Well with Arielle Lorre - 153: The 7 Traits of Emotional Fitness with Dr. Emily Anhalt

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

In this episode, I'm talking to Dr. Emily Anhalt, a Clinical Psychologist who specializes in the psychology of Entrepreneurs and emotional health and the co-founder of Coa (@joincoa). We discuss how to be proactive when it comes to mental and emotional health (whether you're an entrepreneur or not), why she encourages a "worry hour" each day, and how to deal with uncomfortable emotions. We also dive into her company Coa (a gym for mental health), their "7 Traits of Emotional Fitness," and their findings behind common psychological traits in entrepreneurs.   www.Athleticgreens.com/blondefiles for a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. www.Arrae.com with code 'blondefiles' for 10% off one time purchases of 25% off first month of subscription. www.Sakara.com/BLONDEFILES20 for 20% off your first purchase. www.Jennikayne.com with code BLONDE for 15% off your first order.   Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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without your rice-adviseur or SunnyCars. The following podcast is a dear media production. Hey, welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything

in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show. I am really excited about today's episode. I found it to be absolutely fascinating. I'm talking to Dr. Emily Anhalt. She is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the psychology of entrepreneurs and emotional health. She's also the founder of the company COA. It's like a gym for mental health, which is so fascinating. We get into all of that and how to exercise your mental health, essentially. And we discussed how to be proactive,

when it comes to mental and emotional health, whether you are an entrepreneur or not. She also has some really simple, kind of practical mental health hacks that you can implement into your lives starting today, like scheduling a worry hour each day, which I love. We talk about how to deal with uncomfortable emotions, and then we dive into her research

and her work identifying the seven traits of emotional fitness. So I hope you guys enjoy Dr. Emily Anhalt. Okay, welcome Dr. Anne-Halt. Halt, I'm so excited to have you here. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course. So to start, I would just love to have you give the audience a little background on who you are and what you do. Absolutely. So I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been studying psychology about 17 years now and practicing about 12. And I grew up in Silicon Valley. So I've always had an interest in the psychology of the entrepreneur. I also specialized in couples therapy for a

long time. And what all of this led me to was this realization that the culture of mental health in our society is very reactive. We're made to feel like we have to wait until things are totally falling apart to pay attention to our mental and emotional health. But to me, that's a little like waiting until you're diagnosed with early signs of heart disease to start doing cardio. So I wanted to figure out how we can start thinking about our mental health a little more proactively, more like going to the gym and less like going to the doctor. So a number of years ago, I did a big research study where I interviewed 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs about what makes someone emotionally healthy. How would you know if someone had good emotional health? What does that kind of

person do? What do they not do? And so out of this research came what I call the seven traits of emotional fitness. These are the seven things that emotionally healthy people are working on all the time, a little bit at a time every day. And those seven things are self-awareness, empathy, mindfulness, curiosity, playfulness, resilience, and communication. So I started doing work on these seven traits. And along the way, I met my now amazing co-founder. And we started a company called COA, which is a gym for mental health. And at COA, you're essentially learning what is an emotional pushup and how do I do one and how can I strengthen myself in these seven traits a little bit at a time every day so that I can actually maybe prevent a lot of the mental health struggles that would have sent me looking for

support later. You know, when I was doing research for this interview, I was reading and listening to other interviews that you've done and learning about COA. And I'm like, this concept makes so much sense. We are so reactive when it comes to issues of mental health and, you know, largely physical health as well. It's just kind of the structure of health care in this country right now. It's very like very reactive, like you said. But why do you think it is, especially with mental health? I mean, obviously it's so stigmatized, but why do you think it is that like we wait so long to address the issue when there is one? I mean, I've heard elsewhere, I don't know the exact data, but like if somebody's struggling with like anxiety or depression, it takes them so long to seek help.

So can you speak to that a little bit? Sure. Well, firstly, I would say exactly as you just said, society doesn't really give people permission to tend to their mental health in a proactive way. there aren't things set up to make that easy for us. I mean, if we're up to me, there would be EQ classes starting in kindergarten that everyone did. There's this idea that we're supposed to get everything we need mentally and emotionally from our parents, but they're not always set up to give us what they need because they're struggling with their own stuff. And so trauma gets passed down from generation to generation and no one really has the tools needed to break the cycle on that. The other thing that I think is important to think about is we are the way we are for

important reasons. A lot of mental health out there is this kind of trope of, you know, just here's what you should do and then you'll be better. Like just get enough sleep and journal. And the truth is that that kind of, it doesn't honor how complex we are. And it doesn't honor the fact that a lot of the things that we struggle with really served us at some point in our life, which means it's going to be harder to change those things because we first have to understand that maybe they're not helping us the way they used to. So I can give an example. Like, let's say you grew up in a family that really encouraged you not to be very emotional, not to show your feelings. You were supposed to be stoic. You were supposed to have it together all the

time. And that was really important for you to feel safe and accepted in your family. So now you grow up and all of a sudden, you're having all of these motions and you don't know what to do with them and you can't hold them down. But it feels very dangerous to just suddenly become a person who talks about their feelings all the time because you were told at a really important moment that that's not the way you're supposed to be. So when we tell people, oh, here's what to do to change. We also have to honor, here's what we lose when we change. Here are the tough things we have to face in order to change. There's grieving to do. And it's scary and painful to confront those things. You know, if it were easy to change, we would have done it already. So, you know, we can give people all the resources in the world.

but if we don't also make space for the fact that it's a lot harder than it seems, then we might not really be setting up for success. I can relate a lot to that because I've been sober for eight years now. Thank you. And when I got sober, I had to look at all of my shit and look at my defects of character. You know, that was a huge one because I learned that it wasn't really about the drugs and the alcohol. It was about the underlying emotional stuff and the things that were.

driving me. And when I looked at my defects of character, I was like, oh, like, this is how I've gotten to where I am, good and bad. They really do serve me. And even still now, eight years in, I still cling to those things, you know, and they can be helpful in some circumstances. I think that, you know, stubbornness, willfulness, that can be helpful when it comes to business, maybe in some ways. But then in other ways, like in my personal life, you know, not so great. So I can relate a lot to that and a lot to not wanting to let go of those things. Oh yeah. Every struggle or weakness we have is the flip side of one of our big strengths. You know, anything that got us to where we are can also hold us back. Anything that has led to our success can also get in our way and be our downfall.

And that's why ongoing work on yourself is really important because it's all a moving target. Like what worked for you 10 years ago might not work for you now. And we have to constantly be examining and being willing to shift and learn. always ask what my approach to style is, and it's pretty simple. I focus on high quality, timeless, but stylish pieces for the majority of my wardrobe so that it transcends trends, and I get a return on my investment. So if you are wanting to refine your look this year, get some luxurious essentials, or build a capsule wardrobe, the perfect place to start is Jenny Kane. They literally have the best quality, chic, effortless pieces that work with everything in

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I'm so curious about that. Sure. So it came from this research essentially. I sat down with 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs. And I asked them, how would you know if you were sitting across the table from an emotionally healthy person. What does that person feel like and what kinds of things do they do in their life and what do they not do in their life? What does it look like in yourself when you're being healthy or not being healthy? And I did what's called an interpretive phenomenological

analysis, which is a fancy way of saying that you transcribe all of the interviews you do and then you code those interviews for themes. So you're essentially trying to see what is true amongst a lot of the people that you've talked to. And when I coded these things, these seven traits for the things that I saw as representative of what was coming up time and time again. And I've actually spent the last two years trying to figure out what the eighth trait would be. Like, what have I missed? What doesn't fit into one of these seven traits? And we have yet to really find it. Because when I think about any kind of emotional growth, it feels like it fits under the umbrella of at least one, if not many, of these traits. And so it's just kind of a nice compass.

It's sort of like, if you're working on your physical health, you would think, all right, I need to sleep well. need to eat healthy, I need to exercise, maybe need to meditate, I need to have community, that kind of thing. And so this is sort of our version of what to orient yourself toward for your emotional health. So if people are listening and they're like, okay, I hear and I understand the concept of these traits, but what does that really entail? Or like, what is each of those embody? Could you talk a little bit about what each one of those traits might look like for somebody? Yeah, sure. So I'll give a quick overview of what you might learn if you might learn if you we're coming to our classes and working on these seven things. So the first one, self-awareness.

That is essentially about understanding our own emotional triggers and our biases. It's really hard to change something before you know what it is. So the more you learn about yourself, the more agency you're going to have to make changes. So in a self-awareness class, you're going to learn like, how do my frustrations with other people actually give me really important information about myself? What kinds of things are I hiding from myself? Because we're really good at hiding things from ourselves. So that's self-awareness. Second was empathy. And if self-awareness is understanding your own emotions, then empathy is understanding other people's emotions. It's about being able to put yourself in other people's shoes and to really let yourself feel what someone else is feeling.

You know, if you intellectually understand what someone's feeling, but you're not feeling it at all, that's actually not empathy. That's sympathy. Empathy means we really let ourselves feel what someone else is feeling in order to understand them. So in an empathy class, you're going to learn how can you move closer to people by, understanding their experience and putting yourself in their perspective. The third trait is curiosity. So I think about curiosity as pursuing growth over defensiveness. Anytime someone comes to us with a tough piece of feedback or we face some aspect of

ourselves that we don't like, it's very human and natural to get defensive and to push it away, to look away, to not want to explore. But if instead we can get curious, if we can ask questions and grow and explore from that we're just going to get so much farther. And it's a tough thing to do because none of us wants to see our own blind spots or, you know, weaknesses, whatever that might be. The next one is mindfulness. Now, when you hear the term mindfulness, you probably think of meditation, breathing exercises, that kind of thing, which is great. But I define mindfulness a little bit differently. To me, mindfulness is becoming more comfortable, being uncomfortable.

It's all about this idea that when we're not present in the moment that we're in, it's usually because that moment is uncomfortable for some reason, even if it's just uncomfortable because we're used to having constant stimulation on our phones. So mindfulness is about actually leaning into the things that make us uncomfortable, because as we do that, we get more choices of what we can do in that moment versus just, oh, how do I escape this uncomfortable feeling? So from there, we'll go to play. Now play is just really undervalued, I think, as a trait. And to me, play means being a yes and a person. It means meeting people where they are and expanding on their ideas and creating something out of nothing and getting to places you never could have gotten if you hadn't removed the constraints and allowed yourself to really lean in. And most adults, I don't think, really know what it means to play some of the time. And so it's nice to practice and to lean into that vulnerability because play is actually really vulnerable because when we play our guards come down and that's scary if you're someone who works hard to keep your guard up. From there, resilience.

is essentially what I say is bouncing forward from failures and setbacks. And I say forward because we don't actually want to go back to where we were before we've made a mistake because there's an opportunity to learn from that mistake to become stronger. Like one of the way I think about it is going through tough times in life is a little like exercise to a muscle. So if you think about exercise, you're actually tearing your muscle a little, you're damaging it. But if you repair, then the muscle is stronger. And that's why you can then lift a little more weight the next time.

Similarly, as we go through life, if we learn how to repair and grow from and be resilient through our difficult times, we actually become stronger as people instead of feeling cut down by those experiences. And then the last one is communication, which is being able to put words to our needs and our boundaries and our expectations. It's to be able to get on the same team as people and work through tough things and to, you know, recognize that we might want it to be the case that people can read our mind, but they can't. And so we do have to have responsibility for what it is that we're feeling and what it is that we need and communicate that outward.

I have a personal question. When you were doing this research and when you landed on the seven, where you like, great, I have all of these. Are you like, oh, I might be deficient in this area and I need to work on that? I mean, I feel like I could be making a total generalization here, but people who work in your field and any kind of helping field do a little bit of me search, right? in it. Big time. Yeah. Well, I think everyone has unique strengths and weaknesses with these traits. And I would certainly not say, oh, I'm good. I have all of these. Like, you don't become a therapist because you're so much more emotionally mature than everyone else. You become a therapist because the ways in which your family, you know, had complicated dynamics and you have complicated dynamics, that that's interesting to you. And you want to understand it more, but more far from immune

from the same things everyone else is struggling with. So I would say I have strengths and weaknesses within every one of these traits. Because that's a thing. Like you might be higher on some and lower on the others, but you also might be higher in some, in certain circumstances. Like maybe you're good at having empathy for the people you work with, but you're not great at having empathy for yourself

or you're not great at having empathy with your family. So there's just kind of a world of possibility for all of this. And what I like about them is you can kind of start anywhere, because they all relate. Like as you become better at communicating, you're also going to have better self-awareness because you start to learn about yourself. Or as you get more comfortable playing and being vulnerable, then you're probably going to become more resilient because you can use levity to get through tough times. So start anywhere and the others will naturally improve. So how do people start? And how do they start using co-I? I mean, you mentioned like you kind of compared

it to doing a push-up for mental health. So what does that look like? So it can look like a million different things. If you think about what a physical pushup is, it's this tiny physical exertion, just a little bit of probably uncomfortable exercise that you're going to do that stretches you just a little bit. And if you do just one and then stop, you're not going to get stronger from that. But if you do a few every day and then a few more every day after that, always pushing just outside of your comfort zone, you're going to get physically stronger

and you're going to be able to not only do things like carry groceries more easily, but also you're actually strengthening your body such that you're probably less likely to get sick later when you're older. So similarly, an emotional push-up is anything that pushes you just a little bit outside of your emotional comfort zone that you can do over time that will not only make you stronger now as an emotional being, but also will prevent a lot of the issues later. Because my true belief about things like depression and anxiety is that it's very often a result of not having had the resources and space and support and tools and permission to feel your feelings when you were having them originally. We push them way we avoid them and they gather into something that's

much more difficult to work through. Whereas if we had been able to feel those feelings and confront those things and work on them from a young age all the way through, we actually might prevent a lot of that stuff. So I can share examples of what an emotional push-up would look like. You know, it's anything from ask your boss for feedback about one thing. that you could be doing better on the team. Or it could be journal for 20 minutes about something that you really want to shift in yourself in this next week. Like, I want to be more assertive or I want to be better at saying no. It can be write down all of the good feedback you get from people in your life so that you have this, what we call a self-esteem file, a place to look through and remind yourself

that you're wonderful. Or it could be, you know, go to a friend who you're in kind of a tough time with and say, hey, I want us to really work through this. So anything that points you just a little bit outside of your comfort zone will move you toward emotional strength. Mm-hmm. I feel like it's just so hard to find the discipline to do these little things. And like back to my experience in sobriety too, like I've been given all these tools. It's really simple things that I can do each day to kind of shift my mindset and my attitude a little bit.

And I know that 100% of the time, they'll at least help a little bit. You know, it might not be, that's not like a panacea. Like every day I'm going to jump out of bed, like the happiest person in the world, but I can do X, Y, and Z. And I'm still so resistant to doing them. And I think part of it is the discomfort, like you were saying, like none of us really want to look at our own shit and feel those uncomfortable feelings that come up.

Maybe it's just like an alcoholic thing, but I think it's a human thing too, to, I don't know, just not have it in our nature to want to do the work, if that makes sense. Oh my gosh, it's the most human thing. And, you know, one of the things I say a lot is most people don't go to therapy because they don't know what to do. Most people go to therapy because they do know what to do and need help understanding why they're not doing it. Like, it's actually pretty intuitive what we need to do, you know, we need to sleep. We need to spend time with friends. We need to feel our feelings. We need to eat healthy. Like, we know these things. But there are complicated reasons why we're not doing those things. And if we can understand why we might be

standing in our own way or what might be scary about the change, then it shifts our ability to do that. So you're far from alone in that struggle. Is that kind of how motivational interviewing works, where it kind of like just is guiding the person through their own thoughts and processes and all of that? Yeah, motivational interviewing and really most types of therapy are about helping people come to their own change because again, if it were as simple as like, oh, just do X, Y, and Z, then everyone would have done that. It's more like, how can I understand what's happening inside of myself? And one of the things you said, you were saying that it wasn't until you had stopped drinking, that you really realized a lot of the stuff that was going on. And something I think is, if you want to know

why you do anything, stop doing it and see what comes up. You know, if you want to know why you eat too much sugar, if you want to know why you smoke cigarettes, or if you want to know why, you know, anything, stop doing it and you're going to be confronted with all of the feelings that you're trying to numb out or avoid. And that's a good place to start to figure out what needs your attention. I'm laughing because this morning I was doing my meditation and I have admittedly been like, my screen time is through the roof, okay, right now between work and then just like, I was sick last week and so I was on my phone the whole time. scrolling and this morning, I was like, all right, just 20 minutes. I do TM. So I do like 20 minutes

twice a day. And at 15 minutes, I was like getting that craving to pick up my phone. And I was like, this is a visceral physical craving as though it were craving for anything to go eat the cookie or to like have the drink or whatever. And I was just thinking. And I was like, why do I feel this? I was like, I want to like check out because there must have been some kind of uncomfortable feeling or whatever that was coming up during that, you know, moment of stillness and silence. And I tried to override it. And then I was like, fuck it. I'm just picking up my phone. I feel like you're describing such a universal thing right now. Like the thing about our phones is, you know, they give us that little hit of dopamine or serotonin. And that's addictive. We're addicted to it. And our capacity to be bored and to sit with. uncomfortable feelings is just, I think, lower as a universal culture right now because we have this little dopamine device in our pocket that we can turn to whenever we want. Yeah, it's the slot machine

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with, say, anxiety or they're trying to do some of this work, but they're like, I don't know, I'm trying to journal and it's just all of this stuff is coming up. Obviously, you're a proponent of therapy, but do you have any like tips that people can implement in their own lives? I think the big thing is just having compassion for yourself firstly, that it's not all going to go perfectly all the time. I think we'll try something and when it doesn't work right away, we decide that, oh, that's not for me. And, you know, most things worth having in life don't happen perfectly the first time. We have to practice them. So one of the things, one of those muscles

we want to flex, I think, is turning toward difficult emotions instead of a way. And just by putting our attention on something, we increase our ability to do something about it. So even just deciding, okay, I am going to prioritize my mental and emotional health a little bit more just by making that decision. You're making a change for yourself. And you just talked about this moment where you really wanted to grab your phone and maybe nine times out of 10, you would just grab it. But in this time, you said, why do I want this so bad right now? And just creating that little bit of space between you and the escape changes everything because it has an ability to increase your awareness of it. and it gave you the real decision.

Do I want to grab it anyway? Maybe, right? Sometimes we just need to do it and that's fine. Or is this a moment where I want to practice taking some deep breaths and not leaning into that impulse to escape? So just practicing that. The next thing is it's really important that we find our community and that we practice reaching out for support.

So that might be therapy, but that might be finding a group of people who have a similar background or experience or struggle as you. Like healing happens through relationships. really therapy is actually just this relationship that is helping you understand all of your other relationships. And so it's important that we have our people in our life. And I also just really want to quickly throw out there that it's very reasonable that a lot of people are struggling right now. I think people are being really hard on themselves. But like, I can tell you, I was never trained in grad school about how to help people through a global pandemic that I'm also experiencing.

So I have to have some compassion for myself when it feels harder. And I hope. people can give themselves a little credit that we're doing our best in a situation that really wasn't set up for peak mental emotional health. I feel like that's been a driver of so many of these habitual behaviors too, probably. Like if I reflect on my phone use, my screen time, you know, any of this stuff, it definitely increased over the pandemic because of so many variables, being home, you know, working from home, wanting to numb out from a little bit of that anxiety, probably craving that connection that so many of us are not getting when we're, you know, in the middle of a spike in the COVID and whatever else is going on. I know that also so many people

reached out to me about stopping drinking when the pandemic started because I think a lot of people were faced with their relationship with alcohol and questioning whether that was a healthy thing or not. And I think, you know, like what you're saying is so true. I think we're so hard on ourselves. like we're easy on other people and so hard on ourselves. And I get so many questions from the audience about like how to deal with this current moment in time that we're all experiencing and particularly like the uncertainty and the anxiety around it. And it is kind of unprecedented.

So it's like I think we have to give ourselves grace. I think so too. And I can give a couple examples of things that I do when I feel anxious because, you know, anxiety is actually a very reasonable reaction right now. The future is so uncertain. Things feel unsafe. Like we were built to have anxiety in these situations. But the problem is when anxiety stops helping us feel prepared and instead keeps us feeling stuck. It's like when it becomes a rocking chair where it gives us something to do, but it doesn't get us anywhere, then that's when we might want to disrupt it. So a couple ideas I have for that is one of them is schedule a worry hour. This might

sound kind of silly, but if you're finding that you're anxious all day every day and it's interfering with your life, put a half hour on your calendar every day or every week or every month, whatever you need, where all you have to do that during that time is obsess. Worry, ruminate, play things out over your head, catastrophize, whatever you need to do to make you feel like you're thinking over the situation. But then the rest of the day, when your worries come up, you can say, nope, that is not for now. that is my worry hour time. That's six o'clock me's problem. She'll deal with it and helps kind of free up that space and, you know, keep the worrying a little bit contained. So I found that that can be really useful. Sometimes I actually have a friend who during her worry hour, she just writes like crazy

everything she's worried about. And then at the end, she burns the paper. I love that. That's her ritual. The other piece of advice I was given years ago when it comes to worrying is, you know, I share the story a lot, but I was faced with the potential of losing someone who I really loved. She was in the hospital. It was unlikely that she was going to make it. I was really anxious. I was really obsessing about what I was going to do if she died. And a family friend came over who is a psychologist and an oncologist. So he had a lot of experience dealing with loss and families dealing with these kinds of situations. And I was like, what do I do? What am I going to do if she dies? How am I going to handle it? And he said, you know, Emily, the version of you that will handle that tough thing if and when it happens

will be born into existence in that moment. And that version of you will have more life experience and more context and will have more ability to handle that tough thing than present you does. So you need to trust your future self to handle future problems. And instead, just focus on what's true right now. Just like past you had to trust that present you was going to to handle this tough moment, you have to trust that you will handle that tough moment. And it was so profound because even with little things like, oh, what am I going to do if, you know, if this presentation goes badly or what will it do if I get COVID or whatever, I can remind myself, you know, future me is a badass. She's got this. She'll deal with it. And in the meantime, I'm just going to

focus on what's true right now. I love that. I'm going to remember that for sure. And I love the worry hour, definitely going to be scheduling that in to my calendar. I'm curious, can I ask you a question? Yeah. I'm wondering of those seven traits, if there are any that jump out at you as things that you feel like are strengths of yours or any that you're really hoping to work on more. And I can go over them again if they're not top of mind. Yeah, list them again.

I have a couple in my head, but. Okay, so self-awareness, empathy, curiosity, mindfulness, playfulness, resilience and communication. Yeah, no, I think I'm good. I'm kidding. I think playfulness. I think that's one that I have to work on. And when you were talking about that,

I was like, yep, yes, she's right. I think that especially in this day and age, like we all focus on like productivity and efficiency and especially, you know, having my own business and the podcast and all of that, like I have to have the initiative to run it and it's a 24-7 thing. And so I really find myself getting deficient in that area. Strengths, I would say self-aware, mindfulness.

That's something that I've really, you know, I mentioned that I meditate. But also like that has, it's not just like the sitting and meditating. It's carried over into all aspects of my life and just really trying to like be where my feet are. Because I tend to be like a future, I'm either in the future or in the past. it's hard for me to be in the right now. That's powerful. I mean, I think mindfulness is a really important one for anyone who's wanting to change

their relationship to any kind of substances because you're bound to face some serious discomfort and being able to make friends with it instead of escaping it all the time. I imagine it was hugely helpful. Yeah. And it really, I mean, I won't go off on a tangent. Everyone who listens know that I am like, I evangelize meditation. I try not to because I'm like, that's the quickest way to get somebody to not listen to you. tell them to meditate. You know how I think about meditation, though, that has helped me wrap my mind

around it is like, I feel like the practice of meditation is like slowly building a tiny house inside of yourself. And you have to work on it every single day. And even once it's built, you're going to have to maintain it. But once it's there, it's a place that you can go anytime you need calm or safety or comfort. It's just there for you. And, you know, you can drop into it. in this magical way. And, you know, it's not going to work if you only meditate every once in a while. But once it's there, it's like one of the most profound resources that you can have. Yeah, and that was my experience that I had with it where I was struggling a lot with anxiety. And, you know, I was affecting my relationships and my work. And I was not sleeping well.

And I was stressed and I was reactive and having, you know, food craving. Just all these things where I was just kind of erratic emotionally. And it really helped to just calm all. of that. They make the analogy in TM about usually you're, it's like you're, it's like you're picture yourself in a small boat on top of the ocean and you're really getting rocked by all the little waves and every little movement. But when you meditate, you go down to the bottom of the ocean where it's still choppy up there, but you don't feel it as much when you're down there. And that was totally my experience with it. I love that. Yeah. So what do you find you obviously work with a lot of successful people and entrepreneurs. And what do you find those people are usually, what are

their strengths and what are their weaknesses when it comes to the seven traits? I did a Twitter thread recently on what are the sort of common psychological things that you see in entrepreneurs and founders. I'll go into some of them. You know, one of the things I see a lot is that they're not great at celebrating wins. When every goal that you accomplish is really just the start of 10 new goals that you have to accomplish, it can become really tempting to just put your head down and always be pushing forward. But people forget that whatever you're working toward, even if it's a giant acquisition of your company or making a lot of money or whatever is, whatever you're working toward getting, life doesn't start when you get there. This is life now. And if you can't appreciate

where you are now, then when you get there, I think you'll be quite disappointed that it's not everything that you thought it would be. Like when we put off living for some goal, then that goal is not going to make up for all of that time. We didn't allow ourselves to live. So that's an important one. Another thing that I see is this kind of narcissism, imposter syndrome cocktail, where on the one hand, you have to think enough of yourself that you think you can do something no one else has ever done before. You know, you have to believe in yourself enough to think that all of the doubters and all of the haters are wrong and you're going to be able to do it. And that takes a certain kind of, you know, self-confidence. But on the other hand, when you dig into that a little bit, every entrepreneur,

I know is terrified deep down that they're a fraud and that they have no idea what they're doing and then it's all going to fall apart. And you're kind of battling between these two things all the time. So that's something I see and feel in myself, of course. And the other thing that I think just universally in business is a huge amount of underestimating of how important good emotional health is for sustainable growth and success. Like if you're like, you know what, I'll take care of myself at X, Y, or Z later date, you're really putting off something that's going to help you get there in the first place and that's going to be hard to get there without that. So, you know, for example, taking vacations, like founders often will just not take their vacation.

And I think in our mind, we think, you know, I don't have time for a break and, you know, I'm just going to come back and be as stressed as I was before. But we forget that a vacation isn't just a break from feeling overwhelmed. It heals feeling overwhelmed. Like after a vacation, you come back less stressed. It's not just that you've got a week away from the stress. And so we have to repair that muscle that we tore, right? We have to give ourselves an opportunity to grow stronger.

So those are three of the many things that I see a lot of in the entrepreneur world. I feel like even with like smaller habits that might be beneficial, we do that too. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine yesterday where I was like, if I have a really busy day or if I have something really stressful that I have to do in the morning, I'll think, okay, I don't have time to, like, do my five-minute journal and my quick meditation and whatever the kind of foundational things that I do during the day that set me up for a good day, that'll be the first thing to go. And then, of course, those big things that I have usually suffer as a result of that, but it's this weird paradox where it's

like we don't feel like that's the priority, even though, like I said, that's kind of the foundation that everything else is built upon. That's such a great point. The first thing out the door, even though without that, it's harder to do everything else. There's a quote I love, which is you more than anyone else, are worthy of your love and attention. You know, we're focusing on all the things externally all the time, but you can't pour from an empty cup. And if we're not, like you said, creating that strong foundation for everything else, then we're just going to be a husk, especially during these crazy times when the world is really taking a lot of our resources from us at a much more rapid rate than we're used to. Yeah. I always like to ask my guests at the end, what is one thing people, I don't want to use the word should stop, but we won't get into semantics. Just one thing that people can stop doing today to benefit their mental health and one thing that they can start doing. Oh, that's thoughtful. So let's see. One thing they can stop is stop shitting all over yourself. And by that I mean, I should be at a better job by now. I should be making more money. I should be married. I should be married. I

should X, Y, Z. Because when we focus on what we should have done already, it puts us in the mindset that it's not possible to get there. Like if we hadn't got there already, we couldn't get there at all. And that's usually not true. So we want to try to focus on having that ability to feel like we can grow into something instead of harping too much on not being there already. So that's one thing that comes to mind. And then one thing you can start doing, I would say start creating some kind of ongoing practice of checking in with yourself. Maybe it's the five-minute journal in the morning or the night. I have a journal that's a one-line-a-day journal. You only write one line every day. It's super low-lift, but you do it every day and every year. And so over time, you start to see these

patterns like, huh, the day before Thanksgiving, every year, I'm really stressed. That's interesting. I wonder why that might be. Or, oh, I noticed that this time of month, I'm more creative or whatever might be. So creating this habit of checking in, that can be. That can be. done through therapy. It can be done through checking in with a friend, having a accountability, where you and a friend maybe text each other every once in a while just to see how things are going. But to remember that health is a habit, there's no one thing any person can do that is going to move them into good mental health. It's what you do a little at a time every day for the rest of your life. I love that. And I bought that one line a day book many years ago. And I was

really consistent for a week. And then I never did it again. So maybe that's my sign to do it again. Or try a digital version. Like some people like writing is hard. Yeah. Yeah. I actually just saw somebody. I think it was Ryan Holiday. Do you know him?

He wrote The Daily Stoic. Yeah. He just posted the other day like, I have this book and I've been writing in it every day for five years. And now I can look back and I was like, I have that as well. And I did not have that experience with that. But that seems pretty cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Where can everybody find you? And where can they find co? as well. Yeah, so I'm definitely most active on Twitter for people who want to connect with me and my handle on all the things is D-R-E-R-E-E-M-I-L-Y-A-N-H-A-L-T, or head over to join koa-N-C-O-A-com, and check out our classes. You know, this work is hard to do by yourself. We believe that it should be done in community and with support. And if you use the code Friends of COA, you'll get a little discount, especially for your community. So I look forward to seeing people there and being connected. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it, and if you like the show in

general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to the Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Lori.