How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence & Never Get Angry or Bothered by Anyone

Are you going to keep being controlled by your emotions for the rest of your life?  The answer is no. Because today, Dr. Marc Brackett, PhD, the world’s leading expert on emotional intelligence, is here to tell you, “Success in virtually every aspect of life – career, friendship, love, and family – is determined mainly by one thing: how we deal with emotions.” Because your emotions are running your life – and you don’t even realize it. Dr. Brackett is the Founder & Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, whose research proves that your life is being shaped by the one skill that 90% of people were never taught: emotional intelligence. Today, Dr. Brackett will give you his research-backed framework to master your emotions, redirect your energy for more positive thinking, and become more emotionally intelligent in 5 simple steps. In this episode you’ll learn: -How your emotions are hijacking your decisions, relationships, and goals -How to recognize what you’re feeling before it takes over -Why you suppress your emotions and what you should be doing instead -How to stop taking everything so personally -How emotional intelligence improves your relationships and your health -How to stop negative thoughts from taking over your life -How to get less angry and bothered by the people around you Dr. Brackett’s research is clear: You can learn emotional intelligence at any age. It’s never too late. After today you will know how to deal with what you feel and you will finally change your behavior, your relationships, and your entire life. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-415/ Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 00:00 Introduction 02:54 What Is Emotional Intelligence? How Emotions Control Your Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior 04:27 How to Take Your Power Back - Learn to Control Your Emotions 07:23 5 Signs of an Emotionally Safe and Supportive Person 11:30 How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence and Understand Your Feelings 21:55 The Science-Backed Way to Calm Your Nervous System 28:00 How to Stop Overreacting, Control Your Emotions, and Respond Calmly 43:39 How to Stop Taking Things Personally and Manage Emotional Triggers 52:32 The Best Science-Backed Emotional Regulation Techniques That Work 01:00:57 How Emotional Intelligence Improves Your Mental Health, Relationships, and Life — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

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

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:09Mel Robbins?

  Do you ever hit send on a text you know is going to start something, but you do it anyway? Or maybe you have a long day at work, you're a little grumpy, so you just kind of pick that fight with your spouse for no reason? Or what about when you talk yourself out of a great date, or a great job, or a fun night out with your friends because you just get up in your head and you get all negative? It's like an emotional tsunami and you completely lose control of how you react and how you feel. And then, I don't know about you, but I immediately then feel regret. Why did I say that? Why do I always assume the worst? Why am I in a bad mood? Why do my feelings run me over? Why do I take them out on everybody around me?

• 0:54Mel Robbins?

  It's like you're stuck living in reaction mode. But our guest today is going to tell you something life-changing. It does not need to be that way. He is here to show you that you can reprogram your mind for more positive thinking. You can control your thoughts and you don't have to take everything so personally. You can learn how to go through life and let the things out there not get to your emotions in here all the time. Because in those moments where you feel like you are being run over by your emotions, there's a very important and simple question that you need to stop and answer.

• 1:37Mel Robbins?

  Are you going to keep being controlled by your emotions for the rest of your life? The answer's no. Because today, you're going to learn a skill that 90% of people have never been taught: emotional intelligence. Which is learning how to recognize what you're feeling so you can take back control of your life, so that you can have freedom, so that you can use your emotions to achieve your goals, to be happier, instead of your emotions constantly using you. I'm talking about a simple shift that will make a positive impact in absolutely every single thing you do, from your attitude, to your relationships, to your physical and mental health, to your ability to achieve your goals.

• 2:22Mel Robbins?

  Your emotions impact all of these things. And today, you're going to learn how to deal with what you feel and it's going to change your behavior, your relationships, and your entire life.

• 2:43Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm elated that you're here right now because this is one of my all-time favorite topics and the person you're about to meet is somebody that I have admired for, gosh, almost a decade. It is an honor to be here together with you. It's an honor to spend time with you. And if you're a new listener, or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. And boy, did you pick a winner in this episode. You're about to meet Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Brackett is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He's a professor at the Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine.

• 3:27Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Brackett and his colleagues at Yale developed an evidence-based framework that has been implemented in more than 5,000 schools and is used by over 10 million students. And today, he is teaching you the science of emotional intelligence. He has published more than 200 scientific articles on emotions, decision-making, relationships, health, and performance. Dr. Brackett has headlined over 700 conferences and advised Fortune 500 companies on building emotionally intelligent workplace cultures. He's the New York Times bestselling author of Permission to Feel, translated into 27 languages. And his most recent book is Dealing with Feeling: How to Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want.

• 4:12Mel Robbins?

  And that's exactly what Dr. Brackett is here to do. He's here in our Boston studios for you and he's going to distill 30 years of groundbreaking research into this single conversation to help you feel better and do better and to create a more meaningful life. So please help me welcome Dr. Mark Brackett to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I can't believe I'm here.

• 4:34Mel Robbins?

  I have had you at the top, top, top of the list for a long time because your work has made a big difference for me, particularly as a parent and for myself. And I would love to have you explain, if I take everything to heart, that you're about to teach me today, what is going to change about my experience of life?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I think most importantly is that you're going to learn how to use your emotions wisely to have freedom, to have good relationships, to have well-being, to achieve your goals, and honestly, to achieve all the dreams you have and want in life.

• 5:10Mel Robbins?

  If I use my emotions wisely?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 5:13Mel Robbins?

  I can achieve my goals, dreams, and be happier?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  100%.

• 5:18Mel Robbins?

  What do you mean by that? Because most of us feel like emotions are something we have to endure or overcome, or we're subject to or dictated by.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the problem. The problem is that we didn't get an emotion education. Emotions pile up like a debt.

• 5:34Mel Robbins?

  They pile up like a debt?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  They do, those strong unpleasant ones. And if we don't know how to express them in ways that are healthy, what happens? The debt comes due. It's denial, it's suppression, it's repression, it's perfectionism, it's control, it's shame.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  And we need ways to process our emotions, we need skills to do that, and we need skills to be able to communicate them, and we need skills to be able to manage them effectively. That's the goal of this work, is that emotional intelligence is a real set of skills that can help you navigate all emotions and then apply that knowledge to achieve your goals in life.

• 6:15Mel Robbins?

  How does somebody who's really thinking about, I want what Dr. Brackett's talking about, I don't want my emotions to run me over, how do you begin this?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  It starts with permission to feel. It always starts going back to the basics.

• 6:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  So let me explain some of this research.

• 6:32Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  So a little bit of my background. I grew up in northern New Jersey, two parents that loved me. My father was that toughen up kind of guy, my mother was very anxious, and neither one of them knew how to deal with their own emotions, nevertheless mine. Unfortunately, I had two older brothers. Unfortunately, I love them, but they also had their own problems. And my parents, by the time I was around six, they were raising me alone, meaning my brothers had left. They were desperate, they had a lot of struggles, and unfortunately, the person who was my caretaker was a pedophile. And so from age five to 10, I was abused by my parents' closest friend. And I never shared it. I share this now in my 50s with courage.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  I didn't, I suppressed it, denied it until I was 48 years old. I did not share it publicly.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  And then something magical happened. I had an uncle named Uncle Marvin. He was my mother's brother. He was a bandleader by night in the Catskill Mountains and a sixth-grade teacher by day, who by some wave of a magic wand, was developing a curriculum to teach kids about feelings. Who by another wave of a magic wand, lived with us when I was 11 years old for a summer because he was going to graduate school near my hometown, who ended up rehearsing and practicing his curriculum with me in the backyard when I was 11.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And he was the first adult who said to me, hey, Mark, how are you feeling? No one had ever asked me how I was feeling, ever. It was always like, go to your room, wait till your father gets home, you know, like toughen up. No one actually sat with me and literally had presence.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Now, fast forward, you know, that's...

• 8:24Speaker 01

  So I was 11, I'm 56, that's 45 years ago. I mean, my whole career is based on that moment in my life, to be frank.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  So I dedicate my work to this remarkable human who gave me permission to feel. And I became very curious as a scientist, what percentage of people have an Uncle Marvin or an Aunt Maria? And so for people who are listening, just take a moment and think about that.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Was there an adult while you were growing up that created the conditions for you to be your true, full feeling self?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  And again, my research shows that only one-third of us say yes and two-thirds of us say no.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  The next step is, all right, what are the characteristics of these Uncle Marvin's and Aunt Maria's? So the research shows there are, I call them the big five characteristics. The first one is just general warmth.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  The second is nonjudgmental. The third is an incredible listener. The fourth is compassionate. And the fifth is steady presence or reliability.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Notice what's not there. Brilliant, problem solver, fixer, advice giver. Because what I find in my research is something remarkable, that most people say they're afraid to be the emotion ally for somebody else. Because they don't feel confident and capable. I don't know what to say or do. But notice the characteristics, they're not asking you to do very much except be present.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  It's amazing to me. People say, I'm afraid because I'm not sure if they say something, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm not going to be able to fix their problem or give them the advice that they need. And I said, no one's looking for advice, no one's looking for fixing.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Now, what my research shows also is that people who report having had this emotion ally in their childhood, as adults, they are more emotionally intelligent. They have better physical health, better mental health, they have better sleep quality.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  They have greater life satisfaction, and they have greater purpose and meaning of life. And it's funny, because one of my closest friends from like, childhood, came to hear me speak. And he had this reaction to my presentation, like, I hated your presentation, like, you hated it, I got a standing ovation. You know, what are you talking about? He's like, well, I didn't have an Uncle Marvin, now I realize it's why I don't have purpose and meaning of life, and I'm like freaked out about it.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  And I said,

• 10:59Speaker 01

  maybe you can be your own Uncle Marvin. At some point,

• 11:04Speaker 01

  we have to look in the mirror and be those things to ourselves.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  We have to look in the mirror and have warmth for ourselves. No more judgment. Listen to our feelings. Self-compassion. And just be reliable, you know, to yourself. We can all be our own Uncle Marvin's too. And here's something even more remarkable, Mel. So, I do a lot of speaking, and I'm out somewhere in New York State. And I'm giving this speech about this data. And all of a sudden, this man stands up, and he looks at me, he's like, are you talking about Marvin Moore, the sixth grade social studies teacher from Minnesota, New York? I said, I am. He's like, Mark, you're not going to believe this, but your Uncle Marvin was my Uncle Marvin. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, your uncle was my sixth grade teacher, and he transformed my life.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  And we had this amazing conversation afterwards for 45 minutes. And he said, clearly, he's transformed who you are as a person today. I said, I give him all the credit. And then he looked at me and he goes, well, Mark, for whom are you an Uncle Marvin? It was so eye-opening for me. I'd never been given that, kind of, in my face, for whom are you paying it forward? It transformed my relationships that day, because I realized that I just was not giving it.

• 12:26Mel Robbins?

  So beautiful. Really, really beautiful. And as you're going through that list of attributes, I'm like, this is why our kids always go to my husband. I'm not kidding.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  He can be your emotion ally now, and he probably is.

• 12:44Mel Robbins?

  Yes, 100%. Dr. Brackett, I would love to start with some more of the fourth grade level stuff about emotions, since I feel like I'm definitely in that camp of, okay.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  What are we talking about here?

• 12:59Mel Robbins?

  What are we talking about here? Is this going to be one of these weird episodes where I'm thinking about my feelings, but I'm not sure what we're talking about? How do emotions shape our lives?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  So, in my work, I talk about five reasons why emotions matter. The first is that emotions drive our attention, memory, and learning. Now, you're looking at me now as a tenured professor of psychology. I grew up in northern New Jersey. I was terribly abused as a kid, I had terrible bullying as a kid, I was a failing student. I didn't realize until I was in graduate school, that I was in fight-flight mode all day long. I wasn't, I couldn't, how could I learn when I'm getting punched in the face on the bus or made fun of in school? My brain was in survival mode, not learning mode. Emotions drive our attention, period. The second, emotions drive our judgments. Mel, have you ever made a bad decision?

• 13:53Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my God, is my name Mel?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 13:58Speaker 01

  we all make decisions. What we don't like to own is that how we feel oftentimes drives the choices we make. I'll give you an example. So in my research, we do studies where we ask people to think about a good day versus a bad day. So going to my work with teachers. I want you to think about the best day you ever had in the classroom, I want you to think about the worst day you ever had in the classroom. You can apply this to any setting. Immediately thereafter, I gave the teachers the exact same essay to grade. And my question was, would there be differences in how the teachers evaluated the exact same essay, just after thinking for five minutes about a good day versus a bad day? What do you think?

• 14:40Mel Robbins?

  Oh, no.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  One to two full-grade differences.

• 14:42Mel Robbins?

  One to two full-grade differences, based on the mood of the professor?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Correct. Now, when I asked the people at the end of the study, do you believe that how you felt had any influence? Of course not. Like, I do, all I do all day long is grade papers and make decisions. I said, well, here's the data, one to two full-grade differences.

• 15:01Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  So what this tells us is that our emotions are guiding us through the day, and oftentimes, what's happening is we're making a judgment based on the mood we're in, that's not necessarily the best judgment. Now, what's the antidote to allow our emotions to subconsciously influence our judgments?

• 15:21Mel Robbins?

  And the antidote means you change it?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:26Mel Robbins?

  You allow the, you, you, you name the emotion.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  See how smart you are?

• 15:32Mel Robbins?

  Is that right? Oh, my God, I was actually panicking a little bit there, like, oh, my God, and I'm going to get it wrong on my own podcast. You just name it, because what happens when you name it?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  You attribute it to its cause. And when I can attribute my emotion to its actual cause, it will no longer have that subconscious influence over the future judgment.

• 15:54Mel Robbins?

  I really struggle with this. And I am not proud to say this, but I'm a very leaky emotional person. Meaning that it has been a challenge for my entire life to be able to separate myself from the thing that happened and the emotions that I feel. And instead, I wouldn't say leak, I'd say, there have been times I've been more like a tidal wave.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Me too.

• 16:22Mel Robbins?

  And I'm not proud of that. And I, I can even say that this morning, that there was something that happened in our studios yesterday that really made me angry, not with our team, somebody coming in from the outside.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:34Mel Robbins?

  I walked into a meeting that was a great, like, collaborative meeting, and within two minutes, I could feel my intensity, so the leakiness.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:45Mel Robbins?

  That wasn't about the meeting I was in, it was about how I felt even talking about something that happened yesterday, that had nothing to do with that meeting.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 16:56Mel Robbins?

  And it's very useful to understand that a simple thing that you could do in that moment, if you notice that the volcano, or the tidal wave, or all of this is leaking, to just say, oh, I'm really irritable.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 17:12Mel Robbins?

  And I could have just said, I don't mean to be intense, everybody, I realize it's from the thing yesterday, and let me just take a beat, because it's not about you. Because I think what happens is your emotions feel like you have no choice.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 17:25Mel Robbins?

  I mean, for most of my life, Dr. Brackett, I'm the kind of person that was ruled by my emotions, to the detriment.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  We're the same people, because I just did not like life as a child or an adolescent. And I remember even in high school, crawling up in a ball, crying and saying, who am I, and where am I going with my life? And thinking, oh, my gosh, this is who I am, there's no, there's no way out.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  I didn't know there were skills to learn. And that's why I've dedicated my whole life to helping people realize that emotions are impermanent. There are no bad emotions, and we can learn to use our emotions wisely to achieve our goals in life.

• 18:07Mel Robbins?

  I want to make sure that we got all five of the reasons why emotions matter, and we have attention, we have judgment.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yes. The third is relationship quality. Emotions drive the quality of our relationships. Here's a simple phrase. Emotions are signals to approach or avoid. Period.

• 18:29Mel Robbins?

  You just described my childhood.

• 18:33Mel Robbins?

  Emotions are signals to approach or avoid.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  That's right. So my facial expression, my body language, my vocal tone, my presence is either going to send a signal to you. Mark likes me, Mark's with me, Mark respects me, or it's going to say, stay away. I got, you know, I don't respect you. Like, who are you? I don't, I don't need you. That's critical. And that's from the micro to the macro.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  I mean, just a vocal tone. I always joke that I can literally influence how a room feels by lifting my right nostril. I mean, literally.

• 19:08Mel Robbins?

  It looked like I was going to get a bad grade, Professor Brackett, when you did that.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, people who are listening can just imagine this, and if you're watching, you can see it. So if I look at you right now and I do this.

• 19:18Mel Robbins?

  Uh oh. Oh. You had a little bit of disgust and judgment. Whoa.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Isn't that amazing? Like, I just literally lifted my right nostril a little bit, and all of a sudden, you're like, eesh, like, I'm not comfortable anymore.

• 19:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Like that. That's how fast emotions impact our relationships. So that was an example of me showing an emotion that makes people not want to approach me.

• 19:40Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  But then the same thing applies to myself. I wake up in the morning and I think, what's my, what's happening today? Oh, my God. And that dread, or that fear, or that loneliness is going to drive how I communicate. So it's both internal and it's both external.

• 19:55Mel Robbins?

  So we've got attention, judgment, and relationships. What are the other two ways that emotions really run your life?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  The fourth is mental and physical health. So think about this. Little emotions become big emotions if they're not dealt with. Sad becomes hopeless, hopeless becomes despair, despair becomes depressed, peeve becomes irritated, becomes angry, becomes ill-vited and enraged. And if we don't recognize the little emotions and find strategies for dealing with them, all of a sudden, they tear away at our mental and physical health.

• 20:28Mel Robbins?

  That makes a lot of sense. And what's the fifth way?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  The fifth one is that emotions influence our performance, our everyday performance. I think about this all the time because I grew up with two blue collar parents. Neither one of my parents had a college education. And then all of a sudden, I ended this job at Yale. And so every one of my students had higher SAT scores than I had, greater grade point averages, they played instruments I'd never heard of, they traveled to countries I didn't know on the map, and I'm their teacher.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  And I had imposter syndrome for years, thinking they're going to find out that I didn't go to an Ivy League school myself. I didn't even get in to an Ivy League school. I didn't even know what one was, to be frank. And I just had this assumption for so many years that, oh, my gosh, they have, these are the brightest crayons in the box who have all this background knowledge and parents who read to them and parents who are senators and producers. And then I've gotten to watch for 25 years what happens.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And so many people don't achieve their goals in life. And it's not because they're not smart. You know what it is?

• 21:33Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  They can't deal with their feelings. They can't deal with feedback. They can't deal with disappointment. They can't deal with the anxiety. And so there's a point in our lives when our brain power, we need it, of course. The more academically skilled we are, the better. But it's insufficient. It's insufficient. So here I am, I got 500 students in my class, every one of them looks the same on their CVs. They all got the same grades, they all got the same SAT scores. So I look at them and I say, who's going to make it? Because you're all going to apply for the same job. Who's going to get hired? And it's not going to be about your intelligence, just like when you're a basketball player, it's not about your height. Everybody's tall.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  It's going to be another set of skills. And those skills are emotional intelligence.

• 22:23Mel Robbins?

  We need to take a quick pause. I want to just keep on talking, but I've got to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I know you've been thinking about people in your life. I am already, I got my three kids in mind, my husb-- I'm going to send this basically to everybody. Don't go anywhere. Stay with me.

• 22:54Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins, and today you and I are here with Dr. Brackett, the founder and director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. I am loving this. I'm so thrilled you're here with me right now. Let's just jump right back in. Dr. Brackett, what is emotional intelligence?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  If I were to define emotional intelligence in its simplest form, emotional intelligence is a set of skills that helps us to use our emotions wisely to achieve our goals in life. Now, of course, that's very broad. So you say, all right, well, what exactly are the skills? And I have an acronym, Ruler, which helps describe the five skills of emotional intelligence. And the first skill is recognizing emotions. Number two is we understand emotions.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Number three is we label them. Number four is we learn how to express them in ways that help us achieve our goals, because we've all expressed them in ways that have not helped us.

• 23:46Mel Robbins?

  That's been the norm for me.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  And then the final one is regulation. So recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate.

• 23:55Mel Robbins?

  I would love for you to walk us through each one of those five things of the acronym Ruler. And the first letter is recognize. What does that mean?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  So you've created these wonderful blocks for me to show everybody?

• 24:09Mel Robbins?

  Yes. It's a big R. If you're listening, I don't want you to miss anything. He's putting a yoga block in front of him, and it's got a big R, and it says, recognize.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Recognizing emotions.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Think about it. What are we doing here? We're paying attention, like me right now, I'm laser focused on you, and I'm paying attention to your facial expression, your body language, your vocal tone, and your behavior. That's the social awareness piece of it.

• 24:37Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Then there's the introspective piece of recognition.

• 24:40Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Mark, what's going on in your body? What's going on in your mind right now? It's that, it's that basic, basic piece.

• 24:47Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this question, everyone listening. On a scale from one to 10, how skilled are you at recognizing emotions? One being terrible, 10 meaning you're great.

• 24:58Mel Robbins?

  I think I'm 10 at recognizing an emotion is happening. I think I'm probably a four at understanding what exactly the emotion is.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Okay. So my research shows that the correlation between our belief and our skill is next to zero.

• 25:15Mel Robbins?

  Meaning what you can actually do versus what you think you can do?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Is not related at all.

• 25:21Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Because like, how much feedback have we gotten in our development? Like, when you were coming down the stairs at home, did your father say, oh, my gosh, honey, I'm noticing your facial expression today? We didn't do that kind of conversation. Nobody taught us how to read, happy, sad, fear, surprise, all that stuff.

• 25:40Mel Robbins?

  Right, because nobody taught our parents either.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. So we tend to get pleasant, unpleasant, right? Like, approach, avoid kind of feelings. But the specific emotions, we tend to be very poor at guessing. We tend to attribute emotion to people as opposed to actually recognize their feelings. So let me give you an example.

• 26:02Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Like, right now, you would, you went, hmm. If I had some kind of terrible thing that happened this morning, or I heard weird things about Mel, I would come into the meeting and she'd go, hmm. And I'd be, oh, she's judging me. She's not curious. That's a judgment signal. I have no clue what the hell is going on in your head or your mind, but I am projecting my own issues or the other issues that people said onto your facial expression all of the time. I mean, have you ever been misread?

• 26:34Mel Robbins?

  Well, I've been misreading, and I was thinking, when I made that sound, of a thing that I did with our daughter Sawyer, who, for a while, I was misreading her expressions. And she would get very rigid, and her face would go cold, and I would immediately feel like she was judging me. And what I've come to learn in those moments, which makes me really sad, is that she actually was becoming emotionally flooded and felt overwhelmed and didn't know what to do, because it seemed like I was getting angry about something.

• 27:14Mel Robbins?

  And so here we were, two people in constant situations where we are not actually getting each other, because I'm not angry at all, but my voice is going in a direction that cues it.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:29Mel Robbins?

  She then stiffens, and I think she's getting combative. And in fact, it's the opposite. She's in fear.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 27:37Mel Robbins?

  And we miss each other, and we misunderstand each other. And I can see how I was attributing something that then, of course, affects my emotions. And understanding that the first response for her typically, and same as with my husband, actually, is I would always get so mad, because he would go silent when I was pissed off. Smart dude. And then I would be, of course, walking behind him, going, what, now you're going to talk? And what I thought was he was trying to control the situation and pull a power move and dominate. And the truth is, he was shutting down, because in those moments, he felt like there's absolutely

• 28:22Mel Robbins?

  nothing I can do to, like, nothing I can do here.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  You're so clearly showing why we need skills.

• 28:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Because otherwise, we're just projecting all the time. And so using that antidote word again, the antidote is what?

• 28:39Mel Robbins?

  To name it.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 28:41Mel Robbins?

  Because that's what changed everything in the dynamic with my daughter.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  You have to say how you're feeling, but you also have to have the courage to ask her how she's feeling.

• 28:48Mel Robbins?

  How would you advise us to ask somebody else? Because I do feel like, especially with couples, my husband and I are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary, and the question I've asked him the most in our marriage, what are you thinking? Which ironically, doesn't typically lead to an answer that tells me how he's feeling or what he's thinking. What is the best way to ask somebody, as dumb as a question that is?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  It's not that dumb, because we just don't do it, because I think that we are intimacy-phobic. So it's easier to say, what are you thinking? There's less connection involved in it. And so when you are in this weird place with your husband or your daughter, you just say, you know, I'm in a weird place right now. I'm not even sure how I'm feeling. I'm kind of this odd mixture of frustration and overwhelm right now, and I just want you to know that. And I'm really curious about how you're feeling about this situation.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 29:45Mel Robbins?

  It seems so easy.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  It is, but we're afraid to hear the response because we don't want to own the fact that we might have created an emotion, which is more complicated than, you know, said. But we do support other people in experiencing unpleasant feelings, and we don't want to own that. So it's easier to just not ask the question.

• 30:07Mel Robbins?

  Wow. So the next letter is U. And you say, you wrote in your mega bestseller, Dealing with Feeling, that this is the hidden driver of emotional intelligence.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Because this is where we build relationships and connection.

• 30:26Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Understanding emotion, we define it as understanding the causes and the consequences of emotion, including how our emotions impact all the things that we've talked about: thinking, judgment, and behavior. But here's the kicker, and this is where I think most people get it wrong. We have to have a common understanding of emotion. So anger, for example. If I were to ask you, what is the general cause of anger, what would you say?

• 31:00Mel Robbins?

  I would think either sadness. Oh, injustice.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 31:08Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Anger is the result of a perceived injustice or unfairness. Now, you're a woman, I'm a man. We have different upbringings. We have different religions. We have different belief systems. So the things that I see in society that may trigger me to make me feel angry may not trigger you, vice versa. I don't need to prove to you why you should or should not feel angry. You don't need to prove to me why I should or should not feel angry. The goal of emotional understanding is to have connection and empathy. I want to know, tell me, why do you feel this way about this, so that I can be supportive of you? That's the key to understanding.

• 31:51Mel Robbins?

  Wow, and that means more intimacy.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 31:54Mel Robbins?

  Which is why we don't ask.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  I mean, it's why we go to AI to get help with our feelings, because we're so afraid of having the connection with the human that we just think it's easier to ask a chatbot.

• 32:05Mel Robbins?

  Now, what I found interesting about the understand part of this is that it was both understanding the cause of it and then understanding what it's impacting in your life. How do you understand the cause of it?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  The cause is going back to the theme. So injustice.

• 32:26Mel Robbins?

  Oh, gotcha. Okay, so, oh, I got it. So if you're angry and you don't know why, ask yourself, what has happened that makes me feel like something's unfair?

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Correct. Or if you are disappointed, it would be what?

• 32:44Mel Robbins?

  What was my expectation?

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. Disappointment is about unmet expectations. Now, here's the deal. You're with your kid, you're with your partner, you're out and about, and someone says, I can't take it anymore. I just said that to you. I can't take it anymore.

• 33:00Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my God. Okay, I just had like a little bit of a flashback from something. Go ahead.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 33:04Mel Robbins?

  That's okay.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  How am I feeling?

• 33:09Mel Robbins?

  You are feeling frustrated.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  How do you know?

• 33:13Mel Robbins?

  You grit your teeth, you raised your hands, you had a face that was very angry.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Freeze. What are you doing right now?

• 33:25Speaker 01

  You're making the what error?

• 33:27Mel Robbins?

  I am attributing something. I actually don't know how you feel.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Of course not. I'm a dude. I'm not going to tell you that I feel shame or disappointment. I'm going to act out like I'm angry to get my needs met.

• 33:40Mel Robbins?

  Oh, so for example, father in a toy aisle, and kids want the expensive thing. You can't afford it. The deeper emotion is shame, but you're gonna just erupt at your kids, and it's going to read anger and frustration?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Great example. Hence, why we need to deactivate, get curious, find out what's happening, to build the connection, so that we can be helpful to each other. Emotions are data. So when I'm feeling an unpleasant emotion, it's legitimate. There's nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, I've been really thinking about this around my anxiety. And a friend of mine who studies anxiety, we had this long conversation about it. And she said to me, Mark, tell me all the things that make you anxious. Well, I'm anxious about fundraising. I had to constantly raise money to keep my research center alive. What else? I'm anxious about the quality of our center's work. I always wanted to be the top quality. What else are you anxious about? And I named all these things. And

• 34:40Speaker 01

  she said, well, what do those things have in common? I'm like, what are you talking about? She said, no, listen to me. What do those things have in common? And I had an epiphany. I said, they're all the things that I care about in my life. And she said, exactly. So why would anxiety be a bad thing? It's telling you that something may not be going exactly right with something that you care about. So now it's an opportunity to look deeper into that.

• 35:11Mel Robbins?

  Okay, that's personally why you're here for me. That one story and that one reframe around anxiety is exactly what I needed as a parent right now to send to one of my adult kids. That was like a gift. We need to take a quick pause. Please do not go anywhere, because when we return, Dr. Brackett is going to break down the research and some surprising insights about negative self-talk. So don't go anywhere. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

• 35:56Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with the incredible Dr. Mark Brackett. You've been talking about this acronym Ruler as a way that you can build the skill of emotional intelligence. We've covered R and U on Ruler. The third letter of Ruler is label.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 36:16Mel Robbins?

  What does that mean?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  And we have got a block for that. So labeling emotions. So before, in understanding, we talked about understanding the causes and the consequences. The differences between, let's say, anger and anxiety. Anger is about injustice. Anxiety is about uncertainty. But now with labeling, we're going to get super precise with our words.

• 36:43Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I'm going to ask everyone who's listening to take a little quiz.

• 36:47Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  We have anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, overwhelmed. This is a big quiz. Anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, overwhelmed. What's the difference between anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, and overwhelmed?

• 37:08Mel Robbins?

  Anxiety is about the future.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  I gave you that one already.

• 37:13Mel Robbins?

  Okay, I know. Okay, so that means I'm learning. Stress is about your body state?

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Keep going.

• 37:23Mel Robbins?

  Okay. Overwhelm?

• 37:31Mel Robbins?

  I'm like now starting to panic, and I forgot the other two. Overwhelmed is I don't know what to do. Pressure is I can't handle this. And fear is something bad's going to happen.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  You're pretty good. B plus.

• 37:46Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  So anxiety, perceived uncertainty.

• 37:50Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Stressed, too many demands, not enough resources.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Pressure, something at stake is dependent upon my behavior. Fear, impending danger. Overwhelmed, saturated with emotion. Now, why does that matter? Why am I trying to get you to be, as we call it, so granular about your feelings?

• 38:17Mel Robbins?

  Well, I can see why this matters, and it's very helpful, because it applies to something I'm dealing with at work, where it feels like all five of those things are present: anxiety, stress, overwhelmed, pressure, fear.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:31Mel Robbins?

  And I think in some way, all of those things are present in this situation.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  They could be.

• 38:38Mel Robbins?

  But just taking stress, which is too much to do and not enough resources, that is a very different operational problem than having you feel overwhelmed, which is emotionally flooded and I can't do anything.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:56Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  And so that precision is a guide to healthy regulation. That precision is a guide to healthy regulation. Anxiety is about uncertainty around the future. You can take all the deep breaths. You can take all the walks. Guess what? You're going to come back, and you're going to ruminate about all the uncertainty. Stress is having too many demands and not enough resources. You can go to the gym and pump it out. Maybe it'll be some immediate relief. But at the end of the day, you've got too much on your plate, and you can't handle it. So if you're stressed, either you're going to have to say, Mark, your job never ends. You're going to have to accept this. Or you're going to have to distribute more and get more people to support you. Otherwise, the stress is not going to go away,

• 39:40Speaker 01

  period. Here's a quick one for you. So I did a study with my own students on how they feel. And it's sad. Like, 70% of them say they're tired and stressed and bored. And by the way, this parallels with a big study I did with high schoolers across the nation. 77% of the time, tired, bored, and stressed.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  But then I got really interested in, well, do they really know how they're feeling?

• 40:05Mel Robbins?

  Hmm.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  So I had them journal, journal about all the reasons that you're tired and bored and stressed and overwhelmed and all this stuff. What do you think the real emotion was?

• 40:18Mel Robbins?

  Um, despair.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  The real emotion was envy.

• 40:25Mel Robbins?

  What?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Envy, because everything they wrote about, about being stressed, was social comparisons. They study for less hours and get better grades. They've got better hips. They've got better lips. This one's parents have more connections. And so they go to the university counseling center and they get treated for stress and anxiety and doing breathing exercises and yoga. And I keep on thinking to myself, I don't know what yoga pose is going to decrease envy. But no offense to the yoga people out there. I love yoga.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  But the point is, is that if we don't really know what we're feeling, then we don't know what to do with our feelings. And if we're kind of unself aware, then we're just like, give me breathing exercises. Like, I don't know what the breathing exercise is going to do when you're sitting around thinking like, oh, my God, everybody's better than I am. Everybody's better than I am. Like, you need cognitive strategies for that. You've got to change the dialogue in your head and stop comparing yourself. That's the only thing that's going to decrease the envy.

• 41:22Mel Robbins?

  So, Dr. Brackett, what is the thing that you need to do if it is envy and comparison that's making you feel sad, stressed, bored and tired?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  How about gratitude?

• 41:36Mel Robbins?

  Now, if I'm sad, stressed, bored and tired, I'm like, how about you go fuck yourself? Like, I'm literally, you know, just like, you know, because you know how people, how do I access gratitude if I'm in that spiral?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  You take a deep breath and you say to yourself,

• 41:54Speaker 01

  "Look at me.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Look at where I'm at. What's going right for me? What are the three things today that happened that are actually positive?" And I always tell students, like, you know, all respect, like, you've got great freaking professors. Like, come on, let's have some gratitude here.

• 42:11Mel Robbins?

  You can hate yourself, but let's be honest about who I am.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. You know, it's not like the food is bad here. It's not like the dorms are so bad. Can we just take a moment and pause and just think about what's going right? Again, that negativity bias just pours over us. Just take a minute and think about something you're grateful for. It just changes the chemistry in your brain. We need to reflect on what's going right and not always on what's going wrong. That's a skill. It's a practice, just like you brush your teeth in the morning. At the end of the day, when we have dinner together, we do. It sounds cliche, but you know what? We do a gratitude reflection.

• 42:49Mel Robbins?

  That is so insanely helpful. If you start adopting a practice, if you recognize yourself and being in this loop that we've all been in, where you're sad, you're stressed, you're bored, you're tired,

• 43:05Mel Robbins?

  maybe the next time you're in that self-criticism, beat-down spiral, you go, whoa, hold on.

• 43:13Mel Robbins?

  Let me remember what Dr. Brackett said. Let me look around and find three things that are going well.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Or it might just be simpler than that. Mark, this feeling is impermanent.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  You're 56. There have been rainy days. There have been sunny days. Today's a rainy day for legitimate reasons. It's not going to rain forever. But we have to recognize, the key element is that all emotions are impermanent.

• 43:39Mel Robbins?

  They're impermanent.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  They are impermanent. The law of physics says that emotions are ephemeral. They are impermanent. I just say that and I just, it makes me feel at ease because I, I lean into rainy days more than sunny days. That's a whole, you know, that's a therapy session we won't get into right now. But the point is that I have to use that language. I have to talk to myself and say, Mark, today's a rainy day. You've had some beautiful sunny days over the last couple of years. Remember, they're, they're there too. And how relieving that is. We've gone from recognizing to understanding to labeling, and I want to get to expressing. Can I do that one now?

• 44:25Mel Robbins?

  Please.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  So, expressing emotions, this is bringing us to that last big R of regulating, is that there's a lot of discernment in expressing emotions. There's a lot of discernment in me feeling safe psychologically with you, Mel, right here, right now, to be my true self. Like, you create the context. I'm in your home right now. And so you're creating a context for me either to be completely open or guarded.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Every home is that way. Every classroom is that way. Every workplace is that way. So when we want to express our emotions, we can't just do it. It's a skill that is embedded in a context.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  We also have to know how and when to express emotions. I've gotten this pushback too about like, you're just saying that permission to feel means permission to say whatever you're feeling, whatever you want to say. I'm like, I never wrote that, just to let you know. There are norms in our works, there, in our workplaces. There are norms in our homes and society. And yes, you can be your true self, but is that the most helpful self? You know, if I said everything I was feeling to everybody I was with, I would be a very lonely person.

• 45:36Mel Robbins?

  I'd be fired from my own company.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. There you go. The question here is, are we in relationships with people with whom we can be our authentic selves? I can't tell you how many people I talk to, people who are listening right now. And if I said, can you tell your loved ones how you really feel? Can you be open and say, I'm feeling sad? I'm feeling lonely. Do you have the courage to talk about it with someone? Do you know that most people say no? My research shows that about two-thirds of us say no.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  And this is why we need to help people learn the skills because they don't feel like there is an actual person in their life with whom they can be their true, full feeling self.

• 46:26Mel Robbins?

  What is the final R?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  So, the final R of Ruler is regulate. It's about regulating your emotions to achieve your goals.

• 46:35Mel Robbins?

  What does that mean, to be regulating your emotion?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Well, let me ask everyone who's listening and you. What's your definition of emotion regulation?

• 46:45Mel Robbins?

  For me, I think it means to recognize what's happening and to basically try to let it rise up and dissipate.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 46:59Mel Robbins?

  To try to not let it be leaking all over other human beings. To try to not let my mood or my feelings in the moment dictate the actions that I take next. That's what it means to me.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's a great way of thinking about it. Mark, the scientist's definition is it's about the thoughts and the actions, so the things we can do in our heads. I can prevent the anxiety before the presentation because I can get ready for it. I can reduce an unwanted emotion. I can initiate an emotion. I can intentionally try to help you savor your emotions. I can maintain a pleasant emotion. So like, when I leave here today, I'm going to assume that we all think this went well and I'm going to call people and I'm going to say, like, I had an amazing experience with Mel and ask me some questions, please, you know, and so that I can think back and savor it. I think that's important. We tend to just move on.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Why? Let's savor it. Or we can boost or enhance emotions. And we do that in the service of all the things that I do my work for, which is, we regulate so we have better attention. We regulate so we make better decisions. We regulate so we can have better relationships. We regulate so we can have better mental health. And we regulate so we can achieve our goals in life.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  And so there are strategies. Should we go through them?

• 48:27Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, let's start with the ones that are unhelpful, that people may reach for and don't realize it's not actually working. And I'll share one.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Go.

• 48:35Mel Robbins?

  I recently started to realize that when I would kind of become a volcano or I'd get angry because I feel a sense of injustice.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:47Mel Robbins?

  Or I get frustrated because I have unmet expectations, usually, by the way, that I've not expressed,

• 48:54Mel Robbins?

  that in the venting, like, I just need to get it out. I'm a verbal processor. That's it. It just stirs up even more.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:03Mel Robbins?

  And so that's one thing. Another one that has been very unhelpful that I use for decades

• 49:10Mel Robbins?

  is telling myself to not be anxious or telling myself I shouldn't be this way and really rejecting the thing that I was feeling and trying to ignore it.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, welcome to America. I think those are many people's go-to strategies. My research shows that there are three big ones that are unhelpful. For everybody who's listening, take a moment and think about it. When you're overwhelmed, when you're stressed, when you're pissed off, what's your automatic go-to, unhelpful way of dealing with your emotions?

• 49:39Mel Robbins?

  Sending an email and venting on people.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:41Mel Robbins?

  Bitching to my husband about what some idiot did.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 49:44Mel Robbins?

  Talking about the state of the world and why this is still happening.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:49Mel Robbins?

  Yes. And now I'm already feeling, actually, Dr. Brackett.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Totally. I can't believe I'm going to say this. I get mean and I hate myself for it, but I just get, when I get triggered, I like, want to retaliate. And I'm working on it for years, but if I get low enough and angry enough or frustrated enough, it just, and I'm like this, I'm like, I always say to myself, Mark, you're the director of the Center for Freaking Emotional Intelligence. Don't say it. Don't do it, Mark. You have the strategies. You're the expert.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  And I go for it. And it's like, ah. But here are the big ones. Avoidance.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  It's like, the person you're having a difficult time with at work, you're like, I'm just going to not go into the lunchroom. I'm going to avoid that person in the hallway. Or I'm just not going to tell the person how I really feel and just, it's going to, I'm going to bury it. That, that also includes the kind of denial, the suppression stuff. The second is eating and drinking.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  How many of us have had one too many chips or scoops of ice cream or one too many alcoholic beverages?

• 50:53Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, what do you think the odds are that I had a martini last night after a stressful day?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 50:59Mel Robbins?

  And then I walked in here this morning and leaked all over a bunch of people.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Self-awareness is a gift. And the other masterful one, I say that jokingly, is just negative self-talk. We are self-saboteurs.

• 51:14Mel Robbins?

  Where does negative self-talk come from, Dr. Brackett?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't think we want to use it.

• 51:19Mel Robbins?

  Right.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  I think we are gaslighted to use it. Can I give you a really concrete one of an example?

• 51:25Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, please.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  So I have a niece who is the love of my life. Her name is Esme. She was adopted from Guatemala. And I speak Spanish and I went to bring her home back 21 years ago. She just graduated college. I'm very proud of you, Esme. She is dark-skinned. She's Latina. She was in a very white area of New York State. And in kindergarten, some kid said to her, "You're a different color than your mother. That's disgusting."

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Now, of course, her mother called me and said, "You better get up here because I'm going to get in my car. I'm going to run over that kid. I'm going to run over the mother." I'm like, "Take a deep breath. Uncle Mark, road trip." Now, when I got to their home, this is the love of my life, this five-year-old girl. And I know what it's like because I was terribly bullied as a kid. I knew that I had to be her emotion ally. I knew that I had to help intervene because she was already saying, "I don't want to go to school. I hate school. I don't want to go to school." She was already questioning her skin color. Why am I this? And why are you my mother? And in that moment, which was a difficult moment for our family, I had to figure out a way to connect with this young woman and in her five-year-old language, tell her that

• 52:34Speaker 01

  no one has the right to define your reality. Now, if she were Uncle Mark in his 40s at the time, he would have the courage to say, "Wait a minute. Like, who do you think you are talking to me that way? I love myself. You don't have that power." She's five.

• 52:49Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Do you see why I'm saying how important it is?

• 52:51Mel Robbins?

  Of course, yes.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  We have to build the skill early. And so this young girl with her uncle and her parents and other people were really trying to help her reframe, build more positive self-talk, recognize that our family has different skin colors and tones, and it's okay, and that we love her, and that she's going to be okay, and et cetera. But imagine no intervention there. Imagine no one noticing. We were intentional about providing her that support so she could reframe and have more positive self-talk. So our negative self-talk starts early, and it doesn't come from within. It comes from without. It's our parents saying, "Why are you wearing those pants? And why are you doing that?"

• 53:36Speaker 01

  And all that negativity about your skin color, about your height, about your weight, about the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you do your homework, everything. And from what I gather, other than the work I do and some others do, there's nobody intervening in helping parents and children notice and say, "Wait a minute. We need to not be self-saboteurs. We need to be self-compassionate."

• 54:01Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Brackett, if you're somebody who struggles with negative self-talk, how do you stop that?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I wake up every single morning with a mindset that today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today is a day that I can start the journey to be the best version of myself. I mean, I just think we have to have that mindset about life. Otherwise, we just get stuck, and we're endlessly stuck, and we're endlessly like trying to fix. There's nothing to fix. Only learning.

• 54:32Mel Robbins?

  Why is that mindset so important? What has it done for you?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  What it does for me is it allows me to set goals to be the better version of myself that day. And it's like, "You know, Mark, you said that to your partner. Not cool. Like, let's think about that a little bit. Like, what need did you have that was unmet that made you project or displace that crap on him?" And so for me, it's an opportunity to grow. It's an opportunity to flourish. And as a kid who had a lot of trauma, and I walk around the world and I see the data on how many people have experienced trauma and how many people have stayed stuck in

• 55:16Speaker 01

  that trauma, I just feel like that's not the way life should be. Life is about moving forward.

• 55:25Mel Robbins?

  What are the research-backed strategies that are effective for regulating an emotion?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Number one is the permission to feel.

• 55:35Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  You gotta just, "It's okay. I'm feeling it. No big deal." Number two, build the vocabulary. We got there. Number three, you have to learn how to deactivate. You do have to build the space. So if you get annoyed with someone here before you go home, sometimes you don't have access to those cognitive strategies right away. So maybe it's taking a walk around the block. Maybe it's taking a deep breath. Maybe it's a little meditation. It's whatever works for you. For me, it's breathing. I just take some breath and like, "Okay." And then I can activate my best self. So just to, it goes from attitude of permission to feel to having the vocabulary, to knowing

• 56:20Speaker 01

  how to deactivate, to the cognitive strategies. One of my favorite go-to strategies is temporal distancing. It's a fancy way for saying, "How am I going to feel about this in a month?"

• 56:32Speaker 01

  So I'm triggered by everything, just so you know. I just, I am like, especially, I grew up with a father who was like cheap. Like, "Why are we buying that? That's ridiculous." So we go shopping and, you know, my partner wants the organic almond milk. I'm like, "That's ridiculous. We're not spending $7 on milk. Are you out of your mind?" And then I realized, like, A, I'm not my partner's father. Oh, yeah, that's right. Everybody can buy whatever milk they want to buy. It's not like, "Control freak, shut up, control freak." But sometimes I have to take, go down another aisle, take a deep breath and be like, "Mark, is it worth your relationship, this freaking almond milk? Like, this is ridiculous. Are you really going to even remember that you bought the almond milk in a week from now? No, let it go."

• 57:17Speaker 01

  So that, it's like you build in time, or you create the time. One of my ultimate favorites is a relational one. I don't know, but you have ever been in a meeting with someone that you just, their energy is really uncomfortable?

• 57:33Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  My father was like this a lot. He would get triggered when we were at family gatherings, and then all of a sudden he'd go in the attack mode.

• 57:42Mel Robbins?

  And then you feel like, "Oh, my God, what are they going to do? Oh, my God, yes, like, I have no control here."

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you create a picture frame. So let's imagine right now, for listeners, I'm with Mel, and Mel is saying like, "Mark, I think your stuff is bullshit." And I'm like, "I can't believe this is happening right now." And so I could just sit here and absorb it all and be like, "Oh, my God, my life is over. Five million people are going to listen to Mel tell me that my life's work is meaningless." Okay, Mark. A, she didn't say it. B, make a little picture frame. So I literally make you into a movie.

• 58:14Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  And I observe you as opposed to absorb you. Observe versus absorb.

• 58:24Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Do you get it?

• 58:25Mel Robbins?

  Yes. I need this.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  We all need it.

• 58:30Mel Robbins?

  And I especially need it when I see clips from the news.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:37Mel Robbins?

  Because it's so activating to see certain people and certain headlines, and I absorb it.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Me, too.

• 58:47Mel Robbins?

  Versus observing it.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:51Mel Robbins?

  Where there is this distance.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Correct. It's spatial distance.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  So when my father would say things like, "You know, Mark, you think your blank dozen steak now that you're a professor?" And I would be like, "Okay, this is going to be a fun night, but this is going to be a B-level movie." And I'm just going to watch my father go on his rampage and just, wow. Gosh, I wish he had an emotion education when he was young. Gosh, it would have been nice for him to learn some skills. Wow. It's a great movie. And so I would just talk about it while I am observing it.

• 59:25Mel Robbins?

  To yourself.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  And I would disallow him to...

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Bring that into my life. It's a beautiful technique.

• 59:33Mel Robbins?

  It is beautiful. And what I just realized is that when I'm saying, let them in a moment where somebody is very triggering or they're activated, I've never thought about it like the movie, but I'm basically cuing myself to recognize who I'm dealing with and to take a step back emotionally and remind myself, I can't control this. This person's acting like an eight-year-old throwing a tantrum.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Mel Robbins?

  Just let them.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  So that's actually really cool because I've read your book, which I think is wonderful. And I have applied my own work to your work. And we're aligned 100% there because when you are letting them,

• 1:00:14Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  you still have to regulate your feelings. It's not like you just let them and be like, whatever. You have to manage your own experience with that person and allow the disengagement or let the relationship go in a different direction or whatever it is. But that takes some personal work.

• 1:00:33Mel Robbins?

  Well, what I realized is that before being able to say, let them as a way to create the distance between me and somebody else and observe what's happening, I couldn't actually regulate my own emotions because their leakiness and my reaction to it.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  You're absorbing.

• 1:00:54Mel Robbins?

  And now I'm just reacting to that.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Mel Robbins?

  I couldn't actually regulate myself. And it's the distance that you're talking about of observing, whether it's in yourself or someone else and these tools that you're talking to yourself where you start to talk to yourself or you notice it in a picture frame. You go, okay, interesting. Acting like toddlers, six years old. It's very interesting that a 70-year-old person's doing this right now. Okay, and not my job to manage. I'm gonna let them, you know? And it helps me stay over here. I think about it like snow globes. Like when somebody gets super emotional, there's all this agitation that gets shaken up. And the tools you're teaching us can allow you

• 1:01:40Mel Robbins?

  to keep that stuff in their snow globe from hitting you and from recognizing that you can choose to try to calm it, but you don't have to.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  I remember, you know, back a number of years ago, I was giving a speech and this other person who was mean gave a speech after me. I had given a speech and I was really being heartfelt about my bullying experience as a kid. For some reason, the second presenter thought they were like a smart ass. And before they began their talk, which was right after mine, he got up, he shows this video of a boy being bullied. And he goes, that was Mark before he got his black belt. Now, in that moment, I was crushed. And here I was like a 40-something-year-old man in the front of 300 people. I was off to the side. I literally transgressed to being 12. It was mind-blowing. I'm like, wow, I just went, whoo.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  And so I had a moment in my life where I had to make a choice. I wasn't gonna run into Sage and give him. I was gonna think, I had this visual of me like, because I'm a 50-degree black belt. I was gonna run into Sage with a flying sidekick and knock him out. That was like my authentic self. My best self, on the other hand, said, Mark, let's wait. But afterwards, I really had to go up to this person and I had to make it clear that what they said was not only embarrassment for themselves, but for the community. And that it was like, you're done. Like, this will never happen again. You know how much work that took? Oh, my gosh.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  The courage to just be like, I gotta give this person feedback in terms of the way they treated me. And it was embarrassing and gross. Whether you do anything about it or not is not my control. But I have to have the courage and the skill to go up to you and say, never again.

• 1:03:32Mel Robbins?

  What I love about that is you are using all the tools you talked about. And then you're choosing a way to behave that makes you really proud of yourself. It's almost a way for you to be your own Uncle Marvin.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:46Mel Robbins?

  It's so beautiful. Your work is so important. And I am grateful that you made the time to be here with us, to explain all this. And there is so much that I have absorbed. And I cannot wait to apply this. And so just personally, I wanted to say thank you. If you, after all of these incredible tools and insights that you've taught us today, if you could identify, what is the one takeaway that you would want somebody to walk away with after listening?

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  I want people to leave realizing they have the power to choose their response in their lives. I want people to leave knowing that emotional intelligence is not a fixed trait. You weren't born that way. It's a learned skill. We can learn to recognize our emotions better in other people's. We can learn to understand them. We can learn to label them, express them, and regulate them in ways that can help us to achieve all of our goals, to build the best possible relationships, to have the well-being that we want. And I do believe that these skills help us to ensure that our dreams come true.

• 1:05:08Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Mark Brackett, what are your parting words?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  My parting words are, please give yourself permission to feel. Please give everyone you love and even the people you don't love that much, permission to feel. And build that toolbox of strategies to help you manage the full range of emotions so that you can have emotional freedom and achieve your goals.

• 1:05:35Mel Robbins?

  Well, Dr. Brackett, I have such a deep admiration for you.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 1:05:46Mel Robbins?

  And I think your work is a real gift. Thank you for sharing it with us today.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

• 1:05:54Mel Robbins?

  You're welcome. And I also want to thank you for giving us the gift of your time. I know there is so much that you took away from this and that you are going to share with people that you care about and that you're going to start applying in your life. And I'm so excited for you to have these tools and to have all of the wisdom from Dr. Brackett. And in case nobody else tells you today, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And as Dr. Brackett said, when you give yourself permission to feel, when you start to use some of the tools that you learned about today to better understand yourself, to better understand the emotions that you're feeling,

• 1:06:37Mel Robbins?

  you're going to experience a level of freedom that you deserve. And you're gonna start seeing yourself and your entire life in a different light. I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  That was okay?

• 1:06:54Mel Robbins?

  You were what?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Was that okay?

• 1:06:56Mel Robbins?

  Are you actually asking that? So you're in your work clothes when you're making your cappuccino? I'm trying to visualize this.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  My second one. I mean, we're not gonna, maybe the first one, we won't give the imagery for.

• 1:07:05Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so he's nude, everybody.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Maybe halfway.

• 1:07:11Mel Robbins?

  We will have a lot of fun.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  I'm having a breakdown. I can't take it. I'm anxious. And then Orasio, who is my husband, he'll say, you're anxious? How about you're tired? How about like, go to freak the bed?

• 1:07:28Mel Robbins?

  I didn't quite know, like, I just have this like soup of feelings right now.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Let me say that, actually, let me say that again.

• 1:07:33Mel Robbins?

  That was actually really good.

• 1:07:38Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.