The School of Greatness - 604 Susan David: The Art of Emotional Agility

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

People have the greatest levels of success when they live and work at the edge of their abilities. - Susan David All of us want to be happy. Many of us pursue happiness in different ways, and sometimes that includes trying to block out less than happy emotions. You might have noticed that becoming obsessed with this pursuit can actually make you less happy in the long run. That's because all emotions are meant to be experienced. They are meant to pass through you, and when you suppress them or try to pretend they aren't there they will just come back to you with a vengeance. So how do we be truly happy? That's exactly what Susan David has spent her career studying. Susan David is a psychologist, originally from South Africa, that has been learning about emotions and people's pursuit of happiness since she lost her father in high school. She has recently written a best selling book, Emotional Agility, about the importance of every emotion we go through. Susan also recently gave a Ted Talk that was one of the most successful campaigns to date. It received over a million views within the first week. I like to think that things come into our lives at the perfect time and for the right reasons. Lately I've been going through some emotional challenges, which I open up about on this episode, and I took so much away from Susan's advice. I feel privileged to have Susan on this episode and I know you will learn a lot, on Episode 604. Some questions I ask: How did you handle the passing of your dad at a young age? (2:13) What does disability mean? (5:06) How should we approach situations in life we're unhappy about? (7:12) What are your range of emotions like on a daily basis? (11:24) How do we evaluate our emotions? (19:05)Would you say that to make a greater impact in the world that you need to take on more stress? (24:05) How should we approach people going through a difficult time but won't admit it? (29:33) What advice do you have for me if I lose my father? (38:40) In this episode you will learn: What it was like losing her father in high school (00:58) The importance of journaling (56:15) Are we trying to become resilient with our emotions? (4:41) How do we learn from our emotions? (8:28) As a trained psychologist, how do you just allow your emotion to be? (14:20) Are all emotions valuable? (23:09) What does a healthy relationship with our emotions look like? (27:04) What should people do when they lose their job? (37:00) What advice do you have for men who hold in their emotions? (50:03)

This is episode number 604 with Susan David. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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. Brene Brown said that we cannot selectively numb emotions.

When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive ones. I'm extremely excited about this interview with Susan David on the art of emotional agility. Why? Because this is the tool that everyone needs to continually take their life to the next level is understanding the power of emotional agility. And Susan David is an award-winning psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. She's the co-founder and co-director of the Institute of Coaching at McLean Hospital and CEO of Evidence-Based Psychology, which is a boutique business consultancy. She's also the author of the number one Wall Street Journal bestselling book,

Emotional Agility, based on her concept that Harvard Business Review heralded as a management idea of the year and has been featured in numerous leading publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, et cetera. Her TED Talk, which just came out a couple of weeks ago on the same topic, already has over a million views, and

it's one of the fastest watched TED Talks of all time. She is an in-demand speaker and advisor, and she has worked with the senior leadership of hundreds of major organizations, including the United Nations, Ernst & Young, and the World Economic Forum, and she has a wealth of research data and information for us today. Some of the things we talk about are when being okay doesn't actually serve you. Also, the power of writing the truth about what we feel, the difference between emotional rigidity and emotional agility, what happens when we push aside difficult emotions and how it affects our entire life, and how to handle grief in a healthy way. This is a powerful one. I've been

going through a lot of different ups and downs in some personal stuff with my family, some challenges that some of my family members are going through. And it's just been emotionally challenging. And this has been a powerful reflection on how I can continue to elevate my emotional agility. You know, it doesn't matter what level of life we're at, we're going to be constantly thrown different challenges. And the bigger the dreams and the bigger the game we're playing, the bigger the challenges that could potentially come our way and the more that is on our plate. So it's extremely important for us to continue to fine tune and understand our emotional agility. All right, guys, I flowing through life's challenging moments so that we

can continually optimize our life and pursue a healthy, happy existence. I'm super excited about this one. Make sure to take a screenshot, share it out with your friends, tag me on Instagram at Lewis Howes. The link is lewishowes.com slash 604 for all the show notes. And without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Susan David. All right, guys, welcome back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, Susan David in the house. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. You have been blowing up online with your TED Talk. It's one of the most successful campaigns that TED has done. At least they told you you had over a million views in the first

week so congratulations. Thank you. It sounds like The message is perfect time right now for what the world needs and you've got a book out Yes, talks about this called emotional agility Get unstuck embrace change and thrive and work and life so make sure you guys check this book out but that's what everything you've been talking about for many years is emotional agility and you've been studying this and researching it for over a decade now right well the the book and the TED talk are the culmination of truly, I feel, my life's work. Yeah.

And so, yeah, all of my research and all of my studies, but also I didn't come to these ideas through research. I also came to them through life. Yes. Your own experiences. My own experiences. Right. Your father passed away when you were a teenager. You were 17.

Is that what I saw? Yeah. So while I've got a background as a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and there's all of that kind of stuff, really a lot of my. I was 15 and he was 42 years old and I put my school bag down and I walked to say goodbye to him and I remember that day very clearly and afterwards the experience of living in a world where everyone said to me how are you doing? How are you doing? And we live in a world that values getting on with it and relentless positivity and I would say I'm okay, I'm okay. And then I had very, very specific experiences that helped me to recognize that that way of being wasn't serving me and wasn't authentic. And those experiences then drove my work, my research, my PhD, and the book.

Yeah. Did you feel like, how did you handle the passing of your dad at a young age? Were you okay? Or did you just kind of mask it and act like you were okay to show a face? Well, I remember my father died on a Friday. And I remember going back to school on the Monday because I was trying to just get on with it. So you went to the funeral on that weekend? Well, the next week we went to the funeral and I took time off, but I essentially went back to school.

We live in a world that is so focused on happiness and well-being. And so people would say to me, you know, how are you doing? And I would say, okay. and well-being. And so people would say to me, you know, how are you doing? And I would say, okay. And what I experienced, and I think what a lot of people experience in pain is that sense of isolation. So for me, what it looked like is I'm 15 and I've got these school friends and these school friends don't know how to talk about it. So suddenly the word father dropped from all of their conversations because they were worried that they were going to upset me. And so the experience that I had was, you know, saying to people, I'm okay, I'm okay. And back home, the reality was that we were struggling. In South Africa, right? I lived in

South Africa. My father had owned three, he was a small business owner and he hadn't been able to keep his business going during his illness. So my mom was trying to raise three children single-handedly and the creditors were knocking and it was really difficult. And I had this incredible experience of an eighth grade English teacher. And so many of us, I think, have this one person who sees through the triumph over grief story, which is what I was conveying. And I had this eighth grade English teacher who handed out these notebooks in class. And she said, she said, write, you know, write like nobody's reading and tell the truth. And that experience was absolutely pivotal to my work, which is I started to show up to my emotions

and the regret and the grief and the pain and in showing up and in this writing I realized that it was that that ultimately helped me to become resilient and that forged in my career because I became very interested in what does society convey to us about emotions and well-being and positivity and happiness? And in some ways, what are some of those messages that actually might be undermining our resilience? And I think that a lot of the narrative in society about our emotions actually undermines our resilience and our success. Are we trying to become resilient with our emotions? What does he mean by resilient?

Well, if we look at, for instance, the World Health Organization originally predicted that by 2030, depression would be the single leading cause of disability globally. Wow. Outstripping cancer, outstripping heart disease, that was the prediction. In fact, in 2017, depression became the leading cause of disability globally.

What does disability mean? So disability is people who struggle to get on with their day, form relationships, go to work. Really? So depression is the number one thing that disables people? Depression is the number one leading cause of disability globally, outstripping cancer, outstripping heart disease, outstripping cancer, outstripping heart disease, outstripping diabetes. And so, you know, what becomes really interesting is we live in a time

that is complex and where there's a lot of change going on. And what we're starting to see is that the uncertainty is the certainty. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. And what the statistics are showing is that we as a society are not dealing with that reality in a sustainable way. And so when I talk about resilience, I'm talking about how do we navigate the reality of the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, but the world as it is. Not as we wish it to be, but the world as it is. And that involves being in a way with our emotions that is often at odds with what society tells us

because society tells us that we shouldn't be negative or that sadness is a bad emotion. And so, for instance, in some research that I did, in a survey of 70,000 people, found that a third of us judge our emotions like sadness or anger or grief as being bad. We put ourselves down. And we do this to ourselves and we do this to our children. Constantly, right? Constantly jumping to solution.

And what I really suggest… Fixing the problem. Fixing the problem, but not actually feeling the feel, which is not the same as that the feeling is right or the feeling needs to direct the action. But there's something incredibly powerful in our emotions that actually helps us to navigate life. And so when we push aside signals of, gee, I'm unhappy in this job, and we try to rationalize it away and say, well, at least I've got a job, that doesn't actually allow us to then shape or change or tweak things in a way that creates greater levels of meaning and well-being. relationship or a certain situation in life, we shouldn't just say, well, I'm just grateful to have this relationship. I'm grateful to have this job. How should we approach that? So instead of looking at our emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, I want to be right or

wrong. Rather, our emotions just are. Our emotions have evolved with us as a human species to actually help us to communicate with others, but more importantly, to help us to communicate with ourselves. So we don't tend to feel strong emotions about things we don't care about. If you feel rage when you watch the news, it might be a sign that justice and equity and fairness are important to you. Or if you're unhappy in your job, it might be a sign that you're bored and that growth is important to you. So one of the really important things is that beneath our difficulty emotions are often signposts, flashing signals to things that we care about. When we just push aside those difficult emotions, we are not learning from them. And therefore, we are not able to make the changes that our values align changes in a way that's effective.

How do we learn from our emotions? Well, there are a few things. The first is, one of the things that I talk about in emotional agility is the opposite, which is emotional rigidity. And emotional rigidity is when our thoughts, emotions and our stories drive us. Control us. Control us. So, for instance, someone might say, I'm not going to, I just know I'm not going to get the job, so I'm just not going to bother applying. Okay. Or I'm going to be rejected, so I'm not going to get the job, so I'm just not going to bother applying. Okay. Or I'm going to be rejected, so I'm not going to move towards.

Ask the person I'm going to date. So what starts to happen is we often start to crawl into our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories. Some of our stories were written on mental chalkboards in grade three, you know, about whether we're good enough, what we deserve in life, who we are, whether we're good at math or good at... So we start crawling into these stories. And the hallmark of emotional rigidity is when our emotions, our stories, and our thoughts drive us rather than our intentions, our values, and who we want to be in the world. Got it. And so what I talk about in emotional agility is what are ways that we can start unhooking

from that rigidity and instead start moving in a space with our emotions that is more intentional and connected. This beautiful Viktor Frankl idea, this idea that Viktor Frankl, of course, survived the Nazi death camps and 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 rigid, when we hooked by

our thoughts, our emotions and our stories, there's no space between stimulus and response. You know, the person irritated me, so I hit them. Or, you know, my husband started in on the finances, so I left the room. Right. Or they cut me off in traffic, so I reacted. And so we start conflating. We start having no space between our stimulus and response. And what emotional agility in essence is about is how do we develop skills that don't push our emotions aside, but that allow us to see our emotions in their rightful place as data, not directives, where instead we use our values to make choices. To make a response.

Yeah. Right? It's a response rather than a react. To think and be aware of like, okay, I'm going to respond, but here's the price or the consequence or the reward for this response. And some of our reactions are not even reactions that are necessarily driven by anger, for instance.

Some of our reactions in the world are simply going through life on autopilot. Yes. So that's also a way that we are not agile because we're not sensitive to the world around us and to what is coming through the world and being able to make choices in a proactive, effective way. Yeah. What are your range of emotions like on a daily basis? Mine? Yeah. So the first thing I should say with this, because one of the things that I've done is I've spoken about like, you know, this anti anti expectations around happiness or this idea that society, I think, overvalues happiness. So just to be clear, I'm not anti happiness. You know, I'm not anti happiness.

That's my accent. I've written a book, you know, that is a 79 chapter edited handbook called the Oxford Handbook of Happiness. I've got a deep interest in human happiness. But when we start connecting, I'm a nerd. When we start connecting with false ideas around happiness or happiness as a goal, what we know is that people actually become more unhappy over time. We become less able to deal with the world as it is. We have this expectation that I've got to chase happiness, I've got to be happy, I've got to be positive.

And so we stop being able to be authentic and connected. What are my emotions on a day-to-day basis? I'm actually a fairly happy person. I enjoy being happy. I tend to wake up happy. But it doesn't mean that I don't have bad days. When I have bad days, I've learned over time, because I didn't always used to do this, I've learned over time to not try to push those aside, to bottle them,

but also not to brood on them. To ruminate for weeks or months. Yes. Often what we find is ineffective ways of dealing with our emotions, our difficult emotions, is we either bottle them, pushing them aside, you know, I'm unhappy, but I've got to get on with this project. Or what we do is we go over and over our emotions in our mind. And fixate.

And try to fixate on them and we do this with good intentions you know we're trying to understand we're trying to solve um but what i've learned over time with my own emotions is to uh that there's no wrong or right emotion you just feeling what you're feeling just like if you you know have a right hand you don't say well you know, have a right hand. You don't say, well, you know, my right hand is better than my left hand. You know, your hands are your hands. And so this idea of being able to open your heart to the full range of emotional experience, which is very different from what society tells us. Society tells us that we should fix. Especially for men. Yeah. We should fix, we should control,

we should push aside. And what's interesting is when you push aside emotions, it doesn't mean those emotions don't still own you. There's this really fascinating effect in psychology called amplification. And the idea behind it is that when we push aside our difficult thoughts and emotions, they actually come back. They come back bigger, they come come back. They come back bigger.

They come back stronger. And people will have had this experience. You may be on a diet and you have a chocolate cake ban. And so you don't want to think about chocolate cake. And what do you do? You dream about it. The stuff that we try to push aside gets amplified. There's a psychological rebound effect that happens.

How do you manage this as a trained psychologist for years, studying all this, knowing the data and the research and the science behind it all? How do you just allow your emotions to be personally? Otherwise, you're just an inception constantly like, well, as a psychologist, here's how I should approach this. You could be probably very analytical during some challenging times. But figure out a way to trick yourself or just, well, okay, it's going to take this many, I don't know. I don't do a lot of analyzing about what I'm experiencing, when I'm experiencing. You just allow yourself to be. I allow myself to be. I allow myself. That's good. I allow myself to be, you know, I allow myself to be.

But I'm also at the same time, I'm very conscious, for instance, of the messaging that I might convey to my children. Like, you know, we know that often in society, and I know you talk about this, is we have display rules. You know, we'll say things like women should stop being angry or boys shouldn't cry. woman should stop being angry or boys shouldn't cry. And so what we start to do is we start to very early on shape the kind of emotional experiences that are supposedly allowed or not allowed. And what that can lead to is people not being able to feel their emotions in a way that is connected and authentic. And what's the result of that? Anger, depression, or what?

Well, over time, if you don't feel. Yeah, so what happens when people, for instance, have particular types of emotions that they struggle to feel or that they struggle to even identify, there are a couple of things. The first is this amplification effect. So when we push aside our difficult emotions, it's not like the situation gets solved because we're pushing it aside. So we're not actually dealing with the situation, we're just avoiding. And when people have that kind of bottling way of being, over time at its most extreme, it can lead to situations where people try to manage their emotions in maladaptive ways so using alcohol um you know is is one example

where we feel sad but we can't name the sadness and so we try to manage it in a particular way so very practical strategies around this or very practical things around this is, say, for instance, someone's experiencing stress at work. Yeah. Okay. What we'll often do is we'll label these emotions in these very broad brushstrokes. We'll say, I'm stressed. You know, I'm stressed, I'm stressed, I'm stressed. But there's a world of difference between stress and true, gee, I'm just overwhelmed here,

or stress and I'm disappointed because I thought my team would come through and they didn't, or stress and I'm in the wrong career. And so what we know, and in emotional agility I talk about this in a very practical way, is that when we label our emotions in a more accurate way, what it does is it actually allows us to understand the cause of the emotion in a more accurate way and to take steps. We know that it activates what's called the readiness potential in our brains that starts shaping our goals. So a practical example is imagine if I'm working with someone who says I'm just stressed. If I take that person at face value, I might say to them, well, why don't you delegate more? Okay,

isn't that the solution for stress? Yeah. But what if the person's stress is actually, I'm in the wrong career, and I've got a sense of grief and sadness at the time that I've lost, and I've got a sense of grief and sadness at the time that I've lost, then the conversation is completely different. And so if we are able to understand, like, what is this thing that you're calling stress, it allows us to then say, okay, how do we start making shifts? How do we understand the values that you're bringing to this career? How do we start making changes?

And what's your vision? And what's your vision and what do you want? But if you're just in the state of like, I'm stressed or I'm stressed but I'm not even going to go there, you can't actually make changes. And so you asked about the impact. We know that these ideas around emotional agility are critical to our own psychological health, to our well-being,

but also to our relationships. When we push aside emotions, but also to our relationships. When we push aside emotions, it impacts on our relationships. And lastly, we also know that it impacts on the actual ability to do what we're trying to do. So for instance, someone who says something like, oh, I'm angry, but I'm just not going to go there because I've got too much work to do. We, when we assess problem solving and we look at the person's ability to actually problem solve and to tackle the actual work that they're trying to do, that they have degraded solutions, the work is of poorer quality, etc.

So we do it with good intentions, but it doesn't work. So how do we evaluate emotions? To go into a deeper, not just I'm stressed, but what is it really? So a couple of things. The first thing is that when you say something like, I am stressed, or I am sad, or I am angry, what you're doing is you're saying, I am. All of me, 100% of me is this emotion. Okay. But you aren't your emotion. You're also your values. You're also your intentions. You're a whole lot of other things other than that one emotion. When we say I am, it makes all of us about it and there's no space between stimulus and response. So very subtle but practical strategy

around this is to instead of saying I am sad or I'm angry, instead notice the feeling or thought for what it is. It's a feeling or thought. I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm noticing that I'm feeling angry. I'm noticing the thought that I'm not good enough. What that does is it takes you away from the idea that the emotion is a fact or that the thought is a fact and it starts to create space. So that's one strategy. What I'm experiencing in this moment is this feeling of whatever. Yeah. And then other things are the accurate labeling we've spoken about, but also trying to recognize that our emotions have a function. That underneath our difficult emotions is signposted

the thing that we value so often just even saying you know i'm let me give you an example it's like if i say okay well i'm in la at the moment um i've got two children at home in boston both of whom are sick and i i am guilty okay i feel guilty So if I start saying something like, I'm guilty, you know, what that starts to do is it starts to make as if that guilt is a fact that I am a bad mom, that this is terrible. But if I start to say, well, what is that guilt signposting to me? What it's signposting is that I value presence and connectedness with my children. And that at the moment, I'm feeling a lack of that. What that then allows me to do

is to not give up my work, because, you know, that's a very kind of... A different emotion. You know, a different thing. But to be able to say, okay, so in this context, what are ways that I can be present and connected? You know, how can I bring my values to the situation rather than just be like, oh, I'm getting stuck in this guilt.

Yeah, what's the win-win? Yeah. Yeah, can I FaceTime more with them when I'm away? Can I have someone drop in on them? Yes. A sibling or somebody? And when I'm FaceTiming them, can I be present more with them when I'm away? Can I have someone drop in on them, a sibling or somebody? And when I'm FaceTiming them, can I be present and not be on my computer?

You know, so there's all of that kind of stuff. Often when we talk about values, values seem these very abstract ideas. You know, they're things written on walls in businesses and they feel very abstract. But the way that I think of values is that values are qualities of action. abstract. But the way that I think of values is that values are qualities of action. That every day, if you value your health, you get to choose when you go to a restaurant, a move that is either towards your value or a move that's away from your value. And you may say, well, you know, well, I use willpower, you know, I use use willpower but what's really interesting is when you look at when you when you look at how people actually create sustainable change in their lives when people say something like I have to you know I have to lose weight because

my wife's at me or I have to look like a victim it's a have to goal it's I'm a victim of this thing I have to do it as opposed to I choose to because. So that's exactly, so the have to goal, what it actually does is it ramps up temptation. Of course, yeah. You want the thing more, you know, you want the thing more. When people are able to say like, what is the value that underpins this? What is not the have to goal but the want to goal?

We know from a number of studies what it does is it downramps temptation and it actually creates sustainable behavior change. So it's a critical aspect of it. But you only get to that place if you are able to be, you know, open to yourself and what you're experiencing. Yeah. And aware. So are all emotions valuable then? All emotions are valuable. They're all valuable. Absolutely. Society would tell us that emotions, you know, only joy is valuable or only happiness is valuable.

All emotions are valuable. You don't get to have a meaningful career. You don't get to raise a family. You don't get to leave the world a better place without some stress and discomfort. You know, discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. And so some of our emotions, our anger might tell us that we don't like something that's happening in society at the moment. So all emotions are valuable. It doesn't mean the emotion is a fact. It doesn't mean that you write simply because you're experiencing the emotion. They are data,

not directives. So they're information, but they're not telling you what to do. You choose what to do. You own your emotions. They don't own you. Would you say that to make a greater impact in your community or your family or the world that you need to take on more stress in your life? Emotional stress or emotional discomfort? I'm not someone who holds to the idea that you should just be stressed for the sake of stress. Of course, because there's a lot of people in the world who are making an impact or just stress. Or stressed just because I've got to add more stuff to my schedule in a busy way. But when stress is values aligned, that is what contributes.

You know, it's one of the things that I talk about in emotional agility is this idea that we can often, for instance, if you think about the workplace, we can often be in a situation where we're overcompetent in our work, where we, you know, know the work by rote and we know what to expect. And being busy doesn't mean that you're not overcompetent, you know, because we can be busy doing the same thing time and time again. And overcompetence is a very strong risk factor for disengagement in the workplace. But we can also be over...

What do you mean overconfidence? Not overconfident, overcompetent. Like you've mastered your skill. You've mastered the thing, you know what to do. It's routine, it's predictable. Got it. We can also be overchallenged. You know, I never know what's going on in the organization. Things keep changing. Too much uncertainty. There's too much uncertainty. So we know that people make the greatest levels of connection and have the greatest levels of meaning and success in their lives when they work and live

at the edge of their ability. So you're neither overcompetent nor overwhelmed. So that's what it looks like at work. What it looks like in a relationship is you're overcompetent when you go out to a movie and you know what your partner or your wife's opinion is going to be of the movie. You know what they're going to order at dinner. You know what you're going to talk about at dinner. That's over competence. Over challenge in that relationship is when you're walking on eggshells and you don't know. Every day. And both of those, again, are signs of disengagement and disconnection with the relationship. And so being at the edge of your ability in a relationship is often about either trying to expand the depth or the breadth. So what I mean by that,

the depth is, you know, what are some conversations that you maybe had with your partner 10 years ago about your dreams, but that you've stopped having, or aspects of your partner who you just, you don't know those things anymore. So that's about the depth. And breadth is about being able to, you know, explore, do things with your partner's hobbies or new activities that you might not have done. But to my point, it's not just stress for the sake of it. It's about being on the edge. It's about being on the edge in a way that is intentional. Yeah. Yeah. In a way that's intentional and connected with who you want to be in the world. Right. So what does a healthy relationship with our emotions look like then? A healthy relationship with our emotions is about

being compassionate with ourselves. So recognizing that we're doing the best we can with who we are and with what we've got. What does that look like, being compassionate? Is that just an inner conversation of like, it's okay? Is it journaling to ourselves? Is it communicating with someone else and saying like, I'm going to take it easy on myself? Yeah, it could be any of those things.

You know, we live our lives often as if we're in a never-ending Iron Man or Iron Woman competition where the idea of being compassionate is somehow associated with being weak or lazy. But actually, compassion, which is recognizing you're doing the best you can with who you are, with what you've got, and with the resources that you've been given in life, what we know is that people who are self-compassionate are actually more honest with themselves. They're less lazy because what they're doing is they're creating a space inside themselves in which they can fail and they'll still love themselves. And so it's really, really fascinating. And so an example of this is, you know, often when people mess up, if you mess

up at work and you know you've done something wrong, we put ourselves down and we belittle ourselves. And, you know, if you were a five-year-old child, if your five-year-old child made a mistake at school and that child came and told you that they had made a mistake, you wouldn't berate them and yell at them. And yet we do this to ourselves. So what does emotional well-being look like? It's about being courageous, about being compassionate with our emotions. It's about also being courageous with our emotions

because sometimes our emotions take us to feel places that are discomforting. Our emotions might tell us that we're in a relationship that isn't working for us. It's a compass. It's a compass. And so really emotional agility is about being able to be compassionate, curious about our emotions and courageous with our emotions. And to be able to make choices that are connected with our values. That's what emotional health and well-being look like. And we know that this is the bedrock of our success.

And when I say success, I don't mean how much money you've got in the bank, but literally our lifelong well-being, our connectedness in our relationships, our ability to parent and love and lead in an effective, sustainable way. How should we be connecting with our friends and family members, those closest to us who are dealing with emotions? Someone has a death in the family and maybe they're just saying, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, or it's all good. Or they've, should we be judging people if they are okay? Or should there be a grieving that we shouldn't witness? Or some type of like painful emotion that we're supposed to witness?

Or maybe just some people okay with certain things. So it's a really interesting question. One of the most famous models in psychology is this idea that people go through stages of grief. There's denial and there's anger. And in fact, number one, the research just doesn't support it. But secondly, grief is fundamentally unpredictable. Any person who's going through grief will tell you that sometimes they feel okay and then something just triggers something in them and they feel raw. So I think the idea that there should be any expectation that you see something in another person

that truly conveys grief, I think is an idea that's almost like born out of some model of how we deal with grief that's not actually connected with the reality of the grieving experience. I think what is really important for people is to recognize that every person grieves in a different way and that you are able as a friend to be there. Right. To be there. And one of the things that becomes really important here is that often people will say like, oh, if you need anything, you know, just reach out. Whereas it's often difficult as an individual

who's going through grief. And then what that does is it puts the responsibility on the individual to say, okay, I'm now going through grief and I've got this additional responsibility to reach out. And what if they're not available and I feel rejected from them, then I'm not going to reach out to anyone. Yeah. And so I think what becomes just, I talk about this a little in my book and I talk about this also in the TED talk is there's this beautiful phrase in South Africa which is uh sour borna it's beautiful it it's literally translated means I see you and by seeing you I bring you into being and Now, when we feel seen, it is one of the most profound experiences. When we come home from work and we've had a really bad day and our spouse says to us,

how was your day? And we just say, you know, I've had a really bad day. And the person says, oh, well, come set the table because we're going to have dinner now. We feel unseen. There's something so profound in seeing. And it's not just seeing, but it's also seeing the emotions. We will often inadvertently, if our child is in pain, if our child comes home and says, Mommy, I had a bad day at school, no one would play with me.

There's this part of ourselves that goes to pain because we never wanted our child to be rejected. So often with very good intentions, what we do is we rush in and we try to make things better. We try to create a solution. Don't worry, I'll play with you. I'll bake cupcakes with you. I'll phone the mean girl's parents and we'll sort of... And even though we do it with such good intentions and intentions that we should, again, be compassionate towards, what it does is it stops the child from feeling seen. Now, you might say, well, what difference in the longer term does that make? But actually, we know that when children are experiencing a lot of emotion, even just having someone with them, not someone trying to fix it, not someone trying to jump to a solution,

but just someone seeing their being there, that it de-escalates the emotional experience. We also know that one of the most critical things that children can learn is that emotions pass. Emotions are transient. So if you rush in and you're saving your child from difficult emotions, the child is never actually learning the skills of how to deal with difficult emotions. And one day, they will lose their job or experience heartbreak, and they won't have the skill. So critically is this sawabona, whether it's a grieving adult or a child in pain or ourselves in pain.

Sawabona is the, I see you and there is space here for what it is that you are experiencing. Another thing we can do with our children is we can help them to label those emotions effectively. We know that at the age of two or three years old, children are starting to be able to tell the difference between sadness, anger, grief. We know that children are able to start doing this. And so when from a very young age, we start giving children the language around their emotions, that becomes fundamental. And then lastly, being able to say to kids, you know, who do you want to be in this situation? Like,

if a child comes home from school and says, Jack didn't invite me to his birthday party. And so now I don't want to invite him. You see that that child, there's no space between stimulus and response. Okay, it's I'm reacting, I'm being driven by my emotions. If you help the child instead to label what it is that they're feeling and then we start saying to them, well, what does a good friend look like? Who do you want to be in the situation? We start helping our children to develop character. And we know that these skills, they might seem subtle or sideline skills, but these skills are the cornerstone of self-regulation, of grit, of well-being, of relationships in a lifelong

critical way. And so those examples that I just used, we can apply that to ourselves and we can apply that to people struggling. Yeah. And what about adults? Same thing? The same. The same. Who do you want to be? Do you have the same type of conversation? Well, if I'm with someone who's struggling with something, I think the first thing is that not putting them in a situation where they somehow feel that their emotion is wrong or being judged. The second thing is helping them to... How does that happen?

So if a friend comes to you and says, I'm going through a breakup and I'm hurting in a relationship or a job, I got fired, what's the first thing that you would say? Is it, okay, I see you and I'm going. What's the first thing that you would say? Is it, okay, I see you and I'm going to be in this space for a moment? You know, often if someone, so say someone's going through difficulty and they say, I've just been fired from this job. Often what our response is, is, oh, don't worry, you'll get another one. You know, don't worry, things will be fine. But actually what might be going on for the person is a huge sense of rejection or a huge sense of loss or a huge sense of disappointment.

And in the rush to solve the problem, in the rush to fix it, what we do is we don't actually allow the space for them to make sense of the situation and to gather the resources internally that help them to move forward effectively. So I lose my job. What would you say? And I come to you and say, Susan, I don't know what to do. I'm stressed out. I feel rejected.

I don't know if my identity was wrapped up in this job. I don't know what to do. What would you adjust to? Well, I think the first thing is being able to help you to actually like label what it is that you are experiencing and be able to go beyond the just, I lost my job and me making you feel better in some solution oriented way and helping you to kind of recognize what's going on. And often in that, you know, what we know is that people start developing one of the most powerful human skills that we have, which is the ability to perspective take when you stuck in this oh my goodness i lost my job then it feels often like

the end of the world everything i've lost my job when when you able to help them to articulate and what's really interesting is earlier on, I spoke about this experience that I had with this teacher, okay, where she invited us to write in these notebooks. So what is profound is we know when people are able to put their experiences into language, to actually language about their experience. It helps to create greater levels of insight. It helps them to move from the situation of, oh, my goodness, I lost my job into I lost my job and I feel really upset about it. And this is what I think I need to do next. So pulling out of them reflection. to kind of reflect on, you know, helping them to reflect on things that they enjoyed about the job or didn't enjoy about the job or how they're feeling about the loss of the job and what that meant and helping them to understand that is a hallmark then of enabling them to

move forward effectively. Yeah. Hmm. So, I'm going to ask you a personal question about me. Go for it. My current situation, I was…12 years ago my dad got in a really severe car accident, was in a coma for many months, survived, but he was never the same again. And so it was almost like I lost my dad from what I knew him to be.

We had to take care of him 24-7. We had to teach him how to read, how to write, how to talk, all these things. Everything. Simple functions. He had extreme amnesia, didn't remember our names, like all these things. He survived for the last 12 years and kind of got to a stable place where he was comfortable and happy in his own way. Yeah.

But again, it was almost like I lost my father for what I knew him to be. Yeah. But he's still here. Yeah. The relationship isn't the same. There's just other complications and challenges. And then this week, I found out that he may only have 30 days left to live. And for many years, there's different scares of like the

physical challenges he's facing. There's different scares that have happened where we thought he might pass, like different things might happen. So it's been like a grieving. Oh, it's back. Grieving. Like, I don't know. Like, it's like I lost him. He's here. He might die. He's alive. What advice would you give for me you know whether my father gets through this next challenge and you know lives for the next 50 years yeah or this is it because you know my sisters and my my brother are like this might be it we need to go see him and like share our final thoughts with him type of thing like this is it and I don't feel a sense of grieving yet or a sense of like fear or overwhelming emotion yet yes and I did for many years yes years

ago because you've gone through I feel like I've breathed it already yes yes and my siblings are kind of like feeling this grieving thing and I'm'm like, guys, he's still alive, first off. And I think there's a solution to keep him alive. Yeah. But they're thinking like the extreme case is like, this is it. Yeah. You know, and to prepare for that. And I'm like, I just don't feel this emotion of like, I need to feel sad and grieving.

And like, it's the end of the world. You know, I think that's the thing, you you know where I talk about grief being so different for for different people like I as I went through this experience with my father like I just have this inherent sense of myself now which which came through that experience which is I feel resilient like I feel resilient and so sometimes if things that upset other people it's not that like I'm closed off from it it's not I'm in denial it's not any of that stuff it's just like it just doesn't like affect me in the same way because I feel like I've gone through a process and I think what's really important is for us to not put expectations about ourselves that we should feel something or that there's something wrong with us you know it

becomes this whole kind of you know psychological backlash like if you if you if you feel something and if you're not emotional then you must be in defense you know it must be you're in denial you so I think I think you know the advice that I would give is just being able to hold where you're at. You know, that you're at where you're at, and that's just a really important thing. have a father and you've been given information from, I imagine, the medical professionals and about the context that is in front of you. And you can't predict how that's going to go. But what you can do is you can ask yourself questions about who do I want to be as a son in this situation? Like, who do I want to be as a person in this situation? Because my father

may get better in my mind if I don't see him or if I don't, you know, connect with him? Like, what are things that feel values aligned with me? And so I think those are the kinds of questions that I would be asking. Like, you know, yes, you don't need to catastrophize it, but given the context, what are ways that you feel you can be the person who you most want to be at this time? That's good advice. I don't know if that's helpful, but...

No, it's perfect. I'm already, my flight's already booked to go see him, but... But, yeah. Yeah, that's great advice, though. To me, again, it's coming back to you saying that every situation of fear, anxiety, depression, or stress is reflecting on who do I want to be in this situation. Having the awareness to say, as opposed to reacting instantly, instead, what's the type of person I want to be in this situation? Having the awareness to say, as opposed to reacting

instantly, instead, what's the type of person I want to be in this situation? What are my values aligned to, to respond in an effective way? Yes. In the, you know, just to completely change the example, but it's related, is I often do interviews for Harvard Business Review and they'll say things like, what if your boss really is an idiot? You know, or what if your coworker like really is a slacker? And you say, well, you know, what if the gods of right came down and told you, you were right. You know, your boss is an idiot or you're like, then what? You still get to choose who you want to be in this situation. And so the concept that I, that I talk about in this book is the idea that I call workability. And this is what I mean. What actions will bring me closer to being the person, the parent, the leader, the son that I most want to be in this situation?

Yeah. It's funny. I've been talking about in the book that I had come out a few months ago about men opening up and being more vulnerable and expressing their emotions in different ways. Because I think as I went on tour, most of the room for 50-50 men and women. And I would ask the women in the room, I'd say, how many of you get together? Raise your hand of how many get together once a week a minimum with a group of your girlfriends to talk about your feelings, your insecurities, your fears, your body issue challenges, your relationships, work, whatever. You know, the whole room of females raises their hand that once a week they at least get together. And a lot of

them are like, that's every day. You know, we do that every day for coffee or tea or on the phone. And I go for the men in the room, how many of you meet once a month with a group of guys and you sit and talk about your fears and your insecurities and your challenges at work and relationship? There's usually like two of the guys in the room out of 100 or 200. And I always say, are you guys a part of a church group, a men's church group where you, it's like a mandatory or like a set time to do this. And they're like, yes, we are.

mandatory or like a set time to do this and they're like yes we are yeah and i think it's been for men we haven't been taught that it's okay to express ourselves in in this way unless there's a safe structure at a church or a men's group of like hey we're all going to do this at the same time now you can open up yeah um i can't remember where i was going with this but i was i i can say i can say something about it it's i think it, I think it's, you know, there is this display rules. There is this, there is this, a display rule is this implicit idea that's often conveyed by society about what emotions it's okay to feel or not feel. And so what happens is when we feel we can't feel sadness or we can't do this, it starts to interrupt our ability to connect with our emotions and what our emotions are telling us. But what's fascinating is when you look at the research on, for instance, mortality, what we find is if that males and females are in a

relationship and all males and males or females or females, but when you've got one person in that relationship who is the person who's always reaching out, making the social arrangements, being able to bring people together for that kind of social interaction. And then as that couple ages, one of them dies. If the person who's the social connector dies, it significantly predicts the likelihood that the other person in the relationship, the person who is not the social connector, will die within seven months. Wow. And so you say, well, how's that?

What is actually going on here? Social support. Social support is one of the most profound protectors of us as human beings of our well-being and there are two types of social support there's instrumental support which is like my car broke down can you take me to the to the car shop there's emotional support i'm going through a tough time when you've got one person in a relationship who isn't practiced isn't practiced at being able to do that stuff, when they're left alone, their entire social network disintegrates because they haven't been the person doing it.

And so you don't have someone coming and checking in on them and seeing if they're okay. You don't have someone taking them to the hospital if they fall ill. And so you start seeing this impact. And so you start seeing this impact. I am so grateful that the conversation is starting to change in a way that starts to move us away from this false sense, this like false holding up of some emotions are good and some are bad, and just is starting to move us into a space where we can actually be more connected and authentic with how we feel. Because I think that the pain inside of us always comes out. Always. We might take it out on society, we might take it out on children, We might take it out on children. We might take it out on our communities. Internal pain always comes out. And it's only when we as human beings learn,

circling back to the beginning of the interview, learn the capacity to deal with our emotions that are part and parcel of who we are as human beings, that we will be able to develop greater levels of resilience and connectedness and well-being and sustainability. And healthy emotions, I think. A healthy way of living and that's why I think so much has happened in the last year in our society, in America specifically, with all of the mass shootings, the mass bombings, the racial tension in Charlottesville, the sexual harassment, obviously, the sexual abuse, the domestic violence. The common denominator of all these situations we see in the media is men who really don't have that emotional agility,

that they're hurting inside, they don't know how to express themselves, or they've never just communicated it for years or decades, and then it's got to come out somehow. Yeah, the ability to, in a healthy way, deal with our emotions is, I believe, one of the most fundamental skills that we as a human race need as we watch the ice caps melt. As we are in war, this ability, and it will get more and more so as we experience greater levels of complexity and AI and challenge. We, to me, this is, you know, there's an urgency that is just so fundamental. why the ideas in emotional agility and why the ideas in the TED Talk connected. Because really what I'm trying to do in my work is to change the conversation

where our emotions are not seen as being good or bad, but actually fundamental to our lifelong well-being as individuals and as parents in a society. What advice would you have for men who are maybe listening that are typically not as expressive with their emotions or they hold on to their emotions or they just don't share what they're feeling with guy friends, girlfriends, married partners, whoever it may be, family. They just keep it all in. Good and bad. Yeah.

What advice would you have for men and why would you give them advice? I mean, because I think if we bottle this stuff up for so long, we get sicker more frequently. I'm assuming that we die younger when we can't express our emotions. It's going to affect us. We're a heart attack waiting to happen if we're just bottling it in all the time. Do you have that statistic? So one of the things that i will say is that just

because we feel something doesn't mean we need to express it you know this is the again this idea that our emotions are data not direction so i can feel really angry with my boss it doesn't mean that i need to have it out with my boss okay so that's that's but the question that i would ask is this to what extent is it serving you? Because what will often happen is we get into ways of being, we get into autopilot ways of connecting with ourselves that don't serve us. So when we are not able to disclose or when we are upset with something that someone's done, but we aren't able to have a conversation about it, instead we storm out in a mood. What is the impact of that? And so the

question that I would be asking is, how is the way you being serving you? If it's not serving you, if it's not serving your values and who you want to be in the world, then what we can start doing is we can start, we don't need to make massive changes. You know, there's this idea that when we want to change something, we've got to sell up and go live on a Greek island. Like we've got to make massive changes in our lives. In fact, most of the meaningful impact that comes in our world is by doing what I call tiny tweaks, small values aligned changes. And so what that might look like in this context that you're describing is, you know, how can you experiment with a different way of being? If you know that there's something that always triggers you to get up in a huff and leave the room, and you know that that's likely to happen in the next week or two weeks because you know that it's something that you always come to in your relationship,

because you know that it's something that you always come to in your relationship, then start thinking about what would a values-aligned tweak be in this situation? And how can I just try that different way of being? Because it's when we practice that different way of being, we're moving in a way that is connected with our values and is often uncomfortable, that we make our greatest growth. I'm glad you said this. And just before that, you mentioned something that, for me, when a psychologist says something that backs up what I've been doing,

I'm like, perfect. I feel like I'm doing the right thing. It's like, I am. Because I don't have all the data. Yeah, I don't have the data and the research. But when someone else says something, on my tour, I would always tell people, you know, before I went through my journey of like discovering a lot of things about me as a man and the things I was holding on to

and the stresses I was holding on to and, you know, about four and a half, five years ago, I started to just be aware of my actions and my reactions. I used to be very defensive, very guarded and reactive. I didn't have the space between. Do you call it the space between? Stimulus and response. Stimulus and response. I didn't have that. I was just like reactive. I didn't have the space between. If you call it the space between. Stimulus and response. Stimulus and response. I didn't have that. I was just like reactive.

Now I think I'm much better. You know, I'm sure there's moments where I'm reactive, but I'm much more aware. And I'll tell other men when I'm talking to them, I say, listen, you know, there's two things I think about. Are my reactions or actions to a situation serving a purposeful vision for my life and supporting my inner peace? And if it's not supporting both of those things,

then I probably shouldn't do it. I shouldn't react that way or respond that way. Does it serve, you're talking about values. Does it serve you? Yeah, for me, I'm always talking about vision. Does it serve a purposeful vision for your life to flip that person off in the car when they cut you off, to scream at someone, to do whatever, to push someone?

Does that serve a vision for your life in a purposeful way? Probably not. And does it bring you inner peace? It might bring you a sense of satisfaction in the moment, but is it bringing you inner peace? And if it doesn't do those things, then don't do it. As my kind of general rule of thumb, obviously we're not perfect and we're going to make mistakes and we're humans, but

that's what I try to do in my life. And I think, I think that's right. You know, people, people sometimes say, well, you know, my emotions catch me off guard. And so I just react. But the thing is that most of our emotions that catch us off guard and, you know, believe me, I'm by no means perfect. I talk a lot in the book about examples of me doing exactly, you know, the opposite. But often when our emotions supposedly catch us of God, it's actually not of God. Because so often the, you know, I walked out of my job angry, but, you know, not really me. But if you trace back, often that person will have had another experience and another experience and another experience that is all within the same pattern. So we land up having very patterned responses in our lives.

And the emotions might feel that they catch us of God, but when we start becoming aware of the triggers and naming them and labeling them and choosing, then we start recognizing that it didn't actually catch us. Yeah, I think it's powerful. And I think a practical example that you talked about is journaling. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast. You know, at the end of every day, if you journal even a couple of sentences of how did I feel today? Yeah.

You know, on a scale of 1 to 10, did I feel stressed and pissed off or did I feel generally happy? On a scale, and if we can just track a month's period of like, how did I feel? How did I react in these situations? What upset me? And did I respond in ways that I feel proud of of who I was being? You can start creating those. You can start to see those patterns on a daily basis and then start to say, okay, well, what are some changes I need to make in my life? Maybe I need to have a conversation with my boss or my workmate.

Maybe I need to have a conversation with my spouse or my boyfriend or girlfriend, my parents who have been pissing me off for months. Yes, yes. It's so powerful. As opposed to just I'm running out of the office, like, you know, leaving, I'm quitting. Yes, yeah. You can start to make these little tweaks that you talked about as opposed to this huge transformation like daily journey connecting triggers so because you because you don't mind me sharing research there's this there's this beautiful research that's done by a guy by the name of james pennebaker and what he does is he

brings people into a room and he asks people to, he divides them into two groups. One group writes about arbitrary stuff, the cars passing on the street. And the other group writes for 20 minutes a day for three days about emotionally difficult experiences. It might be a breakup of a relationship or a job loss or, you know, I'm going into this new job and I'm scared about it. So they write for 20 minutes a day for three days. job and I'm scared about it. So they write for 20 minutes a day for three days. What he does before the experiment is he assesses people's well-being, their depression, their anxiety, how often they've been to see the doctor, their physical symptoms. They write for 20 minutes a day for three days. And six months later, he reassesses their well-being, physical symptoms, and so on.

And what we find in that research is that simply even writing for 20 minutes a day for three days, those individuals who've done the writing about difficult stuff have higher levels of well-being, lower levels of depression, lower levels of anxiety. They've been to see the doctor a few times. And we even find that it predicts things like when people have been laid off from their jobs, people who do the writing versus don't, the people who write get rehired quicker. Because again, it starts to activate this readiness potential.

Now, what is it that's actually going on here? When we analyze these writing samples, what we find is that writing in this way, which is different from ruminating, oh my goodness, this is terrible. It brings about greater levels of insight. And a key predictor is not only using positive words. In other words, not just doing a Pollyanna, everything will be okay, but actually being able to go to some of the difficulty these insights a moderate amount of of positive emotion words a moderate amount of negative emotion words those become the predictor of this expanded well-being

so what you're talking about is absolutely and i think the experience that i had in the eighth grade is exactly what allowed me to move through that tough time for me. I love this stuff. This for me is like the key to having an abundant life and a wealthy, rich experience of life and not letting emotions own us and control us, but really us having awareness of them and being able to move and dance with them.

And that's what I think someone who has an abundant life can really have ownership of their emotions and accept what's coming in and allow it to flow out as opposed to just being a victim to emotions all day long, which I've seen people in that place. And it sucks to witness when someone is stuck in their emotions. And it allows them to just, there's no responsibility or awareness. It's just, this is the way life is and I can't get through it and I'm depressed and I need pills and I need addictions to mask it. Right? No, no, no.

Preaching to the choir here. Nope. Make sure you guys get this book. I've got a few final questions for you, but get the book, Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life. Make sure you guys pick this up. And also we'll have the TED Talk linked up in the show notes

so you guys can see this as well. Final few questions for you. This is called The Three Truths. It's a question I ask at the end for everyone. Yeah. So you've got one of the most inspiring TED Talks of all time. You've got these best-selling books. You've got all your research and everything out there with Harvard Business Review, all the work that you've done.

Yeah. And for the rest of your life, you achieve everything you want to achieve. Yeah. But for whatever reason, this is the last day many years from now, hypothetically speaking. Yeah. And everything you've ever created has been erased. Yeah. All your work, all your research, all your speeches, it's all gone. Yeah. But you have a piece of paper and a pen. It's a happy celebration of a day. Some people are flowing in their emotions because they've learned so much from you. But it's the last day and you have a piece of paper and a pen

to write down three things you know to be true about life, that this is all you could pass on to the world, that all they would have to be remembered by you. Yes. What would be the lessons, those three truths or lessons that you would share with the world? I would say to love yourself, to love others, and to know that the world loves you. Those are powerful. Simple and powerful. And I really hold to that. Yeah, that's great.

Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for your commitment to people, for people being healthier and happier in their lives. Thank you. Because depression, with the research that you've found, is the highest cause of... So that's the World Health Organization. It's the leading cause of disability. Leading cause of disability. And for your, what seems to be your life's mission to help people and depression, it's one of the greatest gifts of service that you can give for the world and for humanity.

Thank you. You know, this really is, like this is my life's calling and it's the depression, it's the anxiety, but it's also even just beyond that about health and wellness and wholeness that I think is just so fundamental to us. Yeah, well, I want to make sure I acknowledge you for your service to humanity because without people like you doing this work, I think there would be a lot of sicker people in the world

who would be suffering on such a higher level. So this podcast right now, I know it's going to help a lot of people, the work you're doing, this book, the TED Talk, and everything else you're doing to get the message out there, I really acknowledge you for the hard work you're putting out there. And the sacrifices you make to put the time and energy into this. I know you have a lot going on, so it's really inspiring.

You know, I think it is one of those things that when you believe in something strongly, it doesn't, you know, people say things and it sounds cliche like it doesn't feel like work of course it is work of course it's tiring of course they sacrifice but i hold to this with every fiber of my being it's powerful that's very powerful um where can we connect with you online where do you spend the most time or if someone wants to reach out to you on social media so i'm on all the different you know facebook linkedin etc if people are interested i've got a free quiz that a hundred thousand people have taken at the moment and it's social media? Yeah, so I'm on all the different, you know, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera. If people are interested, I've got a free quiz

that 100,000 people have taken at the moment. And it's an emotional agility quiz. And it takes just five minutes and you get a free 10-page report. And that's Susan David, so S-U-S-A-N-D-A-V-I-D, susandavid.com forward slash learn. But otherwise, I'm on LinkedIn

and Instagram and Twitter. You can find Susan David everywhere. It's either Susan David or Susan David PhD, depending on what we could get. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Awesome. Where do you hang out the most?

Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn? Probably Facebook, actually. Right. Yeah. So we'll connect with you. We'll leave comments there. Sounds good. Make sure you guys send her a message.

Let her know what you thought about this over on all the platforms. Thank you. I'd love that. I'd really love that. Any questions for me before I ask you the final question? I have no questions for you. It's been really wonderful. Good. I'm glad you came on. The final question then is what is your definition of greatness is being able to be with yourself in a way that feels connected and whole. There you go. Susan David. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you. And there you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, so important for us to understand the art of emotional agility. How we respond to things is really the key in life. We can't predict certain things that are going to happen. We can't control things people say, what people do,

but what we can control is our response. And that response will equal the outcome of what we're going to create for our lives. Make sure to share this with your friends if you enjoyed it. Take a screenshot of this and tag me, at Lewis Howes. Make sure to share it and connect with Susan David as well. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Again, the full show notes back at lewishouse.com slash 604. Also subscribe to our YouTube channel.

It's got over a quarter million subscribers, millions and millions of views from all of our videos from some of the top experts in the world. Check them out, especially this interview with Susan David. I appreciate all of you so very much. And as always, I appreciate you for being here, for continually showing up, sharing out these episodes, and learning from what we bring on with these guests

and applying it into your life and into the world. You mean the world to me, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great