Amy Morin - Renowned Psychotherapist & Mental Resilience Expert | The Secret To Mental Strength

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