 Hi, so there's this quote I came across about anger that one moment of patience can save you 100 moments of regret. So the question then becomes, how do you become that person who in the midst of turbulence and turmoil and angry emotions are calm? By the end of this video, you'll be able to walk away with practical tips that you could apply right away to improve how you manage your emotions with yourself and your emotions with others. I'm Monica and I recently graduated with a degree in neuroscience and I'm now pursuing medicine. I'm really passionate about making psychiatry accessible for everyone. So this video is a part of the Ask an Expert series where we chat about mental topics and psychological topics with experts. Today I am just so honored to have Dr. Conti back. You may remember him from our last live stream which is accessible from the Ask an Expert live stream playlist. Welcome back Dr. Conti. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be back. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for being back. And I'm so excited for our chat today. I feel like we have so much to cover and so much information. And I love that you open saying that we're going to give everyone practical examples because what we're going to do is give you really real world stuff that you can immediately take after watching this video and help your life find more peace. Exactly. With something like anger, I feel like it can be so exhausting to just hold it in with yourself or just be sometimes angry with yourself or angry with others. Like, you know, if only we could find a way to better manage that. And that's exactly what we'll be just going to be diving into today. 100%. You know, it's fascinating because we are the only ones who have unrestricted access to our minds. And when you think about this, it really is powerful because if we really truly realize that, then we'll stop giving our power away to other people. Like we let people who anger us, who do things we don't like to control our inner world. And once we realize this, we say, wait a minute, I can't do this anymore. You know, that really brings up a really important point and like the kind of first main idea that I want to bring up regarding anger about how to really recognize and control how sometimes anger really comes from within. And sometimes we often think that we're angry because someone else made us angry or something has happened that just is the reason why we're angry. But ultimately, it's our decision. It's our ability to control that what we kind of filter from the world that ultimately causes us to be angry. So I guess we can just jump right into any kind of practical tips on how to better, you know, have control of your own emotions. Yeah, the very first thing. And we hit on this last video. But if someone hadn't seen that yet, I want to jump in with this at the beginning. And that is this, I believe there's a difference between the cart, what I call the cartoon world and the real world. So our cartoon world, and I call it cartoon world because it's not real. It's the world that it's according to our shoulds. So people should think the way I want them to think. They should feel, they should believe what I want them to believe. They should do what I want them to do. And then there's the real world. So there's our cartoon world and then there's the real world. And what I've done for my career is help people learn to align their expectations with reality. In other words, so Monica, let's say I'm driving down the road and I'm gonna get, I gotta get somewhere. And when I, when I'm on the road, there's a bunch of traffic. And I say to myself in my cartoon world, this traffic shouldn't be here. This shouldn't be happening to me right now. I'm gonna be really angry. But if I align my expectations with reality, which is anytime I go out on the highway, there could be traffic. Now I'm more prepared for it. Doesn't mean I'll be happy when I see the traffic, but it means I'll be more prepared for it. And I think that's a really good place to anchor our conversation, is that we master what we practice. And if we practice being impulsive and reactive, well, we get really good at that. And if we practice being mindful and in control, well, we get really good at that too. I love the last part you just said, especially we master what we practice. I remember when I was preparing for exams, just on the topic of anxiety. I would ask myself, why am I expecting myself to be so calm when on a day to day basis, when I don't even have exams? I'm already sweating all the time, just worried about things. It makes no sense. So just bring it back to what we were talking about with your example. Like having tips to be able to just go through your every day, without having emotional outbursts is a way that it's kind of protected. So when we have those experiences that can drive your emotions up, it's not overflowing or it's not going crazy. So it's a really good point you brought up there. Well, it's almost as if, so if I'm talking to you during those moments when you're struggling, I would almost want to almost have this vision that you're putting on boxing gloves and hitting yourself and I almost want to stop you from hitting yourself. Like I shouldn't be upset right now and I shouldn't be stressed. But if you are, then you're now you're giving yourself the extra problem of I'm not only am I anxious, but now I have all these shoulds that I shouldn't be anxious. And that makes it even more complicated. So at least be easy on yourself from the beginning and recognize that as human beings, we are emotions will ebb and flow, though we'll go up, we'll go down, they'll be then that's OK. It's normal, but I think it'll be less extreme if we accept it and it'll be more extreme if we say this can't be happening. I can't take this. That's where we really intensify our own emotions. Amazing. So just already for those who just joined us, I have written down in my head to number one, practice being objective, aligning what we kind of see with what actually what we think with what is actually happening, number two, just being able to master what we practice and hopefully kind of be accepting rather than oh, just kind of rejecting whatever is coming to us and how we feel. And I wonder if this is really kind of well, I think actually this is quite general, like it would apply to anything, but any sort of tips that are more kind of situation specific, whether it's like, I don't know, being angry because you know, you messed up about something, whatever it is. There we go. Let's go. That's a perfect one. So I quite literally did this this morning. I I can I forgot to let my wife know about my schedule. So I confused my schedule for what I have going on this week. So we ultimately remitted it and we fixed it and I could switch days on things. But in that moment, when I realized that I forgot, I dropped the ball and I messed up my schedule. I had the immediate thoughts that anybody would have. Like I practice this every day, day in and day out. But in those first moments when I thought, oh, no, I messed this up. My thoughts could go really negative really quickly and I could get down on myself. What I had to do was say, stop, I'm a human being. Of course, I'm going to make mistakes. I'm not going to minimize it. I'm going to own it. But then I'm going to do the only thing I can do, which is work with what I can do. So I talked to the people about the schedule. We figured out what we could do. We made a plan and we fixed it because spending a whole bunch of time saying, oh, this is terrible and I'm awful. That would not really be productive. And then that would not help the rest of my day. Matter of fact, I'll give you a little teaching tale that I think can be really helpful for this. So I like this concept. So you, me, we've all messed up and then we get mad at ourselves when we mess up. So in the land of fools, there was this guy who had 250 cows and one of his cows accidentally fell off a cliff. And then he said to himself, well, now my herd will never be complete. It's not complete because one of them is missing. So he just started driving the rest of his cows off the cliff. And as he's driving off all 250 cows that somebody says to him, what are you doing? He said, well, my herd would never be complete. So I might as well just get rid of all of them. And the people just hit their heads and laughed at this foolish man who got rid of his 250 cows all because he messed up on one of them. And it's a teaching tale. So don't worry, no cows were harmed in the making of this metaphor. But the great thing about this lesson is if we mess up and then we start beating ourselves up, we start to let those mistakes compound. And so it comes back to saying, why am I pushing my metaphorical cows off the edge of the cliff? Yes, I lost one, but that doesn't mean I'm going to drive the rest of them off the cliff. Yeah, so I think it kind of when you were giving that story, it really reminds me of the idea of like just taking responsibility because at that time, like when that person is like, you know, throwing out their cows or whatever, driving them off the cliff to them, they're like, oh, like I don't even know what. What do you think is going on their minds? Like hypothetically, when someone's just doing something that they know is actually causing something to be worsening the overall outcome? Like what is actually going on? So I specialize in working with people convicted of violent crimes. My this has been my my the specialty of my profession for what I've done for two decades. And what I see is that when people live in shame, they act out of shame. So if I feel like I'm no good, I'm worthless, I'm nothing, then why not hurt myself or others? And there is a difference between guilt and shame. So guilt is feeling bad about something we've done to hurt someone. That's normal. That's healthy. Like if we do something, we feel guilt, we can learn from it. That's OK. Guilt is feeling bad about something we've done. Shame, however, is feeling bad about who we are. And my research for more than two decades has shown me that when people live in shame, they act out of shame. So that's what happens in people's minds when they can they start to get this sense of shame. Well, I'm no good. And so and so they start to develop this narrative that is really hurtful to their own inner peace, first and foremost. But then that starts to go out toward the world. And now I say, well, I already messed up this relationship. So now I'm just going to be angry at the next person. And I'm going to be spiteful to the next person. And so until you stop and reset, it can keep compiling no differently than the person who's pushing the cows off the edge of the cliff. So the idea of responsibility, how does one then kind of switch? Take that responsibility to then say, OK, what I'm doing is wrong. Like maybe it's not the most productive. Let's just say not the most productive. And how can I become and channel that into someone I want to be and someone who's like, you know, just being more and doing more healthy decisions, actually, so I that's such a great question. I think to me, like that exemplifies your insight and consciousness to be able to say, OK, so what do I do? So I think that when we can start to say now, what now, what do we do? The past is gone and there's nothing we can do, no matter how much insight we ever get to get one single second back. The future's hypothetical hasn't been created yet. The only moment that exists is this moment. And so the question is, what do we do from this moment forward? You know, I did over 100 episodes of a podcast called Tackling Life with NFL legend Ray Lewis, first Ballad Hall of Fame football player. And we interviewed an astronaut once. Did I tell you about Reed Wiseman the last time we talked? I mean, I might not have mentioned it, but I don't think so. I don't think I did. So Reed Wiseman was one of my favorite interviews I ever got to do. And he's an astronaut who walked in space. And when you think about the magnitude of that, fewer than 200 people in the history of humanity have walked in space. And yet this astronaut walked in space. I got to speak to him. It was awesome. So one of the things that he said, I don't remember if it was on our show or off air, but when it was this, it was when you're in space and something goes wrong, you don't have time to think, oh, I can't believe Sally didn't fix that. You know, I can't believe Bill, let this happen. The only thing you can do when you're hurling through space in the spaceship is work the problem. What can I do from this moment forward? So to me, there is a brilliance to your question. What do we do now? The past is gone. The future hasn't been created. So what can we do in this moment? And what I say, and this is the most concrete thing that I can give you is be accurate with your language. Be accurate. It wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't the worst thing in the world. You made a mistake. So what do I do now? Well, I can be accurate with my language. I can I can stop myself from perpetuating this extreme language. I'm terrible. This was awful. The person who cut me off in traffic. They're a horrible person. No, the car drove a little closer to my car than I wanted it to. You know, the person at work said something that I would have preferred. She not say, I guess really when I'm accurate, it really curtails the amount of anger that I'm about to have. Can I just say this advice was shared from the last episode of the podcast. And it is life changing. Since you said that, I have applied it to my own life, not only for just like anger, but just on my day to day basis. And it has just elevated my happiness and the way that I see things. So thank you. I'm just going to type it in the chat for anyone here who has missed it because it's truly life changing. So thank you so much. Thank you. No. And I feel I feel grateful that you share it like that and phrase it like that because what I do at this point in my career, January, I've been doing this work for 25 years. And what I do is at this point in my career, when I do presentations and I I do a lot of trainings on yield theory that I created. So we'll do three day, five day trainings. And what I do is I say, look, these are exciting because I take 25 years of sitting down with people, more than 20,000 hours of clinical experience, being blessed, humbled to sit one on one with people where they share their most intimate secrets with me. And I take the information that was truly life changing, those moments that made a change and helped them shift. And I get to give all of those in like a condensed way. And that's why I get excited about what I share, why I'm excited when you and I speak, why I love how hungry you are for information. Because when we can make this information applicable to everyone out there who's watching, it really is a game changer. Life changing stuff doesn't mean it has to be some you have to have these lights come on and the music. It goes, wait a minute, this technique, if I apply it day in, day out, will radically shift the way I experience life. That's what it is. And I think this is perfect because it really draws back to the idea that we mentioned earlier. When I am accurate with my language, I'm better able to disentangle my expectations with my reality. When I thought that I was going to get just last week when I sat my med school exams, 25 percent on my exams. Like I was very sure I was like, I'm going to fail this exam. I'm going to get a 25 and then took a step back. I was like, wait, no, I studied more than half of this material. My friends have quizzed me on this and I've been able to answer more than 50 percent of it. I don't think I'll necessarily fail, but maybe I won't do as well as I wanted to. And even that, like recognizing that helped me realize what I told myself versus like what the reality really was. And that in turn helped me reduce my anxiety, which, you know, is amazing. So I think being able to apply this for like all the different scenarios, whether it's anger, anxiety, I don't know, like, sadness is a really great tool. And with that, I just wanted to pick up the second point that you mentioned about your theory because we've mentioned so many applicable tools, one that I think someone has just mentioned right now, Dasha, how to communicate without getting angry so fast, like these kind of things. But what is the theory behind it? And I know you created your theory and, you know, I would love to learn more about the theory. Sorry, that was so long. So I'm grateful. So here's where I'll take you back to the beginning in 1998. I was in my room and I was in a meditation and I had this vision. And here was the vision. And here's how it kind of came unfolded to me. And I've spent the rest of that time refining it. And now it is an evidence-based approach. It's a theory on counseling. And it's I wrote about it and walking through anger. But let me show you the initial metaphor. So I was thinking like, let's say a car is going down the highway the wrong way and you want to stop that car. Well, you could drive headfirst into that car, head on, and you could stop that car. But one or both of you is going to get pretty hurt. But what if what if instead of smashing into this car, going the wrong way, instead, you say, you know what, I'm going to merge with it like at a yield sign. I'm going to yield with this car and I'm going to go, I'm going to go with. I'm going to go with trying to get my hands on this guy. So I'm going to go with it. Now, as I'm driving with this car, my car next to this car, this is a hypothetical thought experiment. So let's suspend reality. The car says, OK, we're driving in the same direction. Let's save some gas. So I jump in their car and now I'm seeing out of their windshield. I'm actually seeing the windshield that they're seeing out of. And over time, when they trust me, let's say it's a long enough journey. They get tired. They say, I want you to drive. And now I get to be in their exact chair. And then I can help steer them down a different path. And that was the original metaphor for yield theory. Meet people where they are. Do your best to see from their perspective. And this is more than just walking a metaphorical mile on someone's shoes. This is me imagining that I had a person's cognitive functioning. So I had their intellect, their affective range, their ability to experience emotions and their life experiences. And what I say, and this is a this is powerful metaphor. This is this is big. What I say is I believe that if I would have lived every day as another person, I would have made every single decision they made. And the reason why that's a very big assumption is this. I work with people. I specialize in violence. I work with people convicted of violent crimes. I work with serial murderers. I work with people who are serial rapists. So how can I say if I was them, I would have done everything they did. Well, first of all, it's not a philosophical logical argument, right? It's an a priori argument that doesn't make logical sense. But here's what it does for me. When I'm able to say, because we often say, well, I had a hard life and I didn't do that or I had a tough situation and I didn't do that. Then you had your brain doing that. You had your intellect doing that. So imagine you're that other person. Now, here's what this does. It wipes away judgment for me. So then when I meet people where they are, and let's say someone's really angry, I can listen to that person and I can truly listen without judgment. And I can say, look, the past is gone. I can't change a single second of the past. But if I listen to you and I validate what you're experiencing, now we get you out of that anger and I can help move toward helping you make better decisions. So that's the substance. And ultimately, yield theory comes down to doing three things. Because I told you last time, Monica, I try to make things really simple for people. So I think we're always skeptical of other people like we're skeptical, especially if someone disagrees with us, boy, we could be skeptical all day. But I always say, I want to be skeptical of my own ego. I want to be skeptical of my own thoughts. I want to challenge my own thoughts. So I sat back and I said to myself, well, what do I really do? Like I stand at a cell door in maximum security prisons and I talk to people. I sit in a comfortable Zen setting in my office and I talk to people. What do I do? And I do three things. And this is what I would tell people to do. I listen, I validate, and I explore options. So you're with that family member who's so angry and maybe they're being really self-centered. I've seen a couple of comments say, how do I deal with a narcissistic family? And I see that word come up a lot in the chat. And so think about this. They're really self-centered. You might, your initial thought is, I'm going to go tell them what they need to do differently, but they're not going to hear that. So that's like smashing the car head on. You can tell them they're wrong, but they're not going to listen to you. But if you put yourself behind their eyes and you truly listen to them and then you validate that experience, like my goodness, that sounds like that was really awful for you. That sound like that was really difficult for you. And once they, and here's the key. Not just validating, but validate until they feel validated. Because you know as well as I do, we all want to be heard. And if somebody keeps saying things over and over again, that person probably doesn't feel heard. So we can have them really feel heard. Now that we're validating them, now they feel better neurologically. And you know this from neuroscience. When you're angry, you're in your limbic system. You're in your amygdala, you're getting really fired up. That's that fight or flight response. Once you feel validated and that emotional release, now you move to more of the frontal cortex, your higher level decision making. And now we can explore options. Now we can say, okay, now where do we go from here? What's the best decision to make from this moment forward? So it's powerful. I know there's a lot to take in but it's powerful. So I'm just going to summarize and just to make sure that I completely understood at the core of yield theory is to really take someone's perspectives and to see what they, try to see what they see and to meet them where they are. And to really break it down. It's to really listen, to actually think about the meaning of the words they're saying. Not just kind of listening like whatever. Like actually, what are they trying to tell me? To validate, to make them actually feel like they are heard. Not just saying, yes, I'm so sorry. Like, no, like actually listening, validating and then coming up with solutions that you guys can both agree, like kind of meeting in the middle. That's kind of why John from it. Phenomenal, that's phenomenal. It's incredible because it's funny because like in this comments, you have tons of people and they're all talking about different things but I happen to see on one they go, well, if Monica is shaking her head, she's not listening. And here you go, you just accurately summarized everything I just said. And so sometimes we look at other people and we have a projection that what we're seeing is the truth. When we, if we truly take time to listen, we go, wait a minute, maybe the world's not unfolding the way I think. And that's challenging our own egos. Honestly, that's one of the toughest things that any of us has to do because our ego is our sense of self and our ego wants to say, I'm right and everyone else is wrong. That's not reality. Reality is we all can challenge our own egos. And so I have a few follow-up questions actually, one that has just been coming up from the chat. What do you do in terms of exploring options when the other person is unwilling to explore those options? Because ultimately it takes two to tango, doesn't it? It does, it does. So my co-career has been, I've spent a lot of time with people who have been mandated to see me. Like think about this. In the state of California, I had a center for people convicted of violent crimes. Now, once they get out of prison for committing a violent crime, they were sentenced to 52 weeks of anger management. This is outpatient, this is outside of prison. And they had to come to this anger management and they had to pay for it out of pocket. So you can imagine how angry people were to see me. Now, I could sit and be like, oh, they're just angry, they're resistant or I can put myself behind their eyes and go, wow, if I just spent time in prison or jail and I got sentenced to do this too, I would be angry as well. And so I would really listen and I would validate that. And I wouldn't force people to talk. I would say, listen, if you need more time, you need more time. Like who am I to say when you're ready to speak? And because I wasn't doing it as a technique, I wasn't doing it to say, okay, now you should hurry up and speak. I was being genuine. Like if you need time to be angry, be angry. And because of that, when you truly let go, then people will be much more likely to actually speak. So if you find someone who's not ready to talk and you say, well, I did listen and I did validate them, so they should talk now, you're probably jumping to that cartoon world. I validated them enough. Now you're talking about you, you're talking about your own ego and what you did. And that's why I always say, Monica, this is a big one for that person who asked that question. When you validate, don't just validate till you check a box and go, see, I did it. Validate until that person actually feels validated. And again, you know this from neuroscience. When people are angry, they're in that limbic system. And when you can watch, if people are speaking to you and there's brain scan, it's there under brain scan. That anger, once you validate them, it dissipates. Now you actually see blood flow in different parts of the brain, specifically going to that frontal cortex. So this is, I always tell people, what I'm saying, is it rocket science? This stuff is, I'm not saying this is rocket science. It's pretty simple, right? Listen, validate, explore options. But it is neuroscience. This is definitely neuroscience. Yes, I would just like to say. So when in class, people are saying, what's the best way to kind of dissipate these like emotions sometimes during like, you know, anger and things like that. Honestly, it's the sleep, the sleep. In other words, to just take a step back until you feel ready to address it, when other people feel ready to address it, because the reality is that just like you said, not everyone is ready to like, let go of whatever they're being angry at. And it's okay to have space because only through space, only through feeling ready, are you able to effectively explore options? Whether that is like, you know, giving space through sleeping, giving space through taking walks, giving space through, I don't know, meditating. Any of these things are perfectly valid to just take a step back. Well, that's, you're right. You hit the nail on the head. So think about this. How many times have we all been hungry? You know, we're hungry. So we get agitated and irritable. We start to argument and after we eat, we go, what are we mad about? We don't even remember, right? Or you stay up arguing in a fight and it's because you start arguing because honestly, one or both of you is overly tired. So the profound realization is this, when you're hungry, when you're tired, when you're thirsty, when your body's temperature's off or you're overheated, you're in a part of your brain called the hypothalamus. And that is smack dab in the middle of your limbic system. So it makes a lot of sense that when you're hungry, you feel a little bit more agitated and irritable. When you're overly tired and you haven't slept. So we have this new puppy. She's a six month old Karnay Corsa. She's awesome. She's so fun. She's beautiful. I wish, and she was down here. I'd pull her up so you guys can see. Maybe next time I'll have her. Yes. She's so, she's so adorable. But she does something. My wife will say she's fussing it out when she's real tired. So like, and she looks like, if somebody was watching, I go, oh, she's scary. She's not scary at all. She's fussing it out. And how many of us do the same thing? We're angry, we're agitated, we're irritable. So if we could be mindful, maybe now's not the right time to get your point into the other person. But the challenge many of us face is that we're impatient. And so when we wanna tell somebody something, we start talking at them rather than with them. And I don't know if I told you about the fool on the mountain last time, but I wanna share that. I think this would be a perfect time for people to hear that story. Let's hear it. There was a person, he was supposed to lead a group of people up the mountain. So he ran to the top of the mountain and he got to the top and nobody was with him. They were all at the bottom of the mountain. So he started screaming at them. He's like, you should be up here with me. I started down there, I had it tough. I made it up here. And he's yelling and yelling at them where they should be, but they couldn't even see him, let alone hear him. So he becomes known as the fool on the mountain. And before we judge this fool on the mountain, how many times have you and I, and all of the people who are watching us right now, how many times have all of us at times talked at people? Like, you should understand what I'm saying. You shouldn't be thinking what you're thinking right now. In those moments, we were no different than that fool on the mountain. And so that's why Yield Theory is about having the self-discipline to leave where we are and go truly meet others where they are psychologically, what they're ready, willing and able to hear. And the reality is many times, it's gonna take more patience than what we want to give. But here's another key. And this is one of those moments that I feel excited for people to hear this because if I could reach in your heart and have you really feel this, this would be a game changer. And that is when you truly let go and you interact with people and you give them the compassion to say, I'm gonna meet you where you are and you give you the true space. The truth is when you truly let go, it'll happen so much faster than what you think. When you actually take the time, you will validate, it'll get you there so much faster. And patience is really the key of everything, I think. And that's why like during the times when I journal, I always tell myself, how can I be at a place where I feel like whatever could happen to me, I have patience. I have patience for whatever is going to happen, to eventually happen. To take steps to make sure that whatever I want to happen is going to happen, sorry. And I think if I could just share some of the things that I found to be helpful, like mindfulness was truly a key to that. I mean, every single morning I will wake up and I will listen, even two minutes of just mindfulness, guided meditation. It has been so helpful to help me be more patient with myself and to be more patient with others. And I think that draws in so closely with being able to then practice yield theory and to reap the benefits from it. It's that, that is exactly it. So we have a question here from Will Jay. He asks, do you have any techniques to become more patient in yourself to become less impulsive? And Will, I love this question and hits on what Monica is talking about right there. You heard her use of the word practice. We're practicing this. So here's one of the most pragmatic techniques you can possibly do. Here's how you begin to develop patience. Remember that we master what we practice. So if you practice daily, every time something doesn't go the way you think it should, you lash out, you get really good at that. But so what do we wanna do? If we wanna develop patience, let's do the opposite. So let's say I'm thirsty. Right now I have big jar of water when I'm thirsty. The moment I'm thirsty, instead of grabbing it and downing it, I grab my water and I use the exact phrase that you use, Monica, which is mindfulness. And I say, okay, I am thirsty. It's not the end of the world. Let me take a moment, take a breath. Now after taking one breath, now I can drink. The next time I go to take a drink of water, I might take two breaths. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna consciously say when I want to do, when I have the impulse to do something, I don't have to satiate it. I don't have to satisfy it immediately. I can take a breath. I can take two breaths, three to four. And then I can do this. I can practice this in other areas. That's just the first one that came to my mind. You have water right here. Whatever you want to do, Will, think about whatever you have that you're about to do, take one breath. Now, I'm mindful, because I've done this long enough that somebody out there watching goes, well, I practiced that. I tried that once, it didn't work. Well, just the way you can't do one push-up and think now you're strong and you can't do 10 push-ups, you have to do them consistently over time. And if you do enough push-ups and you do them consistently over time, you will get stronger. That's a fact, that's a physiological fact. And if you quit doing push-ups for a long period of time, you'll lose that strength. So it's something you have to practice. The same is true with mindfulness. If you practiced it once a long time ago or you heard about mindfulness or you get excited when you hear other people talk about how they practice it, that's not you practicing it. You have to actually practice it day in, day out. And I promise you, the more you practice it, the better you'll get at it. And one more last thought on this, Will. If you intentionally throughout your day, say, I want to get better at patience today. Well, here's a blessing. The world is gonna give you tons of opportunities. University can say, here you go, I'm gonna give you a bunch of opportunities today, Will. The people who are around, they're gonna make you up, all kinds of opportunities. So now what are you gonna do? Intentionally, you're gonna say, I'm going to practice patience. Just as sure as I would practice weightlifting by having those weights, I'm gonna have all these troublesome moments and I'm gonna practice patience. I love how you brought that up because when you were saying that, I just thought like people go to exercise to feel healthier, like physically, this is just the same, practicing mindfulness. It's like going for an exercise, but for your brain, I love it. It's like a little, like it's not like you go exercise and the next day you'll be like having the figure that you always wanted to have, it takes time. And just like that, like at first I would like to say, like I was kind of, I don't know, not really sure about whether mindfulness would work or not because I've just heard it's been so commercialized, things like that. But when I actually was open to it, like addressing that initial doubt and being like, okay, I'm willing to challenge my preconceptions and then practice it, not just for a day, but for a month and then tell myself, after a month, if I don't like it, that's fine. But like actually having that concrete date, I was actually able to really kind of take in all what mindfulness has to offer. And so I'd like to kind of give that advice if I may for everything that was mentioned today, you might have tried it before, but have you actually like really, really believed in it or at least was open to it because if you do something, but then your mind is like, oh, I actually don't really believe in it. You're like fighting yourself and that's not gonna work. You know, like that has been one of my learning points in the past few months. So I thought I'd just share that. Yeah, I coined a term called the foot in the water principle. And so I got this from my center when I was in California, I'm not there anymore, but when I was in California, my center was in South Lake Tahoe, California. And so Tahoe is a mountain lake. It's a cold lake. So if somebody wants to say that they swim in Tahoe, they can't just tap their toe in the water. They're like, oh, I swim in Tahoe. No, if you wanna say you swim, you gotta dive all the way in. And in the same way, if you practice any of the techniques that we've talked about today and you do them one time and you go, see, it didn't work, well, then you were looking for it to not work. And of course you're gonna find that. If you wanna see something not work, of course you'll not, it won't work. So it's about doing it like you said, dedicate yourself for a month to something, practice it constantly. But if you're practicing it, trying to say it doesn't work, I have a really good example for this. So in martial arts, I did martial arts my whole life. And in martial arts, let's say someone comes to a gym and they're trying to learn what to do if someone pushes you. If you're trying to learn what to do and you go up to the teacher and the teacher says, go ahead and push me. And you walk up and you just, you lean all your way backwards and you just try to push like you're just trying to run backwards. The teacher's gonna say, that's not how people push. You don't run around going, let me jump backwards. You push and you go through it. But if you wanna walk into that martial arts studio and say, these martial art techniques don't work, see, I go like this and it doesn't, then you're not actually doing it. So if you're gonna do mindfulness and not actually do it, then of course you can confirm what your ego wants you to believe, which is that you're right and whatever you believe right now is absolute truth and you have nowhere, nothing else to learn in your life. Your ego's gonna try to convince you of that. But to challenge it, it's gonna take effort and practice. But I promise you, it's worth it, it's worth it. Like I'm easy to find in an internet age, I don't give people stuff that doesn't work and I promise you, this stuff works. It does take effort, we master what we practice. Absolutely, I know we've covered a lot today. So just to wrap up, I wanna give some of my own thoughts and just like summary of some of the tips that you could literally practice right after this video. I think one of my favorite ones is just being accurate with your language, making sure that what you perceive as your expectations actually aligns with what reality is because that is a great way to reduce anger, distress, any sort of negative emotions. I've tried it myself and it works. And I'd love to hear from the community if you've tried it as well and just get in touch and let me know what works, what doesn't and we will always be able to have a chat in the future episodes with any further questions, further follow-up questions. Another major point that I want to bring up again was just the idea about meeting people from where they are, the idea of yield theory, being able to listen, being able to actually validate and being able to explore options when you feel ready and when others as well feels ready. So I think those are the main takeaway points but there's just so many wonderful valuable information that you've shared. Thank you so much, Dr. Conti, for everything, really. I appreciate you having me back on. Like I'm excited about what you guys do. You personally do such a great job. Psych2Go does such a great job. You're spreading conscious information and awareness so I'm grateful to be a part of it and my door will be open to come back on in the future because I feel like there is so much more to talk about. There's so many different things. For instance, one person asked if journaling is helpful and of course it can be helpful. Absolutely, a lot of times it can be helpful just because once you write your ideas down you crystallize them. So if I write it down, I go, wait, sometimes our anxiety gets so big in our minds and our anger gets so big that we're allowing it to just get bigger and bigger but then when we write it down we go, I'm angry because so-and-so expressed an opinion that was different than mine. Oh, wait, that's really not as big as I thought. And so once we crystallize it, yeah, that can help a lot. Journaling can be super helpful for people. So that's something that you like to rely on. That's wonderful. Again, there's so many questions here and I'm grateful to be a part of this process and coming back on the show for sure. I know that so many people have just loved things that you've been sharing and I really wanna direct them to your book. Would you like to share a bit about your book? Here we go, everyone. Walking through anger. So walking through anger and it's really like if you like how I tell stories, can't figure out the camera, but if you like how I tell stories, I've probably over a hundred little teaching tales in this book where I love to teach through Zen tales. I was a professor and I loved when I taught, every year I taught mostly masters and doctoral students, but once a year I would teach undergraduate students and we would have up to 200 students in an auditorium and I always knew I wanted to keep their attention so I would tell stories a bunch. And so when I tell this book, even if you don't struggle with anger, it's really about how do you handle your own intense emotions, whether it's anxiety, depression, and then how do you handle other people when they're in a difficult situation? And I also had that on audio book too, so I read that book for Audible, so it's on there. So that's one way they can get ahold of me and then the other one is I have a YouTube channel as well. And so yeah, I'd love for people to check that out. Amazing, so everything is linked down in the description box below. Until then, please let us know what you would like to hear next in the comment section or you can get in touch through email at monicaatsliketogo.net. Thank you so much and have a fantastic day. Thank you again. Bye.