Why Being Your Best Self Doesn't Mean Being Nice | Marc Brackett

Key Takeaway

Before a predictable trigger—a tense meeting, arriving home exhausted, or a difficult conversation—take 30 seconds to rehearse how you want to show up. Notice your state, pause with a breath, picture the qualities of your best self for that specific role, and choose one concrete strategy: ask questions, take a walk, request a minute, or reframe the situation. Afterward, review what worked so you can refine your response next time.

Episode Overview

Dan Harris talks with Yale emotional-intelligence researcher Dr. Marc Brackett about proactive emotion regulation: preparing for triggering situations before they happen. Brackett explains the Meta-Moment process for interrupting automatic reactions, acting in line with one’s values, and repairing when inevitable failures occur. The conversation emphasizes that a “best self” can be assertive and boundaried—not merely nice.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why Being Your Best Self Doesn't Mean Being Nice | Marc Brackett from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello, everybody, welcome to the 10% Happier podcast, I'm your host, Dan Harris. One of the worst feelings in my experience is when I lose my shit. And it's even worse when I lose my shit unnecessarily, the humiliating process of looking back at that and then having to make amends, etc, etc. So what can you do in advance to prevent these moments from happening? That's what we're going to talk about today with my guest, Dr. Mark Brackett, who is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the author of several books, including his latest Dealing with Feeling.

You may remember that I had Dr. Brackett on the show a few months ago. You guys loved that conversation so much that we're bringing him back. Dr. Brackett, welcome back to the show. Nice to be back. You're a fan favorite. I like it. I like this in person one. Yes, it's so much is so much better in much more interesting. I'm really trying to move this show to in person, which involves a lot of commuting for me, but it's worth it. Let's just do a broad definition of emotion regulation.

You have sometimes been called the feelings master, which I love. Given that you're the feelings master, what does emotion regulation actually mean? Okay. Maybe we should talk about what it's not. How about that? Sure. So it's not denying your emotions. It's not ignoring your emotions. It's not suppressing your emotions, which is what a lot of people think it is. I did a talk for lawyers recently. They're like, oh, so we just leave our feelings at the door. I'm like, hmm. I wish that were biologically possible.

A teacher said it too. I have my life is so chaotic as a teacher. I just leave my emotions at the door. I'm like, they're going to pop up. So it's not about denying your emotional life. At the broadest level, it's about using your emotions wisely to achieve what you want out of your life, which is a broad definition. So emotion regulation, properly understood, is using your emotions so that you can achieve what you want in your life. Correct. So emotions are going to happen anyway, so you might as well harness them to get you to your goal.

Correct. I did a speech for a bunch of families recently, and I asked them to do an exercise, which I had the parents reflect on their child, like live vicariously through your child who is a teenager right now. Just close your eyes, and for two minutes, it's the morning. How are you feeling? Now it's you're walking into school. How are you feeling? Class one, class two, class three, class four. And then the end of the day. And I said, how many of you saw more unpleasant feelings?

Everybody raised their hand. And so I said, well, let's talk about that. Why is that the case? So one dad who had a big personality, he looks at me, he's like, you know, Mark, hasn't always been that way. Hasn't everybody always felt like shitty in school and bored and tired and overwhelmed and stressed? And I said, maybe, but like, it's not what we want for kids. Is that a recipe for creativity, innovation? You know, and so I think that people oftentimes think that emotions are emotions.

You have them, you experience them, but there's nothing you can do with them. And I'm saying that is the opposite of what emotional intelligence and emotion regulation is. Emotion regulation is saying, here's a feeling I can see, is this helpful or unhelpful for what I want to achieve? And if it's not helpful, I can shift it. Okay, so there's a lot here. And this is such a huge topic, we're not going to be able to cover all the pieces. I do want to say that if people want to learn more, they can also obviously read your books or go back and watch or listen to the previous episode we recorded.

Okay, but today, specifically, we're going to talk about what I think is called proactive regulation, what you can do in advance to when you know you've got a potentially triggering situation, what you can do in advance to set yourself up for success. Correct. I think most people, again, when they think about emotion regulation, because some people obviously think about it, I think the mindset is like self-control. I'm going to control myself, you know, I'm going to like deal with this in the moment. And what I want to encourage people to think about is, how can I be better prepared for the moment that's probably going to happen anyway?

Like, I don't know about you, I travel a lot. And so my husband is home sometimes, and I get back from this long trip, and I'm irritable, I am tired, and I don't feel like actually, you know, in that moment being in a relationship. And then it's like, you know, maybe we had plans, or maybe there was something that needed to get done or whatever it is. Before I walk into my house, I grab the doorknob, take a deep breath, and I'm like, okay, Mark, you are not in the mood for anything right now.

Yes, that's true. You are not, you're tired, you're irritable, whatever it is. This person is going to want to know how your trip went. Like, are we going out for dinner tonight, or whatever the heck it is. And so how am I going to meet that in a way that's not going to show off the worst version of myself? Because I have a choice. I can come in and be like, you know, don't talk to me. I hate you right now. I hate everybody right now.

I don't want to, you know, I want to go to bed, and I don't want to talk to anybody. Like that's not great for my relationship. So how can I be the best version of myself in those moments? And that's having a bit more of pausing and prep time. And for you, that pausing and prep time is just hand on the doorknob? It's a reminder. So I have like little signals for myself. It's before I pick up a call, if it's going to be like a work call.

It's before I come home, before I open the door to my house. It could be, you know, even like today, coming into this podcast, I was in a taxi, it was running late. I'm like, what's going on here? Like, come on, let's move it. I get into the elevator, I, you know, I have to check in. And then right before the person came out to greet me, I took a deep breath and I'm like, okay, Mark, how do you want to show up today? It's just a habit.

The concept you've come back to a couple of times is being your best self. And I say this all the time on the show. I said it in an interview just yesterday. One of the recurring themes in hosting the show for more than 10 years is that ideas that I previously dismissed as psychobabble bullshit are actually really helpful. So these can include your inner child or going to your happy place or being in the present moment, all these like sort of apex predator, spiritual, psychological cliches.

They're actually, there's something to them and that is true with this idea of being your best self. You know, because everybody, Oprah talks about it, Michelle Obama talks about it, everybody talks about like, be your best. It can be superficial, not that they're, I think they're thinking about it in a very strategic way. I apply it specifically to regulation and I think that matters. And so in moments when, you know, you call me the feelings master, so just a quick story about that. So my very first day or class I taught at Yale, one of the students in my class, it was a big class of like 500 students, and he wrote for the Yale Daily News and he wrote this article, The Feelings Master.

And it was a little embarrassing, like brand new on campus, it's like other colleagues, like what are you going to think of me? And then I just read the article, I thought it was a nicely written article about my course, and I was like, you know what, Mark, you are the freaking feelings master, like live into it, buddy. You know, like get your posture like the feel, you know, like at a place like Yale you get students who can be sometimes challenging, you know, like oftentimes challenging.

I love my students for the most part, they're bright students who are motivated, inspiring, but once in a while I get one that can trigger me, you know, like the one that says something like, you know, Professor Brekker, I've got a question, but I'm not really sure you'll know the answer. And I'm like, okay, this is going to be a good one. And so in those moments, there's Mark, like the Jersey boy who wants to like punch the kid in the face, and then there's Mark, the feelings master.

So like it is a place to go for inspiration, it is a place to go to shift your values, it is a place to go to have better solutions. And so we can all have this version of ourselves. I'll give you mine. I've worked for a long time with this executive coach, his name is Jerry Colonna, he's great. He's been on the show many times. And with him, I had mentioned that I have these two like demons I wrestle with in my mind that I had given names to one is Robert named after my grandfather, who was very angry dude.

And that was kind of just like the personification of my penchant for anger. And the other was Arthur, who was a great grandfather of mine who I never met, who was a crook, who was the personification of my like, sort of hustler, ambitious, greedy energy. And he kept saying, but bro, there's a third character you're overlooking. He called him teacher Dan, like your capacity to help people with their problems. And that is my feelings master when I'm, yeah, when I want to psych myself up to be the best version of myself.

That's what I'm trying to inhabit. And that version of yourself probably has attributes. Yes. And that's what I want people to think about what are the attributes of your, you know, self help guru, you know, which is yourself in this moment. And it works. It just works. I've kind of taught this now for 20 years to millions of people, and people really find it helpful because it's like a shortcut to, you know, there's a lot going on when you're dealing with your feelings. But if you can break it into a simple process of A, for the proactive piece that we're talking about today, anticipatory.

So I can pretty much tell when I'm going into a situation, like I was giving a speech in a red state. Now, I say that because my work is now being, you know, banned in some red states. Really? Yes. And there is anti-social emotional learning legislation trying to be passed. Really? Yeah. So the idea is we should just go right for unrestrained rage. It's, you know, the opposite too. It's like, oh, teaching kids how to regulate is actually like a form of fragility, which makes no sense.

So there's a lot of pushback. I was giving a speech to about 500 superintendents, and I was warned that the person who was the head of the whole union was like really against this work. So I'm going, I'm in the hotel, right? I go down for breakfast, like I'm doing the 9am opening keynote. I don't even know why I'm invited to this freaking place. And all of a sudden I was becoming the self-saboteur. Like this is ridiculous. You're too advanced in your career for this. Why are you doing this to yourself?

I mean, they're going to throw tomatoes at you, you know. I was just going down a rabbit hole of negativity. And then, you know, I'm like, Mark, where's the feelings master? Like this is not going to be helpful. Like you know that getting on stage with that mishegas in your head is just not going to be good. So like, okay, how do I want to be seen? How do I want to be talked about? How do I want to be experienced on that stage? It's like, oh, okay.

I'm like, I'm like, I'm one of the world's leading experts. I'm like, I know this shit better than anybody else. You know, I'm going to, I have the opportunity to convince 500 superintendents who reach millions of kids to learn the science of emotion regulation to improve learning and improve teacher retention. This is an opportunity. Do you follow? Like it's just a complete reframing or reappraisal. But the best self, creating that image of myself, like sitting at breakfast being like negative, like, okay, we're going to put that on pause.

We're going to think 15, 20 minutes ahead of time. I'm on that stage. What do I want to look like? You know, how do I want to sound, et cetera. There are so many times in my life, and I suspect this is true for you, where you just need a little reset, some little hack to get you out of a thought spiral or to help you fall back to sleep when you wake up at three in the morning or help you recover from some sort of temper tantrum.

You know what I'm talking about? Which brings me to a little meditation challenge. We're launching over on my app, 10% with Dan Harris. Starting today, September 21st, we're kicking off a five-day meditation challenge. It's called Reset, and it's all about getting back on solid ground when life throws you for a loop, which is inevitable in all of our lives. This challenge is guided by the amazing Diana Winston, who's a really legendary and fascinating and very nice meditation teacher. And crucially, she has crafted each daily practice to be something you can actually do in a moment of suffering when you're struggling in some way, large or small.

These practices can literally help you reset. September 21st through the 25th, Reset with Diana and friends and me over on the 10% with Dan Harris app. You can sign up now at danharris.com. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If I could wake up tomorrow and be better at one thing, it would be having a calmer, less anxious nervous system so that I could enjoy my life more. I have made massive amounts of progress in this regard in the past 20 years as a result of meditation and therapy and getting better at tending to my interpersonal relationships.

But it's really a never-ending process, hence the name of the show, 10% Happier. As I often argue, the 10% compounds annually. Better is a feeling defined by you, and for BetterHelp, it's a BetterHelp therapist who really gets you. It's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries. It's progress, and it's also getting better at regulating your nervous system or whatever's important to you. And I know that having a therapist has been very helpful to me in this regard.

Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com. That's betterhelp.com slash happier. One of the through lines here is that you're talking to yourself. Yeah, I do. Maybe I'm just a neurotic guy. I do a lot of self-talk. But there's, from what I've seen, quite a bit of evidence to support the right kind of self-talk. Correct. Because we're doing the wrong kind of self-talk all the time. I'm calling myself a schmuck or an asshole all the time. Constructive self-talk is, I'm sure you're familiar with Ethan Cross's work at the University of Michigan.

There's a lot of evidence to show that we can talk ourselves into being the best version of ourselves. Actually, we're friends and we talk a lot about this together, 100% right. And he studies something called distance self-talk, which is a really helpful technique, which is, Mark, you got this. You literally talk to yourself as if you would talk to a friend. And there are lots of these tricks in terms of moving out of the self-saboteur into the person who is going to achieve their goals. But I think that's the key here, which is that the big piece of this is the awareness.

Like, I was self-aware to know that I was really negative and I was self-aware to know that, like, that wasn't gonna be good for my presentation. I don't wanna show up, you know, in fear or anxiety or kind of like anticipating negativity. Like, I'm the one in charge here. I'm the one standing on stage. All right, what's it gonna be like? What do you wanna make out of this? And how do you, and how does that frame the way I even communicate to the audience? And that's like communicating to my husband or your wife or your kids or your colleague at work.

It's the same thing. I do the same thing at work. You know, sometimes if I know we're gonna have like a tough meeting about a grant or something like that, I'm like, okay, the news is not great. We didn't get the grant. I can go in as Mark's true self and be like, I can't take it anymore. This is bullshit. We've read all these grants and nobody understands our work and this is not good. I don't know what to do. And then my team is like, you know, there's diarrhea.

They're like looking for another job. Right, like how is that helpful for like the culture and climate of my team? Or I can go in and say, all right, I can prepare in advance and say, okay, Mark, how do you wanna show up and how do you wanna manage your disappointment and frustration, but also let people know that this is an opportunity to rethink and grow. And that just automatically, like brain goes in a different direction. And I walk in there, same news saying, listen, you know, it's really disappointing.

I really thought we were gonna get this grant and I feel terrible that we didn't get it. And so I don't wanna focus on why we didn't get it. I wanna focus on what's next. So let's think together about, let's look at the feedback and let's come up with our best plan of action so that we can have a better chance the next time. I got your back, let's do it. We can do this. Let's just put on our critical thinking hat. And then all of a sudden people feel like I care about them.

They're inspired to really work hard as opposed to feel like, you know, there's no future. It's interesting you use the phrase true self. I don't wanna show up as my true self who would have been a negative Nancy, but I don't think there is a true self. All self is contextual. It is, but we have, you know, like a big part of my work, this is more recent research, is about non-judgmental kind of actions and thought processes. Like we're just taught to be completely self-judgmental and judgmental of others.

Like just, you're born and you just become like biased and judgmental. And so unfortunately, you know, my true self sometimes is like, you know, just quick aside. So I was on this other podcast recently and a friend of mine from childhood reached out to me. She's like, you know, we haven't seen each other in 45 years. I'm like, I know. And then I had this memory of her, we were like teenagers and we were gonna go into business, which is, this is the story. So it was in the Jersey Shore and our business was gonna be that we were gonna ask people to pay us for us to tell them what we really thought about them.

So like, you know, like if you like, you know, I walk in the park with my dogs in the morning, I'm looking at all these people, like, you know, that's a whack, this one's this, you know. Like we're pretty much criticizing, you know, a lot. So point is, my true self might be, you know, like, you gotta be freaking kidding me, Dan. Like, are you really? Whatever it is, you know, with my husband, with my friends, family. And but that's your, maybe your true self, your authentic self, but then, okay, is that the self that's gonna preserve my relationship?

Is that the self that is gonna help motivate my team? No, so sometimes your true self needs to be suppressed a little bit so the best version of yourself comes out. But I'm arguing, and you're the feelings master, so how dare I argue with you? But I'm arguing that true is a misnomer because that's just a version of yourself and the best version of yourself is no less true. Well, and maybe like my uncle, who is my hero in life, would say that everybody in every moment is doing the best they can.

And so in the moment, my true self is just whatever's coming out. Like, call it authentic self, call it momentary self. What about reflexive self? Reflexive self, sure, yeah. It's just you're reactive. You're automatic, yes, that's fine. Which oftentimes is not helpful. Yeah, yeah. Like most of the time. Yeah, that's my experience. Yeah, so that's because we're not trained to take the meta-moment, to step back, take a breath, pause, think about the consequences, think about the outcome we want. And if we do that, then sometimes we gotta put that reflexive self on hold and be our best selves.

Okay, so you just used this phrase meta-moment. Yeah. And I think this is crucial. And I believe you've got a five-step process that would allow us to achieve a meta-moment. In other words, this gets us back to proactive regulation. What can we do in advance so that we have the ability to pause and not be reactive? Can we walk through what these steps are? First, I wanna acknowledge my colleague, Robin Stern, who is my co-creator of this concept. Gosh, I'm having all these memories today. So Robin's late husband was a great guy.

But he was this big Italian guy who was very reactive. And Robin and I were the type that we'd work together late at night and we'd be on, back in the day, Skype. And she'd be walking around her house on Skype and her husband would be hearing me, let's think about how we wanna call this best self and let's think about this. And he would literally be, if I have to hear about this effin' best self. You didn't say fuck on this show, by the way.

You don't have to censor yourself. Thank you. So not everybody wants to learn this, by the way. People listening to this show wanna learn it, absolutely. I agree, there are a lot of people who don't wanna learn it. This is like, I'm gonna just be my, I had actually somebody once say to me, my best self tells someone to go fuck themselves. Oh, okay, well, this is a key question. So you're not pointing just to resistance to emotional regulation like we're seeing in some of the red states.

You're just pointing, I think, to the fact that a lot of people have, I think, a justifiable concern that their best self is gonna make them into a punching bag, a doormat, a palooka. Not cool. And that's something that's important to just talk about up front. Your best self should not be a doormat. Your best self should not be gaslighted. Your best self is the self that will help you preserve your dignity and also the other person's dignity. And I think that's a big piece of it.

So if you are in a relationship where you are being gaslighted, and let's say your husband, wife, or whatever is saying like, gosh, Mark, you are so sensitive. And then you're like, maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe I shouldn't be speaking my voice. No, you're an asshole. I don't like, my best self is like, I'm gonna tell you what's going on here, and either you're gonna ship up or I'm gonna ship out. So I think the best self is not always kind and loving, the best self sometimes is very strong and assertive.

Yes, although I would argue, coming as I do out of the Buddhist tradition, they talk about fierce compassion. So you can actually be loving, but still fierce. There's a great story of, I believe it was Sharon Salzberg, the legendary meditation teacher, was in India, and she was just learning about Buddhism, and she was sitting with all of these monks who were talking about compassion, and she said, well, what do I do if I go outside and somebody tries to mug me? And one of the teachers said, well, you compassionately whack them with your umbrella.

Exactly. It's funny, we're making a film about the work I do in schools, and I was interviewing someone from a very conservative think tank in D.C. recently. He's like, the problem I have with your work is that if my kid is being bullied at school, you're telling them that he should just talk about their feelings, and then I'm like, no, I don't write that. He's like, I'm gonna tell my kid to punch the kid in the face. I said, well, maybe there's some strategic, that doesn't have to be the first step, but I do agree, I'm a martial artist.

Strike one, strike two, strike three, I gotta protect myself, this is not cool. So I'm not saying that being assertive or even sometimes aggressive is bad. I'm saying let's not create a world where that's the automatic response to everything, which is what it feels like right now. Before we get to the five-step process, how did it go with the red state superintendents? Amazing, amazing. Okay, great. Look at you, feelings master, this is amazing. I mean, I decided they're not gonna wanna hear my whole shtick, I'm gonna stick to the science, I'm gonna stick to the outcomes.

How many of you in the room would love for your teachers to be less burnt out? Yes. How many of you would like them to be better able to manage stress? Yes. How many of you would like the students in your classrooms to be more focused and attentive and better learners? Yes. Well, that's why I'm here today. Instead of like, let's get into a circle, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya, which is what people sometimes think the work that we do is. Clearly, yeah. Which is not at all what it is.

Right, no, it's just a warping caricature. All right, so back to the five steps to prepare ourselves. I'm a little bit of a divergent thinker. No, go, go, non-linearity is fine. All right, good. But I do think that it's a good idea to like, all right, let's bang this out. So, step one, sense. Sense. The sense, the shift. The shift in your mind. This is meditation, this is mindfulness. It's awareness of, Mark, you're getting negative here. Mark, your heart is racing. Mark, you're clenching your fists.

Mark, you're gritting your teeth. It's just a tremendous amount of self-awareness around that you anticipate or you are, in the moment, experiencing a shift in your feelings. So just notice, okay, things are going along fine. I'm in a conversation with my wife or my child or my colleague and all of a sudden, big blast of anger, can you catch it? Yes, can you catch it? And you might not even know what the feeling is, to be frank. You just know that something has happened. Something in the environment, in my thought process, or in the external world around me has created a shift.

That's step one. The important piece of that is that typically, for many of us, we revert to automatic habitual reactions. I, you trigger me, I go for the jugular. You're not gonna just, true self, reflexive self, just comes out without any thought because there's no real access to reflection in that moment. You're in survival mode and that's where we have to be really skilled at training ourselves. This is why being proactive is so much better because in the moment when someone tells me to go fuck myself, now that I have permission to say the word, I'm gonna be like, no, no, you go fuck yourself, right?

Because that's just, it's like, I don't know, I can't think. I'm just like, you've attacked me. No, you go, it's gonna be this back and forth and we're gonna get escalated. That's the automatic habitual reflexive response. Doesn't really get you far in many instances. So the metamoment says, no, no, no, no, no. Step two, breathe. Step back. Say something to yourself like, Mark, don't say it. Mark, you got this. Whatever you need to just build the space because in that space is where the magic happens and what we have to do is help people just build that, reprogram, rethink their habits.

As soon as you get the urge, actually, I'm gonna just, can I give you a really good example of this? Please. So I was telling you and I have this husband, his name is Horacio, he is a filmmaker and he literally, we were talking the other night and he's on this set making a movie and he wants a second camera for this particular scene and that's out of our budget, like, you know, and he's pissed because he knows that the movie, well, it's gonna make a difference for the visuals and he, that's his job.

He's in charge of it, he's a cinematographer. So in the moment, he was like, I wanna just start ripping this guy to shreds. You're a producer, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm the creative guy, that's why you hired me. Like, this is what we need. And he's like, he realized, thanks to his significant other, like, that response would not be great. So I said, what did you do? He goes, I just took a breath. I left the situation. I took a five-minute walk and I just planned, how do I wanna show up to be the most convincing cinematographer in the history of filmmaking to let this guy know how valuable this camera will be for the shot that I think will make the movie the movie?

And he got the camera. And he said, you know, 10 years ago, he probably would've just been like, go F yourself and like, you're a moron. But instead, he took his meta moment and he's like, I'm gonna build some space. I'm not gonna respond right now because right now, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do. I just wanna attack. Instead, I'm gonna take that walk and I'm gonna give myself the space to problem solve and be creative. The point is that you, we're gonna always have activations in our lives.

There's no way around it. This is life. I'm an acute observer of the human condition. I'm a psychologist, so like, everywhere I go, I'm just like, staring at people. Wow, that was a really interesting response. You know, when you're checking into hotels or at the airports, it's the best. Yes, yes, yes. And I just, I love watching how people just like, triggered, you know, this airline sucks. It's like, okay, whatever. But, and so, step two is called stop. So we've gone from, we said. and then we just put on the stop button, the pause button.

That might be, like I said, pinching yourself, taking a deep breath, saying, Dan, I need a minute, I'm sorry, I just need a minute. Leave the room when I come back, whatever it might be. It's your, whatever you need for you. But it really is like you have to have the discipline to shut up and not say what you feel like saying in the moment, or do, you know. And that, by the way, is also about behavior. So not a little tangent, but relevant. Because I do a lot of public speaking, I, and again, I invite it out for dinners.

I don't like it, because it's just I'm an introvert and I prefer, I just don't like to have to present and socialize, you know, if it's, I might go, but point is that I notice that people expect me, or maybe I'm just making this up, to be like the entertainer. Like I'm the guest of honor for the presentation, so they wanna, like they wanna ask me questions and blah, blah, blah. And I noticed that I actually self-diagnosed myself with like a social anxiety eating problem. That sounds familiar.

Yeah, and I just started eating way too much at these meals, so I would keep my mouth busy. Yes, yes. And then I'd go back to my hotel room and I'd feel like shit. Yeah. And I just said, Mark, like this is, like you have, you're like a 50-something-year-old man who is like a leader in the field of emotional intelligence. Like you gotta work on this. This is not the self that you aspire to be. So I built up my little routine and it was that no matter what, I knew I could anticipate getting, we're talking proactive here, I would anticipate that I'm gonna be anxious at the meal because I'm gonna have to like talk all night and it's not my cup of tea, and I would say, Mark, you can actually ask good questions of other people.

Mark, you can observe the food and not eat the food. Mark, how do you wanna feel at the end of the night when you go back to your room before you go to bed? Do you wanna feel bloated and kind of like annoyed with yourself or do you wanna feel like you got this, you made it through the night and you didn't have to eat your feelings? It radically transformed like my experiences because I just, I set myself up for success. I have my go-to strategy.

When I notice myself getting anxious, I stop talking and I start asking questions and then I get to listen as opposed to everyone that's gotta be like the, you know, on stage. So that's again an example of sensing either in the moment or anticipating pausing to take that breath but here's the piece that was the missing piece which is now it's about seeing your best self. And so what does that mean? Well, it means a lot of things. It means Mark the best self-husband. It means Mark the best self-professor.

It means Mark the best self-presenter because the selves that we need to present are different across our roles. And also the characteristics of that self are different across those roles. So I always joke like Mark, I really like to use humor when I present. It's just my style. I make fun of the audience, I use them. You know, at home, you know, it doesn't work as well. Looks like you're in the red tonight, honey. You know, it's like, I'll give you red. And so I gotta be mindful that Mark's public speaking best self is not the same as his either, and mentor self.

Sometimes my humor doesn't, like, people don't like get it at work. I'm like, okay, we gotta work on that one. And again, best friend self, et cetera. So a big piece of this, and maybe people who are listening can actually do this right now, is to take a moment and think about maybe a role that you're struggling with. Maybe it's husband, dad, podcast host, whatever. And just think about what that self would ideally look like for you right now. What are the adjectives that you would use to describe that self?

I think about this like I haven't seen Horacio in a month because he's been making this film. And I'm gonna show up tonight and know he's gonna be exhausted. And I know that I'm gonna wanna ask a lot of questions, like, oh, Tennis Quaid's on the movie. Tell me about Tennis Quaid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's not gonna be in the mood to talk about any of the actors or anything that's going on. Like, I'm not in the filmmaking business. I'm kinda curious. But, so okay, we're gonna get together for the first time tonight in a month.

How can I show up as the best version of me in that moment? I haven't figured it out yet. I have the flight. But you get my point here. Like, you just, it's, for the stage, maybe it's funny self. It's I wanna be seen as smart, but also humble. Like, that's a big deal for me because of where I work. People automatically assume, like, whatever I think a lot of myself because of my job. And I'm like, I'm from Jersey. Like, I'm just a normal guy.

Like, I, you know, I'm a beef and potatoes kinda guy. And I think that really helps people when I do public speaking because they're, the self that they have created for me is not who I am, et cetera. So, Dan, let me ask you this. Is there a role that you feel like you could work on more so than any other role? So many to choose from. Pick the one that shows up first. The one that's just coming up right in my mind is we do a lot of company meetings at my little company.

I own my company and small staff, I don't know, somewhere between 10 and 15 people. And we do them on Zoom. And I hate Zoom. I fucking hate Zoom. I'd like, if people video call me, I'm annoyed. If I have to get on a Zoom, I'm annoyed. It's actually my biggest problem with hosting this podcast and why I'm trying to get it to be in person is I hate sitting and looking at a screen, unless that screen is playing House of the Dragon. I don't wanna be talking on Zoom.

And so, yeah, so sometimes in these team meetings, I am, like, physically uncomfortable because I get really tired when I have to look at a screen and I don't think I'm accessing my best self and being a good leader because I'm annoyed. That's a great example. I do have one trick for you. I have radically transformed my Zoom meetings because I now have a walking machine. Yeah, yes. It has changed my life. I actually refuse to be in a Zoom meeting and not walking. So it's a treadmill at your desk.

Yeah. Yes. Love it. I take an extra 10,000 steps a day, sometimes 15,000, depending on how many meetings I have. If it's a real, like, if I'm doing an interview, I'm not gonna be walking, weird. But if it's just conversations with staff about stuff, they just know that Mark's gonna be walking. I've got five people on my team to get them. And it does help me have a better mindset because I feel like it's a movement piece. Yes, yes, absolutely. But, so going back to you now, so you're saying that you kind of automatically get disengaged?

Yeah. And you get like, you're kind of just like, ugh, yucky about it. Yes, disengaged and then judgmental of myself. Who is the self that you'd like to show up in those meetings? Teacher Dan, who's generous, attuned, signaling that he cares about my employees, which I do. What's one strategy that you can imagine using? This is a great example of proactive regulation. You know now about yourself. You know that the Zoom automatically kind of brings up fatigue, disengagement, et cetera. So that's gonna happen till the cows come home.

We wanna prevent that. So what's your strategy? What might be one thing you could do differently in the next Zoom meeting? Now I'm gonna take us on a digression because I had a conversation with DJ, who's the executive producer of this show. And he was very, I love when my team does this. I don't actually love it in the moment, but I love that they feel comfortable enough to do it. And it's really been helpful to me. He was able to like call me out on something in a very polite and constructive way.

But he was saying, I'm noticing that on a lot of these podcast interviews, you're kind of flat. And people are saying things that you're not picking up on. And I explained to him, it's because of the Zoom. It's because I've spent the entire morning working on tough creative problems. And I get into the podcast and I just don't wanna be stuck in a little closet in my house staring at a Zoom. And he's like, I totally get that. But like, it's showtime. And it's showtime has been a little phrase I've said to myself when I sit down for podcast interviews.

Not like this, because I'm super engaged because you're a live human being right in front of me. And I think it's showtime is another thing you could say, I could say to myself before these Zoom team meetings. 100%, love it. Simple technique, a simple kind of shift strategy. Just a mindset shift, showtime. That conjures up a whole thing for you, which is bright eyed, cheery faced, engaged, good posture, et cetera, et cetera. Perfect. And maybe you think about other things you can do, like a little exercise, a little bit of movement before you go.

Yes, I keep a tennis ball at my desk and I've been sort of walking around the room just catching the tennis ball a little bit. It's not as good as having a treadmill at my desk. But I don't have to look at the screen the whole time and I can kind of pace a little bit and throw a tennis ball to myself. And that I find actually keeps me more engaged. And do you feel like every meeting has to be a Zoom meeting? No, we're actually talking about moving to phone.

And for my one-on-ones, I do a lot of phone. And increasingly just having people get together in person. Like my CEO who lives near me, she and I just, we get together. And there's another person on my team who is a very close creative collaborator and we just get together. And that makes all the difference. I have now, because I am a movement guy, with the key people on my leadership team, we had a conversation just literally two days ago. I said, can we divide our meetings up into meetings where I need to look at things versus not look at things, versus we're just gonna be talking through stuff.

So yesterday I had a meeting where we were going through all the emails that had come in and what do we want to do with this, these inquiries, do we want to do this, do we not want to do this? I'm like, so I just have to listen and basically say yes, no. They're like, yes. I said, great, I'm doing a walk around the reservoir. And so it was a 45-minute meeting. I walked around the entire reservoir up by where I live on Central Park. And I was like, I felt great.

So I think that this again, it's like there are simple techniques that people can do. And then, of course, I come out of that feeling energized because it was a beautiful day. I got movement in. I feel accomplished because I got the work done. And or I could have been, for people who are on YouTube watching this, like this. Which is basically my jaw sticking out, my back hunched, my neck crunched. An unhappy salamander is basically the email. It's like, I don't want that in my life.

I want, I'm a feelings master, man. I want to have good questions too. We're about to leave on a family beach vacation. And my wife, in an act of kindness and generosity, went on quince.com and ordered me some more of my favorite shorts. So I'm never out of shorts to wear. A couple of weeks ago, I got this pair of shorts from Quince and I've just been wearing them like all the time. So now, thanks to Bianca, I've got three pairs, which I'm very excited about.

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My best self says, Mark, this is part of your life. This is gonna be one of those dinners. You can be the learner, not the knower. And that's what's really important. And by the way, going back to emotion regulation as a kind of concept, I think what's so important is that people realize that different strategies are useful for different emotions and experiences. So I'll give you an example. I've been going through some stuff, you know, just who am I, what am I doing? And I was in yoga last night, and I had this one great teacher.

He said, maybe for certain things, given the lack of control we really have, we can just surrender to the process. And I don't know what it was in that moment, but it was so, I just, my whole body and mind said, you know what, the law of physics, the law of the universe is that we will move forward. Right now, it feels like everything is stuck. I don't love that feeling, but if I can bring in that mindset of just, this is the process, Mark. It's gonna be, it's okay.

I texted him, I actually have never done this before, but I was walking home, and I found him on Instagram, and I sent him a DM. And I just said, you know, there was something, I've been going through something that I'm struggling with, and I want to just thank you, because that language was enormously helpful for me, and just thank you. And he brought me back like, oh my God, we're in this together, you know. But, you know, now I can, now that I learned that that was helpful for me, because I just felt my body and mind shift, when I'm going into a meeting over the next couple weeks about this particular thing, I will bring that memory in.

I will bring that feeling in. So I'll be more, I took what I learned in the moment, and I'm applying it to be more proactive. Just a digression on your digression here, but this notion of surrender is tricky, because it can be misinterpreted, just as emotion regulation can be misinterpreted. So I just want to signal to the listener and viewer that you are surrendering to a process. Correct. There is a process. This is not like drift. But I'm not gonna solve that process when I'm ruminating about it in yoga.

Right, right. And so I'm not gonna ruin my class by just sitting there like, oh my God, I'm like, oh. Luckily, you know, hot power yoga for me gets me out of my head. But for me, it was that phrase, and it just said, you know what, Mark? It's a process. You're not gonna solve this problem in this next 45 minutes. Enjoy the moment, be here. You love this class. And then, but then when I left, I actually, you know, it was, I felt joy. And I, you know, it was beautiful for me to have that experience of like, just a reminder.

Like you said, it's a process. Not gonna solve it today. It's not something that's actually even solvable in the moment. It's gonna be this process. Well said. But I wanted to just help people understand what I mean by flexible regulation, or sometimes we call it polyregulation, which is the idea that, I'll give you some, a few examples. So I have noticed, I've been paying attention, go figure, to like, what strategies I use for what emotions and what situations. What I've learned is that when I have a relationship challenge, I'm not great at using cognitive strategies.

I will ruminate, and I will try to figure it out, and like, wonder like, why does this person not like me, or why is this like this? And you know, it's like, I think I'm the nicest guy in the world, and how could anybody not like me? Like, I'll go through a whole thing of like, self-doubt, or like, whatever. That never, that has not worked for me. I'm gonna be 57 in a few weeks. Happy birthday. Thank you. What does work is recognize, I have a lot of close acquaintances, a lot of friends, a lot of people who I really respect and admire, and why should I have to worry about this alone?

Why don't I just call up a friend and just say, what do you think about this? And hear your perspective. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my god, I'm not alone. I'm a nice guy. There are people who love me. But my point is that whatever it is for me, and my makeup, and my development, when it's about an interpersonal thing, I struggle with resolving it on my own. I do really well by listening, and getting to sharing the situation, not venting for hours and hours, because I know that doesn't work.

I just say, what do you think about this particular situation? Any thoughts? And I listen, and I sift through what I hear. I'm like, yeah, of course, great. And then I can move on. Now, when I am frustrated with something, let's say with Horacio, I have to talk it out. I don't want to go to bed at night. I just need to verbalize it in a way that can get met. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is that for people, I think we get obsessed with one strategy.

Like breath work, people seem to be obsessed with. Which is fine. Breath work is great. It's not gonna solve the world's problems. I joke about this, but my mother-in-law who came during COVID accidentally, it was a whole crazy thing, where she came March 5th of 2020 to visit us from Panama. She did not go home until September 17th. So she was supposed to stay for two weeks. She stayed for seven months because of COVID and all the flights being canceled. So I take breaths, okay, it's even clearer why she's gotta get the hell out of my house.

I have complete clarity why I can't take it anymore. So yeah, breath work is great. Yoga is great. But sometimes we need perspective from other people. Like this is a big issue, for example, with men and emotions. Men think I gotta solve it on my own, I can't be vulnerable. Why? Who said you can't ask someone for some advice or some support or get perspective? It's just that we're taught that that's weak or being too vulnerable. So polyregulation or flexible regulation says, okay, emotion regulation is a function of the emotion itself and the context.

So Marx, when I'm overwhelmed, for example, I'm a writer, you do a lot of writing too. I notice that if I am overwhelmed and I try to keep writing, it sucks. How about you? And this is a mistake I keep making. I'm overwhelmed but I feel pressure to bulldoze through it and nothing good happens. Exactly. So getting my little thing, I am very hyper aware of when I am stuck writing. A, I've written two books, I'm gonna write a third book. I have written 200 scholarly articles.

I can write. I actually know I can write because I have the data to prove it. There are moments when I can't even think of, I can't write a paragraph. It's like the craziest thing in the world. And I can just be like, Mark, you're a writer, this is your professor, you're a scholar. It's like, who gives a fuck? And in that moment, I'm like, you need a break. And I just shut the computer and I walk outside. I take a 10 minute walk. Sometimes I'll do a little movement and I come back and it's like, all the ideas come back to me.

So I really encourage that. And so, this is again, knowing yourself. So for overwhelm, I know that I have to give myself those micro breaks. That's great. For anxiety, which is more about like, this is like, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen? I could take a break and then what's gonna happen, I take another break, I come back, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen? It doesn't work for me. For anxiety, I have to use self-talk strategies. I have to say things like, Mark, take the high road here.

Mark, you're not, during COVID, I would say things like, Mark, you are not the CDC. Mark, you are not the president of the university. You're not gonna ever make the choice about when we go back to work. And I would just be like, oh yeah, I have no control over this. So I can either just sit all day long watching the stock market crash and watching people die of COVID, or I can distract myself from that and focus on what I can focus on. So overwhelmed strategies, different from anxiety strategies.

Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. It does. I think it's just really critical because I think people get stuck. And part of the reason why I wrote this new book, Dealing With Feeling, was to create these, to really show people that your strategy might just be a mindset shift. Your strategy might be the breath work. Your strategy might be shifting your thought processes. Your strategy might be getting social support. Your strategy might be taking a nap, getting a little bite to eat, doing a little physical activity.

And in the end, what I believe is that if you accumulate all these evidence-based strategies, that's what helps you, what? Become the best version of yourself. Right, exactly, yes, yes, yes. All these kind of strategies come together so that when you are triggered and you pause and you take the breath and then you visualize the best self, you now have trained yourself with all these strategies and you can match the strategy to the emotion and the moment. Got it. Yes. Does that make sense? It makes complete sense.

As we march through this five-part strategy, it makes me realize that this is actually, you could use this in preparation for something. Totally. The meta moment, but you can also use it in the actual moment. Exactly. It was originally developed for the moment. Like prolong the space between stimulus and response. To be the best version of yourself. And then I just realized that, wait a minute. Why don't we use this for what we might anticipate would be a difficult meeting? And I do a lot of work in school, so it'd be like the teacher having the parent meeting and it's like, the parent's gonna be angry.

Their kid is getting in trouble. Can I be better prepared? Can I think about my go-to strategy for when the parent says, you're ruining my kid. I don't want you to be caught off guard. You know this person, this parent, after years of working with them or whatever. Let's pretend it's gonna happen. Let's be prepped in advance so that you can be a better responder as opposed to automatic reactor. We've done four of the five steps. First is sense. Second is stop. Third is see your best self.

Fourth is strategize. Is the fifth also gonna start with the letter S? Of course. It's gonna be self-assess. So now, the real meta moment is the four steps. You go from sensing the shift in your mind and body to strategizing and acting in a way that aligns with your best self. But I'm gonna give you one just terrible example of my worst self. Horacio made this movie called America Unfiltered that I helped to make and he had a book of his portraits. It was a tour of America and asking people what it meant to be an American.

And he's like, I really want to do the book of portraits, like a coffee table book of all of his photography. Great, we'll figure it out. So now his English is a second language. He's from Panama originally. And he had to write the introduction and the conclusion of the book. And obviously, I do a lot of writing. I'm gonna be the editor. I'm gonna make this much shorter than it really was. So I get home from a long trip. The book is due the next day.

I had already edited the intro and the conclusion. And I get to Gali. And I'm like, this is not the version that I edited. I don't understand what happened here. I spent a lot of time editing this intro. And he gets very defensive and we got into this huge fight. I was so tired and irritated that the worst, worst version of The Feelings Master came out. It was awful. And in retrospect, I think all this work on emotional intelligence, all in the crapper. Has this ever happened?

Every Tuesday, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and it's worse because, and most people listening to this probably won't be able to relate to it, but you and I have public personas and internalized personas of being better than that. Oh yeah, like people who are practitioners. Yes, yes. And then so when I do the stupid thing or say the stupid thing, it's even more embarrassing for me. Exactly. And I'm like, you're a fraud, the whole thing. And it's like, gosh, it was bad. I'm gonna tell a story that I know.

I hope he doesn't kill me for this. So we live, we have a place in the country and he was so upset with me, he went outside and started howling. So the next morning, our neighbor said, did you hear the wolves howl? I'm like, I actually did and they weren't wolves. It was actually Horacio. And I mean, obviously, we've been together 32 years. We're in, I think, in the best place we've ever been and we now have the skills to repair. So my point of telling you this is that I didn't take the metamoment and I hate myself for that.

But I don't wanna go backwards in life, I wanna move forward. And I need to learn how to apologize, ask for forgiveness, repair, not with all the buts, buts, buts, buts, buts, but why do you edit it and but why did you get the wrong version? That happened. Just because it didn't go as planned and he made a mistake doesn't mean I need to be a jerk. It takes the same amount of time to be a jerk as it does to be compassionate. Yeah, but it's so much harder to be compassionate.

I know. But this is what we have to strive for and that's another big piece of this and I'm glad you said that because we're never gonna attain our best self. We're never gonna attain it permanently. Exactly. It's something we strive for because our relationships change over time. The person that I met when I was 24 years old is not the person I'm with now 32 years later. And that's important to know. And so the self-assessment is really about, okay, it worked, congratulations, let's use this one again.

Mark, you got through the metamoment. You've used your best self. Now every time you go out for dinner, you're gonna take the breath in the elevator, you're gonna remind yourself that you're the learner. not the knower, you don't have to talk throughout the whole night. You can observe the food, not eat it all. You got this, Mark? Yes, got it. And it works 90% of the time, not 100%. You know, it happens. And then there's the times when, you know, I ate the whole thing of nachos and guacamole and I feel like, or the times that I just say the nastiest thing ever to my significant other.

And I have to go, I have to take some time and just say, like, why did this version of myself come out tonight? And usually it's an issue of control. Usually it's an issue of trying to prove myself. Usually it's something that's just not that healthy. And then I can build again and say, okay, next time. What's your strategy? You said something crucial there, because the self-assessment is actually part of the proactive regulation, because if you can see what's my trigger, you just said there, it was something about control.

I think that's a very common trigger. Well, then you're better prepared for when you're going into a situation and you understand, oh yeah, that trigger could come up for me. 100%, and this is the whole point, like anticipatory. Another example I'll just give you, we're actually close to her neighborhood. She has passed, but I had an aunt who was a very successful woman in the garment industry here in New York. But she was like the devil's work prototype, except she didn't do fancy clothing, she did other kinds of clothing.

Schmata trade, yeah. Yes, pretty much. The sweaters that she designed are to be discussed elsewhere. But anyway. But my aunt, she had all the jewelry, and we'd be in a restaurant, and she'd be like, bang her diamond ring on the thing to get attention from the waiter, and you'd be sitting there thinking like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. She had an apartment on the east side, and we'd go there, and she'd say things like, what are you doing? I said, I don't know, we're having dinner with the family, I'm just lighting the candles.

She goes, those are for real company. Got it. Okay, that was my aunt. Funny, cool, not easy to be with. So what do you do? Before you go to Aunt Sandy's house, or before you have dinner with Aunt Sandy, you do a lot of prep work. You take the meta moment in advance. She's gonna bang her diamond ring on the table and be so embarrassing. She's gonna say nasty things about people. She's gonna roll her eyes. She does a lot of eye rolling, too. If someone, she doesn't agree with you, people who can't see, she does this massive eye roll in front of the person.

I'm like, what's going on here? It's ridiculous. But this is who she is. I'm not changing her. It's not my job to be her teacher. It's my job to not, to want to be with my family, and she's part of the family, so I gotta deal with it. But then I became, honestly, I called it like a game of creativity. And so what I mean by that is I actually think emotion regulation is a very creative process. Because it's like divergent. It's like, let me think about it this way.

Let me try this. Let me do this. Mark, how would the feelings master respond to that thing and that thing? And it's really fun if you make it into a game. Bruce Lee used to say, you're a martial artist, he used to say, be like water. And that's what you're doing when you're, and I say this to the listener and viewer, when you're being your own feelings master, you're being like water. You're adapting to the situation creatively. Couldn't agree more. So that became like a fun exercise.

I would be like, okay. So when Ann Saini makes the dumb comment, what am I gonna think and what am I gonna say? And it just became like, this is who she is, this is, you know. And I wouldn't get triggered anymore. I would just find it amusing. I would observe it and say like, wow, I wish I would have tracked her development. What was her relationship, what did it look like for her growing up in her family? And again, that's self-talk too. I would actually say these things to myself.

I'd be like, gosh, this is a fascinating story. How does someone like that get made? So that's the process from, you know, we sense, we stop, we see our best selves, we strategize, and then we have to do some evaluation or self-assessment. Actually, if it's okay to share this, I, on my website, I created a little worksheet for this. So just markbracket.com, and it's called the Metamoment Strategy Builder Worksheet to help people just try it out. And if you go to markbracket.com, you can also find your books, which are Permission to Feel and Dealing with Feeling.

And there's a third one coming? That's right. Okay, great. Will you come back on the show when that happens? I would love to. I think this is, I'm excited about this one. This is, if I can just say up front, it's about how to be an emotion ally. For somebody else? Yeah. A thought came into my head when you were talking about your aunt, Sandy, where you trained yourself to be able to get curious about like, okay, well, what was it like in her home that she's now developing an ocular sprain by rolling her eyes so ostentatiously, you know, when somebody says something she disagrees with?

I'm wondering whether learning how to become your own feelings master inexorably and inevitably leads you to becoming more compassionate, to becoming more of an ally for other people. Because you see how, to use the word you used before, you see your own mishegas, you see how fucking crazy you are so you understand that everybody's got their own stuff. Yeah, I think what you're getting at, Dan, is something that we didn't talk about, which can kind of like bring in at the end, which is that the reason why I think this technique helps and the reason why I think emotion regulation is important is that you're not really doing it for its own sake.

You're doing it for outcomes. I actually want to feel good about myself. Of course, yes, and achieve your goals. I want to be in a healthy, productive, honest, and open relationship with my significant other. I want to make the best decisions. I want to have good mental health. And like you just said, I want to achieve my goals in life. And as someone who has coached thousands of people and trained millions of people at this point in my career, I can tell you right now, cognitive ability is a necessary but insufficient skill.

You gotta learn how to deal with your feelings. And to get back to the thesis of your next book, are you arguing in that book that learning how to deal with your own feelings helps you be an ally to others? I mean, that's part of it. That's part of the Dealing with Feeling book. What I'm arguing in this next book is that only about a third of us feel like we had a pretty good emotional development. Two-thirds of us feel like, gosh, I was raised by wolves.

Nobody really cared about my emotions. That's my research, 70 studies across the world. So you can't change the past. Now, maybe I'll end with this kind of little story, which is I wrote this book, Permission to Feel, which I dedicated to my uncle because he was the adult who gave me permission to feel. He was the only one who ever asked me how I was feeling. And so I'm now running around giving speeches. I'm in Westchester, of all places, where you are. Where I live, yes.

And I'm giving a speech to the different district leaders there because I do a lot of work in schools, as I shared. And you're not gonna believe this. So I didn't always talk about my uncle and his profound impact on my life and how he gave me permission to feel, but I did because that's what I wrote about. And this guy who's a superintendent in a district up there, he's like, are you talking about Marvin Moore, the sixth-grade social studies teacher from Monticello, New York? I said, I am.

And he goes, Mark, you're not gonna believe this. Your Uncle Marvin was my Uncle Marvin. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, your uncle was my sixth-grade teacher 50 years ago, and he is the reason why I went into education. Your uncle was the most amazing human being. I'll never forget his facial expressions, his eyes, the way he talked. Like, he went on and on and on. I'm like, dude, I gotta finish my talk. But can we talk afterwards? It was mind-blowing about how he saw my uncle, like I did, as his emotion ally.

Now, here's what I really wanted to share, which is the focus of this next project, which is, at the end, he said, hey, Mark, it's pretty clear your uncle had a profound impact on your development and your whole career. I said, 100%, I dedicate much of my success to him. And so he said, well, so, for whom are you an Uncle Marvin, Mark? I'm like, I like to do the research. And it was so eye-opening to me about paying it forward. And so my hope is that, in the future, it won't be 1 3rd of people across the world that say they had someone who cared about them in terms of their feelings growing up, but it will be 90, 100%.

And so, it's kind of, what have I learned from the research to support more people in showing up for other people as emotion allies. I look forward to talking about it with you. Thank you. Did Marissa, our producer, prime you for the fact that we've got a new closing segment we do? No, but I'm happy to do whatever you want. Okay, so we're toying with this new closing segment that we're calling What's Good. So, is there a book, a TV show, some little practice, some movie, something that you would recommend that's good in your life, and then I'll give you one.

I can go first, if that would be easier for you. Okay, a couple months before the America 250, I got semi-obsessed with the Revolutionary War, and I watched a 12-part documentary series on PBS, which is not the thing I'm recommending, although I do recommend it. But there's a book called Founding Brothers that talks about the founding fathers and their fraternal relationship, sometimes warm, sometimes cane and able, with one another. And what it does is it kind of reveals that these people that we lionize, or actually on some college campuses vilify, are complex human beings.

And you may have statues built to you, you might be on our currency, but you had your best self and your reflexive self, and we can't tell one solid story about somebody. George Washington, for example. We think of him as a great warrior, but he lost for the first two, three years. He was just in retreat. We think about him as somebody who, I think justifiably, as somebody who allowed for the peaceful transfer of power, stepping down voluntarily when he could have become a kind of American Caesar.

True. Also, dude traveled with a slave for much of that time in the Revolutionary War and was a slave owner and was largely, at least initially, motivated to buck the English because he wanted to colonize indigenous lands west of where he lived in Virginia. And so all of these things are true simultaneously, and I think that's really helpful just to understand about the founding fathers or about anybody, really, that we are more than one thing. So long wind up for recommending founding brothers. Yeah, mine is gonna be much simpler, but I actually am familiar with that and really appreciate that kind of complexity that many of us have in our lives.

I have fifth-degree black belt in the martial arts, and I'm one of those people who was always like, you gotta persevere at all costs and achieve your goals. And I've come to the conclusion, observing people, that what's good is play. Just have fun. Like, can we just have fun? And I don't have to be great at everything, and I can just try this out, and if I don't like it, I can try something else. Be aware if I'm giving up because I am insecure. But I just think that I do so much work with families and parents, and maybe it's because of the institution I work at that it's like, by third grade, you gotta have your coach.

And it's like, really? Like, try martial arts, maybe you'll be good at it, maybe you won't. Try skiing, try football, swimming. Like, just, and actually, if you look at the research, what it shows is that some of our most lauded Olympians were not focused on their initial sport at the beginning. They really tried a lot of things, and then they found the one that they were most passionate about later on and became experts. So the good is kind of just be flexible, have some fun. Just to, I 100% agree with you, and just to back that up, hopefully she's okay with me saying this, but my CEO of my little company, Toni, who's amazing, she often talks about how she can, in her worst moments, become a work robot, where she's just working all the time.

And for her and for many of us, the antidote is to play, is to do, you know, for Toni, if she likes to ride her bike or take hikes or garden. But what you're arguing is a step beyond that. Yes, play, and try new things that you might suck at. There's a real value in it. Actually, it's funny about play. I just thought of this, I forgot. But one of my former researchers at my center went on to be going in the gaming business, and he came to visit me about six months ago.

He was like, why don't we make a game out of your work? And so we actually built a game. It's called The Point of Connection. I'm gonna give you one, actually. And it's this fun card game where you're, like, getting to know people. And so we've decided that, we hadn't seen each other in, like, three years, and we went out for dinner. And it was like, we talked for, like, 15 minutes, and it was like, uh-huh. And then in that moment, he's like, what kind of questions could we write to get to know each other better?

And we had so much fun. We, like, stayed for five hours writing questions, and then we just made it into a game. That's great. Okay, is it available? Yeah, it's called The Point of Connection. Also available through markbracket.com? Okay, markbracket. Always a pleasure to talk to you, even more so in person. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for having me. Just a quick note before I let you go. If you're a listener to the show and you're looking for other ways to engage with my content, let me give you some options.

Your first stop is danharris.com. That's my new website, and it has information and links to my meditation app. It's where you can sign up for my free newsletter. It's where you will find all the latest information on upcoming live events that I'm doing. We've also got 10% Happier Plus, which is an ad-free subscription right inside Apple Podcasts. So that's another option. And if you would rather watch than listen, we film every episode now. Video versions are up on YouTube and Spotify, so please like and follow whether you're watching or listening.

Also, I'm on social media. I try to inject a little sanity into your feed, into the darker corners of the internet. Just search for my name, Dan Harris, and you'll find me wherever you have a scrolling habit. All right, that was a mouthful. Thank you for being here. Deuces. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart, and Hayden Broom. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.

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