The Truth About Mental Strength: Why Action Comes Before Feeling

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: There’s a whole story we’ve been told about how mental health is achieved. It goes something like this. First, we need to talk about the hard things. We need to process the feelings. We need to create insight. Eventually, we will heal. Finally, we will feel better. And then, and only then, we will be able to do the hard things and take the action that we need to take.

Amy Morin: Allow yourself to feel those painful emotions is important. But what you don’t want to do is when we start to throw ourselves that pity party, that’s when we start to think, “My problems are worse than everybody else’s.”

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Well, on this episode of Love, Happiness, and Success, we are going to be turning this whole idea on its head.

Amy Morin: We overestimate how difficult the circumstances are, and then we underestimate our ability to cope.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And consider that waiting to feel a certain way, to feel strong before you act, might actually be keeping you stuck.

Amy Morin: We don’t always need to work on building more good habits. There’s so many things out there about the fact that we should have all these wonderful habits and consistency is key. And when you’re in a lot of pain, the thought of adding all of these good habits to your life feels so overwhelming that you don’t even know where to start. At least I didn’t.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s where we’re going on today’s show. And if this is your first time tuning in, I’m so glad you’re here today. I am Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. I am a psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, and a board-certified coach here with you every week to talk about your growth, your relationships, your well-being, and also the success you attain through your career and through your life. And so this episode is going to be really interesting for you, particularly if you have been feeling stuck and like it’s been very difficult for you to make traction. Maybe you are in therapy. Maybe you’ve been thinking you’re doing all the things to help yourself move forward, but feeling like it’s not really changing. By the end of today’s show, you’re going to have a playbook because we are talking with a very special guest today, Amy Morin. She is a psychotherapist, a licensed clinical social worker, and author of numerous books, including 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, a book that sold over a million copies of more than 50 languages. Her TEDx talk on this topic has been watched over 25 million times, one of the most watched of all time, as a matter of fact. She’s the former editor-in-chief of Verywell Mind and here today with a new set of ideas from her very new book, The Mental Strength Playbook. Amy, we have so much to talk about today. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. To start with, Amy, so much of your career has been devoted to explaining this idea. Mental strength is a thing and that by cultivating mental strength intentionally, we can get a lot further, a lot faster. So how did this turn into such a profound personal mission for you? I mean, seven books now, TED Talk really devoted your career to it. Was there an origin story?

Amy Morin: So I was a therapist, as you said, I came out of college and I thought, “Oh, I’m going to teach people all of these strategies and skills and things that came out of my textbooks.” And about a year into my work, my mom passed away suddenly. She had a brain aneurysm that ruptured and she and I had been really close. And to lose her so suddenly and unexpectedly really did a number on me, even though I was 23, I thought, “Oh, there’s so many things I had expected my mom to be there for.” And imagining my life without her was so painful. And I felt like a lot of the things I had learned in college that were supposed to help you through emotional pain kind of fell short. And that’s when I started my own journey on learning more about mental strength. Like how do you get through tough times? But I didn’t want to just be resilient, whereas people talk about resilience. Like how do you bounce back from tough times? And I thought, “Ooh, I feel like if I just bounce back from this, then I’ll just be waiting for the next shoe to drop.” And I don’t want to live like that. Like just always bouncing back from tragedy, waiting for something bad to happen. And I’m glad that I didn’t do that because on the three-year anniversary, it was three years to the day that my mom died, my 26-year-old husband died of a heart attack.

Amy Morin: And much like how I had just lost my mom suddenly and unexpectedly, my husband was gone. And I wake up and I’m now a widow. I don’t have my mom and I’m 26. It’s the age where a lot of my friends are talking about getting married and having kids and launching their careers. And I thought, “Oof, what do I do? Every dream I just had died, every plan I had thought I had for my life has gone out the window and my two favorite people aren’t here to help me through it.” To this day, I still don’t even really have the words to describe what that period of my life was like, other than to just say it was really dark and really painful for a long time. And all I could even say back then was like, “It hurts to breathe.” But one of the things was I was a therapist and now I’m down to one income and I had a mortgage to pay. We had bought a house thinking that we were both going to be living in it and paying the bills. And suddenly I thought the last thing I want to do is lose my house and have to move. I felt like I had lost so much already. So I had to go back to work not long after my husband passed away and thought, “Ooh, how do I help other people deal with their problems? I’m a therapist. My own life is in complete shambles myself.” And my job as a therapist didn’t quite pay the bills. So I had to figure out what else am I going to do? One of those things happened to be freelance writing. If I wrote a couple articles and nights and on the weekends, I thought I can keep the lights on. So that’s what I did for a few years. And then I was fortunate. I found love again. I got remarried and life was starting to look good. And then my father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I just remember thinking like, “This isn’t fair.” I just spent all these years grieving and life starting to feel good and now I’m going to lose somebody else. And unlike when I had lost my mom and my husband, this time I knew what was coming. And I thought, “I don’t know that I can do this.” So on one of my worst days, I wrote myself a letter about what mentally strong people don’t do. And I would just wake up every day and say, “If you don’t do these things, you’ll get through it.” And that helped.

Amy Morin: And then I thought, “Well, if this helps me, maybe it will help somebody else.” So I published the list to the internet and I thought like five people would read it, but 50 million people read it. One of them happened to be a literary agent who said, “You should write a book.” But nobody knew the backstory. They thought, “Oh, you’re a therapist. You wrote this because you’ve mastered it.” And it really wasn’t until the book came out that I told the rest of the story. Like, no, actually I struggle. I struggle with mental strength just as much as anybody else. But here’s what I did when I was struggling. And that was in 2013. So here we are seven books later and life has changed in the way that now I get to speak about mental strength, not just one on one in my therapy office, but more on a global stage where I can tell people what I continue to learn along the way as I continue on building mental strength.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: What a powerful story, first of all. And I’m so sorry for your losses. And I’m just so impressed how you were able to, I mean, to use a trite phrase, but really journey within and put some things together on a visceral level that you needed and also 50 million other people needed that it gave birth to those ideas and brought them into the world. And let me ask you this. What do you think it was about the things mentally tough people don’t do? And of course, I’m going to ask you what those are as well. But I’m so curious around what do you think people were like, oh my gosh, yes, this, this is it.

Amy Morin: I think there are a few things that made it go viral. One was it started with the number 13. So I think that naturally intrigued people. It was dark all the way through. Right. But I think more than anything, people wanted to know, okay, what do I avoid doing? Because for me on my worst day, if somebody gave me a to-do list, which I got plenty of, people would be like, Amy, you should just exercise. You should sleep more. Make sure you’re eating a healthy diet. And I was like, gee, thank you for that advice. But it’s hard to get out of bed. And the thought of like now having a checklist of things to do feels overwhelming. And if I don’t do those things, I feel like a failure at the end of the day. So the only thing I could tolerate in that moment was a list of what not to do. Because that felt like it was doable. Like, okay, Amy, just don’t do these things today. And somehow you’ll get through it. And I don’t care how much water drank or how much exercise you got. Just don’t feel sorry for yourself, which happens to be number one on the list. And I think that resonated with people. Like, we don’t always need to work on building more good habits. There’s so many things out there about the fact that we should have all these wonderful habits and consistency is key. And when you’re in a lot of pain, the thought of adding all of these good habits to your life feels so overwhelming that you don’t even know where to start. At least I didn’t. So this idea of just get rid of a couple of things, like if you get rid of your worst habit, suddenly the good habits you have are already so much more effective. That felt doable. And I think it did for other people. And we weren’t really talking about mental strength. People talk about physical strength. And we talk about mental health. What about mental strength? And people talk about resilience and all these other words are just a little bit different. Nobody was really talking about what it means to be mentally strong.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And to have a very concrete list of things, like avoid dropping yourself into the swamp further, like making it easy. So I can’t take the suspense. Number one on this list is stop feeling sorry for yourself. I want to hear more. But first of all, conventional wisdom is like, that’s what we do in therapy. You come in and you tell your therapist how deeply wounded you feel and how awful it is and how sad you are. And those are all good things in some ways. But what you’re saying is that that’s actually in opposition to the goal of mental strength.

Amy Morin: Yeah, it’s okay to feel sad, right? Sadness helps us grow or grief. That’s the process by which we heal. So to allow yourself to feel those painful emotions is important. But what you don’t want to do is when we start to throw ourselves that pity party, that’s when we start to think that my problems are worse than everybody else’s. We overestimate how difficult the circumstances are. And then we underestimate our ability to cope. That’s where it becomes unhealthy. It’s not just about feeling, it’s about the thoughts that we have about it when we think this is so bad that my life will never get better. And when people believe that, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would see people in my therapy office who would say, you know, had it not been for that thing that happened 10 years ago, I’d have a good life. But because I went through that thing, I can’t. My life is going to be awful forever because of it. Yep, it probably will if you believe that. And that’s really what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to go through what I had gone through and then come to that conclusion like my life is going to be terrible forever now. Because if I believe that, I would make sure that that became the case.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Absolutely. And that by going into this catastrophic, it’s over helplessness, hopelessness, almost like a victim narrative. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But there’s more. What’s the second thing on your list? I mean, is it okay to run through them?

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I’m so interested to hear them.

Amy Morin: Absolutely. So number two is that they don’t give away their power. And out of all of the things on the list, this is the one that people want to talk about the most. And this is about when we give other people the power over how we think or how we feel or how we behave. And it’s really easy to do. So you might say something like, “My friend calls me and talks incessantly and just wastes my time talking about her own problems.” Will this different really waste your time? No, it’s because you didn’t set a boundary. If you don’t want to stay on the phone and listen to somebody complain, that’s up to you. You’re in charge of your time. Or when we say somebody makes us feel bad, somebody might say like, “Oh, my mother-in-law makes me feel bad about myself because she’s always picking apart my parenting.”

Amy Morin: It’s up to you to decide how you feel, how you deal with your mother-in-law and what you internalize. You don’t have to believe something. Even if somebody puts you down, you don’t have to believe it. Or we’ll say that other people are in charge of our behavior too. Like I have to go to dinner at my in-law’s house on Sundays or my boss makes me work late. But the truth is your boss doesn’t make you work late. Maybe there’s a consequence if you don’t get the work done, but nobody’s forcing you to And just changing your language sometimes is so powerful to recognize that what you’re doing is a choice. How you feel about yourself is a choice. Who you spend your time with, what you do with your time, all of those things are choices. And when we’re in a rough spot, just remembering that it can be tough because it says, “All right, well, it’s my responsibility. If I don’t like what’s going on, it’s my responsibility to change it.” But on the other hand, yeah, I have the opportunity to change it. Sometimes that can be freeing too.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So anytime we are even unconsciously attributing what we’re doing or how we’re feeling or the rules we need to live by to someone else, you’re saying we’re living in a state of disempowerment. And this can be subtle, but I totally resonate with what you’re talking about. Just this idea that literally everything you do is a choice. I remember so clearly being in graduate school and I was sitting in one of these horrible weekend classes. It’s like a full Friday, a full Saturday, a full Sunday. And it was a beautiful summer day. Like the rest of the world is like going to the pool and eating popsicles, like outside the window and having such a good time. And I’m in this like stuffy classroom and it was like applied statistics and just feeling like so agitatedly stressed about being there. Like I can’t believe I have to do this and this is bleh. And then I just had this moment where I was like, wait a minute, I could get up and walk out of this room right this very second and do whatever I wanted to do today. And then I had this moment where I was looking at the door and was like, I could do it. I could get up. I could walk out. And then I thought I would have to take this class again and I would like to graduate with this degree. And I’m actually choosing this. And nothing changed, but immediately I was just like,

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I’m here. What if I’m going to shift my mindset? What? Yeah. It’s like, no, I have decided to be here. I’m in control of this. So I just wanted to share that as an example of how powerful this is. And that’s a simple example, but I mean, we can all do that all the time.

Amy Morin: I love that example because it’s a really concrete way of saying, yeah, no, like this isn’t ideal. However, what’s the alternative? I’d rather be here than skipping class. And then I have to come back. No. And I think anytime we recognize that, like, all right, maybe I don’t love my job, but what’s the alternative? I stay home today and then I don’t get paid. Okay. Well, maybe being here isn’t so bad. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: There are more. I feel like this has been huge. We have 11 to go.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I’m riveted.

Amy Morin: All right. Shall we dive into the next one then? Yeah. That’s a don’t mentally strong. People don’t dwell on the past. And I think that we can learn so much from the past, but if you stay stuck there, you just actually don’t heal. So often we think, well, if I just go back and I kind of like relive this thing or I repeat this pattern from my life that somehow I’ll go through the wound again and this time it’ll be different, but we’re often doomed to repeat things. And in my life, I was tempted to stay stuck in the past just because that’s where my mom and my husband lived. And I thought, well, if I stay there, then I don’t get to enjoy the present. I don’t get to make the future as good as it could be. And I could boil it right down to concrete things. Like what am I going to do with my, my husband’s belongings, right? His toothbrush sat next to the sink for six months to a year, probably. And I thought, Ooh, just how do you get rid of those things or what do you do with them? But, and it was a process. I don’t recommend anybody just pack up, move on and say out with the old and with the new, but on the other hand, moving through that grief often meant giving myself permission to let go of the things from the past so that I could create a new identity, a new me and a new future.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Yeah.

Amy Morin: I would see people in my therapy office too, who would often like get stuck. Maybe it’s a mistake that they made 10 years ago or somebody hurt them three weeks ago and they just really wanted to keep reliving that thing. And it would really get in the way of living their best life. I think it’s important to learn from the past, but to make sure that we’re not beating ourselves up for it, that we’re not staying stuck there, but that we’re not afraid to enjoy the present or to make a better future for ourselves. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I completely agreed. And let me ask you about this part. So I’m imagining we have quite a few therapists that listen to this show. And for anybody who is a therapist and who was listening, you are also invited to join on Love, Happiness and Success for therapists. It is a different show just for you. So come on over. But, you know, this idea that actually grinding on the past and being overly focused on the history and rehashing things, replaying things over and over is in some ways an opposition to many of the conventions of modern psychotherapy, talk therapy, which is the meta agreement in some ways is it is valuable and useful to tell the stories over and over again to make contact with the feelings. And of course, that is part of how we metabolize trauma, which is putting into words the difficult things we’ve lived through, making contact with the pain, but that there’s a point at which it is a productive to keep doing that. Right. What is productive is to figure out how to effectively say goodbye to a past chapter like the way you described so that you can say hello to a new one. And so for someone who wants to apply this idea, don’t stay stuck in the past for longer than is helpful. How would you help somebody like draw that line? Because you’re pretty good. Like we need to make meaning. We need to understand. But then how do you know when it’s too much?

Amy Morin: I think it’s about a process of just deciding. Am I sitting with an uncomfortable feeling? That’s good for us sometimes. Yeah. If I made a mistake last year, well, I could beat myself up about it over and over again. And at some point I’m just driving shame. I’m not teaching myself to do better next time. So things about asking ourselves that like by replaying this conversation, by ruminating by hoping that something will change about the past, by thinking about it even longer and harder, like am I helping? Am I solving a problem or am I just maybe punishing myself for having done that thing or for having been there or to feel like I don’t deserve to be happy? Because I encounter a lot of people that will feel like that. They’ll say, you know, I messed up. And so therefore I don’t deserve the self-compassion. I don’t deserve to forgive myself. I just keep replaying that horrible thing that I did. Eventually I’ll feel like I’ve punished myself long enough, but they never get to that point where they think, okay, today’s the day. They just keep allowing themselves to stay stuck. So I think it’s important to examine our motives. Like, why am I rehashing this? Why am I reliving something that already happened? Am I trying to heal an old wound? Am I trying to punish myself? Am I hoping that I’ll learn something so I can prevent it from happening again? And then once we get to some of those answers, then to figure out how would I let it go? What would I need to have happen in my life in order to feel like I could let that go and to enjoy right now and to make my future better? And for a lot of people, it’s journaling that helps. Sometimes it’s meditating. Sometimes it’s talking to a friend and really hashing it out. And sometimes it’s about talking to a mental health professional if you’re able to, to say, how do I let this thing go?

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: But, you know, and just a through line here, and I’m sure we can continue this, everything that you’re advising so far, it also takes a high degree of self-awareness. You know, in my experience as a therapist, it seems like the hardest thing is the very first step in some ways, which is simply to get visibility into what you are thinking about and, you know, your own internal process. Because a lot of times it’s happening on such an automatic level. We don’t even realize it’s something that is happening, much less something that we might have control over. But these three are fantastic. And it is becoming aware about what you’re telling yourself, what you’re doing, the loops that you might be trapped in, because then you can have alternatives.

Amy Morin: Yeah. It’s easy to think, oh, I don’t do any of these things. Well, I’ll tell you, when you start paying attention to them, you might realize, oh, maybe I do these more often than I’d like to admit. Yeah. Great. And it like, among us, hasn’t done this where you’re like, oh, made a mistake last night. You’re never going to do that again. And then 24 hours later, you find yourself repeating it. And it might be, it might be like a diet that you’d say, you know, I’m going to make some changes to the, to my nutritional habits. Well, it’s easy to say when you feel motivated on a Monday morning, but come Tuesday afternoon, it’s a little tougher to stick with that. Or maybe say, I’m not going to text my ex anymore, but then on a lonely, sad night, you pick up your phone and there you go. And for other people, it’s other things like maybe it’s a financial mistake. And you keep repeating that or relationship mistake or some kind of social blunder that you’ve made over and over. You lose your temper. I mean, there’s so many mistakes that we can make, but I find that sometimes people want to stay stuck in them. Like, well, I’m a bad person. I can’t change. And they give themselves sort of permission to repeat those mistakes. But then I see other people who are like, well, you can’t dwell on that. Going to move on without spending even a moment figuring out, well, why did I do that? And how do I do better next time? Right. Sometimes we’re just so like embarrassed or ashamed of our mistakes that we want to sweep them under the rug. So we pretend that they didn’t happen, even to ourselves. It’s tough to admit like, well, that didn’t count or, you know, everybody does that. So we kind of minimize it and we don’t come face to face with the truth of what we’ve done. And therefore that makes it hard to create a change and stick with it as well. These are all so good.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Number six.

Amy Morin: You know, along the same lines as mistakes, it’s that they don’t give up after their first failure. You know, feeling feels terrible. It’s embarrassing. It’s awkward. It often takes a, gives us a hit to our self-esteem that we think, oh, I’m not the kind of person I thought I could be or not as good as I’d hoped. And when we get there, it can be something to be like, well, just not going to try again. I don’t want to risk failing. I don’t want to put myself out there. Cause what if it doesn’t work out?

Amy Morin: And then you never really figure out what you were capable of or what you could do if you tried. And however, I know how tempting it is. There’s so many times in my life where if I think I’m not going to be good at something or I think it’s not going to work out, I don’t want to put in the effort. And then if I do and it doesn’t go well, I just draw a conclusion of, well, see, it wasn’t meant to be. I’m not the kind of person who can learn to play the violin or I’m not the kind of person who can own, own my own business. But I won’t know until I try again. Like nobody’s good at it at something. The first time they try, it’s really about learning from every failure. But I think as a society, especially in the age of social media, it’s tougher than ever to talk about our failures. Cause we just want to tell people what went well. We don’t want to tell them about the mistakes and the things that didn’t go well. We want to celebrate our achievement and our accomplishments rather than say, but you know what? Actually, I did four things this week that didn’t work out. And here’s what those four things were. Instead, we want to talk about the two things that we did really, really well. And that can keep us stuck in a way that really inhibits our growth over time.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: That’s such a good point that we don’t share with people how that sausage gets made and that there is such a powerful component to experiential learning where we try things, we fail, we learn, we do it a little bit differently, assuming that we’re not making the same mistakes over and over. Yeah. Around that everything that we do, there’s a learning curve that is earned, right? It’s not effortless and to expect that. Yeah. Okay. These are so good. And so I know we have a few more to go, but I’m so curious. I’m imagining you, Amy, like in the depths of darkness to experience those kinds of losses at that point in your life, one right after another, it is difficult to fathom what that place might’ve been like for you. And I’m just,

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I’m sort of imagining you in my mind’s eye, you’re writing with a pen in a notebook, these things. And the realization that maybe you had been engaging in some of these things within the darkness that were somehow making it worse and that getting visibility into those allowed you to see them and step out of some of those loops. When you stopped doing the first few things that we’ve discussed, what did you start to notice as changing inside of yourself?

Amy Morin: It was a huge sense of relief. Like it’s okay. You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to have everything altogether. But as long as you don’t do these things, that you’ll be okay. And I just remember feeling like, okay. And then when I do those things, which I did, and I still do to this day, if I’m being honest, it’s just a reminder that yes, all of us have this natural tendency to do a lot of the things on the list. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It just means I have to be more aware. What is it that my brain and my body sometimes tell me to do? What does my heart tell me? Like, oh, don’t do that thing because you might fail and then you’ll be embarrassed. Well, yes, but I can handle being embarrassed or it’s not that bad. And I really have to balance my emotions with my logic. You referenced DBT earlier. Well, we know how important that is to use your wise mind when it comes to making decisions and knowing that just because I think I need something or I think I can’t handle it. Doesn’t mean it’s true. And if I just take a step back, take a moment. Say, no, like, actually you’ll be okay. Or you don’t have to, or it’s okay to feel bad, but you don’t have to stay stuck there. And it really just gives me permission to say, whatever I feel is okay, but I don’t have to stay stuck in that place if I don’t want to. Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And you know, there’s so much validity behind it as well. And I know we’ve only scratched the surface, Amy, and your work has carried forward into a number of other things, including the mental strength playbook, which I cannot wait to hear more of. But it’s almost a different way of approaching a very well-established theory of change and well-being, cognitive theory, right? I mean, just what you said, don’t believe everything that you think is the foundation of cognitive approaches to mental well-being. But you’re sort of doing it in reverse in some ways. I think that the conventional wisdom is like to retrain the way that you think, the way that you talk. And what you’re saying is just be aware of it and make a decision to not participate in that same type of internal narrative anymore. That can even be enough.

Amy Morin: Yeah, I would find a lot of people would think, well, it’s kind of like putting a band-aid on an axe wound, right? I’m having a bad day and like, let’s reframe your thoughts. Like, okay, well, maybe it wasn’t so bad, or at least this good thing happened. It was. For a lot of people, that feels more like toxic positivity. And they would struggle even more because they’re like, well, I’m supposed to be grateful that at least I have broccoli to eat, but I’m also unemployed and it doesn’t feel really all that good right now. Yeah. And so I wanted people to have that idea, like, okay, well, you don’t necessarily have to reframe everything into something positive. But sometimes just reminding yourself, this is the path I tend to go down. When I’m in a dark place, maybe I tend to feel sorry for myself. How do I catch it when I start doing it? And then what could I do differently to avoid it? Sometimes that’s, I think all we need as a reminder without the exact reframing thoughts that we need or without the exact script that we should be repeating to ourselves. Because that doesn’t always feel good when somebody says, well, just remind yourself of this. Or here’s a phrase to repeat or a mantra or positive affirmation. Because if we don’t feel good about ourselves, like telling yourself, you’re amazing, you’re the best person on the planet. There’s research that shows that actually backfires. If you don’t believe it, your self-esteem goes down instead of going up. So my hope was that because this worked for me in a really dark place, I didn’t have to be overly positive. Just a reminder of what not to do, that it could help other people too.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: You’re talking us through some of the, like, if you want to become stronger and feel more able to manage whatever it is that you’re going through, here are some things to stop. Doing started with recognizing the fact that you are doing with them. Can you run us through the remainder of the list so that we could just get visibility into what those are? And then I’d love to hear your thoughts about what this looks like in action.

Amy Morin: Mentally strong people also don’t shy away from change. They don’t waste energy on things they can’t control. They don’t worry about pleasing everyone. They don’t fear taking calculated risks. They don’t resent other people’s success. They don’t fear alone time. They don’t feel the world owes them anything and they don’t expect immediate results.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Okay. Now, what would you say to one of our friends sitting here with us listening into this? He’s like, but I do all of those things and I, I have emotional responses in all of those situations that feel like they’re outside of my control. How could I possibly stop that?

Amy Morin: Well, if anybody says I do those things, I would say, congrats, welcome to the club. Cause we all do. And I would applaud them for their honesty. When people are like, no, I don’t ever do any of those 13 things, but congratulations. Good for you, but you’re probably not going to make any progress. Cause the truth is who doesn’t repeat a mistake sometimes, right? You know, I’m always impressed when people can say, yeah, I’ve struggled with those things. Probably it’s easy when your life’s going well to probably say, no, I don’t resent anybody else’s success. Well, wait until you are in a rough season in your life and it feels like everybody else around you is doing amazing. And tell me how difficult that one is then. So for people who struggle with it, well, you can write down like what is it that I gain from doing this thing, but also what do I lose from doing it? What am I giving up? What is it costing me? So let’s take resenting somebody else’s success. Maybe it’s harming your relationships. Maybe it’s taking away from your own happiness. Maybe it’s less energy that you have to work on your own goals or to enjoy the achievements that you do have. Just reminding yourself and becoming more aware of when you do it and how it plays out in your life. And then you make a conscious choice. If I didn’t want to do this anymore, what would that look like? What would I be doing instead? And when we start answering some of those questions, I think we then create our own roadmap of how to create positive change.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: What am I getting out of this versus what is it costing me? Like that is so powerful. And I’ll share for a number of these two, I found it useful in my own life and also with my clients to actually like listen to the dark emotions a little bit. Like a feeling of resentment is telling me that I am very jealous of XYZ. And what does that mean about what I want in my life? How is this shining a light on my desire and the gap between where I am in my life and where I’d like to be? So even though I’m having this weird experience with this person to step back and like, OK, so if I listened to this, how could it inform the decisions I make about what I try to attain in my own life? I think that that can be very interesting. But I think that also goes into this balance around.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Stepping in to these spaces and like listening to it, indulging in the thoughts and seeking to understand them. But then stepping back out of it again, you kind of I got what I needed and now I’m going to step back rather than staying in it. Right. Yeah, sense.

Amy Morin: Yeah, it does. So a lot of people will come into my therapy office and maybe you see this too with people who think like if they just unlock one more insight. Then suddenly everything’s going to change like, well, if I could just really understand why I keep texting my ex like, is it a childhood wound from when I was seven? Is there something else going on? And even when they find an answer, well, actually, it’s when you are kind of sad and lonely on Sunday nights when everybody else is with their families and you’re sitting at home. It’s those times that you’re tempted to do this. And at some point, you have to realize, like, OK, it’s great to trace some of those threads, to have a better understanding of what drives your behavior. But then you actually have to take the action. So what do I want to do differently? And it might be something like, you know what, I’m going to put my phone on the other side of the room when I’m tempted to do this, or I’m going to reduce the temptation or I’m going to find somebody else to text instead. I’m going to reach out to an old friend or I’m going to call a family member. But just finding some other strategies without feeling like until I get to that one thread that’s going to unlock everything, I can’t make any change. I think that’s when we sometimes stay stuck, when we just keep telling ourselves, like, a little more insight would unlock this and change my behavior, but it doesn’t.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Wow. And you know what? I’m just realizing that one thing that I didn’t share with you when we first started chatting. So, yeah, I’m a psychologist, I’m a marriage and family therapist. But about 10 years ago, I made a hard pivot into coaching psychology for this exact reason. And I will now have conversations with clients sometimes where they’re like, yes, but what about the time my dad yelled at me when I was up? And I will literally say, hopefully in a not minimizing or triggering way, but we’ll communicate the fact that it doesn’t actually matter. Like, yeah, there can be a benefit for getting some insight and visibility into our process or what does this mean about me? Sure. And insight is not going to change anything.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: It really isn’t. When you translate this into action, and that is one of the things that I took from your work, Amy, and what I was so excited to learn more about is this perspective around how the things we do can get us so much further, so much faster, but also create the self-awareness and self-understanding through the experience, rather than wanting to have all the dots connected or imagining that we need to feel a certain way before we could take action.

Amy Morin: I’m glad that we’re on the same page with that because we think, well, if I just felt ready, if I felt more motivated, if I had more information, if I had those dots connected, then I would really want to change this behavior. I’d really want to do things differently. Or I’d understand why do I keep doing this? But sometimes you have to take the action first, right? And the feelings follow, or you take the action and then you learn, oh, so maybe even though I’m really motivated to make this change, at the end of the day when I’m really depleted and I’ve been fighting my willpower all day long, I kind of run out. By mid-evening, I tend to reach for that thing that I said I didn’t want to do, or on Friday nights when I’m bored and I’m lonely, I do that. So what am I going to do differently? And then when you try experimenting, then you figure out what works for you. It’s kind of like I could read a lot of books about how to play the piano, but I don’t actually become good at playing the piano until I try, until I learn. And it’s those things that I learn from. So when it comes to practicing, changing our lives and doing things differently and applying new habits and giving things up, you got to get out there and do it, not just read a book about it or think about it or talk about it longer. It’s really about the practice that helps us to create the change.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Yeah, absolutely. Well, what would you say to people with this core belief? And I frequently have this conversation with clients where there is this very powerful expectation that they need to feel ready. They need to, in order, they believe that they need to experience like a desire that feels good to go do something. And when, when it a lot of times really is this gritty resolve to do it first, even if you don’t feel great.

Amy Morin: Right. And how often are we tempted? And I say, wait, because me included, it’s not going to put my life on hold, right? Like if, if, if I could just cure my anxiety, I’d have a good life, but until it’s cured, I’m just going to kind of sit here and wait for it to get better. If I had a better fill in the blank, a better relationship, I’d have a happier life. If I didn’t struggle with these habits that are holding me back, then I’d feel amazing. But sometimes you have to do the opposite. Like how do I create an amazing life? And even though I feel this way, what steps do I still want to take? What am I able to do? And then in terms of acceptance and commitment therapy, then we know the thing that you’re struggling with often becomes a lot smaller rather than becoming the focal point or the big challenge that keeps you from living your best life. Instead, you commit to living your best life and the thing that is bothering you becomes so much smaller and just becomes part of the journey, but it doesn’t become the obstacle that you imagined it was.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So take us more deeply into the Mental Strength Playbook. So where do you take your readers through that latest iteration of your work?

Amy Morin: So after writing six books about what mentally strong, either people, parents, women, couples don’t do, people kept asking, okay, now what do we do? Like, how do you put these things into practice? And I wrote it specifically more geared towards the workplace because a lot of the skills and strategies we can use at home, you can’t really do it work. And for me, the example was I had to go to work after my mom died and after my husband died. And I don’t think we talk about this enough. Like, how do you show up at work when your own life is in shambles? And unfortunately, we’re all going to go through grief. We’re all going to go through tough times. You’re dealing with aging parents. The first thing, you know, I get a call at noon that says my mother-in-law fell and she’s not doing well. We’ll have a meeting at two and I have to take the meeting. Or my child’s getting bullied at school. The teacher just called me, but I have a presentation tomorrow. So am I supposed to go home early or what do I do?

Amy Morin: And sometimes at work, you can’t just cope with the emotion that you’re experiencing just because I have anxiety. I can’t say to my boss, I know that project is due later today, but I have some anxiety. So I’m going to put that off till next week. Probably won’t serve me very well at work at home. I can usually do that, right? If I’m going to tackle something and I think, oh, it’s too anxiety provoking to make that call. I’ll put it off till tomorrow. Or if we’re really sad at the office. I mean, people are like, sit with your feelings. Let yourself cry. Well, have you ever walked into like a sales meeting and you’re crying? Like it’s not going to go well. And when I was a therapist, I couldn’t like cry at my desk because I was missing my husband. I had people coming in who were telling me about their problems. Nobody’s going to talk to a therapist who’s crying about their own life. So it was a matter of figuring out, okay, but how do I get through this next hour? So the mental strength playbook is all about strategies so that we can cope with our emotions while we’re at work. And it’s not about suppressing them, but sometimes it’s about shelving them and saying, this isn’t helpful right now. I’m going to deal with it later. Or it’s about the thoughts that we have. So when you’re distracted by the fight you had with your partner, but it’s noon and you need to work on a report, what do you do? Or when you have a big project coming up, you can’t think straight because you’re kind of stressed out. How do you sit down and do that? So this book is 50 plays. Just like any playbook, if you’re a coach, maybe a play works in one situation, but not another. And it’s got plays that will help reduce your anxiety, deal with dread, increase your tenacity, and help you deal with all of the normal human emotions that we experience in the workplace.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Okay. I cannot wait to dig into the specifics here. And I also just want to say, like, absolutely, we need that kind of playbook to keep going at work when we’re not great. But just as you’re talking, I’m thinking about so many different dimensions of life where you still need to show up and do stuff, even if you’re not a hundred percent. Being a parent, following through on commitments to friends and family. I mean, how many times have I felt like, oh, I know I told them I would go to the thing, but I don’t really feel like, and you know what, you still need to show up, right? So it’s like, how do we not fall apart and continue functioning in a good enough way when we are going through hard things and have this toughness? And I hear what you’re saying, like, we don’t want to put it on a shelf forever. And I can also relate to what you were saying, like being a therapist in the aftermath of my own mother’s passing. Several years ago, you know, sitting in sessions, having all this stuff come up. And I think all therapists to a degree can develop this ability to compartmentalize. It’s probably a little bit horrifying, actually, in retrospect, but like it too much. But to be able to cultivate this ability to not have your emotions or your circumstances be this tsunami that takes over everything, right? And prevents you from being able to live your life.

Amy Morin: I feel like so many people are like, oh, they come into my therapy office and they’ll tell me what they’re going through. I’m like, wow. And you’re still showing up at work every day. And maybe your coworkers have no idea. You’re still functioning. You feel like you’re bubbling over, like you just are holding it together by a thread. And yet here you are. Let’s talk about how to do that in a way where you don’t feel like you’re going to break or you’re going to burst at the seams if you keep going.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Yeah. Or that it doesn’t become unhealthy because, you know, there are extremes to that as well. You promised to share with us some strategies that are things we can all do in those moments when we are dealing with stuff and we need to show up anyway and be strong. What does that look like?

Amy Morin: So, you know, one of my favorites, a lot of people will say when I’m struggling with something, like, I just can’t get my mind off of it. And it might be a health diagnosis. Maybe your marriage is in trouble. Maybe it’s something with your kids, your parents, whatever. But you’re at work and you’re trying to work on a boring spreadsheet and that thing keeps popping up in your head. And you’re like, oh, I need to concentrate. I need to be present for this meeting that I’m in. One of my favorite strategies is to schedule time to worry. This is straight out of cognitive behavioral therapy, but it works really well. If you schedule 15 minutes a day to worry about something, there’s research that shows you can compartmentalize it and just contain it to just that 15 minutes. So let’s say somebody’s going through a divorce. Maybe it’s ugly stuff with lawyers and custody issues and lots of stuff to think about. Well, instead of thinking about it 24 seven, you just say from seven to seven 15 every evening, I’m going to worry. And when your worry time rolls around, you sit around at the kitchen table and you just let your mind go wherever. Maybe you write it down. And whenever you catch yourself worrying outside of that time, you just tell yourself, it’s not time to worry about that yet. I’ll worry about that later. Because what often happens when we have a thought is we think we just try to suppress it. We shove it away. But the more that we try to shove it down and keep ourselves from thinking about it, the more our brains like, no, this is important. You need to think about it and it backfires and we think about it even more. So if you just give yourself permission to worry, but just set a time limit on it and then you actually follow through with it same time every day. After a while, your brain will say, OK, I don’t need to keep reminding you of this all day long. And people who will practice this, they’ll come into my therapy office maybe two weeks later and they look like the weight of the world has literally been lifted off of their shoulders. And they’ll say, I can finally pay attention or I feel so much less stressed throughout the day because I’m not always thinking about that thing or all of the things I can’t control. Suddenly, I feel like, OK, I can concentrate on this. And I know I trust that I’m going to give myself a chance to worry about that later.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: You know, like from this mental hurricane where it’s like, you know, like all the thoughts and the ruminations and all the things to be able to have something actionable to do that we’re not saying it’s not important. We’re just saying I have a time and a place to do this and the space it opens up.

Amy Morin: Yeah. And then to OK, I don’t have to worry about this 24 seven. I’ll just worry about it for 15 minutes. I think can be quite freeing. Oh, my gosh.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Is there another favorite that you have is something that you’re like, this is my go to. This is the one that has the most power for me.

Amy Morin: So one one of my favorites is it’s a dread diffuser. I’ve got a whole chapter on things that you dread, whether you dread meetings or senior specific coworker or doing a boring task and the sections about dread diffusers. This one is called Text to Motivation Buddy, and it works really well. So I like to write books, but I don’t love to edit my books. The editing, I think, is just cumbersome and slow. And when I go to edit, I can find a million things I’d rather do, whether it be check my phone or go down some internet rabbit hole or do the dishes. So what I found is really helpful when I sit down to do something that I’m not thrilled about doing or I’m just not in the mood. I’ll text somebody and say, hey, this is what I’m working on. It might be my friend who is also a writer who would understand. It might be my sister who I know will actually follow up in an hour.

Amy Morin: And suddenly, when you put that social pressure on yourself and you give yourself that deadline and not too far into the future, usually an hour is plenty. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself more motivated than you’ve been in a really long time because you’re going to want to report that you have some progress. So in 60 minutes, when your buddy checks back in and says, hey, how are you doing on that? You can say, you know, I’ve gotten 17 pages done or I’ve gotten how many lines done on my spreadsheet or my slide show is almost done. Thanks for checking in. It makes a huge difference. Otherwise, a task that maybe only takes three hours, we could easily like make linger into the whole day. You’re thinking, well, I didn’t get much done and I feel bad and I’ll have to do twice as much tomorrow. And we get caught up in this cycle. But there’s something about reaching out to somebody, asking them to hold you accountable and giving yourself a tight deadline that will make you take more action in that 60 minutes than maybe you have in like three days. And I find this one to be so helpful. Anytime I’m bouncing through a million Ls, I need to check or sometimes when I’m doing something that’s kind of boring and I just, yeah, or I’m just distracted or I just have a day where I’d rather be doing anything but staring at my laptop, having somebody check in with me makes all the difference in the world.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: I have been needing to clear out my basement for literally a year. And I’m going to text you and say, Hey, Amy, check in later today. Cause I’m going to clear out my basement.

Amy Morin: I think these can work just as well with personal tasks as they do with the professional ones for things like that. Somebody says, I’m battling depression and my room is a mess. Can you check in with me in an hour? And I’m just going to try to pick the close up off the floor. Might be as simple as that. Or I need to tackle the dishes because my kitchen’s a disaster right now. Can you check in with me in an hour and see how it’s going? We can accomplish so much more in an hour than we think that we can. For some people, it might even just be in 15 minutes. If you can check into the in 15 minutes to see how I’m doing. Once you get started, it’s usually easier to keep going. It’s that initial hurdle of like, Oh, this is going to be too much. And I don’t want to get started that often keeps us stuck. There’s one more to share.

Amy Morin: I would say another one is a confidence catalyst. So when we’re filled with self-doubt, we often think like, Oh, I can’t do this. I don’t fit in. I don’t belong. So one of my favorite strategies is to just act as if, and it’s not the same as fake it till you make it. Cause I don’t want anybody to act fake, but it could just be, if I were the most confident version of myself right now, what would I look like? How might I enter the room? What would my posture be like? How would I be interacting with people?

Amy Morin: And then if you just start doing those things, even though you don’t feel it, your brain kind of catches up with your behavior. It’ll be like, Oh, we’re shaking hands and looking people in the eye. So we must feel good. And suddenly you start to build confidence right in the moment. So take a networking event. A lot of people are like, Oh, I’m so awkward. I sit in the corner. I don’t talk to anybody. And I’ve had that exact same feeling. But if you said to yourself, if I walk into this networking event and I’m going to be my most confident self, what would I be doing? And it may be it’s, I introduce myself to people. I look them in the eye. I asked them an interesting question. We’ll just start doing that, even though you don’t feel like it and just watch what happens, it can make all the difference in the world, whether you’re giving a presentation at a meeting or you’re walking into a room where you don’t know anybody. Just say, how would I act if I were the most confident version of myself?

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And just to support what you’re saying, you know, I’m sure you’ve encountered this well, but there’s a lot of research to support that. Like that your behavior actually precipitates the way that you feel even something as simple as smiling or, or as you’re saying, talking to someone that you will feel better because of it. And again, just if anybody’s holding onto that idea that you need to feel confident before you can do that, or that you need to feel happy before you can show up in a positive way that don’t dismiss the power of behavior to create the mood state that you’d like to experience.

Amy Morin: How often do we think, well, I’m smiling because I feel happy, but the inverse is true as well. Like if I start smiling when I’m in a bad mood, sometimes you can induce feelings of happiness. And I don’t think that we need to like plaster on a fake smile all the time or we don’t need to be fake. But if you can just put forward like that best version of yourself, amazing things can happen.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This has been so good, Amy. And so thank you so much, first of all, by the way, for sharing these specific things with us just so generously. And I know that in the Mental Strength Playbook, there are 50 of these. And so there’s a lot more where that came from related to your strategies. But I have two last questions if it’s okay. So I guess a couple of different angles here. First of all, for someone listening, and I think that this is something that should be discussed, right? All of these strategies are powerful. There’s such a well-established basis for all of these and a lot of what we know about psychology that works, right? And so for anyone listening who might have those concerns or maybe have those like, how would you recommend somebody use these ideas in a healthy way without going to the place where they are potentially avoiding things that are actually valuable, productive, and need to be addressed? Like as a therapist.

Amy Morin: I think there’s a huge difference between being mentally strong and just acting tough. Yeah. We have a lot of Navy SEALs out there or athletes even who talk about mental toughness. And they’ll say things like, you know, just like suffering is something to be glorified. And the more that you can push down your pain and the more you can endure, the better off you are and never let them see you sweat. And what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And all of these slogans and attitudes are really about suppressing emotions, about pretending like you don’t care. It’s about, you know, just trying to put yourself through pain for the sake of pain’s sake. But then when you really ask yourself, like what takes more courage saying, no, I’m fine. Nothing’s bothering me. Or does it take more courage to say, actually, Lisa, I’m really struggling and here’s what I’m going through. It takes way more strength to be able to be vulnerable and to talk about those things or to ask for help. Like am I being strong right now or just acting tough? Am I putting on that mask because I want other people to perceive me as tough? And I think when we see other people who are acting tough to give them some grace and to know it’s probably really painful for them to go there, to acknowledge their feelings, especially to talk about it. But one of the best things we can do is to just role model. Like, you know what, it’s not that I’m going to try to impress you with how perfect I am, but instead I’m going to tell you what I’m struggling with. And even the toughest of people, when you say, Hey, I’m really struggling with something, they’ll often say, Oh, I can relate to that. Or me too, or I’ve been there. And that can be enough to open the door to help somebody else feel like it’s safe enough to be vulnerable and to acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers or to admit that they make mistakes or that they’re struggling with something as well.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So just, you know, paying attention to, is this a facade? Is this a front that is maybe getting in the way of my ability to be authentic or to have like emotionally connected relationships with people who know me? And to what degree is a defense mechanism versus having that insight to be able to manage it and understand? I don’t know. I think that’s a message here of balance, right? That mental toughness and the strength that is required to manage yourself, manage your thoughts, not go down spirals that are self-destructive in a lot of ways versus also being open enough and self-aware enough to have a healthy connection with your thoughts and feelings and the painful parts of life. That’s not easy to do. And I think something that we all probably need to actively manage as we go through the world. So thank you for kind of talking about your thoughts there. And so the other thing, and this is a curiosity as a therapist, I don’t know, you experience the things that you did very early on in your career. You mentioned being in your twenties, which is still when baby therapists are being shaped, right? And so I’m curious if there was ever a period in your career where you were operating more like a conventional therapist or the processing of the feelings, the insight, the

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: conventional ways of being, and then made a shift into more of a focus on the mental strength approach. And if so, if you noticed a difference in between what your clients were experiencing as a result of those two different approaches that you were using as a therapist.

Amy Morin: Oh, good question. And I think as you say, when I first lost my mom and I first lost my husband, I was straight out of college with the textbooks.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: You were thinking like- You still get bacon in the oven, right? Correct. It’s like your trajectory.

Amy Morin: Right. As time went on, I went through my own experiences. The more I, after I wrote the article and I thought, “Oh, this resonates with people.” If I’d written an article that was like about improving your mental health, I’m not sure we’d be talking about it in corporate America or things like that. So it just made me realize that we all have these universal struggles, what we call it often matters, and that people find more hope, I think, in

Amy Morin: knowing that while maybe you feel bad in terms of your mental health, there’s still choices in what you do, like in terms of mental strength. Just like if my physical health were struggling, I can still choose to go to the gym. If my mental health is struggling, I can still choose to build mental strength every day. And I think that’s sort of new framework reminded me that people just need to know, like, what are some strategies? What do I need to give up? What helps? And that the same thing doesn’t work for everybody. It’s not the cookie cutter textbook strategies that I thought were going to work for people, but people often find their own way as long as they have a relationship with them.

Amy Morin: And I think that’s one of the reasons why I wrote the playbook is I wanted people to know, “I don’t know you. I don’t know your boss. I don’t know your situation, but there’s a play you can run.” And it’s going to be, “I’ll give you the science-backed strategies that I know works.” And then the art form is you get to pick which ones you want to try.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: And, you know, just to share, I could really see many people resonating with this and that it feels more almost like energetically congruent and appealing when we think of mental health. A lot of times the meta message is that you’re sick and we will restore your mental health, right? Or there’s like this healing, you know, that’s what you’re going to be doing. And then the meta message is that you’re sick and we will restore your mental health, right? Or there’s like this healing component versus this ability to become stronger, I think, lands better with a lot of people who can really benefit from the kind of work that you’re talking about, but who might have some, I don’t know, resistance is the right word, but don’t necessarily want to get in that pool where we’re going to be focusing on healing, as opposed to the cultivation of strength. And so I appreciate that brings a path forward for a lot of people who might not have wanted to participate in it without that framing.

Amy Morin: Yeah. You know, to be able to talk to people from all walks of life about how do you build mental strength has been an absolute honor.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: So before we glide to a stop here, where can people go to learn more about you, stay connected with you, check out everything that you have to offer, because there’s so much. There are numerous books. There’s TED Talks. What’s the best way?

Amy Morin: So my website is the best place, which is Amy Morin, M-O-R-I-N. I’ve been on there. You can subscribe to my newsletter, find more information about my books, my talks, and all the other things that I do.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Amazing. Well, Amy, thank you so much for spending this time with us today. This has been such a fascinating conversation and I’m glad to get to know you.

Amy Morin: Well, thanks so much for having me, Lisa. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Oh, this was so good. So, Amy, hang out with me for just one second. Sure. Amy Morin is one of those therapists that I love connecting with because she has a well-established point of view that is grounded in evidence-based practice, but brings a really fresh perspective and a different way of attaining fantastic outcomes for people through a process that is a little bit different than a traditional therapeutic approach. And I really appreciated it. And, you know, one of the things that was standing out for me as I was talking with Amy was how everything she is advising is founded on this ability to know yourself, like to have

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: insight into your own mind and in the moment to be able to be even just aware that you are engaging in a way of thinking that maybe isn’t the best way to be. And that you have control over that, as well as, you know, in the moment, this ability to almost have a conversation with yourself, like what play in the playbook shall I run right now, which requires insight into the circumstance, the way you’re thinking, feeling, and behaving in that circumstance currently, and then an intention to do something different and then follow through. And so these types of ideas are really powerful, but only if you have the ability to intervene on your own behalf in some ways in the moment. And this ability begins with your own work.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: Certainly talking about your own internal process is one way to get that visibility. You can also journal about it, but it requires becoming curious about your own mind. And then also sometimes having a partner who can help you shine a light on your opportunities for change. And I think there are so many things that we all do, the way we think, the way we behave, our instinctive patterns that are not in our own awareness because they’re just the way things are. It takes sometimes an outside perspective to be able to see them in a different way. Amy talked about providing that to her clients through therapy. And that is also something that I and the other clinicians that I work with here at Growing Self do day to day, either through psychotherapy, if the goal is to help someone with depression or anxiety, or through coaching modalities that we use to help people make some positive changes that help them get where they want to go in a more action oriented way. And so if you would like some support for yourself in doing the type of work you heard today, get in touch. It all starts with a free consultation. You can come to growingself.com, click the get connected button, tell us a little bit about yourself, what’s going on, what your hopes and goals are for this. And then we’ll create recommendations for you to have a totally free consultation with one of the coaching therapists on my team. So you could talk more about your hopes and goals, learn more about their approach and see if it’s a good fit before moving forward. Growingself.com get connected. All right. Other than that, I’ll be back in touch with you next time for another episode of love, happiness and success.