“Be Good Now, Don’t Have Bad Emotions, Bad Emotions Are Bad.”

When we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Susan David has had hundreds of people tell her what they don't want to feel. They ...

In her own research, Susan David found that words are essential. We often use quick and easy labels to describe our feelings. "I'm stressed" is the most common one. But there's a world of difference between stress and disappointment or stress and that knowing dread of "I...

But there's an important caveat. Emotions are data, they are not directives. We can show up to and mine our emotions for their values without needing to listen to them. Just like you can show up to your son in his frustration with his baby sister -- but not endorse his idea that ...

Only dead people never get unwanted or inconvenienced by their feelings.

Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience the disappointment that comes with failure. Tough emotions are part of our contract with life. You don't get to ha...

In Susan David’s research, when she looked at what helps people to bring the best of themselves to work, she found a powerful key contributor: individualized consideration. When people are allowed to feel their emotional truth, engagement, creativity and innovation flourish in th...

How we deal with our inner world drives everything. Every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic...

In South Africa, "sawubona" is the Zulu word for "hello." There's a beautiful and powerful intention behind the word because "sawubona" literally translated means, "I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being." So beautiful, imagine being greeted like that. But what does it take ...

Research now shows that the radical acceptance of all of our emotions - even the messy, difficult ones - is the cornerstone to resilience, thriving, and true, authentic happiness. But emotional agility is more that just an acceptance of emotions. Researchers also know that ac...

Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification. Like that delicious chocolate cake in the refrigerator -- the more you try to ignore it the greater its hold on you. You might...

The most agile, resilient individuals, teams, organizations, families, communities are built on an openness to the normal human emotions. It's this that allows us to say, "What is my emotion telling me?" "Which action will bring me towards my values?" "Which will take me away fro...

Our emotions contain flashing lights to things that we care about. We tend not to feel strong emotion to stuff that doesn't mean anything in our worlds. If you feel rage when you read the news, that rage is a signpost, perhaps, that you value equity and fairness -- and an opportu...

Life's beauty is inseparable from its fragility. We are young until we are not. We walk down the streets sexy until one day we realize that we are unseen. We nag our children and one day realize that there is silence where that child once was, now making his or her way in the wor...

See your emotions. Bring them into being. Because in seeing yourself, you are also able to see others, too: the only sustainable way forward in a fragile, beautiful world.

At a time of greater complexity, unprecedented technological, political and economic change, we are seeing how people's tendency is more and more to lock down into rigid responses to their emotions.

On the one hand we might obsessively brood on our feelings. Getting...

Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad. And being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. People with cancer are automatically told to just stay positive. Women, to stop being so angry. And the list goes on. It's a tyranny. It's a tyranny of pos...