How to Detach From Work Before It Destroys Your Life | Dr. Guy Winch

If you are stressed out at work, your partner who might not be working will start to develop symptoms of burnout. Really? That's how much the transfer happens. We think we manage it. We really don't. Psychologist and author and host of his own psychology podcast. This tech talk been viewed by over four million people. He's been working with individuals, couples. Please welcome Dr. Guy Wench. I've worked with many people who thought they had fallen out of love, whose partner suddenly changed. And I'm like, is your partner who changed? Or is it you? Is it your work stress that has become so chronic that you can't feel it? How can time travel reignite love or passion in a relationship? An exercise that I suggest to couples. Re-enact. One of the earlier dates you had in which you realized you started to have feelings for one another. Try and go through that first magical moment. Couples were able to do it. Were able to really kind of take it on as a fun project. And even in prepping for it, they were starting to get into the mindset. Interesting. Stress is entirely psychological. The messaging is critical, which is super useful because we can actually do it. And it seems like a cheat, but it's not a cheat. It's a cheat the other way when we keep using it in a negative way to stress ourselves out. What is one psychological way to manage our mind to overcome burnout in life? So. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Today I'm with the inspiring guy, Winch. And he is an internationally renowned psychologist and best-selling author. And his talks have been viewed more than 35 million times. And his science-based books have been translated into 30 plus languages. Today he's here to offer a guide to combating the many stresses modern work imposes on our relationships. Guy, I'm so pumped that you're here. And it's a thrill to be here again. It's exciting, man. I'm excited about this. And I have a powerful first question for you. A lot of people are struggling relationships today. And I'm curious, is the biggest reason that people are struggling in their relationships and their work relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, having to do with the person they're in the relationship with, or the wound they haven't healed within themselves yet? Ah, well look, the wounds they haven't healed within themselves are probably causing them to make difficult choices in who they're in relationships with. The two are related. In other words, when you've healed the wounds within you, you are more likely to choose more healthy relationship partners and to form healthier relationships. And that includes the romantic, the personal friendships, and even work. We don't like to stay in unhealthy relationships when we feel healthy inside. That's true. So if we're unhealthy inside, or we have wounds inside, and we have all these relationships already established with years of history, how do you start either unwinding those unhealthy patterns in those relationships? Do you just eliminate all those relationships? Or do you take a look in the mirror and say, oh, I've got work to do in this part of the relationship. How do we start that once we're aware that we are having breakdown in multiple relationships? Well, you have to start with looking within yourself. And like, so what is it about me that's choosing these kinds of people or these kinds of relationships? What is it about me that's tolerating staying in situations that are not great for me and that I might not even like? A lot of people are in relationships that make them miserable, but they stay in them. Why? Many, many reasons. They tell themselves that that's the best they can do. It's a sunk cost kind of thing. Well, I've already invested all these years, and I don't want to start looking because it's such a difficult marketplace out there as it were. I mean, it's very, you know, people are very afraid of starting over in that. So let me just stay where I am. And then they find reasons to, oh, maybe this is not too terrible today. So I guess it's okay when might not be terrible today, but it's generally not not great. But when you start to work on yourself and when you start to change, two things will happen. You will either start making different choices or you will start changing in such a way that certain people will just drop out. Because you're not fun for them anymore. They don't get away with their stuff anymore because you're starting to set limits. You're starting to be more assertive. You're starting to set expectations. And so suddenly, this is not working for me. I like running rough showed or I like being, you know, like the boss of this or I like things my way entirely. People will drop out. They'll start to fade away. You know, or you'll have so much conflict that you'll drop out. You'd be like, ah, this just doesn't work for me. It's one or the other, but there is a cleaning house that often happens when people really start to change. What age do people start waking up around seeing if their relationships in their life are working for them or not? Is there a season of life that usually people are like, huh, you know, I'm 25 or I'm 30 now and like, oh, these high school or college friends, maybe I'm not that same person anymore or the relationship I've been in for six or seven years. I'm not who I was when I started that relationship. Is there a season that people usually wake up to recognizing if the relationships are working or not? So when I was younger, there used to be this thing called like the midlife crisis, which was never a thing. Yes. But they called it a midlife crisis and it happened around 40, which is also not where midlife is really. But that was when people start to second guess, but it's actually about circumstances. So for example, when the external stresses that happen on the relationship, we saw it during the pandemic, we saw it after 9-11. When something big happens in the world that stresses the relationship, it forces a contemplation. It forces you to start to think like, is this working in it either brings people closer or it pushes them apart? Really? How does someone create that artificially without having, you know, a war or some pandemic? How do you create that to see if you're with the right person? You know, it's interesting when I used to teach couples therapy and one of the things, one of the wisdoms of couples therapy is, and family therapy, it's the same thing because it's a system, is that they will not change unless they're in crisis because they're too comfortable and change is uncomfortable. But in a crisis, you're already uncomfortable, you're more likely to change. And so some of the wisdoms, if they're not in crisis, put them in crisis as a therapist, put pressure on them so that the crisis happens and they're forced to examine. What are some ways you can put crisis on a relationship? So not as a therapist, because I'm not suggesting that we want rushes to couple therapists and say, stress us out, we don't know that either. That's not the best, you know, use of it. But it's to actually self-examine, it's actually to have a conversation. First with yourself, I mean, first get clarity within you. Is this working for me? Is it not? And it's not a yes or no, it's like, what is working? What isn't? Am I generally happy? We, in a society today, where we're all, you know, the part of the thing about the grind is that when we're in the grind, it's work, it's everywhere. Our head is down, we just go from thing to thing to thing. We don't pause to lift our head up and go, wait, is this working for me? Am I happy? Is this where I want to be going? Is this where I want to be? We just keep going in this autopilot mode. And when we're in autopilot mode, we often fly into the face of the cliff. And so it's just lifting your head and starting to ask yourself the important questions that alone can start not putting you in crisis, but start alerting you. And then once you start having those conversations with the other people, then you start getting somewhere in terms of do I have a partner here? Your book, Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life talks a lot about an overcome burnout and kind of this stress that you just mentioned, where it's just like people are on autopilot of just working very hard, that it's hard to have emotional space to have fun and have joy and love and peace and harmony in your relationships outside of work, it sounds like, for a lot of people if they don't know how to create boundaries or structure or space or time away. Defeat like work is one of the biggest reasons why people are struggling in intimate relationships if they don't know how to navigate work. Work has a huge impact on our relationships outside of work as well. And when I was doing research for this book, I was so stunned by some of the research and what it was saying. Like there's research that shows that if you are stressed out at work, your partner who might not be working will start to develop symptoms of burnout. Really? That's how much the transfer happens, the spillover into your home life. When you are stressed out at work, your partner can lose their sex drive because primarily you're no fun to be around. And I don't mean you personally. But you know, but that's the thing. We think we manage it. We really don't manage it at all. And so this grind is we just keep going but without asking ourselves a question. But yes, it's really impacting our relationship. There's other research that shows that when somebody is really stressed and pressured at work, they will not only fall down on their responsibilities at home with the kids, with their partners, they will actively undermine their partner within the home unconsciously, not even being aware necessarily that they're doing it. What does that look like? They'll undermine their partner at home. What is that? What are some ways? Here's an example. You come from work, had a very, very long and stressful day and the kids run to your partner and say, hey, can I have another cookie? Can I watch TV? Can I spend another hour on the iPad? And your partner appropriately says, no. Okay, and then they'll run to you. Hey, can I have a cookie, iPad, hour, etc. And you'll be like, yeah, fine, whatever. And it won't even occur to you like, wait, let me check with them. Actually, what are the rules? What is the thing? Because you're checked out. So you're doing that. We bring home resentment sometimes from work toward home, because home doesn't get, our families don't get how stressed out we are. What we had to go through all day. Do you think people's lack of work-life balance then is causing them to feel stressed at home? Or is work-life balance a myth? Work-life balance is not a myth, but I think it exists primarily or needs to in our own head. The work-life balance is how we psychologically think about our work and our personal life, our professional identity, and our personal or family identity. Those boundaries get confused in our heads. And what happens is that when our work gets very demanding. And by the way, this happens when we are engaged with our work, when we love our work, when we're passionate about our work, we lose the boundaries between that and we start to amputate aspects of ourselves one by one. We start to push them aside. We start to lose them. We start to lose touch with them. And we become two-dimensional workers. We become true drones in doing what we're doing and feeling, oh, but we're happy in what we're doing. But we're not, really, because we just neglected entire aspects of our personality or relationships of our life outside of work. And it happens gradually usually. And before we know it, it's just that here's a thought experiment I suggest people do. If tomorrow work were taken away, something was erased, and you had no work. What would you do? No, who are you? Oh, what's your identity? Yeah, who are you then? What's your life about then? Interesting. And for many people, they blink at me and they go, because there's not much. That's interesting. What should people try to be if there was no work? It's not about inventing something. It's about who did you use to be? What aspects of yourself are not coming to the fore, are not getting any oxygen? Because people sometimes, in the book, I talk about this one guy, he was a lawyer, and he was so uptight, and he was so rigid, and so, like, you know, like he was like, you would sit like that, he was so, and it turned out that ecology did improv. He used to do improv, yeah. Yeah. And it was just like spoiler alert that happens later. But I was like, there was not a shred of that. No joy. No fun, no joy. I had never seen his teeth. Never seen his teeth. And so I'm like, oh my god, that's how deeply buried that had become. Yeah. And clearly it was a part of him. Why do you think people lose so much of their joy? Is it tied to work stress or pressures of life or societal things? Why is that? Because we have so much joy. Well, not everyone. You know, some people have a lot of pain and suffering growing up, but most people have joy and play in their life growing up. And then work, they lose play. Now, I get you have to have results and you've got to make money and you've got to create profits and all these different things, but why did they lose that? Is it all related to work? First of all, joy is considered a nice to have, not a must have, for a lot of people. But for a lot of people, it's truly a reality of our time, of the current workplace, the current economy. They are working, you know, two jobs or they're working a very demanding job, then coming home, taking care of their kids. They have very, very little time for themselves. There's very little time to breathe. There's very little time to even take their temperature and ask themselves, what, what do they feel like doing? But they just don't have that autonomy. They don't have that space to even question it. And so they just, there's so much they have to get done that they completely lose sight of that. Like if something can go, well, joy will have to go. Yes, I liked doing that, but I don't have time to do that anymore. But it again, it creeps up on you so that you at some point end up with just duty all day. You're in duty mode, whether it's as a parent, whether it's as a worker, whether it's as caretaker, whatever the thing is. It's exhausting, right? Well, that's why burnout is peaking. I mean, the interesting thing about stress and burnout is that awareness of stress and burnout has gone up. The awareness of the importance of work-life balance has gone up. And yet at the same time, the awareness has gone up. Stress and burnout are peaking and are all times highs. Really? Yes. Why is that? Because they're not contained in the workplace. Because that stuff spills over into our life outside of work and the ways I get examples about in terms of our relationships in other ways, such that you can't just, it's not about, oh, let's do something at work to make things a little bit easier. You have to manage your mind. You have to manage the psychology of your mind. Because for many of us, for example, who have either demanding jobs or again, we're passionate about our work, they're desperate to switch off at the end of the day and they cannot. Because they have more responsibilities at home? No, because they're ruminating about work. Because they're obsessing about it. Because they can't let go of that really annoying thing that happened. Or that really dismissive thing that somebody said. Or that somebody didn't show up for them when they had showed up for that person over and over again and it was so hurtful and disappointing, they can't let it go. Really? Why do people hold on to the obsession of what happens at work when they're at home so much? Look, our unconscious mind thinks work is the most important thing in our life. Because factually, it's where we spend most of our time. It pays our bills. It fulfills our needs. Just looking at it factually like that must be the most important thing. So anything that happens there is considered very important. Number one. Number two, interpersonal slights are really thick with us. Wherever they happen. When somebody's rude, dismissive, uncivilized, let alone when you're being bullied or harassed, it is very difficult to let that go. So we obsess about it. We ruminate about it and it's those are intrusive thoughts. Those are not voluntary thoughts. That's not something we decide. I'm going to go home and obsess about how my co-worker was rude to me in the meeting for the whole evening. It's not something we do, but it's something we want to do. But it's something that happens to us and then we're sitting there and we're checked out and we're trying to be present but our mind keeps getting dragged back into this bombardment of intrusive thoughts and we don't have the mechanism. We don't know how to switch that off. I talk about how to switch that off in the book, but it's something we need to do in a very deliberate way. What is one psychological way to manage our mind to overcome burnout in life? So just to explain something about burnout. When we are at work all day and we're in a stressful work environment, again, stressful not necessarily because it's toxic, certainly if it is, just because it's demanding, it's pressured, we are in fight or flight. Our bodies and our minds are in a battlefield and our mind doesn't really distinguish well between whether the battlefield is happening in the boardroom or actually in a battlefield. So we are in fight or flight. When we come home, that is when we need to give our systems a break from fight or flight. You can't be activated all the time because that's when wear and tear will happen, exhaustion and burnout. So when people come home and they're still thinking about work, they're extending that fight or flight until they go to bed and then they're never getting a break from it. So one thing that people can do and it's a really, it's a trivial thing, sounds like, but it's a critical thing, is you need to detach psychologically from work at some point after work. You maybe can't do it, you know, at seven or at eight, but at some point it's got to be because your work day, by the way, it doesn't end when you leave work. Your work day doesn't end when you shut your laptop. Your work day ends when you stop thinking about work. Interesting. And unless you stop thinking about work, you're still at work. So you have to detach psychologically from work. What's the best way you've studied or seen people do and how they can break their mind from thinking about work once they're away from work? So there are two things. First of all, I believe that you have to have a ritual to transition from your work day to your personal time, family time, even if it's family time and parenting duties and caretaking duties, whatever the thing is, but that you're in a different mode because you don't have to be in fight or flight for that. You do often at work. So there needs to be a ritual and the point of a ritual is it's repetitive and it trains your brain that when you start doing it, your brain learns over time, we are about to change our mindset. We're about to relax. We do that with kids when we're putting them to bed, right? An hour before they go to bed. We bring the lights down, we slow things down, we move the toys away, we prepare them to kind of settle down. We need to settle down as well. And so you want a transition that will help your brain learn that now it's time to shift from work mode. And that should include as many of the senses as possible because that's a deeper resonance within the brain. So sound, so music, very evocative, have your playlist that helps you relax at the end of the day that you can listen to. Our clothing is very embodied as a commission for us. They can suit off and put something else on or you wear clothes, right? Yes. Now, I am pretty casual in my job and I know people who work in t-shirts and jeans, but have the t-shirts and jeans that you wear at work and have different t-shirt and jeans that you don't wear at work that you wear at home because your mind will learn to associate when I put those on, then I'm in a relaxed mode. So there's the sight that light, change the lighting when you get home. In any way, it doesn't really matter in which direction, but just something that symbolizes for you now this is about home. Use scent if you can. Use all the senses that you can to really and use the same ritual that has to be repetitive so that when you start doing it, that's the end of your day. Here's one other thing that you can do and again, it's going to sound stupid, but our brain takes some things unfortunately seriously. One thing our brain takes really seriously is calendars and most people when you look at their calendar, it's all booked up with different colors all through the day and then the evening comes and it's just white space and so your brain is not told what to be doing in the white space. Write family time, write veg out, write something that tells your brain my task now is to do something that's relaxing, that's recharging, that kind of thing. Chill mode. Chill mode, write chill mode, but write something so your brain knows that's my task now. Give your brain a task, even if it's to do nothing. Yes. Interesting. Do nothing is a great title. Yeah, do nothing for the next five hours. What would you say are the common coping strategies that people believe are helping them overcome burnout but are actually hurting them? Some of the things people think to do and this is very, very common is they come home and you said, you know, like do nothing, veg out and they are like, I am going to slouch down on the couch and binge this series or do scroll for three or four hours. I feel drained, so I'm just going to relax. And here's the thing about that. You will wake up tired the next morning, no matter how much you relax. Really? Yes, because relaxation is only 50% of the story. Our brain confuses physical and mental exhaustion. It doesn't distinguish well, so you are mentally tired. Some people have very physically demanding jobs. Most don't. Most are sitting with a screen all day. So when you get home, you're not physically exhausted. You're mentally drained. Yes. And then relaxing won't drain you further, but it won't recharge you. It won't fill the battery. What will fill the battery is something active that is recharging for you. So I'm sure that, just use you an example. You know, when you get home at the end of the day and you haven't had a chance to work out, you're athletic, you're an athlete. You know, if you go and you go to a practice session with handball or you do something, you might feel like, no, there's a last thing I feel like doing right now. But if you force yourself to do it, when you get back, you're going to feel more energized than before you left, even though you expended a bunch of energy to do it. If somebody is creative, if they're a painter getting up and painting for half an hour or doing something creative, if they're an organizer organizing, if they're extrovert going and socializing and forcing themselves to get up, even though they feel drained, they will come back feeling more energized. They will sleep better because relaxing is 50 percent. Recharging is 50 percent. And the biggest mistake we make for burnout is, well, we're tired. So we're just going to relax. Yeah. The other problem with that is that our brain is just like, you just spent the entire day looking at a screen. Negative look at a screen for a few more hours. Sorry, what's the difference? Where's how are you preventing? It's just the same thing, even if you're watching something different. So the idea is, do something recharging and that's very individual for you. So you can't just lay down and vag and watch. You can do both. Yeah. But if that's all you're doing, then no, then you're going to be tired. You talk about, in one of your previous books, you talked about emotional first aid, which is something I loved. You also talked about how to heal a broken heart. Are there any new emotional tools that you've learned in the last few years that have been really helpful for people that you work with? So one of them is about this rumination stuff. I spoke about it in my book Emotional First Aid, but I've developed my ideas a little bit further. How bad is ruminating for someone's mind? Well, it's bad for their body as much as for their mind, because when you're ruminating, you are flooding yourself with cortisol. You are literally putting yourself into stress. When you're home and you start to think about how annoying your boss was when they did this and they said that, and you'll feel it. You'll start to, it'll start to feel like, that feeling of stress wherever you tend to feel it, and your shoulders, your stomach, whatever your typical stress manifestation is, you will feel that. And so you are literally putting yourself into fight or flight. You're putting yourself into stress. And rumination by definition is an unproductive form of self-reflection. In other words, we're not trying to figure it out. We're just, you know, we're just thinking about it. It's so annoying when they said that. And then we do this thing where we have a fantasy conversation with our boss that we'll never have, in which we tell them off. We have mic drop moments. I wish I want to go in and I would say this to him. I want to give him the finger and I want to like throw this at them. And they're like, you're not going to do that. But even in fact, now it might feel satisfying in the moment, but you're actually getting yourself really worked up in that scenario. And people can go through those variations for hours, literally hours spent on that kind of stuff. Now what we ruminate about and what causes the rumination is not so much the incident, but the emotion that it evokes. And so with then we start rumination surfing, because that was so unfair that happened at work, which reminds me of the other thing that was unfair that happened three years ago, which reminds me of the unfair thing that happened five weeks ago that now you're remembering and like life is so unfair. And suddenly it's this downwards rabbit hole in the spiral that just makes you feel so upset. And again, it feels compelling. It feels like you're thinking about something important, but you're not thinking it through. You're just replaying the crappy parts of it. So what you have to do to break out of that is A, understand that it's being fueled by the emotion. And then B, you have to do two things, shrink the emotion and convert it into a problem that can be solved. How does someone convert rumination into something that can be solved? Okay. So for example, your boss said something really annoying, shot you down in a meeting, whatever it is, the problem is as follows. And there are many different problems you can pose. Do I need to do something about that? Do I need to address it with the boss directly? Do I need to understand why they shot me down? Is it something I can learn about the fact that I was suggesting something that they tend to not like, etc., etc. Were they just in a bad mood and I can let it go because that was unusual for them? If it's something I need to address, how do I address it? How can I learn what to say in the meeting that they will actually endorse rather than let me decide to pay attention to what their boss is going to when people are speaking. I'll keep my eye on the boss at the next meeting. See what they're nodding and try and conclude from that. What are the kinds of things they like to hear versus not, etc. Once you have a plan, it eases the stress. You can stop ruminating because you have a plan, you've figured it out. But unless you pose it as a question of what do I need to do with anything and if I need to do something, how do I address it? And if I need to address it, what's the most effective way to do it? Right. Once you start asking those questions, you're figuring something out, then you're literally trying to get to solutions. You're cutting through all the angst along the way. There just seems to be a lot of work stress in the, in society's, I guess, conversations a lot. People are stressed, people are getting laid off work, the economy, the uncertainty of the economy, the future, rising prices everywhere. If someone's in love in a relationship romantically, but they go through years of work stress, is it possible they could fall out of love romantically because of work stress? And the second part, is it the boss and the work environment's fault or is it their fault? Okay. Part one. Yes. People can fall out of love when they're really chronically stressed because it's numbing. Yes. So it's not that they're falling out of love, per se. It's that they're not feeling much. It's numbing. Yes. You're just dealing with the pressures. You don't have time to think or feel about other things. There's something that's useful about that because if you were actually feeling how depressing your situation were, you might not be able to function. So, you know, so to numb yourself in order to get through it has its advantages, but that can again spill over outside of work and suddenly you become numb to many things and that can be including your partner. I've worked with many people who thought they had fallen out of love, whose partner suddenly changed and became really annoying or really this or that and I'm like, hmm, is your partner who changed? Or is it you? Like, is it your work stress that has become so chronic that you can't feel it? And then when they do get a break, when they do kind of use these tools to kind of lower the stress, then they start to just reconnect to the feelings. But also it's dynamic because if you're the partner and this person is standoffish, you know, they come home at the end of the day and when you go up to give them a hug, they're stiff because they're still in work mode. At some point, you're not going to be a fan either and then it starts setting up a difficult dynamic between two people. Interesting. Right? Gosh. So, work is the enemy, huh? So, again, a lot of this is happening in our head. Work is difficult. I want to be clear, work is difficult, but it's how we manage it that's responsible for a large chunk of what we're doing to ourselves because we're not creating that separation because we're not creating the boundaries because we're not nourishing ourselves in the way that we need to to be able to manage that. Now, there's a lot work can do to make things easier for us like exhibiting caring. Like there's a study that shows that when there's layoffs about to happen and unfortunately, you know, how these things work, layoffs are announced, but they're six months ahead in advance. So, let's tell everyone that they're, you know, Someone's getting laid off in six months. Get to work, people. You know, it's like it's so difficult. And so, you know, it's so now the research is that if you're a personal manager who doesn't have any more information than you do, who can't control necessarily the budget, so doesn't necessarily know who's getting laid off. If they exhibit caring to you, if they just say, Hey, I know how difficult this is, how are you doing? That reduces stress by a huge percentage. Just caring that everyone's empowered to do that. Every manager, every team leader is empowered. Every co-worker is empowered to exhibit caring. And it has a huge impact in a great way. If someone has fallen out of love, you know, from work stress or just pressures of life, what would you say are a few steps that they can try to reactivate those feelings and emotions to fall back in love with their partner? You just have to load, you have to load the stress, right? I mean, when, when you're trading water and the water's up to here, you need to load the water first. I mean, you need to get more breathing room. And there's a bunch that can do to get more breathing room. Because again, a lot of that stress is spent on ruminating. Stress is very psychological, right? Like people say to me sometimes like, what do I do about the fact that my job is just very, very stressful? But does it have to be stressful? Can you change the way you think about it? Let's say the job is typically is is comparatively stressful. Yes. The first thing you can do about that is stop telling yourself that your job is very stressful. Because what that means is that reinforcing it, right? Yeah, it's reinforcing it. But there are many moments in which it's not. It's many moments in which it is. And there are many moments at which there's a lunch break in which it's not stressful. There are a few meetings which aren't terrible. But you're telling yourself that those two are stressful and terrible. So you're keeping yourself on alert. And you're likely to perceive any negative thing that happens there as see that stressful too. And so you're poisoning yourself into perceiving things that are more ambiguous or not that stressful as stressful. So don't say my job is very stressful. Say my job has stressful elements. I use firefighters as an example because I work with a bunch of firefighters. And you know, is their job very stressful? They run into burning buildings. Yeah. Those moments are very stressful. Those moments are very stressful. There's a lot of downtime where they're just hanging out and just kind of relaxing and being in a meeting. Exactly. And they always say to me like, no, my job isn't very stressful. There are moments that are, but we are in the firehouse most of the time. Yeah. And then it's stressful. Yeah. If it's my turn to cook, it's stressful because people hate my cooking. You know, like that kind of thing. But it's like, it's a great lesson I look from them. Like, yeah, if they can describe their job as intermittently stressful, then that's true of most of us. Yeah. And that framing alone makes a big difference. The framing of it is, yeah, it's finding ways to almost play a game in your mind when you go to work, right? It's like, how can I make today fun, even though usually it's stressful? How can I crack a little joke with a coworker in between a stressful moment? How can I shake it off in the bathroom and just kind of relax? How can I listen to some music that brings me a little joy throughout the day? How can I do something? How can I prepare my favorite meal for lunch so I know I have something to look forward to? Perfect. Yes. Like every couple hours, like there's going to be joyful moments throughout my day. How can I send a funny meme to a friend, whatever it is, like how can I do something where my day becomes more enjoyable, where you can actually enjoy work rather than just be overwhelmed and stressed by it? And again, it doesn't mean there's not going to be stressful moments and pressure filled moments and responsibilities. But how can you reframe the way you think and act every day, work and life? Absolutely. Find one thing to look forward to during the day. And it could be what you just said is a great example. I prepared my favorite meal for lunch, so at least I'll get 15 minutes to have that and I look forward to that. As long as you say that to yourself and you frame that to yourself, it immediately, it's amazing because people will think, well, that doesn't change anything. It does. Stress is entirely psychological. It is entirely our tolerances and what we're telling ourselves. The messaging is critical, which, A, is super useful because we can actually do it. Yes. And it seems like a cheat, but it's not a cheat. It's a cheat the other way when we keep using it in the negative way to stress ourselves out. We can reclaim that and use it to decrease our stress. What is the difference between two people who are going to the same work environment where one person doesn't seem like a lot phases them, even though there's pressure filled stressful moments and the other person is always on alert and overwhelmed and overstressed? What is the difference between those two people in a similar environment? Well, it's their mindset because the overly stressed person has come anticipating the worst, expecting a very difficult day. Now, by the way, if you have a very difficult meeting coming up, then you should prepare for it. You should raise your defenses and take a deep breath and say, okay, I know this is going to be difficult. You know what I can do? I'm going to sit through it and then I'm going to text my friend to say, hey, can I call you for five minutes afterwards just to be able to complain about, oh, I can do something like that. But they're setting themselves up to experience all of it as stressful because they're like, I hate this. I hate my job. If you say to yourself, I hate my job and you are not looking for another job, it's a problem. Because you're just making yourself miserable. Don't stay there. Either change the way you feel about it or don't stay there. Or say, I hate certain aspects of my job. I don't mind others. Might just be more tempered, be more realistic. Yes. What is the biggest challenge that you face personally with your psychological mind, the way you think after four decades of studying the mind and psychology? What is your biggest struggle still? The biggest struggle I have is that I can't get away with much. Yeah, you're like, yeah, yeah, right now here. I know when I'm doing something incorrectly. I know where I should be doing something else. I know like, really, we're having a pity party now. You know, that's not like, I can't shut the voice up in the back of my mind that now, once in a while, I'll be like, I'm going to feel bad for myself for an hour. I'm giving myself the hour. Sure, sure, sure, sure. But it's because, look, emotional health in general, and having the right mindset, you know, this is actually really effortful. It's so much easier to just go with the misery. You know, that's the default. That just, let me just give in to it. Let me just succumb to it. It's actually really difficult to have to go, no, I know that's not the right thing to do. I know I can get myself out of this mood if I just do A, B, and C. So come on, do A, B, and C. Or work. Or when I get home and I'm like tired and then I want to be just like, I just want to veg out. No, do something recharging, even if it's 15 minutes. Because you know the slides, you know the research. And if I haven't experienced it yet, then I constantly come across situations in life where I've worked with someone who had this three years ago and I remember exactly what I said to them. Don't be a hypocrite. So that's taking away with the stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's hilarious. I want to have a practical question for you around relationships. Is it bad for a couple to argue over text or email versus arguing or communicating in person? There are some couples who are very explosive, number one, and two who miscommunicate or mishear. Usually those things go together. And they're just not very productive. When they speak in person? When they do it in person. It escalates really, really quickly. Or like, wait, did you say this? No, I didn't say that. Yes, you did. It's that kind of stuff. You know, people when they come to couples therapy, it's remarkable. They'll have two people in the same room. We had an argument last night. One person says one story, the other person's telling you a different story. Now it's not different perspectives. They truly misremember. One of them does or both of them do what was said. You know, so for some people, when you're doing it over text or over email, two things happen. Number one, you have to compose the text or the email. So that is immediately bringing you down from the kind of amygdala activation kind of thing into a little more of a calmer mindset, because you have to sit and write it. You can, you know, and it gives you the opportunity to read what you're hopefully writing and to amend it. And it's a written record. So you can't say, you didn't say that. Yes, I did say that. Well, now we kind of know who said who said what. What a lot of people do today, by the way, is they'll put it into an AI and say, was this as hostile as I think? Or do they really mean this? Really? Yeah, people said to me all the time, I put all the text into AI and they, and AI thought I was right. That's a hostile thing. And I'm like, if you tell AI, like, is there hostility here? AI will say to you, yeah, yeah, I'll find it. Sure. But that doesn't mean that necessarily it was. But you know, I mean, by the time we, you know, this comes out, AI will have developed and we never know. But the point is, like, for some people, it's more effective, actually, to do it. And I know people who naturally do that, they literally will sit in a different room and they'll be arguing like crazy over text. And it can be useful because the kids are like, my parents never argue and like, is it doing it over text? Wow. Interesting. But you can also be explosive and mean over text as well. But then you have a record of what you said in the like, oh, I'm a jerk. On the jerk. Look at that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does kind of. You can't delete that. No, that's right. And it does kind of prevent you from like, I can't just say I set it out of anger because I wrote it and then I pressed send. So it's not to just. I'll still do that. A lot of people say like, oh, if I could have taken the words back when they came out of my mouth, you can, you just don't press send. Exactly. Now you mentioned AI. Is AI, do you think AI is helpful or hurtful in intimate relationships? The use of AI, people using AI in certain ways or just AI in general? Reviewing text messages and conversations, asking AI for help from romantic stuff like, is this helpful or hurtful? Look, I don't know what you hear. I hear a lot of different things. I rarely hear. I asked AI to find the most romantic date I can for my partner. I told AI everything about my partner and asked, what can I do to delight them for their birthday or for anniversary or for Valentine's Day. Like, I'm sure some people use it for that, which would be terrific. But most people are litigating on AI. Really? Yeah, they're litigating, like they're putting in all of this, like who's right, who's wrong, aren't they terrible? Are they not? It's for that. And for a lot of people who are not in the relationship but want to be in the relationship, do they love me? Do they really care? They're asking AI. Oh, yeah. Here's the texts. And, you know, like, but are they into me then or are they not? Because I can't make it out. And so they're like asking for relationship advice. Now, again, AI right now is still prone to tell us what we want to hear. And we're not very shy about indicating what it is we want to hear. So it's not the most, you know, like, like, you know, real necessarily thing. It'll give you a nice sanitized version of what you might want to hear. But AI can be terribly useful if you're actually using it to generate ideas. Like some people will, you know, do it for like, I need to talk to my partner about something sensitive. What's the best way to phrase that? How do I bring it up in a way that's not hurtful? Or here's what I'm thinking of saying. Can that be offensive in any way? You know, and if so, what can I do in a way that wouldn't be offensive? Yes. That's a great use. Why is it so hard for people to start a relationship and tell the person they're into, just getting started in a relationship, that they're actually interested in them, that what their intentions are, that they like them, that they want to create more with them? Why is that hard for so many people to just say how they feel about the person they're starting to date or see? Instead of questioning, does this person like me or should I say this now? Why is that so hard for people? Look, it's tricky, because there's some people that if you say to them, hey, I like you, they will, for some people, it will make them like you less. Because if they have any kind of self-esteem issues, then you saying you like them, and you don't know that about their self-esteem issues at the beginning, you saying you like them makes them have an unconscious reactions to really already, I don't know what's wrong with them, you know, like something. Well, maybe they're not the right person then. Perhaps. I do think those things work out for a reason. That's psychologically wounded. Do you want that relationship? That is true, but they still think that they want that. It makes you emotionally vulnerable, for sure, because now you're saying like, and my issue with it is that if you're starting to date someone and you like them, you really have to acknowledge that you don't know them well. Of course. At all. So saying I like you without qualifying it. True. Saying like, hey, I'm really just getting to know you, but so far I like what I see so far. Oh, I've enjoyed our first few dates so far. I still know nothing about you. Except for three days of hanging out. But I think it's fair to say, you know, I still don't know you, but so far I like it. You know, like that seems more, you know, balanced. Yes. But then I love you, you're amazing. But here's another issue that I come across. People, because of social media today, are learning incorrectly a lot of issues about dating. So somebody showed me a, you know, a text that they sent someone that that their friend said, so this person had a date with someone, it was two dates. And after that second date, they said, Hey, I really enjoyed the date. I really like you. And then that person took a other person took a step back. And when they not go, so they took a step back. Now they pursued and they did get to see that person again. So they asked them at some point, why did you take a step back? And that person said, because I showed the text to my friends. And they all were like, Oh my God, they're love bombing you. Red flag. They're love bombing. Wow. I liked you. I enjoyed our dates. I really hope you can get to see each other again. Was considered love bombing, which obviously, I get it all. It's not remotely. But like, they learned the term on social media. So they misapplied it. And then that's a warning sign. So people are also misinterpreting. Yeah, that's crazy. What do you want them to say? Just nothing, no engagement or just say, see you next time. Like, what, you know, what are you supposed to say? Hey, I had a fun time. When can I see you again? Yeah, that's it. You can't say I liked you. You can. But this is when you get a weird reaction to that. Understand it's not you. It is not you. Should people be asking their friends about everything the person did or didn't do after the dates and asking them to interpret when they're actually not love experts? It's not only that they're not a love expert. They have biases. Yes. Right. Are they happy in their relationships? And they're really happy for you to have one or they are unhappy in theirs and therefore maybe not be entirely happy for you to find love in yours. Or do they have some jealousy issues? They're not really expressed, but they're there or do they are there in a miserable point, a jaded point in their dating life or in their relationship life where they're just like, think all relationships are like, you know, everyone has biases. Yes. And you have to account for the biases of the people you see counsel from at any stage when it comes to relationships because they will bring those biases to the advice. And when someone is getting into a relationship and let's say they have unhealed emotional wounds, they haven't faced any of their emotional wounds at all and they're getting into a relationship, what could you expect that relationship to happen once they get into it? Based on what those wounds are, there are going to be some issues that come up because it's not going to be smooth sailing. I mean, you know this relationships take a lot of work and they take a lot of honesty and they and first of all with yourself and they take a lot of mutual guidance, right? You're building something together. If you have certain emotional wounds, then you are not building something necessarily in the right direction or correctly or what you think is correct, might not be or what you saw at home from your own childhood, from your own experiences, might not be a great model and so like it'll tilt things in a certain way. Now, it's never too late to get a handle on those. It's never too late to understand what your emotional wounds are and how they might be impacting your relationship and your feelings about the other person. And what you tend to assume like, oh, this is my love language. A lot of people love languages like, just avoid my wounds and that's a love language. Don't do anything to annoy me. Yeah, that's not a love language. If two people get into a relationship who have unresolved wounds or traumas and you could have give them a game plan on how to have a healthy long-term relationship, what would be the actions they would both need to take to start healing those wounds, assessing them, integrating the healing journey? What would that look like? Because most people come to a relationship wounded, we probably all have certain wounds. Even if you've done some work on yourself, you'd probably still have something lingering or something comes to the surface eventually again. So what would be a good game plan together? If, if, and I say if because I don't know a lot of couples who do this, if they could start by acknowledging to themselves and to one another, acknowledging overtly, hey, I have not been great in relationships in the past. I have some stuff. You have some stuff. We both have some stuff, but there's potential here. Let's start with that acknowledgement that we have some stuff that might impact us along the way. And let's keep an ongoing dialogue about how things are going, what feels good, what doesn't, where our stuff might be rearing its head and what we can do about it. Let's keep a spotlight on that, not every second, because that's exhausting, but like let's intermittently do check-ins. Let's intermittent, and let's be open to that kind of feedback, not that you're bad, I'm bad, you did something wrong, I did something wrong. This is our stuff manifesting. You could just use this neutral term of this is our stuff. These are our wounds manifesting. How do we manage them in this context? That's a good idea. I think you know, from the beginning, I think I told you this last interview that when I started dating Martha, I said, I want to commit to therapy in the beginning of our relationship where I can personally grow, you can personally grow and we can grow together with whatever stuff we have going on and try to create more alignment, more agreements from the start rather than a year or two in, frustration comes about, now we have to kind of resolve something together and create agreements later. Let's start with it now. For me, that was the best thing that I've probably ever done in a relationship just by, it just made us appreciate one another also. I'm like, hey, we're in this together. We both got to figure stuff out and we got to figure it out together. That has been really supportive of our relationship. And again, it doesn't make anything perfect or whatever, but it makes it smoother. And it makes the challenging times easier to manage. And when something comes up, you don't have to start with this whole preamble about look, there's something I need to bring up. It's just like, there's an openness to it. Absolutely. Yeah. How can time travel reignite love or passion in a relationship? So a lot of times people will say to me, like, we've been together for a while. It's not that the passion is gone, but it's like, we're both a little fatigued with a relationship with each other. And sometimes an exercise that I suggest to couples, which is a difficult one, and it's a production lift. But if you can do it, it's remarkably effective. And that is like reenact. Not just necessarily your first date, but one of the earlier dates you had in which you realized you started to have feelings for one another. And by reenact, I mean reenact, go back to the bar or to the club, find the same kind of clothes that you wore. Go to, and if the restaurant doesn't exist, find a similar one. Literally try and set that it was Christmas and they were this and they were that. Go to the place, do the thing, and do this long setup of when you're in the moment of, because you're coming to a date. So start separately, try and get into the mindset of how you felt at the time, like, wow, I, you know, this is our fourth date or our tenth date. And I kind of really like her, but I really liked him. But then try and get it. And then literally go through that date. Really? Again, it really helps you kind of remember how exciting it was at the beginning, how, you know, how like this, this new love that was starting to kind of, you know, appear and start, you know, the infatuation that was starting to kind of take over. Those are the really fun moments of dating, right? The initial infatuation. And you want to make them linger and they don't linger that long, but you want to try and make them do that. But try and recapture that uncertainty of it. You didn't know that you're going to end up together. You didn't know that it's over the workout. So have the uncertainty. I don't know. I mean, I really hope this is the one, but I don't know. And then try and go through that first magical moment. And in prepping for it, it might take a lot of prep based on where it was, who it was, who was there. But, but couples were able to do it, were able to really kind of take it on as a fun project. And even in prepping for it, they were starting to get into the mindset. Interesting. What have you seen by people who have recreated their kind of first date moment? With some couples, it's interesting because they had to go back, let's say, 20 years in fashion. Yeah. So they had to go to like vintage stores to kind of find the thing. It's like an adventure though, right? It's like, it wasn't an adventure, but some of them chose to keep that clothing and to wear the clothing every once in a while because it reminded them or to bring souvenirs back that they didn't think to take at the time or to have reminders around to kind of remind them of that exciting kind of time. In terms of the emotional first aid strategies, what would you say is the most effective science back tool that you've either developed or learned that can help people reclaim, I guess, autonomy over their thoughts and emotions that are keeping them stuck in life in general? So to me, when people are stuck in life, it's because they're dealing with some kind of sense of failure. They're feeling unsuccessful in some kind of way. Something's not working. And they have some kind of story about it. And that story is what's keeping them stuck. Really? Because the story is like, I can't do this, or this doesn't work out for me, or if it's the workplace, well, the boss doesn't like me, so I can't get ahead. There's some kind of story and they're stuck in the wound of it. They're stuck in the feeling bad of it. Now, I believe, and this might seem very mechanistic and cold in some way, but I believe that in limits to how long you get to feel bad about certain things in life, like failures or like unsuccesses. And based on the level of that, give yourself an hour if it's small, a day if it's bigger, a week if it's very big. But beyond that, if you're just feeling bad or demoralized or helpless, you're not getting anywhere. So I believe, and I do that with myself. It's one of the annoying things that I force myself to do, which I really... You're like, I can't remain for days. I'm gonna do an hour. But the point is like, when it happens, I then determine how long I give myself, because otherwise I can keep stretching it just one more day. No, this is worthy of this much. And then after that, there has to be a pivot. And the pivot has to be an analysis that is self-critical free, because what really sabotages us is when we start looking at what's not working. And I'm an idiot. I'm so stupid. Why am I a loser? All that stuff, it has zero value. It's not motivating. It's not enhancing our self-esteem. And it's certainly not helping our confidence. It's literally just like, oh, it's choking us. So it has to be a critical free analysis. And the critical free analysis is what's not working for me, where are the obstacles, and then you name each obstacle. For example, boss doesn't like me, so I can't get promoted. You name each obstacle. And then for each one, you start brainstorming, how do you get around that obstacle? Boss doesn't like me. It's two things. How do I change to another boss? Or how do I get the boss to like me? Because you can change the boss's opinion. So who does the boss like? Why do they like them? What are they doing? What are they having? Yeah. You know, if, okay, the boss is like misogynist, he doesn't like me because I'm a woman, right? Then I might need to change because I'm not going to be given the same opportunity here. So then I really need to shift my strategies, but then I'm started to think about what are my options. The minute you're starting to think how to get around an obstacle, then you're already out of paralysis. You're already not stuck. You're already not demoralized. And, and, you know, we all know that your failures are best teacher, et cetera. The, what people get stuck is they don't know how to implement that because they start to look at the failure and they just makes them feel crappy. So they stop as opposed to like, no, you're feeling crappy because you're beating yourself up as you're doing it. Approach it like a detective. Don't have feelings about it. Just analyze. I mean, it sounds like we're talking about getting self-respect. How important is having self-respect in all relationships? And what are the fastest ways that you see people losing their own self-respect? Well, one of the fastest way people lose their self-respect is by having this internal voice of a bully. Not, I'm not saying harsh. I'm saying bully. They are the bully to themselves. They are a major bully to themselves. There's so many people. How bad is that for self-respect? Well, if somebody outside were, you know, if somebody else were like constantly in your head, because that bullying goes on a lot. Like I know people who literally will call themselves loser 30 times a day. Can you imagine if you had somebody following you around in life going, loser, loser, loser, loser, you'd be like this is torturous. But we do it to ourselves and many people do it now. They said to me like, well, I'm trying to motivate myself. I'm like, are you though? Because would that be motivating for anyone else if you did it to them? Well, no, but I'm like, there's no no but. You know, like, well, I'm trying to be a coach. I'm like, that coach will get fired right away. Because a coach is trying to increase the confidence of their players, set a higher expectation, tell them they can do it, not tell them they can't. You know, if you're like, oh, nothing works for me. You know, like I just things never break my way. Those kinds of thoughts, then things never break your way. What's the point of trying? It almost sounds like what we say to ourselves and how we say it to ourselves is one of the most important things we'll ever do. It is the most important thing. Really? Because look, it's I'm all for, you know, hold yourself responsible, hold yourself accountable, set a high bar, set a high expectation. But do not bully yourself, do not chastise yourself, do not name call yourself, do not focus on like, I know so many people who walk around going, well, I'm ugly. And I'm like, how is that possibly useful to you? And I don't care what you look like, you should never be saying, I'm ugly, find something you like about yourself and go, I have beautiful eyes. The rest is not great. What have you seen psychologically? When someone says, I have negative self talk all day long, or I say, I'm ugly, or whatever, not attractive, I'm a dummy, I'm a loser, whatever these are. How badly does that hurt someone emotionally when they speak poorly to themselves? Like, what is the science or the research or the stats around that? Do we have any of that? It's abusive. Really? It's the same. I mean, it's even worse than when somebody does it to you externally. Because when somebody does it to you externally, you can go like, you know, let's screw them. But when you're doing it to yourself, you don't go, screw me. Right. And so it's really toxic. It's absolutely damaging. And it's chronic for a lot of people. And they come up with justifications about why that's a useful thing or why they deserve it. Oh, but I deserve it. Like, do you know, because you're that terrible a person. And well, I am terrible. Like, again, you have to drill down to like, what makes you so terrible, other than the fact that you're suffering, other than the fact that you're really wounded, other than the fact that you're really hurt. Whose voice have you internalized that treated you this badly, that you're continuing their work for them? Like, it's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. And that's something that and it's a difficult habit to change, because it's habitual. And it's a running commentary, a running commentary of your entire life. But you have to get annoyed at it. You have to see it as abusive. You have to see it as some kind of part of you that's bullying yourself. You have to give it a face. You have to give it a name. You have to give it something that causes you and you have to develop an antipathy for it. You have to develop a disdain for a bit. You have to develop an anger toward it. But it's still part of you. So you're putting an anger towards a part of you that's been doing this thing, right? Is it a part of you? It's something you've internalized. It's something that you've developed. But is cancer a part of you? Maybe it's not. Well, it's a part of you. It's attached to you. It came from you. It's in you, but it's not a part of you. It's a part that should be. It's not the healed version of you. It's a part that should be removed. Yes. I think if it is a cancer, it's something you should remove. Interesting. And when we can start to do that with that voice on our head that's putting us down, so many things unlock afterwards, right? What is possible for people when they stop allowing the negative voice to take over their mind and their life and they remove it from themselves and they start using a more empowering voice. What happens for them after that? So if you've tied your legs together, right, Leila, when the sac races we used to do as kids, if you're in a sac and you're trying to move through life, you're not going to get very far. But when you step out of that, and again, stepping out of a sac is much easier proposition than what we're talking about, but when you free yourself up from those shackles, from that abuse, then people are stunned because suddenly like the possibilities, suddenly like it's almost like a little scary because like, oh, I don't have excuses right now. I don't because sometimes it's excuses. It's like, oh, I'm terrible. I'll never because now I don't have to try. I don't have to fail. I don't have to be disappointed, but you're miserable. So what's worse, not trying, you know what I mean? But suddenly there's a freedom. There's an anxiety that comes with that freedom, but there's a sense of freedom there. There's a sense of relief that comes when you really start to like develop. And by the way, when I'm saying develop an intolerance for it, that is a lot of mental discipline. That mental discipline, you are literally doing cognitive retraining. You are trained. That's like, you know, if you want to build a muscle in the gym, you got to go to the gym every day. You got to go a lot and you got to work out a lot. This is 24 seven. This is 24 seven being on God and you'll miss it at first and it'll be there at first. But just as soon as you catch it like, no, that's not true. That's not a voice I want in my head. It is not useful for me. It is damaging. It is abusive. I don't want to live with a bully. Why am I living with a bully? Yeah. And I have compassion for people that maybe had their parents were bullying them or they lived with siblings that bullied them and it became part of their narrative. So it's very hard to unwire, I guess, that narrative, especially if you didn't have the tools or the training or the support when you were younger. So you may be in your 20s or 30s or 40s and still living with that because you never had the tools. 50s and 60s. But look, I sometimes say to them, imagine someone you love and imagine you saying that to them all the time. You'd be horrified. You would feel so cruel. That's what you're doing. Sad. How can someone not beat themselves up for doing it to themselves for decades? Well, if they're hearing this for the first time and they know that they say nasty things to themselves, they know that they say, I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm a loser, I'll never amount to anything, whatever it is that's in their mind and they've been the bully to themselves forever. How can they not beat themselves up even more and say, look at the way the life that I wasted because I did this to myself for decades. How can they, you know, let it go and not... Look, you don't get to like beat yourself up for doing something for decades if you're still doing it. First stop. And that's not an easy thing. That'll take you a while to get there. And then hopefully you were successful. We can talk about like, oh, that's a shame that I kept doing that for a long time. But if you immediately go to know you're right, I'm such an idiot for doing that to myself, you're still doing it. You just found a different angle. Yeah. That's probably one of the hardest things for people to do. For me, it took me a long time. It's extremely difficult. Because most of my school days, I just had confirmation of why I was so stupid because I would get bad test results and people would make fun of me and I was just like, I'm an idiot, I'm stupid. And that was the narrative that I would say, right? And it took me years to try to give myself a little more grace and say, no, maybe I'm not good there, but I'm good over here. Let me focus on the good over here and keep compounding that good. And find other things that I can prove on and see the growth that I've had. Maybe I'm not where I want to be, but I'm not where I once was. And it's focusing on the improvement, the growth, where I am improving, things like that. It took me years. There are, look, I'm a relatively intelligent person. And there are things that I'm really stupid at. There are very simple things that I will get wrong all the time that are so ridiculous. My family, even like they just wait for me to do them because they just stand there and start laughing like, oh my God, you can't do that. How are you this smart over here, but over here, you're not. Right. There's, you know, there are very few people are smart everywhere. Yes. Right. There's emotional intelligence, there's regular intelligence, there's practical intelligence, that, you know, like how you manipulate objects in the world, intelligence. So we all have our areas where we're not that strong and our areas that we're strong. So we can all find the thing we're not great at or that we're quote unquote, and it doesn't mean we're stupid. That's a generalization. It just means that I'm not great at. School, you weren't great at many of the things you are great at. But, but, you know, again, it took you a while to find that balance and to realize the fact that I wasn't great at school doesn't mean that I'm stupid because I'm very good at some other things. And it's true of everyone. We can all find the thing that makes us feel stupid, but we can probably find lots of other things that do not. Yes. And so don't generalize and give yourself a label because of the one or two things. And just because you're not good at one thing doesn't mean you're a failure in life. You know, and you can just acknowledge, oh, I'm not that good at that. And that's okay. Right. And then find the things you are. Yeah. Emphasize those. I don't have to feel bad just because someone else is better than me at something and, and I'm not that good at it yet. You know, it's just like, you don't have to make that your identity also. Mind over grinds how to break free when work hijacks your life. I feel like the next four years as we get into 2030, there is going to be a lot of challenge and stress that could potentially come people's way if they're not prepared for it. I don't want to put this on everyone and say that it's going to happen. But I feel like if people are not emotionally and mentally preparing the way you teach about in this book, the way that you've shared in this interview, and they just keep grinding through life. They just keep around just kind of one step in front of the other. And I'm just going to grind at work and grind at home, just get through it. Eventually they're going to collapse. If they don't learn these strategies now, to be able to apply them now, when there are pressure filled moments in life, when pressure comes at them, whether it's work or the environment or whether it's the economy or whatever, health challenges and family, like when that pressure squeezes you, if you're not emotionally and mentally prepared to take that pressure, it might break you. It might snap you and it might crumble your relationships, everything. And so I really hope people get this book, and I hope they rewatch and re-listen this episode and use some of these tools now because when 2020 hit, it broke a lot of people. And I just have a sense that in the next four years, there's going to be something. We don't know what it is, economically, work-related, AI. Who knows? And I want people to be prepared. And the best way you compare is within your own mind and your emotions. And something that we've talked about many times in this show, something you've talked about in this book. So I want people to get this book, check it out. It's called Mind Overgrind. And I want to acknowledge you, guy, for constantly showing up and trying to serve people the best way you can. Because you have been doing this for four decades. You've gone through your own emotional mental challenges and your own childhood in your life. And you use that pain as part of your purpose to serve people, to give people tools. So hopefully, they don't have to go through what you've been through and other people have been through as well. So I want to acknowledge you for your constant devotion to serving people's minds and emotions, to feel more joy, love, and peace in life. I've asked you these last couple of questions before, but I'm going to see where you're at right now, before I ask them, people can follow you on Instagram, Guy Winch. They can also go get the book and your website, I believe it's GuyWinch.com, is your website, yeah. They can go anywhere and get the book, Mind Overgrind. Check out your other books as well, which I loved, How to Heal a Broken Heart and Emotional First Aid. Is that the other the title? Yeah. Some great strategies in both of those. But this one is called The Three Truths, which you've answered before, but I'm curious with the wisdom you have now, because you're last day many years away from now, and you could only leave three lessons behind to the world. What would those three truths be for you? So I think the number one, and it's going to be a different answer than what I said before, but the number one thing, this is, I guess, from learning, from writing this book, is that we cannot control most of what happens around us, but we can control this. We can control not just how we respond, because that's the thing, yeah, we can control how you respond, but you can control how you think more than we actually allow ourselves to do. So it's not just how we respond, but how you think. That would be the first one. The second one would be that we really have to look at what our thoughts are dictating in terms of our reality, because our thoughts create perception, our thoughts create stress, our thoughts create... So our thoughts are actually dictating our reality, and we have control over them. Not entirely, obviously, but we do, and most people are like, well, I can't control what I'm thinking. You can, and sometimes you can argue about the thoughts that you don't like. For example, we spoke about this idea of the inner critical voice, it's going to appear, but you can argue with it. You can silence it, you can shush it when it shows up. So we are more empowered, than we think. And the third, which is going to be super trite in a way, but the older you get, the more you see it, is that what matters in life are two things, your relationships, and your experiences. And your accomplishments themselves matter less than the experiences they afforded you. Your success, like you can make a lot of money, but unless that allowed you to have certain experiences, or to cherish and cultivate certain relationships, it's not what you will remember on your deathbed, kind of thing. So relationships and experiences are where it's at, and relationships and experiences don't depend on success. And anyone can have them if you prioritize them and realize that's what it's about. It's beautiful. And final question, your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is, and this might be similar to what I said last time, is constantly learning about you, about the world. It's a constant curve of self-improvement. It's a constant curiosity of what do I keep working on? What do I keep improving? What do I keep learning? What new thing is there for me around the corner? That desire to want to get better, to want to perfect, to want to make things, and again, it's a shifting target, because life throws all kinds of stuff at you, so you might have to pivot and suddenly work on this rather than that. But whatever the challenges are, to want to master them, to want to master yourself and your responses to them, to want to improve and become the best version of you that you can be, that's greatness. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Amazing. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to MakeMoneyEasyBook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.