Luana Marques | How to Transform Anxiety into Power and Make Bold Moves

Luana Marques: A pleasure to be here with you today, Serena.

Srini: Oh, it is my pleasure to have you. So you have a new book called Bold Move, all of which we will get into. And as you know from having heard some of my interviews, I will start asking you questions that have nothing to do with that.

And I know part of the answer to this question, but I wanted to start asking you, where in the world did you grow up and how did that end up influencing the choices that you've made with your life in your career?

Luana Marques: So I grew up in Brazil. I was born in a little town called s and then moved to Beluchi.

And I think growing up in Brazil, especially with a single mother and facing a lot of adversity, I think it built a lot of resilience, allowed me to understand the world in such a way that the world wasn't gonna be given to me. I had to go get it. I think that's why I got to bold move is because.

I never could imagine at 10 that today I'd be where I am, and so I'm fully resilient and I'm fully American. But that early upbringing, a sense of like love for family and culture and belonging, I think just made me better human being.

Srini: I, I know from having read the book that your mom basically sold brooms.

Did you grow up in a favela or were you like just a little bit above that?

Luana Marques: We're a little bit above them. Yeah. And now as story is interesting because when my mom came from a family that had a lot of, farming and financial stability, and then she married my dad who had pretty much nothing.

And then my grandfather really lost everything. I remember when I saw him in the last moment of his life, she was in. In the public nursing home, which in Brazil, I have to say is just awful. So this men went from like having everything to like gambling and women and losing everything. And as a consequence, our family became poorer and poorer.

And when my mom and my father finally split, which was amazing in many ways, it left us in the situation that, my mom to this day says, I don't remember those days, I remember a time when. There's this choice of eating and there's a potato, and I said, I thought to myself, I must have been 12 or 13 and thought to myself, You know what?

I shouldn't, like my mother and my sister should eat. And that didn't happen a lot. Because my mom is remarkable. This woman was like, I am just going to do it. And so she like made uniforms and then she made underwear and then she made, clothes for companies and then she figured out how to sell brooms and like she'll trail places and get this amazing sort of opportunity to just reinvent herself.

And eventually it stabilized and was okay. Just them a couple, two years there. They were like pretty tough.

Srini: Yeah. I guess the reason I ask that is, like when I've seen documentaries, when I've seen movies and having spent plenty of time in Brazil myself, I feel like for a lot of these kids who grew up in poor environments, you mentioned that you couldn't imagine where you'd end up today.

But I, I feel like what I've seen is the narrative of, okay, it's either, drug dealer, professional football star. And the ladder is unlikely for 90% of kids. So what is it that separates someone like you who grew up in the same environment, from somebody who ends up in a life of crime or drugs or any of the horrible things that end up happening to a lot of those people?

Because you can't really discount the role that environment plays cuz a lot of those kids are not given the same advantages. I know this because the school that I went to in Brazil, When we got there, we realized, wait a minute, these are like the richest kids in all of Brazil. And as when people will say, my parents are well off in Brazil, it's not my dad's a doctor.

It's more like my dad owns the hospital.

Luana Marques: That's absolutely true. I think there are a few things that separates, the pathways. And for me I was lucky enough, my mom started to date my stepdad's family had means, and they shipped me to leave with the person I considered to my grandmother.

And, she changed the trajectory of my life, not only by creating a more stable home front, but this woman was remarkable on being able to understand that, there was a different way to see the world. And she forced me to build what we'd known now in psychology. Cognitive flexibility, which is just a fancy word to basically say.

The way you talk to yourself, the way you see the world, it can be black and white I'm gonna mess up this interview and get me anxious, or it can be more flexible. And I, today, I know that she basically taught me two things to shift my approach and forced me to approach instead of avoiding things that allowed me to have cognitive flexibility.

So when I finally got out of Brazil, My narrative was no longer I'm poor and I'm not gonna be able to do anything. It was like, okay, life is gonna be damn hard. But there is a possibility of a different world, and I think some of those kids don't have that. In fact, that's why I do the work I do today in inner city.

A lot of my research is training paraprofessionals, so people with no education, how to train, inner city youth on the skills that my grandmother taught me that then I realized was science. Because to me, that's what they don't have.

Srini: Speaking of coming here those were some of the funniest stories I think in your book.

Talk to me about what you found shocking and how old were you when you came to the United States?

Luana Marques: I first came as an exchange student. I was 17. I came in my senior year in Brazil. And the first thing that was shocking to me in America is how nobody had dinners together like. People just sat in front of the TV and ate.

Yeah. And then my American family, God bless them, they were they are, I still call them mom and dad. I have a strong relationship with them. My American sisters are amazing, but they didn't cook, so that was the other thing, like nobody cooked. There was like the dinner, frozen meals, and I, so I wanted to cook the first time and I wanted to make the steak.

I'm Brazilian, I did a lot of meat. And I wanted to make this garlic steak, and you had to see their face the house smells like garlic. And I was like, of course it's great. And they're like, we don't really like that.

Srini: So it's funny you mentioned the dinners because I think that was one of the things that I noticed almost immediately after spending six months in Brazil when I came back was how rushed American life seemed.

And I remember like in Brazil, like you'll sit in a restaurant. For upwards of two to three hours. I, and I pretty sure I remember some woman telling me on the plane that, yeah, when they go to New York, she and three or four Brazilian friends will stay at a restaurant and they'll all make reservations at the same restaurant so they can just extend this dinner for three to four hours.

Why do you think that sort of sense of community is not more prevalent in American culture? I think.

Luana Marques: My experience I can speak for as an American culture is that you're thought to just do more. That's the only way to belong and be good in this is every moment that you are just in leisure, you're wasting that you could be doing something that quote, unquote, is more important.

And I think in the Brazilian culture, the sense of belonging as a community, as a family and it's consistent with the Harvard study that shows that, your relationships are so important. And for us it's, I don't know if it's because. It's a different way of seeing the world, but I agree with you, my, my five-year-old can sit for a three hour dinner without making a mask because he's totally used to it.

Every day at dinner we sit for probably an hour and a half as a family, and it's just what the culture tells you to do. And I'm honestly so nice. Isn't. It

Srini: really is. That's one thing I absolutely loved about it is that I remember just I would sit with this friend from Columbia and we would have a dinner that would last upwards of three or four hours and it'd be 11 o'clock at night and we're still there having started the dinner at around seven o'clock, which I don't think I've ever sat in a restaurant in the United States for four hours talking to a friend

Luana Marques: and think what you get from those experiences that you walk out, I don't know, but I feel like.

Energized and there's always like something you learned about that person that perhaps you didn't know or there's a level of support. It just feels to me like, I don't know, it feels to me like a value alignment. Like I, like it's an anchor in the world, those dinners for me. Talk to

Srini: me about one other thing.

Cause I think the funniest thing about your own experience here was the idea of bargaining when you shopped and I laughed because my grandmother had that exact experience when she went to Walmart.

Luana Marques: I grew up bargaining for everything. I saw my mom bargaining for everything. And when I first got to the US as an Asian student, you don't have a lot of money and I didn't have winter boots and, I needed winter boots.

And so my American family took me to the mall. There's a star called Payless, and so I choose the boots and I'm about to pay. And let me very honest with everybody, listen to us. I spoke very little English, like I, in fact, hit Chicago Herra when I first landed. I went toward the pizza. I was starving, and the guy said they only, they had pepperoni.

At that point in my life, I had never seen pepperoni pizza, so I said yes, and then my brain decided the pepperoni was peppers and peppers at green. So I went back and decided, Green. The guy just laughed at me, so that was my level. I share this because that was my level of English, and so I'm at pay less.

I have this boot on my hand and I asked for 50 cents discount. I literally did. And I only remember this because my American family just is like hushing me. They're like, no, no pay. And like they became so embarrassed and I was like, what am I doing wrong? Says pay less. Like I should pay less. I guess that's not how goes.

I went fast.

Srini: My grandmother did the same thing at Walmart. She like, they're scanning all the items. So I checkout and she's turning to mother. She's what are you doing? Why are we paying for all this without bargaining? She's it doesn't work like that here. Oh, I remember. So you mentioned that your husband was Mexican.

One thing I always wonder about people when they you marriages across two different cultures is when you're raising kids, how do you preserve and integrate, the, your heritage into your, the life of your child, particularly when that child is being raised here in the United States?

Luana Marques: What a wonderful question. So we had a lot of conversation. My husband is David. And David and I had a lot of conversations about this before having Diego. And so the decision started with even what name can we give to this child that can be pronounced in Portuguese and Spanish? The same, I had thought about the name and in the US and there's several names that we came up with that like the Americans just couldn't pronounce like HAFA and American Can't pronounce a hafa.

Correct. And so that was the beginning of it. Then we talked to our pediatrician a lot about how do we maintain the language, and since our son is born, David will only speak Spanish with him no matter what contexts it is. I only speak Portuguese to Diego and he just started kindergarten and he had to have remediation for English because.

His first language, Spanish in Portuguese, 1550. And it's amazing for us. Like he sits at dinner and we'll ask,

and if somebody's sitting there that's in English, he's can I have a strawberry please? And he does without thinking. And so I think language to means like the gateway to culture. The other struggle, like Jigo has been to Brazil three or four times to Mexico, three or four times. It's important to us that he girls close to his cousins and his whole family, which is not in the us.

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Srini: It's funny that you're brought up language of all things. Cause that was usually the first thing I thought of. I thought if I don't marry an Indian girl, the first thing to go will be language. And to this day I still can't deconstruct how I learned my native language. But the fact that he can switch between Portuguese and Spanish so easily, especially when the words are so similar, That's amazing.

Yeah

Luana Marques: I, both, my husband and I agree with language, so maybe the genetics helped it there, but he's very proud of it. He will tell everybody I speak three languages and he does.

Srini: Yeah. At the age of five, like I, I always have thought it's absurd that we don't teach kids foreign languages until they get to junior high.

Wait a minute, why don't you just start this in kindergarten

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when they'll learn it in a week? I learned my native language in six weeks and I have no memory of anybody ever pulling me aside and saying, this is what this word means.

Luana Marques: Exactly, because you learn by just understanding it, people are talking to you and then next thing you know, you're speaking it well.

Srini: So before we get into the book, I want to hit one last point. I know that you and both your husband are educators. You work in probably the most elite educational institution in the world. I'm curious, when you look at education systems both here and in Brazil, what do you see as the big differences and also given the sort of current state of education, if you were tasked with redesigning the entire thing from the ground up, what would you change?

Luana Marques: I've been listening to your podcast and I just love that you're hitting one of the biggest problems we have on the world with this question. Because so much of what we learn about ourselves in the world and our way of thinking comes from early education and I'm gonna hit it from the domain that I see the biggest problem, which is mental health, right?

We have a mental health crisis in the world and education. Education is where we could fix a lot of this. We're we teach kids about their thinking, perhaps in some systems, not all, but we don't teach kids about their brain, how their brain functions. I've been working with this inner city kids, teaching them what's known as cognitive behavior therapy and having them rip it apart.

And one of them said to me, I get to learn about sex ed and I get to learn about, eating healthy. Why doesn't anybody teach me how to regulate my brain? And that is where I'd start. I'd start from the age they in kindergarten. Kids need to be getting higher doses of social-emotional learning, especially the kids in less privileged settings because they don't learn it at home.

Their parents never were taught to regulate themselves. And what do we know scientifically, if you are on in your emotional brain, if you're on fight, fight or freeze, you cannot think critically. And here we are asking kids. We're scared. Sitting in a classroom to learn it is just impossible. And I know a lot of us are trying to really help schools think about social-emotional learning.

But it's just pockets here and there. To me, if I was gonna redo it, I'll do a federal mandate. I'll have the present. Basically say emotional health is so important that every educator needs to understand a little bit about the brain, so that every time a teacher is touching a youth, every time a janitor sees a kid in school, that they are equipped to be able to bring the emotional temperature down.

And this can give very simple, my five year old. I say to Diego all the time when he gets really upset, I say, okay, what part of your brain you in? And he now can tell me that he's in the back of his brain. He's emotional brain. I said, okay, can we label your emotions? What are you feeling like now?

Let's just slow it down. Creating a pause for a kid is so important because that kid's spinning, they can't control their emotions, like he's five. His brain is telling him there's a lying in front of him and I'm asking him to slow down. And by just slowing down the adult, right? Because to help kids, we have to regulate the adult first, and that's usually not what parents do.

Let's talk about that. I need to be calm, to be able to calm down my kid. And usually when the parent goes, is no. Do it my way. You just made your kid more anxious. Yeah. So it's a long answer. I'm sorry,

Srini: but no I'm laughing because I'm just imagining all these moments with my mother where I'm holding like a dish in my hand.

She was like, be careful. You're gonna drop it. And I was like, you realize you're gonna increase the odds that I drop it by freaking out.

Luana Marques: Let, that's this, that's a great example. That's what I'm talking about is like we've been talking so much about teens mental health in the country, how important it is.

But we are forgetting that we have to teach the adults manage, like managing that. Kids manage themselves first and that starts by training them on basic emotional health so they can have some cognitive flexibility so they can slow down their brain before the kid escalates and. I've seen remarkable results on my inner city work.

When you teach adults who regulate themselves, it's just, it's so powerful. So sorry to go so long. I just wanted this topic. No, not at all.

Srini: So I think that makes a perfect segue into the actual content in the book. What was the impetus for this book? What made you write this book and why now?

So

Luana Marques: I hit a place in my career. That for 10 years now, I've been training paraprofessionals in inner city trying to teach the skills to as many paraprofessionals who work with youth as possible. And then I hit this point of it's a drop in a bucket, like it's just not moving. And so I was really frustrated by the fact that.

It takes 17 years from science to get to practice. We know that only 14% gets there. And when we talk about inner city youth, we know that everybody that's touching them don't know the skills. So I was frustrated. And then I had the privilege of creating a course within Harris, and I was talking to Dan about this, and he's just write it.

And I was like, whoa. And he's I will help you get in, a publicist and all of this. I didn't know anything about the, publishing world. But then the pandemic, this was like as the pandemic hit, and then I got even more motivated because the reality was we saw anxiety increase, doubled up by c d C theater.

We had, I had teachers calling me saying, I am like losing it. I had so many requirements for patients, like p referrals for patients, that I had to stop having a wait list. And I was like, I can't just be in this bubble. I need to find a way to teach the skills because. My grandmother taught them to me and I'm sitting here now as a Harvard professor because she had the ability to say, Luan, you need to approach instead of avoiding, and I just felt if I don't do it now, we as the world are missing an opportunity to help ourselves learn how to manage our brain.

And so this is my call for the world to say, listen, let's like get ahead of this. Let's do prevention, early intervention before we have a bigger crisis on our hands.

Srini: Let's get into the actual framework because you broke this down beautifully into parts, and I love people who can do, take really complex ideas and break them into simple frameworks that.

Make it easy to understand. But let's start with avoidance. You say early on in the book that what I've learned throughout my life, clinical work and research, is that there's one common denominator that tends to get all of us stuck, and that is what I call psychological avoidance. Psychological avoidance is any response to a perceived threat that brings immediate emotional relief, but comes with long-term negative consequences.

So talk to me about, why we avoid things even though we get emotional relief that's short term, which is beneficial, but. Even though it's negative for us in the long term.

Luana Marques: Yeah. So I go back to the example of my grandmother when I moved in with her. It was a big city and literally I went from being super outgoing to avoiding talking to strangers.

I just, my brain basically said to me, people are not gonna like me, they are not gonna wanna talk to me. Everybody in this town knows a lot more than I do, and My grandmother noticed this and would ask me questions like, but why don't you invite friends over? You always used to have friends around.

I was like no. I just need to study. The school here are harder. And she'd be like, Saturday, we can have people over for coffee or tea. And I'd be like, oh no I need to like, learn more about this stuff. And basically every time my grandmother would bring up this idea of me going towards strangers, talking to people, having friends at our house, I would avoid and I'd feel better in that moment because my brain would say if I invite them over and they don't like me, then I'm gonna be like an outcast and it's gonna be horrible.

And so your question was why do we avoid? We avoid because we are biologically wired to walk away from anything that feels like a threat. Now that makes a lot of sense. If there's an ambulance just rushing towards you in the middle of the street and you just dodge. That makes a lot of sense.

That's a real threat. But the brain, although smart is very limited on the ability to separate a real threat, that ambulance for perceived threat, which in my case was my brain basically saying that every stranger is going to think that they don't like me. Once the brain senses threat for everyone, including you and anybody listening to us eat goals on fight, flight, or freeze.

And when it's perceived threat, we'll do whatever the hell it takes to not feel that discomfort. So we avoid it. Makes sense. Like biologically makes sense. The problem is, had my grandmother not interfered, I very likely would've had developed what's called social phobia, and I very likely would've changed the entire trajectory of my life.

Because what we know with that diagnosis is that people have less education, they make less money because they can't face other people. And although biologically avoidance makes sense, it just limits our life tremendously. And especially in the domain of anxiety. I can't tell you how many people call me.

They're like, get rid of my anxiety. I wish I could. We can't. We are all gonna have some level of anxiety. It's not Anxiety is the problems. What we do when we are anxious and if what we do is walk out of a plane because you're afraid the plane is gonna crash, then you can't get on another plane.

That's the problem.

Srini: We had Brit Frank here who wrote a book called The Science of Being Stuck, and she talked about the, there being the secondary benefit to avoidance. And I wanted to bring back a clip for Meor perspective on it. Take a, listen. Most people

Luana Marques: assu, like really associate partnership with loss of freedom.

If your system thinks that once you pick a person, then it's over for you, it's going to be highly incented to either not find someone or to pick a series of unavailable people. Because if that's the story, that's a big story. So how do you change the story? You can't change it unless you first name it.

So no, the first order of business is, no one wants to admit that there are benefits cuz all behavior, even suboptimal behavior is functional. Otherwise the behavior wouldn't

Srini: be there. So I'm curious about that. Your research seems to overlap with, that's why I wanted to ask you about it.

Luana Marques: I think she's right on point.

The reality is, Avoidance always works short term. So there, there is a benefit to behavior. Every time I didn't go to the mall with my grandmother, I felt momentarily better. That's what maintains it, that there is a benefit to it. The question is that benefit outweighing the costs?

And to where I go. But she's absolutely right. Everything we do has a pro strengthened pros and a cons I guess I would say.

Srini: Yeah. Okay. So that takes us nicely into this sort of next section. So I think, consciously, she and I were discussing basically the fact that I'm, 45 and single much of the dismay of an Indian mother who's basically only worries that her kids get married.

Yeah. And one of the things that you say is the discomfort we feel when we're confronted with new information that doesn't fit into our current understanding and belief system of the world is cognitive dissonance. And when you have dissonance, you tend to avoid. So how do you resolve that tension so that you break this tendency to avoid, particularly in the face, new information, confirmation bias, and all of the biases that kind of drive our behavior?

Luana Marques: So you brought up the fact that you're 45 and single, right? And yes, I can imagine an Indian mom being really not happy with this. So there's right there a little bit of dissonance. Yeah, a little bit. Having lots of clients from India, I understand the pressure there. But let's talk about you for a second if you don't mind.

Like when you think about going on a date or when you're dating, what does your brain say?

Srini: To be honest, there was a time when I'd lived at my parents' house for the better part of six years. And I got to San Diego and I thought to myself, all right, like finally outta my parents' house. Now the next problem to solve is to meet somebody.

And so every date was like, okay, I'm trying to find the person I'm gonna marry. And I realized, one, it just made me super anxious and nervous at every date. It probably freaked people out unconsciously. And a friend said something to me that always stayed with me. He said, you're treating this as a problem to solve instead of a process to enjoy.

Luana Marques: That is so great. I loved it. I love. Thanks for sharing, by the way. So your brain now had this problem, as your friend said, right? And every time that you went on a date, you were thinking about that date, you're not even present. What I hear is you're like in your head is this the person? What is a checklist?

How do I ensure this is the person? And then what happens is just makes people more and more anxious, right? And then the next date you go, I don't know if that's what happened for you Sereni, but for most people that I work with, what happens is they already have a prediction that date's not gonna work because of the way the person looks or there's a thing on their profile, or, you heard something.

And then once you get to the date and the person says the one thing that may be different than what you expected, it goes, see that doesn't work. And it makes you feel much better, right? You're wrong date. The only problem is what you're doing here is you're training your rank to basically say no dates are gonna work because you are never challenging.

In fact I'll share this happened with my husband. I, we went on this date. We met, matched online, and went on this first date and we

,

had this fantastic day. Okay? He's an academic and it was great. And I called my sister and I'm telling my sister about this and she goes, sounds like he like had a business meet.

And I was like, oh yes, definitely a business meeting. See, this is not gonna work. And I wanted to predict that this amazing date was not gonna work because it fit somehow in this. Like maybe he's academic, maybe this in my brain, wanted me to just not go on a second date with him and it would have been such a mistake.

It's like he's the best thing that has ever happened to me. And yet that confirmatory bias. I wanted to confirm that somehow he was wrong because he's too academic, therefore, he couldn't be fun, therefore, he wouldn't be a good fit. Therefore, and what would confirm for me, my belief, that I'm not enough, that nobody's really gonna love me, that I'm not good enough to be in a relationship, and I'm nearly almost lost this amazing man because of my stupid brain.

Srini: Talk to me about the different types of, behaviors that we categorize as avoidance. Because you say it's important to note that sometimes reacting isn't avoidance. Being assertive, defending yourself against aggression and speaking your mind respectfully in a heated conversation are all examples that come to mind of ways in which you are behaving in a reactive way that's justified.

So talk to me about the ways that, avoidance is not avoidance or what we think of as avoidant behaviors, and what are some other forms of avoid avoidant behavior.

Luana Marques: In the book, I talk about the three Rs of avoidance, react, retreat, and remain. And so let's back up from those three Rs for a second and just think about, okay, what makes it avoidance in, in terms of psychological avoidance and a problem versus not.

And it's really the function of what you're doing or not doing. So for example, a colleague of mine at a conference this week said to me, Whenever she get a request that she does not want to do, she has to respond very quickly because if she doesn't say no right away, then her guilt kicks in and somehow she end up saying yes to something that she really meant.

No. And so she responds to males, they are clear no right away as a way to help her stay true to her value and her desire in that situation. I, on the other hand, gonna tell you. I respond to emails really quickly to make myself feel better. So if I get an email that scares me, makes me upset, or whatever it is, I react.

An only function of responding fast is to make myself feel better, and that's what makes it avoidance because I'm not being thoughtful. I'm not being value driven. I'm literally just avoiding this comfort. And this happened three days ago. As I was boarding to a conference. I got this email. I texted it to my husband and his response with a bunch of emojis was, do not respond.

It is avoidance. You respond right away. Can you think about this email before you react? And and I was like, oh, God damn it. Yeah, I will think about it. I, by the way, I had composed a response already. I did not send because he stopped to me, but I was ready. I was like I'm so efficient. I just I hate this comfort like everybody else.

I hating his eye. So I tend to do you react to make myself feel better. If the function is to just bring discomfort down, that is avoidance, and that's why I use this example to contrast that the same behavior, responding fast for my colleagues totally makes sense for me. It's got me in a lot of trouble.

I'm sorry.

Srini: Don't you love it when people in your life remind you of your own work?

Luana Marques: Oh my god. With this book coming out, and it's such a vulnerable book for me. My husband's like this mural I tend to not to respond if I'll check in with him because I'm like, I react a lot right now.

So calm down Luana. Pause, pause for a second. Yeah,

Srini: I'll literally have people quoting me for my book and I'm like, oh that's what I should do.

Luana Marques: Oh my God, that's gonna happen

Srini: to me. I can see it. Oh, it is. Especially if it's your family members. Like I remember when my other book, audience of One came out a week after my sister calls and says, how's it going?

I was like, it hasn't sold as many copies as I thought it would. She was like, you're an idiot. She was like, you literally wrote the exact opposite in the book. That's what the message of the book is, not to care about that. No wonder it's not selling. You don't believe what you wrote.

Luana Marques: Oh, I love it. How me is this, or she sounds

Srini: awesome.

Oh, she is, she's brilliant. Let's talk about shifting guys. You talk say that shifting changes our emotions by changing what we're saying to ourselves in the midst of challenging moments. It's the ability to take new perspectives, such as considering what a friend might say to overcome challenges.

So the thing that I think I'm curious about is in the midst of a challenging moment, most of us are incredibly reactive. Like we go, there's no pause between stimulus and response. My mom is, particularly good at pushing my buttons. Just small things will just set me off and, and I'm okay, that, that reaction was completely unjustified for the situation.

Luana Marques: Yeah. So there's two things in your question that I love. The first one is this. Before we can learn to shift, we have to learn to pause. For your mom, it sounds like any engagement with her has, and we all have this by the way, people that, I think of those as like buttons all over my body.

And some people can press a button and it's not go to red, but there are people in my life that I know if they press, like colleagues that try to steal my work, for example, when they get close to me, I know very likely whatever they say doesn't matter what it is, it's gonna go right away. And so the first thing is like, What does it look like to pause, right?

Is it that before you engage with your mom, you are able to just bring that kind of love of mindfulness while she's gonna push a button and I need to be ready that she's gonna push a button. Now she pushes an orange button. You might be able to reign in and whatever it is that you wanted to do, she pushes the red button for all of us.

Guess what? It's over. The game is over. We're gonna react. Yeah, it's true. It's gonna happen. And so the question then becomes how big of a reaction, right? And I'll get to shift, I promise you, but like before we shift, we need to understand that like we have the ability to pause, right? And sometimes we might need some support, maybe you know, your sister or somebody else just going, Hey, wait a minute, like this can lead to little red moment.

Then once we get to okay, I can pause my brain a little bit and I'm not talking about red again because red is like impossible. Then it really is to change the narrative. There's something that you're saying to yourself, I guarantee it. I don't know if you wanna share in your own podcast or not, but I bet there's some conceptions about your mom that immediately will trigger.

Actually, I'll share my own, should not put you on the spot, and then you can share if you want. But I just came back from Brazil and I've dealt with obesity my whole life and I came back from her. I was getting dressed, I was on FaceTime with my mom, I was getting dressed, and I put this little thing, this tank top thing that like holds your belly in.

And she's did you put on weight in Brazil? And I was like, exactly. And I hadn't, for the first time I hadn't. And I had put this on because I was putting some dress that needed it. But I had to go, why do you do this? Like, why? Because what I, they heard is this, you're fat. I don't love you. Why?

I heard all of that and then I had the capacity. It was such a great trip. I was like, mom, why do we do this? That comment but my brain she will, she didn't say those things. And I know in families there was implicit things. Yeah. In fact, she went on to say, I looked okay and great and, but my brain.

Filtered. And in that moment it was so helpful to shift and be like, is there another way to see the situation? Maybe she's concerned for me and that's what shifting is about is. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm really mean to myself. Like I say things to myself that I'd never say to anyone I loved and I have control of those things, right?

They may come up, but I don't have to believe them all the time. And so that's really at the core shifting here. It's can we talk to ourselves the way we talk to those that we love? Cuz thoughts are not facts. I know it may be hard to believe, I don't think my mom thinks she doesn't love me.

I'm sure she loves me.

Srini: Yeah, my version of that is, is very similar. Mine is the fact that my hair is gray. Cuz everybody in our family turned gray by the time they were 20. So my mom's 80% of the time if I having a haircut, like literally it's like I walk through the door, even if I've been gone for a month and just land.

She's oh, you need to dye your hair. I was like, thanks mom. It's nice to see you too.

Very

Luana Marques: good. Those comments I think there's two sides of this conversation that I want people to notice What people, what we say to people has such impact on their wellbeing. So being able to shift your own perspective means you're gonna affect people in a much more positive way, in a much more rewarding way.

And the other one is the way we filter it just really hurts us, like it really does.

Srini: Let's talk about emotions in particular because I, I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition in my highlights. You say when we're. Acting based on emotion. We're not engaging our thinking brain, which can lead us to drink more than we planned.

Eat excessively, neglect our responsibilities and even be unfaithful to our loved ones. But then you say you can't have a limited set of emotions and still live a rich and fulfilling life. Living a human existence means being open to all our emotions. And I thought to wait, and I know you didn't contradict yourself at the same time, I thought to him was like, that's an odd juxtaposition.

So explain that to me.

Luana Marques: Oh, I love it that you caught that. That's fantastic. This is the deal. What we know scientifically is having depth and range of emotions is really important. What I mean by this is when I say to you how you feel, and some people might say I feel angry, or I feel anxious, but what else do you feel a lot besides anxiety?

But right now, when before I was talking to you Seren, I was, I felt a little anxious. I was like, I never talked to you before. Then I felt a little excitement and then I feel a little curiosity. I was like, wow, what am I gonna learn about this person and this podcast? And so adapt and range of emotions allows us to have a much deeper way of understanding the world, a much more healthy way to understand the world.

And the out piece that you're asking about is this, the sense of like, when we are acting based on emotions, now this is fi phyto freeze. This is when my five year old is throwing themselves in the floor because he has to watch more Spidey. And if he does, then the world is over. That kind of reaction to those emotional states is a hundred percent not modulated or not regulated by our thinking brain.

And the best way to see this is like the way that we do this in, in, in therapy that I love to, that I do for my son. It's if you had two concentric s circles coming together and one was irrational brain, the other one was the emotional brain. When you are in one end completely of the emotional brain, you're very far away from the rational, and when you're all the way in the rational, you're very far away from the emotional.

In the middle is what we call wise mind is when you can say to somebody, this just happened to me actually. I had a conference, somebody did something. I was really upset, and I was able to not just get to fight or flight. I was able to say, this is not okay. This is really hurtful for me and quite honestly, hurt so much.

I don't know how to respond right now, so I, I need to just walk for a second and think through this because I'm just so crushed and so I was able to feel my emotions. I was able to pause, I was able to say was not okay, and yet I needed space because I was very activated. Does that help color those things?

Yeah. No,

Srini: absolutely. Let's talk about alignment, because. This really struck me, particularly having, growing up in the Indian culture, you said, clinically one of the reasons I see most people being stuck is the confusion between values and goals. Goals are what we plan to do while values are intrinsic motivators that guide our actions.

And you talk about the fact that there are these things that prevent people from doing things that are aligned with their values, particularly other people's advice and culture. Talk to me about those cuz I, know, having, growing up in the culture I did, you're A certain set of values is drilled into you from the time you're a young kid.

It's like doctor, lawyer, engineer, failure. Good grades are basically just expected, not negotiable, that kind of thing.

Luana Marques: So aligning is based on acceptance and commitment therapy, and the idea here is really being clear what you value and then aligning daily actions with those values. So if you care about health, taking a walk, if you care about religion, being part of some religion system with culture sometimes twofold.

The first one is that we grappl with the set of very clear cultural values. And we never examine which one of them fit us as an adult. And what actually are the cultural values that really matter? For example, we talked about family before. We recorded as a value that for Indian and Brazilian culture matters so much.

That is true.

,

That is How do you define then family for you, and how do you align your actions? So for me, family is a value that's very important. It doesn't mean that I don't get to do other things, right? So I think it's really being clear how you define the value, which ones from the culture applies actually to your day-to-day.

And then prioritize in your life. Right before this podcast, I took an hour out for lunch cuz it's school vacation and my kid is home from school and I'm back to back the rest of the day. And so I blocked out lunch and I had an hour lunch with him. And that is aligning my daily actions with my values.

And because it matters, not because Brazilian culture tells me that family matters, not because American culture tells me that I'm not a good mother if I'm not home with my kid. Because for me, that lunch. Really means the most to me. Like his hugs, the conversation, we joke, and then I can be fully present with you here for another value of mine that matters, which is impact.

I want the world to be able to have the skills in this book, and so then my entire day is actually organizing that way so that culture is not dictating what I do. So that. My family or my work, I found myself at times before just doing what was supposed to be the right thing. I remember when I got promoted to associate professor at Harvard Medical School, a colleague says, so now the clock begins and you have to do exactly this to be full professor.

I said, I'm not sure I wanna become a professor. Of course you want you have to wanna be a full professor. How could you ever not wanna be a full professor? And I, I remember leaving that conversation with this colleague thinking, There's another way to define ambition and success maybe just for me, and I made up my mind, I don't know if I wanna be for professor or not, but I can tell you that's not the value that matters the most to me today.

Yeah. And so being able to separate that really helps, because then I don't have to do what my colleague defines a success, which by the way would not have been, this book would be writing another a hundred publications that nobody really reads. And so be honest, I think maybe there's a shot of this book having a little impact, just maybe.

Srini: I think that was the one thing that really struck me when you were writing about this, where you talked about the fact that the value evolved from ambition to impact. And yeah, this is something I wonder about world where. You can see basically everybody's highlight reels on display.

Where social comparison is basically just prevalent in our everyday lives. How do you maintain awareness of what matters to you without being just completely derailed by seeing all this other stuff? I

Luana Marques: love this question. I've given so much thought about this, like, why was I really writing this book and how do I stay?

On this mission, like I have this mission of creating a bold world where everybody can have access to real science-driven skills to help them regulate themselves. And so I, there are couple things I do. The first one is everybody that I meet, I try and they ask me about what I'm doing during this. I share with them like this vision, right?

And I try as hard as I can. To continue to only make decisions that are really aligned with this impact and never to lose sight that like it's, I want a global impact and I want for the people they're hurting the most. I want the little kid or the middle high school kid that is an inner city to say, wait a minute, if I change my thinking, maybe just maybe I can have a different life.

And notice I didn't see a better life on purpose because I don't think there's a better life. I think the best life. Is the one that every day you try to go towards, you know your values, and you do the best you can life happens, shit happens. It's hard and it's not always pretty. But for me, I've been trying really hard to just go, if I'm doing this, is this towards this bigger impact?

Is this goal? Is this value aligned, not goal aligned so that I don't derail? Because you're right, there's such a. I don't even know the word. It's such a pull to do more, be more, be bigger, do this. And honestly, right now, the only things I do, and I say yes, to have to be related to this bigger impact in a way that we bring the mental health crisis down.

And I am sure I'm gonna tremble and I'm sure it's gonna be hard, but at least for now, like I feel pretty anchored. Maybe because I just. I think this has been so hard for me. I wrote this in the book. I'm sure you read that people are so excited that I was writing this book about being bold and I have to call Confess You, like I sold the book.

I was really excited and in the proposal you talked about some of the struggles that I had grown up, and then I handed in the first draft and my editor goes, and Where are you in the book? I go, whoa, there's plenty, I avoid it. I totally avoid it. She goes, Luana. We bought the book because you have a story and I was so scared sharing my personal story, it's challenging.

I just, people that have seen me a certain light. This just happened yesterday. It was a Red Sox game and I was talking to somebody that I worked with before and I finally, such this person, listen, I'm gonna talk about my own trauma in my childhood. And he like fell into tears and he's you don't understand.

That would've helped me so much to know that you had actually gone through something. And I don't know, I guess I'm rambling to basically say the book is mission aligned so much that's where I am right now.

Srini: Let's talk about making this actionable because I see so many people who read books like yours.

I know you reference Simon Sinek. Start With Why in the book as well. And we've had him here as a guest and I always feel a lot of these ideas, sound good. They can feel really inspiring and new agey, and they make us feel good, but they often don't lead to actual action, which is what makes the bold vision of reality.

And so I know you've talked about the sort of four things that we need to consider when we create a bold steps plan, but more importantly, why do people get stuck in this sort of just dreaming and not doing,

Luana Marques: because we're running away from this scoffer as fast as we can I love this question because if people read this book and walk away with one thing, okay, just one thing, which is this understanding when you are waiting and choosing one of the skills you practice, so you could choose to shift, right?

Which is talk to yourself like you're talking to your best friend. You can choose to approach, which is opposite action. So whenever Giza tells you, don't go on that date, At least attempt to go on that date or align, which is daily actions with values. It doesn't matter which of the skills because all three of them are backed by science.

What matters is this to make it very simple. First, commit to identifying your avoidance, because once you look at it, you can't unseen it. Like once. I realize that every time I send an email fast was because I was avoiding, now I have a shot at changing my behavior because if I didn't know the function of it, I can't even change it.

So for anybody listening today, like just pause and try to just look at your avoidance. It's rubbing you from your full life. I was stuck in the last two years of my life doing the same thing. I used to do miserable, right? Because I was refusing to look at my reality. And I have to say, facing reality does not mean we like reality.

It just doesn't. But the, once you face your reality, you identify your avoidance, then pick a skill and just practice it for a little bit. Commit to it because otherwise all we do is buy more bit books, implementation science talks about this, like the psychologist go to the workshop and it's very excited, sits there for the whole weekend and then you get back to your office and you put the book on the shelf and you never look at it.

I would be heartbroken if that's what people do with this book. Like I really hope. That I inspiring people to just commit to one of the skills. Don't even try all three. If you really are stuck because you feel like your values are missing, commit to a line. They won't start to get you unstuck and little by little, right?

We don't build this back overnight. I don't have one either, so I don't actually know how to belt one, but I know you need to go to the gym to get stronger and that's what I'm asking people to do. Gym for their brain.

Srini: You actually offer four really great questions to talk about what you call the bold steps plan, which is, is it aligned, the why is it specific, the what is it doable, the how, and is it scheduled?

Sometimes I I wonder, especially given the world that we live in, where you get to read all these sort of stories about outliers the guests on Oprah, people on the show that people often will. Get where they get stuck is the doable part. Like I had a girl come to me, for example, who's literally didn't have a blog, didn't have an audience, and she was like I want you to coach me.

I wanna write a self-published book that sells a million copies. And I was like, I don't know how to do that. And I'm like, and I'm not gonna help you cuz I haven't done it.

Luana Marques: Yeah. Because regard for all or nothing, right? This idea of doable. It has to be doable for today. And I think when people think about doable, they think about the outcome, not the journey.

And I, you can't sell a million copies by just being in your house. My grandmother used to say this when I was on my shy moments and I wanted to go on dates and I wanted to date, and, but I wouldn't go out, right? She says, do you think somebody's just gonna knock on the door and ask you out? Like you have to be out in the world doing something towards wanting to date to actually go on a date.

And I think that's what you're talking about, this idea of can we define doable? Something that you can do today, this week that's aligned with your biggest why. If you know the why and you know the what, you have to make it doable. Otherwise, all we do is the same thing and expect different outcomes and that just maintains it's been stuck.

Srini: I appreciate the fact that you emphasize the idea of doable today because I think that basically reduces the scope of what seems to be this gargantuan thing that people find so intimidating. My entire career has just been a series of Peterson Sims would call little bets, things that I knew I could do within a week that just gave me enough feedback to determine whether I should continue doing them.

I love

Luana Marques: that idea. I like that. That's how I think exactly that you're testing, right? And you are creating like, this is what I want in the world. I'm gonna try this for this week. Then you look at the data, that's the other piece that you just said. That's beautiful. You look at what the outcome was, if it was consistent with what you expect, keep doing.

If not, throw it out and go to something else. Yeah,

Srini: absolutely. I could talk to you all day. This feels like a very deep rabbit hole, but in the interest of time, I want to finish with my final question, which is how we finish all of our interviews. What do you think it is that makes somebody hear something unmistakable

Luana Marques: showing up fully as you like?

Just knowing the parts of you, knowing your strengths as you, and you weakness and just being you. We all have a gift and the sooner you start to do, the sooner you are living your full most. Beautiful.

Srini: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners.

Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else that you're up to?

Luana Marques: Seren. First, let me thank you. Like you're such a pleasure. I had listened to your podcast, but of course never came here and so such a pleasure and honor. Thank you. So wonderful. And folks can find me@wwwdrluana.com and on social media Dr.

Luana Makis both on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter. And please connect and join the cause and send me questions. I'm delighted to just, launch in this book, but most importantly, I just wanna connect with people and create a community where we can be our boldest, most, most amazing selves.

Srini: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.

Luana Marques: That is unreal and I am so happy. That's the sound of Teresa Gudina random active helpfulness. We just told her the helpful SoCal Honda dealers will be stocking her school library with new books, and we paid her for sharing that story on the radio. And we can help you too, with a great deal on a reliable award-winning Honda like the 2023 Accord.

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