Simon Waller (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to the future with friends. Today I’m being joined by a friend of mine Kirsten Peterson, but no one ever calls her that she only gets called KP. Welcome KP. Hey, going

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (00:13)
Thanks, Simon.

I’m good. How are you?

Simon Waller (00:18)
Look, I’m doing great. I, we’ve always had a little bit of a chat and a bit of banter before joining this ⁓ call. And I have noticed though that you have perhaps been a little bit nervous about coming on the podcast. Is this true?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (00:36)
On one level, I was born to talk. I am professionally trained to speak for long periods of time without taking a breath.

Simon Waller (00:42)
Yeah

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (00:45)
Yeah, the topic has proven to be interesting and more of a challenge than I had anticipated. So on that level, yeah, a little bit nervous.

Simon Waller (00:56)
Yeah, and this surprises me a little bit. Because I see you as being someone who is kind of in control, like a serious overachiever. ⁓ So for people listening, KP has been to seven Olympic Games, not as an athlete, but as a psychologist. ⁓ Which in of itself, don’t know, psychologists, you kind of feel ⁓

are meant to have their shit together. But I kind of assume that that of you, am I overreaching?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (01:34)
Well, I, you know, it was it’s often said in our field that people who become psychologists are often trying to cure themselves or people they love neither of which ever works. So it’s a big fat lie that we have at our shit together. We do know how to manipulate others better than most people because we learn about the inner workings of the mind. But

Simon Waller (01:56)
Okay, so that’s what I should be really concerned about here is whether just throughout this whole thing, I am being manipulated.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (02:04)
Absolutely. And well, yeah, it’s already happened. So you just keep going.

Simon Waller (02:15)
Now tell us now some some of the guests I have on the show I met a decade or more ago our friendship started a bit more recently. Do you recall you know what’s your first recollection of us meeting?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (02:29)
I want to say the first time we met was probably about a year ago. ⁓ I had joined a business school community that you are a part of. ⁓ But may I say that that first experience, you know, it’s kind of like, and this is going to sound creepy, but you you meet the person you’re supposed to spend your life with in the first meeting is like inconsequential. Where you really made an impact on me was

during a time when I did not have my shit together. By the way, is it okay to drop that kind of word, that salt, salt, salt in my fucking. F-bomb, okay. All right.

Simon Waller (03:03)
Yeah, yeah, and drop the S bomb, the F bomb. will not. it’s a

bit sure audience. ⁓

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (03:10)
So I did not have my shit together about a certain piece of big time work that came my way and you… You offered me the most calming reframe of a situation I was getting my knickers in a twister about than anybody had and it turned from me being so anxious about impressing a big client to KP. How about you consider this as an experiment to see if you want to work with these people? Which gave me a little moral high ground in the job and made

literally made a performance difference for me for that big piece of work. So that is the moment I really remember and treasure most about our kind of first substantive meeting.

Simon Waller (03:52)
Yeah, well, you know, and you say the moments where you meet the person you spend the rest of your life with and in this case, it’s, you know, at least an hour and a half or so doing a podcast. But yeah. Yeah. But I look I must admit, yes, I obviously met you through solid prose and just you’ve immediately struck me as someone like I mean, first of all, it’s not I don’t know this.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (04:06)
So similar, know, yeah, gotcha.

Simon Waller (04:21)
I know this is something that you don’t see in the same way that others do. Like the idea that you’ve been to seven Olympics, you kind of like just kind of almost brush under the carpet a little bit and go, yeah, it’s just, it’s just a job, you know, other people are going like, no, that’s not true. And, ⁓ but I kind of, for me, it’s almost like, yeah, what does that take? And how much trust must you have built with, with your clients and with athletes?

to be invited like, like you could go once by mistake, right? But to be invited back another six times afterwards. Yeah, like to be invited back another six times, like you are clearly good at your shit.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (04:52)
Back into it.

Yeah, it is such a complicated thing for me because I had not shied away from talking about my elite sport background, but never said it in that way. And you and I actually had that conversation about why the seven times thing, why is that so important? And you clarified it in that way that, you know, once could be a mistake, once could be a fluke. Just like a lot of athletes, you know, it’s one thing to get into the Olympics once, but it’s another thing to be a repeat Olympian. And so that

that stuck with me, even though I still sort of throw up a little in my mouth every time anybody says it on my behalf. So thank you very much.

Simon Waller (05:43)
Yeah, I hope you got your glass of water ready. ⁓ the other thing that also struck me so maybe a month or two ago, I jumped on a webinar that you were running. And I got to hear like your your like almost your pitch, like your your belief. And you have a book and it’s like

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (06:05)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (06:12)
The premise of the book is it’s not about grit. Like we kind of think it’s about grit and hard work, like ⁓ working harder and just knuckling down. And that’s how you get to the Olympics. And your belief is actually something quite different from that. And I think you even said to me in one of our conversations that if you really were to, to like, ⁓ boil it down, like to the, its core, your philosophy around elite sport is one of love. Is that?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (06:26)
Hmm.

Simon Waller (06:42)
Is that a kind of fair way of capturing what we said? you said?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (06:46)
And you know what I love about how you do this is you bury the lead and you bring us to it. And I was waiting for that. I was just like sliding into the word love. So that was beautiful. Yeah. I, long history in elite sport. Grew up and was socialized around this notion. And I literally had this said to my face as a sports psychologist, hey, KP, from a coach.

Hey, KP, I break them, you fix them. And it was all about this toughness and ⁓ what I have come to realise after first overcoming my shame at aiding and abetting that system ⁓ is that it’s just not even supported from neuroscience. There’s nothing about this notion of fear and shame leading to better performance.

It actually undermines it because you think like us, right now you’ve done some marvelous things to make me feel more relaxed. We take breaths, you know, we get into that parasympathetic nervous system functioning and that’s where performance comes from. And yet I cut my teeth in systems that were not about that. was about, you know, if it’s about, so I will say professionally to people that the only times I use the word mental toughness in a sentence,

is to tell you I will never talk about mental toughness. And that, because what’s the opposite, I ask you Simon. If you’re not mentally tough, what are you?

Simon Waller (08:21)
Well, yeah, so you must be weak, I’m assuming is the alternative.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (08:25)
And how does that serve anyone who’s trying their hardest to be called that name? And it’s so insulting. It’s so shaming. And I, yeah, I spent a lot of my career digging people out of that hole because, I could tell you stories that literally would make your hair curl. know it’s still, it is beautifully coiffed. So let’s not mess with your hair, but. ⁓

Simon Waller (08:30)
Mmm.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (08:50)
It does. And that coupled with the notion of how hard we are on ourselves. So it’s one thing to get it from outside, but it’s another thing. Our inner critics are often, you know, high achievers think it’s all about being hard when in fact, resilience is built on compassion. Like, you know, when we we see somebody else in the world suffering, we don’t kick them in the ass. We give them a hug. And it’s the hug that gives us strength. And yet internally,

Simon Waller (09:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (09:18)
We sit here and go, if I start being nice to myself, and this is like what I get from people, I’m gonna be sitting, some version of it, I’m gonna sit on the couch, binge watching Netflix while eating ice cream with a fork, because I’ve been eating that fast. That’s some version of what will happen to me if I’m nice to myself. And yet none of the evidence. So we have a lot of cultural conditioning to overcome. Sorry, I could take up our whole time talking about this.

Simon Waller (09:36)
Mmm.

Yeah. No,

but this is, but this is so cool. Because, you know, when, when obviously I asked you come on the show, and I suppose that the briefing I initially give to guests is, hey, you can talk about anything you want. But I asked people to kind of shy away a little bit from talking about their work directly. Just because I kind of, if people talk about it directly, we potentially fall into this little trap.

of feeling that we need to use this as a platform to promote ourselves. And I don’t want that to be the dynamic, the dynamic should be just us talking as friends. And, and yet, probably of all the scenarios I’ve seen, yours is the closest to your work. ⁓ And yet it works really well. And I think part of the reason

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (10:14)
Mm.

Beauty.

Hmm.

Simon Waller (10:38)
that it does work well is because of this deep conviction that you have around what sits behind your work. And the stuff that you’re kind of just, you know, ranting on there is a sign of that. Like you can tell your conviction in your rant. And so I think this is a really nice segue into the topic because I said, okay, you can talk about anything you want, KP, and you decide to talk about the future of…

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (10:44)
And.

Ripping the lid off emotional privacy.

Simon Waller (11:14)
ripping the lid off emotional privacy. Yeah, so this concept of emotional privacy, which again, this concept of emotion is obviously very big in what you just talked about, and a really important part of your work. It’s about how do you help people deal with the emotions that they’re experiencing, and especially through the lens of high performance. Is that is that a brief summary of professional KP?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (11:37)
⁓

When people will let me get there. And so I’ll just quickly say the reason I chose this topic is because emotions are invisible. They are often so misunderstood and avoided. So just getting to that place with people is the first step and then helping them manage what is such a natural experience, particularly under situations where performance matters.

Simon Waller (12:07)
Mm. I think in the lead up to this, we had a very brief conversation about the concept of emotions and also like I’m a fairly articulate person most of the time and I’m a complete dunce when it comes to articulating emotions. And like, you know, it’s a classic. It’s either I’m glad, sad, you know, like happy, like what?

Like what other emotions are there? And I used to, share this with you, I used to actually have a picture of an emotion wheel on my desktop of my computer that I used to have to open up on a regular basis to try and articulate something with a bit more nuance than just those really kind of high level concepts. And I get that, you know, in your work dealing with someone like me would be pretty difficult.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (13:05)
I’m sure a challenge that we would meet together very well, so I will leave it there. But yes, there is a bit of that in my work, for sure.

Simon Waller (13:10)
Yeah.

Yeah. So anyways, this topic we’ve chosen this concept of emotional transparency. And ⁓ we’ll obviously talk in a fair bit of depth about this after you’ve shared your scenario. But it’s one where I think quite easily you can start to see signals in the environment already, that would indicate this is already unfolding. But what I love about this is you kind of take us through a story. It’s actually one that as I said, it

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (13:37)
Mm.

Simon Waller (13:44)
it’s 100 % yours, it couldn’t have been anyone else’s. But we actually start to think about what the implications of emotional transparency could be. So one last question before we jump into the scenario. ⁓ You get to choose a timeframe for this to play out in. And obviously, you know, the further we go into the future, the more things can happen, shorter timeframes less. So what what was the timeframe that you chose? And is there any significance of it?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (13:55)
Sure.

Mm.

Well, I cheated a little bit. used ChatGPT to give me some direction and it was an interesting interchange where it made me sort of think about how long would it take for this kind of transformation to occur? It wouldn’t be something we’re going to see in the next decade, I don’t think, because there’s several sort of waves that I speak to around this notion of emotional privacy and how it plays out.

Simon Waller (14:36)
you

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (14:43)
Yeah, it’s a few decades into the future. Do you want me to name the year?

Simon Waller (14:47)
So yeah, you think, yeah, do it.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (14:50)
So we’re ladies and gentlemen, yes, 2040. Yes. Yes. I said 2040 because it’s yeah.

Simon Waller (14:52)
2040. You said 2040 to me, unless 2040. Look,

yeah, let’s have a chat about that afterwards. I reckon the best thing we can do now is let people hear the scenario. And that’s definitely one of the questions I’d like to talk to you about is about the timeframes of this and and you know, what’s what’s possible versus probable, you know, in that space. But right now, what we’re to do is we are going to throw the microphone to you.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (15:06)
Okay.

Simon Waller (15:22)
It’s all yours from the top KP. Please tell us about the future of emotional transparency.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (15:28)
All righty. Thanks, Simon.

I can’t believe it’s over. Newly retired Olympic swimmer Beth Samuelson sat, reflecting on the roller coaster ride that was her career in the sport she loved to hate, learned to love, and then finally hated to leave for all the wrong reasons. She recalled her early years back when she was the kind of raw talent coaches dreamt about. Smooth, powerful, disciplined.

but at the same time, the kind of athlete they dreaded to coach, saddled with deep insecurities and imposter syndrome.

Back then though, at least it was her secret to keep or share. Emotions were internal states that sometimes gave them away. Think blushing from embarrassment, clenched fists in anger, a voice that goes up an octave and wavers with fear, but that also could be disguised or hidden entirely.

And a secret, her emotions stayed more or less through those early years when swimming was more about just getting into the pool and letting it rip. But as Beth moved through the ranks from local to regional to state meets, that gap between how she thought the world saw her and her own self-perception grew, making performance even harder. How was she to measure up?

Added to her internal struggles, growing interest and awareness of mental health coupled with rapid advances in medical technology blew the lid off emotional privacy. It became first possible to accurately diagnose emotions via medical imaging. Then the technology became portable, then transparent, meaning others could literally see how you actually felt.

Beth recalled that at first this was a boon for people interested in helping others or themselves understand and work with their emotions for the good. But this technology soon became commercialised and even weaponised. Governments saw emotional transparency as a form of population control, specifically the ability to know when people were feeling chronically angry or afraid as an early warning sign of a potential bad behavior.

And now this information was used as a pretext for lawful search and seizures. Emotions were literally on display for all to see. Sports soon picked up on the value of emotional transparency, the commercial value, when they trialed the concept at competitions. Audiences loved to connect and broadcast athlete emotions before and during competitions.

and sports saw a commercial opportunity staring them in the face.

Let’s see how you really feel. Making sport human again was the name of the wildly successful 2030 NRL marketing campaign that went viral and became the new normal in sport. Athletes like Beth, who were prone to inward facing emotions like shame or fear struggled more than ever before. For it is one thing to work with your own shame and fear, but another thing to have it broadcast and known to the world. That put those feelings on steroids.

Instead of, what if they found out about me, it became shit. Now they know I’m not the performer they thought.

Before each race, her transparency book band flashed scarlet. Doubt, fear, shame. Commentators speculated. Coaches grew cautious. Audiences murmured. The numbers told a story she was desperate to hide. But the harder she pushed her fear away, the louder it got. By mid-season, she’d lost her spot on the relay.

That’s when Sarah, the team psychologist stepped in. Instead of helping Beth calm down, she helped her tune in. What if fear isn’t the enemy, she asked? What if it’s just proof that you care?

Beth started to notice what fear felt like, tight chest, racing thoughts and what it meant, that she was about to do something that mattered. She stopped trying to delete the feeling and started working with it. At her next meet, the band still lit up red, but instead of hiding it, she nodded to her coach and said quietly, yeah, I’m nervous. So what? Her time wasn’t a personal best.

but her technique was more relaxed. She began keeping an emotional log alongside her training plan. Over time, patterns emerged. She noticed fear before success, calm before complacency, and slower times. Her mindset shifted from, have to fix this, to, I can work with this. Fear is welcome. By nationals, the commentators had changed their tune.

Beth hadn’t eliminated fear, she’d befriended it. And audiences responded with wonder, then admiration. In seeing Beth’s journey playing out in real time right in front of them, it gave them permission to feel and to do the same. As time went on and Beth got used to this new public relationship with her emotions and the audience, something unexpected happened.

She found herself shaping her emotional experiences much for the audience reaction and the dopamine had provided as for her performance and sometimes to the detriment of performance. Sorry, I’m going to have to move this a little bit. Beth winced as she recalled the first qualifying round at the Canberra Olympics in 2032. Her first where she walked out on pool decks so busy talking to her fear to manage the transmission.

and immersed in the emotional back and forth with the audience, she was spectacularly unprepared and missed the horn that started the race. Beth shuddered to think as she recalled how hard she had to swim to make up that ground just to squeak into the next round of qualifications. And while she never made that mistake again, she saw other athletes fall victim to the seduction of emotional influencing.

valuing the reaction of the audience and their ability to manipulate it more than their own sport performances.

And all of which cemented for Beth what was really important. Call it what you will. Emotional clarity, transparency, whatever. It was in service to performance, not the point of it. But now emotional influencing was just another way to get what you wanted in the

The end.

Simon Waller (22:31)
Yes.

Gold, gold, gold.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (22:36)
you say that to all your guests.

Simon Waller (22:41)
Hey, as I said, like, no one else could have written this KP except you. Like he does this beautiful balancing act between the topic that you’ve chosen to talk about in terms of emotional transparency. But I love the fact that the the subject matter as an athlete, and we’re talking about the Olympics, and there’s so much of this which feels like it is built on your personal experience.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (23:08)
Hmm.

Simon Waller (23:09)
And so that’s my first thing I picked up is this, this, this character you have Beth. Is there an avatar for Beth? Like is there someone that you have worked with or maybe a couple of people you’ve worked with that when you started thinking through this journey that someone, like an athlete was going to go on in this scenario that you drew on, ⁓ previous experiences that you’d had.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (23:32)
Yeah, it’s probably a collection of avatars. But there was a subset of athletes that I worked with who fit this bill completely that we had to work very hard to

directly to the voices in their head that were really causing them to doubt their abilities and befriend them in a way, just in the way that was described, know, so trite. ⁓ But then the alternate avatar is very different. And I’m thinking of a female wrestler I worked with. And it seems like combat sports just attracted the mental toughness crowd. And so it was sort of breaking through the armor. ⁓

with one particular athlete who had hardscrabble background, had not seen the ability to talk to how she was feeling. especially as a, can you imagine being a female wrestler? Because that is, that was breaking a lot of stereotypes. The 2004 Olympics was the first time women’s wrestling was allowed in. And ⁓ the idea of women wrestling. So you had to really take on a persona that was the opposite of sort of the more traditional gender role.

emotionally ⁓ available, intelligent, female. ⁓ And so.

That’s the opposite. You’re breaking through that to help somebody recognise what was happening, how to deal with the fear and expectation this particular wrestler felt because she was in the final against a world number one athlete and how we were, I mean, it was minutes we had to try to get to that place because it was happening. I saw it, but she couldn’t, she wouldn’t identify it. And finally it broke and like, mean,

four minutes from her her match and having to sort of put a bandaid on that so she could go out and wrestle. And I wished all of that was a, you know, feel good story where she won the gold, but she did not. ⁓ But she had, she learned a lot about herself in that.

Simon Waller (25:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I can see and we’ll jump. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I but but funnily enough, like in doing so in sharing that story, you actually get a bit of insight into the significance of this scenario. Because I think what you’re saying and what you read in this is that, you know, this this emotional place, you know, on one hand, it’s like, what if we could make

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (25:45)
So that’s a very convoluted answer to your question. Sorry.

Simon Waller (26:12)
emotions more easy to read and readily available. How much easier would it be to support people in that space? If only we had these tools? Yeah, if I could do my job. Yeah, like you’re not relying on someone ⁓ who either doesn’t feel safe or doesn’t have the language to articulate what’s really going on for them. So we could bypass or that we just use this technology. So I can actually in that story you you share

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (26:19)
For me to do my job, please make… Yeah.

Simon Waller (26:41)
in some way, a really strong premise that sits behind the scenario. So thank you. And can I go a step further like in writing this and developing this, like I can see how you’ve drawn on that personal experience. And what is asked of you in this job or in preparing for the for the podcast is to project this into the future.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (26:45)
Mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (27:08)
to look at some of the current trends that we’re seeing, signals in the environment and extrapolating them out to a point, in this case, 15 or years from now and going, what might happen at the intersection of those things? In asking you to do that, I see like there’s really strong foundation you have in your lived experience and these types of stories. But on the other side of that, the signals and the trends and those types of things, were there some particular ones

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (27:14)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (27:38)
that stood out to you or that you’d been ruminating on for a while that you felt were really important to capture in this scenario.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (27:48)
Well, I’ll tell a little story because about 15 years ago when I was part of the Australian Institute of Sport, we instituted a mental health and sport program to try to raise awareness and all the blowback from

the elite sports sector in particular, but you saw it everywhere really that ⁓ mental health, which comprises of emotions, sometimes running amok, we might say, ⁓ was because it’s invisible, was misunderstood, deflected, played down. So when we introduced the concept to the then director of the AIS, he was like, what a great idea, but we can’t call it mental health.

sport. We’ll have to call it mateship.” And we’re like, why is that? Well, you know, because mental health is just too, too in your face. And my staff person, who I think had the much better presence of mind than me, said, sir, with respect, that’s perpetuating the stigma we’re looking to take away here with this program.

And, I will just speaking to the sports system at that point, we showed people headlines about athletes talking about mental health, know, and showed them headline, headline, headline, headline said, what’s common about all these articles. And this is 15 years ago and nobody could pick it up. And we said, no athlete will talk about mental health until they retired because it’s death knell for any athlete to speak of what’s going on inside my head. Well, you know, and ⁓

But now look what we’re seeing. So the signals he asked of me, I’m looking at athletes like Naomi Osaka who came out during the French Open to speak of her mental health struggles. We are talking about Simone Biles that her, she developed the case of the twisties in the Tokyo Olympics, the COVID Olympics, which is a very disorienting experience for a gymnast, by the way, Simone Biles, greatest of all time gymnast, ⁓ where you cannot feel your body in air

And so she opted out of events at the Olympics, drawing the ire of the world, but nevertheless talked to it and now has an awesome Netflix special everyone should watch. And so I was like super psyched about this in the sense that now athletes in their careers are talking about this. And then COVID, you know, stirred up mental health in a big way to the point that now athletes walk into the door of sports psychologist saying, I’ve diagnosed myself with anxiety.

see, know, in a way that we never would have said 20 years ago. the signals I was seeing is that it is now the only way we can make the invisible visible is through language. As far as I know, because we had, you know, was thinking, God, until we can really see it, we have to get people to talk about it. And now we are. So that was the progression I was sort of projecting into the future. Now that we’re talking about it, and it’s a little bit more acceptable.

There are still plenty of pockets where it’s not, mind you. Airline industry, defense, medicine, crazy. But nevertheless, I think it’s moving in that direction. So that’s a very long answer to your very short question. ⁓

Simon Waller (31:03)
No, no, that’s okay. And I think I

think so one, the stories are really helpful. And I think to hear of that journey that you’ve seen elite sport, and I think a lot of people listening to this would say that they have seen a similar transformation happen even in the general public. You know, the, you the simple version of it is, you know, R you okay day is trying to at least signify a time where it’s okay to check in and it’s okay to say I’m not okay. And, you know, some of the response we now see, yeah.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (31:16)
Yes.

Can I say one thing to that? Sorry,

I I love the premise of R U Okay Day, but the problem with it is that it elicits a yes, no answer. The campaign was flawed from the get-go because people could just say, yeah, and we’re done. So note to self or note to R U Okay developers. Let’s work that

Simon Waller (31:45)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

No, that’s great. Yeah, yeah.

And I one of the big things I rile against is this idea of where we force people to give binary answers to continuous experience or questions or positions. So are you for or against Yes or no black or white when most of life is shades of gray or colour, and we’d live on a spectrum of better or worse. And I think the other issue and I think this has been raised with are you okay days like well sure, every day though should be it.

And I think though, the fact that we had one day, they got enough significant publicity to make it okay, means we can now talk about it more broadly as well. But I think that’s a very valid point, but all these are just signals and data points that point towards a world where we’re more okay in terms of talking about it. Perhaps another thing that’s overlaid with that, and I’m sure you alluded to this in the story of the people self-diagnosing as they come in, is that also we have access to

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (32:18)
Mm-hmm.

And.

Simon Waller (32:48)
information, like Dr. Google, or also increasingly, devices that we wear that track mood, with mood being in some way, an approximation or a form of emotion, but perhaps not with a level of detail. So there’s all these little different trends going on that push us into this into this world that you’ve articulated here, where 15 years from now,

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (32:50)
Yes.

Yeah, true.

Mm.

Simon Waller (33:18)
We’ve almost gone through, it feels like a little bit of a peak of, or maybe it’s a maturing, a maturing is a very better term, a maturing of how we deal with emotional transparency.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (33:37)
I like the ING on that because we certainly have not arrived to the final destination. We are evolving into that space, I would say, yes. And we are getting a lot of things wrong along the way. Yeah, sorry. More rant.

Simon Waller (33:50)
So yeah, and so in.

And we’ve, no, that’s all right. No, no, no. know,

in the prompts and stuff I gave you for this, I kind of asked, you know, what is the dilemma that we face in this space? Now, what is the unintended consequences of the actions that we take? And there’s probably more than just one in this, because I think we also, know, we I shared with you yesterday when we were talking. ⁓

Our friend Col, who’s been on the show previously has this saying about the idea that the future is a pathway paved with problems and that when we solve a problem, we often then create the conditions for the next one to emerge and then we solve that problem. And with this, you’ve taken Beth on a journey over 15 years or so between, you know, like when she starts as a professional athlete and we have the rise of this new technology and then her personal experience and her over him to overcome that and

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (34:37)
you

Simon Waller (34:48)
and reach into this point of her retirement where she’s, I suppose, reached a point of reflection. When you look at this scenario, you were writing it, was there one or maybe even a couple of those dilemmas,

those kind of critical dilemmas that you saw in this or tried to explore in this?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (35:11)
Well, I think a big dilemma is just because something is available to you doesn’t mean you know how to use it wisely.

⁓ And so there was a bit of that in the story where some athletes got so enamored with this, the back and forth, they forgot about what they were doing or it became more important. But even even in today’s world, as emotional expression becomes more more valid, you do see people, ⁓ you know, this the notion of authenticity at work or other places that in itself, on the one hand, it

You know, we’re letting ourselves be seen. And I’ve certainly seen it in my work with, professional services folks who will say, I can’t bring my full self to work. And so we’re chipping away at that notion to be your full self brings more of your ability to work well. But we also see authenticity being weaponised. And this is the interesting piece where, you know, you,

you look fat in those pants, I’m just being honest and authentic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all of this availability is good. So the question becomes if somebody has for maybe valid reasons blocked out certain emotional experiences and then all of a sudden has to face them without the ability to to evolve into this awareness, I think go horribly wrong for people. ⁓ So

or it can be manipulated. so these are the, and yeah, speak to what that says so we can build off that. What did you?

Simon Waller (36:54)
Mmm.

No, that’s right. I think the concept

of the weaponised authenticity, I think is an interesting one. And I was listening to another friend’s podcast, Jason Fox’s podcast, John Anthony. And they were, you they were talking the other day about the concept of weaponised helplessness is, you know, the idea that people act a little bit helpless. And they’ll using the reference of like a couple that they knew and

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (37:05)
Yeah.

you

Simon Waller (37:27)
the husband would intentionally go into the kitchen and fuck up cooking once a month. Right, so then his wife was part of it and go like, sweet, oh, you really shouldn’t do that. He goes, oh, I’m so sorry, I did try my best. And then basically, he wouldn’t have to cook then for like the next kind of four weeks. And then he would do it again. And then there was this kind of weaponised helplessness. But I haven’t actually heard of the concept of weaponised authenticity before. And I love like

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (37:49)
Hmm. Hmm.

Simon Waller (37:55)
the juxtaposition of those concepts. Because to weaponise authenticity means that authentic you are authentically ⁓ the type of person who would manipulate someone else basically.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (38:13)
And so it does get to this notion of what sounds like a good idea. ⁓ It’s like, I think being more in touch with who we are, our humanity is really the goal I have. And yet for some people it might not be a good thing for valid reasons that I’m not considering, but how, yeah, how for, without getting too political, just political enough, ⁓ I do believe

The manipulation of emotional states is happening in some governments. that fear is being weaponised against people in the sense that I’m here, I’m the authoritarian dictator who’s going to save you from what you’re afraid of. And in fact, I’m just going to deny you basic ways to live your life. So we are already seeing it happen. And I just think, okay, so I’m not the best signal reader, but what’s it gonna mean and what could it mean?

for people who want to control other people ⁓ and manipulate their emotions when they know more of it.

Simon Waller (39:15)
Mmmmm

Yeah, because you mentioned in here about the weaponisation of this technology, that, you know, the combination and there’s a whole bunch of technologies that sit underneath this. So obviously, we talk about wearables as being one way of being able to track what someone’s mood is or emotional state is. But there’s different technologies that can do this through facial recognition or reading body language.

and using this collection of data to make interpretations of people’s emotional state. And you talk through this about the possibility that a government may use this ⁓ against its own citizens. One of the things that is interesting, again, a trend is towards this concept of predictive policing, where predictive policing says we kind of try and predetermine whether a crime is going to happen, very much like Minority Report.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (39:51)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (40:16)
If we just had enough data, we’d be able to pre know, and we’d be able to, you know, judge whether someone was going to commit the crime before they committed.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (40:27)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (40:27)
So I find this super interesting when you take those two concepts together. On one hand, and I do believe you that, especially emotions like fear are manipulated by governments around the world.

sometimes against their own people, sometimes against other people, to elicit particular reactions and behaviors. And yet on the other side of that, when those behaviors are elicited, those same governments may then also seek to, you know, arrest people or quell those, you know, quell the same violence or issues that they then actually generated themselves.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (40:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (41:12)
And

I know that’s a very dystopian perspective, but it’s almost like you can see the two things happening individually. It’s crazy not also to believe that they may actually happen together.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (41:24)
And I’ll just flip the narrative here for a moment, because as you were talking, I was reflecting on Beth’s story that came out of my own head. But when I read it, what really resonated with me and the hope that this kind of technological future could bring is this notion of being free from the yoke of unintended

behaviors because of emotion. So what I liked, and I wrote it, I know, but the freedom Beth got was like, so what if I’m nervous? And what I see is too many of us running around being owned by emotional experiences we don’t even know about. And so it’s dictating our actions. what I, the most, the most liberating future I can see is when more people can

be cheerful about how, you know, this very real and natural thing that our bodies have evolved to keep us safe and that we are free. And there’s, there’s ability to bring more potential into the world because people aren’t literally held back. And that’s, I think that’s the thing that ⁓ is the hardest about being a performance psychologist is when you see somebody with potential sitting right in front of you. And you know that if they could just

Deal with and let go of that. It’s always fear. It’s always fear. So let me just say my hope for this is that fear becomes something that we manage better and become more free from so that we bring our whole selves into the world.

Simon Waller (43:08)
Yeah, which is a beautiful sentiment. Thank you. And I said, there’s a line you’re using here. No, that’s all right. No, no. Yeah, thank you. And there’s a line you’re using here. What if he isn’t the enemy? What if it’s just proof that you care? And that’s such an interesting reframe that

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (43:11)
I was just getting at it dystopia.

Simon Waller (43:28)
that I think again alludes to this idea of yeah, we can also be hostages to our emotions and they can lead us to behave in particular ways that aren’t healthy. Is this again something that you just said that there’s always fear, you know, like, this is something that comes up regularly ⁓ in the work you do.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (43:50)
the time. Like if there’s another book in me it’s going to be about this, yeah, the primacy of emotions over and because the worlds I travel with, they’ve cognition and thinking is king and queen. So I literally was told by somebody in defense, KP you don’t really understand how it works here in said branch of defense, there are no emotions here. And wow, wow, wow, high performance person when you’re denying half of reality

from a human, you know, at least half, you know, this whole experience, you are taking away so much, not only potential, chances for change. So.

And I’m going to have to gender this a little bit because what I see, particularly with ⁓ male leaders is fear of fear. I can’t be seen to be fear a week. That’s part of the the the modus operandi of cultural conditioning, particularly in the West. And so I go from talking with a leader about what do you tell me what you’re afraid of? And then I’ll get the stock standard response from many. It’s like

What are you talking about? I’m not afraid.

So you know fear is there. So I have to say, okay, what are you concerned about? So we changed the, you know, I have to back off because it’s too threatening to talk about fear. Now, if we could just, you know, let’s acknowledge fear is here. Like that would be so refreshing because once we get to there, then we can get free of it. But if we can’t even acknowledge its existence because it goes against who I am as a strong, you know, leader who is here to

take us to the next step, we’re one step away from highest performance that’s capable for you. And yet that’s the game I play.

Simon Waller (45:46)
Hmm. One thing that I wondered when I was reading this is you mentioned the concept that fear is often the emotion that you deal with or that you’re supporting people with. But if we kind of look at the feeling wheel, and I literally had to open up in front of me to kind of check all the different possibilities here because

You know, fear is a is a quadrant, we’re not even a quarter. It’s maybe a sixth of the wheel in terms of the different emotions. And within there, there is nuances within that of like this fear, which is overwhelming, and then there’s fear, which is feeling exposed, right? There’s subsets of that. There are also a whole there’s a whole section of emotion dealing with concepts of disgust. You know, there are feelings of and I just remember the story was that the Australian swimmer

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (46:29)
Hmm

Simon Waller (46:36)
who at the last Olympics refused to shake hands with the Chinese athlete who they was having come back in after a doping scandal. And I just imagine what it might have been like if that athlete was wearing the band at the time, because they just got out of the pool and their emotional response to that situation was being broadcast on television. And, you know, is there any

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (46:47)
Yes.

Simon Waller (47:06)
you know, is there any emotions that should be even in a world of greater emotional availability? There are certain emotions, which we as a as humanity have a higher level of ⁓

mistrust of perhaps or have less time for it’s not okay to be disgusted with somebody else ⁓

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (47:32)
I don’t know.

You talk to the athlete who didn’t want to stand on the podium and you would, I think you would get a story that my disgust is warranted and that led to this change of behaviors. It’s not like, I mean, nobody goes to discuss school or like looks to like cultivate disgust, but it is a reaction. And so in my view,

Simon Waller (47:42)
Yeah. Look at the subsets of yeah.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (47:59)
You want, wanted, first of all, you want to know how you feel and disgust is a valid human emotion. The question is, what then do you want to do with it? And it’d be curious to go back to that athlete today and say, are you still happy with how that went down? You know, or like, was that the best choice for you? And I think the answer could be well and truly, fuck yes.

That was what that demand. I was not going to go against my principles. I was going to stand true to what I believed. So I don’t know, you know, and yet so you want to have those those conversations. the first step in every case is under like I want to be curious about what I’m feeling right now. And can I label it so then I decide I make better decisions about what I want to do with that information?

Simon Waller (48:27)
Mm. ⁓

Yeah.

It’s such an interesting scenario, because on the one hand, it leads to potentially the normalisation of all emotions. And what you alluded to there, which is these emotions are reactions that our bodies have to a situation, which are actually

perhaps almost impossible or impossible to control. that there is so in a sense, there’s a Yeah,

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (49:15)
Yes. Let’s just, can we, we, Simon, can I stop you there? There is no control. There is no control.

That way. And so it is about knowing and working with, but I really, yeah. So if mental toughness is one word, two words that I don’t use, control is another one that we have to stop even using that word because it applies a power we don’t have over our emotional experience. Sorry. Just a little mini one there.

Simon Waller (49:42)
Yeah. No, no, thank you. No, I appreciate that’s a great, a

really important clarification because if we accept therefore that we can’t control them and someone was, you know, like this whole process is one I’m normalising the complete range of emotions that we have. It’s just that the responsibility for normalising them all falls on a particular group of people. Do you mean like no one else in society?

is having their emotional state being broadcast to the whole world on television and having it scrutinized by commentators. It’s just this subset and in this case, athletes. And possibly, you know, you would say that maybe the rest of the world would eventually catch up or like general society catches up. But I wouldn’t imagine that general society is going on this journey with them because if you had a choice, like if I had a choice right now,

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (50:18)
Mm.

Mm.

I’m.

Simon Waller (50:38)
Do I want my every emotional state to be broadcast through a band on my wrist where anybody walking past

me on the street could see it? My answer is like, no, I’m out. I’m not ready for that level of transparency. So I feel like that’s super, there’s a very unfairness to this, but I could also see how it could transpire. Just like, know, AFL like,

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (50:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yes, that’s.

Hmm.

Simon Waller (51:06)
players all need to wear their trackers now. And we see the hotspots of them on the field and how many k’s they run and who was the fastest. And we find a way of basically taking that data and using it to in a way judge them. know, like, either judge them well, gosh, that, you know, he’s obviously got great stamina or judge them poorly. He really didn’t, he didn’t really perform today. And, and so there’s a judginess that comes with this data and this information. It’s not just, gosh,

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (51:18)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (51:35)
That’s so interesting.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (51:37)
And I there I was thinking about wanting to write about this because there’s the I talk in my work about here’s what I’m observing about you without judgment. And yet it’s up to the person who I’m talking to decide if I sound judgy, even as I say that that certain emotions just get judged differently. You know, no. Who says, wow, well,

I guess somebody could say you’re too happy, but most of us like strive for happiness. We ⁓ do all sorts of things with the idea that we’ll be happy in the future. And so a lot of my work is being happy right now. So there’s some emotions that we just fall into and would bathe ourselves in all the time, but there are, and this is again, I think a normal evolutionary experience. There are emotions we don’t want, A, to touch like fear with a 10 foot pole if we could avoid it. ⁓

although people have learned to manipulate fear in the sense of people who really love the adrenaline rush of fear, certain extreme sport athletes. But then there’s, and I described that in the story, the inward facing emotions. And I think of shame as the ultimate one. And let’s full credit to Brene Brown, social psychologist researcher who really blew the lid off vulnerability and shame in her work.

but she would say that it’s like mushrooms. It thrives in the darkness. ⁓ To its great, you know, to people’s detriment. Nobody likes to talk about shame. And yet the paradox is the only way really to come through shame is to bring it to light and be able to kind of talk about it. So.

It’s a complicated thing as we talk about emotions and transparency and privacy that people will want to keep their shame private. yet, I’m not, and this is not a call for everyone to broadcast their shame out all over the place, but the ability to talk about it. I mean, I can, we have time. have a personal story about shame that might be useful, but I also don’t have to share it. It just depends on how much time we have.

Simon Waller (53:52)
We have as much time as you need, KB.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (53:56)
All right, just, so this story about shame changed my career in the sense that when I was a active sports psychology professional throughout my decades of working, I only worked with, and I’m putting my fingers up to the camera because it’s still hard for me to say the word, less than five Olympic gold medalists in my career. And I…

Granted, I worked alongside the swimming sports psychologist who you couldn’t swing a dead cat in the USA swimming back in the day without hitting a gold medalist because that was the big sport. However it came about, I worked with sports that hard won gold medals, but I also took it personally. Throughout my career, people would say, KP, you’re a seven-time Olympic performance psychologist. You must have been on the podium with so many.

great athletes and I would do this thing. I was like so ashamed of my track record that I would say, ⁓ Simon, it’s funny you should say that. Yeah, it’s been a great career. just, professional ethics won’t let me speak to all the athletes I’ve worked with. And so I would hide behind this facade and let people think what they would. But inside I was like, curl around this coal of

shame. And it wasn’t until I was business school community where I felt brave enough to confess this history to a group of people on a zoom call. And there was this like three beat pause and somebody said, so you were there for those Olympic athletes who failed. I said, yes. And they said, what was the what was

the more important work, success with athletes who didn’t reach their dreams. And I was like, I didn’t even process it for myself as I was the expert in helping people deal with failure until that moment. And it was so freeing. So shame shackled me for years. I was so embarrassed. was so like, in a way that…

I would never, like any other sports psychology professional who ever got on a public stage and said, I worked with XYZ athlete and I, you know, so you should work with me because I worked with them. It’s, I’d never believe it. Cause it’s a soup that makes somebody good, not just the sports psychologist. So I never held anyone else to, I hope that made sense. But I now,

Simon Waller (56:39)
Yeah,

what I hear in that is it almost like you can never take all of the credit. Right? Because it’s as you said, a whole team. No, should you? Right? So even if you were there and you hold up your fingers and you had the five gold medals and stuff, it was always the athlete and you were just one part of the of the team or the, you know, the machine that got them there. Right. But I do think there’s a very interesting point though is in that moment of in the moment of failure, though.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (56:45)
And nor should you. And it’s, at the athlete’s job.

And yet it’s.

Simon Waller (57:07)
you would have been the number one support person for them in that moment. You know, like, in many cases, I imagine you were the number one person, the first person that was there to who really understood them and if they allowed it, right? Yeah. But I do think that that’s interesting in that that asymmetry as well, is like you can never be all of the success, but you could be a very big part of the support in the failure. So that’s also an interesting kind of reflection on that. Thank you for sharing that and I

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (57:16)
if they allowed it.

It’s, yeah.

Simon Waller (57:38)
And I love that in sharing it, you found a different perspective on it that you’ve obviously become quite comfortable with.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (57:55)
Yeah, I go to corporate groups and I say I’m the failingest sports psychologist you’ll ever meet. And here’s why I think that’s awesome. Yeah, like seriously.

Simon Waller (58:03)
Ha ha

ha.

And you keep getting invited back. So you’re obviously doing a very good job of failing.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (58:09)
But you, yeah, it’s…

But that’s the thing, like people fear failure. it’s just helping people, know, Olympic athletes going into the games. Let’s talk about what happens if you fail spectacularly. Let’s have that conversation because it is so important to lighten up on this whole thing that you’re about to do. And people hate it and yet they are transformed by it.

Simon Waller (58:27)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. One other thing though, I just I’m curious with this whole, you know, one the things we talked about in preparing for this, we talk about in a healthy system, there are competing forces. There are positive and negative feedback loops that kind of create a space where things may grow, but then they ultimately recede again. In this idea of emotional transparency, the general trajectory has been

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (58:52)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (59:06)
towards greater transparency.

But it does, there’s risks attached to that, where at some point we’re just so transparent, we spend so much time talking about emotions that it becomes almost debilitating. Do you see somewhere in this scenario or somewhere, how does, what are those competing forces? Do they come into play? What is there a, is there a point where this goes too far?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (59:11)
you

The thing that comes to mind as you said that, Simon, was like this notion of emotional intimacy. ⁓

that the current, if emotion is a currency, if you’re splaying it out, you know, it’s like wealth that’s too us into, you know, too out there, it just loses its meaning. And like, what will it mean in a world of human connection when you, it’s not special, ⁓ it’s not for somebody and nobody else gets to know.

Simon Waller (1:00:09)
Mm-hmm.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:00:11)
you know, like we, and you think about long married couples who just look at each other and you’re just like, there’s something there that, what would, what would we lose if that was able to be so well read? I don’t, I don’t know what the answer is, but I feel like strong emotional connections. ⁓

Jesus especially now you think about the signals that are playing against this this notion of chat bots that are going to become your friend and you don’t know what kind of sort of pseudo emotional connection you’re having with something that doesn’t ever disagree with you and develop the fullness of emotional connection like we. We have all to be connected so strongly humans would not have survived so we all know so.

Simon Waller (1:00:56)
Mm.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:01:00)
what would happen? don’t know that I have an answer, but it makes me think about what would happen to the connectivity inherent in emotion if it’s played out all over the place. Does it lose its effectiveness in that way?

Simon Waller (1:01:14)
I think that’s a super interesting insight. I that is really interesting. Like we talk about the unintended consequences is if the unintended consequences of being more open is actually with a loss of intimacy. Because you said like, sharing our emotions and you know, in some ways, our secrets with a person is a bonding experience. And are we going to take away the opportunity for those bonding experience if people just go like

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:01:22)
No.

Simon Waller (1:01:43)
Yeah, I already know how you feel about me. So yeah.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:01:47)
We’re not even gonna try to go down a second

date, right? Because screw it, I’ve just seen it all over your forehead. Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:01:51)
Yeah.

But yeah, but also think about the emotional rollercoaster. Well, there’s another interesting one about the interactions between people’s feelings. And this was alluded to in a very different way. I think was actually the Future of Friendships, the very first episode with Steph Clark, she talks about people having their aura rings, which again, they capture your mood, but it also then has some type of near field communication thing where when you’re around other people, it starts going, well, when I’m around KP, how do I feel? Is KP good for me?

basically, and your your aura ring is starting to make judgments about what a healthy friendship is for you. But if this was especially a real time thing, and you go in on a first date, and, you know, you say something, and you suddenly see some type of negative reaction in that moment, and then you are likely then to react to my reaction without even understanding potentially the concept or the con the context of how I reacted.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:02:25)
Mm-hmm.

Bye.

Simon Waller (1:02:52)
And that was another thing I picked up on this as well, which is how we, you know, what colour, like you, in this, made the point that fear is red. And in our world, red is bad. Green is good. And even the very decision to associate particular colours with different particular feelings, and also acknowledging that we can’t have the nuance. We can’t have the nuance of all of the feelings in the feeling wheel.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:02:54)
And.

Yeah, emotions, yep.

Simon Waller (1:03:19)
And so at some point we are limited to, you know, the different hues that we can clarify this, there’s gonna be we’re get six, probably, it’s gonna get like the primary colours and the secondary colours, we’re gonna narrow it down to one of six things that you’re experiencing. And we’ve distilled the you know, that continuous human experience into a series of data points, which is further reduced into one of six colours. And that’s what KP was doing right now experiencing right now. I think that’s feels problematic. But I but I ⁓

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:03:33)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:03:49)
don’t think that will stop people from doing it. I just think that we will be ⁓ seduced into that somehow that ⁓ is useful or insightful from a commentator’s perspective as well. Before we close out, and I know there’s a couple of questions I shared that we’re gonna ask at the very end, but I’d like to ask you just about the very last line in your scenario.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:04:07)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Simon Waller (1:04:19)
He

says, but now emotional influencing was just another way to get what you wanted in the world. And we haven’t talked a lot about that, but there was obviously a section of this scenario, which is Beth choosing to manipulate her emotions. And you say that emotions can’t be controlled, but I also don’t think that you’re saying that they can’t be manipulated. That there are things we can do in terms of our breathing or adjusting our facial expressions or whatever, which may

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:04:40)
Mm.

Simon Waller (1:04:46)
manipulate them to an extent. And we see this in people’s mirroring body language and other ways of making people comfortable. Talk us through this last line and what you see as being this other consequence potentially of this type of a technology or this type of a future.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:04:54)
Yeah.

Well, I have been struck recently, if we’re talking about signals, with even in sport where certain younger athletes, and I’m thinking about Nick Kyrgios, the Australian tennis player and his really upending of the very highest level of professional sport in the interest of social media.

as opposed to athletic performance. And he talks about this and I was mortally offended. And it’s because of my desire, like watching athletes really go for things that the rest of us can only dream of. I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but I know it was moving to me and to realise that I’m so old school about sport. I don’t like the manipulation of

high performance in sport to be done, be entertaining in ways other than that you’re trying your damned hardest to be the very best you can be, or lose. ⁓ So that’s what really fed me around this when it becomes less about what it’s supposed to be and sort of a parody to make some other point. It’s debasing.

what I see the beauty of sport to be. Respond to me.

Simon Waller (1:06:35)
And I do think, you

know, there’s no separation from sport, from entertainment these days. You know, in most cases, the professional sports at least are paid for through television rights and that’s about viewership and someone like Nick Kurios is great for viewers. But there’s something you point out in this to some viewers, not all viewers. ⁓

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:06:56)
Some viewers, not all viewers.

Simon Waller (1:07:02)
But as you said, there’s a point where you’re in this where Beth in the attempt to manipulate her own emotions also damages her performance. And again, without being a sports psychologist or anyone qualified to have an opinion, ⁓ there’s a general sense that Nick Kyrgios could have been great. You know, that he could have been a world number one if he just kind of pulled his head in and and and

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:07:12)
Yes.

Simon Waller (1:07:30)
focused on the tennis rather than the other things. And so what I hear you saying is that when the pursuit of these external goals around social media, et cetera, or in the case of Beth, there’s a minimum emotional manipulation gets in the way and it stops you being the success. It gets in the way of the sport. That’s not okay in your eyes.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:07:56)
didn’t realise that I held such firmly, but I think what I love about sport is that it’s such courage for athletes to go out and do these crazy things because failure is on display and we do it anyway. know, like working with wrestlers, you can’t fail more spectacularly than as a wrestler, you get pinned belly up on the floor. It’s like the ultimate sign of defeat and debasement. And yet,

they go out and do it anyway. So there’s something I feel really noble about athletes who overcome their fear, work so hard to hone their craft. ⁓ And not to say they’re assholes in sport and we know who they are, but it’s doing it in such a public way that it just has my unending admiration why I loved the thing. Now I’ve lost, I’ve completely lost track of your question. ⁓ But I…

Simon Waller (1:08:44)
Thank

No, I said,

what I said, what I’m, what I’m interested in is that, you know, you have a strong view about when it’s in this case, the emotional manipulation or other forms of social manipulation are used at the expense of the sport where, again, I think the other thing that I would draw as another example of this is, ⁓ is sport betting. And we obviously recently had the situation in NBA where one of the coaches and a couple of players have been caught up in an illegal sports betting kind of racket.

Obviously not entirely clear yet about what roles they played in it. But we have a real issue when the professional sports people bring the sport into disrepute ⁓ is the terminology we use. But really, it’s about you put something else like you’ve been paid to be a professional athlete, athlete, and you put something else has been a higher priority for you. Now, on one hand, I get that sentiment. And I’m not someone I’m not a fan of sports betting. So that’s easy for me to rile against. But I also think it’s interesting that

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:09:44)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:09:48)
in a world where we’re pushing back against kind of binary good bad choices that this is a very binary kind of position to take. Now, we are going to park that though because I reckon that could be a whole nother episode.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:09:57)
Yeah, I know, because it’s got me up.

Let’s talk more because there’s more to say, but anyway.

Simon Waller (1:10:06)
Yeah. When we went through this process, I find from experience when doing this with guests, the process itself helps them clarify some things. And part of it is, in this case, a bit about clarifying what’s my own position on this? What do I believe to be a good outcome for the people and the world more broadly? And what are the pitfalls to be avoided?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:10:26)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:10:37)
And, you know, on one hand, there’s a real risk when we talk about the future of it becoming overly theoretical and not practical enough. So I suppose if you were to steal down all of what you have done and the research you’ve done in this conversation, and you’re going to give a note, like, you’re not here to necessarily give people advice, but if you say, Hey, what could you do to, to, to do this, engage with this concept of emotional transparency in a healthy way? Is there anything you would advise listeners to do?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:11:08)
You know, I guess it really depends on how the future unfolds in this space, but it really is. My overarching message is that emotions are not the enemy. ⁓ It is our relationship to them and the. The more willing we are, I see this over and over again in every single domain I work in.

that when we reach that moment where we can look at our emotions straight up and be okay with them, and generally it’s fear and anger that are the ones, great things happen for us when we can honestly be there. But I do over and over again see people, it takes a near death experience for people to get, be willing to do that. And that says something about the depth of resistance some of us have.

to actually looking at what drives our behavior without our knowledge. ⁓

looking at emotion and yeah, go ahead.

Simon Waller (1:12:13)
think I picked up in this is

almost like, you know, on one hand, we you paint this picture for a world where emotions are broadcast to everyone. And yet, what I really want things I took away from this conversation was the the value of emotions in terms of intimacy. And it’s like, cool. There’s certainly opportunity to be more open with our emotions. We don’t have to do it to the whole world.

We don’t have to do it on social media, but have at least one person or a few people that are close enough that you feel close enough to and where there’s perhaps even a mutuality in the sharing of emotions where you can take away some of the stigma and stuff that’s perhaps attached to it.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:12:59)
And even, you know, if we think about starting just with us, becoming more intimate with ourselves first. I love the notion of having somebody else to bounce things off of that you feel safe with. But I think the first step is that we find ways to become safe enough in our own heads, in our own hearts, in our own bodies to be able to be with all of who we are. And then maybe we enlarge that circle because that’s the…

first, right, Simon, before we can be intimate with anybody else. ⁓

Simon Waller (1:13:33)
And do you, you,

yeah, as I say, when, you’re working with clients and staff and you’re talking about a concept like that, it feels like that’s not the first time you’ve obviously talked about it. What, what does an exercise look like? You know, is it a journal thing? What do people do if they wanted to try and be a bit more open with themselves about their experiences and their emotions?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:13:58)
Yeah, there’s a process. So I’m also a meditation teacher. And believe it or not, a lot of what I have learned in this space comes way more from the Buddha than from my own psychology training. that’s a sense of psychology has only started to embrace emotions relative to its notion of cognition and thinking. Crazy. Other than, yeah, this is another topic. it’s so there’s a four letter acronym that I will take clients through ⁓ straight out of

the Buddhist literature and it’s rain. And what you do is you first want to just lean in and be recognised. How am I feeling? Emotions at the very core are actually sensations in the body that we give names to. But if we don’t, if we aren’t, we need to develop our self-awareness to realise when we are uncomfortable. And so many of us are, we’ve discounted or we’ve walled off this, just the feelings of discomfort or whatever it is. Like don’t even have to label it. What does it feel like?

And I’ll ask people, where is it? And along the lines, we then also talk about the fact that we have a problem with, semantic problem with emotions. Like I’ll say, I feel anxious or I am anxious. I am this thing as opposed to anxiety lives in the body. So the first step is recognise, where is it happening? What’s it feel like? Let’s get curious about that. Next letter, A. So R-A, accept.

This is the magic is just accept it’s right to be there. It’s here. But what do how often do we deny deflect blah, blah, This here. It’s not no one’s ever died accepting a weird feeling in one’s chest. Then it’s investigate to the notion like, what’s it like? What what are what’s my story that I’m telling about it? So just again, wow, we’re just learning about it. So our recognised a except I investigate. the last letter is N.

for non-identification. So two words, cheating. But this notion that it’s not my identity, it’s just something I’m experiencing. taking people through this process over and over and over and just starting to, as we said earlier, normalize the experience that is part of being human. So that would be an exercise. And then we get comfortable and we can talk to it. ⁓ Meaning I’m not necessarily talking to sensations in my body, but I can.

speak about it without freaking out. And when we gain that ability to empowerment with our emotions, not over our emotions, right? Like, so it’s not control. We can talk about influence, maybe manage, but it’s a relationship. We do we redefining the relationship. That would be the exercise to start.

Simon Waller (1:16:32)
Hmm.

That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I was in that process of when you were doing that, was like, what am I feeling right now? And the first thing that came to me was gratitude, that I’m very much grateful for this conversation and very grateful for you sharing your expertise. And I really appreciate it’s, I find it so interesting to watch people go through the journey of writing a scenario like this.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:16:55)
for asking.

you

Simon Waller (1:17:23)
and and supporting someone through it like

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:17:25)
How many times did I ask you?

I was like, am I the most high maintenance person you’ve ever run into? Because I was like, held my hand. Yes, go on, sorry.

Simon Waller (1:17:34)
Yeah, and no, no, like, I found that super interesting. On a couple of counts, like, so first of all, I don’t mind. And it’s like, you know, when when someone shows an interest in your expertise, and they say, Hey, can you give us some help? You’re like, Hey, I’d love to help you. I would love to not withstanding obviously, you’re coming on my podcast, like just the general premise of it, though, like, I wanted I wanted to try and get the most out of this. And

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:17:39)
Mm.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:18:04)
As I said, so seeing that journey unfold, I find really interesting, regardless, and I like the little micro conversations that we have in advance. And then I get to see what comes out the other side of this. And then the conversation we get to have about the scenario if you’ve created, as I I’m just very grateful for the effort and the time that you put in and the way you’ve shown up today. So thank you. ⁓ But my last question is just really about your own experience of it. ⁓ From being kind of tapped on the shoulder.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:18:29)
Mm.

Simon Waller (1:18:33)
a few weeks ago, would you come and come on the podcast and going through this, this process? What’s your like, what’s your takeaway from it? Is there something that that you think that you’ve learned or that will sit with you beyond, you know, the hour and a half that we spent chatting today?

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:18:51)
I can’t remember if I said this earlier, but it did make me realise this whole process that I suck at being a futurist. ⁓ It was really stretching me because ⁓ as you may have picked up, I am so invested in helping people not fight reality in the present that I always say the future will come and don’t worry about it. It’s going to come whether you like it or not.

So this notion of turning intentionally into this was a whole new experience. And I did, my God, I needed so much coaching to reorient my way of thinking into the future. I don’t think I can unlearn that in the sense of like possibilities and maybe in doing this exercise, help become a better, help people actually think about the future in a way that I’ve never done with clients.

⁓ So thank you. think it.

Simon Waller (1:19:53)
Yeah, you

mentioned that before about that, that idea that you feel that your work is very much in the moment. And I find that contrast interesting is that, that for me, futurism has always been about contemplating the future so you can make better decisions in the moment. Like I think even with the athletes you support or with professionals that you support, their high performance that they’re seeking

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:19:58)
Mm.

Simon Waller (1:20:22)
is because of goals or aspirations that they hold that sit outside the present moment. And it’s like, it’s, it’s almost like this concept of how do we make better decisions, future informed decisions, but ultimately we have to bring it back to the present. I find that super interesting because my biggest fear of futurism is it becomes disassociated with the present. That it, we can’t draw that connection back again.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:20:40)
Yeah.

Wow.

Simon Waller (1:20:51)
In which case, it’s just novelty. And the really powerful stuff is when the exploration brings us to a point where we go, I now get it. I get a sense of what I need to do just a little bit differently. Again, that idea of nudging the world slightly in the right direction.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:21:11)
just in my response to that is right back to the comment earlier, this is not a dichotomy. It’s not a either or, because certainly, certainly anybody going to the Olympics, we do so much visualization of that podium, that venue that this to prepare for it, but then it’s coming back. So I think you’re right, it’s a it’s a frickin balance. And if we over go one way or the other, we do it at the peril of both, I think. So ⁓ thank you. Like, yeah.

Simon Waller (1:21:38)
Mmm.

This has been such an amazing conversation, KP. Thank you so much again. I really love the time I get to spend with you. I really deeply admire the philosophy and stuff that you bring to your work. ⁓ The world is a better place for you being in it. And yeah, thanks so much for being on the show.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:22:01)
Right back at you, Simon. You ask some of the best questions ⁓ to and of me and of the people around me. So I think I reflect the same sentiment right back at you. Thank you.

Simon Waller (1:22:15)
Awesome. Well, on that final, you know, mutual accolades, we are going to close out this episode. Thank you so much for people listening. It’s been wonderful to have you here. We’ll be back in another episode in a couple of weeks time. Till then, take care.

Kirsten (KP) Peterson (1:22:28)
Thank you.