The Life-Changing Skill of Emotional Regulation - Dr Marc Brackett - #1014

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Only one in five adults can name more than three emotions they feel regularly. Why do you think that is?

**Marc Brackett** (0:09)
Globally, I think it's because we don't have an emotion education. We just ignore that aspect of our lives.

**Chris Williamson** (0:17)
What does that mean? What does an emotion education mean?

**Marc Brackett** (0:23)
It means that from preschool to high school, and even when we're in a workplace or in college, we are building our emotion skills, vocabulary, for example. Just to give you one example, I'm going to ask you right now, what's the difference between anger and disappointment?

**Chris Williamson** (0:42)
Anger is fiery and feels like you're on the front foot. Disappointment, for me, is the color of red. For me, orangey-red. Disappointment is sort of a blue-grey, like a dark purple-blue-grey, and it's sort of closed and it feels like I'm on the back foot. It feels like I'm sat in a very low couch. I'm aware that's not a particularly precise definition.

**Marc Brackett** (1:15)
You're a creative type, that's for sure.
And all beautiful kind of metaphors. But I really want to know the psychological definition or difference between the two. So what do you think?

**Chris Williamson** (1:28)
I'll have that. The psychological difference or definition between the two.
Functionally, anger is somebody has stepped over a boundary and you need to exclaim loudly enough to ensure that they know that they have crossed some sort of threshold. It's kind of like being your own law enforcement in a way. Disappointment is around hopes, expectations and those not being met. Maybe that's it.

**Marc Brackett** (1:55)
You got it. That was much better. That was great.
You're on your verge of being an emotion scientist. Yes. So disappointment, unmet expectations, anger, perceived injustice. And so I think a lot of people kind of look at my work and they're like, you know, whatever, who cares that you know, the difference between anger and disappointment or anxiety and stress or pressure and fear. But what we say in our research is that you have to name it detainment. You got to label it to regulate it. And oftentimes, you know, men in particular are going to come into our offices, you know, our homes and, you know, act one way. They're going to behave one way, kind of a socially appropriate way of, you know, typically aggression with all emotions, whether it's disappointment, frustration, fear or anxiety. And the argument that we make is that until people really know how they feel and why they feel the way they do, it's impossible to support them in managing it.

**Chris Williamson** (2:53)
Right, yeah, that does make sense. Okay, so what is emotional intelligence? Like, is that a thing? I remember there was this whole world of IQ, EQ. What does emotional intelligence mean?

**Marc Brackett** (3:07)
So at its simplest level, emotional intelligence is using your feelings wisely to achieve your goals. Using all of our emotions wisely. But that's not specific enough. And the model that I've worked on is called RULER. So there are five skills. The first is recognizing emotions in oneself and others. Understanding the causes and the consequences of emotions. Labeling emotions precisely. Knowing how and when to express emotions with people across cultures. And then finally the big R, which is my new book, which is regulating emotions. What do you do with those feelings? Both your own and other people's.

**Chris Williamson** (3:44)
Okay. So it is functional. That'll be one way to put it. Like it has an outcome. It's not just a thing that you're imbued with. It's using your emotions to achieve.

**Marc Brackett** (3:56)
Yes. It's goal-oriented. Just like, I mean, you can have an IQ and not use it. A lot of people don't. But the same thing applies to your emotional intelligence. The expectation or the idea is that you have this set of skills and you apply them to your life so that you make better decisions, you make better relationships, you achieve your goals in life. What I show in my research is that we like to think that our creativity and our general intelligence are the things that we need to achieve our goals. But what I've shown is that there are a lot of obstacles in the creative process, a lot of obstacles in achieving our success in life.
And if we don't have the skills to manage the frustration or the anxiety or the disappointment, even the most creative among us don't really achieve the outcomes.

**Chris Williamson** (4:47)
Yeah, I think a lot of people would see emotions and the utilizing of emotions as a vector for weakness, not one for expediting success.