How to Cultivate Emotional Sovereignty Emma Seppälä

In this episode, Emma Seppälä shares insightful perspectives on how to cultivate emotional sovereignty. Drawing from her professional knowledge and personal experiences, she emphasizes the importance of self-awareness, courage, and developing a positive internal dialogue in navigating life’s challenges. She introduces the concept of sovereignty as a means of reclaiming agency and resilience in the face of uncertainty and chaos. Through practical insights and strategies, Emma delves into the detrimental effects of self-criticism, the significance of meeting one’s basic needs, and the transformative potential of cultivating a supportive relationship with oneself.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Master techniques for emotional regulation to take control of your well-being
• Overcome addictions with powerful strategies for lasting change
• Discover the impact of self-criticism on mental health and how to break free from its grip
• Cultivate emotional sovereignty to reclaim agency in your life and relationships
• Unlock the benefits of contemplative practices for heightened self-awareness and personal growth

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, there's so much pulling our awareness outward, especially
these days with all of the media coming at us
constantly and our lives being at high speed, that it
is very easy to live life on automatic, unaware and reactive.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,

(00:43):
or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
what we do. We think things that hold us back
and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

(01:03):
how they feed their good wealth. Thanks for joining us.
Our guest on this episode is a returning guest, Emma Sepola.

(01:24):
She's the science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion
and Altruism Research and Education. She's also co director of
the Yale College Emotional Intelligence Project. At the Yale Center
for Emotional Intelligence and a lecturer at Yale College where
she teaches the psychology of happiness. Today, Eric and Emma

(01:44):
discuss her new book, Sovereign Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy and
Power in a Time of Distraction, uncertainty, and chaos.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Hi Emo, welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Thank you, it's great to be back.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on again. We're
going to be discussing your book, which is called Sovereign
Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy and Power in a Time of distraction, uncertainty,
and chaos. And so we'll be getting into that in
a second, but we'll start like we always do, with
the parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandparent who's
talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there

(02:18):
are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second.
They look up at their grandparents. They say, well, which
one wins And the grandparent says, the one you feed.

(02:40):
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you and your life and in
the work that you do.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
I think this parable and I've heard it before the
last time that I came on the show, And in
many ways, my new book, Sovereign is about feeding the
wolf that in turn will feed you. Right, Because the
wolf that is the anger and the fear and the
destruction is also simultaneously depleting you, and the one that

(03:07):
is the kindness, the ethics, the compassion, the wisdom. When
you feed that wolf, it feeds you back and creates
a life of greater well being but also of sovereignty,
of inspiration, of power.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, So tell me about the term sovereign. Why is
that a term you sort of picked is the title
of the book, and what does it mean to you?

Speaker 4 (03:31):
Thank you, Eric. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
You know, I've been in the field of psychology, and
specifically the psychology of happiness, of well being, trauma reduction,
anxiety reductions, things like that that I've looked at in
my research, and I felt that there was something beyond
just the psychology of well being, that there is something
beyond just looking at what creates for mental health or
what creates for thriving because you can be doing all

(03:54):
of the practices, you can be meditating and going out
in nature and doing all the things. But if you
are still buying into beliefs about yourself, about your life,
and you're also engaging in activities or addictive behaviors, we're
getting caught up in stuff like the many different options
and addictive substances or entertainment or media that's out there.

(04:19):
You can still be living a life in which you
live in fear or in anger or in like I said,
addiction without realizing it and still wondering, well, why am
I still not feeling like I'm living the life that
I want to live? And you know, seventy percent of
people on their deathbed feel that they didn't live the
life they wanted to live. And sovereignty is reclaiming, reclaiming

(04:44):
in this time of distraction, because we take in over
sixty thousand gigabytes of information every day across our media channels,
which is insane when you think about it. Yeah, and
can crash a small computer in a week, right, And
this is what we're doing to our mind every single day.
But also a time of uncertainty on the global front
and chaos, and it's so easy to go down the
negative spiral of the fear, of the anger, of the

(05:06):
many ways in which we can be trying to distract
ourselves in ways that are destructive to us. And yet
sovereignty is reclaiming your ability to live the life that
you want as you wish. And that's what I break
down chapter by chapter in the book, and I felt
like it needed its own term, because I don't know
a term in psychology that equates that.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
What you were saying there really made me think of something.
You know, in the fitness world, there's a phrase, you
can't out train a bad diet, right, And when you're
talking about these practices meditation and going out into nature,
those are the exercises. So it's the equivalent of being
on a treadmill or on a bike, right. And they're
really good. But if you're consuming four thousand calories a day,

(05:48):
that's not going to make a dent in it, right,
And I think what you're saying here is something similar.
These practices are really good, and we need to be
orienting towards the beliefs that are holding us back, the
content that we're consuming that is holding us back.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
Right, absolutely so.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
For example, I teach executives, that's my job at Yale,
and I teach these high level leaders that come in
for a week or two to get some more education
and management and.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Leadership and so forth.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
And they are talented, high performers if they were chosen
to come to this program. I mean, they're really amazing.
And what I see stands the most in their way
is their relationship with themselves. And whenever I ask them,
are you self critical? For example, ninety to ninety five
percent of them raise their hand. And when you look

(06:37):
at it from a psychological perspective, self criticism is self loathing.
Self loathing. That's a pretty strong term. And you know
some people will think, oh well, self criticism, it's leads
to self improvement, isn't that a good thing? I'm differentiating
between self criticism and self awareness. Self awareness is oh hey,
you know, my stats aren't that great. I need help

(06:58):
with that that self awareness. Self criticism is those words
that people use for themselves when they screw up, or
when they're fail at something, or when they make a mistake,
when they do something embarrassing. The words people use are brutal.
You know, you're such an idiot. You know those kinds
of things and much much worse right that people say
to themselves that's also feeding the dark wolf.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
But your relationship with.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yourself is the only one that's guaranteed twenty four to
seven for the rest of your life. And if it's
a toxic one, then you are depleting your energy. It's
like you said, you can be on the exercise bike,
but you're eating the trash.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
So something I'm going to be doing a little more
often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
only if combined with action and integration. So before we
move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
for you as you listen to this. Are there any
things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that

(07:57):
might make sense to remove, or any things you could
do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing.
So if you have the headspace for it, I'd love
if you could just pause for a second and ask yourself,
what's one thing I could do today or tonight to
feed my good wolf. Whatever your thing is. A really
useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or

(08:18):
a friend or a tool that regularly nudges you back
towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been
sending little Good Wolf reminders to some of my friends
and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times
per week that give them a little bit of wisdom
and remind them to pause for a second and come
off autopilot. If you want, I can send them to

(08:39):
you too. I do it totally for free, and people
seem to really love them. Just drop your information at
oneufeed dot net slash sms and I can send them
to you. It's totally free, and if you end up
not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out.
That's one you feed dot net slash sms. And now
back to the episode. It's an interesting idea because those

(09:02):
people have gotten to where they are right the top
performers as executives, right, so there's something in their way
of doing things that is working, and yet it tends
to get in the way. And I often think of
it as like there's that business book that came out
right like what got you here won't get you there? Meaning, yeah,

(09:24):
whatever you were doing to get you to this level, right,
it's usually the jump into you know, executive leadership. Right,
everything you did up till then, yeah, it worked, but
it's not going to get you to the next level.
And that's what I've seen in my coaching practice working
with people is yeah, the self criticism sort of you know,
maybe it did its thing for a while, but then
it just stops working, and it tends to be the

(09:45):
thing that sort of gets in the way. And I
had an experience driving over here today. I was listening
to you on James Doti's podcast. I know he's a
mentor of yours, and I just had a memory and
it was of my father and I playing golf. And
I played golf with him a lot as a kid,
and I both loved it and hated it because he

(10:06):
was very angry, very critical. But it occurred to me
today that when he would make a bad shot or
a putt, like, the things that would come out of
his mouth to himself were really awful. I was like, well,
of course, that's where I learned that. Like again, just
a memory to me of like sort of where some
of this stuff starts to get formed.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Thank you for sharing that. You know, when if you
don't want to do it for yourself, do it for
your children or those around you, because we have such
a toxic relationship with ourselves, such a brutal one. When
we are highly critical like that, then we're also going
to be highly destructively critical with the people we love
the most and want to hurt the least. And then
we pass the programming on. And I always think the

(10:47):
self loathing is I think of it as social conditioning,
or could think of it as a program programming that
you inherit from your parents, as you mentioned, or society
at large, because it's very well accepted to have that
kind of relationship with yourself, and it's so destructive, you know.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
It's like if a.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Terrorist walks into the room fully armed, it's going to
set off your fight or flight response, your sympathetic nervous system.
But if the terrorist is living inside of you, then
you are activating your stress response for yourself. And that's
what we're up to. It doesn't make any sense. It
just doesn't make sense to have a destructive relationship with oneself,
and yet many people do have one like that. And

(11:26):
one of the invitations I give in the first chapter
of my book is to deprogram that because that is
a fundamental basis of your existence is how you relate
to yourself.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, I mean one of the things you talk about
with sovereignty which will bring different aspects of your life
to a new level. One of them, right, is your energy.
And obviously what we know about motivational theory says that
we do better and we're more motivated when we feel
good about ourselves, and we become less motivated, less energetic
in a sense when we feel bad about ourselves.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right, exactly are you relating to yourself in a way
that's energizing, that's filling your tank, or that's depleting you Again,
doesn't mean you're not aware of your shortcomings or if
you're being lazy and you feel like, okay, I'm being lazy,
you know, just like a parent is very loving to
their child, but also make sure they brush their teeth.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
Right.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
It doesn't mean going easy on yourself, but it means
having the same kind of relationship you have your with
yourself with your best friend. Because I often will ask
the audiences that I teach. Okay, so now that we've
heard the words that you use to speak to yourself
when you make a mistake, Now tell me what words
you use to speak your best friend or your child
who just made the same mistake. The words that come
out of their mouth are you've got this, You're okay.

(12:39):
Everybody makes mistakes, it's no big deal. Really compassionate, kind, friendly,
supportive words. Why is it that we can't speak to
ourselves like that? What's the difference between you and your
best friend? The only difference is that you live in
different bodies.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yep, you just mentioned that sort of distinction between self
criticism and self awareness. I was interviewing somebody yesterday and
they quoted doctor Spock, who is the pediatrician right that
was so big back in the sixties and seventies, and
he was saying, when it comes to dealing with two
year olds, you want to be firm but friendly, right,
And I think that sort of speaks to how our

(13:16):
interior life can be, right, Like, yes, we do want
to hold ourselves accountable, right, we do want to live
up to our values, and we can do that in
a friendly way.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
But it's hard to.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
Do absolutely, you know it is.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
And when I first heard about this theoretically, I thought, Okay,
that all sounds good in theory, but how do you
break this down, and I'm very pragmatic. I want things
to be clear and grounded. I want to understand what
it means, and I want the same firm whover I'm
teaching or writing for. And so the way that I
break it down is simply thinking about your needs and
meeting them. Like if you have a child that you

(13:51):
haven't fed in five hours, you know that child's going
to melt down any moment, right, But do we do
the same for ourselves, you know, just the basic needs
next time that you feel anxiety, or feel down, or
don't feel well, or feel like you just failed at something.
Instead of asking you know, am I good enough, which
is a question that eighty percent of millennials endorse for

(14:12):
almost every aspect of their life. By the way, instead
of am I good enough? Asking what's good for me
right now?

Speaker 4 (14:18):
What do I need right now?

Speaker 1 (14:20):
That's a radically different question and also allows you to
come back to the here than now, the practical. Okay,
maybe I need a meal. Okay, maybe I need to
just take a walk outside and take a breather. Maybe
I need to step away from my computer for a
second and just lie down on the floor for a
minute and just calm down. Whatever it is, right, the
basic physiological needs are a great place to start, you know,
so make it less theoretical.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
You say something in the early part of the book,
which is that awareness plus courage equal sovereignty. Right, So
say more about those two aspects why those are so
critical to this process.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
Awareness is critical if you want to see where in
your life you're bound. So I differentiate between the bound
state and sovereign state. So we've just been talking about
the self, right, So a bound state is a toxic
relationship with yourself because it leads to this downward spiral
of less resilience, more anxiety, more depression, less ability to
show up at your fullest potential. And yet having a

(15:17):
sovereign relationship with yourself leads to you being able to
really move forward in your life in a way that
does allow you to express your best self. And so
sometimes that needs courage in the sense that it needs
both awareness because you need to be aware of what
you're doing, but also the courage to step out and
do things differently. And that might be difficult for you,
but it might also be surprising to other people around

(15:40):
you who are used to you being a certain way
So how many people will sacrifice their own desires or
their own beliefs in order to fit in somewhere, and
then they pay the price. They are aware of what
they're doing, and they're deciding, now, I'm not doing that anymore.
I'm not sacrificing myself anymore. Then that does require courage.
But you can't really have sovereignty without courage, because sovereignty

(16:02):
inevitably will lead you to being aligned with yourself, which
is not necessarily always something you're used to or that
other people expect, right, especially people who've seen you always
do things a different way. So that's in that first
chapter where I talk about relationship with ourselves. But in
another chapter, for example, when I talk about the sovereign
mind and I talk about the bound state. The bound

(16:23):
state in terms of our sovereign mind is when we
allow our mind to be completely imprinted by everything that's
coming our way without awareness. So, for example, I had
a colleague who had insomnia, and I asked him what
his bedtime routine was, and he said, he watched the
eleven o'clock news. And so we know from research that
you're going to remember what you saw right before going

(16:44):
to sleep. That you're going to remember it very well
the next morning. That's just how our brain works. And
so he's watching the sad and the scary right before
sleep and wondering why his sleep is not good. But
he's not even realizing that he's binding himself with what
he's choosing to ingest. Because you are what you eat
is also true your mind. It's whatever it is that
we take in right. So, but our mind can also
be bound by things like trauma. So so many of

(17:06):
us have gone through traumatic experiences. And then when we
engage in our daily life.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
Let's say you.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Were in a traumatic relationship, then in the next relationship
you go into, you go in with fear and it
doesn't allow you to be your sovereign self in that
relationship because you're in the bound state. Now that trauma
is something inevitable that happens, and one of the first
things is to be aware of that, and then secondly
is to be able to of course start to heal that,
which does take courage. And then in order to have

(17:35):
a sovereign mind, a mind in which you have awareness
about what you are choosing or not choosing, to nourish
your mind with to imprint your mind with and are
taking steps to make sure to heal those imprints, including
the traumatic ones, and also thinking about very consciously about
how you are choosing to interact with your world in

(17:56):
order to cultivate your mind in the way that you
wish to.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, you mentioned something there about the desire to belong.
You talk about this in the book, and I thought
it was really helpful, because we do, as humans have
a desire to belong. We know how destructive loneliness can be, right,
I mean, there's no shortage of writings about that enough
to terrify you. If you're ever by yourself for ten minutes,
I know that it's not really what it's intended to say.

(18:22):
So there is this need for others, and yet you're
also saying there's a need to sort of not go
along to get along.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Right.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
It makes me think of doctor Gabormante, who wrote about
this in the way that was really compelling to me,
which was sacrificing authenticity for attachment, right, and that those
two things are always in some kind of balance, right, Like,
if you're like one hundred percent authentic, you might drive
everybody away. Right, How do you think about balancing those
two needs? Right? To be sovereign, to be ourselves, and

(18:54):
to be in healthy relationship with other people because we
know how important that is to our growth and development.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Also, absolutely it is a balance, you know, I often think,
you know what pain is worse, the pain of not
being who you are in order to fit in or
the pain of not fitting in and choosing to be
who you are.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
That is a balance.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
And you know, if you think about it, even the
society's quote unquote rebels do so much to fit in.
I'm thinking about like the motorcycle gangs, right, they have
this sort of rebellious lifestyle, and yet they're wearing a uniform,
They're wearing the same clothes, they have strict hierarchies in
their gloves. They are definitely doing what they are doing
to fit in. But you don't want to adapt your

(19:36):
behavior to the point of it sacrificing you. And I
mean that in the real term of sacrificing. Because I
knew someone who had a disease which could have been
helped with a change of diet, who chose not to
do the change of diet so she could continue to

(19:56):
look quote unquote normal. Is there a more heartbreaking example
that we would prefer to potentially die rather than not
fit in. And so that's again where courage does need
to come into play.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Some of those I'll just call it go along to
get along habits, right, are at the level that I
have to really think a lot about, like what am
I doing and why, because they become sort of habit
routines that I don't even notice.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
An example I often give is that back to my
father again, I would get on these like, all right,
I'm gonna have a better relationship with my father, kick right.
I would be like, all right, that's what I'm gonna do,
and we're gonna go out and we're we're gonna be together,
and I'm just going to bring up, like you know,
I'm just going to take the conversation deeper than it
normally goes. I'm just going to do that, right, And
I would get there and then the desire would just disappear.

(21:14):
It just I suddenly would be like, well, why would
I even want to do that? And it was because
at some deeper level, at a really deep level, I
didn't think it could happen, and so I talked myself
out of even wanting it. But it took me years
to see that, to actually see that this unconscious program
was running. And I think that's the awareness is we

(21:34):
often don't know. You know, I always find it really
difficult as a person who's really kind and thinks that's
a really good value and a person who's generous. I
mean that sounds unhumble, but those tend to be traits
that most people who know me would say those are
traits of mine. I also then have to go but
when is that becoming my greatest weakness? You know, when
am I okay with the way things are because I'm

(21:55):
kind of laid back, and when am I unconsciously repressing
that I feel differently? I just think this one's very
difficult to sort out.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Sometimes, yes, And that is why in order to cultivate awareness,
contemplative practices are essential. You know, there's so much pulling
our awareness outward, especially these days with all of the
media coming at us constantly and our lives being at
high speed, that it is very easy to live life

(22:24):
on automatic, unaware and reactive. Even workplaces are cultivating that.
You know, you have to be on slack all the
time and answering messages constantly. I mean, you're putting people
on autopilot with very little awareness ability to even handle
things with emotional intelligence because there's no discernment. So most

(22:45):
of the time, you know, the attention networks in our
brain are deployed outward listening, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting. We're
constantly outward, and yet there's a part of our brain
that's focused just on paying attention on the inside, our
self awareness. And for many people, they don't cultivate it
at all, and you can tell, you can tell when
you interact with them. Wow, that person has no awareness

(23:07):
of what they're doing or saying. They're so lost in
the outside world. And is so critical to cultivate awareness
and discernment through things like meditation or contemplative practice of choice,
because then you start to be aware. But I mean, look,
you are already aware. You're like, wow, look I'm with

(23:28):
my dad, and I'm like falling right into the good
boy roll because that's where I'm going right now. That's awareness,
you know, That is awareness. That awareness allows you to
make a choice. You're making the choice. You know, I'm
gonna stay here right now. This is what is going
to feel right for him and for me today. So
this is where I am but you're aware. But I
think a lot of people don't have that self awareness
that you have, and it is so critical because without awareness,

(23:51):
like you said, you can't make a change and you
don't have a choice. You're choiceless. You are on automatic.
And sovereignty is not being on automation. Sovereignty is living
eyes wide open.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
Even if you choose.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
To still continue having a superficial relationship with someone like
your dad, it's your choice. It's a sovereign choice. What's
not sovereign is being on autopilot and wondering why life
feels so overwhelming and why you're not happy.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
And to be clear, that awareness took me a long
time to get. You know, there were years of me
having no idea what was actually going on there. Right,
eyes were not wide enough open, you know, Or to
say it differently, you know, when we talk about traumatic
experiences or difficult experiences, right, we revert to previous conditioning

(24:40):
and almost don't even know it, right, And so awareness
is critical. You talk about contemplative practice, as you mentioned meditation,
but you've also talked about how for a lot of
people seated meditation in the way that we normally do
it isn't really the thing you talk about. You being
in New York City after nine to eleven and sit

(25:00):
down and close your eyes was really made you much
more anxious. So what are some contemplative practices that are
not seated meditation, but that can also help sort of
train this muscle of self awareness?

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Absolutely, you know, especially in these times where anxiety is
so high, sitting and meditating can feel really overwhelming and
more anxiety producing. I was in New York during nine
to eleven and after that I would shake every morning
with anxiety, and sitting and meditating was not an option
I tried. I gave it a good go, but it
was just making me more anxious to try and be

(25:33):
mindful of my crazy anxious mind. And it wasn't until
I walked into a breathing class, breathwork class called Art
of Living, that I suddenly had a handle on my
mind and my nervous system. And when I went to
psychology in graduate school and then became a research scientist
ten years later, I was working with veterans with trauma

(25:55):
and noticed similar pattern that you know, people were trying
to do mindfulness meditation with them and they were all
dropping out. And I thought, you know, breathing worked for me,
let's try for them. It's a breathing technical sky breath meditation,
and it involves actively changing your breath in different rhythms,
different patterns, And we found that after one week their

(26:15):
trauma had normalized and their anxiety remained normalized a month
and a year later, suggesting sort of this reprogramming of
the nervous system. And that's why when I talk about
gaining sovereignty over our trauma so it no longer governs us,
that there are ways that we can do that. And
it's extraordinary because I saw some of these veterans going
from being bunkered up in their basement, self medicating with

(26:37):
alcohol and weed to moving on, getting married, going to school, graduating,
becoming successful professionals, and moving on like nothing happened. We
have the ability to regain sovereignty over our nervous system.
And you know, I think the research is still not
yet quite so known yet we've replicated that study with
the Palo Alto va and it showed that it was

(26:58):
akin to the gold standard therapy for trauma. It was
at least as good, if not better, and it was
actually better than the gold standard therapy for trauma, which
is cognitive processing therapy for emotion regulation at the level
of the brain. So yes, there are other techniques. I mean,
I'm a big fan of the breathing simply because we've
done research on it and I've practiced it every day

(27:18):
for twenty years now because it has helped me so much.
And in fact, this morning I had the incredible fortune
of sharing it with someone, a really amazing person who
grew up working in sweatshops, extreme trauma, no childhood and
a lot of abuse, and just witnessed how is she
after learning the breathing is able to just She's hasn't

(27:38):
slept with three hours in her whole life. She slept
seven hours for two nights in a row now and
it's just extraordinary. We can regain sovereignty over our nervous system.
Other practices that I think bring people into that mindset
of contemplation is a putting away your phone and going
out into nature, taking walks on your own, but going
by the beach or wherever a natural environment is, and

(28:00):
spending time there and doing it on a regular consistent basis,
not just once a month, but regularly training your nervous
system in your mind to go into a place of receptivity,
of quiet, of coming back into the here of the
now and present moment. And I think nature. You know,
there's a lot of research on nature's benefits for well being,
for cognitive function, all sorts of things, even for pro

(28:21):
social behavior. You're going to be kinder when you spend
time in nature. But I think one thing that it does,
especially in our lives that are so virtual in so
many ways, is it brings you back to the concrete
like here, now there's a tree, Like this is reality.
Much of what we do is simply in a cloud that.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Doesn't even exist, you know. A virtual cloud.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Is the idea with the sky breathing, that you are
turning your nervous system in essence down enough that you
are then able to actually be aware of what's happening,
because if your nervous system is turned up too high,
you don't really have awareness so much as you have
some sort of hypervigilance.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
Two things.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
So, if you were to do a simple breathing exercise,
then I can just give a quick example so people
can try this on their own. Let's say you take
five minutes, close your eyes and you breathe in for
account of four and you breathe out for account of eight.
As you do that, you're going to calm your heart rate.
In five minutes, your heart rate will be down. You're
going to feel calmer and clearer. Guaranteed. I've done this
with many people, and this is a physiological process of

(29:22):
downregulating your heart rate and activating your parasympathetic nervous system.
And that's great and you should use it. And you
could use it anytime between meetings, as you transition from
work to home, anytime before a difficult phone call, whatever,
it's going to help. But the sky Breath protocol is
a twenty minute practice and in the when you do
the class, it's longer than that during the class, and

(29:44):
that is I think a much more profound sort of
reconditioning of the nervous system. And a lot of the
veterans that we worked with, and if anyone's interested to
learn this, you can look up a nonprofit called Project
Welcome Home Troops. They teach veterans militi or their families
and no cost. It's really lovely. But when you're doing
the sky Breath meditation, what the participants report is that

(30:08):
they may sometimes have traumatic memories or smells or emotions
that occur. But usually when you have a traumatic memory,
it is accompanied by a nervous system that is highly
activated and in sympathetic fight or flight mode. So you
remember what happened, your heart rate's racing, and you're activated.

(30:29):
And what happens with the sky breath meditation is, we
believe from a scientific perspective, it puts you in a
deep parasympathetic mode. And so the memory may be coming up,
but you are reprogramming your relationship to the memory. You're
decoupling the anxious physiology from the anxious memory. And so
what participants report after going through the program is that, oh,

(30:51):
I remember what happened, but it's no longer right here
in front of my face stopping me from walking into
the mall because the mall is a crowded place where
there could be a bomb. Do you see that? So
we know that memory is malleable. And you know, if
you see a scary movie, it's scary in the moment,
and then later you're like, yeah, that was a scary movie,
but you're not thinking about it right now. When you
have trauma, it's like you saw the scary movie and
you're in the scary movie constantly. And what's happening here

(31:13):
is you're reprogramming the nervous system to decouple itself from
the scary movie so it can come back to a
place of normalcy.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode integration reminder.
Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and

(31:41):
how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
SMS list. I'll shoot you two texts a week with

(32:02):
insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. There are
a nice little nudge to stop and be present in
your life, and they're a helpful way to not get
lost in the busyness and forget what is important. You
can join at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if
you don't like them, you can get off a list
really easily. So far, there are over one and seventy

(32:24):
two others from the one you feed community on the list,
and we'd love to welcome you as well. So head
on over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's
feed our good wolves together. There's that idea that every
time we retrieve a memory, when we sort of you know,
put it away or restore it, right, we've altered it
in some way, right, And so what you're saying is

(32:46):
by bringing it up and then the nervous system reaction
being lower during that time, is that then we've subtly
changed that memory in such a way or I think
you said it best, we've decoupled it, right, the nervous
system reaction.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yes, And that is how you regain sovereignty.

Speaker 4 (33:05):
It's so powerful. I think it's quite revolutionary.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
And these are practices that you know, come out of India,
out of you know, ancient traditions that have been around
for decades and are so helpful.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
In the chapter about sovereign emotions. You tell a story
about in your adolescence in college that you struggled with
emotional eating, Will you tell us that story?

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yes, so you know, when it comes to emotions, no
matter how many PhDs, mds or black belts someone has,
chances are they have as much formal education about what
to do with their big, bad, negative emotions as a
five year old, which is none. And most of us
don't know what to do with our emotion and so
most audiences that I've spoken to, and most people what

(33:49):
they learned from society is to suppress their emotion. Just
suck it up buttercup, like push it down, you know,
pretend it's not there. And of course that's what leads
to all sorts of problems like blowing up inappropriately at
some point, or passive aggression or migrain stomach aches. You know,
it doesn't go away because emotion is energy and motion.
I mean, if you're not going to feel it, it's

(34:10):
going to stay with you. And that's what research shows.
It actually makes the emotion stronger at the level of
the brain. And you know, a child is angry for
five minutes, two minutes, maybe an adult can be angry
for the rest of their lives because a child lets
the emotion move through them, right, So let me go
back to the story because it relates to this point.
I did not know what to do with my big, bad,
negative emotions when I was in college. I'd learned suppression,

(34:32):
just like everybody else, and so I got into this
addictive cycle of binging whenever I would feel down, so
using food, and then at the end of the binge,
I would inevitably cry. And you know, you could think
of it for yourself. I mean, how many people when
they feel bad and they just watch a ton of
entertainment or overwork or drink or whatever drug of choice.

(34:53):
At the end of that, you're still feeling bad, but
you're feeling worse because you're beat up by your drug
of choice. I don't care if it it looks holy,
you know, like I volunteer fifty five hours a week.
You know, whatever it is that you're doing to escape
how you're feeling is a drug, and it's beating you
up and is still there. So that's a problem. So anyways,
I would notice that I would binge and then I
would cry, and this was a cycle. And one day

(35:16):
I attended a meditation session, and meditation was considered very
weird at the time. I was one of three undergraduates
who meditated. The only reason I went was because I
had a crush on another undergraduate and I wanted to
meet this person, and so I went to this weird
thing where we had to sit for an hour and
stare at the carpet. It was Korean Zen meditation, very strict,
don't move, look at the carpet, no instruction, and it

(35:37):
was the most painful and uncomfortable experience of my life.
I just wanted to run out of there. I really
didn't like it, and I thought I would never meditate again.
And when I left, I felt a little more peaceful,
you know, but I was like, I'm never doing that again.
And then the next day I walked into my dorm
room and I was feeling down, this was often the
case at that time, and I spotted I left over

(35:59):
pizza that looked gross, like something I wouldn't want, and
I thought, perfect my chance to binge like it didn't
matter of what it looked like, because I was going
to go into that addictive, impulsive behavior again and in
that moment, and I attribute this very much to the
meditation because we know meditation, even one session increases your
awareness and self awareness. I had this insight, an insight

(36:19):
I had never had before, which was you always cry
after you binge. Why don't you just switch it around
and cry first and binge later. And I thought, okay, fine,
I'll do give this a try, no problem, And I
went on my bed and I cried. And when I
was done crying, I sat up and the impulse to
binge was gone. I never binged again. That moment of

(36:39):
awareness had completely shifted my understanding of emotion and I'd
gained sovereignty over that addiction. And it was really fascinating.
And as I went into the field of the psychology
of emotion in graduate school, which was the labs that
I was in were all specialized in motion research, understanding

(37:02):
that emotion is energy and motion, and that's why a
child is angry for only two minutes or three minutes
a small child, because they're completely feeling the emotion and
then they're allowing it to move through them, whereas an
adult is going to try and push it down, push
it away, eat it away, drink it away, play it away,
whatever it is they're going to do, and it stays
stuck inside of you. Not that you should have a

(37:23):
tantrum in the middle of your office because you're upset
at your boss, but feeling it, allowing yourself to feel it,
you know the expression, feel it to heal it, allowing
yourself to be with it. And we don't like that.
We don't want to feel pain. We don't want to
feel bad. Ever, we don't, and that's why we do
all these other behaviors to try and stop that. But
in the process we're actually holding on tight to the pain.

(37:44):
We're binding ourselves to it. So sovereign emotions, one of
the steps at sovereign emotions is having the courage, the awareness,
and the courage to be with the pain and the
emotions that come up as they come up, and that's
how you become free from them.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Let's dive a little deeper on this one, because that
idea of feel your emotions is pretty common wisdom in
the contemplative world, or whatever world we want to call it,
the psychological world. Right, it can't speak to how prevalent
is outside of that, it sounds like maybe not not
a whole lot. However, as an adult, I have found
that I will feel an emotion. But that's not the

(38:22):
end of the story necessarily, right, meaning that I'm not
like a three year old. I mean maybe if it's
like a very small thing that happens and I get
upset about it and it kind of passes through. But
take something big that happens right the end of a
relationship as an example, right, you can feel that emotion,
at least in my experience, you know, it just kind

(38:43):
of comes back for like a long time, and I
think people get discouraged in the midst of that because
I think a lot of us here feel your emotion
as the shortcut our brain takes is feel that emotion
and then it will be gone. Right, And so it's
just a different strategy of trying not to feel something right.
It's just a different approach. So what is it like

(39:06):
for adults in complex systems where you give yourself over
to it. Maybe you allow yourself that good cry and
two hours later you're kind of feeling back into that.
What does that process look like for a more complex
emotional situation, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Take grief, it's not going to go away overnight, and
just knowing that feel it, be with it, wait it out,
you know, that's where the courage piece comes in. It's
like labor, you're delivering it. And if it's grief or
someone you've loved your whole life, it's not going to
go away overnight. It's just not but drinking your way

(39:47):
through it is going to make it last, possibly your
whole life, you know, And that's where the courage piece
comes in, because if we're really honest with ourselves, almost
everyone's an addict eric almost everyone, whether they're addicted to
their phone, or they're addicted to their fame, or they're
addicted to money, or they're addicted to food or sweets, oh,

(40:10):
you name it. This world has a multitude of things.
And if we're really aware and really look, yeah, you
need courage for that. But it is going to go
by faster than if you were not to feel it,
if you were to masket, if you were to do
all the things. And you know, the truth is, we're
not used to feeling pain, and we don't want to

(40:30):
feel pain. And it's even in the US in particular,
you know, in the pursuit of happiness. In other countries
like China, India, even Germany, there's an understanding that's suffering
it's part of life. And when you can really take
that in, then it's a different approach. I think here
in particular in the US, there's this idea of just oh,

(40:51):
I'm down, therefore there's something wrong with me. No, not always.
Sometimes you're just going through life and life has ups
and downs. That is just the truth of it. And
in that chapter I'm sure you saw. I mean I
put in a ton of tools. It's not that you
can't have tools. You know, tools like breathing, like meditation,

(41:12):
like creative expression, like movement. You know, there's so many
ways that you can help the energy process through your system,
and you should, but not by blocking your awareness. You're
doing it with awareness.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
You know. Another thing that I see when you mentioned
like adults you know, can be angry for the rest
of their lives. A child's angry for five minutes. I
thought a little bit about that, and it made me think,
you know, I know adults who have been angry for
you know, forty years. They're still angry at their divorce
at twenty five, right, and yet on some level they're

(42:19):
not repressing that because they talk about it all the time.
So what dot is not being connected there? Right? Because
they're aware of it, and they will tell you all
about it, and yet it's not passing or healing. So
what's getting missed there?

Speaker 1 (42:36):
The blame game. If you blame your pain on someone else,
you're also binding yourself. You're not taking responsibility. That person
may have done something shitty, but it's up to you
to heal your own emotion around it, because otherwise you're
their victim for the rest of your life and you've
signed up for it. And this is hard for people

(42:57):
to hear. They don't like to hear that, and I understand.
But when I say, like, don't be a victim of it,
it's out of compassion because even if you you know
we're in a very traumatic situation or abusive situation, if
you continue to constantly identify as the victim of that person,
you're victimizing yourself. You're shackling yourself again. This is hard

(43:18):
to hear it, and I'm saying it with full compassion
because it is very hard to be sovereign if you're
constantly identifying as someone who's been abused by someone else.
And I have to tell you I was in abusive
relationships and if I constantly identify as a victim. I
am keeping myself there. I am no longer in those relationships.

(43:39):
I choose no longer to be in those relationships. But
I'm claiming my sovereignty by not identifying as someone who's
a victim.

Speaker 4 (43:48):
Do you see the difference?

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Yep? And it sounds like there's an essence here of
it's an advice. I think I first read in a
Pama Cholderren book like thirty years ago, right, which is
like feel the feelings, draw the storyline, right, like you
own the feeling right of what you're feeling, and you
know that you're responsible for that, and you try and
let go of necessarily the whole story around it, because

(44:12):
that story can change in the effect that you can
reappraise it. But what actually happened is what actually happened.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yes, And so often when we're triggered, sometimes it has
nothing to do with the person, but it has one
hundred percent to do with our own triggers due to
our own past traumas or challenges. So let's say you
were a child that grew up feeling not respected, and
you become an adult and that's your big button and
anyone could push it. And I don't even mean to

(44:40):
push it. But it's very easy to push it because
it's sticking out, big and fat from your chest, and
no matter what someone says, you suddenly go into this
deep shame or anger that you're not being respected.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
A child could do it?

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Is it the child? And so that's where awareness comes in.
It's like, what are my buttons? What am I letting
run my life? Am I going to take back the reins?
Or am I going to let my own buttons, my
own triggers, run the show and upset my relationships?

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Again. I'm not making excuses.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
For people who are abusive, Absolutely not, But I am inviting
us to think about where we get triggered and why
and then owning that, owning that and healing that.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking about you
were talking about addictions, So I of course reflect on
my own addictions. At twenty four, I was a homeless
heroin addict, right, and so I played that game pretty hard.
Talk about freedom from addiction, right, It's sovereignty, right. And
what I've said many many times is that, like the
key turning point to me is that I know that

(45:46):
I can face whatever feelings come up without running back
to that thing. And that's where the freedom is, right.
It's the sovereignty to say, Okay, you know what, whatever
this is that i'm feeling, okay, I can live with
this without turning back to that. Now again, we can
have a hierarchy of addictive tendencies, right. You see this

(46:08):
all the time in people. You give up heroin and
you take up you know, cigarettes, or you give up
alcohol and you now eat two pipes of ice cream
a day. I'm not calling anyone out, Christopher. No, it's
our editor, Chris. He's five years sober at this point. Congratulations, Chris.
But we can all sort of, you know, keep turning
these things different directions, right, But there is a fundamental

(46:30):
element of okay, no matter what, I don't have to
do that. And I think that's kind of what you're
speaking about when you talk about sovereignty of emotion.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Absolutely, Eric, and thank you for sharing your story. And
I'm so grateful that you claim your sovereignty because that
means you got to live, you know, and it means
you realize I'm bigger than the pain. That's one thing
that we sometimes forget when emotions are really hard, they
feel like they're bigger than us, and that they claim us,

(46:58):
but they don't. We're bigger than our emotions. They're just
energy moving through us, and we can help it move,
and we can move with it, and we can We
are bigger than them, you know. I share this analogy
in the book How the first time I gave birth
without meds both times because my mom had done that
with four kids, and I wanted to experience that and

(47:20):
also just preferred that for many reasons. And the first
time I was just feeling so sorry for myself going
through the labor. I was screaming and I was cursing
like a sailor and feeling so sorry for myself the
whole time. And then the second time I gave birth,
I actually had done a hypnosis program that helped me

(47:41):
fully accept everything, and that birth was so calm that
my midwife decided to take a nap with her helper
right before the baby came out, because they were telling
my husband, oh, she won't come till tomorrow, given how
calm she is. And now that was such a difference.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
What happened.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Like that hypnosis program, I had trained myself to be
in full on acceptance and welcoming of the pain. Okay,
so this is physical pain. We're talking about emotion, but
it's the same. You realize, Wow, this is a sensation,
and emotion is a sensation. And when you're giving labor,
you're like, this is a massive sensation where I feel

(48:24):
my body is splitting opens. It's a very dramatic experience,
and an emotion is the same. You can observe it
as a sensation and it's extremely freeing because you're like, Wow,
this is a sensation.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
How do we balance that, right? Because on one hand,
you're observing the emotion and you know, there's the whole
idea of like bypassing right, so spiritual bypassing, which would
be like I am just the sky right and you
are right and right, but you also have to feel
the emotion right. There's there's some nuance subtlety here of

(49:01):
I'm allowing the emotion to be here and I'm feeling it,
and I'm also at the same time recognizing I'm not
drowning in it. To me, that feels like it's an
interesting dance to be able to pull off.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
I love what you're saying, Eric, because it's really easy
when you're feeling unwell to want to jump out of
your experience, jump out of your body, just like a
leave right, and that is what addiction is. But you
could do it in multiple ways. The bypassing you're talking about,
and that's not going to work. What's going to work
is staying with your body, staying with your experience. And
but like I said, you can move it. So I

(49:35):
give you examples. Like you know, I had times when
I struggled with extreme feelings of loneliness, and as a writer,
I remember the day I walked into my office and
I was feeling so much painful loneliness and I sat
down and I decided to write, and I wrote an
article on what to do when you're feeling terribly lonely.
And I channeled that energy into that article. And years later,

(49:57):
to this day, I get people telling me thanks for
that article, and it really helped me today. I had
no idea that it was going to help people like this,
but I channeled the emotion through my writing, which is
what I do now. Everybody has different things that they
do create about let's you know, but there's so many
ways we can help midwife the feeling. You know, it's

(50:17):
not that you escape the pain, you stay in it.
You stay grounded. You don't feed it. You don't blame
others feeding it. You don't blame yourself because that's all
feeding it. You let it happen else you get. Like
I said earlier, you also give it time. And sometimes
what you need is a nap, or you need to
eat some food, or you need to go to a
yoga class, or you need to sit in a bath

(50:38):
or whatever it is. You know, a physical nourishing thing
that you would do for your child who's going through
the same thing and that you don't know how to help,
but you know how to make them a good meal.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
That's really helpful. Let's turn to sovereign mind. You mentioned
it a little bit before, but I want to talk
about a core idea in that chapter, which is we
are constant certainly accumulating imprints in our minds. And then
you go on to talk about deprogramming imprints. So what
do you mean by imprints? And then let's maybe share

(51:10):
a strategy or two for starting to deprogram some of them.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
So well, we talked a little bit about trauma already,
and trauma is a very significant imprint. So imprint is
a thought, memory, behavioral pattern that you have along the
way of your life learned and it has created an
imprint in your mind in the sense that you've integrated
it as a belief system. So, for example, a trauma
would be something that you know. I give the example
of walking with a veteran who we were going to

(51:35):
a restaurant with a group of friends and I look
up and one of the veterans in the group is
sweating profusely from his forehead and I said, what's going on?

Speaker 4 (51:46):
And he said, oh, I just I can't go over bridges.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
So he had had an experience on a bridge, and
he just seeing a bridge in the middle of Wisconsin
in a safe neighborhood was enough to trigger that that imprint.
So trauma is very deep imprint, right, and I've talked
about ways that we can deprogram that. But other imprints
are ones that we pick up along the way. For example,
I had an executive who she's an African American woman

(52:12):
who had real, big dreams and aspirations for her life,
and who was staying in a job that she considered
safe because she said, as a black woman, she had
learned that it was important to stay in a safe
place and not overreach because of the repercussions that could ensue.
So those are some things that she had learned, that

(52:33):
she had learned in her community, that she had lived by.
And she was working as this lawyer, very brilliant woman,
but working as a lawyer for the government in a
position where she wasn't very happy and she knew she
wanted more for herself. I would meet her often theano
during the breaks on our program, and she'd be sitting
there by herself, like thinking about things, and I was like,

(52:56):
you know, we got in a conversation and she would
say she was staring that imprint in the face, and like,
is this going to control me for the rest of
my life? This belief that's keeping me so small? And
after our program a couple months later, I get a
text message from her and she said, you know, I'm
doing interviews and she's not just anywhere at the very large,
you know, Fortune five hundred company, and they not only

(53:18):
gave her offered her one position, they offered her three positions,
one of which was going to be in the legal field,
keeping her in her comfort zone, and one of which
was going to be not in the legal field. So
not only did she take the leap to go from
government to this big corporation. But she then chose the
job that was not the legal job to further stretch
her boundaries and further stretch into discomfort, but towards growth

(53:39):
and opportunity and so forth. And she's excelling. But how
many of us have such imprints, such beliefs, behavior patterns
that are keeping us so much smaller than we want
to be if we're really honest with ourselves that we
need to be, you know, And that's just an example.
Other imprints. Where do we get them from? We can

(54:00):
get them from our societies and communities. We get them
from our you know, religious or philosophical or societal or
cultural norms, and oftentimes you don't know them because they're
just what's normal.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Everybody thinks this or does this, so I guess it's normal.
And it's not until you enter a different context, cultural
context that you realize, oh, like, the whole world doesn't
do this. Maybe I have a choice, or you know,
you realize it through your own awareness.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
And give this one strategy for deprogramming and imprint. We're
nearly out of time, but I would love to hear
just like one approach people could take away with them.
That would be one way of thinking about starting to
deprogram some of those imprints.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
In what areas of your life are you driven by fear?
Do you feel contained in a cage smaller than the
one you want to be in, then you feel constrained?
Look at that. Look at that as a source for
your imprints. In your relationships, they are great mirrors for
your prints. For example, I mentioned that person who feels

(55:03):
that they're not respected. They could be in a relationship
with the child and experience that same thing. Your relationships
are mirrors for your buttons, for your imprints that are
ruling your life that I was sitting on the throne
of your life. Those are some examples, and I just
want to end with one one quick story that I
interviewed a colonel in the military for this chapter. In

(55:25):
this person's job was to control the mind of the enemy, so,
in other words, create information that was brainwash condition the
minds of the Taliban. And I said, oh wow, so
how do you go about consuming information that comes at you?
And he said, oh, well, I always look for intent,
because that's his job, right, he creates intentional material. And

(55:47):
then he told me about how he raises his child,
and they'll be in the supermarket and the child will
want some unhealthy sugary cereal and he'll say, okay, so
why do you want that cereal? And the child will say, well,
because it's so colorful and it's like fun, it's got
these cute animals. And the dad will say, okay, So
why do you think that it has that?

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (56:06):
Because it makes you happy when you look at it,
and you just want to keep looking at it.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
Okay, So why do you think they did that? Oh?

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Because because kids love it. It's so nice, you know.
And I'm like, okay, so why do you think that
they want kids to love it?

Speaker 4 (56:18):
You know? And go on down the list.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
I was like, Wow, nothing like getting lessons on how
to decondition yourself from someone whose job it is to
brainwash others.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
So listener and thinking about all that and the other
great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
would it be? Not your top ten, not the top five,
just one?

Speaker 2 (56:37):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Think about it?

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Got it?

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Now? I ask you, what's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny
little thing you can do today to put it in practice,
or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
heroic effort. If you're not already on our good Wolf

(57:00):
SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool you
can leverage to remind you to take those vital baby
steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed dot
net slash sms. It's totally free, and once you're on there,
I'll send you a couple text messages a week with
little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently shared to
give you an idea of the type of stuff I send.

(57:21):
Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless. Don't strive for perfection,
aim for consistency, and no matter what, keep showing up
for yourself. That was a great gem from recent guests
Light Watkins. And if you're on the fence about joining,
remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe. If you
want to get in, I'd love to have you there.
Just go to oneufeed dot net slash sms. All right

(57:44):
back to it, Emma, thank you so much for joining us.
It's always such a pleasure to have you on. I
really enjoyed the new book Sovereign, and I love spending
some time with you.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
Thanks Eric, the pleasure is mind.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
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