How to Break the Cycle of Low Motivation and Negative Thinking

🎙️ Episode 22 – How to Break the Cycle of Low Motivation and Negative Thinking

This is a Lion Tactics episode — short, practical, and actionable content to help men heal and grow.

👉 Ready for the next step? SCHEDULE A FREE, 30-MINUTE CONSULT with Mark or Zack at:
https://escapethecagenow.com/call/ to see if you’re a good fit to work with them one-on-one. Space is limited.

In this episode of The Lion Counseling Podcast, Mark Odland (Certified EMDR Therapist) and Zack Carter (Counselor & Coach) break down the 3 destructive thought patterns that fuel depression in men — and how to overcome them.

Whether you're feeling stuck, emotionally numb, or you're watching someone you care about spiral, this episode offers real hope and a path forward. They explain how depression distorts how we see ourselves, our lives, and the world around us—and how small mindset shifts can lead to big breakthroughs.

🧠 You’ll Learn:

• Why people with depression have a “selection bias” toward negative thinking
• How overgeneralization keeps you stuck in self-defeating narratives like “I always fail”
• How to stop interpreting neutral events (like a coworker ignoring you) as proof that something’s wrong with you
• Why traditional advice like “just snap out of it” fails—and what actually works
• A powerful visual tool to reframe your thinking and move from stuck to strong
• How small, consistent mindset shifts can transform your mental health

💡 If you’ve ever felt hopeless, numb, or like you’ve lost your fire — you're not broken. Depression is real, but it is also treatable. And at Lion Counseling, we don’t pathologize you. We listen, equip you, and help you move from where you are to where you want to be—without needing to slap a diagnosis on it.

👊 You don’t need to stay stuck. Start today with a single small step.

About the Show:
The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the lions they were created to be. Hosted by Mark Odland (Certified EMDR Therapist) and Zack Carter (Counselor & Coach), we tackle real issues—masculinity, trauma, addiction, identity, purpose, marriage, and faith—with honesty, clarity, and courage.

👉 Ready for change? Visit www.escapethecagenow.com to schedule a free consultation for coaching or counseling.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.’

Creators and Guests

Host

Mark Odland

Founder of Lion Counseling, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified EMDR Therapist

Host

Zack Carter

Zack Carter is a Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling LLC.

What is Lion Counseling Podcast?

The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the Lions they were created to be. It exists to help men obtain success, purpose, happiness, and peace in their career and personal lives. The podcast is hosted by the founder of Lion Counseling, Mark Odland (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified EMDR Therapist), and Zack Carter (Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling). In their podcasts, they address a variety of topics relevant to men, including: mental health, relationships, masculinity, faith, success, business, and self-improvement.

Mark Odland: 00:00

We do not have enough energy to expend on things that aren't even true. Right? And there might objectively be things in someone's life that warrant sadness, that that warrant feeling discouraged. And that's gonna be enough to contend with without all these extra thoughts and half truths that are just dancing around in our mind, bringing us down even more. Right?

Mark Odland: 00:25

So the beauty is one step at a time, Right? All these great resources you're providing for a sac, there is a path out. There is hope. Being in that state is treatable. There can be, improvement.

Mark Odland: 00:39

There is improvement. We see that improvement. And, and at Lion Counseling, right, when we do work with guys one on one, we don't even diagnose. Like, we we don't we don't play the insurance game. We don't diagnose.

Mark Odland: 00:50

We, we just say, what are you going through? What are your symptoms? How do we get from point a to point b? So for some people, a label is helpful because it validates their experience. And for others, not so much.

Mark Odland: 01:01

It's just like, I don't need a label. I just this is what I'm going through. And that's okay too. It's like, let's just figure out what you're going through, what your ideal future is, and create a bridge between where you are and where you wanna be. And, and, yeah, that there there definitely is hope because we've seen it as hard as as as a struggle as it can be sometimes to feel like when you're in that downstate, how to move forward.

Mark Odland: 01:27

Again, taking that one step, putting in practice some of these tools. After a while, you look back and there's there's momentum. Right? There's momentum, and, you're moving in the right direction. 100%.

Mark Odland: 01:38

Yeah. Welcome everyone to the Lion Counseling Podcast. I'm Mark Oddlin, founder of Lion Counseling and certified EMDR therapist. I'm Zach Carter, counselor and coach. And our mission is to help men to break free, to heal deep, and to become the lions they were created to be.

Mark Odland: 02:00

Depression. Depression is something that will touch most of our lives, whether it's us or someone we know. Everyone feels sad in life. Everyone experiences grief. But depression is a serious and unique thing, that that that's legit and isn't always as as easy as just quote unquote getting over it.

Mark Odland: 02:21

And so we're gonna dive into that today. We're gonna talk about the three mindsets of depression and how to fix them. And make sure to hang on till the end because, we've got a lot of great content for you guys. And since you're already here, if you could hit that subscribe button, we'd really appreciate it. It helps the algorithm, helps us get the word out to more guys so we can help more men.

Mark Odland: 02:41

Alright, Zach. Let's jump

Intro Music: 02:54

time to wrestle the beast. Testing my g is getting heavy indeed. The struggle I embrace now, never retreat. I see the test as a blessing indeed. I'm taking steps on the treacherous peak.

Intro Music: 03:05

It's testing the beat. Look if I'm on my destiny's feet. Shine Perfect.

Zack Carter: 03:09

Thanks, Mark. Yeah. So depression is really tricky, man. People that suffer from this really have a hard time getting out of it. We're not going to go too much into diagnosable criteria, you know, but suffice it to say, you know, it's not just about sadness.

Zack Carter: 03:25

It's lack of energy. It's lack of motivation. It's difficulty feeling, right? So feeling numb oftentimes, right? So it can include sadness, it can include suicidal ideation.

Zack Carter: 03:39

So there's like a lot of different things that could be included. But there's some common mindsets that as counselors, Mark and I are gonna be looking for in someone that might have depression, whether it's clinically diagnosed or just a lower level of it. Right? And so there's three common mindsets that we see. And so I'm gonna lay them out and then we'll go into each one and what they mean exactly.

Zack Carter: 04:07

So number one, it's what we call a selection bias towards the negative. What does that mean? It means that typically a person with a depressed mindset, they discount the positive things that are happening in their life. Right? They don't even notice them.

Zack Carter: 04:21

And it's not even that they're intentionally doing it. It's just it just doesn't register. Right? So when I was like thinking about what this may look like Sure. Throughout most of my life I've played in worship bands at church.

Zack Carter: 04:35

And what like if you've never been in a worship band, like a common thing that happens behind the scenes that people in the church don't see is that like you go out, you play the set, you go back, and everybody talks about all the mistakes they made. That's like all the the worship member like, oh, man. Did you hear when I, like, blew that chord? Or, oh, dude, that fill was so dumb. Why did I do that as the drummer?

Zack Carter: 04:58

You know, you know, bassist, no one cares about bassist. So we don't really don't don't even talk about bassist. I'm just playing. I love bassist, but no one notices the bass. So sorry if you're a bassist.

Zack Carter: 05:09

But it's important. They are important. So yeah. So, like, it's very common that, like, the worship team, like, goes back and, like, what happens? All they can focus is on is the negative.

Zack Carter: 05:19

It doesn't matter if 98% of the songs went perfectly. They're gonna fixate on those mistakes. Right? So that's what selection bias towards the negative looks like. Right?

Zack Carter: 05:31

So we're discounting the positive, only focusing on the negative. Number two is an overgeneralization of negative memories. Okay? So life has never been good. Things never go well for me.

Zack Carter: 05:47

Things are always bad. I always fail. Right? So it's it's over you have a few bad things that happen and you blow it up and say like, this is my whole life. This is everything that happens to me.

Zack Carter: 06:01

So an example of like an overgeneralization for me, fortunately I haven't really ever suffered from depression. But for a long time I called myself lazy. And I might have talked about this in a previous podcast. And so like I over generalized. Like, I'm always lazy.

Zack Carter: 06:16

I'm always just procrastinating and not doing what I need to do. And not to get too ahead of myself on solutions, like I actually sat down and like laid out, you know, is this true or not? And when I did that, I found it wasn't lazy. Like sometimes I procrastinate, but sometimes isn't always. But when we overgeneralize, especially if we're feeling depressed, it feels like it's always.

Zack Carter: 06:40

Okay? So number one is selection bias towards the negative. So not paying attention to the positive. Second is saying that everything is negative. Right?

Zack Carter: 06:47

All the things in my life are negative. And then the last thing is negative interpretations of ambiguous events. The heck does that mean? You have like a neutral thing that happens. Right?

Zack Carter: 07:01

You you go into the break room, one of your coworkers doesn't acknowledge you or even say hi, and you have the thought, oh, they don't like me. Or, oh, what did I do wrong? Maybe I did I hurt their feelings? Like, oh, I must have done something wrong. Right?

Zack Carter: 07:15

So it's neutral. We don't we don't know what's going on. They could have had someone that just passed away, But we make it about ourselves in depression, right? It's about us. We're self focused.

Zack Carter: 07:25

It's like, oh, it must be me in some way. Right? So we take neutral events, ambiguous events, and we turn them negative. So those are three examples of some common mindsets we see in depression. Selection bias towards a negative, we discount the positive.

Zack Carter: 07:45

We overgeneralize negative memories. Some negative things happen, so that's our life. And then three, we interpret neutral events as negative. Mark, any thoughts?

Mark Odland: 07:58

Yeah. A couple of thoughts. I think it's interesting too because we live in this unique moment in history where, at least in America, in Western countries, there's a lot of prosperity. Civilization has not to minimize people are going through rough stuff, but as a whole in society, there's been a lot of innovation, a lot of technology that's lifted us out, a lot of the things that would have killed us one hundred years ago. Right?

Mark Odland: 08:21

Life expectancy is a lot higher than it was for our ancestors. And I'm just thinking for our ancestors, having that negative mind mindset actually might have had some survival value. But the problem is we don't quite live in that same context anymore. Right? And so thinking there's danger around every corner, like there might have been, in certain situations, in certain times in history, it's it's not typically the case, right, for for most of us.

Mark Odland: 08:49

And so it's it's it's one of those things where the mindset no longer fits the situation, and it's no longer helpful. But the wrinkle in that is in some ways, there's the illusion that it can be. You know, a lot of the guys we work with are are pretty successful guys. A lot of them are business leaders, entrepreneurs. And, I mean, there's high profile billionaires who will say things like, only the paranoid survive.

Mark Odland: 09:17

Right? And it's like, woah. That's great business advice. Maybe, but maybe not, but the best mental health advice. Mhmm.

Mark Odland: 09:25

Right? So in this competitive world that we live in, for guys, there can be a temptation to kinda double down on that negative thinking. Glass half empty. What's missing? Where's the danger?

Mark Odland: 09:39

And that kinda feeds into our wiring to be a good provider and protector too. But like so many things, there's something to be said for moderation and something to be said for kind of dialing things back and taking a fresh look objectively is, like, what is my mindset? What is my mindset? Am I falling into this trap? And let's be honest, even if you're rocking it pretty well, if you're if you're depressed, if if you're down, if you're if you're as they said, and as you're talking about this, Zach, I thought about one of my famous, most famous, artists of the Renaissance was this German artist named, Elbrich Durer.

Mark Odland: 10:16

And he has this famous, engraving called melancholia, and it's this angel just sitting there looking super sad, and there's, like, all these unique symbols. So the people who, watched my conversation with Jonathan Pageau about symbolism and memory, That's something to check out for you guys too because, this idea that this has been with us. We haven't always called it the same thing throughout history, but it's been a common struggle throughout history. No matter how bright, how tough, how strong, how innovative you might be, you are not immune to getting stuck in a rut, falling into one of these mindsets. And, and so I think, all that being said, I think it's so good that you're drawing awareness to this.

Mark Odland: 11:03

Mhmm. And even though we've got a segment of our of the guys who listen to us who are like, dude, all this stuff is so wimpy and, like, just just step it up. Just get over it. Push through. It's like, yes.

Mark Odland: 11:14

There's a place for that. But being sad is not the same thing as being hit, for months on end with something that is not only mental, but also you feel it physically. And it saps your motivation and makes you feel hopeless. And no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to get out of it on your own. Mhmm.

Mark Odland: 11:35

That's where a little some tools, some support, a little extra nudge from the outside can make all the all the difference.

Zack Carter: 11:43

Yeah. That's so good. Yeah. And so it sounds like, you know, what you're saying is this emotion, whether it's anxiety or depression, can be kind of a double edged sword. So, like, beating yourself up, pushing yourself hard can be beneficial in some ways but can also, you know, if you're outside of moderation, it can really hold you back, really harm you.

Zack Carter: 12:04

Yeah. Think that's really well said. Well, and so what do you do for these three different types of thinking patterns? Like how do we fix it then? So I know especially with a lot of the clients I've worked at are depressed.

Zack Carter: 12:19

A lot of these solutions sometimes feel like they're not gonna work. It's one of these things that we practice over time and we hope for small incremental improvements over time. Right? And can we get 1% better each day? And so sometimes I'll work with a client where, you know, I ask them, how are you doing individually?

Zack Carter: 12:42

Zero to 10. 10 being amazing, zero being the worst you could possibly be. And so they're hanging out at a two or 2.5 for months while we're working together. And then we do a few things and suddenly it's like 2.75. And I'm like stoked.

Zack Carter: 12:57

I'm like, let's go 2.75. But it's like, once again, in the depressed mindset, it's like, what does that even mean? Like that hasn't done anything. Right? And so it is playing the long game.

Zack Carter: 13:08

It is saying like, hey, I gotta do a bunch of little things and little things add up. And hopefully over time what I begin to see is I can move from that 2.5 to 2.75 to three to four to five. Right? And so that's kind of what we're hoping for a lot of times. Right?

Zack Carter: 13:26

Is that like, hey, let's make small incremental permanent changes as as permanent as we can and keep those going to like make you feel better. So Yeah. What do we do? Selection bias towards a negative. Okay.

Zack Carter: 13:37

So discounting the positive. Right? So you're with the worship team members in the back and they're all complaining and noticing the things that only went wrong. Well, you sent me gather evidence. So kinda like I was talking about a minute ago around calling myself lazy.

Zack Carter: 13:52

I I made a list, a pro con list, which sounds cliched, but it's cliched for a reason because it actually works. And so Sure. I listed here are all the things I've done to show that I'm not lazy and here are the things I've done to show I am lazy. Right? So we it's not that we're being Pollyanna, that we're just like, oh, everything's No.

Zack Carter: 14:09

You like look for the truth. Like and so if your mindset is actually not accurate, I can't tell you how many clients I've had that have depressive symptoms that when we take a thought and begin to analyze it, there's like 12 things proving that thought wrong and like three things saying it is true. Right? So sometimes sometimes our depressive thinking isn't accurate. Right?

Zack Carter: 14:35

So we make our list. Like, and say like, okay, am I just selecting for just the negative or am I also beginning to pay attention to what's happening that are that's positive as well? Right? So that's that's how to help with the selection bias towards the negative. The overgeneralization, right?

Zack Carter: 14:52

So this is where maybe we need a little extra polygamy. Maybe we need a little extra positivity and practice that. And so in our happiness podcast, we talked about journaling three positive things a day. And if you do that over twenty one days, you begin to think more positively. Mhmm.

Zack Carter: 15:08

You can also do it with a loved one. And so this makes for a really good activity with your your wife, your spouse. This makes for a really good activity with buddies. Hey, dude. What's been going good this week for you?

Zack Carter: 15:21

Right? You get that conversation going instead of like, here's the list of everything that's going wrong. Right. Right? And begin to begin to practice paying attention to the positive.

Zack Carter: 15:32

Right? Lastly, the negative interpretation of ambiguous events, right? So this in cognitive behavioral therapy, we call this emotional reasoning. They were like, they must hate me because I feel that that's true, so that must be true. Right?

Zack Carter: 15:47

So what do we what do we do about that? Well, we ask ourselves questions. Right? You don't tell yourself, hey, why are you doing this again? Okay.

Zack Carter: 15:55

So that's judgment behind that question. Why am I doing this again? So that's curiosity. That's different question. Even if it's the same words, it's a different question by how you're approaching it.

Zack Carter: 16:06

Right? And so a really great question you can ask yourself is, okay, I went into the break room. This dude didn't talk to me. Okay. Maybe he doesn't like me.

Zack Carter: 16:15

Maybe I did do something wrong. Those are possibilities. Are there other ways of thinking about this? Are there other ways, other things that could be going on outside of me that he would be acting this way? And you go, well, maybe the boss yelled at him.

Zack Carter: 16:29

Maybe he had in a fight with his wife. Maybe a loved one passed away. Maybe he's just having a bad day. Right? And so then you begin to say, okay.

Zack Carter: 16:38

Well, you begin to like let go of that particular thought more and more as you're like, you know, unless this person tells me what's going on, I can assume maybe it's something outside of me. So those are kind of the three mindsets and what to do about them. Mark, any thoughts or comments?

Mark Odland: 16:57

Yeah. I think that's that's so helpful, Zach. It was kinda cool. This last week, I had a chance to do some consultation with the the folks over at the Daniel Amen clinic. Oh, cool.

Mark Odland: 17:09

They're famous for scanning brains, right? And diagnosing things like ADHD, depression through brain scans. And they literally see how the blood flow is going to all the wrong places when we're thinking negative thoughts and we're in a down depressed kind of melancholy state. Right? And so, you know, one of the things Doctor.

Mark Odland: 17:29

Eamon talked about with his famous, like, acronym, right, with the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that we've talked about on the podcast is to be a detective, to be like a just a ruthless detective of our own thoughts. Mhmm. Because, man, life is tough. Life is even even with a good life, life has a lot of hard things, a lot of ups and downs. We do not have enough energy to expend on things that aren't even true.

Mark Odland: 18:10

Right? And there might objectively be things in someone's life that warrant sadness, that that warrant feeling discouraged. And that's gonna be enough to contend with without all these extra thoughts and half truths that are just dancing around in our mind, bringing us down even more. Right? So the beauty is one step at a time.

Mark Odland: 18:33

Right? All these great resources you're providing for a SAC, there is a path out. There is hope. Being in that state is treatable. There can be improvement.

Mark Odland: 18:44

There is improvement. We see that improvement. And and at Lion Counseling, right, when we do work with guys one on one, we don't even diagnose. Like, we we don't we don't play the insurance game. We don't diagnose.

Mark Odland: 18:55

We we just say, what are you going through? What are your symptoms? How do we get from point a to point b? So for some people, a label is helpful because it validates their experience. And for others, not so much.

Mark Odland: 19:06

It's just like, don't need a label. I just this is what I'm going through. Mhmm. And that's okay too. It's like, let's just figure out what you're going through, what your ideal future is, and create a bridge between where you are and where you wanna be.

Mark Odland: 19:21

And, and, yeah, there there definitely is hope because we've seen it as hard as as a struggle as it can be sometimes to feel like when you're in that downstate, how to move forward, again, taking that one step, putting in practice some of these tools. After a while, you look back and there's there's momentum. Right? There's momentum and, you're moving in right direction. 100%.

Zack Carter: 19:43

Yeah. And if if y'all haven't gone and listened to Daniel Amen stuff, go find some interviews online. Daniel Amen's the best. So awesome. I love I love the reference.

Zack Carter: 19:53

Well, in summary, got a got a fun graph that we can share before we kind of wrap. Just as kind of like to further solidify what we're talking about today. So what we're seeing here is that we've got kind of a healthy outlook on life. We've got a depressed outlook. We've got positive situations, neutral situations, negative situations, right?

Zack Carter: 20:16

And so what you'll notice along the top of the graph is that for a healthy outlook, a positive situation happens and they have a plus one. Okay. Something good happened today. Alright. A neutral event like that that coworker in the break room.

Zack Carter: 20:34

Well, maybe maybe it was positive, maybe it's negative. Who knows? Right? And so, know, a healthier mindset, maybe it's a zero. I just don't know.

Zack Carter: 20:42

It's ambiguous. Right?

Intro Music: 20:44

Yep.

Zack Carter: 20:45

Lastly, we've got like a negative situation. Okay. It's negative one. Right? So once again, we're not trying to pretend that bad things don't happen.

Zack Carter: 20:50

Like bad things happen. Okay. So like let's take account for that. Right? And so like what we see for the total is that like, okay, for a regular healthy mindset, maybe that equals out to be zero.

Zack Carter: 20:58

Okay. That's like a normal day. Right? We've got some good things, some bad things, some neutral things. Okay.

Zack Carter: 21:05

And with the depressed mindset, right? When we do the selection bias towards the negative, when discounting the positive, that positive situation goes from a one to a zero. It's like it didn't even happen. Right? In that neutral situation it's not a zero.

Zack Carter: 21:20

It turns to a negative one. Like, oh, this must be a bad thing that just happened.

Mark Odland: 21:26

Okay.

Zack Carter: 21:26

And then for a negative situation, yeah, we pay attention to it. Right? So that's negative one. So what you see is that for a healthier mind set, okay, it all kind of equals out, it's about a zero. For a depressed mindset, it goes to negative two.

Zack Carter: 21:37

Right? So this is why depression is so hard to beat is that you're living your life in negative two all the time. Sure. Right? So when you take these things you say like, okay, how can I turn that zero into a one?

Zack Carter: 21:50

Right? So this is what we're talking about where you're you're journaling positive things that are happening, you're talking to people like that's where you start. Instead of me first thing talking to friends about everything that's going wrong, what's going right? Okay. Let's let's talk about the good things that are happening in life.

Zack Carter: 22:02

Okay. We've turned that. We've turned that zero into a one. For the neutral situation, you're asking yourself questions. Okay.

Zack Carter: 22:09

Am I seeing this in a realistic way or am I just seeing it in an emotional way? So we turn that negative one into a zero. And then the negative situation's okay. Like, we can pray, exercise. Yeah.

Zack Carter: 22:25

We can spend time with friends and family. We can do things to kinda help to cope with the negative things that happen in life. And so we go from that negative two to a zero. That's that's the goal. Right?

Zack Carter: 22:35

So that's all I got. Mark, any any last final thoughts that you have on your end?

Mark Odland: 22:39

No. That that's awesome, Zach. I know just statistically, there's a high likelihood that a certain percentage of guys listening to this are going through something like that, or they they know someone they love is experiencing something like that. And and if we're not careful, it can feel really discouraging. And, this is good for you guys listening out there to know that there is hope.

Mark Odland: 22:59

Mhmm. There can be a plan, and we're not gonna sugarcoat it. It's gonna take some work. Right? It's gonna take some work.

Mark Odland: 23:06

It's gonna not be easy, but there is there is good on the other side. There is And we see it with the guys we work with, and we we see it with our listeners with the amazing comments that they post. And so if you are listening, if you've hung on this long, drop a comment below. Let us know what fits. What makes sense for you about this?

Mark Odland: 23:26

Do you have any other ideas, that have worked for you in your life, that have helped you kinda climb out of the pit, right, with with the right help, with the right tools, with the right mindset? Right? And and and if you are still here, appreciate the content. If you could subscribe, we'd really appreciate it. It certainly makes a big difference with our channel, and we're we're getting closer and closer to that goal of 10,000 subscribers, and you guys are a big part of that.

Mark Odland: 23:50

So, thank you all. Check us out at escapethecagenow.com if you want a free consult with Zach or myself, and we'd be happy to chat. Talk to you later.

Zack Carter: 23:59

Alright. Bye, everybody.

Mark Odland: 24:01

Bye.