Pod Insights The School of Greatness 1089 How to Overcome & Take Back Control of Your Emotions w/Dr. Susan David About this episode "If you're struggling, struggle is normal, and breath into it. I think it's very powerful to think of who we want to be in this moment."Today's guest is Dr. Susan David, who is one of the world’s leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist. She’s the author of the bestselling book, "Emotional Agility," which describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. In this episode Lewis and Susan discuss what emotional agility is and how to develop it, the science behind values and why they’re so important, the biggest misconception people have about creating change in their lives, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1089Dr. Susan David's previous episode: www.lewishowes.com/604Check out her website: www.susandavid.comThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript 16,000 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lewis Howes? This is episode number 1,089 with Harvard psychologist and bestselling author, Dr. Susan David. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.
0:30 Lewis Howes? Maya Angelou said, "I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it." And Gaver Tully said, "Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems." I am so excited because we have my friend and repeat guest, Dr. Susan David, who is one of the world's leading management thinkers and award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologists. She's the author of the bestselling book, Emotional Agility, which describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. And again, this is the second time I've had the chance to speak with Susan on this show. And if you're interested in hearing more, you can visit lewishouse.com/604 to listen to the previous one.
1:14 Lewis Howes? But this one is amazing. And what we cover is specifically what emotional agility is and how to develop it for yourself to live a better life, how to respond in moments when we feel completely triggered and overwhelmed, the science behind values and why they're so important, how Susan believes we should set goals for ourselves, the biggest misconception people have about creating change in their life, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this at any moment, please share this with a friend who you think would be inspired by this as well, as we're all about spreading greatness and positivity to as many people as possible. And if this is your first time here, welcome. Please subscribe over on Apple Podcasts, just click the subscribe button right now, or on Spotify, or anywhere that you're listening. And at the end, please leave us a rating and review of the part you enjoyed the most
1:59 Lewis Howes? about this episode. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Susan David.
2:07 Lewis Howes? Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Super excited about our guest today, Susan David, who is a Harvard Medical School psychologist, is back in the house. Good to see you Susan, how you doing?
2:18 Susan David? I'm so good and so happy to be with you today.
2:20 Lewis Howes? Very excited. People need you more than ever. I've been thinking about you throughout the year, believe it or not, about just emotional agility, emotional fitness, emotional flexibility, whatever you want to call it.
2:32 Susan David? Yep.
2:33 Lewis Howes? Because I see so many people overwhelmed, overstressed, scared, confused, unclear of everything in their life, whether it be their intimate relationships, their careers, their businesses, their health, their family's health, and this need to grasp onto some sense of control, of some sense of like, I need to know the answer, what's gonna happen? And no one knows what's gonna happen.
2:59 Susan David? Yes.
3:00 Lewis Howes? Emotional agility is more important in learning to develop this skill than ever. And I want to talk about why you believe it's so essential before this, but obviously right now, what is emotional agility for those who don't know? And why do we need to start tapping into it?
3:17 Susan David? So delighted to be back. And absolutely, the moment for emotions and the moment for emotional agility is now. And this has always been true, but of course, this moment that we are in is inviting all of us to dig really deep into our human psychological capacity. So great question to start, which is what is emotional agility? And I'll start with, Lewis, if you don't mind, a very brief definition, but then I'll broaden it out a little bit.
3:49 Lewis Howes? Okay.
3:49 Susan David? So the brief definition is really it's about our ability to be healthy human beings. And what I mean by that is that every day we have, you know, tens of thousands, literally, thoughts, thoughts might be I'm not good enough, I'm confused, emotions might be emotions about loneliness or anxiety, and then stories, stories that we tell ourselves about who we are in the world. Some of our stories were written on our mental chalkboards when we were five years old about what kind of relationships we need and whether we're getting those. And we have these every single day. And when we are experiencing stress and ambiguity and complexity.
4:34 Susan David? Often these thoughts, emotions and stories become more pervasive and they have a greater level of hold on us. And so emotional agility is the psychological skills that help us to deal with this inner world of ours in a way that is fundamentally healthy. And what do I mean by healthy? I mean healthy in a full spectrum of the way we can think about being healthy human beings, which is firstly about being able to be wise and connected and trusting of ourselves. But it's also about being able to then bring our capacity to our relationships, to see other people.
5:19 Susan David? So this is this interpersonal experience. And then beyond that, I think the world culture, the conversations that we're having in our culture at the moment are calling us in the collective to be healthy in the way we see, in the way we interact and in the way we connect. And so emotional agility, and I know we'll dig deeper into it, are the skills that help us to be healthy human beings and they are, you know, foundationally associated with greater levels of well-being, ability to attain our goals and come to our relationships more effectively.
5:53 Lewis Howes? So thoughts, emotions and stories, right?
5:56 Susan David? In a world, our psychology.
5:59 Lewis Howes? Yes, and which one is harder to have more emotional agility around? The thoughts that we've been, you know, thinking our whole lives, the emotions we've been feeling of the stories we've been telling ourselves?
6:12 Susan David? Yeah, so that's such a great question. Well, they they're actually all interconnected. You know, for instance, a lot of times people think that it's all about thoughts, you know, the thoughts that you have drive everything and they all that matter. And of course, um, thoughts are very important, but we also know that how people feel can impact on the kinds of thoughts that they have. So for instance, when we're in more relaxed, positive moods, we actually tend to have a thinking style that is more creative, it'll be okay, um.
6:48 Susan David? And more capacious and open. When we are in a more neutral to negative mood, uh, we have a thinking style that's more editing. What's gonna go wrong? Uh, when we proofread a document, we'll find more errors, contingency planning and so on. Now, again, the, the narrative that we have in society is that we should think positive. And in my work, I push back against this very, very strongly. I push back against the idea that we need to think positive and be positive and be happy. Uh, why? Because that narrative actually takes away from our health and wellbeing. And in ways that I think we should explore, because I think it's really helpful, especially in this moment that we're in.
7:32 Susan David? When we force positivity or when we force positive thinking, it sounds good on the surface. But actually, it undermines our agility, it undermines our resilience and our capacity. In other words, it sounds good, but it actually makes us more fragile.
7:51 Lewis Howes? So give me an example, um, someone, uh, s- s- leaves a nasty comment online about me. Someone cuts me off on, in the, in the road. A family member does something where I feel taken advantage of or neglected, whatever it may be. Our partner does something that they broke their word and it infuriates us and we have this emotion. We, we have a thought that turns into a story and a feeling of, I'm angry in this moment. This triggered me in a way that whatever trigger it hit, it hit a button, I'm angry. So what, should we not think positive in that moment? What should we do if we feel that sense of anger or frustration, resentment, I'm not enoughness?
8:32 Lewis Howes? Whatever this emotion is that holds us down in a, in a lower state of energy? What should we think in that moment if it's not positivity?
8:40 Susan David? Well, the first thing that I'll say in relation to that is this notion that we can just think positive actually doesn't work.
8:49 Lewis Howes? Okay.
8:50 Susan David? So it's not that we've even got a choice, it actually doesn't work. If we, if we, uh, in experiments, if we say to people, don't think about an ice cream. You know, or don't think about, we actually know that in around a minute, we have this amplification effect. Where the person actually thinks about the thing that they're trying not to think about around forty times. And we've all experienced this. We've experienced this when we try not to think about that piece of chocolate cake in the refrigerator. And all we think about is that piece of chocolate cake. We've experienced this when we decide, you know, we're really angry and we're not gonna say anything
9:29 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
9:29 Susan David? to our, whether it's to our boss or to a loved one.
9:32 Lewis Howes? Then we explode.
9:33 Susan David? Yeah, and then we're in a meeting and that thing comes out. So this idea that we should actually think positive. It it actually doesn't work. It doesn't work.
9:45 Lewis Howes? So what works instead?
9:46 Susan David? So, okay, so what we, what we first need to recognize is that having difficult thoughts, emotions and stories is is actually normal. Um, this idea that we need to be happy all the time is is abnormal.
10:04 Susan David? And and I say this for two reasons. Firstly, life's beauty and its fragility are interwoven. So for every single person, the normal experience of life is that we're gonna have illness, we're gonna have loss, we're gonna have breakups. And so when we force ourselves to always be positive, we're not living in the world as it is. We're living in the world as we wish it to be. In other words, forced positivity is not healthy. Forced positivity is denial. Forced positivity is avoidance. Forced positivity is gaslighting yourself. It's basically pretending to yourself that your inner experience is not valid
10:50 Susan David? and trying to paper over your inner experience with something else because culture tells us to. So our difficult thoughts, emotions and stories are actually normal. They are part of our body and psychology's way of adapting to threat, to looking out for things that might be going wrong. We have around sixteen thousand spoken thoughts every single day, many more thousand that course through our mind. And so one of the ways that we start becoming in agile or rigid or inflexible is when we have these normal experiences. And then instead of
11:32 Susan David? Showing up to that with a level of acceptance and graciousness and compassion for ourselves, which is really such a healthy and wholehearted way of being with ourselves. Instead, what we often do is we have them and we say, well, I shouldn't be upset, or I shouldn't be, or my experience is not as bad as other people's. And so what we do is, from the outset, we actually undermine our capacity to be healthy.
12:02 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
12:03 Susan David? And when you do that, you are much more likely to be triggered by someone or to be, you know, enraged by a person who cuts you off on the road, as an example, because you aren't operating from a place of clarity and wisdom in yourself. You're operating from a place of hustling with your emotions. And, and those, you know, that takes cognitive resource, trying to push emotions aside, trying to second guess yourself, actually takes resources. And so you're not able to then bring yourself in a way that's breathing and centered um into your experience.
12:44 Lewis Howes? So, give me some more coaching on this, so I understand. Because I want to make sure that I'm, I'm not doing it, I'm not, I don't have an in emotional agility myself. Uh, you know, I try to really have perspective in life, uh, most of my days, and try to not obsess over things that might cause suffering for me. And even though I might be upset, frustrated, hurt by something in the moment, I don't say that I shun those emotions away, but I try to quickly find perspective, find the gratitude in the moment, figure out how will this benefit me, what can I learn from this moment? As opposed to creating more frustration and stress and anxiety in the moment by reaction,
13:26 Lewis Howes? by getting angry and sad all day about something. I try to say, you know what, what is my vision, what is my purpose? How can I increase the level of my quality of my health, my happiness in this moment? Maybe I'm going to feel sad for, you know, a period of time, but how can I move through it faster with more agility? Uh, wha- what can I be thinking about then? Should I be holding on to these emotions longer? Is it okay to have perspective and gratitude and say, you know what? That sucked, I don't like it, but I'm going to focus on the next moment in my life. What do you?
13:58 Susan David? Yeah, so I think what you describe is such a beautiful example of emotional agility in so many ways. If we think about the opposite of emotional agility, what I've already described is this idea that these inner experiences are normal. And so what we wanna do when we are emotionally agile human beings is we wanna come to our inner experiences with a level of a connection with them.
14:25 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
14:25 Susan David? But we also don't want them to drive us.
14:29 Lewis Howes? Right.
14:29 Susan David? Because, you know, you, in that moment, you are not defined by a single emotion. You are a person with values and intentions and relationships and wisdom and breathing and there's so much more to you than your emotion in that very moment. So if we think about emotional in agility, um, what we're doing when we are in agile is we have a thought.
14:57 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
14:57 Susan David? The thought might be, I'm not good enough.
15:01 Susan David? We have an emotion, the emotion might be this feeling of stress or the story. And what we do is we get hooked into this experience. We start treating it as fact. We start letting it dictate our actions. So we'll say something like, well, you said such and such and it made me feel this and that's why I left the room. In other words, we either give our power over to the person, basically telling them that they were responsible for our action.
15:31 Lewis Howes? You made me feel this way.
15:32 Susan David? You, you made me feel this way, or we give our power over to that single emotion, okay? My emotion told me to do such and such, so I did it. And, and what we're doing in both of those circumstances is we're not being emotionally agile because we're not being appropriate to the circumstance, which is a circumstance that has, you know, different aspects of how we can bring ourselves to it.
15:59 Lewis Howes? So are we, oh, in that scenario, are we being either a victim to the person or a victim to our own emotions? Is that what I'm hearing you say?
16:07 Susan David? And both, very often. I mean, it depends on the context, but of course, you know, when we say to someone, when we say to someone, I did this and you drove me to it.
16:20 Susan David? What we are doing is we are giving all of our power to that person. And when we say to ourselves, I'm feeling something or I'm thinking something and therefore I'm doing it. We are giving all of our power over to that single thought. You know, whether that thought is I don't want to exercise today, or the thought is something else. We're giving our power over to that. So these are signs of rigidity. You know, rigidity by definition is when you have these experiences. But instead of noticing them in a way that's flexible and light and
17:03 Susan David? not too clenched into them.
17:08 Susan David? We we can we can either hold on to them and let them drop us, or we can notice them in a way that's curious and compassionate. And in doing so, what we do is we we are able to step into a different place. And so what you describe in your example, which is you you're not letting your emotion call the shots. But rather you stepping into the place of your values.
17:33 Lewis Howes? Your vision, your values, what you want to create, who you want to be.
17:36 Susan David? Correct, correct. And that is the cornerstone of emotional agility. The the only thing that I would say in the example that you gave, Lewis, is that very often our emotions actually contain signposts of things that we care about. So not.
17:52 Lewis Howes? Would it also be, would it all be something we care about or something we also haven't healed or faced?
17:57 Susan David? Yes, something that matters, like something that matters to us. So not every emotion, of course, needs to be acted upon. Um, but our emotions are data. So the way that I often think about this is our emotions are data, not directives. So what do I mean by our emotions are data? If people are listening right now and they think back over the past couple of weeks or months. And if you imagine having a piece of paper and writing on that piece of paper, an emotion that you've been experiencing. So loneliness, boredom, guilt, sadness, anxiety, grief. Okay, whatever that emotional experience is.
18:42 Susan David? Inagility is when you either take that piece of paper and throw it away and pretend to be positive or avoid it or get lost in Netflix.
18:53 Susan David? But inagility by the same token is where we aren't then learning from those emotions. And so if you have those emotions on an imaginary piece of paper,
19:04 Susan David? forced or toxic positivity might say to you, turn that piece of paper over and now write what you grateful for. Write what you think you should be focusing on and positive about. But what I'm doing in emotional agility is I'm actually inviting a very different conversation with the self. On the one side of the piece of paper, you've got the emotion. On the other side of the piece of paper, what is that emotion signaling to you about your needs or about what matters? And so Lewis, like an example might be boredom might be signaling that I need more growth in my work. And it's a signpost that I need to be taking action in that direction.
19:46 Susan David? Loneliness, we can be lonely in a relationship, we can be lonely in a crowd. We can be lonely in a house full of people that we with twenty four seven. Because we can literally feel our wall go up with our loved one as we pass and brush against one another in the kitchen. And loneliness might signpost that you need more intimacy and connection. Grief, grief is love looking for its home. You know, grief is is signposting that there is love that you've had in a relationship or in an experience and inviting you to reconnect with that.
20:28 Susan David? And so maybe that helps to give some of the distinction in the example that that you give, which is, I'm not anti-happiness at all, you know, I love being happy. But but when we push aside normal human experiences.
20:46 Susan David? We fail to learn from them.
20:50 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
20:50 Susan David? And to therefore be adaptive to the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
20:57 Lewis Howes? And obviously, we're all unique human beings with our own experiences and timelines of things. But if a value of ours that we choose is I want to live a healthy, happy, whole life. And focusing on something that is hurting me or stressing me or making me angry or resentful or uh and focusing on it for a very long period of time would be against that value. Is that right? Or am I missing something there? It's not, it's not dismissing dismissing it and saying, I don't feel angry in this moment. I'm gonna like, you know, act like I'm happy when someone, whatever, steals my money or beats me in the face or something. But it's, how do we get back to the value quickly?
21:37 Susan David? So that's such a, that's such an important, important part of this work, which is that often when people have these difficult emotions, uh what we do is we, we often have a tendency to do what I call bottling.
21:53 Lewis Howes? Bottling.
21:54 Susan David? Bottling, yes. Bottling with the South African, Australia, New Zealand, Bostonian accent. Um bottling is when you push aside the emotions. So bottling is the example of forced positivity. Or when you say, I've just got too much to do. I just don't want to go there. Or, you know, I'm trying to get on with this project. So bottling is when you have a difficult emotional experience and you push it aside. And often what you're doing is you're pushing it aside with really good intentions, which is you're trying to get on with your day or your life. Um but bottling actually is associated over time with lower levels of uh well-being, more burnout, uh hitting walls more often.
22:38 Susan David? And more often actually having experiences when the world changes around you. You know, you lose your job or COVID hits, where you actually haven't been practicing emotional skills.
22:52 Susan David? And so now you actually are completely at a loss with how to deal with a situation that is fundamentally out of control.
23:00 Lewis Howes? Give me, give me a, give me a practical example of how we can not bottle, but also be a functional human on a day to day level. Our, our boyfriend neglects us, our spouse says, breaks their word in a moment and we're at dinner. Where our boss does something that offends us in the middle of day. How do we process emotions, not bottle them, but also not, you know, not sit here all day and be like, ah, I'm expressing myself and throwing up my emotions on everyone, you know?
23:35 Susan David? Yeah, no, completely. I mean, the opposite of bottling is brooding. And brooding is where we get stuck in our emotions. We're so busy focused on why we feel what we feel. And we've been wronged and it's unjust and we're getting victimized by our Twitter feed or what's, you know, we're so victimized that that in of itself looks very different to bottling, but it's just as unhealthy. And it's almost like, you know, if I think about it in, in, um, a, a visual metaphor for this, it's almost like when we bottle, we've got this big pile of emotion books and we're holding them so tightly, so far away from us that we drop the books.
24:17 Susan David? When we're brooding, we are holding the books so tightly to our hearts that we are unable to be in our relationship, to see our loved ones, to see their pain. And so we, both of those are examples of emotional inagility. So what does emotional agility look like? Well, I think there's some really important components to this. The first. Is what I've come to call in my work a gentle acceptance.
24:48 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
24:49 Susan David? And gentle acceptance, I think, is this really beautiful idea. That um we we often see when we are at a restaurant. Where we might see, uh you know, see a caregiver, a parent with a little child. And what do you start seeing in this moment? You often see this situation unfold in front of you. The little child runs off from its parents or caregiver. Um it turns to look back to see that the parents or caregiver are still there. And then when it makes sure that, yes, the the I'm safe, you know, I'm safe. If something goes wrong, someone will come in and intercede and help me.
25:34 Susan David? What does the child do? The child giggles even more and runs even further away from the caregiver. So what is going on here is so remarkably beautiful. And that is that the the caregiver is providing to the child. What in psychological terms is called a secure base.
25:59 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
26:00 Susan David? The secure base is this idea that. The knowledge that this person has my back. Is actually what allows me to grow, to be curious, to explore. And to move forward in the world. Now, if we take that idea and we apply it to the self. If we take this idea that we have our own back, and what does having our own back look like? It means being compassionate and kind to ourselves, not invalidating ourselves or telling ourselves that we shouldn't feel what we feel. Having our own back actually allows us.
26:45 Susan David? Literally to explore, to take risks, to be vulnerable, to give love, to put your hand up for a business opportunity. Because you know that if something goes wrong, that you will be forgiving and kind to yourself.
27:03 Lewis Howes? You've got your own back, but a lot of us, a lot of us, a lot of us beat our, beat our back up when we do something that's not right. We, we, you know, are like stupid, I should never do that again. What were you thinking? How, you know, of course you couldn't have accomplished this or whatever. Of course you got, you got rejected again because you're, you're stupid, you're no good, you'll never do anything. We say these things, uh, you know, or I should say, I've said these things in the past. I don't want to say all of us, but I've said these things and it's, it's, I've had feelings in my younger life where I'd never had my own back.
27:36 Susan David? Yes, and it's, it's this example firstly of recognizing that sometimes these stories have arisen for a time and a place where actually at one point they might have been functional. Okay. And what do I mean by that? I mean, often these stories can unfold in childhood or in trying to prove to another person, a, a teacher, caregiver, and this constant feeling of unworthiness can actually be something that was actually really functional for a time, but has now reached a point in its life where it's no longer serving you. And so this, this idea of functionality is really important. But I think the other reason that often people don't have their own backs is
28:21 Susan David? there is this myth that we, we, you know, need to keep on pushing ourselves and driving ourselves. And we see it everywhere, you know, in the moment, in the moment, in the shadow of illness, of death, of COVID, of such pain and heartache. It was so remarkable to me that we would go on social media and we would see things saying things like, you know, if you didn't use your time in quarantine to dust off your screenplay or to start your own business, it's not that you didn't lack the time, it's that you lacked the discipline. You know, even in the moment of the most remarkable human pain.
29:06 Susan David? Our culture still drives us to feel that we are in a never ending Iron Man or Iron Woman competition. Where having your own back feels weak or lazy or letting yourself off the hook. But actually, it is the opposite. It is the opposite when we have our own back. And I can talk practically, if that's helpful.
29:28 Lewis Howes? Yeah, go ahead.
29:29 Susan David? Of what that actually looks like, but it's having your own back that's that's really important. So the first aspect of this is like this idea that I've mentioned before, which is just gentle acceptance. And gentle acceptance is not the same as passive resignation. It doesn't mean, oh, my goodness, I am what I am. This is terrible. There's nothing I can do. Gentle acceptance is the idea that if you went out and it was raining, you would just be, oh, okay, it's raining. You know, that's gentle acceptance. Bottling would be saying, I'm going to ignore the fact that it's raining and therefore I'm not going to take my umbrella. And I'm going to think positive or I'm gonna just get on with my day. That's bottling. Brooding is like, oh, my goodness, like, why does it always rain when I'm trying to,
30:14 Susan David? you know, I'm being facetious here, but those are the differences.
30:16 Lewis Howes? Sure.
30:16 Susan David? So gentle acceptance is really this idea that there is no right or wrong way to feel or think about any situation. Your emotions and your thoughts come up every day, thousands of them, in a way that is designed to help you to be in the world. Now, it doesn't mean the emotion is fact. Our emotions are data, not directives. Just because I feel something doesn't mean I need to act on it. But gentle acceptance is really important.
30:49 Lewis Howes? And it doesn't always mean it's it's a, yeah, it's real. It could be a story that's made up, or it could be an interpretation of a scenario that we tend to hold on to and react to, right?
31:01 Susan David? Yes, very much so, very much so. Because when we when we are You know, we carry with us, of course, stories from many situations and relationships and how we've interacted. And so, you know, when we, when we are hooked, what we are often doing is we're giving those weight. And when we agile, we're rather giving the context the weight. We're saying, this is the person in front of me that loves me. And even though my story is telling me that I'm unworthy, the person in front of me is showing love. So gentle acceptance is really important, but how else do we give ourselves self compassion? How else do we have our own back? They're just really some, some practical ways.
31:45 Susan David? And I can give some examples that are more in the moment, but also longer term. The first is, um, is connecting with your child inside of you. And really what I mean by that is, there is for every single person listening. There is a child inside of you that is saying, see me. You know, love me, hold me, listen to me. And in the busyness of our lives, we often get so stuck in our goals or in our busyness or in the things that we're trying to do in our autopilot.
32:29 Susan David? That we forget to nurture that child inside of us that had hopes and dreams and that is still there and has needs. And so a really powerful way to start just connecting with yourself in a way that is compassionate is to think of the child inside of you. And to ask the child what the child needs. The child may be saying, I need more joy. You know, that, that I've lost my spontaneous spark. And yes, I might be in quarantine, but I can pitch a tent on the, the dining room floor and have a picnic.
33:13 Susan David? Like I just need that sense of quirk or I can dance around the room. There's something that that child needs. The child might be needing.
33:24 Susan David? Kindness. The child might be saying, you need rest. So just asking what the child needs. Another thing that we can do is, as human beings, we're very, very tactile. And especially at a time where there is such a paucity of human touch. The ability, literally just to remind yourself that you are here. Because, because we live our, our lives so often in our heads. And we often forget that we are, you know, tactile human beings. And so
34:09 Susan David? often when doctors, for instance, are going in to give patients bad news. We ask them to do this. It's this just breathing grounding technique that reminds you that you are here. And then a last example, uh, and you know, I've got other practical ways. I think it's going to be helpful for us to think about how we unhook from difficult
34:32 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
34:32 Susan David? difficult things. And I think gentle acceptance is one of his first things. But another example is, um,
34:39 Susan David? just thinking for a moment that if a child or someone that you loved came to you and said, I messed up.
34:51 Susan David? What would you do? Would you punish them? Tell them they're stupid? Tell them that they are unlovable? Or would you take them in your arms and hold them? And when you take them in your arms and you hold them, you're not pretending that they didn't do the thing. You're not in denial. Rather, you are doing what I actually described a little bit in my TED Talk. This idea, this, this word, sabo bona. Sabo bona is the Zulu word for hello. And I grew up in South Africa and you hear it every day on the street. Sabo bona, yebwa sabo bona.
35:34 Susan David? It's such a everyday word. But what does sabo bona mean? Sabo bona literally translated means I see you. And by seeing you, I bring you into being. And so when we sabo bona ourselves.
35:52 Susan David? What this does is it actually galvanizes us, it strengthens us to find our way forward in the world.
36:03 Lewis Howes? Yeah, uh, this is powerful. I went on to pack this a little bit, but I'm curious. You, how long have you been married for?
36:12 Susan David? I'm, I've been married for twenty six years.
36:15 Lewis Howes? Twenty six years. What's been the biggest challenge personally for you in your marriage on uh navigating emotional agility? As someone who's the top expert in this and studying this daily and talking about it, what have you dealt with that's been hard for you?
36:34 Susan David? Yeah, so even though I live and breathe this, of course, I, you know, get hooked in emotions and I, you know, these are, these are practices that we become better at over time. And I remember this really interesting example that I had many years ago where I, I had been writing a book and I mentioned the title of my book to a very, very famous esteemed psychologist whose name I will not mention. And um in, in the, the talking about this book that I was writing that I'd invested years into.
37:15 Lewis Howes? Your life.
37:16 Susan David? Uh, my life into, I literally saw this person's facial expression change and a couple of months later.
37:23 Lewis Howes? In a negative way or in a positive way?
37:25 Susan David? In, in a way that was like, I could see that I'd said too much.
37:31 Susan David? And I saw him registering something that made me feel a sense of disquiet. So a couple of months later, I'm sitting in Starbucks, working on this book and I got a voicemail from this colleague saying to me that he had been writing a book and he was struggling with the title and he hoped I didn't mind him using.
37:56 Susan David? My title for this book.
37:58 Lewis Howes? No, no.
37:59 Susan David? Kid you not, kid you not.
38:00 Lewis Howes? How hoped you wouldn't mind?
38:02 Susan David? Yeah.
38:02 Lewis Howes? What do you mean? This is your book.
38:03 Susan David? And the justification and it was like, you know, there are many other titles and you've got lots of time to to develop some, you know, and and so he left this message. So what was really interesting in this example was I called my husband and my husband is a physician. My husband answers the phone that day as he sometimes does, which is Susan can't talk now. I've got a patient on the table waiting for emergency procedure. Okay.
38:31 Lewis Howes? Right.
38:31 Susan David? And and we've all been in that situation, the the the trap door to your heart opens and you start like the one time when I need them, they're not available, like we stopped doing this story.
38:42 Lewis Howes? They don't care about me.
38:43 Susan David? Yeah, I do this whole thing. And so what's so interesting is I is I then start planning that when my husband's callback comes, which I know it will, it's going to be my turn to be unavailable.
38:59 Lewis Howes? Oh, my gosh.
39:00 Susan David? Okay, but don't we all do this? You know, what's what's remarkable is that we can put a man on the moon. We can automate pizza delivery so you do not need to interact with another human being. And yet the stuff that stuffs us up time and time again in our relationships, in the way we come to the world is is in agility. When we get stuck in our stories, our narratives, our monkey mind, our planning, our getting hooked on being right and the other person's wrong. And so there I spent three days, three days in a snit with my husband.
39:41 Lewis Howes? Thinking, when can I get back? When can I get back at my husband for not? Yeah.
39:45 Susan David? Not not not with not with my colleague, but with my husband, whose only prime was trying to save his patient's life.
39:54 Lewis Howes? Yeah, right. But he had to go in five minutes right now.
39:56 Susan David? Yeah, you know, and I'm using this as an example, but the reason I use it as an example is because if you had to say to me, who do you want to be in your relationship? What is the value that you wanna bring to the relationship? The value would have been, I want what I call a clean relationship. What I mean by a clean relationship is a relationship in which my husband is allowed to do his work without worrying I'm gonna serve divorce papers on him.
40:23 Lewis Howes? Right.
40:24 Susan David? So, we all do this, we all do this, and, and the, the, the, the magic, the magic of the human moment is that we think we are so strategic and logical and yet the magic is in these skills. Because you can be, you can be a child growing up with all the knowledge you want in the world, but one day your heart will be broken, one day you will lose your job. Life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. And it's your capacity to manage your emotions and to step out of them and to be compassionate and to be values connected, that's helpful. So to answer your question, I'm not immune from any of this.
41:07 Susan David? I think what has been the biggest learning for me has been firstly to ask myself much more frequently questions like, I may be right, but is my response serving me? You know, I may be right, but is my response bringing me closer to being the person that I most wanna be, the leader that I most wanna be, the parent that I most wanna be? That has been a really, really helpful way of being. Um, and then I think the other part of it that's been really helpful is holding ourselves lightly, you know, holding our emotions lightly. And what that sometimes means is not taking ourselves so seriously
41:52 Susan David? that we get so stuck in our story, that we are unable to just like.
42:01 Susan David? Laugh at the moment, which is these two human beings muddling their way through the world. Uh trying to raise a family or as listeners will experience, we didn't get an instruction booklet for COVID. And it is a it it is a tragedy. And yet, one of the most beautiful ways we can perspective take is to just for a moment imagine. And I'm not in a tragedy, I'm in a comedy, you know.
42:32 Lewis Howes? Right.
42:32 Susan David? Right now, I'm in a comedy where I've got like two kids at home that I'm homeschooling. I haven't been to a restaurant in a year. Like there's something, you know, and it's all because of this thing that I had no say in. And and it's a tragedy and yet I I think I can hold it lightly while not denying.
42:55 Lewis Howes? Right.
42:56 Susan David? The heartache.
42:57 Lewis Howes? So what's the difference between, you know, reframing that you're living in a comedy as opposed to the tragedy? Uh you know, retelling the story and shifting the perspective. But not living in a state of uh forced positivity. What's the difference there between, well, okay, let's reshape the story. But not live in forced positivity. Where's that fine line?
43:19 Susan David? So forced, so when we're doing, when we're doing forced positivity, we're basically not showing up to the story. Um we're not showing up to the learning of it.
43:28 Lewis Howes? We're denying it.
43:29 Susan David? We're denying it.
43:30 Lewis Howes? We're saying, this isn't happening, I'm happy, this is not real.
43:34 Susan David? Yes.
43:34 Lewis Howes? Got you.
43:35 Susan David? Forced positivity is, I think, one of the
43:40 Susan David? greatest contributors to decreases in human well being right now.
43:48 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
43:49 Susan David? Because what it does is it doesn't allow people the space to or even the permission to process normal experience. So what do we do then? What do we do then that that that helps us? What do we do then that's effective? And like, what are these differences? A a key difference is this this acceptance, this gentle acceptance, but there are others. So for instance, when you say something like um.
44:20 Susan David? I'm stressed.
44:23 Susan David? False positivity might be pretending that you're not or trying to find things that you're grateful for.
44:29 Susan David? Emotional agility is saying, I'm stressed. I'm showing up to that stress with gentle acceptance. But then my emotions are data. So how do I perspective take from those emotions? How do I get perspective so that I'm not stuck in the emotion? But rather learning from the emotion and actually living my life. So here's some some strategies that I think are really um very, very important. The first is uh what is called emotion granularity. So there's often people when they experiencing difficult emotions will use big umbrella terms to describe what it is we experiencing.
45:11 Lewis Howes? I'm always feeling this way. I'm never getting what I need. This is.
45:15 Susan David? Yeah, you know, or how was your day stressful? How are you feeling right now?
45:20 Lewis Howes? I'm overwhelmed.
45:20 Susan David? I'm overwhelmed. So often what we do is we use these very big umbrella labels to describe what it is that we're feeling. But if you think about it, your body, your psychology, your motivation, your ability to take action cannot respond effectively to something that feels so vague as stress. There is a world of difference between stress and disappointment, stress and depletion, stress and that knowing feeling of I'm in the wrong job or the wrong career. So when you, instead of just saying I'm stressed, you say to yourself, what are two other things? What are two other options that I could use to describe what I'm feeling right now?
46:02 Susan David? What you're doing is you're going beyond the umbrella and it's very simple. You're just saying, I'm calling myself angry, but what else might be happening here? And this thing called emotion granularity is so extraordinarily powerful. Because what it does in the moment. Of saying, I'm depleted, I need support, or I'm bored, I'm in the wrong job. In that moment, what you are doing is you are starting to activate what is called the readiness potential in your brain. And it's the part of you in your psychology that helps you to understand what the cause is of the emotion, and also what you need to do in response
46:45 Susan David? to that emotion. And, and that is, um, this skill sounds so subtle, but it is associated even in children, in longitudinal studies, children who have greater levels of emotion granularity, have high levels of wellbeing, ability to delay gratification and so on. Because you can imagine if you're a sixteen year old child, and someone says to you, oh, let's let the air out of the principal's car tires. And you're like, oh, that sounds exciting. And excitement is the emotion, that's the somberly emotion. But then underneath it, actually, you've got disquiet or anxiety. If you haven't learnt how to connect with
47:28 Susan David? that more subtle emotion underneath it, you're going to be constantly swept away about peer pressure, what other people are doing. Whereas when you're connecting with your emotions in a more granular way, you are grounding yourself in yourself. And, and there's, I had this example of a, a client many years ago, and it was just a beautiful example, it came to mind as we were talking of, this client always used to say things like, uh, he used to describe everything as angry. He would say, you know, I'm angry, my team's angry, my wife's angry. And that was his word, his word was angry. And I started to say to him, you know, what are, you use this, you use this label a lot. What are two other
48:12 Susan David? words that you could use to describe? And so he started saying, you know, I'm in a new role, and maybe I'm not angry, maybe I'm actually scared.
48:23 Susan David? And maybe my team's not angry, maybe my team, because they've had a prior bad experience, is distrustful. Now, you can see that if you go into a meeting with I'm angry and they angry, it's a very different meeting. Then I'm going into this meeting scared and my team's going in looking for opportunities to build trust. And a couple of, you know, months after this conversation, I I was very good friends with him. He was he was a long term friend of mine. I went out with um him and his wife for dinner and his wife said that this absolutely changed their relationship. Because he would say to her, you angry?
49:08 Susan David? And she would say, I'm not angry, it's just the end of the day and I'm really tired, or I just need support. So that's one way that we can start now moving out of emotions, driving us into us creating psychological space between us and the emotions. I've got other practical strategies if it's helpful.
49:29 Lewis Howes? Sure, I I'm curious, what is, is it important for us to label our emotions? And identify as our emotions, or are we not our emotions, whether just a thing we're feeling in a moment?
49:42 Susan David? Well, this, yeah, this this is, this actually so beautifully connects with something else that that may be helpful to people, so. Our emotions are part of us, we are not our emotions. Um but often the language that we use is language that over identifies ourselves with our emotions. So when we say something like, I am sad, I am angry. What you are doing linguistically is you are saying, I am all of me, one hundred percent of me, is that emotion.
50:22 Lewis Howes? That's not good.
50:23 Susan David? Yeah, there's no space for anything else. There's no space for breathing, for wisdom, for intention, values, any other parts of ourselves.
50:31 Lewis Howes? What should we say instead?
50:34 Susan David? So a a really good way of thinking about this is when you say I'm sad, it's almost as if you are.
50:43 Susan David? If you imagine a cloud in the sky and when you say I'm sad, it's almost like you have become the cloud, you know, you have become the sad cloud. Um, but actually a really beautiful effective way of getting space between yourself and the emotion is by simply noticing it for what it is. So I am sad. I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad. I'm being undermined. I'm noticing this is my thought that I'm being undermined. I'm not good enough. I'm noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story.
51:22 Susan David? And what you do here is you're moving from I am sad, I am the cloud into doing in psychological terms, what's called the meta view, the ability to helicopter above your emotions. And when you do this, when you say I'm noticing the thought, the emotion, the feeling for what it is. It's a thought, it's an emotion, it's a feeling for what it is. It's not a fact. It's a thought, emotion, a feeling. Um, when you do this, what you're doing is you you move away from being the cloud and you become the sky. You are literally linguistically starting to create space that allows you to breathe
52:05 Susan David? into the experience and choose how you want to respond.
52:09 Lewis Howes? How important is it for us to use different language verbally and internally speaking to ourselves when we're expressing or talking about our feelings and emotions?
52:22 Susan David? Uh, it's it's actually really important and I think it's one of the most um almost under recognized powers that we as human beings have. And I don't mean, again, this, I said such and such to myself, now I'm going to ignore it and just be positive. Um, in fact, there's a very large body of research that shows that simply doing positive affirmations doesn't actually work, that again, there's this amplification or rebound effect. So what do we want to do instead? How do we, how do we draw on the wisdom of language or self-talk in ways that are powerful? So there there are a couple of aspects to this. The first is
53:07 Susan David? I'm sure every person who's listening has had this experience where you are, you know, so angry because your telephone bill is wrong yet again. And you have tried three hundred and sixty three times to get hold of another human being. And finally, you get hold of a human being to discuss the telephone bill or whatever it is with them. And you decide that you are going to give the person a piece of your mind. Okay, so what you're doing there is you are hooked, you are immersed by that emotion. Okay, then there's this little voice that goes off inside your head that says,
53:50 Susan David? Suzie, if you just tell this person how you feel, she's going to conveniently lose your file or never call you back again. Um, and so you find the ability to both feel the feeling, but to also rise above it. And what I described earlier about that meta view is exactly an example of that you developing a meta view. So how else do we do it? So labeling emotions effectively, moving from I am to noticing your thoughts, emotions, stories for what they are. Another strategy that's really, really powerful is often when people are feeling stuck, like really stuck, I don't know what to do about this relationship or this job or
54:32 Susan David? I I just feel stuck and they go and they see a psychologist or they see a coach. And the coach says to them, well, what do you think you should do in this situation? And the person says to the coach, I've got no idea. That's why I'm here. Okay, I am stuck by definition. That's why I'm here with you, yeah. That's why I'm here. Then the coach says to the person, well, who is someone whose wisdom you really value, who you know loves and cares for you, who wants the best for you? Let's imagine for a moment that we bring this person into the room.
55:11 Susan David? What is this person telling you to do about the situation?
55:18 Susan David? And here, what does the client do? They start saying, well, they would advise me to do this and they would advise me to do that. And it's the most remarkable thing to see. Because of course, there is no imaginary person in the room. It is just the two of you. So what has happened when we are stuck, we are in one perspective, one way of seeing things. When we bring an imaginary other person into the room, it's not that that person is there giving you advice, but it's that perspective taking that allows you to move from that space into that alternative perspective. And so any future person is actually giving themselves their own advice.
56:02 Susan David? But they're doing it by perspective taking. And of course, perspective taking is the hallmark of empathy. You know, when you are empathetic towards another person, you are moving from your emotional space into the emotional space of another person. And so this perspective taking capacity is a hallmark of emotional effectiveness.
56:21 Lewis Howes? How, it reminds me of, I think in terms of sports analogies as a former athlete, it reminds me of when I would doubt myself before a big game, I would step into an alter ego. And I would say, well, what would my, you know, the best version of myself or this former great athlete in my position, what would they become? What would they do? How would they show up, you know?
56:43 Susan David? Yes.
56:44 Lewis Howes? And it's stepping into, you know, triggering a different being inside of you in a sense to show up differently in that moment. So you don't crumble to your emotions, your feelings and and hold on to them, but rise to something greater in that moment.
57:00 Susan David? It is so powerful, Lewis. That's such a beautiful example. It reminds me a little bit of, um.
57:08 Susan David? LeBron James.
57:11 Susan David? And he was describing making a big decision. And how he started saying, you know, not what should I do? But talking to himself in the third person. So it's like, instead of what should I do? So Suzy, what's a good thing to do right now? And what I'm doing is I'm talking to myself and we all talk to ourselves. In fact, it's a, it's a, we just, it, it just depends on how we talk to ourselves. Um, but what we're doing is we're talking to ourselves in the third person and we're bringing a different perspective. And that third person perspective taking is a core way that we get unstuck. And again, why are we getting unstuck? Why do we care about getting unstuck? We care about getting unstuck because what we're trying to do is we're trying to move
57:57 Susan David? from our emotional thought or story driving us in ways that are not helpful or connected to the moment and who we want to be in the moment. So what we're doing is we are not ignoring them. We're letting them loosen their grip over us so that we can step with power into our intentions and our values.
58:23 Lewis Howes? And what is the science behind values and individuals developing their personal values or principles for their life? Uh, and how it will support them with, again, following up on their habits and just improving their life in general? How important is it to have values? How do we create those values?
58:43 Susan David? It's extremely, extremely important. Values are often seen as being these abstract ideas, you know, things that are written on walls and businesses. Um, I'll give you some examples of how values come into play. And one of the main ways that they come into play is by protecting us against what is called social contagion. So you'd ask for some of the science around this and, and an example is that all of us are subject to social contagion. And social contagion is the idea that over time, without even becoming aware of it, certain behaviors become normalized. So, uh, we can.
59:29 Susan David? Suddenly realize that, you know, from going, you're meeting with a team and like no one's on their phone. Now, all of a sudden, everyone's on their phone. Or someone goes into an elevator, one person takes out their phone, now everyone does. Uh, there've been really fascinating studies showing that if you, in non-COVID times, are on an airplane and your seat partner, who you do not even know, buys candy, your likelihood of buying candy increases seventy percent.
1:00:01 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:00:02 Susan David? It's, it's, uh, and, and it was to the.
1:00:04 Lewis Howes? Yeah, Robert Cialdini talks about this in Social Proof in his book Influence.
1:00:08 Susan David? Yes.
1:00:09 Lewis Howes? You know, if you see a long line, you're more likely to go in that line than a store with no line because, hey, more people are over here, so it must be better or something, right? It's like, if everyone's looking up, you're gonna look up and be, you know.
1:00:21 Susan David? Yeah, and it's, it's really remarkable. Yeah, and, and what, what he describes is just so powerful. It's really remarkable. I mean, large-scale epidemiological studies show that if someone in your social network, you do not even need to know the person. There could be two or three degrees of separation from you. If they put on weight, stop exercising, um, I mean, these are just the studies that I'm citing. Get divorced, your likelihood of doing those things increases.
1:00:50 Lewis Howes? Really? If people you don't even know, but are connected to someone else or getting divorced, you're like, well, if they did it, then I guess I could do it.
1:00:57 Susan David? It starts to normalize behaviors within social. And both positive, you know, both more positive behaviors and more negative. But what is the impact for us? And of course, we, we saw this with the, with the buying toilet paper scourge at the beginning of COVID. Like, what is going on there? There's a so, there's a social contagion that is actually happening. Now, how does this impact us? It impacts us because it can lead to us engaging in behaviors that are not reflective of who we want to be. Suddenly, we, you know, are wanting to drive our next-door neighbor's car or live in our next-door neighbor's house. I mean, not literally, I mean, in, in terms of wanting the desires of other people.
1:01:41 Susan David? Or we, everyone else is wearing a particular item of clothing and now we feel we need to own that piece of clothing. And it operates in such profound ways. So for instance. If we look at, um, if we look at stereotyping, we often think of stereotyping as something that other people have about us. But what we know is that we can actually internalize stereotypes. And then in times of stress, we actually turn those stereotypes against ourselves. So if you, for instance, are a first generation collegegoer, and you've grown up in a community that says, oh, we don't go to college, we don't go to college here, we're not, we don't go to college, but you
1:02:25 Susan David? fight it, you try, and you decide that you are gonna go to college, you work really hard. You go to college, and then, as will happen at some point, you fail your first test. At that point, around two thirds of those people will drop out. And they'll start saying things like, everyone was right.
1:02:51 Lewis Howes? Ooh.
1:02:51 Susan David? I wasn't cut out for it. So then, this is how value is coming. We take these people and we say to them, spend ten minutes at the beginning of your college, and literally ten minutes, writing down why you're doing this college degree, why it's important, what your values are, what your purpose is here. Or if you're a woman in science, write down why it is that you're going into this profession. What we know is that this simple exercise of values affirmation, the simple process of saying, this is what's important to me, it doesn't need to be convoluted, protects those people two and three years down the track.
1:03:34 Lewis Howes? From dropping out, wow.
1:03:36 Susan David? Yeah.
1:03:37 Lewis Howes? Just because if they, if they don't create the value, if we don't create values, then we're, is it that much easier for us to say, well, this is hard, and I'm just gonna stop doing what I wanna do, because I don't know why I'm doing it in the first place?
1:03:50 Susan David? Well, firstly, values provide the keel that keeps you steady even when things are tough.
1:03:56 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
1:03:57 Susan David? If you're writing a book, if you're taking on a really difficult project, you're gonna run into hard times, and keeping your eye on the prize, and what I mean by prize here is the values-based prize of why it is that you're doing something, your one-two goal, is gonna help to sustain you. Uh, but another reason that it protects you is because... If because social contagion is so strong. And and I mean literally from like the phone that we pick up to the Instagram account that we go on to like. Every aspect of our lives. It's so strong, the pull is so powerful.
1:04:38 Susan David? That when we don't have a sense of who we wanna be, what's important to us. We literally are then just winging it every single day.
1:04:48 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
1:04:50 Lewis Howes? We have no guide, we have no direction, we have nothing that we're working towards. Uh even when we're distracted and that's that's why I think that, you know, sports for me was really helpful to give me certain practical tools as an athlete because. If we didn't have a goal for the season, if we didn't have weekly goals, if we didn't have, uh, you know, a support system. Uh, coaches, game film to review what worked, what didn't work as data. And something to continue to work towards, we'd have been like, why am I working so hard? Why am I, why am I struggling so much? It's this challenging to build this momentum on this sport or this college course or whatever.
1:05:29 Lewis Howes? And I would just, I'd probably easily give up, but when we have something greater we're working towards, we're more committed to the process is what I'm hearing you say.
1:05:36 Susan David? Yeah, yes, absolutely. And and and also just related to that is is that. Goals can be have two goals or there can be one to two goals.
1:05:47 Lewis Howes? Hmm, what's the difference?
1:05:48 Susan David? Well, a have to goal is a goal that is derived out of a sense of shame or obligation. You know, someone is telling.
1:05:57 Lewis Howes? My parents are needing me to finish medical school or whatever, yeah.
1:06:00 Susan David? You know, that that's a have to goal or my doctor told me that I need to do A, B, C, otherwise I'm gonna die. You know, a have to goal is a goal that is derived out of a sense of shame or obligation. And when you have a have to goal, there is, there is literally a.
1:06:20 Susan David? Physiological response that differs internally with the way you approach that goal. And I'll give you an example, if you've got a have to goal that says, you know, I have to be, I have to be fit, or I have to eat healthily, then um actually, and you're like, I'm gonna rely on willpower in order to, because when you have a have to goal, you have to rely on willpower. So now you open the refrigerator and your brain processes taste attributes. One hundred and ninety five milliseconds before you even know whether you're eating that thing in the refrigerator or not.
1:07:00 Susan David? In other words, you think that you're gonna be using your willpower, but willpower doesn't even come into it. Your brain knows whether you are gonna eat that thing in the refrigerator.
1:07:11 Lewis Howes? It's guiding you, yes.
1:07:12 Susan David? Guiding you, okay. So have to goals literally ramp up temptation. They ramp up resistance and they down ramp our ability to be sustained. A want to goal is a goal that is derived out of a sense of my values. What is important to me? What do I hold to? What am I trying to create here? And so a want to goal is a goal that is intrinsically derived because it is personally meaningful to you. And in every single aspect, literally of how people can operate in their relationships to
1:07:53 Susan David? work, to how they give feedback to their projects, want to goals, down ramp temptation and lead to more sustained behavior change.
1:08:02 Lewis Howes? Yeah, it's like, uh, I feel like you can really optimize delayed gratification more when you have want to goals. And I, I feel blessed because my parents were always, you know, supportive in me, kind of going against the grain and just doing what I wanted to do as long as I wasn't hurting anyone and as long as I was contributing in a certain way. And I feel like I've been very fortunate to be able to choose one-two goals throughout most of my life. Uh, not always, but most, especially in the last eight years, I've, I've had that fortune to be able to choose one-two goals. And it, and again, I'm not perfect, but I feel like I'm much able to delay gratification
1:08:42 Lewis Howes? constantly because I see the value of holding to what I want right now will create something better for me in the future. And I'm not resisting it, uh, all the time. So it's a, it's a certain feeling that's freeing and, and less stressful when you have that. And I understand not everyone has that fortune at every stage of their life to do that. If you're living under the house of your parents and you're relying on them at a certain pay, period of time, you might have, have two goals based on that environment. So I don't know how you would reshape those.
1:09:14 Susan David? Yeah.
1:09:15 Lewis Howes? You know?
1:09:16 Susan David? Yeah. Well, well, one-two goals are derived very deeply from a sense of this is what matters to me.
1:09:28 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
1:09:29 Susan David? So of course not every, you know, we can't live every situation. We can't just be, oh, well, like I don't like my job and it's, you know, have to job rather than a want-to job, therefore now I'm out of here. Um, so very powerful becomes the idea of, of tiny tweaks, of small changes that feel values aligned. So, you know, an example might be that, in the, in the example that you gave, it might be that you remind yourself that the circumstances are not necessarily circumstances that you choose.
1:10:02 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:10:03 Susan David? Um, but you do have a choice about your relationship and the value of your relationship or how you wanna bring yourself to the world. Um, your, your, your want-to goal might be the want-to goal of partnering or of community or of collaboration or of fairness. And so you may not like.
1:10:30 Susan David? You know, doing the various things that you might do in that house, feeling that you don't have the choice. But you might also recognize an element of fairness around them, and that can be very freeing. Um, in the workplace and and even in other aspects of our lives, you know, when I think one of the great misconceptions about powerful change is that it needs to be big and bold, that in order to make big changes, we need to make big changes. Um, but actually, the most powerful changes are in the tiny tweaks. It's it's how can I tweak the interaction? How can I tweak? Uh, when when I'm trying to enhance my relationship right now,
1:11:15 Susan David? there might be a moment in time every day where your spouse or your partner and you intersect in the living room. And you might recognize that in that intersection, you on your phone, they on their phone. And the moment is gone. And a tiny tweak might be that idea that that moment, that predictable moment that I see every day, a tiny tweak is that I'm gonna put down my phone and truly hug the person.
1:11:49 Lewis Howes? Right. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a throwing my phone in a safe and locking it away for ten hours and making this big drastic thing, but I'm, you know, spending the first twenty minutes at home present and connected before I get back on my phone or something like that.
1:12:04 Susan David? Yeah, the the tweaks that we make are usually to be found in the interactions that we have with others, the way we come to the interaction. You know, you you call your mom because you feel you have to. And you have the phone conversation with that person, but then you're not really getting anything from it, and it feels almost like a cage. And oh, a one-two goal in relation to that might be. Reminding yourself of the love that you have and of the presence in that interaction. And so the way we tweak our goals is by thinking about the want to in our interactions.
1:12:47 Susan David? Uh, the, the want to or tweaking the, what we put our hands up for in the projects we're doing at work. Even if we can't change our job, you know, what can we bring ourselves towards that feels a little bit more values aligned? Or values connected, are there other projects that you can put your hands up for, are there interactions that you can have? That are different. So they're, they're meaningful ways that we can truly shift. The cadence of our day to day experience.
1:13:15 Lewis Howes? It sounds like we need to know what our values are first to really stand on something and fall back on something. Uh, in life in general, how do we create? Personal values for ourselves, are we able to change them throughout time and how many should we have at a certain time?
1:13:34 Susan David? Well, uh, one of the first ways connecting, as we've said, with values is, is just incredibly extraordinarily important. And one of the ways that we can start actually connecting with our values is by. Connecting first with those difficult emotions, you know, that idea of that piece of paper that. The emotion is on the one side, the value is on the other. What you really start seeing here is that. Our emotions are not barriers, but rather they are beacons to the things that we care about. So one really important way of starting to do this is when we feel a difficult emotion.
1:14:16 Susan David? Is instead of racing for the emotional exits, to rather, you know, show up to that difficult emotion and say to yourself. What is this emotion signaling about what I care about? Because very often. Our difficult emotions will be signposting our values. So that's one way. Another way we can, uh. Connect with our values in a very powerful way is by asking ourselves. Just, you know, even at the end of a day, what did I do today that was worthwhile?
1:14:46 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:14:47 Susan David? Um, not what did I do today that I enjoyed? Because I can enjoy getting drunk, going to a party, you know, often what's worthwhile is what. It is the thing that takes me to the most discomfort. Mm hmm.
1:15:01 Lewis Howes? Where you get the most growth, yeah.
1:15:03 Susan David? Yes, it's that tough conversation. It's the, so what did I do today that was worthwhile? And when we ask ourselves this, we start also connecting, you know, in in greater levels with our values. Another thing that I found personally, I spoke about this in my TED Talk, which is so much of my work is derived from growing up. I I grew up as a white South African in apartheid South Africa. And it was a community that was committed in many ways to denial.
1:15:39 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:15:40 Susan David? And so from a very early age, I was interested in these ideas. And then my father was diagnosed with cancer. And I remember my mother telling me on a Friday to go and say goodbye to him. And so I, you know, went to, I remember this little girl, you know, putting my backpack down and walking down this passage to say good goodbye to my father. And this beautiful experience of knowing that even though my father was dying, and it was the last time that I would be with him, that I felt seen. Okay, that I.
1:16:18 Lewis Howes? By him or by?
1:16:20 Susan David? Seen, I'd always felt seen by him. I'd always felt soured borned by him. I'd always felt it. And so I went through, this connects with values. I went through this really interesting experience where he died on a Friday and on the Monday, because my mom was in grief and she was raising three children and she basically felt that we should keep things normal. And so she sent me off to school. And I started this like really interesting journey of doing the forced false positivity thing. Where I was dying inside.
1:16:59 Lewis Howes? Oh.
1:16:59 Susan David? And people would say to me, how are you doing? And I would say like, I'm okay, you know.
1:17:03 Lewis Howes? I'm fine, yeah.
1:17:04 Susan David? Yeah, but in truth, like I was not okay. Our family was not okay. And I was praised for being strong. I became the master of being okay. And then one day.
1:17:19 Susan David? In the midst of this struggle, this English teacher hands out these blank notebooks. And she looks at the class and she looks directly at me and she says, these blank notebooks or journals, and she says, write, tell the truth, write like no one is reading.
1:17:40 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:17:42 Susan David? And it was just, I remember to this day, I'm still.
1:17:46 Lewis Howes? Ball where you're like, ah, yeah.
1:17:47 Susan David? Yeah, I'm still connected with her because.
1:17:50 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:17:50 Susan David? What, what was it doing? It was an invitation to see myself again, and it was an invitation to be seen again. As opposed to pretend that I'm the master of being okay. And the reason that I give this example is because actually what became the catalyst to me being a psychologist was writing in this journal about my pain, about my grief, about my loneliness, my, my desolation. And over time, what I realized was that that writing actually brought me to a profound sense of insight and resilience
1:18:35 Susan David? and agility, this feeling that I was actually okay, but in an authentic, real way, rather than a pretense way. And so one of the reasons I give this as an example is because we connect with our values when we are willing to see ourselves. You know, when we're willing to actually see ourselves. And one of the ways that we can often do this is by engaging in, in writing. And it doesn't need to be this convoluted process. It, it literally spending ten minutes. If you're going into a difficult interview, or if you're having a difficult time in a relationship, or even if you're going into a positive
1:19:15 Susan David? experience, but that you know is going to be challenging, spending a little bit of time thinking about who do I want to be? What are some of the challenges? Who do I want to be in those challenges? What we know is that when we do that, we start to surface a sense of our values, the things that we hold on to, what I call the heartbeat of our own why.
1:19:38 Lewis Howes? Hmm, yeah, that's cool. So you can start to really, what I'm hearing you say from this amazing story, uh, you can start to develop your values based on the emotions, the discomfortable emotions that are coming up and you can start to see, well, what are the things that I truly want? You know, uh, I don't know if it's opposite of these emotions or that I want to stand for when these emotions come up, uh, to be more of those things.
1:20:06 Susan David? Yeah, it's what the emotions are either guiding us towards, the emotions are either saying this is important to you. So it's either that the emotion is guiding you to those things or that you're actually starting to, uh, internally ground yourself in how your values are going to operate in difficult circumstances.
1:20:30 Lewis Howes? What are your main values?
1:20:32 Susan David? A really important value of mine is autonomy, and it sounds actually like one of yours maybe as well. This idea of feeling like you really want to be able to shape your world. I mean, I probably shouldn't. Am I allowed to give one swear word?
1:20:51 Lewis Howes? Go ahead. Yeah, yeah.
1:20:54 Susan David? In, in Australia, we swear a lot, but, but I know it's not a kind of thing yet.
1:20:58 Lewis Howes? So I get it.
1:20:59 Susan David? You know, because, because when my father died, my mother was basically left in a very, very dire financial situation and she, she sold stationery and every single day she would like package up these like books and pens and pencils and for her it was a have to job and she always used to say to me, Suzy, you've always got to have money.
1:21:24 Susan David? And and
1:21:26 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:21:28 Susan David? And and what she meant by that was you've always got to you've always got to be able to say you know, whether that's whether that's in a relationship, whatever. And of course, she didn't mean that literally.
1:21:40 Lewis Howes? Yeah, of course.
1:21:41 Susan David? But what it did very much evoke in me is is a recognition that's something that's been always very important for me is having a sense of autonomy, being able to shape how I
1:21:52 Lewis Howes? Your life.
1:21:53 Susan David? My my life, how I come to experiences. So autonomy is really important. A community is really important uh to me. And connectedness is really important. And and a very important difference between goals and values is that values have an endpoint. You can check them off. You can say, you know, I wanted to start my own podcast and I did it. Check. A a value is a direction. You you if you value being a present parent, you're constantly going in that direction. If you value being a supportive partner, you never get to check it off. You keep on doing that thing. Yeah, it's it's it's this this um it's a life direction.
1:22:35 Lewis Howes? Goals are things you uh uh accomplish. Uh values are a way of being you're always in pursuit of, it sounds like.
1:22:43 Susan David? Yes, yes, it's it's ways that you're trying to embody that are important to you.
1:22:48 Lewis Howes? Yeah, okay. So autonomy, community, connectedness, what else?
1:22:54 Susan David? Um courage. Courage is a really, really important value. I I think, again, that's something I I know you with. You know, we we've previously spoken about your relationship with your dad. I I remember ten years before my father had even been diagnosed with cancer. Um.
1:23:17 Susan David? I was five, as a five year old child, many children become very scared of the idea of death. And I remember going and finding my way between my parents in their bed and saying to my father, promise me you'll never die, promise me you'll never die. You know, and we didn't know that my father was actually going to be diagnosed with cancer like just ten years later. And my father, you know, could have done the false positivity thing. He could have said, you don't need to worry about that. Everything will be fine. You know, he could have done that. But he chose not to. He chose to guide me with courage. And he would comfort me and he would say to me,
1:24:01 Susan David? Suzie, we all die. It's normal to be scared. Which is a very different way of being. You know, the one is like push away from, the other is step into. And for me, this has become a really important thing, this idea that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is about being able to notice your difficult emotions, your experiences, and still move forward in the direction of your values. Courage is not the absence of fear, it's fear walking.
1:24:34 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm. Feeling the fear and diving in anyways, yeah.
1:24:39 Susan David? Yes, and and feeling it, but in a way that is compassionate and connected.
1:24:45 Lewis Howes? Not crippling you.
1:24:46 Susan David? Yes.
1:24:47 Lewis Howes? But supporting you in some way.
1:24:49 Susan David? Yes.
1:24:49 Lewis Howes? That's powerful. What's the thing that you're most afraid of uh in the last recent part of your life? That you've had to step into this value for?
1:24:59 Susan David? Oh, that's such a great question. I think that, I think that, I mean, certainly COVID, the whole experience of COVID has raised for us as a family, very specific fears. I've got a child who is immunocompromised. My husband is a physician. And it's a really remarkable experience when you are.
1:25:25 Susan David? I'm now talking a year ago when all of this started where you finding yourself sitting down and writing living rules and you know, that is a drawing of courage that for me was very, very powerful. Um, so I think so much of this moment has been encouraging me to think about have I been living in ways that feel values congruent? Were there ways because I traveled so much for my work, you know, on the plane like it. So it's definitely for me. Both around health, but also just around the general choices that I was making that were very autopilot choices. They've become autopilot.
1:26:10 Susan David? At the moment, it's, it's, I'm very much stepping into the sense of there is this fragility, life's beauty and its fragility are interwoven and these tough emotions are normal and there's also part of what had become my everyday experience that actually now.
1:26:30 Susan David? I recognize I don't want to, I don't want to just resume.
1:26:34 Lewis Howes? Yeah. That's.
1:26:36 Susan David? I don't know if you, have you had any of those insights for yourself?
1:26:39 Lewis Howes? Um.
1:26:43 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I've had some. I've also just been. I've just been leaning more and more into uh how to serve, you know, in this time where I feel like a lot of people are stressed and overwhelmed. I just am saying, okay, how can I lean more into my mission and taking care of my own personal health, my own emotions, you know, I've got therapists, coaches, I've got fitness coaches as well so that I stay on track with my value, which is health. And you know, I'm not perfect. I'll have sugar and ice cream and all these other things, but it's like, okay, but I need to make sure that I have accountability for my health. Otherwise, I could easily
1:27:26 Lewis Howes? go for like three to four weeks and just eat ice cream every day because it's the easy thing to do and my feel, my emotions and my feelings might take over and I could just fall into that autopilot. So it's setting up. A schedule and structure with accountability. I kind of live my life like an athlete uh because that's what I know.
1:27:44 Susan David? Because that's that's that's you know your identity.
1:27:46 Lewis Howes? Exactly. And so I know that having uh that investing in accountability on the things that are my values support me in not having to have willpower every moment when I feel overwhelmed. But okay, this is scheduled in. I've invested in going to see the trainer or doing whatever the activity is or seeing the therapist to process emotions so that I don't feel overwhelmed and stressed. Having that and kind of doubling down on that has been extremely valuable for me while I'm building a team, hiring people, managing emotions of you know, three times more people that I've normally have.
1:28:27 Susan David? Yeah.
1:28:27 Lewis Howes? Navigating the financial stresses of a business, you know, whatever it may be, uh and making sure that my values and my foundation is is strong. So that's what I've been doing.
1:28:39 Susan David? I think what you describe is such a powerful aspect of something that I actually talk about in my book Emotional Agility, which is that so often because as human beings we are drawn to autopilot, one of the most powerful ways we can start uh living our lives in a way that is values congruent is by creating then autopilot habits.
1:29:03 Lewis Howes? To support you.
1:29:03 Susan David? To support you.
1:29:04 Lewis Howes? Yeah, exactly.
1:29:05 Susan David? So that instead of your habits being things that undermine you, your habits are actually uh the easiest thing that you do and values congruent because you've got a you've got a support network around you. I think the same, you know, when I when I think when I talk about community, community is just such a powerful um value of mine. And for me, that's really come into play in my work because there's such there's such a profound need. There's such profound levels of burnout.
1:29:35 Susan David? Of of stress, of you know, issues around mental health. And for me, that has been my guiding light through this time.
1:29:44 Lewis Howes? Yeah. And what would you say are some of the better uh strategies around stress or burnout and struggle that that people can cultivate? You know, what what can we do when we're feeling these things?
1:29:57 Susan David? Well, I think honestly, we've spoken about so much of this, which is which is the if you're experiencing in this moment, this this these feelings, to not start trying to push them aside or disengage with them, but to engage with gentle acceptance. Routine is really, really important. It's very difficult to conquer the world, to build a business. It's very difficult if you're doing it on no sleep. So so routine is really important. Compassion is really important. I've got this beautiful, I'll actually send it to you in case it's helpful to you, but what I'm calling the emotional pyramid of needs at this moment.
1:30:34 Lewis Howes? Please send it to me.
1:30:35 Susan David? Yeah, it's so it's it's really just this these ideas of emotional agility that are connected with this moment that we are in right now. And so, you know, tough emotions, that there's no hierarchy when it comes to what emotions are allowed or what trauma is allowed, that tough emotions are expected. But a really important part is also that the the more we struggle to control what is uncontrollable, the more we increase our suffering. You know, the greater our level of trying to control what is uncontrollable, the more we increase our suffering.
1:31:11 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:31:11 Susan David? And and sometimes people say things like, well, COVID is such, you know, a loss of control. And I'm like, yes, and the idea that we even had control to begin with was a mere fiction.
1:31:27 Lewis Howes? We don't have control. Yeah.
1:31:28 Susan David? We don't have control. And so.
1:31:32 Susan David? Trying to push aside, think positive is all, they are all tools of trying to control stuff that is uncontrollable.
1:31:43 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:31:44 Susan David? Instead, trying to accept and embrace and recognize that there is this wisdom, there is this bothness, there is this beauty and fragility that is part of who we are when we step into that in a more profound way. Then what we do is we're now not trying to control what is uncontrollable. We actually step into the reality that it is uncontrollable, that it works discomfort. But we are able to breathe into that discomfort.
1:32:18 Lewis Howes? Yeah, what I'm hearing you say then is breathing into the discomfort, noticing uh acceptance of the feeling and then leaning back on the values, okay? Or what is my value and how long do I want to stay in this discomfort? Do I stay in this for days? Or do I notice it, feel it, process it and move forward? Is that accurate?
1:32:37 Susan David? Yeah, this moment, you know, it's, it's again, I always think about this like Viktor Frankl idea. It's, it's this between stimulus and response. When we hook, there's no space between stimulus and response. We act, we're acting out, we're reacting. When we are showing up, when we're accepting, when we're labeling the emotion, when we're noticing the thought emotion story for what it is. Uh when we, when we perspective taking, when we're doing the kinds of things that, that I mentioned earlier, what we're starting to do literally is create that space.
1:33:04 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:33:04 Susan David? And what are we inserting into that space? We're inserting our why. Who do I want to be? Because for every single one of us right now, this moment is asking all of us, who do you want to be?
1:33:16 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
1:33:17 Susan David? Are you agile? And agility is born of a lifelong correspondence with your own heart.
1:33:27 Susan David? It's not born of a, a controllable world.
1:33:31 Lewis Howes? Right. Who do you want to be, Susan?
1:33:36 Susan David? I wanna be, I wanna be agile. I wanna be kind to myself. I wanna, um, I'm, I'm of absolutely imperfect. But I'm trying to much more frequently step into discomfort, whether that's uncomfortable conversations, but that are guided by values. Again, if I have an uncomfortable conversation because I'm angry, then the emotion is driving. If I recognize that my value is that I value fairness, then I can start asking myself, how fair is it if I don't have this conversation? How fair is it to the team?
1:34:21 Susan David? How fair is it to the individual? How can I have the conversation fairly? And so we stepping into discomfort, but we doing it with the heartbeat of who we wanna be in the world.
1:34:33 Lewis Howes? Hmm, yeah, it's beautiful. I feel like I could talk to you for hours on this, and this is extremely valuable for me as reminders, uh, and hopefully extremely valuable for everyone listening and watching. And I want everyone to get your book, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. And I would say in relationships as well, if you wanted to add something to that too. But, um, I'm a big fan of your content and everything you put out on Instagram. I love following and, and seeing just the daily reminders of these things, because it's easy for us to consume content or information that triggers our emotions in a negative way as opposed to supports us to getting back to who we wanna be, to supporting our values,
1:35:16 Lewis Howes? to reflecting from a place of more peace as opposed to reaction and, and reacting from our emotions that don't support us. So I want everyone to go, I want everyone to go follow you, Susan David underscore PhD over on Twitter, Instagram, and Susan David PhD over on Facebook. Uh, and get the book, get it for a friend. I think everyone needs to read this book right now. Did you do the audio version yourself?
1:35:44 Susan David? I did the audio version and, and actually as you're talking, one other resource that I think may be really helpful, because you were asking about practical ways that we can understand our values. And I've got this quiz online that around one hundred and fifty thousand people have taken.
1:35:59 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:35:59 Susan David? It's about a five minute quiz. It asks a couple of questions about your emotions, your values. And then it gives you a free ten page report and that you can find on my website. It's susandavid.com/learn.
1:36:13 Lewis Howes? I'm gonna do that right now. Yeah, that's good.
1:36:15 Susan David? Sounds good. And thank you for the nice. I, we very much, you know, I'm very focused on social media of creating a space that helps people to breathe into these ideas in very, very practical ways.
1:36:28 Lewis Howes? Of course, that's, that's brilliant. Well, I acknowledge you, Susan, for, for showing up the way you do in a time when people need someone like you to serve and help people who are distracted and overwhelmed and stressed. You're, you're a light and your values and your, your mission is extremely important. And I'm just so grateful for, for you. I, I'm grateful for your work. I could listen to you for a long time. So I'm glad that you did the audiobook as well because I feel like I could just listen to you for hours and feel calmer. I just feel like calm in your presence and in your energies. So I want to make sure everyone gets the book. Susan david.com/learn will take you to a quiz that I see right there over, yeah, one hundred and fifty thousand takers right there. You can test yourself.
1:37:13 Lewis Howes? Susan david underscore P H D everywhere online. And check out the TED Talk as well. Yeah. Check out the TED Talk. It's right there on the top of your website. So you can check it out there. Susan, if people want to learn, if they want to hear your three truths and your definition of greatness, they'll have to go back and listen to the previous episode we did, which had even more content. So we'll, we'll link that up there. So people need to go this and there. But any final words?
1:37:38 Susan David? Just I'm grateful to be here. And again, I just know that this moment for all of us is asking so much and I just.
1:37:47 Susan David? If you're struggling, struggle is normal and breathe into it. I think it's just really powerful for us to think about who we want to be in this moment.
1:37:58 Lewis Howes? Susan David, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
1:38:00 Susan David? Thank you.
1:38:02 Lewis Howes? Thank you so much, my friend, for listening to this episode. I am just such a fan of everything Susan shares. Make sure you check her out on social media. Check out her book, Such a Game Changer, today and this time that we're living in right now, to be able to develop and understand how we can have more emotional agility in our own lives. Again, if you found this powerful for your life, then I know you might know one, two, or three people that would be inspired by this as well. Go ahead and share this with a few friends. Post it on WhatsApp group, post it on social media, text a few friends directly and say, hey, I thought you would enjoy this. Check it out on the School of Greatness. You can use the link lewishouse.com/1089, or you can copy and paste this link wherever you're listening to this. And if this is your first time here, please subscribe. Click that subscribe button right now on Apple Podcast
1:38:47 Lewis Howes? and leave us a rating and review about the part that you enjoyed or got value out of this the most from this episode over on Apple Podcast. And if you would like inspirational messages sent to you every single week to your phone from me, then text me the word podcast right now. Again, text the word podcast to this number, 614-350-3960, as I send out weekly messages, inspirational texts, and some other secrets behind the scenes. And all you gotta do is text the word podcast to that number right now. And I want to leave you with this quote from writer Will Durant, who said, "Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything except what you are going to do right now and do it. Today is your lucky day." And I want to remind you that today is a beautiful gift, even though
1:39:31 Lewis Howes? you might be feeling pain, suffering, memories from the past that are feeling traumatic right now. You have a gift of breathing, of being alive, and experiencing another moment in this life. And it might be challenging, it might be hard, it might be stressful, but there is usually some gratitude and good in every situation, if you can look for it and if you can find it. And I'm telling you, I am grateful for you today. I'm grateful that you decided to show up today. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are so worthy and you matter. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.
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