Leading Psychologist: How To Finally Overcome Stress & Anxiety - Dr Julie Smith
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

mindfulness isn't sort of an indulgent rest you know it's not like deep relaxation it's it's almost gym for the mind so you're building that mental muscle to be able to notice where your mind is notice if it's helpful for you or not and then bring it back to now

We are speaking for the second time to Dr. Julie Smith, who is a clinical psychologist and the author of the bestselling book, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? And her book and all of her work is absolutely fantastic and really helps break down kind of the various mental health issues that basically everyone struggles with into an understandable form with lots of actionable solutions as well. I think what people are referring to is worry, right? So it's that kind of, I'm thinking about things way too much. I'm going around and around in circles. It's almost like that kind of thought washing machine, isn't it? Where you're just churning it over and over.

In this episode, we're going to be talking about how to manage stress and anxiety. We talk a lot about overthinking and we talk about burnout. And along the way, we explore emotions, we explore challenging our limiting beliefs, and we explore strategies for how you can think about thoughts and feelings, the ability to hold thoughts and feelings at arm's length, and how we can get more perspective on whatever problems that we're struggling with.

Most things that are sort of meaningful or feel like achievements involve discomfort on the way. So if you're not willing to make yourself feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, you kind of close a lot of doors to yourself, I think.

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Right, so recently I've started to think a lot about my health, and that's why I'm very excited to say that this episode is brought to you by Huel. Now, I've been using Huel since 2017, since my fifth year of medical school, but since interviewing the founder Julian Hearn on this podcast in season one and hearing the origin story of Huel and how it came together, Huel has now become a staple part of my life. Now, if you haven't heard of it, Huel is essentially a meal in a bottle. So each little bottle is like a shake that has 400 calories, 22 grams of protein, and a good balance of carbs and fats and fiber, along with 26 different

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Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for having me. It's been almost two years to the day since we recorded our first episode. And you haven't aged a day. Oh, well, thank you so much. I think it's the retinoids. But your life has changed a lot in that time. Yeah. Yes and no in some way. You know, I guess you might or might not relate to this because you're kind of living the life. Whereas for me, when I kind of started all this,

I already had children and a family and stuff. So while life has changed to a degree, it's also a lot the same. I'm still getting up, taking the kids to school, trying to do some sense of work within those school hours and then being mum again in the afternoon and then working into the night to try and create some sort of content without looking too tired. So that feels a lot the same, but...

you get to do all this really exciting, interesting stuff, like come and see people like you and like have really fun chats and yeah, doing kind of interesting stuff. So, yeah. So what, like I've seen you, you've been on a bunch of TV shows and stuff, like the book has absolutely exploded in like sales numbers and it seems to consistently be on the bestseller lists. And that's just like a level of success that is really rare in the book publishing world. So how's that kind of rollercoaster been? It's been amazing. It kind of took on a life of its own and yeah,

I think, how weird is this? So I looked last week and it was, I think it was like 70 weeks or something, 70 something weeks in the top 10. And yesterday I forgot to get a paper and have a look. So that is something to think of as you're about to publish your book, that, you know, like something that feels huge in the beginning and it feels like it would be a marker of success or not. Later on, you kind of forget to even look because not

Not that the shine comes off things. I'm so grateful and it's been incredible. It still feels good to know that it's getting into the hands of people. Honestly, I think the most, it almost sounds a bit cheesy, but it is true. The most satisfying moments I've had have been speaking to individuals who've

read it and found it useful. So I imagined that moment that you see the book and the Sunday Times would just be momentous. But that moment ends really quickly. It's a matter of seconds and then it's in the past and it's, will it be in the next week? So it's always, you're always looking to the past or the future. It's never the right now. So while it feels good to know that it's doing well and it's in there,

some of the conversations I've had where I've done sort of live events or talks and things, people queue up at the end to come and see me and they want to tell me their story, where they've been, what's happened to them and how it might just be one part of the book that really shifted something for them and just kind of shifted their trajectory a little bit. And then it's then made such a difference over time that they will queue up for an hour to come and speak to me and say,

thank you you know and those you know those conversations are just momentous for me and I hold on to them and um yeah because that's I never wanted to write the book for the set for the sake of it I wanted to do something that was helpful and stick to the reason I'd started in the first place so um yeah those conversations genuinely sort of hit me and stay with me for sure yeah wow yeah I think there's definitely something there around um

you know, the things that bring the most meaning are when we're in service to others. Whereas I think a lot of us, me included, very much so, chase like the achievement accolade of like, oh, hitting the best seller list.

But then as you said, it's just sort of a flash in the pan. It's like, cool, whatever. But I guess kind of seeing that impact is the thing that really, really moves you. Yeah, I imagine that moment of, you know, if that ever happened, that I would be, you know, just overwhelmed with emotion and, you know, drop to the floor or whatever. And there would be this sort of Hollywood moment. And it just really wasn't like that. It was sort of, yeah, cool. Because that bit's sort of out of your hands in some ways while you can

do everything you can do to help that is just one marker of success. You know, I could probably sell that many, but everyone who bought it hated it. But the fact that people come up and say, thanks, I found it so helpful that I bought three for my family at Christmas. And that's, you know, kind of thing. That's a good vibe. So what sort of stories do you hear about the book? Like what kind of things do people say that

make you feel, yes. Do you know what? Because it's obviously a book about mental health and tips that come from therapy, it's often people who have really quite painful stories. And it's not, it's, I think I annoy the staff actually from these events where people will queue up to kind of come and say hello at the end. And it's not just an average, hi, thanks for the book, bye kind of situation. When somebody wants to, you know, is queued that long to say,

I want to just share something with you and it's often the deepest darkest moments of their lives that the book might have helped them through in a very even in a small way um you can't take two minutes over that you've got to take your time and and often people at these events people you need to get through and I'm like no you take your time you you know these people have um been kind enough to to you know buy the book and and then took you up to say um thank you but yeah often

those stories are around being in a really dark place and often not knowing where to turn as well. The reality is however much I'd like everybody to have access to therapy or something like it, they don't for lots of different reasons. And often it's those people you haven't had access to something like that or that it's not been enough for them. If you get your, I don't know, six or 12

allotted sessions of the NHS and then you don't have access to anything beyond that, where else do you go and what do you do? So sometimes it's been in addition to something.

So I guess that's kind of surprising to me that, I mean, for me, reading something in a book can just completely change my kind of belief or a decision or an action and therefore completely change my life. And people kind of joke sometimes, you know, I'll do a lot of videos being like, this book changed my life because they genuinely did because it changed something. So that's not something substantial. But before you said that, I would have thought that, oh, obviously, like a book can't replace like real therapy.

But it seems like people are getting some value from reading a thing and sort of is it helping them reframe a thought pattern or like what's going on that they're finding it so helpful, even if they've tried therapy before?

Yeah, and you're right, you can't replace therapy and it's really an insight to some of the things you could learn in therapy that you could take on yourself if you kind of practice and reflect on those things and use journaling to kind of keep learning those skills and stuff like that. But there's still a lot of therapy that is so much more than that. So, you know, what I'd love to give therapy to everybody, it is impossible for that to happen.

But yeah, if it can help in any small way, then it's worth doing, I think.

One of the things that I've, so I was looking through this the other day, filled out this feeling wheel. And me and one of our team members were doing it to be like, I was trying to figure out like, what are the feelings that I felt in the last week or so? Yeah. Because I guess since last time we did the interview, one thing that I've been, like I've been seeing a therapist as well and trying to get more in touch with my emotions and trying to sort of

feel feelings in the body rather than just sort of walking around with them in the mind. And when people would ask me, how do you feel? I'd be like, what? That sort of question...

I still find very hard to compute almost but then seeing like the feelings wheel I wonder if you can just like describe what is the feelings wheel and like what could be helpful about it to people well actually it's a really common experience where you know some people are in touch with more in touch with their thought processes so you'll ask them what they feel and they'll say well I'm thinking that and they're kind of reeling off the thoughts to you or you know you'll ask them

what emotion is present and they'll say, well, actually I've got butterflies in my tummy or I'm really tense. And so they're more in touch with the physical sensations and motion. And it's all part of the same experience, right? And I think I mentioned a book about it being kind of, it's almost like weaves in a basket. They're all aspects of the same experience.

But you don't necessarily experience the weaves, you experience the whole basket. And so you get this kind of sensation, but you don't necessarily have words to describe that. And when we separate it out into thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, some people just don't have the vocab to describe.

give granularity to you know they might have happy sad angry frustrated but they might not have the vocab to kind of give that any nuance or the fine detail that the slight difference between the frustration you feel in a queue to the frustration you feel um i don't know waiting for some really um important medical results or something like that they're different feelings right but but sometimes we kind of use the same words to for different um

scenarios or feelings because we don't have the vocab. So the feelings will, I can't remember the lady's name now, it's in there. Wilcox 1982. Yes. But it's really just a way of kind of packing in lots of different vocabulary that you can use to describe. Sometimes you just need a little prompt, right? You just say, oh yes, that's the word I'm looking for. That really kind of resonates with you. Because sometimes when you hear the word,

You kind of have an understanding about what that feels like, but you wouldn't necessarily come up with it. But it's a really important skill actually to be able to give words to feelings so that your brain can kind of help you to predict situations and understand them and kind of find a detail. So yeah, it's really useful. Yeah. So it's like, you know, in the middle, we've got like the six key emotions, I guess, or like of anger, disgust, sad, happy, surprise, fear. And then...

you know, around the outside. If we look at happy, for example, there's optimistic and intimate, peaceful, powerful, accepted, proud, interested, joyful, ecstatic, amused, inquisitive, important, confident, respected, fulfilled. And, you know, I was going through and thinking of like, which of these things have I felt in the last week or so? And I was sort of when I did this exercise a few months ago, I highlighted inspired, playful, hopeful, loving,

respected, confident, important, inquisitive, amused, liberated, energetic, eager. And I was like, all of these were the happy ones. But worried was a sort of leads to anxious, which leads to fear, which was interesting to me. And I realized I did have periods of infuriated and irritated, which is sort of a subset of frustrated, which is a subset of angry. And I wouldn't have kind of known. I was like, oh,

I guess I was sort of anxious equals fear and like frustrated and kind of irritated equals angry. There was something about seeing it in the wheel that was like, I didn't quite realize that. I was like, oh, I am feeling fear. Yeah, because sometimes there's social pressure around or social expectations around certain emotions as well, aren't there? Sometimes attached to gender. So, you know, some people who...

Maybe for men, for example, who don't feel that it's acceptable for them to feel fear might use a very different label. Like you say that in the wheel, you can see that it is connected to fear, but they might use a different label because it feels slightly associated with something different. Or it feels more acceptable to say out loud. Yeah.

And maybe for women, that would be more around anger, actually, that lots of women wouldn't use the word angry, but they might use something else, like frustrated or something that feels a bit more acceptable, a bit more kind of nicey-nicey. Yeah. What do you think is the... So, well, one thing I'm still trying to figure out is...

On the one hand, there's the view that feelings are not facts and feelings are just, you know, these sensations that arise in the body that the mind then gives color to. And, you know, if you're feeling angry, it's not actually that something has happened that has... It's not a law of physics that you should feel angry in the moment. It's a story that you're telling yourself about how that person shouldn't have done the thing which makes you feel angry. Mm-hmm.

So that's like one side of it, which I think I drank the Kool-Aid of that quite a lot where it's like, oh, I mean, feelings are just meaningless, right? Because I mean, feelings are not facts and I can, I could control my narrative and therefore control my feelings. Then on the other side, there's the whole idea that like actually feelings tell us something valuable and, you know, we should be mindful of our feelings, but then people will then get, there's the risk that people then get too attached to the fact that they feel angry, not realizing that actually you could potentially change that.

Do you get what I'm getting? I'm not quite sure what, there's some sort of balance between these two extremes, I think. Yeah, yeah, because there's a sort of sense that you can go down the road that, okay, well, if my feelings aren't facts, then can I trust them at all? And are they of any particular use to me? And the answer is yes.

Because we have to accept that the brain's function is trying to help you generate meaning from whatever's going on. So it's trying to help you understand what's going on in your environment, the demands that are placed on you, all of those things. But it only has so much to go on, right? It's only got so many clues. It kind of assesses the situation from your inner world and your biology and what's going on and your blood pressure and your heart rate and all those things and makes an assessment about how we're feeling.

but also from things that are going on around us. But it doesn't always have all the data. And so it has to kind of make a best guess and it offers that up to you in the form of sensations and feelings. So it's got a lot to say because your brain's pretty brilliant at coming up with assessments. And sometimes those early feelings

can be the most valuable when we listen to them. So I think we have to listen to our emotions as we would listen to any message and hold it lightly, accept that it's okay, this is one possible version of this reality and that it's the first feeling I got. So I'm going to hold on to that and I'm going to also stay open to other perspectives or the rest of experience.

Just because it's not the one truth doesn't mean it has to be completely disregarded. There are lots of really valuable things that aren't the be all and end all. So it's holding it as valuable, but realizing that if we blinker ourselves and only look at that as the possible truth, we're really restricting ourselves there and you can really go down

a hellhole in some ways if your thoughts are distressing or painful and that kind of thing.

And I guess that's a skill that people learn in therapy or through reading the book and through practicing, like this ability to hold the feeling but hold it lightly. Yeah, and it's not easy, right? I think the whole thing about mindfulness, I think people get the idea of mindfulness that you've got to go and sit under a tree somewhere in Bali and kind of live that life and it's very goal-orientated. But actually, you can live mindfully in that way and that's often the things that are taught in therapy around mindfulness.

and observing your experience. Okay, so I'm in this scenario. This feeling is coming over me. I can feel it, you know, in this part of my body or that part of my body. And I notice these thoughts are coming in and I'm going to allow that to be here for a minute. And I'm just going to

allow the next experience to wash over me and I'm going to see how that goes. So you're not sort of grasping onto it for dear life, but you're also not pushing it away. You're kind of allowing it to be present. And when you don't either grasp it hard or push it away, it kind of takes its natural course and it washes over you and it moves past you, right? So those are often the skills that are kind of taught. And I talk a lot about

That kind of thing in the book and in my videos and stuff where, because it's quite a difficult concept, right? To grasp. It's like, well, what do I do? How do I make it go away then? And the idea is you don't have to make it go away if you can be open to experience, even if it's unpleasant or negative or uncomfortable. And often when you stop fighting against it, that takes some of the power out of it anyway. Is it kind of like if you're walking outside and it starts to rain?

then you could be like, oh, why is it raining? It's so annoying. Or you could be like, well, I guess it's raining. Cool. And not really ascribe much, any more meaning than that to it. And you can still protect yourself from painful feelings to a degree, right? So you could choose, okay, I'm never going to go out when it's raining, which is probably not going to be helpful in you living a valued life or a life that is, you know, important to you. But you could say, well, I'm going to go out, but I'm going to take my umbrella and my coat.

And so I'm going to do what I can to kind of ease my way through this day so that it doesn't completely overwhelm me.

but I'm still going to go through the rain. Nice. So if like someone gets social anxiety, for example, one option is like, cool, I'm just never going to be in social situations, which is probably not a particularly helpful way of living. But I guess the raincoat analogy is like, cool, I'm going to, you know, these feelings are going to wash over me. I'm going to recognize them for what they are. Their feelings are going to hold them lightly. And here are some strategies that I can use to deal with them as they arise. Yeah, for sure. So when I started doing like,

like live TV and stuff like that, I realized that if I said no to that, it would be out of fear and that I had to practice what I preach, right? So this is why I kept doing it and kept saying yes to it. And so I had to kind of do that. But I recognized that when I felt anxious before, the sort of few seconds before they say you're live,

I could put some skills in place. So that would be my, you know, my jacket and my umbrella. Okay, I'm going to do this because it's meaningful to me to hold sort of courage as a value and challenge myself and push myself.

I'm living a valued life based on what matters most to me and I'm just going to take these skills along to make it easier. You do the physiological style something a few seconds before, just brilliant, really, really helps. Or I'll do lots of reframing as well if I'm tempted to. Often I'll wake up in the hotel room that morning and think, why am I putting myself through this? Then immediately allow that thought to be there but reframe it and come in with, this is really exciting, it's a challenge.

It's really small in comparison to most things in the world. And we'll get through if I, you know, fall on the stage and humiliate myself, I'll have my end back. So, you know, putting all those little things in place, nobody can physically see those things. They're all skills that happen kind of in here. But they allow me to then do something that is living in line with my values. What's a physiological site?

So that's just a breathing technique. So you take a large in-breath and then just when you feel like your lungs are full, you take in another small breath and then you do a long sort of vigorous out-breath.

So it's allowing the out-breath to be longer than the in-breath. And I talk about lots of, it's just one of the different ways to kind of do slow breathing techniques, but they're all in the book. What do they do? Like what's the theory behind it? So the idea is you're not only you're kind of slowing your heart rate down, but when you take that extra in-breath that you're opening up the little sacs in your lungs a little bit wider. So you're

actually getting rid of carbon dioxide more efficiently than you would be. So it helps you to sort of calm the system. And honestly, you know, those really small things, no one can even see you're doing it, but it makes enough of a difference that you bring anxiety. So you're not trying to eradicate anxiety ever. You're just trying to bring it down to a level of intensity that you can really focus on what you're doing and

perform at your best so yeah I wouldn't want to be totally relaxed when I'm you know on live tv I want to be alert and I want to be thinking well and performing at my best but I also don't want to be completely overwhelmed and catastrophizing I want to be kind of in the zone so it just helps you know only a few breaths it helps you to really kind of get in the zone and then do what you do and it sounds so in in that moment I guess you could tell yourself the story that

oh my god, I'm feeling some level of anxiety on live TV. I'm not cut out for this. Why did I do this? Like, oh, this is not for me. But I guess you're like, no, it's fine to feel some level of anxiety as long as it's not hindering my performance too much. Yeah. And that's what the mindfulness stuff does really is it changes your relationship with all emotional experience because you're accepting all of it, the good and the bad or the

you know, comfortable and uncomfortable, should I say, as just a part of being human and as part of the human experience. So you're kind of allowing that to be there. So, okay, when I do this, I notice those sensations, my heart pounds just beforehand and, you know, I'm tense and I associate that with anxiety and excitement. I'm going to hold that and I'm going to go for it. So it's the sort of long-winded way of saying feel the fear and do it anyway. Nice. One question on this front.

So one thing that I struggle with in my relationship, for example, is that if, let's call her Jane, if Jane is upset with something that I have done in some kind of way, then I'll feel this strong thing of like, oh no, I need to change my behavior. I need to sort of do something differently to make her not feel upset. And whenever I have that thought, I'm always like, I feel it feels kind of weird because it's like,

I can't make anyone not upset. And actually, this thing that I have done is like something that I actually do value. And maybe it's just okay that she's upset. And I was talking to my sister-in-law about this. And, you know, in the context of,

You know, she was saying when her husband leaves on a business trip, she feels sad. And I was like, oh, but then, like, you know, why is he going on these business trips? And she was like, oh, well, I mean, it's okay that I feel sad. Of course I'm going to feel sad, but, like, that doesn't mean he shouldn't go. And that was kind of like a weird thing for me because in my mind it's like managing someone else's emotions sort of feels like my job. But whenever I think that, I'm like, no, that's just not the way. Do you get what I mean? Yeah. And that makes relationships then feel...

difficult if you have to make sure they feel a certain way all of the time because it's impossible to control that right because there'll be certain emotions that come up not because of you but because of something else um and then it all feels very uncontrollable um and and it's a sign isn't it that if you if you feel uncomfortable with their distress in some ways that's a sign of how much you care for someone so it's it's okay to kind of hold that

without acting on it or just to communicate. You know, whenever I see you upset, I have that urge to try my best to make it all go away.

But sometimes that isn't even what's necessary, is it? People often get that when someone's crying. So you get that sort of, I've got to make this go away. And that's when people say things that aren't necessarily helpful because they might say something that kind of minimizes the distress or the problem. And what they're trying to do is immediately get the person to stop crying because they're

their distress feels uncomfortable to us. And actually what they need to do is feel validated. Yeah, this is painful. Wow, this is okay. I've got your back. I'm here for you. We'll walk through this together and then the emotion will come down naturally anyway. So when you're both willing to contain that and sit with that, if you go to therapy, for example, and you feel lots of raw emotion and the tears are coming and...

A therapist won't try to stop you from crying. They will sit with you through that and help you to contain that safely so that it takes its natural course. And at some point, that will tail off and you'll feel something different. And then you're on to the next experience.

Yeah, I think whenever I see someone crying, I always feel like, oh, this is a problem that I must solve. And it's like the natural urge to be like, oh, let me do something. Yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it? Sometimes you often even cause it because, you know, if someone's really tense and anxious or if they've had a terrible day and then you go in for a hug and then whoosh, it all comes out. And often that's because that person's been holding on to lots of stuff.

the whole time. And the minute someone shows compassion and care, they feel safe enough to sort of release whatever emotion is there. And so that can sometimes come out in tears. And then you think, oh no, I caused it. Maybe I shouldn't go near you. What's going on? And then you start sort of questioning yourself about what you should do. And that's often based around the want to control the emotions of the situation rather than allowing whatever comes up to just be. And then communicating that,

whatever we feel, we're just going to be curious about that. That's another thing that comes up a lot in therapy is turning from judgment to curiosity. So rather than thinking a certain emotion needs to be squashed or pushed away, we're just going to be curious about all of them. What's this about? What is this feeling and why is it here and what does that show us?

And then maybe it doesn't show us anything. Maybe we just let it pass. Like you were saying, it's like a piece of information that you hold lightly to be like, huh, I wonder if I should change something based on this or not. Yeah. Like sometimes your partner's upset because there's something going on in the relationship. And sometimes they're upset because having a rough time. And we just have to kind of soothe our way through that and be there together. And sometimes that's enough too.

Nice. What are your thoughts on the idea of, I've kind of heard two perspectives on this, that if it's nighttime and you're having an argument with your partner, one school of thought is never go to bed angry and like hash it out. And another school of thought is, no, no, no, absolutely go to bed angry because you'll get over it by the morning. Yes, yeah. Well, I can see both sides to it, but I would totally sit on the second one really because sometimes when you're in a really high emotion state,

you're not in a position to resolve anything because you're both so angry with each other or upset with each other. And so the words coming out of your mouth aren't helpful, but could cause more damage. And so it's okay to take time out and go and sort of calm the system, get back to somewhere close to a calm state. But sleep does that for us, right? You know, you can go to bed feeling something really uncomfortable or intense, and then you can wake up the next day and think, oh,

I feel fine now. And sometimes you don't. But yeah, I would say if taking a break from each other or having a sleep is what is necessary to help bring that emotion down so that you can

talk to your partner with more respect as you resolve something then do it nice yeah a friend of mine mentioned this to me it was it was a couple months ago and i was you know he's he's been married for a few years so i kind of asked him you know what's what's the secret and he said oh man the one secret is that he set a ground rule that like after 10 p.m you're not gonna have any arguments

Because he was like, yeah, his wife would like, they'd be in bed and the wife would then bring something up, like a grievance or something. And in the early days of the relationship, he would like respond and they'd end up up until like three o'clock in the morning trying to hash it out and not get enough sleep and then feel a bit miserable.

And he was just like, you know what, if there's something to be talked about, it can be done before 10pm. And he said that just that one change made such an enormous difference to their relationship. Yeah. And then also if you start arguing into the night and then you're both also sleep deprived for the next day. So it's unlikely to be resolved for a few days until you're both kind of in your right mind again. So yeah, I'd say that's pretty normal. Do you and your husband have any sort of relationship rituals like a weekly date night or like a weekly...

discussion meeting or yeah I know some people do that sort of stuff no and and you know what we're so busy um we used to kind of you know before we had children there were lots of holidays and going out and socializing and all those things um but now we genuinely you know love spending time as a family and when we're not doing that we work together anyway so well he still works um

during the day at his own thing and then we make the content together in the evening so we spend time together and we're being creative together sometimes that's fun sometimes it's not so you know sometimes there's just a work element to it and you're grinding and and I'm kind of you know we're trying to film and I'm sat there kind of swearing at myself thinking I just don't want to be doing this right now and he's trying to encourage me come on um or the other way around um

So, no, I don't. Do we have any rituals? I don't know. Not sort of really salient ones that I can say, that is our ritual. I'm sure we have little things. Probably something that's really helpful that's developed over the years of knowing each other is humor and being able to find humor in moments that could turn into something. So I think when you're younger and you're in the early days of a relationship,

things that often turn into something because maybe because you're not so secure in yourself or secure in the relationship that maybe they need hashing out maybe those things need those discussions in the early years and then you once you've been together a while you know where that's going you know it's the same old thing so you can almost kind of laugh at each other's imperfections and um

or we can anyway, but we've known each other for a long time. So yeah, sometimes we can kind of start to moan and then it all becomes a bit of a joke and we laugh it off. And then it just helps you to get this sort of perspective. You just sort of shift out for a minute and you get this bird's eye view of everything and how ridiculous it is. And then you carry on with life. Nice.

So changing gears slightly, we asked our viewers and listeners of the podcast through our Telegram community, which will be linked down below in the video description and show notes, what they wanted to hear from you. And loads of people were asking questions around how to manage stress and how to manage overthinking. Okay. So I wonder if we can kind of dive into those. So one of our listeners, Amar, asked...

do you have any practical tools for dealing with overthinking? So I guess like what is overthinking and like how do we manage it? Yeah, I guess overthinking is that term, isn't it? That's sort of been used a lot online that I probably hadn't really sort of

used clinically before that. And I think what people are referring to is worry, right? So it's that kind of, I'm thinking about things way too much. I'm going around and around in circles. It's almost like that kind of thought washing machine, isn't it? Where you're just churning it over and over. And sometimes, you know, if that's about the past, that would be, we'd call that rumination. So

You're just churning over something again and again, but in a really non-productive way that's not going to come to any kind of resolution. And actually, rumination is a key predictor of the sort of maintenance of depression or relapse of depression as well. So that rumination of going over things in the past

tends to get you down. Whereas worry or overthinking about the future and that kind of churning over, often it's catastrophizing thoughts, that kind of thing, the worst case scenarios, what am I going to do if, what am I going to do when, that leads to anxiety, right? Because we're starting to think of the future, not necessarily in a positive way, but in the worst case scenario way and predicting I'm not going to cope way

So then you get more and more anxious. And when you're anxious, then it creates this sense of those things demand your attention even more. So you feel like you need to spend more time thinking about these things because you're convincing yourself that you're going to come to a resolution. But when you're worrying, you're not really answering the catastrophizing questions. So the what ifs, you know, you kind of repeat them in your mind. What if this happens? What if that happens?

And you'll recognize that through if you're having it as a conversation. So if you're with your partner, for example, and you're saying, well, we can't do that because what if that? And then they might come up with a resolute, well, then we'll sort it out this way. But what if that? And what if that? And so you realize that no matter how much the other person tries to reassure you, you will find another catastrophizing thought to come up with. So, yeah, you've got those two kind of areas of, I think, what people are referring to as overthinking. Yeah.

Nice. That leads to different emotions. So I had a bit of a moment when you said, I think the first thing you said was that overthinking is basically just worrying. And I was like, oh, it is. Yeah. Because I guess overthinking is a word a lot of people use, but they wouldn't necessarily use the word I'm worried. But actually I'm worried is like, you know, let's call a spade a spade. Yeah. So worry about the past leads to, well, rumination on the path to depression. Worry about the future leads to anxiety because of the fear of bad things happening. Yeah.

And neither option is anything you really do anything about. So it's a somewhat unproductive cycle of thinking. And again, that's where living in a mindful way and using mindfulness skills helps you to stay in the present because in the very present, if all we have is right now, then there's much less to fear and feel depressed about in the here and now for most people. Yeah.

So, mindfulness is not about never thinking about the future, because we need to, right? We need to live as if we have a future. And it's not about never thinking about the past and finding resolution in that. It's about recognizing which thoughts arrive

and which ones are actually useful to you, which ones can lead somewhere, and which ones are just churning over and over and causing you distress. So it's about kind of observing thoughts that arrive, noticing what emotions they bring with them and how they make you feel and where they tend to take you. Because I think with overthinking,

It often tends to be the same thing over and over again. So you know where it goes, right? So in the end, once you've sort of been mindful for a while, you get to know, okay, I know that if I go down this path, I know how I'm going to feel. I know where it's going to go. And then just by doing that, you get this kind of little window of opportunity that opens up where you get to choose whether you go down that road or something.

Sometimes you will. Or you do something different and you turn your mind back to the present and you almost wait for the next thing to come and the next experience. Or you mindfully participate. So you're very active mindfully. So you'll do something that draws your attention to the here and now. Because if the worries, I mean, I did that. I talk about it in the book, I think, where when we first learned about mindfulness as clinical trainees,

my cohort. It's kind of embarrassing, really. You'd imagine that a bunch of trainee psychologists would be really open-minded and a sort of nice audience to teach that kind of stuff to. And I remember feeling terrible for the teachers at the time because it was a room full of sort of giggles and messing around and everyone was thinking, are we really going to teach this? Is this helpful? This feels a bit wishy-washy. And I was absolutely a cynic when I first learned about it. And it wasn't until we got to

It was exam season, we were coming up to the Viva exams and I had different things due in, stressful time. And at the time, that's when I used to kind of go out for a little run in the afternoon as a way of just getting away from the desk and de-stressing.

And so when I went for this run and I thought, I'm just going to try this mindfulness thing while I'm running. Let's just see. Right. Okay. So, and I'm running through a sort of forest track on gravel. So I just focused on the sound of my feet on the gravel as my anchor to the here and now. So that was the thing that's happening right now is what I can hear and what I could see around me in the forest and stuff. And thoughts of emails, deadlines,

career possibilities or what on earth is going to happen to me after I qualify those or will I ever even qualify those kind of things. Those thoughts came all the time, probably thousands of times during that run. But each time I noticed that thought or noticed that I'd gone off with one of those thoughts, I just put myself back to the sound. And I probably brought my mind back a thousand times. And then as I got to the end of that run, I thought,

Okay, okay, I get this. It's not that you have this goal of ultimate focus and no other thoughts distract you and a kind of monk style kind of image, that stereotypical thing that people think of. It was more that I chose, I constantly made a choice about where I was gonna place my attention in those moments. And that gave me, for this sort of half hour jog or whatever it was,

It meant that I chose not to worry for that time. I chose not to overthink everything. I knew I couldn't do anything about it, right? I'm out in the middle of the forest running. So I chose to just focus on the here and now for that time. And, you know, it was in those sort of micro moments, a little break for my brain, but it was work in a sense that I had to keep bringing my attention back. And that's the thing is, is

Mindfulness isn't sort of an indulgent rest. It's not like deep relaxation. It's almost gym for the mind. So you're building that mental muscle to be able to notice where your mind is, notice if it's helpful for you or not, and then bring it back to now.

And sometimes that's really difficult to do. And sometimes as soon as you bring your mind back, it's gone again. And you have to do it again and again. But yeah. Nice. That's the best description of mindfulness I've ever had. Because I've always had, like, obviously, mindfulness is a big buzzword. Yeah. But that idea that mindfulness is being...

basically drawing your attention to the present moment yeah on purpose on purpose which means that the thoughts are there and then the thoughts leave but you're not like attaching to them or over identifying with them i kind of found myself doing this last night so i was um

sort of very jet lagged because I got back from America yesterday and I couldn't sleep until like 5am. And so I was like literally hours in bed, just like lying there. And, you know, I was already a bit sleep deprived because I didn't really sleep on the plane. And I was in this sort of like negative, like kind of mental headspace where I was then thinking about this conference I was at last week and like a few things that happened there and what that means for the business, what that means for my life and what that means for my relationship. But it was kind of like

This is actually just like an unproductive sort of thought process to have right now. Because I also recognized that it was a Tony Robbins concert. Well, I say concert. It was sort of a cross between a concert and a seminar last week. And one of the things he often talks about is being in the right like state to make decisions about certain things. And I was kind of thinking to myself, okay, I'm overthinking all this stuff about the business and about life. But right now, it's a bit of the night.

It's kind of hot. Like I'm sleep deprived. This is just not a good time to worry about this stuff. And so I was, I was trying to kind of draw my attention to my breath and things like that. And then I would sort of count like, okay, I got, I got up to like seven and then I would just forget because the mind would wander again. And I would bring him back to the breath to be like, nope, it's all good. And after a few cycles of this, I kind of just had a moment of serenity where I was like, that's fine. Everything is fine as it is like life's good. Um, and, uh,

I find that whenever I have these sorts of moments, I almost like laugh to myself because the conclusion is always,

everything is actually just fine as it is like yeah i don't need to worry so much about the stuff if i could do something about it i'll do something about it cool action point let's talk to this person about this thing on wednesday when i meet them like whatever um and yeah it's so tempting isn't it when we start to you know the mind wants to be busy and you know you kind of it's so tempting to go down that route and try and solve one of life's problems while it would be most helpful for you to kind of go off to sleep isn't it and um so i actually use mindfulness a lot um

in that same way that if I sort of get into bed, my mind is busy on things. I'll just focus on like the physical sensation of being in the bed and the kind of, you know, what's the texture of the sheets? What's the temperature of the room? That kind of thing that just kind of brings you back and kind of says, yeah, not now worries. I'm doing this. And I find that really helpful. One of the things you talk about in the book is to use a distancing language. What is that?

Yeah, so something from acceptance and commitment therapy, so ACT therapy, we talk about things like thought diffusion and getting this kind of separation from thoughts and emotions really. So there are lots of different techniques you can use, but I use the kind of example of, if you remember the Jim Carrey movie, The Mask. You've probably, you're too young, aren't you? I think I saw it on TV one time, yeah.

Actually, I was talking about it recently at, I think it was the Happy Place Festival. And I said, oh, does anyone remember the video, The Mask? And everyone was like, what's a video? Who's this old lady talking to us? So yeah, in The Mask, so Jim Carrey finds this kind of like

nothing looking old wooden mask and it looks like nothing but when he puts it on and he holds it close to his face it kind of grasps him around the back of the head and then it controls everything he does everything he says thinks everything but again if he takes it off and he just holds it at arm's length he gets to see the mask for what it is which is just a mask and it then has no control over how he feels or what he does

And it's a bit like that with thought diffusion. It's taking, so we talked about thoughts are not facts. Holding a thought as a fact or thinking because I've thought that it must be true is a bit like putting it here. It's your kind of, you're blinkering yourself from seeing any other perspective. So all you're doing is taking a thought from kind of here to here and you're going, okay, now I can see it for what it is, which is one possible perspective.

And then you've got all this space to kind of consider other things as well. So sometimes like a really simple technique might be, okay, if you're, lots of those thoughts are causing you distress, writing them down, but not only writing them down, starting that sentence with, I'm having thoughts that, or I'm noticing the thought that. So you're immediately kind of priming your mind for, this is a thought.

This is not, I'm not writing a fact, I'm writing a thought or a perspective or the story I'm telling myself is or the narrative currently is. Those kind of beginnings of sentences can just help to give you that extra arm's length

So that you can see that thought for what it is. And just something as simple as that can take some of the power out of it. Or some people with different anxiety disorders like OCD will kind of give a name to a certain type of thoughts. Or, you know, if there are lots of anxious thoughts, they might

give that person an A, as if there's a sort of person with having those thoughts and thank you, Elgar, or whatever it is for, thank you for bringing those thoughts. And all you're doing when you just give little comments like that is you're just taking a step back from it. So you're getting a bird's eye view on it so that it's not here blocking your view of everything else. Nice. That's so good. Yeah. I think that's, I guess that's one of the benefits of journaling

that you write the things down. And I often find myself saying, you know, like my internal narrative is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And then once it's down on paper or on the iPad, I'd be like, okay, well, that's just clearly absurd because that's just not true. Yeah. But when it's in the mind,

It's so easy for the mind to convince itself that that's true. Whereas written down on paper, it's like, okay, well, clearly this is just BS. Yeah, right. And some people will kind of have a thought and think, I just can't even write it down. It just feels too, you know, it feels too embarrassing or, you know, exposing to write it down. And sometimes that's because we're buying into it more than we perhaps could or should. And so, yeah, the process of writing it down and the feeling of exposure that comes with writing it down, even if no one else can see it,

is you kind of always getting honest with yourself about let's kind of put this to the test and see if see if I can kind of still feel the same way about it once I've written it down on a piece of paper

Have you come across The Work by Byron Katie? Yes, yeah. That was one of the books I started reading last night when I couldn't sleep. Because I had this Tony Robbins event and he was kind of talking about this method. I just find it really helpful. It's like these four questions when you're having a thought or some kind of limiting belief. Question number one, is this true? And then just asking yourself yes or no, like, you know, the body will have a response to that. Question number two, is this really true?

It's like, huh, actually, perhaps it's not. And the way that he was talking about it at this business conference was a lot of us will have these limiting beliefs about what we can or we can't do. And we'll say, you know, in my case that, oh, you know, I shouldn't, I can't grow my business because if I do, it'll mean my lifestyle is going to become more stressful. Like, is that true? Is that really true? Is like, have I actually examined all the evidence and like landed at this conclusion that growing a business always means that the owner becomes more stressed?

And just writing it down and asking those questions. And then, you know, the next like question three would be something like, how does it make you feel to identify with that thought? And then question four is, how would it make you feel if you just chose not to identify with that thought? And then you do like a turnaround, I think she calls it, where you sort of

write down the exact opposite of which in this context would be, the more my business grows, the less stressed I'll be. Yeah. And you find reasons to support that. And it's just like a very simple step-by-step process where I was like, damn, this is actually bloody helpful. Yeah. And, you know, it's a really sort of interesting, I say variation of, it's kind of CBT in some ways that CBT will look at, okay, thought challenging. So it's, you know, and that would be one way to do a thought challenge is just asking yourself, is it true? Yeah.

Often when we're really stuck with a thought and it's causing us a lot of distress, it's because we genuinely buy into it and...

So, you know, once you get to the point of therapy and you ask someone, is that thought true? They will say yes. And they do believe in it. And that's why they're in such pain. And so sometimes it's not enough. And that's when you can go into the sort of challenging that thought. So looking at the evidence. So is it true? OK, let's let's just play around with the idea of taking it to court and and

Where is the evidence, not only in my opinions, but what evidence would stand up in court to say this is true? And then looking at the other side, where's the evidence that it might not be true or might not be the best reflection of reality right now? And you can go into doing all that kind of thought challenging stuff, looking at both sides, getting really honest with yourself about it.

And you can get help from friends and stuff to do that if you're not in therapy. Because sometimes it's really difficult when you're really stuck on something to even consider other options. And that's why you're stuck, right? Because it's not easy. But for some people, that's not the best way because it can set up

argument in your mind and then you're just ruminating on you know so you can kind of try and go down for the you know the all the evidence that this thought isn't true and then your mind just keeps coming back with yeah but yeah but this is the reason it's true this is the reason it's true and you end up

almost in more distress because you're just going back and forth with this sort of internal argument. And that's when the act stuff is super helpful. So the diffusion stuff. So it's like, actually, do you know what? True or not, I'm just going to push this thought to there. And I'm just going to see it for what it is for a minute. And I'm going to try and hold it lightly. And I know that that's one option. I can go down that and I can go down that route and I can kind of fuse with that thought and I can spend time with it. Where is that going to take me?

And what are my other options? And sort of holding those options lightly, which is in some ways a bit more mindful. So rather than getting into the nitty gritty and trying to find the truth.

It's acknowledging that often a truth is a mixture of different opinions and not one. And, you know, sometimes you're never going to find the truth. And being okay with that, kind of holding that lightly and moving on to the next experience. Yeah, one of the things I find helpful is that almost there is no truth. It's just, you know, generally, if I think of the...

the disempowering thoughts that I have, they're not things that are like objectively true or not. It's not like I'm not going to be ruminating by the fact that I cannot physically bench 200kg. But I might be thinking, oh, my content's not valuable. People don't like me. I'm going to become irrelevant. Like, oh, I'm a bad public speaker or whatever, whatever the thing might be.

these things like you know i was speaking to my cousin the other day in the car and she just casually threw out the phrase oh i'm just really lazy and i was like are you is that you know is that true and she'd never really questioned that belief because i guess a belief is just a thought that we i that we hold with some level of certainty and we sort of went went over the evidence a little bit i was like i don't know i mean to me it doesn't look like you're lazy because you're doing this this this and this like how do you feel about that she was like

Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess when you put it that way, you know, perhaps I'm not lazy. And it was it was such it was almost a revelation for her to be like, oh, I'm not actually lazy. Shit. Like, I've been telling myself the story for such a long time.

But I find it helpful to imagine the idea that there is no truth. It's just a matter of a thought that we believe because we have certainty with it. And actually, there are way, way more options out there than believing that one specific thought that I'm lazy or I'm a bad public speaker or whatever the thing might be. And that's where labeling thoughts can be really helpful too. So, you know, noticing a thought for what it is is often, you know, if with that situation, it's as you have the thought, recognizing...

That's a judgment or that's a self-criticism or that's an opinion or that's a memory or that's a story I tell myself or that's a prediction about the future or there's a catastrophizing thought. So, you know, there are lots of different types of thoughts, none of which would qualify for giving fact as it is.

So as soon as you can kind of notice, you know, be mindful of a thought, notice it and then label it as, oh, yeah, that's a, you know, self-critical judgment of mine. Then you're in a better position to be able to take it for what it is and not

buy into it you still might hold it there and you still might feel like you're lazy but noticing that it's an unkind way of speaking to yourself and an unhelpful kind of thought pattern or an opinion um helps you to kind of helps it to carry less weight yeah and have less effect on how you feel yeah like you're holding it at arm's length again yeah

So it's almost like this idea, like labeling this as a narrative or as a story or as a memory or as a self-criticism helps it sort of be like, oh, actually, it's just that wooden mask that I can hold a little bit away from. Well, it sounds like you did a really great sort of thought-challenging exercise with her. So well done. Thank you. I really like the thing about, like, would this stand up in court? Again, I've been blessed not to really suffer with any mental health problems, but...

For example, if someone is highly anxious or highly depressed and a depressed person might think life will never be good again. And obviously that one's done up in court. And I've got a few friends who have experienced that. And I kind of asked them about this, that in that moment, you obviously know it's not true.

that like life will be better and they were like yeah you kind of know intellectually that it's not true but like you feel emotionally and in your soul that like of course it's true so

I guess, to what extent does challenging thoughts in court help with the more extreme forms of mental health problems? That's where it takes more time and effort. Like you were saying about the questions from the book that you'd read. Those can be really, really helpful in a light way. But when someone is really depressed, you can spend a lot of time

on something like thought challenging or and and i'm working out whether that's helpful or whether you move to something like diffusion and kind of just separating from it and allowing it to be there because you know that's the that's the bind and depression is that it's not that this thought appeared out of nowhere and then made you feel depressed the two are occurring at the same time so when you're when you're depressed you're more likely to have those thoughts yeah and you're more likely to believe in them and

And when you're having those thoughts, you're then more likely to feel more depressed. And so it's this kind of cycle, this downward spiral that you're kind of stuck in. And so, you know, therapy is often a process of chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. There isn't the sort of one turning point where you go, oh, okay, yeah, the future could be fine. And then everything's okay. It's a sort of

Often we'll do a thought challenging task and you'll rate at the beginning. So you'll get your thought that's causing distress and you'll rate, maybe give it a percentage on how much you really believe that thought to be true and how much you buy into it. And it might be 100%. It's not unusual for it to be 100%.

And then you'll do all your different exercises kind of trying to challenge it. And you're not trying to turn it on its head as much as loosen it off, you know, just holding it lightly. So you might then, after you've done some of those thought-challenging exercises, rate it again for how much you believe in it. And that might go from 100% to 60% or 70%. And that's success, right? So that's just slightly loosening. So you're allowing yourself to consider that there could be other ways of looking at this.

And that would be, okay, movement, progress. And then, you know, move on to the next thing. And that's why these things take time, right? That's why no one can rush in and convince someone not to be depressed because there's lots of different layers and everything's binding it together from different avenues and different kind of angles. So you have to kind of pick it apart like those weaves in the basket. Nice.

I guess one of the things that came up when we were doing, you know, asking the audience as well about the podcast is the idea of positive thinking. Where, like, it sounds like some of the stuff, you know, we were talking about reframing earlier. Yeah. That sounds like it could be, quote, positive. What is positive thinking? Because that also feels like one of these buzzwordy thingies that also feels to be missing some kind of nuance. And that's where I kind of...

I get asked about it a lot because I put it in the book about the sort of positive vibes only trend online and the kind of, you know, don't allow yourself to think any negative thoughts and that kind of thing. And I don't really buy into that side of things because

In order to do that successfully, you have to really deny your own human brain. Because we think of it as in your brain is set up to kind of help you survive, but also to help you generate meaning and understand your environment and what's going on around you and what demands are placed on you. And if your brain is doing that well, then...

a fair degree of the time it's going to come up with some sort of negative ideas about what's going on, right? Because the world isn't, you know, Barbie land or whatever. And so

If you set yourself up with this idea of I'm not going to have any negative thoughts, I'm going to be so positive and then you inevitably have a negative evaluation of something, you then criticize yourself for being so negative and I'm such a negative person and I'm this and that and then you go down and down and down and down, right? Because I had a negative thought, maybe that thing was negative, maybe it was an accurate reflection of your reality. But you then instead of using that information, you get into this spiral of criticizing yourself for having been negative.

So again, I think don't give yourself the expectation that you are going to be 100% positive all of the time. Just accept that you are human and when you have a negative thought, some of those will be helpful to you actually and some of those won't.

I think in some ways that kind of wisdom is being able to hold the, go back to the hold them all lightly thing and then ask yourself, which ones do I want to spend time with? Is it going to be helpful for me to spend time with this and go deeper with it and connect with it? Or is it something I can then let go of and move on from? We've talked about...

you know, if we move on to, if we talk about like anxious thought patterns, we've kind of alluded to the idea of catastrophizing. There's a few other things that I think you talk about in the book around, you know,

you know, personalizing, overgeneralizing, labeling. I wonder if we can just go through some of these and, you know, for people who might not be familiar with them. So what is personalizing? So personalizing is that thing that we all do. I mean, all of these biases are human and normal, right? So they're not pathological. They are your brain taking a quick shortcut to help you come up with an explanation for what's going on.

and possibly help your survival, but do that really, really quickly. So, you know, the idea that your brain only has certain information to go on. So let's say you're walking down the street and you see someone you know on the other side of the street. So you wave and you say hi and they don't, you feel like they've seen you, but they don't wave back. And then your brain goes straight to, oh.

That thing I said the other day must have offended her. She must hate me. Everyone must be talking about me. I'm so awful. What was I thinking? How could I say something like that? And you go down this kind of spiral. And if you kind of get the bird's eye view from that scenario, we could sit down here and scribble out 10,000 reasons why that person might not have smiled. But you go down this hole of kind of self-loathing. And so you're taking an event

that could have lots of explanations or could be fairly neutral and you're making it about you and often in a negative way that is kind of painful or hurtful to you. So you kind of personalize stuff. Nice.

And I guess kind of understanding these is like if you understand, oh, I'm personalizing there or I'm catastrophizing. It's again helpful to hold the thought at arm's length. Yeah. And just being able to kind of even label a thought as personalizing is still one possible version of that reality, right? She might hate you, but also she might not put her contact lenses in. Yeah. You know, it happens. And so it's acknowledging that when you've personalized something,

you can just be free to consider something else and or what you're going to do about it next and or acknowledge that you tend to go down that anxious route of thinking that the worst is happening and it's down to you and that is your brain doing a good job again. It's not like a fault in the system.

Because that is quite a big psychological threat. If you feel like your friendship group or your community is not safe or accepting of you, then...

Historically, that is a risk to your survival. We live in groups, we live in communities. Back in the day, if you were rejected by that community, your chances of survival were pretty drastically reduced. Probably still today, the effects of loneliness are not to be snuffed at.

It's your brain trying to keep you safe, but it's not always the best reflection of reality. It's just the quickest response from your brain that goes to the thing that's probably going to help you to survive the most. Nice. What is the mental filter?

So I did a video on this actually where I use like a big tray, like a big colander type thing and I put kind of different sized beans in to show kind of different types of thoughts and mental filter is often, you get this a lot with depression actually where the good things that happen for example or thoughts about things that could actually make you feel a bit better tend to get filtered out and kind of disregarded and left.

And then what you're left with to focus on is all the stuff that makes you feel worse and the negative stuff. So I think in the old, it's an old video now, but, um,

Again, the video I used, the example of, let's say you make a video and you're scanning through the comments and you're going past hundreds of really positive comments and you're looking for that one person that doesn't like you. And so you're filtering out, you know, on the screen, you're filtering out all the positive thoughts that could help you to feel good about your content. And then you zoom in on that one thing that makes you feel worse. And I did that myself. I noticed in the early days where I was kind of looking through comments

And I was kind of scanning quickly through these really nice comments looking for anyone who, you know, didn't like it. Um,

And noticing that was the mental filter in the moment just allowed me to go, no, we're not doing this. Okay, put the phone away. And so it's actually more, you know, labeling it and noticing what bias it is. It's actually more powerful than you think. It just allows you to kind of trip out of the downward spiral. I was interviewed on a big podcast recently and the interview came out about a week ago.

And I find myself going back to that YouTube video and looking at the comments and sorting my newest, because I've read all the comments on that video. And I'm like, you know, I'm so curious. And I find myself doing this as well. I'm like, yeah, nice comment, nice comment. Like, oh, that's the one. And I saw one last night where it said something like, oh, you know, Ali Abdaal is just a scammer or something like that. And I was like, that's the one. Yeah.

And then I realized, wait a minute, like just skipped past like 18. Oh my God, this interview was incredible. Ali is so articulate. He's such a humble guy. What a nice guy. Oh my God, so helpful. Best interview ever. And just so fixated on the one that was like, Ali Dahl is a scammer. This is what I'm going to think about for the next 48 hours.

The old mental filter. Yeah. Again, just having that terminology to be like, and the visual of just, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. This is a game that we're not going to play. So thank you very much. Yeah. It just enables you to see through it and to see where it's going to take you. And then to make the choice about whether you go with that or whether you don't. And sometimes you will. And sometimes you kind of do something different. What's the difference between stress and anxiety?

So I talk about this in the book actually. I think there are terms that, again, online get used sort of interchangeably, probably to mean similar or the same things. And we do have that one stress response, right? So we have that kind of threat system in our body. And we only have the one kind of survival response, that sort of fight or flight mode and stuff that people talk about. But

The way that we experience, whether we conceptualize that experience, I think depends on the words we use for it. So I don't know if I was going to give an example, let's say you've got a busy day at work, but you need to post your passport off or something and it's got to be done today. And you've got a gap in your meetings or half an hour and you know you can get to the post office, quickly post it and get back.

And then you get to the post office and there's this huge queue and you're stood in the queue and you suddenly start to kind of feel that heart pounding or a bit sweating and what feels like stress. And that's your body kind of

creating this increased sense of sort of alertness to say, "Do you know what? We might need to reprioritize here because we might not be able to meet all the demands placed on us. We might not get back for that meeting." And then you're trying to work out what's most important here. Is it posting this or getting to that meeting? And you might call that stress if that was it, if it was sort of, you know, what demands can I meet? You might call it anxiety if you know that you're now not going to get back for that meeting

But your boss tends to humiliate people that turn up late. And so you're now anxious about public humiliation, which is more anxiety than stress. So it's really about kind of the way we conceptualize it, I think. And often we term things anxiety when it's sort of more threat based or that kind of feeling. But people use those terms really interchangeably these days, I think. Yeah.

As you were describing that, I think it happened like the last week or the week before, where often if my girlfriend and I are going out to dinner and we're meeting someone there or we have like a reservation at a restaurant for a certain time, she'll take ages to get ready. And I will find myself being like sort of feeling the stress response to be like,

come on like yeah it's not that hard like you look great already like why does it take like what the hell what what even is that stuff you're putting on you're like come on and I I often notice that like oh I'm feeling I'm feeling stressed right now that's fine yeah like I can just I can just let it go and I I'll think what's the worst that's gonna happen we're gonna be late for the restaurant that's fine

What if they cancel our table? Great, we'll just go somewhere else. And then I'll be like, you know what? It's fine. I'll just read a book while she's taking ages to get ready and figuring out what shoes go with this thing or whatever the situation might be. But I find myself kind of noticing that like, oh, I'm feeling stressed right now. And I, you know, there's no reason to be because actually, you know, the worst case scenario is actually pretty,

is actually pretty reasonable. Yeah, yeah. And the lateness is a big one, isn't it, for a lot of people because it triggers, you know, for example, if someone else is making you late but you really value being on time, maybe because you associate that with, I don't know, if you grew up in a family where anyone who was late was humiliated or was put down for being, I don't know, selfish or, you know, given those sorts of terms, then it might bring in that sort of fear of, you know,

judgment social judgment or social rejection and those kind of things and yeah um and that's where sort of

turning towards any feeling with curiosity as opposed to judgment. So like, "I'm stressed. I'm going to try not to be about this." Or, "Actually, I'm stressed. Why am I stressed about being late? What's the worst thing about being late today? What is it I'm really scared about being late? Is it because I know that person that's going to be at the table always hates it when people are late and I know they're going to kind of bitch about us later on?" Or that kind of thing.

Once you start to unravel it, you then understand where it's come from. And it's much easier then to do something with it or to feel something different about it. Because, well, do I really value that person's opinion? Is that person really important to me? Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe it's no. But then you've got a sort of chance to do something with it as opposed to just sort of trying to make it go away. Yeah. You also say that we have a love-hate relationship with stress. What do you mean by love-hate relationship?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't remember saying that. Did I write it in the book? Yeah, you wrote, we humans have a love-hate relationship with stress. We love the thrill of a horror movie or the speed of the roller coaster. We actively choose these spikes in our stress response and we anticipate them.

Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing about anxiety as well, isn't it? That it's often talked about as something really negative that's pathological about us and we need to make it go away. And that if you ever feel anxiety, it's probably because of something wrong with you. And it's just not true, is it? And I love the kind of example of the roller coasters or the horror movies, because that's an example of when

we are more accepting of those emotions so much so that we we add them into an an experience you don't have to watch a horror movie you could watch something else but you choose that because the thrill of that those sensations that come with it in what we know to be a safe environment really um is in some way enjoyable and it's it feels like living it's an experience and um

But then anxiety in other situations, we conceptualize it slightly differently that makes us just want to absolutely eradicate it and make it go away. And that's where I think shifting your relationship with emotion generally is just so powerful. It gives you so much freedom if you're willing to carry the discomfort that comes with whatever experience it is. It means that anything that means something to you

is not necessarily out of your reach if you're willing to feel the discomfort of getting there. But if you're not, then a lot of the world is closed off to you because most things that are meaningful and what's the word? Most things that are sort of meaningful or feel like achievements involve discomfort on the way. So if you're not willing to make yourself feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, you kind of close a lot of doors to yourself, I think. Nice.

Let's talk about burnout. But we were just talking before we resumed or while we were grabbing coffee. This idea that, you know, both of us have as content creators, I guess, where there's this sort of almost feels like a hamster wheel sometimes of like more content is always better because like the thing is growing and you don't want to fuck things up because the thing is growing. And it's like, OK, well, let's just triple our output because we might as well. And like the thing is growing and all of this sort of the desire for more and more and more.

Which then gets us to sort of in the direction of burnout. But I wonder what's been your experience of balancing more with like taking care of yourself and having decent work life balance? Oh, that's been a massive learning curve for me. And it's something that I've just had to learn from experience. And I think most people do, don't they? Because, you know, we all preach it, but then we all end up going through it anyway. And I never imagined, I don't think anyone imagines that being a content creator is

It's difficult until you try to do it. And there's something about it is a bottomless pit that will take from you as much as you're willing to give. And sometimes even when things are going well, the demand increases, right? So it's great that it's going well, but also then when we first started, for example, we

Each video we put on seemed to be doing better than the last and it was all good, but we felt like, okay, well, this will switch off at some point. It might last a week, it might last a month, and then it will be that thing we did once. So while it's hot, let's just go for it. And so we kind of sort of worked in a totally unsustainable way because we thought it was going to all switch off at some point.

and it didn't. So the idea of doing this for a month was, okay, let's just get through this month and then it's two and then it's six and then it's a couple of years and that's tough. At some point you have to kind of step back and go, this isn't sustainable so what can be sustainable? But the process of working in a way that's unsustainable

It's then really difficult to step back and take something away or do less for the sake of a healthier life. I think psychologically it's really difficult to do, isn't it? To say, "I'm not going to make a video every day. I'm going to make three videos a week and enjoy the rest of my life." I guess you could apply that to lots of other jobs or working for yourself, that kind of thing.

I think psychologically it's quite difficult to do. It's almost a sense that like, oh, I could film

video a day but the fact that I'm choosing not to means that I am lazy and that I am just not a hard worker and like what's wrong with me and like am I just a softie or am I not disciplined enough or like all of this stuff. And the fact that you know all these platforms are made to be just as addictive to the creator as they are to the consumer right so you know it's that possibility isn't it like what if you made a video and what if it did really well and you know what if it led to something or whatever though you know all those kind of senses of possibilities in your mind that

that draw you into doing more and more and more often to the detriment of you know some other thing that you love doing in your life or that's important to you

I'm curious what this experience is like for you, because from where I'm sitting, you seem to have won the game because the book is great. Like it's selling super well. It seems to be selling week on week, which means that it's not just your promotion that's actually selling the book. It's the fact that it's good and people are recommending it to each other. So now you're you've like won the game. And so like, do you do you still feel that like sense of like, oh, I want this next video to go viral. I should be putting out more content.

No, I'm just kind of sitting here trying to work out how Ali Abdaal is saying to me I've won the game. Because it isn't that strange how, you know, we're both sat here, um,

I did your YouTube course and I've learned a lot from you and you were always, when we first started on YouTube, someone we looked up to, yeah, that's the kind of content I want to produce. It's brilliant, love it. He's won the game. And you never feel like you arrive. You never feel like you've won the game. You just constantly feel like you're playing the game, right? And still I do, right? Because I haven't finished. I'm still going and I've still got more challenges and things ahead that we're sort of planning on and working on.

And yeah, I think the idea of, it's a bit like when we talked about the Sunday Times thing and you go, oh, yeah, good.

And then the next moment comes and it's not as exciting or, you know, or then people go, what's next? And what are you going to do now? And how are you going to do better? So you never really win the game. I think the winning is in playing, right? The winning is in... That sounded really cheesy. The winning is in playing. No, I'm just like, yeah. Yeah, maybe it is. The winning is in choosing to... Because, I mean, in some ways...

it doesn't get any luckier than finding yourself in a position where you can do what you would do whether or not anyone's paying you or not and make it into a living. So, you know, my kind of, my pastime forever has been

to read books about psychology and often popular psychology and people who were communicating it in such an engaging way. And that was what I generally did with my spare time. So the fact that I can now say, right, I've got a writing task. I'm going to see what research is out there or what great books are out there. And I get to call that work. That's probably winning the game. Yeah, whatever views we get. And I genuinely don't really...

um this is probably really bad and I but I um I don't really sort of look twice at kind of numbers or analytics and stuff like that and then my husband's really into it and he'll kind of say oh that video that video is doing well and I've forgotten to even look and and see you know what it's done or um and I think that helps a lot

that I don't base any of my idea of success on that stuff. How do you not? Because that's a hard place. I've spoken to a lot of book authors who...

A lot of content creators will peg their self-worth to their subscriber count, their follower count, and their last 10 view average or something. A lot of authors will peg their self-worth to how many copies they've sold and whether they've hit the best seller list or not. Do you know what? I seriously think having children has helped hugely with that because when I think of... My daughter said to me once, she said, how does it feel to have this many million followers? And I kind of looked at her and I thought, for a moment, she was probably...

kind of looking at that in a way that I didn't want her to look at it and I didn't want her to feel any less for not having that. And so I was very clear that it means absolutely nothing. It really doesn't. And while it's been fun at times,

if I accidentally delete the account, I'm still me. Nothing's really different. And my day-to-day life would be different, right? I'd have more free time. But yeah, I'm still, I'm no more or less of me having that or not having that. And I could all switch off tomorrow, right? So I could say something online that made everybody hate me and it would all be over. But

I'm lucky enough that I think it started late enough in life that I know what's most important to me. And I know it's all kind of a bit silly and that, you know, people unfollow me every day and that's okay. I'm okay with that. But maybe it's also a position of privilege that because my husband kind of looks at that stuff and the analytics that I don't have to, that as a business, obviously, you know, people need to do that. And then I think once you're in it,

it's almost really difficult to not become attached to those numbers. So yeah, it's probably sort of privileged ignorance for me. Floating along nicely making a few random videos. I don't look at YouTube analytics anymore either. I just sort of like, you know, Tintin, our YouTube producer is amazing and our editing team is amazing. Yeah. I don't even review videos before they come out now.

A video will just come out and I'll notice, oh, got some YouTube notifications. I'll be on the toilet. Oh, video came out. I'll watch it. I'll be like, sick editing. It actually worked really well. And it comes as a surprise to me when a video's come because I'm like, oh, nice. Things are being done. But this is kind of to quote to this business conference I was at last week.

Their whole vibe was that if you are a business operator, then growth is stressful. And if you're a business owner and you have an operator who's like dealing with the day-to-day and you can be the owner doing the stuff that you really want to do, then growth is not stressful at all. Growth is actually really fun. And so it sounds like you and I are both sort of in that position where we're the sort of

the talent as it were and you've got Matt and I've got my guys doing the stuff. Yeah. Which means that we have the privilege of focusing on the content and putting a message out there without having to worry too much about the analytics. Just swan along doing the creative stuff. Exactly. I just rock up and then Amber and Nadia are the ones doing the research for the episode and looking at the analytics and analyzing all of our stuff to be like, okay. Yeah. And I'm just like, cool, I'll just rock up and have a chat. Life is good. I think quite early on I realized that if I started to even buy into the positive stuff

like yeah that video went so viral and so awesome and then the next one flopped um you know if you if you i don't know if if you um attach or associate your self-worth to the positive you're also going to lose out massively when the negative happens which it does right and um and so i try not to attach my self-worth to the good or the bad too much and just go with the kind of

This is a fun experience and while it's all good and we appear to be being useful to people then that's great.

But also, you know, the day it all stops, it'll be like, that was a cool ride. That was fun. That's a very healthy way of looking at it. As you would say, like when you said that thing about, oh, you know, if someone deleted my thing, I was like, oh, shit, if someone deleted my YouTube channel, I would lose like the single biggest source of meaning in my life. Whereas you've got the family. And so I imagine that ticks a lot of the boxes for like connection and meaningful contribution and service and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. And in some ways, you know, yeah.

the accounts and stuff, it pulls me away from them. So in some ways it's a sort of, it would be a relief. I don't mean that. It wouldn't be a relief. But it's...

Yeah, I think having already got to a point in my life where I had a profession that I know I can always go back to, right? I know I can always go back to, you know, bums on seats and seeing people in the room, which I loved that part of the job. And I just found it such a privilege. So I know that the bits of that that I miss, I could go back to and enjoy. And so it's not...

you know it's probably a more privileged position than a lot of people if um they've you know remortgaged the house and put lots of stuff into this thing and then they're trying to you know keep a roof over their heads by making something work um whereas i know i've got other things i can do if if it doesn't work out yeah i think once you're out of survival mode then yeah a lot of it then becomes like i mean i mean i'm definitely out of survival mode but i still peg an unhealthy amount of my self-worth on like yeah the fact that like the identity of

being a big YouTuber and it's like that feels good and it's like I feel like I'm doing something useful and all this shit so if the channel disappeared overnight well I mean honestly if the channel disappeared overnight I'd be like great let's do something else let's start build that app that I've been wanting to do for a while and just haven't had the chance to do because of content and stuff

Yeah. That's a good place to be. Yeah. To know that you would continue and still be you. And the fact that you built something means you could probably build something else. And that you've used and developed so many skills through the experience.

whether that's developing a YouTube channel or something else, that if it stops at any point, then you use everything you've learned along the way to try something new and go for it. Yeah. I was speaking to a friend yesterday who recently got fired from his job. Sort of big finance bro who's been succeeding on all fronts and this is the first time he's had a setback. And he was saying that it was actually a great experience because he realized, oh, being fired is not that big a deal.

He had already had like loads of freelance gigs coming through LinkedIn. And he's like, oh, you know, this thing of like working a few hours a day is actually quite nice. And before he'd been like, oh, my God, being fired would be the worst thing ever because my whole identity is tied up in the fact that I'm a finance bro. But now he's like, I can chill. Yeah. Life is good. Yeah. And so I guess maybe that's I noticed this with students a lot. I definitely had periods of this when I was a student as well.

where it's like an unhealthy amount of self-worth would be pegged to the result of the exam and then the exam comes and goes and whether you pass whether you fail whatever the thing is you realize it's not such a big deal it's it's not such a big deal life goes on and actually there are sources of meaning in life ideally other than exam grades yeah i mean i i struggle to it's weird isn't it you get to a point in your life where you struggle to remember what the results were um

But what you, I think what you take away from the process of doing things like exams or going to uni is you learn how hard you're willing to work to get to where you want to go. So I remember getting to uni and I went to Exeter for my undergrad and we went in with a tutor and he said, yeah,

this few people or whatever get first and everyone's kind of slumped in their chairs. And he said, well, but anyone can do it, but the fact that you're all here means it's possible, but it's about how hard you're willing to work to get there and how many hours you're willing to put in. And that was when my sort of ears pricked up and I thought, okay, game on. I could do hard work. Let's go for it. And that was just seeing it as...

good things are available to you with hard work, kind of empowered me to feel that I would give it a shot. Whereas if it was just sort of like results based only that this few number of people get a first, for example, then I would probably have thought that would never be me. I'm just a normal person. I'm just average, you know, average Jew. So, you know,

Seeing something, I think the thing that you learn along all of those things is, um, you

You get the evidence, you get to witness yourself grinding and working hard towards something and enduring setbacks and all that stuff. And then you've got that in the bank that you know the next time something difficult comes up, "I can do this, that's fine." A challenge is not the end of everything. A challenge is a sign that I need to get into gear and face this. So I think then you just use that again and again and again, regardless of A, B, C or D or one to nine, whatever it is now.

It's like this, it's quite an empowering thought or belief that, hey, whatever happens, I'll rise to the challenge and I'm sure I can figure it out based on past experiences. Yeah. And I think, how do I know, maybe I'm making that sound sort of oversimplified because I know there are lots of problems in life where it's just huge and you don't know if you're coming or going and, you know, big awful things are happening. And that's when...

You can feel overwhelmed and you're less likely to think, oh, this is a challenge and not a threat. But then there are also skills to deal with, you know, those really, really difficult moments that are probably slightly different. And it's probably about kind of soothing your way through stuff. But yeah. What do you mean soothing your way through stuff? So in dialectical behavior therapy, so DBT.

which is a year-long therapy, they teach emotion coping skills. And one of those emotion coping... So emotion coping skills is split up into sort of different segments depending on what they're needed for. So within sort of...

emotion regulation skills, you would also have distress tolerance skills. So you have emotion regulation skills or the skills that you use to keep your emotions fairly balanced. But then what if something happens and your emotions are kind of out of whack or they're really intense, then you need distress tolerance skills. So how do you get through highly distressing, disturbing periods of your life safely? Um,

And that's the moments when it's all hit the fan, you know, you are overwhelmed, you don't know what to do and you've just got to get through. So self-soothing is one of those skills. So that's when you're teaching people not to try to squash the feeling or do the thing that's going to make it disappear right now but you're going to regret later.

but to look after yourself through the discomfort. So I think I did a video on this a long time ago about doing like self-soothing boxes. So we'll often do that in DBT, we'll get people to just get a shoe box or something and they'll put in there lots of things that help them to soothe their way through the most painful moments of their lives safely. So it's the idea that it's kind of mindfulness. So you use all of your senses

to help create that feeling of safety. And that's really what you want to do is bring a sense of safeness to the moment. So it might be a piece of music that you know kind of generates certain feelings for you or it might be a perfume that you associate with love and safety like your mum's perfume or lavender or something like that.

or it might be something that you can taste that you enjoy that kind of brings you to the present or lots of different things. So you can use all different senses. So you can put different things in a box to kind of soothe you through difficult moments.

So we were talking about burnout. I want to talk about burnout. So the final three chapters of my book, Feel Good Productivity, link down below. I need to get more comfortable doing the place. I'll do it. Final three chapters, we talk about burnout. And the way that I've sort of looked at the research and stuff, framed things, is that there are kind of three types of burnout that we have different strategies for dealing with.

There is overexertion burnout, where you're just working too hard and not taking a break and on the road to burnout there. There is depletion burnout, which is where we're not resting enough and our energy is depleted. And then there's misalignment burnout, where we're doing the thing, but it's not quite aligned to where our value is, where we actually want to go. And so we end up in this phase where like,

Life should be good, but actually you feel a sense of burnout because you're doing something that doesn't feel like it is fulfilling you or something. To what extent does that vibe with your experience of burnout? Oh, hugely. The misalignment is a big one in the...

one of the skills in the book that I do on a fairly regular basis, probably every few months is the values check-ins. Because I find a lot of people who come on to therapy and can't articulate really what the problem is. They kind of say, "I don't really know what's going on. It just feels bad. Nothing feels sort of meaningful or I don't feel satisfied with my life." Often those situations

become really clear once you do a values check-in. So it's often when people have been pulled away from the things that matter to them and mean a lot to them,

by other things in life. And it's a really simple task. You can do it in different ways, but you can just get a pen and paper and you write out the different areas of your life. So you might have family, intimate relationships, parenting, friendships, health, career, lifelong learning, creativity, whatever. Put them all on the page and you ask yourself, what are the things that matter to me most in this area of my life? So not what you want to happen to you, but

how you want to show up in that area of your life, good or bad times. So what you want to bring and what you want to contribute, the attitude you want to have, that kind of thing. You might have a few words or sentences, bullet points, and then you can kind of rate, okay, out of 10, how important are these values to me in this area of my life? And then rate it again on how much you feel you're living in line with that at the moment. So in the last couple of weeks.

And then you get these two scores and you get to kind of look across the page, all the different areas of your life. And it's a really good indication of where to kind of direct your focus next. Because if you've rated something as really highly important to you,

But then your rating for how much you're living in line with that is like two out of 10. There's a disparity there that needs your attention. And it might, you know, it's not, um, it's not a path for like self-loathing. It's just because often it's because something else has pulled you away from it. You know, you might be doing really well with another area of your life. And, and it's not that you can do them all perfectly all of the time. It's that you probably have to, you know, spin from one to another at each point. You know, you can't, um,

I guess the work parenting thing is a really obvious one that it's really difficult to kind of be the parent that you want to be all of the time and have the career that you want to have all of the time. And so there's a sort of ping-ponging between the two. But just doing one of those exercises, if you're not feeling...

sort of satisfied or if you're feeling burnt out it's often an indication that you've just sort of been shifted away from something and you're not okay with that so it's a sign to shift back nice so like

So you've got the different areas of life. And so in that, like, for example, in the family parenting category, are you asking yourself, like, what are the values that are most important to me? Like being there for my kids and like picking them up from school and stuff. Yeah. And then you rate how important those things are to you and then how much you're actually living. Yeah, that was a big thing for me as everything got busier and busier with all this stuff.

um, that I could feel myself just feeling a bit overwhelmed and, and sort of had a look at it on the page. And yeah, being present as a parent was really important to me, but obviously spent a long time locked in the office, writing the book and, and the dualist podcast and stuff. And, and, and I recognize that I, I needed to shift back to being present more of the time to, to be okay with that balance. And, um,

But I think I've talked about this before. I think often people have this misconception that balance is like finding the perfect sweet spot where you've just like, you know, won the game or whatever. And, you know, you've got it all right and everything's good in your life. And I just don't think it ever happens like that. I think, you know, if you're sort of on a balancing beam,

the process of balancing is a constant shifting from like one side to another. And as you notice you're tilting too much one way, you kind of shift to tilt the other way and counterbalance. And I just think life is a bit like that. And so there's, you know, like I'm here today and I'm not with my kids today, but we're going off...

as a family at the end of the week. So I know that I can, you know, it's a little bit of a shift one way or the other. And I think that's okay. I think because you tend to, I think other parents will probably relate to this, that you just feel guilty whatever you do. But once you recognize balance to be that constant shifting and rebalancing, it becomes slightly easier, I think. Nice. Yeah, I guess the way I see this is like,

Ideally, I would. So in my mind, I sort of have an idea of like, what does my ideal day look like? But I'm not massively attached to that because the day that, you know, stuff happens. I also have in my mind, like, what does the ideal week look like? Like in an ideal week, I'd like to do, I don't know, one or two date nights or like one dinner with friends on average, or like see my mom and grandma once a week. And I go to the gym three times a week. And by mapping that out on like a Google calendar that I call my ideal week calendar, I can just see that, okay, cool. Like this is

This is my ideal kind of life. And obviously I end up like never actually living my ideal week, but just knowing what it is and like helps me be like, okay, you know, for the last two weeks I've been to the gym like once a week. Let's just do a little rebalancing there because actually I do know that this is important to me and it's the thing that I want to do. Therefore, let's do the thing.

So I really like the idea of sort of like balancing this beam and constantly shifting and adjusting. I've always liked your idea of the kind of the ideal week and the ideal day and that kind of thing. Because you can kind of aim towards it. And it's key, isn't it, to be okay with not creating it in full. Yeah. But always aiming towards, always having an ideal to aim towards. But also then shifting into...

kind of gratitude for the week that you ended up having that as life goes you probably could have had a worse week

Even though you didn't go to the gym five times or whatever it was. So it's a really nice mental shift to sort of aim towards that ideal week and to have the chance to do that even, you know? Or to aim towards an ideal week within the limitations of someone's life. So it might be that currently you hate your job, but your ideal week would then be to be doing some night course in something else because that's part of your mission to get out of this job you hate or whatever that is. Yeah.

And so your idea of the idle week would change as time went on as well, wouldn't it? So they'd kind of keep coming back to it. It's nice. We've got a question from Nuragisa in our audience who says, when you study or work for long periods of time, what are some ways in which you can take care of your mental health? When you're studying? Yeah, or working for long periods of time. Okay.

I guess to not do it for long periods of time, to take breaks is kind of obvious, isn't it? But it is... The reason people say it is because it is the right answer. You know, that...

if you've got a stretch and that's what, you know, that's why I learned the hard way on when I began that I was working as if I wasn't going to do it for a long stretch of time and it became a long stretch of time. So I realized that wasn't possible. And now I've made that shift to having a much better balance and adding in other parts of life, like, you know, socializing or exercising or taking a break and sleeping and stuff like that. So you kind of,

It's acknowledging, okay, if this is a marathon, what do I need to put in along the way that's going to ensure I get to the end of this? And for different people, that might be different things.

But generally, it includes the basics like social contact, good food, moving your body and sleeping. If you can get those down, you're more likely to get to the end. If you're sacrificing on any of those, it's going to make it much harder to get to the end.

Might sound like an obvious answer, but I think those basics or the things that we call the basics are the first things we let slide when we're not doing so good. If you've got a big project on, well, okay, I'll just get these four hours sleep and then I'll crack on and I'll do that again tomorrow and I'll just grab a takeaway. It's so easy to just see those things as negotiable, I think. Yeah.

So that, yeah, I think the best thing you can do is prioritize those and recognize how much they impact your ability to keep going and your stamina so that you can not do them perfectly, but just keep aiming towards them. A bit like your ideal day. Yeah. Yeah. I really like the idea of treating things like marathons because I think, you know, one question I sometimes ask is that if the way I lived today was how I live every day, how do I feel about that?

And if the answer for too many days in a row is like, that would be terrible, then I think, okay, cool. This is time for a readjustment.

And usually for me, I find that a work because it's fun and energizing as like, oh, things are growing on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll then eat into things like exercise and healthy eating and sleep because it'll be like 11 PM and I'll be like, oh, but like, I'm really excited about this book that I'm reading. Let me just, you know, and yes, I've got an 8 AM breakfast meeting with someone the next day, which I'm also really excited about, but like, oh, and then so sleep ends up being the thing that gives. And I think once in a while, whatever, but like when

when it happens for a long enough period of time, it's like, oh, let's actually, you know, take care of ourselves here. Yeah, it just makes a huge difference, doesn't it? And something like sleep, the impact is almost instant, right? The very next day, you will feel better if you've had more of it. So...

It's not like you have to wait a long time for the results of that. So it is a great thing to kind of prioritize if you notice, and it is one of the first things we'll look at. If someone is returning to therapy, for example, because they notice their mood is slipping or they're going downhill,

you get those basics back on track. And sometimes that's enough because they are so powerful. They're the reason that things like your ability to move, sleep, eat well, and have social connection, they're weapons of war, right? If you've got a prisoner of war, the way you break them is by messing around with those things. So let's not do it voluntarily to ourselves every day. Let's just keep trying to, if you've had a few night nights, let's just put an end to it.

in there and see if we can kind of redirect yeah i find that for me having like clear rules in place for stuff is like remarkably helpful like knowing that thursday night is always a date night or for example knowing that okay i am not going to arrange any meetings before like 10 a.m or so you know things like that where i know that if i actually stuck to these rules i'm

it would almost force some kind of balance in my life so that I don't have to think about it. So I think about it and someone messages me and it's like, oh, the calendar's full, but the only time is like a 7am breakfast. I know in that moment I'll be tempted to be like, hell yeah, but I know that when it comes down to it, I'll get five hours of sleep that night and then that would not be good in the long run. I like to keep an eye on these basics and just think, okay, like what are the rules? And now that I have the privilege of having a team and

run my own business it's like cool how do I automate the how do I automate the adherence to the rules so that I don't have to think about it yeah like asking my assistant to be like can you just make sure the calendar they're all with three gym sessions and while we're there can we book a personal trainer for them so that I feel compelled to go and while we're there can we just not have any meetings after like whatever the thing might be yeah and I think like different people have different levels of control over their time and their day but to whatever extent possible having rules that force balance on your life

I think, you know, to answer this person's question, is the way that you take care of your physical and mental health while you're working for long periods of time. Because to be honest, the 15th hour of work is probably going to be not that productive. And I think students in particular get themselves into this thing of like, oh my God, it's so important. Like, you know, to your point around how we probably don't even remember our GCSE and A-level results anymore because no one really cares. But when you're a student, it's like, oh shit, this is like the most important thing in the world because my whole life is dependent on all these. Yeah. And it's interesting when you mentioned about kind of that tendency to like...

you're feeling tired and you're feeling that exhaustion but the tendency is to squash it and ignore it in order to do a little bit more like if you're studying or whatever and you've got exams and that extra stuff that you did probably wasn't that productive or helpful because you were exhausted and not concentrating and lacked focus but you still forced yourself to sit in the chair and endure being there so that you'd done your I don't know 10 hours of revision or whatever it is and so I think there's a shift towards us kind of

listening to our bodies a bit more and just acknowledging that tiredness isn't pathological. It's your body letting you know it needs something, rest and replenishment or fuel or whatever it is, hydration. And that it's okay to listen to your body. It doesn't mean you're kind of opting out of hustle culture or you're going to send your career down the pan. It's sustainability and the marathon thing, isn't it?

Final question. A bunch of people in our podcast community asked around how, like, if someone else that they know, if someone that we know is struggling with a mental health or seems to be struggling with a mental health or seems to be struggling in some way, what are some ways to approach that situation in a way that's, like, tactful and nice and not too, like, getting involved in other people's business? Yeah. I think the sort of trap that we tend to fall into is...

is often for the most well-meaning people because we desperately don't want to say the wrong thing. So we say nothing. And we maybe even avoid that person, right? We try to grace them with our absence, right? And say, "Oh, I'll just stay away because they've got a lot going on and I'll probably put my foot in it and say the wrong thing." And actually,

Mostly what people don't need is someone to come along and solve an unsolvable problem. They need some human connection and someone to be there and to have their back and be by their side and show that it matters to them if they're not okay. But often we don't buy into that as helpful. We think we need to step in and solve the problem.

So, you know, often when people are saying, you know, what should I do? What should I say? And it's less about what you do and what you say. And it's more about how you make that person feel. So, and not by taking away their distressed feelings, but by adding in a sense of connection and letting them know that someone has their back and cares for them is hugely supportive. So, you know, if I'm working with someone

who is grieving, for example, you can't take grief away. No one can, you know, magic you out of that. But often those people will say that the friends that they've, not that they value the most, but that have been most helpful to them aren't necessarily even the ones that come along and

start talking about the grief and opening everything up. They can also be the friends who come along and say, let's go for a dog walk once a week together. And in that time, maybe you discuss the latest show you've been watching or some comedy thing you went to see or complete distraction from your pain.

That's just as valuable. If you're that person, right? If you're the friend who doesn't know how to open up those things and talk about them, it's okay to talk about something else and be, you know, sometimes people can be so grateful for that, but you're still connecting with that person. So you're still saying good times or bad, I'm next to you and we'll walk through it together. So, but equally it's okay to just ask that person, you know, how,

How can I support you? It really matters to me if you're not okay and I want to be here for you. I have no idea how to do that right. So let me know. If I'm getting it wrong, steer me in the right direction for what you need and I won't take it personally. I'll just take your direction.

And then you've already kind of just named the elephant in the room and your own insecurities about how to help. I'm really scared about saying the wrong thing, so let me know if I do that and I will adjust. And it just takes the fear out of the whole situation. Everyone can name what it is. And then you can just get to work with connecting with someone and then support comes out of that, I think. You don't have to be the therapist. Yeah.

Nice. I think that's a great place to end this. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode.

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