Understanding the Flavors of Emotions | The Emotion Chef, Kim Korte

0:00 Hello and welcome to Real Men Feel. I am your host, author, coach, and healer, Andy Grant. Please visit theandygrant.com to learn more about me. If I sound a little different today, it's because I'm coming off 2 Metallica shows this past weekend and my voice is shot. Regardless, Real Men Feel exists to remind men that they are human beings. They have the right to experience and express all of their emotions. We have conversations that most men are not having, but that all men can benefit from. My guest today is Kim Korti. Kim is a sensory perception and emotion management strategist who weaves her curiosity about emotional awareness with her decades of experience in the world of business consulting.

0:45 She has an interesting metaphor for exploring emotions based on food and cooking. Kim is the author of Yucky, Yummy, Savory, Sweet Understanding the Flavors of Emotions. Today. She shares how our brains and emotions work or don't work if we try to stuff and deny our emotions, how our memories influence our current experiences, and how to look at our memories as emotion recipes. Kim discusses such topics as emotional granularity into reception and much more around the flavors of emotions. Let's get to it. Hello Kim, and welcome to Real Men Feel. Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.

1:28 Great. And. But before the show we were just talking about Metallica, which always excites me. Yeah, and I still. Haven't. I love Metallica. Awesome. They're awesome. I should do just an all Metallica show, just having different fans on at some point. But but that's not it. So you have a really unique metaphor in dealing with emotions and treating emotions as flavors and using kind of cooking metaphors. Were you raised in a very openly emotional family? Well, I, you know, I probably lean into more like we, we didn't feel the feels, you know what I mean? Like there if something was a little bit off, it's like we just ignored it a little bit more than we should have. Yeah.

2:14 I think I learned more from my parents to push emotions down rather than to experience them. OK, of course I experienced the big ones, right? Like anger and upset and all the big ones when they blow. And I, I'm going to say it's not that my parents were always angry or anything. I just think that it was just generational, right? Passed down. How did your life unfold that you decided to study emotions and write about them in yucky, yummy, savory sweet Understanding the flavors or emotions? I'm going to put this in the context for the people who would be listening to this show because, you know, you can always point out something about your personality that would be more appealing.

3:01 And I think that understanding that while I'm a woman, my husband always teases that I act more like a guy in reaction to the things I'm always trying to solve problems. My dad recounted the story when I was, I don't know, four or five, maybe 4, and my both my mom was really sick. So he came home to take care of my sister and I, who was a year younger, and he was really sick. So they both passed out as sleep sick. They came downstairs because they knew we hadn't been fed and I had made a a makeshift ladder from the drawers in the lower cabinets, got up to the upper cabinets, grabbed some cereal, brought it down and was feeding my sister and I because I like to solve problems.

3:47 I like to figure things out and I was at a point where I was emotionally like I knew that things were bad. I just gone through a divorce. Well, I hadn't even been divorced and I'm, I was like, I've got to figure this out. I have a project management background which is perfect for problem solver, right? And I needed to figure out how it works. How do my emotions work? So if I understand how it works, then I can work with them. Like when you're implementing a system to do the best design right, you need to know the bells and whistles of that system. And the brain is a system.

4:31 It has repeatable processes also, which I love. That applied to a logic that I needed when it comes to emotions and that logic is it uses and, and this is not in its entirety. You know, we're we're trying to get to what's easy to approach, right that that it's uses is sensory perception. If things that are coming in from the outside world, which is called extra reception. So everything that's coming in from the outside world and our inside world, because that's its own little system. And it takes that like ingredients in a recipe and it says here I've got all these ingredients, what do I do with them?

5:17 Because it needs to do something, has to make meaning of it. And it uses our past experiences. That could be what we've learned. It could be the culture that we were raised in, which is part of learning. It could be an actual experience. It, it could be your faith, it could be all kinds of things, your beliefs. And it, it draws upon that to help you focus on what that information coming in is. Out of 11 billion bits of information, we get what, 4550 bits every second. So how does it, what does it use to, to focus on what we are perceiving or seeing or hearing, whatever. And it's going to use our memories. They're like recipes that wiring in our head is what I call emotion recipes.

6:08 And then we feel it in our body through an emotion. So an emotion is literally a chemical signal. It's a peptide, it goes to the body and it's like a server delivering the the dish that was created by a neuron and using that memory and boom, we feel it. The problem is for people like me, and I think some other people who might be listening, is that we at some point in time learn to shut our feelings down or to say that kind of feeling I'm not comfortable with. I'm good with anger. I'm good with certain feelings or the ones that I can't because they're so big, they just explode out of me 'cause I've been pushing them down for so long.

6:52 And so we don't have that connection. We don't we're either afraid to feel them. We're we don't know what it means. And so this book is using these metaphors of food and flavor because flavor is a product of multiple sensory systems, the same ones we use to create our experiences. We also have the experience of flavor. What we see can influence flavor. Even the music playing can influence flavor. So it's a great metaphor and it's a great transition to get used to noticing ingredients in food or to get used to noticing how you feel when you eat what you're noticing, and then translate that to the emotions that were a little bit more familiar with. So when you get more strength in your ability to look at the ingredients of now instead of relying on the past, is, is that really the key to being able to not keep stuffing your emotions? Yes, because you're being filtered like your whole life experience.

7:56 And this is something that I don't think, you know, people will talk about the Matrix. And I'm not saying we live in a matrix world, but I will say we live in a world that's all in, in this noggin. The from the moment we're born, we even in the womb, at about seven months, we start to distinguish our mother's voice from other sounds. And that's the beginning of our perceptive wiring. So that when we are born, we know the sound of our mother's voice, and we might hear other things like music or things that are familiar, familiar because we heard it in the womb, even the father's voice. And that's just the beginning.

8:37 And it's from there that we build out this world because we don't see with our eyes. We don't hear with our ears. None of that is happening, you know, with these things. These are just vehicles to get the data in. And the brain is telling us this. So when we are able to stop and say, OK, it's my brain talking. And also to know that your brain can get it wrong. So your brain is telling you what you see, but it can get it wrong. It's called a prediction error. And that's the fancy scientific term for a brain getting the sensory input incorrect. And this is a chance to correct.

9:18 It is when we have that sensory correction, the prediction error, because everything we experience is a prediction of the brain that we experience, just ever so slightly delayed. Is the prediction error based on the fact that we are really stuck in with with just living through past memories and experiences? Like if something now doesn't match something in the past, that makes an error. So you see somebody who looks just like your buddy John, right? And, and it, it might have just been a cursory look and you look and you go, oh, there's John's over there. And then you look again and the brain got more detail. And so it corrects the prediction error. So sometimes it's, you know, sure, it's your memory of John, right, that is used to make you think that it's John, but it's the closer examination that either confirmed it was John or confirmed it wasn't John.

10:15 And this is what I call the 2nd sip and, or the second taste. Cause a, a chef will not just take one taste of food. They usually take a second one, especially if it's a dish that they haven't tasted before. They're going to take a taste and then take another one and, and make sure they've got and understand the flavors that are in that dish. So when we take a second look or go, wait, is that really what's going on now? And look a little bit more broadly, because remember, our brain is filtering all of our perceptions based on what it's using to launch what that moment. And so if we're consciously going, hey, is this what's going on here to get in more of the, what I call flavors? And that gives you an opportunity to maybe refine that situation and say, hey, does this really, should I really be angry over this or should I really be in love with this person?

11:13 Because you're allowing yourself to consciously think about it more if you if you allow yourself to think about it more critically. Right. So that that's really got to be a conscious choice of of somebody. Life is a conscious choice. And so even, and what's really funny is that even when you ignore your feelings, that's a conscious choice and it's really only to your own detriment. And it's a physical detriment, not just an emotional one. So I like to say that there's two flavors of emotions, the kind that we think about with emotions, right? Love, hate, joy, anger, sorrow, excitement, all of that stuff. But there's another type of emotion that's keeps us alive and healthy and that's hunger, thirst, tired. A racing heart tells us we need to slow down. So really what emotions are communication. It's just telling us, hey, based on what I know and what's you need to pay attention to this.

12:25 And just like hunger, if you don't pay attention, the, the brain just gets it louder and louder and louder and louder. And that's why we see people who don't take that moment to, you know, examine their feelings or to really say, is this how I'm feeling or am I sick or am I am I tired or am I mad? You can get those confused. And and it's even harder when you completely ignore them because, hey, it might be telling you, you are sick, you're in pain and you're just ignoring it. And that can lead to disease. And trust me, from someone who had all kinds of intestinal troubles and, you know, other troubles, I, I can tell you that my doctor visits went way, way, way down.

13:17 The more connected I became to my emotions, to that conversation, that internal conversation. For for you, was it physical issues that that led you to open up and and dig into your emotions? No, because I didn't understand the connection. So I for years was going to doctors and having troubles in certain part of my body. And it was because I had pushed down a very horrible childhood experience and something that should have never happened to a a young child.

13:57 And so that was my first inkling or noticing that, that connection, but I didn't really, really put it all together until I, I, I hadn't mentioned this yet, but I read this book called How Emotions are made, The Secret Life of the Brain. And this was the light bulb that went off in my head that said, hey, there's a process and a procedure to this, which totally got me excited because it was logical. Why would the brain have a different process for how it sees, how it hears, how it responds to low blood sugar, how it responds to, you know, the need for sleep.

14:42 Why would it be any different? And it's not any different. And I loved that. And so to make it more palatable for people to connect to their emotions, I started using food. Is that a step that helped you or was that just to communicate to others? No, no, no, no, no. This is I don't, I don't think you're old enough. But back in what was it in the 8485, there was this guy who had the hair club for men. He he said, you know, I'm not just the president, I'm a client too. And he showed a picture of his bald head and sorry, but he I like bald heads. But apparently he didn't.

15:23 So he was what came to mind when you just said that because I am a client, like everything that I wrote about in this book was for me. I that my divorce was just one thing. That was just the the tipping point for me. Losing a husband, a friend, two businesses, my whole life was gone in one fell swoop. And I knew I didn't want to have this happen to me again. And I couldn't control other people. All I could do was take care of myself. And that is what launched me on this journey. And I have to tell you, like today, I don't need to think about like, what's going on here?

16:09 Like, is this the right emotion? I, I'm constantly questioning my feelings in a, in a very quick way. It's it's like when something comes up that you know, I feel is consequential, I'll step back or later on after a response, I'll go back and look at it. Because The thing is these recipes that we have in our heads, we can change them and we can stop cooking them and we can modify or create brand new ones. Because The thing is, is that when you start to discover what has to happen for you to feel and insert your emotion, when you know that, then you start to notice these situations coming up. It's like when I saw first drove a Tesla. I didn't even want to let my husband test drive that car. I just wanted to drive it for the whole flippant day. It was so much fun to drive.

17:10 I never noticed Teslas before that. And now they were on the street everywhere. And I, you know, where I live, you would think I would have noticed them before. But the, the point is, is that the brain is really handy that way. When you tell the tell it where to focus, when you start telling it, I don't want this, but I do want that. And that's what our emotions provide for us. It, it, it, it is how we filter, prioritize. It's how we, we know what we want more of and or know what we want less of. It's what we use to make every decision. It impacts our behaviors.

17:52 If you, if you look at a memory and a lot of people when they think of a memory, it's, it's all of the sensory input that was coming in at the time, right? It's what you saw, who you were with, maybe the weather, how you were feeling at the time, like, and so, you know, if it was warm out, all that kind of sensory input, we, we don't always realize that emotions, the, the, the, that emotion that we're really talking about, you know, the, the love, hate, all that stuff. Like you were doing a math test and you really hated your teacher. And so, you know, all of that gets built into that memory because interception, which is the, the sensory system that tells us how we feel inside, is a sensory system that gets put into that memory. And I think that that's gigantic 'cause we're using all of our memories recipes to launch our thoughts. Our thoughts can override our feelings. Like we can use our thoughts, but the majority of our thoughts or a product of all of these recipes we use for feelings. And so understanding if you don't like, you know, some results that you're getting from your decisions, you need to look at your emotions.

19:19 Right. So again, using the the recipe and the flavors, if if, if I have a final dish I don't like, I'm going to make it differently the next time. Yeah, but you got to look at the what the what is the ingredients, right? Like what were you using to cook it? And that's what's I think it's kind of fun, right? Because you're, you're taking this process from being a a yeah, I'm not a huge touchy feely kind of person. And so like I said, I like that, that logic part. And so when I'm looking at this not from, I'm trying to get in touch with my feelings, I'm trying to get in touch with what the heck was going on? Like what were the components that that made?

20:00 This situation and made me react to this and do I want to react like this in the future? It's like taking control. One of the things I do in my book is I provide this exercise that helps you to understand what has to happen for you to feel a certain emotion. And I've done it with a, with a, a good amount of people and, and this exercise really helps to open your eyes so that you can start to uncover your recipes. You may not uncover them in their depth, but you will uncover some of these recipes. And the thing I like about it is that it's not having necessarily taking you back to your childhood. Maybe some things might remind you of it, but it's looking at all of these components like what what goes on today that launches this.

20:56 And while it's an exercise partially of the past, it's not going and dealing into, you know, what happened when you were a child, which a lot of people don't want to do. But if you can, if you can look at what were the actions, what were what is happening around you when these feelings come up. This is how you you get to observe more keenly and start to re revamp how you cook your resume, your emotion recipes. Do you see that for the vast majority of people that are stuffing emotions and kind of ignoring the present reality of their emotional state, is is it rooted in a childhood trauma?

21:44 You know, we learned a lot. I mean, think about like what through six or seven, we get the foundation truly of like who we are. I I think a lot of it is, but it's not always that way. I think we're we that's the base. And if you think about like it's, it's kind of a circular motion, right? You've got your base that you, you learn and then you get more experience and that either reinforces that base or slightly changes it a bit. And so you, you kind of build on it as you go. And so then as you get to an adult, you're, you're kind of your responses to situations are going to be based on something that started when you were a kid, right? But it doesn't necessarily mean that's how you have to behave in the future at which I think is the powerful thing, you know, owning your recipes, not blaming other people. Sure, they're providing the ingredients, but how you respond is up to you.

22:54 And I want to go back if I can to the point of your your brain can get it wrong and it's only as good as what you give it. And one thing that in this book, how emotions are made, this woman, Lisa Feldman Barrett, she's she's amazing. I just love how she thinks and how she what she shares, but she uses this word called emotional granularity. If I were to, you know, describe it, it's like if you have a bunch of Peppers in front of you and you said, oh, here's a pepper, but there's a big difference between a bell pepper and a habanero pepper. Even something as simple as ice cream, you can have minimal ingredients in ice cream, right?

23:47 Milk, egg yolk, cream, sugar, salt. I mean, that's about it. Vanilla, of course, vanilla ice cream. And you could have three different tubs of vanilla ice cream in front of you, and each one can taste ever so slightly different if you if you're conscious of it. And that's how I'm trying to help people get with their emotions is to notice the different feeling States and the differences in what's going on at in this moment. Because the more detail you give your brain, the more that it has to work with. Just like, like my palate, my physical palate is trained where I can taste three different ice creams and notice the differences. It might not be like a master ice cream maker, but I could still tell you, wow, this one's got really good cream. It's rich.

24:43 This one's got a kind of a funky vanilla. It might be, you know, I don't know, I, I'm just gonna say it's like, I'm not really a fan of that vanilla. And this one is way too sweet, way too much sugar. And to be able to notice that in your emotional palette is where I'm trying to take people because the sooner you can recognize your emotions, the better you are able to pivot from them to absorb them or to say, I don't, I don't think this is really how I feel. I, this is not really what I think it is. And that comes with taking a second taste. And, and I encourage everybody here go out and get three different tugs of vanilla ice cream. Take the vanilla ice cream challenge. And more than a second taste.

25:32 Yeah, yeah, go ahead, take a couple bites. Notice the differences and, and, and it might take a little work, which is why in my book, I, I recognize like everybody, their physical palate and their emotional palates are different. And so I, I have a, a progression for people to try and help them build it. And it, it takes just noticing. And that's really all it is. It's noticing what's going on in your body and then all of a sudden you're gonna notice. Hmm, I'm, I'm reacting this way and it's really 'cause I'm tired or hey, I think this really isn't that bad.

26:16 Like at first I thought it was bad, but no it's not. It just felt bad at the beginning, But no, it's not. Or one of the biggest ones I was trying to caution people about is love, because people think, you know, Love's positive. And I always say that the emotions aren't positive or negative. The outcomes are. Fear is very helpful if you're standing on the edge of a Cliff. So and pain is really helpful if you've broken your leg. And if you're someone who's got a deficiency in their, their pain processing and can't tell you, ask them they'd love to feel pain. So love is one of those things too, that that you can always be in search of and always being hurt by because your ingredients aren't very good.

27:05 And so, you know, learning to maybe pause the love button and recognize when it's just plain old passion. And that person makes me horny versus I might I just met them and I'm feeling this rush of a crush. And if you don't know what that looks like, do a a YouTube search for Thumper from Bambi when he first meets the other little girl. I mean, it's perfect example of having a crush. So, you know, there's variations in emotions just like there's variations in Peppers. Cool. So you had mentioned men telling you that you kind of think and feel in a more masculine manner.

27:48 So I wonder if could you tell me about the man who's had the most significant impact on you? I guess I would say, you know, it's funny because my, of course my dad had an impact on me and it, my, my first husband had a big impact because of our divorce. It led me down this path. But I would say it's my husband today. And the reason is, is that he lets me be me. He's not, he's very secure and he, he is OK.

28:30 Like he likes my spunkiness. He he, he accepts my spunkiness. He doesn't feel threatened. It's he doesn't mind. Every once in a while he'll say, you know, sometimes I don't need you to think like a guy. He goes, I just need you to listen. I'm like, OK, I'll listen. And and we can have those kinds of conversations. And I think that that is, is probably one of the biggest reasons I love him so much is because he just loves me for me and I love him for him, flaws and all. We're not trying to change each other. And he's kind of helped me to become more feminine by stating what he wants, right? He's like, can you just let me do this? Because I'm so independent.

29:20 And so I learned to depend on him. But it was because we were able to communicate about it. And this is for anyone who's listening, who has communication troubles. The first communication that you need to pay attention to is this internal communication because you don't know what you want. You don't know what you don't want necessarily in, in its entirety. You, you don't get to refine that if you're not listening to these internal signals. This internal communication is what gives you the tools for external communication.

30:00 And well, I'm not talking about sharing your every deepest, you know, anything, but to at least share with a Co worker or a partner, anyone, what you want and what you don't want, what you need and what you don't need. And it's hard to do that when you don't know. And that was one thing my ex-husband used to say to me a lot. I'm like, well how do you feel? Like what is going on? And he's like, I don't know, maybe he just didn't want to tell me. But a lot of the times I don't think he knew. And Kim, you host a podcast too, right? Yes, I yeah, it's called Flavors of Emotions and it is only, I think 6 episodes 7th is coming out and I actually made the decision that I'm gonna start doing an episode on chapters and kind of like reviewing my book and kind of like the, the highlights of my chapters. And I'm also recording my book and gonna put it on YouTube. I you know, the cost and it's not like the money necessarily, it's the theory behind like I'm gonna pay thousands of dollars to put an audio book out and get like pennies per, per purchase. And just the whole, it's kind of a scam sometimes I think in my head.

31:22 So I'm going to be putting it in in an audio format on YouTube. So that's one thing I'm working on now, so that if you want to listen to the book, and I'll probably add little things to it too, little tidbits and helpful hints to help people who pay attention to to YouTube, who who will listen to it on YouTube. Kim, is there anything top of mind that that's in your book or not that you wish more men knew, you know? It, it doesn't serve you to push those feelings down. And there's no such thing as emotions that are feminine or masculine. It, it, it's, they're just what they are and we're born with them.

32:09 We have them for a reason. They're here to protect us. They're here to lead us towards what we want and away from what we don't want. And sometimes we pay so much attention to what we don't want that we don't get what we do want. And it's because we're we're looking at like the big emotions, not the under the little ones, the little nuanced ones. And I think when you look at them for what they are communication and if you're OK with tasting food and noticing that you're sick, then you can start to notice those feelings and understand they're yours to change.

32:54 And you can change them. And they actually serve you in in fabulous ways once you kind of wade through all of the can I swear on this podcast, please, all of the bullshit recipes that you've been served up in the past. And that's what I've noticed. Like I had so much stupid shit that was handed to me that never really felt comfortable that really I'm ignoring now. And I, I'm so much happier like I am, I've never been at at peace. And I don't think it's just because of my age.

33:34 I think it's because of the work that I have done to be comfortable with my feelings. Cause I can check in with my intuition, I can check in with my gut and I can feel a feeling. And even though at the moment I'm like, like I do it to people, I gotta go and like and can sit with it and go oh wait. Or it just sucks. Like sometimes you just have to feel sad and then just feel it and let it go. Like life isn't always about changing. I'm sometimes it's just OK. It's when you don't feel them, they get bigger and bigger and bigger. And a good sign of that is if you have those big emotional blowouts, that's a good sign that you're a feeling stuffer.

34:15 And what what's the best way for people to find out more about what you're up to and and discover the book? The book is on Amazon. It's yucky, yummy, savory, sweet, understanding the flavors of emotions and I am Kim korti.com. KIMKORTE can't even talk KORTE. Maybe I was at a Metallica concert last, I don't know, maybe I was so Kim kordy.com. Or if you look up Flavors of Emotions, that's a website, it's on YouTube and I'm on all of the major podcast players, Apple, all of that.

34:55 Awesome. Well, Kim, thanks for joining us today and sharing your work and your your growth. And, you know, I think it's inspiring to others and, and it's always important for, especially for men, I find to, to be willing to explore their emotions. And any new metaphor, any new tool, any new practices is is always welcome. Yeah, yeah. What have you got to lose? Nobody has to know you're working on it. You know what I mean? Like you don't have to share with the world. Oh, I'm working on my emotions just. Do it, Yeah. What you've got to lose is feeling shitty. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sometimes guys, like I've met plenty of men that think they're supposed to feel bad, that that means you're a man not not being light, not feeling joyous over something like that. Somehow, you know, back to your thoughts, your conversation about the, that there aren't feminine and masculine emotions, They're just emotion.

35:50 That, and that's a big theme for the show, is we remind men that they're human beings. Yeah, And what is the most important emotion for a human being? And that's love. And I can I talk about it in the book and I talk about it on my podcast. My whole relationship and connection to love has changed dramatically. And it's so much better and deeper, you know, and more flavorful. I emotionally more flavorful. And I credit that totally to to this work. And for people who knew me, they would not believe it, but trust me, it's, it's, it's true.

36:35 And so to be able to really connect to love. And in fact, there was Jonathan Majors. He was an actor who got in all kinds of trouble because he beat his girlfriend and ended up going to jail and ruining his career as an actor. And he said in one of his text to his girlfriend, I don't know how to feel love. And that broke my heart. And too many of us don't know really what love is. And refining that recipe and being able to feel it when it comes around, it's hard to beat. Thanks again, Kim, thanks for listening. Wherever you are discovering Real Men Feel, please subscribe, like, review, share, do everything you can do on whatever platform you're discovering Real Men Feel on.

37:22 You can always e-mail me directly at realmenfeel@gmail.com. Always glad to hear from you and until next time, love yourself.