Run Your Life Show With Andy Vasily
Run Your Life Show With Andy Vasily
#286- Why Emotional Literacy Matters—A Conversation with Dan Newby
In this powerful episode, Andy Vasily sits down with Dan Newby—author, educator, and founder of the School of Emotions and Dignity Inc.—to explore the transformative power of emotional literacy. Dan shares his global journey and personal story, revealing how learning to notice, name, and work with emotions can change lives, relationships, and leadership. Together, Andy and Dan discuss why emotional literacy is a foundational skill, how it impacts decision-making and well-being, and practical steps anyone can take to become more emotionally aware and resilient.
Main Takeaways for Listeners:
- Discover what emotional literacy really means and why it’s essential for personal and professional growth.
- Learn practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and building stronger relationships.
- Hear real-life stories and examples that make the science of emotions accessible and actionable.
- Gain insights into how leaders can use emotional literacy to foster trust, connection, and positive change in their teams and communities.
- Be inspired to start your own journey of emotional growth, no matter where you are starting from.
Connect with Dan Newby:
Books By Dan Newby Can Be Found Below:
- The Unopened Gift: A Primer in Emotional Literacy
- The Field Guide to Emotions: A Practical Orientation to 150 Essential Emotions
- Dignity in Leadership: How Emotional Well-Being Elevates Lives, Strengthens Families, and Makes Careers
-Dignity in Policing: How Emotional Well-Being Saves Lives, Families, and Careers
All listeners can access Dan's The Emotional Regulation Dashboard Assessment (ERDA) for free here.
And so I tend to think about emotions and being able to articulate emotions, emotional literacy, emotional regulation as a kind of I don't know, new human technology. We've always had it, but we haven't always recognized it, and we haven't always been able to articulate it. And I think that that's really the work.
SPEAKER_05:I'm your host, Andy Vassly, and today I'm thrilled to bring you a truly insightful conversation with Dan Newby, a leading voice in the field of emotional literacy and leadership development. Dan's journey is as fascinating as it is inspiring, really. He's done so much in his life. He's worked and lived across multiple continents, and he brings a global perspective to his work, helping individuals and organizations unlock the transformative power of emotions. Dan's the founder of the School of Emotions and Dignity Inc. and has authored several books that challenge us to rethink how we understand, articulate, and harness our emotions in everyday life. In this episode, Dan and I dig deep into what it really means to be emotionally literate. And Dan gives plenty of examples and practical advice that we can all consider when it comes to better managing our emotions and understanding them. We explore why so many of us were never taught to name or work with our emotions and how developing this skill can change the trajectory of our lives, both personally and professionally.
SPEAKER_02:For me, emotional literacy is I love it. It's helped me, it's completely changed my life for the better. And every time I work with anyone in this area, they're always amazed at how much there is and how much possibility there is. Learning emotions, things that they never thought about, they never knew existed, they were never taught.
SPEAKER_05:Dan also challenges the common belief that intellect alone shapes our lives, highlighting instead the central role emotions play in motivating and guiding us. He emphasizes that we must recognize and value our emotional experiences and also encourages us to explore and develop a deeper, more intentional relationship with our emotions for greater self-understanding and fulfillment.
SPEAKER_02:But I think what motivates us in life, what moves us, is mostly emotions. So we've left a whole part of our humanity out of the picture, out of the conversation. Because we we think the answer is going to be intellectual. And I would say that I don't see that. I don't have that experience with other human beings. So for me, it's time for us to take a new look at emotions and what they are and what they serve and why we have them and how we can develop a new relationship with them.
SPEAKER_05:And finally, in our conversation, Dan reassures us that while everyone's journey with emotions is unique, the path to emotional growth is truly accessible to all through becoming aware, making intentional choices, and practicing new skills. He encourages us to embrace our own process without comparison, knowing that confidence with emotions is built step by step in a way that's personal and meaningful to each of us.
SPEAKER_02:The path is really quite simple in a way, but everybody's path is different. That's what I find. Your path, I recognize it, but it's not my path. My path is very different. Every single person I talked to who has walked down this path, there's something very distinct about their path. But the common pattern is I became aware, I made a choice, I practiced. And that led to competence with emotions.
SPEAKER_05:You can find out more about Dan Newby by checking the show notes of today's episode, and can also find links to his website, information about his books, and you even have access to the Emotional Regulation Dashboard assessment, which he is offering for free to listeners. This assessment helps you to understand yourself better through two key areas, how you handle emotions and your core personality traits. You'll first answer questions about the emotional skills, then explore your personality profile, and together, these insights create a complete picture of your strengths and areas for growth in both personal and professional settings. I really hope you check out the assessment. And with that, let's now jump into my conversation with the inspiring Dan Newby. Hope you enjoy it. We have similar paths in the sense of uh traveling and living in different parts of the world. And we're going to get into that today. But uh I've followed your work. I first came across your work on Charles Feltman's and Hila Edgar's Trust on Purpose podcast. And uh that's why I wanted to have you on. So, in advance to our conversation, I want to thank you for your time and energy and your willingness to come on the show.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, thank you for your invitation. I'm delighted to be here.
SPEAKER_05:So lots of different directions we can go in the conversation. And what I'm most curious about, and I I just want to start with this, is let's begin with your work and why it's so meaningful to you. And I would ask you are there any connections you can draw on from early in your life and the way you grew up in relation to what you've devoted your life to? And that idea of were emotions something that were embraced and accepted when you were young uh young, or were they pushed down and and buried away? And that's why the work is meaningful to you. So just take that in any direction you want.
SPEAKER_02:I'm just curious. Um well, I would say somewhere in the middle of those two. Um, you know, my my father was a pastor, my mother was a teacher, and so they were very much in service of other people and you know, relationships with other people. We traveled a lot, we lived in a lot of different cultures. So um I think first of all, I just learned a lot about emotions by example, not because they were articulated, but you know, I learned respect because I saw my parents being respectful. I learned generosity because I saw my parents being generous. But my parents didn't um they didn't teach us uh anything about articulating emotions or anything specific about emotional distinctions. And now I look back and I think, well, why would that be, right? If you have loving parents who care about your education, care about you the way you grew up, why wouldn't they? And the only conclusion I can come to is they didn't know. They didn't have the language either. And so I tend to think about emotions and being able to articulate emotions, emotional literacy, emotional regulation as a kind of I don't know, new human technology. It's like we've always we've always had it, but we haven't always recognized it and we haven't always been able to articulate it. And I think that that's really the work. For me, emotional literacy is I love it. It's helped me, it's completely changed my life in for the better. And every time I work with anyone in this area, uh, they're always amazed at how much there is and how much possibility there is, learning emotions, things that they never thought about, they never knew existed, they were never taught. So I would say that I discovered it out of personal need because I went through some very difficult years in my late 30s, my 40s. And I knew I had emotions and I, you know, felt the motions, but I couldn't name them, I couldn't articulate them, I couldn't distinguish them, I didn't know what to do with them. So I think that's quite common. I think most people have they get to that point and then they don't know what to do. And so I I find that just being able to notice completely or more completely, and to be able to name what emotion we're experiencing is already a huge step. And that's what I think of as emotional literacy.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that provides some really good context. And, you know, personally, I see some connections uh based on your work to early in life and things you were learning about yourself. And oftentimes people find paths in life based on finding themselves in hardship or overcoming obstacles, right? Absolutely. And a lot of people do. My wife has referred to this, she's heard it from you know authors that have written about it, but a spiritual bypass. So they often people will just push on, push on and push on, and it becomes habit for them to not deal with their emotions. So they keep busy at all times, they can rarely sit still. Once you start to tap into any kind of emotions, the subject is changed because sometimes emotions are so hard to deal with. Uh, in your book, The Unopened Gift, you refer to emotions as exactly that, an unopened gift. And a recent podcast guest I had on, Dr. Judson Brewer, wrote the book called Unwinding Anxiety. And what he talks about is exactly what you just described is that idea of the first thing we have to be aware of are the triggers in our life that cause emotions to you know surface. And that we have to create the space to be able to sit with the emotions. And what you're describing, creating space, you're describing that as an unopened gift because we can learn so much. So can you just make some connections there and share what you mean by unopened gift and kind of double-click on that idea?
SPEAKER_02:Sure, absolutely. Well, the name came about um as my wife and I wrote the book together, and she was also a coach and she has a background in psychology, and she was very interested in emotions. And and um what we what we thought about what what happened was we had a writing coach, and she said, I want you to go find all the books that have anything to do with your theme, and I want you to, you know, give me a little synopsis of what's different about you. And as we reviewed books, we realized that the underlying theme behind all the books that we found about emotions are, well, they're a problem, but you can live a good life in spite of them. There was kind of this resignation, um, and not any, for the most part, not much appreciation for how what a marvelous gift they are. Because if you think about it, everything in your life that has meaning is because of emotions. It's not because of the data, it's not because of the information, it's because somehow there's a relationship. It has, it it produces, it generates some emotions in you. And so what we began to see emotions as is there's this gift that every human being has. And yet most people haven't opened the gift. And what would you what do you do when you receive a gift? Well, you open it to see what's there. And so we thought, well, that's apropos. But the reason people haven't opened the gift is as you say, there are many. Sometimes people have just been taught it's not worth it. You know, they're not valuable, they're they're unimportant because what's really important is intellect. Other people are fearful, other people are just uncomfortable, and other people don't even realize that there's something in the box, that there is a box, or there's something in the box. And so the whole idea was well, let's just take a look. You know, in the end, you may say, hey, I'm fine. My relationship with emotions is just fine for me. I don't want anything different. Okay, perfect. But at least you took a look. And, you know, that's no different than when we get birthday presents. Sometimes we return them because, well, they're not what we wanted, or they don't fit us, or we don't like the style. So I think that what we're trying to do, and what my work is all about, is just helping people take a look and getting them on the path that to consider the possibility that they do have a relationship with emotions, and they do have choice about whether to maintain that relationship or to change it somehow. And that's really it. I'm not trying to convince people it's a good idea, but I can tell you that, like I said, my life took a completely different path when I began to develop my own emotional literacy, comfort with emotions, to recognize that, oh, well, you know what, I got emotions, so maybe I ought to learn something about them to see why do I have emotions and what can they do for me. And so, you know, for me, I'm just uh I guess carrying the torch to say, look, let's just take a look. Because without knowing it, without probably even recognizing it sometimes, is that almost everything that most of us have learned in school is intellectually based. It's all about reason, it's about language, it's about thinking. And I think that's amazing. I think it's incredible. But what have we not addressed? What have we not looked at? What have we not known how to help people understand and see as a tool that everybody has a life skill? And that's what I care about. I just want people to take a look and where it serves them, to begin to explore emotions and see what they find. Because my experience, both personally and with thousands of people that I've coached and trained is that once they get past the, oh my gosh, if they're really uncomfortable, or oh my gosh, I shouldn't feel this, once they begin to just acknowledge what's happening for them emotionally and get curious about it, then suddenly they begin to respect emotions, see the value of emotions, investigate emotions, begin to want to learn more about emotions. And so I just find once people get on that path, that it just continues. People just keep going. And I think that's fabulous. That's exactly what I would like to see happen.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so it sounds like your work is very much an invitation rather than a demand, or rather than being spoken to and just knowledge being shared. It's an invitation to explore and be curious about what's happening within us in regards to emotions. So that's the first thing I wanted to share back, and I really appreciate that. The other thing that really resonates with me is uh Brene Brown's work and her amazing book, Atlas of the Heart, where she kind of really gives language to different emotions. And I know that's what you did in your field guide. You identified 150 essential emotions and why it's so important to be able to put a name to what we're feeling. And and there's almost like uh it's very nuanced, and there's different textures to emotion, and there's different layers to emotion. So when we equip ourselves with a deeper vocabulary to describe exactly what we're feeling in the moment, then it allows us to better explain and explore maybe why it's happening, or to be able to communicate that to people important people in our life so that they really understand what's going on for us.
SPEAKER_02:So um is that accurate to yeah, yeah, and I would say a really simple analogy is imagine that you only knew the word fruit, but you didn't know what an apple, banana, pineapple is you didn't have that vocabulary. So what would happen? Well, if you wanted a banana, you would ask for a fruit and you would get whatever the person gave you, right? You might get a mango. And so it's not that fruit is wrong, it's just vague, it's not precise enough to explain what you want and to get what you need. And I think it's exactly the same with emotions. I mean, if you can distinguish between anxiety, apprehension, disappointment, uncertainty, fear, those are all absolutely unique emotions. If you can distinguish between uh, well, we could go on and on, but there's hundreds of emotions. And if most human, most of us adults who are educated adults use the same 15 or 20, 25 words repeatedly to name our emotions. We never vary from that list, but there's hundreds. So what are we missing? Well, we're missing a lot of nuance, right? A lot of distinctions around emotions. So it's not just to you know appear smart. No, what it's for is exactly what you said. I can understand you much better if you're precise when you articulate what emotion you're experiencing, and you can understand me much better, and I can understand me much better. You know, I'll tell you an experience I just had this last week where I had this energy, I was I was I was really unsettled, and I was trying to figure out what is that? And it was in relationship to a project I'm working on, and I realized that oh, you know what that is is frustration. And what's frustration? Well, frustration means to me that there this seems too difficult, this seems too slow, there must be a simpler, faster way to do this thing, and what was lovely about and recognizing that was that it allowed me not to blame the other person, but to say, hey, this is just my experience. I just have this story. There must be a simpler, faster way. And then, because I had the language, I could ask my business partner to support me to help me figure out how to speed things up or make things go more smoothly. Well, without being able to name frustration and understand what I was experiencing, I couldn't have done any of that. And I likely would have uh had an unproductive conversation with the person that I was working with that I was having a challenge with. So this is for me how they're so useful is it helps me be articulate. It helps me design the conversations that are going to serve me or serve the relationship. And it just gives me so much choice about how I live my life that I never had when I didn't, when I couldn't articulate my emotions.
SPEAKER_05:So it gives you, based on what you're saying, I appreciate you sharing that example in your own life. And based on what you're saying, you you use the word frustration. So you created some space to say what's really going on for me, what's this extra energy about, and to be able to identify it as frustration and then to be able to sit with it and to understand what might be happening and then choose a more empowering response than a knee-jerk reaction that that flips us frustration maybe into explosive anger or what it whatever. But I'm just wondering about that, first of all. And then secondly, do you, for example, frustration, do you place do you place it on a continuum so that rather than a one to ten where ten is like extremely frustrated, out of control, um, to drop the numbers and instead of numbers use words to describe the emotion?
SPEAKER_02:Uh well, okay, so let's let's let's go in reverse order. So to that question, I would say this. I would say that um, you know, the way I look at emotions, I uh uh uh the criteria I use to say something is an emotion is it has a consistent underlying narrative. So it always means the same thing, even though the situation's different that generates it or provokes it. It has an impulse. I feel like doing something. I might not do it, but I feel I can feel it in my body. I feel like doing something, and then it has this purpose piece. Like, why is it showing up? Like, why do I feel this? Why do I have this emotion? So for me, that helps determine uh well, what is the emotion? But because every emotion has a unique uh set of criteria, like frustration and disappointment, okay, they have a slightly different story, they have a slightly different impulse, they have a slightly different purpose, apprehension and anxiety, fear and anxiety, any of these that we often lump together, if we take a really close look at them and we get rigorous about the story, the impulse and purpose, what we begin to see is, oh, you know what, they are slightly different and they do serve different things in our lives. Hope and optimism, right? Sometimes we talk about those like they're the same thing. And I would say, no, they're not. You know, hope is the idea that, oh, the future could be better than the present or the past. Optimism is, hey, good things are going to happen. Are they both about the future? Yeah. Are they both about good things? Yeah. But they're still different emotions. So hope never turns into optimism or the reverse, but we often feel hope and optimism at the same time because we're looking at the future and we're thinking about things that we we want to have happen. So I would say that uh it's we you can feel anger at a very intense level. And this is what this is why many of us fear anger. Why? Because we've hurt people through our anger, or we've been hurt, and so that high energy anger, pretty many people are very uncomfortable with. But you know, anger can be very quiet too. We turn a cold shoulder, we ignore people, we don't return their calls, we we talk behind their back, we you know, we do we do things out of anger that maybe nobody ever sees us do or nobody ever hears about. It's still anger, right? So anger can be, I I express it as very loud or very soft, right? But the same with love, with affection, with generosity, with any emotion, we can, in the language I use, dial it up or dial it back, right? Depending on what will serve the situation. And when we can do that, that's what I think of as emotional regulation. We choose not just the emotion, but the intensity of the emotion that's going to serve the situation and that's going to produce the way we're imagining it, the best outcome, right? And sometimes those are focused on the relationship, sometimes they're focused on me, sometimes they're focused on other people, but still the the pattern works for every emotion, right? So I think of emotions as very individual, like the keys on a piano, and every key has a slightly different pitch, and you can play chords, but that's how I see it with emotions too, is do we feel fear, anxiety, and doubt at the same time? Sure, all the time, but can we distinguish how much of what my experience is is fear, how much is anxiety, and how much is doubt. So it's for me a matter of precision being able to articulate clearly. And yeah, the other thing that you started with, I think is fascinating because you said, Well, your previous guest said, well, you have to pause and you know, make space for. And this is something interesting about emotions because we're so attuned to learning intellectually, and we learn through insight, and it happens almost instantaneously. I mean, we can change our mind like so quickly. Emotions don't work that same way. Emotions uh, the understanding of emotions emerges over time. So we need that pause, we need the space, we need to reflect. But the more we do, the better we understand the emotion. If I go back to my example of frustration, the first step for me was just noticing. I feel this energy. The second thing was asking myself, well, what emotion is this? And finally getting to frustration. But what was interesting is what I first identified as the source of frustration later evolved a little bit. The more time I spent with it. So for instance, I was frustrated because something seemed like it was taking too long or it's too hard. But then later I thought, oh, you know what? There's more to it than that. I'm assuming that the other person has the capacity and the capability to do what they've said they're gonna do and what I've asked them to do, right? So on a linguistic level, we're in agreement. But maybe my expectation of their capacity and competence is more than it really is. And so then I realize oh, okay, well, I've got to find a way to address the frustration that moves beyond that. I've got to check on capacity, competence. Somehow I've got to find a different way to approach it. And that leads into other emotions like you know, curiosity, compassion, et cetera.
SPEAKER_05:Or maybe empathy too.
SPEAKER_02:Or empathy, yeah, absolutely. So for me to understand better, what's the why is this not happening the way I imagined it would happen? And it's not what we do often is we label those problems. And what I think is very often their emotional misalignments is that we just we we're not aligned emotionally with what's happening. And if we get there, then suddenly things get much easier in life. So again, it's just another reason for me to build this uh ability to articulate and to have a broad palette of emotions to select from because it's like having a cabinet full of spices, right? You make your food taste any way you want it to taste because you've got the spices.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, so a lot of thoughts I've just been jotting some things down as you're speaking and sharing. And I want to go back to uh to the lens of curiosity. So in creating, because that's what Dr. Judson Brewer said is like it's just curiosity itself, that's enough. You know, and that when we're curious, we then open up the space to ask ourselves the right questions, is which is what you just described, which takes It out of a me problem, me, me, me. This is what I'm feeling, to what's actually happening here. So it allows us to ask better questions to create the space, which obviously taps into empathy because you start thinking about that other person, then suddenly you realize in your question what might be going on here. You realize or you come to the conclusion. Not no, you don't come to the conclusion, you accept different possibilities, with one of them being perhaps this person isn't equipped with the skills to be able to do the job we agreed on. So then that allows you to downregulate in the moment and to be more open-minded to what's going on, to then choose the best language and course of action and moving forward to deal with that that issue in proactive ways. So that's what has come up for me in listening to you describe and give practical examples. So does that resonate with you?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the kind of principles is that we will react out of emotions and we need to. You know, if you're walking across the parking lot with your kid and holding their hand and a car backs out and you suddenly feel terror or panic and you pull them aside, well, fantastic. That's exactly how emotions are supposed to work. But that doesn't necessarily resolve the issue, right? Is that there's there may be a bigger concern. And so for me, those two are both worth taking a look at. Like, how did I react? And what was underneath that? Like, where did that come from? What's my belief or what's my experience? That that is how I reacted in that situation. And then to think about, okay, but do I is there a response that would be helpful at this point to get what I need? And so out of the frustration I was describing, my reaction could have been just to press harder to get the person to do their stuff, because that's what I felt like doing. That's what, but then my when I thought uh about is that gonna get me what I really want and need? I want to get this thing finished. And I realized that no, because if that person doesn't have the capability or the competence, pressing them harder is not gonna get it done. What I need is I need to be approach this from a different perspective. And that was the response piece is okay, how am I going to design my response again? So I get what I need, but the other thing is the relationship is important to me. Like I don't want to damage the relationship with this person because you know we collaborate and it's important to me. So I need something, it's not quite working. I could react out of frustration, but wouldn't it be better to pause for a time and say, well, what would be a really effective response? And the one thing that I find really useful is having a conversation with somebody about this. So I talked to my business partner and I said, please help me, because I gotta tell you, I'm feeling a lot of frustration. He knew the situation, he was familiar with it. And I just said, help me see this from a different perspective. How else could I see this? And so we just talked for a few minutes. I'm like, ah, yeah, okay, okay, okay. I got some new ideas. Now I can go design something else. I think what you said is we tend to see emotions as a problem of Dan. So if I'm struggling with an emotion, I see it as about me. But actually, emotions are a human concern. And I think when we can see them that way, I'm not the only person who feels frustration. We all feel frustration. And so when we begin to see that, oh, this isn't about me at all, this is just about how it is to be human. And uh I can get much better at this. And if I get better at it, it actually helps me support other people to be better at it. So this is another reason I think to develop ourselves emotionally is wow, the degree to which it allows us to serve other people effectively, and many of us, that's our work, is we want to serve people or people who serve people, you know, doctors, therapists, educators, leaders, coaches, we all serve people. So I think anybody who's in that type of work, emotions are absolutely the foundation for being effective.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and what it has me thinking of now, let's go back to that practical example again of frustration. And then you uh creating that space to understand that maybe that person that you're dealing with isn't equipped with the skills or something's going on for them that has not allowed them to complete the job on time or complete the steps necessary to get the job done, whatever it is. I think of Charles's work, first of all, Charles Feldman's work around uh the four assessment domains of trust. So care, sincerity, reliability, competence. So when trust, because you you're frustrated that the job's not getting done. So ultimately there may be some eroding trust there. And Charles's work then says, okay, well, instead of it just, you know, looking at it from one point of view, this person screwed me around and I'm done with them. Let's look at the assessment domains and be able to identify the domain that has been jeopardized or ruptured. In this case, it sounds like competence. So then you're able to then approach the situation addressing the competence rather than making it about the whole person, and that changes the nature of the conversation. The second thing is you were approaching the conversation from the emotion of frustration, but you imagine that it is if it is a competence thing, that person may be experiencing fear of being incompetent, you know, that they've been hiding it and they're so afraid to get called out. So the person that you're dealing with may be experiencing a different emotion in our home or will be. So just share what comes up for you when you think about me mapping what you just said onto Charles's work with identifying the assessment domain to have a better conversation, but at the same time, acknowledging that the person you're dealing with is going to be experiencing a different emotion based on their prior experiences and um their chemistry and the the, you know, yeah. So just take that in any direction you want.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Well, those four domains of of trust that you talk about is, you know, I I can use those to say, well, do I believe this person's sincere? Yeah, I absolutely I worked with him for two years. Uh absolutely. Do I think this person's reliable? Yeah, been very reliable all that time. Do I believe that this person um sincerity, competence, reliability, and care? Does this person care? Absolutely. So it must be in competence. There must be something in the competence area. But one of the things also about that model is what uh Charles and other people who work with trust say is yeah, but trust exists in domains. So was this a different domain, this project, compared to the other things this person has done? And in fact, it is. You know, one is doing coding and one is designing a form. Well, those are related, but they're different competencies. Yeah. So once I got that clear for myself, I'm like, oh, so of course it's in the competency domain. And to be honest, I don't know if they're competent in the thing that they said they're going to do. I really don't. And so to find a way to try to be clear about what was needed to see if they could say yes and they could do it. So to experiment a little bit. But the thing you're saying is absolutely correct is it's okay, so I'm coming initially, feeling frustration. So why might they not say, you know what, Ann, I'm not sure I can do this? Well, first of all, because their assessment of competence in that domain is different than my assessment, you know, what I need. And so they may think they're competent, right? They may it may be sincerely believed that they are competent to do. But but because I'm not seeing the result, I'm thinking, hmm, well, there's something missing here. But you're right, it might be to avoid embarrassment, it might be shame, it might be guilt, it might be fear, it might be there's lots of emotions that could live on that side. It could be denial, right? They're you know, they're they're gonna deny they're not competent. Why? Because they don't want to look bad. So I think that yes, and when we can understand, it's not our job to psychoanalyze or you know take care of other people's emotions. But if I can understand the the emotion that's the root of somebody's behaviors, then it makes sense to me. I'm like, oh, the reason they're doing that is because they're lonely.
SPEAKER_06:Ah, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I could address that, right? I could make an offer, then I can uh it's much easier to step away from judgment that oh, there's something wrong or weird about them. No, it's like they're experiencing an emotion that's generating this particular behavior, and to them it makes perfect sense. It just doesn't make perfect sense to me. But if I can understand the emotion, again, in an appropriate way, or just by trying to imagine, like, why would I behave that way? Oh, I might behave that way because I'm ignorant, I might behave that way because I'm I'm uh I'm blind to the fact that I'm not competent. Yeah. So I think when we um, you know, one of the phrases I really like is why don't we stop saying what's wrong with you, and start saying, um, you know, what happened to you or what is happening with you. Because often the reason we're looking for is an emotion. You know, the why people do things. I'm always fascinated when I read the news and they say, you know, some horrible thing happened, some atrocity, somebody killed somebody, whatever, uh, somebody stole money, somebody, and they always say, um, you know, the authorities are looking for for the reason. You know, what's the motivation? But motivation meaning the reason why somebody did this. And I'm like, well, I'm not sure you're gonna find a reason because what was the motivation was an emotion, right? That's what the word motivation comes from. And and instead of just leaving it there and saying, Oh, that situation was generated by resentment and saying, that's good enough. No, we're we're looking for a reason, but I think what motivates us in life, what moves us, is mostly emotions. So we've left a whole part of our humanity out of the picture, out of the conversation, because we we think the answer is going to be intellectual. And I would say that I don't I don't see that. I don't have that experience of myself, I don't have that experience with other human beings. So for me, it's time for us to take a new look at emotions and what they are and what they serve and why we have them and how we can develop a new relationship with them.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, what comes up for me when I hear you describe that again for the listener, like we've really taken a deep dive into better understanding emotions and creating space and uh time to better understand them. And I'm sure they're thinking about their own life and some of the things they've been through and some of the emotions that they've experienced, and some of the times they've uh responded in positive ways, and sometimes when they've responded in negative ways. But what comes up for me is Gabor Mate's work. Are you familiar with Dr. Gabor Mate? Yeah. So my my wife has trained under him for for probably the last five or six years. So she's a certified compassionate inquiry practitioner uh under him. And I've watched a lot of his videos and read a lot of his books and uh watched uh so much of his stuff. But what he talks about is this idea of the attempt to escape pain only creates more of it. So that the negative emotions that we experience in life, according to Gabor, are directly related to uh traumas that we've experienced in our life. So in terms of your work, what's the role of trauma in this? Like, have you taken a dive into helping people understand the connections to trauma and some of the emotional reactions that they have that may be creating obstacles in their life?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So not in a you know from a psychiatric perspective, because I'm not a psychologist, but um, you know, the first thing that I find really useful is for people to uh practice not judging emotions. Okay, so I don't use the word negative emotions, positive emotions. I I just don't see that that's beneficial, right? Now, in social conversations, do I say that? Sure. But when I'm thinking more focused on emotions and how they work, because I think, well, fear, right, that keeps us safe, but fear keeps us from doing things we really want to do. So is that positive or negative? Well, depends on the situation. So for me, I think before we're gonna embrace emotions, we need to quit judging them. We need to quit saying, oh, I shouldn't feel that emotion. Oh, I shouldn't feel that. No, you do feel it. If you have that emotion present, then you're experiencing that emotion. So take it as a gift. Take it may be uncomfortable, but take it as a gift. So I think there are comfortable and uncomfortable emotions, absolutely, and I think there's a reason for that, because then they get your attention. You know, I mean, when I feel jealousy, oof, it's really uncomfortable. But what does it do? It says, hey Dan, there's an emotion here, pay attention. So I think there's a role for that, but I think what we've confused is we said, well, if they're uncomfortable, they're negative, and if they're comfortable, they're positive. I don't agree with that. And I think that confuses us. So what I tend to do is say, okay, so emotions serve us or they don't serve us. And it depends on the moment. And only we can uh assess that, only we can see that. So that's on that level. I don't work with trauma directly, but here's one of the things I do see about emotions is that um, so we have emotions. Some people grow up where they're immersed in certain emotions that are constant in their lives, or some people have very intense emotional experiences that leave some sort of marker or a scar or somatic marker, or they I just heard somebody say, well, actually, they get um embedded in the in the fascia between and I'm like, wow, fascinating. I don't know how that works, but here's what I do see is that uh many of us, well, we all have some mood in life, right? We live in some mood, some fundamental mood, which shapes the way we see life. I was previously married, and the woman I was married to grew up in a in a home that for her was unsafe. Her father's alcoholic, her brothers were abusive, and so she was hyper-vigilant, and her mood in life was fear. She lived in the mood of fear, meaning it didn't really matter what happened, it provoked fear. She had a sense that it was dangerous, she saw life as dangerous. Now, in some ways, that helped her because she was hyper-vigilant with clients. So she understood what they needed and what they wanted, and it made her an amazing creative director. But she suffered personally because she had this, what some people would call trauma in the way she grew up. I tend to think of those as the moods that had been created by our emotional experiences. So the I don't, I'm not studied in trauma, but the thing that concerns me a little bit is we use it kind of loosely to just we call everything trauma. Uh, we call a lot of things trauma that I'm not sure are really trauma. And so, you know, for me, it it's not as clear as it could be. So, but if we want to talk about moods in life, like what's your primary mood? And I what I know from from my life with her is that that mood of fear will probably never completely disappear. I doubt it. However, knowing what I know about emotions, we can also shift that. We can begin to strengthen other moods or other emotions. And when we do that, that primary one that may not be serving us anymore, because it certainly served to keep her alive when she was a child. Now, as an adult, it didn't serve her as well, that can fade a little bit. That can get balanced out by other emotions, like trust or like faith, or something that would help uh her not see the world as such a dangerous place. So the the underlying belief I have is we can shift emotions, we can shift moods, we can practice and strengthen. And at the same time, you know, what's there, what we've grown up with, what we've experienced, what's been embodied, well, we're probably not going to get rid of that. But that's actually part of the benefit of emotions, is they stay with us, they don't just dissipate. You know, we can count on them being there when we need them. So that's how I would relate it. But I again I approach it very much from a learning perspective. And the other thing I would say is that in my work, what I'm focused on, I think of myself as a practitioner, meaning, you know, there's lots of great theories in the world. I'm I'm not one of the people who thinks up those theories. What I really hope for is that people will recognize that they live in an emotional laboratory is that every day, every moment you're experiencing emotions. Every day, every moment you can practice, you can strengthen, you can shift emotions. And so you have an enormous latitude with your emotions to develop them, to focus, to strengthen, and also to allow some that aren't serving you to fade or to move into the background a little bit. So you have you can rebalance yourself emotionally in enormously powerful ways. But again, we're not shown this, we're not taught this growing up. My parents never said anything about this to me. Again, I just think they didn't know, they didn't think about it this way. And it's been all the work of people like Dr. Gavor and Dana Goleman and you know, everybody else in the world who's working in this area to help build this idea that you know what, emotions, it's a domain of learning, it's a domain of wisdom, they're just as important as intellect. We just haven't been paying attention to them. So let's go pay attention to them and see what we discover.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, yeah. That's um, I want to share something personal here just to uh share with you uh what your words just meant to me, kind of describing your ex-wife and what she had gone through. But before getting there, I think of Carl Jung and a quote, I might butcher it, but what he talks about is this idea of uh who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakens. Right. So you think of uh Carl Jung and and uh Rogers and some of the uh researchers from back in the day that were so far ahead of the game in terms of this work. So our generation, you and I and our parents would be, you know, much older. Our parents were not equipped with the skills to understand emotions. They were just you just react and whatever, you know, it wasn't a thing that you really unpacked. Whereas there's been a lot of research uh over the past, you know, in particular 10 to 20 years, on emotions and trauma and uh well-being and mental health and neuroscience as well, that it's really opening up the lenses of learning for people if they're willing to go there. So you talked about this idea of every moment is an opportunity to to research thyself, right? It really is me search, research. That's what people, some of the best uh authors I've had on the show who have been researchers always uh use the term me search because it started with them really trying to inquire into themselves and what the hell was going on in their life, right? Me too. So in my case, I grew up in a dysfunctional family environment that was plagued with depression and mental illness, and I lost a brother to drug addiction, another to suicide, both parents alcoholics, and and I've learned to forgive and to understand that you know everybody's fighting a battle we know nothing about, and that going through what I went through, I was absolutely surrounded by fear all the time. Right. And then we digest, you know, we take fear in. And then through Gabor Mate's work, I was able to understand that I absolutely stored fear in my solar plexus area because when I experienced fear, you know, my the midsection of my chest would just contract and tighten almost like a band around my chest. And I didn't understand that till I really started following his work over the past eight, 10 years. Um, so it's that idea of uh Bessel Vanderkohl, his book, uh The Body Keeps the Score. It absolutely does, that we store these emotions based on traumas. Um so to understand not only the emotion, but what might be happening inside of us as a result of the emotion is an important step in the work. So for me, I recognize that my default in life is sometimes to resort to fear. And that's based on early experiences. So fear of my parents, which led to fear of authority, which led to lots of different emotions. But just those are some of the things that come up for me. But I've been able to do a lot of internal work and to um understand my past and to look at it through multiple different lenses, not only to forgive, but to also create a more empowering narrative for myself. And um, there's a quote from Dr. Jim Lair, who is a mentor of mine, and he's come on the podcast. And what he says is the power broker in your life is the voice that no one hears. How well you revisit the tone and content of your private voice is what determines the quality of your life. It's the master storyteller, and the stories we tell ourselves create our reality. And then Mother Teresa talks about this idea if everyone would just sweep their own doorstep, the whole world would be clean. So it's that idea of the necessity of doing the internal work when we're truly ready to do it and we're open to it. So, how do those quotes resonate with you? Because when we begin to tell ourselves a different story, um and we begin to do the internal work, um, our lives can change in many empowering ways. And it sounds like you experience that yourself through your own life. So take that in any direction we want. Then I have one more question about leadership as we segue to a close. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So one thing I would point to is I do a lot of work, I teach a course in beyond imposter syndrome, this idea that I don't have worth as a human being. And people that shows up for people in a multitude of ways. But what's fascinating is at the root of it, there's a story that I don't have value, I'm worthless. And if you shift that to dignity, which is I have inherent worth, right? I am worthy. I don't need anybody's permission. I don't need anybody to tell me that. I just am. You know, what's fascinating to me is I work with people, we get to a point where I say, you know, this may be hard to believe, but it's no harder to believe you're worthy than to believe you're worthless. It's no harder, it's just a different way of thinking about yourself. But you've practiced thinking you're worthless for a long time. You're very good at it. So now part of this shifting to dignity, besides what you do with the body, is this changing this story of okay, do you have worth as a human being or not? And I just find it fascinating because the moment people begin to see the possibility of thinking about themselves that way, they suddenly light up. They suddenly, they suddenly show up in their wholeness. It it's it's just the most fascinating uh area to work. So I think absolutely what you're saying, I completely agree with. The thing that I invite people to, I think learning emotions is is just like learning other things. I think there's a few steps, but the first step is awareness, you know, and what you said is you became aware. Oh my gosh, I became aware what's going on when I feel fear. The second step is practice, right? Okay, well, you got to decide what you're gonna know, awareness, choice, practice. The second is choice. What are you gonna do with that? Are you gonna do anything with it? And the third is practice. And what I tell people about emotions is nothing can change in you until you practice. You got to practice emotions, you've got to spend time with them, you got to observe them, you got to learn about them. If you are really committed to emotional regulation in your life and emotional acuity to be really clear about emotions, well, then you got to study, you gotta practice. I mean, it's just like anything else, playing the piano, making lasagna. It's exactly the same. And so I just invite people, well, let's work on awareness. And from the awareness, as that grows, then you'll make choices. And maybe the choice will be, I don't want this. Okay, but maybe the choice will be, you know what, this is kind of interesting. I want to go down this road. And then the question is, how do you begin to practice? Because once you begin to practice, then you practice and you practice and you practice, pretty soon you're um you're a virtuoso with emotions, maybe masterful. So I think that uh the the path is really quite simple in a way, but everybody's path is different. That's what I find. Your path, it I recognize it, but it's not my path. My path is very different. Every single person I talked to who has walked down this path, there's something very distinct about their path. But the common pattern is I became aware, I made a choice, I practiced, and that led to competence with emotions. And you know, the last thing I would say is that I think that all of the work around emotions, what everybody is aiming for, what everybody's hoping for, is a capacity for emotional regulation, that I can dial up the emotions that serve me, I can choose the ones that would be helpful, I can dial down the ones that are barriers for me. It's nothing more complicated than that. I just want to be good at regulating my emotions to meet life as I experience it. I think that's what everybody wants. It doesn't matter how we approach it, I think we're all looking for. That capacity. Uh and all of us have the uh ability, we have the gift that we can, but we just gotta become aware and make a choice and practice.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and that's that idea of co-regulation. So when we are able to create the space and time needed to be regulated, emotionally regulated, and when we're dealing with I want to say difficult people, but and I don't mean that negatively. I just mean when we're dealing with difficult circumstances with other people, um, oftentimes uh that we can be dysregulated for sure. They can be dysregulated. So if we are putting the skills into practice to be regulated, emotionally regulated, then we can co-regulate better with the other person to create more possibilities in the conversation. Um, also, it's important for the listeners to understand that what we're talking about here is really grounded in research. And I think of Dr. Carol Dweck's work from Stanford, where she talks about the growth versus the fixed mindset. Um, growth mindset is much more about um learning and oh, I can change. Maybe this is the way I've responded in the past, but now I'm beginning to understand why I responded that way. And I now know there's different possibilities. So that's that's more of a growth mindset. And then it also taps into positive psychology in Dr. Martin Seligman's work around scanning for evidence of good when we are are caught up in our lives and and our emotions in disempowering ways, then we can uh often not look at possibilities and and not uh one of uh Martin Seligman's thing is uh developing a gratitude practice and scanning for the good in our life. And that's another area to for people to really consider. And and as you're describing, it's like putting in the reps, and you use piano and making lasagna as an example, but it really is just putting in the mental reps and and continuing to practice and build this um skill set to be able to create the time and space needed to uh be curious about our emotions and and possibilities on uh how we can respond uh better. But uh, how does that uh land with you?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I'm completely in agreement. I mean, lots of different ways of saying something similar, which is well, I think one is which one of the big ones is we have a choice about our emotions. And it's fascinating because I I can remember people that I've taught who when I said that to them, they're like, I don't think so. I can't shift my emotions. But as we explored it, it was such a revelation to them to say, oh, you know what? I'm living in resentment, but I have a choice. And I never knew I had a choice before. I thought that's just the way I was, and I think that's incredibly liberating when somebody has that, or when somebody, on the other hand, they they're so uh fearful and uncomfortable of exhibiting pride that they did something well and they want to share that with people. And when they discover that, oh, pride is simply that, it's not saying I'm better than anyone, it's just saying, hey, I did this really great thing, and I want to I want to tell people about it, how liberating that is for somebody. So I completely agree. And like I said, everybody's path is different. And we the thing about practice is that it's never the same. It's just like you said, well, you go to the gym, you lift weights. Well, it's different today than it was yesterday. And and maybe some days you feel stronger and some days you don't. But you know what? If you keep at it, if you keep at it, then something will happen. And what I see is people strengthen emotions and they get clearer and they earn greater choice about emotions. And I just don't see how that can't improve the quality of a person's life.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, absolutely. I'm I'm a golfer, so I think of uh minimizing three putts. You know, so I'm working hard on my my short game, and and uh the more I work on it, I'm gonna minimize three putts, but three putts will still be there, you know. Um but so in segueing to a close, I really want to uh look at leadership. So so just describe because I I have a lot of leaders listening to this podcast and uh people responsible for serving others through leadership. And I think there's no greater responsibility in life than being uh a leader in in whatever field we're in. Teachers are leaders, coaches are leaders, you know, parents are leaders. But um talk about why this work is so important for leaders and any practical examples you've had from the work that you've done as a because you you are a leadership coach, you work with lots of different leaders, so so share share what you want to share there just for any leaders listening. Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Well, um if I have permission, let me just say last book that just came out with my my partner is called Dignity and Leadership. And it's all about this. It's it's a practical approach to oh, okay, so what are emotions and how are they part of leadership and how have they always been part of leadership? And uh it's really for people who uh I was surprised to find out when we were writing it that 85% of people who are in leadership roles don't have any leadership development training. It's like, well, that was me when I was a leader, so this is all stuff I would have benefited from knowing. But the way I see it is that um, you know, if you think about well, what do leaders do? What do they have in common? Well, one thing is I think leaders all make decisions, they all solve problems, they all build relationships. I mean, those are fundamental to the role of leader. And you can throw in vision and you can throw in other things, but all of those, all of them, if you begin to look at them underneath of them, one of the fundamental skills or tools is emotions. You know, we cannot build relationships with other human beings without emotions, because there are emotions in the relationship. So are the emotions supportive of generating that relationship or are they not? And you know, we have to be fluent with emotions to be able to uh enhance, to guide, to build, to strengthen relationships, and even to begin relationships or to end relationships sometimes. If you think about decision making, right? Two sets of equal data, there's no decision. Why? Because there's no value placed on the data. You have to bring emotions into the mix in order to make a decision, right? What do you what do you feel safer with? Oh, what do you feel is is more exciting? What do you feel, you know, what's be gonna be more pleasurable? There's always emotions there, and I think in the problem solving too, just like with the frustration example, it's like, well, it was not really a problem. It's not really a problem, it was a misalignment between how I was seeing it and how this other person was seeing it. But without emotions, I couldn't have gotten there, right? If it was just a matter of this person said they're gonna do it, I'm just gonna get tough and I'm gonna keep pressing. Well, I could do that, but would that be the most effective leadership that I could have brought to the table? I don't think so. And there's so much here. You know, I worked with a lot of leaders who when we go through emotions and when we talk about what are the emotions that you would serve you if you could strengthen them. And one of the biggest ones that that I hear from from leaders is, you know what, joy. And when I say joy as a leader, why joy? And they say, Well, you know what? Your card here says joy is connected with celebration. You know, we celebrate because we feel joy. And he and they say, you know what, we're so busy, we're so oppressed that we don't celebrate. I don't even tell people what a great job they're doing. So if I could pause and if I could connect more with joy, simply to say, amazing, amazing you did that, or if I could buy cupcakes, or if I whatever, but we don't, I don't create the space and time to acknowledge, and I don't think my team knows how much I appreciate them because we don't. And I could change that if I could connect with joy more often. Okay, so how are you gonna do that, right? And then it's the practice, then it's the development of it. So I think that emotions are at the root of everything, and I think that you know, a leader who doesn't understand that you know what, there's probably a lot of people on their team who are feeling resentment. What's resentment? Well, they believe there's something unfair. Okay, well, you can ignore that, but it's pretty corrosive, right? So if you can't bring emotions into the conversation, if you aren't comfortable with them, if you don't know your own and how you react and respond to situations, then I would say, well, there's probably room to grow as a leader. And I think that there are many leaders who are very good because they know how to do this intuitively, even if they can't articulate to you what they're doing or how they're doing it. But I think there's a path for all of us to learn what it is and how it is in practice so that we can be intentional about enhancing our leadership. But I think we have to do it with ourselves first, so that then we can turn around and extend that to other people, right? It doesn't do any good to say uh do what I say, don't do what I do, right? It's like, no, we have to do, we have to be. But I will tell you this you know, a leader who stands in dignity attracts followers. So, well, wouldn't it make sense to strengthen dignity? Your own sense of self-worth. A leader who's arrogant may put off leaders. Oh, wouldn't it be good to pay attention to when are you being arrogant, even if you're blind to it? So again, I think that uh I think leaders, in my experience, the competence piece of leadership, they're smarter than they're very intelligent, smart, they're very committed. I get that. But I think what's missing in almost all the leaders I work with is this element of emotions, which is the filter that all that competence runs through to get to our actions. That's the model I use. And I say, you know what? I can't teach you anything on the competence side about being a leader, but I probably could help you with the emotions piece because that is going to determine what your actions look like. And if your actions aren't what you want them to be, don't work on the competence, let's work on the emotions because that will make the difference. And the results are that I find most leaders discover that, yep, that's absolutely true. And they just never saw that before. They never learned that, they never had the tools. If we can give them the tools, they can be much, uh, I would say, much more humane, but also effective leaders.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I I appreciate you sharing that. And Zig Ziglar once said that humility will will open more doors than arrogance ever will. And what you talk about is this idea of leaders standing in in their own dignity and self-worth. And that goes back to doing the internal work. And to me, the mother Teresa quote of sweeping our own doorstep, you know. And um I read a research article that talked about um, you know, the leader who in the big staff meeting, you know, speaking to 100 people and does big grand shout-outs to people, and how uh minimizing that makes certain people feel because they're never recognized. And there the research that was done was uh showing the power of like something like the seven to fifteen second informal interaction where a leader is walking past somebody and um the greatest leaders are the ones who definitely understand their emotions, can articulate their emotions, but recognize emotions in others. And in that seven to fifteenth second uh interaction, maybe it's something like listen, I I know how frustrated you were last week with certain things that were happening, and I really appreciate you sticking with it and not giving up because the work you've done this week has been amazing. And I just want to acknowledge that. There you go. So you acknowledge the emotion the person went through and you're recognizing them, and that's going to create a sense of psychological safety and trust and a sense of being seen and valued. And the best leaders, you know, you and I have both experienced it, you see and feel it. And you might not be able to put your finger on it exactly what makes them a great leader, but it's just this intuition, the sense that we feel. And that's because they see us and and recognize us and understand us and acknowledge what we may be experiencing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. The two things I'd add to what you just said are I would say presence, that I'm absolutely present with you when I'm speaking with you. There's all the only person in the world who exists is you. And the other is listening, you know, because listening is witnessing, listening, you know, acknowledges. And those are also based on emotions. What's listening? Well, one is respect, right? That I think you have something valuable to say, dignity, giving you space to say it. Uh there's all of these things, all the behaviors that we want to develop are based in emotions. Emotions generate our speech, our language, our behaviors, what we do, what we don't do. And I think when we begin to see that, they're like one of my engineering clients said, well, there are fuel for action, right? They're they give us what we need to go act in the world. And sometimes that acting is taking a siesta, but they give us the energy we need. And I think that's lovely because there is nothing, you know. One of the things I I present is the idea of, well, what would happen if we normalized emotions? Like emotions are just part of being human. What if they're just normal? Like you sleep at night, you have emotions. Same thing, right? You're gonna eat today, you're gonna have emotions, right? So when we can begin to see them as just part of being human, they're not embarrassing, they're not to be avoided, they're not dangerous, they're not uh they're not weakness, they're just simply a tool of being human. When we can see them that way, then they're available to everybody. And I think for a leader, for a coach, for a doctor, for an educator, to be a parent, to be able to see emotions in that way is enormously, like I said, liberating.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, that's what Gabor says. Uh, Dr. Gabor Mate is it's really tapping into our own essence and it's the human nature of our essence, you know. So uh in closing, Dan, where do you want people to find your work and uh you know social media or anything? I'd love to share that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn, so that's a possibility. I have a website called school of emotions.world. Um, but I also this new partnership that's a couple of years old is called dignityhyphenc.com. And it's uh it's uh an organization that dedicated to exactly what we've been talking about. And we have a section for leaders, we also work with police and first responders, we have an emotional regulation assessment that's almost ready to launch. There are books. Anyway, there's lots of things there. So those two websites, and then you can find me and Dignity Inc. on LinkedIn. And uh I would just invite anyone who is interested to have a conversation because um I like I said, what I care about is people becoming emotionally literate, people building their comfort with emotions. So if anybody's interested, I'm here, I live in Spain, I'm sitting here waiting for the phone to ring, and I'd be delighted to have a conversation because that's what I don't I don't know what can help humans be more human and be better humans than to uh like you said, sweep our own doorstep, do our own work, get really comfortable with the idea that I got emotions, and emotions generate the life I experience and those around me. I think when we can begin to see the power of them, then it's a it's a fantastic thing. So I would just say, please invite people to be in touch, and I would love to have a conversation.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, that's great. I'm gonna include everything in the show notes and uh hopefully people will reach out to you and I know that they'll uh find value in our conversation and what you shared. So I really appreciate your time and energy today, Dan.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here and good luck in all your interviews, all your podcasts.
SPEAKER_05:So yeah, thank you very much. And uh I I intend on being in Spain, so if I'm in your neck of the woods, I will uh definitely look you up. Where in Spain are you again?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. I live near Marbella in the south of Spain. So I can see the rock of Gibraltar from from my my terrace, so very south of Spain.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, yeah. My wife is actually uh presenting at a uh council, she's a counselor, a well-being counselor, and she's presenting in Spain. I have to figure out where that is, and I'll let you know. And if it's closed, we'll we'll meet up for sure.
SPEAKER_02:But all right, very good, delighted, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so I'm just gonna close off the show and then I'll say goodbye to you. So everybody, thank you very much for listening to this episode and movie, and I hope you come back to listen to future episodes.
SPEAKER_04:It's a bad place to start. Today you will be stronger than you are now. You'll not know everything. Well, it's building all the bottles. You're still not being away. You gotta get up to get it down again. You gotta get down again. You gotta get up to get down again. You gotta get down to get down again. I still won't know everything. When I'm passing up and over the cloud, I'll be all the floor. Today I will be on everything.