Shawna Samuel
Welcome to the Mental Offload podcast, where we talk about women balancing work and life. It's the podcast that combines leadership, feminism, and coaching tools so you can tackle it all with more confidence and less stress. Here's your host, Ivy League mba, certified feminist coach and corporate warrior, Shawna Samuel. Hi, everyone. I am so excited to welcome our guests. Today I am speaking with Dr. Emma Seppala. She is amazing. You are in for a treat. Emma is a lecturer at Yale School of Management. She's also the science director of Stanford University's center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. And she is a research scientist by training, a psychologist, and she's written a fabulous book that I think you all are going to get some wonderful nuggets out of. This book is called Sovereign. And I am really thrilled to be able to welcome Emma Seppala here today to the podcast. Hello.

Emma Seppala
Thank you, Shawna. Happy to be here. Great.

Shawna Samuel
So I have so many questions for you. I think this book is fabulous. And as I was telling you a few minutes ago as we were getting started, I feel like every page I've got multiple things highlighted. So I can't wait to talk to you about this book. I wanted to start just for our offloader listeners with maybe basics of the book Sovereign. So I really come to this from the world of, like, economic development very early in my career where we used to talk about people having agency. But I love this title because it seems to go even beyond agency. It's something bigger. So what does it mean to be sovereign? And why is that so important?

Emma Seppala
Yeah, I think people sometimes think of sovereignty as, okay, political sovereignty or even financial sovereignty if you have. You have enough money to feel like you have, like you said, agency. But you can have all the money and power in the world. You can have all the things and still feel bound on the inside, still be ruled by fear, be ruled by feeling small. And not 70% of people die and report saying that they didn't live the life they wanted. 70% of people who on their deathbed report saying they didn't live the life they wanted. So, you know, it's really interesting to think about, but. And I didn't find another term in psychology for this, which is more about this idea of, you know, people often stand in their own way without realizing it, and there's only so much we can do about our financial and political sovereignty and agency, but there's a lot we can do about our internal sovereignty. And that's what I really felt was not. Had not been talked about yet and so enough, at least in our popular culture. And so I wanted to write about it. And you could think of sovereignty with

regards to your mind, your emotions, your relationship with yourself, your body. I mean, a lot of different things. So that's why each chapter sort of breaks that down.

Shawna Samuel
Oh, and each chapter, you know, is it really does go in deep. And what I love is that you give a whole bunch of actionable strategies in each of chapter about how you can become more sovereign. So we'll talk about that more in a moment. But I wanted to ask you about the subtitle, because the subtitle, I think, is going to speak to so many people. Reclaim your freedom, energy and power in a time of distraction, uncertainty and chaos, which don't we all need right now. So how does accessing your sovereign self really help you reclaim your freedom, energy and power?

Emma Seppala
I think a lot of us give our freedom away with regards to, like, let's say you're stuck on your phone all the time, you're giving away your freedom to spend the time the way you want to by doing things you know, don't even make you feel better, and you're hooked, for example. That's one example. Right. Similarly, I mean, in the sense you're giving that power to whatever it is that you're choosing to focus on, you know, even if it's that at night you need to watch three hours of Netflix or drink that glass of alcohol, whatever it is. Right. We're constantly believing that the answer lies outside of us. And in so doing, we abandon ourselves. We abandon our, our energy too, because our energy is feeding into all the things that we're doing. And this isn't just activities and behaviors, but also our thoughts and our beliefs and our relationship with ourself, which is often self destructive. After college, I lived in China for a couple years and then spent some time in India and Tibet and just saw people who had nothing and they were grateful for everything. And here I see people have everything and are grateful for nothing. In fact, one of the people I talk about in my introduction is Nazreen Sheikh, who grew up in the sweatshops of Kathmandu as a child slave. And, you know, she has found her sovereignty and come out of that. But she often says, you know, in Nepal, in these people that have nothing, I see smiles and it's like, those are. That's what I'm talking about, that inner sovereignty. And she says, it's so shocking to come to the U.S. people have everything, but you see this emptiness behind their eyes. You Got to think about that. You know, how many people are truly living the life they want, are truly living to their fullest potential and are truly fulfilled. You know, how many people could die right now feeling like I lived my life to my fullest and I have no regrets. I mean, sure, you may have regrets for a mistake here or there, but I have no regrets in the sense that I have not wasted this life. I have gone for it. I have fully expressed the full individuality of who I am, made a difference where I could. Savored the moments, loved fully everyone, including myself. Not everyone, but like love the people that I loved. You know, I mean, not everybody's capable of unconditional love, but fully given my heart to whatever I've tried to do. How many people can say that? And that's our birthright. Our birthright is to be sovereign. Our birthright is to live in the full expression of who we are. And in so doing, we will benefit the planet. Because each one of us has a gift, has a lot of gifts. And how many of us are living small?

Shawna Samuel
You know, I think that's such an empowering way to think about. It is no matter what circumstances we find ourselves born into or currently living in, we have opportunities to really decide how we're going to use our time, energy and gifts.

Emma Seppala That's right, yeah.

Shawna Samuel
So Emma, you talk about that, that sort of self critical voice that hangs out in our heads. You know, most high achievers, we've got that voice. It's like, I'm not doing enough, I'm not good enough. And you say, you know that I am not good enough is that viral program running in most people's heads and that many of us have a quote unquote toxic relationship with ourselves. This spoke to me so much. I remember asking my coach a couple years ago, I was like, well, if I'm not critical, I'm letting myself off the hook. I'll. I'll never be my best. I'll probably just turn into a couch potato. So is there such a thing as healthy self criticism or is all self criticism not healthy?

Emma Seppala
Self awareness is healthy. Self awareness lets you know that there are certain areas that you need help with or you need to learn more or you need to pay attention to. Self criticism is the voice that beats you up whenever you fail, that puts you down because you don't know enough, because you're not good enough. Self criticism asks, am I good enough? Self criticism is the reason that so many people have imposter syndrome and it doesn't help Us, there's. It doesn't help us in any way. It does put us down. It leads to anxiety and depression, fear of failure, less willingness to try again. It's the opposite of resilience. And I call it a viral program because it's toxic. It runs in families and communities and societies and it does no one any good. And it's passed on over the generations and across people. You could pass it on to your kids very easily if you're running around with it and you don't want that for your kids. So it's like, well, where's the buck going to stop? It's up to you.

Shawna Samuel
Indeed. Oh my goodness. So that kind of brings me to all right. If we or so many of us have this viral program running in our heads, this self critical voice that's not helpful, that's not going to lead us anywhere good. As you mentioned, how do we sort of move to deprogram? You know, I love that in each chapter, whether you're talking about self or emotions or relationships or intuition, you give us some things about how we can start to deprogram that social conditioning. We talk about that quite a bit on the pod, just that it's there. But in the book, I think one of the things that I really wanted to talk about is that you give the example of cultural conditioning that we're subject to. I know you mentioned you grew up in France and I wrote to you about how I was kind of nodding and chuckling along about some of the mindset differences between France and the US that you bring up. And

something I've shared on the pod is that when I moved here as the mother of a one year old, I was immediately struck by how very different the cultural mindset is around parenting. Like for example, in France it's assumed most mothers will work and the state run creche, the baby daycare is considered like the best thing for your baby. So if people will be like, oh, did you get a spot in creche? And if you did, they're like, oh great, fantastic. That's going to be so good. You get so much, much positive reinforcement. And that was very strange for me coming from the US where I felt like I got all the cultural messages that were like, working outside the home is not great and putting your child into daycare even more not great. And it was confronting that cultural sort of cognitive dissonance was the first clue for me that maybe these cultural dictates are a bunch of sort of made up rules. Like, would you say that mom guilt is One of the viral programs that we have running in our brains.

Emma Seppala
I mean, I think traditionally women have taken care of the kids, but I also think biologically we are, the kids are part of our bodies. For those of us who gave birth and even those who didn't, you know, like there is that nurturing element that a mother brings. It's very physical, biological. And I think it's, it's, it's normal to question whether to leave the child someone else's care, and it's normal to question whether you're doing the right thing by doing so. And it's normal to question, if you're a stay at home mom, whether you should be working. I mean, you know, everybody questions it. I have stay at home mom friends who say, I don't feel like I spend quality time with my kids because they're just, you know. So at the end of the day, I think everyone has to really feel for themselves. But that guilt, I think is absolutely natural. It's natural. And you know, I think we used to live in extended families where there was a lot of aunts and uncles. And still that happens in some traditional cultures. And so there's less of a burden on the mother. But we live in societies where there's so much burden on us, plus maybe we want to work or have to work. So that causes a lot of pressure, you know. Causes a lot of pressure. Yeah, for most people, not everybody, but for most people, yeah, it's normal.

Shawna Samuel
The pressure is definitely there. Are there some maybe, like if you would give us one or two of the actionable tools that you recommend in your book to kind of help bring ourselves back to sovereignty. What are some things that we can do to start to deprogram these toxic messages and the social conditioning, I mean.

Emma Seppala
The first one that, you know, going back to what you're talking about earlier, how do you, how do you develop a less toxic, more healthy, happy, loving relationship with yourself? I mean, the first, I like to keep things really practical, I think. Talk all day about it, keep it theoretical. But at the end of the day, it's okay. If you have ever taken care of a child or a pet or even an elderly parent before, you're keeping track of when was last time they ate, when was the last time they drank, when was the last time they slept, do they need to go outside? Do they need to get some sunshine on their face? Do they need to get some wiggles out? Like

you just have that sense and just turning that lens inward too, you know, oh, it's lunchtime oh wait, I'm, you know, I'm not going to work through lunch. My body needs to eat. I need to run my little legs outside around the block. I need to get a little sunshine on my face. I need to let go for a few minutes. I need to leave my phone, go outside, take a walk around the block and just breathe. You know, taking that question I'm not good enough and asking what's good for me. And when you fail and when you feel shame and when you feel down and you feel you're not good enough, whatever, turn that right around into what do I need right now, what's good for me? And maybe you need a nap, maybe you need a snack, maybe you need a break, maybe you need a drink of water. And I think that keeps it practical, you know, very physical also. But when we start to train ourselves to turn that lens inward and take care of ourselves that way, it's the building blocks to, to a healthy relationship with yourself. And then from there, how would you never talk to your child the way you talk to yourself? Right? But the more you're, you take care physically, you're going to start to notice the words you use. So that's not number one in terms of that. But the other thing is, you know, I, I think it's essential to have a contemplative practice. It's. You're not going to have awareness of your, of your own mind, of how you are bound if you are constantly busy, busy, busy running, running, running, consuming, consuming, consuming information everywhere, never letting yourself have a moment. You have to have a practice, meditation practice, breathing practice, like if you're religious, prayer practice, whatever it is. But really, you know, like I know someone who. He decided to do an out part of his religious tradition. He decided to do an hour of prayer a day. Now this wasn't actively chanting anything or whatever, but it was like one hour of silence. That's what it was. And so yeah, sure, he probably prayed for part of it, for, for part of it he was just silent without taking information. And I know he said emotions came up and anger and sadness and all these things, he was processing things, but he was allowing himself the moment of just being with himself and being. And that's what meditation is. And if meditation is anxiety provoking for some people, and I know it was for me because I really started meditating after 911 and I had so much anxiety in my system. Sitting and being mindful was torture. It was crazy. It was like, why would I do this? Just super aware that I'M anxious. But then what ended up working for me was a breathing practice called Sky Breath Meditations, offered through a nonprofit called Art of Living, which is sort of based in India. It's from the yogic tradition, but what it does is it conditioned my nervous system to calm down. And in so doing, naturally, your mind becomes more meditative. You go into meditation, but it's easier because it's the ephesiological process that puts you in parasympathetic, the opposite of the fight or flight. So find a shoe that fits for you. And you know, a lot of people are like, oh, I'm too busy. It's like, well, really, how much time do you spend wasting every day? Like, seriously, everybody's wasting time. Everybody. I don't care how many jobs you have, how many kids you have. It's like, okay, well, let's say you just have five minutes after everybody's gone to bed. So what are you going to do with that time? You're going to waste it watching some show you don't even care about that's not going to make you feel better, but might make you feel worse. Doom scrolling drinking, whatever, you know. Or are you going to spend it doing something that's really nourishing for you, like meditating, listening to some wisdom, you know, doing something life supportive.

Shawna Samuel
Oh, I love these two things that you've mentioned. So, you know, first, like turning that around and all the care that we give out to other people and checking on what their needs are, turning that inward to say, what do I need right now? Yeah, and giving that to ourselves, that's something we can all go and do right now. And the second thing is that contemplative practice. And I love that you very lovingly call us out in this busy world where everyone's overstretched. I think, you know, we all have that. Well, most people have that moment at the end of the day where they're sitting on the couch and they can choose, do I want to put my time into something that kind of numbs me out but doesn't necessarily make me feel better, or do I want to put that time into a contemplative practice that helps calm me down? So those are two things that I think we can each take away and start to do. Coming right off this podcast. Thank you. Emma. I want to ask you about something that I had this moment when I was reading the chapter on relationships, because what's really interesting for me, I was reading the chapter on relationships, thinking about workplace relationships, and you really talk about These in that chapter too. Can you tell us a little bit about the Crushers, the Sacrificers and the stars?

Emma Seppala
You know, I think there's a lot of, a lot of people who are, contrary to what the news tells us, making us think everybody's evil. I really do think most people are trying their best to do, to do something positive. They're not intentionally trying to hurt anyone. Right. And many are actually doing, putting out some real positive energy out in the world, really doing some good work. But there's different ways of doing that and there's only one that's sustainable and that's really helpful. So the Crushers are the ones. And I'll just give an example of, you know, this one scientist I know who's just well known, written a lot of books, really made a difference in the field through his research. And yet I'm very famous, you know, one of times, 50 most influential, et cetera. And yet when you go in his lab, it's toxic. People are unhappy, frustrated and what's going on here? Well, he is out there busy doing good in the world and yet treading on others underfoot in his own lab or simply neglecting them. And in so doing you think, wow, how successful would he be if his entire lab was also fully blossomed into their best potential and inspired and taken care of by him? Right. So, and I think we all know people like that.

Shawna Samuel
Oh yes. Yep. If you worked for a Crusher, that's going to be instantly recognizable. Yeah, yeah.

Emma Seppala
And then there's the sacrificers. So they, they really do wonderful work, but they also do really good by the people that work for them. And yet they have a toxic relationship with themselves. That's the problem. Right. And so they offer will suffer from burnout or mental health issues. And you think, wow, how much potential would they have if they also had a

life supportive relationship with themselves? Because they often can't. They, they can't go as far as they would like to or they have some hard stops where they have to really take a break for a while. And then there's the stars. And those are the ones who have this life supportive relationship with others and themselves. And in so doing they actually charge their own energy more. So when you are supporting others around you and you're creating that sort of, you create a positive cascade around you and there's research shows you become, there is super product, super productivity around certain individuals who are able to generate that around them. And it's through exercising human values like kindness, compassion, forgiveness, humility, integrity, honesty, very Basic human values and yet, and they balance that with being able to take care of themselves. They have good boundaries and they do take good care of theirselves. Not just their body but their mind. And in so doing they have extraordinary results and they don't burn out. In fact they can keep going. And they're quite extraordinary, extraordinary humans. And we all have that potential. If we have a awareness about what about how we're treating others, how we're treating ourselves and making sure that that's the, that's in line with what the data shows will lead to the most sovereign kind of lifestyle. And, and I think that's one thing, it's just, it's not that complicated when you think about it. But somehow we've learned to either crush others like dog eat dog or we've learned to do the same to ourselves. And sometimes it's both. And that is keeping us bound and it's also hurting those around us and it's teaching them how to act. So it's just, you know, when we change the paradigm, we're changing it for everyone who meets us.

Shawna Samuel
I think this is such an important point for listeners. I've worked with a lot of people who I think would probably recognize themselves in the sacrificer bucket. And you know, the person who's like I didn't get the edits back on the presentation from my team so I'll just do it myself because I, I don't want to like annoy them by giving them the feedback. I think there, there can almost be this sort of view that if you're not sacrificing yourself that you're going to be a crusher, one of those people. And I think your description of the stars and it puts out there, there is this other path where we don't have to be crushing other people. We also don't have to be crushing ourself. And when we take the path to become sovereign, we can operate more like the stars we're meant to be.

Emma Seppala
That's right. Everybody can. Yeah. And that's, that's what we're looking for. That's the life we're looking for. And it's totally within our grasp if we just unbind ourselves from those kind of toxic programs that are running our minds and our behaviors.

Shawna Samuel
Love it. All right, one last question for you. So I should preface this by saying I'm probably one of the least woo woo people out there. So like people know I'm, I'm the person to come to if you like evidence based work and I have to admit that when I opened the chapter on intuition, I was, I was skeptical. And then I, I started reading a passage out loud to my family

because I was like, oh, this is, this is actually quite interesting. My husband was like, well, intuition, of course, it's, it's like central to a career as a researcher. You know, it's where you access your creativity. And then my son was like, yeah, like when you're trying to solve a math problem, you know, knowing what theorem to use, it's mainly intuition. I was like, well, I suppose they have a point. So I went into your chapter with a. An open mind, and I finished it more than convinced. And I learned that some of the practices that we know work to prevent burnout, like play or downtime, are really connected to intuition. So fascinating. But I want to ask you about this piece of research that you talk about in the book that people can tell when they're in the room with someone who's suppressing emotion, like they react to it. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Emma Seppala
Yeah, I think that's a real easy way for people to think about intuition. Many ways you can think about it, but one of the. Which is physiological. So I think everyone's had the experience of being around someone that they don't feel comfortable with, and they just feel like, I'm not comfortable around this person. And they can't understand why in there. Intellectually, they just don't feel comfortable. And yet what we know from the research is that if, let's say I were suppressing anger and pretending not to be angry, which is the number one thing we've learned how to do with our emotions, a lot of people walking around suppressing different things, right? So say I'm feeling angry, but I'm like, nope, I'm not angry. I'm just fine. Your heart rate would increase and you wouldn't understand intellectually why you're not comfortable. But you're, you're not comfortable and your body is sending you a red flag that you haven't even cognitively understood. And if you look in the animal world, like for example, with horses, so horses are animals of prey, and so they're quite aware of possible dangers in the environment. And in equine facilitated therapy, which is when there's a therapist working with a horse and a patient, you know, and then the horse helps in the therapy, if the patient comes up and is like, I'm not scared of that horse, but they're actually scared, the horse is moving all over the place. It's just very anxious. In fact, I was just talking to a therapist who uses horses the other day, and she said recently a patient had been talking to her and was like, oh, I'm a champion. You know, something. Can't remember. And she said, oh, really? Sounded really impressive. And she said, the horse. When he said that, the horse just jumped to the side, literally. And then she said to him, why do you think the horse did that? And he said, because I was lying. I was lying. Yeah. I mean, the horses. So what happens here? It's an instinct. They don't speak English, obviously, right. But they don't understand English, but they have an instinct, and they. We register inauthenticity as threat when you don't know what's coming, but there's an inauthenticity, you don't know what could happen. It feels threatening. And so what happens is, is that. That's one form of intuition, is physiological. Our body registers things much, much quicker than our intellect has the time to catch up on. And that's one. One way that we sometimes can get a funny feeling in place. You know, like my friend Kushel, who was in one of the twin towers during 9 11, and the guards were saying, stay in the building. Stay in the building. And he had this instinct to run, and he saved his life by hair. What about all those people in the building who had the same instinct and didn't follow it? They listened

to instructions.

Shawna Samuel
Wow, that is such a powerful. Both the story and the equine reaction as well. Like, just really powerful demonstrations of intuition and authenticity. I think we've probably all had that experience where we're sitting across the table from someone in a meeting who's like, no, I'm not angry about this at all. And our inner alarm bells are going off. And sometimes it's us as leaders, right? Like, we think that good leadership is trying to take the emotion out of the room, but our team is picking up on that inauthenticity.

Emma Seppala
So it's always better to even just say, either postpone your meeting or just say, I have to admit today I'm feeling anxious and tired. And please, please don't take anything personally if you feel like I'm reacting too quickly. I'm just letting you know where I'm at. I really would rather be Zen, calm, focused, and present for the meetings. But we didn't. I couldn't. I don't have the option to reschedule, so I'm just letting you know where I'm at, you know, Even just saying that just truth relaxes people around truth. We let go. We can breathe, you know, we can breathe easy. It does. You know, I mean, we know when there's untruth, we see through people. And so many of us are walking around with masks on and facades, and everyone's uptight because they're wearing these facades, and they're uptight because they're around the facades and there's no connection, which is what we actually want. And when you can just let go and be honest, which is authentic and which is vulnerable and which is scary, everybody relaxes. You know, maybe you'll get judged. Oh, well, you know, I put a lot of embarrassing stories in that book. Right. And you know, part of me, you know, was like, oh, my gosh. But then it's like, whatever, man. We're all just humans. And if we're not gonna be authentic, that's not helpful for anybody. Really.

Shawna Samuel
Yeah. And I think some of the stories that you share in the book, like that one about, you know, missing the keynote that you, you were supposed to get, like, so many of us have had those kind of embarrassing, shame inducing moments, and it's humanizing when we see someone in a position of leadership who's been there too.

Emma Seppala
We're all the same. We're all just fumbling along, living and loving and learning and making mistakes, Right?

Shawna Samuel Totally.

Emma Seppala
Yeah. And when you could just own that, it's actually so empowering. And I just want to add one thing also. You know, whenever I teach audiences, I ask people, how many of you are

self critical? And 90 to 95% of people raise their hand. And the 5%, which is usually one or two people in the room, right? No, two people in the room who don't raise their hand are so freaking powerful, they end up being the leaders in that room. They're in a life supportive relationship with themselves. And that is, they show up sovereign, powerful. You sit up and listen to people like that. It's amazing.

Shawna Samuel
It really is. Oh, my goodness. Well, you know, my. My husband quipped that my podcast was going to need to morph into the huberman lab. Like three hour interviewers, offloaders. I confess it's a challenge to really do this book justice in the space of one episode because there is so much good stuff in here. It's practical, it's actionable, it's filled with research, but also I think it's filled with stuff that's going to speak to each and every one of us as leaders. So I just want to encourage you to Go and get your hands on this book. Whether you're struggling with mom guilt or boundaries or making time for your own needs or having stronger relationships at home and work, I think it's a very practical playbook and it really covers that missing link which is the foundation of sovereignty that we need to operate at our best. And when without it, we're kind of stuck where we are. It's a real tour de force. Listeners get it now. And Emma, where can people learn more about your fabulous work and research?

Emma Seppala
Thank you. Well, if you read the book, you know I'm. I'm mindful about social media use and thankfully I have someone managing that for me. But I do put out content there that I think can be helpful for people on Instagram at the Happiness Track. And I have a newsletter that I that you can subscribe to on my website, either emma sepa.com or im sov.com which is my the website I have that's dedicated to the book Sovereignty Sovereign and yeah.

Shawna Samuel
And listeners, we'll put those in the show notes so that you can go and click and find Emma's wonderful stuff. Well, thank you so much for being here today. It was a pleasure speaking to you and hearing more about the book. I wish we could have you here all day, but I'm so grateful that you were able to take a little bit of time out of your schedule to be on the podcast.

Emma Seppala
Thank you, Shawna. I appreciate it.

Shawna Samuel
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