767: How to Build Tremendous Mental Strength with Amy Morin

Pete Mockaitis
Amy, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Amy Morin
Hey, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. And I think the first thing that we need to hear about, though, is, is it true you’ve been living on a sailboat for the last six years? And what is the story?

Amy Morin
It is true. So, I guess six years ago, we decided, “Hey, why live in Maine if you don’t have to? It’s kind of cold and dark.” So, we went on this adventure that was supposed to be six months on a sailboat, but six years later, here I am. And it was my husband’s dream. When he was four years old, his bedroom was decorated in a sailboat theme, so he said, “Someday, I’m going to live on a sailboat,” but we realized someday isn’t always promised, so just one random day, we said, “Why not do it?” So, we packed up a Fiat with a dog, a cat, a laptop, and off we went, and here we are still in the Florida Keys on a sailboat.

Pete Mockaitis
So, as we speak, you’re on a sailboat?

Amy Morin
I am, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t see anything rocking.

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, a lot of the time, because I need superfast internet, we’re tied to a dock, so I’m not just bobbing around in the ocean or anything.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, has that been working out well for you, you’re pleased with the decision? And what are some of the pros living on a sailboat maybe others should consider?

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, there are some pros and cons. The pros would be it’s kind of a simple life. Again, I have some clothes and a laptop and not much else, and you really don’t need much. And, like, manatees and dolphins come swimming by, and there’s lots of cool stuff. And, of course, during quarantine, it was easy to be on a sailboat because when everybody had to be inside their house, well, my house moves so I could go places and still go out and do things. I can snorkel, I can swim, I can do lots of fun stuff.

But there are some cons as well. So, this is my podcast studio, so we’re recording a podcast from a boat. It’s loud sometimes. There are certain things you have to think of with a sailboat, like, there’s not a ton of room, so we kind of jockey for position on who gets the cool space on the couch during the day. And there was an octopus incident that involved an octopus coming through our air-conditioning vent. That was not the best day ever.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s wild. Well, cool, you’re making it work. That’s exciting.

Amy Morin
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m also excited to hear all about mental strength. You’ve got a series of excellent books, including 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, and I loved your TEDx Talk, we will put a link to that in the show notes, for sure. So, tell me, when it comes to us humans and mental strength, is there a particular surprising discovery you’ve made about us in the course of your practice and research?

Amy Morin
Well, I guess the first thing was that mental strength really depended on what not to do. We talk so much about all the healthy habits and all the things you should do.

Pete Mockaitis
Exercise.

Amy Morin
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
Breathe.

Amy Morin
And as a therapist, I was taught, “When people come into your therapy office and they tell you what’s going on in their life, figure out what they’re already doing well and build on that,” and that makes sense on the surface, like, “Yeah, I’m going to point out your strengths and we’re going to keep doing that.” But, at some point, I thought, “Well, if I want to go see a physical trainer and they told me to run on the treadmill, yeah, I’m going to run on the treadmill.” But if they didn’t mention, “Hey, by the way, that junk food you’re eating kind of negates all that work you’re doing on the treadmill,” I’d be kind of mad.

So, I thought, “Let’s take a look at this. What are the common unhealthy habits that we all do but, yet, those little things keep us stuck?” And so, for example, you can practice gratitude quite often but if you still feel sorry for yourself sometimes, kind of negates the gratitude. So, most of us have moments where we feel thankful, but we also have moments where we feel sorry for ourselves. So, let’s focus on getting rid of that in our lives, and then the good habits you have already become much more effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, beautiful. So, then when it comes to talking about being mentally strong, how do you define that? Is being mentally strong distinct from mentally healthy or are they kind of synonymous or interchangeable?

Amy Morin
I’m glad you asked that because they’re different. People will say that sometimes, like, “Ah, I wish I could be mentally strong but I’m depressed,” or, “I wish I could be mentally strong but I have anxiety.” Not the same thing at all. It makes more sense to our brains when we think about it in terms of, like, physical strength and physical health. You go to the gym, you can build physical strength, yeah, that improves your physical health, too. But even a weight trainer can still develop, like, high cholesterol or some sort of physical health problem down the road, you might injure your knee, mental strength is the same.

It’s all about the exercises we do every day, the strategies we employ in life, but knowing that despite how much mental strength you have, it doesn’t guarantee you won’t ever develop a mental health problem. So, even when you’re mentally strong, you might still develop something like depression, anxiety, OCD. Those things happen to anybody, but mental strength can prevent some problems, it can make you feel your best no matter what kind of mental health problems you might be struggling with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve got a distinction. And then, so what’s the definition then of a mentally strong person is blank, or mental strength equals this?

Amy Morin
Well, I’d have to say, the easiest way to define it is that there’s three parts to it – the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you behave. So, when it comes to thoughts, it’s not about like super positive thinking all the time. It’s about knowing that your thoughts can be realistic so that, all right, when things are bad, you might just accept, “Yeah, they’re bad,” but, on the other hand, you don’t want to spend all your mental real-estate worrying about things that will never happen or ruminating on things that already did. It’s about just taking some control over your mind and your thoughts.

And then when it comes to our emotions, sometimes people will be like, “Oh, be mentally strong. Don’t cry.” That’s not the case either. Sometimes it takes a lot of mental strength to just acknowledge how you feel, to express those feelings, and to know that you can be comfortable even with some uncomfortable emotions. But, on the other side of that, there are times when maybe you’re so angry you can’t think straight, so you need the power to reduce your anger. So, a simple way would be to be in control of your emotions so that they don’t control you.

And then the last part is about our behavior, the action you take. You can be an optimistic, happy person, but unless you take action, those things don’t really matter. So, it’s about knowing, “Okay, even on the day I’m tired, I’m still going to go to the gym,” or, “Even though I don’t feel like doing this thing, it’s the right thing to do so I’m going to do it anyway.” And knowing when to push yourself but, of course, also knowing that it’s different to, say, run on a sore leg versus a broken ankle. There are days where you need to say, “Okay, being mentally strong sometimes means taking a break, taking a step back, or even quitting or giving up.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that’s nice and clear. All right. So, we got a picture of those three things. And tell us, Amy, to what extent are they learnable? And can you maybe share an inspiring story or research that says, “Hey, people have made transformations here all the time”?

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, it’s definitely all learnable and it’s things that we can learn and practice and put into our daily lives, these small things, just like all of us could choose to build physical strength by working out, doing some things differently. We can all choose to do things differently when it comes to building mental muscle and there’s lots of stories of Olympic athletes and Navy SEALs and people who go out there and do really cool things with their lives.

But I can share my own story and life, and tell you that I don’t come by this naturally but I’ve learned a lot over the years. As a kid, I was the kind of kid that never raised their hand in class. I actually hated school to the point that I vomited before school every day until about the fourth grade. In high school, I never spoke in class either. I was the shy kid in the back of the room. I became somebody that was able to give a TED Talk that’s now been viewed by 20 million people, and I can do lots of things I never ever thought I could do before but it was about practicing and putting those things into place.

And as a therapist, I knew some of this stuff but it wasn’t really the books, the textbooks that taught me anything differently. It was mostly my life experiences. When I was 23, I lost my mom. When I was 23, my husband passed away. A few years after that, my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. It was like my 20s were awful. I went through all of this hard stuff but I learned from it, and what I learned was like, “Okay, don’t sweat the small stuff. There really is a lot to be said for that.”

There are things I never thought I could do that I can. And even as a therapist, I’d be teaching other people about their self-limiting beliefs but, at the same time, I think I really believed that I had a lot of limitations that I didn’t. I can get out there and do so many things now that I never thought I could do by putting these things into practice, by giving up unhealthy habits that were holding me back, and by truly just saying, “Okay, let’s get out there and try these things.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear the things. So, there’s 13 things mentally strong people don’t do. Can you give us that rundown?

Amy Morin
Sure. You want all 13?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, please.

Amy Morin 
I’m going to cheat by looking at the back of my book because now that I’ve written five books, I get a little out of order after a while. So, the first one is that mentally strong people don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. They don’t give away their power. They don’t shy away from change. They don’t focus on things they can’t control. They don’t worry about pleasing everyone. They don’t fear taking calculated risks. They don’t dwell in the past. They don’t make the same mistakes over and over. They don’t resent other people’s success. They don’t give up after their first failure. They don’t fear alone time. They don’t feel like the world owes them anything. And they don’t expect immediate results.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. That’s it, that’s 13. Okay.

Amy Morin
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, then as I hear them, that seems to make sense, like, “Yeah, it’d be better to not waste time feeling sorry for yourself. It’d be better to not give away our power. It’d be better to not shy away from change. Yup, yup, yup, that seems good.” I’m curious, though, if we are doing some of this stuff, how do we begin to make that change?

Amy Morin
Yeah, so it’s easy to say, “I don’t do those things,” or, “I don’t do them very often,” or, “It’s not a problem.” But the truth is we all do those things sometimes, and we all expect immediate results, for example, and that’s part of the world we live in. We now have Google and Amazon where you can get an answer, or on a click of a button, you can get something delivered to your door almost immediately. So, then when it comes to changing our lives, we think this will happen this week.

And you can even look at it with like New Year’s resolutions. Most of them go out the window within two weeks. I think January 18 is the day that most people have already given up on their New Year’s resolution because we expect things to happen fast, “I’m going to lose 100 pounds this year,” “I’m going to change my life,” and it doesn’t happen according to our schedule. But whenever we find ourselves doing these things, the first thing is just become more aware of it.

And even though I’ve written books on this and I talk about it all the time, I still find myself doing certain things. I give away my power, for example. I blame somebody else for putting me in a bad mood, or ruining my day, or making me do something. No, those are all my choices. And just recognizing it, that was the first step, and then being able to say, “Okay, what am I going to do about it? How do I get rid of this habit? What am I going to do instead?”

And, luckily, there’s an antidote for all of this stuff. If you want to stop feeling sorry for yourself, just take a moment and say, “Well, what do I have to be thankful for? What can I be grateful for in the moment?” You find yourself expecting immediate results? Find a way to say, “Okay, now I’m going to figure out how do I track my progress?” Whether you say, “I’m going to make a certain amount of money,” “Pay down a certain amount of debt this year,” or, “I want to have this fitness goal,” well, what can I do to track my progress? It might just be as simple as putting an X on the calendar every day so that you don’t expect this to happen overnight.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, actually, I really like these antidotes. Can I hear 11 more?

Amy Morin
Sure. And there’s a lot of about all of them. There’s science behind it. It’s not just things that I made up. But if we were to talk about not fearing calculated risks, for example, we tend to think that our level of fear is equal to the level of risks, so, “Applying for that promotion feels scary so I shouldn’t do it because it must be risky.” The truth is that our emotions have nothing to do with the actual level of risk that we face.

And so, the antidote to this one is just taking a look from a rational perspective, which, in some cases, might be taking a step back, and saying, “What would I say to my friend who had this problem?” because it takes a lot of the emotion out of it. So, if you said, “Gee, I had this opportunity to apply for a promotion but it feels scary, so I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

Well, if your friend came to you and said that, you’d be like, “Hey, go for it,” or, “I think you’ll do a good job.” You’d probably have some kind words unless you really thought that they shouldn’t apply then you might be willing to be honest, and say, “Actually, maybe not yet.” Well, give yourself those same words, and it takes a lot of the string out of it, the emotion out of it, and you can make a better decision.

Or, if we were to say, let’s talk about not giving away your power, if we went back to that one. The antidote to that one is changing your language. How often do we say, “My boss makes me work late”? Nope, your boss doesn’t make you work late. It’s a choice. Maybe there’s a consequence. Maybe your job would be at risk. But just recognizing, “All right, the expectation is I’ll get this report done by tomorrow. I’m going to have to work late to do it, but that’s my choice.” There’s something super empowering about just flipping your language around so you could say, “It’s up to me to decide how I’m going to do this.”

Another one is about not resenting other people’s success. Well, how often do we, say, flip through social media, and you look at other people, and you’re like, “Ugh, they’re happier than I am. They’re healthier, they’re wealthier, they’re more attractive, they have a better life than I do.” It’s those comparisons that keep us stuck. And studies will show that if you look at somebody as an opinion-holder rather than your competitor, then you’ll learn from them.

So, if you just look at somebody that, say, drives a really nice car, you might be able to say, “Well, what can I learn from that person? Maybe they have a really cool job, or maybe they know how to negotiate a good deal on a car, or maybe they gave up something in their life so they could afford this car.” But just saying, “What can I learn from that person?” rather than, “That person is better than I am,” it keeps you from feeling bad about it.

Amy Morin
when it comes to failure, we have this idea that, “Failing feels bad and I don’t want to feel bad so, therefore, I shouldn’t put myself out there.” Well, one of the insane things we do is we talk about success stories. So, they looked at high school science teachers, and all the science teachers were telling kids about, say, Edison, Einstein, all these famous scientists who were really successful.

And the more that they talked about how successful these people were, the kids’ grades started to decline. So, then they had them talk about how all these famous people failed. Edison had a bazillion experiments that didn’t go well, Einstein had some theories that probably were a little off base. And when they started talking about these people’s failures, the students’ grades started going up because then they knew, “Well, gee, failure is actually part of the process, so the way to succeed, you have to take a risk, put yourself out there, you have to guess sometimes, you have to do things that are going to be really hard.”
And once the students started doing that, they took more risks, they raised their hand, they guessed on an answer if they didn’t know, but they were willing to do harder things, and their grades went up. And I think that’s a great lesson for all of us. When we look around these dotcom businesses or successful business leaders who now have programs out there and they’re trying to get us to buy them, we hear about how successful they were but we don’t always know what it took for them to get there. Just by studying famous failures, it will give you courage to try so that then you’ll know, “Okay, well, if I failed, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just part of the process.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. And how about not shying away from change?

Amy Morin
Yeah, so that one, a lot of people come into my therapy office, and they’ll say, “I’m ready to change my life,” but then when we talk about making change, they’re kind of like, “Eh, I’m not so sure about that. Change is uncomfortable.” And we like it when things are predictable. Even though they’re bad, if it’s familiar, somehow we think, “Well, that’s not too bad.”

So, with this one, there’s a few different things that you can do but sometimes just putting a name to your emotions goes a long way. So, if you just label how you’re feeling, “Okay, I’m anxious,” “I’m sad,” it takes a lot of the sting out of it. And there’s science behind this one, too, that our brains and our bodies need a little help making sense of things. So, when you have all these stress hormones going on, just take a moment and be like, “Okay, I’m feeling anxious right now,” you automatically feel a little bit less anxious.

And then the next thing you can do is, once you identify how you’re feeling, is to be able to say, “Well, is this a friend or an enemy right now?” because so often we talk about feelings like they’re either positive or negative. People will say, “Well, excitement is a positive emotion and anger is a negative emotion.” But when you think about it, any feeling has the power to be positive or negative. Yeah, anger is helpful if you stand up for your friend, maybe, or it gives you courage to stand up for yourself. It’s not helpful if it causes you to call people names or to say things that you wouldn’t normally do or say.

But excitement, on the other hand, we love it. When you’re looking forward to a vacation and you’re excited, that feels good. But what if somebody comes to you with this, like, a get-rich-quick scheme and they guarantee you that there’s no way you’re going to fail?

Pete Mockaitis
“Ooh, no way I can fail, Amy? Sign me up now.”

Amy Morin
Right. That’s why we see really smart people fall prey to, like, really stupid get-rich-quick schemes because they’re so excited about the payoff that they overlook the risks. So, sometimes it’s just helpful to say, “How am I feeling right now?” Put a name to that, and then say, “Is that helpful or harmful?” And if it’s helpful, embrace it. If it’s harmful, then you say, “Okay, what do I do about this?” and make a different choice.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Amy, I love this so much. “Positive emotions” and “negative emotions” I guess we might re-label that as pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions. Like, it’s pleasant to feel excited about the get-rich-quick scheme but that’s not going to serve you well. It’s going to be harmful to you. So, you could say that’s…in a way, I don’t even like the words positive and negative in relation to emotions because they get things a little bit fuzzy versus friend versus enemy, I love it.

And I want to dig a little deeper here on the emotional management stuff because, all right, so you’ve probably heard this poem, and it’s very short so I’ll read it in its entirety, from Rumi, “The Guest House,” and it has a perspective on emotions. A couple guests have brought it up, it says,

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

​Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

​The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
​
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”

So, that’s a poem. I think there’s some profundity. I chew on that, and I think, “Wow, that sounds like a cool, free, liberating way to live,” but I don’t know if it’s optimal, and it may be harmful. And what’s your hot take, Amy, when it comes to emotional management, calling things friends or enemies, versus they’re all just guests, they come and they go and they serve us?

Amy Morin
I think there’s a lot of power in just sometimes allowing emotions to come in. I think a lot of our suffering in life comes from our attempts to fight feelings. So, something anxiety-provoking, we don’t want to feel that way, so then we try to get rid of the anxiety rather than solve the problem. I think life gets a lot better when we get better at answering the question, “Should I solve the problem or solve how I feel about the problem?”

Sometimes we have a problem that’s huge but it’s so anxiety-provoking and I feel anxious about it so I just want to solve my anxiety rather than tackle the problem. This is why people develop, say, substance abuse issues or compulsive behaviors, “It feels better to do this right now than it is to tackle that problem, so I’m going to do what’s in front of me, whether that’s grab a drink or eat too much. Something to take care of my feelings rather than take care of the problem.”

And I can’t tell you, I mean, I’ve noticed this in my own life but it’s something I constantly work with people in my therapy office about is just honoring our emotions sometimes and knowing that the more we run from them, the more they just keep following us, and they show up wherever we are, and they show up in different areas of our lives.

So, if you’re sad, sometimes it helps you honor something you lost, you have to go through those sad feelings. But, instead of going through them, we do a lot of effort to try to go around, do everything we can to go under, over, skip it, we distract ourselves constantly because emotions, certain ones, are uncomfortable, we don’t want to be bored, we don’t want to be lonely, “Who wants to be sad or anxious?”

And in today’s world, it’s so easy to distract ourselves with our phones, with constant noise in our ears, all the things that we can do so that we don’t have to tolerate a moment of discomfort, but if we spend our whole lives trying to avoid just being uncomfortable or making it so we don’t experience emotions that are unpleasant, life gets even worse in its suspicious cycle.

But I also don’t think we have to tolerate it. So, again, when your emotions are saying enemy, when they’re not helpful, then you don’t have to sit and suffer with them. Sometimes we need to say, “Hmm, maybe I should do something else.” If you allow sadness to stick around too long, you might find yourself in bed, and then it lies to you. People become depressed, their depression tells them, “Don’t go to work today. You just stay in bed and you’ll feel better.” Well, nobody’s ever felt better by staying in bed all day but our emotions can lie to us. It can make us irrational.

If we took the example of sadness again, never negotiate when you’re sad. You’ll take a horrible deal when you’re sad because you’ll think, “I don’t want to counter offer because I just don’t know that my ego can handle one more blow, so I’ll accept whatever deal you offer me.” Or, when we’re anxious about something, our anxiety from our personal life spills over into work.

So, let’s say you just had a health test, you’re waiting on the results, you go to work, your boss offers you a new opportunity, you’re going to be like, “No, thank you. I don’t think I can handle that,” because your anxiety spills over and you’re not even going to recognize it. So, as much as we talk about emotional intelligence, I don’t think we’re there. I think we need to just go back to the basics sometimes and figure out, “How am I feeling? Is that feeling helpful or harmful? If it’s harmful, how do I change my emotional state?”

Pete Mockaitis
And let’s say, how does one change their emotional state? We say, you figured out, “Okay, hey, I’m sad but I’ve got a negotiation coming up in half an hour. I recognize that me being sad is not great for this upcoming challenge but, nonetheless, I feel sad. What do I do about it?”

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, let’s say you lost your pet last week and you’re sad about it, obviously being sad helps you honor that lost. It’s okay to be sad for a while, that’s sort of a thing. But in that moment where you’re, like, “I’m about to walk into this meeting and I need to negotiate an amazing deal,” then you can do two things. Number one is change how you think and change your behavior. So, we tend to do something that keeps us in whatever state we’re in. When you’re anxious, maybe you pace. When you’re sad, you just sit and stare at the wall.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, look down.

Amy Morin
Right. And those kinds of things reinforce how we feel. So, sometimes you need to act the opposite, so get up and go for a jog, or you look at a funny cat video online, or you call somebody and talk about a completely different subject just to shift it. And you could also change what you’re thinking about. When you’re anxious, maybe you’re replaying something over and over again, or dwelling on the worst-case scenario.

Or, when you’re sad, you’re just thinking about more sad things. Take a moment and purposefully think about something that’s happier just to give yourself that little mood boost when you need it in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Okay. Well, let’s see, there’s a few more things that mentally strong people don’t do. Maybe you want to hear some antidote if you find yourself doing it. How about when we’re focused on things that we can’t control? What’s the antidote?

Amy Morin
That one is about sometimes just pausing and saying, “Okay, what is within my control?” It might only be your effort, your attitude, your behavior, but it’s tough to do. We want to control the outcome. Or, we find ourselves doing these things, too. Like, let’s say you have a pain in your knee, and suddenly you start Googling. And within two minutes, you find out either it’s nothing or you’re about to die, depending on which website you look at.

And so, to control your anxiety, maybe you just keep researching, researching, researching, and it’s not helpful. Well, what can you control? Well, you can control when you call the doctor, if you make an appointment, or what you do about it. So, sometimes it’s just about taking a step back, and saying, “What’s within my control right now?” and then taking some kind of action, but making sure that that action is about moving forward. Ending up in an endless loop of research, you could research forever, and what’s that going to do?

Or, if you have something coming up this weekend and you want to make sure it’s a sunny day because you have outdoor plans, checking the weather compulsively every two minutes isn’t going to change the outcome. So, maybe you just ask yourself, “Well, okay, what’s the worst-case scenario?” and then kind of play that through of, “All right. Well, if it rains this weekend, what’s going to happen? My plans get ruined. Well, if my plans get ruined, what will I do instead?” And just playing that tape through sometimes reminds us that, “All right, even if the worst-case scenario did happen, it’s not the end of the world.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if we’re worried about pleasing everyone, what do we do?

Amy Morin
Again, that one is a difficult one for chronic people-pleasers. When you tend to always say yes to everything, sometimes it’s just a matter of stepping back and having a new default answer, because if somebody calls, and says, “Hey, can you do me this favor?” and you always say yes, take a moment and say, “Ah, I’m going to check my schedule and get back to you.”

And just having a new script, and maybe you already know the answer is going to be yes, or maybe you already know, “It’s something I really don’t want to do,” but in that moment, it’s hard to say that. So, just having a pre-planned script, like, “Let me check my schedule and get back to you,” or, “I’ll have to see if that works for me but I’ll let you know.” Just having that little pause sometimes can then give you enough time to think, “Okay, is this something I really want to do or not?” then you can get back to the person with a better answer. But I find a lot of times, people-pleasers, just their default is to always say yes to everything, so they need a little bit of time to decide, “Do I really want to do this or not?”

Pete Mockaitis
And what if we’re people-pleasing not just in the saying yes or no, but in the broader sense of what we choose to ask for, like, “Ooh, I don’t want to ask for that. That might be too much. I don’t want to inconvenience them,” in that sort of a way?

Amy Morin
Anytime we’re afraid of something, the best way to overcome that fear of saying, “Okay, I’m afraid to ask for something. I’m afraid to take care of myself,” it’s just about doing it in small steps. So, maybe you ask for a little less than you actually want just to see what happens as an experiment. I’m a huge fan of saying, “Let’s try behavioral experiments,” and test the waters. Sometimes people will be like, “Oh, I can’t ask for that because my boss might be mad,” or, “I can’t ask my coworker for that favor,” or, “I can’t speak up and say, actually, that’s an unreasonable deadline.” Well, try it and see what happens.

And to know that you don’t have to feel brave to act brave. Just put yourself out there and do it anyway, as an experiment. If something terrible happens, you can learn from it, but I think nine times out of ten, you might discover that the worst isn’t going to happen, people aren’t going to be mad, they’re not going to freak out, they’re not going to look down on you if you asked for what you need.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I like that notion of the little steps. So, that might even just be like, “Try writing the email,” or, “Try writing out the script,” “Try asking for…” instead of saying, “There’s no way that’s going to happen, boss. Forget about it.” It’s like, “No, actually, that’s going to be very challenging based upon these other things, and it may require that I’m up until midnight if we don’t re-prioritize some things. So, how do you think about the priorities?” Like, “You got to stay up till midnight, aargh.” Versus, “Oh, I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Let’s see what we can do here.”

Cool. And if you’re dwelling on the past, how do we un-dwell?

Amy Morin
So, yeah, sometime we dwell on like something bad that happened six weeks ago, sometimes it’s like the conversation that happened at lunch, maybe you got home from work after a bad day and you just keep replaying over and over again, and thinking of all the things you wish you would’ve said, all the things you wished the other person hadn’t said. It’s like this tape that gets stuck in our head and we rehash it over and over and over again.

So, one of my favorite exercises for this one is to distract yourself. We call it changing the channel in your brain, and we’re pretty bad at it at first. So, maybe you had a bad day, you get home from work, and you’re still thinking about that bad thing that happened, and you say, “Well, don’t think about that.” Well, we actually are going to think about it more.

So, I’ll do this exercise with people often. We can do it right now if you like, where I say, “Spend about 20 seconds thinking about white bears. White bears, white bears, white bears. Polar bears, stuffed white bears, how many white bears as it gets.”

Pete Mockaitis
Like a Coca-Cola advertisement?

Amy Morin
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re so adorable unless they’re mauling something, I guess. White bears, white bears, white bears.

Amy Morin
So, then spend the next 20 seconds thinking about absolutely anything you want but, whatever you do, do not think about a white bear.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, it’s challenging. I’m like battery recharging. Recharging batteries. Battery rechargeables, like it’s hard. I’m drifting.

Amy Morin
Okay. And then one more quick thing then. For the next 20 seconds, see how far you can get from the alphabet from Z to A, see if you can get all the way through the alphabet backwards. Ready, set, go.

Pete Mockaitis
Out loud?

Amy Morin
Yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T, S, R, Q, P, O, N, M, L, K, J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A.

Amy Morin
Oh, that’s impressive that you just did that. Good work.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Amy Morin
So, when I said think about white bears, did a white bear pop up in your head at least one?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Amy Morin
And then when I said don’t think about white bears, think about anything you want, did you find, did a little white bear pop up maybe at least once?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Amy Morin
And then how about when you just went through the alphabet backwards, did you think about any white bears then?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, I was trying really hard to impress you and the listeners by nailing it, so I was putting all my mental energy there.

Amy Morin
Well, let me tell you, I was impressed. That was really, really fast.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. That’s what it’s all about, baby.

Amy Morin
And that is an example of how to change the channel in your brain. If you tell yourself, “Don’t think about white bears,” or, “Don’t think about that awful conversation,” it’s going to pop up in your head. But if you give yourself a little task to do at home, you’re probably not going to be like, “Okay, I’m going to go through the alphabet backwards,” but you might give yourself something to do. Like, “Okay, instead of sitting on the couch and rehashing this awful thing that happened earlier today over and over again and staying stuck in a bad mood, what can I do?”

And it might be about calling a friend to talk about a completely different subject, maybe you go outside and do something, maybe say, “I’m going to organize my closet for 10 minutes,” but give yourself something to do, sometimes getting up, moving around. The point is when you’re dwelling on something that already happened, you can’t change it. You can learn from it but when you just rehash it and ruminate on it over and over again, you stay stuck in a bad mood. And then telling yourself, “Don’t think about it,” actually makes it worse.

But if you get up and do something, give yourself an activity, it can boost your mood just a little bit. And even though you’re probably going to eventually go back to thinking about it again, when you feel a little bit better, you might be able to see it from a different angle, and say, “Okay, maybe it wasn’t so bad, or maybe the next time this comes up, I’ll have a different strategy.” But the point is, you just don’t want to sit and dwell on something that makes you feel bad and keep dwelling and then you feel worse.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, I dig it. I dig it. And I’m thinking, in particular, that the alphabet backwards is the example of it has a little bit of a challenge or a game-like quality to it. And I’m thinking about if there’s a quick game, like, I don’t know, Wordle from The New York Times has been a lot of fun, or Tetris, or, I don’t know, online math problems or something. It seems like, maybe it’s just me, but, like, something that it makes a bit of a demand upon you, like, “I’m going to have to try to apply my attention here in order to prevail, and I like prevailing so I’m going to choose to spend all my attention on the thing.”

Amy Morin
Right, because that requires your mental energy. It just gives your brain a bit of a break, and sometimes we need that because sometimes bad things do happen. So, we’re talking about something traumatic because sometimes when people have PTSD, they need to get professional help because it does stay stuck in their brains. But when other bad things happen, and we just keep thinking about it over and over again, and maybe you try to put a positive spin on it or something, but you just can’t get unstuck, sometimes you just need to find something to give your brain a break so you can feel a little bit better before you go back and think about it again.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so, if we are making the same mistakes repeatedly, what’s our antidote there?

Amy Morin
So, of course, we just want to learn from our mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. And quite often, we shame ourselves for making a mistake, like, “Ugh, I’m such an idiot,” or, “I’m a bad person.” Well, guess what? When you think you’re a bad person, you’re going to think, “Oh, I’m doomed to repeat that mistake.”

We see this with teenagers sometimes. Like, if a kid messes up a lot and his parents shame him, and says, “Oh, you’re an idiot,” or, “You’re a bad kid,” well, guess what? When he’s 15 and somebody says, “Hey, you want to try drugs?” who’s going to try the drugs, the kid that thinks, “I’m a bad person,” or the kid who, when he messed up, was just taught, “No, I mess up sometimes but I’m a good kid”? Well, we know the kid who thinks, “I’m a bad person” is like, “I’m going to make a bad choice because that’s who I am.”

Well, we do that to ourselves as adults, like, oh, when we mess up, we say, “Well, I’m not smart enough. I’m stupid. I can’t ever do anything right.” When you think that way, you’re going to then think, “Well, I’m incapable of doing better next time.” So, just catching how harsh we are on ourselves sometimes, and saying, “Well, how do I talk to myself the same way I’d talk to a friend again?” you do self-compassion. If you end up shaming yourself, remind yourself, “No, I just messed up and that’s okay. I’m capable of doing better next time.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if we’re uncomfortable being alone and with silence, what do you recommend?

Amy Morin
So, this one takes some practice. So, sometimes people will say, “Oh, I love alone time,” and then I’ll say, “Well, what do you do when you’re alone?” and they’ll say, “Well, I text my friends or I’m scrolling through social media,” but they’re not really alone with their thoughts. They’re sort of consuming stuff, they’re listening to podcast episodes, they’re doing something. But this one is really about sitting alone with your thoughts, which can be uncomfortable. Most of us want to be productive. We want to be doing something. And the thought of being alone with our brains is scary.

So, one of the strategies for this one is to just schedule a date with yourself. It might be that you go to dinner, maybe you go watch a movie, maybe you go for a walk on the beach. Go do something all by yourself. And you don’t have the pressure to perform to make somebody else happy. You don’t have to make pleasant conversation. Just go do what you want to do, and make it more pleasant to spend time with yourself, and then that becomes less scary over time.

And people will say, “Well, gosh, this is hard,” or, “It’s embarrassing to do these things alone,” or, “I’m not comfortable,” but start small. Maybe it’s just taking a quick walk. Maybe it’s going somewhere to eat where you at least know somebody, the waitress or somebody there, but just go do these little small things. And as you become more comfortable with yourself, you get to be more comfortable with the things going on in your own brain.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, finally, if we do feel the world owes us something, well, one, how do I identify that, because I imagine many people will deny that, “Oh, no, I don’t do that, Amy”? And, two, if we catch ourselves, in your description, what do we do about it?

Amy Morin
Yeah, I hear older people say, “Ah, the younger generation feels entitled.”

Pete Mockaitis
“They’re so entitled.”

Amy Morin
Right. But the truth is we’re all entitled sometimes, we think, “Well, geez, I deserve better than this,” and, of course, sometimes we do deserve better. You don’t deserve to be treated poorly by somebody, or you don’t deserve to be abused. But, on the other hand, yes, sometimes you have to wait in line a little while longer than you wanted, or sometimes life isn’t fair.

But when you catch yourself just leaving a little bit of a sense of entitlement, take a step back and just remind yourself, like why you’re keeping score because so many people will say, “Well, I’m a good person. I deserve better,” or, “I’m going to put all this good stuff out in the universe,” but then they’re really only doing it because they expect it to come back to them, like, “Oh, if I earn enough karma points, then good things will happen.”

So, just remember that whatever it is you have to offer the world isn’t a loan; it’s a gift. You have plenty of things to give the world, but if you always expect to get the exact amounts of things back that you’re putting out into the world, you’re not going to be happy. So, just knowing, it’s wonderful that you have gifts and talents and skills and things that you can give to the world but you’re not guaranteed that, just because you’re a nice person, good things are going to come your way.

Pete Mockaitis
Indeed. And I want to ask you, we had another podcast guest, Robert Glazer, do you know him?

Amy Morin
I know of him, yup.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, he quoted you in his email, so you got that going for you. And I really liked this a lot, you say, “The more you practice tolerating discomfort, the more confidence you’ll gain in your ability to accept new challenges.” Now, that sounds true. Do you have some awesome studies or data or research backing that up as well?

Amy Morin
Yeah. So, I guess when it comes to discomfort, we do in therapy something we teach people is distress tolerance skills. And so often, again, our default is to run from distress, but I see it all the time in my therapy office, when people learn to tolerate distress, the things that they thought were really scary, really aren’t that scary anymore.

So, distress tolerance skills can be anything from developing a mantra in your brain that you repeat over and over, so that when you start thinking, “Ah, I can’t handle this,” or sometimes it’s just about tolerating something a little longer than you think that you can. So often we’ll think, “Oh, I can’t stand this.” Well, you can, and you’ll train your brain to see things a little bit differently if you tolerate it a little bit longer than you think you can.

So, I love to run. One of my challenges is I try to run a six-minute mile every day. I can’t quite do it yet but I do it. I attempt to do it anyway. And it never fails, about the three-quarter mile mark, my brain tells me, “You can’t do this.” But I know my brain is lying, like I can keep running at that pace, and despite the fact, though, that my brain will keep telling me, “You’re too tired. Your lungs can’t hack it. Your legs are going to give out,” whatever it is, we go through this lengthy list of reasons why my brain wants me to quit because it’s uncomfortable to try to run.

But I know, I can trick my brain or I can prove to my brain that it’s wrong. And, slowly, over time, my brain now is like, “Okay, I know that you’re going to keep running, anyway but we’re going to keep trying these things on you,” and our brain will try to trick us and tell us that we can’t stand it, but we can. And the best strategy I know to do is to just prove your brain wrong. Know that your brain will underestimate you, it will tell you that you’re not capable, you’re not competent, but when it tells you that, just say, “Okay, challenge accepted,” and push yourself a little harder and see what happens.

And over time, you can train your brain to see you as a little more competent, a little more capable, and that will give you the confidence to know, “Okay, I can handle being uncomfortable.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that could happen either through doing the thing that is unpleasant, either through physical exercise, running as you mentioned. I’ve actually been…I got on a Wim Hof kick, if you know this guy. I’ve been dunking my hands and face into ice water and, well, actually, it’s rather refreshing in and of itself but it also hurts and is unpleasant.

And so, that’s kind of the challenge, it’s like, “Oh, I really want to take my hand out of this ice water now.” It’s like, “Well, I will do that in 10 seconds.” And in so doing, I don’t have the data here, but I think that this is doing something good for me and the ability to tolerate discomfort and have confidence in my abilities. And so, I guess, Amy, I’m not crazy. Shoving my face and hands in ice water can be helpful in this way?

Amy Morin
Yeah. And that is right along the exact same theory, and that’s one thing that I have refused to do. I grew up in rural Maine where a lot of people don’t have running water. To be honest, there are still a lot of poverty there. My parents both grew up in extreme poverty and worked really hard to make sure that I had hot water. Like, I cannot do that to my parents, to then say, “Hey, guess what? I’m taking a cold shower for fun.” So, I don’t do that but it’s absolutely along the same lines, to say, “Okay, how do I put myself in an uncomfortable situation?” And then prove to myself that, “Yeah, this is uncomfortable but I can stand it.”

And then when you teach yourself, “I’m going to do this a little longer than I would like to,” it just teaches it, “Yeah, I can go out there and do hard things. And although it’s uncomfortable, it’s not the end of the world.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Amy, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Amy Morin
Gosh, no, I think you’ve covered so much about mental strength. I appreciate that.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. All right. Well, then can you start with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Amy Morin
So, something my mother always used to tell me was, “Never let your morals get in the way of doing what’s right.” She didn’t make that quote up but I’m not sure who said it, but it’s something I remind myself quite often. There’s plenty of things out there, sometimes it may not be what I think is the moral decision but then when you really stop and think about it, you think, “No, but this is the right thing to do.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or piece of research?

Amy Morin
I think one of my favorite studies is the one where they took a look at older men who were like in their 80s, and they decided to rewind the clock. Most of these men had some physical health issues, maybe some cognitive decline, but what you’d expect from elderly men. And they decided to put them in a situation where they pretended like it was back in like 1950, back when they’d still have been vibrant men in their 40s and physically capable, and they made their surroundings looked like it was 1950.

And they found that, by doing that, some of these men started to stand up straighter, their health got better, their mental health improved, their cognitive abilities improved, simply because they thought this is how they were supposed to be. And I guess what I take away from that study is sometimes we think, okay, whether it’s about aging, or it’s about a person with a certain illness or ailment, or whatever it is, we have this notion of, “This is how I should be when I’m 40. This is how I should be if I have high cholesterol or some physical health issue,” but it’s really our minds that make all of those things happen.

And so, if we can just remind ourselves, “Well, if I want to behave like the person I want to become, I want to be a vibrant healthy younger person,” or, “I want to be somebody who’s happy and full of life. I want to be a confident person,” act like that person now and you could become it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Amy Morin
My favorite recent book is The Gift written by Edith Eger, she’s a Holocaust survivor.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Amy Morin
One of the things I do that still probably helps me the most is I keep a paper calendar so I can have it in front of me, and so I can look at dates and things going on, and still writing down lists and having that with me at all times instead of just relying on technology. It helps me feel better.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Amy Morin
I would say running every day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people quote back to you often, they re-tweet, they Kindle book highlight, it’s the Amy original they can’t resist?

Amy Morin
Yeah, I think I said something to the effect of whomever said time heals everything lied to us. It’s what you do with your time that matters.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Amy Morin
My website AmyMorinLCSW.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Amy Morin
I would say set a goal this week and challenge yourself to do it, and then check in and see what happened, and what can you learn from it, and ask yourself, “What did I do to become mentally stronger this week?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Amy, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and success and mental strength.

Amy Morin
Thank you. I appreciate it.