The School of Greatness - Why Forced Positivity Is Making You Miserable | Susan David

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Some feelings get labeled good. Others get labeled bad. That single belief might be running your entire life. You'll hear why chasing happiness on command wears you down instead of building you up, and why the fastest path to resilience runs straight through the emotions you've been avoiding. Susan David, the psychologist and researcher behind the book Emotional Agility, has spent over two decades studying why some people bend under pressure and others don't. She breaks down the difference between having an emotion and being owned by it, using a simple image you'll carry into your next hard day. You'll hear about the notebook she started writing in as a teenager that nobody else could read, and how her father answered the one question she couldn't stop asking him. Susan and Lewis get into why negativity isn't always the enemy, how self bias quietly convinces you that other people were right about your limits, and what it actually takes to stop reacting and start responding. You are not the feeling that showed up today. You are the whole sky it's passing through. Get a copy of Susan's book: Emotional Agility Susan on Instagram Ted Talk: The gift and power of emotional courage In this episode you will: Learn why forced positivity and "good vibes only" culture quietly increases anxiety, depression, and burnout Discover emotion granularity, the practice of naming what you actually feel instead of defaulting to broad labels like stressed or overwhelmed Recognize the difference between being hooked by an emotion and simply having one Overcome self-limiting beliefs rooted in self bias by reconnecting with your own values Build real emotional agility by treating your emotions as data, not directives For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1964 More SOG episodes we think you’ll love! Get More From Lewis! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Again, thank you so much for being here and listening to the School of Greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. Can we have peace under chaos and can we have perspective when something really, really bad happens and still be grateful for this silver lining or for the situation that we're not in, how bad it's. could be, even though it might be a bad situation. Or is that toxic to have peace and gratitude and perspective under challenges? Or should we allow ourselves to scream and be emotional and be, you know, exhausted emotionally? Yeah, yeah. When there is some type of chaotic moment in our life. So there's a lot of questions. I know. So let's start a little bit with, with the experience of difficulty emotions.

And then when we're experiencing them, how do we find peace to use your language, which I think is such a beautiful word, peace and calm even in the midst of chaos? And then there's this extraordinary conversation to be had around positivity. The narrative that exists in our world, and you speak to this a little bit,

which is this narrative that like emotions and emotion regulation, this is the skill. Yes. It's always been the skill, but it is now the skill of the current world, a world in which complexity and fragmentation and chaos seem to be the contract that we have with life. You know, that is the contract we have. And so the question then becomes of, well, if these emotional skills are so crucial, why is it that we aren't taught it?

Why is it that you've got a child who is suffering during a pandemic who is able to go online and find any number of math courses through Can Academy or if it's equivalent? And yet that same child cannot access the kinds of emotional skills teaching that is foundational. And so before we even talk about the inner work and the suppression and all of these things that we speak about, I think it's really important for us to recognize

that we live as human beings in a context. And the context around emotion is sending particular messages. And the messages are these. Number one, there are good emotions and bad emotions. There's positive emotions or experiences like joy and happiness and grateful experiences. And the bad emotions,

emotions are things like grief, sadness, anxiety, shame, distress, anger, etc. So the first thing that I think is really important, if we're even thinking about finding calm in ourselves, is to recognize that these narratives that basically put us at odds in ourselves are a narrative, this is not a narrative that supports calm. It's not a narrative that supports clarity. And the reason I say this to us is because when we walk through life, we walk in a way whereby beauty holds hands with fragility. You know this in your own life. You know this with your dad where you can experience a relationship with a person and

that person is no longer. That person dies. You're in grief. We are in a situation where we feel we are in control of ourselves, our strategies, our goals, our business plans, whatever it is. And then COVID comes and like taps us on the shoulder, laughs in our face and says, you know, the illusion of control that you had was just that.

It was an illusion. And so why am I talking about this? Like why am I suggesting that there's this beauty and there's this fragility and they hold hands with each other? Because it's the truth. Yeah. Okay, because it is the truth. And so when we think about a narrative that says,

oh, you've got to be happy all the time, or you've got to be positive all the time, what that narrative does is it actually isn't real to the world that we live in, the world in which your heart will be broken, the world in which you will one day lose your jobs, in which our children will be facing not just one pandemic, but likely more. And so what we have is a context in which the world almost feels, in its, narrative about emotions to be conspiring to have us not see ourselves. And really what I mean here is...

By suppressing the emotions or by what? So the feeling that there's even good and bad emotions is like, no, there's your emotions. You are human. You are walking through the world. You are feeling what you are feeling. There is nothing wrong with sadness. Like even the narrative that there are good and bad emotions is a narrative that sets us up in an inner war with ourselves. And the reason this happens or the way you see this happening is someone might experience unhappiness.

They are unhappy about something that's happened in their jobs or in their relationship. And in psychology, we call that a type A emotion or type 1 emotion. I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy. I'm sad. I'm sad about this thing that's happened. Then what we start to is we start having this idea of,

but the world's telling me I've just got to be positive. The world's telling me I've got to be grateful, good vibes only. So now not only... I'm seeing everyone's highlight real and I'm comparing myself. So now not only am I unhappy in my type 1 emotion, but now I've got a type 2 emotion, which is I'm unhappy about my unhappiness. Okay? Man, that's layered, yeah.

So we start and we do this. like we see this with stress. People say things like stress is bad, now I'm stressed about the fact that I'm stressed. Or I'm in grief and I'm being told that my grief is not a good kind of grief. And now I'm like grieving about the grief that I'm having. It's kind of like we're beating ourselves up for the emotion that we have. It is correct. It's what we're starting to do is we're starting to layer our experience of emotion, which is authentic and truth to the world that we're living in. And what we're starting to do is we're starting to layer our experience of the emotion in with judgment, fighting, avoiding. That's where your suppression comes in. I don't

want to feel it. Let me feel something else hustling a war inside yourself. What happens when we do that? What happens when we do that is, firstly, we aren't developing the skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Okay? The world as it is is an imperfect world. The world as it is, is this handholding of fragility and beauty. And so when we push aside difficulty emotions, when we bottle them, when we set ourselves, and when we're doing this in a kind of characteristic way where it becomes our default mechanism, what we start to do is we start to have a couple of consequences. The first is you're not living in the world as it is. You're living in the world as you wish it would be. For example, someone who's unhappy in their job might say,

well, at least I've got a job. Okay. There's a recession coming. At least I've got a job. And so what they do is instead of facing into that unhappiness and learning from that unhappiness and using that unhappiness as a source that helps them to move forward. Instead, what they do is they unsee themselves. They turn their backs on themselves and they say, you know, I should at least be grateful that I've got a job. So I'm just going to ignore this experience. That's suppression.

And what happens is, five years later, you're still in the same job. Sure. Unhappy, you haven't actually used the information to solve the problem. So that's the first thing. forced positivity and suppression these things like especially forced positivity, it sounds innocuous on the surface. Like what could be wrong with being grateful? Right, right, right.

What could be wrong with it? But when it is forced and when it is false, these are the key criteria, forced, false positivity, then what we're doing is we are failing to develop the skills to deal with the world as it is. We're failing to adapt to a world that is changing in which we are changing. the job that I was happy in five years ago, I'm no longer because I've changed. And the other thing that we know is that this kind of forced false positivity and suppression, the force, false positivity, what is it?

It's basically emotional avoidance. It's a denial strategy. Yes, it's like wrapped in rainbows and sparkles and social media memes, but it is forced false positivity and it's an avoidant coping strategy. So avoidant coping strategies. are associated very clearly with lower rates of well-being, high rates of depression, high rates of anxiety, high levels of burnout, there is a real cost. And the last thing that I would say is that when we walk through life, when we walk through the world and we are with others

who are also walking through life and potentially in pain or worried or grieving or concerned and we do forced false. Everything's okay because I don't want to go to my difficulty emotions. What we are also doing is we are presenting in a way that is not integrated, not authentic, not true, not wise to ourselves and to our values. And there is no surprise then that this orientation is connected with poor requirements. quality of relationships because we are connecting with people in a way that it feels real. Yeah. I'm curious on a scale of 1 to 10 of self-love, happiness, and joy scale, let's call it that

scale. For you, where are you currently in your life on a pretty consistent basis? Scale 1 of 10 being like you're a very joyful, happy, peaceful human being, one being you're miserable. I am a 10. I have a 10. I'm a 10 and I am fairly consistently a 10. And I know that sounds, I know when I say things like false positivity, I probably sound like I'm anti-happiness. You know, or that I'm like, you know, like, oh, I'm talking about like getting stuck in our

difficult emotions. And, you know, if I'm not going to force positivity, then I've got to go to these difficulty motions and I'm going to get stuck there. And I think that's worth us exploring. And the reason that I say that this, that I'm not. not empty happiness is, you know, what I'm interested in is authentic happiness. I'm interested in genuine happiness. We, you know, years ago I edited just to kind of prove what a nerd I am and that I've got a genuine interest in authentic happiness is a years ago I edited a 90-chapter

handbook called the Oxford Handbook of Happiness. And really what this handbook was about is like, what do we know about happiness research? What do we know supports versus hinders people's well-being? And, you know, what we know is that the narrative that we have about just be grateful, just be positive, that narrative, even though it sounds, as I say, innocuous, when we start getting so bound with it, what we start doing is we chase happiness rather than connecting with meaning. We start denying our difficult emotions, rather than seeing them and being compassionate with them and understanding them, we start to move further and further away from ourselves and our centre. And in doing so, we lose our capacity in the world. And so, you know, when I say

I'm a 10. Were you always a 10? I wasn't always a 10. I mean, if you listen to my TED Talk, which I know you've done, you'll know that when I was, so I was born in South Africa. I was born as a child, as a white child in the white suburbs of apartheid South Africa. And it was very much a country and a community that was committed to not seeing, you know, to denial.

And I describe. To not seeing. To not seeing the self, to not seeing others. You know, because it's denial that makes 50 years of racist legislation possible while people manage to convince themselves that they are doing nothing wrong. You know, that, you know, that's a kind of different level of suppression, a different level of denial. But I describe in this TED talk, my father, my father dying. And the experience that I had of being this little 15 year old and putting my backpack down and going into his room on the day that he died and his eyes being closed.

But I just knew that he knew that I was there because I had always felt seen in his presence. And I described this like experience of. You know, he dies on the Friday. I go back to school on the Monday because my mom wants to keep things going. You know, she's raising three children and she's grieving the love of her life. She's trying to keep it together. She's trying to keep it together. And so I go to school on the Monday.

And the days drift into months and the months, you know, continue. And from the May, now we find ourselves in November. And I described this experience that I had, which really, connects, I think, with the essence of my work, which is, I describe this experience of going to school and people saying to me, how are you doing? And I'm like, I'm okay. You know, I'm okay. Because isn't it true, we all become the masters of being okay? You know, we all, I'm fine. We become the masters of being okay. We get praised for being strong. The world seems to value relentless positivity. And so for me, I'm this 15-year-old and I'm grieving the love of my life, my kind of

warm-handed father, who was such a profound guide in my life. And so on the one hand, I'm suffering and grieving and drowning. And on the other, I'm moving through the world in which I'm being praised for being strong and I'm telling everyone that things are okay. And so now we've got what I call segmentation. And segmentation is this experience where you've got these things that you're feeling. And then there's a disconnect between the relationships and how you're presenting. And so as I started to spiral. I mean, I was 15 years old.

I was unable to bear the weight of my grief. Things just dissolved in my family. My mom was struggling. The creditors were knocking because we were struggling financially. And I started to, as so many 15-year-olds do, I was binging and purging. Like, unable to bear the weight of my grief. Sure. And so the reason I raised this is because you asked me, like, what did I use?

to be and what am I now? And like I don't want to kind of use me as the litmus because everyone's journey is their journey. But I had this extraordinary experience of just feeling like more and more separated from myself and just less and less centered. And I remember going to school one day and there was this English teacher. And she handed out these blank notebooks to the class. And she looked at me, and I still remember literally to the day,

she looked at me as she handed out these blank notebooks. And it was this invitation to the class, but I felt like it was directed at me. And she said this. She said, write, tell the truth, write like no one is reading. Okay? And I know you've done a lot of journaling.

And so, Lewis, I started to journal. I started to like move away from this denial and pushing away from into really stepping into and owning my experience. So every day I would write in this journal, I'd write about the grief, I'd write about the pain and these just like loss and regret and all of these things. And I started to realize over a period of time that And this actually became the revolution of my work. This experience with this teacher is literally what set me on the course of 20 years of being an emotions researcher.

Because what I started to realize is the narrative of happiness is you're right. Just be happy. Just pretend to be happy. Just get on with it. If we think about how we speak to people who've got cancer, like just be positive. of like this narrative that exists. What I started to realize is that narrative and the way I was interacting with that narrative

was actually making me more fragile. Wow. You know, not less fragile, but more fragile, less resilient, less well, less healthy. And in contrast, when I started to do this journaling and I was writing down like all these experiences and my regret and my grief and my pain, what was remarkable to me is I started to recognize the healing that was coming through that journey.

And so I started to become interested in like, why is it that we are served up this platter of gratitude and happiness as the end point, whereas actually the way we get to anything that even vaguely connects with integrity and well-being is, by integrity with ourselves. And so for me, it was this journaling experience. And it was interesting years later. So it was of the processing the emotions. The process.

When we look at what is called expressive writing, you know, when a lot of people talk about journaling and not why journaling is so powerful. And when you look at the very important questions of like, well, what is it that happens in journaling? What is the mechanism that allows journaling to be powerful? it is the sense making that comes through journaling. The meaning. It's the meaning making.

It's the meaning making that comes through journaling. It's the experience of holding, holding ultimately over the period of journaling, holding your beautiful memories, in my case, of that person. So not denying them, holding them and bringing them to the surface. So there's this beauty and there's this joy and, there's this connection and holding the grief and the loss and the pain and bringing those two things together is the litmus of psychological health and well-being. And it's this learning that comes through our difficult emotions. What happens when we bring the two together? Grief and sadness

and gratitude and appreciation. So what the research shows in this expressive journal, is that when people journal in it, you can even journal, you know, 20 minutes a day for three days and you, you start finding these kind of effects, which is, which is it starts moving you from just being focused on the past into a presence with yourself, into a seeing with yourself. And in starting to, you know, what you start to recognize when you start to to analyze people's writing when they've gone through this expressive writing, is, and you start to say, well, like, what is it that predicts people who do better versus not? It's what predicts people who do better is that they, they aren't being a poliana. They aren't just being, oh, everything's great, everything's fine, I should just be grateful, because at least I got to spend 15 years with my father. Right. They're not doing that.

What they're doing is they are holding their beautiful, positive experiences alongside their tough, difficult experiences. alongside their tough, difficult experiences, the pain and the regret. And they're starting to generate a sense of insight and meaning. So for me, as an example, and I want to come back to this teacher because it was such a remarkable thing that she said to me, the example was I kind of found not to force it or not to contrive it, but when I was doing this writing,

that over a period of time, I started to, connect with like a sense of resilience in myself. So it was like I would write about these difficult experiences and then I would and then I would like over time start recognizing that I just had this like inner sense of resilience and connection. And so circling back to your word calm, I came out of the writing with the sense of having seen the self a sense of calm. Does that make, does that?

Yeah, of course. It's interesting because when my father passed, thanks for reaching out and sending me the text, it was really thoughtful. When he passed, I remember everyone was asking me, like, how are you doing? And I was like, to be honest, I'm sad and grateful. Yeah. I kept saying, like, I'm really sad that it happened this way and that he was in an accident for 17 years and I didn't get to have the relationship that I had with him.

And I'm trying to find sense of that and find the meaning in that process. But I'm also really grateful because there, were some beautiful times we had together. So I'm sad and I'm grateful. And I was just, I kept saying that. I'm like, I'm sad and I'm grateful. Yeah, and there's bothness, isn't there? And I think that's the beauty.

It's like this, the circling back to what we were saying only about this narrative that they're good and bad emotions. What this does is it sets these emotions up against each other. But we are, we are, you know, that beautiful, we contain multitudes. like we experience more than a single emotion. We can simultaneously hold these things. And so the way that we move into a space of holding them is not by making one of them good and one of them bad,

but rather recognizing that what you feel is what you feel, there's such power in the acceptance. I don't mean passive resignation. I just mean acceptance. like this is what I feel and there's such power. I just wanted to quickly circle back to something that this teacher said. Years later. So this is this teacher.

I'm 15. Years, years, years later, I go to a conference and there's someone at this conference who gives a talk and says, you know, they're going to be people in your life who've really shaped who you are, shaped your experience. And if that person doesn't know that they've shaped your life and shaped your experience, reach out and let them know. So I track down this teacher. Wow.

And I find her and I send her, you know, a bunch of flowers. And I, like, in this card, say, like, you saw me. You know, you saw me. And in seeing me, you allowed me to see myself. And I said to her, but one thing I always wanted to ask you is, Lewis, I would write this journal and I would write it in pen. I would like scroll and poetry and all this kind of like teenage, 15 year old, and I would scroll it. Every day, we had this like secret silent correspondence because every day I would have this journal in and the teacher would then send it back with notes like saying you sound really sad or you know she would have these notes.

But she always had her notes in this like almost imperceptible pencil. It was like you could barely make out what she was writing. Really? This really light pencil. So I said to her, I said to like when we reconnected, I was like, why did you write in pencil? And she said to me, which I thought was so beautiful, she said to me, Susan, it was your story. It was your story. And I was simply being witness to your story, but you were crafting your story.

and it reminded me a little bit of because I know you want to dig into emotional agility and often people say to me, you know, what is emotional agility? And I say, well, you know, I can give for a nerd definition but ultimately what my work is about is my work is about seeing. It's about seeing and unseeing. What do you mean by that? Yeah.

Well, it's about seeing yourself in ways that are healthy and whole. and seeing all of you and loving all of you. And in seeing ourselves, we are then more able to see others too. And it reminds me a little bit of Primo Levi, who was a survivor of the Nazi death camps. Just in case you thought you were going to have a light conversation. So Levi describes, Levi was, in a death camp and when the camps were liberated, he, you know, literally on the verge of death

was released. And so he and his fellow death camp survivors boarded trains back to their hometowns. And Levi described how as the train pulled up into his hometown in Italy, there were a whole lot of people waiting on the platforms for them to arrive. And the people on the platforms were so horrified by how emaciated and skinny and bow and like haggard and deathly the people on the trains were, the people that they were so horrified by it that they turned away. Wow. They turned away and they turned away

because they were, they were unable. They were unable to metabolize. They were unable to process. They were unable to see. And Levi described how in many ways that experience that he had was in many ways even more, wow, more devastating, more heartbreaking.

than the experience of itself. No, why? Wow. And I think that for me, when I talk about seeing versus unseeing, it is really about this thread, which is what does it take for us to see ourselves? What does it take to see others? Because here's the thing. We live in a world that really gives primacy to goals and objectives and success and all of these things. but the way we deal with our inner worlds, the way we see ourselves, the way we deal with our difficult thoughts,

like a thought might be, I'm not good enough, an emotion might be, I'm sad, I'm depressed, I'm grieving, a story might be a story of do I even deserve love, am I worthy? The way we deal with our inner worlds drives everything. It drives how we love, it drives how we live, how we parent, how we lead, our health behaviors, our ability to achieve those goals, it drives everything. And that is the centrality of my work, which is about healthy seeing. And just to kind of, so healthy seeing is about firstly holding both the joy and the discomfort together and recognizing that we don't need to be owned by any of it because we are more than those things as well and we are able to move forward towards

our values. I'm curious, I think a lot of people would probably admit, maybe not publicly, but they would probably admit to like someone close to them if they were truly honest with themselves that for a period of their life, they didn't believe they were worthy of love. Yeah. There's probably a good amount of people in the world that aren't as adults good at receiving love. They don't believe they deserve it. And maybe there's a whole other spectrum of people, you know, that's all they do is they love themselves too much. It's like very narcissistic or something like that. But I think there's a lot of people that doubt themselves. Yeah. They doubt themselves by certain stories that told themselves, certain things that have happened in their lives that confirm they're not

deserving of love. They picked on, bullied, parents, whatever might be, broken up with boyfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend, all that stuff. How do we believe we are worthy of love? How do we learn to believe that we as an individual are deserving of love. Yeah, is that such a powerful question? And I just want to kind of circle back. You gave narcissism as an example of self-love. They actually hate themselves the most. Actually, narcissism is a manifestation of very often low self-esteem.

I think one of the most important aspects of this fight for worthiness really because that is what it is. And I think that all of us as humans at some level fight for worthiness. And I think the really important part of, you know, when I talk about agility versus rigidity, you know, my work is on emotional agility in contrast to emotional rigidity. And so I think what becomes really important in that is if we think about the kinds of thoughts that people have, I've given some examples of like, I'm not good enough or there's no point in trying. Okay. Emotions, emotions like grief and anger or stories, stories about whether I'm worthy of love.

So a really important part of actually being able to move forward in the world with integrity is recognizing that these are normal. okay and this is really really important this thought or this feeling that I'm not enough any of it any of it and all of it is actually normal there is nothing good or bad right or wrong about saying to yourself or the automatic thought that says like gee I'm going to stuff this up okay there is that is literally your body and your psychology doing the job that it was meant to do, which is to help you to make sense of the world, to adapt and respond. If you were never concerned about how you sounded, you would have no friends. You wouldn't get anywhere. If you were never concerned about whether you should be fearful about something or not,

you'd be dead. You'd be dead. Okay. So this whole narrative, which is that there's some thoughts that good and some thoughts that are bad and some emotions is actually like a it's a completely false narrative and so one of the core ways we start to dismantle the narrative is by recognizing that these thoughts emotions and stories are normal yes they are normal sense making machines you know you are absolutely your brain is doing its job when it's helping you to kind of judge be curious assess understand, but what happened? Like, that's your brain doing the job. So, when do we become hooked?

When do we become rigid? When are we now being unhealthy? Yeah, when it's holding, when is it holding us back too much? When it's holding us back and when we start being imprisoned by them. Yes. Okay, so in psychological terms, the language for this is fusion. Or in my book on emotional genitality, I call this hooked. So, so.

Hooked meaning like trapped in your feelings, thoughts. You can't progress in life. So let's, so, so, so. You're suffering in it. Yeah. Of I'm not good enough. Or am I going to succeed at this? Or maybe I'll think these are normal.

Okay. Normal. Fusion or being hooked is when you say, I'm not good enough. Therefore, there's no point in me trying. Mm-hmm. Okay. I believe it 100%. So, yeah.

So what you're starting to do is you're starting to take this normal thought emotional story and you are starting to let it define you, hence the word fusion. You know, you are now fused. Becomes your identity. It becomes, it's literally like the emotion owns you rather than you owning it. And this is really important. We own our emotions. They don't own us.

So when you talk about how do we move into a space of generating a sense of of connection with self and self-worth. Firstly, recognizing that the way you've often responded doesn't need judgment. It just needs compassion because it's hard to human. Do you know what I mean? It's hard to human.

It is. So there's firstly that. The second thing that becomes important is, is, and this again connects with this idea of rigidity, which is recognizing that when you were that five-year-old child and you were learning how to survive, that those strategies that you used at that age were actually functional. In other words, those strategies probably protected you.

You know, if you were bullied and therefore you stop being vulnerable as an example, that strategy actually was protective. So it was actually a functional strategy. what happens is we start moving into a point where the strategy is no longer helpful to us. So now imagine you've developed these strategies of defensiveness, of always wanting to be right, of like all of these things that we develop. Competing, like whatever it is for us. So we start developing these strategies and then we move into a different part of our lives.

Now we've got someone who really loves us and who wants to be with us and where our once functional strategy of shutting down and of being protective is now not functional. In other words, we've outgrown, just like we outgrow our shoes, just like we outgrow our clothes. when we move into different phases of our lives, we outgrow strategies. And so it becomes really important. This is where these emotional agility skills come in to recognize that when we are hooked, we are often not sensitive to the context. We often on seeing the person in front of us. Right.

We're seeing the five-year-old who is fighting for survival. And so what does that mean? That means we really owe ourselves huge amounts of compassion, compassion for that child. And we also, there's this beautiful quote by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher who he describes this idea. He says, you know, as a human being, you can never step into the same river twice. And what is that saying? it's saying the world is always changing.

Technology, the economy, politics, like the world is always changing. And we as human beings are changing. If we didn't, there would be something wrong with us. And so with change comes confusion, comes difficulty motions. Yes. comes the it's uncomfortable to change you know it's uncomfortable and it's because it's uncomfortable that it's so important to be gentle with it because because it's like you being gentle with you holding hands with yourself in your walk through life and and as opposed to

staying stuck where you once were and so when you're walking through life and you're walking to a new place, whether that new place is a new job or a new career or a new idea or new relationship. There's such beauty in holding hands with yourself. Going by to what you're just talking about, it sounds like the memories of our past that are connected to a painful emotion hold us back or could potentially hold us back in the future to not feel those painful emotions again, right? Yes. It's these stories that we have attached a memory with an emotion, I guess, from these events.

Yeah. Right? Whether it's on some people's point of view, extremely traumatic or something smaller, but it could still be very traumatic. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Those memories seem to hold us back. It's almost like if we could erase all the memories of our past and enter in the world as this human being without those memories, would we be able to,

be more unapologetic in taking action on the things we want to take action on, well, we have more confidence. What we have here? Yeah, I think that that's such a powerful question. I mean, I think that, like, the memories hold us back and certainly, but they also, they also move us forward. I mean, there's, there's the memory of, that protect us too, yeah, that they're all of these things.

But I also, but we, we can be hooked by a past, but we can also be hooked by today. You know, we know that when people are experiencing a past, you know, we know, we know that when people are experiencing a lot of stress when the world is changing quickly, when your job's changing and there's like yet another, you know, yet another transformation, yet another, whatever it is. When human beings experience huge amounts of stress, or even normal amounts of stress, normal amounts of confusion, there actually tends to be a cognitive narrowing. And so what I mean by this is we tend to, as we experience more ambiguity and more stress or more technology, it's almost like the technology is outpaced our human capacity to deal with it.

Because human beings, when human beings, if we think about the evolutionary survival mechanism, when we are experiencing stress and threat, there is a perceptual narrowing, literally a cognitive narrowing. So there's a focus. And that focus might be, I'm hooked on being right in my Twitter feed. I'm stuck in my emotion today because there's a narrowing. So we can be in agile and rigid because of past experiences, but we can also be in agile and rigid because there's just a lot of stuff coming at us.

And like the World Economic Forum talks about these emotional agility skills as being the skills of the future for exactly this reason. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now, and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need.

Now, let's get back to the conversation. I mean, you can tell also from like the greatest leaders, you know, the ones that are flexible and their ability to relate and connect to different people, the ones that can handle the pressure without going right into fear mode or attack mode, but the ones can see it and not narrow their focus, but widen their focus and see everything and maneuver with flexibility are the ones that typically are able to last in business, in the latest. in relationships as coaching teams, you know, in sports. They're the ones that succeed over time.

Yeah, they land up being able to have contextual awareness. So what you're starting to do is you're starting to move away from a rigid story, defining your action into being able to zoom out and getting a greater sense of like, what is the full scope of what I'm experiencing in front of me. And what you described there is so important, Because, so firstly, I just wanted to, I just wanted to say you'd ask the question about how do we start developing greater levels of self-worth. I think one of the most powerful ways we do this is through action, through action, through, you know, making choices, even if those choices are difficult that feel connected with our values, keeping promises to ourselves. It's through action.

We're starting to develop the sense. But you mention leaders, and it really connects me with, you know, I know it's like an obvious thing to draw on, but it connects me with Nelson Mandela, partly because of my history. But one of the cause, one of the foundational ideas of my work is firstly that these emotions aren't good or bad. And secondly, that emotions are data, okay, that emotions are data, that emotions signpost are needs. And this is very different from the, oh, I'm feeling sad, just pushed aside. What this is actually saying is we aren't just trying to manage our difficulty motions, as in a like clinical, icy, you know, manage them. Manages the wrong word, regulate even.

We aren't even trying to regulate them. Actually, we can take it way beyond there into the extraordinary recognition that our emotions are day. that our emotions are shining a light on our needs and our values. And so for the person who's feeling bored, and you can be busy and bored at the same time, as we know. Sure, sure. Boredom is saying, hey, you care about learning.

You care about growth, and you don't have enough of that. So if you're feeling bored at work, what that's actually signposting is a value. And it's actually saying you can move towards that value. You can put your hand up for a new project. You can extend yourself. You can have different conversations with your team. If you board in a relationship, what I call overcompetent, you know, you got for dinner, you know exactly what you're... Too comfortable.

You know exactly what the person's opinion of the movie is going to be and what they're going to order and what you're going to talk about. that boredom, which is a key risk factor for disengagement, that boredom is actually saying you care about growth and learning. Yeah. How can you bring more growth and learning to this relationship? You're not living in your values right. Yeah. And we can do this by expanding the breadth, the types of things we talk about, the depth.

You know, when you went on the first date and you asked someone about their hopes and dreams, but when you've been married for 10 years, you might not ask it anymore. But ask it. Yeah. Ask it because that is bringing you towards your values. You know, Nelson Mandela spoke about something very powerful. He didn't push anger aside. He spoke about getting into relationship with his anger.

He spoke about his anger signaling his values. And that a value that was really important to him was under threat, okay, which is equality and the fall of aparthe, you know, the dismantling of apartheid. So it wasn't by pushing emotion aside. So here's this idea. It's emotions are data,

but they're not directives. So I'm going to play this out for you. Emotions are data, they're not directives. Emotions are data because they're signposts our needs and our values, but they're not directives. Just because I feel angry doesn't mean I get to have it out with everyone in front of me. I scream at people. Just because I feel sad and I don't want to get out of bed doesn't mean now I give into my sadness

because that's like we spoke about bottling earlier. That's just now brooding. Then you're imprisoned by your difficulty emotions. So Nelson Mandela said something extraordinary. He described how in order to effectively navigate his anger, he needed to learn how to sit down with his oppressor. And this is very powerful. Well, no, he, the emotion was signposting his values, his values around equity.

In order to actually move towards his values, he couldn't be held by his rage. He actually needed to step into the wisdom that his emotions were pointing to, which is, if you want conversation, if you want collaboration, if you want to be seen, then you need to put yourself in a situation in which you are collaborating, in which you are seen, in which you are conversing. And so Nelson Mandela, one of the most powerful things that he did was sitting down to talk. But you can't sit down with your emotions in anger and rage because someone's not going to be able to receive that in collaboration. Emotions are deader.

Not directives. It's like it's the, it's the, it's not credible. Correct. It's not credible. If you're screaming on me because you're upset that I did something I wasn't even aware of. I'm going to be like, what are you talking about? It's the understanding of what the emotion is signposting. To communicate.

In order to step into the wisdom of your values. So it's not the emotions that are driving you. It's not the emotions that are the directives. it is the values and the wisdom. And I think this is so important because when you live in a polarized society, we become so hooked on being right that actually the focus on being right

is very often taking us away from the values that we are professing. Yeah, the wanting the equality or whatever it might be or something. We want to be inclusive, but we're being so exclusive in our opinion or in there's only this one way to be in our opinion. We want to be seen, but we won't see someone else unless they see at their point of view or whatever it reminds you, right?

So it's like so interesting because it's this, it's this like holding of the healthy emotion. And the only way we can move away from the immersion in rage is when we actually have a, when we have a healthy relationship with that, where we see that rage is, being helpful from a data perspective, but also we try to glean the value, the values that are being pointed to from the difficulty motion. So like Nelson Mandela, he sat with his anger or whatever emotion he had. He sat with it. He was developing a relationship with it. And then he would use his information to communicate what he wanted his needs. Yeah, to move towards what you care about.

And it's like we can play this out in so many ways. If we think about loneliness, loneliness is, loneliness is on the increase. And we can be lonely in a crowd. We can literally when people are lonely, very often what they do then is they put up even more of a barrier because they feel so almost enveloped in that loneliness. But loneliness is signposting that you need more intimacy and connection. Right. And so if we can step into those values more purposefully and more fully, that is, you know, that's why when you, when we say like, what is emotional agility?

Well, it's about seeing and unseeing. What is the, what is the, like, true definition of it? Yes. Emotional agility is about the ability to be with all of our thoughts, our emotions and our experiences in ways that are curious. You know, what is this emotion trying to tell me in ways that are compassionate because it's hard to human? And in ways that are courageous. Having that difficult conversation doesn't always feel good.

We don't get to have a meaningful career or leave the world a better place or raise a family without stress and discomfort. It's interesting. You know, as I've been in my relationship with my girlfriend, Martha, I said in the very beginning, I said, listen, we can have all the uncomfortable conversations you want to have. There's stuff from my past I'm not proud of that I'm going to share with you. There's probably stuff that you may want to talk about, but maybe it doesn't feel good for me the way you're saying things, whatever. I can't predict it, but there should be no reason we ever scream or react with anger

towards each other, in my opinion, but we can have all the uncomfortable conversations you want. Like, we can communicate it as healthy, conscious, courageous, compassionate adults. Yes. It doesn't mean you have to lean into the emotion. I can feel the emotion. I'd be like, that's sad. That hurts me. That makes me feel a little angry. But it doesn't mean I need to direct. They're not my directions like you said. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, we own our emotions. They don't own us. And this is where some of these agility skills, like some actual kind of practical skills come in. That can be helpful to people. You have this post I saw on your Instagram, which I love. The best question to ask yourself in a moment of stress. or conflict. And what you have in this post is asking yourself these questions, what action could I take in this, that is most aligned with my values? And the reason I like this post, is because you keep talking about values in this conversation. Most people don't know what their

values are. Yeah. And so what happens when we aren't clear on our values in general? Well, a couple of things a couple of things, of course, like you're talking to like the nerd of the stuff. So I'll say, like, well, they're 23 things. There's like 27 things. If we don't have values or we're not clear on our values, what happens? So there are a couple of things that happen. The first thing that happens is we are more likely to be subject to what is called social contagion. Social contagion is where we basically pick up on other people's values or other people's emotions.

And so, you know, there's some very beautiful epidemiological studies that, for instance, show that if someone in your social network gets divorced, as an example, even if you do not know the person, you are more likely to get divorced. Wow. Okay. Because this, like, divorce is almost like behaviorally normalized for you and you start to adopt it as something that's your own. It's like, okay to do. some other examples. Imagine you get on an airplane and you are, you know, kind of vaguely trying to be healthy, but it's not really connected at a deep level with you. And your seat partner buys candy, you are 70% more likely to buy candy. Wow. Okay. And this might sound like, oh, well,

you know, who cares? It's just like a one-off thing. But if you think about it, what starts to happen is we can start to absorb the way other people live. Our next-door neighbor drivers, a particular car. We want that car. We want that promotion. Like, social media, like, there's all of this thing that starts to create a context in which our behaviors aren't actually our behaviors. They are actually the behaviors of others.

You know, oh, that person on social media has got that beautiful pair of jeans. I've never considered that I might want that pair of jeans, but now I, you know, now I've got to have them. So we start to absorb other people's behaviors. And you saw this very clearly in the pandemic. It's like one person is loading their shopping cart with like more toilet paper than they would ever use in their lives. And now everyone's doing it. So this is social contagion. So is this like our, and would our values become our identity then?

No, so this is because there's emotions in the world and there's behaviors in the world and we start, we are humans and we are social species and we start picking them up. So, and I'll get to the kind of values piece because it's really important. So let me plow out a kind of example here, which is imagine you, and this is based on some research on this. So imagine you are someone who has grown up in an environment, in a community in which every message that you've ever gotten is, we don't go to college. Okay, we're not college material. We don't go to college. Like, this is not who we are.

But you fight and you, like, you do everything you can and you go to college. And then because life's beauty holds hands with its fragility, one day you're in college and you fail your first test or things don't go so well or, you know, something happens like things feel stressful. So at that point, there is a significant likelihood. that that person will actually drop out of college. Right. So what's fascinating here is we always think,

people talk about bias a lot. You know, oh, this person's biased and that person's bias. You know, they're like biased against my gender or whatever it is. But what we don't talk about is self-bias. So what is self-bias? Self-bias is when you've grown up in an environment in which there is some kind of narrative. we don't do college here as one example, and then stress happens because stress happens or change happens because change happens.

And you fall back into that self-bias? Yeah, you actually start to use that bias against yourself. So you start to say things like, maybe they were right, okay? Maybe they were right. Maybe I'm just never going to have a healthy relationship. Maybe they were right. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. So that's why we see at this point many of these college students will drop out.

but now this getting back to values, if you take these college students and you engage them in a brief writing exercise and you ask them literally for 10 minutes to write down why they are studying this particular degree, why it's important to them, what their purposes, what their values are, what the core is of what they're doing here, why they're doing it.

In other words, you're asking them what their why is what we know is that that 10-minute exercise actually protects those students. Wow. Yours down the track. Because they'll always go back to, ah, it's really hard this week or this semester. But the reason I'm doing this is why I'm doing this. This is why I'm doing this. And so when you ask the question, which is why is it, what happens when we don't know our values?

What happens when we don't know our values is, number one, we start living someone else's life. Okay. through social contagion. Number two, when things get stressful, we don't have the inner core to actually help us to respond effectively. And I often think about this kind of analogy, which is, well, like if we think metaphorically,

like a gymnast, you know, what's going on with a gymnast? Like a gymnast is or in any kind of sports, So gymnast is there's everything going on in the environment. There's there's the crowd. There's the music. There's the how everyone else is doing in the competition. There's the individual who, you know, is doing, she's doing her routine and falls slightly differently every time. And yet there is this core that helps the person to write themselves, to connect with themselves.

And that's what your values do. That's so good. That's what your values do. That's so good. in this post that you have about that, which is, is this aligned with my values, which I think is the first thing we should be asking ourselves, is it aligned with my values? Another one you have here is, I may be right in this in this moment, but is my response serving me? And is it serving my values, really? Is it serving my values and my vision? Is it serving me from where my values are and where I want to go? Yeah, like, I may be right, but is it serving? Like, I had this, I had this experience with this individual executive a couple of years ago. He worked for the United Nations. And he was, he was really involved in food security. Like he was bringing food to people who would otherwise not get it. And I had this conversation with this individual and he said to me that in order

to do his job effectively, he needed to work with a particular government official in this country and he could not stand this guy. He was like, I cannot stand him. He's awful. He's like, I can't stand him. Okay. And so what was he doing? He's like, and I'm just avoiding his calls because I just can't deal. And so I was like, we had this conversation. And the reason that that is rigid is because firstly the person may have been right. Okay. The guy might have been a complete idiot, whatever, who knows. But the reason it's rigid is because he would say to me, this man talks to me like my father used to talk to me.

And there is no ways I'm putting up with it. And the reason that it's rigid is because it either asks for a new childhood or for a new government official. Right, right, right, right. Neither of which are likely. Neither of which are likely. Maybe 80 years or something. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like this example, again, of, Is it serving you to get what you want? Is it like, I may be right, but is my response serving me? Is it bringing me closer to being the person, the loved one, to having the relationship, the life that I most want to have? Absolutely. I love this stuff. I feel like I could go for another hour with you, but I want to, I've got a few more questions.

I'm curious, with all your, you've been doing this study, studying for how many decades now? I mean, two decades. Don't even ask. Two decades. I'm such a nerd. I'm like, it's like an awful party thing. Like, what do you do? You know, how many emotions research or why I'm working about, yeah, more than two decades.

You've been doing this for a while. Yeah. What has more control over us if we allow it and what has the most power if we step into it? Our thoughts, our emotions, or our feelings. What consumes us and holds us back of the three the most and which one, if we step into it, propels us forward in a positive way the most. So can I reframe that a little bit? Give it to me.

Okay. So sometimes people say things like which comes first, you know, do your thoughts come first? Do your emotions come first? Which is stronger? In truth, there are multidirectional effects. So let me give you an example. Sometimes people can experience an emotion.

And then they, that emotion turns into a feeling. In other words, we ascribe some kind of interpretation to it. and we know that say someone is feeling a little bit negative, not super negative, but a little bit negative, we know that that emotion actually impacts on their thinking and their decision making. So the emotion impacts of thinking. So when you are trying to do very creative work, if you feeling. more joyous, you are more likely to think big picture, creative, have lots of amazing ideas. Because again, when you're feeling more joyous, you have a perceptual widening.

Therefore, you are able to kind of bring things into being that maybe didn't previously exist. And when you're in a more neutral to negative mood, you've got a perceptual narrowing. So imagine you're trying to write a book. this is why we say when you're trying to write a book, do the creative work when you're in one frame of mind and do the more editorial work when you're in another frame of mind. Because when you're in a neutral to negative mood, you are actually more likely to find errors. You are more likely to do better editing work. And so this is this example, you know, this is this example on the workplace where people say,

oh, you know, you've just got to, people have got to be positive all the time, which is ridiculous and which creates a lack of psychological safety. But more than that, when you're pitching something to a client, being connected and generative is going to create more of an expansive receptiveness. But when you and your team are trying to figure out what could go wrong here, actually a neutral to negative mood actually supports you. Interesting. Well, okay, let me ask you a question.

But I want to step into the power. So let's go there because. Stay there. Let me ask you a question about sports, though, because when I was on lots of different sports teams, if there was ever negative people, negative attitudes, it would pull down the entire team. You know, whether it would be during a practice, during a game, it would kind of throw the rest of the team off. If someone was negative. Now, if you're in watching a game film and you're saying, how could this have been better?

And you're more critical in your thinking and you're assessing, oh, I could have made this shot better or this route, whatever it might be. But in sports, it was never about like having a negative attitude about it because then now kind of pulled the energy down. So how does that work with sports, I guess? Yeah. Well, I think there's a difference between, again, someone being stuck in the being negative relative to creating psychological safety where someone says, you know, the way we're doing this tackle might not work because of such and such. Got it. As opposed to just being like, yeah, I agree with everything. Yeah.

So it's really fascinating. When you look at how this plays out in organizations, a lot of leaders will say things like, you're on the bus, so you're off the bus. You know, you're with me or you against me. Right. And so what's bound up in that idea is that if you say something that is difficult or if you highlight that something might not be working out, there's something wrong with you.

You know, there's something wrong with you. And so what happens? People see a potential error that might happen. And they push it aside. They don't say anything because they don't want to be seen as negative. So actually when you think about organizations and you think about like innovation, innovation holds hands with failure. You know, collaboration holds hands with conflict.

And so you don't actually get to have an organization that is agile without emotional agility, without an openness to all of these difficult emotions. So when you recognize that someone is saying, hey, I'm concerned about the strategy. I'm really concerned about it. What is that emotion signposting? The emotion might be signposting, not that the person's negative, but that the person actually cares about the outcome. That's cool.

You know, that they care about the client, they care about the customer. And so when you're a leader and you create the space for the lack of judgment about good or bad emotions, you move into a different way of being. That's cool. Okay, thoughts emotions. So the truth is that these things are completely, you know,

multidirectional and neither one comes first. So for all of these things, however, we can be stuck in a thought, we can be stuck in an emotion, we can be stuck in a story. And so this is where these critical strategies come into play. So I'll give you two examples. You were talking about stepping into your power. Yes. Okay.

So you're showing up to a difficulty motion. You're showing up with curiosity. but the truth is you feel grieving, you feel sad, you feel stressed and that's the truth for you. So it is really difficult to read the instructions when you are stuck inside the jar, okay? When you are stuck inside the difficulty motion, it's difficult to be able to create the space for values because you're so immersed in it. And I remember, actually it was a couple of months ago, I had the fortune of speaking with NASA. And it was one of those beautiful examples where you're like giving the example and it completely is like their world,

which is this thing that astronauts describe, which is that when they go into space, the further and further they get from the earth, the more it's the, it's the, called the overview effect, the more they see the Earth as being just this tiny pinprick. And that there is something so beautiful that happens in that moment because the astronauts are both reminded of simultaneously of their insignificance, okay, I'm insignificant, and of their significance, and of their significance, because there's something that feels so powerful in being able to observe the earth. And we can do the same with our emotions.

We can move away from the immersion in our difficulty emotions into being able to observe them. Seeing it from the side. So we're now outside, outside the jar. And so there are a couple of ways that we do this. It's beautiful. It's like the significance and insignificance. So there's some ways that we do this.

The first is something that I speak about, a fair but in my work it's this area called emotion granularity and it's this idea that very often when we stuck in a difficulty motion we use big labels to describe what we're feeling we say you know I'm stressed okay I'm stressed is the most common one I'm overwhelmed I'm stressed I'm depressed I'm depressed we use these like big broad brush strokes but there is a world of difference between stress and disappointed. Or stress and feeling unsupported. Stress and that knowing, knowing feeling of I'm in the wrong job, the wrong career, this

relationship isn't working out. When you label something just as stress, your body and your psychology doesn't actually know what to do with it because it feels immobilizing. There's like such an enveloping that happens. So you ask the question of how do you start stepping into your power? And one of the ways you start stepping into your power is you want to start creating space between you and the emotion. You know, Victor Frankel, between the minutes and response, there is a space. How do you start creating the space?

So you're not fused, you're stepping into. So one of the most profound ways we can do this is by developing skills of emotion granularity. So emotion granularity is basically that instead of having this broad brushstroke, I feel stressed. starting to ask yourself, what are two other options? Like, I'm calling this thing stress, but what else is it? And when we start saying, oh, it's not stress. Actually, it's unsupported. What that already literally just in naming this thing,

it starts to activate our understanding of the cause of the emotion, what we need to do in response to the emotion, and what scientists call the readiness potential in our brains, the part of our brains that starts to mobilize us for action, starts to get activated. And so emotional brain clarity is really powerful. And I remember a couple of years ago, I was working with an executive, and he would always say his big word was anger.

He would say, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry. And I started to say, I'm like, what are two other things? Like, what else could you be experiencing? And he started to say, actually, maybe I'm not angry. Maybe I'm fearful. I'm in a new role. Things are changing. I think I'm fearful.

And what about your team? Is your team angry? He started to connect with, I think they're mistrusting. I think they mistrusting. So you can see, Lois, if you feel anger, if you are, I'm angry and my team's angry, the conversation is a very different one than I'm scared and my team is looking for opportunities to build trust. You can see the tone, the experience of it is different.

A couple of months later, I was having a dinner with him and a group of his colleagues and his wife was there. And she said this particular strategy completely changed their relationship because Because he would come home from work and he would say to her, are you angry? And she would be, I'm not angry. You know, I feel unsupported. Unscene or... I'm not angry.

I'm just tired. Yeah. Okay? So emotion granularity is a superpower and I know that word is overused, but children, as young as two and three years old who are more able to accurately label their emotions have higher levels of well-being, literally longitudinal studies, ability to delay gratification, high levels of mental health and so on. And if you think about what's happening here, if you've got a child where the child's now 16 and someone says like, hey, I've got a great

idea, let's take drugs or whatever it is. On the one hand, the child wants to feel part of the group. There's a sense of excitement. and connection. And then in the other, the child who has mastered at some level emotion granularity is able to connect with the disquiet and gee, this doesn't connect with my values.

So it doesn't take a lot of work to see how emotion granularity is actually profoundly useful to us in our lives. So the other thing that I think is helpful in terms of getting out the bottle, getting out the jar, is being careful not to fuse with your emotion. So what is a way that we defuse? So if I play this out to you and I say to you, well, Lewis, you are a brother and you're an entrepreneur and you are a son and you're a friend and you're, okay, of course.

Like, you're like, yes, of course, I'm all of those things. I can, we know that we can hold all of those identities. What often happens when we get hooked, imprisoned by our thoughts, emotion stories is we we over-identify with it. And so we start saying things like, I am sad. If we just think about the language, it's so normal. Of course we say that. I am sad.

I am sad. What are we doing? saying I am, all of me, 100% of me, is said, there's no space for wisdom, values, intention, calm, like there's so much inside all of us that is beyond that difficult emotion. But when we say I am, we are literally defining ourselves with it. So it's not using the words I am, it's maybe something else. You could say, well, if we say, I am sad, or even I am being undermined, I am being undermined. Again, you are creating a prison. I am, this is fact. I am being undermined.

All of me is being undermined. So I've got no choice but to shut down in the conversation. So one of the ways that we can start defusing is recognizing that when we label our thoughts, emotions and stories within I am, and then the word. It's a big statement. It's like, it's almost like there is a cloud and you have become the cloud. And the cloud is the sad cloud. As opposed to I feel sadness. Correct. Correct.

So the power here is exactly that. The language. How you use the language. How we language matters. Words matter. Absolutely. So what we can start doing is it's so simple. You can do it in a meeting.

You can do it in a conversation with someone else. You can just start noticing your thoughts and stories for what they are. Their thoughts and stories. So instead of I am sad, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm being undermined. I'm noticing the thought that I'm being undermined. I'm not good enough.

I'm noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story. This is coming up for me. This is coming up for me. So when you start noticing your thoughts, emotion, stories for what they are, what you are actually doing in effect is you're moving from being the cloud, I am the sad cloud, into recognizing, and for everyone listening right now, you are not the cloud. You are the sky.

You know, you are not the cloud. You are the sky. Wow. And there is a cloud. There is a cloud. In the sky. You are the sky. You are human and messy and capacious and beautiful and real and authentic and you

enough to have all of your difficult thoughts, emotions and stories and to still be the sky, to still be the you. That's powerful. Susan, I want to acknowledge you for your decades of research and work on what I think is the thing that either holds us back or propels us forward in a big way. And a lot of people are prisoners of their emotion. I feel like there's so many free people in the world who aren't in prison, but we put ourselves in an emotional prison. Yeah. That holds us back from peace, joy, love, intimacy, creating the life we want.

Yeah. You know, and we are sickened internally, which manifests physically or in relational or in whatever by these emotions sometimes. And so I'm so grateful for you for creating tools, strategies, for people to upgrade their tools and strategies that weren't working for them. And so they can have a more harmonious life. life while not blocking emotions, feeling the range of them, but not being a captive and a prisoner to them. So I really acknowledge you for your consistent dedication to this. Thank you. And thank you

for helping us to get these words out. Of course, of course. I asked you this last time. I think it was like four years ago when you were on last time. So when I ask you this question, it's called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day. hypothetically. You accomplish everything you want to accomplish. You live your life the way you want to do it. But for whatever reason, you have to take all of your work with you. So all of your messages, this conversation, your book, it's for whatever written gone. Yeah. It's not available anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things you know to be true from your life, your experiences, your wisdom. What would you say are those three truths for you? I would love to capture the three truths in things that feel practical for people. I think one of the truths is that for every person listening, it doesn't matter if you, 30 or 40 or 50, for every person listening, there is a child inside of you. There is a five-year-old and that five-year-old is tugging at your sleeve and that five-year-old is saying, see me, love me, hear me, connect with me. So I think

one of the truths is going to be to turn and find out of the truth. face your five-year-old child and ask your five-year-old what it needs. Does it need spontaneity? Does it need creativity? Healing. Yeah, one of the truths, I think, is that when we hold our child inside of us with gentleness and we also recognize that there is however old you are now, whether it's 30 or 40 or 50, there's someone 20 years, so there's, I'm 50, so there's a 70, so there's a

70-year-old me. There's also a 70-year-old looking back and saying, see me, love me, do what's important. And so I think one of the truths is that we are not alone in the world. Even if we feel alone, we've got a child inside of us and we've got an older version inside of us. That's so true. And that if we walk the journey with both of those people holding our hands, we have an infinite source of grounding and wisdom. So I think that for me is one of the truth. That's beautiful. I think another truth is that there is a mythology that being compassionate towards yourself is about being weak and lazy. It's like letting yourself off the hook.

It's about lying to yourself. And when we think about a little child in a restaurant running away from its parents and looking back to make sure that the parents are there, it's the knowledge that the child has, that his parents are there, that if something goes wrong, that they'll step in.

It's that knowledge that actually allows the child to explore the restaurant and to learn and grow. And so I think a second truth is that self-compassion is doing for ourselves what we see with that child and the parents. And what I mean by that is it's when you are kind to yourself, that you actually, it's when you have your own back, that you're actually more likely to take risks, to learn to grow and be vulnerable.

And so I think a truth is the truth that self-compassion is the cornerstone to thriving. and resilience. And then I think that the third truth is a difficult truth, which is before my father died. I was five years old, and my father died 10 years later when I was 15. And when I was little, I would go into my father and my mom's bedroom.

And at five years old, a lot of kids become aware of their own mortality. So they start to recognize. that one day their parents won't be there. And I would find my way into my parents' bed. Night after night, after night, after night, after night, much to their, like, dismay. And I would cry, and I would say to my dad, Daddy, promise me you'll never die.

Oh, man. And this was 10 years before my dad was diagnosed with cancer, 10 years. And I used to say, Daddy promised me you'll never die. Daddy promised me you'll never die. And my father could have done the forced false positivity. Just be grateful for the time we've got together. He could have done that. But he chose not to.

He could have buffered me from the truth, but he chose not to. And what he said to me is, Susie, we all die. It's normal to be scared. Wow. And Lewis, what I understood as a truth of the way that he was guiding me through those long dark nights is he was saying to me that courage is not an absence of fear. Courage is fearwalking. Courage is about being able to hold your fear,

your change, your concern, your sadness, your whatever it is in one hand, and to move forward with your values in the other. Courage is not the absence of fear and I think. For me, it was very powerful because in a world that tells us to do away with fear, in a world that says, oh, you know, even in a pandemic, look for the silver lining, never mind we in the shadow of illness and death, there is actually profound resilience by being able to walk into the future holding both your fear and holding your courage.

because that is what life is asking of us. Every day, life is saying, are you agile? And it's born of a correspondence with your own heart. Yes. Oh, Susan, I'm so grateful for you. I want people to follow you, susendavid.com, Susan David underscore Ph.D. on Instagram, some of the best content.

I love watching your stuff and seeing all your information there. It's really helpful to understand emotions. So all your content on Instagram, I really appreciate. Also, emotional agility. It's an incredible book. I want people to get the book. How else can we be of service to you? You don't need to be of service to me.

Be of service to yourself and to the world that we were trying to create. But if you want to connect a little bit more with my work beyond social media and the book, emotional agility, my TED Talk is called the gift and power of. emotional courage. We'll link that too, yeah. And then last, something that a lot of people find really helpful because it's just really practical is I've got a quiz that a few hundred thousand people have taken. And it's susendavidot com forward slash learn.

And there's a free 10 page report that comes from it. And a lot of people just because it really connects with emotional agility and values and is very helpful. Perfect. Susan david. com slash learn. Learn. Take the quiz, get the book, follow you on social media, watch the TED Talk, we'll link it all up.

Final question, what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is being gentle. Being gentle, being gentle with yourself, being gentle with others, moving away from tightness into just softening into the world. I think such beautiful things and great things happen from. gentleness. Yeah. It's beautiful. Susan.

Thank you. Appreciate it. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's a single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes.

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