Israa Nasir - Psychotherapist, Speaker & Entrepreneur | Reclaiming Your Time and Emotional Energy

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East Ra is a psychotherapist, speaker and founder of Wellguide, a digital platform reshaping mental health conversations. With over a decade of experience as a licensed therapist in certifications from leading institutions like the Beck Institute. I had done a lot of stuff in my 20s study and this tried to start my own digital health startup. In my early 30s, I was starting to get the outcome of all of that work. People would often say to me, you must be so happy now that you've done this thing. But on the inside, I just didn't feel it. There was such a big gap between how people saw my life and how I saw my life. So I did a little bit of self discovery on depression and I didn't meet the criteria for it. And so I was like, well, if it's not that, then there is something. So now I've ruled out the big thing. So that's kind of when I really went into this exploration of what's going on. She empowers individuals to embrace personal growth and emotional wellbeing. Her multicultural background, spanning Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Toronto and the US, fuels her unique perspective on cross-cultural challenges and transitions. We just live so much happier. We are lies become so much richer. When we understand our emotions and we can manage the difficult ones, things don't have to move fast. There's a lot of value in moving slowly as well. Her mission to inspire meaningful conversations, build confidence and elevate mental health for everyone. Join her by weekly newsletter for insights, recommendations and tools to transform your journey. Let's rewrite the narrative on mental health together. 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 the 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, there's just 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. It's right. I'm excited you're here. It's going to be a lot of fun. What I wanted to start this was with a line in your book, where you say that productivity isn't about managing time, but rather how you manage your emotions. So this is a very interesting sort of novel cake on productivity. So talk to me about that line and then what you mean by that. I think that one of the things that I found very absent in the productivity literature when I was doing research, just for my own self, originally that's how this book came to be. I was trying to figure myself out. The thing that I kept coming up against is I can do all of the things, but it's not changing how I feel. And then I would see that with my clients as well. You know, as a therapist, I do a lot of work and behavior change. And that's something you come up, you know, people say often in therapies like, okay, well, I changed my habits. I'm doing all the things, but it's not changing how I feel. And that kind of pinged me into looking into the literature between like the connection between our relationships and motivate, I mean, our emotions and our motivation. So I got really into like social motivation theory, social learning theory, emotional needs, core needs. I started reading about that. And that's where I really came to this conclusion myself, which was that, you know, our emotions drive all of our behavior. Whether it's positive or negative behavior, our emotions are the foundation of how we show up in the world. So it only makes sense that when we are trying to be hyperproductive, that we are trying to manage some emotion, whether we are pursuing a positive emotion through the productivity, or we're trying to avoid a negative emotion through using productivity as a coping skill. So that's kind of where I landed, even in my own experience is, you know, I know that I was using hyper productivity and optimization and being chronically busy to avoid a set of difficult emotions. I think that really hits because even when you say it, the immediate reaction is, yeah, most likely that is what I'm doing when I'm trying to over optimize or get an extra five or 10% out of my day, even though I'm already putting it an hours. But that's very hard for people to unpack because I think that if we talk about productivity, people don't usually tie it to emotion, probably until it's too late, probably until that productivity and that hustle culture has basically ruined their life to a degree. So somebody listening to this, they want to unpack even where that comes from or how they can start looking inside to figure out what drives their day to day. Where do they start looking? What are some of the questions that even like you asked yourself when you understood that you were over-optimizing or trying to be too productive? So I didn't think that I was over-optimizing what I realized is that I was disconnected. I think that's a really good, I don't want to use the word good, but it is a good red flag to look out for. Right? It's one that you can't ignore is are you feeling engaged in your life? Because no one's going to sit there and think, oh, I'm really hyper optimized, right? Like it's just not the way we think about things. And anyway, hyper optimized is a very rewarded, glorified thing. So you're not going to question it like that. What you want to tap into is how do you feel after you do certain things or how do you feel before you do them? So for anybody who was a little curious about, hey, like where do I sit on this spectrum? Like I wonder what my relationship to productivity is is what she's saying relevant to me. If you want to do that kind of examination, what I would say, and this is what I did, is kind of look back to the last three weeks of your life and look at everything that you did, everything you committed yourself to, the things you took on, everything you said yes to, and then do a little bit of like an energy emotion audit. Just reflect back and think about, okay, did I like the feeling I was having going into this? Was I dreading this interaction? Was I kind of so tired? I was a dragging myself to this thing. How did I feel afterwards? And the two main questions you eventually want to get to are do I have to do all the things that I'm doing? And why do I do the things that I do? And you have to really kind of follow the why in that question because the knee jerk reaction is, well, I have to do this because nobody else can do it. I have to do this because of course I have to do it. It's my job, it's my role, it's who I am, that's what I do in my friends group. Well, you have to continue to follow that. Like, okay, why do I have to be the person that does it? Why can't somebody else do it? And just continue to follow this why until you get to the core and you realize that everything you're committing yourself to is feeding some emotional need of yours. When did you start to go down this rabbit hole? I mean, the book is called Toxic Productivity. So what was the inflection point in your life that helped you understand that productivity can even be toxic? Because we're even jumped into this and we went so deep into the emotional component and productivity. But I think that even to back it up a little bit, like you mentioned, productivity is actually glorified. So I think we even have to start by making the argument why is some productivity even toxic? But was it something that triggered in your life? Was it something that triggered with one of your clients? Was it sort of like this repeat thing that you saw again and again and again in your work? What was the light bulb moment that put you on this path and you made you sort of realize like, oh, this is something that we should probably talk about and figure out because this is not a great direction for high performers, high achievers type A people to go through their entire life optimizing and being continually more productive. There was like an inflection phase. It wasn't like one moment, but there was a phase. And what was happening at that time is there was a big gap between how people viewed my life and how I viewed my life. In my 20s, I come from a very high achieving family, right? You have to do while we're immigrants or like you have to do well. And so I had done a lot of stuff in my 20s to set up, you know, to meet the checklist of things like study and this and extracurricular and try to start my own like digital health startup. But it was just like this checklist, right? So in my early 30s, I was starting to get like the outcome of all of that work. So I was meeting the deadlines or I was getting the goals that I had set out to achieve, right? But on the outside, it really looked like I had all of it figured out. People would often say to me, oh my gosh, like you do so much. Your life looks so like you must be so happy now that you've done this thing. You got this thing. And oh, I remember you were working on this like two years ago. Like now you have it, right? You do all of these things. You do all these things. But like there was such a big gap between how people saw my life and how I saw my life. And it was continuous. Like everywhere I went, people would say these things to me. But on the inside, like I just didn't feel it. I just didn't feel it. And it felt really weird. Like the first couple of times people said it, I was like, okay, whatever. Like they see my life a certain way. You know, you see a certain section of someone's life. But I think like with enough people saying it, I kind of got a little worried about myself. I started thinking that maybe I have a high functioning depression. Because why don't I feel good about my life? Why do other people feel like I should feel good about my life? Right? And so I did a little bit of like self discovery. I did like self assessment on depression. And I didn't meet the criteria for it. And so I was like, well, if it's not that, then there is something. So now I've ruled out the big thing. So that's kind of when I really went into this, this exploration of what's going on. And one of the, one of the things, one of the most common things people were telling me about me is that I was really busy all the time. So I started there. You know, sometimes it's worth listening to what people around you are saying. We don't necessarily need to be influenced by other people's opinions. But I think it's worth examining if there's a certain thing that repeatedly comes up over and over again. And so I was like, am I too busy? Because to me, I was being normal. Like this is just, this is just being ambitious. This is just normal. And so that's kind of that's where it began. So what did you, what did you, by the way, this resonates so deeply, this, everything you're saying. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's exactly how my life is right now. So maybe there's a lot that I can learn from this. So what did you discover about yourself when you started to do this, this introspection? I discovered that I was over committing. I was saying yes to too many things. And the reason was I didn't want to feel like I was missing out. I didn't want to feel like I was missing opportunities. I had this like very powerful scarcity mindset just across the board. Professionally in my like personal relationship, in my, even in my marriage, in my friendships. Like I had this like scarcity mindset that was driving me. And I was very afraid that I was going to miss out on something. I'm going to, I'm going to lose out an opportunity. I'm not doing the thing the right way. So that there was this fear of not being on the path. And that was really driving me to just constantly overcome it. And that's like this beginning of this, right? Like that's, that sets the foundation for you to constantly be on. I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Ham for supporting today's episode. Now Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. 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That's cornbreadhemp.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. That is sort of the classic definition of productivity. That's I think that's what a lot of people assume is productivity. So obviously that's not the best way to conduct your life and to go through life. And I think that a lot of people listen to this are similar to you and to me. They're all people that don't want to miss out. They say yes to everything until they can't, which is there's maybe there's a season for that in their life when they're when they're just starting out to get experience to expose themselves to more opportunities. But what does productivity actually look like? What is the great reimagining of what productivity should be for people? So currently our framework of productivity is more is more and more is better, right? So it's a lot of like quantity over quality. And the idea is if you can accomplish even a little bit more, it doesn't matter if it was like like a B plus, right? As long as you got it done. And to me, I wanted to kind of change in that I want productivity and rest to not be in opposition. So right now, resting and taking breaks is outside of productivity. You're productive and then you can earn rest. You're productive. You're on the hamster wheel and then you can, you know, be joyful and do something for the sake of fun. You have to earn it. So that's the first thing I really want people to reimagine is that resting and joy are actually a part of productivity. It's it's baked in the productivity system and it actually increases your productivity over time. It makes you more creative. You become a better decision maker. And it also keeps you while being balanced. So that's one thing. The other thing I want to kind of help people really tap into is intentionality in your productivity. So current productivity paradigm is here's a checklist of things that means you're productive and you just have to do it. And these are the goals you have to pursue because that's the life everybody has to live. And I want people to be a little bit more intentional about what they're pursuing. So that's like one of the hallmarks to me of toxic productivity is when you are pursuing something for the sake of the pursuit. But you don't really know why you want that thing. You don't know if you're even connected to the thing that you want. And I work with a lot of young people who really are just chasing these arbitrary goals because someone just told them they had to do it. Like their parents said it, they chose an industry where you have to meet a certain milestone or their friends are doing it. So I think like bringing some intentionality back into it is really important. What do you think drives that that setting of a North star that you haven't even thought through? Is it because you feel like your parents are putting pressure on you? Is it because people are trying to achieve a dollar value in their life? Is it because they listen to too much Gary Vee? Like what's the reason why people set these arbitrary North stars? Like what's the underlying root cause? Because I want people to understand where they're where their goals in life even come from. I don't want to sound like a cliche therapist, but it is the truth. Most of the foundations of our worldview is set by our origin caretaking family. So it doesn't always have to be your parents. It could be like an older sibling who sets the mental framework for you and the way they see their life or what they achieve. It could be a really close cousin. You might have an aunt or an uncle growing up. You were like, wow, that's how they live their life. That's what I want to do. And so I think the original formative years, when there are people who have a lot of influence on us, it shapes our worldview. So most of us learn that what is wanted, what the wanted identity is, is what I should be pursuing. Because we see in our original family or caretaking unit, even extending to like school, we see that those certain things are rewarded. We see that certain things, certain traits, certain qualities give you more acceptance and more belonging and more love. And so that really sets the stage for you to not even question what else you should do. And then of course, you do have the families that tell you what you have to do. For sure, like I know families where all the children are doctors, all the sons became engineers, right? And yeah, that's like a cultural thing for South Asians or Asians in general, for sure. But I see outside of Asian culture too, like I see it in the Latinx community, I see it, you know, in American culture as well. But that's something like some families will tell you, that's what you have to do. Other families, you just kind of learn it. But it does come from our formative years. So even looking at sort of the journey that you went through, I mean, you had these expectations that were placed on you as a kid. And you had to wrestle with the one thing that I love to do is all the work that you've put out into the world and you teach, I know that it comes from what you figured out yourself. And how you figured out how to navigate this sort of reimagining of what productivity looks like of what your personal North star should be. So maybe just walk me through your story. And when you came to that sort of realization that you didn't really even realize why you're doing the things that you're doing and why the your friend's perspective of you is so much different than your perspective of you. How do you start to how do you start to restructure your life? What are the what are the sort of the action steps that you take so that you do properly align with something you care about? And your friend's perception starts to align closer to what your own perception of your life was. Yeah. So my I mean, I was definitely raised to be an overachiever. And you know, I don't think that parents are ill intentioned when they do this. So that's that's not my messaging at all. I think, you know, parents do their best based on what their life experience has been, right? And as adults, it's our responsibility to then pull it apart and see what actually fits for us and what doesn't fit for us. But I was certainly raised in a very high activity home. You know, there's a lot a lot of movement happening. Resting was really not a part of my home culture. Whether it I mean, we used to have like a math tutor in the summer. We would go to Pakistan for a summer break and my mom like would get like a little tutor for us, like a kid in the neighborhood. If it wasn't that, it was some things that was like a sport. If it wasn't a sport, it was like classical music. If you know, it was there was always some kind of move. It was always always something something's happening all the time. And so because I actually never saw my parents chilling and hanging out, like I never saw my parents just lying on the couch or sleeping in or anything like that, or even take like a vacation where they're just hanging out. Like I've just never I never saw that. So I learned that life is about forward movement. Like that. So that became my Nord star. So it wasn't like I had a pressure to be a certain profession. But there was definitely like an underlying expectation that forward movement is the way to go. Like you just have to be in constant motion. And so a lot of my life was just in constant motion, like doing parallel things together. It wasn't enough to just have a job. Like you have to have a job. And you have to do your own thing, try to make an impact in the world and you have to have like a hobby and all of those things. But when I started realizing this disconnect, this disengagement that I was feeling and this kind of like listless board feeling because like nothing felt good and nothing felt good enough. The first thing after this audit that I did, the first thing I did is I sat down with a friend of mine and I said, let's just kind of talk about this, you know, because he would often hear me complain about feeling bad after leaving certain you know events or certain obligations. So he was he asked me, he was like, why do you keep going here if it makes you feel bad afterwards? And so it was like this conversation I needed to have and then I decided the first tactical thing I did was I started to under commit. I started to just say no to things. Even when it felt really scary. And that includes professional opportunities. That includes like speaking opportunities because I knew that I was it was not going to give me the return, but I had to really analyze like really get it in the mindset of being comfortable and saying no. And believing that better things will come my way. And that that was like a journey. It didn't happen in one week. But I think like that was like a very important tactical thing that somebody can do is to really just say no to one thing or say yes to one less thing. And I think that really helps us feel that the world will not end if you say no. Because that's the thing, you know, when you're in this fear based mindset, maybe you feel it too because you're you're like from a tech background and you're also an entrepreneur, you feel that the world will end if you don't get this thing, you know, sometimes yeah, which I you know, you know intuitively that's the most ridiculous thought, but you still feel it. And then you still forces you to say it forces you that's the wrong word. It still makes you want to say yes. And you do. Because the fear center is so powerful in our brain. And the fear center cannot tell a difference between a real or an imagined threat. So the brain cannot tell the difference between a real and imagined threat. That's why we jump in a movie because a brain think that's actually happening to you like in a in a in a scary movie. So you really have to retrain your brain, you know, and I had to do a lot of that. And it was it was a long and arduous process. Like I don't want to sit here and be like, oh, yeah, everything figured out like absolutely not. It was horrible and ugly and painful, but I needed to be done. I guess one of the more popular posts that you put up on on your Instagram, I thought was interesting. It was it's the first post. It's dopamine culture is taking over. So what do you mean by dopamine culture? Because I've heard of hustle culture. I've heard now of toxic productivity. I've heard of productivity. I've heard of all these different words. What does dopamine culture mean? Is it tied into all this? Absolutely. And I'm so glad you asked. You were like the first person to ask me this. I love talking about this. Well, I thought it was interesting. It's a concept I've never heard before. I mean, I've heard about hustle culture forever, but I think that dopamine culture, it brings it into the emotional component that you're talking about. And there's some science and there's some hormones that sort of play into this. And I think it's actually very important when you're teaching something to not make it seem like the person who is feeling this is deficient for some reason or they are they're feeling this just because they aren't as good as they could be or they aren't as they aren't the best version of themselves. That's incorrect. I mean, all these things that we teach and all the things that that we do in life are really just responses to our body and how we and how we're programmed and wired. So I think that when you go beneath the hood and you start to understand how like even like hormones like dopamine would impact your day in the life and your response to threats and perceived threats and opportunities and your work and your job. I think it just makes it a lot easier to understand because then we're aware of why we made these decisions. So I don't want somebody to listen to this and be like, I am toxicly productive, but maybe that means that I'm like maybe that means that I'm less than because that's not the case. It's just you don't understand and you're and you're not aware of how your body actually reacts. So you should be so that you can make better decisions, but just don't think that you're less than just because you're not quote unquote perfect or operating the way that that you're operating right now. And I think it's also the system we live in. Not only are we reacting to our internal system, we are also reacting to an external system like everywhere you look, even for me like any model I that I had of a successful woman was always a frazzled woman. She was always like running to places and like things are falling out of her bag, you know, and all those things. But that's a successful woman, right? And so it's also we are reacting to a system that is telling us to be this way. So it's certainly not an internal deficiency. And even I like still struggle with that. Like I think, you know, in the lead up to this book, like I am in a season of not being like my most healthy self when it comes to, you know, productivity right now. You're just taking a red eye. Yeah, exactly. And you know, and I have like two interviews and an event today like to facilitate. But the thing is like that the what makes it better than before is that I'm aware of it. And I have an end time to it. Like I'm like, you know what, this is a season. I'm just going to go through it. I have four more weeks and then it's done. Then I'm then I'm going to not worry about this. But to your point about dopamine culture. So dopamine. So hustle culture is this idea that we have to constantly be hustling to get things, right? Dopamine culture is this like added layer to hustle culture, which adds a layer of urgency to it. So hustle culture inherently has a lot of urgency that we got to get thing, you know, move fast, break fast, learn fast like that mentality. But dopamine culture is how our technology and our system has tapped into the way our brain works. And what that's done is so we are, you know, we are driven by dopamine. We want to get a lot of dopamine because it makes us feel good. Technology has made it so that we can get that hit really fast. So everything has become extremely urgent. So we live in a in a culture of extreme urgency. And when everything feels urgent, everything feels important. And what we end up doing is we end up giving the same amount of effort to everything without prioritizing. So we see a notification on our news app, our email and our personal text, right? The priority of those three things is different. Your personal text is a little bit more important because it's like somebody I know, right? The news app maybe is not that important because like maybe it's not that relevant to you or you're not going to achieve anything by immediately finding out what's going on in the world, right? And then you've got like social media, right? So instead of prioritizing it and giving different amounts of energy to each, we end up giving the same to everything because urgency culture and the way notifications are set up, they're set up to tap into the way our brain actually process information, right? There's a so we get the same chemical response. Yeah. And so that's why we get very activated. And so dopamine culture keeps you in a perpetual state of fight or flight. Just perpetually your system is on. And that's why people are eating poorly. They don't sleep well. Like all of the systems are off internally. And what do we want to do? We want to feel good. So the brain knows if I do this thing, I'm going to immediately feel good. So you just kind of keep doing it over and over again. And the biggest thing that we lose when we are urgent and non-prioritized is depth. We lose depth in our conversations. We lose depth in our connections. We lose depth in our understanding. People only read headlines now. They don't actually read the rest of the article. So we lose a lot of depth. And over time that, you know, if you want to bring it back to productivity, if you continue to do things that lack depth, your end outcome is going to be poor. The result is going to be poor. And so I think it's really important to slow down our process. 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 Perri. 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 Ramose 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. I see the connection quite clearly though. So when you are you are the sort of the victim of this dopamine culture, that's the best way to put it because you all these apps and all these tools they've all optimized so that they give you these quick dopamine hits. So when you're doing that non-stop and you don't have that prioritization, this is how productivity becomes toxic because you're trying to do all the dopamine inducing things while simultaneous doing all the actual urgent important things. You're trying to fit it all all the time into every single day and then this is where I'm assuming there's like at some point this is where burnout or this is where just really poor health comes into play. Yeah, you're always on right? So you're perpetually on and when you're perpetually on and you're always taking in information, it's very natural for you then tap into the other emotional dynamics that impact productivity in an unhealthy way, which is comparing yourself to other people. If you're constantly getting information about other people and it's making you feel like, oh, I'm not doing enough, so you're going to compare yourself. You might say, I'm not doing this well enough and you might tap into this like anxiety induced perfectionism, right? You might start feeling ashamed about, hey, why can't I do this? They can do it and so it all just becomes like a very cyclical thing and I write about these concepts as discrete chapters but they actually overlap. 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Just go to indeed.com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed.com slash clary terms of conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need. So it almost becomes this really toxic flywheel that all feeds into each other. It's fascinating. Another hormone. So I've heard you speak about this before and I'm interested. So you've spoken about always being rushed and having an addiction to stress hormones. So and I guess the argument that people would make is I work better under stress or I work better when I'm on or something along those lines. So which stress hormone is that that's not cortisol. Is there another stress hormone that that we get addicted to or is there how does that how does why would we get addicted to stress hormones at all. And why do people feel like if they're under stress, they work better. Yeah. So the stress hormones are cortisol epinephrine or epinephrine at your adrenal system. And as addiction is not necessarily like a true addiction in the way that we can get addicted to other substances, but it is like addiction light. Right. Like it's a milder form of needing this system to be very active because in the absence of that, you might feel like something is wrong. Right. So the people who say, and I used to be like that, oh my gosh, I'd be like, oh my god, I write my best like in school. I write my best essays two nights before. Like I just might better. But the reality is you're procrastinating because you're anxious. You're anxious because you feel like it's not going to be good enough. And so what happens is in the rush, in the blinding rush of a deadline when your body is just flooded with all these hormones, you don't have time to think about that anxiety. So you push through the anxiety and maybe your work is good because it's not riddled by anxiety. But the only way you can tap into that mindset, the only way you can quiet the anxiety is if you are in that time crunch. And I think that's the piece people think makes them better workers is because they're literally, they're fighting on the front line so they don't have anything else to think about. And imagine if I had done that while writing this book, it would not have been possible to end deadline write a 60,000 word book, right? And so that's the truth is that you really have to learn to manage your emotion so that you can do good work without making yourself unhealthy. The second part of your question was like, why do we get addicted to it? Yes, yes. So I don't necessarily think that it's like a true, like I said, like it's not a true addiction mechanism in your brain. But what I do notice, both in myself and people I've worked with and in some of the readings is the absence of stress starts feeling scary for people. You know, you start feeling like I'm forgetting something. I didn't do something right because you're so your norm has become this state of anxiety and state of heightened like stress. So when you're not stressed or like something is wrong, there's something wrong, like I should be stressed. And that kind of activates the mind that I need to be, I need to feel stressed to feel like I'm being productive. So I would assume that a lot of this, so for a high achiever, a lot of their personality is wrapped up in these feelings because that's how they feel like they've gotten to where they are. I was always stressed, I was always on, but I always performed and I always sort of got the outcome that I wanted. But then this, this toxic productivity becomes, it becomes who you are. It becomes, it becomes you. It becomes your identity. So what would be your advice for somebody who is that avatar, who I think there's a lot of people that are that avatar. And again, there's people that are that avatar for a period of their week. There's a people who are that avatar for years of their life. What would be your best advice is start to remove that identity from, or maybe or reimagine a better identity because I think that that's something that can help a lot of people so that they don't so closely attribute stress and productivity and hustle culture to who they are as a person. That's a really great question. And I want to say that this is something that I definitely struggle with as well, is I used to very firmly believe that if I wasn't stressed out, then I'm not an ambitious person. I thought that if you are ambitious, the truth is, this was my truth, that if I'm ambitious, then I have to be stressed out because people who are not stressed out are just coasting through life. So we developed this very unhealthy relationship with stress as well. And we stress ourselves out in order to feel like we're doing something productive. So to people who are kind of like stuck in this mindset, I mean, there's two types of people, right? Some people firmly believe that this is a good thing and moving the needle for them is much harder, right? Because you have to kind of show them that this is actually causing a deficit in your life in some way. And a good entry point to that for somebody who is like really in the throes of it is to reconnect them with their body. So when we are hyperproductive, we're hyper optimized, we're like just doing, doing, doing, we kind of disconnect ourselves from our body. And so we don't realize when our body feels bad, when it feels good, when things are comfortable, when things are uncomfortable, we are just very disconnected. I mean, I know some people who don't even feel hunger, like they can work through the day and they don't feel hunger. And there's nothing wrong. And they're like, you know, systems in the mind that is supposed to identify it, but you kind of train yourself out of it. I worked with somebody who said that they could control their body functions, so go into the bathroom and stuff like that in times of high stress. Like, yeah, right? Super high achieving person. But you know, they just that was like this feeling that they had of like total control. But the reality is they were just disconnected from their body. So I would say reconnect with your body in some way. Whether that means just observing how your body feels in certain times of the day, you can do a mindfulness meditation, but you don't have to. It can be like like an exercise, dance, anything that puts you back in your body. Because I think that that will tip you off to when you start feeling bad. And when you notice that you feel bad enough times, you will be encouraged to look at why you feel bad, right? Like it just it'll take it might take two months, it might take three months. But once you start noticing where you start feeling bad, where your body feels like anxious or stressed or anything like that, over time, it gets hard to ignore. And then you will say, wait, I don't want to feel like this. You know, what needs to change? For other people whose identity is very infused with this with this mindset, what happens is so in toxic productivity, three things happen, right? One is you become singularly focused on outcomes. Two is everything else becomes secondary to that outcome. And three is how you feel about yourself becomes contingent on the outcome. So these three things are happening in this like toxic productivity bubble. So I would say to diversify your life, when we become singularly focused on outcome, only everything else becomes unimportant. So to people who are really struggling with the singular identity, I would ask them to diversify their life. See if you could add more things to your life that have nothing to do with outcome and productivity. See if you can hang out with your friends just for the sake of hanging out, not doing anything, not going to a concert, not going to like a Michelin star, you know, nothing like that, like just sitting and hanging out with your friends. See if you can engage in a hobby that has no purpose, except for you doing the thing. Like that way, you can start to see that you are more than your outcomes. Unfortunately, people who are really trapped in this don't actually know who they are outside of outcome and achievement. I certainly didn't and I still struggle with that, right? Like it's really hard for me to sometimes reframe myself. I wrote a whole book on it, but human beings are human beings, right? Like it's hard. It's hard to tap out of the mindset. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. Well, I was going to say and also the extreme version of this is when your achievement is so tied into your self-worth and your value that if you do feel off, you start to self-medicate or you, I mean, it's like an extra coffee or I mean, there's a lot of other things that people do to get through a day and be at their top peak performance. You can't sleep. So you're either drinking or you're taking melatonin or you're taking something before bed because you're so wired from whatever you took through the day to stay on. So then it starts to really, I mean, there's health impacts even if you didn't have all these additional horrible things going into your body. But to sort of I assume numb that feeling of oh, my body keeps crashing at four or five. Well, you just include some more substances into your daily routine. All of a sudden, well, I can keep going for an extra three or four hours. Yeah. And I'm sure that you see this a lot with people that are these high achievers. Yeah. And then also like as you're doing that, as you're manipulating your body to, you know, bend to your will instead of connecting with your body and recognizing that your body has its own rhythm, you are also isolating yourself from community, right? People who really get trapped in productivity mindset will even prune their friendships in order to see who is the most relevant to their outcome. So I've seen this happen over time. Just even in my personal life, I've seen this happen with people is they'll stop hanging out with old friends because they don't have the same lifestyle or the same ambitions or the same goals, right? Because there's this idea that you have to constantly surround yourself with people whose average you can become. And so our relationships become transactional and we become lonelier. And what do you do when you become lonely? You self-medicate, right? So it is honestly like, yes, it's like a productivity book, but it's not because I think these habits actually impact our true core humanity. It takes us away from the things that make us human, which is joy and rest and connection and community. And yes, productivity, right? All of these things have to happen, not just productivity. One thing that you spoke about in the book was being rather than doing. Can you explain that concept? When we are doing, we are outcome-oriented. And that can be in anything. So it can be in romantic relationships. You can really put like a milestone to it and you're measuring. Anytime you're measuring something, you are doing. So you see this lot a lot in the wellness space now. People are biohacking and like measuring all the things in their body. And what that does is it puts you on like an action, right? It puts you on this like path of action. Being on the other hand is literally connecting with your senses and the present moment that you are in. And there is no outcome related to it. So what does this look like? Get an example, for instance, you can eat your food and really measure everything that's going in your body, measure the macros or the microbes or whatever else people do, right? You can do that. And that that act of nourishing your body has now become an action that you're measuring progress. You feel like it's good and it's bad, it's dirty and it's clean, right? Or you could mindfully eat and you could maybe have some music playing, maybe you don't, but you are just enjoying the food, appreciating the textures, remembering like a good meal that you had that was similar, just kind of like exploring the moment that you are in. And that will be so much more nourishing than doing the measurement-based food. And now I'm not against measurement-based food, I think there's a lot of value to it. But I know people whose whole lives are like that and they are not very happy. They're kind of miserable because they're always assessing whether they ate good or bad, whether it was good enough or not, right? It's like this, like, so that's the difference between being and doing. But that's by the way, that lesson, yeah, we're talking about food, but apply that to your business. Like when you're doing the task, okay, you can do like an urgent, important eyes and how our matrix figure out what you got to do for your business, but when you're doing the task, like, is it giving you energy? Is it making you feel like you hate your life? Like, you should figure out the things that you do in a day to day. Are they, are they things that actually serve you? And I mean, there's things that I do that I enjoy doing, like, I enjoy this interview and you can't really replace that when you run a podcast. But there's a lot of pieces to a podcast that I don't enjoy doing that at some points I would do, but maybe those are things that you can outsource or that you can train somebody else on. I mean, I just think being, I love that being instead of doing an understanding what you actually enjoy doing is going to make you ironically much more productive than just doing all the things without paying attention to it. Absolutely. 100% agree because that creates a filter, right? If you know your values, if you know you're good at that's why like intention is so important for me. If you have that intention, it literally acts like a filter. It filters out the unnecessary stuff and you realize that somebody else can do this or maybe you don't even need to do it at all. Like, I was doing some stuff as part of my business at some point. And I was like, this I actually don't need to be doing like I don't have to do this. You know, and I just took it off. I and I have no regrets. I love it. If you wanted people to take one thing away from the book, what would that be? The one thing I want people to take away from this book is that our emotions are like messages. They are messengers. They are telling us something. But in this culture that we're in, emotions are often vilified or we're very divorced from them. And I would want people to kind of become introspective and connect with their emotions and learn the message that your emotions are giving you so that you can leverage it. So you can harness the powers and you can understand yourself so much better. That's the that's like my biggest takeaway because I'm a therapist and I do this work all day long of building emotional intelligence and emotional awareness. And we just live so much happier. We are lies. We come so much richer when we understand our emotions and we can manage the difficult ones. We don't have to run away from them. And the second small like part B, I would say to this is this book is an entry point into like a potential for change. I don't think we should ever go into reading a book or going listening to a podcast and think that it's this is a thing that's going to change my life. It will not. You don't even have to read the whole book, frankly, just pick the pieces that are important for you. But let this be an entry point. Let this be like a gateway for you to get to know yourself a little bit better. Like that's my biggest role. If people want to connect with you because the book's going to be on Amazon, I'm sure it's everywhere you can buy books. We'll put that in the show notes. Where else do you want to send people? Socials? Is there a website you want to send people to? Yes. So my website is my full name is trinaster.com. It has everything. It also has a bunch of resources that go along with this book like downloadables. And I do a lot of speaking. So if you're looking for a speaker like that's where you get the information as well. So my website really is the place where you can get all the info. Okay. And then you have all your socials there too. Yes. I do have my socials. Exactly. Yeah. Last question I like to ask everybody. As even you've gone through many seasons in your own life, if you could go back and tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would that be? Things don't have to move fast. Like there's a lot of value in moving slowly as well. And knowing the difference between those two things is key. For me, everything was fast. But some things are better when they're slower. That's what I would say to them.