Sage Solutions
Advice and insight about personal growth, personal development, and becoming your best self.
Sage Solutions
State Mastery: The Power of Emotional Control
We explore the transformative power of state change and how mastering your emotional state can dramatically improve your quality of life and effectiveness in any situation.
• Your state is the sum of your emotions and physiology at any given moment — it dictates how you experience reality
• When in a resourceful state, you're more creative, resilient, and likely to take positive action
• Success is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics according to Tony Robbins
• The state change triad consists of three interconnected levers: physiology, focus, and language
• Physiology is the fastest way to change your state — emotion is created by motion
• Simple physical changes like posture, breathing patterns, and movement can rapidly shift your emotional state
• Focus determines feelings — asking empowering questions redirects your brain toward constructive solutions
• Language shapes your experience — transformational vocabulary can intensify or diminish emotional responses
• Incantations (emotionally charged affirmations with congruent physiology) create powerful state changes
• This isn't about toxic positivity — it's about taking responsibility for your emotional state after acknowledging feelings
• Research shows power poses increase testosterone and decrease cortisol, creating biochemical confidence
Take a moment this week to practice the triad approach whenever you find yourself in a negative state. Change your physiology, shift your focus, and transform your language to take back control of how you feel.
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The Sage Solutions Podcast and content posted by David Sage is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. No coaching client relationship is formed by listening to this podcast. No Legal, Medical or Financial advice is being given. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice, diagnosis, or treatment of a psychotherapist, physician, professional coach, Lawyer or other qualified professional. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The opinions of guests are their own and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the podcast.
Welcome to the Sage Solutions Podcast, where we talk about all things personal growth, personal development and becoming your best self. My name is David Sage and I am a self-worth and confidence coach at Sage Coaching Solutions. Today's topic is one that I've been excited to do for quite a while now. It's about identifying the state that we're in and exercising our ability to change that state. I mean, look, we've all been there, right? We wake up on the wrong side of the bed and it feels like the entire day is just a write-off. Or maybe you're about to walk into a crucial meeting and your heart is pounding with anxiety, whether you're an entrepreneur or an employee. Maybe you're staring at a major setback, a setback that is going to be a huge problem for your job or business, and the weight of it just feels crushing, making you just want to give up. It's in those moments that it can feel like you're the victim of your emotions, like a ship that's being tossed on the waves of circumstance. But what if I told you you have the power to shift how you feel emotionally and physically in as little as a matter of seconds? What if you could be the captain of the ship, able to steer it through any storm. What I'm talking about isn't just wishful thinking. It's a real skill, a skill that can be built just like any other skill. And, as we've talked about before, your life is like a muscle you have to actively exercise, work on and use that muscle or skill to build it up and maintain it over time. Otherwise you let it fatigue. But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free, helpful tools with you and anyone you know who is looking to improve their life. So take action, subscribe and share this podcast with them. So today we're going to break down the strategies that help you become the master of your emotional and physiological state, drawing heavily from the work of the master of state change himself, tony Robbins. So if you are ready to stop letting your emotions run the show and you're ready to take control of your life, taking back the ultimate agency, then you're in the right place. Welcome to the power of state change.
Speaker 1:But before we get into the how, let's talk about the why. Your state is the sum of your emotions and your physiology at any given moment. It's really the lens through which you experience the world. That's right. Your current state is one of the biggest drivers of your perspective of reality, especially when you're not being conscious about it. It dictates the quality of your life when you think about it, the quality of your relationships, your career, your health. It all comes down to the emotional states that you live in most consistently, because when you're in an off state, when your nervous system is dysregulated, you don't show up in the way that you want. To Hell, I know, I don't.
Speaker 1:But when you're in a resourceful state, a powerful state, feeling confident, happy, determined and energized, you're more creative, you're more resilient and you're more likely to take positive, massive actions. You find solutions, you connect with people, you solve problems, you see opportunities where other people see obstacles. When you're in an unresourceful state, feeling overwhelmed, fearful, angry or lethargic, the opposite is true. The world's challenges just seem so big and insurmountable. The very same problem that would look like a fun challenge in this positive, resourceful state looks like an impossible mountain when you're in a negative, poor state.
Speaker 1:Tony Robbins, the incredible motivational teacher, often says success is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics. You can have the best strategy in the world or the mechanics, the best business plan, the perfect diet, the most effective communication technique, but if you're in a lousy state, you won't use it, or if you do, you'll use it poorly. That's why mastering your state is easily one of the most critical skills that you can develop. It's one of the major foundations upon which all other success is built. As we talked about in a previous episode, your thoughts, even if they're just observational about your life, tend to generate emotions surrounding those thoughts. Emotions surrounding those thoughts and those emotions tend to be the major drivers of our decisions and actions, whether we realize it or not.
Speaker 1:Many times that we think we're making a logical decision, it's just that logic and emotions are lining up. We are making a decision based on an emotion that is driving us to take action and then, backwards, rationalizing it with logic. This means that taking control of our emotional state, of our major driver of the actions and decisions that we make in our lives, makes it a super muscle, kind of like grit, and one of the most useful tools in our toolkit. So how do we do it? How do we take conscious control? Tony teaches us a powerful and brilliantly simple framework called the triad. I want you to imagine a triangle with three points. At each point is a lever, a lever that you can pull to instantly change your state. These three levers are interconnected. Change one and you influence the other two. Those three levers are physiology, focus and language. Let's break them down. Physiology Make your body your ally. Physiology is the quickest and often most effective way to change your state. We've talked about how emotions are the major drivers of action, but what's interesting is that it's a two-way street. Your physical actions or your emotions can also drive your emotions, which means emotion is created by motion. Your physiology and your emotions are intrinsically linked through this two-way street of biochemical signals.
Speaker 1:Think back when you feel depressed or even just sad, how do you typically hold your body? Your shoulders are likely slumped, your head is down, your breathing is shallow, your facial muscles are slack. You tend to be looking down. It's a universal posture of defeat. Now picture someone who's ecstatic. Their head is up, their chest is open, they're breathing deeply, they're probably moving with energy. Their eyes are wide open, they're smiling, they're taking up space and they're probably moving with energy. The problem is, most of us are way too comfortable only ever driving one direction down this two-way street.
Speaker 1:You can't just wait to feel good to change your posture. You can change your posture to start to feel good Right now, as you're listening, I want you to try something. Stand up, if you can. If not, just sit up straight, pull your shoulders back, lift your chest. Lift your chest and put a big goofy grin on that face. Now take a deep, powerful breath in, fill your belly and exhale a loud ecstatic yes, now. Hold that posture, look up to the sky and after 10 seconds, yeah, go on, I'll wait.
Speaker 1:Do you feel a little different? Even a small shift in your physiology sends a powerful signal to your brain to change your emotional state. Now I'm not promising an overwhelming 100% wave of change that's going to make you feel 100 percent different in 10 seconds. By doing this, let's set some realistic expectations here, and if you've never done something like this before, it's going to feel weird and foreign, just like the first time you drove. Since we're using this two-way street metaphor, you're not going to be good at it the first time that you do it, and it's not going to be as easy and seamless as once. You can drive on autopilot, but even a small shift in your physiology can send a powerful signal to your brain to change your emotional state. So the next time that you feel a wave of negativity.
Speaker 1:Make a radical change to your physiology. Jump up and down, do some quick push-ups, go for a brisk walk or even try a power pose which is standing with your feet apart and your hands on your hips like a superhero for two minutes. The more that you change your physiology, both physically through motion, more that you change your physiology both physically through motion, but also things like heart rate, temperature, comfort level and visual surroundings, the more it disrupts your current emotional state. This is why putting something cold on your face or, even better, on the back of your neck right along the vagus nerve, can have a physiological response that both distracts you from the emotional state and shocks you out of it. At the same time, the cool feeling will also calm your nervous system and change your heart rate.
Speaker 1:Another powerful tool is your breath. When you're stressed, you take short, shallow breaths To instantly calm your nervous system. Try box breathing Inhale for a count of four, hold for four, exhale for a count of four and hold for another four or whatever breathing technique suits you best. If you repeat any of these breathing techniques four or five times, you'll find that you feel a profound sense of calm. If you're looking for a pick-me-up, you can temporarily increase your rate of breathing through big, non-shallow breaths to start to feel a well of energy.
Speaker 1:Another way to shift your emotional state is to see something funny or have something scare you. Both of these often change your heart rate. Both of these often change your heart rate If you go to take a walk. The change in temperature, atmosphere, smells, lighting, the view of nature, the fresh air on your face, the visual cues of movement all around you, the sight of the horizon or large buildings or even animals, the physical movement of walking all of these can help shift your emotional state. And the true power comes from combining them. And, like any other muscle, the more that you pull this lever, the stronger the response will become. And when you add in a placebo effect and no, I'm not saying that this only works because of a placebo effect, but when you believe in something, you're spreading a layer of placebo effect on top of it, amplifying its power even more. And this isn't just anecdotal, nor is it placebo. There's a whole body of research supporting the two-way street of physiology and emotional state. A fascinating study published in the Journal of Psychological Science by researchers Amy Cuddy, dana Carney and Andy Yap found that holding expansive high-power poses for just a couple of minutes increased participants' levels of testosterone and it decreased their levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. This simple physiological change led to them feeling more powerful and being more willing to take risks.
Speaker 1:Your biology is not your destiny. It is your resource. Move your body and you can change your mind. The second lever is focus. What you focus on expands. So choose your focus wisely and focus on your locus of control, because whatever you focus on, you will feel Period. If you constantly focus on what's wrong in your life, the bills you have to pay, the argument you had with a friend, the things you can't control, you're going to feel stressed and overwhelmed because your brain will deliver evidence to support that reality. Remember, our perspective of reality shapes our experience of reality. Tony often says what's wrong is always available, but so is what's right. You have the power to consciously direct your focus to focus on your locus of control, to take control of your conscious perspective of reality.
Speaker 1:A simple way to do this is to ask yourself empowering questions. Your brain is like a search engine. It will find answers to whatever questions you ask it, instead of constantly asking disempowering questions like why does this always happen to me or why am I not enough? Which only finds reasons for you to feel like a victim. Ask empowering questions like what can I learn from this? How can I make this work? What's one thing I can do right now to make this better? What's great about this situation that I'm not seeing? What can I control? What are some other ways of looking at this? What am I grateful for?
Speaker 1:A powerful practice is to start a daily gratitude journal. Every morning or evening, write down three things that you're grateful for. This trains your brain to actively seek out the positive things in your life, shifting your default focus and, in turn, your emotional home base. We've talked about emotional home, or your emotional comfort zone, in previous episodes. Shifting it can be a very powerful transition. Another pro tip here is to shift from a problem focus to an outcome focus. Instead of dwelling on the problem and all its intricacies, we can define the outcome that we want. We can focus all of our mental energy on how to achieve that outcome and the actions that we need to take to make it a reality. It's a subtle but game-changing shift from being stuck to being in motion. In action, and remember, motion creates emotion. The final lever is language.
Speaker 1:The words you use, both out loud and in your internal dialogue, your self-talk, have a profound impact on how you feel, have a profound impact on how you feel. They are the labels you assign to your experiences, and these labels can either intensify or soften your emotional response. If you constantly say I'm so stressed, this is a disaster, I'm furious or I'm pissed off, your brain will take those as commands and create the corresponding emotional state. You literally talk yourself into a state of suffering. Thoughts lead to emotions. Emotions then lead to actions or inaction. But what if you changed your language? What if, instead of saying I'm furious, you said I'm a little annoyed? Or instead of I'm overwhelmed, you tried, I'm pretty busy or I'm in high demand? The intensity of emotion immediately diminishes. Remember, our brains primarily make sense of the world through stories, and the language that we use shapes the stories that we tell. Tony Robbins calls this transformational vocabulary. By consciously choosing less emotionally charged words, you can dial down the negative feelings and maintain a more helpful state.
Speaker 1:Even more powerful than just changing your words is the practice of incantations. These are not your grandmother's quiet, passive affirmations. These are positive affirmations that you say with emotional intensity and, if you want them to really work, congruent physiology. In this example, we are pulling two levers simultaneously to supercharge the impact. You engage your entire nervous system. So in this example, instead of just meekly saying I am confident, you would stand tall, put your hands on your hips or beat your chest and declare with passion and volume I am a force to be reckoned with, I have unshakable confidence. By engaging your body and your emotions, you're not just saying it, you're embodying it. You're literally forging new neurological pathways, conditioning your mind and your body for a new reality.
Speaker 1:So here's my challenge to you this week I don't want you to just be a passive listener. I want you to be a practitioner. The next time you find yourself in a negative or unhelpful state and you will, because you're human don't stay there. Don't set up camp in that negative space. Don't give up all of your agency. I want you to run a quick triad check.
Speaker 1:Look at your three levers. First, radically change your physiology with whatever combination works best for you. Change your breathing, change your physical state, change your posture, get some movement, possibly change your temperature. Get your heart rate up. Do 10 jumping jacks, go, splash cold water on your face, put on your favorite song and dance wildly for 60 seconds, whatever it takes to break up that physical pattern. Second, shift your focus. Ask yourself what am I grateful for right now? Focus your brain to find a different target. Take control of your perspective of reality. Focus on your locus of control. What could be funny about this situation? And third, change your language. Catch the negative words you're using and consciously swap them for something better. Remember you are the consciousness experiencing your life. You're not every thought that pops into it.
Speaker 1:You can take control of that voice and if it seems like it keeps saying things you don't like, then say it verbally, say it out loud. One of the best ways to interrupt negative self-talk is to use your agency to not just hijack that voice and say it in your head, but to say it out loud. You can't simultaneously think one thing while saying another. Very well, it tends to drown out that inner voice if you say the things you want out loud. So when you make that language swap, you can use what Tony calls a powerful incantation. Yell it in your car. Make sure that what you're saying lines up with your physiology.
Speaker 1:I am in control of my state and I choose to feel amazing. I am not just a passenger, I am the driver. Now, this might feel a little silly at first but, like I said, when you first started driving it felt foreign as well. This is a two-way street and you're used to only going one way. It's gonna feel a little weird at first, but the more you practice, the more it becomes an automatic, unconscious skill. You are building the muscle and, like any muscle, it requires repetition To leave you with a powerful thought.
Speaker 1:On this topic, I want to share a quote from the brilliant writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley. He said there is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. And the first and most crucial step in improving yourself is mastering the world within. Your internal world creates your external world. Master your state and you will begin to master your life. Now just to give some extra shades of gray here sometimes you're going to have events in your life that are overwhelmingly negative, and I'm not saying that there is never a place for a negative state, because what I'm not advocating for here is toxic positivity.
Speaker 1:It's unrealistic to hold yourself to being in a helpful or positive state at all times. It's human to let yourself feel emotions, and shaming yourself or others for not always being happy and positive is not healthy and it's actively destructive. However, on the flip side, don't just use this as a justification to never take responsibility for your state and give up your agency whenever you feel this way. But if you've just went through a major loss or something really, really hard just happened, sometimes you just need to take a mindful moment and let yourself feel. Be there with your emotions. Don't just suppress them. You can give yourself a minute to feel them, but after you've given yourself a reasonable amount of time to feel these things whatever they are, that's when we take control. That's our opportunity to still use these tools, to take control of our conscious perspective, to pull these levers and to change our emotional state. You hold the key to your own state. Use it wisely, use it often and create a beautiful life. And remember you are enough and you deserve to fill up your inner cup with happiness, confidence and self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions Podcast. Your time is valuable and I'm so glad you choose to learn and grow here with me. We'd love to hear your feedback, so click the link in the description and let us know what you think. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on more sage advice. One last thing the legal language. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.