Jon Gordon The Energy Bus: Transforming Mental Health Challenges into Strength

✅ Harnessing Gratitude and Belief: Transforming Mental Health Challenges into Strength

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Key Highlights: 📌
🔗 Gratitude Walks and Mental Well-Being:  gratitude walks, combating anxiety, and fostering a positive mindset.

🧠 The Science of Positivity: Learn about the impact of gratitude on the brain and body, leading to elevated moods and improved performance.

🌱 Cultivating Connection and Safety: Exploring the role of community, safety, and love in the workplace to lower anxiety and boost team performance.

🔎 The 5 D's of Mental Sabotage: A deep dive into the five Ds that fuel anxiety and practical strategies to counter them for personal and team growth.

In this episode of the Anxiety at Work podcast, we're thrilled to have Jon Gordon, best-selling author and acclaimed speaker, who shares his personal battles with anxiety and depression. Gordon illuminates how gratitude and belief in one's team can be powerful tools for mental health and organizational success. As we navigate his '5 D's' framework, Gordon offers actionable insights on building an empowering work culture that transcends anxiety and fosters a thriving team environment.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Anxiety at Work podcast. I'm Chester Elton and this is my dear friend and co-author, Adrian Gosselin. We've got a treat for you today and we hope that every time you join us, we're going to help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and your personal life. We invite experts from around the world of work and life to give us ideas and tools and tips to deal with anxiety in our world. You know and if you have that anxiety everybody needs a guide. That's why we love our sponsor Lifeguides. It's a peer-to-peer community that helps people navigate through their day-to-day stressors by providing a place of empathy, listening, wisdom, and support with a guide who's walked in your shoes, experiencing the same challenge of life as you have. Now, for our listeners, we've got a great offer for you. All you've got to do is go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 to the free text box, and you'll receive two months of free service. We love the life guides at Life Guides. Well, our guest today is our good friend John Gordon. John is the best-selling author of 23 books including the classic The Energy Bus as well as books such as The Power of Positive Leadership and The Garden. His consulting clients include the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dell, Southwest Airlines and West Point. He's a graduate of Cornell University and holds a master's in teaching from Emory University. Welcome to the show, John. We're happy to have you on our humble podcast. Chester, Adrian, great to be with you guys. Now, we're thrilled. You know, you've been very open about your experience with mental health challenges, John, and one of the things that you've said helped you overcome your anxiety was gratitude, which was near and dear to our hearts. So can you tell us a little bit about gratitude and your journey and how it helped you with your anxiety and depression? Definitely. Well, years ago, I was miserable, negative, anxious, unhappy. My wife had enough of my negativity. She said, I love you, but I'm not gonna spend my life with someone who makes me so miserable like you need to change. And I really did need to change. I didn't like who I had become. I was allowing the fear and the stress and the anxiety of losing my job during the dot-com crash, of the uncertainty, of just not knowing how I was gonna provide for my family. It was really wreaking havoc on me and bringing me down. And I made a decision right then and there. I wanted to stay married and I needed to change. And so I began this journey of working to become a more positive person. This is during the emerging field of positive psychology So I started to read research on Positive psychology and I found the research that said you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time And so I started taking these walks of gratitude each day. I would walk and I would practice gratitude and The more I did that the better I felt and when you're doing that the research shows you're flooding your brain and body with these positive emotions and endorphins that uplift you rather than the stress hormones that slowly drain you and over time actually slowly kill you. And so you're creating a fertile mind that is ready for great things to happen. I would come back from those walks and I would just feel a whole lot better. I would feel energized and I see the mind like a garden. Every day you have to weed the negative and feed the positive. You do it for a day, it doesn't do a whole lot, but if you weed and feed for a week, do it for a month, do it for a year, do it for seven years. I've been doing it for over 15 years now. The garden of your mind starts to look magnificent. And I dealt with a lot of depression, I dealt with anxiety, I dealt with fear and stress. And does it still come up at different times? Yes, but not like it used to. And when it does come up, I feel like I have these tools, or at least understandings or awareness or consciousness to be able to overcome and to be able to, what I should say, move through it where it doesn't bring you down. Where you may have a bad day, but you don't have a bad week, you don't have a bad month, you don't have a bad year. And I read recently that the word gratitude comes from the Latin word gratis, which means free. So think about that. When you are practicing gratitude, you free your mind from the burdens and the circumstances of the world. You remove the sludge of negativity from your energy pipeline, and you allow joy and positivity and love to flow through. So you become more of a conduit for great energy and great feelings, rather than being like closed off and constricted by negativity. You know, I love that analogy of the garden of your mind. You know, we've got lots of gardens around our place and yeah, you've gotta weed those things every day. You know, I also love there was a great quote by the great Zig Ziglar, a guy came up to me and he said, you know, positivity, it doesn't last. He says, yeah, neither does a shower. That's why we do it every day. I love that one. So you know, we always talk about it's easy to overlook how feelings are connected with each other, right? You know, we understand it's hard to feel happy when you're crying or sad when you're laughing. So explain how gratitude helps mitigate stress. What about gratitude do you think helps reduce stress and anxiety specifically? Well, I believe it elevates your state of mind, it elevates your mood. When you appreciate, you elevate. You elevate your mood, you elevate your performance, you elevate the people around you. We are energy. We are energy beings. Einstein taught us that. Anything that is matter is energy. And if you study the human cell, if you study the electrons, if you go to the smallest level, we are energy. We are energy vibrating beings. So we vibrate to a certain frequency and I believe gratitude in a scientific way elevates our frequency and we're able to experience more of these positive emotions when you are fearful and stressed and anxious. You're vibrating at a lower frequency and a heavier energy, right? And it can weigh you down. So if you understand in terms of energy, it makes more sense. And a lot of times when we feel stressed and fearful, we just feel lethargic and tired. We don't want to get out of bed. And yet when you're feeling gratitude and we're grateful and you're feeling excited and optimistic, you feel hopeful, you feel light, you feel free, you're bouncing around. And so when you think of things in energy, it makes more sense when you look at it that way. But at the simplest level, we are also producing neurochemicals and endorphins and energy through our body and practicing gratitude just allows us to produce these helpful hormones and neurochemicals that make us feel better in our mind, in our body, in our heart. So the gratitude walk is key because you're walking, you're getting exercise and you're practicing gratitude. So you're getting the mental, you're getting the physical. So it's like a double boost of energy. It's exponential doing it together. And it's something I've done over the years and I've had other people do it now. More and more have been doing it. And they always say, wow, at first it was awkward, a little weird to say what I'm grateful for. People think I'm crazy in my neighborhood as I'm walking and I'm saying what I'm grateful for out loud. But over time, I start to feel a whole lot better when I'm doing that. Love that. Yeah, and you've been talking already a lot about heart and love, and I've been listening, re-listening to the Energy Bus in preparation for today, John, and I think you were one of the first authors to really talk about this idea of love in business. We hadn't been talking a lot about it before, before you really popularized this idea. So how do, so if I'm a manager, I'm listening to this go, how can I, you know, how could I use love to help reduce anxiety levels in my team? How in the world would that work? Well, you guys say it best in your book and I had you on my podcast and I loved what you said and I learned from you in so many ways, but when you have emotional and psychological safety, when people feel loved and cared for, there's going to be less anxiety because they know someone cares about them. Working with a lot of professional athletes like I do, there's a lot of mental coaches and sports psychologists that work with these athletes. I'm convinced what the coach or the psychologist says is less important than how they make the athlete feel. The connection is the most important thing. The fact that this athlete knows that this mental coach or psychologist cares about them, loves them unconditionally, that even if they don't perform well, they're still loved, that psychological safety, that trust, that bond, actually allows that athlete to perform at a higher level because they feel safe, they feel free to go for it. And if they fail, they're not defined by their performance. Same thing at work. If you know that your manager, your boss cares about you, loves you, supports you, you feel more free to actually perform at a higher level, to take some risks, not bad risks, but take some risks to go for it. And in doing so, when you're free to fail, you're more likely to succeed. If you're worried about your performance, if you're worried about your project, if you're worried each day whether you're gonna have a job, well that leads to fear, it leads to tension, it leads to being constricted, and as a result of that, you're not going to have the freedom to actually succeed and perform at a higher level. So again, you're fighting for your survival in those modes. Like each day, you're coming to work and it's life or death. You can perform well like that maybe for a week, but you can't perform in life and death over a long period of time. We know that. It's humanly impossible to do that. It doesn't last. Great coaches, you know, build sustained relationships. You can see the coach that comes in and after a year they have to leave. Why? They already burned everyone out. They've already tuned him out. They've already had enough of his negativity. He drove everyone and yeah, that fear produced results in the short term, but it does not last in the long term. Anxiety is a result of, in many ways, I believe, feeling divided. The word anxious literally means divided, and it's a Greek root word. I wrote about this in the garden. When you are anxious, you feel divided. You feel separate. Well, how do you feel more united? self, yoga, meditation, mindfulness, breathing, gratitude, just finding ways to connect to yourself. You feel more united when you feel connected spiritually. And so different people have different spiritual practices. I pray that really connects me. I believe that connects me to the creator of the universe. And in those moments, I feel more joy and peace. I feel connected. Other people meditate, mindfulness, meditation, all different sorts of meditation, whatever it may be, people do that. And then there's also the unity and connection to another. So when you feel that unity and connection to your team members, to your boss, to your manager, to your spouse, to others, that helps you feel more connected, more united. So I think the more we can connect and unite, the less anxious we will feel. Think about this past year of COVID, right? Isolation, separation. We were isolating people so people were more anxious and fearful and stressed than ever because they were missing the human connection and that contact that we need to not just survive but to thrive. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's interesting, the prolonged stress. I did find one guy that could do it over a long period of time, Jason Bourne. That guy's amazing. I love that. I don't think he's real. Oh, I think those shows are documentaries, Adrian. I agree to disagree. Hey, I loved your book, The Garden, and you talk about the five Ds that keep us from finding peace. Can you walk us through those concepts and how we can overcome them? Sure. There are five Ds that will sabotage us if we let them, and those five Ds will create more anxiety and stress and fear and anxiety and fear. There are five Ds that will sabotage us if we let them. And those five Ds will create more anxiety and stress and fear. And the first D is doubt. There's a lot of doubt and uncertainty in the world more than ever. And so the more there's doubt, the more there's uncertainty and fear. The second D is distort. Distortions are lies. Distortions are negative thoughts. I call negative thoughts distortions and lies because negative thoughts will tell you things about yourself and your future that just aren't true. They will tell you that you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you don't have what it takes. This project is not gonna work out. You're gonna get fired tomorrow, which is most likely not the case, right? So we have all these fears and doubts and lies that come in. Now, when I work with teams and organizations, I always ask them this question, do your negative thoughts come from you? And people always say, yes, of course they do. They're in my head. Well, here's the next question. If you believe they come from you, who would ever choose to have a negative thought? I would never choose a negative thought. Would you ever choose a negative thought, Justin? Not if I had the choice. Adrian? No. So if we wouldn't choose one, where are they coming from? People say, well, it's my inner critic. Well, where's your inner critic coming from, and why is it showing up in the first place? People never talk about why or where it comes from. Negative thoughts or thoughts in general are spiritual. They come from consciousness. No one has ever found a thought inside of a brain. There's an internet cloud of consciousness when you're sleeping and dreaming. Are you choosing those thoughts, those nightmares? Did you choose those thoughts? No, when you're getting an idea for a book, did you choose the thought or did it so often just come to you? It came to you, I know you guys, it came to you sometimes. And that's the beauty of it. That's where the music comes from and the art comes from and we can't explain where it comes from. We know there's a magic to it and that is the magic of consciousness, of the spiritual nature of thoughts. And they're always coming in, right? And often they're negative. I don't know why, but they often are. And they often want to sabotage you. So knowing how the game is played, knowing how the battle is being waged, it's the battle of your mind, you've got to weed that negative, feed the positive. So the negative thoughts come in, the distortions come in, don't believe the lies that they tell. The key is to speak truth to those lies, words of encouragement to those lies, to recognize those thoughts are not coming from you in the first place. See what happens is it comes in, we believe it, we think it's from us, so we believe it. Then we reinforce it. Then we speak it out loud. And then we have guilt and shame for having those thoughts in the first place. I was talking to a young 27-year-old executive of a company. I explained this to him. He felt so free. He started crying. He said, for the first time, I feel free. I've been beating myself up for all these negative thoughts I've had all these years, and now I recognize they weren't from me in the first place. I never had to believe them. All I had to do was speak truth to those lies, speak words of encouragement. And so that's what I really advise a lot of people I work with to do. I work with, as I said, professional athletes, sports teams, you know, Fortune 500 leaders, you name it. Everyone could get this concept. So don't listen to the negative thoughts. Speak positive words of encouragement. And the word encourage means to put courage into it. So when you're encouraging yourself, you put encourage into yourself. When you're encouraging others, you put encourage into them. So that second D is distort. And those distortions come in and what do they do? They discourage. The whole goal of those distortions, I believe, are to discourage us and to keep us from being our best, from what matters most. And so the discouragement sets in. And we don't give up because it's hard. We give up because we get discouraged. So that's why encouragement, and speaking words of encouragement, is so essential, and finding sources of encouragement. People often poo-poo like encouragement and positivity and optimism, belief, and this work that we do, and yet, they don't understand how important it really is, because leaders are dealers in hope. Leaders are dealers in hope. They share their vision, they share their purpose, they share hope for the future. And if there is no hope for the future, there is no power in the present, right? We have to have hope for the future that gives us something to work for and towards right now. Because we believe the best is yet to come, we take the actions necessary to create the best outcome. That's the Duke University study with Miriam Robinson talking about optimists. They work harder, get paid more, they're more likely to succeed in business and sports. And what they found was that these optimists, because they believed in a brighter and better future, they took the actions necessary to create it. It became that self-fulfilling prophecy. And so instead of discourage that third day, we got to make sure that we encourage. The fourth day is distraction. And distractions are the enemy of greatness. And as a leader, as a team, as a human being, every day we are being distracted that keep us from what matters most. And so think about it, you got the doubt, you got the distortion, you got the discouragement, then next thing you know you're sort of off balance and the distraction comes in. What was that John? I was checking my email. What did you say? Exactly, checking my email or even having success sometimes can be a distraction because we get enamored by the success or the outcome and we lose sight of the mission, the purpose and the focus. So anything that keeps you from what matters most in being your best is a distraction. Going back to the garden, the analogy I share is the Garden of Eden. The fruit was appealing. You looked at the fruit. To Eve it was so appealing that it actually was a distraction to her. And so often things seem appealing and yet what do they do? They keep us from being our best. And we know also you could get caught up in the nice shiny car and the house and the bad habit and some people get caught up in drugs and whatever it may be, those are all distractions. In a company, it may be, like instead of our mission and purpose, we get caught up in the fame or this side initiative that starts to distract us from what matters most. I got involved in a positive cookie. I thought this cookie was gonna be a great thing to do and share encouragement with the world. It was such a distraction from what I was doing that after a year, it became very clear to me. Like, I heard the words, I did not put you on earth to sell cookies, okay? And even though they were encouraging cookies, it wasn't part of my mission, it was distracting. And when I lost the money, I lost a little bit of money, and I said, all right, I'm gonna take this loss, take the lesson and move on. It was incredible how much more energy I had in focus to now go create what I needed to create. So distractions are the key. And finally, division. We touched on that with anxiety and anxiousness, division. And we feel divided, we feel separate, we feel divided as a team, we feel divided as a country. And the more division there is, the more anxiety there's gonna be. And then, that's why you guys wrote your great book. It's why we see so much anxiety now more than ever. It's because everyone feels so divided. And so I believe we need these lessons more than ever. We need to understand how to move through it. But people need to understand that the root cause, the anxiousness is the result of these five D's and ultimately the division that we feel. Oh, love that, John Gordon calm j o n Gordon calm or I love Twitter. I'm always tweeting at j o n Gordon 11 Hopefully and I'm not kicked off on Twitter for too much positivity That doesn't happen but j o n Gordon 11 Instagram at j o n Gordon 11 But the website is John Gordon calm and you can find me everywhere for that. Awesome. Yeah, we need more positivity If you haven't read one of John's books, pick one up today. You'll love it. The messages, I love how you write your allegories. They just pull you right along. One of the things you write about too is that what we believe will determine what we create. So sometimes as leaders, we can make assumptions about team members. And look, let's be honest, sometimes we might not like somebody as much as another and that will create some bias And about our assumptions about them So how can leaders apply this idea that you've said believing what they want to drive team success? Well leadership is a transfer of belief and I believe that a leader needs to believe in their team members more than those team members Believe in themselves. So you have to be an over believer I work with Clemson football and dabble Sweeney and we've worked together for the past nine years. He calls himself an over-believer. People ask him, are you an over-achiever? He goes, no, I'm an over-believer. Because he has believed in his team in such ways that they've accomplished more than they ever thought possible. I mean, these guys have gone on to NFL careers that no one thought they would be NFL players. So I believe that as a leader, you need to see potential. You need to see each person's gifts and strengths. So you have to move past your bias and say, okay, what is good about this person? What do they do well? What is their strength? And how can I help them use their strength? Maybe they're in the wrong role, and if they're in the wrong role, you have to move them to the right role immediately, and you have to see where they actually can perform. And if they're not able to serve the organization, if they're not in the right role, and there is no right role for them, then the best thing you can do is to help them find the right role for them in another company somewhere else. So I do believe you have to look at each person, see what their gifts and strengths are, and see their potential of what they can be. Know their limitations, and that's where you guys do so well. Coach, coach to help coach them up, help them get better, help them improve, improve upon their strengths, hopefully minimize their weaknesses. But if you put a fish on land, it's never going to perform well, right? It has to be in the right environment doing what it's meant to do. And I think too often we have people in the wrong roles and the wrong positions. And I look at that with my team. I try to see what they're good at, what their strengths are, and we do some coaching to make them better. But if they're not in the right position, I try to find them the right position. I love your analogy with Clemson. I'm a big Clemson fan. I've loved Davos-Rainey, plus the color is orange, which speaks to me, you know, with the character. I love that. And I love your idea about this community, the importance of community to support. You know, you're there coaching up the players, the coach is there being the over-believer. How can people now with the world has gone more and more virtual, how can they find those positive communities? Well, I think we're moving back again towards physical, which is good. I do want to say that I'm seeing more and more, I don't know you guys, but I'm getting booked tons for the fall, August, September, October. I'm excited about being back in person, right? We're looking forward to that. We're going to ask people to put iPads in front of their faces and turn on Zoom so we can feel more comfortable like we're in those Zoom rooms again. We're not used to real people in person. But to find your community, there is something I have found which has been incredible during this time is to see how many people have gotten connected via virtual technology, via the Zooms, via the video conferences. It has provided a great time for people to come together as long as you're engaging people online. If you're using that as a session to have people share their ideas. Share a team building exercise. I've done a lot of those with teams. Hero, hardship, highlight. Who's your hero? Tell us about a hardship you faced that made you who you are today and a highlight that you're proud of. You can hit a fourth H. What do you hope for? I've seen people cry over Zoom and really get emotional, get connected to their team members doing this exercise. So you make it meaningful. You bring the energy and you make sure that energy permeates and pushes through the screen and into the hearts of others. And when you're transparent, authentic like that via technology, you still can develop great relationships online. So finding your team, getting together with your team. I read about these two coaches that started a mastermind with about five other coaches, like some of the brightest minds in coaching. And they, during the pandemic, would get together once a week, and they would just talk for an hour as coaches. What a great idea. Let's not forget the lesson we learned this past year that we can connect. So let's get back to physical, but then let's use virtual technology as a way to connect with people that we maybe wouldn't have time for, or we wouldn't in the past make time for. Now let's make time to connect in meaningful ways. And that's how I see it going forward. That is so great, John. And I know we've already gone over the time. I knew this would happen. We just have so much to learn from you. So I'll just ask you one last question, and then we're going to let you go. But before we wrap up, a message that you share that I think just bears repeating is this idea, it's okay not to be okay. Help us understand that and what we as leaders and coaches can help our people understand that concept. When I talk about positivity, sometimes people will roll their eyes because they're talking about Pollyanna positive, but this is not about fake positivity. It's not about seeing the world through rose colored glasses. This is knowing that you have the power to overcome the thorns. This is not about ignoring reality. It's about maintaining optimism, belief and faith in order to create a better reality. It's knowing that we're going to have tough days. It's okay to not be okay. But you don't want to allow that to take you down the spiral staircase of depression and despair. So feel the feelings, understand where you are, don't deny them, work through the grief, through the pain, work through what you're going through. But don't allow them to really bring you down to a deeper state of depression, the key is to constantly try to, I believe, feed yourself each day. So that way you can feed others. If you don't have it, you can't share it. So it's doing things like the gratitude walk, it's the appreciation, it's the prayer, it's the meditation, it's being mindful, it's taking care of yourself, self-care, investing in yourself, feeding yourself, talking to yourself instead of listening to yourself. Any time those negative thoughts come in, talk to yourself, don't listen. And the more you do this over time, like we talked about with the garden, you're gonna create an amazing garden with incredible flowers and beautiful fruit. Invest in the root if you want great fruit. If we focus on the fruit, our numbers, our outcomes, our work hours, the project, and we ignore the root, our heart, our soul, our spirit, eventually the tree is going to die. So this is really about investing in your health, in your mental health, and nurturing yourself so that you can take on the challenges that come your way. A lot of people are dealing with trauma that have happened in their life, and that's why they have anxiety as well, there's some deep level trauma. And so they store it in their body. So it's about understanding that, getting to the heart of that, and releasing that through the body, through therapy, through that kind of work that allows you to feel. I believe that that's our opportunity in any team we're with, any organization, any group, any family, any marriage. You come together with your issues and your wounds from your life and now it's an opportunity to feel together so that we can grow together. I know that's deep and you're saying, well, but John, we're just here to make money as a company. Yes, but we're here to heal together. As you do, you're gonna be stronger people, you're gonna be more loving, caring people, and you're gonna produce a lot more success and a lot more money as a result of that. Fabulous. Listen, always time well spent when you spend time with John Gordon. Get his books, they're available everywhere, johngordon.com and John Gordon 11, at John Gordon 11. Are you the 11th John Gordon on Twitter or is that your lucky number? What? No, it's because I ran for City Council when I was 27 years old of Atlanta and that's how I was able to get John Gordon calm and so The the John Gordon out of Minnesota who was a technology guy who knew where everything was going He got he was upset that I did that so he went on Twitter right away and made sure he got John Gordon on Twitter, Instagram, everywhere else. And so I had to get J-O-N Gordon 11. And 11 is my, sort of my number where the energy bus is bus number 11. Carpenter 11. Training camp Martin's jersey number is 11. So I try to weave it into all of my different stories and work because I always see 1111 or 111 on clocks, happens all the time. And so it's usually a sign that great things are happening and good things are coming our way. And so I know it's a special number, so that's why it's all 11. That's awesome. I will never forget that now. Hey, John, thanks so much for your time and your effort and your positivity. You're changing lives every day. We couldn't be more honored to have you on our podcast. Hey, thanks guys. I love your work too, and it's so much fun to be able to always hear about your work wherever I am. People come up to me and they tell me about your work. So I'm glad we're synergizing. My podcast with you all is coming out very soon. So I can't wait for people to hear that when I get a chance to interview you guys. Well, Chess, another amazing guest. John, you know, not only a world famous author, Energy Bus has sold more than 2 million copies. So his wisdom is on many people's bookshelves, but I love what he says. He starts out with gratitude, right? His walks of gratitude that helped him get through times of depression and anxiety. Yeah, you know, first off, perfect title, Energy Bus, because he just emotes such positive energy. You know, so many good suggestions, so many great life experiences, and yet, to your point, talked about his struggles with anxiety. I love when he gets to the roots of the words, you know Anxiety being divided divided against yourself. I also love when he talks about Self-talk, you know this idea. Where'd all that all that negativity come from all that comes from you. So why would you choose that? You know, what did he say about talk to yourself? Don't listen to yourself because for whatever reason we're wired to be negative I thought that was such a great insight. I thought that was great too. And also he talked about coaches as managers. And he said, you know, it's less important what you say because sometimes you go, I don't know if I'll say the right thing. So what do we do? We say nothing. He says, it's less important what you say. It's more important how you make people feel. I mean, it's just terrific advice. Yeah, and the fact that he's worked with so many coaches. You know, Davo Sweeney down there in Clemson, when he says, do you think you're an overachiever? And he says, no, I'm an overbeliever. You know, transmitting that belief. And then, you know, when he talked about the five Ds, which I thought was just so interesting, and I'd list them all down, but he's already done it. I just love that he's got these practical things that come out. You know, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with that energy, the gratitude walk, the five D's, the self-talk? So many wonderful, wonderful concepts. One that I wanted to highlight that really spoke to me was when you get that negative self-talk, you speak truth to lies. Speak the truth to lies. You are good enough. You are kind. You are talented. And that grants you your freedom. I love that concept. And it's funny, I wrote that one down too. And also his idea about distraction, you know. And I love this vulnerability where he says, look, I started selling cookies. Yeah. I don't even know. And he says, and you know, I hear this whispering, you weren't put on the earth to sell cookies, John. How often do we do that? I mean, you know, you and I do that. We in our business, we, oh my gosh, this would be great, this would be great. Do we focus in on what really our mission is or do we get distracted by every potential in our businesses and our lives that we could be fun or could make some money? I love his idea. That is one of the anxiety inducers. Don't get distracted from what you know is important to you. This is a podcast you could listen to two or three times. I love that he sends us to the simple places to get more information, right? It's johngordon.com. It's at John Gordon 11, 11 being his favorite number on the energy bus and so on. So really avail yourself of that. And thank you so much to Brent Klein, who's our amazing producer, and Christy Lawrence, who helps us find all these amazing guests, and to all of you who have given us your time and listening in. I hope there's some tips and things there that will help you reduce anxiety in your life and create a better life for you. We invite you to check out our new book, Anxiety at Work from Harper Business. If you are struggling or if you have a team that is struggling with any amount of anxiety, there really are tools and tips in the book that can help you. And of course, a shout out to our wonderful sponsor, Lifeguides. You really do need a life guide to navigate all this anxiety and all this stuff that's going on with COVID and post COVID and pre COVID. And we've got a great offer. Our friends at Lifeguides, if you'll go to their website, lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code healthy2021 to the free text box, you get two months free. I mean, that's the best deal on the planet. They want to impact a billion people's lives. Let one of those billion people be you. Absolutely. We love Life Guides. We love our listeners. Thanks for listening in. Until next time, we wish you the best of mental health. Take care and be well.