How to Shift Your Emotions Automatically with Dr. Ethan Kross

Summary

Podcast Summary: THE ED MYLETT SHOW – "How to Shift Your Emotions Automatically with Dr. Ethan Kross"

Release Date: December 31, 2024

In this enlightening episode of The Ed Mylett Show, host Ed Mylett sits down with Dr. Ethan Kross, a renowned psychology professor from the University of Michigan and bestselling author of Chatter and Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You. The conversation delves deep into the science of emotional regulation, offering practical tools and insights to help listeners take control of their emotional states.

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1. Introduction to Emotional Shifting

Ed introduces Dr. Kross and his latest work, Shift, highlighting its focus on empowering individuals to manage their emotions effectively. He shares his personal connection to Kross's work, mentioning how Chatter influenced his own teachings on emotional regulation.

Notable Quote:

"His last book, Chatter, I read in two days and it made a huge impact on me." — Ed Mylett [02:01]

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2. Understanding Emotional Shifts

Dr. Kross explains the concept of "shifting" emotions, which involves adjusting the intensity and duration of one's emotional states or transitioning from one emotion to another. He emphasizes that emotional shifts can either amplify or dampen feelings, allowing individuals greater control over their emotional experiences.

Notable Quote:

"You can turn the volume on your emotions up or down, and you can also lengthen or shorten the amount of time you spend in an emotion." — Dr. Ethan Kross [03:05]

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3. The Interplay Between Thoughts and Emotions

The discussion moves to the relationship between thoughts and emotions. Dr. Kross highlights that while thoughts are intimately connected to emotions, they aren't always the driving force. Emotions can arise both from deliberate thinking and automatic sensory responses.

Notable Quote:

"Thoughts are intimately involved in the experience of emotion, but you get categories where they may not be involved." — Dr. Ethan Kross [05:41]

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4. Sensory Shifters: Leveraging the Senses

One of the primary tools for emotional shifting discussed is sensory shifters—using sight, sound, touch, or smell to influence emotional states. Ed shares a personal anecdote about how a specific scent instantly transported him to a relaxed beach environment, demonstrating the power of sensory input.

Notable Quote:

"A sensory shift is when you activate your senses... to push your emotions in a particular direction." — Dr. Ethan Kross [09:10]

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5. Perspective Shifters: Changing How You Think About Situations

Perspective shifters involve altering one's viewpoint to manage emotions. This can be achieved through techniques like expressive writing, where individuals write about their deepest thoughts and feelings to create a structured narrative that helps them move past negative emotions.

Notable Quote:

"When you put those thoughts on paper... it allows us to move on." — Dr. Ethan Kross [23:54]

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6. Space Shifters: Modifying Your Environment

Space shifters focus on adjusting one's physical surroundings to influence emotional states. This can include adding elements like plants or pictures of loved ones to create a soothing environment or removing triggers that lead to negative emotions.

Notable Quote:

"You can modify those environments to either enhance the likelihood that you'll feel a certain way or by removing things that might trigger you in the wrong directions." — Dr. Ethan Kross [39:29]

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7. Relationship Shifters: Utilizing Social Connections

Relationships play a crucial role in emotional regulation. Dr. Kross discusses how interactions with others can either help shift emotions positively or, conversely, contribute to negative emotional states. He emphasizes the importance of constructive conversations that broaden perspectives rather than just venting emotions.

Notable Quote:

"Social Psychology has learned that one of the best ways to make yourself feel better when you're in a jam is to do something good for someone else." — Dr. Ethan Kross [58:05]

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8. Making Emotional Shifts Automatic with the WHOOP Framework

To ensure that emotional shifts become habitual, Dr. Kross introduces the WHOOP framework:

• Wish: Define the emotional regulation goal.
• Hurdle: Identify obstacles that might impede achieving the goal.
• Outcome: Clarify the positive outcomes of attaining the goal.
• Plan: Develop an "if-then" plan to address obstacles.

Notable Quote:

"It's a simple framework... It takes the thinking out of regulating so you don't have to think when you're getting triggered." — Dr. Ethan Kross [46:22]

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9. The Healing Power of Nature

Dr. Kross and Ed discuss the profound impact of nature on emotional well-being. Exposure to natural environments not only enhances mood but also restores attention, enabling individuals to recover from emotionally taxing experiences.

Notable Quote:

"Enhancing your exposure to safe green spaces... helps not just make people feel better, it also restores your attention." — Dr. Ethan Kross [50:41]

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10. Navigating Emotional Discrepancies

Ed raises a common concern: feeling emotions differently from others in similar situations. Dr. Kross reassures listeners that emotional variability is natural and offers strategies to manage such discrepancies without judgment.

Notable Quote:

"Our emotions are like a fingerprint, incredibly unique to each and every one of us." — Dr. Ethan Kross [55:11]

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11. The Role of Prayer and Cultural Practices

Concluding the episode, Dr. Kross explores how cultural practices, particularly prayer, serve as powerful tools for emotional regulation. He explains that prayer combines ritualistic elements, community support, and perspective shifts to help individuals manage their emotions effectively.

Notable Quote:

"Prayer tends to be ritualistic... It gives people a sense of order and control." — Dr. Ethan Kross [61:28]

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12. Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Ed wraps up the conversation by reaffirming the importance of the tools discussed and encourages listeners to explore Dr. Kross's book Shift for a comprehensive guide on managing emotions. He underscores that mastering emotional shifts can lead to improved relationships, health, and overall happiness.

Closing Quote:

"If someone listened to today's show and they didn't pick up something they can use in terms of shifting their emotions, then they didn't listen to the entire show." — Ed Mylett [67:08]

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Key Takeaways:

• Emotional Shifting: Actively managing and adjusting your emotional states using various tools.
• Sensory and Space Shifters: Utilizing senses and modifying environments to influence emotions.
• Perspective and Relationship Shifters: Changing viewpoints and leveraging social connections for emotional regulation.
• WHOOP Framework: A structured method to make emotional shifts automatic and habitual.
• Nature and Cultural Practices: Engaging with natural settings and cultural rituals like prayer to enhance emotional well-being.

For those seeking to harness the power of their emotions rather than be controlled by them, Dr. Ethan Kross's strategies offer a scientifically-backed roadmap to achieving emotional mastery.

Recommended Listening: To gain a deeper understanding and access practical tools, listeners are encouraged to read Dr. Ethan Kross's book, Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You.

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

This is the Ed Miler Show. Welcome back to the show everybody. I love this week's topic. We're going to talk about your emotions and it's something that I want to talk about more on the show. But finding really qualified people to help you is not easy. And so when I do find them, I chased them down to get them in front of you for an hour. And so I have found somebody today that I know is going to help you. First off, his last book, Chatter, I read in two days and it made a huge impact on me. And some of the things you even hear me teach and say, guys, came from that book. He's a professor at University of Michigan, psychology department. He's already had a best selling book and his new book, shift. Managing your emotions so they don't manage you. And I know you all want to know how to do that. So. Dr. Ethan Cross, welcome to the show.

[B]

Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while.

[A]

So have I. Let's talk about shift. What is conceptually, first of all, because through the book you talk about sensory shifters, attention shifters. So specifically, is a shift just a redirection? I know what it means because I read the book, but I want to set the premise for the audience first.

[B]

That's right. It's shifting your emotional state. And there are a couple of ways you can do it. You can turn the volume on your emotions up or down, and you can also lengthen or shorten the amount of time you spend in an emotion. That's another kind of shift. Or you can shift from one emotion to the next. Anxious, happy, sad, elated. So each of those processes involves just shifting, moving back and forth. So it's kind of in my house. It's become a bit of a buzzword. I'll tell you what, my kids absolutely love it when they're getting a little emotional. My God, guys, shift.

[A]

You said we can go in and out of the book. So I told him off camera, guys, I'm gonna ask you stuff for me today too. So do you believe in such a thing as like an emotional home? Meaning that a person has a predisposition. Not predisposition, but a propensity to relive the same emotions over and over again, even if they're not the ones they want. It could be angst, fear, anxiety. And they find themselves moving towards what's familiar to them rather than maybe what they want or what serves them.

[B]

Absolutely. In the sense that we often find ourselves reliving emotional states that we don't want to be experiencing. But we do have those experiences over and over, and they can be really debilitating when that happens. Because if we find ourselves consumed with those states, let's say it's anxiety about something that happened in the past or burning rage about some transgression that you've experienced. If you find yourself harping on that over and over again, it consumes your attention, makes it really hard for you to think and perform optimally. It can interfere with your relationships because through a variety of pathways, one of which is you want to talk about this stuff to other people all the time. And sometimes that can push away people who care about us. And it can gnaw away at not just our subjective well being, how good or bad we feel, but our physical health too. Getting stuck in unwanted emotional spin cycles for a while can actually degrade our physical health. So. Absolutely. And that's one of the things I hope this book can help teach people to do is get out of those states if they want to.

[A]

That's the biggest thing, everybody. So what we're going to talk about today is how to change those states when you're in them. That may not serve you. How correlated are thoughts and emotions? I know you talk a lot in the book about inner voice, et cetera, et cetera, but let's start of where I kind of start with my work, which is thoughts. And so are they cousins? Are they directly related to one another? How do they relate and connect to one another?

[B]

Well, you know, this is a question that scientists have been, have been playing with for like a century now. And I would say thoughts are intimately involved in the experience of emotion, but you get categories where they may not be involved. So let me give you a couple of examples to write this down. You could think your way in, into, or out of different emotional states. If I asked you where, you know, if I asked you to think about something on the horizon that you're really excited about, you have something like that.

[A]

I sure do think about. Yes.

[B]

And if, like make you feel good to think about that.

[A]

It does.

[B]

You're smiling even when you say that. Right. So. So actually that's part of that emotional response. We've got this expressive display. I can see it as a. As a consumer of your emotions, how you're feeling, so that you just thought your way into an emotion. And we do this all the time when we go in the darker direction too. We think about the what ifs, Right. This, what if this happens, what if that happens? It's pretty amazing. And how, how incredible your mind is coming up with what if scenarios without ever exhausting them. Right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so that's us thinking our way into experiences. All right, let's now do a few examples of ways that you might experience emotion without necessarily thinking about it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You ever pass someone on the streets of New York City? It's my hometown. Maybe you're taking the subway or you just happen to walk by someone who just doesn't smell very nice and you're hit immediately with an emotional response.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Disgust.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

No thinking involved there. Boom. Automatic. When my kids were young, we would go to. On vacations, we go to a hotel and they got two girls and they oh, daddy, I love the way it smells in here. I love this place. They're not thinking their way into an emotions. That's the people who run the hotel chains who are piping in scents into the ventilation. Desirable scents to make you feel a certain way. Cologne and perfume, probably a billion dollar industry. Billion. Do you think?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

All about moving your emotions around without you thinking. And so there's. So thinking can be involved in our emotions, but it also doesn't have to be. And the beauty of the science here is we can open up the hood and show you how to shift your emotions through all of these different pathways through your senses, through thinking, through relationships and so forth.

[A]

One of them in the book is sensory shifters, and I'll validate a crazy one for you. I'm in New York this last weekend with my daughter. We happened to go into the hotel store. It's about 25 degrees in New York. This weekend when we were there, we went into the hotel store and they actually, believe it or not, at the hotel I was staying at, it had like suntan lotion with this smell to it. And I smelled it and it had like this kind of coconut smell. Anyway, it immediately took me back to like being on the beach. And actually a time I was in Hawaii, it was the same exact stuff. And that sensory emotion literally transported me from the environment that I was in, literally a 25 degree environment, to this beautiful, perfect place. And I. It. It's just easier, you know this. When you're in New York, there's a hustle and bustle, it's quick, you're wound up a little bit, you know, and all of a sudden to this completely relaxed state. So when you say in the book Sensory Shifters, I sort of experienced a little flavor of that. Share with us, because we're on that topic, we might as well go there. What is one of the ways someone can shift their emotions? What is a sensory shift?

[B]

So a sensory shift is when you activate your senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell purposefully to push your emotions in a particular direction. This is one of the quickest ways to push your emotions around. It's something that all listeners have had experiences with throughout their lives, but it's not something we are often deliberate about activating. So here's what I mean by that. If you ask people. Well, let me just ask you. Let's just do this study right here. Let's see how it works out. So, Ed, why do you listen to music? I assume you listen to music on occasion.

[A]

I just. Every day. Every day.

[B]

Okay. Why do you. Why do you do it?

[A]

I. In my case, just because I'm a little bit familiar with your work. In mine, I do do it to create a state. So there's certain types of music I will listen to when I'm working out, which is not the same music that I listen to when I wake up in the morning, which is typically worship music. Right. So it's to create a state in me. Yes.

[B]

Okay. So. So maybe I wasn't. It was a little bit of a. Of a planted agent there.

[A]

No, it's great.

[B]

But that's okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. So if you ask people, like, why they listen to music, most people will say, I like the way it makes me feel. Feel. We listen to. To music, like, because it. It pushes our emotions around. I went to. I went to the Taylor Swift concert, a couple of.

[A]

Good for you. Good for you.

[B]

And you. Yes. There was a lot of creative negotiations that my kids and wife.

[A]

I was gonna say that might have something to do with the daughters. I'm not sure, but I'm just a guess. Yeah.

[B]

Yes. Oh, yes. It had to do with the daughters. But I'm in this arena, 40,000 people, something around, and I'm just looking around. I'm like, all of these people have just paid enormous sums of money, myself, unfortunately included, for an emotion regulation experience. We are having our emotions be collectively shifted through sensation, through music. So we all know this to be true. But here's the rub. If you ask people, the last time you were anxious, angry, or sad, what'd you do to make yourself feel better? Close to 100% of people will say they listen to music because they like the way it makes them feel. But if you look across studies, it's only between 10 and 30% that actually avail themselves of this tool when they're actually struggling. So we are sitting on this tool that is really effective, very reliable. We're not taking advantage of it. So this was true for me until I started doing some science on this. I tell some stories about just taking this for granted. But when I get into my car every day now, I look at the dashboard, I don't see an LCD display. I see an emotion regulation machine.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

And this machine is populated with playlists that can push my emotions wherever I want them to go. And that is a very valuable resource I possess. So that's just one example of a tool. All of your senses work this way. Touch. You gotta be careful with touch. But affectionate. I call it affectionate but not creepy touch. Right? Like my daughter's had a bad day. I go, I rub their back, I give them a hug. Right. Don't necessarily do that at work, but in the right circumstance, powerful tool. Like when your kids were. How many kids do you have? Just one.

[A]

I have two. I have a son and a daughter.

[B]

I'm guessing the same thing happened when both of them were born.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

You help them immediately. Amen to skin contact. The skin is an emotional apparatus, right? You can activate that and we could just keep on going down the list. But the point here is this is a tool. It's free, no side effects. Make use of it.

[A]

You know, overall, I would say my audience is an achiever audience. And one of the things that I found as I've coached people as well, is that most people are very good at focusing on the next goal they want to achieve or goals. I want to make a certain amount of money or certain body weight and look a certain way, or get into this relationship or buy this particular car, give to my church, whatever it might be. And the more and more I've done my work, I've realized it's not necessarily that you want that car. You want how you think that car would make you feel. You may not even need the body the way that you think you need it to look, but it's how you'd feel if you had it. Even this other person that's not in your life, that if you think you'd get them in your life, is it really that or is it how you think that would make you feel? The reason I make this point is I begin to ask you some different stuff here is. Is that I just want to challenge everyone listening to you. What if some of your focus, your ambitions, your intention was towards the feeling and not the stuff or the person? And what if, as a culture, we started to have more tools that delivered to us how we want to feel? Here's my hallucination. If you're in those emotional states more often, you could regulate that. Maybe the stuff would be easier to get. Maybe the Money would be easier to accumulate. Maybe that relationship would come your way. Maybe you wouldn't eat the way you eat if you already felt the way you think going to feel. Because a lot of people eat to feel things. So having said all of that, I want to get some terminology straight because we're going to talk about perspective shifters and space shifters, all these tools. What does emotional congruency mean in your world? Because it's one of the things in the book that I at least want to dive into a little bit. Emotional congruency means what?

[B]

So the. So this is actually the name for an effect which is a counterintuitive one, which is when you are feeling sad. So a lot of us are motivated to be happy, right? Despite the fact that negative emotions are actually good for us when they're experienced in the right proportions. Well, emotional congruency refers to the fact that when we're feeling sad, rather than turn on the radio and listen to, in my case, Journey or Guns N Roses, I'm instead listening to Adele or Chicago, right? I'm essentially being pulled. Something inside of me is saying, I want to have this other sensory experience that matches what I'm feeling inside right now. And to some extent that may make sense in the following. So if you ask me, Ethan, how the hell can sadness be a good thing, right? Like this? We typically don't think of being sadness as a good thing. Well, we experience. I'd like to think of emotions as like little software programs that get loaded up to help you deal with the emotions or the situations you're in. So sadness. We experience sadness when we encounter a loss that we can't replace. We've gotten fired, a deal hasn't worked out. We've lost someone we love, We've been rejected. When that happens, this feeling of sadness, what it does is it. It activates this coordinated response inside you that says, hey, let me pull back a little bit. Let me turn my attention everywhere. Let me try to like make sense of what's happening now, given this new information, my life has changed. I have to reframe, rethink about myself in this world. So I'm going to take some time away to do that. Now, taking time away when you're sad might be a little dangerous. So what does a software program do? It also, it signals to everyone around us, hey, check up on us at times. And how does it do that? Sad facial expression. You see a sad facial expression, we as other people feel compelled to help. This can be taken advantage of. There's a dark Arts of emotion here that my two daughters are exceptionally skilled at, by the way, because they do something bad and I maybe discipline them a little bit, and then they. They do this exaggerated static response.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I melt. It's automatic. Right. But so here's the deal. So. So sadness in the right dosage. It's. It's getting us to like, think carefully about what we're going through. And then we put on this other music and that helps us go deeper into that state. Right. The Chicago, the Adele. And there's some comfort in that. But. And this is a really big but, if you don't want to be in that state any longer, you need to resist this emotional congruency. You want to go for Journey, whatever your favorite music is. I don't presume that everyone likes Journey, but I do.

[A]

Steve Perry is the greatest male rock voice of all time. Come on.

[B]

Amazing. Amazing.

[A]

So, by the way, everybody, we're doing this today because I want to want you to be cognizant of your emotions and maybe be a little bit more intentional with them and then have some tools. You could call these shifts, you could call these triggers, you could call them whatever you want, but in this case, they're shifters in the book. So. Hey, guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth. And you know, by the way, it's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow. And also taking a look at the future, if you want to change your future, you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second. Growthday.com forward/ed, my friend Brendan Burchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability, journaling horses. Thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute, as do a whole bunch of other influencers like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com ed. That's growthday.com ed what makes a leader? It's a tough question, but one thing's for sure, a true leader leads by example. And a true leader takes risks too. They plunge into life with determination. For those who lead by example, who approach life with a palpable passion, there's the Range Rover Sport. Each Range Rover Sport model offers a dynamic sophisticated take on sporting luxury. The Range Rover Sport offers focused on road performance and world renowned off road capability with industry leading features like adaptive off road cruise control that monitors ground conditions and acclimates to the present terrain. Agility, control and composure are achieved with dynamic air suspension and adaptive dynamics. Reduces unwanted body movements to deliver smooth and composed handling, true sophistication and excellent maneuverability all on a seriously stylish package. Sophisticated refinement meets visceral power in the Range Rover Sport. A new dimension of sporting luxury. Build your Range Rover sport@land roverusa.com this is the sound of your ride home with with dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes brought to you by the fda? There's something in here that I thought was super unique because I think music to many people that go, yep, I get that one. That's one I use already. You know, I'll get my music to get me going in the morning or if I'm a person of faith, I'll listen to worship music or like before I speak in front of big arenas even. I'm very often feeding myself different types of music to put me in that state. And by the way, different music for a different type of message in my case. So it is a huge trigger for me. But there was something in here. I'm going to just phrase it like this and then let you go. The inner voice benefits and then thinking versus writing and the difference between those two things because I think this is a huge tool that many people aren't aware of and the power impact of it.

[B]

So we just talked about sensory shifters. Let's go to perspective shifters. How do we change the way we think about our circumstances? This is a powerful tool that is unique to us as humans. We could shift our perspective, look at that bigger picture, tell ourselves a new story that helps us move on with our lives.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

In the words of a very good friend of mine, a distinguished physician, I can't help but smile every time I tell the story. We're coming back from dinner one night. It's my Wife and I and this physician and his wife, and he's having some problems at work, and he's pretty negative about the situation. His wife says, well, just think about it more positively. You'll feel better. And he goes, yeah, easier effing said than done, right? Really exaggerate. Which I think taps into something that so many of us feel so often we know we can and we maybe should think differently about what we're dealing with, because the way we're thinking about is taking us in the wrong direction.

[A]

Yeah, but we.

[B]

But we can't seem to do it. And indeed, a lot of this book shift is about how to help you do it, how to give you tools to do it when you want to. So to go back to your question, though, about thinking versus writing, we often try to think through our problems, and sometimes that just makes it worse. It takes us down the doom and gloom tailspin. Thought looping, chatter, rumination, worry not good. Part of the reason why that happens is we don't have any guardrails when we think. We're just pinballing all over the place. Right where thoughts are firing, it's very fragmented. It's very emotional. What we've learned is that if you actually have a person sit down and ask them to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about something for just 10 to 15 minutes for one day to three days in a row, no, don't worry about grammar. Just. Just let. Let yourself go. What that does, what research finds, is that that helps people create a story, a narrative, to make sense of what they're going through. And it gives structure to this very disorganized frame of mind that we're in when we're. What if this? What if that? What. You know, like, the mind goes all over the place. It's. You think things to yourself that you wouldn't dare admit to another human being. Sometimes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When you're putting those thoughts on paper, guess what we learn from the time we're little kids? How to write sentences. Sentences have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Punctuation. So does a paragraph. There's a structure to it. And as we work our way through that story, we wrap that story up. And when we wrap that story up in writing, we wrap it up in our minds, and that allows us to move on. So. So this is called expressive writing, and it's an effortful tool in the sense that you do need to sit down and take 10 to 15 minutes to do it. But let's be real. 10 to 15 minutes of writing for a few days. Compared to some much more heavy handed and destructive interventions that people engage in regularly for their emotions. That's a pretty good trade off.

[A]

I gotta tell everybody, I want you to really dial in here. Stay in, okay? This is important because all of you are gonna have. All of you right now have had some point this last week where you'd like to change or regulate your emotions to shift them. You've also. Or you're going to have them. And I got to tell you, this idea of expressive writing, this was recommended to me a few years ago. I'm just going to share this with everybody. First, number one, I'm not a great writer, okay? And I don't have the patience to write. By the way, any of you that read my books, you can validate this. It's not my great skill and I started this process. And I have to tell you, number one, there's different shifts in the book. One of them is a perspective shifter. For me, when I write down my feelings, or even when I want the story to look like you guys, it changes my perspective because almost like my thoughts and emotions are now outside of me and they're on the paper, I get some separation from them. It's almost like therapy for me. When I write, I also start to just think differently. Like that maybe I have some influence over this story that I'm writing, that I'm the lead character and the writer of this story, and that the pen in my hand indicates to me that I can start to write a new chapter or a new page of the book of this moment or of this time in my life. Don't take this lightly. Finding 10 or 15 minutes a day where you journal or write your feelings down or the story you're going through is. It's the number one perspective shifter for me. Music is an obvious one, I think for many of you, but this is a huge one for me also. I want to kind of merge your work together a little bit because this idea of chatter and the shifting of the chatter, the both kind of works together. I kind of want to merge us together here a little bit if we can. So tell us how chatter is and what it is. And then what is a pattern interrupt or a tool you use? Is it the shifts you use to change the chatter in your mind or are they totally two different things?

[B]

No. So I'll give you the. Here's the quick origin story of chatter and shift. Uh, so. So when I got to college, I took my first psychology class. And halfway through the semester we Got to this topic of introspection, this capacity that is unique to human beings to be able to turn our attention inward and work through problems. This is what has made you and so many other people so unbelievably successful. This is what has made the human species so incredibly successful. We can use our minds to solve problems. But a little bit deeper into that class, I learned this very same tool was one of our greatest vulnerabilities. Because when we have emotional issues, we reflexively try to work through them, but we don't come up with clear solutions. Instead, we just get stuck.

[A]

So true.

[B]

Start spinning in ways that lead to such misery and make it hard for people to think and perform and just create enormous human suffering. And once I came across that, that those two sets of findings, it was like a light bulb went off. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I became really passionate about it. So much, so much so that I'll share a funny anecdote. I remember, like, walking on the weekends to parties or the bars with my, my buddies and It'd be like 11 o'clock in West Philadelphia and. And I go, hey, Dan, did you know that people sometimes end up getting stuck in rumination? I can't get out of it. And he looks at me and he's like, what's wrong with you, Cross Saturday night? What are you talking about? But I couldn't stop thinking about this stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I went to graduate school to learn how to use the tools of science, neuroscience, psychology, to figure out why does this happen and what can people do when they find themselves going down the rabbit hole. Chatter. My first book was my attempt to share what I had learned about what are the tools that people can. That exist, that people can use to manage this voice in their head more effectively rather than sometimes having it take hold. And then I went on book tour for an extended period and something interesting happened. On book tour, after I give talks on Chatter to audiences, people would come up to me and they'd say, yeah, this was fascinating. I learned a ton. I'm going to try these tools out. But what do you think about A, B, C, D, E, F and G when I'm angry or envious or this and that and actually tell the story. And Shift. It felt like I had just given a talk on how to combat inflammation. Really important thing. But people also wanted to know about dealing with diabetes, heart disease, and every form of cancer discovered. And so, so that lit another spark. And, and so what I did with Shift was I wanted Shift to be a Book about your emotional lives. Actually, chapter one is called welcome to your emotional life. And what the hell are emotions? Why do we have them? Why do we have bad ones? Are bad ones really bad? And most importantly, when you find your emotions taking you in directions you don't want to be, what do we know about the tools that exist that you can use right now without side effects to start getting more control? And, you know, took two and a half years to write that book, but that's how they're related. And so some of the tools overlap, but there's a lot of new stuff that's different.

[A]

I'd say in shift, I am a professional mental time traveler.

[B]

Oh, I love it.

[A]

Which is great as a business person, as like a dreamer and a visionary. So it serves me there. It's debilitating in terms of worry and fear. And so I want to talk about this for a minute just before you go further.

[B]

I just want to. I want to pause you right there, Ed. And I, you know, I just want to point out what you just said, though, because you're an enormously successful individual and you just talked about one of the secrets to your success, but also the fact that you sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, have some worry, right? Like it happens to you. And I think that's such an important message to share with people because so many people think that they are alone when they find themselves experiencing worry or ruminating about things. It is the rule, not the exception.

[A]

Amen.

[B]

As far as I know.

[A]

Well, I. I have discovered in my life where it came from. So I plead. People are patterns. And so my dad was an alcoholic. He got sober. My audience, most of them know that story. Those of you that are new to the show, you can go hear those stories. But one of the things that happened from my dad's drinking when I was a little boy wasn't just what kind of a mood he would be when he came home or anything like that. It was that I learned to worry about my dad as a young boy. Is he going to come home? Is he going to be hurt? Is he going to hurt somebody else? Or mom and dad going to stay married? And so his drinking wired into me this pattern of worry that has never escaped me. And so. And what worry is to me, and you talk about it in shatter a little bit, it's like kind of. It's like mental time traveling. You're actually projecting into the future things that have not happened yet and traveling there. And what's worse about it is you do it over and over and over again and what you think everybody is. If I keep traveling there in my mind and I keep thinking about it, I will solve this problem the 900th time. I've thought about. There's got to be something that didn't occur to me about this thing that's not even real. If I think about it enough times, I'm going to figure it out. And I've just learned in my life that I can keep traveling into the future all I want and I could do it 900 times in the 900th time. I'm not going to go with a different answer to something that hasn't happened yet than I did the first time. And so because I'm that way, I'm going to ask you a two part question about it. I say that to lay that out for everybody. I also have found as I've gotten older that for the most part it happens around the same time of day. So there's actually a pattern to the time. And in my case it is typically middle of the night or when I wake. And so I'm wondering what you think about what I just said and whether there's some persistent habit in people's lives that it actually shows up at a similar time and what is a shift out of that or a strategy out of that.

[B]

Yeah, I'm a 2am chatter kind of guy. Okay, so I'm on that one. Okay, so there's a few things to unpack here. So first of all, what you just described about mental time travel, I love the way that you talked about both the positives and the negatives. We have a tendency in society right now, in our culture to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Which is to say, well, mental time travel clearly gets a lot of us in trouble a lot of the time. I mean, I'm saying it's a universal. We all worry about the future and ruminate about the past at times. So you know what we should start doing, Ed? We should stop mental time travel. Just focus on the present. Be in the moment. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I have been meditating. I learned five years old, my dad, I wanted a bicycle. He took me to get a mantra. It's a true story. I was devastated. Like, I was not a happy kid. But I've had experiences with meditation and mindfulness my whole life. It could be a great tool for some people. Some of the time. It is impossible to always be in the moment. Our mind evolved in. Our mind evolved to time travel. This is a strength that we possess that we can do this, this is what makes you so incredibly successful. So my challenge to you and everyone else is listening is not to shut down this capacity. It's. If you find that mental time travel is sometimes not serving you well, let's learn how to time travel more effectively. Yes, it's true. Sometimes we time travel into the future, the negative future or past, and we get stuck. It's like back to the future, right? Like, we just get stuck there. When that happens, coming to the present can be effective or doing some other things. So just wanted to get that out there because I hate this notion that you should always be in the moment.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Not possible, not desirable. So lots of people have the, the, the kind of, the worries, the whispers in the middle of the night. This happens to me once every few weeks. I go to bed with a smile on my face. I wake up, terror. Like everything bad that is happening. You said 990,000 simulations are happening in my mind at warp speed. Right. My, my hack for managing this is I fight that with a new kind of time travel. I ask myself, how am I going to feel about this problem next week, next month, next year? What that does for me is very simple. Your whole life, you have experienced the following. An emotion gets triggered, and then as time goes on, it eventually subsides.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

All of us, all emotions have that trajectory. When we get stuck worrying about things, we zoom in on the peak, on the awfulness of the moment. And when we do that, we lose sight of the bigger picture, that as time goes on, things are going to fade. When you jump into the time travel machine and you think about, how am I going to feel about this tomorrow morning, next month, next. Next week, month, year? We could be flexible here. It automatically activates this understanding that what you're going through, as bad as it is, you will eventually feel better. That does something incredibly powerful for a mind that is wrapped up in this chatter and these big emotions, it gives you hope that things will get better. And hope is an antidote for those kinds of reactions. So that's time traveling into the future. I will give you one other time travel option.

[A]

Please.

[B]

It's equally powerful for me. Please. You could also go into the past. You know, again, we, when we get stuck, we zoom in on the awfulness. My, My grandparents were, were Holocaust survivors. They, their family slaughtered. Lived in the woods for three years, Eastern Europe. The worst kind. You know, crazy kinds of experiences. Lots of people have them. They hit home for me because I heard their stories growing up. And, you know, sometimes the stuff that I cook up in here, it seems terrible. Like, oh my God, it's all going to go to crap right away. All right, I jumped back 60 years, however long ago. 70 years. 80 years. I tell you what, like, no matter what I'm dealing with, it pales in comparison to what Bubby and papa experienced in the frozen woods of Eastern Europe. Yeah, that really puts my experience in perspective. Really, does it? So these are, these are, these are like ways of shifting your perspective, being really flexible. And those are two things that work for me. But one thing I want to mention to all listeners is there are no one size fits all solutions. We documented this scientifically. Different tools work for different people in different situations, like exercising and nutrition. If I. If I asked you to gather your 10 closest friends and I had them right down there, nutritional regimens and fitness regimens, my guess is that we would see variability across all of them. Is that a fair assumption?

[A]

Fair, yes. Yes.

[B]

Same is true when it comes to manager emotions. The tools that I use are different from the ones my wife uses. They're different from the ones my best friend uses. And that's the beauty of all of this. Like, our emotional lies are different. So why would you expect the same tool to work for everyone? So I just want to give that disclaimer.

[A]

There's different shifts in the books, guys. So that one right there would be like considered a perspective shifter. We talked about sensory shifters earlier. Oh, such a clutch off season pickup, Dave. I was worried we'd bring back the same team. I meant Those blackout motorized shades. Lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds.

[B]

Hard to install?

[A]

No, it's easy. I installed these and then got some for my mom. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install hall of fame son. They're the number one online retailer of custom window covering in the world.

[B]

Blinds.com is the goat shop. Up to 45% off select styles plus a free professional measure during the blinds.com year end blowout. Rules and restrictions may apply.

[A]

I want to talk about space shifters. Okay. I know what it means because I'm familiar with the work, but I want to give everybody that's listening enough so they still want to get your book, but at the same time they get a bunch of tools out of the hour we're spending together today. So let's talk a little bit about the space shifter. I guess I'll call it a technique. But that shift phase shifters, we're talking.

[B]

About our environment, our physical environment, which I think it's Easy to take for granted just how powerful it can be for pushing around our emotions. There are tools hidden all around us in our spaces for pushing us in the right direction or wherever we want to be. So let me give you two types of space shifters. One has to be with your immediate environment, the room, the spaces you're in. You can modify those environments to either enhance the likelihood that you'll feel a certain way or by. So you add things to your environment. So as an example, you can't see it. But to my right, there's a whole set of pictures with my loved ones. We did this research where we had people think about painful experiences, and then we showed them pictures of loved ones. And we found that it. It instantly helped people repair how well they felt after looking at. At thinking about those experiences. What happens when you look at a picture of someone you love? It activates this. This memory, this experience with those people. And that can be kind of soothing. So I have picture frames with them. I've got. You could see the plants in the background. We know green spaces are restorative. Other people, I don't do this. But you could also put sensory shifters in your spaces. So incense, you know, light. That's ways of enhancing the space. Now, you can also remove things from your spaces that are pushing your emotions in the wrong direction. So in the book I tell the pizza doggy bag story, I like to. I like, try to eat healthy and maintain my physique, But I have some real serious vulnerabilities, and cold leftover pizza is one of them. It doesn't even pay for me to try to abstain. The moment I see the image, it's like, pizza monster. And so we had a party a couple years ago where I ordered too much pizza. I insisted that everyone take it home with them pizza doggy bags. Because I knew that if I left that in my space, it would trigger an undesirable emotional response, desire to eat it. And then it would lead to a cascading negative response. So you can remove things from your spaces that might trigger you in the wrong directions as well. And that is not cheating.

[A]

What if it's a person? Someone's listening to this today, and they're like, listen, I love this person, but this person is constantly triggering me into this space. I know it's not neither one of the books. This occurred to me. Like, when I'm asking questions, I try to ask what I think people are thinking when they hear things. I go. It just seems to me like this person, this relationship over and over and over isn't serving me emotionally. So how much of it is me that this person brings out of me a pattern of emotion? Or could it simply be that this person isn't healthy for my emotions any more than this pizza wasn't healthy for the emotion that's going to take place after you eat all of it?

[B]

Well, you know, I somewhat talk about this when I get to culture and culture shifters because you see this experience happening when people work in toxic cultures. So toxic people, toxic cultures. What do you do in those situations? There are two options. Number one, you just cut them out. Right. And. And there are. There are legitimate situations where you will be better off for doing that. Right. If someone is consistently eliciting a harmful pattern, emotional response pattern from you, and it's. It's really interfering with your ability to live the life you want to live. Like, there's no rule that says you. You can't minimize your interactions with that person. The other thing you could do, though, it's not always easy to do that. Sometimes DNA makes that very hard, if you know what I mean. Like, yep, you're related to those people, right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Then you can try to change the situation, change the circumstance, change the culture, and there. That's not always an easy thing to do. But, you know, figuring out what the triggers are that affect you is. Is where to start trying to minimize it. But let me tell you about one more at. And then we can go off from space stuff. The more counterintuitive, I think, way of using your spaces to shift you emotionally is to find what I call your little emotional oases all around you. So do you have any places in this world on the planet that whenever you go there, you just feel this sense of warmth and security?

[A]

Absolutely. Yes.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So what would be an. Want to give us an example so we can.

[A]

Well, I can tell you it's anywhere I've ever been near the ocean. I know what the ocean does to me. If you made me pick a location, it happens to be a home that I own and, and a place I walk there by the ocean.

[B]

So we often talk about being attached to other people, these positive attachments. And other people can be these sources of support, just being in their presence because they help us. What we've learned is you can also develop attachments, positive attachments to places, and simply being in those places activates the sense of security and support for me. It's the arboretum a few blocks from my house. It's also the coffee shop. I wrote my first Book in and like the main diag on Michigan's campus, every time I'm in those places, I instantly feel my emotions shifted. When my daughters were young and we'd be out and they'd get upset about something, their go to response was not me or their mom. It was, I just want to go home. I just want to go to my room. Their room was a space, the sense of security. I encourage people to do a. Do a space audit. What are the spaces in your neighborhood, in your city where when you go there, they have this restorative effect. If you think about that ahead of time, just go there, go for a walk, go for a break. It's not very effortful. And that helps you regulate. It's another way to help you regulate it.

[A]

I love that I go there mentally too. If I can't get there, I'll just take myself there mentally and spend some time there. I do that regularly. Guys, before a high pressure meeting, a high pressure situation, we'll talk about prayer at the end, whatever someone's faith is at the end. I'm going to ask you about that. How do you make it automatic? How do you make shifting automatic? Can you.

[B]

You can and you got a whoop. There it is, right? Do you know that song?

[A]

Yes, of course.

[B]

There it is. Song.

[A]

I'm the right age brother. Of course. Yes.

[B]

Okay. So. So. So whoop is a technique that scientists have developed. It's a framework for making shifting automatic. And I just love this, I love this work because it breaks this down so simply. So. It also happens to be very similar to what high performance teams like the Navy SEALs do to make their tactics automatic when they are going into these unbelievably high pressure situations. The big problem that we all face is that is what we often refer to as the New Year's resolution. We make this commitment to do better, to regulate better, eat better, whatever, and we do it for a day and then we stop doing it like we just drop off. So several scientists have spent their careers trying to understand why does that happen and what can you do to make it not happen. And what they have settled on is this idea of whoop. W o o p. Okay? It's a, it's a device. So let me break this down for you. First thing you want to do, specify what's your wish? What is your goal? Let's be clear. My goal is to regulate my emotions more effectively when I'm triggered. Okay. What's the outcome? That's the first O that you hope to obtain. So what good is going to happen if you learn how to manage your. If you obtain this wish? Well, I'm going to have better relationships. I'm going to be healthier, I'm going to be happier. That's important because now that's like jazzing you up. It's like fueling you up to motivate you to do some hard stuff. Then we get to the second O obstacle. What are the personal obstacles that are gonna stand in the way of you achieving this goal? So I've started with what are the outcomes I hope to achieve. So the good stuff. But now let's be realistic. What might get in the way? Well, you know, like let's say if it's regulating my emotions with my kids when they fight, I really. I grew up and there was like combativeness in the household I grew up in. It automatically triggers me. I have very low tolerance for that. And I gotta make sure I don't snap when that occurs. So I've now identified the obstacle, the trigger that can get in the way. And that gets me to the p. The plan, the plan for what I'm going to do when I encounter that obstacle. But it's not just any old plan. It's a specific kind of plan. We call it an implementation intention, an if then plan. If I get triggered, then I'm going to do sensory shifting and mental time travel. If I get triggered by my youngest daughter, then I'm going to go for a walk in nature and write expressively. So you actually write out these if then plans a few times. And what this does, it takes the thinking out of regulating so you don't have to think when you're getting triggered. Oh, what should I do? It becomes a habit and you just do it automatically. And that's the goal. We want to make emotion regulation automatically to the extent that we can. And this is an easy to use framework. And I break it down in the book and there's like worksheets. It's super simple.

[A]

I love it. But I also want to ask you, in the other book you talked about. Well, both really, but nature and the cognitive restorative benefits of nature. Everyone, What I'm trying to give you today is just like a grab bag of tools that he has written that, you know, Ethan's put in both books that you can use to help you emotionally. And some of them may be obvious to you, some of them may be things that you have thought about doing but don't do or you used to do that you should be doing again. So talk a little bit about just nature in general, especially in a world today where we're on our screens a whole lot.

[B]

Yeah, this was. It shouldn't have been surprising to me, but it was. So I'm from a place called Brooklyn, New York, where there was a book, a famous book was written about this place that I grew up in and its vegetation. It was called Singular. A tree grows in Brooklyn.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Like. Which was not that, like, inconsistent with my upbringing. Like, not. Not a lot of green spaces. I've been in the city my whole life. I'm not a camper. And then I came across the science in the space, and it was just jaw dropping. There's this wealth of evidence that shows that enhancing your exposure to safe green spaces. So you don't want to be in a threatening spot, but like a. A park, the woods, the mountains, the beach. It helps not just make people feel better, it does do that, but it also restores your attention. And so here's how this works. When we get consumed by emotion, it soaks up our attention. It makes it attention. It's like our emotions are like a sponge. It just consumes those limited attentional resources that we have. This is why, if you've ever tried to read a few pages in a book, when you're worried about something, you don't remember anything you've read, correct?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right. So our emotions consume our attention. When you go for a walk in a safe, natural setting, you're surrounded by interesting things that gently grab your attention back. The scents, the sounds, the trees. And so by the end of the walk, your attention has had this opportunity to restore. So people come out of the walk, and when you give them cognitive tests, they actually perform better than before or than people who go on a walk in an urban setting. So nature is just this. You know, you get some physical benefits, no side effects, and it consistently elevates your cognitive and emotional game. Highly recommended.

[A]

How about that, everybody? So just anecdotally, I was just in New York with my daughter. She goes to school in the South. She did not grow up in a busy city. And so we were there a couple days, and she literally said. She goes, I don't know why, Daddy, but I'm wound up and almost down yet. This is a dream trip. You know, we're on this dream trip, just a daddy daughter trip. It was a great weekend. But she said. I said, well, Billy, it's. It's, you know, you can't see the sky almost. There's all these huge buildings. We're Literally in the city. And I said, I'm going to take you somewhere you've never been before. We went to Central park and it was packed because it's the Christmas time there. But we just walked in the park. And about 10 minutes into the walk, she's like, I feel like myself again. I said, I think it's the trees, I think it's the air, I think it's the birds. I think it's being out in nature. And it did shift both of us. You know what it did? It kind of energized the rest of the trip. We almost went, okay, now we're back to getting in the hustle and bustle again. And so those of you that live in those places, if you can get near something green, get outside, get exposure. This stuff matters. I bet you've never been asked, and there probably isn't a great answer to, but I'm going to ask it anyway because you're in the psychology department and you're a doctor. So we're going to give it a whirl here. This is not in either one of your books, and so I'm going to push you really hard here. What would you say to somebody like me, for example, who finds themselves in situations where they should be feeling a particular emotion, but they're not feeling it to the extent that they probably should or that others are? I'll give you an example. I can be at a concert like what you described. Everyone's having a blast. I mean, like, full tilt, you know, going for it, and I'm having a good time, but I'm not having the emotional experience other people are having. And I'm wondering if there's a hack out of that, a tool, or even like an insight. Why don't I fully experience emotionally the ones that people think you should let. There'll be other times where my dog will walk in and sit in my lap, and I'm the happiest human being in the world over something that simple, because little Rose or Daisy or Lily will jump in my lap. But, like, there are moments where I feel like I should be feeling more in this than I am, and I'm not. I bet you lots of people relate to what I just asked you. What would you say to us that are that way? Is there a hack out of it and is it, or is that normal? I don't know.

[B]

I think there's amazing variability with respect to our emotional lives. Our emotions are like a fingerprint, incredibly unique to each and every one of us. Your example Is a funny one because I think I mentioned it earlier. The Taylor Swift concert. My kids and wife, they were just on a high for six hours. I found it fun for the first two hours. But you know what I did? I'll admit, I'm admitting it to everyone. At about the two and a half hour mark, I sat down, I read a magazine article for like 20 minutes. I put on my AirPods, I tuned out the music. It was like I had enough.

[A]

We won't send this to Taylor. Okay?

[B]

Yes. Taylor, you were wonderful.

[A]

Yeah, for two and a half hours.

[B]

For two and a half hours. But, but, but here's the thing. It's only a problem if you think it's a problem, right? Like, clearly there are some objective circumstances where we would get outside of the territory of, of normalcy, I would say, right? Like if, if you're just totally emotionally flat across the board, you know, that could be the sign that maybe, you know, maybe you need to get some more significant intervention support from a clinician. But what you're describing, these kinds of. Just a different emotional pulse compared to someone else. Like, welcome to your emotional life, man. That's true of all of us, I would argue. And you don't actually have access to the internal feeling states of all the other people that are around you. I remember there was this one wonderful HBO show a couple of years ago, and this, this, this actress pulls up and she's smiling and she has one of these like, you know, million dollar grins or teeth pearly white and say, you see this? I'm dying inside, right? And there's this. We don't actually know what's happening in everyone else's emotional world. And so if you want to feel a different kind of state in those circumstances, that's what this book is all about. It's giving you the power to push your emotions around in the directions you want, if you want, when you want. That if you want, when you want, I think is a really important thing to emphasize. No one is saying, I wouldn't dare tell someone, you should feel this way. You should feel that. That's a, that's a very, very different set of issues. And I think it's, it's hard to give people those shoulds.

[A]

What's a relationship shifter?

[B]

A relationship shifter are the people in our world. And we talked about sensory perspective. We didn't talk about attention, but we did a little bit, A little bit on attention.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Yeah. Those are the shifters that are inside of us. We can pull those whenever we want. But then there Are people in our world around us. And they can help us manage our emotions too. And sometimes they could be really, really powerful agents of change. There are a couple of ways that other people can shift us that I often talk about. So one thing is other people are a resource to help you work through your problems. We often have trouble doing it on our own. Other people can help give us guardrails for thinking about the big. The big emotional experiences we face. The issue here is a lot of people, their intuitions about how to talk to other people send them in the wrong direction. A lot of people think the key to getting good support is to just find someone to vent your emotions, to just get it out. Research shows that venting is helpful for strengthening bonds between people. It's comforting to know I can be honest and authentic with someone. Just let it out to them without judgment. They can empathize with me. The problem is if all you do is vent your emotions to someone else, you leave the conversation. You feel really great about your relationship with that person, but the problem is still there. You're just as upset, you're even more upset because you just spent an hour just talking about the issue. So the better kind of conversations where you do two things. You talk to someone who first takes the time to listen and learn, really engages with you empathically. But then they start working with you to broaden your perspective to look at that bigger picture, to help perspective shift you. Those are the most productive kinds of conversations for managing emotions. The other way you can use other people to shift yourself gets at one of my absolute favorite findings. And social psychology, we have learned that one of the best ways to make yourself feel better when you're in a jam is to do something good for someone else. Helping other people helps you shift emotionally. That's just a win win from my point of view for society. And so I knowing how this works, if I'm in a rut for I get rejected or, you know, I seemingly get rejected every day, I don't know about you, maybe now I'm projecting too much here, right?

[A]

No, it's accurate.

[B]

I'll go and I'll try to be even more helpful to like people on my team or other people. In some ways, this is selfish. In other ways, it's the least selfish thing you can do. So it's just this beautiful way of improving society and you benefit too. Super simple.

[A]

Thank you for this. This is outstanding. All right. I want to ask you about prayer because this is an important part of my life and it is for anybody who's got a commitment to their faith. And for me, it quiets that inner voice. And the inner voice in my case becomes the Holy Spirit, right? And I try to connect to that as best I can, whatever someone's faith is, and that's not what today's show is about. I want to just grab onto two things to just let you run with it the last couple minutes. Inner voice, what that is, how we regulate it. And if there's any correlation, you believe, between emotional regulation, that voice, prayer, etc, just kind of like a grab bag of stuff there to finish with.

[B]

It's a perfect way to finish because it gets us to the. The issue of culture and how, you know, culture is like the air we breathe. And it gives us beliefs and values, it gives us norms, rules for how to navigate our lives. And it gives us practices like prayer, like rituals, that reinforces those beliefs and values. And religion is a form of culture and it is a powerful, powerful tool for managing our emotions. Prayer, I think of prayer as it's. It's a. It's a kind of cocktail for managing your emotions. But I use the word cocktail because a cocktail has multiple ingredients that come together, right. To give rise to it. Prayer does a few different things. It helps you in a few different ways. One thing is prayer tends to be ritualistic. So we say the same words with the same tunes. If you're singing them the same way each time. We know that rituals can help people manage their emotions because they give people a sense of order and control. When order and control is lacking, this is called compensatory control. So you're compensating for the lack of control you feel in your head when your emotions are taken over by doing this thing the same way over and over, right? That's under. You could pray the same way every single time that's under your control. So that's one way that it helps prayer. Also, if you think about the words that are being conveyed, it often connects us to higher powers, transcendent forces that take care of us, right? There's an order to things. And that can be really comforting to tap into that idea that in this messy, crazy universe that we live in, there is some order at a higher level. There's some fairness to it all, some principles that if we follow certain kinds of rules, like, we're probably going to end up okay. So that's another just from a perspective point of view that's shifting your perspective. Then we're often praying too with other people. So there's this communal element to prayer that often occurs, that unites us with other people. So prayer is a wonderful thing for helping us manage our emotional as religion, I would argue more generally can be very, very helpful for allowing people to manage their emotions. What is the. This is. I'm going to go geek out for you very quickly. Why don't we just zoom out for a second and I want to put this in perspective for everyone, what we're dealing with, what is at stake. If we go back to 8 to 10,000 years ago, major spike on the timeline of humanity.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The first surgical technique was invented. It was called trephination and involved drilling holes in people's skulls. Why do you think this? One of the reasons why this technique.

[A]

Was used, I would imagine for relief.

[B]

They thought relief, including relief of big emotional states. Right. This is where the expression, keep it up, you're going to get a hole in your head comes from. Right. So the earliest writing ever discovered, this was discovered in ancient Persia. Talked about dealing with a broken heart and depression. Fast forward to the greatest, the best selling book of all time. You know what that book was?

[A]

The Bible.

[B]

The Bible. One of the most famous stories of that book. Story of Adam and Eve. This is a story of emotion dysregulation. Right. We've been struggling with this stuff for a long time now. Let's fast forward to the late 1940s. There's another giant spike on the emotion regulation timeline. Another technique is developed to help people manage emotions and it is viewed as such an innovation that it is awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine.

[A]

What's that?

[B]

It's called the frontal lobotomy.

[A]

Oh yeah, I thought that. Were you going to tell me? That was the first procedure, by the way. I was going to guess lobotomy. Okay.

[B]

Well, it's a similar theme, right. Damage in your brain. But like, think about that for a moment. This of course is barbaric technique. No one does it, but our emotions are sometimes so all consuming that we've resorted to drilling holes in our heads and poking holes in our brains. And we've actually thought this was a good idea.

[A]

Crazy.

[B]

And now come to the present, we have actual science based tools that are non invasive that can be wielded to strategically push ourselves in different directions. We have not solved the puzzle of emotion regulation entirely. It's an ongoing quest.

[A]

But.

[B]

But we've got lots of resources now that we can avail ourselves of, but we don't really teach people about it. So that's why I'm thankful for you having me on to help share this stuff with listeners.

[A]

So am I, Ethan. I got to tell you, by the way, everybody, I got a psychology professor and writer at University of Michigan to admit prayer was good for you. How about that, huh? Let me check that box. And for me, that prayer gives me comfort, gives me God's comfort, gives me God's strength and God's peace. And oftentimes, that's the fastest and best pathway out of any emotional state that you may be suffering from, reminding you of those promises, God's grace. Ethan, today was awesome. I mean, if someone listened today's show and they didn't pick up something they can use in terms of shifting their emotions, then they didn't listen to the entire show. So everybody, please go get shift Managing youg Emotions so they don't manage youe by Dr. Ethan Cross. And Ethan, I'm grateful you're here today, brother. Thank you so much.

[B]

Hey, thanks for having me. It was a super fun conversation. I appreciate you and what you do.

[A]

Yeah, likewise, brother. God bless you, everybody. Share today's episode. This is the Ed Milan Show.