What if, instead of running away from or suppressing difficult emotions, we learned how to observe, embrace, and utilize them to aid in our personal development? Such is the mission of Susan David—an award-winning Harvard Medical School Psychologist, and author of the bestseller Emotional Agility. In this episode, Susan tells Alex about what inspired her to go into emotions research, the danger of avoiding negative emotions, and what emotional agility is and how we can implement it in our own lives.

00:40 - Intro
02:55 - The experiences that led Susan to study emotion
05:06 - What Susan sees as the essence of her work
08:06 - The revolutionary experience Susan had as a teenager with her teacher
09:51 - The misleading societal narratives that Susan started to recognize around emotion
16:46 - The definition of emotional agility
19:34 - What emotional rigidity (the opposite of emotional agility) looks like
21:30 - Alex’s own experience with emotional rigidity
22:48 - Susan’s explanation of identity fusion and how our sense of self becomes tied to external metrics
26:38 - How we can start to get away from identity fusion and separate our sense of self from superficial achievements
30:29 - How to start practicing emotional agility
33:55- How to practice emotion granularity as a way to build emotional agility
35:55 - The role language plays in helping us to manage our emotions
37:15 - A useful analogy for how to think about emotions

Let us know in the comments below what topics you'd like us to cover and all the ways you work on your emotional intelligence!

#harvard #mentalhealth #podcasts #morningbrew