Resilience, Emotional Well Being with Sara Westbrook

You're listening to TFR, This Feels Right.

All right, welcome to TFR. Before we jump in, let's check in with our first guest, Sarah Westbrook. Sarah, how are you feeling today?

Excited and a little bit nervous. It's a combo.

I love— first off, you should always know I love combos. And I think, you know, nervous, that, as you know, being a singer performer, that means that you're taking this seriously. And this is, this is good stress. That's part of the excitement.

Well, it keeps you on your edge.

Absolutely. It does. It does. So thank you for bringing that energy to the show. I look forward to it. And this show is about resilience and emotional well-being today. And We've got the perfect guest for that. And that's Sarah Westbrook. And she is the creator of— I'm going to use your hand gestures here— of Up You Power.

Yes. And it is very up. It is very uplifting.

Up you power.

Yes.

Very powerful, that. She is a speaker. She is an author. And what's really cool is that she brings her music into play occasionally. She is a singer. You can also find her on iTunes, right?

Yes.

Okay, great.

And also YouTube. I have videos on there as well. Instagram.

Yeah, absolutely. That's— and you've been doing this for like 11 years with the YouPower presentations. And really the focus is about strategies to build resilience and emotional well-being for students, educators, parents, People in business, well, just all of us really.

Yeah, just people.

People in general. Let's just put people in general. And you've done this for, I mean, over 500,000 people, you know, so I'll do Austin Powers. Half a million people have benefited from your enthusiasm, your humor, your music, your life experiences, and this transformational power to be able to really look into emotions and resilience. And we're going to unpack that.

Why, thank you, Joel. That is really quite a Intro. I like it. Thank you.

Oh, and you're also the— and you know what, one more. You're also the author of You Power Journal 2.0, which is an interactive journal, and that's designed to help build resilience in you. So I really look forward to unpacking all this, Sarah, because this is something on the show we haven't spoken about. We've spoken about a bit emotional intelligence, but we've never really talked about How resilience fits into this. And—

Right.

Listeners, if this is your first time listening to the show, this is TFR. This is the show that's about how can you influence others without manipulation. In other words, how are you able to shift behaviors, ideas, and actions without being in— without controlling, without pushing it, by being able to pull it in? So what that means is you're not just able to speak to the logic, But more importantly, and this fits in with what we're talking about today, connect to the emotion so the other person says, yeah, this feels right. And so let's jump in with Sarah today. And Sarah, my first question, we talk about resilience, emotional well-being, and, you know, we talked about you presented to over half a million people. What have you seen over the past 10 years, you think, that that's really changed in the audiences and the people that you're working with, with resilience and emotional well-being?

I would say that looking back even over the last few years, as far as to just paint a broad brush, is we were really lacking empathy and also really feeling entitled, and it was easy to take for granted. Now, given the time that we're in, With this pandemic, I think we're seeing a shift, which is amazing. We're seeing a lot of empathy, compassion, and gratitude. And it's my hope that that's the silver lining, that we, we leave this pandemic with those gifts of embracing empathy. Yeah. Embracing gratitude and really applying it. Because before, I was seeing that the shift was lack of. If I'm painting a broad brush.

Yeah, for sure. You're not pointing at people to go, you, you, you.

No, no, no, just in general. And I think even myself, it was easy to take something for granted, to, to— if someone would have told me that this was going to happen even 6, 8 weeks ago, I would have been like, what? No. To really see that, that there was this huge circumstance that's not in our control, that really shifted the way that we do our day-to-day, our routines, even having our kids home.

Yeah.

I was traveling, doing presentations. Those are all canceled and postponed. So I'm at home shifting my business around, and my husband's downstairs in our office, Working from home.

Yeah.

This is not how our life looked before. So just in a, in a quick moment, everything shifted. And my hope is in that we get to see, whoa, when this is all said and done, what am I going to choose to walk away with? And my hope is to always be mindful and appreciate the things that maybe I easily took for granted before.

Well, you know, first off, I completely agree with you. I mean, I've noticed also in the past 10 years, I don't know if it's technology or what, but definitely people are— there was a lack of empathy. And, you know, in business, I would say empathy is probably one of the most overused words and underused skills. People just don't know how.

Well said.

Yeah, people just don't know how to— they say we need to be more, but they don't know how to do it. Maybe we're gonna unpack that a little bit. And I agree, I think we Everyone just felt much more compassion moving forward, rich or poor, no matter where you are in the world, everybody is somehow struggling with what is going on right now.

Well, I think, Joel, you bring up a really good point because what I like to talk about with my audiences, with myself, with my family, is although we might not have control over the circumstances that happen to us, in life, and now we're seeing one that really we don't have control over, and we're uncertain about what it looks like even at the end and moving through. But it triggers big emotions.

Yeah.

So it triggers, you know, circumstances trigger big emotions, whether it's anxious, nervous, disappointment, sadness, even happiness, joy. And that's what we really have in common beyond the circumstance, is that we all feel big emotions. And what I've noticed is there's a lot of people now more than ever really sharing where they're at, like just really being open and honest. And you even see celebrities like Ellen being like, here I am at home with no makeup on and my hair's— and we can all relate to that.

Yeah.

So not only can we have comfort in knowing we're in this together, but that we also have comfort in knowing we are emotional beings and we all feel big emotions. And even when they're uncomfortable, they're there. And I think before this, we didn't see as many people openly talking about their emotional state. And now I'm seeing that we're really seeing a lot of people just being vulnerable. And that can be the hard part about emotions is the vulnerability part, 'cause it feels uncomfortable. But I see a shift of people being like, well, we're in this together. We're all on—

That's right. So talk to me a bit about this, because let's go— let's talk to me about— because I know you talk a lot about emotions and people just say, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And really, that's kind of one of the— sounds like it's one of the traps of emotional well-being when we just say, I'm fine. So talk to me a bit about that.

I think that a lot of times with emotions, since they can be big, uncomfortable, and overwhelming, when I've spoken to audiences and even one-on-one, we can often just reply with a quick, I'm fine.

Right.

And even to people that we feel we can open up to, it can be just like, oh, I'm just, I don't want to get, I'm fine. And we can only do that for so long. So I, hence what you said, I'm fine, I often give the visual of, you say, I'm fine, and you can do it for a bit, and then you say, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, it catches up to you, and it's like, boom, one day I'm not fine. And I feel as though the big shift that I'm noticing that's happening, and that I'm hoping continually happens, is just saying, it's okay not to feel okay. Like, we're gonna have big emotions, and it is okay, and the more we keep bringing it to the light, that we can actually move through it in a healthy way. I often compare it to, to if you picture, say, mold, and you put mold in a really deep, dark place in a closet, you close the door.

Right.

The mold grows in the dark, but when you bring it out to the light, it starts to diminish. So if we picture that same analogy with emotions, if you just say, I'm going to take this emotion, I'm just going to shove it down, I'm going to It doesn't go away, it just keeps festering and shows itself in different places. So what if the practice became with, it's okay to feel overwhelmed. You're going to have moments where you feel angry and joy, and then it will switch to irritated, and then you might feel sad, and it's— all of it is natural. Yeah. But it's how we choose to verbalize it, acknowledge it, Be aware of it, and then how we choose to move through it in a healthy way, whether that's talking to someone, deep breathing, writing. For me, it's also music, because we don't want our next pandemic to be mental and emotional health and wellbeing.

Yeah, I think that'll be our next show with you. We'll talk about where— and we'll have you come back in a couple months when we're like, how are we dealing with this now? Because I think there'll be a lot of pent-up emotions. I like the example of the mold, and as you were speaking of that, all of a sudden my chest felt really tight. As you're saying that, it's like, oh my God, it's like, oh, there might be some pent-up stuff in there.

Get out your journal.

Yeah. So, so talk about journaling because, you know, people say, you know, writing this down and stuff like that. Can you talk to me a bit about that? How, you know, because people are, as they're listening, they're going, okay, so I am feeling this. Maybe I don't have anyone to talk to. I don't feel safe to talk to them. So journaling would be one way to deal with that.

So I'm going to tell you just a quick story about journaling, because I started journaling at 11 years old, and I didn't want to. I thought journaling would be silly, not helpful, a waste of time, and would just exhaust my hand, and without it being meaningful.

Right.

So my mom, being the mom that she was, said, you don't have a choice. She could see that as a preteen, when I was going through my parents' divorce, lack of relationship with my dad, there were circumstances at school, people making fun of me, feeling overwhelmed, that I was actually absorbing the emotion. And I love when people just get along. Like, that is my ultimate favorite.

Sure.

It's— and it doesn't always happen.

Yeah.

And it's not always going to be the way it is, and not everyone's going to like everyone. And so instead of just knowing that and learning and just moving through it, I just absorbed the emotions, and it was affecting my confidence and my ability to bounce back. So my mom got me into journaling, and the first 2 pages of the journal, because she said I had to write 2 pages, and I want to tell you, Joel, the only reason why I wrote in the journal Was because I knew that if I said to my mom, I'm not writing in a journal, that won't even be fun or helpful. That's— maybe that worked in the olden days, it won't work now. I knew her response to me would say, okay, well, remember the telephone that you like using?

Yeah.

Until you write in the journal, you're not using the phone. And like, Joel, I'm talking about the old-fashioned phone that's attached to the wall with the curly cord.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That you actually talked on?

Yeah.

And I loved that phone. So I wrote in the journal so I could use the phone. I say to parents, it's like you say to your kid, when you blank, then you, and we do it to kids all the time. When you eat this, then you get, when you put on your shoes, then we go. And so she did that. And so I wrote in the journal and my first lines were, The reason I'm writing so big, and my font was big, is because I want to take up as much room as possible because I don't have 2 pages of thoughts.

Sure.

And I kept rewriting that, rewriting that, rewriting that until halfway through the second page I started to actually write about thoughts, day, adventures, feelings. I did a journal challenge with young people and even the ones We did it for 30 days, that thought it would be silly and not helpful. At the end, Joel said, I have more to say than I thought, that it actually decluttered. And I wasn't a good writer. I struggled with writing. It was that I stuck with it. And I realized just because something might not come easily to you, and just because you might think, oh, that won't work for me. Give it a shot. Maybe it will. And journaling became that for me.

It's interesting, of course, because your, your mom did the opposite of what we're talking about here, which is to influence without manipulation.

Yeah.

Proves us wrong.

You can, you can manipulate it. That's like the parent though, right? That's like the parent versus friend. Like, no, no, no, there's going to be boundaries and structure.

Yeah, well, that's— we, and we do need boundaries and structure. But, you know, it sounds like what the payoff of journaling is, is that clutter of thoughts and emotions are— we don't often think about it. So it's, you know, if we, we think it may be at 450 words a minute and we can only say about 150 words per minute, that means it's 300 words. That's kind of that self-talk that sort of fills this cluttering our brain in there. And a lot of that could be, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling stressed, I'm scared. So I think that's— is that what journaling does? Is it forces those 300 words to start finding a place to live?

For me, it does. It literally just lets me have a release. It doesn't mean it fixes everything. It's not like, oh, I journaled and now my life's perfect. No, it's just one more tool in your toolbox. Yeah. So now I'm so thankful to my mom who had me start journaling. Because I see now it is a gift of release. And I might wake up at 4:00 AM in the— with thoughts in my head. You know, have you ever had that moment where you wake up and you're thinking, shoulda, woulda, coulda, but I didn't do that? And you—

How does that go again, please?

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but I didn't do that. And then you, you, and then you, you, Instead of just laying there, expecting your body to go to sleep, because your body's tired, but your mind is going a mile a minute.

Right.

Try grabbing a piece of paper. I get it, our eyes are squinted, we don't want to do it, but I also don't want to be laying there for the next 2 hours trying to fight the thoughts in my head instead of just getting them out and having that release. And then if you need to, you can also add some other things into your toolbox. For other people, they might find it helpful to scream into a pillow or go for a walk, or they might need a glass of water. You know, there's simple— they might find that humming a song in their head is very soothing or certain music. Journaling just can be something that is in your toolbox of ways you move through an emotion, and it's going to be different for everyone, even in your household. But there's no harm in just trying it and seeing, maybe that could be useful.

Well, and we'll come back to music because I think music is a huge way for people to deal with that, you know, screaming the pillow, going for a walk, but music can definitely Do something, you know, from a certain neuroscience point of view can definitely have an effect on us. And I love what you say about that 4 AM because I like to call that the 4 AM dress rehearsal. Let's say, you know, maybe you're going to do a big presentation or you have to have a big conversation with someone the next day and you kind of wake up at 4 AM and you, you kind of play both parts. And then I'm going to say, and then he's going to say, and then I'm going to say, you write out the whole script.

Until it happens and you're like, well, that didn't go how Why did they say that? Because I was planning on them saying that.

They obviously didn't read their lines properly.

And it happens.

They went off script.

And that's the art of flexibility, which goes back to resilience, is sometimes things aren't always— it's like that whole saying, hindsight's 20/20, right? You can, you can connect the dots looking back, and yet we in our brain want to connect them looking forward.

Yeah.

Well, I'm going to talk to them and they're going to say that and I'm going to get that job and then, and then, and then, and then really it's, we can have an end result, we can have goals, we can have, but know that there can be grace and there can be movement in it, that the detours in life can become the best part of the tour.

Right.

If you're open to that flexibility, And I think now in this uncertain, unprecedented time, we really have to be graceful. And that's the word that comes to my head because our expectations of ourselves and those around us can be so high. And I think that that's where we were at before. And now we have to lower it and say, let's take a breath. Mm-hmm. Let's just be mindful of where we're at and know that you are enough, that whatever you're doing, you are doing enough. And that this is not about coming out the other side of, of, of all of this, having to check everything off your to-do list. No, it's coming out the other side saying, What did I learn? What can I be grateful for? And that I just got here, and that you're, you're healthy, your family's healthy, your kids are healthy. Like, that's number one. Because I think we can get almost so worked up and stressed out because of our expectations. So if we just take a breath and say, our number one expectation is health and safety right now.

Right.

And, and that can also Have us take a breath and say, okay, I'm going to have huge emotions, and it's okay. My family is going to have— we're in a melting pot of huge emotions.

Yeah, for sure.

And it's okay. It's what we do with them. Permission to mess up. Let's call it that, Joel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Permission to mess up. Permission to say it's okay not to be okay.

Yeah.

So, we're going to take a break in a couple of minutes, and then we're going to talk about— I like to sort of React or respond moment, right, that you do with everyone. We'll talk about that after the break. But before we go into our little break, our little communication improv break, it sounds like we're on the cusp of resilience, right? And resilience is one of those, again, buzzwords.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, is resilience— you know, some say resilience is bouncing back, some say resilience is bouncing forward. You know what? How do you see resilience or how do you define resilience?

I define resilience as, yes, you're bouncing back. So you're bouncing back from a challenge. So if you picture a basketball and you picture an egg and you drop the egg on the ground, it's just going to splat. It's just going to completely demolish. If you let the ball, it will bounce back, but you also have to move forward. So it's bounce back and move forward. The combination, I think, is essential because you want to bounce back with a lesson learned, to be able to say, I'm not perfect. My life is not perfect, but life is not about perfection. I believe it's about the art of reflection and redirection. So if you can reflect back on a lesson learned, and then you can redirect it to who you want to become or how you want to shift it. We're bouncing back and then we are moving forward with reflection and redirection.

I'm writing this down. That's gold. Reflection and redirection. Yeah, yeah.

And that's what I talk about, even especially when I'm talking to parents, because I just want to say, we can put this big word of, you know, even parenting perfectly, or, or, and we can do that in everyday life. Anything we can say, well, I want to do it perfectly. And I know I've been there many times. I have to be mindful of this. And I'm very open that I say everything I'm sharing, whether it's a presentation online, even with you right now, and the viewers and the listeners, I continually practice. That's why I say permission to mess up.

Yeah.

Please give me permission too, because it is just the— that's how we learn. And so we want to be able to have that room to say, Okay, I messed up. Now I'm going to reflect, I'm going to redirect, and this is my end result, and this is who I want to become. So what choice do I need to make to help me get there? And that's what I build strategies and skills around, and that's what I'm passionate about communicating and teaching. But number one, practicing.

You know, absolutely, because if you're talking about reflection and redirection and permission to mess up, Right. So it's— resilience is an ongoing thing. It's not, it's not a, okay, I'm bouncing forward. Sometimes you're going to bounce forward, but in a sense, it's going to be, oh, you're bouncing back again.

I'm dribbling right now. I haven't got the bounce.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm just dribbling, or I'm feeling my way around this, right? I'm figuring it out. So I like this reflection and redirection because The redirection, and it's difficult if you're a perfectionist, you put a lot of pressure to get it right. And maybe that's why maybe perfectionists struggle with resilience, because it's this fear of rejection or this fear of messing up or this fear of making a mistake. And so they just kind of keep doing the same thing over and over again.

And I would say, then let's look at the emotion that triggers. So when you mess up, what emotion do you feel? And some would say, well, I feel embarrassed. Okay, so then that's the real, that's the real thing we have to work on. So, it's not the messing up, it's the emotion it triggers.

Right.

So, what I constantly look at, even in my own self, is that a circumstance isn't always in my control, and that I also will mess up. But a circumstance is going to trigger an emotion, and that's often what we have the most difficult time with. is the emotion is big, it's uncomfortable, it can be overwhelming, it can feel permanent, right? Like you can think, will I always feel this way?

Yes.

There could be a part of your brain that says, well, yes, but the reality is no. And emotions can be really intense, like waves, you know, like grief can be really intense and then subside and then be really intense. So what I, am passionate about doing is saying, feel it. Don't pretend it's not there. You know, feel the emotion. You will feel embarrassed sometimes. It's not to be avoided. It's not like you can say, embarrassment is really uncomfortable for me, so I'm going to avoid that emotion.

Right.

Because it will happen. And even with our kids, it's— they're going to feel emotions. But what if it was about practicing How you were aware of the emotion, putting a name to it, and then how do you move through it in a healthy way, whether that's deep breathing, music, talking, writing, so that you can bounce back and move forward with respect for yourself, others, and your dreams, regardless of sometimes feeling annoyed, embarrassed. Angry, sad, disappointed. That's what I believe builds resilience. So when we look at how we move through those tough, challenging emotions, and we practice that, because I do believe it's a practice and a skill, the outcome becomes resilience, confidence.

Yeah, this is good. I want to, I want to finish this because we're going to come back to and talk about, you know, sort of that, that moment. I love this is What is that? What is the moment that is happening? It's not, it's not the failure. It's actually the embarrassment, the emotion that's about. That's sort of what I call that, you know, do you react or do you respond to that moment? React might be you ignore it or you jump on it. Respond means you took a beat and go, what's going on?

Right.

So we'll come back to that and tie that in and talk a little bit more about music. Before we do that, let's take our— are you ready, Sarah Westbrook?

Yes.

Improv— improve your communication style.

Yes.

So we're gonna do something that we call One Word at a Time. You and I are gonna tell a story, but we can only use one word. So we're really gonna have to trust each other and listen to each other, and neither of us can ever take control of this. We'll have to just leave it up to the improv gods to—

Okay. Share this.

I'm gonna give a title to the story. All right. And then we'll sort of base it on that.

I can't wait.

Yeah.

What's your title?

I'm thinking. I'm thinking.

Oh, it's gotta be good.

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't planned it. So I'm thinking title to the story. Let's see, what have we been speaking about? Ah, all your engagements were canceled. Talking about We'll pretend we're like the same person. Okay. And we'll say the title of the story is Our Next Vacation Will Be.

Oh, okay. I like this one.

Our Next Vacation Will Be. Yeah.

I need a vacation right now. Don't we all?

Yeah, don't we all?

Yeah.

Let's just go open the door, go sit outside.

Yeah, that's right.

All right.

I was thinking the ocean, but okay.

Lovely. Here we go. I'm going to start us off. Um, when—

You—

Go—

To—

The—

Bahamas—

You—

Will—

See—

A— Shark—

In—

The—

Water—

But—

You—

Are—

Not— Going to die. It got really dark. Our vacation is horrible. Yeah, well, I could go ahead and not die.

Yeah, well, you're not gonna die. So the good news is when you go to the Bahamas and you see a shark in the ocean, you're not gonna die. So it's, it's all in the tone.

If you're gonna ride it. Yeah, shark riding.

Yeah, perfect. Yeah, there you go. Bravo. So that was it. It's scary because it's— we don't know where this is gonna go, right? And it kind of ties into what we're speaking about emotions too. It's scary because Because we're not quite sure about tapping into that emotion. Same thing with influencing. Influencing means if I'm pulling someone in, I'm not controlling it. I'm allowing whatever's happening. I'm allowing the other person's voice to be heard. And so that's one of the payoffs of this. So that being said, let's go into this now about this sort of, you know, you were talking about it earlier off the podcast. For me, I call this sort of react and respond moment. And you sort of, you ask the audience, you know, about respect, I believe. Is that what it is?

About being respectful to yourself, others, and your dreams?

Yeah. Yeah. And then, so can we talk a bit about that? Because it's sort of this moment where you get them thinking about this, about sort of—

Well, I get them thinking about who they are as a person. So we often say I say to young people, all people, but let's start young.

Yeah.

Their character matters. And we hear about it all the time. We even hear about sports. Your character matters as an athlete. Your character matters. It counts. People are watching you in and off the court or the ice, how you are in the locker room, how you are on social media. Your character matters. You hear about this in companies. So when I ask audiences, who here would like to see more respect in the world?

Yeah.

No matter what age, they raise their hand.

Right.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Who here believes respecting yourself, others, and your dreams matters? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Who here has ever made a choice that was not showing respect for yourself, others, or your dreams?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. And they raise their hand. And I say, okay, so we all agree that respect matters, but yet we sometimes make choices that aren't showing our character of respect. We all agree. Okay. So, when you say to someone, well, why? What they end up giving you is a lot of circumstance.

Right.

Well, that one, because they said that to me, because that happened between my parents, well, because she, because he, and circumstance, they happen, and they're not always in our control. So, if we keep focusing all of our energy on circumstance, something we don't always have control over, we can also lose our ability of our control, and our— I believe that we're in control of how we react.

Mm-hmm.

So, what I do is I break it down and say, okay, so the circumstance happened, and we really focus on that, but what if we shifted, and we focused on what emotion did it trigger when she said that to you? What emotion did it trigger when that happened? And you have to imagine, Joel, behind me, when I'm doing a live presentation, I have a huge banner that has 25 elephant faces, All feeling a different emotion.

Right.

So it goes back to that saying, it's like the elephant in the room. Everyone can feel it, but no one's talking about it.

Right.

Isn't that often an emotion?

Yeah.

Like the old, I'm fine, and you can tell the person's not.

Right.

And so I'll say, when they said that to you, what emotion did you feel? And when people point at the elephant emotion, it takes away vulnerability. Because oftentimes, if I just said it to you, well, what emotion are you feeling, Joel? You might be like, oh, that's really personal.

Right.

Not having her back on this podcast, she's way too much. Right? But if I said, well, point at an elephant, it would be like, oh, okay, well, that one. And so then they might say, well, it brought up anger. Some people will say, can I choose 3? Yeah, choose 3, because sometimes they are a combination, like how we started the show. I'm a combination of excited and nervous.

Right.

So, it'll be like, I was sad and then it turned to anger and then I was disappointed. Okay. So, so out of sad, anger, and disappointed, you reacted like this.

Yes.

Yes. Was that reaction respectful to yourself and others? No. That reaction was just your emotional state. Your reaction Is because of your emotions. See, we think it's because of the circumstance, and I'm saying circumstances trigger emotions.

Absolutely.

And emotions are very easy to react out of.

Yeah.

And we see that with kids a lot. Well, hence we see that with adults a lot. We see that with kids. So, even with my son who's 7, I practice with him, and I'll say to our son, Kai, I'll say, Kai, that choice you just made, is it showing? That you're a respectful person, or is it just showing frustration? And he'll look at me and say, frustration. Okay, you can be frustrated, but what are you going to do with frustration to move through it in a healthy way so that you can show up as being respectful, so that you can still make a choice that shows respect for yourself and others? And that's very much a skill, and we have to practice it because emotions are so easy to react out of. And since we're faced with so many circumstances in our lives, from day to day, moment to moment, they trigger lots of different emotions. And I think the practice becomes in saying, okay, I'm feeling these emotions. Now what do I do with them so I can move through them in a healthy way? And then make a choice that shows my true character. Of respect for myself, others, and my dreams. That's hard to do when you're angry.

It is hard to do. You know, what I'm hearing is that, you know, number one, you're talking about your values. So if respect is an important value of yours, you're letting your emotions hijack that value or compromise that. But that's because you're not even aware that that's what's happening.

Right.

Because our first reaction to most events is going to be emotional.

Right. And it's about practicing that, like, emotional awareness.

Yeah.

You know, where do you feel it in your body?

Yeah.

You know, where— because sometimes you have a physical feeling before your brain even connects what emotion you're feeling.

Right.

So it becomes this really mindful practice. And there's so much value in that. Because then you start to know your own self better, which builds confidence, which helps you bounce back. See, when people talk about confidence and resilience, and they never bring in emotional awareness, I don't— and emotional intelligence.

Yeah.

I don't know how you do it without the other, because I believe that when you work on your emotional self and your emotional intelligence and awareness, and you practice what you're doing to move through, you're building resilience.

Yeah.

Because oftentimes people get stuck in the emotional state they're experiencing, Or they become reactive out of it, and neither beneficial.

Well, this goes back to what resilience is, which is bouncing forward. You can't reflect and redirect, you can't bounce forward if you haven't named— you can't just say, I'm fine, and think you're going to move forward. You need to reflect, why did I get angry? What triggered it? So that you're aware of it. the next time that happens. So Sarah, let's— we're going to come to a close in just a couple minutes, but let's talk a bit about music. Let's end on talking about music, your love of music. How does music fit into the YouPower presentations? Where does music fit into this?

Well, depending on what presentation I'm doing or, you know, the audience I'm working with, since I work with Young people, educators, parents, and in business, depending on what I'm doing, I incorporate music. That's how I started as a performer. I've been a singer-songwriter since I was 11 years old and performing since I was 8. Music is one of my outlets. It's one of the ways that I move through my emotions in a healthy way. You know, even today, I was having moments of feeling annoyed and overwhelmed just with all the social distancing, and I love being around people. And just that feeling of irritation. So I had to remind myself, Sarah, go sing a song.

Yeah.

So the song I posted today on my Instagram was just a song that I wrote years ago, but it connects me back to just that feeling of expression. Because the big thing, Joel, more than anything, is reminding people that they're going to feel huge emotions, and not to make ourselves bad and wrong for feeling the emotion, but to practice the art of moving through it in a healthy way.

Yeah.

And that allows, when you do that, you teach people around you to do that. You give people permission to actually feel their own emotions. And I think there is so much healing that happens when you actually allow yourself and allow people around you to, to, to feel, but to express in a healthy way.

Yeah, you can't, you can't bounce forward. You can't have resilience until you, you've, you've kind of had an idea of what, what emotions you're dealing with. If you're hiding it, it's just not going to happen. And I love the idea of music because I think, you know, I can't sing and I went to theater school and I had 4 years of musical coaching. I even had years of musical coaching before to get into theater school. But I still, before I'm going to do any kind of spotlight moment, I still always sing a song because it does, it just does something. It warms up your voice. It gets your lungs going. It sends, you know, Triggers to your brain. It starts making you feel good, gives you that sort of confidence. So it is a huge self-management tool, that's just saying.

And to springboard off what you're saying, one of my also healthy ways to move through emotions is humming a song in my head. And I noticed that I did this more a couple years ago. So, you know, first thing in the morning, back in the day when our kids went to schools, Remember though, aren't we back to school?

Yeah.

That, that you— I would hum a song in my head because I felt like I was being pulled in so many different directions. And it's easy to become reactive, especially out of irritation, first thing in the morning when you have things to do. But I know, like, my son needs to eat, and then my husband, maybe he needs something. And then I know I have to get something, or I've got to get my hair done. And I would just start humming. In my head. The other thing that I find too, that's been a really great strategy for myself and my family, is practice naming your emotions. It sounds so simple, but it's so effective. Just say it out loud. I am feeling annoyed. I'm starting to feel really angry. I'm feeling sad. And there's so much release in just saying it. Not only does it let the other person know that you're feeling that way, But it actually reminds you you're feeling that way.

Yeah.

And there, I find even with my son, it also teaches him emotional intelligence because I'm naming my emotion and then he's naming his emotion. And the elephant poster that I use in my presentations, I actually have for purchase on my website in a magnetic form so that everybody in the family can use—

Nice.

A magnet and put it on the elephant face they're feeling, taking away vulnerability, but putting a name to it and then communicating it. Because I think that there's so much importance to being aware, naming it, but also validating other people's emotions.

Yeah, you definitely have to validate that. And I like that there's, you've got 25 emotions because I think that's the trap for most people. They think it's either good or bad, but there's a whole range of emotions.

And that's not even an emotion. category, right? It's not like, okay, I'll take good for 100.

Yeah.

And then knowing that sad is different than disappointed.

Yeah.

And that happy is different than excited. And yes, there's only— there's 25. There's way more than that. But you're right. It's better than the happy, sad, and mad, or the good, bad, and fine.

That's right.

And just to leave you with this thought, Joel, because I know when I've worked with especially adults, I've said to them, have you ever been feeling angry and someone looks at you and says, don't be angry.

Right.

Stop being angry. I said, did you find that really helpful? Or you're really worried about something and someone's like, stop worrying, it'll be fine. And then you're like instantly not worried now? So what ends up happening is we can actually think we're saying it in a loving, helpful way, but we can actually be disconnecting from that person's emotional state. So just whether you think it's valid or not, honoring the other person's emotional state is really important because it builds connection. In family, in yourself, like honoring your own emotions, which sounds so crazy, but it is. It's honoring that you're feeling. You don't have to just feel joy all the time.

Yeah.

There's lots of other.

No, that's so true. In fact, even joy or elation or enthusiasm, we sometimes will put that in a box. We don't want to allow ourselves to feel the, you know, those positive ones as well.

That's so true.

Yeah. So this is great, Sarah. This has been, you know, and we'll definitely have to have you come back in a couple months when we're sort of out of the pandemic. And now we're talking about, you know, maybe we created some new emotions.

Can we do that one on the beach with the shark?

Yeah, with the shark that— yeah, and you'll be okay. Yeah.

What's shark riding? It's a new podcast where it's emotional, like feeling your fear but doing it anyway.

Right.

Shark— we can work on that. We can tie it together somehow.

That's right. I think it was called Fear Factor. I think they've already done it.

I think it's called Fear Factor. I love it.

We're gonna bring this to a close, but, you know, before we go off, You know, you've given us a lot of resources here, but now how does our audience, how do our listeners find out where to learn more from you, contact you, reach out to you?

My website, so sarahwestbrook.com. Also Instagram, @iamsarahwestbrook. It's just @iamsarahwestbrook. I don't want you to think I'm telling you.

Right.

That's who I am. We've done the whole interview, but I want to let you know who I am.

Yeah. Done.

And those are the 2 great ways. Of course, I'm on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you know, the social media. But if they're interested too in any of the products like the Emotional Magnet or the YouPower Journal to build resilience in their family, then the website's a great place to go.

Yeah, absolutely. Everything is, and there's a couple of videos on the website as well to sort of give some flavor to this.

And if you're interested in a presentation for company or school or young person.

Perfect. And then Instagram, you know, you're always, you've always got great little tidbits on there. So it's a great follow on Instagram as well. Yeah. So Sarah, thank you so much for being with us. I think for me, I really got a better and deeper understanding of resilience, that reflection and redirection and really being able to name the emotions and the variety of emotions. I'm gonna stop saying it's good, it's bad. I've graduated.

Name your emotion. Put a name to it. I'm frustrated. I'm happy.

I've graduated. So thank you so much. And this has been TFR, This Feels Right. And we will see you next week.

Thank you so much for listening. And if this felt right and you would like to see this interview, then come on over to our YouTube page at youtube.com/thisfeelsrightpodcast or join the conversation with our Facebook group at facebook.com/thisfeelsrightpodcast. Or if you just want more influencing tips and communication skills, then please connect with me on LinkedIn, Joel Silverstone, or come on over to Silverstone Communications at www.joelsilverstone.com. I look forward to connecting with you.

Thank you.