Understanding Emotional Flavors: Kim Korte on Navigating Emotions Like a Pro

Brad Minus: [00:00:00] And welcome back to another episode of life changing challengers. My name is Brad minus. I am your host as always, and extremely excited cause I think we're going to have a ton of fun today with my guests, Kim Korte and Kim is an author of the book, Yucky, Yummy, Savory, Sweet, Understanding the Flavors of Emotions.

And she is a podcaster of which she runs the podcast Flavors of Emotion. So Kim, how are you doing today?

Kim Korte: I'm fantastic. I'm really looking forward to this so I have a feeling this is going to be a lot of fun tonight.

Brad Minus: Yeah, that's what we definitely, we try to do, but I'm just excited to hear more about you and how you came up with this premise of flavors of emotion.

So that's, I'm so excited about that. But first. The question that everybody's waiting for me to ask, can you tell us a little about your childhood where you grew up to compliment of your family and what Kim was like as a kid? [00:01:00]

Kim Korte: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area on the peninsula. So that's South of San Francisco and spent pretty much most of my life there.

As a kid, you know, A true Capricorn. So they say very strong willed, very independent. And also a problem solver. My parents, told the story. My dad actually just reminded me of this not that long ago about how when I was around 3 or 4 and my sister, who's a year younger, so she was.

Probably three. Let's just say we're three and four. They were both really, really sick and fell asleep, like just passed out because they were so sick and they woke up and they were like, Oh my goodness, the girls, they, what's happening with them. And they came down to find us on the floor eating cereal.

They could see that I had made steps out of the cabinet lower drawers, climbed up, got the [00:02:00] cereal and brought it down for my sister and I to eat. So even as a young girl, I was trying to figure out like, what's the problem and how do I solve for it? And, Was raised in a fairly religious house.

I would say very, very strict religious house. And, you know, it was very active in that, had some unfortunate thing happened to me in that, religion. One of the young men in the organization did something with me that he should not have when I was, five. And, That that kind of played a role in my adult life.

Then, another sad thing, growing up is my mom was, an alcoholic and that also played a factor in my, my life. I mean, it was hard to watch and you know, she eventually died of it, right after my 30th birthday.

And that was really hard because we were super. Super close. And, just, like I [00:03:00] said, just a real strong willed, independent, from the get go, really.

Brad Minus: Wow. So, just to, makes me think of it, just because I'm also a Capricorn, What was your favorite toy as a kid?

Kim Korte: My horse.

That's what comes to mind. Is this horse that I got. And I wanted a horse so badly. Loved horses like crazy. And I had this plastic horse. And I had a few horses, but I had this one. And it was just my very favorite. Favorite horse and I had that horse for so long and I wished really wished I would have kept it But I think that and then my baby doll which I had for many years and I lost in a move But I had a little baby doll that was cloth bodied I don't think you're as old as I am but back in the day they had little plastic arms and plastic feet and cloth bodies and [00:04:00] My brother would rip it my mom would do surgery on her because he was such A brat.

I'd say those are my two favorites.

Brad Minus: Interesting enough. So I think I was five and I got this amazing rocking horse that turned out to be my favorite toy. It was almost life size. It was a pony that you got on and it had the full leg, so it looked like a full horse.

It had these, springs that would jut out from the four. Quarter panels so that you could bounce it up and down and go back and forth and up and down sitting in the living room with the Lone Ranger on the television was always my favorite.

Kim Korte: Bugs Bunny was my favorite.

Brad Minus: Yes. Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner, show. Yeah. Saturday morning cartoons. Love it. Love it. And then of course, I did have action figures, not baby dolls, but action figures. And those were the life size ones.

Kim Korte: Big.

Brad Minus: My uncle [00:05:00] made me blocks. Like out of two by fours, four by fours. So he made me blocks. And my parents said, my dad always says this to this day. He says, we would buy you stuff for Christmas and you'd probably spend about a week with it, but you'd always go back to the blocks.

So here you are, right. You had some mischievous stuff happened to you at five, which shaped your life and an alcoholic mother that you were still close to. So that that's kind of. Crazy. You said that it kind of shaped your life as far as having your mother as an alcoholic.

What was your life lesson learned, by having someone so close to you that, ended up passing away of this debilitating disease.

Kim Korte: Well, it takes you a while to kind of come to grips with it and really see your life.

Like you have to be willing to be open, to look at your life for what it is. And, just because she was an alcoholic didn't mean that she wasn't a wonderful person, but she was definitely a woman who had her [00:06:00] own demons and she didn't know what to do with them. She didn't know how to handle them.

And one of the things in my life, like from as long as I can remember was we just didn't talk about things like, you know, it was call it willful blindness, cognitive dissonance. It was something that I realized like talking with my father, even now, like he's 91 and he's been talking a lot more with my sister and I about his childhood and his life.

And we hear stories. We both see him once a week and we. Are now hearing stories we've never heard and it gives us insight into why he was shut down. So, you know, having two parents who had life experiences that shut them down, raising kids. So that made that difficult because then they shut down difficult experiences when it came to us.

And it was a pattern I can see that happens in lots and lots of [00:07:00] families, but that comes with. Ramifications and, not knowing how to handle your emotions and not being taught how to handle your emotions. Recognize them is one of them.

Brad Minus: Yeah, I don't think that that's like a skill set that we get really handed down from our parents.

My dad was, pretty strict on me, he was the typical. Hey, you're a good boy. You don't cry. You don't take your anger out on anybody else, but we'll find places for you to do it. So you do it on a soccer ball, on a punching bag, whatever, and you get it out and then you move on.

And that was it. That was like the sense of my emotional sensibility training, that's as far as it went. But I think that's a, that's was pretty common in, in our, our generation.

Kim Korte: You can't teach something that you don't know.

Brad Minus: Exactly. So did you go to university?

Kim Korte: No. Great. Well, I did, but online. [00:08:00] Not like go to university.

Brad Minus: What was high school like for you?

Kim Korte: I was like my girlfriend and I, her name was Betty. We were like, neutral city. Like we were friends with everybody. Didn't matter what group. Cause we were like, You know, back in the day, this was the late seventies, early eighties, you had the stoner group, we call them and then the jocks and you know, all the cheerleader group.

And then they had the smart kids. And then you had all the rich kids. Cause I went to a school that was, bust in people such as myself who are middle class and then a bunch of really, poor kids into a school that. I went to school with the son of a very famous singer and there was, you know, on 16th birthday, they drive in with their, you know, portion or a new brand new car.

It was kind of like a real weird, interesting experiment of the haves and have nots. But my friend Betty and I [00:09:00] just fit in with everybody and everybody knew us.

Brad Minus: I was around that too. My locker partner was a redneck. I was on the wrestling team with the jocks. I hung around with some stoners, but my best friends were all the nerds. So I get it. I totally get it. But it also for me was survival. The school I went to wasn't exactly easy, as far as social goals.

So sometimes it was good to have friends in every group, to have your back. So, it was more about survival. If you did not go to university, what did you end up doing after high school?

Kim Korte: Working and then, yeah, I just worked, even though, you know, I just advanced, like I was always advancing.

Like, I worked, I started out like at a fast food store. Then, I went, I think it was Wendy's maybe. Or something like that. Like one of those kinds of places.

Brad Minus: Okay. I got it.

Kim Korte: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I worked, you know, in a restaurant food chains, you know, in their accounting department, and then I worked [00:10:00] for a bank, and did all kinds of stuff, I worked every desk at that bank because I'm a very curious person and I get things pretty quickly.

I worked all the desks, the only thing I didn't do was the operations manager. And I think the wires desk, I think those are the only two things that I didn't do. And I just kept, moving, on in my different places that I went, gain more knowledge and using that

Brad Minus: you're 1 of the 1st ones, that I've talked to at least.

But so lately, you know, the trending is starting to move away from college again. You know, like when we were kids, it was, you either went to college or you went to work. That's it. Yeah. Maybe then it was later, it was even after me that I got out of high school that the trade schools came up.

Maybe if you didn't want to go to college, you can go to trade school and then go from there. But usually it was,

Kim Korte: I didn't go right after high school cause of the religion that I had was in at that time. I left it in my [00:11:00] early thirties. They discouraged you from getting a higher education.

They really like, no, if you did that, you know, you were like, you know, Satan was going to get you. So that was, that was why.

Brad Minus: So, and it's a question. That's a great question. That I just came up with. Cause I'm so brilliant. Is, is, was that just the women that were, that, that, that were, it was everybody.

Then two. From getting a higher education. Okay, I'm sorry, you're just going to have to tell us, what religion is this?

Kim Korte: No, let's not go down that road.

Brad Minus: Oh.

Kim Korte: Let's not.

Brad Minus: I just, you know, cause I've heard of, you know, Muslims and stuff. They're like, no, I don't want our women to get higher educations, but they wanted their men to succeed.

Kim Korte: They don't feel that way today, but this was back, like I said, the late 70s and early 80s. I guess they've changed their stance. I haven't been with them for a long time. The thing was that they could corrupt your [00:12:00] mind, you know, that you would, leave the fold.

That was why they pressed that, but I don't think they do that today. Cause I've heard of people whose kids went to school, but it certainly was discouraged in my day.

Brad Minus: Okay.

Kim Korte: You wouldn't think, but they, right?

Brad Minus: Because like I said, it was mostly, it was growing up.

It was the women, right? They just didn't want women to do that because they didn't want the women be smarter than the men and then start talking back. And then, and then we'd have this, you know, the infighting that would happen. So that's what we all heard, right? Growing up. So you basically, so when you said you went to fast food, you actually, started like everybody else making burgers and drive through and all that, and then you moved over to restaurant and you actually got into the back office.

Kim Korte: I think what I did was I went to a bank and then I went to a company that owned A large restaurant chain that was really big back then it was called lions restaurants chain. It was all over [00:13:00] California. And. Several states, I believe, I worked in their payroll department, so, that was after I worked for the bank.

I actually got poached because they were a customer at the bank and I was the vault teller. So all of the big, you know, clients who were giving me, you know, what do you, what did you call them? The, you know, the merchants, they would come, I had the merchant window. So the merchants can come straight up to me.

I'd have to count out all their cash. That lions was one of the merchants that was a customer and he handed me his card and he said, would you like a job then that's what I did.

Brad Minus: So there's a certain point around this time or somewhere in the one that you probably got married.

Kim Korte: Yeah, no. I did not get married till I was 32, I think. The first time, I was 32, so I was single that whole time, much later than most people back then. It was [00:14:00] becoming more and more popular, but I think that he knows a lot of my experiences.

So I, because of what happened when I was young, I had pushed all of that down. And when my mom went to rehab, when I was 28, I'd spoke with this woman. Or I heard this licensed social worker talking about alcoholism and then all the things that happened in the family.

I wanted to see this woman because I thought, well, I'll talk to her about, my mom's alcoholism and how this is impacted me. And then what came out was all of the abuse that had taken place, like my repressed memories, and the things I had pushed down.

And then I think that was probably the reason why I hadn't gotten married up to that point. And it took me a few years to kind of work through all of that. And then my mom passed when I was 30, like I said. [00:15:00] And, right after that, I had my, I mean, my mom wasn't gone very long at all. And I had done, what they say to do is to confront your, the person who did this.

It was a couple of them, but, in that process, it didn't turn out very well for me. And I don't want to get into all the details cause it's a very crazy process to begin with, but, it was so devastating to me that how badly it turned out for me that I left it and I almost had, I pretty much did have a nervous breakdown because I thought my faith was everything.

And, I felt like God didn't love me and that, he wasn't with me. It was just such a bad time and that during that low time in my life is when I met my first husband and married.

Brad Minus: Oh, so just because I know what happens after this. So I wanted to ask, how long did you date your first [00:16:00] husband before you met Mary?

Kim Korte: We met on February 5th, 1995 and, we married in September, first of the same year.

Brad Minus: Okay.

Kim Korte: It was fast.

Brad Minus: Six months,

Kim Korte: seven. That seven.

Brad Minus: Okay. All right, so how did that go? How was it now? Where are you work? You're working at the, at the, the restaurant place.

Kim Korte: I'm working, several jobs later and, I was working for a man because I went into the world of real estate accounting, which is, property management, I've worked for large owners of real estate prior to this job. It's called a real estate investment trust and I was an accountant for them.

Then, I went. With my old, boss who left that job, to a smaller company and it was a lot of joint ventures and limited liability companies. So there were several of those. When [00:17:00] I was working for that company, I met my now, ex husband.

Brad Minus: And I was trying to paint the picture.

So you're working for the story adventures from, did you enjoy it? Did you enjoy the work?

Kim Korte: Yeah, I liked the people. We had a lot of fun. Accounting is accounting. It's the people who make things fun. So we had a very lively group, back in the day when I worked for lions restaurants, I.

initiated a chair race. We had this long office and we'd get chairs and, put our arms in and go backwards and see who could make it back first or go forwards and see who could win. We had a lot of fun.

Brad Minus: So it sounds like you had a job that.

At least you didn't mind going to at least, you know, you're probably making a decent salary. You had a husband at the time that you loved. Things were, sounds like at this point in your life, things were going pretty well.

Kim Korte: Yes. Things were on the upswing because when things went really sour, I was working at this company and they were very supportive of me.

And [00:18:00] so, after meeting my husband, my mood and my life lifted up quite a bit.

Brad Minus: So, you mentioned that it's your first husband and now you're now ex husband. So do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Kim Korte: Yes, I'd love to. So he had been, ex Navy and wanted to go to school.

He had. previously been a carpet installer and I said, Hey, cause he had moved from New York to be with me. And I said, well, before we get settled with two salaries, let's try and live on mine and go to school. So he went to school to become a chiropractor and I supported. He would work weekends on occasion, for this company, doing carpet installation, but it got to a point, once he got into chiropractic college, cause he did all his pre.

School work, you know that he had to get in the, prerequisites.

Brad Minus: Yeah.

Kim Korte: And so [00:19:00] he got into the chiropractic college and we moved to be near the school and that was, I also got a new job that was, a better income for us. So it was, everything was going really well and it was a lot of work.

I was happy to help. Like, I felt like it was he and I together. And we both, said this to each other. It was like us, you know, trudging our way through to try and make a better lives for ourselves. And we had all these dreams and we would walk around this Lake Chabot and talk about like what we were going to do and how, you know, we would build the practice and eventually, you know, get it built to sell.

And one thing I was in complete agreement. He really wanted to live in Southern California. So I said, San Diego, is fine. I'm not a big SoCal person. And so that's what we did. He graduated and a few weeks later, We drove down, I kept my job for a couple more months because I was implementing [00:20:00] a software for this company.

I was working for a brand new G. L. software. It's actually call it E. R. P. but it's a system that they use to manage all of the real estate and handle all the commercial management, you know, the leases and, AR, AP, all that kind of stuff. If you know anything about accounting. So when that was done, the company that we have, the software that we implemented, they offered me a job and so I moved down to San Diego, and got this job months later, because the market kind of tanked and it impacted this company I was working for. And, I got laid off. And so I said, well, I've got unemployment. Why don't I help you build the business? And we built like really fast every year. We doubled every month. It was just tremendous. And I did a lot of the marketing and the [00:21:00] accounting, I learned how to do all the stuff it took to, Bill and all that kind of stuff.

So it was a great adventure for the two of us. And eventually my ex husband wanted to open up a running shoe store, which you're going to appreciate Brad because he focused on feet and gait. If you're having back problems, He would first look at the feet, because even when he was in school, he was able to help people just by putting in a lift in one of the shoes.

Just something ever so slightly centimeters could make a huge difference on the wear and tear and how you walk which is gait and running gait. And so we opened up a running shoe store and it was stressful beyond stressful. But during this time, we also had hired this woman to run the front desk because I wasn't running it for the chiropractic practice.

So we opened up a running shoe store and we had a door between the [00:22:00] two, which could lock. So like when the store was closed or the chiropractic office was closed, you know, we could lock people out. And I was. Running the shoe store, and he was doing his chiropractic thing, and I was still doing all the books and all that stuff because it just, that's just the direction it took at one point, though,

so just disappoint, I had done consulting work around this system that I used to implement but he didn't want me to, cause I was away from business too much. So anyway, long story short, he starts an affair with the woman that we hired and it went on for about a year and she was, it wasn't like she was just an employee.

Like I loved her. I thought she was my friend. We used to have so much fun together. And every Monday night, the practice would be open late. So I would go home and make the three of us dinner. [00:23:00] And yeah, it was hard. And so, you know, I guess you can kind of take it from there. We got a divorce and I moved from San Diego back to San Francisco because of my connections in my old consulting world, I got a job in San Francisco.

And, that's the marriage.

Brad Minus: I can't even imagine. Oh, how you felt. I mean, you, first of all, I've been to San Diego a few times. There is, I don't think there's, I don't think if there is better weather and atmosphere, cleanliness. Anywhere in the United States, like it is in San Diego.

Kim Korte: It's pretty nice.

Brad Minus: Yeah. I've run a couple of marathons out there and a little triathlons. I love San Diego. So here you are in one of the nicest environments in the United States. You're in love, you're in love with somebody. You've built two businesses from scratch

Kim Korte: and

Brad Minus: they're thriving.

Brad Minus: And which you're and it sounds [00:24:00] like from what I'm getting in it as well. Minus the accounting. Cause you said, of course, accounting is never fun. But it sounds like the rest of your work, you were, you were, you were pretty, you're having, you're having a good time. And then just had this little piece that you still enjoyed with the business consulting.

So it sounds like life was fricking amazing at this point. Yes. To find out that

Kim Korte: consulting had ended, before we opened up the shoe store because he didn't want me away. But, I definitely had. Lovely people who work for us because we had the shoe store. We had great people, our patients. I loved our patients and you know, you build friendships with all these people.

So my whole world. My whole world was in these two rooms, in these two, these two offices.

Brad Minus: How do you handle something like that? How do you handle it just being stripped away, you know, just like that? What did you do? I mean, besides move to San Francisco. [00:25:00]

Kim Korte: Yeah, you lay on the floor of your condo.

So this was like my tipping point, mother's death, the whole religion thing. You know, all of these things that had happened and you know, I was laying on the floor of my condo. I, it went from light to dark and I just laid there like doing like a life review. Really?

Like how did I get here? What did I do? Like, why, what, what, what was I so bad? I didn't think I was that bad. I knew I'm a strong personality for sure, but I didn't think I was a horrible person to deserve this. And. I got up and said, I'm not going to let this happen to me again. And I realized I can't change anybody else.

I couldn't change him. He was also another one who, never knew how he felt. Couldn't face, reality of things. He was a pusher downer as I like to call it. I just made a decision right [00:26:00] then and there. I'm like, I'm not going to do this again. And that's when I went on my journey.

Brad Minus: All right. So here you are, you know, major adversity, from the get go and now you've built things up. You got to a point where you were super happy. Everything was great. And now that got stripped away and then you decide, no, this is not gonna happen to me again. Now it's these steps that you're going to take.

Tell me some of these first steps that you were taking to say, okay, I'm not going to let this happen to me again. How do you go about that?

Kim Korte: Well, I didn't know what to do. When I was in San Francisco, I think that was for like a year or so working and I was just flailing. Like I was just trying to.

Keep one foot in front of the other. I remember my friend came to visit me and we were walking around San Francisco cause I lived in the Marina and she, and I went for a walk and had some lunch and there was a running shoe store and she [00:27:00] runs. So she goes, Oh, I'm going to go in here.

And I went in with her and I had to run out back outside and I just started bawling. And I needed that year to kind of like get my footing back and I got into my work and then I had an opportunity to get back into consulting.

So I implemented another system for this company. That was a system that was related to the system that I used to implement. So I went, talk to the owner. And he's like, I would hire you, but I can't. He goes, if you become a consultant, I can send you work. So I quit my job, moved back to San Diego because I did not, I told you I was stubborn, did not want to be run out of town on their terms.

I wanted to leave or do whatever I did in the future on my terms. So I went back to San Diego I started my consulting business and that was great. And then I had this neighbor, Marla, and she said, Hey, we got to watch the secret. And [00:28:00] so I watched that with her and I thought, Oh, this gives me some ideas.

And I built this heart. It's the Venn diagram. So if you imagine a heart, Like a Venn diagram. And so one side of the upper circle is me. The other side was my partner. And in the middle was the two of us and everything that made up the V down below. That is my friends and family. So this was to represent my time in my relationships because I've.

I wanted less time together and he wanted all time together and I felt unbalanced and in my reflections, I thought we really were happiest when we had this blend of not being together all the time. And so, you know, not together at all. I called a chubby heart because it's wider. And then if you're together too much, it's a skinny heart because.

Finding that balance, I thought was really [00:29:00] important for my next relationship. And then I kept this heart up all the time to kind of say, this is what you want. This is what you want to have because what's the secret about, visualization.

And then I, my friend who was having problems with his girlfriend and we were out for dinner and I said, here, here's this heart. And he's like, you got to write a book on this. This is good stuff. And so I did, and that was my first book. Even that wasn't enough. That just wasn't enough.

Brad Minus: Hey, well, I mean, that's fine. But that I, I guess I have a statement or think about that. So it's so interesting that you say that about, the Venn diagram. I can totally see it, and I never thought about it that way, I've always been one.

To sit there and say in my relationships that I felt like no matter where you were, no matter if you were friends, if you were married, engaged, whatever you needed a world that's just yours. And you have a [00:30:00] world that's just your partners. And then when you get to that Venn diagram, you've got the world that's yours together.

But I always felt like you've got to have these outside friends, these outside relationships, that sometimes will be come together, but most of the time will not be because what the heck do you talk about at the breakfast table? If that skinny diagram is together like this all the time, right?

You're always together. So what do you talk about? And then all of a sudden you feel like, Oh, I can't talk about anything because we already know each other. We know everything. We work together. We sleep together. We eat together. So where is the conversation at the breakfast table?

Kim Korte: Exactly. It's work. I used to say the office is closed now. I don't want to talk about patients. I don't want to talk about this. Let's talk about planning a vacation. How's your mom? Should we go to the movies? I just could not talk about work anymore. And he would get mad.

It was just not a good fit, but it was a good fit at the time. It [00:31:00] was a good fit. The relationship served a purpose for both of us and launched him to where he needed to go, which was with her. And it launched, me where I needed to go. Which is this journey.

Brad Minus: So yeah, that was just the whole thing. I think that's for relationships in general. And I see that the couples that I see that start to separate and divorce are the ones that are together more than not. I like being with my wife too. But you know, we should have separate friends, separate lives on the outside. So we have something to talk about when we do come together, you know? But even if you work with your spouse, I mean, I've been in situations where spouses and stuff have been around.

If you're talking about the vacation or something at home, you're in at work. And all of a sudden your husband cut up to you and say, Hey, listen, I was on the net here, take a look at these when you get a chance for our vacation. When you're working together, it all comes together.

Hey, remember, we talked about this yesterday, here you go. And that happens at work though. And then you come back and if you don't talk about work, cause you don't [00:32:00] want to, then it's like, well, we've already talked about everything else while we were at work. So where is that time to know each other outside of our own lives that really binds you when you come back together?

So that's how I feel.

Kim Korte: Obviously, I feel the same way. I wrote a whole book about it. And I thought, like, if you have to, you know, if you have to spend so much time together, your question needs to be why is it your insecurity? Do you not trust them? Are they untrustworthy? Then why are you with them? It's looking at the reasons why you need that much time, because it's healthy for us to have lots of relationships we are, you know, for most people, I'm obviously very outgoing, but for most people, you benefit the more exposure you have to different experiences. It brings a lot to the table for you as a couple, but [00:33:00] you as a person.

Brad Minus: So what was the name of the first book?

Kim Korte: The Perfect Heart, Creating and Maintaining Love Life Balance.

Brad Minus: Well, you are not a fan of short titles, are you?

Kim Korte: No, I am not.

Brad Minus: Not at all.

Kim Korte: I won't do it.

Brad Minus: So where did you start looking at the tie between the physical and the emotional?

Kim Korte: I was always on this journey for balance, right? And then, and I kept thinking that thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, you know, if you, cause you know, that's the whole thing. Think your way. Through all these things, but it just wasn't working well enough for me. It's like, there's gotta be a little bit more.

And I read a book called how emotions are made the secret life of the brain. And I was like, it was like, The clouds [00:34:00] parted, the sun shone down on me, and I was like, Ta da! It was like, I was, couldn't believe it, like, a process. So I'm very process oriented, as I know you are too, Brad, because of your job. And I was thinking to myself, This is amazing.

The brain has a repeatable process. And, if I know what that process is, well, then I can work with that and I can figure out how to improve my emotions because of this process. That is, you know, a lot of what I use in my book is from that, because this, the author of this book. Is not the only one who talks about the predictive nature of the brain, but she does it in such a fabulous way.

And she's the author of the theory of constructed emotions, which basically says that, in every waking moment, we are getting sensory input and the brain [00:35:00] has to do something with it. It's got to make sense of it. And so we make sense of it. Like you are predicting me now with your brain, like you've been around me long enough now or seen me and know, like, if you saw me again, you'd know Kim, but you already had the concept of a woman, a woman with blonde hair and all this other kind of stuff.

So it's just building on this concept. That we start to create when we're little tiny babies, like from the time, even that we're in the womb at age seven, at seven months in the womb, we start to recognize voices. And this is all a part of this learning and this wiring that takes place in the brain that we use to see, we use to hear, we use to smell.

We use for everything. And our brain is predicting all of it. And we don't notice this prediction time, but that's what the brain does. So it was mind boggling [00:36:00] for me. And especially after I read a few more books on similar topics is that, you know, our whole world is in our head. There's a great philosopher who talks about like, Red, do we both see the same red?

We don't know when we look at red that we are seeing the exact same red. And even how I see you could be different how, than how your wife sees you just because I don't know how she sees it because it's all in here. Well so are emotions and we predict our emotions and what we use to predict our emotions is what we use for what we see and what we hear.

So I call those recipes that we use for our emotions or emotion recipes. So when this data is presented from our inside and outside world, and I'll get there in a second, the brain gathers it and it creates, we call them memories, call it [00:37:00] learning, call it experiences, you know, call it beliefs.

Whatever you want to call it, it's all the same thing. So it's using everything that it's got available to it in our brains, and it's going to make a prediction or a best guess based on it's closest match. So that's what it's going to try to do, is get it's closest match. And so the, the, These little neurons in our head release these peptides.

It's like a bunch of servers. So the neuron cooks the recipe up and then it gets sent out via these peptides to our body. That's the physical chemical reaction that we get. That's our emotion. And then we feel it when we can connect to the sensations produced by these peptides.

In fact, the author of, pep. Oh, man. Now I'm, I'm, her name is Candace Pert, [00:38:00] molecules of emotions is the name of the book. And that's where I learned about these peptides that get released and. And so we, our ability to connect to those feelings is a sensory system. And so when we can connect to the feelings, then we can better recognize those emotions that are created.

Just like you said, your dad told you don't feel. You know, I, I learned like this doesn't feel good. So I, I'm not going to feel this or I just learned to not feel things that that seem like it could potentially be bad. And so I shut down that sensory system and. We can build it up. And that's why I like to use in my book, the example of flavor.

So flavor is a combination of senses, just like our emotions are using a combination of senses. What we see, what we smell, we know from [00:39:00] COVID how important that is. Our sense of smell is in addition to our taste buds to actually capturing flavors, and it actually change flavor to something bad.

And then we've got, what we hear they have studies now that show that. Certain sounds can influence the flavors of food. That's why they have music or that's why they play certain things. So all of these sensory systems can factor into how something tastes. And so does how we feel about it. If we've had a bad experience, it's going to impact.

are like or dislike of something that we see. And we might not give it another chance. We might assume something like we might see a food and go, Ooh, I don't want to eat that without ever really tasting its flavors. And your original experience could have been wrong. Like, you could have tasted it incorrectly, [00:40:00] or it could have been made differently or whatever.

The point is that it's including all these sensory systems that we use for emotions, including how we feel inside, which is. Why I use food if you're someone who's not comfortable with emotions, you might be very comfortable with food if you learn how to taste food like a chef noticing all the little intricacies and nuances that is a skill.

I propose, and, others would agree with me, that it's also a skill to recognize our emotions. And that, with that kind of distinction to, to notice the nuances between certain situations so that you can distinguish them from other past experiences.

Brad Minus: Okay. So I'm going to ask you to give an example of the flavors that lead to an emotion.

Kim Korte: Okay, so let's say that they're ingredients. So let's say that you [00:41:00] walk into a room and you hear somebody's voice. And you recognize it as a certain person. And you go up and you talk to them, your past experiences with that person are going to be influencing that whole experience.

Brad Minus: Okay.

Kim Korte: And or let's say you, believe that a certain race or a certain religion is a certain way. And you find out that someone is of that religion or that there's a group of these people. And so you start to feel a certain way because of that bit of knowledge. That's like saying that all bagels taste the same. They don't. Not all pasta dishes taste the same. And when you start to lump experiences and people and groups and, locations, if you start to lump them into [00:42:00] this one bagel group and not noticing the nuance of like, well, it's not just the bagel.

It's a bagel with cream cheese in. And, a fried egg and it's got salt on, on top of it. And so we don't take that type of, of time and it, and actually it doesn't take that much time once you get used to doing it, but it's going to change your experiences in the world because you're going from seeing this much of a situation, just like if you took a taste of food and you said, Oh yeah, it tastes good.

Yeah. Well, if you can taste it and say, well, I really like, you know, the, this flavor or that flavor, like I was explaining earlier. So if you can see, take a situation and see it more broadly and experience it more broadly and be able to distinguish this situation differently from those situations that you felt about before, guess what [00:43:00] it's going to do?

It's going to open you up to you. To understand or know people or things or situations or whatever it is. It's going to broaden you so that you're able to distinguish that. And if you're dealing with anger, let's just take that as a pure emotion. You know, let's go back and say, if you were to have a pepper, you have a variation of peppers.

And so when you have anger. That's kind of like I call like a garbage can emotion because you could be irate, you could be miffed, you could be perturbed, you could be unhappy with something, or you could be enraged. And being able to look at the situation and not letting your recipe call for it, because if you don't have that kind of distinction in your history, if you have that kind of distinction, don't have that kind of distinction to recognize the situation differently from [00:44:00] another, and you're always just go to anger.

This gives you that, that. Of emotional flavors, because miffed is way different feeling in the body than enraged or anger, right? All you have to do is think about if you're feeling like perturbed, I'm a little irked versus I am angry. It feels different in the body and the body responds chemically different.

Brad Minus: Yes, yes. So, situation and where I'm trying to better myself, I come to a stoplight and I'm watching the light go turn green. Somebody in front of me is on the phone and misses it. And so we end up missing the light now, and it's all because of that person that was on the phone and the light turned red.

And now I've got to wait through another full cycle and I get more than missed. I get perturbed. I need to take that back [00:45:00] and dig into that to find out, well, what is really going on here? Is it just because this person's on the phone? What happened before that made you miff because he was on the phone that made this light turn red?

That, and are you, what are those flavors that are making you do this, making you feel this way, just because somebody was, somebody was a little, was, was not paying attention for just this one minute in time.

Kim Korte: I talked about how our brain stores, all of our emotion recipes, right?

It stores everything, but for the intense purposes of this conversation, it stores our emotion recipes. Well, our kitchen, the brain, it might not be in good working order. So think about your underlying mood that you're in, in any moment. Your mood, if you're tired or hungry or angry at somebody else, you've got [00:46:00] this condition that you've put into the kitchen to kind of predispose how it's going to cook.

So if you're already in that state. And not out of it. Well, they're getting, that's the kind of recipes that you're going to cook up, right? But this is where thought is so powerful. Our responses are automated, and the only way for us to overcome that is with conscious thought. So thoughts that just are generated, right?

Like, non conscious thoughts that we get, like, we're not really thinking. It just comes to us. Those are using the same things, those same memories. The only difference is, is that memories are made up of sensory signals, right? Like, all that sensory input that goes into making our memories.

Like, we may remember the thought, but the initial response is got has those sensory systems of what we saw, what we heard, think of any memory [00:47:00] that you have, and it's going to be what you saw, what you heard, what was going on around you and how you felt at the time, because it's a sensory system. Our thoughts that we have.

Are going to be generated from those same kinds of recipes and we can consciously stop it and say, okay, what is going on here at this moment? Because anger doesn't serve anything really in a moment like that. It's not serving you. It's not serving them. So what is it about? And it doesn't take that long.

If you just say, Hey, you know what, I don't know what's going on with this person. They may be talking to, you know, the emergency room that their kid is in, or that their mother is in a panic or something's going on in their lives. And so if you were really needing, To get anywhere. Maybe you go into another lane or you gently tapped so that they get, you know, prompted to move.

But, you know, understanding in that moment that [00:48:00] your anger might have nothing to do with them and a lot to do with something else. But it's that conscious thought about it. That makes the difference. I always say that emotions are not positive or negative, the outcomes are. And so, you know, yes, anger or fear can produce chemicals in our body that we need at that time.

Because if there's danger ahead, we need to be fearful so that, you know, have all those chemicals going so that we can up and run. We need that energy. Diverted to my muscles, take it away from my, you know, everything else, my digestion, get me booking away from the trouble. The thing is, is that we can produce it just with thoughts.

And so when we do this, when we, take our chemicals down. Then we're just allowing ourselves to be in a calmer [00:49:00] state and our outcome then is more productive. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question?

Brad Minus: Yeah. And what I keep thinking about is just our little example here, which is, you know, kind of a miffy little example, but, you know, you're sitting in there and that's like salt.

It's salty. You know, it's that anger, that miffness, that way is that I'm getting salty and I need to know how do we balance that? You know, how do we change the chemical reaction of salt? You need to add something sweet. So maybe if I really was conscious, like you were saying, you need to be conscious about it.

Wouldn't I, instead of going, That way, recognize that this salt is coming, and I need to change the chemical reaction of it, of that, in the frying pan, or maybe it's pepper, or whatever, and I need to change the chemical composition. What am I going to add? I'm going to add sugar. Well, what's sugar?

Something that feels better. So maybe instead of going there, I flipped the radio to a song that I know makes me happy [00:50:00] and increases my endorphin level to where it brings up the sugar. So now I'm making a chemical reaction. So if I notice, you know, if we really want to be conscious about it, we want to stay away from those negative chemicals.

from negative feelings and we call them flavors. I'm thinking, okay, you start feeling the pepper. Well, the pepper is starting to make you, you know, starting to make you sweat, starting to make you irritated. Let's add a little sugar to it. Find that piece, that, that, that stimulus. And maybe it might be a song.

I refuse to get angry at something that means nothing. That it's not deserving of my anger. I'm going to take this French fry I'm going to put in my mouth because it makes me feel comfortable.

Kim Korte: Advocating food to, no, no, no,

Brad Minus: I know that, but what I'm saying is it's not about the French fry and the, the flavor of the French fry it's well, no, it is.

Kim Korte: We're changing, what we're doing is we're changing the chemical composition of our recipe, right?

So we're saying. When I'm at a stop [00:51:00] and somebody is on the phone, I can, you know, this is what I'm going to do. Like it does. What good is it doing you to get upset? And so this is your, you're helping yourself. Right. Because that anger doesn't benefit you and you can hurt yourself too with loving too much.

You know, it's not just the negative emotions. It's the positive ones too, quote, unquote positive. You can give love inappropriately and to the wrong people because Your definitions of what has to happen for you to feel love, what has to happen for you to get angry, what has to happen for you to feel, certain emotions is critical because we are cooking old recipes, right?

Like the stuff I learned growing up. I'm sure the stuff you learned growing up, anybody listening, you know, how unhealthy some of those recipes were. And [00:52:00] so it's up to us to catch them and not cook them anymore. And that's what I love about what I write about is that, you know, learning to change the recipe because the chefs in your head, they work for you and nobody can change them.

But you, when you say somebody made you mad, no, you, your ingredients that you received from them is what made you mad. Does that make sense for you to be mad or is, is it, is it something else? And so it's being conscious. of it. And it takes a little bit of work at the beginning, but like for me now, it's just second nature that I am more conscious and thinking about like, Hmm, what, what is going on here?

And it doesn't have to be in the moment. It can be later on, but as long as you can understand, and this is something really critical that I haven't talked about yet is that. Your [00:53:00] brain predicts, but it also can predict poorly. And when we were talking about, you know, being tired or in a bad mood that that could lead to a poor prediction, high levels of stress, a bad diet.

You know, not getting enough sleep, all of these things, they are going to predispose you to bad predictions. And that could be in not only just what you feel, what you see, what you hear. How many people mispredict hearing all the time? It's a constant thing where we think we heard someone say something and that's not what they said.

And you're like, no, I heard it. No, you, you didn't hear it. You heard it in your head because your own voice was over talking them, or your brain was thinking that's what they're going to say. So that's what you heard. And there's so much [00:54:00] evidence around misprediction and getting. what you think is so real wrong.

And it's just part of being human and part of having a brain. And I think it's good in a lot of ways because that gives us that opportunity to correct it, or to at least try and correct it. And it also gives us that, well, I'm predisposed to being wrong. You know, I'm predisposed to, to someone else being wrong, you know, by not hearing me correctly.

So being more clear, trying to be more concise, confirming things with people, like, especially when it comes to communication, just because our brain, can get it wrong and you know, that's, that's really humbling for me. I always just think I'm always right.

Brad Minus: Yeah. I get that. I tend to be in that same situation.

I, I have this saying that I've been saying for a lot of people and especially, and I've been saying it way before we've gone [00:55:00] through this sensitivity area in our environment right now, which I've always liked, offenses in the eye of the offended. It kind of plays with what you're talking about and the flavors, right?

I always say that offense is in the I offended. If you're offended, that's not about the person that you think is trying to do the offending. It's about why you're taking offense to it. And that could be these flavors, right? These predispositions experiences, the things that you're, that, that, that you've experienced is why you're offended.

It's got nothing to do with what, whatever that person said or didn't say or did, it's about how, why you're, why are you offended? And that's your, your past experiences where, where those, what are those flavors that are taking place during that time that you're feeling offended.

Kim Korte: Also too, it's your focus. Know, your brain is going to prioritize what you prioritize. So what are you, if you feel like you're always going, you know, someone's [00:56:00] out to get you, or you're not good enough, all of these, these internal talks or what you're focused on, like you said, over sensitivity, if you belong to a group or, a race or religion.

So you might think that everything that happens to you is around that, because that's how you identify. That's what you've prioritized for the brain because when all these things that are going on in your head, the brain has to use something to prioritize what it should be. And that's what it can use.

So in the line with. What you were just talking about. I want to share this true story. That's in my very first chapter in the book. It was a pre new year's eve party. And this host of this party had great wines. He was a wine collector and just very generous with a few of us who are at this party.

And his friend walked in late, who was also a wine collector, and he spied this bottle of Opus One on the table. [00:57:00] So Opus One's a very fancy, schmancy wine brand, you know, it's Napa Valley, prestigious, all that kind of stuff.

Brad Minus: Right.

Kim Korte: You don't buy their wine, you acquire it. And so he went, Right for that bottle poured a glass took a sip and he's like, I love this wine And we're all laughing at him because what he didn't know because his buddy the host knew he was gonna be late Poured it half full of two buck Chuck, which is a Charles Shaw brand from Trader Joe's and he took another taste While we're all giggling he goes this isn't Opus one The story is to say we experience what we expect, and so if we expect, you know, if we experience a taste because, we see the bottle, we see the dark color of the wine, we know our host has fabulous wines that he's always sharing, and you've never had the experience of him [00:58:00] serving Charles Shaw brand.

You know what? He got what he expected in that first taste, and so do we. And so this is why I always say it's important to take a second taste. Chefs do it all the time. They get a dish, they take a bite, and then they take another bite. Sometimes they take several. It's because they want to capture all the flavors.

And we can go through life getting what we expect, but if we don't like That, well, it's up to us to change them. If you don't want to get it from the world, adjust your expectations so that you can recognize it when it's really, truly happening.

Brad Minus: Typical manifestation. Right from go back to the beginning when you watch the secret that's

Kim Korte: but that's the whole thing. It's the brain. It's you know manifestation sounds so woo woo, [00:59:00] but It's not it's it's honestly like you're you're setting up your brain for what you want You're telling it all the time.

Brad Minus: And I love that. So, let me just, wrap this up a little bit here and I just want to let everybody know that, okay, let's review this book that she has yucky, yummy, savory, sweet, understanding the flavors of emotions, right?

By our lovely. And you can find that, right on Amazon and it'll be in, I will have a direct link right to that and the show notes will also have, Kim 40s, website, kimcordia. com, where you can get more about her and about some of the consulting that she does and her podcast called, flavors of emotion.

When do you release, flavors of emotion?

Kim Korte: Right now I'm doing it every other Wednesday and I'm moving up. It's new for me. This whole [01:00:00] podcasting thing is quite new. I admire podcasters tremendously. The ones who do it every week and several times a week. I mean, it's a lot, but, it's every other week right now and I planning in October to move it to weekly.

Brad Minus: Fantastic. That's outstanding. Yes. I speak at conventions for podcasting and, and so if you ever, please, you know, reach out. And if you ever have any questions about anything, and I've, and I've gone the other way. This is, this is my second podcast. My first one was back in 2018.

And this is going to be episode 48, but, And will be, so it'll be my second season. Second season, 23, so it'll be second season. See, episode 23 and, we just released, we just released season two, episode two, which is our 27th episode.

This is be like 48th episode. I'm excited about that. I just recently went from one day a [01:01:00] week to two days a week releasing. I'm there for you, so, well, I

Kim Korte: appreciate that.

Brad Minus: And you're doing exactly what you should be doing, right? You have a certain, you've got, you're staying consistent, it's bimonthly.

Then you have an idea that you wanna then go weekly, and if you find yourself with extra content, then you can do bonus episodes before you move to twice a week if you end up doing that, or you stay on once a week. Most of the good podcasts right now are once a week, congratulations on that.

Kim Korte: Change, you'll change that

Brad Minus: I know Joe Rogan, who does, five days a week and does two hour pod, two to five hour podcasts. But hey, I don't have that kind of name.

Kim Korte: That's a lot.

Brad Minus: But of course he gets millions of dollars for it too. So,

Kim Korte: If someone was paying me millions of dollars to speak five days a week, I'd do it.

Brad Minus: Exactly. And, that's a whole different story. We can talk about podcasts all day long.

Definitely check book, check out her, website, kimcordy. com, which has also got all of the stuff that I've told you before. And I'm going to put all that in [01:02:00] the show notes, so you'll have easy access to it. And last, but not least, Kim, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on life changing challengers.

You continually overcame adversity and you did it in an uncommon way, which is exactly what we do here on life changing challengers.

Kim Korte: Well, thank you for having me. Who knew that we were so similar?

Brad Minus: Right. Exactly. So, and for the rest of you, please go ahead and share, subscribe, podcast.

And especially if you know somebody that, that some of these takeaways that Tim has talked about, please share the episode so that they can take advantage of her wisdom. And, for the rest of you, we will see you in the