Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Why You’re Always Exhausted (Even When You’re Not Working) – w/ Dr. Guy Winch, Part 1

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Work has a way of following us home—replaying that one frustrating meeting, stealing our attention from the people we love, and turning Sunday night into a countdown to stress. In this conversation with psychologist Guy Winch, we talk about why switching off feels so hard, and what actually helps when work starts to take over your life.We get practical about breaking rumination, handling that end-of-weekend dread, protecting your energy, and staying in that “just enough stress” zone where you can still function without burning out. This is the first half of a two-part conversation. In this one, we’re focused on your professional life; next week, we’ll dive into burnout in your love life.---►► Preorder your copy of Dr. Guy Winch’s new book Mind Over Grind (which will arrive in bookstores on Feb. 10) at guywinch.com/books/mind-over-grind►► Head to CozyEarth.com before February 8 and use my code LOVELIFEBOGO to get PJs for you and someone you love.►► Ask me anything at AskMH.com—try it for free to get instant answers now via voice or text. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am so excited for you to hear this interview. We actually ended up covering so much ground. We broke it into two parts because in the conversation, we talked about work and we talked about love. So how do you deal with it with practical strategies when work overwhelms you and when you feel like you're burning out in a workplace setting and workers dominated your life? But then we go on to talk about burnout in your love life. we are going to save the love life portion as a part two for next week on the podcast this week's is going to be about your professional life so if you feel that work has gotten to the point of burnout for you you are just grinding it out unhappily or even you have a career that you're

passionate about but it's become something that has become so overwhelming that you can't be passionate about it right now this is for you it's practical it's insightful guys is wonderful at this work. And if you haven't yet, grab a copy of his new book, Mind Overgrind, as well as you're listening to this interview. Enjoy. You catch me at an interesting time, guy, if we're here to talk about mind over grind, the title of your new book and burnout, because I've, you know, as you know, our first son just arrived. And you and I have had many conversations about burnout in the past. And I've asked you for lots of advice in this area.

It's funny, when you announced to me privately that you were writing a book on this, I was like, oh, I've been benefiting from the content of this book for the last two or three years talking to you. If I thought I had a lot on my plate before, it's like this whole new, you know, aspect of life has now landed on our plate, mine and Audreys.

And a friend said to me, something he had a child two years before us and he said his experience was that something had to go. I'm curious what you think of this, but he was like it was either work had to massively decrease, social life had to go or my training had to go. And he was like for a year, my training, I decided that was the thing that was going to have to go. And his conclusion sounded quite depressing to me because I was like, I, you know, I don't really want any of those things to quote, go. So what's your opinion of the give that will have to happen in my life as a result of having a new son? All right, but let's, let's, first of all, congratulations again, because that's super exciting.

But let's distinguish between the first few months, the onboarding, as it were, of your new son. but in general, it's not necessarily that something has to go, but things get combined. And what happens with a lot of parents is the socializing gets folded into the parenting. And they become friends with the friends of their kids. They socialize with other parents of newborns because then they can take care of their babies

and socialize while the babies are doing the same thing, which obviously for the first few months is very little. And so you find ways to kind of do combos a lot of the time without having to give too many things up. At the beginning, though, the first few months, it's a huge, huge, huge adjustment. And not just in terms of time, but obviously psychologically, your whole definition of who you are changes.

That vertical of identity of being a dad now that wasn't in existence before. Suddenly not only becomes another aspect of your identity, but a huge one. So, you know, there are shifts that have to happen psychologically. But part of the, you know, adapting is finding ways to do two things at once. One of the things I really, really love

about your new book is the, I think it's very clever the way it's broken down into days of the week. And I'll let you explain that and how it works, but there's a particular kind of case study of a woman in there who felt a sense of guilt about being present with her child in the evenings, that she would have a very small window, having come back from a very long day at work that mattered a huge amount because it was in her mind the key to unlocking more time with her child in the future. So it was hard for her to minimize that. But she felt guilt around not being present in the evenings.

I have, I would say, I have less guilt in the sense that I feel very grateful to be working from home. I have amazing, my mum is in town right now, Audrey's the most loving mom in the world. Like that baby has so much love that I wouldn't say guilt is the thing I feel by having to go back to work. But I do feel this sense of FOMO of like I'm missing out on my. moments and I'm wondering how what you would say to that feeling of like I'm you know, I'm putting an added pressure on myself to like make the most of every moment, but I work means I don't have nearly as much of many of them as I would like. And also every day he's getting older. So he'll never be the age he was yesterday again. And so how do I process that feeling of like,

you know, I'm missing out in real time? But there's also. So all these responsibilities that I have to take care of. So what most people struggle with, and certainly this person in the book, in the book I only follow five people. I give some stories about my own experience with some of these things, but there are five people. We follow them throughout the book, throughout a certain period in their work life in which they ran into,

in combination, all of the different things and issues that I'm talking about. With her, she had very little time, and she was checked out during that time. She was so caught up still in work thoughts. She was ruminating about work so much that she couldn't enjoy the time she did have. And that's what was so devastating to her. I have so little, and I'm not there. I'm not enjoying it.

I'm not even present. Like an hour goes by, and where was I? Like, I'm doing the tasks, but my mind was somewhere else. That's the thing for most parents. That it's very, very difficult to switch off on a dime. It's very, very difficult to workday ends. Immediately now I'm going to be present, truly present, in whatever I'm doing and be able to switch your mood,

you know, like difficult things happen during the day, to shake that off, to really just kind of shift gears entirely and then be there to enjoy. That's the struggle most people have. Yes, you miss out on moments when you're working. And just to prepare you, there, you know, milestones come and you'll miss out on some of those potentially because, oh, they took the first few steps

and you weren't there to see it. By the way, when I was young, I was doing some babysitting, and they said, oh, the baby's almost walking. And they went out for dinner, and the baby started walking. Toddler started walking. I'm like, oh, no.

This can happen, so they came home, and he was literally walking. I pushed him over. And then he got up, I'm like, oh, look, he's walking. you'll hear for it. You know, like, you must never know.

They cannot know. But that stuff will happen. Yeah. You know. Yeah. The feeling of struggling to switch off from work is something so many people experience. And work takes up so much of most of our lives. Where there three quarters of our week,

it's a bit different to other things that we have to almost switch gears from. or even in some cases break an addiction from because if I'm an alcoholic and I decide to go sober, I can avoid the poison. I can decide I'm never going to go into another bar. I'm not going to have it in the house. But work is necessary for our survival. It's necessary for our income. It's necessary for many of us for our, as you point out in the book, our identity,

not just our sense of safety and shelter and all of those things in the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but the self-actualizing part of Maslow's hierarchy needs. So it's kind of, it feels like we're trying to get sober while living inside the liquor cabinet. How do you do what you're talking about, which is to kind of in some ways, well, reduce our level of stress at the same time as constantly living inside the environment that produces the stress in the first place? And then when we get home, how do we switch gears in the way that you're talking about? So it's actually quite difficult. And you're right.

When you're trying to get over an addiction, you just avoid the thing, how painful as that is. But you try and avoid it and you've avoided it. But ruminations are intrusive thoughts. They're not voluntary thoughts. You're not trying to think about work. You're not trying to think about the meeting where somebody kind of dismissed you with a rude hand gesture. and nobody seemed to mind. You're not trying to think of the boss that said something nasty to you

and was really, really insulting or the client that treated you terribly. You're not trying to think about that. You'd rather not. But your mind is bombarding you with those intrusive thoughts. Again, it's coming from your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind believes work is the most important thing, because that's what you seem to be doing most of the time. Ergo, that must matter most.

So let's keep thinking about that then. And so you actually have to do certain psychological exercises to break off the rumination habit in the moment. And in general, the whole point of writing the book is that we can't really control much of the workplace, but we can control this. And this is where a lot of the damage happens. So if we can improve how we manage ourselves within the workplace, then we can actually get a lot done. We can actually make significant improvements in our stress levels. Now, ruminating about work after work. There's certain things that will make us do it a lot,

like insolvility, rudeness, harassment, bullying, unfairness, there's so much of all of those things in the workplace. The first thing you have to do is recognize that you're actually thinking about things in an unproductive way. How do you know it's unproductive? Because it's making you feel terrible. It's bringing back all the feeling you had in the meeting when that person gave you the dismissive hand gesture

or where the boss said the nasty thing to you or whatever happened, it's making you feel that all over again. And you're not actually trying to do anything with that. You're not trying to figure something out. You are just replaying it over and over again. Either replaying it, another thing that people do for hours on end, fantasy conversations that they'll never have.

I wish I would have said this and I could have said that, and this fantasy of how I would have said this and yelled at them and thrown water back, like, you're never going to do it. It passed already. You're just getting yourself upset. Even if there's a little bit of satisfaction in your mic drop moment at the end, you're getting yourself super activated in the process.

So you have to recognize right now your thought process is not just unproductive, it's actually harmful. Because when you're doing that, you're flooding yourself with cortisol. You are putting yourself in a state of stress and you are at work, essentially. You are working. There were a couple of quotes I wrote down because I just thought they were really, really powerful in relation to rumination that you wrote. Every hour you ruminate is unpaid overtime.

I love that line because I think that line in itself is a kind of intercepting. Yeah, it's annoying to think about it. Yeah, it makes you angry to think, oh yeah, I'm not getting paid to do this, but I'm working for free. And you need to get angry about ruminating. You need to get annoyed that this is what my mind is doing. Because to fight it, you have to do two things. Number one, you have to convert the rumination into productive form of thinking, i.e., is there something I need to do about this thing that I'm ruminating about?

And if so, what is it? And so, dismissive hand gesture from the co-worker. Have they done that before? Do I need to talk to them and say, hey, you can disagree. but don't do this at me. That was rude. Would they be open to that? Did they notice they were doing it?

Was it intentional? That was unusual for them or not? If you start asking yourself, what do I need to do here, if anything? And if I need to do something, what's the result I'm trying to achieve? And if that's the result I'm trying to achieve, what's the most expeditious, easiest, simplest way to achieve it?

Now you're problem solving. Now, instead of just stewing, you're actually figuring out what, if anything, you have to do. And once you have, your stress eases. It doesn't, you know, the rumination increases it. Problem solving it, eases it. And then the other thing you can do,

because ruminations are actually around the emotion that's generated, not around the incident. And then we rumination serve, so it's about unfairness. You think of the other unfair thing happened, and in your old job, there were unfair things that happened, and suddenly it's two hours later, and you went on this greatest hits tour

of unfairness in the workplace, in your experience. You can jump to unfairness outside the workplace. It's terrible. So you want to actually lower that emotional loading a bit by thinking about, you know what, I've been looking for an opportunity to address this coworker because they tend to be rude. And that was so apparently dismissive. And we have it on video because it was, you know, because we take the call.

This gives me an opening to actually have the conversation with them. Let me figure out the best way to have the conversation. And that was a great opportunity then. I'm glad that happened because I can then put an end. to their kind of rude behavior toward me in meetings perhaps. So and that eases the emotion because then it's like, okay, it's not that terrible because now it's going to, it's an opportunity to end the problem. Yeah, yeah. Before we go any further with the video, I want to address a frustration that so many of you have had with me over the years,

and that is that you want your personal question answered by me and there isn't a forum to do it. I even had a woman who was angry at me because she joined me on a webinar and didn't get her her question answered. But the day that I released Matthew AI, she tried it. She emailed me and said, I had tears in my eyes as Matthew AI answered my question because I was finally getting your answer to my specific situation. And that is all I had wanted. Whether you are trying to figure out what to text someone back, how to get over a breakup, how to respond to someone's inconsistency in early dating, how to improve your dating profile, you can do all of that with Matthew A. and you can do it at ask mh.com.

You can get it for just $7 for your entire first month and speak to me for as many hours as you want. So please go try this if you haven't already. Askmh.com is the link. I want to talk about the Goldilocks issue. You said there's a Goldilocks zone of stress. Could you talk about what that is and how in a world where so many of us keep dipping into

the extremes of stress and clearly we're not in the Goldilocks zone we're in a much more destructive zone how can you stay in that place because some amount of stress you say is good it's productive it even works certain muscles yes but we're not good at staying

in that Goldilocks zone the research on stress and performance is that without much stress our performance is not great the stakes are low there's not enough keeping our attention focused So as stress goes up, we actually get better at what we're doing.

And there's a Goldilocks zone where there's just enough stress for us to perform our best. And then stress keeps mounting, our performance begins to decline. Because to manage the mounting stress, we need to allocate bandwidth, mental bandwidth, to managing our emotions so that we don't start, you know, getting flooded. And that takes bandwidth away from our ability to focus. to concentrate to use our executive functioning correctly fully in our thoughtful capacity. And the other thing that happens is we start to mismanage stress. We start to self-sabotage when stress is too great. We start to procrastinate on things we shouldn't, and that actually

expands stress, because now something that would have been stressful for 10 minutes of doing the task. We just put off for two hours and wrestled with doing it, and now we just turned it into a two-hour thing of thinking about it, so we didn't do it, but we still got stressed out from it for two hours, or we, you know, we second-guess ourselves in all of those things. And so, and you and I have had this discussion about both our careers. We both are at points that we sometimes say yes to things that seem like a good idea, albeit this was before you had a kid. And then it took us it a little bit over. And we've had this discussion about, you don't have to dial back significantly just enough to get back towards the Goldilocks

zone, which is super useful to know, because when you are going into the red, people think, like, oh, I have to make this huge correction. How can I? There's too much on my plate. You don't need to make a huge correction. A small one can be enough sometimes, because it brings you just enough relief to get back into the full functioning. Yeah, and you've helped me a lot there because my brain has, you know, I've had a tendency in my life to go straight to this catastrophic, all-or-nothing thinking. And, you know, all of a sudden I just think the whole thing is broken and it you then act in very reactive ways where you start stripping out tons of your life and tons of things and I I suppose some people reach a level of burnout where they almost end up having to do that right because they've they've not

lowered that threshold or they've not got themselves beneath that threshold in time and so a certain point, it's like now they have to like strip everything back to then slowly build back up again. Yeah. Real burnout. I start the book with a discussion of my experience with burnout, which happened literally a year into my career. So I was an early achiever. But but it was so soon, you know, but and I explain why. But yes, once you get to a certain point of exhaustion, because that's what burnout really is, right? It's, it's got many aspects. to it, but exhaustion is the most prevailing one. And it's not exhaustion that a good night's sleep

will help you with, or a weekend away will help you with. It's deeper than that. It's this bone tired. It's this mental fatigue and numbness that goes with it. You get numb to anything. You don't really enjoy what you're doing. You're not sure you like what you're doing anymore. Now, when you're not burnt out, you do.

You can recapture the joy. You can reconnect to the fact, oh, I do like what I do. But when it's too much for too long, you can't enjoy. You just, you know, we go into autopilot, we put our head down, we just want to ask to another, to another, to another, just to get things done. There's no living in it. There's no emotion in it. There's just truly drone, like a working drone of just getting stuff done, getting stuff. And by the way, an irritable, unhappy drone.

Drones don't have those feelings. We do when we're burnt out. So that's, drone sounds nice. No. it's a difficult drone to be around. I want to almost bring in, because you give lots of practical examples and techniques in the book,

I want to like go through a couple of them because one of them is for the Sunday blues. So what's the practical strategy for people who get to Sunday? They are immediately, you talk about, I really like that you talk about the fact that the great feeling you have on a Sunday

because it's a Sunday doesn't actually overcome that feeling it makes it worse because it only highlights the contrast between this gorgeous euphoric, you know, I can just be present. This is how life should be. This is how much I should be enjoying my life. Only highlights the impending kind of doom of the next week and everything that's coming. So how can we change the temperature or the tone of those Sunday blues? The Sunday blues happen because we evolved to spot danger. on the horizon, to spot problems and threats on the horizon.

That was a very useful survival mechanism that we evolved. And unconscious mind does not distinguish between threats of enemies in the battlefield and threats of enemies in the workplace. And so if we have a stressful job, if our work is difficult, challenging, if they're moments that are conflictual, et cetera, unconscious mind knows that that's a battlefield. Sunday comes, it starts to see that this is going to happen, the enemy is coming on Monday. And so it'll start

to activate you and fill you with a feeling of dread. And some people are like, but I don't even hate my job. Why am I getting into this level of activation? And certainly people who do not love their jobs, you know, I just feel like, oh my God, I have to. And it happens for another reason, which is like,

hopefully you've used the weekend to kind of come down from activation, to kind of relax. And everyone knows that when you, you know, when you go down to your first gear or, you know, neutral or something, and now you have to ramp up to fourth gear again in a hurry. It's like, oh, it feels very laborious. Now, once you're in it, you're in it and it's okay.

But to go up in those gears to have to start really focusing again to from having the time and the autonomy to do what you want. Which is the same thing you get on vacation, right? At the end of vacation. Yeah, like it's, you and I have discussed vacations where I'm like, guy, I think I'm doing something wrong. I'm like on day two of this vacation. and I can't enjoy it, but you know, you were very quick to be like,

it could take time for your body to come out of that state. And then, of course, on a week-long vacation, by day four or five, all of a sudden I'm like, oh, my God, I, you know, I'm starting to feel really good. I'm starting to feel like myself again, and it's like, we're flying home tomorrow. But look, I actually ended the book with a chapter about vacations for that reason. First of all, because if I hadn't ended the book with a chapter about vacations,

it would be a really downer of a little downer of a little. ending in all kinds of ways. Because the last chapter before is about whether you stay or go, like if you've done all these things to help yourself manage your psychology better and you're still really stressed, really burnt out, really unhappy, here's how you start to consider whether to leave. But I thought, and then the five people we follow, we get to their decision points. So for some of them, it's okay. For some of them, it's not great.

So I wanted to end with something more positive, which is vacations. And when I started doing the research about vacations, it's something occurred to me that I had been doing for years, but I never thought about it as a strategy. I just kind of did it naturally. And that is, I would rest before the vacation. I would leave two or three nights before the vacation to take it easy, to have a good night's sleep. I would pack way in advance.

And I would get to the vacation much closer to vacation mode than staying up all night to just get a little bit more work done. So I wouldn't have that pile waiting for me when I got back, which is what most people do. It's what I've always done. Yes, it's what most people do. And then they pack last minute. And then they're also rushing to get to the airport or to wherever it is that they're going. So that stress, as well, I always get to the airport early because I'd rather get there and start the relaxation. In other words, our airports relaxing? Not necessarily. But if you have that mindset of,

but I'm not at work right now, so I'll bring the book that I'm reading. I'll, you know, I'll bring the puzzles I'm working on. I'll bring whatever it is. I'll call friends and do a catch-up. I always do a lot of catch-ups at the airport like, hey, I'm at the airport, I'm about to go on vacation. So there's a way to prep yourself, so it doesn't take half the vacation to get into vacation mode.

You can start much more vacation ready, and then you can get much more out of the vacation. For someone who's hearing this and going, let's say I commit to doing this, but I have a partner who is, is far less self-aware who is locked into that high cortisol, adrenaline-fueled work state has a really hard time coming out of it. Maybe they are addicted to their work, either because they love it so much or because

they're constantly coming from a place of fear that it's all going to go away or whatever it may be. But they are that person. it's the night before the holiday i have done everything right in terms of getting myself into that relaxed state i packed early and so on but i know i'm going through the airport with a crazy person who is still got all that pent up tension and is still talking about work and looking at their phone and getting irritable with me because i asked a question about the vacation but they're still in work mode what does doing all of this look like when

you're actually really fighting hard to do it for yourself, but you're with someone who is not doing the same work. And this is assuming that you've said to that person, hey, I'm trying this new strategy. It would be most effective if we both did it. But I'm trying it really hard. If you're a ball of stress between today and when we actually get where we're going

and probably a little bit once we get where we're going, that will ruin it for me. so I need to have some separation from you so unless you can agree to experiment and I always said experiment try it once it's it's truly the experimental method it either works for you and it was effective or not but try it if they're not willing to try it

I've said to couples then get to the airport separately meet on the plane you don't have to sit while they do their last frantic minute this go to bed early now they'll do their frantic packing and tell them like I love you. I'd love to be there for you. I just need to do this for me because I want to be able to enjoy the vacation. And I know I won't if I keep doing it the way we typically do. And you are

so stressed out in getting the place on time and all of that. And I don't want to get sucked into that. Moods are terribly contagious. And stress is very, very contagious. And so like, you are going to make me so uptight and so irritable that I'm not going to be able to, all the relaxation I try to do so I can start the vacation and really get the most out of it. I'm going to miss out on because of your attitude and how you are. You don't want to change. You don't have to. But give me some space from it.

Let's not talk in the car. You'll still absorb it because stress, you know, radiates out like an atom, you know, like really. But try and create some separation. I know couples who fly separately for that reason. Because one of them is such a, you know, in such a state on the plane, even though they fly all the time, the other one is like, I can't go through the panic each time.

I cannot. So either you do something to address it or I don't want to be around it because it ruins it for me. I get to the vacation so tense and irritable. It's not fair. So have the conversation. But take steps if you need to take steps.

Okay, so it's Sunday, you're scared about the next week. What can you do between now and Monday to alleviate that? The dread you have is about your brain perceiving that the next agenda item, is the work week. So it's warning you, it's stressing you out because of it.

So what you need to do is to layer something that's not work Monday morning if you can. For a lot of people, this is difficult. But if you can, something that you look forward to doing that's fun for you, Monday morning.

If you have a cheat day on a diet, maybe that's the day. You have that really fun breakfast or you get that really delicious donut that you never... Like, there's something, an event there. It's breakfast with a friend.

It can be a workout. It can be you get up half an hour early and work on the thing that's really exciting to you. It can be that you wear a new outfit to the office and you are really excited about showing it off. It can be whatever the thing is that actually excites you that layers Monday morning. So that your brain, and you have to signal to your brain that that's an important thing. So you say, like, I can't wait for Monday morning because I get to catch up with this friend. And I love catching up with them. it's such a lovely way to start the work week, or I get to go to this coffee shop, and it's such a quaint little place, and I love it, and it's so relaxing, and I'll go there

for 20 minutes, half an hour before work, and then I will go to work. If you have something that you've layered, that you make a big deal of, again, this is your unconscious mind doing it, so you can't control your unconscious thoughts, but you can signal it, you know, broadly by saying to it, like, oh, I'm going to do this month. Then there's a little less urgency on Sunday, because you spend Sunday morning going like, I'm really looking forward to doing this thing on Monday. There's something about what you just said, I think is vitally important because if I look at

the way I've lived much of my life, it's lived in a very kind of binary way. This month is a really busy month and there's so much going on workwise and I'm just in it this month. But I can't wait to get to next month when things are going to be better. And it creates a pretty miserable month.

And sometimes that's six months, or it can be a year, or it can be, and we have this way of constantly kind of deferring joy to a time where we can perfectly enjoy joy. Because I couldn't enjoy right now because it's going to be contaminated by all these things that I have to do. And to that extent, perhaps me and a lot of other people, are poor compartmentalizers where it's it's like it very much is it's either a wonderful time or it's a really busy and hectic and crazy time and i can't wait to get to the next wonderful time and it's been an interesting month leading up to the new year because i have the like the holidays are a very special

time for me and my family we not for religious reasons but we just it's always been the special time in our year together and coming off of the back of the baby coming, taking a couple of weeks off to just be present with that, I have come back into an avalanche of work and requests from team and videos that I need to shoot and all of these things. And I'm sure many people will relate to that idea of just having an avalanche and thinking, well, I'll get back to enjoying things when that's all done. But the immediacy of the holidays at the end of the year is that, no, but I don't get to have Christmas again in January. That's only happening this month. So how amidst a crazy month where actually the year has ended

with a bang workwise where there's so much to do, can I make sure I crowbar in those moments of enjoyment and actually enjoy them instead of going, well, I can't really enjoy them because I'm looking at how many things that I'm going to have to do tomorrow morning and how early I'm I'm going to have to wake up and I can't have that glass of wine because it's going to make me feel groggy the next day when I have what's your, maybe you've already said it in the things we've talked about, but what is your advice for people who find it really hard to just kind of insert joy in the midst of what feels like a crazy season? Well, there are two parts, and you said both of them.

There's the challenge to insert joy. And for some people, there's the end, the challenge of then being able to have the joy. to enjoy the joy. You know, you said like, but I can't enjoy that because of all the other things. That's not true. That is, if that's how you think, well, I can't enjoy it because then I have to go,

I can't enjoy this nice half an hour in the middle of the day that I have something nice scheduled because then I have something difficult scheduled. That's not true. It is how you frame it. Stress and a perception of challenge in the world, especially in the workplace, is extraordinarily psychological.

We control it much more than we realize. We can determine how much we enjoy things by how we frame it to ourselves. If we frame it like, this is a busy period, I won't really be able to have a fun time until I finish it, then you will not be able to have a fun time until you finish it.

What I believe, and I think what really works, is just to be more accurate and more nuanced. It's like this is a really difficult week, but I have some nice moments in it. Or this is a brutal week at work, I have such difficult meetings, but there's some nice lunch times in between. Or let me actually cook my favorite thing and bring it for lunch as a pick me up. Or let me really look forward to the fact that I get to then finish work and see my son. And so it's about being more nuanced in an accurate way.

You have to be accurate. But if you just accurately say, yes, it's not, this is terrible. This is a bad period, good period, challenging period, easier period. Christmas, not Christmas, because you might have to do stuff over Christmas, hopefully not much. But it's like, but I will have this enjoyable part, or I will build in this 15 minutes, and I'll focus on enjoying it because I need that break. And part of the research is that we really overlook these.

opportunities during the workday especially to take breaks that we can use in a restorative way because we're just so hey I can't take a break and like sorry you're not gonna go to the bathroom you're not gonna eat I don't understand like you're gonna take some breaks but how about making the most of them how about finding the things to because what most of us do on breaks yes social media was scrolling and in the research shows that that surprise, surprise, doesn't do much for you. It's not a break.

It's just a distraction. A real break is taking a walk around the block, calling a loved one. You know what I mean? For me, you know, I say this in the book. I am partial to Vishla dogs, a breed of dogs, and to puppies. So although it's reels, five minutes of that, and I'm grinning. I'm grinning, you know, because I'm like, oh, there's just, I mean, look at it. And that's just me.

I mean, that's what I'm partially to. But I will make a call to a friend. I will make a call to a family member that I love. I will literally curate what I can do in breaks. And I will build in this 10, 15 minutes into difficult days so that it's not a punishment from start to finish. If I can. And there's some people who don't have the 15 minutes,

and I understand that. But it's not that you don't have the 15 minutes any day of the week. For me, what helps a little bit is being fatalistic about the fact that life. is just always going to be this way. And it almost stops me from holding on for a better time. It's a depressing way maybe of approaching it. But I kind of, I do like to think, well, I tell myself,

what is this magical time you think is coming, where you get to go back to, you know, being what my son is right now, where it's just a ball that just gets to think about the next meal and doesn't actually have to think about anything else. Like when is that time? It's never coming. Like it will never be that way. So unless you claim moments of joy now,

you'll never do it. You won't do it in five or ten or fifteen or twenty years because there is just never a time coming in life with no responsibility. Right. I want to move on to another technique from the book that I really liked. You talk about how much language matters in our framing.

of something that's coming up that we're maybe dreading. And there's a particular man in the book that you talk about being an overachiever at work, but someone who really feared dynamics with people that, you know, there was a particular meeting that was coming up that he really wasn't looking forward to. And it was, there were going to be politics and drama and, you know, his name was potentially getting thrown under the bus. And so he was in that, he was going into that meeting from a place of dread. And you talk about that dread being something that means we procrastinate, or if we can't procrastinate, we don't prepare, we bury our head in the sand, we numb,

we escape. But you talk about a linguistic shift that we can make that can actually make a tremendous amount of difference in how we view this thing coming up that is creating overwhelm. and, of course, overwhelmed leads to burnout. So what is that shift? In this example, it was him saying, which a lot of us say, I can't handle that. I can't deal with that. Now, it's a fatalistic,

but it is predisposing you to not handle it. Well, for sure. It is the definition of psyching yourself out. What is siking yourself out, that expression? What does it mean? It means that you're framing things to yourself, psychologically in such a negative way that you are writing a self-defeating prophecy, that you are setting yourself up to have such a negative mindset

that you are likely for the bad thing to happen because you are literally almost scripting it. I won't be able to handle it. Are you going to then prepare well for a meeting you don't think you'll be able to handle? No. You're going to avoid the preparation because it's so unpleasant to think about what's going to happen that you don't want to think about it. So you're going to avoid the preparation.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in the negative, a self-defeating one, you know, in that sense. And we do this to ourselves all the time. And one of the ones that I hear, well, and it's so common today, you know, it's like they announce a round of layoffs, and everyone sweats through it and it's terrible. And it's over, and two weeks later, they announce another one. And people are saying to myself, I won't be able to handle that if it happens again. I can't deal with that again. And it's like, you have no control. that again will happen.

So saying to yourself, I can't deal with that again, is actually just setting yourself up to deal with it poorly. And if it's coming, surely you want to deal with it more adaptively, more usefully, more effectively.

And it's a shift in nuance. And again, when we're shifting the nuance of what we're saying to ourselves, it has to be accurate. Unconscious mind doesn't buy lies. You can't see like, oh, I'm going to handle that like a champ when you're sitting there dreading.

your unconscious mind will be like, yeah, no, that's not, it's not happening. So you have to just be nuanced and accurate and say, like, that's going to be stressful, but I can prepare for it. That's going to be difficult, but I can really strategize about how to get through it. Yeah, I was so, I loved reading that because it, there's a lot of talk these, well, there has been for a long time in the self-development world, a lot of talk about mantras and, you know, repeating these states. over and over and over again until your mind starts to believe them.

And I always struggled with that advice, not because I thought it could never work or it did never work, but because I'm, as you know, a logical, rational person, my, I have never had the ability. And I know some people do have this ability, it seems in life, but I can't relate to it, but I've never had the ability to believe something simply because I wanted it to be true. Right.

And so when I repeat a statement over and over to myself about myself, about life, about something, if there's a voice in there that's calling bullshit on that, it's never been effective for me. There will be people, I'm sure, who will say differently, that mantras have changed their life and so on. But that's not been something that's highly effective for me. What I really liked about what you said is the nuance of you're actually taking, you're borrowing from that wisdom, that you're, you're, you're, unconscious mind is pros is listening to what you're saying however you're feeding it a thought that

where two plus two still equals four and the the line you give in the book is it will be stressful but I can handle it and that to me that really resonated because there are so many situations in my life where I don't look forward to them I'm not sure I'm gonna handle it beautifully I'm gonna try to handle it beautifully but do I really have total confidence that I am? No.

Or I go into a situation where, you know, the athlete, there's certain athletes that will stand there telling themselves, I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best before they run a race. And that is very admirable and I always love the concept of it, but there are plenty of situations I find myself in where standing there beforehand saying I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best, doesn't ring true to me because I'm definitely not the best at that thing. but I have plenty of reference points for the fact that I've been able to handle things in my life, that I have survived. Even areas where it's resulted in a fracture, I've survived that fracture.

So that idea of it will be stressful, but I can handle it, is an extremely liberating thought and it doesn't require you to tell yourself it's not going to be in any way painful. Right. And it's really critical what you said, because what you said, like, there's part of me that doesn't believe it if I just say, it'll be great, et cetera. The unconscious mind works by a number of principles, but the very basic principles,

and believability is one of them. And so we know that the mantras, the affirmations, of like, you know, I'm worthy of great love or I'm going to be a great success, when you don't feel that, it will actually make you feel worse. Because every time you say it, it will get rejected unconsciously, and you'll start to think about all the reasons

but all of, and your unconscious mind will toss it, you're like, yeah, because you haven't done that well so far, you know, and so you can't go outside the realm of believability. You just need to stay within it. So it will be stressful, but I can handle it, is believable. It's not too far out. And if even that seems too far out, it'll be stressful, but I can get through it because that's, you know, you have to stay within that, your mind will buy. It's a slightly different example, but I always remembered a story about Donnie Osmond having stage fright. And he was backstage and he was having a meltdown. And on this particular occasion, it was so significant that he felt like I just can't.

I can't go out there tonight. And his wife, or it was either him or his wife telling the story, but his wife basically came up to him and said, do yourself and everybody else out there waiting to hear from. you a favor and just go out there and do an average job. Like that's, that's actually the thing that got him to go out there. It wasn't, you're amazing at this, you have to connect with blah, blah, blah. It was just the words he needed to hear was that it was actually okay for him to go out there

and do an average job. And I think there's a real connection between that and what you're saying. It's a framing that is plausible that you can get on board with that actually, actually allows you to remain in a state of taking action and not procrastinating. It's exactly the right example. And it's also psychological. And I don't know that story, but I'm assuming that when he went out there to do the average job, he did great.

Because it's psychological. It's the fear. It's the worry. What if I won't be able to? But if it's like, can you do good enough? Can you just get through? Can you prepare enough to manage? Then most people would be like, yes.

and then once you're there, then you're actually putting in an effort. Then you're actually bringing forth your capacities, which otherwise would get muted. The last technique I just want to talk about, and then I have a question for you about New Year's, which is obviously important and timely for where we are now. But you talk about an experiment where people get to choose whether to drink a disgusting,

brew, they get to decide how much of it they're going to drink if they have it today versus how much of it they'll commit to drinking if it's six months in the future or whenever it is. Can you talk about that experiment, what the results were and how the concept of having a relationship with your future self plays into getting ourselves to overcome procrastination today. Yeah, look, we procrastinate with this idea of, oh, I'll do it next week, but you're still saddling yourself with doing it,

but there's this interesting psychology we have in which we treat our future selves like a stranger. In that study, people had to assign that to themselves or to strangers, and they found that if it was to drink immediately, they were willing to drink this much. But if it's gonna be six months later, they were willing to drink this much, because they didn't have

have compassion or empathy for their future selves. And that's as much as they were willing to get a stranger. The people who were committing to drinking it in the future basically committed to like half a cup versus the people who were committing to it today. It was this much. And the half a cup was how much they were willing to commit a stranger to. In other words, literally it was the same amount. We treat ourselves like a stranger, our future selves.

Yeah. And now that's reversible. I mean, that's the default, right? That's why we smote. when you know it's bad for us. That's what we don't save money, even though we're going to regret it. So these are very long-term future things.

But even in like, oh, I'll, I'm tired now. I'm just going to go to bed and I'll do the dishes and I'll clean up and I'll do all these 10 things in the morning, even though I get up stressful work and I don't have time and you're settling and then you wake up and you go, oh, why did I do that? But it's because even next morning you is a stranger. Now, I've always worked on cultivating.

a good relationship with my future self. And I talk about it in the book and I'm going to talk about it now and I'm telling you right now it makes me feel stupid every time I talk about it because there's something very stupid about it.

I find the best advice is always weirdly embarrassing. It's weirdly embarrassing. Because it's so personal. And it just makes me feel very stupid. I, again, see, I'm already feeling awkward about it. When I want to skip something that I know I'll be,

I'm going to have to do the next day, and I really not going to want to do it the next day. I say to myself, give tomorrow guy a break. Tomorrow guy will be so grateful if you do that for him now. Tomorrow guy will be really appreciative if you just finish this task now

rather than saddle him with it next week. He would be really appreciative. And I literally use that language myself. I refer to myself in the third person because it is a third person. It's another entity. If it felt like us, we wouldn't be in this predicament.

It doesn't feel like us. So I call it Monday guy, future guy, next week guy. And I say to myself, think of that version of you. They will be very, very grateful. And you have to really take a second to connect to that guy's experience, right?

Like the futures and the stranger that we are in the future, or the stranger that, you know, we make ourselves into in the future, it's a very disconnected experience of our relationship between this, us today and that person in the future. But it actually requires us to be far more connected to genuinely sit in the experience of me this weekend or me tomorrow or me an hour from now and say, what is, what is that thing that is genuinely going to give them a better existence.

Yes. And it also, you know, and I don't talk about this much in the book, but it, you know what it does as a side effect? It really cultivates self-love. Yeah. Because you are learning to love future versions of yourself. You're doing that, you know, you're like, oh, I have a funness for tomorrow guy. Yeah.

And I don't want them to have a difficult day. I look at a day like, oh, you know, they have a really difficult day. Let's take something off their plate. I'll be so appreciative. I literally wrote down that. when I was making notes in the margins of the book, I wrote down self-love in that moment. Yes.

Because it's, I really believe in self-love, the overused phrase that it is these days, out of context. I think that the most potent form of it is the idea of self-love as a verb. Self-love doesn't have to be a feeling that you have for yourself. It can be a thing you do for yourself. You act in loving ways for yourself and the feeling can follow.

And I think that that idea that I, am actually doing something. For anyone who's sitting there going, okay, self-love is so esoteric, it's so abstract. What does it even mean? Well, I think what you're talking about here in this technique actually gives you purchase on the idea of self-love practically because you can say, no, self-love is the action of doing something today that is going to contribute to the well-being of future me. And if I do that enough times, I'm building that relationship.

Even if I don't have it right now, I'm actually beginning a relationship with my future self. When we invest in someone, anyone, we develop more feelings for them because we've invested in them. It works when we invest in ourselves and the future version of ourselves as well. It's exactly as you said. When we're practicing it, the feeling will follow. That's beautiful. I love it. It's funny.

I feel very connected to that lesson right now because one of the things I knew at the very beginning of having a baby was I want to do all of the little things because I know a lot of guys out there they kind of almost skip the parts they feel they can skip and I always whether or not you can seems to me a bit irrelevant I think the process of doing the things that even you know even if you knew someone else is going to do them or you know your wife is going to take care of that because that's who she is. You're actually depriving yourself of the little investments, you know, changing the diapers, burping, doing, I can't breastfeed that baby, but I can sure as hell pick him up and burp him after he's been breastfed. And those little moments are the moments

I've fall deeper in love with that baby. And they lead to greater joy and satisfaction from the baby because you invested in those. little moments. So the joys, the milestone satisfactions, when he smiles at you, then you've earned it. And it feels more gratifying because it feels like he's smiling because he knows I've done all those things. Yeah. Yeah, we've been in the trenches together. Yes. New Year's. What is the biggest mistake that people make as a new year approaches or on January 1st? As they set out to have a great year, which most people do, that's where their intention is. What is the biggest mistake that people make at that point as the calendar changes that leads to greater stress, greater burnout and a greater chance of failure?

Do you refer to the resolutions that we make at that time of year or the general anticipation? It could be either, or it could be the statements people make, you know, that I'm going to make this my best year ever. I'm going to, this is such a time of expectation. And in a sense, I suppose the resolutions are our physical manifestation of that expectation that we now have for life and for ourselves. So are there ways that it just becomes incredibly counterproductive? And what would you say is a better way for people to go into a new year? So look, I'm, I'm, some people would say boring and annoying.

in the sense that I am, I really believe that you have to be realistic in the expectations that you set. You're allowed to exceed them, and you can make them, and don't set them low, set them in, again, moderately plus challenged. You know, like, so you have to invest a certain amount of effort. When it comes to resolutions, for example, people, you know, people sometimes show me their list of resolutions,

and I'm like, is that a list of Santa? What are you showing me? it's bookmarked by category, there's a spreadsheet, and I'm like, Habit Change is hard enough. You sign up for failure right now, because you're not doing all of that. What are you talking about? And the other thing is, part of being real is being specific.

So people are like, it's going to be the best year ever. When they said it to me, I'm like, terrific. What does that mean? Specifically, what does the best year ever mean? Well, that it'll be a happier. excellent what does that mean how would you know at the end of the year if it is it's not measurable you're not going to remember so even when it comes to to setting expectations certainly when it comes to resolutions you know one the most common mistakes people make with resolutions they assume

they're going to start on january one you're not getting out of bed before noon yeah you certainly ain't starting on january one yeah you hung over you partied you know yeah and so it feels like a lot of years the year doesn't even get going till january seven Right, but then you don't have a start date. That's the biggest mistake people make. There are too many. You don't have a start date. You don't clearly define what the expectations are.

And you put a ton of pressure on yourself by setting an expectation, like for the year to be considered good, all these things have to happen. I'm like, that's a lot of pressure to put on yourself to have a good year. So I believe the way our family does it, the way I believe is a good way to do it, is there's no looking forward to the next year without a review of the past one. So what, and not just the highlights or the low lights, but what's one thing you didn't see coming that was really surprising and positive? What were the difficult things? What did you learn from them? You know, what is a surprising thing that can happen next year that you might not see coming? What are the things you would like to work on within yourselves?

And how will you know if you've done that? You know, it's not, oh, I want to become a, people, I want to become a better person. Like, we all do, most of us do. What does that mean? I have no idea what that means. Does that mean you do an hour of volunteer work once a month? Maybe. Or does that mean you stop snapping at your spouse when you get home from work?

I don't know what that means. So unless you can define it in clear, measurable ways, you're not going to do it, number one. And number two, motivation does not, you don't need motivation to start a habit. Starting the habit creates the motivation to continue the habit. So you want to define things in a very clear way. That will then continue to motivate you. What's one thing you could change that? You'll be really pleased with yourself.

That future guy in New Year's 2020. will look back and go like, good on you, that you got that done. Again, think of your future self. What's the gift you can give your future self by working on this year? So when that person celebrates the new year, they can look back and go, I'm really proud of myself for this one thing. Well, it's funny you say that. You finish on that because that, you say in the book,

that this exercise of what can I do for my future self can also be used retrospectively as what should I be thanking my past self for right now, that they had contributed to my well-being today. And in January, we're quite good at saying, what could I do this year that by December would mean that this has been a great year and I could be so proud of myself. What you can guarantee for most people is they'll then get to December and start writing their list of things that they need to do for next December to be proud of themselves. And we'll never actually take the moment to be proud of themselves. Yes.

So I love that idea of not just looking forward, but taking stock of what did happen this year. What do I, you know, what thanks do I owe the person who's been working hard on my behalf all year or making changes all year or trying to develop themselves all year? What in my life is owed to that person? Yes, it's a great time to do some gratitude exercises, right? And to really think about who was really instrumental, who showed up for me this year in ways that I was like hoping but couldn't expect, you know,

and who really showed up, who was really there for me, who really demonstrated something to me that I found moving and touching. And if you have a list like that, hopefully they know. And if they might not, it's a great time to reach out and say, I've been thinking about the year, you were great this year. You really did something for me that was really meaningful. I just wanted to say thank you. Yeah.

And to make sure that when that person is you, that you're giving the appropriate thanks to that person. So I want to switch gears to all of the ways that the lessons in your book, which of course is focused at least around, to me it's all transferable, but it's focused around the kind of overwhelm and stress and burnout that can come from a working life. I want to position those lessons towards people's love lives. and I'm really curious to know what your answers will be in these different areas. Before we go into that, I just want to remind everyone of the book that we are talking about.

It is called Mind Overgrind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. I've been loving reading this book. I've been both a fan of Guy for many years and Guy's work and his content and also benefited hugely personally from working from Guy and feel grateful also to call you a friend today. It's been a real education over the years. And so anytime you have a new book coming out, I'm first in line to want to read it and to look at what all of that material that I've heard for years looks like, marshalled in one place. So I know that if you enjoy my content and if you enjoy listening to the Love Life podcast, you are going to love this book. Pick up a copy.

be mind overgrind anywhere books are sold. Thanks for listening, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the interview. Quick question, is there a question that you would like to ask me right now about life, about love, about dating, about something you're going through? If I were next to you right now, what would you ask me? I want you to go and ask that question right now of Matthew A.I. at AskMH.com.

You can do it for free. give it a try, see what Matthew A.I. has to say to your question. Askmh.com is the link. Let me know what it says. I'll see you in the next episode of Love Life.