Susan David || Increase Your Emotional Agility

psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. She's a co founder and co director for the Institute of Coaching at the McLean Hospital, and she's the author of the number one Wall Street Journal best selling book Emotional Agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work in Life. Susan David, it's so great to have you on the podcast. It is great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I've been willing to chat with you for a really long time. I'm a great admirer of your work and

you as a person as well. You know, I hear a bit of an accent from you. Where are you from? I am originally from South Africa, but I've lived in Australia, New Zealand, backpacked around the world for two years, and I am now in Boston, So it's not a simple accent. Yeah. Sure, And your early childhood experiences certainly shaped a lot of the research you do today, right and sort of your

own theories. Absolutely so. I grew up in a party South Africa, and while I was a white South African and therefore not subject to so much of the cruelty and trauma as so many of my fellow South Africans, it was nonetheless a time of great chaos, and so from a very early age I became interested in this key question, what does it take internally in the way we deal with our thoughts, emotions and our stories that ultimately helps us to thrive in a world that is

complex and difficult and often unpredictable, which, as we all know even today, you know, no matter where people are located, the world is very much like that for pretty much all of us, absolutely, and when we're really young that unpredictability often triggers anxiety and fear, but it doesn't have to trigger anxiety and fear. As we become mature adults. Right. Yeah,

you know it's interesting. I mean I just remember from a very early age just becoming very curious about these ideas, and you know, as you speak to you know, when I was slightly older, when I was fifteen, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I experienced so much of I think what so many of us do, which is people saying, you know, just be happy, just be positive,

Everything will be okay, everything will be fine. What I readness from that experience is that when one goes to difficulty, and when one shows up to difficulty and process it effectively, that ultimately that can shape a life that feels resilient and connected and sometimes richer. Yeah. And I noticed in that whole description you didn't use the word happiness once. Can you tell me a little bit what the paradox

of happiness is? Yeah. So I explore this in my book Emotional Agility, which is this idea that we live in a culture that effectively tells us to be happy. We live in a culture that tells us that, no matter what's going on in the world around us, that if we simply think positive and even if we chase happiness, you know, there's so many books, and every which way we turn we find information on how we can become happier.

And so there's so much in the world that tells us that chasing happiness and thinking in a way that is positive ultimately is what will help us to be happier.

And yet what I found in my experience, and part of this was a very personal experience, and I'll share with listeners a little bit about what this was, which is, I remember when my father was diagnosed with cancer, and I had this very odd situation where I then went to school and so many of my peers felt uncomfortable with the fact that they knew that my father was dying and then dead, and so they dropped all discussion about their own fathers from there every day, you know,

from conversations and so on, and so there was this massive avoidance that went on on the one hand, where people were basically suggesting that if we just thought positive,

felt positive, things would be fine. And then I had this remarkable, remind pockable English teacher, and she knew what was going on for me, and she invited us the whole class, to keep journals, and so I engaged in what effectively became a secret, silent correspondence with this incredible woman where every day I would write about my experience and seeing my father dying and the sense of loss and regret and guilt and all of the things that comes with it, and this woman writing back to me

asking how are you and helping me to process. And what I realized afterwards is it was that it was the showing up to my emotion, It was the labeling of my emotion. It was the experiencing the experience that ultimately helped me to get through it and to be resilient. That makes a lot of sense. Do you think any

part of it has to do with your personality as well? Like, are there people who maybe are just naturally because their sunny disposition or whatever, you know, gravitate more towards happiness as a way of coping. I just wonder that. I don't know if that's true. I'm just wondering. Look, I'm sure and certainly my research, I mean in emotions research about background, and but I trained as a clinical psychologist, and you know, as we know, they're different personality genetic

predispositions that have come together in particular ways. But I do feel that a lot of the societal discourse around happiness is actually ultimately making us less resilient and more avoidant of the reality of our lives. And so, you know, I recently had a very interesting and very sad conversation with a friend of mine who had been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, and she said to me, it's

the tyranny of positivity. She said to me, if it was just a case of being positive and thinking positive, all of the friends in my stage for breast cancer support group would be alive today. They are the most

positive people that I knew. And by everyone telling us just be positive, everything will be fine, what that somehow does is it actually makes me feel culpable in my own debt that I somehow couldn't think my way out of it, that I wasn't positive enough to bring good energy and good experiences, you know, all the secret to

my world. And so I do think that, yes, there's genetic differences, there are many different things that we know, but I also think that there is a cultural discourse very often around positive thinking and happiness that doesn't necessarily serve us. And this woman's experience, she died recently, and she said to me, my experience of people saying to me,

just think positive. What that did is it took away from the authenticity of my experience and the ability for me to be in a real way with the people that I loved, because I felt that if I was scared or fearful, that somehow I was letting people down. Wow, that's pretty powerful, and I know that that way of that story, it really resonates a lot of people. I've seen you in some of your articles right about it and gets a lot of views. So there's definitely something

in this that's resonating with people. And maybe a lot of people are fed up with positivity. They're working for something deeper. Yeah, I mean, And just to be clear, I'm not anti happiness. I actually I am. Are you No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm just you know, I'm a happy person, and I you know, I mean. I wrote an end to end, or edited an end to end eighty chapter handbook called the Oxford Handbook of Happiness. I'm very interested in the ideas of what ultimately helps people

to be happier. But you know what's written fascinating is that when we have a discourse that basically says your happiness is completely in your control. What that also does

is it takes away from our societal responsibility. If you've got someone who is traveling two hours a day to get to and from work, because that's the only viable job away from that person's home, if that place that that individual lives is not supported by public transportation and by other you know, suddenly this individual is traveling four hours a day, which is not unheard of. And you know, would that person over a year, two years, three years

be impacted with their well being impacted of course. And so when we start to almost imply that if someone's miserable, it's because they haven't been able to think their way out of it, that happiness is simply a choice, what it does is it abrogates our societal responsibility to also think about how our social policies, and our transportation policies, and our educational policies can and do, in very real ways impact on people's well being. That was very well said.

Thank you. What do you make of happy people? I mean, it seems like happy people are, you know, taking the flip side, people who do seem to be happy on average in their lives, but doesn't seem to be something terribly tied up with a lot of the things we think that it would be, like money, or social status or lots of other things. You know, when you edited this Oxford Handbook of Happy is, what are some key things you learned from that book before we dive into

your emotional agility work. Well, for example, one of these being how our social policies and how in many ways in our society we have this idea that people can simply think their way to happiness. And I think that what that does, and certainly the work that I've done in emotions and in thinking is what it starts to suggest is that we over invest in the thoughts that

we have, and we over invest in chasing happiness. Now, again I'm not anti happiness, but what the research is showing us is that people who overly strongly strive towards happiness as a goal, you know, they set themselves up and they want to be happier. What the research shows us over time is that those individuals actually become less

happy over time. So happiness is something that really comes from firstly being able to be with ourselves in particular ways, and that's something that I explore an emotion mobility in ways that are real, compassionate, courageous, curious, that allow us to be able to be with the fullness of all

our emotions, not just the ones that feel good. And then secondly, we know that people who land up being happy over time individuals who pursue activities that are intrinsically valuable to them and values aligned, rather than I'm trying to buy a new house because it's going to make me happy. Definitely, Dove tell's the research I've seen as well. Thanks for explaining that. So what is emotional agility and

why is it a better way forward than happiness? So one of the key questions that I've been interested in my work and particularly in writing emotional agility is this, what does it take internally in the way we deal with our fortside emotions and our stories that enable us to thrive in the world, in the world not as we wish it to be, but the world as it is, which is often complex and where life's fragility and beauty are bound up in one another. You know, we're young

until we're not. We in jobs, we love until we aren't. We have hopes and dreams, and some of those don't work out, and so I was really interested in these ideas. You know, what does it take internally in terms of how we work with and be with our solves that ultimately help us to thrive. And so emotional agility is effectively the ability to be with our solves in ways

that are courageous, compassionate, and curious. And each of those components courage, compassion, and curiosity are key to emotional mobility. And then to ultimately be able to learn from our inner experience in ways that help us to forge a life that is values aligned, where we can learn from our difficulties, where we can learn from our emotions, and where we can take steps that are congruent with our values.

So what's the ultimate goal of emotional agility then, So the goal of emotional agility is not to be happier. Happiness often will come as a byproduct when you are with your self in a way that is compassionate, curious, and courageous. But emotional agility is simply the ability to

be effectively with yourself. And the goal then is or not really a goal per se, But the end point is that one is able to live life in a way that is congruant with who one wants to be in the world, with the life that you want to have, truly based on your values and based on what's important to you. So it's not about, oh, my goodness, I want to be happier, Let me do all these things

to get happier. It's much more that we know that people who live fulfilling lives are people who are able to everyday act in ways that feel congruant with their innermost values, with their innermost heart beat. And so if we can be with our thoughts and emotions in ways that allow us to do that, we ultimately will be able to take steps forward in parenting more effectively, and leading more effectively, and in forging our careers and so on. That sounds great. I just thought of something in my

head while you were talking. Shouldn't a part of emotional agility be also being flexible in your values? Shouldn't we be flexible in terms of like being able to be like, you know, what my value is different from your values? Maybe I should entertain your opinion. Well, so I think the two aspects to this personally, there's the evolution of one's own values, and I do talk about this very significantly in where I talk about, for example, when to grit and when to quit. Oh, yeah, I have my

list to talk to you about. Yeah. The idea that you know, sometimes what can happen is we can grow up and we have a sense of what our values are, and then you know, ten or fifteen years down the line, we realize that our values have evolved, We have evolved, the context has evolved. And so a very very important part of emotional agility is the idea that we have a sense of what our core values are and it's

important to move in the direction of those values. But we also shouldn't become so hooked on those values that those values then start to hold us back and constrain us. So I very much, in my approach, have this view that values are fundamental, but that they shouldn't dominate us, and we should actually evolve and embrace the changing of our values over time as well. Absolutely, and I love

that section in your book about grit. I suppose I interpreted that section more about goals than values, because you say explicitly that values are different than goals, and people who are in the grid space are soon to be obsessed with goals. Has been my experience. But what you just said just now makes a lot of sense, and I really appreciate you seeing that. Yeah, thank you. Yeah,

I think it's a really important part. I mean, when we think even about the values that we grow up with, you know what starts to happen is we start to develop what is called clients, which is that our parents have a particular value, and we then develop that value because our parents have that value. And then over time we start recognizing that our maybe even once deeply whold value, is no longer something that we feel as connected with.

And so a really important part of emotional agility is being able to embrace the world and ourselves as changing and evolving human beings. And when we're able to do that, we are able to bring ourselves in ways that are much more authentic and connected to our experiences. So a lot of this sounds related to acceptance and commitment therapy.

I was wondering if you were influenced at all by that perspective and sort of what connections there are between the idea of emotional agility and some of the core

principles of ACT therapy. So very much so. My background is as a clinical psychologist and a lot of the work that I did originally was in ACT, so very you know, a lot of the ideas in ACT around self compassion about not trying to think of thoughts as you know, wrong or right, but they just are being able to notice our thoughts and our emotions and being able to be values and answer. A lot of that

is very heavily influenced by ACT. And then beyond that, a lot of my work is also really influenced by much of the research in emotions emotion regulation. What if emotion regulation actually looks like? And how to bring effective emotion regulation to the context that we face every day, you know, when we with our spouse and our relationships in our parenting, at work, what are typical ways that we might deal with our difficult experiences, for example, pushing

those emotions aside or dwelling on them. And then how might they not actually be serving us? How much those strategies, when used in characteristic ways, not serve us? Like it? I like it. I can get behind this approach. It does seem like emotion regulation is huge, and it does seem like emotion regulation is one of the primary factors underlining every single form of psychopathology. Maybe not the thought disorders as much, but even the thought disorders a little bit.

But if you look at you know, the emotional mood disorders and I mean, motion regulation is just such an important core of a lot of mental illness in society as well as mental wellness. Yeah, I mean, emotion regulation is just so fundamental. And again to what we were talking about earlier is that a lot of the societal

narrative doesn't really help in this respect. A lot of the societal narrative tells us to push difficulty emotions aside, or you know, we should just be happy, and so a lot of times I think, you know, one of the things that I explore an emotional augidity is even in raising children, we often, with the very best of intentions, will when our child comes home from school and says, you know, I'm really sad no one would play with me, we often, with very good intentions, jump in what I

call emotional helicoptering, and you know, said our child, don't worry, I'll play with you, or let's go back cupcakes. And what I'm really interested in is how, even from a very young age, we can teach our children that emotions are to be feared or emotions are to be pushed aside. And what this often does is it takes away from the child's ability to learn. Rarely really call emotion regulation skills that ultimately are fundamental to self regulation in general.

Resilience writ almost every attribute that we see that is critical from an educational perspective, you see the makings of that in how the child is able to ultimately regulate or not his or her emotions. So, breaking down these different aspects of becoming an emotionally agile individual, one of the first steps is we tend to get hooked on our thoughts. I was wondering if you could tell me what are some common hooks, and then how can we

get unhooked? Sure? Absolutely, so the idea of being hooked is really that our thoughts and emotions and the stories that we tell ourselves. So for example, thoughts like I'm not good enough or I'm not cut out for that job, emotions things like sadness, fear stories, larger stories of you know, I'm not deserving of love, or I would really love to be involved in this particular career, but actually I

don't think that I've got what it takes. So we all have these thoughts, emotions, stories, and there's nothing wrong with them. Again, you know, society tells us that we need to think positive thoughts because our thoughts make us, But we have tens of thousands of thoughts every day, and that's our brains just doing the job that our brands were evolved to do, which is try to protect us and look after us. And the same goes for

our emotions. So what I talk about in emotional augidity is the idea that these thoughts, emotions, and stories there's nothing inherently wrong with them. However, what can start to happen is they can start to dominate our actions in ways that our values incongruent. So, for example, my husband's about to start in on the finances, I'm just going

to leave the room. So even if my value is having a clean relationship with that person, and I know that actually coming to a place of honesty around our finance is important, I might let my thought, my emotion, my story drive me. Or I would really love to partake in this particular career, but I'm just not going to try because there's no point. So there's nothing hearing be wrong in these thoughts, emotion, stories, but when they start to dominate our actions in ways that take us

away from our values, that's when we are hooked. That is the idea of being hooked. So we caught like a fish on the line, and I'm able to get free. So I talk about this idea and you know, really really lovely within this is that listeners will have heard. Is this beautiful idea from a Victor frankl This idea that between stimulus and response there is a space and in that space is our power to choose. And it's

in that choice that comes our growth and freedom. So when we are hooked, there's no space between stimulus and response. I think or I feel, and I act. And the different process is very very practical that I talk about an emotional mogidity. Are processes that are key to enabling us to get off the hook and to ultimately be effective with ourselves in situations that are important to us in every aspect of how we love, live, parent, and lead. Yeah.

So you mentioned the stepping out stage a little bit already as a way to get unhooked, So I guess that's the way of getting hooked. It's all very Buddhist, by the way, Yeah, and a lot of background, and of course a lot of a lot of therapies for example, DBT act and so on. There is because emotion regulation is a core aspect of a lot of those therapeutic approaches, and of course in Buddhism, there is a particular approach to noticing our emotions and thoughts as emotions and thoughts.

In other words, our emotions are data, not directions, and being able to notice that and recognize that is fundamental.

One of the things that I talk about in emotional agility is the idea of what I call showing up, and what I mean by showing up is the idea that we so often enter into space with ourselves where we say things like I'm unhappy in my job, but at least I've got a job, so let me just forge forward, or you know, I've got this thought, but I shouldn't have it, And so we spend so much time often either trying to push our thoughts, emotions, and stories aside, or we hold onto them so tightly in

a ruminative way, and neither of those can be helpful because all of them basically use a whole lot of

cognitive resource to work with. What just is there. And so a core part of what I talk about when I speak to this idea of showing up is to enter into the space of willingness with oneself where we can open our hearts to the fact that you know, when my dad was dying, I felt regret or I felt guilt, and that those emotions are what fundamentally helped to make us whole and rich as human beings, and that even beyond that, we can often beneath our difficulty,

emotions are signals to things that we care about. If someone is feeling guilty because they're traveling too much from their kids, that emotion, that feeling of guilt is a sign that you know what is important to you is presence and connectedness, or if you upset that you ideal was stolen. At work underneath that emotion is often a

core value, which is about equity and fairness. And so instead of moving into a space where we grappling with them, trying to push stuff aside, if we can instead show up to that and do this simplest but least expected thing, and that is nothing. In other words, my thoughts and my emotions just are, and I can be with them in ways that are curious and compassionate. Then what that does is it gives me so much more energy and space to think about how I want to shape the

situation effectively. Where does this put cognitive behavioral therapy then? Because now there's mindful cognitive MCBT, which I've talked to Tim Beck about and he seems to like. But where does the original cogniti your therapy stand Like? Is there still value in cognitively identifying your cognitive distortions and trying to actively work on changing the meaning and interpretation of

them and stuff? So it's it's I mean, the literature on this is fairly complex, and of course there's almost no pure, pure CBT, you know, there's so many at this point different aspects of CBT, ones that integrate mindfulness and ones that integrate different philosophies around these types of things.

But one of the things that I do find really interesting when it comes to this question is when you do look at this idea of trying to, for example, push our thoughts and emotions aside, you know, do away with those thoughts and emotions, what we do start to see is an amplification effect. So this idea that when we push our difficult thoughts and emotions, aside that those

thoughts and emotions actually boomerang back. You know, we try not to think of chocolate cake because we are on a diet and we dream of chocolate cake, and so in the emotion regulation literature, what becomes really interesting is when this process is happening, So when people are doing what we call early intervening strategies around their thoughts and their emotions. So for example, you know, I'm upset with this person, but let me perspective, take what do I

think they feeling? Or where are they coming from? And so this is what we call an early intervening strategy. It's early on in the timeline, if you like, around this difficult thought and emotion. And I use that as just one example that kind of navigating thoughts and looking for meaning an interpretation early on tends to be more successful. However,

when we are late intervening. So for example, I'm already fully angry, really upset, really dissatisfied with this particular situation, and now I'm just going to try to rationalize my way out of it or to not think about it. We know that those late intervening strategies tend to be less less effective, and of course you know with CBT, their data showing CBT can be very effective for some aspects but not necessarily for others. So the literature is

complex on this. But what's really just fascinating is I think this mergence and emergence of being able to think about our inner world in very different ways that maybe you know, ten or fifteen or twenty years ago were much more purest. But certainly, you know, the approach via ACT is not an approach where one spends a lot of time trying to dispute a thought. It isn't no, no,

trying to push the thought aside. It's much more about noticing the thought with compassion, recognizing the thought, recognizing the humanity of the fact that you've had something that feels difficult, and then making choices that are values aligned. Yeah, you know, but as you said, the research literature is comp and I think the jury is out on which approach of therapy is most of you know, that's an empirical question. I've seen research showing that CBT is about as effective

as ACT. They're kind of on par when it comes to certain things, you know, anxiety, depression, But you know, CBT is more helpful. The thing with mindfulness based CBT, which is becoming a little bit a bit hot. It's a bit hot these days. It seems like anything that has mindfulness in it is hot these days, is what I've noticed. Everyone jumps on that bandwagon. The thing with mindfulness based CBT is that it's if you show up enough in your model, you know, the showing up part.

If you show up enough, you start to see these patterns, these cognitive distortions, and so showing up is very beneficial for eventually kind of noticing reoccurring patterns that maybe that knowledge of those cognitive distortions can be valuable and being able to recognize them. And I think it dovetails with your research and what you talk about about the parts of labeling your emotions. So I think these things is very compatible with each other. Absolutely, absolutely, And you know

it is. I think when one looks at the principles around emotional augility, which is how do you create space between your thoughts and your emotions and actions? So how do you create that space and how do you then allow yourself and enable yourself to act in ways that are ultimately you know, values a larned and congruent with

the person that you want to be. If you are constantly in a space where you are pushing aside, jostling, arguing with yourself, rationalizing with yourself, you often aren't entering into a space with yourself where you're saying, what is this emotion telling me? You know, this emotion is telling me that I'm less secure in my job than I thought I was. What is like? What is this emotion telling me? Again? Our emotions are data, not directions. You know,

who's in charge the think Who are the thought? Who's in charge the emotion? Or me the person who can feel the emotion and still make choices. But when we enter into space with ourselves, that's noticing and accepting. We able to use that going forward. So we recognize the patterns we get into, as you mentioned, we notice that they're particular things that trip us up. We notice that

there's specific times when we get defensive. Because now instead of getting defensive and getting hooked into the space, we can observe the thought. We can notice the doesn't it ever get a can't mindfulness get exhausting too? Though? Like if I'm constantly like being mindful of all my thoughts are sometimes I just want to like just be, you know, sometimes I just want to like skydive. I don't want to like, oh, let me be, let me think about

you know, can't that get exhausting too? So just to be clear, in emotional agility, I talk about this idea, you know, I talk about this fact that like a lot of people will promote mindfulness as the you know, absolute panasier to everything, and you've got to brush your teeth mindfully, and you've got to puff mindfully, and you know, you've got to do all these things, and I you know,

number one, that's exhausting. Number two, you know, we don't actually know from an empirical perspective that being mindful all the time twenty four seven is actually helpful. So what I'm talking about is a very very specific type of mindfulness. I'm talking about that when you are hooked, when you're noticing yourself so trapped, so crawling into a story, that that story has started to become a prison around you,

that it started to own you. That it's often around those more difficult thoughts and emotions and stories that mindfulness is helpful. So I talk about mindfulness in a very very specific way, and it's not the broad brushstroke, you know, mindfulness for everything type of approach. You know, I think that it gets fairly you know, ridiculous when you are taking the trash up monthly, of course, except for if

it works for you. If it works for you, if it serves you, if it serves your life, if it helps you to live in ways that are more compatible with how you want to live, then that's helpful. So it's not a dogmatic approach. But what I very much talk about any emotional agility is the idea that it's mindfulness for a specific purpose. It's targeted mindfulness around our emotions,

thoughts and stories. That's great. And you I see another samary with cognitive heal therapy, and that's you know, what's the funk thing or what's the functional value of this? I mean it seems related to identifying cognitive distortions, right yeah, and the same that what the funk is both about our thoughts, but it's also about our emotions because so our emotions research about background. And what's really interesting is

emotions have had bad press. I mean in manyeutic endeavors, emotions are seen as the very bad buy or end product of interventions, you know, we'll change our thinking and then we'll feel better. But as an emotions researcher, what I was really interested in is our emotions have evolved to help us as a species to survive. You know, it is really important that you recognize that the person who you thought was about to give you a bear

hug is really about to attack you. And so this idea that we it happens to me all the time, all the time, all the time. So we again in society, we tend to treat emotions as these bad things, that these who were phenomenon that we need to push away. And yet our emotions have evolved to help us shape our lives. If I know what I feel guilty about and what the value is that is underneath that emotion.

If I know that I'm upset because my idea was stolen at work and it's around issues of equity and fairness, what that ultimately helps me to do is to shape my world, to look for a new job, to be more present with my family. And so those emotions are fundamental, and this idea of what the funk is not only about our cognitions but also around what is the function of the emotion. What is the emotion trying to get me? And is that thing that it's trying to get me

again serving me or not? Is it me avoidance? And actually that avoidance is taking me away from something that's fruitful. Yes, yeah, it sounds good. Before we move on, I want to ask you this. One of the things that I talk about in emotional geneity is this idea that we all ask subject to social contagion. So the idea that you know, you might be trying to lose weight, for example, and you in an aeroplane and your seat partner buys candy.

We know statistically that around about thirty percent more likely to buy candy based on what your seat partner does, even if you don't know that person. So we all know that we all subject to social contagion. We see this in epidemiological studies around obesity and around depression, for example. And so one of the things that I explore in in this idea of values is that values are so often seen as being abstract let's just move on from them.

And yet we know in values affirmation exercises, we know that when people spend even a little bit of time thinking very explicitly about why am I doing this? You know? Why am I a first generation college goer? Why am I a woman in a completely male dominated profession? Why is this thing important to me? We know that when people spend a little bit of time thinking about their values in an explicit way, that that protects them from social contagion. It protects them from the kind of biases

that can actually become turned upon oneself. You know, I've got a set back at work and I'm a first generation you know, or I've failed a test and I'm a first generation college goer. We know that people are more likely to drop out of college at that point, But if they've done an exercise where they've thought about why am I at college to begin with, then it helps them to stay the course so very much. You know, value are seen as being cheesy. Oh I don't think

they're cheesy. Yeah, but you know, think no. But often in businesses, you know, values are seen as being things on walls and businesses about what the company believes, what the organization believes. But what I talk about in emotional agility is how values are qualities of action. Every single day, we get to make moves that are towards or away from those values in really critical ways. I think that the values are, of course extremely important. But you talk

about something interesting. You say that it's possible to have overcompetence. Yes, what in the world is what is that? And does it mean to be whelmed? So in emotional agility I explores then, you know, I've explore these four critical movements around emotional agility, showing up, stepping out, walking your wine, moving on, and in moving on that focus a lot

on how our brands are wired for comfort. Our brands are to be in jobs that are predictable, be in relationships that are predictable, and even those relationships that we truly care about. You know, our child comes home from school and sometimes without even looking up from our cell phone, we'll say, how was your day, and my sixteen year old son, without looking up from his might say fine.

And there's nothing inherently wrong in that, except if it's your precious interaction time that is day in and day out, day in and day out, then what you've gotten into is a habit that doesn't necessarily serve your values and serve the way you want to be in that relationship with that person. So in emotional agility. I talk about how as human beings, and we know this from the cognitive research, is that we so wirede for comfort, but

sometimes in ways that don't serve us. And so I explore these different ideas that we don't want to be overcompetent. When we are overcompetent, where we can do our job with our eyes shut, or where we go out to dinner with our spouse and we know exactly what they're going to order and what the conversation is going to be about over dinner. Then what that's showing very often is a lack of growth in that particular sphere of our lives where we comfortable but not necessarily learning or growing.

By the same token, we don't want to be over challenged, you know, we don't want to always be where do I stand in this relationship? Or oh my goodness, you know, have I got a job today? What's going on? So I talk very much about this idea of living to the edge of our ability, this state of wealm where you're not overwhelmed, you're not underwhelmed, you're just in the state of welm and moving towards the edge of ability.

Often in practical terms, what that looks like is a greater level of breadth where you are doing doing new and different things for example with your partner, with your spouse, in your job, or greater levels of depth where you are exploring, you know, having new conversations. But again, this is not just for the sake of adding more to our lives. It's again these values in action coming here. It's like, is this thing with the life that I want? Well, yeah,

I love that perspective. I mean, I think that's conducive to well being. You know, it's fundamental. It's fundamental to wellbeing. You know, there's all this work around job engagement, and I do a lot of job engagement and employee engagement, but this is fundamental to life engagement. You know, how do we stay connected with growth and journey in our lives in ways that are really fundamentally important to our

flourishing and thriving. And now we come full circle because you can see very much that ultimately these processes are pivotal to flourishing and thriving and happiness, but a lot about setting those up as goals. Absolutely well. Then this actually obviously has applications for work and education. In the work, you hinted at this idea of job crafting. Just now you're talking about sort of setting up the conditions of who you want to be. So what does job crafting

look like in the workplace? So job crafting in moving on again, I talk about how do we make these tiny tweaks to our habits that our values aligned. And one of the things that I find I'll work a lot with large organizations around people's strategy, and so in my day to day work, what I often come across is this idea that so often we think of changes, for example, a change in career or a change in job,

as being something that needs to be major. You know, I need to give up everything and find something else. Very often for practical purposes, because you've got to put dinner on the table, or for other reasons, those means are neither desirable nor accessible. And yet we all can find ways that we can make tiny tweaks, values aligned

changes to our job. So, for example, what this might look like is, you know, what are things that are gratifying to you that do connect with you in your job, but that you might not get an opportunity to do frequently? How do you put your hand up for those more, or you know, what are other relationships that you can pursue. So often in job crafting it's how do you change or can you find ways that you can tweak the actual structure of the tasks, or of the relationships or

of the context itself. So you know who you interacting with or which meetings you go into. For example, you know you aren't in the sales department, and yet you really love connecting with ideas around sales, So how can you find ways that you can bring your expertise to

a sales meeting? So I talk about this idea in very practical ways, but that ultimately again are incredibly beneficial to people because we know from psychology that you know, change is not an event, change is a process, and change so often comes about through making small but incredibly meaningful shifts to our day to day lives and habits. Yeah, I mean, you do a really good job talking about that, about how we make these You call them tweaks, right, yeah,

I call them tiny tweets. You know, all values aligned changes, and so that's relieving that they don't have to be these monumental life changes, but that these small tweaks add up and I think relate to this. Well, you already talked about that. We didn't call it the teeter titter principle, but you already talked about it when you're talking about overcompetence and growth aspects, so that seems to be related

to that as well. I would like to end. We've chatted for so long, and I want to be respectful of your time. But education is like our area of mutual yes, one of our I think we have many areas of mutual interest. But it seems like your work has such strong implications for children. How can we raise emotionally agile children? So these are this is critical and I actually recently was interviewed for an article in the

New York Times. If listeners are interested in just a quick read on this called Teaching your Child Emotional Agility, and I explore this in one full chapter in the book. And really the idea behind this is that again, we so often our kits have come home from school and that's set about something, and we can inadvertency do what we call teach display rules. We can teach our child that you know, when you angry, go to your room and come up when you've got a smile on your

face or sadness is to be feared. And so when we do this, when we, with the best of intentions, rush in to save our children or to strip away difficult experiences, we also strip away their capacity to learn a couple of key things. Firstly, that emotions and thoughts pass. This is fundamental when we experience depression, our thoughts and emotions are here to stay. That is, you know, from an experiential perspective, often that is what it feels like.

And yet a critical aspect of learning about thoughts and emotions is that they are transient. There can be value beneath them. They data, not directions, and they pass. So it's only when we allow our children to be with their difficult experiences that our children learn. Gee, I was feeling sad five minutes ago, but now I'm not sad

any longer. So that's first, really very very important. Another aspect that's critical to raising emotionally agile children is helping our children at a very young age to label their emotions. So we know that at age two three years old, children have the ability to differentiate between sad versus mad. You know, are you sad now or you're feeling angry?

And helping our children to label emotions turns out to be fundamentally important again to lifelong well being, because what this does is it helps them to develop the ability to notice an emotion, to observe that emotion, but to also see it for what it is, to basically be able to develop a meta view around the emotion. So they are these critical skills that are again very very practical,

but extremely important to grit. You know, how do you persevere with something unless you're able to recognize your frustration, understand who you want to be in that frustration, and move forward. Critical to resilience, critical to well being, critical to lifelong success. And so I think these skills are fundamental, and of course there's skills that we can help both in education but also in day to day parenting, you know. And I always want to say, you know, I'm not

the paragon of virtue with us. I give lots of examples of how I you know, that's okay with my own children, because of course, as parents or teachers or educators, we are just trying to do the best we can. Oh yeah, yeah, And I think that that's really important to recognize them and notice as well well that was a very authentic comment you made, so I appreciate it and vulnerable comment. Do you do talk about the importance

of autonomy and encouraging autonomy and children as well? Do you want to give maybe one or two ways you can encourage autonomy? Yeah, absolutely, So encouraging autonomy is really critical. We again in education and even you know creeps in in different ways in parenting is we so often become

focused on extrinsic markers for success. So you know, if you peer in the potty, I'll give you five prizes, and if you know, I'll give you EM and MS and you know standard US testing and so there's this whole world in children that effectively gets structured around extrinsic validation. And what is really actually fundamental is that the child learns to recognize his or her own Why who am I? Who do I want to be in the world? What

can I be proud of? And again, just to be clear, I'm not saying, you know, giving your child a treat, as you know, there's new ones around us that's really really important. But there are a couple of ways that we know we can encourage our child's autonomy. So firstly, wherever possible to give them a choice wherever possible, give

them a choice. Where we can't give them a choice, wherever possible, give them a rational So, for example, with my three year old daughter, I don't give her a choice as to whether she wants to cross the road by herself or holding my hat, because that is an issue of safety. But a rationale around you know, cars can see me but they can't see you helps the child to develop a sense of the reasoning behind decisions. And then another aspect of autonomy is helping the child

to also understand their own why. So we know that from a very early age if we say things to kids like you know, you have to invite that person to your birthday party, even if you don't want to, because that's what good people do. That what we're starting to do is we're starting to create what I spoke about earlier on, which is a sense of clients, which is forcing children around particular values without helping them to

understand who they want to be. And so a conversation that's around we have to invite this child to the birthday and that's what we have to do. Is not necessarily as effective around developing autonomy than a conversation like what kind of friend do you want to be? Who do you want to be as a person? What does it feel like when you get invited or you don't get invited to birthday parties? Now? Who do you want

to be in the situation in sending out your invitations? So, what we're doing with autonomy is we're trying to give as much choice as much rational and also help the child to develop a sense of who they are, what their character is, what their values are within the situation. And just to be clear, this is not about you know, not having expectations of children or not being clear around

those expectations. It's rather about how do you help children to develop fundamental character and emotional agility in the context of expectations. Wow, that's some really good advice for parents. So last question, how can I become real? How can you become real? I want to be real? You want to be real? You want to be real? I'll give you so are There are a couple of aspects to

my mobility that I think are really important. We've spoken a lot, but firstly, showing up to yourself and not punishing yourself or invalidating yourself when you have difficult thoughts and emotions, being able to be compassionate towards yourself, recognizing that you are doing the best that you can in the circumstances that you face and with the resources that you've got in life. This is fundamental learning how to

hear the heartbeat of your own why. So we live in a world which encourages us to be in a never ending iron man or iron woman competition, and we often lose sight of who do I want to be in the space, what is meaningful to me? Who is the leader, the parent, the person that I most want to be here? So connecting more with what is your why and then looking for ways that you can develop greater sense of living at the edge of the ability habits,

mindsets and goals that are values aligned. So those are some fundamental aspects of emotional agility, and I think the reason that they're part of being real is because they care to humanity and effectiveness and success. But success that's not just about a goal and achieving a goal, but just very broadly about living a life that feels well lived. I want to stop there because I want to live

a life well lived. Thank you so much, Susan, really appreciate you chatting, and I think you've written a really powerful book. Thank you so much, Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just to stop for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com Bumpy bony bum bu