Mental Strength, Confidence and Self-Trust with Amy Morin

In this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. Supatra Tovar continues her conversation with bestselling author, psychotherapist, and mental strength expert Amy Morin, LCSW, in Part 2 of their discussion on mental strength, emotional resilience, confidence, perfectionism, self-awareness, and building a healthier relationship with yourself.

Mental strength is often misunderstood. Many people believe it means suppressing emotions, staying positive at all times, or never struggling. In reality, mental strength is about learning how to navigate fear, embrace vulnerability, respond to life's challenges with flexibility, and build habits that support long-term emotional wellbeing.

Together, Dr. Tovar and Amy explore practical mental strength strategies from The Mental Strength Playbook, including the Victory Vault, Motivation Buddy, Platinum Rule, Nature Reset, Mental Vacation, Taking Out the Mental Trash, Boundary Resets, and Self-Compassion. They discuss why perfectionism often keeps people stuck, how fear quietly influences our decisions, and why confidence is built through action rather than waiting to feel ready.

Amy shares practical tools for strengthening your mindset, overcoming self-doubt, managing uncomfortable emotions, and learning to trust yourself even during life's most difficult moments. This conversation reminds us that resilience isn't about avoiding struggle—it's about developing the courage to keep moving forward with greater clarity, confidence, and compassion.

If you've ever struggled with perfectionism, fear of failure, self-doubt, anxiety, people-pleasing, emotional overwhelm, burnout, or feeling like you're never enough, this episode offers practical, evidence-based strategies to help you build lasting mental strength and emotional resilience.

Subscribe for more conversations on psychology, nutrition, mental health, emotional wellness, resilience, self-trust, mindset, healing, and sustainable wellbeing.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome Back & Part 2 Introduction
00:30 Amy's Favorite Mental Strength Tools
01:00 Build Your Victory Vault
03:00 The Motivation Buddy Strategy
04:45 Accountability and Breaking Bad Habits
05:30 The Platinum Rule Explained
08:20 Burnout and Building Mental Strength
09:00 Nature Resets and Mental Vacations
12:00 How Your Thoughts Shape Your Energy
13:20 Take Out the Mental Trash
17:10 Protecting Your Mental Health
17:45 Schedule Something Fun
18:50 Why Healthy Boundaries Matter
22:00 Self-Compassion vs. Self-Criticism
25:30 Helping Yourself Through Grief, Anxiety & Burnout
26:30 Name It to Tame It
28:00 Honoring Emotions Without Getting Stuck
29:40 Where to Find Amy Morin
30:00 Final Thoughts & Closing

Episode Summary

In Part 2 of this conversation, Dr. Supatra Tovar and Amy Morin explore what it truly means to build mental strength in everyday life. Through practical tools and evidence-based strategies, they discuss emotional resilience, confidence, self-awareness, perfectionism, fear, burnout, self-compassion, and the habits that help people navigate life's challenges with greater flexibility and emotional wellbeing.

Rather than striving for perfection, this episode encourages listeners to embrace progress, practice self-kindness, strengthen healthy boundaries, and build resilience one decision at a time.

What This Episode Covers

• Mental strength
• Emotional resilience
• Confidence and self-trust
• Perfectionism
• Self-compassion
• Healthy boundaries
• Burnout recovery
• Healthy coping strategies
• Self-awareness
• Mindset and mental health
• Psychological flexibility
• Overcoming fear and self-doubt
• Emotional wellbeing
• Personal growth

Connect with Amy Morin

Website:
https://amymorinlcsw.com

Amazon Author Page:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00LNL5Q18

Podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6YDYQoMTW2YiUVC2XKIwLm

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amymorinlcsw

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/amymorinauthor/?hl=en

Continue Your Journey
 📘 Book: Deprogram Diet Culture: Rethink Your Relationship with Food, Heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet-Free Life

🎓 Course: Deprogram Diet Culture
 https://anew-insight.com

🌐 Visit the Website
 https://drsupatratovar.com

🎥 Watch More Episodes
 ANEW Insight Podcast

🎤 Watch the TEDx Talk
 Rethinking Your Relationship with Food in the GLP-1 Era

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the A New Insight Podcast. Empowering and inspiring your journey to optimal health. Hosted by Dr. Supatra Kavar, clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, fitness expert, and author of Deprogram Diet Culture. Rethink your relationship with food, feel your mind, and live a diet-free life. I follow my guests' journey to optimal health, providing you with the keys to unlock your own wellness path. Tune in and evolve with us. Welcome back, everyone. We are back for the second half of our conversation with the amazing Amy Morin. We have been discussing mental strength, emotional healing, and the powerful lessons behind our newest book, The Mental Strength Playbook. I can't wait to continue. Hi, Amy. Hello. Hello. So let's talk some more about the book. Your book includes some practical strategies like create a reverse worry list, use the 10-minute rule, and visit your victory vault. Which tools do you personally find yourself using most often in your life? And can you explain them to help our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Oh, sure. So the the victory vault, that's one of my favorite ones. So visit your victory vault. We know when you get rejected or you fail at something, it's really easy to remember all the other times that you failed and that you've been rejected. And pretty quickly, a rejection can feel like, oh, I'm a loser. I always get rejected for everything because you remember the other five times you've been rejected for something that was important to you. And then we think, well, it wasn't meant to be. I don't want to try again because this feels bad and I don't want to feel bad. But the truth is, we've all had a lot of victories in life, but they're easy to forget about. So a victory vault is what's going to help you remember. So maybe you write down a list of the top 10, maybe 25 victories you've had in life. And they don't have to just be like a professional award or something like that. Your victory might be that you once went with your mom to a doctor's appointment and helped her advocate to get the medicine that she needed. Like that's a huge victory in life. And what did you learn from that? Well, maybe you learned I can speak up when I have to. So I would write that down in the victory vault. Or maybe when you were in the fifth grade, you stood up for somebody. Like, that's huge too. Like, and what's that lesson? Maybe it's I can speak up for other people when I see a social injustice. And maybe it's pictures too. Maybe you have some photos of something that you've done. Like you spent time with your cousin's graduation, or you did something that was kind of cool. Take a photo of it. And you can have a digital vault, maybe it's a notebook, but take it out and read it in those moments when you feel like you aren't good enough, just as a reminder. And I'll tell you one of mine. So I didn't get into the grad school of my choice. I had gone to undergrad there, so I thought it's probably a slam dunk to get into the University of Maine. We're not even talking about Harvard or anything prestigious. I didn't get in. And I remember being horrified, like, okay, who doesn't get into the University of Maine for graduate school? But then years later, I discovered that they have my book on their recommended reading list. And they just gave me an award for like most distinguished alumni for having my bachelor's degree. Trust me, that's on my victory vault. Because just remembering, okay, just because I get turned down for something or somebody else's opinion of me doesn't have to uh stick. Like it doesn't mean anything about my worth, and I can go still go on. So that's a great lesson in my victory vault. But we all have moments in life where we've done something that we didn't think we could do, but we forget about them. So write them down, put them in your vault, and read over that vault whenever you need a boost. So that's one. Another one is I really like the um text and motivation buddy play. So this is for that thing that you're procrastinating. Maybe it's something personal, like, oh, I should clean the garage, and you just haven't gotten around to it. Or maybe you have like a boring work project, like submitting invoices or doing something that's kind of dull, a spreadsheet, and you keep putting it off. Well, it's easy to wait till tomorrow or next week, or I'll do it later when I feel like it, but you probably aren't gonna feel like it. And those projects that just kind of keep getting delayed over and over. Text somebody, whether it's your grandmother, your friend, your coworker, and you say, Hey, I'm gonna start working on this slideshow. Check back in with me in an hour and ask me how much I've gotten done. And the minute you put a little bit of social pressure on yourself, suddenly you're gonna be the most motivated you felt in a really long time. And about an hour is a really good time frame because now you know I have 60 minutes. And when my buddy texts back to say, Hey, how's it going? I want to be able to show that I have some progress. So you'll get moving more in that 60 minutes than maybe you've done in six months. But I love that play. And I have a couple of go-to friends that I know I can text and they get it. So when I say check back in with me in an hour, I know I can count on them. They'll check back in with me to say, Hey, how's it going? And I'm like, you know what? I just edited two more chapters of my book.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

I love that. And that is a great technique for anybody who has ADHD. And they have like an accountability buddy or accountability partner, someone who can body double with you to do some task. You can just like work side by side on Zoom, and just having that person there helps to move motivate you. I once took this class in my nutrition grad school and it was on habit change. And it was, you know, the this hot assignment for the entire quarter was just pick a habit you want to quit and try to do it, and you write about it, and just having the professor be the accountability person, I was able to quit a habit that was really bad for me, that was really hard for me to quit. So I think that that's so powerful. Let's also talk about perspective. I think my favorite uh play in your playbook was the platinum rule. I'd actually never really heard of it and never even thought of it until you wrote about it. Um, basically, it's how to change your perspective from the golden rule. But I want you to explain it for people and why it's so powerful and so important.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah, this one boils down to this idea. We have the golden rule of treat other people like they want to be treated and or like we think they want to be treated. Well, the problem is we don't all appreciate the same things. And one way this is really easily visible is in the way we communicate. So personally, I prefer to email people 99% of the time as opposed to get on a phone call. But I'm working with somebody on this project right now who really wants to get on a phone call. And so the if I'm gonna run the platinum rule, it's reminding that. It's not necessarily like people communicate better by email. Not everybody does. Just because I do, or I think hey, it's faster. His whole thing is we can save 32 emails of going back and forth if we just get on a 10-minute phone call. And you explain it to me, and then I can ask my questions, it'll take 10 minutes. Oh, okay, that's a different perspective. I think, hey, it saves time when I just send off a quick message. But that's what really running the platinum rule is sometimes, is just asking people really simply, how do you prefer to communicate? Or how do you prefer that I that I respond to this? Sometimes we think we know. So if somebody says, hey, I have this problem, we might jump into problem solving mode because we assume, oh, they want me to fix it. Maybe they just want to be heard. But unless you ask that question, like, what is it that I could do right now that would be helpful? We don't know. So sometimes it's even simpler because we think, okay, I have to do this thing. Sometimes it's easier to just ask people, hey, how do you prefer to communicate? Or how would you prefer that I respond? When you call me and say you've had a bad day, what is it I could do to be helpful? And that's really the platinum rule is saying I want, I'm going to treat you like you want to be treated, not like I want to be treated.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Exactly. And I think that, you know, people make a lot of assumptions. Say you don't get an email returned to you. I think a lot of people get really hurt about that or they get offended, or they're like, why are they ignoring my email? And you don't know if that's their preferred form of communication or not. You don't even know if they're ignoring you. Maybe they're overwhelmed. Maybe that's not how they like to communicate at all. Maybe they haven't had a chance to check their email. And I think that that's so important to check in and say, hey, you know, um, this is the way I usually communicate, but I don't even know how you like to communicate. And I think when we give people that deference, oh my gosh, the way that communication improves is so great. And you're left not making those assumptions and not getting hurt and being more direct. Love the platinum rule. I'm totally keeping that one. So let's talk about exhaustion. I work with so many people who are in the midst of burnout, but they are exhausted before the day even begins. So, what are some small but powerful ways people can start building mental strength without becoming overwhelmed?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Yeah, again, it's those little things that we do in the moment. And sometimes people will say, Oh, I'm burned out, and they assume I need a new job or I need a six-month sabbatical, or they feel like they're hopeless and helpless. But those little things that we do during the workday can make a big difference about whether or not we come home feeling somewhat refreshed and rejuvenated, or we feel like we have zero gas left in the tank. So for instance, one is a nature reset. If you work in a place where there's a picnic table, some green grass, a tree, just about anything, even a park, and you're able to get just a touch of nature during the day, it can make a huge difference. And for people who say, Yeah, but I'm in the city and I can't, or I can't get outside, I don't work in the kind of place where I could step outside, bring nature indoors if you can. Maybe you play some nature sounds, maybe you have a landscape photo that uh you keep behind your desk, maybe you have uh some scents that remind you of the outdoors, some eucalyptus oils, whatever it is, but anything you can do to just feel like you're more in touch with nature and not just staring at a screen with artificial lights all day can make a huge difference. And if you're able to eat your lunch outside or go for a 15-minute walk, you get a huge bonus just being moving in nature as well. So that can be one for a lot of people who get in the habit of eating lunch at your desk and you never see the outdoors during the day. We say, like, oh, this is gonna help me be more productive. Well, it really doesn't. Sometimes it's about taking the break and being intentional about it. Another play that can help with a lot of that exhaustion, too, is uh to take a mini-mental vacation. So we know that, like, okay, a lot of us look forward to that week or two off in the summer of thinking, great, I'm gonna go on this amazing vacation. But then we often come back feeling even more exhausted because we spent the whole week trying to squeeze in as much as we could. Fortunately, you don't have to leave your office. You don't have to use any of your vacation time. Sometimes if you can just find a private space at work and you can close the door and take yourself on a mental vacation, five, 10 minutes where you just imagine yourself. Maybe it's a scene on the beach and you just imagine the warm sun on your skin and the sand underneath you with a light breeze and you hear the ocean. If you spent just a few minutes really immersing yourself in that visual, it's going to renew you and refresh you. Research shows that it can have almost the exact same effect of taking an actual vacation on both your mind and your body. And so, if we did those things throughout the day, I think just incorporated those little moments, those little things that we can to help us feel better, instead of say scrolling during your lunch break, or instead of trying to get more work done all the time without giving yourself an intentional break, it actually doesn't make us more productive. It just leaves us feeling exhausted. And then unfortunately, what happens when we come home feeling completely exhausted? We tend to throw ourselves on the couch, maybe turn on some Netflix or do whatever we can to get through the evening. And again, don't do anything that helps us to feel better. And then we wake up tomorrow feeling feeling pretty bad.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yes. It's so interesting to me because I, you know, I'm a dietitian along with a psychologist. So I'm really interested in energy, energy that comes from food, energy that comes from sleep, any of the physical ways that we get energy. But I am fascinated by the fact that we can either drain our energy just by the way that we think, or we can energize ourselves by the way that we think. And I really help my clients to see, you know, just how draining their line of thinking is. And you can look at that just through, you know, traditional CBT thoughts and the feelings and the behaviors that come from those thoughts. If our thoughts are negative and we're really dreading something or we're really feeling awful about something, we then you know feel depressed or we feel anxious, we're, you know, you know, worried. And that drains our energy. We have less energy to do the things we want and usually, you know, stay motionless and you know, dissociate. But if you just looked at things from a different perspective, right? If you if you took a different perspective, say it's you're feeling unloved, well, you really know that that's not true because there's so many people around you that love you. When you think I am loved, you start to feel you know, just that uh, you know, that warmth, you start to feel better, you start to feel um, you know, like you like supported, and that gives you energy. And I just think it's fascinating that we can just get energy from our minds alone and not from anything else. So when we're in our minds, you talk about taking out the mental trash. Let's explore that. What are some of the most common unhealthy thought patterns that sabotage people's well-being and performance?

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Oh, I'm glad you asked because I love this play too. So sometimes when we get in that headspace, we start thinking, oh, this my job is terrible, my boss is awful, and the people around me are incredibly negative, things are never going to get better. And as soon as you get caught up in that loop, the more that you think all about all the negative things, the worse you feel, the worse you feel, the less likely you are to do anything positive. And then you just start thinking even more negative thoughts, and it's this spiral. Well, one of the cool things is from the research, we know if you write down some of the negative thoughts that you have that aren't helpful, and then when you're done writing it down, you just crumple it up and you throw it in the trash. You're physically showing your brain, actually, I don't value this way of thinking. And you'll think about those things less. So it's easy to get caught up in that cycle of thinking, oh, my coworkers are all horrible and awful. Or uh, this bot this job that I have is just always so draining. There's nothing I can do about it. When you recognize that the thoughts you're having aren't about solving a problem, maybe you're just ruminating on a conversation that didn't go well, you're rehashing something, or you're stuck in that negative loop, take out a piece of paper and write it down. And if you're by yourself, crumple it up loudly and throw it in the trash when you're done. If you're not, you could just take like a Sharpie and cross it out. Or if you do it on your computer, just put it in the recycle bin. As a way to show your brain, I don't value this way of thinking. It's not helpful. It's perhaps taking a toll on my attitude. And if I feel horrible today, guess what? I'm probably gonna have a terrible day, but I have the opportunity to turn things around. So that's one of my favorite strategies for just when you catch yourself in that negative loop to say, what can I do to get rid of these thoughts? And on the flip side, if you write down some really kind and compassionate thoughts about yourself and you hold it close. So maybe you write a little letter to yourself that says, You've been through tough times before, you're gonna get through this, you're doing a great job. If I wrote that on a piece of paper, folded it up, and put it in my pocket, I'm then showing my brain, this is really important. I value this way of thinking, and it can change the way that you think throughout the day. You're gonna tend to think more positive, you'll practice more self-compassion. And just that little shift in the way that you're thinking about things makes a huge difference, as you say. When you change your mental energy, it really changes your physical energy too.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Oh, yeah, I absolutely love that. And I love the visual representation, the actual physical representation of that. I think that, you know, a lot of people when they engage in these negative thoughts and then these feelings, they feel like they're like just supposed to go with those feelings and explore them and kind of ruminate and be in them. I actually think that our negative feelings are more like an alarm clock. Or they're trying to tell us, like, hey, I don't like this, I don't want this. And if we tended to see that those negative thoughts and those negative emotions were an alarm bell going off, telling us we don't want this, then we can focus our thoughts on what we actually want. Then we can try to solve the problem, or we can, you know, create boundaries around the people that are causing us these negative emotions, or we can move in a direction that's opposite of this feeling. I don't think it serves us to continue to ruminate and go down that path. So I love having that physical representation. You know, you can crumple it up or you can burn it, but and then on the flip side, use the other one, stick it in your pocket, put it as a wallpaper on your phone to remind yourself of the direction you want to go in. So powerful. So, another question as a therapist, author, and podcast host, you are a busy, busy person. How do you personally protect your own mental health while constantly supporting others? I think this is a big topic for therapists. This is we see, hear, absorb a lot. How do you protect yourself?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Oh, yeah, that's a great question. And I think a couple of things. So, one, if I were to pick a couple of plays from the from the book that I do run regularly that do help, uh one is to schedule something fun. This is what we work on with a lot of people who are battling depression, right? Behavioral activation. Just having something fun in your calendar can make a huge difference. And I think we all need something to look forward to all the time that reminds us that life isn't just about work or it's not just about getting through the next task. So I always try to make sure I have something to look forward to. And it might be something simple, like my husband and I are gonna go to dinner on Saturday night, or it might be that I'm gonna go for a walk on a Sunday afternoon and go for a hike. But scheduling it builds that anticipation. Sometimes we think like fun should always be spontaneous, like, oh, I'll do something next weekend. But having it in your calendar really gives you that joy now of like, okay, I have something to look forward to. So I always try to make sure I have at least one thing in my calendar to look forward to in the short term, not just in six months I'm gonna go on a vacation, but what do I have this week to look forward to? And that keeps my mindset in a in a better place for sure. And another one would be like the initiating a boundary reset. We talk about boundaries all the time. But what we don't talk about is what do you do when your boundaries get a little bit fuzzy or when they've been eroded a little? Like maybe you make an exception. Maybe you're like, well, I don't answer the phone after nine, but then your sister's going through a really rough patch in life, and you say, you know what, I'm gonna call when she I'm gonna answer the phone when she calls, even if it's 9:30. And then the crisis is over, but now you've gotten in the habit of answering the phone. So then how what do you do after that? Like, well, I'm not gonna answer the phone anymore. Uh, so sometimes we need to do that because I think in my own life, I'll speak for myself personally, sometimes I have boundaries, but then I make an exception, which is great. I think we should make exceptions. Our boundaries don't need to be rigid, but then I have trouble going back and saying, okay, all right, I'm noticing that this is happening, or I've I've been doing extra work on the weekends to manage this one project. I don't want to do that anymore. How do I make it clear I'm not gonna be answering emails on a Saturday or a Sunday? So I try to take a step back, take a look at my boundaries sometimes when I'm starting to feel overwhelmed or anxious or frustrated and say, like, where in my life might some of my boundaries need to be tightened up? Where have I gotten a little too lax? What am I gonna do about it? And then making the decision. Sometimes it's about announcing it, like, hey, I know I've been responding to your emails on Saturdays lately, but uh I'm gonna not do that moving forward. But sometimes it's just about taking the action. Maybe I just quit answering the phone after 9 p.m. I don't have to announce, hey, by the way, not gonna do that anymore. Maybe just stop doing it. People that will stop calling you after 9 p.m. if you stop answering the phone, right? So I try to make sure. I try to make sure that uh I'm keeping an eye on that, just to remember that our boundaries are fluid, things are moving as my life changes, as other people's circumstances change. I might need to say, all right, I'm gonna tighten this one up. I'm gonna be a little looser over here, or I need to initiate a reset with something that I've been doing that maybe isn't working for me moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yes, I think for therapists, like put that in your practice policies. When do you respond? How long do you take? What what are the hours of operation? Um, that's so important. Have it in your email signature, have a no texting past 8 p.m. rule. I would say too that we hear really heavy stuff in our offices. And um, you know, a part of the perspective I take, a lot of people are like, oh, you must, you know, be so drained after hearing all those things. And I'm like, Well, yeah, it's awful to hear these things. But the perspective I take is I think I did something to help. And that makes me feel really, really good. It makes me feel like I've done. Something to help alleviate this pain. And I think that's another important perspective shift rather than to kind of get drawn down into the feeling. I also do a kind of just physical thing. I make sure to wash my hands after every session. And I think that that's just, you know, it becomes more of a you know metaphorical thing, like I'm washing away what I just heard so that I'm open and ready for the next thing. There's a lot that we have to do as therapists, people out there, to um, you know, be able to have the you know tenacity, to be able to have uh the resilience to be able to go and listen over and over to traumatic things. Um, but we do love it. That's why we do it.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Talk to me about self-compassion. I think this is one of the most important qualities that we can have, especially in building mental strength. Um, we don't see this as much with people who are really highly driven and perfectionistic. How can they start to build better self-compassion?

SPEAKER_00 23:05

This whole mental toughness culture that I think we live in, I think there's a big difference between like acting tough and actually being strong. And I'll hear it from other people who who really buy into this whole idea of like mental toughness, where they talk about like not tolerating pain. And if you make a mistake, you must punish yourself. And it's really that idea that I think drives people to believe that harsh self-criticism is somehow going to make you do better next time. But we know from the research over and over again, like calling yourself names, beating yourself up, or punishing yourself for something isn't going to morph you into a better person. In fact, it often does the opposite, right? It builds shame, it keeps us stuck in a place of pain. We start to think that we're not capable of doing better. But practicing self-compassion for a lot of people feels strange. For whatever reason, we uh treat others far more compassionate than we do ourselves. And in our own brains, we're thinking, oh, you've embarrassed yourself, you're stupid, you can't ever do anything right, you're not good enough. And it really has to become a practice of saying, I'm gonna talk to myself with some more kindness. I'm gonna give myself the same grace I give to other people. I'm gonna recognize that yes, well, I messed up. I didn't ruin everything all the time, or I am enough. And I'm not saying that you should wake up in the morning and have to like high-five yourself in the mirror and come up with all of these self-affirmations that you don't believe. Because research will show that too. If I woke up and was like, oh, Amy, you're the greatest person on the planet today. Like, that doesn't help me build self-compassion. It's gonna actually make me feel worse. It will have an effect on my self-esteem because I don't believe it. But if I can just nudge myself in the direction where I say, okay, I made a mistake today, but that doesn't make me the worst human on the planet. Or yes, maybe I did something that I don't like, but I can learn from it and I'm gonna do better tomorrow. And it might be as simple as just saying, like, what would I say to my friend right now? Because I can't Totally.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

I was just gonna say that. That's what I have my clients do.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Right. If your friend called you and said, Hey, I just messed up, you probably aren't gonna be like, Well, stupid, you've ruined everything. Yeah, how often do we think that to ourselves? So to be able to say, Well, I'd say to my friend, hey, you messed up, yes. However, you can go back out there tomorrow, you can try again, or maybe it's one of those things too, where you would say, probably nobody else even noticed. It's just you're making it bigger in your mind. And if we just gave ourselves those same kind words and cut ourselves some slack, you feel better. And then when you feel better, you'll get out there and you'll probably do better next time.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Totally. I do that exercise all the time with my clients when I hear how horribly negative they talk to themselves. And I actually have them say, Well, just imagine right now, you're your own best friend and you are counseling this person who's saying these things, what would you say to them? And what comes out is you just so compassionate, so nice, so loving. And I ask them, why can't you say those things to yourself? There's no reason why you should be speaking so poorly to yourself. And usually this helps to give them that perspective. I love that. So we're almost out of time. I can't believe it. I have so many things I want to ask you. Um, let's talk about people who are stuck in, say, grief, anxiety, burnout, or self-doubt. What is one message that you hope that they can take away from your work and from your own story?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

So, you know, I think we give people what feels like a confusing message sometimes because people will say, Well, I was told to sit with my feelings. And it's really hard to sit with what I have right now. And then other people are like, no, just change how you feel, move on, do something else. So I think it's important to recognize that there are moments where both things work, right? When I am going through a lot of sadness, there's moments where it's important to honor that sadness. But it's also important to recognize when that emotion doesn't serve me well. If I'm gonna walk into an office and ask my boss for a raise and I'm really sad, research shows I probably won't negotiate very well. We're terrible negotiators when we're sad. So in that moment, before I walk into the office, I can take that moment and say, what would help me do my best in that moment? Maybe a little bit of happiness. So in the book, I talk about happiness hacks. Like I'm gonna run a play that will help me be in the very best mindset for what I'm about to do. But then when you're at home and you're thinking, oh, I'm really sad right now, maybe then is when you need to sit with that feeling. So I think one of the best things all of us can do is to practice what we talked about before. Name it and tame it. Just recognize like, how do I feel right now? And then you ask yourself, is this emotion like my friend or my enemy in this situation? Do I need to just embrace this or do I need to shift how I'm feeling so I can get through the next minute? And then when you get better at asking that question, I think life gets a lot better because you might recognize, okay, in this moment I'm gonna show up at my kids' soccer game, showing up crying and being really sad probably isn't the frame of mind I'm gonna be in. What could I do to boost my happiness two minutes before I go so I can get through this? And then later I'm gonna let myself feel sad. And I think when we get better at doing that, it helps us to honor our emotions, to work through them rather than suppress them and avoid them all the time. But also helps us recognize like I have some power over this. Even if I'm in a really dark place in my life, I can still show up and be my best self in certain circumstances, even though it's hard to do it, to feel like I have some control over it.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Yeah, I really do think too, like grief is it comes in these waves. And sometimes the wave just bowls you over and just smashes you flat. And then sometimes you're floating upon that, you know, the top and the crest of it, and you're feeling okay. And I think it's so important to just allow, know that these emotions are important. Try to gain that perspective by you know going into your higher mind a little bit and looking objectively if it's helping you or not, even if it is grief and you don't think it might be helping you, it probably is. There's probably something that you need to work through and go through. I know I needed to do that. I lost my my dog of 18 and a half years, and I can tell you, like I didn't even leave my house for a month. Yeah, I was so sad. But I know going through that grief was really important for me. I just allowed it. I just, you know, came into my room here, did my work, and then just kind of like crawled back in bed at the end. And I needed to move through that. It was so important. And I think it helps also for you to remember that loved one and keep them in a really special place in your heart, not fight um those emotions and that sadness. And you do eventually come out of it in time. Amy, I just think you're wonderful. Oh, thank you. You're also just a really super kind person, and I I really appreciate us keeping in touch over time and you know, just following each other on social media. I think you're incredible. I'm so honored to have you on my podcast. Will you please tell people how they can find you?

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Absolutely. It's Amy Morin, L C S W, as in licensed clinical social worker.com. And on my website, you can find links to my books, my TEDx talk, uh, as well as a link to my podcast, Mentally Stronger with therapist Amy Morin.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yes, and everyone, just go follow Amy. She's go get her books, everything. She's awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. Oh, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Yay, and thank you everyone for tuning in. I'm looking forward to the next exciting conversation, and I really hope you join me next time. Thanks for tuning in to the A New Insight Podcast. Please remember the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. You can find us anywhere podcasts are streaming, on YouTube at myda new.insight, and at anewinsight.com under the Anu Insight Podcast tab. And follow us on our socials at mydanew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates. Tune in next time and Evolve With Us.