Amy Morin Discusses How We Can All Be Mentally Strong

Welcome to Super Entrepreneurs Podcast. Today we have with us Amy Morin. How are you Amy? I'm doing well, thanks. How are you? I'm wonderful, thank you. Did I pronounce your last name correct, Morin? You did, you got it. Okay, awesome. So grateful to have you on the show, Amy. I know we're all so busy and taking time to come on a show and share your wisdom and add value in the marketplace. It's much appreciated. Absolutely, thanks for having me. No problem. So we, you know, we keep it laid back here, so I kind of allow the guests to introduce themselves in their own words, please. Sure thing. So I am a therapist by trade, spent the first half of my career working in rural Maine as a therapist, seeing people one-on-one in my therapy office. And in 2012, I wrote an article called 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, and it went viral. And over 50 million people read it, and it changed the course of my life because a literary agent was one of those people, and she called and said you should write a book. So I had the opportunity to write my first book, and now I'm on book five. So it's been about 10 years since my first book went on sale, and now I am the editor-in-chief of the biggest mental health website in the world, Very Well Mind. I get to host the Very Well Mind podcast. I get to speak on amazing stages and talk to lots of companies about mental strength, and I still get to write books about how to be mentally strong. And now I get to live on a sailboat in the Florida Keys. So life has completely changed. My career has taken a huge shift over the years, but it's been an amazing journey. That is such a beautiful journey. Thank you so much for sharing that. You know, it just took that one article, and the entire path has shifted. Yeah, but what most people didn't know, so when I wrote this article, I had started writing as a side hustle, as a way to earn a little bit of extra income over the years. Because when I was 26, my husband passed away, and I became widowed. And I couldn't pay the bills. I was a therapist. As a therapist, you don't get paid a lot of money, and you can't work a lot of extra hours. It wasn't like I could put in overtime as a therapist. Our office closed at 5, and we weren't open on the weekends. So I needed an extra job. But I wasn't in shape to really get a real job, because I was in a really dark, emotional place in my life. And writing was something I could do when I felt like it, but I didn't have to do it. So I would write a few articles here and there on the weekends, or during the evenings, if I had the energy to do it. And when I wrote this list of the 13 things mentally strong people don't do, it was really a letter to myself, where I said, okay, I was in a rough spot. My mom had passed away, my husband passed away, and we were facing the death of my father-in-law. He had just been given a terminal prognosis. And I sat down and I wrote this article, and it was really the first one I'd written from the heart. Most of the articles I wrote were sterile scientific studies. And this was the first one that I wrote from the heart, and never imagined it would go viral, but it did. And it was just the evidence that in one of the darkest moments of my life, something still really good happened, and my life took this amazing turn. And while I wished I hadn't had to go through all of those losses, being able to write that article and being able to talk about my own journey has just been a humbling and amazing experience. Yeah. I'm sorry to hear about all the tragedies that you faced, but now you're in a place that you must be serving other people that might be in trouble or some sort of trauma to listen to you and to read the stuff that you're putting out there. That is a big, big value that you're adding to the world, right? Yeah, thank you. And it's easier, I think, to go through hard things when you feel like, if I can then take what I learned and help somebody else, it makes it feel like, okay, this isn't quite so painful. And to know that I'm not in it alone, the emails I get from people all around the world who say, thank you for writing this book, or I could relate when you gave this TEDx talk, or talking about grief and hearing what you had to say really helped me understand my journey better. So it's certainly healing for me too, to be able to talk about it and share. Yeah. And you mentioned from the heart. There's something about the heart. When you do things with heart, everything just gets better. The quality improves, everything. Even for our show, it's complete. The reason why it's growing is just because it's all from heart. We don't just script anything. We just talk from heart with two people. We're connecting. And I found that there's some sort of strength, power behind communicating or dealing with life and people from the heart, and you proved it. And I think whatever we do, knowing that there's meaning and purpose and there's value in what we do. We used to have this janitor at our school, and he was an amazing janitor. And even as a kid, and he would tell us, well, my job is to keep the school clean so that you guys can come here and learn. Isn't that amazing? And he was excited about his job every day. And I think for all of us to know, whatever it is we do, that it serves a purpose and that we're not just making money for no reason. And if it feels like you are, that's a really rough way to live. It is, it is. So what happened from the traumas? Or let me ask this question first. You're in a good place now, mentally. Yes, much better. Yeah. So how was that journey from where you were when you first wrote that article up to where you are now? Did you get help? What did you do? What were the steps? It's a good question. So yeah, so I was a therapist. So intellectually, I knew like, okay, what happens when you go through traumatic experiences? I knew about grief and pain and all the things we do when we experience tragedy. So intellectually, I knew it, but then this was the first time I had to figure out how do I do it on my own? How do I go through this? And then how do I become a functioning enough human being that I can still go to work? Like it wasn't an option to not work. I needed to earn money somehow, but I had to be in a good enough place where I could help other people deal with their problems. And so I read a lot of books. I had to find other people who had been through it as well. So a weird thing when you're widowed at 26 is I didn't know anybody else who was in that situation. Everybody else I knew when they were widowed, they were like 75. And they would try to talk to me and tell me about their experience, but it was completely different. And I was at an age where a lot of my friends were getting married. Some of them were talking about kids and here I am widowed. And so I sought out online. I just figured out, okay, I find this online support group for other young widows and they were all like 30, 40 and under. And to be able to then talk to other people who've got it, like, okay, this is how weird it is to be this age and to be widowed. So that was super helpful to me. And also I was fortunate that I had friends and family who were super supportive. I think that's one of the things that got me through it too, is I had them who were just always right there for months on end. I had people that would call and say, you know, did you eat today? You want to go out to dinner? Do you want to have lunch? Staying connected to people and my husband's friends were amazing. They all sort of rallied around me as well. And I had a strong faith. I had grown up, my mom had brought me to Sunday school from a young age and I had a strong faith. And so I knew I'll get through this somehow. I wasn't quite sure how at the moment, but I knew that somehow I'd get through on the other side and that I'd be okay. But it definitely took a while to get there. And then to figure out too, at the age of 26, my husband and I had all these goals and dreams and things we were going to do together. And I had to decide what goals and dreams do I want to keep, which ones are mine and which ones do I want to give up? And we were foster parents. And so I thought, do I want to be a single foster mom? It took a long time to try to figure that out. And eventually I did. I went on to having foster kids, but there were other things I gave up. I thought, you know, that was our goal together, our dream that we both had, but I don't want to do it on my own. And so that took years to kind of sort out who am I now and how do I want to do that? So it was a lot of self-reflection, a lot of journaling, a lot of just reading, talking to people and spending a lot of time working through the pain rather than just trying to distract myself and go around it. Yeah, I can't even imagine. I can't even relate. I can't, you know, I can't. All I can say is that I feel, you know, the pain, but I don't know what kind of pain, right? So I'm very sorry to hear because that's such a prime time when you begin life, basically, you know, you, you get married and then you go actually take steps, like you mentioned goals, like you go after something together, like a team and that team is breaking up, you know? So my, my condolences and, and, you know, but I hope the future is, you know, obviously looking great for you. Now you're actually helping other people that, that are in this type of trauma as well. Like, do you do some kind of coaching or some kind of help that way at all? Yeah. So what I did was I, I kept working as a therapist for, I guess, another decade or so. And then I wrote this article that went viral. So I started writing books. So now most of my time, I don't do one-on-one anymore. Most of my time now I get to speak to like big companies and go to conferences and speak on stages. And I have, you know, online courses and I get to still communicate with lots of people that way. And then through my podcast and through the Very Well Mind website, I get to reach people on a, on a whole new scale. So I can write an article that can get in front of hundreds of thousands of people or create a podcast that reaches a huge audience rather than one-on-one. I just don't really have a lot of time to do one-on-one stuff anymore. But like my book, my first book is in 40 languages. So I get emails from people all over the planet who say, we never, we don't learn about mental strength, or I didn't know anything about mental health, or it's shameful in our country to talk about needing help, or we don't have therapists available. So to think about that, I came from this really small town of a couple thousand people in the middle of nowhere. And to now be able to say, I reached people on the other side of the planet who I get to talk to them about mental strength and mental health is pretty amazing. Yeah, it is. It's pretty incredible. So for your first book, what would you, you know, without divulging too much, I guess, but what would you say the top three benefits people get from reading that first book? So in my book, I talk about what not to do. So one reason is because when I was overwhelmed in life, the last thing I wanted was a long to do list, like you should practice gratitude and you should exercise for 45 minutes a day. And I already felt like I wasn't able to do a lot of things. So I wrote a list of what not to do. And it was things I had learned through my own journey, but things I'd also learned in my therapy office. I thought, you know, people who just don't have certain bad habits tend to get through difficult times much better and they thrive during the good times. So one thing people would learn is why I talk about what not to do and how to just avoid these most common habits. And then I'll give you a couple of these common habits. So the first one on the list is don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself. The reason that's on the top of the list is because that's where I was when I wrote that article that turned into the book is I was like, you know, this isn't fair. I shouldn't have to go through this, which is different from being sad. When you start to feel sorry for yourself, you exaggerate how bad your life is. You underestimate your ability to cope and you overestimate how awful something's going to be. So the book is really goes through those sorts of things like just don't do this. And it's about the thoughts, the emotions and feelings that we can figure out how to manage in a healthy way. So that would be number two is don't feel sorry for yourself. And a third thing would be that there's a big difference between mental strength and mental health. A lot of people will say to me, well, I can't be mentally strong because I have depression or my anxiety keeps me from building mental strength. But the truth is there's a big difference between those two things. And it makes more sense to our brains when we don't think about it abstractly, but when you think about it concretely, like physical health and physical strength, none of us question that those are two different things. You can go to the gym and you can build big muscles to become physically strong, but that doesn't guarantee you wouldn't ever develop like high cholesterol or a knee problem. You still get physical health problems. Mental strength and mental health are the same. Building mental strength can prevent some mental illnesses, but it doesn't mean that you're always going to be mentally healthy. You might still develop a problem. And as a therapist, I'll say some of the strongest people I ever met were the ones battling depression and anxiety. They were going through really tough times, but yet they were still saying, okay, how do I become mentally stronger today? So that would be number three. The third thing is that I really try to differentiate between those two things. And then what can you do if your mental health is suffering? How can you still be mentally strong and what kind of mental strength exercises can work for you? So the victim mindset is quite common right out there. So what would you, any kind of tips or suggestions that people can do starting immediately after listening to this, if they feel like they have that victim mindset? Yeah, that one is pervasive and it's tough to break out of. And we all do it sometimes that we'll say like this person didn't let me do that or I'm not allowed to do that, or I can't do this or do that. But the truth is we have a lot of choices in our daily lives of what we do and who we spend our time with and how we spend it. And so just sometimes just changing your language or recognizing when you use victim language, like even if you say, oh, I have to go to the grocery store later. You don't have to go. It's a choice. Like I'm choosing to go to the store. Or when you say something like, you know, my boss made me work late. My boss didn't make you work late. Sure. There might be a consequence if you didn't work late, but it was your choice. And so that can help. And another thing is, is to just to take action. Sometimes when we feel like a victim, we're just focused on how unfair things are and how we didn't get what we think we deserve in life. But the truth is we always have something that we can give. And if you want to not feel like a victim, go out there and do something kind for someone else. And you'll see like, I have opportunities all day long to make the world a little bit better. And I can either sit at home and feel sorry for myself that my world isn't very good, or I could go out and do something kind for somebody else. And sometimes just taking that action to say, you know, you might formally volunteer somewhere, but you also might just say, I'm going to send three really kind messages to people. Maybe it's loved ones, or maybe you just go on social media for a minute and say, I'm going to compliment three authors whose books I've read lately and say something nice. Something as simple as that can change the entire outlook of your day when you realize, I have some power here and I have the power to make the world a little bit better. And just kindness goes so far. And not only does kindness help other people, but it helps us feel better too. Yeah, yeah, it does. You know, we call it like the outside in compared to the inside out, right? So outside in is when, you know, for example, when we look at a situation or circumstance or something that happens, it's usually not that, that's not the issue. It's our thoughts about it, right? So when we start thinking about it, each individual will be different, right? If the three people, same situation, one, it might not affect at all. And the one that will be like extremely effective, right? So the whole game is just an inside out game. And if you start living that way, you will start, controlling or feeling better in this experience. Absolutely. I have this friend and she and I talk about this all the time and we laugh about it, but if she and I were to go to lunch together and then maybe go shopping. And at the end of that afternoon, somebody says to us, how was your day? The first thing she'll do is she'll be like, oh, the line was so long at the store today. Well, everyone in my family was like, yeah, sorry. Whereas my take on the day might be a little bit different, but her take is always like, oh, let me tell you how awful it was. And she's not like an extremely negative person, but she finds it like, just like it makes a better story, but that's what she focuses on. And so we'll talk about that and sort of how that plays into her overall mentality. When she always looks for the worst thing, if nine good things happen, she'll want to repeat the one bad thing. And so the two of us could have the same day, but if we were going to then talk about what happened that day, you'd hear two completely different stories and you'd think, did you two really do the same thing today? And it's not that either of us are lying. We just have completely different lenses that we see the world through. Yeah. And so sometimes it's so important just to focus on that. Like, okay, well, what's another way to look at this problem? Or what's a different way to think about this situation? Or what would I say to a friend right now who came to me and said, you know, I have this presentation coming up and I know it's going to be horrible and awful. You probably wouldn't be like, yeah, you're going to mess up. But yet we tell ourselves that, or we convince ourselves that, you know, nobody likes us or that went horrible and we exaggerate. So just learning a little bit more about how your brain lies to you can be super helpful. Yeah. Those voices, right? They're always, they're always making up the stories for this type of situation with your friend and you, right? It's, you know, it's like an individual habit, but derived from a collective habit, right? So it's passed on generations and generations that a lot of people have that habit that they just find what is wrong, and they, it amplifies because they enjoy it. They actually enjoy speaking of it. You know, in my family, a lot of, a lot of, a lot more, pretty much everyone I think will point out all the things that they saw that was wrong with a day or with a moment or anything, right? And when I started, when I started transitioning and when I started moving into the inside out, I sometimes when there's so many of them that do it, right? So I, I sometimes don't even want to say it the other side because they'll say, why, why would you say that? What do you mean? What was good about it? Right. So I just stay quiet. Right. And yeah, my friends, kids will say that too, because they, they obviously go through a lot of the Saturdays with her and Sundays and somebody will say, how was your day? And they'll hear her tell the story. And they're like, mom, you know, a lot of good things happen today too. Why do you always focus on the bad? And, and she's a storyteller, she's a writer. And so she enjoys telling the story, but at the same time, she knows now, like, okay, people alongside me have a very different perception of what just happened. And you made another point too, about, you know, I believe you were saying that when you're going into doing something, you say, well, this is not going to work out or, or, or that type of thought, the quality of that work that someone will go in and do will be inferior to someone who would tell himself like, this is fun. You know, like, I can't wait. This is going to be exciting. You know, like, this is something I get to experience in this moment. I'm alive. I'm breathing. Right. So that quality of workmanship or that quality, whatever they're doing is going to be amplified tenfold. Yeah. I'm a big believer that the thoughts we have often turn into self fulfilling prophecies. If you walk into a job interview and you say, Oh, I'm not going to do very well at this. Well, then you don't put in as much effort and you don't do as well. Or, um, there's a big thing too, about like, if you're getting up to give a presentation in a meeting and your goal is to say, Oh, I hope I just don't embarrass myself. Research will show you perform much different than if you walk in and you think I'm going to crush this. But so often we don't play to win. Our goal is to just not be the worst or people will be like, I just don't want to have worse sales in my division. I just don't want to be the worst at this. Or I don't want, I don't want to embarrass myself in front of people, but don't ever make that your goal to not come in last place. Make sure you, and you don't necessarily have to say, I'm going to beat everyone. I'm going to come in first, but make it your goal to do your very best and say, you know, you don't always have to win, but like, I'm going to get up there and I'm going to do the very best I can. And you'll perform so much better than if you say, I'm just going to get up there and try not to get fired. Or I just don't want to embarrass myself in front of everybody. Yeah. It's the, it's the energy you put out to right before a task. And, and when you, when you see positive things, your energy level is completely different than if you looking at it as with a negative lens. Yeah. And sometimes people come into my therapy office and they'd say, well, my doctor said I had to come into therapy for a few sessions before they'll prescribe medication, but I know therapy is not going to help. So I'm just here to make my doctor happy. So my answer would be, you're right. Therapy is not going to help. If you are convinced a hundred percent, that is not going to be helpful in any way, shape or form. I guarantee it's not, but there's so many things in life we think, well, this isn't going to work, but we kind of go through the motions sometimes just because we think, well, I want to say I tried, or I want to prove to somebody else, this was a bad idea. And then it's not going to work as compared to when we have an open mind and we think, well, I'm going to try this and maybe there's a chance it will work. I don't really see how that might be helpful, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. They've even found that with like medication. If you think of medication, you're going to have horrible side effects. If you take one pill and you think, I know I'm going to be the one percent that has awful side effects. You probably will talk yourself into it. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. You know, as Henry Henry Ford's quote, right? Like if you think you can, you're right. If you think you can't, you're also right. Exactly. Yes. So Amy, Amy, tell me what's your, what do you feel your inner most superpower is that got you to this point in your life? Something deep. Like what, what was it internally that you think got you to where you are today? I think, um, it probably is just a gratitude, to be honest. Um, I grew up, you know, and so even when I had dark days, I thought, you know, Amy, your life's not that bad. Like, yeah, this is painful, but it's, it's okay. And I was fortunate in so many ways. I grew up in rural Maine and my parents were both really hard workers who grew up in some pretty extreme circumstances, but they put in so much work to make sure that my sister and I had a better life than they did. And in comparison to what they had or what my grandparents had, I thought, gee, you know, my childhood was really, really good and grateful for that. And I thought, you know, I, I miss my mom and I miss my first husband, but like, I'm really grateful I met them and I had them in my life for as long as I did. And I just try to take those, the lessons that I learned from them and carry them forward. And then I'm just reminded that even on my, on my worst days, my life is still, is still pretty good. And I think just having that gratitude and it wasn't about denying pain. Cause I think sometimes people just try to be grateful in a way that isn't helpful. Cause they're like, well, at least I have clean water to drink today, but they're like minimizing their pain. Or we say like, Oh, first word problems. It's okay. You can still acknowledge that something's really painful and yet still be grateful at the same time. And I tried to do that where I could say, this is really tough and this is really painful. However, I'm also really grateful that I have a roof over my head. And I heard a story of a, another woman, she was engaged and she had lost her, her partner and, um, had to move right away cause she couldn't afford where she lived. And I thought, you know, I, I, I can write these articles on the side and I can keep the house that I live in and I don't have to move right away. And I was grateful for that. And I was just, I think gratitude is a underutilized superpower and it can get us through a lot. So I try to practice gratitude in my life every day to say, you know, I have a lot going for me I'm just really grateful for that. No, that's beautifully said, Amy, like there's good in everything, right? It just depends on how you're looking at, how do you perceive, what are you looking for? What are you searching? Every situation will have something good. Um, and if you shift that and you're grateful for being alive and breathing and having this opportunity to experience this, right? Like we're floating in nothingness, you know, and we're walking around, we're moving. It's like phenomenal body we have is functioning on its own. We don't have to sit there and say, okay, heartbeat, heartbeat, you know, like we don't need to do that. We just create this. It's something hard comes in our life. You just kind of deal with it and then move forward and move forward as a better person. And you have done that. And I, and I really has been an honor to meet you and have the ability to share your message, um, with the public. And I'm hoping that, uh, you continue to impact many people all over the world. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. Welcome. Any final words you want to share with the audience? I would just say you're stronger than you think your brain will underestimate you. It will tell you, you can't do things and you don't have to get rid of all of your self-doubt sometimes just accepted. Okay. My brain doesn't think I can do this. Sometimes we think, well, if I, if I doubt myself, then I, then I can't do it or it's just proof. I have no business trying, but just accept. All right. I have a little self-doubt. I know that a lot of times people with a little bit of self-doubt perform better than people who are a hundred percent confident true with athletes, true with students who are about to take a test. So just know if you have a little self-doubt, that's okay. Embrace it and keep moving forward. Anyway. Awesome, Amy. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you for coming on the show. Audience. Love you guys. Thank you so much for attending another episode of our show. Please share the episode, share Amy's message. You know, anything resonates with you, get in touch with Amy. All the information will be in the show notes and engage on our social media. Check out her books. You know, the more you pick up on these suggestions and recommendations that we get from our guests, the better it is, right? The more you read, the more awareness will increase. And again, visit my website anytime, dmoa.shahidrani.com. And Amy, thank you so much. And please keep in touch. Will do. Thank you so much for having me. No, it was an honor.