The Science of Emotion Regulation: Strategies for When You're Anxious, Angry, or Comparing Yourself To Others | Marc Brackett

This is the 10% happier podcast I'm Dan Harris. [MUSIC] Hello, party people.

“Today I am talking to a world leading expert on emotional intelligence.”

He is a professor and researcher from Yale who is sometimes referred to as the feelings master. We're going to talk about how to deal with stress, anxiety and anger, how to use gratitude in moments of compare and despair, like when you're on Instagram, comparing your life to other people's lives, how to talk to yourself in moments of high stress, and how to talk to other

people when they're experiencing powerful emotions.

By the way, this is a thing a lot of us avoid or fear dealing with other people's emotions, but as you're about to hear my guest makes a very strong case for developing this skill as a way to vastly improve your own life, and I've seen this play out in my own life. My guest is Dr. Mark Brackett. He's the founding director of the Yale Center for emotional intelligence,

and he's the author of a book called Dealing With Feeling. Use your emotions to create the life you want. As you know, meditation is a great way to manage your unruly emotions. So please check out my new meditation app 10% with Dan Harris. We've got guided practices from many of the world's greatest teachers.

We also do these amazing weekly live video meditation and Q&A sessions. There's a ton of evidence that shows that meditating with other people is a great way to keep the practice going. You can get the app by heading over to Dan Harris.com. D-A-N-H-A-R-R-I-S.com, join the party.

We'll get started with Dr. Mark Brackett right after this.

“As a dedicated exerciseer, is that even a word exerciseer?”

Anyway, as a dedicated one, one of the big things I've learned over time after decades of hitting the gym is that you need variety. Not only to keep you interested and keep you coming back to the gym, but also to prevent injury, which is why I want to talk to you about FitBOD, which is a product that customizes every workout and adapts as you improve to avoid boredom and platoes on your journey.

I've checked out the FitBOD app. It's really cool, lots of great trainers on there, lots of options, and it's very easy to use. Having a trainer can be incredibly helpful, but not everybody can afford one, and not everybody lives in an area where you have access to great trainers, which is why FitBOD is so attractive because you can get all the benefits

of a trainer without the logistical hassles and without the massive price tag. FitBOD creates a personalized workout routine based on your goals, your fitness level, and your available equipment. The workouts adapt to your growth, so each workout is challenging enough to push you to make progress, FitBOD tracks your muscle recovery, so you can avoid burnout and keep up your

momentum. Level up your workout, join FitBOD today to get your personalized workout plan. Financial security, I can tell you, and you've probably heard me say this before, I have spent a lot of my life, unfortunately, worrying about financial security,

and I'm always on the lookout for new products and services that can help in this regard.

I think it's true for many of us, one of the biggest sources of background stress for many of us is money. Specifically, worrying about whether we've done enough to prepare for the future. This mindset is kind of the opposite of the inner peace and contentment,

“and that's why I'm going to tell you today about gain bridge.”

gain bridge offers financial products with a guaranteed rate, and I want to emphasize that word guaranteed, you're not guessing, you're not refreshing and app wondering what happened overnight. You know, exactly what growth you're going to get right from the start. You choose the term, there are no hidden fees, and it's refreshingly simple. They have options for whatever stage you're in, one that's great for saving

tortoise, because if a goal, a house travel, your children's future, and another design for retirement planning, the idea is you set it up, and then you don't have to think about it. That's the piece of mind part. It's not only about growing your money, it's about releasing an element of financial anxiety. Your money grows, you know, exactly how much, and then you get on with your life. gain bridge, let your money work for you. Learn more at gainbridge.com, rates subject to change.

Dr. Mark Brackett, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. You make a pretty strong claim here. You say, emotion regulation is the single,

most important skill we can develop. Why is that? Because if you can't deal with your own emotions,

a good co-regulator, I don't think many people want to be around us. Your belief is that this

“inability that many of us have or this underdeveloped skill to co-regulate with others and to”

regulate ourselves is a major contributor to the mental health crisis we're seeing these days. It is. If you think about what we're seeing these days, whether it's emotion, dysregulation, with anxiety, or depression, or whether it's the inability to control oneself from doom's growing for six hours every night, I mean, in the end, it's a form of self-regulation that most people are lacking, and in the relational aspects, let's think about our society today.

I mean, do you think maybe our society would be a little bit better run if leaders cared about how people felt and were concerned about the well-being of society? I do. And that caring quotient fluctuates in Washington and in the seats of power around the country of this is a whole digression, but I'm not sure how high it has ever been. I mean, we were a flawed species, sometimes it's high, sometimes it's not, but I'm not sure how high it ever gets.

Well, it has been explicitly taught and that's my whole argument that none of us really ever got an emotion education. And from my book, I did this research with thousands of people across the world. Less than 10% of people said they had any formal education and emotion regulation that couldn't

“even define it. Most of us can't even articulate what it even means. What does it mean?”

Good question. You want the long form or you want the short form first?

Is it podcast? You can go as long as you want, baby. All right, good. So the way I like to think about it, is that emotion regulation is a set of goals and strategies. So we can prevent unwanted emotions. These are the goals. We can reduce difficult ones. We can initiate the ones that we want to have or help others to have. We can maintain our emotions. We can enhance our emotions. So I have an acronym I use prime for that. So we can prevent

reduce initiate, maintain our enhance our owner or other people's emotions. And we use strategies to do that. That we can go into in a minute because there's a lot of strategies. So emotion regulation is a set of goals and strategies. But there's a lot more to the formula because it's a function of three big things. The emotion you're feeling. You know, I do different things to regulate my anxiety than my stress and my anger, than my disappointment or to feel more pleasant emotions like

happiness and contentment. That's the E. The P is the personality. I'm an introvert who's on the neurotic side. So you know what I need and what you might need are two different things. But I have a feeling you might have some of these traits too. And then there's the context which is right now I'm traveling. So I've got my nice setup here in the hotel. I feel really good. I've got a good mic. And so the context matters for regulation because I can't go for one right now if I'm feeling

anxious during the podcast. I've got to like use some cognitive strategies or breathing strategies but to light or early this morning. I can use different strategies. So just to put it together, emotion regulation is a set of goals and strategies that are a function of the emotion we're feeling the person that we are and the context we're in. We're going to go deep on your strategies because the book is loaded with them. But let me just ask a few more sort of high-level questions.

Sure. First, just to make this even more appealing to people, what are the health benefits

of learning how to regulate your emotions and maybe we can even think about it in the inverse.

“Like, what are the health dangers of not doing this? Well, what does this regulation lead to?”

It leads to an immune system that doesn't function well. It leads to cortisol levels that are skyrocketing and our body throughout the day. It leads to us choosing poor foods. It leads us to not engaging a lot of physical activity in general. Lots of downside health benefits. On the upside, what my research and other people's research shows is that people who regulate better are better learners in school. They're make more sound decisions. They have healthier and higher

quality relationships. They have better physical and mental health. They achieve their goals in life. And I think the big one, which seems to be the new thing that everyone wants to talk about, is longevity. People live longer. You're going to live a healthier, happier life if you can deal with your feelings. On the longevity piece, my understanding and your the expert here so I'll defer to you obviously on this, my understanding that the most powerful way to regulate your emotions is

by having positive relationships in those positive relationships are what help us do it. Is that your

understanding? It's part of my understanding. We have never put all the variables into the equation

the big person to do a good life study. And yes, relationships do matter. But I find in my research

“that something I wrote about earlier on my career seems to have the same predictive power,”

which is what I call permission to feel, that when we give ourselves just the permission to be true, full feeling selves, that we don't judge our feelings, that we're comfortable being with them. That alone is a master emotion regulation strategy. I'm thinking about my long time meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein. He teaches in these pithy phrases and one of them is, it's okay. By which he does not mean everything's fine. He means it's okay to feel what you're

feeling right now. Like you might not think you can withstand it, but you can just let it all in. 100%. That's a big project that I'm working on right now, which is the follow-up research to that concept of permission to feel. About 70 studies that I've run across the world on it,

actually. It's a powerful concept to give oneself permission to feel, to live without judgment

of the emotional experiences you're having. So much of our dysregulation comes from the judgment around the feeling. I'm anxious. That makes me weak. You know, I can't feel this way. It's the feelings we have about our feelings. You know, we call that meta emotions. But, you know, the shame I had as a kid that I was being bullied. So I was feeling fearful, you know, with the bullying, but my shame around being a boy who was bullied and had a father who was a tough guy

is what really gotten away from dealing with it. What you were just saying right there, that's your story. That wasn't just a, for example. Yeah, that's personal. Yeah. So that sounds pretty

“searing, bullying. I think is always most of the time quite a searing experience. And then when you”

add that into the context of your family configuration, is that what drove you into this work? It is. So, though, if we want to go deeper into the personal, unfortunately, also was abused sexually by my parents best friend for five years of my childhood. And so, if you couple having five years of sexual abuse, from five to ten years old and not disclosing it, with hating school and having two parents who loved me, but one was angry,

could deal with his life and the other one was anxious and couldn't deal with her life. What do you go with your feelings? You eat your feelings, you know, you scream your feelings, you cry your feelings, you do mischievous things. The reason why I wrote my first book called Permission of Field was because I had one person in my life who was my uncle Marvin,

who was an amazing human being. He was a school teacher by day and a band leader by night.

And he happened to be running a curriculum to teach kids about feelings in the 1980s. And he happened to use me as a guinea pig. So we sat in my backyard when I was around 11, and he'd say, "Hey, Mark, how are you feeling?" I would say things like sad, angry. He was the only person who ever asked me how I felt. But on top of that, when I shared what I was really feeling, he didn't say, "You know, tough enough kiddo or I can't handle this because I'm

going to have a breakdown because of your feelings, which would have happened at home." He's like, "Let's get through this together." He didn't fix me. He didn't solve my emotional difficulties.

“He just was present. And that's what we're hoping for, or what I'm hoping for for everybody.”

Because my research shows only about one third of us have an uncle Marvin. One third of us. And only about 15% of us say it's our parent. 85% of us are growing up in homes, where we don't believe our own parents give us permission to feel.

I'm having a million thoughts as I'm listening to you talk. First of all, I'm really sorry that happened to you.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Not the Marvin part, the abuse part and the bullying. That's awful. The other thought I was having, which is we don't have to dwell on, is just, I sometimes think about how we use language. We say to people how you do and how you feel. And we often say also take care or take care of yourself. And we don't actually mean any of that. It's just wrote, but it would be interesting if we as a culture started to mean it. I'm at it, too, because I think you're correct, which is that, you know,

and the workplace, especially it's like, we don't say how you're feeling, because that's like very intimate, right? It's like, how you're doing? And then before the person even responds, you're already done, you know, the hallway. We don't really stay with people's feelings. And I have research to show why that's the case, too. A lot of it is people don't think it's worthy. It's like, time, like, really, I'm going to waste my time with us. The second is fear,

which is that people are afraid about what they're going to hear. Like, if I asked you,

other discussion. Let's blow past that. We can go back to it if you want. But we all right, I would answer and I will answer, but I don't want to derail the point you're trying to make. I appreciate that. But the point of me asking you is that if you were to say, like, most people say, good, fine, okay. You know, it's like great, me, too. And then we move on. But if you said, you know, Mark, I'm actually feeling this odd mixture of anxiety and frustration

in an overwhelm, I'm excited to be with you on the podcast, but I got so much going on in my life. What are most people doing to hear that? They're like, oh, gosh, really? This is why I didn't ask you how you felt from the beginning. And I want to have to deal with this. And that leads to a

third issue. Well, for parents, by the way, it's a lot of fear. I asked my kid how they're really feeling.

And they tell me that truth, yikes, what am I going to do with that? And the big one is skill, which is why I wrote this book because people don't have the skills. I don't know what to do with that information. They get overwhelmed by other people's emotions. And they don't know how to work with them to support them. You're one of these guests. This happens to everyone's in while where your answers, bag a bunch of questions. I'm trying to write them all down and then

figure out what order I should ask them in. But you said something right there at the end that kind of

“bags a question. I think a lot of people don't know what do you do if you actually inquire of someone”

how they're feeling. And they say something that has some moment to it, some power. It's momentous

in some way, how do we handle the, how can we develop that skill? Because it's a massive public

service to be Marvin for other people. That's my vision. And again, I think people have this weird conception that being the Uncle Marvin means that you're like indulging, you know, this is the pushback we get now for the work that we do in schools. It's all your indulging kids emotions. I'm like, absolutely not. This is emotional intelligence, not emotional indulgence. We're helping people develop the skills they need because if a kid, for example, comes into my classroom as a teacher,

who has just gotten bullied on the bus and feeling fearful and hatred and anger, they're going to be ruminating about that pretty much all day long and figuring out a way to get home safely. They're not going to be good learners. So it's my obligation to help kids

“A, B, safe and B have the vocabulary and the strategies to deal with their feelings. So I think the”

first step is let's see, so I'm anxious and I've a one this year. Gosh Dan, yeah, it's a lot of

feelings today. What's going on? Just be curious. What's wrong with being curious about someone's experience? Again, what I want to share is that people are not looking for someone to fix their feelings or even to give them necessarily specific advice. People looking for presence and co-regulation are support. And that really should relieve people, provide some relief to people who are listening, thinking, you know, if the reason why I'm afraid to ask people how they're feeling is because,

you know, I'm not sure what to do. You know how to do that much? This got to be there. People actually, they're resilient, muscle will be built by not giving advice, by not doing problems, solving four kids, especially. It's letting them be with their feelings. The ones that are uncomfortable and help them think through the solutions to those emotions, if they're even in need of a solution. Because most emotions right there are femoral. We're not regulating all day long. We go crazy.

It's the strong ones. It's the big ones that we have to deal with. I just want to completely review. I mean, the, it's something I learned late in life that you don't need to fix. In fact, fixing is annoying usually for the person who is being worked on. I often think of something Renee Brown said here on the show, actually, about her own children. And of course, this applies to grownups too. She often says to her kids, or at least did at the time we did this interview.

I can't solve the problem, but I can sit in the dark with you. I like that. Because that's what people want. I learned this when I was a hospice volunteer too. Like sit there, hold

“somebody's hand, and sit in the light too. I think that we underestimate the power of co-regulation”

of positive emotions, the savoring of these beautiful experiences in life that we say, oh fabulous, good, congratulations. That's supposed to really be with those pleasant feelings. I completely grew to another little moment of wisdom is coming to mind from another past guest on the show. She didn't say it on the show. She said it in the context of a direct teaching from her to me. There's a great Dharma teacher named Spring Washington, who one of her sub-specialties is teaching

what are known in Buddhism as the Brahma Viharas. These four interrelated skills of, I would call them love, call them warmth or heart qualities, whatever compassion, friendliness, equanimity, and then the skill she was talking about specifically that comes to mind when you said you're thinking about sitting in a light. It's called sympathetic joy or moody toe, which is just

you envision people and imagine people savoring their success and send them wishes for continued

“happiness and success. And it's very hard to do. That's why there's that expression every time”

a friend of mine succeeds. I die a little bit. But what Spring once said to me that has never

gotten out of my head is you want to be the person that other people like to call when they have good news. Exactly. I would say that it's a skill. Yeah. And I teach this skill to kids and to others, but kids are my favorite because there are future. Just to give an example of this, it was a fun one. When I do writing, I oftentimes go into the real world to do it, meaning I do a workshop with kids or teachers or leaders and I record them and I helps me think about my work. Some working

with this group of fourth graders, and I'm asking them to differentiate the feelings of excitement and elation. Do you want to try it verbally to distinguish them? Yeah. Excitement to me is jangli and elation has a bit more stability and ballast and common. Nice. That was a beautiful way to describe them. Definitely speaking, right? One is more into the pitoury. Right. I'm excited about going to the park. I'm excited to go on vacation. Where elation

tends to be kind of afterward, you're related, you know, when you watch the thing in sports to go, you get the goal and you're like the sense of joy and kind of pride coming together. So I'm teaching this to kids and I asked them to think about, "Well, what are the ways that you

would help a close friend prolong their feelings of elation?" And it was amazing. I mean,

they got into groups and they're thinking about all like give me scenarios where this could be true and where you would practice this and do it and what would it look like and sound like and how would you do it and then we roll plate it? I mean, these kids were when blow your mind. And when I loved about it was at the end, I usually tell these kids, obviously it was a letter that went home that Professor Brackett came to visit your class today and your parents are going to probably ask

what did Mark do with you and that class on emotional intelligence today? And this one girl raises her hand.

“She goes, "Sir, I think we learned a new form of empathy." And he said, "Say more, she goes,”

well, we always talk about empathy. You know, if someone's grandma dies or their dog dies,

you know, we have to show that we care and that's obviously important. But helping people safer, their pleasant feelings, that's a really important form of empathy." My point is that you can teach this at a young age and when they see the value of it, they're going to do it more. But I didn't learn. I mean, did you learn anything about modeta or positive empathy when you were a kid? No. I have to say it. I had really touchy-feely parents, like hippie ex hippies and I was raised

in, as I often joke, the people's Republic of Massachusetts and it was like, you know, a free to be you and me, that record that they played to kids back then. So I may have been taught it, but I wasn't paying attention. Yeah, it's not explicit. Yeah, it should have been more explicit. Absolutely. And I agree that it's a new form or a enhanced and advanced form of empathy. I will also shout out that you said two words there that can be very practical for the rest of us

when dealing with what can feel like an emotional onslaught from other people. Same more. Exactly. The same thing by the way goes for pleasant feelings. Yes, of course.

“That's how you engage in the modeta process, right? It's like, tell me more about that goal you got.”

What did it feel like in your body? What was going on in your mind? It's like, I want to hear the whole story and people love that. As a matter of fact, laundry, too, and we're speaking when we reflect back on our childhoods or even when we reflect back, period. And we think about the people that had the greatest impact on us, is the people who engage in the positive empathy that stand out. More so than the people who engage in the traditional empathy. That's great.

It's good to know as a father of an 11 year old as well. Coming up Dr. Mark Bracket talks about a self-interested topspin on everything we've been discussing this far. Why savoring a positive emotions? Actually, strengthens relationships. Upregulating joy and contentment in your everyday life and the upside of identifying what brings you well-being and then thinking about how to get more of it.

As many of you know, I'm not a big fan of the so-called power of positive thinking that just because you think something like let me get a million bucks or let me cure whatever disease

However, what of my sponsors today has a product that is as close to genuine power of positive

thinking as I can imagine? It's called Wix and they have this thing called the Harmony Editor, which makes it so easy to create a website exactly how you imagined it in your mind that it's almost like you're thinking out loud thinking it into existence. Experience the new way to create websites. Wix Harmony is a hybrid website editor that offers the perfect blend of AI and precise drag and drop tools introducing the world to the next generation of website creation.

Launch a pro-grade website by entering a single prompt essentially turning your words into a full website. Flow between prompting your AI agent and manual design tools to shape every detail of the site.

I can tell you as a small business owner that it is easy to burn out because there's so many

details you've heard me say this before there's so many details to deal with that can pull you away from your formation. Ready to create your website go to wix.com/harmonie that's wix.com/harmonie. Right before I came into the studio today to record these ads had a shame and I had a shave with a Henson Razor. Here's something interesting most people don't realize. Modern Razors have quietly taught us to press harder than we should when we're shaving and that's not really

a bad habit. It's a design thing. Most mainstream cartridge razors use springs and flexible blade mounts. The idea is that flexibility helps the Razor adapt to the contours of your face, but when a blade can move slightly while it's cutting hair, the cutting angle can shift mid-stroke ever feel that slight tugging sensation while you're shaving that tiny bit of movement is usually what's causing it. So what most of us do we press a little harder to steady it,

but the more pressure means more friction and that's where irritation starts to creep in. Henson takes a different approach. Their razors were designed in Canada by aerospace machinists and instead of allowing the blade to move they fully support it and precisely control the cutting angle. No springs, no pivots, no lubrication strips, managing side effects, just fixed geometry that works consistently without needing extra pressure. Like I said, I just

used my Henson Razor along with the shaving cream that they also make super smooth, super easy,

“kind of fun and old school. You have to do a little bit of assembly. You mean take 30 seconds”

even I could do it. You actually put the Razor blade in safely even I didn't get hurt doing it. Yeah, it makes the shaving experience cool. If you want to try it, they're offering a hundred blades free with the purchase of a Razor just head to hensonshaving.com/happier or use the code happier at checkout.

I just want to put a fine point on this part of the discussion. I'm always and I don't know if

this is a service that people actually need, but it's what I need as a person who's wired for selfishness. I want to put a self-interested topspin on everything we've been discussing. Sure. In my experience, if I had heard this discussion 10 years ago, even though I was already kind of interested in Buddhism and personal growth, I don't know that I would have understood why helping people save or their positive emotions or survive their negative ones would be in my interest.

“But I think to me, there's the evidence base, which is what you referred to earlier with”

Bob Waldinger and his work at Harvard with the Harvard Study for Adult Development, which has shown over 80 plus years that the quality of your relationships determines the length and quality of your life. So there's that. Then I can also just say from an end of one perspective, having the skills to draw people out and be with them no matter what's happening has brought my life from black and white to color. I don't do it all the time once heard somebody on my team say that Dan

practices what he preaches about 70% of the time. So that felt pretty good, actually. It really has helped. You're making me think about not just about parent-child relationships, but colleague relationships. I work at a university where people are not so creative, celebrating other people's success. I see couples all the time who feel inhibited sharing the good news they had because they feel like maybe their partner will feel like,

"Well, I don't get the good news that you get." And so it almost is like this weird dynamic of power where I can't really share my pleasant feelings because I'm afraid that you can't handle the fact that I'm actually enjoying my life, which is we can do like a 17%

“I think where we're going just for my own sense of staying on track is that the regulation of”

emotion oftentimes is focused on down regulating unpleasant feelings and we just had a little

pleasant emotions and also upregulating our own pleasant emotions to enjoy our lives and that matters a lot. We'll say more about that upregulating our own positive emotions because I don't think we've

“really touched on that we talked about how to get other people to save our theirs but I think”

given the negativity bias that is so hard-wired into the human animal it can be very easy to move past the pleasant things in our day that taste of our food, the quality of a tiny fleeting little interaction with your pharmacist or somebody at the barista or whatever

or big positive things how do we draw those out and save for them more? Well first we have to know

what those things are and our work we have a tool we call the mode meter which you may have seen before it's this box of four colors the yellow the red the blue and the green and we have an app now that helps people to use that more effectively and so yellow emotions are the high energy pleasant once the excitement the relation the optimism the hope the green emotions or those of calm content tranquil peaceful relaxed low energy pleasant feelings and then we got the blown the red which

were the unpleasant emotions the anger and the anxiety family and the kind of sadness and loneliness family so firstly like do you know what brings you into the yellow like what actually brings you into the yellow quadrant like what are the things that you'd like to do that when you're there or doing them you feel joy and excitement people don't reflect on these things very much what are the things that bring you into that green quadrant the things that make you feel content

it's funny I live now in the countryside if Connecticut we moved after the pandemic to like a

very rural area I've got lots of property and hiking trails and people always say like what do you

love to do more and just say well I now that I live in the country I love to hike and people say well how often do you hike and I'm like think I did too last year it's like you know it's like I don't make the time to do the things that I know bring me pleasant feelings because I'm busy working so identifying those things in your life and planning them for me one thing that I do that I've never done before is I plan my well-being time and so my calendar I may look like

a severely neurotic human being but I schedule my workouts I schedule my hiking time I schedule my connection time because otherwise I'm not going to do it yeah my default is research and analysis and you know blah blah blah yes you're reminding me of somebody on my team she didn't give me permission to name her so I will name her but somebody on my team who talks about her default mode being work robot and so therefore has to put go to the movies with a friend or take

a walk on her calendar because otherwise it's just the slog exactly so identifying those things

“that bring you joy is critically important and scheduling them really matters I mean I think”

that's just one thing everybody did that every week twice a week or three times a week just found those 15 minute blocks or one hour blocks and just schedule that I'm thinking it would be a huge difference in people's lives okay let's dive more deeply into the book you reference your first book permission to feel the new book is called dealing with feeling it's just packed with as you say research back strategies for emotion regulation which as we establish at the top of this episode is

a very important skill and so number one the first strategy you mentioned is quiting the mind what do you recommend for doing that I mean this is your whole thing I mean I listen to you all the time this is your practice right it's the breathing exercises is the mindfulness exercises is the meditation writing a book on emotional regulation that has a chapter on quiet in the mind

was not easy by the way given there are 3,750 million you know books on this topic and so I

wanted to be really clear in terms of I was very curious around the nuance in the research because I mean it's pretty obvious for most of us breathing is going to deactivate our

“nervous system would you agree yeah I think that's on impeachable it's the advice every”

mom gives their kid you'll take a deep breath but it's actually it's there's evidence for it exactly except it's not great when we tell people that I've I've learned that the hard way fair enough I mean it really doesn't work I'm like everybody breathing like that's a trigger mark that's a trigger okay but we do know it works and it's the place where we can build that space to deactivate I make sure I I'm clear that I don't think breathing is sufficient

I was joke when my mother-in-law got trapped with us during the pandemic we do a lot of breathing

temperature it helps us to be able to access some of those cognitive strategies that I think are critically important but doesn't guarantee we're going to use obviously the mindfulness work is important whether it be mindfulness exercises to be more present or to as we talked about

“earlier the compassion focus ones and so I think stating the obvious that we need to do that”

the problem is that nobody wants to do it we haven't sold it well the best example I have for

that is here I am got a large amount of money from a donor to do a study with my undergraduate students to put them through different forms of mindfulness training and we were going to pay these people and then even need the money but we pay them anyway to you know participate because we figured we get them to stick with their research by the time the study was over something like 70 something percent dropped out so we couldn't even actually analyze the data because there was nobody left to

actually study and it was once a week working together through the mindfulness exercise in the head they're on their own time practice zero percent practice on their own the numbers were terrible

and when I interviewed the students afterwards what do you think the number one reason why they didn't

do it was not enough time not enough time that's only a piece of it it's deeper than that it's a waste of their time but you can't be productive while you're doing mindfulness and breathing exercise oh I say I say I say to me that seems like a problem with the pedagogy I deal with a lot of people who have beefs with meditation usually if I can bend their air for five minutes their distributes of the notion that it's a waste of time because

it's a kind of science to show that it's really good for you and it's actually it can make you more productive and focused at all that stuff what I've found is that people aren't doing it because they don't have enough time and habit formation is really hard it's the same thing is true with exercise or sleep hygiene or eating a healthy diet like there's a reason why New Year's resolutions

“were we bail on them by February you're right but I think this goes back to you know I'm a prevention”

scientist and it's sometimes fascinating to me how unpopular prevention sciences and how popular clinical researches or treatment researches because if we keep on treating people with anxiety disorders or depression or whatever it is like the number of new kids or adults who fall into that

system of the need for help is never going to diminish it just makes no sense to me why we don't think

oh my other background by the way is I taught martial arts for 30 years and I have a strong background in Eastern philosophy and Buddhism myself and I would teach five year olds really complex meditations and mindfulness exercises and they loved it but I got them when they were young and they saw the connection between them breathing exercise and the mindfulness and their martial arts and their lives and I taught them that explicitly but now as a professor of college students

“I have kids who are 18, 19 years old they've gone through a system where the only thing that”

makes you successful is playing an instrument that whenever heard or having something in your CV that sounds so special that like it's like well or you went to a country that even existed to volunteer there's no reinforcement for having these kinds of practices and so we're starting late and so we have to work in that mindset which is before the way I talk about it in my book is like before we can get to teaching people whether it's mindfulness or cognitive strategies we've got to get them to

believe that all this matters they have to have that both that emotions are data and valuable sources of information and that it's a learnable skill because a lot of people think of this as something that's innate like I thought this way by the way I mean until we got a PhD in psychology I just thought it was emotionally a basket case you know I had so much neuroses from my childhood is complicated life and I would have strong emotions that's just part of who I am and I just thought okay

you got to live it out and then I realized wait a minute there's evidence space strategies to regulate emotions it's actually a science to this as skills you can learn and it's harder not impossible to do it as we develop you know my big push is let's start to some preschool and teach it in a developmentally appropriate way across development and of course you know

on my work I got I still got a regulate and I need new strategies but I have the muscle you know has already gotten that exercise that it needs to try a new technique well I grew to you about teaching them while they're young I totally grew to you about that and I will say that the people listening to this show want to buy what you're selling so this is a hospitable environment

the good news it's never too early it's never too late the areas of our brain responsible for

learning these skills are with us until we're in our 90s I get a letter from a 90 year old man just a while back thanking me for teaching him this stuff he said I only wish I learned earlier but you're making the last years of my life better so I promise everyone this is something you can learn today and make a difference so to me breathing in mindfulness work that we discuss I have my

“favorites and I think that's part of the work is that I can't remember Zen background I learned”

the pasta and other forms of meditation and mindfulness but the one that stuck with me the most was the work from Takman Han and I just related to him as a human I liked the way he thought about the

world and so I like his mindfulness practices and they worked for me I've been practicing

enough for 40 years I can tell you that I don't need 15 I need like two or three different ones for different purposes and it really does its work for me okay so strategy number one quieting the mind strategy number two is about redirecting your thoughts or cognitive strategies what do we know about that this goes back to your point about the negativity bias we really have to fight that and because again we're not taught from a young age to sit through you know

the way people are talking to us for me this is a big one because I grew up with very low self esteem hated myself I was too Jewish I was too chubby my nose is too big I was too feminine

the world had a lot to say for about who I was and nobody really helped me sit through that and say

oh oh oh wait a minute or you to define my reality from that's called gaslighting by the way and like I don't accept that I do think that most of our negative talk comes from gaslighting

“I think that other people just feel they have the right to tell you who you were and then”

you start believing it because no one else teaches you otherwise and so going from that self critic to the person who self compassionate is effortful and we have to learn the strategies that work of positive self talk and that distance self talk of like Mark take the I wrote like my favorite because of my Zen meditation background my favorite strategy for cognitive strategies is I say to myself consistently Mark you know this feeling is impermanent and to me it's like

can breathe because I don't know about you but when bad stuff happens little bad things like you know the flight gets canceled and you're stuck there freaking out or whatever you're having a really rough day you get news that something doesn't work out at work and you just go into that room and it just stayed which is my default I take that breath which gives me access to the

“cognitive strategies and it's hey Mark today's our rainy day it's okay tomorrow's gonna be a sunny day”

and recognizing that emotions are a femoral and that that's kind of a law physics is freeing for me and I don't think many people take the opportunity to adopt that mindset around their emotions they get stuck in it the biggest challenge I'm seeing today by the way this is where the young teenager like I do a lot of work in high schools and I can't tell you how many high school students come up to me you know they don't want to say this in front of their peers but they say

privately and they say Mark I don't feel anxious I am anxiety they define their whole body in life by the emotion and there's where the problem lies they're not anxiety you're not your emotions your emotions are experiences some of us have stronger experiences than others and sometimes they're more intense or you know more frequent than others but emotions are a femoral and if we can adopt that mindset and recognize that when we're experiencing the strong unpleasant ones life

is gonna be a lot better for us you said this was your favorite strategy for interrupting remanation he's the name for this strategy distance self-talk it is because distance self-talk is just like literally having empathy for yourself and saying mark you know this feeling is in permanent yes mark it's true today mark you know this is like that rainy day it feels like a thunderstorm but tomorrow it's gonna be a rainbow so it's okay and I have to say like again I repeat

back mark last week you had that really shitty experience and you were in that same spot and the next

“day everything was fine remember that oh yeah yeah right okay it's work maybe I just need a lot more”

worth another people but from my exposure in the world I don't think so you do yes yes I completely identify with what you're describing by yourself and just to be technical here you added on top of distance self-talk temporal distance that's another form of it which is that's when you say to yourself mark is this really gonna be something that's problematic in a week for now does this really matter I do a lot of that in my relationship I've been with my partner for 31 years

and we have very different lives and different styles of being and we have different values about buying things part of us like really you really need that and then I have to say mark you're not your partner's father let it go or I have to say something like is this really gonna impact our finances now let it go so that forward looking forward thinking strategy very very helpful

we are prasal oh my gosh how critical is that instead of going right for the blame can you just try

to see it from a different lens or a different perspective for a minute it may not be the right answer but give someone the benefit of the doubt maybe that trying to sabotage you maybe then not intentionally because I don't respect you maybe they just really hit traffic I want to talk about repraising the second but just to say on distance self-talk which includes the kind of

“bonus level of temporal distancing just want to point out to the audience that the key move that mark”

was making was using his own name that is the way to distance yourself dude bro mark whatever you will call yourself it allows you to harness this ability we all have underdeveloped but they are anyway to give good advice when appropriate to children mentees friends whatever you can do that to yourself correct you can be your uncle Marvin well by the way I love that you just said that because a big part of my training now is you know because two thirds of us didn't have the

uncle Marvin a lot of people in my research shows that if you have the uncle Marvin you tend to be more successful in life you tend to have greater life satisfaction greater purpose in meaning better physical help better mental health you actually sleep better at night big benefits to having grown up with that uncle Marvin but then two thirds of the people in the room thinking like

“look it may like maybe that's why I'm so messed up look I didn't have the uncle Marvin”

and I have to remind people you gotta look at the mirror and be your uncle Marvin yes I just think that's so important we can and I'm here for this to a certain extent but my own our life circumstances and we've all got challenging ones some of us way more than others and that's all true that we're trying to take that away from you or gas light you and you still have the opportunity right now to be your own supportive answer uncle by the way just for the research play a little bit

of my research here that will help clarify what that means like it's being uncle Marvin like okay that sounds complicated like what is that I research shows three things uncle Marvin's have and by the way they can be amoreas they can be grandparents they can be coaches this is just people that we want to be around that are emotional allies as I call it three things non-judgmental good listeners who show empathy and compassion that's it and by the way that

shows up cross culturally there are cultural differences and strategies that people use to regulate are how people express emotions but in terms of people reflecting on their childhoods and thinking about the people that created the conditions for them to have permission to appeal I have not found cross cultural differences people say non-judgmental good listeners who show empathy and compassion right at down people coming up Mark talks about some tools for breaking out of

rumination the importance of gratitude when you're in one of those envy or social comparison situations on social media for example and how to regulate your identity and act from your best

self he'll explain what that means probably the most important variable in my experience as an

entrepreneur even more important than the quality of your idea for the business is the quality of the people who you work with it's just so crucial to have high quality really smart really effective really committed people on your side as you're building a business however hiring can be a pain in the butt you spend a lot of time waiting for the right candidates to apply

which brings me to one of our sponsors today zip recruiter they've got the latest tools and

features to help you speed up finding the right people for your roles so you can save valuable time and get the human resources you need in order to build your company and bring your idea to fruition and now you can try zip recruiter for free at zip recruiter.com/10%. With zip recruiter's new advances you can easily find and connect with qualified candidates in minutes you see a candidate you're really interested in you can unlock their contact information instantly over 320,000 new resumes

are added to zip recruiter every month which means you can reach more potential hires and fill roles sooner use zip recruiter and save time hiring four out of five employers who post on

zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day and if you go to zip recruiter.com/10%

that's tmprcnt you go there right now you can try it for free again that's zip recruiter.com/10% zip recruiter the smartest way to hire a thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last and that is where quince shines premium fabrics consider design and everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable even as the season's chain quince has the everyday essentials I love with quality that lasts. They've got lightweight

“cashmere sweaters I've got three of those I think short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polo's linen”

bottoms and shorts t's in 100% pima cotton and european jersey linen these are versatile pieces that make a wardrobe actually work from season to season and quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen you're not paying for brand markup or fancy retail stores just quality clothing I'm sitting in my podcast studio looking down at my feet while I read and I've got quince socks on right now high quality socks highly recommend they only partner

with factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production you've heard me say before I wear quince all the time from the pants I wore to a dinner party last night to the socks I'm wearing right now and on and on right now go to quince.com/happier for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns that's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it and you will now available in Canada too don't keep settling for clothes that don't last

go to qiui nce.com/happier for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns quince.com/happier okay so re-appraisal yeah another geosifism don't side with yourself nice I love that

“the re-appraisal piece for me I actually love re-appraisal and I love teaching it because I think”

it's actually one of the most creative emotion regulation strategies there is and I love helping kids think about it like give me five alternative ways of thinking about that particular experience and I love the challenge and so this is where I think there's a beautiful intersection of emotional intelligence and creativity. Sharon Salzberg geosif gold steins long time partner in crime in the meditation world has this wrap that she goes on sometimes about how we all think certainty

is going to help we crave certainty in a world in constant non-negotiable flux which is scary we find refuge we think in certainty but actually thinking we know how things are

that their terrible and will never change makes us feel worse it's that

think of five different explanations right that's how uncertainty actually curiosity feels safer actually when you do it. 100% agree with that that's also the certainty control this is why we get anxious because we can't make the prediction and we want to make that we want to be clear the pandemic I want to be clear one of the offices opening I want to be clear when I'm going to be updated off the mask I want to be clear all that kind of stuff and for things

that we have no control over it's where all these strategies come into play I remember my favorite

“one during the pandemic remember that like it was like maybe me and it was like nobody”

knew what the heck was happening everybody was freaking out and we're spraying our groceries with wind decks I mean it was not the stock markets crashing I mean it was just like you're watching the news and it's like horrific and I would just sit there thinking I started seeing songs like we all go down together it's like you're like you're pretty selfish thinking like you're the only one who's suffering right now you're actually doing pretty good you got a good job you have a home

little home office actually life is pretty good had about some gratitude and I switched from all the negativity to gratitude and it was eye-opening for me and I actually did a study on gratitude

and the little results of that study were that people just rely on like they think about I'm grateful I have a family on grateful I have food there was no real gratitude for things like the doctors and nurses who were putting their lives at risk to help people the people who had like have jobs where they're cooking for people and precarious water is or the delivery people

“and I think that oftentimes taking a moment it's another strategy right of cognitive strategy”

of gratitude really does make a difference as we know probably the strongest research is in the field of gratitude tell me about the how of gratitude if we want to use that as a motion regulation strategy what's the best practice it's pausing there's multiple strategies I mean techniques one can be just doing the writing exercise one little caveat about that though

is that people tend to overdo it and so this is the stuff that never gets published but I won't

mention the scientists on this but years ago is part of a think tank of researchers doing stuff on this and there's a sweet spot because if you write 10 things you're grateful for every day but it's time Friday comes you can't think of anything and then I'll suddenly just look like you know like I guess there's nothing to be grateful for and actually backfires and your happiness goes down it's like all things to me it's like the Buddhist way the middle path

all these strategies are middle path the breathing is the middle path the cognitive

“is the middle path eating the middle path you know it's all kind of that way but um I think the”

writing of it is great and I think just the pausing as a mindset shift for me I do in the morning I have some rituals that I do and one of my other rituals in the morning is I say to myself

how wonderful it is that today is the first day of your rest of your life and it's just like

all that shit that was like oh yes today that's the past I got the whole day I got tomorrow and I think we could all be more forward looking in our lives to be frank it's like present moment with forward lookingness one of the quick side about the gratitude thing I think it's a beautiful antidote to a very popular emotion these days which is envy I know from my research with students they say they're stressed but the research actually shows that a deep feeling is envy and

jealousy but they don't have the vocabulary so they say stressed but when you get into the nuance it's actually all about social comparisons whether it's about body type or whether it's about studying for at least hours and getting better grades or parents who have better connections in Wall Street or Hollywood everybody's like the scan of the world for what's going to be better than me remember my formula I don't think just doing kind of mindfulness and breathing exercises alone

is sufficient because when you're in a classroom of 300 people like mine and you're looking around think everybody else is better than you are you got to switch your cognitions if you don't shift to your the way you see the world you're going to drown in the envy and if you take a moment and think wait a minute I'm actually student at Yale University wow I got a great freaking professor whatever it is but getting people to shift out and please just focus on three things that you

might have gratitude for and it just pulls them away from the rumination or the acceleration around they're not worthiness or everyone else is betterness and it gives them a bit more freedom

“so just to put a fine point on this I think what you're saying is to the listeners”

next time you find yourself in a moment of social comparison if you can catch it because it can be sneaky and subtle but if you're in that moment and it's probably gonna happen the next time you're on Instagram if you're on Instagram or whatever social media death trap in which you find yourself uh-huh try to use that as a wake up and alarm bell to pause for a second and think of three good things in your life to mitigate the pernicious effects of comparing yourself to other

people's curated versions of their lives exactly right okay I'm skipping around a little bit in your book that's okay one of the strategies you recommend is identity regulation what does that mean well when I mean by that it goes back to kind of our opening conversation about like why is it so important I got this idea by the way so one of the things I did for my own well being while writing

the book was I started doing a rigorous weightlifting workout uh it was always a physically

actor person with martial arts another thing that taught exercising gyms during graduate school

typhoon and I'm like mark you gotta work out you gotta get yourself in shape so this is the

“positive benefits of social media was scrolling one night kind of feeling disgusted and I found this”

virtual trainer and I decided it was a reasonable price to get me started and I meet this person as name is Marco and he's interviews me he's like I only really want to take people who are motivated and I'm like wow that's pretty intense anyway we had this long conversation and he said there's

different phases who are working out the first phase is you're gonna hate it it's like why am I

doing this this is ridiculous which by the way went through from months I would be doing like dead lifts and like I'm 50 years old you know I've been with my partner for 30 years who cares like nobody's looking at you anyway all the negativity I got through that I was like mark ridiculous take the high road you know this is what you want to do I tell myself talk work then I saw changes but the conversation that was the most interesting to me was that he said

just to make the parallel I see myself as a martial artist I have a 50 reblog belt in a style called hopkido if you ask me like do you consider martial arts and aspect of your

identity I'd say 100% I feel like I operate as a martial artist in the world around I'm scanning

the environment you know if you're confident in terms of protecting myself and other people do I feel like I have a black belt in emotional intelligence that's so much do I identify do I see mark bracket as a highly regulated human not yet and I feel like that's where people need to grow that will restart identifying as people who got this yes I am the Yoda of emotion regulation that's when our automatic habitual unhelpful reactions to stimuli become our automatic habitual

deliberate conscious helpful ways of dealing with our emotional acts and that's my whole life it's striving for that I mean for helping people to see that for identified that way but isn't that a setup for failure if you think you're Yoda the next time you're a shit bag like it's gonna be devastating oh you have a Yoda with some humility but for me it's actually great because I'm very easily for whatever reason I feel strong emotions in the world around me and whether I'm

getting a coffee and I feel like the barista's nasty or whether I'm online at the airport or wherever

or people challenging me in my public speeches or students for example first of all I could have

put a question but you know I'm not sure you're gonna know the answer I'm thinking of myself okay yeah this is gonna be a winner I've used that as an opportunity to me it's like mark I go into mark the Yoda mark you are the feelings master mark you are the world's leading expert in emotional intelligence you used that identity to solve this problem and by the way it works it's good research to support that okay but we press on that what about what is it due to your identity

in those inevitable moments when you are disregulated and you know bad enough situation

“that this regulation might last for a while it might and that's where you have to have the”

humility and the courage to either have some self forgiveness or apologize to your partner there's a lot of emotion regulation that goes into having the courage to say I'm sorry honey I have to do that pretty much every week I'm terrible at this by the way and I got it's the other day I was like we went out for dinner with friends and I was triggered by something and we're walking home and of course I like don't say it Mark don't say it of course I said it and then I'm like

Jim what did you do that and then it was like a whole thing when we got home the next morning I woke up and I was like I don't know what got to me that I needed to say that and I'm sorry and I'm gonna really work on not doing that again that's the best you can do you reflect on it

“and you try to move forward I think that 90% of our divorces are because people can't regulate”

they can't deal with their feelings and their relationship whether it's telling someone about their discomfort or whether it's managing these moments people just either decided they're gonna cheat on them they go to the gym for six hours they compartmentalize suppressed and I repress as opposed to approach the approach takes courage the approach takes skill but I think the approach is what makes us healthier happier people you have this kind of order of operations in this

yeah walk us through that yes so that's a technique we call them at a moment I cultivated this

technique with a colleague of mine whose name is Robin Stern and we came at this from a really fun perspective she's a clinician who was dealing with patients she would teach them a motion regulation strategies they go home and they would not use them so we just worked on this and you're a couple therapy like what's going on here I was a scientist working on research and like teaching people this and I got all this resistance and so we're like nobody wants to regulate

it's not just about the strategy because you know you can do the breathing exercises you can do the cognitive exercise that we've talked about and others but if you don't actually see

“that my life is going to be better my relations are going to be better by applying these”

strategies to my life then you're probably not going to do them because it does feel good to be just regulated I prove myself right that evening on that walk home and it does feel good to say go blank yourself and have an extra alcohol of beverage in the moment these strategies don't tend to do well for you long term what that said we realized the missing link was something we spoken about already which is this idea of cultivating your best self so we get the four step

process of the meta moment three the steps are similar right the first step is you notice that something has shifted in your environment I am triggered from feeling tense in my shoulders I have that negative thought I want to say something meaner hurtful and then we do that pause button

where we do that breath but the critical and creative thing about the meta moment is this moment

of seeing your best self so what does that mean well it's role specific but very simply if I were to ask you Dan you're a father of an 11 year old you just said yes okay so I'm going to put you through this exercise you didn't suddenly can send form but it's okay Dan in your role as a parent you're best self are you'd say this here so if my best self how I want my child to see me how I want my child to experience me how I want my child to talk about me to their peers

“what are the three qualities that you would want them to have in mind why I think number one is”

the Uncle Marvin role just a safe place I don't know that he might sound what had the vocabulary for this but like a safe place to just express himself in his full range so what's the trait or attribute that you would have how about easy to talk to great so you want to see yourself as a dad who's easy to talk to yes I mean to more fun to be around like I'm down to do his stuff even though I don't really want to do it listen to him talk about video games as long as he wants to talk

taking this boring events another thing I also don't really want to do but I play drums with him I watch 30 rock with him we're working our way through that whole show cool which has a lot of inappropriate shit in it but whatever so easy to be around fun easy to talk to fun to be around

“okay is it a talk to fun to be around give me one more aspirational figure like I want to be like him”

say more about that I don't believe as a parent in a lot of direct instruction of my child because I don't believe that will work so I try to lead and teach the rosmosis or example you know and so I want him to feel like yeah that's a dude I want to be like because he has rich relationship he has worked that he really cares about he pays attention to his marriage he's fit you know to the best of his ability and I don't mean like looking a certain way I pay attention to my

fitness I want him to look up to me in that way so what's a word what's an attribute role model yeah but that's not specific enough for me I want more specific is it passionate is it perseverance is it motivated is it yeah yeah yeah passionate sure nice so as a dad I want my son to see me as someone who is needed to talk to fun passionate nice so tonight or wherever you are if you're going to meet your child tonight at home you can be forward looking I said I was a preventionist

well if we always are waiting for our kids to trigger us to then activate that best self

it's going to be harder but you can be proactive about this can you before you walk into your kitchen tonight for dinner or whenever you're going to see your kid next just pause instead of goal and remind yourself I've made a commitment that I want to be a dad who is

I feel can metastasize in a very positive way throughout your life you know Buddhist sense I

I wake up in the morning and this is Buddhist language say that you know my job is to be a benefit to all beings it sounds to me and I feel correct me if I'm wrong that you're saying that we can just be tweaking our intention or our best self and setting that as a north star in different contexts throughout the day that's exactly right and my best self as a husband is very different from my best self as a public speaker on stage which is different than my best self as a colleague

and there's different attributes that come up for me but how many of us really take the time like

“I did with you to just sit back and reflect on these things and that's how you feel right now”

with your kid being 11 when there are 17 or 18 you might think of different attributes because of what's going on in both of your lives at that point the real point of it is like you said it's the intentionality of it but it's the granularity of it just saying I want to be a role model it's kind of too broad and so for me this joke in my book when I say like because my students call me the feelings master is that I had an operationalized that like what does that mean exactly it means

he is beautifully creative at dealing with life's curveballs that means that when I'm in a classroom and someone throws that curveble at me I see myself as beautifully creative at solving those big challenges and if I can bring myself into that place I'm just going to be much better

managing it and then you reflect on it because importantly Dan this is not about you're never

going to arrive there this is going back to your thing Walmart you're going to make mistakes and you're going to mess up course I am then I have to look at the barriers then it's like okay so what was the reason and I could say say this publicly I felt insecure about what my partner said in that dinner and it was my issue and so that was a nice reflection from going to have oh so the reason why really they're real deep down reason why I didn't live up to my best self was that I got insecure

oh okay that's interesting work see what that for a little bit let's get curious about that so oftentimes when we're trying to be our best selves the things that are the barriers to that are where real the real learning happens we're almost at a time so let me ask you the two questions I ask I pretty at the end of pretty much every interview one is is there something you were hoping that we would get to that we didn't we covered a lot we weren't linear which is fine I like

“over the river through the woods I think we covered a lot you know we didn't get into”

some of the other strategies but that people can read about them in terms of the biology of regulation you know the way how food and sleep and physical activity all are supportive of that that's an important thing for people to know because a lot of people I'm trying to be my best self but I can't and I just say things like well how much sleep did you get last night well terrible I'm like well there you go there's the barrier and so we need a budget we need fuel to regulate our emotions

effectively but for me I see it is really two big things one is the attitude and all it's the permission of the ill piece and by the way the one thing we we didn't talk about was to give ourselves permission of you we have to give other people permission to feel and I want to recommend that people do this in public meaning show up and let other people observe you being the non-judgmental good listener who's empathic and compassionate because it has a

contagion at back to also so once we can give ourselves and everyone we love and even the people we don't love that much permission to feel we can lean and figure out what to well even though I give myself permission to feel there are certain feelings that are interfering with my success

“with my goals I need strategies and deal with them and I think importantly that our society”

is so like the quick fix thing is like I was giving this speech for I don't know a couple house and actually police officers and like they're very impatient with me and they were like dude what's the one strategy that works and I'm like I'm sorry it just doesn't work that way they're like I'm asking you right now what's the one strategy I'm like all right be kind to yourself and my point in sharing that with you is that when we're regulating our emotions in real life

it's never just one strategy it's using all the strategies that I write about and you realize

your thoughts you go back and you say something to try to rectify the situation or you

take a break and you go look at nature or you go work out or you call a friend we need all of these strategies they're a collective and if we can help ourselves to see where our strength there is our and where our challenge areas are and kind of cultivate the challenge areas we're

“going to be I think happier healthier people well said final question just can you remind”

everybody of the name of your new book your old book any other books any other things you do in the world website social media that we should know about so my new book is called dealing with

feeling my first book is called permission to feel I have a dealing with feeling podcast now where

interview the world's experts on emotions and emotion intelligence and learn about their ways

“of dealing with emotions which is fun I'm on Instagram primarily in LinkedIn which is my name”

and my website is markbracket.com we will put links to all of those in the show notes

for anybody driving or otherwise not only pencil mark great job thank you very much thank you dad

thanks again to Dr. Mark Bracket awesome to have him on the show don't forget to check out my new app 10% with Dan Harris we've got a big meditation challenge coming up it's coming up on March 23rd it'll go for five days and this challenge is peg to the release of a new audible book that I'm putting out with my co-author seven ace el acie the book is called

“even you can meditate that you can get it on audible if you want to join the challenge which will be”

led by seven a head on over to Dan Harris.com to download the app if you already is subscriber nothing you need to do the challenge will begin on March 23rd and there'll be plenty of notifications for you right there in the app. Last thing to say here thank you so much to everybody who works so hard on the show our producers are Cara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily are recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at pod people Lauren Smith is our

managing producer Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer DJ Kashmir is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme