(upbeat music) - Welcome to Behavior Groups, the podcast that explores our human condition. I'm Kurt Nelson. - And I'm Tim Hulaham. We talk with researchers and other interesting people to unlock the paradoxes of our behavior by using a behavioral science lens. - In the psychology whole of fame, if you wanna call it that, there are many discoveries and concepts that help us find our group. The work on biases and heuristics helps us make better decisions. The work on goals and motivation help us understand what drives us better. The work on disorders helps us understand and treat mental illnesses. There are many things we take for granted in our world's day that came through hard scientific research. - One of those foundational elements is called agency. It's the perception that someone has that they can change themselves and/or their environment. It's sort of like control, but it's really more about feeling empowered to do things. - As humans, we rely on the sense of agency to inform how we act in the world. People protest policies and ideas they don't agree with because they have a sense of agency. They think that they can impact those outcomes. We ask our bosses for raises because we have a sense of agency. We feel empowered to learn. We feel the right to indulge and attribute our success to our effort and decisions in part because of agency. We do lots and lots of things because we feel like we can influence the world around us. - Unless we don't. You see, the flip side of agency is when we don't speak up or when we don't feel good about taking time for ourselves. And as with most things in the human experience, it's a combination of our individual genetic code and the specific environment that we live in. - As Richard Thaler says about the many challenges we face in the modern world, life is hard. - In this episode, we wanna share a conversation we had with a Yale researcher about her work on something that takes agency all the way to 11. - I'm hearing echoes of Nigel Tofnell from Spinal Tap out there, Kurt. - You are because the next level of agency connects us to the best of our genetic resources and the parts of the environment that will allow us to thrive or in our guest words to be sovereign. - Emma Sepala is our guest today and she's a researcher at the Yale School of Management and is a faculty director of the Women's Leadership Program. She's also the science director of Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. Her career's work has focused on the science of happiness, emotional intelligence and social connection. In 2016, she published The Happiness Track, which has been translated into dozens of languages and she's followed it up with her new book called Sovereign. - And that's where she takes agency to 11. - Okay, I'm digging that. In our conversation with Emma, we discussed various aspects of personal growth and development, including sovereignty, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, intuition and meditation. She emphasized the importance of recognizing and understanding our emotions, practicing self-compassion and relying on intuition in our decision-making. She also highlighted the benefits of gratitude, nature and language in maintaining a healthy mindset. - Fantastic stuff, but a quick sidebar. Before we get to our conversation with Emma, we want to thank all of the grovers who have rated us or left us a short review. There are many of you, in fact, hundreds of you, who have shown us some love, especially in the Podbean Listening platform and we are grateful for all of those wonderful comments. - Oh yes, we are very grateful to all of you who listened on Podbean and we got a lovely comment just yesterday about our episode with Lynn Herring discussing the importance of unlearning silence. This Podbean Grover wrote, "One of the best podcasts I've ever listened to. "Great choice of guests and interesting follow-up." Well done, lads. (laughs) We are lads, I like that. Wow, very good words. And what about the grovers who listened to us on Spotify? What did they have to say about our conversation with Candy Weeds? - TTLB said, "Truly love this podcast, you guys, keep going. "I'm a strong recommender. "Best wishes from Chile." - From Chile, oh, fantastic. Carlos Hoyes-Brown wrote amazing episode. So much useful information and easy to understand. Thanks. And Sarah Glennister said, "Love this." And a realization that even though I'm very busy, the extra things that I do, like convening an annual event, although adding to my workload, they deliver a lot of benefit. And just my personal little P.S. on Sarah, she's a fantastic person, a colleague, and she's created an annual event for Australasia on behavioral science. And we're gonna have it in the episode notes 'cause I really urge you to check it out if you live in that part of the world. Right now, this sounds like it's ramping up to be a challenge between grovers who listen on Podbean, Spotify, and Apple, who can write the best reviews. It's a battle between good and evil to the death. - Okay, I think we're mixing up our movie quotes here from different movies. Wasn't that from Hook with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman if I remember correctly, Mr. Hulahan? - Okay, okay, let's, we'll stick with spinal tap, I guess, for the time being. Okay, but basically the message is, if you're gonna catch up with the Podbean and Spotify listeners, you're gonna need to turn it up a bit. Use your sovereignty to express yourself in your review. Take your behavioral grooves review to 11. - Okay, well, I think we've overworked that spinal tap metaphor enough at this point, no more 11s, all right? All right, just, I was thinking, sort of, leave no stone unturned. - As you wish, okay, let's get our conversation with Emma and let's do it with words she wrote near the end of our book. And I quote, "And so now I raise my glass to you, my dear, "full of some sort of non-alcoholic, "uncaffeinated, healthy, sovereign, induced beverage." (upbeat music) - Emma Sabala, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. - Thank you, I'm happy to be here. - We are happy to have you. - Very, very much so. And first of all, we'd like to know, would you prefer to have dinner with your favorite actor or your favorite musician? - Probably go with musician. - Okay, do you have anybody that comes to mind right away or is that just general musicians would be better at a dinner conversation than an actor? - I feel like music is so connected to the soul. And I wanna hang out with someone's soul. (laughs) - I like that, I like that. All right, Emma, are you a coffee or a tea drinker? - Is this a caffeine question? (laughs) - I don't think caffeine is just a, you don't do caffeine at all. - No, no caffeine, no, that's part of the way that I lift my sovereignty, I guess. - That's perfect, that's perfect. So do you, do you, do you decaffeinated coffee or tea? - I do herbal. - Okay, perfect, fantastic. - Very cool. - So third speed round question, you know, we've all heard, or at least most of us, have heard this idea that we need others to complete us. Is that an accurate statement? - No, we need ourselves to complete us. And we've fallen for this idea that we need others. And in the process, we've made ourselves and others miserable. And for my research and the signs of happiness for the last 20 years, I can summarize it in one sentence. The happiest, most fulfilled people live a life characterized by compassion for others, balanced with compassion for themselves. And if you don't have that healthy, loving relationship with yourself, you can never attain your fullest potential in your relationships with others or anything that you do. - Yeah, I love that, I love that. And I think that's a, it's a key part of the book and again, we'll get into that a little bit. We have the last speed round question for you. And so, again, I think I already know the answer to this. Most of these speed round questions when we get here, but I'll ask it anyway. Should we strive to leave our emotions at the door, basically just suppress our feelings? Is that a good idea for us to do? - I think if anyone asks themselves this question, they know that it's not a good idea. (both laughing) - Well, in the book, it was one of the pieces that you actually wrote in the book. It's like, leave our emotions at the door is the statement. Again, that many people have stated and that is there, but the idea of that just does not make sense. So, we are talking with Emma about her new book, Sovereign, reclaim your freedom, energy, and power in a time of distraction, uncertainty, and chaos. And so, obviously, this is a book as you wrote in the back that was just kind of, if you can describe it as being compelled, there was an energy that you wrote about, about how you wrote it. What was the impetus for this? Talk about some of that energy. What was it that made you feel like this was the book that you needed to write? - Honestly, as mystical as this can sound, I kind of felt like this book just asked me if I wanted to write it. And it was, for these times, we live in crazy times. There's no doubt about it, and they've been crazy for a while. And I've been, I wrote about the science of happiness in my first book, but then I realized, you could do all the happiness practices in the world. But if you're still falling for ideas, beliefs, and habits that are standing in your way, it doesn't matter. You're never going to be able to attain the levels of fulfillment and potential that you're born for. And so, I wanted to write this book, and I gave it a kind of novel name, sovereignty, because it's different from other psychological concepts. It's about a profound level of awareness in which we look at the ways in which we stand in our own way, and we can go into detail about how, but how to reclaim our right to live completely and freely as ourselves in our fullest potential. 'Cause I think the planet right now needs all of us to be there and at our best so that we can save what's going on. You use the term awareness to talk about sovereignty, and I think of similar psychological concepts might be locus of control or agency, but is awareness kind of the key thing that separates sovereignty from those approaches? - Thank you for asking that. Yeah, I mean, agency is really important, but what agency do you have if you're not aware, right? What agency can you take if you have a big blind spot or lack of a better word with regards to some of the habits you engage with, some of the thought patterns you engage with that stand in your way? Let's take, for example, self-criticism. So whenever I talk to audiences, 90 to 95% of the audience will say they're self-critical, when I ask them to raise their hand if they are. And if you look at it from a psychological perspective, self-criticism is a form of self-loathing, to such a powerful word, and yet that's what it is. And that's different from self-awareness, right? Self-awareness is, oh, you know, I'm not great at statistics, I need help with that. Self-criticism is the words that most people use to talk to themselves when they make a mistake. And whenever I've asked people what words they use, they'll use words like you're such an idiot, you know, belong, like, much worse than that too. And when you think about those words that human beings tear themselves down with, you know? And the research shows is that when you have those high levels of self-criticism, you have more anxiety, you have more depression, you have greater fear of failure, less likelihood to want to try again. The opposite of resilience. The opposite of being able to live as your best self and your fullest potential, because you live in this fear, your mental health is impacted, right? So that's self-criticism, but most people walk around with it and they never even question it, because they're not even aware of it, and because everybody's doing it, and because it's so common in society, I call it like a viral toxic program, you know? Viral, because it runs in families and societies and toxic, because it's harming us in a program, because it's simply a thought pattern that we've adopted and that we failed to question. And yet that we can also reprogram. And we know that people who have a more life supportive relationship with themselves are much more resilient. And what I mean by that is, you know, when I ask people, okay, what are the words you say to yourself when you make a mistake and they say all these sort of horrible, abusive words? And then when I ask, okay, so what kind of words would you use for your best friend who calls you because they made a big mistake? And they say things like, oh, you're okay, everybody makes a mistake, it's no big deal, you've got this, you're awesome, like really compassionate words. What's the difference between you and your best friend? The only difference is that you live in different bodies, that's it, you know? It doesn't actually make sense. It doesn't make sense to have, you know, people complain about working in a toxic workplace and I'm in a toxic relationship. It's like, yeah, you are, you're in a toxic relationship with yourself. And until you deprogram that, you're going to probably not choose the best kind of relationships because that toxicity is sort of inherent in how you're living. And yet what research shows is that when we are more compassionate to ourselves, when we have a relationship with ourselves as we would with our best friend, which can seem so foreign because we're so not, we just think that's so strange. And yet it's the only thing that, this is Maya Angelus quote, it's the only thing that makes sense, right? She said, I learned a long time ago that the wisest thing I can do is to be on my own side. You know, what doesn't make sense about that? And then I'm going to give you another quote by Audrey Lorde was a self-described gay black woman in a straight white man's world. And she was an activist and writer, playwright. And she said, self care is not self-indulgence. It's an act of political warfare. Wow, it's so powerful, right? This idea that how are you going to show up on the battlefield of your life? Are you going to show up limping because you kicked your way there? Are you going to show up in France, banking, new armor? You know, ready to roll, like ready to rocket. And so that's just one example of how these thought patterns that we failed to question and fail to see can really rule our life and how many people on their deathbeds regret not living the life they wanted, something like 70% Wow. - Yeah, yeah. - So that's what I mean by awareness. Let's gain some awareness 'cause you could be meditating all day and doing all the right things, but still be miserable because of that. You're not aware of that. - Well, one of the pieces that you say in your book is you write that the savantries are birthright. And from what you've said here, right? I can grasp onto that. I can hold onto that. But it also feels like it's very hard to kind of come to that it isn't a natural inclination. And again, we think about people from history. We think about maybe people who have demonstrated the savantry, people like Victor Frankl, man search for meaning and diagonists, way back going to different pieces. But we don't have a lot of other, and maybe I'm just not realizing this, but we don't necessarily hold a lot of others up and kind of put them in the spotlight. Is that because it's hard to come by or that we're just not aware these people are being sovereign in their own right and various different things? Does that make sense for us? - That's such an awesome question, Kurt. Thank you for asking that. There are few examples of sovereignty. And that's why we're all in it. And this book, this idea really is an invitation to open our eyes. And it is our birthright. A child is not born thinking it's a bad person, right? And they're not. And how they are raised, how they see their parents acting towards themselves, how they go into different community centers, religious centers, where the way that the messaging everywhere. And just think about how it is when you give people a compliment and like, oh no, no, no, no, no. It's embedded in our conversations. Why can't you take a compliment, right? - So for example, I lead this class at the Yale School of Management. So what I do is I teach leaders and executives at Yale and we teach a class called the Reflective Asself. And in the Reflective Asself, the participants before coming to class, they reach out to colleagues and friends and community and ask them to submit feedback to them. But they are not submitting the generic feedback, which is mostly emphasizing the quote unquote, areas of opportunity, I.e. the number of critical aspects. But only when they showed up as their best self and what their best self is best strengths are, right? That's the feedback they get and we collect that feedback and then we give it to the participants to read all at once. And they are crying and they need to take a minute to even like continue reading. And then they tell me, first of all, they tell me, well, it was really hard to send those requests. I was like, why would you feel more comfortable sending out for critical feedback? Yes. Okay, why? Like it doesn't make sense, right? And then they're reading this and it's kind of like they're reading their own obituary, right? They're so not used to that. And we have such an emphasis on the negative, on the critical. But here's the thing, when you meet a sovereign person, they're unforgettable and they're very, very powerful because there's nothing standing in their way internally. You know, a lot of times I feel like what stands most in the way of some of the leaders that I teach, it's not glass ceilings, it's not different things, it's their own relationship with themselves. You brought up something about like, we're not born with this kind of critical aspect to ourselves and various different things. And there was Gordon Mackenzie, he was an interesting man. He worked at Hallmark Cards and did a lot of really cool work as their chief creative officer in different things. But he told the story, he said, he would go out and do speeches about creativity with school children. And he would go in and he would talk to kindergarteners and first graders and when he asked like, how many of you are artists and like, all their hands would go up, right? And then he said, by the time you got to third grade, you know, he'd ask that same question. He'd go into the school and they'd do the different classes. And by third grade, you know, maybe half of them. And by the time he got to fifth grade, there was like that one kid who when he asked it, you know. And again, so what I'm hearing you say and correct me if I'm mistaken on this, is this idea that there's a societal communal aspect that is this critical part of that it's easier for us to ask for criticism than it is to ask for that, like when we're best. Am I mistaken there? And what is it that drives that? Do you have any research that shows the like, why are we as a community? Why as a society do we tend to kind of focus in on the negative more than the positive? Does that make sense? - Absolutely. Why is it more acceptable? You know, I don't know of any sociological research on this per se. I mean, there is some research talking about how different religious paradigms have impacted us. For example, research on the Protestant work ethic has this idea that, you know, because at its origin there was this idea that you had to prove your worth in the eyes of divinity and that led to the industriousness in the United States, which is mostly impacted by the Protestant work ethic, this idea of I am what I do and so forth and sort of meaning to prove your worth. You know, I'm not familiar and there may be more sociological research on that, but certainly I think we can point to a lot of things, you know, not only is it that what we're learning from the people above us, perhaps from parental figures or leadership figures, but also other cultural aspects like religious traditions, you know, in which you think of yourself as less than or you know, there could be many factors. But the point of the matter is that it's happening and what to do about it because it's not allowing us to show up as with our fullest sovereign potential. You know, especially I think as if you're for parents, you know, if you think, well, okay, if you're the kind of person that, well, you know, I kind of suck and, you know, whatever it is, you need to have a destructive relationship with yourself in some way and you think, well, that's okay, but then think, okay, is that what you want for your child? Like, I have a friend, she's always talking negatively about herself, whether she realizes or not. And I'm like, is that how you want your kid to talk to herself? Because if you do, then keep going, you know, 'cause children do, we'll pick that up. - You stayed in the book that the book is a wake-up call, which I think it absolutely is, but I also want listeners to know that it's more than just a wake-up call. I mean, I read it as a journey that there's, there's a process, there's a lot of takeaways, there's a lot of get in and kind of do the work sort of thing. - How did you get to that point to really build something that's very holistic? - Wow, I have to write this down. 'Cause it's such a, I mean, how did I come to that? You know, I like to write things that are science-backed and I like to write things that are helpful. I don't wanna just share something and then not tell you how to do it. So I shared the ideas, I backed them with science, and then I shared tools to help on this, like you said, journey, are they exhaustive? No, there's only so much I could fit in. Believe me, I tried to fit in as much as I could in the chapters and my editors were like, you gotta stop at 10,000 word chapters, okay? So, and that's why I've got a website where I've got additional tools and I'm gonna be offering additional things as well because it is kind of like a manual, but it's also like a reference book. There's so much, and I think I condensed it so much that I know that each paragraph could be unpacked a lot. So, so thanks for pointing that out. You bring up six categories of sovereignty in the book, right? So, self, emotions, mind, relationships, intuition, body. And obviously, as you just said, you probably had a lot more that, I mean, on each of those that you could expand on in various different pieces, is there, as we think about those six, what is it that, how did you come to those and then help us understand a little bit about them? We'll ask some specific questions on each of those as we move forward, but you know, how did you come to those six? - These were the categories that I felt were umbrella categories for different parts of our life, that we can reclaim our sovereignty in. There may be more, but these were the basic ones, you know, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your emotions, which is a whole chapter because I think it's a, a huge topic that we've never been trained in, that we don't understand, and because of that, we get hooked into all sorts of addictions and behaviors that unfortunately, backfire on our own well-being and our relationships, and then mind, you know, again, we haven't been taught how to have a more sovereign state of mind. And yet, you know, when you look at the quality of our life, it depends on the state of our mind, right? It doesn't matter if you're on a beautiful beach in Hawaii, if you're upset, your mind is more important than your environment, or similarly, it doesn't matter if you're locked up in a pandemic on day, you know, whenever 200, but you're actually having a good day, 'cause your state of mind is okay, you know, so really thinking about what our state of mind determines the quality of our life, what are we doing with it? Are we maintaining a sovereign state of mind? Are we able to cultivate that, or are we not? And then relationships, of course, is huge, you know, it's such a big topic. And so, again, you can write a book about this, but I wanted to, I think for each of my chapters, you can write a book about it. In fact, someone just read my book and is like, okay, I'm writing my book proposal on intuition now, and they wanna write a whole book on intuition, because, and I'm like, yeah, go ahead, you know what I mean? You can write a whole book on each of these, but for me, this is kind of like an introduction, and so that's why I packed so much into each one, and after relationships, yeah, intuition, and our body, you know, again, you can write books about this, and I'm not, you know, this is not a book about health per se, but it is a book inviting us to question the ways in which we are living and how it's impacting our body, which of course, in turn, impacts our mind and so forth. So, I would say this is really an overview book that's also packed and dense. - It is, and I would say that, you know, from my perspective, at least, there's a lot in each of these pieces, and to your point, you do have, at the end of each chapter, you offer up the toolkits on your website, but then you also have the side effects, you know, piece, and then you have this toolkit, and then you end with this wonderful poem, right? And so a couple of questions on just the way that you formatted it, because we've seen, you know, we talk with a lot of different authors, and lots of people have kind of the summary of the chapter or the main things, but I love the idea that you called it side effects, as opposed to implications, or key aspects, or key facts of this. So, A, what was the concept around side effects, and why did you call it that? 'Cause sometimes, again, side effects often have a negative connotation. I get to take a medicine, and I don't want the side effects, but your side effects weren't always, they're not always negative. There's something that's really positive on those, so. - Yeah, it was a bit tongue-in-cheek and having fun. As you can see, there are a lot of stories in the book that, I know, my readers have told me that made them laugh out loud, right? And I want people to have a little fun reading my book, and the side effects was more of a, kind of like a wink, you know, and also, "Hey, this is what's gonna happen." And then there's some that are, you know, like, yeah, like if you claim your sovereignty and your relationships, you might push the buttons, and that might just happen. Or if you want to claim your sovereignty, you're gonna need some courage. And courage can be scary sometimes, but, you know, it's what's better, what's worse, you know? Being all nervous 'cause you're being gonna be courageous, or just being miserable 'cause you're not living the life that you want to be living. So that was, yeah, that was kind of a little fun ending that I wanted, and then the poetry came to me. Like, you know, I told you this book, and in a sense, the idea came to me, I knew what was going in each chapter I, it just saw it in my mind's eye. And then, of course, I wrote it, and sweated over it, and labored over it, and did all the science back on all that. But the poems, you know, like, I think poetry does. I don't know how it is for others, and I haven't written much poetry, but it came to me, and I wrote it down. And my sense is, you know, there's a lot we can grasp with our intellect, but the intellect is, it keeps you in the garage, right? It doesn't always take you into the living room. And poetry sometimes can take you beyond, a little bit beyond. It's a different way of feeling into a topic as opposed to thinking your way into it. And so that's why I have that offering. And believe me, I had more poems, but my editor was like, one a chapter. I was like, okay, I think already I was stretching their comfort zone with what I was doing with the side effects and the poetry. And it was enough, it was enough. Maybe next time they'll let me include too. - So I want to just build off of that, because I love what you just said, is that, you know, rationally kind of keeps us in the garage, but you know, we can move into the living room. And in your chapter on intuition, you talk about bound intuition. And then also talk about reason, and that we tend to overvalue reason. So first off, for our listeners, can you talk about what you mean by bound intuition? And then do you, again, expand upon this idea that we might be too focused in on overvaluing reason versus, as opposed to maybe some intuition components? - Yeah. Well, you know, I think just generally in society, we sort of poo-poo this idea of intuition like it's magical thinking. And yet, we've all used our intuition at times, or we've ignored it. And if we look back and we're really honest with ourselves, we knew better. We knew we shouldn't have done X, Y, or Z. You know, I start with the story of my friend Khushal, who entered the second twin tower on 9/11. And when the guard told everyone inside the lobby, stay inside, his intuition said no. And he ran and he saved his life by a hair. Intuition is, you could think of it in different ways, but it's like an instinct. Animals have this instinct, we have it as well. And it is designed to save our lives. And that's a form of cognition that is starting to be researched. And yet I think it's so easy to dismiss something because we don't know it. And I think, even in the scientific community, this bias is there. It's like, oh, well, that doesn't work, or it doesn't exist because there's no research behind it. No, that's a fallacy. It doesn't work or it doesn't exist. We don't know if we don't know what the research is 'cause there's no research there as opposed to it doesn't exist because there's no research. Easy. I think people often jump to that conclusion. But regardless, there is some research going on intuition. And my colleague, Joe Michaels, has found that when we're making complex decisions, his neuroimaging studies show that we're more likely to make a better decision when we go with our gut feeling. This is not the case when we're making a simple decision. But in any case, how do we bind our intuition? We are taught to be rational and reasonable and logical. And that's a good thing. It's a great tool and it's necessary. But we are kind of trained out of tuning into our instinct. And I want to quote Albert Einstein here because, and I want to get his, I don't have his exact word in mind, but he said something like intuition is a gift. He's like a, I can't remember how he describes it. And reason is like a faithful servant. But we have created a society where we worship the servant and ignore the gift. And what did he mean by that? You know, he has a lot of his insights. He got when he was in a meditative state of mind when he was listening to Mozart. He would go and play Mozart and he would receive his insights. And then he would go out and write them down. That's where the rational and the reason comes in. But he understood what we now know from creativity research, which is that we come up with our best ideas, our aha moments when we are in an alpha way of a state of mind, which is when our brain is not highly focused and it's not, you know, deeply lethargic. It's that in between space. And that's when we get our creative insights. And everybody knows that. I mean, whenever I ask any audiences, okay, when do you get answers to the problems you're working on? Like, I'm in the shower, you know, or I'm walking in the tub. You know, it's an alpha way. Do I am in the morning, right? And different things. Yeah, that's where it is. So to do the quote, the wonderful thing about the internet is it's up there. Albert Einstein, the quote is, the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. So again, I think it's beautiful. And to your point, it's absolutely spot on. When we think about that, we do. We forget the gift and we kind of build this altar to that servant of rationality, so. - Absolutely. Yes. And, you know, there's a reason the military's been studying intuition for decades now, because so many soldiers would come back from the field saying that they had, you know, saved their lives or another person's life. But deciding not to go down that road, but down that road. And there's so many stories of this that the military has been researching. And it was made fun of in a movie called Men Who Stare At Goats. But guess what? They've opened another research program for this, which is top secret. Nobody from that actual program would talk to me. So I know they're keeping it really under wraps, but another research scientist in the military was telling me all about it, because he wasn't under any sort of gag orders because he wasn't personally involved. And we know, I mean, the military's always trying to optimize human performance. So, I mean, there's a lot more that I can go into here with regards to intuition, but that's a good start. - I'm really curious about it now. You can't just leave us there. Tell us more about that. - You can think of intuition as in many different ways. You know, one is more this idea of receptivity or your brain being an active problem solving mode in the background. You know, like the Einstein idea of like, how did he download it? His idea of Salvatore Dali did the same thing. And he created these incredible pieces of art and how did he do that? He would consciously put himself in alpha wave mode. He would sit in a rocking chair and close his eyes and he'd be holding a key and there would be this metal plaque on the floor. And he would be in this rocking chair, just rocking, willing himself into this meditative state of mind. And as soon as he would fall asleep, he'd drop the key, the key would drop on the plate, make a loud sound, wake him up and he could start over and come up with these, you know, incredible pieces of art that you think we're all familiar with. So, there's that form of creativity. There's another one that's just deeply physiological and instinctual. And so, for example, we know that when you suppress emotions, let's say I suppress emotions, say I'm angry and I'm pretending not to be angry. I'm just like, not me, I'm not angry, right? Your heart rate increases. Have you ever had that where you're around someone and you don't feel comfortable around them and you can't explain it, but you're just like, I just don't feel comfortable and that person just want to get out of here? We've all had that, right? So, chances are, this is what's going on. Your heart rate is increasing 'cause you're physiologically picking something up that your intellect is way behind on. Your intellect cannot explain, right? But this, you can find this in the animal kingdom as well. So, if you've heard of equine facilitated therapy, right? Wherever there's a therapist and a horse and they're working with a patient. And so, if that patient, let's say it's a child with anxiety, comes up and they're scared of the horse, but they pretend they're not and they say, I'm not scared of that horse, I'm just fine, but they're actually scared. The horse is all over the place. It's so anxious, it's jumpy. Why? When the horses are animals of prey, so they're very sensitive to this in particular, and they register inauthenticity as threat. You don't understand English. They don't understand what the child is saying, but they are registering the inauthenticity between what he's saying and what he's displaying and what he's feeling. And that registers as threat and we have the same thing. That's why if someone's suppressing our heart rate increases, our sympathetic nervous system is activated, but weak logically, our brain is so slow to understand what's going on, especially if someone puts on a nice smile, right? You don't understand, but your physiology has already picked up a mismatch that is a red flag, potential sign of danger. So that's just a very physiological, instinctual way that we have intuition, perhaps something that Khushal picked up when he was in the Twin Tower. - In your chapter on the mind, you talk about calmness and the importance of having a morning and evening practice, right, to sort of have quiet time. And I just loved it. Kurt is a big meditator, but I was wondering what you find to be the best way to have your morning and evening practice. - Thanks for asking that. Yeah, I mean, the context of it in the chapter is just, especially now, we take in over 60,000 gigabytes of information every day across all our media channels, which is enough to crash the small computer, pretty quickly. And we do this daily. And when you think about that, there's so much we take in, and what you are what you eat is also true of your mind. Whatever, you're gonna watch a lot of news, you're gonna feel anxious, because that's what you're taking in. You're gonna scroll through a lot of social media stuff that's showing you beautiful people and things, you're gonna, it's gonna trigger your desire to buy stuff or look like something or whatever it is, right? And it's really hard to get in touch with A, our intuition and what we really are thinking and who we really are when our mind is clogged with all this stuff, not to mention everything that's going on in our lives and so forth. So one way to regain sovereignty is to clear our minds so we can get back in touch with ourselves, but also cultivate to bring into our minds things that do help us. In any case, so my morning practice is, I start with a little yoga, I do a breathing practice called sky breath meditation, which we researched its effects for trauma and anxiety and found it to have very strong impact. So I do that, I've been doing that for 20 years now and a meditation practice after that. So that's what I did right before we got on the podcast. And then in the evenings, I meditate again for about 20 minutes. And what I find is my mind is cleared, I'm connected in with myself, and when I go and hit the pillow, I'm out. Like I'm not processing the day. - Yeah. - And then, you know, there's so much research on meditation and I think a lot of people feel that meditation's not for them because they tried it once and it was really hard. And I always encourage you to find the shoe that fits 'cause, you know, I started with mindfulness and it just didn't work for me. I had way too much anxiety, I was living in New York during 9/11. And after that, I had so much anxiety. And it was very difficult for me to do mindfulness. And it wasn't until I did the breathing, the sky breath meditation that was like, "Oh, okay, my nervous system was regulated through the breathing "and I was able to move on." And so now I can do, and I like guided meditations. I use an app called Satva and I really encourage people to find the shoe that fits for them, you know? Don't give up on meditation. There's way too much research suggesting that improves emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, happiness and well-being, improves your immune function, improves your cognitive abilities. It is an absolutely incredible exercise that no one should walk past without at least doing like a 30 or 40-day experiment before making any judgment. - Yeah, it's interesting. I've tried, so Tim said, "I'm big on meditation. "I wouldn't say that I'm big on it, but I do practice." And I'm actually, I probably practice more mindfulness than I do actual meditation, so kind of on the opposite side of you. But I do find breathing exercises are what helped me do that. And so it is very, that has been the most positive aspect for myself is, and understanding how breathing and controlled breathing, you know, calms down your heart rate. It does a variety of different elements within your body that gets you into this more meditative state that allows you to, you know, relax and to have that calming component in various different pieces. And so again, I fully enjoy that. I do wanna talk though, because one piece that I think is really important, and I know that there's research out on this that we've looked at, but I love how you talked about this, and I'm talking about gratitude. And you talk in the book, you quote, unquote, here is, gratitude is a lifeboat. And I just love that statement, and it's a great line. Can you talk about that? And how is gratitude like a lifeboat? - It is so easy to fall for negativity, and that, you know, the well-known negativity bias, our brain focuses more on the negative than the positive. It is so easy to go about our lives complaining about this, complaining about that, getting down about this, getting down about that. And in the process, we're tearing down our own energy, our own life force, our own wellbeing, and our own mental health. Not to say you wanna be Polly Anisher, toxic positivity or anything like that. You can know what's going on, including the wars, including all the things that are going on, without letting them overshadow your entire life and take your life away from you and your ability to show up. So what gratitude does is it reminds you of reality. Research shows that more positive things happen to us every day than negative. This is research by Dr. Keltner. And people think they're being realistic when they're being cynical, when they're being skeptical, when they're being negative. Then they think they're being realistic. What research shows is that three times more positive things happen to us every day than negative. We're so stuck in the negative, then we don't even see it. And in so doing, we bring ourselves down and everyone around us. So why is gratitude to the lifeboat? Gratitude reminds you, gosh, did I just have a meal today? Wow, do I have a roof over my head? Amazing, is there a tree I can look at today? Is there someone that I can have a positive conversation with even if it's just the person at the cash register? Am I alive? Am I breathing? Like, this is great, you know? I mean, honestly, if we have a roof over our head and we have had a meal and we're safe, we're better off than like 80% of the population, you know? I mean, really, we are. And this is not to make anyone feel bad, but it is a lifeboat. It can pull you out of the depths that you are in and it can keep you afloat. And I have to say, I've used this in my own life and I use it in my own life every single day. You know, when everything seemed difficult or the mood of your mind is not a pleasant one. You always have the option of being like, yes, this is how things are right now. And yet I'm so freaking lucky, right? Like, okay, I have two kids screaming and hitting each other right now and I'm sweating. And what do I do? And, you know, I'm just, I'm lucky, we're all here, we're safe, we're gonna get through this. That's all good, you know? A lot of people would like to be in this situation. So I don't do the whole like write down three things we're grateful for every day, but I definitely, it's always in the back of my mind and it's always lifting me up and out. And one more thing is that, you know, sometimes people, I've seen this written that they think a gratitude is complacency, it's a way for the leadership to keep the people down and peaceful, you know, I don't think so. I don't think that just 'cause you're grateful doesn't mean you stopped fighting for what you think is right or you stop going for your goals, you become complacent, no. What it will do is it'll keep your morale up as you focus on your goals. - Nicely said, the last poem in the book is called "The Rhythm." And I love the idea that you brought poetry in because for so many reasons. But I was wondering, was there a music, I think of a rhythm as something musical. Was there a musical inspiration or a musical component to the development or the creation of that poem? - All I have to say is, you know, I heard the poem while I was in nature, you know? And right now as you're asking me out music, I can hear birds outside. There is a rhythm and a music in nature all the time. And we are part of nature and we have forgotten that. The point where we live and completely disharmony with nature, getting up whenever, going to bed whenever, eating whatever stuff that's not even remotely connected to nature sometimes, ignoring our bodies and then wondering, oh, why do I have all these chronic diseases? And, you know, why do I have all this stuff? And if we look at how we're living and the amount of chemicals that we're imbibing, that we are surrounding ourselves with, that we're spritzing our rooms with and perfuming, you know, it's nobody's fault. It's just what our society has started to do. But if you look at the data, all of those things, many of those chemicals are endocrine disruptors, which impacts not just your very productive ability, but it impacts your mood and mental health, the food colorings that our toxicologists will tell you that every single food coloring allowed in the US is toxic. And many of them lead to behavioral issues in kids who are then further medicated because there's a quote unquote mental health issue they're dealing with, which may just be a result of the toxicity they've taken in. I mean, I just had to bring this stuff up. I could not not bring this stuff up. And yet, I think what the invitation is, it's just to look, let's look at how we're living and what nature, we grew out of nature, we are nature. Like our body, we were born six, seven pounds, and now we're gone. I don't know how many hundred something pounds. And that's the result of nature. We ate things from nature, like we are nature. But somehow it's become this sort of foreign thing that's nice to go in on the weekends, you know? And yet there's a rhythm there. There's an exemplar there. How do we live our lives? So our body is in the best possible place. So our mind can be, it's just coming back to that. I grew up in Europe and in some European countries, like Germany and Scandinavia, there's a real connection to nature and understanding of it that in other countries, like the US and other places too, sometimes we've come a little bit further away but we can get back there. - Yeah, I have to ask if you were to be sequestered on a desert island for a year and you could only take two musical artists' catalogs with you, which two musicians would you take with you? - I like to listen to Sanskrit chants because Sanskrit has a tonality of vibration that brings a lot of peace into my mind spirit. So I don't know of a specific musician but the Sanskrit chants would definitely be one and the other would probably be, yeah, probably some like Indian flute. - Very interesting, yeah. So you're looking for that calm kind of soul element within that being on that desert island to kind of get you into a nice, good, mindful state. Am I misinterpreting kind of where I'm seeing you going with that? - That's right. The meditative state. You know, Sanskrit is one of the oldest, if not the oldest language and it has an effect when you listen. I mean, when you first start listening to it can sound discordant but then after a while, you realize, wow, this is really, it starts to, in a sense, it feels like it's deprogramming the noise and deprogramming your mind and bringing it into it. - Yeah. - Transcendent, please. - Wow. Emma, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on behavioral grooves and thank you, thank you, thank you. So we appreciate it. - Thank you so much. Thank you so much. (upbeat music) - Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what you learned from our discussion with Emma, have a free-flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our sovereign seeking minds. - Yeah, we are seeking sovereignty. We want that sense of agency. We like that sense of independence and control. I think in part because if we didn't have, if we didn't have a sense of control in our world, like things would, like the human race would come unglued. - Again, I think we need to reclaim that sense of freedom, energy, and power that comes with that. And I really appreciate that part of what Emma is saying in her book and various different pieces of this. So Tim, what did you think? What are some key things that we should take away from this conversation? - Well, you know, in the introduction, we mentioned a lot of things about mindfulness and meditation and a lot of those kinds of things that we could really dive into. I wanted to start with just the idea of take time to smell the roses, like focus on the good and just be a little bit more intentional about self-care and making life good for yourself. - So by smelling the roses though, we want to make sure we grab hold of the thorny stems of the rose and sniff in the bee that's in there because, right? No, no. - No, of course, like, you know, going back to, I think it was Emma who commented that Dr. Keltner's work said that positive things happen three times more than negative things in the world. But a problem is that, you know, if you're a skeptic, by the way, and you're listening, you go, no, that couldn't possibly happen. I think that research by Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Voz tells us that the bad things that happen to us feel stronger, it's like loss aversion. Loss aversion impacts us two to three times more than a gain of similar value. And I think Baumeister and Voz's work indicates that bad things have a stronger impact on us. So if we feel like the world is against us, it might be that that's what we're just feeling and not what's actually happening in the world. We actually, we could be experiencing those positive things three times more than the negative things, but it doesn't feel that way. So my thought around this is let's focus on the good. Let's actually be more intentional about focusing on good stuff. - Well, and we've talked about this in other episodes, right? This idea that, hey, we could have, you know, how many hundreds of fantastic reviews that we talked about at the beginning of the show, right? And all these people saying great things about us, but we get one negative review. - And what do we focus on? We focus on that negative review. That's what keeps us up at night. That's the piece that we ruminate over. And that part of what you just said, I think is so true. So it takes a larger share of our mind and therefore it's like the recency effect where because it's easier to recall those negative pieces, it seems like it's more prevalent. It feels like there are more negative things happening to us. And I agree 100%. We need to really focus in on the positive aspects in our life and really do that. And one way is like really focusing in on gratitude. We talked about this with Emma, right? This idea that gratitude is a lifeboat. It rewires our brain. So it actually pays attention to those positive things. - Yeah, I think that that is really well said. And it can be hard when we feel overwhelmed. And I'm speaking as somebody who in the last four years has definitely had experiences of feeling overwhelmed. The pandemic and whole bunch of stuff that's going on now. I have felt overwhelmed, plenty, and yet-- - Life changing situation. - Yeah, there it is, it's all there. And at the same time, I feel like we just have to be open and be aware to sort of look for those groove moments, look for the opportunity to experience the beauty and the trees, or how beautiful the sky is, or how nice the weather is today, or that sunset, to take in those groove moments just to have that moment. Not like it's going to completely change my day, but it certainly reminds me, going back to this gratitude as a lifeboat, this helps me just stay connected to the good stuff in life. That's absolutely how I feel about it. - I'm going to quote Emma here, where she said, and I quote, "awareness is key to gaining sovereignty, questioning thought patterns that hold us back." Right, unquote. This idea that we just have this awareness, this idea that if we understand again, understanding is only half, not even half, but by just focusing in on this, that we can make our life better, we can have a gratitude practice, we can do something to move us into the mood that we want to be in. Right, think about, we use music as a mood enhancer. Well, what kind of mood do we want to get in? Let's listen to the music, the mood you want to be in. Read poetry for whatever reason. Emma says, "Intellect gets us into the garage, poetry into the living room." I love that. There's a wonderful little video that's been shared on social media that I've seen that talks about, you know, poetry, what uses it, you know, until those times when you've lost a loved one, or you've fallen in love, or you have experienced this setback in your life when all of a sudden, the words that are expressed, the feelings that you get from reading a sense of poetry or listening to a song connect with you at a level that, you know, just in normal everyday life doesn't happen. And I think that is truly this idea of poetry. I love that. I love the way that you expressed that current, and I couldn't agree more. I also want to get back to something you teed up a little earlier, and this is this idea of being willing to accept praise. You were talking about the reviews, and I was thinking about this sort of in terms of, why is it so hard for us to accept praise? And I wonder if this kind of connects, and I actually, I believe this idea that I have now came from a comment that Ebbham made about the industrial work ethic, and which is basically to, that an individual could be the master of his or her own fate through hard work, right? This is akin to the Protestant work ethic where salvation is achieved through hard work, you know, through ref-deficiency, those kinds of things. And, you know, religious institutions have been promoting this for hundreds of years. Roman Catholicism has been saying, you know, the value of work isn't just a duty, but it's a human right. So this idea that we're gonna put work first is really critical. And that, all of a sudden, moves away from, I'm having a good life. It's about just do your work, and then if there's any energy left over, then, you know, then you can have a good time, right? And so if you're not doing a good job in work, which is so important, which is the first thing in all of these ethics, then you're sucking. And so we want to have that praise. We want to have that praise, and we don't wanna have any criticism around it. And yet, like, if we're gonna get better, or if we're just gonna actually live a balanced life, let's just, let's be open to the criticism, but let's ask for the praise. Let's say, okay, here's the things that I need improvement on. And can you give me some tips on what I've been doing right lately? - But that's hard. - It's hard for us to ask for the praise. It's hard for us to take that praise, and again, maybe not everybody. I'm looking at myself and kind of extrapolating out to the larger audience, but I know for myself, it is hard to take praise, because I always feel like it's, I don't deserve it. I feel like I could be doing better. I could do more, I'm all of these factors, and when I get critiqued, you know, yeah, that feels bad, but at least I can work on that, and it doesn't feel false, and there's a false sense of praise. And we've talked about this, even with the reviews. It's like, what podcasts are people listening to? Because, man, we're sitting here and we're getting all these accolades, but, you know, really, is that really how good we are? And I think there's a point where maybe it is. Maybe we are too critical of our own selves, and so accept the praise. Get out of this idea that, you know, we have to always do better. We have to always Protestant work ethic or industrial work ethic, and, you know, my only way to salvation is to work harder and better and everything else, and, you know, it might be good enough. - Yeah, I know in my own experience performing music, being out in clubs and bars and that sort of thing, I know that when, and this happens on, you know, far too regular a basis, but a very drunk person walks right up to the front of the stage, stands right in front of me during the, while I'm singing a song, and just starts talking to me, like, you know, I'm ready to engage them in a conversation, and they say something like, "Oh, man, like, I know talent, "and you are really talented," and they're barely able to stand up, and I totally discount what they have to say. A completely discount is like, no, what I have learned because of those experiences happening so often, it's like, it doesn't matter what I think. It's what they think right now. It just, they're saying something nice, and I'm just gonna just take that in and go, okay, they said something nice about what's happening here. The fact that they didn't care to wait until I was done with that song is totally irrelevant. The fact was, they said something nice, and I'm just taking that on face value as that was a compliment. - See, I thought for sure you were gonna say, they just come up there drunk and they go, "Free bird, free bird, I wanna hear free bird." - That's different. (laughing) - That would be me going to your concert, right? You know, we don't do free bird. All right, last piece that I think we can groove on here is, you know, we've talked a lot, and I think Emma does a nice job about, you know, tips about how we can regain our sovereignty and kind of build this life that's more of a grueling, like that you're in your groove for more of this this time, right, there's some overload there. And one of the things that I think we didn't necessarily get into a lot, but I think is really important is that you can change your environment, right? It's easier to change your environment many times than it is to change your habits. I've talked a ton about Oreos and putting them down in the basement as opposed to being there, but it changes the environment so that my behavior is different. - Yeah, it does. And it's a great story because it works. I mean, that one of the things that really makes your Oreo story work of moving the Oreos out of the kitchen and into the basement is that it's actually functional. It slows down your Oreo consumption, doesn't it? - Slows down my Oreo consumption to a certain degree. Yes, it would be much more if they were up as opposed to down, but does it stop it? No, there you go. I also think about some of the things that Emma said about we are nature, this implication that we eat nature, we breathe nature, we are part of the animal kingdom. Like, why fight the feeling? And I think that there might be some limits on that, but we certainly can benefit from getting in touch with the very natural impulses of who we are, the very natural things that we need, like we survive through cooperation. That's a totally natural thing. So even when it's not in our own best interest personally, we as a species survive through cooperation and that's a really good natural instinct to pick up on. - And being outside and being in nature, I think there's a calming effect. I know that there's been research that shows, being in front of water reduces our heart rate and the stress levels and cortisone levels within our body. So there's lots of really good stuff in that getting back to nature, I think is really good. And the other part about that, and this was a piece that I think was brought up here, this idea that we get 60 gigabytes of information every single day in our modern society between television, internet, social media, your phone, all of the things that we have that, my God, that amount of information is what people would consume in multiple years in ancient times. And so we get that every day and it's important for us to realize that sometimes we have to separate from that and sometimes we need to get out into nature and just have a fresh perspective on it. And this is scary for me from my perspective because I realize this, but I don't know if my kids do so much. I don't know if I've taught them that, hey, being on your phone 24/7 isn't necessarily the best thing for you in the long run and put it down. Go out and enjoy a walk without any music in your ears or any social media at your front hand or texting with your friends, just go out. - Good luck with that, Dad. There we go. All right, Tim, I think we might have expanded on things well enough and we talked, I thought it was a really good conversation with Emma, but let's wrap it up, okay? - That sounds good. It's all good, Kurt. I know that in the introduction, we spoke a lot about the kind reviews we've been getting and we wanna reiterate our gratitude for them. They really go a long way and not just with us, but with others too. - Yeah, the social proof concept and behavior science is very powerful. It takes it to 11, Tim. That's what it does when other people see nice reviews that they are more likely to give behavior groups a try. So thank you, Groovers. Thank you for helping us out in that way. We do this for the fun of it and we really, really appreciate your support and it makes our day, makes us smile. - So with that, Groovers, we hope that you're able to take some lessons from our conversation with Emma and use them this week as you go out and find your groove. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
