How to Better Regulate Your Emotions | Dr. Marc Brackett

A lot of people think emotion regulation is getting rid of a feeling. It's not what it is. It's just having another relationship to it. I've had anxiety or lived with it for a lot of my life, but sometimes I just say hello to it. It's like, "Hey, how you doing today?" And it goes away pretty quickly, or it just sits there. I think that's the other thing about emotion regulation that people kind of misunderstand. They think it's like, I got to check in with how I'm feeling all day long and then regulate, check in, regulate. Like, you'd become psychotic if you did that all day long. Most of the time, our emotions are in the background. Background. You know, like, if you thought about your feelings all day long, you wouldn't be able to do this podcast. Like, that's unproductive. Emotions matter when there's a shift in our environment or the relationships. You know, if you said something that offended me, boom, I'm activated. I'm feeling angry or kind of shocked. Then I have to make a choice in that moment, like, how do I manage it? That's where the magic happens.

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett is a professor of psychology at Yale University, where he is also the director of Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He's an expert in the science of emotions and how to apply that to improve communication and relationships and performance in school and work. One common problem around discussions of emotions and emotional intelligence is that they are often vague and frankly, somewhat soft and cliché. But not when Mark Brackett explains emotional intelligence as he does today, because he talks about the practical tools that emerge from the science of emotional intelligence that you can use to improve your emotional life, both with yourself and with others. And he's not just going to tell us to feel our emotions more deeply. While that could be important in certain settings, his research in and out of the laboratory is really focused on the small things that we can all do, both in moments of emotion but also on our own, that can greatly increase our ability to to understand what we're feeling, communicate it effectively, and to be better listeners, especially in moments that would otherwise create tension or confusion. In fact, what he shares today are life skills, the sort of life skills that make everything—school, friendships, romantic relationships, professional life, and family life—far more effective and enriching. So I'm confident that you'll come away from today's episode with Mark Brackett knowing what to do and when to use the tools that you'll learn, and they are indeed very powerful to improve your life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr.

Mark Brackett. Dr. Mark Brackett, welcome.

Thank you. Glad to be back.

So much to discuss today about emotion regulation, about the kids, the future.

Are the kids all right? They could be better.

And our obligation, our generation, other generations, and providing a world where kids can thrive and where everyone can thrive. It's a bit of a mess out there, but you're going to put some clarification on things for people. You're doing amazing work to give people tools for emotion regulation. And more. So let's start off and define emotion regulation. What is that?

Yeah, well, I think the simplest way to define it is using your emotions wisely to achieve your goals in life. It's a little too broad. And so it's funny, as I was writing my book, I decided I need a formula. And so my formula is ER, which is emotion regulation, is a set of goals and strategies. So it's ER parentheses G plus S. And that equals a function of E P C. You know, it made me feel smart. Emotion, person, context. So what I mean by that specifically is that it's a goal-oriented process. You have to want to regulate. You can prevent unwanted emotions. I have an acronym for that too, it's PRIME. You can prevent unwanted emotions, you can reduce the difficult ones, I think people forget the I initiate emotions. Like when you're teaching or leading or presenting, like you want to create an emotion in the room that's upregulating. You can maintain an emotion like, you know, I'm having a good day, I'm going to avoid these things to just keep it going, savor the moment. And then there's enhancing, which is kind of boosting an emotion. So that's prime. That's the goals. The strategies we can talk about for hours. We'll get into that a little bit later. And then I think what most people misunderstand is that Like, what we regulate are emotions. And, like, what I do, for example, to deal with my anxiety is really different than my anger, than my worry, or other emotions, in that it's a function of the emotion you're feeling. It's a function of me as an individual. You know, I am on the neurotic side. I'm on the introverted side.. And so my strategy selection would be influenced by that. And then the context, like right here, right now, like I know you're into fitness and like running and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, Andrew, I'm really nervous right now. Do you mind if we take a break and I go for a run? Like, it's a little weird, Mark. So context matters. You got to be like, right now, if I were anxious, it's like, Mark, you got to use some cognitive strategies or breathing work. I can't go anywhere, so I'm stuck. And I think people need to see that kind of full spectrum.

I feel like there's a close tie between emotion regulation and self-awareness. Yeah, but I feel like there's a tension between self-awareness and being able to experience and enjoy life. For instance, if I'm feeling anxious, I, I'm thinking about how I'm appearing, how I'm sounding, that it's uncomfortable. But if I get totally outside of that, and just be in the experience that I'm in, uh, then there's the potential to say the wrong thing or, you know, uh, offend somebody or who knows. So when we talk about emotion regulation, what's the best approach to that that doesn't keep us in a subtext in our mind and sort of out of the room? Because when we're alone, it's quite a bit different. We can, we can breathe, we can use whatever self-regulation tools we want, or ruminate, uh, or write, or, you know, or text or call a whatever it is. But when we're at work, at school, on a podcast, if there's that subtext like, uh, I'm, I'm not locked in here, I'm not in the experience completely, I'm, I'm self-regulating or paying attention to myself, that can be very uncomfortable in its own right. It's work.

Yeah, it's effortful, uh, and not always the best effort if it's going down the rabbit hole. I think that you're getting at, which is this mindset piece that the first step is our mindset about our feelings. So let me ask you, what's your mindset around anxiety? Hmm. I, well, I have assumptions around it.

I was telling someone the other day, because I spend a lot of time alone and I'm fairly introverted, but if I go into a crowded environment for the first 5, 6 minutes, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed. Like, whoa, it is really crowded in here. There are a lot of people. And I actually feel like I have a bit of a, social interaction disorder for those first few minutes. But then after about 20, 30 minutes, I'm in that experience and I feel like I'm very comfortable. So I have this mindset that social anxiety is something that is like wading into water. It's always a little bit too cold at first, or usually it's a little too cold, but over time you acclimate.

All right, you didn't answer the question. Okay. So I'm going to frame it another way. What's your relationship to anxiety? I hate it. Okay, there you go. See how you automatically were like, I hate anxiety. I did too for most of my life. And then I was with a friend who's a neuroscientist about anxiety. And she said to me, Mark, tell me all the things that make you anxious. I said, well, I'm anxious about fundraising. And I gotta raise the money to keep the research going. I'm anxious to make sure, I wanna make sure that everything we do is high quality. And I went on and on. And then she asked me another question. She said, "Well, what do those have in common?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And then I thought about it, and I said, "Well, those are things that are important to me." And so she said, "So why would anxiety be a bad thing?" And I think that we have to learn how to adopt a mindset around emotions that there are no bad emotions. It's what we do with our emotions that makes them harmful or difficult for us to live our lives. But anxiety is a good thing. It's saying there's perceived uncertainty around the future. Like, I'm anxious about how I'm going to act in this environment or how I'm going to be perceived in this environment. It's not a bad thing because you want to be perceived well. But if you automatically assume it's bad, then it's going to put you on the path to dysregulation.

So if we accept the idea that all emotions are okay. Yeah. But that the expression of all emotions is in every context is not okay, that it should be context-specific. Yes. I actually think that provides some freedom. I can feel that freedom. Like it's okay to be super angry. It's okay to be frustrated. It's okay to be anxious. But how that's expressed is what's critical. It makes good intuitive sense. I think that what's hard to know is what to do with the emotion if there is no outward expression of it. Like, where should it go?

Well, it doesn't have to go anywhere sometimes. Sometimes it can just be. And that's a big part of regulation, which is that a lot of people think emotion regulation is getting rid of a feeling. It's not what it is. It's just having another relationship to it. Like, I've been— I'm 56. I've had anxiety, lived with it for a lot of my life. But sometimes I just say hello to it. It's like, "Hey, how you doing today?" And it goes away pretty quickly, or it just sits there. I think that's the other thing about emotion regulation that people kind of misunderstand. They think it's like, I gotta check in with how I'm feeling all day long and then check in, regulate. Like, you'd become psychotic if you did that all day long. Most of the time, our emotions are in the background. You know, if you thought about your feelings all day long, you wouldn't be able to do this podcast. Like, that's unproductive. Emotions matter when there's a shift in our environment or the relationships. You know, if you said something that offended me, boom, I'm activated. I'm feeling angry or kind of shocked. Then I have to make a choice in that moment. Like, how do I manage it? That's where the magic happens. But on a day-to-day basis, thank God we're not, you know, We wouldn't want to do that.

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I'd love to poke at some of the assumptions that I know I have, but I wonder if other people have as well. My dad's from South America, and I remember long ago he said, because he went to formal schools, um, he said that he was raised with this terrible idea— he called it terrible— that, um, if somebody was happy and they smiled a lot, that they were stupid. And I said, what is that about? And he said, well, that came, in his words, from the British school system, where the idea was that you were supposed to be skeptical of things, and that if you were happy or happy-go-lucky and you weren't drinking, that people would assume that you were an idiot because you weren't bothered by the problems in the world and you were accepting of the things that you heard and were told. In other words, you're an idiot. And my dad's a very happy person now. Sure. And he has talked about, you know, having to break that mold that like it's okay to wake up and take a walk and, and be happy, that it's okay to be happy. And so that's just one thing that I think I grew up thinking too, and maybe not to that extreme, that, that if especially in academia, like if you're not just like to be happy is to not be discerning. It's totally false, right? Of course. Now we're a long way from England right now. And that's probably something more of my dad's generation than mine. But I think the idea nowadays does seem to be that if you're happy-go-lucky and you're feeling good, that you must not be thinking about all the terrible things going on in the world, or that it's insensitive to those that are suffering, et cetera, et cetera. I'd love your thoughts on this idea that we don't give ourselves permission to feel as good as we might feel. Because of some social pressure or assumptions that we've internalized.

Which is all learned. And so these are learned phenomenon. And it's sometimes outside influence. So talk about happiness. As I was writing and I was doing the chapter on mindsets around emotion and talking about this relationship with different emotions, and we could play around with this all day long. I could say, what's your relationship to anger? What's your relationship to happiness and contentment? And all of a sudden you start realizing, wow, I have a complicated relationship with my emotions. And I was thinking about it with happiness too. And for me, what's interesting, which is different completely from your dad's, is because of my kind of tough childhood and a lot of bullying, is that I would go to school one day and I would be happy, and I'd see the bullies, and all of a sudden they'd say things like, you know, what are you so happy about today, Brackett? And I didn't realize that until I was writing. And then I would get on stage and give a— I do a lot of public speaking. And I'd be standing there, like, feeling really good with my speaking. And then I'd get the applause at the end and I would start kind of looking down. And I started realizing I'm uncomfortable being happy. Like, I'm waiting for something to go wrong. Because, you know, in my childhood, like, happy meant like, you know, we're gonna bring you down. We all have these kind of developmental connections, for lack of a better term, to our different emotions. And I think that it gets back to the phenomenon. There's no good or bad emotions. Life, firstly, some of it is genetic and biological, you know, our proclivity to experience certain emotions. The regulation piece is all learned. Like, you're not born with a pocket full of evidence-based strategies to regulate. It's just like, I don't know about you growing up. My father was very different. My father was the angry guy, and he'd say, "Son, you gotta toughen up." I'm like, "Dad, look at me. Come on, let's move on. It's not happening." And you know that I have a 5th-degree black belt. I became the tough guy that my father wanted me to be. But nevertheless, What does that even mean? But growing up, when I was struggling, my parents missed a lot of the cues. Come down the stairs, I didn't have my father say, "Son, I'm noticing a shift in your emotions today. Your posture is different. Your facial expression is different. Let me give you a research-based strategy to help you regulate your anxiety, stress, pressure, fear." No, it was just, there was no, it wasn't even a construct. I mean, I don't know, but did you grow up with a, a concept of emotion regulation?

Definitely. You did? And it was—

there was a big gender split in my home.

I had the sort of belief, uh, based on the context, that women could express their emotions, big or small, and that, uh, men weren't supposed to lose their temper. Men weren't supposed to be angry.

That's interesting. Yeah, kind of counter the way people think about it nowadays, right? Like, oh yeah, the men are like The more power you have, the more anger you can express.

Oh, the complete opposite of that. In fact, and I don't think he'll mind, my dad's been on this podcast and we have a great relationship now and we've done work and it's been awesome. I mean, it really has. And I remember when I was a kid, if he got angry, he would blink. And now I know that as like behavioral suppression. He was like blinking. But I can't ever remember my dad having an outburst. Ever. So I just internalized this idea, like, okay, you, you don't have outbursts. But I have a certain side of my family that, um, my extended family that's, um, from New Jersey, where words are sometimes used as weapons. Okay. And anger is a bit more outward sometimes, at least in that side. And then I have a South American side where things are more, um, you know, formal and boxed away. And, and I think I internalized a bit of both. And, and So I have all sorts of constructs around who's allowed to express emotions and what extremes. But I didn't observe a lot of anger. Maybe a little suppression. Lots of suppression. Lots of suppression.

Which is regulation. Yeah. Not the adaptive kind, usually.

Right, right. And I probably averaged the two in my own life. But in terms of happiness, I think the same thing now that I I think about it, that it's okay for women to be fully expressive and for men to be, you know, it's a bit more of the, you know, it's kind of the 1950s model was that was very present in my home and in my mind. In my mind, yeah.

Yeah, I could think with happiness as with any emotion, it's about the time and the place for happiness. Like you can't, we have research that shows that people who strive to be happy all the time actually are more miserable because it's hard to live up to that all the time. People who strive for more contentment in their life actually seem to have greater well-being. And so I just think, again, it goes back to these mindsets around emotions, that there's no good or bad emotion. Anger is fine. Obviously, if it's too intense and it's lasting too long, it's probably not going to be good. Happiness is something that we should you know, experience, but, you know, if we're attached to it, it's gonna be problematic because every day's not a sunny day. There are rainy days too, and you gotta be comfortable with the rainy days. And the important thing also is not just our feelings about our feelings, it's also about our mindsets around our capacity to deal with those feelings. Like, do I believe I am capable of managing my anger? Do I believe I'm capable of dealing with the disappointment? And we find a distribution of scores for that too. Going back to my dad, we have very different fathers. My father would say things like, "Son, this is the way I deal with my anger. You're going to have to get used to it." I would say now, "Sounds like you got a fixed mindset, Dad. There are other options to deal with your anger." But he was sort of like, "This is the way I am. You're going to have to deal with it." No learning interests. Whereas nowadays, I hope to help people see, wait a minute, is that emotion working for you in your relationships or not? If it's not, there are alternatives.

I mean, we're talking about boys and men quite a bit already here. So maybe we just continue in that direction, even though we will touch on girls and women and emotions as it relates to them too. I hear a lot nowadays about problems for boys and young men in emotion regulation, in defining masculinity. I'm obviously interested in this, but I also acknowledge that I'm Gen X. I was born in 1975. Things were very different. And I, and I know I have a giant blind spot to their experience. I just do. I acknowledge that because I don't really have a finger on the pulse of, of what life is like for a 15-year-old or 12-year-old or 20-year-old guy out there. What are the pain points and what's going right?

Yeah, there's a lot going on. And I think probably the big issue here with gender is vulnerability. That historically, this is not just now, this is going back to when we were kids, when our parents were kids, you know, go back to other periods in time, is that vulnerability, especially for men, is weak. You gotta be tough. You're the person who has to make the ends meet. You're the hunter-gatherer. And obviously times have changed. And what we find is that the thought today for many boys and men to be emotional. Firstly, emotional alone has a connotation of feminine and out of control. That's just the way people think about it. Still? Yes. Really? Wow. When you say, "Don't be so emotional," it's considered to be a negative thing. It's considered to be feminine and it's considered to be like hysterical. That's why we like to call it emotion skills, not emotional skills. Anyway, so vulnerability is a big piece of it. This is going to be a great conversation between two guys. So what's your relationship to vulnerability? Totally context-dependent.

Okay. I mean, there are people I'm not afraid at all to cry in front of. There are contexts and people that I would never cry.

I mean, I've cried on very public podcasts, two, maybe three.

One here when Martha Beck came on. She really, she, she wasn't trying, but you know, it was happening. And then on Stephen Bartlett's podcast, I think perhaps on another, and it was tough. I mean, it was, I didn't wanna watch those clips, but I'm glad I did it. So totally context dependent.

Yeah, and that makes sense. What I'm really pushing for is like around emotion and about talking about feelings. And so what we find is that boys generally feel more inhibited just saying how they feel, especially when it comes to kind of the sad, disappointment, ashamed emotions. It's much easier to express the anger and the outwardly expressive emotions, but the deep ones that are self-conscious, that make you vulnerable, tends to be tough. And the question is, why is that the case? What are your hypotheses? Why would it be that so many boys feel like they're going to be perceived as feminine if they say they're disappointed or sad or ashamed.

What immediately comes to mind is that somehow it is linked with the word incapable or incapability. Exactly. There's an incredible video of David Goggins breaking down crying on stage, and he was celebrated for that. But David Goggins did a lot of things beforehand. And no one denies his capability, his ability. So when he cried, it was like, awesome. He's willing to go to this really hard place. Yet another difficult thing that David can do that most people can't do. And you just go like, awesome. And he's owning it. And I step back from that and realize, but we already knew former Navy SEAL went from 300+ pounds to this fit individual, you know, Goggins. Yeah, he's a verb, an adjective, and a, you know, pronoun, right? So it's like, shit, you know, if someone else just breaks down on stage, you know, okay, like, I hope this guy can make it in life. That's the, the narrative.

It's like weak.

You worry sometimes for people like that.

I don't worry about David Goggins because he's a superstar and we have a different mindset around him again. And so he has the permission to do whatever the hell he wants.

Yeah, that permission thing, forgive me, but this notion of earned the right, I mean, there are people like James Cameron who wrote all these movies and was famous for like doing all these super difficult things. And then a few years back was like claiming that testosterone poisoned men and that his testosterone was the worst thing. And everyone that liked his movies said, hey, listen, easy for you to say now, you built that career on some of that. So it wasn't, in my opinion, taken that seriously. He may not like it if he hears this, but like, I'm like, it's like when our colleagues are like, oh, I'm no longer gonna publish in Nature and Science. I'm gonna go to these like, you know, these open source journals. It's like you got in the National Academy on Nature and Science papers. So like, you're not kidding anybody.

Well, you're making an important point, which is that once you, you know, I always find it interesting with celebrities, once they become, I can now disclose, you know, I've been depressed or I've been anxious or I've been overwhelmed. But for some reason, you know, they didn't want to take that risk when they were younger in their careers because again, the perception is like, oh, anxiety, depression, whatever it is, that's weak. And so that's the point. The point is, is that we raise kids, boys in particular, to believe that that these feminine-type emotions, which are not feminine by nature, they're just human emotions, are weak. And therefore, that means I'm going to be perceived as not only weak but potentially homosexual, and that's also a stigma. And so what do I do? I suppress, I deny, I ignore. Interestingly enough, for women, what the research shows is that much less likely to suppress or deny much more likely to ruminate.

A couple of things. First of all, I feel like, and I could be wrong, but I feel like the stereotype of gay men being feminine has fallen away somewhat. I grew up in a skateboarding community. There's Bryan Anderson. He was big exposé in the, not exposé where they exposed him, where he voluntarily came out in the New York Times. He's like, He's one of the most aggressive, you know, you know, skateboarders out there. Aggressive in the skateboarding, right? So he's big dude, you know. So I feel like that stereotype has kind of shifted a bit where people assume that there's a range. I think that you're ambitious there.

I think you're right. I mean, we know—

so being gay is still sissy?

Yeah, for sure. Okay. I mean, if you ask 100 people to run like a gay man.

They're still caught in the Revenge of the Nerds movie.

Yeah, they're gonna show you someone who's more feminine or kind of stereotypically feminine, to be honest with you. So while we know, I mean, certainly I remember when I was 18, I went to a gay bar And I grew up in New Jersey, it was very homophobic. The only gay person I really knew was my mother's hairdresser, who was very flamboyant. And then I went to this gay bar and I was like, oh my God, it's like Wall Street executives here, you know, there's football players. It was a total shift in my perception. Nevertheless, if you ask the majority of people, it's still considered to be, you know, The mindset is feminine. Got it.

Yeah, I guess if you, um, grew up training in gyms, which I did, you're around a lot of like very strong, uh, physically strong, yeah, um, gay men. Yeah, they were kind of early to the gym culture, you know, as a, uh, so, so maybe my lens on that is a little distorted. There's something interesting around this notion of sissy, showing emotion, and boys. And earlier we were talking about the movie Stand By Me, movie I absolutely love. And it's just like a perfect story. It's a Stephen King story, right? Turned into a movie. I think Rob Reiner wrote that movie. Yeah. And what's interesting about that movie is the transition that happens right around puberty and between junior— it's right before junior high school or— oh, it's between junior high and high school. I can't remember. Some transition and the kids are at different developmental stages. I feel like this is a big part of it where, like, let's say a kid is a little bit more emotional, a little more coddled at home, perhaps. This is— I'm making a lot of assumptions here— and cries in front of a group of boys when you're in the 7th or 8th grade. Some of those boys are, are because of their stage of maturation, they're not really little kids anymore. They're like, dude, what are you doing? And then you've mixed all those kids together. And because of the way that schools and social dynamics are, that can stay with a kid for a long time. Like being sort of having an emotional expression that can stick with you for like 2, 3 years of school, right? So I feel like some of this stuff comes about that way, which is very different than like in a, just I guess like a hypothetical scenario, an adult male in the business place. Maybe he's new at, you know, where there's— things tend to equalize a bit in terms of maturational stage. And so these are two different things: boys crying versus young men crying versus, quote unquote, grown men cry.

Again, this is all nurture. So if you go to schools that do our work— I just interviewed a bunch of teenage boys, actually. It blows your mind. They have a whole different perception of emotion. I ask them these questions about men and boys and their responses are like, "Huh?" Like, "What's wrong with crying?" Like, "If you feel like crying, you cry." Like, "Are you sure?" No ridicule. No ridicule. I said, "Well, what if you get into a fight? Can you like talk to the kid about what happened and like tell them how you felt when they left you out?" And they're like, "Of course, that's how we grew up." But they grew up in a school that took emotion seriously. They gave them the skills and the resources to do it. It reminds me, actually, I'll never forget this, since we're on this topic of boys and men, I was in the beginning of my career doing training in emotional regulation in London, outside of London, a very kind of rough and tough neighborhood. Headmistress, as they call it back then, of the school, she looked at me and she's like, "You know something, Mark? This program's gonna turn the boys into homosexuals." I'm like, "Okay, where'd that come from?" I'm thinking to myself, "You need a lot more training than just emotional intelligence." But I'll put that aside for a minute. Anyhow, I said, "I'm here, so can we just go and do it? Let me demonstrate it." "Okay, not a problem." We go like a fishbowl. Here I am like the teacher in the middle of the room. I have like 25 teachers around me and like 20 kids in the middle. And I start sharing a story about my life, whatever it was. I was about probably feeling discouraged. I think it was when I first got into the martial arts. You know, it was tough. I was not a tough boy. And I was afraid of my shadow. And I had been— then all this bullying and abuse and going to a Karate studio was a big shock for me. I happen to have an amazing teacher who transformed my life and became a career of mine, martial arts. Anyhow, I told a story about that, about how I failed my yellow belt and I just hated myself. And like, not only was I bullied, but I couldn't even get a freaking yellow belt. Discouraged, hopeless. And everybody's looking at me like, where's this going? The teachers, the kids were like glued. They loved hearing the story. And then I said, "I'm just curious, has anyone else ever felt the way I felt?" And I said, "Just raise your hand if you've had that kind of feeling." Every freaking kid in the classroom raised their hand. And of course, I look over at that headmistress and I'm like, you know, "Let's talk later." Kids are dying to express their emotions, boys and girls. We've just socialized it. And the socialization piece is really important because Even the way fathers talk to their boy children is different. It's the toughen up, it's da-da-da. They use more feeling words with girls than with boys. We're not born that way. We are socialized into having these complicated relationships with certain emotions. But it's not something that can't be modified with good instruction.

You're saying this, I'm realizing I internalized so many things that skew my perspective on this. I guess I should say I'm relieved to hear that expression of emotions among boys is more accepted now. I think that's—

The generation that's going through this work, the kids who are growing up in places that are not taking emotions seriously are growing up in a more, or with a more stereotypical way of viewing it. It's gotta be infused into your life. You gotta have these conversations. You gotta be in situations where, like in our work, just to give you an example, We're really rigorous about teaching this stuff. This isn't just sort of like kumbaya sitting in a circle. This is like, all right, everyone, we've got a problem here. There's the Gaga pit, which is this thing in schools. There's a kid who nobody is allowing to participate. That kid feels awful. What's our obligation? What are we supposed to do to handle that? Imagine you're that kid. Imagine you're the one that nobody wants to be part of the game. Now we're going to get into groups and we're going to think about A, what are the feelings? B, what are the solutions? What do you do for yourself? What do you do for the other person? And it's like rigorous conversations around the techniques and they got to role play it. And then we ask questions about the role play. It's like, well, what if it goes wrong? What happens if you say this and they say, go blank yourself? What do you do then? And that's the kind of complex muscle building we're giving kids in terms of dealing with emotions.

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There is a hardwired bias towards rough-and-tumble play in males of all, of all species, including ours. I think what you're talking about a little bit is a capacity also for kind of rough-and-tumble verbal and emotional exchange, which is not necessarily like, "Fuck you," and this and that, like, but some of that is, can be in jest. Some of it can be really damaging. There's something interesting that I learned a long time ago. Even in academia. He's now dead, but there was a very famous neuroscientist. I'll never forget, I went to my first McKnight meeting. I was so excited to be there. And he came over, he was a pretty large guy, and he grabbed me. And he goes, so where are you? I was picking between laboratories, between this place and that place. He goes, where is it going to be? And then he kind of gave me his advice. And that was a very comfortable exchange for me because I grew up with a lot of physical interaction. Usually guys not putting their arm around me and like tell me like, so what's it going to be kind of thing. But oftentimes, you know, if I interact with somebody that's kind of like an old friend or something, there's— they'll grab my shoulder, you know, just walking by. There's a lot of just kind of physical interaction that just happens. It certainly doesn't feel weird or aversive. And I could see if somebody, for instance, was not used to like just a lot of physical interaction, with other people, that that could feel like a lot. And so I'm wondering nowadays, where are things with respect to sort of just the amount of physical interaction between kids? Are they, like, just feeling and voicing their emotions, but they're, like, at a physical distance? Or are they, you know, seeing one another and, like, handshakes and hugs, what's up? And, you know, or, like, you know, just friendly, the kind of physical banter. I think it's cultural.

There's a lot going on there in terms of the type of school and where it is in the United States or in the world. Touch is a cultural thing. But I think what I wanna say about what you said is that rough and tumble is fine. Of course, rough and tumble. But when it becomes a power over, that's when it becomes a problem, when you have no concern for the emotional life of the other.

This is where— That's bullying.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The dialogue that sort of establishes hierarchy, I guess, is what, if I'm really blunt about it, I just feel like that just sort of just happened naturally in my friend group when I was a kid. Like there were some kids who were more developed and more athletic or better at this or better at that. And we just kind of all fell into place. It wasn't necessarily about being at the apex or being at the bottom.

There was no intention to harm.

Yeah, we sort of formed a team where you understood that Yeah, this kid was fast and this one was strong and this one was clever and this one was creative. And actually there was a goofy kid on our street who was always the comedian. I think later he actually tried to become a comedian or became a comedian and everyone just kind of like was like, all right, you didn't expect him to be like the other kid and you didn't expect yourself to kind of check off all boxes. I wonder the extent to which young males in particular nowadays feel the need to check off all the boxes of what it is to be a guy. Play a sport, be good in school, be, you know, whatever. Well, that's again, the developmental thing.

And I think what happens is that, and you know, you watch kids play in kindergarten, they're not thinking about this kind of stuff. Although it's sinking in or it's seeping in, what's the word? I was in a school recently And a boy raised his hand that he was in the blue quadrant of our Mood Meter, and he was feeling down or sad. And I said, "Do you need anything right now?" And he said, "No." And I got kind of, like, taken by surprise. And I said, "You know, you sure? We can talk about it." He's like, "I don't want to bother you, sir." And that was an eye-opener for me, you know, that already, like, his emotions were a nuisance. And that's what I wanna make sure that we address. No one's emotion should be a burden. A kid should be able to talk about it and deal with it. We want that kid to be a good learner. We want that kid to be a good friend. And if he's already suppressing and denying, ignoring, you know, in kindergarten, it's not gonna be a pretty ride. And those things change developmentally. Kids are much more comfortable talking to each other about their feelings in elementary school and middle school. It starts getting, I gotta look around. And again, with the homophobia piece, and in high school you see less and less touching, or kind of the kind of friendship kind of stuff that you might have seen early on. And that goes back to the things that we were kind of chatting about, toxic masculinity, kind of this manosphere. And again, my hope, is that we rethink child development. We have spent so much time thinking about some of the unnecessary things. You know, reading and writing and arithmetic obviously are important. But if you don't recognize that how we feel and how we deal with our feelings is gonna drive the quality of your relationships, your wellbeing, your ability to deal with life's ups and downs and the harsh feedback you're gonna get in life. And ultimately, you know, having your dreams come true. You know, it's interesting as someone who works at a university where everyone has perfect SAT scores, everyone has grade point averages that are better than mine were, everyone plays an instrument I never heard of before, everyone has done everything to get into this place. And so I have like 700, 800 students right there And I look at them all and I'm like, guess what? Your SAT scores have no predictive validity. None. You can't remember its range restriction. It's like all basketball players are tall. Height is not going to make or break your basketball performance. Same thing applies in a room filled with people with high academic performance. And then, all right, well, what is the predictor? Well, obviously it's going to be something else. And then we start thinking about, well, what are the attributes that employers are looking for? Right now, it's not technical skills as much as it used to be. Right now, it's like, can this person take feedback well? Can this person lead a team and people will want to be around that person? I found in my research, for example, that managers and leaders who are good co-regulators, that, for example, during the pandemic, I did this longitudinal study, and I found that in schools in particular, where I do a lot of work, that when a teacher perceived their leader as both self-regulated and who was good at co-regulating. So what that means is that, like, I'm looking at you right now, I'm thinking, okay, you know, it feels like the world's coming to an end. Are you gonna fall apart, or are you gonna make it? That's number one. Number two is, are you gonna be there for me? Are you gonna be able to support me and deal with the chaos that I've gotta deal with? And what we found in our research is that highly predictive of the culture of the school, highly predictive of burnout, highly predictive of job satisfaction. Frustration levels were 40% lower in schools where there were leaders with these skills. That's what people are looking for these days, more so than anything else. You know, more so than beforehand.

I feel like the word that comes to mind is, is calibration. And in anticipation of today's discussion, I was speaking to a friend. I said, you know, where are you at with kind of men expressing emotions, you know? And, you know, she said, well, I've seen you cry. And I was like, yeah, you know, she said, and it can be beautiful. Like, you know, you hear that, right? It can be beautiful. And I said, but when is is a man expressing emotion a problem for you? Assuming it's not like outward anger or abuse, his sadness was the example I gave. And she said, if he gets very sad about things that happen a lot, it makes it hard to imagine how he would hold it together if really big stuff happened. And so it's exactly what you described in the workplace, right? This notion of calibration. Let's say I'm okay with people expressing their emotion, crying when they're sad, etc. But if that's happening a lot under everyday conditions, I could imagine, let's say you're in work or a relationship with this person and you think, well, goodness, like, people die, right? You know, more— I'm 50 now. People die as you get older. More and more people die. This is kind of the way it works. What's going to happen then? I think there's this underlying question, which is, are you going to be available for all the other things we depend on each other for? And this could be romantic relationship, it could be in the workplace. So I do wonder whether or not people are trying to work out sort of what people are calibrated to, like trying to understand somebody's— I don't want to say emotional set point, but when they're able to, you know, just pack it down and deal with it on their own later, or whether it really needs to become the focus. Like, just to, just quickly layer in another example, I have a friend who runs a big scientific laboratory. Their laboratory gathered together and did a presentation for this lab director and had created a statistical bubble map of their experience of being in the lab. And there was a giant bubble in the middle that just said stress. And they invited someone from HR, and the whole idea here was to let the boss know that they were really stressed out. And I said, let me guess, you were probably thinking— he came up in a very, very hard branch of science. And I said, let me guess, you're probably thinking, what happened to science? He said, he said, for a little while. And then I figured, well, this is the next generation. I have to work with this. So they were calibrated to different set points. And I could imagine that's hard across generations, but even within generation, that's got to be really, really tricky. So you're all about measurement, creating actionable tools. Is there a language around this? Is there a way that we can, yes, learn to process and deal with our emotions, express our emotions in a more healthy way? Also understanding of other people's emotion calibration point. A couple of things.

One is that going back to the kind of partner leader position is I think the confusion that people have, again, going back to vulnerability and emotion dysregulation, is that me being vulnerable or me sharing that I'm anxious or overwhelmed or afraid means that I'm weak. And I think what leaders need to do is recognize, like, during the pandemic, I never forget this, like, wait, the university shut down, everything was freaking out. I knew my team was freaked out. They were stressed out about their jobs. They were dealing with being parents and also being employees and working from home and all that stuff. Here I was, like, the head of the emotional intelligence lab, and like, "How you doing, Mark?" And I'm like, "Great, everything's fine." And meanwhile, I'm like, I hate my life and I hate everybody around me. You know, I had this mother-in-law, you know that story? She was stuck with me. And then I realized one day, like, I'm being a terrible role model. I'm not being authentic, and I'm not demonstrating the skill. So I decided to be really honest and say, I'm going to be frank, it's tough right now, but here's what I'm doing. I'm going for that walk every day at 5 o'clock. I can't go to my hot yoga class, but guess what? I found new workouts online that I'm doing, and I'm doing X, Y, and Z. So the point is, is that I think vulnerability that's like sharing and like spewing out all the fears that you have is not helpful. When it's not accompanied by the strategy. And that's the key, is that I'm feeling this way, but here's what I'm doing about it. That's what a role model is. And that's what a parent needs to do. The parent has to come home and say, I can imagine this, like you're a dad and you're trying to be a role model for your kid. And here's my dad. My dad would have a hard day at work. Daddy, let's play. Son, Leave me alone. Done. That was the end of it. As opposed to Dad comes home, Daddy, let's play. Son, you have to realize, I have to just tell you something. I just had a really rough day at work. I actually got into a fight with a colleague of mine. Didn't go well. And I said something that I really feel bad about. And so Daddy just needs a little bit of time to just process that, to just think about what I can say tomorrow, to kind of help my relationship. And if you don't mind, I need that time right now. I love you and we'll play later, but right now I'm just not in the right space for it. Okay, son? Okay, Dad. All right, let's stop there. What did I just teach my son or daughter about feelings? All right, I'm a dude, I'm a dad who has feelings. I am someone who makes mistakes. I say things that I regret. I reflect on the things that I make mistakes about. I problem solve about the things that I make mistakes about. I need time to, you know, recoup, you know, my energy, and then I can come back and be with you. How much time did that take? Seconds. Yeah. But how many of us, you know, are around people that can process emotion that way, that have the capacity to say, I'm in a dark place, things didn't go well, I made a mistake, I feel bad about it, I need to strategize, and then we'll come back and be together. What happens to most of us, we're activated, like I'm pissed off at the person at work and I project it on everybody else that's in my next situation. And the power of emotional self-awareness, going back to what we started with, and the power of emotion regulation is that I notice that there's a shift. I notice that I'm feeling this anger, this frustration. I'm about to go into a new environment with my family., and I know because I'm emotionally intelligent that it's not gonna be pretty if I don't process that emotion before I move into the next situation. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a breath. I'm gonna take what I call a meta moment. I'm gonna pause, I'm gonna take a breath. I'm gonna think about the best version of Mark, the father I wanna be, the husband I wanna be, and then I'm gonna open the door and arrive through that lens. That's what this work is about. That's what people need to learn.

I'm fascinated by time perception, and I feel like the human brain is so incredible at being in the moment and also getting ahead and thinking behind. And what you're really talking about is projecting into the future in a healthy way, not future tripping, as they call it, but in a healthy way. And I think that, I mean, broadly speaking, I'm almost embarrassed to say this as a neuroscientist, But the more limbic we are, so to speak, I realize that's not really a thing, but the more limbic we are, the more in the moment we tend to be. Correct. And it's harder to get that version of ourself. But when we're relaxed, it's very easy to be like, well, I can remember this time, or I'm going to project into the future. So to some extent, healthy recognition of one's emotions, it seems, healthy expression of one's emotions, is the ability to feel, but also split off from the presence enough to get perspective, the time perspective. I mean, it's all a shift in the time domain. You're not like, I'm gonna go to this, you know, this island in the Caribbean for a moment, although that might be a useful tactic. But that ability to tolerate stress and segment a piece of one's mind and emotions and go, okay, that's all happening, and I'm gonna get like right over here That is a skill.

So the way I like to think about it is that we have to move from automatic, habitual, unhelpful reactions to deliberate, conscious, helpful responses. Because we become more automatic when we're flooded with our emotions, we rely more on habits and usually bad habits. And so to build that space between the stimulus and response, like the question always people say, what is that? What do you do with that space? How long is the space? I need a— some people say, I don't need a meta moment, which is one of our tools. I need a mega moment, you know? And maybe you do. Maybe you take 3 loops around the house before you walk into the door to get your kind of parasympathetic nervous system where it needs to be. That is the key to emotion regulation right there.

We had Richie Davidson on the podcast, and he talked about this myth about meditation that it's supposed to clear the mind and make you relaxed. And he said it's It's actually really about stress tolerance. You're supposed to sit there and resist the temptation to get up and move. Like, it's really stress inoculation, which I think is a really beautiful way of thinking about and different way of thinking about meditation. So do you recommend that people meditate in order to become better emotion regulators?

100%. Especially because if you can't be still, it's going to be hard to access the good strategies. It's a necessary but insufficient strategy. I know that we're obsessed in our world right now with breathing and mindfulness, and it's great, but it's not enough. At the end, I'm going to have to have the difficult conversation and regulate during that conversation. I can't be in my room by myself meditating. I always joked with my— I opened my book with that story of my mother-in-law, and I would take a breath. It's even clearer why you have to get the hell out of my house. So the breath may help you deactivate, but it doesn't say, Shift your perspective. That's the mindfulness work. And I want to jump in now because I think even the taking the moment to recognize you need to take this meta moment is a mindset piece. It's saying emotion regulation is important. I'll be a better version of myself if I don't walk into my house in this angry state and project it onto everybody else. But we've only gone through one of like 8 domains that I think are important. The next is like, you got to know what you're feeling because the feeling, as I said in my formula earlier, is going to drive the strategy selection. So that labeling piece is really important. And I find that people's vocabularies is just awful. People, I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm upset. I don't think we did this last time, but if I were to push you, Anxiety versus fear versus pressure versus stress.

I've thought about these before, but it ends up being hair-splitting. And then I go into scientific operational definitions. So, you know, anxiety, kind of a generalized state of too much sympathetic arousal. You know, stress is one, or usually I'd add to that, you know, one or several things that I can pinpoint as kind of a source of that. Elevated level of arousal. Panic would be if you've gotten so far outside the time domain perspective, like that the physiology overtakes and overwhelms. Like I get into my scientist definition.

Yeah, and I think that's interesting because a lot of people, well, most people, by the way, say it's all the same shit. That it's all one big, yeah. You're technical, you're like, well, this is cortisol and this is epinephrine and this is this, and that's all good. Too. But in the end, what you're regulating oftentimes is the underneath the emotion. And so anxiety, uncertainty around the future, right? I get anxious when I can't predict. That's really what deep anxiety is. I want everything to be exactly the way I want it to be, and I can't control that. So, oh, stress is having too many demands and not enough resources. Pressure, something at stake is dependent upon your behavior. Fear is immediate danger. So when I give you those kind of what we call in psychology the core relational themes, the appraisals that are part of those emotions, does it make you see how your strategy choice might be different? Yeah, definitely.

And speaking of, you know, I doubt it's just two bins, but I've heard once that, you know, some people need to learn to externalize and, or to talk about their feelings more, other people probably less. I've heard this. Uh-huh. For sure. I'm friends with a couple and one of them says, uh, she's, uh, she calls herself an external processor. So if something's bothering her, she has to externally process it. And her wife is an internal processor. And so this obviously, they've worked this out and it's pretty cool to see how they do it. But, but I was like, is that really a thing? External processor, internal processor? And then of course my gender biases show up. I go, well, you're two women. So like that, maybe that language is used, but like in, in heterosexual relationships, it's different. You know? Sure. And we laughed about it and they explained like, no, 'cause actually one of them turns out to be a therapist. So it's like, no, she has many male, female couple clients. So she's a couples therapist. So I got flipped on my back with that one. The thing that I find that I keep projecting into everything I'm hearing, and I wanna put the little asterisk here and say that the reason I share these like things that are happening inside is I like to think that they're perhaps a proxy for what some people are thinking. Um, or not. But is that we really, at least in the United States, we really are not a culture that's clearly defined its terms, let alone its ways of being around emotions. Like, this is not like my dad growing up in Argentina in a certain era where, sure, there was a range, but, um, the culture was fairly clearly defined. I mean, here we've got at all. Like, I do. Men expressing anger, some people call that passionate depending on what it's about. Other people call that scary and dysregulated.

It goes back to your relationship with anger. And so, you know, we construct these emotions in our brains based on our experiences. So I grew up with a dad who had, you know, you know, pressed lips and red face and looked like he was gonna like take his belt off and whack me. And so my perception of anger is probably different than your perception based on our upbringing. That's just— we have to acknowledge that. Now, I could be overreacting to anger, which is not going to be helpful in my life. So I've got to learn to realize not everybody's like your dad. Some people can be angry and not aggressive. But that's the emotional intelligence journey of learning. If I had no cultivating of skills, I would just assume that's anger. And that's not anger. That's one way of expressing anger that I learned. And I think people get caught up in that. They get attached to what they learned early in life and don't realize there's another way. It's kind of why people oftentimes get stuck with trauma, because they are fixated on that experience that they had. And they haven't learned how to reframe or haven't learned how to compartmentalize that particular experience in their lives.

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So thus far we've highlighted at least one thing that can be very useful for emotion regulation, which is the, you know, some short form of meditation for stress tolerance that can give somebody a— create a gap or an opportunity in a moment to at least take some time and regulate a bit. I'd like to layer on something else which I'm hearing. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but that I'm hearing, which is we should all know our assumptions or our presumptions based on our upbringing. Correct. Like, we need to do this for ourselves. No one can do it for us. No single article is going to spell out the full array of ways that one conceptualizes anger or sadness for men, for women, for straight people, for gay people. Like, but this space is actually worth thinking about, right? Uh, right now there's a, there's a little bit of a battle against introspection. This is not introspection. I want to be very clear, um, that's a separate matter. But this is really just what any really good scientist would do, is to know your assumptions before you generate a hypothesis. I mean, it is introspection.

I mean, okay, fair. But just like anything, over-introspection leads to rumination. And so we're not recommending— like, I don't want you, Andrew, to like be obsessively compulsively checking in with how you're feeling all day long. That is unhelpful. It's bad, bad, bad.

Some people would say that I need to do more of that. Maybe you do. I don't. I don't think so.

Emotions matter when they're going to either help or interfere with our performance. That's when we have to check in. Most of the time, thank goodness, they're in the background. Yeah. You know, when you're driving, you know, you're not thinking, how am I feeling? How am I feeling? It'd be weird. Like, that would just be weird. And you don't want to do that.

But checking in with one's assumptions based on our upbringing, I think would be very useful.

Very. But that's the point.

And has that been formalized into a, you know, people love questionnaires. I think if it hasn't been done, I think it'd be amazing. About 8 months ago, I had this wild experience where I realized I had this massive assumption worked into my framework. So I had these friends and I was visiting them and they called me upstairs and there was a bird flying around. And it was like flying into the windows. And I was like, oh my God, you know, I had birds growing up. Kiwi and sugar ray leonard were like my life before I hit puberty, and birds were my life. You know, I loved birds. I love animals of all kinds. And I, I was looking over there and this bird's just flying into the window. It's not going to make it out. It's just doing immense damage to itself. And one of them said, you know, oh, he keeps flying against the window. I was like, okay. And I tried to get him out and I couldn't get him out. Really high ceilings. We didn't have the right thing. And I said, you know, I'm just gonna open the windows, go downstairs, come back and check. And I ended up going back and they said, is he okay? Is he okay? And I'm like, nah, I'm like, this idiot bird is like flying in the window. It's like this moron is going to kill himself. He got out eventually. And about About 2 weeks later, one of them called me and said, listen, I really need to talk to you about something. It's really been on my mind. I was like, okay. And she said, you know, I was really disturbed how you reacted. I was like, what do you mean? I was like trying to help the bird. I love animals. I mean, I really do. I mean, one of the reasons I like doing the work I do now instead of what I used to do is I don't have to work on animals anymore. I hated it, honestly. I understand why it has to be done in many cases, but I hated it. She said, well, just, you're talking to this bird like he's an idiot. And I realized in that moment, I was like, oh shit. I was like, if you had said, oh, that poor girl, she's flying against the window, I've been like, oh, the poor thing. She really needs it. And I immediately realized this strong sex/gender bias that I had, that if a female animal is somehow damaging herself, like, oh my God, help her, save her. And with him, same, if it's a boy, same thing, I want to help. Help. But then my assumption was, you idiot. Like, you idiot. Like, like I would, you know, and I realized I grew up in a big pack of dudes and someone does something stupid, you're like, dude, you're an idiot. Like, what are you doing? But it's a, it was actually, to me, it was a, it was a mode of affection. I'm sure I upset some people by saying this, but in full disclosure, I just had this massive assumption and I've actually had to pay attention to that going forward. But I didn't realize I had that really strong bias.

Again, this is all going to that mindset area of emotion regulation. I mean, parents have that with their kids. I can't tell you how many kids, you observe a parent with their son or daughter, doesn't matter. And the kid is trying to climb a rock. And the parent, because of their own fears, you know, "Oh my God, honey, be careful, be careful, be careful." And all of a sudden the kid is losing their self-confidence. To climb the thing, as opposed to a parent who's skillful, who checks their assumptions. I'm nervous. Okay, fine, you're nervous. Your kid's probably not going to get hurt. Take a deep breath, take a breath, and maybe say something like, honey, gosh, that looks like it's really hard. I'm pretty confident you're going to get there. Let me just come a little closer to be there just in case something goes wrong. But I really do think you're going to make it. What do you think that's instilling in the kid? Totally different way of thinking about it. And so that parent's assumption, that person— parent's fears is being projected. If they were more skilled at co-regulating and recognizing my job is to instill resilience in my kid, my job is to help my kid feel like they can do it on their own. Because that's what this work on co-regulation I'm doing, which I think is so important, is this intentional You're being super intentional about supporting other people and managing their emotions. But the whole goal of it is to support the other person in being capable of regulating on their own eventually. Not codependent, not coddling, but actually instilling the belief in the other person that they can do it. I love that.

I guess what I'd love to know is, is there a formal process or questionnaire, etc., to learning to understand one's own kind of— the word bias is so—

yes, there is.

The word bias is biased. But to really parse like, oh, this is how I conceive the world in and around emotions, gender, gender-specific emotions, because I think that'd just be very useful. It is. Then it allows somebody to do what you just described and really know the difference between helping somebody get to the point where they manage their, work with their emotions on their own versus projecting our own beliefs around, hey, this is the way it's supposed to be done.

Exactly. Yes, there are plenty of surveys actually in my book. I even give people a list of them. You can play around with that and just look at your mindsets and attitudes about them and you'll see patterns. I had no cognitive awareness that I had this weird relationship to happiness until I did my own exercise. And it was eye-opening for me. And it's actually, I've set goals for myself. It's like, Mark, People want it when they're applauding you when you're giving your speech. Let them enjoy it. If they're applauding, it means it was good. Don't be like, uh, you know, like, breathe, be present, and take it in. And actually, it works. It's a beautiful phenomenon.

The awareness of our programming can liberate us from so many painful things. Yeah.

We spent a lot of time on this, which is interesting, 'cause I don't usually spend so much time talking about these assumptions and mindsets and beliefs. We spent some time talking about the vocabulary words, which is very important. You gotta be self-aware. Anger is not the same as disappointment. Envy is not the same as jealousy. Happiness is not the same as contentment. Anxiety, stress, pressure, and fear, and overwhelmed are all different. And I know people listening might be like, "Oh my God, you're overwhelming me." But we have our app that you've seen, the How We Feel app, to give you that vocabulary. And it really does matter. It matters for communication. It matters for getting your needs met. It matters for choosing the strategy. But again, it's not enough. So you gotta know how to breathe and you have to do your mindfulness work to bring the temperature down, to still your mind. I mean, think about our minds nowadays. I mean, they're just— the ability to process information has dwindled completely. Just to give you one example, we used to do like 2.5-minute videos for trainings. People won't get through them. 30 seconds. I mean, this is why people aren't learning anything anymore, because you— how are you going to teach an emotion regulation strategy in 30 seconds? It's like an Instagram post. Of course, that's driving me crazy too, because so many influencers are— my favorite one recently was this very famous influencer teaching about emotion regulation. And she said, you know, I've decided to throw away my anxiety. And so she's in the car and she opens the door and she's like, "Goodbye, anxiety." And I'm thinking to myself, like, that door is gonna hit you so hard in the face. But yet 3,000, 5,000, 25,000, whatever likes, and people are like, "Oh my God, I'm throwing away my anxiety." It's like, you can't throw away your anxiety. It doesn't work that way. The quick fix thing is an issue. Then we gotta learn how to rethink our feelings. That's the programming we have to do. We have to learn some of the things that you've spoken about on other podcasts here, whether it's the cognitive reappraisal, whether it's the reframing, whether it's the distancing, whether it's having gratitude as opposed to resentment and envy. I mean, I never had anyone help me practice cognitive regulation. Nobody ever taught me there was even a— I never knew. There was a thing called reframing, and it's saved my life as an adult. Because again, we go in with assumptions about other people too. And if you can say, wait a minute, Mark, is there another way to look at this? Is there another story you can be telling yourself around this? This goes back to something we talked about earlier. We wanna be careful about that, 'cause in abusive relationships, it can become gaslighting, right? Honey, you know, you're too sensitive. No, you're a jerk. I'm not too sensitive. You're trying to make me feel like, you know, bad about the fact that you're lying to me all the time. Not helpful. And that can be— that's also reframing, but it's a form of deception, you know, where another person is trying to define your reality for you. Super scary. And we can do that to ourselves too. We can trick ourselves into believing things that way. Reframing is playing with this idea of telling yourself a new story, but you have to always be a scientist about it. And that's the one thing about all the strategies is that you have to come back as a scientist and ask yourself the question, "Is this helping me live the life I want? Am I in a better relationship? Am I better able at managing my anxiety applying these cognitive strategies or these labeling strategies?" I find psychology fascinating.

The reason I became a biologist, however, is because I got confused by psychology. And it's too big of a field. Well, and the field wasn't as evolved as it is now, as structured as it is now. But I remember thinking, okay, you know, I could see the argument, maybe even the experiment for healthy expression of emotion allows that emotion to move through, allows us to be healthier physically and mentally. I can also probably find a manuscript that shows that the longer— for every minute longer we focus on being angry, that our anger grows. And I don't know what the answer is. I sense it's— that's probably not the case. But I just remember being very afraid of the contradictions. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Out of sight, out of mind. I was like, which one is it? Exactly. And of course, it's both, right? I mean, and that's the complexity of the human mind. So I decided to think about cells and circuits instead and served me well in my career. I probably in my life, I remain intensely interested in the sorts of issues we're talking about now, including these generational differences. And here's my question. Typically, most work, school, and other environments are hierarchical in the sense that the older people have more seniority and more power. I sense that nowadays there's an understandable concern and interest in young people's emotions and emotional processing. But I also get the sense from my peers that there's this kind of fear of the younger generation, like they're actually in control. I just got through doing 3 2-hour-long trainings, 'cause Stanford understandably has you do like harassment training and workplace safety, workplace violence. You know, you have to learn what the rules are. And I was very surprised to realize that all faculty and staff and some postdocs take this training. Students don't take it. Meaning you have two completely different views of what the rules are. And this is not unique to Stanford. This is unique to a lot of big organizations. And it's not even a criticism. I'm sure, like everything at Stanford, there's a rationale. But it's kind of interesting. You would hope that there would be a universal, at least, nomenclature. Just like we know what mitochondria are here and in Nicaragua. It'd be nice to know that, you know, anger and disappointment, while those words are spoken differently in two different countries, that there's sort of a basic universal understanding of what emotions are, what they're not, how much comes from our past, how much is about our physiology, and kind of how to work with them. And I'm not saying this is going to solve all the problems in the world, but a lot of the problems that I see out there are misunderstandings about where the line is. That's sissy. No, that's healthy emotional expression. Okay, that's anger. No, that's passion. That person's a narcissist. No, that person just isn't spending a lot of time thinking about their own thoughts. And on and on and on. I'm certain that one of the reasons your work and your colleagues' work is so important is because we need a universal nomenclature. We need an agreement that there's at least a way to understand and navigate this stuff.

This is why the work I do in schools, it's not like a teacher comes to a training and does it in their classroom. It doesn't work that way. I learned this the hard way. It's got to be a systemic approach. The leaders, the teachers, the students, and the parents need all the same language to describe the work we do on emotional intelligence. It makes a huge difference. The superintendent can go into the kindergarten room and have that same conversation. We all know what these emotions mean, and we're all thinking like scientists around emotions. I wanna just go back though, because something you said I think is important to address. And I wish, I only wish, that there was the correct answer to how we should feel and what we should do with our feelings. It just doesn't work that way. A funny story about this. So I'm giving a speech to 1,500 police officers who I don't think were told in advance that some guy from Connecticut was going to be giving a speech for 3.5 hours about feelings. And so I walk into the room. It was like out of a freaking movie. And all of a sudden it's like, "And we're welcoming Mark to talk about emotions." And all of a sudden I see these facial expressions. And like some of them, I mean, these guys were sitting, people who can't see me right now, like slouching in their seats, like, you know, their guns in their pockets. I'm thinking to myself, what have I gotten myself into? And so I start, you know, playing around. I'm telling jokes. I've got to figure out how to meet this group. And the thing that struck me that I haven't forgotten was one guy just stood up and he's like, He's like, "I'm not sure I'm interested in this." I said, "Okay." He said, "But I am, I do want to know one thing, Doc. What's the only strategy that works?" And I said, and of course I'm a psychologist, like, "It doesn't work that way. There's many strategies. It's an emotion by person by context phenomenon." And people are so desperate for the right answer. I think the beauty of it The beauty of it is that it's messy. The beauty of it is that it's a journey. The beauty of it is that it's a process. The beauty of it is that we have to ask ourselves questions over the course of our development. Is how I'm living my life working for me or against me to achieve my goals? And we have to check in with other people, like our partners and our friends and our kids and whoever else and our colleagues. And I hate to say that, but The people who are dying for the correct strategy, there is no correct strategy. I worked as a fitness instructor for 10 years of my life while I taught martial arts. I saw so many people use exercise as a way to escape their reality. They just went on the treadmill for 10 hours a day with an eating disorder who were thinking, "This is my healthy strategy," and they were ruining their lives. Same thing with food, the same thing with you can trick yourself into believing things. The goal of this work is to help people pause, consider ideas, and then you have to go back and say, "How is my life? How are my relationships? How's my work going?" Etc. And that's where the real beauty comes out of the learning.

I'm using my checking back into my, uh, developmental biases as a way to, uh, ask questions that I hope are relevant to everyone, and now especially. And one of the things that I've observed is that there seems to be a broadening of the context in which broader ranges of emotions are allowed. Online is a really good example of all of it, all of it, right? And I think that the, the judgments about, well, this person is losing their cool and someone say, well, you know, so-and-so stepped in front of his motorcycle, for instance. You know, I mean, these are the debates that reflect all these developmental biases. And in some cases there's a legal line. And those legal channels, by the way, are very interesting. There's a great channel. It's a little too Hollywood because the guy worked in Hollywood, but he's a lawyer and it's called The Legal Beef. I don't know him, but he does these everyday cases of like, is someone says like, it's illegal to film here, you can't touch my camera, or, you know, and he goes, well, that's the legal beef, tells you and he gives you exactly what the law says. And so I think we tend to like that. I certainly like that. Like where I like thick black lines, clear operational definitions. But it is true that, for instance, growing up, I wasn't of the mind that, you know, it's not okay to cry. I just— but it was definitely certain places, certain times. Yeah. It does seem like the workplace and school and online, it's become either more accepted or it just happens that people are bringing more of their own stuff. And I think one thing I worry about— I'm showing my age here— but the one thing that I worry about as people think about their emotions without having really good strategies to work with them is that they lose the ability to be effective. I agree, because time is running. And I hear from a fair number of friends whose kid is struggling because they're dealing with depression or they're dealing with anxiety or they have a cannabis use disorder or they're— time's ticking and developmental milestones are real. And so the question I have is, how should people think about evolving their own ability to work with their emotions? Because you said it's a process, it's a dance, it takes time. With the need to really show up and get things done in life. Yeah. Because you and I are two people who are degreed and have steady jobs, and it's— we have space to think about this stuff.

Well, we do. And I always tell people that, like, for example, there's a school— I won't mention its name because this is not a good story— post the election, this past election, wrote a note to every student and said, we recognize that some of you may be feeling overwhelmed by your feelings, and if you need to take the day off, it's okay. I almost had a conniption about that. I was— that's my father speaking, conniption. But I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. They weren't a school that I work with. I wanted to call the head of that school and say, like, this is the worst advice you can give people. People have to learn how to live with difficult feelings. And if we're going to give excuses to people to like, you know, they can just like, I'm overwhelmed by what's happened and not be able to process it and manage it and move forward in their life. We're going to create a generation of very weak people. So I couldn't agree more. And that's not what this work is about. That's the confusion. It's been politicized in many ways sometimes. And there's groups of people now that say, you're making kids fragile by having them talk about their feelings. And I say, it's called emotional intelligence, emotion regulation. We're not letting them sit in their feelings all day long. We want them to recognize, is that feeling helping or hurting them achieve their goals? If it's getting in the way, You need to strategize. And the goal is to move forward, not to be stuck in. I think that's a huge, huge issue right now. And the same thing with discomfort. Like, it's okay to be uncomfortable. I mean, my whole career is built upon being uncomfortable. People saying, "I don't like your work. Your program's going to turn kids into homosexuals. I don't want to talk about feelings. You know, you're this." I'm no psychologist, but you recreated your childhood with the public.

Yeah, there you go.

Sublimated. But I love that feeling, that discomfort. I sit with it. I don't try to push it away. And I think, Mark, what's your creative solution? That to me is like the beauty of the work. I don't get it. If I just got paralyzed by that, where would I go in life? I would be frozen. We don't want kids to be frozen. We don't want anyone to be frozen. We want people to be able to live their lives, experience the full range of emotions, regulate effectively, and achieve their goals.

I'm no psychologist. I've said that 4 times, uh, but I have the strong feeling that your martial arts training prepared you to be public-facing because it is a relationship, right? And I'd like to talk a little bit about that relationship specifically because you've been this amazing ambassador for emotions— what they are, how to work with them in a healthy way. And to also still show up in life, to not necessarily take the day off, right? I mean, if you lose a close family member, it makes— we would all say, like, of course, stay home, take a day, take what you need, right? But eventually come back. You know, that's an important piece too. It's an important piece too to not, as one scientist I used to work with say, you know, dissolve into a puddle. He used to say when someone's paper came back, he said, and if it gets rejected, Before you look, if it gets rejected, don't dissolve into a puddle of your own tears. It was that kind of old school harsh thing, but I think it came from a place of care. 'Cause you're like, listen, it's not the end of the world. And there've been graduate students who've killed themselves on the basis of their PhD not going well. I know stories about this, sadly. You have taken some heat for both being a champion of this process, but also by not giving in to this idea that we're all just supposed to take the decade off. Yeah. And so you get it from both sides. Sides. You're in a unique position. Yeah. And I feel for you because some people will say, hey, listen, you're teaching people to be soft. And clearly that's not what you're advocating for. And people have also said, hey, you're pushing us to, like, push our feelings away. And there's a lot that we're really angry about in the world. And how can you be talking about this when fascism is taking over, there's a war, this, and, you know, and, and on and on and on and on and on and on. Down. So how have you, just personally, if you're willing, how has that landed and how have you decided to respond to that? I love challenge.

And so, you know, I wrote this piece for Time magazine. And of course, you probably know this, but when you write an op-ed, the publisher decides on the title and they like to be provocative. So they called it "The Overreaction Epidemic," and I got slammed for it. You know, overreaction, we're not overreacting, the world's coming to an end. And it does feel like for many of us, you know, between wars and everything else happening, political polarization, you know, does feel that way for many on both sides. And I say, yes, but running around yelling and screaming at people, how is that helpful? Like, where is the benefit to you and to the other person to move forward? And so to me, it just makes me think more creatively about the work I do. And the other side, you know, where people have said that I'm now making people fragile because I'm getting kids and boys to talk about their feelings and it's going to make them more fragile. As a matter of fact, I saw somebody said recently that this work causes kids to have mental illness. And I was like, wow, that's a good one. And again, this stems from misunderstanding of the concepts. A, I'm a big stickler, like you said, operational definitions. I wanna be super clear about what I'm teaching. I'm not teaching la la la la. I'm teaching you how to be emotionally self-aware. Would you agree that it matters to be clear about what you're feeling? Yes. Thank you. Okay, so when you're clear about how you're feeling, and if that feeling is disrupting you from being a good student, being a good partner or being a good manager leader, do you think that you should use techniques to help you figure out how to manage it?

Yes, absolutely. Perfect. That's what we teach.

It's really clear. When you have conceptual clarity, I think there's less confusion. What happens is that people— it's gotten politicized. It's confusing around going back to what we spoke about earlier, that this is obsessive checking in, this is prying into kids' personal lives. Here's the deal. A kid comes to school with feelings. We all have feelings from the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night, even when we sleep. Have you ever been irritable in the morning? Definitely. Yeah. Definitely. And have you ever noticed that we call it incidental leakage? It's not a great term, but like you're irritable, you really haven't processed it, and you get maybe to the studio here, and then maybe people are trying to interact with you, but, and you're not like the best version of you. Definitely. Yeah. That's what happens. And so that happens to a kid who's gotten bullied on the bus or had a fight at home. And you want that kid, like every parent does, I want my kid to be a good learner, you know, have good friends, et cetera. All right, so now I'm teaching you a process, Andrew, that before you walk into the studio, I want you to take 30 seconds, maybe 20 if you get good at it, to just check in. Take a breath. How are you feeling? Gosh, I'm pissed off at that phone call I had. I'm annoyed at this. Okay, how do you want to be seen and talked about and experienced in that studio today? Oh wow, it's a whole— it's here. Like, even saying that, like, it makes you stand still and reflect. Well, I want to be this cool dude who's compassionate and creative. Okay, well, what do you need to get there? And then you walk in, and all of a sudden you have attributed the emotion to its actual cause, which is that stupid phone call, whatever happened. And you're no longer going to displace that or project it or take it out on somebody else. Do you think that would be a useful process for kids, couples, leaders to use? Definitely. How long did it take? Seconds. There you go. This is not obsession with feeling. This is not, you know, this is opportune moments. You know, when I come home from work, I work long hours and I'm tired and I'm irritable a lot of time. I just am. I gotta switch my mindset. To be the best version of myself as a husband. So that's what we're trying to help people do. And I don't want people to be confused by that. I want people to be super— I want real clarity. It's articulating what your experience is, recognizing that it may be helpful. If it's helpful, you got nothing to do. Congratulations. If it's not going to be helpful, you need to think about those strategies. Is it labeling it? Maybe. Is it taking the breath? Maybe. There have been times I've taken 15 deep breaths and I'm still irritable. I need a new strategy. I need to call a good friend and just say, hey Doug, can you like, I'm really struggling with this right now. You got some thoughts? Not a problem. Getting social support is not weak. It's smart. Maybe I need to take another walk around the block to just decompress. Maybe I got a really shitty night's sleep and I just need to recognize that that I'm never going to be the best version of myself no matter how hard I try, because I haven't replenished, you know, the resources of my brain to be the best version of myself.

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And I've two reflections I'd love your reflections on. The first one is positive states and emotions that are also dangerous. When people are feeling over-affiliative, over-comfortable, they sometimes say things that get them into real trouble. They either disclose things or they make jokes that later they pay the price for. This is, I think, maybe not as common as anger and sadness, anxiety. But given that some very prominent, very, very smart people I've seen completely destroy their careers by— it used to be called tweeting. You go, this is crazy. This person, actually a chair of psychiatry, I'm not going to beat around the bush here, was fired for saying something that was totally— it was actually inappropriate and lame and stupid. And you just go, but this person is clearly intelligent. They're the chair of a of a, of an Ivy League school in psychiatry. And you say, well, what happened? And what was interesting to me were the tweets leading up to it. You could say he was showing his true self, but there was this sort of like ease and comfort around joking. And there's certain jokes you just don't make. And so I think what you're describing is equally important for not overstepping, not than, you know, hurting oneself or other people? Activation is activation.

So your heart rate and your, you know, different chemicals get released when you're super excited and when you're anxious. Activation might be the same. The psychology of it is different, right? One is like anticipation of like positive things. One is anticipation of, you know, the negative things. And of course, emotions drive our thinking, our decision-making, everything. So, you know, how many of us have made a mistake when we were too excited when we were young? You know, we won't go into those stories now. Excitement without regulation is not helpful. It's funny because you tell that, and going back to the school situation, that's a big problem with a lot of teachers. They're like, the kid is so excited, they're just going to see grandma after school and they can't stop talking about it all day long. And it's driving me crazy. So positive emotions can be a pain in the butt too. And, but they're afraid that they don't want to squelch the kid's excitement. And I say, well, let's talk about it. What do you think? I mean, this is like the easiest solution I came up with on the spot. I said, what's the challenge? He just, he can't stop talking about going to see his grandmother. I said, well, he must love his grandmother. That's a great thing. Have you given him an opportunity to stand up in the front of the class and just tell everybody how excited he is and just let him get it out. What do you mean? You want me to give him the throne? I said, yeah, I want you to try this out. I want you to let him when he's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, he can't stop talking about it, I want you to say, Johnny, I'm gonna give you a minute to get up and tell everybody how excited you are, but then we're gonna go back to math. We're gonna go back to science. And let me know how that works. And of course, 2 weeks later, I go back and visit. She's like, you're a magician. I'm like, I'm not a magician. He just needed an outlet for his emotions. Give the kid the 1 minute to just tell everybody how excited he is it is, but also let him know that the expectations that I have for you are not changing. Just because you're excited about going to see Grandma doesn't mean you have to focus. That's the magic of the work.

Be a channel, not a dam. There you go. I didn't make that up. I learned that when I was a camp counselor in Yosemite. You get a kid that, you know, back then we didn't have concepts of ADHD. Yeah. You got a kid that back then you would just be like, oh, this kid is, he's out of control. It wasn't harming anyone, it was just like would not settle down. You can't like just say, hey, sit down. Or I mean, that kid would always be getting in trouble, get sent home. So you give them an opportunity to do something, but then you have to like let them settle down. Likewise for the kid that was more creative and less physical. If your entire bunk was a bunch of kids who were super physical, that always would happen. But then you find out this kid was like, had some, some, something of value to share with the other kids. And then it would establish his place in, in this group. There's a very weird thing happening lately online, which is this obsession with the '90s. Um, I grew up in the '90s, so a teen in the '90s. What do you say? Um, and there's an example that I saw recently that I think is really relevant to what you're describing. It was a picture of a classroom sitting around listening to a radio. I remember doing this. It an actual picture, and it said, when the Challenger space shuttle blew up, we all listened to it with our teachers because we were listening to that space shuttle launch. And then afterwards, we went back to our lesson plan. We didn't process it for weeks and weeks. And someone said, gosh, I missed the '90s. Now, at my school is a little bit different. I actually remember the teacher going around the room the next day and asking people if they had anything they wanted to share. And people would share their thoughts. And then like one kid said, like, I heard they found a foot, you know? And then she was like, okay, Garrett, you know, like, settle down. You know, like some kids were being a bit morbid and stuff. Maybe she shouldn't have done that. I don't know. But there was an opportunity. But I think that was the last it was ever discussed. And we witnessed with our ears. It's not the same as seeing it, but we witnessed with our ears a bunch of people blowing up. And it was true. It was like, okay, this happened. This is tragic. We're gonna talk about it for a bit and then we're not gonna talk about it anymore. I'd love your thoughts on the picture I just laid out. What happened, what's happening now, this kind of emphasis on let's get back to when things were not as coddled. I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

You know, we were talking about this a little while ago. The world that kids are growing up in now is different. It is different world. I was not thinking about climate change when I was a kid. I really didn't worry about who was president or not president and the whatever's going on politically. I wasn't thinking about, you know, wars as much as people are thinking about right now. I wasn't thinking about artificial intelligence and technology is going to take over my career. So there are real concerns that high school kids tell me they're feeling, and it's really causing them a lot of stress. We haven't created solutions. We're not teaching them how to manage it. We're going to have to learn how to manage it in this world we're living in. So I do think, you know, the challenge is there. I just want to say one thing that's related, which is this artificial intelligence piece that is obviously prominent right now in society, which people are freaked out about for some reasons and thrilled about for other reasons. The thing that I'm most concerned about is this, is that about 20% of adolescents now report using technology, AI, as a therapist, you know, as a companion. Now, No. Do I think you can get advice from AI about like stress? Definitely. Do I think it's gonna help? A little bit. Do I want people to be in relationship with a chatbot? Absolutely not. And here's the deal. When I was a kid who was being bullied and like spit on the bus and my head being banged in the windows and I came off the bus, what I needed was a human being to say, "I love you," a human being to grab my hand, a human being to say, "We're gonna get through this together." There's no way that technology can replace that. And I would argue that this obsession with technology to solve our emotional problems is a symptom of The thing we started talking about from the beginning, which is this fear of intimacy, this fear of connection, this fear of being present with people's emotions. It's so scary for parents to be with their kids' emotions. They're, I never learned how to deal with my anxiety. I can't deal with my kids' anxiety. I'd rather not know that they're feeling anxious. And then I said, do you want your kid married to a chatbot? And so the real issue in my humble opinion, is that we are cultivating more and more disconnection. And I think about this developmentally. I don't think, in general, I was stressed out as a kid, and I was at the age where video games were becoming popular, and I got that first little football game. I could spend 10 hours a day on that. That was my way of not being in the real world. Of not dealing with my challenges, of my parents not connecting with me. Then I got a Walkman. And then the internet came. And then I got email. And then I got social media. And now it's AI. This is just an endless trajectory of outside influences that are pulling us away from being in relationship. And I think I wouldn't say this, obviously I wasn't saying this publicly, this is a podcast, is that that I never thought evolution can move so quickly, but I do feel that way all of a sudden, what's happening now, this chronic disconnection. And kids are preferring to text instead of to communicate with their friends. There's research, you know, anxiety, stress, and depression are increasing consistently. And it comes back to connection and strategies.

Yeah, a good friend of mine who's a geneticist said it's, you know, it takes a very long time to evolve a species. It doesn't take very long to devolve a species. You can crash a species very quickly. In terms of people feeling overwhelmed and saying, I can't do anything right now because of what's happening in the world. I remember when I was an undergraduate, the '90s were a pretty peaceful time. I mean, we had Gulf War and things like that, but relatively speaking. And the professor whose lab I worked in, told me— this was in Santa Barbara where they burned the bank down during the Vietnam War protests— but he said that in the early '70s, uh, very early '70s and late '60s, that you'd be giving a lecture— he was a young professor— and students would just stand up, "What about the war in Vietnam?" And he's like, "This is a physiology class. We're talking about this." And they'd say, "What about—" and the students would start protesting. So this is not a really new phenomenon. I agree. I mean, this was happening— people feeling overwhelmed, people feeling like the campus was theirs, they're going to make noise. I'm I'm not justifying unlawful protest. I'm not— I'm certainly not justifying any kind of protest where certain students are being restricted. I'm fundamentally— I'll go on record, I'm fundamentally opposed to that. But this notion that people are feeling overwhelmed, and young people are full of energy, you know, and they want people to know how overwhelmed they feel and how angry they feel. But in the backdrop, the line's moving, the conveyor's moving forward. I agree. But I think that in order for people to feel like— and this comes from the article that was written by you, uh, you quoted a comment someone said, "We're not overreacting, we're underreacting." So in order for people to feel heard— I want to double-click on that comment— but in order for people to feel really heard and, and understood in their reaction, I think it's also important that our society just can't sit around protesting all day, and we can't collapse into— we can't dissolve into a puddle of our own tears. And I do want to talk to you about the ways that you're formalizing this work, because one thing that I think is wonderful that's happened in the last 10 years or so is that we've moved from the language of consciousness and mindfulness, which I think are great terms, of course, to long exhale breathing, to the notion that stress can be adaptive. Ali Crum's lab, it can make us better, to to an understanding that there's a way of working with your physiology to be stronger and yet acknowledge your physiology. I'm feeling stressed now. I need to bring my stress down. I'm, I'm exhausted. I need to figure out a way to have more energy, work on sleep, etc., etc. I don't think it's happened yet, but I think it's starting that psychology needs the same kind of organizational principles so that people can move past narcissism, gaslighting, claiming everyone that they don't like is, is being abusive. And there's been a sort of psychological— I don't want to say collapse, but I don't think people know how to navigate this space. Whereas I think mindfulness, consciousness, and the idea that we need to take care of our sleep, we need to exercise, we need sunlight, you know, I and others have worked very hard to try and get people to understand, like, you need to work with your body. You're not trying to conquer your body, but you do need to nudge manage it and sometimes push it. You don't want to be that person 10 hours on the treadmill who's suppressing everything. And I think where psychology has been a little bit self-defeating is that there's a lot of language and it can start to feel like, oh, this is a lot, I got shit to do. So along those lines, if you are told, you know, so-and-so's gaslighting me, they're a narcissist, that, you know, fascism is taking over, and like, you expect me to not be outraged, quote, "We're not overreacting, we're underreacting." You're a martial artist, you're a very staid guy. Where do you start? What do you say to that person?

Well, I think we have to ask them if they're being effective. And so is whatever you're doing leading to the change that you want it to have? And if they know about emotions, I don't know about you, but when someone is yelling and screaming at me, I shut down. I'm no longer present. And so they're actually not getting their goal achieved. If they're asking me to do something different or they're trying to help me understand something, if they can't communicate in a way that I can understand it and I want to actually listen, it's not going anywhere. So I think that people need to recognize that I'm a person who is both/and. So just to give you a concrete example, our program RULER, which is the school-based work that we do, is in all the schools in one district of Harlem, New York. 21 schools, thousands of kids, the teachers, the leaders. The deputy superintendent, Dawn, is my former student. They're facing food scarcity. These are really troubled families in many instances. They're facing, obviously, racism. They're facing poverty, you know, home insecurity. Of course I want to solve for that problem. I would do anything I could to make sure everybody has a meal. At the same time, every one of those kids is being dropped off at school, and we're expecting that kid to thrive for 8 hours a day in that classroom. How could I not teach that kid skills to thrive? I have to. There's no obligation. There's no— it's my moral obligation to help that kid be the best version of themselves, no matter what their background is, no matter what their circumstances are. It doesn't mean that I'm not also thinking about that. And I think that people in our society today— this is part of that article— is that we're so focused on the big change. Many of us have very little control over the big change. I feel blessed that I have some control over the lives of thousands of kids that are waking up every morning and trying to be the best version of themselves. But they need help. They need strategy. They need teachers who are well, who can be the best version of themselves for them. They need leaders who care about the teachers. And so I think that we have to find in our own way— I know my way, and I sleep well at night thinking I'm doing important work to support people and having well-being. It doesn't mean I don't think about the larger issues, but I do think that the more well people are, the better they're able to be at problem solving around the larger societal issues. I don't think a dysregulated society is going to solve its problems.

I agree completely, and I'm grateful for the work you're doing. I, um, I feel like that, again, I just draw the parallel to what's happened around sleep, stress regulation, exercise, nutrition. I feel like there's always resistance at the beginning. Like, what is this stuff? Like, I don't want a morning routine. I just want to get up and do my thing. Like, I don't want to hear that alcohol is bad for me. Like, I mean, when I was coming up in academia, like, alcohol was everywhere. The happy hour, is that— it was the source of a lot of problems. I was never a big drinker, so for me it was like great opportunity to go do something else. But if you didn't drink with your senior colleagues, it was like people like, what's wrong with you? Or something like that. I think what causes a tide change is when, first of all, someone creates a structure around things that science shows work. You've been doing that, and I love that you're taking this broader through books, through podcasts, um, into the school districts. We'll talk more about the ways you're doing it, ways people can incorporate some of this. But I think at some point a few or more brave individuals start incorporating a structure like, oh wow, maybe Matt Walker's right. Maybe sleep when you're dead is not a good philosophy. And now the mindset is, well, if you sleep, you're smarter. If you're smarter, you're more effective. And so the people who are doing best are incorporating a structure. And then I also think inevitably what happens— and we're kind of edging up against this now, at least in the sorts of things that I teach is a pushback, like, okay, enough structure. Like, we need some freedom. I'm sensing that now. People are like, how many things am I supposed to do? And the idea is like, you're not supposed to do them all. You're supposed to do what you need, right? And I acknowledge that that's happening now. That's the contour of sort of the areas that I've worked in and tried to share. In the area that you work in and are trying to share, and I realize there's overlap, I feel like the structure is there. I think great examples of people, kids and adults who are really not just succeeding, not just getting by, but are like really kicking butt by virtue of doing the things that you're talking about. That's what's going to lead to a systemic change. I think about Steve Kerr talks about meditation and he's Steve Kerr. So you're like, okay, people like basketball, like this guy's a stud and he meditates. And so meditation is no longer considered magic carpet stuff. Wim Hof. Yeah, right. For every one of these things, that's kind of how it is. It's like breathwork. Okay, like, I know Wim Hof, and Wim is a little bit eccentric. People are like, oh yeah, breathe, exhale. That's like, everyone does that now. So no one's gonna be like, oh, now we're breathing. And like, but how much time do we have to spend breathing? And so I think with what you're talking about, I feel like it's central to everything. I actually worry about our species if we don't incorporate the sorts of things that you're talking about. You talk about about, you know, the idea of regulating is not suppressing. Like, I think the, the concepts are critical and the practices are critical. So could you give us a couple examples of the concepts that are just core concepts? You said we started off this way, but sure. And then maybe a few practical tools so that people can start to think about this in the same way that 10 years ago we might have talked about, like, hey, like, you think sleep when you're dead is working for you, but you're actually kind of an idiot when you don't sleep and you're in a job that requires you to be smart, not an idiot, this kind of thing.

Yeah, I think firstly, you know, in my book I have something called the Dealing with Feeling Wheel. And this goes directly to what you're thinking about. When people are dysregulated, when parents are like dealing with a kid, for example, who's dysregulated, they get desperate. Let's take a deep breath and breathe, breathe. No, let's go for a walk. No, let's cook together. No, let's play a game. No, let's do this. And you go crazy. That's not helpful. I'll give you an example for myself. For a couple of months, I've been just— I have so much work and I have not slept well. The last week, I've prioritized going to bed early. I prioritize like real dark, you know, the darkened room. And like, I woke up today at 7:30. I was like, "Oh God, it's a miracle." Like 7:30, it's like, you know, it's the middle of the afternoon. And I feel energized today. I feel feel, you know, and I'm in a good place. And I felt that way for like a week now. I recognize I'm building new patterns for my sleep. It's no longer in my wheel a priority. I figured it out. There are some days where my— I just feel I can't think straight. I'm like all over the place. I realize that I've been maybe on social media too much. I realize I have like 85 things on my to-do list. And I'm like, Mark, you gotta go back to your mindfulness work. You need some breathwork. You need to just sit around. You need to take that space. You need to get to that hot yoga class. You need to do this. You need this back into your routine. There are other days I sit around and think, so lonely. I don't talk to anybody anymore. I feel like so like, you know, whatever. And I'm like, I need connection. I'm desperate for connection. I think that's the way we have to look at it. That there are these components of our well-being that are correlated and are the same as what we do to regulate our emotions. There's the self-awareness piece. Am I at all paying attention to my emotions right now? There's that breathwork piece. There's the cognitive work. There's the relational work. There's the biology of the sleep, the nutrition, the physical activity. Like, for example, one of the things that happened for me me in writing this new book was that I became very, very committed to my own fitness. Martial arts was like, you know, that was like teaching 10 karate classes a week. I was younger then. I was in the best shape of my life. Then I got like Professor Dumpy Professor syndrome. I'm like, that is not— I'm not getting on that stage looking that way anymore. I was like, whoa. And I made this major commitment. And one of the things that happened to was that it became my go-to strategy for my overwhelm and stress while writing my book. And I remember saying to myself one day, like, Mark, you may not finish this book, but you're gonna be in the best freaking shape of your life. And truthfully, it transformed my life. Now, here's why I'm telling you that story, because in the conversation with this friend Marco, who is a trainer, we started having these conversations around fitness identity and how it relates to emotional intelligence identity. And I realized something magical, which is that now at 56, it's been 4 years that I've done my 4 workouts a week. I mean, I haven't really missed a workout unless I'm on a vacation, but I'll still do something else. I cannot not exercise. And this morning, just to be talking about coming on Huberman Lab, I'm like, I woke up at 7:30. I'm like, I got to get there by this time, but I can't work out. I have to work out before I go to Huberman. I can't show up not doing my workout. And I knew I would feel better. I knew I'd be more present. And I did my hour back workout. But the point I'm really making here is that I identify as a person who exercises. It's like just who I am. My vision for the world is that we cultivate people who identify as well-regulated. Because if you walk into a room thinking to yourself, I got this, nothing you can say can trigger me, I can get through this, or I can manage my emotions, life is gonna be completely different. Different. And that's why I end my book with this concept that people talk a lot about, like, be the best self, and everybody's talking about their best selves. But it really does relate to emotion regulation, and there's good research to support it. That you asked me for like a concrete, like, technique. Well, this is that thing we call the meta moment. And I cultivated this technique with my colleague Robin. She was a therapist working with patients in New York City, and she's like, I teach them all strategies, and then they go home and they yell at each And I'm like, I'm a scientist working in schools and everybody's like, this is boring. And then nobody wants to do this. I'm like, the motivation is not there. People don't see the benefit. People, they don't see that their life is going to be better, going to make better choices, have better relationships, et cetera. So what's going to make a difference? Well, as we know, between stimulus and response, there is space. Okay. So what do I do to fill the space? Well, the first step is I got a sense that something's going on. I got to be aware. Wow, that just triggered me. Wow, that was not cool. My automatic habitual response was going to be, who the F do you think you are? Like, don't talk to me that way, or whatever it might be. Mark, who identifies as the most well-regulated person in the whole wide world, the feelings master, the emotional guru, He has a process. He automatically takes the breath. He automatically builds a space. He automatically takes a step back. He does not go on that gut. He says, "There's a better way." But that's not enough. So now I have to think about my best version of myself in my role as a husband. How do I want to be seen? How do I want to be talked about? How do I want to be experienced? And my role as a professor and my role as a presenter, different roles, different selves. And I've helped millions of people engage in this process, by the way. And when you build the space to think about your best self, what it does is it pulls you away from the trigger and it brings you back to your values. And then through the lens of Mark, the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence, like he's a different dude. He's a totally different guy than Mark who grew up in New Jersey being bullied and is triggered. Mark, who's the center director, is like a, you know, Oz, you know, the Yoda of emotional intelligence. Oh, well, how would he respond to this moment? This is a beautiful challenge. I love it. And so my point is, is that we can do that for ourselves. We can help other people do it. We can do it in a moment. Ideally, we'll do it proactively. So when you go home or when you come into work, you pause, you identify, and you think about the best version of yourself and you enter in through that lens. My favorite story about this was, you know, we teach this in schools. And this one kid, you know, when people joke about things, you know, they got it. So I'm in this school and this teacher is like, "Mark, you know, this stuff is, you know, it's really funny." I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Well, this kid was really not being kind to someone on the playground. And I called him out on it. And he came over and I said, you know, I need to know exactly what happened." And the kid said, you know, Mrs. Johnson, I'm gonna tell you what happened, but I need you to take a MetaMoment first. Like, the kid knew that if she were looking at what he had done through the best version of herself, she would respond differently. That's the magic of the work.

Well, I think that the language around MetaMoment is something that I'm gonna, with your permission, I'm gonna help propagate because I do think languaging and labels is very, very important in terms of getting useful tools out more broadly. You know, again, not to knock on the, mindfulness meditation work that goes back thousands of years. But, you know, occurred to me at some point, like, there's genuine power for mental and physical health in these practices, correct? Yoga Nidra, et cetera. And I had to, like, have a conversation with myself and go, you know what, I'm going to take some heat for this, but I'm not going to call it Yoga Nidra. I'm going to call it non-sleep deep rest so more people do it. And I apologize, but that's, you know, You know, there was a reason. There's a reason to say this is the physiological sigh. You know, eventually now we know you can just do long exhale breathing, right? Principle's the same. The languaging is so key for people to adopt these concepts, and they can't drink from the fire hose. This is also what I've realized. They can't take it all at once. But you're building a curriculum for people, and it's so important. I also, I'm so struck by this. The link that you discovered and clearly embody of internalizing a fit person identification. You know, you're a coach of a team. You're not going to be a slovenly coach. You're going to show that you also could, you did all this and you could continue to do it if your students and your players challenged you to, right? Identifying with a certain emotional maturity, regulation level, that is also key. Because for myself, I mean, many years ago, I remember thinking, I'm, you know, I don't miss workouts. I just decided I just don't miss them to the point where sometimes I probably should miss them. I probably overshot the market time. I was like, you know, and I learned I don't train sick. I'd now take weeks off every once in a while. So those are structured around that. So it's not push, push, push to the point of self-destruction. But with having an emotional identity that you see in yourself and, and can live into, I think that's a beautiful thing. I mean, David Goggins talks about having to have the old Goggins and the new one in order to be the new one, because both live inside his head. He sat in that very chair and explained both of them are in here, but he has to take actions to be one and not the other every single day. And I think as this language around what we're talking about evolves, I do think it's going to go really far and wide. I have a theory right now. Tell me where it's wrong, because it's almost certainly wrong. That many people are very in touch with their extreme emotions of anger, sadness, um, feeling like they're just, you know, they're too woke, they're too— they're fascist. Like, they're just in touch with the emotions. And then we have— we're really good at putting labels on other people's identities, right? They're a narcissist, they're a fascist, they're extreme woke. But we don't really think about our own identity as much. We're kind of lost in the emotions and political parties. People usually know where they stand. But what would this look like to come up? Like, I'm not asking you to do this on the fly, but I'm asking you to do this on the fly.

It's all right.

Like, should we be thinking about emotional maturity, emotional intelligence? Is there a word that we can internalize? Like, I'd like to be in shape. I kind of know what that is. I want to be a certain amount of strength, certain amount of endurance, certain amount of I wanna be able to run for the plane and not cough up a lung. I also wanna be able to open the pickle jar. I wanna be able to go up the stairs without pain. I know I have a concept of what that is for me. What is a label that works really well that people can start to fill in the bins of what it is to be an emotionally intelligent person?

I think it's emotional intelligence because it's, again, we need concepts that are clear, that can be defined, that can be measured, and that demonstrate predictive validity. And so every one of the skills— I wrote a book on emotion regulation because that was the area that I wanted to focus on right now, because that is at the top of the hierarchy. At the end, it's what you do with the feelings. That's the regulation piece. But to do that, you need to recognize your feelings, understand them, label them, decide whether you want to express them or regulate. That's the RULER framework. Emotion perception. Yes, it's complicated, but at the end, it's about building relationships. I can't know how you're feeling by your facial expression. You know that from Lisa Feldman Barrett's work. But I can make a hypothesis and I can check in and say, hey, did what I say land on you well or not so well? Let's talk about it. The intelligence is the courage to engage. The understanding is, listen, Because of my childhood, I have a different relationship to anger than you do. We learned that today together. I see anger and I have fear comes in my blood because I knew I was gonna get hit or yelled at or screamed or punished. You have a different relationship with anger. Anger still is about injustice, period. We have to agree that the definition is about perceived injustice. However, my relationship to that and yours is different. Different. Just like whether you're gay or straight or bi or trans, um, homophobia to someone who is LGBTQIA is different than to someone who's not. I can't relate if I'm not you, but I can have the, the courage to have empathy for your experience. That's the understanding piece. I'm not going to ever be fully empathic to your life because I didn't live your life. It's your life. So you can't understand my life. You can relate to pieces of it, but I can be curious about it and not judge it. The labeling piece is having that language. You know, what is really happening here? What is the experience? The expression piece is knowing how and when to express with different people across contexts. It's saying, is how I'm communicating landing well? Is my intended outcome a possibility here, or is the person going to just, you know, run away? And then the last piece is the regulation, which is, in the end, is this emotion helping or hurting me achieve my goals in life? And if it's going to hurt your goals, you need strategies to deal with it. Life is difficult. I don't know about you, but this journey in becoming an emotion revolutionary ain't easy. You know, now I got— it's politicized, and like we were talking about earlier, it's like, really? All right, come on. Like, what happened? Who was your mother? That's what I want to say. Like, tell me about the relationship you had with your mother. Probably shouldn't have said that, but anyway, I'm okay with it. It's all good. Maybe your father, whoever. The point is, is that I feel very confident in that what I teach is easily defined. It's measurable. And I can show you my own and thousands of other studies where these skills produce predict the things that we care about in life, whether it's well-being, whether it's leadership, whether it's decision-making, whether it's just mental health outcomes. And so it's— I kind of have incontrovertible evidence for the effectiveness of it. And so you can still say, I'm not into it, but you have to be educated first. And once you really understand the value proposition, the why behind learning the skills, I can't imagine that every parent in the world wouldn't want their kid to develop these skills, especially if these skills are going to be the defining skills of who succeeds and who doesn't.

I feel like that's when a culture evolves. And I'm just imagining a future not too long from now where the debate around— we all know who we're talking about here— one group is saying they're all fascists with no empathy. And the other side is saying, well, they're so caught up in, um, inclusivity that nothing's getting done and people are being treated unfairly. That's what the dialogue is, right? That's the dialogue. And at some point we gotta go, okay everyone, like, we understand your positions, but what are we gonna do? We got, we got to move forward. I don't know that there's going to be a meeting in the middle for a while. What is going to happen, I think, is that young people will strive, hopefully, or they'll give up. And I think if the people who strive incorporate these tools and are rewarded for them, then that will become the standard. Exactly. You know, it's kind of interesting, the obesity crisis was real, and there was also a discussion around inclusivity, and that has now shifted in part because of the GLPs. But there's now this idea that that, you know, being obese is unhealthy. You couldn't say that 5, 6 years ago. I remember during the pandemic, a colleague of mine, very senior colleague, said, we're seeing people dying of COVID and it's people who are obese. And he said, but you can't say that publicly. He told me, don't say that publicly. And so now there's this acknowledgment, right, that, you know, physical health is important and people are striving for that more. Which is, uh, that's it. I think that's generally a positive shift. It can be taken too far, but I think that there's this weird moment that we're in where the name-calling and the labeling of others, it's not getting us anywhere. The opportunity cost is that we're not actually figuring out like what we're responsible for. And I'm pointing fingers at both sides, and I'm also pointing fingers at myself because for sure I can sit here and say all sorts of But clearly, we all have this work to do.

Something important about that is that you don't know someone until you know their story. Like, I know a little bit about your story now. I want to know more. And you know a little bit more about my story. And once you know someone's story, you start having more interest in them, more compassion for them. My partner made a movie during the pandemic called America Unfiltered, which was was him and his friend. So it's a gay Panamanian running around with a straight Russian around America for a year interviewing people about what it means to live in America today. And they went to Trump rallies and the Biden rallies, and they went into poverty, you know, and they went into all over America, gun shop owners and Black moms whose kids had been murdered by the police, and people who wanted to become Americans. Of citizens. And it was a listening journey. And it was remarkable on how— I did a study on this, actually. I showed people the expressions of people, and I had them judge, would you want to get to know this person? How warm is this person, et cetera, before they watched the movie? And what we found was that people were very judgmental based on race, based on if they were holding a gun or not. And then you watch the movie and you see the gun shop owner cry when he's talking about his relationship with his father. And that the only way he and his father could bond was over, you know, the guns. And you start hearing his story and you're sort of like, "This guy's a really nice guy, actually." And then we tested people afterwards and we found that people had completely different judgments of people after hearing them and listening to their stories. And that's what we need in our society. We need more curiosity and less judgment. And that goes to ourselves. We'll be much more regulated. We'll have better relationships. We don't have to agree. There's no need to agree, but there is a need to be civil.

What you're talking about are standards. I think what you're talking about is some standards of emotional intelligence, or at least standards for striving. Because if we say like, oh, there's standards of physical presence, and there's— what does that mean? No, does that mean everyone has to have like 8-pack abs and be perfectly, you know? And then, and then you have older people trying to reverse their age and ending up looking like, like totally artificial. And yeah, and it can go too far, right? Um, but I think having standards of striving— like every kid does physical education because even if you're not going to be a great athlete, it's good to develop a relationship to your body and take care but every kid should do emotional intelligence training. If you're— even if you're not going to become Mark Brackett, you, you can learn to regulate better than your parents. And if it— if you're rewarded— we love rewards, right? We're, we're obsessed with— if we— if the promotions and the, the money and the status— let's face it, people care about that stuff— comes from being healthier physically and emotionally, who wouldn't want that?

I agree. And it goes back again, I think, I'm obsessive about this, like being a scientist about yourself. You said this earlier, you know, you, based on whatever, you know, we won't have to go into this right now, but like working out is your big thing. But then you realize, you know, like, I need a little break. I can take a break. It's okay. It's okay to take a day off. I can go walking on the beach or whatever it is. But that's the reflection process. That's you having that metacognitive ability to say, let me evaluate my life right now. Like, I can have a day without the gym. It's going to be good. I can go have some fun with some friends. I'm the same way. All of this work that we do is about that level of reflection. I have to ask myself when I don't do my workout, is this an excuse? Like, what's really under— am I really tired or am I just like lazy right now? And that's the work. You know, I was thinking about this as we were talking that it's a process. And, you know, this— I came up with this process for myself as I was I was, you know, writing, which with the workouts, you know, in the beginning you look in the mirror. And by the way, I took photos of myself every month, every month religiously. And the proof is in the photos. I mean, like sometimes I look at them like, wow, Mark, you really did a good job. Because I really got out of shape and I was not happy with myself. I was used to being an athlete as a martial artist. And now I have 4 years of photos, you know, front, side, back. Every month and you look at the day one and you look at today and it's a completely different human being. I have to look at that once in a while because I still have weird issues and I look in the mirror and I'm like, uh, I'm like, wait, the picture tells the truth. But the phases of that are important. The first phase is like, can I get through this? Can I like— I can't do 4 workouts, go from 3,500 calories a day down to 1,800 calories a day. There's no way to do all that. Just like you can't take every strategy in my book and like be obsessive about it. Like, I'm going to breathe and I'm going to walk. No, I'm going No, I'm going to talk positively. No, I'm going to reach out. You'll go nuts. It's a process. This is life's work. Like, the good news, you get your whole life to work on it because you're going to need it forever. So that first phase is kind of just the learning phase. Like, what can I— like, what's the little steps I can take? The second phase is like, you start seeing a little bit of changes. My life's a little bit better. I feel a little better. I'm sleeping better. My relationships are better. I'm more positive. I even during that phase of my workout, I went through this whole phase of negativity because I'm like, Mark, you're married for 30 years, you're 56 years old, who gives a shit about your body? And I would do deadlifts and I'm like, this is ridiculous. I'm deadlifting at 55 years old. And I would catch myself every time. I'd be like, Mark, this is what you do. You are a self-saboteur right now. You gotta pause and you gotta, like, where is this coming from? And how are you going to get that self-saboteur self out of here? The best version of you is not someone who does just 2 sets of those deadlifts. You do all 4. But it was so much work, I can't tell you. But the beauty of all that, of like working through the discomfort, is that identity phase. Because now it's not an option. And so if you just do it and it becomes part of your identity, you don't have those struggles anymore.

I love it. And the parallel between physical fitness and emotional intelligence is not something I predicted before this conversation, but I love it. And I'm certain that it's resonating with people because it's just, physical stuff is just so tangible. Yeah. It's so concrete. And look, I just wanna thank you for making the emotional intelligence piece so concrete and for laying out these steps. We'll obviously provide links to your books.

Thank you. I want to play a game with you for a minute though. Okay. You ready? Okay. Because one of my former colleagues and I got together a couple of weeks ago, about a month ago. And we decided, like, people are so disconnected. So we took all the contents of my books and we made a game. So you actually, when you have your party, it's called The Point of Connection. And so these are random cards.

And it doesn't involve an app or a Wi-Fi connection?

No, you got to be with people. Awesome. So, uh, there's your first card.

What's the best advice a mentor ever gave you and how has it shaped the way you live or work? Two pieces briefly. The Mike Mentzer, one of the great trainers, gave me the advice to do low volume, high intensity resistance training, each body part once a week, and train only 3 times per week, maybe 4. Never more than 75 minutes, but to really learn to enjoy training extremely hard. And I followed that advice for 30-plus years, and I look forward to workouts. So I don't work out every day. Um, amazing advice. And then the other advice, which is separate from fitness, comes from a guy named Bob Knight, who is a neurologist at UC Berkeley, who said, figure out how much work you can do each week consistently and then find some way to reset yourself each week that is not destructive. And I said, what's yours? And he said, fishing. And I was like, okay, I've done a lot of fishing because my mom's side, all the men went fishing, and I like it, decent fisherman. But I thought, what is that for me? For me, it's hiking. So it could— for someone else, it could be something else. But I taught my lab that, and I would teach a career development course where I would pass that on at Cold Spring Harbor during the summer, which is kind of geek summer camp. And I said, that doesn't mean drink drinking, but maybe one or two drinks. Someone said, okay, fine, but as long as it's non-destructive. Find a way to reset every week and just keep coming back. And so both of those things were about consistency and intensity. So two mentors.

All right, last one, because I think this one is more relevant to our specific conversation. I thought you were going to answer a question, right?

What's one emotion you've been carrying a lot lately that you'd like to experience less often? Oh, Man, sorry. What might help soften it? All right, um, I don't know the name of this emotion. Maybe you can help me. I'll try and describe it briefly. Lately I've been having these moments of feeling so much love and affection for someone, and it like opens, and then I go go, and then it shuts. But it's not opening and shutting because of them. I'm like, and I know this feeling because in a different version of it— I'm about to get a new puppy. He's already picked out. He's already like, he's waiting. And I know the difference between what I just described, and you're like, and I just let it rip with the, with the dog. Two different things. Person, dog. I acknowledge there's a fundamental difference. But I'd feel this sort of like, like I shut it down. So what is that emotion of closing down? I guess, like, shutting off to love. Is that an emotion, or did I probably just reveal way more than—

Well, love is a feeling, obviously. And, um, but I think, you know, and we're going to go back to that opening a little bit about that fear and vulnerability, like just allowing yourself to be with. There's something that's getting in the way there.

So what might help soften it? Time?

Yeah, just be with it. Let it ride.

Man, thank you for that opportunity. Thank you. I actually really appreciate the opportunity. I hadn't thought about that until I read this. Are you willing to answer one? Yeah, sure. You're the guest. I feel like you should speak last. I spoke a lot today.

All right.

I can pick one or you can pick one. How's the game work?

You basically, you can go in circles and everybody shares and you look for the point of connection. So it's get to know people at a party, you know, in the workplace. Who is one of your heroes and what does that reveal about what you value? Well, as you know from our prior conversation, the hero in my life was my Uncle Marvin because he helped me get through my very traumatic experiences as a kid. And what I value about him now that I think about it more was that nothing I could say could startle him. Nothing I could say would make him run away. He was just fully present and a listener and a learner and provided steady support.

Well, clearly you've internalized that. Mark, thank you so much for coming back. Your work is evolving so fast and you're doing such good in the world.

And do come back again. I feel like you're clearly on the move.

There you go. And doing amazing things. And again, I'll put links to your book and your books, plural, and other work. But just wanna say thank you as a co-public educator and as somebody who's really doing important work in the world. Thank you. You're a really good man. Man, thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate you.

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Mark Brackett. To learn more about his work and to find links to his books, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a 5-star you, and you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out.

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