The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 570: Amy Morin - Fix What's Broken, Develop Healthier Patterns, and Grow Stronger Together (13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don't Do)

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Read our new book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/49LJuuD Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Notes: Just two years into Amy's work as a therapist, her mother passed away unexpectedly. Exactly three years to the day later, her 26-year-old husband, Lincoln, died of a heart attack. So she set out on a personal journey to learn as much as she could about grief, mental health, and mental strength. Amy decided that she would live life to the fullest. She rode mules into the Grand Canyon, went skydiving, took flying trapeze lessons, spent the night in 49 states, got 6-pack abs in 28 days, and started driving a motorcycle Amy's daily challenge: She pushes herself to run a mile as fast as she can. It forces her outside of her comfort zone and ensures mental and physical growth. Pleasant activity scheduling. Put them on the calendar. Block out time for pleasant experiences together with your partner, your family, and your friends. You then look forward to those moments, get to experience those moments, and then create memory dividends that you'll have for life. Schedule pleasant activities.  Don't take your partner for granted. I think this goes for any relationship, but especially for those of us who are in committed long-term relationships with a spouse. Think of the Tony Robbins story: For the past twenty years, each day when he gets home from work, he has a "Honey I'm home" routine where they share a big embrace and a kiss and they both bring positive energy to the interaction. This sets the tone so that their relationship doesn't get boring. What Mentally Strong Couples Do: They don't ignore their problems. - Whether they face a sudden financial hiccup or experience issues related to intimacy, mentally strong couples address their problems head-on. They engage in difficult conversations and confront their issues, regardless of the discomfort it might bring. By working together to find solutions early on, they prevent their problems from escalating. They don't keep secrets. - Mentally strong couples respect each other's privacy, like allowing one another to have private conversations with friends. However, they draw the line at keeping secrets. They're honest about everything, whether it's how much they really spent on an item or the fact that a co-worker has been flirting with them. They prioritize open discussion over potential discomfort because they understand that trust is the foundation of their relationship. They don't hesitate to set boundaries - Mentally strong couples know the importance of setting boundaries with each other. For instance, one partner may need to refrain from responding to text messages during the workday as it interferes with their job. But they also set boundaries to shield their relationship from external influences, like an overbearing mother-in-law or a relative who asks to borrow money. Together, they establish financial, physical, emotional, social, and temporal boundaries that enable them to function at their best. They don't become martyrs - Mentally strong couples understand that while sacrifices are part of a relationship, it doesn't mean giving up everything to the point of self-destruction. They steer clear of bitterness and resentment for the things they've done for the family. Instead, they set boundaries, voice their needs, and take care of their well-being. They don't use their emotions as weapons - It's healthy to experience and express a wide variety of emotions. But mentally strong couples don't weaponize their emotions. For instance, a strong individual won't cry to avoid a tough conversation, and they won't raise their voice to get their way. Their focus is on managing their emotions, not controlling their partner's actions. They don't try to "fix" each other - While they work toward bringing out the best in each other, mentally strong individuals don't try to "fix" their partners. They strive to be a positive influence but respect their partner's autonomy to make personal choices—even when they don't agree with those choices. They support their partner's attempts at self-improvement but understand that they can't do the work on their partner's behalf. They don't communicate with disrespect - While most couples understand that name-calling or belittling each other can harm their relationship, mentally strong couples also pay attention to the subtle aspects of communication that can make a significant difference (like looking up from their devices to hold a conversation). They prioritize active listening, understanding each other's perspectives, and expressing their feelings in a healthy manner. They don't blame each other for their issues - A mentally strong individual doesn't pass the buck by saying things like, "I'd be happier if my partner changed." Instead, they take ownership of their happiness. They refrain from blaming their partner for their struggles, acknowledging that everyone has the power to bring about change. They never lose sight of why they fell in love - Mentally strong couples ensure their love endures even as circumstances evolve. Career advancements, parenthood, and shifting responsibilities may make their lives look different from when they first met, but they never forget why they chose each other. Remembering why they fell in love helps them stay committed to resolving issues and working things out. They don't expect their relationship to meet all their needs - These couples don't subscribe to the notion that their partner will "complete" them. They understand that they each have to fulfill some of their own needs. Whether it's spending time with friends for recreational companionship or pursuing personal hobbies, they realize they have the agency and flexibility to meet their needs in various ways. They don't neglect their partnership - Mentally resilient couples understand that while there will be multiple demands on their attention—children, extended family, work—they can't neglect their relationship. They discuss their priorities and collaborate to maintain their connection, even during phases of life when they're being pulled in different directions. They don't take each other for granted - The strongest couples don't overlook the kindness, love, and affection their partner provides. They express gratitude and appreciation for each other regularly. Frequent conversations about what they value, tokens of appreciation, and genuine gratitude are integral to their partnership. They don't stop growing and changing - Mentally strong couples strive for personal growth but also ensure they don't grow apart. They aren't intimidated by their partner's individual progress. As they secure new jobs, take on fresh responsibilities, and change their viewpoints, they make sure their relationship evolves accordingly. It's inspirational when both partners are invested in strengthening their relationship. However, often one partner may be more focused on building mental strength and strengthening the relationship than the other. The good news is that one person can significantly impact the overall health of the relationship. You can start improving your relationship by giving up any unhealthy habits that could weaken your relationship. When you make the decision to change your habits, you can grow stronger as an individual while also strengthening your relationship, even if your partner isn't invested in building their own mental strength right away.

Don't you think if they just didn't do this, then our relationship would be better? But the truth is, and when we have these huge expectations that somebody's going to meet every single one of our needs, it just sets us up for failure. We know that when couples aren't purposely going after those good things, they tend to focus more on the bad things. The bigger picture conversations become key. What will I want to have accomplished? Did I do the things I really wanted to do? I'm not screwed around with this life. It could end tomorrow. At 26, I don't have my mom, I don't have my husband.

I realize, like, someday isn't promised. If there's something you want to do, you might as well go for it now. What are people still struggling with in today's world? We know that, like, boredom kills most relationships. People think it's conflict and that people who fight a lot get divorced. That's actually not true. The biggest reason people get divorced is because they're... Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Glohol.

I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details. And the first two chapters for free of our new book, The Score That Matters. If you text Hawk to 6.6.866. Now on to tonight's feature leader.

Great one. Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author of many books, including 13 things mentally strong people don't do. It's sold over a million copies. People Magazine says her book is one of the top 20 must-read books of all time. Her TEDx talk, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong, is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time with 23 million views. She also lives on a sailboat in the Florida Keys. During our conversation we discuss, Amy shares her story and how she overcame early tragedies in her life, like her mom dying when she was 23, and then her husband dying exactly three years to the day after that. Incredible. And we discuss the mistakes that couples make in their marriage and how to avoid them, as well as how to fix the things that we've already messed up.

Then Amy shares the importance of growing and learning together with your partner and why that's critical for long-term successful relationships. Ladies and gentlemen, I think you'll find this conversation to be very helpful. It's the great Amy Morin. Amy, it is awesome to have you back on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you so much, Ryan, for having me back. It's good to be here. So you're on a boat in the Keys in Florida. I have to ask, what's life like now that you've been living on this boat for years? I guess I've gotten used to it. Like, sometimes I forget and somebody will say, wait, like, what's your background? Where are you? So I think it's been eight years now, seven or eight years ago we moved on to a boat thinking it would be like a six-month,

adventure, but really liked it. So here I am. It's a lot like a floating apartment. I'm tied to a dock most of the time so I can have high speed internet and I'm in a minute canal in the Florida Keys. So I'm not bobbing around too much in the ocean. But just around the corner is the ocean and we can go snorkeling and swimming and go do some adventures when I'm not working. How often do you guys take it out and get on the water? So our sailboat, it all depends. In the winter, it gets really windy, but almost too windy to sail because sometimes the water's too rough and I'm a fair weather sailor. But we have a smaller boat and a jet ski. So those are really easy to take those out almost every day. I love it. Your article caught fire about what mentally strong people don't do. And I want to dig in a

little bit to your backstory, but I want to actually go directly to the recent work before we go backwards. And that's in regards to couples. And I'm curious now that you've studied and worked with so many couples over the years. Some that are doing well that just want to go from good to great and some that are doing really bad and trying to get better. Or as I read, some that are just looking for an excuse to check that box before they eject from the relationship. So you've seen it all when you think of the strongest couples, okay, the best ones, the ones who seem to not necessarily have it all figured out, but they're thriving. They're doing really well. They're happy. Things are going well. What have you found to be some of the commonalities among those couples?

One of the biggest things is their attitude toward problems. Instead of blaming the other person, like it's your fault that we went over budget last month, or it's your fault that we're struggling with these parenting issues. Instead, they approach it like a we problem. Like, okay, we're facing this and this is what we're going to do about it. Right down to problems like maybe their partner's health issue. It's like, how are we going to tackle this, not what are you going to do about? it. And it's really when people face those issues with that attitude, it makes all the difference in a world. And in the book, I explain, there's even studies on when there's a hurricane coming. A lot of couples get stronger. Their relationship improves. They report better marital satisfaction because

they're preparing for the storm. You're putting up the shutters on the windows. You're doing all of these things to get ready for it. And you're working together on a project. You would think something like a natural disaster would tear people apart. But the effects are even long lasting after the storm ends, people report relationship satisfaction because they're like, we just went through that thing. And so any times we face these challenges in life, if we face it as a we problem, that we can both tackle, and even if you can't fix it, like your partners has a health issue, you can't fix it, but you could still say, what can I do to support you? And how can we work on this together as a couple? So they think of we, not me or not say things. I'm going to be projecting this entire

conversation just so you know if I'm using examples is probably me and the stupid things that I've done. How about for parents? Because you probably deal with parents. And let's say one of your kids misbehaved did something wrong. And the other parent was like out of town or not around when the spouse did some sort of discipline or didn't discipline and you get frustrated. And this is something I've obviously done. As I said, I was going to be projecting where then I come home and I'm thinking, wait, how is that the discipline or lack thereof from this mistake, bad choice that a child made? And I know I'm like, that is a you did this versus I wouldn't have. And that's not a good thing to do, but I've made that mistake too many times to count. And I'm embarrassed to say that, but I'd rather

just get right into it here, Amy, and be real than act like this isn't a real thing. What about for those situations, how do you help somebody fix that when they've messed that up more than once? Yeah. And you're exactly right. It's something that we've all done. I was a foster parent for a solid decade. And it's difficult. We make those decisions in the moment. And then our partner makes decisions in the moment. We might not always agree. So then you come together to say, like, what are we doing to manage our child's behavior together? What do we need to do to support each other so we can be on the same page? And that would be the problem that you tackle as opposed to you took your child's bike away for two weeks. Like, that's insane as opposed to whatever I would have done.

And I think when we tackle it like that, like what do we do to get on the same page so that we can manage our child's behavior better so that we're teaching them those skills. And those little moments are all just maybe a setback, a mistake, a difference in opinion. And that's going to happen along the way. And then how do we recover from it? The bigger issue comes in when you say, I think this is how we should parent. Your partner has a completely different view of maybe how consequences work or how to intervene or when to intervene. And that's when we need to have a conversation about how do we manage our differences of opinion so that we don't end up arguing in front of the kids or so we don't end up working against each other.

That's a great point. I feel like my parents were always in lockstep with my discipline. It's like even if maybe one of them messed up, they probably huddled and then came back and they had each other's back. And that was a great model for me that like there was never a disat least not in front of us, a disagreement about when we messed up or did something stupid. They seemed to always be like one, one it came to that. And I think that's a big deal, like having each other's back and figuring out your differences

in private between you too. It is because kids are smart. And if they know that the two of you disagree, they will divide and conquer, right? They will know, I'm going to ask mom these questions. And when I mess up, I go to dad or whatever it is. And so that's one of the most important things for kids to feel safe and secure is that they know mom and dad have this handled.

If they think, boy, mom and dad can't agree on how to help me learn these skills in life, it gives kids anxiety and then actually creates more misbehavior. Can we get into some of your backstory and how you chose to go down this path? And I'll tee it up and I'd love you to tell it. But married young, devastating heart attack from your husband Lincoln when he's what, 26. Is that what I think? 26 devastating heart attacks. So you're widowed and you're so young. Can you take it from there? What some of the other tragedies that happened in your life that inspired you down the path that you're currently on? Sure. In my 20s were just like one loss after another. I had lost my mom when I was 23. Three years to the day that I lost my mom is the day that I lost my husband. It felt like this incredibly bizarre twist in the world that I would lose somebody on the exact anniversary. So at 26, I don't have my mom. I don't have my husband. And I'd also lost like the life I thought I was going to live. I was a therapist. And I thought Lincoln and I were going to have this amazing life. We'd already bought a house. And I just we had these so many hopes and dreams. We'd become foster. parents by that point. And so I wasn't just grieving the loss of my mom and grieving the loss of Lincoln, but I was just grieving the life that I wanted to live and figuring out how do I get through this. And it took years as a therapist. I at least knew intellectually what goes on when you're grieving and what happens when you develop PTSD. But at the same time, going through it was much different

than reading it in a textbook. And I still don't have the words to really describe my 20s other than to say it was a really dark place and a difficult time. But one of the biggest challenges I had, too, was Lincoln was our primary breadwinner. Therapists don't make a ton of money. I had a mortgage to pay. And the last thing I wanted to do was move in that moment is I thought I've lost a lot. I don't want to pack my bags and have to go find a new place to live. Not right now. I want to wait, but I couldn't pay the bills. And so I started freelance writing just as a side hustle because I could do that in the evenings and on the weekends. And a few years later, I was able to pay the bills. I earned enough money so I could stay in my house for now, took years to dig myself out. Fortunate enough that I found love again. And I thought, woohoo, I'm going to get remarried. And then I got to move to a new house when I wanted to on my own timeline. I got a new job. And then my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. And it was pretty quickly after his diagnosis that they told us it was terminal. And I just remember thinking, like, this isn't fair. Like, I just grieved all these years. Life finally took a turn for the better. And now, here we go again. But it wasn't like I had a choice. And that's when I wrote.

myself a letter of what mentally strong people don't do. Just so happened there were 13 things on the list and I found it helpful, I guess, in some of the darkest days of my life and only put it on the internet as a whim because I thought maybe somebody will read it, but that led to a viral article of like 50 million people read it, got a book deal out of it and that's why 10 years later, I now have six books and I get to talk to you about mental strength, but didn't intend to become an author for sure. Could you ever imagine when you wrote that letter to yourself and then just published it, yeah, let's let others read it too, that it could have led to a, that was a life-changing moment. No, and I think if I had known, like, a lot of people are going to read this

article, I mean, first of all, I would have edited it a lot better. But second of all, I think I would have been terrified because I was a therapist, and I wasn't used to telling anybody my story. I listened to people's stories, and I help them, but I don't put my personal stuff out there. And when I put the list out there, it was almost literally just the list. It didn't have any context to it, but as it went viral, it was like clicking on the screen, it was literally 10,000 views. I'd hit click again, and 10,000 more people had just read it in the past three seconds. And so these news stations from around the world are calling me, and they're asking me, how do you know so much about mental strength? And I didn't tell anybody. I just said,

oh, I'm a therapist, and I know these things. And I didn't know what to say. And so privately, my father-in-law passed away pretty quickly after the article actually went viral, and nobody knew. And so we're planning his funeral. I'm going through all of this. And then publicly people are congratulating me on talking about this. And then one of the people who happened to read the article was a literary agent who said, you should write a book. And I said, well, there's a backstory. And I'm not sure I want to share it. And she said, we certainly don't have to, but it might give more, even more credibility to this article that you wrote. So decided, okay, then I'll step up and say, I didn't write this because I'm an expert in it. I wrote this actually because I struggled with it. And then after you passed away and you're starting to go viral, but part of your decision making was, I'm not going to mess around with this life. I'm going to live it to the fullest. You're riding mules into the Grand Canyon, skydiving, flying trapeze lessons. You spent the night in 49 states, right? So you got six-pack abs in 28 days. I just want to hear about your mentality of, I'm not screwed around with this life. It could end tomorrow. You've seen it firsthand with the people you love the most. And I think hearing your story,

could inspire others to not wait for a tragedy to do this, but do it right now. That's the thing. And if anything good came out of the things I went through, one thing would be that, like, things that used to feel really scary aren't scary anymore. Public speaking used to me my biggest fear. Really doesn't matter that much anymore. Go ahead. Laugh at me when I'm on stage.

Like, it doesn't really matter anymore. I've been through the worst things I think I could possibly be through. And I don't want to tempt the universe to give me something else. But it really takes away a lot of those insecurities and fears because I think so many things don't matter. And that was one of the things that caused us to move to a sailboat. We had always said, like, it'd be cool to live on a boat someday and put it off. And it was like, if anything I realized, like, someday isn't promised. If there's something you want to do, you might as well go for it now.

And I'm not getting any younger. Let's do it. So we moved on a whim. We had a fiat and we moved our dog and our cat. just drove to Florida and said, let's do this and see what happens. And a lot of things now, I think, yeah, the things I used to think were scary no longer feel that way. Life is short. You don't really know what you're capable of unless you put yourself out there. Even though I was a therapist and I'm talking to people about being capable and competent and trying new things, writing a book

was beyond my wildest dreams for anything I could have done. And I really didn't know it until somebody said, you should write a book. And it wasn't until the book started hitting bestseller list. I thought, wow, perhaps I could write a second book. And we don't always get those opportunities in life. Somebody doesn't always say to you, you should do this and they don't always invite you to do it. And I realize that too. Like if I want to go live life to its fullest, like don't wait for somebody to invite you. Just go do those things. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. If you try something and you fail, so what. At least you have a good story that comes out of it. I struggle with this still. And that's why it's inspiring for me to talk to you about it sounds

better and more like a leader to say, I'm not as worried about approval of others or not looking stupid and willing to be embarrassed because I admire people who are like that. You just go and do it. They go do the thing. Let's go book the trip. Let's go live on a boat. Let's go dance at the wedding. I admire those and I'm not there yet. And I don't know if ever will be, but I think it's something to strive for. I'm curious how you not only got to that place, but then stay there because it's easy. to get inspired through tragedy to be like, what the hell, let's just go. But then you've been like this for a while, and the tragedies have happened a while ago. So how do you maintain and even continue to live this life of not being that scared?

Not that you don't have fears, but that you're able to push through that day after day. I think I try to remember what is it that I want to have accomplished in life? When I'm 100 years old, if I embarrassed myself on the dance floor, will it matter? well, I'd just be grateful that I had fun. And don't get me wrong, there are still things that I will instantly say, yeah, I'm not going to do that. I was on a podcast recently and they were doing something with songs and they're like, hey, sing this song. No, I'm not going to do it, partly because I'm going to save your listeners from having to hear me sing, but also that is not something I'm still going to be saying I'm going to be comfortable with. So I do have my limits.

But when it comes to like, well, what's the point of this? Again, if I were going to ride a mule into the Grand Canyon, like, that's an amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But it's easy to get stuck in the, well, I have a lot to do this weekend, or I'll do that later when things calm down a little bit. But like, life doesn't really calm down. And so one thing that we can always do is just challenge yourself with little things every day. And one thing I do is I run a mile as fast as I can every day. It's a really tangible way to say, I'm going to do something that my brain tells me I can't do. you get to the three quarter mile mark and my brain's all, ooh, you're out of breath, slow down. But I then get to do it anyway and say, actually, despite the fact I'm tired instead of taking a

break, I'm going to step it up a little bit, just to prove my brain wrong that I can do something that I still don't think I can do sometimes. And then I think another thing we can do is put something in your calendar. So it might be, it's so easy to say, I'm not going to do these things or I'm too busy, but put something in the calendar for next month and maybe once a month, just a small thing that would challenge you to do something outside of your comfort zone. And then when we have those things on our calendar, it tells our brain like, no, I am an adventurous person, if that's what you're going for is adventure. Or if you're going to say, I'm going to get better at public speaking, put a couple things on your calendar that involve public speaking, just to say I'm going to actually

follow through and face the sphere this year. And when we start to do that, I think it just gives us an opportunity to say, I'm not going to put it off. I'm going to increase the likelihood that I do it by putting it on my calendar. And then I start to see myself as somebody who can overcome fear and who can face challenges head on. It's like Nikki Glazer said, she's a stand-up comedian. If you really want to get good at it, go to open mics, bring your friends, sign up for the one two weeks from now.

That'll force you. That'll work as a forcing function to start writing your five minutes or your 10 minutes. And you get on stage and your friends are there. And the only way to get good is to get going. Same way with travel. I had a friend of mine last year. I was like, hey, I think I want to go hike in Sedona with my wife when it's a little bit cold here in Ohio. And he just like, book the trip.

Buy the plane flights, get the Airbnb, start planning. And I mean, it sounds obviously so simple and basic. He's like, buy the plane tickets. And then once you do, it's blocked on your calendar and you're preparing and you're excited. And then you get back and you have those as Bill Perkins would say these memory dividends from the pictures and then the experience of doing it. And this is the thing we say at our house all the time. Would we regret booking that trip? Would we regret doing that thing?

The answer is almost always no. And it's just a great question now. We don't have unlimited money and unlimited time off. However, I think that's a great question to ask. Would we regret that? Like we're talking about doing this big book launch party and bringing a band and doing this stuff. And Miranda looked at me. She's like, would you regret doing that and going big and making it awesome and inviting all

of our friends from all over? Of course not. then let's do it. And I think that's a much better way to approach it if you can than saying like, we're just too busy. We got too much stuff going on and do stuff like that. And that's the thing. We get so bogged down into the day-to-day life and the things that are going on that sometimes we don't zoom out and look at the big picture. Over the course of five years of my life, what will I wanted to have accomplished? I got the dishes done and I managed all the day-to-day tasks in my life. Great. But did I do the things I really wanted to do? Like, throw the party and book the

trip and have fun and go do those things. And in the therapy office, we'll often have people do what we call pleasant activity scheduling. And it might just be one thing a week. And this was really helpful during COVID when it felt like every day blended into the next and people felt like they just couldn't even keep track of time. But put something in your calendar. And it might be as simple as Friday night as a family, we're going to watch this movie at 7 p.m. But when you put that in your calendar, say, on Tuesday, you now have something to look forward to on Friday, which boosts your mood. And then when you do that fun thing, you get a second boost in your mood. And then as you just said, once you've built a positive memory, you get a third boost. And so it could just be these

really simple things, but once you put them in your calendar for a lot of people that really helps them feel better about life in general. And it doesn't have to be these huge things like a trip around the world. It might just be. And even if you live alone, put that on your calendar. Friday night, I'm going to watch this movie, even if it's by myself, so that you have something to look forward to. And then you're making sure that you're building those things in your life. We just booked a ski trip, our nine-year-old has never skied before. And so she's excited to ski. We're going to go to Colorado and like do it up big. One of my friends said, hey, best place for our kid to learn to ski is this one place where we're going to go. And we made the announcements. We're buying the goggles and

the gear and stuff. And we're not going for a few months, but this almost daily excitement level leading up to this is a huge win. Like you said, and then you go and do it and hopefully it goes well. There's no no guarantees with skiing. And then you also then create the memory dividends afterwards, there's just so much to be said, I'm coaching myself now as much as anybody else of why it's useful to book it and to create the excitement and then to go and do it and have those regularly scheduled things as a family or with friends. I think like having those checkpoints along the way on your calendar are so helpful. Absolutely. And those are the things that you remember. When you look back on your life as a kid, do you remember every day you went to math class in the

third grade. No, but you might remember the day your parents let you skip school when you went on a trip or you did something fun or the vacation that you took. And those are the things that really matter so much in life sometimes is while routine and consistency and schedules are great, it's great to also then say, well, let's schedule the fun things or make sure that we're building enough of those things in there so that we don't have all day, every day look exactly the same. How about for you? How do you like map out your year? How do you map out your calendar to have these pleasant activity, scheduling things that are on the calendar and how you plan out your year. Oh, good question. Yeah. So I live on a boat. So it becomes like, where do you go and what do you

do on vacation? I don't really go on cruises. And so I still have a house in Maine. And so in the summer, I often go to Maine, which really helps me reset and spend a lot of time with friends and family. And then I travel a lot for speaking engagements. So when I am not working, like travel isn't always actually on the top of my list because that's what I do a lot of the rest of the time. So for me, it's more of the, let's take advantage of the Florida Keys while we live here. So it's about jet skiing and going snorkeling. And some of those things are weather dependent. So you can't always put them on the calendar.

Like, if I want to go jet skiing on Saturday, it might rain or it might be too windy. So it takes a little bit of flexibility there. But to make sure that I'm doing those things regularly, I want to go snorkeling. I want to go check out a dolphin somewhere. And that helps. And then I think just knowing to like summertime, I go to Maine, and live like the life I used to live, which is a completely different realm. You go together with your husband?

Or do you go separate? Yeah. Usually he goes with me. We still have a house up there and he gets to see my friends and family as well. And his family's in Minnesota. So we go to Minnesota sometimes to visit his friends and family as well. So I don't know how big your boat is, but I'm going to shift now to your most recent work about couples. And they'll talk a little bit about you and then just some of the concepts and ideas.

from the book. But how is it living in, is it close quarters? I would imagine it probably is. I'm a guy likes my own space. So I'm wondering how that goes. But what's it like living together with another person that you're married to on a boat? For us, it works out well. So it is close quarters. It's a three bedroom, two bathroom boat. But we're talking about bedroom. Oh, that's big. Well, it is. So it's 53 feet. So it's not tiny. But at the same time, like a bedroom isn't like a giant master bedroom in a house. We're talking about a very small bedroom type situation. And we're lucky we own what's called a dock minium. So we have dock space outside. So we have a teaky hut outside. So when I'm doing interviews, my husband's not like hiding in the other room.

He's usually outside or doing something else. So that's good that we have outdoor space so that we aren't exactly in the same room all the time. But sure, we live in there aren't like, it's not like you're going to the office and shutting the door or you're not, somebody's not in the kitchen while somebody else is in the other wing of the house anymore, we're here in the same space. What's the key to making a relationship work where you're in close quarters like that? So I think it's a lot of kindness and communication in terms of making sure that stuff is put away or picked up or so that the table isn't covered in stuff and that you stay organized, but then you communicate about that, like, hey, I'm going to do this, put these things here as an author.

I get like lots of books in the mail because I'm a podcast host as well. So people send me their books. Where are we going to keep these? Where do we keep my other stuff for work? My publisher sends me copies of my own books so that I can give them out, piles of them, boxes of them. So it's a matter of then figuring out like how are we going to compromise and make these things work without just making assumptions.

Like, hey, I think I'm okay with putting all of this here. What do you think? Or I'm going to take over this room today. And again, it's about compromise and having those discussions. I want to dive into some. of the 13 things in the book if you're a game and then we'll just riff on a few of them. Is that cool? Sure. Let's start with number one. They don't ignore their problems, right?

13 things mentally strong couples don't do. That's the title of the book. And so number one is they don't ignore their problems. This seems some of these seem obvious, but then I think about I'm like, yeah, but we actually do that one. That's obvious, meaning we mess it up. So can you start with they don't ignore their problems? How do they approach problems? So a lot of people come in to my therapist. office and it might be something that happened 10 years ago but they never talked about it. It could be that one person's still blaming the other person or there was a kid had an accident and somebody says that was your fault because you weren't watching them, but they never discussed it. And 10 years later,

there's still some resentment or sometimes it's an obvious thing in terms of somebody's health. Maybe somebody's not taking care of themselves, but the other person doesn't want to offend him or they don't want to say anything. And then 10 years later, they're still, well, you never stop smoking. and that's why we have this problem now. And another times it's shared issues. A lot of couples will say for years, we've had very different ideas about family or very different ideas about extended family issues,

but we never really talked about it. And therefore, the resentment grows, the problems often grow bigger, or people will start to work on the problem very separately. So if a couple wants to manage their money, one partner might start saving money, the other person's into investing money, or they still are into buying things.

And then you have two people tackle, the problem but from very different angles. And then 10 years later, they're like, oh, boy, this really didn't work out because I took this approach, you took that approach, and we never discussed it. So it's a communication issue. And I think some of these come up because at times, especially for those who are parents, the relationship can become like a series of logistics meetings, right? This kid needs to be there. They need to be there. You're going to be there. We're going to divide and conquer. This parent is actually helping us because we have more kids than

We have five. So we're like always people need to be different places and there's only two of us. So there becomes a lot of logistic meetings and that can be the basis for communication if we're not really intentional. So what are some, what's some practical application for those people who find themselves in the middle of having a series of logistics meetings as opposed to like a real relationship? So I think sometimes it's about zooming out and saying overall in our relationship, how are we doing?

And so instead of having a meeting of who's picking up who, when, maybe you do have a meeting once a week, Sunday nights, let's sit down and just talk about the overall picture of our relationship. How are we doing with managing the household? How are we doing with paying the bills and keeping everything running smoothly? And then you might have that conversation of, gee, I feel like I'm doing a lot of stuff around the house lately. What could we do about that? Can we make sure that you step in a little bit here or there? And to talk about that, but then as you say, you don't want your relationship to be. become a business meeting. So then how do you make sure that you're built carving out time, not just to talk about the problems, but to connect with each other. When people are dating, we talk about our hopes and our dreams and our feelings about stuff. And then 20 years later, couples are just talking about the weather and what time they have to be at soccer practice. So we want to make sure that we're carving out time to not just be parents or to not just be business managers who are running a household, but to also just be human beings who are excited about life.

And that could come in the form of a regular date night. It might be when the kids are in bed every night after 7 o'clock, we're just going to enjoy each other's company. And here's what that would look like to make sure that those things are happening too. How about number three? They don't hesitate to set boundaries. Can you go deeper on setting boundaries? So couples need boundaries with each other.

And it might be, I'm not going to get any of my password to social media. And that could be a boundary that each of you agree on. yeah, we can have private conversations on social media and we're both comfortable with that. Or we can have private conversations with our friend. If my friend calls and says I'm having a crisis, can you come over? Maybe I'm going to meet with my friend and then I'm not going to tell my partner what we just discussed, because that's my friend's business. That would be boundaries with your partner. But you also need boundaries as a couple against everybody else so that your in-laws don't pop over unexpectedly if you don't want them to.

Or so that your sister, if she wants to borrow money, you need to agree on that. that? What are your financial boundaries or even your physical boundaries? Your kids want to sleep in your bed? How does that affect your relationship? And having those conversations, like, how do we protect ourselves? There are so many outside forces that will tear you apart if you let them. And that's why you need to build a fence basically around your relationship that says, here's how we protect it so that we can stay in love with each other and that we don't build resentment because I'm angry that your cousin stops over unannounced all the time. It's those little things that often build over time where people feel like I never felt like I could say anything so I didn't say anything. Here we are 10 years

later and I'm angry about it. We were out together another couple a couple weeks ago and I don't know how the topic of Christmas got brought up but the woman that we were out to dinner with her and her husband and she said right after we got married we had committed to ourselves that we wanted Christmas actually Christmas day to not be crazy hectic of driving from house to see every day. So we both set both sets of parents down and said, we know this may upset you, but we're not going to see you on Christmas Day. It's going to be just us. We're going to open gifts and we're going to relax. We'll see you on the Christmas Eve or the 26th or whatever.

But it's a boundary they set. And both parents, both sets of parents were upset initially. And now both of them, they've been married for a while. Both of them, that's just the way it is. And I thought like, what a great example of setting a boundary of telling them hurting their feelings initially. but it brought their family. This is even before they had kids, and then they had kids,

and they still do the same thing. And I think, huh, those types of conversations that they first had together and then had with both sets of parents, I thought was a great way to approach saying, this is one of our boundaries. I love that.

And holidays are a common subject that comes up. Or people are even like, how much do you spend? Somebody might say, well, I buy gifts for cousins and aunts and uncles, and I spend thousands of dollars. And the other person says,

Wow, in our family, we never did that. I'm not used to spending a lot of money on gifts. You need to have those conversations. What is it going to look like moving forward then? What are our boundaries and how are we going to respect those? Yeah. What's your, like, do you have couples document all this stuff and like have a book of all the things that like strong couples do and don't do? Or what's that?

I'm curious about that process. So I guess a lot of these things that came up with in the book, straight from my therapy office, I just think like, what is it these people don't do? What strategies are they practicing? things we've naturally done for years. I've been a therapist for, it's been over 20 years now. And then also research. I just loved studies and knowing like what actually works and what doesn't, what are breaking couples apart versus what are the small things we can do that can build it up. So, and the way I've always written my books is my readers will ask for what they want next.

Like, hey, how do we raise strong kids? So that led to the parenting book. And then people wanted to know, what does it look like to be a strong woman? That led to the women's book. And then by the time we got to this one, people said now, what about in a relationship? What does mental strength look like? So I was thrilled to be able to write this one for couples. Love it. Okay. So number six is they don't try to fix each other. Yeah, this is a me problem for sure because it's like a natural part of like as I played quarterback and part of my job I felt like was trying to raise a level of play in my teammates. And at times, it would anger them if I felt like they weren't doing it right. And my coaches encourage me, hey, like your team, get these guys gone. And so part of what was built

from a young age through college and after college was like not, I don't know if fixing guys was the right term, but maybe it looked like that at times. And that then has carried over into other parts. And I'm aware of it in trying to do better. But I think this is a tough one for some of us. Maybe more guys and girls, I don't know. But I'm curious to you learn more about they don't try to fix each other. Yeah, it's important to, and you can motivate your partner. You can help them. You can inspire them. But fixing is when you really step in and you're giving out unwanted advice. You're teaching them. You're acting like almost like you're their teacher or their coach. Could be small things. Like I think you need to pick up after yourself. So I'm going to step in and try

to do that better or you should get up earlier or you should read more books. We start telling them what to do. And it really changes the dynamic of the relationship where somebody becomes more like a parent. And then what happens is, strangely, the other person often falls into the other role of, well, I'll become the student or I'll act more like your child and you start to boss me around. And in extreme examples, and I tell this story in the book, would be like the husband had a substance abuse problem and the wife is desperately trying to get him to stop drinking, everything from the dumping out the bottles to arguing with him every day. And the thing is, when we love somebody, we want them to be their best, and we often see their potential. And we think, oh, you could do so many amazing things. If only you didn't do this. Or if only you quit this bad

habit. And we don't want to see them in pain. We don't want to see them struggle. So sometimes we just want to step in and fix it for them. But you can't do that. It doesn't make it any better. It just makes things worse. So sometimes it's about accepting I can work on myself and I can change my behavior, but it's not up to me to try to change your behavior. It reminds me of the Charlie Munger quote. Somebody came up to him and said, I'd love to get a great wife. I really want to have a good marriage. I'd love to find a great wife. And he's like, how do I do that? And Charlie goes, deserve one. And I feel like that's right in line with your stuff, too, of you have to be the person that deserves a great spouse. So work on yourself, focus on yourself

to then deserve the one. And that never ends. Even after your, married. And I feel like that is a through line of a lot of your work of how to earn that great friend, that great spouse, that great job. Deserve it. Deserve one. Work on yourself first before trying to fix everybody else. That's just it. And a lot of people come into the therapy office with a laundry list of things they want me to fix in their partner. And they'll be like, don't you think if they just didn't do this, then our relationship would be better? But the truth is, you can drag somebody to therapy, but if they have no desire to change that behavior, a much better strategy is to say, what am I going to change within myself? How am I going to change

how I respond to their behavior? How am I going to make sure that I'm living my best life? So that perhaps the other person might see that, they might be inspired, they might be motivated. But also when we change our behavior, it's like changing your dance steps. It forces the other person to change there. So there's always something we can do. And fixing ourselves is often the best. place we can start because that's what we have control over. Do you work with many blended families? I do. Lots of blended families. Okay. So I have one as well. I'm a part of one. And I think I'm also kind of a control freak. And that does not play well. Usually in a blended family at times, I've had to get much better. I feel like I have over the past decade. Because in a blended family,

and there's other parents involved that you were in a prior relationship with. And there's a reason, obviously that you're not in a relationship with them anymore on both sides. And so sometimes I let maybe a little of that frustration get the best of me because I'm like, I wish I could just make this decision. Like I'll even say to my wife, a normal family just books the trip and goes. They don't have to check with multiple people outside of their family, but they actually are still a part of the family, right? Because they're parents of children in our home.

So I'm just curious, like overall, when you hear stuff like that, it's very real and raw, but I'd rather this be real and authentic than just going through the list. But this is a genuine thing that I think a lot of people deal with, and it never goes away. And so I'm curious what blended families have done well to progress and keep getting better and better that maybe would be eye-opening for me. Yeah. And it is, and it's not that, I mean, it's a legit concern. And people say these are complicating factors. And I've dealt with everything from a fairly conservative family who had to deal with the other parents who gave their kid a Mohawk and died it purple. And they're like, now we all look fairly conservative. And then we've got the kid in the family with the purple mothawk and we're going out to dinner. And like, what do we do about this? Like right down to those little things. And you do have to compromise. But I think those are all also opportunities to say this is not ideal. This is not what I would love to have happen. But how am I going to deal with?

it anyway and that attitude of like how do I grow mentally stronger given these circumstances and that you can't always control it and there's going to be disappointment because maybe you can't all go on this trip or the thing you wanted to do this weekend gets a little bit messed up because of schedules and just accepting okay like we can't fix it and I think knowing that too like when can you fix the problem and when do you just need to fix how you feel about it and that's the sticky situation is somebody's like if I could just get the weekend custody to be for four o'clock on Friday instead of six o'clock, our lives would be better. And they fight that. It may be out in court. They're battling for a while. And sometimes that makes sense. Let's

address the problem head on. And other times it's about saying, yeah, we could go to court and battle this out until the kid's 18, but is that really where our energy is best spent? Do I just accept the kid comes at six instead of four and you move forward? And then those are either way, is opportunities to say, and how do I grow mentally stronger despite this? And there's no right or wrong answer when it comes to deciding that. Like, when do I fix the problem and when do I fix how do I feel about the problem? But it's opportunities to teach your kids. I don't love this, but I'm going to accept it. And here's how I'm going to work through my feelings about it. Yeah, I think it can make you more patient, more understanding and try to put yourself in the other

person's shoes, even if you completely disagree with them. And it also has an opportunity. You're probably seen this through adversity. When a couple is dealing with tough things from outside that still affect them, I think it can bring you closer together. I think you can get stronger from going through some stuff that you don't want or isn't pleasant, but it almost like has this, it's only like you said with the hurricanes. Like it has a way to like be a unifying factor if you're intentional about it. It could also tear you apart. But I feel I felt that many times over the past 10 years. That's the thing. And so, you know, again, like we could talk about boundaries where most people would say, like, don't talk to your ex now that we're together.

And you blended family, that's not really an option. That's every day. Yeah, we talk every day. Right. And so then figuring that out, like in an ideal situation, I'd say, let's not do that. But given our circumstances, how do we now manage that? And what's that going to look like? But again, if you make it a wee problem of we have to figure out how are we going to manage

all of this, given our circumstances, what are we going to do about it? And you're talking about it, then it does become a shared thing. that you're fighting against. And we know when two people are fighting against something else, they grow closer together as opposed to in some relationships where somebody might say, well, I don't want you talking to your ex and then they are because they're co-parenting.

And then they're doing it in secret because they're like, I don't want you to know I'm having all these. And then they get torn apart. That's it exactly. Yeah. Okay. Let me get to some other ones. Respect.

So number sevens, they don't communicate with disrespect. So they're just, they're more, the opposite obviously is that there is this. There's not name calling or belittling, but there's this mutual level of love and respect. Yeah. And again, the reason I phrase these in the don't is I would have people that would say,

we have these really respectful conversations 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time we're yelling and screaming. And then when we get upset, I start calling names or I start really pushing those buttons that I know especially anger you. That's all it takes. If 10% of the time you're disrespectful, you create such a divide and such hurtful. feelings that you're not going to overcome it in the 90% of the positive communication. And while some people will say, well, I'd never call my partner names, they might be the kind

of person that never looks up from their phone, right? And we've all done this before. You're sitting there scrolling through your phone, your partner's talking to you, and you're still scrolling. Yep. And how disrespectful that is to the other person. But on the flip side, your partner might need to say, hey, can I talk to you in a minute? If you're working, you're in the middle of an email and they interrupt you three times. You may need to have a conversation about that. Here's how we manage that. Because sometimes people do say, well, I text you four times today and you didn't text back, but the other person's working on a project and they don't want to be interrupted. So again, the bigger picture conversations become key.

I thought 10 was interesting. They don't expect their relationship to meet all of their needs. Yeah. In today's world, we have some pretty high expectations of our partners. Like, you're going to be my business partner because we're going to run the household. You're going to be my financial partner because we're going to share in the money. you're going to be my recreational companion because I like to have fun and I don't care if you like it or not, but I'm going to drag you to this event because I like to go. Oh, and by the way, we're also going to be partners when it comes to the household responsibilities. And so, and then we're going to parent these kids together too. And when we have these huge expectations that somebody's going to meet every

single one of our needs, it just sets us up for failure. That's why it's important to have friends and family and people who maybe you talk to about certain things because your spouse doesn't really want to talk about business with you all the time or your partner's not really into discussing the stock market. If you love the stock market, maybe you have a friend that you talk to about that. Or if you love hiking and horses, maybe you go do that with somebody else if your partner doesn't love it. And then knowing you can meet some of your own needs. If you have a need for some solitude, go do that and go spend some time alone. And if your partner has a huge need for a companionship, maybe they find a friend to hang out with or they do something else that day.

and then trusting each other. I know that you can meet some of your needs. I'll meet some of your needs. But again, we're going to talk about where I fall short, what you need from me, and what I could be doing differently. Number 12, they don't take each other for granted. I don't know if you, Tony Robbins has been on the podcast circuit, been trying to get him on.

And he's been telling this story. I think he told a few different podcasts. He's an interesting guy to listen to. But he said one of the things that he started with his wife, I think more than, I don't know if it's 20 years ago or however long they've been together is how intentional he is when he walks in the door after a day of work. And I think this flows with not taking the other person for granted, how he is very energetic, regardless of how hard the day was big physical hugs and kisses.

And I love views and all of that from, and he's been doing it since the beginning of the relationship and still does it to this day. And I think that is, there's a lot of other things to make sure you don't show that you take them for granted. but I think some of these intentional actions of this is what I do when I get home, this is what we do, this is how it is. I think those are really important that those types of actions, those types of behaviors ensure that you never take that person for granted. What do you think? Yeah, when you're dating, we often feel like doing those things, right?

And you have those warm, fuzzy feelings with somebody. After 20 years when life is busy and people are distracted by other things and you don't feel that intensity anymore, it takes, you have to be intentional about it. to say, I'm going to do this. And the scary thing from the research is, we know that when couples aren't purposely going after those good things, they tend to focus more on the bad things. And they've done this where they stick an observer in your house and they say, we're going to have this person point out the good things your partner did today.

They're going to keep a list. But we also want you to notice what good things does your partner do. The people who are looking at their own partner comes up with like two things at the end of the day. The objective person is like, I have 67 things on my list. What's on your list? Wow. Yeah. Because we tend to overlook and we exaggerate the things that we don't like. So like, hey, you forgot to bring home the milk today. It's because you're lazy and you never do anything. And then what happens when you think that thought? You start looking for all the things they aren't doing right. And you overlook the fact that they just worked really hard that day, that they said something nice. They were doing great with the kids. And that's why it's so important to be intentional over time. Because otherwise, our brains start to only point out the things that we don't like. And then that grows bigger. And we literally. screen out the good things they're doing if we don't purposely go after it.

One of the ways that help with that is like, I know I'm going to write regular letters throughout the course of the year. And sometimes they're given just because and other times they're given because it's an anniversary birthday, whatever. I don't know if that part of it matters. But I want these letters to be really good and really specific. I love specificity. Like that's part of my love language is like specific feedback, specific compliments, specific even coaching when I get asked that from others of things that I'm messing up. I like the, like Like, I want the examples. And so in order to make those, I guess you could call them love letters better, I think, the ones I'm writing, I need to always, I have just a document, a Google Doc that I always just try to type a little thing in, like a specific example of something she does on a regular basis or something she just did that day that I thought was really cool or a great way to whatever, like anything.

And I think that is a forcing function to notice all of the amazing things your partner does. because I want those love letters to be good. And they're not going to be, I'm going to forget this stuff if I don't write it down. It's like, I'm going to forget it. So I just type it into my phone and then I maybe a few months have passed and I'm writing a letter. And I can just, it's really for me to write a better letter. Like it's a little bit selfish. But it's there for me.

Then I found it works as this tool to remember. Like, wow, there was a lot of stuff over the last couple of months, really specific things, whether it's whatever it may have been in regards to. And that backed into, I think, a cool way to notice the good stuff that she does. I love that idea. And it serves so many purposes because it helps your brain point out the good and to really know. I did it for me initially. I just want to, I want to be better at writing this stuff.

So it was really started as a selfish thing, but then you stumble into and realizing it's actually a good thing for both of you. And then when you receive a letter, if the letter says you're a kind and generous person, like, Okay, that's nice. But when somebody says specifically last Thursday when you did X, Y, and Z, that feels so much more genuine and it feels a lot better. Yeah. And when you receive comment, I don't know, Amy, probably when you get a compliment about that, about a specific thing you did, it probably also makes you more excited to do more of that type of stuff. Like when you, when that's going back and forth, like I love that you did this and this. I loved how you handled when Charlie fell off her bike and how we weren't the snowpile parents, but how you handle that situation. It was so perfect of what you said to her and how she responded, how you respond. That was amazing. That then is to me, like you get that type of feedback and it's inspiring and motivating to keep doing it and to keep getting better. That's just it. And we know that all of us do that. When people point out our good behavior, let's positive reinforcement. When somebody says, I really appreciated that you did this, you want to do it again tomorrow.

Yeah. Ken Blanchard, right? He's like, his whole rule with leadership and business was always trying to catch people doing it right. And then he would tell them. And I think that doesn't only work in business that works with all relationships in our life. It does. I mean, that's parenting 101. When you keep saying to your kid, like, you got three kids at the table and one is burping loudly and you keep pointing that out. Well, they're getting all the attention.

You turn to the kid that's being quiet and eating well and you say like, hey, I really appreciate your behavior right now. And then watch what happens to the kid who's misbehaving. They'll follow suit because they want attention too. Yeah. Same way with like when you watch your kids play sports. I think the car ride home is so important. And this is one thing is we are very much in lockstep with of the language we use when we're leaving the game, regardless of how we feel we won or lost.

We're going to focus so much on what's important to our family. You played really hard. You gave maximum effort. You were an amazing teammate. In the second quarter, when your teammate fell down and she was hurting, when you walked over and helped her up and put your arm around her, God, I love that moment. You were very aggressive, right? That's good. That is a good trait to exhibit.

So none of these are like you scored a goal, we won the game. We're really focused on the behaviors you exhibited during the game. And usually that stuff will probably help you get the result that you want because, yeah, you want to win the game. But it's more focused on the behaviors in order to then achieve the result. It's more like a process goal versus a results-based goal. I love that. And when we ask kids, like, would your parents rather that you're the smartest kid in the class or that you're the kindest kid in the class. Kids will often say my parents would

want me to be the smartest kid. But when you ask parents, would they rather that you be the smartest, that you have the smartest or the kindest child in the class? Parents will often say, well, I'd rather have the kindest child. Then you say, well, what do you talk about? Well, I ask them how they're going to do on their test on Friday or I praise them for the A that they got. And so even though maybe you want to raise a kind kid, how often do you talk about it or whatever your other values are without just focusing on achievement. So true. So good.

Number 13, they don't stop growing and changing. My podcast is called The Learning Leader Show. I try really hard to exhibit this one. And also highlight like the cool growth that has happened in our home. Can you go deeper on the fact that they don't stop growing and changing? Yeah. So sometimes people will come into my therapy office and be like, well, this isn't a woman. I'm married.

My answer is, well, I hope not. After 20 years, I hope this person has changed. And we know that like boredom kills most relationships. People think it's conflict and that people who fight a lot get divorced. That's actually not true. The biggest reason people get divorced is because they're bored. Really? Yes.

And so when people are bored, they don't even fight sometimes. People say like, we don't even have the energy to fight or I don't really care that you do those things and they give up. Excitement is one of the best things we could do. and how do you be excited in a relationship? You have to be growing, learning, changing, doing new things. You want your partner to still have some mystery. So they're like, oh, I didn't know you liked that Chinese cooking class, or I had no idea you were interested in the history of World War II.

That's really cool. And when we have our own interests and when we're doing things like that, we become more exciting individuals who grow and change. But you want to make sure you're growing and changing together, that you're having those conversations, like, what does this mean? And even the trickle effect that a lot of our habits have, if somebody says, I'm going to start going to go to the gym in the morning, you're still going to want to have a conversation about how that affects your relationship. This means you're now going to get up at 4 a.m. so that you have time to go to the gym, it might mean that you need to go to bed by 7 p.m. So what might that mean? Maybe you don't have time together as a couple in the evening.

So it's really important to then say, how do my changes affect us and what can we do about it? I think that one's really big and felt the good parts of that a lot for me over the past 10 years. And I feel like the ones who may struggle as if you're not an alignment, meaning one person is really down to learn, grow, and improve. And the other one is just chilling. And that could be, I could see that being a big problem where the, where I'll just say the guy is like, hey, I just want to chill out. I'm tired.

I don't want to do this. And then maybe his partner is the one who's saying like, Let's go. Let's improve. Let's go. And I could see that out of alignment could be a, you probably see that with people that you work with, I would assume. Yeah. When you have one person who has this like jest for life and I'm going to go out there and try things and learn. And the other person's like, I'm good. I'm tired these days. And I don't really feel like I need to evolve or I need to change. That often does introduce a struggle. And the last thing you want to do is to try to drag the other person along with you. So sometimes it's about saying, I'm going to grow and change. It's going to affect. you. So how can we talk about that? And if you don't necessarily want to do all of those things, that's fine. But don't hold me back from doing them if I'm going to do them on my own. Let's talk about like therapy as a as a whole, especially couples therapy because it's a big part of what you do. It seems like the stigma of this has changed a lot. It seems like, again, there are a lot of people who are good trying to get to great more so than in the past

where it was like really bad and it was maybe almost going to be over. How have you seen that evolve over 20 years and what do you feel, how do you feel about people saying, you know what, we're pretty good, but we should go anyway. Yeah, thankfully, I do think that we no longer look at therapy as something that you have to go to because you're broken or because you have an extreme mental illness. Instead, we know it can be more like a checkup. Like you go to the dentist twice a year and nobody's embarrassed to say that they had their teeth clean.

Wouldn't that be great if we'd all just had a checkup and you talk to a therapist? And I think we're starting to see that. With couples counseling, one issue is insurance doesn't pay for it. Your insurance company doesn't care that you want to work on your relationship. Really? So you usually have to pay for it out of pocket. Why? That's all.

Because insurance will pay for an illness. So when you are diagnosed with depression, they will pay for you to get treatment. But if you just want to work on your stress management, insurance doesn't pay for that unless you are diagnosed with a mental health condition. So we still have that hurdle. But I think a lot of people are saying, like, we're going to talk to somebody even before we get married. Let's make sure we're on the right page. Let's try to prevent problems before they start, rather than waiting until there's a crisis. Let's just say, here's how we communicate.

Are there things we could be doing better? There's always skills and tools that we can use and strategies that can help. So I'm thrilled that we're coming around to that. The people are like, we're working through this one issue. We just want to have a third party to talk to to make sure that we're on the same page or to see if there's anything we can improve upon. And I think that attitude is going to continue to serve us well as we move forward. and people see that talking to somebody doesn't mean you're on the brink of divorce.

It might just be, hey, we are so excited about our relationship. We just want to make sure that we're doing things the best that we can be. Women are playing such a bigger role in corporate America and just working in general over your career, I would assume, with the past 20 years. How has that impacted relationships where women make more money than men in a lot of cases? And I think some guys struggle with that. and I have friends. We've talked about this, how that would be a problem. Other guys love it. But how has you seen the dynamic shift now that it feels that women have two full-time jobs when they used to only have one?

When I say two, I mean running the house, being a parent and working a job when a lot of guys seem to have maybe that's a, maybe that's a bad thing to say. I'm not going to edit it, but I do see that where that has shifted over the past probably 20 years more so than a lot of things. I do see that getting better. I mean, it was 20 years ago that, like, a lot of the language that we used in the expectations, we're still there that women would do both. Even if you worked outside the house, you're still going to be the one to manage everything at home. And if the dad's watching the kids, people call that babysitting, right? As opposed to just parenting.

I hear that every once wrong. Like, I don't think you're babysitting, dude. They're actually your kids. And so I feel like we still have a way to go. But there's also that, yeah, that idea that some men are uncomfortable if the woman earns more or my husband works for my company. So when people will say to me, I'll be sitting next to a man on the plane, he'll be like, oh, what does your husband do? And I'll say, well, he works for me. I mean, they'll like, high five me. They'll laugh hysterically. Like, oh, that's amazing. But, like,

you wouldn't say that if it were the other way around. So I feel like we still have a ways to go for people to accept it. Yeah. With the people you're working with that come to you for like couples counseling, is that a thing that comes up a lot? Or like, how do you, how are people managing that? Just that's change over the time. Not necessarily the money thing, but just the fact that both people are seem to be working more now than they used to. Yeah. And so again, I think sometimes women will come into therapy with their partners because they want him to step up. They're saying this isn't fair that I'm doing all the household stuff too. But I've also had couples come in who the man will say like my wife now earns more money than I do and it's embarrassing. My extended family knows this or

it's obvious from people or people make these jokes about us and it's really tough to handle. What do you say to them? I guess it's about again like deciding, As a united front, how do you want to handle that when somebody says, like, makes a joke about you earning more money or about your wife bringing home the bacon? What are you going to say? And how are you both going to handle that in a way that you can both live with? Do you see most of your patience when you're, I don't know if they're called patients. Do you see the people you work with when you're on your boat and you do them on Zoom like this? Or do you go in person?

How does it work? Yeah. So these days, I see everybody virtually for the most part. I have some people that will come down. So say Miami and we'll meet in Miami. So how frequently are you doing a meeting with people outside of like podcasting and like you're actually working as a therapist? Yeah.

These days only like a handful of appointments a week because of time constrictions. Huh. Do you? I assume you're doing that because that's what you want to do. I mean, do you miss not seeing more people? I do. I didn't like when I was a full time therapist, sometimes there's so much pressure to if you work for a company, there's so much pressure to see so many people in a week.

Do you feel like you're turning out these people? super fast. So the cool thing about no longer I don't have to do it, but I want to do it, because I want to stay current. I'm like, what are people struggling with? And when I wrote my first book, TikTok had never been invented and Instagram wasn't a huge thing. That's changed a lot for people in their relationship. So I just really want to know, like, what are people struggling with these days? And what are they still working on? And what kind of struggles do they have with mental strength? I find people fascinating. And the fact that I get to listen to people's stories and they tell me stuff They've never told anybody before.

I think it's still one of the most amazing jobs ever. Yeah, you want to be on the front lines, so to speak, still hearing it because that's probably the best way to stay current as well as make sure you can help others. It's weird how it works that you work with people in order to help you work with people. Because I felt like I did take a break from doing any kind of therapy or coaching for a while. But then I felt like I just wasn't, I didn't have the good pulse on. Like, what are people still struggling with in today's world? So I decided to open it up just a little bit to do some more of that. Very cool. Amy, this was amazing. I love to keep talking with you because I find your work so helpful. And it's so great to see great things happen to great people that you write this. It goes viral and now it's created this massive career for you. The most recent book, which I highly encourage people to read is called 13 things mentally strong couples don't do. Fix what's broken, develop healthier patterns and grow stronger together. Again, I really appreciate.

you being here today and I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Oh, this was fun. Thank you so much for having me back and I'd love to continue chatting anytime. Awesome. Thank you so much, Amy. Appreciate it. Thank you. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Amy more and a few takeaways from my notes. I love Amy's challenge to herself to run a mile as fast as she can. It pushes her outside of her comfort zone and ensures mental and physical growth. We all should probably do this.

And then pleasant activity scheduling. Put these activities on your calendar. Block out time for pleasant experiences together with your partner, your family, and your friends. Doing this helps you look forward to the moments. then you get to experience those times, and then afterwards, it creates these memory dividends that you'll have for life. So schedule pleasant activities, put them on the calendar.

Then don't take your partner for granted. I think this goes for any relationship, but especially for those of us who are in committed long-term relationships with a spouse. And I think of the Tony Robbins story that I recently heard him say on a podcast for the past 20 years. him and his wife Sage each day when he gets home from work, he has a quote, Honey I'm Home routine where they share a huge embrace, big kiss, and they both bring positive energy to the interaction. I think this sets the tone so that their relationship doesn't get boring and they don't start

taking each other for granted. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, I think this conversation with Amy Moran will help you have better relationships, especially with your partner. And because you continue to share with your friends and you also go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show

and you rate it five stars hopefully and you write a thoughtful review and by doing all of that, that spreads it to people who aren't currently aware of it. And then that gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.