🧠 Mental Health & Wellbeing Expert, Mitch Wallis on How to Connect Better with The People Around You & Live a Meaningful Life 🤗

This week, I sit down with the legend himself, Mitch Wallace—  world-class mental health advocate and author of Real Conversations.

We break down the real relationships, communication, and self-growth. If you've ever felt stuck in your feels or unsure how to communicate your needs without sounding like a drama queen, this episode is for YOU.

What’s Inside This Episode:

✨How to have tough conversations without feeling awkward.
✨Should parents cry in front of kids?
✨Why trying to change others is a losing battle.
✨ How to navigate "outgrowing" someone in a relationship
✨Why Boundaries Are a Love Language.
✨Why using “I” statements is your secret weapon and how to know when it’s time to pivot.
✨"Go Towards the Pain." Why real growth starts when you face the hard stuff head-on instead of avoiding it.


If this convo sparked something for you, comment 216. 💕
🎧 Get Mitch’s book Real Conversations  

As always, please don't forget to hit Subscribe! xxx

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Music. Welcome to the mind school, the classroom for your mind and soul, where we design our lives from the inside out.

Intro: 0:19

Here you will find a human first approach to life, business and relationships, to create freedom, growth and constant evolution through mindset, emotional intelligence, leadership and connection to self. I'm your host, Breanna may educator, CEO mindset and business mentor, and my mission is to teach the things we were never taught at school so that no dream is left on the pillow and no purpose left unfulfilled. Here, you can expect a lot of laughs and thought provoking conversations

Unknown: 0:51

as we squeeze every drop of juice from this beautiful, precious, crazy thing called life.

Intro: 0:59

Welcome back to the mind school podcast. I am over the moon, literally so excited to introduce to you today's guest, Mitch Wallace is somebody who I divinely stumbled across when I was actually listening to a podcast a few months ago around fertility and grief and hard conversations and all of those kinds of things. And I heard Mitch speaking on this podcast, and I instantly resonated with him. And upon doing a little bit of research about just how well acclaimed and what a leader in the field he is, I just had to have him on the podcast. So Mitch Wallace is literally the the goat. He is one of the top thought leaders in the world in mental health. He has a master's in psychology, and he is a founder of charities such as heart on my sleeve, which is a global mental health movement that helps people drop the brave face and be real about how they feel. He is now an author, and he's just released a book, which I'm going to share in the show notes, which I highly, highly, highly recommend that everybody reads. It is an incredible book. He is one of the best and most accomplished keynote speakers. He delivers to 10s of 1000s of people, including some of the most recognized companies in the world, such as AmEx, Amazon, Google, KPMG and so many more, and you can just tell from his heart and his personal story how deeply invested he is in his mission to change the way the world feels. So in this conversation, we spoke about his journey into this line of work, what was his personal struggles or experiences with his own diagnosis at the age of seven, and how he found a way to turn that pain into his purpose. We talked about what is emotional intelligence and why it is so important, and he spoke about this from the lens of emotional intelligence as a parent, emotional intelligence as a business owner, emotional intelligence as a friend, and how deeply influential it is on our overall happiness, satisfaction and connection to life. We talked about how to have tough conversations and lead with the heart. He showed so many distinctions, which I think was just so incredible, distinctions between types of relationships where it's more you know, it's more helpful to be vulnerable, and other types of relationships where you actually need to be strong. He touched on the nuance between the difference between being real and being raw, and where some is more important to be very conscious of when it is not appropriate. He spoke about what to avoid when holding space for somebody, a friend, a colleague, a family member, a husband, a child who is going through tough times. He spoke about the differences between men and women in this space, and we spoke about what to do in relationships or marriages when one partner can't come to the table and meet you where you are at we spoke about so so much and what I just love, like I said, his heart. I love his soul. I love the way he speaks. I love the way he cuts through the noise and makes everything so clear and so actionable. So I hope you love I know you will love this conversation as much as I did. Please do us both are solid. And if you enjoyed this, share it with somebody who you think would need to hear it, who would benefit from it or tag us in your stories. And we would, we would just love to connect with you, to share it, and to Yeah, hear that it helped another person out there in the universe on his mission. So

Unknown: 4:43

without further ado, here is Mitch Wallace. I am joined by Mitch Wallace, and I just said before we hit record, I haven't been this excited about an interview since I interviewed Lael stone. So that's where I'm putting, Mitch. I'm just so excited to have you here. And thank. You so much for being here, Breanna, it's my absolute pleasure, and I know we're going to talk about conversations today, particularly as it relates to helping someone through a mental health issue. And I just want to start off by acknowledging that in my book, I write about that like 99% of having a real conversation is the energy that you bring, not the words that you say, and how that is actually the bedrock of psychological safety, and we're often unaware of the brand and the vibe that we're putting out. And I just want to say that your vibe is incredibly warm and inviting. So thank you for leading by example. Thank you. That's beautiful. And I want to start with, it's a Monday morning. I always ask guests to start the week, it's perfect. What is something that you are celebrating or something that you are grateful for right now? Good question. I try and do gratitude as a frequent and ongoing part of my everyday routine, but maybe I'll tell a story. So at the moment, the wallpaper of my phone is some Jacaranda trees. And it's because I had a moment a week ago where I had just, I just moved into a new apartment here in Sydney that I love and and I went for did work in the morning, went for a run, came back, had a swim, and then I was eating lunch at the local kiosk, where the guy knows my name. And, you know, it feels very community focused. And I sat down, and I took a moment where I inhaled, and I looked out at the jacarandas, and I thought for the next seven seconds, everything is perfect. And that didn't mean that my life is exactly where I want it to be in every domain, but it meant that it's even with it flawed, I couldn't ask for anything more. You know, my family is healthy in this moment in time. My best friends love Me with their whole heart. I'm doing purpose driven work, and it's progressing. It might not be at the Everest, but it's growing. I'm physically healthy. I Yeah, little things like, I love where I live. I just bought a new car, like milestones, but most importantly, my mental health is where it's at, and I feel peaceful and joyful and the capacity to experience the full gamut of emotions, which for a long time I wasn't able to do, because I was so debilitated. So I took that photo and reminded myself that everything might fall apart in 30 minutes, but right now, in this moment, it's all perfect, and so I'm grateful for the chapter that I'm currently in. And what is something that is a challenge for you right now? A challenge would probably be staying in the middle of ambitious and grateful. Yeah, tell me more about that. I think that moment that I just spoke about is more of a softening than what my brain is hardwired to do, because it's usually go, go, go, achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, fill the void with accomplishments. And although that's far less present, the more healing I do, particularly in the last six years, which has been like a super fucking trajectory of therapy and, you know, a whole life evolution. But there is inherently in me as a type A overachiever that found a lot of identity from that a need to do. And I think my challenge is finding that tightrope of using that as an asset without turning into a curse that feels like the curse of every Type Ia person. It's that staying grounded while still wanting and desiring evolution all the time. You feel that agree so you are obviously extremely passionate about mental health, about emotional intelligence, about wearing your heart on your sleeve, real conversations and all of those beautiful things. I'd love to know the why behind your story. What was it that drove you to this place that you are now? My why is that I wanted to prevent as many people as possible going through the pain that I'd experienced, and my kind of a derivative or a build on that? Why is that I refuse to believe that life is 51% evil, and so what I mean by that is like I had experienced such severe suffering from the age of like seven years old, having acute obsessive compulsive disorder that would see me take hours to leave my bedroom because I'd have to touch a light switch hundreds of times and blink in certain patterns and pray out loud and repeat and have these combustible, intrusive thoughts that made me believe that I was possessed by the devil, which I then only repressed and further grew into depersonalization disorder, generalized anxiety, depression and then eventually suicidal ideation, that by the time I hit rock bottom, which I thought was the end, but was actually the clearing of the start, I. Me. I just could not believe that I'd gone through all that for nothing. I wasn't allowed to compute that that was going to be an outcome. So in order to at least create my own story that the world is 51% good, I made it my mission to help one person not go through what I'd been through. And that's what I do every morning, is I get up and try and do another effort in terms of investing in another person. And I made a pact with with God, which sounds weird, but in my darkest hour, I literally looked up at the sky and I'm like, I don't see a way out of this, other than dying, but if, for whatever reason, I don't die, I promise you I'll devote every waking minute to giving back in this space and being your servant. But you can't break me to smithereens, otherwise I can't serve at all. So part of it is also just like fulfilling the pact. Oh, that is insanely purpose driven. And actually, how old were you when you were diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder? Seven, seven or eight? What was that like as a seven or eight year old, and how did you find a way to make that or did you, I guess you did. Now, what was your journey into turning that diagnosis into something that you mined for treasure and gold. I remember walking out the front of the doctor's office that day and looking up at my mom, my best friend, my life raft, and asking her, why, why is my brain broken? And she started to cry, and I vividly still can go back to that moment of being like, okay, Something's very wrong here, and I need to put on a mask so that I don't hurt the person that I love most in the world. And so I disorganized in a big way, and I splintered, and I wouldn't talk to anyone about it, except mum for the following probably 1520, years. However, I still did whatever I could to pretend, even to her, that I was fine in moments where I wasn't. And as I said, it took until breaking point where I would be forced to reconcile that and so to kind of keep going on. How did you then turn it into gold? That's a it's a longer story, but the short version is in a moment where I thought I was ready to end it all, other than I always say I'm like, my mom's love was like the life raft that kept me afloat, but I still needed a wave to bring me to shore. And I saw a YouTube video online of a guy wearing his heart on his sleeve, and it was the first time ever that I thought to myself, someone has been where I've been, and they really do understand it at a first person level. And for some reason, it was like unlocking the keys to this prison cell that I've been in my whole life, where I thought that I'm broken, I'm unlovable, I'm crazy and and that he made me believe that a new reality was was possible, and that I could step into the lead character part of my narrative, and that he wasn't by any means, the evaporation of suffering, but I believe that most of us will spend our entire life oscillating on the outside of ourselves, disconnected from our reality because we're running away from pain, and largely the thing that's trying to protect us but ends up being our worst Enemy is the emotion of shame. You know, shame is the is the thing is kind of like the the swelling that goes around a physical wound is there to to protect it in some way. But a lot of the main reason people, I saw gladiator two last night and and they said that most people don't die out there in the stadium. They die from the infections from the cuts that they get within the fighting. And I feel like there was a kind of a metaphor to mental health is like OCD depression. That's not what buries people. It's the infection that comes around. It usually that of shame. And when we see ourselves in someone else, in our whole truth, it doesn't necessarily, you know, heal the broken bone underneath, but what it does do is a clear a whole bunch of suffering and b Give us the means to be able to heal from the inside out properly, once and for all. And so I kind of just want to be Harris, this random YouTuber who I've never met for for someone else, every day when I wake up. Have you ever told Have you reached out to this, this YouTuber? Yeah, I get asked that a lot. I reached out to him once in 2017 after I first saw his story. And he's not like a famous person, you wouldn't know of him. He's a couple 100 views on the video type thing. True miracle that I stumbled across it, but he didn't write back. And that was so helpful for two reasons. The first was that it showed me now, as someone who works full time in this space, that you don't have to have a one on one clinical relationship with someone to be helpful like I now use education platforms at scale. I have charities that work at scale. They're all extensions of me and my want to be helpful. Yeah, and and he by putting his story online, that was enough like, which leads me to part two. Not only did he teach me through that, that you don't have to get back to everyone, it's important to have boundaries and let your work do the heavy lifting, but also that his humanity would almost certainly let down his archetype, like what he represented was so much more important than who he actually is. So there's only coming down from there once I made him so it's enough for now. Mm, and you mentioned something that I'm quite curious about, is when you got the diagnosis and you're a seven year old boy and you see your mom cry. That then led to, oh, I don't want to hurt her. I now want to protect her. I'll make sure that I'm all good and I'm okay because I'm causing pain to my mother, who's my best friend, and I don't want to cause her pain. How does that now relate from the research and the study that you've done for parents who are caring for their children and feel their feel their feelings so deeply. What's the advice there when parents are feeling their kids pain or their own pain, are we doing the right thing when we cry in front of them? No, absolutely not. So there's one relationship that selfishly in the whole world should be one way, and that is, parent to child. Every other relationship in your life should be two way now asterisk when the when the parent returns to a child state in older years, that is when the baton maybe might hand over to now, a reversed one way relationship, but by virtue of the psychological need for the parent to be vertical from you, not a power, power balanced. And also by the by the spiritual law that a child didn't ask to be here and is owed nothing. They didn't consent to the to life. You know that that we that we aren't responsible for our parents emotions, so the way that we should be raising kids in well, at least according to literature. And actually, let me change the word should, because it's quite a shameful word and it's loaded. So I'm going to say we might steer our our behavior in a direction toward that of inner healing, so that parents don't accidentally bleed on their children that didn't cut them because of unresolved trauma and stories that they, quote, unquote, don't have the time or the willingness to actually heal. But in fact, that lack of willingness is going to be hurting the person you want to hurt least. So I always say there's no easy shortcuts here. It's the hard work that will pay off, which is you going to therapy, you working on your attachment style, you creating the right lifestyle habits, you selfishly protecting your self care so that you can become selflessly abundant to others, having the right boundaries. I would say first of all, parents, Job is an inside out path. Second thing is that we can still absolutely role model vulnerability without turning the roles in reverse. And so what I mean by that is I don't think you should ever cry in front of your children in real time, particularly not below the age of probably 12, just like how a manager during a massive restructure and layoffs shouldn't be like, Holy fuck, I don't know if I've got a job, and then the employees are like, Okay, well, what do we do now? We're going to go into chaos, right? That's anarchy. However, we also don't want leaders of organizations, just like leaders of families, also known as parents, to be robotic and wear steel arm around all the time. In the book, in my book real conversations, I write about the difference between real and raw, and how real is in service to others. Roar is in service to self, and roar is helpful when you yourself need assistance, right? So a parent is human. They're going to need help, hopefully on a somewhat daily basis if they're going through it, you know. So that means they should absolutely cry, and they should wear their heart on their sleeve, and they should take their emotional bleeding, but they should take that horizontally or up, which means to their partner, to their friends, to their therapist, to their colleagues, to their family, so that they can get help, help for that real is when we want to be in service to others, which is, as a parent, showing the child that it's okay to have emotions, it's okay to cry by saying, Here's a story. When it's blue sky, when there's solid ground, show them your scars, not the wound, if it's still passing, it's not time to show that to your kids. It's time to tell your children about the time that you had that scar, that where you got that scar from. I was crying. I was upset. I was there. Now, now, eventually, once we get into our later teenage years, it might come closer to active role modeling, where you do express emotions in front of your child in a contained way. But Every parent knows the difference between expressing in front of them in a safe way that's age appropriate, and I'm falling into my child to hopefully be my savior. That's when the bad thing happens, when there's a felt sense of I need to caretake for you, I love the distinction there too, between raw and real. Yeah, real and I feel like, in some respects, vulnerability almost feels like, and I should say, rawness, feels like it's kind of been weaponized in the online space to get more clicks. And I've been spending a lot of time thinking about whether or not that's a healthy thing. I love that there's a real push for vulnerability, but I'm seeing it used sometimes in a weaponizing way, where it's like, just be vulnerable for the sake of being vulnerable. Be raw for the sake of being raw. Because it gets more clicks to me, that actually feels unhealthy. Have you got any thoughts on that in the online world? Yeah, absolutely agree. Breanna. And I think it's kind of like, you know, honesty is the best policy. It's like, Yeah, but don't be a dick. So, you know, vulnerability is the best policy, yeah, but also, don't do that without some safety, because otherwise you might injure someone in the process. So honestly, at all costs, is just a lazy way of saying that. I'm not going to put any context into this and actually use discretion. It's honesty, but I'm going to do some math around is this helpful? Is this the right time, place, person? How do I address this? There's a difference between hiding and repressing something and just being, like, rude and not, you know, having any filter at all. And so I think you know, if we relate that back to vulnerability, that we can wear our heart on our sleeve. And my charity with the same name has an E Learning course around well, how do you know when it's the right time to share? Am I doing it for me or someone else? What's my seed of intent here? How do I get really curious about the payoff of this vulnerability? And you know, brenae Brown, the queen of this stuff, talks about that true sharing of vulnerability is always a good thing, but if you haven't shared it with your closest people in a safe way first, then you probably shouldn't be sharing it in a public setting with people you don't know love it. And your book, which you've mentioned to me, the book, is a bible of skills in the realm of emotional intelligence, and that's a huge cornerstone of a lot of your research, a lot of your work, a lot of what you do. Would you mind in your words defining for us, emotional intelligence, the ability to feel someone's internal world instead of think on their behalf? I have not heard that definition. I love it me either. I just made it up. Then I intuited it. But that's like also kind of the EQ model is the ability to trust your gut, your intuition and your emotions as much as you trust your reason, logic and intelligence. And you know, even in business, I'm not negligent by the fact that I throw away numbers I have OCD there's Excel out the wazoo. But truly, the main decisions I make as someone that now works with some of the biggest companies in the world, and somehow I'm earning more money than what I did at Microsoft in a big way, which is was never my intention. But here we are, and my for profit business now funds, my not for profit charity, and there's this whole orchestra of beauty has kind of created out of that. The best decisions I make in business, or intuition, intuition based. And so for me, emotional intelligence. At the heart of it lies this word that we don't often discuss, called attunement. And attunement is our interoceptive which means our internal emotional awareness ability. So like, I know that I'm feeling something because my chest is burning, and therefore I know that that means I'm angry or my hands are trembling, which means I'm nervous. I have an interoceptive body awareness of my emotional state, and I use that as almost a tuning fork to dial in to the state of someone else in real time. And emotional intelligence isn't just an afterthought. It's not a fad. It's part of our nervous system. We literally have mirror neurons in the brain, which is the reason why I have any sense of what it's like to be Breanna. I you know when you give me, unless you're a diagnosable sociopath psychopath, where you're just literally emulating someone's facial expressions and going, I guess, based on years of seeing this, when you raise your eyebrow that that associates a certain emotion, if you don't have psychopathy or sociopathy, then you are feeling, literally in your internal body, the same emotion as what someone else is, because you rebuild their state In yours as a proxy to relate to them. So emotional intelligence lies at the very center of who we are as humans. And you know, if we go back anatomically speaking, we are social, emotional creatures that have learned how to think, not the other way around. So our hardware has bias toward EQ. It's just that the modern. An era and the rapid development of the human condition has been so intellectually focused, but at the core, we must have honor and respect for our essence, which is that of a feeling being so for me, it's kind of calling back to that inside out work. If you want to become more emotionally intelligent toward others, then you build a better understanding of your own emotional world. And why is it important that we do this? If, if you had to make an argument that emotional intelligence is one of the most important skills that we can learn as young people, as adults, as leaders, as parents, as business owners, why should we because emotional intelligence lies at the heart of our ability to connect and our ability to thrive and survive in life is directly in relation to our ability to connect with others successfully. So let me say that in a more simplified way, relationships are the heartbeat of life, personally and professionally, they're the number one thing that keeps us happy and the number one thing that prevents us from being sad. So research has proven Harvard's longitudinal study called the Grand study, the number one predictor of a high quality life, more than socioeconomic factors, race, religion, location is who you have in it, so the number one thing that prevents us from being unhappy as well is the quality of your relationships. Because a meta analysis of over 10,000 PTSD patients showed that it's someone's ability to feel supported before, during and after the trauma that has more of an impact on their downstream symptoms than the frequency or size of the trauma itself. So the degree to which you're supported through something is more of a determinant of your later suffering than experiencing the thing itself. So our ability to have supportive relationships are our greatest chance of having a good life and preventing a bad life outside of our genetic predispositions to mental illness. So but, but so many of us don't know how to connect. We just know how to talk, and my book is all about that nuance of partitioning and teasing out what talking is, which is from our mouth, using our IQ, trying to fix problems and connecting, which is using our heart, hearing someone, allowing them to feel understood, without solving their issues, without making it about you, without Silver Lining it and being an optimist, without freaking out, without burying your head in the sand so that we can feel what it's like to be loved again. Because I think a lot of us know what it's like to be cared for in a very practical sense, but so many people are lonely at our soul level because we don't feel known because we've lost the ability to vulnerably sit in the mud with others. So it's kind of a long way of saying. It seems like a abstract concept to build a cue and embed connection as a core skill, but it's very, very scientific process of the single best thing you can do to help someone else in their life is learn how to love them in the right way. And something that I've come up against, I've I'm a big proponent. I do a lot of advocacy around changing the curriculum in Australia, and this is going in the school context. A lot of the kickback that I get when I present in the media or anything like that is EQs new age for a bunch of hippies, we're here to teach arithmetic. We're here to teach maths and English and Science and that sort of school of thought. And my argument to that is always it's not a case of one or the other. It's a case of one helping and supporting and complementing the other. My belief is that when we nurture EQ, people tend to perform better academically and can access their IQ, because if you walk into an exam and you can't regulate your emotions because you have stories saying there's too much pressure, I can't do this. If I fail, I'm I'm a failure. It doesn't matter how I how much IQ you have if your EQ, if your emotional regulation isn't in check. And what I've found since going from the school path to the Business Path. Same thing. You can have the best strategies, the best launch plan, the amazing spreadsheet, all the KPIs chucked in, and the data and all the right things. But if you can't handle the shame of, oh my gosh, this launch didn't do well, oh my goodness, my client didn't re sign, the same thing happens. Business doesn't grow, because it's our EQ, actually, that seems to be the main block, is that this, am I on the right path there? Absolutely, I would say, for two reasons. A the reason why we educate people, for the most part, other than the right, the human right aspect of it, is that so that they can get a good job and provide for themselves and their family, right? And but you know, the longer you spend in the workforce, the more you try and understand that subject matter expertise, when even more so with the rise of AI that's becoming outsourceable, right? So the thing that you really trade on at work is your ability to collaborate and get stuff done as a team and be highly engaged. And it's not just the things that you do, but it's how you do that thing that. Is as important to you getting a job, keeping a job and getting promoted. So you know, relationship skill building is so key economically. And the best leaders that I've ever seen, and some of the richest people I know, if you want to just put a capitalist lens on it, are those that are best at bringing the best out of people, as opposed to just the writing the code or engineering the bend on the chassis. You know, it's those that know how to create thriving teams, psychologically safe, high performing teams. So there's a, there is a very strong business case for why this should be in the curriculum as a child, so that we can create good business people of the future. But it's also just, I think part of our due diligence on us as humans at the moment is to solve the global warming of the health industry. That is, in my opinion, suicide, whereby, if it's killing more people between the ages of 19 to 45 in Australia than road accidents and heart disease, and it's the number one public health issue facing Western countries, including the US. Then it shows that something at a grassroots level must shift, and things like resilience, mindfulness, self care, connection should be embedded from an earlier age, as opposed to an afterthought or an app that you download as a 30 something year old trying to rectify all the bullshit that's happened for 20 years. Couldn't agree more. And if somebody listening is like, cool, okay, I see, I see the argument. They're still in their head, probably logically, this makes sense. I should be a more intelligent, emotionally intelligent, safe, psychologically safe, human. How does one start? Plug, buy my book. Real conversations, I always follow that up with, no one's getting rich off a book, trust me. You know, in the corporate space, the reason I made the book is because it's, you know, 25 $30 piece of material that most workplaces will pay $1,000 a person to put through the workshop and the program. So like this is so that people can have it for very, very cheap and get access to these EQ tools, literally down to the sentences as to what to say when someone is needed the most, when they're experiencing the highest level of emotional pain. But outside of that, I think, you know, I'm beating on a dead horse here, but sometimes you need to tell someone a message seven to 11 times before it starts to sink in, do the work internally. Get curious around what parts are within me that feel unresolved, that I might have to lift the hood up on and pay attention to, and usually under the guidance of a therapeutic practitioner, whether that's counselor, psychologist or otherwise, you will get the best results 100% of the time, that will pay off. Now, it doesn't mean that 100% of the time you'll get that fit on the right on the first go. You know, if you go to a counselor and you're like, Oh, that wasn't the right person, it doesn't mean the process is broken. It just means that wasn't the right person on the first go, just like how your high school partner might not be your forever husband or wife. You know, it takes some time before you're like, Yeah, chemically, this is working, so get curious internally would be my biggest call to action. And for the people who are wanting to make sure that they're being a psychologically safe human and they're supporting friends in the mud, you've already mentioned things like problem solving, optimism, all of these things that many people might think that's really helpful. What are the things that people get? Quote wrong, and I don't want to use the word wrong in a shameful way, but what are the do nots of trying to hold space for someone when they're really in the mud? Yeah, and shout out to you for for calling out the the lack of wanting to not wanting to shame people, Breanna, because I think that sometimes we are so scared of getting it wrong that we double down on our less helpful ways, because shining light onto the mishaps or mistakes causes so much pain that it's easier to sit in the familiar poor behavior. Donald Winnicott, who's a British pediatrician, said that you only need to get it right 30% of the time with your children for them to grow up well adjusted. And I think that's a pretty true law. If, even in my book, I say, if you can get this right one of three, when you're having emotional conversations with people, you're doing bloody well. So I came up with five characters of disconnection in my book that I try and help people avoid. And it feels counterintuitive, but, you know, we contrast a transactional conversation, which is what people are usually already very good at, the problem solving, fixing type, with a real conversation, which is the technology that's used when it's emotional based to be effective, and that it might be like shit I feel like I'm wearing my shoes on the opposite feet, and that's probably the sign that you're in the right territory. So mistake number one is being a magician, where you wave the magic wand thinking that I can take someone's pain away by. Giving them a solution, when actually what they're looking for is your care and your love. And not only are you not giving them help, you're you're probably making them feel worse because you're signaling to them that you're a broken object in need of repair and that you can't do it on your own. And this the kind of lonely, guilt ridden, shame filled part of ourselves that just wanted to be heard and trusted, that when it's loved enough, it can solve itself, starts to recluse even more into that moment. So like you know, the number one reason I see people stuck in magician mode is because they don't trust the power of listening and just caring because they feel negligent if they don't impart the perfect piece of wisdom, and until someone fully knows that listening is the core intervention of an emotional problem, and that's proven in research in therapy, even when therapists who have the practical tools they've gone to school for it, listening is being shown to be the most powerful element of therapy, more than the practical tools. So if you're not a therapist and you don't have the practical tools, it's even more important to stay in the most helpful thing, which is to provide someone the psychologically safe conditions of understanding. But also the reason we stay in magician mode is that we mislabel something as practical when it's emotional. And I like to use the example in a partnership context, where your husband, wife, significant other, comes home and says, I'm feeling really distant from you at the moment, and you respond with, well, let's go for dinner on Saturday night, and you weren't in a practical conversation just then. That was an emotional conversation that we've mislabeled. What they wanted to hear was that sounds hard. How long have you felt that? And why do you think that is they want you to go toward the pain instead of just brush over it and try and take them out of it. And most of the time, the dinner is not even necessary, if you just sit with them in what they want to be understood for. So magician mode, dropping the wand and going toward the pain. Number two is the thief, which is instantly making it about you and saying same on me too. And this has a really positive intent, just like the magician, where, hey, this is my skill of my trade. I've built this. I've been a problem solver my whole life, through school, through work, I've been incentivized and compensated for this tool. And it's not about abandoning that. It's about extending it into a new technology as well. And so, you know, when we're having a real conversation, we want to validate that person's experience before we get anywhere close to our own territory. So instead of, you know, just jumping in with a story of your own, it's saying, you know, that sounds hard, and I know that whenever I speak up and someone immediately jumps in the story of their own, especially if it's really heavy, I feel compelled to be there for them when I don't have the calories right now to do that. And I thought that this was the time that I get to lean on you for this moment. You can lean on me in five minutes time. But Can, can I just have a moment to lean first? It's getting curious before we shift into the same in me too. The third is the blind optimist, where we Silver Line and sugar coat things that just needs to be heard. And I think we do this because we we conflate acknowledgement as agreement. We think that if we let something be that we endorse or condone that person's behavior or that situation, that they're wrong, when actually you're just sitting with truth. Anything but sitting with truth is technically delusion, so we're delusionally constantly trying to tell someone how to think different instead of meeting what is now. That's not to say that we want to encourage a generation of victims that roll round in their own wallowing, but that's a very black and white mindset. There's a middle ground between the the wallowing and the constantly delusional shift to not sitting with truth, which is called meeting someone at point A before you guide them to point B. The fourth mistake is the helicopter, which is freaking out when someone needs you to just be a stable, objective, listening hardest role, not to be a helicopter as a parent, because we embody the child's emotions so much, which is very understandable, but if you take a physical injury as an example, if your child fell off their bike and brought their graze to you, and they're crying saying, you know, look at what just happened. If you just cried back, the child's going to be like, oh, so there's no difference between me and you. The world is chaos. We're enmeshed. But if you didn't acknowledge the Grays at all, they'd be like, the world is completely unsafe and rigid. And I'm going to have to do this on my own. The emotional world is the same. If you bring if they're bleeding out and emotionally and you freak out, you will make the blood rush faster out of that wound. You have to be contagious with calm. Now it doesn't mean that you need to be a robot, because I have a charity called heart on my sleeve. I am the definition of advocating for. Emotional expression of authenticity. What I am saying is that when someone is in emotional distress, yes, you better be strong. And the moment that ends, you should lean on someone else and distribute that emotional labor to them, where they be strong for you, and then someone be strong for them, and the whole system will work fine if we domino it. What when it doesn't work is when we hold it all to ourselves, or we can't be an island of sovereignty, because separateness is as important to as togetherness, just like how Yin needs Yang, individuality needs relationship. But when we over over index on one side is when the seesaw gets out of whack, so helicopters is counted by internal stability and choosing water over gasoline. The fifth mistake is the ostrich, which is where we bury our head in the sand and go I opt out of the whole EQ thing. It's just not my bag. It's just not who I am. And that is just a cop out. It means that you're not courageous enough to look internally and see how you can grow, because all humans can meet that moment, and we can all see it in a little bit of discomfort, you know, like, I think ostriches sometimes, and trying not to shame, but just being honest in a kind way that is filtered right now is that ostriches have this really good intent to be, like, I don't want to press on a sore spot. But actually, by not bringing it up and avoiding it all together, you kind of make it a heavier burden for someone to hold on their own. And that a lot of the time we're trying to say, harden up. You know? We shouldn't need to talk about that. But it's actually, ironically, the fear of sitting with an uncomfortable emotion that's making us ostrich in the first place, which isn't very courageous. You know, it's the ability to say, I don't even know what to say, but I'm here to listen and that I won't make this go away, and that I won't bury my head in the sand, that you are grieving this person, or that you are going through this breakup, and I know that I don't need to fix it. I just need to hold space for it. Instead of handing that tissue, it's just telling someone to take that take their time, so they're the five things that are less helpful when the most helpful response is to lean into the pain, to listen and to hear them out. Is there a I'm being massively general. I'm generalizing now. Is it often men who go more towards the ostrich and the problem solving, and maybe women who go into, oh my gosh, I'm going to feel everything with you. I'm totally projecting from my own experiences here. But is there some sort of correlation with gender here? I would say to use your words and agree with your point that you know as a generalization. Yes, I think there, there is that trend. And the reason is, is because those two characters speak into the heart of attachment styles. Again, massive generalization, and not necessarily true, but an anxious attachment style, anxious, preoccupied women are slightly more likely to to experience, which is that you know, in meshment, you and me, and I am you and I'm selflessly putting your needs above mine, and but that as a result, means that I don't get my own needs met, probably as much. My self respect goes down and blah, blah, blah, I don't say no when I really want to. And men lean out of vulnerability and connection life's greatest medicine, and what makes it three dimensional and worth living and and kind of say I'm putting this at arm's reach, and I'm actually fearful of what I could feel. Should I let my heart be on my sleeve, and that it is that dismissive, avoidant nature? So that's probably why, more than anything, is it speaks to an attachment style thing than it does a gender thing. I've honestly never had so many requests from my clients, who are mostly women, for more programs for men, and I hear so often I really, really want my husband to meet me, but he just won't. I'm doing all this growth, I'm doing all this healing, I'm learning all of these things. I'm I'm wanting my husband to meet me, and he won't. Do you have any advice for those people about you know, when you're in relation with someone who goes, that's just not my thing. I'm not an emotional guy. It's not really for me. You go, do your thing. What is the advice to the women who are then feeling a little bit either lonely or resentful? First of all, it's really natural to feel both those feelings, lonely, loneliness and resentment in in relationships. So I just want to validate that. Second thing is that I do believe that you can't change anyone like that's just a worldview that I come into life with every single day. You can't change anyone, but you can always speak up for your own needs. And I think the one of the tools that's most helpful, and I unpack this at length in the book, is when you're feeling like you can't attach to someone in a stable way, and you'd like conditions to be different, separate feelings from behaviors, right? So let's say you're on this growth journey where you want to feel more peace and more. Happiness and more purpose, but your partner isn't going on that same journey as you. Well, you have no right to tell them they should be feeling more of a certain thing right. You only have a right to comment on the behaviors that affect you. So it is totally understandable to look at a values based discussion and be like, are we values aligned? If you aren't on an exploration of joy and peace and blah blah. That's one side, which is, is there compatibility? That's okay to have a compatibility discussion, but don't make them wrong for not feeling more of an emotion that you personally want to feel, that is your journey, feel, do your thing, right? So compatibility is one thing where you are more in like a defensive position, and where you're like, is this beyond compatibility, but it's, you know, impacting my life. Is that the way that they behave? And so if their behaviors are, well, they're going out and they're, you know, drinking until all hours and not texting me and coming home late, and I'm trying to talk to them about that, and they're saying that's not for me, or that I would like certain things to happen that will help, you know, make me happy and satisfied, and that's not happening in the behaviors. Then aren't congruent, then it's around working with them on, well, do you have willingness and capacity to meet me on this behavior because of x, y, z, and I actually have sentence stems in the book that can help guide that conversation around how to set boundaries or invite people into your boundaries. If you're letting someone feel whatever they want to feel like, for example, you can't ever say someone don't be mad. You say, Don't yell. They can they, if someone's feel angry, sad, whatever it's their fucking life. It's how the behavior affects you that you get a say on that. If someone is constantly has a low willingness and low capacity, because they're two different things to meet your needs, and those needs are high in that you're not willing to compromise or pivot on them, then you should be thinking about, is this the right person for me? And that's okay you, because there's only two ways mathematically that's getting worked out, they meet you more, or you reduce your need more to get into a green zone, right? We're in perpetual we're going from green to orange to red. The only way to get from red or orange back to green is the knee reduces or the behavior improves. That's it. And you made the distinction there, which I think is a really good point, the difference between willingness and capacity. Could you just expand on that a little? Yeah. So your partner in that example, might have high willingness, low capacity, which means I really want to do better, but like, my ability to, like, grow and stick to things, or, you know, change my behavior is just really low. I'm just not good at this. I've never seen it role model in the past. Like I really want to do better, but I just can't seem to get it right. The inverse is also true, which is low willingness, high capacity. I'm really good at learning stuff. I at work, I get promoted really quickly based on feedback, but in this romantic relationship, I'm choosing not to do that. So and then there's both, where you get low willingness, low capacity, which is, I don't want to, and I can't even if I wanted to, and then there's high willingness, high capacity, which is, I really want to and I'm capable of doing it. And that would be the green light. That would be the best conditions if someone has in the early doors. I think high willingness is more important than capacity, because to some extent, capacity can be learned. And when there's high willingness, it shows that the right seeds of intent are there as well. And I think it goes back to what you said exactly. Your main message at the start was somebody is going to be more willing to open up and do the uncomfortable thing, more willing when you're a safe space that's not shaming, blaming and pointing fingers, because you've done the work to be a grounded and safe human, yeah, yeah. And so in that, in that example, it would be that I'm not making you wrong because you're not on the same journey as me. What I am doing is speaking from the eye. Here's what I would love more of because of it, would support me in giving them a payoff and an incentive and making those behaviors like achievable and realistic and yeah, aligning to because it's something that's important to you versus something you want to change in them, like, because whenever a finger comes out and points in that direction, they will double down on their position, even if they don't agree with it, purely out of, like, certainty bias and negative bias to defend what's known, because the ego will come out. Mitch, I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours, but I'm so conscious. I'm so conscious of your time. So I want to wrap this up and change gears very quickly. And this is a rapid fire sort of question. So whatever comes first is perfect. If today was your last day on earth, and you had one message that you were going to impart your gift to the world, what was the message that you would share with the world? It's always the same four words go towards the pain every single thing I've ever learned in psychology, through my lived experience, through my master's degree, through starting a charity, through speaking around the world, just living generally, research, blah, blah, blah. It seems to be, in my opinion, that. But almost every psychological payoff will happen when you go toward the pain instead of walk away from it. If there's a hard part, you gotta go through it, not around it. I love it, and we're going to just drop the mic right there. Thank you so so much for being here. Where can people find you and where is the best place? We spoke a little bit about your preference or your suggestion for how people could consume your book. Would you mind just sharing that on here? I think people would love to hear it. Yeah, you can get the physical version at any good book retailer, just type real conversations. Audio book just came out, which I personally think is rad, because I read it and so therefore you'll hear it in the way that I heard it in my own head when I was writing it. You can go to Mitch wallace.com Wallace is with an is not an A, C, E. We're one of the weird subtypes of the Wallace clan on all the socials. I've got a podcast and all that good stuff, guys. I'll put all of it in the show notes. And once again, Mitch from a personal lens, I just want to say thank you so so much. Wow. Oh, the camera's like, Wow. You said we were done. Yeah, thank you. I am very, very passionate about the work you're doing, particularly in schools and with principals, and I think that that's going to change generations to come. And I'm just, I'm really, truly grateful for someone like you in the world doing this work. I'm grateful for you hosting conversations like this. Breanna, really appreciate it. Thank

Intro: 52:10

you. Thank you for tuning in to the mind school podcast. It is a massive intention of mine to continue to grow this show, because the more the show grows, the better the guests get. And I know that is going to be so powerful for you listening. So if I could ask this massive favor, it would mean the world if you could please leave a review, hit the Follow button, or leave a rating on Spotify, so that we can continue to grow this show and bring you the juiciest, most thought provoking and expansive conversations through incredible guests. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week. You.