The School of Greatness - How To Master Your Emotions w/ This 90-Second Trick EP 1338

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Joan Rosenberg, PhD, psychologist, is a best selling author, corporate wellness consultant, and media expert who is known globally as an acclaimed speaker and trainer on communication, confidence, resilience, authenticity and grief. Dr. Rosenberg is a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University. Be sure to check out her latest book: 90 Seconds to a Life You Love: How to Master Your Difficult Feelings to Cultivate Lasting Confidence, Resilience and Authenticity.In this episode you will learn,The five keys to building unwavering confidence. The eight unpleasant feelings that hold us back from feeling whole. To sharpen your skills of communicating and expressing your feelings. How to make sense of our past experiences and extract the good.For more, go to lewishowes.com/1338Your Fresh Start Begins By Becoming Emotionally Stable [MASTERCLASS] : https://link.chtbl.com/1322-podJoe Dispenza on Breaking Free Of The Addiction To Negative Thoughts: https://link.chtbl.com/1309-podSusan David on Why Emotional Agility Is The Most Important Skill You Need To Know: https://link.chtbl.com/1297-pod

We have this idea that the purpose of speaking up is actually to get what we want. You know, I want the ice cream now, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is. What dawned on me is that that's the benefit of speaking up. The real purpose of speaking up is to get what we want. 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. Why do people run away from their emotions? Why do they hide or why do they react with their emotions so much?

As opposed to learn how to be curious about them and master them. Why do you think that is? I would say two things right off the bat. One is their early life experiences. So it depends on the kind of experiences they had growing up and the kinds of things they learned by being in those situations. So if they experienced a family where feelings were shut down, if they experienced a home environment where it was explosive or rageful,

or there was trauma or abuse or chaos, all those kinds of things lead people to start to behave in certain ways in response to what they're experiencing. But I feel like that's 98% of the world. No one has the perfect childhood, right? Exactly. Or there might be little traumas that build up. Maybe it wasn't this explosive parents, but they neglected

or they said a few comments that like stuck right that were maybe looked as negative right or neglecting or abandoning and it wasn't even like that bad of a childhood but it still connects with people and affects them right absolutely absolutely so that so that's kind of one piece of it but the the one piece that i actually talk about more than kind of our previous life experience is that the way we experience feeling is actually part of the reason I think people shut down on feeling. The way we experience it? The way we experience feeling. How do most people experience feelings? Most of us come to know what we experience through bodily sensation.

Through how it feels. How it literally feels in our body. It's vibrating. It's numbing. It's literally feels in our body. It's vibrating, it's numbing, it's tight. It feels heavy. Yeah. Right? So think about disappointment or sadness. And for many people, it's not everybody, but for many people, it's an experience kind of in the chest. Right? And then this heaviness. And it's like, or an experience of helplessness that maybe feels like a gut punch or something else. Anger, where it's like raging or an experience of helplessness that maybe feels like a gut punch or something else. Anger where it's like raging through, surging through your body, raging through your body and you can't stop the sensation. Right.

Or embarrassment where you might see the redness, I feel the heat. That what I came to understand is that it's not that we didn't want to feel the whole range of what we felt. What I came to understand is that it's not that we didn't want to feel the whole range of what we felt. It's that we didn't want to feel the bodily sensation that helped us know what we felt. Why do we not want to feel the bodily sensation? Because it's painful? And uncomfortable. Yeah.

And we can't be in charge of it. We're not in control. We're not in control. We're not in control that we feel it. We're not in control of what we're feeling. And not until it's in our conscious awareness. Not until it's like, oh, wait, I can feel the heat in my face. Oh, I'm embarrassed. Then that's the point at which I can go, oh, I can take a deep breath and kind of calm this. So it's when it's in our conscious awareness that we can kind of tamp it down,

or that's when we can regulate it. So we don't want to feel the sensations in our conscious awareness that we can kind of tamp it down or that's when we can regulate it. So we don't want to feel the sensations in our body when we have the emotion of sadness or anger or disappointment, right? Or shame. It's that we don't want to feel the pain in the body. Correct. Why do we not want to feel the pain? Why do we resist that? Because it's just uncomfortable? That's really mostly what I look at. I think it's uncomfortable. It's unsettling. It's unpleasant. It's unsomething. It's not fun. It's not fun. So where the pleasurable emotions literally gets experienced in a great way in our body. So we move towards those and we want to move away from the stuff that's uncomfortable.

Right. Okay. So what do people usually do in that situation when they feel the pain? Disconnect or distract. So I mean and that list is pretty endless. Right. That's where addiction comes in, the numbing sensations, the distractions. Absolutely. Right. So it might be screens, right? In any form, social media, TV, et cetera. It might be substance use. So that might be food. It might be sex. It might be porn.

Workaholic, you know, being a workaholic. Exactly. Anything to kind of check out. Anything that avoids it. Right. Avoids the feelings. Correct. But it's like we look for the positive feelings, but we avoid the painful feelings.

Right. But what are the painful feelings signaling to us? What is it telling us? As others have spoken, they're information. And the way I look at all of our feelings, pleasant or unpleasant, is that it's information for us, particularly the unpleasant ones. But it would be true for pleasant as well, is that we can make use of those feelings. Once we have awareness of them, we can make use of those feelings to make decisions, to express ourselves, or to take action. And so part of it is also understanding that our feelings can be there for a purpose and to help us evolve and to help us grow. And they can be used for specific things. Right.

I believe Susan David said that these feelings and emotions are data, not direction. Right. It's not something we should be reacting to with a direction. We should be having, this is data, it's information, how do I respond based on this information? Correct. Right? Yep. Not how do I quickly react or quickly numb the feeling, but what's missing inside of me that's having this feeling. Right. And how can we process this in a healthy way, right? Right. So it just seems like so many people in the world, including myself for many years, were making decisions based on avoiding pain and numbing the pain and not wanting to face the pain.

What happens when we face it? I think we become more whole, W-H-O-L-E, more whole, authentic human beings. Yes. And as a result, again, you talk a lot about becoming our best selves, right? So then we're more authentic, we're more genuine, and more of us is available for relationship. Or more of us is available for pursuing whatever it is that we want to pursue in life. available for pursuing whatever it is that we want to pursue in life. So that think of when we allow ourselves to experience the fullness, the full range of what we experience, then all of us is available for anything we want to put it towards in life, whether it's self-exploration, whether

it's building relationship, or whether it's I've got this big dream and goal and I'm going to use it in the pursuit of that. Right. How many people in the world, what's the percentage you think are not whole in terms of they're not able to face their emotions in a healthy way? How many people do you think are struggling with this? A lot. Percentage wise, what do you think? 50 percent? 80 percent? No, I'd probably be inclined at least to put it at 70 or 80. Of the world is not willing to face? It's high. It's high.

Yeah. We wouldn't see the level of addiction if that weren't true in any form. And we wouldn't see the level of checking out. We wouldn't see the level of violence. Because why would you need to be angry and react and cause war and fight and hit people? There's no reason for it. You wouldn't need to scream. No.

If you were whole. Yes. Right? Yeah. Because you could manage the conflict in a more peaceful way. Exactly. Exactly. And not a reactive way.

Now, based on this pain hurts me, let me react. And let me splash it all over you, right? Or dump it all over you. Let me, yeah. Disown it. And more people disown their experience or check out from their experience. And as a result, then that's where the hurt occurs for others as well.

What do you mean disown? Like not take responsibility or? Not recognize it and not take responsibility. Right, right. So let's say I'm really angry about something. on like not take responsibility or not recognize it and and not take responsibility right right so so let's say i'm i'm really angry about something no i'm disappointed about something but the only way i allow it to come through me is through anger right which is what a lot of people do yes typically i mean the way i grew up i felt like as a as a man growing up you weren't able to express

without it i mean it was either anger or don't say anything you know there wasn't an ability to be sad or vulnerable or you know tap into a different element of an emotion it was like be angry mad or like stoic and don't say anything right right that was kind of what i was felt like i was allowed to express which created more anger inside of me because i couldn't express right a range right and for, that's also another way to disconnect and distract. That you allow just a default, instead of having the whole range of what you're experiencing and expressing that whole range.

So if you were disappointed and it became anger, now you're using a default feeling. And that's the only way of showing up to someone else. And that's disowning what you're experiencing. So you think, again, this is just your opinion, 70% plus might be disconnected in the world from their emotions, right? So now you're inviting me into a guess. Yes, you're guessing.

But based on your experience of the people you work with and what you see happening in the world, and I think that's a good guess. I'd probably say the same thing. How easy is it for people to get to a place of wholeness? Is it really challenging? Should it take years? Or is it possible for them to get whole and master their emotions faster?

I don't think it takes years. get whole and master their emotions faster? I don't think it takes years. I think the deeper, if you want to move to a much deeper understanding of yourself, then that might be a journey that takes years. But if you want to be able to manage your emotional state and have greater access to the whole range of what you feel and then be able to use it in everyday experiences that's something that can actually i would say i would say happen more quickly than people would realize really yeah so you've worked with thousands of people in this right how how fast can it be what's like uh so the beauty of and we're talking briefly before but one of the things i've recognized is the way that i've approached some of this material around feelings is that once you have the

knowledge once you have the concept or the idea or the awareness you can actually experiment with it right away and and what I have found especially with this idea of experiencing feeling as opposed to disconnecting from it, even in the earliest experimentation of it. So let's say I've been somebody that's like I've checked out for a long time and then I go, all right, I'm going to just try this. I'm going to be curious about it and just try it. And I do, what starts to end up happening is that there's a natural organic lift up and a greater sense of you being more true to yourself.

Really? Because you're owning the whole range of what your real experience is as opposed to dismissing it or trying to disconnect from it. Why are people so afraid to express their emotions, though? Why is it? Is it the fear of what other people are going to say about them? Is it embarrassment? Is it shame? No, I bring it back down. I talk about one's difficulty with eight unpleasant feelings in the book. So the focus of this body of work

is centered on our difficulty experiencing and expressing eight unpleasant feelings. So the feelings are sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment, and frustration. So the feelings are feeling states. Some of them are kind of combined with thinking a little bit. So what I found is that as much as our thinking can get in the way and cause us to pull back from lots of things that are important to us,

I actually found that our difficulty experiencing and expressing these feelings actually was more of an obstacle and more of a roadblock. Okay. So for me, these eight became really central. And again, most people will go, well, like anxiety is not there, fear is not there. They're not there for, to me, important reasons. The reason that I chose these eight and again it was over time there was five and there were seven and it's like eventually I

landed on eight and the reason I for these is because they're the most common everyday spontaneous reactions to things not turning out the way we want or the way we believe they need to be turning out. And so it's the everydayness of these feelings. On any given day, any given week, any given month, you're going to move through a variety of these feelings. So it's the everydayness of them. So if I get to your question then about what makes it so hard for people to express themselves or speak up, for me, it goes back to these eight feelings.

It's not about how somebody's going to respond, not directly. But if you stop and think about it, difficulty speaking up is not a speaking problem. What is it? It's a difficulty with unpleasant feeling problem. So people lack the ability to speak up to who? To whomever. About what?

Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't matter who. It doesn't matter what. It can be as simple as an exchange at a retail store. Feeling uncomfortable about like, oh, this is, you know, I bought this thing, but I need to return it, but I feel uncomfortable returning it. Right. Or a restaurant or something. Exactly. Could be a close friend that just flaked on you. Tell him how you feel

about, you know, the situation. I feel disappointed. I feel let down or whatever it might be. Right. And the same is true for an intimate partner or a boss. It doesn't matter who. And what happens when we don't speak up about how we feel? I think the effect is actually profound. I don't think... So a couple of different things here, Lewis. This is massive for me. So if you'll let me wander a little bit around this. Go for it. So again, the first thing is to understand is that difficulty speaking up actually is not a speaking problem. It's a difficulty with unpleasant feeling problem. So the reason I won't speak up first is because I'm not willing to handle my own

unpleasant feelings. Because you know that there will be an unpleasant feeling with speaking up. Right. And you don't want to deal with it. Right. So let's say I'm disappointed and I don't want to have to tell you that some exchange occurred between us where I'm disappointed. I don't like the experience of myself. I don't do it. But in order to speak to you about it, which is actually going to remove the obstacle between us, because if I don't speak, now there's a distance. There's a barrier. Right.

So I've got to, in order, if I want that barrier to go and I want us to remain close, I've got to deal with it. So think then that in order to have a conversation, not only do I have to deal with the discomfort of my own emotional discomfort, I have to deal with the discomfort of your emotional discomfort. I might upset you or frustrate you or let you down or whatever. You might get angry in response, whatever it is. Now I got to deal with your eight unpleasant feelings simultaneously with my eight unpleasant feelings. And as a result, it's like I'm going to back off. So the reason we don't speak up is because we don't want to deal with the unpleasant feelings that are involved no matter what.

With ourselves and with others. With others. And that's true for, let's go the positive route. I want to tell you how much I like you or admire you or want to be close to you. Right? Or I love you. That's going to involve vulnerability. And it might be disappointment because you might look

back at me and go, I'm not feeling the same thing. Right. So you'll be let down if you don't get the response. So putting yourself out there in the positive ways, emotionally, expression, you still might get let down. You might have an unpleasant feeling. That's right. So the uncomfortable expression or the positive expression still could respond with eight unpleasant feelings. That's right. So the uncomfortable expression or the positive expression still could respond with eight unpleasant feelings. Right. So in order then to be able to speak comfortably, you have to be willing to accept that the experience of unpleasant feelings may be part of that journey. I feel like people should use this as an experiment and say, okay, what are the things that I haven't been saying lately to the people closest in my life or to acquaintances maybe?

And allow myself to say the things in maybe the not as pleasant conversations and also the pleasant conversations and see how it feels. See what opens up in the space of the response. And how can I manage the feelings, pleasant and unpleasant, afterwards. But most people are afraid to say, I care about you, I love you, or here's how you mean to me, because they're not sure what they're going to receive in response. And you let me down. I was disappointed when you flaked on me. Can we create an agreement

moving forward or something like that? Some people just don't speak up at all is what you're saying. Exactly. Exactly. But here's, again, a couple interesting things about this. First, my caveat around speaking up is that it needs to be positive, kind, and well-intentioned. Conscious. Conscious. But the two most important, kind. Positive, kind, and well-intentioned. Conscious. Conscious. But the two most important, kind. Positive, kind, and well-intentioned. And well-intentioned. I love your saying this, Joan.

Positive. So if I'm going to encourage you to go speak up or you want people to kind of experiment with it, then it's not about... This is how you made me feel. Exactly. So it's not about that. I love that you said this because I was telling you

beforehand off camera that I've been doing this therapy and coaching almost every two weeks for the last almost two years now. It's been almost two years. And with my girlfriend, Martha, when I started the relationship, I said, listen, I've always wanted to start therapy in a relationship. After a few months of us dating, I said, I'd always wanted to try it together. Not because there's a problem, but because I want to make it great. I want to make sure we're on the same page. We have agreements. And I told her early on, I go, there is no reason I will ever get upset at you for anything. Um, based on, you know, we have our agreements and things like that, but there's no reason, you can live your life fully,

and I will not get upset at you. I will not, like, expect things from you, I'm not gonna get upset at you, because we have a certain standard of our agreements. And I said, the only reason I will get upset, there's only one thing, I've told this story many times, like, oh, there's only one thing that'll make me upset, is if you come at me with an attack,

and you don't do it from a conscious point of view. If I let you down, you can talk about anything you want. You can come to me with anything, but it has to be a conscious conversation. Come from a loving, kind place. You said positive, kind, and well-intentioned. Know that I'm not intentionally trying to hurt you. Right. Know that my intention in this relationship is good. If I do something stupid, then you can let me know from a positive, kind, and well-intentioned

way. And I'm going to receive it. But if you come at me with anger, resentment, expectation, aggression, I'm going to be defensive. I'm going to say like, what are you doing right now? You're not being conscious in this moment. I can't receive your information so i will never come at you in that way don't come at me that way and that's why doing therapy together i think allows us to keep a peaceful environment sure of growth yeah so i'm so glad you said this because it's not speaking let me tell you how I really feel and just unload on you my emotions.

You can't create a bond or a bridge in that way. Exactly. People are just going to be on the defense. Right, it breaks the safety. But why are so many people, why do so many people struggle at speaking up in a conscious way the way you talk about positive time and well-intentioned? Why do they react or scream or say mean things to the other person

well again that's going to get into lots of other dynamics but but but think of it as first thing it's uncomfortable in me yeah so i'm going to make you feel it as opposed to me feel it yeah you made me feel this way so now i'm gonna right right or and it's this this sense that you made me which is also an incorrect way of thinking about it. It's a victim mentality. Exactly. Exactly. So then I'm just going to be aggressive in response or I'm going to attack you so that you feel what I'm experiencing.

As opposed to me telling you because somehow the telling doesn't get through. So now I'm going to amp it up. I'm going to escalate it. Make sure you hear me. Right, right. But that's a whole other story that we can go to as well. But that's part of it. I don't want to experience it,

so I'm going to make you experience it instead. And what happens when someone does that? Well, the bond breaks, right? And so there's no safety. And now if you're doing it to me, I'm going to withdraw because it doesn't feel safe. Right. I'm going to disconnect.

I'm going to put a wall guard up. I'm not going to talk to you. Right. Or I'm going to go back at you and be aggressive, whatever it might be. But there's no intimacy then. Correct. You lose the bond.

You lose the bond. And for me, it's not only talking about what is being said, it's also talking about how it's delivered. And most people in relationship don't do those two things. They do one and they get lost on the detail, but they don't do the second, which is to talk about how it was delivered. Like if you're rolling your eyes, right? Body language, yeah. Yeah. Energy, tone. All that.

But sometimes that's where the real infraction is. So it's not necessarily what you say, it's how you say it. Think of it as both. Yeah. Right. You've got to be conscious in how you say it. You can't say you're a horrible person in a loving way, right? Correct.

You can't say, you're just such a bad person. I really hate you. You know, and smile. It doesn't work. You have to be, you know, what is the best way to speak up to an intimate partner or someone intimate in your life, a friend or an intimate partner? What's the best way to speak up if you feel hurt, let down, disappointed in what someone did or didn't do? Well, the first thing is that for me, it's actually I talk about it in the book,

and I call it a preemptive bid. Okay. So what I want people to do or I want to encourage people to do is to think about whatever the obstacle is to talking. So let's say I think you're going to laugh at me. And so the first thing I do is to say, you know what, Lewis, I really want to talk to you about something. My biggest concern is that if I bring it up to you, you're going to laugh at me. Well, if I say that to you, the pull typically for the listener is to go, no, I won't. Yeah, yeah. I'll listen to you. Let me hear it. Yeah,

yeah. Let me hear it. So now I have your attention. So it's kind of sharing the concern or fear up front with the person. Right. Right. So why? Because I want to break down the obstacle to the conversation. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Right?

Then, again, speaking up does not give you license to be malicious. So it's coming from a kind and well-intentioned place. So the reason I'm coming to you is because I, you know what, I feel like I'm being a little bit distant from you. And that's not what I want. I want us to be close. So I actually want to talk to you about X. And when I was seeing people face-to-face, I used to hold up a pillow. So if I can borrow the book for a moment.

What I used to do, so think of this as the pillow and we've got something to deal with and I want to talk to you about my disappointment or whatever it is I would do this it's like there's no connection if the obstacle is there if I haven't talked to you

it's just obstacle but the moment I say alright I want to talk to you about this thing that's getting in the way which is my disappointment or my concern you're going to laugh at me or whatever, now the obstacle is removed and we can be close again. So it's super important to be able to speak up in relationship because it allows the bonds of intimacy and the depth of that connection to grow.

A lot of people don't create the preemptive bid first. They just unload. Correct. And they don't do it from a positive kind or well-intentioned way. Right. They do it from a frustrated, hurt, malicious way, right? Yeah. I don't want to feel one of these eight unpleasant feelings.

I'm going to dump it on you. I'm not going to be conscious in the way I communicate. I just don't like what happened. So here you go. Take it. Right. You hurt me. I'm going to hurt you back. Yeah. Right. And that doesn't do anything good. No, no. There's nothing good that comes out of that. Nothing good. No. So, and here's, here's the other thing for me around speaking up. Again, there's a variety of great things that happen. I actually think that our capacity to speak with ease in life, to say what we want to say, who we want to say to, all that kind of stuff, timing, again, with the caveat of being kind and well-intentioned, again with the caveat of being kind and well-intentioned, that to be able to speak with ease is actually the super glue to confidence. That if we don't speak, if we feel confident in a variety of different ways and we can experience our feelings fine, but we don't have that additional layer of speaking with ease in any situation we need to, then

I don't think that it actually...we feel that kind of unwavering experience in ourselves. So what I found is that we have this idea that the purpose of speaking up is actually to get what we want. In this case, it might be to stop something, setting a boundary, setting a limit, whatever it might be. Or it's to literally get something. You know, I want the ice cream now. Whatever, it doesn't matter what it is.

And then what dawned on me is that that's the benefit of speaking up. Getting what we want is the benefit of speaking up. The real purpose of speaking up is to grow us. And I think that when we find that we have our voice, that's when we start to feel that real deep strength. Confidence. Yeah, confidence and strength within us. Okay, there's two things I want to discuss here. One, the first one is the ability to speak up and practicing it and owning it and being able to sit with the feelings and be comfortable with the uncomfortable feelings. It's like learning how to master sitting with sadness, sitting with vulnerability, anger, helplessness, all these different things, shame, and not let it consume us but feel it and let it flow.

Move through. Move through us, right? Yes. And be okay with it. Okay, I have an uncomfortable conversation today. This is how I'm feeling. But I'm alive. I'm okay.

Everything's good now. We actually came together stronger now. Okay, cool. I can move through it. I feel okay. And practicing that on a consistent basis. So that's one thing I want to talk about. And then the second thing I want to talk about is,

is it possible to just not let things affect us? And not need to speak up because we are so okay with ourselves and know that people are people and people do what they do and say what they say and they're in their own stuff and their traumas. And okay, I'm not gonna take it personally. I'll process it. And I don't need to speak up. Maybe I can, maybe I don't need to.

And I'm gonna be okay because I'm living an intentional life. It's kind of the two things, practicing being uncomfortable, being comfortable with the uncomfortable feelings, and practicing speaking up consistently and moving through it. And then also saying, do I even need to play this game? Not game, but do I need to play in that space? Or

I don't like what happened right there, but I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm here for myself. Life is good. That one has some complexity to it. The second one. The first one is obvious because we're going to get practice. And then we'll practice. The more practice is obvious because we're going to get practice and the more practice we engage in in that way, really the healthier we become. But with the second one it's like, well, I don't need to do it. I actually feel okay. I'm not taking it personally, that kind of an idea. To a degree I would say that works and that that's probably fine. But there's another element of that where I've seen people respond that way where that's probably fine. Yes. Right? But there's another element of that where I've seen people respond that way

where that's their way out. Yeah. It's like a spiritual bypass or something. Exactly. That's their way to not deal. Like I'm fine, everything's okay, but it's actually you haven't processed. Exactly.

Right? So to use your words, one is it's a spiritual bypass. The second is it actually doesn't allow yourself to grow or the other person to grow. That's true. Because then maybe they just keep disappointing or they're not being their word. And you just let it go every time. Right.

Right. And you're being affected. And it's damaging the relationship. So now you're pulling away because the person's continuing to do what they're doing. Right. They're out of integrity or they're disappointing you or whatever it is. So now you don't get the growth. The other person doesn't get the possible growth.

And the relationship doesn't get to grow. So for me, it becomes really important for people to kind of really check themselves. Interesting. And go, you know, do I need to say something? And most people will back off because they don't want to deal with the discomfort. Yeah, interesting. So they do the spiritual bypass. Rather than going, you know what?

It's important to me. And once again, to understand the purpose of speaking is not necessarily to get it to be totally right. It's to grow yourself. Yeah. It's to try to get what you want, I guess, the end result, but it's more to grow yourself and hopefully grow the other person and create a deeper relationship. Right. How often are you speaking up in your life?

In my life? Yes. Once I realized this, it changed how I behaved. Really? Yeah, it did. It did. And in both directions. Oh, man.

I will tell you that if I look back five years, ten years, whatever it might be, I'm a very different person now in terms of my willingness to lean into the discomfort and to go there because I know how much better it gets. And again, I'm coming at it from a kind and well-intentioned place. So there's no effort to hurt. It's I want to make whatever's going on better.

Have I had situations not work out? Yep. Then I have to deal with my disappointment, right? It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good. But then again, same thing for me. It's, it's again, a part of it has to do with the mantras we live by. So one of mine is that I'm going to learn from every life experience. That's part of the intention, or I'm going to see how far I can stretch. Also part of it, you know. So it's like, okay, then this is part of it. And so then for me, it's like, how can I grow from this experience? So it's, again, to your earlier point, it's living in a conscious way. And the other side of it is making sure that people know i care about them so it's i've become

much more expressive about love and much more intentional about about making sure i convey my care my deep care my love whatever it might be did you not communicate those things in the past i when i was when i was much younger i would say I was not so great about it. It was really an evolution. And I was probably better at describing the caring feelings I had or expressing those. And then over time, and also working with the work that I was doing, it was like, I got to get better at this. Interesting. And the other part was really finding that when I combined the two of being kind and well-intentioned, then I could typically speak the things I would have typically found much harder to speak. So it became much easier. So when did this start to really shift

for you when you started to implement this speaking up strategy more frequently? Was this five years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago? No, no. Wow, that's a good question. So part of it was professional, which to me is a little bit funny because in my role as a psychologist, I'm often saying to people things that they don't want to hear. Right? So I had to learn how to deliver that message early. And this work in its earliest form started probably 25 years ago or a little bit more.

And I would say the evolution was probably it was a much softer start 25, 30 years ago. But as time went on, you know, I would say easily 15, 20 years. Okay, cool. Yeah. How long did it take for you to kind of feel okay with these consistent, uncomfortable conversations until you felt like, I can speak up almost automatically now without having to wait for weeks to think about what I'm going to say or how I'm going to say it. That's been a number of years. That's probably been 10 to 15 years. Really? Yeah. Okay. And what is available for people on the other side? Like what was available for you after you started implementing this? You know what? I think I actually, the benefits are profound. What ends up happening is you become more congruent. benefits are profound, what ends up happening is you become more congruent. And that to me is where the magic of emotional strength and confidence is. So if we talk about congruence,

I usually include about eight things here, but the first four are, I would say, singularly the most important. And that's that our thoughts, our feelings, our words, and our actions match. So the first benefit or set of benefits is that you, again, you have an experience of yourself as having that kind of internal strength and confidence. So you become more confident when you're congruent. Right. Right. And what are the other four?

Oh. We're on the spot here now. Yeah, no, I am on the spot. One, two of them have to do with that we own our past history, that our attitudes and beliefs and our values, so that's kind of putting attitudes and beliefs together and our values, is the sixth one, our past history. And then the last one is our vision of what we want for the future.

That all of those align. And what's really interesting here, Lewis, is that if they don't align, oftentimes we feel anxious. And then part of it is going, okay, I'm anxious, then what's out of alignment? One of these four things are out of alignment. Or one of the eight. I'm not telling the truth about my past. I'm not owning what's true for me for the future that I want for the future. Or I'm feeling something and not saying it. Or I'm believing something, but I'm acting out of integrity with my belief.

Right. Or I'm saying my value is this, but I'm not being that value. Right. Right. Interesting. So that you can... I'm saying I want this in the future. I want to be healthy, but I'm eating bad food every day, so I'm out of alignment right and then i start to feel anxious right or overwhelmed or stressed something right something's off something's off because you're not a whole person in congruence with thoughts feelings words actions matching attitudes and beliefs values past history and vision of the future. What is past history? How can you be in alignment with past history?

Is it just addressing and facing the past history and dealing with it as opposed to distancing yourself and numbing? Right, and acting like the past history I had, I didn't have. What happens when we don't face the past? Again, we start showing up in ways that are not very effective with other people. We don't show up in ways that are necessarily good for us. So, again, I might be drinking a bunch. I might be using food. I might be using sex.

It doesn't matter what it is. But I start checking out. That's what happens. When I don't deal with my past past then I check out in some ways right and and I don't and again it's not the past isn't everything but it does contribute yes so we just have to acknowledge that it contributes in some way to who we are in the present and but it doesn't have to be the thing that actually defines our future. How does someone develop a set of beliefs and values that will support their life? What if they don't know what their values are?

How do they create them? You know, an easy starting place is to look at people that you admire. And say, what do I admire about this person? What type of life do they have that I respect and like? Right. And then pull some of those values. Right. It's like, how did they get there? I mean, you know, go read stories.

Go read biographies. Learn all their mistakes and don't do that. Exactly. But not only learn their mistakes and don't do it, but learn what they had to go through on the journey to get to where they evolved. So a first place is to look outside to see people who are doing what you want to do and being the ways that you think you want to be. And then it's looking inside and basically asking the question

is, who do I want to be? Who do I want to become? How do I want to show up? And then you practice that. And then your words and actions match your values. Exactly. Match the vision you have for your future self. Right. What's the best way to address the past history? What if someone's gone through a crazy past history and they had a lot of different challenges at home and relationships and abuse or abandonment or just, you know, bullying? How does someone face that amount of pain or trauma? You know, I call kind of that whole area as disguised grief. Okay. So I'm going to give you

a couple of ways to think about disguised grief. One has to do with the words we use. Okay. So if I'm saying to you, I'm bitter, I'm angry, I have this long-standing anger, I'm resentful, I hold grudges, I am pessimistic, cynical, sarcastic, I can hurt. against this hurt and any words that's jealousy right jealous envious all those kinds of things for me everything underneath that is grief grief of what well again it's i'm going to take you to the second second layer of it so grief of something i'm missing the grief of something i'm expecting grief of something i'm wanting and when i'm'm talking about grief, I'm putting at least four of those eight feelings into the mix. So for me, again, I don't know that people necessarily talk about grief and kind of break it down. But when I think about grief, I think about sadness, helplessness, anger, and disappointment as comprising, at the minimum, comprising grief. And they can be singular responses.

So I might be sad about something. Well, then I'm grieving. I might be angry about something. Well, then to a degree, there's grief. So you can think about them individually. You can think about them collectively. And the easy way to remember them is that instead of being sad, I'm shad. Sad, helpless, anger, or disappointment.

So underneath all those what I call grief signal words is grief. And what is grief? Again, think of it as the emotional response to some situation or... That you're lacking or upset about or missing or jealous of or frustrated that you don't have or something like that. So how do we eliminate grief? How do we process it? We don't eliminate it, right? So again, if you'll allow me, one step over. The other way to think about grief, and this is to your point about our life experiences,

is that almost all of us have been through experiences where we got something that we didn't deserve. So think about that as kind of the bad stuff. So it's chaos. It's abuse. Bullying. Right, all as kind of the bad stuff. So it's chaos. It's abuse. Bullying. Right. All that kind of stuff. Or we deserve something we didn't get.

So that's the good stuff. The praise was missing. The support was missing. People not showing up for events, meets, performances, whatever it is, or great job on the progress you're making. The letdowns. That's all missing. It's grieving over what never was.

So think about facts and circumstances of your early life. And think about it also from the standpoint of missed opportunities. This could have happened. But it didn't. That wasn't my life experience. Also grief over what is not now. So you might not be exactly where you want to be. So there's grief about that. And then there's grief about what may never be. It's a lot of grief. It's a lot of grief. But that really takes us to our life experiences. And to me, there really is a way to work through all that. How do we do that?

The most important thing, I can cut kind of one sentence to remember here, is that you want to be able to make sense of the impact and meaning that the experience, of the impact and meaning that the experience, the difficult life experience or experiences had for you. And the key here is across time. Yeah. So again, the question is, who did I become because I went through this? Yep. Why do a lot of people not think that way? Instead, they hold on to the grudge of what happened to them as opposed to saying, what's the meaning and impact that this had on my life over time? I think in some ways they think, well, one, they may not want to do the work around it, right? Because to make sense of it, you have to go back to the pain of it. So I'll just act like it didn't happen and I'll put it away.

It's in the past. It's nothing. Except you're still becoming reactive, right? Highly reactive because you didn't deal with whatever is going on from the past. So that would be one reason. And why else do people avoid? I think people actually don't understand that there's a roadmap out. There really is.

What is the roadmap? Well, the first is to recognize, one, is to go, okay, I have this set of stories or this set of life experiences that shaped me. And in the book, I talk about, I kind of give people a process to walk through. Let me pick just one. Not all of them. Not all of them.

Let me pick just one. So I go, all right, I'm going to start with whatever the experience was. You know, how I got yelled at about something and how that affected me, that I pick out this one incident. So the first is to recognize that you've got the grief. The second is to pick out something to reflect on. The third then is to do what I call kind of a deeper inquiry

or to inquire more deeply. And what that involves is that this to me is really the core of it. This is where you want to make sense of the impact of meaning across time. So how did it affect me? Did I become kinder? Did I withdraw? Did I shut down? Did I start to become more aggressive? Did I become kinder? Did I withdraw? Did I shut down? Did I start to become more aggressive?

Did I ignore authority? Did I rebel? Whatever it is. Exactly. Did I become really sarcastic? Did I become cynical? Did I start feeling more of a victim of life? Right?

So there's a whole array of possibilities in terms of who I became because I experienced it. It's so interesting. As you're saying this, I'm thinking of, okay, what are some of the experiences and stories of my life that shaped me, right? I talk about this on my show all the time, so I think a lot of people have heard this, but my brother was in prison when I was eight years old until I was 12 years old. It was a big gap of time that affected the family, that affected me, not able to have friends in the neighborhood, all this different stuff. Sure.

And also witnessing the suffering, the pain of my brother, what he was going through. And in some ways it shaped me to, I never want to be in this place. Right. I want to make sure I never do this, which is one of the reasons why I never drank alcohol. I've never been drunk in my life, never been high,

never done any drugs. I've had sips, but I haven't like, you know, never been on those things. So it's like, I just don't want to see where that leads me to, you know? It's not even worth experimenting. There was other reasons why I didn't do that for sports and things like that, but, you know,

there was, you know, stories and experiences that shaped me from that, that were painful, but also some more positive, right? It was, you know, sexual abuse that I went through. There was being injured, losing kind of my dream of playing professional sports. And it took me down a path of a couple years of stress and overwhelm and sadness and losing an identity of a dream.

But if I look back over time, like what you said, to reflect on over a period of time, what are the benefits that this gave me? And how did this make me a better person? Even though I may not wish that this would have happened, even though it wasn't okay or wasn't fair or I don't wish on anyone else to go through certain experiences, but how can I serve humanity at a higher level, the people around me in a better way, and myself because of these experiences.

It's making sense and meaning of the impact and shifting it from a negative victim mentality to okay, how can I use this to my benefit? It happened, I can't change it. I can be a victim for the rest of my life and be in grief and angry and sad. Right. Or I can try to do something better with it. Right. And that sounds like the only things you can do.

There's only a couple options. And more people we see landing on, I'm just going to stay in this grief place. Again, they don't even recognize it's grief. They're just angry and resentful. Angry and resentful. Bitter, holding grudges. Right. They're doing all of that.

Or cynical. They've got a cynical view of life. Nothing's gonna turn out good for me right because it hasn't in the past so why would i believe it will exactly exactly so so people get lost and stuck in those places without an awareness that there really is a way out and they don't realize that they're grieving yes so so for me it's it's kind of bringing, let's expose it, let's bring that to light. What you're doing is you're experiencing grief. And really, there's a way to make sense of what the experience was so that you can finally let go of it and resolve, get some resolution, and then move on. And so once you inquire more deeply and reflect

on it, which is painful and scary a lot of times for people, what's the next step after that? You extract the good. Ooh. Okay. Right? To your point, or just a few moments ago, is like, okay, how can I, your question was, how can I serve humanity better? Yes. Right?

Because I went through this. Right. But now you're shifting. Now, not only are you making sense of your life story and, again, feeling more whole, more centered inside, more grounded inside, more authentic because you're owning your life history. Right? Not detaching from it. Not detaching from it. Not acting like it didn't exist.

Right? Not detaching from it. Not detaching from it, not acting like it didn't exist. So now you're making sense, if you will, and I know that Susan David talked about this, is you're making sense of the narrative of your life, the story of your life. Laurie Gottlieb talks about rewriting your story, not having the story hold you back in a negative way,

but rewriting it into the positive side of your life. Right. Where Sapir says, tell a different lie, you know. Right. We hold on to these lies about ourselves that hold us back. Like, tell a different lie. You know, tell it in a positive way, not in a way that holds you back. Right.

Right. Right. It's whatever it might be. Right. Exactly. So there's lots of ways to come out of it. So that once you've inquired more deeply, then what you want to do is you want to extract the good.

It's like, you know, what were really the benefits? Again, who did I become in a good way because of what I went through? And then for me, that's the process that leads to forgiveness. So how does someone learn to forgive the pains of their past? It's to go through this process. Yes. Once you make sense of it, it loses its hold on you, its grip on you. And once you find the good in it, then you can say, okay, I forgive this experience because good came from this. Correct. If there was no good that came

from it, it'd be hard to forgive probably. Well, for me, that brings me to kind of another point. And that has to do, if there's difficulty forgiving, what I recognize with that is that that has to do with finally coming to a place of acceptance within yourself, that you cannot undo what was done. You can never undo what was done. And you can never do what was undone. You can never go back and change it. It was whatever it was. Yes.

So that the resolution then, the resolve, becomes moving to that place of acceptance. Accepting it first, then you can start to forgive. Right, if forgiveness is hard before that. And again, it's forgiving yourself for what you did or did not know and for what you did or did not do, and the same for someone else. So it's forgiving them for what they did or did not know and what they did or did not do, or say, in this case.

What happens if we go through all these different steps and we get to a place of saying, you know what, I'll see the benefits of how I've become an okay person or I learned these lessons, but I just, I can never forgive what this person did to me or did to my family or how horrific this was. It was so extreme that they just could never fathom forgiving that person. So what's interesting about forgiveness is that forgiveness doesn't have to do with the other person. Forgiveness has to do with me choosing to live my life more in the present. And in peace.

And in peace. Yeah. Not to continue to go back to the past and to go, okay, this is still affecting me. It's still affecting me. And it's still affecting me. And to go, okay, this is still affecting me, it's still affecting me, and it's still affecting me. And it's still coloring how I'm living my life in the present and how I'm likely to live my life in the future. What happens if we continue to not forgive the past from 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago?

We're living with a level of toxicity within us that's unnecessary. Yeah. And so again, was it good? No. Are we condoning and saying that was great that that happened? No. Are we letting people, in quotes, get away with something? No. It has to do with us moving to a place of greater inner peace, which is why it's important to forgive.

It's amazing because in the last couple of years, I've really believed that peace is my highest currency in life. And being in a peaceful environment is the place I want to be in. I've lived in so much high emotion, drama, low emotion, all this different joy and desire and high emotions to stress, anxiety, and overwhelm. Like kind of that up and down roller coaster for so many years. And I was always like, why is this happening? Why is it like, life is really great

and then life is really challenging and suffering. And I think a lot of it was because I didn't learn how to do this in every area of the past that was affecting me. And you said to start with one experience to reflect on this. Yeah, just start there. But I really feel like when we can start to do this with every experience that hurt us, affected us, made us resentful or cynical, when we can start to go down the list of these things and do the process, more peace ensues.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. So on my end, it's like start with one. But once you open up one, yes, if you can stay with the process and do it for those kinds of things, absolutely. It's amazing because my therapist and coach, she had me start with one of my earliest memories, right?

It's like sexual abuse was one of my earliest memories when i was five and it kind of set a baseline unconsciously and subconsciously for reaction throughout my life for defensiveness for feeling abandoned or abused and taken advantage of unconsciously sure it was just in reaction yep if things felt that way. Bodily sensation. Right. It's just like, I feel something, let me react. There was no consciousness to it. I was a joyful, happy person a majority of the time. But if I felt like, oh, someone's taking advantage or abusing me, like, I don't like this.

It's like this, let me come after you. And so she had me start with that season of of life in those experiences and let's start here And then she's like, okay, what's the next major season of life where things happened that could have affected you? Mm-hmm And so I had a photo I had shown this many times I had a photo on my phone of myself when I was around five or six right for the last year plus Then recently I switched it to a time when I was like 10, 11. And so it's reconnecting where I'm at to where I was in those times, those moments in time and rewriting the story and the

process from each stage of life to come from early childhood to where I am now. To be able to be in full alignment and congruency of my values, my life, reflecting on all the experiences so that hopefully I can continue to stay in a peaceful state a majority of the time and just get closer to the vision of the future and bring it closer faster as opposed to staying in the past longer. And it's really allowing me to, we were talking about this beforehand,

manifest things so much easier. Things flow. Yep. Things flow, things come, because you're not tied to an emotional baggage, emotional weight of the past. And staying stuck in this narrative. So I highly recommend people doing this work and going through this process with you. This is fascinating to me.

Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. You go ahead, you jump in. I'm speaking too much. No, no, no ahead. You go ahead. You jump in. I'm speaking too much. No, no, no. I'm enjoying the conversation. The last two pieces of it. So the process moves you in the ideal.

It can move you to forgiveness. And again, having the understanding that forgiveness is about moving yourself to that place of inner peace, freeing yourself from the past. So it allows you to move to forgiveness. It also allows you to forge new images of who you want to become. So you can release the, you free yourself from the previous life story. And then the next one is to forge new images of who you want to become. Creating a new identity in the future. Right.

Now you can say that's who I was or that's who I've been up until now. And this is who I want to become. And a lot of that is it's almost like you have to have a death of some sorts, like an emotional death of a person you once were holding on to. Right. And you've got to, I don't know if kill off is the right word, but you need to allow that to shed the skin of this old story and old narrative and say, okay, this is who I was, but this is not an identity I'm living into anymore. And that is hard for people to let go. A lot of people have been carrying baggage and

luggage around for years. Exactly. They don't want to drop their bags. Because if they do, they have to be in a place that's now more free, more vulnerable, and now more open to connection and hurt. So why is it so hard to be free and open and vulnerable? Because there's more room for potential pain? A lot of people don't know what to do when they have, you know, the image in my head is the blank, the artist's. A blank canvas. A blank canvas, right.

So they don't know what to do in a blank. It's unfamiliar. Right. It's scary because it's new. It's new and now I have to step into the unfamiliar. It might be the most blissful, healthy thing in the world, but it's scary because it's new. Right, right. Oh man, this is so fascinating.

So it goes back to having the courage to consistently speak up. Going back to feeling the uncomfortable feelings and being comfortable with the uncomfortable consistently will give you more freedom. Absolutely true, 100%. Gosh, this is fascinating. So is there anything else here that I'm missing

that at the end of this process, this forges the new image of who you want to be? Then at that point, it really is. Then it's starting to take action to step into those images. It's going back to the eight things that will help you create congruence to living into that identity. Thoughts, feelings, words, actions and just taking consistently living into that.

Right. And what values do I want to embody? What attitudes do I want to hold? And then what actions will I take? For instance, there was a time in my life when I didn't consider myself very generous. And I was like, you know what? I actually want to embody that more. So I would think on a daily basis,

or maybe not daily, but consistently, what do I need to do that would allow me to actually embody that more? So for instance, if I was traveling, then it meant I tipped more, right? To do that kind of thing. Or I became more generous in my compliments. Or I became more generous in giving of my time, right? So there's all sorts of ways to be generous, generous in terms of sharing knowledge. There's lots of ways to do that. So again, you can choose a value. You can choose an attitude. You can choose a belief that you want to hold or embody. And then you start to take the actions that support that. So again, that's the congruence piece.

Because I believe that a lot of people, I love everything you're saying here because action consistently is my whole motto. It's like the reason I've gotten to where I'm at is because I've had a couple of things. One, a meaningful mission. I'm clear on the vision that I have for my future and wanting to bring it closer to the now.

So I know where I want to be. I don't think a lot of people have a meaningful mission. They're not 100% clear on what they want, why they want it. That is more than just for their needs and desires, but it's also for contribution. And I think without the meaningful mission, it's just kind of you're reacting to life. You're just doing what you're told, you're reacting or you're just, you're not creating your life. So I think it's having the action consistently towards the meaningful mission. And I think most people also aren't taking consistent action. They'll sometimes take action and then they're out of integrity because they're not consistent or they're

sometimes generous, but not consistently. So again, you're not congruent, which causes stress and anxiety when you're out of alignment. So all these things, I again, you're not congruent, which causes stress and anxiety when you're out of alignment. So all these things, I mean, this is not for the faint of heart, this is for people that want a rich, fulfilling life and who are willing to go through consistent, uncomfortable feelings until it becomes more comfortable, until it becomes more second nature because you've practiced it. But that's hard to get to in the first place. To your point, you've got to go, that's important to me.

I want that. Let me make the decision and choice to do that. And then it's with an understanding that you're going to be in the discomfort for a while. It's a period of time. Right. And what's interesting to me here, Lewis, is that I actually consider our ability or our capacity to experience feeling and to express feeling, so communication, as skills. Huge skills. So it's not that we should be able to do it because we have a brain and we

can speak. Oh, no. You've got to develop a skill. No, it's skill-based. Yes. So we get better through practice. Well, this is why great leaders are great leaders because they've learned to develop these emotional skills. Their EQ is usually so skillful because they practice for decades on how to have tough, meaningful conversations that are also uplifting and forward. They create forward momentum, not creating a barrier. That's why leaders can build businesses or create movements or whatever it might be because they have that ability to speak up consistently. So what is this 90-second method then? I mean, the whole book is 90 seconds to live a life you love. Right. So what is this 90-second method then? I mean, the whole book is 90 seconds to live a life you love.

Right. You created like this Rosenberg reset thing, right? Right. A friend of mine called it that. Okay. Okay, it landed. It's a good method. So I didn't do it.

I said, thank you very much. I like it. I think I'll use that. Yes. What is this 90 seconds process? Right. So the idea, now the book is 90 Seconds to a Life You Love. Think of that as kind of the method.

And sort of a secret sauce to leaning into unpleasant feelings. But I will tell you that the subtitle of the book is where all the magic is. Yes. And the subtitle is How to Master Your Difficult Feelings to Cultivate Lasting Confidence, Resilience, and Authenticity. So the magic is in the eight feelings. But the Rosenberg Reset is, think of it as a formula for leaning in. So it's one choice, eight feelings, 90 seconds. That's the formula.

So the one choice is awareness as opposed to avoidance. So we've talked about avoidance. Substance use, screens, sex, porn, food. The list goes on. Harsh self-criticism to me is a distraction. Anxiety is a distraction. Making geographic moves is a distraction. Having feelings about havingiety is a distraction. You know, making geographic moves is a distraction. Having feelings about having feelings is a distraction. Right? Anything besides the awareness of it is a distraction. Right, exactly. So my invitation is for people to be as aware of and in touch with as much of their moment-to-moment experience as possible.

That's what I'm asking people to lean into, is be aware of the present moment. Be aware of your experience in the present moment, as opposed to avoid. The eight feelings we've talked about, so again, briefly, they're sadness, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment, and frustration. Vulnerability, embarrassment. disappointment, and frustration. Vulnerability, embarrassment.

Disappointment and frustration. And then the 90 seconds piece is really the specific around leaning in. Right? So, and again, we've talked about aspects of it, but if I kind of do it in sequence, the first thing is to understand that we're one interconnected whole. I mean, obvious to many, but the truth is that our brain is always feeding information to our body. Our body is always feeding information to our brain. We're an interconnected whole. We're not separate.

But we get trained to be separate. We cut off from feeling when we cut off from our body. Right. We stay in our analytical thinking as opposed to feeling. Right. Which is where people many times will describe where the subconscious mind is. So that's the first thing to understand. The second I mentioned, which is that most of us come to know what we feel emotionally through bodily sensation. So again, why is that important? Because what dawned on me was that it's not that we don't want to feel the full range of what we feel. It's that we don't want to feel the bodily

sensation that helps us know what we feel. There's a great story for me around this too, which if you're interested, I'll come back to. But the third part of that then is the 90 seconds idea. And it's not my 90 seconds. Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, she wrote a book called My Stroke of Insight. She's the one that first mentioned it. Big TED Talk, right? Right, right, early, yeah. She was like a neuro-brain scientist.

Exactly. There's a Harvard-trained neuroscientist that has a stroke and takes eight years to come out of that stroke. Wow. But she had a capacity of awareness and put it to use. And what she became aware of was her observation that when a feeling gets triggered, there's a rush of biochemicals into our bloodstream that activate the bodily sensations we're talking about. And those same biochemicals flush out of the bloodstream in

roughly an upper limit of 90 seconds. So you might have this embarrassment and this redness or whatever rash feeling that comes on your skin because of a situation. Right. Does that come through the brain first? Like it comes through the mind that connects to the brain and then flushes through the nervous system? It can go both directions. Okay. So it's what people call bottom-up and top-down processes. So it might be the body connecting to the brain. Right.

Because the body keeps the score. Right. The book. And then, or it might be like I see something, I think something, and then I feel something. Correct. Interesting. It can go both directions. And what I'm hearing you say is that it takes around 90 seconds for it to leave.

Right. If you are able to recognize it and go through the process. And stay present. Again, how do you stay present? Breathing. Breathing is the key. You can actually think. So I like to talk about it from the standpoint of think about walking along the shoreline and ocean waves kind of coming and going from the shoreline.

It's like they come up. It doesn't matter the degree of tumult, right? They can be tumultuous waves, they can be medium waves or moderate waves, and then they can be really light waves. But no matter what, they come onto the shoreline, they seem to hang for a moment, and then they subside. Well, think of the same process going on in terms of these bodily sensation waves. So it's not one wave we're talking about. Well, think of the same process going on in terms of these bodily sensation waves. So it's not one wave we're talking about.

We're talking about one or more waves, right? And so the notion is that you want to be able to ride one or more short-lived bodily sensation waves to stay present to the feeling. The challenge is if you resist the feeling so much and it's so painful or uncomfortable, that 90 seconds might feel like 90 minutes. Right. You know what I mean? I just want to get away from this. So let me get a drink. Let me eat food.

Let me watch porn, have sex. Let me buy something. Let me work harder to not feel this feeling. Correct. Yes. Was there anything else to this process? Right. So again, the key for me, again, then it's kind of bringing it all together.

It's you want to be able to stay present. So it's choosing an awareness and then it's staying present to one or more bodily, short-lived bodily sensation waves or riding those waves and understanding that what you can do is to just breathe and kind of pause so that you just allow your breath actually to be like that ocean wave. And that'll help you stay present to the feeling. And if you do that, you can then in those paused moments, if you really want to start to master even more, then what you start to do is you reflect. And you start to go, well, what triggered me? Or, geez, is there any pattern to my reaction? Is this attached to anything in my past? So depending on the depth of reflection, So depending on the depth of reflection, you can stay with that process and then you'll start to gain insights into your experience. The more you gain insight, the more you're able to develop the mastery over your feelings. Mastery.

That's what I'm looking for. Why do you feel like it takes an extreme breakdown in life for people to start the process of healing and change versus life is just really painful consistently, I'm not gonna change. You know what I mean? Sometimes it takes like a divorce, a near death, a breakup, a loss of a career for them to wake up and start doing this process as opposed to the I'm just living at a five in life out of a ten and life is hard and

sucks but it's not enough for me to want to do this work. That's a very interesting question and it makes me recall and I don't remember the specifics in my life, but what I became aware of is that if a certain problem happened in my life and I didn't address it, it would escalate in intensity and scope. So I have no idea. Like I said, I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember that if I looked back, I realized I could have handled it earlier. And I didn't.

It just got bigger and worse. And more painful. Right. So part of it is that we don't pay attention at those earlier opportunities to actually deal with whatever's going on. And we go, oh, it's not hurting enough. So I can play it off.

I can handle this. Or we don't want to deal with whatever unpleasant feelings and whatever the experience is going to be. We will avoid those unpleasant feelings until it is so painful, until we break. Right. But that then is the crisis point is the wake up. Yes. And so that think of no matter what level it's occurring at so let's say it's occurring at this level as opposed to this level or the crisis

level right if you can be aware that you're getting caught into a pattern early on then deal with it down here because you know that life truism is that it's just going to get bigger as you go, right? But how many people actually deal with the event down there when it's just starting? Fewer. What's the percentage you think? Oh, come on. Give me a range.

5%? 10%? I don't know. It's low. Because the people that you've worked with over the years, most of them, they don't come to you when, I'm just feeling a little off. They come to you when there's a crisis usually, right? Right. Or it's gotten to enough where it's preoccupying.

It becomes something that now it's kept. Consuming them. Right. Right. It's every thought, every feeling is this pain that could have been avoided years ago. Right. So I haven't dealt with it, but now I've got to deal with it. So I think John Gottman talks about people being in marriages six to seven years and having a problem go along that long where they finally go, okay, now I've got to deal with it.

Six to seven years because we're at a breaking point to live in you know just disconnection or the resentment or lack of love or affection for six or seven years until they're like okay every christmas we think about this every anniversary it's just getting worse and worse now it's at the time where we gotta we gotta do something right so. But the key here then is that the points at which we choose to deal with it, and again, the idea we're noticing early as opposed to letting it accumulate and intensify. We're feeling it early and noticing it. Right. And we let it intensify. Right. But no matter what, the point at which you start to deal with it,

think of it as an opening for your growth. Yes. Right, right. And don't shame yourself for how long it took you to get to it. Exactly. I mean, I put my hand up and say I've stayed in painful situations for many years too many times. As have I. I get excited about this because I reflect on my life and how much I stayed in pain for so long, low level pain until it intensifies. Stayed in relationships for years that I knew I shouldn't have been in. But I was afraid to feel those eight unpleasant feelings and to speak up. And it's crazy to think now how simple the concept is, but how challenging it can be. If I say to you,

I'm thinking, yeah, I could have avoided so many painful experiences, relationships. If you want to call it saving years on your life in relationships that people think about, just by speaking up and saying, from a positive, kind, well-intentioned place, this isn't working for me or this is something that's affecting me and I want to talk about this in a loving way. But, you know, this is my value and your value seems like it's off. Can we meet somewhere in the middle or what can we create?

And the ability to walk away from a relationship and feel the pain and sadness as opposed to staying in it because it's familiar. Exactly. Exactly. It's crazy what we do to ourselves because we're afraid of these eight unpleasant feelings. Oh man, this is powerful stuff. And I wish that, I mean, I wish I had this stuff sooner, but I hope people listening and watching really are taking this in and taking this to heart and are taking notes like I am and starting to think about like,

where in my life am I allowing things to happen where I'm not speaking up? That's what I wish people will start thinking about. And how can I start to process these different things and start communicating in a way? And it's probably not gonna to be easy at first. No. It's probably going to be extremely uncomfortable.

Yes. The first few times you do this. Vulnerable, embarrassing, don't want to do it. Humiliating. Whatever, yeah. The inclination is to want to back off from it. But let that be your signal to move forward. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I want to ask you about confidence because you said in the beginning that there are five keys to unwavering confidence. Can you talk about those? Right. We've talked about two major ones, actually, and touched on the third. But for me, and again, there's more to it, but I would say there's five, really five core things to pay attention to. The first we've been talking about kind of throughout, and that is to be able to experience and move through the unpleasant feelings. So I define confidence as the deep sense that you can handle the emotional outcome of whatever you face or whatever

you pursue mmm so stay out one more time yep the deep sense that you can handle the emotional outcome of whatever you unpleasant feelings. So being able to experience and move through those eight unpleasant feelings is the foundational aspect of confidence. That's your starting point. Move through unpleasant feelings. To experience and move through. Right. The second is speaking up. Why? Because I just, you know what, I have no, there probably are ways to prove this at this point, Lewis, but I actually think that our capacity to speak up changes our molecules. Our cells. Literally. Our nervous system. Yes. Yes. I believe it. So that when we have that sense of ourself internally, like I said, that's when, for me, that becomes the superglue to confidence.

Yes. You build so much confidence because you have the ability to speak up and handle these feelings. Right. And what's interesting is that you're – and two things here. It's not that you know yourself and then you speak. It's not that you are yourself and then you speak. It's not that you are confident and then you speak. It's actually as you speak and through speaking that you gain the confidence. So it works.

It's a process. Yeah, yeah. It works the other direction. And the interesting thing is also you actually come to know yourself better. Yes. The more you speak, the more you actually come to know what you believe. And it solidifies. You own your beliefs more.

Yeah, it solidifies. Again, if I go back. And it's speaking up in a kind, positive, well-intentioned way. Right, right. If I go back to my youth and to high school years, it's like I was aware at some point. I wasn't even aware of what my own opinion was right right and it's like going back and forth on opinion or who knows it's like it's like how come I don't know my own opinion I was super shy and I wasn't speaking then

I actually came to know more about who I was and what I believed as I spoke. By taking action consistently. In this case, the speaking piece. Speaking consistently. Right. The third then is taking action and taking action is similar to speaking. It's not that you're confident and then you take action. So you want to learn a skill, whatever, playing piano, playing tennis, doesn't matter what it is, or practicing communication. It's that you take the risk, you take the action, and then you gain the confidence. Yeah, you're not going to, you know, I'm learning Spanish right now, but I say learning. I mean, it's like I'm still feeling like a beginner, you know, two years into like practicing daily. Right.

I don't have confidence like speaking it, right? Right. But I have more confidence than when I started. And it's going to take time practicing and taking action. So the third is taking action because again, that's going to further solidify. The fourth is stopping or ending harsh self criticism. And then the last one is accepting compliments, really accepting and absorbing compliments. How many people in the world criticize themselves consistently? I would say the greatest majority of us do. Why? Now here's the interesting thing. I look at harsh self-criticism. I mean it's a problem in and of itself, but I don't look at it exactly that way. I think harsh self-criticism. I mean, it's a problem in and of itself. But I don't look at it exactly that way.

I think harsh self-criticism is a thought hijack of the eight unpleasant feelings. Is that a spiritual bypass, essentially? It's kind of like a bypass to not facing the eight feelings. Yes. I just criticize myself. Right. So let me give you an example, and then if you want, we can unpack it. Yes. I was doing an interview, but this time it was over Zoom, right?

And I could hear the person who was going to be interviewing me. He could not hear me. So he was saying something mean to himself. No. Well, you could see him starting to fumble with the computer and see if he could get the sound to work that way. And then you see him kind of crawling underneath the table. Trying to wire something.

Exactly. So he's doing the wires. But while he's doing the wires, I hear him say, I'm so embarrassed. But without missing a beat. So embarrassed is one of the eight. Great. Awesome. And I'm chilling.

I'm fine. It's cool. I have time. And I'm pretty easy going anyway but he goes I'm so embarrassed and then right after that without missing a beat he says I'm so stupid I'm such an idiot yeah now harsh self criticism the so what's the difference embarrassment we don't we're not in charge of what we feel or that we feel it

once it's in our conscious awareness we can manage it right so I'm really angry okay I don't want to I don't want to blurt out things that are mean to people when I'm really angry

so I'm going to take a breath okay but I'm aware of it now I can take the breath and chill and not say anything but some people act and don't have that gap between

the thinking and the responding or the reacting but so the interesting thing here is that for me what we think how and what we think

we are in charge of not in charge of that we feel or what we feel what we think we are in charge of. Not in charge of that we feel or what we feel. What we think we're in charge of. So we feel something, we're not in charge of that because it could be just a response to something. But once we think it, we can change the thought.

Right, we're in charge of the thinking. So what I watched, and again, it came out of an experience when I was working with a guy working on his dissertation. I was a staff psychologist at UCLA for a period of time. He was working on his dissertation. He was really, really frustrated. But he was talking about the frustration, and frustration was really difficult for him. Okay, got it.

But then I heard him start to shift to, I feel inadequate, unworthy, and undeserving. And in my head, it's like, how did he get from frustration to inadequacy or frustration to that he wasn't worthy? And then it dawned on me that if we think of those as feeling bad, right? think of those as feeling bad, right? I'm feeling bad if I'm frustrated. Now he's creating the same, sort of the same feeling bad, but now he's in charge of it because he's in charge of what he's thinking. Right. Right. So that's when it kind of dawned on me that harsh self-criticism is actually a thought hijack of unpleasant feelings. Wow. And so I think more people shift into, I'm so stupid, I'm such an idiot, or what a dumb thing, or I'll never be able to do that. I mean, the list is endless in terms of how mean we can be to ourselves and what we say to ourselves, that we're doing

that because we don't want to deal with the unpleasant feelings underneath. Man, I feel like for decades, I would say mean things to myself. You know, you're such an idiot, you're stupid, how can you be? So forget whatever it is, right? Say all these nasty things to myself. I'm so grateful I don't do that anymore, but it took practice and it took time to heal and kind of go through this process essentially.

What happens to us when we are in a consistent, harsh, critical state to ourselves? Well, we turn everything toxic. So again, I don't know if I said this earlier, but a friend of mine likes to say what doesn't get emotionalized gets physicalized. So now we're affecting our physical body. We know that harsh self-criticism depletes our immune system. We know that. There are studies out that can show the difference between somebody who's optimistic, positive, kind, expresses gratitude, all those kinds of things.

There's a vast difference between somebody's immune system when they behave in those ways or think in those ways and then when somebody's mean to themselves. It's like you're crushing your cells. Every cell hears you, right? And so now you're moving yourself into a depleted and toxic state. Yeah, your body's getting older. It's aging.

It's unhealthy. It doesn't have as much energy. Right. It's more effort to do things. Exactly. All that stuff. Exactly. What's really interesting to me too, Lewis, is that most people think that unpleasant

feelings and the harsh critic, that they're equal. They are not equal. So again, just from, again, no proof here, no research, but from an observational standpoint, I actually think harsh self-criticism is the thing that takes us down to depression and often takes us down to suicidality. Wow. Because we're saying such mean things to ourselves consistently. Right.

And if you remove the mean words and things, criticism, you're going to feel a lot more peace. Exactly. It's just removing that. But people are so caught in a cycle of beating themselves up that it just comes whenever they make a mistake or they're not perfect or they let themselves down or they feel like they, whatever, hurt someone, they react to, God, you're such an idiot. How could you do this? You're so stupid.

You're such a dummy, whatever it is. Right, right, right. You're so. How could you do this? You're so stupid. You're such a dummy, whatever it is. Right, right, right. You're so ugly. You're so this. You're so bad. You're so all these different things. Right. As opposed to what should we do when there is a letdown?

We experience the embarrassment. We experience the disappointment. And we ride those short-lived bodily sensation waves. Experience it for 90 seconds. Or one or more times. Right, right? You just keep on going back. That's the key. You just keep staying. You stay with the experience. So kind of think of it as reversing course, right? And you're going to go, all right, now you're catching yourself doing the harsh self-criticism. And I'll tell you, that harsh self-criticism takes a lot of mental space, a lot of mental and emotional space. So when you change it, you're going to have some

open space. Creativity comes in, right? Connection comes in to yourself and to others. And so what you want to do is when you find yourself engaged in the hard self-criticism, you stop yourself and you go, all right, what was it that I was experiencing just before that, just before I let myself go to that kind of thinking so that I can be in touch with what was hard for me to know, hard for me to bear, hard for me to think, or hard for me to feel. And typically it's going to be one or more of those eight feelings. Stay with it. Make sense of it. Breathe. Breathe. Process it. Right. And come out of it. And it's also understanding, again, in my world, the difference between those unpleasant feelings and the harsh self-criticism is think of it like when we experience something that's unpleasant,

it's just, it's unpleasant. It's like a one-to-one ratio. But we live in California, right? And California has earthquakes. Well, if people are familiar with the Richter scale, a one-point difference is not a one-point difference. It's a 10 times difference. So think about that in relation to harsh self-criticism. That when you're engaged in it, we're not talking about it's just the same as unpleasant feelings. It's not. You're really in a takedown. You're in it, yeah. And there's a difference between harsh self-criticism and I would say conscious feedback. It's like, okay, I was late for this meeting. I messed this up, or the audio isn't working on the Zoom call.

Okay, it's just information that I wasn't prepared, and how can I be prepared better next time? And it's not the end of the world. Maybe I let someone down here for this moment, and that doesn't feel good, but all right. It just means I need to be more present for the future. And now I have a checklist, and now I have a checklist and I have a processor you know I'm gonna improve this right right right so it's just feedback it doesn't have to be this

huge failure correct correct right right and and and I will say a couple different things here for me doubt and questioning myself is a more subtle insidious version of harsh self-criticism. And if I hear somebody say, I'm a disappointment, that's harsh self-criticism. People will, rather than saying, I'm disappointed, it becomes, I'm a disappointment. Or I failed at something becomes, I'm a failure. Now we're moving from a reaction to something into actually harsh self-criticism. Yeah, Once you own that and you say, I am this, that is very harsh. Right.

Not, oh, I'm disappointed that I let this person down. Right. Or I did this thing or this person did this as opposed to I am a disappointment. I am a failure. That is hard to come out of. If you claim it as an identity. Right. I am and then use that word.

Right. That identity will stay with you until you break the identity, I am, and then use that word, right? That identity will stay with you until you break the identity. Correct. And create a new identity. So it's hard to get out of that and build confidence if you're in a hurtful identity. So that's step four. Right.

And then what was step five? Step five had to do with truly absorbing compliments. Receiving compliments, absorbing. Yeah. Why is it so challenging for people to receive gifts compliments support well it uh one part of it has to do with us being able to be okay with the dependent side of our nature and that it really is okay to receive and frankly the the greatest experience of life comes when we can do both. We can give and receive, right? That's where the richness, much of the richness of life

comes. And so that's one piece of it. The second is we're socialized not to receive them. Why? Because one, I think we have the sense that people will see us in a negative light, then we won't fit in, then we won't belong, and then it's just going to lead to unpleasant or difficult connections with others. But I really differentiate or make a distinction between this whole idea of arrogance and what I would consider kind of that healthy esteem or that healthy confidence. Because arrogance is just the opposite. Arrogance is coming out of a place of inadequacy or a sense of inferiority. And so I'm going to need to tell you 17 times how great I am, right?

Because I'm actually not feeling it. And now we start to think that person is conceited or that person is arrogant when in fact it's actually reflecting the opposite back to you. They're not feeling very great, and that's why they feel like they need to tell you all the time. So I want to make that distinction. When people feel really good about themselves and they take

in the compliments as and and for me taking in the compliment actually allows you to update and up level your sense of self and self-image really that's that's the thing that i've noticed is that it's it helps you forge that new story of yourself and if you don't allow them to come in, then you don't necessarily have, or you're not making use of the new information. You're not receiving the information that confirms the values and the person you want to be. Right, right, right. You're blocking the information.

You're saying no, but you're saying, but I want this thing to be this person in the future, but I'm not allowing it to happen right now, right? Right, so think of a compliment. So you're not a congruent. You're not congruent. You're not congruent. That's right. That's exactly right. Think of compliments as a reflection of you back to you. So it's the essence of I'm holding up a mirror to show you back to you. And if I dismiss that compliment, not only am I dismissing my reality, I'm dismissing your reality of me.

So if I'm rejecting this of you saying it, then I'm telling you that's not who I am. And I'm saying dismiss your reality. Right. Your reality is wrong. Right. That's not what I am. I don't deserve this. Yeah. We do all sorts of machinations around that. So now we're back into harsh self-criticism. Right. I don't deserve this. So it's as if we were in charge of our deservedness and our worthwhileness, but that's a whole separate issue. So the truth is that if somebody's giving you a genuine compliment, it's coming out of an experience of you and an experience with you. So if you're dismissing the reality, if you're saying, no, no, no, no, not taking it, and you play it off, oh, it was nothing. It was just luck. it and you play it off oh is nothing it was just luck you know it was it just happened and you dismiss the truth now you're dismissing your reality the other

person's and you're dismissing your effort you're dismissing your action you're dismissing like your consistency and all of that all of it yeah that was nothing no big deal exactly exactly I really have come to see that compliments allow you to update and up-level your self-image. That's cool. So that if you start to get a whole bunch of compliments about the same sort of thing and you didn't see yourself in that light, then it's like, oh, wait a minute. Everybody's kind of telling me this maybe I need to take a look at this and actually own that that is part of me or that is who I am that is how I show up and then you're not stuck in the old image of who you were yes you now can

make use of that it's like oh okay okay, I can step into this new place and see myself in a different light or experience myself in a different light. That, oh, I can be capable of this. Or I already exhibit the generosity or the kindness or whatever it might be, right? So I think it makes a huge difference. And what's interesting to me around this, Lewis,

is I often get the question, well, what about conceit then? Isn't that going to give you a big head? Right. How do I stay humble and receive endless compliments? How do I stay grounded? Exactly. And in service still, not just like I'm the man or I'm the woman or whatever, you know? Right.

So for me, there's kind of two answers to this. One is I actually think of humility as telling the truth of who you are oh interesting so tell me more what does that mean that well if you think about arrogance in relation to humility right and I was doing this during a talk at one point and I asked people how like I asked three questions and all of them had to do with playing down your skills dismissing compliments dismissing your accomplishments you know devaluing all of that and then I looked at the audience and I said that's arrogance really playing down your skills yeah is arrogance right so kind of who are you and what gave you the right to dismiss who you are?

Interesting. That's arrogance. Interesting. Humility then would be telling the truth of who you are. So if you're a really skilled opera singer, you're a skilled pianist, you're great at tennis, you're a kind and generous person, it doesn't matter what it is. great at tennis. You're a kind and generous person. It doesn't matter what it is. If you own the truth, you don't have to tell me 17 times. You might say once or twice, yeah, I'm really good

at that or I'm really excellent at that. But people will receive that as truth and they don't think anything of it. It's like, yeah, they are. And they recognize they are cool. And my experience is that when people feel good about themselves, Lewis, they don't have to tell people. They just live good. Absolutely. Or live the good. Absolutely. What's the best way for us to receive compliments? What's an approach we can have where we're authentic? It doesn't come across as arrogance or dismissing something what's the best response two comments one is at first a thank you or thank you I'm glad you see that or thank you for recognizing that thank you for saying that and the second and this is actually borrowed from Lisa Nichols and that that is, I receive that.

So it would be, thank you, I receive that. I like those. And if you don't take time to, if you haven't taken the time to take them in, in my world, compliments are timeless. What does that mean? Think about the compliments you've been given and given and dismissed. Oh, wow. Now, go back and I would have you ask yourself the question,

or kind of two around this. One is, what are those compliments that you've received that you've dismissed? And I've actually had people jot this down. You can go back as far in time as you want. Right, childhood, yes. You can. And who would you have become if you had actually allowed yourself to accept those compliments at that time? And who can you become now by taking them in? So for me, compliments are a super important part of this whole experience of confidence. This is inspiring.

I'm so inspired by this, Joan. And your book, I want everyone to get this, 90 Seconds to a Life You Love, How to Master Your Difficult Feelings to Cultivate Lasting Confidence, Resilience, and Authenticity. how to master your difficult feelings to cultivate lasting confidence, resilience, and authenticity. I believe that doubt is one of the things that holds us back from living a beautiful life. Doubting ourselves, doubting our past, doubting our future, just being in doubt. You know, we're not as rich to be around. You know, we don't, we're not as beautiful as an experience to be in the presence of when we doubt ourselves. People don't want to be in relationship as much

with someone who's constantly doubting themselves or doubting everything. And I feel like doubt is one of the killers of our dreams. Agreed. And in order to eliminate doubt, we need to learn how to build confidence. And you gave an incredible five-step process here to doing this.

And again, it's an easy concept, but can be very challenging for people to go through. But I believe that these steps will make it a smoother process to experience the uncomfortable feelings, which are necessary. You're going to have to experience them in order to get more comfortable and confident with experiencing them. So I highly recommend this. I've got a couple of final questions, but before I ask you, Joan, I want to acknowledge you for your incredible commitment to understanding people, to breaking down the science of the emotions that people go through in a practical way that for me was very easy to understand

this process. And I know that's taken you decades to understand and to experience not only individually but also experience with thousands of people face to face and hearing life stories and problems and stresses and pains from a lot of different people. A lot of different walks of life. So I really acknowledge you for your work, your ability to speak up and communicate effectively so that I can understand and that others can understand and the work that you're doing with this book and everything else.

So it's amazing to connect with you. Likewise. And I really appreciate this. Thank you. Thank you, I receive. Exactly. Thank you, I receive. Thank you, I receive that.

Yes. This is a question, but before I get to the final two questions, I want to make sure people follow you over on social media, Dr. Joan Rosenberg on social media. And also what's the main place to send them? What's the main website for you? Dr. Joan Rosenberg.com. Dr. Joan Rosenberg.com, social media. Get the book, 90 Seconds to a Life You Love. This will be a game changer for life. If you know anyone who's lacking confidence or is suffering,

get them this book as well. Really helpful. How else can we be of service to you before I ask you the final two questions? For me, really, Lewis, it's really about getting the work out. For me, it's about the kinds of things that help me get this kind of message out.

Sure. Like I said, I've had the opportunity to experience repeatedly what a difference it makes in people's lives. And so for me it's about being bigger service. Cool. We'll get it out in a big way, so I'm very excited. This question I ask everyone at the end is called the three truths. Right. We'll get it out in a big way. So I'm very excited. This question I ask everyone at the end is called the three truths. Okay. So imagine a hypothetical scenario.

It's your last day on earth many years away. You get to live the life you want to live. You create everything. You accomplish things. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you on your last day. So no one has access to your book, this conversation, TED Talks, they're all gone. But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world, three things that you know to be true that you'd want to share with the world.

And this is all the information we have of yours left. What would be those think, speak, and take action in the direction you want your results to be. The second would be to be congruent. So we can go for the first four or we can go for all eight. And the list can go beyond eight. But again, it would be that you want your thoughts, your feelings, your words, and your actions to match at the very least. Right. And if you can get your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions, your attitudes and beliefs, your values, your past history, and the vision for your future, if you can get them all to match even more, you're going to be that much more fully aligned. You are on a rocket ship to what you want.

Exactly. Exactly. So that would be the second. Congruence would be the second. And then the third would have to do with speaking up. It would be that understand that the purpose of you speaking, and again it's speaking from a kind and well-intentioned place, I would say internally to yourself as well as externally with others, that your capacity to do that and the importance of doing that, that purpose, if you will, is to grow you. And it's

one of the best ways to evolve through life and not only have a deeper connection within yourself, but it allows you to have the deepest and most enriching connections with others. connection within yourself, but it allows you to have the deepest and most enriching connections with others. Powerful truths. I'm a fan of those. Final question, what's your definition of greatness? You know, I said earlier, in terms of kind of a personal mantra, this idea of kind of that I want to see how far I can stretch in life.

and stretch in life. And so one of my definition or a definition of greatness for me has to do with the willingness to step in and to pursue something no matter what that journey looks like. And so as I might say many times that we disappoint our ways to success. But it's to pursue those things that we really want to pursue in life and to allow ourselves to be as fully expressed in life as possible. Joan, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Powerful. Inspiring. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.