← The Walker Webcast
The Walker Webcast
Marc Brackett, Bestselling Author and Founding Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
01:03:11
Loading summary
Transcript66 lines
- [00:11]
Willie Walker
Join Willie Walker, Walker and Dunlop's Chairman and CEO, as we bring you fresh perspectives about leadership, business, the economy and commercial real estate. Willie hosts a diverse network of leaders as they share wisdom that cuts across industry lines. His guests are experts in their fields, from leading economists and CEOs to Harvard and Yale professors and everything in between. Our one goal is simple, providing you with unique insights, unparalleled data, and real time market analyses.
- [00:44]
Welcome to another Walker webcast. It is my great pleasure and honor to have my friend Mark Brackett, Dr. Mark Brackett, join me once again on the Walker webcast. Mark, I was just saying to you that it's been over five years since the two of us got together on a Walker webcast. Last time was in the depths of the pandemic in April of 2020. And your insights at that time were extremely helpful to everyone who listened in as it relates to how to deal with the isolation and the fear of the pandemic which was gripping our nation and gripping our world at that time. I'm super happy to have you back, and I'm also super happy to have you back in potentially less anxious times. But you know, that, that, that could actually be. I see you shaking your head there. Yeah, well, we're gonna, we're gonna dive into that. Maybe not specifically into the causes of anxiety in today's world, but how to deal with them nonetheless. Let me do a quick intro, Mark, so, so that people, not that you need much of an intro, but there's a lot to your bio that some people may not know. And then we will jump into your new book, your thoughts on the world we're living in. And, and I think most. First of all, I know you well enough that the two of us can have just a really good, engaging conversation on a lot of things in your new book. The second thing is that you are very straightforward in the book of just some tools and some ways that people can regulate emotions. And so I really want to make sure that you and I get into some of those, if you will, tricks or habits that need to be developed to be able to regulate emotion, identify emotions, and be able to react to emotions in the way that all of us would like to react and not how we really don't want to react. And so without getting too far ahead of myself, let me just jump in and give the bio and then I'll turn it over to you for a moment. Mark Brackett is the founding director of the Yale center for Emotional Intelligence. He is also a professor in the Child Study center at Yale University and he is the author of the bestselling book Permission to Feel, which is now translated into 27 languages, which has transformed how individuals, schools and organizations understand and apply emotional intelligence. He is an award winning researcher for 25 years and has secured more than $100 million in grant funding and published over 200 scholarly articles on the role of emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, physical and mental health and workplace performance. Is the lead developer of ruler, an evidence based framework for cultivating emotional intelligence now implemented in more than 5,000 schools worldwide. I believe that's 7 million students have had access to ruler due to the 5,000 schools. It's into improving the lives of millions of children and adults. RULER enhances the way administrators lead educators, teach students learn and families. Parent research shows that it improves academic outcomes, reduces bullying, lowers teacher stress and burnout, and enriches school climate and instructional practice. Together with Pinterest founder Ben Silverman, Mark co created the award winning how we Feel app which has helped millions build emotional awareness and improve well being. Mark's newest book, which we are going to dive into today, Dealing with Feeling, which you just told me has gotten onto the bestseller list after only being out there for one week, continues his mission to democrat, democratized emotional intelligence. The democratization of emotional intelligence. Does that mean that emotional intelligence is elite or fascist or socialist or what? Why would it. What, what's the democratization of emotional intelligence mean, Mark?
- [05:05]
Mark Brackett
It means that it's going to be in every school and every workplace and every government institution if I have it my way.
- [05:15]
Willie Walker
And what's it take to democratize emotional intelligence?
- [05:21]
Mark Brackett
Being on your webinar?
- [05:22]
Willie Walker
Yeah, I know that helps. And you've been on my friend Rich Roll's webcast last week I listened to his podcast with you. It was fantastic. As you know, Rich and I went to India together to meet the Dalai Lama and had just one of those amazing. Gosh, it was just an amazing trip. One of those life changing trips. But one of the things on that Mark, which is interesting is that my friend Arthur Brooks invited me to go on that trip because Arthur had heard me talk about the fact that of all the things that I feel like I'm missing in my life right now, I. I have purpose, I have great friendships and I have really, really good physical health. But that I in his quadrants, I don't have spirituality. And I'd spoken to Arthur about that and Arthur said, you're coming with me to meet the Dalai Lama. And while going to meet the Dalai Lama was a wildly, what I would deem a spiritual experience. I didn't take away from meeting with the Dalai Lama or work into my life spirituality to the degree that I had thought I would after going to India and meeting the Dalai Lama. As I read your book, I thought about all of the things that need to be put into place to being able to deal with feeling and some of the things that you talk about as it relates to identifying the actual emotion, understanding which specific emotion it is dealing with, doing meditation, deep breathing, being able to build some of these habits into our life that make us better at doing these things. And as I listened to it, I sort of said, you went to meet the Dalai Lama, it was all there, but you haven't sort of worked the spirituality into it, which requires practice and requires you to do it. And I sort of listened to your book and I said, am I going to be able to take some of the methodologies and the really what I would say, life changing things that are required to transform a life and to be able to deal with emotions in a specific and, and, and, and productive way? What have you found to be the necessary first steps, if you will, that allow someone to incorporate some of the things that you talk about into their life and make them successful at doing so?
- [07:38]
Mark Brackett
Yeah, it's interesting. So I spent, you know, so many years of my career running around the world teaching people the skills of emotional intelligence, like how to identify those feelings and how to understand them and label them and express them and then regulate them, which is the focus of this book. And I realized that there was a master strategy that nobody really talk about, which is, I'm going to call it permission to feel, which is this kind of mindset around our emotions. And what I find is that, you know, one of the reasons I'm excited to talk with you about it is here you are the CEO of a large, you know, for profit organization. And oftentimes when I visit companies, not your company, but other companies, a CEO is like, you know, look at me, Mark, look at my office. Do you really think I need emotional intelligence? And I say something like, well, I've interviewed the five people who work for you and they hate you, so you might. No, don't say that. But my point is that, you know, self awareness is a gift. And I think many people are unself aware about their own emotions and how they, how their emotions impact other people. So for me, step one is about valuing emotions, that these are important in this is an information, it's data. And I Don't think. People grew up thinking that emotions are data. People grew up thinking that emotions are interference. Like when I'm feeling something strong that gets in the way of achieving my goal, and I'm here to tell people that that's the opposite, that when we learn how to use our emotions wisely, they are the pathway to achieving all of our dreams.
- [09:14]
Willie Walker
So permission to feel. That title is very personal to you in the sense that you grew up in a household and with a father who really didn't give you permission to feel. And I think one of the interesting things about what you write about in this book is that when people hear emotional regulation, they sort of say, oh, that means that I shouldn't feel that feeling. I shouldn't express that feeling. Jump in on that for a moment, Mark, because I think that's clearly not what you're saying. So talk about how people need to have the opportunity to permission to feel, the ability to express emotion, but then really the trick or the tool to develop is the response to that emotion, to the regulation of that emotion, to the. To how you process the emotion and then act back to others.
- [10:07]
Mark Brackett
Yeah, well, interestingly, you know, it's not that we have to deal with every emotion. Sometimes we just have a feeling. Like if you had to deal with every feeling you had all day long at work, you go crazy. Think about it, because you're going through the day and you're having lots of feelings. And so most emotions are just, you know, I'm in the mood, I'm not in the mood. Things are going pretty good. Things aren't going so well. It's when emotions are intense and they last for longer than I want them to, or they're interfering with a goal or interfering with a good decision or interfering with having a good relationship, that's when we have to deal with them mostly. And that's an important thing to understand. I think also that a lot of people think of emotion regulation as not feeling like, oh, I'm going to get rid of my anxiety. Like, I've lived with some anxiety. I'm 56 as of two weeks ago. And I thought for so many years in my life, oh, I have to find the doctor who's going to carve that area of my brain ash, and then I'm. I'm going to be happy all the time. A, that's not possible. B, it's a weird goal because truthfully, people who are happy all the time are kind of weird. And three, is that sometimes feeling an emotion like anxiety or stress is actually helpful. You know, I like to hire people actually have a bit of anxiety because they're focused, they work hard, they get things done. And so we can have a mindset that anxiety is debilitating, you know, gets in the way of achieving a goal. Or we can have a mindset. Oh, actually, you know, funny thing about anxiety, if you really think about it, we get anxious about the things that we care about. Let's say that again, we tend to get anxious about the things that we care about. I care about the funding for my center. I care about making sure that my team publishes high quality research. You know, those are things that I care about and therefore want to do a good job at. So why would anxiety be a bad emotion? You follow? It's a. There's no. They're actually, I'm going to say it up front, there is no such thing as a bad emotion. All emotions are data and information to serve our goals.
- [12:22]
Willie Walker
But there are bad responses to emotions.
- [12:25]
Mark Brackett
Yes, we all know those. You know, we've all ate a little too much, we've all drank a little too much. We've all said something we regret. We all, you know, avoid the person at work that we don't want to have a difficult conversation with. We've all watched too much television, scroll for too long. I mean, it's endless, right? All those kind of what we'll call maladaptive strategies for dealing with our emotions. And somehow another, you have to get a graduate degree to learn them.
- [12:52]
Willie Walker
So talk for a moment there though, about defining the emotion. Because you, you talked about anxious. Anxiousness. So in yesterday with a group of W and D ers down in our Irvine office, I had a really good conversation with them, specifically from your book about defining emotions. And I talked about the difference between anxiety and stress. And I sat there and said that if someone in the room is stressed, that means generally speaking, that there's, if you will, too much on their plate, that they have too much of inbound emails, too much that they need to process and they don't have the tools or the resources to be able to deal with that workflow. Anxiety is, generally speaking, concerns about the future. You just talked about concerns about the future of your center at Yale and are you going to have enough funding for it and do you have the right professors in it and our students going to continue to come and take classes there? All those things that are concerns about the future. Many people would put those two emotions together and say anxiety and stress kind of sit together, talk about the need to Separate those and then why it's so beneficial to separating them in applying the solution to those emotions.
- [14:06]
Mark Brackett
Yeah, I mean, that is a big piece of my work. So actually, the two building blocks to kind of the beginning of the regulation process are the first one is those mindsets. No such thing as a bad emotion. Emotions are data. Emotions are information. Just because I'm feeling anxiety or stress or overwhelm or anger doesn't mean I have to be debilitated. Like, there's way somehow or another correlated unpleasant feelings with not being functional, which is ridiculous. That means, like, half the half America wouldn't go to work. We want, you know, you can go to work if you're feeling anxious. You can even go to work if you're depressed. I think there's a mindset oftentimes that these emotions get in the way. And I don't believe that's the. I don't think that's the right way to think about it. But then you have to know what you're feeling. And in my research, what I find is that most people just have no clue what they're feeling. They say things like, I'm disappointed when they're angry. They say, I'm jealous when they're envious. And the example that you're giving is one of the most powerful ones because of, you know, post pandemic. And the reason why I wrote my book was because people were saying things like, I don't even know how I'm feeling anymore. I'm like, I'm. I'm overwhelmed. I'm stressed, and I'm freaking out all at the same time. And, like, what do I do with this information? I mean, you go back to the pandemic. People were like, remember when we were spraying our groceries with windows? I mean, people were out of their minds. Like, don't touch me. Don't come near me. And so I was like, how you feeling? And then I'm stressed. Are you stressed? Or as you said, are you anxious or are you overwhelmed or are you afraid or are you feeling pressure? I mean, we can ask everybody, you know here. We've got lots of people at 850 people here. So, like, just take a moment, everyone, and think about it. If I were to ask you to define the psychological difference between and among anxiety, stress, pressure, fear and overwhelmed. And it's a lie that it's a. That's a hard test. Let's do it. Anxiety, stress, pressure, fear, overwhelmed. Now, you may. You've read my book, Willie. So, you know, like, I. I was Doing this course at the, at the business school at yana, all these business professionals there. I'm like go define these words. And they're like why? Like this is a waste of my time. And I'm like just do it, just do it. What do you think the difference is? There's no difference. I'm like now you're wasting my time. So I should we go through them?
- [16:49]
Willie Walker
Well, I think it would be really interesting to go through them only in this. You put them out and then I as a CEO will apply what I would do to take care of them as we define the different emotions. Because the, the, the if you will, if you put them all together, I don't have any ability to apply resources or, or work on something. Whereas if you go through them, I can sit there from my perspective and sort of give you okay, this is what we need to do to take care of that to the individual. Which I do believe shows not necessarily the way that the individual will process it, but how, by defining it, you can actually work on it. If that makes sense.
- [17:26]
Mark Brackett
Yes, well, you can. So as you know, in my book I talk not just about like what we do to manage our own emotions, but how we co regulate. And I just want to say something upfront about that because I just published this very large study of. It was five time points throughout the pandemic looking at leaders and their teams and what I found was that the leaders in organizations where the leaders had higher emotion regulation skill. But there's two forms of this. There's like imagine I work for you Will. Like I'm like, you know, I. Willie's in good shape. You know, Willie has a good attitude. You know, Willie is, you know, able to manage stress. He doesn't come in like look like he's freaking out every day. That's your self regulatory. That's my opinion or my belief of observing you as my leader that you can deal with your feelings. That's not the same thing as you know, all of a sudden the stock goes down, all of a sudden there's a pandemic and you have your team of hundreds of people in front of you and you have to be that person who's present for them and help them deal with their feelings. That's the co regulation or the interpersonal regulation. You see the difference there? Oh yeah. And so my is that both matter for the success of your organization, but they predict different things. If you want to really an organization where there's a lot of trust, people have to see you as a leader who can deal with this stuff. If you want an organization with a more positive culture and climate where people are less burnt out, where people feel like they can get through things that are difficult, you got to be good at the interpersonal regulation piece. So I just want to put that out there because you can't really be good at the interpersonal piece if you're not good at knowing what the different feelings are. Right. Then you just sort of like, go, take a deep breath. It's going to be fun using kind of like these broad things. Like, you know, when someone tells me to take a deep breath, I'm sort of like, all right, yeah.
- [19:25]
Willie Walker
But at the same time, you're really, you're really prescriptive in your book, Marc, of talking about breath therapy, if you will, and taking a deep breath and meditating and, and, and when, when your body kicks into the fight or flight mode and you start to breathe really quickly, that sometimes that's going to cause you to react to something in, in the inappropriate way. And so while, while I do get you saying like, okay, breath, and in your book you talk about, you know, going on to Instagram and people sort of saying, here's the solve to all of your emotional issues and you can watch this, you know, 28 second video and all of a sudden you're going to be solved of everything. That, that really isn't the way to get there. But nonetheless, you do underscore the, the, the, the need for breath work and, and regulation through breath work 100%.
- [20:10]
Mark Brackett
But it's, it's the necessary but insufficient strategy. Right? I mean, if you're having a difficult time in a relationship, let's just imagine girlfriend, spouse, partner, whatever it is. And all you do is like every time you get irritated, you take a deep breath, it's like, okay, but like it's been six months that I'm taking these deep breaths. We gotta talk about, you know, like, the breathing is starting to not work very well. All right, but one thing before we.
- [20:39]
Willie Walker
Get into the five, which I think is important just on that as it relates to a relationship and emotions. I think one of the things that is important to keep in mind on emotions is that for instance, my, my girlfriend loves to express her emotions. And there are plenty of times where she says things that I'm just like, okay, she likes that, doesn't like that, what have you. But for me, when there is a criticism of something that I have provided down to even a as silly as a hotel room that I had nothing to do with, how it was built, how it was designed, what the, you know, layout of the room is. But if I put together booking a hotel room and we get there and the emotion is, ah, this is okay. Rather than, this is a beautiful hotel room, and I'm really excited to be there, I take that personally. I take that as a criticism to me. And that's my own issue to take care of.
- [21:34]
Mark Brackett
Right.
- [21:34]
Willie Walker
I got to get over that. But at the same time, that's to some degree my kryptonite in the sense that I then stepped into. Well, I got to change it. And I tried my best to get the best room or get the best hotel. And what it then does is it sets up this dynamic where I feel like I'm being criticized while she's just expressing an emotion. And so one of the areas where we've had to work really hard together is that she obviously has the right and ability to express any emotion she wants. It's how I then receive it and whether she can do a better job of not literally having it come out as if it's a criticism, but just sort of her emotion about something, something and me not taking it as well. Now I got to go redesign the hotel room or move us out of here. But just say that's just her emotion at this moment. Sit with it, don't take it personally, and allow the two of us to move through it.
- [22:25]
Mark Brackett
All right? And this is going to cost you a lot of money for this session. But the, the, you know, I think this. This is. It's layered because it depends on the patterns, you know, and if things are repeated all the time and you can't, you know, just say, like, well, no one can. You create your own emotions. I mean, emotions are not. People say, I'm triggered. Well, maybe you are triggered, but you're the one who experienced the emotion because you process it a certain way. Not everybody would process it the same. The same way. I mean, going out of your relationship for a minute, if this. If you and I are on a roller coaster ride and you, like, had a traumatized experience as a kid on the roller coaster ride, you're thinking, oh, shit, I'm going to die. And I'm thinking, like, this is boring. So the roller coaster does not cause you to feel excitement or terror. It's our appraisal of that. So if your relationship with that kind of feedback or it's your, you know. Well, it's your relationship with that way of someone talking to you or, you know, that what your history is with criticism that's coming into play. Your whole history comes in every time you have a feeling. Just so you know, it's not just that instant. It's life. And all that stuff in your brain that's being. That's been there forever and ever and ever. And somehow another, that little vocal intonation or that little saying is bringing back memories that are creating the feeling. So little pause there.
- [23:57]
Willie Walker
It's great. So then dive into the five so that we can talk about how important it is to define the emotion.
- [24:04]
Mark Brackett
Anxiety, perceived uncertainty. So. So can't make a prediction about the future.
- [24:13]
Willie Walker
Yeah. So if I can set up anxiety and stress for a moment, if someone were to conflate those two or put them in the same definition and they say, I'm stressed, I sit there and think about the fact that on defining stress versus anxiety, they've got too much on their plate. So what we need to do is figure out how he or she can either get things off of their desk or are given additional resources, tools, training to be able to deal with everything that is inbound to them. Anxiety is. I don't really know where we're going. I don't know what the future looks like for Walker and Dunlop. How are we going to do competing with other firms? Is my job secure? Is there a vision on where this company is going? Those two things as it relates to me saying, how do we either communicate better on the anxiety piece or provide resources on the stress piece, or wildly different solutions, if you will, or ways that I might be able to help with that emotion, that if they just came in, put together, I'm not going to define which one we really need to work on.
- [25:21]
Mark Brackett
Exactly. I mean, I'm thinking back during the pandemic again, just as an example. So Yale shut down. My center shut down. All my team is going home. They got kids, they're freaking out. That's. You know, and when are we. When are we. When are we going back in? When is it going to open up again? And I'm like, I'm not the cdc. I'm not the president of Yale. We're going to live together through this uncertainty. And so I could spend all day long, I could, you know, when are they gonna open? What is it? And go crazy. So there are certain things you have to acknowledge that when you can't predict the future, you have to ask yourself, how much control do I have over that future? Certain things we have control over. Many things we don't. If you don't have control over, then trying to find a Way to have control over is gonna drive you nuts. So you've gotta be. You have this, Mark. We're all in this together. You know, I remember in the stock market, you remember this pretty well. I'm sure with your company. They're all suddenly. And I just. I just started singing songs and I'm like, we all go down together. I just feel, you know what, we're all going to be poor, so it's good. But my point is that the anxiety piece, when you have an employee who's anxious. So, for example, at Yale, there's something about, like, not being anxious. It's like, it's an issue that people think that's correlated with incompetence. Like, if I assign someone to do a research study where they have to do complicated analyses, and let's say they don't really know how to do that, they're gonna. They, like. Some of them would just go off and, like, freak out. Like, I don't know how to do this. My theory about that is if they knew the kind of leader that I am, which I try to be transparent about, I would. Rather than say, hey, Mark, I really don't understand what the heck you were talking about. And can you just clarify it for me and then maybe I can figure it out or, you know, maybe you can just hook me up with someone who can help, you know, me figure out this analysis. I'd much rather that communication than someone freaking out in a. In an office by themselves for a week, you know, because they're so anxious and don't feel comfortable talking about it. At the stress piece, like you said, too many demands, not enough resources. Like you said, you have two options. Yes, somebody helps or take stuff off their blank. And the thing about here is, if you do, like, I can breathe, and then I still have too many emails, I can't respond. So the breathing may lower your temperature for the moment. But if you're not dealing with a specific emotion, with too many demands and not enough resources for the stress, normal stress is going to go away. Does that make sense?
- [27:55]
Willie Walker
It does, Very much so.
- [27:57]
Mark Brackett
All right, so what about pressure?
- [27:59]
Willie Walker
So, you know, so if pressure were put in there with anxiety and stress, the. The difference on pressure would be, well, where's the pressure coming from? Is the pressure coming from your boss? Is the pressure coming from clients? Is the pressure coming from outside influences in your life, like a spouse who wants you to make more money and is putting pressure on you to do better at work? So identifying pressure versus stress versus anxiety is. Is super Important, because if it's pressure from your boss, well, then I got to go talk to the boss and say, is this pressure, you know, is it needed, is it warranted? And what do you think the outcome is going to be? If you keep the pressure up, he or she is going to either get to your needed state of productivity or they're going to burn out and leave or what have you. So identifying that pressure piece and where the pressures are coming from, if it's outside and your spouse is expecting you to be making more money than you're making, and you don't really have the opportunity at W and D to earn significantly more to meet your spouse's desires of and expectations for you, well, that's a tough thing to do. So let's be clear on what the opportunity is, what the bonus opportunity is, and then go do it. So I think to your point there, Mark, identifying the pressure versus anxiety versus stress is uber important to identifying the emotion and how we can help with it.
- [29:22]
Mark Brackett
So the. So for everyone, but you did it perfectly. The pressure is when something at stake, like your marriage, right. Is dependent upon your behavior, are you going to make more money? You know. You know, for example, going back to my own students that, yeah, they all say they're stressed out. And then I say, well, tell me what you're stressed out. My parents are texting me 15 times a day asking me how I did it, you know, throughout the day. I said, that's not stress. There's no demand, you know, or, you know, this is like, outside pressure on you to, like, you know, I want you to make sure you did well on your test. You know, you can go meditate all you want, but until you have the difficult conversation with your mom or your dad, it's not going anywhere. And there's fear, which is just danger. Like, this is when, you know, it's like. Since we met Willie, I now live in the countryside of Connecticut. And I was there last year, and all of a sudden a bobcat walked by my office door, and I just felt like, we're dead. Yeah, I knew nothing about bobcats, but that's fear. Fear is when there's impending danger.
- [30:27]
Willie Walker
And the only thing that I would dive in on that a little bit is, you know, when I was at the New York Stock Exchange last week on Wednesday, my. My colleague McCrae and I were walking to check in to go into the New York Stock Exchange. And it's a very public space. It's a very open space. And as we walked across in front of The New York Stock Exchange. I turned to McCrae and I said, does being in a space like this make you nervous? And she looks right at me and her eyes were sort of that. And she says, 100%. And just given the world we live in today and being in big, open public spaces in a space that something like bad could happen. Whenever I'm in those types of spaces, I'm. I'm just, I'm on heightened alert. I'm just constantly looking around and thinking about things. That's a. That's a fear impulse that comes inside of me. But if someone were to say to me, I have fear, it's about what Is it about the physical safety of the office? Is it about the future of our company? Is it about you, the security of your job? All of those things. Defining fear versus anxiety versus stress versus pressure is super important to how I'm going to try and give that person data or help in dealing with that fear. And there's obviously just to your point, as it relates to, as the markets go down, there's only so much you can do. But one of the things that I very clearly can do is making sure that in our 45 offices across the country, we have a physically safe environment with an emotionally safe environment for people to be able to come work and from the hours that they're at Walker and Dunlop, make sure that they feel that they are safe. And if they're feeling fear during that period of time, very clearly we as a company are missing something. And I can put resources to that.
- [32:17]
Mark Brackett
And, you know, as you know, there's the physical safety and then there's the psychological safety, which is, can someone express, can someone disagree with you without the fear of being fired, without the fear of being ridiculed or dismissed? And that's a big issue in most workplaces, that people get to have that kind of sense of psychological unsafety. The last one is overwhelm, you know, which is just basically, you're saturated. And it's interesting if, you know, I know that you're like me. I'm. I have tendencies to have workaholism. And, you know, sometimes It'll be like 11 o' clock at night. I'll be doing emails and I'll say things. I'm freaking anxious. And then I realized, mark, you're just tired. Like, you're not anxious. It's like you've been working 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours, like, go to bed. And over the last few years, I realized that kind of with overwhelm, it's really about boundaries and, and self boundaries. Like, Mark, after dinner you don't have to go back on your computer. You have, you can give yourself the permission to like watch a film, go take a walk, do something for yourself. And I feel a lot of people again are misperceiving all these feelings. They, they're saying they have an anxiety disorder or they're stressed when they're just not giving themselves any freedom in their lives to have some space to do a yoga class or take a walk or do some physical activity. And they're mislabeling what is overwhelm, which could be dealt with pretty quickly with anxiety. I thought one of the great anecdotes.
- [33:53]
Willie Walker
That I've heard you give is when you're, when your mother in law was living with you during the pandemic. And there are two pieces to the story that I think were great. The first is that one night when you, when you got, if you will, short with her and responded or reacted to something that she had said in a way that in hindsight you wish you hadn't, she looked at you and said, mark, aren't you the director of the center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale? And you looked right back at her, said, not tonight, I'm not. And I just, I love that. It's just like all of us at some point want to say, hold it, don't hold me to that task. Like, you know, yes, I'm supposed to be great and good all the time, and yes, I do spend my career at this, but at this moment I'm, I, I'm, I'm not the director of the Yale center for Emotional Intelligence. I'm just Mark Brackett. And then the other piece to it, Mark, was the reflection that you had on putting yourself in her shoes, that there was a, there was a selfishness which I'm greatly appreciative of you sharing. There was a selfishness of sort of, you know, she's in our house and I want my time to have my coffee and to decompress and come out of all this work that I do. And, and all of a sudden you stopped and said, hang on a second, she's been displaced. She, yes, she's here and living with us. And that's really nice that she can be here, but at the same time she doesn't have what she wants to be doing and to turn it around and just sort of say, stop thinking about Mark Brackett so much and start thinking about your mother in law and how challenging it is for her to be here. At the same time. And it's not all a one way street of just saying I want my time for my coffee and my decompression without having somebody in my kitchen. It's like, well, she's in her kitchen and would actually rather be in her own kitchen.
- [35:37]
Mark Brackett
Yeah, I mean, for sure she wanted to go home. She was like, she has dog and a cat and a parrot we had to deal with. You know, I, I'm sure, I know you have a plane. I was thinking of calling you to borrow your plane, but I didn't think I should.
- [35:50]
Willie Walker
You know, you don't need to mention those things on, on, on the rocket. Right? Hundreds of thousands of people hear this thing. You don't need to put that out there. Anyway, go ahead.
- [36:00]
Mark Brackett
Well, I thought of getting someone I know, ah, who can help me bring her home. But the point is that the joking aside about the planes and the all that, you know, we, we tend not to have an other orientation. You know, it's like when we're activated and we're upset and we're angry and we're fearful, it's all about me, me, me, me, me. And sometimes if you just take that pause and think about, well, what's this other person going through right now? Like, here's an 81 year old lady who's afraid to go outside because it's Covid who's dying to go home. And all I could think about is that I want to have coffee by myself. Really? You got big. That's like, come on, Mark, you can do better than that. And you're bringing up something that's so important, you know, about this work, which is that a lot of times emotion regulation has to align with our values and you have to think about the person that you want to be. Like, literally, like when I ask you, Willie, if I were to push you on this in terms of your relationship with your girlfriend, in terms of your being a parent, in terms of being a boss of a huge company. If I were to say, you know, Willie, take a minute and think about how do you want to be seen, how do you want to be talked about and how do you want to be experienced as a human will with these people? Like, what comes to mind for you as, as some of the top attributes?
- [37:33]
Willie Walker
Well, as you know, you know, a number of years ago I, I went through sort of a big transformation as it relates to, if you will, coming public that I had struggle with anger and the management of anger. And when I gave a speech about that journey and what it Took for me to realize that I had an issue there and really needed to learn how to react more professionally and in both my personal life as well as my professional life. And it was predominantly in my personal life. My fear at that time was that I'd lived my entire life hoping that everyone thought that I was.
- [38:14]
Mark Brackett
Perfect, that.
- [38:15]
Willie Walker
There was nothing that anyone could ever find, and that that was my own insecurity and my own fear of not only failure, but of people finding out that I wasn't smart enough, that I wasn't fast enough, that I wasn't strong enough, whatever the case might be. And one of the things that happened after I gave that talk thinking that people would sort of say, oh, you're not, you know, you're not as great as we thought you were. It actually turned everything and that people saw that I was willing to express and show my vulnerabilities. And rather than people moving away from me, people moved towards me. And it was a, it was an incredible eye opening moment as it relates to, you know, both feeling like I had the permission to feel the permission to express where I had insecurities and then also that friends, colleagues, clients sat there and said this guy who had always appeared to be the Teflon guy wanted to be seen as all these things that he may or may not have been, is actually showing his own vulnerability. And in that imperfection, people came towards me, not moved away from me. And so to the best of my knowledge, to the best of my efforts, what I've tried to do is to continue to clearly, like you talked about it previously, when the world turned upside down during the pandemic, one of the most important things to do was to communicate clearly. I didn't have all the answers to, I didn't have answers to a lot of different stuff. But to show that A, we were going to make it through, so make sure that people had the security to know that we were going to get through this one way or another as a team. And then second of all, openly discussing all of the challenges that we were facing and not try and kind of keep them in a box that all of a sudden they would just pop up and people like, whoa, where'd that come from? And I, and I do think that that form of leadership was very reflective of what I wanted to be seen as of. I'm not Teflon man. I don't have all the answers. And at the same time, I also want you to have the confidence that if we work on all this stuff together, we're going to get through it. And I think that that form of leadership during the pandemic was extremely helpful to getting us through it and making everyone feel that they were on the proper team.
- [40:30]
Mark Brackett
Nice. And I. I love hearing that. I want to really narrow this down, though, because I want. I want actual adjectives from you. I don't. I want you to go specifically to, like, values and attributes and characteristics. So as a dad, as a leader, as a partner, I want to be seen as a man who has these qualities.
- [40:57]
Willie Walker
So I would put forth empathy, I would put forth intelligence, I would put forth vision, and I would put forth care.
- [41:16]
Mark Brackett
Nice. So you want to be seen as someone who is empathic, who is smart, who has a vision, would demonstrate that they care. That's pretty good to me. And so the reason why I'm pushing you on this is that what my research shows is that if I can get you when you're annoying the girlfriend or the kid who does something or whoever, the colleague of yours, and before you go and say what you're going to say or do what you're going to do, that might not be as helpful as it could be. You take that breath to build the space, but in that space, you remind yourself of the person that you want to be like. I want to approach this with empathy, with vision, and with care, for example, or like, even intelligence.
- [42:02]
Willie Walker
And.
- [42:02]
Mark Brackett
Well, what the research shows that what happens that when we get activated by people who, you know, trigger us or activate us, if we can build that space between the stimulus and response with the. That breath and the redirection to our values, we're going to respond in a way.
- [42:21]
Willie Walker
Yeah. You know, this. This part of the discussion, Mark, reminds me of the quote that I sent you over the weekend as I was sitting at the. At the. Up in Santa Barbara at a. At a hotel. And sitting on the stone in front of me was a quote by W.L. sheldon that said, there is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. And I found that quote to be so. I mean, I'm sitting there reading your book, literally, and I looked down at this thing. I said, that rock was not placed there by chance. I mean, I was like, it was so. It was so. It was so perfect in the sense that to exactly what you just talked about, the challenges to continuously improve, to take that breath, to. To respond in a way that doesn't accelerate the issue, doesn't make the issue worse. And look, I mean, one of the other pieces to it that I think is so important is that as we deal with emotions, making sure that we are engaging with humans face to face. You talk about this in the book as it relates to, like, right now, you and I can see one another and I can read the emotions on your face. And we were listening to your book, my girlfriend and I were listening to your book driving down from Santa Barbara on Sunday, and something came up in your book that she wanted to talk about. And we were both facing forward in the, in the car, and she pressed pause and she started to talk about this issue. And I. And I said to her, can we put a pin in this until we get home and can look at one another? Because as I'm driving down the California freeway and she's out to my right, in my peripheral vision, in my peripheral vision, that's there to warn me of predators and to think that there might be a threat coming from the side, and I can't see what she is feeling and expressing in her face, and she can look at me. But generally speaking, when we're sitting in the passenger seat, we're facing forward. And the ability to look someone in the face, when you want to really understand emotion and deal with that emotion effectively, you really ought to, like, throw away your phone. And other than doing it on FaceTime, don't call them, don't email them, and certainly don't text them, because text is like the worst thing in the world to convey emotion and understand difficult issues. And yet so often we find ourselves moving through something quickly. And then all of a sudden, you.
- [44:49]
Mark Brackett
And your partner or Sarah and I.
- [44:51]
Willie Walker
Are going back and forth on something, and I say something, she says something, and the next thing you know, we're off in, you know, some really bad space of going back and forth saying, I, I thought I told you that, and you told me this. And it escalates without stopping and saying, look at me in the eyes. I still love you. I still want to be your partner. This is our issue, not your issue.
- [45:10]
Mark Brackett
Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. And the. You brought up a lot of different things in there, kind of that I actually cover in the book around emotional regulation. But the. Because you have to fill that space. And, you know, one of the major goals of emotion regulation is to go from automatic, habitual, unhelpful, unconscious ways of dealing with stuff, which we all are programmed to do. And that pause in that breath and that best self helps us to be more conscious, deliberate, you know, and intentional. And, you know, the question is, and I thought it'd be good for us to just let me. So we got those building blocks which are. And the other thing, by the way, that quote which is so reminiscent of having just a growth mindset about your life, it's saying, you know, today I messed up today I was not the best version of myself. Like I did with my mother in law. Like, you know, like I need strategies to how to, to apologize and ask for forgiveness. And let's. How do we move forward? Because the goal of life is to move forward. It's never to go backwards. And this is why I always feel compelled for people who have had really dark experiences in their life, whether it's a traumatic experience like my own abuse as a kid or bullying, the goal is not to be in the, in that trauma reminder place your whole life, then you're stuck. We have to figure out how to help people get through these things and move forward. And just like we had may have learned unhelpful ways of dealing with our anger in the past, like you were saying, doesn't mean you can't. Just because we learned unhelpful maladaptive ways of dealing with our anger, even until you're 40, doesn't mean you can't recognize that. Start unlearning those bad patterns and learn the new ones. It is a hundred percent learnable and a hundred percent possible at any age. And I wanted to say that loudly.
- [47:01]
Willie Walker
And I thought one of the things that you. There was a, you saw after the last election, a school had written to all of their students saying if you, if you don't want to come to school tomorrow because of the election outcome, you know, like take the day off. And you're like, you're like pulling your hair out saying, excuse me, that's, that, that is not learning. That's not dealing with the world we live in. That's avoiding the emotions. It's avoiding these. I, and I loved hearing you like, just like that's the last thing we want to do to say to people. Oh, just, just check out. It's a tough day for you. So like take the day off from school. It's like, no, come together, talk about it, express emotions, understand the way forward.
- [47:41]
Mark Brackett
I mean life. I don't know about you, but I've seen, you know, you, you, your company has coming up and down, up and down. It keeps going up, which is fabulous. But you know, there are really difficult days and if, and you know, if you avoid those difficult days, that's sometimes the best learning and the best opportunity. And so I really Am. I think it also is what makes sometimes this work. Like, they call it soft skills, which drives me crazy. I don't know why the balloons are coming up and celebrating, but this is that.
- [48:12]
Willie Walker
Is that, like, something that you have automatically at minute 45 on your podcast, that the balloons start coming up on.
- [48:18]
Mark Brackett
The thing, celebrating my book. But it's. It's important. And you know, the other thing, you know that you know, 95% of the things, I bet you, Willie, 90% of the things that you know, drive you nuts about, let's say, your relationship or something at work, it is a temporary irritant. And if you ask yourself in that moment, Willie, will this matter next week? Really, like, the thing that I'm pissed off about right now? Will this actually. Does this have, like, a huge impact on my life? Is this going to really bother me tomorrow or the next day or in a week from now? 95% of the time, you'd say no.
- [48:57]
Willie Walker
Well, you know, that is such an interesting one because, like, so I have a friend of mine who's a very, very successful CEO, one of my closest, closest friends, and the two of us have said to one another at various times that both of us should not ever have to worry about money again. And yet we both constantly worry about money. And my friend said to me, you know, like, of all the skills that I have in the world, the one skill that I know is always going to be there is my ability to go and make money. I've done it throughout my career, and I can go do it. If I lost everything, I think I could go build it back tomorrow. And yet, at the same time, I'm constantly preoccupied with my money. And we. And one of the things that my friend said to me was, I guess the reason I'm so good with money is because I worry about it all the time. And, And. And I. Both of us have talked about strategies as it relates to just letting go of that. And whether it's money, whether it's your position in a. In. In a. In a socioeconomic stratus, whether it's a membership to a country club, whether it's winning the. The club golf tournament, or whether it is a relationship that you have with a family member that has been tried for a very long period of time, I think one of the things that we get a lot of energy from is those worries. And I would. I'm curious, Mark, how can people kind of unwind those. How does. How does somebody who is constantly worried about money but thinks it's actually the reason they're so good with money. Let go of that. What I would call neuroses. Yeah.
- [50:34]
Mark Brackett
Well, a couple of things. One is there is the rule of impermanence. And so we're all going to be dead in one day. And, you know, your money's going to not be with you. Except the. And everything is impermanent. And I think the beauty of the principle of impermanence, and you just got back from seeing the Dalai Lama, that's the whole principle of Buddhism, is impermanence. You know, no attachment. You know, the. The whole attachment to things that would cause a suffering. And it's a true. It's a true phenomenon that, you know, the. If all we have is an attachment to something, like a person, well, they may have cancer and die. Think about that. I mean, like, life is just one big experience of impermanence. And the same thing applies to happiness. You know, I have people who like this, this whole field of happiness. And I know your friend Arthur, you know, he likes to write about this stuff. And I have to have a conversation with him about it because I think the research on it is tricky because if you're always striving for happiness, you're bound to be disappointed and feel down. It just. It's not attainable. It's just there are rainy days and there are sunny days. And if you try only to have sunny days in your life, you know, maybe you have to move to San Diego or something, or Hawaii, but the truth is there's going to be a rainy day. And so having that ability to just let go is really important. And that's why. So we talked about the mindsets, we talked about the labeling, talked a little bit about the breathing and the meditation, the mindfulness. I would say a big piece of that, the neurosis piece, is that we can't steal our minds. So really interesting research. I used to make videos for parents to help them learn how to regulate emotions, be better parents. Years ago, we could do a two and a half minute video. People would watch the whole thing. You know that as of like a year ago, 37 seconds. People don't have the patience to. This is why the Instagram influencers teaching therapy is like so successful. Except the research shows that everybody's gotten psychologically worse off in the last 10 years. So those quick fixes are not working. So then the second is the cognitive stuff that we were just talking about that saying things to yourself, like, Mark, let it go, Mark, take the high road, Mark, give the person the benefit of the doubt. That's all that cognitive work going from self criticism to, you know, self compassion. Then there's the relationship work, you know, having that emotional ally, as I now call it, that you can, that confidant to talk with about feelings. The one thing that we haven't talked about, that I know that you do a lot for your mental health and well being, however, is physical activity. Making sure that you're getting the right amount of sleep, a good sleep, and make sure you're not putting junk in your body. And I think it's really interesting that so many people tell me, mark, I set my goal to be the best version of myself. I'm trying to be more empathic and I have my smarts and my vision and my caring. But I like, I, I mess up every freaking morning and it doesn't work. And I said, well, tell me more, by the way. You know, what time did you go to bed last night? I went to bed at midnight. What time did you get up? Five o'. Clock. So you got five hours of sleep. You think anybody can be their best self with five hours of sleep? And so what people don't realize, and this is tricky, is that you need strategies for your strategies. Does that make any sense? Like, I set my goal, my intention to be the best version of myself. That's caring, Patrick, et cetera. But I'm not living my life in a way that gives me the space to actually be that person because I haven't rejuvenated, I haven't replenished. You know, our brains are, you know, I can't even imagine, you know, I think my job is hard, you know, researchers and trying to get schools to do this work and working with companies. But you're running a massive company. Your, your, your brain is burning up all day long at work. Has to be your problem solving constantly, you're in meetings constantly, phone calls, making deals. I mean, that's a lot of emotional regulation, whether you're conscious of it or not. And then you get home to your girlfriend or your kid or whoever and you're depleted. We call that resource depletion. And you're expected to be able to like be the same exact person you were at 7am as you are at 7pm it's not biologically possible. And so one of the things I recommend for leaders is to figure out where are you going to make the time in your day to get that energy back? Because if you don't get it back, you're going to be the worst version of yourself every single night. Does that resonate with you?
- [55:22]
Willie Walker
Very much so. I think the, the one other piece to that is alcohol and alcohol making it so that you're, you're. I mean, the whole reason that alcohol is so great is that it, it makes it so that you don't have to regulate emotions. The reason that when we were in college and went out to parties and ended up doing things that we probably look back on and said maybe I shouldn't have done that is because alcohol acts as a, as a. It takes out the inhibitions and it, it makes you. That you're unable to, to regulate. And it. I think back on some of the worst arguments slash fights that I've had in my personal relationship. And you can sit there and say, oh, at that time I was really stressed with this, or we were doing a deal or the kids were acting up or whatever else. But as I peel the onion on a lot of those, a lot of them happened when I'd had one too many glasses to drink of wine. And all of a sudden I was dysregulated and I let my emotions take over rather than stepping in and saying, how would you like to react to this? In being a better self? And one of the pieces there is that not many people have alcohol interact with their work life. But it happens often in your personal life because you get to dinner and you've had that extra glass of wine or whatever the case might be. And that was another one of the big kind of aha moments that I had as I look back on my anger and I look back on my. When it would express itself.
- [56:53]
Mark Brackett
Yeah.
- [56:53]
Willie Walker
And I sat there and said, you.
- [56:55]
Mark Brackett
Know, I've gone to all my work.
- [56:56]
Willie Walker
Employees and they're all like, we don't see it. Like we. You're like, you're really good at regulating your emotions and all that stuff. And then you would talk to Sheila and she'd be like, oh, yeah, we came home from dinner the other night and he just like, you know, he snapped on something and it really wasn't fun to be on the other end of that. And it's like, okay, the reason was. And I could find five different reasons on why I was stressed or why I wasn't dealing with things. Well. Then all of a sudden I said, and it was also that fourth glass of wine.
- [57:22]
Mark Brackett
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we know about the role of alcohol. Firstly, it disrupts sleep, it disrupts the cog, the ability to access the high quality cognitive strategies. I mean, when you think about a lot of regulation in relationships is about the cognitive self control piece. And so if you're using substances or you're just, you know, not getting the sleep or even the physical activity piece, I mean, there's good research to show that if, you know, you have two people in a room and one of them is doing that kind of an exercise bike, the other one is just sitting on the chair, and then someone comes in and tries to, like, really play with them and mess them up and trigger them, the person who's on the bicycle is going to be less triggered than the person who's just sitting by, sitting on the seat. And, you know, so that endorphin rush that we get from exercise is inducing more pleasant emotions, which makes it harder for us to get triggered.
- [58:16]
Willie Walker
Yeah, And I was just gonna say we're almost out of time. And one of the things that I really, really wanted to talk to you about was that, you know, the age of AI has a lot of people stress, concern, worry. We can use a whole bunch of things that all come in on what AI is putting forth. Because the scariest part about AI is that we don't really know how it's going to impact our lives. And as a result of it, there's this big kind of worry cloud that can hold all sorts of things, all sorts of emotions. But one of the things that is very evident from the book, and you write it, Mark, is that, you know, emotional regulation is the most important human skill. And I think about that as it relates to the students that you teach at Yale and students across the country at lots and lots of institutions who sit there and say, well, I'm going to be disintermediated by AI. I'm not going to have the ability to graduate and go into some job because there's not going to be any analyst positions, not going to be any of this. And that talk for a moment about the skills that students need to learn to make them productive in the professional world. Because at the end of the day, it is that emotional regulation. It is that emotional skill. It's, you know, we all know you write it in your book. We all know someone who is the smartest person in our high school class who didn't have the eq, didn't have the ability to take their brilliant mind and actually apply it in the business world to either move up the corporate ladder or create a new business or get a job as a teacher, whatever.
- [59:41]
Mark Brackett
The case might be.
- [59:42]
Willie Walker
But you look back in your. I'm 30 years out of business school, and I look at some of the Smartest people in my class. And I'm like, they've had good careers, but not like the gangbuster careers that a lot of people who had a lot more emotional intelligence and leadership skills have been able to apply. So as you think about AI, what's your advice to students right now as it relates to what they really ought to be studying and learning when they're in college?
- [60:02]
Mark Brackett
Well, I think you have to find your purpose and passion. That's key. And you have to really never just go in that direction. Yeah, I know your friend who wants to make a lot of money and keep making a lot of money. That's great. Like, you know, a life worth living is a life that you wake up in the morning and you have purpose and passion, you know, and meaning the. But and with that said, what I have found, like, for example, we study creative, like highly creative people now. I'm very fascinated with people who just have really rich imaginations. Emotions are the fuel of the creative process. Think that the ability to use emotions wisely, but emotional intelligence determines whether that creative process, the creative process actually turns into an outcome. Because as you know, in the journey towards any goal attainment, you're going to get anxious, you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to get stressed, you're going to have pressure, you're going to be fearful, you're going to get angry, you're going to get harsh feedback. People aren't going to like what you do. I had someone say to you, they're like, this is ridiculous. I'm like, thank you for your opinion, but I've learned to sift through people's opinions like yours, and I'm going to sift yours away because I got a goal and I'm going to deal with my feelings about you and keep going. And I find, you know, interestingly, not now after 20 something years of being a professor who got to Yale with imposter syndrome, by the way, because I didn't go to Yale. And so everybody's got higher SAT scores and better grade point averages and they play instruments I never heard of. They travel the world that I never met, this city they went to, I never heard of. I thought automatic ticket to success. Not true. They got in, but they don't get out and achieve a lot of their goals all the times. The people who achieve their goals not only have the cognitive abilities, but they have the emotion skills they need to navigate the complexity of the world they're living in. The feedback, the disappointment, the frustration, the overwhelm as I said and if you don't have those strategies oftentimes what I've seen is some of the most creative smart people allow their strong unpleasant emotions to have way more power over them than they should and that gets in the way derail them from achieving their goals.
- [62:11]
Willie Walker
I'm going to I'm going to see you soon in Denver. Then I'm going to see you again in Las Vegas at the Walker and Dunlop all company meeting which I'm very much looking forward to having you come speak. I could keep going for a couple more hours. You didn't even charge me for this session. Mark, I'm, I'm, I'm super, I'm super appreciative of all the, all the therapy you you provided to me throughout this conversation. Thank you. The book is fantastic. I love reading it. I love talking about it with you today. Thanks for all you do and I look forward to seeing you soon.
- [62:44]
Mark Brackett
All right be well.
- [62:46]
Willie Walker
Thanks Mark. See you sa.