Susan David+

A Crucial Skill for Regulating Emotions

We've all experienced it before: one day, out of the blue, an emotion catches us totally off guard. "I don't know where that anger came from," we say. When we find ourselves fully immersed in an emotion unexpectedly, it becomes much more challenging to regulate that emotion and manage our response to it. Because of this, it's crucial to understand the difference between "hot" and "cold" emotions. Hot emotions are fully formed, while cold emotions are somewhat distanced from us. We're beginning to experience them but not yet immersed in them. To become more aware of your cold emotions so tha

When it feels like your values are in conflict...

When it feels like our values are at odds with one another, it helps to remember that values are not goals. Values are a life direction—they’re aspects of your world that matter to you and that you keep moving toward your best self across the months and years. Goals, on the other hand, are fixed—they’re achievements you check off a list. Often what we view as a values conflict is really an issue of goal conflict, or of time management, or of the difficulty in committing to a plan or a course of action. An especially common goal conflict emerges when we try to strike that elusive work-life b

A Powerful Question for Our Relationships

🗣️ You know the moment well. You're stuck in a never-ending argument loop with your partner, friend, or colleague. And regardless of the context, you're determined not to let it go until they validate your rightness. As much as you care about being “right,” you most likely also value connection with your partner, shared laughter with your friend, or a harmonious working relationship with your colleague. At the moment, however, none of these things seem to matter. An expression used to describe this particular self-defeating phenomenon: "cutting off your nose to spite your face." When you

Unlock the Power of Emotions to Thrive in Work & Life

Sawubona. I see you. In South Africa, where I come from, “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.” At its core, emotional agility is about the capacity to see ourselves and others in a wholehearted and healthy way. It’s a set of essential psychological skills for our complex world—a world that often chooses not to see. It is more than just a skill set I teach, it’s what I try to live by, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity

What is emotional agility?

Everyone is talking about the AI Revolution. But the real revolution? The Human Skills Revolution. As industries transform and jobs are reshaped—or replaced—our edge won’t be knowledge or expertise. It will be the capacities that make us human: Adaptability Collaboration Curiosity Flexibility Courage Sensemaking These emotional agility capacities will define success—not just at work, but in life. They will keep us psychologically strong and prepared for an unknowable future. The real question isn’t: What can AI do? The real question is: What are humans for? And the answer isn’t knowledge.

How do you respond to sadness?

How do you respond to sadness? Do you push it aside and force positivity instead? Do you tell yourself that you’ve got no right to be sad or that you should just be grateful? Many of us grow up believing that our most challenging emotions (like sadness) must be hidden away, a notion which often leads to adults being comfortable with only a few emotions and much less so with others. Display rules stigmatize normal, natural human emotions and lead us to believe that we must emotionally perform a certain way in order to be accepted in the world. You can begin to dismantle display rules with y

The Power of Job Crafting

If you're stuck in the wrong job (or even in the wrong field), work can feel like an increasingly narrow space. Job crafting is about creatively reconfiguring your work role to make it more fulfilling. Three Ways to Job Craft: 1. Notice which activities you find most engaging. 2. Change the nature or extent of your professional interactions with others. 3. Find a new why—a new perspective. Try to see your job in a different light. //Speaking Susan inspires audiences to think, feel, and act differently with deeply impactful and positive outcomes for themselves, their colleagues, and their or

A Question to Ask When You Face Challenges

A difficult moment strikes again—a disheartening news story, a confusing work project, a four-year-old who's suddenly turned into a harsh food critic at the dinner table. It's in the midst of these situations that we get the opportunity to choose who we want to be. Next time you have the urge to shut down, procrastinate, or have an outburst, find the space to observe your emotions without judgment so that you can act according to your values. Then ask yourself, “Even in the midst of this challenge, who do I choose to be?” //Speaking Susan inspires audiences to think, feel, and act differen

Am I fighting or feeling this emotion?

One way for us to be with our difficult emotions is with what I call “'a gentle noticing.” For example, "I'm noticing that I'm feeling really depleted. I'm noticing my grief. I'm noticing my sadness or my loneliness." When we notice our inner world with compassion and gentleness, we're no longer fighting against our emotional experiences. We are able to just be with them. And when you can just be with your emotions, your gentle acceptance defangs that difficulty or challenge a little bit, allowing you to take the next brave step towards what matters most. //Speaking Susan inspires audiences

Quick Tips for Bottlers and Brooders

Are you a bottler or a brooder? Both are rigid ways of dealing with our emotions. Bottling is when you push aside difficult emotions. Imagine the emotions being a stack of books and you’re holding them tightly away from you until your arms and heart get tired. And very often, you will drop the books. Brooding is when you dwell on difficult emotions. It’s like carrying the stack of books so close to your heart that you’re unable to reach out into the world, be present with your child, or connect with your team. To be more emotionally agile, see if you can engage with your emotions in a diff

Tiny Tweaks, Big Changes: How Small Actions Transform Your Life

You may wonder whether small actions that you take actually impact your life. I wanted to share an exciting study that looks at microinterventions. The study was published in Nature's Scientific Reports. And what it looked at is whether people who are Creating microinterventions, for example, being generous to their partner in a way that is concordant with their values, how that impacts them over time. So, what is found in this research is that if you make a connection that is concordant with your value one week, you are more likely to do it in the following weeks. We often talk about our val

The Four C's of Emotional Agility

The quality of our lives depends not on how many tough emotions we experience, or even their intensity, but on the way we deal with them. The Four C's of Emotional Agility, which I discuss in this video, can transform how we approach our emotions and help us navigate challenges at work more effectively. Of course, practicing self-compassion in challenging moments and cultivating curiosity about your feelings is easier said than done, especially when you've spent many years suppressing uncomfortable emotions or judging yourself for "being negative." If you want to learn how to better engage w

Make The Ordinary Come Alive

There’s so much pain and suffering in the world right now and sometimes, when we don’t know how to process our most difficult emotions, we end up creating more harm: speaking sharply to a loved one across a dinner table, shooing our children out of the kitchen, maybe speaking unkindly to ourselves. I hope you can find some joy in small things today, too, and allow yourself to lean in to softness and compassion. I wish for everyone to experience the privilege of gathering with loved ones and tasting tomatoes with your children. Let us do our best to meet the broken parts of our world with cou

4 Ways to Embrace Self-Compassion

One of the great myths of self-compassion is that it’s about lying to yourself. Or that it’s about being weak or being lazy. Or that it’s about pushing aside your difficult thoughts and saying, “Now I’m going to tell myself five positive things.” That’s not self-compassion. When you are self-compassionate, you’re actually doing something very specific for yourself—you’re noticing difficult thoughts, showing up for them, and creating a sense of psychological safety for yourself. Ultimately, self-compassion is about recognizing what it means to be human. //Speaking Susan inspires audiences

Lacking Self-Confidence?

I often get asked, "How do I boost my self-confidence?" In this context, self-confidence is typically seen as an elusive, magical, missing ingredient that "if we only had more of, we'd be able to make big things happen in our lives." But here's the thing: self-confidence is less about what's happening in your head and more about what you're doing in your life. We build self-confidence by doing. Let's break it down. Tip one: do the next right thing. Keep taking actions that are aligned with your values and goals. Tip two: keep small promises to yourself. Whether it's putting your phone aw