The Science Of Emotion Regulation: A Five-Step Plan For Not Losing Your Sh*t | Marc Brackett

Plus: why being your 'best self' isn't about being nice or passive, why regulation starts before things go wrong, and how 'polyregulation' can help you up your game. Marc Brackett, Ph. D. https://marcbrackett.com/ is the author of Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want https://marcbrackett.com/dealing-with-feeling/ and the bestselling Permission to Feel https://marcbrackett.com/permission-to-feel/. He is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence https://medicine.yale.edu/childstudy/services/community-and-schools-programs/center-for-emotional-intelligence/ and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. You can watch Marc's podcast interviews here https://www.youtube.com/@marcbrackett. In this episode we talk about: Why your "true self" might be the worst version of you The five-step process for catching yourself before you explode What to tell yourself in the doorway before you walk into a hard moment Why breathwork alone won't fix everything you're feeling The simple fix for total disengagement in your next Zoom meeting Why your best self should never be a doormat How to repair after you say the nastiest thing you've ever said How to build a go-to strategy before you even need it Related Episodes: The Science of Emotion Regulation: Strategies for When You're Anxious, Angry, or Comparing Yourself To Others | Marc Brackett https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-science-of-emotion-regulation-strategies-for/id1087147821?i=1000755531660 Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here https://app.danharris.com/membership Sign up for Dan's free newsletter here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: This episode is sponsored by: BetterHelp: Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/HAPPIER http://betterhelp.com/HAPPIER. CocoaVia:: Visit www.cocoavia.com/discount/HAPPIER https://www.cocoavia.com/discount/HAPPIER and use my promo code HAPPIER at checkout for an extra 20% off, or check out your local Sprouts Farmers Market. Thanks to CocoaVia for sponsoring this episode! QUO: Try QUO for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to Quo.com/happier http://quo.com/happier. FarmKind: If you give monthly through https://farmkind.giving/happier, FarmKind will boost your donation by 50%. Just 50 cents a day — $15 a month — can save 350 animals a year from suffering. To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. One of the worst feelings, in my experience, is when I lose my shit. And it's even worse when I lose my shit unnecessarily. The humiliating process of looking back at that and then having to make amends, et cetera, et cetera. So what can you do in advance to prevent these moments from happening? That's what we're going to talk about today with my guest, Dr. Mark Brackett, who's the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the author of several books, including his latest, Dealing with Feeling. You may remember that I had Dr. Brackett on the show a few months ago. You guys loved that conversation so much that we're bringing him back.

• 0:48Dan Harris?

  Dr. Brackett, welcome back to the show.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Nice to be back again.

• 0:51Dan Harris?

  You're a fan favorite.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  I like, and I like this in-person one.

• 0:54Dan Harris?

  Yes, it's so much, is so much better in-person.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Much more interesting.

• 0:58Dan Harris?

  I'm really trying to move this show to in-person, which involves a lot of commuting for me, but it's worth it.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:05Dan Harris?

  Let's just do a broad definition of emotion regulation. You're, you have sometimes been called the feelings master, which I love. So, given that you're the feelings master, what does emotion regulation actually mean?

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Okay, maybe we should talk about what it's not. How about that?

• 1:22Dan Harris?

  Sure.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  So, it's not denying your emotions. It's not ignoring your emotions. It's not suppressing your emotions, which is what a lot of people think it is. I did a talk for lawyers recently. They're like, oh, so like, we just like, we just like, leave our feelings at the door. I'm like, hmm. Like, I wish that were biologically possible. You know, a teacher said it too. I just, you know, I have, my life is so chaotic as a teacher. I just leave my emotions at the door. I'm like, they're going to pop up. So it's not about denying your emotional life. At the broadest level, it's about using your emotions wisely to achieve what you want out of your life, which is a broad definition.

• 1:59Dan Harris?

  So emotion regulation, properly understood, is using your emotions so that you can achieve what you want in your life?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:07Dan Harris?

  So emotions are going to happen anyway. So you might as well harness them to get you to your goal.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Correct. I did a speech for a bunch of families recently. And I asked them to do an exercise, which I had the parents reflect on their child. Like, live vicariously through your child, who is a teenager right now. Just close your eyes and for two minutes, we're going to, it's the morning. How are you feeling? It's, now it's your walking into school. How are you feeling? Class one, class two, class three, class four. And then the end of the day. And I said, how many of you saw more unpleasant feelings? Everybody raised their hand. And so I said, well, let's talk about that. You know, why is that the case? And so one dad, who had a big personality, he, he looks at me, he's like, you know, Mark, hasn't it always been that way?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Hasn't everybody always felt like shitty in school and bored and tired and overwhelmed and stressed? And I said, maybe, but like, it's not what we want for our kids. Like, is that a recipe for creativity, innovation? You know, and so I think that people oftentimes think that emotions are emotions. You have them, you experience them, but there's nothing you can do with them. And I'm saying, that is the opposite of what emotional intelligence and emotion regulation is. Emotion regulation is saying, here's a feeling. I can see, is this helpful or unhelpful for what I want to achieve? And if it's not helpful, I can shift it.

• 3:34Dan Harris?

  Okay, so there's a lot here. And this is such a huge topic. We're not going to be able to cover all the pieces. I do want to say that if people want to learn more, they can also, obviously, read your books. Or go back and watch, or listen to the previous episode when we recorded. Okay, but today specifically, we're going to talk about what I think is called proactive regulation. What you can do in advance to, when you know you've got a potentially triggering situation, what you can do in advance to set yourself up for success.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Correct. I think most people, again, when they think about emotion regulation, because some people obviously think about it. I think the mindset is like, self-control. I'm going to control myself. You know, I'm going to like, deal with this in the moment. And what I want to encourage people to think about is, how can I be better prepared for the moment that's probably going to happen anyway? Like, I don't know about you, I travel a lot. And so my husband is home sometimes, and I get back from this long trip. And I'm irritable. I am tired. And I don't feel like, actually, you know, in that moment, being in a relationship. And then it's like, you know, maybe we had plans, or maybe there was something that needed to get done, or whatever it is.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  And I, before I walk into my house, I like, I grab the doorknob, take a deep breath, and I'm like, okay, Mark, you are not in the mood for anything right now. Yes, that's true. You are not. You're tired, you're irritable, whatever it is. This person is going to want to like, know how your trip went. Like, are we going out for dinner tonight? Or whatever the heck it is. And so how am I going to meet that in a way that's not going to show off the worst version of myself? Because I have a choice. I can come in and be like, you know, don't talk to me. I hate you right now. I hate everybody right now. I don't want to, you know, I want to go to bed and I don't want to talk to anybody. Like, that's not great for my relationship. So how can I be the best version of myself in those moments? And that's having a bit more of pausing and prep time.

• 5:28Dan Harris?

  And for you, that pausing and prep time is just hand on the doorknob?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  It's a reminder. So I have like, little signals for myself. It's before I pick up a call, if that's going to be like, a work call. It's before I come home, before I open the door to my house. It could be, you know, even like today, coming into this podcast. I was in a taxi. It was running late. I'm like, what's going on here? Like, come on, let's move it. I get into the elevator. I, you know, I have to check in. And then right before the person came out to greet me, I took a deep breath, and I'm like, okay, Mark, how do you want to show up today? It's just a habit.

• 6:08Dan Harris?

  The concept you've come back to a couple of times is being your best self. And I say this all the time on the show. I said it in an interview just yesterday. One of the recurring themes in hosting the show for more than 10 years is that ideas that I previously dismissed as psychobabble bullshit are actually really helpful. So these can include your inner child, or going to your happy place, or being in the present moment, all these like, sort of apex predator, spiritual, psychological cliches. There are actually, there's something to them. And that is true with this idea of being your best self.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  You know, because everybody, Oprah talks about it, Michelle Obama talks about it. Everybody talks about like, be your best. It can be superficial. Now that they're, I think they're thinking about it in a very strategic way. I apply it specifically to regulation, and I think that matters. And so in moments when, you know, you call me the feelings master. So just a quick story about that. So my very first day or class I taught at Yale, the one of the students in my class, it was a big class, had like, 500 students. And he wrote for the Yale Daily News, and he wrote this article, "The Feelings Master." And it was a little embarrassing, like, brand new on campus. It's like, other colleagues, like, what are you going to think of me?

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And then I just read the article. I thought it was a nicely written article about my course. And I was really like, you know, Mark, you are the freaking feelings master. Live into it, buddy. You know, like, get your posture, like, the feeling, you know, like, at a place like Yale, you get students who can be sometimes challenging. You know, like, oftentimes challenging. I love my students. For the most part, they're bright students who are motivated, inspiring. But once in a while, I get one that can trigger me. You know, like, the one that says something like, you know, "Professor Brackett, I've got a question, but you know, I'm not really sure you'll know the answer." And I'm like, okay, this is going to be a good one.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  And so in those moments, there's Mark, like, the Jersey boy who wants to like, punch the kid in the face. And then there's Mark the feelings master.

• 8:23Dan Harris?

  Right, right, right.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  And so like, it is a place to go for inspiration. It is a place to go to shift your values. It is a place to go to have better solutions.

• 8:33Dan Harris?

  And so we can all have this version of ourselves. I'll give you mine. I've worked for a long time with this executive coach. His name is Jerry Colonna. He's great. He's been on the show many times. And with him, I had mentioned that I have these two, like, demons I wrestle with in my mind that I had given names to. One is Robert, named after my grandfather, who was a very angry dude. And that was kind of just like, the personification of my penchant for anger. And the other was Arthur, who was a great-grandfather of mine, who I never met, who was a crook, who was the personification of my, like, sort of hustler, ambitious, greedy energy. And he kept saying, but, bro, there's a third character you're overlooking.

• 9:17Dan Harris?

  He called him Teacher Dan, like, your capacity to help people with their problems.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 9:22Dan Harris?

  And that is my feelings master. When I'm, yeah, when I want to psych myself up to be the best version of myself, that's what I'm trying to enhance.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  And that version of yourself probably has attributes.

• 9:34Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  And that's what I want people to think about. What are the attributes of your, you know, self-help guru? You know, which is yourself in this moment. And it works. It just works really, I mean, I kind of taught this now for 20 years to millions of people. And people really find it helpful because it's like a shortcut to, you know, there's a lot going on when you're dealing with your feelings. But if you can break it into a simple process of, A, for the proactive piece that we're talking about today, anticipatory. So I can pretty much tell when I'm going into a situation. Like, I was giving a speech in a red state. Now, I say that because my work is now being, you know, banned in some red states.

• 10:19Dan Harris?

  Really?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yes. There is anti-social emotional learning legislation trying to be passed.

• 10:24Dan Harris?

  Really?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:25Dan Harris?

  So the idea is, we should just go right for unrestrained rage?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  It's, you know, this, the opposite too. It's like, oh, teaching kids how to regulate is actually like, a form of fragility, which makes no sense. So there's a lot of pushback. I was giving a speech to about 500 superintendents. And I was warned that the person who was the head of the whole union was like, really against this work. So I'm going, I'm in the hotel, right? I go down for breakfast, like, I'm doing the 9:00 AM opening keynote. I don't even know why I'm invited to this freaking place. And all of a sudden, I was becoming the self-saboteur. Like, this is ridiculous. You're too advanced in your career for this. Why are you doing this to yourself? I mean, they're going to throw tomatoes at you, you know? I was just going down a rabbit hole of negativity.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  And then, you know, I'm like, Mark, where's the feelings master? Like, this is not going to be helpful. Like, you know that getting on stage with that mishegoss in your head is just not going to be good. So like, okay. How do I want to be seen? How do I want to be talked about? How do I want to be experienced on that stage? It's like, okay, I'm like, I'm like, I'm, I'm one of the world's leading experts. Like, I know this shit better than anybody else. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I have the opportunity to convince 500 superintendents who reach millions of kids to learn the science of emotion regulation to improve learning and improve teacher retention. This is an opportunity. Do you follow? Like, it's just a complete reframing or reappraisal.

• 11:57Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  But the best self, creating that image of myself, like, sitting at breakfast, being like, completely negative, like, okay, we're gonna put that on pause. We're gonna think 15, 20 minutes ahead of time, I'm on that stage. What do I want to look like? You know, how do I want to sound, et cetera?

• 12:15Dan Harris?

  There are so many times in my life, and I suspect this is true for you, where you just need a little reset, some little hack to get you out of a thought spiral, or to help you fall back to sleep when you wake up at 3:00 in the morning, or help you recover from some sort of temper tantrum. You know what I'm talking about. Which brings me to a little meditation challenge we're launching over on my app, 10% with Dan Harris. Starting today, September 21st, we're kicking off a five-day meditation challenge. It's called Reset, and it's all about getting back on solid ground when life throws you for a loop, which is inevitable in all of our lives. This challenge is guided by the amazing Diana Winston, who's really legendary and fascinating and very nice meditation teacher.

• 13:00Dan Harris?

  And crucially, she has crafted each daily practice to be something you can actually do in a moment of suffering, when you're struggling in some way, large or small. These practices can literally help you reset. September 21st through the 25th, Reset with Diana and friends and me over on the 10% with Dan Harris app. You can sign up now at danharris.com. Most of us can remember being about 15 and feeling completely invisible, or worse, extremely visible, but for the wrong reasons. I remember one year, when I was a teenager, I had a pimple in the crevice of my nose for the entire year. I didn't like that. Either way, even if we have painful memories of that age, most of us tend to soften it

• 13:42Dan Harris?

  in memory, and it was actually harder than we remember it now. That is the territory of Carrie, now streaming on Prime Video, the first-ever television adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie, eight episodes from Mike Flanagan, with Stephen King as an executive producer. Flanagan had described this show as a tragedy. It's about a girl who doesn't feel seen by anyone, and about how small, everyday acts of unkindness compound into something nobody meant to cause, which happens now at a speed and scale that would have been unimaginable not long ago. What I really appreciate about the show is that the show takes Carrie seriously as a person, rather than as some sort of symbol, and the season keeps circling around one major

• 14:26Dan Harris?

  question: are you watching the making of a hero, a villain, or something more complicated than either of those options? Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.

• 14:44Dan Harris?

  One of the through lines here is that you're talking to yourself.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. Maybe I'm just an erotic guy. I do a lot of self-talk.

• 14:51Dan Harris?

  But there's, there's, from what I've seen, quite a bit of evidence to support the right kind of self-talk.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 14:58Dan Harris?

  Because we're doing the wrong kind of self-talk all the time. I'm calling myself a schmuck or an asshole all the time. Let's say constructive self-talk is, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Ethan Cross's work at the University of Michigan. There's a lot of evidence to show that we can talk ourselves into being the best version of ourselves.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Actually, we're friends, and we talk a lot about this together. 100% right. And he, you know, he studies something called distant self-talk, which is a really helpful technique, which is, Mark, you got this. You literally talk to yourself as if you would talk to a friend. And there are lots of these tricks in terms of moving out of the self-saboteur, you know, into the person who is going to achieve their goals. But I think that's the key here, which is that the big piece of this is the awareness. Like, I was self-aware to know that I was really negative, and I was self-aware to know

• 16:00Speaker 01

  that, like, that wasn't gonna be good for my presentation. I don't want to show up, you know, in fear, or anxiety, or kind of like anticipating negativity. Like, I'm the one in charge here, I'm the one standing on stage. All right, what's it gonna be like? What do you, what do you want to make out of this? And how do you, and how does that frame the way of even communicate to the audience? And that's like communicating to my husband, or your wife, or your kids, or your colleague at work. It's the same thing. I do the same thing at work. You know, sometimes, if I know we're gonna have like a tough meeting about a grant or something like that, I'm like, okay, the news is not great, we didn't get the grant. I can go in as Mark's true self and be like, I can't take it anymore, this is bullshit,

• 16:43Speaker 01

  we've ran all these grants, and nobody understands our work, and this is not gonna, I don't know what to do. And then my team is like, you know, diarrhea, like, looking for another job, right? Like, how is that helpful for like, the culture and climate of my team? Or I can go in and say, I can prepare in advance, say, okay, Mark, how do you want to show up? And how do you want to manage your disappointment and frustration, but also let people know that this is an opportunity to rethink and grow? And that just automatically, like, brain goes in different direction, and I walk in there, same news, saying, listen, you know, it's really disappointing.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I really thought we were gonna get this grant, and I feel terrible that we didn't get it. And so, I don't want to focus on why we didn't get it, I want to focus on what's next. So let's think together about, let's look at the feedback, and let's come up with our best plan of action, so that we can have a better chance the next time. I got your back, let's do it. We can do this, let's just put on our critical thinking hat. And then all of a sudden, people feel like I care about them, they're inspired to really work hard, as opposed to feel like, you know, there's no future.

• 17:55Dan Harris?

  It's interesting, you use the phrase "true self." I don't want to show up as my true self, who would have been a negative Nancy, but I don't think there is a true self. All self is contextual.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Well, it's malleable. It is. But we have, you know, like, a big part of my work, this is more recent research, is about non-judgmental kind of actions and thought processes. Like, we're just taught to be completely self-judgmental and judgmental of others. Like, just, you're born and you just become like biased and judgmental. And so, unfortunately, you know, my true self sometimes is like, you know, just quick, just quick aside. So, I was on this other podcast recently, and a friend of mine from childhood reached out to me. She's like, you know, we haven't seen each other in 45 years. I'm like, I know.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  And then I had this memory of her, we were like teenagers, and we were gonna go into business, which is, this is the story. So it was in the Jersey Shore, and our business was gonna be that we were gonna ask people to pay us for us to tell them what we really thought about them. So like, like, you know, like, if you, like, you know, I walk in the park with my dogs in the morning, I'm looking at all these people, like, you know, like, oh, that's a whack, this one's this, you know? Like, we're, we're pretty much criticizing, you know, a lot. So, point is, my true self might be, you know, like, you gotta be freaking kidding me, Dan, like, are you really, whatever it is, you know, with my husband, with my friends,

• 19:32Speaker 01

  family, and, but, that's your, maybe your true self, your authentic self, but then, okay, is that the self that's gonna preserve my relationship? Is that the self that is gonna help motivate my team? No. So sometimes, your true self needs to be suppressed a little bit, so the best version of yourself comes out.

• 19:51Dan Harris?

  But I'm arguing, and you're the feelings master, so how dare I argue with you? But I'm arguing that "true" is a misnomer, because that's just a version of yourself, and the best version of yourself is no less true.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Well, and maybe, like, my uncle, who was my hero in life, would say that everybody in every moment is doing the best they can.

• 20:10Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  And so, in the, like, in the moment, my true self is just whatever's coming out, like, call it authentic self, call it momentary self.

• 20:19Dan Harris?

  What about reflexive self?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Reflexive self? Sure.

• 20:22Dan Harris?

  It's just, it's just your reactive.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Your automatic.

• 20:24Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yes, that's fine. Which oftentimes is not helpful.

• 20:29Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Like, most of the time.

• 20:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that's my experience.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, that's because we're not trained to take the meta-moment, to step back, take a breath, pause, think about the consequences, think about the outcome we want. And if we do that, then sometimes we gotta put that reflexive self on hold, and be our best selves.

• 20:53Dan Harris?

  Okay, so you just used this phrase "meta-moment."

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:56Dan Harris?

  To, and I think this is crucial, and I believe you've got a five-step process that would allow us to achieve a meta-moment. In other words, this gets us back to proactive regulation. What can we do in advance, so that we have the ability to pause and not be reactive? Can we walk through what these steps are?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  First, I want to acknowledge my colleague, Robyn Stern, who is my co-creator of this concept. We, gosh, I'm having all these memories today. So Robyn's late husband was a great guy, but one, he was this like, big Italian guy who was like very reactive, and, you know, Robyn and I were the type that we'd work together late at night, and we'd be on, back in the day, Skype, and she'd be walking around her house on Skype, and her husband would be hearing me, like, let's think about how we want to call this best self, and let's think about this. And, and he was like, like, literally, if I have to hear about this, effin' best self.

• 21:53Dan Harris?

  You can say fuck on this show, by the way.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, good.

• 21:55Dan Harris?

  You don't have to censor yourself.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Thank you. And so, not everybody wants to learn this, by the way.

• 22:00Dan Harris?

  People listening to this show want to, want to learn it.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:03Dan Harris?

  Absolutely. I agree, there are a lot of people who don't want to learn it.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  They're like, this is like, I'm gonna just be my, I had actually somebody once say to me, my best self tells someone to go fuck themselves.

• 22:11Dan Harris?

  Oh, okay, well, this is a key question. So this is, you're not pointing just to resistance to emotion regulation, like we're seeing in some of the red states. You're just pointing, I think, to the fact that a lot of people have, I think, a justifiable concern that their best self is gonna make them into a punching bag, a doormat, a palooka.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Not cool. And that's something that's important to just talk about upfront. Your best self should not be a doormat. Your best self should not be gaslighted. Your best self is the self that will help you preserve your dignity and also the other person's dignity. And I think that's a big piece of it. So if you are in a relationship where you are being gaslighted and like, say, your husband, wife, or whatever is saying like, gosh, Mark, you are so sensitive. And then you're like, maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe I shouldn't be, you know, speaking my voice. No, you're an asshole.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  My best self is like, I'm going to tell you how, you know, what's going on here and either you're going to ship up or I'm going to ship out. So I think the best self is not always kind and loving. The best self sometimes is very strong and assertive.

• 23:25Dan Harris?

  Yes, although I would argue, coming as I do out of the Buddhist tradition, they talk about fierce compassion.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:32Dan Harris?

  So you can actually be loving, but still fierce. There's a great story of, I believe it was Sharon Salzberg, the legendary meditation teacher, was in India. She was just learning about Buddhism and she was sitting with all of these monks who were telling, talking about compassion. And she said, well, what do I do if I go outside and somebody tries to mug me? And one of the teachers said, well, you compassionately whack them with your umbrella.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's funny, I was, we're making a film about the work I do in schools. And I was interviewing someone from a very conservative think tank in DC recently. He's like, the problem I have with your work, you know, is that if my kid is being bullied at school, you're telling them that he should just talk about their feelings. And then like, no, I don't write that. He's like, I'm going to tell my kid to punch the kid in the face. I said, well, maybe there's some strategic, like, that doesn't have to be the first step. But I do agree, I'm a martial artist. Like, strike one, strike two, strike three, you know, like, I got to protect myself. This is not cool. So I'm not saying that being assertive or even sometimes aggressive is bad. I'm saying, let's not create a world where that's

• 24:39Speaker 01

  the automatic response to everything, which is what it feels like right now.

• 24:43Dan Harris?

  Before we get to the five step process, how did it go with the red state superintendents?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Amazing, nobody, amazing.

• 24:49Dan Harris?

  Okay, great.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:50Dan Harris?

  Look at you, feelings master. This is amazing.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I just, I decided like, they're not going to want to hear my whole shtick. They're going to, I'm going to stick to the science. I'm going to stick to the outcomes. Like, how many of you in the room would love for your teachers to be less burnt out?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  How many of you would like them to be better able to manage stress?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  You know, how many of you would like the students in your classrooms to be more focused and attentive and better learners?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Like, well, that's why I'm here today. Instead of like, let's get into a circle, hold hands and sing kumbaya, which is what people sometimes think the work that we do is.

• 25:27Dan Harris?

  Clearly, yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Which is not at all what it is.

• 25:29Dan Harris?

  Right. No, it's just a, it's a, it's a warping.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:33Dan Harris?

  A caricature. All right. So back to the five steps to, to prepare ourselves.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  I'm a little bit of a divergent thinker.

• 25:40Dan Harris?

  No, go, go. Non-linearity is fine.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  All right, good. But let's, I do think that is a good idea to like, all right, let's bang this out. So step one, sense.

• 25:49Dan Harris?

  Sense.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  The sense, the shift, the shift in your mind. This is meditation. This is mindfulness. It's awareness of, Mark, you're getting negative here. Mark, your heart is racing. Mark, you're clenching your fists. Mark, you're gritting your teeth. It's just a tremendous amount of self-awareness around that you anticipate or you are in the moment experiencing a shift in your feelings.

• 26:18Dan Harris?

  So just notice, okay, I'm, things are going along fine. I'm in a conversation with my wife or my child or my colleague and all of a sudden, big blast of anger. Can you catch it?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yes, can you catch it? And you might not even know what the feeling is, to be frank. You just know that there's something, something has happened, something in the environment and my thought process or in the external world around me has created a shift. That's step one. Now, the important piece of that is that typically for many of us, we revert to automatic habitual reactions. Right? I, trigger me, I go for the jugular. You're not going to just, true self, reflexive self just comes out without any thought because there's no real access to reflection in that moment. You're in survival mode. And that's where we have to be really skilled at training ourselves.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  This is why being proactive is so much better. Because in the moment, when someone tells me to go fuck myself now that I have permission to say the word, I'm going to be like, no, no, you go fuck yourself. Right?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Because that's just, it's like, I don't know, I can't think. I'm just like, you've attacked me. No, you go, it's going to be this back and forth and we're going to get escalated. That's the automatic habitual reflexive response. Doesn't really get you far in many instances. So the meta moment says, no, no, no, no. Step two, breathe, step back. Say something to yourself like, Mark. Don't say it. Mark, you got this. Whatever you need to just build the space. Because in that space is where the magic happens. And what we have to do is help people just build that, reprogram, rethink their habits. As soon as you get the urge, actually, I'm going to just, can I give you a really good example of this?

• 28:09Dan Harris?

  Please.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So I was telling you, and I have this husband, his name is Horacio, he is a filmmaker. And he literally, we were talking the other night and he's on this set making a movie. And he wants a second camera for this particular scene. And that's out of our budget, like, you know? And he's pissed because he knows that the movie, well, it's going to make a difference for the visuals. And he, that's his job. He's in charge of, he's a cinematographer. So in the moment, he was like, I wanted to start like ripping this guy to shreds. You're, you're, you're a producer. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm the creative guy. That's why you hired me. Like, this is what we need. And he's like, he realized, thanks to his significant other, like, that response would not be great. So I said, what did you do?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  He goes, I just took a breath. I, I left the situation. I took a five minute walk and I just planned, how do I want to show up to be the most convincing cinematographer in the history of filmmaking? To let this guy know how valuable this, you know, camera will be for the shot that I think will make the movie, the movie. And he got the camera.

• 29:19Dan Harris?

  Great.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  And he said, you know, 10 years ago, he probably would have just been like, go F yourself and like, you're a moron. But instead, he took his meta moment. And he's like, I'm going to build some space. I'm not going to respond right now because right now I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I feel like I just want to attack. Instead, I'm going to take that walk and I'm going to give myself the space to problem solve and be creative. The point is that you, we're going to always have activations in our lives. This is no way around it. This is life. I'm an acute observer of the human condition. I'm a psychologist. So like everywhere I go, I'm just like staring at people. It's like, wow, that was a really interesting response. You know, when you're checking into hotels or at the airports, it's the best.

• 30:00Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  The best.

• 30:01Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  And I just, I love watching how people just like triggered, you know, this airline sucks. It's like, okay, whatever. But, um, and so step two is called stop. So we've gone from, we sense. And then we just put on the stop button, the pause button. That might be, like I said, pinching yourself, taking a deep breath, saying, damn, I need a minute. I'm sorry, I'm just, I just need a minute. And then leave the room and I come back, whatever it might be. It's your, whatever you need for you. But it really is like you have to have the discipline to shut up and not say what you feel like saying in the moment or do, you know?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  And that, by the way, is also about behavior. So another little tangent, but relevant. Because I do a lot of public speaking, I, and I get invited out for dinners. I don't like it because it's just, I'm an introvert and I prefer, I just don't like to have to present, present and socialize. You know, if it's, I might go, but point is that I noticed that people expect me, or maybe I'm just making this up, to be like the entertainer. Like, I'm the guest of honor for the presentation. So they want to, like, they want to ask me questions and blah, blah, blah. And I noticed that I, I actually self-diagnosed myself

• 31:29Speaker 01

  with like a social anxiety eating problem.

• 31:32Dan Harris?

  That sounds familiar.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I just started eating way too much at these meals. So I would keep my mouth busy.

• 31:38Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  And then I go back to my hotel room and I'd feel like shit.

• 31:41Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  And I just said, Mark, like, this is like, you have, you're like a 50 something year old man who is like a leader in the field of emotional intelligence. Like, you got to work on this. This is not the self that you aspire to be. So I built up my little routine and it was that no matter what I I knew I could anticipate getting, we're talking proactive here, I would anticipate that I'm going to be anxious at the meal because I'm going to have to like talk all night and it's not my cup of tea. And I would say, Mark, you can actually ask good questions of other people. Mark, you can observe the food and not eat the food. Mark, how do you want to feel at the end of the night when you go back

• 32:24Speaker 01

  to your room before you go to bed? Do you want to feel bloated and kind of like annoyed with yourself? Or do you want to feel like you got this? You made it through the night and you didn't have to eat your feelings? It radically transformed like my experiences because I just, I set myself up for success. I have my go to strategy. When I notice myself getting anxious, I stop talking and I start asking questions. And then I get to listen as opposed to everyone that's got to be like the, you know, on stage. So that's again, an example of sensing either in the moment or anticipating, pausing to take that breath. But here's the the piece that was the missing piece, which is now it's about seeing your best self. And so what does that mean? Well, it means a lot

• 33:06Speaker 01

  of things. It means Mark the best self husband. It means Mark the best self professor. It means Mark the best self presenter because the selves that we need to present are different across our roles. And also the characteristics of that self are different across those roles. So I always joke like, Mark's, I really like to use humor when I present. It's just my style. I make fun of the audience. I use them, you know, at home, you know, it doesn't work as well. You know, it looks like you're in there red, you know, red tonight, honey. You know, it's like, I'll give you a red. And so I got to be mindful that Mark's public speaking best self is not the same as his either

• 33:48Speaker 01

  and mentor self. Sometimes my humor doesn't like people don't like get it at work. I'm like, okay, we got to work on that one. And again, best friend self, etc. So a big piece of this, and maybe people who are listening can actually do this right now, is to take a moment and think about maybe a role that you're struggling with. Maybe it's husband, dad, podcast host, whatever. And just think about what that self would ideally look like for you right now. What are the adjectives that you would use to describe that self? I think about this like, I haven't seen Orasio in a month because he's been making this film. And I'm going to show up tonight and

• 34:29Speaker 01

  know he's going to be exhausted. And I know that, you know, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to want to ask a lot of questions like, oh, tennis queens on that movie. Tell me about tennis queen. And, and he's not going to be in the mood to talk about any of the actors or anything that's going on. Like, I'm not in the filmmaking business. I'm kind of curious. But so, okay, you know, we're going to get together for the first time tonight in a month. How can I show up as the best version of me in that moment? I haven't figured it out. Yeah, I have the flight to show. But my, you get my point here. Like, you just, it's for the, for the stage, maybe it's funny self. It's I want to be seen as smart, but also humble. Like, that's a big deal for me because of where I work.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  People automatically assume like, whatever, I think a lot of myself because of my job. And I'm like, I'm from Jersey, like, I'm just a normal guy. Like, I, you know, I'm a beef and potatoes kind of guy. And I think that really helps people when I do public speaking because they're what the self that they they have created for me is not who I am, etc. So Dan, let me ask you this. Can you, is there a role that you feel like you could work on more so than any other role?

• 35:38Dan Harris?

  So many to choose from.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Pick the one that shows up.

• 35:41Dan Harris?

  The one that's just coming up right in my mind is, we do a lot of company meetings at my little company. I own my company and small staff, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 15 people.

• 35:54Dan Harris?

  And we do them on Zoom. And I hate Zoom.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:57Dan Harris?

  I fucking hate Zoom. I'd like, I, if people video call me, I'm annoyed. If I have to get on a Zoom, I'm annoyed. It's actually my biggest problem with hosting this podcast and why I'm trying to get it to be in person is I hate sitting and looking at a screen, unless that screen is playing House of the Dragon.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:15Dan Harris?

  I don't, I don't want to be talking on Zoom. And so, yeah, so sometimes in these team meetings, I am like physically uncomfortable because I don't, I get really tired when I have to look at a screen. And I don't think I'm accessing my best self and being a good leader because I'm annoyed.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  That's a great example. I do have one trick for you. I have radically transformed my Zoom meetings because I now have a walking machine.

• 36:45Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  It has changed my life. I actually refuse to be in a Zoom meeting and not walking.

• 36:50Dan Harris?

  So it's a treadmill at your desk?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 36:52Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Love it. Extra 10,000 steps a day, sometimes 15,000, depending on how many meetings I have. If it's a real, like, if I'm doing like an interview, I'm not going to like be walking weird. But if it's just like conversations with staff about stuff, they just know that Mark's going to be walking. I've got like five people, you know, on my team to get them. And it does help me have a better mindset because I feel like the movement piece.

• 37:16Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes, absolutely.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  But, um, so going back to you now. So you're saying that you kind of automatically get disengaged?

• 37:23Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  And you get like, you're kind of just like, yucky about it.

• 37:27Dan Harris?

  Yes, disengaged and then judgmental of myself.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Who is the self that you'd like to show up in those meetings?

• 37:33Dan Harris?

  Teacher Dan, who's generous, attuned, signaling that he cares about my employees, which I do.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  What's one strategy that you can imagine using? This is a great example of proactive regulation. You know now about yourself. You know that the Zoom automatically kind of brings up fatigue, disengagement, etc. So that's going to happen till the cows come home. We want to prevent that. So what's your strategy? What might be one thing you could do differently in the next Zoom meeting?

• 38:05Dan Harris?

  Now, I'm going to take us on a digression because I had a conversation with DJ, who's the executive producer of this show. And he was very, I love when my team does this. I don't actually love it in the moment, but I love that they feel comfortable enough to do it. And it's really been helpful to me. He was, he was able to like call me out on something. And he was in a very polite and constructive way. But he was saying, I'm noticing that on a lot of these podcast interviews, you're kind of flat. And, you know, people are saying things that you're not picking up on. And, and I explained to him, you know, it's, it's because of the Zoom. It's because I've spent the entire morning working on tough creative problems. And I get into the

• 38:47Dan Harris?

  podcast and I'm, I just don't want to be stuck in a little closet in my house staring at a Zoom. And he's like, I totally get that. But like, it's showtime.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:57Dan Harris?

  And it's showtime has been a little phrase I've said to myself when I sit down for podcast interviews, not like this, because I'm super engaged because you're a live human being right in front of me. And I think it's showtime is another thing you could say, I could say to myself before the Zoom team meetings.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Love it. Simple technique, a simple kind of shift strategy, just a mindset shift, showtime. That conjures up a whole thing for you, which is bright eye, cheery face, you know, engaged, good posture, etc., etc. Perfect. And maybe you think about other things you can do, like a little exercise, a little bit of movement before you.

• 39:36Dan Harris?

  Yes. I've been, I keep a tennis ball at my desk and I've been sort of walking around the room, just catching the tennis ball a little bit. It's, it's not as good as having a treadmill at my desk. But I don't have to look at the screen the whole time. And I can kind of pace a little bit and throw a tennis ball to myself. And that I find actually keeps me more engaged.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  And do you feel like every meeting has to be a Zoom meeting?

• 39:59Dan Harris?

  No, we're actually talking about moving to phone. And, and for my one on ones, we, I do a lot of phone and, and increasingly, like, just having people get together in person. Like, my CEO who lives near me, she and I just, we get together. And the, and there's another person on my team who's, who is a very close creative collaborator, and we just get together. And that makes all the difference.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I have now, because I am a movement guy, I, with the key people on my leadership team, we had a conversation just literally two days ago. I said, can we divide our meetings up into meetings where I need to like, look at things versus not look at things, you know, versus, we're just going to be talking through stuff? So yesterday I had a meeting where we were going through like, all the emails that had come in and like, what do we want to do with this, these inquiries? Do we want to do this? Do we not want to do this? I'm like, so I just had to listen and basically say yes, no. They're like, yes. I said, great. I'm doing a walk around the reservoir. And so it was a 45 minute meeting. I walked around the entire reservoir up by where I live on Central Park. And I was like, I felt great.

• 41:05Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  So like, help, like, I think that this, again, it's like, there are simple techniques that people can do. And then, of course, I come out of that feeling energized because it's a beautiful day. I got movement in. I feel accomplished because I got the work done. And/or I could have been for people who are on YouTube watching this like this.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Which is basically my jaw sticking out, you know, my back hunched, my neck crunched, you know.

• 41:32Dan Harris?

  An unhappy salamander is basically the-

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, it's like, I don't want that in my life. I want, you know, I'm a feelings master, man. I want to have good pleasure.

• 41:41Dan Harris?

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• 42:23Dan Harris?

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• 43:17Dan Harris?

  So did we make it through the list?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 43:20Dan Harris?

  So-

• 43:20Speaker 01

  We're at step three.

• 43:21Dan Harris?

  Okay, sense, stop.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  See your best self.

• 43:24Dan Harris?

  See your best self.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Now-

• 43:25Dan Harris?

  Four.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Strategize.

• 43:26Dan Harris?

  Strategize.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  So my best self says, it's showtime. My best self says, I'm gonna walk during this meeting. My best self says, I need a five minute break to get myself together. My best self says, Mark, this is part of your life. This is gonna be one of those dinners. You can be the learner, not the knower. And that's what's really important. And by the way, going back to emotion regulation as a kind of concept, I think what's so important is that people realize that different strategies are useful for different emotions and experiences. So I'll give you an example. I've been going through some stuff, you know, just who am

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I? What am I doing? And I was in yoga last night and I had this one great teacher. He said, maybe for certain things, given the lack of control we really have, we can just surrender to the process. And I don't know what it was in that moment, but it was so, I just, my whole body and mind said, you know what? The law of physics, the law of the universe is that we will, we will, we will move forward. Right now, it feels like everything is stuck. I don't love that feeling, but if I can bring in that mindset of just, this is the process, Mark. It's gonna be, this is, it's okay. I texted, I actually

• 44:50Speaker 01

  have never done this before, but I was walking home and I found him on Instagram and I sent him a DM and I just said, you know, there was something, I've been going through something, you know, that I'm struggling with and I want to just thank you because that language was enormously helpful for me and just thank you. And he brought me back like, oh my God, we're in this together, you know, but you know, now I can, now that I learned that that was helpful for me, because I just, I just felt my body and mind shift. When I'm going into a meeting over the next couple of weeks about this particular thing, I will bring that memory in. I will bring that feeling in. So I'll be more, I took what I learned in the moment and I'm applying it to be more proactive.

• 45:34Dan Harris?

  Just a digression on your digression here, but this notion of surrender is tricky because it can be misinterpreted, just as emotion regulation can be misinterpreted. So I just want to signal to the listener and viewer that you are surrendering to a process.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 45:50Dan Harris?

  There is a process. So this is not like drift.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  But I'm not gonna solve that process when I'm ruminating about it in yoga.

• 45:58Dan Harris?

  Right, right.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  And so I'm not gonna ruin my class by just sitting there like, oh my God, oh my, oh. Luckily, you know, hot power yoga for me gets me out of my head. But for me, it was that phrase and it just said, you know what, Mark? It's a process. You're not gonna solve this problem in this next 45 minutes. Enjoy the moment, be here. You love this class. And then, but then when I left, I actually, you know, it was, I felt joy and I, you know, it was beautiful for me to have that experience of like, just a reminder. Like I said, like you said, it's a process. Not gonna solve it today. It's not something that's actually even solvable in the moment. It's, it's gonna be this process.

• 46:39Dan Harris?

  Well said.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  But I wanted to just help people understand what I mean by flexible regulation or sometimes we call it polyregulation, which is the idea that, I'll give you some, a few examples. So I have noticed, I've been paying attention, go figure, to like what strategies I use for what emotions and what situations. What I've learned is that when I have a relationship challenge, I'm not great at using cognitive strategies. I will ruminate and I will try to figure it out and like wonder like, why does this person not like me? Or why is this like this? And you know, it's like, I'm, I think I'm the nicest guy in the world and how could anybody not like me? Like I'll go through a whole thing of like self doubt

• 47:21Speaker 01

  or like, um, whatever. That never, that has not worked for me. I'm gonna be 57 in a few weeks.

• 47:28Dan Harris?

  Happy birthday.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Thank you. What does work is recognize, I have a lot of close acquaintances, a lot of friends, a lot of people who I really respect and admire. And why should I have to worry about this alone? Why don't I just call up a friend and just say, what do you think about this? And hear your perspective. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my God, I'm not alone. I'm a nice guy. People, there are people who love me. But my point is that whatever it is for me and my makeup and my development, when it's about an interpersonal thing, I struggle with resolving it on my own. I do really well by listening and getting to sharing the situation, not venting for hours and hours because I know that doesn't

• 48:11Speaker 01

  work. I take, I just say, what do you think about like this particular situation? Any thoughts? And I listen and then I shit and I'm, I sift through what I hear. I'm like, yeah, of course. Great. And then I can move on. Now, when I am frustrated with something, let's say with oratio, I have to talk it out. I just got, I can't like, I don't want to go to bed at night. I just need to verbalize it in a way that, you know, can get mad. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is that for people, I think we get obsessed with like one strategy, like breath work, people seem to be obsessed with, which is fine. Breath work is great. It's not gonna solve the world's problems. You can, you know, I

• 48:56Speaker 01

  joke about this, but my mother-in-law who came during COVID accidentally, which is a whole crazy thing where she came March 5th of 2020 to visit us from Panama.

• 49:08Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  She did not go home until September 17th. So she was supposed to stay for two weeks. She stayed for seven months because of COVID and all the flights being canceled. So I take breaths and I can't even clear why she's gotta get the hell out of my house. I have complete clarity why I can't take it anymore. So yeah, breath work is great. Yoga is great. But sometimes we need perspective from other people. Like this is a big issue, for example, with men and emotions. Men think I gotta solve it on my own. I'll be, I can't be vulnerable. Why? Who said you can't ask someone for some advice or some support or get perspective? It's just that we're taught that that's weak or being too vulnerable. So polyregulation

• 49:52Speaker 01

  or flexible regulation says, okay, emotion regulation is a function of the emotion itself and the context. So Mark's, when I'm overwhelmed, for example, I'm a writer. You do a lot of writing too. I notice that if I am overwhelmed and I try to keep writing, it sucks. How about you?

• 50:11Dan Harris?

  This is a mistake I keep making. I'm overwhelmed, but I feel pressure to bulldoze through it and I, it's nothing, nothing good happens.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. So giving my little thing, I am very hyper aware of when I am stuck writing. A, you know, I've written two books, so I'm gonna write a third book. I have written 200 scholarly articles. I can write. I actually know I can write because I have the data to prove it. There are moments when I can't even think of, I can't write a paragraph. It's like the craziest thing in the world. And I can just be like, Mark, like you're a writer. This is your professor. You're a scholar. And it's like, who gives a fuck? And in that moment, I'm like, you need a break. And I just shut the computer and I walk outside. I take a 10 minute walk. Sometimes I'll do a little movement and I come back

• 51:01Speaker 01

  and it's like, all the ideas come back to me. So I really encourage that. And so this is again, knowing yourself. So for overwhelm, I know that I have to give myself those micro breaks. That's great. For anxiety, which is more about like this, like what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I could take a break and I'm what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? I take another break. I come back. What's gonna happen? What's gonna happen? It doesn't work for me. For anxiety, I have to use self-talk strategies. I have to say things like, Mark, take the high road here. Mark, you're not, you know, during COVID, I would say things like, Mark, you are not the CDC. Mark, you are not the president of the university. You're not gonna ever make the choice about when we go back to work. And it would just be like, oh, yeah, I have no control over this. So I can either just sit all day long, watching the stock market crash and watching people die of COVID, or I can distract myself from that and focus on what I can focus on. So overwhelmed strategies, different from anxiety strategies. Does that make sense?

• 52:04Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:04Dan Harris?

  It does.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  I think it's just really critical because I think people get stuck. And, you know, part of the reason why I wrote this new book, Dealing with Feeling, was to create these, to really show people that, like, your strategy might just be a mindset shift. Your strategy might be the breath work. Your strategy might be shifting your thought processes. Your strategy might be getting social support. Your strategy might be getting, taking a nap, getting a little bite to eat, doing a little physical activity. And in the end, what I believe is that if you accumulate all these evidence-based strategies, that's what helps you, what? Become the best version of yourself.

• 52:43Dan Harris?

  Right. Exactly.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  You see, it all kind of, it all, all these kind of strategies come together so that when you are triggered and you pause and you take the breath and then you visualize the best self, you now have trained yourself with all these strategies and you can match the strategy to the emotion and the moment.

• 53:02Dan Harris?

  Got it. Yes.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 53:04Dan Harris?

  Yeah, it makes complete sense. As we march through this five-part strategy, it makes me realize that this is actually, you could use this in preparation for something.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 53:13Dan Harris?

  The meta moment, but you can also use it in the actual moment.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's meant, it was originally developed for the moment, like, along the space between stimulus and response to, you know, be the best version of yourself. And then I just realized that, wait a minute, like, why don't we use this for what we might anticipate would be a difficult meeting? You know, and I do a lot of work in school, so it'd be like the teacher having the parent meeting. And it's like, the parent's gonna be angry. Their kid is getting in trouble. Can I be better prepared? Can I think about my go-to strategy for when the parent says, you're ruining my kid? Like, I don't want you to be caught off guard. You know this person, this parent, after, you know, years of working with them or whatever. Let's pretend it's gonna happen.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Let's be prepped in advance so that you can be a better responder as opposed to automatic reactor.

• 54:10Dan Harris?

  We've done four of the five steps.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:12Dan Harris?

  First is sense. Second is stop. Third is see your best self. Fourth is strategize.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:18Dan Harris?

  Is the fifth also gonna start with the letter S?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  It's gonna be self-assess. So now, the real meta moment is the four steps. It's, you go from sensing the shift in your mind and body to strategizing and acting in a way that aligns with your best self. But I'm gonna give you one just terrible example of my, like, worst self. Horacio made this movie called America Unfiltered that I helped to make. And he had a book of his portraits. He was a, it was a tour of America and asking people what it meant to be an American. And we were, he's like, I really want to do the book of portraits, like a coffee table book of all of his photography. Great, we'll figure it out, we'll figure it out. So now, his English is his second language.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  He's from Panama originally. And he had to write, like, the foreword and, or the, you know, the introduction and the conclusion of the book. And obviously, I do a lot of writing. I'm gonna be the editor. I'm gonna make this much shorter than it really was. So I get home from a long trip. The book is due the next day. I had already edited the intro and the conclusion. And I get the galley. And I'm like, this is not the version that I edited. Like, I don't understand, like, what happened here? Like, I spent a lot of time editing this intro. And he's, gets very defensive and, you know, we got into this huge fight.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  I was so tired and irritated that, I mean, like, the worst, worst version of The Feelings Master came out. It was awful. I mean, and in retrospect, I think all this work on emotional intelligence, all on the crapper. Has this ever happened?

• 56:05Dan Harris?

  Every Tuesday. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and it's worse because, and I know, most people listening to this probably won't be able to relate to it, but you and I have public personas.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 56:16Dan Harris?

  And internalized personas of being, you know, better than that.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, or like, people who are practitioners.

• 56:22Dan Harris?

  Yes, yes. And then, so when I do the stupid thing or say the stupid thing, it's, it's even more embarrassing for me.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I'm like, you're a fraud, you know, the whole thing. And it's like, gosh, it was bad. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna tell a story that I know, I hope he doesn't kill me for this. But, so we live, we have a place in the country. And he was so upset with me, he went aside and started like howling. So the next morning, our neighbor said, did you hear the wolves?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  I actually did, and they weren't wolves, it was actually Horacio. And, I mean, obviously, we've been together 32 years. We're in a, I think, in the best place we've ever been. And we now have the skills to repair. So my point of telling you this is that I didn't take the meta moment. And I hate myself for that. But I don't wanna go backwards in life. I wanna move forward. And I need to learn how to apology, apologize, you know, ask for forgiveness, repair, not with all the butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, but why do you edit it? And but why'd you give the wrong version? That happened. You know, just because it didn't go as planned and he made a mistake, doesn't mean I need to be a jerk. It takes the same amount of time to be a jerk as it does to be compassionate.

• 57:44Dan Harris?

  Yeah, but it's so much harder to be compassionate.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  I know. But this is what we have to strive for. And that's another big piece of this, and I'm glad you said that, because we're never gonna attain our best self.

• 57:54Dan Harris?

  We're never gonna attain it permanently.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 57:57Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  It's something we strive for because it's, and it's, you know, our relationships change over time. The person that I met when I was 24 years old, you know, is not the person I'm with now, 32 years later. And that's important to know. And so, the self-assessment is really about, okay, it worked. Congratulations, let's use this one again. Mark, you got through the meta moment. You've used your best self. Now, every time you go out for dinner, you're gonna take the breath in the elevator. You're gonna remind yourself that you're the learner, not the knower. You don't have to talk throughout the whole night. You can observe the food, not eat it all. You got this, Mark? Yes, got it.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  And it works 90% of the time, not 100%. You know, it happens. And then there's the times when, you know, I ate the whole thing of nachos and guacamole and I feel like, or the times that I just say the nastiest thing ever to my significant other. And I have to go, I have to take them, I have to take some time. And like, just say like, why did this version of myself come out tonight? And usually, it's an issue of control. Usually, it's an issue of trying to prove myself. Usually, it's something that's just not that healthy. And then I can build again and say, okay, next time, what's your strategy?

• 59:21Dan Harris?

  You said something crucial there, because the self-assessment is actually part of the proactive regulation. Because if you can see, like, what's my trigger? You just said there, it was something about control. I think that's a very common trigger.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:36Dan Harris?

  Well, then, you're better prepared for when you're going into a situation and you understand, oh, yeah, that trigger could come up for me.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  100%. And this is the whole point, like, anticipatory. Another example I'll just give you, where actually, close to her neighborhood. She has passed, but I had an aunt who was a very successful woman in the garment industry here in New York. But she had, she was like the devil's word prototype, except she didn't do fancy clothing, she did other kinds of clothing.

• 1:00:03Dan Harris?

  Schmata trade.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Yes, pretty much.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  The sweaters that she designed are to be discussed elsewhere. But anyway.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  But my aunt would like she had all this jewelry and we'd be in a restaurant and she'd be like,

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  bang her diamond ring on the thing to get attention from the waiter and you'd be sitting there thinking like,

• 1:00:26Dan Harris?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  I can't believe this is happening.

• 1:00:28Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Or we had, she had an apartment on the east side and we'd go there and she'd say things like, what are you doing? I said, I don't know, we're having dinner with the family. I'm just lighting the candle. She goes, those are for real company.

• 1:00:41Dan Harris?

  Got it.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Okay, that's, that was my aunt. Funny, cool, not easy to be with. So what do you do? Before you go to Aunt Sandy's house, or before you have dinner with Aunt Sandy, you do a lot of prep work. You take the meta moment in advance. You say, she's gonna bang her diamond ring on the table and be a, you know, so embarrassing. She's gonna say nasty things about people. She's gonna roll her eyes. She does a lot of eye rolling too. It's like if someone, she doesn't agree with you, she, people who can't see, you know, she does this massive eye roll in front of the person. I'm like, what's going on? Ridiculous. But like, this is who she is. I'm not changing her. It's not my job to be her teacher.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  It's my job to not, to want to be with my family and she's part of the family. So I gotta deal with it. But then I became, honestly, I called it like a game of creativity. And so what I mean by that is I actually think emotion regulation is a very creative process. Cause it's like divergent. It's like, let me think about it this way. Let me try this. Let me do this. Mark, how would the feelings master respond to that thing and that thing and that thing? And it's really fun if you make it into a game.

• 1:01:48Dan Harris?

  Bruce Lee used to say, you're a martial artist. He used to say, be like water.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:52Dan Harris?

  And that's what you're doing when you're, when, and I say this to the listener and viewer, when you're being your own feelings master.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:00Dan Harris?

  You're being like water. You're adapting to the situation creatively.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Couldn't agree more. So that became like a fun exercise. I would be like, okay. So when Aunt Sandy makes the dumb comment, what am I gonna think and what am I gonna say? And it just became like, this is like, this is who she is. This is, you know? And I wouldn't get triggered anymore. I would just find it amusing. I would observe it and say like, wow, I wish I would have tracked her development.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  What was her relationship like? What did it look like for her growing up and her family? And then we, again, that's self-talk too. I would actually say these things to myself. I'd be like, gosh, this is a fascinating story. Like, how does someone like that get made? So that's the process from, you know, we sense, we stop, we see our best selves, we strategize, and then we have to do some evaluation or self-assessment. Actually, if it's okay to share this, I, on my website, I created a little worksheet for this.

• 1:02:59Dan Harris?

  Oh, great.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  So just marcbrackett.com and there's a, it's called the Meta Moment Strategy Builder Worksheet to help people, you know, just try it out.

• 1:03:07Dan Harris?

  And if you go to marcbrackett.com, you can also find your books, which are Permission to Feel and Dealing with Feeling.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:03:13Dan Harris?

  And there's a third one coming.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:15Dan Harris?

  Okay, great. Will you come back on the show when that?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I would love to. This is, I think this is, I'm excited about this one. This is, if I can just say upfront, it's about how to be an emotion ally.

• 1:03:25Dan Harris?

  For somebody else.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Dan Harris?

  A thought came into my head when you were talking about your aunt, Sandy, where you trained yourself to be able to get curious about like, okay, well, what was it like in her home? That she's now spr- developing an ocular sprain by rolling her eyes so ostentatiously. You know, when somebody says something she disagrees with. I'm wondering whether learning how to become your own feelings master inexorably and inevitably leads you to becoming more compassionate, to becoming more of an ally for other people. Cause you see how, to use the word you used before, you see your own mishegoss, you see how fucking crazy you are. So you understand the way everybody's got their own stuff.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think what you're getting at, Dan, is something that we didn't talk about, which can kind of like bring in at the end, which is that the reason why I think this technique helps and the reason why I think emotion regulation is important, is that you're not really doing it for its own sake. You're doing it for outcomes. I actually want to feel good about myself.

• 1:04:29Dan Harris?

  Of course, yes. And achieve your goals.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  I, yeah, I wanna like, I want to be in a healthy, productive, honest and open relationship with myself and be another.

• 1:04:37Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  I want to make the best decisions. I want to have good mental health. And like you just said, I want to achieve my goals in life. And as someone who has, you know, coached thousands of people and trained millions of people at this point in my career, I can tell you right now, cognitive ability is a necessary but insufficient skill. You gotta learn how to deal with your feelings.

• 1:04:57Dan Harris?

  And to get back to the thesis of your next book, are you arguing in that book that learning how to deal with your own feelings helps you be an ally to others?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  I, I mean, that's part of it. That's part of the dealing with feeling book. What I'm arguing in this next book is that only about a third of us feel like we had a pretty good emotional development. Two thirds of us feel like, gosh, I was raised by wolves. Nobody really cared about my emotions. That's my research, 70 studies across the world.

• 1:05:24Dan Harris?

  Wow.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  So you can't change the past. Now, maybe I'll end with this kind of little story, which is I,

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  I wrote this book, Permission to Feel, which is dedicated to my uncle, because he was the adult who gave me permission to feel. He was the only one who ever asked me how I was feeling. And so I'm now running around giving speeches. I'm in Westchester, of all places where you are.

• 1:05:48Dan Harris?

  Where I live, yes.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  And I'm giving a speech to the different district leaders there, because I do a lot of work in schools, as I shared. And you're not gonna believe this. So I'm, I don't, I didn't always talk about my uncle and his profound impact on my life and how he gave me permission to feel, but I did because that's what I wrote about. And this guy who's a superintendent in a district up there, he's like, are you talking about Marvin Moore, the sixth grade social studies teacher from Monticello, New York? I said, I am. And he goes, Mark, you're not gonna believe this. Your uncle Marvin was my uncle Marvin. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, your uncle was my sixth grade teacher 50 years ago. And he is the reason why I went into education. Your uncle was the most amazing human being. I'll never forget his facial expressions, his eyes, the way he talked. Like he went on, on, on, on. And I'm like, dude, I gotta finish my talk.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  But can we talk afterwards? It was mind blowing about how he saw my uncle, like I did, as his emotion ally. Now here's what I really wanted to share, which is the focus of this next project, which is, at the end, he said, hey, Mark, like, it's pretty clear, your uncle had a profound impact on your development and your whole career. I said, a hundred percent. I dedicate much of my success to him. And so he said, well, so for whom are you and Uncle Marvin, Mark? I'm like, I like to do the research. And it was so eye opening to me about paying it forward.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  And so my hope is that in the future, it won't be one third of people across the world that say they had someone who cared about them in terms of their feelings growing up, but it will be 90, a hundred percent. And so it's kind of, what have I learned from the research to support more people in showing up for other people as emotion allies?

• 1:07:33Dan Harris?

  I look forward to talking about it with you.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:07:35Dan Harris?

  Did Marissa, our producer, prime you for the fact that we've got a new closing segment we do?

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  No, but I'm happy to do whatever you want.

• 1:07:43Dan Harris?

  Okay, so we're toying with this new closing segment that we're calling What's Good? So is there like a book, a TV show, some little practice, some movie, some, something that you would recommend that's good in your life? And then I'll give you one. I can go first if that was easier for you. Okay, a couple of months before the America 250, I got semi-obsessed with the Revolutionary War. And I watched a 12-part documentary series on PBS, which is not the thing I'm recommending, although I do recommend it. But there's a book called Founding Brothers that talks about the founding fathers

• 1:08:24Dan Harris?

  and their fraternal relationship, sometimes warm, sometimes Cain and Abel, with one another. And what it does is it kind of reveals that these people that we lionize, or actually on some college campuses vilify, are complex human beings. And you may have statues built to you, you might be on our currency, but you had your best self and your reflexive self. And we can't tell one solid story about somebody. George Washington, for example, we think of him as a great warrior, but he lost for like the first two, three years. He was just in retreat.

• 1:09:09Dan Harris?

  We think about him as somebody who, I think justifiably, as somebody who allowed for the peaceful transfer of power, stepping down voluntarily when he could have become a kind of American Caesar. True. Also.

• 1:09:23Dan Harris?

  Dude traveled with a slave for much of that time in the Revolutionary War, was a slave owner and was largely, at least initially motivated to buck the English because he wanted to colonize indigenous lands west of where he lived in Virginia. And so, all of these things are true simultaneously, and I think that's really helpful just to understand about the founding fathers or about anybody really, that we are more than one thing. So, long wind-up for recommending founding brothers.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, mine is gonna be much simpler. But I actually am familiar with that and really appreciate that kind of complexity that we, many of us have in our lives. I, you know, have fifth degree black belt in the martial arts and I, you know, I'm one of those people who like, was always like, you gotta persevere at all costs and achieve your goals. And I've come to the conclusion, observing people, that what's good is play. Just have fun. Like, can we just have fun? And like, I don't have to be great at everything and I can just try this out. If I don't like it, I could try something else. You know, be aware if I'm giving up because I, you know, am insecure. But I just think that I do so much work with families and parents.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, maybe it's because of the institution I work at, that it's like, by third grade, you gotta have your coach. And it's like, really? Like, try martial arts, you know, maybe you'll be good at it, maybe you won't. Try skiing, try football, swimming, like, just... And actually, if you look at the research, what it shows is that some of our most lauded Olympians were not focused on their initial sport at the beginning. They really tried a lot of things. And then they found the one that they were most passionate about later on.

• 1:11:11Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  And became experts. So, the good is sort of just be flexible, have some fun.

• 1:11:17Dan Harris?

  Just to, I 100% agree with you. And just to back that up, hopefully she's okay with me saying this, but my CEO of my little company, Tony, who's amazing, she often talks about how she can, in her worst moments, become a work robot, where she's just working all the time. And I, for her and for many of us, the antidote is to play. It's to do, you know, for Tony, she likes to ride her bike or take hikes or garden. But what you're arguing is a step beyond that. Yes, play and try new things that you might suck at. There's a real value in it.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Actually, it's funny about play. I just thought of this, I forgot. But one of my former researchers at my center went on to be going in the gaming business. And he came to visit me about six months ago. He was like, why don't we make a game out of your work? And so, we actually built a game. It's called the Point of Connection. I'm gonna give you one, actually. And it's this fun card game where you're like, getting to know people. And so, we've decided that he, we hadn't seen each other in like, three years, and we went out for dinner. And it was like, we talked for like, 15 minutes, and it was like, uh huh. And then, in that moment, he's like, what, what kind of questions could we write to get to know each other better? And we had so much fun. We like, stayed for five hours writing questions, and then we just made it into a game.

• 1:12:35Dan Harris?

  That's great.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Dan Harris?

  Okay, is it available?

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:37Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  It's called the Point of Connection.

• 1:12:39Dan Harris?

  Also available through marcbrackett.com?

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Dan Harris?

  Okay, Mark Brackett. Always a pleasure to talk to you, even more so in person. Thank you for doing this.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:12:48Dan Harris?

  Just a quick note before I let you go. If you're a listener to the show and you're looking for other ways to engage with my content, let me give you some options. Your first stop is danharris.com. That's my new website, and it has information and links to my meditation app. It's where you can sign up for my free newsletter. It's where you will find all the latest information on upcoming live events that I'm doing. We've also got 10% happier plus, which is an ad-free subscription right inside Apple Podcasts, so that's another option. And if you would rather watch than listen, we film every episode now. Video versions are up on YouTube and Spotify, so please like and follow, whether you're watching or listening. Also, I'm on social media. I try to inject a little sanity into your feed, into the darker corners of

• 1:13:31Dan Harris?

  the internet, so just search for my name, Dan Harris, and you'll find me wherever you have a scrolling habit. All right, that was a mouthful. Thank you for being here. Deuces. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Cashmere, David Hart, and Hayden Broome. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. And Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Thanks for listening. Peace.