Longevity – Inspired New Horizons

Corks Rising

When I first started blogging about personal growth 8 years ago, I had a glass jar on my kitchen windowsill with a cork bobbing in water. It was my touchstone to remind myself that each of us plays an important role in lifting each other’s cork. We need help to stay afloat.

This morning, I read something in Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, that transported me back to that moment in time. It felt surreal and spine-tingling to be in two places at once. I was at the very beginning of my self discovery journey placing that cork in the jar –AND — I was also fully present in my apartment taking stock of just how far I have truly come on that personal growth journey. A smile stretched across my face as I took stock of how my own cork has risen over 8 years — and most importantly, how so many others’ corks have also risen.

At the onset of my personal growth journey, I felt alone in the work – one cork in a small glass jar. Today the massive ocean is full of corks and I am merely one of many. I could not be happier with the company I am keeping.

For over 20 years, Brene Brown has been planting seeds of the very work we are deeply steeped in today. She braved the wilderness back then, schlepping her first book from the trunk of her car and mustering courage to give a Ted Talk on shame and vulnerability. She did not have a crystal ball to guide her — she just followed her heart and her calling, blazing a path and planting seeds.

There is a Greek proverb that reminds us that wise men plant seeds of trees, the shade of which they will never sit under, bubbled up into my consciousness.

Brene Brown planted the seeds of human connection with an emphasis on vulnerability, the importance of our emotions, and the necessary healing work of addressing old generational patterns — and those seeds took root.

It has taken nearly two decades for the seeds to grow into the full awareness that we got a lot of things wrong about humanity, how the brain and body really work, and what is truly possible for our evolution on so many fronts.

I sat under the shade of the tree that Brene planted just yesterday. I listened to Scott Galloway and Rich Roll openly discuss vulnerability on Rich’s podcast. It was visceral to experience this refreshingly deep and honest conversation with two men in their fifties get real about their emotions and what they want for their sons and daughters.

Even more importantly, is the education and messaging that Rich Roll and Scott Galloway are collaborating on — the need for us all to take very seriously the crisis of loneliness, depression, social isolation and lack of human connection that is paralyzing our younger generations.

When I began my personal growth journey, I read Dr. Bruce Perry’s compelling book, Born for Love. In that book, he was sounding the alarm for our growing empathy poverty, but his voice was drowned out as our collective attention turned to the novelty of social media. We blatantly ignored the warning and gleefully plugged into social media and our devices, so certain that we’d find the connection we craved through technology.

Today, Jonathan Haidt draws a through line from the early 2010’s to today and holds up the reality of our human condition for us to see clearly. Our younger generations need to be unplugged and reconnected to reality. In his book, the Anxious Generation, he is carrying forward the message that Dr. Bruce Perry warned us of in Born for Love. Our growing lack of empathy, our self-imposed social isolation and addiction to devices, has created an epidemic of AI – artificial intimacy. It is Esther Perel who coined that term – Artificial Intimacy. She is the dynamic psychotherapist who fearlessly weeds out conflict between couples to help them discover that plot of ground begging for seeds of love, intimacy and connection to be planted.

We can no longer blatantly ignore what is hidden in plain sight. We must focus our attention, resources and real life support on our children.

Ask anyone who has ever hit rock bottom, and they will tell you that it was in their lowest place that they faced the truth that in order for meaningful change to happen, they had to dig deeper – and do the hard work of rebuilding.

This is where we all are today – collectively at rock bottom with an opportunity to nurture the seeds that have been planted over the past twenty years in psychology, behavioral science, neuroscience and modern medicine.

It is my strong belief that we have reached this breaking point because humans are hard-wired for connection and we do not thrive in continual chaos and uncertainty. If this dilemma were happening in the animal kingdom, our hearts would be breaking open as we watched adult animals leave their young unattended without teaching them any life skills. Their basic instincts would atrophy over time.

If you are familiar with epigenetics, then you may realize that for generations we have passed down unprocessed trauma and overloads of stress and anxiety. Dysfunctional generational patterns are the emotional inheritance that has never been unpacked. Old parenting models failed to install one of the key components of the human operating system — emotional intelligence. This combination is the one-two punch that delivers a compelling warning to us. Unpack the old emotional baggage, heal old traumas. The time has come. Our kids are on overload and they are drowning in cognitive dissonance.

The reality is that we have made this work of unpacking emotional baggage, healing old traumas and installing emotional intelligence so much harder than it needs to be. Psychology has shifted dramatically in the past decade with a focus on somatic healing and understanding how our brains actually work. Neuroscience fires up this better approach by highlighting the neuroplasticity of our brains and how we can re-wire healthier neural pathways in a relatively short amount of time.

As I wrote about in my last blog post, the creative coalescing of so many fields and modalities is helping us fast-track the triage that we need — and can no longer ignore. This creative coalescing is the little forest that has grown from the many seeds that have been planted over the past twenty years.

As many of you know, I am impassioned about teaching our kids all about their innate and integral emotional intelligence. I have a “Marie Kondo” approach to cleaning out generational baggage – let’s stop dragging it around, unpacked and continually weighing us down. Let’s travel more lightly through life and make new discoveries.

By the way, have you noticed how mainstreamed words like vulnerability, mindfulness, self-awareness and emotional intelligence have become? Little seeds have been planted over and over again by people like Brene Brown, Dr. Marc Brackett, Andrew Huberman, Kristin Neff, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Arthur C. Brooks, Dr. Becky Kennedy, Dr. Peter Attia — and a host of others. They are the corks that jumped into the sea of change and lifted us all up.

So many resources have cross-pollinated that little forest that began with a few seeds several decades ago. We are at the tipping point of a huge, positive human evolution. Just the other day, author Arthur C. Brooks told Ryan Holiday that we now have the neuroscience to prove all the wisdom of the ancient philosophers. His excitement and enthusiasm was contagious.

Here’s what I know — Brene Brown did not have a crystal ball twenty-five years ago, but she felt a nudge so strong she could not resist it. She poured herself into shame and vulnerability and stayed the course because it mattered. She networked the hell out of her platforms during Covid, lifting others up when we were most receptive to learning and discovering all kinds of new things – the missing parts we didn’t know we needed. Brene was planting seeds of awareness all throughout our dormant period.

I used to think that the law of attraction was mostly like wishful thinking — but through Brene I have learned that the law of attraction is sharing, networking and lifting each other up. That is the momentum that brings the changes and opportunities we want.

Michael O’Brien (@the.mindful.cyclist) was also a recent guest on the Rich Roll podcast. His recovery from a near-death cycling experience was the catalyst for his seminal shift that changed his perspective, mindset and actions. He expressed this profound wisdom:

“Things don’t happen for a reason. Things happen….and we give it meaning.” — Michael O’Brien

I am taking this profound wisdom to heart today. Things have been happening FOR us for nearly two decades and we can give it a transformational new meaning and pivotal new direction.

There has been a big clearing of the weeds that prevented us from seeing what was possible for us. Seeds were planted and cross pollinating was happening. mostly in the background.

The self help space got a little traction with mindfulness about a decade ago. It was a wake up call but we kept hitting the snooze button. We turned to devices and poor coping skills; social media was a siren call we falsely believed would bring us the connection we craved. Our attention became a commodity traded in futures markets.

Unfortunately our devices and social media stole our attention and mindfulness; it amplified our disconnection from real life. Highlight reels and filters gave us a very distorted picture of the beautiful complexity and realities of life.

What it also took from us was the fuel that runs our human engines – the neural energy and connectivity we get from being with each other. There is so much that neuroscience has to teach us about how the human brain and body works – how we jumpstart, co-regulate and scaffold each other. We know more about our incredible brains and how to care for them than we ever did before.

So, taking Michael O’Brien’s wisdom to heart, the meaning we can give to this moment is the discovery that we are better together, that human connectivity is integral to our physical, emotional and mental health, and our longevity.

We have the rare opportunity to lift up our kids out of their malaise with greater knowledge, tools and awareness than we have ever had before. We can have a dramatic, positive impact in short order if we meet this moment quite differently than we ever have before.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Michael O’Brien Shift: https://www.michaelobrienshift.com/about/

Do yourself a favor and click that link to read about Michael’s transformational life experience. Then listen to his deeper conversation with Rich on the Rich Roll Podcast.

Check out this episode of the Rich Roll Podcast with Prof G – Scott Galloway. At about 54 minutes in you will hear the 5 minute deep conversation about vulnerability and emotions. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991

Creative Coalescing

A couple of years ago, I blogged about how excited I was to be discovering that so many diverse fields and modalities were beginning to intersect. Many of my favorite resources for personal growth and self development were referencing each other in their books and research papers. It was becoming evident that a lot of dots were being connected as neuroscience, psychology, parenting and emotional health began to swap knowledge and findings.

So many of the profound breakthroughs would have been worthy enough on their own, and yet it was putting all the pieces together that revealed a much bigger, more dynamic picture about our human evolution. What is currently underfoot is a creative coalescing of an all-encompassing understanding of how our brains and bodies actually work – and how this changes everything we once believed about the human experience.

We not only have more pieces of the puzzle — we actually have a much bigger picture.

Since the dawn of time, we human beings have been so busy “doing” the same things over and over, getting the life lessons repeatedly, but not really making genuine progress in a meaningful way. In fact, we have been making things much harder than they have to be for thousands of years. This is precisely why the philosophy and life lessons from the Stoics still resonate so deeply with us. Little has changed about the human experience, regardless of the time period we live in.

What is changing is our knowledge and understanding of the human body, brain and mind. We are now in the midst of a human evolutionary transition. Futurist Amy Webb recently shared with Brene Brown that fifty years from now, people will look back on this time period with great wonderment – we are Generation Transition.

I imagine my grandchildren who range in ages from 6 to 11, being in their mid-life fifty years from now – having had the benefit of better skills, tools, knowledge about their brains and bodies than all the generations before them — and how their lives will have been shaped in healthier, positive and meaningful ways.

It is impossible not to get excited and enthusiastic about ushering them into this new era of our evolution, armed with emotional integration, healthy psychological tools, and an understandable owner’s manual for their own body and brain.

Talk about being generational cycle breakers – no wonder we are Generation Transition. Maya Angelou has always told us that when we know better, we do better — and now we most definitely know better about how our brains work – and how to care for them.

This moment in our human evolution is one for the record books. How we meet the moments of our human experience is what is shifting — we are going to become proactive rather than reactive. We are going to be better equipped to deal with change and uncertainty with resiliency, acceptance, flexibility and curiosity. We will not be armoring up to protect ourselves, we will be gearing up for meeting the moment in profoundly healthier ways.

We are shifting in tandem across many disciplines to become proactive users of better skills and tools for ourselves, our relationships, for parenting, for our physical and mental health and overall quality of life. All of these pieces of our human puzzle were meant to work in harmony, yet we kept them compartmentalized. Now we know better.

We know that emotional integration is the missing link we got so wrong. As we are plugging this key component into our human operating system, so many other fascinating parts of our brain/body unity are lighting up and coming online.

The creative coalescing that I am seeing today is showing up in podcasts. In fact, podcasts may be the very alchemy that we need to keep up with the rapid pace of our collective growth period.

What makes podcasts so impactful is that they are real life conversations that engage us more viscerally — we almost feel that we are part of the discussion as we listen, nod, agree, push back and take in new information. The interplay of the podcaster and guest invites us to learn and integrate almost spontaneously. These rich conversations remind us that we are not alone. There is an instantaneous recognition that the vast majority of us are all grappling with many of the same life issues. We are collectively normalizing and demystifying the recurring problems and opportunities that humans have faced since the dawn of time.

Ryan Holiday recently shared in one of his Daily Stoic podcasts that we don’t have to learn all of life’s lessons the hard way. We can learn from other’s stories and experiences — and most importantly from their hindsight, insight and wisdom. This underscores the dynamic learning environment unique to podcasting. The creative coalescing is happening in real time on a continual basis as podcasters dive into deep conversations with very diverse guests and find common ground in what was once perceived as unrelated subject matter.

Let me share a few delightful examples of this creative coalescing. These are some of my favorite podcasts that support my own insatiable desire to learn and stay current.

The Rich Roll Podcast with guest Dr. Ellen Langer:

Rich Roll is an ultra endurance athlete and full-time wellness advocate. In a very relatable story, Rich hit rock bottom in his 40’s with his longtime struggle with drugs, alcohol and unhealthy living. He turned his life around and then turned to extend a helping hand to others who found themselves with similar struggles. Rich started his podcast in 2013 and often interviewed high profile athletes who shared similar life experiences.

On February 12, 2024, Rich Roll’s guest was renowned psychology professor at Harvard, Dr. Ellen Langer. They took a deep dive into her newest book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. Dr. Langer is the most delightful and engaging guest for an inquisitive podcaster. She has the unfiltered curiosity of a three year old and a sense of humor to match.

Dr. Langer’s approach to mindfulness is not about sitting on a cushion meditating – it is about proactively living each and every moment steeped in mindful curiosity. She offered the most insightful nugget early on: “Everybody’s behaviors make sense to them; otherwise they wouldn’t do them.”

Rather than judging, hand-wringing or rushing to rescue when someone’s behaviors seem out of alignment, she challenges us to be open-minded and inquire — “what was your intention?“

This simple pivot moves us from being stuck in age-old patterns that feel like a tug of war and shifts us into becoming curious explorers. We not only change our “go-to” judgmental and knee jerk responses to others, we build a bridge to helping others become more “mindful” and self aware of how they get in their own way and may be negatively impacting their relationships.

When we change how we meet others and the events in our life, we facilitate collective change.

I loved this episode so much that I ran right out and bought her book, gifted a few copies and have been having the best conversations about it ever since. This is how the word is spread. How many other listeners have done the same and are bringing positive changes to their friends and families?

Since Rich Roll had Dr. Ellen Langer on his program, he has also had the following guests join him for more diverse yet inter-connected conversations:

February 22 – Charles Duhigg, Author of SuperCommunicators, discussing how to unlock the secret language of connection.
March 4 – Cal Newport, Author of Deep Work and Slow Productivity, talking about how to escape burnout, do your best work and achieve more by doing less.
April 1 – Dr. Daniel Amen, world renowned psychiatrist and author of Change Your Brain Everyday where they discussed all things brain health, dementia, Alzheimers and ADHD.
April 15 -Scott Galloway, co-host of the popular tech and business podcast PIVOT and author of the Algebra of Money, to talk about why vulnerability is power, healthy masculinity and financial security.
April 22 – Jonathan Haidt, author of the Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind, to unpack how social media is rewiring childhood.

Just look at that guest and topic list — this is the creative coalescing that I have been observing. Rich Roll is facilitating the coalescing by having so many diverse guests discuss their areas of expertise. It’s easy to connect the dots and see how insights from one conversation dovetail into another.

Re:thinking with Adam Grant Podcast:

Wharton organizational psychologist, Adam Grant, kicked off 2024 with a podcast episode on parenting. Imagine that – parenting!

On January 2nd, Dr. Becky Kennedy, one of today’s foremost authorities on a brand new model for parenting, had an awesome conversation with Adam Grant about bringing out the good in kids and parents. Dr. Becky’s parenting model focuses on integrating emotional intelligence so that our children get a complete operating system and the training wheels they need to understand it. This parenting model is a total 180 from the old one that did not integrate emotions and subsequently is the root cause of so much emotional misunderstanding and disregulation.

I have been a huge fan of Dr. Becky for quite a long time and I learned that Adam Grant and his wife are too. They have been following and implementing Dr. Becky’s parenting advice with their own kids. The positive impacts are evident for both parents and kids as Adam pointed out with some of his personal stories.

Dr. Becky shares short videos with her social media followers that are relatable, common and “spot on”– many of them created as she takes a break in her closet, or walking the busy streets of New York. She draws from her own parenting experiences, from her private practice and workshops. Every parent and grandparent will get something of real value from her clips – and often the practical advice she offers are good emotional tools for kids and grown ups alike. The reality is that since most of us did not learn about the meaningful role emotions actually play in our lives, we have to “unlearn” before we can teach this new and improved way of using our emotional intelligence.

It became very evident that the subject of parenting and Dr. Becky were becoming mainstreamed when Dr. Andrew Huberman also had her on his podcast on February 26th with the title “Protocols for Excellent Parenting & Improving Relationships of All Kinds. Just as I had observed in my own life, when we parent with better practices and tools, we also gain positive benefits for all other relationships. Yes, I did get goosebumps.

I found myself laughing out loud recently when during a recap of the Daily Show with Jordan Klepper, even he mentioned Dr. Becky’s rule of thumb for emotional distress. Once again, we see how the seeds of positive change are popping up everywhere.

Here’s another intriguing list of the diversity of subjects and experts in Adam Grant’s podcast lineup:

January 16 – Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, psychologist and neuroscientist at Northwestern and Harvard – You have more control over your emotions than you think
January 23 – Susan David, psychologist at Harvard Medical School – overcoming toxic positivity
March 5 – Cal Newport (who was also on with Rich Roll) – How to be productive without burning out
March 26 – Charan Ranganath, psychologist and neuroscientist – the science of memory
April 16 – Anne Lamott, renowned author of 20 books and Adam’s favorite writer – her thoughts on love, writing and being judgy
April 23 – Kara Swisher, journalist, author and co-host of the Pivot Podcast with Scott Galloway (who was also Rich Roll’s guest) – on speaking truth to power.

I couldn’t resist sharing these compelling lists of topics and guests for two of my favorite podcast series. There is a lot of crossover and intersecting occurring – rather like a blurring of once solid lines between diverse fields. It is proof positive of futurist Amy Webb’s observation — we are all a part of Generation Transition.

Historian Ken Burns has noted that change happens at the edges. It made me think of Brene Brown who began her research on shame and vulnerability 25 years ago, just before 9-11. Her first Ted Talk on that very subject became an overnight sensation and rates as one of the most highly viewed Ted Talks ever. Brene wasn’t so sure that we were ready for discussions about emotions, vulnerability and human connection. Perhaps we were ready – or sensed that we needed to get ready.

Ready or not, we are at a tipping point in our human evolution with so much incredible new knowledge and insights to support the process. It is the first time that we have so much creative coalescing bubbling it all up to the surface. It is readily accessible, highly relatable, makes for engaging conversations and has positive benefits across all aspects of our health and well being.

What will you share about this moment in time – 50 years from now?

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

HUBERMAN LAB PODCAST
(science and science-based tools)
with Dr. Andrew Huberman

FINDING MASTERY PODCAST
(high performance psychology)
with Dr. Michael Gervais

RE:THINKING
(great minds don’t think alike)
with Adam Grant

UNLOCKING US
(conversations to unlock the deeply human part of who we are)
with Brene Brown

TETRAGRAMMATON (inspiration engine)
with Music Producer Rick Rubin

THE DRIVE (health and longevity)
with Peter Attia

WHERE SHOULD WE BEGIN
(step into the office of psychotherapist and learn from client sessions)
with Esther Perel

BEING WELL
(practical science of well being)
with Forrest and Dr. Rick Hanson

PIVOT
(all things tech and business)
with Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway

Good Bones

In my last blog post, I shared how integral it is to really know ourselves well — so that we stop the shape shifting we do unconsciously as we move in and out of the many roles we play daily. What we are striving for is a strong, consistent foundation for moving through life – no matter our role and responsibility, no matter the opportunity or the problem.

We have a whole new way of viewing self discovery and personal growth now. We are normalizing the obvious — we are always “works in progress”. We are going to be re-shaped and impacted in remarkable ways by life. The transformational pivot is how we re-frame this ever evolving, organic process. We start with a solid foundation of who we are, grounded in our values. Any renovation starts with the bare bones; the good bones are the core of who we are and who we are becoming.

If we use this metaphor of renovating an old house into our dream home, we can get clarity very quickly about self-discovery and meaningful change. When we see the potential in the “good bones” of a neglected house, we get super-charged about what is possible — and we get to work. We can apply this same approach to personal growth. It shifts our attitude in a whole new direction — it is fascinating, motivating and empowering.

Bear in mind that we are also bringing new tools and skills to our personal renovation process. We now know that the old parenting models hijacked emotional integration which is the most impactful key to really knowing ourselves and what matters most to us. We also know with great clarity that social norms compounded the problem and kept us stuck in limiting beliefs about our full potential.

There is a compelling reason that so many leaders in parenting, psychology, behavioral science and neuroscience point us to childhood to look for the root causes of our insecurities, poor coping skills and problematic behavioral patterns: Childhood beliefs can have a very strong grip on our sense of self, our beliefs about our potential and even our understanding of the world at large.

Here is the story of Florence Nightingale, one of the most heroic figures of the 19th century who saved countless lives on battlefields and in hospitals. Florence knew as a young girl that she wanted to be a nurse – it was her calling, her destiny. She wanted to revolutionize medicine and sanitary conditions. But it took her 18 long years to fulfill her childhood dream. What held her back? Not financial means – she came from a wealthy family. Not acumen – she learned, studied and had practical experience. What held her back was limiting beliefs – her own and others. She was afraid of “what a woman’s role was supposed to be.” It was also the fear of other people’s opinions – her parents held her back, her sister held her back and other people’s opinions hold her back. It was only when she freed herself from these limiting beliefs that she embraced and pursued her true destiny. As Florence journaled about her frustrations, she realized that she’d been “tied down with straw all along” — and she cut through the bonds that held her back. (special thanks to Ryan Holiday for sharing this story recently)

The story of Florence Nightingale shines a powerful light on the reality that old parenting paradigms, gender stereotyping and social conditioning keep most of us from tapping into the best versions of ourselves and discovering our incredible hidden potential. I often ponder how many inventions, advancements and breakthroughs were missed all throughout history due to the grip of limiting beliefs.

In his book, Hidden Potential, Adam Grant does a deep dive into the many ways we got things wrong about our ever evolving potential. He unpacks the distinctions between (a) character and personality and (b) values and beliefs. This sets the stage for building a strong sense of our own identity.

Have you had an overreaction to someone or something and later admonished yourself for “acting out of character?” What were you using as a benchmark for your character?

Most likely, you were acting from your personality and out of alignment with your values.

“Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition — your basic instincts for how to think, feel and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts. Character doesn’t set like plaster – it retains its plasticity. — excerpted from Hidden Potential by Adam Grant

Kids operate instinctively on “personality” with young developing brains. Children need adult guidance to role model and teach character skills — and be the training wheels for emotional regulation.

If you grew up in a family environment where the adults operated mostly on personality themselves, or had a double standard for family values, it’s no wonder there is real confusion around your personality and your character. Many of us were labeled by adults for our personality traits — our basic instincts for how to think, feel and act. Those labels stuck. And the accompanying limiting beliefs gripped tight.

“The true test of character is whether you manage to stand by your values when the deck is stacked against you. If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on hard day. Personality is not your destiny – it’s your tendency. Character skills enable you to transcend that tendency to be true to your principles. It’s not about the traits you have — it’s what you decide to do with them.” — Excerpted from Hidden Potential by Adam Grant.

Dr. Becky Kennedy, the child psychologist who is championing the game-changing parenting paradigm shift, stresses the importance of emotional integration and teaching character skills throughout the 18 year apprenticeship that our kids have inside their family units.

Just imagine growing up and growing through life free of personality labels and limiting beliefs – scaffolded by parents and family members, as you build your own strong sense of self and foundational core values. There is no better springboard for entering adulthood.

Adam Grant next offers the critical distinction between our values and our beliefs. When we understand the integral difference between the two, we can see clearly that values become the foundation of our real identify (our strong sense of self) that we can build upon for the rest of our lives. This is why values become the springboard for building our lives. Beliefs can hold us back.

Values are what you think is important.

Beliefs are what we think is true.

Our personal foundation is built on our values — what we think is important. Our values create the focal point for where we spend our time, our energy and our resources. Our core values stand the test of time, are both durable and flexible. They become the scaffolding and building blocks for lifelong learning and evolving.

Our beliefs are subject to change and in reality should be updated and refreshed as we acquire new knowledge, more experiences, set new goals and broaden our perspectives.

Did you go into adulthood, marriage or parenthood with a strong sense of what mattered most to you? Were you determined not to do some of the things that your own parents did? Did you make a mad dash for the door when you reached adulthood so that you could go out and live your life just the way you wanted to? What a great place to start looking for the “good bones” of your foundation.

One of the biggest problems we have with separating out our “values” from our “beliefs” is that those childhood beliefs became very intertwined in our life stories growing up. It is hard to even see or think differently with all that overgrown prickly brush covering up the “good bones.” Florence Nightingale’s story is proof positive.

Whatever you long to be “free of” is entangled in limiting beliefs. Do you think you aren’t smart enough or courageous enough to pursue your “dream” career or start your own business? Are you overly concerned with what others might think if you colored outside the lines, took a big risk or moved far away? Do you make yourself small so that others feel better about themselves – and then find yourself resentful for not investing in your own big dreams, ideas and goals? Letting go of those limiting beliefs gives you the wiggle room you need to reimagine and reclaim who you are — and who you want to become.

Malcolm Gladwell invites us to hold our beliefs lightly. He will often offer his perspective on something and add the disclaimer — “for now” or “at this time”. He is clearly acknowledging that what he believes about a subject or idea is subject to change. For any of us who have lived multiple decades, we get this on a very visceral level. So many things in our daily lives have changed in the most astounding ways over the least 20, 40 and 60 years. What we once resisted is now a normal part of our everyday lives.

Take some time to reflect on your own childhood beliefs that got in your way growing up. Identify one or two things that you proved wrong to yourself and others. Reflect on some beliefs you once had that make you laugh today.

Adam Grant pointed out something that is integrally important to understand about an identity that gets built around beliefs. When our identity, our sense of self, is too closely linked to our beliefs (rather than our values), we will feel threatened when we change our mind about something. We will feel like we are “wishy washy”. We might even tell ourselves that we aren’t being true to ourselves if we change our minds about a strongly held belief.

If we are grounded in our values rather than our beliefs, changing our minds is as natural as changing our clothes. Of course we are going to change our minds — and our beliefs — about all kinds of things in our lives. If not, we would stunt our growth.

Adam Grant cleverly named his popular podcast “Rethinking”. Breakthroughs in neuroscience, technology and psychology are coming at us fast and furiously these days. Why not stay current and “rethink” old beliefs?

In his book, The First Rule of Mastery; Stop Worrying About What Other People Think of You, Dr. Michael Gervais adds even more context to limiting beliefs. Just like the vine that has a stranglehold on this tall tree, a narrow identity can never capture the full essence of who we are. The fear of other’s opinions can keep us playing a “narrow” game. Florence Nightingale didn’t want to rock the boat or risk being outcast from her family, so she limited herself to stay connected to them.

“When we have fused ourselves to an identity that is not true to who we are, or to an identity that’s too narrow to contain the whole of who we are, or to an identity incapable of incorporating new information and growing, the opinion of another can feel like an assault where our survival is at stake.” — excerpted from The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

Returning to the metaphor of recovering the good bones of a solid old house, take some time to think about what you may have misunderstood about personality and character, values and beliefs. Take stock of the messaging you received in childhood and take into consideration what the social norms were when you were a kid. Begin your own personal growth renovations by building a foundation of core values that are just right for who you are today and who you are becoming.

Start to challenge your limiting beliefs — do they still hold true?

Once you really know yourself well, and you are anchored in your core values, you will find yourself using those values as a filter more consciously. You will discover that there are far fewer times when you feel like you acted “out of character.” This is living mindfully — noticing what is going through your mind before you act — and being more discerning in your response.

You’ll worry less about what other’s might think (and for the record, they are rarely thinking about you as much as you believe) and you’ll make decisions based on what is truly right for you.

Let Florence Nightingale be your reminder not to let your biggest dreams be sidelined.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Adam Grant gives us a whole new framework for raising our aspirations and exceeding expectations. He shows us that progress depends less on how hard we work and more on how well we learn! Growth is about the genius we possess — it’s about the character we develop.

If FOPO – Fear of Other Peoples Opinions is a concern for you — you will love this book. Dr. Michael Gervais is a sports psychologist who has works with elite athletes, professional sports teams and entrepreneurs. The stories he shares will surprise you.

Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey combine art and science to encourage us to Build the Life We Truly Want. The goal is not to arrive at a final destination of happy — but rather to be happier each and every day.

Connective Tissue

A few years ago, I started to notice that the more I was really getting to know myself, the greater my curiosity about others. Even when I watched a Netflix series or read a compelling fiction book, I found that I was more empathetic with the characters and their backstories. Truth to be told, I discovered that I could see parts of my own life reflected back to me in their experiences and reactions. It was also easy to see the patterns of cause and effect that we messy human beings bring to our relationships.

It dawned on me that I was now engaging with books and shows on a deeper level and I loved it. I was able to feel and relate to so many characters almost as if I knew them personally. The story lines and plot twists of shows like This is Us or Parenthood were intimately familiar. Some felt like they had been pulled right out of my own family history. It was easy to readily identify with characters and events because I too “have been there”.

Conversations with some of my closest friends revealed that the same thing was happening for them. As they deepened their own self awareness, they too were more intrigued by the complexity of their favorite characters in a book or tv series. They could recognize blind spots and insecurities that contributed to missteps and bad decisions.

Discussing episodes of these shows with friends was much like being in book club with a fascinating twist — our focus was on the whole of the family dynamics and how one issue could cause a cascade of varying problems amongst the family members. We could clearly see the through line that ran from childhood experiences right into the adult lives of each family member.

These mini series became a classroom for recognizing familiar behavior patterns and coping mechanisms. We got a zoomed-out view of how complicated families are. We gained a deeper understanding of what drives people to make some of the choices they do; again, because in many cases, we too “had been there”.

While my friends and I laughed that it is easy to recognize the many fault lines in family dynamics when we simply watching a show, we did agree that we gained from observing the bigger picture. These programs give the viewer a different vantage point; we get an abundance of nuance and context from so many different perspectives and experiences. That is rarely the same lens we use in our own complex family dynamics.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that we rarely know our family members as well as we think we do.

Another is that we rarely know the “whole” of each other.

The Bigger Picture:

I titled this blog post “connective tissue” because that is what we are growing and strengthening when we become cycle breakers and agents of change.

I am a firm believer that replacing that tightly woven yet constantly unraveling fabric of complicated family dynamics with healthy “connective tissue” is the ultimate safety net for our families and relationships.

Dr. Michael Gervais (one of the world’s top high-performance psychologists) shares this wisdom with us: “To lay the foundation for a strong sense of self, the prime dictum is to not focus on the self. The way to do this is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less often.”

The real value of personal growth and self discovery happens in relationship with others. When we truly get to know ourselves well and change how we show up, that’s where meaningful change occurs. When we take Dr. Gervais’ advice to heart, we build a strong foundation of who we are and who we wish to become. We pay attention to how we get unmoored from ourselves in our relationships with others.

This is a giant step in building healthy connective tissue. It’s sticking to our core values and getting more consistent in behaviors and skills that match who we want to be. We can cultivate greater self awareness about how we show up at work vs. how we behave at home, how we act with parents and siblings vs. our own kids and friends. It’s exhausting to shape shift and adapt to all these different relationships if we are constantly matching the environment instead of who we really are at the core.

So often in the self help space, we are told to shed outgrown behavioral patterns that we learned in childhood. Yet they are second nature to us and fit like our favorite pair of comfy jeans. Eventually a good friend or our spouse is going to tell us that it is time to ditch the well worn jeans — they look terrible, no longer fit the body we now have and surely don’t match who we are today.

The same is true with childhood coping skills and poor emotional regulation. They are just old jeans that need to be tossed and replaced with something that makes us feel like a million bucks when we put them on. And while the jeans become a staple in our wardrobe, we can dress them up or down depending on what we are stepping into. Our strong sense of self is that great pair of new jeans. The jacket, the hat, shoes or other accessories are all the skills and tools we use when stepping into relationships with others.

A strong sense of self is our core foundation for everything we do and all the relationships we are in. We become more consistent in how we show up whether we are at home, work or community. When people describe us to others, they capture the essence of who we really are — across all our relationships.

A core reason why family dynamics are the most challenging is that we have a long history of shape shifting, people pleasing, shrinking or puffing up to get our needs met and to also feel a sense of belonging. One false move and we become an outcast. Misunderstandings, rifts and estrangements are so commonplace for this very reason.

Remember that takeaway from the mini series I mentioned above — We have no idea of all the nuance and context of our family members unique emotions and experiences. If we don’t even know ourselves well, how could we possibly know others? And if we are all donning different behavioral patterns to “make things work”, it’s unlikely anything actually stands a chance of working.

A little perspective here: Even if your sibling is only two years older or younger than you, their childhood experiences can be remarkably different. First of all your parents were not the same that they were when you came into the world. They learned a lot from raising you and they adapted in a lot of new ways. What might have changed in your parent’s lives in that time span? Job change, relocation, loss of a parent, health issues, financial struggles? Life events have an impact on parents and kids. If there is a five year or greater age difference in siblings, then essentially it can be like being raised in two remarkably different families.

Healthy connective tissue for family dynamics has to replace the old tangled web we weave by losing ourselves in multiple identities. No wonder our relationships are so complicated.

Our sense of self, our identity, gets shaped and molded like Playdoh when we are growing up. By the time we reach adulthood, we’ve been cut, pounded, stretched and kneaded so many times that we have a hard time figuring out who we really are. It’s unfortunate that most of our self worth and self identity is under constant scrutiny and subject to change at any given moment throughout childhood.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.” — Carl Jung

Being a change agent and breaking generational family cycles, starts with us. Once we free ourselves of behavioral patterns that keep us stuck, we have more wiggle room for self discovery — and to forge the identity we truly want. We can spend our energy on getting consistent with who we are, rather than exhausting ourselves to fit in.

We need to get very clear on our own identity and self worth. Again, this is a familiar refrain in psychology and the self help space, but it is not cheap talk. It is only when we know our worth and what is critically important to us that we can use a relationship tool like boundaries. Boundaries help others recognize how we want to be treated. Every time you set a boundary, you are getting clearer with yourself about your value and worth.

For the record, when we use boundaries in parenting instead of punishment or dismissive attitudes, we are leading by example. We teach our children not only how to treat us and be respectful, but also how to use this invaluable tool in their own lives (both when they are young and when they are adults).

The fear of other people’s opinions is yet another detriment to really getting to know ourselves intimately.

Most of us lived in this thick fog of other’s opinions all throughout childhood; especially with those old parenting models that did not integrate emotions into our experiences. Kids were told they were too much, too sensitive, too bossy, too timid. First and foremost, we were labeled by behaviors and those identifies stuck with us. — you’re a jerk, you’re a good girl, you’re perfect, you’ll never amount to anything. Secondly, we had to wrestle with these assessments of who we were while trying to figure that out for ourselves. Most of our childhood behavioral patterns and coping skills are rooted in the “fear of other’s opinions” – at home, in school and beyond.

“Identity is our subjective sense of self built on our experiences, beliefs, values, memories and culture. It’s a set of physical and psychological characteristics that is not shared with anyone else. Often derived in relationship or comparison to others, our identity provides a framework to better understand our place in a complicated social world. “ — excerpted from the book The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

“When we have fused ourselves to an identity that is not true to who we are, or to an identity that’s too narrow to contain the whole of who we are, or to an identity incapable of incorporating new information and growing, the opinion of another can feel like an assault where our survival is at stake.” – excerpted from The First Rule of Mastery by Dr. Michael Gervais.

When you let these two excerpts soak in, you can see why we get so confused about who we are. The first excerpt addresses how we make sense of the world when we are kids. It is a private internal narrative we create about who we are. We create it when we are young and powerless and that identify feels vulnerable and in need of protection even when we are older.

The second excerpt reveals why we develop coping skills and behavioral patterns. Our identity does leave us vulnerable to the slings and arrows of other’s opinions so we develop armor to protect who we believe we are.

It’s that armor that gets in the way of us really knowing who we are; and it gets very complicated by the fact that we keep returning to home base to figure it out. Yet, that identity we created at home when we were young no longer feels like it fits who we’ve become.

Without honest self-awareness, it is incredibly hard to see how we stay stuck in an identity we’ve long outgrown and how we stay trapped (especially in our families) in old limiting beliefs about who we are.

We are not the same person we were when we were 5, 10 or 15. We are works in progress throughout our entire lives. A pivotal shift in our mindset around our personal identity is to recognize and embrace this.

We change over time and that is a marvelous thing. We are not forever stuck in an old story, or shackled to a troubled childhood, or doomed to relive an old trauma like a recurring nightmare. We would never want this for our children. When we get clear about who we are, we can parent from our most authentic sense of self. It frees us from protecting our kids unnecessarily from the things that once had a big impact on us.

The benefits of “connective tissue”:

Just imagine the positive difference we are making for younger generations, when we steer them clear of the pitfalls that derailed us from building the life we wanted. Today we have better life skills and relationship tools to teach them. We have a much-improved parenting model and are integrating their emotions into their developing complex brains. We are validating each other’s emotions and experiences which is the preventative medicine for suppressed emotions and unprocessed trauma. We recognize that rupture and repair strengthens our relationships and builds enduring trust. In fact, we normalize the fact that ruptures happen in life and we have a responsibility to repair our most valued relationships. We are learning the integral role body budget plays in our daily lives and the importance of sleep for our brain health.

Most importantly, we can help our young people develop a strong sense of self and be the scaffolding they need through all the growth spurts and life changes they will surely have.

This is an extensive list of key components of “connective tissue” for our families. It’s so much more beneficial than what most of us experienced — because we don’t put each other in boxes, but rather we give each other room to grow – with a big safety net underneath. We encourage each other to explore, discover, stretch, try new things, experiment — with the confidence that they can express themselves honestly and will have the support and guidance they need and deserve.

Dr. Michael Gervais has a nugget of wisdom that he shares on his Finding Mastery podcast that serves as a core reminder for the changes we want to make: No one does it alone.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

If you struggle with FOPO –the Fear of Other People’s Opinions, you will love this book. Check out Michael Gervais podcast too — Finding Mastery

LISTEN TO DR. ANDREW HUBERMAN’S CONVERSATION WITH PARENTING GURU, DR. BECKY KENNEDY, author of Good Inside This Episode is entitled Protocols for Excellent Parenting and Improving Relationships of All Kinds https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000646851810

If you are unfamiliar with Internal Family Systems, you might be surprised to learn that it is all about YOU not your whole family! Discover all the parts of you that have something to offer about what is most important to you and how to best take care of YOU!

Architects of Our Experiences – Part 3

Are you starting to realize just how much control you really do have to shape your life and experiences in remarkably beneficial ways? If you have read my last two blog posts about becoming Architects of our Experiences, you may already be discovering some changes in how you “meet the moments” in your life and in your relationships.

The more we know about how our brains and bodies really work – especially how they impact our wide range of emotions – the easier it is to get a little traction implementing better skills and tools for emotional regulation.

My guess is that now that you have learned a little about “body budget”, you are consciously and even unconsciously doing a little check in from time to time to look at your own “battery life”. You may even be catching yourself when you are “hangry” and choosing to be a little more emotionally in control than you would normally do. Congratulations…you are becoming an architect of your experiences!

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that a balanced body budget is the foundational key to any self improvement initiative we might have. It’s just that we didn’t know about this connection until recently.

Think about how much harder we make things for ourselves in large part because we simply don’t have the energy or power; how often do we push through or burn the midnight oil? No wonder we get in our own way so often. Our best intentions are not enough to integrate real changes in our emotional regulation, relationship skills or healthy habit initiatives. We need a balanced body budget…..full stop.

This reality is bubbling up everywhere now, most notably in modern medicine, psychology and mental health. Although it is basic common sense, we overlooked this foundational principle for far too long. The intake process at the doctor’s, trainer’s or therapist’s office now includes an assessment of how well we are sleeping, eating, exercising and hydrating. In many cases, we are also asked how we are coping with life and navigating our relationships. It’s become evident that our emotional health can have a major impact on our physical and mental health.

Better intake, expanded assessment of our health and well being = more accurate and effective diagnosis and treatments. As Dr. Andrew Huberman has been promoting since the onset of COVID, there are so many no-cost steps we can proactively take to improve our physical and mental health as well as the overall quality of our lives.

The fundamental foundation for becoming skillful architects of our emotions and experiences is a balanced body budget. Sleep is the bedrock of this foundation.

In my most recent blog post about becoming architects of our experiences, I shared the versatile, multi-purpose tool of emotional granularity. Having this tool at our disposable means that we will become much more agile when it comes to emotional regulation. With a balanced body budget and emotional granularity, we are setting ourselves up for much greater success in all areas of our lives. We will be meeting the moments in our life better resourced than ever before.

Just imagine feeling grounded and clear-minded throughout most of your day. What would it feel like to know that you were not at the mercy of an emotional sandstorm that could blow in at any moment? This is what it means to be an architect of your experiences and emotions. You feel in control, you can more accurately assess a situation and more skillfully deal with it and others.

Emotional granularity is analogous to that intake process in the doctor’s office. If all that we can tell the doctor is that we have a pain in our mid-section, the doctor will probe for more clues. A physician always starts with foundational clues like heart rate, lung capacity and blood pressure. She gets more granular by asking about the level of pain, its frequency, any pattern when it flares. We might also go through a battery of tests for deeper investigation.

We can begin a similar “intake process” when we feel a core emotion like anger. If we are angry, it is just a warning light to get our attention. We need the details to clarify what we are angry about. We need emotional granularity to help us find context clues. Just like that investigation in the doctor’s office, we want to explore so we are treating the right problem.

Can you see the distinction? An unskillful “do-it-yourselfer” might run into a heated situation with a hammer and an accelerated heart rate. A skillful architect does a quick assessment of body budget, then reaches for that versatile multi-purpose tool and calmly assesses what the real problem is. A skillful architect develops a viable plan to solve the right problem with the right tools.

Happiness expert, author Arthur C. Brooks taps into this architectural approach by suggesting that we try “substituting” a better emotion for the one that doesn’t feel so good. Just like we choose the healthier option of an apple for dessert versus the cake, we can choose an emotion that will get us a better outcome. In the book, Build the Life You Want, Arthur even uses architectural language:

“Sometimes you want to replace some of your negative emotions with something that fits and is more constructive, leading you to act the way you want to, not the way you feel.” (excerpted from Chapter 3: Choose a Better Emotion in the book Build the Life You Want)

Ok, so let’s just pause here for a moment and really take in just how empowering it would feel to be able to pull this off a few times each day. Simply by paying attention to body budget and choosing emotions that better align with who we want to be, we would proactively practicing becoming an “architect of our experiences and emotions.”

And now, let’s add just one more component that will dramatically enhance your architectural prowess. Drum roll, please…..

Upgrading and Updating Our Brain’s Predictions:

Our brains are prediction machines, not reaction makers. Yet another thing that we got wrong, especially about emotions but also about how we engage with our experiences. Scientists have long believed that brain neurons were dormant until stimulated by something from our outside world. But thanks to major breakthroughs in neuroscience, we now know that this is not the case.

The neurons in our brains are firing constantly, stimulating one another as well as different regions in our complex brain systems. It is this very brain activity that represents the millions of predictions that our brains will make about what we will encounter next — all based on our lifetime of past experience.

This all happens so fast and so automatically that we usually aren’t even aware of it. We might even refer to it as our “unconscious”. The irony is that we can be very conscious of our past experiences –especially when we get emotionally triggered.

Anyone who has ever attempted to free themselves from an old emotional trigger or an overreactive behavioral pattern knows firsthand that it feels like a labyrinth. We even use metaphors in the self help space to talk about how hard this process can be: it’s a journey searching for clues on a jagged, rocky path through the thick entangled forest of our past. The definition of a labyrinth is a complicated, irregular network of passages or paths in which it is difficult to find one’s way. Sounds exactly how we describe self-discovery and behavioral pattern change.

Again, we have made this work so much harder than it has to be – because we misunderstood how our prediction machines work. If we want to vastly improve our predictions, we have to update and upgrade our internal data base. We do this by loading new content; adding richer, nuanced context; and curating a diversity of new experiences.

When we proactively update our inner database — our brains can make predictions that more closely match what we really want our lives to be and feel like and not reruns of unhelpful, old experiences. If we are trapped in the past with old emotional triggers and dizzying rumination loops, it is our brain retrieving old files to make predictions.

Your brain predicts and prepares your actions based on past experiences. Mental distress, anxiety and even old trauma arise from flawed predictions. Of course, these inaccurate predictions don’t feel good or correct in our present moment – they do not accurately fit our current situation. We get caught in a trap of outdated information that produces outdated, ill-fitting, unchecked reactions.

Think about all the ways that we have rather seamlessly updated how we do daily life. We are no longer tethered to land line phones or hanging laundry outdoors on a rope to dry. We aren’t using multi-folded, printed paper maps to navigate from one city to the next. We shop, transfer money, take photos and send emails on our phones all while waiting in a check out line.

We’ve got this — We already know how to update and upgrade our lives – and we have done it rather effortlessly — on the outside.

Now we need to do the same — on the inside.

We simply have to get intentional and proactive about upgrading and updating our internal database for much improved predictions. The bonus is that once we begin to integrate newer, more relevant information and experiences into our brain’s predictive database, we set ourselves up for greater success with each and every subsequent experience and interaction we have.

We begin to operate more fluidly and efficiently from a fresh, current database – not a relic from the past.

We know that our limiting beliefs, outgrown behavioral patterns and childhood social conditioning can be fossilized in our internal database. Because we misunderstood how our brains truly function, we just reinforced that old science too. We simply reinforced the old science by repeating our personal history – over and over again.

We are learning that neurons that fire together, wire together. By getting stuck in the past, we literally were dropping our needle on the same spot and creating a well worn groove for repetitive, familiar predictions. This is what we did with our old vinyl music records back in the day. No wonder those records would skip, slide past the next song or get stuck.

Now we have this groundbreaking neuroscience about how our complex brain circuitry really works. We now know that our brains are prediction machines not reactivity makers – and we are beginning to understand how neuroplasticity helps us to rewire our brains in healthy, optimal new ways. We can actually build new neural networks that operate more seamlessly like streaming music.

Here is an easy example to help us grasp the concept of neuroplasticity — of neurons that fire together wiring together. If we want to break an old habit, we are given all kinds of tips that actually disrupt the related neural pattern: don’t buy the potato chips, take a walk when you get a craving, replace the potato chips with almonds, etc. This is the equivalent of pulling that needle up and off the old groove; that habitual pattern of reaching for the bag of salty chips without much thought. Each time we disrupt the pattern, we tap into our brain’s neuroplasticity and create a fresh, new neural network. As it becomes easier to resist the chips, it is a clear indicator that different neurons are firing and wiring together – making us much more successful at resisting the urge to binge on chips.

For the record, it doesn’t mean that we won’t ever binge on chips in the future. But we will have greater awareness because of the new neural pathway and we might catch ourselves before we consume a whole bag. If we do fall off the wagon and succumb to the whole bag, when we renew our pledge to do better tomorrow, we are starting from a much improved baseline and not square one.

See the difference?

This is precisely what we also want to begin doing with our emotions and experiences. Disrupt the old outdated brain prediction that makes us feel reactive and out of control. Replace it with an emotion and response that feels better and more in line with how we want to show up in life. Create new and improved neural networks that strengthen over time. Toss out the rusty, dusty old files in our internal experience and emotion database – and update them with something fresh, that more closely matches how we want to feel and act, and is much more beneficial for our present moments.

There are two key ways that we can deliberately become proactive in housecleaning and updating our internal database: reframing and adding new concepts.

Reframing is simply getting a fresh perspective on an old familiar situation. Cognitive reframing is a major tool used in psychology for identifying and shifting how events, emotions, beliefs and old narratives are viewed. Reframing also serves to disrupt those well-grooved old stories and ruminative patterns.

When we reframe a situation, we not only get a fresh perspective, we are reorganizing our internal database. Reorganizing an old story or limiting belief, helps our predictive brain to use valuable take-aways from our experiences in more productive ways. This is how we can extract important lessons from our life experiences and learn from them rather than having the same lesson get repeated over and over without any real progress.

The second way to dramatically improve our predictions is by keeping our brains well stocked with new experiences, new concepts, new words and definitions. It turns out that being open-minded, curious and engaged in learning, is the portal for updating our prediction database.

See how we were making our lives, experiences and relationships so much harder than they have to be?

There are very simple things we can be doing on a daily basis to keep our prediction database fresh, updated, repurposed and creative:

Read – read a real book; reading from left to right stimulates the brain, engages learning and builds empathy. Read fiction and try a variety of authors and genres. Read non-fiction to engage learning something new and challenging.
Learn new words – words seed your concepts, concepts drive your predictions, predictions regulate your body budget and your body budget determines how you feel. The more finely-grained your vocabulary, the more precisely your brain calibrates your body budget (excerpted from How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett).
Watch movies or listen to thought-provoking audio content — this will broaden your perspectives and shake you free from old social conditioning. This is a great way to break out of echo chambers where we simple engrain over and over what we once believed or were taught. Often, we are unaware that we unconsciously do this — stay in our comfort zones and look for confirmation for our opinions and beliefs. Think of this like pouring a little water on a very dry sponge….you are just creating softness and the ability to absorb some new, possibly contradictory, concepts.
Be open to paradox — two opposing things can be true at the same time. Begin to notice how paradox shows up in nature, in our families and friendships. What one person finds thrilling, another finds scary (amusement park rides, movies and crazy drivers). Building a repertoire of paradoxical examples, stimulates our brain’s ability to be more creative, relaxed and receptive to contrasts.

If you can reach back and change how you feel about your past, your brain would predict differently – and you might act differently, and experience the world differently, as a result. Your actions today become your brain’s predictions for tomorrow. and those predictions automatically drive your future actions. (excerpted from 7-1/2 Lessons About the Brain by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett)

The Wrap Up:

I hope you are amazed by the new path forward for our emotional intelligence and emotional health. No wonder we have struggled in every sense of the word to live more authentically. We’ve been working so hard to grow, to heal, to understand ourselves and each other – and we’ve been doing it with stale, constrictive, outdated information all while we were attempting to blaze more spacious and engaging new trails.

The springboard for building the life we want and living it with greater fulfillment, is taking care of our brain and body. This is the missing puzzle piece that we have been searching for. Go have some fun implementing these new tools and concepts. Discover the difference it makes today — and how it better prepares you to be flexible, resilient and creative tomorrow.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Check out this resource to get some impactful highlights about your brain’s predictions – and dive into some of the resources suggested to learn more: Predicting Better. org https://predictingbetter.org

Check out this timely episode on the Huberman Lab podcast with Dr. Mark D’Esposito: How to Optimize Cognitive Function & Brain Health https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000645842679

Architects of our Experiences – Part 2

Are you fascinated by this new concept where we can actually become “architects of our emotions and experiences”? This new approach is much more “hands on” when it comes to navigating life and sets us up for greater success to meet its ever-changing challenges and opportunities.

This is the 2nd in a three part series on becoming skillful architects of our experiences. Today we are going to learn about a multi-purpose diagnostic tool we can put into our architectural briefcase. But before we dive into learning what this dynamic tool is and how to use it, let’s do a quick review of the basic foundational tool from part 1 — our body budget.

In my last post, I shared how our body budget significantly impacts how we experience life. When we are well resourced, things go more smoothly for us. When we are running on empty, we create a lot of emotional turbulence. Surely, this was both eye-opening and pretty obvious.

When we are getting consistent deep sleep, eating nutritious food, staying hydrated and getting regular exercise, our brains determine that we are “fuel efficient”. We have the necessary internal resources to meet the moments in our lives with clear heads and the ability to be emotionally balanced. All we really need to do is pay attention to our brains and bodies just like we do the battery charges and wifi connections on our phones.

Author Ryan Holiday recently shared the HALT acronym to help us remember that our first line of defense when it comes to dealing with emotional turbulence is to assess our human “check engine” lights.

HALT stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. HALT is a simple and very effective tool to remind us that these four common conditions can derail our best efforts to stay in alignment with our values. When we are feeling emotional turbulence, a quick check in on our body budget can prevent us from getting in our own way.

For the record, this is also a great tool to share with children. When kids are acting out, we can pause to think about when they last ate, if they had a disrupted night of sleep or skipped a nap, or if they have been buzzing from one activity to the next without some quiet time or a brain break. Before we overreact to an unacceptable behavior, we can think about their “body budget” first and foremost. When we teach our kids to check in with themselves, we are equipping them with a foundational tool they can use for a lifetime.

Now let’s add a versatile new tool to our architectural briefcase. The multi-purpose tool that is a “must have” for skillful architects of experience is emotional granularity. This term may seem a little foreign but it’s easier to grasp if we think of emotional granularity the same way we think about the fine-grained distinctions in wood, textiles and even sandpaper.

Emotional Granularity:

The reason that emotional granularity has such a strong impact on our emotional experiences is because the true essence of our experience is in the details. That’s right, details matter.

We mistakenly believe that there is uniformity in common basic emotion such as happy, sad or mad. Nothing could be further from the truth — variation is the norm; not uniformity.

Bear with me here for a minute — and think about your own varied experiences of mad. You can be mad at yourself, mad at a circumstance, mad at another. You might be really mad about running late one day and not care at all the next. Sometimes your body budget is in deficit and you get mad a lot during the course of a day; other days, you are well resourced and unflappable. Do I see your heading nodding in agreement that “variation is the norm?”

If we limit ourselves to the three most commonly identified emotions – happy, sad or mad, we also limit our deeper understanding of what we are really feeling in the moment. When we can tease apart the details that accompany happy, sad or mad — that is when we get to the heart of the matter. This is the gift of emotional granularity – the finely tailored emotions that best reveal the heart of our experience.

Emotional granularity is an exploratory multi-purpose tool. It’s actually easier to use than we might think. We just need more practice and a bigger emotional vocabulary.

Start with why. Why are you mad?

Is it because you are frustrated, anxious and annoyed? Now, dig a little deeper to get to the fine grains of greater detail. Are you frustrated that something you are attempting to accomplish is taking longer than expected? Are you anxious because it is the third time this week you tried to finish a project? Are you annoyed that others aren’t respecting your need for uninterrupted time to focus?

Emotional granularity brings out the relevant details — in the accompanying emotions and the backstory of each.

The more finely-grained distinctions we can make, the more accurately we can parse what matters most, or recognize that there are multiple layers to one core issue. We may even be surprised to discover that we have competing emotions – and both are true. We can be happy for someone else and feel sad for ourselves; that’s paradox.

Emotional granularity moves us in the right direction for self awareness and effective problem solving with more clarity than we could ever access if we stop at “mad”.

The reason emotional granularity is a dynamic multi-purpose tool is that it helps us accurately express our feelings and experiences — AND it makes it easier for others to support us in constructive, beneficial ways.

We often hear that emotional intelligence is a key component for building a good life and meaningful relationships. Emotional intelligence is defined as our capacity to be aware of and control our emotions; and to handle interpersonal relationships with empathy and non-judgment.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett emphasizes that the most invaluable asset for cultivating emotional intelligence is emotional granularity. The more finely tuned we can get about our emotions and experiences, the easier it is to regulate them and reframe our experiences.

Not only does this support our efforts in achieving better emotional clarity and regulation in real time, it actually updates our internal database for the future. Remember that our brains are prediction machines. When we are able to reframe and reorganize our internal database by being more skillful with our emotional responses, we will vastly improve the accuracy of our future predictions.

Yet another reason why emotional granularity is a dynamic, multi-purpose tool. It is a fast-tracked process of freeing us from old emotional triggers and outdated information from decades old past experiences. The better we get at using emotional granularity and becoming skillful architects of our experiences, the more traction we will have in building better habits and mature response patterns.

Emotional granularity helps us to level up. We get to know ourselves better through greater self-awareness. We become more skillful at unpacking multiple emotions that are interlaced with our current experiences. With this improved awareness and clarity, we don’t drain our body budget so quickly. We have greater access to self-compassion which turns on our parasympathetic nervous system which also positively supports our body budget. We get better at emotional regulation and it becomes easier to clearly express to others what we are experiencing and what we actually need in the moment. Not to mention the added bonus of automatically updating our brain’s complex interactive systems with invaluable, current and relevant data for future reference.

Have some fun with this new tool – explore the many emotions that you feel whenever you get that initial hit of a core emotion like mad, sad or happy. Become curious when you are with others when they are sad, mad or happy and ask questions to better understand all that they are feeling in the moment. Compare your findings with your friends and family. This is how we help ourselves and others super boost their emotional intelligence and become more skillful architects of their own experiences.

Quote from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

To help you expand your emotional vocabulary, read Brene Brown’s most recent book, Atlas of the Heart. Brene offers relatable stories and detailed definitions for 87 of our common emotions and experiences. Better yet, she has organized this invaluable resource by highlighting how we typically feel under certain circumstances. The chapters invite us step into “the places we go when….” When we compare, feel uncertain, when we are hurting or fall short.

Check out Dr. Marc Brackett’s newest app How We Feel. Dr. Brackett is the Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and author of Permission to Feel. There are over 200 emotions to explore in the How We Feel app!

Click this link to go to the website https://howwefeel.org and learn more about the app and how you can use it to help you build your emotional awareness and vocabulary in real time.

This quick, relatable read will stimulate your appetite to learn more about becoming an Architect of Your Experiences. Awesome insights into how our brains and bodies actually work.

If you are fascinated by neuroscience and love a deep dive into science and psychology, then treat yourself to How Emotions are Made. This book and Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart are reference books for our home libraries – the kind we will return to again and again!

Architects of our Experiences

Surely you recall that childhood pleasure of a rainy day when mom or dad would drape blankets over couches and chairs, then stand back prepared to be amazed at what their creative little geniuses would do next. An ordinary living room suddenly transformed into a sensory wonderland that started with a simple blanket fort.

I came upon this sight a few days ago and marveled at the ingenuity of the little architects who began with a pint-sized castle that just kept morphing into something even grander with each “lightbulb” moment and the addition of another toy bin.

As the plans grew in size and complexity, there was a lot of trial and error. Shrieks of joyful delight filled the room as the framework collapsed and a new idea took shape from the rubble.

What a lesson to be learned from two small children actively engaged in an organic, evolving, complex and creative process. They were little architects of their playful experience.

Are you aware that we adults can become skillful architects of our own experiences?

It’s true — and the beauty of it is, we can tap into the creativity and positive outcomes that comes so easily to kids, by using our brains and bodies in a powerful new way.

Just imagine being able to construct experiences and supporting emotions that more consistently align with your goals and big aspirations. Fewer self-made obstacles, more smooth sailing.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is breaking new ground in the science of emotion – overturning long-standing beliefs that our emotions are universal, automatic and hard-wired in different regions of the brain. Instead, we actually “construct” an instance of emotion through a remarkable interplay of our brain, body and our culture.

Anyone who has ever experienced a strong emotional trigger from an event that happened decades ago, has some appreciation for how quickly this remarkable interplay coalesces. It’s no wonder we believe it’s automatic and has become hard-wired into our systems.

And yet, we also know that it is possible to “re-wire” our brains and release old emotional triggers – freeing us from being snagged by that old experience over and over again. The neuroplasticity of our brains enables us to re-organize our old connections in new and improved ways.

This rewiring process is analogous to children reorganizing their fort framework to become something more useful for an even more incredible structural masterpiece.

It turns out that becoming “architects of our emotions and experiences” it is not as big a stretch that we once believed. How remarkable is that?

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is gifted at making this new concept readily accessible to all of us. There are three key components that we need to know more about when it comes to curating our architectural tool bag: body budget, emotional granularity and cultivating more current, diverse experiences.

Today’s post is the first in a three part series about becoming skillful architects of our experiences. Prepare to be amazed at the role our body budget plays in our emotional reactions to life.

Body Budget

A major part of becoming skilled architects of our experiences involves mastering our emotions. We erroneously believe that our emotions that are the first system to get activated — and we have to “manage” those strong emotions in order to respond effectively to our circumstances. But this is not the case.

What actually happens first is that our brains are estimating what’s in our tank and predicting how much of our inner resources are going to be required to meet the present moment. It would be analogous to us hopping in our car for a big road trip and looking at the gas gauge to determine how far we can get before refueling.

Our brains are only 2% of our body weight, but they use 20% of the oxygen we consume and 20% of the energy we consume. What our brains and bodies need in order to have a balanced body budget are consistent quality sleep, hydration, good nutrition and movement, i.e. regular exercise.

We are learning so much more than we ever knew about the importance of consistent quality sleep for our optimum brain health. Even while we are sleeping, our brain is storing and categorizing information, cleaning and purging, updating and rejuvenating. We are even cognizant of the disruption that caffeine and alcohol has on our sleep cycles and the integral neural processes that occur only during sleep.

The benefits of good nutrition, hydration and regular exercise are irrefutable. But while we know these components are needed, we often forget that we are also draining our resources throughout the day and should pay attention to when we need a break, should take a walk, or grab a healthy snack. How often are we literally running on fumes?

Let’s just pause here for a minute and think about the amount of time we devote to charging our phones, making sure we have 5g network and cooling it off if we get a heat warning. What if we were to become as knowledgeable about our brains which are operating 24/7 for us – and often without any awareness of the drain on our inner resources?

All this time that we believed we were at the mercy of our emotions, we may simply be attempting to function optimally on an empty fuel tank. Very often what we are “feeling” is not an emotion, but rather an indicator that our body budget is out of balance.

Since our brains are lightening fast at the estimation and prediction process, they get our body ready for a response that might include an increased heart rate, shallow breathing, or release of chemicals and hormones such as adrenaline or cortisol. We “feel” these sensations and “assign” an emotion to it. We might tell ourselves we feel scared, angry, anxious, uncertain, elated or surprised.

We’ve been doing this for most of our lives without a second thought, so it has become second nature to associate an emotion with whatever we are sensing in our bodies. Once we assign an emotion, we are off to the races – and often unconsciously,

Since our brains are prediction machines, it will quickly run through our historical database to find past events that simulate what we are feeling in the present moment. This complex retrieval system is on auto pilot most of the time; we are unconsciously running an algorithm that reviews our personal history looking for matches.

After the match is made, our amazing brain has one more remarkable feature — it runs a prediction error model. This is the brain’s way of giving us the opportunity to discard old data and replace it with newer, more appropriate data that suits the current situation.

For the record, we often bypass or override this integral prediction error process. If it “feels” like a past experience, we pull the “all systems go” switch. This is how we’ve forged our “go to” behavioral patterns and protective armor. Without a moment’s hesitation, we assign an emotion, recall a past similar experience and jump into a memorized and familiar reactive pattern.

When we are pivoting to becoming architects of our experiences, we can start to pay more attention to both predictions and prediction errors. We can take the time to see if we are simply relying on an old database that no longer serves us well. This is how we “re-wire” those old outgrown behavioral patterns and replace them with new responses better suited to our lives today.

If the first brain system to get activated is simply an assessment of internal resources that are needed for the present situation, then we can start paying attention to body budget first and emotional responses second. This is a game-changing pivot in both mindfulness and self awareness. Think of this as a little “self check-in”. Are you resourced internally? Have you assigned an emotion and if so, does it feel appropriate to the current situation?

If we can make the distinction that our body budget is actually causing us to be under-resourced and not some big emotional reactions, we can begin to dis-engage from strong emotional triggers and respond with more cognitive skills.

We think that emotional regulation is really hard and that changing our old behavioral patterns is even harder, but Dr. Barrett’s research is showing us that we just might have been making things much more challenging for ourselves all along by not understanding the role body budget plays.

It is the very reason that we have “variation” in our moods, emotional states and our ability to think clearly. Dr. Barrett offers us a welcome sigh of relief — it turns out that “variation” is the norm.

There are times when we do feel in control, cognitively and emotionally. We meet even the most stressful moments calmly, with a good sense of humor, a healthy acceptance of reality. We can even help others calm down and self-regulate when we feel this way.

Then there are times when we are short-tempered, can overreact to the smallest of events, or work ourselves into a state of frenzy. We set off a chain reaction of emotional reactions in others and things can escalate quickly.

Variation is the norm. And now we know what might be the real cause — a body budget deficit.

We get notifications throughout our busy day from our brains and bodies about what is needed to keep us running optimally. We even have terms we’ve created to diagnose our body budget deficits – such as hangry, brain fog, getting on our last nerve and no bandwidth. But unlike the ding of a notification from our phone, we often ignore the alerts we are getting from our brain about our own energy drain.

We frequently overlook the small investments we can be making all throughout the day to keep our body budget in balance. We may start with a full tank in the morning after a good night’s rest, a tall glass of water and a healthy breakfast; but we are going to begin to drain our body budget resources as the day goes on. Exercising, staying hydrated, making healthy choices for snacks and meals, taking breaks, getting outdoors, and unplugging from our devices are just a few of the multitude of ways we can restock our inner resources.

The biggest paradigm shift in understanding how we “make our emotions” is coming from a deep understanding of the role our body budget plays in our daily lives.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a pioneer in her fields of neuroscience and psychology – and she is helping us to get very savvy about our incredible, complex brain and body systems. If we take better care of ourselves, and pay attention to our body budget, this whole business of emotional regulation might just get a whole lot easier.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett will captivate you with her compelling Ted Talk about how emotions are made. Click this link to listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gks6ceq4eQ&t=140s

Check out this episode of the Huberman Lab podcast where Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett is Andrew’s guest to discuss How to Understand Emotions https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000631446646

Life Lessons from the Sea

My teenaged daughter and I were aboard a dive boat anchored in the Caribbean blue waters of St. Thomas. As we double checked each other’s scuba gear, our fellow divers were clamoring to jump overboard, creating a frenzy of commotion and noisy, disruptive entry splashes we’d been advised not to make. Two compelling thoughts raced through my daughter’s head and she urged me to hurry up. A fear of missing out by not being first — and a concern about not being part of the bigger group — had snagged her attention.

One of our seasoned dive masters was assessing the chaos that had unnecessarily disturbed the calm beauty of this idyllic setting with chagrined disappointment. As I caught his eye, I turned to my daughter and said “Just wait. It will be more than worth it.”

Some divers descended to the ocean floor quickly while others bobbed on the surface, fighting small waves and themselves, making it harder to deflate their lungs and their buoyancy control vests so that they could calmly drift down by the anchor line. Too many people making too many unskillful moves causing silt and debris to cloud the once-clear ocean waters.

Paired diving buddies got separated, visibility was obscured, and the dive masters were diverted from their preferred role of ocean exploring tour guides. Now they had to pivot to become search and recovery teams for disoriented divers and missing gear.

My daughter and I waited a bit longer and then we quietly entered the crystal blue waters just as we had been instructed. As we ever so slowly descended into the ocean, we watched the silt do the same, sinking slowly back to the sandy bottom. We marveled at the rays of sunlight dancing through the now clearer waters illuminating the rich diversity of the coral reef and extensive array of colors in the parrotfish, spotted butterfly, tangs and angelfish.

By this time, the other divers were nearly out of sight, just a fading trail of fins and bubbles off in the distance. Being patient paid off. My daughter and I explored in leisurely, pure delight as the wonders of this mystical undersea world poked their heads back out and returned to their daily routines now that the coast was clear.

We took our time, investigating nooks and crannies, paying attention to the tiniest of sea creatures and intricate textures of coral reef vegetation. Our dive guide coaxed small neon violet and lemon yellow Royal Gramma fish from tube-shaped sponge coral. I could hear my daughter giggling through her regulator.

Our dive guide taught us how to navigate through the reef using our lungs instead of relying solely on our compressed air tanks. We learned to gently rise and descend by using our own inhales and exhales, skillfully navigating without disturbing sand or sea life. We even had a hovering contest to see who could get closest to the ocean floor without actually touching it.

When we returned to the dive boat, my daughter and I discovered that we actually had a longer dive than the rest and surprisingly, we also had the most air remaining in our tanks. The dive master explained to the group that we conserved the compressed air in our tanks by controlling our own breathing. He made a point of telling them that their overly excited and sometimes frantic reactions at the start of their dive predisposed them to erratic breathing; so they relied more heavily on their air tanks than their lungs.

Ironically, we were the last to enter the water, yet we had a longer dive time. However, it wasn’t just more time that made our dive experience so rich – it was being calm and fully present that drew us into discovery and expanded exploration.

When all the divers were safely back on the boat, the dive masters invited everyone to share their experience and use a laminated chart to identify the colorful fish they had seen. As we listened, my daughter had a big realization. By hanging back and being patient, we hadn’t missed out at all. In fact, we had one of our most incredible diving experiences after all the dust had settled. She gave me a sly little wink. There were so many life lessons embedded in this one magical, awe-filled deep sea dive.

Remembering to Use the Skills:

The first lesson that really stands out is how hard it is put into practice the actual training and skills in the “heat of the moment”. All the divers on that boat had to be open water certified in order to even participate in this excursion. They had passed both a written and under water test to earn their dive card. In addition, the charismatic dive masters reviewed in great detail the proper protocol for each dive before anyone entered the water. Nonetheless, all bets were off when the anchor was tossed overboard. Excitement, anxiousness and the strong desire to be first superseded the training and instructions.

This very same experience happens to most of us when we are put to the real life test of using better emotional regulation and relationship skills in the “heat of the moment”. It’s one thing to learn about new tools and quite another to remember to use them. Ironic isn’t it? We have a strong desire to employ better tools and skills when we take a dive into those murky waters of emotional disregulation, disagreement or overwhelm but we can override our best intentions in a heartbeat.

The metaphorical lesson learned from the dive boat experience is that losing control and forgetting our skills can actually create more confusion and muddy up any chance of clearly understanding what is going on. It can also make things more challenging for others than they need to be as we cause unnecessary and distracting disturbances.

The neuroscience lesson is that when we get excited, anxious or overly stimulated, our brains decide we need energy to match the moment. We got a shot of cortisol in anticipation of what is about to go down. Our hearts race, our muscles twitch and before we know it, we are jumping into the ocean or a confrontation, completely disregarding both our knowledge and our intention to use it.

Pause and Get Your Bearings:

When a diver prepares to enter the water, he or she fills their buoyancy vest with a few puffs of air from their compression tank, so they can initially stay afloat and get their bearings before beginning a descent.

The metaphorical lesson from this skill is that taking in a deep breath and then slowly exhaling is the equivalent of filling ourselves with the buoyancy we need to be present in the moment, and to get our bearings before we respond or engage.

The neuroscience lesson is that taking that deep breath is how we check in with our body’s inner workings; easing it from autopilot and the default mode to our own agency and self regulation. That simple calming breath slows our heart rate and clears ambiguous messaging in our brains so that we have more clarity.

We Are All at Different Levels:

Just like the divers on that boat, we are all at different levels of awareness and skills when it comes to putting better relationship tools and emotional self regulation into practice.

A few of the divers may have been newly certified while others may have had 10 to 20 dives under their belt. Since each dive is uniquely different, those people had numerous opportunities to practice their skills in varied conditions and environments. Some divers may be quick studies and are able to easily integrate their education and training into their real life experience of a deep sea exploration. They may be able to relax and enjoy the ocean’s currents quite naturally. Others may be a little unsure, feel tense and have some resistance when the current sways them in a different direction.

The metaphorical lesson is that we need to put our knowledge and tools into practice through real life experiences. The rubber hits the road when we take our training from a predictable indoor swimming pool to the ever-changing eco system of the sea. Practice does not necessarily make perfect, but it vastly improves our confidence in our ability to skillfully use our knowledge and tools in a variety of circumstances and conditions.

The neuroscience lesson is that we actually create new neural networks in our brains when we begin to use new skills and tools. It is the consistent practice that moves the needle. We can practice in low stakes situations to gain more confidence with setting boundaries, staying calmer, listening to understand, and not getting attached to the outcome. As we become more skillful with these tools, we will feel better resourced to use them effectively in our most valued relationships.

Becoming Sturdy Leaders:

When I was first learning to scuba dive, I always felt safest with a seasoned diver as my dive buddy. Being with others who have more experience and are highly skillful is how we learn through osmosis and real life role plays. We pay close attention and keenly observe their actions and choices and most importantly, the subsequent outcomes.

Later, when I had earned my certification and my kids wanted to learn to scuba dive, my role shifted from student to teacher. My attention was now on demonstrating and explaining things in a way they would understand. I also felt a strong sense of responsibility, much like we do when we teach our kids to drive a car. Staying calm while exchanging our dive gear on a platform 60 feet deep in a cold quarry was paramount.

The metaphorical lesson is that we are teaching others, and most especially our kids, how to navigate life and relationships using the skills and tools we’ve honed. Our own practices, coping skills and experiences influence how and what we teach. We wouldn’t put our kids behind the steering wheel of our SUV and employ the same teaching strategies that we often unconsciously resort to with temper tantrums, whining and confrontation. Parenting guru, Dr. Becky Kennedy, refers to our parental role in teaching life skills and emotional integration as “sturdy leadership.” Sturdy leadership is what a dive master provides. When we are sturdy leaders for our kids and for others, we help them feel safe, find calm and develop skills for emotional regulation and resilience.

The neuroscience lesson is that we co-regulate and co-create with each other. One cool, calm, collected sturdy leader helps others return to their emotional baseline faster. Then with clear heads and more emotional regulation, we can co-create a better situation and outcome.

Setting a Positive Intention:

Those affable and charismatic dive masters created a sense of camaraderie, fun and curiosity with a group of strangers on a dive boat. They delivered their instructions for each dive with warm smiles, a little humor and attention to detail. Their goal was to keep us safe and set us up for the best experience possible.

Setting a positive intention provides the framework and guardrails for what might be considered two opposing truths: Being and feeling safe – and exploring uncharted territory.

The metaphorical lesson is when we have to engage in a hard conversation, deal with a difficult situation or person, we can also lead with a statement of positive intention. Brene Brown has long taught us that clear is kind; that we can be generous in believing that others are doing the best they can in the moment when we stay in our integrity and set boundaries about acceptable language and behaviors.

A statement of positive intention is how we enter these challenging conversations. We state clearly and genuinely that we care deeply about a person and our relationship with them. It is our “why” for a desire to resolve our differences or a misunderstanding. A statement of positive intention can diffuse the tension and resistance that often prevents us from having these hard conversations. We offer kindness, compassion and respect – the ingredients to feel safe enough to be vulnerable and truthful. Reframe these hard conversations as a “search and recovery” opportunity.

The neuroscience lesson is that we often get in our own way when it comes to conflict resolution because of the stories we have told ourselves to make sense of things that happened in the past. Our brains are prediction machines relying on a historical database. In our efforts to protect ourselves from being hurt or disappointed yet again, we resist opening up to gaining helpful context, nuance and perspective. When we are open to “listening to gain understanding”, we are in essence installing an “update” to our data base. Taking in new information with context we may not have been aware is how we free ourselves from craggy old beliefs and narratives that snag and entangle us.

On Dry Land:

When my teenaged children were learning to scuba dive, I had a lot of friends who chided me for letting them do something so risky. At the time, I shared with those concerned friends that we also teach our kids to drive, which is equally risky and something we all do nearly every day. Kids take driver’s ed, they study and pass exams to get a learner’s permit and we parents take them out to practice in parking lots and less traveled rural roads. We give them the tools and the practice they need to earn that driver’s license and we celebrate the milestone of turning over the car keys and letting them venture out on their first solo drive.

How remarkable is it then that we really don’t give much serious contemplation to the emotional and relational skills we need the most and that we will use every single day for the rest of our lives?

We need sturdy leaders to teach us how to self-regulate, to learn from our internal dashboard of emotions and experiences, to use self-awareness, healthy coping skills and relationship tools to navigate all parts of life.

Today, we are fortunate to have incredible new science-based insights and knowledge about the importance of emotional integration, the inter-connectedness of our brain and body systems, and a plethora of resources to support better ways of showing up for ourselves and others.

The Takeaways in Life Lessons from the Sea:

Find the “dive masters” that are the sturdy leaders that resonate with you. Study and learn from them. Acquire some new and improved relationship skills and play around with them. Start with low stakes situations to build confidence.

Find some seasoned “dive buddies” to help you hone your ability to use more effective tools. Friends, family members and mentors can become these dive buddies for you. Seek their wisdom, ask questions and ask for help. Swap stories and experiences to deepen your understanding.

Don’t forget to put all that education and study hours into actual practice. Use that calming breath to fill your life vest with some air, get your bearings and then enter an interaction grounded and calm. Remember to use the new skills you are learning. Put them to the test with some patience and compassion for yourself and others.

After each new “dive experience”, take some time to reflect on how it went. How did you feel and what did you learn? Were you able to listen to understand, validate someone else’s experience or perspective, find some common ground? Did you feel more emotionally balanced and recognize that this helped others calm down faster? Taking the time to do a thoughtful de-briefing reinforces your learning and hones your new skills.

A Measure of Success:

Imagine all the positive changes that are sure to come when we collectively begin to acquire and use better emotional and relationship skills. These new tools and skills will be transferrable to all aspects of our life; fewer self-made obstacles and less complicated relationship entanglements.

After all, look how many of us can competently drive a variety of vehicles on a busy highway or skillfully navigate a crowded parking lot.

We can teach each other complex navigational skills.

NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES:

Healing Cycles of Trauma with Mariel Buque — if you find yourself telling others they are too sensitive or overreacting, then you will find this episode so insightful https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/being-well-with-forrest-hanson-and-dr-rick-hanson/id1120885936?i=1000640891293

One of the Best Parenting Resources for our time — Dr. Becky Kennedy. Check her out on Instagram and her YouTube Ted Talk

Check out this HubermanLab podcast episode featuring Adam Grant discussing his newest book Hidden Potential. How often do we limit our own potential and that of others without even being aware? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=1000636628726

Midlife is a Chrysalis, not a Crisis: Life Gets Better with Age. This dynamic conversation with Chip Conley will have a big impact on anyone who is reassessing what they want out of a new chapter of their life. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?i=1000641285807

When the Student Becomes The Teacher

Many months ago, my young granddaughter was scared. As she described her experience to me, I could fully understand why she was frightened. She felt as though she was having some kind of out of body experience – something that was not at all like her – and yes, it was scary to think she might be changing and had very little control over it. My granddaughter was angry; not plain vanilla angry – she was infuriated. Along with that infuriating anger was a fear that she would forever become an angry person – and that was scary – because she didn’t want to change who she was.

We’ve all been there haven’t we? We reach a breaking point and suddenly we too have an out of body experience and act way out of character. We have a jolting knee jerk reaction that surprises even us — or our simmering kettle of stuffed emotions boils over at the most inconvenient moment and we regret it the moment it happens (even though it is too late). In hindsight, we have said or done things that we’d never dream of in a much more rational moment.

The distinction between us adults and my young granddaughter is that we know we will not stay stuck forever in this “out of character” form; we will return to our emotional baseline and be back to feeling like our normal, “true to character” selves again. Sometimes we can even do that BEFORE we overreact – and other times, we have the wisdom to make those necessary repairs; we apologize and put in real effort to do better in the future.

Little did I know that my granddaughter was giving me a golden opportunity to understand the benefits of emotional granularity. Simply put, emotional granularity is when we are able to identify all the emotions that we are experiencing in any given moment. There are always more ingredients in our emotional experiences than simply happy, sad or mad. But we often hit the brakes as soon as we identify those 3 core emotions and we stop a profoundly important process. Angry, sad or happy are just the headlines; we need to understand “the rest of the story,”

In my granddaughter’s case, the anger was ginormous in this moment. She’d been patient with her younger brother all day long, but now she was tired and hungry, which served to amplify the slow build of her frustration. We could all understand and empathize with her feeling angry. That was normal and justifiable, especially at the end of a busy day.

The anger problem could be remediated by both validating her feelings and giving her a break from her energetic, fun loving, free flowing brother. But my granddaughter had more to share – she was also feeling afraid that she’d stay stuck in anger — and she did not like the way that felt to her.

Even without a textbook or podcast, she knew instinctively that there was more going on than just the anger. Thank goodness I did have some working knowledge of emotional granularity. I silently expressed my gratitude to Brene Brown and Dr. Dan Siegel for this education and proceeded to help my granddaughter. I asked her to describe to me what anger was making her feel like. For the record, kids are much better at articulating this than most of us adults. No wonder she was fearful of staying stuck in that feeling — it’s downright icky. I assured her that strong emotions don’t have a long shelf life, that they do fade and we return to feeling like our normal selves in short order. I wish you could have seen the relief that washed over that precious face. A big warm hug and a reassuring smile soon had us both laughing. Astonishingly she could even reframe her brother’s prior annoyance as just his silly antics – the very same antics and playfulness that she loves so much about him.

What a rebound! This is the magic of emotional granularity; we can hold both sides of an experience and keep them in balance.

My young granddaughter recognized that her brother can bring her great joy and he can also annoy her. Both are true.

Emotional granularity keeps us from getting stuck in a single core emotion. It helps us discover many pieces of our experiences puzzle. Nuance and context are key ingredients for how we “feel” in any given moment. For example, earlier in the day when my granddaughter was fresh from a good night’s sleep, had a full tummy of her favorite breakfast and a full tank of patience and energy, her brother’s antics were light-hearted, fun and tolerated. It was only later in the day, when her tank was running low that she felt quite differently.

Take a moment to think about that for your own daily interactions. When you are well resourced with sleep, nourishment and bandwidth, you most likely flow pretty easily with other’s moods as well as the diversity of tasks and demands you are juggling. When you are running low on fuel, it gets harder and your mood and emotional state shifts. Emotional granularity helps us parse out the underpinnings of happy, sad and mad.

More recently, this same granddaughter was having an off day. She wasn’t her usually bubbly self and she wasn’t keen on all the suggestions we were offering to snap her out of it. Not sparkling water, her favorite breakfast or a fun craft was moving the needle. She announced that she wasn’t in a hurry to get out of this mood and she was going to go be alone with it for a while. When she rejoined the family activities later, she was in good spirits and all in on the fun stuff we were doing.

It wasn’t until later that day that my granddaughter told me that the reason she likes to stay in her moods is that she knows what I told her is very true. Emotions and feelings fade faster than we realize – and she doesn’t want to miss a chance to explore hers before they drift off. In that moment, the student became the teacher.

I am a firm believer in the advice that ogre Shrek offered years ago — “Better out than in.” It is better to get our emotions out where we can examine them than stuff them away in cold storage. My granddaughter is living proof that doing this sooner rather than later is precisely how we extract the most wisdom from what our emotions are trying to tell us.

Doing this emotional awareness processing in real time is when we have the sharpest clarity to fully appreciate and understand what our emotions have to tell us. If we postpone sitting with our emotions, they will change and shift – just like clouds in the sky. We will end up blurring or diluting them. We may even stuff them so far down that we completely ignore them and their valid warning signs.

Processing our emotions in real time is the best preventative measure we can take for cultivating our self-awareness and vastly improving our ability to skillfully regulate our emotions. We now have science to support this.

In her book, How Emotions Are Made, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett teaches us that emotional granularity is the integral key to keeping our internal “emotions and experiences” data base updated. Our brain and body are our uniquely personal information processors. They are prediction machines that rely on the data we store. The greater our ability to identify and process the multiple emotions we experience in any given situation, the better our “prediction machines” will operate in the future.

It should be pretty self evident by now that the lack of full emotional integration when we were children is the major cause of so many “prediction errors” in the way we are able to regulate and understand our emotional triggers in adulthood. When we are getting in our own way and making life more difficult than it needs to be, chances are that our “prediction machines” are feeding us old, outdated data. Emotional baggage is like the fruits and veggies growing moldy in the fridge. We never took the nutrients out of our emotions and experiences when they were fresh. Yet we still have to deal with all that mushy mess when we clean out the fridge.

There is another compelling reason that we need to get much better at processing our emotions in real time — it is because our current mood greatly impacts how we experiencing life. If we are overly tired or famished, there is a greater likelihood that we will feel more negative about what is happening. In other words, we can skew our emotions, file them away without any self reflection, and end up with an internal database full of misinformation. Talk about an algorithm that feeds us more of what we really don’t need, but that feels oh so affirming.

Let’s go back to the story of my granddaughter’s emotion of big anger. She was experiencing this giant-sized anger more intensely because it was the end of the day; she was both hungry for dinner and ready for bed. She just didn’t have a lot of bandwidth to cope with her brother’s antics. Earlier in the day, his silliness made her laugh and her delighted responses encouraged him all the more. As the day wore on, her tank was ever so slowing draining. On the other hand, her brother may have had a nap and ate more snacks, so he was still going strong. My granddaughter’s context had changed and my grandson’s had stayed the same.

Two opposing things were true here — my granddaughter loves her brother’s zest for life AND she also needed a break. My grandson believes his antics are adorable and valued no matter how tired others are.

This very scenario plays out in our adult lives all the time but we are mostly unaware of it. We do ebb and flow in our moods all throughout the day. When we feel rested, nourished and energized, we have greater coping skills and better judgement. When we hit the wall, all bets are off.

When we hit the brakes when one of the 3 core emotions jumps out – and then step on the gas and barrel through, we actually stay stuck in happy, sad or mad. Imagine if we were in our cars, hit the brakes to avoid hitting a small child, and then while our heart was racing and our nervous system was on high alert, we hit the gas pedal and were doing 80 mph in 10 seconds. We would not be at our best to reflexively respond to another potential accident – in fact, we might cause an accident.

We know that it is encouraged for us to take that meaningful pause between stimulus and response when we are feeling strong emotions washing over us. Far better to take a few deep breaths and calm ourselves before we “react without reflection”. When we are working on developing better emotional regulation, we want to ground ourselves and consciously “respond” in a calmer way.

Yet there is one more beneficial skill that we would be wise to cultivate: Stop, look and listen.

Pretend you hit the brakes at a railroad crossing. The flashing lights and the gate that lowers are big emotions trying to get your attention. Stop, look around at the current circumstances and how well resourced you are to make good decisions. Listen to all that those accompanying emotions have to tell you. They are the messengers of the context and nuance needed to proceed with caution.

If an 8 year old can do this, so can we.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Chapter 2 of Arthur Brooks newest book is entitled the Power of Metacognition. If you only read this chapter in his book, you will have a much better understanding of how we can proactively choose better emotions to enrich our experiences. A worthy read.

Listen to this short YouTube video with Lisa Feldman Barrett about how past experiences and emotions impact how we respond to current experiences. You’ll be inspired to get more skillful at processing your emotions and experiences in real time, so that you are operating from a fresh and updated data base rather than old, outdated and clunky information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYAEh3T5a80&t=31s

Lisa Feldman Barrett was a recent guest on the HUBERMANLAB PODCAST. This episode will give you a foundational understanding of how we could be vastly improving how we teach our children — at home and in school — with a more updated understanding of how emotions impact us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeRgqJVALMQ&t=318s

New Year, New Skills

Can you feel that little updraft in inner drive and determination that comes from a brand new year? There’s nothing like a brand new calendar, clean and pristine, to let our imaginations run wild with big dreams of how well organized and productive we will be. This psychological phenomenon is called the “fresh start effect”. It marks a clear delineation for our “out the old and in with the new” mindset. A brand new year is when we get to double dip in this fresh start effect — it’s not just a new month – it is a brand new year.

I confess that I love a Happy New Year fresh start and I prepare for it as eagerly as I do for Christmas. My desk has stacks of colorful, inspiring blank journals and brand new chunky, spiral-bound idea notebooks; along with an assortment of gel pens and varied sizes of neon post-it notes. And the real gem is that pristine 2024 planner. Thanks to my grandkids who gave me a generous gift card to Quail Ridge, I also have an inviting stack of new books I cannot wait to read. There is a rush of pure joy and an eager excitement every time I look at the endless possibilities that will manifest when I actually use all these tools.

It was in that moment, that it dawned on me that this was the direction I wanted to take my blog in 2024. This year, my blog posts and Daily Gummies of Wisdom, are going to become more relatable and digestible. This is the year where the “rubber hits the road”. I want to share more real life stories, examples and experiences that reveal how beneficial it is to be using better tools and becoming more skillful with them.

This is the year that I want my blog to help others stock their desks, toolboxes and backpacks with diversified resources for building the life they want and showing up more often as their best selves. It is an exciting time to be alive because thanks to science, we have taken a lot of the mystery out of old paradigms about emotional and mental health, parenting and relationships – and yes, even personal growth.

I love diving into groundbreaking and ever-evolving data. I also love distilling it in a way that is easy to understand and implement in real time. I’ve become a bit of a “reverse engineer” with 7 decades of life experiences to draw on. By sharing familiar and relatable real life stories, I can teach and role model how and why these much-improved relationship and life tools are meaningful game-changers.

There is another confession that I have to make: I am over the moon thrilled that it no longer feels necessary to keep self discovery and personal growth under wraps. The proof of this is in our current overuse of the word “normalize”. We toss that word out like a disclaimer reminding us that no one is immune to “feeling” their way through life.

No more cloak of secrecy when it comes to mental and emotional health — it is now fully mainstreamed! And, it is not only mainstreamed, we are making genuine progress in connecting the dots between our physical health and our emotional health. Our eyes are being opened to the many no-cost and low-cost steps we can take to proactively improve both.

The pivot I will be making with my ever-evolving blog will mirror the pivot that is being made in modern medicine, psychology and neuroscience. There is a shift from problem solving to prevention. Many fields, modalities and people are taking proactive steps to improve their physical, mental and emotional health to safeguard against future health and relationship issues. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

Food for Thought: This is a new element that I will be adding to my blog posts this year. I will wrap each one up with a little food for thought, something to reflect on and then consider putting into practice. The “food for thought” I offer today is to take time to look through – and reflect on – your planners and journals, camera rolls and playlists, on the biggest challenges and fondest memories of 2023. Before you toss them in the trash, or pack them in a box with birthday cards, archived bills and tax receipts — spend some time distilling what mattered most to you in 2023. Use that as a map for where you are headed in 2024.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Arthur C. Brooks is a well known happiness expert. His last book was entitled “From Strength to Strength” and it had a big impact on me. That book was really meant for those of us who are transitioning from one stage of life to another. It was such a helpful guide for reflecting on past experiences and using it as a solid foundation for reinventing ourselves for the next chapter.

In this powerful new book, Arthur works his magic once again — and makes it easy to understand the latest breakthroughs in science and how to take that knowledge and weave it into your daily life. One message comes through loud and clear as you read this book – we need to put in the reps – we need daily practice with all kinds of situations and people for these new tools to stick.

THE RICH ROLL PODCAST: Treat yourself to a new podcast in 2024 – and check out the diversity and dynamics of Rich Roll and his inspiring guests.

There is a vast ocean of podcasts these days. It can be both time-consuming and overwhelming to sort through the catalog and find the ones that call to you.

There are times in our lives when we need a little extra knowledge about core physical health tools like quality sleep, nutrition and exercise. Other times, we need some encouragement to get through tough times. We also need to be inspired through other’s stories of how they used all these new tools we are learning about; stories from others help us digest and metabolize new information.

My recommendation is to listen to Rich Roll’s podcasts in chunks. Few of us really have the time to sit and listen (let alone pay full attention) to a lengthy podcast. But if we listen for 15 – 30 minutes at a time on our drive to work or while running errands, we can gain a lot. Instead of scrolling on your phone when you need a break, listen for 10-15 minutes to part of the podcast. This is how we put some really nourishing and healthy content into our brains.

There are so many subjects, modalities and tools to support our self-discovery and personal growth. What captures your attention? What do you want to learn more about? Rich Roll offered two podcast episodes at the end of 2023 that offer a diverse menu of choices. I am sharing the links for these two episodes, rich with guests that we all know and love – and full of inspiration to get you super-charged for the new year.

Rich Roll Podcast, The Best of 2023: Part One https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?i=1000639648780

Rich Roll Podcast, the Best of 2023: Part Two https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?i=1000639901420