The One You Feed - How To Build Mental Strength, Cope with Stress to Thrive Under Pressure with Amy Morin

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

In this episode, Amy Morin discusses how to build mental strength, cope with stress, and thrive under pressure. Drawing from personal tragedies, including losing her mother and young husband, Amy shares practical tools for building mental resilience, particularly in the workplace. Key strategies discussed include giving yourself personalized pep talks, eliminating negative thoughts by physically discarding them, using “dread diffusers” to overcome procrastination, and applying motivational interviewing in relationships. Amy emphasizes that mental strength isn’t about feeling strong constantly, but about choosing the right strategy in challenging moments. Exciting News!! My new book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life, is now available!!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Key Takeaways: The significance of mental strength and daily choices. Personal experiences of loss and their impact on mental health. Introduction of practical tools for coping with stress in the workplace. The concept of “pep talks” and their role in building confidence. Strategies for managing negative attitudes and thoughts at work. The importance of happiness in the workplace for productivity. Techniques for navigating difficult workplace dynamics and communication. Differentiating between dread and anxiety, and strategies to alleviate them. The use of motivational interviewing to enhance interpersonal relationships. For full show notes:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with Amy Morin, check out these other episodes: Mind Over Grind: Practical Tips to Manage Work Stress and Enhance Your Well-Being with Guy Winch How to Recognize the Hidden Signs of Burnout with Leah Weiss How to Deal with Burnout Through Self-Compassion with Kristin Neff By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! This episode is sponsored by: Aura Frames: Named #1 by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting AuraFrames.com. For a limited time, listeners can get 25 dollars off their best-selling Carver Mat frame with code FEED. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout! Shopify – The commerce platform that helps you build, grow, and manage your business all in one place. Start your $1/month trial at shopify.com/feed. David Protein bars deliver up to 28g of protein for just 150 calories—without sacrificing taste! For a limited time, our listeners can receive this special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to www.davidprotein.com/FEED ⁠⁠Alma⁠⁠ has a directory of 20,000 therapists with different specialities, life experiences, and identities, and 99% of them take insurance. Visit ⁠⁠helloalma.com⁠⁠ to learn more! ⁠⁠Brodo Broth⁠⁠: Shop the best broth on the planet with Brodo.  Head to ⁠⁠Brodo.com/TOYF⁠⁠ for 20% off your first subscription order and use code TOYF for an additional $10 off. ⁠⁠Quince:⁠⁠ Refresh your wardrobe with Quince by going to ⁠⁠Quince.com/feed⁠⁠ for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. ⁠⁠Rocket Money⁠⁠ Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at ⁠⁠rocketmoney.com/feed⁠⁠. ⁠⁠Pebl⁠⁠ – an AI-powered platform that helps companies hire and manage global teams in 185+ countries. Get a free estimate at ⁠⁠hipebl.ai⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Hello Fresh⁠⁠ – Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So we know from the research that a lot of times we have these thoughts that just swirl around our heads. I hate my job. Hate that I have that meeting this afternoon. My boss waste my time. All sorts of negative things can go on up there. One of the best ways to get rid of it is you write it down on a piece of paper and then you crumple the paper up and you throw it away. And essentially, you're showing your brain in a very physical way. I don't value this way of thinking.

Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thought. we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

In this conversation with Amy Morin, author of the Mental Strength Playbook, she said something that I don't think I've ever heard said this clearly before. Do I need to solve the problem, or do I need to solve how I feel about the problem? And those are not the same thing. We talk about how knowing the difference can change what you do next because the strategy that helps in one of those does not help in the other. We talk about anxiety, dread, procrastination, and why getting unstuck often isn't about trying harder. It's about doing something different. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one you feed. Hey, everyone, I've got something really special to share with you. My new book, How a Little

Becomes a Lot, The Art of Small Changes for a More, meaningful life is officially out now. Right now, a lot of us are carrying more than we know what to do with. The news alone is enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and the amount of input that's coming our way feels unsustainable. This book isn't about fixing all of that. It's about the next small thing you can do when everything feels too big to face. Underneath all the anxiety and overwhelm is something important. You care. You care about your life, your people, the world, and this book is about turning that care into action, not all at once, but little by little, in ways that actually hold up. The book is available now wherever books are

sold and you can learn more at one you feed.net slash book. Hi, Amy, welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book called The Mental Strength Playbook, 50 Tools to Cope with Stress, Thrive Under, Precute, and gain a competitive edge in the workplace. But before we get to that, we will start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in that parable, there's a grandparent talking to their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, and they

Think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Such a powerful parable. And for me personally, there's the side of me that is definitely filled with fear. I grew up an incredibly anxious kid who probably would have qualified for a diagnosis of selective mutism. I didn't talk. I had friends and family that spoke for me and on my behalf. And to this day, if I'm somewhere with my friends and family, I'll be really quick to say, hey, can you ask the wait stuff for this question? And I think it is a constant reminder of,

no, I don't need to feed that side of myself. I can stand up like, hello, Amy, you have a podcast. Hello, Amy, you do these other things. You can ask for something when you need it. But it takes a conscious effort. And I see it in my therapy office too from people. When we're trying to make any kind of change in life, it's all about those, as you say, those daily choices. And the little things that we can do in that moment to say, which one of these feelings, which one of these things, are we going to put our energy into? I always find it kind of amazing how much we can grow from the people we once were. And yet, in certain circumstances or under stress, or in default situations, there's still that old behavior that rises up, right?

You have a podcast. You talk all the time. You're a speaker. You go out and talk to the world. And yet you still, in a restaurant, would rather not ask the waiter for, you know, a modification to your order. I'm always fascinated by that. And I think it's also really valuable to talk about that because it shows what improvement really looks like.

It's not perfection. it's that we are able to do the things that really matter to us. And yeah, some of that stuff may still linger. In my case, I think there's certain things that, like, I don't expect it to be going away. I'm like, well, it's been around a long time. It probably will be. I know how to work with it skillfully. Yeah, I think that's it exactly.

So often people will say, well, I've changed. I'm not that person anymore. And that means your behavior's changed. But, like, at the core, a lot of us, our personalities are still. the same. Those desires, those things are still right there. And even though I can not act on it, and I can say, I'm going to push myself to talk, like, I can ask the Uber driver to turn the heat down a smidge if I'm really high. But I'll have to think to myself. I mean, I did this just recently. I was in a used furniture store and I was like, oh, this chair that I saw last weekend isn't here

anymore. Do I want to ask if they still have one of these chairs in stock? So I show the photo to my husband. He knows what I'm getting at. I'm trying to get him to do it. it. And in my mind, I'm thinking, you gave a TEDx talk to 25 million people. You can probably ask the clerk in the store if he has any of these chairs in the back. But it is. It's that same seven-year-old that still crops up, even though I have all this evidence that says, you can speak, you can do these certain things, but it is deeply ingrained. Yeah, I think that question of how much we can change is a really fascinating one. I told you before this interview, I will be incapable of not mentioning my own book because it just came out, but I do for a reason because I tell two stories in it.

And one story is me absolutely unable to not get myself to drive to a dealer to buy drugs. And then there's another story where I easily handle drugs without any problem. That is a massive shift. I mean, it's not even hard for me around addiction anymore. And so I think that shows like how much we can change. And like you, I sometimes have trouble asking people for what I want if I think that they might not want to give it. And, you know, both those things are true. Yeah.

And I think sometimes we expect to like to be different. Like when I was five, when I imagined what it would like to feel like a grown up, like I thought when you get to be 45, like suddenly you have all the answers. I'll still find myself in a situation where I'm thinking like, gee, somebody should do something about this. And then I'm reminded, like, Amy, you're 46 years old. You're probably the one that should take action. But I don't necessarily like feel a lot different or I don't feel like I thought that I would at a certain age or that because I've changed as a person. It's not like I just woke up one day and suddenly everything is different. But you're right.

There's things I can do now without thinking about it that 25 years ago, I wouldn't have done, be on your podcast, for example. I would have thought, oh, that's too scary. I can't possibly do it. And just to recognize sometimes how far we've come, like, okay, the things that aren't necessarily difficult for you anymore used to be. Or the things that you're able to now say, all right, I'm not going to listen to that voice in my head. I'm going to take action anyway. And you can silence it. You can quiet it if it crops up. And those are often the changes. And sometimes it's not necessarily what you see on the outside. It's what's going on internally, too. Yep. Very well said. So before we get into your new book, maybe set up for us a little bit

your journey to this, right? A number of years ago, you wrote a book that did very well called The 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do. I don't recall exactly how long ago that was, but I think there were some inciting events that kind of led you to writing that book. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I was a therapist in Maine and in a little rural town where pretty much the only other therapist in town was my sister. And we're going about our business, you know, seeing people just treating depression, anxiety. And about a year into my work as a therapist, my mom passed away and it was sudden and unexpected and it was from a brain aneurysm. She was only 51 at the time. And going through that, I realized a lot of the skills and strategies I learned in college and the things in my textbook aren't really that helpful when your heart is broken.

And I was kind of horrified that all of these strategies I'm supposed to be teaching people kind of fell short in my own life. And that was really when I started studying mental strength with a different perspective. I just really wanted to know, how do you go through tough times and come out on the other side? And then when I was 26, it was actually the three-year anniversary of the day that my mom died. My 26-year-old husband died of a heart attack. And I didn't even know you could have a heart attack at 26. He didn't have a history of known heart problems or anything like that. There were no drugs involved.

And the doctors were just like, yep, it can happen sometimes. And losing the two people in my life that I was closest to and just really unexpected, sudden ways, did an absolute number on my brain. It was like the two people that were my biggest fans, the people I was. closest to had literally just disappeared. And I'm a widow. I don't have my mom. And now I'm down to one income, so I have to go to work as a therapist. And my life's in shambles, but I'm supposed to be helping other people solve their problems. And you would think I would have some ways to describe this time in my life. But honestly, after all these years, I don't even have the words other than to say

it was just a really dark time. And it took years to kind of figure out, what am I going to do next? It wasn't just that I had lost my husband, but it was, I had lost so many of the dreams that I had. We were foster parents. We had therapeutic foster kids. Like, do I still want to do that as a single person? And figuring all that out, like, what's the next chapter going to look like? And it did take years. Eventually, I started writing as a side hustle. It was one of the only ways I could keep the lights on in my house was to have something else going on besides being a therapist. And writing became a way to do that. And I didn't write about anything really, really to my grief or anything like that. I just wrote these like $15 articles that I could pump out on the

weekend or something for the longest time. And a few years down the road, I was fortunate. I found love again. I got remarried. I started a new job. Life was looking pretty good. And then my father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And I just remember thinking, like, I just spent all these years grieving. I can't possibly lose somebody else. And it was probably one of my worst days that I wrote this letter to myself about what mentally strong people don't do. And I found it helpful. So I thought, well, I'll just put it on the internet and maybe it will help somebody else. And honestly expected like 30 people to read it, but it went viral. Like within days, millions of people were reading it. And I didn't tell the backstory. So everybody thought, oh, you're a therapist. So you've mastered all

of these things. And pretty soon Forbes picked it up and it got like 10 million views there within a week. it was a bizarre time. I would hit the refresh screen and 10,000 people had read it. And I hit refresh again and 10,000 more people. And I'm thinking, what have I done? CNN in Mexico calls and MTV in Finland and all these people want to interview me about how awesome it is to have figured out life. And like literally nobody knew the backstory. And one of the people that emailed me was a literary agent who said you should write a book. And I didn't even know what a literary agent was. So I didn't even reply to her email at the time. Thankfully, she followed up. And I said, well, I have to tell you. I don't have these things mastered. I wrote this list because I struggle with all 13. In fact, I do all of these things. And here's the story of why. And she said, well, you don't have to tell the story. But if you told the backstory, maybe it would give you even more credibility. And so within a month, we had a book deal with Harper Collins, one of the biggest publishers in the world. Within 13 months of writing that article, my book hit the shelves. And it's been a whirlwind sense where I've been speaking about mental strength. And fortunately found that sharing my story just added. to credibility, where for a long time I was mostly concerned it was going to ruin it. Like, if people know that I struggle with these things, are they going to take me seriously? It turns out they did. Well, thank you for sharing all that. What an incredibly challenging period of time. And you describe in the new book a little bit about how hard that is to show up at work, having to help other people when you're struggling so, so greatly. But I'm happy you made your way through.

I'm happy that you gave us that wonderful book and I now want to talk about this book. Because this book is instead of things that mentally strong people don't do. This is what mentally strong people can do. And it's broken down into, I would call very small things that we can do, which as you know, we've talked before, is right up my alley, you know, little things that we can do. So what I'd like to do is just cherry pick some of these from the book. I want to do one and then I'm going to ask you another couple meta questions and then we'll do the others, okay? But I want people to have a sense of what one is like.

So chapter one are called confidence catalysts. And you say confidence isn't a fleeting emotion. It's a mindset. It's the quiet belief that you can handle whatever life throws your way. And I absolutely love that idea. And I actually built my sobriety the second time around around that very idea that like there were things I could do that would allow me to handle whatever life brought. So beautiful idea. Let's talk about play number five.

Give yourself a pep talk. Yeah. So this is the one where you get the opportunity to basically be your own mental strength coach. And it comes up in those moments where you think, I can't do this. So two minutes before you're walking into a meeting where you have to make a. sales pitch and you're thinking, I have no business being here. I've forgotten everything I was supposed to say. And you're filled with that self-doubt. Your anxiety goes up. One of the best things you can do in that moment is you just get a hold of yourself and you say, no, actually you can do this.

And here's why. And for me, I'll just remind myself like, okay, Amy, like you've been through tough things before. You can definitely do whatever it is you're facing now. Or that pep talk of you gave a TED talk to 25 million people. You can ask the clerk a question, right? Yeah, yeah. But I think any of those moments, we know like an NBA halftime coach has the ability to change the game. When they give a speech that makes the team rise to the occasion, motivational and inspirational, their behavior changes. Their performance is different than if the coach yelled at them, pointed out their mistakes and said, you're doing horrible. If the coach gets really angry and yells at them, performance declines.

We don't always have a coach in our ear, but we can do that for ourselves. How do you give yourself a pep talk? So I always encourage people when you're filled with self-doubt, just take a minute, remember who you are, and give yourself a two-minute pep talk and just inside your mind, give yourself some ideas of why you can do this, pretend you're talking to a friend if you have to really give some words of encouragement. But when you do that for yourself, you can pep yourself up and give you the confidence and the courage that you need to take that next step. So you talk about five steps in order to construct a pep talk. And I just love to walk through them

real quick. So listeners have something very practical they can do here. And the first is you mentioned find a quiet moment. The second is acknowledge the challenge. Tell me about that one. So it's one thing when we say, all right, I have to go give a presentation right now. You want to know, like, what are you actually facing? And it's not about exaggerating like, I'm going to get made fun of or I'm going to stumble over my words. And the challenge is I have to give a presentation in 10 minutes. And here's what I'm looking at. Sometimes we get the problem wrong. We think, oh, we worry about the things we can't control. Are people going to like me? Are they going to laugh at me? just focus on what's the challenge i have a presentation in two minutes the factual words will help okay

then we deliver the pep talk you say speak to yourself like a coach who believes in you use motivational language tailored to you i love that right because we've got to find the right language for ourselves because the language that works for me might sound cheesy and dumb to you and vice versa and so finding our own language is really really important it is Because, you know, like an inspirational quote sometimes is great. Or when you hear the words of somebody else, that can really inspire us. But to make sure it is something that resonates with you and to have your own language. So you know, all right, when I'm backed up in a corner, I rise to the occasion.

That might work for some people, but not everybody. Some people are like a setback's a comeback. Again, somebody else says, that's kind of cheesy. But to know, like, what is it that sparks that fire within you? And you can tell yourself that. I've been traveling a lot lately, and when traveling, it's really easy to reach for junk food because it's everywhere. So David Protein bars have been critical in allowing me to continue to eat well during this time. I put a box of their bars in my suitcase when I left for a book tour,

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nervous because it's totally different. Right. I'm used to an hour-long podcast conversation where we can ramble and chat and have a good time and edit. And this is like four minutes live. Like, you've got to nail it. And I've never done anything like that before. But I remember, I was sitting in the in the green room giving myself, as you say, a pep talk about, okay, you're well prepared, you know, be yourself, connect, just connect with the person who's in front of you. You know, know how to do that, you've done that, right? I was able to get myself to a place where I wasn't so nervous. And that's so much more powerful than had you sat there and crammed your notes. You wrote the book, this is about your life, you've lived it. But if you just kept thinking, I'm going to forget everything,

I need to read all of these papers I have in front of me. And we're trying to memorize stuff. Your anxiety would have gone up. Your confidence would have gone down and your performance would have been completely different. Well, what's interesting about that is there was a period of time where that is what I did where I realized, like, I don't know how to say these things in one-minute sound bites. So I'm going to work on that. I'm going to figure out what those are. I'm going to practice those a little bit. But you're right.

As it got close to time, I had to just say, okay, you've prepared well, set that down. You're in good shape. Right? To your point, had I been up to the last second doing that? And everybody's ratio of that is going to be different. So for me, it's always like part of what allows me to give myself a pep talk is when I know I've prepared well. Yeah. Right?

When I know I've done what not perfect, not as good as I could be, but I'm in a good place because I gave myself a good shot for this. Yeah. And obviously if you give yourself a pep talk to give a 30 minute speech that you have never even prepared for at all, we're all going to struggle with certain things like that, right? So the preparation beforehand is key so that you have that foundation so that you believe your pep talk when you've said. it too. And I think that's another key point. If I said, hey, I'm going to go out and play a basketball game and I'm going to crush it. And yet I don't practice basketball and I'm actually quite horrible at it. Like, that's not going to do the difference. And so overconfidence isn't helpful either, but something that's more realistic can inspire us to just give it our best at the very end.

All right. So now I want to go back to meta idea about the book real quick, just so people understand what is in this book. So you have 50 of them, but each one of them has some components to it in the book. You talk about why it works, when to use it, how to use it. You give an example of somebody doing it in action. You give some pro tips for how to make it really good, pitfalls to avoid in a game plan for success. So in addition to the basic idea, give yourself a pep talk, there's all these different elements underneath that really flesh that out. So I'm just trying to give people a picture of what they get in this book. Now we will move on to additional mental strength plays. I want to go to chapter two attitude adjusters and I want to read something you wrote. You said,

think of your attitude as the operating system behind your workday. If it's outdated and buggy, even easy tasks take a lot longer. But when you upgrade it, everything runs smoother and feels more doable. That's a really great description for what our mindset or attitude does. Yeah, it's always there and it can affect your behavior, but how much like bandwidth it's taking up. If I walk into the office and I'm like, oh, I hate my job, hate the people I work with, despise everything I have to do today. The more I'm thinking about those things, the less energy I have to put at the task at hand. But it also brings my mood down. The worse I feel, the harder everything becomes. And when we think about our attitude, most of us think about when

you were eight and your mom said, you need an attitude adjustment. But, Really, when I'm talking about this, it's about just taking control of your own mindset and recognizing if I have to do a task that's unpleasant, I have a couple options. I can either do it the best I can with the most positive attitude possible or I can do it with a horrible attitude and let it drag on forever and just makes my day so much worse. Yeah. And I always think this is an interesting idea and I'd just love to get your broader perspective on this, right? because attitude is so important and we don't want to fake everything we actually i don't think we can very well make ourselves believe things that aren't true so how do you think about sorting out like okay this is an attitude adjustment that i might need or there's a bigger thing here let's just take your job right you could say i don't like my job because of x y and z and there could be two

solutions to that. One might be change the way you think about X, Y, and Z. Option two might be get a different job. That's a big question that I'm not asking you to solve, but I'm curious how you think about that for yourself and for your clients. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't think we need to paste on a smile and go through the day pretending as that we love everything. In fact, there's research that shows people who have to work and say the hospitality industry where you have to paste on that smile, no matter what's going on behind it. It can be very stressful. They have less willpower at the end of the day. They're more likely to struggle with a lot of things, like an addiction, for example, because they've used up every ounce of emotion regulation just to make it through their shift. So we don't have to do that. But instead knowing that's part of the job. I don't care whether you have a job that you love or you're a solopreneur that you work from home. There's going to be tasks that you don't love to do. And how you get through those is all about the attitude that you choose to approach it with. So it might be you're doing something with spreadsheets, you hate spreadsheets, takes forever, it's boring, and you're struggling with all these

numbers. Well, you can say this is horrible and awful and choose to let that task really be the bane of your existence today. Or you can just accept, all right, this isn't fun, but how do I make the best of a task that I don't love to do? And then, yeah, there is that tipping point where when you think, I hate everything about my job. Maybe it's me, but maybe I need to switch jobs too. And there are the times where you just need to make the change to a new environment, which can make a big difference. But for the most part, about getting through the day, just accepting tasks. There's people that you have to work with who you didn't choose to. This is really the difference between our personal life and work. And it's one of the reasons why I wrote a book specifically about the workplace. And my personal life, I get to hang out with

my friends. I get to put a task off until tomorrow if I don't feel like it. At work, you don't really get those choices. Your boss usually picks your deadlines. You have to work with coworkers that you wouldn't normally want to collaborate on a project with. So many things are out of our control, but the one thing you can control is your attitude. So to say, I'm going to walk into this with the best attitude I possibly can, can go a long way. Yeah. And I love that you say that because I think, like you said, even in any job, there are things that are unenjoyable to do. I mean, I work for myself doing work I love, and there are plenty of things that I have to do in any given day, week, month that I don't actually like doing.

Right. But there's a way that I can approach those with a little bit more equanimity versus fighting them the whole time. So within attitude adjusters, let's talk about play number seven taking out the mental trash. I love this one because it's so simple, but it gives you immediate, really. as well. So we know from the research that a lot of times we have these thoughts that just swirl around our heads. Ah, I hate my job. Hate that I have that meeting this afternoon. My boss waste my time.

All sorts of negative things can go on up there. One of the best ways to get rid of it is you write it down on a piece of paper and then you crumple the paper up and you throw it away. And essentially, you're showing your brain in a very physical way. I don't value this way of thinking. And the research will show that when you do that, you get rid of the thoughts physically, you're much less likely to think those same things over and over again. A lot of our thoughts are repetitive. So if I think, I don't like my job, I hate this task, 20 minutes later, I'm still thinking, I hate my job, I hate this task. But if I take it out of my brain and put it on paper and then throw the paper away, it reduces that. I'm much more likely to them be able to go on and think about something else.

And obviously, if you're in an open office setting, crumpling your paper up really loudly isn't a good option, but you can cross it out with a black marker. You could put it on your computer and you throw it away in the recycle bin. But basically, you just want a physical way to say, I don't value this way of thinking. And then just watch what happens with the way that you start thinking after that. It's pretty cool. I suggest wherever you are, you just light it on fire. You know, that's great. You know, like I don't care where you're at. Light it on fire. It's going to work better. It's going to work better if you do that. Yep.

Let me ask a question about that. So that's going to reduce the amount of time that we spend on that thought. And yet, as you said, thought patterns are notoriously sticky. So I do that. I get a little bit of relief. I find myself 30 minutes later. It's all starting back up. Do I do it again?

What's the utility? Like, how do you think about, you know, working with a client? Like, this is one tool in a toolkit, right? of, okay, I'm having repetitive thoughts that I don't want to be having. They're not useful to me. One option is I do this, take out the mental trash. What are other things that I can do when I've decided clearly, I don't want to keep running that thought pattern. What are some other techniques we can use that help us change that channel and keep it changed? Well, and that's why I wrote the playbook, because what works for me might not work for you. Or maybe that works for me when I'm

dealing with a workplace issue. But then maybe when I come home at the end of the day, and I'm thinking about that conversation with my coworker that happened at lunchtime and I can't stop thinking about that, that play may not work as well. So it's why it's important to practice with a lot of these things. And it's sort of like if I had a knee injury, maybe heat works, maybe ice works, maybe I need a pain reliever, maybe I need to stretch, lots of different ways to treat some of these issues. So knowing which ones work for you in which situations is important. But And you actually use the words for one of the other plays, which has changed the channel in your brain. So we know that the more I say to myself, just don't think about that.

The more I actually think about it, right? Your brain doesn't handle that well. When we try to suppress something, it pops up. Just keeps coming back. But if I change the channel, which means I decide, all right, rather than sit here on the couch and keep rehashing that conversation where somebody said something rude, I'm going to get up and I'm going to go clean my bedroom for 20 minutes. I set the timer for 20 minutes and I decide for the next 20 minutes, my goal is to figure out how much I can get cleaned up. And then when the timer is up, I feel a little bit better. I've done something where I'm not just ruminating on the same thing.

So even though my brain might go back to that conversation I had with my coworker, I might have a different perspective now because I took a break from it. Or I might realize, okay, it's not the end of the world. And probably most of us have experienced this when you're laying in bed at night, trying to go to sleep and you're worried about something. a mistake that you made or something that might happen tomorrow. You can't stop thinking about it. And then you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, whatever, it's not a big deal. And you're able to move on because your brain got a break from it for a while. And the back of your brain kind of figures things out.

You don't always have to have everything right on the very tip of your brain trying to figure it out. Just give yourself a break. But in order to give yourself a break, you have to be proactive about saying, I'm going to do something like physical for a while, like work in my garden or I'm going to do the specific task rather than just say don't think about it. Yeah, I think that's a really important and nuanced point, right? Because there is an element of saying, I don't want to keep thinking about this thing. Like, there's a decision to do that, right?

There's a decision where we go, that's not helpful anymore. A lot of times we don't even get that far. We just let it run. So now that we've decided I don't want to continue thinking about it, now the question becomes, all right, well, how do I actually make that happen? And as you said, just saying don't think about it probably doesn't work. Although sometimes I heard this from somebody. My partner, Jenny, heard it from her mindfulness instructor.

She's a certified mindfulness teacher. And when she was getting trained, she heard it. And the guy said, I just see Gandalf in my mind knocking down his big stick and saying, no more or you should not pass or I don't know what it, something like that. And that is actually kind of a, every once in all for me is a very useful thing where my brain is just like, That's it. No. Yeah. And then there are other times, like you said, change the channel is a big one.

We often think of distraction as a bad thing. And distraction used excessively can be. But my experience is there are times for strategic distraction where it's like, for whatever reason, this thing's got enough emotional energy. I can't turn it off. I can't avoid it. So you know what? What will make my brain more interested? And go do that.

Absolutely. When our emotions are high, our logic is really low. So if I'm incredibly angry, now's not a good time to have a discussion about something. I need to wait until I'm calm down. One of the best ways to reduce the intensity of that emotion, it's probably distract myself for a while, right? I go for a walk. I come back. I'm a little calmer and I can say, all right, let's have this discussion where I'm not so heated that I say things I later regret. And I like to tell people, in those moments, we have the option. I like to say, let's use the three P's. You pause, instead of just going with. your first reaction, and then you pick, pick the strategy. I'm going to try to go for a walk, or I'm going to take out the mental trash. And then you run the play. Go ahead and just take the action and see what happens. If it doesn't work, you can always use something else. But when we know that a lot of the things that we're doing in life, it's not because we're not strong enough, it's just because we're running the wrong play. And when you feel like, okay, I have other options other than the default thing that I've always been doing, it empowers us to say, let's try

something different. I gave my mom an aura frame for Christmas and I think it's the best gift I've ever given her. She can't get out of the house much these days, but she gets to sit in her comfy chair and see a rotating collection of the people and places she loves. The other really great feature is I can add photos from my phone from anywhere and so can all my other family members. I was updating photos to my mom's frame in real time as I did my book tour. You can also preload photos before it ships, so when mom opens it, she already has a lot of pictures on it. Named number one by wirecutter, you can save on the gifts mom's love by visiting auraframes.com. For a limited time, listeners can get $25 off their best-selling Carver Matframe with code feed.

That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code feed. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. There's been times where I knew I could use some extra support, some therapy, and then I would start looking and it's like who's a good fit, who takes insurance, how do I even sort through all of these options? And that's why I love what Alma is doing. They've built a network of over 20,000 therapists, and you can browse their directory without creating an account. You can filter by the things that actually matter, like what you're dealing with, the therapist's approach, even background, so it feels a lot more human and a lot less like guesswork. And one thing that really

stands out, most Alma therapists except insurance. On average, people save about 80% on sessions, which makes getting help feel a lot more doable. Because for a lot of us finding therapists, we just don't know where to start and we worry about the cost. So if you've been thinking about therapy, but haven't taken that first step, this is a good place to begin. Go to Hello Alma. dot com slash feed. That's hello a l-ma.com slash feed and find a therapist who fits you. The next category you call insight igniters, and I just want to read what you said about insight. With the right insight, every challenge becomes an opportunity for innovation or creativity. These plays are designed to break you out of repetitive thought loops.

We're just talking about that. And dead end pass so you can see challenges through a fresh lens. Whether you're navigating a personal dilemma or leading a team out of a rut, these strategies help ignite new insight. So let's talk about the play in here of question your question. Oh, good. I like that one. So sometimes we're trying to solve the wrong problem. And this is one that I use in the therapy office often because a couple might come in and say, we need to stop fighting.

How do we stop that? But that might be the wrong question. All right, let's say, instead of fighting now, the two of you just stay quiet at home. Well, that doesn't solve the underneath issue, right? The problem might be, like, why are you struggling to communicate? Or a different question might be like, why do I raise my voice when you leave your socks in the middle of the floor? But when we get better at figuring out, is this to right question or not? We can solve the problem.

Sometimes we're just trying to solve a symptom of the problem. And in the business realm, people do this all the time, too, a restaurant. might say, well, why don't we have enough customers? What can we do to bring more people in? Well, is that really the problem? Maybe the problem is you're just not getting enough revenue from your existing customers. And just simply asking yourself, is this the right question? Am I trying to solve the right problem? Or is it more like a symptom? And then we can get to taking the action that's actually going to help us feel better. Are there some questions that are good at revealing the question? I mean, I guess you just had one of them like, what's the real problem here?

Or what am I trying to really solve? Yeah, sometimes it's just a matter. Write down the question that you're trying to solve and then do some brainstorming. Think like, what other ways could I tackle this? How might somebody else approach this same issue? What other problems might there be going on? Is there something at the root of this? Just a little bit of reflection sometimes will help us back up and say, okay, maybe there is

something else going on. Or if I solve this problem, would that really mean that the underlying problem goes away? Or would it just be like putting a Band-Aid on an Axe wound? And I'm not actually addressing the underlying issue. I like that Band-Aid on an Axe wound. All right. We're going to move into part two of the book, which is Plays for Emotional Strength.

And I want to read something you wrote about happiness, because we're talking about our jobs here mainly, although we know that it's all connected. Your happiness on the job isn't just a nice to have. It's directly tied to your productivity, your performance, and even your long-term career success. Neglecting happiness means leaving potential untapped. Say more about that. Yeah, a lot of people think, you know, my happiness is reserved for my time outside of the office.

The truth is, we spend so much time at work. It would be awful if we decided that the 40-plus hours we work are supposed to be filled with misery, right? And the little things that we do, just to boost your happiness at work a little bit better, Not only will you feel better, but then you think differently. When you think differently, you start to do things differently. And it can just shift everything from your relationships to your job satisfaction to your well-being, even how long you live. There's so many factors involved in that. And yet, we don't really think about, like, what could I do today to be a little bit happier?

Sometimes we just think, nothing, my boss makes me do these things or I have all these boring tasks to do. But if we approach it just slightly different, and it's not about saying I'm going to be ecstatic on a Monday morning every week, but is there a little thing I could do perhaps just to boost my mood, even if it's just a little bit? And that can make a big difference. Speaking of that idea of how much time we spend at work, I've had an experience recently where I've gone back in my career a little ways, mainly back into my software days, to ask a couple people, like, hey, I'm delivering some corporate workshops now. Can I come deliver one to your team? Or I'm doing more speaking. And it's been so interesting when I get these people on the phone that I worked with for a long time that I was really close with,

I'm stunned by how familiar they are to me, even a decade later, right? It's because I spent so much time interacting with them that they are like still deeply in there. It was just sort of surprising to me. It just, I expected it to feel like, oh, yeah, all right, I'm contacting. I haven't talked to this person in 10 years. And immediately upon hearing their voice, I just was like, oh, I know this person. And, you know, on the flip side during COVID, I was hearing from so many people who were suddenly working from home with their spouse. And they're saying things like, I had no idea I was married to the loud

typeer, right? And there, or somebody else. I'm the loud typer, my, uh, Jen, you'll tell you that. I always have to ask in the afternoon. Like, can I sit here on the couch or would you prefer me to work elsewhere? Because I'm the loud typer. Couples, though, that never worked in the same room where somebody was like, I'm married to the circle back person, you know, who's always like, I just circling back. They're like, I had no idea all these years. And to think that, Yeah, sometimes our coworkers know things about us that our partners don't because they don't see us in a professional setting very often. And to know, okay, my coworkers have a lot of inside baseball about how I handle stress, how I solve problems, how I manage my emotions when I'm in the office. And often we don't think about that.

And it goes back to this idea of, yeah, so to make sure I'm investing in a little bit of happiness at work makes sense because I do spend a lot of time there. I was doing research on friendship at one point because I'm very interested in how adults become less lonely, feel more connected, all of that. And the data is really clear that for adults, the vast majority of their friendships come from work. And it's simply because friendship takes a certain amount of time. And typically the place that you get that amount of time quickly is at work because you're with those people 40 hours a week or more. And all, of a sudden, whereas like if I meet a new friend and I have coffee with him every week for an hour, I got to meet him 40 times to spend as much time as I do with the people.

And that's not to say that there aren't ways to significantly, I think, shrink that. I think the more intimacy there is, the more vulnerability, what you're talking about all matters. It can shorten that time frame. But there's still something to that idea. and how do I cultivate the best relationship I can with these people around me is to me always one of the most important things about work. I guess still is, even though my relationships with people are slightly different. But the people that work with me, Chris, Nicole, I mean, it's so important to me that we all really get along.

It feels paramount to my mental well-being. And the people that you work with are the ones who know what it's like, right? when I was a therapist in a community mental health center, was really the only people that were therapists that know what it's like for 40 hours a week. I could tell my friends, I could tell my family, but they know what it's like to be in that position. So no matter what job you have, often,

it's the people that you're working with who really understand a lot of things about you and the work that you do that other people outside might never really get. Let me ask you a question about that. One of the things I found as I was working on this idea of community and sharing and all that was, a piece of research, I can't remember the researcher's name now, it's in my book, called the co-rumination trap. And it's this idea that we can get locked into cycles of rumination with other people

that are not helpful. So to your point, the people we work with are the ones who know, and it's really possible that we get locked into cycles of talking about our work with those people that are not helpful. Absolutely. And we know that, yeah, just hearing your co-workers standing around the water cooler complaining about how much they hate these new policies coming down the pipeline or how your boss is a jerk, when you start chiming in and you're all having these venting sessions where we think, oh, venting just gets out my feelings. Research shows it's the opposite. It's more like adding fuel to the fire. So if you're always complaining with people, so if your coworkers only get together to talk about how difficult your job is, the worst you're going to feel about work. That can have a

huge impact on your happiness. Yeah, the thing that I found about that study was really interesting because it showed that if two people are engaged in this, it actually will, for a little while, bring them closer. Yep. But it does not improve the situation. It often makes the situation worse. So it's this weird thing where a little bit of that seems to be valuable in allowing you to connect with your coworkers, but too much of it then becomes deeply problematic in other ways. And so it's like, I feel like it's like so many things in life. It's like, well, what's the right balance or right amount of commiseration versus, you know, sliding into co-rumination? Yeah. And I think you're right. There is that tipping point because that's often how we kind of bond with people.

Yeah. I talk about my struggle. I say, gosh, I have so much paperwork to do. Somebody says, I know, I have so much should it do too and it's so difficult to get it done and that strikes up a conversation because they can relate to my struggle. However, once we start complaining about, yeah, not only is the paperwork bad, but also can you believe X, Y, and Z? And the more we start bringing up all the other things that we dislike about work, suddenly before you know it, all we're doing is complaining about it and that's what gets us stuck in that cycle then of thinking everything about our jobs are horrible and awful. So let me ask you a question. This is something that I have talked with a few people about. out in the not too distant past. And it's it's this idea of take middle managers at work. As a middle

manager, you are often in a very weird place. I was in this place where you're getting direction from above that you actually think is stupid. Yep. And wrong. And yet, you need to convey it to your team. How do you think through that? Because I don't want to be like, well, this is just an idiot policy and I also don't want to pretend like I think this is a great like their their concerns their problems are valid and real how would you think through that oh you're right and I've been in a similar situation where you think how do I present this as if I'm in agreement with it or on board when I think it's probably not good I think you find that balanced approach right very few policy changes are going to be 100% great or completely awful there's a reason for them

And sometimes explaining the reason behind it, hey, this is the new program we're going to use. This is the new strategy. This is what's coming down the pipeline. I know some of you may have concerns about it. Let's talk about the concerns rather than pasting on the smile and saying, and everything's going to be amazing. People see through that. But if you acknowledge both the pros and the cons or that there are some potential downsides and you let people talk about their concerns too, sometimes that can help. So that we're seen as more authentic and we're not just cheerleading and championing things.

that aren't going to work. Great. All right. Let's move on to anxiety alleviators. But I want to ask a question first, because chapter six, anxiety alleviators, chapter seven, dread diffusers. What's the difference between anxiety and dread in the way that you talk about them? So dread is often that anticipation where I start to feel bad, awful,

because I start to feel awful right now because I imagine I'm going to feel even more awful later. So it might be that meeting coming up this afternoon. and I think, oh, the last thing I want to do is go to that meeting. It's like when you're picturing a root canal. And you're just imagining the pain is going to be unbearable and you're doubting your ability to tolerate it. And we know from the research that if somebody gets asked, do you want me to kick you in the shins twice today or once tomorrow?

People will often say twice today just to get it over with because otherwise they're going to spend the next 24 hours in this state of dread. And most of us find dread to be fairly intolerable and we'll do any. we can to escape it, which is often where a lot of the bad decisions come in. Anxiety is more about the physiological experience we have. If I'm going to give a speech and I'm imagining, oh, everybody's going to laugh at me. People aren't going to like what I say. I'm going to stumble over my words.

It might make my heart race. My palms get sweaty. I struggle to think clearly. But it's not necessarily going to take up 24 hours of just dread where I'm imagining that it's going to be horrible and awful. Got it. Yeah, dread. Who, right?

Yeah, that's a real one. It is. It's quite consuming mentally and emotionally, and it's really taxing on us. I'm always struck by, I noticed this years ago, and it caused me to start to say, nobody needs a vacation more than the person that just got back from vacation, because what I noticed is I would start to have dread partway through my vacation. This can still happen to me today, even though I love what I do. But when I'm on vacation, the thought of shifting out of that mode back into the work mode starts to cause me to feel a little bit of dread.

Now, I've learned how to be more strategic and how I talk to myself, because I just keep reminding myself, it's not going to be like you think it is. It's not going to feel the way you think it's going to feel. You're going to not like it for a few hours. And then you will just shift back in. and within a day, maybe two at the most, you'll just be back in your old rhythm like you always were. Like, I have to walk myself through that pep talk because the dread otherwise, I mean, it used to ruin the last few days of every vacation of mine. I think that's common.

And a lot of people can relate to like the Sunday scaries too, right? By 3 p.m. on Sunday, you're thinking, oh my gosh, the weekend's almost over. I got to go to work tomorrow. We know people's moods are really low on Monday morning. The Monday morning blues come around because you're dread. all the tasks you have to do this week. And it can take a serious toll. Impacts your happiness, impacts your ability to enjoy the moment because your mind is already in another place where you're imagining the worst case scenarios. So give me a couple dread diffusers. We can maybe come back

to anxiety alleviators as are always good. But I just don't, I don't get to talk about dread that often. And it's one of my favorite emotions. It's not one of my favorite emotions, but I really recognize it, right? It's that resistance. It causes so much suffering. So what are a couple dread diffusers? So my favorite one is to text a motivation buddy. And this one is for when you're dreading a task. Like, oh, I have to make a slides for a presentation.

It's boring. I don't even know what I'm doing. So I put it off and I put it off tomorrow. And I'm procrastinating. The best thing you can do is to find a friend. Might be a coworker. Maybe it's your grandmother. But somebody that you know, if you say to them, follow up with me in an hour that they're going to follow through.

and you send them a text message and you say, hey, I'm working on these slides, check back with me in an hour and see how I'm doing. And the minute you create some, a little bit of social pressure for yourself, and you've given yourself this deadline, because it's easy to say I'll work on that next week. But when you've given yourself an hour deadline, your brain is going to want to have some progress to report. So suddenly you start getting to work. And once we get started on a dreaded task, it's usually way easier than we thought it was going to be. 100%. I mean, that's so much of what I talk about in my book is that idea of like, how do we get ourselves across the starting line? Because that's often far and away the most difficult part of it. Right. And then once you build a little bit of momentum, it's way easier to keep going.

Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what another of your dread diffusers is is the 10 minute rule, right? Just tell yourself, get started for 10 minutes. Sometimes I have to make that the like two minute rule, but I'm astounded by how much of my life gets done that way. Like you talk about thinking like we should be better than we are or we should be more advanced than we are. I'm amazed how often I have to trot that thing out of like, okay, just start two minutes. I did this. You mentioned about the cleaning.

Like I'll do this. I'll be like five minute cleaning, which oftentimes five minutes gets a lot done. Right. Wow. Okay. But even if not, I'm already, then I'm moving. Right. Otherwise, it's easy to sit on the couch and think, oh, I should clean the house.

And then we feel guilty. We feel bad. We put it off until tomorrow. We feel overwhelmed. And then it doesn't get done. But if you just get started, people say, you know, I should get some exercise. Well, if I just go for a walk, when I get to the five minute mark, I'll decide, do I need to turn around and walk back for five minutes? Or can I keep going?

And people will say, yeah, once I get started, it's way easier to keep going. And give yourself permission to quit. Like, all right, maybe you do 10 minutes. and it is awful and horrible. Go ahead and quit, but I guarantee most of the time you'll keep going. I think what you said is interesting because you said if you ask people whether they want to be kicked in a shin twice today or once tomorrow, they would say twice today because they don't like dread. And yet, many of us allow dread to linger by continuing to put things off. I have a little bit of a rule. I don't like having difficult conversations with people. I just don't like it. I don't think I will ever like it. I can do it.

but I don't like it. My brain will always go, it's just not the right time. It's just not the right time. It's not the right time. And so I have a question for myself, which is like, am I ever going to want to do this? And if the answer is no, an honest no, I'm never going to feel like, oh, now's the right time. Then I try and get myself to do it just as soon as I possibly can. Because every minute that I don't do it is another minute that I allow that awful emotion of dread to stay. around. And so that's become in an overall spirit of minimize my own suffering is when I, there's something I don't want to do, I try and do it just about as soon as I can. Now, I'm not saying I always do that. I'll procrastinate it. Don't, but that's the strategy. And I like that idea of saying, yeah, because otherwise there's a lot of things that we do, these little habits,

these little plays that we run to try to delay something and we'll trick ourselves into being like, well, it's not the right time to have a difficult conversation, right? So, or I'm in a good mood today. I don't want to ruin it. So I'll do that conversation next week. Or the other person's not in the right frame of mind. And while timing is important, there's never going to be the time where you feel like this is the absolute perfect time to have this really difficult conversation. So, but if you try to wait for it or you convince yourself that you're doing the right thing by waiting, it doesn't happen. And then you're just have more and more dread or guilt about not having the, conversation. Yeah, that's funny. There are times that are more right than others. I mean,

there is a sensitivity to all of it. I just remember this sort of line of thinking in my mind. Like you exactly said, like, well, they're in a good mood. I better not do it today. I don't want to ruin that. Or they're in a bad mood. So I don't really want to push them when they're in a bad mood. Or I'm in a bad mood. Or I'm in a bad mood. Or they had a bad day at work. Or, I mean, it just... Right. It can go on and on. I am very familiar with this one. And I think we do that with other things, too, like somebody will say, you know, I kind of wanted to start this little side hustle business, but I need to do more research. And you could research forever. You could plan forever.

And the idea of, I can't do it until I feel ready, is often that attempt to put something off because we're afraid. We're afraid of what will happen if we launch this thing. Or we're afraid of the wrath that might come our way if we have this difficult conversation. So we like to put things off. Right. And we never feel ready. thing that's worth knowing. It's like if I wait to have that conversation until I don't feel afraid to have it, it will literally never happen. Right. Because I'm going to feel afraid. It's just

part of the deal with it. Same thing with, you know, launching new things or doing different things is waiting to feel ready is always, in my mind, a recipe for failure from big things to even tiny things like we mentioned before. When do I feel ready to do my taxes? The answer to that, I will tell you after how many years have I been doing taxes a lot. The answer is never. Right? There's never a time where I look at that on my task list. And I'm like, oh, now, this would be a great time to do that, right? Never. And that's why it's so important to say, okay, I know how to take productive action. I don't feel like it. My thoughts are all over the place or I'm trying to talk myself out of it, but it's not the action that you take sometimes and the

step forward. The last chapter in the book are interaction improvers. This is helping us to get along better with the people around us. We talked about this being an important thing to try at work. What is play number 48 practice motivational interviewing? Oh, this is one of my favorites. As a therapist, we use motivational interviewing all the time, but it can work on anybody in your personal life or at work too. And essentially, it's about deciding that I don't need to figure out where you are in this continuum of change. If you have a bad habit and I say, Eric, you need to stop doing that. You might then say, actually, no, I like this habit.

Maybe it was showing up to work 20 minutes late. You're like, no, the traffic's bad and I come in 20 minutes late because that's the soon as I can get here. Well, that's not going to change your behavior that I just lectured you about it. But if I had a conversation with you and said, is there anything about coming into work in the morning that's getting in the way of it to be here at 8 a.m? Or are there any reasons why getting here late? Is it causing any problems for you?

And I ask you some open-ended questions and then you identify. Actually, yeah, here's what's getting in my way. Or if I could start at 8.30, that would change my life. Here's why. And we might be able to problem solve. Because a therapist, so many people come into my office because they have to be there. The judge said, you have to go to so many counseling sessions. Or they're like, you know, I don't think I have a problem, but my partner said if I didn't come to therapy, they were going to leave.

So my goal is to keep my partner or my goal is to get off probation. My goal isn't to change my behavior. And I start telling them, no, you have to do this. You can't do that. Again, I'm just going to reinforce their position. But if I ask questions, what would it take to get your partner off your back? How might that look? And people come to their own conclusions.

They'll follow their own advice way more than they'll follow mine. And if you ask the right questions, you can help people discover the strategies that they want to try. When they say them out loud, they're much more likely to follow through. Well, thank you so much. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation. for a couple of the things. We've still got some productive action plays to cover. Maybe we'll get an anxiety one in there. But if we want to leave people with one idea around mental strength, what would it be? That you don't have to feel strong to be strong. It's just all about picking the right play in the moment. We all have options of plays that we can run. And when you run a different play, it changes everything. Just like a good play in a game, changes the outcome of the game for a lot of people, running a different play. play in your life, changes the outcome, and it can change everything, but you don't have to wait until you feel strong to take the action. Thank you so much, Amy. Like I said, listeners, if you'd like to join

the post-show conversation between Amy and I, you get that, you get ad-free episodes, you support the show. We can always, always, always use your support. You can go to one you feed.net slash join. Thanks so much, Amy. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation and helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode

link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you. feed community. If you've ever put your phone down and felt better almost immediately, and then picked it right back up 10 minutes later, you're not alone. Researchers around the world are finding that social media is making us less happy, and most of us already know this. The harder question is why we can't seem to stop. And that's exactly what Dr. Lori Santos is digging into on the Happiness Lab. She sits down with the authors of the 2026 World Happiness Report to unpack this

biggest findings. What's happening with young people's well-being, why the rest of us stay glued to our feeds, even when we know better, and what the science says we can actually do about it. I'm a really big fan of Laurie's work on the Happiness Lab because she doesn't just tell you what the research says. She helps you figure out what to do with it, and that's the part that most people skip. Listen to the Happiness Lab wherever you get your podcasts.