Emotions with Andrea Garfield & Awesome Institute | Simon Sinek

Andrea, how are you?

Should I say I'm fine and then you'll say you're fine and then we'll pretend like we're both fine.

So actually, you know, you and I have known each other a bunch of years and you have been a confidant and a coach to me for a while.

And I wanted to share some of the way you view the world with other people. And instead of like interviewing you, because I find that sort of rather distant, I thought I'd actually just ask you some real questions and sort of take the risk to let people.

Hear it all.

So here's what I'm dealing with. So at the beginning of COVID I called a friend of mine in the military and I asked him, how do you compartmentalize your emotions? Because I knew that we were dealing with trauma and I wanted to be mission focused and pivot my business. But at the same time there was this trauma of COVID And I know that in combat they're able to compartmentalize their emotions so they can stay focused at the mission at hand. And he gave me a very stern warning. He basically said, you can't compartmentalize your emotions, not for any length of time. He says we can do it for a short period of time in battle. He says, but you're going to deal with it at some point. You're dealing with trauma. There's no avoiding trauma. And, and he says, sometimes, you know, we, we often deal with it months after we get home.

So I took that warning to heart and I called all of my A type personality friends and gave them the warning that we're not avoiding this, we're delaying this. And it's been what we're now four or five months in, something like that. And I know that he sometimes starts to feel the effects about four or five months after. And I'm actually right on schedule. Weirdly, I'm starting to feel it now. And so I called him the other day and I didn't was, there's no leading the witness. I didn't say what I was going through, I didn't say what I was experiencing. I asked, I started with a very open ended question. I asked, what are your symptoms when you come back from combat? And he said one of his symptoms is that his sleep schedule gets disrupted. So he starts going to bed really late for no reason and then in the morning doesn't want to get out of bed. And I'm like, check. And then he says he has one day where he's totally unproductive and Unmotivated. And he says to himself, well, that's okay. I needed a break anyway. I needed relax. But then he has another and another and another, and I'm like, check. And then he said, and he doesn't want to spend time talking to people with people. And I was like, check. And I'm coming to terms with the fact that, you know, four months in, I'm now starting to deal with it, and I am not myself.

And I. You know, when other people ask me for advice, how to deal with this, I'm good at dispensing the advice. I'm not necessarily try to follow it. I am calling people. You and I are having this conversation now. But I'm very curious, you know, do I just have to sit in this? Can I expedite it? Do I manage it? Like, what is this? And how do I get through it? You know, somebody asked me, are you depressed? And I don't know how to answer that question. Is that a clinical diagnosis? I'm off my game.

So help me make sense of this.

Sure. So let's start with, how are you? Like, how are you feeling? What? What are you feeling?

Like I said, I know I'm not myself.

You know, motivation comes and goes sometimes in a day, you know?

You know, feeling alone but not lonely.

What's the difference for you? So.

The difference for me is, like, I'm. I get the. I thank goodness I have my family that has absolutely helped keep me sane. But I definitely noticed the effects of being single. Like, and I've gone long periods being single before, and it's just like, whatever, you know. But now, like, what am I supposed to do with this?

I don't know even know how to. And I'm not that motivated to go meet somebody either.

Yeah. And it's really hard, complicated right now.

Right.

Okay. So one of the things I noticed about how you just explained how you were feeling is you actually didn't tell me any feelings.

You told me your behaviors. You told me. You did say one thing, that you weren't lonely. You were not one emotion. You weren't feeling that. And so, you know, I think one of the first steps to understanding how we work with these things is to first be able to name it. So we have these, like, handy little sheets because you're essentially learning a new language. Most of us as kids, like, we never really learned how to name our emotions or work with them or anything. Kids today are starting to learn that more as a part of, you know, just sort of coming up in school and that sort of thing, but we didn't. So the first step is to say, how am I actually feeling? And to be able to put a name on.

Takes practice. It doesn't happen right away really easily, but over time, if you keep doing the practice, you'll be able to say, how am I feeling? Well, I'm feeling sad and I'm feeling scared and I'm feeling lonely and I'm feeling hopeful and I'm feeling excited. And you can feel all of these things together. But the first step is to really know what it is. So.

Do you want to try again and see if we can and find a feeling? You might need to. Wait a minute. You might need to close your eyes. You might need to put your hand on your chest. That's like a nervous system thing that we sometimes do. And it can help us slow things down a little bit.

Is malaise a feeling?

I feel it's hard. It's hard to explain, I guess. I guess that's the whole point of feelings, right? I know that it's funny. I know the biology. I know that feelings are hard to put into words because they're in our limbic brain, which doesn't control language.

So I understand that the biology of why I struggle to put things into words, that's not helpful, is it? The how am I feeling? I mean, the way I've been describing it is off my game.

Not myself. I mean, these are not affirmative feelings. These are. I'm telling you what I'm not.

Yeah, so sometimes we see this when. When we actually either don't know what we're feeling or we can't stick with it. We get these, like, what I call moving away experiences. So because it feels awful to sit in sadness or fear or anger or whatever, sometimes we're like, I'm just gonna, like, go over here, I'm gonna push there. And so that's when we feel malaise. That's when we feel off our game. That's when we feel sluggish. We don't wanna get out of bed. It's different for everyone. Some people are exploding at people. Some people are just sort of like, quietly disappearing. There's a lot of different ways this can show up, but that's usually because we're not, like, able to sit with that feeling for whatever reason. And for a lot of us, most of us, we haven't had this many challenging feelings all at once. And that's what's so interesting about this time. I mean, it's hard for everyone, but it's Also, it's kind of equalizing. Right. Single people are having a hard time, parents are having a hard time. Like, everybody's having their own version of a hard time, but, like, all at once.

Yeah. And I think there's a. I mean, as you're talking, I'm going through all the things in my head, and they're all unwords, you know, like unmotivated or frustrated, you know, or out of control.

You know, they're all.

The thing. There's also an element of guilt, I think, because I know that there is. There are people dealing with way more than I'm dealing with.

And so there's a little bit of guilt like.

That I even feel bad at all, you know?

Yeah, I hear that a lot, Ann, because, you know, the biology. You know, that your body doesn't compare how you're feeling to other people and then say, oh, okay, now. Now I can feel upset. Now I can. Now I can let it affect me. It's like everybody's experience is their own experience, whether it's technically super terrible or technically okay. Right. A lot of us are technically okay. Like, we're not living on the street. We have food to eat. Like, we're going to be okay, but our emotions are run off of, like, a very ancient system in us, Right. So, like, belonging is a big one. Loneliness is a big one. Like, if you get cast out of the tribe.

And a lion's gonna eat you, that's a problem. So we're wired to be really upset about this. I hear a lot of people saying, like, I'm okay. Like, I see a couple people, like, I shouldn't be this upset by this, but. But we're supposed to be like this. It's how we stay alive. It's how we've stayed alive for a long time.

So how do I find myself again?

Like, I don't need to be like, rah, rah, rah every day. I get that. Like, that's fine. Like, there's the usual machinations of, you know, but how do I get through this?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's really about starting to access those feelings a little bit at a time, getting used to it, saying, I can handle it. This isn't really that bad.

And getting to the point where we can tolerate more of these uncomfortable feelings, and then we don't have to do this dodging thing.

You're saying I have to find words to put. I have to find those words, even if they're very uncomfortable to admit.

Yes. First you find the words the next step you do is you actually learn how to sit with those feelings a little bit.

Alone.

Alone. Or with a coach or with a therapist or with a friend or whatever. It doesn't really matter as long as you feel safe and you can. And you can handle it. And most people think, like, okay, if I'm gonna get into sad, I'm gonna open this Pandora's box of sadness, and I'm gonna fall into the abyss, and that'll be the end of it. Right? I was just gonna die alone, sad. But really, what happens is if we. If we go through a process.

We can say, okay, I feel sad. I like to feel sad, whatever. But I. But I feel it, and I'm gonna feel it for a couple of minutes. And you can actually, like, decide to feel sad for a minute. You can set a timer, you can practice feeling sad. Then you can feel sad for a little longer and a little longer until maybe, you know, maybe it only takes a couple minutes of feeling sad for it to pass through you. Maybe you'll feel sad again tomorrow, maybe you won't.

I really like this. I like this idea of giving yourself permission to feel. Because I think so many times, I'll speak for myself, you know, if I have feelings that I would consider negative or things that pull me back or hold me down or whatever words you want to use. You know, there is the. There's the suppression, like, I cannot feel this way, or, I have to get over this, or. And what I'm denying myself is this. The permission to just accept the feelings and feel them. And so what I appreciate is to give that feeling a name.

Even. It doesn't. Even if I want to call it depression, it doesn't have to be a clinical diagnosis. I think. I think a lot of people are afraid of those words that veer into sort of diagnoses, myself included.

And give it whatever it's called and say, okay, today I'm gonna feel depressed for 20 minutes and set a timer and whatever depression means. I can pull out the ice cream or watch tv, sit in bed. I am allowed to be depressed for 20 minutes today.

Yeah. Yeah. And we actually, like, two minutes.

Two minutes even.

Like, you can just like, dip your toe in. This doesn't have to be a whole big thing. You can just dip your toe in. What does it feel like to feel sad? What does it feel like to feel scared? You can do a couple minutes here, a couple minutes there, and rather compartmentalize, like you may have to do in the military. You're able to Say, hey, like, a thing happened today, and I felt terrible. Okay, that's sad. I'm gonna spend a couple minutes on it. Oh, and I felt frustrated because you can feel a lot of things at once, right? And so one thing that.

Really occurs to me is, like, you're the optimist guy. You're supposed to be positive. You're supposed to be hopeful. You're supposed to be all the positive emotions. So what happens when the optimist guy has challenging feelings and maybe isn't feeling super positive all the time? Like, I would imagine you have a lot, maybe even more pressure than the average person to not show that you're feeling these things.

I. Yes and no. I mean, optimism is a bias for me. It's a natural disposition, you know.

And so I am finding that when my friends are calling me and saying, like, a friend called me the other day and said, you know, she's struggling, I was like, I was my old self again. Like, to be in service, to me is the thing that I need the most. And I think one of the things that I'm struggling with is I'm. I have fewer opportunities to really be in service. Posting things on social media does not. Is not service, you know, but to actually be there with people, for people.

Even if it's something as silly as just answering questions. You know, when I do book club every week, you know, I just answer people's questions. I'm so happy to be in service. And I think part of what is creating my feeling is I'm disconnected from the thing that brings me joy, which is service.

Finding new ways to serve at a distance. And by the way, when I say at a distance, phone is fine, but.

Yeah, so I don't feel the pressure that I have to be optimistic all the time because I've got something to prove, and it's my brand because I don't want to fake it. I also pride myself on the fact that there's an authenticity to all of it, that I am who I am, warts and all. And I. If I'm always optimistic, that means somebody. That means it's an unrealistic thing for others to aim for.

It's.

Which is, you know, no one's that way all the time.

Well, what I found with.

I tend towards optimism, too, and a lot of my clients do. What I found is that that means we have less practice with those difficult emotions. So it's like, it's not that it's pressure, but, like, that's just the way that we are. So then when we have this experience of being in a lot of difficult emotions, we're like, we don't. This isn't really like our realm. We don't. I don't really do sad. Like, I'm. I'm just gonna silver lining everything, which is fine sometimes. But, like.

I mean, you're good at. You're good at being in service and being with people in how they're feeling. Like, you clearly have a lot of practice at that. But I wonder how much practice you have for yourself in being with those things.

The thing that I really appreciate about this is this idea of practicing emotions, you know, which is. And it's not just the bad ones, but the good ones, like for people who are in a bad place or who struggle with things like optimism, to practice happy. Today I'm going to be happy for two minutes. Something good happened. I'm going to do happy for two minutes or proud of something I completed. And I think that's really fantastic. I think that's such great advice, especially for people who, you know, there's loss of income, there's loss of jobs, all of these things that are happening to people.

To practice good as well. You know, for me to be okay with, you know, unfamiliar emotions, I think that's. That can be. It can be across the board. I just love this idea of practicing emotions. Matter what they are.

Yeah, absolutely. I have a client right now who's been working on Joy because he's really good at finding the problems. And he's built this incredible company because he can find all the problems and patch them up. And then now that we're saying, well, what's good and what's wonderful? And he's like, I don't know. And now that he's been searching for joy and practicing feeling joy, like he's finding it everywhere. So you're totally right. It's like a lot of people come and they say, I don't do emotions. I'm not really good at them. Or I'm like, I really, like. I feel comfortable in this zone. And it just means they haven't practiced. Some people get practice as kids from their parents. Some people get practice in school. Some of us never learned it, so we just have to learn it now. And it's not this mysterious thing. It's just. It's another skill that we practice, and it makes us great leaders, and it makes us great friends and partners and. And all the things.

This is so good.

Thank you, Andrea. You're so good. I appreciate it. I'm going to call you afterwards and try and tell you some of these emotions.

I'll talk to you soon.

Okay, Take care. Bye.