The Power of Negative Thinking: Why One Psychologist Says It's Good to Be in a Bad Mood
Have you ever questioned the way you navigate your inner-world? The way you think, feel - even the way you react to the emotions you experience every single day. Harvard psychologist Dr. Susan David argues that you should, because our awareness of those feelings is the single most important determinant of our success in life. In this interview, Dr. Oz and Dr. David strive to help all of us direct the complex system of our thoughts and feelings with acceptance, purpose, and an open mind, even arguing that being negative can be more positive than we think. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
So how emotionally agile am I, do you think, Lisa?
Just give me a grade.
Use the, of course, use the Susan David scale.
He's emotionally labile, which is different from emotionally agile.
Because I'm reactive?
You're very reactive.
So is there a grading system?
When spouses fight, can they use the David scale?
You've got a two on the emotional agility scale.
Don't give him any more ammunition.
Hey, everyone. everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
Yes. - Bye.
Have you ever questioned the way you navigate your inner world, the way you think, feel, even the way you react to the emotions you experience every single day?
My next guest argues that you should, because our awareness of those feelings is the single most important determinant of our success in life.
Dr. Susan David's latest book, Emotional Agility, strives to help all of us direct the complex system of our thoughts and feelings with acceptance, purpose, and open mind, even arguing that being negative can be more positive than we think.
Dr. David, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you for inviting me.
So I was struck as I began looking at your work at how much you push back in the traditional ways we talk about coping, being positive, stay above.
What is wrong with the way that we react right now?
So let me first say that I have nothing against being happy and nothing against being positive.
But being positive has become almost a new kind of moral correctness.
People with cancer are automatically told to stay positive.
People who are experiencing discrimination are told to stay positive.
There's this idea that if we just grit our teeth and stay positive, that...
Life will be fine.
And there are a number of problems with that.
Firstly, we know people who focus on the positive and actually ignore the signals that their emotions are telling them don't then get the capacity to change their lives in ways that are more fulfilling and more meaningful.
And secondly, we know that people who strive in ways to just be happy actually over time become unhappy, paradoxically.
Our emotions have evolved to help us figure out life and figure out the world and when we just ignore important parts of ourselves, our difficult emotions, we can actually keep ourselves stuck rather than moving forward.
I'm going to give you a quote from the book.
When the ground is constantly shifting under us, we need to be nimble to keep us from falling on our faces.
We're referring to being emotionally agile in a way that we approach our day-to-day life.
And it's an interesting phraseology.
Folks who are going to read the book in the future, give them a little tidbit about what emotional agility is and what should they expect if they have emotional agility.
Well, let me start with the opposite, which is emotional inagility.
Emotional inagility is where we get stuck in a way of being that doesn't serve us.
It doesn't serve our values.
It doesn't serve how we want to parent, how we want to love, how we want to come to our relationships.
And we often get stuck.
We often get hooked into ways of being that are autopilot.
So we might shut down when someone starts a particular conversation that we find uncomfortable.
We might be so stressed when we come home from work that although we value being present, we don't engage with our children.
And so what often happens is we get stuck in where's a being, where our thoughts, our emotions, and sometimes even our stories, stories about who we are, what we deserve in life, what kind of relationships we deserve.
Those kind of things can start to dominate us and hold us hostage.
Emotional agility is the opposite.
Emotional agility is being able to be with yourself in ways that are curious and compassionate and courageous because sometimes we see things that we don't like or we realize that I think
though with the emotional rigidity you're talking about, isn't it Primarily because we're not even really aware of how we're reacting.
I think emotional consciousness has to kind of supersede even the ability to be agile.
Absolutely.
So when we are emotionally rigid, often what we're doing is we are either just going around life on autopilot or we've got stuck into habits or ways of being that don't serve us.
We come home from work, we're trying to be healthier, but we're stressed.
So we automatically go to the chocolate box.
They're ways of being that are very habitual that can keep us stuck.
And so a very important part of emotional agility is first what I call showing up to our emotions.
And showing up is where instead of saying, gee, we've got good and bad emotions, positive and negative, and I just want to be happy.
Instead, you start saying to yourself, what is this discomfort that I'm feeling?
You know, I'm feeling stuck in my job.
What is that telling me about me?
My job.
What is it telling me about my values?
Maybe I value growth or creativity or collaboration.
And so when you start engaging in a more willing, accepting way with your emotions rather than being judgy about having them, we open a whole world to ourselves that allow us to move forward with greater levels of purpose.
So how emotionally agile am I, do you think, Lisa?
Just give me a grade.
Use the, of course, use the Susan David scale.
He's emotionally labile, which is different from emotionally agile.
Because I'm reactive.
You're very reactive.
So is there a grading system?
When spouses fight, can they use the David scale?
You've got a two on the...
Emotional agility scale.
Don't give them any more ammunition.
Well, I will first say that I've actually developed a quiz that 100,000 people have taken at the moment, which is on my website if your listeners are interested, which is at susandavitt.com forward slash learn.
And really this starts to assess different aspects of emotional agility, which is, you know, are you able to be willing in showing up to your emotions?
Are you able to also not let those emotions drive you?
You know, you own your emotions.
They don't own you.
And very often, you know, I imagine when you're being emotionally labile, when you're being reactive, you know, what's happening is the thought is in charge rather than the thinker.
It's like, I'm angry, therefore I'm going to lash out.
I'm not putting words in your mouth, but I'm going to say something.
I feel prosecuted and persecuted.
Oh, no, no, don't.
So, yeah, there are different aspects of emotional agility, but really what this does is it brings us into a space with ourselves where we are able to connect more with who we are and who we want to be in the world.
And this, as it turns out, is a critical skill set in all aspects of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead.
Because our emotions drive us in ways that are profound and important and that we may not even connect with and yet impact on the way we interact every day.
So what's the difference between emotional agility and mindfulness?
How do they play?
Well, a core part of emotional agility, I talk about four different parts to this.
The first is showing up to your emotions.
The second I talk about is being able to step out of your emotions, recognizing what I was talking about earlier, which is that you in charge, the thought isn't in charge.
Then I talk about walking your why, which is connecting with your values.
And then how do you actually make values aligned changes to your habits, to your health, to the way you come to the world?
Mindfulness is a subset of that.
It's a small part of emotional agility, but it's important.
And mindfulness is basically the second part, which is being able to notice your thoughts and emotions, but not let them drive you.
And of course, when we're being mindful, what we're doing is we're moving from the stage where, let me give you an example of non-mindfulness, okay?
Non-mindfulness is where you say something like, I am sad, okay?
I am sad.
And what you're doing when you're saying I am sad is really the language of I am sad says all of me is sad, 100% of me is sad.
I am fully identified with being sad.
When you start noticing your emotions and thoughts for what they are, emotions and thoughts, not facts, not directives to action, they're just emotions and thoughts that contain value, but they're not telling you what to do.
You start being able to move from, I am sad, I am angry, I am stressed, into I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad.
I'm noticing the thought that I want to put my hand up for this project, but that I'm not good enough.
I'm noticing the emotion of, or the experience of feeling stressed.
So what you're doing here is you're moving from the I am into I am noticing.
I'm noticing the thought.
I'm noticing the emotion.
I'm noticing the story.
That's a mindfulness technique.
What you're doing is you're starting to move yourself away from From being the emotion into being able to notice it for what it is.
So you don't identify with it.
You're not identifying and over-identifying with it.
And that's important for folks who have illnesses too because they get defined by their illness.
And this will separate you in a way from that.
I have the four points again just for my own benefit.
So showing up is realizing that you can't just pretend these emotions aren't there.
You've got to face them face to face.
Stepping out is what you were just talking about.
Making sure you're not fully defined by one little aspect of how your day is going.
And then walking your why, which is finding out the core values that mean the most to you.
That's not an easy...
It sounds cool, but how do you actually walk your why?
So this is critical.
You know, all of us are subject to social contagion, the idea that we can often go about life without even realizing that we're being impacted by others.
We get into an elevator, everyone's on their cell phones, we take out our cell phone.
We know, for instance, that if you're on an airplane and you're trying to lose weight, but your seat partner buys candy, your chance, even if you don't know the person, your chance of buying candy increases by 70%.
So what starts to happen is without even realizing it, we start being impacted by other people's stress, the cars other people are driving, the lives other people are living, and we often start losing a sense of what is the heartbeat of our own why?
Who do I want to be in the world?
What is important to me?
Is presence as a parent important?
Is collaboration at work important?
Is growth important?
What is important?
And you're right, you know, so often values seem very abstract.
You know, these ideas that are put on walls in businesses of how people should be.
But the way that I think of values is that they are qualities of action.
So every day we come into contact with choice points.
For instance, if I'm trying to lose weight or if I'm trying to be healthier, I walk out of this conversation and I'm faced with fruit or a muffin.
My choice point, one of them will bring me towards my values, one will bring me away from my values.
When I go home from work, I am faced with a choice, which is, do I bring my cell phone to the table or not?
That is a choice point.
And the way that I think of values is that there are these ways that when we bring them front of mind, and we can talk about how to do that, but when we bring them front of mind, they protect us from social contagion and they become a key compass that allows us to move they protect us from social contagion and they become a key compass that allows us to move forward, not without stress or without conflict, but move forward with greater levels of Could you give us one of those techniques you said that we could talk about?
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's a hard thing to do.
It's a really hard thing.
So first, let me say that when I spoke earlier about showing up to emotions, this is one of the reasons why our difficult emotions are so important, is so often underneath our difficult emotions are signposts to those values.
For instance...
I'll talk about parenting.
I've got a nine-year-old.
I've got a five-year-old.
I'm often on the road and so sometimes I experience guilt.
Okay.
But you're not a guilty person.
But I'm not a guilty person.
And I'm not seeing that guilt as fact.
When you hook into guilt, you start saying something like, I'm a bad person.
I'm a bad mom.
And you start beating yourself up.
And then you might say, well, I'm just going to do my best here.
I'm just going to, you know, and do the positive thing.
What I'm suggesting is that that guilt is a signpost that you, for instance, value connectedness with your children.
And maybe you're feeling a little bit too little of it.
So underneath our difficult emotions are so often signposts of the things we care about.
I've never met someone with depression who isn't at some level concerned about how do I better be in the world?
Social anxiety, how do I better engage with others with my life?
Boredom at work, creativity and collaboration are important.
So the very first aspect of emotional agility, the showing up piece, is saying, what is the signpost beneath this difficult emotion?
What is it telling me?
From there, we then start being able to surface, actually, there is this value that I may be ignoring in the busyness of my life and that I need to connect with more.
Some other questions you can ask yourself is, when I go to bed at night, what did I do today that felt worthwhile?
Worthwhile is not the same as fun because we can often do lots of stuff that's fun, but it didn't feel like it was growing, worthwhile activity.
What did I do today that was worthwhile?
How can I start doing more of it?
Those are the kinds of questions, and I talk about this a lot in my book, Emotional Agility, that are critical to start surfacing our own heartbeat, which is fundamentally protective and critical to our mental health, physical well-being, and And our ability to flourish.
We're only just scratching the surface here.
We got a lot more to discuss, so stay with us.
In emotional agility, actually in your TED Talk as well, which was superb, you talk a bit about your dad. - Mm.
And I think having folks understand how you came upon some of these insights would be valuable.
Absolutely.
So, first I should say that I grew up in apartheid South Africa.
I grew up in a country and community that was committed to not seeing, to denial, to not moving into emotions in an accepting, recognizing way.
And then when I was 15 years old, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he was given months to live.
And I still remember he died on the Friday and I went to school on the Monday.
And what is remarkable is we live in a world where the fact is that life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility.
We are young until we're not.
We walk down the street sexy until one day we realize we are unseen.
We nag our children to clean their rooms, and then one day they're gone making their way in the world, or we are healthy until a diagnosis brings us to our knees.
And what I experienced with my father was everyone telling me, just be positive.
It'll be okay.
Everything's fine.
And I became the master of being okay.
But back home, my family was struggling.
My mom was trying to raise three children, grieving, and we were in financial...
Debt, significant financial debt because of my father's inability to keep his small business going during his illness.
And I started to spiral.
I started to use food to numb my pain, essentially refusing to accept the full weight of my grief.
And I started to binge and purge.
And what I talk about in the TED Talk is this remarkable eighth grade English teacher who invited us to write.
And to write about our experiences.
And what I had in that moment was this person seeing me and also me seeing myself, moving into this writing about my emotional experience, which as it turns out, and we can talk about later, is really an interesting, important way of showing up to emotions.
So in sum, this experience of both denial and then moving into the space of acceptance and noticing and compassion was absolutely life changing for me.
And it became the catalyst to my entire career.
I developed an interest in emotions.
I became an emotions researcher.
I did my PhD in clinical psychology.
I've got a profound interest in how we deal with our inner world in ways that are more effective and lead to authentic happiness rather than false happiness.
Were you using an emotional autopilot when you lost your dad?
I mean, to school on the Monday after or?
Or were you purposely just trying to get rid of that emotion so it didn't exist?
Back to the very first question I asked, trying to pretend you were happy.
Yeah.
Because it was the social contagion.
Yeah, I think for me it was both.
I think the narrative in the world that I lived in was very much everything will be okay, everything will be fine, just get on with it.
I mean, I'm describing my personal experience, but every single one of the listeners to this podcast will experience this where they've gone through difficulty.
And there's this narrative that if we just grit our teeth and get on with it, that things will be fine.
And, you know, there's a time to grit and there's a time to quit.
And sometimes just gritting and ignoring is maladaptive.
And that's what I experienced.
I was just going, going, going.
And it was killing me inside.
And so there was this narrative in the world, but there was also a part of it.
And I talk about this in my TED talk.
I did a piece of research where I looked at how do we as a society deal with normal natural emotions, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.
Sadness, anxiety, grief.
These are normal emotions.
Now, we don't necessarily want those emotions to become the everything in our lives and to become the defining way of our world, but these are normal natural emotions.
And what I found in a survey of over 70,000 people is that a third of us push aside or deny our normal natural emotions.
We judge ourselves for having them.
We judge our children for having them.
We inadvertently shame ourselves or shame others out of these emotions, and it doesn't work.
So to answer your question, what I was doing is I was firstly on autopilot and I was doing And secondly, what I was doing is...
Two things.
Firstly, bottling emotions, which is, in the world, trying to just push them aside.
But inside, sometimes at home, I would be dwelling on those.
Neither of those are effective.
Often what we do is we bottle emotions, we brood emotions.
Emotional agility is a third way of being with our emotions, which is not about pushing them aside.
It's not about letting them call the shots.
But it's about being in a space with ourselves that's healthy.
Weirdly, when you talk about these two places of either pushing emotion aside or letting them rule you, it feels like in my life and in the people around me, it's when you try to push them aside that they actually take over.
And part of that repression, like saying you're not angry, then you're like annoyed by everything.
So you're going to feel them one way or another, feel them consciously and process them So you can move on, as you talk about, or they're just going to dominate in subtle ways.
Is that why you get mad at me sometimes?
You figured it out!
I think innocently, do something, and remind her of something else that reminds her of her being wrong.
It was like, I dreamed that you did something obnoxious, and you never actually do something bad.
That's different.
And then you remember the 393 times that this thing happened in a vague way.
That's exactly what happens.
Even when we push emotions aside, we think they're not in control.
But in fact, they are in control.
And psychologists call this amplification.
We've all had this experience.
You go on a diet and you try not to think of chocolate cake.
And I gain five pounds.
And what do you do?
You dream of chocolate cake.
Because there's a resource, there's effort that goes into pushing emotions aside.
All what we find is when someone says...
I'm going to try not to be angry with my older brother at the Thanksgiving table.
You might push those emotions down, but you kick the dog.
You have an argument with your mother-in-law.
So bottling and brooding do not work, even though in society we have this idea that we should just ignore it and move forward.
It doesn't work.
So do you like the concept of people being in a bad mood?
And I'll just debate it a bit more.
I've often found that people who are a bit depressed do their most creative work when they're feeling a little bit down because it calls for a change.
Absolutely.
I talk about this in my book.
So the first thing I should clarify is when I'm saying that, you know, what I'm saying is that our emotions and our moods are important even if they don't feel comfortable.
But we own them.
They don't own us.
And the example that I give in my TED Talk is I say something like, I can show up to my son's frustration with his baby sister.
I can empathize with that.
I can try not to push that emotion aside.
I can show up to that.
And at the same time, not endorse the idea that he gets to give his baby sister away to the first stranger that he sees in a shopping mall.
We can show up to emotions without acting on them.
The same with things like our moods, like anger.
We know that very often when people are angry, when people are slightly neutral to negative, that actually what it does is it evokes a particular kind of thinking style.
The thinking is It is more creative, is more able to kind of fine tune.
Well, this person said I should sign on the dotted line, but I don't really actually trust them in my gut.
What's going on here?
And so when we've got the full range of our moods and emotions, what it actually does is it allows us to access different levels of communication.
You find that no solutions have ever been generated to major scientific problems.
Well, I shouldn't say they've never been generated in the lab, but very frequently it's when people are under the tree, in the bath, etc.
What's happening there is they've moved from the space of being very kind of focused into a more relaxed space and being able to move from one emotional space into another and As it turns out, is actually critical for our ability to incubate ideas, be creative.
And, you know, also anger, no change ever came about in the world without anger.
Anger heightens us to a sense of injustice or a sense that this is not okay.
We just need to know how to channel it effectively.
Well, I guess not channeling it effectively leads to hostility, which is not so adaptive.
The way there is clear disadvantages.
Yes, yes.
And so this is why this showing up, this openness to these emotions is critical rather than pretending the anger doesn't exist.
Then saying something like, okay, what is this anger telling me about my values, what's important?
Oh, it's telling me that justice is important.
It's telling me that fairness is important.
Now, when you move to the stage of walking your why, how can I create greater levels of justice in the situation?
How can I create greater levels of fairness?
Let me give you a simple example, which is imagine you've got a leader trying to give feedback in the workplace.
Often that leader will say things like, I don't want to give this feedback and I'm just going to avoid it.
But if you start to connect with what is important to you, ah, fairness is important.
How fair is it if I don't give this person feedback?
How fair is it to the team?
How fair is it to the individual?
What you can start doing is you can start moving towards the thing that you need to do.
But it's now not a have to goal.
It's now a want to goal.
It's imbued with a sense of values, the sense of kind of freedom and clarity of purpose that is very powerful.
And that applies, I give a workplace example here, but this applies in real ways to health goals, to losing weight.
When we have a sense of, I have to lose five pounds, we resist.
But when we start connecting with the value that's underneath that, I want to engage more with my children and my lack of health in a particular area is stopping me from doing that.
What we start being able to surface is a want-to goal, a values-aligned want-to goal.
And as it turns out, when we try to change our habits, want-to goals are far more powerful and sustainable than have-to goals.
After the break, what you need to know about true happiness and artificial happiness and how to tell the difference.
We were speaking about aspirational ways and specifically being outside the lab and coming up with the freedom to create, coming up with a wonderful idea.
There's a whole movement behind The Secret.
Other big thinkers saying their versions of the secret where wish it, see it, visualize it, and then it'll happen.
Help us reconcile that with the transparency you're advocating for in emotional agility.
Okay, so the first thing that I will say, which is a social commentary on ideas like that, Firstly, I should say, and I mentioned at the beginning, that I am inherently interested in true, authentic happiness, not false happiness.
And so to this end, I, at one point, wrote a book called The Oxford Handbook of Happiness, which is an 80-chapter edited handbook of happiness.
And as it turns out, when people are trying to make changes...
Simply actually wishing the change, wishing positive affirmation, imagining yourself in the mirror, a svelte version of yourself, imagining yourself winning the marathon that you want to run.
As it turns out, when you look at the science of behavior change, we find that being able to have this big vision of what you want is important.
But actually, when you only have that, it kind of tricks your brain often into believing that you've already done all the work necessary to achieve that goal.
So when you look at the science of behavior change, what we know is that you want to imagine a great outcome.
But you also want to think through the obstacles that might stop you from achieving those outcomes.
You know, when are you, I'll go with this health example again, when are you going to come into a situation where a desert is put in front of you?
How are you going to be dealing with that in a practical way?
What's your answer going to be?
We know that when people couple both the sense of how I want to be What are the obstacles that they are more likely to achieve sustainable behaviour change?
So if you don't mind, I'm going to take, I'm going to tack into an area where I didn't think I'd be going with this.
And I've got another point to make about this.
Go ahead and make that first because this is completely unrelated, but you've touched on it too many times.
Okay.
So the other thing I wanted to say about the secret is this, or it's not, it's not just the secret.
It's the idea that the entire world exists only in our thinking, that if we create something in our minds, we will create it in the reality.
One of the concerns with this is it implies that when people are going through difficulty, and I know that this isn't necessarily what's intended by the implication, but when people are going through difficulty, they can solve the world's problems and their problems just by thinking positive.
So you start having this narrative where people with cancer are told to just be positive, and people who are dying of cancer, there's this language around, you've given up the battle.
And it's insidious and it's cruel and it's unkind.
The idea that someone who, for instance, is commuting two hours to work every day and two hours from work every day They over time, you know, a week of doing it, a month of doing it, they over time are going to experience decrements in their well-being.
We know this from the research.
The idea that they should simply change their thinking and it will make them happier abrogates our societal responsibility to recognize that our social policies, our narratives can and do in real ways impact on people's well-being.
And So yeah, the mind is wonderful, the mind is powerful, but the idea that therefore any suffering that you have is simply created by a lack of control or positivity is insidious and I think it's unkind.
There's a refreshing honesty to the approach that you're articulating.
And It makes me think a little bit about how a lot of Americans talking about politics now.
Because when you cut through...
This is where you weren't going to go.
But you've hit it so many different ways.
I can't help but be reminded of how we've misinterpreted each other in a fairly systematic way.
Where you don't actually see a way out of it.
Yet many of the tactics you're articulating could work in that discourse as well.
You just gave a specific example of not telling something to somebody who needs to hear it.
Because it's a disservice not to.
And that can be painful.
I liken it to the unfortunate scenario where you have 10 really hardworking people and one person's not working hard.
What do you do with the person who's not working hard?
Ironically, if you don't allow that person to find a different career path, you're actually hurting the other nine people.
It's dishonest to them to not acknowledge there's a problem here and to move that person on because it hurts the other nine.
And yet, that is a good example of A debate that gets heightened.
You're ignoring their 10th person.
They have problems.
You should be helping them and nurturing them, which you should do.
And that kind person would do that.
But you have to also respect the other nine people's needs and how they're perceived in this.
So I'm just curious if this emotional agility argument has been used at all in how people message difficult societal issues that we need to tackle.
Yeah, these really emotional agility is about being able to not be hooked in ways that don't serve your values.
And what we so often find in politics is that our emotions, our anger, our anxiety are driving outcomes rather than being able to surface the, what is it that you want in this future country that you're building?
What is it that you want for your children?
And so emotional agility actually becomes critical here.
It's firstly recognizing again that our emotions often signal to us things that are important.
It might signal that I'm wanting to nurture my children and I'm struggling to put food on the table for them.
That anxiety is important.
The anger of injustice or inequity, that is important.
But when we just act out of our anxiety or act out of our anger, we often paradoxically create the very thing that we're trying to avoid, which is we create greater levels of divisiveness, greater levels of anxiety.
And so emotional agility is critical in this pathway, being able to surface anxiety What are these emotions?
What are these emotions telling us?
And how can we come to a place where actually we generate a shared sense of why?
You know, where it's not just my anger versus your anger, but what is there that is shared about how we want to be in this world, how we want to come to this world?
And it's interesting when you look at research, for instance, on climate change or when you look at politics – What you often find is that when people are able to sit and talk rather than let their emotions drive them, there's often a shared why.
It comes from different directions and different experiences, but there's often a shared why.
Susan, I think that's self-evident, but what you're offering us is a language to allow that to happen.
Yes.
So instead of being defined as an unemployed co-worker in West Virginia, defined as a man trying to take care of his kids, Whose fear is he's not being the man he should be.
And you take away my manliness and all of a sudden I'll get angry because that's going after my core.
I'm being simplistic.
You're better at it.
But I would think that level of discourse, what you're arguing, which is people seeing each other because it's hard to hate up This is so fundamental.
So often when there's differences between two people, we get hooked on being right.
You know, we become, wars are made and broken by the idea that I am right and you are wrong.
People put out products that they know will not work in the marketplace because I am so focused on putting out this product regardless of what the marketplace is telling me.
We've all had that experience of having an argument with a spouse or a loved one and then finally calm descends and something compels you one last time to turn on the light.
And tell the person why you are right and they're wrong and then chaos breaks loose again.
As human beings, we all get so hooked on the idea of being right.
And what's fascinating is when you look at how you change people's minds, it's not from that position.
It's not from drumming facts down people's throats.
It's not from that position.
It's often by going to an understanding of their emotions and values.
And you taught me this.
You did.
You did.
Because you've previously spoken to this idea that so often when people are struggling with something, it's easy to kind of go to facts and data and statistics.
But actually what we need to do is go to emotions.
We need to go to emotions.
We need to understand the emotions and the values.
And there's commonality and there's beauty.
And it can feel uncomfortable, but we don't get to leave the world a better place or have a meaningful career without some level of discomfort.
Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life, and this becomes profoundly important.
I really appreciate all your wonderful insights.
I want to thank Dr. Susan David.
You can hear lots more about her insights on emotional agility, Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life.
It's a wonderful book, thoughtful, and you actually need to read it and share it with people in a very emotional level.
You can also check out her emotional agility quiz on draz.com.
