#461. 4 Ways Not To Be Owned By Your Sh*t | Susan David

It’s completely natural when dealing with anxiety, depression, anger, shame, or any other unpleasant emotion, to just want it to go away.

Guest Susan David says that these discomforts are the price of admission to being alive and offers an approach called emotional agility as a way to navigate them. 

Susan David, Ph.D. is a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of a book called Emotional Agility. Her TED Talk on the subject has been viewed more than eight million times.

In this episode we talk about: 

• Her definition of emotional agility 
• The four skills of emotional agility
• Why she says our emotions are data, not directives
• How to move skillfully through a world that “conspires against us seeing ourselves”
• How to avoid emotional “fusion”
• The power of tiny tweaks
• And “emotional granularity”— what it is, why it matters and how to practice it

Where to find Susan David online: 

Website: www.susandavid.com

Social Media:

• Twitter: twitter.com/SusanDavid_PhD
• Facebook: facebook.com/susandavidphd/
• Instagram: susandavid_phd
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/susanadavidphd/

Book Mentioned:

• Emotional Agility

Other Resources Mentioned:

• Susan’s TED Talk: The gift and power of emotional courage
• Emotional Agility Quiz
• Brené Brown’s TED Talk: The power of vulnerability
• Heraclitus
• Oxford Handbook of Happiness
• The Velveteen Rabbit
• Viktor Frankl

Additional Resources:

• Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install