Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this podcast hosted by the trailblazing founder of RE/MAX, Dave Liniger, we discover the secrets of those who have overcome challenges, pushed past their own limits, and experienced the best life has to offer.
00:00:00:09 - 00:00:05:02
Unknown
You.
00:00:05:04 - 00:00:08:17
Unknown
You.
00:00:08:17 - 00:00:25:21
Speaker 1
head on with unwavering determination. I'm your host, Dave Lineker. Today, I am honored to be joined by the incredible Amy Moran, a renowned psychotherapist and bestselling author whose work has inspired millions around the globe.
00:00:25:23 - 00:00:33:20
Speaker 1
Amy has sold over 1 million books. I'm very excited for our conversation. Amy, thank you for being here with us today.
00:00:33:22 - 00:00:36:20
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me, Dave. I'm excited to be here.
00:00:36:22 - 00:00:51:04
Speaker 1
I spent yesterday watching your Ted talk that's been seen 23 million times. I also finished off your best selling book. And so I've put together a series of questions I hope you would share with our audience.
00:00:51:06 - 00:00:53:10
Speaker 2
I'd be happy to. Thank you.
00:00:53:12 - 00:01:02:19
Speaker 1
So in your work, you emphasized the importance of mental strength. How would you define mental strength and how does it relate to grit and ambition?
00:01:02:23 - 00:01:19:21
Speaker 2
Now that's a good question to start with. So there's three parts to mental strength. It's about the way you think, the way you feel, and the way that you behave. So that we know a lot of the thoughts that we have aren't true. So part of becoming mentally stronger is sorting those out, figuring out when your brain lies to you and when to believe what you think.
00:01:19:23 - 00:01:36:09
Speaker 2
The second part is the emotional part about knowing that you can control your emotions. They don't have to control you, and that doesn't mean you should try to be happy all the time. It just means that when you're sad or when you're struggling, you don't have to stay stuck in a dark place. And then the third part is about our behavior and knowing.
00:01:36:09 - 00:01:53:01
Speaker 2
How do I take productive action even when I don't feel like it? And in terms of grit and ambition, we know that, we don't want to just do what we feel like doing, right? If I said, you know, I'm only going to do what I feel like doing today, I wouldn't push myself to do hard things. I would never step outside my comfort zone.
00:01:53:01 - 00:02:05:02
Speaker 2
I wouldn't keep going when things get hard. So all of the aspects of mental strength can help us make sure that we, continue to to do those things and we persevere even when we don't feel like we want to keep going.
00:02:05:02 - 00:02:05:23
Speaker 1
That's excellent.
00:02:05:23 - 00:02:10:03
Speaker 1
in reading the book, you mentioned personal tragedies.
00:02:10:03 - 00:02:20:17
Speaker 1
can you share, a challenge you faced that required significant grit and ambition to overcome? And what lessons did you learn from that experience?
00:02:20:18 - 00:02:37:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, I was a therapist, and I thought I was just going to listen to people's stories I never imagined and someday be sharing my own. But about a year into my work as a therapist, I was 23 when my mom passed away, and then three years to the day, it was the three year anniversary of the day that my mom died.
00:02:37:15 - 00:02:54:16
Speaker 2
My 26 year old husband died from a heart attack. Obviously, you're not supposed to have a heart attack at age 26, and I was pretty sure I was not supposed to be a widow, at that age either. At the same time that all my friends were building a life and they were just starting to talk about getting married and having kids.
00:02:54:17 - 00:02:59:06
Speaker 2
And I felt like everything I had dreamed to have in my life was over.
00:02:59:06 - 00:03:13:21
Speaker 2
And, you know, another big issue was at the time, as I couldn't take a lot of time off from work, I was down to just one income. So I had to I had to keep going. I didn't want to end up homeless as well, but my husband had been in the primary breadwinner, so I had to figure out what do I do to pay my mortgage?
00:03:13:23 - 00:03:29:14
Speaker 2
Part of what I decided to do was to start freelance writing because I could write. I was a therapist during the day and after work and on the weekends, I would write articles that helped help me keep the heat on. I lived in rural Maine at the time, and and that helped me. That was something I could at least control.
00:03:29:14 - 00:03:50:19
Speaker 2
Something I could focus on was, all right. I can't control a lot of things in my life right now, but I can control what I do with my spare time. And so while I was working through my grief, while I was healing, I also had something very concrete to do, which is I'm going to try to earn. I earned about 15 to $25 per article that I wrote, but as long as I earn an extra $600 a month, I could stay in my house.
00:03:50:19 - 00:04:09:02
Speaker 2
So I was churning out articles when whenever I felt like I felt up to it. And that helped me because it gave me something to do. But it also felt like, all right, this is bad. But here's something I do have some control over. And then a few years later is when I wrote this article, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do.
00:04:09:04 - 00:04:18:07
Speaker 2
It wasn't really meant to to be public, but it was a letter to myself on one of the darkest days of my life. I had just learned my father in law was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I thought, oh,
00:04:18:07 - 00:04:23:00
Speaker 2
I'm not sure I can lose another loved one. I've been grieving all this time and I don't want to do it again.
00:04:23:00 - 00:04:42:18
Speaker 2
But I wrote myself a letter about how to avoid unhealthy habits that would keep me stuck in life. And as a therapist, you know, I'd been taught really build on people's strengths. But one of the things I realized in my own journey was focusing on the good habits isn't always enough. Sometimes it just takes one unhealthy habits to derail our progress and to be counterproductive.
00:04:42:20 - 00:05:01:22
Speaker 2
So I wrote myself that letter and I thought, hey, this helps me. Maybe it'll help somebody else. So I put it on the internet and I earned $15 for the article, but it went viral and 50 million people read it. And that, helped me get my first book deal. And now I've written six books, and it's been ten years, and I still get to speak to people like you about mental strength because of that.
00:05:01:22 - 00:05:14:04
Speaker 2
But I think I would have never imagined it was just a 600 word article. But again, at the time, it was helpful to me to have something, something that I felt like I was doing to try to make my life just a little bit better during some of my darkest times.
00:05:14:04 - 00:05:27:18
Speaker 1
That's an interesting story. What strategies do you recommend for individuals looking to build mental, resilience and overcome setbacks on their journey to their ambitious goals?
00:05:27:18 - 00:05:34:05
Speaker 2
So a few things we can do, like number one on my list of what mentally strong people don't do is that they don't feel sorry for themselves.
00:05:34:05 - 00:05:44:19
Speaker 2
When we are faced with some kind of a setback or some kind of a problem, it's tempting to think this isn't fair. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm a victim of these terrible circumstances.
00:05:44:21 - 00:06:05:03
Speaker 2
But when we dwell on those things and we exaggerate how bad our lives are, we don't take any kind of productive action. So it's important to let yourself be sad. It's important to let yourself deal with grief or to go through tough times. But what you don't want to do is magnify how how awful it is, or to underestimate your ability to cope with it.
00:06:05:05 - 00:06:22:00
Speaker 2
So that would be my first strategy is don't let yourself feel sorry for yourself. Another thing is, is to not give up after your first failure. When you start to recognize that failure is part of the part of the path to success, you deal with it differently. You recognize, all right, one step back doesn't mean I'm all the way back at the beginning.
00:06:22:00 - 00:06:35:19
Speaker 2
And just because that didn't work now, I figured out one way to, to move forward. That. All right? If I hit my plan can be better moving forward. Now that I know that this one particular strategy didn't work, you assess why it didn't work, and you keep going.
00:06:35:21 - 00:06:36:19
Speaker 1
It's outstanding.
00:06:36:19 - 00:06:51:17
Speaker 1
ambitious individuals often face the challenge of balancing their drive with maintaining mental well-being. How can people pursue ambitious goals while, ensuring that they prioritize their mental health?
00:06:51:23 - 00:07:11:10
Speaker 2
Oh, that's a great question, because I think that people often think that higher levels of excess success in life mean that you must be doing really, really well psychologically. But we know that's not always true. Somebody could wake up all day, every day and say, you know, I'm going to work 23 hours a day, keep grinding and hustling, keep it moving more.
00:07:11:12 - 00:07:33:20
Speaker 2
So I think it's important to back up sometimes and remember that true mental strength is really about living according to your values. And if you value time with friends and family, sometimes that means not working 24 seven. It might mean that you take a break, or it might mean that you look at your contributions that you're making to not just the world, but maybe to your friends and family.
00:07:33:20 - 00:07:53:19
Speaker 2
And to remember when you're 100 years old and you're looking back over your life, what will matter the most to you? There's really not an award for who has the most money in their bank account or who work the most hours, but instead, like what would make me proud of my life? And when we start to look at things that way, I think we can take another step back.
00:07:53:19 - 00:08:13:17
Speaker 2
I know in my life it would be tempting as an author to to keep pumping out books 24 over seven and to always be making sure I'm marketing my books. There's never like a time that I'm done. I don't have a 9 to 5 job anymore, but if I did that number one, I wouldn't be as effective if we work too much, we start to lose effectiveness.
00:08:13:17 - 00:08:35:20
Speaker 2
But number two, I also wouldn't be living the kind of life I want to live. I don't want to, turn out to be 100 years old and say, you know, I'm really glad I worked that much in my life. I also want to make sure that that I'm balancing that with, with self-care, because we do know that our psychological well-being declines when we don't take time for rest, and when we aren't taking time to take care of ourselves.
00:08:35:22 - 00:08:51:13
Speaker 2
And then we become less productive as well. But it's not just about being productive all the time. It's also about knowing these things are important. And if, just like if you don't take care of your body, you're going to really struggle. If you don't take time to exercise, you know, take time to try to eat healthy, then your body's going to break down.
00:08:51:13 - 00:08:54:05
Speaker 2
If you don't take care of your mind, your mind is going to break down too.
00:08:54:07 - 00:09:06:01
Speaker 1
Many ambitious individuals face, moments of self-doubt. How do you recommend overcoming self-doubt and maintaining confidence in the pursuit of long term goals?
00:09:06:18 - 00:09:28:08
Speaker 2
So what we know from the research is a little bit of self-doubt actually helps you perform better. So when they look at golfers, for example, the golfer who says, I'm definitely going to win today actually performs worse than the golfer who says, you know, I have some concerns about my putting these days, people who have a little bit of self-doubt, but they can embrace it tend to do better.
00:09:28:08 - 00:09:45:21
Speaker 2
So if you have a little bit of self-doubt, it keeps your head in the game. You stay on your toes. You say, all right, I really want to work hard at this because there isn't a guarantee of success. So when people flip the way that they look at it and just remind themselves that self-doubt doesn't mean I can't succeed, or it's on a gut instinct that I'm about to fail.
00:09:45:21 - 00:10:03:10
Speaker 2
Instead, you just write a little bit of self-doubt is what could actually help me do better when I am questioning. Or can I do okay at this talk? I'm gonna deliver, I practice more, or what I'm questioning like, is my book going to be okay? I'll double check it 17 times if I have to, but that's really it.
00:10:03:10 - 00:10:34:17
Speaker 2
So I think I always encourage people just embrace a little bit of self-doubt. And when you acknowledge like, oh right, my self-doubt isn't isn't here to hold me back, but instead it could help help me perform better, could help me prepare more. Then people start to actually perform better. But if you're really dealing with like significant self-doubt and you're sitting around and you're thinking, I definitely can't do this, I would say, write it, write a list of ten reasons why you think you can, ten reasons why you think you might succeed, and then read over that list whenever the self-doubt starts to creep in again, take out that list.
00:10:34:18 - 00:10:50:02
Speaker 2
It's in your own words and read it over. Here's ten reasons why. Maybe I can do better. And a third strategy would be just ask yourself if your friend said to you, hey, I'm going into this sales call that I'm going to fail. What would you say to your friend? I guarantee you would have nice kind words to your friend.
00:10:50:04 - 00:10:58:17
Speaker 2
Practice giving those same kind words to yourself. Self-compassion is super important when it comes to success and doing our best.
00:10:58:19 - 00:10:59:21
Speaker 1
That is fascinating.
00:10:59:21 - 00:11:11:02
Speaker 1
as a psychotherapist and author, how do you approach teaching and fostering grit in others, whether it's clients, readers, or individuals in your profession?
00:11:11:17 - 00:11:28:00
Speaker 2
So I would say it's really about recognizing that your emotions don't have to dictate your behavior. You might feel like sitting on the couch, but that doesn't mean that you have to. You might feel like reaching for that extra, extra cookie, but you don't have to. You might not feel like going to the gym, but you can push yourself to do it anyway.
00:11:28:01 - 00:11:33:13
Speaker 2
And we make our best decisions in life when our logic and our and our emotions are in imbalance.
00:11:33:13 - 00:11:48:10
Speaker 2
So to recognize when your emotions are really high, you're probably going to make some poor decisions. So how do you how do you balance that out? It's by raising your logic. So for example, if I said, hey, I have this get rich quick scheme and I guarantee you're going to make $1 billion tomorrow.
00:11:48:10 - 00:12:07:00
Speaker 2
You just have to do this, this and this and you get really excited about it. You might be tempted to say, hey, I'm going to do that. We want to introduce some logic. Actually, here's 50 reasons why that get rich quick scheme might not work out. Or when somebody says, you know, I'm I'm really nervous about something, our anxiety goes up and our logic goes down.
00:12:07:00 - 00:12:24:16
Speaker 2
We want to balance that out. So that you can take a calculated risk. Just because you feel nervous doesn't mean something is is a bad idea. So I always encourage people, number one, name your emotions. Just putting a name to it takes a lot of the sting out of it. So how do I feel right now? Am I anxious, my sad, my angry?
00:12:24:17 - 00:12:43:08
Speaker 2
Let's put a name to it and then recognize how might this affect my decision making. So all right, when I'm nervous, even if it's about something else, I'm nervous about my my grandmother's health issue right now. How might that affect me? At work today, my boss asked me to do something. My anxiety is still there, so I'm like, no thank you because I'm nervous about something else.
00:12:43:10 - 00:13:00:15
Speaker 2
Completely unrelated. But just recognizing those things helps us make better decisions. And when we make better decisions, it's easier to say, all right, I don't feel like doing this thing, but I'm going to do it anyway. And a really helpful strategy when people say, yeah, but I can't even, like push myself to get going, is to do what we call the ten minute rule.
00:13:00:17 - 00:13:19:18
Speaker 2
So if I say, you know, I should go to the gym today, but I don't feel like it, you say, I'm just going to go for ten minutes. And I guarantee you, when you get to the ten minute mark, it's much easier to then be like, all right, I can do ten more minutes. Just getting started is usually the hardest part when it comes to ambition, but once you put yourself in motion, it's much easier to stay in motion.
00:13:19:18 - 00:13:29:14
Speaker 2
So whenever there's something you don't want to do, just agree that you're going to do it for ten minutes and at the ten minute mark, see what happens. And I think 99.9% of the time you'll feel like you can keep going.
00:13:29:14 - 00:13:31:00
Speaker 1
That's outstanding advice.
00:13:31:00 - 00:13:38:14
Speaker 1
What are some common pitfalls or misconceptions you've observed in individuals pursuing ambitious goals?
00:13:38:14 - 00:14:02:11
Speaker 2
One would be that, that they keep going at all cost. So somebody might say, I'm going to run a marathon and they injure their knee, but they keep running anyway because I already told everybody I was going to run a marathon. So I think it's important to evaluate your goals sometimes. And what is it costing you. And it's okay to step back and say, you know, I'm not going to run a marathon, I'm going to run A5K and I'm going to wait six more months to do that.
00:14:02:13 - 00:14:19:04
Speaker 2
So I always think it's important to evaluate your goals. And I think it's important to track your progress. So we know that people, often set out on these huge goals. Sometimes they're not even measurable. Like, I want to I want to have more money. I want to be happier. I want to be healthier. But what does that mean?
00:14:19:04 - 00:14:37:04
Speaker 2
So you have to really define what's your actual goal and how do you make it measurable? I want to go to the gym three times a week is a much better goal than I just want to get healthier next year, and then tracking your progress is really important. We know that when people just have a calendar and they put a X on the calendar on the day that they did that thing, like I went to the gym today.
00:14:37:04 - 00:15:03:01
Speaker 2
So you put an X on the calendar, you're much more likely to actually increase your gym attendance. So I think by not tracking our progress, by not having a measurable goal, sometimes we just throw it out there. This is why New Year's resolutions don't work, because people are like, I want to change my life this year, but we don't get really concrete about what that would look like, what steps we need to take today, and to recognize that failure is part of the process, that every week you aren't going to absolutely crush your goal.
00:15:03:01 - 00:15:19:12
Speaker 2
That's okay. So then you can do better next week. Sometimes people come into my therapy office and they'll say, you know, I fell off the wagon. I can't do this anymore. Really. They just had a rough week and that happens to everybody. And just recognizing that you're not going to be super successful or perfect all the time. And that's part of the process.
00:15:19:12 - 00:15:22:02
Speaker 2
And how do you pick up and move forward is really important.
00:15:22:02 - 00:15:32:04
Speaker 1
the grit often involves self-discipline. How can individuals develop and strengthen their self-discipline to stay focused on long term goals?
00:15:32:06 - 00:15:52:03
Speaker 2
You're right. It does require a lot of self-discipline. As the author that talks about what not to do in life, it's really important when it comes to grit is to saying, well, what am I not going to do if I have a goal and I really want to reach that goal? I have to say no to a lot of things that would get in the way of reaching that goal.
00:15:52:05 - 00:16:15:14
Speaker 2
The more things that we can say no to, the more energy and the more time that we have to focus on the most important thing. So it's really important to be able to say, does this thing that I'm invited to do, is it going to help me get closer to my goal or not, and to give ourselves permission to say no to a lot of things and to know life's all about juggling, and it's not going to always be an equal balance.
00:16:15:14 - 00:16:33:12
Speaker 2
If your goal is to try to get out of debt, you may have to spend a lot of more time working right now so that later you can enjoy other things. Or if your goal is to get healthier, you may have to spend a lot of time working on your health right now, and then later on, you might have more time with friends and family, but you have to get serious about it in the in the short term
00:16:33:12 - 00:16:42:03
Speaker 2
and again, it's about saying no and knowing how to set boundaries, knowing that you want to preserve as much of your energy to work on yourself as possible.
00:16:42:05 - 00:17:01:21
Speaker 2
If you're putting a lot of energy into trying to make other people happy, you don't have that much energy left over for yourself. In fact, there's research behind that, too, that when people are people pleasers, they usually don't reach their goals because they've spent all day trying to make everybody else happy. And at the end of the day, they don't have any energy left to work on themselves.
00:17:01:21 - 00:17:29:03
Speaker 2
They are completely out of energy, so they have almost zero willpower. By the end of the workday. And then they go home and they end up doing all the things they said they didn't want to do or that they, they just don't have the energy to, to keep working on themselves. So set healthy boundaries, say no to things that might get in your way, and, give yourself a treat, though every once in a while to that you don't have to live so self-disciplined that you deprive yourself and that you live a really, ugly life.
00:17:29:03 - 00:17:45:23
Speaker 2
It's okay to to reward yourself. just make sure those rewards don't get in the way of of reaching your goals later on. If your goal is to get healthier, you probably don't want to reward yourself for the giant pizza and a huge slice of cake every Friday night. But you can find other ways to reward yourself and to acknowledge your progress to.
00:17:46:01 - 00:17:57:23
Speaker 1
So maintaining a positive mindset is often associated with middle strength. What strategies do you recommend for cultivating and sustaining a positive outlook?
00:17:57:23 - 00:18:17:00
Speaker 2
So one thing is to notice your your thoughts that are just exaggeratedly negative. We have something like 60,000 thoughts a day. A lot of them are repetitive. We think the same thing today as we thought yesterday in so many ways, but our brains are automatically hard wired to be on the lookout for the negative. It wants us to know when there's danger around us.
00:18:17:04 - 00:18:32:23
Speaker 2
So you have to be proactive about looking for the positive. So if somebody says, you know, how was your day to day, your brain might automatically go to the one bad thing that happened. But there might be nine good things that happened to. So you may have to remind yourself, like, all right, what's something really good that happened today?
00:18:33:01 - 00:18:44:07
Speaker 2
And then when it comes to talking to people, when somebody says, how was your day? If you automatically complain about the one thing that went bad, become the kind of person who says, actually, here's three good things that happened today to.
00:18:44:07 - 00:18:49:23
Speaker 2
And when we start to get more proactive about looking for the good in life, we feel better.
00:18:49:23 - 00:18:53:02
Speaker 2
And then we start to think more positively. Naturally.
00:18:53:02 - 00:19:12:07
Speaker 2
I'm a huge fan of gratitude as well. I think gratitude is an underrated superpower that when we practice gratitude, we know that our psychological well-being improves. We sleep better, our relationships get better. Grateful people even live longer. It costs no money. It only takes a few minutes a day. And there's so many different ways we could practice it.
00:19:12:07 - 00:19:27:15
Speaker 2
You might write in a gratitude journal before you go to bed. You just write down three good things that happened today are three things you're grateful for or when you wake up in the morning. Or I have families who will sometimes over dinner, on the car ride to school in the morning, they'll at least say, you know, here's something I'm grateful for today.
00:19:27:17 - 00:19:49:03
Speaker 2
And when we start doing that again, it trains our brains to to start to look for the good in life, too, so that we aren't just focusing on all the bad. And of course, with the news these days, you have to be careful what you're consuming. So many people read the news throughout the day on their smartphones, or we see it coming across our computer screens in their email, or you have the TV on and you have the news on.
00:19:49:05 - 00:20:05:09
Speaker 2
The news is really trying to keep you hooked by telling you the absolute worst case scenarios and the worst things happening out there. So it's important to make sure that we're shielding ourselves. Give yourself a break from the news sometimes. Take three four hour chunks of time during the day where you aren't looking at the news. At least.
00:20:05:11 - 00:20:13:10
Speaker 2
Otherwise it feels like all these horrible things are going on around us all the time because they rarely share the good news about the happy things going on in the world.
00:20:13:12 - 00:20:37:07
Speaker 1
I've noticed the last 2 or 3 years, the weather forecasters on the, Denver television channels are always hyping the next storm. Yes, and I've come to realize where they're all saying, hey, we might get a foot of snow tomorrow, and they're just trying to get you to come back on and look at the weather again. 15 minutes later.
00:20:37:09 - 00:20:41:03
Speaker 1
And I've noticed how often they're incorrect.
00:20:41:03 - 00:20:59:14
Speaker 2
That's a great example. I live in South Florida, where there's always a threat of a hurricane or terrible thunderstorm arms, tornadoes, all of these things, and sometimes they even do that right. Like, is this storm going to affect you? Find out right after the break and keep us hooked so that we're always like being on alert for danger.
00:20:59:14 - 00:21:18:04
Speaker 2
And we know that it affects our nervous system so much that for 20 minutes after you stop watching the news, your body body's in a state of heightened alert. And it used to be that families might watch the news from 6 to 630 in the evenings, and your body be in a heightened state of alert for that next 20 minutes.
00:21:18:06 - 00:21:38:06
Speaker 2
But now, people, a lot of people are checking the news almost constantly on their phones throughout the day. So your body's almost always constantly in a state of heightened alert and looking out for danger, which is then training our brain to always look for the bad. So that's why it's so important to make sure that we're giving ourselves a break from the news sometimes, so that we don't feel like we're always in that heightened state of alert.
00:21:38:08 - 00:21:54:00
Speaker 1
Well, Amy, I'm very grateful for the advice you've given our listeners today. You are absolutely brilliant. And, there's so many golden nuggets that that you shared with us. I sincerely appreciate it. I'm grateful for you.
00:21:54:03 - 00:22:00:22
Speaker 2
Oh, thank you so much, Dave. I so appreciate being here, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to talk to you about grit and ambition.