Can You Choose Emotions;

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Most of us were never taught that emotions are something we can choose. We were taught they happen to us. They arrive uninvited, they take over, and the best we can do is manage the damage. But what if that story is not the whole truth? What if the language we use for what we feel or the language we don't have is quietly shaping our will. I'm Yusuf, and this is the place where we explore what it really needs to take care of yourself from inside out. My guest today is Doc Jonathan, a former business executive, a world champion sailor, and the author of a new book called Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart. It's a remarkable reference. One that maps out over 250 emotional states through thousands of voices across philosophy, psychology, literature, and everyday life. The premise is simple, but quietly life-changing. You have more choice over your emotional life than you think. Doug, it's wonderful to have you here. Welcome to the show, sir.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Thank you, Yusuf. I'm delighted to be here. It feels like friendly territory. Thank you for the introduction.

A Daughter’s Question Sparks Research;

SPEAKER_00 1:36

It is, it is. So I want to start somewhere very personal for you, if that is okay. So the story behind this book is really a human one. Like it began when your daughter asked you a question about depression. Can you take us back to that moment? And how on earth did it go into a book about 272 emotions?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Thank you. So my career has been for a long time as a corporate researcher. I'm I'm familiar with sort of being thrown into the middle of a complex problem and being asked to figure it out. More recently, 10 years ago, I was uh at that point hired by some major national law firms to help them research their complex business cases, uh, presumably to assist them in determining which party was in the right. Uh at that point, my daughter was in eighth grade, and she knew that I was a researcher, and she kept asking me, as most 14-year-olds do for an allowance. And uh instead of giving her, simply giving her money, I thought, well, why not ask her to earn it? So I would come to a dinner. We would have father-daughter dinners. I would come to dinner with a list of 200 questions, could be about anything, geography, history, art, science, sports, politics, could be anything, philosophy. Um, and if she got the answer right, I would slide a $2 bill across the table to her. And we called the game, you said we called it College Bowl, and she loved it. It it was an opportunity for her to demonstrate that she was a good student, but it was wonderful for me because I got to see what my teenage daughter was really like. I mean, what was going on in her mind? Two years into that, two years into our game of College Bowl, she turned the tables on me one night at dinner. She said, Dad, it's my turn to ask questions. Uh, I said, sure, go ahead. Um, she had had an accident uh in early in the tenth grade and followed by surgery. So she did out of school for a month, and her face was very serious. And and she said, Well, Dad, what is depression? And because I was in the business world primarily, I gave her a business answer. I said, Well, it's a slowdown in business activity. And she looked at me with a long face and she said, No, not that kind of depression. I mean emotional depression. And you'll survive. I knew nothing about it, I except that a depressed person was sad. I knew I could not help her, and I was ashamed of myself that I couldn't help my daughter. So I went to the library, I went to the bookstores, I went online, I surrounded myself with laptops, and I dug into the word depression, emotional depression. And, you know, there are many great psychologists around and therapists, but most of them were dealing with depression from a scientific perspective. There were acronyms, there were long, long words of description. And I decided instead to just write down a few of the quotes I came across from people who had survived depression because I thought that would help

Three Quotes That Made Depression Real;

SPEAKER_01 4:49

my daughter. So about two, three days into it, I came across uh a quote from a gentleman named Rollo May, who was from the 1950s, but he had his PhD. He was one of the first self-help authors. He had survived depression himself. And his quote was depression is the inability to construct a future. And the moment I read that, suddenly depression became much more real to me. This wasn't just sadness. I mean, I I I could hardly imagine waking up and not being able to think about my future. But that's common for depression sufferers. I came across another quote from J.K. Rowling. I'm sure you know who she is. She's the author of the Jake, uh, pardon me, the Harry Potter series. She had also suffered terribly from depression as a young woman before she became a writer. And her quote about depression is depression is that absence of being able to envision you will ever be cheerful again. It's the most unpleasant thing I've most unpleasant thing I've ever experienced. That's what she wrote. So I wrote that down on a post-it note. And then a few days later, while I'm researching on behalf of my daughter, I came across a third quote from a writer you probably haven't heard of, but she's a brilliant freelance writer named Haley Cornell. She too had survived depression, and her quote was: Depression lies. It tells you you've always felt this way and you always will, but you haven't and you won't. So, Yusuf, I'm sitting at my desk, my daughter's in class across town. I decided to text her those quotes because I thought they might help her. She probably should not have been looking at her text, but she responded in minutes, Dad, I'm crying. I was alarmed. I was trying to help her. And I said, Why are you crying? These are all people who recovered from depression. Uh, there's hope. And she responded, That's why I'm crying. Thank you, Dad. Well, that was a very powerful father-daughter moment. I realized, and just if we were onto something, that that quotes of people who've actually experienced a depress uh an emotion are often more helpful than scientific discussions of it.

Turning Lived Experience Into A Map;

SPEAKER_01 7:03

So we went from uh my daughter recovered in a few months with with some good help and is now a nurse and is a happy life. But we at that time we we branched into uh anxiety and OCD and other um good and bad emotions to see what people who'd experienced them had to say. And it was very lightning. So 10 years later, there were 272 different emotions that we covered through 4,000 quotes across history, including the most recent scientist scientific insights as well as the the ancients, uh uh uh from India, from China, from from the Middle East. Uh uh all all scholarly traditions were included. And uh what a surprise. After I finished the book and published it in January, a friend of mine said, you know what? You should submit that manuscript to AI and see what AI thinks about it. Well, there's no AI in the book, these are human uh expressions, all of them, all of these are quotes. Uh, and I thought, well, why not? I mean, so I I lined up Claude uh AI and Chat GPT, I'm sure you're familiar with them. And I thought, why not why why not just submit the manuscript and see what it they have to say? So I you can appreciate I I I paused for a moment, but I decided, what the heck, I'll go ahead with it. And within minutes, both Claude AI and Chat GPT responded that that my book, Choosing Emotions, which covers 272 different emotions, is the single most comprehensive book about emotions in the English language. I I was stunned. I had no expectation of that. I thought surely many others have done what I've done, but nobody has. So uh the book is off to a very good start. It's it's um done well on Amazon in three categories, and it's it's very helpful to people. Wouldn't you want um some of the most experienced in the world people to share how they felt that emotion? And that's really the core of it.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Wow, you know, it was really a father-daughter movement, and then you universalize it thinking that you know, a lot of young teams like me, young guys like us are going into that situation, and you know, that really the genuineness, the care, the the kind of what do you say, the concern that you have in your voice, it it it tells me how much you care for this mission.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Uh it it has been a uh a total surprise and a total joy, and and the the really wonderful thing was was helping my daughter, and I was, I'm using this word again, I was ashamed that I knew nothing about depression. And then in the course of researching all of these emotions, I learned so many things, and you know, I would call her frequently and say, Hey, I'm I'm I'm studying curiosity, and here's an interesting quote about curiosity, or here's an interesting quote about empathy, and it really helped me in my relationship with my daughter a whole lot, as you as you can appreciate.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Yes.

Why Emotional Vocabulary Changes Everything;

SPEAKER_00 10:32

So you know, one of the things that struck me about your work is that idea that most of us have a very limited emotional vocabulary. We reach for the same five or ten words to describe our entire inner life. And why does that gap in language matter? Like, and why does it actually cost us when we can't name what we are feeling?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Such a great question. So I'm gonna give you a tiny bit of a long answer. The average person now, nobody nobody is average, but collectively we are average, right? The the average person believes that there's somewhere between eight and twenty emotions. That's all. The average person thinks that there's fear and anger and happiness and joy and maybe confidence or but but a very short list. Well, in the course of writing the book, you know, they're they're at least in the low hundreds. Um, so that becomes really significant. Um, I'm gonna uh use a humorous expression from a psychologist, and her name is Harriet Lerner. She's at a PhD, and her quote about emotions is that essentially many people are afraid of emotions. And uh her quote is very funny. She said, emotions are like children. You don't want them driving the car, but you can't stuff them in the trunk either. Well, that made me laugh to hear that. Um to answer your question, what the top scientists and writers and artists in the world all agree on is that we solve problems, we solve emotional problems through words. That uh there's a psychologist I'm sure you're familiar with named Brene Brown, who's written six or seven New York Times bestsellers. And I'm gonna read you um uh a quote from her uh uh about the importance of words and language in understanding emotions. Uh her quote, this is from Brene Brown. She's done TED Talks and the like, I'm sure you know. This is her quote: Language is our portal to meaning making. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. Well, most people struggle with how they feel and how to apply words to how they feel. And the book, Choosing Emotions, which I wrote, makes it much easier. Uh, wouldn't wouldn't you like to know what over 1800 of the world's most experienced people had to say about a specific emotion? Uh, the the average emotion in the book has 20 different quotes from people who've experienced it. What it was like to feel addiction, for example, what it was like to be bullied, for example. And uh imagine for a moment, I'm not a psychologist as you know, but imagine there's a scene where there's a therapist, a psychologist meeting with a patient. And the therapist says to the patient, Well, what you know, what what seems to be troubling you? What's on your mind? And the patient may be struggling for words to describe it. Maybe the patient is actually suffering from some sort of addiction, but doesn't know how to say that. And so the patient says, I feel anxious all the time, uh mistaking the word anxious for addiction, right? Well, if you're the therapist, you're you're sort of going down the wrong road, and so is the patient. What our uh the book has to do is to offer you, if you're a patient, you can look through what 20 different people who are pretty knowledgeable say about addiction, and you can point to a phrase and say, That's the way I feel, right there. That's the way I feel. So it helps them find the words, and since it's words that allow us to solve problems, it's a big help.

Words As The Tool For Healing;

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Even in psychology or even in therapy, is acknowledging the fact that there is something going on and then writing it, just putting it out somewhere or and that is how we work.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

It's getting started in you know, how do I put this into words? Am I wrong to feel this way? Well, when you have already words and phrases and sentences used by people who've experienced that emotion before, it can help you sort out what's troubling you. Um, if I may, I'm gonna take um 30 seconds to describe the list of top scientists and and artists in the world who all agree that it is words that help us solve problems. All right, so though those scientists include uh Niels Bohr, an atomic physicist. You may recall his name working with Albert Einstein in in the nuclear physics program. His quote is what is it that we human beings ultimately depend upon? We depend upon our words. We are suspended in language. Uh there's a uh a gentleman, Dr. Noam Chomsky, who's the father of modern linguistics. He's 97 years old. His quote is that language etches the grooves through which our thoughts must flow. Well, they the all of these leaders say the same thing. It is all about finding the right words and being comfortable with finding the right words and often taking advantage of what other people have experienced. Um, what a joy to be able to point to what somebody who's experienced addiction or bullying or uh a codependence or some other emotion. What a joy to be able to point to that and say, that's exactly the way I feel. And then suddenly your problem gets smaller. Yes, the moment you can put your problem in words, your problem becomes smaller. That's a wonderful thought.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yes, certainly. And choosing emotions has been called an emotional read. A word I love. And you know, it's both a referent and a companion, something readers describe written to the actually using this book,

The Emotionary And Emotions As Navigation;

SPEAKER_00 17:20

not just reading it once, but live with it.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

My my closest friend was the one who first called it an emotionary. I I sent him, I've known him since I was a teenager. I sent him the manuscript of the book, and he called me and he said, What are you gonna call it? I said, Well, it's it's a lot like a dictionary, but nobody's ever written a dictionary in this form that uses quotes of other people. And he said, Well, why not call it an emotionary? and it stuck. Uh this has never been done before. Um, it's never been done before that people uh in a book that you can pick up five minutes at a time or an hour at a time, you can pick a single emotion or you can look at ten. Uh, but it's a book you sit with to have the insights of really, really smart people from all faiths, all genders, all backgrounds, all cultures. Uh, everybody experiences emotions in every language, whether it's Persian or Indian or American or European, happiness is always happy. You smile, sadness is always sadness, you frown. You may have a different word for it. But emotions are the Rosetta Stone of human behavior. We all have them. Uh, and and they're always the same. Happiness is happiness. They they may have a different word for it, but uh emotionary stuck, and it's a fun word. I think most people like it.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yes. Doug, for people who want to connect with you or want to learn more about your work, where can you do that?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Thanks. The name of the book again is Choosing Emotions. It's available on Amazon and Ingram Spark and a few other places. It's available in hardback, it's available in paperback, it's available in Kindle version. Uh it is truly, obviously, I wrote it, but it's a joy to read. People smile. I mean, that how happy it is to be able to see that somebody else has experienced what you're experiencing and is sharing it in their own words. How often that makes people smile. Uh it helps you navigate life. Emotions are in a way, uh they're a way that we navigate. Uh, obviously, your emotional system tells you to stay away from things like pain and anger and fear, right? So we we navigate away from those emotions, but we also navigate toward emotions like curiosity and wonder and zeal and enthusiasm. And once you realize that emotions are your navigational system, suddenly you see them not as things to be afraid of, but as tools to make your life better. And when I realized that you could choose emotions and not simply react, like you touch a hot stove, you withdraw your hand, you react. Yes, you react because your body is trying to protect you, your emotional system is trying to protect you, but you also get to choose joy and wonder and excitement and and happy things.

Trauma Needs Language To Move Forward;

SPEAKER_01 20:35

I'd like to add one other thing. There is um an emotion called trauma, it's more of an emotional state. And an emotional state of trauma is where uh a person's emotional system is overwhelmed. And one of the most enlightening things that I came across in my 10 years of research has to do with trauma, which is where your emotional system is overwhelmed and it shuts down. Um, you may have a friend, or perhaps you've experienced yourself where uh you experienced trauma. You were either in an accident or somebody did something very, very, very unkind to you and you shut down. The answer to trauma is to find the words to describe it. If you've ever known somebody who was beaten or raped or something terrible in an accident, and they shut down, the answer is to find the words to describe what happened to you, and then you can move forward and live a happier life. I found that was a very powerful thing that I learned in writing the book.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Doug, thank you so much for coming on top.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

What a joy to be with you on the show today. Thank you, Yusuf, for having me.