Becoming Emotionally Agile with Dr. Susan David

(upbeat music) - Hey everyone, welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson. If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today, and if you've listened before, welcome back. I'm joined today as usual by Dr. Rick Hanson, so dad, how are you doing? - I'm great, and I'm thoroughly psyched about our topic, which is tied for first place on the extremely short list of the most important mental health broadly, things to know and do. - It's fantastic praise, and I think that it's absolutely true. And we're joined today by Dr. Susan David. Susan is an award-winning psychologist at Harvard Medical School, and author of the best-selling book, Emotional Agility. Her TED talk on the topic of Emotional Agility has been seen by more than 10 million people, and she's a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. She's also the host of TED's podcast, checking in with Susan David. So Susan, thanks for joining us today. How are you doing? - Absolutely great. And, Rick, you said tied for first place. I'm curious what is the other type? - Oh, mindfulness broadly. - Yeah. - Coming from the heart, and learning, the deliberate cultivation along the way. I would make those my list of four, and there might be a fifth or a sixth, but those definitely would be the top four for me. How about you? - I mean, I fundamentally believe that these skills that we cultivate internally just drive everything, and they're a number of those, that they impact on. You know, we often talk about them impacting on our mental health and wellbeing, but I think at a broader level, they impact truthfully on our community, our organizations, and the way we parent and love and need. So I think these skills are foundational, and it's one of the tragedies that they are not taught. - I love that you extended the personal into the political broadly, the community, institutional, organizational, societal. I wonder if we could start even with you distinguishing your frame of emotional agility from some other notions that people might be familiar with, like mindfulness or emotional intelligence. - Yeah, really important question. So my background, I've trained as a clinical psychologist and I did my PhD in emotions research, and so a lot of my work has been driven in that context, and I did a lot of my PhD actually focused on emotional intelligence. So maybe I'll start there. You know, emotional intelligence is, I think, a profoundly important topic, but I think it's become somewhat dated, and I'll give you a couple of reasons as to why I say that. When emotional intelligence was first described by Jackman Peter Seneve, it was described as the ability to problem solve within about emotions. And of course, that's a very, very important skill set. What was intentionally not included in emotional intelligence was venues, because the idea here was that it was a kind of intelligence and that you could use that intelligence to bring about world peace, or to build an atom bomb. The critical part of my work on emotional agility is that venues actually are essential, that when we use our emotions in a way that brings us towards our venues, takes us away from our venues, disconnects with the values of others, that then has profound consequences in our lives. Another aspect of emotional intelligence in its popularization is that ears often see as this ability to control difficult emotions. The idea that we get these emotional hijacks, we triggered, we struggling with our difficult emotions, and emotional intelligence is often become this idea that it's synonymous with being able to control difficult emotions. And I really, in my work, have pushed back on that, because we know very well from the scientific research that the more we see emotions as bad and as needing to be controlled, the more we have amplification of those difficult emotions, and we own our emotions. In other words, when we've got something that we are trying to control constantly, that we are then actually owned by that experience, rather than being capacious and beautiful beings. So there are a number of distinctions, but I think those are poor distinctions, and a lot of the focus of my work on emotional agility is about really profoundly practical skills that help us to have any number of difficult thoughts and emotions and stories and experiences to connect with our values and to move forward with those. Well, there was half a dozen things in there, Susan, that I want to ask you about, you know, there was fantastic, but I also want to start just by kind of laying a foundation for people who might not be as familiar with emotional agility. So you frame it as having these four different parts, showing up, stepping out, walking your why, and moving on. These four kind of fundamental techniques that we can learn how to do, which are themselves all made up of many different practices and techniques and things that people can use. And I was hoping that you could briefly summarize each year for people. Sure, you know, it's an interesting thing when you write a book, you often bring this perspective of, you know, academic and experience and story, and you come up with this thing that is definitional. There's something very profound and powerful in the sentiment of emotional agility, the other science. And as we were coming into this conversation, we were talking about my roots in South Africa, and in many ways, my experience growing up as a white child in a part of South Africa. It was, you know, a community and a country committed to denial, to not seeing, because it's denial that makes 50 years of race as legislation possible. Well, people convinced themselves that they were doing nothing wrong. And so a lot of my work was forged in growing up in that community and also in the experiences that I had as a child with the death of my father and other aspects of this. But the reason I bring it back to this is in my TED Talk, I use phrase a soul-banner. And soul-banner is a zoo phrase. You share it every day on the streets of South Africa. It basically means hello, or if you Australian, it means like, good day mate. It's basically a kind of every day greeting. But someone is literally translated, means I see and by seeing you, I bring you into being. And for me, that is the essence of emotional agility work turned towards the self. It is about the ability to see ourselves and that requires curiosity and compassion, but also courage. And it is not just in the seeing, it is in the bringing into being. It's the movement. It's the we are living our lives in our heads, we are living our lives in our action that becomes really important. So how do we deal with our everyday experiences in ways that are healthy in how we come to ourselves and then the world? But to get into the four core practices of emotional agility, I do give some structure to this. The first, I talk about showing up to difficulty motions. And very often we have these views of difficulty motions that they are good or bad or positive or negative. The academic science is repeat with this idea that emotions are good or bad. And often what that can lead to is people experiencing difficulty motions, but having a meta view of those emotions is being bad. And so they might hustle with them, they might judge themselves for having them. They might think that they're not allowed to have them because they aren't struggling as much as other people. And so a really important part of the first movement of emotional agility is this reclication that you don't get to rebuild a city when it's still under bombardment. And it's very difficult to forge forward in our lives when we are fighting ourselves. So showing up is about gentle acceptance of difficulty motions. And there's of course a lot to that. The second part which is stepping out is about creating space between us and our emotions. So you know, in the beautiful Victor Franklin language that I'm sure you've used on his podcast is, you know, between stimulus and response there is a space and in that space is our power to choose. And in that choice lies our growth and freedom. But when we stuck in our difficulty motions when we hooked, it's difficult to move forward. It's difficult to know what we value. And so stepping out incorporates mindfulness and then other tools and practices that help us to create space. Then the third part is walking your way. and the essence of this is ready about hearing the heartbeat of your own why, hearing the heart of your values and who you want to be in the world and why that is so important because values are often seen as being this abstract idea and then the last is moving on and moving on is really the science of how we cultivate habits and changes to bring our values and our wisdom forward. I noticed a shift in my own body when you use that Zulu phrase about seeing into ourselves and it made me reflective for a moment on what it feels like to be seen whether it's by another person or by ourselves and a kind of melting that occurs when that accepting non-judgmental presence is brought including to our own emotional material and then to feel a kind of receiving of that even inside ourselves. Yeah. So we're giving it to ourselves and we're receiving it from ourselves both. I love the word that used to be melting because it can often feel when we talk about struggling with suffering or burnout or well-being or any of these things can often feel very either white knuckled or if can feel very impractical. The more that we soften into ourselves which is why we use this term gentle acceptance the more we actually able to breathe into the essence of who we are. You know maybe it's helpful for me to share in a little bit of how I came to this work when you use this language and when you talk about seeing self and seeing others. So I really described it a little bit about my experience in South Africa but when I was around fifteen years old my father was diagnosed terminal cancer and I remember firstly I speak about my TED talk I remember going into his bedroom on the day that he died. My mother hauled me as I was about to go to school and she told me to put my backpack down and go and say goodbye to my father. I remember going into my father's room and his eyes were closed and he was in clear pain and yet I knew that he knew that I was there and I had always felt seen by my father in that solar board away. But then what happened was I started to experience after his what so many of us experience in the world which seems to be that the the world seems to always conspire to ask us to unsee ourselves. We become busy in our work we feeling burned out we busy with our get there's all of the stuff that's going on and we start to unsee ourselves and for me what I experienced was in the days and months after my father died. I went to school on the Monday because my mom wanted to keep things normal and they became stuck forced positivity that I started to experience where people firstly wouldn't use the word father in my presence because they were worried that they would upset me and I also started to be praised for you doing so well you being so strong you know there were all of these things I didn't drop a single grade and so there was all of the stuff that was going on in the surface which was oh aren't you great aren't you happy aren't you wonderful aren't you doing well and inside I was dying I was dying I became bulimic I was unable to experience the weight of my grief and I was in English class one day and there was this remarkable teacher who handed out these blank notebooks to the class and she knew what I'd been going through and she said to the class there was this invitation but it's all like it was to me and she said you write a toll the truth right like no one is reading and reconforced I began this correspondence with this teacher where every day I would write in my journal I would write about the loss and the regrets and my anger and all these experiences and the teacher she her name was make she would write back to me and she would write back to me in pencil in this very light almost imperceptible pencil and we had this silent correspondence that went on for months and months and months and she saved me and she saved me by enabling me to save myself three decades later I went to a psychology conference and someone said at this conference is is there anyone in your life who's made an impact on you who doesn't know about the impact and if that is the case reach out to them and so I reached out to Meg and I said to her you don't know but I want to let you know the difference you made and then asked her a question and I said to her tell me why you always wrote to me in pencil and she said something remarkable she said to me Susie Arote pencil because it was your story you were writing your story you were writing your chapter it was your story and I was very mortgaged and there was so powerful firstly the experience with her literally forged my entire career because I'm interested in what it what helps versus does it when it comes to these emotional and psychological pasties and but I think something so profound in the solvone it's like the it's the pencil because you're witnessing another person's story and it's the pencil even in the thinking of it's the holding life isn't it I feel a lot of respect and compassion for that younger you and that speaks to something that you've also written about the notion of continuity of self obviously using that term self very loosely I mean to me that younger you with her qualities is present here and you also talk about projecting yourself into the future yes the continuity that way too and I'm deliberately jumping around here but I just kind of wonder how it's meaningful for you these days to take into account the future you know tomorrow a year from now a decade from now in the last year of your life you know how do you weave that in to your own emotional agility I think it's such a powerful question and they such powerful ideas the idea of continuity of self I always feel the five-year-old or the fifteen you're old inside of me and for any one listening right now there is something so powerful in just breathing into the moment and asking what you'll five-year-old needs is it fun joy learning people like what is your five-year-old need and so the I do have continuity of the self is that often when we get stuck in difficult emotions or stuck in difficult experiences we get very stuck in the present and yet you've got these other people in your life that will be with you always and those people are the five-year-old you and then the you today plus fifteen years plus twenty years plus whatever and I think this is such how when we move away from saying how do I feel what's wrong what's not going well why must I why my stress we stuck in this moment is to just remind ourselves that there is a five-year-old you tapping your shoulder saying see me and love me and I need something up here and then there is the older version of you that is say see me love me or the choices that you're making gonna make me proud you know are you looking off to yourself are you looking off to your home are you looking off to your relationships are you doing these things and so to get to the essence of what you are asking was how do I use that I try to use this idea of continuity of self very often because what is it doing it's like getting us into that sort of stepping out which is the perspective taking and broadening our view and the way that looks for me very practical is just even luck you know you know we're sharing something you have all of us all of us well many of us speak to ourselves in the third person okay and speaking to yourself in the third person is found to be very psychologically helpful so what Susie what should you do today not what am I gonna do today Susie what should you do today because what you're doing is you're moving yourself from your own perspective into a curious stance and I'm often often daily I was laughing at myself the other day saying Susie it's okay you know you've got this what do you need today. I'm having these conversations myself constantly. But they're not actually what the Mimi of today. They are, I think, with the Mimi of the past and the future. The future part, I'm very struck by, including relating to your third element of walking or why, the values part, and the sense that if we take our future self into account, very often then, motivation becomes much more straightforward. What would be the best, wisest, most compassionate thing for the one whose joys and sorrows we know most keenly ourselves? And who's the one to whom we have the highest duty in a sense, the one over whom we have the greatest power, our future self? And so there's, for me, there's something a little bit like a relay race, you know, in this moment, I've received a baton from my past selves, at least in this life, right? And I don't want to suck. I don't want to drop the baton. You know, I want to appreciate how they've set me up to the extent they have. And then, I want to pass the baton forward tomorrow, and then next year, and then I want to the next, the last year of my life, in a way that helps those future versions of me as well, which for me is kind of a way I talk about at least, walking my own way in this particular regard. And I wondered if you wanted to add to that or touch on that. Absolutely. The idea of future self, you know, where is this drawing from? The research that shows that when we consider our future selves, we very often will make very different choices when it comes to our finances, what we spend our money on, you know, the day-to-day decisions, because it is actually, there's almost this like shortcut that's happening to the parts of our lives that we most value. And it's just very powerful. One of the things that I really appreciate in your work, Susan, that we're already talking about right now is how to relate to these different kinds of emotional or thought pattern-based hooks that we have that can drag us into some spooky places in the mind, but also into some problematic behaviors that maybe aren't aligned with what we feel like we would really want in the future, or maybe what some younger version of ourself wanted for us in the past. And I think this way of thinking about it, like the future self idea is a great way to unhook from some kind of a thought. But a lot of the time with people, when we're actually really hooked by an idea or an emotional pattern in particular in the moment, it can be very difficult to identify that there's a hook that's present. And part of the process is often figuring out that we're hooked by something in the first place, because it can kind of become the water that we're just swimming in. And I'm wondering, what do you think helps people identify that they're in a, I mean, call it what you will, CBT, they're stuck in their stinking thinking or however you want to kind of talk about it? The way that I am thinking of hooks is they are thoughts, emotions and stories that are now driving us and are taking us away from our most abandoned lives. Part of what we see around us, particularly in a lot of the more generic social media world that we see is this idea that we should think positive and we should be positive, and it's a lot of this positive thinking that has been very much part of a cultural narrative. This idea of forced positivity or positive thinking, there's so many issues with it. And you know, ultimately it's an avoidance coping strategy. It's like wrapped up in rainbows and sparkles, but it's an avoidance coping strategy because as soon as you starting to say, I just want to be positive, I only want to be positive, I only want to think positive, I only want to, then what you're not doing is you're not recognizing that the reality of life demands a fragility that is into woven with who we are as people and that we develop our capacity not by turning our backs on the fragility, but rather facing forward towards the fragility and being able to see it and absorb it and connect with it. And I think that's really important. And so a very crucial part, I think, firstly of starting to recognize our hooks. And this is probably foundational to my work is that I really mentioned that I don't see emotions as being a positive, negative, good or bad. And the same with thoughts, our thoughts have evolved to help us to make sense of the world, to understand what we need to pay attention to. They have a very strong evolutionary perspective. And so a very important part of this is to recognize that any thought, any emotion, any story is actually kind of normal. It doesn't need to be shamed, it doesn't need to be judged. So when the thought-emotion story starts to become a prison, when it starts to drive your action, then you know you're hooked. So an example might be, I'm sad, so I'm going to stand back. There's no space there for your values of connection or collaboration or other parts of yourself, you know there's literally a fusion between your thought and your action. I feel undermined in this meeting, so I'm just going to shut down. Again, there's no space that allows venues to come into play, or you know having a conversation with the child in which you have this precious moment with the child each night, but you so stressed that when they come to you and they're showing you this beautiful picture that they drew and they look at you, you know the eyes behind the eyes and the soul behind the soul of the child, you don't see because you're on your phone. And that's hooked again because it's the stress that's driving a particular response. So I talk about different categories of hooks, but most commonly we know we hooked when it is the emotion, the thought or the story that's driving our action, rather than grounded us in our values. The internal experience becomes a prison that directs or demands how we act. This is where you know this as a clinician, it gets tricky because people have different, they have layers of values. And I think about wisdom, proverb, and the Buddhist tradition that wisdom is choosing a greater happiness over a lesser one, and personally I might add, it's choosing a lesser harm over a greater harm. So it's, in other words, in the face of multiple values and multiple tugs at us, it's making some kind of choice in that space that you talked about, the Victor Frankel talked about, to walk a higher road in some ways. And yet that lower road, and I will use that distinction, higher, lower just for simplicity, is really compelling. It's got the power of habit, it reflects a lot of values like, you know, avoiding dreaded experiences, of course, and I talk about, or conformity, or the value of not seeing. Think about the moral difficulty for white people in South Africa you live through, it's not claiming any authority at all about that, but just imagine, you know, what would come up, so people would have a value on not seeing. So I just kind of wonder what you have found in your framework, yeah, that helps people walk that higher road and overcome the fact that a lot of other values are pulling them in another direction. So I think there are a couple of aspects to those that are really, really important. The first is that often what I've experienced with values is that people talk about values being in conflict. So they'll often say things like, "When I value the spin, I also value that in those values on conflict." So I think, you know, to what you're talking about, one of the most important aspects is, your values just are, their values that are more helpful to you now versus less helpful, but getting a little judgy about whether, you know, a value work, but because I'm at work, and, you know, this is going on at home and means I don't value home, people often get a lot of shame around their values because of the slight feeling that it's a conflict. And the way that I think of values more is that there's a bothness, like there's this idea that if you've got a diamond, and the diamond has many facets, they're going to be times in your life where one of the facets is front and center, you focusing on a particular project at work, you know, are managing an aspect of your mental health, so there's one aspect that is front and center that it doesn't mean that the rest of the diamond doesn't exist. I think it can be a helpful piece of like what we spoke about melting in, where we move or if someone's in the space of like conflict to be more in the space of there is this diamond, but there can also be two things that I think can be really important and difficult to be aware of when it comes to values. Firstly, we can be so front and center with some of our values, a value of conformity, conformity, conformity, conformity, that we then go against some of the others consistently, we keep on having that diamond faced away from us. And we actually aren't engaging in our lives in a holistic way and what is workable. So for example, someone who values money. who values finances and at the bottom of it it's because I value money because it provides me with safety, it provides me with a whole lot of things. But if that person is so valuing of what's front and center, that they are consistently turning away from their relationships or connecting with others or their health or their wellbeing, then that moves now into the space of not workable, in other words, they are my values, they're not in conflict with each other. But if I keep doing this thing in this way, is it going to bring me closer? Ultimately, in the longer term, in the continuity of self, is it going to bring me closer to being the person, the loved one, the parent that I most want to be? Very often, the answer is going to be no. I believe that just as we can become cooked in a very rigid way on thoughts, emotions and stories, we can also become cooked in a very rigid way on a value. But we can value something so much, we can value fairness so much that in our rigidity with fairness, we don't actually see other people at the table. We can become cooked in a value in a way that stops us from connecting with others. So the value again just is, but when we holding to it so tightly, it can sometimes be indicating to us that this is not workable. This episode is sponsored by Hule. Out of every sponsor we have ever had on the show, I think that Hule is the one that Elizabeth and I have used the most. It's always been tough for Elizabeth to eat enough protein and she's been trying to build some muscle recently. And while we're both busy during the day, it often feels easier to just grab something rather than taking the time to make something that's actually healthy, but what if you could do both? 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Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's Freedom the Bee. Use us directed. I'm really interested in this and so I kind of want to throw out a first question comment is will and emotion so I'll come back to that in a second and the way I'm thinking about values here is that it's basically an umbrella term for notions that are held very consciously certainly. But more broadly, I'm thinking about motivational tugs of various kinds are wants broadly and often there's a there is a conflict there is a difference there's a divergence between the immediate rewards of doing what's familiar and staying safe and and the short term gains netted against what for some is often the case of an immediate cost netted against vague long term future gains for walking that higher road right and so we're being pulled we're being pulled in different directions there and I just kind of wonder how we can apply your framework to strengthening I'm going to call it the will but strengthening though the will which I think of as surrendering to the best within us essentially that would then over time inclinus increasingly and more rapidly and efficiently to disengage from that familiar short term rewarding lower road if you will and help us become increasingly more comfortable and and pulled down that higher road how can we strengthen that core of choice and motivation it's such an important question I think of values as being fundamentally what matters to be including you would say emotionally matters and or in terms of reward matters not just conceptually and I don't incorporate as much of will and emotion in the foundation of values that's not to say doesn't matter in forging and life but the way that I think of values is that values are the things that matter to me they they what I want in the in the dark of night when I'm myself lying about with their what I want my life to be about but why does it matter does it matter because it's intellectually appealing or because it's emotionally so mattically viscerally mattering to important salient desirable right yes yes it's mattering to me because this is the core of what encapsulates a sense of richness yeah it's aligned with your deepest being the one to whom we are seeing into who we are seeing right yes it's the who am I and who do I want to be in the whole beautiful then when we think about emotions and we think about comfort versus discomfort most human beings are drawn towards comfort you know in in every aspect of our lives most human beings are drawn towards comfort they value it in effect in a bright sense they like it they want it they like it we want it we deferred we default to comfort when we really connect with our values often what we're doing is we're being asked to engage with discomfort okay it is the discomfort letting out it's the discomfort of engaging this is why I often talk about this idea that discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life because what you're doing is you aren't actually often engaging with the easy emotions you often aren't engaging with what's easy in your life you are often showing up to what's tough to what isn't working in your relationship to what isn't working in your job to what what you know I'm bored at work and that feels ready comfortable but my value is the value of learning and so the more we become are open to our difficulty motions the more we start saying to ourselves okay so this boredom that feels really comfortable but there also feels like there's a sense of dissonance what is that difficulty motion signposting about my needs and my values and that boredom even though it feels really comfortable might be signposting that learning is extraordinarily important for me and it's asking me to move with courage and discomfort to the thing that matters and this is where in a lot of my work I talk about even this idea of thinking about what our values are becomes so important because when we look at when we look for example at stereotypes okay we often think of stereotypes as being stereotypes and biases or things that other people have about us and it's true but when we are under stress we can often start to self-stereot so we can often start to say things like oh maybe they're right maybe I'm not cut out for this you know maybe maybe this isn't the right job for me and we felt this for example in studies of kids who going off to college where you've got children who've grown up in environment where all of their message has been we not college material we not cloud for college this isn't this this isn't us now you've got a child who struggles who works who does everything they can and they make it to college then what happens the first six months they fail their first test things are harder they're struggling with their peers and at that moment of stress it is much more likely that they won't continue in that part it is much more likely around 70% likely that they will actually drop out of college now if you take those kids and you just ask them to engage in a 10 minute exercise where they write down what are their values like affirming their values like why are they at college why is this thing important to them why are they studying me What is the importance of that and what they want to bring to their community? What do they do it? That in minutes or values affirmation. Protects those children two and three years down the track from dropping out. So to circle back, there is this idea of these values that is foundational, the core of what matters to me. And then there is an environment that constantly asks us to be comfortable and that is constantly telling us what we can't do and who we can't be. And there is huge anxiety. And as soon as we have that we drop down into black and white thinking, into self-biasing and into rigidity and stereotype. This is where these emotional jinnity skills so important, just in the example that I've given. Who am I, like what is the heartbeat of my wire? When you know that, when you're going into a difficult conversation with your boss, or when you go into the workplace, that's changing. But you know who you want to be in your career and as a person. It protects you and it helps you to act in the longer term in ways that are more values concorded. So one of the ways that we've talked about this in the past on the podcast, Susan, is through the language of wants and needs, what do I want, what do I need, another way to say it, what do I value. And it's really interesting, whenever we post content related to this, one of the most common comments that we get is, well, but I don't know what I want. Well, I don't know what I need. I don't know what I value. I can't feel into myself in that way. Why don't I know my why? You know that whole going down that rabbit hole. And it's actually really heartfelt. And I really feel for that person who doesn't have a feeling for their interior in that way. Or maybe there's been a lot of conflict between what they experienced at one time in their life as an authentic value that came into conflict with those broader societal forces that you're speaking to that could very understandably cause somebody to divorce theirself from that or maybe bury it down in some kind of a way. And I'm just wondering what do you think supports people and being able to go through that process of identifying those core wise inside of themselves? It's such a common experience. If anyone's listening now and then I can't know what my values are. It's so cruel. And I think there's so many reasons for it. There is, there is, of course, family of origin reasons like are you as a child? Are you allowed to have autonomy of the self in terms of what you wanted, what you liked, what you didn't? What did you have to defer to others constantly when it came to that? Were you told what you needed to study? You know, like there's all of this, all of this thing that can happen. And even just like day to day buzzing, I submit so many parents who talk about, you know, these first two years of raising young children they completely use themselves. And they just try to survive. And they don't necessarily have a sense of what their values are. So some of the things that I think can be really helpful is asking, asking just a couple of questions. So firstly, you know, if this was my last, and I'll just give you a couple and some might be helpful. But if this was my last day on earth, what would I want to be doing on that day? Okay, just that simple question can be helpful in signposting what's helpful. Another question that's really helpful to ask is at the end of each day, what did I do today that was worthwhile? What did I do today that was worthwhile? And Rick, this gets to your question earlier, which is, I specifically used the language worthwhile. Not what was easy, not what you enjoyed, not what was fun, not what was comfortable, but what was worthwhile. Sometimes what is worthwhile? You see, it's really difficult. It's the having of the tough conversation. It's the courage to stay with someone who's ill and see them. There is so much that that question asks. So what did I do today that was worthwhile? And if anyone's interested in exploring this further, I've actually got a quiz on my website that's been taken by around 30,000 people that has a whole list of values and starts to ask questions that help you to unpack that. And that's it. Susan, David.com/learn is the quiz. So I think those are some really helpful questions. And to connect, for us in terms of what you were mentioning, with the ones versus the have-tos, this becomes so important in world power. When someone is approaching a situation and they say something like, "I have to get a job. I have to be on bad duty. I have to be healthy. I have to choose in our lives, evoke resistance. Automatic resistance. No one wants to have to anything. And so as we frame our lives in have-tos, we automatically decrease the likelihood that we will get there because we actually work against our own motivation. Whereas one's two goals are goals that are derived from a clear sense of, "I want to be healthy because I want to see my kids grow up." You know, this is important to me because it's our model to my children. Not "I have to be on bad duty. I get to spend time with my kids." It's the more that we can think of the way we language in our lives, in often ways that are very roast and automatic. We start recognizing that often we use language that is actually disconnected with our values and creates resistance, and that if we try to make changes creating a stronger line of sight between what I want to do and the value that is supporting that, actually increases our likelihood of being motivated and walking the path. I can say honestly, Susan, that if Forrest and I don't know how many of you know Forrest 300 plus, this is one of our deeper, more off-script conversations, which is really saying something good about you. And so I just want to name that. And I'm burrowing in here because I think actually a lot of people know what they really care about. And some don't, but they do. And I'll use the language of caring. What do you care about? What matters to you? What are your most fundamental aims in this life? Okay, values broadly. The problem is it's really hard to sustain action based on what you most care about in the face of all the other things, the external pressures in society, and then the ways that are passed as acting like a puppet master sometimes, pulling us in various ways down old, not so good roads. So a lot of the question is, what is that factor, which if people strengthen it in themselves globally, it's like a meta motivational factor that enables them to become increasingly able to sustain surrender to being lived by being given over to those most fundamental values, those most fundamental things that matter that they care about, that really come from the core of their being. And I think that's a really deep question, actually. I don't want to cut you off before you even go here, Susan. But the first thing that's coming to me that is I wonder if this is kind of a distressed tolerance question in some kind of way, but I want you to take this wherever you want to go with at Susan. That would be one of the factors, right? Another one is how identified are you with, in a healthy way, the you that you see into with that Zulu phrase, when you do your first action here of showing up for yourself, that you become really identified with that. But don't want to turn it over to you now, Susan. Oh, I think it's a beautiful question. I, as you were talking, how can we possibly do a podcast without talking Greek philosophy? Oh, boy, you've never done that before either. Of course, really, too. So I'm reminded of, you know, when you were talking about all the things in the environment that keep going and going and going. I'm reminded of Heritlite's The Greek philosopher. He said, we can never, as human beings, we can never step into the San River twice. Because the world is always changing. Those around us are changing. The environment is changing and we, even within ourselves, are changing. So if I extend this a little when you're talking about like, what is this, you know, foundational skill, this is why in my work only talk about walking your wires like the third movement and then moving on as the fourth, because the foundational pieces are actually the pieces that are about the river is changing around you. You are changing and you're trying to kind of walk through this river in the people that are able to walk through the river. There is a groundedness. And so for me, this is why these emotional skills actually are crucial because what is it that calls me away from our values or tells me I'm not good enough or you know makes me lash out what's very often happening is I'm unseeing myself in some of like the most basic ways. So compassion is crucial and when I'm working with a large organizations and I'm talking about some of the skills where these leaders are going through transformations of 300,000 people and the environment is changing in the economy and there's all of the stuff that's going on and then they've got another Zoom call to do and another 10 Zoom calls there is a compassion of the hands of the heart that round you in place. So I think that's one. I think another is gentle acceptance. You know gentle gentle acceptance I mentioned earlier like we can't build the city while there's an internal bombardment. We need to as we move into the fragility of compassion of illness of things are going on in our relationship to have a gentle acceptance of it because it becomes very difficult to move towards your values or to make changes if you aren't seeing what is. So I think those are two key skills in showing up. There are also just really important stepping out skills. One number together that connects with mindfulness is if you say something like I am angry or I am sad or I am frustrated or I'm being undermined when we use this language and we very often use this language I am. Now if we think about I am language what it's saying is I am all of me one hundred percent of me is sad I am defined by my sadness or I am unworthy that language I am all of me is defined by being unworthy there's no space for values there's no space for discomfort because we literally are being defined in this moment and so I really you know encourage people that are work with to get a little bit used so with their language where they're starting to notice their thoughts their emotions and their stories for what they are they thoughts their their emotions their stories they are yours they are important they are one of those things but they are not there just because you had the thought child worthy doesn't mean you are worthy and they don't need to drive you action so instead of saying I am sad I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad I'm noticing this is my why I'm unworthy thought I'm noticing this is my there's no point in even trying yes I'm just going to be quiet in this meeting when instead you say I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad what you're doing is you creating linguistic space between you and the emotion because no human being is the out you know we we are not the cloud you are not the cloud you you are the whole damn sky so that's a piece of language and then the last thing that I'll add is it helpful for me to baby give one other strategy that might be very practical yeah I think that would be great so so just you know one of the things that comes up in emotions research is how very often people use very broad brushstroke again to this like you know amorphous being amorphous around their emotions language so people will often say something like I'm stressed and no matter what they went through today you know no matter how their day was I'm stressed every fight again this in organizations and in families where people will very often use very broad brushstroke language to describe their emotion now when you keep saying I'm stressed I'm stressed I'm stressed I'm stressed your body in your psychology doesn't know what to do with that stress it's very diffuse if instead of saying I'm stressed label that emotion more accurately what psychologists call emotion granularity so now you're moving beyond stress and you're saying the thing I'm calling stress what is it oh it's disappointment it's loneliness it's feeling unsupported it's it's it's actually it's boredom it's exhausted when we move beyond broad brushstroke labels and we become more nuanced around our emotions we are more able to understand the cause of the emotion and also what you need to be doing in response to it when we look at young kids children who at the age of two three years old have great levels of emotion granularity they're able to discern between men and said and and different types of emotions are children who grew up with high levels of wealth greater levels of ability to delay gratification we're talking about the continuity of self they had the ability to move with distressed tolerance towards their goals and you can see how this plays out if you are 16 you're and you really want to be liked and you really want to be part of a group and accepted and your peers have this wonderful idea to spray paint graffiti on the principal's office wall there is going to be something that happens in a child that has greater levels of emotion granularity where the child will say gee on the surface there is this thing that looks comfortable and exciting and I'm part of the group but a child that's got emotion granularity is also going to be able to say there's something that feels wrong about it I've got a sense of anxiety there's something going on in my body actually this isn't a breath into it so it's most surprising that that type is going to be able to stay the course of their goals when other temptations arise and when the world moves in yeah and I also think this just comes back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier about identifying what some of those wants needs values are that lie inside of you is that there's truly nothing there or is it that there's a whole bunch of material there that is extremely rich and very complex and has these different layers that Rick was talking about earlier in the conversation and the issue isn't so much that you know there's a black hole inside of myself it's that there's so much there that I don't know where to begin in terms of unpangling at all and I think you've given a lot of good material here for how to start untangling that not and one other quick untangle is see your emotions your emotions your emotions your difficulty motions are often signposting what your values are so someone says it just feels empty inside I'm lonely okay I'm lonely I don't know what my values are I feel empty inside you might look at that and go this person feels empty they feel like they don't have their values but what is loneliness loneliness is often signposting the greater need for intimacy and connection and boredom I've spoken about before anger often signposts that we want greater levels of equity and fairness joy often signposts that being in the space of creativity is what's important so our emotions often signposts on needs and our values so if you're struggling to think about what your values are stay with their difficulty motion and it's often going to start tapping you on the shoulder and telling you and then coming back to this comfort that we were talking about earlier someone who's lonely is is we know when people are feeling lonely they very often will shut down when they get invited out they'll often say no they often don't speak as much socially not because of social anxiety but because there's a sense of being in on their souls so the emotion or the experience of loneliness signposting intimacy and connection also asks us to bring with it you know values or qualities of action how can I move myself towards that and very often it's going to be asked us to move with discomfort towards the thing that matters I think that's a really beautiful summary of a lot of material that we explored today's is and this was just a wonderful conversation thank you so much for taking the time to do this we both really enjoyed it thank you so much for having me and loved a lot of the conversation yeah I got a lot out of it and I think about psychosynthesis which is a system you may know something about and it talks about these two great dimensions love and will and these are terms that are used really broadly and will there is not mantas the kind of classic will power if it's centered yeah it's not that at all it is really the way I described it surrendering to being lived by the best within us from the core of our being rippling out word and then the question becomes much as people can become more competent and skillful affective with love let's say And how can they become more competent, skillful, and effective with will, understood in this way? Yes. Which then becomes a major global factor in helping people really enact the second and third steps, pardon me, the third and fourth steps, rather, in your structure. And to me, that's a very deep consideration. What helps us become better at willfulness, understood in this very wise way over time. How can people learn to be better at willfulness in the deep meaning that we're exploring here? It's such a beautiful question and such an important exploration. Yeah. Well, we could go ahead and have you back to talk about motivational agility. Love race, let's do it. Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you, really. It was great. We had a great time today talking with Dr. Susan David about her construct of emotional agility and book by the same name. Emotional agility emphasizes the importance of being flexible and adaptive with our emotions. It's not about avoiding difficult feelings, but rather about approaching them with curiosity, compassion, and the willingness to learn from them. By developing it, individuals can cultivate the skills that they need to navigate life's challenges, make authentic choices that are aligned with their values, and ultimately lead more satisfying lives. And it's those values that we spent a lot of time talking about throughout the conversation. Susan really foregrounded the values piece as an essential component of emotional agility, and one of the things that really separates it from similar constructs like emotional intelligence. Emotional agility has four parts. Moving up, stepping out, walking near why, and moving on. Showing up includes facing your feelings and acknowledging and accepting your emotions without judgment. And it could also include moving away from avoidance or suppression and toward curiosity and compassion toward your own experience. Second stepping out means creating some distance between yourself and your emotions. And this included a lot of very good mindfulness-based CBT kind of stuff, labeling our experiences, labeling our emotions with more granularity was something that Susan talked about toward the end of the conversation, feeling our emotions rather than being the emotion, and not having our emotions directly dictate our actions. Where Susan gave the example of, "I feel stressed so I will fill in the blank." There's no space there. There's no freedom, there's no agency, there's no ability to intervene in that moment with our emotion. We're just a prisoner to it. We're experiencing it, and our action is flowing naturally from that experience. And Susan really talked about how we can find a moment there, find some space. Where we recognize the pattern that we're in and cultivate the ability to step out of it. Where we see the emotion that we're experiencing. We get more granularity around it, maybe we're able to burrow down underneath it to find the values that it rests upon. Then third walking your why, and this means aligning our actions with those core values and long-term goals. And this can include reflecting on what truly matters to you and using that understanding to guide your decisions and behaviors. And a really interesting topic that we got into during the conversation was what allows somebody to identify those underlying emotions and values that are truly important to them. Because so often when we talk about this, we receive feedback from people along the lines of people tell me to align my actions with my values, but I don't even know what my values are. So how can I possibly do that? And Susan unpacked all of these different things that really understandably can get in the way of our ability to determine what our values are. Maybe you had some developmental experiences that separated you from those values. Maybe you've just received a lot of social messaging, a lot of so-called social contagion around what you should care about. And Susan and Rick had a really interesting dialogue about what supports somebody and aligning increasingly over time with the things that really matter to them. And finally, the fourth step of emotional agility is moving on. And this includes breaking out of old patterns and cycles and letting go of the emotions and thoughts that no longer serve us. Another topic that came up throughout the conversation was this movement from our past to our present to our future self. How we can often find the things that we truly value by going back in time internally. And looking at that younger version of who we are and asking, what does that younger version need? What did that younger version really want before the world got in the way? And how can I bring that younger version's values more into my life these days? And then along the same lines, the really powerful motivational tool is turning toward the future and asking ourselves, hey, if I were me a year from now or ten years from now or thirty years from now, what would I wish I had done today? If I close my eyes and imagine myself as that person thirty years from now, really try to inhabit that person in this embodied felt way, your thirty years older than how old you are today. And then you open your eyes and you return back into your body as it is right now. What would you really want to do with that body in the here and now? How would you want to turn your life in this moment now that you're back in time just as you are today in a way that would benefit that future version of yourself? And I really love that exercise because it does a couple of things. First, it gets me in direct contact with what my values really are, what I actually care about in this moment now that I have it to do all over again. And then second, it really makes a lot of questions of behavior very obvious. It becomes kind of obvious what would benefit me obvious what would attract from the future self that I'm going to be in a couple of years. And I can give you a real motivational push behind the higher road that Rick mentioned because we all have many different things that we want and many different things that we value. And sometimes those wants or values are in direct conflict with each other. We maybe even know that we should take one road. But another road feels really appealing right now. And practices like this are a wonderful way to nudge ourselves toward that higher road over and over again. So I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Dr. Susan David. Again, her book is Emotional Agility. It's a wonderful book. I would strongly recommend it. I would also recommend her Ted Talk, which she gave on Emotional Agility. I think that it's been seen by over 10 million people or something like that. It's been incredibly popular. If you're interested in this territory, you should definitely check it out. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can subscribe to us wherever you're listening to the podcast right now on. You can also check out the videos of the episodes on YouTube. You can find my channel Forest Hansen over there. And you can join us on Patreon. It's patreon.com/beingwhilepodcast. And for the cost of just a couple of dollars a month, you can support the show. And you'll receive a bunch of bonuses in return. So until next time, thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.