You’ve Been Lied to About What It Means To Be Emotionally Strong | (#040) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.

Most high-performers are rewarded for charging forward, for being productive, efficient, unemotional, unflinching. You’ve probably been told to suck it up, power through and get shit done, and that approach probably worked, at least in the short term, but here’s the truth that most achievers never get told: what got you here, that exact approach, is also the thing keeping you stuck.

If you’re constantly feeling like success should feel better than this, if you’re burning out even though you’ve barely hit your prime, if you’re secretly afraid that if you slow down long enough to feel that you might fall apart, then this series is for you, because emotional strength isn’t the absence of emotion. It’s not about muscling through and it definitely doesn’t come from pretending you’re just fine. [01:02.2]

Real emotional strength is about being grounded in the storm. It’s having an inner radar that tells you, before you self-sabotage, what’s really going on underneath. It’s the quiet power of staying present with whatever is happening inside, without flinching or flailing, or lashing out.

If you master what I’m going to cover in this series, here’s what’s possible for you—you’ll stop getting derailed by emotional landmines. You’ll rebuild trust with yourself and you’ll gain the kind of grounded presence that makes people around you feel safer, calmer, even drawn to you without knowing why.

But if you keep operating the way that most achievers do, cut off from what you’re really feeling, out of touch with what you actually need, then your success will always feel fragile and your relationships will eventually collapse under the weight of all the pressure you’ve buried. That’s the cost of staying emotionally blind. Let’s not keep paying it. [01:58.4]

I’m David Tian. For over the past almost two decades, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people from over 87 countries find fulfillment, meaning and success in their personal and professional lives. I’ve got three points in this episode, and the first is this—what most people call strength is actually just reactivity. It’s armor. It’s overcompensating. It’s fear dressed up in a luxury watch.

For many decades of my life, I didn’t understand this. I dismissed psychotherapy. I thought feelings were for the weak, the confused, the mediocre. Starting in my late-20s, I bought into the myth that life is a game of status, of mating, of power, survive and reproduce, max out your value. That’s what evolution says, right?

That’s what the guys I looked up to at the time said, so that’s what I did and I dove head first into the world of seduction science, and this was back when pickup was still a thing over 20 years ago. I studied it like it was a second PhD, reverse-engineering attraction, optimizing identity, mastering social dynamics, and I ended up creating the top rated dating skills program in the world and the only one scientifically verified in studies published in a tier-one academic journal. [03:15.5]

I became a celebrity coach based in Singapore, “the Asian Hitch” the media called me. I was living the dream that a teenage, insecure version of me would have sold his soul for, and at the time, honestly, for a while, it felt pretty good, a lot of pleasure. The status, the money, the lifestyle, it was all in there, but it was actually hollow. It just took me a little longer to realize it.

I thought I had reached the top back then. I had this model girlfriend, the booming business, the recognition, the status, the sex, the parties, the luxury, and it didn’t feel like I was just surviving. It felt like I was thriving, by society’s standards anyway, and then it all came crashing down. The girlfriend that I had been dating for years at that time ended up cheating on me publicly in a kind of brutal way, in a way that made sure all of her following knew it, and in just that instance, my mask slipped. The façade cracked. [04:10.0]

The confidence, the swagger, all evaporated—and what was underneath all that? A terrified, broken little boy who felt worthless and thought he had to perform to be worthy of love. I didn’t just feel hurt. I felt annihilated, and when the shame got too loud to ignore, when the pain swelled past what I could numb, when I didn’t see any point to living anymore, I found myself on the edge of the 57th floor of a skyscraper in Singapore, ready to step off.

I don’t remember what I was wearing, but I remember how heavy everything felt, how quiet, how hopeless, and I remember the moment my good friend grabbed me and pulled me back from the edge. That should have been the wakeup call, but it wasn’t. A few months later, I tried it again, this time accelerating my motorcycle down a winding mountain road, convincing myself that I’d lose control at just the right moment to ride off into the sunset to end it all. [05:11.8]

But that’s when this life changing thought stopped me, a two-year-old girl. She was my goddaughter and I had helped take care of her when she was a baby, diapers, crying, sleepless nights, all of it, and somehow through all of the chaos of my life at the time, I felt something I didn’t know I was missing—unconditional love, not the type of love that depends on how you look or how rich you are, or successful or how impressive your resume sounds. This wasn’t something I earned. I didn’t have to do anything for this unconditional love that I felt for her, and she didn’t have to give it back. She could cry or scream or spit up on me, and it totally didn’t matter. I was full of love for her anyway. [05:59.4]

In that moment, on that mountain, that thought hit me like a punch to the chest, I just want to witness her grow up, and this feeling of love flowing from me unconditionally—that’s what life is for, not status, not control, not applause or significance or approval, just love, the true kind, the vulnerable kind, the kind that can’t be earned because it’s unconditional—at that moment, saved me.

After that, I started digging further. I started studying deeper. Applying the same obsession I once had for my academic work and then later for seduction science, I applied it into understanding myself, psychotherapy, psychology, philosophy. I devoured all of it, and what I discovered was this—most of what high-achievers call strength is actually just another form of fear. [07:01.0]

We learn to tough it out, to soldier on, to grind harder, but that’s not actually strength. That’s a survival strategy. It’s white-knuckling it. It’s just armor, and it might get you far for the short term, but it will cost you in the long term. It’ll cost you peace. It’ll cost you joy. It’ll cost you connection. It’ll cost you the ability to love and be loved, the capacity to feel anything deeply at all

If you ignore that cost for too long, one day your body will remind you. Your nervous system will start crashing. Your relationships will implode and your success will feel like a prison. I’ve seen it over and over in clients and friends and in myself. [07:58.0]

So, if you’re listening to this right now and something in you is tired or brittle, or secretly terrified, don’t just brush it off. That’s not weakness per se. It’s a part of you trying to come back home. This series is the start of that process and it begins by confronting the lie of toughing it out. What you’ve been thinking of as psychological strength might actually be the very thing holding you back, and what looks like weakness, like slowing down, tuning in, letting yourself feel fully, might be the first true act of emotional courage you’ve taken in a long time.

On to the second point, now that we’ve stripped off this armor, what do we do instead? Here’s where most achievers freeze up. They’ve relied on pushing through for so long that they don’t know what to do when that engine breaks down, when white-knuckling stops working, when the distractions wear thin, and this is where true strength begins and it starts in stillness. [09:12.2]

I don’t mean the woo-woo kind of stillness with crystals and chants, and a Spotify playlist called “Moonlight Mindfulness” or anything like that. I mean the ability to stay fully present in your body right now without flinching. Most people are so reactive that they don’t even realize they’re reacting.

Someone sends a snarky text, boom, heart rate spikes. Brain spins into overdrive. Resentment kicks in before the message that you’re going to send is even finished. When you get bad news, suddenly, your stomach tightens, jaw clenches, and you find yourself doom scrolling Twitter while pretending to be productive. That is not emotional strength. That’s a nervous system stuck in survival mode. Grounding is what changes that. [10:01.0]

Grounding is the ability to stay with what’s hard without trying to escape it. It’s what makes space between the trigger and the response. It’s what lets you choose instead of just react, and no, I don’t mean choosing, like some productivity hack. This isn’t a new flavor of mental discipline. It’s something much deeper, and it starts in the physical body.

Most achievers live, from the neck up, stuck in their heads. If they can’t think their way out of it, then they end up panicking. But grounding doesn’t happen in the head. You can’t talk your physical body out of a panic response. You have to meet it, and that means learning how to stay with your discomfort. I’m not talking about flooding yourself with every past trauma all at once or anything. That’s not strength. That’s like masochism and it usually backfires. You end up either dissociating or just burning out. [11:00.0]

What works is titration, emotional titration, in the same way, I don’t know, a Special Forces soldier learns to stay calm in the midst of battle chaos, not by ignoring fear, but by building capacity for it, increasing your threshold of tolerance for it. We build emotional strength by gradually expanding our window of tolerance one moment at a time, one breath at a time, and when that wave of sadness or anger, or whatever that strong emotion is, starts to rise, you don’t run away from it. You don’t scroll and distract yourself from it. You don’t numb it with work or Netflix, or five back to back meetings. Instead, you pause, feel more deeply into your body, and you let yourself breathe deeply.

Then see if you can name the feeling quietly, without judgment. Just identify it, name it, even if it’s just describing the physical feeling or sensation, like tightness or clenching, or shaky or empty. It doesn’t need to be poetic, just honest, and this is how we start regulating the system, instead of being hijacked by it. [12:17.0]

This is what elite athletes train for, emotional regulation. This is like performance fuel, because when your nervous system is calm, you can access more of your cognitive capacity, more of your creativity, more of your awareness, and that’s how you lead under pressure. That’s how you make better decisions when the stakes are high. But again, this doesn’t come from gritting your teeth. It comes from connection with yourself.

I remember this one moment, some time ago. A client, a multi-millionaire, tons of responsibility in his career, he told me, “David, if I let myself feel what’s under the surface, I’m afraid I just won’t be able to function. He believed that if he stopped white-knuckling, then everything would collapse, his business, his relationships, his drive to accomplish anything at all. [13:13.0]

But what was actually collapsing was him, exhausted, quietly, slowly, but inside him, exhausted. We worked together on grounding, not with complicated scientific machinery or psychedelic journeys. Just simple check-ins with the body, consistent and frequent, simple practices that helped him stay connected to himself through any stress.

Over time, what happened was that he didn’t lose his edge. Instead, he sharpened it. His team started trusting him more. He stopped overreacting. He started sleeping better. His creativity came back and his relationship with his wife got much deeper, all because he stopped treating stillness like the enemy. [14:01.2]

Now, stillness isn’t a passivity. It’s precision. When you’re grounded, you don’t waste energy trying to control what’s outside of your control. You conserve it for what actually, truly matters, and that calm, focused presence draws people in. That’s what gives your voice weight. That’s what makes your leadership magnetic. But you won’t get there if you’re afraid to slow down.

If you’re constantly spinning out or sprinting to avoid pain, you’ll never discover what’s underneath it all, and what’s underneath it for most of us is grief, loneliness, shame, fear of all of that, obviously not pleasant, at first anyway, but also not dangerous. The feelings can’t hurt you, but running from your feelings can. [14:56.0]

So, if you want to build emotional strength, not fake toughness, not polished image, but real, true, unshakable presence, then you have to start here. Pause, ground, breathe deeply. Let the wave of emotion pass through without clenching or trying to control it. Then just notice what’s happening in your body. What story is playing in your mind? What do you usually do to avoid this moment? Instead of doing that thing, just stay in the pocket here, even for five seconds longer than usual.

This is how we build the muscle of staying. This is how we grow strength that doesn’t crack under pressure. It won’t feel dramatic. You won’t get some dopamine rush. No one will give you a medal. But this is the work that matters, because the ability to stay present in discomfort is the foundation of leadership, of power, of love, and it’s available to anyone willing to practice it, so let this be the start. [16:17.4]

Even if it’s just five deep breaths, even if it’s just feeling your feet on the floor while everything else inside you wants to run away. That’s the beginning of real strength. That’s where it can begin.

Many high-achievers struggle when it comes to managing their emotions or navigating their relationships, and they hit a wall when it comes to emotional mastery. Maybe you’ve noticed that stress, frustration or anger is seeping into your personal or professional life, or you feel disconnected from those you care about.

That’s where David Tian’s “Emotional Mastery” program comes in. It’s based on peer-reviewed, evidence-backed therapeutic methods to help you find happiness, love and real fulfillment. Learn how to break free from the emotional roller-coaster and start thriving in every area of your life. You can find out more at DavidTianPhD.com/EmotionalMastery. That’s D-A-V-I-D-T-I-A-N-P-H-D [dot] com [slash] emotional mastery.

Now on to the third point. Once you’ve got some grounding, once you’ve trained your body to stay present instead of always flinching or checking out, then something new becomes possible. You can start to see, and I don’t mean with your eyes, I mean the kind of inner radar that picks up what’s actually happening beneath the surface, because the deal is you can’t master what you can’t notice and you definitely can’t change what you refuse to feel. [17:58.2]

Most achievers are flying blind and they don’t even know it. They live stuck in their heads, running endless mental simulations, calculating every outcome, predicting the next 10 moves, or at least trying to, but if you ask them what they’re feeling in their actual body in real time, they either draw a blank or they deflect with some intellectual thought, but not a feeling, a thought about a feeling, and they wonder why their relationships feel so shallow, why they overreact to dumb shit, why they can’t sleep, even when they’re actually exhausted. It’s because they’re disconnected from the only guidance system that actually matters in life.

Your emotions are not distractions. Your emotions are not flaws in the code. Your emotions are the whole point. They’re like signals that your body is always sending you, their data, constant updates on what’s happening inside your system. [19:06.7]

But if your radar to detect them is off or jammed, or pointing in the wrong direction, then you miss these signals, and when you miss them, you get stuck in loops, the same arguments, the same triggers, the same shutdowns because the signals are still firing. It’s just that you’re not listening.

For a lot of people, the radar went offline a long time ago, usually when they were kids, because back then, it wasn’t safe to feel. It wasn’t safe to be angry or sad or scared, so those parts of them got pushed down, buried, silenced, and now, decades later, those same parts are still trying to be heard, but now they don’t whisper. They yell. They hijack your mood. They sabotage your best efforts to try to get your attention. They make you say things you regret five minutes later. They overwhelm you, take over, all because no one ever taught you how to check your damn radar. So, we can start doing that now. [20:11.2]

Radar means scanning, not judging, not fixing, just scanning, just noticing, just picking up the signals. Start with this question: “What’s happening in me right now? What feelings, sensations or emotions?” Don’t answer this with your head. Drop into the body. A tight chest, maybe, or a heavy stomach? Or is it kind of numbness overall. Start practicing your radar.

Another way in is “What part of me is driving right now?” because most of us aren’t being guided by our calm, wise Higher Self. Most of the time, it’s a scared 12-year-old manager part trying to avoid shame, or a pissed off teenage part demanding respect out of fear, or an exhausted part just trying to keep everyone happy, and these parts don’t need to be punished. They need first to be seen and then understood. [21:19.8]

If that sounds weird or New Age or whatever, don’t worry. You don’t have to believe anything. Just notice. That’s all radar asks you to do, notice. It’s the difference between getting sucker punched by your emotions versus spotting them on the horizon coming in. When your radar is online, you can tell the difference between “I’m actually angry at them” versus “I’m afraid they’ll reject me if I speak up,” or the difference between “I need to work harder” versus “I’m terrified I’m not enough,” and that’s real clarity, and clarity gives you power. [21:59.6]

But the thing is, radar only works when you’re grounded. Otherwise, the signals get scrambled or cut off. You either over-identify with the emotion and get swept away, overwhelmed by it, or you out of fear of being overwhelmed cut off from it completely and go numb or blank.

So, grounding and radar work together. Grounding stabilizes the system. Radar makes sense of the signals. One keeps you in your body and the other helps you understand what’s happening inside you. When you’re grounded, then you can actually scan, and when you can scan, then you can actually choose, but you can’t choose what you can’t see or notice. [22:46.0]

Most achievers are stuck in a kind of automatic pilot, running from part to part or story to story, without ever pausing long enough to ask, “Who is driving right now? What’s this emotion really trying to tell me?” The ones who do ask, the ones who build the radar, they’re the ones who stop repeating the same mistakes. They’re the ones who can break out of the cycles. They’re the ones who start healing, not just managing symptoms, and they’re the ones who grow very quickly. Once you can do this on your own, moment to moment, then all of your results change.

I remember working with a co-founder of a startup who was always blowing up at his team. He’s a really nice guy, smart, actually had a big heart, but the smallest things would set him off. Every time, he’d just justify it by saying, “But, hey, they’re just not executing. I need to hold the line. I need to teach them a lesson.”

But when we dug deeper, the radar started picking up something else. What was actually happening was that he had a part of him that was terrified of being seen as soft, because as a kid, his dad berated him every time he showed softness. So, now, decades later, he’d armor up and lash out whenever he sensed someone possibly questioning his authority, even when, in hindsight, no one actually was. [24:15.6]

Once we found this pattern, once he could see it, he stopped reacting to the triggers. He could pause, scan and then choose how to respond from a grounded place. That one shift changed the entire energy of his company and his marriage, and his sleep, because now the radar was online.

Now, this isn’t magic. It’s a skill and anyone can learn it. Start with just 30 seconds a day, just pausing and asking, “What’s happening in me right now?” not “What should I be feeling?” not “How do I fix this?” Instead, just “What’s really happening in me right now?” If it’s anger, notice it and name it to yourself. If it’s shame, notice it and name it to yourself. If it’s blankness, name that, too. [25:12.0]

When you do that, when you stop running or stop avoiding, or stop shaming yourself for having these feelings, then something really powerful can happen. You begin to feel seen by yourself, and that right there, that’s what most people are chasing in all their achievements anyway, not really approval, not really applause, just the feeling of being okay in their own skin.

But you won’t find that from the outside. You find it by learning to tune in, to listening to the signals, to turning the radar, your inner radar back on, and once that system is running, now we can do the real inner work, because now you’re not just reacting blindly. You’re responding with awareness. [26:04.1]

Now you’re not being dragged around by a bunch of outdated, toxic patterns. Instead, you’re choosing, and the more you choose from this place, from grounded awareness, the more trust you build within yourself, and trust within yourself is the foundation for everything else, confidence, connection, intimacy, leadership, peace, but it starts here: ground, then scan, then choose.

It sounds simple and it is actually simple, but it’s not easy, not at the beginning anyway, and that’s why most people skip this step and then spend their whole lives wondering why nothing they achieve ever makes them feel like enough. But you don’t have to do that anymore. This is the work. If you’re still listening, then guess what? You’ve already started. [27:00.5]

So, let’s bring it all together.

First, most of what we’ve been taught about emotional strength is backwards, toughing it out, staying in control, never letting them see you sweat. That’s not strength. That’s fear in disguise, armor, pretending to be muscle.

Second, real strength starts from grounding. If you can’t stay in your own body, you’re just triggered and reacting. You’re not choosing. You’re just surviving, not thriving, not fully living.

Third, once you’re grounded, you can scan. You can tune the radar to pick up what’s actually happening inside, and that’s where real awareness begins and that’s the doorway to your growth, because if you can’t feel it, you can’t heal it, and if you can’t see it, you can’t change it. [27:51.8]

I’ll say this as clearly as I can, the old way of being emotionally strong, the one that says power means pushing harder or never feeling, or never needing or always controlling, that old way doesn’t work. It burns you out, and it kills intimacy and connection, and it leaves you wondering why success feels so empty.

I worked with a client, a high-level executive who had achieved everything on his checklist. He had made multiple millions. By the time we started working together, he had purchased multiple properties. He had married a beautiful wife, and six months after his exit from the company, he was totally depressed. Not just bored, depressed, and it turns out, he’d been performing for decades of his life, performing competence, performing confidence. He had no idea who he was without the pressure driving him. So, we spent months focusing on this one thing—helping him feel. [28:52.4]

At first, he hated it. He wanted to skip it. He thought it was a complete waste of time. Then one day, he told me, “I actually feel calm for the first time in years, not like hyped and not panicked, just calm and peace,” and that was the beginning of his true power, power that didn’t depend on validation or pressure, but instead power that comes from just being present with himself—and that’s where we’re heading, because next time we’re diving into the one thing most achievers avoid, but it’s actually the key to unlocking true power, which is vulnerability, not as a strategy, not as a brand, but as a genuine gateway. So, if any part of you wants to stop performing and start living, you won’t want to miss this. Come back next time.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has helped you in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from it. If you liked it, hit a like or give it a good rating on whatever platform you’re listening to this on, and if you have any feedback whatsoever, I’d love to hear it. Give me a comment or a message. I’d love to get your feedback.Thank you so much again for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [30:05.0]