Episode 1449: Interview with Kim Korte About the Flavors of Emotions

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1, 449 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:08] Kim Korte: I'm Kim Korte challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to understand that feelings aren't facts.

[00:00:26] This is key. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer,

[00:00:44] better understanding of how they work without it being too sciencey, which is why I use food. The title of my book is Yucky, Yummy, Savory, Sweet, Understanding the Flavors of Emotions, because we can feel yucky and food can taste yucky. We can [00:01:00] relate to all these things, but the most important thing that we need to understand is our ability to connect to those feelings inside.

[00:01:08] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time. Your talent and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:34] In today's podcast episode, I interview Kim Cortee. I asked Kim about how she decided to write her book, Yucky, Yummery, Savory, Sweet, Understanding the Flavors of Emotions. Kim also shares why we have to become aware of our emotions and how they come about, and Kim shares why her journey has uniquely positioned her to talk [00:02:00] about this topic.

[00:02:01] I've got a new book coming out called Inspired Living, assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about it and sign up for getting more information over at InspiredStewardship. com. Inspired Living. That's inspired stewardship. com inspired living.

[00:02:25] Kim Corti is a pioneering sensory perception and emotion management strategist sparked by a significant emotional event that propelled her to question the very essence of human feelings. She blends her expertise in consulting with a profound passion for emotional resilience. Driven by her insatiable curiosity and fueled by her love of food, Kim embarked on a quest to redefine emotional awareness.

[00:02:49] Culminating in the creation of her latest book, Yucky, Yummy, Savory, Sweet, Understanding the Flavors of Emotions. In this groundbreaking work, she shares a process to [00:03:00] help us make sense of our feelings through the lens of a chef understanding flavors in a recipe. This unique approach to emotion management blends culinary metaphors with emotional education in a digestible format, making the complex world of feelings accessible and actionable.

[00:03:17] Welcome to the show, Kim! Thank you. I'm very privileged to be here.

[00:03:22] I appreciate you coming on. So I talked a little bit in the intro about some of the work you do, but for one thing, this area is, I think, a little different than a lot of folks will have heard about and thinking about your emotions and how we work with those.

[00:03:40] And I think of our intro sometimes as almost like the high level. Show the best parts of how we got to where we are. And yet, I also know that the journey to get to where we are is usually not like that. It's not the CliffsNotes version, right? Would you mind unpacking a little bit more about your journey [00:04:00] and what brought you to the point of putting this book out into the world putting this idea and this message out into the world?

[00:04:10] Kim Korte: Happily because it's the journey, right? That's, it's so important. And I had some things happen to me as a young girl going back in time that should not have happened. And I grew up with a definite influence of alcoholism. My mom had it and she died of it. I had a a very dramatic, traumatic experience within the religion of my youth that was very life altering.

[00:04:46] And around that time, I met my husband, my first husband, I should say. And I thought, Oh, this is it. I've got emotional stability. I've got love. [00:05:00] I'm set like this is going to be good. And then he left me for another woman who, after I put him through school and this woman was our friend.

[00:05:10] Think about it. Like I was through, had been through a lot and I was laying on the floor of my condo because I was renting it out and I was moving up north from San Diego to San Francisco. And I literally laid on the floor from, Daylight till dark and trying to figure it out, right?

[00:05:33] Because I'm a project manager. And for me, I need to figure out how this project went wrong and how I can keep it from happening to me again. So I got up with this resolve and this is a true story. Really. I did get up from the floor with this resolve to not let this happen to me again. And we all know that is not the case.

[00:05:53] So what's my place in this? And so this started in a journey inward of. [00:06:00] Looking at my mistakes. And I wrote my first book was about trying to create balance because boy, was I out of balance. But in this, Trying to manage my thoughts just didn't seem to be working and I didn't know what to do.

[00:06:17] And then I read this book called how emotions are made the secret life of the brain. And that changed my world because I was introduced to a system, really the system of the brain. Now the brain is so complicated and I would never say that. It's the end. I'll be all what I'm presenting, but it gave me this understanding that our emotions are a prediction of the brain.

[00:06:43] So if it's a prediction, what's it using for prediction and then how do we experience it? And that's really what got me started. That's the Genesis of the book.

[00:06:57] Scott Maderer: So it's trying to figure out your own solution.

[00:06:59] Kim Korte: [00:07:00] No, it was under taking that solution that this book. Provided, which I thought was so insightful for me to, I like processes and I got the process.

[00:07:11] So what I tried to do is take that process and use food to help people to connect to the. to those process. And I don't know if you want me to get into it now, but that was the idea of this book was like, okay, if there is this process, the brain does predict, what is it used to predict? And I translated that to food and chefing and dining experiences.

[00:07:40] And

[00:07:41] Scott Maderer: let's talk about that a little bit. So the analogy that you made here of connecting it to food and to cooking and to dining, why was that the ana there's probably a thousand different things you could have compared it to and come up with a system to compare it to why food [00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Kim Korte: emotions are created.

[00:08:03] So you could say that perceptions are the ingredients of our emotions, everything that's going on around us in this outside world. And even in our inside world, because people don't think of us having perceptions associated with how we feel inside, but that's a perception. And so our outside and inside world is sending us these ingredients and that's true for how we see, for how we hear everything that we experience in the world is a prediction of the brain.

[00:08:39] And those ingredients that come in, that it uses, the brain uses to create our emotional responses or predict, I should say, our emotional responses. It makes sense. Ingredients, food, cooking recipes. That's where I came up with it. Actually, at first I was going [00:09:00] to have it be using wine cause I live in wine country.

[00:09:03] My husband's a sommelier. Wine. Wine. person. And I thought, Oh, I'll use that. But I wanted to appeal to a broader spectrum. And I certainly didn't want to exclude anybody with alcoholism, especially, I'm especially sensitive to that. So I moved it to food.

[00:09:21] Scott Maderer: I'm glad you did because wine would not have worked as a good analogy for no, it would not.

[00:09:26] Let's talk a little bit too about one of the things I like to draw out of folks is how our unique faith journeys intersect with our life journey. And that can be a very complicated experience for everybody too, but it usually has a connection to some of what we've gone through and some of which where we get to.

[00:09:48] Would you talk a little bit about your spiritual journey, your faith journey and where you're at today?

[00:09:54] Kim Korte: Sure. I was I was raised in a particular [00:10:00] religion and was in it for up until my late twenties. And like I said, I had the an experience with it and it was very it was so emotional for me that I actually considered like my life there was a lot going on and do I want to.

[00:10:24] Continue living. And I felt like I had lost my faith and I did, I actually did lose my faith for a long time, but it's actually through this process. Of connecting to my emotions that I reconnected to God, if that makes any sense at all to you or to anyone listening, because I part of this system inside of our body, I had learned to shut it down and I realized that, That connection that I [00:11:00] related to religion, I had shut down.

[00:11:02] God call it whatever you want. Creator, the universe source to me. It's all the same. And I reconnected. To me, that was very important result of this and it wasn't really what I was expecting either.

[00:11:24] Scott Maderer: I think it's interesting. To think about not that we could ever do this, but there's that thought process of if you knew then what you know now what would be different, right?

[00:11:38] That we, I think we all go through those moments of thinking that. And I think about me as an example, with more maturity and more understanding, there's experiences I went through as a young person that I would probably react to differently. Now that I'm 50 something years old and it's, but the truth is.

[00:11:58] I didn't have the [00:12:00] experience that I've had in the last 35, 40 years. So I can't regret it. I can't go back in time and say that was cause it's part of my journey. It's part of my story. It's part of where I got. Do you think for folks how do you see this idea of us learning and becoming more self aware and understanding that stuff that's going on in our brain that I think most people think of as out of their control and disconnected and not real not almost not even real in a way, despite the fact that it is real.

[00:12:35] How do you see people learning more about that? And what are the benefits of that?

[00:12:43] Kim Korte: That's a big question. I, and I will say that, when you understand how a car works, And you have a problem with the car. It's a lot easier to fix it. It doesn't mean the problems don't happen [00:13:00] with the car.

[00:13:01] It's easier to address it instead of having this happen. You're out of commission. You don't know what to do. You can use that analogy for all kinds of things. So I look at what I do. I'm trying to help people understand is to have a better understanding of how they work without it being too sciency, which is why I use food, right?

[00:13:28] Because we, my title of my book is yucky, yummy, savory, sweet, understanding the flavors of emotions, because we can feel yucky and food can taste yucky. We can relate to all these things, but the most important thing that we need to understand is our ability to connect to those feelings inside. that we produce and look at what produces them.

[00:13:50] So if you were to take a bite of food and just say, Oh, it's good, it's bad, whatever. But if you could take a bite of food and say, you know what, this needs more salt, or this [00:14:00] needs less of this, that's looking at the ingredients. And it's our ability to look at the ingredients of our emotions, where we're sourcing these ingredients for what we're producing and looking to see is this really that?

[00:14:16] That gives us power, right? That gives us control because we have only us to control. This is what I came up from the floor and said, you know what? Like I can't control some man in my future to not cheat on me, but I can do things to be proactive in whom I choose. And I can be proactive in the relationship more to call things out and to not push things down or not look at stuff.

[00:14:45] And so that's what. I'm advocating here for people to taste their emotions, so to speak, to look at the ingredients because we are the [00:15:00] producer of our emotions. We love to say someone else makes me feel this way, but no, you're taking their ingredients and doing with it. And we all have this experience when we talk to someone and we say something.

[00:15:13] In a conversation and it's like they didn't hear us and that's them taking your words and coming up with their own ingredients like they heard something differently and that's my whole point is that we need to understand that we, our lives are the product of how we use the ingredients we receive.

[00:15:38] Scott Maderer: Do you see in this too that I think sometimes the language we use becomes important in a way that I think most of us don't think about because like you just mentioned I hear people say things like, So and so made me angry. No, so and so didn't make you angry they're that's not in a way That's almost [00:16:00] giving the power of your feeling to somebody else It's saying they have the ability to do something that they don't how do you see the language we use around emotion?

[00:16:10] Being part of this soup that we're learning to make when it comes to our emotions

[00:16:17] Kim Korte: It's so important. When you think about it, you're feeding your brain. When you speak out loud or you speak to yourself, your brain my friend likes to say it doesn't have a sense of humor. It just knows what it gets, right?

[00:16:31] If you give it information and it's going to work with it. So if you say they made you angry it's their words. But what you're doing with those words, what those words mean to you versus what they mean to them. But so that's really important. Saying I am angry versus I feel angry, two different things.

[00:16:56] One you can change, but you can't change. It's hard to change [00:17:00] who you are, like as a structure, who I am, but it's easy to easier to change how you feel. So it's more just saying it out loud. It feels different in your body. And then there's the use of these terms like angry. If you look at like for my podcast, I have peppers on there because you can have a variety of peppers.

[00:17:24] It's in the image. You can have a variety of peppers. One could be sweet. One could be so spicy. Your mouth is going to burn. and they're all peppers. So if you look at some of these emotions, like love and anger and hate, you could dislike someone, or you could be not too thrilled, or you could be irked instead of angry, but maybe you should be enraged for that situation.

[00:17:50] So it's, that's where I go back to the ingredients and looking at what you're cooking. Is this really even when it [00:18:00] is, each situation is different. I use the example of vanilla ice cream and that's really easy, right? Cause there's just a few ingredients, but even with vanilla ice cream, you can taste three different ingredients.

[00:18:15] brands, and have three different experiences. If you're paying attention, it could be better ingredients, more creamy different vanillas, more sugar, less sugar. It's all different. You can't find two vanilla brands that taste exactly the same. Same too with emotions.

[00:18:42] Scott Maderer: When you think about that experience that we have of emotion, like you're using anger there.

[00:18:52] And I think a lot of times we almost ascribe a value to the [00:19:00] emotion separate from the situation. And what I mean by that is take anger as an example, people immediately assume anger, bad, not anger, good, right? Being angry is somehow bad. And yet there are situations where anger is probably the appropriate emotion.

[00:19:17] Exactly. So how do you see that kind of cause, but yet culturally we have a tendency to say. Anger is bad as opposed to looking at when it's right, when it's wrong. How do you see that kind of mishmash or navigation for people?

[00:19:36] Kim Korte: Yeah I don't like positive and negative assignments to emotions because everybody thinks, Oh love is positive.

[00:19:44] It isn't always. It's not always positive. It can be you could be in love with someone who's hurting you. And that happens a lot. So it's your definition of love gets a little skewed. So we can [00:20:00] have even positive emotions that can have negative outcomes. So it's going back to what I said.

[00:20:09] I've talked about it's appropriateness. It's looking at the situation because you know what, being angry that somebody is doing something wrong and wanting to do something to fix it. That's good. That, that, that anger can morph and become more developed into indignation and then to action. And that's a good thing.

[00:20:33] Anger is not good when it leads to violence and to other, and I would say that's a negative outcome of an emotion. So I don't think the emotions are necessarily positive or negative. I think the outcomes are

[00:20:50] Scott Maderer: the actions that it could lead to. But there's still a choice there, too, to have taken a certain action or not.

[00:20:57] Exactly. [00:21:00]

[00:21:00] Kim Korte: That's why looking at the situation and understanding that certain emotions will make you more focused. These ones that we ascribe as negative, like fear anger they take your focus and narrow it. So you're only getting a small portion of this visual field, let's say, or the word spoken of perceptive input, because that's what our body does.

[00:21:29] The chemicals that we release like cortisol, they narrow our focus. They actually dampen our cognitive capability. It's like a do it yourself lobotomy as one neuroscientist put it. And so when we are able to. Say, okay, wait and take that breath to calm the body down. Take a couple deep breaths and see if we can take in more ingredients.

[00:21:53] We might just see that. Oh, we assumed remember our brain is predicting [00:22:00] and that we assumed because of Past experiences. And I need to add this into this discussion is that while the ingredients are our perceptions, our past experiences, it's our belief systems our, what we've learned, our experiences, our memories, it's, those are all the same thing in the brain, and I call them recipes.

[00:22:25] And our brain takes this information in and is using these recipes to produce what it thinks is the best dish given the ingredients. I use that show chopped where they go in and they get all these ingredients. You'll have 4 different chefs given a basket of ingredients and having other things, and they all produce something different and the same with us.

[00:22:50] We can have. Perceptive ingredients given to us and we have different outputs. And so when our ingredients [00:23:00] produce something, that's let's say cortisol producing, then our focus stays narrowed and when we can step back and look at the situation and get a wider view, we might take in more information that will change our emotional experience.

[00:23:21] Scott Maderer: So Kim, I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there and ask you those questions, is there anything else about the work you do or this or your book Yucky, Yummy, Savory, Sweet, that you think is important for the listener to hear?

[00:23:40] Kim Korte: It, emotions are scary, right?

[00:23:43] For a lot of people. And for me, we, I know so many people who go through life just trying to avoid them. And they're the most important and valuable piece of communication that we can get. We're all born with them for a reason, [00:24:00] just like we're born with eyes, and they exist to communicate and to provide richness and depth and just everything that we need we will die without love.

[00:24:16] And so when you think about how important it is, and there's a reason why we have them, our ability to connect to them is that much more important. And I'm trying to offer a bridge for this by using food for the people who feel that way. And. For me, it's like looking at people in the world and you see these violent eruptions.

[00:24:40] And I think to myself, if they had that skill, because just a chef learns how to distinguish flavors in a dish. It's not always just natural, like you learn it and we can learn the same way to distinguish our emotions and to. Learn and understand the flavors in [00:25:00] that much better. And if we all were able to do that, it doesn't mean that we're not going to encounter negative experiences and or the things that we don't.

[00:25:08] It just means we might be able to get back up from them that much quicker.

[00:25:16] Scott Maderer: So I, as I mentioned earlier, I think the language we use and the words we use is important and a lot of times we use words and yet different people mean different things by them. So my brand is Inspired Stewardship and I run things through that lens of stewardship and yet I've discovered that's one of those words that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

[00:25:35] So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:25:41] Kim Korte: I think of that as a guide. Like my first I meant to look up the dictionary definition because I'm usually one of those people who looks into the, to the meaning of the word, like where it came from, what was the etymology of it.

[00:25:59] But to [00:26:00] me, a steward is not just a guide, but helps you grow and leads, helps to lead you in the direction that's right for you, not for them. That's part of the problem is some of us don't know ourselves well enough, which is part of what I try to address in my book, because knowing what we want and what we don't want, what we need or don't need.

[00:26:25] These are the things that our emotions guide us for to our highest and best use of this life that we're given. And I feel like everybody is given something that they're here to do and accomplish. And a steward is going to help you to uncover that.

[00:26:46] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask each guest. Imagine for a minute that I invented this magic machine and with this machine, I was able to pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future. Maybe [00:27:00] 150, maybe 250 years, but through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life.

[00:27:07] See all of the connections, all of the implications, all of the ripples that you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

[00:27:17] Kim Korte: That's an easy question because I try and live my life by on my deathbed, how am I going to look at this action? Am I going to be glad I did this or not?

[00:27:30] And it helps me guide my decisions. I want to on my deathbed upon reflection of my life, be able to say what my speaking engagements, my podcasts, my books, they had a positive impact on at least one, but hopefully A multitude of people so that they can have a better life and then by that they [00:28:00] then fed that on to a next generation and a generation after that so that in 500 years I could look back and say, you know what this person is having an easier time of this situation because of me and that would bring me nothing but joy.

[00:28:20] Scott Maderer: So what's next on the roadmap? What's coming up in the future as you continue on this journey?

[00:28:27] Kim Korte: I just started a podcast. It's called Flavors of Emotions

[00:28:39] as very exciting. And I just gave my first public discourse on this topic last week. I was very excited. It was, is leading to another speaking opportunity. And I'm hoping no, my plan is to become an international speaker. Speaker [00:29:00] in demand that talking about just this like you and I did today.

[00:29:06] Scott Maderer: Awesome. You've already got an international adca audience probably once you get the podcast out there, and I've got folks in other countries listening to my episode, so you can already say you're be adhered to heard in other countries even if you haven't physically traveled there to speak yet.

[00:29:19] So there you go. This is true

[00:29:22] Kim Korte: And that is true, but I'm hoping. I really feel strongly about doing public speaking and that's a good

[00:29:31] Scott Maderer: route to start that journey. That's a good first step. Absolutely. You can find out more about Kim on her website at kimcorty. com. I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well.

[00:29:45] Kim, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:29:55] Kim Korte: Find more joy. just look for more joy in your [00:30:00] life. And look at your recipe for it. If you think about and ask yourself and write down what you need to have happen around you. Like what are the ingredients for you to feel joy and refine that recipe and seek it out because we have enough of the other things that seem to be creating a lot of consternation within our lives, and we have more opportunity to see the things that bring us joy when we define it and seek it out.

[00:30:36] Your brain's going to look for it when the more you give it details, it will look for it.

[00:30:46] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way [00:31:00] to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspiredstewardship.

[00:31:09] com slash podcast. iTunes rate. All one word. iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world. .