The School of Greatness - 140 The Power of Emotional Courage to Transform Your Habits with Peter Bregman

Episode Date: February 18, 2015

"Emotional courage is the ability to feel absolutely everything and then make a smart choice about what to do next." - Peter Bregman If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/140.

This is episode number 140 with Peter Bregman. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. And I want to introduce you guys to a new friend of mine.

His name is Peter Bregman. And he's got a new book out called Four Seconds. All the time you need to stop counterproductive habits and get the results you want. all the time you need to stop counterproductive habits and get the results you want. And it all starts with a big, deep breath and a resting point. We're going to get into that here in just a second. But for those that don't know who Peter is, he's the CEO of Bregman Partners, a firm that advises, coaches, and trains leaders at all levels to take powerful and ambitious actions to achieve the things that are most important to them in their organizations.

He is the author of 18 Minutes, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, along with a number of other books, and he is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, NPR, Psychology Today, Forbes, Fast Company, and other media outlets. I really enjoyed this episode with Peter today, and we go back and forth on a few things. Some things we agree on, other things we come to a mutual agreement on things because we have different viewpoints and opinions. But all in all, this is something that everyone needs to be listening to. I think you're going to get a lot of value out of this on how to not react negatively in certain situations, how to manage your emotions

when things come up, whether in business or relationships or whatever it may be. But really we talk about emotional courage and I think it's something that everyone should be learning more about and understanding more about because it's really, truly the key to success in life is your emotional intelligence, your emotional courage, your emotional fitness, and understanding how to navigate and flow with your emotions and not hide them down or stuff them, but really the best way to let them out. And Peter talks about those best ways to let them out here. So let's go ahead and dive in with the one and only Peter Bregman on episode number 140.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Peter Bregman on today. How's it going, Peter? I'm well, thanks. How are you, Lewis? Doing great. And we met about a month ago in New York at an author's dinner through, was it Dory, right? Yeah, Dory Clark.

And it was a fun little dinner night. It was like in the middle of a blizzard, but we all made it. And it was fun connecting with you. And you were telling me about your new book called Four Seconds, all the time you need to stop counterproductive habits and get the results you want. And I said, I got to bring you on because I'm all about building and forming positive habits. I feel like that's one of the keys to greatness for anyone is those habits. But sometimes we get in our old habits, our old ways of being, our reaction mode, and

we don't stick to those habits or our ego gets in the way or resentment or anger or fears, whatever gets in the way and it stops us from being productive. So why did you get into this book in the first place? What inspired you to talk about this topic? You know, every topic that I write about, it's because I struggle with it myself. So I don't approach anything that I write about from, you know, I'm not some guru from on a pie that comes down from my heavenly perch to share my great wisdom and then go back up to my perfect life. I, I write about stuff that I struggle with and I struggle with a lot of things. And, um, and one of the things that I noticed is that I have, you know, no matter how much I write about stuff, no matter how much I think about this stuff, which is all the time, I have gut instinctive knee-jerk reactions to situations.

And almost always they are unproductive. It's almost a formula that if it's my gut reaction, I probably know I shouldn't do it. And the reason, I think, is because we learn these responses to situations when we're kids that we don't really have the ability to sit with. And so someone gets mad at us and we get defensive because it's so scary that someone's mad at us or something goes wrong and we get angry. And it's these gut responses that were actually very useful to us when we were four, but not particularly useful to us anymore. And so I noticed that I had a lot of these. I had my fair share of reactions to situations that simply weren't getting me the outcomes that I wanted.

And I was a little stunned by how often I repeated the same thing and didn't change it. So it made me really look at it and say, what's going on? And first of all, let me understand it. And second of all, let me figure out how to subvert it. You know, how do I make that shift and actually land on some more productive reactions to everyday situations? So you're saying we can't act like a little whining child when we're an adult in business or in relationships? You know, the truth is we can, we just probably won't get what we want. Right, exactly.

You know, like, or maybe we will get what we want in some situations, but not in a lot of situations. And we probably won't create a win-win situation when we get what we want because someone else will feel like they have to give up something or you know you may feel i don't know precisely precisely and and we probably won't love ourselves at the end of the day right and you know ultimately you sort of want to live your life in a way that you're liking what you do during the day right exactly but you know let's talk about four seconds how can you really accomplish anything in four seconds?

So I heard, and we've all read, it takes 21 days to change a behavior and you have to do it over and over again until it becomes a new habit, et cetera. And I realized, and I actually get this from meditation teachers who often talk about a single breath. And I get it from my own meditation, right? Where I'm able to sort of pause for a single breath. And I realized, and my own meditation, right? Where I'm able to sort of pause for a

single breath. And I realized, and let me use a really simple example, right? I, you know, I look at a cookie and I want to eat it. And my habit is to take a bite of that cookie every single time I see a cookie, right? Which leads to, you know, kind of what I want to do in that moment, which is eat that cookie, isn't what I want to do ultimately, which is to end up having an outcome of being unfit and gaining weight that I don't want to gain, et cetera. So maybe I need 21 days to shift that habit. Or what I found is if I take a deep breath, I can subvert the reaction. What happens in that moment when I see that cookie? And this is not obviously just about a cookie. It's if someone yells at me, right?

And my reaction is to yell back. What happens is I get a stimulus to my amygdala. I get my limbic system, my emotional system, the reptilian part of the brain gets a jolt, right? Mmm, cookie, good, right? It's going to, that's a good thing. Or someone yells at me, oh, bad, you know, yell, saber-toothed tiger, because at me oh bad you know yell saber-toothed tiger because we can't really distinguish between the saber-toothed tiger and you know someone

yelling at us in a hall and so we have this gut reaction and it turns out it takes one to two seconds that's it so actually when i wrote four seconds i was very generous i gave people twice but it takes one to two seconds to slow down enough, one to two seconds for the stimulus to go from your amygdala, which is the reptilian brain, to your prefrontal cortex. That's the part of your brain that thinks. That's the rational part of your brain. It's the part of the brain that goes, wait, do I really want the calories that come with that cookie? Do I really want to yell back at this person who's yelling at me? That's the part of the brain that allows you to think. And by taking a deep breath and pausing for the briefest of pauses, just four seconds, you can subvert the reaction that is

spiraling out of your amygdala and you can allow it to come out of your neocortex and make a more thoughtful response. And you change in an instant. This is what the meditation teachers often taught me, is that change happens in an instant. The moment you don't eat that cookie, the moment you don't yell back at the person who's just yelled at you, the moment you pause for a moment and take a breath, that is the moment where you change in an instant. You transform yourself. And a number of those moments strung together becomes a transformational change. Yeah. I mean, I understand it. I get it.

I feel it. But I know there's sometimes where someone will yell at me or say something negative or attack me or maybe they're not even doing it, but I'm feeling like it's happening where I just can't control myself. And maybe I try to take a deep breath for a few seconds, but then I still react later because it like digs into my soul and my, my, my ego takes over and I'm like, I breathe, I meditate on it, but this guy is still pissing me off for like two days later. And I still want to react how, you know, what do we do then? It's so, it's so, it's so true. And I'm in there too. So like, again, I want to reinforce that I'm not, you know, like I'm not immune to feeling those things. It's, it's why I write a lot about, and it's in this book and,

and it's, and it's the foundation of the leadership intensive that I run about emotional courage. Emotional courage, in my view, is the key to being an effective leader, to moving effectively in your life. And emotional courage, the way I define it is the courage to feel whatever it is you feel. So you're going to get that jolt, Lewis. I'm going to get that jolt. And the power that you have when you develop your muscle of emotional courage is you could feel that vulnerability or that anger or that fear or that irresistible, almost irresistible urge to lash back out. You could feel it, and it's not insurmountable to feel. You could feel it. But success in action, success in being a leader, success in being able to move through the world with power is your ability. It comes down to this, Lewis. It comes

down to your ability to feel absolutely everything and then make a smart choice about what to do next. And the people who have to act out of their feeling, like when I feel something, I got to do that. Those are the people who in the end become victims of whatever bandies them about, knocks them around. But if you have the capacity, I mean, this is what I feel like is at the root of all successful leadership. If you have the capacity to feel the pain or the vulnerability or the fear or the insecurity or the sadness or the weakness that you may feel when something happens to you and still be able to make a smart choice about what to do next, then you are free. That is true freedom in the full sense of the word, I believe.

How do you, I love that explanation. And how does someone because i feel like feeling the feelings is definitely something we should all do if you're not feeling uh and allowing your body to be moved by whatever feeling is coming through then it's you're you're basically just uh i don't know you're you're not human and you're you're stuffing things down and you're not allowing yourself to feel it's just not healthy to not allow that flow. You're creating a blockage in your energy. Now, what about expressing how you feel? Is it important to express how you feel? Obviously, if I'm angry, I want to be angry and express that. But what's the effective and efficient way to express your feelings, feel your feelings, express them in a healthy way that drives results? Great question. Great question. So first of all, I want to say

that this is so counterintuitive. It is not important to express how you feel. It's not. It is important to know. It is important to feel it. That follow me here because this is like, so this is so tricky that we express how we feel in the moment so that we can stop feeling it. Right. We let it out. If I feel incredible anger, then I feel myself almost incapable of feeling that anger. So I want to get super angry. And then you talked about it before. If you don't feel it, then the energy gets blocked. So we want to unblock the energy and we unblock the energy by letting it out in this like crazy lash out way. And then we don't feel

angry anymore because we've been able to express all of our anger. And we've done possibly tremendous amount of collateral damage in that process. So it's fine to feel anger. And using anger is a great example because if you feel anger, think of it as data, right? If you're really capable of feeling that anger, what happens is we don't want to feel it, so we stuff it down. And by the way, I may not get angry because I may not be able to get angry. If you're a kid, you can't get angry at your parent if you're worried about being abandoned. If you carry that into being an employee and you're boss, you're super angry at your boss, you may not be able to get angry. So you don't express it because you don't me to do, or I'm going to find some other way to subvert it, or I'm going to gossip about him. And that's going to come back, and that's going to hit me even harder. But it doesn't necessarily mean that I could just be angry if I'm angry, because I might get fired. I can't necessarily do that. So the trick is,

feel it fully. Feel it fully. Feel that energy. Don't block it. Don't repress it because then it leaks out in some insane way. Don't necessarily express it because that may not get you what you want, but you feel it. And then you pause for a second and you ask yourself the question, what is the outcome I want in this situation? What is the outcome I want? Because the great win here is to move forward in your goals and in the things that are most important to you. So if your boss makes you super angry rather than expressing it, say, what is the outcome I want? He just took a project away from me. If I get really angry at him, is that going to encourage him to give the project back to me? No, probably not. So getting super angry at him is not going to help me.

It's only going to put me in a worse situation, which will make me more angry, which will put me in a worse situation, which will eventually get me fired. More passive aggressive, yeah. Exactly. So what I want to do instead is I want to pause for a second and go, I'm super angry. That's data. That's data that I'm not getting what I want. That's data that I feel like I've been knocked down or maybe humiliated or something. That's data. Yeah, I call that feedback. down or maybe humiliated or something. That's data.

Yeah, I call that feedback. Yeah, perfect. It's feedback. It's feedback. And given that feedback, I need to now make a smart decision about what to do next because if ultimately I don't want to feel that anger, rather than repressing it, how about I change my situation? I don't become a victim, but I change my situation in a way that – and you've done this in

your own life, Lewis, from what I know of life. How do you not become this victim and make a smart strategic move? How do you do such a kick-ass job on the next project that he gives you back two other projects? How do you funnel that feedback and that emotional energy into something that's going to be really productive for you? energy into something that's going to be really productive for you. And one last thing, sorry, but one last thing, because if it's so strong in you, you can't get it out, go to the gym, do an MMX workout, hit a bag, do whatever you need to do to actually physically move that energy, because that energy is not tied to that person. It's in you and you may just need to move it to get it out. That is powerful stuff. Yeah. So you're saying it's okay to express it as long

as you don't express it to the person or the situation itself where it could cause more harm, but rather in a contained environment or a safe environment, you could scream in a pillow if you want to in your bed. Yeah, that's a great thing to do. I do that. I mean, full disclosure, I'll be open. I will sometimes sit there and I'll hit my bed, right? Because I know that I need to get that out. And that's the only thing that I have. And I know that I don't want to get it out in some weird way. And I mean, it's kind of a secret about energy or emotion or reactions to things that we don't fully understand, which is you getting, you know, that anger you feel,

the energy in your body. Yes, you can move it, but it's not tied to a particular person. You just feel it. I mean, you could get just as angry at your boss for not giving you your bonus as you will some guy who bumps into you in the subway and you walk by. And it's not that you're actually as angry, but you've got anger in you. Move it. Move it. And then you don't end up getting kind of ineffective or unproductive with it that's good is there ever a way to never feel anger or frustration ever in our lives you mean enlightenment yeah is that ever possible

i mean i've never met anybody who who uh um who has that i i have heard this great story of and i don't even think that's the goal by the way but but i i heard this great story of, and I don't even think that's the goal by the way, but I heard this great story of this monk who I don't know if this is a true story or not, but this monk who was talking and having kind of this nice, kind of funny, laughing conversation with a student and then he saw another student

and he turned and he goes, he said very nicely to the first student he was talking to hold on one moment, I just need to do something. And then he turned back to the one who was walking over and he started screaming at him, you call that meditation? That's not meditation. I don't know what you're doing.

Get back there and sit for two hours. And then he looked back at the person he was talking to and he chuckled. He goes, he needed that right then. And then he kept talking. And it's sort of the skill of using the emotion to get to the outcome that you're trying to get to in the service of other people even. But I don't think it's even a goal to not feel these things because what would life be if we didn't feel the full breadth of the emotions that we can have. I mean, the truth is, anger can be incredibly useful. Anger is an empowering emotion. Anger gets you moving, right? Sadness.

Sadness actually is also a really powerful emotion. I mean, just if you're looking at the productivity of emotions. Sadness can help you to slow down a little bit, to be a little more thoughtful. You know, sometimes when I'm sad and I write a piece, it's one of the best pieces I've ever written because I'm able to sink into it. I'm not multitasking in 20 different directions because my energy is a little lower. So it's, these emotions are useful to us in certain ways and we want to leverage them. We want to use them in a way that we're not afraid of them.

Yeah, and some of the greatest art pieces, music, movies in the world have been created through these emotions. Yeah. We wouldn't have those if we didn't have those emotions, I guess. That's an interesting way to look at it. You talk about goal setting and how it can actually harm your performance. Can you speak into that? Sure. I think we can get so laser-focused, blinders-on, driven towards our goals that we pursue them and achieve them at the expense of the things that are really important to us.

And we've all seen that. I mean, we've seen entrepreneurs who build these great businesses and their life is a shambles. You know, and why were they building their business in the first place? To have like a really nice life. And, you know, we've seen, and I mean, there's great examples of this. I mean, there's examples of people who, you know, like it's really, I was in a recent conversation around diversity in an organization where I was in a conversation with someone whose real focus was we're going to get our numbers up. And it's like, well, you also need to create an environment in the organization that makes it robust and interesting for people of diverse perspectives and coming from diverse cultures and places to really feel included and be able to contribute. But that's not the goal. The goal

is to get our numbers from 20% to 25%. Well, you're going to lose those people. That's going to end up costing you a lot of money. You're going to bring in people just to get them in, where you may not even be bringing in the best candidates. And it's these short-term, driven, focused goals that we pursue and achieve at the expense of ultimately what's important. And I think it's important to keep in mind what you value and what you're really going for so that you can continue to assess whether you're getting traction on it. So I like the idea of areas of focus, things I really want to focus on. And yes, you can measure them. And maybe even you can set some goals.

I mean, I'm not saying don't set any goals. But I think we have to be super careful about goals at the expense of what we really value and what we really want. What I'm hearing you say is that when other people, specifically in the workplace, or other people set goals for you that they want, that it's unproductive. But if we're setting our own goals on what we want and it's a balanced attack, let's say, are you saying that we shouldn't have our own goals or is that okay? You know, I think your distinction is a really useful distinction. And it's helpful to keep in mind other people's goals versus your sort of own goals. But I think we can get carried away with our own goals too. I mean, I think like the entrepreneur example, I think that we could achieve the things we're out to achieve and not get the things that we really want to get.

But I think that your point about other people's goals is even more important. I mean, there's some examples I use in Four Seconds in the book where the Pinto was created out of this goal of a car. I believe it was under 2,000 pounds for $2,000. And they, if you remember the Pinto in the 1970s, they actually built it. They succeeded in that goal. And every time it was rear-ended, it blew up. And so it caused a lot of deaths and it caused a lot of injuries. And it was the result of a goal achieved. But they had to cut corners. In order to get it to that price, they didn't do all the safety checks. They met the goal and they achieved something really dangerous. So I think we just have to be aware of that. Yeah.

I mean, I definitely see your point of, you know, focusing all of your energy on it to cut corners and with goals. I don't think that's effective. My personal opinion and happy to speak into this is, you know, if we want to,

if we have a big vision, if we have any vision, then there's got to be some type of goals or somewhere you're marking something that you can work towards to achieve the vision, to make your dream a reality. And so I think for me personally, it's a matter of making sure, because I have been in my life where I've been so fixated on the goals, like you just said, that I did achieve every goal and then I was unhappy. And it's because I wasn't having a balanced attack of why I wanted the goal, making sure that I was unhappy. And it's because I wasn't having a balanced attack of why I wanted the goal, making sure that I was taking care of my emotional fitness, emotional

courage, developing positive relationships, focusing on love and health. And so I think in some ways, I really agree with you on that. But also I think it's a valuable thing to just be aware of the goals you're creating and make sure you're creating a win-win situation with every goal for the people, for yourself and the people around you who are included in those goals. I like that. So let's agree on this. Let's do, let's, no, no, I like it because I like it. So let's agree on this. Let's say that every goal exists in order to get us to something that we want. Yes. Right? And so if we keep both things, like meaning if I have a goal which says I want to –

Make a million dollars next year. Make a million dollars next year. I want to make a million dollars next year. I could put that goal above my desk. I could put that goal above my desk, right? But at the same time, I want another piece of paper above my desk saying, here's why I want to make a million dollars a year. Here's why that goal is important to me. And then as I approach that goal or make that goal, I want to keep looking at the other one going, is that goal getting me closer to the thing that I really want. And if I could hold both of those things together, then I think a goal is great. And it's even useful as a measure to say,

as the thermometer rises towards my goal, is the thermometer also rising towards getting what I want? And if it's not, if there's a disconnect, if I'm getting less of what I want, but I'm achieving that goal, then I've got to question whether the goal is the right goal. Exactly. I definitely agree with that. And for me, when I'm setting my goals, it's evolved over the years as I've evolved. Before it was just like, get a girlfriend and make varsity. It's like my goal. But now it's like a balanced attack. It's like, what are my spiritual goals? How am I going to give back to the world, my community, my service goals, my health goals, emotionally and physically my business goals, you know? So that's like, I create these categories of like a balanced attack. And, uh, you know, if something's off that if one of them isn't, isn't winning, then neither of them are winning. And so it's creating the win-win in all areas of my life that I feel

that what works for me. It's great. I think that's great. Cool. So how do you coach someone to accept reality and change their expectations? That's a great question. And it very much depends on who the person is and what their relationship is with reality. Because there's a lot of people who actually have a pretty good reality. In fact, there's a CEO that I work with when I coach him around this stuff who says to me, look, it's my – and he's right somewhat about what he's about to say, which is it's my job as CEO not just to conform to reality, but to change reality. There's some element in which if the reality isn't meeting my expectations, if we're not making the numbers, then I've got to go change that. I've got to make that happen. And then my ability to change that particular reality is reflective of my ability

to be a good CEO. And to some degree, I think he's right, right? I mean, I think that we need to make change in the world. But there are sometimes when fighting against the reality of a particular situation, you know, customers don't want the particular product. Well, I could change that reality maybe by convincing them that they need the product or even by shifting the product. But in order to shift that reality, I've got to see reality for what it really is. I need to understand the situation. I need to understand why it's not working. And so in those cases, it's a fairly

rational conversation, right? If I'm coaching a CEO, it's a fairly – it's kind of looking at the situation and going, let's do a debrief. Let's do an assessment. What's working? What's not working? Let's break that down. And we can look at it from a business perspective, understanding what's going on and change reality. There are some times when the reality is completely out of sync. So there are some people and where I'm coaching them or we have – there's a bunch of coaches at Pregnant Partners and

I supervise them. So I hear about this from people who are coaching for us and there's a victim mentality, for example. So I think that my reality, the way I see the world is that everyone's out to get me or that I can't be successful because of other people in the organization, etc. And our job as coaches is to help them understand how to get out of that mentality, right? It's to understand that while they are sitting in the victim mentality, nothing is going to change. By definition, nothing is going to change because they're not going to change anything. mentality, nothing is going to change. By definition, nothing is going to change because they're not going to change anything. And if I know one thing about people, and I write about

this a lot in four seconds, don't go to a hardware store and get upset when they won't sell you milk. It's like, look at people. And the one thing that you could pretty much rely on in life is for the most part, people will be in the future like they are in the past. For the most part, you can expect, unless someone's going through a major transformation in their life, you can expect people to behave tomorrow the way they're behaving today. And so if you're going to agree with that, then the only person that you can change is yourself in terms of seeing that reality. And so sometimes it's hard to get people to see that when they're really in their victim mentality. And I think from a coaching perspective, our job is to keep taking smaller steps back,

back, back, back, back until we get to one thing we can agree on that they can impact. So they might say, I can't have that conversation with my boss because my boss will never listen to me. Well, so then let's go smaller. If you can't have that conversation with your boss, who can you have the conversation with who might listen to you, who might have influence with your boss? Meaning let's keep taking steps back, back, back so that we get to an action that we both agree you can impact. And in that moment, in that action, you've stepped out of your victimhood, right? For that action, you agree you can impact something. Great. Once we get there,

we've got traction. We start taking little baby steps forward in order to eventually get you to a conversation with your boss. Gotcha. Towards achieving the goal you want. Exactly. Yeah. Or the life spot. Exactly. What are three to five questions in order that someone can self-coach themselves with? Like if they're having a breakdown or they recognize and are aware that they're a victim or something's not working or they're not satisfied with the result, what is the first three or four or five questions that they can ask themselves to switch their perspective and move forward in a different way?

Good question. And I'm on the spot, so let me think. Or what are three to five questions that you ask them? Yeah. Right, right, right. So I think the first, let's do this together because I like it. I think the first thing to do in those situations, the first thing to do is pause and breathe, right? It's something that I talk a lot about in Four Seconds.

It's a basic idea. It's a basic tool that we can use in order to get regrounded and recentered. And in those moments, that's what you need. More than anything, you need to be grounded. You need to be centered. And so the step one, the first step is take a breath. Just take a breath. Slow down.

And I talk in four seconds a lot about meditation even and about doing nothing in a lot of situations is the best thing that you could possibly do. One of the things that meditation has taught me is the ability to resist urges. When I sit down and I meditate for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes or a minute, in that minute or however much time I'm meditating, I don't do anything but breathe. So when I get this great idea that is going to be the basis of my next book and will make me millions and millions of dollars, I can't write it down because all I have to do is sit and breathe because that's the practice. And that practice not only develops a centeredness, but it gives

me the ability in those moments when we were talking earlier in the conversation about anger, it gives me the ability to resist that urge because I'm building my capability to resist urges. So the first thing you do is you take a breath, you resist the urge to act immediately, right? Because we don't want the intuitive, counterproductive thing to come out. So step one is take a breath. Step two is I would say, what are you feeling right now? Just ask yourself that question. What are you feeling right now? Take a moment to assess what you're feeling. Because again, like we talked about earlier, you don't want your feeling to dictate your next action. Because at best, it will have a random

result. And you don't want a random result you want an outcome that moves you closer to what you to your goals right to what you most want in your life and so so you take a breath step one step two ask yourself what you're feeling identify it label it feel it be aware of it notice where it is in your body, right? When you do those things, you release its control over you, right? Step three is to say, what is the outcome I want in this moment? So you're not responding out of the past. You're not figuring out what you should do based on what someone else did to you. You're not responding based on your emotion. You're asking yourself the question, what is the outcome? What is the future that I want to create for myself?

What is that future? What is the future with this person? What is the future with my work? What is the future in this relationship? What is the future with the company? Whatever it is, what is the future I want to create for myself? You could do this, by the way, in seconds. This does not take long, right? You stop, you breathe, what am I feeling? Notice it, notice where it is. What is the outcome that I want here? Step four is you ask yourself, what is the thing I can do or say or even think or feel in this moment that is most likely going to get me to the outcome that I want. It's counterintuitive because you are acting out of a future that you want to create, not out of a past that might be stimulating you to act. If somebody yells at me in the hall, I'm not acting out of that past. I wouldn't act if not for the yell,

which is why it gets confusing. I wouldn't act if not for the yell. And that's why I'm often misled into acting out of the yell. But no, I want to act out of the future I want to create, which might be a relationship with the person who's yelling at me, which would be a completely different response than if I was in a parking lot and someone was coming at me with a tire iron. So you stop, you breathe. What am I feeling, what is the outcome I want to achieve, and what is the action that I can take now that will help me move towards that outcome? And specifically, what do I have to do, say, think, or feel right now, and then execute on that? That's a great little self-coaching model.

Yeah, it's a great process. And it's something that we do with the people that we coach. That's a great little self-coaching model. Yeah, it's a great process. And it's something that we do with the people that we coach. That's a great process. Yeah, I like that a lot. And I feel like my emotional courage has definitely evolved over the years, especially in the last couple of years since I hit 30. But I still see tendencies of weakness in specific situations. And I'll give an example. You know, I used to be always reacting in relationships. If like my girlfriend would say something in the past, like a past girlfriends would say something that would trigger me, I would react. It was like, it was going to happen. You know, 99% of the time I was going to react. Now I am really good at not reacting,

like in taking that breath and relaxing and saying what I need to to get the outcome I want and connecting and like being understanding and loving and all these things that come from a place of like groundedness. And I feel like I dissolve the conflict very quickly now. However, it like lingers in me. Like two hours later that night, the next day, I'm like, gosh, why was she even frustrated in the first place? Like doesn't she understand me?

Doesn't she get this? Like doesn't she understand what I'm up to? And then I react like a day later because I'm frustrated that I even had to deal with it. Right. And what can I do in that situation or what can someone do in that situation if they're like calm and loving but then they're like frustrated later because they're like, why am I even handling this stuff? Do you remember when we talked about passive aggressive behavior?

Yes. Okay. So it's – but it's – this is like the tempting – this is the tempting thing, right? So when you're responding in this loving way, what I'm getting is you don't actually feel necessarily all like loving and compassionate and like, great, you're so angry. But you know that it will be more productive for you to act in this loving way. So what you're kind of doing is you're repressing your anger. I would argue that you're probably not fully feeling it in that moment, but you're, you're repressing it. And then you're acting in a way in kind of like a mask,

right? Like you put on your love mask and you say, I'm, I'm like a really loving, peaceful, happy person. And you know, I'm going to respond from that place. And it's tricky because it may sound to some people as I'm talking like I'm suggesting that. But I'm not suggesting that. I think it's a mask. It's not really super authentic. But it's very hard to tell. And it's very hard to even see it in yourself because you know that's what people are telling you to do.

And you know that that's going to get you the outcome that you want. So how do you be authentic and feel, but not cause more conflict? So I think the important piece, the missing step here is, first of all, to really feel the anger, to know that you're super angry, right? It's okay to say to your girlfriend in that moment, without expressing your anger in an angry way, without reacting your anger as, you know, in an angry way without reacting to say, you know, I'm feeling really angry right now. And I think, um, I want to, I don't want to respond out of this place. So let's, can we continue this conversation later? Or to be able to say, I feel really angry. And, and, and when you're feeling enough to say,

and actually I realized that my anger is coming from this place of vulnerability. Like I'm feeling vulnerable in this or I'm feeling weak. Like you're able to show – like you're able to see what's underneath the anger in a way that you're able to express that, which often develops into a deeper connection. So even saying to her, I'm angry, may give you a much deeper connection because that's real in the moment. But it's not violent and it's not abusive and it's not just reacting in a way that you're out of control. You're saying, okay, I'm angry about this. I want to have this conversation. Or you're able to say, I'm angry because I feel like I kind of switched my schedule around for this stuff and maybe

it's not as important to you and I don't – and it feels like a disconnect and that makes me sad. So you're able to articulate your emotions with a little more subtlety that allows you to engage in a deeper conversation that's really real and that then through that develops real feelings of love, not a mask, but real feelings of love and connection that stay with you for much longer. Yeah. And you talk about in the book, you emphasize the need to resist urges. Is that going along the lines with this? Yeah. I think we have so many urges and our urges are mostly there to protect ourselves, right? I mean, we mostly have these urges. Some of us, again, if we're maybe super enlightened, have urges that are like totally on the spot. And some urges are on the spot. I mean, sometimes, you know, your urge to do something is pretty much on target and on the spot. But you want to be present enough to resist the urge enough to know whether that urge is what's necessary in that moment. And then you don't get yourself in trouble. And this is not just for people who fly off the handle or throw telephones. It's for everything

that we do. It's like we have this urge. Sometimes the urge is to put on that love mask, right? I mean, sometimes the urge is to be loving when really there's a problem that we're sitting with that's kind of eating us up inside and it's going to leak out in some insidious way. Right, right. Why do you consider criticism a gift? Criticism is data. I mean, it gives us such amazing information and information that if we don't have, we're going to continue operating in a way that will, in effect, elicit that kind of criticism that nobody's telling us about. And we're going to keep making the same mistakes over and over again and never really know it. So when someone criticizes us, it's data, it's feedback. I mean, you called it feedback. That's

exactly what it is. I mean, it tells us something about ourselves that's really useful to know if nothing else. By the way, it doesn't necessarily tell us this is the truth about you, but it does tell us this is someone's perspective of the truth about you. perspective, if nothing else helps you with that particular person, right? If someone tells you, you don't listen very well, right? You don't have to go to a mea culpa and go, oh my God, and I don't listen well, and I'm a terrible listener, and that means I'm a terrible person, and I'll never lead, and I'll never... No, you could just say, there may or may not be truth in that in general, but certainly this person's perspective is that I don't listen well. So what do I need to do with this particular person in order to show them that I hear them? And so now you've got a formula to have a stronger relationship and a more successful relationship with this person that can help you in any number of ways. So it's this huge gift if someone gives you a criticism. And again, that's one of those things where you

may have a gut reaction. It may make you feel terrible. You may want to lash out. You may want to gossip about them. What a jerk. And miss the gift, which is, wow, so someone's giving me a formula to work with them more effectively. And someone's shedding some light. And someone, by the way, has gotten over their own hesitance to maybe be disliked by me, to tell me something about how they're feeling about something or how they're seeing something that can be my benefit. So I want to respect and appreciate the courage it took someone to criticize me. Now, maybe they did it in a sloppy, ineffective way. Maybe they lashed out for themselves. But if I can see it for that gift, then I can actually use it to become a stronger, more successful person.

I like that. I got a couple of questions left for you. And I want to know some of the rituals that you personally do to change a, let's say, counterproductive habit. So the breath is a big ritual that I do, right? And I practice it in meditation, but breathing is a ritual that prevents me from having a counterproductive habit in general. But those are just in the moment. So there are counterproductive habits that I have, like working. I could do between the time I think I have to write an article and actually sitting down to write the article. There's so many things that distract me from it. Writing the articles hard and I don't know how to start. It's a blank page. And so I have all these counterproductive habits. And so, um, I've developed some rituals around it. So I, you know, will take a moment and, and, and breathe for a second.

Sometimes, depending on where I am, because I write in different places, if I have a candle, maybe I'll light a candle and I'll sort of say to myself, this candle – and I'll say it. I mean not out loud if I'm by myself. But this candle, when it's lit, is lit for me to write this piece. And when I stop writing, I'm going to blow out the candle. That's interesting. And it kind of is a reminder. And if I start to get distracted, I look and I see the candle.

Like this is my writing candle. And I'm going to go. And it allows me to do it. And then sometimes I'll sit, you know, if I'm not around a candle, I'll have my computer and I'll just say to myself, like, this is my writing time.

So I'm going to close every single window in my computer except the one that I'm writing with. And I'm going to write on that. And I'm writing with. And I'm going to write on that. And when I need a break, I'm going to be really conscious of saving and closing this piece so that when this piece of paper is open, you know, when this dock is open, I'm going to be using it to write this piece and I'm not going to be using it. So don't just have it open when you're not writing it. Yeah, because then it's going to give me the illusion I'm writing and

I'm not. And what I want to do is be real with myself that I'm not actually writing in this moment. If I'm not writing, I don't want it open because I don't want to pretend I'm writing. And then four hours later say, oh my God, I didn't write this piece, but I've been writing all day. You know what? I haven't been writing all day. So I create a ritual of a beginning and an end so that I'm really clear what it is. And I don't want other things to interrupt me in that moment. That's really good. We've got one, two questions left, but before I ask those questions, I want to make sure everyone checks this book out four seconds all the time. You need to stop counterproductive habits and get the results you want. I'll have it

linked up all of my, uh, my website. I'll let you guys know what that link is here in a second and get all the show notes from today's episode. You can find links to Peter's information and social media, his site as well. So make sure to check all that out. A couple of questions left for you, Peter. One is what are you most grateful for recently in your life? I am super grateful for the people around me. I mean, I, you know, I've got people who love me and whom I love and people I, you know, Eleanor, my wife and my kids and people that I work with. And I'm really, I mean, that is, the freedom of space to express my ideas, to write them, to think about them, to talk about them. I mean, I really love that. I'm deeply grateful for teachers in my life, for people who've taught me. I've got people who teach me every day,

every day. You, a woman, Anne Bradney, who's taught me a lot about emotional courage and emotions and my friends who teach me. I mean, I've got such amazing teachers around me. And I think that those are the most important things to me, that I've got great, great relationships, people close to me, great teachers that I continue to grow and I continue to learn and that I have the freedom to experiment and to play and to express and to be creative. I'm really most grateful for those things. That's what comes top of mind. I like that. Thanks for sharing that.

Before the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Peter, for your awareness. And I don't think I've ever acknowledged someone for their awareness, but I want to acknowledge you for your awareness because I sense you have extreme awareness about what doesn't work for you and what you're not good at. And then you dive into that and you make it a mission of yours to become great at it and then serve others and how to overcome those obstacles as well in their own life. So I want to acknowledge you for your awareness and then your commitment to overcoming whatever's in the way of you achieving the results you want in your life. It's been really inspiring to watch. Thank you for that. I'm touched by that and

really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Final question. It's what I ask everyone at the end is what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is really being able to look back. I don't know if this is right. I mean, I think it is partly right. I mean, it's your ability to really look at your life, look at your day, look at your year, look at your life, and to say, I've made my thumbprint on this world in a really positive way. of and that I've impacted in whatever realm that is, however small or however big. I've moved this world in a way that is clearly my unique way of touching this world and it's made a positive impact. That to me is greatness. Peter Bregman, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. It's really been a pleasure talking with you.

thank you so much for having me. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. There you go, guys. Hope you enjoyed this. Again, make sure to check out our show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 140. The number's 140. lewishouse.com slash 140. I'll have a link where you can get the book, Four Seconds by Peter Bregman. Also, some other links to where you can get the book, Four Seconds by Peter Bregman. Also, some other links to where you can connect with Peter. If you enjoyed this episode, if you found it fascinating about how to manage your emotions and emotional courage,

then make sure to share this with a friend over on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus or tag me on Instagram or send them an email. lewishouse.com slash 140 is the link. Just send them that and let them know that you thought

they would like this episode. Again, thank you guys so much. We've got big interviews coming up. I believe we're releasing one with Jack Canfield here next week. And I had a fun sit down with him in Santa Barbara at his home. And we had an additional interview basically where I played a game of pool with him. So we'll have some videos, some great links there, uh, and some awesome guests coming up in the future. If you enjoyed this episode, again, please subscribe to the podcast. If this is your first time coming, make sure to check out the previous episodes. We just had Marie Forleo on the previous episode, one 39 and some incredible guests, obviously in the first 139 episodes. So make sure to check these out. Keep sharing them with your friends.

You guys are incredible and I appreciate you so much for all that you do. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you. ស្រូវនប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ Outro Music