Dr. Susan David is a Harvard psychologist. I’m enjoying her bestselling book, “Emotional Agility” and want to share a quick summary.
David claims that our culture puts pressure on us to be positive and bottle our “negative” emotions. This leads to emotional rigidity. Instead, her research shows that people are much happier when they are emotionally agile.
4 principles of emtional agility
- Showing Up – Ask, what is it that I’m feeling? Show up with curiosity and compassion to what you are feeling, and try to do the same to others. This is not forcing yourself to be positive at all times, but accepting different emotions.
- Stepping Out – Recognize that those difficult emotions contain data about our values. Understand that while we experience different emotions, they are not the boss. A stepping out technique is to replace “I am sad” with “I am noticing that I am feeling sad.”
- Walking your Why – At choice points, move toward your values, not away from them.
- Tiny Tweaks – Make small habit changes toward our values, that lead to long-last results. (I have written about tiny changes here and here.)
Assess your emotional agility
Take Dr. David’s quiz to assess your own situation. The follow up email sequence elaborates on the above 4 principles.
Obviously, I suggest that you use your secret e-mail address for promotional email….
She is a moving speaker, so I also highly recommend her very personal, inspiring TED Talk (16:48 minutes.)
“Emotional Agility” on Amazon
Photo by furkanfdemir from Pexels
I love the four principles. Showing up with curiosity and compassion is a fantastic skill to learn that gives endlessly. Thanks for sharing.
Yes! And it connects so well with mindfulness. Observation without judgement. It’s so different from how many of us were raised…
I didn’t know about this author before. Thanks!
Her book is really good, but if you don’t have time for the whole book, the TED talk gives a good sense of what she’s about.