What Mentally Strong People Do on Their Worst Days with Psychotherapist Amy Morin

Be honest: you've taken a mental health day that made you feel worse. You stayed in bed, you avoided the thing, and by evening it was still waiting for you—with less of the day left to face it. Amy Morin thinks the problem starts with the word. We treat mental health as something you either have or you don't… and framed that way, there's nothing to actually do on a bad day. Her work runs on the opposite premise: mental strength is a practice, and you build it like you'd build anything else. Amy is a psychotherapist, a clinical social worker, and the author of the bestseller 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do and the new The Mental Strength Playbook. She became a therapist at 22 and lost her mother at 23. Three years later—to the day—her husband died, and the mental health agency where she worked gave her three days of bereavement leave. She built the practices that became her book in real time, from there. In this conversation, Amy walks through exactly what she did to get mentally fit. Not as theory, but as the small, unglamorous things that got her out of bed. And I press her on the question nobody in her field says out loud: whether an industry built to help us has any incentive to finish the job. In this episode you'll learn: ➡️ Why the mental health day you take to feel better isn’t helping ➡️ How to tell whether to solve the problem or solve the feeling (most of us pick wrong) ➡️ The 15-minute daily exercise Amy's clients say lifts the weight of the world ➡️ Why "I am anxious" and "I have anxiety sometimes" build two different lives ➡️ How to compromise with yourself on a bad day instead of going all-or-nothing ➡️ Why "I'm just staying busy" is avoidance we've learned to compliment ➡️ What playing the victim actually gives you (+ why it's so hard to give up) ➡️ Simon's rule for hard days: no crying alone Amy's argument is a hopeful one: the feeling follows the action. Do one small, ordinary thing today, and you've already started. This… is A Bit of Optimism. + + + This episode is brought to you by SAP. Bring it with SAP GROW. The AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Learn more at https://SAP.com/GROW + + + If you’d like to buy Amy’s new book, The Mental Strength Playbook, head to: https://amymorinlcsw.com/books/ + + + Chapters + + + Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do. Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game. + + + Website: http://simonsinek.com/ Leaderful: https://simonsinek.com/leaderful Podcast: http://apple.co/simonsinek Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonsinek/ Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/simonsinek/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsinek Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonsinek

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  You do not want to relive any of the things that you have lived, those tragedies. What about you has changed because of those things that, deep down inside, you're glad they happened?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  So I grew up incredibly shy, but probably as a kid could have been diagnosed with selective mutism. I didn't talk for years and public speaking would have been my number one fear. I give the eulogy at my husband's funeral. And in that moment, I was like, I don't care if I embarrass myself, if I stumble over my words. I don't care how I sound. It's not about me. I've been through the worst of the worst.

• 0:35Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, negative review just doesn't do it anymore.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, go ahead and do that. I'm okay now.

• 0:40Simon Sinek?

  The mental health industry is booming. There's all kinds of therapists out there, some of them legitimate, some of them not. There's all kinds of advice being dispensed across social media. But here's a question, if all that mental health guidance we were getting was working, wouldn't there be a decline in our anxiety and depression? But there's not. It's going up. So maybe, just maybe, the advice that we're getting or the advice that we're following is wrong. That's why I invited Amy Morin on the show. She's a psychotherapist who wrote an amazing book called 13 Things That Mentally Strong People Don't Do. And her new book is The Mental Strength Playbook. She questions the advice that we're getting and the advice that we're following.

• 1:26Simon Sinek?

  She views mental fitness as something that we work towards, nothing that we'll ever achieve. But most importantly, there are very simple and practical steps that we can take to keep ourselves mentally strong regardless of the ups and downs that we all experience in our professional and personal lives. If you like this content and are interested in more, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:59Simon Sinek?

  This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. Staying at one job for a whole career used to be the norm. Now it's the exception. So when it does happen today, I want to know why. Is there something wrong with the employee? Or is the company doing something right? Given how rare a long tenure has become, I was excited to talk to David Robinson. He's been at SAP for over 20 years. And I wanted to hear what it takes to continue staying interested and inspired at one company. To learn more about SAP, the AI cloud ERP for businesses of all size, head to sap.com/grow. Amy, thanks for joining me and coming in. I appreciate it.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I'm thrilled to be here, Simon.

• 2:43Simon Sinek?

  Let's talk about mental health.

• 2:47Simon Sinek?

  I think you and I see the world very similarly. You know, I hate the term mental health.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51Simon Sinek?

  I use the term mental fitness. Mental health sounds like some goal you have to achieve, which nobody ever will. We're always falling short. We're mental fitness, like physical fitness is something you're always working on. Sometimes your head, sometimes behind, but it's a practice that you commit to your life. But you are more qualified to talk about mental health than I am. You're actually sort of trained in this stuff. It's an obsession right now. Everybody's talking about mental health. People are dispensing armchair advice all over Instagram and TikTok, which I hope is well intended. However,

• 3:23Simon Sinek?

  there's a problem with the mental health world in America today.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, despite our increased conversations with mental health.

• 3:33Simon Sinek?

  It's a real topic now.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Right. As you've noticed, we're not getting better. That over the years, it seems to be our mental health is struggling more and more.

• 3:40Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  And despite a lot of these superficial conversations, I'm not hearing from a lot of people like, I'm so grateful that the more we talk about it, the better I feel. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite. And something I'm seeing in my therapy office is people are now going on a quest to be like, if I can just figure out what happened to me when I was seven and somehow I'm going to feel better today. Or they think that mental health is something to be achieved, or something you have or something you don't. And when you think about it, like, nobody walks around and says, well, I'm physically healthy, right? Because like, physical health is not a goal.

• 4:11Simon Sinek?

  Less of a conversation, yeah.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Right. But when it comes to mental health, it's like, people think, yes, I'm mentally healthy or you're mentally ill. But the truth is, if you looked at a scale of how people are on optimal mental health, the CDC at some point said about 17% of people are probably operating at optimal mental health at any given moment. And where we fall on that scale varies throughout the day. It depends what you ate for lunch, who you've been talking to, whether you're tired. So many of these factors, yet we think you either have mental health or you don't.

• 4:39Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, I think we've also confused feelings, like having feelings, like you're sad.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:45Simon Sinek?

  You're angry, you're frustrated, you're overwhelmed, is not a mental health problem. That's just life.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:54Simon Sinek?

  The younger generations are just talking about it more.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Well, I think we're talking about feelings more, but as you say, now that we're talking about it, more people are thinking that there's a problem with their feelings. So the one I hear all the time is, well, I have anxiety. Well, we all have anxiety. And the problem is, is that an anxiety disorder is just called that. So we name it the same thing as the feeling. So then people think, well, if I'm anxious before I give a presentation, clearly I have social anxiety or some kind of anxiety disorder. And we don't separate those things. We don't talk about how to deal with those feelings. I'm finding a lot of people are like, well, what do you do when you're sad? And I think our phones and technology could be wonderful tools, but so many people are just reaching for them to escape those emotions. And we're not learning how to tolerate them and work through them.

• 5:39Simon Sinek?

  So in your practice, do you teach people how to feel? Do you teach people how to have emotions? And I think your insight there, which is if the mental health industry was working.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:50Simon Sinek?

  There would be less problems and less anxiety and less of everything. But the trend is going up. So either the mental health industry doesn't care to get you better because it's in, there's a profit motive to keep you sick. Or there's a misunderstanding of what it is and we don't know how to ask for help or what help looks like. Probably some combination of both, I would imagine. So can you tell me a story of somebody who, from your practice, who doesn't see you anymore because they came with a problem and it's fixed, quote unquote? It's better. They're good.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So fortunately, I can think of many people over the years. But if I were to think of like a recent one, I had somebody that came for depression.

• 6:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And it was really clear.

• 6:35Simon Sinek?

  And they were, they were actually depressed.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:37Simon Sinek?

  They weren't just sad.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Right. Because what happens a lot these days is people come in and they're trying to like optimize their mental health, right? Like, oh, I have an avoidant boyfriend, so I need to work on my attachment issues. Well, that's not a mental illness. If we're talking about true mental illness, like major depression or generalized anxiety, that's much different. So when somebody came in, he had definitely had major depression. And it was a matter of, let's talk about what strategies work for depression. Sometimes it's exercise, it's increasing your social circle. It's about being more active and participating in daily things, managing your diet. A lot of strategies like that, coping skills. How do you deal with a bad day when you have depression versus what does it mean to just be sad? And so I'm a cognitive behavioral therapist by trade, which means I help people

• 7:24Speaker 01

  shape the way that they think, which then shifts the way that you feel. And then you also change your behavior and it creates a more positive feedback loop.

• 7:32Simon Sinek?

  So how did you help him change the way he thought about himself?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  So a lot of what he was struggling with was the, the automatic thoughts that popped into his head. So somebody doesn't call you back. When you're battling depression, sometimes it's because I'm worthless, because people don't like me, because it's all my fault. Or if you don't get picked for a project at work, it's because I'm not good enough. And when you really peel back the layers about what kinds of things people are thinking, often boils down to that deep rooted belief of somehow I'm flawed and not good enough and people don't like me. And when his depressive episodes would get activated, he had a couple of them throughout his life, but it just got kicked into high gear where he would assume everything was because he was a flawed human being. And the more he would think about that, the less he would participate in life.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  And the less he would participate in life, yeah, the worse he felt.

• 8:22Simon Sinek?

  And so how did you turn it around?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  So we would take a look at those thoughts, like literally, if somebody didn't call you back, that's one option. Maybe they actually don't like you, but what are 10 more? Or what can you tell yourself when you wake up in the morning? Something he battled was on a really depressed day, he didn't want to go to work. Well, you could stay home, but what happens when you stay home, the typical quote unquote, mental health day? Staying in bed doesn't reduce your depression, right? So what can you do when you wake up and you think, actually, I'd like to stay home today? What can you then tell yourself? And so for him, it was a list of the top 10 reasons why you should go to work when you don't want to. And he would leave it on his nightstand. So when he would wake up in the morning and think, ah, if I just stayed in bed today, I'd feel better.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  He'd read over that list, try to talk himself into, yep, I don't want to go to work, but it's good for me and I'm going to do it anyway.

• 9:10Simon Sinek?

  I love this because there is an irony in all of our solutions, which again, well intended and, you know, supportive environment, I need a mental health day.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:20Simon Sinek?

  And I'm going to stay home and it'll make me feel worse.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:24Simon Sinek?

  Now, you know, if somebody's lying and they go to the beach, I mean, more power to them. That's probably really good. That's a real mental health day.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:30Simon Sinek?

  Like play hooky and go to the beach. That's awesome.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:33Simon Sinek?

  But there is a great irony in this, which is I need, I'm overwhelmed at work. I need a mental health day, so I'm going to stay home, sit in bed, eat Haagen Dazs and watch movies and feel worse at the end of the day. Why are we choosing solutions that we think will help? That actually either do nothing or make it worse?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  A lot of it's about what's going to make me feel better right now. So for somebody who says, I don't want to go to work, well, sure, at 9:00 AM, when you're watching TV, you're still sleeping. Maybe feel a little better than if you're in that boring meeting in the office or you're faced with a pile of paperwork. Of course, though, that coping strategy creates longer term problems. The avoidance doesn't make it go away. So on Tuesday, when you wake up in the morning, you don't suddenly feel like, I can't wait to go to work today. It often becomes more difficult. But I think it's really about, a lot of the coping skills we reach for sometimes make us feel better in the moment, but then create bigger problems in the long term.

• 10:29Simon Sinek?

  Let's scale it back a little bit. So somebody who's clinically depressed, that's a diagnosis.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:33Simon Sinek?

  I mean, that's a thing. But what we're talking about, I think, is a, is the more pervasive feeling that people have that I am dealing with my mental health or I have mental health challenges, which is there's no diagnosable issue there.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:49Simon Sinek?

  There's, you know, the ups and downs of life. Some of the examples you're talking about, you know, you're overwhelmed, you don't feel like going to work. I'm like, wait a minute, I sometimes wake up and I don't want to go to work. Do I have mental health issues?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:02Simon Sinek?

  You know, and now I'm diagnosing myself because I hear that somebody else who does have mental fitness challenges.

• 11:10Simon Sinek?

  Again, I'm so fascinated. It's like, why is your business booming?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:14Simon Sinek?

  It's like, it shouldn't. I wouldn't want it to be, no offense. I like, I want you to do very well. I want you to hang a sign out the door saying, I'll help you with your mental health and nobody knocks, you know?

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yes. And of course, that would be the dream. And I think, say, 10, 15 years ago, it was really about if you had a mental illness, so your doctor might send you to therapy.

• 11:34Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  In today's world of social media and influencers who are often talking about these issues and using labels incorrectly. And we're talking so much about mental health.

• 11:45Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  That people are going to therapy, not because they're sick, but because they're, say, have a narcissistic ex-boyfriend that was gaslighting them. And so they say, gosh, you know, I'm dealing with this. I need to talk to somebody about it. And then the problem with my industry is, is your insurance company is going to pay me a pretty small amount to see you. But if I charge you out of pocket, I can charge a lot more money. So it used to be that therapists only saw people with a mental illness because they were getting reimbursement from insurance companies. Now a lot of therapists are charging a private pay. So you don't necessarily have to have a mental illness. You might just be dealing with something that you saw on social media.

• 12:22Simon Sinek?

  And I know I'm getting to get in trouble for this, but I'd like you to react to it, even if I get in trouble for it. There's a financial disincentive for a therapist to get you better.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Simon Sinek?

  Because you, most therapists don't make passive income. They only make active income. I have to work to make money. And so getting new clients is hard. Keeping clients is easier. If you come in and say, I need your help for X, then we're going to keep this going. I remember my sister, I've talked about it. We did a podcast episode on it. She, she went through a real tragedy. She lost her husband at a very young age and you can relate.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:54Simon Sinek?

  And ironically, she was seeing a therapist prior because she was dealing with anxiety that she might lose somebody. And it just weirdly happened. And so she had the therapist already. And then like, she did all the other things as well, in addition to the therapy, which, you know, she pushed herself to go out. She spent time with friends. She spent time with family. She eventually got back on the horse and like, really felt good. And she said to her therapist, I think, you know what, I've, this has been, you've been amazing. And I think, I think I'm good. I'm, I'm done. And the therapist said, I don't think you should stop. And my sister was like, no, no, I feel really good. And I've like, felt really good for, like it's, I've got less to talk to you about.

• 13:36Simon Sinek?

  And the therapist was like, no, no, I think you're being foolish. I think you should keep going. And I was like, and by the way, good therapist.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:42Simon Sinek?

  Right? But the, where my sister is, I says, I'm healthy. I don't need the therapy. What the therapist hears is, I'm losing money. I'm losing a client rather than yippee for me. I helped someone get better. Right? And so are therapists part of the problem of our inability to move through some of the struggles we're having? We're going to get a lot of flack on this.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Well, certainly there, certainly that's.

• 14:09Simon Sinek?

  Not all therapists.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:10Simon Sinek?

  But I understand that. It's not fun losing a client. No matter what you do, if you work for an ad agency or a law firm, like nobody wants to lose clients.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Right. And certainly that's an example of one, right? And, and there is the pressure to say, I need an income. So how do I keep people coming back?

• 14:28Simon Sinek?

  It's not, it's not nefarious. It's not evil.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:31Simon Sinek?

  It's just like, you, you know, they may genuinely want to help people, but you keep them on the.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:36Simon Sinek?

  Keep them on the books.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  And on the flip side of that, I mean, we get plenty of people too, who'll be like, you know, I'm better. I don't need to come back to therapy. And we'll have that honest conversation of, well, maybe you have bipolar and you're having a good week, but you're not cured. And to at least educate them on, you know, or how would you know if you needed to come back in the future? What do you anticipate next week? And you'll space out your sessions. Maybe, go ahead, we'll see you again next month instead of next week. And we'll see how you're doing. But if you need me in the meantime, you could call.

• 15:03Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  So that when people hit the dip, say in their mood, that they're still prepared and we don't leave them high and dry. However, obviously there are cases where therapists will say, you know, if I keep you on a little longer, if I can convince you, then that's one less person I have to go find and bring in.

• 15:25Simon Sinek?

  Instead of doing a straight ad read, we're pioneering something called an ad with authenticity. We want our ads to have valuable content for you, the listener. And this ad with authenticity is brought to you by SAP. Having a long tenure at one company gets a bad rap these days, like it means you've stopped growing or something. But David Robinson, he's been at SAP for over 20 years and he'd argue it's the total opposite. He's growing more now than ever. Maybe he's on to something. I, I've worked with you guys in the past and I've always been impressed with the tenure of people and the pride that people have.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:06Simon Sinek?

  And I think young people confuse, they, they're like, I would never stay at a company for a long time. Why would you ever? If you feel like the company has your back, if you feel like the company is trying to help you grow, you won't actually notice the time pass.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  It should not be seen as a negative to be at a place like SAP for this long. If you're moving quickly and you have two to three year stints at, at technology firms, that's great. If you're able to be at the same firm for 20 years, that's great. It's about taking the very best of those different types of experiences. You're showcasing the value of either having lots of experiences at many places or the experience that you have gathered over time at one place.

• 16:46Simon Sinek?

  If you choose a strategy of jumping, you choose a strategy of staying. I think the standard should be, or has to be, am I growing?

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would agree with that. And it's, it's healthy because it creates that diversity of thought, diversity of experience. And that has to do with not just how tenured you are, but how many opportunities have you been presented over time? And how well have you taken advantage of those opportunities?

• 17:09Simon Sinek?

  Yes.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  That's a good standard.

• 17:17Simon Sinek?

  Let's get personal, if you don't mind.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 17:18Simon Sinek?

  One of the things I think you, that makes you so qualified for this conversation is not because you're a trained clinician. What makes you so qualified is you've gone through it. You lost your mother unexpectedly. A healthy woman who, how did she die?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  She had a brain aneurysm that ruptured.

• 17:34Simon Sinek?

  Just out of the blue, right?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:35Simon Sinek?

  Young, young woman, right?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yep, 51.

• 17:37Simon Sinek?

  And then you lose your husband at a young age?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was 26.

• 17:42Simon Sinek?

  Just heart attack?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Heart attack at 26.

• 17:44Simon Sinek?

  Healthy guy?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yep.

• 17:46Simon Sinek?

  Well, he lost his father before that, right?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  I got remarried a couple of years later.

• 17:49Simon Sinek?

  Oh, right.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And as soon as I got remarried, my father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

• 17:53Simon Sinek?

  Right. And so like, you have every reason to be depressed and fear, have a genuine fear of falling in love. Or loving anyone, forget about falling, loving anyone, because everybody you love seems to fall away, seems to die.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:07Simon Sinek?

  That there's a very good reasons to, to not want to get out of bed in the morning.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:13Simon Sinek?

  And so I think what makes you the most credible person to have this argument is that it is not an academic argument. It's that you found a way to find happiness, to be mentally fit and followed, and I think fair to say, an untraditional route based on the current standards. How did you do it?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  It was a lot of trial and error, a lot of work.

• 18:37Simon Sinek?

  Why didn't you go the traditional route?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Depends what you mean by traditional route.

• 18:44Simon Sinek?

  All the things we've been discussing.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:46Simon Sinek?

  You know, sort of not wanting to go to work or taking your mental health days. And by the way, everybody would have given them to you and gladly and felt supportive of you because what you went through was awful.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Simon Sinek?

  So at any one of those periods, I'm sure, you know, whoever you worked for at the time would have been like, yes, yes, yes. Take all the time you need. Right? Because that makes sense. I don't know if you were in therapy at the time.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  So funnily enough, I worked for a, a mental health agency. I was a therapist. I was 22 when I became a therapist. I was 23 when my mom passed away and I was able to take two weeks off from work. It was just so sudden and unexpected, even though I was an adult. And then when my husband died, it was the three year anniversary to the day of when my mother had died. And I had three days of bereavement time as a therapist at the mental health agency.

• 19:31Simon Sinek?

  Mental health agency gave you three days off?

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 19:35Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  And I.

• 19:37Simon Sinek?

  The irony is thick.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Applied for short-term disability and got denied because they don't cover grief. And.

• 19:44Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Was able to go back and see my primary care doctor and she diagnosed me with acute stress disorder, which is the precursor to PTSD, because I was there when my husband died. And that bought me two months of short-term disability. And then I had to go back to work. It really wasn't a choice. I didn't have a fallback plan. I had a mortgage to pay. My husband and I had already bought a house. I don't have wealthy family who could say, you know, we'll pay your mortgage while you. And he and I had bought the house, obviously assuming we were going to have two streams of income. So not only did I have to go back to work, but if I didn't want to move and I didn't want to lose my house, I was going to have to figure out,

• 20:26Speaker 01

  what else am I going to do? And I had encountered this other woman who had to move shortly after she lost her fiance. And the thought of packing up my house in like the lowest moments of my life and then having to also figure out where am I going to live seemed more unbearable than saying, I will work two jobs. I will figure this out. And that's, I guess, what got me up in the morning is I said, I don't want my life to get worse. I want it to get better. And as a therapist, I had seen what happens to people if they went through tough times and they didn't like work through the pain. So many people like bought into that lie of time heals. And they would come in 10 years after something bad happened and they'd say, Amy,

• 21:07Speaker 01

  how come I don't feel any better? It's been 10 years since I lost somebody or 10 years since this traumatic thing happened and my life isn't better. And I didn't want to be that person who said, yeah, I'm now 36, 10 years after I lost my husband and my life still isn't good. And so it was a choice every day of what am I going to do? What kind of a life do I want to build? How do I let myself feel awful and go through all of the pain, but also then how do I have some hope? That life could get better? And what do I want the next chapter to look like?

• 21:36Simon Sinek?

  Okay. There's a lot to unpack there.

• 21:41Simon Sinek?

  How do you find hope when the, the genuine sadness and little d depression?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:54Simon Sinek?

  Are real. And I say little d, meaning not a clinical diagnosis, dealing with a traumatic event.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:59Simon Sinek?

  And.

• 22:01Simon Sinek?

  The stress of having to like have two jobs, which is not a good option. It's the lesser of two evils. It's the less bad option.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:12Simon Sinek?

  Rather than packing up a house. How did you envision? How did you imagine hope? Like, where did the hope come from?

• 22:19Speaker 01

  I think I had a strong faith and I believed, okay, there was a God and some reason this happened to me. And perhaps there's a way to get through it. And I also thought, you know, maybe this is my opportunity. Like, I can either rise to the occasion and do my best, or I can just stay crying on the bathroom floor. And 10 years from now, be like, yeah, I'm not feeling any better. Just felt like that was a choice in life of, do I want to make the best of this terrible hand I was dealt? Not to say, gee, I'm grateful that this happened. I'm not all these years later. I'm not grateful that I went through that. But on the other hand, it felt like, okay, like for whatever reason, this is the lot you were given.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  And you can do this. If you're going to try to rise to the occasion, turn this into a comeback, try to make something of your life. It's now or never. And I think not having that luxury of saying, I'm going to wait a while or have family that's going to bail me out. Or I'm going to take a year off really made me say, do it. And I did it.

• 23:22Simon Sinek?

  And let's be clear, you do need time to do nothing and to grieve. You know, we're not saying like, on day one, this is the attitude.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 23:28Simon Sinek?

  I mean, there is a time period.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:30Simon Sinek?

  Where you do grieve, you do stay in bed.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:34Simon Sinek?

  You embrace sadness. You don't have to be functional. And I'm assuming it's slightly different for everyone, but at some point, not two, three, four, five years later, way before that, there's a choice that's made of, I gotta move through this.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:48Simon Sinek?

  And it is a choice.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  It is. And early on, there's that tendency to stay busy. We even like compliment people when somebody's going through something tough and you say like, how are you doing? They say, I'm just staying busy. And we're like, that's great.

• 24:00Simon Sinek?

  That's avoidant, that's avoidant though, right?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:02Simon Sinek?

  Distracting yourself.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And right. And that, that's a skill to use. Sometimes if I were going into my therapy office to be a therapist, I needed to distract myself sometimes. And I'm really sad. I have therapy clients coming in in 10 minutes, distracting myself. It's a wonderful skill in that moment, but if I did that in my entire life, I'd still be stuck in that place. And so I think it was about allowing myself to be sad when I could. Come home from work and it's okay to just eat a TV dinner on the couch and let yourself cry. And then having those other times where I'd say, okay, I'm coming into the weekend. I have zero plans, nothing going on. I could stay in bed all weekend, or maybe I'll just stay in bed until a little later on Saturday morning. But then I'm going to get up and I'm going to say, what else am I going to do with my day? Go for a walk, call somebody, go do something.

• 24:46Simon Sinek?

  I love this because it's not an all or nothing plan.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:49Simon Sinek?

  You're not saying, you can't stay in bed, but you're also not saying you, you are allowed to stay in bed. What you're saying is, you know what? I'll meet you halfway.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Simon Sinek?

  I'm gonna stay in bed a little longer, but then at 11, up and at 'em.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Simon Sinek?

  There's an element of grace in there, right? Which is you're not giving in to your desires to do nothing. You're compromising with your desires to do nothing.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Right. Cause there's a balance to be had between, yes, I'm going to sit with this feeling for a while. But then also I have the ability to change how I feel. If I stayed in bed all day on a bad day, it's not like at 2:00 PM, I'm like, oh, I feel great. But if I push myself at 11:00 AM to get up and go for a walk, just changing my environment and doing something different can shift my mood. And grief is all about that, finding that balance of, okay, do I have the space and the time and the ability to let myself be sad right now? When I was at work, I couldn't do that. In between therapy clients, I'm not going to cry in the 10 minutes that I had. I had to be functional, but in the evenings, the weekends, I could say, yeah, I'm just gonna do something sad.

• 25:46Simon Sinek?

  Is that doable? Can human beings schedule time for feelings? Cause it does sneak up on you sometimes.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  It certainly does, right? I'll be in aisle seven of the grocery store and I'll see one of Lincoln's favorite foods. And I think, oh, how sad, I could be crying in the grocery store. And it's, it's not something that I've scheduled or anything like that. But on the other hand, when that emotion comes over me, if I'm about to walk into a meeting with a therapy client, I can say, this isn't helpful right now. I'll let myself feel that later. What am I going to do right now? And it might be, I'm going to do something that makes me happy. I'm going to call somebody real quick who is going to tell me something uplifting. I'm gonna open up my phone and look at happy pictures for a few minutes to try to boost my mood so that I can function right now in the moment.

• 26:27Simon Sinek?

  So I want to be clear why I want to talk to you. I love extreme examples because in extreme examples, the, the lessons are just more, they're just easier to see, they're clearer. And I consider what you've gone through and how you've healed and, and protected your mental fitness, a pretty extreme example. Getting one of those things is pretty awful. And just getting battered over the course of a very short period of time is, is unfair. At least I think that's probably how it felt. The reason I, I think these things are so important, because if these techniques work for you, then they can work for somebody who's struggling with a difficult boss or thinks that they're unattractive and nobody wants to date them, or they're just not good enough for a promotion.

• 27:07Simon Sinek?

  You know, some of those sort of more everyday anxieties that we're dealing with, that people may confuse with mental health challenges, or it feels like a mental health challenge. I think the thing that I'm really, I'm most struck by and drawn to is this very difficult thing to do. And that's what I want to talk about next, this very difficult thing to do, to lean into the effort. To lean into like, when you're lazy and don't want to go to the gym, when you don't want to see people and you're feeling pretty antisocial, like, how do you change your mindset to force yourself? And that's kind of what it is sometimes.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:41Simon Sinek?

  To force yourself to go do the thing that you really, really, really don't want to do. And I think this speaks to other things that we do in our lives, having the difficult conversation that you really don't want to have. You know, leaning into a tension that you really don't want to lean into because avoidance and ignoring and ghosting and pretending or quitting is just easier, which is why I think it's a common strategy. Because in the short term, it works just fine.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:10Simon Sinek?

  It absolutely works, you know, ghosting the ex after dating them for six months. For the next month, two weeks, absolutely perfect strategy.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:22Simon Sinek?

  Dot, dot, dot. So please wax philosophical about both those things, which is what are, we understand the short term benefits of some of those strategies. What are the long-term liabilities? Why don't we recommend those things? The leaning out, the giving up, the not having the conversation, the ghosting. Why do we not advocate those things if they work in the short term?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Because those things don't go away. So a lot of times we forget to differentiate between like solving the problem or versus solving how we feel about the problem. So if I have a, a stack of bills on the table, maybe it makes me anxious to sit down and, and open the envelopes and pay the bills. But if I don't address them, then obviously the bills are still going to be there tomorrow. My tendency might be, yeah, but I feel anxious right now, so I'm going to address how I feel and I'm going to solve my feeling. So then I'll just push that away. I'm going to go watch some Netflix and pretend it doesn't exist. And I think when we tackle issues in our life from the wrong angle, we don't ask ourselves often enough, do I need to solve how I feel or solve the problem itself? And when we take the wrong approach, everything gets messed up.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  And sometimes we do it the other way around. So somebody will say, my husband drinks too much. Well, in that case, you might want to say, okay, that causes me some anxiety, but what is it I try to solve? Well, I tell him not to, I pour the alcohol out. We're trying to solve the problem and it's not our problem to solve. As opposed to, I'm going to learn how to manage my anxiety about this. Or I'm going to try to approach this from something I can control, which is my own behavior. Instead, I'm going to focus on what I can't control, which is how somebody else behaves. Because if I can control you, then I don't have to control my feelings.

• 30:01Simon Sinek?

  Okay, I have to re, I have to highlight this and double click this. This is so good, right? This is so good, which is when we have feelings for things we can control. I think your bills example is a great example. We work to solve the feeling and not solve the problem, which is, and, and I think breakups are the same and stuff like, we solve the feeling. I want out, check. But we don't solve the problem of closure and narrative and clinging on to things. And all you do is talk about every time you go out with your friends to the point they don't want to hear it anymore. So I love this. If you can solve the problem, solve the problem, not the feelings. And if you can't solve the problem, literally it's out of your control. Manage your feelings because you can't solve the problem. This is, this is huge.

• 30:43Simon Sinek?

  And that confusion, it's like light bulbs are popping up for me when people talk about their mental health challenges. So we've talked about how you found hope. We talked about confusing our feelings for solutions and how we have to solve one and manage the other. Narrative.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Simon Sinek?

  The stories we tell ourselves. This is probably one of the biggest ones of all. And when I turn on social media, what I hear is people giving advice, reinforcing that you can tell yourself these stories that actually aren't helping you.

• 31:17Simon Sinek?

  And perpetuating, to your point, what we made right at the beginning, which is, with all this mental health advice we're getting, why isn't mental health getting better? Mindset is essential.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:30Simon Sinek?

  And faith in something, belief in something, whether it's God, or a positive future, or my friends, or my family. Can you tell me the story you told yourself when you were in despair and you were shattered? What was the story? And then how did you change to the new story when the time was right to start leaning into healing rather than mourning?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Oh, good question. I think for several years, the story was kind of like, isn't this a tragedy that you, in your twenties, lost your two favorite people? And life will probably never be good again. And there was a time where I believed that. And I thought, oof, how do you make life good again? And it felt like I was going through the motions. And at some point, I thought, or, this could be an amazing comeback story of the new life that I'm going to create. But in order to do that, like, I better get out of bed and go do those things. I better figure out what would I want the next chapter to look like? And it's not just going to land on my table. I'm gonna have to actually create a new life.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  And so I started to do things. I got a motorcycle license and a motorcycle. And I thought, oh, this is different. And Lincoln and I have been foster parents. So it was a question of, do I still want to be a foster mom if I'm by myself? Like, which things do I want to continue in my life? And what things do I want to give up? And ultimately decided I'll be a single foster parent at some point. And I did that. And I wanted my story, the next chapter of my story, to be of somebody who had been through tough things, yet created this beautiful life. And was able to go out and do incredible things that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise. And while it wasn't the life I chose, it was like a new life that I created, despite what I'd been through.

• 33:23Simon Sinek?

  Why? I mean, I don't mean to be flippant about it.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:26Simon Sinek?

  But like, why did you want that to be your story?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Because I think the alternative felt like, I'm 26. Am I gonna just sit around till I'm 86 and think, oof, that's a long life to live? And I just felt like I had two choices. I can either create something completely different from what I had, what I had hoped for, or I could just keep clinging to, isn't it sad I didn't get the life I wanted?

• 33:52Simon Sinek?

  I love this idea of, I'm gonna make the best comeback story ever, which is different from, I'm going to sabotage my work, my ex-boyfriend, my ex-girlfriend's life, so I can feel better.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:05Simon Sinek?

  There's an accountability, which is, it's gonna be my comeback story about how I choose to live my life, as opposed to ruining their life so I can feel better. That's not the comeback story.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:14Simon Sinek?

  The problem is, the mindset of, I'm gonna make this the greatest comeback ever, could go in slightly different directions.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. And, and I think the comeback story sometimes isn't about, you get rejected for something. Well, maybe, maybe you're never going to be a famous actor, or never you're gonna do the thing that you wanted, but your comeback story could still be, I did this other thing and still created a wonderful life for myself in a different way.

• 34:38Simon Sinek?

  I love this, which is, if you're writing your own movie, like, if you're just unhappy the whole time, it's a boring movie.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:48Simon Sinek?

  Right? Like, all judgment aside, that's a boring movie.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:52Simon Sinek?

  But what we want to watch a movie about is somebody who's gone through it, and takes it upon themselves, and inspires us, the viewers, and makes us sort of find a way through the difficulty. And again, yours is an extreme example, but you lose a job, you lose a relationship, something just doesn't go the way you want it to. The project doesn't hit the numbers that you were hoping for. I mean, there's a million things that we can beat ourselves up about, but I'm gonna make this the greatest comeback story, which goes, then I want to ask you, it's an uncomfortable question, and I apologize for that.

• 35:26Simon Sinek?

  However, you do not want to relive any of the things that you have lived, those tragedies.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:32Simon Sinek?

  Clearly. You wish they'd never happened, and you definitely do not want any of them to happen again, nor do you wish them upon anyone else.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:42Simon Sinek?

  However, what about you has changed because of those things that, deep down inside, even though the words are uncomfortable, you're glad they happened?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Oh, good question, too. So I grew up incredibly shy, and I mean, socially anxious for sure, but probably as a kid, could have been diagnosed with selective mutism. I didn't talk for years. And I really had no desire, college, grad school even, I really didn't talk much at all. And I surrounded myself with people who loved to talk, and that made it really easy to be the quiet person in the room.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  And I think I would have.

• 36:23Simon Sinek?

  Good strategy.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  And I think I would have stayed that way. I had friends who talked for me to this day. If we go to a restaurant, they will still ask, like, for something for me, my childhood friends, my sister. And that worked really well. And public speaking would have been my number one fear. I give the eulogy at my husband's funeral. And in that moment, I was like, I don't care if I embarrass myself, if I stumble over my words, I don't care how I sound, it's not about me. It's about a couple of stories about him that I wanted people to hear.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  And let me tell you now, I'm like, oh, public speaking, not the biggest fear in the world anymore. And I can do it without being so concerned about how I look, how I sound. So many of my insecurities are no longer there. I think, well, I've been through the most painful things I would have ever imagined, losing two of my favorite people. Go ahead, insult me. Like, it's not going to sting. I've been through the worst of the worst.

• 37:20Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, negative review just doesn't do it anymore.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, go ahead and do that. I'm okay now. But years ago, those little things would have been something I dwelled on, and I would have thought about, and I would have rehashed and ruminated on, even as a therapist. It would have really bothered me, but I can say now, I don't really sweat those small things anymore.

• 37:38Simon Sinek?

  Again, I'll ask the question, sort of, I never want those things to happen again, but I'm glad they happened because?

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Because I am now a much more brave and confident person who was able to say, I'm not going to let life be passive, but I'm gonna create the very best life that I can for myself. And I take more risks. I'm the kind of person who says, if it doesn't work out, that's okay. Like, I don't need to have all the answers, because I'll figure it out along the way. And I wasn't like that before.

• 38:13Simon Sinek?

  This is one of the things I think leaning into hardship is, I think, the greatest gift, which is, life is balanced, always. Nature abhors a vacuum and seeks equilibrium whenever possible. And so, all good things have some sort of cost associated with them. You know, congratulations, you're fabulously wealthy, and you have no relationship with your children, right?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:37Simon Sinek?

  Like, whatever the cost is. And for some people, those costs are worth it. It's not for me to judge, right? But there is a cost for the things we get. But there's also benefits to the things we lose. My practice is to always, I always play the equation. So when something great happens to me, and I'm like, I'm the best, I'm amazing, look how awesome I am, I always remind myself, okay, what was the cost for this? It keeps me humble, but also just reminds me, don't take it for granted. And if you want this again, then you're gonna have to pay that. You know, there's no entitlement here. So I always remind myself that. And when bad things happen, even though it sucks in the moment, and I can't play this

• 39:18Simon Sinek?

  game right after it happens, it's too soon, I have to allow for anger, or frustration, or sadness, or whatever the feeling I have towards the thing is. And at some reasonable period of time, say, okay, what am I grateful for here?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:33Simon Sinek?

  To me, my mental fitness is good, because I keep that, that equation balanced at all times. Let's talk about victim.

• 39:46Simon Sinek?

  I'd love you to wax philosophical based on the clients you see, but also just, you're a consumer of, of the world and social media. I see it more, and maybe I'm just more sensitive to it, because mental health is such a, a topic, and, and everybody, they confuse mental health problems with having feelings. But this idea of being the victim, playing the victim, I spoke to a, a social worker recently, and they said something that really surprised me. I wrote about this, they, they said something that really surprised me. They said, playing the victim is very powerful and feels great. Let's not confuse playing the victim and being a victim. Being a victim is when you are targeted by someone, they do something to you, abuse, a crime, something like that. Or you are the victim of some hurricane, you are a victim.

• 40:31Simon Sinek?

  Then there's that being a victim. Then you are playing the victim. The world is doing this to me, that person is doing this to me, when, you know, my boss is out to get me, which, it does exist, but I wouldn't say it's the majority of the time that somebody's targeting somebody. Wax philosophical, if I'm overreacting, or there seems to be a correlation with the mental health challenges that so many people are facing today with the...

• 40:59Simon Sinek?

  Is it insensitive to call it a trend of playing the victim?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. We see it more on social media than ever in terms of relationship ends. Well, it's because my ex was a narcissist, right?

• 41:13Simon Sinek?

  It's amazing how many exes are narcissists.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Suddenly, right?

• 41:17Simon Sinek?

  Like, I know narcissism is a diagnosable thing. And what percentage of the population are narcissists, do we know? It's probably pretty small.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  It is tiny.

• 41:25Simon Sinek?

  You know, 5% maybe?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:27Simon Sinek?

  That are diagnosable narcissists. But my goodness, there's an explosion of narcissism.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Exactly, because it feels better to say it's somebody else's fault, right? I was a victim of somebody who took advantage. And whenever we get into this victimhood, it correlates with self pity and just thinking, I don't have the skills, tools and resources to get through something. We underestimate ourselves, we overestimate a challenge, we overestimate how difficult things were. We tell ourselves that story of, well, I didn't have a choice. I couldn't make things better then, and I still don't have a choice now. And the more that we get stuck in that cycle, the more we find excuses to say, and so I don't have to change. So whether it's I call a friend and I just complain about my boss all day long to my friend. So they're like, wow, you shouldn't be treated like this. This must be awful to be you.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, that's right. It does feel awful to be me.

• 42:19Simon Sinek?

  Feels awesome.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Right. It's empowering for a moment to think, and I'm justified to stay stuck. And that's what we say then, people just stay stuck. And I'll see it in my therapy office. People come in and they say, you know, this is awful. Here's my situation. And they don't really want to solve any of the problems in their life. They want to come back next week and tell me again and see how awful it is. And there's definitely value in talking about your feelings, being heard to say, yes, that is awful. It's unfair that you're in this situation. But some people just want to stay stuck there.

• 42:49Simon Sinek?

  Why do people want to stay stuck? We're not seeking help, we're seeking validation for our narrative.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:54Simon Sinek?

  And if my narrative is validated, then I must be right. So I'm going to stay here because it helps me feel better, kinda.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Right. And it's uncomfortable.

• 43:03Simon Sinek?

  I don't have a problem with people being the victim in the short term.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:05Simon Sinek?

  Because it's like mourning, it's like anger, it's a feeling, it's a venting. I don't have a problem with people venting. You want to call somebody, I hate my boss, I hate work. Healthy venting is a good thing. We're not talking about that.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:15Simon Sinek?

  We're talking about, okay, got it. The relation, it does feel better when the relationship collapses to blame the other person for it. And you should do that. But there's a point at which, again, okay, now I need to like, take some accountability. Is that really what it is? Is playing the victim easier because then I don't actually have to look at myself and be like, you know what, I'm not such a great catch. You know what? I wasn't such a great partner in my relationship. Eh, maybe I poured gas on this fire, you know? Is that the reason we don't like it?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the other person was at fault, so therefore I'm the victim versus, ooh, how did I get there? And let's say you were in a really bad relationship. Well, like, what were the steps along the way that made you stay? Or there had been some red flags along the way. What was it about me that decided, but I'll tolerate it one more day? I'll stay in this situation for, for longer. And then I get mad at the end and I'm resentful. So I think it's really about acknowledging, what's my personal responsibility? And if I want to do something different, I'm going to have to be uncomfortable. You will usually choose familiar pain over the unknown. Every single time, unless we get proactive about it, like, I know what this is and I'm used to it.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  So therefore I'll keep tolerating it versus, okay, I'm going to try something else. It's going to be painful as well. And I don't know what that pain is going to feel like or how painful it's going to be, but I'm willing to try.

• 44:38Simon Sinek?

  I know somebody who is very attracted to very wealthy men.

• 44:43Simon Sinek?

  And some of them are wonderful human beings and there are great connections. And every time she starts dating, they're always the perfect person, which we all have that when we first meet somebody, which is great. And it doesn't work out. And, uh, and then she blames them. And I see this pattern. I've known her for a long time and it's the same pattern over and over and over and over again. And when you talk about staying in a relationship, and I've been there, I mean, I'm, this is not, again, there's no judgment here because I've, I've done the same thing. I've been in something and I knew all the red flags. It's like, it was fricking semaphore every day of my life. Somebody's standing in front of me waving red flags. I'm just like, yeah, but hold on. Just look how hot they are. Look at their lifestyle that I love being a part of, or look at their wealth.

• 45:28Simon Sinek?

  Hold on a second, there's so many other things that I superficially prefer. Let's just not look, you know? But it's so much easier to talk about how they were toxic and they were this and they were that. But deep down inside, I knew I shouldn't have been dating them and I stayed in it because, let's be honest, I was a superficial ass.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:44Simon Sinek?

  And I wanted all that stuff. And until I can take accountability for the fact that that's what I was attracted to, and I wasn't really attracted to the person, you know? I'm going to keep repeating this pattern.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:55Simon Sinek?

  How do we do that though? I mean, it's, it's all finding good for you and me to sit in an armchair and talk about all these. But like, how do we break our patterns? Like, what practical steps can we take to learn how to be accountable? To learn how to stop playing the victim when it feels so good?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  So it starts with first recognizing the patterns. And most people are like, you know what, my life isn't going very well and struggling to really figure that out. Or I've had some bad relationships. I'd sit down and I'd write it down. What are we looking at? Maybe you've had five relationships that ended abruptly. The other person ghosted you five times. Well, let's take a look. Maybe might there be something else that's going on? Are you attracted to a certain kind of person? Anything we can get out of our heads and put on a piece of paper helps us see things differently. We see it more clearly. So if you can get out a journal and do some writing, and I'm talking about writing by hand, that affects our brain differently than when we're typing, causes us to slow things down and really look at it. And to just identify, like, what are some patterns in my life? And then you might go back too and think, well, when did this start, right?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I don't think we have to necessarily dissect our childhoods and go through everything moment by moment. But you might find, when did I feel that before? So maybe I'm attracted to people's lifestyles. So I find these people with really exciting lifestyles and then I overlook all the red flags. So then I think, well, when I was a kid, was there something that maybe I was attracted to the excitement back then? Was there something in my life? Maybe I had a mom who used to date men who also had exciting lives too. And sometimes just connecting those dots is helpful to say, okay, this is maybe a, an emotional wound that I'm.

• 47:31Simon Sinek?

  It's not blaming the mother.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:32Simon Sinek?

  It's simply recognizing it has an origin.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:35Simon Sinek?

  That's it. It's just an origin story.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:37Simon Sinek?

  Not a blame story.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  And then to figure out, is there an emotional wound from my childhood? Just keep revisiting. Am I trying to heal something that I haven't healed yet? And I try to heal it by reliving it over and over. Like, if this next relationship can work out, then I'll be good, or I will have figured it out. And when people can connect some of those dots, and we can do this on our own, you know, so necessarily have to be in therapy, just opens your eyes. So then when you meet the next person, you might think, oh, am I doing it again? Or is it, or is this somebody I'm really attracted to? And then to be cautious of those labels. If we just label ourselves something like, oh, I'm always attracted to assholes, or I'm the asshole who's always attracting people. Like, it's the label that then makes it true.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  If I label myself as something, I'm going to live up to that label, chances are. So if I say I'm the kind of person who sometimes does X, Y, or Z rather than I am.

• 48:29Simon Sinek?

  Or I have a, yeah.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Then to just recognize, all right, this is my tendency, but it's not who I am. And so how might I change that next time? And if I'm somebody who ignores red flags in a relationship, well, what will I do differently next time? To just be more aware and start thinking about that, like, what's a red flag I've ignored before? And if I spot that red flag again, how will I know that I'm trying to push it under the table? Or how will I know that I'm trying to convince myself that, that I don't need to pay attention to those red flags? And it is helpful sometimes when we have a trusted friend in our life who can say, you're doing it again, Simon, right? The person who can say, have you thought about this? A person that can ask you the question of.

• 49:10Simon Sinek?

  Shut up, you don't know me.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Right, right. And that's why it's important to make sure it is somebody that, that you trust, somebody who has that. Because when the emotion isn't attached to it, they can sometimes see things that we can't. Our emotions cloud our judgments. When I meet somebody and they're so exciting, I can easily overlook their red flags.

• 49:28Simon Sinek?

  The bit that I want to underscore in there, which is to not use the being verb.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32Simon Sinek?

  Which is I am, dot, dot, dot, but rather I have a tendency to.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:36Simon Sinek?

  Or I have a habit, or I have a pattern. It's not who you are, it's something you do.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:41Simon Sinek?

  Those are very different things. And so I think that that's a phenomenal piece of advice, which is go ahead and beat yourself up and you talk about your attachment problems and your childhood trauma, blah, blah, blah. Fine, but just don't use a being verb.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Right. And we'll see this even with emotion. Somebody will say, I am an anxious person. Let's just try to have anxiety sometimes. Or when it comes to relationships, somebody might be like, well, I'm an avoidant. Maybe I avoid people in some of my relationships or I push people away sometimes, but that's not who you are. You can choose to be different in the next relationship if you want.

• 50:14Simon Sinek?

  And the word sometimes is great. Like, I'll never meet somebody yet. Like, you know, like, I haven't found the person I want yet, you know? And because I think what sometimes and yet do at the end of a sentence, and this speaks directly to narrative, which is it allows for, and it goes right back to what you're saying before. It allows for hope. It allows for bright future, simply by the sentence we construct. So clever. It's, it's so funny how when we talk about these things, none of these are very complicated.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:42Simon Sinek?

  Like, these are relatively simple things to do. I want to write down all our little lessons that we've, that we've gotten here because it's a good checklist. If you're in a bad place or feel like you're stuck, like, you know, go through something, go through the emotions. And at some point you pull the little checklist out and like, okay, can I say sometimes? Am I using being verbs? You know, what's my narrative? Can I compromise with myself and stay in bed a little longer, but not all day? Like, I love that, that mental health, or let's call it mental fitness. Actually, the minute you call it mental fitness.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:13Simon Sinek?

  The whole thing, I, we're talking about checklist. I mean, it's like having a workout. First I'm going to do arms, then I'm going to do legs. Ugh, I don't feel like doing core today. Oh, I'll do it tomorrow. You know, it's a checklist and you go through the checklist. And what happens is you get fit.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:29Simon Sinek?

  There's no magic to it, you know?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Right. And when people talk about mental health, it's often about what they feel versus mental strength or mental fitness is about what you do. So if I wake up sad, I could be like, well, I have poor mental health today versus I woke up sad. What am I going to do about that? Maybe it's stay in bed a little longer, but maybe I'm going to get up and go do something differently. And that's about a choice that you have.

• 51:51Simon Sinek?

  And recognizing like our regular physical fitness or our diets, it's not good or bad or right or wrong. It's a head or behind.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:59Simon Sinek?

  Like I'm on it. I'm doing the things. I'm checking off the things. I'm eating the right things. You know what? I have not been doing it. I'm off the wagon right now, which is okay.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:10Simon Sinek?

  It's so funny talking about language. The minute we call it fitness or strength, it instantly becomes something I can work on. Where the minute we call it health, it's actually kind of like, you know what? I think I'm just going to stay in bed.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:25Simon Sinek?

  That seems like the right strategy.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Right. And when we feel like we're taking action, it automatically starts to make us feel better.

• 52:33Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  So if I say, all right, I'm kind of going through a rough patch in my life. Maybe I've been feeling kind of discouraged down lately. But you know what? Reading a book for 15 minutes a day kind of helps pull me out of it.

• 52:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  So I put that on my agenda.

• 52:45Simon Sinek?

  Put that on the to do list.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And then I think, okay, well, I'm going to do this and maybe it'll work and maybe it won't. But at least I'm doing something as opposed to thinking I'm going to wait for this to pass.

• 52:53Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. What is one of your bad habits that therapists you, if you were your own patient,

• 53:02Simon Sinek?

  would be like, you should do this. Like where are your bad habits that you, you sort of don't follow your own advice?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, well, we could certainly do a whole episode on, on things that.

• 53:11Simon Sinek?

  And we're out of time.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly. The things I struggle with. You know, scrolling at night. And that's one of those things. I know that people feel better when they don't sleep with their phone in their room. And when you put your phone in another room, your anxiety goes down. I know that.

• 53:26Simon Sinek?

  So good though, right?

• 53:27Speaker 01

  It is. So then when I go to bed at night, I think, oh, let me just check something real quick. And then I can easily go down the rabbit hole. Simple tiny thing I could easily fix in my life, but I often don't.

• 53:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, it's like, I know that being on my phone at night is bad. Do I do it? Yes. Do I know that it'll keep me up later than I want to go to bed? Yes. Will I get less sleep because of it? Yes. Will I wake up in the morning fully aware? Yes. Will I regret it? Yes.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:54Simon Sinek?

  And will I do it again? Yes.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  And that's why, you know, when we look at other people's habits, we think, oh, it's so easy to change. And then when you really dive deep into your own life of the things that we do and the things that we know is bad, like insight doesn't change behavior, right? Like we think of something's bad for me, I won't do it anymore. Obviously that's not the case.

• 54:14Simon Sinek?

  I think this is very funny, which is sometimes something bad has to happen for us to actually, like we have to lose the relationship.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:20Simon Sinek?

  We have to go through the, the depression because we are becoming antisocial because of the addiction.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:26Simon Sinek?

  And this is what addiction does. You know better than I do. You know, addiction, it causes social problems. It causes problems in your career and your social life. That's why we know it's a problem as opposed to just something you enjoy doing.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pain of staying the same has to start to outweigh the fear of change.

• 54:41Simon Sinek?

  We've talked about a lot of things. We've been a lot of really practical advice. Any other like top tips that you would offer for how to help somebody stay mentally fit, mentally strong in this crazy, insane world that literally every pressure on us is trying to keep us mentally unfit.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. And I think one of the things we touched on earlier was like, can you schedule feelings?

• 55:04Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Well, there is actually research that you could schedule time to worry. And that's one of my favorite exercises and I'll do it with my therapy clients. And the ones who do it, well, sometimes the weight of the world has literally been lifted off of their shoulders in a matter of a couple of weeks. There's so much to worry about that a lot of people don't even really realize how much they're worrying. I'm worrying about the weather and worrying about what's going to happen after work. What's going to happen in the next meeting? People's heads are just so filled with worry all the time. Not to mention that we consume so much media that we're often in this heightened state of alert. And then our anxiety is high. So then we're looking for danger all the time. But research will show when you set aside just 15 minutes a day to worry,

• 55:46Speaker 01

  that you sit down and you've got to put it in your calendar, you've got to actually schedule it.

• 55:50Simon Sinek?

  Set an alarm.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yep. And you sit down and maybe just sit at your kitchen table at seven o'clock at night, write down whatever you're worried about. Maybe you just sit and think, you don't even have to write it down necessarily. When your 15 minutes is up, it's okay.

• 56:02Simon Sinek?

  As you're saying that, it reminds me of a story of a guy I know who was in a, he was riding his bicycle. He was hit by a car and like bad news, right? Very badly mangled in, in hospital and was in excruciating pain. And I hate my life. I hate this. Why does this have to happen to me? All of this stuff. And it got to the point where it became so overwhelming, like he was doing it too much, that he, I don't know how he came up with it, but he had the wherewithal to be like, this is not healthy. Like for me doing this, I'm going to schedule the time to feel sorry for myself and be in pain. And whatever time it was, 20 minutes, he set a timer and like, he was allowed to be a victim and hate life. And why does it have to happen to me? And I'm in pain. And then after the alarm went off, it's like, okay, now I have to go do the therapy, you know?

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:46Simon Sinek?

  It's like, now I have to go do physical therapy. Like that's it. And I, I found that fascinating. And he credits that with having, helping him have the right mental attitude towards recovery. Cause, and I think this is really important. And I think we've confused being mentally strong and mentally fit with denying or suppressing bad feelings.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:08Simon Sinek?

  We've confused those two. And what I love about your strategy is we're not denying or suppressing anything. We're allocating time for all of that nonsense. Very healthy nonsense, I might add. You know, be the victim. Go ahead. It feels good. So have, it's like eating ice cream. Go ahead and for 20 minutes, you get to be the victim, you know? He's an asshole, you know? And then after 20 minutes, you have to go back to accountability, focusing forwards and moving through it.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  And this whole idea of mental toughness, I think, has convinced people. You just shove it all down. You suppress everything. I'll have a lot of people that come into my therapy office thinking they're going to shove it down forever. And I'll convince them.

• 57:51Simon Sinek?

  For now.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  It's going to come up.

• 57:53Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. You'll shove it down for now.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Right. And when you least expect it. And those are the people that break.

• 57:56Simon Sinek?

  You start yelling at people for stupid things.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 57:58Simon Sinek?

  And nobody's aware, including you.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:01Simon Sinek?

  That the reason you're yelling at somebody and you're so short tempered is for something that happened four months ago.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  And they'll say, well, no, I was fine for the last four months, so I dealt with it and I've healed from it. Or it didn't affect me. Cause there's that pressure to, to bounce back. We use resilience, like I'm going to bounce back the next day. And people are like, wow, you came back even stronger. But people didn't really work through the pain.

• 58:21Simon Sinek?

  One of the things I've learned from people like you, which is when the feelings show up, you know, there is, there's a time and place, right? Like there are certain places if it shows up and I don't want it to, I'll suppress it for a little bit.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:33Simon Sinek?

  You know, but, but it's shown up in healthy places to just let it be.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:39Simon Sinek?

  You know, overwhelmed by something and I just feel like sitting and crying. And I'll usually call somebody. My rule with my friends is no crying alone.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:49Simon Sinek?

  I'll just call somebody and be like, I, I'm not, this is not working. Just spend with a little bit of time on the phone with me. That has been the greatest gift that I've learned in recent time, which is if I am having really bad feelings, to invite someone that I love to sit in the mud with me.

• 59:09Simon Sinek?

  And the reason I say invite them, it's because having been on the receiving end, either offering to sit in mud with somebody or been invited to sit in mud with somebody. As a friend who loves somebody, it's an honor.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:21Simon Sinek?

  To get down and climb into the mud with someone, not to fix them, but just to make them feel not alone when they're going through whatever they're going through. It is such an honor to be invited to sit in mud with someone and to be there with them. The whole idea is I didn't want to bother you. You know, I have a friend who did that to me. Like they were going through something and they said, I didn't want to bother you. You're so busy, all this nonsense. I wasn't like, no, no. I got angry.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:44Simon Sinek?

  I'm like, how dare you? How dare you deny me the honor to be your friend? How dare you deny me the honor to like sit in the mud with you when you're going through it? Like, how dare you, you selfish bastard, you know?

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:56Simon Sinek?

  So yeah, I've learned that I too have the feelings of, I don't want to bother people. And it's, I'm just feeling sorry for myself and, you know? But I've learned my friends want to be there for me.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  You're absolutely right. And we know from the research, social support, one of the biggest indicators of how we emerge from tough times, difficult to do, especially when you're not used to it, to call somebody and say, having a bad day.

• 1:00:18Simon Sinek?

  And like all these, like all these things, I think it's a muscle.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Simon Sinek?

  Really hard to do. Start with something small.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:25Simon Sinek?

  Whining about something. Can I just wind you for five minutes? Sure. And if you work that muscle, you can get to the point where can I just call you up and cry?

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:33Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Amy, you're the best.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:00:36Simon Sinek?

  Thanks for coming on. It's been absolutely insightful. And I really, really do believe that the work you're doing and the message you're spreading and the books you're writing are genuinely, genuinely helping people navigate the stuff properly, healthily. And I have to believe that the people who consume your work actually don't need your work as much because of your work.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:01:02Simon Sinek?

  Working yourself out of a job.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  I hope so. I hope so.

• 1:01:05Simon Sinek?

  Thanks for coming.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:01:12Simon Sinek?

  As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simonsinek.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.