How to handle big feelings at work with Ethan Kross

Summary

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Fixable: How to Handle Big Feelings at Work with Ethan Kross

Podcast: Fixable
Episode: How to Handle Big Feelings at Work with Ethan Kross
Host(s): Anne Morriss & Frances Frei
Guest: Ethan Kross, Professor, Author, and Director of the Emotion & Self-Control Lab, University of Michigan
Release Date: July 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the emotional challenges people face at work—especially amid constant change and uncertainty in 2026. Anne Morriss and Frances Frei are joined by renowned emotion researcher Ethan Kross to explore practical strategies for managing "big feelings" at work. The conversation tackles common workplace truisms about emotions, debunks some myths, and sheds light on science-backed tools to help leaders and employees thrive emotionally and psychologically.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

The Modern Landscape of Workplace Emotions

• Profound Shifts: The world of work is in a state of flux due to advancements in AI, geopolitics, and economic changes. This brings unprecedented emotional challenges (01:28–02:10).
• Workplaces Unprepared: Traditional workplaces aren’t well equipped to help people manage overwhelming, persistent emotions (02:15–02:29).

Ethan Kross’ Approach to Emotions & Self-Control

• Emotions Are Not the Enemy: Emotions evolved for a reason—they’re functional in the right dose and duration (05:33–06:41).
• Finding the “Sweet Spot”: Both positive and negative emotions have an optimal range. The trick is to avoid letting emotions get too intense or linger too long (05:33–06:41).

Tool: Mental Time Travel (Temporal Distancing)

• What Is It?: A cognitive tool to help regulate emotions by imagining how you’ll feel about a situation in the future or reflecting on the past (07:10–08:42).

• How It Works: When caught in a moment of distress, ask yourself how you’ll feel about it next week, next year, or five years from now.

  • Quote: "You jump into your mental time travel machine and you ask yourself, how are you going to feel about this tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now? ... It’s such a simple reframing tool, but it taps into something, this common wisdom we possess."
    — Ethan Kross (07:10)

• Multiple Applications: Time travel is not just for emotional regulation—reflection, savoring, fantasizing the future, and distilling lessons from past mistakes all depend on it (10:48–12:17).

• Presence vs. Time Travel: While mindfulness and being present have value, so does constructive mental time travel (09:08–10:17).

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

1. “Always Be Present”

• Reframe: Sometimes it’s healthy and productive to think beyond the present moment (08:42–10:17).

2. “Always Be Positive”

• Value of Negative Emotions: Negative emotions like anxiety serve a purpose—alerting us to prepare for important events. The goal is proportion, not total elimination (15:44–17:21).
  • Quote: "Anxiety is an emotion we experience when there’s something looming on the horizon. ... It hooks us, it zooms us in on that thing we’re thinking about to help us prepare for it. I don’t want to give up that capacity."
    — Ethan Kross (16:22)

3. “Always Confront the Problem”

• Balance Over Absolutes: Chronic avoidance is unhealthy, but selective, temporary avoidance can help. Allow time for emotions to cool before tackling difficult issues again (18:41–21:09).
  • Quote: "We don’t just have this on or off switch ... we can take our attention away from something for a prescribed period of time and then come back to it later. ... That is a useful tool."
    — Ethan Kross (20:10)

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Practical Applications in the Workplace

Managing Overwhelm & Burnout (24:38–29:00)

• Structural vs. Personal: Address the objective demands (workload, pace) while also mentally creating psychological breaks (26:51–27:41).
• Sabbath as Historical Remedy: Citing the Sabbath as a long-standing tool for recovery, underscoring the need for deliberate rest.
• Psychological Breaks: Integrate mini-breaks and moments to savor accomplishments to combat ongoing overload.

Facing Massive Change (AI as Example) (27:41–32:10)

• Threat vs. Challenge Mindset:
  • Threat Appraisal: “What’s required of me? Can I do it?” Answering “no” creates anxiety.
  • Challenge Appraisal: Remind yourself of past accomplishments and skills to approach new demands with confidence.
  • Self-talk in the Third Person: Use your name or “you”—“Ethan, what are you doing? You’ve got this.”—to coach yourself out of threat mode (31:11–32:10).
  • Quote: "I will talk to myself using my own name. That’s distance self-talk." — Ethan Kross (31:11)

Coaching Others through Big Emotions (33:14–35:54)

• Two-Step Blueprint:
  1. Empathic Connection: Listen and show you care first.
  2. Broadening Perspective: Once trust is established, help the other person zoom out and reframe the situation.
  • Quote: “Most people already have access to the solutions. They just need to see them.” — Ethan Kross (35:51)

Cultivating Excitement, Wonder, and Possibility (36:33–40:20)

• Promotion & Prevention Orientation: Great teams and leaders balance motivational “go for it” energy with careful, prevention-focused attention to detail.
• Psychological Safety: Managers must model openness to risk and create safety for others to take risks without fear (38:27–40:20).
  • Quote: “You do not get that if you are constantly in fear mode. ... You give people a sense of grace, a sense of safety and security and opportunities to take some risks. That’s a good place to start.” — Ethan Kross (39:33)

Navigating Uncertainty and Instability (41:46–45:00)

• Tolerating Uncertainty: Leaders help teams by normalizing uncertainty and teaching strategies for handling it, rather than promising false security (42:32–44:35).

  • Quote: "Uncertainty and a lack of control are igniters of doom looping in the head of worry and rumination. One of the most valuable gifts you can give people is to help them tolerate uncertainty." — Ethan Kross (42:32)

• The Power of Narrative: Leaders and individuals can shape their own and their team’s story, providing agency and motivation.

  • Quote: "The mind is a storytelling machine. You can change the story." — Ethan Kross (44:51; callback to intro at 00:43)

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Most Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Time Travel and Emotion:
  “If we say to ourselves, we always have to be in the moment, we are depriving ourselves of the richness of those different kinds of experiences that come from being able to go back and forward in time.” — Ethan Kross (12:13)

• On Parental Triggers:
  “With parents ... they can do things that send me bonkers. Reframing is very powerful. Looking at that big picture, I think there are lots of people who frame it in negative terms. There may be value in that.” — Ethan Kross (17:35)

• On Big Picture Leadership:
  “If I don’t lick these envelopes, they can’t do the research. And if they can’t do the research, the people they’re trying to help cannot benefit.”
  — Ethan Kross (46:35)

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Actionable Takeaways

Tools & Practices

• Mental Time Travel: Use future- and past-oriented thinking to defuse emotional storms and gain perspective (07:10, 47:05).
• Challenge Mindset: When new responsibilities or anxieties arise, reframe them as opportunities to grow by recalling past resilience (28:22–32:10).
• Distant Self-Talk: Coach yourself through difficult moments by using your own name or “you” in internal dialogue.
• Structured & Mental Breaks: Deliberately schedule moments of pause, celebration, and decompression.
• Empathize & Broaden for Others: First listen carefully, then help others look at broader perspectives and previous experiences.
• Model and Foster Psychological Safety: Leaders can lower team anxiety and increase creativity by framing failures as learning opportunities, not disasters.

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Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |---------|-------|-----------| | Opening Theme | The rise of big feelings at work | 01:28–02:29 | | Guest Introduction | Ethan Kross’ work on emotion and self-control | 03:18–03:40 | | Challenging “Let Every Feeling Happen” | Discussion of Rilke quote and finding the sweet spot with emotions | 05:33–07:10 | | The Value of Mental Time Travel | Future and past focus as an emotion tool | 07:10–13:10 | | Rethinking Presence | Balancing mindfulness and time travel | 08:42–10:17 | | The Power of Negative Emotions | “Always Be Positive” myth busted | 15:44–17:21 | | Approaching vs Avoiding Problems | Why selective avoidance isn’t always bad | 18:41–21:09 | | Managing Overwhelm & Burnout | Structural and psychological solutions | 24:38–27:41 | | Shifting from Threat to Challenge | How to reframe anxiety about AI/changes | 28:22–32:10 | | Coaching Others through Change | Two-step empathic model | 33:14–35:54 | | Building Excitement & Psychological Safety | Leadership tactics for possibility and safety | 36:33–40:20 | | Tolerating Uncertainty | How leaders and teams can handle ongoing instability | 41:46–45:00 | | Pep Talk & Practical Tools | Motivating yourself and action steps | 45:47–47:33 |

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Final Words

• One thing to try tomorrow:
  “Learn about the tools that are out there and commit to trying them out. … We talked about mental time travel. Start mental time traveling. … How are you going to feel down the road? Go back in time and think about getting through something harder.”
  — Ethan Kross (47:05)

• Personal Fixation:
  Ethan's focus after the interview? Buying mulch and fixing his garden—grounding himself with a tangible, immediate task. (47:43–48:19)

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Episode Tone

Conversational, practical, insightful, and often humorous—balancing academic rigor with real-life anecdotes and a sense of hope. The hosts and guest engage in playful banter while delivering clear, actionable science.

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This episode is a must-listen for leaders, employees, and anyone grappling with the emotional complexity of modern work. For more insights, follow Anne and Frances on social media, or contact the Fixable hotline for workplace questions.

Transcript

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[Ethan Cross]

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[Ethan Cross]

on Monday.com the mind is a storytelling machine. You can change the story. I had a colleague who is about to enter into a pretty high stakes negotiation and he was spinning and I literally just said change the story. Like you control the story and tell yourself a different story. It puts you in an entirely different position.

[Anne Morris]

Welcome to Fixable, a show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they are not. I'm Anne Morris.

[Frances Frey]

And I'm Frances Frey.

[Anne Morris]

Frances, we have been talking a lot about how people in the workplace are managing in this period of profound change. AI geopolitics economic shifts, if not shocks on a regular basis. Companies and whole industries seem to be shape shifting around these big forces that feel very much outside of our control.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah, and I don't think we're imagining it. I really think there is a lot

[Anne Morris]

going on and from a leadership perspective, which we think a lot about, these shifts present very tactical and strategic challenges and opportunities, but also emotional ones.

[Frances Frey]

We are all having such big emotions,

[Anne Morris]

lots of big feelings at work, which is true. And the scale of these feelings feel new, at least in my lifetime. And most workplaces aren't really built for them.

[Frances Frey]

You know, I felt something a little bit similar during COVID but that at this point feels contained compared to what we're going through.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, I don't feel like we were like looking into the void of our species survival, which is now just a casual part of the conversation. So for instance, today we want to try to make some progress on how to deal with some of these feelings at work. Our guest today is someone who has gone deep over decades studying how people manage their emotions in a very practical way. What works and what doesn't when we get hijacked by our feelings? We are talking about Ethan Cross Ethan is a professor in the University of Michigan's psychology department and the Ross School of Business.

[Podcast Narrator/Ad Voice]

He's a.

[Anne Morris]

He's the director of the iconically named Emotion and Self Control Lab. Ethan's research examines how people can control their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to improve their lives. He's also the bestselling author of the Voice in Our why It Matters and How to Harness it and Shift managing your emotions so they don't manage you.

[Frances Frey]

I can't wait to learn. I have pens, papers, color coding, sticky notes. I want all of it. I want all of it.

[Anne Morris]

Oh, our two teenage boys are going to benefit very much from this conversation. Very much. Ethan Cross, welcome to Fixable.

[Ethan Cross]

Thanks for having me. It's a delight to be here.

[Anne Morris]

We're very excited to have you on the show today. You seem very cool. How do you react to that premise?

[Ethan Cross]

Oh, I like it. My immediate reaction is, my God, why weren't my daughters here to hear that? That would have been so amazing.

[Anne Morris]

So what we want to do today is go deep on a few of the big emotions that people are feeling at work in 2026. Before we get there, we want to establish your point of view on emotions and self control, which we find incredibly compelling and practical. So let me start with this moment of self awareness. So we have a big family bulletin board. When you walk into our kitchen, we have some quotes up there. It's inspirational quotes, mainly for me, but we try to use them to influence our children's discretionary behavior. And I looked at one today and I thought, oh, I'm not sure Ethan is going to agree with this one. Okay, so I want to get your reaction. So this is the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's advice, I think, to his younger self in his, like, letters to a young poet. Let everything happen to you. Colon. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. So, Ethan, should we be letting every emotion happen to us?

[Ethan Cross]

So I don't disagree with that quote it in the sense that I am of the belief that. Listen, we evolve to experience emotions for a reason. They help us with a big giant asterisk. They help us when they're experienced in the right proportions, which is to say they're not experienced too intensely or not intensely enough. And they don't last too long or dissipate too shortly. So there's a sweet spot for all of our emotional experiences, and that's a gift. The big giant question is, how do you find that sweet spot for not only the positive moments in our lives, but also the negative ones. And I think that's where a lot of people struggle. I actually think that that messaging and so the poet. It's not surprising to me that you have that quote hanging in your home because, my God, is it liberating to recognize that, hey, if you're experiencing something negative at times, welcome to the human condition, my friend. We all do. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, I want to get at some of your resistance to conventional wisdom because I think that's also a really interesting way into your work. But the thing about the quote that I find liberating is exactly what you underlined. So it's also permission to spend less time resisting, particularly the terror side of the spectrum, and just say, yes, this is part of what it means to be alive and a human being. And then the reminder that this stuff is mostly temporary.

[Ethan Cross]

There's a tool that I'm very fond of. It is called. The technical name is temporal distancing. The more roll off your tongue way of describing it is mental time travel into the future. This is such an easy science based tool based on tons of research. When you're in a funk, when the terror cloud, the doomsday scenario, you name it, everyone has their own phrase to describe how it feels when it descends over you. You jump into your mental time travel machine and you ask yourself, how are you going to feel about this tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now? It is such a simple reframing tool, but it taps into something, this common wisdom that we all possess, which is the following. We have lived through millions of emotional experiences in our lives, and that's not an exaggeration. We're experiencing emotions throughout the day, every day. Millions of those experiences, they all have the same time course. You're living life, something happens, it triggers you. And then as time goes on, the emotions eventually fade. You know that to be true. I don't need to convince you of that because you have experienced it millions of times. But we forget it when we're in the heat of the moment. And that's where a quote like the one you put on your bulletin board can make all the difference. It's when knowing how to time travel into the future and making a commitment to do that when you struggle can make a difference.

[Anne Morris]

I love it. As a contrast to the conventional wisdom that you just referenced, which is also always be present. Like our job is to really be present in all of these moments in our lives. And the real threat to whatever we've come for Is this. I mean, time travel is often presented in kind of a pseudo Buddhist conversation as the enemy of what we're all doing here. And you're telling us to do it, Ethan.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah, do it. Do it. Embrace it. Like, I'm not giving up my ability to time travel in my head. And I don't encourage you to either. There are a couple of reasons for that. So first off, I want to be very clear. I think there is enormous value in being able to refocus on the present. Focus on your breath, meditate, be mindful when you're descending into a spell of rumination about the past or worry about the future. That's one solution. But it is one. There are multiple ways to engage with your inner chatter, if you will, to extricate yourself out of it. So now that we've gotten that caveat out of the way, why do I think mental time travel is such an amazing gift of the human condition? Well, let's think about that for a second. What value comes from being able to go back in time in your head? I'm going to guess that the two of you, we don't know each other very well. We're rapidly getting to know each other. But I'm going to guess you have screwed up in your life many times over. Is that a fair assumption, Francis?

[Anne Morris]

I'll let you answer today.

[Ethan Cross]

Today.

[Anne Morris]

Many times today.

[Ethan Cross]

Fair to say that you have managed, like me, to find new ways to screw up each and every day. But you've gotten better at not screwing up the same way over and over. Because after the screw up, you jump into your mental time travel machine. You go back in time, you think, what just happened? Why did that happen? And you learn from the experience to get better.

[Frances Frey]

The power of reflection, which I had never thought of as mental time travel, but of course it is.

[Ethan Cross]

That is mental time travel. Here's another mental time travel benefit. It's called savoring. I'm going to give you a trigger warning here. This is going to sound corny, but it is absolutely the truth.

[Anne Morris]

We started with poetry, Ethan.

[Adam Grant]

It's.

[Ethan Cross]

It's all good.

[Anne Morris]

The bar is high.

[Ethan Cross]

It's all good. Okay. Okay. I stumbled on an. An unbelievable sleeping aid when my first daughter was born. I would just close my eyes and I think about what she had done earlier that day or a couple of days ago, and it would just, like, wash over me with positivity and, like, lull me to sleep. I will add, she is now a teenager and that process no longer applies any longer.

[Anne Morris]

You gotta go Back a couple more days.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah, a couple more years. Maybe over a decade. But we digress. Before I get myself in big trouble, what I'm doing there is. I'm savoring, I'm going back in time. I'm thinking about the amazing. Like just yesterday, I was riffing with a colleague. You know, we were in flow together on ideas. It was great. I savor that experience. That's mental time travel into the past. We also use mental time travel to fantasize. And you know, people. Whenever I use that term, fantasize in a professional context, people get very uncomfortable. It doesn't have to mean naughty things. Right?

[Anne Morris]

Right.

[Ethan Cross]

I'm fantasizing about what I'm gonna have for dinner later tonight. Truly, I'm very hungry right now. I'm thinking about the next vacation we're gonna take. All of that is mental time travel, right? So if we say to ourselves, we always have to be in the moment, we are depriving ourselves of the richness of those different kinds of experiences that come from being able to go back and forward in time. And I'll say one more thing and I'll throw it back to you. We talked about how you could harness this capacity to help you manage your emotions by traveling into the future. You can also benefit emotionally by traveling into the past when you're struggling, when life feels really heavy. And sometimes it does. You used a great term, Anne, before. Do you remember what it was?

[Anne Morris]

I mean, I think it was Rilke. Beauty and terror as the spectrum of human emotion.

[Ethan Cross]

Terror. That was a good one. That's evocative. When terror descends and. Yeah, it does for all of us. At times I jump into my mental time travel machine and I go back to 40s, eastern Poland, which was where my grandparents were living when the Nazis invaded. They slaughtered their families. My grandparents were homeless for years. Day to day, they would try to find a new hiding place, not knowing if someone would kill them. Ultimately made it out. I will tell you, when I engage in that mental time travel experience and I hang out with them in the frozen Polish woods for a couple of minutes in my head, my God, does that help put in perspective what I'm going through right now? Right. That's another way of broadening. And I like to tell people, you do not need to have Holocaust surviving grandparents to benefit from that tool. We've all experienced moments or know people who have that you can anchor on to similar benefit. So it's about harnessing this capacity of the mind, not shutting it down.

[Frances Frey]

I have a question let's say it's a day where I don't have a lot of emotional spikes. How much time travel would you expect to happen in that day?

[Ethan Cross]

Well, you know, you might be time traveling just to brainstorm and think about what could be in the future. Right. You don't have to be time traveling to always be regulating your emotions. Time travel is a multi purpose tool. It serves many different functions. What I feel really compelled to do as a scholar and translator of science here in this space is we know a lot about specific tools that people can use when they're struggling to help them get back on track. But we don't share those tools with folks. And so you want to have these at your disposal to use when you need them. But it's akin to, if we use the metaphor of tools like, you know, you could walk around with a hammer and you may have occasion to use it once or twice during the day or the week, but you don't want to haphazardly be swinging that hammer all over the place. It would waste your energy and it might actually be unproductive.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

All right, Ethan, we're going to go after two more of these truisms that I think you might be a little bit suspicious of. Let's do Always be positive. Why is that not a great idea?

[Ethan Cross]

Seems great because negative emotions give us an edge. And I'll give you a couple examples that support that idea. One personal and one more general. I gave lots of presentations over the course of my career. I've done hundreds, maybe more. When I think back to the one presentation that really, really flopped from my point of view, it flopped because I experienced no anxiety, no jitters beforehand. As a result, there was no cue inside me that effectively said, hey dummy, why don't you go look at your notes before you go speak? Why don't you get them loaded up? Why don't you get a little energized? I just strolled right in. Oh, so what are we talking about today? You know, and just. It was not good. Anxiety is an emotion we experience when there's something looming on the horizon that is important. And what this very emotional response very skillfully does is it captures our attention, it hooks us, it zooms us in on that thing that we're thinking about to help us prepare for it. I don't want to give up that capacity. That's a really you useful tool. As long as it doesn't get too intense or last too long. All of our emotional negative experiences are functional in the right proportions. So again, I find this liberating. I find this like, I don't like feeling anxious, but I understand why I feel anxious at times and I have tools to rein it in.

[Frances Frey]

I have a question. Spending the summer with my mother and so I could just use a quick intervention here. Whenever I talk about something, she will find the cloudy lining. Will you help? That no longer bother me.

[Ethan Cross]

Well, look, we all have triggers and it's. I think when you deal with parents in particular and kids, all of the rules change. In fact, I was just doing an interview the other day and someone asked me how my kids, when they're dealing with something emotional, you know, how they respond to my genuine, heartfelt advice about how they might approach this. And of course, they roll their eyes and it's a sacred relationship that upends our psychological calculus in somewhat unpredictable ways. But with parents, and I've got two of those, that they can do things that send me bonkers. Reframing is very powerful. Looking at that big picture, I think there are lots of people who. Their characteristic way of making sense of things is to frame it in negative terms. There may be value in that.

[Frances Frey]

It's already helpful. Yeah. Thank you.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

All right, let's do the last one, which is always confront the problem. That's also conventional wisdom. That is in the ethos.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah, don't avoid it.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, don't avoid it.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah. Not true, just wrong. Fundamentally wrong.

[Anne Morris]

So reassuring.

[Podcast Narrator/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Ethan Cross]

Well, you know, whenever you hear these kinds of black and white rules, I think it's useful to kind of pause and really think, does this really make sense? There's such nuance that characterizes our experiences in the world. I have yet to come across a single one size fits all solution to help people navigate all of the. The curve balls that life throws at us. So here's the deal with what I would call avoidance or the flip side, confronting experiences. If you ask me, okay, is it good every time something bad happens to just have a decision rule that you are going to look the other way, do your best to suppress and repress that experience. And that's the only thing you do chronically. I would answer very confidently and say that is not healthy. There's lots of research which shows that chronic avoidance. So just perpetually trying to look away does not serve people well. However, that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because we don't just have this on or off switch when it comes to our attention. We also have the ability to. To be flexible with our attention. We can take our attention away from something for a prescribed period of time and then come back to it later. And it turns out, my God, is that a useful tool? Take time away and then come back. The reason why that is so useful is because while you're doing other stuff, this wonderful part of our metaphorical psychological immune system is operating on the problem. The component of our immune system that is operating is time. What did we talk about earlier? As time goes on, it takes the edge off of those experiences. So then you come back to it and you have more perspective. So you do not want to always zoom in and focus on the problem. There's a time and place for that, but there's also a time and place to be flexible.

[Anne Morris]

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[Anne Morris]

So we're going to move on to our kind of primary emotions in the workplace today. But let me ask, is a better quote for our family board that better represents your worldview? Is it the Viktor Frankl's famous between stimulus and response, there's a space, and in that space lies all of our power and freedom. If I may summarize, I'm butchering the message.

[Ethan Cross]

I like that one very much. I also like the poets. What that Frankl quote does is it. It gives us agency. It endows the. The reader of that quote with this understanding that you're not the victim of your circumstances. And, and that is a. Oh, my God, A powerful belief to take with you no matter where you are in your life, because it means you always have hope to think, feel, or behave otherwise. And that's an advantage I would want most people to have.

[Anne Morris]

All right, let's start with the feeling of overwhelmed. That can even tip into burnout. So many people are being asked to absorb so much change quickly at work. Right now. Two questions we're going to ask you on all of these is how do I manage this emotion for myself and when I am responsible for other humans as a team leader, how do I help the people around me manage these emotions?

[Ethan Cross]

Okay, so, you know, with burnout, there are two ways to think about this. There are of course, what we might call structural elements that contribute to burnout. And then there is the personal side of things. And so what I mean by that are like, there are conditions that are objective that can just make it really hard for you to not feel overweighted if you are continually piling on more duties, obligations for folks at work to fulfill without giving them any break. That's a surefire way of burning out even the most skilled operators. So I think it is important to like, let's take stock of the objective circumstance. You know, on this point, it was really interesting. This past weekend I was at a bar MITZVAH celebration for a friend's son. And the. The rabbi during that event talked about the Sabbath. And like, you know, I'm familiar with the Sabbath, but the way he framed it was historically. Like scholars, the thinkers of the time recognize that there is value to having a day away from the tumult of everyday life. The idea is that we've been dealing with burnout for a really, really long time. So, like, what are the structural features of the situation contributing to burnout, and are there things you can do on either end as an employee or as a boss to alleviate some of that tension? I think that's one question.

[Anne Morris]

Make structural space for recovery. Make it for yourself, and make it for other people.

[Ethan Cross]

Absolutely. And then, you know, the other piece is, how are you mentally engaging with the demands that you have? Are you building in psychological space between tasks and needs more? My to do list never ends, and if I just go from one to the next to the next to the next, I'm going to burn out. So instead, what I do is I build in, like, breaks, and I build in time for myself. Time to savor the accomplishment of finishing a really big job. And so thinking in those terms about how you can psychologically create those breaks in that space, you're operating on the same mechanism from different angles. And I think that's really important.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, great. Let me give you a very specific use case on this one that we are hearing a lot about, which a lot of people are feeling a lot of pressure from people they report to, or people who their bosses report to to level up very quickly on AI, even as their kind of day jobs, which are already hard, are getting harder. So there's this pressure to learn, and there's this pressure to continue to execute and excel. You have all of these magnificent tools. Do any of the tools in the Ethan Cross toolkit seem particularly useful for this mix of emotions?

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah, there's one that immediately comes to mind. The initial response that I often will have in those circumstances is it's what we'd call a threat response. So a threat appraisal is basically you're asking yourself two questions. You often do this automatically. What's required of me? And can I do it? And so if you scan and say, well, what do I have to do? Oh, I've got to learn this new programming language, and can I do that? No. If you ask like, okay, well, that elicits a threat response. Anxiety undermines performance, keeps you up at night, poor physical health outcomes, all documented, extensively studied. Here's the really cool Thing about appraisals, though, we can shift them and so you can look at the same set of circumstances and hey, can I do that? Well, I've done similar things before. Yeah, I can do it. And so if you ask yourself these two questions, what's required of me? And do I have the resources to deal with this? And you say, yes, I can, that elicits what we call a challenge orientation. So you go from a threat mindset to a challenge mindset. A challenge mindset predicts better performance, better subjective well being, better physical health. I will consciously flip the switch going from threat mode to challenge mode. In the situation that you're talking about. This is going to be an opportunity to learn. Like, all right, I can do this. It's going to be a little foreign. I'm going to screw up a few times, but I could build in a half hour each day. I mean, think about how much, like, my God, how much time do I waste each day doing stupid stuff like, I'm going to be Claude savant by the time I'm done, Right? So just taking yourself down the other pathway in terms of how you are mentally representing this situation, that is a game changer. If I think about moments in my life where I've been presented with options to stay the course or go in a different direction, that has the potential for real upside or maybe downside, I consistently go for the option where there's upside. Doesn't always work out. But on the whole, it's put me in a much better position than if I just listened to threat mode. So go from threat to challenge.

[Anne Morris]

I want to get Francis in on this, but I have one follow up question. So I want to get a sense of the texture of you coaching you on this one so you're confronted with this thing. You have the dropdown menu of threat or challenge. What does it look like to kind of choose this challenge path? Is there a voice in your head that's coaching you through this?

[Ethan Cross]

So I will talk to myself using my own name. That's distance, self talk. Ethan. Or sometimes I'll say you. Or even oddly, man, I'll just, what are you doing, man?

[Anne Morris]

Hey, man.

[Ethan Cross]

Hey, man. Yeah, not in the more masculine sense. Yeah, it's like a buddy in college or high school sense. And then I'll, Ethan, what are you doing? You know, look at the opportunity before you. You've got this. Why can't you do this? You've done this before. This person's done it. I will essentially start having a conversation with myself, like with one of my best friends or students or colleagues. When people come to me for advice, you know, I'm realistic. I don't tell people, yeah, you should like, you know, do something that is impossible. But if it's a reach and I think they're capable of doing it, I'm going to encourage them to do it and I'm going to give them reasons why. And that's what I do for myself.

[Anne Morris]

Are you saying these words out loud or is this an inner conversation you're having?

[Ethan Cross]

It is an inner conversation. If it's a really significant moment in life, if the stakes are really high, I will do that. And then I will layer on another tool, which is I will consult my advisory board, my chatter advisory board, people in my life who are skilled at connecting with me, empathically listening to what I'm dealing with, and then back and forthing with me to advise me through the circumstance. This is not, by the way, a Pollyanna esque exercise of always doing the thing that's impossible. There have been moments where I've engaged in this self reflective and I've communicated with other about this issue and made the choice. All right, maybe we shouldn't do that. But nine times out of 10, I take the risk and I'm grateful for

[Frances Frey]

it when you're coaching others to do it. So do I need to learn how to do it and then tell people from the first person or what do you recommend?

[Ethan Cross]

There's a scientific cheat sheet that I often give coaches, if you will, for how to steer conversations with others. There are two steps. The first step is you need to empathically connect. You need to listen and learn about what's happening and demonstrate to that individual that you've got their emotional back, so to speak. First and foremost, you are there as a trusted individual that they can confide in. Once you have learned about the scenario and that trust has been created, and if it's an ongoing relationship, you don't have to work very hard there, then you need to shift into zooming them out. Let's look at this bigger picture. Right? And you're in an ideal position to do that because you're not the one facing this decision. So you can be more objective. All right, Francis, so let's think about this situation with your mom that you were telling me about earlier. She's done this before, right?

[Frances Frey]

Very, very often.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah, yeah. So how have you dealt with this in the past? Have you succeeded ever?

[Frances Frey]

Never.

[Ethan Cross]

You've never succeeded. You told me, however, that there was this Michigan faculty member who in 60 seconds gave you a tip that made a difference. What do you think he would say about this?

[Frances Frey]

He would say that she is framing it in a way that helps her cope.

[Ethan Cross]

So does reminding yourself of that in this situation.

[Frances Frey]

Yeah, it'll help a lot.

[Ethan Cross]

Yeah. So you see like we're looking at the big picture there, and there are multiple ways that I can probe you. That's nice to look at that big picture. Like, I could have also said, hey, Francis, what would you tell me if it was my mom? How would you coach me?

[Frances Frey]

Oh, compassion, understanding. Yeah. Curiosity.

[Ethan Cross]

So here is the deal with that blueprint I just shared with you. I value this blueprint so deeply because before I was aware of this and this is all science based, I'll put that out there. Everything we're talking about is people would call me and they'd want to talk about stuff and I would have no idea what to tell them and oh, I'm so sorry. What did your son do? Oh my God. Sounds terrible. Geez, what are you gonna. You know, it'd be like a loop. But now I know how to steer the conversation. Phase one is listen, learn, connect. Phase two, when the person's ready, broaden their perspective, right? Get them to start thinking about it from different points of view. Most people already have access to the solutions. They just need to see them. They just need a little bit of handholding. You, of course, both know this to be true.

[Anne Morris]

You spoke beautifully about fear and anxiety before. So we're going to jump all the way to our last big emotion, which is excitement and wonder and a sense of possibility. Ethan, to be honest, it feels too low in many places compared with the opportunity that some of these disruptions are creating. I feel like I am in touch with the fear associated with all of this change, but not with the thrill and possibility of it. We've talked about cultivating less of emotions or getting distance from them. But if I want to feel more of this agency and wonder and co creation and possibility, what advice do you have for us?

[Ethan Cross]

There can be tremendous value behind motivating people. Giving them a North Star, filling them with excitement that provides them with this energy. Energy to do great things and to really do really hard things. That's what excitement does. It is fuel. It's a certain kind of fuel that feels great, it can be intoxicating, and it's something that I certainly want in my own life when I approach all of the work that I do. And it's something that I also want in all the people working for me now, I don't only want, however, to hire people who have that capacity. I also want to hire people who can skillfully shift between keeping that North Star in mind, having it be energizing, but then being able to switch into a different mode of, hey, let's do this really carefully and not screw something up, because there's real value in getting this right. Those are two different, what we call motivational orientations. A kind of promotion focus. Be all you can be, do all you can do, but also a prevention focus. Let's not mess this up. Let's get this right. The ability to go back and forth between those two motivational states, depending on where you are and what tasks are before you, that's a really valuable skill.

[Anne Morris]

So, Ethan, let me ask you this. So one thing we're seeing in organizations, at the top of an organization, there's a lot of this, like promotion, excitement, energy. But then as you move down the ranks, we're shifting into prevention and skepticism and even outright hostility around some of AI applications. If I'm the head of that organization or ahead of a team where I want to bring us back into balance, do you have any advice for us on that challenge?

[Ethan Cross]

It's very easy to slip into this lack of psychological safety. Don't screw up, make sure you get it right mode where people are now governed by fear and they're worried about messing up, they're worried about losing their job. And we know definitively that putting people in that chronic state of chatter undermines performance outcomes 100%. The irony here is many managers and leaders, they're trying to kind of clamp down on their workforce because they think that's going to eke out the best results when it's actually the opposite. You want to make it clear to folks, you want to give them a sense of safety and security. Think about little kids, right? Little kids will explore the world when they feel like they're safe. If not, they hold onto their parents leg. You don't want most of your employees, like unwilling to take any risk ever, right? Like, I want my team members to be suggesting things that I'm not thinking about. I want them to be pointing out flaws in my own thinking and behavior. Like, I do better, right? We do better if we are all open about that. You don't get that if you are constantly in fear mode. So how do you do this as a leader? Number one, you model this, right? You, you make it clear that, look, you screw up at times and that's okay. You learn from it. There's no penalties. You, you know, clearly you don't want to screw up the same way every day. That would be problematic. But you know, you give people a sense of grace, a sense of safety and security and opportunities to take some risks. That's a good place to start.

[Adam Grant]

Foreign.

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[Anne Morris]

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[Anne Morris]

One message we hear a lot from middle managers in organizations right now is I get what you're saying Ethan, about what the human beings around me need to feel secure and take risks and be creative and be innovative. And we're in an industry that is in a state of disruption. The world is shifting around us. How do you coach people through moments like this where I can't promise you security the way you have understood it in the past? And yet we are all here on the payroll and still trying to take one foot in front of the other. In a context of uncertainty where the future is not known and not within

[Ethan Cross]

our control, uncertainty and a lack of control are igniters of doom looping in the head of worry and rumination. One of the most valuable gifts you can give people is to help them tolerate uncertainty. So it makes good sense that we don't like uncertainty and a lack of control. The world's a lot safer when things are certain and are in control. When you take away those two conditions, things are more dangerous. It is a given that life is uncertain, however, and so a lot of people just struggle with that they just desperately want to control everything. Right. And so the more you can give them this capability to just recognize, hey, there are some things like you are not going to be able to figure this out. Right. The moment they have that awareness that often turns the temperature down on their chatter quite a bit. How might you do that? Well, you know, number one, pointing out all of the other things in life that are uncertain, that can sometimes be really powerful for people. Like, you know, guess what, like, it's not clear that I'm going to wake up tomorrow. Right. Like, something bad can happen at any moment in time. I can get hit by a car, like someone I love can be ill. Think about the uncertainty that surrounds us that we don't often think about. It's all around. So you can keep on focusing on that, or you can divert your attention and try to deal with parts of the situation that are under your control. That position you best to deal with negative outcomes if they were to happen. It's refocusing people's attention. It's reorienting their perspective around this. This issue. And if you can do that, that can be really powerful for a person who is just kind of taken away by the uncertainty in the situation.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. I sometimes feel like part of the story right now is we had the fantasy of security in the past decade or so, and now we are actually confronting how much it has always been outside of our control. It's more in our face for a whole bunch of reasons.

[Ethan Cross]

That's right. The mind is a storytelling machine. You can change the story. I had a colleague who is about to enter into pretty high stakes negotiation and he was spinning and I literally just said, change the story. Like you control the story and tell yourself a different story. It puts you in an entirely different position.

[Anne Morris]

I really do feel like that is the entire. If there is a key to the human experience, it is really mastering that storytelling ability for ourselves. And then is in these leadership roles helping to create a story for the team and the organization and these more complex units where multiple people come together. All right, give us an Ethan Cross pep talk on how to go to work and also be complex feeling human beings. It's not going so well right now.

[Ethan Cross]

Well, you know, hopefully you can remind yourself about why you're doing what you're doing to begin with. And if you don't have that strong North Star, that strong why, I think that's a good moment to reflect on whether you're in the right spot or not. Reframe, though, on what that bigger picture is. That usually on its own, can be tremendously motivating for folks. I remember when I was in college, I was a research assistant, and my God, what I was asked to do was so boring. And I did it for years, you know, literally licking envelopes at times. But I figured out, I don't know if I just stumbled on this or someone told me, like, why am I doing this? Well, you know, what? If I don't lick these envelopes, they can't do the research. And if they can't do the research, the people they're trying to help cannot benefit. So linking, like, recognizing that even the really arduous, hard stuff, if you're in an environment, in a job for the right reasons, it feeds back to help that bigger picture, help advance those goals. That's a really powerful capacity.

[Anne Morris]

Beautiful. What's one thing someone listening can do tomorrow to better manage their emotions at work?

[Ethan Cross]

Learn about the tools that are out there and commit to trying them out. We don't teach these tools to folks. We should. And if you want to jumpstart, we talked about mental time travel. Start mental time traveling. You know, the next time you're really struggling, you feel like the world's caving in, how are you going to feel down the road and go back in time and think about a moment that you or someone you know has managed to get through something way, way worse? Try those out.

[Anne Morris]

Love it. Last question we ask all our guests. What's one thing you're fixated on outside

[Ethan Cross]

of work right now, in the moment, or just in general?

[Anne Morris]

Right now, in the moment.

[Ethan Cross]

Right now, in the moment, right behind the two of you, I'm staring at my garden and how deprived it is of mulch and flowers. And I'm also reminded of the estimate I just received for how much it's going to cost to fix this. And so right now, I'm fixated on changing my shirt after this and going to buy some mulch and spreading it myself.

[Anne Morris]

So in your ear, this question must land really differently than most of our guests.

[Ethan Cross]

Yes.

[Frances Frey]

There was no time travel.

[Anne Morris]

No, like, the like. Fixation is a term of art in your work.

[Ethan Cross]

Yes. Yeah. Right now it's very clear what the situation is. I'll spare you some of the weightier issues that I no doubt have as well.

[Anne Morris]

Ethan Cross, you're awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

[Ethan Cross]

Thanks for having me. Great conversation.

[Frances Frey]

This was really terrific. Thank you.

[Anne Morris]

If you're enjoying this show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out. Fixable is a podcast brought to you by Ted and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris and me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Trina Menino. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloraiso and Roxanne Hylash.

[Frances Frey]

Our show is mixed by Louis at Storyyard.

[Adam Grant]

You. Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free range self directed investing or perhaps you pick up a few farm fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full service wealth management. Mix, match and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab you can invest your way no matter your goals or appetite for investing. Schwab has everything you need all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more.

[Ethan Cross]

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[Anne Morris]

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[Ethan Cross]

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[Anne Morris]

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[Ethan Cross]

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[Adam Grant]

hi there, it's Adam Grant from Ted's Rethinking podcast and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work, they actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit ServiceNow.com.