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Below, Marc Brackett shares five key insights from his new book, Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want. Marc is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yales Child Study Center. He is the author of the bestselling book Permission to Feel and over 200 scholarly articles, with his research featured in the New York Times, Good Morning America, and Today. Together with Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann, Marc launched the award-winning How We Feel app. He is also the producer of the documentary America Unfiltered: Portraits and Voices of a Nation and host of the podcast Dealing with Feeling. Whats the big idea? Emotion regulation is one of the most important skills for both personal and professional success. With the right training, we can all replace poor habits (yelling, isolation, blame) with better strategies (breath, positive self-talk, reframing) that strengthen connection and well-being. 1. We need to give ourselves permission to feel. Most of us grew up hearing things like: Stop crying. Dont be so sensitive. Shake it off. And so, we learnedexplicitly or implicitlythat emotions are problems to avoid, not signals to explore. But ignoring or suppressing emotions can lead to anxiety, chronic stress, headaches, digestive issues, sleep disturbances, and even long-term impacts on physical and mental health. It also makes it harder to connect with others and regulate emotions effectively. Giving yourself permission to feel means embracing all emotions with curiosity, not judgment. It means saying to yourself: This is how I feel right now, and its okay to feel this way. Let me understand it. That moment of acknowledgment is the gateway to healing, growth, and making wiser decisions. Emotions are not weaknesses. They are data. When we approach emotions with empathyfor ourselves and otherswe create the conditions for insight and resilience. The challenge is that only a third of people report having permission to feel when they were young. What will make us all feel that we have permission to feel? 2. Emotion regulation is 100 percent learned. Where did you learn how to manage emotions? Was it through watching your parents? Was it from teachers? Friends? Maybe no one ever taught you directly, but you still learned. We all did. Ask yourself, on a scale from one to five, how much emotional education you received growing up. And how much of that education helped you develop effective regulation strategies? My research shows that only about 10% of people feel as if they had a solid education in emotion regulation. Common default strategies (especially in moments of stress) include avoidance, yelling, eating, scrolling, numbing, blaming others, or blaming yourself. These are not character flaws. They are just what you learned. But the good news is that because emotion regulation is learned, it can also be relearned. My research shows that only about 10% of people feel as if they had a solid education in emotion regulation. You can upgrade your emotional regulation strategies to include techniques such as deep breathing, accurately labeling emotions, practicing positive self-talk, reframing situations, or seeking support. These are teachable, learnable, and they work. But they require intention, practice, and sometimes unlearning what no longer serves you. 3. Breathing is necessary but not sufficient. Breathing is a powerful tool, and I teach it to everyone, from kindergartners to CEOs. Conscious breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us move from the fight-or-flight response to the rest-and-digest state. It deactivates our stress response and creates space for wiser choices. Thats why I call it the master strategy. But breathing is only the beginning. The real transformation happens after breath. Once youve calmed your body, what do you do with your mind? What story do you tell yourself? What action do you take? Breathing helps you press pause, but it doesnt solve the problem. That takes reflection, strategy, and sometimes courage. The other day, I visited a middle school classroom and asked a student what hed do if someone were mean or hurtful to him. He said, Take a deep breath. I replied, Thats great, but whats next? He couldnt answer. Breath is only the bridge that takes you to the side where real emotion regulation work can begin. 4. You are what you think. When you make a mistake, whats the first thing you say to yourself? Do you call yourself an idiot, or do you say, Hey, everyone messes up. Its okay. Ill apologize, learn from it, and move on. That inner voice shapes everything from your emotional state to your behavior to your sense of self-worth. And that voice can be trained. Two of the most powerful strategies are positive self-talk and reappraisal. Positive self-talk isnt about pretending everything is fine. Its about being kind and encouraging to yourself, especially in tough moments. Its even more effective when spoken in the second or third person: Marc, take a breath. Youve got this. That subtle shiftcalled psychological distancinghelps us regulate better by stepping back from the heat of the moment. Reappraisal, or reframing, means choosing a new lens through which to view a situation. Its the difference between This is a disaster and This is a challenge I can learn from. I like to say: reframe instead of blame. That inner voice shapes everything from your emotional state to your behavior to your sense of self-worth. For instance, I tend to repeat myself a lot during keynote presentations. There are days when I say to myself, Really, Marc, this is what you are going to do for the rest of your life? But I know better than to go on stage with that mindset. So, I reappraise. Recently, I gave a big talk at a tech company, and I switched my internal dialogue to, Marc, you are going to present your lifes work to over 1,000 engineers, managers, and leaders. Think about the impact you can have on their personal and professional lives. With that mindset, I gave one of my best talks! 5. Focus on other people. When were anxious, angry, or overwhelmed, the instinct is often to withdraw, ruminate, isolate, or spiral inward. But research tells us that reaching out to support others who are suffering is a helpful strategy for healing not only them, but us too. This is a form of co-regulation. When we help others manage their difficult emotions, we simultaneously help regulate our own. Parents do this with their children all the time, but its just as relevant in friendships, workplaces, and partnerships. When you show up for someone else with empathy, patience, and presence, then you also create connection. You model emotional intelligence, and your kindness has the potential for ripple effects. Even witnessing someone else being emotionally supportive can inspire others to do the same. Next time youre feeling low, ask: Who else might be struggling? And how can I helpeven in a small way? You might find that helping someone elseis the most effective way to help yourself. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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E-Commerce
Your interest in longevity may be entrepreneurial; after all, people who want to live longer, healthier lives are a huge market. Or maybe, if you hope to be wealthy, theres what Warren Buffett called the Methuselah technique: a long life and a high rate of return. More likely, though, your interest in longevity is personal. We all hope to live a longer, healthier life. The problem is, the recommendation bar for living a longer life can seem impossibly high. One study found you need between 150 and 300 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity to mitigate the risk of death associated with sitting. Another study found you need to jog five days a week for 30 to 40 minutes for your body to have the age progression of someone nine years younger. Fortunately, theres an easier way to add years to your lifespan. Two studies, one that spanned 10 years and the other 30 years, found that high optimism was linked to 11 to 15% longer lifespans, even after taking into account factors like health and socioeconomic status. As the researchers write: Among psychosocial factors that appear to be potential health assets (e.g., social integration), optimism has some of the strongest and most consistent associations with a wide range of health outcomes, including reduced risk of cardiovascular events, lung function decline, and premature mortality. Investigators have speculated that optimism may facilitate healthier bio-behavioral processes, and ultimately longevity, because optimism directly contributes to how goals are translated into behaviors. Thats a lot, so lets break it down. Social integration directly correlates with living longer. A clinical review of nearly 150 studies published in PLOS Medicine found that people with strong social ties had a 50% better chance of survival, regardless of age, sex, health status, and cause of death, than those with weaker ties. Make and keep a few close friends, youll likely live longer. Yet optimism also directly correlates with living longer, since optimistic people tend to behave differently: While everyone has goals, people who fall on the less optimistic end of the spectrum are much less likely to try to achieve their goals. Why start a journey that feels impossible? On the flip side, the researchers say optimism directly contributes to how goals are translated into behaviors. When the journey seems possible, starting feels much easier. Sounds good. But still. Knowing you should be more optimistic, if only to extend your lifespan, is different from actually becoming more optimistic. There isnt a more optimistic switch you can flip. Or maybe there is. Research shows that approximately 25% of our optimism set-point is genetic. That means 75% of your level of optimism can be shaped and learned. For example, participants in a study published in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry who spent five minutes a day for two weeks imagining their best possible selfin terms of professional, relationship, and personal goalsexperienced significant increases in optimism. If visualization isnt your thing (it isnt mine), try another approach. If, as Jim Rohn says, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, simply spend more time with optimistic people. Theyll be more encouraging. Theyll be more supportive. Their enthusiasm will naturally rub off on you. (Plus, youll reap the social integration longevity benefits.) If spending time in groups isnt your thing (it kind of isnt mine), then take a step back and think about your mindset. Generally speaking, people fall into two camps: People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence, ability, and skill are inborn and relatively fixed; that they are what they were born with. Someone with a fixed mindset might say, I didnt handle that well. Im not cut out to be a leader. People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence, ability, and skill can be developed through effort; that we are what we work to become. Someone with a growth mindset might say, I didnt handle that well, but next time Ill make sure Im more prepared. People who embrace a growth mindset believe success is based on effort and application, not innate talent. Think about a challenge you overcame. A goal you achieved. A time when you doubted yourself, but still persevered. Youve done it once. You can do it again. That, in effect, is a growth mindset. Embrace it. Not only will you be more successful, youll be more likely to live longer, too. Cant beat that. Jeff Haden This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Category:
E-Commerce
Amid dramatic disruption, what role should business play in building the future? Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky shares his candid perspective on business, politics, creativity, and AItracing from Airbnbs humble beginnings to bold plans for the companys future. Through a designers lens, Chesky also reveals the single question leaders must ask themselves, and explores how best to make tricky decisions in a volatile climate. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company, and recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Your cofounder, Joe Gebbia, now works at the White House as the chief design officer, although you were not among the cohort of tech CEOs who had dinner with Donald Trump there. What’s the state of the conversation between you and your peers about how to navigate this new administration, this new environment? I mean, it’s incredibly tricky to know what to do. And I don’t even know how you’re going to answer this question. I don’t know either, actually. So let’s see. Silicon Valley’s gotten more political. And when I came to Silicon Valley, maybe it was more left, but it kind of felt more moderate. And it didn’t feel as much like it was as political. I do think that another thing that I am noticing is people are running toward a certain administration, obviously Trump. There’s a very good chance there will be a new administration in three years, maybe not, but let’s say there’s a 50/50 chance of a new administration. And I’m kind of curious: Do they run the other way, and do the worlds swing back and forth? And I think there’s a lot of swinging. There was all this focus on DEI, and then there was all this focus to roll it all back. And there’s all this focus to go here, and now there’s all this focus to go here. And it’s like back and forth and back and forth. I think I try to imagine what will still be true in 20 years. What do we believe in? Because whatever’s true in 20 years are our principles and our values, and everything else is just a trend. Everything else is just trying to fit in. Everyone else is just rushing to whatever is popular at that current time. And so I think every company just has to ask themselves what do they stand for? What are their values? And I think I try to be pretty clear about what we stand for. And so I try not to wade into too many political topics unless I feel like I have something to add to the conversation, and it’s something that is connected to our vision or our values. I mean, the other thing about politics is, we’re trying to bring the world together. That’s what I’d like to do. The problem with politicsI don’t have a better system, but it’s 50-plus-one. You have to divide them and get plus one. And it is inherently a divisive thing, and Airbnb’s mission is inherently unifying. Do you know the number of Trump supporters who stayed in a house of a Kamala Harris supporter over the course of the election? Millions. Do you know the number of Democrats, Republicans that live together and don’t even know they’re Democrats and Republicans? When you travel, it’s one of the few times in your life that you’re truly open-minded. Even prejudice, people with prejudice, don’t have prejudice when they travel because they’re in someone else’s land and they’re now open-minded. You don’t talk to the Uber driver in your own city, but you do in another city. You have a completely different orientation. Travel brings out the best in you. And there’s this ancient hospitality. It started with the ancient Egyptians, started with the Greeks, that the guest is God and we’re going to serve them. And so I try to zoom out. I try to focus a little less on divisive issues and say the best way to change someone else’s mind about other people in a time that’s really divided is to walk in their shoes, to live in their home, and to bring people together and remind people that basically . . . I’ve learned two lessons after having started Airbnb: People are fundamentally good, and we’re 99% the same. And you read the newspaper and you engage in political discourse and you can forget that we’re basically all the same. And if that wasn’t true, we would have been out of business a long time ago. And so that’s why I’m very careful about falling and treading into politics. We will, but very selectively. And these swings that you talk aboutwhere it swings from one way to the otherhow do you keep yourself from getting caught up in those? Because there’s a lot of pressure sometimes behind those. Well, I stay off Twitter a littleor Xa little bit. And I mean, there’s this temptation to want to participate in every conversation and to feel like you have to have an opinion and wade into everything. And actually, I try not to have opinions about things that I don’t know a lot about until I learn about them. I think there was a period of time where people in tech felt like we had to have a statement about every single issue. That was quite a burden, though, because either you learn about the issue or you’re just jumping on a bandwagon. You don’t really know, and you’re not really informed. So I just try to make sure I tell the company, “We are going to be thoughtful as a company. We’re not going to swing back and forth. We’re going to do whatever we think is the right thing to do.” Yeah. You talked to me before about the difference between a business decision and a principle decision. A business decision is like trying to gamify the outcome to win. A principle decision is, I don’t know how it’s going to end, so how do I want to be remembered irrespective of the outcome? And if you do that, it’s another way of doing whatever you think the right thing to do is, whatever you think is true. And maybe you lose in the short run, you lose the battle, but you win the war. Because ultimately, you’re rarely going to get out of business because you stick to your principles and your values. And people want to work for a company like that, and we want to buy products from people who lead in that way. What do you think Airbnb’s role is in building the future? And for the folks who are sitting in this room, what’s the role that they should be taking in building the future? I like to ask an entrepreneur a question: “Why does your company deserve to exist?” And the best kind of generic answer I’ve ever heard is: “Because if I don’t do it, no one else will.” And I like to ask that question to myself. What could we uniquely do that if we don’t do it, ayone else will? And I think that we’re just this particular company and we were naive to believe that people are basically good, and it was a good idea to have a stranger in your home. And ultimately, I think that what we’re trying to build, again, is this global community because I think communities are eroding all over the world. I think we have a place in this world to do something unique. I think that design is a hugely underleveraged superpower. I think it’s going to be really important in the age of AI. I think for every business leader, I think that you should ask: “If you never existed, what would be different about the world? What is your unique imprint to do?” I say this because I think a lot of people like to chase trends. And by the way, by the time it’s a trend, sometimes it’s late. Once it has a name, it’s late. Although AI will go on forever, so that one might be different. So then what in AI? What in AI, because everything’s AI at some point? What is not AI? So I think business leaders should focus on a unique contribution they can make. I think we are in building mode. I think it’s going to be so revolutionary. You ask, is it a new house or a renovation? I think it’s a new house. I think that’s exciting. I think it’s slightly scary.
Category:
E-Commerce
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