May 28, 2025 • 43 mins
The quality of our life depends on our state of mind. We could be on a beach and feel unhappy or be stuck in traffic and be content and joyous. The difference is our state of mind.In this podcast, Yale Professor and Author Emma Seppala shares the research and secrets to stop the destructive self-talk and reclaim our resilience and power.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the ten Seconds to Air podcast.
I'm your host Alita Guienne. Today we are talking about
finding what is important in our lives to achieve complete freedom.
It's become so common to hear people of all ages
say they feel like something's missing, or they just are
burned out. Blame it on the pandemic, politics or the
(00:21):
state of the environment. They are real feelings and real
challenges that we have in the world, and we need
to find ways to reclaim ourselves and our passions. My
guest today is Emma Sapala, PhD, a psychologist, research scientist, professor,
and author. So Paula's expertise is the science of happiness,
emotional intelligence, and social connection. She teaches at the Yale
(00:44):
School of Management and is the science director of Stanford
University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. You
may have heard her TED talks on Happiness. She's out
with a new book called Sovereign, Claim Your Freedom, Energy
and Power and a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos.
(01:06):
She joins me now to talk about her research and
to help us reset our nervous system to live a
fuller life. She's proposing a forty day challenge that is
doable and free.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Grand bye, go and live hard.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Emma, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Thanks
for taking the time. Happiness Sovereign. We could use a
little reboot right now. It's it's really a tough time.
You listen to the news or you pay attention to
the kind of what's happening in the world, and it's
easy to feel unfulfilled, despondent, bit hopeless.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, things can feel really overwhelming right now, and they are.
But at the same time, we do have the ability
to claim our sovereignty and show up as our best
self regardless. And you know, one example I give is
that the quality of our life depends more on the
state of our mind than what's going on. If you
think back on the pandemic, there was a day that
(02:22):
followed another day that we're all the same, but some
days felt really hard and some days felt just fine.
What's the difference. It's the state of our mind. And
you know, you could be on a beautiful beach at
sunset but upset, and it doesn't matter that you're on
the beautiful beach, or you could be in traffic and
no end in sight, but you're in a good mood
and you're dancing in the car. So that's the good news,
(02:42):
because we can do something about the state of our mind.
And that is what I've dedicated my research on my
writing to my speaking, to this idea of reclaiming our
inner sovereignty, our ability to be resilient despite the chaos
by conditioning our mind, our nervous system, grain and greater awareness,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So knowing that, knowing that many people you are going
to talk to or teach are feeling like they don't
have control over that what goes through your mind ten
seconds to air, ten seconds before you speak on this.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Always I think, let my words be of service to
the audience. Always I have that intention before I go
on air or go on stage.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
You've been studying this for twenty some odd years. Happiness.
A lot of people are talking about happiness right now.
We need it. How do you define happiness? And how
do you and how do we claim it? And how
do you study? I know there are three questions in there,
so let's start with how do you define happiness?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I think everybody may experience happiness in their own way,
but the way that psychologists have divided. It is that
there's one form of happiness called head onic happiness, which
is what gives you a dopamine hit. You know, it's sex, drugs,
rock and roll, money, fame, whatever, chocolate cake, you know,
all the things that give you a short burst of happiness,
(04:09):
but it doesn't last. And then there's another form of
happiness called you demonic happiness, which is what we gain
from doing something for others, from connecting with something that
is greater than ourselves, a cause or spirituality or some
or nature, something beyond ourselves, doing acts of kindness, compassion.
And what research shows is those forms of happiness lead
(04:31):
to enduring happiness, not just that short little dopamine high
that society will have us chasing. And meanwhile, where we're
going to get our greatest fulfillment is in those other
acts that are beyond just me myself.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And I yeah, does research show how often you should
engage in those kind of acts.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, at least once a week, I would say. You know,
research there is a study that looked at these individuals
that had been through really traumatic experiences, like through war,
and usually those individuals will live a shorter life because
stress is such acute stress can shorten the length of
your life. And yet they found that in this group
(05:15):
they were studying, there was a subgroup that just kept
living these really long lives, and they were wondering what's
going on with these people, And when they really looked
into the data, they saw these were all people who
in some ways were engaging in community service or doing
acts of kindness for others. And so what that suggests
is that when we engage in these kind of compassionate acts,
(05:38):
we're actually erasing the impact of stress in our lives, which,
if you think about it, is extraordinary, especially in these
times when stress is so high, but also in these
times when so many people need compassion. And what's really
interesting is that in terms of our happiness too, research
shows that when we do compassionate acts for others, it
(05:58):
actually helps us and you know, not just live longer,
but also be happier, have better mental health, a better
perspective on our problems. So it's kind of one of
the best cout secrets out there. Nobody's out there making
money marketing compassion, right, right.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And how do you measure that? When you do the studies,
I mean, the.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Studies will often ask people about their daily activities to
kind of pinpoint what is it that is, you know,
impacting their lives. And there have been many research studies
on compassion looking at also when you have people meditate
on a certain compassionate type of meditation, do they help
others more? So you can actually train yourself for greater compassion.
(06:39):
But I think for me, I like to keep it
really simple, and so I always just think, okay, you know,
just may everyone I meet during the day may be
an experience where I leave them better than I found them, right,
or at least not worse off, hopefully right. But uplift
It's so easy to do something uplifting, share a joke,
share a compliments, share a smile. And what the research
(07:00):
shows is that as you do that, you uplift yourself,
which is really interesting, you know, because oftentimes we'll think, oh, well,
if I you know, if I exercise, it get tired
like that kind of energy. Physical energy depletes with yous,
or emotional energy depletes with yous, but relational energy when
you're uplifting or helping someone else, it actually uplifts your
own energy. So it's it's really a beautiful win win.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right, right, So I just want to pivot a second,
and you've been talking about happiness, now you're talking about
sovereign regaining your power. Is it that different? Is it
just a slight transition.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yes, it is, but it takes it a little further.
Sovereignty really requires awareness. You have to be aware of
the programs running your mind, the behaviors that you engage with,
and whether they're helping you or hurting you. For example,
whenever I talk to an audience, I usually ask at
some point, I sometimes ask how many of you or
(08:00):
self critical, to which ninety five percent of the audience
will raise their hand. And when you look at it
from a psychological perspective, self criticism is self loathing. It's
self loathing. That's pretty intense for ninety five percent of
people to walk around with self loathing. And you know
there's this idea, oh well, if I'm self critical, then
you know that leads to self improvement, doesn't it?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
It doesn't, see.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
The head nod, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, beating yourself up actually leads to more anxiety, depression,
fear of failure, and less willingness to try again, which
is basically the opposite of resilience. It activates your stress response,
And I'm differentiating that from self awareness, and self awareness
is being aware like oh I'm not so strong in this,
(08:48):
or I need help in that, I need to learn more,
I need to get help that self awareness it doesn't
involve having sort of a toxic relationship with yourself. Right,
But inevitably the one or two people who don't raise
their hands when I ask this question or yourself critical
show up is so powerful. They're very sovereign. And it's
(09:11):
not that they're self absorbed or think they're the best
thing ever, it's that they have their own back. And
what doesn't make sense about that? You know, define sovereign?
So sovereignty is an awareness of it. I actually have
a formula for it. But it's an awareness of your
thoughts and behaviors and choosing life supportive ones over destructive ones. Okay,
(09:38):
and so many of us, without even realizing it, are
engaging in destructive ones. For example, oftentimes when people feel
negative emotions, like what have we learned in society about
what to do with the negative emotions?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I don't know, I just growing up, Like.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
What's the thing that you're just sort of absorbed from
your community? What are you supposed to do with your
big anger?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
What do you do? I don't know, suppress it?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, I was just going to say it's sort of
a vicious circle. I kind of think you don't do
much with it. You keep it in your head and
it's a conversation you keep having over and over and
over again.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It doesn't go anywhere it is.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And we've been we haven't. I mean, it doesn't matter
how how educated someone is or what level in accompany
someone is, Chances are they have as much education about
what to do with their big, bad, negative emotions as
a five year old none, you know. And what we've
learned to do is to suppress. And so what happens, well,
first of all, that makes the emotion stronger, but that
(10:36):
makes people also engage into all sorts of behaviors, addictive behaviors.
And you don't have to be a drinker or a
drug addict. You can be someone who's addicted to your phone,
or addicted to overworking, or addicted to staying busy, you know.
I mean, there's pick your poison watching Netflix for hours,
you know, and those are behaviors that are not life supportive.
(11:00):
So Michael, with writing Sovereign, was how can we gain
awareness as to the programs like, for example, self criticisms
that are running our head, or the behavioral patterns are
addictive behaviors that we are engaging in that are standing
in the way of us showing up at our fullest
potential and our greatest happiness because the two go to
hand at hand. Those are just two examples. You know,
(11:21):
there's also sovereignty and relationships, and there's many different forms
of sovereignty I discuss in the book. But this just
sort of gives you an overviews.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, so what is it that What is it that's
actually happening that we are not You're saying that there's
just this layer that we can't even access what we
need to access because we are spending so much time
I guess beating ourselves up or in a conversation with
ourselves that is just not allowing us to even access
to even begin the day the awareness I know awareness.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, for example, I'll give you a very concrete example.
So when I was in college, I would binge eat,
so I would whenever I felt bad, I would just
eat whatever was there until I was feeling sick, and
then I would cry. I knew it was feeling horrible
and I couldn't get out of it. I was eighteen
or nineteen, and I just I didn't know. I was
so lost. I didn't know what was going on. And
then one day I had a crush on this guy
(12:12):
and he would go to this meditation on campus, which
in ninety seven meditation on campus is like a really
weird thing. Yeah, yeah, only the real weirdos would go too.
But I thought, well, here, what the heck, let me
just go, right, So I went and it ended up
being this very strict Korean zen like stare at the
floor for an hour with no instruction, don't.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Move, and you must have really liked him.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I had no idea what I was getting into, and
I was like, wow, I am never doing that again,
you know. And when I left, I felt a little calmer,
but I was like, that's it, I'm never doing that again.
And then I went back to my dormer and the
next day I was feeling down again, and there was
this disgusting looking pizza in my dorm room and I thought, great,
I can binge. But all of a sudden, this light
bulb went off in my head. It's this light bulb
(12:55):
and it was said, you always cry after you binge.
Why don't you cry first? So that aware, like one meditation,
and I had gained that awareness that I had not
had for years, that I was suffering from not having
that awaren So I said, okay, and I went on
my bed and I cried, and when I sat up,
and when I was done crying, the urge to binch
(13:16):
had gone and never binged again. And I think of
that as it's like any addiction, you know, And we
don't know how to handle our emotions, so we just
grab anything we can to not feel bad, write anything,
just give me anything, give me the movies, give me
the scrolling, give me the this, give me the that,
or drugs, alcohol, at whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Right, And that's how most of us live, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And so sovereignty is starting to gain awareness like, oh
look at that. If I feel the emotion, I'm free
from it, Okay. Sovereignty also involves some courage, because it
takes courage to go through emotions. It does, you know,
it really does. But sovereignty is also like noticing, oh,
like that self criticism, asked that self criticism, Why am
(13:58):
I beating myself up? Like I'm complaining about toxic relationships
in my workplace are with people on dating. Why am
I why a might I talk to a relationship with myself?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
How does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
It doesn't make any sense if you think about it.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Right, Right?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You never talk like that's your friend?
Speaker 1 (14:14):
No, you don't. So how do so those conversations that
you do have in your head that when you beat
yourself up over something, how do you how do you
recognize that it's even happening?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Because you have this awareness, you went to meditation and
that kind of broke your cycle. But many of us
would re engage in the same conversation. I have many
conversations in my head that I would never say to
a friend or a friend told me that, I would say,
are you why are you saying that? That's not true?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
You know?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
But I don't slow down enough or I don't know
how to stop that cycle.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, this is where meditation and breathing exercises are just
so key. You know. We live in a time with
so much much information overload, over sixty thousand gigabytes of
information coming on us every day. The speed of life
is intense, the news is bad, so much is getting
thrown at us. That we the only way to handle
(15:15):
this kind of extreme time, Like our ancestors wouldn't even
have had to deal with this in a whole lifetime.
What we deal with in a day worth of stimulation,
right is to do something else that's extreme, which is meditation.
Sit still, doing nothing, sit still and do some breathing.
That's extreme. Why would you do that? You do that
because in this time of extreme activity, you need the
(15:38):
extreme stillness to be able to regain your center and
have that sovereignty. And what happens, what the research shows
is that the more you meditate, the more you have awareness.
I mean, look one I did one hour and I
had this moment of insight that forever nipped in the
bud any kind of addictive behavior I could ever have,
I if I don't have any addictions that I know
(15:59):
of at the moment, and none, And whenever I have
had the desire, oh I want to eat this thing
or that, now I check back in, I'm like, okay,
how are you feeling. Oh, look at that, you're feeling
all done?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
We just sit with that for now, you know, right.
So that's something that we can all gain. And so
I'm a huge proponent enough meditation, although, and I'll tell
you I couldn't quite meditate at the beginning very well
because I had a lot of anxiety. After nine and eleven,
I was in New York dream nine to eleven, and
so breathing was how I started. I could talk about
that or.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So, how how often do you meditate? And how for
how long?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Every day?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Twice a day for how long?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Come? What may about twenty minutes in the morning and
twenty minutes at night. You know a lot of people
will be like, I don't have time. But you know,
if you're really checking with yourself, like how much time
do we waste every day watching some stupid show that's
not going to enhance our life? Maybe it'll make us laugh,
but is it really Is it cultivating and condition you
(17:00):
for resilience and happiness well being, you know? Or is
it just dulling your brain? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And why do you think it's so hard for people
to I'm going to say people, I'm going to say,
for me, why is it so hard for me to
just get started and to just sit.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
You're not alone? Research shows that people would rather give
themselves electric shocks than sit alone in a romself.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Okay, wow, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
We're so used to and thanks to our phone, you know,
we're so living something in our head. Before the phone,
it was like the cigarette or something right, something in
your hands, something from que Connor RBS, you know, and
so you're not alone. And so I would highly recommend
starting with breathing. And so I was, like I said,
I was in New York during nine to eleven. I
saw the second impact and I was very anxious after that.
(17:45):
Every morning at eight thirty, my body would just shake,
visibly shake before leaving my apartment. And I tried all
sorts of things and nothing really could help. And then
I walked into a breathing class offered by a nonprofit
called Art of Living out of India. It was like
this yoga stuff and I was like, what is this?
Like what am I doing?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
This was all calling to you though, following the man
into the into your meditation, and now something, something was
calling you.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Something was calling me. And I was just like what
is this?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
You know, I love it?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
And then I you know, kicked and screened my way
through the class. The instructor said, do this for forty
days to see the impact. And I said, yeah, I'm
going to do it because I don't believe you, because
I was so skeptical, and so I did. And then
after forty days, I realized, whow Like I can sleep.
And it was funny because I was, you know, in
New York, people don't always smile at you on the street,
(18:39):
right up to you. But suddenly people were smiling at me.
They were coming up to me to ask me directions.
It's like, what is happening? And I realized I was.
I walked by this storefront where there was like you
could see your reflection, and I realized this walking around
with like a semi Smile's like wow, my nervous system
was understanding what was happening before my own my brain
would catch on, you know. And now it's years later,
(19:00):
I practice still practice that breathing exercise every day as well,
and I've done research on it with for veterans with trauma, yeah,
it's it's been, and for Yale undergraduates it's been. You know.
It's it's amazing how simple these things can be, but
how complicated we can make them. Yeah, And and most
of us are walking around with anxiety and also maybe
some trauma, and so a first step of sitting still
(19:23):
and trying to meditate and feel like hell. And so
I always recommend try the breathing. This is a really
wonderful way to start and it settles your nervous system
from within, so then you can sit without feeling.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Do you teach that also? Do you teach the breathing?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I have learned to teach it. I don't really currently
teach it, but you know I can be. I can
set you up with an instructor. For one. It's that
there's two nonprofits that offer One is Art of Living
and one is Project Welcome Home Troops. And the thing
with Project Welcome Home Troops is they offered it at
no cost to military veterans and military families.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
So you talk about out freeing yourself. You talk about
getting to another place, right, we want to we want
to breathe, meditate, all of this to not wipe away,
but maybe have a different relationship with that conversation that's
happening that's in our way. And you talk about getting free,
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
By free? I mean not trapped in ways of thinking,
patterns of behavior that are harming us, that are not
life supportive, so that we can live in a more
life supportive way that can free us up to living
at our greatest potential of happiness, of innovation, of productivity,
(20:40):
of relationships, which we it's our birthright. But we can
get trapped and our world doesn't help us. You know,
the messages we get don't help us. The messages we
get that you know, we have to look a certain
way achieve a certain thing, being go go, go mo,
do this, do that? Do that? Do that? These messages
are not necessarily correct, right, nor are they helpful. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And then you also talk about energy, and do you
mean energy in having energy to do things or do
you mean an energy that you're giving out? What's meant
by energy? Accessing that energy?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well? In relationships, I think we all know the concept
of energy vampire and how you could be around certain
people that are dreat Yes, yes, but that's been talked
about forever. And you know, one thing we don't talk
about is how you can be around some people they
give you energy and they're uplift you, and they're enlive
in you, and they inspire you and they empower you.
I call them sunshine people. Those people also exist. And
(21:40):
what's really interesting what the research shows is that those people,
as they uplift others, are also uplifting themselves and are
also getting so much happiness giving and gaining happiness to
see that this is free right now. Most of us,
if we think back on the person in our life
who does that for us, it might be a relative,
it might be a friend. It's like that person means
everything to us. They mean everything, and we have the
(22:03):
opportunity to uplift others in the same way. And it
comes down to two things. One is what the researches
is living according to values, which I think most people do.
Most people want to be honest, have integrity, be compassionate. Bekind,
that's something that I think most of us are when
we're at our best self, when we're the only reason
we are not is when we're stressed, when we're burned out,
(22:26):
when we're overwhelmed. That's when those things can't manifest. So
that's why the second aspect of being that kind of
positively energizing leader is feeling your own tank, knowing.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
How to do that, feeling your own tank, filling your
own tank.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well, I think different people might need different things, but
the basics are of course the sleep and exercise and
all that that we hear about, but there's also some
other other things, like we know that happiness, for example,
increases activation in the parts of the brain responsible for
positive emotion, So meditation, I should say, meditation increases activation
(23:08):
in parts of the brain responsible for happiness. But also
acts of kindness, like I was saying, those are things
I've been saying, but also things like being in nature.
So research shows when you're in nature, it decreases your anxiety,
your depression, increases your well being and just as little
as twenty minutes. And if you can't be in nature,
just being in your neighborhood park, and if you don't
have a neighborhood park, having plants on your desk, and
(23:29):
if you don't have plants on your desk because you
don't have a window, that even having a screen saver
or an image of nature on the wall, that's how
deeply wired we are to nature. And then another aspect
is food. You know, again we don't nobody's marketing this,
but research shows that if you go from eating almost
no fruits and vegetables to eight plus servings, you go
from happiness levels of unemployed to employed. Wow, it's a
(23:51):
drastic increase, which if you think about food, deserts and
so forth, that's a problem, you know, But filling your tank,
you know, and then I would say unplugging, you know,
if we're constantly getting stressed, Like if the first thing
you do in the morning is look at your phone,
your first thing you're doing is you're activating your stress response.
(24:12):
And I think that there's a point where people become
addicted to stress, like addicted to adrenaline. Why is it
that people have to drink so much caffeine. There's an
addiction to adrenaline, just like any other drug. But what
it's doing is it's burning everybody out. I have a
theory that everybody's running around with almost everybody's running around
(24:33):
with adrenal fatigue. Your life is stressful enough, why do
we add it onto ourselves.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well to get through, to get through to the next
you know, if I don't have that cup of coffee
in the morning, but I also am now noticing, you know,
all the things that you're mentioning about the phone, the coffee,
that routine. That routine is really important, and it's really
easy to not have that routine, to have a bad routine.
(25:00):
It actually contributes to the negative. I mean, I'm seeing
sort of two sides, you know, the choices that we
make and the choices that we don't make. The choices
that we make don't even see hearing you speak, don't
even seem like choices. The grabbing the coffee, the grabbing
the phone. If I were really thinking about how it
(25:21):
made me feel, and going back to what you were
saying about awareness, I wouldn't grab that phone. I might
still grab the coffee, though, I have to be honest, Emma,
I might still grab the coffee. But it's an awareness
and a choice, and as opposed to saying, Okay, my
choice is actually going to be maybe I do grab
(25:42):
the coffee and I sit for twenty minutes, as opposed
to grabbing the phone and getting some kind of quick
adrenaline rush that is completely empty and leaves me feeling void.
I mean, it's really incredible just hearing you say this
and now thinking about just that's separation or that it's
like coming to a fork in the road and making
(26:03):
the wrong turn.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
It's like you're sucking yourself out of the matrix. You
see that, Yeah, sovereignty is pulling out of the matrix,
feeling like I'm right over here making my own choices,
feeling just fine. I'm right over here resourcing myself and
filling my bucket so I can go back out into
the chaos. It's really that, and that's what meditation is.
(26:28):
You're pulling yourself out of the matrix and you're aligning
with yourself. And in meditation, you'll find that you get
your best ideas, you get inspiration, you get energy. And
so my greatest, you know, one of my greatest messages,
and I teach at the ol School Management Executive Education
Program and I teach a women's leadership program, is if
(26:50):
you can meditate every day, you're going to access so much.
It's like you're sitting on a gold mine. Are you
gonna dig? Are you just gonna say?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
There? You know?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And when you can pull yourself out of this matrix
of the crazy, you become so strong and you kept
so much perspective when you go back in right, you know.
And I'm there's a WhatsApp group that was created by
a subgroup of the women on the last women's leadership
program that we had who decided to do a forty
day meditation challenge that I offered them, and they're all
(27:23):
on this WhatsApp group saying this is They're on day
thirty one now they're saying this is changing my life. Like, yeah, oh,
you're doing And there's free app. I recommend this free
app called Satfa SATTV. I love it. I use it
every day. It's free. It's got tons of meditations of
all different lengths. It's like, just do it for forty days,
Like be a scientist about it. You're in your own lab.
(27:44):
You're like, all right, I'm in my own lab. I'm
gonna do this for forty days and if I don't
like it, I'll just drop it. But it may just
change my life.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Why women in leadership? Why is that so important that
women are in leadership?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah? I teach the women's leadership program at the Yel
School Management, and I often just see that the biggest
thing standing in the way of women and their greatest
dreams is their relationship with themselves. And it's so heartbreaking
because they're so powerful, they have so much to offer,
And I always think, what would this world look like
if fifty percent of leaders were women, fifty percent of
(28:17):
political leaders, of religious leaders, of corporate leaders, would be
a really different world. There will be a balance. Women
bring some of the traits that are lead to greater
piece understanding, communication, protection. Yeah, you know, and I don't
(28:38):
think it's too much to ask. And we have fifty
percent of the population as women, you know, And so
I wish for women too and men too obviously to
really take those sovereignty techniques into themselves, because we need everyone, everyone,
men and women at their greatest potential right now. That's
what we need you as and in many ways we're
(29:01):
engaging in self destructive behaviors. Can we turn that around
so everyone can be so sovereign and model that for
their children too? You know. I had one instance where
I was overwhelmed with my kids and I said something
to my I said something like I just can't do this,
and I think I was crying.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I had a three year old and a baby, and
I remember three weeks later, my three year old said
the same thing that I had said to myself to himself,
and I was like, Wow, I'm not going to pass
this on. Buff needs to stop here. I need to
model something different.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You talk about power that they're all feeling powerful, and
I know you talk about that in the book Define
Power and what that should look and feel like when
we get there.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I mean, I think the word power has been overused,
I think and sometimes has negative connotations. But I would
say that I would call it your life for us.
You know, we know when our life force is low
when we're depleted and tired. And we know when our
life force is high when we're feeling optimistic, when we
have energy, we want to go and do things, we
(30:10):
have creative ideas, and we probably experienced both. Right, you
see a child there, rainfall, life force and then you
know life bumps and bruises and crish, crashes and burns
and stuff, and there's times on the ebbs and flows
and you're like, I can't even remember how I felt
when I was twenty. Right, But there are ways to
increase our life force, and that has to do with
(30:32):
a lot of the things that we talked about, you know,
And when we engage in those and we plug out
of the matrix and we eat while and we sleep well,
and we exercise, we try to get outside. And I
know we're all busy. I'm busy. I work several jobs,
have two kids.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, get up at five thirty.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
You know, people are probably like, gosh, she has all
day long to sit around meditate. I don't. I wake up.
I met this morning. I meditated at like four o'clock
in the morning. You know, my kids get about five thirty,
and then tonight I'll meditate when the village is at rest,
you know. But I I don't miss a day because
the return on investment is so big it's just not
(31:07):
worth ever skipping it. And if I ever do, if
I'm on a plane and going across the world and summon,
you know, it's a different type of day. And it's
almost like I wouldn't go out without brushing my teeth
and showering. I wouldn't go out without meditating because That's
what I'm doing for my mind.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Right, And how is it that we have sort of
lost this ability to access what you're talking about, the
things that we really do need to access to fill
the bucket to whether it's your meditation or your breathing exercises,
all those things that allow us to be free and
have the energy and access power. How did we lose
(31:47):
sight of the first piece that you're talking about to
even get there where we need to get now? We're
having to go back to just be in green space
because we have lost just that natural ability to sit
or to not grab the phone, or to just just be.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I know, well, it's not in our education. We're not
taught that, you know, we're not taught it in college.
I always I'm just sat through college thinking learning all
this stuff. But I'm not learning what matters. I'm not
learning how to live. I'm getting all this elitist information
that like, I remember the first day of college, you
were the best of the best, blah blah blah. And
I'm thinking, here, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And you went to a top school, right, you went
to didn't you? Did you go to Yale?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I went to Yale.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
And I was like, I literally almost walked out of
the room when they said that, because I thought, really,
we're the elite because we had the good fortune of
being able to go to school and have books in
our home, Like, yeah, that's not elite for me. The elitist.
The people who are going out there changing the world,
making it a better place, that's the elite. But when
(32:56):
we're taught what is the elite, it's the rich and
the powerful and all that. It's like, yeah, is in
what sense? Is that? That's just luck? Right? I mean?
And I just feel like we don't get taught any
of these things in school, and we don't get taught,
and so then all of a sudden there's all these
mental health issues in the workplace. Well, yeah, you never
(33:17):
taught the kids, and then you didn't teach the college students,
and now they're in the workplace and now they're like,
I can't figure out life, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah, of course not sure.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
And so do you think that more of this needs
to be taught when the kids are younger? What would
the perfect world look like to you in teaching some
of this?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
My ten year old meditates every morning with me, and
he says, you know, he's like, I'm going to meditate
so I don't get angry at that kid at school.
And then you know, we talk about how meditation makes
your inside stronger than the outside. Is. That's sovereignty in
a word, that's sovereignty in a sense. Yeah, making your
inside stronger than the outside is. Why else, I mean,
(34:00):
you've got to wonder like, how are we going out
into that outside world without making our insights stronger?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Right, Well a lot of us are entering it with
a facade, and that's why we're feeling so empty, or
feeling so helpless or negative, or you know, looking for
a power or feeling despondent in some way. It's so
common that people now are saying that they feel something's missing.
I mean, you talk about it in the book that
(34:26):
many people are feeling that something's missing. Could it be
the pandemic, could it be the state of the world,
It could be all of those things. But what I'm
hearing you say, even with all of that, that's happening,
because there's always going to be something that we're going
to have to be dealing with. You can't control those things.
But what you can control is that what's happening on
(34:47):
the inside, yes, is putting that forward.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Lactly. I'm my goal at the end of this podcast
is for you to download that app and meta day
every day for forty days.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, yeah, totally, Okay, say the name of the app again.
I'm gonna I'll have it on these spell it.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
S a t TVA. I love it. I've donated a
couple of my meditations to it, but I don't make
any profit on it at all. It's completely free, right,
I just love it myself.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
What is the difference to you between finding that power
and having just too much control over everything?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah? I mean the ability to surrender is also something
that is important and to be able to let go,
you know, because we don't ultimately have control, And the
more of that life force you have conditioned inside of you,
the more you're able to let go when you need to.
(35:45):
I think control is often connected to anxiety. Yeah, you know,
not that you would never feel anxious. Of course, we
all feel anxious at times. We all feel sad at times.
We also all feel other people's emotions. Sometimes you're like,
why am I angry? But you have just been hanging
out with someone who's got a lot of suppressed anger,
and then you're wondering why you're feeling angry. But it's
(36:06):
emotions are contagious. We know that from research. But the
more you have that life for us, the more you
can also recognize, Okay, this is worth stressing about. That
is something I'm just gonna let go.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Mmmm.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
And I have the I have the power to let
it go. I have the country, you know, And it's
something that we're not used to in our society. Surrender.
You know, we think surrender is defeat, but surrender sometimes
is just just letting go.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
You just said something where you said emotions are contagious
or emotions Do you think that because so many people
are now feeling stressed, anxious, all of that sort of
perpetuating that, And it's a lot easier to feel that
way than it is to feel calm and free.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, I mean, people are very stressed right now and
it is very easy to pick that up, pick up
on that, And that's why it's all the more important
to come back to a daily practice. You may not
feel calm all the time, but every day you're pulling
out of the matrix. You're coming a nervous system from within.
And as you do that, you are conditioning yourself. So
we go to the gym to condition our muscles so
we can be strong if something happens in the world
(37:21):
you need to lift a car and you know, or
something crazy, right, Well, this is the same thing. You
are conditioning your nervous system and your brain and you're
putting them into prime condition to face whatever. And you
may feel stressed, but you will bounce back quicker. You
will come back to center quicker. With a practice. You know,
it's like you can recover faster.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
So let's tell listeners what they can do today to
kind of make that change, to be feeling better, to
feel more energetic, powerful, fulfilled, authentic, all of those things.
What do we do today today?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
It starts your first day of a forty day meditation challenge. Okay,
you've talked about app Okay, that is it's almost a
non negotiable.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Okay, non negotiable.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Two live by this mantra. Uplift myself, uplift others, uplift myself,
uplift others. What am I doing? Is it fulfilling me?
Is it life supportive? If so, I can continue? If not,
let me move to something that is. And what can
(38:35):
I do to uplift other people? Every person I meet,
whether it's a person as the cash register or a barista,
your favorite coffee shop or whoever. Those are two things.
And then I would say, if you have anxiety, learn breathing,
learn the sky breath meditation practice that we researched with
veterans that can and if you have trauma also, it
(38:55):
could help so much to settle your nervous system. And
what we found with the veterans is that after learning
this practice, they no longer qualified as having post traumatic stress,
and the results were maintained a month and a year later,
suggesting that they had permanently come back to balance. And
I always wish, wow, if everyone learned this, or if
(39:16):
every young adults even learn this, there goes their childhood trauma.
They can move on with sovereignty, you.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Know, And do you say that is possible? You can
move on from trauma, You can move on from.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh my gosh, absolutely, I mean, we see it with
the veterans. And if you're interested or anyone's interested in
learning more, there's a documentary film that was made about
our study that's on YouTube called Free the Mind, where
you see the veterans going through the class and afterward.
And I wish everyone knew this because there's so much
talk of trauma now, you know, whether you're on TikTok
(39:51):
or what, everybody's got trauma. But it's true most people have.
But you can do something about it, you know. I
think it's so easy to get stuck in that mindset
of like I'm a victim of my trauma, but you
can have sovereignty and resilience over it. You can move
on and breathing that anyway, this breathing practice we research.
(40:13):
I can't talk to all breathing practices if we only
research the sky. Breathmentation is so powerful for that.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Okay, forty day meditation, uplift myself, uplift others, and learn
some breathing techniques.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Three.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Also the fourth thing, I would say, go outside, go outside.
If you can be a nature, be a nature. If not,
just go outside. Like we live within four walls, it
narrows our perspective and it robs us of the benefits
of what we get from being around a tree, being
in nature, getting the sun. This a really dramatic impact
(40:47):
on our nervous system.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
And it's all free.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It's free, it's free.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
I love it. It's a forty day challenge.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I'd say yes, I yes, I would love to hear
from you.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, now you're going to hear from me and whoever's listening.
I hope that we all engage in this forty day
challenge meditation, uplift myself, uplift others. Breathing and going outside
free easy. It's a small commitment. It's a small commitment.
It's just like you say, I wouldn't think of walking
out the door without brushing my teeth. So I'm onto this.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
This is okay, all right, and.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
You're going to hear from me. Good Emma, anything I
didn't ask you, or that we didn't get a chance
to talk about. I know that we could go on
and on, but I want to respect your time, and
I just want to give people something I'll hold on
to and be able to think about when they leave us.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I mean, if I were to summarize the research on
happiness in one sentence, it would be the happiest people
who also live the longest and happiest lives are the
ones who balance compassion for others with compassion for themselves.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Okay, on that note, that note, you've given us a
lot to think about. Thank you so much. Thank you
for your time. Thank you for this gift that you
have instilled in all of us. I can't imagine that
you have not changed anyone's life who is listening right now.
I certainly have changed mine. So I'm looking forward to
(42:16):
the next forty days.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I really am. Thank you, Thank you, Ali.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
It's a pleasure to speak with you.
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the ten Seconds to Air podcast.
I'm your host Alita Guienne. Today we are talking about
finding what is important in our lives to achieve complete freedom.
It's become so common to hear people of all ages
say they feel like something's missing, or they just are
burned out. Blame it on the pandemic, politics or the
(00:21):
state of the environment. They are real feelings and real
challenges that we have in the world, and we need
to find ways to reclaim ourselves and our passions. My
guest today is Emma Sapala, PhD, a psychologist, research scientist, professor,
and author. So Paula's expertise is the science of happiness,
emotional intelligence, and social connection. She teaches at the Yale
(00:44):
School of Management and is the science director of Stanford
University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. You
may have heard her TED talks on Happiness. She's out
with a new book called Sovereign, Claim Your Freedom, Energy
and Power and a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos.
(01:06):
She joins me now to talk about her research and
to help us reset our nervous system to live a
fuller life. She's proposing a forty day challenge that is
doable and free.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Grand bye, go and live hard.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Emma, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Thanks
for taking the time. Happiness Sovereign. We could use a
little reboot right now. It's it's really a tough time.
You listen to the news or you pay attention to
the kind of what's happening in the world, and it's
easy to feel unfulfilled, despondent, bit hopeless.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, things can feel really overwhelming right now, and they are.
But at the same time, we do have the ability
to claim our sovereignty and show up as our best
self regardless. And you know, one example I give is
that the quality of our life depends more on the
state of our mind than what's going on. If you
think back on the pandemic, there was a day that
(02:22):
followed another day that we're all the same, but some
days felt really hard and some days felt just fine.
What's the difference. It's the state of our mind. And
you know, you could be on a beautiful beach at
sunset but upset, and it doesn't matter that you're on
the beautiful beach, or you could be in traffic and
no end in sight, but you're in a good mood
and you're dancing in the car. So that's the good news,
(02:42):
because we can do something about the state of our mind.
And that is what I've dedicated my research on my
writing to my speaking, to this idea of reclaiming our
inner sovereignty, our ability to be resilient despite the chaos
by conditioning our mind, our nervous system, grain and greater awareness,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So knowing that, knowing that many people you are going
to talk to or teach are feeling like they don't
have control over that what goes through your mind ten
seconds to air, ten seconds before you speak on this.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Always I think, let my words be of service to
the audience. Always I have that intention before I go
on air or go on stage.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
You've been studying this for twenty some odd years. Happiness.
A lot of people are talking about happiness right now.
We need it. How do you define happiness? And how
do you and how do we claim it? And how
do you study? I know there are three questions in there,
so let's start with how do you define happiness?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I think everybody may experience happiness in their own way,
but the way that psychologists have divided. It is that
there's one form of happiness called head onic happiness, which
is what gives you a dopamine hit. You know, it's sex, drugs,
rock and roll, money, fame, whatever, chocolate cake, you know,
all the things that give you a short burst of happiness,
(04:09):
but it doesn't last. And then there's another form of
happiness called you demonic happiness, which is what we gain
from doing something for others, from connecting with something that
is greater than ourselves, a cause or spirituality or some
or nature, something beyond ourselves, doing acts of kindness, compassion.
And what research shows is those forms of happiness lead
(04:31):
to enduring happiness, not just that short little dopamine high
that society will have us chasing. And meanwhile, where we're
going to get our greatest fulfillment is in those other
acts that are beyond just me myself.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
And I yeah, does research show how often you should
engage in those kind of acts.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Well, at least once a week, I would say. You know,
research there is a study that looked at these individuals
that had been through really traumatic experiences, like through war,
and usually those individuals will live a shorter life because
stress is such acute stress can shorten the length of
your life. And yet they found that in this group
(05:15):
they were studying, there was a subgroup that just kept
living these really long lives, and they were wondering what's
going on with these people, And when they really looked
into the data, they saw these were all people who
in some ways were engaging in community service or doing
acts of kindness for others. And so what that suggests
is that when we engage in these kind of compassionate acts,
(05:38):
we're actually erasing the impact of stress in our lives, which,
if you think about it, is extraordinary, especially in these
times when stress is so high, but also in these
times when so many people need compassion. And what's really
interesting is that in terms of our happiness too, research
shows that when we do compassionate acts for others, it
(05:58):
actually helps us and you know, not just live longer,
but also be happier, have better mental health, a better
perspective on our problems. So it's kind of one of
the best cout secrets out there. Nobody's out there making
money marketing compassion, right, right.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And how do you measure that? When you do the studies,
I mean, the.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Studies will often ask people about their daily activities to
kind of pinpoint what is it that is, you know,
impacting their lives. And there have been many research studies
on compassion looking at also when you have people meditate
on a certain compassionate type of meditation, do they help
others more? So you can actually train yourself for greater compassion.
(06:39):
But I think for me, I like to keep it
really simple, and so I always just think, okay, you know,
just may everyone I meet during the day may be
an experience where I leave them better than I found them, right,
or at least not worse off, hopefully right. But uplift
It's so easy to do something uplifting, share a joke,
share a compliments, share a smile. And what the research
(07:00):
shows is that as you do that, you uplift yourself,
which is really interesting, you know, because oftentimes we'll think, oh, well,
if I you know, if I exercise, it get tired
like that kind of energy. Physical energy depletes with yous,
or emotional energy depletes with yous, but relational energy when
you're uplifting or helping someone else, it actually uplifts your
own energy. So it's it's really a beautiful win win.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right, right, So I just want to pivot a second,
and you've been talking about happiness, now you're talking about
sovereign regaining your power. Is it that different? Is it
just a slight transition.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yes, it is, but it takes it a little further.
Sovereignty really requires awareness. You have to be aware of
the programs running your mind, the behaviors that you engage with,
and whether they're helping you or hurting you. For example,
whenever I talk to an audience, I usually ask at
some point, I sometimes ask how many of you or
(08:00):
self critical, to which ninety five percent of the audience
will raise their hand. And when you look at it
from a psychological perspective, self criticism is self loathing. It's
self loathing. That's pretty intense for ninety five percent of
people to walk around with self loathing. And you know
there's this idea, oh well, if I'm self critical, then
you know that leads to self improvement, doesn't it?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
It doesn't, see.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
The head nod, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, beating yourself up actually leads to more anxiety, depression,
fear of failure, and less willingness to try again, which
is basically the opposite of resilience. It activates your stress response,
And I'm differentiating that from self awareness, and self awareness
is being aware like oh I'm not so strong in this,
(08:48):
or I need help in that, I need to learn more,
I need to get help that self awareness it doesn't
involve having sort of a toxic relationship with yourself. Right,
But inevitably the one or two people who don't raise
their hands when I ask this question or yourself critical
show up is so powerful. They're very sovereign. And it's
(09:11):
not that they're self absorbed or think they're the best
thing ever, it's that they have their own back. And
what doesn't make sense about that? You know, define sovereign?
So sovereignty is an awareness of it. I actually have
a formula for it. But it's an awareness of your
thoughts and behaviors and choosing life supportive ones over destructive ones. Okay,
(09:38):
and so many of us, without even realizing it, are
engaging in destructive ones. For example, oftentimes when people feel
negative emotions, like what have we learned in society about
what to do with the negative emotions?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
I don't know, I just growing up, Like.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
What's the thing that you're just sort of absorbed from
your community? What are you supposed to do with your
big anger?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
What do you do? I don't know, suppress it?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Right?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, I was just going to say it's sort of
a vicious circle. I kind of think you don't do
much with it. You keep it in your head and
it's a conversation you keep having over and over and
over again.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It doesn't go anywhere it is.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And we've been we haven't. I mean, it doesn't matter
how how educated someone is or what level in accompany
someone is, Chances are they have as much education about
what to do with their big, bad, negative emotions as
a five year old none, you know. And what we've
learned to do is to suppress. And so what happens, well,
first of all, that makes the emotion stronger, but that
(10:36):
makes people also engage into all sorts of behaviors, addictive behaviors.
And you don't have to be a drinker or a
drug addict. You can be someone who's addicted to your phone,
or addicted to overworking, or addicted to staying busy, you know.
I mean, there's pick your poison watching Netflix for hours,
you know, and those are behaviors that are not life supportive.
(11:00):
So Michael, with writing Sovereign, was how can we gain
awareness as to the programs like, for example, self criticisms
that are running our head, or the behavioral patterns are
addictive behaviors that we are engaging in that are standing
in the way of us showing up at our fullest
potential and our greatest happiness because the two go to
hand at hand. Those are just two examples. You know,
(11:21):
there's also sovereignty and relationships, and there's many different forms
of sovereignty I discuss in the book. But this just
sort of gives you an overviews.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, so what is it that What is it that's
actually happening that we are not You're saying that there's
just this layer that we can't even access what we
need to access because we are spending so much time
I guess beating ourselves up or in a conversation with
ourselves that is just not allowing us to even access
to even begin the day the awareness I know awareness.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, for example, I'll give you a very concrete example.
So when I was in college, I would binge eat,
so I would whenever I felt bad, I would just
eat whatever was there until I was feeling sick, and
then I would cry. I knew it was feeling horrible
and I couldn't get out of it. I was eighteen
or nineteen, and I just I didn't know. I was
so lost. I didn't know what was going on. And
then one day I had a crush on this guy
(12:12):
and he would go to this meditation on campus, which
in ninety seven meditation on campus is like a really
weird thing. Yeah, yeah, only the real weirdos would go too.
But I thought, well, here, what the heck, let me
just go, right, So I went and it ended up
being this very strict Korean zen like stare at the
floor for an hour with no instruction, don't.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Move, and you must have really liked him.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I had no idea what I was getting into, and
I was like, wow, I am never doing that again,
you know. And when I left, I felt a little calmer,
but I was like, that's it, I'm never doing that again.
And then I went back to my dormer and the
next day I was feeling down again, and there was
this disgusting looking pizza in my dorm room and I thought, great,
I can binge. But all of a sudden, this light
bulb went off in my head. It's this light bulb
(12:55):
and it was said, you always cry after you binge.
Why don't you cry first? So that aware, like one meditation,
and I had gained that awareness that I had not
had for years, that I was suffering from not having
that awaren So I said, okay, and I went on
my bed and I cried, and when I sat up,
and when I was done crying, the urge to binch
(13:16):
had gone and never binged again. And I think of
that as it's like any addiction, you know, And we
don't know how to handle our emotions, so we just
grab anything we can to not feel bad, write anything,
just give me anything, give me the movies, give me
the scrolling, give me the this, give me the that,
or drugs, alcohol, at whatever.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Right, And that's how most of us live, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And so sovereignty is starting to gain awareness like, oh
look at that. If I feel the emotion, I'm free
from it, Okay. Sovereignty also involves some courage, because it
takes courage to go through emotions. It does, you know,
it really does. But sovereignty is also like noticing, oh,
like that self criticism, asked that self criticism, Why am
(13:58):
I beating myself up? Like I'm complaining about toxic relationships
in my workplace are with people on dating. Why am
I why a might I talk to a relationship with myself?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
How does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
It doesn't make any sense if you think about it.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Right, Right?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You never talk like that's your friend?
Speaker 1 (14:14):
No, you don't. So how do so those conversations that
you do have in your head that when you beat
yourself up over something, how do you how do you
recognize that it's even happening?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Because you have this awareness, you went to meditation and
that kind of broke your cycle. But many of us
would re engage in the same conversation. I have many
conversations in my head that I would never say to
a friend or a friend told me that, I would say,
are you why are you saying that? That's not true?
Speaker 2 (14:43):
You know?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
But I don't slow down enough or I don't know
how to stop that cycle.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, this is where meditation and breathing exercises are just
so key. You know. We live in a time with
so much much information overload, over sixty thousand gigabytes of
information coming on us every day. The speed of life
is intense, the news is bad, so much is getting
thrown at us. That we the only way to handle
(15:15):
this kind of extreme time, Like our ancestors wouldn't even
have had to deal with this in a whole lifetime.
What we deal with in a day worth of stimulation,
right is to do something else that's extreme, which is meditation.
Sit still, doing nothing, sit still and do some breathing.
That's extreme. Why would you do that? You do that
because in this time of extreme activity, you need the
(15:38):
extreme stillness to be able to regain your center and
have that sovereignty. And what happens, what the research shows
is that the more you meditate, the more you have awareness.
I mean, look one I did one hour and I
had this moment of insight that forever nipped in the
bud any kind of addictive behavior I could ever have,
I if I don't have any addictions that I know
(15:59):
of at the moment, and none, And whenever I have
had the desire, oh I want to eat this thing
or that, now I check back in, I'm like, okay,
how are you feeling. Oh, look at that, you're feeling
all done?
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
We just sit with that for now, you know, right.
So that's something that we can all gain. And so
I'm a huge proponent enough meditation, although, and I'll tell
you I couldn't quite meditate at the beginning very well
because I had a lot of anxiety. After nine and eleven,
I was in New York dream nine to eleven, and
so breathing was how I started. I could talk about
that or.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So, how how often do you meditate? And how for
how long?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Every day?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Twice a day for how long?
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Come? What may about twenty minutes in the morning and
twenty minutes at night. You know a lot of people
will be like, I don't have time. But you know,
if you're really checking with yourself, like how much time
do we waste every day watching some stupid show that's
not going to enhance our life? Maybe it'll make us laugh,
but is it really Is it cultivating and condition you
(17:00):
for resilience and happiness well being, you know? Or is
it just dulling your brain? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And why do you think it's so hard for people
to I'm going to say people, I'm going to say,
for me, why is it so hard for me to
just get started and to just sit.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
You're not alone? Research shows that people would rather give
themselves electric shocks than sit alone in a romself.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Okay, wow, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
We're so used to and thanks to our phone, you know,
we're so living something in our head. Before the phone,
it was like the cigarette or something right, something in
your hands, something from que Connor RBS, you know, and
so you're not alone. And so I would highly recommend
starting with breathing. And so I was, like I said,
I was in New York during nine to eleven. I
saw the second impact and I was very anxious after that.
(17:45):
Every morning at eight thirty, my body would just shake,
visibly shake before leaving my apartment. And I tried all
sorts of things and nothing really could help. And then
I walked into a breathing class offered by a nonprofit
called Art of Living out of India. It was like
this yoga stuff and I was like, what is this?
Like what am I doing?
Speaker 1 (18:05):
This was all calling to you though, following the man
into the into your meditation, and now something, something was
calling you.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Something was calling me. And I was just like what
is this?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
You know, I love it?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
And then I you know, kicked and screened my way
through the class. The instructor said, do this for forty
days to see the impact. And I said, yeah, I'm
going to do it because I don't believe you, because
I was so skeptical, and so I did. And then
after forty days, I realized, whow Like I can sleep.
And it was funny because I was, you know, in
New York, people don't always smile at you on the street,
(18:39):
right up to you. But suddenly people were smiling at me.
They were coming up to me to ask me directions.
It's like, what is happening? And I realized I was.
I walked by this storefront where there was like you
could see your reflection, and I realized this walking around
with like a semi Smile's like wow, my nervous system
was understanding what was happening before my own my brain
would catch on, you know. And now it's years later,
(19:00):
I practice still practice that breathing exercise every day as well,
and I've done research on it with for veterans with trauma, yeah,
it's it's been, and for Yale undergraduates it's been. You know.
It's it's amazing how simple these things can be, but
how complicated we can make them. Yeah, And and most
of us are walking around with anxiety and also maybe
some trauma, and so a first step of sitting still
(19:23):
and trying to meditate and feel like hell. And so
I always recommend try the breathing. This is a really
wonderful way to start and it settles your nervous system
from within, so then you can sit without feeling.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Do you teach that also? Do you teach the breathing?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I have learned to teach it. I don't really currently
teach it, but you know I can be. I can
set you up with an instructor. For one. It's that
there's two nonprofits that offer One is Art of Living
and one is Project Welcome Home Troops. And the thing
with Project Welcome Home Troops is they offered it at
no cost to military veterans and military families.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
So you talk about out freeing yourself. You talk about
getting to another place, right, we want to we want
to breathe, meditate, all of this to not wipe away,
but maybe have a different relationship with that conversation that's
happening that's in our way. And you talk about getting free,
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (20:20):
By free? I mean not trapped in ways of thinking,
patterns of behavior that are harming us, that are not
life supportive, so that we can live in a more
life supportive way that can free us up to living
at our greatest potential of happiness, of innovation, of productivity,
(20:40):
of relationships, which we it's our birthright. But we can
get trapped and our world doesn't help us. You know,
the messages we get don't help us. The messages we
get that you know, we have to look a certain
way achieve a certain thing, being go go, go mo,
do this, do that? Do that? Do that? These messages
are not necessarily correct, right, nor are they helpful. Right.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And then you also talk about energy, and do you
mean energy in having energy to do things or do
you mean an energy that you're giving out? What's meant
by energy? Accessing that energy?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Well? In relationships, I think we all know the concept
of energy vampire and how you could be around certain
people that are dreat Yes, yes, but that's been talked
about forever. And you know, one thing we don't talk
about is how you can be around some people they
give you energy and they're uplift you, and they're enlive
in you, and they inspire you and they empower you.
I call them sunshine people. Those people also exist. And
(21:40):
what's really interesting what the research shows is that those people,
as they uplift others, are also uplifting themselves and are
also getting so much happiness giving and gaining happiness to
see that this is free right now. Most of us,
if we think back on the person in our life
who does that for us, it might be a relative,
it might be a friend. It's like that person means
everything to us. They mean everything, and we have the
(22:03):
opportunity to uplift others in the same way. And it
comes down to two things. One is what the researches
is living according to values, which I think most people do.
Most people want to be honest, have integrity, be compassionate. Bekind,
that's something that I think most of us are when
we're at our best self, when we're the only reason
we are not is when we're stressed, when we're burned out,
(22:26):
when we're overwhelmed. That's when those things can't manifest. So
that's why the second aspect of being that kind of
positively energizing leader is feeling your own tank, knowing.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
How to do that, feeling your own tank, filling your
own tank.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Okay, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well, I think different people might need different things, but
the basics are of course the sleep and exercise and
all that that we hear about, but there's also some
other other things, like we know that happiness, for example,
increases activation in the parts of the brain responsible for
positive emotion, So meditation, I should say, meditation increases activation
(23:08):
in parts of the brain responsible for happiness. But also
acts of kindness, like I was saying, those are things
I've been saying, but also things like being in nature.
So research shows when you're in nature, it decreases your anxiety,
your depression, increases your well being and just as little
as twenty minutes. And if you can't be in nature,
just being in your neighborhood park, and if you don't
have a neighborhood park, having plants on your desk, and
(23:29):
if you don't have plants on your desk because you
don't have a window, that even having a screen saver
or an image of nature on the wall, that's how
deeply wired we are to nature. And then another aspect
is food. You know, again we don't nobody's marketing this,
but research shows that if you go from eating almost
no fruits and vegetables to eight plus servings, you go
from happiness levels of unemployed to employed. Wow, it's a
(23:51):
drastic increase, which if you think about food, deserts and
so forth, that's a problem, you know, But filling your tank,
you know, and then I would say unplugging, you know,
if we're constantly getting stressed, Like if the first thing
you do in the morning is look at your phone,
your first thing you're doing is you're activating your stress response.
(24:12):
And I think that there's a point where people become
addicted to stress, like addicted to adrenaline. Why is it
that people have to drink so much caffeine. There's an
addiction to adrenaline, just like any other drug. But what
it's doing is it's burning everybody out. I have a
theory that everybody's running around with almost everybody's running around
(24:33):
with adrenal fatigue. Your life is stressful enough, why do
we add it onto ourselves.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well to get through, to get through to the next
you know, if I don't have that cup of coffee
in the morning, but I also am now noticing, you know,
all the things that you're mentioning about the phone, the coffee,
that routine. That routine is really important, and it's really
easy to not have that routine, to have a bad routine.
(25:00):
It actually contributes to the negative. I mean, I'm seeing
sort of two sides, you know, the choices that we
make and the choices that we don't make. The choices
that we make don't even see hearing you speak, don't
even seem like choices. The grabbing the coffee, the grabbing
the phone. If I were really thinking about how it
(25:21):
made me feel, and going back to what you were
saying about awareness, I wouldn't grab that phone. I might
still grab the coffee, though, I have to be honest, Emma,
I might still grab the coffee. But it's an awareness
and a choice, and as opposed to saying, Okay, my
choice is actually going to be maybe I do grab
(25:42):
the coffee and I sit for twenty minutes, as opposed
to grabbing the phone and getting some kind of quick
adrenaline rush that is completely empty and leaves me feeling void.
I mean, it's really incredible just hearing you say this
and now thinking about just that's separation or that it's
like coming to a fork in the road and making
(26:03):
the wrong turn.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
It's like you're sucking yourself out of the matrix. You
see that, Yeah, sovereignty is pulling out of the matrix,
feeling like I'm right over here making my own choices,
feeling just fine. I'm right over here resourcing myself and
filling my bucket so I can go back out into
the chaos. It's really that, and that's what meditation is.
(26:28):
You're pulling yourself out of the matrix and you're aligning
with yourself. And in meditation, you'll find that you get
your best ideas, you get inspiration, you get energy. And
so my greatest, you know, one of my greatest messages,
and I teach at the ol School Management Executive Education
Program and I teach a women's leadership program, is if
(26:50):
you can meditate every day, you're going to access so much.
It's like you're sitting on a gold mine. Are you
gonna dig? Are you just gonna say?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
There? You know?
Speaker 2 (27:01):
And when you can pull yourself out of this matrix
of the crazy, you become so strong and you kept
so much perspective when you go back in right, you know.
And I'm there's a WhatsApp group that was created by
a subgroup of the women on the last women's leadership
program that we had who decided to do a forty
day meditation challenge that I offered them, and they're all
(27:23):
on this WhatsApp group saying this is They're on day
thirty one now they're saying this is changing my life. Like, yeah, oh,
you're doing And there's free app. I recommend this free
app called Satfa SATTV. I love it. I use it
every day. It's free. It's got tons of meditations of
all different lengths. It's like, just do it for forty days,
Like be a scientist about it. You're in your own lab.
(27:44):
You're like, all right, I'm in my own lab. I'm
gonna do this for forty days and if I don't
like it, I'll just drop it. But it may just
change my life.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Why women in leadership? Why is that so important that
women are in leadership?
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah? I teach the women's leadership program at the Yel
School Management, and I often just see that the biggest
thing standing in the way of women and their greatest
dreams is their relationship with themselves. And it's so heartbreaking
because they're so powerful, they have so much to offer,
And I always think, what would this world look like
if fifty percent of leaders were women, fifty percent of
(28:17):
political leaders, of religious leaders, of corporate leaders, would be
a really different world. There will be a balance. Women
bring some of the traits that are lead to greater
piece understanding, communication, protection. Yeah, you know, and I don't
(28:38):
think it's too much to ask. And we have fifty
percent of the population as women, you know, And so
I wish for women too and men too obviously to
really take those sovereignty techniques into themselves, because we need everyone, everyone,
men and women at their greatest potential right now. That's
what we need you as and in many ways we're
(29:01):
engaging in self destructive behaviors. Can we turn that around
so everyone can be so sovereign and model that for
their children too? You know. I had one instance where
I was overwhelmed with my kids and I said something
to my I said something like I just can't do this,
and I think I was crying.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
I had a three year old and a baby, and
I remember three weeks later, my three year old said
the same thing that I had said to myself to himself,
and I was like, Wow, I'm not going to pass
this on. Buff needs to stop here. I need to
model something different.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
You talk about power that they're all feeling powerful, and
I know you talk about that in the book Define
Power and what that should look and feel like when
we get there.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I mean, I think the word power has been overused,
I think and sometimes has negative connotations. But I would
say that I would call it your life for us.
You know, we know when our life force is low
when we're depleted and tired. And we know when our
life force is high when we're feeling optimistic, when we
have energy, we want to go and do things, we
(30:10):
have creative ideas, and we probably experienced both. Right, you
see a child there, rainfall, life force and then you
know life bumps and bruises and crish, crashes and burns
and stuff, and there's times on the ebbs and flows
and you're like, I can't even remember how I felt
when I was twenty. Right, But there are ways to
increase our life force, and that has to do with
(30:32):
a lot of the things that we talked about, you know,
And when we engage in those and we plug out
of the matrix and we eat while and we sleep well,
and we exercise, we try to get outside. And I
know we're all busy. I'm busy. I work several jobs,
have two kids.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, get up at five thirty.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
You know, people are probably like, gosh, she has all
day long to sit around meditate. I don't. I wake up.
I met this morning. I meditated at like four o'clock
in the morning. You know, my kids get about five thirty,
and then tonight I'll meditate when the village is at rest,
you know. But I I don't miss a day because
the return on investment is so big it's just not
(31:07):
worth ever skipping it. And if I ever do, if
I'm on a plane and going across the world and summon,
you know, it's a different type of day. And it's
almost like I wouldn't go out without brushing my teeth
and showering. I wouldn't go out without meditating because That's
what I'm doing for my mind.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Right, And how is it that we have sort of
lost this ability to access what you're talking about, the
things that we really do need to access to fill
the bucket to whether it's your meditation or your breathing exercises,
all those things that allow us to be free and
have the energy and access power. How did we lose
(31:47):
sight of the first piece that you're talking about to
even get there where we need to get now? We're
having to go back to just be in green space
because we have lost just that natural ability to sit
or to not grab the phone, or to just just be.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I know, well, it's not in our education. We're not
taught that, you know, we're not taught it in college.
I always I'm just sat through college thinking learning all
this stuff. But I'm not learning what matters. I'm not
learning how to live. I'm getting all this elitist information
that like, I remember the first day of college, you
were the best of the best, blah blah blah. And
I'm thinking, here, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
And you went to a top school, right, you went
to didn't you? Did you go to Yale?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I went to Yale.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
And I was like, I literally almost walked out of
the room when they said that, because I thought, really,
we're the elite because we had the good fortune of
being able to go to school and have books in
our home, Like, yeah, that's not elite for me. The elitist.
The people who are going out there changing the world,
making it a better place, that's the elite. But when
(32:56):
we're taught what is the elite, it's the rich and
the powerful and all that. It's like, yeah, is in
what sense? Is that? That's just luck? Right? I mean?
And I just feel like we don't get taught any
of these things in school, and we don't get taught,
and so then all of a sudden there's all these
mental health issues in the workplace. Well, yeah, you never
(33:17):
taught the kids, and then you didn't teach the college students,
and now they're in the workplace and now they're like,
I can't figure out life, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah, of course not sure.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
And so do you think that more of this needs
to be taught when the kids are younger? What would
the perfect world look like to you in teaching some
of this?
Speaker 2 (33:36):
My ten year old meditates every morning with me, and
he says, you know, he's like, I'm going to meditate
so I don't get angry at that kid at school.
And then you know, we talk about how meditation makes
your inside stronger than the outside. Is. That's sovereignty in
a word, that's sovereignty in a sense. Yeah, making your
inside stronger than the outside is. Why else, I mean,
(34:00):
you've got to wonder like, how are we going out
into that outside world without making our insights stronger?
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Right, Well a lot of us are entering it with
a facade, and that's why we're feeling so empty, or
feeling so helpless or negative, or you know, looking for
a power or feeling despondent in some way. It's so
common that people now are saying that they feel something's missing.
I mean, you talk about it in the book that
(34:26):
many people are feeling that something's missing. Could it be
the pandemic, could it be the state of the world,
It could be all of those things. But what I'm
hearing you say, even with all of that, that's happening,
because there's always going to be something that we're going
to have to be dealing with. You can't control those things.
But what you can control is that what's happening on
(34:47):
the inside, yes, is putting that forward.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Lactly. I'm my goal at the end of this podcast
is for you to download that app and meta day
every day for forty days.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, yeah, totally, Okay, say the name of the app again.
I'm gonna I'll have it on these spell it.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
S a t TVA. I love it. I've donated a
couple of my meditations to it, but I don't make
any profit on it at all. It's completely free, right,
I just love it myself.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
What is the difference to you between finding that power
and having just too much control over everything?
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah? I mean the ability to surrender is also something
that is important and to be able to let go,
you know, because we don't ultimately have control, And the
more of that life force you have conditioned inside of you,
the more you're able to let go when you need to.
(35:45):
I think control is often connected to anxiety. Yeah, you know,
not that you would never feel anxious. Of course, we
all feel anxious at times. We all feel sad at times.
We also all feel other people's emotions. Sometimes you're like,
why am I angry? But you have just been hanging
out with someone who's got a lot of suppressed anger,
and then you're wondering why you're feeling angry. But it's
(36:06):
emotions are contagious. We know that from research. But the
more you have that life for us, the more you
can also recognize, Okay, this is worth stressing about. That
is something I'm just gonna let go.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Mmmm.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
And I have the I have the power to let
it go. I have the country, you know, And it's
something that we're not used to in our society. Surrender.
You know, we think surrender is defeat, but surrender sometimes
is just just letting go.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
You just said something where you said emotions are contagious
or emotions Do you think that because so many people
are now feeling stressed, anxious, all of that sort of
perpetuating that, And it's a lot easier to feel that
way than it is to feel calm and free.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, I mean, people are very stressed right now and
it is very easy to pick that up, pick up
on that, And that's why it's all the more important
to come back to a daily practice. You may not
feel calm all the time, but every day you're pulling
out of the matrix. You're coming a nervous system from within.
And as you do that, you are conditioning yourself. So
we go to the gym to condition our muscles so
we can be strong if something happens in the world
(37:21):
you need to lift a car and you know, or
something crazy, right, Well, this is the same thing. You
are conditioning your nervous system and your brain and you're
putting them into prime condition to face whatever. And you
may feel stressed, but you will bounce back quicker. You
will come back to center quicker. With a practice. You know,
it's like you can recover faster.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
So let's tell listeners what they can do today to
kind of make that change, to be feeling better, to
feel more energetic, powerful, fulfilled, authentic, all of those things.
What do we do today today?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
It starts your first day of a forty day meditation challenge. Okay,
you've talked about app Okay, that is it's almost a
non negotiable.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Okay, non negotiable.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Two live by this mantra. Uplift myself, uplift others, uplift myself,
uplift others. What am I doing? Is it fulfilling me?
Is it life supportive? If so, I can continue? If not,
let me move to something that is. And what can
(38:35):
I do to uplift other people? Every person I meet,
whether it's a person as the cash register or a barista,
your favorite coffee shop or whoever. Those are two things.
And then I would say, if you have anxiety, learn breathing,
learn the sky breath meditation practice that we researched with
veterans that can and if you have trauma also, it
(38:55):
could help so much to settle your nervous system. And
what we found with the veterans is that after learning
this practice, they no longer qualified as having post traumatic stress,
and the results were maintained a month and a year later,
suggesting that they had permanently come back to balance. And
I always wish, wow, if everyone learned this, or if
(39:16):
every young adults even learn this, there goes their childhood trauma.
They can move on with sovereignty, you.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Know, And do you say that is possible? You can
move on from trauma, You can move on from.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh my gosh, absolutely, I mean, we see it with
the veterans. And if you're interested or anyone's interested in
learning more, there's a documentary film that was made about
our study that's on YouTube called Free the Mind, where
you see the veterans going through the class and afterward.
And I wish everyone knew this because there's so much
talk of trauma now, you know, whether you're on TikTok
(39:51):
or what, everybody's got trauma. But it's true most people have.
But you can do something about it, you know. I
think it's so easy to get stuck in that mindset
of like I'm a victim of my trauma, but you
can have sovereignty and resilience over it. You can move
on and breathing that anyway, this breathing practice we research.
(40:13):
I can't talk to all breathing practices if we only
research the sky. Breathmentation is so powerful for that.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Okay, forty day meditation, uplift myself, uplift others, and learn
some breathing techniques.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Three.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Also the fourth thing, I would say, go outside, go outside.
If you can be a nature, be a nature. If not,
just go outside. Like we live within four walls, it
narrows our perspective and it robs us of the benefits
of what we get from being around a tree, being
in nature, getting the sun. This a really dramatic impact
(40:47):
on our nervous system.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
And it's all free.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It's free, it's free.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
I love it. It's a forty day challenge.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I'd say yes, I yes, I would love to hear
from you.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Okay, now you're going to hear from me and whoever's listening.
I hope that we all engage in this forty day
challenge meditation, uplift myself, uplift others. Breathing and going outside
free easy. It's a small commitment. It's a small commitment.
It's just like you say, I wouldn't think of walking
out the door without brushing my teeth. So I'm onto this.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
This is okay, all right, and.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
You're going to hear from me. Good Emma, anything I
didn't ask you, or that we didn't get a chance
to talk about. I know that we could go on
and on, but I want to respect your time, and
I just want to give people something I'll hold on
to and be able to think about when they leave us.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I mean, if I were to summarize the research on
happiness in one sentence, it would be the happiest people
who also live the longest and happiest lives are the
ones who balance compassion for others with compassion for themselves.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Okay, on that note, that note, you've given us a
lot to think about. Thank you so much. Thank you
for your time. Thank you for this gift that you
have instilled in all of us. I can't imagine that
you have not changed anyone's life who is listening right now.
I certainly have changed mine. So I'm looking forward to
(42:16):
the next forty days.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
I really am. Thank you, Thank you, Ali.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
It's a pleasure to speak with you.
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