Navigating Your Emotions in the New Normal

Welcome to the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit for 2022. My name is Grant Herbert. I'm here in Sydney, Australia. I am an Emotional Intelligence subject matter expert who has the privilege of travelling worldwide and working with people just like you.  

I am a qualified Social and Emotional Intelligence Coach and a Master Trainer in that same discipline. Not only do I work with clients, but I also train, certify and mentor other coaches,  trainers and human resource professionals to be able to do the same thing. I  started an organisation called "People Builders", which is the company that is sponsoring and putting on this summit. I have worked for many years now as a leadership trainer and coach. I also have been able to work with individuals and teams all around the world. I am a neuroscience nerd and a constant learner. I want you to understand that everything that I teach and share in things like this comes from learnings that I've had from a book, a program, a teacher, or a mentor (some type of learning), but then I've implemented them in my own life. So most of what I'm going to bring you is always going to be out of my journey of imperfection. I tell people all the time that although I'm a subject matter expert in Social and Emotional intelligence, I, however,  am a work in progress in its implementation just like everybody else, and that includes you. So it's not about me having it all together — being an Emotional Intelligence coach makes me no more Emotionally Intelligent than standing in my garage would make me a car. I still need to implement the strategies that I know, and I still need to work on them every single day. So, that's a little bit about my credentials. However, at the end of the day, I'm an ordinary guy. I've got an outstanding wife, five amazing kids, and four exceptional grandkids who just put his pants on one leg at a time, just like everybody else (on most mornings).  

I want you to know that because I want you to make sure that you don't see me ( I think I said this before) or any of our speakers as being their way out there; they can do it. This can hold you back from getting the most out of what we're going to do today, and out of this session, that's what  I'm going to bring to you right now. I'm just someone who listens, learns, and does most of the time — sometimes it takes me longer than it could— and sees the results. It's all about trial and error. Hopefully, a lot of the stuff that I've done, and I'm going to do in this session, will save you some time and heartache. I've got a military and corporate career, where during those times, I haven't heard anything about Emotional Intelligence. 

About 14 years ago, when I first started studying the topic, I realised I didn't have any. No one had ever taught me any of that stuff. Now that I know and look back at those situations, I realise that the lack of Social and Emotional  Intelligence was the reason why I wasn't able to have the journey that I — and a lot of people around me — would’ve liked to have.   

There are some defining moments in my life ( just like yours) that led me to decide to go down the path that I was travelling. So whatever was happening here led me to go here based on what I believed, what meanings I put on those particular situations, and particularly around my identity. As we get into this today, I just want to remind you to take one or two things from what I'm about to share with you and implement those strategies moving forward so that you can incrementally grow in your own Emotional Intelligence. As I said, our theme is all about navigating your emotions in this new normal, and there is a lot of stuff going on. Over the last couple of years, the world has changed, and I know that we're all getting sick of hearing this "new normal". 

However, that's going to be around for a little while, and there are going to be some changes and tweaks. I know that a lot of people are going through that in different ways. They're making it mean certain things about them and creating behaviour that is not serving them. So, I  want to start off the summit by laying the foundational platform so that every speaker after me can bounce in and they can add layers to that;  therefore, fill you up as you go along. It's like, I'm going to be the entree, and then your main courses are coming, and I'm going to even slip in at the end and give you some dessert.  

 As you go through every single session today, make sure to put your questions or thoughts in the comments below.  

I picked this topic and put this summit on again this year because I've noticed that even though the underlying behavioural issues that come with human psychology and being human are still there, people are manifesting those in different ways. I want to make sure that we do what we can to do what's going to help us in a different way. So, these are some of the things that I'm seeing, and what I want you to do is relate to these as they fit you.  

I hear people telling other people not to be “too emotional” —  to suppress their emotions. I see people holding back and going, “I don't know what's going on internally. So I don't want to handle those emotional things.”  And that's a major challenge. Whenever you suppress those emotions, your energy needs to come out somewhere.  

I used to tell people this joke: “You may not want to suppress your emotions because if you do,  your energy travels down to your belly and hip. And you don’t want to have bloated hips and bellies, right?” 

I also have seen people getting really anxious because of change.  

For some of you, change may invoke a response or reaction in your physical body as it often gives us a feeling of uncertainty — not knowing what comes next.  

Here in Australia, we have experienced so many lockdowns, which has somehow given a feeling of anxiety and uncertainty to some people, including myself. I used to travel to different countries every month, and all of a sudden, on the 1st of March 2020, everything changed, and I did not know when I would be able to travel again.  

Aside from the lockdowns, there have also been conflicts and wars happening in the world. All these somehow contributed to some feelings of uncertainty among a lot of people. And feelings of uncertainty often lead you to react in an unhealthy way that is not good and does not serve you and the people around you.  

I also noticed that a lot of people are “catastrophizing”.  

So what is catastrophizing?  

Catastrophizing is when something happens, and your mind leads you to the worst-case scenario.  

For instance, if I looked at how the pandemic would affect my ability to make an income, catastrophising would lead my brain to think of the worst-case scenario that could happen to me: lose my house, go out of business, etc.  

However, thinking of the worst-case scenario often holds people back from where they could feel and where they could be.  

I want to make sure that you go from suppressing, ignoring, and worrying about your emotions to navigating them. That's why it's the theme. The reason why I used the word “navigate” is to imply that it's a journey that we're on. 

Navigating your emotions and using them actually to go on the journey, no matter where it's taking us is a totally different way of doing it and can give you a much different result as well.  

So instead of feeling anxious, confused and uncertain, I want to be able to help you and other people feel more joy, peace, and confidence —  confidence in yourself, as well as confidence in what's going on around you.  

One of the major things that I work on with people in the 26 competencies of Social and Emotional Intelligence that I train and coach on is their Personal Power. In my personal experience, Personal Power is the underpinning competency for all the other 25. Personal Power says that you've got everything within you and around you to get ahead in life and to be who you need to become so that you can have what it is that you want to have and that everything's going to be okay. We're all teachable. We're all on a journey. We all got things happening to us, and we need to shift and change to go with that. But I want to make sure that I can empower you to go out of today with more confidence in you.  

To do that, I'm going to do a few things: 

I’m going to dispel some myths that you might have been taught about emotions.  

I'm going to then talk about a three-step process to go through to help you get a different result than you might be getting right now.  

But before I do that, I want to give you a little bit of an understanding of where I'm coming from.   

Firstly, I want to talk about before the new normal and then my experience going through that new normal, and then where I've been able to come now. The reason I tell that story is because my story is not about me but is about you.  

This may not make sense to you right now, but it will as we go through it. Because I want you to do as I'm going through my story, which is going to have my content, I want you to put it into your context.  

I want you to see yourself through my story. So even though I'll be talking about things that are different in terms of experiences, I want you to filter that through your lens, and hopefully, that makes sense to you. If it doesn't, that's okay. Just come with me. I know that you will pick this up as we go along.  

When I was 15, I found out that when I was six months old, my mum put me on the doorstep of someone else's house and left me there. When I found out about that, I had a pity party for the next 25 years.  

You see, it's not what happens to you in life that matters; it's what you make it mean. And at 15, the way I was feeling (even though I couldn't remember being six months old), I navigated that in an unhealthy way.  

I put the meaning on it: "Well, if a mother could drop their child off, they obviously don't love them." I, therefore, nursed and rehearsed this over a period of time and filtered through how I was feeling about myself to a point where I concluded that since my mother didn't love me, I, therefore, am not lovable. That became a self-fulfilling prophecy because it eroded who I thought I was. My self-worth, which was already really low, went even lower.  

So I went on a journey from that point as I had that pity party to prove myself worthy and good enough  to eliminate those three universal fears:  

The fear of not belonging, the fear of not being enough, and the fear of not being loved.  

For me, it was a triple whammy.  

I got the trifecta.  

I obviously didn't belong in the family because mum left me.  

I obviously wasn't good enough because she left me, but she kept my sister at home.  

I obviously wasn't loved because, I'd made that mean that if a mother would leave their child that they didn't love them.  

So, before I move on (by the way, my beautiful mum is now in heaven), I want to make sure that I paint the picture correctly. Because I'm telling this story to help you, it’s not a story about my mom.  

So the thing was, back then, my mom had postnatal depression (I am 60 years of age, and that means it happened a long time ago). During those times, it wasn't something that was readily recognised and talked about.  It was basically: “Here's your baby. Go home. Do your best.” 

The truth of the story back then, by the way, was my dad went and got me when he came home. So I wasn't there for long. But the truth of the story was my mother loved me so much that she was willing to give me up so that I could have a life moving forward that she felt in her current mental state that she wasn't able to give me.  

So there are two stories there that I could have believed. There are two meanings that I could have put on that. I chose the negative one where I wasn't lovable, I wasn't good enough, and my mum didn't love me because it lined up with how I felt about myself anyway.  

I didn't think I was worthy of anything.

I didn't think I was worthy of being loved. 

So obviously, the other side of the story would've meant that I had to change, that I had to believe that I was lovable and good enough. In fact, I was so great, worthy and valuable that mom was willing to sacrifice her joy for me.  

Now, I am telling you this story to kick this summit off to show you some vulnerability because I want you to be really vulnerable as you go through this.  

As we go through today, I want you to have the opportunity to look at what experiences in your life, what defining moments in your life can you identify where you have put a meaning on something which isn't true, where you've put a meaning on something (like I did) out of a place that wasn't quite where it needed to be in terms of your self-identity and self-worth because this is the foundation for everything that you're going learn about today.  

For you to get the most out of today, you have to put YOU as number one. You need to make this all about you. You need to invest your energy today for you because you are worth it. If you have an internal dialogue that doesn't match up with that, it's going to steal gold nuggets from you today as we go through the summer. 

So that's before covid — right before the pandemic. Out of that, I could tell you many stories that I don't have time to tell you today; where that belief about myself over those 25-30 years beyond that meant that I operated out of  the performance trap:  

I was seeking approval from people all the time.  

I was trying not to get rejected, whether at school, in my military and corporate career, or even in the early stages of my being a coach.  

I tell the coaches that I work with all the time that just because you're a coach, that doesn't mean you've got it all together. It just means you've got a few more strategies that you can use to grow incrementally and do things differently.  

So if I then bring it when the world changed a couple of years ago and how I went through that change and into the new normal (as I said back before, just like you, I’m on a journey and still a work in progress), what I found is as I was going into this new normal, I felt like I regressed a bit in what I was teaching others that I got to point where I felt emotionally, physically, and mentally down. You see, I love travelling and teaching others all around the world, and when the pandemic happened, I felt like all of it had been snatched away from me.  

I thought: “How am I going to fix this?” (As if I’m able to fix it.) 

“Is this ever going to be the same again?” 

“I’ve put all these years to build this practice up and have been able to help a lot of people; then this pandemic will just put all this to a stop?” 

So the dialogue that was going on in my mind wasn't healthy. The way I expressed my emotions was not healthy for me and those around me. In fact, I started getting short with my clients.  

I started not tolerating the things that they were saying and whatever because it was coming out of fear and uncertainty. I tell you that so that I can give you some hope that it doesn't matter what you know, who you are,  and what you're going through: Everybody around the world has had some reactions to what's been going on.  

Because I want you to understand that although you are special and unique, you're not alone in what you're going through.  

Yes, the content's different. However, if you look at my case, for example, the conflict that's going on in different parts of the world right now, I haven't lived through that. So my experience is not the same and to different levels of intensity.  

But I want everyone to understand that we're on an even footing here. No one's handling this great. Everybody has had to shift and change.  

By getting back into the fundamentals of what I'm going to teach you, by shifting my own thinking, by getting a new sense of joy and purpose about what I was doing, by stepping into something that would take me from here forward and then focussing on the present, I am now in a way better (it’s not a word I like to use) place than what I was even before the pandemic.  

Because what I did was the things I'm going to teach you.  

I went deeper into my topic of Social and Emotional Intelligence. I went back as if I was starting all over again.  

I looked at what I was doing, looked at my own strategies, stopped teaching them alone and started implementing them again. This led me to some new learnings. I got some more, I did some more study, and I looked at benchmarks — I looked at things that were going on around the world, and I looked at them with gratitude for what I had gained by this new normal.  

Yes, I travelled the world. I was out of the country every month. I loved working with people. I loved speaking on stage. I love working in organisations with individuals, whether it was developing coaches and trainers in our offices around the world or whether it was you working with individuals. I loved all that.  

But I love my family more. I love being at home. I found that in doing all that, I wasn't actually being true to my true priorities. So what the new normal has allowed me to do is instead of jumping in a car to get to an airport, go on 15 to 30 hours depending where I was going or flying, cars at the other end, and all that sort of stuff, I've got a 14-second commute from my kitchen to standing in front of this camera.  

So for me, there was a positive that came out of it. I started shifting my thinking around what is good in this new normal — it led me to put some stuff down and to do some things differently moving forward in terms of People Builders, the Emotional Intelligence Academy and all those sorts of things.  

So I started looking at what I could give thanks for out of what had happened. Obviously, none of that mitigated what was going on in the world. None of that changed the personal loss of friends and the different things that went on for me, just like everybody else. But it allowed me to get to where I was ready to move forward.  

So how did I do that?

What were the things that came out of that?  

For many years, there were some things that I was perpetrating myself as a speaker, trainer, expert in this field, a guru (as I get called in some countries and which took a while for me to accept because of my personal power is still growing just like everybody else). But even in that leadership position, I was saying things that were not helping. I was just saying what I'd learnt and hadn't really thought it through.  

So let me share some of those with you now. They’re going to help you. 

We will be talking about some myths. There are a number of them, but I’m just going to talk about two or three of them to get us started in this session. 

The first one is having a great understanding of what emotions are and what they're not. 

To do that, you need to have a greater understanding of neuroscience. 

I'm not a neuroscientist. I have a great friend who's a neuroscientist. She's the person that advises us in, in our company, in terms of questions about anything we have with the subject. But I have a basic and in-depth understanding as a Master Trainer of Applied Neurosciences as of how the brain works, et cetera.  

Everything's changed to what it used to be years ago. Because of FMRIs and all those new technologies, we can learn more and get a deeper understanding of our brains. 

So there was an understanding that the brain processed emotions in a certain way. There were old theories about having a “Lizard brain”, an evolved brain, the left and right brain - how different components do this, and all that sort of stuff. I will not be delving much about those even though they’ve been debunked. But first, I want to talk about here is how emotions have formed, what they actually are and what the process is. You really need to understand these before you can go through what I’m going to talk about today.  

There was an old school thought that we were born with, and in our genetic code, there were five or six or seven (depending on who you talked to) emotions that were imprinted genetically into our brains. And everybody experienced those emotions in certain ways. This led people to be looking at facial expressions. Where people conclude, “Oh, Grant’s looking like that, that means he is confused.” This kind of thinking often leads to a misunderstanding. Emotions are formed differently from what some of us might think.  

So before we just jump into that, you need to understand what an emotion is because people ask me a question like: “Is an emotion a feeling?” And they look for what we're talking about; it's okay to put the two together. 

However, I just wanted to give you what actually helped me understand this in a lot deeper way; emotion is a sensation that we experience in our body. So it's physiological. It is a cue, an alert, a clue that something's going on in your world. That is what an emotion is. 

So what's a feeling? What happens is when that sensation happens in our body, you put a meaning on that based on your beliefs, your experiences, et cetera, with the knowledge that you've got. And that leads you into some thought patterns, et cetera. Not only that, the brain is an amazing prediction machine. So, all the time, your brain is predicting what's about to happen. It does that based on what it knows about the world and what it knows about you — what it knows about what you would normally do when this happens, et cetera. So with all that going on, that's why the brain then gives you some sort of a signal, some sort of a cue. Then as I said, you think about that, you make that mean something, a dialogue starts, and then this fleeting sensation, this emotion, becomes a feeling.  

If I put that into perspective: if I feel pain, some sort of a sensation here in my chest, if I make that mean I have a heart attack, the feeling will be anxiety or something like that. My behaviour will then change because my thoughts will change around what that actually means.  

So an emotion becomes a feeling. Those feelings can change, escalate and deescalate. Depending on what it is that's going on, that can be quite strong, or it can have a lesser effect.  

Being able to understand how emotions are formed is really important. So the emotion is physiological. The feeling comes from the psychological — and that's what we want to make sure that we get a hold of today in everything that we do.  

So the psychological is about you; it's about me. It's about what you think about, what you ruminate on, what you make it mean, what you say to yourself, your internal dialogue, and then what you do.  

Then those changes will help you to feel this way. Then what you make that mean will help you to feel something different, and you can change those emotions. Over a period of time, if you stick with that same feeling or group of feelings, it becomes a mood; it becomes a state. And this is what I've noticed happening not only in myself but in many people during this new normal time.  

So out of that, the second thing that I want you to understand is: There is no such thing as a positive or negative emotion.  

No emotion is negative. Because every single emotion, no matter what it is because emotions are physical cues and physiological sensations that are designed to get your attention to tell you something. What can be negative or positive is what comes out of that. So the thinking, meaning, behaviour, and action can be negative or positive.  

So it's a distinction. Some might say semantics. Let me tell you; it's way stronger than that.  

So now we know and understand what an emotion is. 

But as I said, feeling and emotion that's really up to you. I just wanted you to understand that because it happens like that. I want you to understand what the difference was.  

Another myth is that: “Men and women handle emotions differently.” 

No. Human beings handle emotions in certain ways. They move through those emotions in certain ways. It doesn't matter what gender you are, whatsoever. 

Another my is when people tell you to: Stop being emotional. Leave your emotions at the door. 

We don't bring emotions in here.  

That’s an impossible demand because you're a human being, and human beings are emotional beings. So it's really important that you understand these things.  

Then the last one, and this is the one that I'm really taking a stand on right now. I know it's going to be another one of these semantic things, and people attack me about it. It's great because if it stirs up the conversation and gives us an opportunity to talk about it, that's a good thing. 

And that is this whole thing of Managing Your Emotions.  

Now that you know how it operates, it's unhealthy to manage emotion. Because what that normally leads to is people ignoring and suppressing emotions. So you don't want to manage what happens. You don't want to manage that sensation, that physiological. What you want to do is manage the thinking and the response to that emotion.  

It sounds like a subtle difference. However, it is not. It’s the key. So what do you need to do instead is for us to Navigate your Emotions? 

By navigating that sensation and by navigating it in a certain way, you choose the feeling; you respond rather than react. That is all about what Emotional Intelligence is.  

Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of the emotion that you're experiencing at the moment and then use that information to manage your behaviour moving forward.  

Now that you understand all these things, now that you have dispelled some of those myths and things that we've all been taught and have all experienced, what can you do with that? 

I want to give you a strategy — three steps that you can practice, and then we will go deeper on those so that you can navigate your emotions.  

As we go into this, you need to remember that it is all about the moment.  

So it's not overall what's going on, whether you are good at emotions or all those sorts of things that people say. It's right here; right now, what is the emotion you are experiencing, and how does that make you feel? That's what you want to be able to get to. 

The first part of the process is all to do with awareness. That's why in the four quadrants that I work in, the first quadrant is self-awareness. To get that self-awareness, you must be alert and look for these things. It needs to be something in your day, and there are ways — and I help my clients do that. The first thing you want to do is notice it.  

So you experience a sensation in your body, and you notice that it is happening. So obviously, you're aware of it, but when you notice it, this is where it can go in a positive way, or it can spiral down and lead to unhealthy feelings.  

Remember that you are going from emotion to feeling and then to state and mood.   

The first thing is to notice it. So you’re not going manage it; you are just going to notice it.  

“Oh, I'm going through this sensation right now.” 

“I've got a funny feeling in my tummy.” 

So that is step one. We're noticing it without initially responding to it, without it stirring up or needing to do too much with it. We just want to notice it first. That's the first step. It's like when you're driving along in a car, and they've got signs up everywhere to tell you what to do.  

If there's a speed sign there and you don't notice it, then you are going to get a ticket because you're going to keep going at the speed you're at. So that's the first thing: to be able to be aware that these things are going on and to notice them. 

Then what you want to be able to do is you want to be able to name that feeling. So you’ve got an emotion (physiological goes to the feeling), yet you’ve got something going on in the middle, right in between these two things. There is a lot going on here.  

Based on your past experience, your emotional memories, how you're feeling about yourself at that moment, et cetera, the internal dialogue could be either positive or negative.  

If you notice the sensation — the emotion —  and you then are going to name the feeling in between, you need to be able to keep your thoughts in check.  

So at the start, I talked about the problems. One of those is catastrophising. So if you are someone that catastrophises that it's a dichotomy, it's either things are going really, or they're bad.  

So if catastrophising is something that you do, it's being able to reel that in. It's being able to go through a process of bringing that a little bit more centred. It's being able to control what's going on in your thoughts, in your brain. Because the challenge is with all the circuits in the brain, the way they work, and all the neurochemicals that work in your brain, when they get triggered, then obviously what you do will be different. You've all heard of the fight, flight, freeze, stress, reward circuits, and all these things. So between noticing it and giving it a name — which is the feeling — we need to control that inner dialogue. 

We need to challenge any of that negativity that's going on. 

If I say, “Oh, my business is doomed, and I'm gonna sell the house,” I need to check that and go, “Is it really right? Or does it mean I need to do things differently? (which is what I did).

I went from travelling around the world to going online.  

I don't call it virtual. It’s just a little thing that I do because virtual is like virtual reality; it’s not real.  

What I'm doing is still the same; I'm just using a different medium to get it in front of you. 

So I've noticed it. Now I'm going to give it a name. So let's talk about that.

There are over 2000 words in the English language alone. 

But in English alone, there are two over 2000 words, yet most of us have a little handful that uses 5 to 10 words that we use regularly.  

We're happy, or we're sad. We’re frustrated, or we're angry. 

Whatever it is.  

In being able to name what you are feeling coming out of healthy thoughts because you are controlling that negative dialogue, the first thing we'll be able to do in naming it is to name it correctly.  

What do I mean there? 

What I'm saying is if you are feeling misunderstood and you name it as frustrated, the strategy we use for frustration is different from the one that's misunderstood. 

So, subset one in this naming the emotion or the feeling is to increase your vocabulary of what it is that you're going through to name things that you're feeling.  

Here's an example: 

I'm working with someone, and I'm having a chat with them. I’m looking at their face, and their face is giving me the impression that they are not gelling. With that, I might start feeling that they are not listening or they do not understand what I am saying. So I might feel misunderstood. 

Now, if I ruminate on that in an unhealthy way, that could help me from feeling misunderstood to being frustrated or annoyed and then becoming angry.   

And the behaviour that will come out of anger will not solve the problem. In fact, the higher the intensity of the feeling, the harder it is to reign in and regulates the response that comes out of it.  

That's why it's a reaction.  

If that situation I talked about is happening, and I go, “Oh, I'm feeling frustrated.” I'm going to behave in a way that's going to frustrate the other person as well, and it's not going to work. 

So if I'm naming it as "I feel misunderstood”, I can go, “Hey Bill, can I just ask you? I'm sensing that I might not be communicating this correctly. Can I just check in to what you feel I'm saying, or do you think I'm saying?” 

By doing that, they can back and clarify what it is that they are truly feeling. Then it makes you get rid of any misunderstanding and prevent you from getting angry.  

So we've noticed the emotion, that physiological sensation. We've controlled our thoughts and done our best to navigate that part of the process in a healthy way. Now we’re naming the emotion. This is where we are using the word emotion and feeling interchangeably. It will always happen depending on who you're listening to. So, either way, it is fine. When you do that, when you name the emotion, you need to be able to fit it into one or two ways of saying it.  

Ask yourself the question to be able to answer: 

I feel (insert whatever that one-word feeling is right now). 

I am feeling (whatever that is you’re feeling right now). 

To do that, you need to take that pause at the moment. 

Now, this happens really quickly. But you won't be able to name the emotion because you will not be able to manage the response of emotion when you don't know what it is.  

As I said before, we'll use a different strategy. 

So you’ve now named it.  

You now know what it is.  

You now start the process of navigating that feeling to get a healthy response.  

So that's step number three.  

After noticing and naming it, you’re going to navigate it.  

Instead of suppressing, ignoring and reacting to it, you've now given yourself some space and structure to navigate it healthily because you’ve got your big voice in control rather than your mini-me having a dialogue that's not serving you. You’re eliminating the fears that you thought that you had, or you’re eliminating the meanings that you’re putting on things that are not healthy, et cetera.  

Now that you’re able to navigate the emotion. So whether it’s: “I feel angry,” “I feel sad”, or “I feel happy”, you want to be able to navigate that so that you take it towards the behaviour that you want.  

How can you use this? 

The first thing is recognising that emotions are a good thing. Emotions are never negative. They are there to give you the sign so that you can respond to what it is that's going around you in your world.  

You’re responding rather than reacting because you’re going through a process that's going to set your brain and nervous system up to best help you to do that. So you’re not managing the emotion; you are navigating it and controlling and regulating the thought patterns, the meanings, and, therefore, the behaviour.  

So that's what I wanted to start us off with today.  

I wanted to give you some practical steps based on science and experience so that you could then take every single thing that we go through today with the different speakers;  no matter what part of the world they're from, no matter what their unique take is on the particular topic that they're going to be talking about, you can actually put it into that framework, and you can get yourself in a position where you can decide how you feel. 

No one makes you feel anything; that's a choice. No one makes me feel sad or happy. That’s up to me. That all comes at that starting process of what I make it mean. Whatever goes on around me in my world —  finding out why I was put on a doorstep, whether it's my business, the way I was doing it. Stopping, whether it's moving through and going forward now with the amazing opportunities in front of me, I'm going to do that in a way that's good for me, others, and the greater good.  

So I hope you got something out of that. I know I did. Yes, I’m here to serve you. But every time I do one of these, I also talk to myself every single time. Because I believe you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting.  

I’m a continual learner, and it's a journey of imperfection.  

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