In this interview, Dr. Mort Orman explains how his work with older adults who lived angry lives inspired him to develop a personal‑development system that treats emotions as formulaic processes. He describes a model in which every emotion—positive or negative—is generated by the brain through a combination of chemical releases and cognitive narratives. Using the example of infatuation, he shows how the brain creates an overly rosy scenario that later clashes with reality, illustrating that both joy and anger arise from the same brain mechanisms. Orman emphasizes that his approach focuses on eliminating reactive emotions rather than merely managing them. He clarifies that elimination does not mean never feeling anger, but learning to recognize the brain’s story, apply a rapid “truth process” to expose the false narrative, and consciously turn the anger off. This technique relies on awareness of the source, quick identification of the trigger, and practice to make the response automatic. The conversation highlights how leaders can use this emotional‑intelligence framework to reduce triggers, maintain composure, and gain a competitive advantage.
Chapters
taking care of people who are in their 60s and 70s who've lived lives full of anger. And you, you see what the picture looks like and you go, you go like, hey, I don't want to end up that way. You know, I don't, I don't want to have all those problems. So that drove me actually into personal development work, which a lot of busy doctors don't make time for. Yeah. But, but to me it was important. And, and so I, I spent a couple years lots doing lots of different programs and eventually I pieced put some things together and also discovered some things on my own that led me to these conclusions that I'm talking about now that I discovered like 40 years ago. Plus being able to figure out, you know, the specific formulas for each of the different emotions. And then once I knew that, then okay, now I can step in. Now I finally have the opportunity to do something about my emotions that I couldn't do when I didn't have that particular model of understanding them that I had gained.
Well, and there are two things in that formula for different emotions. First of all, those— that formula includes release of chemicals in our body.
Absolutely. Right.
And so those impact us. But also there are those formulas for the good emotions. Those— there are those formulas for joy and pleasure and celebration and congratulation and accomplishment, all of those kinds of things.
Yeah, whether it's a positive emotion, what we call positive emotion or negative emotion, they all work the same. Your brain is generating them by how you look at things. You know, this is the classic situation where you meet somebody and you fall in love and you're totally infatuated and everything looks rosy and you don't— and they have no faults. They have no character flaws. Your brain is creating this scenario for you of what's real and what's true. And then you're all excited and you love spending time with this person and you think they're the answer, you know, that they're the one. And then, you know, time goes by and all of a sudden reality starts to assert itself and you start to see, oh, hey, there were some flaws there. I didn't pick up on them initially, or maybe I did and I just dismissed it, you know, because it didn't fit the picture. But the thing is your brain gives you an ultra rosy picture, a little more so than was called for perhaps, and you eventually find out that reality is a little bit different than what your brain told you. And it's the same for lots of different positive and negative emotions. Your brain is always spinning certain scenarios that it's getting you to buy into. And a lot of times they turn out not to be completely true.
Well, one thing I love about your approach is that you say elimination, not management. Yes. And that's a, that's a, it's a strong claim. And also, it can, it can be tough for people to wrap their head around. Like, wait, I'm never going to be angry again, right? Elimination.
Yeah, it doesn't eliminate, it doesn't eliminate anger as a human experience. Like, you'll never ever get triggered, you'll never ever have anger. What it means is you'll, you'll have the ability— a, you'll be triggered less, okay, as you go through this process, uh, so things won't bother you as much as they did before. But when you do get triggered, or if you do get triggered, you know very quickly how to intercede and say, okay, I want to turn this anger off. I don't want this anger now. I can get rid of it. Boom, it's gone. All right. And it's not through, you know, some manipulation or deep breathing or anger management thing. It's by, okay, I know where my anger's coming from. I know what my brain's doing to me. I know how to defend myself against what my brain is doing to me. And now I can make the anger go away by just recognizing what's true versus what my brain is telling me. So it's really doing a very quick truth process on the thing, the stories your brain is telling you. That takes a little experience, a little practice to get good at. But once you do get good at it, these patterns repeat, you know, so you can catch them when you, when you see them a couple of times, you can catch them a lot quicker and you recognize what's going on.
