In this solo episode, I dive into the connection between emotions and creativity, productivity, and effective communication. Building on my recent conversation with Kindness Speaker MJ Shaar, I explore how our feelings shape our experiences and influence our thoughts and actions.
Have you ever noticed how your emotional state affects your interactions? In this episode, I discuss the concept of "emotion drives content," revealing how our feelings can either enhance or hinder our relationships, both personally and professionally.
I’ll be playing the improv game "Emotional List," demonstrating how choosing a specific emotion can dramatically change the direction of a conversation or scene. Through personal anecdotes—including a heartwarming story about my son and a challenging encounter with a demanding boss—I highlight the importance of kindness and self-compassion.
Join me as I encourage you to embrace the transformative power of emotions and share practical insights on being more aware of your feelings and the impact they have on others. Discover how choosing kindness as your guiding emotion can lead to better communication, stronger relationships, and ultimately a more fulfilling life.
Don’t miss this engaging episode—tune in now and learn how to let your emotions drive your content!
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Get access to the "Say, 'Yes, And!' to Yourself Webinar," which gives a deep dive into how you can access and direct your creativity:
Un-Edited Transcript
Welcome to Yes And, the podcast where we explore the powerful idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but, and how you can use it in your career, your business, and your life. I'm your host, Avish Parshur, and this is Yes, Am. Feelings. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Feelings. Hey. This is Avish Parasher, and, yes, you are listening to a solo episode of yes and with Avish Parasher.
And today, we are going to talk about feelings. I know. I know. I talk to a lot of businesses and professionals, and feelings and emotions are generally soft and squishy things that we feel should be left, outside of the office. We should leave it at home. We don't care about how you feel. You just gotta come in and do your work.
I have to say, though, in my experience, emotions not only matter. Emotions are really everything, and that's what we're gonna talk about on this episode. Now this episode is a follow-up slash add on to my interview last week with the amazing MJ Shar, who is a kindness speaker. And in that episode, yeah, we talked about kindness and the power of kindness. And if you have not yet listened to that episode, please go ahead and do so. I think, especially if you have this mindset of, like, kindness has no place, you gotta be cutthroat, or emotions have no place in the workforce, go listen to that episode because we not only talk about how kindness is nice and makes the world a better place, MJ cites a bunch of studies and a bunch of research about how powerful kindness can be as a productivity tool and as a business results tool.
So go listen to that episode. And the idea of kindness to me really dovetails nicely into yes and and improv and the stuff I talk about all the time in my keynotes and trainings, because I, talk about this phrase that emotion drives content. What I mean by that is that we think that the things that happen to us, affect how we feel, which is true, but we often don't think about the reverse, which is that how we feel drives our thoughts, and those thoughts then drive our words and our actions. So emotion drives content. This is true whether you're talking in personal relationships. This is true whether you're talking about being a leader or even as an organization and culture. And I really first learned this in improv comedy.
See, what's funny is in improv comedy, sometimes, I know, I have to admit it, sometimes the improv just isn't working for whatever reason. It's like you're doing a scene with a partner, and, the audience is a little disinterested.
They're not laughing. And frankly, the scene or story you're working on is boring. Now when that happens, it's very easy and common for the improviser for them to start thinking and their mind to start racing. And they ask themselves, what can I do to bring this back?
What can I say that's funny? How can I be creative? How can I do something interesting to get the audience back on my side? Now that rarely works, because and we'll talk about it in a future episode about creativity, but once you start getting that conscious mind downward spiral, it's really hard to think of interesting, clever, or funny things. And it just sort of gets worse and worse until the scene mercifully ends. But somewhere along the way, I learned this idea that emotion drives content. And what I figured out then is that if a scene isn't working and if you wanna make it interesting and creative and potentially funny, you don't need to come up with something interesting, creative, or potentially funny to say. No. All you need to do is have an emotional reaction to anything your partner says.
Now when I say anything, I mean anything. Your partner can say something that is completely non charged that a person would not normally have an emotional reaction to. Like, let's say you're doing a really boring scene that's not going anywhere, and your partner's like, oh, I'm gonna get some coffee. Now in that moment, a normal reaction would be like, oh, okay, or can you get me a cup? But what I learned is that if you just pick an emotion and have a big response to that, that will suddenly drive content, and you can pick any emotion. In fact, if you pick an emotion that's not appropriate to someone saying they're gonna get coffee, that suddenly adds interest. So I could be, like, scared.
Speaker 2What? Coffee? Oh my god. I can't believe you're gonna get a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1Or I could be excited. Coffee? Yes. You are going to get coffee. Finally. Thank you. Right? And you can pick any emotion.
Now what that does is two things. Number 1, when you have a big emotional response, especially one that's inappropriate, it suddenly creates a bit of curiosity in the audience. Why did he have that or she have that emotional response? Which means suddenly they're now interested. Like, oh, why was he scared that their partner was gonna get coffee?
Or why was he so excited? Number 2, what this then will do is it would drive your creativity. Right? Because you had a really big emotional response, that emotion is gonna direct your creativity. Now you need to justify why did I have that happy response or scared response or or whatever response you pick. If you've watched my creativity stuff, this will be basically the emotion becomes the pebble in your pond. Now if you have no idea what I'm talking about there, I'm going to, drop in a link, where you can download a free, webinar or section of a webinar I did that goes deep into what how to access your creativity and what I mean by the pebble in your pond.
So go download that if you're unfamiliar with that concept that I've talked about before. Hey there. It's Avish. If you're ready to say yes and to yourself, I've got a free webinar just for you. Learn how to apply the principles of improv to your own life. You'll learn how to access your creativity, set bigger goals, and confidently take action that move you forward towards them. Sign up and watch the recording for free at avishparsher.comforward/yesandwebinar.
Now enjoy the rest of the episode. So the point is, when you have an emotional response, it drives your creativity. Suddenly new ideas pop out. If I feel the emotion, I can't just say, oh, I'm scared. Let me think of scared things. But rather, I repeat the phrase a couple of times, get me in that emotional state, and then an idea will pop in my head. For example, scared.
Speaker 2Coffee. You're getting coffee?
Oh my god. Why why
Speaker 1are you getting coffee? I didn't know you had coffee. Don't you know that the alien monsters, they are attracted to coffee. You've been hiding coffee or they're gonna find us now. Okay. So that's random. Right? And you can say whether that's good offer or bad offer, it's a new creative offer that's gonna drive the scene in a new direction. Or happy. Right? Coffee. Oh my god.
You're getting coffee. I can't believe you are getting a cup of coffee. You've known for so long that I was always the one getting coffee. And because you are opting to get the coffee yourself today, that shows you finally listened to me.
Oh my god. Yes. Now now we can actually get married, and we can tell my parents. Come on. Let's call my parents and tell them right now. Okay. Again, I didn't know that's where that was gonna go, but the happy response led to these thoughts.
The ripple in my pond, the idea that it gave me was about, oh, why would I be happy? What's because I've never done it? And what is the next idea that leads to, oh, it leads to us getting married, and now we can call my parents. And now all of a sudden, the scene has somewhere to go. What's gonna happen when you introduce the parents to the fact that we're getting married? So these are little improv comedy tricks you can use. But the point is that the emotion drives content.
When I figured that out, with improv, I realized that I don't need to be clever. I just have an emotional response because emotion drives content. And to drive this point home a little bit deeper, what I just showed you were a couple quick demos. I'm gonna drop in a recording of an improv game called emotional lists, where I will tell the story, and I have a list of emotions. And periodically, we're gonna I'm gonna pick a different emotion, and the scene is gonna have to take on that emotion. And you'll see by listening to me play that improv game, you'll get a sense of how every time the emotion changes, it drives a scene in a new direction because the emotion is the thing driving the content, not, being clever or funny. John was an incredibly successful wine collector.
He had a great collection, but the one wine he really sought was the Montepulciano de Jesus. Yes. The wine of Jesus. Pride. And he said, well, if I am the greatest wine collector, which I know I am, I need to have the greatest wine in the world. So I will go out and find it. So he went all the way to Italy from his home in Philadelphia, and when he got there, he saw something strange, fear.
He saw people looking at him. Everyone was staring at him. They recognized him as that wine collector, and this town had been tasked with protecting it. He got very scared. He said, oh my god. These people are gonna kill me if they find out. Love. But then he looked over, and he saw, this one woman staring at him not with hatred like he wanted to kill him, but with affection.
So he went over to him and said, excuse me, ma'am. Can you help me? And she looked at him and said, oh, sir. I have been following you, and I have fallen in love with you from afar. Yes. I want to help you find the multipleciano de Jesus. Loneliness. John looked at her and said, oh, my goodness.
I have been alone with wine for so long, and to have you in my life, I don't think I don't think I deserve you. I don't think I deserve this help. Doubt. And she looked at him and said, oh, well, I thought you were such a great wine collector. Maybe I was wrong. I don't want this insecure weirdo. What and she started walking away, despair.
John fell to his knees and says, no. If you don't help me, not only will I never find this wine, then these people will kill me. Excitement. She said, yes. And that is the key to finding the Montepulciano de Jesus. I we must kill you.
He said, what? She said, yes. When we kill you, you will die. And then when you come back, just like Jesus did, you will have wine with you. He was like, yes.
I'll do whatever it takes to get that wine. Disgust. Then he thought about it, though. He said, oh, but I don't want you to stab me. How are you gonna kill me? Like, that's gross. I don't want to be she said, oh, you're such a wuss.
And she just immediately took out poison, threw it in his face, and he said, but then he swallowed the poison and started to die. Annoyance. He said, oh, god. I can't believe you not only killed me, but you got my my $1,000 shirt all disgusted with poison.
You are so annoying. I can't believe you did that. And then he keeled over and just died. Well, she dragged his body to the tomb, content, and put him in the cave, and she just sat there. And she said, oh, at least now I get 3 days of peace without a man talking to me. I can't believe I told this guy I loved him. Let me just enjoy my peace.
Well, 3 days passed, and then, powerlessness. John woke up in the cave, and he looked around, and there's a big boulder in his way. And he's like, well now I'm never gonna get out of here. But then he looked and he saw there was a bottle of wine but he didn't even have a court screw. He's like, how am I gonna open this? Well he started pounding on the door and the woman moved the boulder. Shame. And she looked at him and said, oh god.
You didn't get the malte bucciano to Jesus. You got the malte bucciano to Jerry. Ugh. You suck. And she rolled the boulder back in there, left him to die with his cheap wine, and no one lives happily ever after. So that's an example of emotional lisp. So hopefully, you could see how every time the emotion changed, it gave new ideas.
The scene completely shifted direction, and it changed. So this is an improv comedy technique that I think is incredibly valuable that frankly, I don't think enough people talk about or deal with in the improv comedy world. Now how that applies to the real world and this idea of kindness is that the same thing is true offstage. We discount feelings, but how we feel determines the thoughts we have, which then determines what we say and what we do. And that can have drastic consequences depending on which emotion you choose. Now I use the word choose there deliberately because we can choose our emotional response. The challenge is most people don't.
They don't ever think about how they're feeling before they engage in a conversation, and suddenly, the result of the conversation is being driven by feelings they never thought through. And you know this because if you ever been in an argument you know, sometimes you are getting angry in an argument, and what'll happen? You will blurt out something that you don't really mean, but it's just a little bit hurtful or exaggerated to attack the other person because you're feeling mean. The point is that when you're feeling angry and mean, you say angry and mean things. On the other hand, if you're feeling good and happy, everything seems good and happy. Like for example, have you, think back to when you were in a dating relationship, a romantic relationship. And in the first few months, everything the other person does is so sweet.
You love it. No matter what they do, they're little foibles. Right? It could be like, oh, yeah.
He snores, and I just love it. It's so comforting, because then when I wake up in the middle of the night, I I roll over and I hear him snoring, and I just know he's there, and it just is so comforting. It lulls me back to sleep. Right? Or, oh, yeah. You know, she never cleans up after herself. She leaves her coffee mugs and things all over the place.
But I love it, because then when I come out to the kitchen the next day and she's at work and I'm working from home, I see her coffee mug on the table, and it just reminds me of her, and it's like a little boost in my day. I actually like to do those little things, cleaning up after her. It's just a little way for me to show her that I love her. But then what happens? Months go by, maybe the initial sheen of the relationship is worn off, and now those little things that you used to love are suddenly very annoying. Like, you wake up in the middle of the night, oh my god.
He's snoring again. Jeez. Will he just shut up? I wish he would stop snoring. And you take the pillow and whack him in the belly to get him to stop. Right? Or you come out, and you see that coffee mug again on the table, and this time, the response is very different.
You're like, oh, god. She left her coffee mug out again. Why is it so hard for her to get the coffee mug and put it into the sink? It's not that difficult. Right? Now it's the exact same stimulus, snoring or leaving the dishes out. But because your feeling about the relationship is different, it creates a completely different emotional response, and that happens to us.
How we're feeling drives what we think and feel, and it can have huge consequences, both good or bad. Let me give you a professional example of this. A number of years ago, I was working, in IT as a support person. Yeah. I'm Indian. Go figure. I worked in IT support, but I was working not in a call center.
I was working for a hospital for one department. And this is a group of doctors who were very successful, obviously very educated, and they were also researchers. They not only were treating, patients, but they were doing a lot of research, and this is all around pediatric cancer. So if you want to see high pressure situations and people who are under high emotion, just look at doctors who are under a deadline doing important research to try to eradicate pediatric cancer. And so I was the IT support person. And one day, I'm sitting at my desk, and this doctor comes in, and he's like, Avish, I think my computer crashed.
Now I'm immediately like, oh my god. You never want to hear this. But, you know, I I I paused for a second. I'm like, maybe it's not terrible, because sometimes people overreact and don't understand. And literally just 2 weeks before, this woman had come in and been like, oh my god, my computer's frozen. And when I went over to her computer, it was frozen because her mouse had gotten slightly unplugged plugged. So I'm like, alright.
Maybe it's not completely dead. I say, okay, doc. Let me come look at the computer. So I go into his office, and I check the computer. I fiddle around a few things, but nothing's working. And yes, in fact, the computer had completely died. So then I, say to the doctor as politely as I can, so have you backed up this hard drive?
Now that's what I said. In my head, what I wanted to say was, have you backed up this hard drive like I have recommended and reminded people to do multiple times over the last 2 months? He looks at me and says, no. So I'm thinking to myself, oof, alright. Let me see what I can do. Maybe I can try to recover, or there's some services that can get data off a crashed hard drive. So let me do that, and I'll get back to you. He says, yes. Please do.
Then he starts to tell me how important the research on there is, how there's a ton of research on there that he's been working on, and he's getting more and more worked up. And then he finishes, looks me dead in the eye and says, please see if you can fix this.
Your job depends on it. It's like, whoo. He literally was so emotional about this. He threatened my job. Now mind you, I had done nothing wrong. In fact, I had tried to get people there to back up their devices and computers, and he just hadn't done it. So if anything, he was the one who was in the wrong, but because he was in a highly emotional state, he was threatening my job.
Now again, I wanted to say all this, but I didn't. I just said, I understand. So I went, I did what I could, I tried to fix the problem, but I couldn't. I took the hard drive. I sent it to a place who specialized in disk recovery, and they called me back a few days later and said, I'm sorry. This hard drive is beyond repair. We cannot get any data off of it, and it was a disaster.
Now then I went to the doctor and told him this, and guess what? He did not fire me because he didn't really mean that he was gonna fire me if I couldn't save his hard drive, but his high emotional state made him say that thing. So I ended up not getting fired, but you know what?
At this point, I was done. I was done being the punching bag for so many different doctors in high emotional states who couldn't manage their emotions and would ride me because I was a support person. I was the closest punching bag they had, and this was the final straw. When he threatened my job over this, I was like, you know what?
I'm sick of this. So I started immediately looking for another job. And with a few months, I was gone in a much healthier place with a better emotional culture, and I was much happier. And this is the consequences that can happen when we don't realize that emotion drives content. If you just feel a certain way and then jump into a conversation or jump into an action, you are gonna make non an action, you are gonna make non optimal choices. Right? This doctor did.
You probably have managers who have done this. You probably have friends, parents, coworkers, colleagues who have done this. Emotion drives content, and we need to be aware of that. So number 1, be aware of how emotion drives your content. And going back to the conversation with MJ, picking kindness as a leading emotion is not just a nice thing to do. It is actually a productive thing to do. It can lead to greater productivity.
It can lead to greater employee retention, and morale, and it can lead to overall better performance and improvement. So you don't even have to have this huge analysis of what's the best emotion to pick here. If you just pick kindness like MJ recommended, when you are going into a tough situation, when you're going to engage in a conversation or when you need to go be productive yourself, just ask yourself, can I be kind here?
Can I be kind of the person? Can I be kind to myself, which is often very hard? Right? Or as MJ and I talk about at the end of the interview, can I be kind to my children? Whatever it is, choose kindness as your first response and not just logically.
That's where it starts. But feel kindness. Once you feel like you're in a kind state, then go in. If this doctor had come to me and just taken a minute to get into a kind place to think it through, I mean, this wasn't even my fault. If there was a place to be kind, that should have been it. But even if I had messed up, even if you manage employees and they mess up, if you could start with kindness, right, that's gonna lead to long term rapport. That's gonna lead to retention. That's gonna lead them to wanting to improve themselves and the situation and not make that mistake again, as opposed to wanting to leave or being resentful or arguing back. Right? This yes and or kindness, I'm sorry, is a yes and response.
When you start with yes and how can I be kind, it changes everything? So number 1, pick kindness as your emotion before you jump into an interaction.
It'll drastically change the results. Number 2 is to be aware of the impact your emotions have on others. Right? Just like this doctor's emotional state on me absolutely changed how I felt about the organization, or I didn't change because I'm already leading this way, but it pushed me over the edge. How you interact, the impact you have on other people's feelings, this needs to be talked about more frankly. We spend more time with our coworkers and our bosses than we do with the people we love. Right? If you think about an 8 hour day and your partner or spouse or whoever is doing things, if you total up the number of hours, you're at work for 40 hours.
How much time do you spend with the people you love? So the people you work with have the greatest impact on the well-being of your life, and you have the greatest impact on the well-being of your coworkers and employees. And what is impact?
What is quality of life? It's emotion. Right? It's how do people feel. And if you're not aware of the impact your words and actions are having on the people around you, you are doing them a disservice. Right? If you sometimes you're thinking, well, I'm just telling them what they need to hear, or I don't have time to deal with their feelings.
You are destroying people's lives sometimes, and I know. Right? I've had terrible bosses. My wife had a horrible boss at one point, and every day, she would just come back and just be so upset, and it made life so hard. The quality of her life was diminishing because she had a boss that was destroying her emotions every day. We have a responsibility as managers, as leaders to the people who work for us. And I think we have a responsibility as humans to the people around us to create better emotional experiences for them.
So be aware of the emotional response you are generating in the people around you. So those are 2 ways you can start right away by using emotion. And the third thing you can do is just be aware of your own emotion that you are creating for yourself. Right? Be kind to yourself. We beat each other ups. Sorry. We beat ourselves up so much.
When we don't succeed at something, we dwell on mistakes we've made, when we're not as successful as we feel we should be. Choose kindness in those moments. Right? We think we gotta beat ourselves up to get ourselves to change, but as you hear on the interview with MJ, being kind to yourself is gonna be much more effective and healthy and positive. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave a comment, on the blog post. I'll link to it in the show notes and, or go on social media.
You know, I, go follow me on LinkedIn or Facebook, and then comment on this post, or just comment generally on my page and let me know what your thoughts are on the interview with MJ and on, this solo episode as well. What are your thoughts on being kind to others, on emotion driving content, and about the idea of being kind to yourself? So thank you for listening to the solo episode. Thank you for listening to the MJ episode, assuming you have. If not, go back and listen to it. Be sure to tune in, next week where we're gonna have another fantastic interview. Because of timing, I'm not sure who it's gonna be with, but you can bet.
We're gonna talk about yes and. I wanna talk about tools and ideas that can help you uplevel your personal and professional life. And, hey, if you like this podcast, if you like this episode, share it with some people. Right? Link to it on your social media or just send the link directly to some people. And if you could, head over to, iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast and give this podcast a 5 star rating. And if you are feeling so inclined, maybe a review because that really helps us rise in the charts and the ratings, and that is how people find us and helps the message of yes, Dan, grow and spread.
So thank you for listening, and I will see you next week on yes and.