Full Transcript for Exploring Emotions: Controlling Emotions isn’t Possible, Regulating Is

Excel spreadsheet, of course, and I started listing all the emotions I could think of, and I would read and look in the dictionary or on Google, and based on some things we learned together at Newfield, I realized that if we're going to call something an emotion, it has to have certain criteria. But there's no universal agreement on what the criteria should be, yes. So I was working, then, with my wife, who's also a coach trainer and a psychologist, and so we started working, playing with the idea of figuring out what were the criteria that we thought were most important, and the first one is a narrative. Every emotion has a story or an underlying narrative. You're thinking or you believe something that's connected with that emotion. So if you can figure out what you're thinking when that emotion appears, or that experience appears, that you name a certain emotion, then you're part way to figuring out the logic of emotions. And every emotion has an impulse. You feel like doing something. It doesn't mean you will do it, but you have a physical impulse or urge to do something, and maybe it's just lie on the sofa, but that represents some emotion, and maybe a marathon, and, oh, that's a different emotion, yeah. And then the last one for us that was critical was to say, you know, every emotion has a purpose. They don't just exist randomly. Is that the emotion of sadness tell us we've lost something we care about. Yeah, that's the purpose of it. It's not to make us sad or to feel badly. It's to help us understand something about what's happening in our lives. And so the way we approach it is you can go through every single emotion, and you can assign this story, impulse, and purpose, and when you do, they all begin to look a little bit different. And then you can see like, oh my gosh, there are so many emotions. Mark Robertson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, beautiful, man. That's a... that's a lot of stuff I could, I could follow up behind, you know, you talk. So I'll just real quickly, you talk about, you know, your thinking. And I think about the three circles of language, emotion, body, like they're always there. They're always interconnected. So you took this realm of emotions and you linked it to the linguistic side. And you use the logic of emotions, which I love is like, because I think historically, what you're pointing out, but maybe you didn't say was for so long, especially in the organizational world, let's, you know, let's get emotions out of the way. Let's think logically and rationally, which I don't think actually is possible. And yet, you've shown there is that component as well, and I think it helps with understanding it. You also intrigued me there to say this, and then I'll get you to react. I remember in my learning, I don't know if you share it the same way, but when we... I think it was Julio that said, you know, emotion literally comes from the root word emovere, which means that which moves us into action. And so this isn't a woo-woo, touchy-feely conversation. Let's understand the importance of each of these distinct emotions and the action it predisposes or pushes us to take, I think, for logical, rational people and probably dudes in many respects, like, okay, I can, I can, I can grab on to that, you know. And so I love what you did in terms of, I'm going to just call it creating a foundational understanding of emotions, and then at, you know, ascribing those three pieces to them, not to mention the purpose of emotions, you know. So you just... you triggered, not triggered, but reminded me a lot of my own learning in my journey. Dan Newby: So, lovely, lovely, yeah. So I love the conversation about organizations, because, you know, one of the things I've discovered doing this work for now, you know, 15 years, is that I work with people in all parts of the world and all backgrounds and all professions. And what's fascinating is we all, it seems, have a background belief or story about what emotions are, and there's certain elements to that, which I would call myths, that they're not true, but we still believe them. And so one of the things I do with people is say, "You know what? Let's start with when we talk about emotions, let's talk about what an emotion is," yeah, and let's go through these myths or misapprehensions, and let's just discuss whether you think these are true or not. So, you know, one of them is very popular is, "Well, you have to control your emotions. That's how you live a good life." And I say, "Okay, who in this room can honestly say they know how to control their...?" Nobody, of course. And then we talk about, "Oh, emotions are positive or negative," yeah? Like, really? Well, that's fascinating, because I would say that's not true, but we still talk about emotions as if it is true, yes. And there's about 10 of these that, once you look at them, and once you reflect on them, you go, "Oh, yeah, I do believe that, but I don't think that's true." And the thing I find fascinating is they're global and they're universal, and in every culture, not exactly the same ones, but they're lists that there's always some of those in the background of everybody. So I think what we have to do is start with a new interpretation of emotion. And why this is valuable is because when you get to the conversation with organizations or leaders and you say, "Well, do you think your organization would be better off if you could just eradicate emotions? Really, truly have people leave them at the door." And some people will say, "Yes." You say, "Okay, so you're telling me you want your people to come into work and leave ambition, compassion, joy, excitement, enthusiasm, courage, boldness, leave them at the door. You don't want them to bring those emotions, they're a problem." I don't believe you. I don't think it's true. Yeah, what we're trying to say is sometimes emotions can be bothersome, sometimes they can be barriers. Sometimes they make us uncomfortable. But I'm not

sure the best solution is to try to get rid of them. I think a better solution is to try to understand them and make them tools for us. And that's what I'm about. That's what I'm always trying to help people do is say, "You know what, you can think about them that way, but it's not very helpful. So why will you embrace emotions? Why don't you befriend emotions? Why don't you be curious about emotions? What have you got to lose?" Mark Robertson: Because they're there, they're always there. So why not? Dan Newby: You're never going to not have emotions. Mark Robertson: So why not befriend them? And you, God damn, that's really so good, you. Yeah, you just invoke all this cool stuff. I mean, you make me think about the fundamental idea of the observer we are, right, and we observe from our distinctions. So a lot of what we do, I think, to help our clients see this differently and or understand this differently, is we keep introducing new distinctions, usually, I think, more robust than what the myth is out there about them. Like, "I can control my emotions," like, that's so narrow, it's like a Twitter sound bite, right? I think there's so many of that, so many of, "Here's..." and this is why I started this, Dan, is because I think the way I talk about it is this, this the ontological framework and tools are just more powerful, in my opinion, a powerful way to see the world and act in the world. And I think many of us, not through ill intention, are we learn, and we're... when we grab onto these myths through social media, or what someone told us, someone important, and we try to live out these myths. But stuff like, "I want to control my emotions," to me, is a trap, like your target is off, and so I love that. That's where you start. It's like, let me debunk a lot of your current framework, and you do it respectfully, so it opens them up to, "Whoa, now I can see a whole world and wow, look, I'm a leader in an organization. I can use this." Yeah, it's important. So, beautiful stuff, man. So I want to take us to that raises the question for me, which we talked about in preparing for this, and I want you to talk about so then, where do most of us learn about emotions? How did we learn about emotions that we come to this place sitting across from a Dan Newby or a Mark Robertson, and we're saying, "Hang on a second. Let me. Let me offer you some different ideas." Dan Newby: Yeah, well, I think we learned about emotions, and we picked up our beliefs about emotions like we do about a lot of stuff in life, like money. You know, in some families that you talk about money, in some families, you're given tools of how to manage your money and how to see it as what, however you see it. And in some families or in some cultures, it's, you know, money is the root of all evil. So there are beliefs about money that you adopt when you're young. You don't discriminate whether it makes sense or not. You just adopt it. Well, with emotions, I think this is the case. I think in some cases, we've been actively taught. We've been told, you know, "No, don't, no whining. I don't want to hear any negative emotions. If you can't be go to your room." Okay? So we thought something, yeah. In other cases, we learned it. We watched people, and we went, "Oh, you know what? When we're angry, we throw things. Oh, okay, so that's how I'm going to live." And then in some cases, we've we've figured it out, we've made sense of it for ourselves, like we've had some experience, and we've said, "Oh, that's, you know, for me, the difference between jealousy and envy, for instance." Oh, okay. And so sometimes, you know, we learn new things about emotions because somebody tells us, or some we read something, or somebody points it out. Sometimes we just figure out the difference. But I think that we grow up with these ideas about emotions, but rarely does anybody that I'm aware of start at the beginning with, "Okay, well, what is an emotion?" Yeah, and you know, to answer your question, my parents well educated. They made sure I was well educated. My mother was a teacher, my father was a pastor. I mean, they were very engaged, active, socially responsible people, and cared about their kids. So why didn't they teach me this? Well, I would say they didn't know it. Yeah, as intelligent, as educated they were, this was not part of their learning. Now, were they emotionally mature? I would say yeah, for the most part. I would say they were pretty much emotionally competent, but they they did it intuitively. They didn't. They didn't have the background. They hadn't studied it. They hadn't they... If you had asked them, "Are emotions logical?" they probably wouldn't have known what to say because they thought about it before. So what I'm seeing is that now we're at a point where we can articulate this. We can help people learn, broaden their emotional vocabulary, make sense of emotion, see them as a tool, see them as a life skill. And for me, that's the piece that I find most exciting. It's kind of like, you know those people who help help people who have never learned to read, learn to read, right? You're a reading teacher, but you're helping people become linguistically literate. They love doing that, because it opens so many possibilities. Yeah, that's what I think I do. But with emotions, it's just to help people build their emotional literacy, yeah, so they can name their emotions, so they understand their emotions, yeah, distinguish between emotions, because when you can do that, suddenly the world looks quite different, and people look very different too. Because now you realize that when somebody says something, there's some emotion that provoked them to say that, yeah, and you instead of judging them, sometimes. And if you're, you know, if you're conscious and aware, say, "Huh, I wonder what emotion it was that provoked them to do that," right, say that. And to be honest, people make a lot more sense then, like the the reason, in

some cases, is an emotion, yeah, and I find that to be so liberating, because then I can be curious, rather than mental. Mark Robertson: And curious, right? Is a powerful emotion or mood, mood, right? It's in credit, it's one of the... I think it's the best one for learning, you know. And so, yeah, we're never not in emotions, again, man, your answers are powerful and take me so many different directions, but let me, let me go off on what might be a tangent, okay? And I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask a couple of questions, which I was taught not to do, but that's what I do all the time, right? So, so what was screaming at me as you were talking a lot, was two words, limbic system, limbic system, limbic system, right? And so I think about the the limbic system is, in large part, I think, and you may correct me, where our emotional learning is housed, or where it sort of, sort of comes from, but not entirely. So I think about the limbic system learning through immersion to explain a lot of what you said, where we learn it. So I'm wondering, I don't know, if you have any comments about that as it relates to the limbic system. And then I want to hear a general comment from you, Dan, in terms of your observations and assessments regarding where, where you would say the bulk of people are, in terms of this journey of learning more about emotions, being more aware of emotions, maybe even a concept I think you use emotional regulation, maybe. So I'll just put that out there and take it. Take it. Where you want to take it. Dan Newby: Okay, well, the limbic system. And I'm not a neuroscientist, but what I understand, pretend we are, you've got elements in your brain that this is where you store emotional memory and emotions, and how you make sense of emotions. But the what I also understand is all of that, even though it's been located in our heads, it's linked to your entire nervous system. So it's really the system itself is much bigger than just one part of the brain. Recently, I've been reading, I got really curious about, you know, fascia, you know, that connecting material we have everywhere in our body. And what I have been learning is that fascia, not just is like a net that connects you and holds your muscles together and allows you to move, but it's full. It's just packed with nerve endings. So it's always when you move, it's sending information to your brain. So if you think about this internal emotions, so there's not emotions in your fascia, it's not that they live there. But think about this. Think about somebody who in their body is experiencing resignation. What do they do? They're collapsed. They look down. So your body is shaped in a particular way. Then they were to shift to optimism, right? It's like everything changes. Well, that movement is sending signals to your brain. So the connection I'm seeing is that there's the body piece, right, which comes through the fascia and muscles, etc, yeah, then there's also this part in the brain.

So emotions are much well, they're integrated to every aspect of us. Mark Robertson: And yeah, we all... Dan Newby: I think we can begin to understand, "Oh, if I reshape my body, that has something to do with the emotions that I can experience or not experience," and we talk about that, like openness, closeness, tension, etc. So I think that there's fascinating work developing there. Again, my interest is always practical. Can we put this to use in some way? Can we use this in some way? And so I think now we include the fascia as a piece of the body that you know, tells us about our movement and how we're positioned, or what our disposition is. Yeah, I think that has a lot to do then with the information that we're gathering about our emotions and the emotions we experience. So anyway, fascinating area. I Yeah, yeah. So that's where I am. But again, you know, I'm all about what's what's practical. What can we use? What can we use? And if that proves to be something we can use and help people to learn better through that. Yeah? Mark Robertson: All in favor of rock on. Yeah? Nice. You remind me of an experience, a couple experiences of mine recently. I want to share because you brought up fascia again, the language, emotion, body, connection. We're a system. It's all interconnected. It's coherence, congruent. One affects the other. Who knows which one's leading, all that stuff. You know? Really fascinating. I just think important to pay attention to all those, if we can, that awareness. Recently, since July, you know, I've undergone, I'm transforming my body, nutrition, exercise, sleep, supplements, all of it. And I'm down about 10 pounds now, maybe a little more this morning. I literally am also observing the corresponding emotional shift that's happening with all of this, the ambition I'm getting around small little things, like, I bought a food scale and I'm weighing food and I'm like, wow, look at what I'm learning about portion size. Wow. I was so off. You know, I'm learning about doing cardio four times a week and what my heart and lungs will and won't do. So it's fascinating, man. And honestly, you know, six months ago, if you'd have told me, I'd have said, "Nah," from the emotion I was in, "now that ain't happening," you know. I even think about the personal trainer I hired after I had a knee replacement in December of 2020, almost five years ago, and he said, "One day you're going to love working out." And I said, "Hell no, that is never going to happen." And I am like, I don't want to give in to that, but I'm almost like, I'm in the gym six days a week, and I'm almost like, man, I've loved this stuff. I don't say it out loud, but again, it makes me think about like there's always that emotional end. And what I would say, Dan, is that the shift to ambition, excitement, enthusiasm, and there's been some downs as well, right, but that shift, like there's a fuel to it that keeps moving me forward. It keeps... I get one thing happens that's positive, and it feeds ambition and enthusiasm, and I keep moving to more and it's just really cool. It's and it's useful. It's just fascinating. So I don't know if that makes sense. I think it does, but I'm wondering if now's a good time. I feel the impulse to ask you to show us at least one of the diagrams you showed me about how you labeled the different parts. Dan Newby: Excellent, yeah, so let's look good. You can see this, yeah. Mark Robertson: Yeah. I put my... go. There you go. I put my glasses on. I can. Dan Newby: So for years, I've been working in the area of emotional literacy. So the top right, the ability to notice and name our emotions and and to understand them, to make sense of them. And I would say, to a large degree, intellectually. Emotional intelligence, right? That's on everybody's lips. And what I understand about it is we're born wired for emotions. So we have this, this native capacity, and then we learn emotionally our whole lives, whether we know we're learning or not, yeah, but it may not be intentional. It's just where we got to. So this is our awareness about emotion. So emotional intelligence, for me, is we can read the room. We can sense when there's tension in the room. We can sense other people's emotions, even if we can't name them, but with emotional literacy, then we probably can name them. So now we have awareness and understanding. And these are places, these are parts of emotions that, for me, are very much about intellectual understanding, and our brains help us with these. But the other thing that's interesting about them is I can do these on my own. I don't really need other people to learn these. These are like my own development. But if you drop below the center circle, you've got emotional resilience, which is our ability to bounce back, and our emotional agility, so shifting between emotions. And those, the way we get practice with those is often when we're encountering other human beings, right? Because somebody, somebody promises something, they don't do it, we feel disappointment. What do I need? We need to be able to bounce back. Or somebody changes plans. We need to be able to shift between emotions. So those, really, for me, are practices. Those are ones that we we learn through doing, and the more we do them, the better we get. And if you add all of these up, what it leads to is your capacity for emotional regulation. How competent are you to choose the emotion that will serve the situation? So the beautiful voice and regulation, it's important not to hear it like turning down emotions, because sometimes we need to dial up emotions, yeah, sometimes we need to dial them up. Sometimes we dial them back, yeah. So what I'm doing now, and what Dignity, Inc. has done, is created a psychometric, a validated assessment that measures all of these and at first, when we started, we weren't 100% sure that they were distinct and measurable. And many people have thought, well, emotional agility and

resilience, they're kind of the same thing. But what this assessment does, and it's validated 2500 people, that's which is a high number to validate an assessment, right? Is that, "No, actually, these are distinct and unique." And when I work with clients, it's fascinating, because when they take it, I ask them, "What would you see?" And one example is a woman who had some autism, some level of autism, she'd been diagnosed. She's a leader in an organization, a young leader, and what it told her was actually her emotional resilience was quite high, her emotional literacy was quite low. When I asked her, "What sense do you make of that?" She said, "Well, I've been overcoming challenges my whole life because of gender, because of the culture I live in, because of, you know, because of this, this restriction I feel, because of the autism and not understanding what's happening around me. But what's fascinating is I don't know anything about emotions. I can't name emotions. So if I could learn more in terms of emotional literacy, that, along with the emotional resilience, would elevate my ability to regulate my emotions," yeah, meet the situation at hand, and that's just an example. So just because we're high in one of these doesn't, doesn't translate to being high in another one. Yeah, it's fascinating to me, because this gives us a picture of what's going on internal with our emotions in a way we've never been able to before. Mark Robertson: Yeah, a very, in my assessment, a very full picture. In fact, I've got a session later today at 12:30, interestingly, on emotions and trust. And I'm thinking, "How am I going to incorporate this stuff, and how would I talk about it?" And part of me is like, I'm just going to play this part of our video and let them hear you talking about it because it's a beautiful full picture. So a couple questions related to this that popped up, it's or comment, and then maybe a question. It strikes me that any of these quadrants could be significant learning territory, like you could work in each of these distinctly, if you wanted for months or something, noticing. And then also, why did you, why did you choose sort of the roll up term as emotional regulation? I love the word regulation because it's not control. It's not use. So talk about that. Dan Newby: Well, the first part of the question, absolutely, in fact, I think they're lifelong. I mean, I studied for years emotional literacy. There's always more I can learn. I mean, it's not you never. There's no end to it. So I think that what can be helpful is to be able to see where might it be best to put my focus on my learning. And when I took this I was quite high in emotional literacy, which thankfully reflected what I do. Yeah, I was much lower on emotional agility, my ability to shift between emotions, meaning, how easily do I adapt to changing situations? Yeah, I was curious. I did it twice. I took this assessment twice, one from the perspective of work and one from the

perspective of my personal life. And from the work side, my emotional agility was quite high. Why? Well, because I choose what I do at work. I control my agenda. I decide what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it, so I don't really need to be very emotionally agile in my work, right? But with my wife, who is Venezuelan originally, we live the world, and her view is much more spontaneous than mine, and so things are always changing, and I find that sometimes quite challenging to keep up with, and that's where my work, that's where I can do. My work is on my emotional agility, in particular personal life. So that's what I see. And what I have also seen is none of the four of these gives you the full set of tools, and that's why emotional regulation, because in some cases, we need a little more awareness. We need to put our attention on just being aware of what's going on. And sometimes we need to learn something in the emotional literacy space. Sometimes we need to shift, sometimes we need to bounce back. But all of those are in some way regulating ourselves emotionally. And one of the things we say at Dignity, Inc., is only you can regulate you emotionally like nobody can do it for you. So if I understand where to look for the possible ways I can regulate myself emotionally, that gives me that empowers me emotionally, and for me, that's why it's so important, is to be in choice and to be conscious that I do have a choice. Mark Robertson: You know, there's a there's I want to talk about the emotional regulation piece and the definition you have there, but you remind me of Dr. Jody Carrington, I think is her name, and she talks a fair amount about, or I've heard a little bit about, like, emotional deregulation or dysregulation. Her assessment that, like, I don't know if this is just us or global, but so many Americans are emotionally dysregulated or don't have a high level of emotional regulation. And so I would share that assessment as well. I find interesting the definition you're using, again, to language, emotional regulation, the ability to select. That's a word for me that's interesting, the emotion that will serve the situation, to be in choice. I've often, I think there's data, Dan, around the relationship of there's a triggering event, the emotion arises in you, and then you act. And that can happen in like I've heard 45 nanoseconds. So when you use the word select, that would imply to me that you there's a high level of emotional understanding and an ability to interrupt that automatic process, so somebody's going to have to be pretty emotionally aware or regulated. Would you like talk about that? Dan Newby: Sure. Respond to that. There's two elements to that. One is we have emotional reactions and those we can't always adapt. We can't select because they're automatic. And in fact, I would argue we don't want to learn to select those because why we hear a loud noise, we duck. It's automatic, and we within reaction, but it keeps us safe, survival. But here's the thing, is now I'm in fear, and fear won't always get me what I need. So then there's the response aspect of emotion. So when we say select, we're really talking more about the response phase, although here's what I would also say, sometimes I react in a way where I might say something that offended somebody. Now, I didn't do it on purpose, right? It was just a reaction, or I made a face, okay, but I still have a choice to select the emotion that will help resolve that situation. I can holler, right? I can feel, I can feel regret for doing it. So, so I would say that even though it's not this isn't so much about learning to react differently as learning to respond differently. Beautiful. Now, to some degree, I think we can learn to react differently, but I would say I'm not that for me, is not as valuable as learning to respond in a way that will get me what I need and will address the situation in the best possible way. Yeah. Mark Robertson: Yeah. And would you also agree that the ability to notice that and then select or respond, that's pretty high level emotional learning? Yeah? Dan Newby: So in emotional literacy, when I work with people, the very first exercise we do is called the notice and name exercise. And you pause, that's this to notice. You notice what you're experiencing, and then you put a name on it. Whoops, sorry, we're celebrating. And. So I see that really as part of emotional literacy, and that learning to pause, notice and name and the more you do that the bigger, the broader your emotional vocabulary becomes, and more automatic it becomes as well. One of the things I find sometimes people struggle is just with the pausing because we're so committed to action. People are so busy that even pausing for 10 seconds to ask themselves, "Huh? I wonder what emotion that is I'm experiencing," a lot of people struggle to even do so. I think it's really essential, the pause, the notice, the name, so that you can understand what's happening for you emotionally. Mark Robertson: I think what you're talking about there is a practice of pausing, a purposeful for this time period. I'm going to practice catching and pausing and then choosing, and that could... so we talked about, I talked about learning is time and practice, and so you want to learn anything, time and practice. So literally, the act of pausing becomes a practice, which I think is interesting because you said it, we're so action oriented that doesn't maybe feel like an action, but it is also, Dan, I think that especially organizationally, but I think in general, so many people in my assessment, are over committed. They have more to do than they can actually do so they're caught in this execution loop. They're do, they're human doings such that the trying to help them see the value of a practice, emotional, emotional practice of learning, of pausing. I just sat here listening to you like, "Yeah, who's going to do that?" you know, in today's culture.

Dan Newby: This is a place where we as coaches have a great opportunity, because coach comes to us and says, "I feel like I'm on a tread treadmill. Tread, wheel, squirrel, wheel, whatever. I can't I can't get off," right? I think that a great place to go. There is emotions. And my question would be, "Okay, you made lots of commitments, so your time is filled up. What are the emotions that lie underneath of those commitments?" Yeah, "what's the emotion that had you make all of those commitments?" Because that's really where the answer lies. Because many people will say, "Oh, I feel obligated," like "I don't have a choice, obligation." Okay, well, let's look at obligation. Does it really mean you don't have a choice, or does it mean you believe you don't have a choice? Yeah, ah, well, that might do something. And then let's look at, you know, your passion. Let's look at that. So I think that there are ways to approach that, and one of the beauties of the coaching conversations, we do create space for people to pause and reflect. But again, if somebody's doing this on their own, I would say, you know, spend your time doing that. You know, you you just said, "I'm going to the gym six times every week." Great. Well, you're on a treadmill. You've got time to reflect on what emotions you're experiencing. Absolutely. In your car. You can be listened to Led Zeppelin, or you could turn off the radio, you can say, "Hey, what emotion am I experiencing right now?" Yeah, we have lots of time when we could do this, yes, but it's just not a habit. Mark Robertson: That's right, yeah. It's a couple reaction to that. And then I'll ask the last question, because I want to honor our time, and I'm real clear, Dan, that there's so much more we could cover. And I'll just say it right now, if you'd be willing to come back, I'd love to have another conversation with you. Dan Newby: More than happy. Mark Robertson: Good. About with regard to, you know, it's, it's what you just described as the reason I'm very careful to as with regard to what I allow into my life, what I allow into my brain. So I haven't watched the news for over two decades. I don't get notifications on my phone. Generally, they're like they're very exclusive. So I'm very purposeful about creating space to reflect, to notice. I'm constantly when I'm driving, I'm reflecting. I'll do that today with this conversation. You know, when I lead this session this afternoon, at least just and I don't think most people are. I think they're so over committed, they're just going on to the next thing. But interestingly, the clients that come to me who want to work in this realm use two very common words, I'm stressed and overwhelmed, which are right, emotional words, right, to describe this phenomena. And so it's just fascinating to wade into that territory and dig in. And there's so many places you can go with it. So... Dan Newby: Yeah, the only thing I say about those two is they're not in my world, emotions, proper. Okay? Because we can, we can if you ask somebody about what's the emotion that's generating their sense of overwhelm, they might say joy, because they're going to see somebody they haven't seen in 10 years. Or they might say terror. Or they might say, you know, I don't know, ambition. I mean, there's long. Lots of things that might be fear, and the same with stress, because stress, for me, deserves unpacking in the sense that stress is part of life and we need stress, but where it gets to be problematic is distress. And so let's take a look at distress, and let's talk about the things that are causing distress, or even beyond that strain, and what are the emotions related to that? So I think that they are great when people say that, and I think genuinely trying to explain an emotional experience having. Yeah, and I would just say they lack vocabulary, because those are not exact precisely emotions, but there's certainly emotional indicators. Mark Robertson: So would that fall into the area of emotional intelligence, of on your model, or... Dan Newby: Emotional literacy. I still put that in emotional literacy, because about a distinction around emotions, and I kind of tongue in cheek in my book, say, well, there are emotions, and they have those three elements, story, impulse, purpose. But then there are not quite emotions, and those are the ones that they represent a variety of emotions. And if we don't get clear what emotions we're experiencing, then we kind of get lost trying to resolve those because overwhelm. How do you address overwhelm, if you don't get to the root, which would be the emotions? Nice. Mark Robertson: I love that distinction. Thank you. That I've learned a ton from you today, and that last one is really intriguing. I think I need to shift how I speak about that and or shift how I dig into that world and how I speak about it. So that's really helpful. Thank you. I want to ask you one more softball question, but I'm not going to, for the sake of time. So in order to close, I'll ask it. I'll ask it when we come back next time. In order to close, though, I want to, I want to make an opportunity available for you right now. You when you introduce those distinctions with your slide, you talked about the assessment that you had done for my viewers or listeners that might be curious and want to know more about what Dignity, Inc., is doing and or I was thinking, take that assessment. Where can they go do that? Dan Newby: Yep, so dignity-inc.com is the website. There's a tab in the menu for the Emotional Regulation Dashboard assessment. Okay, there's information there. We're building the portal, so at this moment, until the end of December, you can't just sign up and take it. You have to contact us if you want, but you're welcome to do that, and we'd love to even have a conversation with you, if you're interested. But as of the first of January, people will be able to go on, sign up, take it, get their results without, I mean, automatically, however you say that. So it's coming. But for now, I would say anybody who's interested. And we also support people who are like yourself, practitioners, you know, people who are coaches or facilitators who want to use the assessment with their clients, then we're happy to work with them on how that can happen and, okay, understand the benefits of it, etc. Mark Robertson: So you got another certification out there. Dan Newby: A certification for the assessment? Yeah, well, you can get certified with me in Emotion Centered Coaching. Okay, that we will have a process for people to get acknowledgement that, you know, they're trained to use this tool. So, yeah, we definitely want people to use it. So please. And if anybody has any questions about emotions, emotional literacy, regulation, I'd be more than happy to have a conversation. Get an email. Connect on LinkedIn. Mark Robertson: So to give your email, if you didn't already do that. Dan Newby: My email is Dan at dignity-inc.com. Got it. Beautiful, and you can reach me through the website too. So, okay, and I'll do my best to make sure that that that information goes in the show notes. Dan Newby: Well, thank you. I look forward to our next conversation, and you're right. There's a world out there to discover about emotions, and it's, for me, all fascinating, so we can go any direction you'd like to next time. Mark Robertson: Awesome. Dan, let me just close. Brother was saying thank you so much. I suspected this would be fun. I've had a blast, and it opens up like so many more conversations I want to have with you, so we'll have you back. So but thank you for taking your time and bringing this to us. Really, really good. Dan Newby: All right, you take good care. Thanks. Bye, brother. Bye. Mark Robertson: Thanks for being part of the ontological experience. Until next time, remember, be yourself. Everyone else is taken.