I think in our society we're given a lot of things to do instead of feel. You know, a lot of things to consume instead of feel, and yet that's how we stay bound and addicted and unhappy.
On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I chat with Emma Sepola about reclaiming yourself and setting yourself free. Sounds good, right. I've known Emma since grad school and she consistently puts out good vibes and teaches us how to have healthy
bodies and minds. In this episode, we discussed what Emma refers to as sovereign, which is designed to emancipate you from the many ways in which you knowingly or unknowingly subjugate yourself at every level of your existence, from yourself, to your emotions, to your mind, to your relationships, to your intuition, and to your body. Emma shows us how we bind ourselves and how we can reach claim our sovereignty.
Emma is a very wise and compassionate human and I think you'll learn stuff in this episode you can apply in your life right away to reconnect with yourself in a very healthy way. So, without further ado, I'll bring you Emma Cepola Emma, Emma, Emma.
Hi Scott, how you doing.
Good to see you, Good to hear you, Good.
To see you too.
Congrats in your new book, Sovereign Reclaim your freedom, energy and power in a time of distraction, uncertainty, and chaos. Wow. Well, I think a lot of people are really yearning from that right now. So you know, this major theme of this new book is setting yourself free, and it's opposite state, which you refer to as the bound state, where through life experiences, fear and trauma, we start to disconnect from ourselves.
So you're really contrasting these these things, and hopefully we can help our listeners and viewers, if they're watching the YouTube channel right now, help them, help them set themselves free. No one can do it but themselves, right, We can't do it for them.
Yeah, so true, and that's that's the whole goal of this book.
I know I read your book.
You are awesome, Scotty.
Well, thank you. Go on and stop.
So what's where do we even start with this this? Can you can you describe to me that how you conceive of the concept of energy. I mean, there's so many places to start in this discussion, but I see that word interwoven quite a bit throughout the book, and can you just kind of tell me what you think of that word.
I love that as a first question, Scott, because in many ways, as I'm contrasting this the balance state and the sovereign state, the bound state is really everything that trains us of our energy. It's the beliefs we hold, the behavior patterns we have, the addictive behaviors that we have, the ways we conceive of ourselves and the ways we interpret the world that drain our energy, the ways that we interact with people that drain our energy. And when
we're in a sovereign state, that's the opposite. We're filling our own tank, we're maintaining it, but we're also filling others tanks. So it's a pattern in that goes through all of the different chapters. You know. As one example, just as one belief that drains us is you know, whenever I've asked audiences how many people are self critical, almost every single person raises their hand. And as you as you know, self criticism the psychological definition is that
it's a form of self loathing. And when you think about that, just you know that the majority of people are walking around with this. You could think of it as social conditioning or programming, like viral programming that runs in families and runs in societies and does us no vapors and drains us of our energy. That's one example.
How do we get bounded, you know, and disconnected from ourselves? And you know, throughout the course of our lives, can our relationship with ourselves change depending on life circumstances.
Absolutely, And I think that's the journey, right, that's the journey of and it starts with awareness, like being aware of the many ways that we engage with behaviors or thought patterns that drain our energy. Another example is our emotions.
And I know you think about this a lot too, and that most people when you ask, well, what have you learned about what to do with your emotions, your big, bad negative ones, people will say, let's just suppress them, right, just suck it up, butter Cup, That's that's pretty much what everyone is up to. I mean there's some exceptions, you know, in some Latin cultures in southern Italy, But even then there are certain emotions that are just not
acceptable and that are suppressed. And when we look at the research suppression basically increases the negative emotion, and it's more likely to come out somatically, you know, through health stuff, or it's going to explode or come out as passive aggression and destroying both ourselves and others in the process.
So that's just sort of one example of that. And how the journey towards becoming more sovereign with regards to our emotions is to learn to actually feel them, just like a child will feel their emotions one hundred percent and then it moves through them. Just like so going back to that theme of energy, the child lets the energy of the emotion move through them and then they're done a few minutes later, as opposed to adults who
can hold on to an emotion forever. Not to say that I'm encouraging exploding our emotions all over the place, but the ability to feel, and I think, I think in our society we're given a lot of things to do instead of feel, you know, a lot of things to consume instead of feel, and yet that's how we stay bound and addicted and unhappy.
What does a healthy self esteem look like?
Well, you know, I always just ask, like, you know, what are some of the things that people say to themselves when they make a big mistake. Right when you ask people that, they usually say where it's like, you're such an idiot, you don't belong here, not good enough, those kinds of words. And you know, whenever I hear that, it's just so heartbreaking to hear how people talk to themselves. When during the pandemic, I would teach on Zoom and I would ask this question, what do you say to
yourself when you make a big mistake? And people would write it in the chat and you'd see one thing after another of these heartbreaking words that people tear themselves, tear themselves up with, And when you think about it, it doesn't make any sense because what would you say to your best friend? You would say, what would you say your best friend? You would say, Oh, you're okay, everything's everybody makes mistakes, You're totally fine. We'd be so
encouraging and loving to them. Why do we have a self destructive relationship with ourselves? You know, we talk about toxic being in a toxic relationship or toxic workplace. Most people are walking around with a toxic relationship with their own self? What about that makes sense? It doesn't, but it keeps people bound this. One study found that eighty percent of millennials endorse the belief I am not good enough with regards to most areas of their life. Can
you believe that? It's so heartbreaking? And so I always think what would happen to this world if every single person had a sovereign relationship with themselves? I mean, how would they show up? They would be able to show up within their full potential, be their freaking best selves and rock stars like Scott Barry.
Kauffman, Well, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, you got me thinking that. I think I might start using the phrase instead of self esteem. What we really need is a healthy self relationship. I like, yeah, I just thought of that phrase self relationship.
Yeah, and so.
Totally why wouldn't you? I mean, the only relationship you're guaranteed for the rest of your life is with yourself. Might as well make it a good one, right, or a friendship, a romance and what happens then? You know? I just you know, I always think, like, how are you going to show up on the battlefield of your life? Are you going to show up, you know, limping because you kicked yourself there? Or in brands spanking new, shining armor because you loved your way there. You know, where
are you? How are you going to be strongest? And and yeah, so that's just something I think about. And Maya Angelo has this beautiful quote where she says, I've learned a long time ago that the only thing that forgetting now the exact quotes I've learned a long time ago, but the only thing that makes sense to be on my own side. Something like that. And then Audrey Lordie has another really great quote and she says, or self care is not self indulgence, it's an act of political warfare.
So powerful. And she was a self described uh, a gay black woman in a white, straight man's world, you know, so she just was she was battling a lot of battles as an activist and writer and so forth. But it's so powerful what she said. It's it's that's how you're going to show up. You're going to show up powerfully if you show up with that self care.
Wow, that's really powerful. Emma.
You know you've done some terrific, groundbreaking research in our field on the neuroscience of emotion regulation. I'd be remiss not to have you review some of your most recent findings or your most the highlights of some of your findings. You know, what are some of the highlights of your findings and why as adults well, and also why don't children learn learn this stuff? We're never taught this, I know.
Scott, It's so weird. I always just think, like, no matter how many mds, PhDs, black belts, you know, dishes, you know how to cook, languages, you know how to speak, most people are running around with as much education about how to handle their big, bad, negative emotions as a five year old, which is basically no formal education. I mean you're supposed to you know, like the two hardest things we're supposed to manage in our life, which are
emotions and relationships, we never get any training on. And they caused so much pain, you know, And so yeah, I mean we were looking specifically, I was looking at a trauma. So after nine I was living in New York during nine to eleven, and I had a lot of anxiety after that day, and I tried a lot of things to help me at the time, you know, I tried mindfulness. I'd go to like hot yoga and I do all this stuff. And I was still shaking. You know, it's still shaking at eight thirty in the morning.
And then I walked into a breathing class called it's called sky Breath Meditation, which was a breathing class that was offered at Columbia by some fellow students through an organization called Art of Living. And I was like, Okay, what is this And I learned the breathing practices and then I felt wow, like I feel like I can
move on. I regained my sovereignty over my anxiety. So fast forward then, you know, I did my doctoral program in psychology and I was doing a postdoc and working with veterans with trauma or coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq, and many of them had gone through traditional therapeutic or pharmaceutical treatments and they hadn't helped them. They were self medicating, like in their basement, smoking weed or drinking, et cetera. And so I thought, you know, this helped me so
many years ago. Let's see if we can help them with breathing. And that was one of the first studies that we ran with a breathing protocol, with doing on the sky breath meditation for a week and then we looked at their anxiety pre post, one month post, and one year post, and we also looked at physiological measures
of startle response and so forth. And what we found was that after one week their anxiety had normalized, I mean compared to the country role group, they they had really uh, some of them no longer qualified as having post traumatic stress. And then when we looked at the physiology of it, we saw really strong correlation between their reduction in in startle response and their reduction in anxiety. So correlation was zero point nine. Now this is something crazy.
And then one month later and yeah, one month later and one year later, they they had maintained they they were they had maintained what they had experienced after that first week, so their anxiety was normalized. And it was interesting because many of them hadn't continued their breathing practice, and so that was really cool. It was like as if you know, there's a way to sort of stabilize the nervous system even if you have gone through trauma
through breathing. And I think, to me, that makes sense in the because a lot of psychological approaches are through the mind, like change your thoughts, change your mind, change your life, you know, and I think that can work to a certain extent, and I think I think it does work, you know, being grateful and so forth. We know,
oh that that works. But when there is a really intense trauma, really intense anxiety, it's lodged in the body, the memory is I'm just thinking about one veteran he would he said, you know, I'll stand in front of the mall, and I'm here in Madison, Wisconsin, and I know there's no danger in the mall, but I still have to brace myself for twenty minutes before I can go in. Because his mind is doing fine. It's just that the trauma in the body, the memory in the body,
is bringing up so much anxiety. And so what we think is happening is that through breathing there's this combination. You're not just addressing the mind, you're also addressing the nervous system.
Tell me a little tell me a little more about that, because I've been critical of the trauma obsessed culturally living now and also the obsession with the body keeps the score. So I actually would like to hear more about this.
Absolutely, no, I'm fascinated by myself because we've run a number of other studies subsequent to this and found some really interesting stuff. So yeah, I mean, one thing we think is happening is this is that as the veterans are doing their breathing practice, they go into this deep parasympathetic state of just calm, and in that moment, it's
sometimes these memories come up. They can come up in the form of the flashback, they come up in the form of simply a smell, of feeling, of physiological sensation, but they're in a deep parasympathetic state. So when usually when they're having a flashback or a memory, they're back in sympathetic activation as if they were in the trauma
that they experienced. And that's why post traumatic stress doesn't allow you to move on, because it's as if that trauma is still right there in front of you right now or every time it's triggered, right and so, and they're not able to sleep for that reason. They're constantly in high activation. And what happens with the breathing we believe is that as they're going into this parasympathetic state and the memory maybe coming up, there's like a decoupling
that happens between the physiological activation and the memory. And so what they have said to us is I remember everything that happened, but I can move on. And they get off got off their met their sleep meds, anxiety meds, you know, and you know, sometimes I get in touch with them because like a reporter wants to talk to them or something, and some of them are like, I'm
not I honestly don't remember what that was like. I'm like, I can't believe you don't remember what that was like cause you were living in your basement going through a divorce and you couldn't even know about work, you know, so talk about sovereignty, you know, how can we regain sovereignty?
So many people have gone through trauma, and you know, many psychological approaches do work and do help, and exposure health therapy does help, you know, in some cases and in other cases, there are people that fall through the cracks, and many veterans have fallen through the cracks. And there's been a very very high suicide rate, as you probably
know daily. It's a horrible amount. And and I wanted to see is there another is there another way that we can bridge that gap, that we can catch those that are falling, And we subsequently ran another study with the Palo Alto Va the larger a larger group of veterans including both men and women, and and it was a it was a design where you uh, that where it was side by side with the gold standard therapeutic treatment, cognitive processing therapy, and the design was such that we
wanted to see if the breathing intervention was it was at least as good as that one. I'm forgetting the name of it now and off the top of my head, but it's that's what the statistical uh, what the stats are that you're you're conducting on it, and that's what was found that was at least as good as the gold standard therapy. And then but then looking at just the physiology too of emotion regulation, those that had gone through the THING program as opposed to the therapy showed
better emotion regulation at the physiological level. So again because I think what's happening with breathing is that you're actually something is going on at the nerve with the nervous system. It's not just cognitive and so so that's just really fascinating. And then another study we ran here at Yale looking at so Yale undergraduates tend to have worse and worse mental health as the semester goes on in their height, you know, type A, and just getting more and more
anxious and depressed with the with time. And so we want what do.
You say, my personal experience?
Yeah, you remember that, Scott we met at Yale all those years ago. Oh it was so fun. Yeah, and uh exactly. So what we wanted to see is can we provide a buffer to prevent this from happening. So we randomly assigned students to It was about two hundred students I think. We randomly assigned them to one of three well being interventions or control group. So it was either this sky breath meditation, the breathing or it was mindfulness based stress reduction, or it was emotional intelligence which
is mostly cognitive skills, or the control group. And we wanted to see which one of these was going to do to help the students most. And what we saw was that the breathing group had the most impact of all and I think it's because it probably brings together a lot of the elements from the others. Has both the physiological breathing component, but also brings together the mindfulness.
Because what we saw is that mindfulness scores increased thanks to the breathing, and then it has some cognitive you know, you're you're better able to take in any kind of cognitive information when you're you've addressed the anxiety that's at the level of the body. Yeah.
Can you give our listeners a concrete practice? Can you teach us something?
Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, so you know what you know, what we researched is a program that takes a couple to learn, is like a whole protocol, like a twenty minute protocol. But what I can teach you now is something real simple that you can keep a.
Back stuck in the past. You've taught me stuff in the past to help me get through my flying anxiety you have.
Oh my gosh, fantastic.
I don't remember that while ago ago.
Yeah, yeah, oh good? Did it help?
Oh yeah, okay.
I'm glad to hear that. Okay. So a real simple thing that people can take away from from just listening today. So when you breathe in, your heart rate increases, and when you breathe out, it slows down. And if you're you know, if you're in a nurse's office, you can really scare them by exhaling for a really long time and seeing what happens to your heart rate. But what we're going to do today is I can lead us through a real Do you want me to lead us
through an exercise? Yeah, I'll lead us through a short extras Okay, what we're just going to do is lengthen our exhales for a while with our eyes closed. So before we start, before we start changing our breath, you can just close your eyes and have your palms open on your lap, and then you want to breathe in
for account of one, but hold on before you start breathing. Sorry, before you start breathing, I just want to assess where you are right now, So just assessing your level of energy, noticing, you know, how many thoughts are going on in your own mind, so you could have a lot of traffic, a lot of thought traffic, or not a lot. Just sort of noticing your own state of mind first, so you can see if there's a shift from before to after.
And then for the breathing, you want to breathe in for account of one, two, three, four, hold and then you can breathe out for two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, So you're breathing out for either twice as long or a time and a half as long as you breathe in. You want to do that for about five minutes and then reassess sort of where you're at and then and that's a practice that you can take take with you. Do you want me to guide us through it or.
Yeah, I'm doing it right now.
Okay, so I'll keep guiding us then for a few minutes. Okay, So breathe then two three four, hold and breathe out two three four, five, six seven eight. Breathe in two three four, hold and breathe out two three four, five six seven eight. Breathe in two three four, hold and breathe out two three four, five, six seven eight. Breathe in two three four, hold and breathe out two three four, five,
six seven eight. One more time deep breath in two three for hold, breathe out two three four, five six seven eight, and then come back to normal breath and just assess any shifts or changes in the state of your mind. And then when you're ready, you can open your eyes and notice how you feel with the eyes open.
I opened my eyes already. I'm gotta admit amazing. Yeah, No, it's it really does help do something to my parasympathetic nervous system.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a way to gain sovereignty, right. I mean, look all the time throughout the day, we have so much media coming at us, We have so many things, so many people, so many demands, and sometimes you can just rush through the day and there's all this stuff in our head from everything we've been accumulating.
And then you you're right, sum are either at your office and you want to just be focusing, or at home and you want to be focusing on your loved ones, but your mind is completely cluttered with everything that's been happening, and you're not able to be present with what you
want to do. And you know, having sovereignty of our mind is being able to bring it back into a place where it can be aware and present with what's going on, in calmer and able to you know, we know from research that when you're calmer, you're a better decision maker, you have better emotional intelligence, you're more focused, better attention, better memory, and you're more creative. Right, so, all the things.
That's true, that's true.
The emotion regulation and trauma narrative link is really interesting to me because I feel like trauma has exploded in our society, where it was once confined to like veterans and others would diagnose post traumatic stress disorder. Now it's every student I teach, it's everyone on TikTok, everyone and everything is blamed on their trauma as well.
So to a.
Certain degree, you know, trauma is a higher level, conscious construction of an event. It's it's a label that we're putting on an event. And of course you are quite right to point out that there are bodily uh uh top you know, bottom up effects. You know, there's top down, but there's also you know, bottom up effects that that can linger, especially under triggering situations that are related. But
now everyone's being triggered by everything. You're a very very compassionate I mean, I've known you a long time, Emma.
You are very very that.
You have like a very like motherly way of being to the work, to the world at large. Just my observation just now, I am not you. I think some people need to toughen the fuck up, is what I'm saying.
That's what I'm saying.
Now, work with me, here, work with me, let's meet, Let's meet in the middle.
Let's resolutely let's meet in the middle. Because you know, one thing I talk about also is you know, yes, things may have happened to you. To to most people, something's happened. You know, you've had a car accident, you had a tough youth, you had a tough breakup, you've had your morning. You know, yes, those things happen. And
in that sense, we are victims of those situations. And yet I do, really, from the bottom of my heart, believe that when we hold onto that victimhood, we are keeping ourselves in a bound state because we are not we are. It kind of keeps us in that place like, okay, I'll share. You know, for myself, I wasn't an abusive marriage, Okay, so I know what. I know what it's like to be in a situation like that. And yet if I stay in that I'm a victim of you know, a
domestic violence. I am. I am identifying with a disempowered position as opposed to I am. You know, I lived through that, I learned through that, I grew through that. I'm you know, I'm stronger for it, and I'm more sovereign now. But sovereignty, I think is really reclaiming that post traumatic growth, not so much focusing on the victimhood, which can painfully keep us in a place of feeling abused. And you know, this is it's a this is a tricky line to walk because I'm not saying no, you
didn't have trauma. Yes you had trauma, and yet it is in your favor to identify with the fact that you have survived it, you're growing from it, and you're stronger for it, and you're not having that happen to you ever again.
Well yeah, well, love what you're saying. The idea though, that trauma is something objective as opposed to a subjective.
Thing.
Though, you know, it's interesting because there's so many different definitions of trauma in the psychological literature. It's not like we all agree in the literature. You know that on this term. And you know, if a student is traumatized that they have homework, is that a fair use of the word trauma?
Do you know? Do you know there's just the word.
Trauma is being used now like everyone's being traumatized as opposed to I'm upset or I'm anxious. It's now I'm traumatized.
Now.
Now I think there are things we can all I mean, there's a list of things we can all agree. I think the ACE checklist is still valid, you know, but there are so many things now that fall are falling under that purview for young people.
Yeah, what are your thoughts of that?
Well, they're not by by going deep into that as a victim, they're disempowering themselves. And that's a problem, you know, because then they're not accessing, you know, their inner core strength and belief in themselves that Yeah, like this is hard for me, and I can get through this, and I'm a freaking warrior. You know. We've all been through hard times, and even just looking back on it, you can be like, wow, I'm I went through that, and I can do this. You know, I can do this again.
And I could do it with more wisdom, I could do it with more compassion. I can do it. I've gone through suffering and I'll continue to go through suffering because that's human life, and I can do this.
Well, that's lovely. That's a lovely actually, I mean you are.
You are very forward looking, which is which is why I mean, I'm very much in line with that.
For sure.
Your research has spanned multiple areas you've also studied intuition and got feelings. You know, you aregue we have an instinct for self preservation that we often ignore, but you do argue that we can make better decisions in our lives if we can gain some sovereignty over that. Could you elaborate a little more on your research relating to that.
You know that I'm so curious about that instinct for self preservation because my hero, Carl Rodgers called it the we have an organismic valuing system in our body is what he argued. I have renamed that in my coaching program too. We have a self actualizing compass.
In our body.
So it's even more than self preservation. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Well that's sovereignty, right, self actualization is sovereignty. Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. I think you know when else at grad student, I was a grad student and James Gross's lab at Stanford, which was the Emotion regulation Lab.
He's amazing.
I love him. He was an amazing mentor. He is an amazing I mean to this day, he's my hero. And you know, one of the studies that was really interesting was that in the lab we looked at suppression. What happens when you suppres emotion. Now, when someone is suppressing anger, Let's say I were suppressing anger and I'm talking to you and I'm pretending I'm not anger. I'm like, nope,
I'm fine, everything's fine. Right. Let's say that your heart rate would increase, so in cognitively you wouldn't understand, okay, you wouldn't understand why you're feeling not so you want to back away or you want to get out of there. You know, sometimes you have that feeling like I don't I can't explain it, but I just don't have a good vibe. I need to move, I need to get out of here. Well, what happens is that physiologically, you've
already registered that I'm suppressing emotion. You've registered inauthenticity, and inauthenticity from an instinctual point of view, registers this threat. So even animals, I'll give you an example with equine facilitated therapy. So when a therapist uses a horse to work with a let's say a child with anxiety, right, and the child pretend not to be scared of the horse, the child will come up and be like, I'm not scared of that horse. I'm just fine. But if that
child is scared. The horse is moving all over the place and is anxious, and the horse doesn't understand English, right, but the horse is registering inauthenticity and that registers this threat. And so and we have the same thing, and we register in authenticity as threat, whether we realize it cognitively or not. Our heart rate is going up. So I thought that was really fascinating. And then that and we have so we have an instinct which we can think
of intuition as instinct. We can think of it as you know, putting the pieces of putting the pieces of information together in the back of our mind. I mean, there are many ways that we can conceive of it. Joseph Michaels, who is my colleague at Stanford, he looked at decision making and he thinks about intuition as your feeling. You know, you say, I have a feeling this is
a good idea or not. And what he found was that when decision making is complex, when you're weighing a lot of things, you're going to make a better dey decision if you go with your feelings rather than just thinking through it reasonably. If the matter is simple, no big deal. But if it's complicated, you're going to make a better decision if you go with your gut feeling.
I think that's just really fascinating. That also ties into you know what you and I. Yeah, what you and I are really interested in with the whole idea of the creativity. Where do you get your creative insights? Again, it's from a place of relaxation, right, So you could think of it as, oh, my brain's putting together a puzzle in the back, in the background, and I'm not
realizing it. Or you could think of it as receptivity like Einstein, you know, he he would go and play Mozart and then it would come, the ideas would come to him. How does that happen? However we think about it, it's it's a way of being receptive in a non cognitive way that can really that can save our lives.
Like my friend Kushel was on nine to eleven. He walked into the second Twin tower to get into his office and then the building was hit or that I don't know remember which tower was, but anyways, building was hit and the guards were giving orders to stay in the building, and Krushill hesitated for a moment and he ran out of there and he saved his life by hair. And what would have happened if he hadn't listened to his gut? How many people in that building had the
same gut feeling and didn't go with it? Right, So this is an area of research that I think is going to be going to grow a lot. It's already growing. There's just a lot of interest, and the military has been researching it for decades under different names. But and there was a movie that made fun of it called Men Who Stare At Goats? Did you see that movie?
Well that it was kind of.
Making fun of that. But they're always starting new programs again because so many service members came back from Iraq and Afghanistan having reported using gut feelings to like save their lives or save other people's lives. Oh, we didn't go down that road because I had a feeling, you know. So now they're studying it again. It's sort of top secret and nobody would nobody wants to talk about it, but it's happening, and I know it. I have I have some I have some some intelligence from that.
Yeah, so interesting.
I don't know if you know, But my my dissertation was on impulsit learning.
No, I didn't know that.
Yes, yes, and it's relationship to creativity, so I think I'm all about uh harnessing that power. Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me tell me about that well, the the regularities and statistical probabilities that we learn automatically and unconsciously throughout the course of our day. There are individual differences in it.
I found some people are better at impulsit learning than others, and that was unrelated to their IQ score, So they could have do well on IQ tests and see those patterns explicitly and consciously, but not be as good as at seeing the tacit areas of life.
So yeah, I.
Found implicit learning was correlated with openness to experience the personality trait makes sense, and yeah, it was which that in turn was correlated with creative achievement. But I so, yeah, No, I think that's really good. And you would argue that's important to distinguish between just like a blind faith in one's emotions, right, and a more honed expert intuition.
Absolutely, because our feelings are always changing. It's not like you can just I'm just going to always go with my feelings. That could also make you really wishy washed. She like you, we definitely have logic and reason there. And I like how Joe Michael says. He says, you know, when I have to make a big decision, of course I use my reason, but I also consult my feeling. And I think just that even just that invitation to consult one's feeling has been absent from our discourse, absence
from our education. Pooh poot is not like magical thinking. But actually, you know, even when you're like mother's intuition, there's a word for that, like we know what's going on with our kid better than you know anyone else. And I also think that you know, making time for
those moments. And I know, Scott, you and I have talked about this a lot, about those moments of you know, the awful wave of moments in our lives where we are in a more relaxed state, you know, whether it's through meditation or contemplation, or being out in nature or playing music, listening to music, whatever it is that allows us to go into a more serene space, that's when you're more likely to sort of access those insights. And you also want to make sure that you're not they're
not being colored by your trauma or fear. Right, it's like, Oh, I have a got feeling I shouldn't go on stage. Well, maybe you're just really afraid to go on stage. But if you went up there, you'd be a rock star and you'd be helping people, So you should do it right. So we have to make sure that we're not you know, we're not. We have to make sure that that our feeling really is is is an intuition? Yeah?
Yeah, I love that.
You know you've you've tied a lot of the stuff to leadership too, right, m hm.
And what do you think? What do you think are like?
Do you can you give an examples of any sovereign leaders people you would say, Oh, they're sovereign, they're sovereign, they're not bound.
Trump is bound. Do you think Trump is bound?
Oh that's hilarious. I can't speak to I have no idea. He is definitely doing his own thing. But whether he is a sovereign I don't know. Because you know, a sovereign state is one in which you're not caught up in addictions. Whether that's addiction to fame, or addiction to money or pleasure, all those things are bound. Those are bondage and it sounds like from his history you may
have some of that. But yes, I I once met this. Uh. I was actually supposed to escort this woman, her name is Lindaton to a stage and I hadn't met her before, and within minutes of her sitting next to me, seconds maybe tears start rolling down my face. Scott, this is embarrassing here. I'm her host. I'm supposed to bring her to the station going to speak at Stanford Business School. And she looks at me, She's like, I'm making you cry,
and I'm like, what is happening to me? And I had this flash of insight at that moment that I had never met a woman who owned her sovereignty so completely in my life, and it almost shot a pang of pain in me, not just for myself, but for all women in particular. This was what this was about fifteen years ago, and it was sort of a maybe a flash of insight, you know, one of those wow you know. And she is an incredible woman. Talk about
working with her intuition. She definitely moves with her intuition, but she's also brilliant. But she and she in fact, this is an intuition story herself, so she went She lost her father when she was in her teens and experienced firsthand what it was like to have a main provider pass away in the family, and so she got herself to Yale on a tennis scholarship, and then at Yale once she got married at Yale and then was pregnant shortly thereafter and a single mom, so she had
to somehow support her child. And she went to Wall Street in the eighties as a woman. So she became financially successful, but was sexually harassed by both her colleagues and her clients constantly. So she finally decided to retire
in her thirties, thinking that's it. I'm out of here, and she moved to Florida, and then she had an intuition that came to her as a dream, and her father came to her and said, this is not what I had in mind for you, and she realized there was something else she was meant to do, and she decided to make sure that no other families that she could help whatever, have to deal with losing a main p and so she bought these companies that other people had given up on as you know, a lost cause.
And turn them around. So I think companies like Style a Makeup, you know, like, these are companies that even the consulting companies had given up on. She bought them just to make sure that people would lose their jobs. And she turned around all these companies. She's called the Turnaround Queen. She at one point had seven hundred thousand employees. And this woman is incredible, and she dances to her own drum and has thereby shown up with at her
full potential and made such a difference. So it's just one example. And I do believe, you know, yes, there are extraordinary people, but we all have extraordinary gifts, every one of us if we allow them through. And that comes through when we are sovereign, as opposed to caught up in ways of thinking and behaving that keep us bound.
Yeah yeah, well them, well.
Yeah yeah, I mean. And you know, I was teaching a group of undergrad a yel undergrads the other day and asking them what's your definition of success, you know, and they're all like, well, you know, make a lot of money or do this or that the other and I said, okay, so I want you to think about the most wonderful people in your life. You know, think about the people that were there for you and mentored you and just saw you for who you were and just helped you along. And then says, how would you
describe those people? And they would say, oh, they were loving and warm and caring, you know, they use those kind of words. And I said, would you say that those people have had a successful impact on your life? And they were like, yeah, so what is success? Isn't it that ability to show up for people and you know, support them and just be there completely present in that kind of a loving way. I mean, you know, we really have to think about what that is. And Lynn,
she has a lot of love in her heart. I can tell you that. And she's showing up as a badass, like she's she's a badass, you know, you know, I'm mess with her, but she's making such a difference we should have on your podcast.
I would welcome an intro. I would welcome in absolutely.
Well, I've really I've really asked the main questions that I want to ask you today.
Is there anything else?
Is there anything you would like to add?
Yeah, yes, I'd love to talk about relationships. Scott, what do you think?
Yeah, let's do it.
You know, relationships is another area of our life where we just don't have we don't get a manual for and we want we want to have good relationships, and we suffer in relationships, you know. And it's it's really interesting to me because oftentimes relationships are also obviously places where we can kind of project all of our own fears onto other people who they haven't done anything, and
here we are, you know, creating all the suffering. But anyway, I think a lot of people have talked about that. I'm not going to go into that in so much detail, but there is a new field of research that is really amazing called positive. It's on positive organizational scholarship. You familiar with it a little bit, I'm sure you are.
I yeah, yeah, I love that that Amy wear, Nest Fernski and Jane Dunnan, Jane Dunnan and all that.
Yes, I love this, So I guess i'll share. I'll start with a story. So my friend, it tells she's an environmental activist and she's often in the African jungle or in the South American jungle doing undercover investigations on deforestation and child labor. And then she'll like write to these companies and tell them that what they're doing is illegal. And then anyway, she does amazing stuff.
Right.
So she was once in an African country in the jungle doing this investigation when her car disappears, right, and her driver is gone, and she's told to get in the car with these two muscles strapped guys in military apparel and weapons, and she knows that the government is in cahoots with the rubber company that she's investigating because they're getting kickbacks. They don't want to tell there she
has she has three hours. She's three hours away from the airport, so she had no choice but to get in the car with these guys who are her hitmen, right, and inspead of those three hours, not only did she did they say, did they not kill her? But she
made friends with them. They even at one point held up a little sheet so she could relieve herself by the side of the road so she wouldn't go into the jungle and get bit by snakes, okay, And they and she had got confirmation that they were meant to kill her when they when she got to the airport and they said to her, do not ever come back here. You are not safe here. At all. But if you do come back, come over a land border under our protection and stay with us.
Wow.
So what happened here? Etel has something called positive relational energy. She knows how to connect with people in such a way that is life giving. And I think we all know, you know, this concept of energy vampires has been around for you know, two decades, and there's so much talk about it. But what we don't realize is that there's another type of relating which is not one that sucks you dry. It's energy enhancing and that's the key to
positive relational energy. And so Kim Cameron and some of his colleagues did research on large organizations and saw that there were these pockets within the organizations that were hyper productive. It's like, what was going on here At the center of each of these was one person. He said, there was one person, and that person was giving life to
everyone around them. It was like and so he called them like positive, positively energizing leaders, and that is really incredible and it's something that can be taught, and Kim does. He trains people in us. He trains leaders and turns them around. You can become a positive you can have what it tel had now a story was extraordinary, by the way, And I'm not saying that you know, other people who are in hostage situations didn't have this, because
that's not true. I mean, she was very much a particular case, and she was in the process of connecting with them able to explain what she was doing, and they realized also how she was trying to help their villages and so forth. I just want to give that caveat. But positive relational energy is something that can be trained and that anyone can learn, and that it can really
catapult both relationships and work relationships. And it has a lot to do with the values that you have and how you live, but it also has to do with your ability to have fill your own tank and have a have a positively energizing relationship with your own self. So I just want to add that.
That's really cool. I love the phrase positively energizing leaders. I just wrote that in my notes. Good stuff. Well, Emma, thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to add?
Oh, I'm super grateful to chat with you, Scott. You know, so we go, we go way back and.
Me too, me too, Thank you, Emma, Thank you, Scott. Good luck with the book, thank you,