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KF #26. Being Resilient Archives - Page 3 of 21 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Apr 21
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1051: Channeling Optimism as a Superpower with Sumit Paul-Choudhury

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Sumit Paul-Choudhury shares the science behind optimism and why it gives people an advantage in the long term.

You’ll Learn

  1. The case for optimism
  2. How to train your brain to become an optimist
  3. How to direct your optimism to where you need it most

About Sumit

Sumit Paul-Choudhury writes, thinks, and dreams about science, technology, and the future. A former Editor-in-Chief of New Scientist, he trained as an astrophysicist, has worked as a financial journalist, and, at the London Business School, received a Sloan Fellowship in strategy and leadership. Currently, he devotes most of his time to his creative studio Alternity, which puts the ideas in this book into scientific and artistic practice. He lives and works in London.

Resources Mentioned

Sumit Paul-Choudhury Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sumit, welcome.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Hi, glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m feeling optimistic about this interview.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Me too, hopefully, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I would like to kick it off. You’ve got a pretty dramatic story in terms of you share that you became an optimist on the night of tragedy. Can you tell us the story and how you came to this position?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Yeah. So, well, it’s not so much that I became an optimist as I realized I was one starting at that point. So, some time ago now, my first wife died of cancer, or complications of cancer. And, obviously, this was a pretty bad time for me. But one of the things I did, or the main thing I did, actually, was in the aftermath, I was to think, “Well, how am going to get through this?” And I thought, “Well, the present is not great, obviously, but I have to believe that the future is going to be better. It’s going to be brighter than today is.”

And so, I started, more or less, kind of like a coping mechanism, really. I sort of declared myself to be an optimist. I said, “I’m going to be an optimist. I’m going to believe that the future is going to be better. And, in that way, maybe it will be.” And so, I started to do things that I thought might help me along that goal. And as I kind of did them, I realized a couple of things.

One was I realized that, actually, it was helping, and something that I kind of thought was frivolous. I thought optimism is kind of a fairly naive way to go about your life. I realized there was more power there than I had realized previously. And the other thing I realized was that, actually, I thought, “Well, this is coming at a very bleak time in my life.”

And then I thought, “Well, I’ve always been an optimist. This is something I’ve always assumed that things will get better. And even now in this darkest of moments, I still think things are going to get better.” And then realizing that I was an optimist and appeared to be quite strongly optimistic was quite difficult because I thought it was frivolous. I thought this was something that if you didn’t really want to think much about life, you’d just say, “Oh, I’m an optimist. Things will work out.” And that’s how you proceed.

So, both of those things came as something of a surprise to me, that optimism wasn’t this kind of throwaway thing, and that I’d always been one, which wasn’t something I identified with myself.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s powerful. Thank you for sharing. And I really relate to that. I remember, when I was 15, my dad died in a bicycling accident.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Oh, sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
And it was terrible and very sad. And, at the same time, in the mix of my thoughts, I remember thinking, “Boy, I’m so grateful that I had him for this long.” Because I just imagined, like, if he had left me three years earlier, I probably could have gotten into some real trouble, really, because I had some, I don’t know, wild rebelliousness within me.

And so, I was grateful for what could have been, that was not looking to the past, and you’re looking to the future, like, you believe the future will be better than today. Well, tell us, you know a lot of reason, fact-based, evidence-based things, is optimism rational, true, believable, defensible for the skeptic?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Well, I’m a science journalist, I should say. And that was one of the reasons I found optimism, or identifying as an optimist, to be difficult, because I kind of prided myself on being a critical thinker, or being someone who made all these decisions on the basis of evidence. Or, at least, that’s what I thought I was doing, right? And then I became a journalist. And, similarly, in journalism, you’re supposed to be a detached critical thinker.

You view things objectively, try and come up with the most accurate possible assessment of a situation, or of what you’re being told. And that doesn’t sit very well with the idea of optimism as this kind of belief that things will turn out for the better. And, actually, the more I kind of dug into it, the more I realized that actually optimism is kind of irrational, actually. I mean, people kind of often try and turn it into a rational kind of way of looking at the world.

And there are arguments for it and there are ways that you can kind of make it more rigorous. But at its core, optimism in the psychological sense is irrational. Psychologists refer to it as unrealistically positive expectations. It’s kind of believing that good things will happen more often than the numbers suggest or the experience of your peers suggest. And bad things will happen less often than the numbers suggest. So, it is basically irrational.

But having said that, you can make a good case for it. You can make a case for the fact that this irrational belief, nonetheless, helps us to get ahead in life. And when you kind of do the kind of research that psychologists have done, you discover that, actually, people who score as more strongly optimistic up to a point also seem to have better lives in many respects. Longer lives, healthier lives, happier lives, and more successful lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I want to dig into that. And I guess, with that strict definition of optimism, in terms of the belief that things will be better than they, statistically, are likely to be, I guess I’m curious, though, sometimes just having–we had Jamil Zaki on the show, and he was talking about hope, and that often our default assumptions are more cynical and more doubtful than the reality on the ground.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Right, exactly. And I think that’s where optimism comes into its own, essentially. So, the reason that it’s irrational is because we don’t have the evidence to hand to say, “I believe this thing will work out.” We don’t have the evidence for that, you know, “I think I’m going to get this promotion,” say. You can’t say ahead of time that that’s definitely going to happen. Almost never in the real world are you in a position where you can say, “With 100% certainty, I know what’s going to happen,” or, “I know that things aren’t going to work out.” That’s just not the way the world works.

Most of the time you have to kind of try and make your best guess, and you know that your best guess is not going to be entirely correct. The difference between being an optimist and a pessimist in that situation is that as an optimist, you recognize that there are positive possibilities that you don’t see. There are positive outcomes that you’re not necessarily aware of.

As a pessimist, you kind of write those off. As an optimist, you think, “Well, there are positives. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know what those further solutions, those further opportunities might be,” but you make the effort to keep yourself open to them, to keep looking for them. And so, if they do exist, you’ll find them, right?

If you’re a pessimist, on the other hand, you don’t do anything. And so, you don’t kind of realize those opportunities. So, basically, I mean, you start off in this position where, whatever your best assessment is, it’s going to be wrong. If you assume it’s wrong and there’s no upside, then that’s going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume it’s wrong, but there are positive outcomes out there that you haven’t foreseen, then you’ve got a better chance of achieving them.

Pete Mockaitis
This kind of reminds me of Pascal’s Wager.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Yeah, it is very much like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Except we’re not talking about death and eternity, so much as life and the immediate weeks, months, years ahead.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Right. Right, it is like that. Actually, I mean, it’s like optimism in its origins is actually a philosophical argument, not a psychological one. So, it actually doesn’t really come from, it’s become this kind of, you know, word for the way that we look at the world, and that’s essentially what it means to us today. And it has always meant that to some extent.

But once upon a time, it was a much deeper, more philosophical point about, “What way does the world skew?” You know, at a time when the kind of language of probability and risk and that sort of thing was not as evolved as it is today, you had to explain why bad things happened. And optimism was one way that you explained how that good things were more likely to happen than bad things.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, boy, the universe of statistics and probability and risk today is wild. I’m thinking about markets such as Polymarket and predicted and Kalshi, it’s like, wow, we’ve got a number of people putting money on the probabilities of all sorts of things. So, yeah, what an environment we find ourselves in.

So, well, could you share then a few of the biggest discoveries, the most fascinating tidbits you’ve uncovered within psychology that you share in your book, The Bright Side: How Optimists Change the World, and How You Can Be One?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, the main kind of thing about this, as I say, is that you can make a good argument for why you should be an optimist even though being optimistic is not rational. And the way that pans out is that, essentially, by going after opportunities you don’t necessarily know exist, you tend to realize them in due course. And that kind of helps you to kind of benefit from the upside, from benefits from upsides that you don’t necessarily see at the outset.

And where this kind of shows up, in day-to-day life, essentially, is that it makes you better at coping. I mean, as I kind of talked about with my own experience at the beginning of this, I was doing this inadvertently, but it makes you better at coping with setbacks. It makes you more able to kind of bounce back when you hit a roadblock. You don’t kind of think, “That roadblock is absolute and total and I’ve gotten nowhere around it.” You think, “Well, actually there are probably are ways around this even if I can’t see them.”

And that translates not just like to the decisions you make about your own personal life in terms of what might be happening to you in your family life or whatever, as my example goes. But it also translates to the area of relationships. So, optimists tend to work harder at their relationships, both kind of your social relationships and your professional ones. And so, that means that you tend to kind of persevere more. You tend to try a bit harder to get past whatever your current problem is.

And that, over the long term, tends to mean that things work out. But there is kind of a caveat in here, which is that it does have to be something that you kind of do on a routine, regular basis. If you just get wildly optimistic about a particular thing, a particular event, let’s say you are going for a promotion. If you get massively optimistic about that particular event, that doesn’t necessarily help because it doesn’t–you can’t change the odds in your favor all that dramatically.

If, however, you kind of take every opportunity you have to advance yourself, and you take each of those individually with an optimistic stance, that’s what tends to pan out over the long term because, sure, you’ll be wrong sometimes and some things won’t work out, but sometimes they do. And over time that accumulates.

So, optimism is not a short thing. It’s not a one-off, you know, wild overestimation of how likely you are to get lucky in a particular time. It’s a game for the long term. It’s something you have to keep trying and keep trying to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is really juicy stuff, and it reminds me of some of Dr. Albert Bandura’s research on self-efficacy, in terms of the beliefs we have about what is possible for ourselves really do translate into different results, not so much in a mystical law of attraction, universe bringing things into your life kind of a way, but rather a, “Well, hey, if you believe that it’s going to work out this way, or that you have the power to do a thing, then you’re going to go ahead and make an effort, and you get the results more often when you go ahead and make the effort than when you don’t.”

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Exactly. I mean, I think there are other ways in which this pays off. It pays off in terms of your relationships, I say, because people like optimists. People like people who are willing. And this is not difficult to understand, but, I mean, clearly, who’s going to kind of want to hang out with someone who tells you things are going to be terrible, right? I mean, you want to hang out with someone who says, “Things are going to be good. If you follow me, things are going to work out well.”

But if you kind of adopt that stance and you put in that little bit of extra effort, then you tend to kind of reinforce those relationships. And it works both ways, right? I mean, if you develop a stronger relationship, that then becomes a status resource, as it’s called, that you can then draw upon.

It means that when you kind of come to a point when you need something down the line, you’re more able to ring up that person you have that relationship with. You’re more able to kind of ask for a favor. You’re more able to ask for advice. And those are all the kind of things that, gradually, over time, add up to real material changes in your ability to achieve what you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, could you share some fun stories that bring this all to life?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, I think the easiest place to see optimism at work at the moment, and you can take this however you like, really, is in the Valley. So, optimism is very strongly associated with entrepreneurship and with innovation. I say entrepreneurship, but I mean, essentially, anyone who wants to take a chance on doing something new or different requires a certain level of optimism because, at the outset, you can’t know that it’s going to work out.

So, whether you’re within a company or an organization, and you’re trying to do something differently or you’re trying to do something on your own, you need some degree of optimism to make it work. And I think there’s no kind of more successful example of optimism than the people we see who run the big tech companies at the moment and where they came from.

If you take someone like Mark Zuckerberg, he started out coding in his dorm room with a project with what eventually became Facebook. There was no kind of realistic way that you might think at that point in time that this was going to become one of the biggest companies in the world and one of the most powerful companies in the world, and that he would still be single-handedly in charge of that now. That this would be kind of his pet project.

Zuckerberg talks about this in terms of that language of the self-fulfilling prophecy. So, he talks about, you know, this is one of his favorite phrases that optimists tend to be successful, pessimists tend to be right. And this is the kind of thing about, so if you’re a pessimist, you can always kind of justify this to yourself. You can always say, “I was correct about that,” because you go and look for the evidence that supports your point of view.

You don’t do anything to confound it and, therefore, you end up being correct that something doesn’t work out. If you’re an optimist, you tend to ignore that and you build the thing, you build the multimillion, the multibillion-dollar company, and you go ahead and do it even though that’s not what conventional wisdom says you can do, even though that’s not something that someone working out of a dorm room is supposed to be able to achieve. That’s kind of where the power of optimism comes in.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. Could I have another story?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, in the story I tell in the book, I tell the story of how I eventually got my job at New Scientists. And it started off, when I was a kid, I was in my dad’s office. He took me to work when we were on vacation, when I was on vacation rather, from school, and I found a stack of magazines, New Scientists magazines, so science magazine.

I kind of thought at the time that writing in science were not very compatible occupations, which they, by and large, are not supposed to be. And so, I kind of looked at these, the stack of magazines and asked my dad, like, “Who looks after this magazine?” And he said, “The editor does that,” and I kind of, “All right. Fine.” And this is when I was about eight, and I thought, “That’s the job I want, basically. I like writing. I like science. That’s something I can do.”

And, obviously, at the age of eight, you don’t have any expectation that you’re going to be able to make that work, right, or what that means, essentially. But I clung onto that idea. And so, when I kind of went to school, I had to make my choices, I decided, “I still had this kind of thing in the back of my mind. This is the ultimate job for me, essentially.” It wasn’t that I necessarily thought I was going to get it tomorrow, but that was what I was aiming for.

So, when I came to having to choose between writing and science, initially I chose science because I thought you needed to be a scientist. And I thought that you could be a writer even if you didn’t have the training for that. So, I studied science, I studied astrophysics, I did all of that. And then I decided that I would switch to writing, which was kind of this leap into the unknown, essentially, at that point.

And it was kind of a, that was pure unbridled optimism. I thought I could make that work. I had no evidence for it. I had no background in writing. I had no track records. I had no particular expertise in that field. But I thought I’d give it a go. So, I did. And as it turns out, I did turn out to be able to make a career in writing.

But the most important thing, really, wasn’t that I was necessarily good at that. It was that by looking for ways to advance that career, I eventually lucked into a position where the physics background was very useful, which was in covering finance. From there, I kind of did that for quite a long time. I started a publication through a random opportunity, through someone I met through networking, carried on doing this.

And, eventually, after doing that for about a decade, I wrote back to New Scientist, and said, “Can I have a job?” And they said, you know, at that point, they kind of said, “Well, you know, maybe later, maybe if you get some more experience.” So, I got a bit more experience. I wrote back to them. And, ultimately, they gave me a job, a part-time position. It was a two-day a week position that I started out with.

And then, over time, I built up from there and, eventually, I became the editor in chief. And the kind of point I was trying to make here is that, really, I mean, there are a number of ways you can think about this. This was not a case of me saying at the beginning of this, I had the very naive, optimistic view that, you know, if I just went out there and did like, you know, wrote for a couple of years, I would somehow end up at New Scientist and end up in charge.

What it turned out to be was that much longer game, but every step along the way required me to take kind of optimistic leaps into the dark, essentially. It meant I have to kind of accept, I had to be optimistic about my chances of being a writer. I had to be optimistic about my chances of, once I’ve been a writer, of being able to run a publication.

And then I’d to be optimistic about my chances of getting into New Scientist. And once I was there, I had to be optimistic about my chances of progressing there. And so, there’s a succession of steps, each of them involved being open to possibilities that were not obvious at the outset. Each of them is kind of optimistic journey, a step down this line, that, eventually, ended up with me getting the job that I kind of set out to do, you know, 25 odd years earlier. And that’s kind how I got to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very cool. Congratulations.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. So, if we think, “Yes, that’s good. I would like some more of that,” but it doesn’t come so naturally to us, what do we do?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, there are a few things you can do, and some of these are given in the book. They’re not actually particularly complicated. The main thing is that we don’t take the time to do them. So, there are a bunch of exercises that people have suggested for how you can make yourself more dispositionally optimistic. So, the very specific optimism, I think we kind of know how to make ourselves optimistic about how to kind of G ourselves up for a specific challenge.

So, if we’re going for a job interview, or we’ve got a big project to pull off, whatever, I think we kind of all have an idea about how we kind of build our morale for that. But the bigger challenge is being optimistic in that longer term sense, in that persistent sense. And there are a couple of things that people suggest for that, or psychologists have suggested for that.

One of them, which I think is kind of something that has to become second nature, is called disputation. And this is the idea that when something happens, you need to try and explain it to yourself in a way that doesn’t kind of make it entirely an issue, you know, it doesn’t make it an inevitability. So, the idea is that we have different explanatory styles.

And one explanatory style is to say, “Well, I didn’t get that job,” or that promotion, or, “This project didn’t work because it was always doomed to happen that way,” “I wasn’t qualified,” “I’m not ready,” “I don’t have the right kind of skillset for it,” or whatever else, and to really internalize that. And, obviously, there’s always going to be some truth to that and you always need to reflect on the components of that that might have led to whatever situation you end up in.

But the other way of doing it is to think about, is to kind of to challenge that, and think about the other factors that were involved and how you might have controlled those, to think about whether there are external factors, whether you had a bad day, whether you had a personality clash with the person you’re talking to, whether there was a failure in the environment that meant you couldn’t deliver against whatever you’re trying to deliver against. So, with that, you have to keep doing it. It’s not something you can do once and then move on from.

It’s like having a little post-mortem every time something happens, and thinking about it and trying to come up with a constructive frame. And if you do that over and over and over again, you eventually become good at kind of coming up with an optimistic interpretation of what’s happened. And that then makes you better at coming up with optimistic interpretations of what’s going to happen, of the challenges that you face. It makes you better able to frame your challenges, your problems in ways that are amenable to solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And can we dig it out into some particular questions or prompts or ways we might point our brain in the direction that gets there?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So there are a few different ways you can do this. One is there’s a model called the best-possible-self exercise, which is kind of you sit down and you, essentially, spend 15 minutes talking about the best possible version of you. So, you try and you can do this in whichever way makes sense to you. You can do it as a written description.

So, one of the things I did when I was in my bereavement was, I did this as a blog posting exercise, essentially. I wrote down what I thought my life could be like. But you can do it that way, you can do it in terms of the things that you want to achieve over various timeframes. You can ask yourself what success looks like to you.

And the idea is to try and do that on a regular basis, to do it something like daily. You spend something like 15 minutes a day doing this for as long as you can manage, essentially. Initially, it helps to kind of do it over a short-term period, so do it for like two weeks or so. And then you can do it less frequently over time because it’s a lot of time commitment.

The thing about that is not something that we never do, but we don’t tend to do it very often. We only tend to do it when we have a particular decision to make. Whereas, doing it on a regular basis means that you keep kind of front and center in your mind what it is that you’re trying to achieve, what it is that you want to do, essentially, rather than being, getting lost in the fog of the moment or of the everyday.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about being lost in the fog of the moment or the everyday, if you do find yourself in that zone of sweeping condemnation or despair, do you have any kind of go-to tactics to lift yourself up out of there?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
I think the one thing that’s useful there is to think about the pivotal moments in your life and to think about the what-ifs. You kind of mentioned earlier the what-if when your father passed. And that’s kind of a quite extreme example. But I think one of the things that’s useful to do when you feel like overwhelmed is to think about the what-ifs in your own life. Think about the points when things could have gone differently for you. And there’s two kinds of implications of that.

One is the ways in which they went right for you and the ways that your life has gone in the direction that you wanted to. And the other is to think about how you would have reacted if they’d gone a different way. Because, usually, particularly with the passage of time, it becomes easier to see that, actually, whatever happened was not the only thing that could have happened and the only way that things could have worked out. There are other ways that things could have gone that would have been equally satisfying.

And you can usually see that with a remove. And that helps you to bring perspective on the current moment. No matter what you kind of look at, if you’re looking at the moment right now and you think, “I can’t see a way out of this. I can’t see what happens from here,” you’ve probably felt like this in the past. There are moments in your past when you would have felt like that, and things either worked themselves out for the better, or you know how they could have done. And that, I think, gives you perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Sumit, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
I think there’s a lot of upsides to optimism, and they pan out over the long term gradually, more than they do in the short term. One of the things about being an optimist, I think you have to be careful not to let it kind of override your basic kind of common sense about how to treat people. I think optimism is a question of directing the optimism that you have.

I think if you kind of think about where you’re optimistic in your life and where you’re maybe not so optimistic, that kind of helps you to identify areas where you might want to concentrate using things like that best possible self-exercise, or where you want to kind of think a bit harder about disputing your version of events.

It’s not that easy to necessarily raise your level of optimism hugely. And I’m not sure that that’s necessarily that healthy an exercise because if you do that, you run the risk of starting to dismiss the problems in your life, or the problems in other people’s lives, or the real challenges that you face. So, I think that with optimism, it’s more a question of directing the optimism that you have and trying to increase it in specific areas than it is with being blanket positive.

It’s not just about being happy or being relentlessly positive about everything. It’s about trying to focus on the areas where you need that optimism. And that’s also true when it comes to assessing what lies ahead of you. One of the things that optimists, an optimist sees opportunity everywhere. And that means you can find it quite difficult to pick one thing to focus on.

If you’re an optimist like I am, you tend to kind of, as sort of from the little description I gave you there of my career, you tend to kind of want to try and do everything. So, you need to bring a little bit of discipline to that as well in terms of what the specific things you want to do, the specific goals you want to achieve, the specific jobs you want to have, the specific roles you want to play. So, optimism is about targeting. It’s not just about being relentlessly sun-shiny. It’s about choosing where you want to increase your ability to see that brighter future.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have any guardrails or pro-tips on how much optimism is too much, or when we’re potentially flirting with recklessness?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
I think the best answer there, really, is to listen to other people. So, generally, it’s the point at which you’re tipping over from constructing a version of events that suits you into denial. There’s a point at which people are saying, “You’re wrong about this.” And you need to kind of think carefully about whether they’re right or they’re wrong. You need to think about the data. You need to think about what the numbers say.

We’re disposed to ignore the numbers completely. You can’t ignore them completely. You need to pay a certain amount of attention to them. It’s clearer in things like in health outcomes. If you smoke 20 cigarettes a day, it doesn’t make any difference what you do. You’re going to have bad outcomes from that.

If you take wild financial risks, those also are not going to work out for you in the long term. So, there’s just a certain degree of remaining grounded and a certain degree of listening to what people are telling you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, my favorite quote on optimism comes from James Baldwin, the Civil Rights activist. And so, he came out of, this is in 1963, he came out of a meeting with Robert F. Kennedy, who was the Attorney General at the time. And it was a very acrimonious meeting. Things had not worked out. They had not been able to find common ground. And Baldwin, as it happened, was doing a TV interview the same day.

And, in the course of that interview, he was asked, “Well, what do you think about the future of America? Are you optimistic or are you pessimistic?” And he kind of thinks about it for a minute. You can see it on the film if you watch it. He’s kind of thinking for a minute about what to say. And then he says, “I think I have to be an optimist because, otherwise, you’re accepting that human life is an academic matter.”

And what he means by that, I think, is that, you can’t afford to– it goes a little bit back to what you saying about cynicism, that you can’t really afford to say that life is a purely a matter of calculation about what is bloodlessly correct. Life is something we live, and you have to kind of be engaged with it. And that, I think, means being an optimist.

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

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
There’s one that kind of sticks in my mind quite a bit, which is one by three psychologists called Armor, Massey, and Sackett. And that was, essentially, about what people think about optimism.

They basically did an experiment where they say, “Here are some scenarios that the people are facing.” Someone is offered a promotion. Someone is asked to organize an event and a few other things like that. And they asked people, “What stance should people have going into this? Should they be optimistic? Should they be pessimistic?”

And almost universally, across the board with all of these scenarios, the answer is they should be optimistic. And that’s kind of very telling because people don’t expect realism from others. People don’t think that realism is the best way to go into things. People think that optimism is the best way to go into a new challenge.

And then it’s kind of a rider to that, so, two, actually. One is the degree to which they prescribe optimism depends on how much control you have over the situation, which is not surprising in some respects. The other one, though, is that they didn’t think people were optimistic enough. We almost never think that anybody is going to be optimistic enough, or that we are going to be optimistic enough in dealing with these situations.

So, there is an enormous kind of psychological weight to optimism, but one that we tend not to allow ourselves when we’re in a professional context. We tend not to allow ourselves to express that kind of belief, I think, because we think we’ll be viewed as naive, or we think we’ll be viewed as being unrealistic in some way. But I think it helps to remember that, actually, almost all the time, everybody thinks optimism is the right way to approach a challenge. And that, actually, we probably don’t make enough use of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
The book I would recommend is Candide by Voltaire. An old book, it’s published in 1759. The title is Candide or optimism. And it is a book that sets up two different strands of optimism. It sets up one which is, I referred to earlier, this kind of grand philosophical version of optimism in which the world is set up a certain way and things must turn out for the right within it.

And another, which is much more kind of concerned with the here and now in the present moment. And I don’t think either of those two kinds of optimism is necessarily correct or incorrect. They’re both different kinds of optimism. I think it helps to think about both of them. The one in which you try and make sense of the world and the one in which you think about what you can do, what you can do to make your own situation better, what you can do around you.

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

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, the main tool I would say, the thing that’s really made a difference to me in the last few years, given that I’m a knowledge worker, essentially, is Roam, which is a personal knowledge management tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
My favorite habit is probably my version of the best possible self, which kind of takes various forms, but I do it over different time scales. So, I do one, which is sort of for the next month or so, I do one for the next year, and I do one for the next five years. The one that actually turns out to be most useful for me, I found, is the five year one, in point of fact.

Because I think the others, they get derailed very quickly. Things I need to do over the course of the next week, like everybody I set out with my list of to do, most of them don’t get done, you know, some of them do. The five year one, though, is like the compass needle of where I need to get to over the long term.

And I find that it makes it much easier to make all the little course corrections you need to do. And it makes decision-making easier when I’m thinking about what I want to be doing in five years’ time rather than what I want to be doing next week.

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

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
So, the best place is my website, which is Alternaty.com, A-L-T-E-R-N-I-T-Y dot com. You’ll find more information about me and the book there, and some other resources fairly soon. Not up yet, but they’re going to be, they will be shortly. Otherwise, I’m available on LinkedIn.

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

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Always stay open to possibility. If you plant many seeds, some of them will grow. If you go out looking for new opportunities, you’ll find them. If you stay where you are, if you carry on doing what you’re doing, you won’t. So, keep moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sumit, thank you. This has been fun.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury
Thank you, Pete. Thank you.

Apr 17
0

1050: How to Shift Your Mood and Keep Your Cool with Dr. Ethan Kross

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Ethan Kross shares simple, science-backed tools for managing your emotions.

You’ll Learn

  1. When avoidance is actually helpful
  2. Effortless strategies for quickly shifting your mood
  3. The emotional regulation framework used by the Navy SEALs 

About Ethan

Ethan Kross, PhD, author of the national bestseller Chatter, is one of the world’s leading experts on emotion regulation. An award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he is the Director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory.

Ethan has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed about his research on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at Columbia University.

Resources Mentioned

Ethan Kross Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ethan, welcome back!

Ethan Kross
Hey, thanks for having me, Pete. Always great to be here with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I loved our first conversation about your book Chatter. And now we’re talking about your book Shift. Tell us, what made you think that this book needed to exist in the world?

Ethan Kross
Well, the recognition really came from just talking to people about my first book, which you just mentioned, Chatter. So that book really dealt with, “What do you do when you get stuck in a negative thought loop that you just can’t get out of, worrying and ruminating?” I would give talks about that topic, and the audience would be incredibly receptive to the tools that I would share with them.

But then they’d have loads of other questions about their emotional lives, beginning with, “What is an emotion in the first place? Why do we have them? What do they do for us? Are the bad ones good, or can they help us in some way? And what about if it’s just a momentary increase in emotion that I want to regulate, not necessarily a thought loop?”

And the way I think about the experience I had, it was like I had just given a talk on how to combat heart disease, but people had questions about inflammation, cancer, diabetes, and all sorts of other chronic ailments. And so, it really motivated me to dig into what we know about this messy emotional world that we live in and what we could do to manage our responses to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love it if you could kick us off with any particularly surprising discoveries you’ve made. So, you’ve been researching this kind of thing for quite a while at Michigan. Is there insight you share with audiences that make people go, “Whoa”?

Ethan Kross
First off, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions when it comes to managing our emotions. People routinely ask me, “What’s the one thing you should do if you are experiencing…?” fill-in-the-blank, A, B, C, D, or E, anger, anxiety, envy, you name it. I can’t answer that question because what I know from the science is that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Ethan, if I may, whenever I’m talking to the AI robots, they tell me deep breathing is the answer to calm down.

Ethan Kross
Well, deep breathing can be useful for some people in some situations, but so can a boatload of other strategies. We recently published these studies that looked at how people managed their COVID anxiety during the pandemic. We tracked people for several days over the course of a few weeks, and every day we asked them to tell us, “What did you do today to manage your anxiety about the pandemic?” And we also had people rate their anxiety.

And what we found was there were lots of things people could do to feel better about what they were going through. But, on average, people use between three and four different tools each day. Not one, not just deep breathing. Between three and four, some people use a lot more, some people use a little bit less.

But what we also found, Pete, was that the tools that worked for one person on one day were remarkably different than the tools that worked for someone else on the same day. The tools that worked for one person on one day were sometimes different from the tools that worked for them the next day.

So, I think of all of this now a lot like how I think about physical fitness. A lot of us share the same goal to be physically fit, to be physically healthy. But how we get there can be quite, quite different. If I just look in my immediate social circles. What I do is different from each and every one of those other people in my group, right? We may all like to lift little weights, but I like to do some high intensity stuff, and sometimes I’ll do yoga. Another friend might throw in some Pilates or a different regimen. There are different ways to achieve our goal, and that is true of being emotionally fit as well. So, that’s one thing I want everyone to know. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions.

Another aha, there’s no such thing as a bad emotion. So, we often think, you know, if we’re feeling anxious or sad or anger, there’s something wrong with us. These are emotions we want to rid ourselves of. In fact, we evolved the capacity to experience those emotions because they’re often functional as long as we experience them not too intensely or not too long.

Anger alerts us to the fact that our view of what’s right and wrong has just been challenged and there’s something we could do to fix the situation. Anxiety tells us that there’s a looming uncertain threat on the horizon. Maybe we should pay attention to it. Now, clearly, for so many of us, so much of the time, those otherwise adaptive negative emotional responses become harmful because we can’t turn them off, and that’s where the science of shifting that I talk about in my book comes into play.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, this is good, and there was an author, I think it was Susan David, who wrote a book, and she had a cute little abbreviation about emotions, it’s, “What the funct?” That’s spelled F-U-N-C-T, like, “What is the function of this emotion?”

And I found that to be a much more helpful question when I’m having conversations with myself than “Why are you here anger?” because it’s almost like it creates defensiveness. It’s like if you screwed up something at work, it’s like, “Why don’t I have this document yet?” It’s like, “Ugh!” It almost, like, sparks defensiveness, and you can give some, “Well, I’m angry because of all these things!” And sure enough, then we’re really reinforcing that anger.

And what I’d like to do is sort of quickly understand and move past it to be more effective in whatever context I am. So, I think that’s great to note that they’re not bad things to be fixed but they have a function within them.

Ethan Kross
That’s right. And so, what I like to tell people is that if you experience negative emotions, there’s nothing wrong with you. It means you’re operating the way you’re supposed to operate. But, these tools that we possess, these emotional tools that we have, they’re unwieldy tools, right, as you just described, and we don’t get a user’s manual for how to manage them.

And that’s really what I try to do in this book, is provide folks with a science-based blueprint for how to understand how to turn the volume on their emotions, up or down, shorten or lengthen how long they last, or even jump from one emotion to another. And there are lots of things you could do there. And interestingly, Pete, there’s also, there are a lot of myths about how we should shift that are actually wrong.

So, maybe we could go into some of those myths because those are often fun and they’re helpful ways to introduce some of the tools. Myth number one, avoidance is always bad. So, we often hear that you should never avoid your problems, face them head-on. This was a lesson that was drilled into me from a young age.

It’s absolutely true that chronically avoiding your problems doesn’t tend to work out very well for people. So just suppressing, denying, drowning yourself in substances that may provide you with some temporary but not long-lasting relief. These are things that many people do. They’ve been shown to be harmful, but we have over-generalized from that observation to assume that all forms of avoidance are harmful. They are not.

Pete, have you ever had an aggravating interaction in person or an email?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes.

Ethan Kross
And you’re smiling already, so I’ll take that as yes. And the temptation existed to respond right away but you combated it. You took time away. You distracted maybe for a couple hours, maybe for a few days, and you came back to the experience and found that it was a lot easier for you to work through it rationally. Does that resonate with you?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. “The Lincoln Letters,” right, that’s a historical legend, which I think is true. Lincoln was angry, he wrote some letters, and he put them in his desk and just kept them there.

Ethan Kross
There you go. So that’s a way of being strategic with your attention, right? You don’t have to choose between approaching or avoiding, as we often describe it. You can approach your problems and then take some time away and then come back to them. You could do that repeatedly. And research shows that being flexible in that regard can be quite helpful. So, avoidance is not always useful. Attention is a powerful tool. You want to be flexible with how you wield it.

Let’s talk about being in the moment. We often hear that the goal should be to always be in the moment. Now it’s absolutely true that being in the moment can be helpful when we get stuck in a negative future or past. But there are also ways to travel in time in your mind to help you deal with the problems you’re experiencing, and these are easy, powerful tools that we all possess.

So, I call this mental time travel. Rather than say in the moment, I could transport myself into the future 10 years from now and think to myself, “How am I going to feel about this thing that’s really bugging me right now 10 years from now?” What that does is it highlights something I know at my core to be true, that whatever I’m experiencing as time goes on, it will eventually fade in its intensity.

The reason I know that to be true is the same reason why you know it to be true, and so many of our listeners do as well. We’ve experienced millions of emotional reactions over the course of our lives, and most of them follow the same time course, the same what we call temporal trajectory. Our emotions get triggered, and then as time goes on, they eventually fade.

Now we lose sight of that when we’re struggling, when all we could think about is how awful and consuming our circumstances are. But jumping into the mental time travel machine into the future, it makes it clear that what we’re going through is impermanent. That gives us hope, which turns the volume on our emotional responses down. So that’s mental time travel into the future.

You can also go into the past. I do this a lot, too. I opened the book with a story of my grandmother who narrowly escaped being slaughtered along with the rest of her family during the Holocaust. She lived homeless in Poland for years before she escaped to the States and built a new life. When things feel really bad for me, I jump into my mental time travel machine. I spend some time with her in the frozen Polish woods.

I don’t have to spend a lot of time, just a little bit, and it powerfully makes clear that what I’m going through pales in comparison to what she endured, and that broadens my perspective quite well. So, myth number two, you should always be in the moment. No, you shouldn’t. First of all, if your goal is to always be in the moment, good luck. I don’t think it’s actually possible. The brain evolved to travel in time.

Traveling in time is something we do in our minds, helps us plan for the future, learn from the past. What we all, I think, want to be doing is focusing on “How can we be better mental time travelers?” And that means sometimes recalibrating in the moment, but also traveling strategically in our minds into the future and past, depending on what our goals are. So that’s another myth.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to dig into that notion of, it’s a mental travel, time travel to the past, think about being in the frozen woods of Poland, and that gives you some perspective that your current problems aren’t so bad. I’m curious, is there a way to do that poorly?

For example, I think some might say that if we are quick to imagine much greater troubles elsewhere and dismiss the feelings we have about our current state or situation, that might be, I guess, “invalidating” of the emotion and potentially counterproductive. How do you think about that?

Ethan Kross
I don’t think so. Here’s why. It’s a misnomer to think that you apply these tools, and all of a sudden, a real difficult spot in your life turns into a birthday party with cupcakes and soda and warm cups of tea and pizza, right? That’s just not the way emotion regulation works. So, what ends up happening is, instead, as you get these shifts, these down regulatory shifts in amplitude or duration.

Amplitude meaning how intense the emotional response is or how long it lasts. You’re making it feel more controllable, and so you’re not just saying, “Oh, this is nothing and doesn’t mean anything at all.” I think that’s probably pretty rare, that a kind of traveling into the past and thinking about, “Well, you know, things could be worse.” I don’t think it just turns it off.

Having said that, Pete, I always recognize that there are instances that defy the norms. And so, is it possible that that could happen? Sure, absolutely. And in a minority of cases, like, I wouldn’t be willing to bet that that never does occur. But here’s the good news, that if you find yourself trying mental time travel into the past in this way, and it’s leading to the kinds of outcomes that you’re suggesting, don’t use that tool anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s easy. Sure.

Ethan Kross
Use a different one. And that’s an ace in the hole on the one hand but it’s the truth on the other. Like, I don’t respond well to burpees. Are you familiar with burpees?

I hate burpees. It doesn’t mean they don’t make me feel good. Guess what? I don’t do them. They benefit a lot of people. They don’t really benefit me. And there’s a whole boatload of physical exercises like that. I don’t do dips. It’s too hard on my shoulder. And we could go down the list. I’ll spare you my injuries and idiosyncrasies. But the same is true when it comes to managing our emotions and these tools that I’m talking about.

Some people benefit enormously from what we call expressive writing. Sitting down with a problem and just journaling about it for 15 to 20 minutes for one to three days. Just let yourself go. Talk about your deepest thoughts and feelings. Take it wherever you want. Connect it to your past, your future, whatever you want to do.

Research on that shows that that’s a really useful tool. And, in fact, in that COVID study that we ran, that I mentioned earlier, that was the most predictive of anxiety reductions of all the tools we looked about. But guess what? It was also the least frequently used tool out of the 18 or so that we administered, probably because it’s hard to do. Like, sitting down for 20 minutes. Who has 20 minutes? We all feel like we don’t.

I say this because you have agency in how you decide to assemble the tools that you apply to your life. And again, I think that should be a breath of fresh air because so many people I meet, they say things to me like, “Oh, I tried mindfulness. I tried meditating. I tried diaphragmatic breathing. It didn’t work for me. It works for everyone else. What’s wrong with me?” Again, nothing wrong with you. We know that there are these person strategy fits.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like the way you used that term phrase there, assemble the tools. Because sometimes there may be some assembly required. And I’ve been thinking, like lately, some tools I’ve been leaning on a lot, which are new and yet super handy, is that we had a guest, boy, back in the day, Michael Kerr, talked about putting together a humor first aid kit.

And I have diligently followed his advice and even used like a flash card application to assemble mine. And so, I’ve got, like, over a hundred things that I just thought were laugh out loud funny in the moment that I’ve captured, and then I just review them. And then it’s like, “Oh, I remember that time at that trade in Cancun, the trader did this thing, and it was so funny.” And so, it’s great to just have like 10 rapid-fire jokes, it’s like, “Oh, I’m in a better mood.” And there it is.

Ethan Kross
It’s so funny you bring that up. One of the things that we often talk about social media, how it’s bringing about society’s demise, and there clearly are some ways of interacting with social media that are harmful, but I like to remind people that sometimes it can be beneficial from a mood regulatory point of view. We don’t talk about that as much.

And your example makes me think about how I sometimes engage with social media to help improve my mood. Before bed, I will often watch these ridiculously silly short reels, and they bring me such emotional delight. I just find these pranks and other kinds of things, and I’ll laugh at them, and you know, they’re short, and then I’ll send them to some of my buddies, and they’ll send me back the teary-eyed emojis, they’re laughing, and then we both write back that our partners are elbowing us to stop laughing because we’re making too much noise and they don’t understand our humor.

And so, that little exercise of watching a funny video is both instantly elevating my positive affect. It’s also enhancing social connections. A simple thing you could do. So, let’s talk about simplicity for a second, though, because I think that’s another myth we can address. We often think that managing our emotions is hard, you know, “Pull up your sleeves. Get ready for the battle.” Sometimes it is, no question about it. But it isn’t always hard.

There are lots of tools that exist that are relatively effortless to implement. So expressive writing would not be an example of an effortless tool. That’s a pretty effortful tool, right? You’ve got to sit down, 15-20 minutes, you’ve got to write hard. But there are lots of things that you could do that are pretty easy. I’ll just kind of spit off a few. Spit off. Spit out. Mention. Mention a few sounds a lot more appetizing than spit off.

Music. I’ve been listening to music since I’m five years old. I’m guessing you’ve been listening to music for a while, too. Why do you listen to it?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s fun. It sets the vibe or the mood.

Ethan Kross
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of I got young kids, like, “Let’s have a dance party,” or it’s like, “Are we are we feeling silly? Are we feeling like cue the Rocky theme to spark the motivation, or ‘Eye of the Tiger?” It’s like a movie, that we’re going to score this thing for the emotion or vibe we’re looking for.

Ethan Kross
There you go. So, close to 100% of people, when asked, “Why do you listen to music?” they answer that question by saying, “I like the way it makes me feel.” But if you then look at the percentage of people who, when they’re struggling, reach for music as a tool, it’s only between 10% and 30%. percent. So, music is an example of one way of harnessing your senses to shift your emotions.

All of our senses, sight, sound, touch, smell, hearing, I’ve probably left a few out, those are some of the major ones. Part of the way your senses work is through emotion. So, the senses refer to the different apparatus we possess to take in information about the world around us. Part of the reason we’re taking in that information is so we understand how to navigate the world, and a key part of navigating the world involves understanding what’s safe, what’s not, what should we approach, what should we avoid.

So, your senses are intertwined deeply with your emotions. Again, you know this to be true, like we all do, right? Sounds can elicit emotional responses. Scents, you’ve got a multibillion-dollar industry that deals with just spritzing yourself with scents to change the way you feel about yourself and change the way that other people feel about you. It’s called perfume and cologne, right? Hotels pipe scents into their ventilation system to change the way their patrons make them feel.

Pete Mockaitis
And cars.

Ethan Kross
Food, restaurants, cars. Cars do it.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m working on that delivery.

Ethan Kross
Yeah, little spritz. I mean, it’s wild. For me, it’s wild. I don’t want to assume that everyone thinks it. I find it amazing. I look at the world through this filter now of our senses managing our emotions. Like, restaurants, why do we pay all this money to eat? This is an emotional experience. It’s not like we’re just lining up for an IV drip. We could get away with just an IV drip, right? Like, getting all the nutrients we want from somewhat no flavor bypassing senses.

Pete Mockaitis
Oatmeal and multivitamins and protein shakes, and move on.

Ethan Kross
Yeah, but even those are spiked with senses. Instead, we spend sometimes hundreds of dollars on these fancy meals. It’s all about an emotional experience. Touch. When a touch is registered from someone who we accept the touch from, that can be an amazingly pleasant experience. We caress our children, our partners. Some people even do it themselves when they’re showing, like they self-soothe, they kind of rub their face, right, when they’re trying to feel better about stuff.

So those are just some examples of very, very simple things you could do to get momentary shifts in emotion, and there are many, many others like it. So, all right.

Let’s talk about one more myth having to do with other people. Other people can be an amazing resource in our emotional lives when it comes to shifting, but they can also be a liability. And one of the things that we often hear from those around us and our broader culture, I think, is sending us in the wrong direction when it comes to how to engage with other people, when it comes to our emotional lives. And this is directly relevant to the work experience.

We often hear that when you’re struggling you should find someone to vent your emotions, to just get it out, let it go. Express it, don’t keep it inside. What we know about this is that venting your emotions can be useful for strengthening bonds between people. Good to know someone is willing to listen to me, take the time to listen and care.

Problem is if all you do is vent, you leave that conversation, you feel good about the person you just connected with, but all the problems are still there because you haven’t actually worked through it. They’re not just still there, they’re even more activated because you’ve just spent all this time rehearsing the awfulness of the situation.

So, if venting isn’t the solution, what is? It’s a two-step process. Find someone to talk to about your problems and spend some time initially getting it out. They do need to listen and learn so that they can help you. Empathy is good. But once they have a sense of what you’re going through, and once you feel heard, then, ideally, talk to someone who can help you put your experience in perspective, someone who can help you work through the problem. Other people are in an ideal position to help you do that because the problem isn’t happening to them. So be wary about venting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, yeah, there’s a lot of cool stuff and a lot of places we can go. I want to check out what you said with regard in your book. It was a powerful sentence. Well, I wish I could quote it directly. Maybe you can. You said something, like, “We cannot control what triggers our emotions, but we can control the trajectory of them,” in terms of like the intensity and how long we’re there.

So, one, I think that’s a heck of a statement because, one, if there were a way, you would know about it, like you of all people, having studied this for so long, so intensively. So, I think that’s kind of telling, in and of itself, that to be realistic about what is, in fact, possible for us as a species. Could you elaborate on that?

Ethan Kross
You ever had the experience–where do you live, Pete? What city or town?

Pete Mockaitis
I live near Nashville.

Ethan Kross
Near Nashville, okay. You ever, on a muggy summer day, walk down the street and just catch a whiff of someone who doesn’t smell very good and experience an emotional reaction?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure. Okay, yeah.

Ethan Kross
Okay. Yeah, me too. That reaction was out of your control. You happened to encounter something in the world, it activated your senses, in turn, activated an emotional response. We experience emotional reactions like that all the time. We see things, we hear things, we think about things that just pop up in our head. We don’t know why the thoughts pop up in our head, but they elicit emotions. We don’t often have control over those different experiences. They just happen.

However, once those emotions are triggered, then that’s our playground, then we can get in there and alter the trajectory of those emotional responses, right? Like, you catch a whiff of that stinky person, maybe you could choose to inhale more deeply. That might perpetuate the response. You might close your nose, pull your shirt up over it. You might start thinking about how selfish is it for this person to carry them in this way.

Or maybe you might think otherwise, “Well, you know, maybe they’re not aware. Maybe they don’t believe in wearing deodorant.” Lots of ways you could think about the situation to alter the trajectory of that response. And so, this is a chapter in the book, and the setup for it is, several years ago when I was doing research as I do now, I came across an article that said that 40% of adolescents sampled in this study did not believe they could control their emotions.

That statistic just floored me because if you don’t think you can control your emotions, why would you do anything to actually try, “I don’t think there’s anything I can do to get healthier, to get more physically fit. Why am I going to go to the gym and do these painful things,” right? It just doesn’t make sense. You need to be motivated in order to use these different tools.

And, of course, I’m a director of a lab called the Emotion and Self-Control Lab. I’ve dedicated my life to understanding how people can control their emotions. And so, when you dig into it, what I’ve learned is that those 40% of students were right if they’re thinking about the trigger of our emotions. We can’t always control the trigger. We don’t have control over all the factors that could activate an emotional response.

What we can control is the trajectory of those emotional responses. And I think just knowing that can be really empowering, too, because it means that if you do find yourself experiencing a dark thought that you’re ashamed of, recognize that that’s not always under your control, but how you engage with that thought is.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, it sounds, is it accurate to say, in your informed, researched view, that no matter what you do, smelling a stinky person is going to trigger an emotional response, just period, even if you’re like trained with exposure to lots of stink for weeks at a time, you’re still going to have a degree of emotion trigger problem?

Ethan Kross
Well, no, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ethan Kross
Not. No, no, no. You can certainly train, be trained, or train yourself to become immune to certain kinds of provocations. This is often referred to as stress inoculation therapy. Stress inoculation is often utilized in various military trainings, where the idea is, “Okay, put people under stress, under relatively controlled conditions so that they’re used to it, so that when they find themselves in those situations in everyday life, they don’t respond with this huge reaction.”

You, I’m sure, just as I, like we’ve experienced many things the first time around. They were tremendously distressful, but then you realize you get through them. There are things you could do, and they’re not so bad later. Sometimes you don’t even register anything at all. So, certainly, if we have our eye on a particular kind of situation that provokes us, we can train for it, so to speak, to either reduce in its intensity or get rid of it altogether.

That said, you can’t train for every situation in life, and some situations are likely going to always trigger an emotional response. Certain kinds of, I would argue, sensory events. Pain as an example.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. So, we always have control over, or influence, over the trajectory of the intensity and the length to which we are experiencing an emotion that is triggered, and we may, in certain circumstances, be able to train for, inoculate against certain triggers doing a thing. And so, I’m thinking that hypnosis is one interesting kind of intervention if people have phobias or kind of reactions to things.

There seems to be some good science supporting that, “Oh, okay, with a hypnosis intervention for some people who are hypnotizable, they are not so triggered after kind of going through that.” And then also, you mentioned like a training or inoculation. Let me just make an example. Let’s say I, and it’s true, I feel pretty irritated when I’m interrupted, whether in speaking conversationally.

As well as just sort of, like, you’re doing a thing. It’s like, I’m doing a thing, and then there’s an interruption, like a knock on the door. It’s like, I am kind of flustered by such things. And so, that’s just kind of in there, kind of like involuntary.

I remember there was a time, someone knocked on my door, I was in a podcast interview, I actually gasped, like, “Huh!”

And so, if there’s a thing in us, like we find there’s a trigger that we know is not helpful, and here, for me, it’s being interrupted, I’d like to feel more adaptable and less inclined to being flustered upon interruption, what’s my playbook?

Ethan Kross
Well, that gets to the final chapter of the book, and it’s about “How do you go from knowledge to action?” And what I do in that final chapter is I give you a framework for identifying situations you want to target to minimize the emotional impact they have on you. It’s called W.O.O.P, and here’s how it works.

So W.O.O.P. is an acronym. W is wish. What’s your goal? State your goal. Maybe for you it’s to not be perturbed every time you’re disturbed. The first O, that’s an outcome. Okay, well, what’s the outcome that will come about if you are successful in accomplishing this goal? “Well, I’ll be more emotionally healthy and maybe I’ll have better interpersonal relationships.” The point of that first O, focusing on the outcome, is to really energize you, to put in the motivation to achieve this goal.

Now let’s get to the second O, which is obstacle, “What are the personal obstacles that may stand in the way of me achieving this goal? Well, I just have this automatic reaction when someone disturbs me. I just, I can’t take it. It affects me to my core.” Okay, now we at least know what the problem is. Let’s get to the final element of this framework, the P, which is the plan, but it’s not any plan. It’s called an if-then plan.

If I’m disturbed and I find myself going to that dark, dark place that Pete goes to when he’s disturbed, then, and then you plug in what you’re going to do. And what you’re going to do is use one of the 20 or 30 shifters you’ve just learned about, and maybe a combination of them to stay calm in that moment, to broaden your perspective, so that you can achieve your goal.

If we were actually training for you to achieve this goal, I would have you write those different elements down, maybe once, maybe twice, and have you read them over a few times. Research shows that this framework is incredibly useful for allowing people to achieve all sorts of goals because what it does is it systematically targets each of the impediments of goal pursuit and it nips them in the bud from the start.

This framework has been applied with older adults to help them with emotional and health goals. It’s also been applied to kids as young as first graders who are trying to improve the way they achieve. This also happens to be a framework that is mightily similar to what one of the most successful organizations in the world uses before complex engagements, i.e. the Navy SEALs.

The Navy SEALs do something very, very similar when they’re planning a mission, “What’s our goal? If we achieve this goal, what is going to happen? What are the obstacles that might stand in the way? And then for every obstacle, we’re going to come up with three to five different specific plans, so we’re virtually never caught off guard.”

Now, we can’t plan for everything, and the good news is that if you are caught off guard, you still have knowledge of these other tools we’ve been talking about to fill in the blanks.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, Ethan, tell me, any final shifter you want to make sure to get out there before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Ethan Kross
You know, I think we covered a lot. We covered senses, we covered attention, we covered some perspective-taking, we covered people. Physical environments, get a healthy dose of nature, put some pictures of loved ones around your office to give you an emotional boost when you need it. Yeah, I think we’ve covered a bunch of it. We’ll leave a little bit more for people to discover.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. Well, now can you share a favorite quote?

Ethan Kross
“This too shall pass.”

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

Ethan Kross
The study I talk about in chapter one, which tracked newborns and through adulthood, they’re still being tracked, and found that the ability to manage one’s emotions in childhood predicts all sorts of great things later in life. But even more importantly, that capacity is not fixed. It’s malleable. You can get better or worse at managing your emotions, which I love that finding because it really speaks to the agentic side of what we’re talking about, that your destiny is really in your own hands.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Ethan Kross
I’ll give you two. One is pretty common, “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. And, in a different direction when it comes to fiction, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite Ethan original nugget or soundbite that people are vibing with?

Ethan Kross
If you experience negative emotions, there’s nothing wrong with you, there is everything right with you.

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

Ethan Kross
www.EthanKross.com.

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

Ethan Kross
Learn about the tools that are out there for managing your emotions. Leading other people, I think, starts with leading yourself. The tools that I talk about, decades of research, hard work went into identifying them, but the take-homes are really, really simple and straightforward. So, learn about those tools, practice them to find the tools, the combinations that work best for you, and share them with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Ethan, thank you.

Ethan Kross
Thank you so much. Always a pleasure, Pete.

Mar 31
0

1045: How to Stop Overthinking and Build Mental Resilience with Joseph Nguyen

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Joseph Nguyen discusses the hidden relationship between thinking and suffering—and offers a powerful framework for achieving peace of mind.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to spot and stop negative judgments
  2. How to PAUSE overthinking
  3. How to beat procrastination with SPA

About Joseph

Joseph Nguyen is the author of the #1 international bestselling book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, which has been translated into 40+ languages. He is a writer who helps others realize who they truly are beyond their own thinking and conditioning to live an abundant life free from psychological and emotional suffering. When he’s not busy petting his three cats that he’s allergic to, he spends the rest of his time writing, teaching, speaking, and sharing timeless wisdom to help people discover their own divinity from within and how they are the answer they’ve been looking for their entire lives.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Joseph Nguyen Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, welcome!

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your area of expertise. Your book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, has just taken off tremendously. Congratulations.

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And the title is so good. It’s so funny, Amazon auto-completes if you type, “Don’t believe everything you think.” It’s like, “Nice.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that’s a great advertisement, I guess, and a great slogan just to have all over Amazon. It’s what it should be, instead of all the stuff that we don’t need to be buying.

Pete Mockaitis
Don’t buy many other things here.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so can you take us through the journey a little bit of how you and your relationship to thought and the insights that you discovered came to be in your own personal lived existence?

Joseph Nguyen
A lot of what I’ve come to realize comes from, this is not new information. This has been here for eons, thousands of years, from everyone and so many different countries, cultures. I mean, I draw influence from Western philosophy, Eastern philosophies, Zen Buddhism, Christianity. So much cognitive behavioral therapy. Like, you name it, there’s probably some sort of influence there.

But I think the only time that I was able to actually integrate it into my life was when I sort of hit a rock-bottom moment where, after I really tried as much as I possibly could all the options that were available to me, like, I mean, there’s therapy, there’s acupuncture, acupressure, there’s going vegan. I did all these things and it didn’t really quite work until it forced me to look internally.

I was trying to do everything to change everything outside of me, so changing people’s behaviors, how they viewed me, how they judged me, wanting and trying to earn other people’s approval, love, all these sorts of things, all these attempts at finding what could only be found within. So, I think the moment where I kind of hit rock bottom, which was a point in my life where, I mean, I had a business that was growing. It was going great. I accomplished a lot of the goals that I had, but at the cost of my own mental health.

So, every single day, I was just so chronically anxious, borderline depressed. I was probably depressed. I just wouldn’t admit it to myself that that was it. And I just didn’t know when the next client was coming from. I didn’t know if we’re going to have enough money, food. My partner, now wife, she had a lot of physiological illnesses.

So, she had gastroparesis, and so she couldn’t eat, got a feeding tube, hospitalized multiple times. All of that was happening concurrently with, basically, my business falling apart. Then my business partner and I split. I went 50,000 into debt at around 21, 22 years old. And so, all of that happened within a span of about a year.

And so, that was probably the rock-bottom moment that I hit, where I thought, after accomplishing everything that I wanted, that it would give me this internal peace and joy, but it did the exact opposite. And that was because I didn’t realize where peace comes from, and it doesn’t come from manipulating the environment or other people or the world to whatever I think it needs to be. It comes from releasing that desire, that need to change everything outside of me except myself.

So, rock bottom, I think pain is a great motivator and catalyst for change. Most people, like myself, probably wouldn’t change if it wasn’t absurdly painful. So, I’m actually very grateful for those experiences, but it’s quite difficult to go through it. But that was the genesis of the turning point for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, thank you for sharing that. That’s heavy, and it’s a lot. And I think what you’re articulating dead on, we just chatted with Anne-Laure Le Cunff, who discussed the arrival fallacy, this notion, “Ah, yes, when this happens, then it’ll be smooth sailing. I’ll be happy. I’ll be free. I’ll be at peace. All my problems will be solved.”

And it just doesn’t work out that way. And sometimes we don’t believe it until, as you’ve said, we experience that pain. We have arrived and go, “Uh-oh, shoot, these feelings are still there, that lack of peace is still there.

Joseph Nguyen
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what then? What happened next?

Joseph Nguyen
So, it basically forced me to look inside, because I was trying all these modalities to help, and they did help to a certain extent, but it didn’t really change that much. And it puzzled me, because I thought to myself, “I surely can’t be the only one going through this. So that’s when I started looking for a lot of different solutions.

And then I started questioning my own experiences, and other people’s experiences too, which is I think most people, if not every single human, goes through extremely difficult and challenging events and times or even traumas.

And so, I started to ask myself and run thought experiments, where it was like, “If two people, have similar traumas, how is it possible that one person can spiral downwards and fall into a deep depression and isn’t really able to get out of it, while another person who has gone through something similar is able to make amends and make peace with the past and become okay with what happened?”

And not only that, but become empowered by what happened and go on to want to help other people not experience the same thing. How is that possible if we can’t go back and change the past? So, neither one of them went back to alter the events in any single way, which means it’s not the events that was changed, but their own thinking about what happened to them.

And so, that sparked an epiphany, which was, our emotions don’t come from external events, they come from our own thinking about the events, which is our own judgments, our own opinions, our own criticisms about the event, or even ourselves and our own thoughts about whatever happened. And so, that was what kind of made a giant light bulb moment for me, which is like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s no way to change the past, but I can always change the way that I’m viewing it. Is this helpful or hurtful? This sort of incessant nonstop negative judgment of life, of myself, of other people?”

And so, that spawned a whole slew of new questions for myself, which was like, “Why do I do that? Why do I constantly wish things were different? Why do I constantly tell myself that I’m not enough, not good enough, not smart enough, not whatever it is, and repeating these stories to myself?” And I never stopped to ask myself, “Is that actually helpful? When has overthinking helped me?”

And so, I realized then that overthinking doesn’t solve problems, it creates them and exacerbates them. And I just didn’t understand that I could just not judge, negatively judge, the things that are happening in my life or myself. That was an extremely liberating moment for me. And, I mean, most of the thoughts that we have, we have over 60,000 thoughts in a single day. How is it possible that every single one of those thoughts is true? There’s no way, right?

And if it were true that we are our thoughts, what happens to the thought that just passed our minds, that just left? We’re still here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d disappear.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re still here, right? So, that means we are something beyond our thoughts. Same thing with emotions. If we are our emotions, if I am depressed, or if I am anxious, if I am those things, or I am happy, what happens when those things pass, anxiety or happiness? I’m still here. How is that possible?

So, we are not our thoughts and we are not our emotions then. We are something greater than that. And that is the feeling and the space that I sink back into to finally find some peace because I realize that everything in life is transient, including our thoughts. And if we are the common denominator that is still here, then those fleeting things can’t be possibly us. That was the eye-opener for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Wow, there’s so much good stuff here, and I’m just drawing all kinds of connections. I recall I was in a therapy session once, and I posed the same question, and it’s like, “So, is it true that, like Nietzsche or Kelly Clarkson says, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” Or, is it the opposite experience in which, “No, I had a bad thing happen to me and I’m somehow less strong, weaker, not as capable as a result of the experience”?

So, it’s like, “So which is it? And under what circumstances, and why, and what’s the distinction?” And he didn’t give me the easy answer, “That’s one of the greatest questions of therapy.”

Joseph Nguyen
He was amping you up, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I mean, and that is one of the assertions, I believe, of cognitive behavioral therapy or of Shakespeare. There’s nothing good or bad, but rather thinking makes it so, and our cognitive distortions or our thoughts about things and judgments shape the emotional reactions and experiences we have. And we had a Navy Seal Alden Mills sharing some similar notions, like, “Hey, is this thought helpful or hurtful? All right. Well, then let’s bring some energy to the helpful thoughts.”

And we got some real wisdom there. It’s, like, we cannot be our thoughts, we cannot be our emotions, because our thoughts and our emotions are ever shifting and changing. And that sounds wise and familiar. Is this coming from a wisdom tradition? Or is this a Joseph original?

Joseph Nguyen
Oh, no, nothing is original from me. Creativity is just a blend of a lot of different parts and combining it into something seemingly new. But it’s all from Eastern philosophy, some Western, right, some Stoicism, Zen, Buddhism, in that there’s tons of psychology in there, right? Like cognitive behavioral therapy uses so much of this in terms of questioning our own thoughts, our own emotions, trying to figure out the root cause of all this. So, all of that, I definitely stand on the shoulders of many, many giants from centuries or millennia.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, you put a stake in the ground, and it seems like you’ve got some real conviction here, that it is, indeed, our thoughts and judgments and overthinking, over-thoughts, about a situation that is the source of our depression, anxiety. And I’m thinking, is it the only source, the primary source? Are we sure about this? It sounds true-ish, but what’s our best evidence for it?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, in terms of emotions, there’s no way to really prevent “negative emotions.” Those will always come and go. What I propose in the book is less about preventing them, but to reduce the time spent experiencing those emotions. Because a lot of times, we are replaying and ruminating on memories of the past, and bringing them into the present moment and reliving that experience from a certain vantage point of it, which may or may not be true, I don’t know.

But if it makes us feel a lot of anxiety or depression or resentment, is that possible for us to change? And if so, then how? And so, in the book, I started to realize, like, let’s say there’s a lot of people in veteran hospitals or recovering in Alcoholics Anonymous or tons of people who have been through so many different things. How is it possible that there’s people that have gone through something similar, but then have different results?

So, it’s like, “What are they changing? They’re not going back in the past to do that, so they’re changing something now in the present moment to alter their experience.” And so, that’s where the book is coming from, which is like, “What can we do now that things have happened, and becoming more resilient, right?”

This is building and training emotional regulation and resilience rather than a prevention of emotions in totality, because a lot of times, sometimes emotions are very helpful. They help to protect us. They help give us signs. All emotions are messengers to help us and to show us what we need to pay attention to. That’s all emotions are.

But if we believe them to be the only source of truth and an ultimate conclusion about ourselves, then that’s where we run into trouble. And, let’s say, if we’re really depressed, then we might think about ourselves, and say, “We’re not enough. We’re not lovable. We’ll never find love.” These sorts of beliefs about ourselves, which is what I call “thinking” or “negative judgments,” those things are not necessarily that helpful and they harm us more than help us.

And so, is it possible to let those things go? And if so, how? So, for me, why I use the word “thinking” in particular is because it’s the best word I could find to explain the phenomena of just ruminating negatively on something. So I make a distinction in the book, thoughts versus thinking. A thought is a neutral observation or intuitive prompting about an event that happened.

Pete Mockaitis
“I would like to eat some food.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that is a thought.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, that’s a desire.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, that could be a desire.

Pete Mockaitis
A thought and a desire.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, and then thinking, on the other hand, is a negative judgment about an event or your own thoughts. So, let’s take a scenario.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m overweight. I shouldn’t eat all this food.”

Joseph Nguyen
Right. See, “should” is a great indicator that we’re thinking, right? That’s usually a preliminary word that we use before we judge ourselves. And so, an example of this is, let’s say it’s raining outside. A thought is, “It’s raining.” That’s a neutral observation. Thinking, on the other hand, would be something like, “Why is this happening? Why does this always happen to me? This rain completely ruined my day. I’m always unlucky like this.”

All of this thinking about the thought of it raining is not as helpful to us and is the source of all this suffering. So, let’s say we did have something planned and it rained and it ruined our day, that’s unfortunate, right? Like, we had plans, we planned for it, but is it possible to not let it ruin our entire day? Is it possible to let go of this emotional suffering within a few minutes?

And so, that’s why I say that’s the thinking part of whatever is going on. And although we can’t change the event or even our initial thought of it, we can always let go of the thinking or judgment about whatever is going on, and that’s where the power lies. For example, thoughts have no power over us unless we believe them to be true, right? So, the belief in the judgment is what causes this suffering and is the difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, now, as you use the word “thinking,” I am wondering if we could have other, do some other thinking, or judging about the rain in a positive fashion, in terms of, “At last, the crops will be nourished by this rain,” or, “You know what, let’s just frolic like a child.”

And so, in your definition, would you still call that thinking even though it has maybe a positive vibe or feeling associated with it?

Joseph Nguyen
I think there’s two different categories of what we can call positive thinking. On one hand, it could just be an intuitive prompting. An example of that would just be, “It’s raining. Let’s go outside and play in the rain.” It doesn’t necessarily have to skew towards, “This is the best thing that’s ever happened in the entire world.”

See, like where we can over-exaggerate positive thinking is equally where we can fall short of it because who’s to say it is the best thing in the entire world? Because if it’s raining here, it might flood somewhere else. So, it’s very difficult to just, ultimately and conclusively, say if this is good or bad. And so, if we are overly positive about something, then it opens us up for, “Well, what if that might not be the case?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, so it might feel good, but we’re not necessarily getting closer to truth or accurate representation of reality.

Joseph Nguyen
Correct, yeah. And we can skew both ways, and that’s when positive thinking can then open us up all sorts of cans of worms. But that’s not to say that positive thinking doesn’t work, and I don’t want to say that at all. It certainly does work, but the question is, “Is it sustainable? And is it based in reality?” So, if we observe the rain, and we’re like, “Oh, look, it’s like nourishing the crops,” like that’s a neutral and true observation, like it is feeding the plants and all that stuff, and we can feel good about that.

But what I also observed as well was, once we let go of the negative judgment about things, we are naturally at peace. We are naturally more joyful. We skew towards that way. And if you look at children that are a couple years old, they skew towards happiness. They’re smiling, they’re happy, unless they’re like hungry or like something is physiologically wrong. They’re generally just very positive, very happy, laughing all the time.

And that’s our natural state as well if we don’t negatively judge whatever situation is going on. If we let go of worrying about the future or ruminating and resenting the past, that is our default state. So, you don’t necessarily have to try to be positive. And other examples I love giving is, think about or recall a time where it’s like you were very anxious, or stressed, or overwhelmed. Like, how much thinking is going on?

Pete Mockaitis
Plenty.

Joseph Nguyen
Too much, right? But then if we flip and invert the question, recall a time when you were your happiest, in a total state of flow, and you lost track of time, how much thinking was going on then?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it’s, I guess per your definition of thinking, like, very little. Although, if you’re in a flow and doing a thing, you naturally have to—

Joseph Nguyen
You’re having thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, you’re having thoughts, but you’re not thinking in the Joseph-sense of the word.

Joseph Nguyen
Right, you’re not negatively judging the thoughts or experience that you’re having. You’re just in it, you’re fully immersed. That’s when you lose a sense of self, actually, and that’s when we are no longer psychologically suffering. And some people in the spiritual community will call this like the death of the ego. It’s when you just dissolve and you feel at one with everything. That’s what flow is and why a lot of times people will say like that’s this ideal state for humans to be in.

Athletes experience this very often when they’re in and playing a game during a competition. They’re not so much thinking about what’s going on. They are just intuitively responding and being there. And that’s like our ideal state that we’re in. Actually, the times that athletes think too much, they tend to miss the shots, or think too much about something and overanalyze, and that’s when they freeze and choke when they could have definitely done something different.

The same thing is true for our own lives. The more that we constantly just ruminate, judge, and criticize ourselves, other people, events, we tend to freeze, and go into fight-or-flight mode, and act as if our life really is in danger, and operate from a place of fear rather than love and expansion and joy.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Joseph, we’re getting near a zone I’ve been pondering for a while, which is, you talk about when we feel a sense of peace or joy and flow, contentment. And I’ve been reflecting on the distinction between contentment and boredom. Because, in terms of an external view of the situation, they’re almost the same.

It’s like, “Nothing’s really happening right now.” And yet, when we feel bored, we’re restless, agitated, and, I guess, negatively judging, “I don’t like that nothing’s going on right now,” versus when we are content, it’s like, “Ah, nothing’s going on right now.” And that feels restful, rejuvenating, restorative, and we like and appreciate the space that we find ourselves in.

So, I guess that is perhaps one of many examples of the judgment we bring to a situation, shaping it, but I’d love your pro tip. If we find ourselves bored and would rather be content, what should we do?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, great question. So, boredom is not necessarily a bad thing. Boredom, a lot of times, is the birth of creation, new things, new hobbies, new thoughts, new ideas. If we’re not bored a lot of the time or sometimes, then we’re actually just recycling a lot of the same material from the past and constantly going and we feel like we’re in the hamster wheel. So, boredom is not necessarily bad. And when you see kids get bored, what do they do? They invent.

Pete Mockaitis
They invent some games.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly. That’s what humans do. When we’re bored, we create, and so it acts as a great motivator. But where things can go a little bit south is when we say, “Oh, instead of being content with what’s happening right now,” let’s say we’re on vacation, “I should be working. If I’m working these hours, I could make so much more money or I have all these emails I need to get to.”

You’re not able to actually enjoy yourself in the present moment, and you’re constantly thinking about the future and all these things you need to get done, that’s when the “boredom” or what we would call that in that case, that’s when it robs our peace and takes it away from us is when we think we need to be doing something else other than what we’re currently doing or experiencing.

So, in that case, what I love recommending to do is just to schedule those things and just, like, if you’re on vacation, like that’s the boundary you need to draw for yourself. But if we don’t draw boundaries, it will creep in. All of these beliefs that we have, all these negative judgments that we have about ourselves or what we should and shouldn’t be doing, they will come in unless we set that boundary for ourselves.

Like, “If I’m on vacation, my phone is off,” or, “I’m not taking emails or whatever it is.” But without those, they will creep in and they will start to fester and become uncontrollable at that point. And this is really a practice of presence more than anything else. Are we able to do and give our full attention to what is happening right now in front of us? Or, are we distracted and thinking about something else in the meantime?

Peace comes from being present. It is a natural byproduct of doing so. The more that we are able to do that, that’s the happier we will be, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m reminded of the Scientific Journal article, “A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind,” which, I think it was Kahneman and company looked at just that in terms of empirically checking with people and, “Hey, what are you doing? What are you thinking about?” and seeing the results. So, that’s that there. When you say boundaries, my first thought is sort of external things, like, “I will not be picking up my smartphone,” “I will not be answering emails on vacation.” Do you have some thoughts for boundaries we have, like with ourselves and our own thoughts or experiences?

Joseph Nguyen
Those are the most important boundaries because we can change everything external but if we don’t change anything internally then we’re still going to suffer a lot emotionally. So, some of the most important internal boundaries that you so aptly alluded to are the judgments that we’re making that is really at the core of our emotional suffering, of our resentment towards others, to ourselves.

If we don’t draw that boundary, and say, like, “We will no longer judge ourselves in this light,” then we’re going to keep doing it. And we do this mostly because we’re not even aware that there’s an option out, that, “Oh, we can just not judge everything that’s going on? Like, there’s a way that, as I go about my life, I don’t have to constantly narrate and say this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this should be happening, this shouldn’t be happening?”

We just aren’t taught that. Most people just don’t know, and I wasn’t aware of that until I was basically smacked in the face with it and had to hit rock bottom to find it. But that is probably the most important boundary to set, which is, “Can we let go of the judgments that we’re having about ourselves, the world, whatever’s happening? Are we able to enjoy it as it is?”

When we go about life, most of the time we judge everything, “This person’s good,” “This person’s bad,” “This person’s evil,” “This person’s not,” “This is beautiful or ugly.” Like, there are so many things that happen. But when we walk in nature, like how many of us are saying, “This flower is ugly. This flower is like beautiful,” or, like, “This tree is crooked or what”?

Like, we just observe and enjoy nature as it is rather than constantly pick apart every single thing that we think is wrong with this tree. As soon as we do that, that’s when we suffer. So, nature is a great way to reset because of that and it brings us back to our true nature, ironically, of just being aware and giving our full attention to someone without judging them. That’s what the basis of love is, unconditional love, which is to fully accept someone as they are without wanting to change them, without wanting them just to be something different.

Full acceptance of that is where peace comes from. This not only goes for people, but for situations, anything. That is the root of unconditional love. And use that thought experiment for yourself. Like, when do you feel most loved by someone? When they’re constantly judging you, nagging you, saying you should do this, saying you should be different, you should be better, you should be doing any of these things, or when they fully accept you as you are without judging? That is the goal of everything.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. My children would say, when we do hugs and kisses in flying blanket mode.

Joseph Nguyen
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
But it falls into a subcategory of what you’re describing. I like that notion about the narration that we’re just doing it all the time, and it might not even seem too intense, like, “I’m such a stupid idiot.” But even just like, “Oh, oh, oh, the sun is kind of in my eyes. Oh, it’s kind of hot. Like, oh, I’m getting tired.”

Like, there you are in nature, you might not be condemning the tree for being crooked, but we are narrating and judging – well, I am often – experiences they’re in, in terms of like the air temperature or the illumination that is not perfectly aligned to the preferences I have in that moment.

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, and that’s where all the suffering comes from, is just what we wish would happen, what we want the world to be. But peace comes from letting go of what we wish everything would be and accept it for how it actually is. And, yes, same goes for anything in life, people, even ourselves. In AA, like one of the first steps is acceptance. The five stages of grief, acceptance is what you’re trying to go for.

And in CBT, acceptance of whatever emotions we’re feeling is also a core component of the whole process. So, at the end of it all, like all these different modalities are pointing to the same thing, which is, “Can I let go of the judgment that I’m having of whatever is happening and going on?” Once we’re able to let go of that thinking mind, the fear-based mind and the judgmental mind, then we’re able to find a little peace.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you said that we have the option to stop the narration, and I am a frequent Audible listener who likes to pause my audiobooks. And I understand you’ve got a little acronym you can walk us through.

Joseph Nguyen
Yes, exactly. So, this acronym, I tried to make it as actionable as possible in terms of, I mean, what we’re doing is letting go of the judgments. That’s the whole purpose of this. And so, this makes the act of letting go a little bit more tangible. So, the first letter in the acronym is P, which is pause. So, pause and take deep breaths, and you don’t need to get fancy with it. Just take five deep breaths. There’s no specific way you need to do it.

But it’s been scientifically proven that taking deep breaths allows us to lower our heart rate, to regulate our emotions, and to come back to center. So, just do that in the beginning of anything, because it’s really hard to regulate or do anything or make decisions or come back to yourself when we’re in a fight or flight mode. Next is A, which is ask ourselves, “Is this thinking useful?” Just like the other psychologists you mentioned before, like, “Is this thinking making me feel the way that I want?” If not, the next step is U, which is understand that you have the ability to let that thinking or judgment go. We always have that power. We may not be able to control our thoughts, but we can always control our thinking about the thoughts, and therein lies our entire power to change our experience of life.

S is, say and repeat the mantra, “Thinking is the root cause of suffering.” You can use any mantra in this matter. Another one, for example, would be, “I let go and choose peace.” Any mantra rooted in truth will work, and it needs to be short and memorable. What mantras do is that it’s very difficult to think of two things simultaneously.

So, what it does is it focuses your attention on this one thing, which means you can’t be thinking about the future or ruminating about the past. So, it forces focus and attention on something that is true. So, repeating that for maybe 30 seconds to a minute is really all you need, and that will slow the thinking mind. It will calm things down significantly.

That’s the basis of Transcendental Meditation as well, what a lot of the Tibetan monks use to go beyond the mind and to achieve oneness with the universe. But we take it here and you’re able to use it in real time.

Then E, the last step is to experience your emotions fully without resistance. So, we’re not trying to bypass the emotions by just not thinking about it. We’re actually removing the judgment of the emotions because what we resist persists. So, if we are resisting the anxiety, it usually gets worse, which is why a lot of times, when someone has a panic attack, they’re much more prone to more panic attacks simply because that’s how, it’s just like self-fulfilling, so to speak.

It’s like once we experience something and don’t want it to happen, we just put up a wall and just constantly resist it. But in physics, an object in motion will stay in motion, right? But also, for every force, there’s an equal and opposite force happening. So, if you have this force of an emotion and you’re resisting the emotion, that emotion is going to constantly be there and it’s going to stay stuck unless it passes through your system.

Anything that is stuck creates a significant amount of suffering. So, for a slightly more comical and light-hearted example is, like, if you eat a lot of food and it doesn’t pass through your system, what happens? Like, a week, a month passes, it’s going to be very painful and it’s going to cause all sorts of issues.

The same thing is true for our thoughts and emotions. The more that we hold on to our thoughts and don’t let them pass through, the more it’s going to cause us a lot of emotional suffering. Thoughts, emotions, all these things are transient and meant to pass through us, just like water flowing through a river.

As soon as a river is dammed up, that’s when wildlife begins to dwindle, fish begin to die, all these things start to happen. But as soon as the river is able to flow, that’s when life begins to flourish. That is the same thing for our own lives. So, letting thoughts and emotions pass through us without resistance. So, the way to do that is to create space within ourselves, to honor and hold the emotions, and to not judge them.

See them as another entity, like our inner child, or even one of our own children, and to hold them within our hearts, and to give them space to be there, without judging them, without saying, “You shouldn’t be here. Why are you here again?” That’s what we say to these emotions a lot of times, like, “Why are you still here, anger?” And we’re angry at the anger, and so it just compounds.

But as soon as we say, “Oh, you’re welcome here. You’re not an enemy. It’s okay.” As soon as you give children space, time, and attention, things begin to settle and we’re able to regulate. The same thing is true for all of our emotions and it passes so much more quickly when we’re doing this rather than kind of putting up a wall. So that’s the whole entire process.

Pause, take deep breaths. A, ask yourself, “Is this thinking helpful or useful?” U, which is understand you have the ability to let that thinking go. S, which is say and repeat the mantra. And E, which is experience your emotions fully without resistance.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. And if I may put some numbers into this, so you had a mantra, I counted, it was about seven words. Is that around the length that we’re thinking about? Like, if you push it to 20, it’s outside mantra zone?

Joseph Nguyen
Probably. It just creates so much more thinking and you’re probably going to have to try to remember, “Am I saying it right? Did I forget a word?” And you’re trying to make it as simple as possible so that you don’t have to overthink it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then with experience, I think when I’ve resisted, historically, it’s been almost out of a fear that, “If I begin to experience this sadness, this sorrow, this grieving at this deeply unfortunate thing that has occurred, then will it swallow me? Will it persist for a long time and impact the things I need to do this day, this week, this month?”

And so, I can sometimes push away. But you say with the water flowing situation, and that which we resist persists, we are better off experiencing it fully. I mean, Joseph, for those fellow aversive pushers, away-ers…

Joseph Nguyen
Master push-up-ers, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
…how long are we in for a rough emotional experience if we allow it to hang out?

Joseph Nguyen
I will say shorter than if you’re resisting it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Joseph Nguyen
So, the irony in it is that, when we’re pushing it away, we think that we’re not dealing with it but we’re still suffering. We’re constantly thinking about it, we’re wishing it were different, we’re ruminating on it constantly, but what we don’t understand is that when we just allow it to be there, that it passes so much more quickly.

I think neuroscience is saying now that it takes about 90 seconds for an emotion to be regulated in our bodies. The only reason why it’s prolonged most of the time is that we begin ruminating on the event or judging the situation that happened, and it resets that time period. So, we’ll go 90 seconds, and right before that, we think about it again, we’ll judge it again, and it keeps prolonging the cycle.

And so, it only takes a few minutes to do this and to let go, and it’s not like the entire emotion will go away, but the intensity of the emotion will be drastically reduced than what it was when we were resisting. And, over time, as you build the muscle of emotional resiliency and emotional regulation, it becomes a little bit easier to do every single time. And the threshold in which we become overwhelmed is significantly expanded, so we can take on a lot more in life.

We’re able to do a lot more. We’re able to endure a lot of these events with a lot more grace and a lot more love. But, yeah, it’s definitely scary to kind of allow these emotions to come in because we think that we might not be able to handle it. We might crumble under the emotion. But you have to ask yourself, like we were saying before, like, “Am I my thoughts? Am I this emotion?”

And think about all the difficult times and trauma that you’ve been through, and all the trauma, like, you’re still here. So, I mean, you’re greater than every single emotion that you’ve ever experienced. And the same is true now and it will ever, and it will be true forever because those things are not us.

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, beautiful stuff. Could you share any final thoughts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, I would run micro-experiments with yourself. Like, you actually don’t have to believe anything that I’m saying, ironically, like the book title. Test it out for yourself. See if it’s true, if thinking is the root cause of your emotional suffering. And the way that you can test this out is to try to suspend judgment, negative judgment about yourself, your own thoughts, your own emotions, external things, people, circumstances.

See if you can suspend judgment for about seven days. That’s it. You don’t have to do a month. You don’t have to do a year. Just see if you can let go of the judgments that your mind is creating, for seven days and see how you feel afterwards. If it significantly improves your emotional well-being, awesome! Continue doing it.

And if it doesn’t, that’s completely okay, and you can find another modality that might work for you. But at the very least, try it and see what happens. And it is only through our own lived experience that you know what truth is, rather than just taking someone’s word for it. So, that’s what I would encourage everyone to do, and just see for yourself.

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

Joseph Nguyen
One of my favorite quotes is actually in the book, which is from Jonathan Safran Foer, which is, “I think, I think, I think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, very good. Very good. Thank you. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Joseph Nguyen
The neuroscience study that I was alluding to before, I don’t know exactly what experiment it was.

But they were studying about how long it takes for our emotions to actually pass through our systems, and it was about 90 seconds, which was mind-boggling to me because I thought it would take, you know, like multiple minutes or at least like, I don’t know, 10 minutes, for like, if you’re angry of something, like it feels like it takes way longer than 90 seconds.

So, that was a profound shift in me to realize that, “Oh, my gosh, like it is possible to let go of a lot of these emotions quite quickly.” And it’s actually important to follow this. You don’t have to follow this process, specifically, but you can follow any process, but it’s really important to do it in real time as you’re going about your day.

So, this process is, if you’re experiencing something in traffic, or your boss says something, or your parents say something, or your friends says something that creates a negative emotional reaction within you, it’s important to use the process then rather than only use it in the morning or in the evening like meditating, right?

That way you are actually strengthening your emotional resiliency throughout the entire day. It’s a little bit easier to find peace when you’re alone in your room and it’s dark, your blindfolds are on, there’s like Zen music, right? It’s like a little bit easier to find peace there, but the true test is, “Are you able to find peace while also, like let’s say your boss is screaming at your face, or making fun of you, or your friends are doing something that you don’t really approve of, or your parents are criticizing you in front of other family members?

That’s the time that you’re truly tested for, if you’re able to find peace. And this is something that you can use during those times rather than you need to bust out like a 30-minute meditation just to find a little bit of alleviation. So, that’s one other thing I would do, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And a favorite book?

Joseph Nguyen
This one’s very interesting, maybe slightly controversial, but it currently is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

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

Joseph Nguyen
I like to use this particular framework on just when I’m doing work because I have issues, a lot of times. Just like procrastinating like most people or just putting off things that I know I need to be doing. And one of the most effective things that I’ve done is to follow the SPA methodology, which is just, if I’m overwhelmed by something, just take the next smallest possible action, so SPA, and doing that.

So, if it’s, “I need to write another book,” that’s a pretty big task, pretty scary, daunting, and it’s like, “Am I able to bust out a whole book in this one session?” Now, that’s typically what the mind thinks of. But if I break it down to the smallest possible action, like, “Am I able to just open the Word document? Can I just do that?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I can definitely click on Notion and open it up. I can definitely do that.” And if I still can’t do that, “Can I just sit at the computer desk?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Joseph Nguyen
So just keep breaking it down.

Pete Mockaitis
“Sit up from the couch.”

Joseph Nguyen
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard, right? Sometimes it’s really hard. And so, it’s okay if we need to break it down into those baby steps, but that works wonders for me. So, it’s like, “Can I write one sentence?” And when I write one sentence, I’m going to want to write another sentence, like I’m just going to go.

And, lo and behold, there’s like a couple dozen sentences, a couple hundred words pass, and that was way more progress than if I force myself sit down and write my book. That’s a big task. So, smallest possible action is what I like to default to when I am frozen in procrastination or analysis paralysis.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Our emotions don’t come from external events, but from our own thinking about those events. That is something that people just didn’t really realize, and so it’s like a massive epiphany moment for them. Other ones are just like, “I didn’t realize that I could just stop judging. I had no idea I could just not listen to that incessant negative critic in the back of our minds, and that I could just be and just be present. I don’t have to be thinking about something else or doing something else. I can let go of whatever that incessant chatter is, and to finally find a little bit of peace.”

Yeah, that big epiphany was like, oh, yeah, during the times that we are happiest, like we’re not really thinking about anything else, or ruminating on anything. We’re just there, fully engrossed by the moment. And so, those are probably like some of the biggest nuggets that people have gotten.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Probably, I would say my website and newsletter, so JosephNguyen.org, J-O-S-E-P-H N-G-U-Y-E-N.org. You’ll be able to find like my newsletter there, sign up for it. I do have a YouTube channel. I don’t post that often but a lot of the content there is evergreen. All my socials are just itsjosephnguyen, I-T-S and then Joseph Nguyen. Those are probably the best places to find me, but email is where you’ll be able to be up-to-date on any new projects I’m working on.

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

Joseph Nguyen
Let go of the fear of being judged. The more that we’re afraid of being ourselves, to be awesome at our jobs, the less effective we’ll be. And sometimes being ourselves will ruffle a few feathers. People will judge us one way or the other, even if we’re playing conservatively and not really showing that much at work.

People are still judging us anyway. So, we might as well be judged and criticized for being who we truly are rather than masquerading ourselves behind something else. And the more that you’re able to be yourself, the more awesome you’re going to be at your job, the more that you’re able to lean into your own gifts, your own talents, your abilities. All of that is usually held back if we’re afraid of what other people are thinking.

So, stand up for yourself, do what you believe is best for the work that you’re doing, and definitely defend it, and to not just let it be pushed over. Because at the end of the day, if you’re coming from a place of love, generosity, true selflessness, and wanting to do the best that you possibly can, there’s no shame in that at all. So, if you’re going to be criticized, definitely be criticized for doing what you believe is right, rather than hiding behind and playing it small.

Pete Mockaitis
Joseph, beautiful. Thank you.

Joseph Nguyen
Thank you so much, Pete. It’s been such a pleasure and so much fun with you. I love your energy.

Jan 13
0

1023: Finding More Purpose and Flow through Breathwork with Francesca Sipma

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Francesca Sipma shares breathwork practices to help access more purpose and flow.

You’ll Learn

  1. How breathwork leads to greater clarity 
  2. The science supporting breathwork 
  3. The most important question to ask yourself 

About Francesca 

Francesca Sipma is the author of Unblock Your Purpose:  Breathwork, Intuition, and Flow State. She is the founder and CEO of Mastry, the creator of HypnoBreathwork®, and an international speaker who offers courses and training programs for C-suite executives, world-renowned producers, celebrities, artists, and athletes. She has led sessions for Deloitte, Snap, Upwork, and Athletic Brewing, and her work has been featured by Bloomberg, Forbes, NBC, and ABC. She lives in San Diego.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Francesca Sipma Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Francesca, welcome.

Francesca Sipma
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat through your book and your discoveries around Unblock Your Purpose: Breathwork, Intuition, and Flow State. Could you maybe share with us for starters your journey, the short version, with regard to how did you stumble upon this protocol? And what’s it doing for people?

Francesca Sipma
Yes. So, a little bit about my background is I actually come from advertising and marketing in Manhattan, and sort of hit a lot of my goals, and found myself at the peak of the mountaintop, so to say, and just felt quite empty and unfulfilled. And that really took me on a quest to rediscover my values and to sort of pivot my career into something that would bring me more fulfillment.

And that’s when I discovered breathwork and was completely fascinated by this practice. It took me really deep into my subconscious, and was extremely revealing of things that needed to heal in order to tap into my highest clarity and intuition. And the breathwork really helped me discover my life’s purpose, which gave me a lot of meaning and fulfillment. And now it’s my quest to share that with others.

Pete Mockaitis
How does breathing help us get to our purpose?

Francesca Sipma
So, breathwork reveals sort of your subconscious motivations and anything that’s unhealed in past relationships, and also a bit how your identity has been formed. So, in order for you to discover your purpose, which my definition of purpose is really the convergence of your skills, your experiences, obstacles you’ve overcome, and how you turned that outwards to be of service, you have to get to know yourself a bit.

You have to go through the defense mechanisms, the ego, any protective strategies that have been built. And breathwork has this really unique and profound ability to cut through the conscious mind, and it allows us to go deeper into emotions that have been repressed, and the exhale really allows us to clear out any sadness or guilt, subconscious limitations, and it just reveals more truth. It reveals our authenticity.

And when we do that consistently, the dots start to connect between the things that really light us up and how we can contribute to the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Francesca, help me out. I’ve been breathing for a long time but I don’t think breathing has ever done that for me. Am I doing it wrong? Or what’s the missing link here?

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, it’s a very specific style that we do. Breathwork has really become an umbrella term, and there’s a lot of different practices and processes, and most of it has really been for calming and for anxiety and stress relief. But the style of breathwork that we work on is called HypnoBreathwork. And so, the breath is really more of an experiential therapy. It’s very intense to inhale one exhale for about 20 minutes, and that really starts to disrupt your conscious mind and those habitual thought loops.

And then we bring in hypnotic suggestions, which are vocal cues that allow you to really focus and concentrate your brain on very specific prompts, and that might reveal what you wanted to be when you were younger, or how your skills can connect into something that you’re passionate about. And then we have visioning, which we really bring at the end of a session so that people can mentally rehearse their goals.

They can see the highest version of themselves. They can get clear action steps on what they want to create in the future. And it’s a hyper-efficient and effective 22-minute process, and each session sort of has a theme or a topic of things that we move and get clarity on. And when you do that daily, you can make a lot of progress in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s really intriguing. Well, so we’ve had Marc Shoen on the show, who is a clinical psychologist who does hypnosis, and that was cool. And then we had Dr. Sam Rader share about some of the, I don’t know if I want to say metaphysical, but she’s in the wellness space, talking about some of this stuff. And so, for those who are skeptical, reluctant, think that sounds a little, I don’t know, out there woo-woo, whatever term du jour, could you share any evidence, or science, or goodness that says, “No, for real, this really does stuff”?

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, I totally get that perspective. I was extremely skeptical as well when I went to Bali and discovered breathwork. I was pretty self-righteous, to be honest. I had been in therapy and read a lot of self-help books, and thought it was going to be some form of meditation or yoga. But through my experience, I found it was much more deeper than that, and it was very cathartic, and it was very healing.

And then I went to study it around the world. I went to India, I went to Peru, I went to Thailand, I went to every workshop and training, and read every breath book that I could find, and I came to understand that what’s happening in our bodies, physiologically, is we are changing the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

And when you do that, your blood becomes more alkaline, and you start to shut down the prefrontal cortex. And that’s the default mode network, that’s the overanalytical mind, that’s doing things from past experience, that’s expectations of how things have been done before, and you start to activate and you start to stimulate different regions and areas of your brain. And it’s a bit like microdosing.

When you start to activate old memories and information and knowledge and infinite intelligence, all of a sudden, you get this expansive worldview. You get more perspective. So, I actually use breathwork for peak performance. I use it to get into flow state for my business to be sharper, clearer, more articulate, problem-solving, decision-making.

And what I find is it allows me to be more creative because it’s connecting more dots. Because everything that you’ve ever studied, or been inspired by, or read, or listened to, it all lives in your subconscious mind, which is the record holder of your experiences and your emotions. And when you can breathe past that default mode network, and you can start to stimulate these different regions, all of a sudden, those different elements will connect in you in creative ways.

So, it’s like, “Oh, that one episode that I listened to on Pete’s podcast, if I did that for this passion project, and I monetize like this, and this is my acquisition strategy, and I sent this email out, and I was inspired by that social media billboard, and maybe those are the colors,” all of a sudden, you get hyper-creative, and it’s a very efficient and very effective process.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Francesca, that sounds awesome. I enjoy when my brain just makes all the connections from a lot of things. It’s a great feeling, like, “Aha,” when insights and things are unlocked, and when goodness flows.

Francesca Sipma
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And the research on hypnosis says kind of that same thing with regards to hypnosis is just kind of a state of mind in which we are more accepting or open to receiving suggestion. And so, sometimes that’s used in kooky stage hypnosis context, but it can actually be super useful in terms of practical life context for any number of things.

I think I found it best when it’s like there’s a thing that I know to be true, and yet it doesn’t feel true in terms of, like, my insides, how I’m operating, how I’m emotionally reacting naturally to things. And hypnosis can be handy for that with regard to, say, handling criticisms, like, “Oh, I know that someone is not the judge, jury, executioner, end all, be all with regard to their opinion of me or my performance on a thing.”

And yet, sometimes, it feels though like they are, like that is true, but, no, it’s not true. And then hypnosis seems to have a cool way of letting those suggestions really go deeper and hit home. And it sounds like what you’re saying is, with a particular breathing approach stacked on top of that, it’s like we’re getting even more deeper penetration.

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, you’re really hitting the nail on the head. I love hypnotherapy and all of the sessions that I had sort of gone through in my exploration, but what I found was, for a lot of the sessions, it would take 60 minutes to two and a half hours, and I just didn’t think that bringing that back to the States into modern audience, and especially with my New York friends and people in finance, that they would spend that much time on their personal development.

So, I started to experiment with an EEG headband and test my brainwaves. And theta brainwaves are where you want to get to an order for the suggestions to really stick, in order for you to access those deeper states where you’re less defensive, and you are more open to that suggestion.

And with the conscious connected breathing, when you do the two inhales and one exhale, what I found consistently was I could get into theta state within four minutes versus when I would do it in meditation, which it would be about 15 minutes and I was still oscillating between alpha and beta brainwaves, which means you can negate the suggestion.

Which means, if I say, “Get to the root of procrastination. And what would it look like to finish that task? And what would that confidence feel like in your body?” you’re much more likely to be able to go and see that version of yourself, see yourself on stage, feel the emotion like you already have it, and it can actually stick versus feeling like you’re fighting against the current.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you’re using the EEG headband and you’re saying the theta waves roughly corresponds in the app to the calm portion of that. And you’re saying that by doing this breathwork, you’re able to land to that calm zone way faster than just meditating.

Francesca Sipma
Yes, exactly. Precisely.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s cool. And I saw a fun dorky blogpost about meditation tournament, and, the irony of it all, they called it March Mindfulness, and they talked about how it can be very easy to game those if you’re doing the calibration with your eyes open. So, tell us a little bit about that nuance. Is this all eyes closed? I even see in your videos people have eye masks on. Is that right?

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, we like to place a really comfortable eye mask on, make sure that you are laying down, make sure that you’re very comfortable and cozy. A lot of people like to have a blanket with them during a breathwork session, or a box of tissues because it can be a very intense journey. But breathwork is very different than meditation. I want to be really clear in that distinction.

In meditation, you are taking more of a passive state. You’re maybe observing your thoughts, you’re maybe trying to focus on a mantra, you’re may be focusing on your breath and allowing things to pass or de-trigger yourself, where breathwork is extremely active. It is very intense. You will feel physical vibrations sort of moving through your body, especially for your first three sessions.

You might feel like your hands are clamping up. You’ll feel tingling around your face. You might feel emotions and energy moving through your chest or your stomach, and that’s really stress and emotion that’s been buried and have been stagnant that wants to remove and that wants to release. And the way that we position the HypnoBreathwork sessions, it’s really for you to become more self-aware and maybe observe those psychological patterns and expand your mind into a new way.

So, it’s very active, it’s very intense, it’s very physical. And I think that’s why people are so intrigued by the practice, and they can maybe stick with it longer than meditation. I get the same feedback all the time, “It’s so hard for me to meditate. I can’t calm down my mind. I’m constantly running my to-do list,” and people will give up on the meditation.

But with the breath, because it’s so physical, because at least you can tell that something is happening in your body, and at the end of it, you’ll at least, at the very, very minimum, feel so much lighter and so much clearer. It’s a better habit, I think, for people to start on their personal development journey because they’ll stick with it long enough to start to experience some results.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s paint a real clear picture here then. This sounds swell. So, we’re lying down, we’re comfy, we got a blanket or something, we got eye mask, so we got sort of nice visual stimuli all kind of blocked away, and then we’re doing this breathing, two inhale, one exhale. Could you give us a demo on that?

Francesca Sipma
Yes. So, it’s an inhale into your belly, inhale into your chest, and exhale. And your inhales are done through your nose, and your exhales through your mouth. So, it’s looks like inhale belly, inhale heart, exhale, inhale belly, inhale chest, exhale. And another key differentiator in the style of breathwork we teach is music is a really big part of it.

So, we might play more Shamanic beats if we’re doing a healing session from your past. We might play Adele or Celine Dion if we’re going through relationships and healing heartbreak. We might play more of like a Rufus Du Sol and ethereal, cinematic Braveheart Soundtrack type of tunes if we’re getting into your most powerful state or seeing your 2025 roadmap for your business. So, the music and the topics really shape the vocal cues and the journey. It’s very specific and it’s very customized.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, with that two inhales, one to the belly/diaphragm, one to the chest/heart, and then the exhale, is there a pace we’re aiming for?

Francesca Sipma
It’s a good question. I think that I try to let people go at a pace that they’re really comfortable with to start because I’d rather they stay for the whole journey and experience the benefits than push them too hard on the first one. I definitely work with a lot of athletes and peak performers who are pumping their breath extremely fast, and they’re feeling sort of an out-of-body experience really early on because they’re breathing in such an accelerated fashion.

But honestly, you can take it fairly slow, a place that feels good and feels comfortable, and you’ll still be able to access those deeper brainwaves states for the emotional breakthroughs and insights. So, this pacing is nice, with a medium pace, inhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, exhale. That’s sort of an ideal middle.

Pete Mockaitis
And as you’re doing it, I imagine there’s probably some group effects in terms of the rhythmic groove, and you talk about these beats. Well, now you reminded me, a buddy of mine mentioned he did, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing these words right, holotropic breathwork and SOM. Is that the same thing as this or is that different than this?

Francesca Sipma
That’s sort of the OG, like that’s the grandfather of breathwork, so definitely huge respect to Leonard Orr and to Stan Grof, sort of the grandfathers of that practice. Stan Grof was a clinical psychologist who studied LSD in the ‘60s and then created holotropic breathwork as a psycho-spiritual way for people to do deep trauma healing and see childhood memories, and become higher versions of themselves, and really access those altered states of consciousness.

So, that’s the first breathwork that I ever experienced, and I did seven sessions in Bali at a private breathwork retreat, which is why I became so in love with the practice. But what we’ve done now is we’ve really modernized it. Holotropic breathwork can also last 60 to 90 music. Typically, the music doesn’t have any lyrics in it, and there’s also no vocal guidance or cues, and there’s sort of a signature effect of drawing a mandala after your experience to really help you integrate and sort of hold onto the internal events that had just taken place.

Pete Mockaitis
What is a mandala?

Francesca Sipma
It’s basically a visual representation. You use different either crayons or markers and a white sheet of paper to just create a visual to sort of cement or integrate the practice for you. When I had my first experience with that, I was writing words and trying to understand the different colors and the different memories that I had seen, and the teacher was like, “No, just draw, like, a visual representation of it.” And I was like, “I’m not an artist. I don’t know what that means. And I’m trying to understand my physical limit, my psychological limitations.”

And so, that’s when I really noticed that I had this ability and this desire to really connect the dots between an experience and truly changing your life, and that’s when hypnosis became also foundational in the practice, as well as visioning, or visualization.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it sounds like this is powerful for you and for many of the folks you’re working with. Do we have any juicy published science on this goodness?

Francesca Sipma
Well, Stanford Research just came out with a study recently through, I believe, at the beginning of 2024 with Andrew Huberman that said that breathwork is now scientifically proven to improve mood and sleep and reduce stress, and it’s more effective than meditation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this was the paper with his physiological size relative to the other breathing practices or the mindfulness.

Francesca Sipma
And meditation, it was a comparison to meditation. The New York Times recently covered that a lot of clinicians and psychologists are bringing breathwork into their practices so that it’s not just intellectually and mentally processing, but people are also having a somatic release. And it’s still relatively new, it’s still relatively fresh, so I think we’re going to see more and more articles and sort of that research come out, very similar to what we’re seeing with, like, MDMA and ketamine.

So, stay tuned to this space because I think people are going to see that it’s a very profound and transformative practice. And what I like about it versus plant medicine is that it’s just your natural breath, and it’s so accessible.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And so, if we’re comparing it to plant medicine, I mean, that sounds pretty potent. Is this safe? Like, say, if someone hears this podcast, and says, “That sounds awesome. I’m going to get my blanket, I’m going to get my eyeshade, and I’m going to get my breath on and my music on, and some suggestions on for 22 minutes. Away I go,” are we cool? Are we safe? Any things to watch out for?

Francesca Sipma
Are we safe? So, I believe that breath is your lifeforce and it has medicinal properties, and we’re just now really tapping into how profound that can truly be for your healing. I think when you ask the question, “Are you safe?” for a lot of people, they don’t want to open Pandora’s box, they don’t want to go into some maybe memories or life events that have been painful for them. But I find it to be more unsafe to hold onto that emotion and allow it to shape the decisions that you make in your career, in your relationships, and in your health.

So, for me, while it may be intense, and while it may feel heavy at times, the breath is a natural mechanism for you to explore some of those emotions to heal and release them simultaneously in real time, and to gain that clarity and to gain that more peaceful state.

Now, we’ve developed Mastry, which is a platform that has these 80 different HypnoBreathwork sessions so that anybody can get whatever they need at any given time. And our intention is for you to breathe in this cadence for 20 minutes every single morning, and take your action step as that higher version of yourself.

Now, those sessions are more mild. So, the sessions on the app, because they’re audio-guided sessions and you’re doing them from the luxury of your own home, they are more about getting clarity, making a decision, hearing your intuition, feeling that self-love. When you’re doing the deeper more intense sessions that are maybe about processing grief or healing your inner child, those are sessions that I recommend that you do with a facilitator, and you have somebody there to hold that space for you, and to create that emotionally supportive environment if you’re dealing with heavier emotions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, it might be handy to have some support in play as a little bit of a safety backstop. But, generally speaking, are you free of fatalities and lawsuits?

Francesca Sipma
I have never had a fatality and I’ve never had a lawsuit to address.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great. So, you got an app, Mastry. How do we get it?

Francesca Sipma
So, it’s M-A-S-T-R-Y. It’s available on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. And as soon as you log onto the app, it gives you a demo of the breath technique, and then it allows you to choose from, again, 80 different sessions based on whatever you need on topics of health, love, peak performance, corporate.

And then, afterwards, the very last cue of every single HypnoBreathwork session is, “What is your one next intuitive action step?” So, we really try to take people through this journey where they see their highest selves, they shift their energy, and then they execute. They take action from that place so that it actually starts to move and shift and change their life. We have a digital action tracker that you will type that in after your session, and then you get a badge once you complete it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. So, that’s how that works. Let’s zoom in on the flow state. So, you got a book. It sounds like one of the ways to get to flow states is, “Hey, do this stuff.” Any other pro tips on getting more flow states more often and for longer?

Francesca Sipma
So, flow state is optimal consciousness. It’s when things are effortlessly flowing, you’re intrinsically motivated, disciplined, you’d surrender, you lose sense of time. My favorite way of defining it is when productivity meets alignment. That’s truly the sweet spot. And sort of how I shared before, your subconscious is this record holder of all the podcasts you listened to, conversations with mentors, investors, your bosses, your colleagues, the books that you read, all this stuff lives in your subconscious.

And what the breath does, especially if you have a good coach and he gives you a very specific cue in flow state breathwork or HypnoBreathwork, will say, “I want you to see the project. I want you to see the pitch. I want you to see yourself on that stage. I want you to see the campaign,” and then you’ll continue to breathe, you’ll start to stimulate more ideas, more creative connections will start to get made.

And then we might say something like, “How do you want your audience to feel? What are the benefits that you want to convey? See your impact in the world. What’s your next action step towards that?” And it’s a really profound way to create, in a way, that’s original to you, that’s very authentic, that’s innovative. I really believe that this is where more invention and nuance come from, and the breath is just a brilliant way to hack that state in 20 minutes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s talk about some of these suggestions. Can I hear some of your faves?

Francesca Sipma
Well, I customize them by industry. When I first started my coaching business, it was a really difficult transition from corporate and having that stability, and especially having that secure bi-weekly paycheck, to going off and becoming a breathwork coach. And the way I did it was I treated my bedroom like a war room, and I had physiological benefits, psychological benefits, spiritual benefits, content strategy, pillars, messaging, partnership ideas, and then I would breathe, and I would just say, “What’s the next step to scale my business?”

And, immediately, it would be like, “This topic with this contact, with this video, and then this email funnel,” and these things would connect, and I did that every single day to grow my business and to scale it, and it became quite successful in the first two years. And then I brought it to different industries. So, when I went back to advertising, I said, “I want you to see the strategy. I want you to see the campaign. What are the media channels? How do you want your audience to feel? What’s your next action step as a team? How can you collaborate?”

I would use very customized vocal cues, but if I was speaking to lawyers, “See yourself in the courtroom. What’s the energy you want to convey? What are your mannerisms? What’s the case? See the victory.” If I’m going to sports teams, it’s, “See yourself on the field.” It’s just very specific and very customized. So, I would do, like, a 5- to 10-minute debrief with you, Pete, on what it is you want to create in your business. Maybe it’s podcast growth. Maybe it’s your personal brand, I don’t know. And then I would then flip it into the vocal cues, match up the songs and take you on a journey to expand and grow.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it just sounds swell.

Francesca Sipma
It is.

Pete Mockaitis
I think everybody loves a little bespoke, custom, “just for me” kind of goodness when they’re contracting a service provider, so that sounds like a successful formula for a winning business.

Francesca Sipma
But you know what we found is that in order for me to sort of digitize this and scale the work, there are general cues that can be applicable for everyone. So, even if I say, “What’s your goal? What would it feel like to accomplish that goal? See the goal like you already have the outcome that you want. Step into that.” Now, it works for millions of people even though they’re having a different internal experience.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that. Well, Francesca, can we hear a couple of those general pieces? I know some outcomes our listeners are after often are confidence and the ability to focus. Any cues that seem to be winning on those dimensions?

Francesca Sipma
So, those are two very different sessions. For focus, I would say, “I want you to see the task at hand.” And once you’ve been breathing for about one to two songs, I would say, “What’s the priority task?” because your intuition is then going to not put the busy work in front but actually put the one that moves the needle the most, because breathwork really organizes thought streams.

So, “What’s the task at hand? What is it that you need to prioritize? What is distracting you?” and then I would have you breathe out the distractions. If you’re known to be a procrastinator, I would say, “What is at the root of the procrastination?” And there, we might be going a bit deeper because there might be a fear of success, there might be a fear of failure, there might be a fear of judgment.

I would have you wrap your breath around that, move it up to your chest, exhale, keep breathing out any discomfort, keep breathing out any resistance or tension. And then I would say, “See the task like it’s done, like it’s complete. How do you feel in your body? What would be the reaction around you? Feel that peace. Feel that freedom.” And then I would say, “What’s your next action step to completing the task?”

And it might be delegation, set the meeting, have the conversation, just check it off the list. There’s a different action step for everybody. So, that’s what I would do on focus, and we do have that on Mastry app where you can breathe for 20 minutes and you’ll get those cues in a more eloquent way with the music.

And then for confidence, confidence is an interesting one. Typically, if I’m guiding someone towards confidence, I would actually have them see the last time they felt confident so we can start to generate that emotion in their body. And then I would have them apply it to their present moment where they’re needing to feel a bit more empowered, a bit more liberated.

So, I might say, “See the word confidence. What does it bring up for you? Breathe our any insecurities. Now, visualize the last time you felt confident. And now bring that emotion to your present-day visualization, and see if they can anchor those two things.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Francesca, this is fun. As you described these states, you’re bringing me back to, wow, 2009, Walking on Hot Coals with Tony Robbins, not just me, there were thousands of people there. But he hit a nice little recipe for whipping up a state of mind-body emotion in terms of adjusting your physiology, like how you’re holding your body, your visualization, and what you were saying to yourself.

And there’s a lot of power moves, a lot of “Yes. Yes. Yes,” going on. How do you think about your approach to entering into states in comparing and contrasting with this kind of advice?

Francesca Sipma
I love Tony Robbins. I really do. He’s probably my greatest expander. I also really love Dr. Joe Dispenza, and I think that they both have incredible techniques that have changed millions of lives. For me, personally, I have to remove the subconscious block in order for me to really believe that power pose. I can’t just jump up and down to a song and feel like I’m energized and I feel clear. That doesn’t work for me. Maybe I have too much trauma. I’m not really sure.

But, like, when I’m on this entrepreneurial path, or if you’re an executive, a manager, employee, it doesn’t really matter, what your position is, but if someone is like, “Feel better. Don’t be anxious,” that doesn’t work for me, per se. I have to actually see where the root of that is coming from, “Why am I having impostor syndrome right now? Where is this self-doubt percolating from? Where is it living in my body? Does it have a color?”

And a lot of times, my conscious mind is very loud and my ego can be very loud, and I’ll think I know the answer but my subconscious is a lot deeper. It’ll take me to, like, age 7 or age 14, this event happened in high school. And I’ll need to breathe out those limitations and those sources of where the identity or the pattern formed.

So, that’s my experience and that’s my experience with a lot of my clients who have maybe been through more life events that have made them really create that self-doubt, and so that’s why we like the breath. We like going into the subconscious. We like taking it several layers deeper to really get to the root, and dissipate it from the source.

And then see the stage, see the scalability, see the exit, see your most powerful self. So, it’s just a little bit of a deeper psychological process that is more effective for me personally.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention to folks looking to be awesome at their jobs before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Francesca Sipma
I have two things. First, Pete, I want to know what your biggest 2025 goal is.

Pete Mockaitis
I’d say one would be getting one of my businesses into a good spot with regard to regular growing client acquisition. It seems like it’s sort of like, “Oh, yeah, we get some referrals and we get some people come in,” but it’s like, I really like a repeatable predictable process by which we’re able to kind of turn on the “get customers” engine, whereas it’s been a little bit, “Hey, good months and bad months,” you know.

Francesca Sipma
Yeah, consistency. Consistent growth. Is it product? Service?

Pete Mockaitis
Service.

Francesca Sipma
Okay. So, what we would do in a session like that is we would do a creative brainstorm for 10 minutes, and we would talk marketing, we would talk funnels, “Is it content? Is it a different platform? Is it TikTok? Is it LinkedIn? Is it influencers?” We would do a little brainstorm, testimonials, video ideas, “Is it a webinar?” We would basically brainstorm a couple of things together.

And then I would take you into the breath, and I would say, “See your business. Where are the gaps? Where are the opportunities?” And you’re deeper now, you’re in theta, things are percolating, you’re starting to get ideas, you’re starting to get insights. You might see a blind spot, say, and then I’d say, “What is your biggest opportunity for growth?”

A couple ideas might come up in your subconscious. Then I would say, “Now, visualize your business having consistent growth. And how does that feel in your body?” And it might feel like ease. It might feel like freedom. It might feel like abundance. It might feel like joy. And then I would say, “Now, from that vibration, from that state, what’s your next action step to grow your business?”

And then the answer might be, “Hire a team, hire a social media manager, up your digital ad spend,” here’s all of these things that will come from all the information knowledge you have on that business but it’s just taking you on a little bit of a deeper journey that is a bit similar to microdosing, I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay.

Francesca Sipma
So, I just want to throw that out there so that you could really understand what a customized flow state might look like for you. And then the last thing I would want to say to your listeners is that intuition is a superpower in your work. I think that we lean too heavy on strategy and systems and knowledge and information, and we don’t lean enough on our own inner intelligence, in our own inner wisdom.

And when you learn to trust yourself and you learn to trust this knowledge that you uniquely hold within, then your life can start to have a more original path. It can start to have more joy. You can start to attract more synchronicities and opportunities, and it can take unpredictable turns that your logical and linear mind wouldn’t have seen. So, I would invite everyone to listen more to your intuition and to fiercely execute on it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Francesca Sipma
“Act on your intuition.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Francesca Sipma
My favorite book is Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

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

Francesca Sipma
That every single person has a unique purpose in this life. And when we heal bits of the past, that will start to become clear, and your life will have more color and more joy and more peace.

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

Francesca Sipma
You can grab my book Unblock Your Purpose on Amazon, or find me on Instagram @francescasipma, or my website, FrancescaSipma.com.

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

Francesca Sipma
I think if you want to be awesome at your job, one article or two articles that I recently come by is this new sort of wave called “The Great Stay,” which is basically like we were in The Great Resignation, and now we’re in The Great Stay where people feel stuck at their jobs, and they feel immense burnout and resentment, and breathwork will rejuvenate this position for you. Breathwork will help you find the gratitude again. It’ll help you find your creativity again, and you might actually discover your purpose within your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Francesca, this has been fun. Thank you. I wish you all the best.

Francesca Sipma
Thanks for having me.

Jan 09
0

1022: How–and Why–to Stop Overapologizing with Shira Miller

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Shira Miller reveals the harmful effects of overapologizing—and shares powerful advice for owning your greatness.

You’ll Learn

  1. How overapologizing hurts you personally and professionally 
  2. Five steps to stop unnecessary apologies
  3. How to tame your inner saboteur

About Shira 

Shira Miller is an award-winning keynote speaker, Certified Executive Coach, author of Free and Clear: Get Unstuck and Live the Life You Want and works as the Chief Communications Officer of National DCP, the $3 billion supply chain company serving Dunkin’ franchisees. The two-time TEDx speaker, who delivered a talk called Stop the Apology Speak, has helped thousands of leaders instill optimism and purpose at work, stop making unnecessary apologies, eliminate self-sabotage and own their greatness. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Shira Miller Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Shira, welcome.

Shira Miller
Hi, Pete. Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m glad to be chatting with you. We’re talking apologies, and I’m excited to dig deep into this notion of apology speak. Could you kick us off by sharing your own apology story?

Shira Miller
Oh, boy, do I have one. I spent the first 40 years of my life in a constant state of apology. I’m talking about apologizing when I won speaking trophies, and for when I would win awards at work, and the men in my life maybe weren’t so excited about that. And the most significant apology story I have to share took place back in 2009.

I used to have a public relations firm, and from the outside it looked like we were doing so well. We were in a fancy office tower, I had big-name clients, we’ve won a lot of awards. And then, I remember, in May 2009, we had about four pieces of business out for bid, and none of them came back, and that was highly unusual.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the Great Recession was coming through the country and that it was about to demolish my business along with 200,000 others across the country. So, I was caught unawares, I had $100,000 worth of business debt, I had to let go of wonderful employees, and I spent my time constantly apologizing.

I honestly knocked myself out for the next four years to take care of all the work, to get rid of the debt. I did it all by myself. I ran my health into the ground. And then, at the end, when I should’ve been celebrating because I survived, what did I do, Pete? I apologized. That’s what I did.

Pete Mockaitis
To whom?

Shira Miller
To the world. I kept telling people, “Gosh, I feel stupid. I can’t believe that I got myself in this situation.” Instead of standing proud to think, “I got through one of the biggest challenges of my life,” I put myself down, self-deprecating language, constantly said I was sorry to anyone that would listen.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, Shira, what’s the harm or problem in saying we’re sorry often? Isn’t that kind of a polite, friendly thing to do?

Shira Miller
You know, you would think that it is on the surface, and sometimes that is people’s intention with it, but when you apologize for no reason, you are telling the rest of the world, subconsciously, that you don’t matter. You are trying to maybe diffuse a tense situation, perhaps you don’t want to shine brightly and you dim your own light to make other people feel better about themselves, but it’s saying to the world and yourself that you are coming in second, and that your opinion and your ideas don’t matter.

And when it comes to work, if there are two people up for the same promotion, who do you think is going to get it? The woman who stands in front of a room and says, “I’m sorry” as the first words out of her mouth, or the person, the woman who stands there confidently, owning her accomplishments?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, maybe we can disentangle or distinguish a little bit what’s up. Because I imagine, from your perspective, and you tell me if that’s the case, it would be appropriate to apologize when we have genuinely injured another, made a mistake, failed to deliver on a promise or an expectation. These seem like fine times to apologize.

Shira Miller
Absolutely. The whole premise here is that when you’ve done something wrong, all of the examples you gave, if you’re thinking about the workplace, if you missed a deadline, you took credit for someone else’s ideas, you cast a shade on somebody else, you need to own that. That is worthy of an apology, and issue one.

But in those circumstances, when you’re using apology speak, which is my name for starting a sentence with “I’m sorry,” when you’ve done nothing wrong, or self-deprecating phrases, like, “In my humble opinion,” when you start out by saying that, or, “I’m not an expert but…” you’re literally telling the room, “Okay, I don’t know as much,” or, “My great ideas, they don’t matter.”

Pete Mockaitis
So, could you share with us perhaps any data, evidence, research, science studies that speak to, really, the big stakes impact, consequentiality, if that’s a word, of this stuff?

Shira Miller
So, if you dig into the why of why we’re doing it, I know your audience is primarily female so I’m going to go with that example, the University of Waterloo did a study, and they found that women apologize more than men. And to that I say, “Duh!” I mean, we all know this but Mila Jovanovic, who is a sociologist in Canada, she digs deeper into the theory of why we’re doing it.

And her theory is that women are socialized into being people-pleasers from a young age, and the apology speak is part of it, when we’re taught to say “I’m sorry” to go along or get along, or diffuse a tense situation. But if you dig deeper into the research, a lot of it stems from impostor syndrome. KPMG came out with a study a couple of years ago that found that 75% of female executives felt impostor syndrome.

And, as you know, that is a behavioral phenomenon where you might have tremendous accomplishments but you don’t feel good enough. You feel like you don’t deserve that seat at the table even if you spent the past 5, 10, 15 years working for it. And that can really undermine your confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, over-apologizing, in some way, sounds as though it’s a bit of an indicator or a symptom of some underlying stuff, which might be low self-esteem, or a tendency to people-please, or put others’ thoughts, opinions, priorities, needs above your own habitually. And so, that’s kind of what I’m hearing. But, in addition to the indicator, it sounds like you’re saying that the actual act of over-apologizing does us harm.

Shira Miller
It is a form of self-sabotage. It hurts your career. It hurts your credibility. It hurts you at home as well. It’s hard to have really rich conversations about difficult topics with the people you’ve got relationships with if you’re feeling overwhelmed and you just start saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” to shut down a hard topic. You’re not really digging into what’s going on, and that hurts you professionally and personally.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, could you dig into that example a little bit more? There’s a conversation going on, and you say, “I’m sorry,” and bow out.

Shira Miller
Yes. Let’s say that you’re having an argument with your significant other. Maybe it’s about finances, about latest credit card spending, and when you are asked the question, “Why did you spend all of that money?” instead of thinking, “Okay, let’s talk. What’s going on? Is it a budget issue that I need to talk about with my significant other? Is there a problem? I’m earning my own money,” instead you just raise your hands in the air and you deflect it, and go, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

But you’re not actually dealing into, “Are you dealing with a control freak? Are you dealing with a spending problem you’ve got? Is it a lack of communication about your budget parameters?” You’re not going into the real stuff that helps us have good relationships at home as well as at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s one form of apologizing. It’s almost like we’ve got a taxonomy of apologies here…

Shira Miller
We do.

Pete Mockaitis
…is the avoidance apology, “I’m sorry.” Can you share with us some other flavors or categories and how they’re harmful?

Shira Miller
When you start apologizing for things that are out of your control. For example, “I’m sorry it’s raining,” “I’m sorry traffic is bad.” Unless you’re Mother Nature, you’re not controlling those factors. And when that’s the first thing out of your mouth, rather than acknowledging the person or what the subject is that you’re going to be meeting about, it takes away the focus of your interaction or the time.

Another work example is when you say, “I’m sorry to bother you,” because when you’re using that language, you are immediately setting up your conversation as an imposition. You’re saying that their time matters more than yours, whereas, you can shift the language to, instead, say, “Do you have a moment to talk about an important issue?” or, “Can I get your perspective on this project?” Those are words of ownership, and you deserve to have their time because it’s going to make everybody work smarter and better.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. So, in a raining environment, I’m imagining of an event coordinator. We’re having a lovely picnic in the park event, and it’s raining, and that’s genuinely disappointing for all of us who imagined a different kind of a scenario.

So, it’s intriguing because in that context, if you’re the event planner of this, you are disappointed that things have not gone the way you had hoped, and you recognize that they, too, in the crowd, are disappointed. It has not gone your way.

But to apologize for the rain, you’re right, it’s sort of nonsense, as you’ve said, in terms of, like, you did not make it rain. And yet, here we are experiencing some disappointment due to rain. So, what would be a superior linguistic substitution?

Shira Miller
What you can start out with is acknowledging your audience, the people in the group, “Thank you for your patience. We’re dealing with a rain situation but you guys are so resilient that we’re easily going to be able to take everything, move inside, and get on with our meeting, and have the best time yet.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny, as we’re talking about when it’s appropriate to apologize and not apologize, I’m sort of imagining the response following the “I’m sorry.” It’s as if the response “I forgive you” is nonsense, then maybe it’s probably not right to apologize in that moment, like, “I’m sorry it’s raining.” “Hey, I forgive you, Shira, for making it rain.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Point taken. It doesn’t really make sense here.”

And that’s a whole other conversation but in terms of “I forgive you.” It’s funny, with my wife, I like to hear that. She does not like to hear that because it feels like, if I say, “I forgive you,” I’m acknowledging, “Yes, in fact, you have wronged me,” and she would prefer a “No big deal,” or, “That’s okay.” But I like “I forgive you” because I know I screwed up, and to hear that I’ve been released of any debt or burden or obligation or ill will associated with that error feels nice to me.

Shira Miller
And it sounds like you are very clear on your linguistic choices and hers in feeling acknowledged in a conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Well, it’s funny, now that we’re talking about romance, I recall, one time, I was driving home to visit my mom and dad, and I had my girlfriend at the time in the car. And so, I was driving, and she wanted to text them to let them know how the timing was unfolding. And it was really interesting in the moment because she’s texting on my phone because I’m not texting and driving, and so she’s writing on behalf of me.

And so, she said, “Okay, I’ll text them right now. I’m saying, ‘Oh, sorry, it looks like we’re going to get there in about 4:30.’” And I remember saying, “Hmm, can we delete the sorry?” And she’s like, “What? Why?” And we had a whole conversation. This is, like, the only time I’ve talked in depth about the apology language prior to now.

And I thought, “Well, I don’t think that we’ve actually done anything wrong in terms of we have not communicated a specific timing expectation. We didn’t make any unwise choices and it just feels out of place.” I wasn’t even thinking about harm. It just felt off to me intuitively.

Shira Miller
You’ve got a great intuitive meter because, yeah, when you start with a sorry and you’ve done nothing wrong, there was no established arrival time, then it might set it up for another apology when you show up, where you were bringing your girlfriend home. Your family was probably delighted to meet her, and it was a time for family togetherness and joy. There was no need for an apology.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Well, tell us, if we do need to interrupt somebody, that’s one time I think of sorrys happening. It seems kind of appropriate to me to apologize for interrupting, even though the thing needs to be communicated immediately. What’s your hot take there?

Shira Miller
I think you can do that in a couple different ways and a lot of it depends on your tone. If someone is starting to go in detail then you know it needs to be corrected or added on. It can be, “Emily, I love your point. And can I please add one more thing to your message?” When you kind of pop in and you make it fun, acknowledging the person who’s speaking, that’s a way to do it.

Or, you could say, “Hey, pardon my interruption for just a second. I got to add something to your message right now,” or, “Here’s my clarifying point.” When you start it that way, as long as you don’t take away from the messages that are being communicated by the person who’s got the floor.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. I’m also thinking that if you’re apologizing frequently, that sends a message, maybe like in a negotiation context, and many contexts are really negotiation contexts under the surface, “I want something. You want something. And so, here we are in conversation.” Kwame Christian is a friend of mine. He hosts the podcast Negotiate Anything, and he’s wonderful. He’s a former guest.

And he said, “A negotiation is conversation which somebody wants something.” And so, I think in that definition, a person who apologizes frequently, I get the impression as a counterparty to that negotiation, and I try not to abuse this. I get the impression that if I’m a little bit more assertive, I’m likely to gain concessions because of their discomfort, because I know I’m a people-pleaser, too.

It’s like, “Oh, this person is kind of like me. So, if I let them know that I have an expectation or I’m a little bit unhappy with the thing,” which I am, honestly, I’m not, like, faking it to game the negotiation, “then I have a higher probability of receiving consideration from them,” as oppose to a stone-cold negotiator, like, “I don’t care if you don’t like it. This is what I can do.”

Shira Miller
Well, what you’re doing is recognizing an opportunity, because when someone starts with an apology speak, they don’t feel solid in their position. There’s some sort of weakness. They don’t feel confident. That’s what it’s saying. Even if they are the most brilliant person in the room, because of their language, they’re not coming across that way. So, when you’re talking about the example of a negotiation, you’re just being a smart negotiator spotting an opportunity that you will leverage to have a better deal.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And it’s funny, I was just in a negotiating conversation yesterday, I almost said I’m sorry. She asked, “What’s the price?” I said, “$12,000.00” She said, “Can you do 10?” And I said, “I respect and appreciate you asking but I cannot.”

Shira Miller
Beautiful. You had no sorry in it, right? You just said no.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it was almost there, though. It was close. Cool. Well, so tell us, you’ve got a system, five ways to break the cycle of unnecessary apologies. Lay them on us.

Shira Miller
Well, you are so brilliant. You already started going into this. So, the first step, Pete, is to determine if an apology is necessary, and sometimes it is. If you have actually done something wrong, we went through several examples earlier, issue a genuine apology. And I’m going to give you a non-work example here but it’s just a really public one that we all know of.

If you think about the Academy Awards, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, he needed to issue an apology, and he didn’t issue one right away to Chris Rock. He apologized to his family and the world but it took him a while. Now, Chris Rock didn’t accept the apology. That was his prerogative, he didn’t have to. But Smith absolutely had to apologize. He did something wrong.

But when you don’t, when you’ve done nothing wrong, reserve your apologies for when they actually matter. Because if you’re the constantly-saying-you’re-sorry person in your language, it diffuses it when you actually have done something wrong and need to make an apology. So, that is step one.

Step two is to pay attention, and this is a really quick homework assignment for anybody who’s listening that wants to immediately change a situation. Start writing down, it could be a hash mark, it could be the details. Every time you find yourself over the next three or four days making an unnecessary apology.

Like, let’s say that you’re at the grocery store, you’re minding your own business pushing your cart, someone else is playing on their phone, they’re not paying attention, they run into you and your cart, and you look at them, and go, “Oh, hey, I’m sorry.” You didn’t do anything wrong. So, just note all of that and look at the end, three or four days, if you’re trying to be real A student, do it for a week to really find out, and then start tallying it up.

If you’ve done it a couple times, that’s one thing. Maybe it’s in the dozens, this is a real problem. So, start to find the connection points. Is there a common denominator? Is there a director at work who’s really difficult and he prompts that situation whenever you’re in a meeting? Or maybe it’s your mother-in-law. I’m not even trying to go to vaudeville jokes here, but it might be a frenemy.

It could be somebody like that. You find yourself constantly apologizing when you’re with that person, they’re the trigger. And when you understand it by paying attention, you can plan ahead not to apologize and choose other words instead.

Shira Miller
The third step is to reframe your words. So, think about what you’re actually trying to communicate with an apology. Often, the intention is to connect with another person. Maybe you’re trying to express sympathy or empathy. Make the sentiment the focus of your words. So, let’s say you’re running late for a meeting.

Instead of running in the room, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I was late,” and constantly talking about it and why and the parking garage was a mess, just focus on “Thank you for your patience. I’m so excited to dig into this presentation today,” and then get into the meeting. You’ve acknowledged the people for their graciousness, and then you move on. So, it’s a point of connection, and reframing your words to actually fit the sentiment.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Shira, if I can pause there for a moment.

Shira Miller
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, in that context, it seems like it may very well be appropriate that as a person who is late, you have, indeed, I don’t want to be dramatic, but you have harmed people. You have harmed people by your tardiness, and I mean, it’s not life or death, but, yeah, it is an inconvenience, a distraction of time has unfolded as a result of your tardiness.

And so, “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem out of place to me. Now going on about the parking garage, of course, burns more time, which is so that’s worse than make it snappy. But what’s your take on that one?

Shira Miller
I think that’s a great question, Pete. If you are really late, if you’re 15, 20 minutes late, yeah, you need to apologize. I’m talking if you’re a couple of minutes late – the elevator was slow, the parking garage was a problem. If you’re one or two minutes late, okay. If you do know, though, this is knowing your audience, let’s say that you’re talking to some prospective clients, and time management is really big on their list of priorities, yeah, you do go into that and say, “I’m sorry I was a couple of minutes late. I appreciate your flexibility and your patience. Let’s get right into this.” That’s knowing your audience.

But it’s the dramatic, “Oh, my gosh, I was late, and here’s why. And my kid was sick this morning and traffic was horrible.” People don’t want that verbal vomit with the sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Next step?

Shira Miller
Next step is something I call claiming your accomplishments. And so, think about one thing that you were great at. So, before you start your day each morning, take a minute to think about your one good thing, and how that quality or skill makes you feel.

Does it make you feel happy? Proud? I want you to say it out loud and express your gratitude. Because when you start your day by thinking about your best quality or skill, that helps you unlock your full potential. It helps with the feelings of impostor syndrome, the feeling you’re not good enough, and it strengthens your confidence muscles so that you’re not delving into the state of over-apologizing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Shira Miller
Final step there is to set boundaries, and start from a place of confidence. Think about the good work that you do and the value that you offer. You don’t need to over-prove yourself all of the time. Say no when it’s a project that you simply don’t have time to handle. It’s all in the delivery. If it’s an opportunity that you’re not interested in, when you say no to others, you can say yes to yourself more often. So, setting boundaries will also help you stop over-apologizing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Beautiful. And can we dig into a little bit of, I suppose, the underlying foundational psychological thing in terms of if we really do view ourselves as less than, inferior, dumb, not worthy of whatever, we’re impostors, do you have any…you mentioned claiming your accomplishments, which is phenomenal. Can we expand upon approaches by which we develop this inner strength and confidence?

Shira Miller
I’ve got two things for you here. So, the first is a lot of the self-doubt comes from your inner saboteur, and that is the internal voice in your head that is talking trash about you to yourself, so it’s negative self-talk. And it might’ve started years ago when you were trying to protect yourself, “Oh, don’t get on that slide. You might get hurt,” when you were a kid, or, “Don’t raise your hand in class. You might sound stupid.” So, it might’ve started young. But when you’re doing it as a conscious adult, it’s holding you back.

So, when you start to hear that critical voice in your head, and part of you knows that it’s completely off base but it’s just an old habit, that’s what a negative self-talk is, just like apology speak, you can actually talk back to the self-talk. You can say, whether it’s an out-loud conversation, as long as there aren’t a lot of people around thinking that you’re going off into a crazy spiral, but you could say, “Thank you but I’m done now. I don’t need that protection. What you’re saying, I’ve outgrown it. It’s actually incorrect.”

You could write yourself a letter. You could journal about it. That is a tool to try to deal with negative self-talk. Another tool that I’ve created is something called a reverse bucket list. And you know the concept of a bucket list, things you want to do, aspirations, before you die, before you kick the bucket. In this case, I ask people to take 10 minutes and write down a list of everything you’ve accomplished, and I want as many things as you can think of.

Did you put yourself through college? Did you end a cycle of family addiction? Did you get promoted in your first job after two years? Are you the first female director in your organization? Everything. List it. And then once you take the time to write that down in 10 minutes, go back and read it because what you’ve done is created evidence, proof of your capabilities, of your resilience, and you can take that list out, that reverse bucket list anytime you’re not feeling confident. It’s an instant trick that will help build your confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, Shira, I did, in fact, create a list like this in college. I was being rejected for a lot of things, and I was sad. And it was very helpful because self-doubt really did creep in, I was like, “Oh, maybe I’m really not that smart or capable, in general. Geez, everyone keeps rejecting me for these cool opportunities and things I’m applying for.”

And so, I made a big old list, and I referred to it, and it was quite handy. I went to it often. But now I’m thinking back to a conversation we had with Victor Cheng in episode 500 about developing unshakeable self-confidence. I’m curious about our underlying foundation, and we’re getting real philosophical here, Shira.

Shira Miller
Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of it’s not ideal to pin our sense of value and worth to accomplishments, although it can be handy in a particular context if you think, “I’m no good at this,” like, “Hey, here’s the evidence. You’re pretty good at this.” But even at a deeper level in terms of, like, your general sense of goodness, worthiness, capability, do you have any thoughts on that?

Shira Miller
Yes, and I think that’s a very powerful message. The tool I just talked about is great if you’re not feeling confident in a work situation, or, honestly, a personal situation. You can just change the attitude, the mood, the mentality but you really do need to go deeper. The most important relationship that you have in this world is with yourself. And you need to have an innate self of your worth. You need to be able to trust yourself, and it’s deeper.

And so, I’ve done a lot of work on that over the years through journaling, therapy. Some people work with a professional coach such as yourself. Those are some wonderful ways in which you can build stronger, deeper, unshakeable confidence that will bolster you no matter what you face in your life. It is a deeper journey on the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, this is a lot of cool stuff, Shira. Could you tell us a fun story of someone who stopped their over-apologizing ways and what kind of impact that made for them?

Shira Miller
So, the first person coming to my mind is a friend who was a partner in a $500 million consulting company. Very successful. She was raised in a hard situation, grew up in a double-wide trailer in Alabama, her parents constantly put her down, so she felt like she always had something to over-prove, and didn’t feel like she deserved a seat at the table, ended up putting herself through to good schools, worked for some of the biggest companies in the country, but she always found herself apologizing.

And even as recently as about a year ago, and, again, she’s a partner, she’s a board member at this $500 million company, when the CEO was talking to her one day about a co-worker who wasn’t performing, what did she say? “I’m sorry.” She kept apologizing because a co-worker wasn’t performing. She did nothing wrong. The CEO was consulting with her to try to get a solution, and that was her first indication, “Oh, I really have a problem.”

And so, when she realized this, we started talking about it. She knew that I could offer her some tips, and she started the exercise I said about actually writing it down when you’re doing it. Her name is Cindy. I know she’s not going to care if I use her name. Cindy wrote it down and realized that the list was pretty high, especially for somebody who has such tremendous accomplishments.

So, for her, it was gaining the awareness. And whenever she found herself in conversations that would normally trigger it or with people, she came in there armed and ready to stand more in her power than apologizing for somebody else not delivering work or a situation she had no control over.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then what happened?

Shira Miller
Oh, gosh, I’ll tell you what. It did great for her well-being. She finds herself just really, and this is a woman who is in her 50s, so you can change this at any time in your career. I just want to be really clear about that. It decreased her stress at work.

She realized, “The whole problems of this company and the world are not on my own shoulders. I don’t need to take that on. I don’t need to say ‘I’m sorry for that.’ I can listen. I can be empathetic to it, but, really, people want me to talk more about positive solutions, and I’ll take ownership of a problem that’s not mine.” So, it’s greater well-being and less stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Fantastic. Well, Shira, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Shira Miller
I just want you to know that you can stop over-apologizing at any time. I did. When I was about 46 years old, there were a whole bunch of circumstances that happened that just made me realize, “I’m done with this BS. I’m not going to sit there and apologize for things when I did nothing wrong anymore.” And it was such a sense of empowerment and ownership, and you can start immediately.

You can practice. Go into one situation that you know, that normally triggers over-apologizing, and don’t do it, and see what happens. See what happens in the room with everybody else, and see how you feel about yourself. It’s going to be a big confidence boost and I bet that it’s going to help you own your greatness even more at work.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Shira Miller
So, this is from Albert Einstein, and he said, “Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.”

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

Shira Miller
Gallup does some wonderful research on workplace wellbeing. And what I love is that they have shown that when employees prioritize their physical and their psychological wellness, your overall well-being, and whether that’s through exercise, having good conversations, engaging in things that align with your values, you’re going to have better job satisfaction, your wellness is going to be better, your actual health, you think smarter. So, I love that people realize, and studies like this that well-being at work is really critical to your performance and the overall success of the company.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Shira Miller
It’s called Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success. This book came out like eight or nine years ago, but I constantly go back to it because it has so many helpful tips.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, Brad Stulberg was on the show talking about that, and it is fantastic. And a favorite tool?

Shira Miller
I have become obsessed with ChatGPT. I do a lot of writing, I have to do a lot of research at work, and it can’t create original content well, but whenever I’m trying to dig into a topic and get more insights, it’s a wonderful tool to just go deeper and give me different perspectives, insights, research. It has saved me so much time. I love it.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us an example or prompt that has made all the difference for you?

Shira Miller
Yes. So, recently, I’ve been developing a new keynote that is about activating the remarkable and it’s harnessing the power of optimism in the workplace. So, I wanted to go in and I wanted to get examples of companies that had really inspiring value-based purpose statements because that’s one of the ways in which you activate the remarkable. You help people reignite the why, find their purpose.

And so, I went in, it gave me a bunch of examples. And then I said, “Drill down even further and I want you to have companies that did well in 2024,” because I wanted profitable companies. And so, it came back and, for example, Airbnb is high on the list, Netflix, Moderna. And so, I was able to go ahead and get those examples rather than spend hours and hours of research just by using ChatGPT, the paid version.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. So, you said, “Hey, give me an example of someone at Moderna who did this thing.”

Shira Miller
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
That is a great use case there in terms of I think you said it just right. I don’t trust its words to be good but I do trust it to surface swell things faster than Google and with more specificity. I like Perplexity for this as well. So, right on. And favorite habit as well, could we hear that?

Shira Miller
I am one of those early morning exercisers. I did not start that way. I was not a morning person 30 years ago, but that is how I get my magic and how I start the day doing something completely for myself. So, I work out almost every day before I get the day started. And it just gives me energy and optimism and makes everything go smoother.

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

Shira Miller
No matter where you find yourself in life, I don’t care how old you are, what your circumstances are, you can get unstuck. You can start today. You can start now.

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

Shira Miller
I would say follow me on LinkedIn. It’s Shira Miller. I’d love to have you there. I always post new content. I’ve got a newsletter. I’ve got videos and a lot of helpful content that I’d love to share.

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

Shira Miller
If you want to be awesome at your jobs, I want you to own your greatness, and you can start immediately by stop apologizing when you’ve done nothing wrong. We’ve given you the tools today. Pick one step. Start to do it, and you’re going to be amazed at how your confidence soars.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Shira, thank you.

Shira Miller
Thank you. This has been wonderful.