The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mindset Training: Conquer Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow by Nekeshia Hammond

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Mindset Training: Conquer Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow by Nekeshia Hammond Amazon.com Drnekeshiahammond.com IT’S YOUR TIME Billions of people struggle through life filled with self-doubt, a high level of stress, a lack of self worth, and live lives they prefer was different. However, they have been that way for so long that they don’t know what to do to change for the better. Sadly, people feel they don’t have the time to put into self-care, while others feel they aren’t worthy of self-care. In her 4th book, Mindset Training, Dr. Nekeshia Hammond, founder of Hammond Psychology & Associates and an elite executive coach, provides fresh, easy-to- apply strategies anyone can apply to live the lives of their dreams. Self Care isn’t Selfish If you struggle with being stressed out, overworked, underappreciated, unmotivated, and overall feeling like you should be getting more out of life, this book is for you. “I have had the honor of traveling to many states and countries and have seen and heard stories of how people are struggling with anxiety, depression, and so many other things but do not understand how to turn their lives around. If they understood the value of taking care of themselves and took even baby steps in that direction, they would drastically change for the better and show up the right way for those around them.” —Dr. Nekeshia Hammond You’ve waited long enough to heal from the inside to show out on the outside. Buckle up. Grab a highlighter and a pen and begin training your mind to win the game of life. You know you deserve more; it’s time to get it. It’s time for you to unleash the real you!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.

At least no one there. At least things in the mix official. Welcome to thech Foss Show. podcasts and subscribe on itunes and all those great places go to goodreads.com for chest chris fuss linkedin.com for chest chris fuss chris fuss one on the tiktok and all those crazy places on the interwebs today we have an amazing young lady on the show today we're going to be talking to her about her newest book it came out april 10th 2024 it's called mindset training conquer your mind and the rest will follow dr nikisha Hammond joins us on the show. We'll be getting into some of the details of how you can improve the quality of your life. Because that's what we kind of do that here on the Chris Foss Show.

We're always talking about those, how to improve your life. People, you know, some people write me and they go, damn it, Chris, why are you always going to be talking about how to improve my life? How can I ruin it? That's a different podcast. Different podcast. I think that's a Joe Rogan podcast. Excuse me. Sorry. I had a cough there. I'm just kidding. He's a different podcast. Different podcast. I think that's a Joe Rogan podcast. Excuse me. Sorry.

I had a cough there. I'm just kidding. He's a nice guy. Anyway, Dr. Hammond is a distinguished psychologist, international speaker, and USA Today bestselling author of the latest book aforementioned. As an award-winning speaker, she is an expert in mental health, burnout prevention, and leadership development. Oh, three of my favorite topics.

Empowering entrepreneurs and professionals to achieve mental wellness and work-life balance. burnout prevention and leadership development oh three of my favorite topics empowering entrepreneurs and professionals to achieve mental wellness and work-life balance my dream that someday i'll achieve she's the founder of hammond psychology associates and the host of the popular show mental health moment with dr hammond where she shares practical tips for managing stress promoting well-being her leadership extends beyond her private practice as well. She served as president of Florida Psychological Association and past chair for the Ryan Reese Foundation Board of Directors. Welcome to the show, Dr. Hammond. How are you? Thank you. I'm amazing. Thank you for having me.

It's wonderful to have you, man. If you're president of Florida Psychological Association, isn't that whole state under your purview you know the florida man sort of thing you know we see in the news we have a lot yeah we we typically have a lot going on in florida a lot going on there yes salty faces and whatever's on the news this week um so give us a dot coms where could people find you on the interwebs yeah i'm at the best place to find me is my website which is dr nikisha hammond.com d-r-n-e-E-K-E-S-H-I-A, hammond.com. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's in your new book out this year?

Yeah, it's been an exciting journey with my newest book, Mindset Training, Conquer Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow. Super excited to release this one. It's all about mindset. It's all about holistic self-care. So how do you grow physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally? Because a lot of times when it comes to our life and our growth, we get super focused on one area, but the issue is we're whole and complete beings, right? So it's really a lot of tangible strategies that you can

apply in your life and different areas of your tangible strategies that you can apply in your life and different areas of your life so that you can work on thriving as an individual. Yeah. Thriving is kind of important last time I hear. You want to be happy. It's not fun to be on the other side of being unhappy, but if you work on your mindset. So, how do you define mindset? A lot of people use that terminology in your purview of the book. How do you define mindset? What is that? Yeah, great question.

So really, when you think about your mindset, it's the thoughts that you have on a daily basis, how you view yourself, how you view the world. A lot of the book also talks about, because what I've seen is a lot of people struggle sometimes with worthiness issues or self-love because of your mindset. It's a thing to be more self-aware and to know that you deserve to be happy. You deserve to be emotionally healthy. You deserve those things. And for some of us, we don't feel like we deserve them, even though we do. So it's really unraveling that when it comes to your mindset. So again, you can work on showing up powerfully for yourself and for the people around you. Ah, that's good to have. I mean, you can't share or help other people if you don't have yourself fix first or help yourself first. Yes. One thing you talk about in the book is that self-care isn't selfish. I know, you know, people who I, you know, my mother does,

not really hospice care, but she, my sister's in a care center for MS and dementia. And, and so she's a caretaker. That's the word I was seeking. I've done caretaker with my dogs in hospice care with cancer. And it, it really is hard. Anyone who really takes care of somebody else puts a lot of work in it and usually they bleed themselves out in taking care of everybody else and not themselves. Give us some talk about what self-care and why is it selfish to take a break for yourself? Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that we have to really unlearn.

I know for myself personally as well, just growing up, I don't remember a lot of conversations about mental health and self-care, frankly, at all, because it was such a go-go-go mentality, not taking the time for yourself, getting everything done, taking care of everyone else and everything around you. But the problem with that, like you said, is it really does lead to burnout, especially as you mentioned for caregivers. There's a huge issue with burnout for caregivers. Yes, you can still take care of other people.

Very important. Of course, a lot of us have different responsibilities, whether it's our kids or our parents or whomever it is around us. But also you have to make yourself your number one priority. You have to focus on your mental health. You have to focus on your emotional wellness, which is going to make you a better caretaker for the people around you. That is literally what happens, but it's hard sometimes because our brain wants to go, let's put all our energy into helping whomever it is and neglect ourselves. But that doesn't work because that leads to burnout.

Definitely. Definitely. And what made you want to write the book? Was there a proponent or something that happened or some sort of inertia that made you go, I need to write a book on this? Yes. COVID-19 pandemic. Yeah. When the world turned upside down, global pandemic, my speaker team at the time was getting, we were getting a lot of calls for like, how do we deal with all this stress? Like companies and organizations were like, people are stressed out understandably. At that time, everyone of course was leaving the workplace and going into a home setting and remote work, which was stressful at the time. And we had a lot that we were dealing with in 2020. And then I start to think to myself

as a writer, I'm like, okay, I was already getting these types of calls. And I'm like, what is it? How can I help? Right? How can I help more? I love writing books calls and I'm like, what is it? How can I help? How can I help more? I love writing books. And I'm like, what does it boil down to? What do we all need to really address? And to me, as a psychologist, maybe slightly biased, it's like our mindsets. We really have to work on our mindsets. And I personally had some things happen in 2020 as well that if I didn't have the mindset I had, it would have been a lot more difficult than it already was. So it's a matter of how do we really strengthen our mindset so we can get through not just a global pandemic, of course, but just get through the ups and downs that life brings to us. We got a lot of great books that came out of the pandemic.

Yeah. It really did. It spawned and everyone sat down and said, we're stuck at home. We're going to write some books. And it gave a lot of space for that. Talk to us about some of your, I think you have four books. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Talk to us about some of the other books you have written. Yeah. So a couple of my other books actually dealt with children's mental health. So I wear a lot of hats at home. So one of the things that I do,

I'm still in my private practice that I've had now for almost 16 years. And it was about how do you help kids to be emotionally healthy? One of my books was about how do you help children with ADHD? So a lot of children's mental health as well, children and teens are definitely my heart and my passion as well. And then of course, this current book is a little bit broader for mindset work and helping a lot of organizations and corporations that I work with as well with leadership development and how to be strong leaders and also have the self-care that you need to be productive as well. Yeah. It's important to have that. I mean, you can't share stuff unless you take care of yourself, you know, and people

tend to, you know, you, you deal with burnout, right? What are some factors of people that have issues with burnout, you know, where they're not taking care of themselves? How can they identify if I'm burning out? Yeah. It's, it's really, when it comes to burnout, burnout affects people in different ways, but some huge common signs, if you will, of burnout is when you're just at the point where you're like, I don't feel like going to work. I don't feel like doing the work I need to do. I no longer am excited about the leisure activities that I'm involved with. Sometimes it affects your appetite, your sleep. There's all these different areas where you just really feel shut down.

And sometimes it's physically you are shut down or emotionally and mentally you're done. There's so much fatigue that's there. But the good news, which is why I love this work, is that burnout is absolutely preventable when we put the right things into place. So instead of waiting to the point where we're falling apart, we're so distressed and we're so overwhelmed, we can work on taking care of ourselves and putting into place a preventative plan so that we don't get to that point of burnout. Yeah. Knowing that you burn out and taking time out, I mean, that's one thing entrepreneurs really suffer from, is taking time out for themselves. I found I needed to start taking little getaways on

the weekend usually yeah now you know i avoid the holiday getaways because you know you just you spend half it's stuck in traffic usually on a plane or on a car and so i try and take my holidays at different times but i found you know sometimes just getting you know maybe doing a stay vacation just going up into the canyon this is's maybe an Airbnb and staying overnight there. Something to get me out of my four walls and into a different frame of mind and get me out of the box, if you will. And I find that really is helpful. And it can kind of break it up. Like why burn yourself out all year long?

You're like, I'm just going to take one week vacation or two weeks, you know, whatever the thing is, once a year. And if I could just get there and not have a heart attack by then. And I'm like, no, just break it up into pieces or take more breaks. And I think people have a hard time, especially if you're one of those burnout adhd type people you know entrepreneurs you you feel kind of guilty or shame to take time off right yeah you kind of feel a little bit like oh i'm not being good mother if i maybe take care of myself and eat first you know and spend a little private time with myself to you know know, just, I've been watching these TikTok videos. It's kind of funny.

They've been doing these TikTok videos where they're, it's usually couples and they're like, no judging or something. It's some sort of thing where we listen and we don't judge and they're telling each other their secrets of their relationship, which is really interesting, actually, because you're like holy shit but one of the common things that i hear them say is they go into the bathroom not really and spend time they're not really to go in the bathroom they're going in the bathroom to just kind of decompress get away from the craziness of the kids in the home and yeah the partner and just kind of have some me time yeah and it was funny that they were all admitting that's like a secret they all do. And they all kind of know they were doing it. So like it wasn't any sort of dirty secret.

Yeah. Cheating or anything. But, you know, I think people need that. Absolutely. Downtime. And it should be shameful. It should be shameful. And maybe you shouldn't have to go in the bathroom to do it.

Maybe there should be like, hey, if you want to go to the Starbucks and, you know, go sit there with your laptop and take a break. I got got the kids covered you know this sort of thing exactly yeah people have weird it's a it's a real thing that is i would say that's one of the number one feelings that i've heard that people have as well guilt which again it's it's it goes back to your mindset though because if you feel like i am doing something wrong by taking the time for me, like you said, going up the street to the Starbucks. I love anyways, I love Starbucks, but that's my little treat sometimes. Like it's it takes a minute. Have my tea from Starbucks.

But but but taking that those moments even like sometimes we don't we don't have time. And that's fine, especially as busy entrepreneurs or corporate or wherever it is that you're working. You may not have the time to take a week long vacation, but you don't need to always take the week long vacation for self-care. Self-care is things as simple as I always say, take a minute a day, the 60 seconds. If it has to be you taking yourself to the bathroom to get away from the hecticness of work or at home life. Like that counts too. Take your minute, take your 60 seconds for you. And over time you train your brain and it really adds up. It really starts to add up. I do way more than 60 seconds now, but I started that way because I told myself something that wasn't true, which was I didn't have time for self-care, which is a lie. It's not true. The other thing I found that worked really well for me was in the mornings,

trying to stay in a peace mode, especially during the summer, I'll get my coffee, I'll go sit out in the sun, and it's kind of like a multifaceted thing. So I go out there, soak up some vitamin D, start my circadian rhythms, play with my dogs when I go in the yard with them. And I usually read some meditations by Marcus Aurelius or some sort of a stoic thing. And I try and put myself in a mindfulness. Yes.

So good. And then I come to my desk and then I turn on the computer and then all hell breaks loose. You open your emails and you're like, why are all these questions? And it fires and stuff. So you're just like, okay. But you feel a whole lot more prepared for the day. Yes. Mentally.

Yes. That's something I changed to a couple years ago because I was very guilty like you. I don't know if you used to do this, but I used to wake up and literally 30 seconds after I woke up, I was on my cell phone. Like I was checking an email or I was looking at something.

And I was like, and then it dawned on me. I was like, this is ridiculous. Like I cannot start my day like this. So yeah, a couple of years back, the same thing, I'm like, okay, I do not hit the cell phone until I've done my gratitude practice. I'm doing my devotional.

I'm doing my deep breathing. Like I need to start the day in a calmer mindset before I get to the emails and the 400 things that I need to be doing. And it is life-changing to change your morning routine. It really is. And you mentioned the gratitude stuff. I mean, having that gratitude sort of moment.

Yes. I do that in the mornings. And then usually I'm just grateful to get some coffee. They're all of that. This is the most wonderful coffee. I'm a bear in the morning. People will die if they bother me for the first five hours. Five hours.

Half a day or something like that. Don't mess with me before I haven't had my coffee. But, you know, I mean, I remember I had a girlfriend once. And she was a morning person i'm not a morning person and she would as soon as she woke up she would be bouncing out of that bed and going you know me i'm roll back and forth a while pursues and crawl out of bed like he was zombie crawling out of a grave sort of thing you know i'm i am not the morning person but i remember she she was just buzzing but she

could never enjoy a quiet peaceful moment on saturday i'd be like let's lay in bed you know on saturday and watch some tv and cuddle and you know just kind of it's saturday or you know even sunday and she didn't do it like she was just and i'm like you're five kids with you you're gonna have a really hard time. But she was one of those people who was always like, my kids will never act like that when she sees the other kids in the store. And I'm like, shit, I can't marry you because your kids will be like that. Anybody who says their kids won't be like that, there's a curse, I think, that gets invoked at that point. Is that true?

Yeah. Different when you become a parent, for sure. Let's get into some of the services that you offer and things you do on your website. I see you do some speaking, you've got your podcast and other work that you do. Yeah, for sure. So, I spend my time really in three places. Like I said, I mentioned before, I own Hammond Psychology and Associates. So, I'm at the practice a part of the time doing psychological evaluations. The other part of the time I'm traveling, either doing different types of work in the community or speaking to different corporations and organizations about burnout prevention. And then the other part of my time I spend as a writer writing books. I'm actually, I'm not ready to say the title yet, but I'm going to be releasing another book here shortly, probably next month.

Yeah, that's how I spend a lot of my time. In addition to, yes, the mental health moment with Dr. Hammond as well. You even have a shop. People can buy some shirts. Keep growing. Keep going. Keep growing. Yes, that's my motto in life.

Yeah. Definitely my motto in life. That's one way to continue getting up in the morning. I got to keep going and keep growing. If you don't keep growing and going, life, the universe kind of has a place they find for you and it's in a cemetery. Yeah. Might as well just keep never, what's that old line? Do not go into the good night

lightly. Something like that. I'm not a poet folks. I think you know that after six years. I see some free self-care resources you have on your website. Tell us about some of that. Yeah. So I put together also some digital toolkits when it comes to self-care for parents or there's a teacher's guide. There's information about ADHD, depression, anxiety. working in the public education space I work in, that there's so much heartache and pain that can be prevented if only people had the information, which is, it's difficult for us being in the mental health field sometimes because we're trying our best to just get out as much information as we can. So yeah. So one of my gifts to the community is I put together some digital toolkits that are free on my website as well.

Awesome. Tips to manage depression for youth, tips to manage anxiety for youth. I'm still waiting for my dad to come back with the milk from the store. Let's see. No, I'm just teasing. That's a joke. Gaming jokes are now a callback on the Chris Hush show. Parent self-care toolkit. That's probably really important. You know, I mean, you know, one thing I always hear from moms is, and I think we were guilty of doing this to our mom you know it was like mom mom mom mom mom mom you know i've heard moms i go in the bathroom and they've got their fingers in the door they're door i can't get a moment to myself yeah you know my girlfriend's the same way this is the same thing i don't know what that means anyway let's see self-care tips for teachers that's a big deal my mom was a teacher for 2020 nice and my sister and that was hard

that's a lot of hard work and we're doubling our class sizes all the time wow it was like yeah i mean just i think they doubled their classes so big they couldn't fit him in the room i don't know i'm just a joke. Tips to manage ADHD for youth. I might want to pick that one up. Yeah. I had my ADHD down and then I, with old age, you know, everything kind of slowed down. So I got it under control. And then I started testosterone treatment therapy, replacement therapy a year ago.

And man, it all came back. Interesting. Yeah. It was, it was really interesting. I had it. I had everything. I had all that anxiety, all all came back. Interesting. Squirrel. Yeah. It was really interesting. I had all that anxiety, all that ADHD down. I was like, you know, calm. Wow. I just don't really give a shit because I'm old and I don't care anymore.

And then the testosterone kicked in and it's back. Wow. Squirrel. Self-care tips for youth too. Self-esteem for youth. A lot of these seem geared towards youth. Do you work with a lot of people in their youth? Yeah.

So, when I'm at the practice, I do work with youth. I work with all ages, but also youth. When I do evaluations for ADHD, learning disabilities, depression, anxiety, those types of evaluations. So yeah, for sure. Yeah. Learning disabilities. You ever been on Twitter? There's a whole client base there you can tell. So, yeah, for sure. Learning disabilities. You ever been on Twitter?

There's a whole client base there you can tap. Social media is an interesting place. Do you think social media is making people more depressive? We're talking about youth, and I know a lot of them, especially young girls, are getting depressed. You know, the Instagram and some of these, you know, they see some of this fake, this fakeness about all of social media. There's influencers are fake. There's filters that make every woman look like a supermodel. And they get a lot of, you know, body dysmorphia and stuff like that. So what do you think about some of that stuff? Is it? Yeah. And actually there's been many studies about how it affects youth it's it's hard because i i love social media a lot i think there's a lot of good

that we can do especially well like right now right like spreading information i love it for that purpose positive information and reputable information but the downside of course especially for teens like you said is that comparison effect where they are on there. They are like, everybody's perfect. Everyone has millions of dollars. Everyone's an influencer, which we know is not true. Everyone has a perfect life. Definitely not true. So it's a lot of education, especially for our youth, that that is not the reality that you're seeing. When you see that 20, even for adults, I mean, we do that too. When you see that 20 second video out of someone's day, you literally don't know what their 24 hours was about. We make assumptions. Like we see 20 seconds. We're like, oh, they have a perfect life. No, they don't. They don't. But we, we, we think that way. Cause that's what we see. We're seeing

these clips of information and we think we know everything that's happening, which is not the case, but it's even harder when you're developing and you're, you know, you're in identity crisis and all those sorts of things as a teenager anyway. So it is difficult. Yes. For a lot of teens, for sure. You know, I talk about how toxic the internet is and how it's kind of been become a Pandora's box. When a box, when it first came out, we were all like, kumbaya, it's bringing me in the one world together and we're all going to get along. And, you know, you started seeing the fall of, you know, the evil dictators and sort of thing.

And it seemed like, oh, this is going to unite us. And, of course, people thought that if you give more information to people, it will make them smarter. And instead, all the village idiots moved out of town square and found their friends. Yeah, scary. Some of the comments are very scary. Very scary.

And I, I, as an older person, you know, I've been on YouTube for about 20 years, so I, I'm used to be calling, you know,

all sorts of names and everything else. I mean, but at least I get paid for it. Thanks. Okay. You know, they're like, you're fat.

I'm like, Oh wow. Thank you. You're a prophet. How did you foresee that? I'm fat and tell me something I don't already know? And my scale tells me every morning. It actually does say that.

You're fat. It does not. It's one of those. It does not. It's an Alexa-based thing. It does not. She has issues with me. But it even screams in pain.

It's, ah, ah, you're stabbing. You're stepping on. No, it doesn't. I'm like, you're a scale. No, it doesn't just gonna do a stand-up bit here on scales i guess but i someone pointed out to me about a month or two ago and it kind of hit me like a freight train and they're like chris you know you you talk about some of the issues that people have on social media and depression and you know all those things

but imagine if you're a young boy or young girl oh yeah you don't have any sort of callous no used to people you know throwing ugly at you and you're not used to you know all the things that are out there i mean you got people spewing hate on yes different levels variations and and i'm like geez i never really thought about that i mean that could really fuck you up i mean you you and i are likely come of the age where you know back then you you didn't have social media you know you were lucky if you get somebody you know you leave a voice I remember when voicemail came around it was like you have voicemail now back then you just call people and you got a busy signal

you're like oh yeah call them back and you know so a lot of technology has changed but we were able to grow up and develop our esteem and our egos yeah without all that crap and so i can't imagine just growing up in that world but that's why our generation x was the greatest generation i knew i just want to play that out so any of your thoughts on any of that that I just was rambling on? Yeah, no, it's a real thing, like you said. And you're absolutely right. It is unfortunate when it comes to cyberbullying, for example. I mean, it's 24-7, right?

So a lot of kids, which I highly don't recommend as an aside, sleep with cell phones in their room. They're on their phone half the night or throughout the night. People are, like you said, spewing the hate. It's so much to take in. You have, hopefully, they're also focusing on school and other things that are important to them. But in addition to that, there's this extra added layer of the cyberbullying, which is a huge issue as you're trying to develop and understand who you are as a person and your sense of self. So all of that is a lot to deal with, which is why it's important.

And I'm a huge advocate for mentors and the community. It's not necessarily just the people in their households, but it's also the community. We have to rally together as a community and help our youth and make sure that we're advocating for them because it is a different world that they're living in. Like you said, when for us, it was school.

Maybe someone says something mean you went home, that's it. No, it's not like that anymore. It's 24-7. They have their phones, they have the internet. Yeah, it's 24-7. You could settle down in the playground, which you would do. You'd be like, you call me what? Maybe there needs to be

like a virtual punch in the face. No, we don't advocate violence. We just do the jokes. Just do the jokes. See a psychologist going to do to people. No, we don't advocate violence. No. We just do the jokes. Just do the jokes. See a psychologist if you need help there. No, no violence. So as we go out,

give people your dot coms. Tell people where they can reach out to you and find out more about utilizing your services, ordering books, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

So the best place is my website. It's drnikeshahammond.com. D-R-N-E-K-E-S-H-I-A hammond.com. D R N E K E S H I A Hammond.com. Thank you very much doc for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Hey, does this look infected? No,

I'm just kidding. That's my favorite doctor joke. I do a part. Oh, no. If I bump into doctors out in the wild or parties or something, I'll be like, Hey,

can I show you something? I think it's infected. And they look at me like, are you serious? no no i'm just kidding no this is my favorite doctor joke anyway thank you for coming to the show we really appreciate it thank you thank you so much for having me and thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com ford says christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas christmas one the tick toity, and all those crazy places on the internet. And thanks to LaShawn Huntley. My apologies if I pronounced that wrong.

Thanks for sharing this important information. We certainly appreciate the comment. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.