SPEAKER_01: 1:25

Uh you know, I was laying, I was laying on the on the floor, you know, feeling that sense of like I might be having a stroke or dying or something like that. And I swear, I was like, you know, it would be super nice just to die and like go to sleep. But then I was getting stressed out that I might then I was getting stressed out that I might be having a stroke and I'm gonna lose my brain. I'm like, dying is not the problem. It's like staying here with all these deficits. It's living with that shit, yeah. Yeah, exactly. What's going on, everybody? Uh, welcome to this live stream, and you're catching Danny and I just kind of shooting the shit before we come on live. And we're inviting some of our male friends, so other people might uh jump on. But um yeah, Danny and I are going live uh on my live streams uh to YouTube. Um, you might be finding us on LinkedIn, you might be finding us on Facebook, or you might be finding us on one of my favorite places to hang out now, um, is Substack. And so Danny and I want to do this as much as possible. Me and him and our good friend Dr. Ray Heinish were on last week, got a lot of great feedback um from a bunch of you. And so we're gonna kick off this discussion um about uh empathy and compassion. Those of you who were hanging out with Danny and I last week, we were talking about this idea of leadership and can you create a good leader if you don't have the skill sets right away? Can someone be built into a good leader? And so we were debating that and having that conversation, and it brought us into a deep discussion about what is a leader, what makes a good leader, you know, what makes a bad leader, and how we can uh inspire and influence people. And so we'll see if any of our other brothers show up on this, but let's just me and you go ahead and get started, Danny. So the question for you that I wanted to get into is, and we can couch this in leadership, which is your expertise, is a quote that I've seen going around, and it's a quote I heard from Elon Musk. Of course, we have to be very careful about you know, some of these things we see on the internet because they often are clips and they're taking out of context. And I have to admit, I did not see the complete context of this video. But the clip that I saw was Elon Musk essentially saying that uh empathy uh slash compassion, which really are two different, slightly different things, so we can talk about that, but that it is really an ultimate weakness uh that people will prey upon, that it's not a good thing, essentially, was this clip was inferring that having empathy and compassion is not really a good thing. And the the context underneath it was that it is something that people will take advantage of, it will make you weak, it will that kind of thing. And so I want to just uh have this conversation with you first, you know, given that you're the expert in leadership and you do a lot in this world, like what would you say about that? Knowing you as a close friend, I think I know where you come down on this in terms of agreement-disagreement, although uh I know there's probably nuance there, but I'm wondering how you see this from a leadership perspective. Is empathy and compassion an asset or a liability?

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

I I do think it's important we start with the the distinction between the two. And you may, I I don't know the technical definition on each, but I do decipher between these when I teach Jade and I say, look, empathy is to feel with. Jade is sad, I become sad. Jade is mad, I become mad. Comma compassion is more of a mental process, be able to see what you're going through or to understand what you might be going through, even if I haven't gone through what you've gone through. So if you if like if something that you went through and I've never been through, I may not know exactly what it's like to go through that, but I will know what those emotions are. I know what it's like to be scared, I know what it's like to be sad, I know what it's like to be betrayed, I know all those human experiences. Passion to me is just about understanding. I don't know if I'm bouncing back with echo on your side, Jay, but you have an echo on your side? Yeah, I might have to change my mic real quick.

SPEAKER_01: 5:51

But I do want to know what you're doing. No, you're not I'm not echoing, which means it's probably coming from me. Let me turn my volume down, see if that helps.

SPEAKER_00: 6:00

But I do just want to get your thoughts on that, Jay, to start with that distinction, because believe it or not, I'm I'm actually probably a little bit more against empathy than than you think. Uh that has been a new thing for me. I've been working with a lot of people. I do the big five personality traits in my training. So the audience are not familiar with those. It is the most reliable and agreed upon personality assessment. And I like it because it's nuanced. I like it because it's dynamic. Who I was at 25, I can change my personality by 35. And one of those traits is agreeableness. These are the people pleasers among us. And one of the things that the people pleasers among us do is they're very high in empathy, which means if Jay's sad, then I become sad. And what we're finding, at least in the leadership space, it does take a lot of their energy. It takes a lot of their just bandwidth to feel what they feel. So I try to teach them more on the compassion side. Like, look, it's absolutely critical. We see what other people are going through. And there's some evidence in the research that says people who are better perspective takers, they're better at compassion. They're better negotiators, they're better salespeople, they're, they perform better at work across the board. And they don't go home exhausted at the end of the day because they're like, I've been, I've been angry all day. Why have you been angry? Well, Jane's been angry because I've been empathizing with him all day. So I don't think, I don't know that I agree that it's it's weakness and you'll get it taken advantage of, but I do see it more as like a seasoning, like salt, rather than a main ingredient like protein. So empathy is something that should be used in dashes. It should probably be used and reserved for people who are probably most close to us. Like I'll have empathy for Kels, I'll have empathy for you, but I can't have empathy with everyone I work with across the day. Otherwise, it kind of leaves me empty. So I don't know what you think about those two definitions and those distinctions, or if you even agree with sort of my approach. But that's what I've been teaching lately. So I've been excited to talk about this topic.

SPEAKER_01: 7:47

Yeah, and and let me know if you're still getting feedback. You probably will. I probably I don't have my headphones near me, but so you're probably gonna get a little bit of feedback. But yeah, and and actually, uh, if you don't mind, like let me let's look this up real quick. I'm just I'm just gonna briefly check. And before I look it up, I'll tell you, just so, you know, I've I've always seen empathy as a feeling-based thing, and I've seen compassion more as the action-based thing. Um, but I but let's actually look this up for everybody. So I'm just gonna say um compassion versus empathy. And just so everyone knows, when I'm I'm on, I'm on GPT, I just want to see what what's the difference. How does how does that difference come out?

SPEAKER_00: 8:30

I do know that the the chief researcher on this is Kristen Neff. She wrote the book called Self-Compassion. She's out of the University of Texas, and that's a key component of her of compassion, is action-oriented. I take it, I remember this one time Jade, and Jade does not like to do this stuff, and I knew that about him, but I really needed help. And so I called and I was like, hey man, do you mind helping me move? And Jade, Jade will always have your back, but this is his one thing that he's like, fuck. I don't even know if you're my friend, if you have to ask me that to move. But the fact that you came out, you came from uh Santa Monica, drove all the way into Central LA into Koreatown, couldn't find a parking spot, helped me like helped me in the hot sun with this big ass mattress for three hours, gave up your Saturday, like that is an action-oriented thing, or taking someone to the airport, compassion is that component of action. So she would agree with you. But I interrupted when you're kind of looking it up. What is what was the distinction? I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:26

I'll tell you all what it says here and love her work for sure. So empathy, feeling with someone, you emotionally resonate with another person's experience. What it does well builds connection and rapport, signals you're not alone, helps you understand emotional states, hidden cost, emotional contagion, burnout and fatigue, boundary and collapse, paralysis instead of action. You absorb suffering instead of responding to it, right? So empathy says, I feel your pain. If you stop here, you're now in pain too. Right. So that's the idea that I think you were getting at, right? So empathy in that regard, I guess we could see what someone like an Elon Musk is trying to point to. Now, compassion, caring about suffering, and this is the key component, with the intention to reduce it without becoming consumed by it. So to me, that's the action part. This is what it does well, preserves emotional regulation, supports wise action, maintains good boundaries, scales in leadership, parenting, coaching, and medicine. You can stay present and effective. I see your pain and I'm steady enough to help. And so when I first saw this quote by Elon Musk, I was disappointed. Not because I fully disagreed, but I was disappointed by the lack of nuance in whoever grabbed that clip. And I'm and whoever, if there's anyone here that saw the whole clip, I'm hoping that perhaps, although I don't know that he's necessarily known for this, that there was some nuance in there and that he was touching on this idea. Because from my perspective, what he's really talking about is not, and this is what people do, it's not to avoid empathy, it's to have emotional maturity. And from my perspective, if we're gonna have a conversation about empathy and compassion, we probably should have a conversation about emotional maturity and emotional development first. Because from my perspective, if you have emotional maturity and you are emotionally well developed, there's no risk of getting swept up into overfeeling so much that someone in rage causes you to be in rage, or someone in sadness causes you to go into sadness. There should be this thing that I can feel you and then immediately move and be like, that's your feelings. And now I can move to take actions to allay suffering, but I don't put myself in suffering as well. But to me, empathy is I don't think compassion is possible without empathy because the first part of compassion is going, I see that you are in pain. I can feel to some degree your pain so that I can do something about it. How are you supposed to help somebody allay compassion if you don't know and understand what they're suffering from? It'd almost be like, you know, someone on the side of the road who has a car, you know, that's broken down and you pull over to help them and know nothing about changing a tire and they're trying to clean their windshield while they're trying to change their tire. It helps nobody, right? So you have to recognize the fact that, okay, I can see that they have a tire flat, and that is the thing that we're working on. That's empathy, right? Like to me, it's like that's a recognition, a seeing, not with our eyes, but with our emotions. I see you, right? I get you. To me, empathy is I get you. Compassion is I got you, right? Like that, that idea of like, I see that that that you know, Danny has to, he needs help moving, right? I can understand and I can get and I have to get into the thing about it. Like he's got nobody else. It's like he's, you know, he can't do this alone. It, you know, that's incredibly frustrating because I've felt it before. And then so I get it. I get what it's like to move and to have that frustration of having to move by yourself. I also, though, now I got you because I go, I because I understand it and I know what that suffering is like, I will show up and be uh compassionate and help you allay that suffering. So I don't think you can have one without the other, but I agree it's emotional maturity because people who are emotionally mature go, I feel you, I can get you, but I'm not gonna get consumed by you. I'm not gonna let that be contagious on me. And now I'm going to uh you know have some compassion. And let me just say one more thing about this. My uh brother-in-law, Ellie, uh, who you know Danny well, he is uh Israeli and he can have a pretty gruff way of being. He's not necessarily the warmest human in the world. Um so a lot of people would say, well, he doesn't have like, you know, the empathy because everyone sees empathy as being warm, but he also is the kind of person who'll be the first one. He was an EMT and that kind of stuff, he'd be the first one to run in the building and pull you out. So he has the compassion beyond what most people would have, but he's not necessarily light and airy and warm and fluffy about it, right? And so I think that's partly the distinction, right? He is able to see someone needs help. I get that they're suffering, I will help them, but I don't have to be overly emotional about it. And in fact, being in my emotional uh, you know, integrity and authenticity and alignment allows me to be more compassionate. So I don't know what you think about that.

SPEAKER_00: 15:02

I like I like all that. I I would just say this is like this is like a muscle that needs to be exercised, though. I am noticing more and more, just in my work and just my observations of people in general, like this, this muscle is getting really doled down. Just our capacity to even imagine what someone else is going through. I'll give you what I use to teach this now. This is this game called Codenames. You ever heard of this game, Code Names? Like a board game, Jade. You familiar with it? So for those of you who don't know, it's a you take these deck of cards, and every card has a single word on them. It could be something like bridge, it could be a location. They're mostly nouns on these cards, just single word nouns. And you're split into two teams, and there's a five by five grid of all these cards. And you're looking at all these cards, and it's word association. So you, as the hint giver, like if you're on my team, Jade, I'm looking at this card with a unique board that matches the board that you see on the table. And I would give you a hint. I said, all right, Jade, this one is for three words, and I get a one-word hint, and the word is country. And you would look at the board and you go, okay, well, there's America, there's England, there's China. It's gotta be those three. So Jay would guess those three, and you go, okay, great, yeah, you got it. And you kind of block those out, and it's like the first of seven or whatever. Every time I play this game with someone new, my my family, we're into board games, and we always there's always someone new in the mix, and every time without fail, you'll be the hint giver and you'll go through the hint, you'll go through the round, and then you lay down your card and say, Yeah, this is what the board looked like. And if your team lost that round, without a doubt, someone will say, Why didn't you just say this? It's so easy, it's right there, right? The problem is you have to avoid certain words too. So if I gave you three for country and there are four countries on the board, then like one of them could be the other teams, one of them could be the death card on there. And without doubt, Jay, then it's their turn to give the hint. And they get behind the card and they go, Wow, this is a lot harder than I thought it was. Every time, and it's frustrating for your teammates to go, yeah, have a little perspective, have a little empathy, like imagine so their capacity to imagine what it was like on the other side of the card, impossible. All they said, well, here's all the information I have. It's so easy. Look at it, until they get in that situation. So I'm noticing this more and more in the world, too. That muscle to be like, oh God, I can imagine that's really tough. There's this experiment out of uh, there's this professor out of, I think it's Penn, and every new business school class, he brings people in and he goes, All right, let me just ask you all you're all business-minded people, right? You're economic-minded people. If you were alive in 1740, bunch of white kids in the class, how many of you do you think would be slave owners? Not one hand goes up. They would all be the righteous one to push back, be the anti-slavery, right? But we know statistically that's probably not the case. That if X amount of people at that time were slave owners, then probability would tell us that, yeah, this classroom of these type of people probably be slave owners. But it's interesting, we just don't have that capacity to imagine what it's like in those times, in that moment, going through that situation. So I don't know if you've noticed this, but I feel as if a lot of these muscles have been doled, except for the people who identify as people pleasers. And I think there's there is a little bit of an overcorrection with them. They're exhausted, and because they have this story of, well, I'm a good person, and this is what good people do. It's like, well, you can be a good person and be and not have to feel every emotion of everyone around you. But those are some of the examples I like to use to be like, I know you think this is obvious. I know you think this is easy, that it's natural, but then looking at games like code names, looking at these experiments where they ask people, imagine if, and people are just wrong over and over and over. So go into the same thing.

SPEAKER_01: 18:50

It reminds me too of um of like post-World War II and you know, the Hitler. Like one of the things that always kind of blew my mind and studying that is that after that war, to find people in Germany who would admit or even you know, recognize like that you won't find people nowadays who say I supported Hitler. Okay. Like, right? What most of them are dead, but like at the time, no one would admit. And and then as time went on, you know, like everyone, like if you did studies of Germany and you were like, who did you support them? Everyone was like, No, no, I didn't. No, I didn't. Right. And it's that it's the same kind of sort of principle in my mind of what we humans do. We it works like what you're talking about, where it's like, you know, you can't put yourself in that perspective. But then it also works in reverse that if you were that person and you feel like you made wrong or quote bad uh choices, you're not necessarily gonna own those bad choices because the brain does not like cognitive dissonance in that regard. And so it will essentially correct itself, which is why it can be incredibly infuriating with this kind of stuff, because uh humans are not logical in nature. They make emotional um decisions, and I think that, and we don't understand those, and I think that is why empathy is oftentimes seen by those who are I I really just think they're not well versed in emotions, they're not very emotionally mature, and therefore empathy is a complex emotion that um is tricky, and because it can put people in a vulnerable situation or feel like you're being hijacked, a lot of people will just blanket say it's a problem. I'll sh I will say that what I believe about it is I actually think it is the most important of all human emotions. A world without empathy is a world where you and I aren't having a conversation. And this has been well worked out in terms of the debate of survival of the fittest versus survival of the friendliest. And most people who study these things, anthropologists, social psychologists, you know, um, this even gets into the research of um domestication of dogs and animals and how they become more and more amenable and friendly. It has to do with cooperation. And there is no cooperation in my mind without empathy. In fact, lack of empathy leads to wars and cruelty. And so let's just be in my mind. Now, you may or may not agree with me, not you, but you as a whole. I'm curious what you think about this, but the people listening to this, but to me, I go, that's a very slippery slope. Just because empathy is a complex emotion, to see it as a weakness and not realize that a world without empathy means you can't feel me, get me, cooperate with me. You just don't give a damn. Your suffering is all that matters, and that's it. And you, me and Ray talked about this last time that in a human ecosystem where we have to get along, or just an animal ecosystem where the lion, who's the king of the jungle, decides he's gonna just exert control over everybody and take all the resources, ends up destroying himself. We see this over and over again. The world, you know, we're talking about World War II. A lot of people are talking about what's going on in the United States now. The world gets here because empathy begins to sw to be uh, it begins to be confusing for people or begins to be abandoned. Compassion then goes out the window, cruelty begins to uh consume us, and all of a sudden we are on a track trajectory of disconnection, dehumanization, divisiveness. And the people in power always think this is to their advantage. It never is. It will destroy them the same as everybody else. And we humans have made this mistake again and again and again. So I'm curious what you think about that. And then I'm wondering if you want to get into the idea of like what really are we talking about when we're talking about emotional maturity? Because to me, it's not stoicism so much as just be stoic and don't care. It is, you know, a whole set of behaviors and ways of being that help you manage empathy in a way that doesn't, you know, burn you out and create a situation where you are hijacked by everyone around you.

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

Yeah, I definitely want to get into it. I think you have a great model. It's like five, five or four or five like different types of emotional intelligence that that combine all of emotional intelligence. I want you to that, I just wanted to add that fight and flight get a lot, get a lot. They have a great PR person. The flight or fight response is a great PR person. What has less of a great PR person is the tend and befriend response, which was just as vital to our ancestor, to your point, Jay. This is something that is in our wiring. Like people who had this tend and befriend response, they had this capacity to bring people in closer, to get bring the group in closer. And of course, that's a survival mechanism because the worst thing that you could have in those times be out ostracized from the tribe. So this tend and befriend response is critical even for the most masculine, angry type warrior, still actually at huge capacity. Anthropologists are fine, they're have huge capacities for this tend and befriend response. And I think this is something that's getting a little bit misguided, especially in, you know, you and I as men, we pay attention to a lot of men's issues, a lot of psychological men's issues in this generation. And it's very interesting to us, and I think both of us would think they're on the wrong path. They're very much like, yeah, kill, kill and eat your food, protect, and all those things. There is an element of masculinity that I agree with that, but they're totally ignoring the tend and befriend response. Really masculine men can be really warm and really welcoming and really inclusive. They can do all those things too. So I just wanted to add to that, but I definitely think we should get into maybe the what these components of of really emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, whatever you call it, is. And then maybe we finish up, Jay, probably speaking to the people who are a little too far the other way. We probably don't have a lot of these people who are who are anti-empathy on this call. They're probably people like, I'm empathetic, but they might be going too far the other way. So maybe we can finish with some like how-tos, like maybe how they should be thinking as well. But yeah, go through the go through your uh emotional intelligence model.

SPEAKER_01: 25:31

I think that's well first, yeah, I will. But yeah, first, I want to just talk about this this men's issue stuff briefly, you know, because and you know, uh, we were thinking that maybe some of my some of our other uh bros would come on, especially my nephews who are a little younger. But, you know, it's interesting to me because when you look at, at least as a young man, like, you know, what you know, what are what are young men sort of really after if you think about it, right? Like as a young man, you're basically like, okay, you know, sex and attraction, um, power and sort of income, you know, sort of status kind of thing. And what's really interesting about that is that those games, and this again is very clearly mapped out, those games are most won. You have someone who's an asshole, right? And I know there are examples of that all over the world where there are these powerful assholes. But the fact of the matter is, if you want deep connection with a woman, empathy and compassion, you better understand those. If you want to uh basically uh create a community that can give you status and build this whole idea of networking and stuff like that, you're going to be fair far better by looking to bring people together, which again can't happen without empathy and compassion. I would even argue that the narcissists of the world who gain power, they do that through manipulation of empathy and compassion. So even though they might not have it and they are completely self-centered, they are masters of using it to get people uh on their teams. And so, from my perspective, if you're a man listening to this and you're just like, I want to win, even if that's where you're coming from and it's completely self, you know, like just all about me, self-absorbed, still empathy and compassion win. And I think the data are incredibly clear on that. So, just real quick, how do you get emotional maturity? It goes through child development. And again, this is my model, but it's based on child development. It's basically like if me and Danny are little kids and we are just acting out all the time, the first thing our parents are going to be uh priming us on is emotional regulation, right? You need to calm down. You can't just, you know, be yelling all the time. And, you know, it's like there is an impetus in the parent to try to emotionally regulate for the child first, but then teach emotional regulation next. And so we need emotional regulation. To me, the next thing is they're gonna teach you about appropriateness. Danny can't throw a temper tantrum, Jade can't throw a temper tantrum just anywhere out in public. You know, parents, you'll remember, parents will be like, you can't do that here. You'd be punished for or put in your place about the appropriateness of doing that when guests are around, or the appropriateness of doing that in public. So it's this idea of regulation, then appropriateness. That's a lot of where a lot of people's maturity stops. The next piece, I think for men, this is men, women have this nailed, but men don't, which is emotional integrity. What am I feeling? Am I sad, but I'm projecting it as anger? What am I really feeling? Where am I feeling it in my body? The next would be emotional vulnerability, which essentially says, can I share what I am feeling with others? Right? Like, can I actually share that? And then finally, which is the most advanced skill, would be emotional alchemy, which this is where we get into empathy, which emotional alchemy is to be able to feel something and change it into something more appropriate and more regulated to get something done. An example would be like if I'm mad, anyone has ever been through, you know, the a bad breakup, you know, there's a stage where first you're sad, then you get angry. And oftentimes that turns into drive and motivation, if you're healthy, to better yourself, to get in shape, like all those things. So to me, that is the way that we move forward. But we need this alchemy. We need all of them really, but you have they build on each other. If you don't have regulation, you don't have appropriateness. If you don't have appropriateness, you can't be in emotional integrity. If you don't have emotional integrity, well, you can't share that and be emotionally vulnerable. And if you don't have all of those, you can't have emotional alchemy and be able to use these emotions and change them to be more appropriate. So to me, when we're talking about empathy, you need all of these because if I feel Danny and the energy coming off of him and I get consumed in his sadness or consumed in his anger, I'm kind of hurting both of us. But if I basically go into this place where I get regulated, by the way, science shows if I'm regulated emotionally and Danny's having an emotional event, he's far more likely to be regulated. This is co-regulation. It's very well, you know, balanced. If I come up with him and I'm like, dude, you're all right, I got you. You know, like we're good. He's gonna be more likely to regulate. We don't have enough people, A, in my mind, who have this kind of emotional maturity, who have learned it, and B, will apply it in a way. And to me, so I do think empathy is an advanced, and compassion is kind of an advanced emotional state. It requires all of these. And if you're not well versed, then empathy will feel dangerous and like weakness to you because you can't hold it in the way that you probably should be able to.

SPEAKER_00: 31:07

Let me get your take on this, man. So shout out to Time Millionaires back in the day, one of Jade's early programs. One of the one of the modules was all about like how to create your own frameworks and how to, you know, it's it's it's all the stuff that you do all the time. But how do you take all the information and synthesize it into a very basic framework? So one of the things that I've used for me, and I've been teaching this, and so I'll I want your honest feedback, Jay, because sometimes when I teach it, people kind of kind of glaze over. But it's worked for me to develop some of these skills. So when it comes to, well, just I'm calling your kind of your whole package emotional intelligence or maybe it's emotional regulation, but I love that model. One model I do to actually practice becoming that, as I I have something I call the feel model. And maybe I just stole this right off of you, Dave. But I think because you might have a feel model too, but my and so tell me if I'm just saying your stuff back to you. But these are there the feel acronym. First is the F, which is feeling, meaning identify the feeling. So one of the things that psychologists have found is emotional granularity, like having emotional vocabulary actually makes us all five of those things that you talk about. Uh, emotional, from emotional understanding to emotional uh regulation to emotional vulnerability, being able to get down. It's not like we know this about men. Men feel anything and it's anger. Men get mad. It's like caveman one, I'm sad, I'm mad. I'm tired, I'm mad. I'm annoyed, I'm mad. Like it's just anger, but there's there is a thing, I think they've identified like 4,000 different uh experiences that we can have on a granular level. So the more we get practice on identifying the specific feeling, it's like, no, I'm not mad. I'm actually hurt, I'm actually betrayed. I'm actually, I'm I am just annoyed for the moment. Being able to identify the feeling actually takes a lot of the feeling of the intensity of the feeling away. So F is feeling. The first E is engage. So the immediate thing that we want to do is run. And I get this too. My my anxiety response in my 20s was to immediately turn on basketball and eat a giant bowl of Chipotle. And that helped me just get away from whatever men feel bad feelings. I could get away from those. So my new practice, meaning engage mean just sit with it. Like don't try to run from it. Don't just turn on the television, don't just get on Instagram and check out of it. Kind of sit with it, which leads to the next E, which is to, well, engage is also like where does it show up in your body, right? This is a mindfulness practice. So it's like, okay, I'm feeling it in my stomach. Oh, I feel it really in my chest. Oh, it feels like it's in my throat. It's starting to identify and place that. Again, it's just a mindfulness practice that helps dissipate the intensity. The second E is explore. So why am I feeling this emotion? Every time I hang out with this person, I'm pissed off. Every time I hang out with this person, I'm drained. Every time I do this type of work, I get really annoyed. I get really short. Like something for me, and this is not a big insight, but I think most of us know this. But yes, I if I don't hit eight hours of sleep, and yes, I mean eight hours. Seven, I'm worse off. Six, I'm I'm toast. But I need eight hours of sleep. And if I don't, I get annoyed easier. I take things personally more easier. So just having that connection, okay, why is this experience coming up and exploring some of those things, maybe through some of your journaling practices that you talk about? That's an explore phase. Where is this coming from? And then the L is live, live out your values, no matter how you feel. And that's sort of what you're saying, the appropriateness piece of this is I am pissed, but also my value is kindness. My value is empathy, my value is compassion. So to practice that, it's a muscle like anything else. So I don't know if I just took that straight from you, dude. No, but that's kind of my field model of emotional intelligence. Identify the feeling, engage, explore where it's coming from, and then live out your values anyway. That's kind of been my practice that I've been talking about.

SPEAKER_01: 34:51

Yeah, I love it. My my field model is F-E-E-L, is probably what you're thinking. And it comes from, it's what I use for people when they're going through breakups, right? So it's first feel the emotion. The next one is exercise because it has the ability to uh move us out of our trauma. It has some really good and and drama, it has some really good effects there. And then the next one is edit the story. And then even sometimes you have to eliminate that person and all the reminders from your life. And then the next one is live a new life. So that's where you're kind of getting that highlight.

SPEAKER_00: 35:21

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I'll I must, I'll say I must have pulled this, but that's something I've been thinking of a lot. But maybe we can talk a little bit about Jade sort of sort of on the back end here for those people who are like, look, I am emotionally intelligent. Look, I am empathetic. My problem is that, yeah, people walk off, people, people are doing what Elon Musk said at the beginning of this conversation. They are walking all over me. They are taking advantage of me that I am left like at the end of the day, totally exhausted and burnt out. So, what can I do to start maybe uh I don't know, showing up a little bit differently so I'm not feeling all these things without losing that piece of myself that I'm really proud of. I'm proud that I'm kind, I'm proud that I'm empathetic. But at this point, I'm getting I'm getting my ass kicked with this. So maybe we can sort of wrap this up with some of those, some of your tips around that.

SPEAKER_01: 36:05

I I think it's it's back to this idea of emotions and the idea of becoming emotionally stagnant or only having one play in the playbook, right? So, like you can imagine a football team that only has one play and they run it every time, right up the middle. You know, that's our play. What's gonna happen is the defense is going to know that's the play they're running all the time. You're gonna feel like you're being taken advantage of because you can't move anybody because you've only got one play in your playbook. And that play in the playbook is simply to be, you said, like for a lot of these people, agreeable and not necessarily confront people or not have boundaries and just kind of be like whatever or let it go or whatever their one thing that they normally do with difficult people or whatever it is, and then resentment builds. And we see this all the time in one-on-one coaching, right? I'm always looking at where is the story of resentment, you know, and the story of bitterness that comes from past hurts. And so from my perspective, it's actually a pretty easy fix to talk about. It's a difficult thing to actually do, and all it is is teaching people a different move. And actually, I think probably the best model that I think you and I both love would be um the model of, you know, um uh Grant, right? You know, his model of you have to be able to change your emotional reciprocity style. So this to me goes into this idea of givers, uh, takers, and matchers. And the idea, I think, of what happens with people who do get taken advantage of, they tend to be empathetic, they tend to be givers, they tend to have this view that everyone is default good, which I think is not as bad, but almost as useless as thinking everyone is default bad, right? Like to me, I go, everyone is human, everyone suffers, and everyone is operating from a story that they believe is right. It's not good or bad, it's just me trying to decipher their story. And so then what I do, instead of being a giver or a taker, if I'm a giver and I match with takers, they're gonna take all of the time. And I'm just gonna be starved. And what I have to recognize is I can default give, but if I meet takers all the time, I've got to change my reciprocity style, my emotional way of handling. And this is just a way of saying boundaries. So don't get caught up in the psychological language. It's just I need boundaries to say, oh, you're one of those. You've got kind of this story that is making you be this way. I've got to change my way of behaving with you. What we do instead is we go, everyone should just match, meet me where I'm at. If I'm nice, everyone should be nice to me. If I'm giving and generous, everyone should be giving and generous. And I go, that's not the way it works because some people have been giving and generous and gotten burned. So now they're not giving and generous. And so to me, I just go, what is it that they are working with? And let me, I have to be the one to adjust the way that I show up with them, which is to say, understanding boundaries and standards. Uh, real quick, to me, a boundary is a flexible way of behaving. I can adjust my boundaries. Like if you're rude to, let's say, uh a server, that's a boundary of mine. I'm gonna, I might, but it's not a hard and fast rule that I'm not gonna be friends with you if you're rude to a service professional. However, if I see you do that five, six times and I'm like, okay, it wasn't just a bad day. You're just an asshole to service professional, then I'm like, now then I move you to the standard category where I'm like, I don't deal with those kind of people. But boundaries should be flexible. Standards are, you know, something that's written in the sand. You know, I like to think of it as the World War I trench warfare where there's trenches on either side and this boundary zone in the middle. You come in the boundary zone, you may get shot at, you know, you may not. But you get into someone else's trench, that's it for you, right? So I think we need to operate like that. I'm like, you know, if uh, you know, someone does something to me that I can slightly deal with, but I don't like, I'm gonna be like, look, it's kind of crossing my boundaries. It's on me to change my approach with them. But there are certain things where if you behave a certain way, I have my standards, which is a one-strike rule. That's kind of how I see it. We need the flexibility, and that flexibility comes with, once again, regulation, appropriateness, emotional alchemy. How can you be flexible if you can't understand what I'm feeling, what's going on with this person, feel what they're feeling, and adjust. And once again, even narcissists who tend to get power in difficult times and you know, tend to be voted into power, they are self-centered. It's all about them, but they are masters in appearing like they're not, because whether they're using it or not, they have mastered this technology, this emotional technology to manipulate. I know we don't like that term manipulate, but we also have to master this emotional technology that Danny and I are talking about to manipulate not other people, but to manipulate our sovereignty in a sense.

SPEAKER_00: 41:16

Yeah, just so uh one of my things, love books. So I'll I'll shout out the book that Jade's talking about real quick. It's by Adam Grant, which he said it's called. Give and take. And the fascinating research that he did was he was like, let's see where these people land on the what he calls the success ladder. Who in this group of givers, people who tend to give first, tend to go out of their way to help other people, they kind of lead with that. Then there's takers who obviously do the opposite, right? They they take first, they're looking for their opportunities to get theirs. And then they have what they call matchers, which is let me just wait and see what Jay does, and then I'll copy him. So if he's a giver, I'll be a giver. If he's a taker, then I'm gonna be a taker. And so the piece of research that he does is says, who finishes highest on the success ladder? And I do this in my workshops. I go, who do you guys think? Who do you think fits on the top of the success ladder? Everybody goes, oh, givers for sure, because we sort of are trained in this good versus evil model. And they're right. Givers do finish on top of the success ladder. Then I ask, who finishes at the bottom of the success ladder? And when we say success, anything from work, promotions, and status to salaries to fulfillment, all across any way you define success, Grant found that, yep, this is true. Is that who finishes at the bottom? And they always go, the takers finish at the bottom. And it's like, actually, no. Givers finish at the bottom. The difference is what Jade is talking about. So givers basically go first, but then when they engage with a taker, they don't treat keep trying to give. That becomes a martyr. And that's a huge line I deal with with people who are highly agreeable, people pleaser tight. They'll just keep, well, this is the way I am. It's like, then you're gonna keep getting stomped on, unfortunately. So it's some, and that's where your boundaries and standards come into play, which I love. The other book that I'd recommend for people who struggle with this, Man or Woman, is no more Mr. Nice Guy. I believe the author is Robert Glover. And it sounds a little, the title sounds like a little snarky, but we all know what this nice guy thing is. When women talk about nice guys, they're not talking about guys that they want to be with and be in a relationship with. When men talk about nice guys, they're not saying someone I look up to, someone I respect. So we know kind of how we loosely define this nice guy syndrome. That's what that book is all about. And a big practice from that book is practicing engaging in conflict because it's it's the zone that all people pleasers hate. So practice engaging in cont in conflict, practice with radical honesty. And that's a lot harder for us people pleasers. It's a lot easier said than done, rather, right? And so one of the things, I'll just share this with the audience. I read that book and it really shifted my sort of internal processing. And so I started doing these things. I was like, all right, I'm just gonna be radically honest. All right, I'm going to lean into conflict. I'm not going to avoid it. And I just wanted to tell people this is a little embarrassing, but there is going to be an overcorrection period. This, like anything else, you're going to cross a line, you're going to show up in a way that that's not exactly like I'm overcompensating for the people pleaser. And so the last couple of years, I've rocked relationships, I've transformed relationships, I've lost a couple friends, I've gained a couple friends. And that was really freaking hard for me. When your primary value is to be liked and to be appreciated, and I am the guy who's, oh, Danny's here. It's easy. It should be humorous. It's go with the flow. And now I'm in here rocking the boat. That was really, really difficult for me. And I'm embarrassed about how I showed up. But it's kind of part of the process. So I just want to share with some of the peel pleasers out there. It's really critical that you engage in some of these things and lean in to conflict. And yeah, sometimes you're gonna be like, that was kind of an asshole move. That's not how I want to be. And that's okay. It's sort of part of the figuring out process. And the last thing I'll just share to touch on what you said, Jade, I heard this recently and I wanted to see what you think about this, but boundaries is another way that people pleasers overcorrect. So they go, all right, these are my boundaries. And what they mix up is a boundary is not for other people, it's for us. So what they do is they go, my boundary is this. Don't talk to me like that, Jade. That's my boundary. You're not allowed to talk to me like that. That's not a boundary. That's just telling Jade what to do. The boundary is every time Jade talks to me like that, I'm gonna leave. That's something I'm doing within my control. So it's not telling people what to do. That's my boundary. You can't do that, you can't say that. It's no, this is my boundary, mean this is what I'm gonna do in these situations or when these things come up. And like you said, there is nuance in those, but that's the practice. If I have a boundary of this, practicing saying, all right, that didn't go, that that's across my boundary. I have to do something about it. I have to leave, I have to change a relationship, I have to change my behavior. It's not telling other people what to do. So that was a key distinction I've learned recently. I'm like, that's really good because that's what a boundary is. Because a lot of people go, this is my truth, and get out of my way. And it's like, that's not exactly a boundary, right? So I don't know what you think about that, but I like that distinction. Boundary is about us, we set it for ourselves. We're not necessarily setting it for other people.

SPEAKER_01: 46:05

Now, I I actually love that you said that because one of the one of the things I could say in my clinical coaching practice over the years, you know, and of course, I'm part clinician, part counselor, sort of part coach. So being in a clinic as a doctor is a little different than the coaching counseling thing. But one of the things that uh speaks to this, and I always couch it as expectations and assumptions. And I'll throw this out at you and then we can begin to wrap up, but I want to see what people think about this because it you can call it boundary standards, but you're right. We have to then have a conversation about expectations and assumptions. And I oftentimes say to people that same thing you said, expectations and assumptions are always and only for self, not for other, for the exact same reasons. And as soon as I say that, people will immediately get uncomfortable because they're like, well, if I'm in a relationship and we have an agreement, I need to expect that someone will have that agreement. And I'm like, no, you need to expect that if that agreement is violated, you will have a particular reaction to that. So the expectation and the assumption is not that Danny does what he says he's going to do, because that is impossible for me to control, but that if Danny doesn't say what he's going to do, then I have an expectation and assumption for myself on my behavior. So I'm just repeating exactly what Danny said uh in a different way. I agree completely. I just also think wording matters too, because if people under, if you understand what Danny just said about that, then I go, expectations and assumptions, I think, should fall into this discussion as well. And I think it does make people uncomfortable because those are different words. They come with a whole different set of emotional material and story behind them. But imagine the ultimate goal, I think, with this is emotional freedom. And you need like that would be another masterpiece, right? It's like the next level up from emotional alchemy, if we follow that path, is emotional freedom, which is really what stoicism was kind of talking about. And this is an advanced aspect of emotional freedom. It essentially says, you know, if you do a particular thing, I can't expect or assume that you're gonna do what I want you to do. What I can expect and assume is for you to do exactly what you're gonna do. All I can control is my reactions to it. And once again, I think this goes into the argument of empathy and compassion. If I have emotional freedom, I can show up and allay suffering. If I don't, I might get caught up in the suffering storm in my attempt to allay suffering. And so, and this is what happens. The best people, the best men, the best leaders in my mind have a mastery of this. And just from a rational, not that we're rational people, we're normally emotional, but just from a reasoned, rational, logical perspective, it is the thing that gives the most results in all the domains. Whether you want to be a great husband or partner, whether you want to be a great leader, this is the path in my mind.

SPEAKER_00: 49:19

Yeah, I got nothing, I got nothing to add to that, Jade. I again, I think we are speaking to the people who are more on one side of the fence than the other. It's sort of this paradox. I in my head I call it like the self-development paradox. It's like the people who need self-development aren't really into it. The people who don't really need self-development, it's like an extension of the Dunning Kruger effect. It's like people who don't need self-development, love it. They're like, yeah, I need to develop my empathy. So I doubt we have a lot of people who are anti-empathy leaning in to learn in this conversation. So I just speaking to those people. I know you felt this way at some point in your life. I certainly, I told you I've been working through it the past couple of years, it's kind of peep, these people-pleasing tendencies. That's when empathy does go a little too far and there is a little bit of an overcorrection. And I just, I would, um, the final thing I would say is just like that. There is a process of change that is clunky. It does not feel good. That doesn't mean you're on the wrong path. It is going to be painful, like interpersonal conflict, especially when your primary value is to be likable and to make things easy for people. It to rock the boat feels horrible. You'll lose sleep, but I'm sort of getting to the other end of this process, or at least further down the field than I was two, three, four years ago. And the the emotional freedom, I love that term. I'm at far more peace. I it's far easier to have conversations now because I'm not constantly managing or monitoring things I'm saying. Uh, I'm still practicing my values. That's how I avoid showing up with an as an asshole. You don't want to just be like, well, I'm honest. That doesn't get you off the hook from being an asshole. It's what do you say? It's like honesty without compassion is cruelty, right? So just trying to balance these things, I think I would just tell people, the people who I expect are listening to this, that this is a clunky process, but it is a worthwhile process to go through.

SPEAKER_01: 51:04

Yeah, I love it. Um, for all of you who want to uh make sure you follow Danny, because I'm live on all of mine here. Uh Danny is um on Substack. Tell them all, tell them your handles, Danny, because you're in all the places and they're gonna want to follow you.

SPEAKER_00: 51:19

Yeah, just uh just searching Danny Coleman on Substack right now is still it. But everywhere else it's at it's Danny Coleman. Don't forget the it's. It's Danny Coleman. People feel like it's Danny Coleman, like at Danny Coleman. No, don't forget the it's. But at it's Danny Coleman.

SPEAKER_01: 51:35

Yeah, at it's Danny Coleman on all the stuff. And to find him easily, you can just go find my profile. Uh search for Danny. You'll find him there because I follow him on all those platforms. I love you, brother. I'm gonna um just stop this, stay on the line just so I can make sure everything loads up. But uh thank you so much, everyone, for uh hanging out with us. We'll talk soon.