The Psychology of Youth Mental Health | Ross Szabo

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Even in my, my senior year of high school is when I attempted to take my own life after kind of 4 or 5 months of crippling depression. Even when that happened, president of my class, varsity basketball player, member of every like volunteer organization possible, high GPA. For my parents, On the outside, well, he looks like everything's fine.

Welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. Today's guest is Ross Zabo, one of the leading voices in youth mental health education. He's the founding wellness director at Geffen Academy at UCLA. He's founder of Human Power Project and co-author of Behind Happy Faces, and he's also the author of A Kid's Book About Anxiety.

Where a lot of parents make a mistake is they focus so heavily on is their kid academically prepared for college that they forget that they may not have the actual skills they need to navigate the different challenges they're going to experience interpersonally versus academically.

We explore why so many young people are struggling, why parents sometimes miss the signs, and how we can help kids build the language and the skills to understand what they're experiencing before they reach— a crisis point.

The mental health crisis is equally difficult in everyone, but it comes out differently in different genders. There's a bigger stigma for young men to share their feelings or to talk about it. Then if you have that vacuum, you're going to fill it with the manosphere and all these other things that aren't supporting them. We're not filling the vacuum with meaningful things that can support them.

So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Ross Szabo. Hey, Ross, we've been able to hang out. We've had some lunches and a bunch of conversations, and I'm excited to be able to sit down and have a conversation about your life efforts and what you're bringing to this world. But before we get into that, what do you hope that the listener or viewer will take from our conversation today?

I really hope that people understand that mental health isn't a talking point and that we can actually have clarity around it. We hear that mental health is like physical health all the time, but you actually need to do things to make that happen. And there is so much confusion out there now. It's like we've stopped just using emotional words, and everyone now has anxiety and everyone has depression, but not everyone actually has anxiety and depression. And so I really hope this conversation just adds the clarity that people need so that they can understand mental health the same way they do physical health.

Amen. And we're living in a stigma. If you grew up in my family and my neighborhood and my, you know, sport ecosystem when I was younger, you would not go seek out a psychologist or a therapist to help you with your mental health. And the taboo was too rich. It was too strong. So I actually— that's how I got into the field, is I needed it, and I needed to figure out how to work kind of in the shadows of it. So I studied it, which I think was, like, great. It really worked for me until somebody in my academic career said, hey, the intellectual understanding of the psychology of being a great human, quote unquote, great. You actually need to go do the work. You need to sit in a chair. You need to go do this work and have somebody hold you accountable so that the work is honest. And I was like, oh, okay. So that's when I realized there was an exponential difference between studying it, intellectualizing it, and practicing and training the building of the skills. Okay, so I think we're going to vibe on the same way, but what is your origin story of why you wanted to dedicate your life to mental health?

Yeah, I find that not a lot of people become mental health advocates because they had a great life. They're not like, oh, my life was so great, I should tell people how amazing it is. And that is also true for me. I grew up in a family. I grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania, so I was actually born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. Come on. Yeah, it's my origin story since you wanted that. And, uh, you and who else? Yeah, just a few other people. Okay, good. I was born into a family with severe mental health disorders and addiction, and no one tells you that when you're a kid. So you're like trying to figure it out and you're like, oh, why do people behave this way? And then I think the most damaging thing about growing up in a family like that is you think everything is because you're bad and you're wrong and something is happening to you. And so my first experience with mental health disorders was visiting my brother when he had his first break with bipolar disorder at the University of Pennsylvania. I was 11 when I visited him in a psychiatric ward.

Okay.

Yeah.

3 things here. One, you grew up in a messy environment.

Sure.

Right. Was it hostile or was it messy? Is it different?

It was messy. Messy.

Okay.

Because the lineage of Eastern European factory workers was alcoholism. And so my family just used alcoholism to mask. And I'll never actually know what my extended family experienced.

Okay, so addiction. And you're saying underneath that or abuse? Well, I'm not sure, but underneath of that was covering up mental health stuff. Older brother.

—by, I don't know— 7 years.

All right. And then he had a break. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

It was two things.

One, like, visiting your brother in a psychiatric ward when you're 11— and this was in the '80s, right? So they were still using straitjackets and restraints and all kinds of things— was very, very eye-opening. I think, fortunately, because I was so young, I looked at it as like, is he going to die? And my parents were like, no. And I was like, well, then he must be able to— work through this. The first time we went to visit him in the psychiatric ward, I had some level of comfort because it seemed like he was getting help. And my family was scared. Everyone in my family was crying except for me. And I was like, well, if he's not going to die, then like, what do we need to do to like help him get through this? And I think that's an innocent view. I don't know that I would have had that view. That view didn't last for my personal journey because my journey kind of went downhill rapidly after that.

But at least you personally struggled with your mental health as well. Yeah. And you said bipolar for him? Bipolar for him.

And then I got diagnosed when I was 16 with bipolar disorder.

Yeah. So explain to the listener what bipolar is. Yeah. And then the difference between type 1 and type 2.

So there are different types of bipolar disorder, like you're saying. I will first describe the symptoms. Yeah. So when I was 16, I wouldn't sleep for like 4 or 5 days in a row and I was never tired. I had endless energy. I felt invincible. You know, I played sports. I did take really, really huge risks driving, doing all kinds of stuff because I felt like I was unstoppable. The downside of mania is because you have this false belief of who you are and what you're doing.

And by the way, people in a manic episode love it. Yeah, right. Like highly productive, amazing, superhuman type of stuff. Until it becomes overly agitating and overwhelming.

100%. And I would stay there for like, you know, 4 or 5 days and you just had these mind racing thoughts that wouldn't let you sleep. So I'd think 7, 8 thoughts a minute and I wouldn't sleep. And then after 4 or 5 days, I would get really angry and I'd start lashing out and I'd, you know, do things physically, verbally, and then I'd crash. Yeah, right. And then I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't do anything. And so the 16-year-old me to cope with it would just binge drink. And I would just drink to the point of passing out. I just couldn't handle all of the moods. Yeah. And feeling numb felt better than feeling. And I had started drinking when I was 12, and I just ramped it up to— this is the easiest way out, so this is what I'm going to do.

So to oversimplify a pretty complex set of symptoms is that bipolar is like mood swings, pretty radical mood swings up and down. It can be slight. Sure. And that's the differences. Yeah. And so type 1 is mania and with kind of severe depression. And type 2 is, as I'm speaking, like, you don't know, this is more for the listener here. Of course you know these things. Type 2 is hypo, just below full manic. And that kind of like chases the intensity of the depression away. The way my first supervisor taught it to me was type 2 has two legs. And it's kind of chasing the, the hypomania is chasing the depression away. I don't, it's stuck with me. Okay, so from that standpoint, you said something also really important is that you started drinking at a young age. Yeah. Can you reveal what happens to a person who uses alcohol or other drugs at a young age?

Well, a couple things. One, 3 of my grandparents were alcoholics. And so the 2 biggest predictors of alcoholism or addiction are biology, family makeup. Well, 3 of my grandparents were alcoholics. So I had the biology. Biology. And then two is age of first use. And if you use under the age of 15 regularly, you are setting yourself up for a life of at least abuse, not possibly addiction. And so for me, what started happening was it was my outlet. And I didn't get drunk all the time. I got drunk probably 2 to 4 times a month from age 12 to like 16. I mean, think about a 12-year-old right now.

I have a 12-year-old nephew. And the other piece is that you were very subtle when you said it, but when your parents are drinking or using drugs or there is a mental health condition in the family, and I'll lump all of them together for just a moment, that can take the focus and the precedent over investing in a child that looks like they're doing okay. 100%. So those needs for the parents are more important. And I'm being, again, provocative. Than investing in a kid that looks like it's all working out just fine.

And throughout my whole life, I always had the best appearance. Like, you know, I didn't write a book called Behind Happy Faces because I had a terrible appearance. And even in my, my senior year of high school is when I attempted to take my own life after kind of 4 or 5 months of crippling depression. Even when that happened, president of my class, varsity basketball player, member of every, like, volunteer organization possible, high GPA. And so you're bringing up a good point. For my parents on the outside, well, he looks like everything's fine. Even when my brother got diagnosed, he went to Penn when he was 16, majored in physics, graduated high school 2 years early, all that other stuff. And so—

super high achieving family. Yeah. And so you— did you take on the high achiever? Like, there's 5 or 6, let's call them emblems that come out of addiction-based families or, again, families with mental health disorders. The hero, the comedian, the rebel, the rule breaker, if you will, the high performer. Did you take that identity on?

I was the comedian.

You were the comedian, not the high performer. So here's the thing.

If you're the youngest in your family and your oldest brother goes to college at 16 for physics, you're not competing. And your middle brother is all-state football, basketball, goes to all the track finals, gets a full ride to a D1 school for football. And you're the youngest and you're not as smart as your oldest brother. And you're not as athletic as your middle brother, what are your options? To be funny, to like try and make jokes and make your jokes, you know, to take away from the pain. Yeah.

Look at my joke. Don't look at me. Yeah. Don't look at my fear. So our community, they are switched on. They are great thinkers. They're great doers. And they are deeply interested in being. More of themselves. They have full lives. Okay. And so whether it's at work and home and blending the two, so that bridging between work life and home life is complex. Yeah, it's— I'm using that word, not complicated. It is complicated, but it's complex. There's a— there's more nuance in there. Can you spend a moment because you've embodied it, meaning that you've lived a family system that was struggling suffering potentially. You yourself have struggled and suffered. You also understand as an adult thriving. So can you speak to the parent who is kicking ass and trying to blend two worlds in their most optimized way? Can you talk to, like, how to parent better in this complexity that we're talking about?

There are a couple very important things. One is when you do have time at home, make sure it's authentic. And make sure that you are holding as much space or being there for your kids as much as you can in those moments that you have. So I get that you're successful and overachieving and doing all these other things. When you're home, try to just be home and be with them, even if it's for short amounts of time, because that's what really matters. Like, what really changed my trajectory was when my dad was able to get through the noise and be like, I'm just here with you. I'm going to spot you as you bench press. We're going to go for a walk. I'm going to take you somewhere. We're going to do something. And he was just there with me because in this world of overstimulation and dopamine and everything else, you don't get that time to just have someone be there. And even if it is 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is, depending on how busy you are, make sure you're there and you're showing up in that authentic way. What I want to do for—

to credential the importance of what you just said, let's roll back and, and just open up what you do as a profession so that, so that there's some contextual placement for how you're spending your life. Yeah.

So I'm a mental health education expert. I work with every population from as young as kindergarten up to corporations, and I created a curriculum that treats mental health the same way it treats physical health. So that means having a clear definition of mental health. Being able to— much like we understand the difference between a sprained ankle and a broken leg, knowing the difference between feeling nervous and having anxiety, understanding that like when you want to take care of your physical health, most of us wake up every day and think, all right, what is happening right now and what do I need to do about it? So taking that same approach with mental health and then, you know, just talking about brain development, coping mechanisms, all that other stuff. And then I am the wellness director at Geffen Academy at UCLA, which is a school for students of grades 6 through 12, and I created a program. It's the only program in the country where kids learn about mental health and healthy relationships once a week, every single week from grade 6 through grade 12.

Say that last part again, because like, this is— notwithstanding all how great you are in all the other parts of your life, but this piece I am super inspired by.

So the idea was if kids learned about mental health and healthy relationships from grade 6 through grade 12, they would be better prepared for the rest of their life. We know that the second largest period of brain growth is 12 to 25, and we know that what happens during that time time period last for a lifetime. And so the idea was give them those skills, teach them those skills at that young age so that they are better college students, so they are better adults, so that they are growing in the ways that they need to. And I don't know why other schools don't invest the time or create similar programs. But what we have seen is that our graduates feel far more prepared for college than their peers, not even in the academic sense, but in the important sense, the roommate conflict, the dating, the challenges that they're going to go through when they are in college, because they've had that conversation from grade 6 up to that time.

I can't tell you the number of times I've sat with, like, a game-changing athlete or executive or artist that literally has changed their industry, and they're investing in new ways in their psychology, and they're underneath the surface, and they're like, man, if I would have had this when I was younger, Mm-hmm. You know, so you're speaking right to something I hear so often. Mm-hmm. And so this conversation is about leaders of industry, leaders of families. How do we help people that are following, you know, your footsteps to be able to help them be just a little bit better, whether it's a kid or it's a middle manager, whatever? How do we invest in a system and a set of skills to help them be better? All that being said, you shared a statistic with me that is Captivating. Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. Travel a lot at Finding Mastery, and sometimes travel makes it tricky to eat well. Best intentions, and then you're at the airport, and then suddenly the only options around you are the ones that you'd rarely choose at home. Something I come back to often is that discipline isn't really about willpower in the moment. It's often about choice architecture, setting up your environment ahead of time so that the easy choice and the good choice are the same one. That's the role David plays for me on the road. The gold bar. It's Flagship high protein density, great texture, flavors that make it easy to stick with. So when I throw a few in the bag before my trip, I've already made the decision. The hard moment later takes care of itself. And the team here at Finding Mastery, they love the bars as well. They are ripping through them in the Finding Mastery Lab. Salted peanut butter and fudge brownie seem to be the fan favorites right now. They have built something with real rigor in a crowded, sometimes ambiguous space like nutrition. That matters when it's something that you reach for again and again. David Bars are now available in major retailers like Walmart and Target. And if you'd like to buy them directly and get a special offer for being a Finding Mastery listener, head to davidprotein.com/findingmastery, where right now if you buy 4 packs, you'll get the 5th one for free. Again, that's davidprotein.com/findingmastery. Finding Mastery is brought to you by ProtonVPN. When I work with high performers, one of the things that we talk about is taking real responsibility for the things that are 100% under your control. The discipline to be great with the things that are in your control is a mark of mastery. Your digital privacy is one of those choices, and it's one a lot of people hand over without ever deciding to. Think about how much your life now lives online, your conversations with loved ones or colleagues, your finances, your work, and it's far more exposed than many of us realize. Most of us just accept that as the cost of being online, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can decide to take some of that ownership back. That's where ProtonVPN comes in. ProtonVPN is a secure service designed for people people who want to protect their privacy and their online life. And if you travel a lot, it's great. It encrypts your connection so what you do online stays yours. And what I respect is that it's built by a team that treats privacy as a core value, and they've got a track record to back it up. Right now, Proton VPN is offering you 70% off a 2-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com/mastery. That's protonvpn.com/mastery for 70% off with a 2-year plan. Again, protonvpn.com one of the leading causes of people missing work is them trying to take care of their kids' mental health.

How about that? And in this youth mental health crisis, that's often missed. You have so much data and statistics that anxiety and depression and suicide and neurodivergence is off the charts. And so we think like, oh, what can a school do? Or what can an afterschool program do? Or what can sports teams do? Like, you know, for high school athletics. But we forget that It is actually a cost to a company if the adults are missing work to take care of their kids' mental health. And then you have lower productivity from a company, you have lower engagement, all kinds of stuff because you have people who are at work just constantly scared that their kid isn't going to make it.

It's a real fear. Mm-hmm. What about their own mental health? What does the data suggest for people missing days of work because of their internal conditions?

That is typically the biggest cause of missed work days. The biggest. Adults' own mental health. And then one of the leading causes after that is, is taking care of their kids' mental health. Okay. So it's a, it's a universal crisis. It's not just, it's just the kids.

How do we normalize? What are you coming to understand? How do we normalize conversations around mental health without it feeling nerdy, clinical, uncool? How are you entering the conversation? How do we make this thing more normal, more exciting? Less taboo?

First, you need an actual clear definition on what mental health is. No matter what you call mental wellness, mental health, behavioral health, whatever you call it, people need to know what it is. Okay. In L.A., when I tell people that I teach about mental health, people say like, oh, you work with homeless people. And I'm like, no, I don't. Or other people will be like, yeah, I teach about mental health. I'll be like, yeah, I go to the spa and I get facials and massages. And so if we are in a world where the words mental health either mean luxury Or homelessness. We don't have a definition for it.

We just don't put it in plain language.

The way that I define mental health is it's not about having a problem. It's how you address different challenges in your life. It's not about being perfect. It's like when you hurt your leg, you know, like you need to go to someone, get it assessed, and figure out your road back to using your leg. If you wake up in the morning and you're like, I have a cold, you know, you have to grab some cough drops and some tissues and go to work. When people wake up with different mental health experiences, not only can they not name them, sometimes they can't identify them. They don't have the skills of what they actually need to do. They don't know that, oh, I'm just stressed out, so let me go hit the gym or let me go for a run or let me manage the stress versus, wow, I actually am having a panic attack right now and I can't breathe. So what are the steps I would need to take there? And that's what the definition really is. If you think again about physical health, you think, what am I doing and what do I need to do about it? None of us have our physical health perfect either. Those days where you eat too many donuts or drink too much or do something else, the next day you're like, all right, I shouldn't have done that. But you know how to come back from it. With mental health, we're not at that place.

Yeah, there's still a taboo and a shame and a foggy cloud of like, what do I do? And I'm not sure I can talk about it. Right. So it's getting better. Yeah, it's getting better. In my lifetime, it's better than it's ever been, which I think is better than most civilizations have done it. But I, I'm not exactly tuned to that, but I think we're getting better. And I'm going to say this to the community. If you're one of the cool kids, if you're a leader in your organization, if you're a high performer, if you're getting it done, raise both arms, even if you don't need it yourself, but raise both arms to say, hey, listen, it's really important for me. It's really important for my family. This is a really important thing. We're going to figure this thing out together, you know, bring you into the organization, whatever it might be, to help educate and get a definition. One other piece is that this gets a little complicated to imagine, but mental health is not the absence. It's not the absence of a disorder, right? So that's a— there's a little bit of gymnastics you need to do with your imagery, but mental health is like thriving. And we still got a taboo. It's like mental health disorder. This is like, what are we talking about? So, okay, mental health is also just managing.

It doesn't have to be thriving. It can be— look, there are many things that have happened in a life where even on your best understanding of mental health, you're not going to thrive. When I lost my dad, it was the hardest thing I've ever gone through. You know, you can take the bipolar disorder, the suicide attempts, the 5 years of substance use, the drowning, everything. When my dad died, I was in grief for at least 4 to 5 months. And it didn't matter if I went to therapy and it didn't matter if I did my coping mechanisms, it didn't matter. I did all those other things. I wasn't able to actually balance my mental health. And that's okay, because that loss that you feel, that you grieve, is, is equitable to what's going on. It doesn't mean I couldn't function. I still went to work. I still had other things happening. But I also think that, like, mental health isn't just thriving. It's also— there's going to be times in life where you're just managing.

Great. So let's get into the weeds of what we can do. Okay. So that's the what. Okay. You've dedicated your life to it, providing a clear understanding of what it is, what it's not, a working definition. You're investing in a school system to give it to kids that are young. So that they're better by return of investment. The parents are better too. But let's get into the how. How do we invest in our mental health?

The most important things people can do to really take care of their mental health is first, know your journey. So many people are reacting to things that are happening now without thinking about their past. They are kind of still in their past, repeating the same behaviors over and over and over again without seeing how they got here. And so even with my students, when we do a healthy relationships class, I ask them to think about their self-defining memories. That got them here. And self-defining memories are just the core memories you have from your childhood all the way up till now. And so making a roadmap for that is actually a really beautiful thing because you get to see that, yes, you went through things, but you also did other things. You had good memories too. It wasn't just this, this problem.

Can you give us the visual? I've done this a handful of times with some folks. It's really great. I was exposed to it early in my kind of training. But can you give a visual how you do it? So there's a timeline on the bottom and there's— how did we do it? There's like above the line, below the line, if you will. There's things that were like important memories that weren't so great, kind of below the line. There's this imaginary line, if you will. And then there's things above it and you can be slightly above it and or you can be like mountaintops above it. Definitely. How do you do it? Do you put above the line, below the line?

Yeah, I do a similar thing. I ask them to think about— and they're younger, right? So it's a little easier. But I ask them to think about trips they took. You know, people that were important in their life, moments that were great, like maybe they won an award or something. Like one of my students is on every Girl Scouts box in the world, and the picture was taken of her when she was like 7. Uh, you know, it's just so there's like little things like that. And then I also, and the thing about their first experience of loss or change or rejection or hard times, the most important thing though is I model it so they see my timeline. From my life and get to see like, oh, so I can share. It is safe to share something harder than just making this like, you know, picture-perfect timeline up into the right. What about you guys? Yeah, right. What happened to you? So yeah, but it's an exercise that I think adults need to do. And I think it's really important if you're in a relationship because not everyone shares everything from their life. And doing a timeline not only helps you as an individual, but it also helps you understand who you're in a relationship with. And that's the first step, is you have to know your past to better understand your future. If you don't understand your past, you will keep repeating the same mistakes, the same habits, the same things. And that's true of relationships. That's why you can see people in, you know, multiple marriages, but they're doing the same thing. They're just finding someone who's more tolerable of it. They're like, oh yeah, but that person was bad because they didn't get that. And then they didn't change. They just found someone who was like more tolerable.

This is a thing now. I was in therapy with my wife. We were married 30-some years, right? And so I'm in therapy and we're going through a phase, and I'm Italian, she's Latina. We're in there and it's got some fiery kind of nature to it. Psychologist stops us and says, okay, this is about as bad as it gets. And she was a wise woman, classically trained, clinically trained. Wise woman. And she says, Mike, do you know that you need to work on yourself? I said, yeah. She looked at my wife and she says, Lisa, do you know you need to work on yourself? And my wife says, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she says, okay, really simple. Do you guys want to do the work together? Or Mike, do you want to do it with another partner? Lisa, do you want to do it with another partner? And I was like, oh my God, that's the heaviest question. That's the question. And my heart sank in those handfuls of seconds that felt like an eternity. It was the most honest question that she could ask. Even thinking about now, I'm like, oof, like the vulnerability required because I knew what I wanted to say. Mm-hmm. And I wanted her to have all the space for her to know what she wanted to say. And I looked over and she said, I don't want to do this shit with anyone else. I was like, thank God. We have a chance. We've got a chance. And so I said, I'll do the work.

I'll do it. I'll do all the work.

Yeah.

But I do want to highlight something there too, because you said vulnerability. And in today's world, I think sometimes people think vulnerability would be doing that timeline and then just trauma dumping on their partner or their spouse or their whoever.

Trauma dumping. Is this a thing? It is.

What is that? So there's a difference between vulnerability being like, Here's my timeline. This is how messed up my family was. This is what happened to me. This is the abuse I went through. This is what other relationships have been like. And it was horrible versus this is everything I went through and I am open to growing and I need support in these ways and I need help because in our society right now, vulnerability has been turned into just share things. You can't just share things and have growth. You have to share things under the guise of, this is where I need support. Otherwise, it's not vulnerability at all. So that's the first step, is this self-awareness, self-defining memory roadmap, whatever you want to call it. You're understanding your past, you're understanding what you bring in to your current life with your mental health. The next step is really thinking about how do you cope? Coping mechanisms are the building blocks of mental health. So when we want to get strong physically, We exercise, we eat right, we train hard. And, you know, some of your, your clients or people you work with are the most exceptional people in the world at that. They have trained so hard physically that they have excelled in ways that you can't imagine. There are ways to do that with your mental health, and those coping mechanisms aren't the same for everyone. Some people do like to talk, some people like to write, some people like to exercise and get it out. Some people like to do other things, but After you know yourself, you have to think about how you cope. If you're in a relationship, just because we brought it up sooner, you do need to communicate. It can't be like, okay, I'm really stressed out. I'm just going to go in my silo and fix it and come back because that other person has all kinds of emotional reactions while you're doing that. But the next piece is how do we cope? What do we do? The piece after that is thinking about the relationships in your life and what their current state is.

So you go map it out. Yeah. So let's create this map of above the line, below the line, in my language. Then you're investing in some vulnerability to share and talk about it and be open to not just trauma dumping, but actually saying, this is my tender spots, if you will. Okay. And then you say, okay, I need to build some coping skills. Let's pause there for just a moment. What are the coping skills that you're most interested in teaching?

So we teach the neuroscience of coping versus emotion-based coping. I learned very early on, even with kids, that if you go to this place of like, oh, do you have feelings? And how do you change your feelings? It was not as effective as teaching them that the longer you do something, the better you get at it. So for me, when I started drinking at 12 and then binge drinking at 16, every emotional trigger I had truly until I was 22 and hit rock bottom because I couldn't continue those coping mechanisms. The deeper I got into drinking, the deeper the neural pathways got in my brain and the better I got at it. Similar thing for athletics. The longer you practice a sport, the better you get at it, so that when you're in a big moment, you're not going to choke. You're going to be relaxed and do the sport because you've practiced it enough. I think that social-emotional learning and teaching emotion-based things in elementary school works really well. But in adolescence, I found that if you enter through neuroscience and show the pattern behavior, it opens up and be like, oh, that is real. And then you can dive into the emotional piece, right? So I have them understand how the brain works and that the longer you do something, the better you get at it. Then what I'll do a lot of times too is ask them to think about something they're good at and the steps it took to get them good at that, whether it's video games, cooking, whatever it is. And they'll often list that like, you know, it took time, it took trust, it took someone typically teaching them, and then it took practice. And then I'll say, yeah, to change coping, you have to do the same thing.. It takes time, it takes practice, it typically involves someone else, and then it takes a while for you to rewire your brain to actually use that coping mechanism. But the flip side of that, the emotional piece of it, is all research shows that the more words people have for their feelings, the better their mental health is. Full stop.

It's worth repeating because that is so foundational, something that you and I understand but almost evaporates into the world of like daily living for people who haven't spent their life studying this.

It's worth What are you saying again? So the more words you have to describe your feelings, the better your mental health is. But we live in a society that is not promoting multiple words. We live in a society that is literally funneling you into anxiety and depression. I'm good. Or am I good?

Yeah. Yeah. Or anxiety and depression. Right. And there's shades of it. 100%. Which is how you open this conversation saying there's a difference between, I think you said anxiety and nervousness. Feeling nervous, yeah. And there's a difference between anxiousness and clinical anxiety, right? So can you open up just a little bit on how to practice putting words to these states?

The best thing you can do is use apps. There is an app called How We Feel. It was started by one of my friends, and every day it gives you 70 emotions that you could choose from. And the more specific you get with your emotion, the more relief you're going to feel. Because a lot of times people think if they don't share their emotions, they're going to feel better. But naming emotions, even if it is grief, loss, tormented, whatever it is, it activates your, your cortexes and it gets you out of that kind of fight or flight response. So it lets you at least clarify it. So I always recommend using whatever you can to help identify those emotions, and then you figure out kind of what you need to do to come back or address the emotion.

You know, the research is actually quite clear that when you put a name to the state that you're experiencing, the emotional state, it actually dissipates the intensity of that emotion. It's a little bit like if you're holding a dandelion and you blow on the dandelion, it, like, it changes and it becomes different. It's lighter now. There's less tentacles that come off of it. And just naming the emotion actually does something like that. I'm being 100% poetic with this imagery, but That is so counterintuitive because what I was taught, and you, and probably many of our community, is if you name the emotion, now you bring it to the light. Now you're in trouble. Because if you don't name it and don't bring that friend with you to the, to the whatever experience, then maybe you can hide it, maybe you can ignore it, and maybe it'll just go away. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that.

And then once you name it, you go back to like, all right, how do I typically cope with this? Now, coping is not a linear line for anyone. So I'll talk first about, like, my own experiences with that. I grew up in a home where no one used emotional words, and so I didn't have that. And then I started drinking. And then when I wanted to come out of it, it was a series of different coping mechanisms for me. It wasn't just like, oh, this is what I'll do. The first thing I had to do was put myself in a very strict structure just to understand what was a disorder and what was my actual life. And that meant waking up at the same time every day, going to bed at the same time every night, eating foods and boundaries. Because I would say that, let's go back to that parenting question from the beginning. When people come home from this busy life, everything else, the first thing that goes is boundaries. You want your kid to just be placated. And so if that means they get a device or they get to play video games, they do something else and you don't have to fight them, then you let go of your boundaries, right? For me as an individual, I needed those boundaries of how do I take care of myself? How do I— make sure that I'm doing everything I can to be prepared to monitor my mental health. And I know that's like a, a reach back to parenting, but families without boundaries are also gonna struggle with coping mechanisms because there's not a model, there's not discipline, there's not a way to keep that in place.

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So structured things for me, when I wake up in the morning, I do take a phone break first and just connect to how I actually feel and what I see and what I want for the day. How long? For me, it's 30 minutes of just like centered, focused attention, things like that. I will either lay or walk or, you know, sit and just think about the day, what I'm going to be facing, what's going to be happening, and just kind of taking a moment first to prepare.

Is there any research that you point to of this practice, or is this something that's been useful for you?

I mean, there's a lot of research on starting your day tech-free. That's correct. Reaching for your phone right away. Yeah, right. And then the meditation meditation qualities. Like, I don't meditate every day, but, you know, starting your day with your own voice versus all of the other voices— there is a lot of research philosophically.

That's— yeah, that's really nice. And there's good data to suggest the data on mindfulness is ridiculous. It is. The research, I should say. Yeah.

And then I'm a meal prep guy. I don't know about other people, but I'll make overnight oats for the week, and then I wake up and have— you know, once I have cleared my mind, I have my, my overnight oats. I can control the amount of protein in it. I can control the ingredients. I can do a lot and you can actually pack a lot in there. You can pack chia seeds and almonds and protein powder and blueberries, bananas. Like, you know, you can make sure your breakfast is hitting your goals without having to make it every day. So I try to make sure that before I go to work or before I do anything, that I take that time to get ready, also device-free, so that I am not distracted. And that, you know, when I talk to my wife, when I do other things, it's like, all right, we have this kind of whole wake-up routine. Everyone needs their own wake-up routine. Work is whatever, you know, you can take breaks, you can do other things like that. I'm not gonna structure everybody's work life. I do think it's important to have moments that are tech-free at work too. We know, especially at a school, that tech has just destroyed an entire generation of kids. That— big statement— that the rates of anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, suicide, they wouldn't be as high as they are without addiction and social media. Yeah, yeah, that's all very real. And now you see school districts removing tech from elementary and middle schools, which I am in favor of.

The data is scary heading into colleges.

100%. Yes.

Yeah. This is not getting better once they get out of—

and it's plateaued, but it's plateaued so high that you're like, any improvements are like great, but it's already so high.

General numbers, what are we looking at for—

so the suicide rate since social media has gone up around 60%. It's increased.

It doesn't mean 60% of kids are suicidal. It means that It's the absolute number. Yeah. The number in the US is 41,000 people a year, somewhere in that range. Almost 42,000 people a year commit suicide. Yes. School me up here. I think I got a lot of backlash on using the phrase committed suicide. What's the language?

The language around committing suicide induces guilt upon the person who died by suicide. So the language that a lot of mental health advocates use is died by suicide, took their own life. There are people who will say, like, you know, the depression was so crippling that they succumbed to depression or they succumbed to something else. The committed suicide language came from— there was laws in the books that committing suicide was illegal. And so committing came from that.

I see. Versus committing a crime. Yes. But it's— okay, so it's a hangover.

So that's why it's still there. But dying by suicide, took their own life, is, is, you know, the more—

thank you. Yeah. Gender differences. What are you finding?

Young women are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide, and young men die by suicide 4 times more likely. And that is because they use more violent means when they attempt. Like, we can't say like, oh, certain genders have it more difficult. It— the mental health crisis is equally difficult in everyone, but it comes out differently in different genders.

Let's go back to the group that you're spending most of the time with, 6th grade to 12th grade. What are you finding gender there? Is there a difference between boys and girls?

For young women, they are more likely to internalize their emotions and their mental health in the ways that they treat themselves. So you've spent time with women. They factor so many different things, think about so many different things, and consider so much more than I ever will. If I ask my wife, like, as a check-in, like, hey, what are you thinking about right now? It is at least 8 things that I have not considered at all. And so remember that that doesn't just turn on. When they're adults. That starts at a young age. And so they do have higher rates of depression and anxiety that they're diagnosed with, partly because of the way that they are addressing their emotions. And so young women need an approach to mental health that is naming things, identifying what they're going through, building coping mechanisms, but understanding that they are likely to take those emotions on themselves. Young men tend to externalize. So when they do have emotions, it tends to come out. In anger, frustration, things like that. But there's a bigger stigma for young men to share their feelings or to talk about it. And so while young women may be more open to doing that, young men aren't. And so the approach with them has to be modeling it. What we've seen with young men's mental health crisis is one of the, the biggest fix is having other adult men in their life that are modeling the behaviors that they need. Some boys don't have a single male teacher from pre-K through 6th grade. They get their first male teacher in middle school. That's a problem. So having more men involved in education and healthcare and things like that to model those behaviors is helpful. It is no mistake that me being a male teacher talking about mental health and healthy relationships has an impact because most young boys aren't getting that conversation or that information anywhere else in their lives. Very cool. And then if you have that vacuum, you're going to fill it with the manosphere and all these other things that aren't supporting them but are speaking to the vacuum of their mental health, their emotions, their feelings. And so they gravitate to it because the reality is kids do want to have these conversations. We're not filling the vacuum with meaningful things that can support them.

Can you talk about looksmaxing and the manosphere, and can you just open those up a little bit, what they are and your take on them?

To me, this whole experience of looksmaxing, manosphere, the masculinity crisis, all of it is truly just filling this vacuum of young men who feel lonely and isolated and don't know where to go with it. And then they're taking those emotions and they're getting projected into whatever outlet is speaking to them at the time. Even for me, with the young men that I work with who have fallen down that rabbit hole, it's not because they don't care. It's not because—

but they look like it. Sure. I mean, I watch that and I'm like, embarrassed for a whole population of— like, embarrassed is too strong because it has nothing to do with me. But I'm like, I don't want anything to do with that. So I—

but it's hitting a lot of boys, you know.

And, and so wait, are these new heroes happening?

There's always going to be someone filling that vacuum. Right now it is Clavicular and his looksmaxing of like hitting his jaw with a hammer and doing all these other things. I don't know any kids who have done that, but they are fascinated by it. And so they'll check in on it, and eventually that seeps in. I'll tell you one thing that I do at the end of every 10th grade class at the end of the year is I ask everyone to write about who they want to be in a future relationship using some of the skills we discussed from the year. So attachment theory, conflict resolution, codependency, communication, the effects of media, you know, porn, all of it. And every year there are young men who write the most powerful reflections you could ever imagine. And they talk about who they are and where it came from, and that they haven't had a language to ever use before to describe it. And so a lot of our focus is going to go on all of the problems with young men. I like to stay focused on some of the solutions and the way to actually help them. And this activity teaches me more about that generation than I could ever imagine.

What are some general themes that are emerging for you?

So over the past years, you have these kids who who present to the school as like, you know, problematic, disassociated, maybe super quiet, not necessarily fitting in, not knowing where they're going. And then they'll write these reflections of why. They grew up in homes that they weren't supported in. They started internalizing being a man at a young age and felt like they had to show up and step up for whoever they're dating, for whatever's happening in the family, whatever else. And so then their affect at school is Well, I'm just going to keep doing that because no one cares about me. And then even though my class is not therapeutic, because I don't believe schools can be therapy centers, I do believe schools can teach mental health like you teach physical health, but I don't believe they can be therapy centers or therapeutic interventions. These kids learn these skills where then they will go home and try to implement it with their parents or try to make a big difference in their lives, and they get it. At a time period where they can actually implement it. Age 15 to 16.

List off a handful more of skills that you're interested in for this generation of kids building.

So I do think it comes down to healthy relationships. I do think obviously mental health is important and we've, we've addressed that. We've talked about it in this interview at length. But I do think kids need to know that the way that they were shown and the way that they gave and received love as a kid will affect them into adulthood. And that's attachment styles. I do think they need to know that there are different conflict resolution styles, that competing, problem-solving, compromising, avoiding, accommodating are real things. And that if you can understand that at a young age, it helps you navigate what someone's trying to do to you. And if you know you're an avoider and accommodator in adolescence, that's going to follow you into adulthood and that's going to affect everything. And then we do talk about the difference between independent, interdependent, codependent relationships, because most relationships are codependent. And they're problematic.

Just to define it, here's a simple version that I like, is that my happiness depends on your happiness. So that's not the clinical, but that's kind of the way it shows up locally. How are you defining codependency?

Codependency is an overreliance on someone addressing all of your emotional needs.

Yeah, that's right. And that's not good. Yeah. And this is why an addict and a codependent work so well together. You know, it's because one can do the job and they kind of— it's this symbiotic relationship between the two. One is messy, let's say, and the other one cleans it up, right? Yeah. Like, definitely we're depending on each other to be a mess, but to be the cleaner.

But what that comes down to, too, is we don't teach kids self-advocacy and we don't teach them how to ask for what they want in any relationship.

So say more there.

So we are doing that. We're doing lessons on, hey, here's self-advocacy. Here's how to think about how you want to be treated and what you need and what you like so that you can state that from the beginning of a relationship or a friendship and not just be constantly responding to when you're not getting it. We do talk about love languages. I don't love the Five Love Languages. They've turned them into Seven. What I do appreciate about that is it helps people think about how they feel seen and heard. And so if they can state that, they can clear up a lot of different dynamics in families, friendships, and romantic relationships. It doesn't just have to be— I think sometimes when I say healthy relationships, people immediately think I'm teaching kids how to date. I'm not. I'm teaching them how to manage family, friendships, and romantic relationships. And what we've seen from this, again, because I don't think it can be stated enough, is like, these kids go home and they teach their families these skills, and it does help heal generations of mistreatment.

So a parent says, what'd you learn today in school? And a kid says, oh, we learned emotional regulation skills, you know. And then, what are you talking about? And then they go and teach at the dinner table. Yeah.

Yeah. Or the parent will be like, you know, chastising them for something and they will say, that's not how you're supposed to talk about that. And you know, there is a dynamic there that like, there are many students that I have taught that I love teaching that I would never want to parent. I would be like, please God. And I'll see their parents and just be like, God, you're doing so bad. You got a handful. So much. But I know that those kids are also, one, using those words to fight back and push back against their parents just to push back. But two, they are conceptualizing it in that, in that moment. It's not just the, you know, being a rebel. It's also like, okay, this is what I need.

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The emotional expression that they needed. When you look at attachment theory, like secure attachment, which is that you— your most of your emotional needs were met, is still around 50% of people, but it's only 50%. The second highest is disorganized, which means your emotional needs were met with threats or actual abuse.

How does that show up? What is a threat?

Oh, I'll give you something to cry about. Or, you know, a kid's expressing emotions and you tell them to shut up or stop, or, you know, things like that. And I still think that's a pretty common parenting style. I don't think that's—

and how does the parenting style promote avoidance and avoidant attachment?

So for me, I grew up avoidant attachment. It was just my emotional needs were never met until I was much older, and my dad was like, I'm gonna— this kid's gonna die, so I need to stop. And I need to actually, like, listen.

You chose to avoid or— No, I was raised—

my mom had a mental health disorder and was not able to respond to my emotional needs. And I'm not blaming her. Like, that's just the reality. So I dissociated from a young age, hid everything inside, thought I was super independent, and then thought I was okay, and then was a nightmare in relationships because there's nothing worse than someone who, when you ask if they're okay, defaults to everything being okay. When in fact nothing is okay, but they don't have the self-advocacy or vulnerability to address what's going on. They're going to constantly say everything's fine and it's not, and you can't access them in that relationship. That's a problem. And anxious attachment— anxious is your parents were just uneven. So sometimes they responded caring, loving, and other times they were overly intrusive and like, you know, trying to fix everything. And so a kid grows up thinking like, I don't know which parent I'm going to get. And so they become clingy. And then as an adult, they tend to be really clingy. And as you probably know, in adult world, for whatever reason, people who are anxious tend to attract people who are avoidant, and they stay in that anxious-avoidant cycle until they break up or just infuriating.

Yeah. There's an interesting position is that most of the major issues that you have with your partner do not get resolved fully. They kind of just are there. They become better managed. Sometimes you can extinguish them or fully heal from them, but to do that requires a lot of intentional work. So there's like, you know, I mean, if you're okay with the issues that you have, you don't need to go to work. But if you're like, oh, man, there's some stuff that I need to sort out. And I can see a better version of our relationship, then it likely needs somebody that's an expert in that field to be able to navigate it for you and with you.

And to that point, like, what I learned quickly in, in creating this school was a lot of the best ideas came from these kids. And so when I created the school, I didn't have a year healthy relationships class. But by year 2 of the school, I saw that relationships were the biggest thing impacting their mental health. And if they didn't have these skills to use, they weren't going to be able to manage their mental health. Just like, you know, you see like tech influences them, other things influence them. But we are in a society that doesn't have the strongest relationship skills. And you do need to start learning it from a young age to be able to make a change.

Let's go a little older right now. You know, the college years. Sure. 18, 19, 22, 23, in that kind of range. We've already mentioned that the data there is alarming of people that are struggling, if not radically suffering more than they ever have in our lifetime. What do you hope that parents can do for— to support and challenge their kids to be healthy, to be their very best? Speak to the parents, to college.

The thing that I do to prepare my students for college is in their senior year, because we can do this once a week, I put them in every scenario they're going to be in and ask them what they're going to do. So we spend weeks on roommate conflict and understanding different conflict resolution styles. We spend weeks on drugs and alcohol. The amount of my graduates who have come back to me and said like, hey, you weren't lying, I got offered cocaine in my first days on campus. Like, these drugs are more prevalent than I think people realize. And there are less of Gen Z using substances, but it doesn't mean they're not available to them. So to answer your question in a short way, think about the threats and the experiences your kids are going to have in college and start those honest conversations with them before they go so that when they do go, they're going to open up and ask for support or talk about what's going on as opposed to just shouldering it on their own, taking it on their own. UCLA currently has 55 counselors at the counseling center, and obviously there's a waitlist and there's always people who need to get in. But the percentage of students who need support for anxiety disorders or depression is not nearly as high as the amount of students who can't handle a roommate conflict, don't know how to ask somebody out on a date, don't know how to navigate just basic life skills. And I think where a lot of parents make a mistake is they focus so heavily on is their kid academically prepared for college that they forget that they may not have the actual skills they need to navigate the different challenges they're going to experience interpersonally versus academically.

Where are you on the narrative for By the way, that's epic. I loved every word that you chose there. Where are you on fraternities, sororities as a protective factor versus a risk factor?

The data shows that students who are in fraternities and sororities have better mental health than college students who aren't. In this world of loneliness and in this place where we don't have belonging, the fraternity and sorority chapter can provide that. I say can because that's not always going to be the case. Place. And in cases of hazing and other things that have been detrimental, then you're going to have a, a sharper turn that is not going to be helpful. But the data for belonging has shown that college students who are in fraternity and sorority life have, uh, better mental health.

Hazing's a real thing though. Yes, it is. Do you get through fraternity sorority experience without hazing?

There are a lot of colleges that, that you can. That's definitely possible. And then there are a lot of colleges that you won't. And remember that hazing isn't just the men. Like what some of my college students who have graduated from my school share about hazing for women is equally disgusting. Can you give some examples? There was a hazing ritual that a graduate shared with me. I can be graphic. It was basically— that's okay. It was basically you have two options. You either do a line of— it's called Blow or Blow. So either do a line of cocaine or you give somebody you don't know a blowjob., and there are certain people who do both. And this particular student was like, I'm not gonna do either. And they're like, okay, you can't be in this, this sorority. And she was like, okay, then just give me my money back. And they were like shocked, but she was like, why would I do that? And so there is that side, that, that hazing side that can be horribly detrimental or traumatic. One of my friends Dave Erickson is a mental health speaker, and he talks about a hazing incident that re— that brought up all of the memories of his dad taking his own life when he was home. And that was part of the hazing ritual. Like, as you can imagine, there was like some really dangerous things involved. So yes, yes, hazing can, can occur and it can be detrimental.

So is the juice worth the squeeze? Let's make up a number. 80% are going to have a hazing experience. Experience. And the data is that we could say 50, I don't know. And the data is pretty clear that having a social network is really important. If you get through this potentially humiliating or whatever type of scary, intense, traumatic experience, then you'll have a social group to be okay with.

It's going to depend on a lot of factors. One, the, the hazing we just named is the most extreme things that I've heard of. And most of it is not. It is just group belonging. It is just kind of like, hey, you fit into this thing. And so there are kids who wouldn't make it through that, and that would be weeded out pretty quickly. For the kids who it's not traumatic and it is more team building, like, yeah, yeah, because there are team building things that are like, hey, you just do this thing, you know, that's minor, like you carry someone's, like, you know, backpack, or you clean up after a party or something like that. Then, you know, I think it's okay. Obviously, if it's traumatic, you can't endorse that.

Okay, cool. Data is mixed on athletics and protective factor versus risk factor. It's mixed. It's not clear that because you've got better psychological, emotional management tools because they're required for high-pressure situations, if that is actually— if the pressure outdoes it, if the social factors of having close relationships is protective versus the risk. Sport is unclear right now. And so I err on the side of like, yeah, it's probably a good thing now. But the data does not completely—

But this is in your wheelhouse. I think it more comes down to the person's identity. If their only identity is that they're a student athlete and that they are thriving off of being that student athlete, their transition out of student athleticism is going to be really hard. And if there's no balance to the team and there's no other aspect of it, I think you're gonna see that detrimental mental health piece. I do think that it's interesting, you know, there are a lot more organizations supporting student athlete mental health and making it more normalized. Hidden Opponent is a great one, and there's so many others. But I think that there's still a huge amount of students who are like, I don't wanna disclose what I'm going through because I'm gonna lose my scholarship and I'm gonna lose my starting position. And if I just lost my starting position, I'm gonna lose my identity of who I am. And my mental health's gonna spiral. We still see high suicide rates in student athletes and high suicide rates in people who were student athletes. And I don't know that joining a team is your biggest sense of belonging, as is that identity work is.

If we knew what you knew, how would we parent better?

The first thing that would happen is modeling the type of mental health that you wanna see in your family and not just telling kids they have to do it. So those boundaries around— we take family walks, we have family dinners that are tech-free, we do these things, we show up— is, is got to be the most important part. What typically happens is parents come to me after they haven't done it, and now their kid is in a mental health crisis and they're like, what can I do? It's never too late to start. It's never too late to model the things you want to have, even if you don't have the most time. You set up the boundaries and the rituals of this is what we're going to do.

If we knew what you knew, how would we lead an organization better or a team better, knowing that we've got real pressure to meet deadlines, to make, you know, Wall Street happy, whatever it might be? How would we lead better?

Treating mental health the same way you treat physical health means that there has to be a language for it. I spoke at the Pentagon a few years ago, and the Secretary of the Navy brought me in and he was like, you know, what do you think we can do? And I was like, well, look, Your military is successful because everyone speaks the same language, everyone's on the same page, and they can complete operations that no one else can. In the business world, you have a language for whatever your field is. If you're a lawyer, if you're in tech, if you're a financial advisor, whatever it is, and it's typically a language that other people have to get a degree or experience to speak. If you do not have that same level of language for mental health, your business will not be as successful as it could be. You just—

Dave Erickson just shared what I think is one of the great, most impactful advantages that high-performing teams, whether it's in sport or others, have is shared language, shared practices. So the shared practices is the piece I put on that as well with shared language. So once you get that dialed in on the psychological pieces, it is different.

The other thing I will say, though, is a lot of businesses treat mental health as a third rail and they're afraid to touch it because they think if they have a language for mental health, it has to be therapeutic, and it doesn't. What's happening in a lot of businesses now is people have figured out the language that they can use to get out of work. And so they'll go to their supervisor and they'll explain like, hey, this is happening and this is happening. And so I just, you know, can't do this thing. And then the supervisor typically takes on the work of that person to help support them, which isn't sustainable for either person. So when we say there's a shared language for mental health, it's not that it's a language of not having accountability. It's a language of identification of what somebody might need and normalizing mental health so that somebody can either get the support they need or just letting a supervisor know like, hey, this is what I'm going through. So if I'm not 100%, this is why. As opposed to the scapegoating, which is, hey, I have mental health, so that's not how you figure it out. Yeah. Yeah, right.

So where's the imaginary line between I got something I'm working through It could be like something that I can't see, like an ulcer, let's say, right? And it's like really problematic. And depression, something I can't see, but both might have behavioral performance consequences. So let's just go in this world of mental health for a minute. You go to your supervisor or boss, you say, I got something I'm working on. It's tough. I'm going to navigate it. I just want to let you know. And then the supervisor is like, yeah, no problem. It's good we're talking about this because your performance has been problematic. Matter of fact, like, we really need to do something because you're in a dangerous zone for keeping your job, let's say, or, or making a move, something along those lines. Where's that imaginary line between your promise to the shared mission is to do these responsibilities well, and you've got a thing going on? As a supervisor or leader, how do you navigate that? Person's not performing well and they're going through something that tricky.

And remember, there's going to be different individuals here too, right? So there's always going to be outliers from what I'm about to say. There's, there's going to be the people who are disclosing this because they do want to actually work through it and they're trying. There's going to be people who disclose this because their severity of their depression is so much they probably can't work right now. And that, depending on the size of the company, is a different experience. If there's HR and there's support for people with disabilities, things like that, maybe they get the support. If you're a small company, And you don't have that. You don't have HR. You don't have all those things. That's a different conversation too. I think the line you really want to understand is how severe is it? Would time off be more beneficial than them trying to plug through? Remember, we're also working at a time right now where cost of living is so high that a lot of people do try to push through even when they can't because they're worried that if they lose their job, they're not going to be able to survive. So it's not as simple as like you're just not producing or you are anymore. Because you may not be getting the honest responses from people. I think the line that I always try to walk, whether it's parenting or even because I supervise people, I'm an administrator at my school, is the difference between empowering and enabling. Enabling could be like, okay, so this is this person's level of capacity and they're never going to be able to reach it whether they have depression or not. And I have a choice here of like, do we just keep this dance, or do they need to find a different career because this isn't going to work out for them? Versus empowering, which is if we build trust on this team and I set a benchmark and they're able to hit it, even though it's not where it needs to be, this experience that they're having is real. And when they work through it, they'll be able to come back up. That's a different conversation. So I can't give you a, like, quippy answer here. There is no easy path to navigate here. And most managers do care about their employees and they don't want to be the dick who just fires people because they have a mental health concern. But they also do have to answer to their bottom line and be productive. And so unfortunately, I stick to the like empowering versus enabling line. But that's also going to be—

that's a good difference. It's a good hinge. I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using for years. For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates, or text threads, I choose how to start my morning. That's always in my control. That's always in your control too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using. And the best part, it only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to findingmastery.com. Morning to download the audio guide for free. Again, head to findingmastery.com/morning to get your morning mindset routine. Finding Mastery is brought to you by AG1. Summer is here, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. You can just feel it though. Days are longer, pace picks up, and there's this sense of momentum that comes with the season. For me, that also means more travel. It's more early mornings. More late nights, and it's just really a schedule that isn't consistent as I'd like it to be. That's exactly when having a simple, reliable daily foundation, it matters. AG1 has been that foundation for me for over a decade now. One scoop in a glass of cold water in the morning, and I know I'm supporting my gut health, full stop, filling the nutrient gaps that are hard to cover through food alone. And what ends up happening is I'm giving my body what it needs to keep showing up, and that really matters to me. What I love about AG1 is that it doesn't ask a lot of me. It's one habit, one scoop, and it travels easily. The AG1 travel packs are something I genuinely rely on this time of the year. I throw a few in my bag before a trip and the routine stays intact wherever I am. If you haven't tried AG1 yet or you've been planning to think about getting back into it, now's a great time to start. Visit drinkag1.com/findingmastery to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 free in your welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. It's a $72 value. Again, that's drinkag1.com/findingmastery. Okay. One-word answers, right? Little, little fire round here. It all comes down to resilience. The good life is marked by connection. Success is? Peace. Relationships are? Responsive. My vision is? Health. My purpose is? Self-advocacy. My dream is?

Mental health being everywhere. Oh, very cool. I was trying to get to one word and I was like, I can't do it.

I can't do it, yeah. If you were to name a boat, what would you name the boat?

There's so many quippy names because I paddleboard through the marina a lot. Marina del Rey. And the water means so much to me. Like, the water is where I go to seek mental health, peace. Like, I'll just go sit on the beach. So I think I would have to name it something like my utopia, something like that.

Yeah, there you go. And then last question. If you were to sit with a true master, somebody that were in that position, who would it be and where would you want to sit with them?

I would love to go back to some of the early educational people like Vygotsky. You know, Vygotsky's whole thing was scaffolding. And he was really one of the first people to understand that, like, not everyone is just at different stages, but you can meet someone somewhere and scaffold them to a different place. And he died at, like, 30. He died young. But his work is so prevalent. And it's something I always think about is how do we scaffold people and what happens for them and what are the bridges to get them from an educational psychology perspective. So he's the first person who came to mind was like Vygotsky. I really, really loved his whole concept. Vygotsky was also the first person to realize that people have an internal voice. And one thing we didn't get to address a lot here is the way you talk to yourself is the loudest voice you have. And we talk to ourselves more than we talk to any other person. So when Vygotsky— when I found out that Vygotsky was the person who figured out internal voice, I was like, oh man, I have so many questions for that guy. Very cool, man.

Ross, thank you for your commitment to mental health, the clarity that you're able to share the ideas with, the openness to share your story and how you've navigated and the dream that you have for people to live a better way. Thank you for the commitment. It really is important to me that my family, my community, my ecosystem that I get to navigate with, and the global community figures this thing out because there's so much human potential lying dormant because we have not invested properly in the way that we navigate our internal experience, our psychology, our thoughts, and our emotions. So just want to say thank you. Appreciate you.

Thank you so much. This was really— I love this conversation. So thank you so much. And your work is just This is so awesome.

I love it. Thank you.

Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Matt Abrahams, lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter. Why do we so often lose access to what we know the moment all eyes turn toward us? Matt shares practical tools for navigating high-stakes conversations, overcoming the fear of being put on the spot, and why the goal isn't to sound perfect, but to create genuine connection. So join us Wednesday, July 29th at 9:00 AM Pacific only on Finding Mastery.

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