Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Amy Morin - Renowned Psychotherapist & Mental Resilience Expert | The Secret To Mental Strength

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Amy Morin - Renowned Psychotherapist & Mental Resilience Expert | The Secret To Mental Strength · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  80% of the advice on TikTok is bad advice.
• 0:03
  Big misconception is people confuse mental strength with just acting top.
• 0:07
  Amy Marin has spent over two decades helping people unlock the power of resilience
• 0:12
  as a licensed clinical social worker and international best-selling author of
• 0:15
  13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do.
• 0:18
  After I became a therapist, my mom passed away suddenly.
• 0:21
  She and I have been super close.
• 0:22
  This is probably one of my biggest fears in life.
• 0:24
  I don't even have enough money to pay the bills and I thought,
• 0:27
  how do you get through this?
• 0:28
  I talk time and when you want to do something better in life,
• 0:31
  when you want to improve your mental health, you should do something.
• 0:34
  And that was when I wrote a list of what mentally strong people don't do.
• 0:37
  And I put it on the internet, 15 million people read it,
• 0:39
  got to become an author who writes books because it resonated with so many people.
• 0:43
  Sometimes it's not about what you do, it's more about what you don't do.
• 0:46
  Amy has sold over one million copies across her transformative series,
• 0:50
  empowering parents, women and professionals to build mental strength.
• 0:54
  When our emotions goes up, our logic goes down.
• 0:56
  So the more intense we feel in emotion, the more difficult it is to think clearly.
• 1:01
  Don't make the same mistakes over and over again.
• 1:04
  Don't give up after your first failure.
• 1:06
  Enjoy the ride and don't worry too much about what's going to happen in the future.
• 1:09
  She's inspired audiences at Global Giants like Google, YouTube and Under Armour
• 1:14
  and has been featured in Time, Oprah.com and Men's Health,
• 1:17
  with appearances on Good Morning America and CNBC.
• 1:20
  A speaker, author and thought leader Amy is redefining how we understand and cultivate
• 1:24
  mental toughness for a stronger, more resilient life.
• 1:31
  Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary.
• 1:34
  The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network.
• 1:37
  HubSpot not only supports this show, but they support entrepreneurs.
• 1:40
  That's why I'm such a huge fan of HubSpot and I'm very grateful for HubSpot
• 1:43
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• 1:46
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• 1:49
  A lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing,
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  a lot of lead scoring, a lot of channel management, a lot of content,
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• 2:00
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• 2:05
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• 2:11
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• 2:17
  Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more.
• 2:23
  Why do people have such a hard time developing mental toughness
• 2:36
  and mental calluses and why is it so difficult to be mentally strong?
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  What are the things outside of the obvious that just wear us down every single day
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  that we have such a hard time dealing with?
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  Oh, that's a great question.
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  Well, nobody ever teaches us how to be mentally strong, right?
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  Like, it was nothing I learned in school, and even when I was going to be a therapist,
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  they talked a lot about building on your strengths and finding out what's working well in life,
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  but like literally nobody tells you how do you get through tough times,
• 3:07
  how do you grieve, how do you deal with a loss in your life,
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  or when you reach an obstacle, and there's a lot of books out there
• 3:14
  that are written by people who are really good at marketing,
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  but they're not necessarily good advice.
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  And we see the same with TikTok, and research will show like 80% of the advice
• 3:24
  on TikTok that has to do with mental health is bad advice.
• 3:27
  And back to a lot of it is downright destructive and harmful.
• 3:30
  So then you think, well, where do we get our information?
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  Well, when I was a kid, my teachers didn't talk about feelings.
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  My parents certainly didn't talk about emotions or how do you deal with sadness or anxiety.
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  It was more like quit crying or don't worry about it.
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  Let's not helpful when you're struggling with something
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  where somebody say, don't don't worry, it doesn't make you not worry.
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  It just makes you feel like there's something wrong with me.
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  So because of that, we grow up really not knowing a lot of these
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  basic things because nobody taught us, and then we didn't have an opportunity to practice.
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  How do you deal with these challenges in life?
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  And what do you do about them?
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  So a lot of the solutions that we turn to are things that work really well in the moment,
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  whether it's eating too much because I'm lonely or reaching for a drink
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  because I think I need to relax or staying up really late at night
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  because I feel like that will help me stay more productive.
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  And all of these things work in them in the moment, but then they backfire.
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  And we have trouble connecting those dots or thinking, well, what do I do instead?
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  Or if I'm really uncomfortable right now?
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  And I could reach for this thing that helps me in the moment.
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  And I'm not going to do that.
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  Then how am I going to tolerate this uncomfortable feeling?
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  Or how am I going to push through?
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  Or when something feels scary, like, does that mean I shouldn't do it?
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  Well, no, sometimes that just means it feels scary and you should do it anyway.
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  But because nobody talks about it and nobody teaches us these things,
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  it's really difficult to build mental strength.
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  Until you have a recipe of how do you do it?
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  What does it take and what steps do you do to get there?
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  And I think another big misconception is people confuse mental
• 5:08
  strength with just acting tough.
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  And they'll think, well, if I didn't cry for three months, it means I was strong.
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  Or if I push through it all costs, then clearly I'm a strong person.
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  And people don't want to quit.
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  I see so many social media memes about like, never give up.
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  If you have a failing business and you're about to go completely broke,
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  by all means, stop and do something differently.
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  But I see so many people who want to push through because they think
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  in doing something different, pivoting, giving up,
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  would be just a sign that I'm not mentally strong enough to handle it.
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  But there's so many things in life that we should be walking away from and learning from.
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  And that's such a good answer.
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  But it's still, it's still, when somebody's listening to that answer,
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  it's still like, oh my God.
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  So now I have to figure out when I should walk away, when I stay,
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  which things are benefiting me, which things are hurting me,
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  which instincts do I listen to, which ones do I not listen to?
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  We're going to do, we're going to get into all of it, obviously.
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  But I think that it's actually really important to understand even your own journey
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  because I like learning from people that sort of wrote the playbook.
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  So you like everyone else who's listening,
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  did not have this playbook growing up.
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  What was your first, I guess, inflection point in your life that it wasn't just a trying experience,
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  but it was something that prompted you to say,
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  I want to figure out how to get through this shit.
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  But then also I need to figure out how to get through the next thing and the next thing
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  and the next thing because the thing and the reaction that I'm having to this particular thing,
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  I'm assuming that's sort of how this concept evolved.
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  It's not serving me.
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  So walk me through sort of your interest in this field is the best way to put it.
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  Well, I grew up an incredibly anxious kid.
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  I threw up before school every day for years.
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  I hated school and people would ask me like, what do you hate about it?
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  I didn't even have the words.
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  I just said it's a really long day.
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  And to this day, I don't even know what exactly I hated about it.
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  Like I had good grades, I had friends.
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  I just didn't want to be there.
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  And it just felt like it was four years, like one school day.
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  And so I vomited before school.
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  And it took a long time for even my parents to figure this out.
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  But about nine o'clock in the morning suddenly I felt much better.
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  And I didn't know what it was either for a long time.
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  But like nine a.m., I'm like running around having a good time.
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  And they were like, hmm, the bus just went by.
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  And once you knew you didn't have to go to school suddenly you feel better.
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  And so I knew that as an adult, like I never wanted to do anything that made me feel so bad
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  that I would have a physical response like that.
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  So I was kind of always interested in mental strength.
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  Now we never got therapy for it.
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  We never like this was not something I grew up in rural Maine where nobody talked to.
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  I didn't even know anybody who went to therapy.
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  So it really wasn't anything my parents ever considered.
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  They were just like, I don't know, you're going to have to figure this out in life.
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  But I really wanted to know like, why does that happen?
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  And so I originally thought I was going to be a doctor.
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  Realized really early on in college that was not for me.
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  Switched gears and went into social work became a clinical social worker.
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  My sister strangely is a therapist as well.
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  And for a long time we had these adjoining offices in rural Maine.
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  It was like she and I were the only two therapists for like a 100 mile radius.
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  So if you're going to see a therapist you had to see one of us basically.
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  But about a year or so after I became a therapist my mom passed away suddenly she had a brain
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  aneurysm. And she and I had been super close.
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  And losing her I realized, okay, like this is probably one of my biggest fears in life.
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  And now I'm facing it head on.
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  And how do you get through that?
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  And I felt like even as a therapist I was incredibly unprepared to go through grief and to deal
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  with that. And that really is what started me on my journey of okay.
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  Well, how do you build mental strength when you're going through tough times?
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  And what does that mean to be strong when your heart's broken when you're really struggling?
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  And it was three years to the day that my mom died.
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  My 26 year old husband died of a heart attack.
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  Which I didn't even know you could have a heart attack at 26 and talk about my biggest fear
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  after losing my mom.
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  My biggest fear in life certainly was then like my gosh.
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  What if I lost somebody else?
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  And of course my husband that would have been my biggest fear ever.
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  But in the back of my head I think well that doesn't happen, right?
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  Like you're not going to lose.
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  Of course.
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  Yeah.
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  And then it just felt like just beyond even words to describe how it was.
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  It happened on the three year anniversary of the day I lost my mom.
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  We were having this discussion like, oh, an anniversary is tough.
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  What are we going to do on this day?
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  And it was that evening that he died of a heart attack.
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  So I now I don't have my mom.
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  I don't have my husband.
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  I'm supposed to be a therapist who helps other people deal with their problems.
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  I don't even have enough money to pay the bills.
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  Therapists don't make a lot of money.
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  And we had a house by that point and a mortgage to pay.
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  And I thought, oh, how do you get through this?
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  Talk about, you know, a tough time.
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  And a lot of what I had learned by that point was okay.
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  And in school they had taught me when you want to do something better in life,
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  when you want to improve your mental health, you should do something.
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  Like add something good to your list of things you're already doing.
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  But it was during this really rough time in my life that I was like,
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  you know, the last thing I want is like another thing on my to-do list.
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  Like, oh, practice gratitude for three hours a day.
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  Aimee and you'll feel better.
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  Didn't work like that.
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  I thought, you know, I need to get rid of something.
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  Like as long as I don't do certain things, I'll be okay.
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  And a few years after my house in a past way,
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  I had started writing because I wanted to keep my house.
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  I didn't want to be homeless basically.
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  I didn't want to move, but I had started creating content online
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  just as a way to earn a little bit of extra money so that I could keep my house.
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  But at first it was very generic articles about random things,
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  nothing to do with therapy or anything like that.
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  But a few years after that,
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  like worked on my grief really had to do a lot of soul-searching,
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  digging, figuring out like don't have these certain bad habits and you'll be okay.
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  Fortunately enough, I found love again.
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  I got remarried, got a new house, a new job.
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  Life was looking pretty good, but around that same time,
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  my father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
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  And I was just like, you know, I just spent like all these years grieving.
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  I'm about to lose somebody else.
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  Like life had just finally felt good.
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  How am I going to deal with one more loss?
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  And I wrote myself a letter of what not to do,
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  because that was the only thing that felt like it was doable in that moment.
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  It was just, Amy, don't do these things and you'll be okay.
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  And that was when I wrote a list of what mentally strong people don't do.
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  And I put it on the internet, hoping somebody would read it.
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  But 50 million people read it.
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  And that's how it got to become an author who writes books,
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  because it resonated with so many people of sometimes it's not about what you do.
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  It's more about what you don't do.
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  And this first list, this list that like,
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  again, like went viral.
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  Obviously, it's when things like that just hit home,
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  you know that everybody's dealing with it,
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  but nobody knows how to put it into words.
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  And you incorporate into this list,
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  things from your own lived experience is probably,
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  but also from your from your from your professional background,
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  you understood how these things impact you.
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  So let's actually just start off with that.
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  Let's start off with like the first version of the list,
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  really, that I think helps people get through these really tough times
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  based on all the different things that you went through.
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  And then we can talk about maybe why these things work so well,
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  and we can talk about the psychological,
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  maybe even biological pieces to it,
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  because there's a lot there that encompasses like mental toughness
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  and and and making yourself not impervious to these horrible situations
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  that everybody's going to go through,
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  but at least better equipped to deal with them.
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  Sure. Mommy, run through the list.
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  Let's go through the list.
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  Yeah, let's go through the list.
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  Just kick it off.
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  It's a good framework just to start,
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  and then we can take it from there.
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  Let's say a good memory is if we can do these in order.
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  So I think I have it written somewhere too.
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  Yeah, don't feel sorry for yourself.
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  Don't give away your power.
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  Don't make the same mistakes over and over again.
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  Don't give up after your first failure.
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  Don't fear alone time.
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  Don't shy away from change.
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  I don't resent other people's success.
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  Don't worry about pleasing everybody.
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  Don't feel like the world owes you anything.
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  Let's talk about these these rules
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  or these I guess these these laws of things
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  that mentally strong people don't do.
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  Can you from a therapist's perspective
• 13:43
  talk about why these things are so bad?
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  And you don't have to go through each one.
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  But talk about what these things actually do to the person
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  when they're going through a tough time.
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  Why does for example not doing some of these things
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  allow you to go through a death
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  or this very traumatic experience?
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  So it really boils down to
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  taking a responsibility for the way that you think,
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  the way you feel, and the way you behave.
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  So the reason the list starts off
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  we don't feel sorry for yourself
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  is because that's right where I was.
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  I was thinking this isn't fair.
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  I got another loss in my life.
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  Why me?
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  But I knew as a therapist
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  like anybody who comes in feeling sorry for themselves
• 14:21
  isn't going to get any better.
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  And if you see somebody who feels sorry for themselves
• 14:25
  and you offer a solution and idea,
• 14:28
  any kind of support,
• 14:29
  their immediate response is,
• 14:31
  well that won't work for me and here's why.
• 14:33
  Like my case is special.
• 14:34
  Like yes, that strategy works for 99.9% of the people in the world
• 14:38
  but I'm the 0.1% that that is never going to work for.
• 14:41
  And they kind of get angry that anybody's even trying
• 14:44
  to help them out.
• 14:45
  So I knew that it's okay to be sad
• 14:48
  and that we have to be sad
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  and that's part of our grieving process
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  and that's how you heal is by going through those tough things.
• 14:54
  But I also knew that if I dug in my heels
• 14:58
  and exaggerated that my life was worse than everybody else's
• 15:01
  or that this was so horrible I could never recover,
• 15:04
  I would make those things true
• 15:06
  that I could say yes, my life is awful
• 15:08
  and I'm going to spend the rest of it sitting on my couch
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  and never leaving again.
• 15:12
  But that wouldn't do me or anybody else any good.
• 15:14
  So and a lot of the things on that list
• 15:16
  are really about that.
• 15:17
  Like if you look at,
• 15:19
  don't give away your power.
• 15:20
  That's really about saying,
• 15:21
  well I'm in charge of how I think feeling behave.
• 15:24
  You can call me an idiot
• 15:26
  but I don't have to let,
• 15:27
  I don't have to feel bad.
• 15:28
  Like that would be my choice if I said,
• 15:29
  like, oh, I feel really bad
• 15:30
  because Scott called me names today.
• 15:32
  No, I can just be like, all right,
• 15:34
  that's his opinion and I can move on.
• 15:36
  Or if you have a coworker who talks to you a lot,
• 15:40
  you could be like, you know,
• 15:40
  that person waits my time and they ruin my day
• 15:42
  because they won't stop talking
• 15:44
  and I can't get anything done.
• 15:45
  Or you would set a boundary and say,
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  hey, we're not going to do that right now.
• 15:49
  Or thanks for,
• 15:50
  thanks for having a chat with me,
• 15:51
  but I can't talk.
• 15:52
  I'm busy.
• 15:52
  I have something to do.
• 15:54
  And all of these things are a tough
• 15:56
  sometimes to be like,
• 15:57
  oh, you know, it really is me who's in charge.
• 15:59
  But at the same time,
• 16:01
  like there's a lot of freedom in that.
• 16:02
  Knowing, I get to pick what kind of life I have.
• 16:05
  I can't control all the things that happen to me
• 16:06
  but there are so many choices I have.
• 16:09
  And even when we look at things,
• 16:10
  you can't control.
• 16:11
  You can't control somebody else's behavior.
• 16:13
  You can't control the economy.
• 16:15
  You can't control whether people buy your products
• 16:18
  but you can control how great of a product you make
• 16:20
  or you can control how you respond to people
• 16:23
  when they behave a certain way.
• 16:24
  So just keeping that in mind,
• 16:26
  I think brings us into a lot of freedom
• 16:28
  where we say, all right,
• 16:29
  the choice is up to me.
• 16:31
  Like, just like you can't always control
• 16:34
  that the hand you were dealt in life,
• 16:35
  there are so many options
• 16:36
  and how you respond to it.
• 16:38
  So this list is really about that
• 16:40
  because people who would come into my therapy office,
• 16:42
  some of them had been handed
• 16:43
  incredibly difficult cards in life.
• 16:46
  And yet the ones who were still optimistic,
• 16:48
  the ones who would say, you know,
• 16:49
  this has been tough,
• 16:50
  yet I have these skills and resources
• 16:52
  and here's how I'm going to get through it.
• 16:54
  Could get the rouettes
• 16:55
  and they still were like, hopeful about the future.
• 16:58
  Compared to other people who were like,
• 17:00
  can you believe how bad my life is?
• 17:01
  And they wanted to come in next week
• 17:03
  and tell me how horrible everything happened
• 17:05
  in the past seven days.
• 17:06
  Like, can you believe how awful this has been too?
• 17:09
  And these are people that don't get better
• 17:11
  and it seems so obvious from the outside.
• 17:13
  Like, yeah, it just takes some time,
• 17:14
  a little bit of hope,
• 17:15
  a little bit of optimism,
• 17:16
  a willingness to try new things
• 17:18
  and an openness to say,
• 17:19
  I'm going to experiment in if I fail
• 17:21
  or make a mistake,
• 17:22
  I can handle that and I'll be okay.
• 17:24
  I love that.
• 17:25
  It's just about, it's about ownership.
• 17:27
  And to be like, I need to ask
• 17:30
  because it's easy to say
• 17:33
  and like you mentioned, much harder to do and to live.
• 17:36
  So, yes, extreme ownership.
• 17:39
  Yes, believing that you happen to the world,
• 17:43
  the world doesn't happen to you
• 17:45
  and you can take control of your circumstances.
• 17:47
  It's very, it's a very important mindset shift.
• 17:49
  But in the moment,
• 17:51
  whether or not it is,
• 17:54
  God forbid somebody passes away
• 17:56
  or on a much lighter scale,
• 17:59
  your business isn't working out
• 18:00
  or your spouse cheats on you.
• 18:03
  In the moment,
• 18:04
  for some people it is almost impossible
• 18:07
  to remove themselves
• 18:09
  because I think just like anger and anxiety,
• 18:11
  just like take, they take over,
• 18:13
  they take over and you feel helpless.
• 18:15
  So, maybe talk about
• 18:19
  your strategy or even like some of the strategies
• 18:21
  that you've helped your clients with as a therapist.
• 18:25
  How do you remove yourself from the moment
• 18:26
  so you can think clearly
• 18:27
  so you can take yourself back to this list
• 18:30
  because I think that
• 18:32
  if somebody's not going through something chromatic,
• 18:34
  it's very easy to say,
• 18:34
  oh yeah, that sounds good for next time.
• 18:36
  Until they're going through some shit
• 18:38
  and then all of a sudden,
• 18:40
  like the rules go out the window.
• 18:42
  Correct.
• 18:42
  And that's what happens.
• 18:43
  We know from the research,
• 18:45
  like when our emotions goes up,
• 18:46
  our logic goes down.
• 18:48
  So the more intense we feel in emotion,
• 18:50
  the more difficult it is to think clearly
• 18:53
  as you just alluded to.
• 18:54
  So if somebody gave you a test to take
• 18:57
  when you're really angry,
• 18:58
  you would score poorly on it.
• 19:00
  Like you literally get stupid when you're angry.
• 19:02
  An anxiety does the same thing to us
• 19:04
  or overwhelming sadness.
• 19:06
  It's nearly impossible to figure out what do I do next.
• 19:09
  So we all need tools
• 19:11
  to deal with uncomfortable feelings
• 19:13
  and sometimes they're simple things.
• 19:16
  Just putting a name to an emotion
• 19:17
  takes a bunch of the sting out of it.
• 19:19
  If I could say,
• 19:19
  hey, I'm really anxious today,
• 19:21
  my anxiety goes down just a little bit
• 19:23
  just because I've helped my brain
• 19:24
  and my body make sense of it.
• 19:26
  If I can then say, all right,
• 19:27
  is this emotion serving me well?
• 19:29
  We'll call it a friend or an enemy.
• 19:31
  Like sometimes it's our friend.
• 19:32
  Like if you feel really sad
• 19:34
  about something you've lost,
• 19:35
  by all means embrace it.
• 19:37
  But if you're sad
• 19:38
  and you're about to go ask for a raise
• 19:40
  in that moment,
• 19:41
  that's not your friend.
• 19:42
  You want to boost your mood
• 19:43
  before you walk into that meeting.
• 19:45
  So we all need skills and tools
• 19:46
  to boost our mood.
• 19:47
  So could be listening to a happy song for a few minutes.
• 19:50
  It might be a matter of saying,
• 19:51
  I'm going to go for a walk around the block.
• 19:53
  I'm going to go outside in nature.
• 19:55
  I'm going to do something
• 19:56
  to reduce the intensity of this feeling.
• 19:58
  Acting the opposite helps.
• 20:00
  If I feel really sad,
• 20:01
  my brain's going to say,
• 20:02
  you know, stay in your pajamas
• 20:04
  and sit on the couch today.
• 20:05
  You don't need to go out and do anything.
• 20:07
  Well, I've never met anybody who said,
• 20:09
  you know, I skipped work today,
• 20:11
  sat on the couch and my pajamas
• 20:12
  and by noon I felt amazing.
• 20:15
  And other than when I was eight
• 20:16
  and I didn't want to go to school,
• 20:17
  but for the most part,
• 20:18
  when we do what our brain tells us to do
• 20:21
  when we're stuck in a bad mood,
• 20:23
  is it just reinforces a bad mood?
• 20:25
  We listen to angry music when we feel angry
• 20:27
  and it makes us feel angrier.
• 20:29
  So sometimes you have to then say,
• 20:30
  okay, this emotion isn't serving me well.
• 20:33
  So I'm going to do the opposite.
• 20:35
  And I'll sometimes work with people
• 20:36
  to create what we call a list of mood boosters.
• 20:39
  So I'll say, what do you do
• 20:40
  when you're really happy?
• 20:41
  If you came home from work
• 20:43
  and you were an amazing mood,
• 20:44
  what would you likely do?
• 20:46
  And somebody might give me a playlist
• 20:47
  of the songs they'd listen to
• 20:48
  or they might say, I would call a friend,
• 20:51
  I'd go for a walk,
• 20:52
  I might work in my garden for a while
• 20:54
  and we'll take that list
• 20:55
  of whatever things they say
• 20:57
  and you hang it on the refrigerator.
• 20:59
  When you come home from work
• 21:00
  and you're in a bad mood,
• 21:01
  I want you to do something on that list.
• 21:02
  You're not going to feel like doing it,
• 21:04
  but it makes you feel a little bit better.
• 21:07
  And we have control over our emotions.
• 21:09
  So many people say,
• 21:09
  well, you shouldn't control how you feel.
• 21:11
  No, by all means, you should.
• 21:13
  And it's okay to feel sad
• 21:15
  and it's okay to feel anxious
• 21:16
  when those emotions are serving you well,
• 21:18
  but you don't have to stay stuck in them.
• 21:19
  We have some control over our behavior
• 21:21
  and we can also control what we think.
• 21:24
  When you wake up and you're sad,
• 21:25
  you're going to think this is going to be an awful day.
• 21:28
  I can't handle anything.
• 21:29
  People are going to be mean to me.
• 21:30
  Nobody likes me.
• 21:32
  If you keep thinking those things,
• 21:33
  the worse you feel,
• 21:34
  and the worse you feel,
• 21:35
  the more you're going to think about it.
• 21:36
  So change what you think.
• 21:37
  Say, well,
• 21:38
  what's one reason today might be a good day?
• 21:40
  What's one thing I can do today
• 21:41
  and then change your behavior too.
• 21:43
  So if we change how we think
• 21:44
  and we change how we behave,
• 21:46
  we change how we feel.
• 21:47
  Then this all seems like common sense stuff
• 21:50
  when you really think about it,
• 21:51
  but literally nobody teaches us this
• 21:53
  when we're when we're kids.
• 21:54
  And I don't know why they know it
• 21:56
  because it would have changed so many lives.
• 21:57
  And that's what I get from people is,
• 21:59
  only I would have learned this 20 years ago.
• 22:01
  Oh, yeah, listen,
• 22:02
  at the end of the day, common sense is in common.
• 22:04
  And and this, when you say it,
• 22:07
  it's like, well, yeah, if I'm pissed off,
• 22:10
  I should focus on things that that are positive.
• 22:13
  So I don't act when I'm like, again,
• 22:16
  the more emotion, the less logic,
• 22:18
  the more anger, the stew, the dumber you are.
• 22:22
  So maybe don't answer that email,
• 22:24
  maybe don't respond back to your girlfriend,
• 22:27
  boyfriend, wife, husband,
• 22:28
  when you're super pissed off and had a bad day,
• 22:30
  it seems to make sense.
• 22:32
  It doesn't make sense, but nobody does it.
• 22:35
  That's the issue.
• 22:36
  Like people don't operate this way
• 22:38
  and they respond when they're angry
• 22:40
  and they just do things without thinking.
• 22:43
  And then this, you know, snowballs the problem
• 22:45
  and then this is why we're trying to create like a framework
• 22:48
  where people can step back and again,
• 22:52
  there's always going to be problems in life,
• 22:54
  but how you address that problem is going to yield
• 22:57
  like wildly different outcomes.
• 22:59
  Then if you were just super emotional when you address it,
• 23:02
  I'm curious why do you focus on,
• 23:05
  on don'ts rather than do's.
• 23:08
  Like that's sort of like the premise of your work.
• 23:11
  Yeah, as soon as a therapist, they told me,
• 23:13
  build on people's strengths.
• 23:14
  So when somebody comes into your office
• 23:16
  and they're like, Amy,
• 23:17
  I'd been writing in my gratitude journal three times a day.
• 23:20
  I was supposed to be like, yes, you keep that up.
• 23:23
  And I was doing that, but I thought,
• 23:25
  like, if I went to a physical trainer and they were like,
• 23:28
  hey, I want you to work out for 30 minutes.
• 23:31
  I'd be like, okay, I'll do it.
• 23:32
  If I really wanted to get in shape,
• 23:33
  I'll do whatever you tell me to do.
• 23:35
  But look, what if they didn't tell me to not eat the jelly donut
• 23:37
  on the way to the gym?
• 23:38
  Look, I'd be so mad because I'm like,
• 23:40
  oh, I'm going to spend an extra hour on the treadmill.
• 23:42
  No, I just rather give up the donut.
• 23:44
  And that's what I was seeing with people in my office.
• 23:46
  A lot of these people who are incredibly intelligent people.
• 23:49
  They've read self-help books.
• 23:50
  They worked on themselves.
• 23:51
  Some of them have been in therapy before.
• 23:53
  And they're doing all of these things.
• 23:55
  But then they have like one counterproductive bad habit.
• 23:59
  That was just really undoing a lot of their progress.
• 24:01
  And they felt like they were stuck.
• 24:03
  And so rather than saying, hey, I want you to go to three more yoga classes
• 24:07
  and meditate for four more hours this week,
• 24:09
  like, well, what if we take that like 30 minutes
• 24:12
  you spend complaining every week when you come home from work?
• 24:15
  What if we got rid of that?
• 24:16
  And instead you just did something different during that time.
• 24:19
  You could even sit on the couch and watch TV for 30 minutes.
• 24:22
  But let's not spend 30 minutes complaining about your life.
• 24:25
  People would be like, oh, my life has changed by giving up something.
• 24:29
  And sometimes it's tougher than that.
• 24:30
  It's not just a little habit that we're doing.
• 24:33
  Sometimes it's something that's deeply ingrained in us
• 24:35
  or it's something that we're getting something out of.
• 24:38
  If we went back to feeling sorry for yourself.
• 24:40
  Or if there's a lot of people who said,
• 24:42
  you know, I call my friends at night and tell them
• 24:43
  about all the bad things that happened that day.
• 24:45
  And then they tell me all the bad things that happened to them.
• 24:48
  That's kind of how we bond.
• 24:49
  So if we're not going to complain about how awful our lives are,
• 24:52
  what are we going to talk about?
• 24:54
  And we had to figure that out.
• 24:55
  Like, okay, what is it that you get out of this habit?
• 24:57
  And then what could you do instead
• 24:59
  so that we're still getting that need mat?
• 25:01
  Or somebody who even has a habit like smoking?
• 25:04
  Well, people know smoking is not good for you.
• 25:06
  But what do you get out of it?
• 25:08
  Well, I feel like it relieves my stress.
• 25:10
  Okay, so then what else are we going to do to relieve your stress?
• 25:12
  You can't just say quit smoking to somebody.
• 25:15
  So we have to look at what do you get out of these things?
• 25:17
  And then what could you do instead?
• 25:19
  But when people give up like that one habit
• 25:22
  that's been keeping them stuck in life,
• 25:24
  suddenly all of their good habits become so much more effective.
• 25:26
  And I'm a huge fan of saying let's work smarter instead of harder.
• 25:30
  So many people would come into my office and they were exhausted.
• 25:34
  And even coming to therapy just felt like one more chore on their list.
• 25:37
  And the last thing they wanted was for me to tell them
• 25:39
  here's six more things you have to do this week.
• 25:42
  And I know that when I felt like I was in a rough place in life
• 25:46
  that wouldn't have been helpful either.
• 25:47
  I just needed to know like, what do you not need to do today?
• 25:50
  And if I read that list in the morning, which I would,
• 25:53
  I would read it in the morning,
• 25:53
  read it in the afternoon, read it in the evening,
• 25:56
  as long as I could say don't do these things today and you'll be okay.
• 25:58
  That felt much more manageable than if I'd created a list of 13 things
• 26:02
  I felt like I had to do today.
• 26:04
  I just want to take a quick break and thank the HubSpot podcast
• 26:07
  network for supporting success story for the past two years.
• 26:09
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• 26:12
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  Fans vary wise and you've probably seen it.
• 26:57
  I'm so curious but you believe that there are some habits
• 27:02
  that are so there's some negative habits that people do
• 27:05
  that are so powerful that it can derail
• 27:08
  all of the positive progress they're making.
• 27:10
  Like that's how bad some of these like bad habits can be
• 27:13
  that maybe don't even seem that bad.
• 27:16
  Like complaining for 30 minutes after work doesn't seem
• 27:19
  that bad but you're saying that can derail so much progress.
• 27:22
  It really can and that's the thing.
• 27:24
  A lot of these things don't feel like they're a huge deal
• 27:27
  or if somebody says all right I struggle with taking risks.
• 27:31
  Well this person might be making incredible progress
• 27:34
  in their professional life and in their personal life
• 27:36
  and yet certain roadblocks are going to keep them
• 27:39
  from ever making enough progress
• 27:42
  so they feel like they're really able
• 27:43
  to reach their greatest potential.
• 27:44
  So somebody might be like yeah you know I have some friends
• 27:48
  but like I never take the first step.
• 27:49
  I never invite somebody for coffee
• 27:51
  unless I'm certain that they really want to be friends with me.
• 27:54
  This new acquaintance that I met somewhere
• 27:55
  or I never want to take a business risk
• 27:59
  because what if it didn't work out?
• 28:01
  So that's somebody who no matter how much meditating they do
• 28:04
  or how many times they write in their gratitude journal.
• 28:07
  If you don't dare take a risk
• 28:08
  because you can't handle anxiety it doesn't matter
• 28:11
  that you're doing all these other things.
• 28:13
  How does somebody go about sort of assessing
• 28:16
  where they are on their on their own mental strength?
• 28:20
  Yeah that's a good question
• 28:21
  because I've had people read the book and they'll say
• 28:23
  I didn't really think I was a people pleaser
• 28:24
  and until I read the chapter
• 28:26
  and then I really resonated with me.
• 28:28
  So every chapter has like a checklist
• 28:30
  that you can go through to say do I do any of these things
• 28:33
  and sometimes that house people recognize it
• 28:35
  but I think just in our own lives we can ask ourselves
• 28:38
  like what's the emotion that I'm really uncomfortable feeling
• 28:42
  and I think we all have one.
• 28:44
  Might be embarrassment so we don't take social risks
• 28:47
  or it might be anxiety so we don't do anything
• 28:50
  that would really put us out there
• 28:52
  and help us try new things.
• 28:54
  It might be sadness so we don't ever want to do anything
• 28:56
  where we might fail because I'd be too sad
• 28:59
  and I couldn't handle that.
• 29:00
  So just by asking yourself that question
• 29:02
  you can get some good insight into like what's that emotion
• 29:04
  that I'm terrified to experience
• 29:07
  and then when I do experience it what do I do?
• 29:10
  So sometimes somebody will be like well I just push it away.
• 29:13
  And try not to feel it or really quick things
• 29:16
  and we all have smartphones these days.
• 29:18
  So somebody who is intolerant of boredom
• 29:20
  picks up their phone all the time or loneliness.
• 29:22
  Somebody's like I can't tolerate feeling lonely
• 29:24
  so we pick up our phones
• 29:26
  and our phones can be incredible ways to build mental strength
• 29:30
  because you have all this free advice
• 29:32
  and all these cool tools and apps and things you can do now
• 29:34
  but for a lot of us it just becomes a way
• 29:36
  to avoid feeling uncomfortable
• 29:38
  and if you don't ever feel an uncomfortable emotion
• 29:40
  you struggle to learn from it.
• 29:41
  Is there when people sort of dive into the self-help realm
• 29:45
  of mental strength they're gonna come across other concepts
• 29:49
  like resilience and grit and all these other things
• 29:52
  and is there a significant difference
• 29:55
  because I don't want people to get confused
• 29:56
  between one of the other or maybe they are the same.
• 29:58
  I have no idea.
• 29:59
  But from my mean at least your interpretation
• 30:02
  are there some differences between all of these sort of
• 30:04
  mindset topics that people are gonna try and incorporate?
• 30:07
  Yeah I love that you ask that
• 30:08
  because a lot of people use a lot of these words interchangeable
• 30:11
  but we talk about resilience
• 30:13
  it's about bouncing back from something hard in your life.
• 30:16
  I don't think we should live our whole lives
• 30:18
  like building something just so we can wait
• 30:20
  for the next shoot to drop, right?
• 30:22
  Like we're all gonna experience hardship
• 30:25
  but goodness I want us to enjoy the good times in life too
• 30:28
  and mental strength is really about that
• 30:30
  about how do I enjoy the good times in life
• 30:33
  and get the fullest out of it
• 30:34
  because a lot of people struggle with that
• 30:35
  they'll say you know I can't let myself be happy
• 30:37
  or I struggle with allowing myself to feel certain feelings.
• 30:42
  So mental strength will do that.
• 30:43
  Yes it will help you bounce back from hardships
• 30:45
  but I guarantee it makes the good times
• 30:47
  a million times better too.
• 30:48
  So it's about both and when it comes to grit
• 30:52
  people talk about grit and perseverance
• 30:54
  sometimes people use those interchangeably
• 30:55
  but it's really about your ability to keep going.
• 30:58
  Well I don't think we should,
• 31:00
  I think we keep going most of us far too long.
• 31:03
  I think we should quit more often and quit faster.
• 31:06
  I see so many people who are like
• 31:08
  you know I had a spray knuckle but I kept running
• 31:11
  because I thought that was like the epitome of toughness
• 31:13
  and perseverance like well now you can't run for six months
• 31:16
  because you've really messed it up.
• 31:18
  If you've just taken a break that day
• 31:19
  you'd be in much better shape
• 31:21
  or you know my business was losing money for three months
• 31:24
  but I was like if I just tough it out a little longer than...
• 31:26
  Three months how about like three years?
• 31:28
  Right, I don't encounter people who are like
• 31:31
  you know I'm not gonna give up and I'm like
• 31:33
  no please give up change course do something different
• 31:36
  and so a mental strength is about that too
• 31:39
  about knowing that it's okay to ask for help
• 31:41
  it's okay to completely quit do something different
• 31:45
  and to have the strength to say you know
• 31:47
  my ego doesn't depend on that.
• 31:48
  I don't have to finish the race on a broken leg
• 31:51
  or I don't have to make this business come to fruition
• 31:54
  just because I declared three years ago
• 31:56
  I was gonna do it maybe that's not my goal anymore
• 31:59
  maybe it doesn't make sense or maybe it just
• 32:01
  what isn't gonna work out and that's okay
• 32:04
  so I think what really differentiates mental strength
• 32:06
  it's not like I'm gonna win at all costs
• 32:08
  it's like now I'm gonna be okay even if I don't win
• 32:10
  either way is fine and I'll do my best
• 32:12
  but that's okay regardless of how it turns out.
• 32:15
  That is a key differentiation
• 32:16
  and I think that's a much healthier
• 32:18
  that's a much healthier way to go through life
• 32:20
  because again when you put it out
• 32:22
  I completely agree that that is how those words
• 32:26
  can be interpreted and I actually don't even think
• 32:29
  that's the way that I mean Angela Duckworth is grit
• 32:33
  I don't think there's anybody that really champions
• 32:34
  the words perseverance or resilience
• 32:36
  but I don't think anybody who's built anything meaningful
• 32:41
  wants you to go through and keep going
• 32:45
  when things aren't working out
• 32:48
  you have to have a signal for when it's moving
• 32:51
  in the right direction but slowly versus
• 32:54
  when it's not moving in the right direction at all
• 32:56
  or even when your North Star is a human starts to change
• 33:00
  and you have to understand that
• 33:01
  and that has to guide your decisions
• 33:03
  so I love this so it's not about like win at all costs
• 33:07
  it's about do you even is this a thing
• 33:09
  you even want to win at maybe not
• 33:12
  and that's where the mental toughness and the mental strength
• 33:15
  comes in to have that hard conversation with yourself
• 33:19
  so that you can make the right decision.
• 33:21
  Absolutely because how many times do we start something
• 33:24
  and then you're like I didn't realize
• 33:26
  it was going to take up this much of my life
• 33:29
  like fighting your relationships
• 33:30
  it's hurting your you know you're about to divorce your wife
• 33:35
  because you're working so much
• 33:37
  it's not this is not the best way to live life
• 33:40
  there's other things that are important.
• 33:42
  Exactly and so many of us want to like stick it out
• 33:44
  because I think no I sign up for this I'm going to do it
• 33:47
  or we think that like we're suffering for a purpose
• 33:49
  like I'm going to work 80 hours a week
• 33:51
  and until like what for if you decide that this takes up
• 33:55
  and your goals have changed and it doesn't really
• 33:57
  it's not in line with your values
• 33:59
  do something different that's okay.
• 34:02
  So mental strength there has to be a component of it
• 34:06
  that is tied into almost emotional intelligence
• 34:09
  because you have to be understanding
• 34:13
  you have to understand what direction you are actually going
• 34:16
  and why you're going in that direction
• 34:18
  and not just again winning at all costs
• 34:21
  so does mental strength require emotional intelligence
• 34:25
  or do you have to improve your emotional intelligence
• 34:28
  to improve your mental strength
• 34:29
  is there some correlation between the two concepts?
• 34:32
  There is.
• 34:33
  So I hear emotional intelligence
• 34:35
  people have kind of changed the definition over year
• 34:38
  years is what happens with a lot of things
• 34:40
  and so I hear people say like you really need to understand
• 34:43
  how the person you're talking to feels
• 34:46
  but if I were to ask you to list as many feeling words
• 34:49
  as you could like you might struggle to come up
• 34:52
  with a 10 page paper on vocabulary words for emotions
• 34:57
  and I'll do this with executives
• 34:58
  and I can do a speaking gauge and I'll say
• 34:59
  I want you to take out a piece of paper and a pen
• 35:01
  write down as many feeling words as you can in 30 seconds
• 35:04
  and for like five seconds
• 35:05
  these people are like smoke coming up from the paper
• 35:08
  because they're writing down sad mad
• 35:10
  and then you get to about five words on average
• 35:12
  and then we start to struggle with even like naming an emotion
• 35:16
  and so for a lot of people
• 35:17
  we're not even able to recognize our own emotions
• 35:20
  let alone guess what somebody else is feeling.
• 35:23
  So when I ask you like how do you feel today?
• 35:25
  Okay, good.
• 35:26
  All right.
• 35:27
  And we don't use words in our everyday conversation
• 35:30
  you might say you know I have butterflies in my stomach
• 35:34
  nobody walks around and says actually
• 35:35
  I'm feeling a little anxious right now.
• 35:38
  And so we don't spend enough time focusing on like
• 35:40
  how do I feel and then when we guess how other people feel
• 35:44
  we're not very good at it according to what the research says
• 35:46
  yeah we're not willing to ask either
• 35:48
  like nobody says you know like are you sure
• 35:50
  that's how you feel today or you look a little anxious
• 35:52
  what's going on like it's pretty rare
• 35:54
  that people have these discussions.
• 35:55
  So I do think part of mental strength is more about self-awareness
• 36:00
  and then asking like and then what how might you be feeling
• 36:04
  to ask the question and don't pretend to be a mind reader
• 36:06
  because when I hear people talk about emotional intelligence
• 36:09
  sometimes they're talking about like this psychological trickery
• 36:12
  of if I walk into a negotiation and I ask you a question
• 36:16
  and you answer it in the affirmative
• 36:17
  then I'm two steps ahead of you
• 36:18
  and they're like trying to do all this stuff
• 36:20
  where instead of just figuring out like how do I feel
• 36:23
  like we know from the research if I'm going to ask for a raise
• 36:27
  the last time I should do that is when I feel sad
• 36:30
  because if I say hey I'd like $10 more an hour
• 36:32
  and you say I'm going to give you five
• 36:34
  I won't counter back at $750 because I'm like
• 36:37
  ugh my ego can't handle one more blow to it today
• 36:41
  so I'll take a bad deal.
• 36:43
  So I think if we just focused more on our own emotions
• 36:46
  and being aware of how I feel when I walk into a situation
• 36:51
  it would make things so much better than trying to then play
• 36:54
  a game of chess where not only do I need to know how I feel
• 36:56
  I'm going to guess how you feel
• 36:58
  and then I'm going to make a move based on how I think you're feeling
• 37:01
  because 99% of the time I think we get it wrong
• 37:04
  we were to say to somebody how did the other person feel
• 37:07
  and we also lack self-awareness too
• 37:09
  there's a lot of research on this that frightens me
• 37:12
  so one of my favorite studies they had these two people negotiating
• 37:16
  they put people in pairs they have them negotiate
• 37:19
  over kind of like worthless objects or whatever
• 37:22
  and at the end of the experiment they ask people
• 37:25
  were you a jerk or were you a pushover
• 37:27
  and then they asked the other person who was on the other end of it
• 37:30
  was this person a jerk or was this person a pushover
• 37:33
  almost everybody got it wrong
• 37:35
  compared to how the other person was
• 37:37
  the people that are like I was a pushover
• 37:39
  the other person's like no actually you were a jerk
• 37:41
  so the fact that we can't even tell when we're negotiating
• 37:45
  whether we're kind of wimpy or whether we're over the top
• 37:47
  I think speaks volumes
• 37:49
  and sometimes people will say well what other people think of you
• 37:52
  is none of your business
• 37:54
  you know it absolutely is your business
• 37:56
  do you know how many people come into my therapy office
• 37:58
  and they're like if no idea why I got fired from the last three jobs
• 38:01
  come on really polite person I'm a hard worker
• 38:04
  well that's not how other people see you
• 38:06
  so you need to know how you're being perceived
• 38:08
  people to have relationship problems don't know
• 38:11
  that they're coming across maybe as rude
• 38:13
  or that they're coming across as insincere
• 38:16
  so we're then guessing how other people feel
• 38:18
  this is a long answer to your question about emotional intelligence
• 38:20
  but rather than guess how other people feel
• 38:23
  I think we do a lot better if we just focused on how do I feel
• 38:26
  and to be more open to asking people
• 38:29
  like how do I come across in a meeting when I speak up
• 38:31
  do you look like I'm assertive or does it look like I'm wildly angry
• 38:35
  and have no idea what I'm talking about
• 38:36
  or I can't control my emotions that would serve us much better
• 38:39
  but I think that's so smart
• 38:40
  because then when you actually have a good barometer
• 38:43
  a good reading of who you are
• 38:47
  then that's where you can apply mental strength appropriately
• 38:51
  because if somebody thinks here I mean if you don't
• 38:54
  if you don't know how you come across
• 38:55
  again a lot of people listen to this podcast
• 38:58
  or like entrepreneur business all of that
• 39:00
  but I mean everybody who's listening
• 39:02
  who's trying to figure out a deal with their job
• 39:05
  or their business partner or their employee they just hired
• 39:07
  they also have a spouse at home
• 39:09
  and they're trying to figure out how they come across to their spouse
• 39:12
  and sometimes I think that sometimes it's people have a very hard
• 39:16
  the A type personalities that are entrepreneurial
• 39:19
  I think sometimes it's a very hard time
• 39:22
  it could be effective to a degree in the workplace
• 39:25
  but then you bring that shit home
• 39:27
  and that's also gonna be pretty difficult for your spouse
• 39:29
  if especially if when you first got together
• 39:34
  you weren't that person
• 39:35
  and then you felt like you had to become that person
• 39:37
  to be successful and I thought the whole of the conversations
• 39:39
  I don't think you have to change a personality be successful
• 39:42
  I think that's something that almost like a trap people fall into
• 39:46
  but say you started a company
• 39:49
  now you have hundreds of employees
• 39:50
  and you feel like you have to be different
• 39:52
  then you bring that shit home
• 39:53
  it's because you've lost sense of who you are
• 39:56
  and then if your spouse argues with you
• 39:59
  well the you don't apply mental strength
• 40:02
  and find the will to argue back
• 40:04
  you gotta do some introspection and realize like it's not them
• 40:08
  that's the issue it's me
• 40:09
  and the mental strength application is actually like
• 40:12
  getting my shit together and being a good partner
• 40:14
  not coming to the argument with as much fire
• 40:17
  and ammo as possible
• 40:18
  so I think that that's self-awareness piece
• 40:20
  because you don't wanna incorrectly apply mental strength either
• 40:24
  you're right there's a whole bunch of tools and skills
• 40:26
  and we need to know part of mental strength
• 40:28
  is knowing when to pull out each tool right
• 40:31
  as well as says hey I could use some help with the dishes
• 40:34
  like you really aren't gonna negotiate all the three dishes
• 40:37
  if you do four like not that's fine to be using that
• 40:40
  or I'm gonna calm myself down before I answer your question
• 40:42
  like there's all of these tools and strategies
• 40:44
  and part of self-awareness is knowing like yeah
• 40:47
  when do I use that and it works well in this situation
• 40:49
  in my professional life but maybe not in my personal life
• 40:53
  are there any strategies or
• 40:56
  because when we first we first started chatting
• 40:58
  there's these life events that sort of come out of nowhere
• 41:02
  and they totally throw you off
• 41:03
  and then you know if you haven't been like practicing
• 41:06
  or finding some way to increase your mental strength
• 41:10
  when these things don't happen to you
• 41:12
  then when things do happen to you
• 41:14
  you kind of feel like your emotion gets high
• 41:17
  you make bad decisions
• 41:20
  are there like daily practices or daily things that you can do
• 41:25
  when there's nothing bad happening
• 41:27
  that can increase your mental strength
• 41:29
  so that when shit does happen
• 41:31
  you're better equipped to deal with it.
• 41:34
  Yeah and the last time you want to like work on your physical muscles
• 41:38
  is like you have to lift up a heavy box or like
• 41:40
  let me go, what's the weights right now
• 41:42
  and I'm gonna have box up like you want to do that last month
• 41:45
  so I think it's always a good idea to be working on our mental strength
• 41:48
  no matter how strong you think you are
• 41:50
  and I know I've been saying things like
• 41:51
  you don't need to do all of these gratitude
• 41:53
  or meditation practices but those are actually the practices
• 41:56
  that you do want to be doing
• 41:58
  you just don't want to have the bad habits that outweigh them
• 42:00
  so one thing we can always be working on
• 42:02
  is the thoughts that run through our head
• 42:05
  you have something like 60,000 thoughts a day
• 42:08
  the vast majority of them are repetitive
• 42:09
  with what you thought yesterday
• 42:11
  and a lot of them aren't true
• 42:12
  and you have certain thoughts about yourself
• 42:14
  what you're capable of, what you can't do
• 42:16
  so sometimes just learning to ask yourself
• 42:18
  like how true is this thought?
• 42:20
  Is it a factor in opinion?
• 42:21
  If you're thinking I'm not good at negotiating
• 42:24
  is that a factor in opinion?
• 42:25
  Is it something you could work on?
• 42:27
  And just asking yourself occasionally
• 42:29
  like what would I say to my friend who had this problem?
• 42:31
  You messed up at work
• 42:32
  can you come home and you think
• 42:33
  oh I embarrassed myself today I ruined everything?
• 42:36
  Well what would I say if my friend called me and said that?
• 42:38
  Like no you'd probably be like
• 42:40
  you'll do better next time
• 42:41
  or it's not as bad as you think
• 42:43
  we're not gonna be like well stupid
• 42:44
  you're ruined everything
• 42:45
  but yeah we often think those things to ourselves
• 42:47
  so learning to practice a little more self-compassion
• 42:50
  and a little more realistic thinking goes a long way
• 42:53
  and then just getting more aware of how we feel
• 42:56
  and so it might be a matter of printing off a list
• 42:58
  of feeling words just Google emotional vocabulary words
• 43:02
  printed out you hang it on your bathroom mirror
• 43:05
  so your brushing your teeth hopefully twice a day
• 43:07
  in the morning and again at night
• 43:08
  just look at the list and say how do I feel right now
• 43:11
  and get a little more used to putting a name
• 43:13
  to whatever that emotion is
• 43:15
  and then thinking like how did this emotion affect me today?
• 43:18
  Maybe you're anxious about your grandmother's health test
• 43:22
  and all of a sudden tomorrow you have a huge meeting
• 43:24
  well you're likely to carry that anxiety into that meeting
• 43:27
  but just being aware okay I feel anxious today
• 43:29
  so probably gonna be kind of risk adverse
• 43:31
  walking into this meeting
• 43:32
  that self-awareness goes a long way
• 43:35
  so that if in three months or six months
• 43:37
  you run into a much bigger hardship
• 43:39
  or an incredible difficulty
• 43:41
  you already have some skills in your tool belt
• 43:43
  of how to change your thinking
• 43:44
  and how to cope with and identify
• 43:46
  with some of those emotions that you're having.
• 43:49
  Is there a model like the this model work
• 43:51
  if you know even again at the beginning you're saying
• 43:53
  as a kid you didn't have anything
• 43:54
  is there a model that parents can teach over to their kids
• 43:58
  to start building that mental strength at a young age
• 44:00
  is this model worked for them as well
• 44:02
  as there's something else that they could do?
• 44:03
  Oh yeah absolutely
• 44:05
  so that was the biggest question I got when my first book
• 44:07
  came out was parents saying great how do we teach this to kids
• 44:10
  I want my 12 year old to learn this
• 44:11
  so I wrote a book called 13 Things Minimalist Young Parents Don't Do
• 44:15
  and it's really about how do we start teaching these skills
• 44:18
  to kids when they're four or five
• 44:20
  and up to the teenage years
• 44:22
  and part of it is like for us not to take responsibility
• 44:25
  for their emotions.
• 44:27
  In today's world when kids are bored
• 44:29
  we entertain them when they're sad
• 44:30
  we tear them up when they're angry
• 44:33
  we want to calm them down.
• 44:34
  So instead of us doing it
• 44:35
  like how do you give them the tools
• 44:37
  and there's lots of things we can do right in the moment
• 44:39
  a toolkit for little kids for example
• 44:41
  you might have a physical toolkit
• 44:42
  if here's your calm down kit
• 44:43
  when you're angry go get something out of that box
• 44:46
  Plato or something that helps to calm you down
• 44:49
  and I wrote a book for kids too
• 44:51
  it's for the eight to 12 year old range
• 44:52
  for older kids to have the language
• 44:54
  the vocabulary so that they're starting to learn
• 44:56
  okay here's what you do when things are tough
• 44:58
  and how to get through it
• 44:59
  because I think it's so important that we start
• 45:02
  learning these things when we're younger.
• 45:04
  I don't fully agree.
• 45:05
  I mean like everybody listening to this show
• 45:07
  is pretty much set on personal development
• 45:09
  so they buy into these concepts already
• 45:12
  but these concepts don't exist in silos right
• 45:15
  you have kids you have partners
• 45:17
  actually that's an interesting point too
• 45:20
  somebody listening to this their partner isn't
• 45:23
  or even their coworker isn't
• 45:25
  somebody in their universe is not listening to this show
• 45:27
  and they want to support that person going through it
• 45:29
  tough time is there is there a strategy
• 45:33
  to help somebody else go through something as well.
• 45:36
  There is so our tendency is to often give people advice
• 45:39
  right so if you come to me with a problem
• 45:42
  I'm gonna be really quick tempted to be really quick
• 45:44
  to be like I know what you should do
• 45:46
  but what happens is let's say you start smoking cigarettes
• 45:49
  tomorrow you decided smoking is gonna be an amazing thing
• 45:51
  that was gonna help you with your stress
• 45:53
  so then the next day I say actually smoking is bad for you
• 45:55
  you should quit you then start to tell me all the reasons
• 45:58
  why you enjoy smoking well actually Amy it helps me
• 46:02
  with my stress makes me feel a lot better
• 46:04
  I get to take a break every 20 minutes
• 46:06
  to go smoke a cigarette and I love that.
• 46:08
  So what I've done by telling you not to smoke
• 46:11
  is I've actually increased the chances
• 46:12
  that you're gonna keep smoking
• 46:14
  when we lecture somebody or we give them advice
• 46:16
  they actually then reply with all the reasons
• 46:18
  why they don't want to do something
• 46:20
  and we tend to believe the words coming out of our own mouths
• 46:23
  much more than we believe somebody else's words.
• 46:25
  So when I say to you know I love this bad habit
• 46:28
  and here's why it actually ingrains it deeper in my brain.
• 46:32
  So what you want to do when you're helping somebody else
• 46:34
  to build mental strength or they're going through
• 46:36
  a tough time is just be a good listener and ask questions
• 46:40
  like hey do you have any concerns about smoking
• 46:42
  but not in like a smug kind of a way
• 46:44
  but to ask like and maybe they'll say you know
• 46:47
  I actually think it costs a lot of money.
• 46:49
  Oh okay they may not have the concern
• 46:51
  that it's bad for their lungs but they might say
• 46:53
  I'm concerned about the financial factor.
• 46:55
  So then you go with that like oh really the
• 46:58
  how much does it cost to smoke these days
• 47:00
  and then you tell me about that
• 47:02
  and then it's gonna increase the chances
• 47:04
  that you might create some change in your life.
• 47:06
  So I think just by asking questions
• 47:09
  and by letting people know whatever they feel is okay.
• 47:12
  Somebody's going through a tough time and they're really sad.
• 47:15
  Sometimes we're like hey you're gonna go bowling
• 47:17
  because we think we should make you happy for the day.
• 47:19
  So like I'm gonna drag you out of the house
• 47:21
  we're gonna go to dinner and I'm gonna cheer you up
• 47:22
  and then I feel really good about myself when I go home
• 47:25
  because I made you happy today.
• 47:27
  But sometimes people just need to feel sad
• 47:29
  and they need somebody close enough to them
• 47:31
  who can tolerate their sadness.
• 47:33
  So instead of like no everything's gonna be okay.
• 47:36
  You can say gosh I know things feel really dark right now.
• 47:39
  When you can say that to somebody
• 47:41
  they feel like much more understood and heard
• 47:44
  and usually that's what people need
• 47:45
  when they're in a dark place.
• 47:47
  People tend to figure out their problems on their own
• 47:49
  and they especially can get there
• 47:51
  when they have somebody that can bounce that idea off of.
• 47:54
  And if they ask you for your advice by all means
• 47:57
  be willing to say you know if I was in your situation
• 48:00
  I think this is what I might do
• 48:02
  but to be slower with giving people advice on
• 48:05
  you just gotta get up and get outside
• 48:07
  or if you start doing the X, Y and Z
• 48:09
  you'll feel a lot better because that doesn't work.
• 48:11
  I wanna take a second and thank Range Rover Sport
• 48:13
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• 48:18
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  who's tried to build their own thing.
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  Everybody listening gets it.
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• 48:32
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• 48:35
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• 48:40
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• 48:46
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• 49:46
  Yeah, I think another thing that people probably,
• 49:51
  if someone's listening to this,
• 49:52
  they're probably trying to figure out, okay,
• 49:55
  when should I, even in my own life,
• 49:57
  when should I apply mental strength
• 49:59
  versus when is there a situation
• 50:02
  that is so overwhelming that I actually should go
• 50:05
  and seek out professional help?
• 50:07
  And I don't want to leave people just thinking that
• 50:11
  you're gonna be perfectly fine tomorrow
• 50:14
  if you start practicing these things
• 50:15
  because that's not realistic.
• 50:17
  Obviously it takes a while to build up this muscle.
• 50:20
  So do you have advice or if somebody's listening
• 50:27
  to this, they're trying to find a signal
• 50:28
  that, okay, this practice that I'm trying to incorporate
• 50:32
  is not enough to deal with the amount of trauma
• 50:34
  and grief and stress that I'm dealing with.
• 50:36
  I should probably go speak to somebody
• 50:38
  because these internal mechanisms are not working 100%.
• 50:42
  What's that point where you feel like somebody,
• 50:46
  the mental strength isn't cutting it,
• 50:48
  they should go talk to somebody.
• 50:49
  If it's interfering with your functioning
• 50:51
  for more than two weeks.
• 50:53
  So if you have trouble sleeping
• 50:54
  because you're so worried about something
• 50:56
  or your appetite has significantly changed
• 50:58
  because you're sad or anxious
• 51:00
  or you've been through something
• 51:02
  that's interfering with your ability to concentrate at work.
• 51:04
  If you just trust out in general,
• 51:06
  like you know, I just am not feeling good.
• 51:08
  Headaches and stomach aches tend to be really common issues
• 51:11
  that are actually much more likely to be related
• 51:13
  to mental health as compared to physical health.
• 51:17
  Statistically, the vast majority of emergency room visits
• 51:20
  are actually mental health related.
• 51:21
  People have panic attacks
• 51:22
  and they think they're having a heart attack.
• 51:24
  A lot of the ER visits are more about anxiety.
• 51:27
  And doctors will say
• 51:28
  well you should do something about that
• 51:29
  but they often don't set people up with a therapist
• 51:32
  because they're the ER doctor.
• 51:34
  They're just making sure you're not gonna die
• 51:35
  in that minute and they send you home.
• 51:37
  So I always say if you are struggling with something
• 51:39
  for more than two weeks,
• 51:40
  by all means reach out to somebody.
• 51:42
  But even if you are and you're just kind of like,
• 51:44
  I'd like a checkup to know how I'm doing.
• 51:46
  Reach out to a therapist.
• 51:47
  Used to be the old model was you had to have a mental illness
• 51:50
  and you had to sign up for therapy
• 51:52
  once you were already depressed.
• 51:55
  Fortunately that's changing.
• 51:57
  So if you just say I just wanna know
• 51:58
  like what areas could I be doing better
• 52:00
  or what kind of struggles might I have
• 52:02
  that I could work on or what issues do I wanna address?
• 52:05
  You can call somebody and say,
• 52:06
  I'm not sure I need therapy
• 52:08
  but can I just kind of come in
• 52:09
  and run some things past you?
• 52:10
  And sometimes I just reassuring,
• 52:12
  oh okay, you're on the right page
• 52:13
  or this is normal given your circumstances.
• 52:16
  Or here's what to be on the lookout for.
• 52:18
  If things started to change and you saw these things,
• 52:21
  then you would know it was a sign that perhaps
• 52:23
  you need to talk to somebody.
• 52:25
  And we can do that too.
• 52:26
  If you have a partner, a child,
• 52:27
  somebody else in your life who won't get help
• 52:30
  is for you to go to therapy.
• 52:31
  Talk to a therapist and say this is what's going on.
• 52:33
  What else can I do to support the person
• 52:35
  and sometimes that makes a world of difference too?
• 52:37
  Yeah, I think that's great advice.
• 52:39
  Is there, are there some commonly held beliefs
• 52:44
  about mental strength which you don't agree with?
• 52:47
  Things that people may assume is true
• 52:50
  but you feel like it's inaccurate
• 52:51
  or they're doing more harm than good?
• 52:53
  You know, the big one is that people will say like,
• 52:55
  I wish I could be mentally strong
• 52:56
  but I have depression or have anxiety.
• 52:59
  And that's not true at all.
• 53:00
  Just like it makes more sense when we think about it
• 53:03
  in terms of physical strength.
• 53:04
  Like you can go to the gym and you can work out
• 53:07
  and become physically strong
• 53:08
  and it usually prevents health problems
• 53:10
  but you might still get high cholesterol,
• 53:12
  high blood pressure through no fault of your own,
• 53:14
  your genetics, your life experiences,
• 53:17
  mental health and mental strength is the same.
• 53:19
  Building mental strength improves your mental health
• 53:21
  but if you develop something like anxiety or depression,
• 53:25
  it doesn't mean that you're a weak person.
• 53:26
  It just means this is something that you're struggling with
• 53:29
  and some of the strongest people I've ever met
• 53:31
  were battling some kind of a mental health issue
• 53:33
  yet they're still showing up every day.
• 53:35
  So to know that it's about the habits you have every day
• 53:37
  the choices you make, there's so many things you can do
• 53:40
  to build mental strength
• 53:42
  but if you develop a mental health issue
• 53:44
  by all means, reach out and ask for help.
• 53:46
  I love that analogy too
• 53:48
  because a lot of these, I mean, I don't know,
• 53:51
  I don't know if mental health is,
• 53:52
  there's some predisposed things that you can inherit
• 53:57
  from your parents, I have no idea,
• 53:58
  but I know that in physical health,
• 54:00
  I mean, I'll give you a personal example.
• 54:03
  So my grandpa, he's passed away now,
• 54:05
  he had Alzheimer's dementia and that's like in the family.
• 54:08
  So I'm trying to do my best to do things
• 54:11
  that are gonna push that back as far as possible
• 54:14
  and thank God he lived to late 90s,
• 54:16
  so that's a great life.
• 54:18
  But still, I could do all the right things,
• 54:21
  I could work out seven days a week
• 54:22
  and I know that's still in my family.
• 54:24
  So this is just a great,
• 54:28
  this is just a great conversation about
• 54:30
  it's not your fault if some of these things
• 54:32
  are still happening to you, not physical
• 54:34
  but mental as well.
• 54:36
  Because you can't control what you're predisposed to,
• 54:40
  you can't control a lot of things
• 54:43
  that you could do all the right things
• 54:46
  and you still end up in a less than ideal situation.
• 54:49
  Absolutely, and I see so many people too
• 54:51
  who when they go through something traumatic
• 54:54
  that they feel like they have to pop right back up
• 54:56
  and be like, I'm good, I'm good.
• 54:58
  Even though they're struggling
• 54:59
  because they feel like that that's a side of mental strength too,
• 55:02
  like I went through seven traumatic things
• 55:04
  and I'm completely unscathed.
• 55:07
  And so many people will say things like,
• 55:08
  well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger
• 55:10
  but like, I don't think that's true either.
• 55:12
  I think sometimes when you go through really tough times,
• 55:14
  you can come out scarred
• 55:15
  and you don't necessarily always come out better and happier
• 55:18
  or anything like that.
• 55:20
  And so we shouldn't minimize our life experiences
• 55:23
  if something happens to you when you were a kid
• 55:25
  or something bad happens to you as an adult,
• 55:27
  you don't have to feel like you're gonna come out
• 55:29
  and emerge stronger, especially the next day.
• 55:32
  But I see a lot of people who I think feel that pressure
• 55:34
  to say, nope, that didn't bother me at all,
• 55:37
  but really they haven't even dealt with it at all.
• 55:39
  Is there an appropriate way to not only deal with traumas
• 55:44
  but also potentially use them
• 55:46
  to increase mental strength in the future?
• 55:48
  Like if something happens to you,
• 55:50
  what's the best reaction that will actually help you,
• 55:55
  not benefit benefit is a completely incorrect word,
• 55:58
  but use the situation so that even in 10 years from now
• 56:03
  that could be a useful learning
• 56:07
  or addition to your mental strength.
• 56:10
  Yeah, in the days after something,
• 56:11
  we know that the most important thing you could do
• 56:14
  is whether you just went through a horrific car accident
• 56:17
  or a natural disaster, whatever feelings you feel are okay,
• 56:21
  let yourself feel those,
• 56:22
  whether you're angry, anxious, sad.
• 56:24
  And to get social support,
• 56:26
  social support is like one of the number one factors
• 56:28
  of if you have somebody that you can talk to
• 56:30
  and who can relate to you,
• 56:31
  you're much more likely to feel like you're able to get through it.
• 56:36
  And a lot of what we know about getting three tough times
• 56:39
  is our ability to then realize
• 56:40
  that we have inner strength, resources,
• 56:42
  things that help us to get through it
• 56:44
  and when we're in a rough spot,
• 56:46
  sometimes we need somebody else to point out to us
• 56:49
  and remind us of like you'll get through this
• 56:51
  and just hearing it from somebody else can be good.
• 56:54
  And then down the road,
• 56:55
  when people do go through traumatic experiences
• 56:57
  and they feel like somehow it changed them maybe
• 57:00
  in a way that's for the better,
• 57:02
  it's often because they can say,
• 57:04
  I learned from it.
• 57:05
  I wished it hadn't happened,
• 57:06
  yet I learned something incredible about myself
• 57:09
  or it changed something.
• 57:10
  I know for me, public speaking was my biggest fear in life.
• 57:13
  So not only did I not speak it like in school,
• 57:16
  but even in college,
• 57:17
  like never raised my hand, never said a word,
• 57:20
  I gave the eulogy at my husband's funeral
• 57:22
  and let me tell you,
• 57:23
  these days public speaking is not scary at all.
• 57:26
  Like if I can give a eulogy at somebody's funeral,
• 57:28
  like getting up in front of a crowd
• 57:29
  of corporate professionals is really not so scary anymore.
• 57:32
  So if I had to say did anything good come out of it,
• 57:35
  it wasn't a great experience,
• 57:37
  but at the same time,
• 57:38
  I certainly learned a lot
• 57:39
  and I don't sweat the small stuff anymore.
• 57:42
  And I no longer have to worry about vomiting
• 57:43
  before I go to school every day.
• 57:45
  So in a strange way, yeah,
• 57:47
  there are some things that came out of it
• 57:49
  that I think I wouldn't have been able to experience
• 57:53
  if I hadn't gone through those things.
• 57:55
  Yeah, I think it's just about,
• 57:57
  I think that you made a really, really good point.
• 58:00
  So if you go through something traumatic,
• 58:03
  you don't have to bounce back and learn from it tomorrow.
• 58:06
  Right.
• 58:07
  But there can be things in the future that will,
• 58:10
  it will evolve you as a human for sure.
• 58:13
  But I think the issue is when somebody tries
• 58:17
  to shut those emotions down the second they happen
• 58:20
  because they feel like that's the way they have to be tough
• 58:23
  for everyone else.
• 58:24
  Whatever the reason is that to be tough for themselves,
• 58:26
  be tough for everyone else.
• 58:27
  I think that's when, again, not a professional,
• 58:31
  but to me, that makes the most sense as to why trauma
• 58:35
  sort of implants itself that can,
• 58:38
  that can honestly impact you 10, 20, 30 years in the future.
• 58:42
  It's because you try and push stuff down
• 58:44
  and deal with it too quickly.
• 58:45
  That seems to be a very bad idea.
• 58:48
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 58:49
  And it's tempting as it is to be like,
• 58:51
  no, I'm good.
• 58:52
  Right after something happens that you don't want to do that.
• 58:57
  Okay, so you have 13 don'ts.
• 59:00
  I mean, you wrote the article.
• 59:01
  You did the TED talk.
• 59:02
  You've put the book together, but it's been a minute.
• 59:05
  Would there be a 14th anything that you'd want to add
• 59:08
  to the book sense or the article sense
• 59:11
  that you feel like has sort of come into your life
• 59:13
  that would be a great 14th point?
• 59:15
  Oh, great question.
• 59:17
  You know, I don't think so.
• 59:18
  Like I've never just come up with like one thing of like,
• 59:20
  oh, I wish I would have added that to the book
• 59:22
  or anything like that, which is interesting
• 59:24
  because again, I wrote the wrote the book
• 59:27
  based on the article and the article
• 59:28
  was something I wrote to myself,
• 59:29
  but I'd certainly been thinking about it for years
• 59:32
  even though I'd never put pen to paper.
• 59:34
  So I don't think so.
• 59:35
  The joy of, I now I have six books.
• 59:37
  So I've been able to write about so many things
• 59:39
  in all the subsequent books, but I've never come up
• 59:41
  with like one thing that I feel like I was missing
• 59:43
  in that book.
• 59:43
  Good, it's a complete list.
• 59:44
  That's all that matters.
• 59:45
  I was just, I was just curious if you've seen something
• 59:47
  or noticed something in yourself
• 59:49
  that you didn't include really, but that's good.
• 59:53
  It's very, very good.
• 59:54
  But, you know, what would be because mental health,
• 1:00:01
  mental strength, I'll say, actually,
• 1:00:04
  I'll say the same thing, but different.
• 1:00:06
  Let me explain where I'm going with this.
• 1:00:08
  So mental health, mental strength, obviously,
• 1:00:11
  very much invoked topics right now.
• 1:00:15
  When you are looking at new problems
• 1:00:18
  that people are dealing with or you're even researching
• 1:00:21
  new things that are affecting some of your patients,
• 1:00:24
  what are some new things that you're looking at
• 1:00:26
  or new ideas or new concepts or new treatments
• 1:00:30
  or even just new stressors, even in a post-COVID world
• 1:00:35
  that people are dealing with right now
• 1:00:37
  that you think would be highly relevant
• 1:00:39
  that you sort of see coming up time and time again.
• 1:00:42
  Ooh, I think, I guess if anything good came out of COVID
• 1:00:47
  is that people are talking more about mental health
• 1:00:49
  and I think people have realized that subtract something
• 1:00:53
  from your life and suddenly we're all only one step away
• 1:00:55
  from having something like depression or anxiety anyway.
• 1:00:58
  So it's become much more common in conversation,
• 1:01:02
  but on the flip side, one of the bad things I'm seeing
• 1:01:05
  is it's almost watered it down to the point
• 1:01:08
  that people who are really struggling
• 1:01:10
  are feeling almost dismissed.
• 1:01:12
  Well, they'll say, well, everybody has anxiety, right?
• 1:01:15
  Yes, we all have the emotion of anxiety,
• 1:01:17
  but not everybody has an anxiety disorder.
• 1:01:19
  Or I see people who are really quick to say,
• 1:01:21
  well, I have social anxiety too.
• 1:01:23
  Person doesn't have social anxiety.
• 1:01:24
  They just maybe are a little more introverted
• 1:01:27
  than other people.
• 1:01:28
  So I see a lot of these words misused
• 1:01:30
  like everybody's in narcissistic these days
• 1:01:33
  or a sociopath and I see a lot of the things
• 1:01:36
  getting used as a weapon almost where people
• 1:01:38
  are throwing them into conversations
• 1:01:41
  and using them as if they're just everyday things
• 1:01:44
  and people diagnosing themselves with things
• 1:01:46
  that they don't necessarily have.
• 1:01:47
  So that's one of my big concerns.
• 1:01:49
  And I guess the other huge concern I'm hearing
• 1:01:52
  from people is how people are feeling burned out these days
• 1:01:55
  just from feeling like they can't shut off work
• 1:01:58
  that they started working from home,
• 1:02:00
  perhaps during the pandemic or in a post-pandemic world,
• 1:02:03
  they feel like they have to get ahead
• 1:02:05
  and then they feel like they're on this treadmill
• 1:02:07
  and they can never get off because they have to stay up late
• 1:02:09
  tonight to get more work done for tomorrow
• 1:02:11
  and then tomorrow they still don't feel like they're ahead
• 1:02:14
  and they feel like they're falling
• 1:02:15
  further and further behind every day
• 1:02:17
  and they don't know how to get off.
• 1:02:19
  And of course in today's economy
• 1:02:20
  where people are stressed out because of money anyway
• 1:02:23
  and then people say we'll have to keep stepping it up
• 1:02:25
  and I don't know what else to do
• 1:02:26
  and I don't have time for anything
• 1:02:28
  and in the meantime they feel like their mental health
• 1:02:31
  is perhaps suffering but then don't know what to do about it.
• 1:02:34
  And so I do have a lot of concerns about burnout
• 1:02:37
  and people feeling like they need to be more productive
• 1:02:40
  yet can't be productive enough right now.
• 1:02:42
  Well, I think that ties back into that.
• 1:02:46
  Do you even want to win the game
• 1:02:48
  that you're playing?
• 1:02:50
  And I think burnout comes from that.
• 1:02:52
  I think burnout comes from people over indexing
• 1:02:55
  on resilience and do it at all costs and never give up
• 1:03:00
  and not enough on having the mental strength
• 1:03:02
  and the self-awareness and the EQ to understand
• 1:03:05
  is this a direction that I actually want to be moving in.
• 1:03:07
  And I mean there's a lot of reasons as to why this is
• 1:03:10
  but I mean whether or not it's hustle culture
• 1:03:13
  or COVID or cost of living increasing
• 1:03:15
  like it's like this perfect storm of all this BS
• 1:03:18
  that's causing this stress.
• 1:03:20
  And for that person who does feel like they're on this hamster wheel
• 1:03:23
  just bring it back to mental strength.
• 1:03:28
  What would be the advice so that they can at least
• 1:03:30
  for a second pause take their foot off that treadmill
• 1:03:34
  and then understand the actions they can take
• 1:03:37
  to start to move in the right direction
• 1:03:38
  even if it's not tactical at first
• 1:03:40
  and it's only psychological
• 1:03:42
  because that would be the first step.
• 1:03:44
  Yeah, so sometimes about know what are my values in life
• 1:03:46
  and am I living according to my values?
• 1:03:48
  It's so easy to get off course where we say
• 1:03:51
  I value family yet I'm working 120 hours a week
• 1:03:54
  so is that really the kind of life I want to live
• 1:03:57
  and we have to take a step back
• 1:03:58
  because otherwise life happens to us
• 1:04:01
  and we get involved in all of these things
• 1:04:02
  without saying like what would actually do I value
• 1:04:05
  and does my life reflect that?
• 1:04:07
  And a good way to do that is to get some psychological distance
• 1:04:10
  where maybe you do that test where you pretend
• 1:04:12
  that you're 100 years old
• 1:04:13
  and you're looking back over your life
• 1:04:15
  and you just say like what would make me say
• 1:04:17
  gosh that was a life well lived
• 1:04:20
  and maybe it is having $5 million in the bank
• 1:04:22
  but maybe not maybe you think gee
• 1:04:24
  like nobody's gonna put on my tombstone she sure was productive
• 1:04:27
  like so then what do I want people to say
• 1:04:30
  like I was a nice person I did some kind things
• 1:04:32
  I spent a lot of time with friends and family
• 1:04:34
  maybe I didn't have the nice house and the nice car
• 1:04:36
  but I did these other things instead
• 1:04:38
  so to really get in tune with what are your values
• 1:04:42
  and are you living according to them
• 1:04:44
  and to make sure that we're our lives reflect that
• 1:04:46
  sometimes when I work with parents
• 1:04:48
  and I work with kids I'll do a speaking engagement
• 1:04:50
  during the day where I speak to the kids and I'll ask them
• 1:04:52
  if your parents were to come into a teacher
• 1:04:54
  a parent teacher conference tomorrow
• 1:04:56
  what would they most likely want to hear the teacher say
• 1:04:59
  that you're the smartest kid in the class
• 1:05:01
  or that you're the kindest kid
• 1:05:03
  and like 99.9% of the kids are like
• 1:05:05
  oh my mom wants me to be the smartest kid in the class
• 1:05:08
  and then that night I'll ask the parents
• 1:05:10
  what would you rather hear?
• 1:05:11
  And whether it's just because its parents think
• 1:05:13
  this is socially appropriate
• 1:05:14
  but a lot of the parents are like
• 1:05:16
  no I want my kid to be kind.
• 1:05:17
  So go home tonight and ask your child what they think it is
• 1:05:21
  and then I want you to think like
• 1:05:23
  well how often do we talk about kindness at home
• 1:05:25
  versus how much do I say
• 1:05:26
  did you do your homework today?
• 1:05:28
  And just think about those little things in our lives
• 1:05:31
  and even if you don't have kids
• 1:05:32
  like what's really reflected in your life
• 1:05:33
  with where you spend your time
• 1:05:35
  where your money goes, your calendar
• 1:05:37
  and your checkbook are quite reflective
• 1:05:39
  of a lot of things in your life
• 1:05:41
  and does that really reflect how you'd want to be spending
• 1:05:43
  your time so that when you're 100 years old
• 1:05:45
  and you look back and think
• 1:05:46
  you know my 30s, 40s, whatever decade you're in
• 1:05:49
  was really time well spent.
• 1:05:51
  Very good advice.
• 1:05:52
  Okay, where can people go connect with you,
• 1:05:55
  get more of your content?
• 1:05:56
  I mean your book's gonna be on Amazon
• 1:05:58
  I'll put in the show notes as well
• 1:05:59
  but just some links, drop some links
• 1:06:01
  so people know where to go.
• 1:06:02
  Sure, my website is Amy Morin, LCSW
• 1:06:05
  as in licenseclinicalsocialworker.com
• 1:06:09
  and on there you can find info on all six of my books
• 1:06:11
  as well as I have a podcast called
• 1:06:13
  the mentally stronger podcast with therapist Amy Morin
• 1:06:16
  and we discuss strategies for building mental strength
• 1:06:19
  twice a week.
• 1:06:20
  I have a guest on Mondays
• 1:06:21
  and I do a solo episode on Fridays
• 1:06:23
  and talk about all things related
• 1:06:25
  to becoming mentally stronger.
• 1:06:27
  Amazing.
• 1:06:28
  Okay, last question I love to ask
• 1:06:30
  because you've had a great career,
• 1:06:32
  multiple seasons to your life and your career
• 1:06:35
  and if you could look back
• 1:06:36
  and tell your 20 year old self one thing
• 1:06:37
  and it's gonna be about your work
• 1:06:39
  it can be about mental strength
• 1:06:40
  it could be about anything.
• 1:06:41
  You have to go back and tell your 20 year old self
• 1:06:43
  one thing, what would that thing be?
• 1:06:45
  Oh, I would say enjoy the ride.
• 1:06:46
  It's gonna be an incredible adventure
• 1:06:48
  with lots of ups and downs
• 1:06:50
  but just enjoy the ride
• 1:06:52
  and don't worry too much about
• 1:06:54
  what's gonna happen in the future.