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Lessons - Building Mental Strength When Everything Feels Impossible | Amy Morin - Mental Toughness Expert · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore the power of mental resilience through 13 key habits
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  that emotionally strong people avoid during adversity. Learn how taking ownership of your emotions
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  helps you navigate grief and trauma. Learn why controlling your thoughts and behaviors
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  can change how you feel and learn practical tools to regulate intense emotions such as sadness,
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  anxiety or anger so they do not control your decisions.
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  And this first list, this list that like again like went viral obviously it's
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  when things like that just hit home you know that everybody's dealing with it but nobody knows
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  how to put it into words and you incorporate into this list things from your own lived
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  experiences probably but also from your from your from your professional background you understood
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  how these things impact you. So let's actually just start off with that let's start off with like
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  the first version of the list really that I think helps people get through these really tough
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  times based on all the different things that you went through and then we can talk about maybe
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  why these things work so well and we can talk about the psychological maybe even biological
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  pieces to it because there's a lot there that encompasses like mental toughness and and and
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  making yourself not impervious to these horrible situations that everybody's going to go through
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  but at least better equipped to deal with them. Sure, mommy runs through the list. Let's go through
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  the way. Yeah, let's go. Just kick it off. It's a good framework just to start and then we can
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  take it from there. Let's see how good my memory is if we can do these in order. So I think I
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  have a red dot somewhere too. Yeah, don't feel sorry for yourself. Don't give away your power.
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  Don't make the same mistakes over and over again. Don't give up after your first failure.
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  Don't fear alone time. Don't shy away from change. I don't resent other people's success.
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  Don't worry about pleasing everybody. Don't feel like the world owes you anything. Let's talk about
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  these these rules or these I guess these these laws of things that mentally strong people don't do.
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  So can you from like a therapist perspective talk about why these things are so and you don't
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  have to go through each one but talk about what these things actually do to the person when they're
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  going through a tough time. Why does why does for example not doing some of these things allow you
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  to go through a death or this very traumatic experience. So it really boils down to taking a
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  responsibility for the way that you think the way you feel and the way you behave. So the reason
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  the list starts off we don't feel sorry for yourself is because that's right where I was. I was
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  thinking this isn't fair. I got another loss in my life. Why me? But I knew as a therapist like
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  anybody who comes in feeling sorry for themselves isn't going to get any better. And if you see
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  somebody who feels sorry for themselves and you offer a solution and idea any kind of support
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  their immediate response is well that won't work for me and here's why my case is special like yes
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  that strategy works for 99.9% of the people in the world but I'm the 0.1% that that is never going
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  to work for and they kind of get angry that anybody's even trying to help them out. So I knew that
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  it's okay to be sad and that we have to be sad and that's part of our grieving process and
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  that's how you heal is by going through those tough things but I also knew that if I dug in my
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  heels and exaggerated that my life was worse than everybody else's or that this was so horrible I
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  could never recover I would make those things true that I could say yes my life is awful and I'm
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  going to spend the rest of it sitting on my couch and never leaving again but that wouldn't do
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  me or anybody else any good so and a lot of the things on that list are really about that like if
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  you took looked at don't give away your power that's really about saying well I'm in charge of how I
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  think feeling behave you can call me an idiot but I don't have to let I don't have to feel bad like
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  that would be my choice if I said like oh I feel really bad because Scott called me names today
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  no I can just be like all right that's his opinion and I can move on or if you have a co-worker who
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  talks to you a lot you could be like you know that person waste my time and they ruin my day because
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  they won't stop talking and I can't get anything done or you could set a boundary and say hey we're
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  not going to do that right now or thanks for thanks for having a chat with me but I can't talk I'm
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  busy I have something to do and all of these things are a tough sometimes to be like oh you know
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  it really is me who's in charge but at the same time like there's a lot of freedom in that knowing
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  I get to pick what kind of life I have I can't control all the things that happen to me but
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  there are so many choices I have and even when we look at things you can't control you can't control
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  somebody else's behavior you can't control the economy you can't control whether people buy
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  your products but you can control how great of a product you make or you can control how you
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  respond to people when they behave a certain way so just keeping that in mind I think
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  brings us into a lot of freedom where we say all right the choice is up to me like just like you
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  can't always control that the hand you were dealt in life there's so many options and how you
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  respond to it so this list is really about that because people who would come into my therapy
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  office some of them had been handed incredibly difficult cards in life and yet the ones who were
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  still optimistic the ones who would say you know this has been tough yet I have these skills and
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  resources and here's how I'm going to get through it could get through it and they still were like
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  hopeful about the future compared to other people who are like can you believe how bad my life is
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  and they want it to come in next week and tell me how horrible everything happened in the past
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  seven days like can you believe how awful this has been to and these people that don't get better
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  and it seems so obvious from the outside like yeah I just take some time a little bit of hope a
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  little bit of optimism a willingness to try new things and an openness to say I'm going to
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  experiment and if I fail or make a mistake I can handle that and I'll be okay I love it's just
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  about it's about ownership and to be like I need to ask because it's easy to say and like you
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  mentioned much harder to do and to live so yes extreme ownership yes believing that you happen
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  to the world the world doesn't happen to you and you can take control of your circumstances it's
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  very it's a very important mindset shift but in the moment and whether or not it is
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  God forbid somebody passes away or on a much lighter scale your business isn't working out or your
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  spouse cheats on you in the moment for some people it is almost impossible to remove themselves
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  because I think just like anger and anxiety just like take they take over they take over and you
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  feel helpless so maybe talk about your strategy or even like some of the strategies that you've
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  helped your clients with as a therapist how do you remove yourself from the moment so you can
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  think clearly so you can take yourself back to this list because I think that if somebody's not
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  going through something dramatic it's very easy to say oh yeah that sounds good for next time
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  until they're going through some shit and then all of a sudden like the rules go at the window
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  correct and that's what happens we know from the research like when our emotions goes up our
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  logic goes down so the more intense we feel in emotion the more difficult it is to think clearly
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  as you just alluded to so if somebody gave you a test to take when you're really angry you would
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  score poorly on it like you literally get stupid when you're angry an anxiety does the same thing
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  to us are overwhelming sadness it's nearly impossible to to figure out what do I do next so we all
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  need tools to deal with uncomfortable feelings and sometimes they're simple things just putting
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  a name to an emotion takes a bunch of the sting out of it if I could say hey I'm really anxious
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  today my anxiety goes down just a little bit just because I've helped my brain and my body make
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  sense of it if I can then say all right is this emotion serving me well we'll call it a friend
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  or an enemy like sometimes it's our friend like if you feel really sad about something you've lost
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  by all means embrace it but if you're sad and you're about to go ask for a raise in that moment
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  that's not your friend you want to boost your mood before you walk into that meeting so we all
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  need skills and tools to boost our mood so could be listening to a happy song for a few minutes it
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  might be a matter of saying I'm gonna go for a walk around the block I'm gonna go outside in nature
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  I'm gonna do something to reduce the intensity of this feeling acting the opposite helps if I
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  feel really sad my brain's gonna say you know stay in your pajamas and sit on the couch today you
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  don't need to go out and do anything like never met anybody who said you know I skipped work today
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  so out on the couch in my pajamas and by noon I felt amazing and other than when I was eight and I
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  didn't want to go to school but for the most part when we do what our brain tells us to do when we're
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  like stuck in a bad mood is it just reinforces a bad mood we listen to angry music when we feel
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  angry and it makes us feel angrier so sometimes you have to then say okay this emotion isn't serving
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  me well so I'm gonna do the opposite and I'll sometimes work with people to create what we call a
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  list of mood boosters so I'll say what do you do when you're really happy if you came home from
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  work and you were an amazing mood what would you likely do and somebody might give me a playlist of
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  the songs they'd listen to they might say I would call a friend I'd go for a walk I might work in my
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  garden for a while and we'll take that list of whatever things they say and you hang it on the
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  refrigerator when you come home from work and you're in a bad mood I want you to do something on
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  that list you're not gonna feel like doing it but it makes you feel a little bit better and we
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  have control over our emotions so many people say well you shouldn't control how you feel no
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  by all means you should and it's okay to feel sad and it's okay to feel anxious when those
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  emotions are serving you well but you don't have to stay stuck in them we have some control over
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  our behavior and we can also control what we think when you wake up in your sad you're gonna think
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  this is gonna be an awful day I can't handle anything people are gonna be mean to me nobody likes me
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  if you keep thinking those things the worse you feel and the worse you feel the more you're
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  gonna think about it so change what you think say well what's one reason today might be a good day
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  what's one thing I can do today and then change your behavior too so if we change how we think and
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  we change how we behave we change how we feel then this all seems like common sense stuff when you
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  really think about it but literally nobody teaches us this when we're when we're kids and I don't
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  know why they know it because it would have changed so many lives and that's what I get for
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  people is only I would have learned it 20 years ago thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see
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  you in the next one