The Daily Stoic - Amy Morin on How to be Mentally Strong

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

This episode comes out for free on 10/8/2022Ryan talks to author Amy Morin about her book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, how to find agency in your everyday life, overcoming mentally challenging situations by gaining perspective, and more.Amy Morin is a psychotherapist turned “accidental” author. In her early 20’s Amy experienced grave loss - both her mother and her husband passed only a few years apart. In 2013, during one of my lowest points in her life, Amy wrote a letter to herself about all the things mentally strong people don’t do. When she was done, she had a list of 13 things that could rob her of mental strength if she let them. She has written 4 books, including,13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do, and 13 Things Strong Kids Do. Amy is also editor and chief at Verywell Mind, an award-winning resource for reliable, compassionate, and up-to-date information on mental health topics.📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is out now! We’ve extended the pre-order bonuses for the next week—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have. Here on the weekend when you have a

little bit more space when things have slowed down be sure to take some time to think to go for a walk to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday.

Welcome to another episode of The Days to Podcast. My hand is recovering. In all, I've signed north of 10,000 copies of Discipline Is Destiny. Finally got through. They've all been shipped out. It is definitely an embarrassment slash problem of riches to be able to sign this book.

I mean, I probably signed 100 copies of my first book, you know, had two events that I did. And so to be here 10 years later, signing 10,000, I mean, it's just absolutely incredible. And I just want to thank everyone for the support. Someone was asking me like, how did you do it? How did you sign all these copies? And, you know, I said, it's it's kind of a matter of discipline. Like the way you sign 10,000 copies of a book, there's no secret to it. You sign in one copy at a time. You find ways to be efficient.

You know, they mark the page for me. We stack them at a certain level. We set it up on the table so I can sign and move. Sign and slide, sign and slide, sign and slide. But I sign 10,000 copies, one copy at a time. And my wonderful team led by Justin and Rachel did an amazing job facilitating all the logistics of it. So I appreciate that, but the way they shipped them out was the same way I signed them, which is one book after another. So thank you

to everyone who supported Discipline and Destiny, the power of self-control. I'd love to hear from you what you thought of the book. It'd be amazing if you could post about it on social media. Also, if you could leave a review on Amazon that helps a huge amount. It really moves the needle. And most of all, if there's someone you feel like could use the book or if you yourself haven't read it yet, I would love for you to do that. We're still honorably pre-order bonuses at dailystill.com slash fritter. Now, to today's guest, daily still dot com slash fair. Now to today's guest, I was saying when I introduced Robert McKee that someone like Robert McKee, you're not familiar with his work, but you've been influenced by it. Amy Warren is, is an example of that where you have almost certainly seen this very famous thing that she wrote, but maybe you didn't stop and think about who wrote it. If you

saw that list, 13 things mentally strong people don't do. Then there was a sequel, 13 mentally strong, saying parents don't do. And then finally, 13 things a mentally strong women don't do. Well, a person wrote those lists. They're just random viral content on the internet, a person wrote them. And Amy Morin isn't just a trained psychotherapist who knows what she's talking about, but as we open this episode, that mental strength that she is speaking about.

Well, first of all, it was written in the style of a Marxist-Rules. These are rules for herself, not lectures, or philosophical or psychological principles, although they are also that. These are notes she was jotting to herself, rules she was trying to adhere to. But they came out of an immense amount of suffering in pain, which we talk about in the episode, and the virality of the pieces they would go on to be reached

by more than 50 million people led to four books, 13 things mentally strong people don't do, 13 things mentally strong parents don't do, highly recommend, 13 things mentally strong women don't do. 13 things mentally strong parents don't do. Highly recommend. 13 things mentally strong women don't do. And 13 things strong kids do. She is the editor in chief of very well-mined and award-winning resource for reliable compassionate and up-to-date information on mental health topics. She has a podcast you can listen to.

I'll link to all of this below. You can follow her on Instagram at Amy Moorean author. You can go to her website, Amy Moran LCSW.com on Twitter at Amy Moran LCSW. And you can also, I'm of course linking to both these lists, all these lists and these books, but you can just Google things mentally strong people don't do and you'll find all of them and I hope you do and I hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation So I got to ask her you want a boat I am I'm on a sailboat Amazing do you live on a sailboat? I do yes where down in the Florida Keys. Oh, that's amazing. Why a sailboat? That's

a good question. So I lived in Maine and you know, it was cold. Yeah. My husband said he always wanted to live on a sailboat and he thought it would be a good opportunity to do it. So we came down thinking it would be for six months, but I think this is year number six. So wow. Yeah. With your kids. So I don't have kids. I just had foster kids. So I don't have any foster kids who live on the boat with me. How many square feet is a boat to live on? Oh, good question. So this sailboat is 53 feet in length and at its widest, I want to say it's like 14 feet. So it's three bedroom, two bathroom, but obviously the bedrooms aren't like a bedroom.

You find in a house they're much smaller. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, of the boat, it's not all living space. So I imagine, but your ocean, the ocean is your yard. Right. So my playground is, you know, have a jet ski tied to the back.

So I can quickly jump on a jet ski and go somewhere if I want and we can go play out in the water and have a look at that. And how often are you sailing or are you mostly stationary? We're mostly a stationary at a dock just so I can have high speed internet and actually work. Yes. Yes. Wow.

Okay. Fascinating. That's not what I would have guessed. Really? I don't know what I would have guessed, but I think boat person lives on a boat would be low on the list of guessing where someone lives. And so how did you figure it out? My parents had a boat when we were a kid. It wasn't a sailboat, but it was like a pretty big boat. And you kind of just get a sense of like the crampedness and the wood. The wood gives it away.

Like I could probably guess like if it was a camper or a van that'd be a little different vibe, trailer would be a different vibe, you know, we workspace would be a different vibe. Right. Yeah, you know, it's probably 10% of people who will go away. Are you want to boat? So I'm always like, what gave it away? Yes. That's fascinating. Well, I'm really excited to talk. Obviously I've known of your work for a long time. And then your work is so viral that it's like, you almost crossed over your lists or like those things that you see. It's like a cliche where you're like, I guess somebody said that at some point before it became a genuinely unattributed piece of wisdom.

Yes, yes, I think that's one of the reasons why it kind of went viral as people were like, it seems like we should know this, but they just never seen it all in one place before. Yeah, I remember once I gave a talk to the Pittsburgh pirates and they had this quote on the wall, I was there to talk about stoicism and I was like sort of like, you know, you probably wouldn't think, you know, stoicism, professional baseball, but I was like literally as I walked in, you have a quote from Epictetus on the wall,

you just think it's like one of those sportsisms. Like you didn't even know that this is from a 2000 year old Greek slave talking about like the essential, like sort of predicament of the human experience, it sounds like something Yogi Barra must have said or whatever. Right, exactly. But I think what's fascinating and probably the why they're so universal is there. When I was reading the story of how they came about, these weren't just like this thing

that you whipped up one day, there's quite a bit of pain and adversity behind the 13 rules. Yeah, and so that's what a lot of people didn't know. And the article first came out, it was literally just a list of 13 things and so people thought, oh, that's interesting. And then a literary agent had seen it and called me

and said, oh, you should write a book. And I said, oh, well, there's a little motor to the story. And I don't know if I want to make it public on a therapist. And as a therapist, we don't usually share our personal story. So it was a matter of them thinking, do I want to share my personal story? And the reason I wrote it wasn't because I was trying to go viral.

It was just a letter to myself that I hadn't imagined putting on the internet. And then when I did, it certainly never imagined that all these people would be reading it. And we'd still be talking about it a decade later. Well, I want to get into the writing it to yourself, because I think there's a very big stoke tie in there. But for people who don't know, what, is there's, I don't want to say that there's a sort of almost a triumphant, that there's sort of like this, like, there's a positivity to the rules that, I guess, that's sort of saying, belie, the hard one,

and heartbreaking experience that seems like they went into making them. What, what, what was that for you? What is that story? Yeah. So I was a therapist and thought, I'll go out and I'll teach other people all of these life lessons. But my mom passed away when I was 23 and that was really early on in my career. And I thought, Oh, now it's not just about telling other people, hey, you should try

these things. But it was about, Oh, how do I do this in my own life? And early on, I was really just looking at different people hearing different stories. I was in a small town in rural Maine, close to where I had grown up. And suddenly, I was meeting all kinds of people from different walks of life, people that I would have maybe normally never met.

And if I met them, I would have never known their background. And as I was hearing all of these people who were sharing their stories with me, it just became really clear that some people go through some really hard things in life, awful things, and they come out of it, and they're still hopeful. And they say, gosh, you know, that was awful. I wish I hadn't been through it, but they really attributed that awful thing with teaching them some life lesson, or they said, I grew from it. So even though I'm a therapist and I'm supposed to be teaching

them, I was really learning from a lot of people like what makes these people tick? How do they still get up every day even though life keeps pushing them back down? And again, as a therapist, I was supposed to teach people what they're doing well. I was taught, you know, build on people's strengths. When they come in, you're like, yes, keep doing that one thing. And I thought, yeah, but sometimes people just have one bad habit. What if I don't point out that one bad habit that they're doing? And so it occurred to me, like, you know, a lot of these people who are growing from their pain just didn't have these certain bad habits that a lot of other people did. And then on the, it was the three-year anniversary to the day that my mom died, that my 26-year-old

husband died. And he had a heart attack. Obviously, when you're 26, you're not supposed to have a heart attack. You didn't have any heart issues that we had known of before that. And to, like, I'm a widow, I'm 26. I don't have my mom. And it was like the lowest of the low. Like, I just couldn't even imagine. Like, my two biggest fears had basically come true in life.

And this thing is, it's like some sort of cruel twist that it also happened on the same, you know, February and the same date and like what are the chances of that even happening? But meanwhile, I'm a therapist and I am supposed to make a living living a house and solve other people's problems. And I think like how do I do this? How do I help other people? And and then how am I going to? How do I help other people? And

then how am I going to keep this roof over my head? We had bought a house, but it was based on the fact that we had two incomes. And I only was down to one. And the last thing I wanted to do was move the thought of having to pack up and move in that moment was not enticing. And that's how I ended up becoming a writer was a side hustle that earned in the beginning. I earned $15 an article. So I waited my spare time just wrote because as a therapist, you can only work so many hours as a therapist. So after work and on the weekends, I wanted to do something to earn money and it was heartbroken.

So I wasn't in the state to really go out and get a job, but I could write an article from my couch some days anyway. And I learned a lot. Like I just, that's the painful experience. I learned a lot. It was awful. It was horrible. And I wish nobody would ever experience that kind of pain,

but it taught me a lot. And years later, life, you know, I learned the grown building this new life for myself and I got remarried and I thought life is going to be good again. Here we go. And then my father and law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And there was this moment where I thought, like, why does life keep doing this to me? Every time something good happens or I finally feel like my heart starting to heal,

like the other shoe drops. And I know that that's how life is inherently. But on the other hand, I'm like, why does it have to keep being like the people closest to me, which I grew up as a kid with separation anxiety. So to lose somebody was my worst fear in life. And I think, why does this keep happening? And it was actually in that moment when we knew my father and law probably had two months to live.

And I'm thinking, I can't deal with this. I can't handle one more loss that I thought, well, what am I gonna do? It's not like I have a choice. And but really boil down to, there are a lot of things I feel like I can do right now. I don't have the energy to say, I'm gonna write 17 pages in a gratitude journal,

but you know what I can do? At least I'm not gonna feel sorry for myself today. So that's where the list came from. As I sat down and I said, if I want to be mentally strong right now, what do I do? And what does that look like? And I wrote a list. And when I was done, it happened to have 13 things on the list. Everybody always thinks that there was like a magic in the number that I picked 13 for a specific reason. No, that was just what I learned as a therapist and through my own journey. And then I found that list helpful, because I thought, again, I don't have the energy, I don't really have the capacity to do a lot.

But as long as I don't do these certain things, I'll get through today. I thought, if it helps me, maybe it will help somebody else. And so I published it online thinking, 12 people will read this, but like 50 million people read it in the course of a few weeks. And before I know it, I'm on national TV TV and everybody wants to know how to be mentally strong. But nobody knew it was like the secret I had of like actually, I didn't write this article because I'm the epitome of mental

strength. I wrote it because I felt like I was at the bottom of the barrel and I just really didn't have any strength in that moment. Yeah, it's interesting. There must have been this goes to the, I guess, the first of the 13, but like, there must have been some party that's sort of like, why me? Why does it keep happening to me? Why is life sort of picking on me? Like, you had every right to feel sorry for yourself because you had a run of, you know, that's, that's not, that it's, like statistically that doesn't happen, right? All of those events happen suit, they all inevitably happen, but they happen sooner than they would happen to the average person in closer proximity to than they would

to the average person. So you would, on the one hand, sort of be forgiven or right to feel like this is unfair. And yet, the whole point is that there is no fair or unfair. It doesn't exist. You're not being singled out. Events don't care about you at all. And that's just yeah, because I was like, all right, what are the chances? And I had lost my mom, she had a brain injury. So it was like, I was on the phone with her an hour before she died and she was fine. And same with my husband, like, he was fine. And then he boom, he disappears. And and it was just like, took a really long time for my brain to even wrap around those

facts of like, how can somebody be talking to you one minute and then the next minute you're not going to speak to them again. Right. And I just couldn't figure that out. And then when we, we got news of my father-in-law. And at first they like, oh, it's cancer, but it's treatable. And then they're like, it's spreading, and then they're like, actually, there's nothing we can do. And then it was like, well, now I know, I'm like looking at this person knowing that he probably has two months left on the planet, and then to like this idea of like not that there's

a better way to go or not, or it's not more helpful to know or not know, but my brain was just like, again, and couldn't wrap my brain around. I'm looking at this man who I know is not gonna be on the planet in a couple of months. Like, how do you prepare for that too? Such a strange time. And yeah, I did keep thinking. And again, that like, what are the chances

that I'd lose my mom at 23 and then lose my husband at 26 and that it would fall on the same calendar date? Right. Like the odds of that happening, I'm like, ah. Yeah, it's weird. Sorry, can you hear me? Glitch.

I remember reading about the sort of learned helplessness experiments. Like they're almost what you went through is like how you would design an experiment to torture someone to see you. Like at what point do they give up. But what I thought was interesting about that experiment was there was a certain percentage of the dogs, obviously it's a cruel and strange experiment, but a certain percentage of the dogs just never had, it just didn't happen to them. And obviously since it's an animal, we don't know why it doesn't happen to them, but it sounds like what you're sort, so you're sort of testing the ideas in the laboratory,

you know, like what, what is the defying, defying line between learned helplessness and sort of mental resilience, like or mental strength? What is it, you know, and I guess obviously these rules are part of it, sure, circumstances and luck and genetics, all these other things play into it as well. But it's just like that, that decision. And I guess it is a decision to be like, am I being picked on or is this just life? That's kind of the first choice that we make. Yeah, exactly.

Cause again, I just, I couldn't, I'm looking around at them like, okay, so my friends still have their parents. They still have a partner if they're dating somebody. Again, what is the probability? I would lose people in separate and completely unrelated incidents. And then it was like I was walking around kind of waiting for the next shoot to drop, like what's going to happen next? And there were things, it was like two weeks after my mom passed away, my dad's house caught on fire and it didn't burn flat, but it was a fire. And then a couple weeks after my mom passed away, my dad's house caught on fire and it didn't burn flat, but it was a fire.

And then a couple weeks after my husband passed, this is really strange, but guess what, there's another fire. And I just remember thinking like, you gotta be kidding me. Right, is there a glitch in the matrix here? Like what is happening? Yeah, exactly.

I've started one of the versions of the talks I do. I sort of, I take people back to the year 160 AD and I sort of tell the story of Marcus Relius. You know, he's chosen to be emperor. They think it's going to be a couple years before he takes over. His adopted stepfather incidentally rules for 19 years. So it takes 20 years longer than he's supposed to. He finally gets the job. And then there's a devastating plague, then there's a series of floods, then there's an invasion,

then there's a coup attempt. It's like one thing after another. And he ends up writing in meditations. He goes, you know, like, it's unfortunate that this happens to me. But then he kind of catchesitations, he goes, you know, like, it's unfortunate that this happens to me. But then he kind of catches himself and he goes, we actually know it's fortunate it happened to me instead of basically someone else or someone else who didn't have the skills or training that I have. And so I guess it does, it sort of comes down to like, how are you going to see it?

We always have the ability then, I guess, to decide, you know, is this a run of obscene bad luck? Is this, you know, punishment for something? I've got like the narrative that we tell out of these, at the end of the day, series of unrelated events determines to a large degree whether we're going to be broken by them or we're going to be able to move on. Like, I sort of, you add on to that. This is the incredible thing I've learned about Marcus is I've written about him is like, he has 12 children and five of them make it to adulthood.

And you're just like, how does that just put all the other stuff aside? You lose one kid, that's a reason to not get out of bed in the morning. You just think about some of the things that people have gone through and you're like, how are you still here? That, to me, is the testament to the things that you're talking about, what mental strength can get you through. I could get you through literally the worst things

that exist. Yes, and I find not only is that the story that we tell ourselves, but other people have a story that they would often tell me to. Like some people would be like, the reason you made it through this is because God has a plan for your life and you knew that something good we knew something great would come out of this. But then you have other people. So like in my TEDx talk, I explain a little bit about, like, you know, the series of events. I'd gone to the same auditorium and saw my mom the night

before she died, as the night before my husband died. And sort of this bizarre story and a prelation of given that many details in my TEDx talk. But some of the comments are like, either the auditorium's cursed or clearly that woman is cursed because everybody she comes around. When you're manifesting it, some sort of pseudo-spiritual explanation. Right. And so then you have to also figure out like how do you let other people's versions of their story of what they think happened to you, the narrative that they come up with. How does that going to impact my own story of, well, you know, do I want to know why this happened? Do I want to say yes, something good came out of it, just a series of unfortunate events,

but how do you handle other people's interpretation of it too? Yeah. Kate Boulders' book is really great about what's the title? I'm forgetting it. It's, oh, everything happens for a reason. It's like the most insulting thing you could say to someone with cancer. She tells this story of some, you know, well-meaning church lady coming up and saying this to her husband and he basically goes, well, I'd love to hear it. You know, I like, I'd love to like tell me the fucking reason is basically what he's saying, right? Because there's kind of a, I think, I think it comes down to when you're thinking about the story that you're telling is like, does the story give you agency or not, right?

And like, I think ideally, the story empowers versus disempowers the person and there's inherently a kind of although you mean well when you go everything happens for a reason You're disempowering that person by saying one they have you know, they're not in control their own lives, but two like their pain and suffering is not theirs. It was selected for them. And you're in a sense minimizing it also by saying like the randomness of it that you feel so aggrieved by

is actually on purpose or something. There's something weirdly disempowering about telling someone that there is and the Research will show that when you say that to somebody you feel better and they feel worse And so and there is so much of that that people have to say that you know, and they just I forgive people because I think you don't I don't know what to say to somebody and somebody those circumstances too But when you really look at the stuff we say to people who are suffering and you think, yeah, just don't say that. Yes, I think we as a society, this is slight digression, but you can just not have opinions or express opinions about things that are none of your fucking business. Do you know what I mean?

Like people, like when people, like how many weeks many weeks are you and it's like have you just thought about not saying anything to someone like you don't just because there's an awkward space between you you can just keep it totally to yourself. You don't have to fill the space with a random observation that's likely to get you in trouble. Yes, I completely agree with that. Well, so so I want to get into the rules also, but to me, the exercise of how you did it is interesting, and it's probably another thing that we don't think about when we would read your insights and go, oh, this is coming from someone who has figured it out, who is cross the desert and is explaining how they did it and doing so from a place of

confidence and consistency, as opposed to what it sounds like it was and what I make up when I read, say, meditations is this person is talking to themselves, it, it, monishing slash edifying themselves, it, it monishing slash edifying themselves. And if it does someone else good, that's extra, but it's, it's primarily, it's, it's a, it's a spiritual exercise. The writing is not the recording of the wisdom. It is the practice of the wisdom that, that you're just, the publishing of it is the byproduct. I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, that's it exactly. And as I've been a freelance writer for years, I was saying and had written a lot of really

sterile scientific things that, you know, obviously never really gathered that much attention. This was really the first thing I had written that wasn't like an assignment. I wasn't told what to write about and said it was just, just that of okay. These are the things I know. Let me put it on a piece of paper just so I can have it in front of me and and then yeah putting it on the internet wasn't part of the plan. If I had known like at the time, gee this is going to go viral, I would have written it a lot differently. I probably wouldn't have found the courage to publish it. I probably wouldn't have wanted any of this to happen. Although I'm grateful I get to still talk about it in that moment.

It would have been my biggest fear of like, oh my goodness, here's this letter you wrote to yourself and the whole world's gonna read it. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt

Browneau, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Well, it's like the difference between also knowing it. These are the things you know is not the same as saying, these are the things that I always

do in all situations. It's these are the things that I know to be true that I aspire to do as often as possible, but as a human being fall woefully short of them. Yes, and again, as a therapist, I thought, oh, if I put this out there into the world and be like, hey, everybody, I actually struggle with all of these things. Like, how's this going to affect my career? Is there? And that how are people going to be looking at me when they think,

you know, I thought that you were doing okay. Maybe you're not. And all of these questions about, you know, I'm very private person normally. So the thought of putting my struggles out there for the world to see was just not something in that moment. I would have probably signed up to do. Yeah, although that probably ties in also to, to number eight, which is not making the

same mistakes over and over again, that is actually what we do, though, right? Like it's like, we know, and we know, hey, when this happens, I'm better off taking a beat, not responding right away, not getting upset. And then it happens. And the pattern, you know, we go right into the pattern, right? We do, we do make the same mistakes over and over again. It's just we try to make them maybe for a shorter duration of time, try to catch ourselves faster and try to get a little bit better as we go.

Yes. And so as you have noticed, we all do all of those things on that list from time to time because a lot of people will say to me like, what's the, I give this number three, four times a year, but that doesn't mean I'm not mentally strong. Yeah. Or so I probably wouldn't have ordered those things that way. Had I known we'd eventually have a book about it or anything like that because now we all have mental strength to a degree. It shifts depending on what's going on around us. We all mess up and we all have opportunities of what we're going to do. Once we mess up, how we respond to those mistakes is much more telling than the actual

mistakes that we make. Yeah, and I want to talk about parenting too, but I was just doing an email for daily dad about this where I was thinking it's like, you know, the key phrase I was honing in on was like more often than not. Like do you do it more often than not? Like are more often than not, are you encouraging and positive and patient and all the things that you wanna be as a parent?

To expect that you're all things to all people all the time is to set yourself up for disappointment is to despair at the impossibility of it. Like what matters is on a consistent basis, or just more often than not doing it, are you able to approach what you want of yourself? Yeah. I'm supposed to own ourselves,

I'm either all this way or all that way, or I don't do this, but I do do that. And then you have the whole issue of, yeah, but I said I was a confident person, but I wasn't in this case. So what does that say about me? And stirs up lots of psychological distress words. Yeah, or it's like, ideally, you're, you do these things, the mentally strong things when it counts, right? So like, you could go go to go to pieces when the plane is delayed, but what matters is when life punches you in the face, you know, three times in a row

as you lose three people very close to you, is that when you break, right? Because like you have you you have the luxury in the modern world of going to pieces over these small things, but the stakes are too high on these other things, and that's really where you do have to step up and be what you know you're capable of being. Yes, and for people to know too about mental strength is like it's important when life is good too. It wouldn't be awful if we were only

built mental strength for those horrible moments when life completely falls apart. And people will talk about resilience and know, and usually that's what they're talking about. only built mental strength for those horrible moments when life completely falls apart. And some people will talk about resilience and that's what they're talking about. I can rebound from horrible tragedy. Well, that's great. But what about when life is going well, too? We have options.

And I know plenty of people who struggle when things are too quiet or when life is finally good. And if you just walked around waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time, you'd miss out on the good. Yeah. I do think when I think about what the stokes get wrong is they don't talk about joy, humor, sort of gratitude, like just ordinaryness enough. And I make up that that's probably the same reason that in your list, you don't talk about, you know, 13 things mentally strong people do, like laugh at jokes that are

funny, you know, enjoy things that that tastes good is like Marcus isn't writing for an audience or Sena is writing specifically to a specific friend, like they're addressing only what needs to be addressed and and stipulating we're taking for granted some certain basic facts about being a person in the world. Yes, and that's a good point in terms of my list as well that I don't talk about. How do you embrace joy? How do you know when you're spending time with your family? How do you get the most out of it? How do you be in the moment when life calls for that? Because again, I just wanted to say, hey, and stop doing these certain things and you'll get through it. But even if when you don't do them too, I feel like it does make the

good times better. And when we have tough times in our life, the relief from pain sometimes feel better than just sudden happiness or a great thing that happens to you. But sometimes when we are going through something and you're like, okay, well, I've been through it or the relief from pain, we know a cold glass eliminate tastes better after you've mowed the lawn. Yeah. And knowing that when you do go through the tough times, yes, good can come out of it, not to sound like the people that say, you know, everything happens for a reason, but there are those times where good can come out of it.

And when we experience that relief of pain, sometimes I think that's the only good thing that might come out of it is we feel better once we experience that relief. Yeah, and you could probably argue too that it's like by removing these 13 things, you are creating the room for joy, happiness, contentment, presence to ensue naturally. So if you're like, hey, like, they're like, well, what about presence or having fun? Well, it's like not dwelling on the past, taking calculated, or, you know, not fearin calculated risks. Those are, those are two ways that what, like, the opposite of those things is the positive thing. So like, your list is inherently about removing negatives. And I think that the Stokes are saying this too, it's like, hey, when opposite of those things is the positive thing. So like your list is inherently about removing

negatives. And I think that the Stokes are saying this too, it's like, hey, when we get rid of focusing on what we don't control, when we get rid of the fear of death, et cetera, it creates room for the positive emotions. But those are so natural, those do tend to fill that space that we're not going to talk about just adding them because they're irrelevant if you haven't first made room for them. Right. And I talk about it in terms of physical strength, too. It makes more sense to us because like all right, you know, you can go to the gym, you can build physical muscle. Doesn't mean guarantee you won't get a physical health problem, mental strength, mental health, the same thing. You can build mental strength, but often it's the things that we don't do

that makes our good habits so much more effective. Like, is you run on the treadmill, that's great, but just don't eat the jelly donut and you don't have to run on the treadmill for four hours. But like, I have somebody in my life who tells her kids like, you know, you can eat that burger in french fries but make sure you eat a salad too

because eating vegetables is healthy. But she wouldn't say don't eat the cake burger in french fries, but make sure you eat a salad too, because eating vegetables is healthy. But she wouldn't say, don't eat the cake in the french fries, but as long as you eat that plate of salad, then you're a healthy person. Instead of just saying, you know, if we're going to be conscious of what we're eating, maybe we don't want to eat french fries and cake and burgers all the time

because the salad doesn't cancel that out. Yeah, it's like that's the problem with that approach. It might seem a little more palatable, but it's fundamentally and nutritionally not correct. Right. And or yeah, you see people are like, I ate terribly, so I'm gonna go for a jog later. And it's like, here's the calories consumed.

Here's the calories burned. They're not even remotely in the ballpark. Like, you're gonna, that Oreo that you have, that, the one Oreo, that was the 30 minutes of jogging, like unfortunately. So, like, I think that's also probably a mentally strong thing, which is like face facts and the world as it is, not as you would like to be,

and there's no real compromising with reality in that sense. Right, but we like to bend the rules, like to think sometimes very smart people again, or lose their way because they end up bending the rules coming up with these other policies or thinking that there's ways around reality. Yeah, we tell ourselves stories to keep us from having to make hard choices. Right. Or say difficult things. Right. And we get hopeful that the world isn't the way that we see it. So we think, I feel like I could see it differently or only if this didn't happen. Or we get excuses, justify things. Yeah, it's like a shit in one hand, hoping the other see what

fills up first. Yes, yes. Yeah, the kid, the kid thing is interesting to me too, as I have a six year old and a, and a three year old. And I probably get asked that as you do as soon as you make anything that is helpful to adults, I think it's a, it's a good impulse. I'm not like complaining about it. But they go, now, how do I teach this to my kids?

Right. The, the, the first answer being like, well, why don't you just try to teach it to yourself first, and that will probably do most of the heavy lifting for teaching it for your kids. But it is the sort of perennial question because I think it's like when we discover something that helps us are inst and this is true. It's like why didn't I learn this earlier? Like why didn't someone tell me this earlier? I'm not it's not always possible I guess, but I think that's where that impulse to teach it to kids comes from. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what happened after my first book came out. That's the biggest question I got got and people kept saying if I had only learned this when I was 10, it would have prevented

30 years of suffering. So I want to make sure my kids learn this first. And some people kept asking me for a kid's book, but I thought, well, I can write a book for your tenure world. It says, don't fear failure, but unless you're reinforcing those skills, it won't help. So that's why the parenting book came about because I want a parents to know, yes, you can do these things and there are strategies you can use to adapt them to say an eight year old, but the very best thing you can do is live out these principles in your life and make it a policy in your home

that this is how we respond to failure. And this is what we do when we make a mistake and you'll teach your kids by showing them how you do those things. Right, it's like it's easy to talk to these, to talk to your kids about these things. It's harder to demonstrate these things to your kids. But ultimately, only one of them is going to matter. Yes. And I do this exercise sometimes when I'm speaking at a school and then

I speak to the parents, I'll speak to the kids during the day and the parents at night. And I'll ask the kids, I'll speak to the kids during the day and the parents at night. And I'll ask the kids, I'll take a poll and just say, you know, what are your parents care more about if they were to come to your parent teacher conference tomorrow, would they rather your teacher say you're the smartest kid in the class or the kindest kid in the class. And of course 99% of the kids are like, oh, my mom wants me to be the smartest kid in the class. And then he asked the parents the same question at night and it's almost the opposite 99% of parents are like, me to be the smartest kid in the class. And then he asked the parents the same question at night. And it's almost the opposite. 99% of parents are like, I want the kindest kid in the class.

And the other 1% usually says, I want my kid to be the kindest and the smartest kid in the class. But then we just talk about that. Like, why might your kids have a different theory? Well, how often do you talk about kindness versus how often are you talking about? Would you get on your science test today? And if we really want them to learn our values, we can't just say, hey, you should be kind once a month. We also need to be talking about that regularly and talking about that more perhaps than we're talking about achievement. When the problem is one is so measurable, right? One, you can track your the teacher can track for you and send a report card home. The other, although I do remember getting citizenship grades, but I never, never once would

my parents have to go to your point. If I had a low grade in the class, but a high-markered citizenship, would they have said, good enough, right? They would have said, fuck this other stuff. They would have, the mask would have slipped in that moment. They would have said, they would have said, fuck this other stuff. This is, you know, they would have, the mask would have slipped in that moment. They would have said, this is meaningless. This is, this is, this is just what we pay lip service to. Why do you not have an A? That's what we actually care about. Exactly. And so then when you look at the statistics and it's like 75% of kids in high school

admit to cheating. Yeah. Well, why are they cheating? Because they think you care more about the grade than they do. Honesty, for example. And of course, you know, it's okay if that's what you truly value is somebody's grades because you're probably aren't going to get a paycheck based on your kindness. But to know what, what's important or if your kids do in their homework and somebody calls and says, and they're crying, do you want them to pause their

homework and go talk to their friend? Or you say, no, a homework comes first. You call your friend and their crisis back later. It depends. There's a lot of variables in there, but just knowing where do we value these things and how do we live out our priorities in life? Yes. And I think there's this thing for kids too, where the parents are very clearly modeling that what they actually value is appearances

above all other things, right? Like even the way that they see that the kid is not their own person with their own hopes and dreams, but a reflection of them or an extension of them, or a thing that they're optimizing or trying to make be a certain thing. And then, of course, the kids internalize a kind of, it's almost a kind of nihilism, right? Where these things don't actually matter. Right. And they found from the research, too, that a parent who maybe didn't make the math team or the football team raises a kid who's like, we at math or really good at football.

It's really healing for the parent. They're able to like work through a lot of their old emotional wounds and it's good for them and then it's horrible for the kids to grow up with a parent who pressures them to be a certain way. But to know like what are my unhealed childhood wounds and how might that be playing out in my relationship with my kids is super important. Yeah, I think about that with my parents. Like, if I was just now starting to make headway in my writing career, they would have a very different relationship with my job. Do you know what I mean?

Like, the success of, like, if your kid takes an untraditional path and is successful, everything works out. If your kid takes an untraditional path and struggles, well, it's hard for you to answer that question, oh, what's Timmy doing? Or whatever, right? Yes. Yes. Oh, he's really following his passions and figuring out, I always thought the revealing

thing in the college admissions scandal, which I'm so endlessly fascinated by, was one of the parents is caught on the wiretaps going like, I just, I just can't have a kid that goes to to University of Arizona. That's where dumb kids go, right? It was like, it wasn't that it was that they didn't want to have to tell other parents that their kid went to a party school. Right. And like that, that's the struggle for the parent. And that's obviously a very mentally fragile, vulnerable parent, if you think about it. That's a parent who cares way too much what other people think. Yes. And I think it plays out in family dynamics in so many ways. I have a sister who's a therapist and she has a nine to five job and loves that. The fact that I don't work a nine to five job,

she does not think is cool at all. She's embarrassed by it. And so she'll tell me to make sure her kids know that I have a job and that I work very hard. She's afraid her kids are going to see me as unemployed if I'm out and about it new and on a Tuesday. And so she's very much like. She's stabilizing. You're shaking, you're making the world seem scary. And I genuinely explain her, you know, a lot of people think that's cool

to not have an nine to five office job. And she's still very much like, well, a lot of people are unemployed who don't have jobs to, Amy. Yeah. I mean, I feel like at the core of all of them is like cultivating the ability to not care what other people think is maybe the most important trait you can have because like so many of the the the the vices that you're talking about are rooted in not that they're objectively

better or comfortable or nice. The only reason we're doing them is that we're worried that we're going to be judged or criticized or or ostracized or whatever. At the core of it, it's like, can you be comfortably in yourself good or bad? It's like it's the big driver of everything. Right, and to your point before, if I were a writer and I hadn't made any money, or hadn't sold any books, like would I be comfortable telling people,

I'm a writer, like at what point do you think, okay, I'm okay with this, but if you're successful, because much easier to say, yeah, that's what I do. And if other people don't get it, that doesn't sting so much as if they were to say those things and you didn't have any success to back it up. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the list. So it's like number two, don't give away their power. That's like some, so what other people think is not in your control.

Don't shy away from change. Part of the reason we fear change is we fear looking foolish, we fear looking out of date, right? Don't waste energy on things you can't control. Again, what other people think is something you don't control. Don't worry about pleasing everyone. That's worried. Whatever other people think calculated risks. One of the reasons we're afraid of risks is we don't want to fail and you know have nothing or be ostracized or look foolish again. Dwelling on the past. So often we're dwelling on, you know, embarrassing things that we did, resenting other people's success. That's caring what other people think.

The reason we give up after a failure is we don't want to be seen as a failure alone time. We don't want to be seen as a loser, right? Feel the world owes something. Like at the core of all of it, even expecting the immediate results, like it all comes down to like how much time are you thinking about what other people think and how much time are you thinking about what you think and what you need and how it feels to you, which is ultimately the only thing you control and the only thing that really matters. Right, that's it exactly. Obviously you're the expert on ego and you know, all of those things that impact us and the ability

to then think, how much energy do I want to put into trying to prove to other people that I'm cool? If I, you know, am I going to buy a million social media followers? So I look like I'm legit in today's world or can you give that up? Or do you need to justify it? And when you give up that need to try to prove to other people,

it's definitely freeing, but again, easier said than done when you give up that need to try to prove to other people, it's definitely freeing. But again, easier said than done when you're successful. But last night I was coming home from a walk and I was on the phone with my dad and he said, like, what are you doing? You heard me rustling something around. And I said, oh, somebody sent me a frozen pizza in the mail and putting it in the freezer.

And he said, why would anybody send you a frozen pizza? And I said, well, it's a company who just sends me free stuff, because that's what happens. You get random free stuff in the mail. And he's like, yeah, but why would they, why would anybody send you a frozen pizza? Because they wanted to do that. You're putting, you know, in his head, you just couldn't justify like somebody's going to send you a product to test it for free. And then you might talk about it on social media like, why would anybody think you're cool enough to do that? And you just have to decide like,

do you put energy in trying to explain? And like, yeah, that's how it works out. And you just kind of move forward after that. But there was a time in my life, even say with my dad, where I would have been like, no, dad, you don't understand. Like it's like, your bafflement is actually a little insulting. I don't know how to tell you this. But like, you should, this shouldn't make sense to you and your inability to make sense of it is partly rooted in some sort of conception of me as not important. Right. And this is the same dad. When I made the Wall Street Journal best seller list, I said, Hey, dad, I made the Wall Street Journal best seller list. And he said, yeah, but

what number were you on the list? Yikes. I said, I don't even know. I was just impressed. I made the list. Right. Yeah, no, and you can see how those are the kinds of things that end up giving your kid complexes, right? Because you've now either not saying your dad is,

but like a parent who's a minimizer or a parent who's never pleased or a parent who is so insecure about their own worth they have to make someone else insecure about their, that's how you get a kid who wins seven super balls and still feels like a piece of crap, right? And like, I think one of the gifts you can learn and hopefully you learn it early in your career is that no amount of success can make your parents proud of you if they aren't if they weren't already proud of you and nothing can make you feel. inherently already feel like you're worth something. And that is very true. And as a therapist, I would have parents bring their kids in for interesting reasons. Like, oh, you know, my kid, he must be depressed because he's not doing four hours worth of homework

every night because he doesn't seem to care. He's apathetic, so cure his depression. And sometimes it would be the opposite end of the spectrum. Kids who would have some anxiety and they'd be studying constantly and the parents would bring them in and be like, is this an anxiety disorder? Is it a high achiever? Where's the line? But certainly what parents think is important and then because they do see that as a reflection of themselves,

if their kids don't have those same values or they think their kid isn't successful enough or they can't brag about them on social media, then they think, well, who am I if I've raised this kid? And for parents who raise kids who have a mental illness or a substance abuse problem, they often worry, this is a reflection of myself. I've done something wrong

or what could I have done differently? Yeah, I think treating those inner child wounds as you get older is so important because you realize how we transfer our issues onto other things. I read this interview with Judd Apital once, where he's like, the most important breakthrough I had in my career was realizing that the movie studio was not my parents. And that when they were giving me notes on the movie,

they were just giving me notes on the movie. They weren't like, it wasn't, I didn't need to make them love me. I didn't need to fight them as like a rebellious teenager. I just needed to look at the notes, take the ones that were good, ignore the ones that were bad, and continue to go about my life. When you have these kind of inner child runes, they're like these trigger points that make you not a mentally strong adult. They make you a mentally fragile, non-year-old, or even even a mentally fragile nine-year-old or even a strong nine-year-old is not going to be able to withstand, you know, a negative story on the front page

of the New York Times about them because you're just not equipped for that. And so you have to you have to treat those things if you want to function in a in a in a adult world that as as your story points out is like quite cruel. Right. And there we all have those certain insecurities. So we might be like, oh, I'm okay. If you make fun of me for not having as much money as somebody, but if you insult my looks, that's really going to hurt. Whatever it is that we all have these certain pain points. And when people touch on those, it brings it brings it to the surface and it's tougher to say, okay, what you're saying is a reflection of you, not necessarily a reflection of me, but once you get to that point where you can do that pretty well in life, life gets easier, but then I feel like

we still have those moments where we think that one thing or it comes from a certain person and we still have to check ourselves because there's a part of us that still hurts from most likely from childhood. Yeah, it's like whenever I find myself feeling very strongly about something, it's almost always touching one of those points as nothing to do with the thing at hand because the thing at hand doesn't really matter that much. It's touched. Whenever you're that sort of blind, you know, overwhelmed, you know, like whenever that whole thing happens, it's a, it's an inner child thing.

And, and you got to figure that out if you want to be a functional adult, or raise functional adults. Yeah, exactly. To recognize that and then to be able to say, all right, what's this really about? That's tough to do, but super important. So you had foster children? What was that experience like? So I guess I have. Yes, yeah, so I did have foster children before moving on a boat since they

didn't even let foster kids be on a boat, let alone live on a boat. Yeah, so even if you wanted to take like fishing for the day, it's pretty much an act of Congress to get people to sign off it, so they can set foot on a boat. But like ever since I was young, I just wanted to have foster kids. I had learned that there were kids who didn't have parents, and I thought that was the saddest thing. And so when I was probably about 22, 23 is when my husband and I started fostering, we got married and said, well, let's do this. And with the intent of fostering like younger kids, I didn't want a baby, but I wanted like, you know, four-year-olds who could at least tell me what,

when they were hungry, that kind of stuff. But then I ended up with mostly teenage girls. Teenage girls got a bad rap a lot of times. And we became therapeutic foster parents, which meant the state knew I was a therapist too, so they would give me the kids would behave your problem. So my role ended up becoming taking the kids that the state was concerned might not be adoptable. The ones that had been kicked out of 25 places or something like that, which I said, I'm happy to take the kids that misbehave,

as long as their misbehavior is more like yelling and swearing and not, I'm not going to sleep with one eye open if I have a teenager in my house who has horrible violence and aggression in there, history, but almost all of them, like it wasn't teenage girl stuff, it wasn't anything horrendous or all that difficult. So I did that until I wrote the book and decided to move to a sailboat in the Florida Keys. Wow. Was it a very rewarding experience? How did you change by it? Yeah, you know, that was one of the things. So like, after losing my mom, I just remember being like,

this isn't fair. I'm 23. I lost my mom. I had all these things. I imagine my mom would be there for. And then I had this foster kid who was four years old. And I thought, yeah, you don't have either of your parents' little buddy. And then, you know, all the other kids that would come to my house, some of them, like both

of their parents had died in really tragic circumstances and they just didn't have family who could take them. And it kind of put things in perspective. And I don't think we should really look at people who are less fortunate than us just to feel good about ourselves. But on the other hand, I thought, you know, I grew up with my mom and my life for 23 years. Like, she taught me what I needed to know to get through life. I had her around long enough for that.

And I just couldn't imagine being a kid. Like, I wouldn't have handled it very well at seven if I had to move in with complete strangers. Like, I'm not sure I would have survived, but they would call you at maybe midnight. And this kid would show up with a trash bag of belongings. We're complete strangers and they have no idea if they're going to see their families again.

Just the thought of that is horrifying. So I thought if I can do anything to try to make that experience a little bit better, I will. And they did all the stories didn't have happy endings. In fact, our last foster child as an adult, she became a young adult who died of a substance abuse problem. And it was one of those things where you think, you know, you try to do your best

to make a positive impact on somebody when you have them, but you know, again, they didn't always end in happy endings. I wish we could say, yes, they all went on and had great lives after that, but the truth is, and they didn't always end in happy endings. I wish we could say yes, they all went on and had great lives after that, but the truth is, they didn't, some of them had been passed around from foster home to foster home for a decade, and a lot of damage had been done.

And even if they get adopted as a teenager, it's tough to then go on and live a functional life after that. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, you were talking about a little bit more earlier, but I guess even there, it feels like another through line between all the things that mentally strong people do, or one thing that mentally strong people have, which is perspective. Perspective is what allows you to distinguish or to go this way or that way. It feels like all of the 13 to some degree are rooted in the ability to have perspective or to have the right perception about things.

Right. And that's just to then decide, am I going to say, you know, it's my life story, going to be one of horrible tragedy or is it one of my hero that I survived all of it? And it's up to me to decide how I want to write the story or how I want to be portrayed in my own narrative, but to I could either say I'm a horribly scarred, emotionally wounded person because of the things I've been through or I can say, you know, I went through things that were way tougher than I think I could have. And here's how I got through it. And just remembering that that I wouldn't have imagined I could get through most of those things, but I did.

And my wife gets to keep writing the story from here on out. How have you thought about all these ideas with the pandemic? I go back and forth with the pandemic and kids. Like it feels like I try to be very sympathetic to my kids, like they're having a hard time but they don't know they're having a hard time. They don't even comprehend how ridiculous or abnormal all of this is. They can't even perceive

that they are feeling stressed. They just know that stress is acting on them. So I think about it that way. And then on the other hand, I've been kind of amazed at people's readiness and quickness to just like sort of right off their kids as being like very fragile and easily broken. You know what I mean? Like I remember early on, it was like, 2020 is a lost year for children. Like there's this kind of like, again, we talked about agency,

this kind of like idea that like because kids went through this, they'll never recover. And I don't mean to be glib about educational losses and income inequality. All these societal factors have been exacerbated by this disaster, but it seems like people are not prepared to cultivate or expect their kids

not prepared to cultivate or expect their kids to have any, you know, resiliency or that actually these events might have been wonderful for cultivating said resiliency. Yeah, and you're right. It's about finding that balance. I was doing an interview the other day where we were talking about how more younger people are seeking out mental health services more than ever. And the interviewer said, do you think that younger people are getting their mental health treated because they've been through so many more hard things than other generations have? Yeah. And I, out of the mind, mouth flew words like, well, I think their grandparents survived war and things like that.

And, and I don't think it's that they've been through anything worse. I keep hearing people use the word traumatic. Like, oh, the pandemic has been traumatic. And it was for some kids. Some kids didn't have enough food to eat. Some kids were living in homes that were abusive, so to not be able to have a break and go to school would be traumatic. Sure. But the vast majority of people throwing that word around, their kids were not traumatized by the pandemic. And I think we do people into service when we keep saying that yes, our kids are traumatized. And when we treat them like they're fragile, yes, they grow up to be fragile. Yeah, I was thinking about that too. My wife and I were just talking

about this, my wife is trained in psychology also. And you know, this idea of like, they're like, it's an epic, a mental health epidemic. And I'm, I'm actually're like, it's an mental health epidemic. And I'm actually not sure that it's any more common than it ever has been. We might, the positive expression would be, we have a surge in people being treated for various mental illnesses, which is an overwhelming positive. Like, when I look at my parents and my parents generation and the generation before there, I, yes, there was a certain, especially grandparents, there's a certain amount of emotional resilience to get through the depression and more, etc.

But I also see a lot of problems that were swept under the rug, a lot of obvious issues that were denied or mental illness, mentally ill behavior that was simply indulged, that if there is a mental health epidemic, it's a result of that trauma being passed down. It's not that, but I would actually argue that people are not any worse off than they have been. They're just actually open about it. And the upside is that they're dealing with it instead of denying it.

Yeah, that's just it. When I was a kid, I didn't know anybody who went to therapy. It just wasn't something people did. And now I have kids that would come into my therapy office because they asked their parents, hey, mom, can I see a therapist? Because my friends do. And it's kind of a cool thing to do. But something I learned in my own life, I had sprained my ankle once and it

swelled up really fast. And the doctor was quick to say, I think it's broken. It's just not showing up on the x-ray because your ankle's so swollen. So be really careful for the next few days. And then we'll try to x-ray it again. So I went home thinking I had a broken leg. So I basically didn't move because it grossed me out to think I had some crushed bone in there, and so in my brain,

I was making it that obviously it was this horrible broken bone. So of course, by the time a week rolled around, my ankle was more swollen than ever. I couldn't move it, and in my head, I kept reinforcing, because this must be awful. There's something really wrong with it. I went to a physical therapist a couple weeks later

who was like, well, yeah, you haven't been walking on it. Get up and walk. And then it was like within a day of weeks later who was like, well, yeah, you haven't been walking on it. Get up and walk. And then it was like within a day, I was able to walk on it. The swelling went down and it felt a million times better. But I thought, that's what we do in life. If we treat ourselves like we're broken in fragile, then we don't go out there and do anything that really puts our abilities to the test. And then when we start treating ourselves like we can't handle stuff, then we actually

reduce our ability to handle adversity. And I'm afraid that we do that with kids. If we start treating them like they're too fragile, we won't handle stuff, then we actually reduce our ability to handle adversity. And I'm afraid that we do that with kids. If we start treating them like they're too fragile, we won't give them the opportunity to test what they actually can do. No, that's right. It's like there is a danger in labels or the desire to prematurely label something instead of seeing them as on some sort of spectrum, although even that is one of the things like how quick we are to be like, oh, they're on the spectrum or this or that. But it's like when you are trying to make something

a thing, you are kind of making it a thing, when really it's probably a better approach is to just be understanding and empathetic and accommodating, but realizing that yeah, not everything is a disease that has to be treated with, say, medicine. Right. And I think for parents who are checking in with their kids about the pandemic too much, like, how are you dealing with it now and checking with them 14 times a day to say, how are you handling the stress of the pandemic?

Yeah, yeah. Am I supposed to tell you not well? Yeah. Right. Instead of just going like, okay, you have the reason their grades are slipping or the reason the three-year-old through the tantrum is because I had CNN on in the background and that's stressful for them. I'm just going to fix that and I'm going to understand that behavior is downstream from these environmental decisions that I'm making, to fix that and I'm going to understand that behavior is downstream from these environmental decisions that I'm making, let's say. Yes.

If the managing the environment, so often we tend to blame ourselves or somebody else for not having the inner tools, but sometimes that's the best solution. Shout off CNN. Let's fix the environment so that we're not fighting all of these things all day longer, these temptations are so that it's not so hard to manage our inner turmoil. Yeah, I guess it all comes down to agency or if you see them as capable of improving or getting better, they'll probably be able to get better. And if you see them as fixed or inherently broken or constrained or limited, that's also probably true. And that's not so, you know, which is the

mentally strong attitude. The one that says, yeah, they have a, you know, they have a hard time doing X. So they therefore they shouldn't do X anymore. Or it's they have a hard time doing X. So I'm going to expect X to take longer than I would on some other kid. Right. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I have other parents that kind of throw their kids to the wolves and be like, I'm going to toughen them up. Yeah. And your life is tough enough. You don't need to like introduce obstacles just to make them feel worse.

Like they'll get that in life. You just don't want to protect them from that stuff too much. Yeah, people say that too, because I wrote the obstacles the way and people are like, so do you think I should be seeking out obstacles to test myself again? I mean, like, look,

I think it's good to have a physical practice. I think it's good to challenge yourself, jump in, jump in cold water every once in a while or whatever, but like life for the most part is conspiring enough against you as it is. I don't think you're going to walk through raindrops your whole life. Like obstacles are coming. Just wait. That's right. Yes. For patient and off they will come your way one way or another. Yeah. And look, not everyone, I mean, obviously, the result of your,

you know, the events of your life sort of formed your ability to articulate and talk about these things and open up. You know, you probably wouldn't be here talking. Had you not gone through the things that you've gone through, your work wouldn't have reached millions of people. Maybe your experience as a foster mother would be different. So all these things shape us. But I do feel like there's also this sort of bent, maybe social media exacerbates it, but people like people think that adversity needs to be like, well, I lost my leg in an accident when I was six or, you know, I come from this persecuted religious sect or what I like, like,

it's also just fucking hard to be a person in a world that you don't control and that adversity is there shaping each of us whether you're Prince Charles, you know, and you have a distant mother who works all the time or you know, you were growing up with a one of the kids that you met in foster care like life is hard and it can build mental strength in us or it can, you know, overwhelm and break us. We have the choice there. Yes. And something I learned as a therapist is like, we all experienced the same emotions, just

about different things. So somebody who's wealthy is going to have anxiety about something probably quite different than somebody who's wealthy is gonna have anxiety about something probably quite different than somebody who's in poverty, but yet we still have the same emotions and it's not a contest of who's been through the most pain or who has the most pain in life or who's suffering the most. No, that's exactly right.

It matters not what cards you get dealt but how you play them. Right. Exactly. Well, this was amazing and I so appreciate work and I'm really glad we got connected. Me as well, thank you so much. Well, I did it.

I am officially at the halfway point or past on the four virtues series that I've been writing. Discipline is destiny, the power of self-control is now out in the world. Meanwhile, I'm hard at work on the next one. I'm trying not to focus on the results, trying not to focus on how far I've come. As the Stokes talk about, as I talk about in the book, I'm trying to keep my nose down and do the work, to be disciplined, to not be distracted, although there's nothing as distracting and consuming as a book launch.

I appreciate everyone so much who supported the book. It's been the biggest launch I've ever had. All of your support means so much to me. I signed over 10,000 copies of the book. I'm still signing more because we're honoring the pre-order bonuses. If you missed it, you can grab a copy of discipline as destiny, the power of self control.

Anywhere books are sold, or if you want to grab a sign copy or want to redeem your bonuses, you can do that at dailystilic.com slash preorder. And if you're a podcast person, which clearly are, you're listening to this, the audiobook is out, which I also recorded and grab it on Audible, I books. Anywhere you get your audiobooks, the ebook is out too. I can't wait to hear what all of you think and thanks to everyone for supporting discipline, its destiny, the power of self-control, which is out now everywhere. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon

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