In this talk, Patrick Mosher defines emotional freedom as the ability to safely express one’s deepest emotions. He begins by referencing a 2017 UC Berkeley study that identified 28 discrete emotions, encouraging listeners to reflect on personal stories tied to each feeling and to journal these experiences. He stresses the importance of seeking professional help when stories involve trauma, addiction, or severe mental health issues. Mosher then outlines a two‑part pathway to emotional freedom: (1) getting in touch with one’s own emotions through journaling and therapeutic support, and (2) finding trustworthy people and environments where emotions can be shared. Trust is described as a bank‑account metaphor, built through fulfilled promises; he offers concrete questions to assess whether a listener feels judged, fixed, or compassionately received. Mosher challenges leaders, facilitators, teachers, and coaches to create safe spaces for emotional expression, illustrating his point with a real‑world consulting anecdote where he invited a hospital project team to share feelings during a status meeting, resulting in tears, laughter, and a new “Feelings” agenda item. He concludes with a call to action for the audience to embed emotional safety into their professional and community practices, framing this as a contribution to collective wisdom for humanity.
Chapters
A friend saw a recent post of mine which read, "What emotional freedom do you have right now?" So he asked, "Would love to hear your definition of emotional freedom and how to obtain it." Great question, so thank you. Simply put, emotional freedom describes those moments when you can safely express your deepest emotions. So what is an emotion? The University of California, Berkeley published a study in 2017 identifying 28 discrete emotions. As I read this list, think about a time you felt each of these emotions. Admiration. Adoration. Aesthetic appreciation. Amusement. Anger. Annoyed. Anxiety. Aww. Awkward. Boredom. Calmness. Confusion. Craving. Disgust. Empathic pain. Entrancement. Excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire, and surprise. If you're serious about unlocking your emotional freedom, read this list again. One by one, and journal moments when you felt each of these 28 emotions. Each emotion contains a very personal story of your life. Some good stories, some painful ones. And a note: if your stories contain elements of abuse, depression, addiction, anxiety, or extreme emotions, please seek professional support. So here's a few of my story titles. Aesthetic appreciation. Seeing Renoir's Two Girls Playing Piano at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Anxiety. My supervisor led off a performance review session with, "Your most critical development point is being contentious when given constructive feedback." Calmness. Anytime I take a really deep centering breath. Excitement. Seeing my name on the callback list to be in the musical A Music Man when I was in college. Fear. Sliding off an icy road into the ditch and seeing my wife lifted out of her seat in slow motion. Nostalgia. Looking at a picture of me proudly standing by my mom when I made Eagle Scout. And joy, seeing Renoir's Two Girls Playing Piano at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris with my daughters at my side. So that's identifying emotions and emotional freedom. The second part of his question is much harder to answer. How do you obtain emotional freedom? Obtaining emotional freedom comes in two parts: getting in touch with your own emotions and finding people and places with whom and where you can express those emotions. Getting in touch with your emotions is a lifelong journey of discernment, and for the purposes of this short blog post, here are two recommendations. Number one: journal your life stories of emotional highs and lows. And number 2, seek professional support to discover and uncover your emotions layer by layer. The second part of obtaining emotional freedom is finding people and places with whom and where you can express those emotions. This part relies on one thing: trust. We all need safe havens places where we can freely express without fear of retribution or judgment. True compassion flows. Grace flows. And unfortunately, we've all been burned by trusting too much or trusting where we thought it was safe, but it wasn't. We bear unseen scars from these experiences. We protect ourselves to deeply avoid getting emotionally hurt again. We create a moat around ourselves with water so deep and broad We are untouchable. We create a space where we are alone with our emotions. And the negative emotions rise and we have nowhere to put them. And again, please note, if your stories contain elements of abuse, depression, addiction, anxiety, or extreme emotions, please seek emotional support. So how do you get the courage to trust again? Trust is tricky. It's not on or off. You don't trust someone or don't. It's more like a bank account. You make deposits and withdrawals. Trust is built. It's earned. A speaker at a conference once gave an incredibly simple way of describing trust building. It appealed to my analytics geeky side because it put trust in a formula. Trust is directly proportional to fulfilled promises. Small promises fulfilled, a little trust gained. Bigger promises fulfilled, bigger trust gained. Revealing our true emotions is like revealing our deepest held secrets. We are reluctant to express them, and when we do, we feel uncomfortably naked. Awkward. And the next moment after a big emotional reveal, it's critical in this trust-building journey. So I ask a couple questions: Is there judgment? Is there an attempt to solve your problem? Is there an attempt to fix you? Or does the person receive it with compassion, receiving your emotion as if they're placing it on on a soft pillow. You feel received. In that moment, a huge promise is fulfilled. Trust is established and you've obtained emotional freedom. So okay, that's great, but that's all about you and your emotional freedom. I want more from you. So here's my emotional freedom challenge for you. As a leader, facilitator, teacher, consultant, advisor, therapist, or coach, you have a responsibility to create safe environments for the people in your care so they can share their emotions freely. Yes, it, it is possible in the most unlikely places, even in corporate settings. So when I was a new manager in my consulting career, I was the change management lead for a patient-focused care project at a hospital. As always, our project was fast-paced, long hours, and emotionally challenging. Our client counterparts were incredibly talented and dedicated too, but they weren't used to working with consultants, and they struggled mightily. And during one of our status meetings, the project manager asked each person one by one if they had any issues, and each responded, "No issues." I noticed Diane hesitated ever so slightly. So I asked her, "Diane, how are you feeling right now?" She looked around at the team and tears welled in her eyes. And she took the leap. "I feel totally overwhelmed," and she burst into tears. Our consulting team looked confused. Awkward is an emotion, right? One of the nurses on our team leaned over and just put her hand lightly on her shoulder to let her know she wasn't alone. There was that soft pillow. No judgment, no retribution, no fixing, no problem to solve. Just received. So I took the leap and asked the nurse, "How are you feeling?" She expressed her feelings and we went around again through the project team one by one expressing how each person felt. It was so freeing. There were tears, laughter, hugs, pats on the back, recognition, and acknowledgement. And even the consultants loved this new experience. And at the very end of the meeting, the nurse asked, "Can we add feelings to our agenda every status meeting?" And before the project manager could respond, I said, "Of course!" At the end of the project, the team gave me a little green book labeled The Feelings Book. It is your job to create a safe environment for emotional freedom. When you, as a member of this community, build safe environments for emotional freedom with your clients, team, community, neighborhood, you are building wisdom for humanity.
