[00:01] Katie: Welcome to The Focus B show where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.

[00:32] Katie: Welcome to a brand new episode of The Focus B show. I am very excited to be here today with Mark Metri. Mark is a LinkedIn influencer with over 100,000 followers. He has been featured in Forbes and TEDx and is a mental health enthusiast and advocate. He has spoken at Fortune 500 companies and continues to promote his message on mental health and well being. Welcome, Mark. Welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to have you here today, Katie.

[01:10] Mark: It's so great to see you grow over the years and I appreciate the invite on your show. I'm excited.

[01:15] Katie: Thank you so much. I'd like to begin with your journey. You have been through such an incredible transformation and it's so inspiring for so many people. Could you tell us a bit and could you share? Where did it all begin?

[01:29] Mark: Yeah, what an interesting question. So for me, the best way that I have figured out a way to introduce this is today. I'm in a spot in my life where I get to share my story, what I've learned on podcasts, on stages, on my own podcast, and my writing, my books, my newsletter, different companies that hire me to give workshops. And I do that literally every single day. And it's funny because I spent almost every single day of my life, maybe about like five or six years ago, wanting to do the opposite. I spent every single day of my life just I don't have a story, I don't want to talk to people, I'm nobody. I'm just going to try to exist and just try to escape and try to exist as small as possible. And it's just funny to sort of see how things have come around. And for me, I don't have some crazy story. I don't have anything that's super drastic. And I think that's why a lot of people have resonated with my know. For know, I ended up growing up on the east coast of America after having my parents who immigrated from Egypt, and I remember just having a very simple childhood. And really for know, I had stuff that I think a lot of people face, whether it was encountering bullying, encountering abuse, encountering things like racial profiling, having different physical health issues, mental health issues. Even though at the time, when I was a kid, I had no idea what mental health was. I had no idea what anxiety was. And so for me, I've just lived my life almost kind of like hidden and suppressed and invisible. And ever since I was about 18 years old, which was 2015, I really had this crazy rock bottom experience in my life where my entire life I had struggled with social anxiety. But when I was 18, that's where I really started to struggle with things like depression, for the first time in my life, not just social anxiety, but really social isolation. I ended up becoming obese. I gained a lot of weight. I had issues with substance abuse. And eventually I reached a moment in my life where I just didn't know what to do. And I was actually suicidal. And the best way I could describe it is it felt like my brain broke. And I just sort of saw the world as this black and white, very scary place. And ever since that, I've just been in this consistent path that started off slow to me, just like, hey, what can I do today to improve my life? What can I do today to rewire my mind? What can I do to change my brain? And it's funny, right, because I know a lot of your audience is business owners. And I remember even before I experienced this rock bottom, I was actually pretty financially successful. I was always launching things online. I was always running different online businesses. On paper, I was pretty successful. I had a decent amount of followers or whatever money and businesses that I love doing things that I actually enjoy doing. But yet, all of a sudden, I found myself depressed and socially isolating and suicidal. And so when that happened to me, it was just like, oh my God. When that happened, it just sort of stopped everything in my life. And it made me be like, this has to be my primary focus. And I remember after then for that year, I just sort of focused on me, just focused on what I could do. And then eventually, that's what started my journey. And eventually I ended up launching different kinds of businesses. I ended up launching my podcast. I ended up kind of shifting my content from talking about business marketing to more what I personally think is the most important thing, which is like mental health, how does someone live inside of themselves? And so, yeah, I do a lot of different things, but that's really I'm not sure if that's good enough or if you want to ask any other questions, but that's my story.

[06:00] Katie: Yes, it's wonderful to hear because you've really transformed and you've really changed. And it's also interesting to hear that you already had, like you said, the financial success, the followers, but that really wasn't actually fulfilling you. I'm curious as to what happened. How did you flip that switch? How did you end up going from that depressed state and you said obese and suicidal to really focusing on your mental health, putting in self improvement practices? What happened? How did you flip that switch?

[06:31] Mark: Yeah, it's a long story, but what I'll say is, I remember for me, one of the ways that I was suicidal was I was living in a pretty nice area at the time, but the neighboring city, let's just say, was not that great. It had a lot of violence, gang violence. And what I started doing was every night because I couldn't go to sleep at night, I would just go for these walks at 02:00 a.m. In the ghetto and just hope that someone would kill me and murder me. And I remember on one of those walks, I'm not really sure what happened, to be honest with you, just the quiet, the stillness of nobody being around at 02:00 a.m.. But I remember walking and not necessarily hearing my own thoughts. It's not like I was hearing voices in my head. But essentially I began to understand on these walks is that we have voices in our head. And I don't mean voices in schizophrenia or something like that, but I mean that to say the average person has 65,000 thoughts a day. The average person. And I don't know about you, but that to me seems like absolutely crazy because we're probably not even aware of, like maybe 10% of those. Maybe 10% of those were aware. And so when I realized that kind of in real time, I slowly started to realize that I wasn't the problem. And what I mean by that was throughout my entire life, I had just thought, like, wow, I'm a piece of ****. I'm never going to accomplish anything. I'm a loser. I have no friends. People don't want to talk to me. And when I started going on those walks and I could almost get into an area of stillness where I could hear my brain think, I started to realize that those thoughts are actually not mine because I don't actually believe in those things. And I slowly started to uncover that a lot of my internal programming for how I think, for how I feel, was actually based on a time in my adolescence where I faced a lot of bullying, I faced a lot of racism, different forms of abuse. And I realized and then I started to understand a little bit of basic neuroscience. I started to do research, and I started to understand that based on how the first part of your life goes, your brain will basically pick up information that it thinks is very important for your survival, and then it'll store it in your own voice, even if that's not necessarily true or if that's not helpful for you. And so for me, at that time, my brain was like, hey, Mark, be shy. Don't talk to people. Because there were different experiences that I had faced as a kid of being discriminated because of how I looked, being kicked out of different communities and social circles, where for me, my brain was like, okay, we're going to stop talking to people. We're not going to talk to anyone, and we're just going to try to hide. And so once I started to understand a little bit about that basic biology and neurobiology, it started to teach me that I'm not actually the problem like Mark metri and how I view like I'm just sort of like this raw vessel for change and for potential and for creation. And so once I started to realize that and the problem wasn't me, the problem was actually my brain and my cells and my mind that had been programmed. And then I started to shift my attention towards that and then it was just day in and day out. And I'll tell you, one of the first few things that I had discovered was and again, when this was happening, I still didn't really have any idea, like, what was happening in the moment. There's that quote that says, you can't see the picture when you're the one in the frame. For me, what I realized was I was only aware of sort of like physical reality, so to speak. And so I was only aware of at that time that my problem was that I was overweight, I was a bit obese. And so for me, I was just like, how can I lose weight? And when I started to research and go down that rabbit hole, I started to come across different people, different authors, and I started to understand that food and nutrition, it does have to do. But it doesn't actually have to do that much with what I would say, how most of us have been conditioned to think about it, which is like, oh, it's about your weight. It's about if you're fat, if you're too skinny, or if you're eating too much, or if you're not eating too much, or it's about your calories and all that stuff, which is fine. But once I started to understand that the food that you eat actually programs all of your cells, the food that you eat, actually a large portion of it, goes directly to your brain because your brain needs that fuel different nutrients and different foods that you eat can influence your hormones, it can influence your energy levels. And so I had never known that my entire life. And so that was sort of like the first thing that I started to physically take action on. And as that started to happen, all of a sudden I said I was overweight at the time. All of a sudden I noticed that I not only lost weight, but more importantly, it kind of felt like my brain had just turned on. It felt like all of a sudden I could focus on something, whereas before, no matter what it was, I could just never sit down and focus. And I had always thought, oh, Mark, you're so stupid. There's something wrong with you. You're not that smart. You get bad grades. But then it's like, oh, wait, no. My brain just wasn't working properly. And so all of a sudden, I started to understand these things and I started to understand what mental health really was and what anxiety was. And a lot of things started to click. And once I could find some of those things. Then I started to research and look at the science of what are either people out there doing who have this same problem as me and what results are they getting? And then also, what's the science, what's the data saying that's credible, that we can use to prove certain things in terms of habits and behaviors that work, that can help people through anxiety. And so that was really the path for me. And it's very long and it's very complicated, but basically speaking, that was like the first sort of thing that was like a big AHA to me that really, I think, ended up changing my life. And I'm glad it happened.

[13:16] Katie: That's so wonderful. I particularly love the part where you're explaining that when you were walking and you had the thoughts, you were able to detach from them. And I think this is so incredibly powerful because so many people think they are their thoughts and they are their emotions. And as soon as you're able to detach from them and see them, like you said, you could almost see your brain think then that's when you can have the power to change them. And then I loved what you said about nutrition because that's totally underestimated. It's one of the things like you explained, people just think it impacts their weight, but they don't realize it impacts their sleep. Eating sugar creates cortisol or eating nuts gives you that, like, dopamine and makes you feel happy serotonin eating the nuts. And once you realize that it impacts your whole brain and your energy, that's extremely powerful. I'm wondering what other tips or tools or techniques or habits do you have that you have since then implemented to help you be in peak state, to help your brain function effectively? What other things on top of nutrition have you started to put in place?

[14:24] Mark: Yeah, definitely. So there's so much that I could talk about. And I personally believe that the foundation, the basic 1234, is like, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and then having some sort of a practice, like meditation or something that can help you calm your mind and get centered. But I'm always practicing. I'm always experimenting. One habit that I kind of have been experimenting around, I've done it in person sessions, but not really in my own personal daily life is like breathing exercises. I don't know if you do these, I'm sure you have or you've heard of them, but I discovered this app. It's called breath work. And breath work without the o. And it's just like on my phone. And it just very intuitively, very simply and visually just walks you through all these different sorts of breathing exercises. And there's like four main categories for breathing, which is at least in this app. And it's like breathing techniques that help you calm down and help your anxiety. Breathing techniques that actually give you energy and help you increase your state of mind and your blood flow then there's breaths to help center you, balance you out, help you perform better, which I would do maybe like before a speaking engagement. And there's breaths for sleep. And so these are all very simple. Some of them take like 1 minute, two minute, three minutes. But I think a lot of the things that I talk about and a lot of people talk about when it comes to anxiety and mental health, a lot of them, they're more long term, right? So if you eat a salad or if you eat some nuts, all of a sudden you're not going to cure your depression by tomorrow or today. That's not how it works. However, maybe after like a month, three months, six months, a year of consistent behavior, then yeah, maybe you will feel significantly better. But a lot of these things, they're long term. It's not like you do them and then you're like, wow, oh my God, my life has changed. But I think when it comes to breathing, it's one of the few exercises that actually is more or less instant where if you do it, you will immediately be in a different state of mind than how you started. And maybe if you're just starting it, maybe it'll take a little bit for your brain to sort of get used to it. But I know for me, and I talk about this with social anxiety, one of the biggest things with social anxiety is your brain. Similar to what you just said of you have all these thoughts and then you sort of think you are these thoughts, right, and you don't detach them, right? And what I've noticed is people with social anxiety, when you're in a social situation, or even before or after, if you're thinking about a social situation, your brain shifts into hyperdrive and it attaches into all those thoughts and it really goes in there. And if you're at an event or if you're doing anything physically, and even if you're not doing some crazy breathing exercise, but simply just like breathing, focusing on breathing the entire time and then paying attention to your breath and how it moves in and out of your body. Yeah, maybe that's not going to be a magic pill. But if you can do that, you'll have a lot less social anxiety, anxiety in general, because you're just present with what is. And I think one of the biggest things that I've learned that is almost kind of like counterintuitive is like before, I used to think that, oh, the key to dealing with anxiety or the key to dealing with an overactive mind or with mental health or with things regarding with your brain and your mind it's all about doing more. You have to do more, you have to do more. And yeah, definitely there are times where you may have to pick up new habits and do more things. But the reality is it's actually about learning how to use your brain less. It's actually about how do I use my mind less so that I can actually step into a situation and just be in the present moment and not tune into this super hypercritical voice that wants to take every second of our lives and force it to be in this particular way. And that's really what anxiety is. I made this post on my LinkedIn last week and I said that what it's really like is anxiety. It's like a radio channel. And again, it may not apply to everybody, but for people who have long term anxiety, it's like a radio channel where you can switch the channel to Am and FM. But Am, let's say if that represents anxiety and then FM, if that represents your higher self, you being calm, whatever, both of those channels are always going to exist. But what your goal is, is to learn how to control your attention, to shift the knob, to shift the channel. I think a lot of times people with anxiety, they are very strong, logical and analytical overthinkers. And I think a lot of the times that can be mistakenly viewed as intelligence, which I don't really think it is in terms of, if anything, I've seen people who are more intelligent have more anxiety, and it's because your brain is so analytical. You have so many thoughts, but it's actually learning about how to enter into habits and practices that help you step away from that and shift off. I have different clients of mine that tell me for example and I used to have this problem too of like I wish I could just shut my brain off. No matter what it is I'm doing, whether I'm at work or whether I'm just like hanging out with my family, my brain is never off. And that's a problem that I think is massive. And it's like if you take those people and you put them on vacation, like you take into some resort, their brain is still going to be on unless they learn how to shut it off. And so I think all these practices to some degree are teaching you how to put your brain in the best position so then you can actually use your mind less, shut part of your mind off so that you can actually be more of yourself. And what I'll notice is the more and more that I've been able to embody this process, the more and more where example I will either show up to a social event or I'll show up to a meeting or I'll show up to an event where I'm speaking or I'll show up to a gathering with different friends or, like, a networking party or show up like an interview like this where that part of my brain that's just always thinking, trying to be anxious. It's just shut off. And it's not always like that for sure I wish, but it's more and more and more like that. And when you enter in there, you just don't think about these things. You just don't worry about it. And I know it seems kind of like I don't know what the word is. I know it seems maybe overly simple, but the more and more you learn how to use your brain like a tool, like a radio, the more you learn how to shift the channel, even if anxiety is still present, you can still switch it. And again, I've been on my journey for five, six years. I'm obsessed with this stuff. I do this stuff every single day. And so everyone is in a completely different area in their journey. But I definitely recommend those things like food and sleep and exercise and meditation and breathing exercises, because all those things, they help teach you how to use your mind less, which actually helps you to be more of who you are in some kind of counterintuitive way, if that makes sense.

[22:29] Katie: I don't find it counterintuitive. I think it's bang on. And you mentioned the exact obviously same pillars. I generally like the anachronym nest, so nutrition, exercise, sleep and timeout. I created that. I don't know if other people also called it nest, but it's a nice image also with the nest. But I like your addition of breath work. I did that a bit with Wim HOF. I'm big on the whole cold showers and some of his breathing exercises. So I really like that too. And I loved your thing about switching channels. I saw that post both on LinkedIn and on Twitter, and it's so true. And both channels always coexist. More than two channels, no doubt 2 million channels. But we can choose which one to dial into. That's the reality. And this leads me to something that I think is fundamental and totally related to what you're saying, which is self acceptance. So in those moments when you manage to dial down the anxiety, when you put all these practices in place, there still might be a part that's not satisfied, like you said, the part that's maybe too controlling or lacks that flexibility. And maybe for people who are very high achievers, those tend to be the people I work with. They might have all these practices, they're ticking all the boxes, but the fulfillment isn't there because there's a part of force and lack of self acceptance. So I'm wondering, what sort of things have you started to put in place, maybe yourself or with your clients to help with this? Because without self acceptance, you can't ever be fully fulfilled.

[24:00] Mark: That's so important. And it's funny because I've had different moments of what you just said where I'm checking off all the things on the boxes, but then I'm like, wait, there's something that may be off here. And what I would say is this. I think one of the biggest things that has helped me is no doubt discovering this whole world of self improvement and self growth and mindset and all these different things. And when I was 18, I really needed that stuff and I still need it today. But I think for me, in terms of the mistakes that I made that may hint towards your question, is that I think that I became too obsessed with it. And I think what happens is when you become too obsessed with it. Which again, I'm glad because I feel like really, if I didn't become obsessed with this, especially for that first year, I don't think I would have made it like a consistent long term. But I think what happens is if you get too caught up in this world, then the entire goal of everything just becomes about self improvement, improving everything, trying to grow. And the reality is you need that. And I think for me personally, I needed to do that in order for me to just enjoy happiness, to be able to use my mind. But then, now, as I've been able to get there over the years, it's definitely been a practice of where I'm like, okay, there are these certain habits that I'm going to do because I like doing them for the sake of doing them, and I know they're healthy for me and they make me better. But then also if I don't do these things, it's not like there's something missing from me. And to go from this never ending, always grow, always improve, never stop, to actually learning that. I actually think now that the skill set that is required to be successful versus the skill set that is required to be happy and be fulfilled are actually two different, completely different skill sets. Maybe there's overlaps in them, but they're two different skill sets, right? And I remember at the end of 2019, I started to realize this because my sister gave birth to her daughter september of 2019. And so I became an uncle for the first time, right? And she's almost about to turn two now, which is crazy to think about. But when my niece was born, I feel like it really helped unlock a part of my heart of being an uncle that I didn't really know existed. But also what came with that was spending quality time in the present moment with her. And what I realized was that if I was trying to hustle and I had all these different things and then my sister would be like, hey, do you want to go on a walk with me and my niece? Right. Then I would go on the walk, but then I'd be like, wait, I have this meeting. I have to go back in 20 minutes. I would just realize my brain would just constantly be analyzing and trying to make everything so productive and trying to fit it in and be so perfect that I was just like, wait, I'm not even here. I'm not even in the present moment. While I'm walking with my niece or my sister or whoever. And so I think that's been the biggest thing of just trying to accept just where I am in the present moment and how I'm not like this broken person anymore and I can enjoy my life and then also sometimes deviate from the path and even not check things off the checklist and still feel like I'm good. But I think the biggest thing, too, is that I think this depends on the issue that we're talking about. But I think with some issues, what I've learned is that there's two halves of them. The first half is like, learning how to manage them in your life, but then the other part is about accepting them in your life, and you need both of those to actually move forward in your life, right? So personally, for me, I had to manage my social anxiety and my anxiety with all these different habits and things that we've been talking about because that didn't even let me be myself. And as I've done that, there's also a certain level of accepting it. For example, last week I was in Boston, which is where I live, and I was grabbing lunch with my girlfriend, and we're at some restaurant, and then the waiter is walking us to the table, and then we're walking, and then all of a sudden I hear Mark. And then some random dude is like, yo, Mark, what's up, bro? I follow you on LinkedIn. I love the content. And the guy was like, with his mom, too, and we just start having this conversation. And honestly, to be honest with you, I don't get that socially anxious anymore. I have different anxiety in different ways. But that was one of the first times in a long time where I was like I definitely felt shy for some reason, and it was kind of weird, and it kind of surprised me a little bit. But I had to have that level of self acceptance with myself of like, mark, you're already making a lot of progress. It's okay if 1% of the time or 5% of the time or 10% of the time you may act in this certain way. And obviously, as long as you don't hurt anybody or hurt yourself, you're fine. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge part of it. And then the last thing that I would say is that I read this somewhere. I don't know if I said this a long time ago, but I said something like, you can't work on yourself. You can't do self development if you don't love yourself, because why would you work on something that you don't love? And you can't love yourself if you can't forgive yourself? Because we're always going to mess up. We're always going to have problems. And if you can't forgive yourself, then you're never going to be able to overcome those temporary periods of i. Don't know darkness, so to speak. And then you can't forgive yourself unless you learn how to accept it. Unless you learn how to accept yourself. And so it's actually this whole chain reaction. And I've actually seen people in my life where they're doing self development, but not really, because they're not going on this chain reaction. And what's actually happening to them is they have this one definition of self improvement. Maybe it's like, oh, my definition of self improvement is to be the hardest working person at my company or at my job. But then they sort of don't look towards maybe these other aspects that may help them in a more holistic setting, or like accepting yourself forgiving yourself. That's for losers or that's for meditation or whatever, or that's for hippies. And so I think that's the biggest thing of like, I've seen so many people where they don't have this holistic understanding of if you truly want to be on the path of self growth, which I personally believe that life is all about two things. I think that life is about your own self growth, and then it's about how you can help the world and your community with your purpose and your family. And so that, to me, is like, the two things. But you can't do those without all those things that I just said. You can't work on yourself if you don't love yourself. You can't love yourself if you don't forgive yourself. You can't forgive yourself if you don't accept yourself. And so it's like all a chain reaction. And so I think if you can have both of those pieces to the pie, and maybe in some seasons, 1 may be better, 1 may be worse. I know definitely during quarantine there was a time where I was just like, what am I even doing? What's the point of this stuff? It's okay to enter in these different bubbles, like these different ruts and seasons. But I think the most important thing is that you understand that it's a season. And I think a big part of it, too, is having the humility to understand that you may not know enough. I know I'm talking so much, so feel free to interrupt me, but I put out this tweet the other day, and I said people who are less intelligent are more likely to change their minds. And that's because intelligence is basically like your brain trying to create these assumptions, and then you getting validation or seeing those assumptions being corrected by either you or by life or by other people. And when you're someone who isn't in that spot or you haven't had that pattern throughout your life of being a smart guy, you're much more likely to thinking that you're wrong. You're much more likely to realizing that you're not right. And so I think that can help a lot when it comes to the natural skepticism that I think it's important to have of yourself, which is not to be confused with lack of self doubt or lack of self belief, but to have the sense of, like, hey, what I'm thinking right now, what I'm doing right now, it actually could be wrong. And rather than me trying to prove myself that I'm right and just trying to wake up every day and just try to hit the same buttons and smash the same wall, let me actually try to pause and be like, hey, who can I learn from? How can I research, how can I expand? Because I know for me that's been one of the biggest things of like actually I think I'm definitely a smart guy, I think I'm definitely like a talented person, but I don't think I'm the most intelligent. And I think that's actually been a good thing because it's enabled me to be like, mark, what you could be thinking right now could be wrong. Step outside of yourself and try to learn. And then once you learn, then you're huh, then there's all these different theories and there's all these people who may be smarter than me doing all these different things. Let me try to borrow, let me try to experiment, let me try to learn. And then that's where I think really you get put on this constant but sustainable cycle of self growth where it doesn't kill you, it doesn't burn you out. But then you also feel fulfilled and you feel curious and you're learning and you're in the present moment, if that answers your question.

[34:50] Katie: Amazing. So many insights in what you just said and what you just put about keeping an open mind and always approaching things with a beginner's mind also comes back to what you were mentioning at the beginning in terms of being able to detach from your thoughts. So looking and thinking actually are these the best thoughts or emotions that serve me or can I actually learn something else out there that can impact me and help me grow further? So definitely extremely insightful. We're already reaching the end of the episode, which is absolutely incredible. It goes by so fast. One last question. What do you think is the number one myth on mental health and your point of view on that? What do you think is a really common myth out there that you want to go against?

[35:38] Mark: Yeah, so this is the biggest thing that I would say. Man, what a great question. So this is the biggest thing that I would say and I could be wrong. I genuinely believe that the reason why when I was younger, when I was a teenager, when I was in middle school, whatever. The reason why I never learned any of these things that I'm talking to you about today is because I think there's a lot of people who are either unaware or they are afraid to talk about it. And I mean by afraid, I mean they either are maybe shy, socially anxious, or just have been taught either by their family tradition, culture, religion, that they just shouldn't talk about these things, or by the other side of that, of people not wanting to share, are people who think they're not qualified enough. And I definitely think, listen, people shouldn't say anything they don't know enough about. But the reality is that I think the biggest myth in terms of mental health is the word itself, mental health. And the reason why is because a lot of times with certain people, in certain times, I'll talk about mental health and then someone will say, like, oh, are you a therapist? Are you a psychiatrist? Are you a doctor? I'm like, no, I'm not talking about giving people surgeries or prescribing medicaid. I don't know any this is none of my business. But really, I think that I don't know what the word is for it. Maybe the monopolization of that word to only be like, hey, mental health is about people who need to go to a clinical institution to be treated by psychiatrists. That's now what mental health is. Maybe it could be maybe that's like a mental illness. But I think the biggest thing is that we need to change the word mental health into something else that makes it more open, like mind health or mental wellness or brain health or something like that. Because the reality is that I think that's harming a lot of people because it is stopping a lot of information and awareness and knowledge from getting out there, from people that need it. Because the truth is that mental health is relevant for every single person. Like, if you have a brain, if you have a mind, you have mental health the same way that if you have a physical body and physical health exercise applies to you. The same with mental health. And so I think that we as I don't know, as a society or something, we need to figure out a way to have a word that can be used as a catch all, an umbrella, without also not saying like, oh, only certain people are allowed to talk about this, or only these people. I think those two are like the biggest things. Because again, when I was younger and I heard the words mental health, I only thought it was like, oh, you're crazy. Or like, oh, you're like some person who's sitting in a dark room for two years. You know what I mean? And so that's what needs to happen. We need to open this word and teach it to every single person the same exact way. I don't know what it's like where you live, but in America, in public schools, there's physical exercise, there's physical health classes. We need to do the same thing, but with mental health classes, with mental health exercises to start teaching this stuff. And so that's the biggest myth. If we can get through that, then I think everything else is going to be a lot easier.

[39:14] Katie: Amazing. I'm thinking maybe this is your next mission to coin a new term for mental health. Maybe that's your mission.

[39:21] Mark: Yeah, I got a lot of missions.

[39:25] Katie: Just add it to the bucket. Great. Well, thank you.

[39:29] Mark: I'll add it to the mission to do list.

[39:30] Katie: Yes, exactly. That'll be an opposition. But anyway, thank you so much, Mark, for being on the I've really, really enjoyed our conversation. Super interesting. Thank you for being here today, Katie.

[39:43] Mark: You're such an awesome person. Thank you for making my Monday. And yeah, the last thing that I'll say is that I really hope that people appreciate and support you on this podcast. And I know for me, as a like, one of the most helpful things is that when people go to Apple and they leave a rating or review, that helps the show. So people want to support you, and if you want to support me, they can just leave a review for your show because it helps you. So I would appreciate that.

[40:11] Katie: Thank you so much. Thank you.

[40:15] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzing.