Dr Becky Kennedy – Inspired New Horizons

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

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

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

Self-Discovery & Sturdy Leadership

It was a handwritten note in an unexpected thank you card that opened my eyes. As I read what was written just for me, I had a realization that how my family member saw me and how I saw myself were one and the same. I was completely caught off guard by this moment. It was a graduation day for me too. Eight years of investing in self discovery and personal growth culminated in this moment where someone on the outside saw who I am on the inside.

How often do we reach a major milestone in our lives — get that diploma or promotion — and fail to synthesize how all that hard work, discovery and new information truly shapes us? To “synthesize” something means to “combine a number of things into a coherent whole.”

Perhaps that is the ultimate goal of self discovery and personal growth work – to take apart and rebuild a better framework and foundation for ourselves. The kind of framework that enables us to be consistent in who we are and how we show up regardless of the role we play or the company we are keeping.

Modern lingo calls this “being our authentic self” which sounds just a little too woo-woo and gauzy; a bit like having a fairy godmother wave a magic wand and we are instantly transformed. No wonder people get the big idea that it just means showing up unfiltered and fearless about being our raw selves. Children are authentically themselves and we all know the challenges that both kids and parents face.

We use the word “work” in association with personal growth, self-development and emotional regulation because it is work. We do have to learn how to use tools and skills instead of defenses and coping mechanisms. We have to practice these new tools in all kinds of situations in order to become skillful in all our human interactions.

It’s time we reframe self-discovery and personal growth as a fundamental stage in our adult development. It is a pivotal time to step back from the memorized patterns of behavior we learned in childhood and swap them out for fluid, flexible and healthier responses to life. A key aspect that is often overlooked and under-discussed is that we can “synthesize” what we learn about ourselves while we fold in better skills and tools.

Have you ever wondered why friends or colleagues see you so differently than your family members? Get your pick axe out and chip away at the obvious: Are you more “you” with them than you are at home? At home, do you feel like you have to make others happy, keep the peace and not speak up when you really want to? Are you more at ease with friends or at work in having hard conversations and speaking your truth?

In the self discovery process, we often find that we are more our “authentic” selves with some meaningful and mature filters when we are at work or with friends. Clearly we can do this — show up as our better selves and work harmoniously together.

The graduate level of self discovery and personal growth work comes when we start to practice our self-awareness and better skills in our most sacred relationships. This is not for the faint of heart.

We’ve all heard the profound wisdom that the only person we can truly change is ourselves. Yet bringing a changed version of ourselves into our family units is scary business. Each member of our family is quite familiar and even comfortable with how we are, how we show up. They are comfortable with our “unfiltered” self even if it makes them very uncomfortable. Our brains are prediction machines and our bodies are well trained to respond to familiar behavioral patterns. We memorize the patterns of anger, frustration, fear and dis-regulation of our family members and we rely on fight, flight, freeze or fawn to help us cope. It’s a comfort zone when we are in discomfort.

Think of this whole delicate dance like a game of Parcheesi — we just want to get to “safety” as quick as possible — and to allow our nervous systems to calm down. It is in this supposedly safe space that we make up a story to make sense of what just happened. It is also where we confirm (and memorize for future use) what worked.

When a child experiences a dis-regulated parent, they quickly learn what works to calm that parent. Feeling safe with the one person who is supposed to take care of them becomes paramount. The root cause of our unhealthy coping skills and dysfunctional behavioral patterns is from daily exposure and experiences of adult emotional dis-regulation. We humans co-regulate each other. But we should not be expecting our children to do the heavy lift of managing our adult unchecked emotions.

Take note of the reactions and behavioral patterns that you unconsciously fall into with your family members; and contrast that with how you respond in a similar situation with a stranger. Where are you most in control of your emotions and skillful in your responses? Most of us will agree that we act with more calmness and clarity when we are NOT emotionally triggered or intimately invested.

Our family members give us the greatest challenges and the biggest rewards when we are working on self-discovery and personal growth. It is the truest test of our ability to shift into a “sturdy leader” role for the people we love unconditionally. Like parenting, it is the hardest job we will ever do — and the most rewarding when we meet with success.

Remember though that our family members are very familiar with our old ways of reacting and behaving, so when we change and try new skills and tools — we have to be prepared for some pushback. It is not just our own pattern of reactive behavior that we are changing. It is also how that change messes up the memorized prediction process of our family members.

We don’t have a fairy godmother for this dichotomy either. We have to remain steadfast in our self control and courage. We are in this for the long game – and it will take tenacity and practice to stay the course.

This is why I like the term “sturdy leader” so much better than “authentic self”.

Ryan Holiday, author of the Daily Stoic, grounds us in this concept by reminding us to ask one big question before we react: “Given my current role, how can I contribute in a positive way?”

When we are at work or with our best friend, this happens so automatically that we don’t even need to think about it. We intuitively know that our role in these moments is to help others be successful. We offer support, scaffolding, empathy and calmness with remarkably fluid ease. We are not just authentically ourselves — we are sturdy leaders.

Dr. Becky Kennedy uses the term “sturdy leader” as a substitute for “parent”. Again, she uses a term that grounds us immediately in our current role. As a parent, we are incredibly careful to make sure our child receives the best environment to be successful when we choose a babysitter, a coach, a teacher or a camp experience. Dr. Becky reminds us that we have young children with developing brains that simply aren’t capable of emotional regulation yet. We are the training wheels for those little developing brains. Yet so often, we are not scaffolding our kids with some training wheels — we are simply showing them that we lack discernment and control too.

Imagine a set of cookie cutters handed down from one generation to the next. Patterns, if you will, that have worked for centuries to handle emotional outbursts and dysfunction. They are now rusty and misshapen, but we still use them. Doesn’t anyone want to get more creative with a dynamic new cookie shooter? We have better tools and resources available today for parenting (i.e. sturdy leadership) based in psychology and neuroscience. They are safer, healthier and more productive (just like car seats and bike helmets).

The goal of self-discovery and personal growth work is to become a consistent, sturdy leader. To synthesize who we truly are in all aspects of our life – and most importantly, in our relationships.

To synthesize means to combine and make a coherent whole. When we are invested in doing our personal growth “work” we are combining the best attributes of ourselves with healthy relationship skills and tools. Yes, we are our authentic self – but with diplomacy, integrity and values as guardrails. We are more grounded in who we are becoming – a consistent and sturdy leader.

When we can be more fluid stepping into our various roles — without shape shifting, people pleasing, and negotiating for our value — we strengthen the parts of us that we love the most. We bring the best parts of ourselves to the foreground. We are anchored in emotional integrity. This is how we become practiced in showing up consistently no matter our role and who we are with at the time.

Like anything worth pursuing, self discovery and personal growth require discipline, courage and daily practice. Too often we shy away from the opportunities to test our progress that is presented to us every day with the people we love the most.

Imagine what might happen if we had a family meeting and mapped out a fresh approach to helping each other with self discovery and personal growth? Even the kids would welcome this change. We can all be sturdy leaders for each other — and especially in families, because we get to practice taking turns doing just that. Some days we are better equipped to be the sturdy leader than others. Every family member gets opportunities to participate and practice new skills and tools. Rather than memorizing and mimicking old cookie cutter behavioral patterns, we get front line practice in meaningful life skills in the safety of our own home with the people who love us. This is the better framework and foundation we want to be giving each other. Sturdy leadership for every role we have in our ever-changing lives no matter the stage of life we are in. A nugget of wisdom here: teachers and students learn from each other; it is miracle grow for better responses to life.

Most of the trusted resources that I turn to for self discovery and personal growth work, will openly confess that this a lifelong process and one that only atrophies if we aren’t putting in the daily practice. Ryan Holiday says that parenting is one of the richest environments to test our mettle. In fact, he has Dr. Becky Kennedy’s book, Good Inside, at the top of his recommended reading list in his own bookstore, The Painted Porch.

It turns out that this “work” is as beneficial and rewarding as the workouts we do to stay physically fit. We know that we are up to the challenge when we are physically fit — whether that challenge is competing in a 10K or running across a busy street to grab our child chasing a ball.

Ryan Holiday urges us to be proactive and be at the ready when it comes to how we handle life and our relationships. Do the work — every day, he advises. Make self discovery and personal growth a priority so that you can be the sturdy leader your family, friends and colleagues every single day, in a variety of situations.

This brings me back to that handwritten card. The reason that it opened my eyes to the dividends that come from doing the “work” and putting in the daily reps, is that it felt like validation. The work is having positive impacts and is bringing me closer to being my true self no matter who I am with and the experiences we share.

I want this incredible feeling for everyone – a consistent and steady ease of being ourselves and being a sturdy leader for others.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

The Huberman Lab Podcast with Dr. Becky Kennedy https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/huberman-lab/id1545953110?i=100064685181

The Daily Stoic – Ryan Holiday https://dailystoic.com/podcast/

Dr. Becky Kennedy hosts her own podcast, has authored this book, Good Insider and has recently launched the Good Inside App. Her work and all her resources are changing how we parent and become sturdy leaders in all our relationshipshttps://www.goodinside.com

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett gives us this quick read that explains all about our brain’s prediction processand how to vastly improve it.

Creative Coalescing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rich Roll Podcast with guest Dr. Ellen Langer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:thinking with Adam Grant Podcast:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

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

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

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

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

TETRAGRAMMATON (inspiration engine)
with Music Producer Rick Rubin

THE DRIVE (health and longevity)
with Peter Attia

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

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

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

Good Bones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Values are what you think is important.

Beliefs are what we think is true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

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

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

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

Architects of our Experiences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Body Budget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:

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

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

When the Student Becomes The Teacher

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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