186. THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS: How to Improve Your Mood & Increase Your Freedom feat. Emma Seppälä

Apr 8

listen to this episode:

Today's guest is Emma Seppälä— a best-selling author, Yale lecturer and faculty director of the Yale School of Management’s Women’s Leadership Program, the Science Director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, and international keynote speaker. A psychologist and research scientist by training, her expertise is the science of happiness, emotional intelligence, and social connection.

In this episode, we discuss:

+ Cultural differences in defining happiness around the world

+ How different countries interpret challenges & successes

+ What sovereignty is in psychology & why it's so important

+ Why you don't have enough freedom in your life & how to change that

+ How your emotional IQ can impact your sense of freedom

+ The science of happiness & what we can learn from it

+ The two types of happiness and which is better in the long-term

+ Ways that you can boost your happiness according to psychology

+ Advice for students on how to improve your quality of life

+ The culture of success in the U.S. & its cost on well-being

+ Why you should be a good friend to yourself & what this looks like

+ Tips for when you're struggling to make self-care a habit

+ so much more!

Emma's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehappinesstrack/

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Emma's Facebook

+ Emma's Twitter

+ Emma's Website

+ Preorder Sovereign

+ Sattva App

+ SKY Breath

+ SKY for Kids

+ The Happiness Track

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

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About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

Emma: no matter how educated someone is, no matter if they're like a CEO of a company or like a big chef or whatever it is, They have as much training about what to do with their big, bad, negative emotions as a five year old.

We've never received training. And so what do we do when we feel bad? Most people engage in some kind of self soothing behavior that's usually destructive. I don't care if you're addicted to work or you're addicted to alcohol. I don't care if you're, doom scrolling, smoking weed, over exercising.

You know, it can look really saintly, like, I volunteer a hundred hours a week. All of those things just ways that we're trying to cope. With our negative emotions

Sadie: Hello, hello, you guys. Welcome back to She Persisted. If this is your first episode, get excited. This is a good one. We have Dr. Emma Sipala on the podcast today. Such an incredible conversation. I learned so much. It was so inspiring. I know you guys are going to learn so much as well.

Emma is a best selling author, a Yale lecturer, the faculty director of the Yale School of Management's Women's Leadership Program, the science director for Stanford's Center for Compassion, Altruism, Research, and Education, and an international keynote speaker. She is a psychologist and research scientist by training, And she is an expert in the science of happiness, emotional intelligence, and social connection.

So this episode completely reflects that. We talked about so many incredible things, including how we define happiness around the world and how we as different cultures interpret successes and challenges and How the way we do that impacts how happy we are, we talked about sovereignty and psychology and why that is so important to establish.

We talked about why you don't have enough freedom in your life and how you can change that. How emotional intelligence can impact your sense of freedom. The science of happiness. We talked about the two types of happiness and which is better in the long term. How to boost your happiness according to psychology, advice for students on improving your day to day quality of life, the culture of success in the United States and how that impacts our overall sense of well being, why it's so important to be a good friend to yourself and how you can actually do that, and then tips for when you're struggling to implement these changes in your life but you do want to move in the right direction.

So this is just such an incredible application. I really hope you guys enjoy this. I know I did. If you like it, leave a review, share with a friend or family member, post on social media, all the things. It really helps the podcast. And as always, I gotta remind you guys, we do a little Starbucks gift card giveaway every month.

So if you leave a review and send me a screenshot, you are entered to win a gift card. The instructions are in the show notes, but if you want to be the April winner, make sure to enter and DM me. So, with that, let's dive into the episode.

well, thank you so much for joining me today on She Persisted I am so excited to have you on the show and so glad that you've reached out and I just can't wait to dive into this conversation.

So thank you for joining me Thank you for having me. Of course. So I would love to talk a little bit about your background. I'd love to give listeners additional context with why you got into this field, how you became a Yale professor, how you chose psychology and landed in the mental health space. So can you give a little bit of a background and context there?

Emma: Yeah, so I grew up in Paris, France, which sounds really glamorous, but the philosophy on the streets is really negative there. , so you're growing up always feeling like things are going to hell in a handbasket. You're never good enough. It's highly critical. , and when I moved to the U. S. for college, I went to Yale as an undergraduate and I saw, wow, people are more positive here, which felt really good.

And that felt like something I was preferring. , but then in the U. S. I saw people working so hard. They were working themselves into the ground. There's this belief that I am what I do. And if I don't do and if I don't do successfully, then I don't have much worth. And so it was really interesting to observe that, which was different from what I learned in France.

And I was like, wow, this, this is also, you know, problematic. , and then I lived in China after college for a couple of years. And there I saw people who had absolutely nothing, but we're grateful for everything. And so resilient and so, so much joy and energy. And I realized, wow, our mental health and wellbeing has much less to do with our external circumstances as it has to do with our state of mind.

Like in France, people have everything, like they have lots of vacation, free healthcare, all this great stuff. And they're not happy. , in the U S they just feel like if they're not constantly achieving, they're not happy. And then in China, when I, when I lived there, at least I just saw, wow, they're just so grateful.

for, you know, the, the people that I was surrounded with it. And I just realized, you know, the, the quality of our life depends on the state of our mind. And that's actually really freeing because it means that, no matter what, craziness comes your way. And I think on the globe, we're seeing so much craziness, both on the global level, but also in our own lives, how much craziness comes your way.

There are ways for you to be resilient. Right here, right now, regardless, and that gives me hope. And that's why I went into psychology, , did a PhD in psychology, and then did research on ways that we can make ourselves feel better and have that resilient state of mind. That we want to have so we can face life in our at our best potential as our best self.

So I did research on meditation and breathing and things like that and go into that. But

Sadie: I already have a question before we dive into your books and your specific research and work, but Having been in all of those different contexts and viewing all these different ways that people coped with their lives and kind of interpreted their surroundings, was there a, , narrative that was most effective, like a way that people attributed their challenges or the good in life that you were like, this is the way to do it, even if it was like a blend of multiple cultures?

Emma: I love that question. A blend of multiple cultures. I would say that in France, You learn savoring. There is a sense of deeply appreciating the joys of life, right? Whether it's good food or good company, social connection. You know, like here, if you meet someone for coffee, It's like, all right, I got 45 minutes.

Let's go. Right. Yes. But in France as a teenager, I mean, and in general, you sit at a cafe for three, four hours, there's no sense of time. It's just, yeah, right here right now. And I'm prioritizing being together. That's what life's all about. So those are the kind of what I learned in France. And then, and also in France, you learn this.

joy and beauty. There's this real appreciation for beauty. You know, you can think of things like fashion, but even like you go in a pastry shop, everything is gorgeous. And there's such an appreciation even in the literature and the books and so forth. So there, that, that, that savoring, I would say in France.

Right. And then in the U S , what I appreciated is that people don't really have a lot of time for complaints. And focusing on the negative and so forth. The way that in it was in France. In France, it was like, that's how you bond with people. Geez. The weather's terrible, isn't it? Yes. It's terrible.

That's how you bond. Yeah. And in the US that's just not what we do. And I appreciate that. , more perspective on, you know, people smiling at each other. Like if you smile at a stranger and friends, you're considered like there's something a little wrong with you . Like, you must be crazy. Right, we're here like exchanging a positive word, a word of upliftment with another person.

It's normal, it's appreciated, and it's those micro moments of joy you get throughout the day, and I really appreciate that. , and then, like I said, in China, and also I saw this in India when I spent some time in India, I learned gratitude from people who have nothing and are grateful for everything. You know, as opposed to all those people here and in Europe who have everything but are grateful for nothing.

Who is really rich? Who's really poor? Gratitude is a lifeboat. It's what carries you through. And I see that when I was in India and China and saw how people lived and how much they suffered and how difficult their life was. But how, because of gratitude, they were so powerful, so strong, so sovereign.

Sadie: Mm hmm.

A hundred percent. Well, to start with, your book , you talk a lot about the idea of freedom, and I think it relates to a lot of what you mentioned there, with those different, like, I don't know if attributional styles would be the right way to, Put it, but like the way that we explain our surroundings, the way we interact with our surroundings.

So , just to give people like an overview, a bird's eye view of why freedom is important and even how you define that, because I think that's also something that people get confused with, but giving us like the overall Perspective of why freedom is important with regard to our mental health and well being and then we'll get into all the details on What happens when we're not don't have a sense of freedom and how we can build that sense of freedom but to start with how you explain that from a research perspective and why that's so important.

Emma: Yes So it this is my my new book is called That's called sovereign. I explore this idea of, of sovereignty. And, you know, in psychology, we talk about mental health and we talk about flourishing, but sovereignty is something else entirely. Sovereignty is the ability to have really deep awareness of the ways in which we stand in the way of our own ability to show up at our full potential.

So every one of us wants to show up. Where our gifts and talents and strengths are uninhibited, where we're able to really show up as a gift for the planet, but also not feeling inhibited, not feeling fearful, not feeling like we don't belong, like we're not okay, like we're not good enough.

Those are all ways in which we Squash ourselves in which we put ourselves in boxes where we don't feel like we fit and where we, we feel stifled and eventually anxious and depressed. Right? So sovereignty is the ability to be aware of where and how do I tap into belief systems, habits, behaviors, addictions that are standing in the way of me showing up at my fullest potential.

So having that awareness and then dismantling those things so we can show up and live the life we want. 70 percent of people on their deathbed regret, right? Not living the life they wanted. So that let's not be those people, right? And it starts with awareness. And I go through a number of things. For example, I mean, that one of the basic things is 80 percent of people walk around and feel like they're not.

good enough with respect to almost every aspect of their life. It's so heartbreaking when you think about it and where did that come from? That's, that's not, that's not healthy. That's not useful at all. Imposter syndrome. Why does everyone feel it? Right. And when I ask audiences, how many people are self critical?

80 percent of people raise their hand. And when you look at self criticism, It's self loathing. Psychologically, it's self loathing. Can you imagine how heartbreaking and you know, one example to just make it really clear for people is, you know, whenever I ask people, okay, what did, what did you say to yourself?

Last time you made a big mistake or had an embarrassing moment, people usually say things like, you're such an idiot. You're such a failure. Like those kinds of words, heartbreaking when you think about it, those. And, but then whenever I ask, okay, so what would you say to your best friend who made the exact same mistake?

Okay. They'll say words like, you've got this. Everyone makes mistakes. It's no big deal. And what's the difference? Why are we that kind with our best friend and not that kind with ourselves? It doesn't make any sense, because what's the difference between you and your best friend? There's no difference, except that you live in different bodies.

So, I'm just, that's just one example of the, the things that, that I'm trying to raise people's awareness about in the book, so they can question. You know, you can't have sovereignty, you can't have freedom until you question the stuff that's going on that's not working for you. And in particular, that's, that's a foundational one.

Sadie: You mentioned awareness and questioning the things that aren't working for you. I would love to get your like perspective on What that looks like from a belief system perspective from a thought perspective You mentioned that self esteem and self criticism and self loathing are really tied up in that but to get really detailed what Do people need to be aware of when it comes to having a lack of freedom and what areas of life that shows up and in addition to self esteem and self criticism, because I'm sure it shows up in our relationships and our, and our larger goals, , and all those kinds of things as well.

Emma: Oh my gosh, absolutely. So, , let's look at our emotions for example, right? So what have we learned to do with our big, bad, negative emotions in general? And I've asked this question to people from all over the world. The answer is usually To suppress them, suck it up, buttercup, bottle them up. And yet, when you look at the research and I was in a research lab where we studied this, the impact is that the emotion gets stronger.

So you bottle up your anger, your anger is going to get stronger. No wonder it's going to come out, you know, in an inappropriately explosive way at some point, or it's going to implode with stomachs, aches and migraines and things like that. And no matter how educated someone is, no matter if they're like a CEO of a company or like a big chef or whatever it is, They have as much training about what to do with their big, bad, negative emotions as a five year old.

You know, it can look really saintly, like, I volunteer a hundred hours a week. All of those things are just ways that we're trying to cope. With our negative emotions because we've never learned it, but we get tied up in these addictive behaviors that are often destructive at the end of it. That's one example of how we have like no freedom because we don't know how to handle our emotions.

And what the research shows is that if you want to really heal your emotions, you have to feel them. And like, if you look at a child, child is angry for a couple minutes. And then it's over. They're so angry. And then they're, it's over. Why? Because emotion is energy in motion. So, if you let that energy move through your system by experiencing it, You let it express itself fully and leave. Now, it doesn't mean that you want to have a tantrum in front of people, no. But the ability to feel pain, to feel the pain of the emotion, allows it to be released. Just like a baby, you know, when you're having a baby, through labor, it's very, very painful. But as you go through it, it ends with delivery.

It's like that.

Sadie: Would you say that the way that you cope with emotions and your relationship to them is what is most essential? When it comes to your sense of autonomy, or is it also? The thought process and the actions that you take like is there almost an order of operations that you recommend people take?

When it comes to dealing with challenges that arise that set them up for success when it comes to feeling free and not Pressured and brought down by these emotional experiences.

Emma: Yeah, there's, there's two things. First of all, you can cultivate your nervous system. So it's more resilient before you experience your triggers so that your triggers are less triggering and ways to do that are, you know, meditation practices, but for a lot of people, meditation practices can seem so foreign and challenging.

, I know that for myself, I had very high anxiety. I was in New York city during nine 11. And after that I was trying to meditate, but who was meditating? I just, just feeling my anxiety and it was awful, right? Yeah. So, and then that's where I recommend breathing practices. And this is something that we researched with veterans with trauma for whom also closing your eyes and meditating was not an option.

This, it was too anxiety provoking breathing practices. And we studied a breathing practice called sky breath meditation, which is offered through a nonprofit called art of living. , That conditions your nervous system for greater calmness. It's about a 20 minute, practice that you do every day. And just like you would go to the gym and condition your muscles to be stronger, here you're conditioning your nervous system to be more resilient.

And, and that's what we found and my colleagues have found in their studies, is that when you practice this breathing technique every day, then you're, when you are in a stressful situation, like Sitting in a you know a room and being told you're going to be going up on stage and giving a speech now You're going to have less of a stress response So that's one thing that I highly recommend and I wish I had learned earlier in life I learned it at 24 and I was so sad.

I hadn't learned it earlier and now that I'm, you know, 46 I'm like, oh wow, I was so lucky I learned it at 24 some people are learning it now and they went through their whole life without having probably You know, these tools. So I highly recommend learning and you can actually learn it as a teenager through,, it's called sky for kids or something. Yeah, it's good because, , perfect. But yeah, so that that's one thing. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And I really wish everyone had this because it also helps with trauma. So even let's say you have childhood trauma, imagine if you could take care of that early in life, like when you're a teenager or when you're a young adult.

Right. , it's such a resilience. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is in the moment, what do you do? You're triggered, right? Well, ideally we'll have done one of these practices. So when the trigger shows up, it's not just you and the trigger and you're just reacting, but there's a part of you that's like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.

I'm in this situation. I'm seeing my, you know, my ex or like I'm in a situation where I have to speak in public and this is really nerve wracking. What do I do right now? Well, a couple of things. One is, , just taking Some simple breaths in the moment where you're extending your exhales, making them longer.

When you make your exhale longer than your inhale, you're slowing your heart rate. , so you've just doing that. Let's say you're sitting and you're about to have this trigger happen to you and you just do that for a few minutes. That's really helpful. , but also just allowing yourself to experience the emotion rather than trying to block it, push it away and just noticing it and really letting yourself feel it.

, and then, is, is really the way to let the emotion move, right? , And, we can, talk about it specifically, like if you were to go up, you know, on, for a lot of people, public speaking is a big fear. And, you know, one way to really deal with it is also to think about it in a different way.

The way that I do, and I used to be so shy in college that I would get lower grades in my seminars because that was part of the requirements to participate. But Now I public speak for a living, but what I've noticed is when I change the framework where I look at it as, Oh, I want this to be an offering.

I want everyone in the audience to get something from what I have to say. , and I'm changing the lens. It's not on me. Oh my gosh. What if I look stupid? What if this, what if that, what if I trip off the stage and fall on my nose? Right. , but More of a sense of, , let my words be, let my words be helpful to people.

That change of frame from the attention to you, to the others makes a huge difference.

Sadie: I would love to shift gears and talk about the science of happiness because you've done a lot of work in this space and you're mentioning the pillars and practices that very much tie into living a life where you're flourishing or have a high sense of well being.

, and like you mentioned, having that sense of autonomy and freedom is really important and a huge pillar of that. But for people that aren't familiar with positive psychology or the science of well being or the science of happiness, however you want to put it, because there's so many different ways that people try to explain it.

Can you give us just like an overview and a TLDR, , of what the science of happiness is, how we study it, and like the biggest findings, , that have kind of come of that work?

Emma: Yeah, so there's Two kinds of happiness. There's hedonic happiness and eudaemonic happiness. So what's the difference?

Hedonic happiness, you can think of as sex drugs and rock and roll, like all the pleasures of the senses, you know, food, , any, any kind of tactile pleasure, sensory pleasure, but also money, fame, popularity, you know, follows on social media, whatever it is, that gives you this like high and it's so, It's focused on the self.

It's like giving your own self a high, right? It's all about you. And then there's the eudaemonic happiness, which is a type of happiness that comes from doing something, , for, for others that has something to do with a greater purpose Transcribed beyond yourself. It could be doing service, acts of kindness, compassion, , and connection with the natural world connection with if you're religious or spiritual, with sort of the spiritual aspects of life.

And that is a, , a form of happiness that research shows doesn't just give you this short high followed by a low, a dip, right? It, leads to this continuous levels of fulfillment. , and so it's really interesting because if you look at the, our world, it's constantly encouraging us to get those dopamine highs from the hedonic pleasures, right?

I mean, buy this, look like this, eat this, consume this, you know, watch this, all these things that are giving you these highs, but then you're constantly you have craving for more as opposed to the eudaemonic, , forms of happiness, for example, Helping someone, you know, helping someone in the morning, you brought him feel good all day.

And when you engage in those kinds of acts of compassion your whole lifelong, it leads to higher and lasting levels of fulfillment, which I think is even more powerful than happiness. So should you only do one or the other? No, I mean, life is meant to be enjoyed, right? But be aware that you're not going to get the long lasting fulfillment from the hedonic pleasures.

It's just going to be short little bursts of fun.

But that can also leave you craving for more and hooked. And that's where you want to have awareness and being sovereign means, okay, I can see how I'm getting hooked here and I'm getting out of here because the more hooked I am, the more bound I am, the less sovereign I am, the less freedom I have.

Sadie: For sure. A hundred percent. . You mentioned a lot of different practices that people can do, , in the happiness track where you talk about ways that we can increase our well being and be more happy. Can you mention a couple of those that listeners can implement, , and kind of what the data shows when it comes to implementing those, how they impact our mental health, whether it's just well being, our sense of autonomy, depression, anxiety, all of those things.

Emma: Yeah, so I talked to, I talked a little bit about breathing already. I talked about meditation. , I'll talk a little bit more about meditation. So meditation, when I was in college was seen as this sort of weird thing. I was one of three people on campus who meditated and it was just considered very bizarre.

, now because of research, it's become much more mainstream and it is. So key to emotional wellbeing. People who practice meditation regularly have higher levels of happiness, positive emotion. , they have a greater ability to regulate their emotions and therefore less stress and better health, less inflammation, better, , immunity.

And the list goes on. It's really worth doing. And what I always recommend is do it for 40 days. And don't judge it until you're done. Just see how you feel during those 40 days. And I would recommend just using an app. Like I use an app called Sattva, S A T T V A, which I love. There's meditations of different lengths.

I do it. I use that app two or three times a day. It's so easy. I just press play and here we go. It's guided and it's really amazing, the impact. And so I always recommend, you know, there's the difference between a skeptical scientist and a cynical one. A cynical scientist thinks, Oh, that's never going to work.

So they don't do the experiment, but a skeptical scientist thinks that's never going to work, but I'll do the experiment. And so that's what I recommend. I recommend being a skeptical scientist when approaching these kind of practices for your wellbeing. I've been meditating for 20 plus years and I would never even consider not doing that and now with my nine year old and six year old, I'm teaching them so that they have those tools early in life because they're the key to having that inner strength and awareness of what's going on, but also knowledge of who you are and how you want to show up because there's so much noise in the world.

We're taking so much So much information, over 60, 000 gigabytes of information every day across all of our media. How are we even supposed to know who we are, what our original thoughts are, what our innovative creative thoughts are, what we even want with the world telling us so many things about what we should.

So, meditation is really key, especially right now when we're taking so much information.

Sadie: 100 percent. , I want to ask you about your advice from the perspective of students, because you're at Yale, I'm a student at Penn, these are two Universities where people are really stressed, they get burnt out, they're overwhelmed, , especially, I can't speak for Yale because I don't know the data, but there's really high rates of depression at Penn, , students struggle and it's this really interesting phenomenon because you have this element of like you're you're striving, you obviously are succeeding in your academic pursuits, you have these really large goals for yourself.

But there's not enough of that balance when it comes to emotional well being and mental health. And so, , If you were to speak to your students and speak to college students and kind of give them advice on what they could do differently and what you wish they did to set themselves up for success, because you're in it, you, you interact with them, you see kind of how they talk about these stressors and balance certain things and what's being prioritized.

How do you wish that college students approach their, their lives and stress and academics to set themselves up for success when it comes to your. Not just their academics, but also their emotional health and well being.

Emma: Thank you, because this, I teach this to my Yale undergraduates too, is that if you want to be as successful as you possibly can, and as happy as you possibly can, because the two actually are going to go together, then the key is to take care of yourself.

And you know what? That stands out. That stands on its head everything you've probably learned because and when I remember one of the undergraduates who was Especially brilliant in my class said that makes no sense I got here by basically killing myself on the way here and that's why I'm so successful How in the world would taking care of myself help me show up better than I already am and I said don't believe me It's what the science says, but don't believe me.

Don't believe the science but do the experiment And so for one week, he took care of himself. He got enough sleep. He took time out He went out into nature, which is an incredible well being booster. , he didn't over overdo it and he meditated. He did his breathing, you know, he ate well and he came back after a week and he said, you know, I spent all this time doing self care, doing time off.

he, I remember him telling me I was stood on the roof of my dorm and was just looking at the birds and, spending time relaxing. And he said, I got more done more quickly when I was actually working than I ever have before. And it was such an eye opener for him. And what the research shows that if you want to make the best decisions, if you want to show up with emotional intelligence, with creativity, with good levels of focus and attention and memory and cognitive skills, the best way for you to do that is to take care of yourself in the process.

Is to focus on your rest, is to focus on your well being, on your mental health, on practices like meditation, on time spent with friends, on time spent with yourself, being kind to yourself. You're going to show up at your very best, but it's flies in the face of what we've learned. Because even adults are in go, go, go mode and they think that's how they're going to get things done faster, quicker, drink more coffee, go, go, go.

And yet research shows you are on a superhighway, but it's a superhighway to burnout. And when you're 18, 19, you may not realize it because you could do a bunch of sleepless nights and be fine. But believe me, it's a superhighway to burnout later. You don't want to burn out. There's so much you need to do on this planet.

There's so much you have to offer. You want to be. Making sure that you're Working in a way that's not just most successful for you, but also That's, , helping you be in it for the long ride. That's sustainable for you.

Sadie: Yeah. You mentioned that it feels like it goes against everything that we've been taught to prioritize our well being and create that space when it comes to prioritizing your needs and taking time for your mental health.

We started this conversation talking about, like, these different cultural norms that we hold and these different perspectives. Do you have any thoughts, whether it's anecdotal or, like, from what the research says, about why we hold that belief that being successful and being at our best means not prioritizing our mental health and why that is?

So commonly believed, especially in these spaces where we're surrounded by research and we have common sense it feels like, and we think that we're smart. And yet this thing that is so foundational and important is ignored or there's just all these misconceptions around

Emma: Yeah, I mean Cultural psychology research shows that the U. S. is very much influenced by the Protestant work ethic, which is this idea that you have to prove your worth originally in the eyes of divinity, right? Improve your worth through your work, right? So, but the U. S. is also influenced by the immigrant world culture, which is Pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you want to survive.

Okay. So that's our history. So that is why the U S is one of the most productive places, but it's also why the U S identifies self worth with productivity. That is not the case in France, for example, at all. which is influenced more by the Catholic religion and so forth, but, religion and philosophy that doesn't matter as much as what are the, what are the, cultural ideas that are influencing us.

And we know that those are the, beliefs that we hold. And the truth is, if you go, go, go and burn yourself into the ground, are you going to be successful? Yeah, you're going to be successful for a little while, for a little while. Are you going to be happy? No, probably not. Are you going to be successful over the long run?

Nope, probably not. You know, unless you have some kind of iron health genes, but even then you're not gonna be happy. And you know, you grew up in the Bay Area. I spent a lot of time on the Stanford campus and also in Silicon Valley meeting people who are entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs. It's like, really, how many companies do you need to start until you're going to be happy?

You know, start all the companies you want, be successful, but not if it's just internally seeking proof of your worth. You know, at Yale, which is so hard to get into. When researchers asked the students. You know what emotion they feel the most you would think oh these people have gotten into the number one You know our number two school in the world.

They just must be elated and like happy and you know, just proud Maybe they feel those emotions. Nope. The emotions they feel the most are stressed tired and then when the scientist asked , the students, what emotion do you most want to feel? What do you think they said?

Sadie: Probably happy or fulfilled or like maybe the inverse of being tired and burnt out.

So like at peace, content, something like that. They want to feel

Emma: loved. I should have known that, with all my positive psychology classes I've taken. Yeah, but it's so shocking. You know, why are these people burning themselves into the ground? Why are everyone in Silicon Valley doing that? Why are most people doing that?

Why are the professors at these universities doing that? Because they are trying to prove their significance. Because they think it will make them feel loved, but no amount of success or adulation from others is going to mend the hole in your heart that comes from a lack of friendship from yourself.

Because as you burn yourself into the ground, that is self loathing and no matter how successful you get because of it, you will never be happy. Do you see that? I've seen it again and again, and I don't, I don't care how old you are. I don't care how successful you are. It's the same thing. And that is why if you want to be most successful, first of all, the research shows you should take care of yourself because you are going to have better cognitive skills and you're going to be more creative and innovative and so forth.

But also you're going to be less likely to burn out and you're going to be happier. You're going to live a life where you're happy. And I think if the last couple of years have shown us anything is that life is so fleeting. We could go tomorrow and it doesn't matter how old you are. It's like, how are you going to live it?

Like imagine if you die and then you look back on your life and you're like, Oh shoot, I spent the entire time just burning myself into the ground for no reason because I thought it would make me feel loved. What a waste of a life, right? Not to get depressing, but like, we gotta think about this stuff because we're not guaranteed anything.

Sadie: Yeah, you mentioned The, the path forward and like the path to, the thing that's essential in that journey is being a friend to yourself. We talked about the behaviors that are important to prioritize when it comes to our health and wellness. But what exactly does that mean? Especially with how you talk to yourself and how you navigate these changes, being a good friend to yourself.

Emma: Absolutely Sadie. You know, I used to hear this, like love yourself stuff. And I was like, what the hell does that even mean? Like what? This is how I break it down because I think you got to make it really concrete. Okay. So you know how people often ask themselves, am I good enough? Right? Am I good enough?

People often ask that. Okay. We're going to flip that question into what is good for me right now? What's good for me right now? So just it a habit of asking yourself this question a couple of times a day. What's good for me right now? What do I need? What do I want to do? I want to go like doom scroll for three hours and then go, go, go and last minute study for my test tomorrow.

Okay. That's what you want to do. So what's good for me? What's good for me is probably. Take a nap and then study for a couple hours. Then good, get a good night's sleep, right? It's a totally completely different, approach to things. And, but it's concrete. What I like about this, it's concrete physically.

What do I need? Oh, maybe let me just close my eyes. What do I need? Oh, shoot. I haven't had breakfast. Like maybe I should eat breakfast or I'm tired. You know, I need a rest or I haven't been outside. I haven't seen sunlight. Let me go do that. Right. Just these concrete, I need to eat something healthy, you know, asking yourself those little, very pragmatic things about what does your body need?

But sometimes it's also your emotions. Like, what do I need? I'm feeling really sad right now. And what am I engaging in? I'm engaging in like endlessly going through my, you know, Instagram right? Yeah. Is that going to make me feel better? No. What's good for me right now? Maybe for right now I need to go lay on my bed and cry.

And then it moves through and I'll share it on story about this city if you don't mind.

Sadie: Yeah.

Emma: so I had an eating disorder when I was a teenager. And then when I got to college, I still had it. And, , what I would do is that whenever I was upset, I would binge. I was, whenever I was sad, I would binge.

So I told you meditation was really weird in college and I didn't meditate at the time, but I had a crush on this guy and he was going to this meditation thing. So I was like, all right, let me just go. You're like, I

Sadie: also would love to learn about meditation. What are you talking about?

Emma: Right. So I go there and it's, it's like, it's a Korean Zen strict.

No talking, no instructions for one hour. I'm staring at the carpet. I'm just like, this is how, like, this is awful. I don't ever want to talk to this guy.

Sadie: You're like,

Emma: you are so weird.

Sadie: I changed my mind.

Emma: I changed my mind. I've never, I've never meditating again in my life. Right. So I got up from that meditation and I felt, I noticed that I felt more peaceful, but I was like, I'm never doing that again.

Okay. So I go back to my dorm the next day I'm feeling down, which I felt often in college. And I walk in my dorm room and there's a pizza, and it's got all this stuff on it that I don't even like. But when you have that kind of eating disorder, it's like, I'm just going to binge on whatever, right? So it's like, oh great, there's a pizza, I can binge because I feel really low.

And a lightbulb went off in my head, like, hey, you always cry after you binge. Why don't you cry first, and then you can binge all you want later. That's the lightbulb that went off. So I went on my bed, and I cried. And I cried all the sadness out. When I was done, I got off my bed and I noticed I don't want to binge anymore.

I had absolutely no craving. And you know what? That was the last day of my eating disorder, Sadie. And it was amazing because what happened is the awareness that my compulsive behavior could be an addiction, it could be anything, was in order not to feel. But if I let myself feel, I'm free from the addiction.

I'm free from the eating disorder. I'm free from anything that gets me bound and addicted. That's sovereignty. Sovereignty.

Sadie: Yeah, I have a follow up question and I'm going to like, phrase it two different ways because I have a feeling that it's responsibly the same. The first one that came up was how do you close that gap between what, when you know what's good for you, but you're on that repeated pattern of doing what you want.

And so how do you close that gap of I know what I should do, but I'm not doing it. And then also this is very similar, which is that I know that I should feel my emotions and you've trained yourself for so long to do these other behaviors or engage in these. addictions, obsessions, whatever you want to call them.

How do you make that shift, especially when it's in the early days and you haven't formed that new habit and you're struggling with the action? It's like, okay, I know what to do, but how do I do it?

Emma: Yeah. So I really do attribute meditation to helping me have that awareness because before that I would have the emotion and then I'd have the compulsion and there was no space.

But what meditation does is it creates space It creates space in your brain to have awareness. So I think that meditation is key to freedom. And that's something that you just. Like, like I roll out of bed in the morning and I just, even my eyes are half closed and sit on the floor. I put the damn meditation on done.

Do you be done? Like then just make that, that's your morning. I have it, you know what I mean? Yeah. Create it. I'm like, I'm doing first thing in the morning. That's why no excuses. Everybody's still sleeping. Put my alarm 6 AM. Okay, let's go. Let's do this. Right. , and if need be, just lie back down and go to sleep again after if you have to, you know, but just making it, you gotta make that a habit by making it very easy.

Like, it's just the first thing I do. My phone is right there with the app is right there. My phone is not on, you can like use the app and download stuff. So it's on there without you looking at the rest of your phone. And just, so that's something that's like going to the gem and you. Your meditation could be 10 minutes.

You know, it's not a big deal thing if you think about how much time we waste every day. So anyway, there's that. , and the other thing is that once, see, once I had that awareness, Sadie, I never pinched again because it's kind of like I'm not falling for that again. It just can't happen. Once the awareness is there, you can't fall for it again.

It's like once the awareness is there that someone you dated is really bad for you, you're never going to fall for them again. Yeah. You know, if you've really registered that they're bad for you. Right. , but the other thing is that every time, and so sometimes you may fail, right? Sometimes it's like, Ooh, today I had awareness.

No, today I didn't have awareness. Right. But the more you do it, the more you're building that habit and the freedom that you feel, the freedom I felt after experiencing my emotion was so profound. I was literally handcuffed. To the eating disorder. And my handcuffs were just taken off, which is amazing.

, and that in itself is addictive. Like I'm addicted to freedom and sovereignty and that's a good thing. Right. and then the other thing you were saying, like, okay, when you're stressed and tired, it is harder to be aware and it is harder to have that willpower. Right. So you want to make sure that you are sleeping and that is something so many people skimp on thanks to their phones too, because it's so easy to stay on Have some rules for yourself because when you have some discipline in your life around, okay, I'm going to bed at nine 30 every night, right?

Whatever it is, that's giving you freedom. The discipline gives you freedom because you show up and you wake up. You're awake. I'm awake. I'm alert. I'm powerful. And nothing's going to take me over today. Do you see that? And then the eating the right kinds of foods to, , research shows that the more fruits and vegetables you eat, not only are you healthier and all that blah, blah, that we've heard forever.

It's good for your mental health. Did you know about this?

Sadie: Yeah, I had a nutritional psychiatrist for my podcast like two years ago, probably at this point, and it was the same thing. It has such a huge impact, and we're not generally aware of how powerful that switch is.

Emma: Absolutely. So making those kinds of choices, and I know like when you're, You know, busy and a student and there's not a lot of options available.

It can be challenging, but it is so, and also, you know what, when nobody else is doing it, when everybody else is drinking coffee and staying up all night and, you know, stressing out and everything, it just feels like, oh, I guess everyone's doing it. So that's what I should be doing. Don't fall for that just because everyone's doing something.

Does not mean it's the way that you should do it and the best way for you to do it.

Sadie: 100%. Well, this was absolutely incredible. If people want to read both your books, continue to follow along all of the things, you are also on social media. Where can people find you?

Emma: Yes. , so I am on most of the social media channels.

, I'm at the happiness track on Instagram. , and I have a website called art. I am sov. com. Like I'm sovereign, but it's I am s o v. com. That has more information and links to all those things. And then my book sovereign is coming out. And I really, with all my heart, I want Gen Z to read it because these are tools for them.

You know, I really see you as the future and I want you to feel free on this planet that has so many temptations to not be free. Yeah. And yet we need you at your best potential and Gen Z, we know from research, , has the best values, really cares and you're the, you're the hope for this planet, you know, so I wish you sovereignty.

I really do from the bottom of my heart.

Sadie: Oh, I love it. Well, thank you so much. This was absolutely incredible. Thank you, Sadie.

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