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Good Life ProjectLeading Neuroscientist: Turn Anxiety and Anger Into Peace and Power | Ethan Kross
Good Life ProjectLeading Neuroscientist: Turn Anxiety and Anger Into Peace and Power | Ethan Kross
Leading Neuroscientist: Turn Anxiety and Anger Into Peace and Power | Ethan Kross
Update: 2025-02-06
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Ever feel like your emotions are running the show? Learn breakthrough tools from Ethan Kross, PhD, leading expert on emotion regulation and author of Shift: Managing Your Emotions - So They Don't Manage You.
Discover potent "sensory shifters," attention deployment tactics, and a step-by-step process to master your emotional world once and for all.
You can find Ethan at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Ethan in an earlier conversation about overcoming mental chatter.
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Transcript
00:00:00
We have a range of different emotions we experience, like for a reason.
00:00:05
They are...
00:00:06
Ethan Cross is a leading expert on controlling our inner voice and transforming mental chatter.
00:00:12
He's the best-selling author of chatter, and his new book shift reveals groundbreaking tools for mastering your emotions.
00:00:18
What do emotions actually do for us?
00:00:21
Different emotions are like loading up different software programs within us
00:00:25
to help us deal with specific situations we encounter.
00:00:29
The problem is that sometimes those emotions get experienced too intensely or for too long, and that's really when you need...
00:00:38
In a music is probably the sensory modality that is used most.
00:00:43
Why do you listen to music?
00:00:45
Because the way it makes me feel.
00:00:46
It's interesting, it's not used nearly as often as you would think.
00:00:50
So research shows up.
00:00:52
Hey there, before we dive into today's show, one quick thing.
00:00:57
If you haven't yet followed the show, it would mean the world to me if you took just 2 seconds to tap the follow button on whatever app you're listening in.
00:01:04
It helps us grow our good life project community, and continue creating the best possible show we can for you.
00:01:10
And it ensures you'll never miss an episode.
00:01:13
Now on to the show, I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.
00:01:23
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00:03:27
Excited to explore the world of emotions with you.
00:03:31
You and I touch spaces a couple years back now. When your last book chatter came out, talking about one very particular way that our minds do interesting things to us.
00:03:38
In your new exploration, it's really more of a broad exploration of how emotions work within us, how they affect us,
00:03:46
and how we, quote, regulate them, how we work with them, how we allow our emotions to work with us.
00:03:52
One of my curiosities has always been, "Why do we emote?"
00:03:57
Because nothing lasts in the human condition unless it serves a very particular role. What do emotions actually do for us?
00:04:05
So, I'm a proponent of the belief that all emotions are adaptive when they are experienced in the right proportions.
00:04:12
Not too intensely and not too long. And when I say all emotions, I really mean all emotions.
00:04:19
And I think that's an important message to share with people, in part because I fundamentally believe it to be true.
00:04:26
But it also is a liberating message.
00:04:29
One myth that I often come across is this idea that to live a good life is to live a life free of negative experiences and of negative emotions.
00:04:40
We could go through some of the big negative emotions we have. They serve a really useful function in our lives.
00:04:46
Take anxiety. I call this in my book, "The Boogie Man Emotion of Modern Day Times."
00:04:52
So many of us, right? We think about anxiety and instantly we think to ourselves, "Oh my God, it's the last thing I want to feel."
00:05:00
When I think about experiences I've had giving talks, I've given hundreds, maybe thousands of talks over the course of my career.
00:05:08
If I think about the one or two that didn't go so well, they're the talks where I didn't experience any butterflies in my stomach a couple of days before.
00:05:18
No anxiety whatsoever. What does anxiety do? It alerts us to an important goal that we have that is ahead of us.
00:05:26
And it mobilizes resources within us to help us prepare for that goal.
00:05:31
So anxiety, just a little bit, that can be really useful for motivating an appropriate kind of response.
00:05:38
Take anger as another example.
00:05:40
We often think of anger as a toxic emotion. And when do we experience anger? We experience anger when we encode some kind of transgression of our worldview.
00:05:54
Something now has gone wrong. This is not the way I expect things to go, but there's an opportunity for me to correct the situation, for me to write the ship.
00:06:02
So my daughter, let's say one of my youngest daughters, they know they're not supposed to ride their bike. She knows she's not supposed to ride her bike without her helmet.
00:06:12
If she rides her bike without a helmet, I might experience some anger in her presence, express that anger to her so she can see it.
00:06:21
And that serves a function. It is this is a very important situation that I care about the safety of my kid, most important thing in the world, right?
00:06:31
And now I'm displaying this emotion that is communicating to her that what she did was incorrect. And hopefully that's having downstream effects on her behavior.
00:06:39
We evolve this, this capacity to emote for a reason. Different emotions are like loading up different software programs within us to help us deal with specific situations we encounter.
00:06:53
The problem is that sometimes those emotions get experienced too intensely or for too long. And that's really when you need to know how to regulate them, which is what most of my work is focused on and my book deals with.
00:07:08
But you know, if you experience anger or anxiety or sadness or envy or guilt at times, welcome to the human condition my friend.
00:07:19
We all do and reframing those experiences as helpful. I think can be a tremendous boon to our daily lives.
00:07:29
Yeah, I mean, I've always been curious about that there are some sort of Eastern philosophical teachings around non attachment, non grasping.
00:07:40
And part of those teachings and this may be my part of this, maybe my filter in my overlay is a non grasping to feeling a certain way to a lot of what we would identify as emotion.
00:07:54
You know, the ability to just notice that a certain thing is happening and coming up, allowing yourself to feel it and allowing to just move through you and not hold on to anything.
00:08:05
So that you return to a state of, you know, what's often considered just sort of emptiness avoid, which I equate to a state that exists, sort of like without emotion.
00:08:15
And it's always been teed up as a bit of an aspiration to me and I've never quite been able to wrap my head around that in part because I think for the typical person, it's largely an impossible thing to our experience.
00:08:28
But also because I can't imagine wanting a life devoid of emotion. I mean, sure, you know, like maybe a little less anxiety a little less angst a little less of that side of it, but at the same time, you know,
00:08:43
there's so much, like as you described, like each one of these things, sort of a function that allows us to experience life in a richer way. And then the other side of the emotional spectrum, we are like, oh, more, but even all of, you know, like default, like, you know, the diversity of emotions that we can experience.
00:08:58
If I even try to imagine a life without them, both the highs and the lows, that doesn't feel like a life that I want to be in.
00:09:05
I agree. I'm very familiar with that argument, that kind of shooting for that even killed this homeostatic's point where you let yourself experience something and let it slide by.
00:09:17
Sometimes I want to immerse the hell out of an emotional experience when I am feeling joy out of something that just went really well for my family or my students or me like.
00:09:30
Emmercing an act that's the stuff that sometimes makes life worth living was out to dinner with some close friends my wife and I and some close friends the other day we were laughing and sharing stories and it was a fundamentally emotional experience.
00:09:46
And it's one that stands out in my mind right now I remembered even though it happened several days ago, like those are the moments that I want more of I crave those.
00:09:56
And so I think what we're talking about is a different view or goal that we're giving people but does your father relate to their emotions and their emotional lives.
00:10:06
When I experience a negative emotion, I don't just notice it necessarily and let it go away.
00:10:14
That can work for some people. One big theme of my book is if the way in which you are handling your emotions is working really well for you, keep doing it.
00:10:24
If an a broke don't fix it for most of us the statistics and common experience would suggest there is some room for improvement if not a great deal works for me.
00:10:34
And this has been a real game changer for me.
00:10:37
When I experience a little bit of anxiety I reinterpret that as I lean into it well this is my body this is evolution gearing me up to deal with the situation at hand.
00:10:51
This is an adaptive response that shows I care and it's allowing you to focus in on what I have to do.
00:10:57
So I'm reframing this negative experience and positive terms now that can be really energizing so I'm not thinking what's wrong with me that I'm having this experience.
00:11:08
I'm thinking this is what's right with me reframing them in those terms can serve a helpful function.
00:11:14
I mean that makes a lot of sense. So when you use the phrase emotional regulation what are we actually talking about here.
00:11:21
So we're talking about being able to turn the volume up or down on the emotions you're experiencing or shorten or lengthen the amount of time we stay in those experiences.
00:11:35
So intensity up or down and duration shorter or longer and how we want to get in there and skillfully deal with our emotions or regulate them is going to depend entirely on what our goals are.
00:11:50
So if you want to have the goal of maximizing this experience of joy but maybe have it confined to the moment because you have to go and meet with a client in 10 minutes like that it's about just amplifying up but not also extending it.
00:12:04
And you could play that game for all of the different states that we experience but that is fundamentally what emotion regulation is about.
00:12:12
It is about harnessing tools that exist within us and around us I mean in our relationships with other people in our physical spaces in the cultures that we belong to utilizing those tools to allow us to achieve the emotion goals that we have.
00:12:32
So and I want to get into some of those tools but the question is lingering is really there is that okay yes and to what end well you know different emotions have different consequences that we just discussed like for our lives if you find for example that emotion is getting tweaked.
00:12:52
And even two different kinds of examples let's say an emotion anxiety is not being experienced in proportion it's too intense and it's lasting way too long that can be enormously disruptive right we're now having difficulty concentrating difficulty sleeping we're taking you out on our partner and maybe we're getting some gastric distress as well.
00:13:14
The end there the purpose of regulation there is to constrained that anxiety response reduces intensity and reduce how long it's lasting we may not want to eliminate it altogether if it's anxiety about something really important you may want to still keep some vigilance active but we need this to be a more proportional response so that's one it let's go to the opposite end of the spectrum not about reducing intensity and duration.
00:13:43
But amplify it the time I mentioned earlier when I didn't prepare for presentation because I had no butterflies beforehand that's an example where probably would be with me to be able to turn up a little bit of anxiety or a little bit of that anxious arousal
00:14:04
to get me motivated right to not to actually practice the presentation to be able to perform also that would be an example of an instance where you want to turn on a negative response now we're just talking about negative responses we could also have the same conversation for all sorts of positive experiences too but the idea is that these emotions have implications for really everything that matters our ability to think and feel our relationships and our health
00:14:30
and so we want to make sure that we're experiencing emotions in ways that lead to the ideal outcomes in most different domains and the ideal outcome is going to be unique to the context to the person to the moment to the circumstances.
00:14:44
We do seem to still hold on so fiercely to this desire to like if you're like oh hey listen we can look at each one of these emotions and we can adjust the amplitude and the duration to make it optimal for our experience.
00:14:58
I would imagine there's going to be a tendency for everyone to say okay so I know Ethan says that anxiety has a certain use it's important to us and anger has a certain use and sadness has certain use.
00:15:10
Really if I actually have the ability to reduce the amplitude and the duration of these why not just reduce them all the way how is that actually going to be destructive to my life.
00:15:22
Well let's use the example of pain because it's a kind of emotional response and I think it powerfully answers your question makes a point.
00:15:30
There are certain people that are born into this world and they're incapable of experiencing physical pain.
00:15:36
If you look at those people's lives what you find is that they're not very good lives those people end up usually dying early they die early because they put their hand in the fire accidentally and there's no cue that tells them to pull it away.
00:15:50
They start itching the mosquito bite and the scab that forms and they keep doing that right because there's no cue to say stop you now open wound that can become infected.
00:16:02
What makes these different negative emotions functional is the fact that they hurt at some level right that hurt that subjective experience of distress that accompanies different emotional responses is what is grabbing our attention and telling us to pay attention to this situation in a very particular way that the emotion is driving.
00:16:26
And so if you would just get rid of those negative emotions altogether the prediction would be and even some data like I just discussed is that this would probably not be a very successful life that you would live.
00:16:40
And so it's going to be really hard to ever test that idea because guess what you can't get rid of every negative emotion it is hard wired into us this capacity to experience it.
00:16:54
And so I think the more we can wrap our head around that the easier it becomes to really embrace this notion that there's a role that negative emotions have in our lives they're giving us information information about the circumstances that were in that we can use to live better lives.
00:17:14
Let's take envy is another example like envy we usually think of is isn't that the 7th deadly is not like that right it's like you know it's not a good one envy can lead us to.
00:17:26
If experienced to keep intensely too long lead to some negative outcomes but you know what I can also do it can be unbelievably motivating right if you see someone who is out performing you are out achieving you in some way that can have a motivating effect.
00:17:42
A motivating consequence to lead you to strive harder to reach the goals that you have so these emotional experiences these negative experiences can be easily refrained in how we think about them in ways that I personally find exceptionally liberating.
00:18:02
Because if you're telling me that hey Ethan like you really shouldn't be experiencing any anger any sadness any envy like name your favorite negative emotion and then I experience those states.
00:18:15
We all experience these emotions for a reason.
00:18:20
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00:21:33
You know I think part of what you're speaking to here is our capacity to be intentional about the way that we live our lives to make decisions that are in some way beneficial to us and to others around us.
00:21:45
It's like I think we love to think of ourselves as these like we're rational beings like we make tells you rational choices and yet be as you just about the motion carries information.
00:21:55
That information is actually really important for us to make good decisions even if we don't like the feeling that goes along with it.
00:22:04
So it's like if we strip away the emotion and by doing that we also strip away the information.
00:22:09
Then it kind of sabotages our ability to then make decisions and take actions in one of that actually would allow us to live the lives that we want to live does that make sense.
00:22:20
It does and I think it also makes it much more challenging for us to live the lives we want to live because it compounds the negative experience.
00:22:29
So take an example that happens true story with my oldest daughter several years ago she had one of her first early evaluative moments in school with a big test and it was stressful.
00:22:41
And she started experiencing some real anxiety about it and she didn't understand what it was what's happening what's wrong with me or sweetie it's nothing wrong with you.
00:22:51
This is your body doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing to help prepare you for the exam tomorrow to say hey we have a little bit more studying to do.
00:23:01
That instantly changed the way she was relating to this experience she was having.
00:23:07
It's not something that is wrong with me this is how human beings work. Clearly if the anxiety is too extreme too long then we really want to intervene.
00:23:20
But in the right proportions this simple reframe often helps bring down the intensity of that response you said something else that I want to just engage in because I think it's really important.
00:23:30
You raise this notion of having some agency with respect to the way that we relate to our emotions and our emotional lives.
00:23:38
I think it's a really important point to harp on for a moment because one of the most eye-opening experiences I had doing research was coming across an article and I tell this story in my book that looked at people's beliefs about whether they can actually control their emotions.
00:23:57
And the researchers basically surveyed a large group of adolescents and asked them a series of questions about do you think you can control your emotions and about 40% of the sample said no I don't think I can control my emotions.
00:24:13
That to me is astounding and for a variety of reasons the first of which is if you don't think you can control your emotions why would you take any steps to ever do so.
00:24:30
If I don't think there's anything I can do to lose ten pounds or lower my blood pressure or improve my cholesterol levels I'm not going to change the way I die or exercise because why bother.
00:24:46
Those are often effortful take time right if I do think I can do it then that should motivate me to take some action and you 40% of this sample did not think they can control the emotions so as I break down in the book there is good reason for that and I think it's worth just very quickly sharing with listeners.
00:25:09
There are facets of our emotions that we can't control and parts of our emotional experience that we can we cannot control when an emotion is going to be automatically triggered right like I was just in New York and I was in a cab.
00:25:26
It was not a pleasant sensory experience there's like heavy sense of body odor you can relate you lived in the York this happens at times lovely driver but wow instantly there was a negative experience.
00:25:38
A negative emotional response a sensory media response was triggered I have no control over that what I do have control over is how I engage with that emotion do I reframe it do I divert my attention elsewhere do I try to have another kind of sensory experience you know sniff some perfume or cologne to combat it all sorts of things we can do.
00:26:04
To channel that emotion response in different directions to increase or decrease its amplitude or duration.
00:26:11
So you can control those automatically automatically triggered feelings that are just part and parcel of living our lives but you can control the trajectory of those experiences.
00:26:25
I think back to can be a really liberating idea for people to just noodle on because sometimes I mean let me ask you Jonathan you ever have a dark thought never of course never I mean like I had one back in 87 but back in it you're you're a saint a total saying well tell you though that if that were true which of course I know it is not you would be an anomaly I do this exercise with my classes when I hear a Michigan I did this just a few months ago.
00:26:54
I asked about 60 students anonymously to indicate whether they had experienced a really dark thought over the past week and then to tell me what those thoughts were anonymously type it into a computer program that would allow me to and see these thoughts.
00:27:12
Everyone has these dark thoughts and they are really heavy sometimes they're about violence towards others towards the south dark sexual thoughts like you name it we saw there.
00:27:25
This mind of our sometimes generates those dark thoughts and the feelings that accompany them and that's a universal so if you understand that hey if you experience a dark thought at times like doesn't mean you're a bad human being it means you're a human being and part of the way your brain is just working it sometimes produces these wacky dark thoughts but if you act on those thoughts.
00:27:53
Then that's a different story because there are ways of engaging with them or not.
00:27:57
Yeah I mean it's such an important point and glad you tease that out it's almost like the way that so many of us react to anxiety creating a spiral it's like something happens it makes us anxious and then we basically start thinking about our own anxiety and we create this spin cycle where we shame ourselves for feeling this way we shouldn't feel this way
00:28:19
there's something hardly wrong how can I not let go of this and we keep like giving fuel to this feeling based on our beliefs about what it's actually telling us or whether it's good or bad or whether it's normal or abnormal it's interesting to hear you describe the role of our beliefs about our emotions and how they contribute to the amplitude and the duration potentially of those emotions.
00:28:40
Well there's a reason why the second chapter of the book before I talk about any tools deals with precisely this issue of beliefs because it is the starting point my advisor remember and graduate school one of the first things he taught me was.
00:28:55
Look we can break down emotion regulation into two parts really simple there's your motivation do you think you can do it do you want to do it.
00:29:06
And then the tools that exist to help you achieve those goals if you're not motivated like we just said before you're not going to use any that you can know all the different that's your physical exercise as an analogy or.
00:29:19
I could know how to use every machine in the gym if I'm not motivated to lose weight if I don't think I can do it I'm not going to allow myself with those tools the flip side though is I can be super motivated to get fit.
00:29:35
But if I don't know how any of those tools those machines work not only am I going to be unsuccessful achieving that goal I may actually harm myself right.
00:29:45
I may like try to like you know I don't know I'm going to make something up here like bench press with my neck and sprain something or you know whatever that was probably not the best example I had the open terrain there to do something funny you need both you need the beliefs that you can do this.
00:30:03
And science compellingly shows that we possess this capacity to manage a trajectory of our most short responses we have like sophisticated brain networks that evolve to help us do this to transform our emotional experience by redirecting our attention on or away from what's driving those emotions to reframing those experiences to transporting ourselves in time.
00:30:32
To allowing us to find the right people to talk it's remarkable the array of tools we possess to be able to modulate our emotions and so just conveying that to folks I think is just really important.
00:30:45
And that makes a lot of sense to me my question that brings out for me then is if we take that 40% of people that you described who answered like actually don't believe that I have the ability to in any meaningful way control my emotions.
00:30:59
How do we bridge the gap the belief gap because you know as you describe there a whole bunch of tools relay a whole bunch of tools that we're going to drop into shortly that are really effective and that are highly accessible and often don't cost anything like these are things that people can do.
00:31:13
But if you're in that 40% somebody's listening to this right now and they're saying like I've been feeling this way I've been flying off the handle I've been deep into this you know like since literally for as long as I can remember I've done all the different things I've tried X Y and Z.
00:31:27
And I'm just at a point where I literally do not believe that it is possible for me to in any way shape or form regulate my emotions anymore.
00:31:37
And then you're sitting there on the other side of conversation saying I'm sitting on top of a vault of tools that I know will help you.
00:31:47
What's the shortest path between that profound disbelief and somebody even believing just enough so they're doing to try one of them to let their own experience start convincing them or is that in fact the thing that starts to open the vault for them.
00:32:05
Well, two answers to that very good question. So first of all I think it's not that the 40% to say they can't control their emotions are wrong.
00:32:15
You know, I think people focus on different assets of our emotional experience when they're answering that question.
00:32:23
So the people who are sometimes saying you can't control an emotion they're really focusing on this emotional trigger I can't control the emotions I experience when I'm walking down the street.
00:32:34
And you know, someone insults me or I smell something that's aversive like I have no control of that how can you make the claim that I do.
00:32:42
Whereas the people who are saying you can control your emotions they're the ones who are thinking about well, you know, if I'm in the smelly cab I can do this.
00:32:52
I can pinch my nose or see the person who just gave me a scowl and think, oh well, maybe they're having a bad day like maybe they you know just got some really bad news.
00:33:03
So I think it's not that one person is right. One group of people is right and the other is wrong. It's that we're focusing on different parts of our emotional experience.
00:33:12
Let's say there's some skeptics that fall through the cracks and still don't believe there's anything they can do to manage their emotions.
00:33:21
Give them a piece of chocolate, put on some, you know, Bon Jovi or Adele. Have them sniff some perfume. What's the shortest way to showing that we can have some agency and our ability to modulate our emotional experience.
00:33:38
Activate the senses. Part of the way that our senses operate is through emotion. I mean, why do you listen to music, Jonathan? What's your favorite kind of music?
00:33:48
Probably classic rock. Classic rock. Why do you listen to it? Because the way it makes me feel.
00:33:57
It makes me feel faster access to a feeling for me. That's right. Then the right music.
00:34:02
That's right. And if you ask people this, which many researchers have, about 96% or so percent will say exactly what you said.
00:34:11
So why do you listen to music? I like the way it makes me feel. So you want a fast track to showing you can change your emotions around like that's how you do it.
00:34:20
I have songs on my phone that are designated for different kinds of moods like I can get pumped up really fast. Some of it is cliche and it'll make listeners think much less of me.
00:34:31
I'll share it nonetheless. If you want to pump me up, like you go into some rock and roll, even verging on even some, I'm a big Yankees fan.
00:34:40
One of my favorite players of all times, Guy, my name is Mariano Rosera, who you know, doubt, are you a baseball fan?
00:34:46
Anyway, this guy really has come very, really great is closer of all times. So if the team was down or was up and the manager wanted to just end the game with a win, they put him in.
00:34:59
And he always approached the mound to metallic as enter the sandman. You put that up. I feel like I'm ready to conquer the world.
00:35:08
And I have a songs like that that can get me going and I have songs that can bring me down one very powerful way that people can just experience some agency with respect to our emotional lives.
00:35:19
Now those effects fleeting right after the music goes off, our emotions often return to where they were before, but nonetheless they demonstrate there are things you can do to push those emotions are out.
00:35:32
And it's certainly, it's one of the levers that I throw pretty regularly in my own life. I don't want to feel a particular way.
00:35:39
And interestingly, it's also, you know, I will listen, you know, like, if I go and like, if I'm listening to you too from the 80s or the 90s, it gives me very particular feeling, you know, it's lost in, you know, some sort of transcendent type of moment or experience.
00:35:55
But I might also listen to Leonard Cohn, because I actually want to feel a certain kind of deep melancholy, because I may just be in a space where I'm just like, you know, I really wanted, like I want to drop into my heart for a moment.
00:36:08
And it's powerful, like, so it works on both ends of the spectrum.
00:36:12
Totally. Let's talk about that. That's another great example of how negative emotions can have some functionalities.
00:36:19
We tend to experience sadness when we experience some loss that we can't replace, right? Like we lose someone we love, or we screw up in a way that we cannot fix.
00:36:30
When we experience sadness, a few things happen. First, there's this kind of slowing down of our physiology. There's also this motivation to withdraw and be introspective to turn our attention inward. Why?
00:36:43
To make sense and meaning out of this new circumstance that we're finding ourselves in, like something happened, we cannot fix this situation. We can't replace the loss.
00:36:55
We got to now reframe how we're thinking about ourselves and the world around us to make sense of this new reality. So we need some time to do that introspective work.
00:37:05
But, and I love this feature of sadness.
00:37:09
You know, when you're in that kind of darkish state, right, you're not feeling great and you're withdrawing, that could be dangerous if you pull too far away.
00:37:19
So what is evolution and doubters with a sad facial expression that is like a lifeline that broadcasts to those around us, hey, don't leave this person alone, check up on them.
00:37:32
You know, some people use this to their benefit and yes, daughters, I'm talking to you. Like my daughter is, if I'm sometimes upset, they'll just put on the sad face.
00:37:43
You know, it's like an exaggerated lower lip getser. And even though I know it's being deliberate, I still instantly melts me. And that's because we are social species. We are highly attuned to the emotions of other people.
00:37:57
So there's a functionality to sadness and you can use music to go deeper into that state. So there's this effect called the emotional congruency effect, which is when we are experiencing certain emotional states,
00:38:11
we often seek out experiences to match those states. So when we're in a sad mood, we're going to want to listen to some sad music.
00:38:19
Nothing wrong with that. If you're feeling sad and you don't want to feel sad anymore, that is a cue that, hey, maybe you shouldn't listen to the Leonard Cohen and you should go listen to Journey instead.
00:38:32
I mean, it's interesting also as you're describing them, I'm thinking of the phrase a good cry, you know, and it's interesting that phrase exists, you know, because you're kind of saying, okay, so there's actually like their times where you just feel heavy or sad and you're carrying something, and there's something in us that knows that if we just push it, if we just move into the point where we have this physiological response like crying,
00:38:57
that it also it creates a release mechanism that almost gives us access to then move out of it to process our way through it, and then like move into that state of like, you know, like, I feel differently now, but it's like we had to tip ourselves into it, almost to get that extra physiological response to sort of release us into a better place.
00:39:19
It makes total sense to me, and it makes me want to ask you, how does having that insight change the way you experience sadness? Does it make it a more acceptable experience staff?
00:39:37
I'll answer from my perspective, I don't necessarily shy away from the hard experiences or emotions, so it doesn't sort of meaningfully change the way I would process it because I'm okay going there actually, and I'm okay, crying, I'm okay actually feeling all the feels because I also feel like to try and regulate them to the point where I'm not feeling them.
00:40:02
It doesn't mean that whatever the stimulus that evoke them in the first place is not in some way going to find its way out in my body and often that is through other emotions that are equally hard or through physiological harm.
00:40:18
You know, as you described earlier in our conversation, maybe it's going to show up in GI distress, maybe it's going to show up in pain, maybe it's going to show up in inflammation or in illness, and that has happened in my past and probably will happen again.
00:40:31
What I've tried to learn over time is that in order to be healthy, physiologically, psychologically, but also physically, actually need to feel all these things, I need to own them and I need to fully feel them because they're not going to just go away, they're just going to find another way through me, and oftentimes that way is going to be much more destructive.
00:40:54
Yeah, so that attitude, a very evolved one and it's, I would describe it as you through a, I mean, it would be interesting to learn how you got to this point and when you did based on what kinds of experiences, but you're working with the machine that is you rather than against it.
00:41:15
When we talk about these sayings that suggest to people that you should aspire to never experience negative emotions or another one of my favorite, you know, directives, always be in the moment or never avoid pain, always approach it.
00:41:34
Like these are impossible directives, we're giving people goals and we're telling them they're really important that they cannot possibly accomplish.
00:41:44
And that I think is a huge problem because you are setting people up for failure from the very beginning when there are better goals to have and I realize better can sound judgy, but I'm saying this based on what I know of how emotions work.
00:42:01
Like they can be useful in the right dosages, so I think your view is enlightened.
00:42:07
So let's drop into what we kind of, we backed our way into actually the early part of a conversation around what you just grab as shifts.
00:42:14
Like these are like mechanisms or tools to be able to actually in some way navigate the amplitude and the duration of these things that we're feeling so that we can experience them, but also experience them in a way that actually feels better to us.
00:42:29
Like I can deal with this, I'm okay with this and maybe I can even find value in it.
00:42:33
You talk about in the early part of this, you kind of divide into shifting from the inside out as the starting point and sensory shifters is this huge mechanism.
00:42:44
We talked about in the context of music, but just more broadly described to me, what is a sensory shifter?
00:42:50
A sensory shifter is when you are activating your senses, which have these powerful connections neurologically speaking to emotion networks in our brain.
00:43:02
You're strategically activating your senses to generate a desired emotional response.
00:43:10
So in English, what do I mean? You want to feel happy. You are firing up music that makes you feel happy. You want to feel a little bit more sedative and calm.
00:43:20
You're putting on maybe some classical music or the music that helps you achieve those goals.
00:43:25
Music is probably the sensory modality that is used most often for these regulatory purposes, though it's interesting.
00:43:33
It's not used nearly as often as you would think. So research shows that most people like almost at ceiling 96, 97% of people want to ask across studies, while you listen to music, they say they like the way it makes them feel.
00:43:48
But if you then look at what they do to manage their emotions when they're experiencing really big ones, 10 to 30% avail themselves of that sensory modalities.
00:44:01
We all have this kind of experience of listening to music. Like I was just at a concert a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, "Oh my God, people have paid collectively millions of dollars to just have their emotions be regulated for three or four hours."
00:44:15
I was just an emotion regulation event. Everyone's happy for most of it. There are a couple of sad songs that were played.
00:44:23
But I talk about this in the book, even for me as someone who has studied emotion for 25 years, I have often lost sight of earlier in my life of the role that the senses play in impacting our emotions.
00:44:38
That they are a tool that can be strategically levered. Like when I go into the car now, I look at the dashboard and I don't see, you know, I guess we wouldn't call it a radio, but we call it a device for activating playlists.
00:44:52
Like I see an emotion regulation tool that I can move my emotions around and everyone in that car, depending on what channels I select, right? What playlists, what songs I put up there.
00:45:03
And so it's a tool that's right there. It is so easy to use, and I don't think we use it frequently enough. Another just to give you one more powerful sensory tool is touch.
00:45:15
You know, an affectionate embrace has been shown to generate positive feelings pretty automatically. If it's an unwanted embrace, it actually leads to the opposite regulatory outcomes, right? It can lead to a kind of cringe get away from me.
00:45:31
Touch is the first sense to develop. We are a tactile species. And so if I'm not having a great day, and you know, my wife comes over and you know, just kind of gives me a hug or rubs my back. Like there's an automatic regulatory effect that has.
00:45:49
And it's one that I can leverage as well to help other people, you know, and clearly we need to give all the caveats about you want to do this judiciously, you don't have hazard touch people at work like that would not be a good thing, but let's not kid ourselves.
00:46:03
We're a tactile species, right? And so you can leverage that sensory modality as well. So those are just two examples, but we see similar data linked with the other sensory modalities vision hearing scent as well.
00:46:17
These are all gateways for relatively effortlessly, shifting our emotions. And I threw in that relatively effortlessly there for a reason. We know that human beings, we don't like to do things that are hard.
00:46:33
This is true for all of us. There's a law of least effort that characterizes us. And there's good reason for this. We have limited resources. We're always trying to preserve our cognitive or thinking resources.
00:46:45
And so the easier something is to do the more likely you are to do it. These sensory modalities aren't necessarily going to help us fix the giant problems we experience.
00:46:58
But they can nudge us in the right emotional directions, being aware of that, I think is really important.
00:47:04
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I feel like the speed of action for the sensory shifters is like can often be so fast. You know that maybe it's just like the match that just kind of like immediately starts to shift us into something and maybe we have to do some work to sustain it or to change or to add exactly what yeah.
00:47:24
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00:49:52
One of the other shifters that you talk about on this category of inside out is also attention which I've always been so fascinated be between the relationship between attention and emotion and what we feel.
00:50:07
You brought up earlier in the conversation pain and attention have always had a really strong relationship to me and I learned years ago.
00:50:15
Million years ago you'll do yoga studio in health kitsch New York and I also have my grandson had my men's mind tired out life had to teach a class you know like so 6 30 50 people are piling into a room that just had a hard day.
00:50:28
It's my job to show up and give them everything that I can for 90 minutes.
00:50:32
And there were times where I would show up and you're like I've got a raging headache and I don't know how I'm going to do this step into the room.
00:50:39
And I sit down and everybody's just sitting there and all the sudden my attention shifts from me to these 50 other beings who I'm in service of in the moment that we're in together and for the 90 minutes the pain drops away.
00:50:52
And then when the last person leaves the room.
00:50:55
It comes back you know and so I really began to explore like the relationship between attention and felt experience like whether it's physiological or emotional psychological and.
00:51:07
You speak to this and I think it's such a powerful lever for us.
00:51:11
Oh absolutely I mean attention is determining what's getting into our brains right like it's what we are how we are it's like that is our spotlight.
00:51:21
And what you put the spotlight on is that what you were going to then focus on.
00:51:26
And what's interesting about attention is that it's often talked about in very non nuanced ways.
00:51:36
We've learned a couple of things over the past few decades about attention emotion that suggests that maximum is not true.
00:51:44
So here's what we know we know that chronically avoiding problems so if you have this rule that you should always avoid things this is not good.
00:51:52
This can lead to negative outcomes and does over time by the same token like chronically attending to every source of pain or possible.
00:52:02
Probably not a good idea either and probably going to listen lots of mental chatter too if you're just always zooming in on the problems that are in front of you.
00:52:12
What seems to be the most effective strategy is being able to be strategic in how we deploy our attention being flexible.
00:52:20
Being able to engage with negative feelings at times when it's useful and productive like when we do need to solve a problem and work through it and learn from our experiences.
00:52:31
Focusing on the problem, wielding our attention to it can be very helpful, but at other times sometimes getting some mental space away from the problem can be really helpful because what it allows to happen.
00:52:45
Let's say I distract like you dig you distracted by folks and other people.
00:52:49
If we're dealing with an emotional experience time often tempers our emotional reactions like you know we often say time heals all wounds.
00:52:58
It's a pretty powerful effect that time has on many of the emotional trials and tribulations that we experience and so you getting some time away from a problem.
00:53:08
It is remarkable how when you then come back to that problem later sometimes it's just not even there.
00:53:14
In other cases it's there but in a less intense form where we can engage with it more effectively I'll give you an example from my own life just last night there was something that you know it was very it was a long day.
00:53:29
I didn't have probably as many resources cognitively as I do when I first wake up and I'm fresh and I thought about something and it was beginning to get me anxious like oh my god did I screw this up.
00:53:40
And for a little bit I started to focus on it to really get to the bottom of it to see if I had screwed up and I found that the more I focused in on it and zoomed in the bigger the problem seemed to be.
00:53:53
And then I purposely taking a page out of my book no pun intended I diverted I positively distracted I strategically avoided and said to myself I'm not going to come back to this until tomorrow and so I engage in a positive set of distractions I played with my kids.
00:54:11
I want some funny clips on social media which consume my attention I talked to my wife and lo and behold that's what happened this morning when I woke up Jonathan.
00:54:20
It was magically dealable we're done it was gone it wasn't even there.
00:54:26
Whereas 12 hours earlier it felt like one of the biggest problems I had ever encountered and so that's an example of the power of being able to strategically divert our attention on or away from things can be really useful.
00:54:44
Now we don't tend to teach people how to strategically deploy our attention we just give them these maxims work through it don't avoid I cannot tell you how many times I have heard over the course of my life and career you should never avoid talking about this or focus as always confront the problem that on.
00:55:00
Sometimes confronting is really good other times we've away from a little bit and come back to it that kind of flexibility seems to be the name of the game.
00:55:10
So there are these like rules that I try to flesh out in the book of when to avoid when to approach when to go back and forth that we've learned from the science over time and I think that.
00:55:20
Learning about what those contingencies what those rules are it almost gives us a playbook for how to steer our attention spotlight ways that can be productive.
00:55:29
So agree with that and I think having those rules having that necessarily basic guidelines to say okay like here's I have a better sense for when to step in or when to step out I want to switch out into some of the more external things that you explore as well and you describe this is shifting from the outside and.
00:55:46
And more than things that you talk about is physical environments I thought this was really fascinating because I'm somebody who's also really strongly affected by both my immediate physical environment and also geographically where I am and have found that.
00:56:00
They have a really strong effect on whatever I'm feeling in any given moment and time it is kind of combined with the internal because it's oftentimes when you shift your physical environment you're also probably making a change in your attention.
00:56:12
And the sense is it's hard to kind of tease us out and just control for all the one of these so if I'm stressed about something and I'm getting a little anxious about it I actually need to get up I need to get out of my office and I need to be outside.
00:56:24
And you know the change in the physical space around me often is really powerful at least for me it tends to be fairly mean it very well you're not alone either I mean this is a very powerful shifter.
00:56:37
And there are a couple of different ways it works you already described one set of properties that characterize it like when you change your space your inputs are different so your attention is focused on different things your sensations are different to one of the most popular spaces that can have emotionally restorative effects for people is going out in nature.
00:57:00
When you go out nature now all of a sudden you're not necessarily looking at a computer screen but you're looking at your surroundings you have sights and smells and sounds that are often pleasant you can sometimes also be in a place that is filled with grandeur that makes you feel wow this life seems a little bit bigger than just me these trees have been there for hundreds of years and I'm worried about this little episode that didn't go well with the guest.
00:57:27
So they can help also shift your perspective which is another internal shift or we haven't talked about.
00:57:33
Places also have a meaning to us in the in a deeper sense almost which I don't know where you from New York or originally a little island water town called Port Washington.
00:57:47
Okay Port Washington did you like where you grew up or not like where you grew up yeah loved it and so I bet that if we were to magically drop you back into Port Washington you would instantly be filled with positive warm feel.
00:58:02
Is that a fair thing to say.
00:58:05
Probably except for a few days in Minnesota right well I'm saying right now yeah I think middle school would not elicit positive feelings for most of us.
00:58:16
We often talk about the attachments that we form to other people right we developed these kind of secure attachments to our partners hopefully our parents hopefully where they become a source of
00:58:31
emotional salvation and strength for us right there mere presence makes us feel better well what we also knows people develop attachments to places and so if you know what places you are positively attached to maybe it's a place you grew up.
00:58:49
Maybe it's green spaces simply being in those spaces can elicit positive feelings now we can also develop negative attachments to places as well in the same way that we can develop negative attachments to people so I grew up not too far from you in Port Washington maybe I don't know an hour drive away in in Brooklyn New York.
00:59:11
And the neighborhood that I grew up in was a neighborhood that I never really loved it was a rough and tumble place with fights and muggings and things like that and I was always on guard.
00:59:23
If you put me there now I would have a negative response I say this because I think it can be useful to think about what are the places in your immediate and broader environment that you have those positive attachments to.
00:59:38
If you can like think about what those are really carefully you could be proactive in how you visit those spaces when you may be struggling so here in Ann Arbor I could tell you it's the Arbor item it's the law school quad it's here on park these are places where I go to them I instantly feel better so changing your space is one way that you can leverage your surroundings to help you achieve the emotional states you want to achieve the other thing you can do.
01:00:07
Is if you can't change your space which we can't often do for various reasons you can modify the space that you are in and that's another way that you can shift your emotions you can modify your space to activate emotional responses that you desire for example on the sides of me and flanking the computer you can't see there are picture frames all around me they just not back there I don't look behind me very often
01:00:36
there are picture frames of people I love and research shows that glancing at those picture frames that instantly activates thoughts memories of those individuals and it activates positive emotional states that can help prepare negative responses so I've modified my space just around myself with cues that are capable of helping you repair when I'm struggling pictures of plants or real plants also have been with other kinds of positive responses
01:01:05
so those are ways that you can modify your space to activate a desirable response you can also modify your space to eliminate the activation of undesirable emotional responses and the story that I give somewhat tongue in cheek in the book but it's true for me coming from New York I don't know if the same is true for you but my weakness is pizza and the colder it is the better
01:01:33
and it doesn't matter what my cholesterol looks like or what time of the early morning it is if I see that slice in the fridge it is activating an emotional response that is going to drive me to consume it and then I'm going to feel terrible as a result
01:01:49
and so if we have a party and we have people over and I've got a couple of extra pizza pies and they go in the fridge one thing I can do to eliminate the likelihood that I'm going to be tempted and undesirable emotional response
01:02:05
give the pizza away get modified my space so I'm not actually triggered by it people are struggling with addiction are often told not to visit old haunts because the mere sight of those places can activate these undesirable responses so this is a way now of structuring our physical spaces to help us achieve our regulatory goals
01:02:31
that makes so much sense and I imagine that for a lot of folks even things as simple as lighting and temperature make a real difference I know for me lighting essentially is a huge thing if I'm kind of getting a little ordering cranky
01:02:45
and I'm really like oh wait a minute the sunset it's actually really dark in my studio I mean just turn the lights and it's like oh well
01:02:52
light the world is better light is huge temperatures is huge and these are also sensory experience and so it's all connected and you know like my hope is with this book is to break
01:03:08
these down into bite size bits so that people understand how you can be really strategic and pulling these different
01:03:16
objects to push you in the directions you want because I can have really positive effects yeah I mean no doubt you under that same outside in you also
01:03:27
explore relationships and the broader culture and the impact that this has and you also drop into as you wrap up the conversation you drop into a conversation
01:03:35
around like how can we actually how can we take the decision making process out of a lot of these things so it's like this
01:03:41
these go to just become our go to these shifts become like the levers that we don't have to take our time and think and then make happen but they're just like
01:03:50
this is what happens like when I feel X I do why I feel like you know if we can get to that place not with all of them and not
01:03:58
with all of our emotions believe if we can at least start to dip into creating the rituals and the habits where you just
01:04:04
don't have to think about it you just on feeling this like here the two things it's like that it takes one major friction point away
01:04:13
and and we're so you know like the slightest bit of friction seems to derail people so easily I'm raising my hand right here like
01:04:22
it's just you can remove those friction points and almost like automate the process of like this is what I know to do now
01:04:28
we transform it if well and we can you know so I talk about there are these technologies these simple steps that we can take
01:04:36
to make a motion regulation automatic and I lay this out in the book right you it's called boop like you know there it is
01:04:44
right it's actually you know that song and of course I do your friends to get into his work instead yes exactly I was disheartened
01:04:51
because when I the song you know I was so excited to use that in a very cheesy way as a subheader in the book but the actual song is
01:04:59
titled Rump with an am not just yeah so people often ask me do I ever struggle with emotions you know I run a lab I've
01:05:10
spent 25 years studying this I'm a third I'm an authority in this area and you know I usually pause of course I sometimes
01:05:18
struggle with my emotions like sometimes they can get the best me but here is where I really excel and it is a testament to
01:05:24
the value both of the tools that I talk about and this issue of how to make the usage of those tools reflexive
01:05:32
automatic I am I'm really good at the moment I detect an undesirable emotional response brewing and becoming too big
01:05:42
I know exactly which tools I'm going to go for so there are like two or three things I do instantly
01:05:48
40% of the time 50% of the time that's it it helps me deal the situation I'm back on track
01:05:54
another 20% of time I've got a layer on a few additional tools and you know 15% more a few others
01:06:02
and then that 5% of the time where like I don't know what the hell to do but the idea here is I have plans that I activate
01:06:10
to help me reach the desirable and states that I seek to attain and more often than not that helps and it turns out like these ways that we know to make
01:06:22
a most great regulation automatic these are frameworks that people in many other industries use to be successful
01:06:28
this is one of the most successful organizations in the world that what they do and the way they do it is ahead of time
01:06:34
they think about all right what's my desired outcome what are the potential obstacles I might encounter
01:06:40
now let me come up with plans to address those different potential obstacles if this happens then I'll do this
01:06:46
if this happens then I'll do that if this happens I do this and it doesn't work then I'll do that
01:06:52
you do that enough times you don't have to think about what to do if some calamity strikes
01:07:00
you know exactly what to do when you do it automatically that is the opportunity that I think exists for everyone
01:07:06
make so much sense and by the way you just walked us through that when you first shared the whoop is actually an acronym
01:07:12
acronym WOP it's shorthand for wish outcome obstacle plan which is an approach that you just to sweat
01:07:20
and they feel stuck and there's also really interesting research around goal achievement with this technique
01:07:24
and it's like when you actually identify the potential obstacles in advance you kind of know
01:07:28
and oftentimes they're the internal obstacles the emotions the feelings that pop up the remnants
01:07:34
and you're like if this happens this is my plan when you do that in advance it's so much more likely to actually happen
01:07:40
it won't do rally you exactly you can feel it and move through it because you know what to do in advance
01:07:46
you don't have to sit there trying to figure it out when you're then presently dealing with the emotion itself
01:07:52
and how it's affecting you thank you I think the final point here I want to ask you about and I think it's probably become pretty evident
01:07:58
here is that you know while you list that a whole bunch of different go-toes you know like internal external shifts
01:08:04
that we can all explore that you know there's no universal diet of tools here there's no universal thing that says
01:08:12
you know like for every person that's feeling this this is the thing to do that you know that we are all the unique individual beasties
01:08:19
and we kind of need to figure our own way through like we can look at the toolbox
01:08:23
but we've got to try on like all the different things and see what works for us
01:08:27
yeah I mean that's exactly the point to add on there are no one size fits all solutions
01:08:32
and anyone who tells you that there are you should run the other way
01:08:37
because that is not the way we work and the science powerfully demonstrates that is not true
01:08:44
Lee recently others paper accepted we've been working on it for a while it summarized the results of these two large studies that we did during the COVID pandemic
01:08:52
where we basically track people for several weeks it was a nationally representative study where we looked at
01:08:58
how are you feeling how much anxiety you're feeling on this day and what tools did you use to manage things
01:09:04
I mean I asked for like 20 different tools what we found is that there was remarkable variability
01:09:10
not only between people in the tools that benefited them so the three things that worked really good for you
01:09:18
they've been entirely different from the four things that worked really well for me on a particular day
01:09:23
but even within the same person over time the three things that worked for me on day one
01:09:29
were quite different from the four things that worked for me on day five
01:09:33
now we don't yet know how to prescribe tools to people you do these six things and then when Tammy comes to me
01:09:41
and tells me about her circumstances and hers and who she is I can prescribe these three things
01:09:47
what we where we have gotten is we know what a lot of the tools are there are dozens of them
01:09:54
and we understand how they work we've profiled how they work pretty well
01:09:59
and so the real opportunity that exists for folks as you just describe this start start playing
01:10:05
start self experimenting with these tools to find the ones that work best for you if you find one that works
01:10:11
keep using it lay around another one see how that helps matters the beauty of these tools is that
01:10:17
they're not just cheap they are free I guess you have to maybe subscribe to people this is a free download
01:10:24
I mean to get the book for free from your library you got to find the tools right minimal cost there
01:10:31
this is not like taking a powerful medicine that is loaded with side effects
01:10:35
right the cost to trying these are pretty minimal so give it a shot
01:10:39
if the works keep doing it if not shift to something else
01:10:43
love that feels like a great place for us to wrap up as well a comfortable circle so I'll ask it again in this container
01:10:50
good luck project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up
01:10:56
purpose relationships
01:11:02
contentment having purpose and meaning to drive you having wonderful people to surround yourself with that
01:11:09
contribute to that purpose and being content with what you have because there's always more that can be attained
01:11:17
thank you
01:11:20
hey before you leave if you love this episode safe but you'll also love the conversation we had with Ethan in an earlier
01:11:26
episode about overcoming mental chatter you'll find a link to that episode in the show notes
01:11:32
this episode of good life project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields
01:11:38
getting help by Troy Young Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss
01:11:43
for her research on this episode and of course if you haven't already done so please go ahead and follow good life project in your
01:11:50
favorite listening app or on youtube too if you found this found her season interesting or valuable and inspiring
01:11:57
chances are you did because you're still listening here do me personal favor a seven second favorite
01:12:03
share it with just one person I mean if you want to share it with more that's awesome too but just one person even
01:12:07
then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter
01:12:15
because that's how we all come alive together until next time I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for good life project
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[Music]
