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A Masterclass in Mental Toughness for Your Family with Amy Morin

Lace Gilger
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In this episode we bring mental toughness expert Amy Morin onto the show to discuss how to help yourself and your family be mentally strong.

Amy Morin is editor-in-chief at Verywell Mind, a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and psychology lecturer at Northeastern University. She’s also an international bestselling author. Her books include, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, and 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do. The Guardian dubbed her “the self-help guru of the moment” and Forbes calls her a “thought leadership star.” Her TEDx talk, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong, is one of the most popular talks of all time with more than 15 million views. Her advice for building mental strength has been featured by major media outlets, including Fox News, CNN, Oprah.com, Time, and many more! Her most recent project is the newest book in her series, 13 Things Strong Kids Do: Think Big, Feel Good, Act Brave, being released this spring.

  • What is mental strength?

    • The way you think

    • The way you feel (emotions)

    • The way you behave (how you choose to act, how you motivate yourself, etC)

  • Naming your feelings can help deal with and resolve them

  • Ask yourself: Is the emotion I'm having right now a friend or an enemy?

  • Any emotion has the ability to be useful or harmful.

  • Trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings makes you pretty miserable in the end

  • As a society we don't teach the necessary emotional skills to deal with life

  • Assuming another person's emotional state

  • Emotional intelligence starts with mastering your OWN emotions before trying to understand

  • Most people's emotional reactions to you are really a reflection of their own reality and their own perception

  • Why you should never negotiate when you're sad

  • We're really bad at compartmentalizing our anxiety

  • When should you start to teach these lessons to your kids?

  • Lesson #1 to teach preschoolers - there's a difference between how you FEEL and how you behave.

    • It's OK to be mad.

    • But it's not OK to hit.

  • How do we teach our children to build their own emotional vocabulary?

  • A great turnaround: what would you say to your friend who was in the same situation?

  • How do you build the "thinking" side of mental toughness?

  • "Our brains tend to underestimate us"

  • Your brain tends to underestimate you.

  • How you brain lies to you.

  • How often you get stuck in your own comfort zone.

  • Proving yourself wrong can be a powerful tool to change the voice in your head

  • How do we teach our children to build their own emotional vocabulary?

    • Use feeling words more in everyday conversation.

    • Express your own emotions to your kids.

    • Talk more about feelings.

    • Ask kids how SOMEONE ELSE felt in a situation

      • Show me with your face how someone else feels

  • Help your kids to build a "calm down kit"

  • How are you doing on your emotional thermometer? Here are a few reframes

    • "How's your stress level been lately?"

  • Exercise: Have your child write a kind letter to themselves. (Teaches self compassion)

  • Exercise: Work on gratitude with your kids. Create some gratitude rituals around the house.

  • Create a gratitude jar at your house and read the answers once a month.

  • Why you shouldn't shield your children from pain. Let your children experience pain and challenges. It's much better to experience it at home than it is to experience it once they are out on their own.

  • Don't prevent your children from making mistakes.

  • Giving your children too many choices and input - they start to have anxiety and doubt that you know what you're talking about, and ultimately it backfires. Your kids don't have an equal vote. There is a hierarchy.

  • You need to teach your kids that you believe they are strong kids, and even though this is something they didn't want that they will learn to adapt and be OK. It's building the muscle of tolerance of discomfort.

    • You want to teach your kids how to say to themselves "This is uncomfortable and I can handle it."

    • Your kids can face their fears and deal with tough situations.

  • Homework: Incorporate more feeling words into your own vocabulary, and your vocabulary when you interact with your kids and your family. Get more comfortable recognizing and labeling your emotions.

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet, bringing the world’s top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fable.

[00:01:28] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over a 100 countries.

In this episode, we bring mental toughness expert, Amy Morin, onto the show, to discuss how to help yourself and your family be mentally strong.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we brought back renowned guest, Greg McCune for an amazing discussion of how to make your life effortless and focus on what really matters. Now for our interview with Amy.

Amy Morin is the Editor-In-Chief at Verywell Mind, a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist and psychology lecturer at Northeastern University. She's also an international best-selling author. Her books include 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do, and 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do. The Guardian dubbed her the self-help guru of the moment, and Forbes called her a thought leadership star. Her TEDx Talk, The Secret to Becoming Mentally Strong is one of the most popular talks of all time, with more than 15 million views. She's been featured on CNN, Oprah, Time and many media outlets across the globe.

[00:02:16] MB: Amy, welcome to the Science of Success.

[00:02:17] AM: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Matt.

[00:02:19] MB: Well, we're really excited to have you on here. I've been a fan of your work for a long time and I love the recent tack that you've taken more towards parenting and children, especially, as a relatively recent spent a couple years, but father of two children, it's great to see and encounter resources that are geared towards parenting, but also with a with a bent towards evidence in psychology and research as well.

[00:02:46] AM: Yeah. My books really stems from what my readers have asked. After my first book came out for adults, I had so many parents that said, “How do I teach this to my kids? Or if only my life could have been different had I learned these things sooner.” That led some parenting book. Now years later, I'm finally writing for kids to be able to say the resource that you can give to your kids, that they can learn mental exercises in a fun way, too, and in a kid-friendly language. There's so many opportunities to teach kids, especially right now about how to build mental strength. I'm excited to get this book out into the world.

[00:03:19] MB: Before we jump into some of the tactics and strategies and some of the specifics, I'd love to zoom out and get a sense from you, as somebody who's written and researched so much about this, how do you think about what mental strength is?

[00:03:37] AM: Glad you asked that. We just did a survey, where we asked people and reading the answers was fascinating to see the wide range of what people viewed mental strength as, everything from it's the same thing as resilience, to it's your ability to solve problems. Really interesting. The way that I define it is that there's three parts to it. The way you think, the way you feel and the way you behave. When we talk about thoughts, it's not about being overly positive, or assuming everything will turn out right. That's not really helpful either.

Instead, it's more about thinking realistically and thinking, I can handle this, even if it doesn't turn out the way that I want. Then the emotional part is knowing that you don't have to be happy all the time, that you can tolerate being sad, that you can tolerate being upset and angry and embarrassed. You also don't have to stay stuck there, that you have some skills and tools and strategies to manage those emotions in a healthy way.

Then the third part is about your behavior. How do you choose to act? What do you do when you start with motivation? What steps do you take your goals, even on the days when you don't like it? I combine those three things, we've got mental strength.

[00:04:42] MB: I love those three pillars, and on the emotional side especially, the topic, or the theme of tolerating sadness, tolerating negative emotions is such a vital skill set and such a cornerstone of not only emotional intelligence, but really, just living a healthy and productive life.

[00:05:04] AM: It is. We talk so much about emotional intelligence, and how to interpret other people's feelings and those sorts of things. I would argue, we're a long way from that. I'll stand in front of a roomful of executives giving a talk. These are educated people who are doing really well. I'll say, I'll give you 30 seconds to write down as many feeling words as you can. At the end of 30 seconds, they usually have an average of five words that they came up with. Happy, sad, mad. Once we get beyond those, it's a lot harder to think of it, because we spend such little time paying attention to our emotions.

There's a lot of research behind the fact that if you just name your emotions, it takes a lot of the sting out of them. Being able to say, “I'm anxious,” makes you feel a little bit less anxious. Or being able to say, “I'm really sad right now,” can help you feel a little bit better. I really always advocate for people to learn how do you label your emotions. How do you put a name to what you're feeling? It's tough Sometimes feeling things that almost feel contradictory, you can be happy that you're going to take on a new job, yet still sad that you're going to miss your old job.

You can have more than one feeling at once. Just figuring out okay, how am I feeling right now? Is this emotion serving me well? There's an exercise in my kid’s book, but it's an exercise I often do with adults that says, ask yourself, is the emotion I'm having right now a friend or an enemy? We tend to talk about emotions as if they're either positive, or negative. We say, happiness is a good emotion. It's positive, but sadness is a bad emotion. That's not true that any emotion has the ability to be helpful sometimes, but it also has the ability to be hurtful, for example.

The reason why really smart people sometimes fall prey to get rich quick scheme, they were so excited about it, that it clouded their judgment, and they overlooked the risks that they were facing. They underestimated the possibility that they might fail. Or, when we look at something like sadness, we think, “Oh, sadness is a bad emotion.” Sadness is important. Sometimes that helps you honor something that you lost, whether you're grieving a loved one, or you are missing something that used to have in your life. It's okay to be sad.

We also need to recognize when that sadness isn't serving us well. If you're so sad, you can't get out of bed, or you're so sad that you don't want to talk to people, then you need to take action to say, “How do I regulate my emotions a little bit better?” As a society, I don't think we've done a very good job teaching people, how do you cope with uncomfortable emotions? So many people spend a lot of time numbing themselves, running from uncomfortable feelings, doing anything they can to avoid feeling bad.

The ironic twist is, is that ultimately, trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings makes us pretty miserable in the end. That you can't really enjoy even at times in life, unless you've gone through some tough emotions, too. It's really important. What are your coping strategies? What helps you when you feel these things? How do you get through them, rather than try to go around them? Obviously, during the pandemic, most of us have lost our go-to coping strategies.

We can go visit with our friends, and we can't see our family as much. Maybe we can't go to the gym. Those were all the things maybe that regulated our feelings, so we felt okay. In the absence of those, people are finding that they're reaching for some really unhealthy things. I'm turning to alcohol. I'm eating too much. I'm binge watching TV to the point that I don't get off the couch all weekend. Other things that they're doing now are introducing bigger problems in your lives. It's just so important for us to talk more about our emotions, to become more aware of how we're feeling, and then to figure out, how do I cope with this emotion if it's not serving me well?

[00:08:37] MB: So many great points and things I want to dig into. One of the things you’ve said that really resonates with me is this idea that as a society, we really don't teach people how to cope with uncomfortable emotions. In many ways, this podcast itself sprung from that same desire to help people build a toolkit to start to unpack and work through. Aven as you touched on a moment ago, acknowledge what your emotions are, and how to channel them and accept them and deal with them appropriately.

[00:09:12] AM: Yeah, that's just it. It's so tempting when we say to other people like, “Oh, don't worry about it, or it'll all work out in the end.” We're uncomfortable when other people are upset, too. I see this with parents that when their kids are sad, they're like, “Oh, cheer up, honey.” Or we do something really quickly to cheer them up. Or we minimize their feelings and say, “Oh, nothing bad is going to happen. Or, you'll be just fine. Don't worry about it.” Instead of talking about it, instead of being able to say, “No, it's really normal to be scared sometimes.”

Even if we don't dare in somebody else's emotion, if they're really afraid of something, we shouldn't minimize how they feel. This is real to them, and they feel really afraid and that's okay. It's not that their feelings are wrong. Sometimes, people just need to be validated to say, “Yeah, it's okay to feel that way, if you're really anxious about something going on in your work life.” Who am I to say, you shouldn't worry about it, or things will turn out well? That makes me feel better for a minute to say that. Ultimately, it doesn't make other people feel better.

I think, we just don't spend nearly enough time teaching social and emotional skills. In fact, one of the things I do, I'm a college professor at Northeastern University, and I see what happens to a lot of college kids who come in, and they just don't have the emotional skills. I suppose for a lot of them, their parents really over for them and made sure that they cheered them up, they put them down, they manage their anxiety for them.

Studies will show that this is true. When they ask college kids, were you ready for college? About 90% of them say that they were academically prepared, but 3% of them say, “Yeah, but I wasn't emotionally prepared. I don't know how to deal with loneliness. I don't know how to deal with anxiety. I don't know how to deal with a test grade, because parents aren't here to do it for me anymore.”

I think, it's huge that we start implementing more strategies to teach people, how do you deal with emotions to normalize it, that it's okay to be sad, and that crying isn’t a sign of weakness. It takes a lot of courage to express your emotions. How do you express them in any way? Then, how do you cope with them when you're struggling?

[00:11:10] MB: A dovetail that that you touched on earlier, which I thought was really insightful, is this idea that a lot of times, we think about emotional intelligence, maybe focusing around how do I influence, or read other people and their emotions? Really, the work in a big way starts with yourself. It's almost like, the notion of putting your own oxygen mask on before you start to decipher and help someone else through their emotions, if you can't label and work through your own. You're coming from a pretty tough spot.

[00:11:42] AM: Yeah. I think, we get a lot of assumptions that are true. Write down, and say, if somebody doesn't text you back, you think they might be mad at me, or they don't like me. Well, maybe they're just busy. We take it to that degree that we try to connect a lot of the dots. When we do, we make assumptions about how the other person's feeling. I think that does more harm than good, when we assume this person didn't reply to me, because they aren't interested. Or when they told me that story, they look like they were sad. Therefore, they must not have wanted me to know that information. I don't know.

We connect lots of dots that aren't necessarily true. Rather than ask, we just avoid it, or we sugarcoat it, or we make the assumption and then move forward in a way that isn't always helpful. I think sometimes, it's good to just ask yourself, well, what's an alternative? What might be another route, feeling that person had, what other thing might have been driving that behavior that you saw? Somebody is [inaudible 00:12:31] towards you in the morning, when you get to work. It doesn't mean that they're mad at you, or that you did anything wrong. Maybe they had a fight with their spouse before they left the house. You don't know.

So often, because we talk so much about emotional intelligence in a way that it's something that we all have to have in order to succeed. Yet, a lot of people make assumptions about how other people are feeling that aren't correct. They go through life believing that they're emotionally intelligent, because they are connecting some dots that maybe aren't even true.

[00:12:59] MB: Such a great insight. It's funny. I almost look at it from the perspective of a mirror. Many people's interactions with you are often just a mirror of their own experiences. I've seen it, where being in the podcasting world, and you may have encountered this too, I'll send an email to thousands of people and the responses I can get are polar opposites. It's the same email that I'm holding up, but it's just reflecting back whatever their emotional state is.

[00:13:28] AM: Oh, I'm glad that you said that. I talk about it in my books. There's research on that. When they ask people to describe someone else, more often than not, people who are critical are just describing how they feel about themselves. When they ask those people five years later to describe a completely different person, like, “Hey, what do you think about your neighbor?” They come up with almost the exact same answer as they did five years ago, when describing the neighbor that they lived next door to back then.

[00:13:53] MB: That's really funny.

[00:13:54] AM: Right? Then when they ask people like, how do you feel about yourself? I mean, it's almost word for word, sometimes deep down when people get to the nitty-gritty of, if I don't like myself, or if I call other people stupid, if I call other people, I don't know, whatever names they call people, or they think that person is a jerk, they're mean, isually, more of a reflection of how they feel about themselves, rather than how they actually see other people.

[00:14:15] MB: So interesting. One of the other things you touched on earlier that I thought was a great insight was this idea that I've looked a lot at how do we channel so-called negative emotions, things like anger, fear, sadness, etc., into something that's more productive. I haven't looked as much at the downside of so-called positive emotions, like exuberance, excitement, etc. The analogy of the example you used earlier, I thought, was a great way of seeing how really any emotion can be a double-edged sword.

[00:14:47] AM: Yeah. I love to look at the research behind the emotions and the decisions that we make, because I find it absolutely fascinating. When you're sad, never negotiate. Because what happens is when you're feeling sad, let's say you asked your boss for a raise, when you're really sad, your boss maybe makes you an offer. You're not going to make a counteroffer, because you think, “Oh, my self-esteem can't take it. I can't handle one more blow to my ego right now.” You've accepted probably a pretty raw deal, as compared to when you're happy, or we're really bad at compartmentalizing our anxiety.

If you're anxious about something. Maybe you're anxious about something in your personal life, like you are awaiting test results for a health issue, or somebody in your family is dealing with something and you're anxious, then you go to work. your boss says, “Hey, do you want to take on this new project?” You're much more likely to say no, because you can't figure out that your anxiety has spilled over into a different area of your life.

We lump it all together, and we think, “I can't handle this, or it won't go well.” It affects the way that we think. It's so important. Again, if we just go back to labeling your emotions, and then assessing, has this affect the choices I make today, if I'm saying that I'm probably going to not really join in a conversation, or express opinion. Or when I'm anxious, I'm going to say no to things that probably aren't even risky. Just being more aware of that can help us make better choices.

[00:16:08] MB: Yeah, that's so interesting. I also look at things like anger, right? Anger, can be, if you can learn how to temper it a little bit, can be a really powerful piece of fuel to if I'm in a bad mood, I can almost channel it into going and organizing something, or cleaning up, or taking action on something that I hadn't taken action on in a long time. I can almost use that frustration and channel it into executing on something that otherwise, was sitting there and not being done.

[00:16:38] AM: Yes. Anger does give us energy. Sometimes it gives us courage right away. You might stand up for something, or cause that you believe in, or angry sometimes, because you just feel a little bit better. That initial rush. Obviously, there's other times when our anger can become quite unproductive, when we started tasting, or we're so angry, we can't think straight.

There's research that shows that if we were to take an IQ test when we were angry, we'd score a lot lower than when we're calm. That our intelligence actually goes down as our anger goes up. That's why, we say things and we do things when we're really angry that we wouldn't normally say or do. Our brain store all our angry memories in the same place. That's why couples are arguing, and one gets angry, they might bring up a 101 other instances where they've been angry with that person. They bring up all the other mistakes the other person made, or the times when their feelings were hurt, because you activated that part of your brain, and that's all you can think about is all the reason why you're still angry at this person.

There's so many things that make our emotions interesting. Yet, we never talk about them. Nobody ever really teaches us how to recognize our emotions and how our emotions affect the way we think and the way we behave. It's vital for us to have this information, so that we can function and become our best.

[00:17:58] MB: It's amazing to me that this stuff isn't taught in school, by and large. It's not a core – I mean, this should be stuff that we're teaching people in high school, or even earlier than that. That's why, I think it's so exciting that you you've started to create works for children, or younger adults to start to really learn some of these important lessons. One thing that I was curious about is, and I say this as a parent as well, when should we start to teach these lessons to our kids?

[00:18:30] AM: I think, we can start pretty much right away, that we can teach preschoolers a lot about feelings right from the beginning. With preschoolers, the big thing you want to start instilling in them is that there's a big difference between the way that they feel and the way that they behave. That they know, it's okay to feel angry, but it's not okay to hit. It's not okay to kick my brother, because I'm mad.

So often, we tell them like, “No, don't hit, or don't do that, or stop crying.” They don't know the difference between that it's okay to be mad, but it's not okay to hit. When we start explaining to them that angry feelings are okay, it's just what you do with your anger that matters. Or it's okay to be sad, but here's what you can do when you feel sad. You can't scream in the middle of the grocery store and cry and throw yourself on the floor, because that's not fair to other people. It's okay to cry, but you just can't disrupt the entire roomful of people. Here are the options instead.

When we start to teach kids that, it makes a big difference. When kids start to learn their vocabulary words for feelings, it makes a huge difference in how they behave, too. A kid who can say, “I'm mad,” won't feel like he has to show you how angry he is by ripping everything up. Or a kid who can say, “I'm sad,” isn't going to have to feel they have to throw themselves on the floor, because you said no, that they couldn't eat more candy. As soon as we start teaching them those feeling words and we start explaining the differences between the way you feel and the way you behave, puts them on a pretty good path.

Then as they grow older, we can start incorporating more stuff about the way that they think, so that kids know that their brain will trick them sometimes, it will lie to them. It will say, you can't do that, or everyone's going to laugh at you, or don't bother trying, or you're not good enough. As parents, we're usually really quick to say, “No, that's not true, or you'll just be fine.” We don't teach them how to talk themselves into realizing that it's okay to self-doubt sometimes, but you don't have to believe it.

There's lots of strategies we can use. For example, just when your kid says, “I don't want to go to school tomorrow, because I have to give a speech and everybody's going to laugh at me.” It’s a great opportunity to say, what would you say to your friend who said that to you? Your kid isn't going to say to their friend, “Oh, yeah. Skip school, tomorrow, you loser, because we're all going to laugh at you.” They'd probably say something really nice like, “You'll do a good job. Just do your best, or I know you can do well.” Then we teach them to start saying those things to themselves. Then, they have a skill that they can use when we're not around and we're not right there coaching them all the time, so that when they have negative thoughts and they're either at a friend's house, they're away from home, or even when they go to college someday, they know how to talk themselves down when they start to get worked up into a frenzy.

[00:21:08] MB: I love that idea of teaching them skills they can carry with themselves and have those tools to be able to use. You touched on something a minute ago that I want to almost zoom out for a moment and dig into a little bit, which is the thinking side of mental toughness. We talked a lot about emotions. Tell me a little bit more about the thinking side before we dive back into how we can really practically apply this to teaching children.

[00:21:34] AM: Sure. When it comes to thinking, a lot of people assume that it's about being positive all the time, that you should always assume that you're going to win and that you should assume that nothing's ever going to hurt you, and that you can do all things and be all things to all people. Obviously, that's not healthy all the time.

It's much healthier to think, “Yeah, I can ask for help. I can acknowledge that I have some weaknesses. It's okay if I don't win, because I'll be fine emotionally if I come in third place.” For us to not be afraid of self-doubt. So often, people will think, “Well, if I have any self-doubt at all, I shouldn't try something new.” Or people will say, “I can't do anything different, because I lack confidence.” Well, how do you get confidence? It's by doing, by putting yourself out there.

Sometimes we say, you're not going to really think your way into confidence, because thinking, “Yeah, I'm really good. I'm a great person,” unless you believe it. Sometimes you have to take action, so that you can reinforce those thoughts and figure out when your brain doubts you, the best way to prove it wrong is to go out there and do exactly what your brain says that you can't do. Our brains tend to underestimate us and it will see us is not good enough. It will try to tell you that you shouldn't try anything new. It really wants us to stay really deep into our comfort zones.

Again, the emotions that you have affect the way you think. When you're sad, you'll think really sad and negative thoughts. When you're anxious, you'll predict all the worst-case scenarios. It's important to just be able to realize, just because you think it, it doesn't make it true that your brain does lie to you. It's inaccurate sometimes. Going back to just being able to identify your feelings and then figuring out, well, how true is this thought? There's a lot of different exercises for people to start learning how to recognize their irrational thoughts, and then replacing them with something more realistic.

That same exercise that works for kids, works for grownups, too, where you can say, “What would I say to my friend who had this problem?” Because so often we, for some reason, think that being really hard on ourselves will motivate us to do better. When we mess up, we call ourselves names, or we talk ourselves out of doing things, because we think we can't handle it. Research will show that self-compassion is really the key to performing better, to recovering from mistakes, and to just feeling your best in life.

Ask yourself, “What would I say to my friend who had this problem? Or what would I say to a friend who was struggling with this thing?” When you start replacing a lot of the negative thoughts that you have with more self-compassionate inner dialogue, it can really change the course of your life.

[00:24:06] MB: Self-compassion is so vital. I love what you said a minute ago about this notion that your brain can lie to you, and that your brain, in many cases, will lie to you, to keep you as boxed into your comfort zone as possible. It's such an important insight. Tell me a little bit more about that.

[00:24:27] AM: Yeah. Your brain will tell you, again, like, “Oh, don't try for that new job, because it might not go well. Or there's no guarantee it's going to be better, so you should just keep doing this.” It wants to keep us in whatever emotional state we're in. When you think about it, well, what do you do when you're sad? Maybe you sit on the couch and you binge watch TV. What do you do when you're happy? Maybe you listen to loud music, you call a friend, you do stuff around the house. Maybe you go outside.

It affects your behavior. Again, it also affects your brain. Your brain will tell you when you're sad, to just stay stuck inside, to not go do anything fun. It will tell you, it's not going to work anyway. When I work with people who have depression, for example, they're convinced that therapy's not going to help, that medication couldn't possibly be helpful, but nothing's going to work and that they're going to stay stuck like that forever. That's really the depression talking, convincing them of that, or I mean, with people with anxiety, they're convinced that everything that possibly could go bad will.

If there's a one in a 100 chance that something bad might happen, they're convinced that it's probably a 100% going to happen, and it's going to happen to them, because the anxiety tends to cause their brains to think that way. When we get a better handle on our emotions, it becomes much easier to figure out, yeah, well, this is just the anxiety talking, or this is just my sadness trying to convince me to stay stuck in a bad mood.

Sometimes, it's about arguing the opposite, when you think, “Well, this isn't going to work out. I'm going to embarrass myself.” Well, argue the opposite. Maybe, will turn out better than you might think. Or, when you do something and you come to a conclusion, like that person didn't answer my email, because they're not interested. Well, that's one possibility, but it also might be that they're busy, or maybe they didn't read the email yet. Or maybe they are going to respond, they just didn't respond today. There's a lot of different reasons why.

Yet, we just need to open up our minds to the idea that the one conclusion that we draw isn't the only potential outcome. When you start realizing that and figuring out, okay, this is my brain's desire to try to make me stay stuck in whatever state I'm in now, it just becomes easier to say, “I'm going to face some fears. I'm going to do some things I think I couldn't do.” You can literally train your brain. You can change, physically alter your brain. Things like gratitude can change your brain and things like meditation, we know creates physical changes to the brain.

You could do that just by proving you're wrong. For example, and my brain will tell me, never fail. I didn't run far. I just run one mile a day and I run as fast as I possibly can, and I spend most of my life trying to break the record of how fast I run and try to see if I can just run a little faster today than I did yesterday. Never fail about a three-quarter mile mark. My brain tells me, “I'm too tired. I have to quit. I shouldn't keep going. I can't possibly take another step at this pace.”

I know that it's not true. It's just because I'm tired, and my brain wants me to quit, because that would be the comfortable thing to do. As soon as I started to think that, just to prove my brain wrong, I try to run a little bit faster. It's like, over time, I can say, “All right, now my brain is starting to realize, I'm going to try to trick him. Still going to try to tell you to quit, but that voice has gotten a lot quieter over, it's been about a year and three months now that I've been trying to break this record.”

Just recognizing that and knowing okay, as long as I don't listen to that little voice in my head, it gets a lot quieter over time. To just be more aware that your brain will try to trick you, it will try to tell you not to do hard things. It will try to talk you out of tackling challenges that are uncomfortable, because it really wants you to stay comfortable in life.

[00:27:59] MB: Great story, and a really compelling insight. I want to bring it back now to making this more practical and talking about how we can start to implement some of these ideas for our children. One of the things you mentioned, which I think is really important is this idea of teaching children an emotional vocabulary, and how to label their own emotions. Tell me a little bit more about how we do that.

[00:28:27] AM: If you have young children, you just start to say something to the effect of, “Oh, it looks like you're really angry right now,” when your kid has a tantrum. I didn't pick up on that. To use feeling words more in everyday conversation like, “Oh, it looks like you're sad right now. I'd be sad, too.” Or, to express our own emotions. I'm really happy today, because the sun is shining, whatever it is. Just using it more in everyday conversations. We read books and talk more about feelings and other people's feelings.

Another fun one is to ask kids how somebody else felt. If you have a kid who hits her brother, for example, and the brother starts crying. You can ask your daughter, “Well, how do you think he felt when you hit him?” She might say, “He felt sad.” Then, ask her to make a face. “Show me how you think he felt with your face.” When kids then make a sad face, they actually feel sad for a second. It gives them a whole new level of empathy for their sibling, or somebody that they just hurt. It helps him recognize, “Oh, yeah. That doesn't feel good.”

I always encourage parents, have your kids make a face. Tell them to show you with their face how somebody else feels. That's a really good way to get them to become more aware of that. “Yeah, I don't just have feelings, but everybody else does, too.” Then with older kids, again, it's just important to just keep incorporating bigger and more complicated feeling words into conversations, like disappointed and embarrassed. You might even keep a list of feeling words on the refrigerator, or have a chart somewhere so that kids can really identify different ways of feeling.

If you have a kid that really isn't into talking about feelings, if you have a child that isn't going to say, “Yeah, I'm sad today,” another thing you could do is just use a feeling thermometer. From zero to 10, how are you feeling today? That same kid might be able to say, “Well, I'm a three right now.” Then your goal might be to say, “Well, how can we make you at least a five?” Maybe you have some strategies, some skills, things like that, so that they know that they can pull themselves out of a bad mood when they're feeling stuck.

I think, the more that we do those things, and that we just normalize that it's okay to feel down. We all have days when we feel bad. Sometimes we know why. Sometimes we don't know why. We just wake up feeling that way and that's okay. To then have those conversations with kids about the way you're feeling right now, a friend or an enemy. They just hit something because they were angry. Well, now your emotions are an enemy, and for us to not take responsibility for how they feel.

If you have a kid who struggles with their emotions, then brainstorm with them. Gee, when you're really sad, what kinds of things might help? Well, you could try coloring a picture. You could try going outside. You could try doing 10 push-ups. Come up with a whole list of things that your kid could try. Maybe write it down, and then when they're sad someday, it's up to them to go try to pick something off the list.

Or, if you have a kid that gets upset, or they're easily frustrated, you might create a calm down kit. It could be a shoe box filled with strategies that engage their senses. There might be some silly putty in there, a coloring book, or maybe some pictures, or a joke book. Anything that might help your child calm down a little bit. Then when they start to get upset, you might just encourage them, maybe it's a good time to go get your calm down kit.

Then they take responsibility to say, “What can I do right now, so that I can calm myself down before I get into trouble, so that I don't end up doing something that hurts somebody else, or I don't destroy property, or I don't say something mean, that hurt somebody's feelings?” Then again, we have teach kids to walk away with a toolbox of skills and strategies that they know, “Okay, when I'm upset, it's my job to calm myself down.”

[00:32:05] MB: The concept of the emotional thermometer is something that's really interesting, and something that I've been thinking about recently. Even as adults, I feel like, when we encounter somebody, or we have a conversation with a – whether it's acquaintance, a friend, whatever, we run into each other and say, “Hey, how are you?” “I'm good. How are you?” “Good.” It's always, whenever we have these interactions, you immediately just throw a bunch of somewhat positive words out into the conversation, then that's it. Then everybody moves on. How do we really, even as adults, and teaching this to children, actually break through that surface level veneer and start to really pinpoint where we are on our emotional thermometer, and how to share with others?

[00:32:52] AM: Yeah. That's such an important thing, because we do get into that surface level conversation, as you say. Even they ask you the, “How are things going?” “Great.” “How is work?” “Good.” We just struggle to get past that initial barrier. Obviously, in the middle of the grocery store, when you run into an acquaintance, you might not want to dive into your life history, but we do want to have those people in our lives that we can take it to the next level with, whether it's friends, or family.

When we're talking to people, and we want to know how they're doing, how they're really doing, sometimes it's helpful to acknowledge how you're doing first. If you say, “Hey, how are you?” Obviously, you're probably going to get the stock answer of, “Good. How are you?” Then, you can revisit it later in the conversation. It's easier to talk about when you externalize it, when you say to somebody, “How are you feeling lately?” They're probably still going to say, “Good. Why? How are you?”

If you can say something like, how's your stress level lately? People might say, “Oh, it's pretty bad.” Even the same person that just said that they're doing great in life, when you say, “How's your stress level?” Something about that makes it a little easier to acknowledge, “Gee, I've been having trouble sleeping lately, or I've had so much work, I can't possibly relax.” It opens the door. It's helpful sometimes, too, when we start by talking about our own stress level. You say, “Ah, I've been really stressed lately. How about you? Have you been feeling it?”

If we're concerned about somebody else's mental health, too, it's important to address it, to say, “Gee, you don't quite seeing yourself lately. How are you doing really?” It might open the door for them to talk a little bit. If you want to open the door for yourself, because you're struggling, just don't be afraid to bring it up. In the middle of a conversation, you might just pause and say, “Hey, I got to tell you, I'm actually struggling lately. I know, I said I was just good earlier, but here's some things that are going on for me.”

More often than not, when you open that door, other people are more than willing to listen and then they'll also share some of their struggles too. Once you get past that initial barrier of, “Yeah, I’m doing great,” it seems like then, people know that it's okay to talk about it. Again, as a society, we’re in this weird place, especially during the pandemic, where so many people are struggling, and we're all in the same situation, in terms of our mental health. It seems to be, mental health is on the decline. Study after study is showing us that we're struggling more than ever.

Yet, we still struggle to talk about it with each other. Quite often people will say, “Yeah, I'm doing good, or I'm just staying home a lot. There's nothing really going on, or nothing to talk about lately.” People are really sad. People are struggling with anxiety. It's really important that we open the door and make it known that it's okay to have those conversations and that mental health is a continuum. On any given day, we might fall in a slightly different place on that continuum, and that's okay.

It's not a sign of weakness. I talk so much about mental strength, and sometimes people think that if they're struggling with depression, or they have anxiety, they're just really stressed out that it means that they're weak, or they're not good enough. That's not true at all. My mental strength and mental health are two different things. Just like physical strength and physical health aren't the same. You can go to the gym and lift weights to become physically strong, but you might still develop a health problem, like high blood pressure, or you might break your ankle someday. That doesn't mean that you didn't still have strong muscles. Mental strength is the same. To know that talking about it, acknowledging it is a sign of strength. It's definitely not a sign of weakness,

[00:36:20] MB: Such another great insight. I love that analogy of how physical health, versus physical fitness may not be the exact same thing. It holds true just as well for mental strength. That really comes back to what we touched on earlier with just this notion of, of, it's not something that we teach most people, but if we can start with our own children to build this toolkit of emotional tools that they can carry with themselves, and that they can improve and build on over time, it's something that's a tremendous gift.

[00:36:54] AM: It really is. I think, it can definitely change the course of kids’ lives, and they'll feel empowered to reach the greatest potential, whatever their goals are in life to know, yeah, at least have the emotional skills to get there. As opposed to just being really good in school, or to have certain talents in life, that's great. Once you have the emotional tools that you need to really get you through the tough times, or to bounce back from failure, it's tough to make it.

[00:37:19] MB: What are a couple of the – we touched on a few of these already, but what are a few other tools that we can start to add to the toolkit for our kids?

[00:37:30] AM: If I had to pick another big one, in terms of helping kids think more realistically, and being kinder to themselves, is to just teach them to write a kind letter to themselves. It might only be a few sentences. Maybe it just says, “Dear, whatever their name is. I know that you're struggling in life. Yet, you're a really good kid. You're a nice person. I know that life's going to be hard sometimes, but you can make it.” Something like that, but it's going to be their own letter to themselves in your own words.

You have them write that letter, and then keep it somewhere safe. Whether that means they keep it in their nightstand, or they carry it around in their backpack. Then, when they're having a bad day, have them take out that letter and read it to themselves. Since it's their own words, again, they learn how to reassure themselves, how to give themselves confidence when they're feeling bad, or how to get through tough times. That maybe when a friend is being mean to them, they know, “Well, I can still be nice to myself, and I have this.” It's a wonderful gift to have kids do that.

Then, I've had kids that have done that when they were younger, and they've gone on and even as college students, or young adults, they're still doing it, because they find it to be so helpful. Because when they are having a bad day, and they need that voice to tell him, “Nope, you're okay,” they have that with them. That's one really simple, but effective things that parents can do.

Another one is to just work on gratitude with kids. We don't want to force gratitude to tell kids, they have to be grateful for everything that they have. By creating some gratitude rituals around the house; maybe you decide that at bedtime, you're just going to say what you're thankful for. Or, maybe you have a gratitude jar at home, and everybody just drops a slip of paper in every once in a while. Then you read them all once a month, or something like that. It's a wonderful way to help kids see that there are good things going on in the world, that even though we might not talk about them that much, that the news isn't always positive, or it's easy to complain about our day.

When we have something like that, it really trains our brains to say, “Okay, how do I remember that even when I'm going through tough times, I still have more than I deserve and there's still good things going on and I still have gifts that I can give to other people.”

[00:39:33] MB: I love the idea of the gratitude jar. That's definitely something that we'll probably implement in our house, once my kids are a little bit older. There's a couple other themes and in many ways to me, 13 things strong kids do is almost the inverse side of the coin from 13 things mentally strong parents do. There were a few themes from that book in particular, that I thought were tremendously powerful and really, defied a lot of conventional wisdom around parenting. One of them to me, which I'd love to hear your thoughts on was the notion of not shielding your children from pain. Tell me a little bit about that.

[00:40:16] AM: Yeah. As a therapist, I've worked with a lot of kids whose parents have gone to great lengths to shield them from the realities of life. While we definitely don't want to just throw kids out there to toughen them up, they don't need to know about certain adult problems, or things that are above them and their maturity level.

On the other hand, we do need to let them face challenges. We do need to let them experience pain sometimes. You want to do that when they're under your roof. As hard as it is, as a parent to watch your child be in pain, the truth is, you don't want them to experience that for the first time when they're 20-years-old, and they've moved away from home. When they experience that at home, whether they get rejected by somebody at school, or they don't make the team, or they're struggling a lot with a certain subject in school, it's an opportunity to say, how do you deal with these uncomfortable emotions? How can you manage this in a healthy way.

Those are those teachable moments where we can say, rather than take this pain away from you, I'm going to teach you how to deal with it and cope with it in a healthy way. I know how tough that is. I know how uncomfortable it is as parents. So many parents feel like, “Oh, if my kid isn't happy all the time, then somehow, it's a reflection of me that I'm not a good enough parent.” The truth is that kids need to go through tough times as a way to learn and grow. It's our job to make sure that we're guiding them, rather than always protecting them from painful experiences.

[00:41:38] MB: I really like that distinction between guiding them and protecting them. A corollary of the idea of not shielding them from pain, which I thought was really insightful was also the notion of don't prevent your children from making mistakes. Tell me a little bit about that.

[00:41:54] AM: Yeah, that's another tough one. In today's world, it's especially tough. Back in the day, I think when I was a kid, probably everybody forgot their homework sometimes, or they forgot their soccer cleats sometimes. It wasn't a big deal. Now, so many parents are so quick to make sure that their kid’s homework gets checked, or they even hire a tutor for their kids to make sure that they're getting 100s. Then when your kid forgets their homework, you might think, “Oh, I don't want to let them fall far behind.”

I talked to a lot of parents who feel that pressure of, if I let my kids fail a test, even if it's just one test, or I let them forget their homework once, they're not going to get into that Ivy League college and their life will be ruined. They walk around with this incredible pressure to make sure that they prop their kids up at all times. The problem is, kids then don't learn. How do you make mistakes and how do you rebound from mistakes? That's a much more vital skill in life that they're going to need, whether they make it to an Ivy League college, or not.

Kids who don't gain those skills, actually, it's not that they grow up to never make a mistake, it's that they become really good at hiding their mistakes. We need to know, okay, when you make a mistake, it's okay to own it. Then how do you respond to the mistake, rather than how do you cover it up? Or how do you prevent them from making mistakes at any time?

[00:43:09] MB: It's funny, I was the youngest of four. One of the greatest gifts that I think my parents gave me was that they never bailed me out. Homework, for example. They wouldn't even ask me. They had no idea what my homework was, if it was done, if it wasn't done. If I didn't do it, that was my issue to deal with. I feel that really taught me a lot and gave me a sense of both ownership and responsibility for taking control of my own life in many ways.

[00:43:35] AM: Yeah, I can imagine. I think, there's so many parents that feel it's their job to make sure that their kids always do everything, whether it's that they always have everything packed for the soccer game tomorrow, and if they have every subject completed at all times. They take on so much responsibility that I'm seeing them act more like their child's business manager, personal concierge, rather than a parent who is in charge. Your kids just aren't gaining those really vital life skills as a result.

[00:44:04] MB: How do we as parents, not give our children power over us, in that sense of not only being a concierge, but more broadly, as well?

[00:44:15] AM: Yeah, this is another one that I see quite often in the therapy office from well-intentioned parents, who wanted to make sure that their kids were heard at home. We used to have the TV shows, like Father Knows Best. Back in those days, kids were to be seen and not heard. Then the pendulum, I think, swung a little too far the other way, where we started giving kids way too much power in voting of, should we move? Should mom or dad take this new job? What do you want to eat for dinner tonight? To the point that kids are making a lot of really adult decisions.

Parents are thinking, “Well, I'm making sure that they know that their opinion matters.” Really, they're instilling anxiety in their kids. Kids know, “I don't have the skills and the tools to make really good life decisions. I'm hoping my parents have those skills, because I know I don’t.” When their parents are asking for not just their input, but they're giving kids an equal vote, kids start to doubt. Gee, do mom or dad really know what they're talking about? If they are willing to let me have an equal vote in this, then clearly, they don't have any more knowledge or skills than I do.” Ultimately, it backfires.

It's important to empower your kids, to know that, okay, they can speak up for themselves, they can advocate, they can take the steps they need to solve problems, but you don't want them making important family decisions, or you don't want them to think that they always have an equal vote in everything. It's important to have that hierarchy, so that kids know, you're in charge. While you may ask for their opinion, ultimately, it's your decision. You're going to make that decision based on your knowledge and your years of wisdom that they just don't have yet.

[00:45:46] MB: I love that insight. It definitely flies in the face of a lot of the conventional parenting wisdom out there. It makes total sense.

[00:45:55] AM: Yeah. I have to say, I can't tell you how many people have come into my therapy office. I had a mom who stopped dating, because her 10-year-old didn't want her to date anymore, and so she quit dating, because she said, “Oh, he doesn't want me to.” It was almost like, she then made him a parental figure of hers, or a strange partnership, where he got to make those choices. Or, I've had other parents who had job opportunities in other places in the country, but they said, “My eight-year-old doesn't want to move, so we're not going to.” For them to know that they were then teaching their kids some really bad habits, like moving would be uncomfortable, and we can't make you uncomfortable, so we're going to stay here.

Not to say there aren't valid times when maybe you decide to make life decisions based on your kids. Maybe you decide, “I don't want to uproot them.” That shouldn't be because your eight-year-old told you not to, or because your 10-year-old insists that that would be unfair. It should be because that's what you've decided based on what you know about life.

[00:46:52] MB: It sounds almost comical, when you think about your life being dictated by an eight-year-old. In those moments, it's hard to make those decisions. How do we, as parents build the mental toughness to really be tough in those spots?

[00:47:11] AM: It goes back to knowing that rather than shielding your kids, you want to teach them – you don't want them to think, “I'm too fragile to handle this.” Instead, you want them to know that you believe they're a strong kid. That even though this isn't what they wanted, but they can handle it anyway. If you're going to move, you're going to do something different, you're refusing even right down to when your kid says, “I'm not eating that for dinner,” and you can choose to make different meals for everybody in the family. Or you can say, “You can eat it if you're hungry. If not, that's okay. You don't have to eat it.”

Just making those decisions and doing, “All right, my kid's going to be a little uncomfortable. That’s painful for me to watch.” You don't want to make choices that are just the most comfortable for you in the moment either. You want to know, what life skills am I teaching them right now? If you can just, as you say, zoom out and say, “What skills do I want them to learn from this situation? How do I teach them those skills, and how's this going to serve them in life?” That's much more important than those little moments really matter when we say yes, or no to something, or how we respond to them, and the messages that we're sending them about how to deal with their own uncomfortable emotions.

[00:48:15] MB: I really like the frame of approaching that as a methodology, or framework across a couple of different things we just talked about, all for building the tolerance of discomfort. As we said earlier, getting out of your comfort zone is such a vital and important thing. When you frame it in the context of helping your children develop the ability to tolerate discomfort and to wrestle with uncomfortable feelings, emotions, situations, suddenly, it puts it in a really powerful frame shift, that that's a really vital thing to be teaching them.

[00:48:50] AM: Yeah. I'm glad that it does. Because I think if we're going to serve our kids well in life, that's one of the most important skills and tools that we can give them is that they then have confidence to know, yeah, this is uncomfortable, but I can handle it. Too often, kids say, “I can't stand it.” Then we bail them out. We believe their brains when they say, “I can't do this anymore.” We give them an immediate out with us to know, no, they can persist at things. They can do things that are tough. They can face some of their fears. Our job is again, it goes back to guiding them, rather than sparing them from those tough things.

[00:49:24] MB: For somebody who's been listening to this conversation and wants to concretely implement one of the themes, or ideas that we've talked about today, what would be one action item that you would give them to start taking action on this?

[00:49:38] AM: I would say, the biggest thing would be to start incorporating feeling words into your everyday conversation. Two, maybe check in with yourself a couple times a day. Maybe you decide you're going to pair it with something else, so you remember. Maybe when you brush your teeth and hopefully, you brush your teeth in the morning and at night. When you brush your teeth every day, you're just going to take that. Two minutes while you're brushing your teeth and think, “Oh, how am I feeling? How might that be affecting my day?”

Or maybe, it's when you eat a meal, you take a moment to say, “Okay, how am I feeling right now?” For families to just incorporate more feeling words in everyday conversation and to just get more comfortable with recognizing emotions and labeling them, and getting more comfortable with realizing how your emotions affect your decisions.

[00:50:20] MB: For listeners who want to dig in, find out more about you and your work and your books online, what is the best place for them to do that?

[00:50:30] AM: My website is the best place, which is amymorinlcsw.com. You can find information on my books, my TEDx Talk and link to my podcast, which is called The Very Well Mind Podcast.

[00:50:44] MB: Well, Amy. Thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing some very insightful wisdom about children, about our emotions broadly, and how we can all cultivate mental strength.

[00:50:57] AM: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

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