Self-Awareness – Inspired New Horizons

Build a Sophisticated Toolshed

Imagine my surprise to hear a male guest on a podcast sharing that he and his wife are now using more “sophisticated” tools to navigate life. Wow — I love that impactful word and could even feel myself leaning into it and embracing the full scope of what it feels like.

It is remarkable how one word can shift us quickly into the next level of our personal growth — and do so in a way that feels amazing.

I could see it in the body language of this middle-aged man – he was owning how empowered he felt by proactively choosing a “sophisticated” way to support his wife deal with an emotional situation. There was a sense of pride and accomplishment.

His personal story was a sliding door experience for him — one where he could see how he used to handle situations like this that usually only made things worse; and how he attended to his wife’s needs now in a more mature and skillful way. Not only did his wife get what she needed most, their personal connection deepened.

The stark contrast of how his old ways of dealing with relationship struggles pulled them further apart – and how his new and improved ways, strengthened their relationship was undeniably magical. The “before” and “after” results of using “sophisticated” tools was proof positive that he was growing in the right direction.

He had handled a common relationship issue with aplomb.

Admittedly, he shared that he used to match her emotions and they’d get in an emotional tug of war. This could lead to a stand off and for the next few hours, they’d avoid each other or poke at each other’s shortcomings. Not fun.

His new and improved approach of validating her feelings and her experience, of listening to understand and co-regulating her by remaining calm, felt surprisingly good to him too. A simple shift in his approach was the fast-acting remedy that produced incredible results. They were hugging and smiling in just a few minutes. For hours afterwards, they could still feel the strong intimate connection they’d made.

Build a Sophisticated Toolshed:

That young man inspired me to see what is possible as we reframe personal growth and self discovery. Yes, of course — we want to be using sophisticated tools in skillful ways to build the life we want. To become better versions of ourselves over time and to support those we love in ways that build trust, resilience and self-confidence.

We can become master craftsmen and craftswomen with some simple, impactful shifts in our language and our awareness. Who wouldn’t want to become confident enough to use “power tools” in our most treasured relationships?

In his book, Shift, author and psychologist, Ethan Kross, reveals just how easy it is to step into using the “power tools” that proactively shift our mindsets, perspectives, emotions and perceived limitations. In fact, the concepts he details in his book could be the Starter Kit for building your own sophisticated toolshed.

These power tools are really pretty straightforward but we frequently get hijacked by the stimulus of a situation and just reach for a hammer.

It’s our natural human tendency to rely on familiar methods or tools, even when they are not the most appropriate for a situation.

As Abraham Maslow reminded us: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

It is precisely why Victor Frankl urges us to use the pause between stimulus and response to think about what is the best course of action in the long run.

Reminding ourselves that we want to be reaching for “sophisticated” power tools while we are taking that pivotal pause might be all that is needed to remind us to be more mature and intentional about our reactions. Drop the hammer and reach for the more contemporary, state of the art, power tools.

Instead of over-reacting, consider reframing a situation.

Rather than be singularly focused, take a broader perspective and consider how others are feeling or could be impacted.

Validate what you are experiencing instead of projecting your pain onto others.

Lower the temperature on your heated emotions and let them cool down before boiling over.

Ask for help rather than complaining or blaming.

Validate other’s experiences and emotions with respect and empathy rather than dismissing them.

Zoom out and ask yourself if what’s happening now will matter as much in a few hours, a few days or next week.

A Method and a Motto:

There is a method to stop the madness of using a hammer for everything that pops off in our lives and crops up in our relationships. It is recognizing that we human beings have a lot of variation in the way we show up day in and day out.

Some days we are far better resourced to handle blunders, mistakes and miscommunications. We can let things roll with grace and generosity.

Other days, not so much. We are irritable, easily distracted, have limited bandwidth and are running on fumes.

Even when we want to do our best, it may feel nearly impossible to pull that rabbit out of a hat.

Enter a colleague of Ethan Kross – author and neuroscientist Emily Falk to help us when we are feeling out of sorts and prone to knee jerk reactions, swinging a hammer with wild abandon.

In her book, What We Value, Dr. Falk shares how we rely too much on yet another human default system that is our biggest obstacle to changing how we show up under pressure.

Turns out, we unconsciously overweight and overrate what we can get in the short term. We make snap decisions and have knee jerk reactions to get satisfaction right away. We don’t like feeling uncomfortable, we want relief immediately. Winning a shouting match feels good.

But winning that shouting match only feels good for a hot minute.

That’s the unfortunate reality of overweighting what feels good in the heat of the moment. We unconsciously give too much weight to winning a fight or avoiding a conflict. We make a value calculation that is fleeting.

Dr. Falk reminds us that where we “place our attention” is the lever we can pull to override our tendency to overweight the value of a short term outcome. Play the long game. Turn attention to what matters most. Are you the kind of person who saves the day?

We aren’t little kids in a sandbox anymore. We are grown ups who calmly come in and help each other get along. We can clearly assess the situation and get back to having fun together.

In her book, What We Value, Dr. Emily Falk urges us to get intentional (especially in the heat of the moment) about shifting our attention to the long game. We will find it much easier to reach for our sophisticated relationship power tools when we focus on what we value most in the long term.

It may seem small and highly unlikely to be effective to “shift” to the long game – but it is an elevated form of delayed gratification. Do you want one marshmallow now or would you be willing to wait so that you get two marshmallows later?

Play the long game.

Turning our attention to think about what we are working towards in becoming a better person, in how we show up for others especially when it is challenging — that shifts our focus and puts more weight in the ‘value calculation” that drives our choices, behaviors and actions.

When we play the long game, we make the most of that pause between stimulus and response, by asking ourselves – “Wait a minute – let’s think about what I value most and make the better decision that aligns with my values.”

The method we can use to help us reach for power tools instead of a hammer is to shift our focus to playing the long game and matching our responses to our long term goals and core values.

The motto we create for ourselves becomes the lever we pull that opens our sophisticated tool shed. Something as simple as the golden rule can be a magical shifter in how we meet life’s moments.

Sophisticated Power Tools and Lots of Practice:

When our kids are little, we give them those brightly colored plastic replicas of lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers. Many times our kids love to store their pint-sized imitation power tools right next to the real thing in the backyard toolshed.

We would never give our kids the real deal power tools until they are old enough and mature enough to use them with great care and skill. But we do plant the seeds that they will be quite capable to use the real tools in the future.

What we know now that is backed by advances in science and psychology is that for far too long is that most of us were only taught to use a hammer to fix just about everything. But a hammer and duct tape do not build strong relationship foundations and deep connections.

As we begin to incorporate more advanced relationship tools into our daily lives, we reinforce the positive benefits we reap – and we also teach by osmosis how effective sophisticated power tools truly are – in the long run.

Think about using the mental image of a magical toolshed full of dynamic power tools that are fun to use and get the job done right the first time. We can all build that kind of toolshed, well equipped with sophisticated tools and skills easily accessed each and every day.

What motto would you put on the sign that hangs over the door of your sophisticated toolshed?

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

BREAK FREE FROM A VICTIM MINDSET: June 6th, 2025 episode with Scott Barry Kauffman. Prepare to be amazed at how often we get trapped in our own victim mindset. This dynamic conversation will shift you quickly to an “empowering mindset”

Digging in & Getting to Work

The compelling metaphors of spring being a time of rebirth, new beginnings and growth are not lost on me. Every time I go for a walk in nature, I marvel at the seemingly slow process of a tiny bud pushing with all its might at the very tip of a fragile naked branch. Just a few days later, I discover that the tight bud has swelled and softened. And then later in the warmth of afternoon sunshine, voila — the bud has now unfurled and I see tiny green leaves.

Now the process begins again. The fragile pale green leaflets will grow over time and one day later this summer, they will actually provide shade for the ground cover that is the understory of this forest. In the fall, the seeds will drift downward and nestle into the soft compost beneath the understory – and next spring, those seeds will pop up and start the process anew.

I find myself wondering what has taken us so long to reframe our own personal growth in the same transformational way that we view springtime.

It is precisely why I have been encouraging us all to consider self discovery and personal growth in a dynamic new way. We are not only works in progress at every stage of our life, we are ever-growing, adapting and changing throughout our lifetimes. Much like the image of a majestic oak tree used to symbolize strength, stability, endurance and longevity, we too are ever growing.

Taking ownership of our personal growth over the course of our life changes everything. We no longer have to view our past history and adversities as impediments that uprooted us. We can more accurately see how the stories we have told ourselves about our lived experiences have often had a far greater impact on shaping us than the event itself.

As human beings, we are designed to make meaning out of the experiences in our lives. The root cause of our stunted personal growth is that we were only budding young authors during our most profound developmental stages – early childhood and adolescence.

We’ve heard it said over and over again: “change the narrative and it will change the way you see yourself.” This is one of the foundational principles that should be guiding our personal growth throughout our lifetimes. We need to become better storytellers and discerning meaning makers.

Many of the stories we tell ourselves have long roots going back to the first drafts we wrote when we were young. When we go back and revisit these stories with the intention of editing, updating and rewriting them, it is in essence pulling up the weeds and tangled vines — and revealing to ourselves just how much we’ve grown over time.

With a fresh perspective and a growth mindset, we can really dig in and get to work. We can become master gardeners for our self discovery and personal growth.

Re-imagining how we can repurpose what we have learned and discovered about ourselves over the years, helps us dig a little deeper into our raw material and use it wisely and with good intention.

Best selling authors frequently share that they “wrote the book they needed to read” or a well-known psychologist will confess that their “research” was actually “me-search.”

Taking a cue from these folks, we can begin to write the stories that shape us in the most transformational ways. We should not stay stuck in those old narratives that limit our potential.

A Trowel and a Notebook:

When my kids were teenagers, I would often ask them “What have you learned from this experience?” They were not huge fans of this parenting tool, for it required them to stop and think about their choices and the subsequent outcomes. It felt like hard work and they much preferred to be grounded than breaking ground.

I didn’t realize it then — but what I was intuitively trying to do was get them to “think on their own” and be able to make better decisions in the future when faced with similar (but much more consequential) events.

What I knew from my own lived experiences as a 40 year old mom was that a lack of self-reflection usually led to breakdowns. What I wanted for my teenaged kids were more “break throughs” in their self awareness and sense of agency.

“What have you learned from this experience?” was a trowel; an invitation to dig a little deeper into what motivated them to make certain choices and to step back and see if the outcome matched their values. Did their choices and behaviors help them get where they wanted to go in life?

I have a confession – I did not see this simple question as the meaningful tool it truly is when I was a middle-aged mom of fast growing teenaged boys. I just knew they needed something from me that they could take into adulthood as a guidepost for building the life they wanted. The life I hoped they would have; one that was a little less bumpy than my own had been.

Finding our footing and being grounded in mid-life is a super power and not a punishment. But we can only be “grounded” in our values if we have in fact done some serious self-reflection.

For the record, grounding my teenaged boys would not have had the same impact as making them reflect on their own life lesson in real time – just ask Dr. Becky Kennedy.

Today, thanks to Arthur C. Brooks and his book “Build the Life You Want”, I now have a greater awareness of the incredible value of asking ourselves “what have we learned from this experience.” It is the trowel we need in our personal growth toolbox.

Arthur Brooks tells us that whenever something in your life has unraveled, pull out a journal and write down what’s happening and how you feel about it. Come back a week later and write down how you are feeling about it now after some time has passed. Are you able to see a silver lining yet? He tells us to revisit a breakdown in a month, in 6 months and even a year later. Was there a breakthrough?

That old adage “time will tell” rings very true when we take Arthur’s advice to heart. What have we learned from that one heartbreaking experience or major adversity that has enriched our life or opened our eyes in entirely new ways? How has it shaped us?

It is this self-reflection, done over time, that helps us with fundamental building blocks for building a life we truly want. We tell ourselves stories to make meaning of our experiences. But the first draft of our stories is often fraught with too many emotional cliff notes. These jagged first drafts keep us stuck in the painful parts of our stories.

We need time for each experience to fully develop, just like a photo taken with an instamatic camera. It is over time, with edits and re-writes that we grow into what life had to teach us through our experiences. Arthur’s simple journaling exercise is how we plot our changes and observe our development.

Personal growth and self discovery is a process. Of course the events in our life have impact and shape us in ways that we may not even realize. Some of our best lessons have a very long germination period. Getting curious about how we are growing is a fresh new perspective to adopt.

Anyone who loves gardening will tell you that patience is a virtue when it comes to planting seeds, nurturing them and providing the right environment for them to survive and then thrive. This organic growing process is the one we want to emulate for ourselves and our life experiences. We can be much more proactive and intentional about how life events impact our personal growth. It requires patience with ourselves as well as the process.

The beauty in this shift in how we approach our personal growth and self discovery is that we can begin at any time. We can start small and work our way deeper into our library of life experiences for more insight and enrichment later.

Choose just one recent event in your life that felt like you might be breaking ground for something new to emerge.

Did a friend offer you a reframing for a struggle you are having and suddenly you saw a whole new path forward?

Maybe you stopped to realize that the same old approach to a recurring problem just isn’t working and you decided to change how you react and respond.

Were you facing a very difficult decision having to choose between two appealing opportunities? Were you able to feel your way intuitively into making the best choice for you at the time?

We get these little nudges for growth spurts almost daily. Anytime we can stop and do a little check-in about the stories we are telling ourselves, we are acting like skillful gardeners attending to our personal growth and self discovery.

Give This Some Thought:

Take some time to think about how telling yourself a different story would have impacted your emotions and experience over time by reflecting on a meaningful event in your life.

Ethan Kross, author of Shift, encourages us to ask family members and friends to help us see ourselves through their eyes.

My younger brother does this often for me when we talk about our childhood experiences. Where I see myself as a frightened ten year old, he saw me as a strong and courageous big sister who protected him. This fresh perspective helps me go back and edit a childhood experience with more context and nuance than I had access to as a kid.

Over the years, with his help, I have been able to see the tender shoots of my strengths pushing hard through a few childhood experiences, just the that tight little bud on my favorite tree. I was emerging; I just didn’t see it.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Dr. Becky Kennedy’s parenting book is also helpful in understanding what gets in our own way when it comes to relationships and emotions. All too often we believe what we were told as kids and have made behaviors part of our identity. This book will free you up to see all that is Good Inside of you too.

This book is a game-changer. Instead of telling someone that what they are feeling or experiencing is wrong or not appropriate (which leads to telling ourselves unhelpful stories), we simply validate their true experience.

What Marcus Learned from His Mother May 9, 2025 In this episode, Ryan Holiday shares insights from the global pandemic experience that reshaped his life in profound ways. It is the tail end of this episode where he asks thought provoking questions that will help you rewrite better stories for your own life. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-stoic/id1430315931?i=1000706718469

A Coaching Tree & Board of Advisors

Have you shifted the image of your past experiences and lessons learned into that of your personal greenhouse library, chock full of invaluable reference material?

If so, you are ready to add a Coaching Tree and a Board of Advisors.

Ryan Holiday, author of the Daily Stoic, has long been a strong proponent of a coaching tree. In fact, he dedicates a chapter in his latest book, Right Thing, Right Now to this very concept. Ryan takes a powerful working model for a coaching tree from professional sports teams and adapts it for our personal use.

It is so easy for us to visualize all the branches of support that professional athletes have to help them be their best. We see them on the sidelines on game day – the head coach, assistant coaches, trainers and teammates. We may be less cognizant of the many others who support the athletes, but they have an integral role too. Physical therapists, nutritionists, sports psychologists and family members are all part of the coaching team that provides daily support to bring out a player’s best.

Professional coaches and athletes depend upon coaching trees to foster growth and excellence. The benefits go both ways — a good coach not only offers guidance and guardrails, he also learns from each player, their unique talents and potential and how they integrate what he teaches. These insights deepen his knowledge and hone his skills for working with other players.

Think of the coach as the roots of a tree, growing deeper and stronger with each athlete and assistant coach he is developing. Then visualize how each player and assistant coach takes the knowledge, wisdom and discipline from the coach and branches out on their own. Now you have the concept and visuals image for a coaching tree.

Ryan Holiday recognizes the invaluable interplay that comes from a student/teacher relationship: learning and discovery go both ways. Adam Grant also knows this to be true — that the best way to learn something is to teach it.

When we create our own personal coaching tree, we amplify our potential for fast-tracking self discovery and personal growth. We practice our life and relationship skills, putting in the daily reps in diverse ways. We keep our core operating systems (our brains and bodies) well maintained and updated. Personal growth and self discovery are not a once and done process, but rather a continual lifetime of learning and growing — just like a tree.

Grow Your Own Coaching Tree:

Who has been a rock solid role model for you? Someone who actually practices what they preach, who leads by example?

Who have you turned to when you needed help with a specific situation — someone that you know has had a similar experience and somehow came through it stronger and more authentic as a result?

Who do you wish you could be more like – that one person that possesses signature strengths that you wish you had?

When we ask ourselves these types of questions, we begin to see that we are naturally drawn to certain people for specific attributes that we want to foster in our own lives. Just like pro athletes, we become an amalgamation of the people we admire and who inspire us. We become a well-rounded person by drawing on the diverse strengths of our favorite mentors, coaches and role models.

Ryan Holiday emphasizes that a coaching tree becomes an evergreen “give and take” organic process for personal growth and paying it forward. We take what we need from our role models and personalize it for us. We just don’t “copy and paste” what they do — we make it our own. As we become more skilled and practiced with these new attributes, others will come to us — and ask us for help. We pass on not only what we have learned from our mentors – but also how we personalized it. We “take” what we need for self improvement and we “give” tips and tools to others discover what works best for them.

Here’s a real life example and one that you will find relatable: A friend called me when she had some very difficult personal decisions to make for her spouse with a very serious health issue. She knew I had some real life experience with tough choices that require a delicate balance between practicality and big emotions. I became her sounding board, a grounded friend who could help her sort out the pieces and make the best decision for both herself and her husband’s long term special needs. This didn’t happen in a day — it was months and even years of long conversations, of listening and learning, of being honest about doubts and second guesses and lots of empathy, validation and reassurance that each choice was a building block for her making the right decisions each step of the way.

My friend grew in remarkable ways through this very difficult life challenge. She not only handled one of life’s most emotionally tender realities with grace, compassion and love, she learned a lot about herself along the way. She survived — and she thrived. Today she leads support groups, she offers wise, personalized counsel to others facing similar long term care situations, and she has championed changes in memory care facilities in her community.

Guess what she does for me and has been for years — she forwards my Daily Gummy of Wisdom to a her big circle of friends every single day, along with her own insights. She is paying it forward and causing a ripple effect that is making a meaningful difference for more people than we can ever know.

Spend some time reflecting on the people who have shaped your life, especially during times when you faced adversity, golden opportunities and pivotal moments. Who provided encouragement, saw your inner strengths and hidden potential; who listened, validated and reminded you of just how far you’ve come? These are prime examples of those you want perched in your coaching tree.

In his chapter entitled “Grow a Coaching Tree” Ryan Holiday offers this poignant insight: “Generosity is the seed of a great coaching tree.”

Brene Brown reminds us that we can be most generous when we recognize that just like us, others are doing the best they can with the information, tools and resources they have at that moment. Ryan invites us to remember our own challenging experiences and those who showed up at just the right time when we needed the most generous of interpretations — and the generosity of their wise guidance.

Be intentional and discerning as you grow your coaching tree.

Some Food for Thought:

The coaching tree image helps us to see with greater clarity the work we have to do alone, the scaffolding we get from others to help us in this process — and how we can return the favor by helping others.

We have long been told that when we change, others change too.

This is not always viewed as positive however. People like us to stay the same because they believe they can accurately predict how we will behave and react – and they can make contingency plans to cope with what they have come to expect. These contingency plans are coping skills, protective armor and behavioral modifications.

As a result, when we change and make significant self improvements, others have to change their predictions about us. All those old tricks of the trade people once relied on to “meet you where you were” are no longer needed. In fact, others who still resort to shape shifting, conflict avoidance or cognitive dissonance may stunt the very growth we are pursuing.

Even when our self improvement changes make us easier to live with, it takes a long while for others to trust it. There’s a big gap between the old you and this new & improved version of you. It takes a leap of faith to bridge it — and yes, it requires other people to make some changes too.

This is precisely why we shouldn’t do this work in the dark.

We need all the help we can get when we are fostering personal growth and self awareness. Just as a young tree needs rich soil, sunlight, water and wind, we too need a few scoops of miracle grow and some scaffolding to help us get grounded and sprouted.

When we embark on self improvement and self discovery plans, we should tell our family and friends so it is not a secret. After all, we’d tell them if we were trying to cut back on daily desserts or wanted to stop drinking alcohol. Being open up our commitment to change, helps others support us in meaningful ways. It also helps them re-program their predictions about us. That’s a win-win.

Add a Board of Advisors:

When we proactively seek help with the changes we want to make, we bring our intentions out into the light of day. Just like a tree cannot grow with the right conditions and nutrients, the same is true for us. We need a good support system. Ethan Kross, author of Shift, encourages us to create a board of advisors.

Just like a board of directors for a company or non-profit, we need some diversity in our personal board of advisors. While it is very helpful to have like-minded folks who are also committed to personal growth, Ethan reminds us there is no “one size fits all approach”. There are a plethora of resources, tools and modalities that can be personalized to match what works best for us — just like a physical fitness plan.

In a recent Happiness Lab podcast conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos, Ethan Kross shared the importance of having a personal board of directors to help us when we get stuck, noting that strong emotions and self doubts can derail us.

We need friends and family members who can help us get a fresh perspective, pull us out of a rumination cycle and reframe our situation. These are the folks that should be on our personal board of directors.

Who are you going to call? Not ghostbusters! You are going to call an emotional advisory board member.

We all get emotionally triggered – and sometimes in a very big way. It keeps us stuck and pulls us back into old reactionary patterns of behavior. Having that one friend who understands and validates us when we are triggered is the first line of defense. It takes a long time and lots of practice to lessen the tug of emotional triggers and it is also some of the most freeing work you’ll ever do. Enlist someone who has done this work and has great success. Put that person on your board of directors.

All too often, we get stuck in some one-track thinking. We know we need a different vantage point, but our own strong emotions or self doubts, just keep us gridlocked. Do you have a friend who is really good at reframing your current situation and helping you see what you are missing? Someone who flips a situation from negative to positive as though she had a magic wand? People who have deliberately worked on breaking free from the auto-pilot of our brain’s negative default mode are the best advisors for reframing and fresh perspectives. Who do you know readily views a situation from many different points of view? That’s person is a great candidate for your board of directors.

Have you ever asked yourself “What am I missing?” There are times when we are exhausted from all the effort we put in, but we come to the realization that we are not making any progress. In these situations, we may have a big blindspot and an accompanying lack of self awareness. So we find ourselves asking — “why does this keep happening to me or why can’t I catch a break?” Adam Grant offers sound advice for times like this: recruit a “disagreeable giver” for your board of directors.

A “disagreeable giver” is our challenge friend. Chances are you already have one of these people in your life — but you haven’t tapped into the gifts they offer. You may even find yourself resisting the good points they make.

“Disagreeable givers” respectfully and thoughtfully challenge our ideas and opinions – even (and especially) when it might be uncomfortable. Their goal is to help us see our blind spots and move us to better decision making. A caring challenge friend wants the best for us; they are often tired of seeing us so exhausted from our hamster wheel. Challenge friends are not afraid of having hard conversations; they know your life will get easier once you have a breakthrough. Fill that spot on your board of directors with a trustworthy challenge friend.

There will be times when we need a specialist for whatever life has thrown at us. Someone who has had a similar experience and is on the other side of it. It might be a health crisis, a divorce, the loss of a loved one or dealing with family estrangements. This is when we need someone on our board of advisors who has a working knowledge of the many complexities of a shared experience. What we get from people who “have been there” is what we would find in a support group. Yet it is even better because it is personalized empathy, care and healing.

When life hands you a deeply emotional adversity, be intentional about who can best help you. Recognize that you are fragile, your thinking is clouded, and you don’t have deep inner resources to draw on. You need someone who can go deep with you and not drown in your emotions. Who can help you weather this storm and keep you afloat til you are able to do it alone. That’s the specialist you want on your advisory board in the hard times.

There’s one more advisory board member you most definitely want to add — someone who makes you laugh, who loves to play, who brings a lightness and freshness with ease. Who brings out your inner child? Who is that one friend that makes you feel like a 7 year old – running with arms outstretched towards each other laughing with pure delight? Give that person a special seat on your advisory board. Call them often, go on adventures and collect joy.

Growing Your Team:

This may be the first time in our human evolution that we become intentional about the lifelong process of learning and growing. Over the past twenty years, bits and pieces of knowledge and wisdom were floating around, but hadn’t yet congealed into the solid, science-backed insights we now have.

Now we know that emotional intelligence is a uniquely human feature. But we didn’t know that it was a foundational component of our human operating system, so we didn’t integrate it. We floundered for far too long, misguided because our core GPS wasn’t installed. Emotions are data – they point us in the right direction and help us get more out of life.

We are now in a fascinating experimental stage – where we get to play around with the full installation of emotional intelligence and make incredible discoveries about ourselves and others.

Rather than fumbling around and feeling unsure about our growth spurts, our hidden potential and how we stunt our growth – we can build a coaching program. We will get the most out of these new science-based breakthroughs by growing a strong coaching tree and developing a personalized board of advisors.

We will fast track our new knowledge, tools and skills by learning from each other and building on each other’s insights.

By getting very intentional about the 5 people we spend the most time with and how we show up with each other, we can shift our families and circles of friends into a lifetime of healthier, more meaningful personal growth and self discovery.

NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES:

Ryan Holiday’s blog post This Is The Accomplishment That Matters Most:
https://ryanholiday.net/this-is-the-accomplishment-that-matters-most/

Check out this short video from Adam Grant about having a challenge network:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T79PZvUUd4&t=69s

Check out this episode with Ethan Kross: Harnessing the People Around Us to Feel Happier https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/id1474245040?i=1000697654175

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Take some time to think about the many times in your life when you set out in search of something new, something better, something you’d wanted or worked for your whole life.

Chances are you felt highly energized and incredibly enthusiastic. You tapped into the power of visualization to picture yourself living your dream — and it felt amazing! Maybe it was the dream job you landed, or a new relationship; perhaps you relocated to a bustling city or a different climate.

How did things pan out over time? Was it all that you had hoped for and dreamed that it could be?

If you didn’t intentionally take a new and improved version of yourself into this golden opportunity, did you find yourself backtracking?

Wherever you go, there you are.

This sage insight was offered to us by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1994 in his book bearing that title. His poignant message is one that stands the test of time. If we don’t spend some time reflecting on what we have learned from our past experiences, we will simply go into our new opportunities with the same old reactive behavior patterns, blind spots and memorized coping mechanisms. Everywhere we go, there we are.

We take the same version of ourselves into a new chapter of life, a reinvention of ourselves, a dream job or relationship, and soon discover that we are right back where we started. We get in our own way. Same obstacles, same disappointments, same setbacks, same relationship issues.

Are we the common denominator as we move through life, bringing the same version of our ourselves into each new situation, opportunity and adversity? Wherever we go, there we are.

In my last blog post, I offered the image of a “greenhouse library” to reframe our personal reference material and internal data base. We can gain so much insight from spending time to learn from our past experiences. This becomes an intentional shift to pivot from old behavioral patterns, lack of self awareness and outgrown emotional reactions BEFORE we enter our new opportunities.

Isn’t it ironic that we often are pushed to our limits, know that we want something better for ourselves, and purposefully make big life changes (like moving, finding a new partner or more rewarding job), but we never stop to think about how we ourselves must change in order to make the most out of these pivotal moments in our lives?

We should conduct an “exit interview” with our inner coach (our inner voice) when we are moving on from something that we’ve outgrown or that is no longer working for us. We should be asking ourselves “what have I learned from my past experiences”?

It is not just what we learned from life’s challenges and golden opportunities but most importantly what we learned about ourselves as we met these moments.

In that exit interview, there should be a page with the heading “Wherever you go, there you are”. A review of your habitual patterns of behavior, emotional triggers and blind spots becomes the launchpad for taking a new and improved version of yourself into the change you are purposefully seeking.

You may want to elicit a little help with your “exit interview”.

Consider just how much your parents, grandparents and teachers helped you gain a deeper understanding of yourself as you were growing up. Their perspective on how you typically showed up in life educated your intuition and inner voice. They are often the ones we hear whispering in our ears when we are making both big and small decisions.

Do you remember that major milestone of getting your driver’s license?

You couldn’t wait to get in that car all by yourself and take off. Your first taste of freedom to drive yourself wherever you wanted to go, taking any route that pleased you, listening to your favorite music at whatever volume you chose.

It does not take a big stretch of the imagination to recognize that your parents trusted that wherever you decided to go, you would show up as the teenager they knew well. You were going to be you.

As mom or dad tossed you the car keys, it is quite likely they also tossed you some cautionary reminders about making good decisions. “Don’t drive too fast or tailgate. Don’t text or fiddle with the touchscreen. Keep your eyes on the road and stay vigilant about other drivers. A yellow light means be cautious, not hit the gas and gun it.”

Your parents knew that “wherever you go, there you are.”

Your parents had 16 years of observing, experiencing and predicting who you were, what mattered most to you, how you made decisions. They had to trust that all those years they invested in teaching and guiding you would prepare you for this independence. It was their past history with you that became the very reason they offered you personalized reminders of potential hazards. Not only road hazards, but the very ones that you yourself might create.

Those words of wisdom that your parents offered in exchange for those car keys was a form of an “exit interview’. Venturing out on your own, they offered some pointers to keep you aware of your natural tendencies. Subtle reminders to pay attention to your habits, behaviors and impulses that could be potential roadblocks.

Sticking with this driving metaphor, think about how many times you actually updated your driving skills over your lifetime. As you “practiced” driving solo, you became more confident, were able to judge traffic more intuitively, merging with ease and avoiding potholes. You learned how to drive in bad weather, take unexpected detours and fix a flat tire. You probably accommodated your fellow passengers when you were the designated driver, stepping up and accepting more responsibility. When you became a parent, it is quite likely you became a much more cautious driver all while honing your time management skills and planning for unexpected small human emergencies. You may have learned to drive stick shift, a van or truck; learned how to tow a trailer. When you bought a newer model car, chances are great that you had to learn how to use computer functions that didn’t even exist when you first learned to drive.

Take a few minutes to remember your sixteen year old self and that first solo drive. Compare that to the driver you are today. Give yourself a few gold stars for just how far you’ve come.

There is remarkable value in doing this same type of comparison whenever we are making changes in other areas of our life. We may not always be attuned to just how much we have changed and the many invaluable life lessons we bring with us into new chapters of our life or reinventions of ourselves.

An “exit interview” is a fresh reframing for self-reflection and pulling threads from our life lessons. If we comb through our old files of life experiences, we are likely to find important clues about why some of our big dreams or golden opportunities didn’t pan out like we’d hoped.

Wherever you go, there you are.

We can move to a new job, new location, into a new house or apartment, but that alone is not going to be the magic that brings about the real change we seek. If we bring our same old self to something new, nothing really changes.

Dan Pink, author of The Power of Regret, tells us that a little self reflection on things we regret is a powerful way to help us remember what we value most. If we ask ourselves “why” we are pursuing a change, we will bubble to the surface the very things that matter most.

While there is an implied promise to ourselves that what we really want the most can be found in this new place, job or relationship — we have to bring what we have learned from past experiences into these new opportunities in order to set ourselves up for success. If we bring our same old self, we will surely find the same old problems cropping up. Wherever you go, there you are.

Old behavioral patterns have a way of repeating themselves. We can change our environment or relationships, but if we rely on the same old behavioral responses like people pleasing, conflict avoiding and passive aggressive tactics, the end result will be the same — just in a different place or with different people.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, points out that we don’t naturally “rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” This advice is a springboard for meaningful life changes. Build better systems to make the most of new opportunities.

A huge component of a meaningful “systems” change is changing the way we show up in life. Awareness of our non-productive, habitual behavioral patterns becomes the gateway for real changes in our brains — and subsequently how we “show up”.

Take your personal growth into those new opportunities. Let the self-discovery process inform you about the places where you can now stretch and flex. Use the “fresh start” effect of a new job, new location or new relationship to strengthen your commitment to showing up as a new and improved version of yourself.

There is a huge benefit in taking stock of where we have been and where we are going whenever we undertake a major change in our lives. If we aren’t intentional about this, we wander rather aimlessly into the new chapter or reinvention of ourselves. We might fail to see that our core values evolve over time and are even subject to revision.

Consider this timeless question: What would you tell your younger self?

When we take time to reflect on what we have learned from our past experiences, we gain real clarity about our current values — the “what matters most” part that is driving our strong desire for change. We are able to put some more meat on the bones of our values. Maybe it is a job that not only pays well but is also in alignment with our real interests, one that feels personally rewarding. Perhaps it is a relationship that feels less like a tug of war and more like a highly functioning partnership. Maybe it is not just a change of scenery; it might be better access to community, nature, arts and activities we enjoy.

In other words, we don’t just check a box, we look at the contents and see if that box is really meeting our needs and values.

Another timeless question: What is the one life lesson you have to keep learning over and over?

In his book, Shift, author Ethan Kross reminds us that most learning typically requires many experiences. When we acknowledge this reality, we can look more closely at the earlier chapters of our lives to find that one life lesson that we do in fact have to keep learning over and over.

In many cases, the lesson we need to learn repeatedly is to stop getting in our own way. We do make things harder for ourselves than they need to be. Being stuck in our old ways while we are trying to move forward in life is that one lesson that life keeps offering to us. The same lesson can be repurposed and repackaged in a lot of creative ways. What is that one life lesson that you have to keep re-learning?

If we want to truly evolve as we move through chapters and stages of our lives, then it is wise to take stock of where we have been and be clear about where we are headed.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, uses the image of our “future” self as a way to visualize how we will look, feel and act when we grow forward into changes we proactively pursue. He reminds us that it is our consistent, small efforts toward these bigger changes that are rock solid “votes” for our future self.

Remembering that our past experiences are not old baggage, better left forgotten – but a vast, rich reference library for our personal growth is a great reframe for self-discovery. All too often we forget just how far we’ve come, how many adversities we have faced and the inner strength, confidence and resilient we’ve stockpiled.

The purpose of an exit interview is to understand why we are leaving something behind and pursuing change. It is also to get honest feedback and fresh perspectives. Self-reflection is a key part of doing our own “exit interview.” Being candid with ourselves about any regrets we might have helps us get crystal clear about what matters most. It gets to the heart of why we are seeking change.

Most importantly, heed the advice Jon Kabat-Zinn offers in his book. We are wise to take a long hard look at the places where we get stuck, where old patterns of behavior are no longer serving us well, where emotional triggers and dis-regulation pull us backwards.

When we are very clear about who we are, how we are showing up in our life and who we are working on becoming, we take the guesswork out of changing for the better.

We can grow forward by looking at what we have learned from our past. We already have more footholds and skill sets than we realize.

This is the 5th blog post in a series about the stories we tell ourselves, creating better scripts for our stories, and working on our character development. The next post will be all about creating a “coaching tree” to support your personal growth. Ryan Holiday is the inspiration for planting a “coaching tree” in your greenhouse library.

NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES:

The most recent book from Ethan Kross is a guidebook for emotional regulation. We can learn to turn the volume up or down on our emotions to help us navigate our lives in the best way possible. This book is a game changer for self awareness and emotional agility.

January 27, 2025 episode –
James Clear on the Science of Building Habits That Last – this conversation with Dr Michael Gervais, elite sports psychologist and James Clear will supercharge your efforts to make sustainable changes for personal growth. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-mastery-with-dr-michael-gervais/id1025326955?i=1000685599922

This is one podcast so worthy of your time. Dr. Ellen Langer sees the world through kaleidoscope lenses. Once you listen to her, you will never see the world the same — and that is the best thing that can happen FOR you. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rich-roll-podcast/id582272991?i=1000695494416

Character Development

Have you ever considered just how much the stories that we tell ourselves shape and mold our lives? Not just on a daily basis but throughout our lifespan.

Our stories impact how we meet pivotal moments that can shift the trajectory of our lives. They can become stumbling blocks or lighted pathways, cautionary tales or calls to adventure, footholds or landslides.

This is a compelling reason why we are so drawn to movies and books based on Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” framework: the protagonists sets out, has transformative adventures and returns home a better person for it all. Our own lives are a continual unfolding of many experiences that do transform us. How many times have you reinvented yourself? How many times did a life event change you?

The stories we tell ourselves when we are facing opportunities and challenges can open doors or slam them shut. If we can be more proactive and empowered in how we meet these transforming moments in our life, we will create an ever emerging main character in the stories we tell ourselves.

We evolve just like our favorite characters in a long running book or movie series. Take a few moments to realize how much Harry Potter or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz grow in character development over the years of a continual book series or multiple remakes of a classic.

A writer spends an inordinate amount of time on character development. The story arc provides the framework for the character to face challenges, make important self discoveries and grow through the experience.

However the stories we usually tell ourselves do the opposite — they keep us gridlocked in limiting beliefs about ourselves. We reinforce old narratives rather than re-writing the script to encourage our own character development.

We have rich resource material that we can readily access to better support our life-long character development. We’ve just been looking at it and applying it in all the wrong ways for centuries. In my last blog post entitled “Better Scripts, Better Stories” I offered a strong visual image of a greenhouse library to fast-track a dynamic new way to think about our inner database of life lessons and lived experiences.

A powerful visual image can psychologically shift us faster than any written or spoken words. Don’t you feel this shift in your mind and body when you imagine wandering through a greenhouse library? Exploring our very own reference material in this new light shifts us from dread about rummaging through the past, to one of eagerness and curiosity instead.

Brene Brown has written for over two decades about how much we have armored up to go out and do battle with the world, defending and protecting ourselves at great personal cost. I like to think of her as one of our most courageous pioneers who was willing to do the really hard work of blazing a new trail for all of us – by cutting down the strangling vines and overgrown weeds that prevented us from accessing our own “secret garden” — our personal greenhouse library.

The fact that Brene touched a collective nerve with her viral Ted Talk decades ago about shame and vulnerability was a clear indication that we were all feeling weighted down by our protective armor and exhausted from dragging around emotional baggage.

The deeper Brene went into the weeds, the more it became evident that the root cause was a complete misunderstanding of the integral role our emotions play in the stories we tell ourselves. We’d been protecting ourselves from emotions instead of engaging them. It would be analogous to spending our whole lives wearing our outgrown clothes inside out.

Additionally, many of us get trapped in old stories because of the identity labels that were stuck to us. We were scaredy-cats, wallflowers, natural born athletes or brainiacs, winners or losers. When we were kids, it was a common mistake to apply the fundamental attribution error to “who we were”.

Fundamental attribution error is a cognitive bias that causes people to over-emphasize personality traits and under-estimate situational factors. As a result, a kid that runs late gets labeled as “lazy”, a child who struggles with emotional control gets labeled “too sensitive, unruly or bad”.

If ever we needed to “stop judging a book by its cover” — it is now. We are all prone to apply the fundamental attribution error to others and label them, which limits them in their character development. We even label ourselves — we identify as perfectionists, people pleasers, procrastinators, worry warts and air heads.

In our “greenhouse library”, we can stop judging a book by its cover and peel a limiting label. We can read between the lines of our old narratives and discover lessons we may have missed.

If Brene Brown was the one who pulled the weeds and unearthed the tap roots of our limiting stories, Ethan Kross just might be the one who takes us by the hand and helps us reframe the integral role emotions play in the stories we tell ourselves to shift us toward proactive character development.

Ethan Kross has titled his newest book “Shift” for good reason. He proclaims that we are at a collective inflection point – where integrating emotions is the transformational pivot we need most. Emotions are not something to be avoided and to guard against. Emotions are our internal guidance system — invaluable data points and highly personal information that are the drivers of good decisions and building blocks for our character development.

Emotions are not a bug or human design flaw. Emotions are a uniquely human, dynamic operating feature.

All this time we have been treating emotional intelligence as a pesky infestation – when in reality our emotions are pollinators.

Our emotions, combined with our backstories, lived experiences and life lessons become the “care instructions” for our individual personal growth. We can provide ourselves the right environment and nutrients to thrive and flourish.

Picture those little tags tucked into the soil of potted plant that tell you just what a particular plant needs in order to thrive. How much sunlight, a preferred temperature range, water, and room to grow so clearly defined on a tiny plastic instruction card.

Aren’t we all just like plants? Ask any parent of more than one child and they will quickly confirm that each child requires something a little different in order to be their most authentic selves.

Ethan Kross reveals to us in his book Shift that our beliefs are often what limits us from growing. We hold steadfast to beliefs that were planted in our minds as kids. But just like a greenhouse plant, we grew in spite of the pot we were in or an environment not suited to our needs. Most of our discomfort comes from being rootbound, starved for nutrients and improved conditions that match our unique requirements to thrive.

If you’ve ever weeded an overgrown garden or rescued a sad looking plant from the sale rack of your local nursery, then you are already quite familiar with just how rewarding and satisfying this work can be. This is the shift we want to make for ourselves too. Personal growth and self discovery work is similarly rewarding and doesn’t have to be so pain-staking.

In a recent podcast conversation, Dr. Marc Brackett and Dacher Keltner, actively discussed the old mindset that we all had around emotions — we labeled them as good or bad, positive or negative. This made it even harder to change our belief system about the intrinsic value of every single one of our emotions. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at Berkley, is a phenomenal resource for shifting our beliefs about emotions like grief and sadness. He assures us that there is beauty and comfort in sadness. Dacher tells us that it is okay to feel embarrassed and angry. We have so much to learn from these rich emotions that connect us in a very deep way to what is most important.

Dacher Keltner wrote his inspirational book “Awe” when he was steeped in grief over the death of his beloved brother. It is a testament to all that he teaches about those emotions we once believed were better left alone and ignored. Dacher was also the scientific consultant for both “Inside Out” movies helping to teach us about biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, empathy and emotional expression.

Once again, we are learning that our societal belief systems about emotions were rooted in labels and misunderstandings. We doubled down both individually and collectively — giving emotions a bad rap.

Open the Invitation:

Are you game for a transformational shift in the way you think about personal growth and self discovery? Can you imagine your backstory, past and present experiences, and life lessons as your personal “greenhouse library” of highly personalized reference material? Will you train your inner voice to be your compassionate, encouraging life coach (more like a best friend than inner critic)?

Most importantly, will you begin to use your emotional intelligence as your core operating system for navigating life? Treat your emotions as though they were the latest, greatest technological upgrade you could possibly download and install.

No more armor and emotional baggage weighting us down and limiting our character development.

We can tell ourselves much better stories – the kind we often read as kids that helped us dream bigger, imagine a life of our own design, and continuously, curiously making new discoveries about ourselves and the world around us.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Read SHIFT by Ethan Kross to learn about this inflection point for integrating our emotions and using them to drive our lives in the best directions for us. We let our emotions be the driver for too long — they are actually meant to provide signals and directions not drive the car.

Check out this YouTube podcast episode with Dr. Marc Brackett and Dacher Keltner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ObQdCYY6I

Check out the HOW WE FEEL app, developed by Dr. Marc Brackett at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. It’s free and it’s fun to use. Kids love it too! Andrew Huberman recommends this app on his podcast

Better Scripts, Better Stories

What if we all had access to an incredible library of rich, engaging reference material for the stories we tell ourselves?

Instead of rummaging through old baggage accompanied by a judgmental inner critic telling ourselves stories that usually aren’t very helpful, we could flip the script.

We could build a dynamic database of reference material that could be repurposed time and again to write relevant stories that truly help us rather than restrict us.

Better scripts. Better stories.

If the stories we tell ourselves throughout our lives keep us trapped in small versions of ourselves, snagged on shards of shame, fear or insecurities, and limit us from seeing valuable context clues for building the life we want — we will miss the golden opportunities that are often right before our eyes.

If we are constantly second guessing ourselves and worried about other people’s opinions, we will never be able to fully tap into our own dynamic and unique character development. We will write ourselves as supporting cast members instead of taking the leading role we should have in our own personal development.

Knowing ourselves well and having access to our ever-evolving inner database of rich raw material cultivated from our experiences, emotions and mentors will be the giant transformational step in the better stories we tell ourselves all throughout our lives.

Ethan Kross, author of Chatter; The Voice In Our Heads and Why It Matters, recently shared that we are at a pivotal inflection point right now. His latest book, Shift, is an open invitation to embrace this transformational reframing of the voice in our heads and the database we all have in our bodies and brains as a resource not a roadblock.

How do we turn a centuries old paradigm on its head? The one that had us believing our inner library was just a dark, dusty basement full of stuff we’d rather forget?

We do a major renovation – that’s how. No more dimly lit basements or scary attics. We build greenhouse libraries instead!

Sit with that image for a few moments and feel just how inviting it would be to linger in that welcoming greenhouse — to explore your own personal growth in a warm, well lit, inviting environment with a vast library of inspiring stories of courage, creativity and curiosity.

No more inner critic curmudgeon constantly saying “I told you so” while opening the creaking lids of old baggage rummaging for proof that we’d never measure up. No more donning old protective armor or hand me down behavioral patterns.

Out with that crotchety inner critic stuck in the past who keeps us entangled in an unpruned past. In with an insightful, inspiring inner voice instead – one that continually reminds us how far we’ve come, what we are capable of and all our unexplored hidden potential yet to be discovered.

Our inner voice would be he head librarian and life coach of our personal greenhouse library — an effervescent mentor with a knack for using intuition and gut instincts as a guide for the best reference material suitable for our present day adventures and obstacles.

This is the major undertaking that we are all being encouraged to embrace thanks to neuroscience, psychology and vastly improved parenting models. This is the very inflection point that Ethan Kross tells us has arrived. We are long overdue for this healthy, space-clearing renovation and modern upgrade.

Each and everyone of us has the opportunity to write better stories that we tell ourselves. For many of us, it does mean that we have to clear out that metaphorical attic and basement in order to make room for the personal growth databases we can maintain in our greenhouse library.

For our younger generations, we can help them build their own greenhouse library from the get go. Tear down any shaky foundations currently under construction for that misguided inner critic and storing of unhealthy emotional baggage. Make room for a new tenant – a strong, flexible and resourceful inner coach and a vast, continuously updated library of worthy reference materials.

This is how we pivot from a harsh and unhelpful inner critic who restricts our growth to a dynamic personal life coach — an inner voice that is trustworthy, truthful and has been trained to help us set ourselves up for success.

The second major pivot is to reframe our past experiences, processed and unprocessed emotions and prior stories as history lessons, rich raw material and sources of inspiration and motivation. We can write and re-write better stories to tell ourselves when we view our internal database as an endless resource library for our lifelong personal growth.

Let’s get a sense of how it would feel to tap into an inviting database to explore creative new ways to tackle a problem or make the most of an unexpected opportunity.

In that old cob-webbed model, your crotchety inner critic would be jumping erratically on your shoulder playing the same old broken record on a loudspeaker – “you can’t do that or you don’t have what it takes.”

In the new updated and integrated model, your personal life coach and supportive mentor meets you where you are. Your inner voice takes your hand and validates that what you are experiencing is hard. Your calm inner voice asks you “what does help look like right now?” Your inner life coach reminds you that you can do hard things. That inner life coach can show you all the places from your past where you did overcome adversity, met challenges and set your sights high.

Are you beginning to “feel” the marked difference between a debilitating inner critic and a supportive inner coach?

Are you able to imagine that your backstory, lived experiences and knowledge you’ve gained along the way have created a dynamic personal reference library (and not a musty, dusty storage unit of things best forgotten).

The inflection point that Ethan Kross talks about is this pivotal shift from inner critic to inner life coach. Ethan encourages us to accept the invitation to shift our thinking and to use our emotions as data points they are for helping us live a balanced, rewarding and generative life.

Accepting the Invitation:

Adam Grant, organizational psychologist, echoes what Ethan Kross is promoting — and he adds that one of the best ways to quickly integrate this transformational new way of using our inner voice is to teach it. In his recent conversation with Dr. Becky Kennedy, the parenting expert that has built her practice on this modern model of emotional integration, they both acknowledged that shifting into inner coaching is how we fast track ourselves and our kids into this better human operating system.

Dr. Becky points out that we can “re-parent” ourselves while we are teaching our kids all about emotional intelligence and emotional regulation. We help our kids build a massive emotional vocabulary and as we are doing that, we are updating and rebuilding our own.

As we teach our kids that emotions are not scary, not to be avoided and are actually incredible data points for getting to know ourselves well, we are also reinforcing this messaging for ourselves.

As we become more familiar with our inner greenhouse library reference material – and we let our inner voice guide us as a life coach would — we will naturally be role-modeling how easy it is to access helpful internal information. Now we get the benefit of osmosis to easily facilitate our kids building their own personalized internal resources.

What we once relegated to the dusty basement is the core operating system in our greenhouse library: Emotional Intelligence.

It is precisely why Ethan Kross entitled his newest book Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You.

It is also why Dr. Becky Kennedy tells us that punishments don’t work. We need to be teaching our kids how to process and manage their emotions. They cannot learn that and acquire the skills and tools they need for emotional intelligence by being punished. Punishments only result in the old baggage stored in dusty, dingy basements with the scolding inner critic.

If you don’t have kids or are not a grandparent, don’t feel that you are missing the boat of this transformational inflection point. We all have family members and friends to support. And Adam Grant’s principle applies here too: We can reinforce our own learning by teaching. As we integrate emotions, expand our emotional vocabulary and get betting at regulating our emotions, we can share what we are learning with others.

Let’s consider the impact we have on others when we rely on an inner critic, old baggage and unhelpful stories we tell ourselves.

When we are inconsistent in how we show up for our kids, our spouses, siblings or parents — we pour out a lot of mixed messages, confusing signals and big margins for error. Especially prediction errors. Our inconsistency in controlling our emotions and reacting to common everyday occurrences really messes with everyone’s ability to do the two things our brains are naturally hard-wired to do: make predictions and make sense of what is happening by finding meaning.

Did you know that psychologists point out that our inner critic is comprised of the voices and messages we heard most often in childhood. Parents, siblings, grandparents, caregivers and teachers contributed to that inner voice that helps us co-author the stories we tell ourselves.

Our inner critic has such a loud voice that it often drowns out what our inner self is trying to tell us. How can we trust our gut instincts and intuition if we can’t hear it?

When we put this into perspective, it helps us shift out of our reactive, driverless auto pilot. We become more cognizant that we are training those inner voices of our loved ones to hear better scripts. In turn, they will be able to tell themselves better stories. Just like AI, we are providing input to others that will either help or hinder them in the future. Do we want to develop a loud, harsh inner critic — or a dynamic, inspirational life coach?

Our most important roles in life are that of parent, partner, sibling and friend. We are real life coaches for each other in each of those roles. After all, our learning and growing is a lifelong process, not one that stops when we reach our full height or our brain has fully developed (which doesn’t occur til our mid-twenties). We all need life coaches to help us navigate life with healthy skills, tools, inner resources and strong support systems.

Just imagine if we all accepted the invitation to pivot as Ethan Kross suggests? We are at a major inflection point in our human evolution thanks to science-backed evidence of how our brains, our emotions and our inner voices are intended to work as an integrated team.

Wouldn’t you rather trust yourself to make the best decisions throughout your life than a harsh inner critic? Wouldn’t you love an inner voice who often sounded most like reassuring, encouraging and supportive parents who kept you safe? Wouldn’t you love an inner life coach that was an amalgamation of parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches and mentors who scaffolded you through some of your most remarkable life experiences?

Better resources, better skills and tools. Better stories we can tell ourselves.

P.S. I credit my young grandson for the image of a greenhouse library that he offered to me. He said he would build me one some day. He already has.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES;

Ethan Kross not only explains why all that chatter in our heads is disruptive, he gives us great tools to harness it. A very informative and relatable read.

Ethan’s newest book comes out in early February, 2025. He has been promoting his latest book on podcasts. It was his conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos on the Happiness Lab that contributed greatly to this blog post.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves – Part 2

Grab some paper and a pen. Make a list of the many roles you have in your life. Start with an ordinary day — and then expand it out to a week, then a month. Be thorough and thoughtful about the many places you show up and play a part. Start with your immediate family then expand the lens to work and your community.

You may be a spouse and a parent, an employee or entrepreneur, a sibling, a grandparent, aunt or uncle, a best friend, a youth soccer coach, a golfer or triathlete, a musician in the local orchestra, a training buddy, a book club member, a podcaster, a creator, a caregiver, a community volunteer. Chances are the list is much longer than you think.

No wonder we are so complex, fascinating and mind-boggling all at once! We wear a lot of hats and juggle many responsibilities and have a host of hobbies and interests. But wait — there’s more!

Did you know that embedded in all the different roles we have, we also have a specific identity associated with each one. These multiple identities are like the unique blueprints we bring to the roles we play. There is a lot of nuance in these multiple identities because we draw on different characteristics of who we are to highlight the ones that best fit the role we are in.

Ryan Holiday tells us that a great tool for helping us show up as the best version of ourselves in any given situation is to ask: What is my role right now?

This simple question quickly crystallizes our responsibility and our strengths that we bring to the table in the role we now play. Our identity for that specific role becomes the template and the filter for how we show up. It is our unique blueprint.

Ryan’s poignant question grounds by reminding us of the identity we assume as a parent, a spouse, a work colleague, sibling or friend. When we connect with our role, we also connect with our goal. That identity we bring to each role becomes the framework and guardrails for how we show up.

If we fail to ask this question about the role we play in any given situation, we may unconsciously default to another of our roles and bring the wrong attributes to the table. We’ve all done this and in hindsight, we readily recognize we played a part in the clumsy, confusing way things unfolded.

Mel Robbins tells us that we all have an inner 8 year old that can show up unchecked, disregulated and unruly — and if we let that character step in to a role well beyond his or her job description and matching skills, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Most of us never stop to reflect on the many roles we have in our lives and the blueprint we have curated to help us do our best in each one. And here’s a surprising revelation – if we don’t consciously develop a strong job description for each role we play, we are going to default to the inner child quite often. This is often referred to as our “unconscious” self – and that’s where so many of the old stories we tell ourselves become the script for knee jerk reactions.

Knee jerk emotional reactions come from the past. Old stories we’ve told ourselves trap us in our amygdala; it links our current emotions to old memories. Which is precisely why we can act like an 8 year instead of a rational, mature adult. We viscerally feel our emotions and our amygdala supplies all the data we need to remind us of past times when we felt just like that — and underscores a feeling of helplessness (a lack of personal agency). When we were 8, we didn’t have skills and tools to help us understand and regulate our emotions. We only had the warning signs and basic reactions. We hadn’t yet developed our strong sense of self and built reliance on our own agency.

Ryan’s question prompts us to remember that we are no longer a helpless, overwhelmed kid. We have adult roles now and the ability to shift into the executive function of our brains. That one simple question flips the switch in our brain — and gets us running on the right track — our executive function. We can catch ourselves before we shrink ourselves to age 8 and pivot to our better equipped grown up self.

How does this dovetail with our roles and our identities? Well, we develop blueprints for how we want to show up in the various roles we have. We even start this process as kids — when we tell ourselves that when we grow up, we will parent differently or we will handle life’s challenges more responsibly. Those blueprints help us craft the identities we rely on for each role.

As we move through our lives, we update those identities much like we update our resumes. As we become more skilled in any of our roles, we add and subtract from the identity we’ve created for each role. We are always a “work in progress” and we thrive when we have a very strong sense of self and tap into our personal agency frequently. We get to choose how we conduct ourselves in each role — and we feel good when our emotions match our actions.

This is where we can pair Ryan’s question – “what is my role right now” with Arthur Brook’s question: “How do I want to be feeling right now?” This is how we sync up our roles with our identity blueprints and our emotional and behavioral responses. We play the “match” game.

We can cross-pollinate our identity blueprints that we use in the outside world to build stronger and more reliable identities for our family relationships. If you stop to think about it, you readily recognize how reliant you are on your identity at work or out in your community. That identity provides the guardrails that keep you from losing your cool, having a meltdown or curling into a ball. Your actions and responses match the identity you crafted.

Most of us are less clear about our identities in the roles we play within our families. We drop our guard at home with the people we love the most – and in that process, we drop the very guardrails that would help us bring our better selves to the most important roles we have.

Home and family is the one place where we should feel the safest, where we should feel seen, heard and valued. Yet our family relationships are the one place where we have most of our day to day conflicts. Could it be a simple mismatch between the role we play and the actions and behaviors we bring to that role?

Dr. Becky Kennedy has coined the phrase “sturdy leader” for the role of a parent. She uses the analogy of an airline pilot to give us a strong mental image of what a sturdy leader looks and acts like. A competent pilot does not come frantically racing out of the cockpit freaking out about turbulence. We expect a competent pilot to tell us the truth about what is happening, assure us that all efforts are being taken to keep us safe and offering the actions we can take to help the collective effort.

Is this how we show up in our family relationships — as sturdy leaders – those calm, competent pilots?

Are you laughing to yourself right now now? I think most of us can agree that is not our “go to” when we experience emotional turbulence in the kitchen cockpit.

What usually happens at home is a bad case of emotional contagion. We match the emotions of our kids, our spouses, our siblings or parents. We are playing the wrong match game.

The better match game is the adult version. The one where we can readily identify our role, how we “want” to be feeling and we match our responses, behaviors and actions to that blueprint. We become sturdy leaders at home just like we do at work or in public spaces.

The basic blueprint of sturdy leader is a great template for our roles at home. Who wouldn’t want to have a sturdy leader as a parent or a partner? Think of all the skills and personal attributes you bring to the workplace and repurpose them for your roles at home. Add them to your identity blueprint. Are you good in a crisis at work? Do you work well under pressure? Are you a wizard at time management and effective delegation? Can you rally the troops? Do you build a strong team by tapping into the key strengths of each person? Do you provide breaks to reset and recharge when others are on overload?

There is yet another emotional and psychological tool that can be utilized in meaningful ways when we are nailing down our identity blueprints for our family relationships. It is “distancing”. When we are able to zoom out and get a broader perspective, we see the bigger picture. Distancing is a great tool for helping us to pivot to sturdy leader. When we can step out of the fray and turn on our executive function, we often realize we already possess the very skills we need to bring our better selves home.

Distancing helps us see the calm and competent pilot we are at work or out in our community. We show up like this with ease – consistently. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, would tell us we have deployed the compounding effect of consistency and frequent practice in the workplace. We practice keeping our emotions in check and our responses mature – day in and day out, several times each day.

Now just think about the difference that would make in your roles at home. All this time, you have been missing the golden opportunity to put in countless reps every day to become a sturdy leader! Practice doesn’t make us perfect, but it surely makes us more skillful, resilient, reliable and easier to live with.

Give yourself a honest evaluation about how you show up at work – and how you show up at home. Are you matching other’s emotions or are you matching your role with your identity blueprint, your skills sets and the goal you have for that role?

Remember that your old emotional database can pull you back into outdated reference material. You want to be operating on better, current data with greater agency and a strong sense of self.

Want some extra motivation for crafting sturdy leader identities for the roles that you play in your life? Just imagine helping those you love amass an incredible library of reference material for the stories they tell themselves. Who wouldn’t want the people they love to immersed in possibility and potential instead of limiting stories about who they are and will become?

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

Check out Dr. Becky Kennedy’s book, website and app to discover science-backed parenting tools for raising emotionally intelligent, resilient and empowered kids

Check out Ryan Holiday’s collection of books . Right Thing, Right Now is his latest. The Obstacle is the Way is great for seeing opportunities where we blindly believe we forever stuck. If you are a parent — check out Daily Dad.

Mel Robbins’ latest book is quickly becoming a fast-track resource for letting go – and stepping into your own agency. Let others be thernselves, especially family, and Let You be your best self. This book is so relatable, you won’t be able to put it down.

If you want to fast track what is packed into Mel’s new book, take a listen to this We Can Do Hard Things podcast episode. Mel and host Glennon Doyle crack open the book, the theory and relatable real life stories. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-can-do-hard-things/id1564530722?i=1000682368717

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Some of the most fabricated stories we will ever hear are the ones we tell ourselves. They keep us spellbound — holding our attention so completely that we can barely focus on anything else.

If you have ever doubted that you possess a wild imagination and a flair for creative writing, look no further than the many stories that you tell yourself during the course of one normal day.

We are so skilled at crafting these stories that often we don’t even realize we’ve actually taken the time to pen them with invisible ink in our minds. Sometimes it even feels as though we’ve used permanent markers to write them. The stories we tell ourselves impact our lives in ways we can’t even imagine.

During the course of one ordinary day, we can tell ourselves more stories than a two year old demands at bedtime.

The alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button, telling yourself that 15 more minutes in bed won’t make a big difference. Later when you are frantically searching for your car keys, chugging coffee and yelling at everyone to hurry up and get in the car, you create another story. Now you tell yourself are undisciplined for hitting that snooze button yet again; when will you learn and why can’t you ever catch a break? Next thing you know, your car’s GPS announces there are traffic delays on your route and presto, your inner critic becomes a personal ghost writer. You can almost hear the melodramatic music accompanying the litany of ways you will be forever doomed to failure as your inner critics pounds those typewriter keys.

Those early morning story lines can become a snowball rolling down a hill. Let’s face it, once the inner critic takes over, the plot doesn’t change much and there is very little room for character development. The stories we tell ourselves can block us from the very change we so desperately want.

We are natural born storytellers, each and every one of us. Our brains and bodies are these phenomenal meaning making machines. It is a core function of our brains to make sense of the world by constructing narratives and understanding based on our past history and our unique perspectives. We tell ourselves the story we need to hear in order to process and integrate our lived experience.

When we are crafting those stories we tell ourselves, we can find ourselves rummaging through the old card catalog files in our brain’s database looking for the genre that matches how we feel. Picture a dimly lit basement in an old library with sections labeled “Scaredy Cat” “Underachiever” “Timid Wallflower” “Too Much” or “Born Loser”. (I hope that imagery makes you laugh – It’s intended to help you get the bigger picture.)

If we keep going back to the same old resources as the basis for the stories we tell ourselves, then our series is not going to evolve. And there will be little room for our own character development. This is how we get stuck in the stories of our own making.

How often have you read a book or heard a podcast where someone shares just how stuck they were in an old narrative? They let a strong identity from a past chapter of their life take the lead role in all their unfolding newer stories. Once an addict, always an addict. Once a lost soul, always a lost soul.

Take a few minutes right now to think about all those things you believed were true about who you were as a child – and how you have shattered those limiting beliefs by all that you have actually done and accomplished over the years. Were you told you weren’t athletic but now you run races, play competitive tennis or belong to a local hiking club? Were you told you weren’t very smart, yet you have earned a degree or certification in a field that fascinates you?

Those limiting narratives stored in our dimly lit library are so outdated. It is mindlessly going back to that old reference material that limits our ability to shift our narratives. Of course we have changed — and so should the script for the stories we tell ourselves.

The proof is in the pudding.

The very same set of circumstances on any given day will end up with strikingly different stories. Many of the stories we tell ourselves depend greatly on how we are feeling in the moment and our ability to effectively regulate our emotions. The stories we tell ourselves are rather like a “choose your own adventure” book. There are endless possibilities.

We go in search of data from our past. We simply copy, cut and paste all the old familiar plots into the present story we are creating.

We do our best to make sense of what is happening right now pulling from past experiences – and frequently without any editing or updated research.

We even let our inner critic tell the story without a single challenge. This is precisely how we let something from our past foreshadow what might happen in the future – by staying in an old narrative that was never revised.

You landed that dream job but you tell yourself you will likely be unsuccessful, just like the last dream job you had. You make a new friend but you predict that over time, this friendship will also fade away like so many others. You pursue a new hobby but you tell yourself you will never master it like the others.

Not only are our brains meaning making machines, they are also prediction machines — and these two go hand in hand. If we don’t update old narratives, then we also limit our ability to accurately make better predictions.

Even if we don’t intentionally go in and update our old databases, we are ever-changing. Each experience we have shapes us in some way. We are constantly taking in new information, expanding our inner libraries and making genuine progress in many areas of our lives. The reality is that we don’t often flip the switch and explore the newest additions to our database.

Just imagine what incredible material you might find there! Dr. Ellen Langer, author of the Mindful Body, tells us that when we stay current with all the changes and experiences we have, we vastly expand our inner library. We can make any decision the right decision, because we have viewfinders that are more like kaleidoscopes than microscopes.

Dr. Langer reminds us that we have no way of knowing which was the optimum decision – staying in the old job or pursuing the new dream job. The pivot is in making the decision the right one. Was there something we could have done differently in the old job that would have restimulated our passion for it? How we will go into this new job — with a better prediction for its outcome, supported with new approaches to the opportunity? Either choice then becomes right choice.

The best way to help yourself become better at telling yourself stories that support you in positive ways is update your inner library resources. It is two fold — you need to update those old narratives and limiting beliefs and you need to get more creative with your predictions.

There is one more thing that requires our attention — we can work toward getting more comfortable with uncertainty. None of us knows what the future holds. We can stay gridlocked in our fears about the unknown or we can reflect on just how much uncertainty we have already experienced. Not only did we survive uncertainty, we grew through it!

When we were kids we had no way of knowing what our adult lives would look like. When we became parents, we had no idea what our babies would teach us and how remarkably unique each child would be. We learned to drive cars without power steering and we used paper maps for road trips. Today we drive cars with more technology built in than we could have ever imagined. We once took paper checks to a brick and mortar bank to deposit and get cash. Today, our phones have replaced every aspect of cash transactions.

We are not afraid of change in so many aspects of our daily lives. The last frontier to be explored when it comes to change and uncertainty are in the stories we tell ourselves.

When we tell ourselves better stories — chock full of diverse, colorful and rich real life experiences in our well lit, expansive inner database, we will live with more self awareness and creativity. The possibilities will be endless.

NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES:

Dr. Ellen Langer is an engaging and dynamic person who views life through a kaleidoscope lens. She opens us up to how remarkable it is to live life in a constant state of curiosity.

Get out of your head and into your life by harnessing that inner voice/inner critic that blindsides us time and again. You can also listen to Ethan Kross discuss his book on the Huberman Lab podcast.

Check out this Podcast episode with Dr. Marc Brackett and Dr. Becky Kennedy. Even if you aren’t a parent, what they discuss will expand your knowledge of emotional integration and regulation for the stories you tell yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6KYwizMW94

A Slice of Life

Did you know that the phrase “a slice of life” is actually a storytelling technique? Who doesn’t love a good story? There’s magic in stories that we find so inviting and irresistible.

When someone walks in the front door and says “wait til you hear what just happened”, we drop what we are doing and are all ears. A good story captures our curiosity, interest and attention.

It is these little “slices of life” that we share with each other throughout the day that do wonders. When we hear these stories, we come to see how familiar and normal so much of daily life really is. Everyone has issues, makes mistakes, gets embarrassed, acts silly, falls short and rises to the occasion.

When we offer each other “a slice of life” we tap into our shared human experiences. We help each other make sense of things that currently aren’t making any sense. We offer lifelines, rays of hope and footholds to see us through our challenges. We celebrate the wins, the growth spurts and the mile markers.

Our shared stories help us normalize many of the common human experiences that unfold on a daily basis and help us feel less alone in what we are experiencing. It is all too easy to gaze out our windows into the lives of others and tell ourselves a story about how smooth their life seems to be going while ours is falling apart.

We shatter that false image though when we run into our neighbor at the grocery store and she shares a relatable story about being out of milk for the pancakes her kids were craving, even though she just went for groceries yesterday. Standing there with our arms full of bread, eggs and coffee cream, we laugh along with her because we are in a similar predicament. How unexpected to be offered a “slice of life” to go along with our purchases. What had been an exasperating quick trip to the local market had a silver lining. We leave a little better fortified for the rest of the day thanks to that simple exchange in the checkout line.

Ironic isn’t it – how we all feel like we are alone in the trials and tribulations of life? Yet a single, relatable story told to us by a stranger or a friend snaps us out of this hazy myth.

What the world needs now is more stories. Brene Brown told us this decades ago. She told us that data needs stories to bring it to life — otherwise it is just facts — charts and graphs. The real life stories add backstory, personal history and lived experiences to the sensationalized soundbites we get from the news. The raw facts come to life with stories. A slice of life beats a pie chart any day of the week.

I recall a lecture from an economics professor years ago who used slices of life to teach that statistics were not just numbers and graphs — they revealed insights into the people who drive (and are driven) by the economy. He told us to look behind the numbers for the human stories. His real life examples turned dry data into compelling relatable stories that made his teachings and our learning really stick. To this day, I still recall that lesson — and it is a big reason why Brene’s call for “more stories” really resonated with me.

Stories build bridges in a variety of ways. Stories can bridge the past and the present so that we can learn the lessons without having to go through it ourselves. Ryan Holiday, author of The Daily Stoic, is a strong proponent of learning from others through story – whether it is ancient or contemporary history, business wins and fails, or people who’ve overcome tragic adversity. Stories help us build a better framework for our own problems and opportunities. History that bridges the past and the present gives us a blueprint for the future.

Another way that stories build bridges is helping us to gain insight and understanding about societal norms that shaped prior generations beliefs, behaviors and actions. In his book, The Daily Laws, Robert Greene, puts a spotlight on this by reminding us that “People were experiencing their present moment within a context that made sense to them. You want to understand that from the inside out.“

Robert Greene tells us that the optimum way to fully comprehend the past is to make it come to life, to re-create the spirit and conditions of the time, to tap into the subjective experience of the storyteller. We can use our imagination to take us back in time and feel what it might have been like to live in that time period. It’s quite likely that you will do this without a second thought when you watch a holiday movie such as A Christmas Carol, It’s A Wonderful Life, or even How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

When we are listening to a story, we are opening up our natural curiosity and our imagination. Without even being consciously aware, we are feeling parts of that story too. Storytelling shifts us from being judgmental and close minded to surrendering to the magic of story. We begin to make connections and discoveries through empathy, sensory perception and our own emotional responses.

Watch a grandparent telling a story to a grandchild and you will see this magic unfolding. Often the grandparent will get down on eye level with a child or draw them into their lap. The opening line is probably not “once upon a time”, but more like “let me tell you about a time I fell off my bike”.

There is an instantaneous connection over a common shared experience. When a grandparent tells a good story, they are weaving their own real life experience into that of their grandchild’s — and offering the wisdom that small child needs to feel better, to realize how common that bike fall really is, and to have faith that they’ll have a lifetime of skillful bike riding ahead of them. The loving grandparent has just offered a slice of life through the magic of a good story.

So what is this “magic” embedded in story? Why is storytelling such an effective technique for imparting wisdom, sharing life lessons and reframing age-old conundrums? The answer is that we humans are hard-wired for story. We use story to make sense of our experiences and to give those experiences meaning – and we do it from childhood all throughout our lifetime. The magic is how our brains get activated by a story.

When we listen to a story, multiple regions in our brains come online and light up. This allows us to “live” the story we are hearing through vivid imagery, emotional engagement and sensory perception. Hormones such as oxytocin are released so we become awash in empathy and relatability.

We also experience neural coupling, where our brain and that of the storyteller actually synchronize. This becomes the mirroring that we humans do for each other. Watch a mother and her baby and you see this neural coupling in action. We get the same mirroring effect during storytelling — we reflect back to each other what we are feeling and experiencing. It is a brain connection that also makes a heartfelt bodily connection.

Mirroring may sound like new-age neuroscience lingo — yet it is hardwired into us humans. It is a phenomenal tool for emotional regulation. A mother can up-regulate her fussy baby to a happy state using facial expressions and cheerful tone of voice. She can down-regulate her baby into a calm state before nap time with a soft-toned, soothing lullaby. We do this mirror processing without a conscious thought as we listen to the stories our children, spouses and friends tell us. It is a fluid process of reflecting back and forth, validating how someone feels and acknowledging that we understand. We might even share a similar story of our own. We create bonds of trust and acceptance through mirroring.

So now you know where the magic in storytelling is coming from — it is coming from our brains and bodies as we “synch” up and absorb the encompassing, rich context offered by the storyteller. It is a shared human experience.

Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to teach and learn. It is how ancestors passed knowledge about culture and heritage from one generation to the next. It is how wise sages impart wisdom through parables and fables — offering us a poignant “moral to the story”. Stories are how we preserve precious memories of loved ones we’ve lost and keep them alive in our hearts.

Perhaps most importantly, it is the small “slices of life” storytelling that really nourish us on a daily basis. When we are offered a slice of life, our brains get activated in the best possible ways. As we listen to our child tell the tale of a food fight in the school cafeteria, or our spouse unravel the details of tense work project – we are making neural connections and building bridges in our relationships. We are synching up! What an antidote to all the disconnect we get from having our faces in our devices.

We get micro doses of empathy, curiosity and fresh perspectives with each little “slice of life” we hear or tell. Our small stories help us see each other in all our technicolor glory — as we reflect back and forth, the normal realities we all face. Some days we are the windshield and some days we are the bug. Our colorful, animated, entertaining stories help us understand and relate to each other much better.

Brene Brown is right — we need more stories. We can bridge divides, build a better future and find acres of common ground through storytelling. Offer a slice of life to others whenever possible. And when someone offers you a slice of life, savor it!

NOTEWORTHY RESOURCES:

*NEW YORK TIMES* BESTSELLER • Now in paperback and featuring new material, the definitive guide to telling an unforgettable story in any setting, from the storytelling experts at The Moth

**“From toasts to eulogies, from job interviews to social events, this book will help you with ideas, structure, delivery and more.”—CNN**

Award-winning writer and acclaimed teacher of creative writing Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can write better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers—and also our brains—create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.

Brene Brown’s Reference book on 87 common emotions and experiences is the perfect resource for discovering “the places we go” and “the stories we tell ourselves” in everyday life.

Our Natural Resources

For centuries, philosophers, poets and psychologists have pondered the same human perplexities. There was an innate sense that unhelpful thoughts and unchecked emotions were both a natural part of the human experience – and often the cause of so many of our age-old problems. Were we destined to keep stumbling in the dark endlessly searching for answers to this paradox?

Over the past few decades, breakthroughs in neuroscience began shining bright light into new places to look for answers to the puzzling questions that were as old as time. Thanks to MRI’s and other neuroimaging, researchers could look more closely at our brains for the clues.

It has brought us to this incredible tipping point where we have living proof of how our brains and bodies are actually designed to work. We are learning not only how to care for our brains; we are understanding that due to our brain’s neuroplasticity we can retrain, rewire and update our brains.

Now we know, through brain imaging and intentional collaborative research, just how a child’s brain develops and how long that process actually takes. We no longer have only theories about a fixed or growth mindset — we have practical tools to access what holds us back or keeps us stuck in limiting beliefs.

We can pursue the changes we want in our life in more relatable, dynamic ways than ever before. Personal growth and emotional agility are now viewed as positive and proactive — not something we only seek when we have hit rock bottom or challenging adversity.

What we didn’t know is that we possess a lot of natural resources that would be so much more productive and rewarding than hand-me-down coping mechanisms and outgrown behavioral patterns we’ve come to rely on — with barely a second thought.

We have mostly been using the reptilian part of our brain in this modern age; that part of our brain is clunky, clumsy and limiting in today’s fast paced, ever-changing environment. We need to fully utilize our remarkable executive function of our brain so that we can meet today’s challenges with resilience, flexibility and emotional agility.

The executive function of our brains is an evolutionary gift. It is the part of our brain that is best suited to help us meet the demands of modern life. The reptilian part of our brain served our ancestors well. Now it is our turn to tap into the capabilities of our pre-frontal cortex and continue to make discoveries about what we humans can accomplish.

It’s ironic isn’t it? We are so quick to adapt to the latest technology on our phones or laptops. We love all the safety features and luxury conveniences in our cars like back-up cameras and heated seats. Yet we rarely pondered how we humans are so different now from our ancestors; how our brains have been adapting to keep up with a fast-paced, ever-changing environment. Would a caveman be able to function in today’s world with ease?

Does anyone recall the GEICO cavemen commercials that first aired in 2004? That should have been a clue about just how much our brains and bodies have evolved over thousands of years.

Why are we so incredibly astonished that our young children adapt so easily to technology, as if there was no major learning curve like we experienced just a decade ago? How did they skip that steep learning curve?

We are captivated by the evolutionary adaptions that animals and sea creatures make out of necessity to survive and thrive in ever-changing living environments. We should be equally captivated by our own evolutionary advancements.

The last twenty years has ushered in the proof we needed to see for ourselves so that we could embrace a huge shift in our understanding of human development and human nature. The pivotal breakthrough will be when more of us begin to use our natural resources of our brains and bodies to their fullest potential.

Out with the old and in with the new.

Out with coping mechanisms and childish behavioral patterns.

In with our natural resources of emotional intelligence, our ability to regulate and access clear thinking and mature responses to others and to life experiences; to be flexible, resilient and creative.

It all begins with emotional integration. This is the key evolutionary component that we got wrong. We can move from the prefrontal cortex (our reptilian brain that houses fight, flight, freeze or fawn) into the executive function of our brain (where we have access to emotional intelligence) and much more agency over our lives.

We bypassed this evolutionary upgrade when we stuffed our emotions, sent kids to their rooms alone, dismissed what we and others were truly feeling and labeled feelings right or wrong. We relegated the most resourceful part of our core operating system to the basement – packed away in boxes taped tightly shut. The emotional information that we needed to fully understand ourselves was not accessible.

Most of us don’t have to reflect for too long to realize that if we’d had that inner GPS of emotional intelligence, we wouldn’t have had such a tumultuous, bumpy ride through life. So much of what we wrestle with in our lives and our relationships has a lot to do with emotional dysregulation and unprocessed emotions that have accumulated over years. When the emotions cool off or dissipate, we frequently discover we are quite capable of solving problems, getting tasks completed and even bouncing back from adversity. It was our misunderstanding of the purpose of emotions that derailed us.

We failed to install a key component of the human operating system. Mystery solved at long last – we need the emotional data plugged in.

We cannot teach what we haven’t learned — and up until now, we didn’t realize the importance of emotional intelligence. This is why we simply passed behavioral patterns and problematic coping skills down from generation to generation. Now we are all learning together about the important role emotions have in our quality of life.

We can be learning and teaching at the same time. Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and author, reminds us that learning and then teaching what we are learning is one of the fastest ways to gain traction with new skills and knowledge.

The more we practice shifting into this more highly attuned part of our brain, the easier it gets. It’s just like shifting to a lower gear in our car when the driving conditions change. We shift gears to save our brakes, to control our speed, to preserve the integrity of the engine, and to operate our vehicle safely and efficiently.

Being able to move from our reptilian brain and its reactive reflexes (that are intended to keep us safe), into our prefrontal cortex (the executive function) enables us to downshift, so we can access important information from our emotions, regulate our emotional signals and respond more maturely. It keeps us from slamming on the brakes and enables us to more skillfully slow down and course correct. This is how we prevent accidents and collateral damage – whether we are driving or handling strong emotions.

Step 1 of “In with the New” is recognizing when our emotions are lodged in the reptilian part of our brain. When we feel like we want to fight, run away, become cognitively dissonant, or people please, that’s our cue to shift gears. We’ll become energy efficient when we do this too. Those reptilian reactions run on rocket fuel and they can drain our body budget fast.

Use a mental image of shifting gears in your brain, just like you would your car. Slow down, make an assessment of the information your emotions are providing before proceeding.

Step 2 of “In with the New” is validation. Validating our emotions and those of others is simply acknowledging what we are honestly feeling in the moment. We now understand that emotions are raw data full of invaluable information. They are not right or wrong; good or bad. No judgment, just validation.

Validation is magic. It is the exact opposite of sending a child to their room alone or dismissing someone as being overly sensitive. That old tactic is what caused us to bottle up, stuff and override our emotional intelligence. No wonder we got triggered and conflicted. No more overriding emotions. The short cut to executive function is paved with validation.

The magic in validation is being believed about what we are feeling. We can organically drop into a calmer space when we are not fighting so hard to be understood or resisting what feels so visceral to us.

Just watch a child’s body language when you validate their feelings. You can see their body and facial expressions relax. Take notice of this calming effect for yourself when you too are validated for what you feel in the moment.

Step 3 of “In with the New” is to be cognizant that we have control and agency. This is when we can tap into all that is available to us in the executive function part of our brain. We can be angry or upset and still choose to act in a calm, mature manner.

The important work of processing our emotions happens in the executive function part of our brains. We can take the information our emotions provide, assess it and distill it – and then draw on past experiences, psychological tools and self control to respond in a meaningful and appropriate way.

We can use psychological tools like deep breathing, grounding ourselves by feeling our feet on the floor, counting to 10 — to create that space between stimulus and response. This will help us shift into our master “control center” for emotional regulation and emotional agility.

Re-discovering our natural resources:

We possess so many natural resources that we take for granted. Cultivating more self awareness about our natural resources equips us to engage with people and life in much more relational and responsible ways.

Our emotions are one of our most integral natural resources for understanding what matters most to us. They are guideposts for what we need to feel safe, valued and heard. When we understand our own emotions more intimately, we develop greater empathy and understanding for others. Emotions are not obstacles – they actually are the way to stay in alignment with our core values and basic needs. Emotions guide us to better discernment, decisions and actions.

We possess invaluable natural resources to slow our heart rate and calm our anxious nervous systems. Deep cleansing breaths and movement do wonders to calm us. We can co-regulate each other; just watch a mother soothe a child – or notice how a soft tone of voice calms an adult. When we are more skilled in calming ourselves, we also become more effective in helping others learn techniques that work for them.

When we can’t think clearly or have trouble focusing, relaxing and accepting reality opens the aperture so we can tap into cognitive clarity and creativity. It is when we tense up and put up a lot of resistance that we narrow our ability to problem solve. Having this knowledge, we can recognize when others need support to tap into their own executive function.

A child’s brain and it’s development:

Now we have more knowledge about how a child’s brain develops and we can stop having unrealistic expectations about their emotional control. Before we had this education, we got so frustrated believing our kids were emotional train wrecks.

How ironic (once again) that we would never expect them to walk out of their crib at 2 months old or learn to read at 6 months. A child’s brain takes over two decades to fully develop. In fact, the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain that houses our executive functions – doesn’t fully mature til the mid to late 20’s. Step back for a moment and imagine asking your toddler to do something that was physically impossible at that age.

In a recent podcast episode, Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Victor Carrion, spoke very clearly about our role in a child’s brain development. Again this is a pivotal shift in how we help our kids with emotional intelligence and a slowly developing brain. (Just remember, that all good things take time — and in this case, our remarkable young brains take their sweet time.).

Now we know what we did not know before – the importance of emotional intelligence AND how to help our children use their brain’s functions with greater ease. Validating their emotions integrates them. Teaching them to label and learn from their emotions build their emotional intelligence database. Teaching them about the two parts of their brain and being their training wheels for the prefrontal cortex gives them a strong mental picture and the practice they need to “shift gears”.

Instead of throwing out the most important piece of a child’s brain development, we install it — and we nurture emotional intelligence and how to regulate emotions. We actually help “wire” our child’s brain, so that the neural pathway to the prefrontal cortex grows stronger and is much easier to access.

We Can See Clearly Now:

This enormous missing piece of our human puzzle is bringing a cascade of new discoveries, new ways to help us all shift more easily into our prefrontal cortex and begin to engage in life with a complete operating system. Emotions are the plug in and the upgrade needed to expand the full capacities of our incredible brain.

Now that we can see so clearly what was missing, we can pivot with greater ease to better parenting models, to healthier and more productive ways to be in relationship with others. This is the dawn of a new age in our human evolution. It is exciting, revelational and intriguing.

Now that we know better, we can most certainly do better. The best part is — it is not nearly as hard and exhausting as we once believed.

The pivotal breakthrough will occur when more of us begin to use our natural resources of our brains and bodies. This is how we collectively break generational cycles.

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