Mental Strength in the Moment with Amy Morin

[00:00:01] Today on The James Altucher Show. After my first husband passed away, I had this acne breakout. I'm 26, I have acne. I go to the dermatologist and he's like telling me that I should manage my stress better. Like in that moment, that was not helpful. Like, hey, you should manage your stress. Like, no kidding. The technique I did was I imagined the nervous version of myself left my body and was standing next to me. And I was able to sort of say, don't worry about it. Just come up to the stage with me and we'll be okay.

[00:00:30] And so that I separated myself from this person that was me. That was the nervous person who was afraid to go up on stage. I started teaching people the same strategy that I was teaching kids, which is you pretend like you're smelling a piece of pizza. And essentially you breathe in through your nose like you're smelling the pizza and you hold it for a beat at the top. And then you blow out through your mouth like you're cooling the pizza off. The goal is you just make the exhale a little bit longer than the inhale. And you can do this sort of nonchalantly while you're in this conversation.

[00:00:59] But if you do it a couple of times, it calms your brain, calms your body. So you can at least come out and say something that sounds a little more intelligent and less emotional. Sometimes you just have to get out of your head. One of the best ways to do that is to just do something kind for somebody else.

[00:01:31] Today I am thrilled to welcome back one of my favorite guests, one of my all-time favorite guests and a good friend and a true expert on mental strength. I have relied on her help many times, Amy Morin, who is the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do. And she has a new book coming out, The Mental Strength Playbook.

[00:01:53] Amy has one of those stories where she just went through a horrific time in her mid-20s, hit bottom, had to come back from it. And that resulted in what eventually became an article, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, which then became a best-selling series about the same topic. And now in her brand new book, The Mental Strength Playbook, Amy brings together 50 practical research-backed strategies you can use in the moment,

[00:02:21] whether you're dealing with financial stress, relationship tension, performance anxiety, or just kind of the everyday overwhelmingness of modern life. We dive deep into many of her techniques like, you know, using a reverse worry list, the power of the half smile, throwing a good vibes boomerang, and a ton of other techniques. Plus, you know, we talked about the times, you know, Amy has really helped me.

[00:02:47] And it's almost like when I have a podcast with Amy, it's like my own therapy session because she is a licensed psychotherapist. Also, we talk about she's been living on a sailboat for the past 11 years and really more details of how she accidentally became a best-selling author and the personal lessons that she's learned along the way. So if you want fast-acting tools to feel more calm, focused, and mentally strong, this conversation is for you. Let's get into it with Amy Morin.

[00:03:20] Articles are like the focus group of what makes a good book. Well, that's kind of the cool part, right? You get to test a theory. And sometimes I think something's interesting, and clearly it wasn't to anybody else. And then I know, obviously not meant to be a book if nobody read the article. But living on a sailboat, and you've been doing this as long as I've known you, right? Like you've been living on a sailboat for like 10 years. Yeah, so this is actually 11 years. And you know what? So, and I don't think I've ever told you this. So I didn't really tell anybody I lived on a boat.

[00:03:49] And I was on your podcast once, probably like nine and a half, 10 years ago. And you had put in the podcast that I lived on a boat. And it was the first time it was actually made public. I'd never just mentioned it to anybody. And I kind of always angled my computer in a way that people couldn't tell. And I remember like the response from that was so positive. And I was like, oh, maybe I should be a little more upfront with people that I live on a boat. So I always credit that with you, that you were kind of the person that announced it. You know, and it's a really cool thing because I'm sure there are difficulties of living on a boat.

[00:04:18] But the things that a lot of people think about, the stress of maintaining a house, the stress of maintaining, you know, a mortgage, this idea that you could just kind of move around when you want to and you're on the ocean, which is so peaceful. Like there's something really almost spiritual about living on a boat, the simplicity of it, the water, the lifestyle. There's a lot of things that I don't worry about anymore. Like the furniture for the most part is built in. So I don't really have to go furniture shopping.

[00:04:46] Or if I'm going to buy something, I have to get rid of something because there's not a lot of space on a boat. And at first, it felt like kind of a constraint. Like, oh, it's going to be more difficult to live like this. Like I don't have a big closet or I can't buy as many things. But it's turned out to make life a lot easier. And don't get me wrong. I still have a house. I still have more stuff than I need in a house. And I do go there sometimes. But for the most part, when I'm here on the boat, life is a lot simpler. Yeah. And does it ever get a drag?

[00:05:15] Like if there's two of you on the boat, like your husband, like if you get in each other's way? You know, it's not too bad because we own dock space. You can buy a dock a minium. So I own a slip. And so I'm not like bobbing around in the ocean because I need high speed internet. So a lot of times when I'm doing podcast interviews or I'm on TV, then I'm at the dock anyway. And we have a tiki hut outside. So there's outdoor space too. So if I'm doing a live interview or something like that, he just goes outside.

[00:05:42] So that way we aren't just staring at each other in the living room. Well, in any case, you've been doing this as long as I've known you. And as long as I've known you, you've been the 13 things, mentally strong people, kids, couples, parents, women don't do. All those books started off with 13 things mentally strong people don't do. And now you have the mental strength playbook, which is kind of, I would say, an amalgamation of all you've learned in these years,

[00:06:12] kind of researching and helping people and compiling stories of what actually is mental strength across all these different categories. And you now have the playbook, the Bible of every situation and basically how to use these techniques in practice and make your life better, less stressful, more creative, more productive, more efficient. And it's all gathered here in this mental strength playbook. Yeah.

[00:06:40] My other books are all about what not to do. And obviously people found that helpful and I found it helpful too. But over the years, people have also said, what do I do right now or what do I do right in the moment? And I was thinking about that too, because like I can remember after my first husband passed away and I had this acne breakout. I'm 26, I have acne. I go to the dermatologist and he's like telling me that I should manage my stress better.

[00:07:07] Like in that moment, that was not helpful. Like, hey, you should manage your stress. Like, no kidding, but I'm going through this problem. So that wasn't helpful. And so I thought, you know, I don't want to be the person who just tells people when they're like, gosh, I'm struggling in life. Like, well, you should manage your diet or you should sleep better. Like people want like a painkiller, not a vitamin. And I thought, can I write this book now that gives you fast acting relief? And I think I had shied away from that before because I didn't want to just have people like read this book of like,

[00:07:35] great, these are these really quick solutions and I can apply them and then I'll be mentally strong. But at the same time, like, what do you do when your anxiety is really high? Somebody says, well, take care of yourself. That's not helpful. Like, what is helpful right in the moment? And that's really where this idea for the playbook came in. Let's say there's a day your mortgage is due the next day and the stock market just crashed and your portfolio fell double what the price of your mortgage was. And you're thinking to yourself, oh man, I should have sold my portfolio the day before.

[00:08:05] And, you know, this is like a common thing, particularly with the market so volatile right now. I see a lot of people with financial worries right now. And that creates a lot of anxiety. Like, what should someone do? So I guess in a case like that, we have some sort of financial anxiety. The first question is to like, ask yourself, do I need to solve the problem or how I feel about the problem? So if your mortgage is due tomorrow, that's a problem. You have to figure out what am I going to do about it? What I see with people is they can pay their mortgage. Yep. They work or they've been,

[00:08:33] it's not like they're up or down 100% a day in their portfolio, but just the anxiety that's created, oh, I could pay my mortgage today, but maybe in a year I'm going to have to sell the house or which means maybe I should sell it now. Or who knows? Like they're feeling overburdened. So for something like that, where you're just like, okay, the economy is scary right now. There's a lot of financial things going on. There's nothing you can do about it, but you might make some of those decisions. Like, do I sell my house? Do I move some things around? A great strategy for that one would be to schedule time to worry.

[00:09:04] So you set aside 15 minutes a day to worry about it. That way you give your brain permission to think about it, but you're not thinking about it all day long. When I'm working on another task, if I start thinking, oh, should I sell my house? Or what's the stock market going to do tomorrow? I just remind myself I'll worry about that later. I'm not going to worry about that right now. And then I put it in the calendar. So I'm going to worry from 7 to 7.15 at night. Seven o'clock rolls around. I worry for 15 minutes, get up and then go do something else. And there's research that will show

[00:09:31] you can then train your brain to think about something for a little while. So it doesn't take up the whole day. Essentially, you're saying, I'm going to expose my brain to this, but also set some time limits on it. Because what I see is people will say, oh, I just shouldn't think about that. The more you try not to think about it, the more you do. And then on the other side, I see people who are like, well, I have to think about this all the time because this is a real problem. But there's no evidence that thinking about something longer or harder leads to a better solution. In fact, it's the opposite. If you give your brain a break,

[00:10:00] you tend to come up with better ideas. Yeah. And I think also there's some self-awareness there where, like, for instance, a lot of times, this happens to me. I'll wake up at three in the morning and my brain will find something to worry about at three in the morning. And if I always tell myself, hey, this is something I tend to do at 3 a.m., I'm going to worry at three, I'm going to address this issue at 3 p.m. instead of 3 a.m. And then I can go back to sleep. And when I do that, even though I'm still worried about the thing,

[00:10:30] it can't totally turn off the brain, I do find that at 3 p.m., I'm not worried about the thing anymore. That's just it. Like, the back of our brain, our subconscious often works through a lot of the problems when we're not thinking about it. And it's amazing how those things at 3 a.m. that seem huge, often by the next day, they don't seem so big anymore. That once we've given our brain a break from it, the back of your brain has the opportunity to process the information differently, and suddenly it doesn't seem like it's an absolute emergency.

[00:10:59] Like, what do you worry about? When's the last time you used this technique? I worry about other people sometimes, right? I worry about family members' health issues. I'll take my dad, for example. My dad's getting up there in age. There's nothing I can do about it. And like a lot of dads, he'll downplay an issue. Like, he had this pain in his stomach for a while. And he'll kind of downplay it, so I don't really know what's going on, because he'll be like, oh, it's not bad, but I can tell it hurts. And I'll ask him about going to the doctor,

[00:11:29] and he'll go to the doctor, like, when he really has to. But even when he goes to the doctor, he'll say, oh, it's like, the pain's like a 2 out of a 10. I know that's not true. It's getting in the way of his life. Like, it's not a 2. It's probably like an 8. So then I'll be worried. Like, is it something worse? Or what could I have said to try to convince him to be more upfront with his doctor or schedule an appointment sooner? There's really nothing I can do. In fact, the more I try to convince him to do it, the less likely he is to follow through. But that's one of those things I worry about, but I can't change.

[00:11:59] So if I schedule time to worry about it, I don't find that it interferes with my daily life. Or if my sister will try to talk to me about it, too. She's also a therapist, so she'll say, well, this is what dad told me. Does it line up with the story you heard? And I don't want to just get into that, because again, there's nothing I can do about it. So I'll set some limits there, too. So you find that works? I do. Like, it's one of those things I have to accept that he's 74. He's going to do what he wants to do. And giving myself a little bit of time

[00:12:29] to worry about it helps me to say, all right, I'm at least thinking about it, but I'm not thinking about it all the time. You mentioned you create a reverse worry list. I like this idea. And is this the sort of thing you would create a reverse worry list about? Or maybe describe the reverse worry list. Yeah, so I think a reverse worry list is more for those acute times when our anxiety really, really spikes rather than more of a chronic anxiety. So if somebody who says, I'm terrified of public speaking,

[00:12:57] and you have to give a presentation in 10 minutes, and your anxiety is really high, and your heart is beating, and your palms are sweaty, that's where the reverse worry list comes in. And essentially, you're just going to sit down and write down all the things you're excited about. It could be that you're going to your friend's wedding next summer, or you have a vacation coming up, or you're going to watch a movie on Friday night. Anything in life that you might be excited for. And suddenly, you can convince yourself that that physiological response that you're having

[00:13:26] is excitement instead of worry. So then when I step out in front of a group of people, I'm like, oh, I'm excited to be here. I'm not terrified to be here. We can trick ourselves into thinking that we're excited rather than anxious. Yeah, I like that. It reminds me of one time in 2013, I was very nervous about giving a talk. I was so nervous that right before the talk, I walked out of the building, and I was just not going to go back. And they would just call me up to the stage, and there'd be nobody there.

[00:13:55] And I did do a technique. I find it's funny because techniques in general work, whatever the technique is. Because you sort of outsource this difficult thing to something that somebody tells you will work. So there maybe even is a placebo effect on all this stuff, but it works. So I imagined the technique I did was, I imagined the nervous version of myself left my body and was standing next to me. And I was able to sort of say, don't worry about it.

[00:14:25] Just come up to the stage with me, and we'll be okay. And so that I separated myself from this person that was me, that was the nervous person who was afraid to go up on stage. Oh, I really like that one. So, you know, I would say that's like a form of psychological distance, which I also talk about in the book, where you can refer to yourself in the third person and get some distance from like that part of you. But it also reminds me, say, of narrative therapy. As a therapist, sometimes we'll do these things where we tell people like,

[00:14:54] your anxiety isn't you, it's separate from you. So what is it your anxiety is trying to talk you out of doing? And when you separate it a bit, it often helps us to have less of a physiological response and then take action. So I love that that strategy worked for you in that moment. And, you know, another thing you mentioned a lot, and I think is very helpful, is taking action as opposed to changing your thinking. So for instance, throwing a good vibes boomerang.

[00:15:22] So giving someone else some positivity and watch it come back to you. Can you give an example of where that works? Yeah, so often we get caught up in our own heads, right? That we think, oh, my life is awful and horrible. Or there's all this focus these days on self-care. And I'm finding that people are like sitting on the couch, ruminating and thinking more about their life than ever. Well, sometimes you just have to get out of your head. And one of the best ways to do that is to just do something kind for somebody else.

[00:15:49] Instead of sitting on my couch, feeling sorry for myself, I could just send a friend a text message, somebody I haven't talked to in a while, and say something kind to them about how much I appreciate them. And by doing that, I'm reminded that I have some control over something in my life. And that as soon as I do that, chances are I know that I'm making somebody else's day better. They might respond and say, hey, thank you or say something kind back. But even if they don't, it's just a wonderful reminder that I don't just have to sit and ruminate on what makes my life awful.

[00:16:19] I can take some kind of an action step to make the world a better place, no matter what kind of bad day you're having, or no matter how rough the space is that your life is in right now. There's something you can do about it. And this is one of my favorite things, just to get out of your own head sometimes. And whether somebody's like, I'm going through a really rough divorce, or I got some financial problems, just do something kind for somebody else. And it can do wonders for your mood, but also just as a reminder of if things could be worse,

[00:16:48] and there's always something we can do. Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at alcatra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks. Running a small business is tough.

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[00:19:12] I was, this is like 25 years ago. I was in a situation where I was going broke. I was losing my house. And my wife at that time suggested, oh, why don't you do some charity work? So I volunteered to some charity and I went there for the day and I was stuffing envelopes and it did not make me feel better. I was like sitting at the charity, stuffing envelopes and worried just as much as I ever was. Well, and I think that's one of those examples of like a stuffing an envelope doesn't really make us feel like we're doing something kind for somebody, right?

[00:19:42] I would do something like really interactive that involves a human being and something that's important to you. Because I agree, if I were to go stuff envelopes when my life was in a really rough spot, I probably would have felt worse about my life and wondered what I was doing with my time. But in the small cases where you just hold the door and smile at somebody, that's I think what makes a bigger difference or just taking two minutes of your life to be a listening ear for somebody else going through a tough time so that it feels more meaningful. Because otherwise, yeah,

[00:20:12] if I were sweeping the floors at a charity or stuffing the envelopes, I might not feel like I'm making an actual impact. You know, how much of this, you think, is related to neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity is this idea that as you get older, you can continue to learn new things and build new connections and strong memories in your brain. And a memory is basically, let's say, two neurons representing different concepts that are strongly tied together and that becomes a memory. So I see your face and I think Amy Morin.

[00:20:42] And I think 13 things mentally strong people don't do. So it's like a collection of neurons that have stronger connections than other neurons because you're in my memories. And neuroplasticity is this idea that I can form new strong connections between neurons by thinking a lot about new things. And if you think negative things all the time, then you're just going to build these negative memories and that's going to build the next evolution of your brain. As opposed to if you just think, if you think about positive things

[00:21:11] and things you're grateful for and things you're excited about, your brain will evolve into a more excited, you know, grateful, maybe happy brain. Is this fake research or is this real? It's real. You can see differences on MRIs of how people are using different parts of their brain. We know you can tell when somebody meditates by looking at an MRI or if they practice gratitude. And so while a lot of those things are met with an eye roll, we know that it can physically change your brain and also prevents things

[00:21:41] like dementia, Alzheimer's. People are living longer. They're experiencing better cognitive abilities when they practice these things. And it'll show too, like just like kind of like a river when there's water running in a certain path, the water always goes in that direction. It runs off the mountain into the same path. But our brains will solve a problem with the path of least resistance or it will look for ideas and strategies that we've always used before because we've already built that path. But if you start to build new paths,

[00:22:11] your brain starts to think differently. It starts to look at different opportunities. It helps you solve problems. You regulate your emotions differently. So I do believe there's a lot to it that by being more proactive and intentional, we can rewire our brains in some interesting ways. And it's not just the brain. Like you mentioned in the book, like the half smile. Like tell us about that. Yeah, most of us think that we smile because we're happy, but there's research that shows the opposite. If you smile, you could also trigger your brain's response to say, oh, we must be happy right now.

[00:22:40] And that's not to say I'm going to paste on a big cheesy grin because we also know from the research that if somebody is, say, a hospitality worker and they're forced to smile all day long, no matter how difficult their day is, then that can actually drain some of our willpower. But if you do just a half smile, which means you just kind of turn up the corners of your cheeks just a little bit, like corners of your mouth, just a slight bit so that if you were looking at me, you're not going to think I'm smiling, but you might notice that my face looks like it's softened a little bit.

[00:23:10] And if I just hold that, so maybe we're in a tense discussion and I just kind of make sure that my face softens a bit, turn up the corners of my mouth, like my body starts to relax and my brain starts to think, oh, this is okay. Like it's okay to relax or I'm in a better mood right now. So whether you're like doing a really boring spreadsheet and it's awful and your mood is kind of low or you're nervous about having a difficult conversation with somebody, you can use your physiology to your advantage by doing the half smile, but you have to hold it.

[00:23:40] Like if you do it for two seconds, it's not going to work. But if you can hold it for a couple of minutes during a meeting, it makes a big difference. You start to feel better. When you feel better, you think differently and then you start being more open to ideas or you start thinking about a problem from a different perspective, you might come up with a better solution too. Even if you know for sure, oh, this is just a technique, it still works. Yeah. I mean, I think if you go into it believing this is not going to work, it's stupid, it'll probably have the opposite effect.

[00:24:10] But if you go into it with an open mind of I'm going to try this strategy and see what happens, you might find that it works. And you know, the reason I put 50 plays in the playbook is because not every play works for everybody at every point in time. So you might find this works really well when I'm, say, staring at my computer doing something boring, but if I'm in a heated discussion with somebody, it doesn't work. So that's when I need to run a different play. So let's take an example from like real life. So a lot of people right now throughout the whole world

[00:24:39] are arguing, you know, war with Iran is good or war with Iran is not good or, you know, pro-Gaza, not pro-Gaza. You know, these types of arguments and like families are being split up. So let's say you're having a discussion with someone and you're getting, you find you're really upset at their stance. Whatever stance you're on, you're really upset at their position and you're absolutely convinced your position's correct and you're even feeling like personally offended by it.

[00:25:09] Like what's a good way to sort of move past this conversation somehow? So yeah, if your emotions are getting high and you're struggling, you might need to say calm your physiology for a moment because the minute we open our mouths and we start speaking, it's going to be tough to do that. And even if I say something kind, like, I guess we just have to agree to disagree. If I'm really angry when I say that, it's like I'm hissing through my teeth and you're going to pick up on that. So you might need to do something to calm yourself first. So like there's a breathing exercise I talk about

[00:25:38] called smell the pizza, right? And this one came about because so many of my therapy clients would be like, I know there's this box breathing thing or 478, but I can never remember what to do and when to do it, especially when I'm stressed out. So I started teaching people the same strategy that I was teaching kids, which is you pretend like you're smelling a piece of pizza and essentially you breathe in through your nose like you're smelling the pizza and you hold it for a beat at the top and then you blow out through your mouth like you're cooling the pizza off.

[00:26:08] The goal is you just make the exhale a little bit longer than the inhale and you can do this sort of nonchalantly while you're in this conversation, but if you do it a couple of times, it calms your brain, calms your body, so you can at least come out and say something that sounds a little more intelligent and less emotional. So if that's your goal of I'm going to change the subject, I might do something first to make sure that you're calm enough that you can actually say those words. And why does that work? So when you make your exhale a little bit longer than the inhale, it signals to your brain

[00:26:37] like I can relax. When our brain's in that fight or flight state, your breathing changes. You tend to take shallow breaths, but when you say I'm going to take a deeper breath and I'm going to exhale longer, it triggers your body's relaxation response. Your heart rate decreases. Your brain gets the memo of I guess we're not in a life-altering situation right now, so I don't need to get all geared up as if I'm hanging off the edge of a cliff. Yeah, so all of this, I mean, you can argue all of this is designed

[00:27:06] to maybe help people be happier, right? And so then it begs the question, like what is happiness? Is there such a thing as happiness or is it better to think of it as well-being and then what is that? Yeah, I think it's better to think about well-being because if we chase happiness, we know that that backfires. If I wanted to feel happy in the moment, the things that will make my life better are probably not the things I would indulge in today, whether it's I eat a giant chocolate cake and sit on the couch and do nothing or,

[00:27:35] and I wouldn't push myself to do the hard thing. So if we look at well-being, it's like a lot of our long-term goals, whether we work out or we eat healthier or we push ourselves to challenges that we may not rise to the occasion to meet, but we learn from them anyway. And so I think well-being is all about our life satisfaction and our ability to live according to our values so that hopefully when we're 90 years old and look back over our lives, we can think, you know, I made the best of the time that I had here.

[00:28:05] So how much of that is just like thinking of ourselves as just this like bag of chemicals that we're trying to program? Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol, whatever else there is. For instance, finding new challenges that increases dopamine. Accomplishing those challenges that increases serotonin. Failing at these challenges that increases cortisol. Being close to someone that increases oxytocin. How much is it like, how much can I just think of it in terms of that? And I'm just, oh, I need more dopamine this morning so I'm going to like

[00:28:35] make a list of things to do. Oh, I'm going to need more serotonin when I sleep so I'm going to hug my partner and make a list of things I've accomplished today and that I'm grateful for and so on. You know, I think there's a lot to be said for that. Like TJ Power and the dose effect, his book about doing just that and figuring out which chemicals at which intensity that you need in those moments. But like on a deeper level, I feel like still our lives,

[00:29:04] like what's the purpose of all of that, right? And I don't think that we need to suddenly say, oh, I have my life's purpose all figured out. But hopefully your life has a little bit of meaning or you feel like you matter or you feel like there's a reason why you're doing the things that you do other than just wasting time trying to feel as best as possible until you die. In terms of like purpose, again, a lot of people are looking for their life's purpose. They don't want to just kind of go to work, do the same thing day after day. Maybe they're unhappy with what they do.

[00:29:34] Maybe they don't see themselves as the hero of their own story. And I feel like you've accomplished this very well in your life. And it was through hardship. Like you mentioned earlier, your husband had passed away. If people don't know your story, your mom had also passed away when you were around the same age. And this put you through a hard time. And then you wrote the article that became the huge book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, became a whole franchise.

[00:30:03] Like you sort of found your purpose very early in your adult life. And now, and the Mental Strength Playbook, this seems like the culmination of all your work. Like, do you worry now? What's next? I do kind of have that worry because I had that viral article that led to the book. I didn't mean to write a book. I never imagined I'd become an author. So then I think, well, how long can this play out? I thought I was just going to write one book. And I was like, well, I'm a therapist and I wrote a book.

[00:30:33] That's great. And it didn't sell that well when it first came out. It took a year and a half before it started hitting bestseller lists. You know, I want to ask about that. I often hear that. Like, usually publishers give up on a book if it doesn't sell in the first week. So how did your book get legs? Honestly, it was from Rush Limbaugh. And he mentioned my book on like a Monday where he said, today we're going to talk about the 13 things mentally strong people don't do. And he never got to it that day. And so Tuesday,

[00:31:03] he said, today is the day we're going to talk about the 13 things mentally strong people don't do. And he didn't get to it that day either. Well, by about Wednesday, it had literally sold out of every bookstore. He didn't get to it until Friday. So he plugged my book five days in a row and it sold out. I mean, because a year and a half in where it had only sold okay, most bookstores only had one copy. Even Amazon didn't have that many in stock. So it sold out everywhere by about Wednesday. And so that was the next week that I hit Wall Street Journal

[00:31:33] and USA Today bestseller list. And it seemed to be after that, I kind of hit that tipping point where enough people had the book that they would tell people about it and then it would sell copies on its own. I don't think I ever knew that story. That's amazing. Were you surprised like a year and a half later? Were you like, oh my gosh, I forgot about this book and now it's changed my life? Yeah, I was still working as a therapist. I had a nine to five job and I thought, you know, that's great. I got to write a book. And it was really after that that I started thinking, well, should I pitch a second book? Like,

[00:32:02] could I pitch a second book? Like, what would that look like if I did? And around the same time the book was coming out in paperback and Target had picked up the paperback book and I thought, well, let's do that. So that's when I pitched the parenting book to my publisher and things kind of changed.

[00:32:31] So you started this career as like multi-million books selling author. You wrote several books in the franchise. Did you stop being a therapist? Are you still a therapist? I still do it a little bit on the side, but obviously a lot fewer hours. And now that I'm able to do it online, I can do online therapy or coaching. And again, the mental strength playbook, I don't want to say it's like a summary of all those books because each of those books was very targeted audience and was very different. But now this is kind of a summary of all these 50 techniques

[00:32:59] for basically having a life filled with less anxiety, less stress, more efficiency, more productivity, more success, more happiness. How do you think about what's next? I don't know because I guess every book I've written, I've thought, well, this is probably my last book because as an accidental author, like how long can you carry this out? I didn't know anything about the publishing world or marketing a book or anything. So I've always just kind of played it by ear and I think the uncertainty has somewhat worked to my advantage.

[00:33:28] Like I've never gone into it thinking, and then I'll write four more books or then I'll have this strategy and this strategy. And everybody always says you have to have a plan but in my case, I found I didn't have a plan. In fact, if I had had a plan, I might have then thought if it doesn't go according to plan, then all hope is lost. But as I've just played it by ear, my readers have basically told me what they wanted next. If they said, well, how do we teach this to kids? I was all, well, then I'll write a parenting book. So I don't know. I guess we'll see if readers have a lot

[00:33:58] of questions about this book. They'll probably give me the idea for my next book. And if not, if there weren't another book in my future, I guess I'd have to figure something else out with what I'm going to do. And you don't really have a big social media presence either. It's not like you kind of cultivate your fans on social media. It's basically just through the books. Yeah, that's the thing. People will be like, 25 million people saw your TED Talk and you have sold a lot of books. How come you don't have a huge social media following? And I think as a therapist, I mean,

[00:34:28] it was like ingrained in me like you don't share your personal life out there. And it's been years and years that I've been in the public eye, but I think there's still a big piece of that that as a therapist, like you don't want people to know about what your house looks like or what you're doing in your spare time. So I think that's been a piece of it. And again, I'm not a marketing guru. I don't have a team of people. I don't have a social media expert. It's just me doing it. So, and I'm okay with that. But over writing these books though too,

[00:34:57] you've probably had to research so many different areas, so many aspects of psychology and kind of the science of happiness. Just the process of writing these books has probably made you a better therapist, just like being a good therapist and going through your life experience has made you a good author of these sorts of books. I hope so. I mean, I think back now and I think, gosh, I was 21 when I became a therapist. Like, I probably owe some people, a lot of people, an apology for the things that I thought I knew coming out of school based on my textbooks compared to where I've been now.

[00:35:27] I was probably as a new therapist. But again, I think most new therapists feel that way. You learn a lot just by doing rather than reading a book. So, on the mental strength stuff, let's say your anxiety is like through the roof and this has often happened to me where I really can't think that, oh, I need to stop thinking about this because the problem seems so overwhelming and enormous, I have to keep thinking about it. Even though, logically, I know that doesn't

[00:35:56] really accomplish anything. If someone really has an anxiety problem, like, what is the solution? So, anxiety is one of the most treatable but undertreated conditions and we know the average person waits like 10 years to get help for anxiety, which makes sense because if you're anxious then you're going to be anxious about going to a therapy appointment probably as well. But, sort of depending on the type of anxiety, there's generalized anxiety versus panic disorder versus somebody who has social anxiety and exposure therapy is one of the best things

[00:36:26] is to say you can face a lot of the anxiety. Sometimes people need a low dose of a medication to take the edge off so that they feel like they can function better. Sometimes people just need skills to practice. Somebody with social anxiety is going to do well if they feel like they have some confidence in their social skills. Somebody with panic disorder, if they have full-blown panic attacks, may need to know that they have a plan in place so that if they start to have a panic attack in the middle of the grocery store they don't have to run away instead what are you going to do to calm yourself right in the moment.

[00:36:56] So it depends but it's very treatable and unfortunately so many people don't get help for it. But I also think on the flip side, anxiety is something we're supposed to have and everybody has anxiety sometimes. But we talk about it so much that it kind of dismisses people that have credible anxiety disorders because they're like well everybody has anxiety don't worry about it. And for some people it really interferes with their daily functioning. Yeah, I've definitely had an issue where it's interfered with my daily functioning

[00:37:26] and I had to get medicated for it. It was very brutal. Like you wake up in the middle of the night and there's like nothing you could do. You're just like in the middle of a hurricane in your brain and it can't stop. And that's one of those things and then when people are like well make sure you're sleeping well and make sure you're eating a good diet and people will be like my anxiety is so high I can't sleep and I haven't eaten in three days because I can't function and that's the kind of advice I think a lot of people feel like they're getting when they first approach a doctor or when they

[00:37:55] read a self-help book that just says make sure you're doing some self-care. Yeah, I ended up taking medication for it which did help but then the medication is very addictive so you got to be careful about that. So then what helped you overall in addition to medication? What was some of the things that helped you? I think two things. One is writing helped me because it was like taking action that gave me this enormous dopamine like people would say oh this is good writing and you'd get these

[00:38:25] dopamine boosts like I would get likes and shares and stuff like that and that's really how I evolved as a writer because I was getting so much encouragement and it was saving me from this anxiety and the other thing is really medication helped me although maybe addictive medications like people don't realize they're more addictive than heroin or cocaine and the withdrawal effects you cannot get off the medication once you're on it it's very extremely

[00:38:54] people go to rehab for it which is almost like a joke but it's very difficult. Yeah and I think a lot of people don't know that doctors will prescribe it sometimes in medium to high doses and if you get hooked on something it can be life-threatening if you suddenly quit and yet we're in this weird phase of the life right now where sometimes pharmacists won't prescribe it or people will say I was on vacation for the week and I couldn't get a refill this is like life or death situations for people

[00:39:23] and not to scare anyone but certainly benzodiazepines aren't the only medication that we have for anxiety these days and depending on what state you live in sometimes they're more commonly prescribed than others but I'm curious about writing too had you not written for the internet had you written say just something for yourself would writing itself have helped you or was it more of the feedback you were getting from writing it's a combination because just the feedback alone didn't help if I personally felt the writing was no good

[00:39:50] and if the writing was good I found myself not caring about how many likes like I would say oh this is good I would sense it that this was good writing and that's after like reading thousands of books and spending a lot of time developing the skill I would sense if something was a good piece of writing and then I wouldn't care about the likes and shares and all that stuff but if I didn't share it I wouldn't get the benefits of the anti-anxiety that resulted I still needed to share it

[00:40:20] and did it have to be like it had to be good writing if you had just written down like in a journal your thoughts and it was messy that wouldn't have worked for you zero interesting but related to that though one thing that did help was this practice I have of writing down 10 ideas a day because then you kind of make your brain it's again this neuroplasticity thing if you push your brain to always be thinking of creative ideas if you exercise that muscle it like expands your brain it fires neurons in the brain that haven't been

[00:40:50] fired and somehow or other that whatever the biology behind that is that makes life a little easier to deal with like that's your serious depression and anxiety for me that practice I love that because so often I mean in the book I talk about brainstorming the bad ideas first but we're so afraid sometimes that we can't come up with a solution or we think that I don't want it to be a bad idea and even in our own heads when we are stuck with a problem we think well you know nothing's going to work and it's so easy

[00:41:20] to get stuck in that and there's research that will show problem solving skills are a wonderful solution to depression so for a lot of kids especially teenagers who lack problem solving skills they're much more likely to struggle with depression but when you teach people problem solving skills which is a skill we can all get better at their mental health improves obviously you stumbled across this on your own and it's something that you've used for years and thankfully have taught so many other people I always think about the 10 ideas whenever I'm feeling stuck with something too yeah

[00:41:49] and people need to know that it's important to make it to 10 ideas like it's bad ideas like you were saying the brainstorming the bad ideas that's a perfectly valid part of this process like it's great to have tons of bad ideas because that's only how you're going to find some of the good ideas exactly and I know it works for you every time I talk to you I usually walk away with a million more ideas of things that something I'm struggling with or with my books over the years and you've been like you know what Amy you should do this and this and they're brilliant ideas and I think oh yeah I didn't come up

[00:42:19] with that and here I am this is my full-time job but I know it works for you that you come up with incredible ideas because you've been practicing this it always works except you know every now and then I think when when you slip on these practices you know things start to slip like I always every now and then I get too busy and fall off the wagon in terms of practicing these things and then inevitably the anxiety will start again so it really does like help me to not fall off the wagon and you know that's why things like the mental strength playbook are so important

[00:42:49] because having this repertoire of techniques you know oh I'm in this situation I'm about to give a talk I'm anxious or I'm in this situation I'm about to talk to someone I don't like and I'm afraid that they're gonna you know put me down or whatever or I'm in this situation I'm losing money or I'm in this situation maybe this relationship is over you know all these things is different it's like being dealt a different hand of cards and for each hand of cards you have to play it a little differently and that's what I like about this mental strength playbook

[00:43:17] is like how do you deal with each hand of cards you're dealt or perhaps every game of chess that you play where you have to have a different move right and a different strategy and to know that you can't always predict what's gonna happen it's easy to say oh that'll go well but you don't know what life's gonna throw you like I suppose you don't know what your opponent's gonna do when you play chess yeah and funny you bring it up because now I'm gonna bring it up you were gracious enough to come on a call with me and my chess coach at the time Avatek Gregorian

[00:43:47] a great chess player great human being and we couldn't figure out despite all my lessons why I was not winning more like I probably was knowing more about chess but I was not winning more and since then I know even more and I'm winning even less and so I've stopped you know sometimes I get upset about it but I've stopped overly worrying about it but like is it just age like what is happening to me do you feel like

[00:44:16] it's more than a slump and the reason I say this is like in baseball we know that every batter is gonna go through a slump the ones who just accept this is a slump get out of it and the ones who say like oh my gosh I'm gonna lose my career this is horrible I'm getting worse they tend to continue to decline but you tell me does it feel like it could possibly be a slump or are we talking about something else I don't know I don't know what it is I just at this point I just have no I guess even then I didn't know why I was not

[00:44:46] every other time like when I was younger every other time I focused on improving I improved but now I'm focusing on improving in this one domain that I used to be good at and still good at but you know not the same way this is the one time I've really focused on something for years now didn't think it would take this long and I'm just not getting better even though my knowledge is greater I have like an encyclopedic knowledge that I never had before I know so many more things about the game of chess

[00:45:15] this sport slash game that 600 million people around the world play I know more than I've ever known before and yet I win less I don't play chess and I don't know enough about it to ask this question in a way that probably sounds intelligent but do you know like what is it that you're doing wrong is it like one move that you do wrong is it that you forget something in the moment can you pinpoint like where things go downhill yeah I think I don't quite remember things maybe I don't I sort of maybe get a little careless

[00:45:45] I might play a good game for like 40 moves and then I'm careless but my opponent is not careless and then boom strikes so I might be winning the whole time and he's just like waiting for me to make a mistake and then I make a mistake so I don't I don't seem to have the correct stamina okay so like is it an attention span thing is it your focus gets lost after some yeah maybe my focus gets lost after I'm starting to realize that this could be it that my focus gets lost after a certain amount of time like if I'm sitting at the board for an hour

[00:46:13] my focus might get lost or if I think if I if somehow or other I'm just not as focused every single move and my opponent might be more focused every single move because my lessons actually work like if you test me on my lessons I know the answers but then if I'm in a game boom I might forget something or I'll miss something or I'm just I'm not like a killer I'm not like ready to kill and do you notice okay so then when you make a mistake do you notice right away

[00:46:42] or is it not until your opponent does something that you're then like oh how did I miss that yeah exactly that is that okay okay yeah so I wonder and I've tried medication I've tried Adderall yeah okay I've tried all this stuff but nothing there's no way I can and and my results are crazy because sometimes I'll beat like world famous players and then other days I'll meet to just like you know the kid that lives around the corner so it's like it's very erratic my results but I know also

[00:47:12] you set the bar really really high for yourself right so even when you say you're struggling like I mean we're still doing better than most people right yes but I'm not doing better than I used to be I'm not even doing better than I used to be four years ago okay all right interesting so then I wonder like yeah is it a lack of focus and attention and if it is could we argue that that that's age related or might it be the

[00:47:43] consequences of today's world that we're distracted and that you well I just read this paper I'm curious what you think I just read this paper called the myth of cognitive decline and it argues that older people don't really have cognitive decline it's just that there's more things in our brain so we there's only so much that can fit in the brain I guess is the metaphor and so things drop off so if I'm like you know at any given point like I'm responsible for a podcast I'm writing articles I'm responsible for a bunch of different businesses

[00:48:13] maybe then I've got to drop some stuff off sometimes yeah and I would argue that that's true too and the more stuff I'm reading because I'm also fascinated by this idea of like decline as we get older the more that I read on it the more it seems to be like our belief in that as well that if you believe at 60 people get forgetful then you get forgetful at 60 versus people who say you know I hang out with people who are vibrant and have great memories so that's not something that's going to happen to me much less likely to have it happen so I do think a lot of it

[00:48:42] has to do with our beliefs but I also think that there's a lot of truth to that in terms of our cognitive load if we are dealing with 8 million things during the day then yeah it would make sense that something drops off so this is why I'm attracted to your lifestyle which is okay the sailboat write books you know you lead a very healthy life in terms of exercise and diet and so on and there's a certain simplicity to that that I think is very beneficial yeah I guess I don't run multiple businesses and I don't spend

[00:49:12] a lot of time playing chess but yeah I do think that having a simple life lets me know what is it I want to focus on and where do I want to put my attention and my mental bandwidth because for me just juggling life as an author and a speaker and podcast and all of that is plenty and what I know you've written 13 things mentally strong couples don't do what's the secret of having like a good long term relationship it's really about

[00:49:42] renewing your commitment every day I think and knowing that you can still be grateful for being in the relationship and not taking your partner for granted and because when we start to just assume that then we take our commitment less seriously and like one of my favorite studies it'll show that people who are in really serious committed relationships when they're really committed to their partner they're less likely to put themselves in situations where they might be tempted by somebody else and so like in research about cheating we know that if somebody's really committed they're not going to

[00:50:12] surround themselves with single attractive people all the time instead they would be more likely to turn that down because it's about their commitment and not necessarily about their their willpower or how attractive their partner is it's more about the decisions that you make every single day I think that's really important that's sort of like you're the average of the five people you spend your time with so if you're around your partner and other committed couples or people in committed relationships that's the behavior you're going to emulate even if you don't have any willpower exactly you kind of remove the equation

[00:50:42] of whether or not you have willpower if all your friends are going through a divorce and they're making the lifestyle of being single sound like it's incredibly attractive then we know that you're actually more likely to get divorced too because you think oh maybe it is fun to be single and to be out meeting new people and being around people who are in committed relationships has the opposite effect so but what does it mean to renew your commitment every day like obviously you don't say your vows to each other every day like what actually do you do I think it's just that reminder to yourself of like I choose this person

[00:51:11] and that what does that look like to be in a committed relationship well it's doing the things you don't want to do sometimes saying I'll go to this event with you or I'll do the dishes even though I don't feel like it because that's part of being a good committed partner and just reminding ourselves of that that like what does my commitment to this person mean and how does that play out in the little choices that I make every single day yeah that's that's interesting and or or the other question is should people be in like one relationship for 70 years you know now we're we're

[00:51:41] we're living to 100 years old or more how does the nature of relationships change with you know if you live another 80 years of life well it's a good question right because a lot of us are not the same person at 50 than we were at say 20 so you think well then how could you possibly still be with the same person if your life has changed your personality different facets of it have come out and you enjoy different hobbies but I guess that's where the commitment piece comes in and just deciding if you're going to commit to somebody what does that look like how do you

[00:52:11] grow together how do you make sure that their rough edges are something that you can tolerate and knowing that you two are not perfect so I do think there's a lot to be said for for long-term commitment and but I don't think it's always the fairy tale that we hear from people about being madly in love my grandparents were married at 14 and 15 and they both lived to be in their mid-90s and the day that like my grandfather had to go to a nursing home because he had Alzheimer's my grandmother

[00:52:40] didn't hug him goodbye she just said oh like see ya from the other room knowing that she was probably never going to see him again and she didn't so I don't think that that's like the end-all be-all goal to be married for 75 years to somebody that you don't really like that much I can't even imagine why anybody would do it other than for say financial reasons or convenience which I think was their situation but on the other hand I do think if you work on staying committed to somebody that you can have love

[00:53:10] even after 70 years together yeah that's interesting we can all hope right so again like what what now like now that you've done the mental strength playbook what's what do you think is what are you exploring next or maybe you haven't thought about it because everything's just happening now yeah exactly so you know how it is after the book comes out you get to market the book and speak about the book a lot so I guess that's the next thing on the agenda seeing how this plays out in terms of people wanting to adopt the mental strength playbook and I'll

[00:53:40] listen to my audience to see if they still have burning questions about what I can write next I like this idea of committing to the long game and you say focus on your values not your current frustrations so let's say again your current frustration is your job or money or your relationship how does focusing on your values help you deal with your current frustrations so let's say I'm sitting down with my husband Steve and we're having a discussion and I'm annoyed because maybe he wants to do something with money that I don't want to do well if I'm going to commit to

[00:54:10] the long game it's about reminding myself that I want to be a committed partner a collaborative person a good teammate to him so I can handle the frustration better and I gave this example I was in corporate America for a little while and whenever we traveled we had to submit receipts and my editor didn't like the fact that I had said submitting receipts for the travel took longer than the travel itself because he thought I was just exaggerating I wasn't literally submitting receipts took hours and hours and hours the flight

[00:54:40] didn't take nearly as long as it took to submit the receipts I thought it was ridiculous I'm like that too right I mean it was insane the amount of stuff I had to do and apps to sign in and things to print out and to justify every expense for like everything I ate while I was on a trip made zero sense to me and I was like you're gonna like waste the company's money for me to take basically a whole day to submit receipts for a trip for a two hour meeting I had to fly into and so I didn't want to do it but it was one of those like if this is what they

[00:55:10] want me to do I want to be a collaborative team player I guess I'll overlook the frustration and the ridiculousness of the red tape and try to be a team player because my ultimate my first response was to send the email that said I'm not doing this and in fact I was like I'll just pay for the flight myself it's not a big deal but it made me realize all right if you want to be the team player you don't want to be the grumpy person who isn't on board just go ahead and do it overlook it the frustration in the moment and commit to the long game yeah no I like that it might not solve again

[00:55:39] like oh if you're constantly worried about money but maybe it would maybe maybe if you're constantly worried about money and you kind of look at the worst case scenario and say okay I'm fine with that as long as I can live a life that I'm you know has integrity and whatever I can survive and move on right I mean I think if we looked at say when people are constantly watching the market even though maybe it's a retirement fund well the long game is all might have to wait another 20 years so if it goes up a little today goes down a little tomorrow

[00:56:09] don't panic and I think for a lot of financial investments that can be the case but sometimes it's about saying I'm going to do this thing that's uncomfortable right now and maybe it is moving money around today knowing that you have to tolerate the uncertainty but the long game is hopefully it will pay off if you stick to it yeah well Amy I'm always such a fan of all your books and all of our conversations and also the friendship we've developed over the past 10 years like there's very few of my podcast guests I kind of

[00:56:39] reach out and talk to outside of the podcast you're one of the few and you're always a welcome guest back on here and the mental strength playbook when's it actually out April 28th April 28th and again I'm so excited to get the I haven't gotten the hardcover version yet I've just gotten the PDF version of it which is excellent but I always like putting your books up on the shelf and just like you have the books behind you there do you have the book in front of you the mental strength playbook do you have the hardcover playbook I do okay

[00:57:11] oh great well good luck with it and thanks once again for coming on the podcast always a pleasure to talk to you James thank you so much thank you thousands of free movies and TV shows we're coming at you with everything we got this is the mindset

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