What Mentally Strong People Do on Their Worst Days with Psychotherapist Amy Morin

13:42Amy Morin:Yeah.

13:42Simon Sinek:Right. But where my sister's eyes says I'm healthy, I don't need the therapy. What the therapist hears is I'm losing money. I'm losing a client rather than yippee for me I helped someone get better right and so are therapists part of the problem of our inability to move through some of the struggles we're having we're going to get a lot of flack on this well certainly there certainly that's not all therapists right but I understand that it's not fun losing a client no matter what you do if you work for an ad agency or a law firm. Like nobody wants to lose clients.

14:18Amy Morin:Right. And certainly that's an example of one, right? And there is the pressure to say, I need an income. So how do I keep people coming back?

14:28Simon Sinek:It's not nefarious. It's not evil. It's just like, you know, they may genuinely want to help people, but you keep them on the books.

14:36Amy Morin:And on the flip side of that, I mean, we get plenty of people too who will be like, you know, I'm better. I don't need to come back to therapy. And we'll have that honest conversation of maybe you have bipolar and you're having a good week, but you're not cured. And to at least educate them on, you know, or how would you know if you needed to come back in the future? What do you anticipate next week? And space out your sessions, maybe go ahead, we'll see you again next month, instead of next week. And we'll see how you're doing. But if you need me in the meantime, you could call so that when people hit the dip, say in their mood, that they're still prepared, and we don't leave them high and dry.

15:10Amy Morin:However, obviously, there are cases where therapists will I was like, you know, if I keep you on a little longer, if I can convince you, then that's one less person I have to go find and bring in.

15:25Simon Sinek:Instead of doing a straight ad read, we're pioneering something called an ad with authenticity. We want our ads to have valuable content for you, the listener. And this ad with authenticity is brought to you by SAP. Having a long tenure at one company gets a bad rap these days. Like it means you've stopped growing or something. But David Robinson, he's been at SAP for over 20 years. And he'd argue it's the total opposite. He's growing more now than ever. Maybe he's onto something. I've worked with you guys in the past. And I've always been impressed with the tenure of people and the pride that people have.

16:06Simon Sinek:And I think young people confuse. They're like, I would never stay at a company for a long time. Why would you ever? If you feel like the company has your back, if you feel like the company is trying to help you grow, you won't actually notice the time pass. It should not be seen as a negative to be at a place like SAP for this long.

16:25Amy Morin:If you're moving quickly and you have two to three year stints at technology firms, that's great. If you're able to be at the same firm for 20 years, that's great. It's about taking the very best of those different types of experiences. You're showcasing the value of either having lots of experiences at many places or the experience that you have gathered over time at one place.

16:46Simon Sinek:If you choose a strategy of jumping, you choose a strategy of staying. I think the standard should be or has to be, am I growing? Yeah, I would agree with that.

16:54Amy Morin:And it's healthy because it creates that diversity of thought, diversity of experience. And that has to do with not just how tenured you are, but how many opportunities have you been presented over time?

17:05Simon Sinek:And how well have you taken advantage of those opportunities? Yes, that's a good standard.

17:16Simon Sinek:Let's get personal if you don't mind. One of the things I think that makes you so qualified for this conversation is not because you're a trained clinician. What makes you so qualified is you've gone through it. You lost your mother unexpectedly. A healthy woman who, how did she die?

17:32Amy Morin:She had a brain in your zone that ruptured.

17:34Simon Sinek:A brain in your zone just out of the blue, right? Right, yep. Young woman, right?

17:36Amy Morin:Yep, 51.

17:37Simon Sinek:And then you lose your husband at a young age?

17:40Amy Morin:Yeah, he was 26.

17:42Simon Sinek:Just heart attack?

17:43Amy Morin:Heart attack at 26. Healthy guy? Mm-hmm, yep.

17:46Simon Sinek:Well, he lost his father before that, right?

17:47Amy Morin:I got remarried a couple of years later. Oh, right. And as soon as I got remarried, my father-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Right.

17:53Simon Sinek:And so like you have every reason to be depressed and fear, have a genuine fear of falling in love or loving anyone. Forget about falling, loving anyone because everybody you love seems to fall away, seems to die. Yeah. There's a very good reasons to not want to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah. And so I think what makes you the most credible person to have this argument is that it is not an academic argument. It's that you found a way to find happiness, to be mentally fit, and followed, I think fair to say, an untraditional route based on the current standards. How did you do it?

18:33Amy Morin:It was a lot of trial and error, a lot of work.

18:37Simon Sinek:Why didn't you go the traditional route? it depends what you mean by traditional route all the things we've been discussing okay you know sort of not wanting to go to work or taking your mental health days and by the way everybody would have given them to you and gladly and felt supportive of you because what you went through was awful yeah so at any one of those periods i'm sure you know whoever you worked for at the time would have been like yes yes yes take all the time you need right because that makes sense i don't know if you were in therapy at the time.

19:08Amy Morin:So funnily enough, I worked for a mental health agency. I was a therapist. I was 22 when I became a therapist. I was 23 when my mom passed away. And I was able to take two weeks off from work. It was just so sudden and unexpected, even though I was an adult. And then when my husband died, it was the three-year anniversary to the day of when my mother had died. And I had three days of bereavement time as a therapist at the mental health agency.

19:31Simon Sinek:Mental health agency gave you three days off.

19:33Amy Morin:Correct. right and i irony is thick applied for short-term disability and got denied because they don't cover grief and right was able to go back and see my primary care doctor and she diagnosed me with acute stress disorder which is the precursor to ptsd because i was there when my husband died and that bought me two months of short-term disability and then i had to go back to work It really wasn't a choice. I didn't have a fallback plan. I had a mortgage to pay. My husband and I had already bought a house. I don't have wealthy family who could say, you know, we'll pay your mortgage while you.

20:15Amy Morin:And he and I had bought the house, obviously, assuming we were going to have two streams of income. So not only did I have to go back to work, but if I didn't want to move and I didn't want to lose my house, I was going to have to figure out what else am I going to do? And I had encountered this other woman who had to move shortly after she lost her fiance. And the thought of packing up my house and like the lowest moments of my life and then having to also figure out where am I going to live seemed more unbearable than saying I will work two jobs. I will figure this out. and that's I guess what got me up in the morning as I said I don't want my life to get worse I want it to get better and as a therapist I had seen what happens to people if they went through tough times and they didn't like work through the pain so many people like bought into that live time heals and they would come in 10 years after something bad happened and they'd say Amy how come I don't feel any better it's been 10 years since I lost somebody or 10 years since this traumatic thing happened and my life isn't better.

21:14Amy Morin:And I didn't want to be that person who said, yeah, I'm now 36, 10 years after I lost my husband and my life still isn't good. And so it was a choice every day of what am I going to do? What kind of a life do I want to build? How do I let myself feel awful and go through all of the pain, but also then how do I have some hope that life could get better? And what do I want the next chapter to look like?

21:36Simon Sinek:okay there's a lot to unpack there how do you find hope when the the genuine sadness

21:50Amy Morin:and little d depression yeah are real and i say little d meaning not a clinical diagnosis dealing with a traumatic event yeah and the stress of having to like

22:05Simon Sinek:have two jobs, which is not a good option. It's the lesser of two evils. It's the less bad option rather than packing up a house. How did you envision, how did you imagine hope? Like, where did the hope come from?

22:18Amy Morin:I think I had a strong faith and I believed, okay, there was a God and some reason this happened to me and perhaps there's a way to get through it. And I also thought, maybe this is my opportunity. I can either rise to the occasion and do my best, or I can just stay crying on the bathroom floor and 10 years from now be like, yeah, I'm not feeling any better. Just felt like that was a choice in life of, do I want to make the best of this terrible hand I was dealt? Not to say, gee, I'm grateful that this happened. I'm not all these years later. I'm not grateful that I went through that. But on the other hand, it felt like, okay, like for whatever reason, this is the lot you were given and you can do this.

23:05Amy Morin:If you're going to try to rise to the occasion, turn this into a comeback, try to make something of your life. It's now or never. And I think not having that luxury of saying I'm going to wait a while or have family that's going to bail me out or I'm going to take a year off really made me say, do it. And I did it.

23:22Simon Sinek:And let's be clear, you do need time to do nothing and to grieve. You know, we're not saying like on day one, this is the attitude. I mean, there is a time period where you do grieve, you do stay in bed, you embrace sadness, you don't have to be functional. And I'm assuming it's slightly different for everyone. But at some point, not two, three, four, five years later, way before that, there's a choice that's made of, I got to move through this.

23:47Amy Morin:Right.

23:48Simon Sinek:And it is a choice.

23:49Amy Morin:It is. and early on there's that tendency to stay busy we even like compliment people when somebody's going through something tough and you say like how are you doing they say i'm just staying busy

23:58Simon Sinek:that's great that's right that's avoidant though right distracting yourself and right and that's

24:04Amy Morin:a skill to use sometimes if i were going into my therapy office to be a therapist i needed to distract myself sometimes and i'm really sad i have therapy clients coming in in 10 minutes distracting myself is a wonderful skill in that moment but if i did that in my entire life i'd still be stuck in that place. And so I think it was about allowing myself to be sad when I could come home from work and it's okay to just eat a TV dinner on the couch and let yourself cry. And then having those other times where I'd say, okay, I'm coming into the weekend. I have zero plans, nothing going on. I could stay in bed all weekend, or maybe I'll just stay in bed until a little later on Saturday morning, but then I'm going to get up and I'm going to say, what else am I going to do with my day?

24:43Amy Morin:Go for a walk, call somebody, go do something.

24:45Simon Sinek:I love this because it's not an all or nothing plan.

24:48Amy Morin:Right.

24:49Simon Sinek:You're not saying you can't stay in bed, but you're also not saying you are allowed to stay in bed. What you're saying is, you know what? I'll meet you halfway. Yeah. I'm going to stay in bed a little longer, but then at 11, up and at them.

25:01Amy Morin:Yeah.

25:01Simon Sinek:There's an element of grace in there, right? Which is you're not giving in to your desires to do nothing. You're compromising with your desires to do nothing.

25:08Amy Morin:Right. Because there's a balance to be had between, yes, I'm going to sit with this feeling for a while. but then also I have the ability to change how I feel. If I stayed in bed all day on a bad day, it's not like at 2 p.m. I'm like, oh, I feel great. But if I push myself at 11 a.m. to get up and go for a walk, just changing my environment and doing something different can shift my mood. And grief is all about that, finding that balance of, okay, do I have the space and the time and the ability to let myself be sad right now? When I was at work, I couldn't do that. In between therapy clients, I'm not going to cry in the 10 minutes that I had.

25:40Amy Morin:I had to be functional. But in the evenings, the weekends, I could say, yeah, I'm just gonna do something sad. Is that doable?

25:48Simon Sinek:Can human beings schedule time for feelings? Because it does sneak up on you sometimes.

25:52Amy Morin:It certainly does, right? I'll be in aisle seven of the grocery store, and I'll see one of Lincoln's favorite foods. And I'll think, oh, how sad I could be crying in the grocery store. And it's not something that I've scheduled or anything like that. But on the other hand, when that emotion comes over me, if I'm about to walk into a meeting with a therapy client, I can say, this isn't helpful right now. I'll let myself feel that later. What am I going to do right now? And it might be, I'm going to do something that makes me happy. I'm going to call somebody real quick who is going to tell me something uplifting.

26:19I'm going to open up my phone

26:22Amy Morin:and look at happy pictures for a few minutes to try to boost my mood so that I can function right now in the moment.

26:27Simon Sinek:So I want to be clear why I want to talk to you. I love extreme examples because in extreme examples, the lessons are just more, they're just easier to see. They're clearer. and I consider what you've gone through and how you've healed and protected your mental fitness a pretty extreme example. Getting one of those things is pretty awful and just getting battered over the course of a very short period of time is unfair. At least I think that's probably how it felt. The reason I think these things are so important because if these techniques work for you then they can work for somebody who's struggling with a difficult boss or thinks that they're unattractive and nobody wants to date them or they're just not good enough for a promotion.

27:07Simon Sinek:You know, some of the sort of more everyday anxieties that we're dealing with that people may confuse with mental health challenges or it feels like a mental health challenge. I think the thing that I'm really most struck by and drawn to is this very difficult thing to do. And that's what I want to talk about next. This very difficult thing to do to lean into the effort, to lean into like when you're lazy and don't want to go to the gym, when you don't want to see people and you're feeling pretty antisocial, like how do you change your mindset to force yourself? And that's kind of what it is sometimes to force yourself to go do the thing that you really, really, really don't want to do.

27:46Simon Sinek:And I think this speaks to other things that we do in our lives, having the difficult conversation that you really don't want to have, you know, leaning into attention that you really don't want to lean into because avoidance and ignoring and ghosting and pretending or quitting is just easier, which is why I think it's a common strategy because in the short term, it works just fine. It absolutely works. You know, ghosting the ex after dating for six months for the next month, two weeks, absolutely perfect strategy.

28:21Amy Morin:Yep.

28:22Simon Sinek:Dot, dot, dot. So please wax philosophical about both those things, which is what are we understand the short term benefits of some of those strategies? What are the long term liabilities? Why don't we recommend those things? The leaning out, the giving up, the not having the conversation, the ghosting? Why do we not advocate those things if they work in the short term?

28:44Amy Morin:Because those things don't go away. So a lot of times we forget to differentiate between like solving the problem or versus solving how we feel about the problem. So if I have a stack of bills on the table, maybe it makes me anxious to sit down and open the envelopes and pay the bills. But if I don't address them, then obviously the bills are still going to be there tomorrow. My tendency might be, yeah, but I feel anxious right now. So I'm going to address how I feel and I'm going to solve my feeling. So then I'll just push that away. I'm going to go watch some Netflix and pretend it doesn't exist.

29:17Amy Morin:And I think when we tackle issues in our life from the wrong angle, we don't ask ourselves often enough, do I need to solve how I feel or solve the problem itself? And when we take the wrong approach, everything gets messed up. And sometimes we do it the other way around. So somebody will say, my husband drinks too much. Well, in that case, you might want to say, okay, that causes me some anxiety. But what is it I try to solve? Well, I tell him not to I pour the alcohol out. We're trying to solve the problem. And it's not our problem to solve, as opposed to I'm going to learn how to manage my anxiety about this, or I'm going to try to approach this from something I can control, which is my own behavior.

29:54Amy Morin:Instead, I'm going to focus on what I can't control, which is how somebody else behaves. Because if I can control you, then I don't have to control my feelings.

30:01Simon Sinek:Okay. I have to re I have to highlight this and double click. This is so good, right? This is so good, which is when we have feelings for things we can control. I think your Bill's example is a great example. We work to solve the feeling and not solve the problem, which is, and I think breakups are the same and stuff like we solve the feeling. I want out, check, but we don't solve the problem of closure and narrative and clinging onto things. And all you do is talk about every time you go out with your friends to the point they don't want to hear it anymore. So I love this. If you can solve the problem, solve the problem, not the feelings.

30:36Simon Sinek:And if you can't solve the problem, literally it's out of your control. manage your feelings because you can't solve the problem. This is huge. And that confusion, it's like light bulbs are popping up for me when people talk about their mental health challenges. So we've talked about how you found hope. We talked about confusing our feelings for solutions and how we have to solve one and manage the other. Narrative. The stories we tell ourselves, this is probably one of the biggest ones of all. And when I turn on social media, what I hear is people giving advice, reinforcing that you can tell yourself these stories that actually aren't helping you.

31:18Simon Sinek:And perpetuating, to your point, what we made right at the beginning, which is with all this mental health advice we're getting, why isn't mental health getting better? Mindset is essential.

31:30Amy Morin:Yeah.

31:30Simon Sinek:And faith in something, belief in something, whether it's God or a positive future or my friends or my family, Can you tell me the story you told yourself when you were in despair and you were shattered? What was the story? And then how did you change to the new story when the time was right to start leaning into healing rather than mourning?

31:58Amy Morin:Oh, good question. I think for several years, the story was kind of like, isn't this a tragedy that you in your 20s lost your two favorite people and life will probably never be good again? And there was a time where I believed that and I thought, how do you make life good again? And it felt like I was going through the motions. And at some point I thought, or this could be an amazing comeback story of the new life that I'm going to create. but in order to do that like I better get out of bed and go do those things I better figure out what would I want the next chapter to look like and it's not just going to land on my table I'm gonna have to actually create a new life and so I started to do things I got a motorcycle license and a motorcycle and I thought oh this is different and Lincoln and I have been foster parents so it was a question of do I still want to be a foster mom if I'm by myself like which things do I want to continue in my life?

32:54Amy Morin:And what things do I want to give up? And ultimately decided I'll be a single foster parent at some point. And I did that. And I wanted my story, the next chapter of my story to be of somebody who had been through tough things yet created this beautiful life and was able to go out and do incredible things that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise. And while it wasn't the life I chose, it was like a new life that I created, despite what I'd been through.

33:23Simon Sinek:Why? I mean, I don't mean to be flippant about it. Yeah. But like, why did you want that to be your story?

33:30Amy Morin:Because I think the alternative felt like I'm 26. Am I going to just sit around until I'm 86 and think, that's a long life to live. And I just felt like I had two choices. I can either create something completely different from what I had, what I had hoped for, or I could just keep clinging to, Isn't it sad I didn't get the life I wanted?

33:52Simon Sinek:I love this idea of I'm going to make the best comeback story ever, which is different from I'm going to sabotage my work, my ex-boyfriend, my ex-girlfriend's life so I can feel better. There's an accountability, which is it's going to be my comeback story about how I choose to live my life as opposed to ruining their lives so I can feel better. That's not the comeback story.

34:13Amy Morin:Right.

34:14Simon Sinek:The problem is the mindset of I'm going to make this the greatest comeback ever could go in slightly different directions.

34:20Amy Morin:You're absolutely right. And I think the comeback story sometimes isn't about you get rejected for something. Well, maybe you're never going to be a famous actor or never you're going to do the thing that you wanted, but your comeback story could still be, I did this other thing and still created a wonderful life for myself in a different way.

34:38Simon Sinek:I love this, which is if you're writing your own movie, like if you're just unhappy the whole time, it's a boring movie, right? Like old judgment aside, that's a boring movie, right? But what we want to watch a movie about is somebody who's gone through it and takes it upon themselves and inspires us, the viewers, and makes us sort of find a way through the difficulty. And again, yours is an extreme example, but you lose a job, you lose a relationship, something just doesn't go the way you want it to, the project doesn't hit the numbers that you are hoping for. I mean, there's a million things that we can beat ourselves up about, but I'm going to make this the greatest comeback story, which goes then i want to ask you a it's an uncomfortable question and i apologize for that however you do not want to relive any of the things that you have lived those tragedies right clearly you wish they'd never happened and you definitely do not want any of them to happen again nor do you wish them upon anyone else yep however what about you has changed because of those things that deep down inside, even though the words are uncomfortable, you're glad they happened.

35:53Oh, good question too.

35:56Amy Morin:So I grew up incredibly shy and I mean, socially anxious for sure, but probably as a kid could have been diagnosed with selective mutism. I didn't talk for years and I really had no desire. College, grad school even, I really didn't talk much at all. And I surrounded myself with people who love to talk. And that made it really easy to be the quiet person in the room. And I think I would have stayed that way. I had friends who talked for me to this day. If we go to a restaurant, they will still ask for something for me, my childhood friends, my sister. And that worked really well. And public speaking would have been my number one fear.

36:36Amy Morin:I gave the eulogy at my husband's funeral. And in that moment, I was like, I don't care if I embarrass myself, if I stumble over my words, I don't care how I sound. It's not about me. It's about a couple of stories about him that I wanted people to hear. And let me tell you now, I'm like, oh, public speaking, not the biggest fear in the world anymore. And I can do it without being so concerned about how I look, how I sound. So many of my insecurities are no longer there. I think while I've been through the most painful things I would have ever imagined losing two of my favorite people. Go ahead, insult me.

37:16Amy Morin:Like, it's not going to sting. I've been through the worst of the worst.

37:20Simon Sinek:Yeah, negative review just doesn't do it anymore.

37:22Amy Morin:Yeah, go ahead and do that. I'm okay now. But years ago, those little things would have been something I dwelled on and I would have thought about and I would have rehashed and ruminated on even as a therapist, it would have really bothered me. But I can say now I don't really sweat those small things anymore.

37:38Simon Sinek:Again, I'll ask the question sort of, I never want those things to happen again, but I'm glad they happened because.

37:47Amy Morin:Because I am now a much more brave and confident person who was able to say, I'm not going to let life be passive, but I'm going to create the very best life that I can for myself. And I take more risks. I'm the kind of person who says, If it doesn't work out, that's okay. Like I don't need to have all the answers because I'll figure it out along the way. And I wasn't like that before.

38:13Simon Sinek:This is one of the things I think leaning into hardship is, I think, the greatest gift, which is life is balanced always. Nature abhors a vacuum and seeks equilibrium whenever possible. And so all good things have some sort of cost associated with them. You know, congratulations, you're fabulously wealthy and you have no relationship with your children, right? Like whatever the cost is. And for some people, those costs are worth it. It's not for me to judge, right? But there is a cost for the things we get. But there's also benefits to the things we lose. my practice is to always, I always play the equation.

38:54Simon Sinek:So when something great happens to me, and I'm like, I'm the best, I'm amazing, look how awesome I am. I always remind myself, okay, what was the cost for this? It keeps me humble. But also just reminds me, don't take it for granted. And if you want this again, then you're gonna have to pay that. You know, there's no entitlement here. So I always remind myself that. And when bad things happen, even though it sucks in the moment and I can't play this game right after it happens, it's too soon. I have to allow for anger or frustration or sadness or whatever the feeling I have towards the thing is.

39:27Simon Sinek:And at some reasonable period of time say, okay, what am I grateful for here? To me, my mental fitness is good because I keep that equation balanced at all times. Let's talk about victim. I'd love you to wax philosophical based on the clients you see, but also just you're a consumer of the world and social media. I see it more, and maybe I'm just more sensitive to it because mental health is such a topic and everybody, they confuse mental health problems with having feelings. But this idea of being the victim, playing the victim. I spoke to a social worker recently, and they said something that really surprised me.

40:08Simon Sinek:I wrote about this. They said something that really surprised me. They said, playing the victim is very powerful and feels great. Let's not confuse playing the victim and being a victim. Being a victim is when you are targeted by someone, they do something to you, abuse, a crime, something like that. Or you are the victim of some hurricane. You are a victim. Then there's being a victim. Then you are playing the victim. The world is doing this to me. That person is doing this to me, when my boss is out to get me, which it does exist, but I wouldn't say it's the majority of the time that somebody's targeting somebody.

40:46Simon Sinek:Wax philosophical if I'm overreacting or there seems to be a correlation with the mental health challenges that so many people are facing today with the, is it insensitive to call it a trend, of playing the victim.

41:05Amy Morin:You're absolutely right. We see it more on social media than ever in terms of relationship ends. Well, it's because my ex was a narcissist, right?

41:13Simon Sinek:It's amazing how many exes are narcissists, by the way.

41:16Amy Morin:Suddenly, right?

41:17Simon Sinek:Like, I know narcissism is a diagnosable thing. And what percentage of the population are narcissists do we know? It's probably pretty small.

41:24Amy Morin:It is tiny.

41:25Simon Sinek:You know, 5 % maybe that are diagnosable narcissists. But my goodness, there's an explosion of narcissism.

41:31Amy Morin:Exactly, because it feels better to say it's somebody else's fault, right? I was a victim of somebody who took advantage. And whenever we get into this victimhood, it correlates with self pity and just thinking, I don't have the skills, tools and resources to get through something. We underestimate ourselves, we overestimate a challenge, we overestimate how difficult things were. We tell ourselves that story of, well, I didn't have a choice. I couldn't make things better then and I still don't have a choice now. And the more that we get stuck in that cycle, the more we find excuses to say, and so I don't have to change.

42:08Amy Morin:So whether it's I call a friend and I just complain about my boss all day long to my friend, so they're like, wow, you shouldn't be treated like this. This must be awful to be you. Yeah, that's right. It does feel awful to be me. feels awesome right it's empowering for a moment to think and i'm justified to stay stuck and that's what we say then people just stay stuck and i'll see it in my therapy office people come in and they say you know this is awful here's my situation and they don't really want to solve any of the problems in their life they want to come back next week and tell me again and see how awful it is and there's definitely value in talking about your feelings being heard to say yes that is awful.

42:45Amy Morin:It's unfair that you're in this situation. But some people just want to stay stuck there.

42:50Simon Sinek:Why do people want to stay stuck? We're not seeking help. We're seeking validation for our narrative.

42:53Amy Morin:Right.

42:54Simon Sinek:And if my narrative is validated, then I must be right. So I'm going to stay here because it helps me feel better, kind of.

43:01Amy Morin:Right. And it's uncomfortable.

43:03Simon Sinek:I don't have a problem with people being the victim in the short term.

43:05Amy Morin:Yeah.

43:05Simon Sinek:Because it's like mourning. It's like anger. It's a feeling. It's a venting. I don't have a problem with people venting. You want to call somebody like, I hate my boss. I hate work. Healthy venting is a good thing. We're not talking about that. We're talking about, okay, got it. It does feel better when the relationship collapses to blame the other person for it. And you should do that. But there's a point at which, again, okay, now I need to like, take some accountability. Is that really what it is? Is playing the victim easier because then I don't actually have to look at myself and be like, you know what?

43:36Simon Sinek:I'm not such a great catch. You know what? I wasn't such a great partner in my relationship, maybe I poured gas on this fire, you know, is that the reason we don't like it?

43:46Amy Morin:Yeah, the other person was at fault. So therefore, I'm the victim versus, oh, how did I get there? And let's say you were in a really bad relationship. Well, like, what were the steps along the way that made you stay? Or there had to been some red flags along the way. What was it about me that decided, but I'll tolerate it one more day, I'll stay in this situation for, for longer, and then I get mad at the end, and I'm resentful. So I think it's really about acknowledging what's my personal responsibility. And if I want to do something different, I'm going to have to be uncomfortable. You will usually choose familiar pain over the unknown every single time, unless we get proactive about it.

44:23Amy Morin:Like I know what this is and I'm used to it. So therefore I'll keep tolerating it versus, okay, I'm going to try something else. It's going to be painful as well. And I don't know what that pain is going to feel like or how painful it's going to be, but I'm willing to try.

44:38Simon Sinek:I know somebody who is very attracted to very wealthy men. And some of them are wonderful human beings, and they're great connections. And every time she starts dating, they're always the perfect person, which we all have that when we first meet somebody, which is great. And it doesn't work out. And, and then she blames them. And I see this pattern. I've known her for a long time. And it's the same pattern over and over and over and over again. And when you talk about staying in a relationship, and I've been there, I mean, this is not, again, there's no judgment here, because I've done the same thing.

45:14Simon Sinek:I've been in something. And I knew all the red flags. It's like, it was freaking semaphore every day of my life. Somebody standing in front of me waving red flags. And I'm just like, yeah, but hold on. Just look how hot they are. Look at their lifestyle that I love being a part of. Look at their wealth. Hold on a second. And there's so many other things that I superficially prefer. Let's just not look them, you know. But it's so much easier to talk about how they were toxic and they were this and they were that. But deep down inside, I knew I shouldn't have been dating them. And I stayed in it because, let's be honest, I was a superficial ass.

45:43Simon Sinek:Yeah. And I wanted all that stuff. And until I can take accountability for the fact that that's what I was attracted to, and I wasn't really attracted to the person, you know, I'm going to keep repeating this pattern. Yeah. How do we do that, though? I mean, it's all fine and good for you and me to sit in an armchair and talk about all these. But like, how do we break our patterns? Like, what practical steps can we take to learn how to be accountable, to learn how to stop playing the victim when it feels so good?

46:12Amy Morin:So it starts with first recognizing the patterns. And most people are like, you know what, my life isn't going very well and I'm struggling to really figure that out. Or I've had some bad relationships. I'd sit down and I'd write it down. What are we looking at? Maybe you've had five relationships that ended abruptly. The other person ghosted you five times. Well, let's take a look. Maybe might there be something else that's going on? Are you attracted to a certain kind of person? Anything we can get out of our heads and put on a piece of paper helps us see things differently. We see it more clearly.

46:40Amy Morin:So if you can get out a journal and do some writing, and I'm talking about writing by hand that affects our brain differently than when we're typing, causes us to slow things down and really look at it. And to just identify, like, what are some patterns in my life? And then you might go back to and think, well, when did this start? Right? I don't think we have to necessarily dissect our childhoods and go through everything moment by moment. But you might find, when did I feel that before? So maybe I'm attracted to people's lifestyles. So I find these people with really exciting lifestyles. And then I overlook all the red flags.

47:12Amy Morin:So you might think, well, when I was a kid, was there something that maybe I was attracted to excitement back then? Was there something in my life? Maybe I had a mom who used to date men who also had exciting lives too. And sometimes just connecting those dots is helpful to say, okay, this is maybe an emotional wound that I'm -

47:31Simon Sinek:And it's not blaming the mother. Right. It's simply recognizing it has an origin.

47:34Amy Morin:Right. That's it.

47:35Simon Sinek:It's just an origin story. Exactly. Not a blame story.

47:37Amy Morin:And then to figure out, is there an emotional wound from my childhood? Just keep revisiting. Am I trying to heal something that I haven't healed yet? And I try to heal it by reliving it over and over, like this next relationship can work out, then I'll be good, or I will have figured it out. And when people can connect some of those dots, and we can do this on our own, you know, so necessarily have to be in therapy, just opens your eyes. So then when you meet the next person, I think, Oh, am I doing it again? Or is it or is this somebody I'm really attracted to? And then to be cautious of those labels, if we just label ourselves something like, Oh, I'm always attracted to assholes, or I'm the asshole who's always attracting people.

48:16Amy Morin:Like it's the label that then makes it true. If I label myself as something, I'm going to live up to that label. Chances are. So if I say I'm the kind of person who sometimes does X, Y, or Z rather than I am.

48:30Simon Sinek:I have a habit or I have a, yeah.

48:31Amy Morin:Then to just recognize, all right, this is my tendency, but it's not who I am. And so how might I change that next time? And if I'm somebody who ignores red flags in a relationship, well, what will I do differently next time. Just be more aware and start thinking about that. Like, what's a red flag I've ignored before? And if I spot that red flag again, how will I know that I'm trying to push it under the table? Or how will I know that I'm trying to convince myself that I don't need to pay attention to those red flags? And it is helpful sometimes when we have a trusted friend in our life who can say, you're doing it again, Simon, right?

49:06Amy Morin:The person who can say, have you thought about this? It's a person that can ask you the question of, shut up, you don't know me.

49:12Simon Sinek:Right, right.

49:12Amy Morin:And that's why it's important to make sure it is somebody that you trust, somebody who has that. Because when the emotion isn't attached to it, they can sometimes see things that we can't. Our emotions cloud our judgments. When I meet somebody and they're so exciting, I can easily overlook their red flags. The bit that I want to underscore in there, which is to not use the being verb, which is I am dot, dot, dot, but rather I have a tendency to.

49:36Simon Sinek:Right. Or I have a habit or I have a pattern. It's not who you are. It's something you do. Right. Those are very different things. And so I think that that's a phenomenal piece of advice, which is go ahead and beat yourself up and talk about your attachment problems and your childhood trauma, blah, blah, blah. Fine. But just don't use a being verb.

49:53Amy Morin:Right. And we'll see this even with emotion. Somebody will say, I am an anxious person. Let's just try to have anxiety sometimes. Or when it comes to relationships, somebody might be like, well, I'm an avoidant. maybe I avoid people in some of my relationships or I push people away sometimes but that's not who you are you can choose to be different in the next relationship if you want and the word

50:15Simon Sinek:sometimes is great like I'll never meet somebody yet like you know like I haven't found the person I want yet you know and because I think what sometimes and yet do at the end of a sentence and this speaks directly to narrative which is it allows for and it goes right back to what you said before it allows for hope it allows for bright future simply by the sentence we construct stuck. So clever. It's so funny how when we talk about these things, none of these are very complicated. Right. Like these are relatively simple things to do. I want to write down all our little lessons that we've gotten here because it's a good checklist.

50:51Simon Sinek:If you're in a bad place or feel like you're stuck, like, you know, go through something, go through the emotions. And at some point you pull a little checklist out. I'm like, okay, can I say sometimes am I using being verbs? You know, what's my narrative? Can I compromise with myself and stay in bed a little longer, but not all day? Like, I love that, that mental health, or let's call it mental fitness. Actually, the minute you call it mental fitness, the whole thing, we're talking about checklist. I mean, it's like having a workout. First, I'm going to do arms, then I'm going to do legs. I don't feel like doing core today.

51:22Simon Sinek:I'll do it tomorrow. You know, it's a checklist. And you go through the checklist and what happens is you get fit. Right. There's no magic to it, you know?

51:32Amy Morin:Right. And when people talk about mental health, it's often about what they feel versus mental strength or mental fitness is about what you do. So if I wake up sad, I could be like, well, I have poor mental health today versus I woke up sad. What am I going to do about that? Maybe it's stay in bed a little longer, but maybe I'm going to get up and go do something differently. And that's about a choice that you have.

51:51Simon Sinek:And recognizing like our regular physical fitness or our diets, it's not good or bad or right or wrong. It's ahead or behind. Right. Like, I'm on it. I'm doing the things. I'm checking off the things. I'm eating the right things. You know what? I have not been doing it. I'm off the wagon right now, which is okay.

52:09Amy Morin:Yeah.

52:10Simon Sinek:It's so funny talking about language. The minute we call it fitness or strength, it instantly becomes something I can work on. Where the minute we call it health, it's actually kind of like, you know what? I think I'm just going to stay in bed.

52:24Amy Morin:Right.

52:25Simon Sinek:That seems like the right strategy.

52:27Amy Morin:Right. And when we feel like we're taking action, it automatically starts to make us feel better. Yeah. So if I say, all right, I'm kind of going through a rough patch in my life. Maybe I've been feeling kind of discouraged down lately. But you know what? Reading a book for 15 minutes a day kind of helps pull me out of it. Yeah. So I put that on my agenda.

52:45Simon Sinek:Put that on the to-do list.

52:47Amy Morin:And then I think, okay, well, I'm going to do this. And maybe it'll work and maybe it won't. But at least I'm doing something as opposed to thinking I'm going to wait for this to pass.

52:53Simon Sinek:Yeah. what is one of your bad habits that therapists you, if you were your own patient, would be like, you should do this. Like where are your bad habits that you sort of don't follow your own advice?

53:06Amy Morin:Oh yeah, well, we could certainly do a whole episode on things that - And we're out of time. Right, exactly. The things I struggle with. And you know, scrolling at night, that's one of those things. I know that people feel better when they don't sleep with their phone in their room. And when you put your phone in another room, your anxiety goes down. I know that.

53:27Simon Sinek:So good though, right?

53:27Amy Morin:It is. So then when I go to bed at night, I think, oh, let me just check something real quick. And then I can easily go down the rabbit hole. Simple, tiny thing I could easily fix in my life. But I often don't.

53:38Simon Sinek:Yeah, it's like, I know that being on my phone at night is bad. Do I do it? Yes. Do I know that it'll keep me up later than I want to go to bed? Yes. Will I get less sleep because of it? Yes. Will I wake up in the morning fully aware? Yes. Will I regret it? Yes. Yep. And will I do it again?

53:55Amy Morin:Yes. And that's why, you know, when we look at other people's habits, we think, oh, it's so easy to change. And then when you really dive deep into your own life of the things that we do, and the things that we know is bad, like insight doesn't change behavior, right? Like we think of something's bad for me, I won't do it anymore. Obviously, that's not the case.

54:14Simon Sinek:I think this is very funny, which is sometimes something bad has to happen for us to actually, like we have to lose the relationship. Yeah. We have to go through the depression because we are becoming antisocial because of the addiction. Yep. And this is what addiction does. You know better than I do. You know, addiction, it causes social problems. It causes problems in your career and your social life. That's why we know it's a problem as opposed to just something you enjoy doing.

54:37Amy Morin:Yeah, the pain of staying the same has to start to outweigh the fear of change.

54:41Simon Sinek:We've talked about a lot of things. We've given a lot of really practical advice. Any other top tips that you would offer for how to help somebody stay mentally fit, mentally strong? in this crazy, insane world that literally every pressure on us is trying to keep us mentally unfit?

54:58Amy Morin:Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. And I think one of the things we touched on earlier was like, can you schedule feelings? Well, there is actually research that you could schedule time to worry. And that's one of my favorite exercises and I'll do it with my therapy clients and the ones who do it will sometimes look like the weight of the world has literally been lifted off of their shoulders in a matter of a couple of weeks. There's so much to worry about that a lot of people don't even really realize how much they're worrying. I'm worrying about the weather, I'm worrying about what's going to happen after work, what's going to happen in the next meeting.

55:29Amy Morin:People's heads are just so filled with worry all the time, not to mention that we consume so much media that we're off in this heightened state of alert and then our anxiety is high. So then we're looking for danger all the time. But research will show when you set aside just 15 minutes a day to worry that you sit down and you got to put it in your calendar you got to actually schedule it alarm yep and you sit down and maybe just sit at your kitchen table at seven o 'clock at night write down whatever you're worried about maybe you just sit and think you don't even have to write it down necessarily when your 15 minutes is up it's okay as you're saying that it reminds me

56:03Simon Sinek:of a story of a guy i know who was in a he was riding his bicycle was hit by a car and like bad news right very badly mangled and in hospital and was an excruciating pain and i hate my life i hate this why does have to happen to me all of this stuff and it got to the point where it became so overwhelming like he was doing it too much that he i don't know how he came up with it but he had the wherewithal to be like this is not healthy like for me doing this i'm going to schedule the time to feel sorry for myself and be in pain and whatever time it was 20 minutes he set a timer and like he was allowed to be a victim and hate life and why does it have to happen to me?

56:42Simon Sinek:And I'm in pain. And then after the alarm went off, he's like, okay, now I have to go do the therapy. You know, like I have to go do physical therapy. Like that's it. And I found that fascinating. And he credits that with having, helping him have the right mental attitude towards recovery. Cause, and I think this is really important. And I think we've confused being mentally strong and mentally fit with denying or suppressing bad feelings.

57:07Amy Morin:Yes.

57:08Simon Sinek:We've confused those two. And what I love about your strategy is we're not denying or suppressing anything. We're allocating time for all of that nonsense. Very healthy nonsense, I might add. You know, be the victim. Go ahead. It feels good. So have, it's like eating ice cream. Go ahead. And for 20 minutes, you get to be the victim. You know, he's an asshole, you know. And then after 20 minutes, you have to go back to accountability, focusing forwards, and moving through it.

57:38Amy Morin:And this whole idea of mental toughness, I think, has convinced people. You just shove it all down. You suppress everything. I'll have a lot of people that come into my therapy office thinking they're going to shove it down forever. And I'll convince them. For now. It's going to come up.

57:53Simon Sinek:Yeah, you'll shove it down for now.

57:54Amy Morin:Right, and when you least expect it. And those are the people that break.

57:56Simon Sinek:You start yelling at people for stupid things. And nobody's aware, including you, that the reason you're yelling at somebody and you're so short-tempered is for something that happened four months ago.

58:04Amy Morin:And they'll say, well, no, I was fine for the last four months. So I dealt with it and I've healed from it and it didn't affect me because there's that pressure to bounce back. We use resilience like I'm going to bounce back the next day and people are like, wow, you came back even stronger. But people didn't really work through the pain.

58:21Simon Sinek:One of the things I've learned from people like you, which is when the feelings show up, you know, there's a time and place, right? Like there are certain places if it shows up when I don't want it to, I'll suppress it for a little bit, you know, but it's shown up in healthy places. to just let it be, you know, overwhelmed by something. And I just feel like sitting and crying and I'll usually call somebody. My rule with my friends is no crying alone. I'll just call somebody and be like, I'm not, this is not working. Just spend a little bit of time on the phone with me. That has been the greatest gift that I've learned in recent time, which is if I am having really bad feelings to invite someone that I love to sit in the mud with me and the reason I say invite them it's because having been on the receiving end either offering to sit in mud with somebody or been invited to sit in mud with somebody as a friend who loves somebody it's an honor yeah to get down and climb into the mud with someone not to fix them but just to make them feel not alone when they're going through whatever they're going through it is such an honor to be invited to sit in mud with someone and to be there with them.

59:33Simon Sinek:The whole idea is I didn't want to bother you. You know, I have a friend who did that to me. Like they were going through something and they said that I didn't want to bother you. You're so busy, all this nonsense. I wasn't like, no, no. I got angry. I'm like, how dare you? How dare you deny me the honor to be your friend? How dare you deny me the honor to like sit in the mud with you when you're going through it. Like, how dare you, you selfish bastard, you know? Yeah. So yeah, I've learned that I too have the feelings of I don't want to bother people. And it's I'm just feeling sorry for myself.

1:00:02Simon Sinek:And, you know, but I've learned my friends want to be there for me.

1:00:06Amy Morin:You're absolutely right. And we know from the research, social support, one of the biggest indicators of how we emerge from tough times, difficult to do, especially when you're not used to it to call somebody and say having a bad day.

1:00:18Simon Sinek:And like all these things, I think it's a muscle. Yeah, Really hard to do. Start with something small. Yep. Whining about something. Can I just whine to you for five minutes? Sure. And if you work that muscle, you can get to the point where, can I just call you up and cry?

1:00:32Amy Morin:Yeah.

1:00:33Simon Sinek:You know?

1:00:33Amy Morin:Yep.

1:00:34Simon Sinek:Yeah. Amy, you're the best.

1:00:35Amy Morin:Oh, thank you.

1:00:36Simon Sinek:Thanks for coming on. It's been absolutely insightful. And I really, really do believe that the work you're doing and the message you're spreading and the books you're writing are genuinely, genuinely helping people navigate the stuff properly, healthily. And I have to believe that the people who consume your work actually don't need your work as much because of your work.

1:01:00Amy Morin:Thank you so much.

1:01:02Simon Sinek:Working yourself out of a job. I hope so. I hope so. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me.

1:01:12Simon Sinek:As always, thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, please do remember to subscribe to A Bit of Optimism wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And remember, new episodes drop every Tuesday. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. And if you want more cool stuff or just to find out what I'm up to, visit simonsynic.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other.