#32: How To Master Your Emotions And Manage Your Reactivity

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On this solo episode, Isaac leads listeners through a masterclass on the exactly how to familiarize yourself with your emotional reactions. When tensions are high, most of us default to knee-jerk reactions. But those that are truly skilled in the art of relational leadership have learned to introduce conscious choice in those moments instead. They choose behaviors that create connection instead of separation. That can feel like swimming upstream. It's not easy. 

In this episode, Isaac reveals the path and shows listeners the internal work to build self-understanding, and the external behaviors to actually shift their lived experience. You're going to want to take notes on this one.

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00:00 Introduction to Emotional Mastery
00:59 Understanding the Space Between Stimulus and Response
07:07 Staying in the Pocket: Emotional Activation in Relationships
10:49 Mapping Emotional Reactions and the Four B's
22:44 The Importance of Biography and Backstory
31:34 The Naming Protocol: A Counterintuitive Approach
38:24 Somatic Practices and Final Thoughts

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Well Worshiped Man Podcast. Before we get into our masterclass for today, we have a free gift for you, and it's in the show description. You can click the link in the show description to get a free training and meditation to hone your focus. We live in a world today that is full of weapons of mass distraction, of flashy, shiny new things, algorithms that are designed to steal our attention, which is our most important resource. So if you're not training your attention actively, it is getting worse. And we know that it is our ability to focus and direct our attention that allows us to create the lives that we deeply desire. So grab the training below. It will help you train your focus. And if you want to go even deeper into this, listen to episode number 30, How to Master Your Life Force. Okay, so today is gonna look and feel a little bit different. It is just me. This is our first solo episode. And what I'm gonna be sharing today is the emotional mastery masterclass. So you're gonna walk away from this episode with real actions, practices that you can implement into your life, into your relationships to feel more confident in the way that you're leading yourself and others forward into deeper connection, truth, and intimacy. And so, who is this episode for? It's for both men and women. It's for anyone who wants to create more space between the stimulus that's coming in and their reactions. So one of my favorite quotes is from Victor Frankel. He's a survivor of the Holocaust and author of Man's Search for Meeting. And the quote is between stimulus and response, there is a space. And within that space lies our freedom. And for too many people, that space is barely there. And when there's not a space between stimulus and response, we just default to knee-jerk gut reactions. There's actually not a conscious decision happening. And that's where we see partners speaking sharply to each other or shutting down, acting out, having outbursts of, you know, after an argument happens and the dust settles, uh, one of the couple might share, I don't even know what happened. It got out of hand so fast. Um, it's because that space was compressed into nothing. And so there were no conscious choices made. And what really condenses that space is emotional activation. It's harder to make conscious choices of how we want to respond when we are emotionally activated, when our wounds are touched, when we feel like we're being attacked. And so what I'm gonna share today is how you can stay in what I call the pocket. And I'm gonna use a sports analogy here. And first, before I dive into that, just know that your ability to stay in this pocket is your ability to create the life and the relationships that you want. So in American football, the quarterback who throws the passes, who's the leader of the team, drops back after the ball is snapped, after the play starts. And immediately he has thousands of pounds of defensive linemen rushing him, trying to tackle him and destroy him. So immediately as he receives the ball, he is under duress. And in that discomfort, the desire is to escape the discomfort, right? To get out of it, to get to a place where he will not be tackled or hurt by these defensive linemen. And so he has to actively fight against his desire to just throw the ball away or take a knee or early rush out of the pocket. He has to fight against all of those desires for safety to stay in the pocket, to stay composed long enough to deliver the ball to an open man downfield. He's got to hold all of that discomfort. And that pocket, while most of us aren't playing in the NFL, but that pocket lives in our lives in a few places. One of the places that it lives is in uncomfortable conversations with people that we care about and the people that care about us, right? Immediately as they start bringing forward ways that they have felt missed, hurt, neglected, misunderstood, it begins to feel for most of us like we have those thousands of pounds of defensive linemen rushing towards us. And we want to use our defense mechanisms to protect ourselves. Another place that the pocket shows up outside of the relational field, well, it still is within the relational field because everything is, is in business. If you are in business working for someone or working for yourself, then sales is an integral part of your business's success. And what I've found in my life, in my business, is that my ability to stay in the pocket that arises at the end of a sales call is my ability to enroll and inspire my prospects and clients. Because at the end of every sales call, there is that uncomfortable pocket. Okay, we've done the discovery, we've learned about you, we've learned what you want, and now comes the time to tell you what the investment is, right? And actually the skin that you must put in to the game. And a lot of people get really uncomfortable talking about money, both the seller and the prospect alike. And what many business people, many salespeople will do is they will throw the ball away, right? Or they'll take a knee. And what that looks like on the sales calls is offering payment plans too early is agreeing and endorsing the prospect's objections around money. And the reason is they just want to escape that emotional place and say, ah, you know what, it's fine, just we can just do a payment plan, right? Instead of digging in deeper and allowing that moment to be an opportunity to actually coach and lead the prospect through their fears, doubts, and insecurities, that money is really just an instrument or flashlight exposing. So, what I'm going to share today is going to allow you to stay in the pocket in both your personal relationships and in those critical business situations that are sales or negotiations. And so this is all about your ability to hold emotional discomfort, to understand yourself so well that there's nothing operating underneath your conscious awareness that is running the show and disrupting your ability to uh repair ruptures in relationship and to understand the person sitting in front of you deeply enough so that you can get on the same side of the table and move forward, whether that's in sales or whether that's in your personal relationships. So what I'm gonna share today is probably remarkably different than what you've been taught, than what you think works. It's going to feel counterintuitive, silly. It might even feel downright irresponsible. And this is actually a positive sign. The work that I lead men through is transformational work. It changes them from the inside out. And when we're approaching a transformational process, the change that's required of us will offend our programming. It will offend the way that we've been operating up to this point. It will feel silly or stupid or irresponsible or maybe even wrong. And so, what I'm asking you today is not to take what I'm teaching as true, but to be open to experimenting and to ask yourself before we dive in, is the relationship that you are in now the relationship that you would be inspired and proud and fulfilled to continue for the rest of your life as it is now. And if you're single, ask yourself the same question about your last relationship. Was that the relationship that you would have been proud, inspired, and fulfilled to continue for the rest of your life as it was then? And if the answer is anything but a resounding yes, then it is reasonable for you to assume that a different way of operating is the only thing that's going to get you ultimately what you want. Continuing to do what you've done will continue to get you what you've had. Two plus two always equals four. And so this is about plugging in new inputs, right? It's about replacing one of those twos with a three or with a four or with a five so that the sum of your equation lands you closer to the relationship and the results that you want in your life. Okay. So the things that I'm gonna take you through today are one, mapping your emotional reactions. That's number one. Two, I'm gonna teach you the four B's to manage and mediate those emotional reactions. Number three, I'm gonna give you an emotional activation protocol that will allow you to neutralize any escalation that you're experiencing, whether that's escalating into an argument or an outburst, or an escalation into withdrawal and shutdown. And then the final thing is the somatic practice. Actually, what can you do with the body when you're in those scenes of emotional activation so that you can actually uh grow the space where your freedom lives? Remember that quote in the space between stimulus and response lies our freedom. So, how do we actually create a larger space so that we can choose our responses and not just knee-jerk default into reactions? So the first thing is mapping out your emotional reactions, it's knowing clearly what your default is when tensions get high or when it gets uncomfortable. So, an easy way to do this is to think back to your last disagreement, blow-up, moment of rupture with your current or past partner and just notice where you went, right? For me, when I get defensive, I start defending myself, right? I feel attacked, even if I'm not being attacked. I feel like I'm being made to be wrong, and this is still modern day, but I've learned the tools to set this behavior pattern to the side and choose a new one that's more constructive to the connection that I want to create. And so for me, it's it's defend. I get defensive. For you, you might point the finger and start blaming the other person for things. You might project, you might make your experience about them. Instead of speaking from I, you speak from you. Um, you might withdraw, right? You might find it hard to find the words. You might shut down and go mute. You might leave. You might walk out the door and go somewhere else. You might start explaining or justifying your behavior, right? This is adjacent to defending. Um, or you might attack their character, right? You might start tearing them down, right? Shooting darts at them. So just take a few moments if if you're able to write down in your phone, in your notes app, or in a journal, um, the typical emotional reactions that you have when you feel attacked, when you feel uncomfortable, when you feel misunderstood or disagreed with what happens within you? And there might be one big one, like for me, it's defending, or there might be a few. And if there's a few, it might be in different circumstances. It might be that you find some of those emotional reactions happen more often with certain people in your life. So you can write that down too, so that you know when you're dealing with this person or you're dealing with this circumstance, that um the thing you have to look out for is this is defending, right? Okay. So that is the first thing, right? I'll go through some of them again, right? Projecting, accusing, blaming, withdrawing, shutting down, rationalizing, explaining, justifying, defending. Uh, there's one called um smeagling, which is based off the golem character in Lord of the Rings, of you know, when you enter one of these conversations, instead of speaking truth and speaking from a strong spine, you you collapse and you start saying things like, I know, like I am the worst partner ever. I oh, I it's just like all my fault. Um, I keep making these mistakes, I don't know what's wrong with me. So it's like this self-beat up that happens in conversation and in these types of connections. So that one's called smeagling. And maybe there's another one that you're noticing that that I haven't mentioned. So that's that's all good. That might be possible too. And so now that you have your emotional reactions, next I'm gonna share the four Bs. And these are from Renee Brown, right? And these are the four B's to help manage, understand, and mediate your emotions. And the four B's are biology, behavior, backstory, and biography. And the first is, and perhaps the most immediate, is biology, right? So what Brene Brown shares about this B biology is that there are many physiological factors that influence our emotional state and our emotional capacity, and so we are likely more reactive if we haven't got much sleep. Okay, so that's a biological fact. We've all been hangry before, right? We're likely more emotionally reactive if we haven't eaten and we're hungry, right? Uh, if we're sick, right, if we're exhausted, um, our emotional capacity is lower, and that space between stimulus and response is smaller. And we've got to know that about ourselves. We've got to be aware of that, and we have to be proactive in communicating that to our partner, right? It's really important for our partner to know where our battery level is at all the time or where our capacity is, right? If if I haven't slept or I'm extremely stressed, it's probably not the optimal time for me to hold space for Jessica or for me to receive feedback. That's not to say that I won't receive feedback or hold space in that state, but it is to say that at the beginning of that, it's important for me to communicate, hey, I'm willing to do this right now, but I just want to let you know that my capacity is a little bit lower because I haven't slept or because I've been sick or because I just heard this other bad news and I'm feeling a bit stressed and dysregulated about it. Right. So we've got to understand where we're at physiologically and not suppress or ignore those signals. It's not to say that we can't take action or we can't be there for somebody, uh, but we do need to communicate where we are at physically and energetically, so that they know. So it's not a surprise if we come through less understanding than they might be used to. So that's what Brene Brown teaches about the bee of biology. Um, but another thing that that I teach about biology is that every emotion has a corresponding physical sensation. And this is the work, the preliminary work that I do with all of my clients is understanding okay, when you get defensive, let's say that that's the emotional reaction, when you get defensive, what do you notice happening in your body? And when I ask this question, I mean the actual physical sensations, right? And for me, when I start feeling defensive, my breath gets shallow, start breathing into the chest. A lot of my energy, my awareness is rising up into the head, right? I feel a bit like uh like a squirrel, you know, squirrels have like those like jerky movements, uh, they're always swiveling their head, looking around, right? It's like not a smooth movement, right? I kind of lose awareness of my lower body and my feet on the ground, right? And so when we learn to understand what's happening in the body when these emotional states arise, what I've found, and what my clients have found, is that we can actually notice the physical sensation beginning before the emotional reaction causes any damage, right? For the emotion of anger, which is something that a lot of people feel, especially men feel in emotional discomfort or in disagreement. But anger for most people feels like a rising of heat, right? It feels like heat in the head, the neck. You can even see people get get flushed, right? And so someone might feel, oh, I'm getting hot in my head and shoulders. Okay, that's anger. And then that's an indicator to regulate that anger with some of the tools that I'm gonna talk about later, instead of allowing it to run the show. Because what happens when people haven't met these emotions, haven't mapped them to the corresponding physical sensations, is that when these emotional reactions bubble up, it's like a surprise. You know, it's like a jump scare in a movie, where if you're in a movie and you don't know it's coming, jump scare happens and you flinch or you jump in your chair, right? It's very different. If you've seen the movie before and you know that it's happening, you can expect it, and then there's no reaction from you. It's the same thing when these emotions come up. If I've met my anger so many times, then I am less likely to act out or have the anger uh create a um a negative reaction in me. Um but if I haven't met my anger, then it comes out of nowhere and it has control over me. I jump out of my seat, right? There's an outburst. So the B biology, right? Understanding if you're exhausted, if you haven't ate, if you're sick, if you're stressed, how that might impact your ability to show up and create space between stimulus and response. And then also understanding the physical sensations that happen in the body that correspond to your emotions that are there when you are reacting. Okay. Uh the second B is behavior, which you've already talked about a little bit, is what do you actually do in those times of emotional reactivity? Right? Do you point the finger? And blame. Do you make it about something that it's not about? Do you make it about you and start defending and explaining your behavior? Do you leave? Do you slam the door? Do you um defame their character? Right. So what do you actually do? So that's the second B behavior. And then the third B is biography. And this is where we start getting into the retrospective work that's often done in many therapeutic settings. And you know, biology, behavior, those can be things that you can map in the moment, right? And it's a good idea to map them before the moment. Like hopefully, you've already done listening to this episode. Um, but biography is about your conditioning, it's about your childhood, it's about where you learned these protective mechanisms. It's about going back and understanding how the ways that you defend, accuse, blame, withdraw, shut down, how you were actually taught those strategies. Because at one time, when you were much younger, like in childhood, those strategies were actually intelligent and they actually protected you usually from the withdrawal of love, affection, and attention. Because in love, affection, and attention are needs. They're especially needs when we're children, right? If when we're babies, our primary caregiver withdraws attention from us, we will literally die, right? So we must develop strategies to continue to receive that love, attention, and affection, even validation, right? So if um if we were punished by uh if we were punished for crying or voicing our emotions as a youth, and maybe that punishment was, you know, being grounded or being uh hit, but usually that punishment is just the withdrawal of love, attention, and affection. So if we learned that our expressions of emotions were punished in that way as a youth, we will simply stop expressing our emotions. And that will work as a youth to get us more affection and attention because there is an unhealthy attachment with our caregivers, right? But as we become adults holding on to that same strategy, which in this example is the strategy of uh withholding our emotions, not expressing our emotions, that same strategy will create disconnection in our adult relationships. So once we understand how our protective mechanisms were wired in as a youth, we can understand a few things. The first is that our lack of skill in our adult relationships, the disconnection that we've created, the pain that we've caused and experienced ourselves, it's not our fault, right? We weren't taught differently. We developed strategies that were well-intentioned, but as adults, they are misguided. So it's not our fault. And it is our responsibility to start building the capacity to choose differently, right? So that's the first thing that looking into our biography allows us to develop. We start developing compassion for ourselves, that we are so young, malleable, our brains are so spongy at the time that we developed all of these defense mechanisms, all the things that disconnect us, um, that that we didn't really have a fighting chance. But now, as adults, as mature adults, we're responsible for creating a new path forward. So understanding our biography is really important. And also understanding and sharing our biography with our partner so that they can understand when there's something happening in the current relationship that didn't start there, right? One of the biggest paradigm shifts for Jessica and I was we were in the middle of a rupture and it was challenging. Uh, she was she was deep in it, right? And there was a moment uh where I took a risk, and something that felt right for me to share with her was hey, I don't know where this started, but it wasn't here. The wound that was activated in her was not one that I had created or contributed to. It was one that I got to care for, but it wasn't one that I had created. And that was incredibly helpful for her to create some space to actually look at more of the biography and what was happening. Right. So that's the third B, right? So we've got biology, we've got behavior, we've got um biography, and now we have backstory. And backstory is the present meaning making that happens in the moment. Right. So the the backstory that I often make up in my head uh when Jessica brings something to me is that I've done something wrong. Um, that I am bad, right? And and these aren't necessarily true. Sometimes they're even absurd. As humans, we're we're terribly bad at understanding the absurdity and the validity of our own thinking, right? And sometimes it takes, often takes someone outside of our head to help us see what's valid and what's absurd. And that's why working with a coach is is so important. And also working with a and also being with a conscious partner, right? So when you're in these uncomfortable conversations, when you feel misunderstood, unmet, unseen, attacked, what is the story that you make up in your head, right? Your partner is unresponsive to your text for a few hours, and you make up the story that they don't love you or they don't care about you, right? And perhaps the reality is that they've been on a serious work call or in a meeting for the past several hours, and they they simply haven't looked at their phone. They're not actively ignoring you, which maybe that's the story that you make up in your head is they're ignoring me, they don't care about me, they don't love me anymore, they're going to leave me, right? So these mental stories can really snowball, and you know, assumptions make an ass out of you and me to assume ass, you and me. Um, but that's what we do, and our minds are a really swampy place, and it can get really, really muddy up there. And so the first key is to have an awareness of what the backstory that you are running, and you will think unequivocally that whatever backstory you're running is true. Uh, but the facts are that it might be, it also might not be. So opening to the fact that the mental story that you're telling yourself, no matter how much that you want to believe it's true, opening to the fact that it might be false, right? So awareness, one, being open to the possibility that that story, no matter how true it seems to you, because of course it does looking out from your eyes, it might be false. And three, communicating that mental story because that's the only way that you can test out that mental assumption to see if it is true, right? When you didn't respond to me today, here's the example. When you didn't respond to me today, the story that I made up, this is a great sentence stem to communicate with when you have these mental stories. The story that I made up is that you were ignoring me and that you didn't care, right? And then the person sitting on the same side of the table as you can say, I'm so sorry that that made you feel that way. That's not what was happening from my end. And what was going on is blah, blah, blah. For whatever reason, I didn't have access to my phone and couldn't respond, right? And so that way you can remedy the differing perspectives. And instead of sitting across the table from each other, you can get on the same side of the table. So that's the four B's: biology, behavior, biography, and backstory. Okay. Um, you can look up more of those online. They first appear in Brene Brown's book, Atlas of the Heart, and they're also in her most recent book, which I absolutely loved. It's called Strong Ground. And so, next, I want to share maybe the most counterintuitive, the most vulnerable practice that I'm going to offer. And that is this emotional activation protocol. It's a protocol called naming. And what naming does is it stops you from holding your cards. It stops you from holding your cards close to your chest, which so many of us want to do in these periods of emotional reactivity and activation. Uh, we don't want to show ourselves. We don't want to show our cards. And what this practice asks you to do is put all of your cards on the table, right? And you can do this not just with a close romantic partner. I've seen it done in sales situations, and it resulted in massive deals. Actually, it resulted in me spending a significant amount of money on a mentor. Um, and I've seen it done in work situations with family, and the practice is simple and it's called naming. And it's one that has completely changed my relationship. It's neutralized so many escalations, it's allowed tensions to diffuse, um, it's allowed me to check myself. And so, what naming is is simply speaking out loud the emotion that's being activated within you, or your impulse to insert emotional reaction here, your impulse to defend, to withdraw, to shut down, to attack. So the way this looks is when I feel like I am ramping up in my relationship, I will say, and sometimes I don't know what else to say, right? And you might find that too. I'm feeling like I want to defend myself right now, or I'm feeling like I want to blame you right now, and then after saying that, the chances of me actually blaming or defending are almost eradicated, right? If I was to, if we were playing a game of chess and I was to tell you, I'm gonna move my night here, it'd be pretty silly for me to move my night there and give you the extra time to think about your response, right? Not that um relationship is a competition um or game, but putting our cards on the table, letting them know our next move invites them into our process and lets them know that we are not strategizing behind closed curtains to take them down or be right. Um, that we don't want to be on the opposite side of the table, that we want to be on the same table, the same side of we want to be on the same side of the table with them. And that will completely disarm a partner who also wants to attack or defend. Uh it becomes the permission for them to share too what their impulse is, right? So I might share, I feel like I want to blame you right now. And sometimes that even creates some humor, right? And then Jessica might say, Yeah, I wanted to I wanted to blame you too. It's like, okay, now we can see all of that. All of that's on the table, and we both know that we don't want to take that route. And yes, it's extremely vulnerable to say this. Yes, it can feel like it's inviting an attack, it can feel like it is an abdication of power, right? Uh, but power isn't something that we're seeking over someone else, right? And I'll tell the story about um how this happened in the sales situation is I attended an event, um, it was like a three, four-hour event, and then at the end, the leader of the event, um, we all sat down in front of him, uh, and he made an offer to work with him. And the offer was to to stand up, right? If you were ready to to work with him one-on-one as a mentor, and nobody stood, right? And the room was silent, right? And he didn't bail out, he didn't say, All right, well, great event. Let's all go home. Handshakes and some hugs, we can all feel good about this. He sat in it, right? But there was some silence, there was some space, and then he also spoke to his internal experience, right? That, you know, I'm I'm feeling like in this moment, like I'm the bad guy, right? Like I created this wonderful day that we all had together, and and here I am inviting you guys into mentorship, right? Here I am making an offer. And we're all sitting in this room now in this discomfort of a money conversation, right? And he went on to say, you know, I I feel the need to to bail out, right? I feel the desire in me to to play the hero, to emerge from this event as a knight in shining armor. And I also know inside of me that that my ability to actually impact you guys uh requires me to not always be the good guy, right? To be courageous and brave enough to to make this offered, to call you guys forward. And um it was so impressive. Um we sat in that for probably 10, 15 minutes. He spoke to some guys directly, and I could feel it in me that it was a yes, right? Um, but I was so inspired by him, his ability to stay in the pocket, um, that I ended up, you know, standing up, signing up, right? And it was an awesome decision. But it wouldn't have been made possible if he wasn't courageous enough to stay in the pocket, to use the practice of naming, to have done all the prerequisite work that he had done across the course of his life to understand his biology, his behavior, his backstory, his biography, right? And that created a moment and an opportunity for me uh to receive incredible mentorship from him. So these skills are not only for us, they're to create opportunities for others, to create connection, to create opportunities where they can hear our idea or our message, to create opportunities where they can say yes to our offer, our product, or our service, right? And so everything that I'm sharing today, if you have a relationship that you want to build, if you have a message that you want to share, if you have a product or service that can impact somebody's lives, all these skills are obligations for you for you to learn. This is what removes the ceiling on your potential. So the final thing that I'll share today um is that what can you do in those moments, right? I I feel attacked, uh, I feel like I want to defend, I know my four B's, um, but still it's hard for me to not. Okay. And there are a few things you can do, right? Often when we want to protect ourselves, the posture, the body language is like a leaning forward, a lurching forward, uh rolling of the shoulders forward, a lifting or dropping of the chin. It's for many of them, it's like we want to rise out of our seat, right? And so the postural adjustment is to lean into the back of your chair if you're sitting, if you're standing or sitting, to rest your awareness in your spine. So actually send your awareness into the back of your body. So you no longer want to leap forward in that attack energy, right? You no longer want to wall up in the front of you. Just send your attention into the back of your body, feel your feet on the ground, slow down and deepen your breath. So send your breath down into your belly, rush your attention in your back body, feel your feet on the ground, and just listen intently. So, more important than the words that you can speak, more important than the words that they're speaking, even, is your nervous system state. Our nervous systems naturally attuned to each other, and the strongest nervous system in the room is the one that we'll be attuned to. So chaos is contagious, that's a strong signal, but calm is also contagious. So when things are getting really hot, really spicy, right? Your only job is to feel your feet on the ground, rest your attention on the back of your body, send your breath out deep into your belly, and listen with curiosity. Listen intently. Listen five to ten seconds longer than you really want to. There might be some silence, but that's okay. Right? So just remember that the strongest nervous system in the room is the one that is attuned to, and calm is contagious. So if you can create that nervous system state, and this is something to practice outside of game time, outside of the disagreement, right? You can do it by yourself in your personal practice, right? Feel my feet on the ground, breathe deep, rest my attention in the back of my body, right? No one around, just you. Building that capacity. And then in normal conversations, conversations that aren't heated, conversations that are normal, you're talking about normal stuff, do it. And then only then does it become accessible to you in the moments where emotional reactivity is a likelihood. So here's what we went through today. We mapped the emotional reactions, we went through the four B's, the Brene Browns, biology, backstory, behavior, and biography. Um, really important to work with a coach, a mentor, a therapist, a counselor to dig into the biography, especially, and understand the backstory because some of those might be operating underneath your conscious awareness. We can't read the label from inside the jar. So we need somebody from outside the jar to look in and help us see our blind spots. It's really, really important. Um, and then the the practice, the vulnerable, courageous practice of naming. I'm feeling this way. I'm feeling like I want to react like this. Put your cards on the table. And then the last just the somatic practices, breathing deep, feet on the ground, awareness in your back body, listen intently. So listen to this conversation again, take notes, um, do the journaling practice at the beginning. Um, and as far as being able to sit in these conversations and remain present, the other skill that we didn't talk today about that is required is focus. And we have a free focus training for you along with a meditation. It is in the show notes. So make sure to click that link and grab it. Um, and we'll see you in the next episode. Love you.