Feelings are not facts. You don't need to believe them.

Are they valid? Yes. They are a core part of our experience of the world.
- Should we honor them with compassion? Yes.
- Should they be heard? Yes.
- Do they signpost things we care about? Yes.

Are they facts? No. *Choosing* to believe a feeling, is not the same as automatically believing it.

I trust my best friend. Can I honor her, love her? Yes.
- Is everything she says a fact? No.
- Do I believe *everything* she says. No, she could be wrong.
- Do I obey everything she says? No.

A long history of "feminizing" emotion - the notion that emotional capabilities and emotionality are more female than male - has devastating consequences.

One is the suppression of NORMAL yet supposedly "undesirable" emotions by gender and associated mental health costs. Another is the societal devaluing of the "care" professions especially when those professions intersect with gender bias - like therapy and social work.

The crisis in available care and the underpayment of those who provide it, should be deeply concerning to all.

A leader isn’t someone who says “trust my map.”

A leader is someone who instead invites, “trust my compass.”

1/5 It's tempting to present solutions and strategies as if they are defined and incontrovertible.

Yet, the truth is leaders cannot know the answers.

The world - technology, politics, and markets - is constantly changing. There are simply too many variables for a "map."

2/5

What are you feeling?

What are two other options?

Use this thread to label your emotions in a more granular way.

You might be surprised at the breadth of your emotions—or that you’ve unearthed a more accurate name for what you're feeling. Angry

• Grumpy
• Frustrated
• Annoyed
• Defensive
• Irritated
• Offended
• Spiteful

When you support autonomy development in children you give them a crucial gift: they learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

This is *essential* in a changing, complex world.

5 Keys ---> 1. Honor the child for who they are (e.g. someone who loves drawing) rather than who you wish them to be (e.g. someone sporty.)

Children need to be truly seen.

We reach emotional agility through a series of tiny steps in everyday moments over the course of a lifetime.

Here's a thread about how you can start this journey today. 2/ Appoint yourself the agent of your own life and take ownership of your own development, career, creative spirit, work, and connections.

Grit is overrated.

Yes, grit is extremely important, but so is adaptability.

It’s crucial to identify when to grit and when to quit.

If you’re making choices genuinely aligned with your values, there may come a time when the only smart thing to say is “enough is enough.” 2/

It’s often difficult to let go of a longtime goal without feeling like a failure.

But when you view yourself through a lens of self-compassion, this process of reevaluation and adaptation takes on a different light.

1) Toxic positivity: When people default to bypassing difficult emotions in the service of forced positivity (fake positivity) is when 'toxic positivity' takes root. 2) Just like we can get stuck in difficult emotions, we can also get stuck in the idea of 'positive only' and this is fundamentally an avoidant coping strategy (a form of gaslighting oneself - or others.)

Are you a bottler or brooder? 💭

Everyone has a different method of coping, and some are more productive than others.

Sometimes we settle deeply into our negative feelings and struggle to get beyond them. 2/ Bottlers push emotions to the side and get on with things.

Bottling may look like:
- Suppressing emotions
- Forcing yourself to “think positively"
- Exerting an imagined control over an emotion

In the midst of this challenge, who do you choose to be?

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived a Nazi death camp wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 2/ When you start thought-blaming, there’s not enough space between stimulus and response, in Viktor Frankl’s terms, for you to exercise real choice.

Words matter.

If you’re experiencing a strong emotion, take a moment to consider what to call it.

But don’t stop there: once you’ve identified it, try to come up with two more words that describe how you are feeling.

Are you angry? Are you hurt?

What a pleasure to have breakfast with @JuliaGillard the first female Prime Minister of Australia. She's one of the world’s most influential voices for women’s rights and mental health. We spoke about the long road ahead in de-stigmatizing mental illness, but also the wins. A major challenge is that mental health is erroneously tied to competence. In so many countries when doctors, members of the police, military personnel and other professionals seek support, reporting procedures kick in and assumptions are made that the person is ‘not competent’.