Mental Strength in the Moment with Amy Morin

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20:10James Altucher:I always wonder though, like, so a long time ago, I was, this is like 25 years ago, I was in a situation where I was going broke. I was losing my house. And my wife at that time suggested, oh, why don't you do some charity work? So I volunteered to some charity and I went there for the day and I was stuffing envelopes and it did not make me feel better. I was like sitting at the charity stuffing envelopes and worried just as much as I ever was. Well, and I think that's one of those examples of like a stuffing an envelope doesn't really make us feel like we're doing something kind for somebody, right?

20:42I would do something like really interactive that involves a human being and something that's important to you. Because I agree, if I were to go stuff envelopes when my life was in a really rough spot, I probably would have felt worse about my life and wondered what I was doing with my time. But in the small cases where you just hold the door and smile at somebody, That's, I think, what makes a bigger difference or just taking two minutes of your life to be a listening ear for somebody else going through a tough time so that it feels more meaningful. Because otherwise, yeah, if I were sweeping the floors at a charity or stuffing the envelopes, I might not feel like I'm making an actual impact.

21:19James Altucher:You know, how much of this you think is related to neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity is this idea that you can, as you get older, you can continue to learn new things and build new connections and strong memories in your brain. And a memory is basically, let's say, two neurons representing different concepts that are strongly tied together, and that becomes a memory. So I see your face, and I think Amy Morin. So it's, and I think 13 things mentally strong people don't do. So it's like these, a collection of neurons that are tightly, you know, have stronger connections than other neurons because you're in my memories.

21:54James Altucher:And neuroplasticity is this idea that I can form new strong connections between neurons by thinking a lot about new things. And if you think negative things all the time, then you're just going to build these negative memories and that's going to build the next evolution of your brain. As opposed to if you just think, if you think about positive things and things you're grateful for and things you're excited about, your brain will evolve into a more excited, you know, grateful, maybe happy brain. Is this fake research or is this real? It's real. You can see differences on MRIs of how people are using different parts of their brain.

22:29We know you can tell when somebody meditates by looking at an MRI or if they practice gratitude. And so while a lot of those things are met with an eye roll, we know that it can physically change your brain and also prevents things like dementia, Alzheimer's. people are living longer. They're experiencing better cognitive abilities when they practice these things. And it'll show too, just kind of like a river. When there's water running in a certain path, the water always goes in that direction. It runs off the mountain into the same path. But our brains will solve a problem with a path of least resistance, or it will look for ideas and strategies that we've always used before because we've already built that path.

23:09But if you start to build new paths, your brain starts to think differently. It starts to look at different opportunities. It helps you solve problems. You regulate your emotions differently. So I do believe there's a lot to it, that by being more proactive and intentional, we can rewire our brains in some interesting ways.

23:25James Altucher:And it's not just the brain. Like you mentioned in the book, like the half smile. Like, tell us about that. Yeah, most of us think that we smile because we're happy, but there's research that shows the opposite. If you smile, you could also trigger your brain's response to say, oh, we must be happy right now. And that's not to say I'm going to paste on a big cheesy grin, because we also know from the research that if somebody is, say, a hospitality worker, and they're forced to smile all day long, no matter how difficult their day is, then that can actually drain some of our willpower. but if you do just a half smile which means you just kind of turn up the corners of your cheeks just a little bit like corners of your mouth just a slight bit so that if you were looking at me you're not going to think I'm smiling but you might notice that my face looks like it's softened a little bit and if I just hold that so maybe we're in a tense discussion and I just kind of make sure that my face softens a bit turn up the corners of my mouth like my body starts to relax and my brain starts to think oh this is okay like it's okay to relax or I'm in a better mood right now So whether you're like doing a really boring spreadsheet and it's awful, and your mood is kind of low, or you're nervous about having a difficult conversation with somebody, you can use your physiology to your advantage by doing the half smile, but you have to hold it.

24:40Like if you do it for two seconds, it's not going to work. But if you can hold it for a couple of minutes during a meeting, it makes a big difference. You start to feel better. When you feel better, you think differently. And then you start being more open to ideas, or you start thinking about a problem from a different perspective. you might come up with a better solution too.

24:58James Altucher:Even if you know for sure, oh, this is just a technique, it still works. Yeah, I mean, I think if you go into it believing this is not going to work, it's stupid, it'll probably have the opposite effect. But if you go into it with an open mind of I'm going to try this strategy and see what happens, you might find that it works. And the reason I put 50 plays in the playbook is because not every play works for everybody at every point in time. So you might find this works really well when I'm, say, staring at my computer doing something boring. But if I'm in a heated discussion with somebody, it doesn't work.

25:31So that's when I need to run a different play.

25:33James Altucher:So let's take an example from like real life. So a lot of people right now throughout the whole world are arguing, you know, war with Iran is good or war with Iran is not good. Or, you know, pro-Gaza, not pro-Gaza. You know, these types of arguments and like families are being split up. So let's say you're having a discussion with someone and you're getting, you find you're really upset at their stance. Whatever stance you're on, whatever stance they're on, you're really upset at their position and you're absolutely convinced your position's correct and you're even feeling like personally offended by it.

26:09Like what's a good way to sort of move past

26:12James Altucher:this conversation somehow? So yeah, if your emotions are getting high and you're struggling, you might need to say, calm your physiology for a moment because I mean, we open our mouths and we start speaking. it's going to be tough to do that. And even if I say something kind, like, I guess we just have to agree to disagree. If I'm really angry when I say that, it's like I'm hissing through my teeth and you're going to pick up on that. So you might need to do something to calm yourself first. So there's a breathing exercise I talk about called smell the pizza, right? And this one came about because so many of my therapy clients would be like, I know there's this box breathing thing or four, seven, eight, but I can never remember what to do and when to do it, especially when I'm stressed out.

26:51So I started teaching people the same strategy that I was teaching kids, which is you pretend like you're smelling a piece of pizza. And essentially, you breathe in through your nose like you're smelling the pizza. And you hold it for a beat at the top. And then you blow out through your mouth like you're cooling the pizza off. The goal is you just make the exhale a little bit longer than the inhale. And you can do this sort of nonchalantly while you're in this conversation. But if you do it a couple of times, it calms your brain, calms your body. So you can at least come out and say something that sounds a little more intelligent and less emotional.

27:25So if that's your goal, if I'm going to change the subject, I might do something first to make sure that you're calm enough that you can actually say those words. And why does that work? So when you make your exhale a little bit longer than the inhale, it signals to your brain, like I can relax. When our brain's in that fight or flight state, your breathing changes. You tend to take shallow breaths. but when you say I'm going to take a deeper breath and I'm going to exhale longer, it triggers your body's relaxation response. Your heart rate decreases. Your brain gets the memo of, I guess we're not in a life altering situation right now.

27:58So I don't need to get all geared up as if I'm hanging off the edge of a cliff.

28:03James Altucher:Yeah. So all of this, I mean, you can argue all this is designed to maybe help people be happier, right? And so then it begs the question, like, what is happiness? Is there such a thing as happiness or is it better to think of it as well-being? And then what is that? Yeah, I think it's better to think about well-being because if we chase happiness, we know that that backfires. If I wanted to feel happy in the moment, the things that will make my life better are probably not the things I would indulge in today, whether it's I eat a giant chocolate cake and sit on the couch and do nothing and I wouldn't push myself to do the hard thing.

28:38So if we look at well-being, it's like a lot of our long-term goals, whether we work out or we eat healthier or we push ourselves to challenges that we may not rise to the occasion to meet, but we learn from them anyway. And so I think well-being is all about our life satisfaction and our ability to live according to our values so that hopefully when we're 90 years old and look back over our lives, we can think, you know, I made the best of the time that I had here.

29:05James Altucher:So how much of that is just like thinking of ourselves as just this like bag of chemicals that we're trying to program? Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol, whatever else there is. For instance, finding new challenges, that increases dopamine. Accomplishing those challenges, that increases serotonin. Failing at these challenges, that increases cortisol. Being close to someone, that increases oxytocin. How much can I just think of it in terms of that? and I'm just, oh, I need more dopamine this morning. So I'm going to like make a list of things to do. Oh, I'm going to need more serotonin when I sleep.

29:39So I'm going to hug my partner

29:42James Altucher:and make a list of things I've accomplished today and that I'm grateful for and so on. You know, I think there's a lot to be said for that. Like TJ Power and the dose effect, his book about doing just that and figuring out which chemicals at which intensity that you need in those moments. But like on a deeper level, I feel like still our lives, like what's the purpose of all of that, right? And I don't think that we need to suddenly say, oh, I have my life's purpose all figured out. But hopefully your life has a little bit of meaning or you feel like you matter or you feel like there's a reason why you're doing the things that you do other than just wasting time trying to feel as best as possible until you die.

30:24James Altucher:In terms of like purpose, again, a lot of people are looking for their life's purpose. They don't want to just kind of go to work, do the same thing day after day. Maybe they're unhappy with what they do. Maybe they don't see themselves as the hero of their own story. And I feel like you've accomplished this very well in your life. And it was through hardship. Like you mentioned earlier, your husband had passed away. If people don't know your story, your mom had also passed away when you were around the same age. And this put you through a hard time. and then you wrote the article that became the huge book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, became a whole franchise.

31:04James Altucher:Like you sort of found your purpose very early in your adult life. And now, and the mental strength playbook, this seems like the culmination of all your work. Like, do you worry now? What's next? I do kind of have that worry because I had that viral article that led to the book. I didn't mean to write a book. I never imagined I'd become an author. So then I think, well, how long can this play out? I thought I was just going to write one book. And I was like, well, I'm a therapist and I wrote a book. That's great. And it didn't sell that well when it first came out. It took a year and a half before it started hitting bestseller lists.

31:40James Altucher:You know, I want to ask about that. I often hear that. Like, usually publishers give up on a book if it doesn't sell in the first week. So how did your book get legs? Honestly, it was from Rush Limbaugh. and he mentioned my book on like a Monday where he said, today we're going to talk about the 13 things mentally strong people don't do. And he never got to it that day. And so Tuesday, he said, today is the day we're going to talk about the 13 things mentally strong people don't do. And he didn't get to it that day either. Well, by about Wednesday, it had literally sold out of every bookstore.

32:13He didn't get to it until Friday. So he plugged my book five days in a row and it sold out. I mean, because a year and a half in where it had only sold okay, most bookstores only had one copy. Even Amazon didn't have that many in stock. So it sold out everywhere by about Wednesday. And so that was the next week that I hit Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller list. And it seemed to be after that, I kind of hit that tipping point where enough people had the book that they would tell people about it and then it would sell copies on its own.

32:43James Altucher:I don't think I ever knew that story. That's amazing. Were you surprised like a year and a half later? Were you like, oh my gosh, I forgot about this book. Now it's changed my life. Yeah. I was still working as a therapist. I had a nine to five job. And I thought, that's great. I got to write a book. And it was really after that that I started thinking, well, should I pitch a second book? Could I pitch a second book? What would that look like if I did? And around the same time, the book was coming out in paperback and Target had picked up the paperback book. And I thought, well, let's do that.

33:14So that's when I pitched the parenting book to my publisher and things kind of changed.

33:31James Altucher:So you started this career as like multi-million books selling author. You wrote several books in the franchise. Did you stop being a therapist? Are you still a therapist? I still do it a little bit on the side, but obviously a lot fewer hours. And now that I'm able to do it online, I can do online therapy or coaching. And again, the Mental Strength Playbook, I don't want to say it's like a summary of all those books because each of those books was very targeted audience and was very different. But now this is kind of a summary of all these 50 techniques for basically having a life filled with less anxiety, less stress, more efficiency, more productivity, more success, more happiness.

34:08James Altucher:How do you think about what's next? I don't know. Because I guess every book I've written, And I've thought, well, this is probably my last book because as an accidental author, like, how long can you carry this out? I didn't know anything about the publishing world or marketing a book or anything. So I've always just kind of played it by ear. And I think the uncertainty has somewhat worked to my advantage. Like, I've never gone into it thinking, and then I'll write four more books or then I'll have this strategy and this strategy. And everybody always says you have to have a plan. But in my case, I found I didn't have a plan.

34:39In fact, if I had had a plan, I might have then thought, if it doesn't go according to plan, then all hope is lost. But as I've just played it by ear, my readers have basically told me what they wanted next. If they said, well, how do we teach this to kids? I was all, well, then I'll write a parenting book. So I don't know. I guess we'll see. If readers have a lot of questions about this book, they'll probably give me the idea for my next book. and if not, if there weren't another book in my future, I guess I'd have to figure something else out with what I'm going to do.

35:10James Altucher:And you don't really have a big social media presence either. It's not like you kind of cultivate your fans on social media. It's basically just through the books. Yeah, that's the thing. People will be like, 25 million people saw your TED Talk and you have sold a lot of books. How come you don't have a huge social media following? And I think as a therapist, I mean, it was like ingrained in me, like you don't share your personal life out there. And it's been years and years that I've been in the public eye, but I think there's still a big piece of that, that as a therapist, like you don't want people to know about what your house looks like or what you're doing in your spare time.

35:45So I think that's been a piece of it. And again, I'm not a marketing guru. I don't have a team of people. I don't have a social media expert. It's just me doing it. So, and I'm okay with that.

35:55James Altucher:But over writing these books though too, you've probably had to research so many different areas, so many aspects of psychology and kind of the science of happiness. Just the process of writing these books has probably made you a better therapist, just like being a good therapist and going through your life experience has made you a good author of these sorts of books. I hope so. I mean, I think back now and I think, gosh, I was 21 when I became a therapist. Like I probably owe some people, a lot of people an apology for the things that I thought I knew coming out of school based on my textbooks compared to where I've been now.

36:27I was probably as a new therapist. But again, I think most new therapists feel that way. You learn a lot just by doing rather than reading a book.

36:39James Altucher:So on the mental strength stuff, let's say your anxiety is like through the roof. And this has often happened to me where I really can't think that, oh, I need to stop thinking about this because the problem seems so overwhelming and enormous. I have to keep thinking about it. even though logically I know that doesn't really accomplish anything. If someone really has an anxiety problem, what is the solution? So anxiety is one of the most treatable but undertreated conditions. And we know the average person waits like 10 years to get help for anxiety, which makes sense because if you're anxious, then you're going to be anxious about going to a therapy appointment probably as well.

37:15But sort of depending on the type of anxiety, there's generalized anxiety versus panic disorder versus somebody who has social anxiety. And exposure therapy is one of the best things, is to say you can face a lot of the anxiety. Sometimes people need a low dose of a medication to take the edge off so that they feel like they can function better. Sometimes people just need skills to practice. Somebody with social anxiety is going to do well if they feel like they have some confidence in their social skills. Somebody with panic disorder, if they have full-blown panic attacks, may need to know that they have a plan in place so that if they start to have a panic attack in the middle of the grocery store, they don't have to run away.

37:54Instead, what are you going to do to calm yourself right in the moment? So it depends, but it's very treatable. And unfortunately, so many people don't get help for it. But I also think on the flip side, anxiety is something we're supposed to have. And everybody has anxiety sometimes. But we talk about it so much that it kind of dismisses people that have credible anxiety disorders because they're like, well, everybody has anxiety. Don't worry about it. For some people, it really interferes with their daily functioning.

38:22James Altucher:Yeah, I've definitely had an issue where it's interfered with my daily functioning and I had to get medicated for it. It was very brutal. You wake up in the middle of the night and there's nothing you could do. You're just in the middle of a hurricane in your brain and it can't stop. And that's one of those things. And then when people are like, well, make sure you're sleeping well and make sure you're eating a good diet. And people will be like, my anxiety is so high, I can't sleep. and I haven't eaten in three days because I can't function. And that's the kind of advice I think a lot of people feel like they're getting when they first approach a doctor or when they read a self-help book that just says, make sure you're doing some self-care.

38:59James Altucher:Yeah, I ended up taking medication for it, which did help, but then the medication is very addictive. So you got to be careful about that. So then what helped you overall in addition to medication? What was some of the things that helped you? I think two things. One is writing helped me because it was like taking action that gave me this enormous dopamine. Like people would say, oh, this is good writing. And you'd get these dopamine boosts. Like I would get likes and shares and stuff like that. And that's really how I evolved as a writer because I was getting so much encouragement and it was saving me from this anxiety.

39:35James Altucher:And the other thing is really medication helped me. Although maybe I took too much and had a problem with addiction to it because it's very addictive. like things like Klonopin are very addictive medications. Like people don't realize they're more addictive than heroin or cocaine. And the withdrawal effects, you cannot get off the medication once you're on it. It's very extremely, people go to rehab for it, which is almost like a joke, but it's very difficult. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't know that doctors will prescribe it sometimes in medium to high doses. And if you get hooked on something, it can be life-threatening if you suddenly quit.

40:10and yet we're in this weird phase of the life right now where sometimes pharmacists won't prescribe it or people will say i was on vacation for the week and i couldn't get a refill this is like life or death situations for people and not to scare anyone but certainly benzodiazepines aren't the only medication that we have for anxiety these days and depending on what state you live in sometimes they're more commonly prescribed than others but i'm curious about writing too had you not written for the internet had you written say just something for yourself, would writing itself have helped you or was it more of the feedback you were getting from writing?

40:44James Altucher:It's a combination because just the feedback alone didn't help if I personally felt the writing was no good. And if the writing was good, I found myself not caring about how many likes. I would say, oh, this is good. I would sense it, that this was good writing. And that's after reading thousands of books and spending a lot of time developing the skill. I would sense if something was a good piece of writing. And then I wouldn't care about the likes and shares and all that stuff. But if I didn't share it, I wouldn't get the benefits of the anti-anxiety that resulted. I still needed to share it.

41:21And did it have to be, like it had to be good writing. If you had just written down like in a journal your thoughts and it was messy, that wouldn't have worked for you?

41:28James Altucher:Zero. Interesting. But related to that though, one thing that did help was this practice I have of writing down 10 ideas a day. because then you kind of make your brain, it's again, this neuroplasticity thing. If you push your brain to always be thinking of creative ideas, if you exercise that muscle, it like expands your brain. It fires neurons in the brain that haven't been fired. And somehow or other, that whatever the biology behind that is, that makes life a little easier to deal with. Like that's your serious depression and anxiety for me, that practice. I love that because so often, I mean, in the book, I talk about brainstorming the bad ideas first, but we're so afraid sometimes that we can't come up with a solution or we think that I don't want it to be a bad idea.

42:13And even in our own heads, when we are stuck with a problem, we think, well, you know, nothing's going to work. And it's so easy to get stuck in that. And there's research that will show problem-solving skills are a wonderful solution to depression. So for a lot of kids, especially teenagers who lack problem-solving skills, they're much more likely to struggle with depression. But when you teach people problem-solving skills, which is a skill we can all get better at, their mental health improves. Obviously, you stumbled across this on your own, and it's something that you've used for years. And thankfully, you've taught so many other people.

42:44I always think about the 10 ideas whenever I'm feeling stuck with something too. Yeah.

42:50James Altucher:And people need to know that it's important to make it to 10 ideas. It's bad ideas, like you were saying, brainstorming the bad ideas. That's a perfectly valid part of this process. It's great to have tons of bad ideas because that's only how you're going to find some of the good ideas. Exactly. And I know it works for you. Every time I talk to you, I usually walk away with a million more ideas of things that something I'm struggling with or with my books over the years. And you've been like, you know what, Amy, you should do this, this, and this. And they're brilliant ideas. And I think, oh yeah, I didn't come up with that.

43:20And here I am. This is my full-time job. But I know it works for you that you come up with incredible ideas because you've been practicing this.

43:27James Altucher:It always works, except every now and then, I think when you slip on these practices, things start to slip. Every now and then I get too busy and fall off the wagon in terms of practicing these things. And then inevitably the anxiety will start again. So it really does help me to not fall off the wagon. And that's why things like the mental strength playbook are so important because having this repertoire of techniques, you know, oh, I'm in this situation, or I'm about to give a talk, I'm anxious. Or I'm in this situation, I'm about to talk to someone I don't like and I'm afraid that they're gonna put me down or whatever.

44:04James Altucher:Or I'm in this situation, I'm losing money. Or I'm in this situation, maybe this relationship is over. All these things is different. It's like being dealt a different hand of cards. And for each hand of cards, you have to play it a little differently. And that's what I like about this mental strength playbook is like, how do you deal with each hand of cards you're dealt? Or perhaps every game of chess that you play where you have to have a different move, right? And a different strategy and to know that you can't always predict what's going to happen. It's easy to say, oh, that'll go well, but you don't know what life's going to throw you.

44:34Like I suppose you don't know what your opponent's going to do when you play chess.

44:37James Altucher:Yeah, and funny you bring it up because now I'm going to bring it up. You were gracious enough to come on a call with me and my chess coach at the time, Avatek Gregorian, a great chess player, great human being. And we couldn't figure out, despite all my lessons, why I was not winning more. I probably was knowing more about chess, but I was not winning more. And since then, I know even more and I'm winning even less. And so I've stopped... Sometimes I get upset about it, but I've stopped overly worrying about it. But is it just age? What is happening to me? Do you feel like it's more than a slump?

45:18And the reason I say this is like in baseball, we know that every batter is going to go through a slump. The ones who just accept this is a slump, get out of it. And the ones who say like, oh my gosh, I'm going to lose my career. This is horrible. I'm getting worse. They tend to continue to decline. But you tell me, does it feel like it could possibly be a slump or are we talking about something else?

45:39James Altucher:I don't know. I don't know what it is. I just, at this point, I just have no, I guess even then I didn't know why I was not, every other time, like when I was younger, Every other time I focused on improving, I improved. But now I'm focusing on improving in this one domain that I used to be good at. Still good at, but not the same way. This is the one time I've really focused on something for years now. Didn't think it would take this long. And I'm just not getting better, even though my knowledge is greater. I have an encyclopedic knowledge that I never had before. I know so many more things about the game of chess.

46:15James Altucher:this sport slash game that 600 million people around the world play. I know more than I've ever known before. And yet I win less. I don't play chess and I don't know enough about it to ask this question in a way that probably sounds intelligent. But do you know, like, what is it that you're doing wrong? Is it like one move that you do wrong? Is it that you forget something in the moment? Can you pinpoint like where things go downhill? Yeah, I think I don't quite remember things. Maybe I don't. I sort of maybe get a little careless. I might play a good game for like 40 moves and then I'm careless, but my opponent is not careless and then boom, strikes.

46:51James Altucher:So I might be winning the whole time and he's just like waiting for me to make a mistake and then I make a mistake. So I don't seem to have the correct stamina. Okay. So like, is it an attention span thing? Is it your focus gets lost after some? Yeah, maybe my focus gets lost after... I'm starting to realize that this could be it, that my focus gets lost after a certain amount of time. Like if I'm sitting at the board for an hour, my focus might get lost. Or if I think, if I, if somehow or other, I'm just not as focused every single move. And my opponent might be more focused every single move.

47:24James Altucher:Because my lessons actually work. Like if you test me on my lessons, I know the answers. But then if I'm in a game, boom, I might forget something or I'll miss something. Or I'm just, I'm not like a killer. I'm not like ready to kill. And do you notice, okay, So then when you make a mistake, do you notice right away? Or is it not until your opponent does something that you're then like, oh, how did I miss that? Yeah, exactly. That is that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I wonder. And I've tried medication. I've tried Adderall. Yeah. Okay. I've tried all this stuff, but nothing, there's no way I can. And my results are crazy because sometimes I'll be like world famous players.

48:04James Altucher:And then other days I'll meet to just like, you know, the kid that lives around the corner. so it's like it's very erratic my results but i know also you set the bar really really high for yourself right so even when you say you're struggling like i mean we're still doing better than most people yes yes but i'm not doing better than i used to be i'm not even doing better than i used to be four years ago okay all right interesting so then i wonder like yeah is it a lack of focus and attention. And if it is, could we argue that that's age-related or might it be the consequences of today's world that we're distracted and that you...

48:46James Altucher:Well, I just read this paper. I'm curious what you think about it. I just read this paper called The Myth of Cognitive Decline. And it argues that older people don't really have cognitive decline. It's just that there's more things in our brain. So there's only so much that could fit in the brain, I guess, is the metaphor. And so things drop off. So if I'm like, you know, at any given point, like I'm responsible for a podcast, I'm writing articles, I'm responsible for a bunch of different businesses, maybe then I've got to drop some stuff off sometimes. Yeah. And I would argue that that's true too.

49:19And the more stuff I'm reading, because I'm also fascinated by this idea of like decline as we get older, the more that I read on it, the more it seems to be like our belief in that as well, that if you believe that 60 people get forgetful, then you get forgetful at 60 versus people who say, I hang out with people who are vibrant and have great memories. So that's not something that's going to happen to me, much less likely to have it happen. So I do think a lot of it has to do with our beliefs, but I also think that there's a lot of truth to that in terms of our cognitive load. If we are dealing with 8 million things during the day, then yeah, it would make sense that something drops off.

49:54James Altucher:So this is why I'm attracted to your lifestyle, which is, okay, the sailboat, write books. You lead a very healthy life in terms of exercise and diet and so on. And there's a certain simplicity to that that I think is very beneficial. Yeah, I guess I don't run multiple businesses and I don't spend a lot of time playing chess. But yeah, I do think that having a simple life lets me know, what is it I want to focus on? Where do I want to put my attention and my mental bandwidth? Because for me, just juggling life as an author and a speaker and podcast and all of that is plenty. And I know you've written 13 things mentally strong couples don't do.

50:37James Altucher:What's the secret of having a good long-term relationship? It's really about renewing your commitment every day, I think, and knowing that you can still be grateful for being in the relationship and not taking your partner for granted. And because when we start to just assume that, then we take our commitment less seriously. And like one of my favorite studies, it'll show that people who are in really serious committed relationships, when they're really committed to their partner, they're less likely to put themselves in situations where they might be tempted by somebody else. And so like in research about cheating, we know that if somebody's really committed, they're not going to like surround themselves with single attractive people all the time.

51:15Instead, they would be more likely to turn that down because it's about their commitment and not necessarily about their willpower or how attractive their partner is. It's more about the decisions that you make every single day.

51:25James Altucher:I think that's really important. That's sort of like you're the average of the five people you spend your time with. So if you're around your partner and other committed couples or people in committed relationships, that's the behavior you're going to emulate, even if you don't have any willpower. Exactly. You kind of remove the equation of whether or not you have willpower. If all your friends are going through a divorce and they're making the lifestyle of being single sound like it's incredibly attractive, then we know that you're actually more likely to get divorced too because you think oh maybe it is fun to be single and to be out meeting new people and being around people who are in committed relationships has the opposite effect so but what does it mean to renew your commitment every day like obviously you don't say your vows to each other every day like what actually do you do i think it's just that reminder to yourself of like i choose this person and that what does that look like to be in a committed relationship well it's doing the things you don't want to do sometimes saying, I'll go to this event with you or I'll do the dishes even though I don't feel like it because that's part of being a good committed partner.

52:24And just reminding ourselves of that, that like, what does my commitment to this person mean? And how does that play out in the little choices that I make every single day?

52:33James Altucher:Yeah, that's interesting. And or the other question is, should people be in like one relationship for 70 years? You know, now we're where we're living to 100 years old or more. How does the nature of relationships change if you live another 80 years of life? Well, it's a good question, right? Because a lot of us are not the same person at 50 than we were at, say, 20. So you think, well, then how could you possibly still be with the same person if your life has changed, your personality, different facets of it have come out and you enjoy different hobbies? But I guess that's where the commitment piece comes in and just deciding if you're going to commit to somebody, what does that look like?

53:11How do you grow together? How do you make sure that their rough edges are something that you can tolerate and knowing that you two are not perfect? So I do think there's a lot to be said for long-term commitment, but I don't think it's always the fairy tale that we hear from people about being madly in love. My grandparents were married at 14 and 15, and they both lived to be in their mid-90s. And the day that my grandfather had to go to a nursing home because he had Alzheimer's, my grandmother didn't hug him goodbye. She just said, like, see ya from the other room, knowing that she was probably never going to see him again, and she didn't.

53:48so I don't think that that's like the end-all be-all goal to be married for 75 years to somebody that you don't really like that much I can't even imagine why anybody would do it other than for say financial reasons or convenience which I think was their situation but on the other hand I do think if you work on staying committed to somebody that you can have love even after 70 years together yeah that's interesting we can all hope right so again like what what now like now that

54:17James Altucher:you've done the mental strength playbook. What do you think is, what are you exploring next? Or maybe you haven't thought about it because everything's just happening now. Yeah, exactly. So you know how it is after the book comes out, you get to market the book and speak about the book a lot. So I guess that's the next thing on the agenda is seeing how this plays out in terms of people wanting to adopt the mental strength playbook. And I'll listen to my audience to see if they still have burning questions about what I can write next. I like this idea of committing to the long game. And you say, focus on your values, not your current frustrations.

54:50James Altucher:So let's say, again, your current frustration is your job or money or your relationship. How does focusing on your values help you deal with your current frustrations? So let's say I'm sitting down with my husband, Steve, and we're having a discussion and I'm annoyed because maybe he wants to do something with money that I don't want to do. Well, if I'm going to commit to the long game, it's about reminding myself that I want to be a committed partner, a collaborative person, a good teammate to him so I can handle the frustration better. And I gave this example. I was in corporate America for a little while and whenever we traveled, we had to submit receipts.

55:25And my editor didn't like the fact that I had said submitting receipts for the travel took longer than the travel itself because he thought I was just exaggerating. I wasn't. Literally, submitting receipts took hours and hours and hours. The flight didn't take nearly as long as it took to submit the receipts. I thought it was ridiculous.

55:44James Altucher:I'm like that too. Right? I mean, it was insane. The amount of stuff I had to do and apps to sign in and things to print out and to justify every expense for everything I ate while I was on a trip made zero sense to me. And I was like, you're going to waste the company's money for me to take basically a whole day to submit receipts for a trip for a two-hour meeting I had to fly into. and so I didn't want to do it but it was one of those like if this is what they want me to do I want to be a collaborative team player I guess I'll overlook the frustration and the ridiculousness of the red tape and try to be a team player because my ultimate my first response was to send the email that said I'm not doing this and in fact I was like I'll just pay for the flight myself it's not a big deal but it made me realize all right if you want to be the team player you don't want to be the grumpy person who isn't on board just go ahead and do it overlook it the frustration in the moment and commit to the long game.

56:37James Altucher:Yeah, no, I like that. It might not solve again, like, oh, if you're constantly worried about money, but maybe it would. Maybe if you're constantly worried about money and you kind of look at the worst case scenario and say, okay, I'm fine with that as long as I can live a life that has integrity and whatever, I can survive and move on. Right. I mean, I think if we looked at, say, when people are constantly watching the market, even though maybe it's a retirement fund. Well, the long game is all, you might have to wait another 20 years. So if it goes up a little today, it goes down a little tomorrow, don't panic.

57:11And I think for a lot of financial investments, that can be the case, but sometimes it's about saying, I'm going to do this thing that's uncomfortable right now. And maybe it is moving money around today, knowing that you have to tolerate the uncertainty, but the long game is hopefully it will pay off if you stick to it.

57:28James Altucher:Yeah. Well, Amy, I'm always such a fan of all your books and all of our conversations and also the friendship we've developed over the past 10 years. Like there's very few of my podcast guests I kind of reach out and talk to outside of the podcast. You're one of the few and you're always a welcome guest back on here. And the Mental Strength Playbook, when's it actually out? April 28th. April 28th. And again, I'm so excited to get the, I haven't gotten the hardcover version yet. I've just gotten the PDF version of it, which is excellent. But I always like putting your books up on the shelf and just like you have the books behind you there.

58:04James Altucher:Do you have the book in front of you, the Mental Strength Playbook? Do you have the hardcover playbook? I do. Okay. Ta-da! Oh, great. Well, good luck with it. And thanks once again for coming on the podcast. Always a pleasure to talk to you, James. Thank you so much. Thank you.

58:56We'll be right back. is always free. Huzzah! Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.