Key insights from the conversation

Understanding emotions

• Negotiation everywhere: every disagreement with willingness to reach agreement is a negotiation

• Emotions trigger stress: disagreements activate stress responses as humans need social connection

• Individual differences: most feel uncomfortable with conflict, but some personalities thrive on it

Before stress: building resilience

• Build "emotional cardio" by deliberately creating controlled stress

• Key techniques: Wim Hof breathing, temperature variation (hot/cold), quality sleep

• Visualize desired outcomes and emotional states

During stress: practical tools

• Breathing techniques: Physiological sigh, box breathing

• Emotional labeling: Name feelings to reconnect with logical thinking

• View emotions as messengers with important information

• Ask questions instead of reacting impulsively

After stress: release methods

• Physical release: Shaking, walking, movement, humming

• Self-hugging with gentle tapping

• Activities that calm your nervous system

More insights

• Emotions physiologically last only about 90 seconds if fully experienced

• Resistance prolongs emotions; acceptance helps them pass

• Crying is beneficial - a natural stress release mechanism

• Create safe spaces for emotional expression

Special considerations

• ADHD often comes with natural crisis calm abilities

• Counter gaslighting by trusting your own feelings

• Practice "peace negotiations" with yourself

• Final message

• Acknowledging emotions often resolves inner conflict

• The greatest gift is inner peace

• Work toward more self-connection, less unnecessary suffering

Full transcript

Here is the full conversation transcript, edited for clarity and conciseness. Here’s also the link to the conversation on LinkedIn live.

Roberto: Hi Lousin.

Lousin: Hello. Let's go.

Roberto: I am super excited to do this live with you. I was so much looking forward and I'm very grateful. I want to thank you for all the care, the preparation and the effort that you put into this. It really means a lot. And also thanks to the people who was already connecting; of course we're going to have the conversation, but at the same time we want to engage a little bit with the people who are there

Lousin: I see them live as well here on my phone. I wanna thank you Roberto, for, organizing this. I know you've been asking me several times and been very patient with my crazy calendar, but I'm really happy that you kept reminding me and that we're here now and making this happen.

Roberto: Yeah, and let's do an event which is worth investing one hour of our time, because that's the only thing that we are not getting back anytime.

It's our time.

I know you from, almost two year Lousin and you are a constant inspiration professionally and personally. I also want to thank you, here because, thanks to our conversation, I was able to do an amazing program, which is the high performance leadership with the wonderful and super general Josh Corer, Very grateful for that. It was an amazing experience and I thank you so much

Lousin: You are welcome.

Roberto: Yeah. Was the spark that ignited many more things. Thank you for that. And you're a professional negotiator. keynote speaker, trainer, advisor. You have many roles, and also you're a mother.

And my first question for you, so the people also can know a little bit more about you, what's your story?

Lousin: Oh my goodness, which part of the story? Crazy story. I feel like I've lived 55 lives already.

A professional journey in a nutshell. my first career was in finance. I worked on trading floors of investment banks and for stock exchange for 15 years. it was in that capacity that I had the privilege of being trained by some of the world's best negotiators in how to negotiate like a professional.

We learned everything from high stakes deal making, stress management, profiling, lie detection, neuroscience the beautiful art and science of human behavior. I loved it so much that I continued learning from them, from others, reading books, until I became a certified professional negotiator in 2014.

So it's been a while. now I'm, working as an independent negotiation advisor where I help organizations with their high stakes negotiations. It can be business negotiations, divorce negotiations, suicide negotiations, anything where the stakes are high. it's smart to bring in an external party to have a fresh set of eyes on it to help.

Roberto: Yeah. Starting from the world of finance where we think, everything has to be, rational and manage our numbers and all these things we have, we are having a life about manage your emotional

stress.

And I'm curious what made you, and of course we agreed about the topic.

What was the spark that made you think this is a topic that may be useful and interesting people to share?

Lousin: Yeah we all negotiate every single day, but not everybody realizes that. Many people think that we only negotiate when we, are negotiating a salary or raising money for a startup, whereas we all negotiate every single day. Every time there is a disagreement and you have the willingness to go to an agreement, you're in a negotiation.

So when you and I were talking about how shall we call this event, I suggested let's not talk about negotiation because a lot of people, don't realize that they are negotiators themselves. Let's call it something about emotions, which is directly linked to negotiation. But emotions is something that obviously everybody feels.

Based on the keynotes I've given internationally it's not related to any, language or culture or country. Everywhere I speak, as soon as I start talking about emotions and emotional intelligence, people's eyes light up and they are full of questions. This is a subject that a lot of people are interested in, and I'm happy to share whatever, questions, whatever directions you wanna go on.

Let's talk a bit more about emotions, about how to remain calm in stressful situations. High stakes negotiations are always stressful. Finance, the world I came from is always stressful, so knowing how to navigate life when dealing with stress, is a good skill to have for anybody.

Roberto: Absolutely. And there is one thing when you mention negotiation, you said, we have a disagreement and we are willing to do something.

Why is that so important?

Lousin: It's crucial. We all have disagreements every single day and now I'm not even talking about the internal disagreements, which I'm really passionate about, but let's just say disagreements with other people. It's every single day, and it's subtle. We have disagreements with our partner. We have disagreements with our employees. We have disagreements with our children, and a disagreement is nothing more than I want A, you want B. That's, it doesn't mean there is conflict, doesn't mean there is drama. It just means there is a disagreement about what we want. And then when you add to that, the willingness of coming to an agreement, now you are willing to talk, put in the effort to resolve the disagreement and come to an agreement.

And it's on in our lives every single day. With your partner, you wanna go on holidays, you don't necessarily agree on the destination. Boom. That's a negotiation. Honey what are we watching on Netflix? If you don't agree, that's a negotiation. Kids, time to go to bed. Ah, I don't want to boom.

You're in a negotiation. It's every day. with your neighbors, with your friends. I believe negotiation is such an important skill to have because when we become better negotiators, we are able to have less drama in our lives because we resolve conflict better, faster, with less stress.

Exactly. And how does that connect with stress and emotion? Because we see, we negotiate all day, every in different situation, even with ourselves. Now we, maybe we will talk a little bit of that. How does this connect with emotional stress?

Whenever there is a disagreement, there is some form of stress for most people. Most people do not like conflict. because we are social beings and it is wired in us that we need other people to survive. So as soon as there is a disagreement, there is this internal stress coming up that makes people uncomfortable It can be sadness, it can be anger, it can be frustration, it can be fear. Any type of emotion can creep in because it just makes us so uncomfortable. Now, on a side note, I also wanna say that there are certain personality types who thrive on disagreements, who thrive on conflict, who not only don't mind being in a disagreement, they actually benefit from it.

It gives them energy. these are the people that will deliberately go and cause. Conflict and the percentage of those type of personalities is much higher than we think. So all of us, we know these people. Some of us live with those people. Some of us are those people. I don't know how many people are we in the life right now, but there are people, who are in the live right now or listening later in the recording that have certain type of personality.

Think about a narcissistic personality disorder. Psychopathy, sociopathy, those people thrive on conflict. Everything we're discussing today is not for those who love conflict. It's for those who don't like conflict, who are uncomfortable with conflict, who feel the emotions coming up and don't necessarily know what to do with it.

That's what we're talking about Yeah, absolutely, and I would love to add one thing. Even if we don't love conflict, we may learn to like having conflict because we care about that. We want to resolve the conflict.

Exactly. That's what I often hear in my trainings. For example, when I say that I'm a negotiator, oftentimes I hear people say, oh, I don't like negotiation because I don't like conflict. And that's where I immediately wanna change the mindset and say, If you don't like conflict, that's when you have to become a better negotiator so that you can resolve it better, faster with less drama.

Roberto: Exactly. And also for my experience, when I went into a conflict, usually it was not so bad as it looked in the beginning it was like, oh, what are they going to do? Maybe the person is going to take a bottle and smash it on my head? No, this is not going to happen. But as you said, it's wired in our brain.

And on the other side, when you don't address the conflict, then things go.

Lousin: They escalate. Absolutely.

Roberto: How does this connect with what you said before you mentioned the stress before the conflict. Why is this story important?

Lousin: When we talk about managing emotions, how to deal with your emotions in stressful situations? And I wanna emphasize that if you want to become better in emotional intelligence, there are three aspects.

There is the part before a stressful event. How can you train your body and mind to deal with stress better? Then there is, during conflict, you don't necessarily do the same things during a stressful situation to deal with your emotions than you do before. And then there is, after a stressful situation, what do you do to get rid of all those emotions that are flushing, in your body?

So it's important to look at it in three different aspects. And not only focus on, okay, I'm stressed. What do I do? There's a lot of things that you could have done before so that stress wouldn't impact you right now. So that's why I would like to tackle all three angles. If we were to ask you dear audience, when is it that you feel that emotions and stress become problematic for you?

Is it during when you're feeling the stress? Is it then that you don't know what to do with your emotions? Or is it after a stressful event where you're full of emotions and you don't know how to get rid of it? Or would you like to learn what to do before and in everyday life so that you are more equipped to deal with it?

And maybe we can also just open it to any type of questions that they might have. So far, let's make this interactive. So please let us know when you decided to come to this event, what is it that you would like to walk away with? Is there any specific question that you have in mind? Just let us know.

As you said that no two identical human beings. Everyone perceives this in a different way.

Exactly. So that's when I start realizing that this is turning into a stressful situation. And then during, before, after. people perceive stress in different moments. It's not necessarily during the stressful situation. It's before. It's after.

How do we deal with it? Okay, so let's just go with it for chronological order. Okay. If you want to become emotionally resilient, if you want to develop your emotional muscle, I think that's the way we should look at it. For example, if you want to develop your cardio, you deliberately go and make your heart beat faster. Because you want to train it to come back to a normal heartbeat in a fast way, right? That's the whole goal. That's why we do cardio. We deliberately push the heartbeat faster because we want to grow that muscle so that it can go back to calm faster and better.

Okay. Now emotions is the exact same thing. We can train our emotional resilience so that we deliberately create stress, push our body in a fight or flight so that we teach it, that it can go back to calm. It's like the heart muscle. so now a few examples. What can you do to make yourself emotionally more resilient?

It is literally put your body in stress so that your body. Has some form of shock. So a few examples can be, certain breathing exercises. For example, the breathing exercise that is taught to us by Wim Hof. You might have heard of him, the Iceman who has broken loads of records doing crazy stuff and spending time in ice.

He has a specific breathing exercise that when you do it, you literally put your body in stress. It's in a calm and safe environment so that you teach your body to calm down better. you're training your body in emotional resilience.

The number two also, what Wim Hof is doing is anything with, rising or lowering temperatures, when you're taking a shower, you can go from very hot to very cold to very hot to very cold. That is a shocker, right? That is why saunas exist and ice baths exist.

We deliberately put our body in stress so that it builds its resilience. Exactly. A third thing you can do if you know a stressful event is coming up, it can be high stakes negotiations or anything in your own life, is to make sure that you sleep well.

We all know how much worse we react to everyday stressors when we had a horrible night of sleep.

sleep is really a crucial one because it helps you be ready and be prepared when you have to confront a stressful situation. But it also, after a stressful event, helps you to process and calm down, et cetera. So sleep is really an important one. We talked about, breath work.

We talked about temperature, be it extreme high or extreme low. Those are just a few examples that you can use to, in a safe environment where there are no stresses, create stressors, create shockers for your system to learn about how it is to go back to a calm, place. And I also want to emphasize, and this was fascinating research done by Stanford University that showed that stress is only, negatively impacting you if you believe it does. By shifting your mindset and seeing stress as something positive, which it is in this case, when we're deliberately adding stress so that we learn from it, it's actually a good thing. Stress in my eyes is neutral. It's not necessarily good.

It's not necessarily bad, it's just coming there to tell you something, inform you of something. Just like emotions if we know how to calm that stress down, if we know what to do to not stay in that high level of alertness all the time, that obviously is toxic and not beneficial.

If we know how to calm it down, then we don't have to fear it anymore. Stress, emotions, same thing. If you know how to calm it down, you don't have to fear it.

Roberto: absolutely. And there is one thing that you said, and I would like to add one thing. By the way, it is amazing, a lot, very so many things that there is all another question also asking about the breathing. But we go back, I would like to add one thing, which is when you say that this is just information, it's also my experience as when I am feeling the excitement and anxiety are exactly the same in our body the same signs in the body you are accelerating, maybe you're sweating or something. And when I see this I can think, okay, I'm excited. Or am I anxious? Because if I'm excited, it's because I care

Lousin: Yes.

Roberto: I care about this. I care about doing a good job, having a great conversation, having an impact, whatever. And if you remember how I started the conversation, I started, I'm very excited to do this.

Lousin: Yes.

Roberto: And then there is one other thing that we can do, and I want to credit, George Kohlrieser for this because this is something that I heard in his training, which is visualize the outcome before we can think about how do I want this conversation, this life, this meeting, this whatever, to go and we play this in our head again and again

Lousin: Absolutely. And it's not just a woohoo thing, right? It has been scientifically proven. Top athletes are using it. If you know you're going to have a stressful event, and it doesn't matter whether that's a work event, it can be a Christmas party where you know there's gonna be certain people that are gonna stress you out whatever it is, you can visualize upfront how you would want it to be. And then it's not about controlling events, it's about focusing on your feeling. How would you like to feel? And by feeling that before the actual event, you are programming your mind, and then there's this whole thing about energetics that is happening, that then, absolutely helps.

Yeah. Thanks for adding that one too.

Roberto: And you're setting the intention the day before, and you mentioned sleeping, when you're going to sleep. write down the goal for the next day, for example, is something that I do. What are my three goals, not many, three goals for tomorrow, and what do I want to express?

What emotion, what part of me I want to show? And this helps me with the intention. And then time things happen oh, everything goes perfect. sometimes things don't go as planned, but it helps a lot and mean

make you focus. Yeah. Lu one thing, and I'm super curious by the way, because there's a person asking to describe the breathing exercise.

Could you do a little, explanation or maybe even demonstration of how we do it?

Lousin: Sure. Happy to describe it. And I'm giving all the credit to Wim Hof. This is not something that I came up with. Wim Hof, again, Google him the Iceman. There is a free app that you can download.

This is a breathing exercise that all in all takes you about eight minutes you do 30 rounds of deep inhalation and exhalation in, out, in, out, without blocking anything. It has to be circular, it has to be smooth. just deep in with your nose or mask doesn't matter.

30 times

Roberto: Okay.

Lousin: Once you have exhaled all the air fully, you block your breathing so you stop breathing and you time it as long as you can. Okay, so in the beginning, that might only be 30 seconds. It can be 40 seconds, whatever it is, just as long as you can. And then when you really can't do it anymore. So this is the moment where you're putting your body in stress, right?

Because you're not breathing anymore. And when you reach the moment where you think you're gonna die and you really need oxygen, then you breathe in fully and you hold that for 15 seconds, And then you let it go. That was one round. You do three rounds. And you will see how amazing this is.

You will also see that the moment where you're not breathing it's expanding exponentially. It's crazy. Like in the beginning, you might be able to hold it only 30 seconds, 40 seconds. At one point you're gonna reach one minute, one minute, 30, it's amazing. then you do the breath in deeply and then you hold it 50 seconds.

That one is not changing, it's just always 50 seconds. And then you let it go. You do three or four rounds, you will see you're completely pumped, you have more energy. You've already done something difficult to start the day. So there's also this element of dopamine boost because you've checked something difficult.

So that is how the breathing exercise works, there's a lot of, research done by it. Like it's just crazy, the benefits; go and Google it, and learn about it. But this is one that I use different types of breathing exercises based on what I need. There are some breathing exercise that, to calm the body.

There are some to pump the body. This one, you're deliberately putting your body in stress to teach it that it's okay, that it's safe, and then it learns how to go from a stressful situation to calmness faster. So this is emotional cardio.

Roberto: Wow. Thank you for sharing this

Lousin: Lemme know if that was clear. And then, yeah, let's go on.

Roberto: Okay, time flies. Now we are just in the phase of the pre, we have the during and the after. So how about we go a little bit into the during and then maybe we go back or forth.

Lousin: Sure. Yeah. So again, definitely worth investing in your emotional resilience in periods of calm where there are no high stakes. Okay, then your body is prepared, once you are in the middle of a stressful situation and you feel your emotions are coming up, what do you do? A few things. Number one, same thing.

The breathing exercises can help, obviously not the one we just discussed in this case. You want to do, what I learned from professor Andrew Hubermann, the famous Stanford guy. So he came up with this.

I will teach you how it works. When you're in a stressful situation and you want to get out of it, you wanna calm your system down there is this breathing technique where you do an inhalation until your lungs are full. And then when you're full, you do a little inhale again with your nose, and then you breathe out slowly, okay?

And you always want to make, if you want to calm your body down, you want to make sure that the exhalation is longer than the inhalation. Okay? So I will demonstrate again, and you take the time to exhale slowly. Every time you exhale longer than you inhale, you're telling your body to calm down. Every time you inhale longer than you exhale, you're telling your body to pump it up. So it depends. Do you want energy? It's all about the inhale. You wanna calm down?

Roberto: It's about the exhale. Wow. Thank you.

Lousin: Thank you, Naya. The physiological sigh. Absolutely. That's how it's called, that's the name of it. Thank you. Andrew Huberman. Credit to those who deserve it.

Roberto: And she also mentioned the box breathing, which is an amazing technique, which you can do without anyone noticing. You can even do it in a meeting

Lousin: Yeah. Let's explain what it is. So there is the triangle breathing, or there is the box breathing. And it just means that the inhale hold and exhale are the same number. So we just said, when you exhale longer, you calm your body down. But in general, when you want a natural flow of things and calm your body down the box breathing is, for example, you breathe in for four. Hold for four, breathe out for four, hold for four. And then the triangle is you breathe in for four. Exhale for four, hold for four. Or the other way around. Breathe in for four. Hold for four. Breathe out for four. Or five or six, whatever is comfortable to you based on how advanced you are in breathing exercises, how new this is for you.

You just do whatever works for you. You start with four seconds, or you can bring it to 5, 6, 7. Really, whatever makes you comfortable. But we are not aware how powerful breathing is and breathing techniques are, how that can completely change us physiologically. So if in that moment we just wanna get rid of a stressful event, this is a very fast and very efficient way to calm, our body and mind down.

So that is one thing that can help. Another thing, what also helps is when you're going through all these emotions, your brain is in the amygdala, okay? your amygdala takes over and you're not connected to your thinking brain anymore. One way to reconnect yourself to your thinking brain again, is by putting a name on what it is that you feel.

Okay? let's say it's fear. For example, you need to give a talk for a thousand people, and you're scared. It might sound counterintuitive, but it actually helps when you speak out loud what it is that you feel. So if you just say, I feel stressed to go on stage, I'm scared to go on stage.

I feel the stress of going on stage, just that expressing it already calms it down. So this is what we call emotional labeling. Just express whatever it is that you're feeling for yourself, and then if you're in a safe environment, you can also share this with other people. But if you don't want to, it doesn't matter, then you just do it in your head.

As soon as you are using words, you are using the thinking brain and you are coming out of the fight or flight response, going back to the thinking brain, the neocortex here. So yes, putting a name on what it is that you're feeling expressing, it definitely helps to connect with the neocortex faster.

And then I also want to emphasize one thing. we are all scared of emotions and we feel things we don't want to feel, and then we say or do things that we regret. I believe we make a big drama out of emotions simply because we're not informed enough about what it is, and we don't realize that emotions are there to help us.

Our creator didn't create emotions just to piss us off. They're there as an ally. They have a goal, they have a message. So our goal is to see emotions as messengers. Oh, there you are. Fear. I feel fear, what does fear want to tell me? Every single emotion has a message. Just realize that every emotion has a message for you and is only there to serve you.

It's only there to help you survive. It's not there to annoy you, to piss you off, to make you feel ashamed or whatever. It's really there to guide us. So the more you develop your emotional intelligence, the more you can use that phenomenal ally that you have inside of you.

Roberto: I would love to add one thing because it connects beautifully with part of my coaching training, which is not to resist emotion because we said that what you resist persist.

So if you don't want to feel something and you avoid it. And it usually helps them the opposite. And instead, there's a also a beautiful part

Of a coaching exercise. When you listen to the emotion, we stay with the emotion. And what we find is that people are afraid of staying with the emotion. I say, okay, make it bigger. Make it bigger. And then what happens is, as you said, with the stress, it's a stress. And then usually comes a moment, maybe not in this moment, maybe later, but then you say, okay, I experienced that, I labeled it and then you take in the message, it's still with you. But then all the consequences and all the other thing are not there anymore. And then a question from Vikan who perhaps is connected with this. She asked, thank you, by the way, for asking this, brave question. What did we feel like crying in a stressful situation?

How can we prevent this? This is the question she asks.

Lousin: What if you feel like crying?

Roberto: Yeah.

Lousin: Now crying is a physiological response to sadness. So as soon as your body perceives something as a form of loss, it's informing you, there is a form of loss and then that makes you want to cry. Because by crying you are releasing a lot of stress. This is literally your physiological response to releasing an overdose of stress out of your body.

It has loads of benefits. So for everybody who was taught, man up, don't cry it's the biggest disservice that has been done to you, and it's time we unlearn that crap because crying is very beneficial. Now, of course, in certain settings, you might see it as a weakness to cry or not professional to cry.

So that is, one thing that is very different for different people, But then we go back to what we discussed in the beginning of this session what can you do beforehand so that you become better at emotional regulation so that the tears don't jump up out of nowhere?

If that happens, something tells me then that there have been a lot of tears in the past that have been suppressed, that have been pushed away and may, maybe not necessarily tears, but also frustration, all kinds of stuff. If you are a person where you experience, often the tears just come up, whereas you weren't even aware of what's happening to me that indicates that there is too much unresolved stuff. For years, you've been pushing things away. So then the invitation is there to come and say slowly, although it might be, painful or complicated, pull up the rug. Let's go and see what's there. And that can happen, with friends in therapy, in any safe setting where you can go and explore what is it that I've pushed away for so long.

But again, every time something comes up, see it as an invitation. See it as an emotion that is knocking on the door. as soon as you just acknowledge it by locking in its direction. by opening the door, it already calms down. It's because you've been ignoring it for so long that it comes and it comes.

So once it comes, it justsome people cry, and this is an important one by the way, tears are an expression of sadness, but often in certain cultures or generations, we've been taught that it's not okay to cry. So they push it up.

And then there are people who, when they are sad instead of crying, which is the natural consequence, they act in anger. They hit a wall, they scream because that emotional expression was accepted, and crying wasn't, exactly the same way for other people. There are many, people who instead of, when their boundaries are being crossed, which is the message of anger, instead of being angry, standing up for what they want or saying, affirm, no, that's when they start crying. This is the other way around. They've been taught that crying is okay.

Expressing anger isn't. So it's interesting to ask yourself when you were growing up, which expression of emotion was accepted, which one wasn't. That's where your lessons are. That's where the hidden part is under the rug, and that's where we can start exploring.

Roberto: Yeah, absolutely. this reminds me of how important now that we both have kids, how important it is to show them that it's okay to do all of this. okay for a father to be sad to cry. It's okay for the mother to be angry and avoiding these stereotypes because it does not serve them at all.

We have our luggages from the past and I think we have this responsibility with our children to show them how we can, behave in a way that is different.

Lousin: Our role as parents and caregivers is to create this safe space where they can go through their emotion and know that it's safe, that it's not going to be penalized, it's not going to be punished; a kid knows very well how to go through an emotion and regulate.

They just need us to be there and protect them and to hold that safe space. That's all. That's also what we want from a partner, really, as you said, there are no stereotypes. There are no gender roles in this. We're all human. We all have the exact same brain and how the emotions are processed and work.

We just need a safe space to express that in a way that we won't be ridiculed, we won't be punished for, et cetera. And what I want to add, and this is the right moment to add that as well. If you look at children, they go through an emotion. They just go through it. They get back up and go on with whatever they were doing because they know that an emotion is not gonna stay in your body forever.

It's us adults pushing it away. That makes it then stay longer. But if you want to know physiologically, do you know how long an emotion goes through your body? I'm sure you already know Roberto, but for the listeners, it might be fascinating to know you're making such a big fuss out of it as if it's something so scary or this invisible monster

But sit down with it and get to know it and you will see it's actually not a monster. It's more like a little, cute thingy that is there to help you. Now, what is an emotion? An emotion is your brain telling your body to get prepared because it's perceiving some form of threat.

Okay. Your brain's number one goal is to protect you. It's protection. It's survival. All right? It just wants to keep us alive. Now, whenever it perceives, let's say for example, a threat, okay? And it says, danger, boom. The brain is gonna give the order to the heart to start beating faster so that it can send blood to our extremities so that we can get ready to fight or flight.

Now, an emotion, the time it takes to come up and to leave again is only 90 seconds.

Roberto: Yeah.

Lousin: Ladies and gentlemen, can we allow ourselves to feel something for 90 seconds? It's because we don't wanna feel it, that it becomes longer and we tell ourselves stories about it and boom, you add another 90 seconds and another.

Now an emotion becomes a feeling a feeling becomes a sentiment. A sentiment becomes a story. A story becomes our identity. And before we know it, we're whining about the same thing for 30 years. It's just 90 seconds guys. if you look at children, they demonstrate this very well.

You look at the child going through an emotion, be safe go to their level and let them go through it. You will see in no time they're back to playing again.

Roberto: Yeah. And I would also like to add when they feel heard and when they feel seen, when they feelone thing that happens later I saw my daughter Valentina was very angry. I said, oh, Valentina, you're very frustrated. And she said, yes, I'm of course. And she was like, and then what happened? Okay.

Lousin: That's it, because you allowed her to feel what it is that she was feeling. Listen, every single emotion needs to be recognized and needs to be allowed to be. Okay. It's there. What you do with the emotion can be detrimental, and that's another story. But the fact that you're feeling it shouldn't be suppressed, who are we to tell somebody else?

Calm down when they're going through an emotion tell me this, have you ever told somebody to calm down or was going through an emotion and then they calm Has that ever worked? It doesn't. It might make them even more angry. Exactly. Because you're not allowing them to feel whatever it is that they're feeling.

Roberto: If you label it even if you are labeling it wrong, allow them to feel whatever it is that they're feeling and give them the opportunity to correct you, which is still better than pretending it's not there. Trying to push it away. Or even worse, just ignoring it. Yes, exactly. Maybe you say, okay, you're very angry. No, I'm not angry. I'm disappointed at you. Oh, okay. You're disappointed. What happens? Exactly. And then you start a conversation. It's not about shutting up, it's about what's happened to you. And I'm curious, and I want to hear about you. Absolutely.

Lousin: It's really, we are making such a big fuss out of emotions. It's just because we don't know them. It's the unknown. That's it. Become familiar with it, embrace it. Be curious about it. Go inwards. Like after this conversation, I invite everybody who's listening right now just when you're shut off, take two minutes. Two minutes to just go inward and say what it is that I feel right now. That's all. And in the beginning that might be weird because you've never asked yourself that question. But the more you do this, the more your body will trust you with telling you what's happening, and then you will also feel the nuances because you can feel too, at the same time, right? You can feel anger and sadness. So it's very interesting to learn about what it is that I'm feeling and what is the message behind it.

Roberto: Thank you, Lousin, for this example, We have 15 minutes. I'm curious, very curious about, what to do after,

Lousin: Yes, absolutely. Let's address that as well. Once we've been through a stressful situation and we're out of it, the situation is over, but we still feel those emotions. It's not something that you can just push away and go on with life because the residue is gonna stay in your body. You want to get rid of it.

We see this in the animal kingdom. When you look at animals, who go through a stressful situation, it can be a fight with another animal, running away from an animal. whatever it is. Once the situation has calmed down, if you observe them, you know what they do?

They shake it off, they shake it off. So literally moving your body allows those emotions not to get stuck in the fascia, but to get out. So shaking is a great way to get rid of, stressful situations.

Roberto: It's like this,

Lousin: Any way you want.

Roberto: Any movement

Lousin: If you want, put on music and shake on, dancing helps. Absolutely, shaking helps. Dancing, helps any type of body movement helps without it adding stress.

Roberto: Walking outside.

Lousin: Walking, absolutely. 100%. Humming is another one.

Humming any type of song you want, just hum, that vibration you're creating in your body through humming helps to calm the nervous system. Anything that helps you calm the nervous system, anything you enjoy doing that can be taking a hot bath, that can be breath in certain essential oils that can be doing a meditation, that can be, so this is now the opposite of what we said about the before.

Right now you wanna calm your body down, so you wanna make the, exhale longer. Anything that makes your body feel safe. Another thing that really helps very fast, and this can be done during as well, is when you give yourself a hug like this And you tap, For those watching you just give a hug and you give taps.

What helps is maybe you can add something by, telling yourself, I'm safe, I'm good. I'm allowing myself to feel what it is that I feel, and boom, that helps immediate.

Roberto: Wow. Thank you so much, now you're giving scientific proof I will tell my wife this is by way a joke because sometime when I'm, when I feel frustrated or something, I say, okay, I have to take a walk. And I go outside, literally go outside five minutes, take a walk and come back and what people think sometimes at least was my experience that I want to get away from the situation.

And in the end, what you're saying is no, you don't want to get away. You want to be in your best state so you can go back again.

Lousin: It doesn't matter what the reason is. The intention in both situations is good. Walking away literally can also be a good, thing to do if it becomes too much. And, if I stay in this moment, I'm gonna say or do something that I'll regret. So I'm pulling myself out of the situation.

I'm taking a break. I'm taking a walk. That's very good. You know how often it has happened to me in high stakes negotiations where the tension was going up and I knew this person is pissing me off so much that I better pull myself back. So I said, listen, this truly matters to me and I wanna be at my best to resolve this in the most ethical way. That's why I am calling in a break.

Roberto: Oh wow. That's great. And you are also saying why, so you say, I care because I care. I want to take a break because I know myself. You're talking about yourself. You're not talking about the other person.

This is what I need. I need this is what is happening because I want this.

I'm going to do this. Is it okay? This is amazing. Thank you.

I would like to add one thing, which also connects with, what you said about the 90 seconds. when we feel. Your emotion growing up and you say, okay, I'm going to say something that I don't like.

What sometimes I do is ask a question. this gives me the time to breathe, to think about what I want to express, maybe to touch one of my things that I have here to remember, something that I want to express. This is another thing that we can do, ask a question because we don't have all the answer by the way.

And maybe asking a question, we clarify something and it's not that big deal.

Lousin: Yes, but also just having the courage to say, let me think about this. I don't have the answer right now. I need to reflect on this. Those are all valid answers.

Roberto: Yes, exactly.

Lousin: Shall we go to the audience?

Roberto: Yes.

Lousin: So audience, let's open up the floor to you. Based on everything you've listened to, is there anything you would like to hear more on?

Is there any feedback? Is there anything you've already experienced, you're already doing? Let's open the floor to you and let me know, how else we can help. Oh, and I also wanna ask in the audience, is there anybody who has ADHD. Because ADHD people have a natural talent of remaining calm in crisis, also neurologically proven.

So when we have been, diagnosed with ADHD or we have ADHD and we're not even aware of it, we tend to have a natural talent for remaining calm in crisis because our brain is already used to working in high stressful situations. And there are people who even unconsciously create stress to perform.

Think about all the last minute deciders, who need last minute stress, who even from high school, they waited for the last minute to hand in that test to learn for that exam. It's an unconscious way of your body to create a deadline, meaning stress, so that you can then perform. And this again proves that stress is not necessarily a bad thing.

Stress pushes you into performance. So it can definitely also help you, it's really the way you look at it. As long as you know how to get out of the stress once the exam is over, once the threat is over, how can you calm yourself down? For example, through the things that we said, then there's absolutely no problem and even stress is there to help us and protect us and keep us in survival.

Yeah, if you have ADHD, you have a little superpower in knowing how to remain calm in crisis. Does this resonate with anybody in the audience?

Roberto: Yeah. And someone is saying, you're explaining me, that's me, it's not good or bad, it's how we are. So knowing how we are, how our brain works might help you because maybe someone can tell you, oh, you are a bad person because you are procrastinating. Maybe you're not procrastinating.

Maybe it's how I do my best. like I saying, the morning person, nine person, what's the best? There is no best. You know who you are, how you function, and then you adjust your schedule, your things to work at your best, not to what expectations you have from other people. Exactly.

Lousin: And we're all different. You have the early birds and then you have the night owls. You have to stop judging people, stop wanting us to be different than how we are, and just look at us naturally. What do I naturally do well, and then accept ourselves as we are, and then try to build life around us.

And it's not easy. And I know because I'm a chronic night owl. I love sleeping late. I love the silence of the night. And I get a lot of things done. Like most of my business I have built after eight 30, once the kids were asleep. That's just how I work. But society has been built in a way that gives more credit to early birds and also been built in a way that from the second you're a parent, it's done being a night owl and waking up late. You have to wake up very early, take care of the kids, et cetera. It messes up your natural rhythm.

Again, self-awareness is super important. Acknowledgement of yourself, your skills, your emotions, all those things are just so important. it's such an inside job. You don't need anybody else. You don't need a book, you don't need a training. You just need self-awareness and the curiosity of wanting to go inward, understanding what's happening, look at it with empathy, with compassion, give yourself some credit for everything you're doing well, and stop beating yourself up.

Roberto: Yeah. And I see there are a lot of questions already, so let's, of course we can go on for two hour more. It's super interesting, by the way. Thank you. Listen. So let's see. First question, do we shape our emotion or do secretly shape us?

Lousin: Deep question.I don't think our emotions shape us as long as we don't identify with our emotions, emotions are just messengers. We need to acknowledge them. We shouldn't put them on a pedestal or give it a story or whatever. There are some people wear their emotions like a badge of honor, no need.

So I don't think our emotions shape us. The story we tell ourselves about our emotions shape us. the good news is that you influence the stories because you make them up. So make up a good one.

Roberto: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you also for asking a question from Kelly. What? How about to deal with gaslighting? I was raised by a narcissist in family and she was and was not allowed to have emotion and now as enabled, I still having a lot of challenges, allowing me to have emotion. Thank you, Kelly, for sharing this with us.

Thank you for sharing that with us. I have a lot of empathy for what you've been through. I have been, raised by narcissist as well, not my parents, other members of the family. I have worked with many narcissists and we could do an entire hour, Roberto, about narcissism because this is a very vast, subject.

Lousin: So the question is how to deal with gaslighting. First of all, for those who don't know, what is gaslighting? Gaslighting is people telling you a version of a story that is not how it went to make you doubt yourself about the reality of how you experienced this. This is the opposite of what we said, of allowing things to be and acknowledging, okay, this is like a deliberate, shifting the table and making you believe that whatever it is that you are feeling is not real, whatever you perceived is not real.

And it really makes people literally go crazy because you doubt your own sanity. When that's done, it's super toxic. So the first thing is to be aware of it. Read about it, know what gaslighting is, and start to recognize it when there are people in your environment doing it. Learn about narcissism. I invite everybody to learn about narcissism because I guarantee you that you have at least one person in your closed environment that has, narcissistic personality disorder or highly narcissistic traits.

You know why I've studied this in detail because I was fascinated by how many narcissistic people I had in my surroundings, and I wanted to learn about it because the official number say it's only one to 2% of the population, but that is one to 2% of the population that has been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

One of the main characteristics of these people is that they don't think there's anything wrong with them. They think they are these amazing beings. So why on earth would they go in therapy and get a diagnosis? They don't. So the majority of people are never diagnosed, therefore, they're not in the official numbers.

Doesn't mean they're not narcissistic. You see what I mean? And I spoke about this to Dr. Ramini who is an amazing, world expert on, this topic. She's written a book about it. She teaches at university about it. She has networking groups about it and teaching and helping people who go through narcissistic abuse.

She said no, the real number. And that came out last May in a scientific study, said that if we just get rid of the label for a second and look at, if you sum up all the narcissistic traits, all the typical patterns and behaviors, and say, okay, this goes in the narcissistic corner.

You know how many people have it, you know how many people have highly narcissistic traits on that consistent basis. Don't be scared. One out of six people.

Roberto: Wow.

Lousin: One out of six people has hiding narcissistic traits. So I invite everybody to learn about narcissism so that you know what it is, so that you can, if you are one yourself, become aware of it and limit the damage you might be doing to other people without knowing it.

If you're surrounded by one, learn about it so that you can protect yourself from this type of behavior, because in certain situations it can be highly toxic or even dangerous.

Roberto: Thank you. I will read it, by the way.

Lousin: What can you do about it? Become aware of it. Become aware of what gaslighting is. Stay extremely connected to your own feelings give yourself a double dose of acknowledgement of what you are going through.

Every single emotion that we feel is legitimate. Your brain is not creating it to mess with you. It's real. So acknowledge it, allow it to be and have the courage to say, this is what I feel, this is my truth.

Roberto: Yeah. And there is one question actually maybe connect with that. How can we stop this unconscious thing, like you said, from delaying through the deadlines or fear of failure holding me back.

Lousin: Oh, that's three questions in one. Always start with accepting what is before we try to change anything first, acceptance of what is every single behavior you have. Even the toxic ones is what your body, what your mind believes is beneficial for you. They're all there for a reason.

If you perform better under stress, your body is gonna unconsciously create stress to help you perform better. It's actually a beautiful thing, so befriend your emotions, befriend your actions so that then you can say, is this still serving me? Because at one point it was, is this still serving me?

And if not, why do I want to change it and how can I change it? If you do it in that way, meaning what I call peaceful change.

Roberto: Yeah.

Lousin: It becomes much easier than if you wanna change through frustration or because you're fed up with something, et cetera. And also give yourself credit and give yourself time and give yourself empathy for if it doesn't work out.

For example, I'm a night owl. I've been trying to change that for years. My son is now 13, so it's been 13 years that I know it would be better if I would change my sleeping pattern, to wake up earlier and sleep earlier. And yet I still struggle with it. And I know every single time I sleep before midnight or even before 11, it's so fantastic.

The next day I feel like a whole new person and oh my God, this is amazing. And then it's evening and boom, my energy comes and I have all these ideas and I wanna do this and I wanna do that. I'm like, okay, five minutes this, five minutes that. And boom, before I know it, it's midnight one, one o'clock. And I'm like, oh, shit.

But instead of, beating myself up, I'm like, okay, I'll try again tonight. I'll try again tonight. And then you just go with it.

Roberto: Thank you Lousin, for this example, I want to ask a question for me, that last minute question. There's one thing that popped into my mind when you said peaceful, which was the peace negotiation with yourself that you talk about, sometimes. Could you share a little bit about this?

Lousin: I think the biggest gift we can give ourselves is having peace negotiations with ourselves. how does that work? You allow yourself to feel what you're feeling and go in with the curious mindset of understanding what's happening. What is it that I'm feeling?

What is it that I'm doing? Why am I doing it this way? you negotiate with yourself just like we would negotiate with other people with the same skills, meaning empathy, curiosity, listening skills, observing, trying to understand the need. Everything that I teach about how to become a better negotiator, you turn it inwards and you do it with yourself.

One way I like to do it is, I'm a board advisor. I work a lot with boards. So in my mind I create this imaginary board where it's all versions of myself, and we have a board discussion, there is the child version of me, the teenager, the rebel, whoever it is in that moment that needs something, we talk about it together and say.

What is it that you need? So this is like ultimate form of acknowledgement of what's happening inside, because that is the fastest way. To calm things down. Everything that's happening in your system is just asking for your attention. Sometimes attention alone solves the whole issue.

You don't need to be a genius. You don't need to have the answers. Just acknowledge that it's there and listen to what it is that it's telling you. Just by your attention alone, you can solve and fix a lot of things. And then I also wanna invite the people. I have loads of, podcasts and videos and lo loads of things on my YouTube.

It's all free. It's all there. Just go have a look and learn and apply it to yourself and teach your children. The biggest gift we can give ourselves is inner peace.

Roberto: Thank you so much.

Lousin: And I also wanna thank the audience, whoever is still here with us.

Roberto: we still have 47 people connected,

Really. Oh wow. Thank you.

Lousin: Thank all for being here. If there are any other questions, you can send me a dm, I will try to go through it, and answer if there's anything I wasn't allowed, didn't have the time to answer or you didn't wanna ask in a group setting, just send me a DM and I'll do my best to answer.

Roberto: Thank you so much, Lousin I have one last question: to wrap up, which is, what would you like to see more and less in the world?

Lousin: Oh wow, that's a beautiful question. What I would really love to see more is more people connected to themselves and the realization how incredibly powerful they are. Like people, whoever is still listening to this on the live, you are so powerful and all I wish is for you to realize that, to feel that, to see that, and then to express that, in life.

And what I would like to see less of is suffering. I think there's a lot of suffering in the world, which is, unnecessary because people don't have the tools or the techniques or the knowledge or the people in their lives to teach them how to, overcome suffering. And this is something that I've experienced a lot in my own life.

And I know how horrible it feels. And I hope, we can together through all the actions that we do, lower the level of suffering in our world.

Roberto: Thank you Lousin. 100% support that.

Lousin: You are very welcome. Thank you, Roberto, for organizing this. Thank you. Everybody who was live and everybody who was watching this. Let's keep the conversation going. Please do one thing that you got out of this. Apply it. Theory is great, but application is even better. Share it with somebody else.

Help somebody else go through their emotions, become more resilient, and let's make a better place in this beautiful world with less suffering.

Roberto: Thank you, Lousin. Thank you for your presence, for your preparation, for all your care. Bye bye to everyone

Bye Let's keep in touch.

Lousin: Bye.

Where to find Lousin and her work

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