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Dr. Marc Brackett on Huberman Lab: How the Meta-Moment works

Through the Meta-Moment pause, Brackett shows suppression backfires; strategy choice and emotion regulation depend on person, context, and desired outcome.

Dr. Marc BrackettguestAndrew Hubermanhost
Apr 20, 20262h 27mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:55

    Marc Brackett

    1. MB

      A lot of people think emotion regulation is getting rid of a feeling. It's not what it is. It's just having another relationship to it. I've had anxiety or lived with it for a lot of my life, but sometimes I just say hello to it. It's like, "Hey, how you doing today?" And it goes away pretty quickly, or it just sits there. I think that's the other thing about emotion regulation that people kinda misunderstand. They think it's like, "I gotta check in with how I'm feeling all day long and then regulate. Check in, regulate." Like, you'd become psychotic if you did that all day long.

    2. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MB

      Most of the time, our emotions are in the background. You know, like, if you thought about your feelings all day long, you wouldn't be able to do this podcast. Like, that's unproductive. Emotions matter when there's a shift in our environment or the relationships... You know, if you said something that offended me, boom, I'm activated. I'm feeling angry or kinda shocked. Then I have to make a choice in that moment, like, how do I manage it? That's where the magic happens.

    4. AH

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. [music] I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Marc Brackett. Dr. Marc Brackett is a professor of psychology at Yale University, where he is also the director of Yale's Center for Emotional Intelligence. He's an expert in the science of emotions and how to apply that to improve communication and relationships and performance in school and work. One common problem around discussions of emotions and emotional intelligence is that they are often vague and, frankly, somewhat soft and cliché, but not when Marc Brackett explains emotional intelligence as he does today because he talks about the practical tools that emerge from the science of emotional intelligence that you can use to improve your emotional life, both with yourself and with others. And he's not just going to tell us to feel our emotions more deeply. While that could be important in certain settings, his research in and out of the laboratory is really focused on the small things that we can all do, both in moments of emotion, but also on our own, that can greatly increase our ability to understand what we're feeling, communicate it effectively, and to be better listeners, especially in moments that would otherwise create tension or confusion. In fact, what he shares today are life skills, the sort of life skills that make everything, school, friendships, romantic relationships, professional life, and family life, far more effective and enriching. So I'm confident that you'll come away from today's episode with Marc Brackett knowing what to do and when to use the tools that you'll learn, and they are indeed very powerful to improve your life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Marc Brackett.

  2. 2:55 – 5:53

    Emotion Regulation

    1. AH

      Dr. Marc Brackett, welcome.

    2. MB

      Thank you. Glad to be back.

    3. AH

      So much to discuss today about emotion regulation, about the kids, the future. Are the kids all right?

    4. MB

      They could be better.

    5. AH

      Mm-hmm. And our obligation, our generation, other generations, in, you know, providing a world where kids can thrive and where everyone can thrive. It's, it's a bit of a mess out there, but you're gonna put some clarification on things for people. You're doing amazing work to give people tools for emotion regulation and more. So let's start off and define emotion regulation. What is that?

    6. MB

      Yeah. Well, I think the simplest way to define it is using your emotions wisely to achieve your goals in life. It's a little too broad. And so it's funny, as I was writing my book, I decided, "I need a formula." And so my formula is ER, which is emotion regulation, is a set of goals and strategies, so it's ER (G+S) , and that equals a function of E+P+C.

    7. AH

      [laughs]

    8. MB

      You know, it made me feel smart. Emotion-

    9. AH

      Mm-hmm

    10. MB

      ... person, context.

    11. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MB

      So what I mean by that specifically is that it's a goal-oriented process. You have to want to regulate. You can prevent unwanted emotions. I have an acronym for that, too. It's PRIME. You can prevent unwanted emotions. You can reduce the difficult ones. I think people forget the I, initiate emotions, like when you're teaching or leading or presenting, like you wanna create an emotion in the room that's upregulating. You can maintain an emotion, like, "You know what? I'm having a good day. I'm gonna avoid these things and just keep it going, savor the moment." And then there's enhancing, which is kinda boosting an emotion. So that's PRIME. That's the goals. The strategies we can talk about for hours. Um, we'll get into that a little bit later. And then I think what's most people misunderstand is that, like, what we regulate are emotions. And, like, what I do, for example, to deal with my anxiety is really different than my anger, than my worry, or other emotions in that it's a function of the emotion you're feeling. It's a function of me as an individual. You know, I am on the neurotic side. Uh, I'm on the introverted side, and so my s- strategy selection would be influenced by that. And then the context, like right here, right now. Like, I know you're into fitness and, like, running and, you know, all this kinda stuff, and I'm like, "Andrew, you know, I'm really nervous right now. Like, do you mind if we take a break and I go for a run?" [chuckles] You're like, "You know, it's a little weird, Marc." So context matters. You gotta-

    13. AH

      Mm.

    14. MB

      Like, right now, if I were anxious, it's like, "Marc, you gotta use some cognitive strategies or breathing work. I can't go anywhere, so I'm stuck." And I think people need to see that kind of full spectrum.

  3. 5:53 – 11:25

    Emotion Mindset, Anxiety; Good or Bad Emotions?

    1. AH

      I feel like there's a close tie between emotion regulation and self-awareness.

    2. MB

      Yeah.

    3. AH

      But I feel like there's a tension between self-awareness and being able to experience and enjoy life. For instance, if I'm feeling anxiousI'm thinking about how I'm appearing, how I'm sounding, that it's uncomfortable. Um, but if I get totally outside of that and just be in the experience that I'm in, uh, then there's the potential to say the wrong thing or, you know, uh, offend somebody or who knows. So i- when we talk about emotion regulation, what's the best approach to that that doesn't keep us in a subtext in our mind and, and sort of out of the room?

    4. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. AH

      Because when we're alone, it's quite a bit different. We can, we can breathe, we can use whatever self-regulation tools we want.

    6. MB

      Or ruminate. [laughs]

    7. AH

      Or, or ruminate, uh, or write, or, you know, or text or call a friend.

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. AH

      Whatever it is. But when we're at work, at school, uh, on a podcast, if, if there's that subtext like, uh, I'm, I'm not locked in here, I'm not in the experience completely, I'm, I'm, I'm self-regulating or paying attention to myself, that can be very uncomfortable in its own right. It's work.

    10. MB

      Yeah. It's effortful, uh, and not always the best effort if it's going down the rabbit hole. I think that you're getting at, which is this mindset piece, that the first step is our mindset about our feelings. So let me ask you, what's your mindset around anxiety?

    11. AH

      Hmm. Um, I... Well, I have assumptions around it. I was telling someone the other day of, uh, because I spend a lot of time alone, and I'm fairly introverted, but if I go into a crowded environment, for the first five, six minutes, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed, like, whoa, it is really crowded in here. There are a lot of people. And I, I actually feel like I have a bit of a, a social interaction disorder for those first few minutes. But then after about 20, 30 minutes, I'm in that experience and I'm feel like I-- very comfortable. So I have this mindset that social anxiety is something that, um, is like wading into water. It's always a l- a little bit too cold at first, or usually is a little too cold, but over time you acclimate.

    12. MB

      All right, you didn't answer the question.

    13. AH

      Okay.

    14. MB

      [laughs] So let's, I'm gonna frame it another way. What's your relationship to anxiety?

    15. AH

      I hate it.

    16. MB

      Okay. There you go. See how you automatically were like, "I hate anxiety." I did too for most of my life. And then I was with a friend who's a neuroscientist a-about anxiety, and she said to me, "Marc, tell me all the things that make you anxious." I said, "Well, I'm anxious about fundraising, and, you know, I gotta raise the money to keep the research going. I'm anxious to make su- I wanna make sure that, like, everything we do is high quality." And I went on and on. And then she asked me another question. She said, "Well, what do those have in common?" I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And then I thought about it and I said, "Well, those are things that are important to me." And so she said, "So why would anxiety be a bad thing?" And I think that we have to learn how to adopt a mindset around emotions that there are no bad emotions. It's what we do with our emotions that makes them harmful or difficult for us to live our lives. But anxiety is a good thing. It's saying there's perceived uncertainty around the future. Like, I'm anxious about how I'm gonna act in this environment or how I'm gonna be perceived in this environment. It's not a bad thing 'cause you wanna be perceived well.

    17. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MB

      But if you automatically assume it's bad, then it's gonna put you on the path to dysregulation.

    19. AH

      So if we accept the idea that all emotions are okay-

    20. MB

      Yeah

    21. AH

      ... but that the expression of all emotions is, in every context, is not okay.

    22. MB

      Correct.

    23. AH

      That it should be context-specific.

    24. MB

      Yes.

    25. AH

      Um, I actually think that provides some freedom. I can feel that freedom. Like it's okay to be super angry, it's okay to be frustrated, it's okay to be anxious, uh, but how that's expressed is what's critical. Uh, it makes good intuitive sense. I think that what's hard to know is what to do with the emotion if there is no outward expression of it. Like, like wh- where should it go?

    26. MB

      Well, it doesn't have to go anywhere sometimes.

    27. AH

      Mm.

    28. MB

      Sometimes it can just be.

    29. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    30. MB

      And that's a big part of regulation, which is that a lot of people think emotion regulation is getting rid of a feeling. It's not what it is. It's just having another relationship to it. Like, I've been... I'm 56. I've had anxiety or lived with it for a lot of my life, but sometimes I just say hello to it. It's like, "Hey, how you doing today?" And it goes away pretty quickly, or it just sits there. I think that's the other thing about emotion regulation that people kinda misunderstand. They think it's like, "I gotta check in with how I'm feeling all day long and then regulate. Check in, regulate." Like, you'd become psychotic if you did that all day long.

  4. 11:25 – 13:54

    Sponsors: Joovv & Lingo

    1. AH

      to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health. Now, in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, red light, near-infrared, and infrared light have been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health.These include faster muscle recovery, improved skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision. Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there, but what sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near-infrared, and infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about ten to twenty minutes per session, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Joovv, they're offering up to four hundred dollars off select products for listeners of this podcast. To learn more, visit Joovv spelled J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. Again, that's J-O-O-V-V dot com slash Huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Lingo. One of the most important factors in your short and long-term health is your body's ability to manage glucose over time. Glucose directly impacts our brain function, mood, and energy. You want your glucose relatively stable across the day without big peaks or valleys. This is why I use the continuous glucose monitor and app from Lingo by Abbott. Lingo provides minute-by-minute glucose data directly within the app, showing you how your glucose responds to food, exercise, and stress. This information can help you make smarter choices to support your health both now and in the long term. The CDC estimates that more than one in three American adults has prediabetes and that many of these people don't know they are living with prediabetes. Visibility about how your diet and activity affect your glucose can be the first step toward informed conversations with your doctor and making smarter daily choices. If you'd like to try Lingo, Lingo is offering Huberman Lab listeners in the US and UK ten percent off a four-week plan. Just visit helloLingo.com/Huberman for more information. Terms and conditions apply. Again, that's helloLingo.com/Huberman.

  5. 13:54 – 22:13

    Permission for Happiness; Gender, Emotion Suppression

    1. AH

      I'd love to poke at some of the assumptions that I know I have, but I wonder if other people have as well.

    2. MB

      Sure.

    3. AH

      My dad's from South America, and I remember long ago he said because he went to formal schools, um, he said that he was raised with this terrible idea, he called it terrible, that, um, if somebody was happy and they smiled a lot, that they were stupid. And I said, "What is that about?" And he said, well, that came, in his words, from the British school system where, uh, the idea was that you were supposed to be, um, skeptical of things, and that if you were happy or happy-go-lucky and you weren't drinking, that people would assume that you were an idiot because you weren't bothered by the problems in the world, and you were accepting of the things that you heard and were told. In other words, you're an idiot. And my dad's a very happy person now.

    4. MB

      Sure.

    5. AH

      And he has talked about, you know, having to break that mold, that like it's okay to wake up and take a walk and f- and be happy, that it's okay to be happy. And so I'd-- that's just one thing that I, I think I grew up thinking too, n- and maybe not to that extreme, that, that if, especially in academia, like if you're not dis-- like to be happy is to not be discerning. It's, uh, totally false, right?

    6. MB

      Of course.

    7. AH

      Now, we're a long way from England right now, um, uh, and that's probably something more of my dad's generation than mine. But I think the idea nowadays does seem to be that if you're happy-go-lucky and you're feeling good, that you must not be thinking about all the terrible things going on in the world or that it's insensitive to those that are suffering, etc., etc.

    8. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AH

      I'd love your thoughts on this, this idea that we don't give ourselves permission to feel as good as we might feel because of some social pressure or assumptions that we've internalized.

    10. MB

      Which is all learned.

    11. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    12. MB

      And so this i- these are learned phenomenon.

    13. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MB

      And it's sometimes outside influence. So talk about happiness. You know, as I was writing and I was doing the chapter on mindsets around emotion and talking about this relationship with different emotions, and, you know, we could play around with this all day long. I could say, "What's your relationship to anger? What's your relationship to happiness and contentment?" And all of a sudden you start realizing, "Wow, I have a complicated relationship with my emotions." And I was thinking about it with happiness too. And for me, what's interesting, which is different completely from your dad's, is because of my kind of tough childhood and a lot of bullying, is that I would go to school one day and I would be happy, and I'd see the bullies, and all of a sudden they'd say things like, you know, "What are you so happy about today, Brackett?" And I didn't realize that until I was writing, and then I would get on stage and give a pr- I do a lot of public speaking, and I'd be standing there like feeling really good with my speaking, and then I'd get the applause at the end, and I would start kind of looking down, and I started realizing I'm uncomfortable being happy.

    15. AH

      Mm.

    16. MB

      Like I'm, I'm waiting for something to go wrong because, you know, in my childhood, like happy meant like, you know, we're gonna bring you down. We all have these kind of developmental, um, connections, you know, for lack of a better term, to our different emotions. And I think that it gets back to the phenomenon. There's no good or bad emotions. Life, firstly, some of it is genetic and biological, you know, our proclivity to experience certain emotions. The regulation piece is all learned. Like you're not born with a, you know, a pocket full of evidence-based strategies to regulate [laughs] it. It's just like, like, you know... I don't know about you growing up, you know, my father w- was very different. My father was the angry guy, and he'd say, "Son, you gotta toughen up." I'm like, "Dad, look at me, you know, come on, let's move on. It's not happening." And you know that I have a fifth degree black belt. I became the tough guy that my father wanted me to be, but nevertheless, you know, what does that even mean?But, you know, growing up when I was struggling, my parents missed a lot of the cues. Come down the stairs, I didn't have my father say, "Son, I'm noticing a shift in your emotions today. Your posture's different. Your facial expression is different. Let me give you a research-based strategy to help you regulate your anxiety, stress, pressure, fear." No. It was just, there was no... It wasn't even a construct. I mean, I don't know, but did you grow up with a, a concept of emotion regulation?

    17. AH

      Definitely.

    18. MB

      You did. That's awesome.

    19. AH

      And it was, there was a big gender split. In my home, I had the sort of belief, uh, based on the context, that women could express their emotions big or small, and that, uh, men weren't supposed to lose their temper. Men weren't supposed to, uh, be angry.

    20. MB

      That's interesting.

    21. AH

      Yeah.

    22. MB

      It's kind of counter the way people think about it nowadays, right? Like-

    23. AH

      Oh, yeah

    24. MB

      ... the men are like, the more power you have, the more anger you can express.

    25. AH

      Oh, the complete opposite of that. In fact, and I don't think he'll mind, my dad's been on this podcast, and we have a great relationship, uh, now. And-

    26. MB

      [laughs]

    27. AH

      ... um, and we've done work, and it's been awesome. I mean, it's really, it really has. I mean, uh, and I remember when I was a kid, if he got angry, he, he would blink.

    28. MB

      Mm.

    29. AH

      And I, and now I know that as, like, behavioral suppression. [laughs]

    30. MB

      Yeah.

  6. 22:13 – 31:00

    Young Men, Vulnerability, Incapable; Gay Men

    1. AH

      I mean, we're talking about boys and men-

    2. MB

      Yeah

    3. AH

      ... quite a bit already here, so maybe we just continue-

    4. MB

      Please

    5. AH

      ... in that, in that direction, even though we will touch on, um, uh, girls and women and, uh, emotions as it relates to them, too. I, I hear a lot nowadays about problems for boys and young men in emotion regulation, in defining masculinity.

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AH

      I'm, I'm obviously interested in this, but I also acknowledge that I'm Gen X. I was born in 1975. Things were very different.

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. AH

      And I, and I know I have a giant blind spot to their experience, right?

    10. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    11. AH

      I just do. I acknowledge that because I don't really have a finger on the pulse of, of what life is like for a 15-year-old, or 12-year-old, or 20-year-old guy out there. What are the pain points, and what's going right?

    12. MB

      Yeah. There's a lot going on, and I think probably the big issue here with gender is vulnerability, that historically, this is not just now, this is going back to when we were kids, when our parents were kids, you know, go back to other periods in, you know, in the, in time, is that vulnerability, especially for men, is weak. You gotta be tough. You, you're the, you know, the person who has to m- you know, make the ends meet. You're the, you know, the hunter-gatherer. And obviously, times have changed, and what we find is that the thought today for many boys and men to be emotional... Firstly, emotional alone has a connotation of feminine and out of control.That's just the way people think about it.

    13. AH

      Still?

    14. MB

      Yes.

    15. AH

      Really?

    16. MB

      Yeah.

    17. AH

      Wow.

    18. MB

      When you say, "Don't be so emotional"

    19. AH

      Mm

    20. MB

      ... it's considered to be a negative thing, it's considered to be feminine, and it's considered to be, like, a hysterical. Um, that's why we- I call it emotion skills, not emotional skills. [laughs] That's... Anyway, so vulnerability's a, a big piece of it. Let's... This is gonna be a great conversation between two guys. So what's your relationship to vulnerability?

    21. AH

      Totally context-dependent.

    22. MB

      Okay.

    23. AH

      I, I mean, there are people I'm not afraid at all to cry in front of.

    24. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    25. AH

      There are contexts and people that I would never cry- I mean, I've cried on very public podcasts two-

    26. MB

      Mm-hmm

    27. AH

      ... maybe three. One here, when Martha Beck came on, she really... She-

    28. MB

      [laughs]

    29. AH

      ... uh, she wasn't trying, but, you know, it was happening.

    30. MB

      Yeah.

  7. 31:00 – 37:34

    Boys & Men, Crying; Emotion Socialization

    1. AH

      something interesting around this notion of, um, sissy showing emotion in boys.

    2. MB

      Yeah.

    3. AH

      And we -- earlier, we were talking about the movie Stand By Me-

    4. MB

      Uh-huh

    5. AH

      ... a movie I absolutely love, and it's just like a perfect story. It's a Stephen King story, right? Turned into a movie. Um, I think Rob Reiner wrote that movie.

    6. MB

      Yeah.

    7. AH

      Um, and what's interesting about that movie is the transition be-ca- that happens right around puberty and between junior hi- It's right before junior high school, or... Oh, it's between junior high and high school. I can't remember. Some, some transition, and the kids are at different developmental stages.

    8. MB

      Uh-huh.

    9. AH

      I feel like this is a big part of it, where, like, let's say a kid is, um, a little bit more emotional, a little more ch- um, coddled at home, perhaps. This is, I'm making a lot of assumptions here.

    10. MB

      Yeah

    11. AH

      And cries in front of a group of boys when you're in the seventh or eighth grade. Some of those boys are, are, because of their stage of maturation, they're not really little kids anymore. They're like, "Dude, what are you doing?" And then you've mixed all those kids together, and because of the way that schools and social dynamics are, that can stay with a kid for a long time. Like, being, sort of having an emotional expression, that can stick with you for, like-

    12. MB

      Of course

    13. AH

      ... two, three years of school, right? [chuckles] So I feel like the, uh, some of this stuff comes about that way, which is very different than, like, in a, um, just taking as, like, a hypothetical scenario, uh, an adult male, um, in the business place. Maybe he's new at, you know, uh, where there's -- things tend to, uh, equalize a bit in terms of maturational stage. And so these are two different things, boys crying versus young men crying-

    14. MB

      Yeah

    15. AH

      ... versus, quote-unquote, "grown men" crying.

    16. MB

      Again, this is all nurture. So if you go to schools that do our work, I just interviewed a bunch of teenage boys, actually, it'd blow your mind. They have a whole different perception of emotion. I, I ask them these questions about men and boys, and, you know, and their responses are like, "Huh?" Like, "What's wrong with crying?" Like, "If you feel like crying, you cry." Like, "Are you sure?" You know [chuckles] even I'm ri-

    17. AH

      No ri- no ridicule.

    18. MB

      No ridicule.

    19. AH

      Hm.

    20. MB

      I said, "Well, what if you get into a fight? Can you, like, talk to the kid about what happened and, like, tell them how you felt when they left you out?" And they're like, "Of course. That's what, that's how we grew up. That's..." But they grew up in a school that took emotion seriously. They gave them the skills and the resources to do it. It reminds me, actually, I'll never forget this, you know, since we're on this topic of boys and men. I was, in the beginning of my career, doing training in emotional regulation in London, outside of London, in a very kind of rough and tough neighborhood. And, uh, the headmistress, as they call it back then, of the school, she looked at me and she's like, "You know something, Marc? This program's gonna turn the boys into homosexuals." I'm like, okay, like, where'd that come from? You know, like, I'm thinking to myself, like, you need a lot more training than just emotional intelligence, but I'll put that aside for a minute. Anyhow, I said, "You know, I'm here, so can we just go and do it? Let me, let me demonstrate it." Not a problem. We go in like a fishbowl. Here I am, like, the teacher in the middle of the room. I have, like, 25 teachers around me and, like, 20 kids in the middle, and I start sharing a story about my life, whatever it was. I was about probably feeling discouraged. I think it was when I, when I first got into the martial arts, you know, it was tough. I was not a tough boy, and I was afraid of my shadow, and I had been... Then had all this bullying and abuse, and, you know, going to a karate studio was a big shock for me. I happened to have an amazing teacher who transformed my life and became a career of mine, martial arts. Anyhow, I told a story about that, about how I failed my yellow belt, and I just, I hated myself and, like, not only was I bullied, but I couldn't even get a freaking yellow belt. Discouraged, hopeless, and he's-- Everybody's looking at me like, where's this going? The teachers. The kids were, like, glued. They loved hearing the story. And then I said, "I'm just curious. Has anyone else ever felt the way I felt?" And I said, "Just raise your hand if you've had that kind of feeling." Every freaking kid in the classroom raised their hand. And of course, I look over at that headmistress, and I'm like, [tsks] you know, "Let's, let's talk later." Kids are dying to express their emotions, boys and girls. We have, we, we've just socialized it, and it, the socialization piece is really important because even the way fathers talk to their boy children, you know, is different. You know, it's the toughen up, it's da-da-da, use more feeling words with their, with girls than with boys. We're not born that way. We're socialized into, you know, having these complicated relationships with certain emotions. But it's not something that can't be modified with good instruction.

    21. AH

      You're saying this, I'm realizing-

    22. MB

      [clears throat]

    23. AH

      ... I internalized so many things that skew my perspective on this. I guess I should say I'm relieved to hear thatExpression of emotions among boys is more accepted now. I think that's, that's-

    24. MB

      The generation that's going through this work, the kids who are growing up in places that are not taking emotion seriously are growing up in a more-- or with a more stereotypical way of viewing it.

    25. AH

      It's gotta be-

    26. MB

      It's gotta be infused into your life.

    27. AH

      Yeah.

    28. MB

      You gotta have these conversations. You gotta be in situations where... Like in our work, just to give you an example, like we're really rigorous about teaching this stuff. This isn't just sort of like kumbaya sitting in a circle.

    29. AH

      Right. Right.

    30. MB

      This is like, "All right, everyone, we've got a problem here. There's, you know, the gaga pit," which is in these, you know, this thing in schools. You know, th-there's a kid who nobody is, you know, allowing to participate. That kid feels awful. What's our obligation? What are we supposed to do to handle that? Imagine you're that kid. Imagine you're the one that nobody wants to be, you know, part of the game. Now we're gonna get into groups and we're gonna think about, A, what are the feelings? B, what are the solutions? What do you do for yourself? What do you do for the other person? And it's like rigorous conversations around the techniques, and they gotta role play it, and then we ask questions about the role play. It's like, "Well, what if it goes wrong? What happens if you say this and they say, 'Go blank yourself'? What do you do then?" And that's the kind of complex, you know, muscle building we're giving kids in terms of dealing with emotions.

  8. 37:34 – 38:58

    Sponsor: AG1

    1. AH

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  9. 38:58 – 46:47

    Physical Interaction; Rough/Tumble Play, Teaching Emotion Regulation

    1. AH

      There is a hardwired, uh, bias towards rough and tumble play in males of all, of all species, including ours. I think what you're talking about a little bit is a capacity also for kind of rough and tumble verbal and emotional exchange.

    2. MB

      Yeah.

    3. AH

      Which is not necessarily like F you and this and that. Like, but some of that is, can be in jest. Some of it can be really damaging. There's something interesting that I, I learned a long time ago. It, even in academia, he's now dead, but there was a, a very famous neuroscientist I'll never forget. Uh, I went to my first McKnight meeting. I was so like excited to be there, and he came over. He was, you know, he's pretty large guy, and he grabbed me. Like grabbed me, and he, and he goes, "So where are you..." I was picking between laboratories, between this place and that place. He goes, "Where's this gonna, where is it gonna be?" And then he kinda gave me his advice. And then, and that was a very comfortable exchange for me, 'cause like I grew up with a lot of physical interaction. Usually guys not putting their arm around me and, and like telling me, like, "So what's it gonna be?" kinda thing. But oftentimes, you know, if I interact with somebody that's kinda like an old friend or something, there's, they'll grab my shoulder, you know, just walking by. There's a lot of just kind of physical interaction that just happens. It certainly doesn't feel weird or aversive.

    4. MB

      Sure.

    5. AH

      And I could see if somebody, for instance, was not used to like just a lot of physical interaction, uh, with other people, that that could feel like a lot. And so I'm wondering nowadays, where, where are things with respect to sort of just the amount of physical interaction between kids? Are they like just feeling and voicing their emotions, but they're like at a, at a physical distance? Or are they, uh, you know, seeing one another and like handshakes and hugs, what's up, and you know, or like, you know, just friendly-

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm

    7. AH

      ... the kind of physical banter?

    8. MB

      I think it's cultural. It's, there's a lot of, there's a lot going on there in terms of, you know, the type of school and, you know, where it is in the United States or in the world. You know, touch is a, is a cultural thing. But I think, you know, what I wanna say about what you said is that rough and tumble is fine. Of course, you, you know, rough and tumble. But there's, when it becomes a power over, that's when it becomes a problem, when you have no concern for the emotional life of the other. This is where-

    9. AH

      That's bullying.

    10. MB

      Yeah.

    11. AH

      Yeah.

    12. MB

      Exactly.

    13. AH

      Yeah. The dialogue that sort of establishes hierarchy, I guess, is what, if I'm really blunt about it, I just feel like that just sort of just happened naturally in my friend group when I was a kid. Like, there were some kids who were more developed and more athletic or better at this or better at that, and we just kinda all fell into place. It wasn't necessarily about being at the apex or being at the bottom. It was like-

    14. MB

      Yeah. Or the intention to harm.

    15. AH

      Yeah. We, we, we sort of formed a, a team-

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm

    17. AH

      ... where you understood that, yeah, this kid was fast and this one was strong, and this one was clever, and this one was creative, and actually, there was a goofy kid on our street who was always the comedian. I think later he actually tried to become a comedian or became a comedian. And everyone just kinda like was like, "All right." You didn't expect him to be like the other kid, and you didn't expect yourself to kind of check off all boxes.

    18. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    19. AH

      I wonder, uh, the extent to which young males in particular nowadays feel the need to check off all the boxes of what it is to be a guy. Play a sport, be good in school, be, you know, uh, whatever.

    20. MB

      Well, that's again the, the developmental thing. And I think what happens is that in, you know, you watch kids play in kindergarten, they're not thinking about this kind of stuff. Although it's, it's, it's sink- it's sinking in or it's, uh, seeping in. What's the word? Um, I was in a school recently, a-and a boy raised his hand that he was in the blue quadrant of our mood meter, and he was feeling down or sad. And I said, "Is-- Do you need anything right now?" And he said, "No." And I got, I got kind of, like, taken by surprise, and I said, you know, "You sure? You know, we can talk about it." And he's like, "I don't wanna bother you, sir." And that was an eye-opener for me, you know, that already, like, his emotions were a nuisance. And that's what I wanna make sure that we address. No one's emotion should be a burden. A kid should be able to talk about it and deal with it. We want that kid to be a good learner. We want that kid to be a good friend. And if he's already suppressing, denying, ignoring, you know, in kindergarten, it's not gonna be a pretty ride. And those things change developmentally. Um, kids are much more comfortable talking to each other about their feelings in elementary school and middle school. You know, it starts getting, you know, I gotta look around and again, with the homophobia piece, and in high school you see, um, less and less touching, you know, or, you know, kind of the, the, the kind of friendship kind of stuff that you might have seen early on. And that goes back to the, you know, the things that we were kind of chatting about, toxic masculinity, kind of this manosphere. And again, you know, my hope is that we rethink child development. We've spent so much time thinking about some of the unnecessary things. You know, reading and writing and arithmetic obviously are important, but if you don't recognize that how we feel and how we deal with our feelings is gonna drive the quality of your relationships, your well-being, your ability to deal with life's ups and downs and the harsh feedback you're gonna get in life, um, and ultimately, you know, having your dreams come true. You know, it's interesting, as someone who works at a university where everyone has perfect SAT scores, everyone has grade point averages that are better than mine were, everyone plays an instrument I never heard of before [chuckles] , everyone has done everything to get into this place. And so I have, like, seven hundred, eight hundred students right there, and I look at them all and I'm like, "Guess what? Your SAT scores have no predictive validity." [chuckles] None. You can't... Remember, it's range restriction.

    21. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    22. MB

      It's like baske- all basketball players are tall. Height is not gonna make or break your, your basketball performance. Same thing applies in a room filled with people with, you know, high academic performance. And then, all right, well, what is the predictor? Well, obviously it's gonna be something else. And then we start thinking about, well, what are the attributes that employers are looking for? Right now it's not technical skills as much as it used to be. Right now it's like, can this person, like, take feedback well? Can this person, you know, lead a team and people will wanna be around that person? I found in my research, for example, that managers and leaders who are good co-regulators, that... For example, during the pandemic, I did this longitudinal study, and I found that in schools in particular, where I do a lot of work, that when a teacher perceived their leader as both self-regulated and who was good at co-regulating. So what that means is that, like, I'm looking at you right now, I'm thinking, okay, you know, it feels like the world's coming to an end. Are you gonna fall apart or are you gonna make it? That's number one. Number two is, are you gonna be there for me? Are you gonna be able to support me and deal with the chaos that I've gotta deal with? And what we found in our research is that highly predictive of the culture of the school, highly predictive of burnout, highly predictive of job satisfaction. Frustration levels were forty percent lower in schools where there were leaders with these skills. That's what people are looking for these days, more so than anything else, you know, more so than beforehand.

  10. 46:47 – 56:15

    Emotion Calibration, Tools: Leaders & Being a Role Model; Meta-Moment

    1. AH

      I feel like the word that comes to mind is, is calibration. And in anticipation of today's discussion-

    2. MB

      Yeah

    3. AH

      ... I, I was speaking to a friend and I said, "You know, where are you at with, uh, kind of, um, men expressing emotions, you know?" And, and, you know, she said, "Well, I've seen you cry." And I was like, "Yeah." You know, she said, "And it can be beautiful." Like, you know, the- you hear that, right? It can be beautiful. And I said, "But when is a man expressing emotion, um, a problem for you?" Like, a-and-

    4. MB

      Mm-hmm

    5. AH

      ... assuming it's not, like, outward anger or abuse-

    6. MB

      Yeah

    7. AH

      ... or, you know. His sadness, okay, was the example I gave. And she said, "If he gets very sad about things that happen a lot, it makes it hard to imagine that, uh, how he would hold it together if really big stuff happened."

    8. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AH

      And so it's, it's exactly what you described in the workplace, right?

    10. MB

      Yeah.

    11. AH

      This notion of calibration. So, uh, let's say I'm okay with people expressing their emotion and crying when they're sad, et cetera, but if that's happening a lot under everyday conditions, I could imagine, let's say you're in a work or a relationship with this person, and you think, "Well, goodness, like, people die, right?" You know, more-- I'm fifty now.

    12. MB

      Yeah.

    13. AH

      Like, people die as you get older. More and more people die. That's just kinda the way it works. What's gonna happen then? I think there's this underlying question, which is, are you going to be available for all the other things we depend on each other for?

    14. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    15. AH

      And this could be romantic relationship, it could be in the workplace. So I th- I do wonder whether or not people are trying to work out sort of what people are calibrated to. Like, trying to understand somebody's, I don't wanna say emotional set point, but when they're able toYou know, just pack it down and deal with it on their own later, or whether it really needs to become the focus. Like, just to, to just quickly layer in another example, I have a friend who runs a, a big scientific laboratory.

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AH

      Their laboratory gathered together and did a presentation for this lab director and had created a statistical bubble map of their experience of being in the lab, and there was a giant bubble in the middle that just said, "Stress." And they invited someone from HR, and the whole idea here was to let the boss know that they were really stressed out. And I said, "Let me guess. You were probably thinking..." He came up in a very, very hard branch of science. And I said, "Let me guess. You're probably thinking, 'What happened to science?'"

    18. MB

      Uh-huh.

    19. AH

      He said, He said, "For a little while, and then I figured, well, this is the next generation. I have to work with this." So they were calibrated to different set points. And I could imagine that's hard across generations, but even within generation, that's gotta be really, really tricky. So you're all about measurement-

    20. MB

      Mm-hmm

    21. AH

      ... creating actionable tools. Is there a language around this? Is there a way that we can, yes, learn to process and deal with our emotions, express our emotions in a more healthy way, also understanding of other people's emotion calibration point?

    22. MB

      A couple of things. One is that, going back to the kind of partner-leader position, is I think the confusion that people have, well, again, going back to vulnerability and emotion dysregulation, is that me being vulnerable or me sharing that I'm anxious or overwhelmed or afraid means that I'm weak. And I think what leaders need to do is recognize, like during the pandemic, I'll never forget this, like, wait, the university shut down. Everything was freaking out. I knew my team was freaked out. They were stressed out about their jobs. They were dealing with being parents and also being employees and working from home and all that stuff. Here I was, like, the head of the emotional intelligence lab and like, "How you doing, Marc?" And I'm like, "Great. Everything's fine." And meanwhile, I'm like, "I hate my life and I hate everybody around me." You know, and I had this... My, my mother-in-law, you know that story. She was stuck with me. And, um, and then I realized one day, like, I'm being a terrible role model. I'm not being authentic, and I'm not demonstrating the skill. So I decided to be really honest and say, "I'm gonna be frank. It's tough right now, but here's what I'm doing. I'm going for that walk every day at five o'clock. I can't go to my hot yoga class, but guess what? I'm, I found new workouts online that I'm doing, and I'm doing X, Y, and Z." So the point is, is that I think vulnerability that's, like, sharing and, like, you know, kinda spewing out all the fears that you have is not helpful when it's not accompanied by the strategy.

    23. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MB

      And that's the key, is that I'm feeling this way, but here's what I'm doing about it. That's what a role model is, and that's what a parent needs to do. The parent, you know, has to come home and say, you know... I can ima- imagine this. Like, you're a dad, and you're trying to be a role model for your kid. And my-- here's my dad. I-- My dad would have a hard day at work. "Daddy, let's play." "Son, leave me alone." Done. Like, that was the end of it. As opposed to dad comes home, "Daddy, let's play." "Son, you know, you have to realize, I have to just show-- tell you something. I just had a really rough day at work. I actually got into a fight with a colleague of mine. Didn't go well. And I said something that I really feel bad about. And so Daddy just needs a little bit of time to just process that, to just think about what I can say tomorrow to kind of help my relationship. And if you don't mind, I need that time right now. I love you, and we'll play later, but right now I'm just not in the right space for it. Okay, son?" "Okay, Dad." All right, let's stop there. What did I just teach my son or daughter about feelings? All right. I'm a dude. I'm a dad who has feelings. I am someone who makes mistakes. I say things that I regret. I reflect on the things that I make mistakes about. I problem solve about the things that I make mistakes about. I need time to, you know, recoup, you know, my energy, and then I can come back and be with you. How much time did that take?

    25. AH

      Seconds.

    26. MB

      Yeah. But how many of us, you know, are around people that can process emotion that way, that have the capacity to say, "I'm in a dark place. Things didn't go well. I made a mistake. I feel bad about it. I need to strategize, and then we'll come back and be together"? What happens to most of us, we're activated. Like, I'm pissed off at the person at work, and I project it on everybody else that's, you know, in my next situation. And the power of emotional self-awareness, going back to what we started with, and the power of emotion regulation, is that I notice that there's a shift. I notice that I'm feeling this anger, this frustration. I'm about to go into a new environment with my family, and I know, because I'm emotionally intelligent, that it's not gonna be pretty if I don't process that emotion before I move into the next situation. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a breath. I'm gonna take what I call a Meta-Moment. I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna take a breath. I'm gonna think about the best version of Marc, the father I wanna be, the husband I wanna be, and then I'm gonna open the door and arrive through that lens. That's what this work is about. It's what people need to learn.

    27. AH

      Yeah, I'm fascinated by time perception, and I feel like the human brain is so incredible at being in the moment and also getting ahead and thinking behind, and what you're really talking about is projecting into the future in a healthy way, not, not future tripping, as they call it, but in a healthy way. And I think that, I mean, broadly speaking, I'm almost embarrassed to say this as a n- neuroscientist, uh, but, you know, the more limbic... uh, we are, so to speak. I realize that's not really a thing, but the more limbic we are, um, the more in the moment we tend to be.

    28. MB

      Correct.

    29. AH

      And, and it's harder to get that version of ourself. But when we're relaxed, it's very easy to be like, "Well, I can remember this time," or, "I'm gonna project into the future." So to some extent, healthy recognition of one's emotions, it seems, healthy expression of one's emotions is the ability to feel, but also split off from the presence enough to get perspective.

    30. MB

      Correct.

  11. 56:15 – 1:03:12

    Meditation & Stress Tolerance, Tool: Label Emotions; Childhood

    1. AH

      We had, um, Richie Davidson on the podcast-

    2. MB

      Yeah

    3. AH

      ... and he talked about this myth about meditation, that it's supposed to clear the mind and make you relax, and he said it's, it's actually really about stress tolerance. You're supposed to sit there and resist the temptation to get up and move. Like, it's really stress inoculation, which I think is a really beautiful way of thinking about, and different way of thinking about meditation. So do you recommend that people meditate in order to become better emotion regulators?

    4. MB

      100%. Especially because if you can't be still, it's gonna be hard to access the good strategies. It's a necessary but insufficient strategy. I know that we're obsessed in our world right now with breathing and mindfulness and it's great. Um, but it's not enough. You- at the end, I'm gonna have to have the difficult conversation and, and regulate during that conversation. I can't be in my room by myself meditating. I always joke with my... You know, I open my book with that story of my mother-in-law, and I would take a breath. [inhales] [exhales] It's even clear why you have to get the hell out of my house, right? [chuckles] So, like, the breath may help you deactivate, but it doesn't necessarily shift your perspective.

    5. AH

      Mm.

    6. MB

      That's the mindfulness work.

    7. AH

      Mm.

    8. MB

      And I wanna jump in now because I think even the taking the moment to recognize you need to take this Meta-Moment is a mindset piece.

    9. AH

      Mm.

    10. MB

      It's saying, "Emotion regulation is important. I'll be a better version of myself if I don't walk into my house in this angry state and project it onto everybody else." But that's, we've only gone through one of, like, eight domains that I think are important. The next is, like, you gotta know what you're feeling because the feeling, as I said in my formula earlier, is gonna drive the strategy selection, so that labeling piece is really important. And I find that people's vocabularies is just awful. People, "I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm upset." You know, I don't think we did this last time, but if I were to push you, anxiety versus fear versus pressure-

    11. AH

      Oh, um-

    12. MB

      ... versus stress.

    13. AH

      Uh, I've thought about these before, so i-i... But it ends up being hair-splitting, and then I go into scientific operational definitions. So, y- uh, you know, anxiety, kind of a, a generalized state of too much sympathetic arousal. You know, stress is one or s- usually I'd add to that, you know, one or several things that I can pinpoint as-

    14. MB

      Mm-hmm

    15. AH

      ... kind of a source of that elevated level of arousal. Um, you know, panic would be if it-

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm

    17. AH

      ... if you've gotten so far outside the, um, time domain perspective, like, that the physiology overtakes and overwhelms. Like, I get into my scientist definition mode.

    18. MB

      Yeah, and I think that's interesting-

    19. AH

      Yeah

    20. MB

      ... because a lot of people... Well, some, most people, by the way, say it's all the same shit.

    21. AH

      Mm.

    22. MB

      That, like, it's all one big-

    23. AH

      Very, yeah

    24. MB

      ... yeah. You know, you're, uh, you know, technical. You're like, "Well, this is cortisol, and this is, you know, epinephrine, and this is this," and that's all good, too. But in the end, what you're regulating oftentimes is the underneath the emotion.

    25. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MB

      And so anxiety, uncertainty around the future, right? I get anxious when I can't predict. That's really what deep anxiety is. I want everything to be exactly the way I want it to be, and I can't control that, so ugh. Stress is having too many demands and not enough resources. Pressure, something at stake is dependent upon your behavior. Fear is immediate danger. So when I give you those kind of what we call in psychology the core relational themes, the appraisals that are part of those emotions, does it make you see how your strategy choice might be different?

    27. AH

      Yeah, definitely. Um, a- and speaking of, you know, I doubt it's just two bins, but I've heard once that, you know, some people need to learn to externalize and, uh, or to talk about their feelings more, other people probably less. I've heard this.

    28. MB

      Uh-huh. For sure.

    29. AH

      In fact, I'm, I'm, I'm friends with a, a couple, and one of them says, uh, she's a, she calls herself an external processor, so if something's bothering her, she has to externally process it.

    30. MB

      Oh, yeah.

  12. 1:03:12 – 1:04:32

    Sponsor: LMNT

    1. AH

      like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking LMNT makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an LMNT packet dissolved in it. I also drink LMNT dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. LMNT has a bunch of great-tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free LMNT sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack.

  13. 1:04:32 – 1:12:09

    Understand Your Assumptions, Tool: Intentional Co-Regulation

    1. AH

      So thus far, we've highlighted at least one thing that can be very useful, uh, for emotion regulation, which is the, you know, some short form of meditation for stress tolerance-

    2. MB

      Correct

    3. AH

      ... that can give somebody a, a, create a gap or a m- a, an opportunity and a moment to at least take some time and regulate a bit.

    4. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    5. AH

      I'd like to layer on something else which I'm hearing, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but that I'm hearing, which is we should all know our assumptions or our presumptions based on our upbringing.

    6. MB

      Correct.

    7. AH

      Like, we need to do this for ourselves. No one can do it for us. No single article is gonna spell out the full array of ways that one conceptualizes anger or sadness for men, for women, for straight people, for gay pe- like... But this space is actually worth thinking about, right? Uh, right now there's a, there's a little bit of a battle against introspection. This is not introspection. I wanna be very clear. [laughs] Um, that's a separate matter, but this is really just what any really good scientist would do, is to know your assumptions before you-

    8. MB

      Correct

    9. AH

      ... generate a hypothesis.

    10. MB

      I mean, it is introspection. I mean-

    11. AH

      Okay, fair

    12. MB

      ... but just like anything, over-introspection leads to rumination.

    13. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    14. MB

      And so we're not recommending... Like, I don't want you, Andrew, to, like, be obsessively, compulsively checking in with how you're feeling all day long. That is unhelpful. It's bad, bad, bad.

    15. AH

      Some people would say that's, I need to do more of that. [laughs]

    16. MB

      Maybe you do.

    17. AH

      I d- I, I don't.

    18. MB

      Um-

    19. AH

      I don't think so.

    20. MB

      Emotions matter when they're gonna either help or interfere with our performance.

    21. AH

      Mm.

    22. MB

      That's when we have to check in. Most of the time, thank goodness, they're in the background.

    23. AH

      Yeah.

    24. MB

      You know, when you're driving, you know, you're not thinking, "How am I feeling? How am I feeling?" It'd be weird. Like, that would just be weird. [laughs]

    25. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    26. MB

      And you don't wanna do that.

    27. AH

      But checking in with one's assumptions based on our upbringing, I think would be very useful. Um-

    28. MB

      Very. But that's the point

    29. AH

      ... you know. And has that been formalized into a... You know, people love questionnaires. I, I think if it hasn't been done, I think it would be amazing. About eight months ago, I had this wild experience where I realized I had this massive assumption worked into my framework. So I had these friends and I was visiting them, and they called me upstairs, and there was a bird flying around, and it was, like, flying into the windows.

    30. MB

      Mm-hmm.

  14. 1:12:09 – 1:15:49

    Vocabulary & Rethinking Emotion, Tool: Reframing

    1. MB

      We spent a lot of time on this, which is interesting, 'cause I don't usually spend so much time talking about these assumptions and mindsets and beliefs. We spent some time talking about the vocabulary words, which is very important. You gotta be self-aware. Anger is not the same as disappointment. Envy is not the same as jealousy. Happiness is not the same as contentment. Anxiety, stress, pressure, and fear and overwhelmed are all different. And I know people listening might be like, "Oh my God, you're overwhelming me," but, you know, we have our app that you've seen, the How We Feel app, to give you that vocabulary, and it really does matter. It matters for communication. It matters for getting your needs met. It matters for choosing the strategy. But again, it's not enough, so you gotta know how to breathe, and you have to do your mindfulness work to bring the temperature down, to still your mind. I mean, think about our minds nowadays. I mean, they're just-The ability to process information has dwindled completely. Just to give you one example, we used to do like two-and-a-half minute videos for trainings. People won't get through them. 30 seconds. I mean, this is why people aren't learning anything anymore, because you-- how are you gonna teach an emotion regulation strategy in 30 seconds? It's like an Instagram post. Of course, that's driving me crazy, too, because so many influencers are... My favorite one recently was this very famous influencer teaching about emotion regulation, and she said, you know, "I've decided to throw away my anxiety." And so she's in the car, and she opens the door, and she's like, "Goodbye, anxiety." And I'm thinking to myself, like, "That door is gonna hit you so hard in the face." But yet three thousand, five thousand, twenty-five whatever likes, and people are like, "Oh my God, I'm throwing away my anxiety." It's like you can't throw away your anxiety. It, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. The quick-fixing is an issue. Then we gotta learn how to rethink our feelings. That's the programming we have to do. We have to learn some of the things that you've spoken about on other podcasts here, whether it's the cognitive reappraisal, whether it's the reframing, whether it's the distancing, whether it's, you know, having gratitude a-as opposed to resentment and envy. I mean, I, I never had anyone help me practice cognitive regulation. Nobody ever taught me there was even a str-- I never knew there was a thing called reframing. And it's saved my life as an adult because, again, we go in with assumptions about other people, too. And if you can say, "Wait a minute, Marc, is there another way to look at this? Is there another story you can be telling yourself around this?" This goes back to something we talked about earlier. We wanna be careful about that, 'cause in abusive relationships it can become gaslighting, right?

    2. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MB

      "Honey, you know, you're too sensitive." "No, you're a jerk. I'm not too sensitive. [chuckles] You're trying to make me feel, like, you know, bad about the fact that you're lying to me all the time." Not helpful. And that can be... That's also reframing, but it's a, a form of deception, you know, where another person is trying to define your reality for you. Super scary. And we can do that to ourselves, too. We can trick ourselves into believing things that way. Reframing is playing with this idea of telling yourself a new story, but you have to always be a scientist about it, and that's the one thing about all the strategies, is that you have to come back as a scientist and ask yourself the question: Is this helping me live the life I want? Am I in a better relationship? Am I better able at managing my anxiety applying these cognitive strategies or these labeling strategies?

    4. AH

      I

  15. 1:15:49 – 1:22:15

    Emotional Intelligence Training, Self-Evaluation

    1. AH

      find p-psychology fascinating. Uh, the reason I became a biologist, however, is because, um, I got confused by psychology.

    2. MB

      Uh-huh.

    3. AH

      And-

    4. MB

      It's too big of a field.

    5. AH

      Well, and the field wasn't as evolved as it is now, as structured as it is now. But I remember thinking, "Okay, you know, I could see the argument, maybe even the experiment for healthy expression of emotion allows that emotion to move through-

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm

    7. AH

      ... allows us to be healthier physically and mentally. I can also probably find a manuscript that shows that the longer, for every minute longer we focus on being angry, that our anger grows, and-

    8. MB

      Mm-hmm

    9. AH

      ... I don't know what the answer is. I, I, um, I sense it's, that's probably not the case. But I just remember being very afraid of the contradictions. Absence makes the heart grow fine, fonder.

    10. MB

      Uh-huh.

    11. AH

      Out of sight, out of mind. [chuckles] I was like, "Well, which one is it?"

    12. MB

      Exactly.

    13. AH

      And of course, it's both, right? I mean, and that's the complexity of the human mind, so I decided to think about cells and circuits instead. And, um, served me well in my career. I, probably in my life, I, I remain i-intensely interested in the sorts of issues we're talking about-

    14. MB

      Mm-hmm

    15. AH

      ... now, including these generational differences. And, and here's my question: Typically, most work, school, and other environments are hierarchical in the sense that the older people have more seniority and-

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm

    17. AH

      ... more power. I sense that nowadays there's an understandable concern and interest in young people's emotions and emotional processing. But I also get the sense from my peers that there's this kind of fear of the younger generation, like they're actually in control. I just got through doing three two-hour-long trainings, 'cause Stanford understandably has you do, like-

    18. MB

      Mm-hmm

    19. AH

      ... harassment training and-

    20. MB

      Sure

    21. AH

      ... workplace safety, workplace violence. You, you have to learn what the rules are. And I was very surprised to realize that all faculty and staff and some postdocs take this training. Students don't take it, meaning you have two completely different views of what the rules are. And this is not unique to Stanford. This is unique to a lot of big organizations.

    22. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. AH

      And, um, it's not even a criticism. I, I'm sure, like everything at Stanford, there's a rationale. But it's kind of interesting. You, you would hope that there would be a universal at least nomenclature.

    24. MB

      Correct.

    25. AH

      Just like we know what a mitochondria are here and in Nicaragua, it'd be nice to know that-

    26. MB

      I agree

    27. AH

      ... you know, anger and disappointment, while those words are spoken differently in two different countries, that there's sort of a, a basic universal understanding of what emotions are, what they're not, how much comes from our past, how much is about our physiology, and kinda how to work with them.

    28. MB

      Right.

    29. AH

      And I'm not saying this is gonna solve all the problems in the world, but a lot of the problems that I see out there are misunderstandings about where the line is.

    30. MB

      Mm-hmm.

  16. 1:22:15 – 1:27:01

    Living with Discomfort & Emotional Intelligence

    1. AH

      I'm using my, checking back into-

    2. MB

      [chuckles]

    3. AH

      ... my, uh, developmental biases as a way to, uh, ask questions that I hope are relevant to everyone, and now especially. And one of the things that I've observed is that there seems to be a broadening of the contexts in which broader ranges of emotions are allowed. Online is a really good example of all of it. All of it, right? And I think that the, the judgments about, well, this person is losing their cool, and someone will say, "Well, you know, so-and-so stepped in front of his motorcycle," for instance. You know, I mean, these are the debates that reflect all these developmental biases and in some cases there's a legal line, and those legal channels, by the way, are very interesting. Um, there's a great channel, um, it's a little too Hollywood in, 'cause the guy worked in Hollywood, but he's a lawyer, and it's called The Legal Beef. I don't know him, but he does these everyday cases of like his... Someone says, like, "It's illegal to film here. You can't touch my camera," or, you know, and, and he goes, "Well, that's The Legal Beef," tells you, and he gives you exactly what the law says. And so I think we tend to like that. I certainly like that. Like where-

    4. MB

      Sure

    5. AH

      ... I like thick, black lines, clear operational definitions. But it is true that, for instance, growing up, I, I wasn't of the mind that, you know, it's not okay to cry. I just... But it was definitely certain places, certain times.

    6. MB

      Yeah.

    7. AH

      It does seem like the workplace and school and online, it's become either more accepted or it just happens that people are bringing more of their own stuff, and I think one thing I worry about, I'm showing my age here, but the one thing that I worry about as people think about their emotions without having really good strategies to work with them, is that they lose the ability to be effective.

    8. MB

      I agree.

    9. AH

      Because time is running, and I hear from a fair number of friends whose kid is struggling because they're dealing with depression, or they're dealing with anxiety, or they have a cannabis use disorder, or they're... Time's ticking, and developmental milestones are real. And so the question I have is: How should people think about evolving their own ability to work with their emotions? 'Cause you said it's a process, it's a dance, it's a, uh, it takes time, with the need to really show up and get things done in life.

    10. MB

      Yeah.

    11. AH

      'Cause you and I are two people who are degreed and have steady jobs and, and it's, we have space to think about this stuff.

    12. MB

      Well, we do, and I always tell people that, uh, like for example, there's a school, I won't mention its name 'cause this is not a good story, uh, post the election, this past election, wrote a note to every student and said, "We recognize that some of you may be feeling overwhelmed by your feelings, and if you need to take the day off, it's okay."I almost had a conniption about that. I was the, that's my father speaking, conniption. But [laughs] I was like, "I cannot believe this is happening." They weren't one of the school that I work with. I wanted to call the head of that school and say, like, "This is the worst advice you can give people." People have to learn how to live with difficult feelings, and if we're gonna give excuses to people to like, you know, they can just like, "I'm so overwhelmed by what's happened," and not be able to process it and manage it and move forward in their life, we're gonna create a generation of very weak people. So I couldn't agree more, and that's not what this work is about. Like, that's the confusion. It's been politicized in many ways sometimes, and there's groups of people now that say this is, "You're making kids fragile by having them talk about their feelings." And I say, "It's called emotional intelligence, emotion regulation." We're not letting them, like, sit in their feelings all day long. We want them to recognize, is that feeling helping or hurting them achieve their goals? If it's getting in the way, you need to strategize. And the goal is to move forward, not to be stuck in. I think that's a huge, huge issue right now, and the, the same thing with discomfort. Like, it's okay to be unco- I mean, eh, my whole career is built upon being uncomfortable. People saying, "Well, I don't like your work. Your, your program's gonna turn kids into homosexuals. I don't wanna talk about feelings," you know, "You're this." Um-

    13. AH

      I'm not a psychologist, but you recreated your childhood with the public.

    14. MB

      Yeah.

    15. AH

      [laughs]

    16. MB

      There you go. Sublimated. Um, but, you know, I love that feeling and that discomfort. I sit with it. I don't try to push it away, and I think, "Marc, what's your creative solution?" That to me is, like, the beauty of the work. I don't get... If I were, if I just got paralyzed, you know, by that, I would, where would I go in life? I would be frozen. We don't want kids to be frozen. We don't want anyone to be frozen. We want people to be able to live their lives, experience the full range of emotions, regulate effectively, and achieve their goals.

  17. 1:27:01 – 1:34:19

    Marc's Work & Criticism; Emotion "Leakage" & Switching Mindset

    1. AH

      I'm no psychologist.

    2. MB

      [laughs]

    3. AH

      I've said that four times. Uh, but I have the strong feeling that your martial arts training prepared you to be public-facing 'cause it is a relationship, right? And I'd like to talk a little bit about that relationship specifically because-

    4. MB

      Yeah

    5. AH

      ... you've been this amazing ambassador for emotions, what they are, how to work with them in a healthy way, and to also still show up in life, to not necessarily take the day off, right? I mean, if you-

    6. MB

      Yeah

    7. AH

      ... lose a-

    8. MB

      Of course

    9. AH

      ... a close family member, it makes it, eh, we would all say, like, "Of course, stay home. Take a day. D- take what you need," right? But eventually come back, you know? That's an important piece too.

    10. MB

      You have to come back.

    11. AH

      That's an important piece too, to not, um, as, uh, one scientist I used to work with say, you know, dissolve into a puddle. He used to say when someone's paper came back, he said, "And if it gets re- before you look, if it gets rejected, don't dissolve into a puddle of your own tears."

    12. MB

      Yes.

    13. AH

      It was that kind of old school harsh thing, but I think it came from a place of care 'cause you're like, "Listen, it's not the end of the world." And there have been graduate students who have killed themselves on the basis of their PhD-

    14. MB

      Terrible

    15. AH

      ... not going well. I, I know stories about this, sadly. You have taken some heat-

    16. MB

      Sure

    17. AH

      ... for both being a champion of this process, but also by not giving in to this idea that we're all just supposed to take the decade off.

    18. MB

      Yeah.

    19. AH

      Um, and so you get it from both sides. You're in a unique position [laughs] .

    20. MB

      Yeah.

    21. AH

      Um, and I feel for you because some people will say, "Hey, listen, you're teaching people to be soft," and clearly that's not what you're, um, advocating for. And people have also said, "Hey, you're pushing us to, like, push our feelings away, and there's a lot that we're really angry about in the world, and how can you be talking about this when fascism is taking over, there's a war, this-

    22. MB

      Yeah

    23. AH

      ... and, you know, and g- and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. So how have you, just personally, if you're willing, how have, how has that landed, and how have you decided to respond to that?

    24. MB

      I love challenge, and so, you know, I wrote this piece for Time magazine. It was... And of course, uh, you probably know this, but when you write an op-ed, the publisher decides on the title, and they like to be provocative, so they called it "The Overreaction Epidemic," and I got slammed for it. You know, overreaction, we're not overreacting. The world's coming to an end. And it does feel like, for many of us, you know, between wars and everything else happening, political polarization, you know, it does feel that way for many on both sides. And I say, yes, but running around yelling and screaming at people, how is that helpful? Like, where is the benefit to you and to the other person to move forward? And so to me, it just makes me think more creatively about the work I do. And the other side, you know, where people have said that I'm now making people fragile because I'm getting kids and boys to talk about their feelings, and it's gonna make them more fragile. Um, as a matter of fact, I saw somebody said recently that this work causes kids to have mental illness, and I was like, "Wow, that's a good one." And again, this stems from misunderstanding of the concepts. A, I'm a big stickler, like you said, operational definitions. I wanna be super clear about what I'm teaching. I'm not teaching la, la, la, la. I'm teaching you how to be emotionally self-aware. Would you agree that it matters to be clear about what you're feeling?

    25. AH

      Yes.

    26. MB

      Thank you. Okay. So when you're clear about how you're feeling, and if that feeling is disrupting you from being a good student or being a good partner or being a good manager leader, do you think that you should use techniques to help you figure out how to manage it?

    27. AH

      Yes, absolutely.

    28. MB

      Perfect. That's what we teach. It's really clear. When you have conceptual clarity, I think there's less confusion.

    29. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    30. MB

      What happens is that people, it's gotten politicized. You know, it's confusing around, going back to what we spoke about earlier, that this is obsessive checking in. This is prying into kids' personal lives. Here's the dealA kid comes to school with feelings. We all have feelings from the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night, even when we sleep. Have you ever been irritable in the morning?

  18. 1:34:19 – 1:35:32

    Sponsor: Rorra

    1. AH

      an unfortunate reality, but tap water often contains contaminants that negatively impact our health. In fact, a 2020 study by the Environmental Working Group estimated that more than 200 million Americans are exposed to PFAS chemicals, also known as forever chemicals, through drinking of tap water. These forever chemicals are linked to serious health issues such as hormone disruption, gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues, and many other health problems. The Environmental Working Group has also shown that over 122 million Americans drink tap water with high levels of chemicals known to cause cancer. It's for all these reasons that I'm thrilled to have Rorra as a sponsor of this podcast. I've been using the Rorra countertop system for almost a year now. Rorra's filtration technology removes harmful substances, including endocrine disruptors and disinfection byproducts, while preserving beneficial minerals like magnesium and calcium. It requires no installation or plumbing. It's built from medical-grade stainless steel, and its sleek design fits beautifully on your countertop. In fact, I consider it a welcome addition to my kitchen. It looks great, and the water is delicious. If you'd like to try Rorra, you can go to rorra.com/huberman and get an exclusive discount. Again, that's rorra, R-O-R-R-A dot com slash huberman.

  19. 1:35:32 – 1:45:11

    Excitement, Positive Emotion; Modern Concerns, AI & Disconnection

    1. AH

      I love it, and, um, I've two reflections I'd love your reflections on. Uh, the first one is, uh, positive states and emotions that are also dangerous. When people are feeling over-affiliative, over-comfortable, they sometimes say things that get them into real trouble. Uh, they either disclose things or they, um, make jokes that later they pay-

    2. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. AH

      ... the, the price for. Um, this is, I think, maybe not as common as anger and sadness and anxiety, but given that some very prominent, uh, very, very smart people I've seen completely destroy their careers by, it used to be called tweeting. You go, "What? This is crazy." This person, actually a chair of psychiatry, I'm not gonna beat around the bush here-

    4. MB

      Mm-hmm

    5. AH

      ... was fired for saying something that was totally, it was actually inappropriate and lame and stupid. And you just go, "But this person is clearly intelligent. They're the chair of a, of a Ivy League school in psychiatry." And you say, "Well, what happened?" And what was interesting to me were the tweets leading up to it. You could say he was showing his true self, but there was this sort of, like, ease and comfort around joking.

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. AH

      And there's certain jokes you just don't make. And so I think what you're describing is equally important for not overstepping, not, um, you know, hurting oneself or other people.

    8. MB

      Activation is activation. So your heart rate and your, you know, different chemicals get released when you're super excited and when you're anxious. Activation might be the same. The psychology of it is different, right? One is, like, anticipation of, like, positive things. One is anticipation of, you know, the negative things.And of course, emotions drive our thinking, our decision-making, everything. So you know how many of us have made a mistake when we were too excited when we were young? You know, we won't go into those stories now. Excitement without regulation is not helpful. It's funny because you tell that and going back to the school situation, and that's a big problem with a lot of teachers. They're like, "The kid is so excited. They're just going to see grandma after school, and they can't stop talking about it all day long, and it's driving me crazy." So positive emotions can be a pain in the butt, too. And th-th-- But they're afraid that they don't want to squelch the kid's excitement. And I say, "Well, let's talk about it. What do you think?" I mean, this is, like, the easiest solution I, I came up with on the spot. I said, "What's the challenge?" "He just, he can't stop talking about going to see his grandmother." I said, "Well, he must love his grandmother. That's a great thing. Have you given him an opportunity to just stand up in the front of the class and just tell everybody how excited he is and just let it, get it out?" "What do you mean? You want me to give him the like, give him, like, the throne?" I said, "Yeah, I want you to try this out. I want you to let him when he's like, 'La, la, la, la.' He can't stop talking about it. I want you to say, 'Johnny, I'm gonna give you a minute to get up and tell everybody how excited you are, but then we're gonna go back to math. We're gonna go back to science.' And let me know how that works." And of course, two weeks later, I go back and visit. She's like, "You're a magician." [chuckles] I'm like, "I'm not a magician. He just needed an outlet for his emotions. Give the kid the one minute to just tell everybody how excited he is, but also let him know that the expectations that I have for you are not changing. Just because you're excited about going to see grandma doesn't mean you don't have to focus." That's the magic of the work.

    9. AH

      Be a channel, not a dam.

    10. MB

      There you go.

    11. AH

      I didn't make that up. I learned that when I was a camp counselor in Yosemite. You get a kid that, you know, back then we didn't have concepts of ADHD.

    12. MB

      Yeah.

    13. AH

      You had a kid that back then you would just be like, "Oh-

    14. MB

      Mm-hmm

    15. AH

      ... this kid is, he's out of control." He wasn't harming anybody. He just, like, would not settle down. Y-you can't, like, just say, "Hey, sit down," or I mean, that kid would always be getting in trouble, get sent home. So you give them an opportunity to do something.

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AH

      But then you have to, like, let them settle down.

    18. MB

      Yeah.

    19. AH

      Likewise, for the kid that was more creative and less physical, if your entire bunk was a bunch of kids who were super physical, that always would happen. But then you'd find out this kid who was like, had some, some, something of value to share with the other kids, and then it would establish his place in, in this group. There's a very weird thing happening lately online, which is this, uh, obsession with the '90s. Um, I grew up in the '90s, so a teen in the '90s.

    20. MB

      Whitney Houston.

    21. AH

      Um, and there's an example that I saw recently that I think is really relevant to what you're describing. It was a picture of a classroom sitting around listening to a radio. I remember doing this. It was an actual picture, and it said, "When the s- Challenger Space Shuttle blew up, we all listened to it with our teachers," because we were listening to that-

    22. MB

      Mm-hmm

    23. AH

      ... space shuttle launch. "And then afterwards, we went back to our lesson plan. We didn't process it for weeks and weeks." And someone said, "Gosh, I miss the '90s." Now, at my school, it was a little bit different. I actually remember the teacher going around the room the next day and asking people if they had anything they wanted to share, and people would share their thoughts. And then, like, one kid said, like, "I heard they found a foot," you know? And then she was like, "Okay, Garrett," you know, like, "Settle down." You know, like, some kids were being a bit morbid and stuff. Maybe she shouldn't have done that. I don't know.

    24. MB

      Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    25. AH

      But there was an opportunity. But I think that was the last it was ever discussed. And we witnessed with our ears, it's not the same as seeing it, but we witnessed with our ears, um, a bunch of people blowing up. And it is true. It was like, "Okay, this happened. This is tragic. We're gonna talk about it for a bit, and then we're not gonna talk about it anymore." I'd love your thoughts on the picture I just laid out. What happened, what's happening now, this kind of emphasis on let's get back to when things were not as coddled. Um, I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

    26. MB

      You know, we were talking about this a little while ago. The world that kids are growing up in now is different. It is a different world. I was not thinking about climate change when I was a kid. I really didn't worry about who was president or not president and the, whatever's going on politically. I wasn't thinking about, you know, wars as much as people are thinking about right now. Um, I wasn't thinking about artificial intelligence and technology is gonna take over my career. So there are real concerns that high school kids tell me they're feeling, and it's really causing them a lot of stress. We haven't created solutions. We're not teaching them how to manage it. We're gonna have to learn how to manage it in this world we're living in. So I do think, you know, the challenge is there. I just wanna say one thing that's related, which is this artificial intelligence piece that is obviously prominent right now in society, which people are freaked out about f-for some reasons and thrilled about for other reasons. The thing that I'm most concerned about is this, is that about twenty percent of adolescents now report using technology, AI, as a therapist, you know, as a companion. Now, do I think you can get advice from AI about, like, stress? Definitely. Do I think, um, it's gonna help? A little bit. Do I want people to be in a relationship with a chatbot? Absolutely not. And here's the deal. When I was a kid who was being bullied and, like, spit on on the bus, and my head being banged in the windows, and I came off the bus, what I needed was a human being to say, "I love you," a human being to grab my hand, a human being to say, "We're gonna get through this together." There's no way that technology can replace that. And I would argue that this, this obsession with technology to solve our emotional problems is a symptom of the thing we started talking about from the beginning, which is this fear of intimacy, this fear of connection, this fear of being present with people's emotions. It's so scary for parents to be with their kids' emotionsThey're, "I never learned how to deal with my anxiety. I can't deal with my kids' anxiety. I'd rather not know that they're feeling anxious." And then I say, "Do you want your kid married to a chatbot?" [chuckles] And so the real issue, in my humble opinion, is that we are cultivating more and more disconnection. And I think about this, you know, developmentally, and I don't think, you know, in general, you know, I was stressed out as a kid, and I was, I was at the age where video games were becoming pop-popular, and I got that first little football game. I could spend 10 hours a day on that. That was my way of not being in the real world, of not dealing with my challenges, of my parents not connecting with me. Then I got a Walkman, and then the internet came, and then I got email, and then I got social media, and now it's AI. This is just an endless trajectory of outside influences that are pulling us away from being in relationship. And, uh, I think I wouldn't say this [chuckles] obviously I wouldn't say this publicly, this is a podcast is that I never thought evolution can move so quickly, but I do feel that way all of a sudden, what's happening now, this chronic disconnection. And kids are preferring to text instead of to communicate with their friends. There's research, you know, anxiety, stress, and depression are increasing consistently, and it comes back to connection and strategies.

    27. AH

      Yeah. A good friend of mine who's a geneticist said it's, you know, it takes a very long time to evolve-

    28. MB

      Yeah

    29. AH

      ... a species. It doesn't take very long to devolve a species. You can crash a species very quickly.

  20. 1:45:11 – 1:54:38

    Major Societal Challenges & Everyday Progress

    1. AH

      In terms of, um, people feeling overwhelmed and saying, "I can't do anything right now because of what's happening in the world," uh, I remember when I was an undergraduate, the '90s were a pretty peaceful time.

    2. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    3. AH

      I mean, we had Gulf War and things like that-

    4. MB

      Sure

    5. AH

      ... but relatively speaking. And, uh, the professor whose lab I worked in told me, this was in Santa Barbara, where they burned the bank down during the Vietnam War protests, but he said that in the early '70s, uh, very early '70s and, and late '60s, that he'd be giving a lecture, he was a young professor, and students would just stand up. "What about the war-

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm

    7. AH

      ... in Vietnam?" And he's like, "This is a physiology class. We're talking about this..." And they'd say, "What about..." And the students would start protesting. So this is not a really new phenomenon.

    8. MB

      I agree.

    9. AH

      I mean, this was happening, people feeling overwhelmed, people feeling like the campus was theirs. They're gonna make noise. I'm not justifying unlawful protest. I'm not, I'm certainly not justifying any kind of protest where certain students are being restricted.

    10. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    11. AH

      I'm fundam- I'll go on record. I'm fundamentally opposed to that. But this notion that people are feeling overwhelmed, and young people are full of energy, [chuckles] you know, and they want people to know how overwhelmed they feel and how angry they feel, but in the backdrop, the line's moving f- the conveyor's moving forward.

    12. MB

      I agree.

    13. AH

      But I think that in order for people to feel like... And this comes from the article that was written by you. Uh, you q- uh, quoted a comment. Someone said, "We're not overreacting. We're underreacting." So in order for people to feel heard, I wanna double-click on that comment, but in order for people to feel really heard and, and understood in their reaction, I think it's also important that our society just can't sit around protesting all day and, and, and we can't collapse into, we can't dissolve into a puddle of our own tears. And I do wanna talk to you about the ways to f- that, that you're formalizing this work because one thing that I think is wonderful that's happened in the last 10 years or so is that we've moved from the language of consciousness and mindfulness, which I think are great terms-

    14. MB

      Of course

    15. AH

      ... to long exhale breathing, to the notion that stress can be adaptive, Ali Crum's lab, it can make us better, to an understanding that there's a way of working with your physiology to be stronger and yet acknowledge your physiology. "I'm feeling stressed. Now I need to bring my stress down. I'm, I'm exhausted. I need to figure out a way to have more energy, work on sleep," et cetera, et cetera. I don't think it's happened yet, but I think it's starting that psychology needs the same kind of organizational principles so that people can move past narcissism, gaslighting, claiming everyone that they don't like is, is being abusive. And there's been a sort of psychological, I don't wanna say collapse, but I don't think people know how to navigate this space. Whereas I think mindfulness, consciousness, and the idea that we need to take care of our sleep, we need to exercise, we need sunlight, you know, I and others have worked very hard to try and get people to understand, like, you need to work with your body. You're not trying to conquer your body, but you do need to nudge it and sometimes push it. You don't wanna be that person 10 hours on the treadmill-

    16. MB

      Yeah

    17. AH

      ... who's suppressing everything. And I think where psychology has been a little bit self-defeating is that there's a lot of language.

    18. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    19. AH

      And it can start to feel like, "Ugh, this is a lot. I got shit to do." So along those lines, if you are told, you know, "So-and-so's gaslighting me. They're a narcissist," that, you know, uh, fascism is taking over-

    20. MB

      Mm-hmm

    21. AH

      ... and, like, you expect me to not be outraged? Quote, "We're not overreacting. We're underreacting."

    22. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. AH

      You're a martial artist. You're a very staid guy.

    24. MB

      There you go.

    25. AH

      Where do you start? What do you say to that person?

    26. MB

      Well, I think we have to ask them if they're being effective. And so is whatever you're doing leading to the change that you want it to have? And if they know about emotions, you know, I don't know about you, but when someone is yelling and screaming at me, I shut down. I'm no longer present, and so they're actually not getting their goal achieved.

    27. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    28. MB

      If they're asking me to do something different or they're trying to help me understand something, if they can't communicate in a way that I can understand it and I wanna actually listen, it's not going anywhere. So I think that people need to recognize thatI'm a person who is both and. So just to give you a concrete example, our program, Ruler, which is the school-based work that we do, is in all the schools in one district of Harlem, New York. Twenty-one schools, thousands of kids, the teachers, the leaders. The deputy superintendent, Don, is my former student. They're facing food scarcity. These are really troubled families in many instances. They're facing, obviously, racism, they're facing poverty, but you know, home insecurity. Of course, I want to solve for that problem. I would do anything I could to make sure everybody has a meal. At the same time, every one of those kids is being dropped off at school, and we're expecting that kid to thrive for eight hours a day in that classroom. How could I not teach that kid skills to thrive? I have to. There's no obligation. There's no, there's... It's, it's my moral obligation to help that kid be the best version of themselves, no matter what their background is, no matter what their circumstances are. It doesn't mean that I'm not also thinking about that. And I think that people in our society today, this is part of that article, is that we're so focused on the big change. Many of us have very little control over the big change. I feel blessed that I have some control over the lives of thousands of kids that are waking up every morning and trying to be the best versions of themselves, but they need help. They need strategy. They need teachers who are well, who can be the best versions of themselves for them. They need leaders who care about the teachers. And so I think that we have to find, in our own way, I know my way, and I sleep well at night thinking I'm doing important work to support people in having wellbeing. It doesn't mean I don't think about the larger i-issues. Um, but I do think that the more well people are, the better they're able to be at problem-solving around the larger societal issues. I don't think a dysregulated society is gonna solve its problems.

    29. AH

      I agree completely, and I'm grateful for the work you're doing. I, um, I feel like the... Again, I, I just draw the parallel to what's happened around sleep, stress regulation, exercise, nutrition. I feel like there's always resistance at the beginning. Like, "What is this stuff?" Like, "I don't want a morning routine. I just wanna get up and do my thing." Like, "I don't wanna hear that alcohol is bad for me." Like, a-

    30. MB

      Mm-hmm.

  21. 1:54:38 – 2:05:33

    Physical/Emotional Identity & Envision Best Self, Tool: Meta-Moment

    1. AH

      examples of the concepts that are just core concepts? You s- we started off this way, but-

    2. MB

      Sure

    3. AH

      ... and then maybe a few practical tools so that people can start to think about this in the same way that 10 years ago we might have talked about like, "Hey, like, you think sleep when you're dead is working for you, but you're actually kind of an idiot when you don't sleep, and you're in a job that requires you be smart, not an idiot." This kinda thing.

    4. MB

      Yeah. I think firstly, you know, in my book I have something called the Dealing with Feeling Wheel, and this goes directly to what you're thinking about. When people are dysregulated, when parents are, like, dealing with a kid, for example, who's dysregulated, they get desperate. "Let's take a deep breath. Everybody breathe, breathe. No, let's go for a walk. No, let's cook together. No, let's play a game. No, let's do this." And it, you know, you go crazy. That's not helpful. I'll give you an example from myself. For ab- a couple of months, I've been just... I have so much work, and I have not slept well. The last week, I've prioritized going to bed earlyI prioritize like real dark, you know, the darkened room. And like to, I got like I woke up today at 7:30, I was like, "God, this is a miracle. Like 7:30. It's like, you know, it's the middle of the afternoon," and I feel energized today. I feel, you know, and I'm in a good place, and I've, I have felt that way for like a week now. I recognize I'm building new patterns for my sleep. It's no longer in my wheel a priority. I figured it out. There are some days where my... I just feel I can't think straight. I'm like all over the place. I realize that I've been maybe on social media too much, or I realize I have like eig- eighty-five things on my to-do list, and I'm like, "Marc, you gotta go back to your mindfulness work. You need some breathwork. You need to just sit, right? You need to take that space. You need to get to that hot yoga class. You need to do this. You need this back into your routine." There are other days I sit around and think, "I'm so lonely. You know, [chuckles] like I don't talk to anybody anymore. You know, I feel like so like l- you know, whatever." And I'm like, "I need connection. I'm desperate for connection." I think that's the way we have to look at it, that there are these components of our wellbeing and of, that are correlated and are the same as what we do to regulate our emotions. There's the self-awareness piece. Am I, am I at all like paying attention to my emotions right now? There's that breathwork piece. There's the cognitive work. There's the relational work. There's the biology of, uh, the sleep, the nutrition, the physical activity. Like, for example, one of the things that happened for me in writing this new book was that I, uh, became very, very, um, committed to my own fitness. Much even... And martial arts was like, you know, that was like teaching 10 karate classes a week. I was younger then. I was in the best shape of my life. Then I got like professor, dumpy professor syndrome, and like that is not-- I'm not getting on that stage looking that way anymore. I was like, "Whoa." And I made this major commitment, and one of the things that happened to me was that it became my go-to strategy for my overwhelm and stress while writing my book. And I remember saying to myself one day, like, "Marc, you may not finish this book, but you're gonna be in the best freaking shape of your life." And truthfully, it transformed my life. Now, here's why I'm telling you that story, 'cause in the conversation with this friend Marco, who is a trainer, we started having these conversations around fitness identity and how it relates to emotional intelligence identity. And I realized something magical, which is that now at fifty-six, it's been four years that I've like done my four workouts a week. I mean, I haven't really missed a workout unless I'm like on a vacation, but I'll still do something else. I cannot not exercise, and this morning just to be, you know, talking about, you know, coming on Huberman Lab, I'm like, I woke up at 7:30. I'm like, "I gotta get there by this time, but like I got, I g- I can't work out. I have to work out before I go to Huberman. Like, I can't show up not doing my workout." [chuckles] And, um, I knew I would feel better. I knew I'd be more present, and I did my hour, you know, back workout. But the point I'm m- really making here is that I identify as a person who exercises. I, I, and I, it, it's like just who I am. My vision for the world is that we cultivate people who identify as well-regulated. Because if you walk into a room thinking to yourself, "I got this. Nothing you can say can trigger me. I can get through this," or, "I can manage my emotions," life is gonna be completely different. And that's why I end my book with this concept that people talk a lot about, like be the best self, and everybody's talking about their best selves. But it really does relate to emotion regulation, and there's good research to support it, that you asked me for like a concrete like technique. Well, this is that thing we call the Meta-Moment, and I cultivated this technique with my colleague Robin. She was a therapist working with patients in New York City, and she's like, "I teach them all strategies, and then they go home, and they yell at each other." [chuckles] And I'm like, "I'm a scientist working in schools, and everybody's like, 'This is boring,' and then nobody wants to do this." I'm like, "The motivation is not there. People don't see the benefit. People, they don't see that their life is gonna be better. They're gonna make better choices, have better relationships, et cetera." So what's gonna make a difference? Well, as we know, between stimulus and response, there is space. Okay, so what do I do to fill the space? Well, the first step is I gotta sense that something's going on. I gotta be aware. S- wow, that just triggered me. Wow, that was not cool. My automatic habitual response is gonna be, "Who the F do you think you are?" Like, "Don't talk to me that way," or whatever it might be. Marc, who is, identifies as the most well-regulated person in the whole wide world, the feelings master, the emotional guru, he has a process. He automatically takes the breath. He automatically builds a space. He automatically takes a step back. He does not go on that gut. He says, "There's a better way." But that's not enough. So now I have to think about my best version of myself in my role as a husband. How do I wanna be seen? How do I wanna be talked about? How do I wanna be experienced? In my role as a professor, in my role as a presenter, different roles, different selves. And I've helped millions of people engage in this process, by the way, and when you build the space to think about your best self, what it does is it pulls you away from the trigger, and it brings you back to your values.And then through the lens of Marc, the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence, like, he's a different dude. He's a totally different guy than Marc who grew up in New Jersey being bullied and is triggered. Marc, who's a center director, is like a, you know, Oz. You know, the, uh, he's a Yoda of emotional intelligence. Oh. Well, how would he respond to this moment? This is a beautiful challenge. Love it. And so my point is, is that we can do that for ourselves. We can help other people do it. We can do it in a moment. Ideally, we'll do it proactively. So when you go home or when you come into work, you pause, you identify, and you think about the best version of yourself, and you enter in through that lens. My favorite story about this was, you know, we teach this in schools, and this one kid, you know, when you know when, when people joke about things, you know they got it. So I'm, I'm in this school and this teacher's like, "Marc, you know, this stuff is, you know, it's really funny." I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "Well, this kid was really, really not being kind to someone on the playground, and I called him out on it. And he came over and I said, 'You know, I need to know exactly what happened.' And the kid said, 'You know, Mrs. Johnson, I'm gonna tell you what happened, but I need you to take a Meta-Moment first.'" [chuckles] Like, the kid knew-

    5. AH

      Mm-hmm

    6. MB

      ... that if he, if she were looking at what he had done through the best version of herself, she would respond differently. That's the magic of the work.

    7. AH

      Well, I think the, the language around Meta-Moment is something that I'm gonna, with your permission, I'm gonna help propagate because I do think languaging and labels is very-

    8. MB

      Yeah

    9. AH

      ... very important in terms of getting useful tools out more broadly. You know, again, not to knock on the mindfulness meditation work that's gone-

    10. MB

      No

    11. AH

      ... goes back thousands of years, but, you know, it occurred to me at some point, like, there's, there's genuine power for mental and physical health in these practices.

    12. MB

      Correct.

    13. AH

      Yoga nidra, et cetera. And I had to, like, have a conversation with myself and go, "You know what? I'm gonna take some heat for this, but I'm not gonna call it yoga nidra. I'm gonna call it non-sleep deep rest-

    14. MB

      Mm-hmm

    15. AH

      ... so more people do it." And I, and I apologize, but that's, you know, it, you know, there was a reason. There's a reason to say, "This is the physiological sigh." You know, eventually now we know you can just do long exhale breathing, right?

    16. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    17. AH

      Um, principle's the same. But languaging is so key for people to adopt these concepts, and they can't drink from the fire hose. This is also what I've realized. They can't take it all at once. But you're building a curriculum for people.

    18. MB

      Correct.

    19. AH

      And, and it's so important. I, I also... I'm so struck by this, the link that you discovered and, uh, and em- clearly embody of internalizing a, a f- a fit person identification. You know, you're a coach of a team. You're not gonna be a slovenly coach.

    20. MB

      Right.

    21. AH

      You're gonna show that you also could... You did all this, and you could continue to do it if the-

    22. MB

      Mm-hmm

    23. AH

      ... if your students and your players challenged you to, right? Identifying with a certain emotional maturity-

    24. MB

      Yes

    25. AH

      ... regulation level, that, that is also key. Because for myself, I mean, year, many years ago, I remember thinking, you know, "I don't miss workouts." I just decided, I just don't miss them, to the point-

    26. MB

      Exactly

    27. AH

      ... where sometimes I probably should miss them. I probably overshot the mark at times.

    28. MB

      Sure.

    29. AH

      Like, you know, and I learned I don't train sick. I now take weeks off every once in a while. So those are structured around that. So it's not push, push, push to the point of self-destruction. But with a, having an emotional identity that you see in yourself and, and can live into, I think that's a beautiful thing. I mean, David Goggins talks about having to have the old Goggins and the new one in order to-

    30. MB

      Uh-huh

  22. 2:05:33 – 2:12:46

    Emotional Intelligence

    1. AH

      a theory right now, tell me where it's wrong, 'cause it's almost certainly wrong.

    2. MB

      [chuckles]

    3. AH

      That many people are very in touch with their extreme emotions of anger, sadness, um, feeling like they're just, you know, they're too woke, they're too-

    4. MB

      Mm-hmm

    5. AH

      ... they're a fascist. Like, they're just in touch with the emotions. And then we have, we're really good at putting labels on other people's identities, right? They're a narcissist, they're a fascist-

    6. MB

      Mm-hmm

    7. AH

      ... they're extreme woke, but we don't really think about our own identity as much.

    8. MB

      Yeah.

    9. AH

      We're kinda lost in the emotions. And, uh, political parties, people usually know where they stand. But what would this look like to come up-- like, I'm not asking you to do this on the fly, but I'm asking you to do this on the fly.

    10. MB

      It's all right.

    11. AH

      Like, like, is, should we be thinking about emotional maturity, emotional intelligence? Is there a word that, that, like, we can internalize? Like, I'd like to be in shape. I kinda know what that is. I wanna be a certain amount of strength, certain amount of endurance, certain amount of, I wanna be able to run for the plane-

    12. MB

      Yeah

    13. AH

      ... and not cough up a lung. I also wanna be able to open the pickle jar. I wanna be able to go up the stairs without pain. Da, da, da, da, da. I know I have a concept of what that is for me. What is a label that works really well that people can start to fill in the bins of what it is to be an emotionally-

    14. MB

      Intelligent

    15. AH

      ... person?

    16. MB

      I think it's emotional intelligence because it's, again, we need concepts that are clear, that can be defined, that can be measured, and that demonstrate predictive validity, and so every one of the skills. I wrote a book on emotion regulation because that was the area that I wanted to focus on right now because that is at the top of the hierarchy. At the end, it's what you do with the feelings. That's the regulation piece. But to do that, you need to recognize your feelings, understand them, label them, decide whether you wanna, you want to express them or regulate. It's the ruler framework. Emotion perception, yes, it's complicated, but at the end, it's about building relationships. I d- I can't know how you're feeling by your facial expression. You know that from Lisa Feldman Barrett's work. But I can make a hypothesis, and I can check in and say, "HeyDid what I say land on you well or not so well? Let's talk about it. The intelligence is the courage to engage.

    17. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    18. MB

      The understanding is, listen, because of my childhood, I have a different relationship to anger than you do. We learned that today together. I see anger, and I, I, it, I have, m- fear comes in my blood because I knew I was gonna get hit or yelled at or screamed or punished. You have a different relationship with anger. Anger still is about injustice, period. We have to agree that the definition is about perceived injustice. However, my relationship to that and yours is different. Just like whether you're gay or straight or bi or trans, um, homophobia to someone who is LGBTQIA is different than to someone who's not. I can't relate if I'm not you, but I can have the, the courage to have empathy for your experience. That's the understanding piece. I'm not gonna ever be fully empathic to your life because I didn't live your life. It's your life. So you can't understand my life. You can relate to pieces of it, but I can be curious about it and not judge it. The labeling piece is having that language. You know, what is really happening here? What is the experience? The expression piece is knowing how and when to express with different people across contexts. It's saying, "Is how I'm communicating landing well? Is my intended outcome a possibility here? Or is the person gonna just, you know, run away?" And then the last piece is the regulation, which is, in the end, is this emotion helping or hurting me achieve my goals in life? And if it's gonna hurt your goals, you need strategies to deal with it. Life is difficult. I don't know about you, but this journey in becoming an emotion revolutionary ain't easy. You know, now I got-- It's politicized, and like we were talking about earlier, it's like, really? All right. Come on. Like, what hap- who was your mother? That's what I wanna say. Like, tell me about the [laughs] relationship you had with your mother. Probably shouldn't have said that, but anyway, I'm okay with it.

    19. AH

      It's all good.

    20. MB

      It's all good. Maybe your father, whoever. The point is, is that I feel very confident in that what I teach is easily defined, it's measurable, and I can show you my own and thousands of other studies where these skills predict the things that we care about in life, whether it's well-being, whether it's leadership, whether it's decision-making, whether it's, um, just mental health outcomes. And so it's, I kinda have incontrovertible evidence for the effectiveness of it. And so you can still say, "I'm not into it," but y- you have to be educated first. And once you i-- Once you really understand the value proposition, the why behind learning the skills, I can't imagine that every parent in the world wouldn't want their kid to develop these skills.

    21. AH

      Especially if these skills are going to be the defining skills of who succeeds and who doesn't. I feel like that's when a culture evolves, and I'm just imagining a future not too long from now where the debate around , and we all know who we're talking about here, one group is saying they're all fascists with no empathy.

    22. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    23. AH

      And the other side is saying, "Well, they're so caught up in, um, uh, inclusivity that nothing's getting done and people are being treated unfairly." That's what the dialogue is, right?

    24. MB

      Yes. That's our society right now.

    25. AH

      That's the dialogue. And at some point we gotta go, "Okay, everyone, like, we understand your positions, but how, what are we gonna do? We got, we gotta move forward." I don't know that there's gonna be a meeting in the middle for a while. What is going to happen, I think, is that young people will strive, hopefully, or they'll give up. And I think if the people who strive incorporate these tools and are rewarded for them, then that will become the standard.

    26. MB

      Exactly.

    27. AH

      You know, it's kind of interesting, the obesity crisis was real.

    28. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    29. AH

      And there was also a discussion around inclusivity, and that has now shifted, uh, in part because of the GLPs, but there's now this idea that, um, you know, being obese is unhealthy. You couldn't say that five, six years ago. I remember during the pandemic, a colleague of mine, very senior colleague, said, "We're seeing people dying of COVID-

    30. MB

      Mm-hmm

  23. 2:12:46 – 2:19:32

    Curiosity & Compassion; Reflection, Identity

    1. MB

      important about that is that you don't know someone until you know their story. Like, I know a little bit about your story now, and I wanna know more, but, you know, and you know a little bit more about my story. And once you know someone's story, you start having more interest in them, more compassion for them. You know, uh, my partner made a movie during the pandemic called America Unfiltered, which was him and his friend. So it's a gay Panamanian running around with a straight Russian around America for a year interviewing people about what it means to live in America today. And they went to Trump rallies and Biden rallies, and they went into poverty, you know, and they went into all over America, gun shop owners and Black moms whose kids had been murdered by the police and, um, people who wanted to become Americans, you know, citizens. And it was a listening journey.And it was remarkable on how... I did a study on this, actually. I showed people the expressions of people, and I had them judge, you know, would you wanna get to know this person, how warm is this person, et cetera, before they watched the movie. And what we found was that, uh, people were very judgmental based on race, based on if they were holding a gun or not. And then you watch the movie, and you see the gun shop owner cry when he's talking about his relationship with his father and that the only way he and his father could bond was over h- you know, the guns. And you start hearing his story, and you're sort of like, "This guy's a really nice guy, actually." And then y- we tested people afterwards, and we found that people had completely different judgments of people after hearing them and listening to their stories, and that's what we need in our society. We need more curiosity and less judgment, and that goes to, you know, ourselves. We'll be much more regulated. We'll have better relationships. We don't have to agree. I don't want... There's no need to agree, but there is a need to be civil.

    2. AH

      What you're talking about are standards.

    3. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AH

      I think what you're talking about is some standards of emotional intelligence or at least str- s- standards for striving 'cause if we say like, oh, there are standards of physical presence, and there's what does that mean?

    5. MB

      No.

    6. AH

      Does that mean everyone has to have, like, eight-pack abs and be perfectly, you know, and then, and then you have older people trying to reverse their age and ending up looking like, like totally-

    7. MB

      Martian

    8. AH

      ... artificial and yeah. And, and it can go too far, right? Um, but I think having standards of striving, like every kid does physical education because even if you're not gonna be a great athlete, it's good to develop a relationship to your body and take care of it. Every kid should do emotional intelligence training if you're, even if you're not gonna become-

    9. MB

      Yeah

    10. AH

      ... Marc Brackett. You, you can learn to regulate better than your parents, and if it, if you're rewarded, we love rewards, right? We're, we're, we're obsessed with r- if we, if the promotions and the, the money and the status, let's face it, people care about that stuff-

    11. MB

      Sure

    12. AH

      ... comes from being healthier physically and emotionally, who wouldn't want that?

    13. MB

      I agree, and it goes back again, I think I'm obsessive about this, like being a scientist about yourself. You said this earlier. You know you, based on whatever, you know, we won't have to go into, go into this right now, but, like, working out is your big thing. But then you realize, you know, like, "I need a little break. I can take a break. It's okay. It's okay to take a day off. I can go walking on the beach," or whatever it is. But that's the reflection process. That's you having that metacognitive ability to say, "Let me evaluate my life right now. Like, I can have a day, like, without the gym. It's gonna be good. I can go have some fun with some friends." I'm the same way. All of this work that we do is about that level of reflection. I have to ask myself when I don't do my workout, "Is this an excuse?" Like, what's really under... Am I really tired, or am I just, like, lazy right now? Um, and that's the work. You know, I was thinking about this as we were talking, that it's a process. And, you know, this, I came up with this process for myself as I was, you know, writing, which w- with the workouts. You know, in the beginning, you look in the mirror. And by the way, I took photos of myself every month, every month religiously, and the proof is in the photos. I mean, like, sometimes I look at them like, "Wow, Marc, you really did a good job," 'cause I really got out of shape, and I was not happy with myself. I was used to being an athlete as a martial artist. And now I have four years of photos, you know, front, side, back every month, and you look at the day one, and you look at today, and it's a completely different human being. I have to look at that once in a while 'cause I still have weird issues, and I look in the mirror, and I'm like, "Ugh." And I'm like, "Wait, the picture tells the truth." But the phases of that are important. The first phase is like, "Can I get through this? Can I like..." I can't do four workouts, go from 3,500 calories a day down to 1,800 calories a day. There's no way to do all that. Just like you can't take every strategy in my book and, like, be obsessive about it. Like, "I'm gonna breathe, and I'm gonna walk. No, I'm gonna sleep. No, I'm gonna talk positively. No, I'm gonna reach out." You'll go nuts. It's a process. This is life's work. Like, the good news, you got your whole life to work on it 'cause you're gonna need it forever. So that first phase is kinda just the learning phase. Like, what can I, like, what's the little steps I can take? The second phase is like you start seeing a little bit of changes. Oh, my life's a little bit better, feel a little better. I'm sleeping better. My relationships are better. I'm more positive. I even, during that phase of my workouts, I went through this whole phase of negativity 'cause I'm like, "Marc, you're married for 30 years. You're 56 years old. Who gives a shit about your body?" And I would, I, I mean, I would do, like, deadlifts. I'm like, "This is ridiculous," like, "why I'm deadlifting at 55 years old." And I would catch myself every time, and be like, "Marc, this is what you do. Like, you're, you are a self-saboteur right now. You gotta pause, and you gotta, like, where is this coming from, and how are you gonna get that self-saboteur self outta here? The best version of you is not someone who does just two sets of those deadlifts. You do all four." But it was so much work, I can't tell you. But the beauty of all that, of, like, working through the discomfort is that, is that identity phase 'cause now it's not an option.

    14. AH

      Mm-hmm.

    15. MB

      And so if you just do it, and it becomes part of your identity, you don't have those struggles anymore.

    16. AH

      I love it.

    17. MB

      [chuckles]

    18. AH

      And the, the parallel between physical fitness and emotional intelligence is not something I predicted before this conversation, but I, I love it, and I, I'm certain that it's resonating with people because it's just, physical stuff is just so tangible.

    19. MB

      Yeah.

    20. AH

      It's so concrete. And look, I just wanna thank you for making the emotional intelligence piece so concrete and for laying out these steps. We'll obviously provide links to your books.

    21. MB

      Thank you.

  24. 2:19:32 – 2:25:02

    Point of Connection Game

    1. MB

      I have a, I wanna play a game with you for a minute, though.

    2. AH

      Okay.

    3. MB

      You ready?

    4. AH

      Okay.

    5. MB

      Because one of my former, uh, colleagues and I got together a couple weeks ago, about a month ago, and, uh, we decided, like, people are so disconnected. We, so we took all the contents of myMy books, and we made a game. So you actually, when you have your party, it's called The Point of Connection. And so I d- these are random cards.

    6. AH

      And it doesn't involve an app or a Wi-Fi connection.

    7. MB

      No, you gotta be with people.

    8. AH

      Awesome.

    9. MB

      So, uh, there's your first card.

    10. AH

      What's the best advice a mentor ever gave you, and how has it shaped the way you live or work? Two pieces. Briefly. The Mike Mentzer, one of the great trainers, gave me the advice to do low volume, high intensity resistance training.

    11. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. AH

      Each body part once a week and train only three times per week, maybe four, never more than seventy-five minutes, but to really learn to enjoy training extremely hard. And I followed that advice for thirty plus years.

    13. MB

      Wow.

    14. AH

      And I look forward to workouts, so I don't work out every day.

    15. MB

      [laughs]

    16. AH

      Um, amazing advice. And then the other advice, which is separate from fitness, comes from a guy named Bob Knight, who is a neurologist at UC Berkeley, who said, "Figure out how much work you can do each week consistently, and then find some way to reset yourself each week that is not destructive."

    17. MB

      Mm.

    18. AH

      And I said, "What's yours?" And he said, "Fishing."

    19. MB

      [laughs]

    20. AH

      And I, I was like, "Okay, I've done a lot of fishing," 'cause my mom's side, all the men went fishing, and I like it, decent fisherman. But I thought, "What is that for me? For me, it's hiking."

    21. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    22. AH

      So it could-- for someone else, it could be something else. But I taught my lab that, and I would t-teach a career development course at, where I would pass that on at Cold Spring Harbor during the summer, which is kinda geek summer camp. And I said, "That doesn't mean drinking." "But maybe one or two drinks," someone said.

    23. MB

      Mm-hmm.

    24. AH

      "Okay, fine. W- but as long as it's non-destructive, find a way to reset every week and just keep coming back." And so both of those things were about consistency-

    25. MB

      Love it

    26. AH

      ... and intensity. So two mentors.

    27. MB

      All right, last one, because I think this one is more relevant to our specific conversation.

    28. AH

      I thought you were gonna answer a question.

    29. MB

      [laughs]

    30. AH

      All right. What's one emotion you've been carrying a lot lately that you'd like to experience less often? Oh, [exhales] man.

  25. 2:25:02 – 2:27:36

    Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter

    1. AH

      you. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Marc Brackett. To learn more about his work and to find links to his books, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab Podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than thirty years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation, and of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am hubermanlab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab Podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab Podcast. Again, it's hubermanlab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one- to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Marc Brackett. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science. [outro music]

Episode duration: 2:27:37

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