Episode 247 · 6 November 2025 · 47:37
Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast, with Dr Ryan Martin
Featuring Ryan Martin
Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast, with Dr Ryan Martin
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The classroom exercise: why we fear the wrong things
interview#psychology#fear#classroom-exercise
Introducing Dr Ryan Martin
What is emotion, actually?
interview#emotion#definition#psychology
Vestigial emotions — do we still need them all?
interview#emotions#evolution#usefulness
The story behind Emotion Hacks
interview#emotion-hacks#book#story
Suppression vs. regulation — and the rebound effect
The 5 categories of emotion hacks
interview#emotion-hacks#categories#self-help
Nature, unplugging, and regulating through activity
interview#nature#unplugging#activity
Three questions for in-the-moment intensity
interview#questions#intensity#in-the-moment
Worldview — the lens you see everything through
Myths busted: catharsis and beyond
interview#myths#catharsis#debunking
The knock-on effect for leaders
interview#leadership#emotions#workplace
Top 3 takeaways
interview#takeaways#summary#key-points
Where to find Ryan
Show notes
Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast — with Dr Ryan Martin
Guest: Dr Ryan Martin — psychologist, emotion researcher, and "The Anger Professor." His new book, Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast, is out January 6th, 2026.
Emotions aren't the enemy — they're information. But most of us treat them like emergencies, reacting in the moment instead of shaping how we feel hours before the trigger even appears.
Dr Ryan Martin joins Al and Leanne to explain his "Why We Feel" model — how stimuli, mood, interpretation, feeling, and expression combine to create what we experience as emotion. He shares practical in-the-moment tools like grounding, mantras, and naming the feeling, then challenges leaders to go upstream: sleep, hydration, nature, worldview, and daily choices. Plus, why the catharsis myth refuses to die, and a manager's checklist for mapping emotional incidents before you act.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Treat emotions as signals, not emergencies. They give you information and energy to act. The goal isn't to switch them off — it's to read them and choose your response.
- Most regulation happens upstream. Sleep, hydration, nature, movement, and digital boundaries set your baseline. If you're running on empty, no in-the-moment trick will save you.
- Your worldview drives everything. Beliefs about people, yourself, and the future shape how you interpret every single interaction. Audit the lens before you blame the trigger.
Practical Tools Mentioned
- Grounding: 5 things you can see, 4 you can hear, 3 you can touch, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste.
- Mantras: A short phrase to anchor attention and guide the next step when emotions spike.
- Nature with attention: Unplug and actively notice what you see — passive scrolling through the woods doesn't count.
- Recognition over suppression: Acknowledge the feeling, then choose the response. Suppression creates a rebound effect.
- Worldview audit: Do I trust people? Do I see myself as capable? Do I view the future as hopeful?
More From Dr Ryan Martin
- Pre-order Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast: amazon.com/Emotion-Hacks-Ways-Feel-Better-ebook/dp/B0F3WNB6HP
- Website: alltheragescience.com
- Substack: angerprofessor.substack.com
- TikTok and Instagram: @AngerProfessor
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottSo there's a classroom with a psychology professor. He asks everyone to raise their hands if they're scared of spiders. And of course, some hands shoot up. Snakes? There are more hands. Now he asks, who's scared of guns? There's crickets. Who's scared of power lines? Nothing. Cars? Maybe one or two hands go up.
Ryan MartinWhat's interesting about that is that those last 3 things, those are things that could actually kill you in modern society. Those first 3 are very unlikely to kill you. So we have like this biological preparedness that prepares us to be scared of things that we don't need to be scared of necessarily, and not to be scared of some things that are actually threatening.
Leanne ElliottThat's Dr. Ryan Martin, also known as the Anger Professor, and he's just revealed something quite profound about human emotions. Our brains are still running on ancient software in a modern world. We're terrified of the wrong things and calm about actual dangers.
Al ElliottBut here's what's really interesting. Ryan argues that we've been thinking about our emotions completely wrongly. We treat them like emergencies to be managed when they explode. So when you're furious, you might do a bit of deep breathing. If you're anxious, then you might reach for a bit of meditation.
Leanne ElliottRyan's new book, Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast, flips that entire model. What if instead of managing emotional explosions, You could design your day to prevent them from happening in the first place.
Al ElliottThe story that inspired this book is when someone commented on one of Ryan's TikToks saying, if exercise doesn't work for managing anger, then I'm all out of options. And Ryan thought, wait, you've got 50 options. You just don't know about them yet.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Al ElliottOur guest today, Dr. Ryan Martin, is a psychologist and an emotion researcher. He spent his career studying anger, but his latest work goes far beyond that. He's created a framework called the Why We Feel model that explains how every emotion we experience is shaped by 5 key factors. Long before we even realise we're feeling anything.
Leanne ElliottAnd here's the really important bit for leaders and managers listening. Most emotion regulation isn't about the moment you feel anxious or angry. It's about the decisions you made 3 hours earlier about whether to drink water, go for a walk, or check your phone one more time.
Al ElliottToday we're discovering why self-care actually is emotion regulation, why your worldview might be making you miserable, And the surprising research on mantras that shows even repeating the word one can change your brain chemistry.
Leanne ElliottAfter this quick break, we'll explore Ryan's 5 categories of emotion hacks and learn why feeling better fast isn't about willpower, it's about science. This is going to be ridiculously practical.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Ryan MartinNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Ryan MartinSo I'm a psychologist and emotion researcher. For much of my career, I've specialized in anger and written 2 books related to anger. I'm also just in general an emotion researcher who teaches courses on emotion and has done quite a bit of research there. And I've got this new book coming out that I'm super excited to talk about.
Leanne ElliottSo with that in mind, I really want to start at the beginning, in the most simple place, emotion. What is emotion? How do psychologists define emotion?
Ryan MartinThis is actually a super complicated question, one that there is considerable debate all the way from strict behaviorists who would say emotions don't exist, all the way to people like me who would define them as a psychological state that includes physiological responses, That includes some cognitive responses, meaning particular types of thoughts, and then some behavioral responses, meaning ways we act, right? So if you think about it in terms of a really simple emotion, one that we all feel, fear, right? When you get scared, you have a physiological response. Your heart rate increases, you start to sweat, things like that. There's even a startle response, which is a little bit different, but a startle response is part of that.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinSo that's the physiological piece. Then there is cognitive piece, or the types of thoughts you have, which in the case of fear really include a lot of thoughts around threat or danger, right? Or some sort of catastrophizing. This is like the worst thing that's ever happened or whatever. And then you have some actions, some things that you tend to do. Avoidance is the most common one associated with fear, which is you get away from the thing that scares you. So you see a spider, heart rate increases, you start having thoughts about it biting you or whatever, or icky thoughts, things like that. And then you avoid, right? You stay away, you have somebody kill it for you, whatever.
Leanne ElliottI think you've already blown people's minds by saying that some psychologists don't even think emotions exist. So I think it's, as you say, it's such a complex area. Assuming they do exist and we're in the camp that they do, Why do we have them? Do they serve a purpose for us?
Ryan MartinI would argue, and there's, there's good solid research for this, that our emotions exist because they provided an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors, both human and non-human ancestors. So ultimately, you can think of emotions as doing really 2 things. One is they give you information. So they are a source of information about your situation that you're in, in a given moment, right? And that information is pretty primal in a lot of ways. So if you think about it, if we just run through a bunch of emotions right now and think about what information they provide you. So anger lets you know that you may have been wronged or that something is interfering in your goals. Fear, we've already talked about, lets you know that you might be in danger. Sadness lets you know that you may have lost something. All of these feelings, they're, it's your brain's way of taking information in and then sending you a signal to say, hey, something's going on and you need to be aware of it. Now, the second thing that they do is they energize you to deal with whatever that thing is, right? So they give you the energy and that's what that physiological arousal is for.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinOr why that exists is that it gives you the energy to confront the injustice or to flee the danger. Or an emotion we don't talk about very much is curiosity. And so curiosity, it's your brain's a way of alerting you to the fact that there's a gap in your knowledge. It's telling you, hey, there's something you don't know, and that something you don't know might be important. And then it gives you some energy to actually seek out an answer to a question or to figure out what you don't know. Um, so imagine a friend says something to you like, hey, did you hear what happened to Taylor Swift? Right? And now they've exposed a gap in your knowledge because you haven't heard what happened to Taylor Swift and you desire to fill that gap. You want to know. And so then the emotion gives you some energy to actually try and, try and answer that question.
Leanne ElliottSo with that in mind then, are there any emotions that cause more problems than they are helpful now in terms of evolution? You know, how is it like the spleen or the appendix or something that evolution, we don't need it anymore? Is there an emotion that we don't need Anymore, but it's here causing us problems.
Ryan MartinVestigial emotions. So I don't think there's anything we don't need. I think that there are, there are emotions that there are ways in which their usefulness back then does cause us some problems now, right? So the truth is that me as a, as a person living in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who is exposed to very few scorpions or very few spiders that are actually deadly, I probably don't need a fear of spiders, right? But I did inherit— there's actually something we call biological preparedness that we are prepared to be scared of particular types of things, and that's rooted in our evolutionary history too, right? So if you ask people, hey, I do this with my students every semester, I ask people, raise your hand if you are scared of spiders. Raise your hand if you are scared of snakes, rodents. And hands almost always go up, about 50% of the room for a lot of those things, right? That they don't like those things. And then I say, raise your hand if you are scared of guns and raise your hand if you're afraid of power lines. Raise your hand if you're afraid of cars. And hands don't regularly go up for those. Some do, but not very many. But But what's interesting about that is that those last 3 things, those are things that could actually kill you in modern society. Those first 3 are very unlikely to kill you. So we have like this biological preparedness that prepares us to be scared of things that we don't need to be scared of necessarily, and not to be scared of some things that are actually threatening. So that's a way in which some parts of this might be vestigial. The other thing I would say is that it isn't so much that emotions aren't useful to us, but there are times where I mean, what we see is that these emotions, they're valuable probably 90% of the time or 80% of the time, but then 10 to 20% of the time we might quote unquote overreact, right? We might respond badly to our feeling and not handle it very well. And then that feels really overwhelming to us. You know, it might embarrass us. We might do something dangerous or stupid. We might make a mistake that, that costs us some social credibility or whatever, that just sort of comes with the territory. And that actually speaks really to why it's so important for people to learn to navigate these effectively is so that we can figure out when it's helpful and when it's not.
Leanne ElliottAnd I love that you've started the new book, Emotion Hacks, by explaining exactly this, how emotions work. And you outline your Why We Feel model, Why was it important for you to begin here and explain the science?
Ryan MartinI think that this is part of a bigger picture effort for me to help people think about emotion regulation in a new way or a broader way. So I think too often people really focus on the part of the emotion where we feel it and we do something with it. Meaning I get scared and then I avoid the thing I'm scared of. The problem is that by focusing so much on that, we're not focusing on the reasons we feel in the first place, which is also where we can have a lot of different types of interventions. There are decisions we make day in and day out that lead to particular types of feelings. The decisions we make about who we interact with, decisions we make about how we interact with people, decisions we make about how well we take care of ourselves, whether or not we're staying hydrated, whether or not we're, you know, spending time in nature, whether or not we're exercising, whether or not we're eating right. All of those things actually do affect our emotions, but we don't think of those as emotion regulation strategies in the ways we should. I tell this story early on in the book, but one of the things that where this book was sort of born from was something I read, a response to a TikTok of mine, probably 4 years ago at this point, where I I mentioned something about exercise as a form of emotion regulation. And the truth is, we know, and this is, this runs contrary to a lot of people's experiences and opinions, exercising when you're angry is actually not particularly good for you. Exercising when you're not emotional is great for you. It's, it's one of the best things we can do for our emotional wellbeing. But when you are angry or when you are scared, what you actually need is to calm down.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinAnd exercise does the opposite. It elevates your physiological arousal. I shared that finding on social media and somebody responded, a bunch of people responded angrily, told me I was wrong and that sort of thing. But then one person responded with, if exercise doesn't work, then I'm out of options. And that struck me as really sad, right? Because there's so many options. And it was worrisome to me that a person felt so kind of overwhelmed and helpless with strategies. And so what I wanted to do and what I decided to do was to write a book that essentially maps out, look, here are all of these options. And so it's organized around 50 very short chapters. Each one is just a couple pages long that basically dives into the science behind how you can use it to manage your emotions and then give some real practical advice about how you can A question people are going to have in terms of emotional regulation is exactly what is emotional regulation?
Leanne ElliottAnd perhaps a common misconception, are we talking about suppression of emotions?
Ryan MartinEmotion regulation, I would define as the decisions we make and the strategies we use to manage our emotions. And I think we can include in that, and this is one of the ways that I would argue that we can think about this more broadly, is A lot of times we think about that in terms of either not feeling particular things or not channeling particular things into negative behaviors. I would argue that emotion regulation should also be thought of as trying to get ourselves to feel particular things, right? To increase particular feelings, which in the case of happiness is really obvious. But at the same time, You know, I have a son who is an athlete, and one of the things he's noticed is that he plays a little bit better when he's a little bit angry, right? And so, are there strategies— and this is something I hear from athletes a lot. And so, are there ways in which we can teach athletes to induce anger in themselves to try and perform in a particular way when they're competing, right? So, we can embrace strategies. When we think about emotion regulation, it can be all sorts of different things.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinNow, you mentioned suppression, which is really, really important because with suppression, what we're really talking about there is not an emotion regulation strategy. It's, it's an, it's essentially an emotion avoidance strategy. When you essentially push your emotion away, you deny that you're feeling it. You deny that you're experiencing it. And it is a particularly ineffective strategy overall for trying to manage your emotions. They eventually come out.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinIt ends up being this sort of a, sometimes a, what we call a rebound effect, right? It's by not, by, by pushing the thing away, we end up actually focusing on the thing even more than we would otherwise. And so we know that's not particularly healthy and it's not particularly productive. Far better to learn to acknowledge the feeling and then decide what to do with it as a, as an emotion regulation approach. One of the things people tell me often is that they find themselves feeling really overwhelmed by their emotions. And because they feel overwhelmed by them, they actually do, going back to what you said before, they suppress, right? It's like they just try and push it away. And they tell me, I hear this all the time, even from really close friends. They'll say, they'll tell me this really sad story or this really frustrating thing. And then they, when I say I'm sorry or something like that, they say, It's okay, right? Which is really a way of minimizing the impact of that feeling. And so what I'm trying to do for people is say, let's not minimize that feeling. Let's acknowledge, and the goal should be to acknowledge where it is, you know, and how significant it is. And then let's figure out what we do with it. Like, let's figure out where does it come from? How can I intervene? And how can I essentially make myself feel happier, Make myself feel less scared, make myself feel less angry. How can I then decrease some of those negative feelings in a way that allows me to be more productive or more focused or engage differently with my family or my friends or my colleagues or whoever? The core of emotional wellbeing is that it allows people to be better at just about everything. If you are good at managing your emotions, you're going to be better at almost every activity you engage in in your life, from athletics to work, to sleeping, to engaging with your family. You'll just be better at all of those things.
Leanne ElliottI love this, that you're bringing this to the focus and actually explaining to people this, this interaction. The book goes on to split these 50 hacks into 5 key Categories. So we've got big picture, mood, interpretation, feeling, and expression. Why these 5 categories?
Ryan MartinThose are by and large rooted in the broader why we feel model. So when we feel something, it is the result of some sort of stimulus, right? Some, something that we experience, right? Going back to my spider example, the stimulus is the spider. So it's, it's that along with the mood we were in when we experienced that stimulus. So are we tired? Are we already scared of something else? Are we angry? Are we physically uncomfortable? Who knows, right? Along with how we appraise or interpret that stimulus. So do we see it as a threat? Do we see it as You know, dangerous? How, how do we think about that particular thing? So those, those 3 things come together and then they lead to the feeling itself, which in this case is fear. And then from that is, well, what we do with that, that fear, right? The behaviors that are associated with it. So that's the model for why human beings might feel anything and how they might express that feeling. And what I'm trying to argue here in the book is there are interventions for each of those different categories. So we can make decisions about the stimuli we experience, right? The most obvious example of that is at a certain point, I stopped regularly going to see scary movies, right? That's me making a decision about a stimulus that, that I was experiencing. That's an obvious example. But there's lots of little examples that we experience throughout our life. How much time we spend with particular people is an example of that. How we handle our morning commute is an example of that. We can make choices about how we experience these stimuli. Same thing could be said for our mood, right? When we take good care of ourselves, well then when we experience those stimuli, we are in a better physical state, right? We are in, and, and we're better able to handle it. We can pay attention to the types of thoughts we're having and explore our worldview and how it's affecting our emotions. So, we can intervene in each of these categories in very concrete and intentional ways to help better manage our emotions.
Leanne ElliottAre these things that build on each other, or can readers dip in anywhere to the, to the hack?
Ryan MartinOnce you understand the the big picture model, the why we feel model, which is why I want it, it was so important to me to start with that. Then ultimately you can, you can read this in any order you want, right? If you're someone who is like a fitness guru who takes care of themselves physically, or you're a nutritionist and you know you're eating well, when you get to the chapter on healthy eating, skip it, right? Move on to the next one. Unless you just want more evidence that, you know, it works for you. Go ahead and skip it. There was a, there was a chapter that even as I was writing it on meditation, as I was writing it, I was thinking to myself, this is not for me, right? This chapter right here is not— I'm not good at meditating, right? That's not a thing that I'm— and I find myself knowing that it's good for me and wanting to be better at it, but also knowing that I just haven't had any success with that in my life. And so maybe it's better for me to focus on other sorts of strategies. So I think that's the idea here is that people can honestly think of it in some ways as a menu that they can identify the things that they need to work on, the things that they don't need to work on, the places that are particularly challenging for them and the things that they want to truly embrace.
Leanne ElliottAnd is there any merit in us understanding that that is an activity that can help us regulate our emotions? So what I'm thinking of is that I love to cook. I love to cook. And at the end of the day, Al will always say to me, are you sure? Do you want some help? We can just get takeaway or something. I'm like, no, it's my time. It's my feeling. Is that, is it connecting that, making it more powerful?
Ryan MartinYes. So, and I love that example because, and part of why I love that you brought that up is like, that's an example that's not in the book, but I think it's really important to acknowledge that a lot of the, there are a lot of versions of these things that people can engage in, even ones I don't talk about that will have a really similar impact. And I think you're absolutely right. It's so important to acknowledge that by focusing on those psychological benefits, we actually get more out of it. And probably the best example of this is exercise. So people get really hung up on the physical health benefits of exercise, and that makes sense. That's why people engage in it a lot. But the problem is those physical health benefits Those actually take a long time, right? Like you have to exercise for a really long time to start to really see a lot of those physical health benefits. And when I say a really long time, I mean like a month or 2 months or whatever. But, but the psychological benefits happen immediately, right? I mean, truly, like right after the run, a lot of times people are feeling better. They're feeling more enthusiastic. They've got more energy. They're feeling proud that they did this. What actually detracts from those psychological benefits is when we get too hung up on the physical benefits, because then that's when people start to feel disappointment, right? It's when they say, gosh, I've been doing this for a month and I haven't lost any weight, or I'm not getting any faster or whatever. And they get disappointed instead of thinking about the physical health benefits where that reward is immediate. So, by attending to those benefits, we actually get more from them.
Leanne ElliottI also am gonna take this opportunity to settle the discussion that Al and I have quite frequently. If we're walking, either with a dog or on our own, is it better to have no distractions? So, I'm thinking like, you shouldn't be, should you be listening to a podcast? Does that have a difference? Music, the radio, should it be nothing? Does it have any impact?
Ryan MartinIf the goal is to spend time in nature and the goal is to take in nature, you should unplug. So you should turn off the podcast, turn off that stuff. And I say this as someone who runs every day and loves it and always has music or a podcast going. So I'm not particularly good at unplugging in this context. Like I said, there's, there are a lot of points in the book where I thought, you know what, this one isn't something I'm particularly good at. I got to work on this. But I, but I do think that if you're, if you're trying to get the exposure, like the benefits of nature, Unplugging is important because it allows you to, to better pay attention.
Al ElliottRight. So we've just learned that emotions aren't just reactions. They're the results of stimuli or our mood or how we interpret things. We also learned that I really should leave my AirPods behind when I walk the dog. So after the break, Ryan is going to argue that most of us are fighting our emotions at the wrong level. We're trying to fix the feeling when it actually explodes rather than questioning why we're feeling it. In the first place. And that leads to something that honestly made me feel a little bit uncomfortable when I first heard it. Our worldview might be the reason we're constantly angry or anxious or exhausted. Fair warning, this part of the podcast is going to make you think hard about some assumptions you didn't even know you had. See you in 60 seconds.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioral science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Ryan MartinAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s— the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Leanne ElliottThe audio destination for business professionals.
Ryan MartinSeamless. Seamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Ryan MartinUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. So of course you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Ryan MartinIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Ryan MartinI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Ryan MartinDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back. Keep that in.
Al ElliottWelcome back. So before the break, we talked about the practical physical things you can do to regulate emotions, like going into nature, sleep, hydration. In a moment, Ryan's gonna talk to you about how your worldview, i.e., the way you interpret your world around you, could be causing your strong emotions in the first place. But before we do this, let's rejoin Leanne and Dr. Ryan and get a practical lesson on exactly what to do when you do have a strong emotion?
Ryan MartinI think there are 3 questions that people can ask themselves when they are experiencing something strongly. The first is, okay, so what thought am I having that is informing this feeling? Am I catastrophizing? Am I blaming? Am I labeling? You know, what types of thought, what type of thought am I having? So that's the first thing. I think the second thing that you can ask yourself is, what evidence do I have that that thought is true? So where is the data that tells me that this thought is an accurate representation of what's going on? And the third thing is, is there any other way to look at this? And so if we can actually ask ourselves, Is there another way that I could interpret this particular situation? And then I can start to interrogate that, right? And whether or not there's actually evidence for that one, for that version of the story. So often the emotions we have stem from the stories that we're essentially telling ourselves about our experiences. And so Interrogating and unpacking those stories is really critical. I think that a lot of times we're feeling lots of things at the same time. And so sometimes it's helpful to actually just acknowledge, okay, I am feeling sad and angry and scared, but probably the most significant thing or the primary thing I'm feeling right now is that anger. So that's good. That's a good thing to be able to articulate to yourself because that allows you to dig a little deeper into the why. So why am I feeling angry, right? And is that actually the emotion that is sort of, should be most salient given what I'm dealing with right now? Maybe, maybe actually, you know, at the, at the core of this is I probably should be really sad. I probably should be grieving, but that anger is actually the safer thing for me to feel.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinIt's less uncomfortable for me, so I focus on that. So, I think that that labeling can be really helpful as it helps you get to the why or the underpinnings of what's going on.
Leanne ElliottAnd I'm also thinking of listeners who might want some direction from you in terms of, if I'm feeling like this, is there a hack I should go to? So, if I'm feeling particularly anxious, is there a hack I should go to?
Ryan MartinYeah. So, there are. And I think that one of the things we do, and this is, I'm gonna come back to some of those things I said at the beginning that I was trying to sort of reframe us away from, but also acknowledge that when we are feeling something, those sorts of hacks really work, right? So if we are feeling anxious, well then yeah, like deep breathing is a great way to decrease our physiological arousal, right? Lower our heart rate, decrease our muscle tension. Even though I'm bad at it, meditation is a really good way for people to kind of decrease their that physiological arousal. Grounding can be a really positive approach. And with grounding, it's really taking a moment to be present with your surroundings, right? So one mechanism people like to use for grounding is, okay, so I'm going to choose 5 things I can see right now, right? So I count to 5, like things that are, that I can see, 4 things I can hear, and so on all the way down. And in doing that, you become a little bit more sort of, again, grounded or set in your experience. Ultimately, it's a form of distraction in some ways. It takes you away from the thing that you were emoting about and helps you calm down or relax. That's a really valuable way to sort of de-escalate. And then that allows you to sort of do the work of thinking about your thoughts, right? Okay. So now that I've acknowledged I'm scared and I've taken some steps to decrease that, what thoughts am I having that are leading to that fear? And let's interrogate those thoughts and decide, are those thoughts reasonable? Are they rooted in accurate information? Are they not rooted? Are they rooted in something else? We can unpack them.
Al ElliottOkay, so you've just had some great, brilliant, in-the-moment strategies. Sort of, we talked about the deep breathing, the grounding, the 5 things you can see technique. These are things you do when you're feeling anxious or angry. But if you're using those techniques constantly, maybe multiple times a day, every single day, you're actually treating the symptom, not the cause.
Leanne ElliottExactly. And this is where Ryan's approach gets really challenging, because what he's about to talk about isn't a quick hack you can do in 30 seconds. It's actually about interrogating something most of us have never even thought to question: our worldview. How you fundamentally see the world, other people, yourself, and the future. And Ryan argues that this lens you're looking through might be the reason you keep needing those grounding techniques in the first place. I'll be honest, this part of the interview made me a little uncomfortable because it was asking us to examine beliefs we didn't even know we had. For example, do you trust people? Do you see yourself as capable or fragile? Do you see the future as threatening or full of possibility?
Al ElliottAnd the really confronting part is this: these aren't just philosophical questions. Your answers to them are directly shaping how often you feel angry or scared or sad at work. So here's Dr. Ryan explaining why unpacking your worldview might be the most important emotion hack of them all.
Ryan MartinWe spend a lifetime learning our thought patterns, right? Or developing our thought patterns and learning to interpret things in a particular way. And so trying to just undo that is going to be really, really difficult. It's really difficult to not look at a thing and interpret the way you always have interpreted that thing. So I would argue though that people need to be, should be really intentional about catching themselves when they do that and then trying to offer that reframe. You know, and so like catching themselves when they've done, when they've catastrophized or when they've blamed people in a bad way or whatever. And then trying to offer some alternative ways, offer themselves some alternative ways about thinking about things. And that's actually why one of the things I do is I start that section with the hack, which is a really big thing to do, which is to unpack their worldview. And what I mean by that is people should interrogate how they see the world, how they see themselves, how they see other people, how they see the future, and really ask themselves some relatively tough questions about, do I trust people? In general, how trusting am I? Do I see myself as competent and capable, or do I see myself as fragile and potentially somewhat weak? Do I see the future as, am I optimistic about the future, hopeful about the future, or do I look at it as something to be scared of? I think that once you sort of try to better understand that worldview, that serves as a lens by which you take in all of this information. And so if you, if you don't trust people, if that's sort of your inherent is like, hey, look, I got to watch out for me because other people aren't trustworthy. Well, then you're going to find yourself feeling scared, angry, and sad more often. And maybe you should be like, maybe that's a good, safe emotion to feel because people in your sphere of influence are not trustworthy. I, I, that's a, that's a question people have to, have to sort of navigate on their own. But, but inherently that's going to be the outcome is that you will find yourself more frightened of the people around you. You will find yourself more angry with people who don't do what you want them to do. You'll feel your— find yourself feeling sad more regularly because you're surrounded by people you aren't comfortable with. And so I think a big part of this has to be to pay attention to that worldview, to how you tend to see people, and that's going to inform so many other types of thoughts you have during your sort of day-to-day interactions. Let's say that my worldview, it's not, but let's say my worldview is that other people are incompetent, right? I just don't think they're any good at what they do, or they can't do things well. Well, then when I'm at work and someone does a thing and I don't like how it's done, or, you know, I find myself seeing them through the lens of like blame proneness and seeing that through the lens of, look, I don't think people are competent. And hey, look, I thought they would screw this up and now I'm looking at what they've done and indeed they screwed it up just like I thought they would. Right. So.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinSo that lens informs the types of thoughts I have in those sort of day-to-day moments when I'm encountering other people's work or things like that. If I believe other people are dangerous, then it informs how I experience, you know, them when I'm on the road, right? And like when I'm driving someplace, it informs how I perceive them and the types of thoughts I have about them. So I think that, you know, absolutely my perception or that worldview informs the types of thoughts I have.
Leanne ElliottAnd are there any myths that you're busting in the book that people might be surprised by? I remember when the first time that we had you on the podcast, we talked about anger primarily and how things like boxing, it isn't cathartic. That doesn't actually help you deal with anger. Is there any similar myths in this that people are gonna be surprised by?
Ryan MartinYeah, I think so. That one's there. So the catharsis myth is still a biggie and one that I'm certain I'll get some pushback on. But again, we know and we've known for 50-plus years now that catharsis, that, you know, physical boxing, punching a punching bag, punching a pillow, breaking stuff, we know that's not good for you. One of the things I don't know if this is so much a myth is just a A thing that I've really relied on a lot lately is the value in having a mantra, like a phrase that you can go to in difficult times. There's some really interesting research about how that can have like a really positive impact in the moment. Just uttering a phrase that is actually— it works even if the phrase is meaningless or doesn't have any sort of significance. Just just repeating the word. In fact, the research shows that repeating the word one every couple of seconds led to decreased arousal. But if you are willing to come up with a phrase that can be sort of a guiding mantra for you, and to really— one of the things I would encourage people to do is really put some energy and some thought into what that phrase is. It can It can really serve you in difficult moments in a couple different ways. One is it can have that grounding effect that we talked about, but also it can serve as a little bit of a guidepost, right? It can tell you what to do next, and that can feel really empowering.
Leanne ElliottOne mantra that I heard through a coaching program I went on, and I loved it, and I stick by it, and I think especially being self-employed when you are you don't have the same level of control and influence in certain situations as you would if you were employed in an organization. And she said her mantra was, not my circus, not my monkeys.
Ryan MartinIt's a nice way of sort of removing the things you can't control or the things that don't necessarily matter to you and kind of taking that and putting it aside. And so, I did a talk last week for some people and I asked people some of their mantras and One of the things that I think is really interesting is when you listen to them, and this is one of the things that I personally have just reflected on, is when you listen to them, you see different levels of action associated with them. Like there are some that are really acceptance-driven. And so I used to always fall back on my sort of repeat phrase was, it is what it is, which is, but that's like a real acceptance type of mantra, right? You're essentially saying, hey, I, you know, this isn't, this isn't necessarily something I can do anything about. I'm just accepting the world as it is. I, I hit a point where for me, I started to feel that was a little disempowering, that I was actually at that point not necessarily owning what role I could play. And so when you, you know, this is what I mean by like, for everyone to put thought into what they want that statement to be and how it impacts their life. For me, the phrase that I go to now, which is really helpful in both my work life and my personal life, is do the next right thing, which is a nice way of, for me, pushing back on the fact that, okay, I may have made mistakes to get here, but at this point, I want to do the next right thing, whatever that is, right? And as long as I can, it helps me recognize, okay, so step one here is to figure out what is the next right thing.
Al ElliottYeah.
Ryan MartinAnd then now that I know it, that's what I'm going to do. And so it feels empowering while also offering some level of acceptance for how we got here.
Leanne ElliottThis is such a powerful and practical book. I think for anybody who is going into 2026 wanting to work on their emotional regulation, perhaps feel more calm and controlled, I can, I can absolutely see, yeah, people are going to love this. I'm also wondering, because I know we're going to have business owners listening that are going, oh, how could I use this in my business? How could I use this with my teams? Can they? How would you advise they do that?
Ryan MartinYeah, I think they absolutely can. And I think there's a couple of different ways that people can think about this. From a leadership perspective, I oftentimes find myself trying to better understand the emotions behind how I'm reacting to an employee or one of my faculty or anyone that I'm working with in a way that I think the value, part of the value here is for me to actually what I call diagram An emotional incident, meaning, okay, let me actually map out the stimulus in this case. Let me map out the mood I was experiencing at the time, the types of thoughts I'm having. And once I've sort of diagrammed that thing for myself, I now better understand the circumstance that I'm in and why I'm reacting the way I'm reacting. And I actually find myself sometimes doing that with on their side too, to the best that I can, trying to help understand, okay, they are angry right now, or they are feeling scared right now. Let's unpack why they're feeling those things using this model. And then that helps me better understand how I can relate to them and how I can react to them. And so if I can, if I can identify sort of what those points are, then it helps me better understand how to interact.
Leanne ElliottAnd what's the knock-on effect of that gonna be? If a leader is gonna invest in their own emotional regulation and their understanding of other people's emotions, what's that gonna look like for them as a leader? What are they gonna see?
Ryan MartinYeah, I mean, it's, to me, it's about motivation. It's about culture. And so, when you think about what you want from your employees and from your team, It's a positive culture, which, you know, cultures are made up of people. And so, it's a positive environment, and that requires not necessarily positive emotions all the time, but I would argue it definitely requires emotional understanding and emotional intelligence. So, there's that. And I honestly think a lot of times when we talk about motivation, what we're really talking about is Emotion. You know, motivation can be a little bit more than that. But by and large, if you're trying to motivate people, that requires an understanding of what motivates them. And that is an understanding of, of what allows them to emote in the ways that you most want them to emote.
Al ElliottThat was Dr. Ryan Martin and a masterclass in hacking your emotions. The thing is, I think we've all been so focused on managing our emotions when they explode that we've completely ignored all the tiny decisions throughout the day that could shape whether they explode in the first place. So, Leah, what do you think are the top 3 takeaways from Ryan's research that listeners can actually use?
Leanne ElliottThe first takeaway, stop treating emotion regulation like it's an emergency service, because Ryan's research is clear. By the time you're using deep breathing because you're furious, you've already missed 20 opportunities to prevent that anger. So start earlier. Did you sleep enough? Are you hydrated? Did you spend 5 minutes outside? These aren't wellness luxuries, they're emotion regulation strategies. Takeaway 2: your worldview is either your greatest asset or your biggest liability. If you fundamentally don't trust people, you'll find yourself constantly angry when they don't meet your expectations. If you see yourself as fragile, you'll feel overwhelmed more often. The hack isn't positive thinking, it's honest interrogation. And takeaway 3: leaders need to think carefully about the root of emotional incidents for themselves and their teams. When someone on your team is struggling, don't just tell them to calm down. Map out the stimulus, their mood beforehand, their interpretation, and their feelings, because understanding the full picture helps you respond effectively rather than just demanding they be professional. Culture isn't about positive emotions all the time, but it is about emotional intelligence.
Al ElliottAnd for all us business owners thinking, I just don't have time for this, Ryan would argue you're already spending that time. You're just spending it firefighting. Every difficult conversation, every person who quits unexpectedly, every conflict that derails a project— these are all emotional incidents that could have been prevented upstream, as it were.
Leanne ElliottRyan's book is called Emotion Hacks: 50 Ways to Feel Better Fast, and it's out on January 6th, 2026. Perfect timing for New Year's resolutions that might actually stick this year because they're backed by science. Not willpower. And I do have to say, I've been very lucky to have received an advanced copy of Ryan's book. And believe me, it is genuinely game-changing for both individuals and organizations.
Al ElliottAnd you can find Ryan on pretty much every social media platform as @angerprofessor. His TikTok and Instagram are particularly, particularly good. You should go and check those out. His website is alltheragescience.com, and he also has a Substack under the name Anger Professor. faster as well if you want to sign up to his newsletter.
Leanne ElliottWe will put all the links in the show notes. And remember, emotions aren't the enemy, they're information. The real question is whether you're listening to them early enough to do something useful with that information.
Al ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We'll see you next week.