Cedric Bertelli  
I mean, fear is such a major player in our lives. And then we wonder why we're so tired at the end of the day, then we then we wonder why we use and abuse alcohol or other stuff? You know? Yeah, it's it's, I mean, it's not the life really

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to love as a business strategy, the podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories from real people about real business about real life. And my guest today is Cedric Bertelli. Cedric is a recognized expert in emotional resolution, a revolutionary approach to emotional healing that has transformed the lives of countless individuals. As the founder and director of the emotional health institute. Cedric has dedicated his career to helping people overcome stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD and other negative emotions using powerful tools and techniques. After a drastic career change. Cedric began his journey into motional resolution in 29, sorry, 2009 in his home country of France, and since then, he has honed his expertise and developed a deep understanding of how emotions function in the human psyche. His work has touched the lives of people all over the world. And at EHI, Cedric and his team provide training and education to mental health professionals, coaches, and educators, helping them to integrate emotional resolution into their practices. In addition, Cedric works directly with clients providing individualized support and guidance to help them overcome emotional challenges, and improve their overall well being with a passion for empowering individuals to take control of their emotional health. Cedric has transformed the lives of countless individuals and his  his expertise continues to drive innovation and progress in the field of emotional healing. And I am so excited to talk to you today. Cedric, welcome to the show.

Cedric Bertelli  
Thank you, Jeff, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jeff Ma  
Cedric. Emotional resolution is so so intriguing to me. And we talk about love a lot here on the show, we talk about leadership and behaviors. And at the core of all of that, there's always the emotional component. And a lot of times, it's hard to kind of segregate or differentiate our emotional kind of needs and tendencies, from the logical needs and the tactical things that we need to do in a workplace. So I'm very excited to dive into everything you have to share around that topic. Before we do. I want to just hit you a little bit around your journey. So your passion, can you share a little bit about what gets you up in the morning? And how that came to be in your life?

Cedric Bertelli  
That's a great question. What get me up in the morning, it's many, many things actually. My family, my partner and, and our two daughters. That's, that's an immense source of joy for me. My work, which doesn't feel like work, it's it's something that I do more than pleasure than, than anything else. And, and just the pleasure to to walk the walk the word really. That's kind of what can we up in the morning. Now it's, for as far as I know, we only have one life only have one life. So might as well live it with intensity and an intention. And that that can be up with joy. Evan, when some days it's not easy, even when sometimes in session, I hear stuff that that you don't want to hear. There is still Yeah, this this, this thirst for intensity and for life.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. Thank you for sharing that. And I want to dive into almost immediately here because I know there's so much I want to cover. But can you kick us off at a high level maybe? Because, you know, emotions go in a lot of different direction. And one of the ones I wanted to focus on today is not necessarily an emotion of itself all the time, but we deal with fear a lot in our workplace. And in life, to be honest, so can you kick us off with just, I guess, a primer around fear and emotions as a whole in as they pertain to how we show up at work?

Speaker 1  
Yeah. I think I'm one of my, one of the chapters of my life is I'm not a therapist, I didn't start as a therapist, I started working in, in hospitality business, I was working for the Ritz Carlton for many years. And I was director of restaurants for them. So I had, like over 100 employees. And it was, it was very interesting to see them. When you manage that amount of people. You do not manage people, you manage the emotions, you're trying to always create, if you want to obtain good result for your guests and your team, you always try to purchase staff, your employees in an environment where they will thrive. So the coworkers the task, the type of client, because if they thrive, if they don't feel triggered, they're going to give the best of themselves. They're going to work for joy. Now, to talk about fear, if we look at our life currently for us, let's say adults, yeah, a lot of the fear that we are experiencing, and for me, anxiety is a fear. Depression is a bunch of fears. This fear that we are experiencing in our lives, most of the times are not congruent with what our life is. A lot of the fear that we are experiencing are not actually relevant to what our life is providing us with. Our job emotional resolutions, is to resolve these fears that are not congruent with our current reality. Because when there is no fear or less fear, then we talked about love earlier, when there is less fear there is more love. There's more flow. There's more thriving, versus more pleasure. And that's what we're looking for. We know today how disruptive, emotional pattern are created. We know how fear fears are maintained in our life. We understand that recurring anxiety is recurring fear, recurring phobia recurring depression. All it is, is an obsolete prediction from the brain. Our brain, has many quality and many jobs the one of the main job of the brain is to predict based on past experiences. We also understand where fear recurring fear come from, at the beginning of each one of our recurring fear is always an incident of trauma. Now what is trauma, trauma is just an instant, and that hold too much stress, physical or emotional for us to take on at the moment when we live it. And what is happening during this instant of trauma, it's a moment of dissociation. Basically, our cognitive mind is dissociating. The cognitive mind has also many roles. But one of the main role of the cognitive mind is to filter information. What you and I were aware of right now is about 2000 bits of information per second. That's what you're aware of what I'm aware of too. And we process that as a speed of about 150 miles per hour. At the same time, your subconscious mind as a potential to gather 400 billion bits of information per second. And to process this information at the speed of 150,000 Miles power. Wow. So when there is a traumatic incident, the cognitive is shutting down so we don't suffer too much during this incident of trauma. But when the cognitive shut down in this moment of dissociation, the subconscious gather an immense amount of information available during this instant of dissociation. And this information this information is purely sensorial. What you smell what you sense what you see what you taste what you feel in your body during this instance of dissociation. Later on, when your subconscious find itself in a situation when it recognizes one or several elements that was present during one of your traumatic instance, it is going to generate, it is going to predict what physical sensations you're about to feel in your body is going to generate the same physical sensations that were felt in your body during a specific trauma. This physical sensation recall that somatic markers or interoception. That's how we know that we experiencing an emotion when we do what makes sense so far.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, and if I understand correctly, this is our body and our mind trying to protect us from having to go through that same trauma again.

Cedric Bertelli  
Correct. 100% Correct. Our mind, our subconscious mind and our body spend, literally its life to try to protect us trying to protect us, that is wrong. The problem is, we never gave an opportunity to the brain to update these predictions that create these emotions. 

Jeff Ma  
Make sense. 

Cedric Bertelli  
 And the reason is, as human being, we always control. If you look in nature, you can look at any mammals in nature, they do not hold on to trauma, except some domestic animals, because we control them, and some farm animals. But animal in the wild do not all don't to trauma, because they do not control what's going on within them. When you or I, we feel anxious or angry or frustrated, we try to control we hide it, or we take some deep breaths to relax, or we blame it. Or we do we try to change our environment. So we out of what makes us feel weird. Yeah, we always control ourselves or our environment. We never let this sensory prediction, playing out until the end. And that's the secret, in order to resolve an emotional difficulty is to let the sensorial prediction the sensations in our body playing out until the end, without any kind of interference.

Jeff Ma  
And that will then update our latest understanding of what that what that would be like

Speaker 1  
That's right, it will update our emotional software. Incredible. We can all do that. But when if I work with a co worker and this co worker makes me feel stressed or tense. I'm not going to let my my sensation play I'm going to blame him I'm going to avoid him I'm going to be sometime nasty with him is we are always in control. 

Jeff Ma  
This makes so much sense. It's almost like too simple. Like the way you the way you've put it together it just it makes so much sense. So my natural next question is Well then how I guess do we get to that point where we can let it let it play out because fear from my experience my personal experience and what I what I know of it it's I personally position as the opposite as you said the opposite of love when we when we first wrote love as a business strategy, the running kind of joke was that the opposite of this was fear as a business strategy, which is what we we personally see all too often right now in the in the corporate environment. And then if you think of just a standard work day played out in our lives or you know portrayed on media it's one fear after the other it's it's fear of getting fired fear of disappointing your boss fear of letting your team down fear of you know, your own standards not being met fear of everything equal fear of in front of everything. And it seems like every every decision we make is driven by preventing, like you mentioned, some kind of feeling coming to the front. So how like it feels so pervasive and so ever present in our lives, how do we work our way out of that?

Cedric Bertelli  
Just to jump in what you said is you're right. I mean, fear is such a major player in our lives. And then we wonder why we're so tired. At the end of the day, then we then we wonder why we use and abuse alcohol or other stuff? You know? Yeah, it's it's, I mean, it's not the life really. I mean it is, but it's not. So how we have to change our paradigm, in a sense, we have to put ourselves first. Right? It's like we have to, we have to see, I'm afraid of disappointing others, instead of working harder, based on this fear, I'm going to address the fear. I'm going to address the fear, I feel like I'm disappointed I'm, I, I feel like I'm not enough. And I'm about to disappoint you as my boss, instead of like, frame myself, and work even more and to increase my workload or my intensity of work, stop. And recognize that yeah, there is a fear in me, how do I know it, because I'm filled with tension. Now, okay, the only thing I have to do is, close my computer, go in the bathroom, if I'm at work, because I don't want people around, it's very important to do this work, then the body feels safe. If your body doesn't feel safe, for example, if you're next to me, in the next cubicle, and unsent your presence, my body's not going to feel safe. So go to the bathroom, maybe, and take the time to close your eyes. And to sense your fear. How do you do that? You feel the sensations in your body, you feel the tension in your body. It's important, I'm going to be very technical, it's very simple. Yeah, it's important to feel at least two sensations at once. So that take attention, right, you have to remove your attention from your workload from your boss, you have to turn all your attention inside of your body. When you do that, you will notice and the sensations do not stay static, they start changing. We call that the transformation of the sensations. When you have a fear. That is not an actual, when you're not actually in danger, right? When you suggest a fear, the sensations and you pay attention to the sensation, the sensations are going to start moving. Now what you got to do is more difficult, you've got to do nothing. You've got to remain attentive to the sensations as a change in your body. If your attention weakened, you're going to go back to your mind. And you're going to think about where you're gonna think about your work  that it's too late. You have to remain intensely attentive to the sensations in your body, as I change the sensations will change for about two seconds, to 90 seconds, Nevermore if the sensations are not done changing and disappearing within 90 seconds is because you did something to interfere with a natural skill of the body or you. You won't you will not feeling safe. But sensations, if it's well done, will change in between two and 90 seconds, at the end of the 90 seconds, you will just feel a sense of calm. Whatever created this fear will never create this fear again. Once an emotion is resolved, is not coming back again. Once the prediction is updated, it's updated. And to prove until proven wrong, so to speak. And if you think about it, Jeff, we update predictions constantly, constantly in our life update prediction. That's how we learn. And when do we update prediction? When we're not stressed? When we're not stressed,  We get prediction constantly. And we constantly learn and improve.

Jeff Ma  
How does that work with? You know, in the example of let's say you have a tight deadline to meet and you're pushed up against the clock and you it's due today or yesterday and your boss is demanding it you're feeling all these things. You're feeling that you go into the bathroom and you and you sit with it. And you sense your fear you acknowledge and in the time passes and like you said, if done properly, it's changed. What does that look like? When I come out of the bathroom? And I come back to the world where this work still needs to be done. What What should should that look like now? Or how does that play? How does that story play out in this in this hypothetical situation now that I'm now coming back and well I don't have I don't have any more time to do It's still something that must be done. What's changed now for me as that employee,

Cedric Bertelli  
you have full capacity. You have you recover your full cognitive cognitive capacity. That means that you have a situation. And emotional resolution is not going to change the situation. You have a deadline, you behind it. Now, if you're calmer, you accept what it is, and you adapt. With that pressure. Yeah, you face the situation for what it is, without extra pressure. Now, how is it going to look like? I'm not sure. Maybe you reach out to the boss, but you're not tense. Say, Well, this is what happened, this is why I'm behind. But you have full control over the actual situation. It doesn't change the situation. But now you can accept the situation, adapt, and act. Because chances are, if you, if you did not reach the deadline, it's probably because you procrastinated, maybe if you procrastinated, it is because you are cheers. It's true. And so and so to be completely honest, if you feel like completely crushed by the deadline, and the body feels like there is a danger, then you might need to reach out to a practitioner, because a practitioner will be able to make you feel safe. When you do it by yourself, you might feel to crunch by the bus pressure by the deadline. So that's when you need some help sometimes so that somebody can take care of you create a safe environment, so you can do the work.

Jeff Ma  
So it sounds like in this example, I'm really picturing this like, very acute and strenuous kind of situation. What about the almost day to day mundane fears? So I'm talking about, like I mentioned earlier, I can have 15 different fears in a five minute span. They're all they're all small. They're so small that they feel like they're just, that's just life. That's just how things are meant to be because there's micro fears, right? I'm just like, Oh, I hope I don't miss a deadline. Oh, but in five minutes, I have another meeting and, and all these things just kind of pile on into a general sense of stress. But it's not. It's not, it's not overwhelming yet. It's not quite, you know, to the point where I would even trigger me to go to the bathroom and think about the fear itself. It's just seems like it seems like normal.

Cedric Bertelli  
That's when that's where we need to change our paradigm. You know, Van Gogh, the painter said, our smallest fear or the captains of our life as they lead our life without us ever noticing them. What you mentioned Jeff, there is completely right, like we are, we are packed with tension on a daily basis. And we think it's normal. That's that's the one that's the single most difficult thing of the work right. The first one is to do nothing when you feel in fear and to be in attention with the sensations, no breath, no nothing. Just be with be with the monster inside. And the single most difficult thing is to actually not accept to feel tense if you don't need to feel tense. If you if you feel tense versus vibration of tension of of uncomfort discomfort stop and take responsibility for it. Because if you're tense and when meeting me it's very primal. If you and I will meet for the first time and you're tense not because you meeting me but because of what something that happened at home before you left because of conversation you had with a friend whatever. If you enter the meeting and you feel tense, I am going to sense it. And I'm not going to send Oh Jeff is tense something might have happened at work no no at home. No, I'm going to sense your tension. if I sense you attention I'm going to tense as well. And that already is going to give a dynamic to our for our meeting and then we're not going to have a productive conversation and I'm going to go back to my to my desk and say there's something about this Jeff. Like something like something about him I don't feel him. There's nothing to do with you. You just had a bad day. And my buddy sense your tension. So we had tension is very primal is like two dogs, right? Two dogs come in front of each other. If one is tense, the other one is going to tense. Why? Because if you're tense on a very primal way, I feel like you might attack me. You become you become a hazard. So I'm going to tense as well. Get ready to defend myself. It's also conscious, but this level of tension is going to create dynamics in our relationship.

Jeff Ma  
Do you have any, I guess this type of work, obviously, is your bread and butter. And this is how you've, you've helped many, many people through this. For those just listening, and they want to start practicing this. Is there any quick advice you can give to help? Because this is not something that was that's going to come naturally. To many people I know, there is this conscious effort we can make to recognize in those big moments, the time and space we need to practice is there something we can do, like now proactively, when we're not yet stressed to prepare ourselves? Yeah.

Speaker 1  
So when we're not really, when you're if the emotion is not in you, and that's when you need to work with someone, a practitioner, that's when that goes, people will come to see me with anxiety with fear. And most of the time when they meet me, they don't feel that. So we retrigger it very specifically, and we resolve it. But there is moments when you will notice, I mean, we all know that when there is nothing, we;re on our couch watching Netflix, and we have a thought about tomorrow meeting. There's already an anxiety there. Yeah, boom, that's the right moment. You know, all those anticipatory anxieties motor for me, most of our anxieties come in anticipation of something that is not actually happening. Yeah. Ever, like fear of public speaking. I mean, I will say 75% of people who are fear of public speaking or afraid before stepping on stage, or stepping in front of the camera. Once it's rolling, they're good. So to answer your question is, well, when you're when you're at home, when you're driving, when in your have a thought, you have a feeling, there is no danger, there is nothing going on. You at home, you're sitting on your toilet, maybe, boom, that's when you can do it. Your body feels safe, a thought fit, something crossed you, your body reacted with anxiety or fear. Boom, close your eyes, feel the sensations. Immerse yourself in the physical sensations give it an intense attention to sensations at once. And keep on feeling the sensations as a change in your body. And, when they become uncomfortable, because they're going to become uncomfortable, they're going to become uncomfortable, but they are not new. You carry them everyday anyway, this time you're just conscious of it. If you don't try to ease them, that's it. Be with the discomfort as the sensations change. Until things go back to a state of homeostasis. Open your eyes move on with your life.

Jeff Ma  
The last bit I want to connect on with you is the the other side. So love as a business strategy and the element of love. When we say love as a business strategy, we're often talking about a very personal thing, a very individual thing. We were also talking about a culture or talking about collective behaviors. How do you see kind of this emotional resolution but also this addressing a fear of Fear Itself? Playing in the dynamics of culture and of getting in the way of love really,

Speaker 1  
you know, if we if we're not constantly triggered, if we're not constantly busy by our tension, tensions, or our fears, then there's a lot of space for listening to each other, being present for each other. And in for love, for joy. When nowadays we don't really listen to each other, when when you speak. I'm already thinking about what I'm going to answer. And often it will be vice versa. If there is less tension, there is more presence, more attention. And then it's shift the whole relationship.

Jeff Ma  
I love that answer. That was perfect. The way you put it. I'm sold. I mean that's a hell of a reason to be working on ourselves in this way. Because what I just heard from you is that it enables us to actually practice the positive things we want for ourselves. Getting these things out of the way, opens us up to love. So

Cedric Bertelli  
we are trying. Because you know, we are good people and most of us are we trying to be present for others, we're trying to do a good job. We don't have to try so hard when we put ourselves first, and it's not, it's not selfish. It's actually, it's actually very important to take care of our own tension and emotion first, so that we can be a positive element in the world.

Jeff Ma  
Cedric, I really appreciate what you share today. It was packed with really, really good wisdom and insights, I know I'm going to go practice this myself, I get the feeling I'm going to spend maybe the entire first few days in a bathroom. So just just lock myself in there and just work from work from fear to fear to fear.

Cedric Bertelli  
Yeah, do it, do it. It's so worth it.

Jeff Ma  
I will. And I hope the listeners got similar impact from it as I did. And it's an amazing thing. Cedric, thank you so much for the time and space you've given us today.

Cedric Bertelli  
My pleasure. And thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. Thank you.

Jeff Ma  
Thanks for the listeners. We hope you enjoy this episode and all the other ones yet to come. Please continue checking out the book love as a business strategy. And we really appreciate all of you for tuning in. We really do and the audience has been growing. We're getting good feedback. But we want to continue to kind of give everyone more and more perspective as episodes you want to hear about other topics you want would like to have, please let us know. And we'll keep doing what we do here and keep bringing on amazing guests like Cedric so hope you enjoy that. With that. We'll be signing off here and we'll talk to you next week.