Ethan Kross on How to Make Your Emotions Work for You | EP 568

In this episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles welcomes back Dr. Ethan Kross, a leading expert on emotions and self-regulation, to discuss his latest book, SHIFT. The conversation delves into the importance of understanding and managing our emotions, emphasizing that emotions should not be suppressed but rather harnessed as powerful tools for personal growth and resilience. The episode explores various strategies for managing emotions, including the concept of "shifters"—sensory experiences that can alter our emotional states. Dr. Kross emphasizes the role of music, scents, and touch in modulating feelings, sharing a personal anecdote about using music to uplift his daughter’s mood before a soccer game. Link to the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/ethan-kross-on-how-to-make-emotions-work-for-you/Sponsors:Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSION. In this episode, you will learn: Emotions as Tools: Emotions should not be viewed as obstacles but rather as tools that can help us navigate life. Understanding and managing our emotions can lead to resilience, connection, and fulfillment. The Importance of Avoidance: Strategic avoidance of emotional triggers can be beneficial. Sometimes stepping away from a situation allows for better clarity and decision-making when returning to it. Sensory Shifters: Our senses can significantly influence our emotional states. Engaging with sensory experiences, such as music or scents, can help shift our emotions quickly and effectively. Cultural Influence on Emotions: Culture plays a crucial role in shaping our beliefs, values, and norms regarding emotions. Understanding the cultural context can help individuals navigate their emotional lives more intentionally. No One-Size-Fits-All Solution: There are no universal solutions for managing emotions. Just as physical fitness requires a variety of exercises, emotional management requires a diverse set of tools tailored to individual needs and circumstances. Connect with Dr. Ethan Kross: https://www.ethankross.com/Next on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, we’re sitting down with Eric Zimmer, a renowned expert on habits, behavior change, and personal transformation. Eric is the host of the popular podcast The One You Feed, where he delves into the science of creating positive habits and the mindset shifts that lead to lasting change. For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content,...

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

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  We are challenged throughout our lives, whether it's a deployment under hostile conditions on the world stage, a difficult home situation, or problems at work. Life is constantly throwing curveballs at us. Sometimes it's not just that we don't hit the pitch. Sometimes we have the equivalent of Nolan Ryan throwing fastballs at our heads is the way it sometimes feels, and he's hitting us too. And we need to understand how to get better at bats when that happens and how to not get injured.

• 0:37John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:19John R. Miles?

  Hey, Passion Struck fam, welcome to episode 568. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for joining us. You have just entered a community that's all about igniting passion, living intentionally, and creating a life that matters. Now let me ask you something. Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed by your emotions, feeling like they're controlling you instead of you controlling them? What if I told you that the key to managing your emotions isn't about suppressing them or trying to ignore them, but learning how to use them as a powerful tool to propel you towards your purpose? That is exactly what today's guest is here to help us understand. In this episode, I'm sitting back down with my friend, Dr. Ethan Kross, one of the world's leading experts on emotions and self-regulation.

• 2:02John R. Miles?

  Ethan is also the bestselling author of Chatter and the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Ethan has dedicated his entire career to studying how we can transform the way that we experience and navigate our emotions. His latest book, Shift, which launches today, takes his groundbreaking research even further, showing us how we can harness our emotions for resilience, connection, and fulfillment. But today's episode isn't just about theory, it's about real, actionable tools. Today, Ethan and I will discuss how we can reframe our relationship with our emotions, shift our inner dialogue, and embrace the full range of feelings, from fear to joy, as a source of growth and clarity. We'll dive into fascinating stories like how a Navy SEAL used his emotions to thrive

• 2:47John R. Miles?

  under pressure, and explore the science behind how sensory experiences like music, scent, and touch can change the way we feel and react. Before we get started with today's conversation, let me give you a quick recap of last week's episodes. On Tuesday, I sat down with Dr. Dave Vago, a leading neuroscientist, to discover the neuroscience of mattering and how our brains' intricate pathways shape our sense of belonging and purpose. On Thursday, Francesca Sipma joined me to discuss how breathwork can connect us to our subconscious, unlocking clarity, emotional balance, and self-discovery. On Friday, I shared a solo episode on how to fight for your soul, where I explored the importance of aligning with your purpose, overcoming inner resistance, and making choices that protect the core of who you are.

• 3:32John R. Miles?

  If you haven't listened to any of those yet, check them out for some transformative insights. And if you're loving these conversations and want to dig deeper into topics like emotional resilience, personal mastery, alternative health, and growth, make sure to explore our episode starter packs. These curated playlists are designed to guide you through key themes like mindfulness, mindset, and the science of mattering. You can find these starter packs on Spotify or at passionstruck.com/starterpacks. Don't forget to subscribe my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com, where I share weekly insights, challenges, tools, and exclusive content to help you stay focused on what truly matters. It's the best way to get inspired and stay aligned with your goals each week. And if you prefer watching these transformative conversations, make sure to check out our YouTube channel.

• 4:16John R. Miles?

  It's a great place to engage with the content in a whole new way and connect with others on their intentional living journey. Now, let's get started with episode 568 of Passion Struck with Dr. Ethan Cross. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:40John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back Dr. Ethan Kross to Passion Struck. Great to see you again, Ethan.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Great to be here, John. As you know, we were just talking offline. I've been looking forward to this for a while and I've missed you and I've been tracking all of your successes. And so it's great to be in the same virtual room with you again.

• 5:00John R. Miles?

  It is great. I wish we could do this in person and I hope down the line we can. But I am glad that we're doing it now because we actually are, both of us, huge Michigan fans and we can still, as of today, say we are the national champions.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  That's right. We have a few days left and we're going to savor it because it was a wonderful ride last year. And even this year, although we've had some downs, we ended on a pretty positive note with two huge wins towards the end. So we're feeling pretty good in Ann Arbor. I'm going to embrace that because there have been years in which we haven't felt that way. Which is actually like a perfect segue. We haven't even planned it into the topic of my book on managing our emotions, right?

• 5:46John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. And I am ecstatic that it also looks like our basketball team is going to be back to the program. We all hope it will be. So with that lead in, it is such a pleasure to have you back on Passion Struck. Your last episode on your previous book, Chatter, resonated so deeply with our listeners that I was just thrilled when I learned that you had written this new book and that we could bring you back on. So this episode is really, to me, a continuation of the incredible journey you've taken us on. One that's both scientific and profoundly human.

• 6:26John R. Miles?

  Can you maybe walk the listeners through what led you from Chatter to now writing this book?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  I'm happy to, and they were very much and are related. So my first book, Chatter, dealt with the question of, how do you manage the voice inside your head, which is often a really vital tool? When you find that it starts ceasing to be a tool and starts to become your worst enemy. And what I'm talking about there is when we start perseverating on things, worrying and ruminating incessantly, that mental chatter builds up to the point where we have problems, thinking and performing, relationship issues, and even find that those nasty conversations we sometimes have with ourselves get under the skin to influence our health. And that was a topic that I've spent a lot of my scientific career investigating.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Why does that happen? And what tools exist to help you talk to yourselves more effectively? And the book came out and, you know, fortunately it was well received and I went on a book tour. And the experience I had on that book tour was really quite interesting because, you know, as an author and you know this, John, you you work so hard on a book and you hope it's received well, but you don't really know until you get out there. And so I'm out there and I'm finally talking about all these ideas that I spent so much time writing about and researching and it feels great. And then I get to the Q and A and effectively, time after time, there was the experience I had was people saying,

• 7:59Speaker 01

  this is so interesting. Thank you so much. They lob a question or two about chatter, but then they start going off in all sorts of other directions like, well, what about anger and sadness? And what is an emotion? And should I try to manage them? And what do you think about being in the moment? And it just, the the list of questions went on and on and on. And the experience I had, and I write about this in my new book, is it felt like I had just given a talk on how to deal with heart disease. And people were grateful for that information, but they also had questions about how to optimize their physical fitness, avoid cancer, reduce the risk of diabetes, and a slew of other questions. And so

• 8:46Speaker 01

  When I took a step back, really, I think the opportunity that emerged was to write something about our emotional lives, which is a topic, of course, that we are all so intimately familiar with from the time we are born and actually before in the womb too, there's, you know, likely we're experiencing various kinds of emotional states. But we don't get a user's guide, a science-based, accessible user's guide for guiding us through that emotional world that we are bathed in all the time. And so I got really excited about that topic and shift was my attempt to address it. So it is, you know, it's like, welcome to your emotional life. What are emotions? Why do we have them? And most importantly,

• 9:30Speaker 01

  what does science have to teach us about what we can do to manage those emotions, all of them? When we find that they cease to serve us well and actually start conspiring against us because they're activated either to intensely and/or for too long a period of time.

• 9:51John R. Miles?

  So Shift opens up with an incredible story about your grandparents, Dorian Izzy, and their harrowing escape from Nazi, from the Nazis during World War II. It's a story, as I was reading it, of survival, resilience, and emotional endurance. What stuck with me the most is how their stories reflect the themes of emotions as really tools for navigating life. Can you share more about their journey and how it influenced your own understanding of emotions?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  So Dorian Izzy, as you mentioned, were my grandparents and their story was one of the first I can remember hearing about growing up, and it always captivated me and it still does to this day. They lived in a relatively small town in eastern Poland, were adolescents, teens, young adults around the time that the Nazis invaded. They were Jewish and they effectively witnessed their loved ones be slaughtered and narrowly escaped that fate themselves. Lived in a series of ghettos in the frozen Polish woods for years, trying to evade capture. And

• 11:02Speaker 01

  My, the interesting thing about my grandparents was they were exceptionally emotive and loving. They did not talk to me about their experiences during the war. And I would ask them as a curious kid, hey, Bubby Papa, what happened? Tell me more about it all, you know, these are heroes. It was like G I Joe and I just wanted to know more. The only time I got a window into their experience was they would hold these Remembrance Day events one time a year with other members of the town that survived and ultimately moved to the States. And during that one day a year, I would see them fall into tears and, and just describe atrocities that

• 11:46Speaker 01

  I still have a hard time wrapping my head around. I mean, I, I sit here right now at home. I've got my daughter, who's a little under the weather upstairs safely in her, you know, snuggled up in her bed. And I'm looking out to the snowfall and I've got a fire in the back. I mean, like, life is really good and sweet. And their lives were really good and sweet. And yet they just ended that version of their life so quickly. It's hard for a human being, like I think any of us to contemplate that.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  So I only heard them talk about their experience just one time a year, never any other time. And as I got older, you know, and I learned more about psychology, what, what was really fascinating to me was it sure seemed on the surface that my grandmother in particular was avoiding talking about these experiences. And one of the first lessons I learned early on in life from my parents, and then it was reinforced in graduate school was you shouldn't avoid focusing on things. Avoidance is bad because if you avoid it, the wound never heals and it'll just come back to haunt you later on.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yet by all accounts, my grandmother is actually doing pretty well. This was not a depressed or overly anxious woman. This was a woman who saw her position in the world elevate. She moved to the States with nothing, worked really hard, saved up enough money to ultimately buy a home and even have a a winter escape in your part of the country in Florida during the snowy winters.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  But she avoided. And what I ended up learning later on, I write about this in the book, is that

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I think this uncovers one of the myths surrounding emotion regulation that a lot of us buy into, which is this idea that avoidance is always toxic. It is not, and the science now pretty compellingly demonstrate that that is not the case. There are times and places when strategically avoiding emotional triggers and cues can actually be quite useful. And I'll give you a couple of examples. Sometimes, and now I speak from personal experience, I will get triggered, an email, something really bothers me, or a conversation with someone at work, or, you know, I will admit, sometimes it happens at home, too. Shocker, sometimes I get into an argument with my partner or my kids. And I've discovered that actually, right when those

• 14:13Speaker 01

  emotions are first triggered, sometimes the best attempt to work through them right there in the moment is not the optimal solution. A better strategy is to take some time away, whether it be a few minutes, hours, even days, and then come back to the problem later on. And when I do, I've got more, more bandwidth, I can think more objectively, I can relate to the other person if it's an interpersonal problem more effectively, too. That's an example of using avoidance strategically, right? Taking a break to then come back. Sometimes, I take a break and I find that the problem just melts away because I realize it's, it's just wasn't significant in

• 14:53Speaker 01

  the first place, and I was magnifying it excessively. Now, of course, there are instances where taking that time away, the problem just continues to surface, and that can be a cue to engage more deeply. But the point here is that avoidance isn't uniformly bad. It is a tactic, a tool, that when used strategically, can be quite effective. And so that was just one insight that my grandparents' experience provided me. The broader one, now I'll throw it back to you, is That there are just no one size fits all solutions when it comes to managing our emotional lives. I think we as human beings loved

• 15:38Speaker 01

  the prospect of finding such solutions. There's something really seductive about this idea that there's a single tool or two you can use to be more emotionally fit, to be happier and more successful. I get asked all the, all the time, what's the one thing you do to manage your emotions? It's a question I can't answer because there are no single solutions. Do you ever, do you, do you ever work out, John? We haven't talked about this before, but do you exercise frequently?

• 16:07John R. Miles?

  I just went to the gym earlier this morning.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  What, what, what did you do when you went to the gym?

• 16:13John R. Miles?

  Well, today I just wanted a cardio workout, so I, I just did 30 minutes on an elliptical. Okay. And I listened to Andrew Huberman's podcast that you were on as I was doing it.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Okay, good. You're prepping up and my memory of that podcast is that we're covering some different ground here, which is good. Let me ask another question though about your gym experience. Do you ever lift weights?

• 16:38John R. Miles?

  Well, I have an alternative health podcast, so I, I follow what Mark Hyman and other people have told me to do. So I try to do cardio a couple of times a week and I try to do free weights a few times a week.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Okay. So my last question, then I'll give you the punchline is when you go to lift weights, do you do more than just exercise your biceps with curls?

• 16:59John R. Miles?

  Of course.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Okay, of course. That's the kind of response I, I hope this book and conversations like the one we're having can help push people towards that awareness that of course responds when it comes to thinking about the tools we use to manage our emotional lives. It shouldn't be, the question should not be, what's the one thing you do to manage your emotions? The question should be, as far as I'm concerned, what are the tools you use to manage your emotions? Right? Depending on the goals that I have at any given point in my life, when I go to the gym, I'm doing a range of exercises. I may be doing some cardio, high interval

• 17:41Speaker 01

  training, calisthenics, I'm blending in different things because there are different components to physical health. What we have learned is that the same is true when it comes to managing our emotional lives.

• 17:53John R. Miles?

  Our emotional worlds are incredibly nuanced and the goals we have are not always the same. When it comes to motion management, so why on earth? Would there be one tool? That all of us can benefit from it just doesn't make sense and the science to support it. So that was another insight I got from Bubby and Papa. So they ended up being quite influential in my life and I wish they were here for me to. Tell them about it directly now. Well, hearing your grandparents story reminded me of my partner Corey's. History, her grandparents were Russian Jews. On both sides who similar to your parents evaded the Germans and eventually also migrated to Brooklyn, much like your family.

• 18:36John R. Miles?

  And as I think about this and your family and I think about the fires that are happening in LA right now. I just. Think of, imagine just sitting in your home. And everything is normal and then all of a sudden. You're told you have to leave now and this can happen for a hurricane or a tornado or other things. But imagine that emotional toll and I mean, it really is universal, whether it was them. Or even what we're facing today and I think emotions and these personal narratives really shape the way we understand.

• 19:15John R. Miles?

  The human capacity to endure and thrive even when we have to face things like this. Wouldn't you agree?

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think the fires are a great and tragic example of how important it is. To be able to manage our emotions effectively for our own well being and survival. You know, I was actually just in LA last week and I had to evacuate on Wednesday evening. And when I arrived, the fires weren't really raging at all and they just took off and I was able to see some of that devastation firsthand and. It was tragic and it was an inherently deeply emotional experience that required a lot of empathy.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  People bandied together to support one another, but also the ability to manage some pretty potent emotional responses. Sadness, fear, anxiety in order to take actions to protect oneself and one's loved ones. And sadly, as I think this this tragedy stretches out, we're going to need more more help managing our emotions. Just given the amazing devastation that is occurring, it is a parallel to what what we're talking about.

• 20:33John R. Miles?

  Well, I want to jump from here to the first section of your book in which you describe emotions as a near constant force in our lives. And I love the words you use, sometimes subtle like background music and other times sharp and consuming, shaping our decisions and relationships. And in in this first chapter, you highlight a 2015 study that found that people experience one or more emotions over 90% of the time. To illustrate it, and I'm someone who has, I was not a Navy SEAL, but I have deployed a lot with them. And I've also been to SERE school and you beautifully illustrate this with the story of of Matt Mastum,

• 21:15John R. Miles?

  who's a SEAL going through SERE training, who I personally don't know, but I can understand what you were talking about with his story, where he felt anger, pain, joy, and surprisingly even love simultaneously. Can you talk about that experience he went through? And how understanding this pervasive and complex nature of emotions? Help us reframe them as a tool for navigating life rather than obstacles to overcome.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  So Matt's story is a really powerful one. So Matt is just such an interesting character. He was a Michigan alum who, after graduating, became a SEAL, deployed, was a hero, came back, became a SEAL instructor, and then actually went to Harvard to get his leadership degree and was selected by the President of the United States to carry the nuclear codes, or selected by whoever selects such an individual. And so he has this just unbelievable.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Record of achievement and for me, the first thing that came to mind when I heard about him before I interviewed him and became friendly with him was this guy must be a robot, right? Like emotions just don't enter the equation. Given the kinds of extraordinary things that he has had to do and in our very first meeting, he swiftly dispelled me of that notion. And you know, when a Navy SEAL of his level of accomplishment and physical prowess dispels you of something, you believe it very quickly. So I was very happy to change my mind. Essentially, what he described was his experiences of emotions, both positive and negative, were vital to his success.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Not his ability necessarily to shut them down, but he described his the emotions he experiences as information he acted on that was useful for helping him determine how he should respond to different situations. And these emotions that he experienced were present throughout his experiences. And so the SEER school experience that you asked about, so SEER school, for those who are not familiar with that acronym, is a school that you send, I think primarily military personnel to

• 23:36Speaker 01

  teach them how to deal with the possibility of them essentially being abducted or trapped behind enemy lines. Like so you put people in different really uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable is putting it pretty lightly as John, I'm sure you can attest firsthand. So that, God forbid, if someone finds themselves in one of these situations, they have some tools they can use to manage them and to survive. So we're talking about not eating food for days, being held in cages, all sorts of really aggressive kinds of.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Interrogatory, is that a word interrogatory? I don't think it's a word. They're like in mock interrogations and and other things of that sort. Well, what am I missing? Get give me more color here. Water simulated waterboarding, maybe?

• 24:31John R. Miles?

  I wasn't simulated. I mean, you are put through a mock of what it would like to be prisoner or including. They're trying to test all aspects of you. So three aspects of it from the noises that they blur in. There's the the temperature, you know, I did it in the mountains, so it was freezing cold. By the time you're captured, you haven't eaten in a few days because all they give you is a rabbit. And send you on your way. So you're starving. And so they try to give this, I think, as real world as they possibly can. Here you are trying to evade capture, which is what the first aspect of it is. And then everyone gets captured. And then it's how do you deal with all these things that they throw at you? To put you as much as they can under a real world situation.

• 25:16John R. Miles?

  So if it would ever happen, you are somewhat prepared for what it's going to be like. Knowing that it's probably going to be even worse than the environment that Matt found himself in.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  I'm glad you were there to help illustrate it in more vivid detail. And so it's a grueling experience. But what was interesting about Matt's time there is that he was filled with all sorts of negative emotions when he was going through it. He was angry and frustrated and concerned about. He had these training missions that he was going to be doing these cold water training up in, I think, Alaska. And in order to be fit for that, you need muscle. And he found his muscle depleting because he wasn't eaten. And so would he be able to accomplish those missions? And alongside all those negative feelings he was having, he also was falling in love with the woman he would eventually marry,

• 26:08Speaker 01

  who was in the literal cage across the courtyard from where he was being kept in in a cage. And he was flirting with her during this training exercise. And in the process of doing so, falling in love. And so he's a perfect example of someone who I think many of us think shouldn't feel emotions and should just be robotic, yet.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  If you asked him, hey, would you give up your ability to experience? Any different kind of negative emotion or positive? He would say no. What he was really skilled at is. Experiencing those emotions, learning from them, but not allowing them. To mushroom too greatly, so not allowing those experiences to those emotional experiences to be triggered too intensely. Or for too long. And that is a challenge, I think, that we all face. When we think about how to manage our emotional lives. I'm a proponent of the idea, a really strong one, that all of our emotional experiences. When they are triggered in the right proportions and contexts. Are useful.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  I benefit from my ability to experience anxiety. And sadness. And anger. And envy. And jealousy. All of those different responses. They tune me into specific features of the situations that I'm encountering. To help me manage them more effectively. Give you a couple of examples, anxiety, anxiety captures my attention. And focuses it on a potential threat that is looming. It's effectively telling me, hey, dopey, focus, you gotta prepare for this thing, it's important. When I think back to some of the. Engagements that I've had that haven't gone as well as I would have hoped, they're the ones that I felt zero anxiety about.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  As a result, I had no. Cue inside me. To trigger me to focus and prepare, so I didn't. You know, take envy, we think of envy, it's one of the deadly sins, right? Like, it's uniformly bad, it is not uniformly bad. Sometimes I look at someone who I'm envious of, and. That then provides me with a target to aspire to achieve what they have accomplished. Right, like now I've got, I've got something I can shoot for, so I'm reframing that envy as. As a way of, of, it's a kind of north star of sorts. And you could play this game with all the different negative emotions we experience, they all have a functionality to them.

• 28:45John R. Miles?

  Well, one of the things I liked that you covered in this chapter is I realize hope isn't really an emotion, it's a cognitive state. But I explored this whole concept of why hope matters. I really typed hope to matter and similar to the way you're explaining influence, the influence of emotions and how they influence not just our moment to moment decisions, but they can influence the trajectory of our lives. It's kind of like hope. I mean, it was hope that Gandhi used to inspire people to break away from the British rule. But he also tied into the emotions of the people.

• 29:25John R. Miles?

  It's, it's, as you write, it's ignited personal achievements like the cultural legacies to large movements like the Taj Mahal or the Underground Railroad. And it's so interesting because emotions do fuel some of humanity's greatest accomplishments. But I think what people fail to realize is how can they tap into this emotional fuel? So to speak, to create this life or these movements that they want?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Well, there are lots of ways you could tap into hope if that's the target. Our ability to both strategically wield our attention, what we focus on, and then how we focus on it, whether we're reframing or not. I think those are two specific cognitive tools we possess that can be really helpful for boosting hope. And let me give you a couple of concrete examples because that's a little abstract. Let's first talk about finding hope when things feel really bad and we're really sinking into the doldrums, sinking into despair. Or we're finding ourselves really anxious or anger, angry for that matter. When we experience these big negative emotional states,

• 30:41Speaker 01

  we often zoom in on them and what is driving them in that moment. So we're focusing on the worst parts of the experience, which makes good sense because what is one of the first things we're taught to do when we have a problem growing up? Roll up your sleeves and deal with it, right? Don't avoid it.

• 30:58John R. Miles?

  Right.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  So that's what we often reflexively do when we're struggling with things. And it just, it often perpetuates that negative experience.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  All of us, though, have had this experience that I'm going to describe probably millions of times, certainly hundreds of thousands, probably millions, depending on how old you are. And the experiences is follows, and tell me if you disagree, John, like truly tell me if you disagree. We experience something and it triggers an emotion, that emotion activates, and then as time goes on, the emotion eventually begins to fade in its intensity. Most of our emotional experiences follow that temporal trajectory, that time course. They're triggered, they rise, and as time goes on, they fade.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Some emotions rise more intensely than others, some fade more quickly, some take longer, but almost all of them follow that time course. Now, we lose sight of that in the moment. But if you jumped into what I've called your mental time travel machine and you ask yourself, how am I going to feel about this thing? Tomorrow, next week, next year, in 10 years, when I'm dead. That is a powerful way of automatically making accessible the understanding that what you're going through is temporary, it will eventually fade. And when you have that recognition, it gives you hope. It gives you hope that things are going to get better.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  And that can be a powerful bomb when we're struggling with negative things. You know, I worried about something happened just yesterday that I was having some second thoughts about. Oh crap, did I say the wrong thing? And didn't feel good in the moment during the immediate aftermath. And then I, I asked myself, how am I going to feel about this next week?

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Instantly, I was reminded of the fact, John, that I, Ethan Kross, have put my foot in my mouth.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Tens of thousands of times and it doesn't feel good in the moment, but it usually amounts to nothing and instantly that turn things down. So that's one way of finding hope. The other way of finding hope is to wield your attention on to things that are inspirations. So we do this often too, and this can be a kind of attentional deployment, right? Like if you're really struggling with something, try to find something in your life that is the source of hope. Something that just makes you really excited about the future and what lies ahead. For some parents, this is their children, grandparents or children and grandchildren, business owners or employees.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  It can be hope for future accomplishments. There's an infinite number of things and ways we can find hope. And so that would be another tactic that people can use if they're motivated to do so.

• 33:58John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you for answering that. Ethan, I want to go back to something with the military here for a second. As you know, I have really been trying to study a lot about the topic of mattering and I'm actually working on a book right now about it. And I want to take you back in time. A few years ago, I went to this retreat that we were having that had probably 60 special forces, former special forces people there. It was everything from the former secretary of defense who was there to, you know, we had green berets, we had rescue swimmers from the coast guard. We had rangers, we had seals, we had marines.

• 34:41John R. Miles?

  And universal across all of them, they had experienced profound post-traumatic stress. And all of them had told me that they had gone through this sense of just feeling completely numb and indifferent and apathetic to, you know, to the world around them. And it really led me to this connection that our emotions are really deeply tied to this sense of meaning and connection in our lives. How does understanding and managing our emotions enhance our ability to feel like we matter? And how we connect and belong in the communities that we're part of?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Well, what a great question, and I wish there was a one line answer, but there isn't. So let me do my best. So one thing I think that is important to keep in mind is that we human beings are meaning makers. One of the ways we navigate the world is with this motivation to constantly make sense of the world in which we live. We need to make sense of it because if we understand this world and the place we occupy in it, that makes this world easier to navigate. And as a general rule, that's like a general guiding motivation for human beings. We want to be able to navigate the world easily.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  So if we have meaning and purpose and we feel like we matter, that's great. Things feel right and we don't have to, we could just focus on the task at hand. Oftentimes, the times that people get stuck is when they can't find meaning. They don't feel like they matter. When that happens, it's like a giant red button is pressed in your brain that says, stop, pay attention, figure out what's going on here so that you can start feeling like you do matter and have meaning so that we could get on with life the way it's supposed to be lived. But for having trouble developing that sense of purpose and meaning, we often struggle. We can ruminate about things.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  We can experience complicated negative emotions like anxiety and sadness as well. So finding meaning is really important. Being able to manage your emotions when you're struggling to find meaning is also really important because we are challenged throughout our lives, whether it's a deployment under hostile conditions on the world stage or a difficult home situation or problems at work. Life is constantly throwing curveballs at us. Sometimes it's not just that we don't hit the pitch.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Sometimes we have the equivalent of Nolan Ryan throwing fastballs at our heads is the way it sometimes feels. And he's hitting us too. And we need to understand.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  How to get better at bats when that happens and how to not get injured. And that's really where the science of emotion regulation comes into play. Because we evolved this extraordinary capacity to experience emotions. And remember, emotions are tools. They're useful. You want to be able to feel anxiety to motivate action, to focus on the task at hand. Anger, when you perceive that there's some transgression, some violation of your understanding of the world. And there's an opportunity for you to fix things. Anger is a powerful little message that propels you to do that. These are useful, but they are often unwieldy tools.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And the gift that we have also been born into this world with

• 38:31Speaker 01

  is the capacity to manage those emotional states. So on the one hand, we evolved this wonderful brain that allows us to experience all these emotions and these different kinds of shades and textures and blends. But we also co-evolved all of these different capacities that we can harness to manage those emotions. And the key is accessing those tools that we possess to rein in those emotional responses. And that's what I hope the book helps people do. Number one, simply introduce you to the tools that exist. And then number two, offer you some guidance in how you can use those tools. If you go back to the gym metaphor here.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  If you don't know how to work out, right? You just show up in a gym and you're looking at equipment like you could very well get hurt if you don't know how to use that equipment. And the odds are, the odds are that you don't just walk into the gym and you know how to seamlessly weave these different exercises together in a way that's going to dramatically improve your health right away. There might be some stumbling, some trial and error that you do in the gym. And you find, oh, this is making me those biceps a little bit bigger and my calves a little bit plumper. Whatever you're trying to achieve, but it's not going to be the most efficient thing. I would argue that that is kind of how a lot of us navigate our emotional lives right now. We stumble on exercises.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  That sometimes work for us, oftentimes don't, sometimes even get us into trouble. And the value of science here is that it can, it, it doesn't, it's not can. Science provides us with a guide to introduce us to the exercises that are out there. And to teach us how to begin to weave them together to help us achieve the emotion goals that we have. And that's, I think, the real opportunity.

• 40:31John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. And I want to use the remaining time that we have to do a little bit of a teaser. Uh, for the audience, uh, about the book, um, but not giving it all away. So they'll go out and buy it. Part two of your book, you're really starting to go into. How do you start using the title of your book, Shifts? And it starts from shifting from the inside out. And on my way back from, uh, the gym today, I was trying to get myself pumped up for, uh, our interview. So I happened to listen to Casimir by Led Zeppelin.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 41:10John R. Miles?

  But you, as I understand it, you have a daughter named Dani and I have a daughter named Olivia. They both are soccer players, although my daughter doesn't really play anymore. But I remember when she was younger, there were those days where, like anyone, you, you just don't feel like practicing or going to a game or something else. And you, since we're, we're talking about Michigan today, you, you happen to turn a song on. That Journey sang, that starts about a young boy from Michigan who wanted to believe. And can you go into this story and, and how this sensory shift helps us, uh, with our emotions?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  I will do so on one condition, which is when this podcast airs, you subtly have this song begin to play in the background as we talk. I call them shifters. What is a shifter? If you think about a ship, we want to shift our emotions, we can ship them up or down, or make them last longer or shorter. So then the question is, well, what are the shifters that are out there? Well, the first one that is often overlooked is what I call our sensory shifters. Senses, sight, sound, touch, smell, just a few examples.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  These are very powerful tools for pushing our emotions around. And when I use the word powerful to convey that not only can they generate very different kinds of emotional responses, but they can do so relatively easily. And what's remarkable to me about these sensory shifters is that we all are intimately familiar with them, but we often overlook them. So there's this one study that asked people, why do you listen to music? Almost a hundred percent of the sample indicated they listen to music because they like the way it makes them feel emotional. But then if you ask people, last time you were anxious, angry or sad, what did you do to change the way you felt?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Between 10 and 30% use music as a tool, just 10 and 30%, even though close to 100% of people readily acknowledge that music is a powerful modulator of their emotional experiences. It's not just people out there in the world who don't often think about sensation as a tool to manage your emotions when they're struggling. It's this expert that you're talking to right now as well. I'm using that expert title a little bit jokingly. And I've listened to music my whole life and it wasn't until this experience I had with my daughter that I began to start using it strategically. She woke up was in a kind of morose mood. It was bugging me out because at the time that she was playing soccer, I looked forward to this weekend event.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Throughout the week, it was like my release. I love just watching her play. I played when I was a kid. And she just didn't want to go is in a funk. And, and then we get in the car and I put the radio, whatever you call the streaming device, whatever we call them nowadays on and don't stop believing just came on. And you know, I can't help myself. I start jamming out to that song. I'm bopping my head. I'm humming. I'm singing. And then I look in the rear view mirror and I see Danny.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Without even knowing it is like bopping her head along and she's into it. And that was really surprising because normally she tells me my choice of music is terribly embarrassing. But I guess that's a universal that song. And next thing I know, we're like, we're having a ton of fun in the car. We pull up to the soccer field and she just darts out of the car. And you know, scores seemingly a gazillion goals that gave as far as my memory tells me. We know memories are fallible, so we won't fact check that detail, but she did do really well. And it was just this wonderful example of how sensory experiences can modulate how we feel super fast. And so since that moment, number one, we've done some research on this topic.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  We actually published a paper identifying this as a bit of a blind spot in the, in the areas that we work in for emotion regulation researchers. But I now have playlists that I have on my iPhone that I go to to help me reach certain kinds of goals that I have. I got some pump up music, I have some calming music and it's a tool right there and I avail myself of it all the time.

• 45:35John R. Miles?

  And I would just say that a great other tool if someone could use is I really loved the book, The Five Senses that Gretchen put out a couple of years ago, really exploring when, when we really tap into our senses, how much it plays a profound role. And all you gotta do to experience this is go to a hotel like I did this past weekend where they pump in the sensory smells or a restaurant, which does the same thing.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely. I mean, these are tools that organizations and other entities are wielding all the time to trigger emotional responses in you. I mean, just think of not just the hotel and restaurant industry, which I talk about in the book, but, but think about every international airport you go to. In the duty free zone, it is populated by perfumes and colognes, right? This is an entire industry. I don't know what the, the number will put on it, but it's a pretty big one, I think. This is all about how sense are being applied to our skin to trigger emotional responses in other people.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Typically approach, although we know that odors can also elicit the other kinds of response as well. Just to take a ride in the New York City subway if you want the other experience. But it's, you know, these are some of the tools, and this is just an example of some of these tools that are hidden in plain sight that, on the one hand, we've all experienced them. But I don't think a lot of us are consciously wielding those tools to help us reach our goals, our emotion regulation goals on a moment to moment basis throughout our lives. And so there are lots of shifters that take that form. You've probably worked with them, but you may not have realized it. Then there are shifters out there that you've never encountered before.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  And then we go even outside of the shifters that exist within us into the next part of the book that deals with how our interactions with other people can shift us. Our interactions with our physical spaces can shift us. And then we talk about culture more generally to think about how do the cultures that we are a part of shape our view of our emotional worlds and how we can manage them. And what role do we play as individuals that can shape the cultures that we belong to? To not only help ourselves, but to help other people that we work with and live with do the same.

• 48:09John R. Miles?

  So this cultural shift is something that needs to happen in a lot of businesses right now. Where you've got so many people who are disengaged and there is absolutely a reason for that happening, but a lot of it plays into the emotions of the employees. So why does culture play such an important role in how we interpret and express emotions? And how can shifting it help us navigate our lives with greater intentionality?

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Well, in some ways, culture is the most powerful shifter that exists because it's ever-present. We are bathed in it. It is like the air we breathe. And what does it mean to be a part of culture? Well, culture determines our values and beliefs. So, do you think you can control your emotions? Do you think you should control your emotions? Culture is influencing those values and beliefs that we have about emotions and emotion regulation. Culture is also providing us with norms. Norms are rules, both spoken and unspoken, that guide our behavior throughout our lives. And so, culture is shaping the norms that govern the way we behave on a moment-to-moment basis.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Is there a norm in your family or in your organization for talking about emotions or bottling them up? Like, we have norms for all sorts of emotional behaviors that are then impacting us and those around us. And then, culture also can give us practices, tools, that we use to manage our emotions. Rituals, as an example. Families have rituals, organizations have rituals, some of which are designed to help us manage our emotions. Families, we often teach our kids and our loved ones how to manage our emotions. Employees, bosses, mentors are constantly mentoring those beneath them, ideally, without a deal with adversity.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Adversity, by definition, an emotional experience in those kinds of organizational contexts. So, culture is the kind of, what's the word I use for, they use for this in the book? It's the big Kahuna of shifting. It's impacting it at every level. And the reason I think it's so important to start thinking about the role culture plays in our lives is because, on the one hand, you're parts of different cultures. So, if you understand what culture is, beliefs and values, norms, practices, you can start getting in there to maybe push the culture around in a direction that you think is more beneficial for you and those that you love. If though you find yourself as in part of a kind of culture that is toxic with

• 50:52Speaker 01

  respect to emotion, emotion, regulation, and there's not much you can do about it, you can make the decision to leave that culture too. And that is a noble decision to make when that culture is working against you. And I think thinking about culture through the lens of emotion, regulation makes it a lot easier for us to start to start reasoning about how to change culture, when to join new ones, leave them, and so forth.

• 51:21John R. Miles?

  Well, I think that's a great topic to end on. Ethan, if someone wanted to learn more about you and your work, where's the best place for them to go?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  The best place to go is my website, www.ethankross.com. And there's information about Shift, my lab, my old book, and lots more. So check it out.

• 51:44John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you so much for joining us here today, and I can't wait to have you back on for a third time.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, John. It's an honor and a privilege, as always.

• 51:52John R. Miles?

  Wow, what an extraordinary conversation with Ethan Kross. From the groundbreaking insights into why we feel to the powerful tools for shifting our emotional states, today's discussion was a masterclass in understanding and harnessing the complexity of our emotions. Ethan's work in Shift reminds us that our emotions aren't obstacles, they're allies. Whether it's the power of sensory experiences like music, the stories of resilience and love from his research, or the practical ways we can use emotions as tools for connection and growth, this episode is packed with wisdom that can truly transform how we navigate our lives. As we close, I encourage you to reflect on a few key takeaways. How can you begin to see your emotions as superpowers rather than hindrances? What sensory tools

• 52:37John R. Miles?

  like music, scent, or touch can you intentionally incorporate into your daily life to help shift your emotional state? If today's episode resonated with you, please leave us a five-star rating and review. Your feedback helps us continue bringing powerful conversations like this one to the Passion Struck community. And if someone in your life could benefit from Ethan's insights, share this episode with them. It could be the spark they need to see their emotions in a whole new light. You can find all the resources we discussed, including Ethan's book Shift, and links to the previous episode on Chatter in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, where you can watch the video version of this episode and share it with others who are passionate about intentional living. Lastly, if you're looking to bring these kinds of transformative insights into

• 53:19John R. Miles?

  your organization or team, visit johnrmyles.com/speaking to learn how we can work together to ignite purpose, connection, and emotional mastery where it matters most. In our next episode, I'll be joined by Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed podcast, for a powerful discussion on intentional living, personal transformation, and feeding the parts of ourselves that matter most. It's going to be an inspiring conversation, so make sure you tune in.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  It took everything away from my identity that wasn't about being an addict. That was it in the last couple of years of my addiction. That was all I was and all I lived to do, and it consumed every waking moment of my life. How am I going to get the next fix? That's it. That was all there was. It took every part of my identity away, any part of me that was anything different. And ultimately, I think the thing about addiction that really becomes the thing is this belief that I can't do anything else. I'm never going to do anything useful or important or interesting because this thing owns all of me.

• 54:26John R. Miles?

  Thank you for always, for spending your time with us and for being part of the Passion Struck community. Remember, the lessons you learn here are only as powerful as the actions you take. Until next time, live life Passion Struck.