KF #26. Being Resilient Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Julia, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Julia DiGangi
I’m so glad to be here, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to get into some of the wisdom you share in your book, Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power. Neuroscience just gets me all fired up. So, I think, first, I want to hear, for you personally, can you tell us from your own experiences working internationally and with vulnerable communities, is there a particularly powerful moment or story that shaped your understanding of stress, trauma, and resilience from a human experiential point of view?

Julia DiGangi
Absolutely. So, let me just say that I am a neuropsychologist, which means I’m a clinical psychologist with specialized expertise in the brain, and never in a million years did I think that I would become a psychologist. And the reason is my father is actually a psychologist, and I grew up, I’m very close with him. I grew up, he was always telling fascinating stories about human behavior, and I just always thought that psychology was my father’s domain and that it was not going to belong to me.

So, I was called to a lot of social justice work, so I started doing a lot of political work, and I started doing a lot of international humanitarian aid and development. And the reason I became a neuropsychologist was because I started working all around the world, so Detroit, Chicago, Latin America, Africa, and I was working in very, very traumatized communities, very high stress environments.

And the thing that really started to strike me is that, regardless of where I was, people were responding to stress in similar ways. So, I was really kind of struck by this idea that despite this wild amount of diversity, why is it that human behavior looks the same when it comes to extreme stress?

And it was really that question that got my scientific mind fired up and decided to really look at, “What can we understand about the human brain that can explain the way we run our large systems, whether it’s our family systems, whether it’s our organizational systems, whether it’s our companies, and whether it’s our political systems?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, the stressors then, I’d imagine, in those different environments are quite different, varied from each other, you know, what’s happening in Chicago versus Latin America are different, and yet the stress reactions and responses of the people were pretty similar to one another?

Julia DiGangi
Yes. So, I was working with a lot of very, very extreme trauma, so I was working with torture survivors, I was working with combat veterans, I was working with child soldiers, I was working with orphans, I was working with war survivors, so really extreme forms of trauma. But the thing that kind of struck me though is, like, “Why are such similar situations unfolding, because they’re all perpetrated by people? And then what was happening to the human body that was then creating additional trauma?”

Because when we’re traumatized, we then show up in our relationships, in our communities, in our workplaces in ways that aren’t really that functional. So, yes, I was working in a lot of different environments and seen a lot of different things, and I started to think, “If we could understand human suffering and human resilience at the most extreme ends of the spectrum, then there would have to be some pretty, pretty powerful advice about how the rest of us can grapple with the more common stress that we face in our ordinary lives.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Julia, that’s exactly where I wanted to go. You have piqued my interest to the max. So, I have a lot of notes and things I’d like to cover but let’s just go right where we are right now because that’s juicy. So, tell us, from those experiences, did you discover any master keys to resilience that we can put in place right away?

Julia DiGangi
Absolutely. So, I will say that I feel like I am on this planet, I feel like my core message is that our experiences of emotional pain, and by emotional pain I just mean any bad feeling you don’t want to feel – so stress, aggravation, irritation, inadequacy, fear of rejection – that these terrible feelings that we all experience in our own nervous systems in our own bodies are absolutely not here to torment us; they are here to set us free.

They are literally the line between where we currently are and the next evolution of what I call emotional power. So, if you want to show up at work more powerfully, if you want to show up online more powerfully, if you want to be more creative or more expressive, absolutely the number one thing you need to work with is your hard feelings.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that is juicy, that is a thesis alright. Can you provide an example illustration so that we can get our arms around that conceptually to experientially, like, “Oh, I see. I see in that instance, that person, there was the line, and they surpassed it and then cool things unfolded”?

Julia DiGangi
Absolutely. Sure.

So, I would say that, without question, the hardest thing for us is our experiences of other people’s emotion. So, I think that our leadership is best understood as, “Who do I become in the energy of other people’s emotions?” In other words, “What happens to me when people don’t see me the way that I want to be seen? What happens to me when the people around me don’t agree with me? What happens to me when the people around me don’t understand me?”

If I’m not emotionally powerful enough, and I have this really great idea, okay, let’s say I have a great idea for a podcast, I have a great idea for a social media post, I have a great idea for a new product, if I feel like people don’t understand me, it’s going to provoke bad feelings, it’s going to make me feel insecure, it’s going to make me feel anxious, it’s going to make me feel stressed. If I don’t know what to do about those bad feelings, it will shut down my behavior.

So, it’s only when I’m able to say, “I know, in the energy of you not understanding me perfectly, Pete, it’s provoking the sense of anxiety or stress inside of me, and I know…”

Pete Mockaitis
Like, right now?

Julia DiGangi
Yeah, I mean, I always get nervous before these podcasts, so, yes, absolutely, but I think that’s a perfect example. It’s like, “Can I still, in my fear, in my anxiety, in my worries, like, am I going to say something stupid? Are people going to understand me? Am I still powerful enough to show up here and say the things that I want to say?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Understood. And so then, there you go in terms of, like, the line in terms of it is sort of a border or a fork in the road – I’m mixing my geographical metaphors here – in terms of you could say, “Well, just forget it. Just whatever. I guess we’re done here.” That’s one option, like we give in, in terms of the frustration, the anxiety, the fear, the overwhelm, whatever, just sort of wins out, like, “I’m out of here.” That’s one approach. And then the other way is that you sort of fold.

And for the record, Julia, I think you’re doing great.

Julia DiGangi
Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that you have whipped up a frenzy of curiosity inside me such that now I want to understand all of it and with perfect clarity. And so, yeah, we’re going to be picking up on that.

Julia DiGangi
Let me say this because I think this is really clarifying, too. Everyone has problems, we’re all, like, “All right. So, what’s the biggest obstacle in my life? This problem, this problem, this problem.” But if you really think about what a problem is, there is no problem on the planet until you have activity in your nervous system. In other words, anything that you’re calling a problem in your life necessarily means you have bad energy in your nervous system.

So, let’s say I’m fired from my job, and let’s say I’m fired from my job and people call me like a bumbling idiot in front of 50 people, and I legitimately don’t feel bad about it. I’m not intoxicated or I’m not dissociated. I just really don’t feel bad about it. Because I have no pain, I have no problem. And one of the things, this is such a big shift, it makes you so more powerful in your leadership, a lot of times we run around trying to solve our situations, “Okay, this person is going to say this and so I’m going to do this,” or, “This project might go with this, and I got to do this about this project.”

And I’m not saying your situations don’t matter, but if you really think about the most powerful place to work in your life, it’s at the beginning of your emotional energy. In other words, who would I become in this situation if I said, “It’s okay, Pete, if you don’t perfectly understand me”? actually, I’ll tell you a good story.

So, I interviewed a lot of very, very elite leaders for the book, and one of the leaders that I interviewed, and I said that I was going to anonymize everyone because some people talked about some really sort of controversial and difficult things in the book, but I’ll say it’s someone who leads tens and tens of thousands of people.

And one of the things he said to me in the book that I was totally struck by, is I said, “How do you deal with your own tough feelings? Like, how do you deal with your own feelings of doubt, or insecurity, or fear, or anxiety?” And he said, “That’s kind of a hard question for me to answer but I would imagine that if my wife was in the room, my wife would tell you, if I have to make a hard decision that is not a sleep-loss moment for me. In other words, if there is a thousand people in the room, and only 501 agree with me and 499 don’t agree with me, I’m totally okay with it.”

By the way, this guy has amazing employee engagement scores, so he’s very, very well-liked. He’s not some brute who has no emotional intelligence. So, what that moment is telling us is that this man is powerful enough to be misunderstood in the energy of other people’s skepticism and doubt and confusion. And if we’re really honest, how often does other people’s emotion shut down the big visions that we have inside of our own brains and our own spirits?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you know, it’s so funny. I’m reminded of, or there’s so many things that are coming to mind here. I remember a buddy of mine, we had the idea that was basically Airbnb, I think shortly before Airbnb was founded, and so we thought it’s really cool. And so, why not? We were consultants, we saw empty bedrooms, we’re like, “Well, these underutilized resources could really turn into something.”

And so, we thought, “Let’s chat with a buddy of ours who is somewhat high up in Hyatt Hotels.” And then his energy was like, “You know, I think this could be a nightmare for liability, people are going to ruin stuff and commit crimes. And, yeah, ugh, I’m really nervous about that.” And so, we’re like, “Oh, yeah, I guess he’s right.” So, we just stopped.

Now, who knows what life path that we could’ve been to people who started Airbnb, or if maybe hundreds of people were thinking the same thing around the same time in the universe. But it’s true that energy did shut it down, and it’s a common experience. Or, if someone seems to respond to our idea with a sense of, I don’t know, contempt, or disgust, or even just more subtle, like, “Oh,” like they’re not really into it but just, like, “Okay, you don’t find that interesting or compelling. Okay, duly noted.” So, yeah, that can shut it down.

So, are you telling us, Julia, that it’s quite possible to develop the emotional power, force, resilience?

Julia DiGangi
A hundred percent. First of all, your story was a phenomenal one.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Julia DiGangi
And we all have versions of that, like we all have. And here’s the thing that I think is so important to really get. When we have these moments of inspiration, whether we call it inspiration or creativity, or we have these visions, the whole idea of creativity is the world has never been here before. So, of course, there’s going to be skeptics. It would make no sense if you said, “Hey, you know what we’re going to do, we’re going to start a community on Mars,” and the rest of the world was like, “Of course, that makes perfect sense.”

So, it’s almost like some of our best, most powerful, most transformative ideas, if they’re not being met by other people’s resistance, I think we need to question, “Is it really a good idea?” So, it’s almost like part of our work is to reframe the patterns we have around other people’s reactions. That’s the first thing I want to say.

There’s another second important thing that I can say that can really help our leadership, and that is this. We all know that when people are flagrantly rude to us, or egregiously cynical, that hurts. But something that we egregiously underestimate is the pain of confusion. Well, you just gave a great example where you said sometimes people will meet our ideas and, like, not just be super enthusiastic. They might just be a little bit lukewarm or they might seem a little bit confused.

One of the things we’ve very clear about in neuroscience is your brain absolutely despises confusion. So, a very practical way to think about your brain is as a pattern detector. It’s going through your life, largely unconsciously, going “Apple. Apple. Fill in the blank. Apple. Apple. Apple. Fill in the blank. Apple.” Now what this actually means is “Apple. Apple. Fill in the blank,” sometimes the answer really isn’t apple. But because your brain hates that ambiguity or that openness, it will try to close the pattern in a way that’s going to make sense to you.

When we are confused, what happens is the brain can handle kind of the open-endedness of confusion for a very short period of time, and then very quickly it will close the pattern, and it will close the pattern in a way that is suspicious, fearful, and small.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Just this morning, Julia, this was funny, I thought I was going to be making some scrambled eggs for the family. And then Katy said, “Oh, hey, can you come watch Joey, and I’ll make the scrambled eggs?” And I said, “I thought I was making the scrambled eggs?” And she just said, “Can I do it?” And so, I was like, “Well, what’s going on here? I made the scrambled eggs last time, I usually make scrambled eggs, she’s asking to do it.”

And so, it’s sort of like I can’t even stand the uncertainty, the question mark associated with why this is happening. It doesn’t even really matter in terms of I’m thinking, “Is there something wrong with the way that I make scrambled eggs, with the scrambled eggs that I made yesterday?”

Julia DiGangi
Isn’t that interesting? Because, like, your interpretation automatically goes to the brain definitely has a negativity bias, it’s a way to keep us alive. So, now you’re thinking, “Oh, she hates the way I make my scrambled eggs.” And the next thing we know, we’re fighting with our partners over something that nobody really even understands because we’ve all been confused from the beginning.

So, it’s like if we could understand the power of confusion in our lives, like have reverence for it, understand how the brain is really, because I think I always say the brain is the most powerful machine you’ll ever own. You have to operate it powerfully. A great example of that happened in my marriage a lot more at the beginning, is like me and my husband had different texting patterns. So, it’s like I would text and then he would delay for a long time, and instead of just being, like, the man is not near his cellphone, or the man is busy, or the man is distracted by something else, you start to come up with all of these ridiculous stories.

And the craziest thing of all is the stories help no one. It doesn’t help the relationship, it’s not fair to the other person, and we injure ourselves in the process. So, again, if we understand what the brain is doing, which is why I wrote Energy Rising, we become so much more empowered in our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in that circumstance, I’m curious, it feels like we need a narrative or an explanation so badly we just make one up. So, Julia, is there a better alternative for us in these moments?

Julia DiGangi
Absolutely. So, the thing that you want to do is you’ve got to think about this idea of emotional power is, “Who do I want to be in the energy of other people’s bad emotions?” So, if I want to be the type of leader, and, by the way, our leadership totally shows up in our romantic relationships as well so it’s not just a thing at work, it’s a thing in our homes as well.

If I want to be the type of leader who’s trusting and generous, then I need to know that when I start to wobble in uncertainty because, again, the brain has an allergy to uncertainty, I need to really think, “How do I hold the frequency of trust and generosity?” And if I don’t ask myself, if I don’t have a practice of discipline of asking myself that question, the brain is automatically and reactively going to shut the pattern.

And it’s going to shut the pattern in a way that actually makes no sense to our wellbeing. This is kind of the paradox of having a human brain. It’s going to make you start thinking suspicious, annoying. And if you let it fester for too long terrible things about the people in your life who really are on your team. But can I tell you an example from our lab that I just think is so powerful to show you how much the human brain hates uncertainty?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Julia DiGangi
So, in part of our paradigms, we would, in our lab, we had a machine that would shock people. So, this is a way to administer pain to see how people respond in conditions of pain. And what people, as lots of researchers out there who study uncertainty in the brain, in fact, this is at the foundation of all anxiety disorders are. All anxiety is a disturbed relationship with certainty.

So, we would bring people into the lab, and there’s conditions that you can put people in these laboratory settings. So, you can have a machine that counts down five, four, three, two, one, and when the machine hits one, you’re absolutely going to get a shock. Then you have another condition where the machine counts down five, four, three, two, one, and maybe you’ll get a shock or maybe you won’t get a shock.

Now, the “rational person,” and I’m using air quotes here, is the person who says, “Definitely put me in condition two because there’s a good chance I will walk away pain-free.” But statistically, people choose to be in the option where they get the shock every single time. What that is telling you is that emotional pain, first of all, uncertainty is literally emotionally painful. And the pain associated with uncertainty and stress can be more painful than actual physical pain.

And so, when we think about the way that we lead, the way that we communicate with people, how confusing we are, how much clarity, how much transparency, we have really powerful neuroscientific evidence that says really, really think, especially in a world that is filled with a brim of information, think about how to communicate clearly if you want to be powerful. And by powerful, I don’t mean command and control. I mean effective, connected.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got this allergy to uncertainty, and one master approach is to rather than letting our default brains do what they do – inventing stories that cause turmoil – we could proactively say, “Who do I want to be in this moment amidst the uncertainty?” And so then, we’re making sort of a conscientious choice, “All right, this is how I’m going to be amidst this as opposed to letting autopilot take us somewhere, which is probably not going to be a great place where autopilot would go.”

Do you have any other pro tips in the midst of uncertainty how we can deal with that well?

Julia DiGangi
I do. This one is, like, I think, a fantastic one. I want to teach you guys something that I call a power pattern. So, I said before, your brain is a pattern detection machine. Now, overwhelmingly, the brain is driving you through your life in ways that are unconscious. We all have had that experience where we’re driving in our car and we’re talking on the phone, and somehow, we magically show up in our driveway and we have no idea, we actually have no conscious recollection of it. So, the brain is an incredibly powerful machine and it does a lot of the work for you unconsciously.

Okay. But let’s go back to this pattern, this idea of “Apple. Apple. Fill in the blank.” How that actually sounds emotionally in our lives, and emotion is the most powerful energy in a human being’s life. This is just a neuroscientific reality. So, we’re all running these patterns in our life, and maybe your pattern sounds like, “Things just never work out for me. Things just never work out for me. Things just never work out for me.”

Maybe you have a pattern that’s like, “People don’t understand me. People don’t understand me. People don’t understand me.” So, if you look at your life and you say, “Where are the ways in my life that I kind of keep getting into conflict, or struggle, or stress?” you’re going to see there’s a pattern that kind of connects all those things.

So, let’s imagine that mine is, “People don’t understand me.” So, I write a book, and I kind of have a sense, “Nobody is really going to get it.” Or, I show up at parties and I kind of feel weird because I really don’t feel like people understand what I’m talking about, or people don’t enjoy talking to me. Now, let’s say I’m creating a business, and the whole reason one would create a business is because, hopefully, it’s bringing something novel to the world.

So, I start this business but my underlying pattern, the underlying energy in which I’m doing it, whether I’m conscious of it or not, is, “People don’t understand me.” What do you think the likelihood of success for that business is? I can almost guarantee I am going to self-sabotage. So, what if I said to myself, “Instead of working with this pattern of ‘People don’t understand me,’ what if, if I think I’m really creative and I have these really kind of cool visions for my leadership, what if I started having the…?”

Also, let me just say, when people don’t understand us, especially if we have kind of forward-thinking ideas, that is stressful. But what if I change my pattern, and my pattern, instead of being, “People don’t understand me,” what if my pattern was, “I am ahead of my time”? Now, I kind of have the sense, when people don’t understand me, “Of course, they don’t understand me. I go first. Of course, they don’t understand me. I am a pioneer. Of course, they don’t understand me. How could they possibly understand a place that I’m trying to lead them to?”

Do you see how much more life-giving and hopeful and spacious, “I am ahead of my time” is than “People don’t understand me”?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. So, building the power pattern seems like we are reframing a thing that’s a bummer into, “Well, yeah, of course, that’s just sort of normal and to be expected.”

Julia DiGangi
A hundred percent true.

Pete Mockaitis
I think I remember doing this during my dating years because it’s a bummer when you’re digging somebody and they blow you off, it’s like, “Oh, okay.” And what’s so funny, I decided about my criteria, I had to boil it down into four.

Julia DiGangi
And will you tell? You’re going to tell me your four criteria or is that top secret?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, they’re cool, they’re cute, and one of them was that they’re crazy about Pete Mockaitis because that’s just more fun. And so, it’s so funny, even though the same thing happened, like, “Oh, I texted her and she ghosted me. Bummer,” I reframed it in terms of it isn’t like, “Oh, why? What’s wrong with me? Was I…?”

In terms of it’s like, “Well, unfortunately, this candidate has been disqualified because she doesn’t really measure up on the key criterion of being crazy about Pete Mockaitis. So, yeah, that’s disappointing that we’re going to have to conclude this candidate’s application process, but I guess we’ll have to move onto the next.”

And it was funny because in both instances, they more or less decided they didn’t dig me enough to want to continue communicating.

Julia DiGangi
Well, Pete, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t dig you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks.

Julia DiGangi
But that being said, things happen that are unexplainable, but what a liberating frame. Because the only thing that would’ve happened if you would’ve been like, “Oh, this person doesn’t like me. I’m not good enough,” which we all do, is we just sink ourselves. So, the other piece here is that this is so big, it almost can sound like I’m saying nothing but it really does matter, which is there is no meaning in the world until you use your nervous system to make meaning out of it.

And the way I really learned that this was true, so, first of all, it’s kind of obvious. If it doesn’t hit your brain and your neurons, like, “Did the tree fall in the forest? Who cares? You weren’t around to hear it.” The whole idea of objectivity, it’s coming through our subjective nervous systems. The way that this really kind of became very, very clear for me is I’m fundamentally a trauma researcher. I’ve done extensive scientific research into trauma, the behavioral consequences, the neurobiological associations.

We very commonly see people undergo the same trauma, the same objective event – childhood issues, assault, accidents, combat – and have wildly different experiences. At one extreme, you have post-traumatic stress disorder, which is a form of illness after trauma, and at the other extreme, you have something that scientists are now starting to study more and more, which is called post-traumatic growth.

How in the world? So, trauma is horrific, that definition is what makes trauma, trauma. How could two people experience something that no one is debating was horrible, and have two remarkably different stories, realities, meanings emerge from that? It has everything to do with what is happening inside of their nervous system.

So, you want to say the stories we tell ourselves are the meaning we make, this has everything to do, everything to do with how powerful we are in our lives. Because I will tell you what, I work with people who had every good reason, every good reason to stay down. The amount of trauma that some people go through is mind-blowing.

If they said to you, “I am never up again,” you would say, “I completely understand.” But for some reason, they say, “I rise because I say that I rise.” And when you see people say, what they’re really saying is, “Even though this horrific thing happened in my life, I am still the most powerful person in my own life.” And when we really touch that, our energy is unstoppable.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Julia, I’d love your take in terms of, I think, sometimes we can see, “Yes, this frame, this power pattern would be more useful and helpful to me than the alternative, and yet, I just don’t really believe that to be true. It’s, like, I’d like for it to be true. It sounds pretty nice. I think it can be true for some people, and yet as I try on that belief, it doesn’t fit, or feel right, or feel me.” What do we do with that?

Julia DiGangi
Totally, you got it right-size it. One of the things I love doing in the area of emotional intelligence, mental health wellbeing, is making just tons of great, great analogs to physical health. If I really had been totally out of shape, and I call you, and I’m like, “Hey, you know what, I’m going to run Ironman. I’m going to participate in Ironman athlete,” you’d be like, “That is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard you say, Julia, and you’ve had some pretty dumb ideas in your life, but that one takes the cake.”

So, what we have to do when we’re thinking about our own emotional expansion, our own emotional increases in our power, and our emotional strength, we have to think there’s not a more powerful journey in your life so we have to right-size things. So, a lot of times what will happen is people will reach for the emotional Ironman off the dome. And this is why I do not like affirmations, I look in the mirror and, let’s say, I feel terrible about myself, I look in the mirror, and I say, “I’m so great. I’m so great. I matter so much. I love myself so much.” Whatever.

But there’s huge parts of me that is like, “Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.” Not only is that not going to help, it’s going to make me feel worse because the dissonance between what I’m feeling and what I’m actually saying is like so far apart. What I need to do is say, “What is the edge?” And I talk about this a lot in my book, “What is the edge of my emotional power?”

So, if I go to the gym, and I can lift 20 pounds today, tomorrow I’m not going to try and lift 50. I’m trying to say, “What’s 22?”. I go to a conference and I normally sit in the back of the room. I’m too afraid to speak up. I don’t say, “I deserve to be on that stage today.” Maybe I say, “You know what’s accessible to me, I’m going to sit in the first row.” Maybe the next thing is, “I’m going to sit in the first row, and I’m going to ask a question.” You see, so it’s this idea of if you can think about evolution in other areas of your life, of course, you can think about evolution in your emotional life.

The other thing that I think is so exciting is we have totally misunderstood human development. We celebrate, like, “Oh, the little kid took a step,” “Oh, the little kid is walking,” “Oh, the little kid is eating solid food.” And then by the time you’re 21, everybody is done with you. Graduation, college, you’ve hit all your milestones, there’s nowhere but down to go. Not freaking true.

The next frontier of human intelligence is absolutely going to be emotional. And the sooner leaders understand this, the better, because the human brain is emotional. But what we need to now think is, in the middle of our lives when we’re kind of hitting our stride in our career, the most powerful question is, “How do we think about our emotional evolution?” And by emotional evolution, I mean, “How do I still speak up when other people don’t understand me?”

I think a lot of us are saying we’re exhausted, but we’re overworking. That’s a form of self-injury. A lot of us are saying we have really great ideas in our mind but we’re keeping our mouth shut. That’s not emotionally powerful. We’re saying we want to work on holding our boundaries, “I’m really going to start telling people no,” and the second somebody calls me, they’ll be like, “Hey, can you do this other project, Julia?” I’m like, “Yeah,” and then I’m so pissed off all night because – why? – I’m not really resentful of them. I’m resentful because I betrayed myself.

So, we got to get clear on, number one, where the emotional pain in our lives is coming from. And a lot of us don’t recognize this but the majority of the pain in our lives is actually coming from the ways that we abandon ourselves. And the second we start saying, “No matter what, I will not leave myself. I will pay attention to my emotional energy. I will work with my emotional energy. I start to become more and more powerful.”

The reason that this is so important for our leaders is, do you know what your followers want more than anything on the planet? They want access to their own power. And when you become the embodied standard of a human being who is in touch with your own emotional power, you become the influence, the true influence. We all throw this term around. You become the standard that everyone follows, not because they have to, not because they have FOMO, but because they truly desire to. And this is the leadership that will change the planet.

Pete Mockaitis
This is powerful stuff. I’m digging it, Julia. Let’s hit another example in terms of a power pattern and knowing that we don’t jump to the Ironman, metaphorically, but rather we sort of take one more step, like sitting in the front of the row. Let’s say there’s a pattern of energy associated with procrastination or distract-ability, like, “Ugh, I don’t feel like doing this. It’s boring and I don’t want to.” And then that shows up a lot. How do we apply some of these frameworks to that issue?

Julia DiGangi
So, you want me to tackle procrastination?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Julia DiGangi
Okay. So, first of all, you ready for this?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Julia DiGangi
We have to really get down to the guts, and Energy Rising takes you to the guts of what procrastination is actually about. First of all, let me just say neurodiversity is totally a thing, so a lot of people struggle with attentional issues. I always say attention is the mother of all of our cognitive abilities. If you think you can’t problem-solve, you can’t remember things, you can’t make decisions if you’re not paying attention in the first place.

So, there’s a lot of sorts of taxes on our attention these days, I want to acknowledge that. But if you really look at the research into procrastination, procrastination is always about a fear of not being good enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah? Okay.

Julia DiGangi
Let’s break this down, and I can actually really speak to this from my own. I just wrote this book, like it was a glorious process but I will tell you it was so hard. And the reason it was so hard, and I would have writer’s block, procrastination, distraction, it’s because you have this sense, and a lot of times it’s not even that conscious, but, like, “If I don’t make this perfect,” and a lot of us aren’t able to, we’re not in touch with ourselves enough to say this.

But the logic kind of goes like this, “If I don’t make this perfect, people aren’t going to like it. But it’s not just that they’re not going to like it, they’re going to think I’m an idiot. I’m going to humiliate myself. People aren’t going to want to be around me. I’m going to let everybody down. I’m going to be…” It just keeps cascading and cascading and cascading, and this is what catastrophic thinking is.

So, we do a lot of work around catastrophic thinking in both the coaching industry and in the mental health field, but it’s, like, the true thing about procrastination is not, “I can’t make a phone call,” or write four sentences on a page, or get on camera and say a few things. Procrastination is really this deep, deep fear that there’s something fundamentally wrong with myself.

So, first of all, the first step is to name it. And as soon as you start to say, “Hold on, Julia. So, you’re telling me if you don’t write 10 sentences that are absolutely like Pulitzer Prize-winning, you’re going to basically be a troll living in a refrigerator box?” And when you start to make that explicit, it just starts to let some of the pressure out of the pressure compartment.

And then I start to say, “I’m going to write 10 sentences with absolutely no judgment. I can literally write, “The sky is blue and the grass is…” I just need to start going because you want to start getting some momentum. And you also want to say, like, if we want to be effective leaders, the fastest way to get there is to totally release this perfectionism BS. Because it’s so interesting to me, and I will tell you, I treat a lot of anxiety. OCD is an anxiety disorder, and one of the forms, there’s many forms of OCD, but at a pathological form, perfectionism is OCD.

We think that OCD, or we think that perfectionism makes us so strong. It makes us so weak because the person that you’re doing the perfection for isn’t you. You’re performing for some fantasy that you have about what other people think. And if you’re really getting to the guts of it, what you think is that, “They’re going to think I’m a fool, they’re going to think I’m a reject, they’re going to think I’m a degenerate, unless I nail it.”

And what’s really interesting is when you get people to start verbalizing, “Tell me about the fears,” it’s almost hard for them to put it into words because the intellectual part of their brain knows that it’s absurd. The intellectual part of my brain knows that if I don’t write the best book in the history of the planet, I’m not going to be a social outcast and die alone. So, it’s more of this nebulous sense of, like, “This just doesn’t feel good.”

That sensation is generated by emotional systems in the brain. So, part of the work of getting over distract-ability, and perfectionism, and procrastination is to say, “How is my fear of failure playing out here? Let me start to literally list the reasons, and then let me start to take reasonable action.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Julia, much good stuff. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to put out there before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Julia DiGangi
I think I just want to say this because I think it’s so hopeful and so empowering and so healing, and I sort of started our interview saying this, is that the feelings, if you really think about any problem in your life, the reason you have a problem is because you have a bad feeling. You feel intimidated. You feel disappointed. You feel overwhelmed. You feel scared.

If you don’t work on the actual feelings themselves, those feelings will just keep popping up again and again and again, which means your ability to be powerful in your leadership will be constrained by that level of your emotion. Let me make this more clear. Let’s say I get really anxious talking in front of five people, and I make it through my talk, and they’re only five people there. Next time I give a talk, it’s probably only going to be to five people. If I want to talk on huge stages to 20,000 people, do you think I’m going to be able to talk on a stage of 20,000 people if I really can’t handle a stage of five?

So, it’s not really the situation I need to work with, it’s the sensation of anxiety and fear. And once I break through that at five people, then I can start to speak to 20 people. When I break through that, I can start to speak to 50 people. So, when we really start to work not just with our situations but we really start to work with the energy in our nervous system, it really transforms our leadership and our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Julia DiGangi
Yeah. Can I share two?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Julia DiGangi
I have two favorites. The first quote is from Mother Teresa, and it is, “If only we would sweep our own doorsteps, then the entire world would be clean.” I have worked with human suffering and human redemption for a long time, and we’re all out there talking about a better world. If we really want to create a better world, we have to look more closely at our own emotional pain because nearly all of the pain in the world actually comes from people’s fear. It doesn’t come because we’re cruel, vicious, psychopaths. It comes because we don’t feel like we’re good enough. And in the panic of not feeling good enough, we create messes.

The second quote is related to that, and the second quote is, “Everywhere I go, there I am.” A lot of times, we think if we could just change our situation, we could get a better job, we could make a little bit more money, we could have the breakthrough in the business that we just created, the kids could graduate, on and on and on and on. But what I have seen over and over and over again through my work, and also because I understand the brain, the brain is a pattern detector that runs on emotional energy.

So, your situations can change, you can move from Chicago to Denver, and you might feel good for six months, but pretty quick, you’re going to feel the way you’ve always felt unless you work at the level of your emotional energy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Julia DiGangi
I’ll say one of my own studies that I really like and then I’ll talk about someone else’s work. The study of my own that I like the most is I looked at what’s called pre-morbid predictors of PTSD. So, this kind of goes back to this idea of we have so much power to make meaning out of our own lives.

So, basically, the idea here is that most people who experience a traumatic event will naturally recover. Just like if you fell down on the street and skinned your knee, if you give it some time, chances are good that your leg is going to recover naturally. So, scientists are asking the question, “Is trauma alone not enough to describe who gets sick and why?”

And so, this study really looked at, “What’s going on with people even before the trauma has happened that can describe who’s at risk and who’s really resilient?” Because if we understand that, there’s so much potential to heal people. So, that’s kind of my work that I think is really exciting.

And I’ve also really liked a lot of the studies around uncertainty and boredom. There’s a great study where people were put in a room, and they thought they just had to go in this waiting room for a little while, they thought they were going to be part of another study but it was actually a setup. They were put into this room, and the only thing that was in this room was an electrical shock machine.

And they were like, “We’ll be back in three minutes to come get you,” that’s what the experimenter said, but the whole experiment was just to leave people in the room. And you saw that in a relatively short period of time, people were so bored that instead of just sitting with themselves, instead of just being still, meditating, thinking, people started using this electrical shock machine to shock themselves.

And I think that’s such a powerful metaphor because we are so resistant to just sitting with ourselves. And if we really want to feel better in our lives, we don’t need to achieve more and do more, I’m not saying those things can’t be done, but they come from a much more powerful place when we really understand our own inner energy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Julia DiGangi
So, a great book, I can’t say my favorite because I have a lot, it’s like picking your favorite child, is The Body Keeps the Score. Are you familiar with this book?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Julia DiGangi
So, obviously, a great book about pain and how it shows up in the nervous system. So, if we really want to empower ourselves, it begins with our brains and our bodies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Julia DiGangi
Well, this isn’t going to be this fancy but it’s going to be honest. I do a tremendous amount of work texting myself. I wrote enormous sections of the book texting myself. So, a lot of times, it kind of goes back to what we were saying about procrastination and fear of failure, when I would fire up the computer, I felt like there was all this pressure to start being, I don’t know, Ernest Hemingway or something. And a lot of times, I would get paralyzed by it.

And it was a night when I was calm and my kids were asleep that a lot of times, I would have all this inspiration – there’s that word again – all this creativity, and I would, in my Notes app and in my text message, do a lot of really beautiful work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Julia DiGangi
I would say my favorite habit is I free-write every evening. I’m very, very disciplined about this. And the reason I do this is because it’s a great way to integrate your thinking and your feelings. It’s a great way to have the most powerful brain. So, you have systems in your brain that think, and systems in your brain that feel, and they are connected but not perfectly integrated.

So, if you free-write, in other words, you’re not writing with a goal, you’re not trying to answer a very logical question, it’s a great way to link your emotions to the way that you think. And the most powerful person is a person who knows what they feel and feel what they know.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Julia DiGangi
Yeah. “Emotional energy is a currency, and you cannot give what you do not have.” We get this in all other domains. If I came to you and said, “Pete, I really, really need five bucks,” and if you really wanted to help me but you genuinely did not have five bucks, you would go, “Julia, I’m sorry, I don’t have five bucks,” and that would be the end of it. I would clearly understand.

In our workplaces, in our homes, we’re now talking about all these emotional currencies: transparency, empathy, inclusion, belonging, authenticity. And leaders are supposed to give these things to their teams, they’re supposed to give these things to their children, they’re supposed to give these things to their partners, the problem is I cannot give something I do not have.

How can I give attunement to my child when I’m not even attuned to myself? How can I create a culture of belonging if I’m always feeling, like, “I’m not really sure I belong in this organization. I’m kind of worried about my relevance. I don’t really feel like people like have my back”? We cannot give what we do not have.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Julia DiGangi
I would love to connect and talk about emotional power in leadership. I’m on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram @drjuliadigangi. Or, you could check out my website which is DrJuliaDiGangi.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Julia DiGangi
Yes. I would say think about, look for a pattern in the ways that you get stuck. Where are you getting constantly overwhelmed, constantly stressed, constantly feeling frustrated? And ask yourself, what can you do that would push you a little bit further out of your comfort zone to be able to feel your feelings a little bit more so that you could ultimately release those feelings that don’t feel good?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Julia, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and good energy.

Julia DiGangi
Thank you, Pete. Likewise.

Pete Mockaitis
Luana, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Luana Marques
Thanks for having me. Excited to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the latest wisdom you’ve got in your book Bold Move: A 3-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power. It sounds right up our alley but I’d like to start with one of your bold moves. I understand that you have, in fact, proactively chosen to negotiate while inside a Payless shoe store. What’s the story here?

Luana Marques
I did. So, I first came to the US as an exchange student and I spoke, basically, almost no English. And growing up in Brazil, we’re just taught to negotiate everything from a car to a banana to pretty much anything. Nothing is at face value what people tell you cost. So, I was here and I needed a pair of winter boots, there’s no need for those in Brazil.

And so, I walked into a Payless with my American family, chose what I could afford for winter boots, and as I was trying to pay, I asked for a 50-cent discount, and my American family, I remember, like they turned bright pink, and they’re like, “You don’t do that.” And I couldn’t understand why they’re so embarrassed, I was like, “Well, what is wrong?” I didn’t know.

I spoke very little English but the store is called Payless, and so I thought, “Well, why I wouldn’t pay less?” I don’t know if it was a bold move or it’s just a ‘I don’t know to speak English’ move but I did negotiate at Payless.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I want to know, what did they say?

Luana Marques
The woman looked at me and said no, and my American mom, like, pulled her money and quickly helped pay. It was really embarrassing for them, I think. I don’t think that saleslady was embarrassed. I felt I shamed them, and I think maybe that’s why I remember it so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess the funny thing for me about Payless, in particular, is, yes, it’s called Payless and it’s like they always had some promotion going, so it’s almost like if you’re actually talking to a decision-maker, they might be like, “Sure, hey, we just got everything all the time, 50 cents is fine by me.”

Luana Marques
That is such a good point. At that point, and I remember I didn’t know that there was so much coupons and promotions and buy-one-get-one-free, like that concept was still not in my brain at that point.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it was not as much bold as it was because you’re unfamiliar with how things are done. Although, every once in a while, that kind of ignorance can really be powerful in terms of, in this case, you might’ve gotten a discount because nobody asks but you asked, and it could happen. And other times, I’ve heard a story, was it Sara Blakely of Spanx, she just called up some merchandisers, and like, “Oh, I didn’t know that’s not what it’s supposed to be done. Oops,” but it worked out great for her.

Luana Marques
No, I think the spirit behind that moment still very much drives me. Like, I will negotiate for my salary. I will ask. My grandma, she used to say, “If you don’t ask, you don’t know. It can be a yes, it can be a no. If you don’t ask, you don’t even have a chance.” And so, I have an event coming up, I’m speaking at Formula One next week in Miami, and I was just not asking for tickets for the event. And then I sat with myself, I was like, “No, I can’t write a book about being bold and not being bold,” so I asked. And I think I might get tickets to watch the race.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, there you go.

Luana Marques
So, that was a bold move.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent.

Luana Marques
That one was good.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Very good. Very good. All right. Well, so let’s hear a little bit about your book Bold Move. Any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made while you were putting this together?

Luana Marques
So, the book, it’s a professional and personal journey for me, and I think the thing that was fascinating, I had the table of contents, I was writing the book, the last section of the book is I call a line, which is the idea of living a values-driven life, so identifying the key values in your life and really aligning your day-to-day life with those values.

And what was amazing to me is that I talk about this a lot, I coach people on the value-driven life, I think a lot about my life, but I realized, as I wrote it, how much I had strayed. I had really started to struggle with health and stopped going to the gym. I put on a lot of weight during the pandemic. I really cared about my work but was not aligning the way those aligned with the specific value related to my work.

And so, it was like this wakeup call, I was like, “Oh, my God, I’ve been talking about this but I hadn’t sat to realign my values.” And it’s something I think a lot of us maybe haven’t done yet since the pandemic. The world went upside down, things stabilized a little bit, and we went back to living our lives as we’ve done, adjusting, I’m sure, but I, personally, needed a major valid realignment to be able to really not only finish the book but to live a better, more fulfilling life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Luana, if I may dig into these values, we’ve come up a number of times here, and it’s such a big word, values. It’s probably the biggest word there is. And so, we’ve had a variety of guests say a variety of things in terms of how one arrives there, like, you could do a values card sort, and you could think about the times that were most meaningful in your life.

Can you share with us what are your values? And how did you stray? And what is a values realignment look, sound, feel like in practice?

Luana Marques
Wow, I’m speaking my language, all so great questions. So, values, to me, just for my definition, are our compass. Often in life, we live a life that we’re sort of guided by external things instead of internal things. And I think of values as sort of intrinsic motivators, so things like health, family, impact, wealth. And so, how do we get our true values?

There’s actually science here. Sometimes people get a list of values and they’ll start circling the values they like, and I have a list in my book. But what we know about values and why is it they hurt so much when we’re not living a life that’s aligned with values, it’s because we’re violating something that really matters to us, so it really only hurts because it matters.

Let me answer your question with an example of how my values got compromised. For 20 years, I worked with an amazing institution at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital, but in the last three years, I had a particularly challenging situation with one of my superiors, and what he did to me really violated trust for me.

And having grown up poor, having grown up with very little, in a situation when home was unstable, if I don’t trust those around me, I can’t really survive, really. For me, it’s sort of I need to have trust to feel safe, safety in the world. And so, I kept working there, and I kept not addressing it, but it was eating me alive.

And so, one of the questions we ask when we’re thinking of values and identifying values is, “Why is this hurting so much? What’s behind this thing?” Because, see, if I didn’t care about this person at all, what he did to me wouldn’t have hurt. So, it hurts because I cared. And that’s how I realized that he had violated trust and that’s why it was so painful.

So, I don’t want to keep going but that’s the first piece. I guess it’s like, “Can you see either if you’re in pain, why are you feeling that pain? What is the value that’s being violated?” because, to me, that’s the first step to then realign your life with those values. Does that answer your question, Pete? Like, I don’t want to sort of keep just rambling about values.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. So, that’s a nice indicator there. And now I’ve got Dr. Steven Hayes in my ear, thinking about values, and I hope to have him on the show. He’s got a great voice. And he said, “Often, when we connect to our values, the most common response is crying.” So, that was a striking sentence, like, “Huh.”

And so then, what does it look like then? So, we see the violation looks like, according to Steven Hayes, of acceptance and commitment therapy, that when you connect to them, you’re crying? What is connecting to your values look like?

Luana Marques
He is so great. And this question about violating your pain is definitely a Steven Hayes question. And the crying, sometimes, is twofold. One, you’re like understanding why it was so painful, and the other one, which I think is implicit in what he’s saying, is there’s a sense of relief, “Oh, okay, now I know what to do.” So, for me, I had to take action and, basically, addressed this with this person so that I could stay with my job and not feel like I was hurting every day.

And that’s the second piece. Once you connect with it, you’re going to have some relief. But in a practical way, what does that look like? In my case, it was intrapersonal conflict. But on-to-day, if we’re talking about productivity, if we’re talking about your life, it’s really choosing actions every day that represent that value.

If you care about connecting with others, are you making time to see your friends? If you care about justice, are you involved in things that reflect justice? And what his research shows very beautifully, Steven Hayes’ research, is when you align daily actions with values, stress goes down, anxiety goes down, depression goes down, and your sense of wellbeing and thriving in life feels much better despite of stress. You still can handle stress better because you’re doing things in a way that’s meaningful to you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, so then a realignment then is just you’re taking a look at how things are and what you’re doing, what you’re up to, and then doing things differently?

Luana Marques
Yeah, in a meaningful way. It’s looking at it, choosing it, doing it differently, and then tracking the outcome. Because if you change what you’re doing, you want to know if it’s working, if it’s making you feel better. But if it’s value-driven, it usually does.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And then when it comes to the defining of one’s values, so trust is one, how many values do most of us have, more or less?

Luana Marques
I don’t think there is a single research that can agree on that. I think most people would say that it’s hard to hold more than five at any active time and actually live a meaningful life towards them. I think we have many more than that. For me, right now, currently, that’s the important thing, we change through our lives. Currently, the values that are really important to me are trust, impact, health, and family. Those are the four main compasses by which I’m guiding my life today.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Okay, so you’re just getting warmed up talking about values. That’s just a warm up, Luana.

Luana Marques
I know. I know I get excited. I really get excited about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, let’s hear about the book Bold Move: A 3-Step Plan to Transform Anxiety into Power. What’s sort of the big idea or main thesis here?

Luana Marques
The main idea of the book is that although anxiety is extremely painful, anxiety itself is not the enemy. The real thing that gets us stuck is psychological avoidance. Psychological avoidance is anything that we do that helps us feel better momentarily but it has a negative long-term consequence. So, these sort of things like you cancel a date, you don’t finish your report at work because it makes you anxious, you walk in your house and your wife gives you a look, and you know she’s upset, and you’re like, “Oh, I have to work a little more. I don’t want to deal with that right now.”

Those are examples of psychological avoidance. When we avoid, we feel better momentarily. Long term, we are just creating more anxiety. So, that’s at the core of what the book is about. It’s we can get rid of avoidance but we can’t get rid of anxiety so we need to be fighting the right enemy to live a bold life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, to not do the avoidance, what do we do? Do we just go for it every time? How do we think about that, like, “Hey, what’s up? You seem upset. Let’s do this”?

Luana Marques
Well, “Just do it” works for Nike. It doesn’t work for psychological avoidance. We have to be more thoughtful. So, the first piece is actually identifying that we’re avoiding. We may know it but not everybody has paused and really asked themselves, “When my anxiety is high, what do I do?” And in the book, I described something called thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, or TEB cycle, the TEB cycle.

And it’s just a technique that we often use in psychology to just cause a pause, create a pause in your brain. So, the first step is if you’re feeling anxious, ask yourself and write it down, “What am I saying to myself? How does that make me feel? What do I want to do?” And if that action is something that is designed to only bring down discomfort, there’s a good chance that you’re avoiding.

So, does that help a little bit, sort of just setting the framework?

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So, if that’s the thing that is there, then okay. And then I could see how that behavior could be, boy, just any number of things. So, first of all, I’m thinking about, like, okay, smoking, drinking, drugs, video games in terms of, like, there’s a universe of things that’s just, like, “I am just trying to push the feel-good button here.” As opposed to, I guess, now there are things like it might be in the gray zone, like going for a run, it’s also a healthy behavior which is good for the body, but is also exiting a situation that you don’t want to be in.

So, I guess maybe that might be in the gray zone of it is, “I’m avoiding but I’m doing it in an uplifting way so it’s not purely just to make me feel better.” And so then, yeah, then I guess the behaviors that would be not just feel-good behaviors but, I guess, they’re like helpful or productive or advancing things in some way. Is that right?

So, like, if your partner or spouse has given you the cold shoulder, it might be you don’t necessarily engage in a conversation right then and there but you might say, “Well, okay, I’m going to do something that’s helpful for her at the moment because it seems like that would be useful.” So, I’m purely speculating, Luana. You tell me.

Luana Marques
I love it. So, Pete, I think you’re dancing with avoidance the right way, and this is the trick. Avoidance works and there are times in life that we have to walk away. So, you’re having a really bad day, it’s certainly much better to go for a jog, call a friend, than to reach for a bottle of wine, just in terms of your overall wellbeing.

The question, really, is not about the behavior. It’s like, “What is the function of the behavior and is there a negative consequence?” So, for example, if every time you’re upset with your spouse, the only way you handle it is going for a jog, and you never address that you’re upset with your spouse, there is a lifetime, a time on this. Meaning, eventually this blows up for every couple. There’s never a couple I’ve worked with where they avoid a conflict, avoid a conflict, and conflict just ran away. Conflict doesn’t have legs. It stays there.

And so, the running, and the clearing your mind, and jogging, it’s great but if it’s the only way you address conflict, then now you get yourself into a problem. So, it’s really about that price tag, and I think it’s helpful to think about three ways of avoiding. The ones that you talked about, it’s alcohol, numbing, those are retreating. That’s when we sort of try to move away from discomfort. So, you had a really busy day at work, you just come home and have a few glasses of wine, once in a while that might be okay. If it’s every night, now it starts to get into really psychological avoidance.

Some of us, though, avoid in a completely different way. When we feel threatened, specifically perceive threat, so you’re upset with your boss, you get an email you don’t like, you are angry with your partner, you react. Those are people that raise their voice. They will write a hasty email. The idea here is that they’re moving towards that discomfort but not in a productive way. In a way of, like, “I just can’t feel this anxiety so I have to do something.”

Like, I had a patient that just would explode. Every time something would happen at work for him that made him anxious, he would explode. So, there is the people that react, explode kind of idea; there’s the people that retreat; and the last category on psychological avoidance is really the people that remain.

This is the person that is frozen. They’re in a job that they hate but the idea of transitioning, the uncertainty, they just don’t make the leap. They have a relationship they don’t like. So, they are sort of stuck, unable to move one way or another. Does that help to clarify these flavors?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it does good. Yes. Certainly. So, the avoiding isn’t necessarily avoiding the situation. It’s avoiding the feeling of anxiety, like, “I’m going to escape this into anger. Like, I’m going to tell you what I think about this with some attitude.” Okay.

Luana Marques
That’s really important. You’re right on target. You’re not necessarily avoiding behavior, which is the way everybody thinks about avoidance. You’re avoiding discomfort. It’s really the anxiety that you’re trying to run away from.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so tell us, what’s the promised land? What can really be possible for us? In a world where stuff happens, we feel anxious, what’s possible?

Luana Marques
So, there are three skills that I talk about in the book that I think are very helpful that, really, I’ve used them since I’m 15, and my grandmother taught some of them to me, and then, eventually, I got to graduate school, I was like, “Oh, there’s science behind what she was saying?” and here they are. The first one is shift.

Shift is the idea of learning to examine what we’re saying to ourselves. So, what is it that you’re saying to yourself when you’re anxious? Because what happens when we’re anxious is our thoughts become very black and white. On my early days of dating, I remember I’d go on a date and if somebody gave me a look, I’d be like, “Oh, my God, they don’t like me.” And we jump to these conclusions without any facts whatsoever.

So, shift as a skill is, really, after we pause, can we learn to talk to ourselves as if we’re talking to our best friends? What do I mean by that? I don’t know about you, Pete, but I say things to myself that I would never say to my friends. Like, we talk to ourselves in ways that are very not helpful. So, to shift is really arriving on a more balanced view of the world.

So, if you’re really scared about a presentation, can you say to yourself, “You know what, yeah, I’m anxious, but I’ve given presentations before, and I’m prepared”? And what we see is if we shift, our anxiety goes down a little bit. It doesn’t go away but it allows us to engage with things that cause some of that discomfort in a way that’s more productive.

And I have two more but how does that one sound? I’ll pause here for a sec.

Pete Mockaitis
No, I dig it a lot and I’ve heard that before, I feel it wasn’t Ethan Kross or David Burns, but, yeah, that is good. Talking to yourself like a best friend as opposed to any number of things that you could be saying to yourself, which could be judgmental or harsh, or, “You idiot, you always do this.” Like, okay, you probably wouldn’t talk to your best friend that way. You’d be like, “Oh, man, that’s a bummer. Oh, okay. Well, hey, you know what, everyone makes mistakes. You are awesome at your job in all these ways. We’re going to figure out a plan to fix this. We always do.” And that’s a much better vibe inside.

Luana Marques
Yeah, I love the example you just gave because it’s like a good leader would do. If you’re working with somebody that you trust and they make a huge mistake, you don’t go, “Hey, that was awful.” You sit with them, and you say, “Okay, let’s figure out how we got here, and let’s walk together to get you out of here.” And it’s being able to take that perspective towards ourselves so that we’re not living dominated by negative anxious thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. All right. What’s next?

Luana Marques
Approach, not avoid. So, we actually already talked a little bit about this. You mentioned when you’re in conflict with your partner, and the only way you manage that conflict is going for a run because you feel so anxious about talking that you want to run away. Approach is the idea of going towards discomfort by doing what I call opposite action. So, you’re going to do an opposite action of what the anxiety tells you to do.

But here’s the trick, and this is really important. It can’t be all or nothing. So, if you’re afraid of conflict, you can’t, all of a sudden, turn on a switch and go to your partner, and be like, “Well, we’re going to address this right now.” No one can tolerate that. Our brains can’t handle it. So, what is one thing you can do instead of running away? It could be as simple as saying, “Hey, what you said really hurt me, and I’d like us to find some time to talk about it, eventually.” Or, “You know what, that hurt me enough that I need some space from you,” but trying to go towards that discomfort, and so approach instead of avoid.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Luana Marques
And, finally, we actually already talked about it, which is align, and it is drawing from the acceptance and commitment therapy. And the idea of living a values-driven life is a life that really is meaningful. Now, I do this every week, Pete, on Sundays. I look at my calendar for the next week, and I do a little values check, and I go, “Okay, what am I doing that’s related to impact?”

Like, being with you here today feels so important to me because I wrote this book to help the world find science-driven skills to bring the mental health crisis down. And being in such an important podcast like yours, to me, has impact. So, I can check that today, I can say, “Okay, there is impact here.” And tonight, I’m going to have dinner with my son, and he’s really excited. We’re cooking together. Check family.

And so, for me, I try to ensure that I have a little bit of everything, knowing that an aligned life is not a perfect life. I’m about to launch a book, I’m doing a lot more impact, a lot less family, but it’s in a purposeful way so that I continue to live a value-driven life.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. When we talk about values and alignment there in terms of because some values, I think, could be pretty fuzzy in terms of, like, thinking about a week and can we put a check on it. Like, I’m just going to say integrity. It’s like, “Okay, do I have anything for integrity this week?” It’s like, “Well, I’m just going to try to not lie to anybody over the course of interacting with folks.”

That doesn’t quite seem nearly as concrete. For impact, being on the podcast. Family, cooking with son. How do you think about that when it comes to values?

Luana Marques
So, values should be how we say yes or no to things. And if you’re clear on your values, then when somebody presses you, “Can you do this in a way that’s a little shady?” if you’re acting with integrity, the immediate answer is no. There’s not a sense of, like, “I have to think through this. Or, is there a way around that?”

And so, I think about integrity the same way I think about trust in some ways. As core values, they are non-negotiables. So, they’re values that I, personally, every day, want to live by. And then there are things for me that are non-negotiable. Like, integrity is one of them, for example. That my decisions in meta level and in a micro level need to have integrity.

It is harder to check in the list. It is not harder to live by that value if you have it. So, like, I have my list of values and I look at them often, at least once a week. But as a way to sort of say to myself, “Can I keep myself…” the word that comes to mind is reliable, but it’s not really right. “Can I keep a check on myself? Am I really honoring those values?” And it doesn’t feel hard to do integrity but I get your point that it does feel like it’s more amorphous than, like, family, for example.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I guess it seems less schedulable, it’s like, “Ooh, do I have an integrity activity for this week? Hmm, no.” As opposed to reflecting, looking back, “Did you do this?” I’m thinking of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography here in terms of he had his nice little rundown of virtues and “Did I do it today?” and he made the marks on the grid.

So, I could see, like, in hindsight, you can say, “Ooh, hey, actually, I don’t think I had as much integrity as I would’ve liked to there. I kind of let them think something was the case when I knew it probably wasn’t going to be the case, and I could’ve corrected that, and that would’ve been helpful for them and painful for me. And I didn’t do it. I wasn’t lying but that was less than 100% integrity.”

Like, you might be able to reflect on that in hindsight but I can’t think of an integrity activity that I could make sure is scheduled on the weekly agenda, and then if it’s not, go ahead and schedule it. Maybe you can, can you?

Luana Marques
The only one that I think you could schedule but it’s not, again, schedulable as much is parenting. Like, how do you parent with integrity? What do you teach? And can you create moments that you’re teaching specific things that are related to integrity? But it gets in a whole can of worms. Like, how do you parent? What are your values for parenting? What is your partner’s value for parenting? What are the activities around those values?

But it’s the only one that I could because I have a five-year-old at home, so that is something that we think a lot about. So, maybe it is that we just have to check more and reflect on those mega core values, but I like to think more about that. Now you got me in a linchpin here. I want to think about how do you schedule values, those kinds of values.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I also want to dig into one of your concepts. You suggest that we become our own thought lawyers. What does it mean to be a thought lawyer?

Luana Marques
So, what it means is that whenever we’re anxious, our thoughts, well, the way our brain process information is based on our views of the world which are formed early on. I talked a little bit about my view of being afraid I’m not enough, or there are people like they’re not going to think something, or think something badly of me.

And so, our brains are automatically running information that way, which means sometimes our thoughts are not accurate. They’re not either based on reality or they’re likely distorted by our views of the world. And so, to become a thought lawyer is really to pause and look at your thoughts, and to be able to say, “Okay, is this thing I’m saying to myself based on data? Will this hold in a court of law? And if it doesn’t, is there another way to talk to myself?”

So, it’s really questioning our thinking. It’s no different than learning to talk to yourself as your best friend. The idea behind both principles, really, is thoughts are not facts. They feel true but they’re not necessarily 100% accurate. And that arriving at a more flexible view of the world allows us to live a better, more meaningful life.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, it’s funny, when I think of interacting with a friend and a lawyer, it feels different. And I guess when I’m thinking about a thought lawyer, as I’m imagining I am cross-examining a thought I have. It’s like, “What is your evidence for that thought?” And, in some ways, I don’t know, I wonder about what’s the tone we’re going for when we’re being a thought lawyer?

Luana Marques
Well, given that we’re trying to live a meaningful bold life, ideally, a tone that has some compassion with yourself. I think the spirit behind both of them is the same, which is, “Can we interrogate our thoughts? Can we not take thoughts as facts immediately?” Now, I worked with some people, they’re very scientific, and so, for them, it’s like they need to be in a cross-examination, otherwise, there’s nothing. This whole friendship stuff, they’re like, “It’s too soft. I can’t do it.”

And I worked with people that go, “Oh, this law stuff, I don’t really care. What I care about is meaningful relationships.” So, think about them, Pete, as different entryways for people with the same goal. The goal here is, “Can we look at what we’re saying to ourselves?” Because if what we’re saying to ourselves is just leading to more anxiety, do we want to keep talking to ourselves that way? And could we arrive at a more balanced view so that we can bring that anxiety down and transform it into more of a power and more meaningful life?

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Well, I guess the way I’m reconciling it is the thought lawyer is the lawyer that I have hired on my team, as opposed to the lawyer on the other team who’s adversarially going after me. Because I think sometimes with thoughts, I mean, you can, I don’t know, at least these are in my own thought life, if I am too intensive with my interrogation, it’s like I flip on into defensive mode. And it’s like, “Huh, really, is that true, Pete?” “Well, yeah, because dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” And then it’s like, “Huh, I don’t think I’m getting where I’m trying to be going from this process.”

Luana Marques
So, it’s interesting because defensive mode sometimes is just a way to avoid our own self sometimes because we get defensive, we’re like, “No, no,” and it’s sort of in a way a little bit. I hear you. I think that sometimes we can get so black and white in the interrogation that we just lock our brain more, and that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.

We’re trying to achieve cognitive flexibility. That’s really the goal behind these skills is you have a more flexible brain. And so, I love that you know for you what works and doesn’t work. And I think that’s what I recommend for everybody. If for you, the lawyer that you hired and your team is better, bring that lawyer on everywhere with you, man. That’s awesome. I love the picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Okey-dokey. And so then, the subtitle of the book Transform Anxiety into Power, so I could see how doing these three things, the shifting, talking as a best friend, the approaching not avoiding, the aligning to be values-driven, are powerful, and we’ve sort of transformed an anxious anxiety into power there. Although, I’m wondering, it’s like could I be powerful without the anxiety? Or, is the anxiety actually being a handy fuel for me? How do you think about that?

Luana Marques
I’ve never met anyone in my life that I worked with that they didn’t want that anxiety gone. I’ll be the first to say I don’t like anxiety myself, so I’m there with everyone here. That being said, we can’t get away of anxiety. If you think about anxiety as sort of a broader concept that involves just even some mild discomfort. Have you ever seen anyone powerful that goes to give a concert, or somebody who’s about to take an exam? There’s some level of apprehension and an anxiousness that is somewhat adaptive up to a point.

And getting rid of anxiety is like getting rid of our pain receptors. It sounds fantastic, you bump into something and you feel nothing, but then you touch a hot stove and we’re in trouble. And so, we can’t get rid of anxiety completely. We can bring it down, and that’s why I chose very thoughtfully the subtitle of transforming anxiety into power.

So, if you’re going to feel anxious anyhow, wouldn’t you want to use it to do something meaningful, something that makes you feel power, make you feel bold towards what you care about? And so, I think we can get rid of avoidance. That, I think, we can do really good. Anxiety, I’m sorry to break it for everybody, we’re all going to have a little level of it. There’s no way around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Well, Luana, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Luana Marques
No, I think we covered everything.

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty. Well, now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Luana Marques
So, since I was 16, I’m inspired by Paulo Coelho’s quote on The Alchemist, “Whenever you want something, the entire universe conspires in making sure you have it.” That quote gave me hope when life was tough in Brazil, and still does.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Luana Marques
I’m really excited, have been, by the things that I think a ton about is Steven Hayes’ work on acceptance and commitment therapy recently, and this idea that we can actually create more meaningful lives by leaning into our pain, understanding that pain can reflect values, and then create a new life when those values are a part of it. That, to me, is very exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Luana Marques
Favorite book, the last book that I read that gave me a lot of inspiration is Michelle Obama’s new book on The Light We Carry. She has an entire chapter on avoidance, and it’s just so powerful to me to see a woman like Michelle talk about avoidance and also overcoming it. And although she doesn’t use the same terms I use, I can just see the science right there in everything she used, so she inspires me tremendously.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Luana Marques
So, I think what I’m really just, I love, nowadays, ChatGPT and just being able to use AI as a way to elevate my writing. I think it’s really incredible. I think there’s pros and cons but it certainly has helped me to sort of streamline my thinking.

Pete Mockaitis
I feel like there are some episodes about this coming up to be done. How do you use it to streamline your writing? Is it in terms of brainstorming or…?

Luana Marques
So, no, it’s mostly, you know, English is my second language. Of course, I’ve been here for a long time. I tend to be a fast writer but being able to create the flow, and sometimes just even clean up the grammar. I can get in a habit there, so being able to say, “Help me rewrite this in a way that ensures tone but allows for grammar correctly, and this, and this.” Just, it literally cleans it up a little bit. It just saves a lot of time. It stays consistent with the message that I want to send. It’s just like I have an editor at home that is just like an amazing editor, and that’s really powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Luana Marques
Breakfast with my family, like sitting and actually having breakfast. We had to create that into a habit because life has a way to just take it over, and it’s a habit for us.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate, and folks quote it back to you often?

Luana Marques
Approach than avoid. All my clients say again and again, like, whenever they avoid, they go they hear me saying, “Approach than avoid.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Luana Marques
www.DrLuana.com. You can find out about the book and everything else there, including upcoming speaking events and book signing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Luana Marques
Yes. I encourage you all to take a pause, look at your values, and really make a bold move to align your job with what matters the most because that, I think, guarantees that you’re going to be super awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Luana, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much fun and many bold moves.

Luana Marques
Well, thank you so much, Pete. It’s really an honor to be back here. It’s super fun.