The Secret to Breaking the Stress Cycle with Dr. Susan David
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When you're in the market for a new SUV, you want a vehicle that can handle your daily commute, navigate the elements, and adventure with ease, right? You need the reliability of a Toyota and the confidence that your investment will last. Why? Because after all the carpools, rugged trails, and weekends out, you want an SUV that still has plenty of miles left in it and holds its value for a great trade-in deal. That's where Toyota leads the pack.

as the number one resale value brand for 2024, according to KelleyBlueBooksKBB.com. So check out the legendary redesigned Land Cruiser or spacious Grand Highlander or test drive a RAV4 available in gas, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid models. And remember, when you choose a Toyota, you're not just buying a vehicle for today, you're investing in trade-in value for tomorrow. Visit BuyAToyota.com, the official website for deals, for more.

Vehicle's projected resale value is specific to the 2024 model year. For more information, visit kellybluebookskbb.com. Kelly Blue Book is a registered trademark of Kelly Blue Book Co. Inc. Toyota, let's go places. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Money rehab.

Have you ever had a really hard day at work and struggled to pick yourself up by the bootstraps or whatever other cliche people use to basically say, ignore your feelings and just get over it? If that approach has ever made you feel worse, you're right. Today, I sit down with Dr. Susan David, a renowned psychologist whose work shows that ignoring your feelings does not help you in the workplace or anywhere else for that matter. Today, Dr. David shares what you should do instead. I really love this conversation. It hit pretty deep for me, and I hope it does for you too.

Dr. Susan David, welcome to Money Rehab. Hello, I'm so excited to be with you. I'm so excited to see you because I feel like I know you through your TED Talk.

I loved it so, so much. I am a TED Talk junkie, but yours is like in the team photo of my favorite TED Talks of all time. You frame emotional courage as a powerful gift. You basically broke the internet with this concept and your insights from the field of psychology challenge convention in the office when it comes to using your emotions. So you say that in some cases fixating on happiness and positivity, like why can't we all just be happy and smile, can actually undermine mental health

in the workplace. Can you unpack that?

Absolutely. So we grew up in a world that tells us to be happy. And of course, as human beings, we want to be happy. But for anyone who's lived a moment, you know that the truth of life is that there is fragility and beauty that is interwoven in our lives. And so the truth is that we as human beings need to develop the emotional capacities, the emotional skills that help us to deal with the world as it is.

not as we wish it to be. And therefore, when we only focus on positivity and being happy all the time, it doesn't mean that these difficulty emotions don't happen. They do. And we are now less practiced and in time, less resilient in our ability to deal with them. I describe this as almost like a kind of dissonance or a disconnect, a self-abandonment that

that develops over time where we are not able to really connect with who we are as people and what's important to us. So one of the very strong parts of my work is really pushing against this idea that is even inherent in every psychology textbook, the idea that there are good and bad emotions. And what I really talk to instead is the idea that all emotions are

are actually normal and the term that I use, Nicole, is functional, that our emotions help us to calibrate ourselves in the workplace and in the world, and that our emotions signpost our needs and our values. Our emotions signpost the things that are important to us. And of course, this relates to every aspect of our lives.

When we are skilled with our emotions, when we're healthy with ourselves, it impacts on how we love, how we live, how we parent, how we lead, but also our workplaces and to a lot of what you cover in this podcast, our financial health, because every financial choice that we make is actually impacted by our emotions and how we feel and our moods. We can explore that more.

Yeah, I would love to. You say in the talk that this discomfort is the price of admission for a rich, full life. I'm paraphrasing. But of course, rich in all aspects of that word. You can't just be happy or feel something in one area of your life and then silo it and not feel it, you know, in your personal life. It's your one life. There is a one life and there is richness that comes in all our capacities to be as human beings. We are capacious.

And we have the ability to have psychological wealth and psychological joy, every single one of us. And it's a really important question. And one of the reasons that I say that discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life is because

I really talk to this idea that difficulty motions signpost our needs and our values, as I mentioned earlier. And yet so often in the workplace and beyond, people say things like, can we just have one day of no change, one day of peace, one day of no stress, you know, one day of nothing altering.

And I've mentioned this in my TED Talk, but I somewhat facetiously will say, you know, well, you can have all of those things. You absolutely can have a day of peace and a day of no stress. You will have that, in fact, when you are dead, because these are dead people's goals.

I love that you say that in the talk too, because it's like, I just want to be happy. I just don't want to feel anything all the time. Right? Like what is it to be alive then? What is it to be alive? And so it's not discomfort just for the sake of it. It's really discomfort in ways that help us to move towards our values. When we are in a relationship that we are struggling with,

Showing up to the difficulty of that relationship and knowing that it might be time to move or shift or to a job that's not working, raising a family, leaving the world a better place, all of these things change.

ask of us that we engage in discomfort. So it's not just about discomfort for the sake of it. It's very much about values aligned discomfort. Hence, discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. But you're also basically saying don't label it as good or bad. You don't actually know if it's good or bad in the moment, right? There's that whole

You have to know in perspective over time whether things are actually good or bad. So really, maybe you're saying don't label these emotions as good or bad, just that they are.

So judging emotions as good or bad, where we automatically then foreclose on those emotions is actually not helpful to us psychologically. As soon as we have difficult emotions and we jump into, I shouldn't feel this, this is not allowed, I've got it better off than most people, therefore I shouldn't be allowed to feel those things. What we start doing is we start engaging in an internal struggle with ourselves and

an internal hustle, if you like. And when we do this, we are much more likely to engage in psychological mechanisms that have been found over time substantially and significantly to undermine our well-being. So for example, we might feel a difficult emotion and we push it aside and we say, I'm not allowed to feel that. Even if we're doing it in the service of, because I just want to be happy,

You know, really what forced false positivity is, is it sounds good on the surface, but it's basically an avoidant coping strategy. You know, wrapped up in unicorns and sparkles, but it's an avoidant coping strategy because we're not actually dealing with the issue that we're facing and we aren't actually developing the skills that help us to deal with the issue. So that's when we push difficulty motions aside. Sometimes when we have difficulty motions and we judge them...

What we also do is in judging them, but then getting stuck in them. You know, this is a bad emotion and I feel so terrible and this is awful. Is it also stops us from being able to engage in clean and effective ways with ourselves and the world. So judging emotions as good or bad is not helpful to our mental and psychological health.

There is something that is extraordinarily helpful when it comes to this idea, and that is labeling emotions in effective, nuanced ways. And so what I mean by this, Nicole, is instead of going, oh, it's good or it's bad,

It's really helpful psychologically when we, for example, are feeling stress. Okay, we're feeling stress financially or we are struggling with something. Often what we do is we use very big labels to describe that emotion. So we'll say something like, I'm stressed or I'm just nervous.

miserable in my job. And we use this broad label to describe our emotional experience. And one of the things that I talk about a lot in my work, and that is in the wider psychological literature called emotional granularity. And emotional granularity is the idea that you move away from a stress into a

What is the nuance of this emotion? You know, what are two other options beneath the difficult emotion umbrella of what's really going on for me? And we can very quickly learn that what we are calling stress is I feel unsupported by my team or I am not growing or I

I am actually experiencing exhaustion and this is a signpost to me that I'm burning out. So the aspect of labeling emotions, it's the labeling where it's not a judgy labeling. It's rather a curious and compassionate labeling that says what's really going on for me is a cornerstone of our ability to be psychologically well and healthy.

I found this to be so helpful. And I talk about this a lot on the show and in one of my books in particular, DBT class, the dialectical behavioral therapy class. And I just, for the

for the first time, learn that there were like these seven main emotions. And then within them, I saw this very cool chart that totally changed my life within those categories. You have all these different words and like you can get more granular and that's actually really helpful. And it takes away some of the power to the overwhelm that you're feeling. So powerful. I'll share with you actually to share on social if it's helpful. I've got these tools that I call emotion umbrellas, which are exactly this. What is the umbrella term that we're using? And then what's underneath it?

And what's really important here is that it's both the labeling, but then it's also what is it that happens to us when we label our emotions more accurately. So if you think about it, when you say something like, I'm stressed, your body, your psychology doesn't know what to do with that stress. When you move beyond it and you say, actually, this thing that I'm calling stress is actually that I feel unsupported.

there is a part of our brains that gets activated. And in psychological terms, we often call this the readiness potential. So the readiness potential, as soon as you start to say, huh, this thing is actually unsupported,

What it does is it starts to help you to understand the cause of the emotion and then also what you need to do in relation to it. So it's not that the emotion is just, gee, I've now labeled this emotion effectively and all is good. It actually leads to behavioral activation.

that says, I need to get my resume together, or I need to put money away, or I need to have this conversation. And so what it's starting to do is actually starting to move us to alignment. And one last thing I just want to say in relation to this, because it's very helpful, is

You know, when we talk about this emotion granularity as a superpower, I don't use that language lightly. There are studies that show that children as young as two and three years old who are more able to accurately label their emotions

over decades have higher levels of well-being and more ability to attain their goals and regulate towards their goals. And you might look at this and go, like, what difference does it make if I'm two and three and I'm going, I'm not mad, I'm sad? Why should that matter? But if you think about being now a 16-year-old, and imagine you have got a 16-year-old who has become

best friends with someone who thinks that the most fun you can have on a Friday afternoon is letting the air out of the principal's car tires. And you've got a child who is able to discern the nuance of what is going on for them emotionally. That child is able to go, gee, on the one hand, I've got this friend and I want to be liked and I want to be accepted. Right?

But when I dig deeper, I feel a disconnect. This feels wrong. This feels like it's not congruent with who I want to be. You can see how that child is going to be much more able to connect with themselves and their values and needs.

than a child who just says, gee, on the surface, this sounds good. I'm just going to move forward. So this is a really important skill. One of many that I talk about in emotional agility that really help us to navigate our emotional and psychological worlds more effectively.

And movies like isn't it inside out that was so helpful for kids that labels all the emotions like anger, fear, disgust, happiness, right? Sadness, surprise, contempt. I love that movie. And it's such a powerful movie. And it's really this idea that.

We have these emotions. We often think that they're bad. Our culture often tells us that they're bad. But these emotions, not only when we get a bit of space between them, for example, through the labeling, that not only are they there and able to be processed effectively, but they signpost our needs and our values. When you are feeling bored at work, your border might be signposting that learning is important to you and that you need to do more of that.

Even something as profound, a lot of people are talking about loneliness. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back.

When you're in the market for a new SUV, you want a vehicle that can handle your daily commute, navigate the elements, and adventure with ease, right? You need the reliability of a Toyota and the confidence that your investment will last. Why? Because after all the carpools, rugged trails, and weekends out, you want an SUV that still has plenty of miles left in it and holds its value for a great trade-in deal. That's where Toyota leads the pack.

as the number one resale value brand for 2024, according to KelleyBlueBooksKBB.com. So check out the legendary redesigned Land Cruiser or spacious Grand Highlander or test drive a RAV4 available in gas, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid models. And remember, when you choose a Toyota, you're not just buying a vehicle for today. You're investing in trade-in value for tomorrow. Visit BuyAToyota.com, the official website for deals,

For more, vehicles projected resale value is specific to the 2024 model year. For more information, visit kellybluebookskbb.com. Kelly Blue Book is a registered trademark of Kelly Blue Book Co. Inc. Toyota.

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We know loneliness is increasing. And when people feel lonely, again, connecting with financial help, they're much more likely to spend into a feeling of comfort. Yeah. And thank you for bringing it back to money and using some of these financial coping methods. It's true to dissociate or avoid some of these hard things. So I'd love to dig into some solutions here. We

We understand these ideas of emotional suppression. We've probably all been there, whether in the workplace or otherwise, but I'd love to dig into the workplace as our audience is mostly interested in coming to us for that. How do we use these tools and information to improve our lives at work and in our careers?

Well, these tools apply to every aspect of the workplace. So I can describe a couple of powerful tools, but also powerful mechanisms. For example, we know that the mood that we are in on a given day impacts every decision that we make. And I'll give you a quick example of this. If you are giving a proposal to a group of people and you're hoping that those people are going to connect and buy from you,

If those people are in a more joyous mood...

those people are much more likely to be big pictured, everything will be okay. And if you think from an evolutionary perspective, when you are happy and relaxed, you don't need to be looking at what's about to attack you. And so we know that there is this thing called mood congruence, this idea that when we are in a particular type of mood, which is more happy and relaxed, it's

It leads to a big picture, it'll be okay, everything will be fine kind of scenario. People are much more likely to see the proposal as being wonderful. The same applies when we are thinking of making purchasing decisions. When we are in a more happy and relaxed mood, we are much more likely to make purchases that we cannot afford.

They're much more likely to make business decisions that actually we shouldn't be making because we think big picture, everything's going to be okay. And we're not actually worried about what is the contingency, what's not going to work yet.

So we know that our moods impact on every aspect of our workplace. We know that our emotions also impact on how we come to our workplace. So often when we are experiencing change and transformation at work, we get stuck. You know, we get stuck in our difficult emotions. We get stuck in, I am right and the manager is wrong, or I am right and the client is wrong.

And we get so stuck in that emotion that we often forget to ask ourselves questions like, even in this difficulty, who do I want to be? What is going to bring me closer to being the leader, the manager, the person in my career that I most want to be?

So these are emotional skills. Nicole, every workplace right now is talking about transformation and AI and change. And of course, this evokes huge amounts of stress for us as people. And so one of the most powerful tools we can have in the midst of transformation and change is really the skills that help us to move away from

from the idea that these emotions are right or wrong, they just are, to show up to those emotions with compassion because it's hard to human in the workplace right now. And being compassionate to the self is extremely important and powerful. It is the skill set that helps us to say things like,

I'm calling this thing stress or I'm calling it anger, but what's really going on for me? So we can get some separation between ourselves and our difficulty emotions. And it's the skills that help us to also then recognize that our difficulty emotions signposts

these values and that every one of us, it doesn't matter what our jobs are, what our roles are, who we are in the workplace, what we are doing in the workplace, we all have the opportunity to step into the values that are not the values that are

values that I need to have just because the workplace is telling me to have these values, but they're my values because the greater level of congruence that we have between us and our values, the more we are likely to be well, healthy human beings, the less likely we are to have burnout.

the more likely we are to find our voice and to negotiate effectively. So these skills are profound and powerful. And I love that you just really go back to the skills because that's all within our reach, right? IQ is really hard to change. EQ is easy to change. You know, there's a big percentage that's in your grasp to change. And I don't know a lot of things, but I know how to study really hard and work really hard. And so, you

You tell me that there are skills to learn for this. Like it's not innate. It can be learned. It's very encouraging. And it's also really helpful to remind yourself that those are skills to practice where you say, I am angry or whatever. Like we tend to say I am something, but it's better, right? To say I'm feeling something like to not take that as your identity.

Often when we are stuck, when we're feeling difficult emotions, we'll say things like, I am. You know, I am angry. I am sad. I am frustrated. No, I am Nicole. You are Susan. You know, it's really interesting. Like if you said to me, who are you, Susan?

We all know that I can simultaneously be a parent and a business person and an author and a loved one and a human, that we have multiples that we can have within us. So if we think about then the language that we use with emotions, what we do is the opposite. We say something like, I am angry. And if we think about what we are doing psychologically,

There is no space between you and the emotion. In other words, I am or one of me, 100% of me is defined by my anger. There's no space for anything else. There's no space that beautiful Viktor Frankl, between stimulus and response, there is a space and in that space is our power to choose.

One of the ways that I think about this is, imagine for every single person listening right now, imagine when you say, I'm sad, it's almost like there is a cloud in the sky. And when you say, I am sad, it's as if you have become the cloud, okay? But when you start saying something like, I'm noticing that I'm feeling sad, I'm noticing that this is my thought, that I'm not good enough.

When you start noticing your thoughts, your stories, and your emotions for what they are, you create the space. And what starts to happen is you start recognizing that you are not the cloud. You are the sky. What I mean by this is as a human being, every one of us is different.

big enough and capacious and able and human and messy and beautiful enough to experience all of your emotions, getting back to your DBT, the bothness of our emotional experience.

Yeah, I was going to say that because you can be the sky and you can have a cloud and a rainbow and like some lightning over somewhere else. And that had helped me so much to hold these two seemingly opposing things true at the same time. It was something that I'd never done. My family was really fucked up and didn't teach me any of that. It is so powerful. You know, you are not the cloud. You are the whole damn sky.

Sky. And when we said, why are these skills so important? If we think about emotional rigidity, emotional rigidity, the emotion is bad. I'm locking down into it. I'm pushing it away. And therefore, I don't have the skills to help me to deal with the world as it is.

Whereas when we start having skills that we're talking about, the compassion, the labeling, the noticing these thoughts and feelings for what they are, the bothness, the connecting with values. These are just what I've listed here are five skills that are accessible to every single person listening.

What you're doing is you're now moving from rigidity into why I call my work emotional agility, because emotional agility is the idea that we can, all of us, experience all of our difficult emotions and circumstances and

our stories, and we can notice them lightly with compassion, with curiosity, and we can still choose who we want to be. And this now is the skill set of capacity and resilience and of agility.

Honestly, Dr. David, this has been more helpful to me in business than anything I learned on Wall Street, anything I learned in a book. The emotional regulation and the interpersonal effectiveness have by far been the things that have helped me more in my business, in my career than anything else. And bringing that back

from like pie in the sky, I guess, pun intended. But to say like those two things can be true in an interpersonal relationship. Like I can be really pissed at you or I can feel pissed at you, but also love you at the same time. Or like I can have a,

deal fall through, but also feel like in a good place in my business. And those opposing things can both be true at the same time. And that has really, really helped me effectively navigate challenges in business. Oh, it's so powerful. I call this the idea of bothness. When I was very little, I was petrified of the idea of death.

And it's normal. Five-year-old children become aware of their own mortality and they stop recognizing that their parents aren't going to be around forever. And I remember night after night after night going into my father's room and lying between my mom and my dad, begging my father, saying to him, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, promise me you'll never die.

And my father could have done forced false positivity. He could have said to me, don't worry, Susan, everything's fine. You know, everything's good. But he didn't. He said to me, Susie, we all die. It's normal to be scared.

And what I understood, and this is this idea of bothness, what I understood in the way that he was guiding me through those long, dark nights is he was saying to me, you can intrapersonally be fearful, be worried, be scared, and you can hold that in your one hand. And in the other hand, you can move forward with your courage and your values and your curiosity.

And that is interpersonally in our organizations, in our workplaces. Can we hold the idea that there is change and we don't like it or that there's a team that we don't feel connected with? Can we hold that idea and also move forward?

to have the conversation, to create an environment that we want to create, to use our voice because it's connected with our values. If we can hold both, then we hold our power.

Not from a place of fear, but from a place of being grounded in the reality of the world as it is. And you've said that that conversation with your father happened years before cancer was on the radar. Yes. So I had that conversation with my father night after night. And neither of us knew that in 10 years he would be gone.

And this is how I came to my work because after my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and did die, the world around me was telling me to just be positive, to push it aside. They were praising me for being strong and I needed to refine my lesson. And the lesson was that lesson of showing up to the self, the lesson of being

the teacher who was willing to witness me and to give me space for the truth of my emotional experience, the labeling of the emotion, the understanding that I could simultaneously never in a million years wanted my father to die. I could hold that in the one hand and I could move forward holding in the other hand the

learning and empathy that I developed for others. And I started to culturally think about what are the ways that we are taught or not taught in our society to deal with the most important part of ourselves, our inner worlds? How are we taught or not taught? And how are those ways actually undermining our well-being, not just

as individuals, but in our communities, in our families. Because when we're in a world that feels pain and we have individuals who don't know how to deal with that pain in healthy ways, we become leaders who don't deal with others in ways that are compassionate. We become leaders who don't have organizations that are healthy. We see the devastation around us and

My mission in life is the practical, powerful skills that can help us to move forward in ways that are healthy. Yeah, because it's going to come back at some point. My father died when I was 11 and I'll never forget going to the funeral in the morning and then going to the second half of school so I didn't miss the rest of the school day.

At that time, I was like, okay, it's fine. And people were like, where were you? I was like, oh, I was just at my father's funeral. I didn't know that that was not a thing that like maybe take the whole day off. And obviously it came back to bite me years later because it will, even when you suppress it, it's going to come out. Not in an opportune time when you're, I was at CNN or something like this is not the time to be mourning something I should have dealt with when I was 11. You know, psychologists call this amplification and it's this idea that we're not suppressed difficult feelings.

There is a short-term impact and a long-term impact. Really what this means is we push our feelings down, we push them down, we push them down, and then we are more likely to kick the dog, yell at our child, or take that emotion out. So that's the short term. The longer term is that when we consistently push difficult emotions aside,

even in the service of forced false positivity, even in the service of, well, I've got this big busy job and I've got to get on with it. What we see over time is, you know, what are you doing? You are engaging fundamentally in self-abandonment because your emotions are this beautiful part of you and your experience. And so when you do it over time, we find more and more that

There is a predictive aspect of lower levels of well-being, higher levels of burnout, dissolution of relationships. There is a really long-term devastating impact that happens when we suppress our difficulty motions. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

Dr. David, I want to ask you a question from a listener. She recently asked us about how women and men approach and see money differently. What have you seen in the research around that? Well, I can speak to the research that shows differences in emotional capacities and how that impacts on a whole range of decisions, including financial.

What we know is as children, we grow up very frequently in families that have what we call display rules. And display rules are the kinds of rules that are often implicit in our families, but sometimes explicit, where we learn from a parent about what emotions it's okay to demonstrate or not. So for example, if you grew up in a family where every time you are angry, you're

your parent says, we don't do anger care, go to your room, or they signal that to you, you're going to become less practiced with anger over time. And you're not actually, when you experience anger, going to be able to process that anger effectively. And you might have that kind of application effect that we described earlier, or you might shut down every time everyone's angry around you. So you learn a display rule around these emotions. Or you could

come home from school and feel sad and say to your parent, mommy, no one would play with me today. And your parent with the best of intentions might say something like,

Don't worry, I'll play with you. Your parent is heartbroken that you've been rejected at school. What that parent is often signaling is that there's no space for sadness in our house, that we've just got to be happy. And again, you'll be less practiced. So to come back to your question, I don't like to make too much of gender differences around emotions because

There is a lot of nuance and there's a lot of individuality in terms of the families that we grew up in. However, what we have found in a number of studies is that boys tend to have far more conversations with parents and caregivers where parents will say things like, what did you do at school today?

Okay, what did you do? And so what that really leads to is a situation where boys are much more about being task-oriented and compartmentalizing emotions. It's about what I do. It's not about how I feel. How I feel is about what I do. And so what this often leads to is a disconnect with emotions and

And over time, what this can lead to is in financial spending is things like not understanding that I'm unhappy, not understanding that I'm actually buying this thing because it's connected with unhappiness. It becomes much more that my unhappiness is

in a financial way, becomes much more targeted in tasks. I buy this thing and I feel better. I watch Netflix and I feel better. So there's a task orientation. We know with girls, there's much more conversation around how did you feel today? How did you feel when no one would connect with you? How did you feel when you were the last person invited to the group?

And what this can often lead to in females, again, I don't like making too much of it, is getting stuck in difficulty emotions, ruminating, dwelling on those difficulty emotions and still making choices. But those choices are often from a place of,

I feel bad and there's this thing that helps me to feel better. So they can both look the same. They can both look like, gee, I'm spending a lot or gee, I'm engaging in a lot of alcohol or a lot of watching shows on Netflix, but they arise from difficult places. The one much more about compartmentalizing and not processing

and the other about getting stuck in difficult emotions and struggling to connect with the baggies in a way that feels real and wise and harnessed.

And I know this is more of a sociology lane than maybe a psychology lane, but some researchers have done studies around biological drivers for men and how they have these provider complexes. I'd love to hear what you think about that. You know, I've heard anecdotally from men who were dumped because they didn't make as much money as their partner maybe wants them to. I've never heard that scenario from a woman. So that's a lot of pressure on men, right? What's a good strategy for managing some of that?

I think firstly, from an emotional perspective, it is really important to understand how our difficult and different emotions, as well as the families that we grew up in, impact on our emotions and how we process our emotions and whether the way we process our emotions is healthy versus not.

But, you know, from both sociological and psychological perspective, what we know in relationships is that when we feel stressed,

we are much more likely to default to stereotypes that the world has around us. So one example might be an example of being a provider, but we see examples in other ways. So for example, if you've grown up in an environment where every single person in that environment says to you, you know, we don't do college. We aren't from a family that goes to college.

What you can do is you can grow up in that environment where you struggle, you work hard, you give your best, and finally you make it into college. And then as happens in your first year of college, you fail a test or you struggle relative to your peers.

What very frequently then occurs is those stereotypes. When we talk about stereotypes, we often think that stereotypes are things that other people have about us. But what happens is those stereotypes can become self-stereotypes. In other words, at times of stress, self-stereotypes begin to be activated. So you can start saying things like,

Oh, maybe they were right. Maybe I'm not cut out for college. And we know at that point around 70% of kids will drop out because the stereotype becomes turned to themselves. So coming back to your question.

I think there is a broader and deeper question in that, which is that there are stereotypes that exist about who we should be, how we should risk, how much we should earn, what jobs. There are these stereotypes. And one of the most important aspects

for ourselves and for our conversations with our loved ones to the question that you asked early on is what are our values? What are guiding who we want to be? What is it that matters to us in our relationship? And Nicole, I'll describe how this plays out in the example that I just gave. We know that if we take kids that have grown up in that environment, wherever

everyone has said, you're not cut out for college. And we then, in their first semester of college, we asked them to engage in a very brief exercise, an exercise that every single person listening can do. And it's this.

Spend 10 minutes writing about what are your values? Why are you doing this college course? Why is this thing important to you? And of course, this can be applied to relationships. It can be applied to a new job that you're doing, any aspect, your financial choices.

When these kids spend 10 minutes writing about what their values are and why they are studying what they are studying, that child is protected three years down the track from dropping out and from these stereotypes. So I think the question that you ask is so important. It is this question of saying,

What is the heartbeat of my why? You know, we can have budgets, we can have goals, we can have all of these things. In times of stress, we are much more likely to push them aside. What protects us is when we are grounded in

What are my values? I think it might also be worth noting. This has helped me when I've explored my own values or talked with others about their values to not judge what those are and be really honest, because you don't need to show those to anybody. If you value fame and success and money value that you don't need to value community service and religion and like what you think you should put down on the list.

Yes, your values just are. And I hear this a lot where people say things like, I've got a values mismatch. I've got a values disconnect because I value my career, but I also value my family. And again, what that does is it gets us into this rigidity where we are an either or rather than a bothness. Your values just are. You can simultaneously value your family and yourself.

Value your career and value your ambition. Yeah, I just think that sometimes you can get into a shame cyclone, I guess, by saying like, you know, really, truly, honestly, in my most quiet moment, I do value power. Like it just that's who I am. And I don't need to pretend like I want to go and help children in an orphanage. Maybe I do or whatever. But like there is nothing that it should be right. The value is just value.

are. My mother was left in a very, very difficult financial situation after my dad died. And my mom sold stationery for a living. She hadn't been able to finish school, neither her or my dad. And my mother just always felt constrained because she had to do the basics of supporting three children.

And my mom always used to say to me, Susie, you've always got to have fuck you money. You know, you've always got to have fuck you money. And Nicole Hedge was really funny because when I was publishing Emotional Agility, the publisher insisted that I change the word fuck you money into. No. I think they said that no one was going to buy the book because there was the word fuck you in it. And they had to change it to stuck me money. Okay. But you swore earlier it was fuck you money.

That's what it was. It was fuck you money. You're talking to the girl who wrote Rich Bitch. It was fuck you money. And what she meant is...

It connected with this value of hers, of autonomy. And she was basically saying to me, Susie, you can never be in a situation where you are being mistreated in the workplace or when you're in a relationship where you're dependent on someone. You've always, always got to be able to say, fuck you.

Yes, I do value fuck you money. But I think what is underneath that are real core values of being able to take care of myself, having safety, having stability, having a home. Yes, I think that's so important. And I think that's exactly, you know, what my mom was talking about. And even for me, like, it's not about the money. It's actually about being able to make choices. And I think that's a really important part of that conversation.

We end our episodes by asking our guests for a piece of money advice they can take straight to the bank. I think you just gave us one, but I'd love to know if you have a tip that anyone can use to invest in themselves or help with financial anxiety. I think the most important aspect of mind work is the recognition that

Most financial choices are impacted by our emotions. So if you slow down and you said to yourself, what's really going on for me? What's happening for me? And is this connected with my values and who I want to be in the long-term workable way of being in the world? You will be both richer in your bank account, but also richer as

as a human being, compassionate and wise. And that's what we advocate, living a rich, full life in all aspects of the world. Thank you, Dr. David. Thank you for having me. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

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