Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show on the Choose Yourself Network. Today on the James Altiger Show. Prove yourself wrong. Your brain isn't always right. Life is inherently risky. There's no guarantee. Our logic gets flawed. We make up all of these rules in life about what's gonna keep us safe and how to stay safe. If you listen to your brain, you'll sell yourself short in life. I thought my mission in life was to teach other people to be mentally strong, and I didn't realize how much I was going to need mental strength. My husband, Lincoln, said he didn't feel well, and a few minutes later, he collapsed. He fell in the hallway, and I ran upstairs and found him, and he was unconscious. The paramedics came. They rushed him to the hospital, and I called his mom, and we waited and waited and waited. And finally, the doctor came out. I used to work at the hospital, so I knew that when they call you out back, they usually take you to see the person, and he takes us to this other room. It was one of those moments in my life where I thought, if I just don't go in there, if I just don't go sit down, because I knew what he was going to say. So I was like, if I just don't go in that room, you know, can I just stop time? Is there anything I can do? It's like moment where time just sort of stops. I am so excited because this woman has helped me so much, Amy Morin. You wrote a book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do. We're gonna talk about all 13 things because I have found them so applicable to my life. But you've also just published a new book, 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do. So you're kind of beginning the franchise concept of the 13 things mentally strong people don't do. You're kind of franchising that out now. Yeah. After the first book came out, the biggest question people kept asking me is, how do we teach kids how to be mentally strong? So it seemed like that that parenting book was gonna be the next best thing, and it seemed like a a good fit after the first book. And we're gonna talk about all 13 things and, but there's a couple couple things I wanna run by you. And then, also, I wanna talk about your story of what led to these books because it's very moving. And and and just to mention also, you've talked about it on a a very popular TEDx talk, where you told your story, and it was very beautiful and, and moving and and and how that led to you, you know, writing these books and dealing with grief and and and other things and so on. But, I feel like this concept, 13 things mentally strong people mentally strong ex don't do, can can apply to many things. So you, of course, took the next step, kids, but it could apply to entrepreneurship, the arts, any type of creativity, sales. And, of course, you really only have to read I mean, for all those things, not the parent not the kids one. But for many of these topics, you only have to read the first one to get the ideas. But I think the way you tell stories and where when the way you can tell stories within each category could be very compelling. I don't know if you've considered, like, making 20 books on these. Yeah. I get a lot of times people will say, well, again, what what are the things that mentally strong writers don't do? Or what are the things mentally strong entrepreneurs don't do? And how do I apply this, you know, specifically to to my line of work or to my relationships? So I think there are endless opportunities. I'm hoping so, anyway. Yeah. It reminds me of, that one series, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. Yes. You know that? And and and he actually I think his name's Richard Carlson. He wrote another book about, habits for happy people, and it never really took off. He wrote it several years before Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. Then Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, of course, sold millions of copies. And he could have just left it at that because it had everything. But then he made, like, I don't know, 20 more Don't sweat the small stuff for parents. Don't sweat the small stuff for entrepreneurs, writers, whatever. And they all and they work because then he's able to kind of take them and specifically apply. So I I think that is a a a good concept. Yeah. I'm hoping so. Do it. I hope you do it. You. So, the other thing I wanna talk about is so you you just came out with, 13 things mentally strong parents don't do. I wanna get to the word don't in a second, but I wanna run run by you one situation I've been in. And and then we're gonna really dive into anything. Okay. So I'm sorry I'm I'm dominating that conversation here. For 10 years, I've been writing about how I don't think kids these days should go to college. And I specifically mean, like, right now just because student loan did so high. Whether I'm right or wrong, I don't know. But I've been writing about it for for a long time. I have an 18 year old daughter who really wanted to go to college. And for a while, we would argue about it, and she would just simply we I would start arguing with her, and she would just simply walk away. Like, literally, we she'd walk away. She didn't wanna deal with my argument about it. And I would get upset, and, of course, nothing good is accomplished. Her walking away combined with me being upset did nothing to further my goal of her not going to college. And then, of course, now she's 18, and she wanted to go to college and I wanted to be a good parent. So I sent her to college and I even took her there. I took her on college tours, you know, and, dropped her off day 1. And, I don't know. Is there anything I could have done differently? Well, you know, I think once they're 18, you need to let them make some of their decisions even if you think it's a mistake, and to listen to them. You know, all you can do is you teach kids the best that you can, and then at some point to say, even if you think it's a mistake, to let them go. And who knows? Maybe she'll think it's a mistake someday, but maybe not. So I think, you know, to give your peace to be able to say, but to also listen to say what's the reasons you wanna go to college and to hear kids out. Sometimes they just need to be heard and validated and but sometimes you do also just gotta say, okay. Right. Because Let them do it. It it was out of my control. Yep. Otherwise, I could've maybe it could've been in my control in this very forceful way. Right. But I don't think I don't think that would've been good for her relationship with me down the road if I would have long term success with her. And, I can't say I listened to her because she I don't even think she knew why she wanted to go. But I think the main thing for me was not trying to control a situation that was most let's say, not you know, at least 60 or 70% out of my control. Like, she was the one gonna wanna go no matter what. And if you had kept her from going when she's 30, she may then always just blame, well, dad didn't let me go to college. And she would have never known, and you would have never known what would happen too. So to let her go and say, okay. Let's see what happens. And maybe she'll think it's great. Maybe she'll think it's a mistake, but there's only one way to find out. Yeah. I was worried about that. I was worried at she'd be 30 when she'd really be in a life crisis and not be listen to me at all because I've been, you know, so so forceful. And and maybe she blamed me for some crisis that happened later on because I wouldn't have let her go to college where all her peers were going. Right. But I'll tell you the last thing that I tried to do to, persuade her was, I said to her, listen. Just for 1 year, I'll give you cash, the tuition I would have paid. And all you have to do is every morning watch one movie a day with me, and we talk about it for a half hour. And then you can go off in New York City. She She likes she loves being an actress. You could go for you could do whatever you want. Do you just have to watch one movie a day with me and talk about it for half hour? She said no and went to college. Wow. So is there anything I could have done differently there in your opinion? Oh, you know, I think you made her an offer, and then she got to make the choice. Right? Yeah. So then to say, okay. You raised a a strong independent daughter who was willing to say, I'm not gonna do that if that's not what I wanna do. So I think that also speaks kudos to you that you raised a daughter who was willing to say, nope. That's not what I want. I wanna do this instead. And then she did it. You know, I I didn't think that the way, like, the way you put it. But I I I wrote about it, and some people in the comments were, like you know, they said the same thing. Like, oh, what's good is you raised this independent thinking daughter. And so, yeah, I guess that was a good thing. I didn't even realize some of the positive things I have been doing, which again is part of the, you know, being mentally strong as sort of kind of looking at the positive instead of being angry over a situation I can't control. So so I wanna get to, so many things I wanna get to. We gotta figure out the right direction here. So thirdly 13 things mentally strong people don't do. There's a lot of books about habits and building habits and mentally you know, the probably the obvious title is here's things mentally strong people do do. So why did you take kind of the the don't do? Why why why kind of the negative side? You know, as a therapist, I'm trained to build on people's strengths. And over the years, it was all about identifying what people were already doing well and then convincing them to do more of that. And that's helpful. But at some point along the way, I realized maybe I'm kind of doing people a disservice too if I'm not also pointing out, hey, by the way, this one or two things that you're doing is keeping you stuck. Sort of like if you wanted to become physically healthy and you said, I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna work out and you worked the trainer and they kept giving you more exercises, that's great. But what if they didn't tell you, hey, you should also change your diet. And because maybe, you know, giving up the 2 donuts you eat for breakfast is really the key to moving forward. And I felt like it was the same when it came to mental strength that you can have all of these great habits, but it only takes 1 or 2 to cancel out some of the good things that you're doing. And I'm about working smarter, not just working harder. So so wait. Unpacking that, that's so so fascinating. You could have, like, lots of good habits, but all it takes is 1 or 2 bad habits to derail. You gave the the physical exercise metaphor, but what's what's a mental bad habit that you just need 1 or 2 of those mental bad habits, and they'll derail 50 good mental habits? Well, you know, so the first one on the list that mentally strong people don't feel sorry for themselves. I run into so many people that will say, you know, when I have a bad day, I call my friends and we talk about it and they think that that's helpful. But really, they're venting and they're, like, looking for sympathy and they're hosting a pity party. Well, when you do something like that, it doesn't matter whether you say, okay, well, I'm sort of a positive thinker or I am getting out and I'm getting exercise every day because that's good for my brain too. But then you do this one thing that keeps you stuck because, oh, no. Just don't do that anymore. And I think venting is one of those things that so many people think I get my emotions out and that helps me to to feel better. And and there's some truth in saying, okay, processing my emotions and talking things out and getting emotional support is healthy. But at some point, it crosses the line when you're just calling somebody saying, listen to all the bad things that happened to me. You hang up the phone, call another friend, and tell that same tell that same story of listen to all the bad things that happened to me, then you get stuck. And the more you think about and talk about the bad things, the worse you feel. Because it it take a, that takes, like, hours of time. Right. And, where where you could be creative or or creating opportunities for yourself or or solving the problems that that you were venting about. And then there's the flip side of it. There's the person who likes to listen to people venting. Yes. So so so what's up with that? Yeah. Sometimes we like to be needed. I'll run into a lot of people who say, I'm that person that everybody loves to talk to. And they feel proud of it. Right. And they are they have a hard time setting a limit to say, I don't wanna answer the phone or, gee, I don't wanna talk about that. And so there's part of them that's feeling like, okay, I hung up the phone and, yes, this person trusted me enough to call me. But then on the other hand, it drags them down too. If you become that person that always gets vented at and everybody always calls to share their problems and all the bad things going on in the world, that affects your state of mind too. Yeah. And, do you think in general, avoiding toxic people and trying to constantly associate yourself with positive, uplifting people, do you think that's a strong mental habit? I do. Sometimes people will say to me, well, shouldn't you be able to put up with anybody? But our environment definitely impacts us. And sort of like if you were an alcoholic, maybe you shouldn't be a bartender. You know, that it's okay to create an environment that helps you to stay stronger and that doesn't mean you have to cut out every negative person out of your your life that you've ever met. But your core people, the friends and family and the people you associate with the most, are people that you're gonna want to inspire you to become stronger and a healthier person. And you brought up the gym metaphor and you bring this up throughout these two books. It's not like someone is mentally strong, and then that's it. Right. They're mentally strong for life. It's like, the the gym metaphor applies. It's it's a muscle that needs to be constantly exercised and taken care of. And I think that's really what your your book is about is that the 13 thing 13 ways to kind of take care and build this muscle. It's ultimately about making yourself mentally stronger. But like you say, to avoid finding maybe what are the 1 or 2 habits you have that could derail you and pushing forward through them. And, you know, you're a therapist, so I imagine people don't visit you because they have good things happening. They visit you because they have bad things happening in their life despite many other good things that might be happening, and that maybe that also affected your choice of title. Yeah. You know, I think that's one of the one of the ways our mental health care system is broken. We wait until people are are already having big problems before we help them. We don't do mental health wellness checkups, or we don't teach people how to be mentally strong before they have problems. So by the time they come into my office, a lot of people have been struggling with something for 5 or 10 years and then we have to try to fix it, try to figure out how do we help you to feel better. But if we could go back in time, and that's what I was hoping to do with the parenting book too, is to start teaching these proactive skills when kids are young so that before they are 30, 40, 50 years old, they already have all the skills that they need to help build more mental muscle. I'm so glad you're a therapist. We're we're gonna get back to that later when you apply therapy for me. But, your story started out I mean, obviously, started out when you were born, but your your your story that you talk about in the book starts out when you're 23 years old. You kind of you've kind of achieved this sort of straight line definition of, how we grow up thinking what success looks like. And like all things, like all stories in life, things got derailed. And, maybe, you know, maybe you can describe what what happened that kind of ultimately led to what we're talking about now. Yeah. Life was pretty easy. I was fortunate that until I was 23, life was fairly smooth sailing, and I thought, you know, I gave myself some credit for thinking, okay, here we go. I'm a therapist. I am married. I have a house, become a foster parent already and I thought What? I didn't know that. Yeah. So I sort of thought I was like, you know, got this jump start on life. Like, yeah, I'm 23, but I I've got this handled. And I had done this whirlwind of of college and then grad school. I was able to finish grad school early and do all of this stuff. And Why did you think you could be a therapist at 23? I mean, I'm 49. I don't think I can help people with anything. And you were 23. Right. And I think I just didn't know better. I went to college, did the a 4 year thing, went to grad school, and I was I was, I think, 21 by the time I graduated and and became a therapist. So I'd already been a therapist for a couple of years before. How'd you cruise through grad school so fast? They had this program where you could do it in in a year if you did this crazy, you know, summer thing and you went and it was a lot of hours, but it was a matter of just putting it in, putting in the time, and hunkering down and saying, okay, I'm gonna do this and get it done. And I thought, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And before I knew it, here I am a therapist and I think, okay, now I'm supposed to give people wisdom and advice. And really all I'd done was gone through school. And but I thought my mission in life was to teach other people to be mentally strong. And I didn't realize how much I was going to need mental strength. So then when I was 23, life was smooth sailing at first. And then I get a phone call from my sister one random night and she said something about our mother and she was rushed to the hospital and I couldn't really figure out what she was trying to tell me, but I hung up the phone and told my husband, Lincoln, we need to go to the hospital. And when we got there, they told us that my mother had had a brain aneurysm. And within 24 hours, she passed away. And my mother and I were always really close. And so then the thought of going She was only 51 years old? 51. No history of any health problems or anything. And so it was like she was here one minute and gone the next. I'd just seen her, the night before she passed. And so that was my first experience with okay. When that happened, do you I mean, for me, the loss of a parent was probably the deepest loss I've ever had. And the the sadness is so incredibly deep. I had never experienced anything like this. Like, was that the sort of feeling you had? It was. My mother and I were so close, and there were so many things I still wanted to do. You know, she she didn't have grandchildren yet. She never got to retire. She had all these plans in life, and I thought she never got to do those things. And she never really got to got to see sort of the end of my story, like what was gonna happen. She saw the beginning of my career, but wasn't able to see what would happen. And there were so many things that I knew we were just weren't going to get to to do together. And I thought, ugh. So it's not only missing her, but it was also all of these kind of goals you sort of had for your life with her that you felt now would be impossible to achieve. Yeah. Absolutely. So it was yes. It was missing her and missing I knew all of the things that we weren't going to be able to do together. And it was a a strange sense of grief. And I had seen what happened in my therapy office. I had seen what happened when people come in and and didn't deal with something that happened to them. It could be 20, 30 years later. They still couldn't talk about it, or they'd grown bitter and angry because they just weren't able to deal with their pain. Because like trauma is sort of this almost like this tattoo on the soul that you might not even know is there, but it's gonna keep on affecting you and and and in ways that are unexpected unless you unless you deal with it. Exactly. So I figured out, okay, if you if you wanna deal with it, then you have to figure out how do you heal. And grief is healing. It's painful and it's terrible and it's awful, and our tendency is to try to go around rather than go through. But I knew if I was going to deal with it, I had to go to go through it. People say that though. Is that a little bit of a cliche go through it? Like, what does that mean? You know, I think our we wanna avoid it. People are uncomfortable when we're sad, so people try to cheer you up or they say, you know, I'll take you out to dinner because that will help. And those things are all temporary, and that does maybe cheer you up for a minute. But sometimes you just have to sit with the pain and know that it's okay to be sad and it's okay to be angry and it's okay to feel all of those emotions and lonely and disappointed and despair. And instead of just distracting yourself, I see so many people that when they go through something tough, they just distract themselves as much as they can and try to escape it. But then ultimately, because they never deal with it, it's sort of like a if you had a physical wound and you just decide I'm gonna put a Band Aid over it, well, it might get infected. You gotta clean it out. You gotta do things. You gotta actually take care of it. And I think our emotional wounds are the same. You gotta take care of them if you really want them to heal. So there but then there's a balance. Right? Like, it's it's on the one hand, it's okay to feel sadness. Like, people you don't have to immediately say, no. No. I'm gonna go bowling tonight, and it's gonna be fun. And you but so it's okay to sit with sadness. But at the same time, you do need some forward motion even a tiny bit, I think, is what you're saying right here. I I don't know. Yeah. It is. Because you you don't wanna get stuck there. 20 years later, you don't wanna still be sitting in a dark room staring at the wall and being sad, but to be able to know, okay, it's okay to be sad. And what am I gonna do to take care of my sad feelings? And so sometimes that's good thing to cheer yourself up by all means. Go out with friends and and do fun things, but don't let yourself do that all the time to be able to say, okay. I'm just gonna sit and be and allow myself to be sad right now. You need that balance. But by the way, I just mentioned bowling is like a side click. I didn't mean that that necessarily is a cure for sadness. So I used to bowl as a kid. I understand. So so what what we're gonna get to the next event in your life. But what did you do right then to kind of, because you were already a therapist. You already understood about grief and dealing with it, and and you had seen situations. What did you do to not only sit with the sadness then, but also try to move forward? You know, I took some time off from work. I knew I couldn't be an effective therapist if I, jumped right back into work. So I took as much time off as I could. And then about two and a half weeks after my mother died, my dad's house caught on fire. And, didn't burn down, but it had extensive damage. And that was all of my mom's possessions were gone at that point. A lot of them anyway because it had smoke damage and water damage and that's why I was saying fire? It was an electrical fire that started in our basement. We were having work done on the on their kitchen at the time. And, my mother had planned this new kitchen remodel sort of after my sister and I graduated from college, and, she passed away in the process of it. And a couple of weeks later, the Isn't that weird? It is. Like, not only did she die, but all of her things died. Right. And so that was sort of another thing then to figure out, okay, well, those things that my mother owned weren't her. You know? That it was tempting to sort of say, okay, I'm gonna keep all of her stuff and, to remember her by. But it was one of those moments where I just had to remember, you know, that those were her things but those aren't her. And, to honor my memories and to make sure that I really respected that. But at the same time, to know that it was okay to to go on and make new memories and to go out and do new things and to figure out sort of this new sense of normal in our life. My parents had been married since my dad was 19 and my mother was 18. So then to see my father alone too was another experience in itself. Devastated. He was. And so, you know, here my dad is this big strong man, and now he's he's widowed. And to figure out, well, what's that gonna be like too to to see my dad? He never really lived on his own. And so there were a lot of different things going on, and it was a matter of just figuring out a new sense of normal. It took a long time to get there, but, eventually, we did. What did he do in in that those first moments? Because he must have thought to himself, oh my gosh. Like, he was, I guess, 52 years old, which is again, I'm 49, so I I can't even imagine 3 years older than me. What did he do when he he must have been thinking he must have been putting together the whole story in this weird way. Like, why is this happening to me? First, my wife of all these years dies, then all her things disappear. What am I gonna do next? Did he reach out for help? Did he or did he get it too sad? Like, what happened to him? Yeah. He, spent a, you know, a lot of time with friends, family. My mother had a wonderful family who, sort of circled the wagons and came out and was very supportive to all of us, and his family as well and friends and the community. We live in a small town. I grew up in a same place where my parents lived and so the community was wonderful. And it was sort of one of those things where you could just see he worked in an an neighboring town, but he was the postmaster in a really small post office so he knew everybody in town. And the outpouring of love from people, I think, was one of the biggest things that helped him get through it. So so, so to extrapolate from that kind of, almost preparing for, there's always gonna be things that derail our lives and kind of not necessarily being anxious about them in advance, but kind of preparing in a way by building solid connections in your community, raising a good family that could support you or building a good family that could support you. Keeping having these mentally strong habits will prepare you better for these inevitable not not everything's inevitable, but in you know, some things are inevitable. And, you know, that that's kind of a good approach to this. Yeah. Both of my parents were wonderful giving people. And so I think for the first time, it sort of was able to come back to my dad. He's not usually on the receiving end of of all of this kindness and outpouring of love, but it really, I think, spoke volumes of his character and my mother's character that all these years they had been so kind in giving and the first ones to help other people that so many people were were willing to help him when he needed it too. I I think and this this touches upon you just touched upon 2 different things you mentioned in in your book. One is, when you're experiencing a negative thought or, like, despair or whatever, it's kind of reach for a positive, more productive thought at the same time. So you can still have the despair, but at the same time, reach for something more positive. Like, you just were describing your mom and then the loss of all her belongings. And so you had to find ways to not just say, oh, why is this all happening right now? You had to also say, I have to honor these memories that are inside of myself instead of with her possessions or whatever. Like, you reached for the positive, and he reached for the positive. Your dad reached for the positive. Right. Absolutely. And to know that, you know, reframing your negative thoughts isn't about just thinking everything's wonderful and, being overly positive, but to come up with something realistic that says, okay, this is hard. And how can I get through it? What steps can I take? Because you can always do something to make your life or somebody else's life. You can always do something. Yes. Just a little bit better, you know, rather than sitting around and exaggerating how bad your life is or thinking poor me. Well, why do people think they can't always why do I don't think everybody thinks you can always do something. I think people think they're doomed in many cases. Right. So why do you think that is? I think it's a learned helplessness. I think it's a a big problem that people just grew up thinking nobody's gonna help me. So why should I bother or I can't make a difference? And that becomes such a habit that we see it in psychological studies all the time. But I see it in people's lives all the time too where they just think I can't do anything because it's not gonna help anyway. Yeah. I think that kind of giving up Right. Is hard. And I think the other thing your your it sounds like your dad did, I I had kind of a trauma in my life about 2 years ago, and I had always been afraid to ask for help. I always thought, no. I should be the one. I don't wanna I I don't like asking for help. I feel funny doing that. I should always be the one giving help. But I was so kind of in trauma at that moment. I had to ask for help. And it sounds like your dad did as well in his community and so on. Yes. And I think a lot of people think that that's being strong, saying I don't need anybody to help me, but that's acting tough. And there's a big difference between being strong and acting tough. And being strong, you can say, okay. I can't do this. I need help. And to acknowledge that takes strength. Yeah. Why why does that take strength? You know, because I think there's so much of us that wants to pretend like we have it all together. And to be honest with yourself, you have to say, no. I don't have all the answers. And that's hard to do sometimes. Or to say, okay. I'm gonna reach out to somebody and and ask them to support me. That takes courage to do that. Yeah. I don't have all the answers, I think, is a is a key mantra. Right. Because none of us it's hard. None of us do. Right. Life is hard. It is. And I think it's so tempting sometimes to put on that mask and say, I'm gonna pretend like I have everything together all the time. And we think that that so many people think that that's about being strong, but it's not. You know, I, I don't like having people on the podcast who write all this theoretical stuff. Oh, scientific research says if you do this, this, and this, you'll be happier. But you've you what I love about your book is that it's so story driven starting with your own story. And then in each chapter, you tell stories. You're a great storyteller. And within each chapter, you tell stories of people you've either experienced through your work or other people who are, you know, who are well known and who have written books about their own situations. I think that's a real great driving force of the book and what's made it so popular. But the next event in your life happened a few years after your mom died. Maybe you could describe that. Sure. Because that was also incredibly devastating from the way I read it. Yeah. It was the 3 year anniversary of when my mother died. And for anybody who's lost somebody, you know, that sometimes anniversaries, birthdays of somebody who's passed on can be difficult. And so my husband, Lincoln, and I were like, ugh. What are we gonna do this weekend? And on the 3 year anniversary, and coincidentally, friends called and said you should come to this basketball game in rural Maine in February. There's not a lot going on, but, we watch basketball in the winter. And it was being held at the same auditorium where I saw my mom the night before she passed away. And and I thought, okay, let's let's go. Let's see what happens. And these are friends that had I'd grown up with and so they they knew my mother and we went and we talked about her, and we had this great time. And I thought, oh, that's nice. You know? So so, again, stopping before the event Mhmm. The quote, unquote event, you took what could have been a negative, could have been and and it clearly you probably were there and sad, but you also reached for the positive in that moment. You had a fun time with your friends. You honored your mother's memory. Mhmm. So, again, you kind of sat with the sadness, but reached for something positive, which I think is really important, and people forget to do that. Right. But then Yeah. So then, we get home that night, and and Lincoln said he didn't feel well. And I didn't think anything of it, but a few minutes later, he collapsed. Well, when he said he didn't feel well, he you I think you mentioned, well, he he was feeling something in his back? Yeah. Yeah. He said he he had some back pain, and, he'd been in a car accident a few years ago and had injured his back. So it wasn't particularly unusual for him to have back pain every once in a while. So did anything in his face or anything that would have been suggested something's different? No. Not at all. And then it was just a a few minutes later, he collapsed. And so I called an ambulance, and we only live 2 tenths of a mile from the hospital. And so I just thought, okay. If we can just get him to the hospital. I didn't even know what to say. I don't know what happened because all happened so fast. When you say he collapsed, was he unconscious? Or He was. And so, I he fell in the hallway, and I had hurt him. And I ran upstairs and found him, and he was unconscious by the time I got there. And so the paramedics came, they rushed him to the hospital, and I called his mom and said, you gotta get here. And I didn't really know what to tell her either. I said, I don't know if it was a seizure or what happened, but something. And so she got there and we waited in in the waiting room of the ER and waited and waited. And finally, the doctor came out and called us. And I used to work at the hospital, and so I knew that when they call you out back, they usually take you to the room and you get to see the person. And and rather than go that direction, he takes us to this other room. Well, when he's starting when he says let's go to the other room and and and by then, you're in a sense of if you had rational thought then, because maybe there's many situations where you might not have been thinking rationally because it was so horrifying. But were you, like, immediately, like, ugh, was it a kick in the stomach? It was. It was one of those moments in my life where I thought if I just don't go in there, if I just don't go sit down, and I do because I I knew what he was going to say because I knew they don't share good news with you. So I was like, if I just don't go in that room, is you know, can I just stop time? Is there anything I can do? It was like this moment where time just sort of stopped. And and and we went in there and we sat down and sure enough, he said, I'm sorry to tell you. As soon as those words came out of his mouth, I knew what was coming next. And he said, Lincoln passed away. And it was just it brought me right back to when my mother had passed away, and the doctor had said very, you know, similar words. And I thought, how could this be? And both of these situations were were shocking because they were within in in the case of your mom was within a day or 2. Yeah. And and she was young, and a brain aneurysm's, you know, an odd kind of random thing. What was so Lincoln was 26. Yeah. What was what was the story? We found out later he had a heart attack, And he doctors think he probably had some sort of genetic anomaly that we just weren't aware of, but he didn't have any history of heart problems. There was no signs. Do you think the prior car accident that was in a few weeks earlier had sort of triggered kind of some trauma in the heart? I don't think so. That car accident had been a couple of years before that. And so and he'd gotten a clean bill of health. You know, he'd seen tons of doctors after his car accident and such, and and nobody ever found anything. You know? So it was one of those and they had said too the particular genetic issue he had. Even if they'd found it, there was really nothing that they would have done about it anyway. So he had, like, a a a clock on him, you think, from, like, decades earlier? Yeah. That's what we pretty much, the conclusion based on the information from the doctors is, you know, it just was what it was. And there wasn't anything we could have done to prevent it, which was somewhat, helpful to know. Okay. It wasn't that we did anything wrong or that we should have caught something and we didn't. It was just one of those things. So it's helpful sometimes to know that something was really out of your control, and you're not you can't blame yourself. But then you get home. Okay? You're home alone in your in your house. Mom had passed away 3 years earlier. Lincoln had just passed away, and and the house is empty and silent. You obviously don't expect that, a 26 year old person. What were you thinking right then when you walked into the house that first time after the hospital? You know, it was surreal. It was like in the it's like my brain couldn't quite wrap wrap around what was going on. So for the first several weeks even, it was like I was still expecting him to walk through the door, or I was still thinking, you know, wait So that's denial stage. Right. Sort of like wait till I tell him about this or about that. And even while we were planning his funeral, and I I find myself picking out the clothes for his funeral, and it was just so surreal. And it was like I was waiting for it to be over as if it was just a bad dream or something, like, was going to happen, but it wasn't. And it took a while for that to really sink in that this is life now, that he's not coming back, that he's not here. And I'm never gonna be able to talk to him about what life was like during this rough period, and it was just a really surreal experience. Yeah. I can't I I actually can't even imagine that. Did you, I'm sorry if this sounds personal, but did you cry, like, every single night? Yeah. You know, at first, I think I was just numb. I just I had I cried all the time, but then I at some point, there's just no tears left. And and then it was a matter of, yeah, what am I gonna do now, and what do I even do with my time? And I took about 3 months off from work this time around because I said, you know, 2 weeks or 5 weeks isn't gonna do it. I need a lot longer, because I'm definitely not in any shape to help anybody. And I was fortunate during that time. We never planned for for me to have anybody to to have lunch or have dinner with. But for 3 months, randomly, somebody would call. As far as I know, nobody planned this. Every single day, I had either lunch or dinner with somebody. Did you and and like you said, they called you, but did you ask for help at all? Or or was it just you had such a great community of friends and and stuff who who cared about you that that they all chipped in in a sense. Yeah. For the most part, they all just chipped in. His Lincoln's friends were wonderful. His family was wonderful. They still are. My friends and family just everybody just sort of came together and were willing to to be there and do whatever they could for me. And And there were times I didn't even know what I needed or what I wanted, but people were just there anyway and were willing to just do whatever they could. Yeah. It's, again, my some of my traumatic situations are nowhere as near as, horrible. I mean, I can't even imagine that the situation you just described. But in one one time, I had a friend say to me, all I want you to do is take a photo of every meal and who you're having the meal with. So I know you're eating and socializing. And she said, send it to me just so I could check. And so I actually wasn't ready for that. So I would just go to the restaurant downstairs and find a way and order something and say to the waiter, just do a selfie with the waiter, and here's the food. And then I would just go back up to my house. I'd pay for it, and I just and I wouldn't eat it. I just go back up to my house. But but it sounds like you did the real thing, eventually. I you know, and I think to have a friend who does that, I think, speaks volumes for somebody to say, I just wanna make sure that you're okay. And, and I had friends that would, you know, show up and be like, okay. Let's let's go do something or let's make sure that you get out of the house or, what can I do? Can I help you clean your house? Whatever it was, but I had a lot of people that were willing to not just say, let me know if there's anything I can do for you, but they would just show up and say, let's do this and and would do it. Go after after this event, and trust me, this is all building into the book because we've already been describing lots of things in the book that that that you used that that ended up in the book. But we'll get more methodical in a second. But when you first went back to, your job as a therapist, were you thinking to yourself, I'm sick of listening to these people's problems. Like, they don't have any problems. I had the problems. You know? So the first day I went back, my boss and I had this conversation about what it was like to go back. They my clients, were all just told I was out on a family emergency. They were given the option to see a different therapist if they wanted or to wait for me to come back. And almost all of them waited for me to come back. And very few of them knew. A few people had heard through the grapevine because it's a small community what had happened, but most of them had no idea. And the first person I sat down with after I returned, she said, I'm so glad you're back. You're not gonna believe what happened to me when you were gone. And I said, really? What happened? And she said, my husband almost died of a heart attack. And it was in that moment I thought, okay. Here we go. I'm gonna have to figure out how do I help other people deal with their problems without having this sort of resentment or thinking, well, my husband did die of a heart attack. And and I was angry. Like, that must have been Right. Did you get angry? Did you get angry right then? You know, I think I was just, like, using as much self talk as I could to say, okay. Just, you know, stay calm. You gotta be with this woman. And and I thought, you know, when I get that, I completely understand how traumatic that would be to almost lose your husband as well. And, I just had to make sure that I put myself in other people's shoes as much as I could to say, okay. I get that. And you who's to say whose pain is worse or who has more difficulties in life? And for a lot of these people that come into my office, they don't necessarily have an awesome support system or they didn't have the skills. They didn't go to college to be a therapist. And so the things they were struggling with were just as real as the things I was struggling with. And so who was I to minimize it? And so a lot of conversations with myself to just remind myself, okay, be with these people and who are struggling. And and I think on a on a new level, I was just able to relate to people's pain probably more than I ever had before. That's a definite. So that's why I think your book is important as opposed to you just writing a book about 13 things mentally strong people don't do. Because, without experiencing that pain and and using your own ideas, to go get through it, I think you would have been useless as a writer. Yeah. Because I I I think people say, oh, they did a statistical study with a 1000 people. Ultimately, the only real sample size is is 1. If you can kind of use your ideas to get through a difficult situation, then it's fair enough for you to write about them or or discuss them. And then whether or not people follow those ideas is up to them. But you're just telling your your book, even though it's a list, there are 2 you know, it's it's it's it's this, kind of the the premise is technique driven. It's really story driven. Nobody has to follow your techniques, but they say, oh, she had this story, And these stories that she writes about other people have their stories, and this is what they did. And then it's up to them whether they follow those techniques. But it's still story driven, which I think is the power of your book as opposed to so much self help jargon and books that are out there who I just would never even just talk to those people. But, but now I wanna go through your your 13 things because and I don't remember by heart the list even though I have notes on each one of them. But, and the first one kind of is is is maybe most important in from the situation you came out of, which is, mentally strong people don't waste time feeling sorry for themselves. Yeah. I think, you know, to back up a little bit, most people don't know that this list, it wasn't meant to be a book. It was an article. And I wrote the article to myself a few years down the road. Publishers are such vultures. They see an article that's popular, and they say, oh, can it's a it's a brilliant 3 page article. Can you make that into a 250 page book? And you're like, how am I gonna do that? But then you did all the research, and you found, like, hundreds of stories that you're able to write about. So kudos to you for for not just stretching out 3 pages to 250 pages, which is another big mistake that writers make, and you did not make it. Right. You know? And so when I had written it, it was a 600 word list, but it was a letter to myself. My I was facing the, death of my father-in-law and knew that we had maybe a couple of weeks left before doctors were saying he's going to pass away. And after going through really sudden losses and when my mother had died and when Lincoln had died, and then I thought, okay, now I'm going to lose my father-in-law and I was thinking this isn't fair. I shouldn't have to deal with this and digging in my heels and then had that moment of, no, Amy, mentally strong people don't do that. And so then I wrote the list, and that's why the first one on the list is that mentally strong people don't waste time feeling sorry for themselves because I was tempted to throw a pity party for myself. Can you do it a little though? Like, again, you have to sit with sadness a little bit. Right. And to figure out, okay, the difference between being sad and self pity. Well, being sad is about saying, yeah, this is tough, this is hard, and it's gonna be awful. But self pity is when you're thinking nobody's problems are as big as mine. My life is worse than everybody else's. It's when you start to exaggerate how bad things are. I'm taking it one step further that, your life is always going to be bad. Right. Right. Because, look, you you you so so one one year, your mother died. 3 years later, your husband died. Then 4 years later, you you remarried. But then almost right away, his father was was getting sick and and passed away. So you could it's very, very easy for for you to think, I'm doomed. Right. Right. And so it's sort of like I was thinking, why is it all these people around me keep passing away? I'm looking around and Oh, you could build a story. Right. Right. That I'm somehow this, you know, misfortunate individual, and this is every time I find somebody that, that I love, that they're just not gonna last very long. And if I would've gone with that, I could've very easily just thought, you know, well, this isn't fair. Why do I keep putting myself in these situations that I allow myself to love people because they're just gonna leave you anyway. I mean, could have gone a 101 different ways, but sort of in that moment, I reminded myself of that, and that's when I wrote the list of all the 13 things mentally strong people don't do, and it wasn't because I'd mastered it. It was because I struggled with it, and then I Which is the key, I think, to writing well, to writing about these things from an informed manner. Right. And then I thought, you know, if it helps me, maybe it'll help somebody else. I didn't imagine it would turn into a viral article that became a book. But, that's why the first thing on the list though is that mentally strong people don't waste time feeling sorry for themselves because it wasn't helpful me at that time. And I know it's not helpful to other people to throw a pity party either. Let's stop to take a quick break. We'll be right back. I think a lot of the items on your list boil down to not boil down to because I think it's important to think about each thing separately. But a lot of it is about surrender. Like, if you waste time feeling sorry for yourself, you know, one way to kinda get through that is to just surrender to the fact, okay. This happened. Now what? These are the cards I'm dealt. I wish I was dealt 2 aces, but I was dealt a 2 and a 7, and now I've gotta play the hand. Yes. And I think people get the word acceptance confused. You can accept that something happened. It doesn't mean you have to accept that it's okay that it happened. But you can say, this is what happened to me, and what am I going to do about it next? And so what did you do then? You know, at that point in my life when I wrote the article, I was like, okay, here's the article. Here we go. I might as well if my father-in-law has a couple of weeks left on the planet, how do I make the best of that time? How do I be helpful to to my family? And how do I not I didn't wanna do anything that made me regret if I thought, you know, if I just sit in a dark room by myself for 2 weeks, will I appreciate that later on in life? No. Absolutely not. So I just did spent as much time with my father-in-law and my second husband in his family as I could to say, how do you make the best of what you have? And and how did they respond to you kind of thinking about this or talking talking like this? You know, they responded well. It was a strange time in our life when the article went viral. It was about the same time my father-in-law became unresponsive. And, so it was a weird time. The phone's ringing off the hook with this viral article, but our family's very privately dealing with something else. And I can remember in the couple of weeks leading up to that, just looking at him and thinking, you know, we're out at dinner and here's a waitress and she happens to be really nice, but I'm thinking she has no idea that being kind to us right now, how important that is, that this could be this man's last time out at a restaurant with his grandkids. And it just it was a really strange time in life to think, you know, how life can change in an instant and how sometimes we know what's coming and sometimes we don't, and how you just need to enjoy every minute that you can while you have it. And and when when your father-in-law became unresponsive at the same time that, you know, the this article, which eventually became very successful book, your your article went viral. Did did anybody kind of resent the success of the article given that it was happening in the middle of this tragedy? No. Not in the least. My husband's family was all very kind about it. And And your husband? Yes. And, you know, it sort of gave us, something else to think about too, you know, while it was like, okay. How do you how do you celebrate something at the same time as be really sad? It was a really interesting time. But, Which which seems seems to be a big theme to kind of reaching for the positive while something sad. Right. Legitimately sad is happening. Right. You know, I I, I I read somewhere that the key to success in a relationship they they did a scientific study, so I've been I'm gonna fall back on on this story, but I've seen this in my own personal experiences. It's not people who support each other through bad times. It's people who support who who are happy for each other in successful times or successful moments. So in like, let's say your article goes viral, which it did, one response is, oh, sure. You know, I gotta deal with this, and you just go off and enjoy your success. Or instead instead of that, that'd be the negative thing. Instead of that being legitimately happy for you, that's a much that's the best sign of future success in a relationship is when 2 people can do that. Yeah. I think that's spot on. I think absolutely to be able to celebrate one another's success and to be able to say I'm not gonna keep score. It doesn't matter. It's just I'm gonna be genuinely happy for you even even though my life isn't perfect or we're going through this other really tough thing. It's okay to also celebrate something at the same time. That's one of those articles where, with, like, psychiatrists were, like, observing couples, and they could tell within, like, 5 seconds or whatever which couples would survive and which weren't. And that and it turned out of the quadrant of things that could happen, that was the that was the most important quadrant. But, okay. So your your next thing and by the way, feeling sorry for yourself is or not feeling sorry for yourself is difficult. Yes. I think it it should be stressed that all of these things in your your list of 13 are things that require noticing. Oh, I'm I'm noticing that I'm feeling sorry for myself maybe a little bit too much and then acting on it. Right. Both are difficult muscles that have to be practiced. Yeah. I run into some people who say, oh, I don't do any of those things on your list. I'm 13 for 13. Yeah. Right? We all do these things sometimes, and it's hard to admit that you do them. And then it's hard to break free of that habit once you say, okay. I do this sometimes. Now how do I not do it? It's different than saying, okay. How do I just have enough good habits, but how do I give up these bad habits that I have? Yeah. And and and, again, I think a lot of people don't have the sort of meta skill to notice when a bad habit is happening. You have to go look out from outside of you and say, oh, I'm doing one of these bad I hate to use the word bad, but I'm doing one of these, I'll use it again, bad habits. How do you build that ability to notice? Yeah. Sometimes if you have people in your life who will point it out to you kindly and you're willing to listen to that, it can be helpful. But a lot of people us don't have people that would be honest and a lot of people aren't willing to take that feedback. They become defensive. But it can also, if you just try to develop some insight to take a step back sometimes and just think about it. Think, well, when was the last time I felt sorry for myself? And be honest. And that takes some courage to do that, even to admit it to yourself. Some people find journaling helps. Other people, just a little bit of quiet time helps. But to just take a step back sometimes and think about life instead of just going out there and doing stuff. Yeah. And and and, again, kind of, be simply being aware of this list and kind of maybe even running it down running down it as a checklist. Am I doing this? Am I doing this? And so on might be a good way to practice that that meta muscle. Right. Absolutely. This is a really important one, which I have this next one is is so important, I think, in terms of career and in terms of success, in terms of creativity. Mentally strong people don't give away their power. This is one I get from people who will say, well, I didn't realize I was doing it. Or I'll run into people who say, yeah, that's my biggest one that I do. And it's really about saying other people don't have the power to control how you think, feel, or behave. And we do it so often that it becomes a habit where you say, I have to do something. Well, to just change your language and say, no, I'm choosing to do that, whether you say, oh, I have to go grocery shopping today or I have to go to my neighbor's house for dinner tonight. No, you don't. You don't have to do any of that. And just to remind yourself, I'm in control. I don't have to do those certain things in life. If I wanna spend time with certain people, I can. If I don't, I don't have to. And there's consequences for all the choices that you make. But just recognizing those things are choices. And even if you are around somebody who's critical of you, it doesn't have to affect your self worth unless you allow them to. You can say no. Even if you have a poor opinion of me, I can still feel highly of myself. And for a lot of people, that's sort of a new concept that you can be in control of all of those things. Yeah. I think people I think people have a tendency to outsource their happiness to either other people or outcomes. So for instance, I could say, I'm gonna be happy, when I'm promoted. So I'm gonna work really, really hard. And once my boss promotes me, I'll finally be happy and I can relax. And, of course, that a, there's a good chance that might not lead to your happiness because what what is happiness made out of? It's probably not made out of a promotion. And second, you might not get that promotion for reasons that, you know, we'll see later or out of your control. Now some people might say though to to one of your examples, oh, this is easy for her to say. I have 6 kids in a mortgage, so I've gotta work my horrible job all day and then go out grocery shopping at the end and then do laundry until 10 o'clock or midnight and then wake up again to get the kids to school. I have no choice. It sounds like she has choices, and I don't. And, well, entourage yourself that it still is a choice. Okay. Maybe you aren't gonna go to work. Well, obviously, then you can't feed your family. But just simply recognizing that nobody's forcing you to go to work, nobody's forcing you to to stay up all night and do laundry, that you're choosing to do it. And just making that shift in your head to say, okay. I I can do these things or I get to do these things is a lot different. I'm gonna argue, though. I can't not choose I can't choose to not do the laundry. My kids need laundry. My 6 my 12 kids need the laundry. There are plenty of kids who go to school with dirty clothes. Right? I'm a foster parent. I see people who kids whose parents made choices not to do those things. Those are the consequences of not doing it. Podcast wearing dirty clothes. So I See, it was a choice. You didn't have to do laundry. I totally did not have to. So but, again, though, some people will say, but I've gotta pay the bills. I gotta pay the mortgage. How I have to go to this job I don't like, and I can't quit it because the job market's crazy in my area of the country, and I don't have any other skills. You know, I'm making up a story. But, what do you say to them? You know, just, again, making that shift to remind yourself I don't have to go to work. Yeah. If I don't go to work, I don't get paid, and then I can't pay the bills. And those are the consequences, but nobody's pushing you out the door and pushing you into your job and making you stay there all day. And just recognizing, okay, it's a choice, can make all the difference in the world for some people. And knowing I'm choosing to do this because I wanna take care of my family is different than saying I have to do this because somebody's forcing me to. I think also and and you you talk about this, throughout the book too. No matter what your situation is, there's always small steps you can take. Even tiny minuscule steps you could take to to play around with changing your situation. So maybe someone says, oh, I have to go to this job. And maybe they do tomorrow. I have to go to this job. But they can also just expand the horizon a little bit. Well, what other things can I do to make a little extra money? And they might not have good ideas at first, but just kind of having that mindset too of taking action in other directions to to widen their choices might be a way to approach this. Yeah. We get stuck in these habits. So we do the same thing almost every day, day in, day out, all the little things that we do. So sometimes it might be, I'm gonna go instead of eating lunch at my desk, I'm gonna go speak to one of my coworkers. Or instead of sitting in the back corner during the meetings, I'm gonna sit somewhere else. Just those little shifts that you can do or to talk to somebody new or to break out of your routine a little bit can change the course of your day. Yeah. So it's, again, it's like a a a meta habit on top of these habits, which is to, you know, taking action when you when you think you're doomed. So you have a great story of the the guy, the patient of yours, who was diabetic, but was sent to you because maybe part of his problems were mental. And and what you encouraged him to do, he he felt he was doing because of his family history and so on. And his diabetes was just getting worse and worse. He was losing his eyesight. I imagine I'm just making this up, but I imagine he was obese. You didn't necessarily mention that in the in the book. But you simply said, why don't you try one thing? Switch to Diet Pepsi from Pepsi. And he suddenly noticed a change, and and I think that helped him realize, oh, there's a a meta muscle here, which is that small changes might work. Yeah. And it could be just as simple as that. You know, I'm gonna try something different. And he was convinced, this particular gentleman was convinced it wasn't gonna work, but he sort of did it because he and I talked about it. And he's like, whatever, Amy. I'll do it and we'll see what happens. And then couldn't believe, okay, saw just a little bit of results. But as soon as he saw a little bit of a change, it motivated him to do more. And he said, okay, if I see that little bit of results now, I'm willing to try something else and see what happens. So I think if we looked at life more like an experiment to say, okay, what can I do? And even if you think it's not gonna work, sometimes prove yourself wrong. Your brain isn't always right. Yeah. Look at life as an experiment. And, again, I think the strongest research is a sample size of 1 when you're if it's yourself Right. Instead of trying these experiments. So then you know, oh, yeah. That worked for me. Right. So and I can do it. Because most people could see, oh, well, switching from Pepsi to Diet Pepsi works, but they still can't do it. Right. Because, they can't they can't they don't have that meta skill. Number 3, they don't shy away from change. This one is tough. We tend to think, okay. My situation's bad, but I don't wanna make it worse. Like what? You know, I run into a lot of people who are in a horrible relationship, and they say, well, you know, I don't wanna go to couples counseling because I don't wanna rock the boat. But I don't wanna end the relationship because I've put in 10 years of hard work, so I don't wanna throw that away. What what that's in situations that are relationships that are bad, for whatever reason. Like, maybe someone's cheating or abusive or whatever. What about relationships that are or jobs or situations that are good, but you feel like better can happen? How do you know when it's time to change as because because they might get because those are situations where it might get worse Yep. Before it gets better. Oh, I'm in a great job, but I really wanna be a painter. And when do you know that change is appropriate or I'm being kinda crazy for doing this? I mean, sometimes there's only one way to to figure it out. Say, I'm gonna take the leap and what's gonna happen. But and I think part of being mentally strong is knowing I'll be okay no matter what. If this doesn't work out, that's okay. I'm still gonna be me, and I'm still gonna be okay. And I think when people have that confidence, then they're able to make a lot of things work anyway. How do they build that confidence? I mean, I can read it in your book, but that won't give it me more confidence. You know, it's about changing changing your thoughts, about changing your behavior, and being in control of your emotions. It's a process. But when you figure out that that you can control those three things, I think that's when it becomes an option to say I'm gonna take the leap even though I don't necessarily feel like it's a 100% guaranteed. I'm gonna do it anyway. What's maybe some way to practice change so so you build that confidence? Yeah. I think the next time your brain tells you you can't do something, just remind yourself, challenge accepted. I'm gonna go prove my brain wrong. And the more that you prove your brain wrong over time, you start to your brain will start to physically change. Studies show that your brain will physically change, and your brain will start to see you in a different light. So if you Is that right? Like your your neural pathways or whatever will will change? Yeah. You can see it on neuroimaging studies that you can physically alter your brain just by changing the way that you think and changing the way that you behave. So if your brain tells you you can only run a half a mile, but you run a half a mile plus 5 steps, after a while, your brain will start to see that, well, maybe maybe you're a little more athletic than I give you credit for. I I had on my podcast once, Jesse Itzler, and he was talking about physical training. And he was he was saying, basically, at the point where your brain starts screaming, you can't do another whatever. You can't do another push up. It's it's that this is it. At that point, you can always do 40% more. Yeah. And I think that's accurate that our brain, in a lot of ways, underestimates our ability to do things. And if you listen to your brain, you'll sell yourself short in life. I always believe in what I call the the discomfort zone that, of course, it's great to always be in the comfort zone because it's comfortable. But sometimes, it's good to at least practice being a little uncomfortable sometimes. And so, one time I wanted to get good at a certain skill. So I wanted to I figured a way to practice this. So I'll go on the subway, and I'm gonna do stand up comedy on the subway. And there's no downside to it because who cares? But the brain really does not want you to do it. And if you suggest to other people to do it, they will say, no way. I am not doing that. Because the brain is screaming again. You cannot do this. But it turns out once you start doing it, you can do it. Right. Because there there actually is zero downside to doing it, and there's only upside, which is now you've done it. And I love that example because I think so often we think, I can't do this. And then you stop and you think, well, why not? Right? Why not just go out there and do it anyway? And even if you can if you can behave contrary to the way you feel and the way that you think sometimes, it will change things for you, and you'll start to see things a little bit differently. Just like your example of the mother doing the laundry at 10 at night. Okay. Some kids do go to school with the clothes a little dirty. You know, that's a little uncomfortable maybe, but, it's possible. Right. It's not the end of the world. It's really good if you have 12 kids over there in my made up story. Number 4, they don't so by the way, I'm going through these things slowly. I don't know if you wanna speed it up. I'm talking about each one because as I was reading the book and now, first off, I've read the book when it first came out, and then I've gone back to it because I think this list is so useful. It's it's a good book to refer to afterwards, because that's why I had so many questions on each thing. Number 4, they don't focus on things they can't control. Another extremely important thing, like, everybody is a little bit of a control freak. Yeah. Because they think that if they give up, control, then bad things will happen. Right. And I run into a lot of people that do that where they think, okay. If I can just manage every little thing in my life, I'll be okay. And they create that rule for themselves that sort of says, you'll be okay if and it's if you can control the outcome of everything. And how anxiety provoking is that when you think I have to be in control of everything? And That's horrible. It is. And for to let go of that and to say, I can't control other people. I can't always control the outcome. And I work with a lot of people on creating goals that are about what you can control. So for example, somebody will say, my goal is to get a promotion. But you can't control whether your boss gives you a promotion. You can control how how much effort you put in or how you work, but you can't control that outcome. And so for a lot of people, it's about making that shift to saying, okay. I'm gonna focus in life on what I can control and recognize that you could be the best worker on earth. But if your boss doesn't recognize that, you might not get a promotion. Right. And another way kind of to say that is you can it's much easier to control the process than the outcome of that process. So for instance, when you put in a lot of effort into getting that promotion, you might not get the promotion. But you did put in the effort, and the effort has both external and internal results. Now you know how to put in that effort. Now you probably learn more skills while you were putting in that effort, and that might lead to a different job or a better job or whatever if you don't get that promotion. Right. And so many of us, I think, measure success on the outcome and the things that we can't control, and that's why we then think, oh, I'm a failure. I can't do these things in life. And we reinforce these self limiting beliefs that we have, but, really, you might have done a really awesome job. And for circumstances beyond your control, you didn't get to where you wanted to be, but that doesn't mean that you're a failure or that you did something wrong necessarily. And I would say, I mean, I mean, looking at your own life and situations, but I also of course, while I'm reading this, I look at mine. Most things in my life didn't go the way I wanted them to. Right. So very basic examples. I went to graduate school. I thought I was gonna finish graduate school. Like, most people who enter something think they're gonna finish it, and I didn't finish graduate school. I got thrown out. And but I did learn skills in the process, and I learned more about what I really wanted to to do with my life. But but then every step of the way, nothing ever really happened at the end that I thought was gonna happen when I started something at the beginning. You kinda have to surrender to you have kind of have to surrender to the fact that if you do take the actions and your intentions are good, then some outcome will happen even if it's not the one that you want. Right. And I think that's key to sometimes be able to say, what did I gain from this? Even if I didn't have the outcome that I wanted, it probably still learned something, gained something along the way. And then how do you use what you gained even if it's in a different experience or a different environment or in a different way than you intended and to grow from that. And again, that's a lot of what you've been addressing before, which is something negative might be happening on the surface, but you're gonna sorta also, it's important to reach for the positive as well. Not to find the things necessary to be grateful in this, I think is a little cliche ish, but to to still find something positive while while something negative is happening or or you're thinking about something negative. So Right. So we don't end up on one end of the spectrum or the other. We either think life is wonderful and everything's perfect or everything's horrible and awful. But to realize that you can have both at the same time, you could have something wonderful happening at the same time something horrible is happening, and that's okay. And I you know, it's it's interesting because I think this is all related to like, let's say you feel stressed about something. So this is a stress is also this this chemical that's happening in the brain. So cortisol is spiking in your brain. And there's essentially two ways to resolve it is what a lot of these, ideas are about. One way to resolve it is to say and this is an odd way to resolve stress, but it does actually reduce cortisol is to say, well, of course, something bad happened. Bad things always happen to me. So, actually, your stress will go down if you think that, but that won't necessarily improve your life. And another way to resolve the stress is to do what you're saying, like, is to kind of reach for something positive. And that that also will turn out to reduce stress because now something positive is happening as well. Yeah. And I think for us to just when we are trying to change our thoughts, it doesn't have to be, I'm gonna just think positive when things are that bad. I'm just gonna think more realistically. So somebody's stuck at a traffic jam rather than thinking, why do these things always have to have to happen to me? This isn't fair. Remind yourself there's millions of cars on the road. It's gonna happen that there's going to be traffic jams, and that's okay. I'm so glad you used the traffic jam as a result because, I used to use that as a great example, and I I remember I realize now I've not been using that lately, but I would always tell myself in a traffic jam, instead of being, like, oh, I'm gonna be late or I'm stuck in this traffic jam or I'm bored. I think to myself, I'm in this traffic jam because I'm trying to get into the most amazing city in the world where there's so many things happening. And I'm here, and I get to experience it and participate in it and so on. So I don't know again if that's, like, too Pollyanna ish, but that's how I deal with traffic jams. Oh, you know, and I think that goes back to not giving away your power to be able to say, you know, I'm not gonna blame traffic on on having a bad day, or I'm not gonna let it ruin my time. But to know, okay, it was a fact of life. If you're gonna live in New York, that's gonna happen. And and I think there's so many other things that can spin off from this. Don't focus on things that you can't control. So for instance, somebody might write a book and no publisher will accept it. And you can't control if a publisher will like your book or not. You know, there's only, like, 4 or 5 major publishers. Yeah. 4 or 5 people might not like your book out of billions of people. But there's still things you can do. A, you wrote a book. Now you have the have the skill set so you can write another book, Or you can look for, well, what are the alternatives out there? And without being brainwashed into what has stigma and what doesn't, you could self publish your book for instance. I mean, E. L. James with 50 Shades of Grey was rejected everywhere, and she self published it initially. And then only later was it picked up and became the biggest bestseller ever, you know, with your book probably as a close number too. So, but I think people don't look at the the choices. One thing they can choose is is having more choices. Yes. I think that's a wonderful example is to be able to say, how how do you what you know, what are you gonna do? If this doesn't work out, if this isn't what you planned for, then what can you do next? Yeah. And not tie your happiness to that one or to that one outcome. This one, I kinda had to deal your next number 5, I had to deal with today. So, mentally strong people don't worry about pleasing everyone. And I think in our kind of social media intense world, like, where every tweet and post and everything is analyzed, you're always gonna not please somebody. Yes. In fact, if you please everyone, you're probably doing something wrong. Right. You're gonna have to in order to please some people and reach your target audience, you're gonna repel some people, and that's okay. But I think we do live in a world where we wanna be polite. We want people to like us. And social media has only amplified that that idea that I'm only as good as how many likes I get on Facebook. Or Yeah. You can really attach self worth to well, I think in general, because we we're we're primates and we live kind of, we we're we're descended from, you know, an initial species that rank themselves from alpha to omega in every single tribe. I think we always wanna apply some metric to, determine our happiness. Yes. I think so too. And I think in today's world, social media becomes a outlet for a lot of people to know. Plays on that genetic thing. Right. Likes and shares and more likes and whatever. Right. And it's tough to say, okay. Some people don't like me. In fact, some people are really mean, especially on the Internet and on social media that some people are gonna say what you said was stupid, and they're gonna criticize everything about you. And to know that that's okay and to be able to say, I'm gonna keep going anyway, and that takes courage to do that. Well, when you when you first came out with this book or the initial article, what were some of the negative things that you had to deal with that you felt this urge, oh, I gotta argue and correct this person, but then you held yourself back? When the article came out, it didn't give any of my backstory. It was essentially just a list. So I had tons of people that would say things like, well, you don't know what it's like to go through difficult times. And That must have, like, infuriated you. It did. And I wasn't in a place where I wanted to tell people the the backstory, but at the same time, I was upset that people were saying those types of things. And so that was frustrating. But then when I had other professionals that came out, somebody wrote an article about it was another, professional in the psychology industry, about all the things wrong with my article. And I thought, oh, dear. And so that Did they say well, they what was one of the things they said was wrong with your article? You know, so I said, don't dwell on the past. And they would say, well, what does the word dwell actually mean? And they were sort of picking it apart. And I think in hindsight, I think because my article went viral, they were also looking for their article to go viral as well. And it was published on Psychology Today. And so I thought, have I just ruined my my career in the psychology industry? But it actually led to Psychology Today giving me a job, and so I now write for them. So it something good came out of it. But in those early days, it was a matter of thinking, you know, what have I done? And if I anger the wrong people or I upset people, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen to my career? What's gonna happen to me personally? How's this all gonna play out? Because I never meant for for this to go viral. So it was an interesting place to be in one of those times where I really had to practice that one myself to know, okay. Not everybody's gonna like it, and that's okay. I think also it sounds like when this article came out, you were going through such personal tragedy with your father-in-law that maybe that actually, in a weird way, because you're devoting so much energy to the to the tragedy, it kind of saved you from, oh, well, now I also have to have enough energy to respond to all these people. Right. You were probably just like, oh, okay. I can't deal with that, and that probably was a good lesson in a weird way. It was to know it's not my job to explain myself. I don't have to go through, replying to every message I get or telling them all my story. It was just a matter of knowing, okay, people can be angry. I think this was the chapter, and I I quoted it. You had the quote you started off with a quote from Lao Tzu. I I forget if it was this chapter or or a later one. What was the quote? It's something like if you try to please everyone, you're a a prisoner to everyone. Right. Something like that. Yeah. It's along those lines. I don't remember the exact words of it too, but it is because I think, you know, when we try to please other people, it it can change who we are, and it makes you maybe act and do things that aren't in accordance to the way you'd normally do things because you think I don't wanna upset anybody. And that's a dangerous place to be. I think probably this happens in a lot of professions, but let's say as a as a writer, you can you write lots of things, and then, oh, you wrote something that a lot of people suddenly liked and and built that's how that that's how you built up a following or whatever, that that metric again. Right. And then suddenly, when previously you used to write whatever you wanted to write, and you were as authentic as possible, now you kind of feel like, oh, I have to fit this one channel, or else people won't like me, or they won't recognize this, or it won't be as as powerful, or I won't get that metric. And so I think that's a big challenge to, to think, oh, I I I don't have to please everyone with every single thing I do. The flip side is if you're trying to do good in the world, you do have to think, oh, I need to please a lot of people. Right. So how do you balance that? You know, it's a matter of knowing, okay, there's an audience and the whole world isn't necessarily my audience, but to know, okay, that I do have an audience. And how do I how do I make sure that I'm giving them what's helpful to them while also being honest? I don't wanna sugarcoat everything and say, read this and feel good about your life. But and that's what led to the second book was people just kept asking me more about kids, and I thought, okay. I can do that. Right. So so you felt safe knowing that you can still be authentic and still please a particular audience that you built up. And I think there's there's another thing that happens. Like, you take take a musician like Bob Dylan. He built up an audience with his kind of acoustic folk music style initially, but then he went electric at one point, and his entire audience hated him. And he had to deal with that, but he didn't wanna stop being the artist he was. And so I think that also is a challenge. It is. It absolutely is to figure out how do I still be me, do what I wanna do, and know that if, you know, realistically, if nobody likes what you're doing, then you're not gonna make money at it. Yeah. So you have to deal with you have to deal with that. You have to choose that. Right. They don't fear and this is related to number 6. They don't fear taking calculated risks. Yeah. We're so I think we think that the level of risk and our level of fear is equal. So when something feels scary, we think it's really risky. And we know that that's not true, that anxiety is a strange thing. And when you're anxious about one thing, it carries over into other areas of your life. And not to talk about too many studies, but studies will show that when you if you're anxious about something in your personal life and then you try to make a professional decision, you'll be more anxious and you'll play it safe. But to just know, how do my emotions affect my decisions? If you try to negotiate when you're sad, then you aren't gonna take as big of a risk because you think I can't handle one more rejection. Or if you're doing something when you're nervous about something else, it's completely unrelated to know I'm not as likely to take a bigger risk because I'm anxious about something else right now and my anxiety plays into that. So it's more about just being aware of your emotions and knowing that life is inherently risky. There's no guarantee, but that our logic gets flawed. We tend to think people are like, oh, I can't ride in an airplane because it's risky. No. Driving to the airport is riskier than getting on the plane. But we make up all of these rules in life about what's gonna keep us safe and how to how to stay safe. And a lot of times, they're just based on things that aren't even logical. Right. Well, we make up these rules often, I think, based on what we've been taught. So, for instance, I've seen this in a a friend recently where he knew he could quit his day job because he had various sources of income that could almost completely replace the income from his day job. But it's scary to quit a 9 to 5 day job because we're always taught, well, that's the safe path. We've been taught that since we were 3 years old. Right. And even though that might not be the safe path, I I think, I think, Nassim Taleb said, the 2 most addictive things are heroin and a steady paycheck. Mhmm. So kind of a different understanding of risk. Like, our our limited knowledge of of risk in life might be predetermined by all this whole backstory of things we've been taught and trained in and how and that other people believed and projected onto us and so on. Yeah. We develop a set of core beliefs when we're really young, and we hold on to the things that we know are true. And then to unlearn it or to open expand your mind and think, oh, maybe that's not true. That's tough to do. Yeah. Alright. Number 7, the evil one from Psychology Today that don't dwell on the past. Mentally strong people don't dwell on the past. Right. It's helpful to reflect on the past. Obviously, we need to learn from it, but dwelling's not getting stuck. It's when you think, okay, the best years are behind me. Your life was better back then. Or I see so many people that made a mistake and they can't forgive themselves and or they can't forgive somebody else. And they just aren't enjoying life to its fullest anymore. They aren't planning their future because they are somehow thinking if I I'm I don't deserve to to be happy right now, or I'm not going to be as happy in the future. So then they aren't. You know, I I, 2 things 2 things relate to this. I found that forgiveness often results in my best friends. Meaning, if I had some problem with somebody or if they had some problem with me, just kinda like and then we didn't talk for, let's say, many years, kind of because because I was always dwelling on the pastor. Just kinda working through that often results in much stronger connections than I have with the people who are my friends all along the way, weirdly. So and then the other thing is a couple years ago, I was doing an experiment, and I threw out everything I owned. Like, like, pretty much a 100%, except for, like, one backpack's worth of items. And after 40 years, I had lots of items. After 47 years, I had I had decades decades worth of items and and so much stuff. And people ask me later, oh, it must be so freeing. Like, do you do you miss anything? And I would respond, of course, I miss things. Your the goal was not to not miss anything. Missing things sometimes is a pleasure of its own, and I think you could dwell it's it's it's thinking about the past and appreciating it, but, again, not saying, oh, I wish I had that back in my life, or this person did this to me 5 years ago. I could never forgive them. Like, making a set of rules for now based on what happened in the past sometimes is is the is you wanna avoid. Right. And we do. We the conclusions that we draw and sort of the assumptions that we make, and they're not always accurate. But so for example, somebody doesn't get a promotion 5 years ago, so then they determine, okay, I'm not meant to be a leader. And 5 years down the road, they don't apply for for new jobs because they think I'm not that person. We allow ourselves to to reinforce those beliefs that we have, but to know you don't have to do that. You can create a different sort of life that you want right now. Do you think people can change? Absolutely. I wouldn't be in my field if I didn't have hope that people could could change. I think everyone can change. Like they say, once an addict, always an addict. Do you think that's true? I I think somebody who is an addict will probably struggle with that, but they don't always have to be an addict. It will just mean that they probably are always going to be tempted or they may always have problems or may have changed them in a certain way, but I don't think they're necessarily always going to be an addict. Or or what about something else? Like, let's say someone has been, like, I don't know if this is really a a medical term or not. But let's say someone's been very narcissistic in their life. Can they change to be not narcissistic? If they're truly motivated when it comes to something like narcissism. Sometimes people wanna change on the outside, but they don't really change who they are on the inside. But but you think they can? Absolutely. I think a lot of people think they can. I think that's true. And, you know, again, it depends on somebody's motivation. Anybody who's truly motivated to change, I think, can. It's in the Quran. Intention, precedes action. Right. So if your intention is sincere and and you can probably find your way to action to to make those changes. Right. And, you know, we're in charge of what we think and what we do and how the choices that we make. So you absolutely can do something different. Not a Muslim, by the way. I just know that one anecdote from the Quran. They don't number 8, they don't make the same mistakes over and over. This one can be tough because we we do something and it didn't work. So there's, you know, the old adage just get right back up on the horse and try again. But sometimes you need to pause, take a break and think, okay, why didn't that work or where did I mess up? And our tendency can be to blame other people and think, well, that person messed up and that's why I'm where I am now. But you gotta take responsibility for your share and then learn from it so that you could say, how do I move forward and be wiser than I was? Yeah. And, I mean, I think I think this comes up in several places, but, like, one is relationships. You you always hear stories of people who only go for people who are unavailable. That's like a cliche type of story in a in a relationship scenario. But how do you given that that there are a lot of people who do make the same mistakes over and over, and I've been guilty of this myself in a lot of different ways. How do you it's one thing to say it, oh, I'm not gonna make that mistake again. But there could be really deep reasons why you make the same same mistake over and over. And and they're very complicated, those reasons. It could be how you're raised, or it could be some trauma that you've had in your life, or whatever. How do you kind of do you need to get back to the core to figure it out? Or how do you avoid making the same mistakes over and over? Yeah. Sometimes, it is about taking a step back and getting to the car. I've worked with people. There was a woman I worked with, for example, who dated drug addicts. And so she'd said, okay. Well, I'm not gonna go back to the bars to meet people. I'm gonna meet people online. But then online, same thing. She attracted drug addicts and ended up dating them. Not just attracted them. She was probably attracted to them. Right. Maybe she was bored of the people who weren't drug addicts. Right. And so What do you do? So then it was a matter of saying, okay. Well, it's not just where you're meeting people or how you're meeting them, but it's a matter of thinking, do you deserve better, or what's exciting about being attracted to these people? What is it that you're getting out of it? And what would that mean to give it up? And for her, it was a matter of figuring that out of, okay, I like taking care of people. I sorta like this risk and I like this danger. Maybe she's afraid if she doesn't take care of people, then they're gonna leave her. Yes. And this is an easy way to be a caretaker, you know, of somebody. Right. And that was definitely a part of it. And for her to sort of draw all of those conclusions to know, okay. It wasn't just the bar that I went to where I kept meeting people. It was deeper than that and we really had to take that step back and say, well, who are you that and how could you do something different and what would that mean if you were in a relationship with a healthier person and somebody that cared for you? And it was really a self worth issue where she thought, I'm not worthy of being in a healthy relationship and being somebody's partner. Instead, I am comfortable in that caretaker position, which went back to childhood. And and what did she do? You know, it took a lot of soul searching and she'd get in these other relationships after a while with healthier people, but it was uncomfortable for her, and then she'd sabotage it. Uncomfortable in what way? You know, she just wasn't used to somebody asking her questions like, what do you need or what can we do? And she was so and then then it was sort of like this place where she felt more vulnerable that she couldn't always be in control or couldn't be in charge or wasn't always meeting that person's needs. And so we had to figure out how do you sit with that discomfort? How do you say, okay. This is anxiety provoking, but I'm gonna do it anyway because this is actually a healthy relationship. Yeah. Or or would she get bored when she wasn't the caretaker? Right. Right. It's not nearly as exciting when you don't have somebody that's has all this drama. And so it was a matter of figuring out how do you still meet that need for excitement in your life without sabotaging a healthy relationship? Did she did she do it? Yeah. You know, after a while, we had to figure out it took a lot of creativity to figure out how do you create a new life for yourself that still meets all of these needs but not in an unhealthy way. So it was a matter of saying, okay, you can still go on exciting dates with somebody who's healthy. It might not involve a trip to the ER, but it could still be exciting in another way. You know, why don't you go take a trip somewhere and do something else? And for her, again, it took a long time for her to come to that point where she could say, yeah. That was really weird. We went away for the weekend, and there were no drugs involved, or we didn't do anything that was illegal. So for her, that was strange. But after a while, she was able to get more comfortable with that. It's almost like when you wanna change your diet, it's not simply a matter of, okay. I'm gonna stop eating bacon and chips every day. I'm gonna eat kale and vegetables. It that you could make that decision, but it's gonna taste horrible for a while. And what happens is your your your the food you eat ends up part of it ends up being bacteria in your gut, and that bacteria is alive. And that bacteria has food cravings. So if you all you eat is chips, you're gonna develop this bacteria in your gut that crave chips. And it takes a while, like, let's say, a few weeks that you grow new bacteria that now craves the kale. And at first, it was gonna just taste horrible. Your stomach's not gonna want it. Your brain's not gonna want it because your stomach and your brain are are connected by a lot of neurochemicals. And it's the same thing. It sounds like in this person's case, she had developed almost this emotional gut bacteria that, oh, I need drug addicts. And she had to kinda get into a bunch of situations to sort of grow new emotional bacteria. Right. And to sit with that discomfort. Because at first, she thought, you know, this isn't working. If I'm in a healthy relationship and it's uncomfortable, then I must be doing something wrong. But to know that just because she felt uncomfortable didn't mean it was wrong or bad or a mistake, she could just be uncomfortable and that that was okay. She just had to get through it. So, you know, I want I want people to read your book and not just, listen to all 13 on this podcast. And then, of course, I want people to read, the, you know, 13 things mentally strong parents don't do. And I'm a parent. Your book's I'm I have 2 kids. Your your book's incredibly valuable to parents, So I I don't I want people to to read both. But I I wanna skip to number 12. I don't know. Is this number 12? No. Number 11. They don't fear alone time. And the reason I wanna skip to that is because I think I fear alone time. And so I I find I'm always in something where I don't have to be alone. And how how do you develop the ability to not fear alone time? And what's the problem with fearing alone time? And I like to be with people. Yeah. And I think we're social creatures, and that's great. We definitely need plenty of people time. But to be alone with your thoughts is a little bit different. And I'll challenge people. Just spend 10 minutes alone in a room without the TV, without your cell phone, without anything going on. And for most people, that's really scary. They think, oh, I'll be bored. I won't know what to do or my mind will be racing or I'll think about uncomfortable things. And to know that that's the place we've come to in the world where people are terrified to be with their own alone with their thoughts. And when they did studies on this, they asked women, would you rather meditate for 15 minutes or submit yourself to an electric shock? And 25% of the women opted for the electric shock. But then they asked men, and 75% of men opted for the electric shock. That's fine. Just sitting quietly. And you think, yeah, that's the state of our world. I think we're so surrounded by, you know, social media and text messages, and we're always connected. And there's so much noise. And so many people use the TV, the radio, something for background noise all the time just so that they don't have to think. I think I think though there's kind of, a persistence of life in the sense that, if something's happening right now, then it's always going to happen. Yeah. So for instance, you were going through these tragedies, and it's very easy to concoct the story that, oh, anybody I love, I'm gonna experience some horrible tragic loss. And I think it's very easy to think, oh, alone right now. I'm gonna always be alone. And I think that's a hard it's hard to convince yourself that the present isn't the best usually, the present actually is the best predictor of the future. So it's hard to convince yourself of the times when it might not be. Yeah. And for people to know that being alone doesn't necessarily have to be lonely, but that it's okay to just even if you just take 10 minutes a day to just unplug, unwind, and say, I'm gonna just think. Reflect on how your day went. What are your goals? How'd you do? What kind of progress are you making? What do you wanna do better tomorrow? And for a lot of people, that's tough. I'm my therapy office, I have tons of people that come in and say, I can't sleep at night because my mind is racing. And I'll ask them that question, well, how much time do you spend just alone with your thoughts during the day? And almost all the time the answer is, well, none. Because we have so much focus on being productive and that people always wanna be doing something, but sometimes just taking a step back can be helpful. And if you don't ever give your brain an opportunity to sort of process things, it'll take it whenever it can. So for a lot of people, that's when they lay their head on the pillow because that's the first time all day long that things are silent. That's a really great point because I think I'm the type of person that will wake up at 3 AM with my thoughts racing, and that's usually also the most irrational time of the day. Yeah. Because it's not like you're gonna solve all your life's problems at 3 in the morning all of a sudden. Right. And my I think my one of my daughters, not my younger daughter gets this from me. She'll wake up at 3 in the morning, and she'll say she'll even wake me up and say, I can't I'm thinking I can't sleep. And so I tell her to do the same thing I tell myself, which I find works, and it worked for her, which is I say to myself, okay. I'm waking up at 3 in the morning again. I'm not gonna solve my problems right now. It's impossible, but I'm gonna make an appointment with myself to think about this exact problem at 3 in the afternoon. Yes. And I tell her to do the same thing, and a 100% of the time, I don't really the problem wasn't a real problem anyway. At 3 in the afternoon, I could spend 3 seconds thinking about it, and that's it. Like, it's it wasn't really a problem, but your mind, you know, you're in that kind of half dream, half fantasy state, half nightmare state Right. And you wake up thinking about these things. And that's a skill we actually use in therapy a lot, which is schedule time to worry. And so if there's something that you just can't get out of your mind, set a time. Put it in your calendar. So from 7 to 7:15 tonight, I'm gonna worry about that. And then when it enters your mind throughout the rest of the day, just remind yourself, nope. I'm gonna think about that later to sort of free you up so that the rest of the day you can think about other things and know I'm gonna devote 15 minutes to thinking about this problem but that it doesn't encroach in your entire day because how often do we have something going on in the background? So even when we're concentrating on something in the background of our mind, we're still worried about something else and it's a distractor. So to say, no. I'm gonna schedule time to think about that. And for a lot of people, that really helps. So so I'll I'll I'll start to I'll start to close this up. But I do wanna I do wanna ask you this. A lot of times, it's easy to write these things down and particularly while you're experiencing things. Oh, this is how I solved this issue in the past. That's how I have this experience to write this list and then write this book. But when since you've written the book or at least the initial article, when have you found yourself in an incredibly difficult situation where you could take a step back and say, oh, I'm gonna apply my own advice and see if it still works for me. Have you had that opportunity? All the time. I think, you know, fortunately, I haven't had any major things since the book came out that have been horrible and awful, but to just remind myself that I'll be okay no matter what. I guess if a more recent example, I live in the Florida Keys. Hurricane Irma came through, and it was a matter of figuring out, well, what's gonna happen next Completely out of my control. I can't stop the storm from coming. I can't prevent damage from happening. It was a matter of just thinking, okay. We'll deal with that when it comes. And I still come by this list, honestly. I still go through the list and remind myself. No. Like what'd you do? You know, it was a matter of figuring out how much news and media do I wanna consume because I could sit and watch the news 247, but it wasn't gonna make it any better. I wasn't gonna have any more information on what was going on down there other than what the media was showing. So it was a matter of saying, I'm gonna consume a little bit and and then shut it off. I'm gonna go do other things because I wholeheartedly approve that. I I I have been on a news diet now for about 7 years. I don't look at any newspaper or TV news or anything. Not because it doesn't and people think, oh, well, don't you need to be informed? Actually, it doesn't make you more informed. It might make you less informed because they're trying to grab subscribers. So they're gonna make they're gonna intensify maybe too much so the news. And you can often just hear if you just see what's like trending on Twitter or you hear a friend overhear people talking, so sometimes that's you're gonna absorb the events you need to absorb anyway. Yes. And I think that that's wise. I mean, studies will show that too, that the more that we consume, you know, the more anxiety goes up or the more it starts to feel like the entire world is doom and gloom. And when you can shut yourself off from that and remind yourself that they're showing the worst of the worst, and that there's plenty of other good things and happy things going on, and those things don't make the news. But when you consume too much of it, it feels like that's the entire world. Yeah. Like, I I there was one year where there was a lot of, shark attacks, and every head day, another headline, person loses an arm and a shark attack. Turned out that was the least number of, out of the past 70 years, that was the least number of reported shark attacks that year. But just whatever reason, the I mean, I've worked in newsrooms, and you see the editor kind of set the tone. And and you I could just imagine some editor saying, okay, find a shark attack for today, and let's write about it. Right. So as opposed to some other issue they could have written about. Right. And you think how ridiculous, but when we're watching it, it makes us think, oh my goodness. These sharks are invading, and suddenly we're all gonna die of a shark attack. Right? Yeah. And so to know how do you shut that off and how do you keep that perspective? And for me, it was a matter just limiting how much I consumed and knowing that it is what it is, and I'll deal with it. And what happened? Did your house get destroyed and everything lost? No. We had some damage, but everything, everything will be fine. Because it was like a category 2 hurricane. Alright? It wasn't a category 5 or or 8 that everybody was predicting. Category infinity that everyone was predicting. Yeah. You know, it was bad. Some places got it certainly had lots of damage and not to minimize that. And I know some peep some lives were lost, but for the most part, I think that we fared much better than they predicted. Did and did you consider evacuating? Yeah. I was not there. I would have been the first one that would be out. I wasn't there when they, evacuated people, but I would have definitely evacuated just on the off chance it was that bad. Yeah. So you you still have to prepare for. You have to take a calculated risk. Right. Right. And so I would have definitely chosen to evacuate just in case. Yeah. Yeah. And, but I also wanna recommend, by the way so I'm about to recommend all your books, but I I wanna recommend also people listen to your your TED Talk. I thought it was great. You're funny. Like, you started off with this thing about, you know, you have a Facebook friend whose life seems perfect and really seems sincere, and it's like they bring a professional photographer with them when they go on vacation. And then you kinda, like, pause a little bit. Does anyone else have a friend like that? And it was just, your timing was was funny. It was a very good, TED talk, and you kind of then you told your story, then you talk about you don't list all the 13 things, but, you you you talk about the process that led to the the book. And I thought it was a great TED talk, and so did 4 and a half 1000000 other people who who have watched it. So I encourage people to watch that to kind of get an intro to you after this podcast, of course. But I also think people have to it's a must read. 13 things mentally strong people don't do. And then I just wanna make sure I get the title right. 13 things mentally strong parents don't do. I wish I had read that one when I first became a parent. I feel like becoming a parent I mean, not becoming a parent, but over I have an 18 and a 15 year old. And over these 18 years, I've learned a lot of these things, but through hard trial and error where I wish I could have just read this and at least, you know, mentally went down the checklist. Oh, am I kinda I think it's important not just to read the book, but to remind yourself of these things. Because there's that meta skill of it's too easy to fall in the ruts we always fall in, and you have to kinda notice when you're doing it. You have to note it. These are habits. These these things that, these habits that mentally strong people don't do. Mhmm. And you can't just sort of read about breaking a habit and then break it. You have to kinda constantly notice, and that's an important skill. But I I think that's why I like these your books as almost checklists to remind myself of. And at the same time, I just wanna say the reason why I think these books are so popular and and the first book has done so well and it sounds like you corrected it after the article, which I didn't read. I've never I didn't read the original article. I read the book. You're a storyteller. And so you start off with your story so people could see right away. Oh, okay. She's been through something, and it's I can relate to it. I have different things that have bad that have happened in my life. And then you tell not just your own story, but you draw from stories of hundreds of other people to kind of express each point. And I think that's a really powerful technique, which makes your book great. So thank you, Ami Morin, for coming. And it's m o r I n, if anyone wants to Google you. Thank you, Amy, for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah. It was fun. For more from James, check out the James Alticere Show on the choose yourself network atjamesalticere.com, and get yourself on the free insiders list today. Hey. Thanks for listening. Listen. I have a big favor to ask you, and it will only take 30 seconds or less, and it would mean a huge amount to me. If you like this podcast, please let me know. Please let the team I work with know. Please let my guests know, and you can do this easily by subscribing to the podcast. It's probably the biggest favor you could do for me right now, and it's really simple. Just go to Itunes, search for the James Altucher Show, and click subscribe. Again, it will only take you 30 seconds or less. And if you subscribe now, it will really help me out a lot. Thanks again.
Comments