Chapter 26

Emotional Hygiene

It can be tempting to think of emotions as unfortunate evolutionary by-products, signs of weakness to be avoided. But emotions play an important role, in life and in uncertainty, that should not be ignored. As Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD and science director of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, writes “[Emotions] provide us with quintessential information about what’s important and what to do next and how to do it and who to do it with.”1 Uncertainty comes with emotions, and becoming aware of those emotions, learning how to observe and validate them without impulsively acting from the pain or worry, is a vital part of sustaining yourself.

How do we become better at navigating the emotions that come with uncertainty? Psychologist Paul Ekman is known for his groundbreaking work developing a “science” of emotions.2 Together with his daughter, Dr. Eve Ekman, he created an “atlas” that categorizes every human emotion into one of five universal categories: anger, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness. They designed the framework to create awareness of the mechanics behind emotions, including triggers, reactions, intensity, and the negative consequences of unconscious responses. The framework underscores the tangible algorithms behind intangible emotions, and the importance of paying attention to them, rather than ignoring them.

Historically, our ancestors paid limited attention to physical hygiene, which shortened their lives and increased their physical suffering. When simple things like washing hands and other physical hygiene practices were finally introduced, it doubled humans’ life expectancy. But just as our physical bodies require hygiene, our emotional bodies do as well. Yet today we still pay limited attention to our emotional care, which undoubtably prolongs our emotional suffering. Guy Winch, an author and psychologist who received his PhD in clinical psychology at NYU, argues that by ignoring emotional hygiene, we often make our situation worse rather than better. Winch illustrates this dynamic with the example of a woman who, after twenty years of marriage and a messy divorce, finally gets up the courage to go on a first date. Ten minutes after meeting her date at an upscale bar, he stands up and announces, “I’m not interested.” Devastated, the woman calls a friend, who says, “Well, what do you expect? You have big hips, you have nothing interesting to say. Why would a handsome, successful man like that ever go out with a loser like you?” Shocked? Of course, no friend would say such a thing. Winch reveals, “It’s what the woman said to herself.”3

It doesn’t make sense to hurt ourselves emotionally, but that is precisely what most of us do in the face of emotional wounds. As Winch points out, “You wouldn’t get a cut on your arm and decide, ‘Oh! I know—I’m going to take a knife and see how much deeper I can make it.’” When it comes to dealing with uncertainty, though, we critique our lack of courage, criticize mistakes, and feel shame for taking a risk that doesn’t work out. Winch says this kind of thinking can be debilitating. “If your mind tries to convince you you’re incapable of something, and you believe it, then … you’ll begin to feel helpless and you’ll stop trying too soon, or you won’t even try at all…. You see, that’s why so many people function below their actual potential. Because somewhere along the way, sometimes a single failure convinced them that they couldn’t succeed, and they believed it.”4

We are not psychologists, and we wholeheartedly encourage seeking help from a professional when emotional wounds warrant expertise. But we have observed how robust emotional hygiene enables creatives, entrepreneurs, and pathbreakers to sustain their uncertainty journeys. To help you remember this urgent task of emotional hygiene, we suggest you become your own uncertainty doula. Doulas are nonmedical individuals who provide physical, emotional, and informational support during a significant experience, most often childbirth. Doulas come from an ancient tradition—stone carvings from prehistoric times depict them at work—but modern research underscores their effectiveness in childbirth, demonstrating they can help reduce anxiety, labor time, and additional medical interventions while improving mother-baby bonding.5 Even though they are not licensed medical professionals, they are so effective that the World Health Organization has recommended that every birth mother have one. Doulas advocate for and remind their patients of their most important hopes and fears, guiding them toward their best outcomes when things get stressful or change unexpectedly.

Sadly, we weren’t familiar with doulas when Susannah gave birth to our four kids. We were commiserating about how we wish there were doulas for uncertainty, for bringing possibility to life, when we wondered: What if there were individuals who were willing to give continual support for transilience, for transforming uncertainty into possibility? Then we thought: Why couldn’t you be your own doula, providing yourself the support, confidence, warnings, and wisdom to bring your possibilities to life?

When we went back to the interviews we had done, we realized this is something that many innovators have learned to do for themselves. For example, despite David Heinemeier Hansson’s extensive experience creating new businesses, he admits that he still feels stress and anxiety when doing something new. Rather than attacking himself, he has become practiced at acknowledging these emotions, recognizing they are human and normal, and using certain techniques to lessen their negative effects.6 Meanwhile, others we interviewed invited people into their lives to act as doulas. Mentors, life coaches, therapists, partners, and friends can all act as these special assistants, helping guide you to your best outcome.

Imagine having someone there to sustain you, remind you what’s most important, and guide you to your best outcomes during a period of pain. Someone who would help you bring your life … to life! They would talk you through the most vulnerable moments, when you might hurt yourself more, and help you see the other side of the stories you tell yourself and pick the one that empowers you rather than disables you. It’s a powerful idea, and one that can be implemented immediately. Without a doula (an emotional, physical, informational advocate) your unaddressed emotional obstacles make transilience harder. Whether you manage to act as your own uncertainty doula or invite others to fill that role, the point is to bring about the calmer and happier “births” of your pursuits and dreams.

Riding the Waves

Part of what makes childbirth doulas so effective is their prior experience with the stages of labor. They understand the natural cycles of anxiety, frustration, pain, and exhaustion that accompany the anticipation, joy, and awe of that momentous event. The emotions that accompany uncertainty also follow cyclical patterns, with both highs and lows that occur repeatedly. Entrepreneurs almost universally describe their experience as being like riding a roller coaster, with incredible highs and incredible lows, sometimes in the same day. An uncertainty doula would remind you that the waves of emotion are a normal part of the journey, give permission to feel the accompanying emotions, and suggest how to sustain yourself through the journey.

Recognizing this cycle helped Luca Belpietro recover from the unexpected loss of his lifelong dream mere months after he finally reached it. From his earliest memories, Luca dreamed of living in Africa. At the age of four he camped alone in his family’s vineyard in Italy, snuggled up next to the dogs, trying to prove he was ready to go on safari. After high school he lived with farmers on Lake Naivasha in Kenya, and in university he wrote his thesis on the idea of sustainable ecotourism, “seeding the concept for a new model for conservation” based on a symbiosis of tourism, wildlife support, and community-driven decision-making.

To fund this dream, he cofounded a financial services firm, where he worked for ten years until 1995, when he and his now-wife, Antonella, moved to Kenya’s Chyulu Hills. Rising over the plain beneath Mount Kilimanjaro and providing water to over seven million people, this green and vibrant landscape is the majestic setting that inspired Ernest Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa. But when the Belpietros arrived, “there was no infrastructure, no buildings, no communications, no water, not even a road, absolutely nothing.” They lived in a tent for two years, building a lodge alongside the Maasai tribespeople. It took years of hard work, setbacks, and immense courage to build Campi ya Kanzi and to earn the trust of the local tribe. But slowly they succeeded in creating a sustainable ecotourism lodge to support the local community.7

Then one night, faulty wiring sparked a fire that burned the entire camp to the ground. Looking out over the smoking ruins of decades of work “was absolutely heartbreaking,” Luca remembers. “There was nothing left, we lost literally everything.” The grief and discouragement defied words. Antonella was back in Italy with their small children and asked him to consider moving back. They had given Campi ya Kanzi everything they had. Couldn’t it be time to switch gears and throw their effort and attention to the family vineyard?

For Luca the decision rested on recognizing that he was in the lowest low of an emotional wave. Whereas in university his dream had only been an ambition, now he knew it was possible. Realizing this helped him find the courage to restart. When he let the Maasai know of his intention to rebuild, they admitted they had been watching to see how he would respond. Recognizing his courage, they offered the land rent-free and worked with him without wages until they had rebuilt. Likewise, seeing the strength of his commitment inspired a friend to donate $100,000. Slowly, Luca rebuilt what is now one of the leading examples of long-term, sustainable, community-based ecotourism. Looking back on that day, he points to his framed quote by General Douglas MacArthur: “Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, and the taste for adventure over the love of comfort.”8

In addition to acknowledging that highs and lows are a normal part of the journey, being your own uncertainty doula includes foreseeing trouble spots, gearing up for the hard “contractions” where you might lose your sense of purpose, and applying the right care for the moment. Research has identified emotional roller coasters in almost every change journey. There is the emotional expat experience of honeymoon, followed by disillusionment, followed by adaptation, for example. We experienced this personally after we arrived in France and baguettes, castles, chocolates, and food markets turned into school bullies, impatient bakers, gloomy winters, and confusing systems (pick something out, pay at the cashier, then go back to pick up what you bought). Organization change experts talk about the emotional cycle of transformation: an initial high, followed by a period of disillusionment that requires encouraging activities, then proof points of success, and finally communication until the organization transitions to a new normal. Creatives, artists, and designers talk about the thrill of starting a new project, followed by a dark forest with cycles of inspiration and doubt, of grueling work and flow, until they emerge victorious near the completion of the project. Recognizing that these cycles of joy and pain are normal and universal can help, but they need to be met with appropriate emotional hygiene, which helps transform our pain and distress into manageable obstacles we can overcome on our way to possibility.

Even the Covid-19 pandemic created an emotional cycle, which many psychologists compared to the Kübler-Ross stages of grief because of the multifaceted loss it created. As defined by psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.9 Because any emotional wave can be navigated more smoothly with appropriate emotional hygiene, sociologist and therapist Martha Beck came up with specific ideas to counteract the ill effects of each grief stage: denial needs accurate information and communication with others, anger and depression need emotional support, and bargaining and acceptance need access to creativity about what is possible. Beck promises that with “each round of turbulence [you] will find yourself higher and higher. A mind that’s been blown open can do anything. A closed mind can’t progress.”10

Know that the emotional lows are the hardest part, and it is these times when we most need to care for ourselves. A low can feel like being lost in a hopeless murk. When Nathan was thinking about a career change, he wrote,

Finally, doulas remind clients of their nonnegotiables in tense moments. You can do the same thing by going back to your story, your values, or the adjacent possible you are working toward. Some cycles are so significant that they are transformational, changing who we are. Beck compares these to a caterpillar that literally becomes a “soup of cells” before transforming into winged creatures that fly. She reminds us that “any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.”11

Hope Is Active

Sometimes uncertainty introduces problems and pain that seem to have no purpose. In these circumstances we can get stuck in rumination or grief—but finding a tiny thread of possibility beyond the sadness can provide the spark that leads to transilience. Hope is a good thread to look for as it can be a sort of bridge to possibility. Journalist and thought leader Krista Tippett explains, “Hope for me is distinct from idealism or optimism. It has nothing to do with wishful thinking. It is a muscle, a practice, a choice: to live open-eyed and wholehearted in the world as it is and not as we wish it to be.”13 In other words, it’s not about hoping to avoid loss, but about persistence, growth, and kindness in the face of loss.

When Jos Skeates met Alison, he was a “poor art student with a bad haircut” and she was dating “an African prince who drove a Porsche around London.” Today Jos laughs: “I wrote her letters every day. He didn’t have a chance.”14 Jos and Alison dated for a few years while he, already a master goldsmith belonging to London’s Goldsmiths’ Company, which has a royal charter, finished his training at art school Central Saint Martins and Alison worked as a rising executive at Compaq. But after they married and started a family, they decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship, joining forces to launch their own boutique in London’s cool Clerkenwell neighborhood. They dreamed of showcasing new jewelers alongside Jos’s exquisite designs. Their talent quickly attracted clients from all over the world, and they began to envision a new kind of luxury group, democratizing access for the most creative emerging artists. Together they took on investment and started opening stores, first in Notting Hill and then Chiswick.

Then a series of disasters struck. First, a yearlong construction project killed the crucial foot traffic for their Notting Hill boutique as workmen pushed wheelbarrows full of mud across their front doorstep. Next came the 2008 financial crisis, which emptied their customers’ budgets for jewelry. “For a six-month period, we were running out of road,” Jos recounts. “I remember waking up one New Year’s Day … [and] we owed a third of a million, had no money in the bank, and the money was due.”

Meanwhile, Alison had been sick frequently, but they just chalked it up to stress. When a friend visited, though, she took one look at Alison and announced, “Get in the car, I’m taking you in.” She sat Alison down in front of the family physician and said, “I think she has leukemia.” The doctor agreed that something was very wrong, and Alison was rushed straight to the accident and emergency department. The friend called Jos, busy with the pre-Christmas rush and desperately trying to keep the business afloat, and said, “You need to come right away.” Not understanding, Jos replied, “Let me finish these earrings.” But the friend insisted, “No, put down the earrings. Come right now.” Tests confirmed the grim diagnosis. Jos remembers taking to the London streets to run numbly through the dark, his mind gnawing at his troubles.

Yet there was a point of clarity amid the uncertainty. Sometimes when cancer strikes, partners split, realizing they would rather spend their remaining time with someone else. But Jos recalls that conversation with Alison, as she lay in her hospital bed, and the realization they both shared, looking into each other’s eyes: “You are the one.”

What then? Amid this immense uncertainty and tragedy, Alison told Jos, “We have to be hopeful because there are no guarantees.” When they talked to their daughters, they told them, “Hopeful is our word.” But hope, as Alison said, “is not a passive thing, where you just wait and see. Hope is active. It is participatory—we will take this view on life.” She admits that it took all her energy and required that she remind herself over and over, “I have everything to live for.”

As part of maintaining hope, they purposefully adopted a lighthearted tone. When Jos walked their two young girls to the hospital, he tried to make it more fun by pretending they had to dodge sharks hidden en route. Just before they arrived at Alison’s room, Jos would text her so she could take off the oxygen mask and receive them with a warm smile. They even embraced a bit of gallows humor to ease the tension—one of the techniques we described in chapter 12—with Jos joking to the whole family, “Don’t worry, if mom dies, I’m going to marry Taylor Swift.” (Swift was the girls’ idol at the time.) They would all laugh together at the absurdity of their situation.

Fortunately, after months of struggle, Alison recovered. But the business failed. They knew that Alison’s recovery was the most important thing and are glad for the way they prioritized her recovery. Still, the failure of their business remains a bitter memory. Even though Jos managed to repay all their suppliers and they were voted London’s best jeweler of the year, he laments: “I still feel shame for putting the company down.”

Not surprisingly, their resolve to embody active hope helped them reenvision their business together. Jos and Alison still had all the talent they needed to recreate the luxury group, but maybe, they realized, scaling up wasn’t the impact they wanted to have. The jewelry industry has a good deal of waste and high risks of unethical sourcing from locations where people are exploited. Together, Jos and Alison decided they wanted to lead the way in creating a sustainable artisanship, forming London’s first B Corp in the jewelry sector and becoming spokespersons for sustainable business. At their store, EC One, Jos trains cohorts of new jewelers, teaching them how to engage in and spread sustainable practices throughout the industry.

But their greatest contribution might simply be their example, their warm laughter together, and the lesson they have to teach all who endure uncertainty—that being hopeful is a deliberate and sustaining choice. Although not easy to do, it is a muscle we can build and develop. And it can help us face the emotions that come with the unknown.

Connection and Community

We have all experienced the thrill and relief of finding a like-minded community for our ideas and projects. It can be a sort of homecoming to team up with others after you have been carrying a torch for something by yourself. Often, we forget that part of building robust hope is honoring and holding space for its opposite—the fears and doubts we have about our abilities, the validity of our ideas, or the way we are pursuing them. This is made easier when we can count on the emotional hygiene that’s strengthened by talking with “our people.” Although it sounds obvious, when threatened or anxious, most people tend to turn inward, afraid that how they feel reveals a flaw in their ability or character. It doesn’t—you are just human. Part of being your own doula, then, is not only coaching yourself to find and share with a community that sustains you but talking to yourself with awareness and kindness.

Sustaining yourself by talking with others happens when you share with the right people. By “right people,” we acknowledge that as the leader of an organization or as a parent, you may have one kind of conversation with those you lead and another with the people who care for you, personally or professionally, or who share your situation. Talking with others in the same community or situation helps normalize both the uncertainty you are feeling and the frustrations and doubts you have as part of the journey to possibility.

Recall that actors may win one out of 100 parts they audition for, and photographers publish perhaps one out of 10,000 shots. “It’s a bit like walking into a casino with a bucket of quarters, and you have to lose 100 times before you get one win,” jokes actor Dallas Roberts.16 When he taught us this lesson, he emphasized the stabilizing influence of his community of fellow actors, which we mentioned in chapter 12. “Seventy percent of my email comes from a group of seventeen other actors, and we just all help each other.”

Community helps us sustain ourselves and learn from the uncertainty, not just resist it. At the unconventional business school Kaospilot, first-term students are put in charge of marketing and producing Denmark’s largest cultural festival. Suddenly, they are tasked with a host of complex action items: design cinematography, build toilets, rescue a failed catering order, optimize ticket sales. One moment they may be using a hammer to pitch in on the bleachers, which were delivered late, and the next negotiating with one of the artists on a contract. “We tell students that we cannot guarantee that they will learn everything in the curriculum. In fact, we will only deliver 80 percent of objectives. But we can guarantee that you will learn 110 percent. It’s very confusing for them at first,” head of school Christer Windeløv-Lidzélius explains. “It all comes down to dialogue, it all comes down to talking. Talking about it is what helps you learn.”17

For situations when we can’t talk to others, there are ways of talking to ourselves that can help. Mindfulness coach Daron Larson helps leaders at companies, hospitals, and even prisons navigate personal and professional challenges. He warns that when we step into the unknown, “it’s easy to view unwanted emotions as additional opponents. We instinctively attempt to defend ourselves against frustration, fear, and vulnerability. But when we feed them with our resistance, they get stronger.” Instead of trying to sweep our emotions under the rug, he advises, we can talk to ourselves, saying, “This is what it feels like to feel X—scared, annoyed, bored, angry.” For example, “when you notice that you’re feeling nervous in anticipation of a pitch meeting, you might say to yourself, ‘This is how it feels to be nervous about pitching an idea I care about,’” Larson explains. Or “when you find yourself bogged down by a lack of clarity, try to ease up on finding a solution…. Say to yourself, ‘This is how it feels to not have an answer right now.’” Larson says that talking to yourself this way helps you simply notice the emotions rather than fighting them, which creates a more empathetic response and ultimately weakens their debilitating effects.

Comforts

Being your own doula also means having comforts on hand that sustain you. Similar to uncertainty balancers, which are meant to be ongoing practices that offer continual sustenance, comforts are like a secret arsenal we can use at a moment’s notice as an extra dose to sustain our floundering boat. There are many sources of comfort when it is needed. One of the most important is a place, particularly a home, where we can seek comfort and reassurance. In The Poetics of Space, philosopher Gaston Bachelard says that home is like a forge where creativity and dreams are created. “The house protects the dreamer. The houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace,” he wrote.

But before you start scheming that you can’t be comforted or creative without the ideal space, challenge what you really need to create that space. For the Travellers, an ancient culture of Irish nomads, home could be an old lay-by or an empty field filled with memory and pride.19 Nick Ashley, son and business partner of designer Laura Ashley, whose company once had five hundred shops worldwide, remembers their home being redone every year as an example for stylists. When his mother died, the company lost its heart and soul. Nick realized that although he lost the curated home, he actually wanted something different. “My idea of heaven is to pick my own food, cook it, eat it, sit by the fire, and then go to bed on a wonderful mattress. I mean, come on, you can’t argue with that.”20 Even famed designer Kenzō Takada, whose house had a swimming pool in the living room, argued that atmosphere was all that really mattered. “When I go into other people’s homes, the first thing I look at is the atmosphere.”21 We can create that atmosphere anywhere, even in a tiny apartment, with care and thought.

In addition, a good doula reminds you to think about what, how, and where you eat. The myriad ways we experience food—its aromas, flavors, textures, and memories—can too easily be taken for granted. Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a brilliant food writer who described eating well as one of the “arts of life.” Her essays weave together gorgeous descriptions of memorable meals and the stories surrounding them with an underlying claim about how food sustains us on a deeper level. In The Gastronomical Me she endearingly writes,

Sensory comforts are sustaining and are meant to be—our senses have evolved to steer us toward safety, nourishment, and pleasure or to warn us from their opposites. Take note of the comforts that sustain you. These comforts can become sources of healing in our daily lives, refueling us for the journey through uncertainty.

We asked a licensed therapist to share some of the sustaining guidance he gives clients facing uncertainty (see the sidebar “Returning to Center: A Therapist’s View on Navigating Uncertainty”) to anchor the tools we have observed. Emotional hygiene takes courageous effort but is a critical first step in the Sustain phase of uncertainty possibility. Like Paris’s symbolic boat being tossed on the waves but not sinking, emotional hygiene calms the rough waters of the unknown.