Living Out Your Values

Pushkin Hiness Lab listeners, Wlcome back to our special series on Spring Cleaning Your happappiness Today we're doing another trip into our back catalog to find some of my favorite past episodes And today's choice is a conversation I still come back to whenever I'm facing a tough emotion. This episode is all about how to clean up the way you manage negative feelings And as happiness spring cleaning hacks go, the ones you're about to hear today are going to be super important Because negative emotions, feelings like sadness, anger, fear, overwhelm They tend to come up on the regular these days, and we don't often deal with these emotions all that well Sometimes we try to avoid difficult feelings by distracting ourselves or trying to suppress what we're feeling Other times, we get very caught up in our negative emotions keepeping them alive through rumination and worry. But what if we used a healthier strategy we instead got curious about what our tough emotions were trying to tell us What if we looked more carefully at the solutions they might be suggesting? These are the questions I'll be diving into in this episode I'll chat with Harvard psychologist Susan David about strategies we can use to get more agile with our tough emotions And Susan will share lots of tips we can use not to sweep our negative emotions away, but to embrace them as healthy data points That's all coming up right after some quick words from the Happiness Lab sponsors This is an IiHart podcast Guaranteed human. 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When we experience negative emotions, things like guilt or sadness or anger It can feel pretty intense Almost like navigating a violent storm at sea We might feel buffeted and disoriented, or even a little sick to our stomachs At times like that, staying on an even emotional course can feel impossible, like we'll never reach the safety of dry land again I've chosen this nautical analogy for a reason As I began reading more about the science of negative emotions for this special season, I learned more about the excellent work of Harvard Medical School psychologist, Susan David In her book, Susan argues that negative feelings are like the bright glow of a lighthouse in a storm. To become a wise emotional seafarer, we need to heed the warning of all the hidden rocks ahead If we ignore the light completely or venture too far out We might get trapped The problem is that we tend not to listen to the message our yucky feelings are sending And that means we sometimes find ourselves dashed on the emotional rocks Susan's interest in thinking more carefully about negative emotions began early in life It was born of both family tragedy and the grim politics of her homeland A lot of my work is born, not in the halls of Harvard or Yale, but in like so many of us in the messy tender business of life. So I grew up in the white suburbs as a white child in N partarti, South Africa And it was very much a country and community that was committed to not seeing and to denial And so from a very early age, I actually became interested in this thread that I think really runs through my work, which is seeeeing versus not seeing. particularly when it comes to the emotional world. how whether we see ourselves impacts and how it impacts on our capacity to be whole hearted humans And so really that's the thread of so much of my work. And then when I was around fifteen years old My father, who was forty two was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I remember My mother telling me to go and say goodbye to him. he was dying in our home and I went to his room, I opened the door. It was just before I headed off for school. It was on a Friday Dad was lying in bed and his eyes were closed and I just remember this feeling that even though he couldn't see me He could. He knew me. I'd always felt seen in his presence And then also overlayered on that was this experience that I had after my father's death, which was Everyone telling me to just be strong, keep smiling. And I am a fifteen year old and I become the master of being okay You know, I don't drop a single grade, peopleople ask me how I'm doing. and in a world that seems to value relentless positivity. As a marker of so called strength, I keep saying, I'm okay, I'm okay. But the truth larries that back home, my family is struggling. father has died in debt My mother's grieving the love of her life. She's raising three children. Predators are knocking and I as a child was just struggling. I felt so untethered from myself and so untethered in this experience of grief. I started to respond to that to so many people do when they experiencing emotional pain, especially unprocessed emotional pain, which is For me, that took the form of binging and purging, refusing to accept the full weight of my grief And then the last thing that I would just add to this journey of how I come to my work is I remember when I was then probably about six months later, I'm in this struggle and I recall This extraordinary teacher handing out these blank notebooks to the class And she was my English teacher and she looked at me and she said and the invitation of the class, but it felt like it was to me. She said right truth wrrite like no one is reading. And so Lura, I started this cororrespondence with this teacher. It was this correspondence where I would journal and I would hand in my journal and she would write back to me in pencil. It was my story and she was writing back in pencil thoughts or responses to what I was experiencing. And so I had this feeling that actually became clear to me, which was this act that I was engaging in with my teacher was actually revolutionary for me. It was counter to what I was being told in society, which is just get on with it and just be positive And instead what I was doing is I was facing into these really difficult emotions and experiences and that that secret silent correspondence with the teacher as well as the secret silence correspondence with my own heart actually landed up shaping my career. So I became an emotions researcher and I was really just foundationally interested in What is told to us by society about emotions And in what ways does that narrative actually not serve us in fact completely counter to making us strong and more resilient? It actually makes us more fragile. And that became the thread of the work that I do. And so I love this story because it shows the kind of way that we normally deal with these undesirable emotions. know, both kind of the ways that society tells us, we need to deal with them but also our natural instinct, which is like, you know, avoid, avoid, avoid. Like in their book, you kind of walk through so many bad reactions we have when we have these undesirable emotions. know One of these is sort of J jumping into our own productivity and overwork. talk about how this strategy plays out and why it's so problematic for dealing with undesirable emotions Yeah, so what I've found in my work is that typically when people have difficult, tough emotions, they very often have one of two ways of responding The first is what I call bottling bottling is basically where you push aside the difficulty motion often with good intentions. I've got so much to do. I just can't get on, you know, I've just got to get on with my life. And sometimes the reason that we do this is because we fear that by facing into the difficulty motion, that we don't have the skills to deal with it or that somehow it's just better to be productive and focused on moving forward. And so btling emotions is really this idea that we push the emotions aside for whatever reason. And we think that that actually is helpful, but there's a body of research showing that when we push aside these difficult emotions, there's actually an amplification effect which is really fascinating. and for anyone who's ever tried not eat a big piece of chocolate cake that's tempting you in the refrigerator, you know that the more you try not to think about that piece of chocolate cake, the more you dream about it. And the same experience happens with emotions. And when I talk about emotions in this way, I'm both talking about the big moments of emotions, the grief, the loneliness, the loss But I'm also talking about the smaller experiences that we might have day to day. We feel undermined in a meeting, we feel D, we feel like we just want to roll our eyes at the change that's going on in our organization. So we have every day thousands of these kinds of emotional experiences. And on the one hand, we can bottle them, we push them aside, but there is this amplification effect. What becomes clear when we look at the research is that when we do this as not just a once off, but as a tendency, actually it undermines Wellbeing, we have lower levels of resilience, higher depression, high anxiety, it impacts on the quality of our relationships and even on our ability to achieve our goals. because If you take these emotions that are trying to signal something to you, o, you boreought a new job or things aren't going well and you push them aside, then you aren't actually adapting to the reality of your life and therefore, you aren't putting strategies in place to move forward effectively. So that's one way we can deal with difficult emotions The other looks so different and yet a lot of the consequences are the same. So brooding is where we get stuck in the difficulty motion. get victimized by our news feeed. We get hooked on being right. We go over and over and over in our heads why it is we so unhappy with something that's happened. And again Even though this might have the semblance of being effective It actually keeps us very stuck in the emotional experience and not moving forward effectively. And so if we think about this difference, it's really fascinating because Brooding is similarly associated with lower levels of wellbeing, goal attainment and relationships Almost imaginary, it's like if you've got a pile of books that you're holding and your emotions are the books. Bottling is where you hold those books so far away from you that ultimately the energy and effort that's involved in holding them far from you leads you to drop them And so you might snap at the person or you cry unexpectedly or caught of guard by those difficulty emotions When we brooding, we hold so tightly to ourselves. and so we're not able to see child who iss giving us a hug or who wants to be with us, we unable to Be and breathe and be wise in the world So bottling up pain, anger, and anxiety doesn't really work But allowing these emotions to fully take over doesn't help either Unfortunately, these both tend to be our go to strategies when we're facing a tough situation. When we get back from the break, Susan will share a potential middle path we can use to navigate emotions As we'll see, it's a strategy that we can all use to find greater happiness no matter what life throws our way happiness lab, we' be right back I've been thinking about my spaces lately And I've realized just how much thoughtful design can change the feel of my everyday routines. But I honestly never expected a toilet to be part of that conversation until I experienced the Kohler Smart Tilet collection Coler has been elevating bathroom design since eighteen seventy three. And you can really feel that legacy in the way their products are designed. the Koler Vail smmart toilet design immediately stands out It's modern, sleek, almost like a functional work of art It just makes your entire bathroom experience feel more elevated It's a reminder that the right design can make everyday moments feel cleaner, more comfortable, and more intentional Pohler has been redefining bathroom design for more than one hundred and fifty years And their smart toilets really show how design and innovation can transform even the most routine parts of life Design changes everything And Kar smart toilets are a really great example of that experxience the difference of Koler smart toilets Find more at Kohler. com As the weather changes, I've been thinking more and more about my wardrobe And these days, I've been trying to get more intentional about what's in my closet getting dressed to feels simpler. So I've been leaning into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable, but still look put together been obsessed with Quince's one hundred percent organic cotton poplin tiered Maxie dress It's got a fit that feels sleek But it's still super comfortable. And I couldn't believe how great the price was Quince makes it easy to refresh your everyday wardrobe this spring, with pieces that feel as good as they look Quince uses premium materials like one hundred percent European linen, organic cotton, and ultra soft denim Plus, Quince works directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen So you're paying for quality and craftsmanship. notot brand markup Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use Head to quQince. com slash happiness for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. That's QuinCE. com slash happppiness for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince d. com slash happiness Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort goes into building something of your own That's why they make your business growth their priority. The team at Chase takes the time to understand your mission where you are now and where you want to go A broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind, so you can bring your ideas to life from banking to payment acceptance to credit cards You can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools Looking for tips and advice, their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive Lets see how your business can get stronger and go farther, with Chase for business Learn more at chase d. com slash businessus Chase for businessusiness, M more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP. Morgan Chase Bank, A A member FDIC Copyright twenty twenty six, JP Morgan Chase and Company This message is in partnership with Simple Mills On our show, we talk a lot about how small choices can have a big impact on your wellbeing And one choice that often gets overlooked The snacks you reach for during the day It might sound simple, but the right snack can help you feel energized and focused Two things that make sticking to healthy habits so much easier When your body feels good, your mind follows That's why I feel good talking about Simple Mill's almond fllour crackers They are made with real nutrient rich ingredients like almond flour, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds And the bonus These crackers have a unique crunchy texture They're absolutely delicious, and I promise they'll make you look forward to snack time We all know that unhealthy snacking can derail even the best intentions Simple mills crackers do the opposite Now I hope you know, I'm not a big ads speak person But when they say simple Mills crackers taste like sunshine in every bite, actually a pretty good description They're light, satisfying, and instead of weighing you down, you feel a little more energized. Choosing snacks that fuel your body well is one of those small but powerful steps that make other healthy habits stick And if you're looking for something filled with its own little reward system Check out Simple Mill pops Yes, spelled with three Ms These light airy poppable cheese crackers are loaded with real vegetables, so you get that quick crunch without compromising your energy It's a mindful choice that feels good and tastes great The bottom line, habits don't happen in isolation They're supported by the environment you create and the choices you make along the way. pick snacks that help you feel good physically and mentally, you're setting yourself up for success. And success should taste good. Find simple mills at your local grocery store Psychologist Susan David often explains the idea of emotional agility with a story The sad tale of a mariner who was too stubborn to switch course when something bad popped up on the horizon It's a beautiful story and it's this idea that there's a captain on a ship and he's basically trying to steer the ship effectively. So he says to a junior seaman, let me know if you see anything. and the seaman comes to him and says, I'm seeing something in front of us and we are going to bash into it And the captain gets like more and more arrogant and says, tell them that we are on a collision course and tell them to move, tell them to move And so the semen keeps on relaying this message to the obstacle, saying, you know, you've got to move out the way, you've got to move out the way. And ultimately a message comes back from the so called obstacle saying, actually you need to move. Why? Because we are a lighthouse, sir And it's a beautiful story because really if we think about what a lighthouse is A lighthouse is helping us to navigate. A lighthouse is helping us to develop some sense of steering around the rocky shores of life. And yet often if we think about the metaphor, if we want to extend it O emotions are The signal, you know, emotions are signaling things that are important. Our emotions might be signaling that this job isn't going as wonderfully as you wanted or the relationship is actually not working out. And yet when we keepe on either avoiding the emotions or not connecting with them effectively, then we aren't actually using that GPS system in the way that it was intended. And so we then struggle to be agile, we struggle to be effective. The world is changing around us. We need as human beings to be able to have the capacity to deal with the world as it is which is a world that is fragile in which illness is interwoven with health, in which love and loss are connected in which we raise children and then one day that Wild Thes The emotions that we experience are Brokered us with the reality of life, which is changing and fragile. And yet this notion that exists in our society, which is that These difficulty emotions are bad. We need to ignore them. We just need to fake positivity It sounds good on the surface very often, but actually what it does is it undermines our capacity to be whole human beings in the world And so you've argued that the right way to kind of listen to this lighthouse signal of our emotions is with this notion of emotional agility and trying to increase our emotional agility. Explain what you mean by emotional agility. What is it? So emotional agility is the ability to be with your everyday thoughts and emotions and experiences in a way that is healthy and I'll go into what I mean by the word healthy. But it's being with these experiences in a way that's healthy so that you can respond effectively to everyday situations So let me break that down a little bit. We all have thousands, literally thousands. We have approximately, according to some research, sixteen thousand spoken thoughts every day and many more course through our minds, experiences of good enough am I not good enough is the job. you know all the stuff goes on in our minds. We have all of our emotions, emotions like fear and sadness, grief, loneliness, loss, stress, anxiety we have all of it. And we also have stories. Some of our stories were written on our mental chalkboards when we were five years old stories about who we are, whether we good enough whether we' creative or not creative. And so we have this normal experience of these thoughts, emotions and stories and We need to have skills that enable us to deal with these in ways that are healthy. Now what's not healthy is when we push them aside or we fail to learn from them or when we allow them to call the shots. And so what emotional agility is, it's the ability to hold these thoughts and emotions and stories lightly. so to not ignore them, but to hold them lightly to recognize, for instance, that when we experience a difficulult emotion, difficulty motion just like the lighthouse is Happing us on the shoulder and it's saying Hm, there's this thing that's important to you. And Laurie, I'll give you an example. Loneliness. we don't like experiencing loneliness. But loneliness is often signaling signposting that intimacy and connection are important for you You don't have enough of it in Your life right now Boredom at work. We could look at boredom and go, I'm just going to ignore it because at least I've got a job. In other words, bottling the difficult experience, or we might say What is that boreem signaling? It's signaling I value growth and learning and I don't have enough of it I often think grief, you know, grief is love looking for its home. Grief is Tapping us on the shoulder saying. Remember me, think of the things that you learned from me M I'm still with you in some way. brring that to life in a way that feels special and connected. and so Holding our thoughts and emotions lightly is by beinging curious with them and being able to recognize that when we experience these difficult emotions Well The dictates of society might say Oh, you've just got to be positive. You've just got to push them aside. In fact is Extraordinary beauty when we just slow down with them in a way that is curious, huh What is this emotion telling me about my needs or my values there's also connected with that Lorry is this need to be compassionate Because it's hard to human. It's hard to be a human being in the world, regardless of what the circumstances are of your world And so emotional agility is really about this ability to be with our emotions in ways that are curious passionate. Crageous, courageous because we don't often always like what we see and feel so that we can then understand our values and our needs and move forward in the direction of those values And so one of the ways you've argued we can start this process of kind of gaining our emotional agility is first to kind of show up and kind of non judgmentally see the emotions we're dealing with. Why is showing up for our emotions so hard? It's kind of funny, right? Like they're there. but we tend not to kind of know what's going on when we experience these undesirable emotions. Yeah, we described it a little bit earlier. We spoke a bit about these narratives that exist in society. and it's important to recognize that all of us grow up with what are called display rules Display rules are often the implicicit and sometimes even explicit rules me be in existence in the families that we were born into. or even in society at large. And an example of a display rule might be You come home from school as a child and you angry and a parent says to you whyy are you angry? and you say, I'm angry because you know, Jack didn't play with me today. And The parent with great intentions jumps in and says something like, D't worry, I'll play with you, you know, I'll phone the mean person's parents. Let's go back cupcakes. And it's done with really good intentions, but what that might signal to you is that Joy and happiness are allowed in this house and that anger or that sadness isn't. Sometimes these rules are explicit. Sometimes someone might say Go to your room and come out when you've got a smile on your face. Display rules exist in our communities. When we say to someone with cancer who is terminentally ill and is suffering And we said to the person, just keep positive. What we are conveying is a display rule, which is that their experience of pain and grief and hardship has no place And so it's really important to recognize that one of the reasons that we unsee our difficult emotions is because despite the fact that they exist and are all around us There are these narratives that basically say either they are not allowed or they don't belong, or we live in a world that says we can fix everything. If we don't like our car, we can buy a new car. If we don't like the walls, we can paint them a different color. And so when we experience these difficult thoughts and emotions, we can just fix them. findind ways to be grateful, we can think positive and everything will be okay, but it actually doesn't work And so what we are doing when we start cultivating this capacity to show up to our difficulty emotions is we stopped recognizing that When a city is being bombed, it's very difficult to rebuild. It's very difficult to find a way forward in the midst of the bombing. It's only when there is an internal ceasefire that one is able to start moving forward effectively. And so If you in a space with your difficulty emotions where you say, I'm not allowed to have it, I should be grateful. I need to just think positive, literally what you are doing is you're in a little wall with yourself about your own emotions and your own suffering. so A really important part of showing up is ending that war, literally ending the war, This is what I feel This is my experience. There's no wrong or right way to be experiencing right now. This is my feeling. And when we show up to those difficulty emotions with compassion which is really important, we are then able to start crafting a way forward with the experience And one of the ways we can really kind of develop that compassion is to kind of become a little bit curious about the emotions we're experiencing. You know, sometometimes we don't even know what they are. And you've argued that one way we can do that is to literally label our emotions. know why is the labeling of emotions so important So labeling emotions, you know, it's almost like an emotional superpower. So because there is a tragedy, and that sounds dramatic, but I think it to be true. There is a tragedy that exists in our schools and in our workplaces where emotions have Historically, for a number of reasons that we could explore have been pushed aside, they're seen as soft skills. They are seen as being less important than things like math and strategy What we have is literally entire generations of people who have not been foundational emotional agility skills. And these are core to our well being to our mental health, to our relationships. Internal pain always comes out and the people that pay the price are ourselves and our communities, our children. And so One of the emotional skills that is not taught is the superpower which is emotion granularity. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by this. Often when we've had a tough day We'll say something like, I'm stressed. We use a very broad brush stroke Lack and wh what label to describe the emotion that we've experienced. And stressed is the most common one I hear, but people might have their own that they use that have become very familiar. and it's basically this label that you use That's your quick go to label to describe what it is you're feeling. Now if we think about it, there is a world of difference between stress and disappointment. stress and that knowing, knowing feeling of job, the wrong career or this relationship isn't working out. Stress and exhaustion. Burnout. If you label your experience as stress It's a very diffuse label. It's very murky and your body, your psychology doesn't really know what to do with that. It's almost like being in that boat and you think that there might be something on the horizon that you've got to pay attention to, but you've got no idea what it is. But when you start saying to yourself, what are two other options? I'm calling this thing stress, but what else could it be? Oh, it's disappointment Oh it's feeling unsupported. What it starts to do is it starts to activate the readiness potential in us as human beings, which starts saying What do I need to do in relation to this? And so there's enormous power in being able to label this emotion accurately because it helps us to understand both the cause of the emotion as well as the steps that we might need to take in order to process that emotion effectively. And we know, for instance, that even in young children, this capacity is profoundly, profoundly important a sixteen year old who is encouraged by P. to oh, let's let the air out of the principal's car tires sixixteen year old is able to say, Hm, on the one hand, I feel exxcited and tempted actually deeper down is a sense of dis quiet trepidation This doesn't feel right That is a child who's going to be able to delay gratification. who's going to be able to focus more on their moral compass, their values and their goals and their character over time So it sounds like such a subtle skill when someone says, oh, when you experience something, don't use just the first broad brush stroke label, label it more accurately. it feels like, oh, okay, is that all you've got to offer. is just extraordinary in terms of how important it is. So when we think about these emotions as distinct, when we kind of label them, then we can start in on another process, which is to start using our emotions not as this kind of horrible sensation, but really as data for what we can do as the next step. know So talk about some strategies we can use to do this. Yeah, it's so important. The way that I think about emotions is our emotions are data. So emotions again contain signposts of the things that we care about But our emotions aren't directives. I can show up to my son's frustration with his baby sister. I can see it. I can hold space for it. I can be accepting of it. It doesn't mean that I'm endorsing his idea that he gets to give her away to the first stranger that he sees in a shopping mall Okay. O emotions are data not directives. In other words, we own our emotions, they don't own us. And so another skill that becomes really important in helping us to not push aside the difficulult emotions, not root on them, but develop healthy space with our emotions is If we just think about the language again, of how we often describe emotions We often say things like I I'm sad I am angry I am frustrated, I am being undermined Now if you just think about this language, words matter So when you say I am It. prettyretty much as if You are the emotion. I am all of me one hundred percent of me is the emotion. When you do this, there's no space for anything else. there's no space for Wisdom. There's no space for intention Victor Frankl talks about this sentiment of between stimulus and response, there is a space In that space is our power to choose and in that choice lies our growth and our freedom. So when we are hooked by a difficulty motion, when we feel triggered by it, there is no space. We just feel something and we respond You know, someone that I love starting in on the finances, I'm going to leave the room because I feel alienated. So we hooked And what we try to do when we being emotionally agile is to cultivate healthy space between us in our emotions so that we own the emotions they don't own us And one of the ways we can start doing this is by recognizing again that when we say I am There's no space. you are literally defining yourself by the emotion. And so what's being crowded out there are the other parts of you that exist in every single one of us. wisdom attension of values whoo we want to be, our breathing, our connectedness. there's so much centeredness every single one of us And so The way we can start creating this space is by noticing The thoughts or the emotions or the stories for what they are They are thoughts, emotions and stories. they're not fact. So an example, I am sad, I'm noticing that I'm feelings. I'm being undermined. I'm noticing that this is my thoughtault that I'm being undermired. G goodood enough. There's no point in even trying I'm noticing that this is my I'm not good enough story. When you do this, you aren't ignoring your difficult experience, but you're creating space in it. Beautiful. metaphor that I think when I think about this skill is that when you say I am It's almost like hereere are the emotion and the emotion is Cloud And you've become the cloud. I am s But when you instead create space between you and the emotion, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad There's literally a kind of distance that's created in language What happens then is you aren't the cloud any longer. you are the sky You are the sky. Every single one of us is beautiful and capacious. Eough to have all of our difficult emotions and still choose who we want to be in the moment You are not the cloud. you are the sky. But it's not enough to label our emotions and change how we talk about them True emotional agility requires getting curious about what our emotions are telling us and where they're steering us And that kind of agility requires something more in the words of one of my favorite seventies bands, Parliament We gott to have that funk You'll hear more about the funk when the happappiness Lab returns in a moment I've beeninking about my spaces lately And I've realized just how much thoughtful design can change the feel of my everyday routines. But I honestly never expected a toilet to be part of that conversation until I experienced the Kohler Smart toilet collection Kohler has been elevating bathroom design since eighteen seventy three And you can really feel that legacy in the way their products are designed. the Koler Vail smmart toilet design immediately stands out It's modern, sleek, almost like a functional work of art It just makes your entire bathroom experience feel more elevated It's a reminder that the right design can make everyday moments feel cleaner, more comfortable, and more intentional Kohler has been redefining bathroom design for more than one hundred and fifty years And their smart toilets really show how design and innovation can transform even the most routine parts of life Design changes everything And Kolar smart toilets are a really great example of that Exience the difference of Ker smart toilets Find more at Kohler. com As the weather changes, I've been thinking more and more about my wardrobe And these days, I've been trying to get more intentional about what's in my closet I want getting dressed to feel simpler So I've been leaning into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable, but still look put together been obsessed with Quince's one hundred percent organic cotton poplin tiered Maxie dress. It's got a fit that feels sleek But it's still super comfortable. And I couldn't believe how great the price was Quince makes it easy to refresh your everyday wardrobe this spring, with pieces that feel as good as they look. Quince uses premium materials like one hundred percent European linen, organic cotton, and ultra soft denim Plus, Quintince works directly with ethical factactories and cut out the middleen paying for quality and craftsmanship brand Markup. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use Head to quince. com slash happppiness for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. That's QuincE. com slash happiness for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Qince d. com slash happiness Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort goes into building something of your own That's why they make your business growth their priority The team at Chase takes the time to understand your mission where you are now and where you want to go A broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind So you can bring your ideas to life banking to payment acceptance to credit cards. you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools Looking for tips and advice, their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive Let's see how your business can get stronger and go farther, with Chase for business Learn more at chase. com slash businessusiness Chase for businessiness, make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank, A member FDIC Copyright twenty twenty six. JP Morgan Chase and Company This message is in partnership with Symbple Mills On our show, we talk a lot about how small choices can have a big impact on your wellbeing And one choice that often gets overlooked The snacks you reach for during the day It might sound simple, but the right snack can help you feel energized and focused Two things that make sticking to healthy habits so much easier When your body feels good, your mind follows That's why I feel good talking about Simple Mills almond flour crackers They are made with real nutrient rich ingredients like almond flour, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds And the bonus These crackers have a unique crunchy texture They're absolutely delicious, and I promise they'll make you look forward to snack time. We all know that unhealthy snacking can derail even the best intentions. Simple mills crackers do the opposite Now I hope you know, I'm not a big ad speak person But when they say Sple Mills crackers taste like sunshine in every bite, It's actually a pretty good description. They're light, satisfying, and instead of weighing you down, you feel a little more energized Choosing snacks that fuel your body well is one of those small but powerful steps that make other healthy habits stick And if you're looking for something filled with its own little reward system Check out Simple Mill Pops Yes, spelled with three Ms These light airy, poppable cheese crackers are loaded with real vegetables, so you get that quick crunch without compromising your energy It's a mindful choice that feels good and tastes great The bottom line, habits don't happen in isolation They're supported by the environment you create and the choices you make along the way When you pick snacks that help you feel good, physically and mentally, you're setting yourself up for success And success should taste good Find simple mills at your local grocery store Psychologist Susan David argues that the first step in reacting effectively to our negative emotions is knowing which specific emotion we're dealing with. We need to distinguish a catch all sensation like stress for more specific feelings like exhaustion or disappointment But once we know what emotion we're dealing with We also need to figure out what it's saying to us Or as Susan puts it, we need to ask What's the funk I love this in my book, I describe this idea of what the funk and what the funk like WTF is not a description of the more explicit label. It's basically saying what is the function of the emotion? What the funk You know, what the funk is my grief signaling, what the funk is my loneliness signaling? And so what we' starting to do when we ask ourselves what the funk is we are starting to really create this beautiful space between us and the emotions. Instead of feeling that the emotion owns us, that it's driving us, that we triggered by it, that it's writing our story, what we're starting to do is we're starting to use the emotion in the way that it was intended which is to help us to adapt. And so what the funk is A lovely short form for what function What is the emotion trying to tell me about my needs or my values when I you know worried about a situation in the workplace On the face of it I might say, okay, well, I'm just feeling worried or I'm just feeling angry. But when we start saying what the funk It may be that that worry is signaling that we really care about quality or we really care about our clients and that we are concerned that the way we are moving forward is actually not a good direction. So when we start asking ourselves what the funk, whether that's in a personal context or in a broader context We starting to say what is this emotion trying to signal about my values or my needs. The example that I gave earlier, which is If I am feeling lonely, the function of that loneliness is to say that I need more intimacy and connection And so you might say, well, I am on Zoom calls every day and I see people all around me, but we know that we can be lonely in a crowd. And so what the function of loneliness might be saying, you know, you pass your spouse in the kitchen as you both getting a coffee