The Secret to Building Mental Strength with Amy Morin
In this episode of the Habits of High Performers podcast, host James Laughlin interviews psychotherapist and mental‑strength author Amy Morin. The conversation begins by defining mental weakness as the belief that one is already defeated and the reluctance to try new, uncomfortable actions. Amy identifies self‑pity and relinquishing personal power as common habits that erode mental strength. She recommends intentional morning practices—spending a minute to set a daily intention and reflecting on gratitude, hope, and inner strength (GHI). The discussion moves to scientific backing for gratitude and hope, noting their positive effects on mood, health, and relationships. Amy shares concrete, in‑the‑moment tools for anxiety: labeling emotions, a "reverse‑worry list" that reframes anxiety as excitement, and a simple breathwork technique called "smell the pizza" that uses longer exhalations to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. She also suggests scheduling a dedicated 15‑20‑minute worry slot each day to train the brain to postpone rumination. The interview covers Amy’s personal journey into mental‑strength work after profound personal loss, her process for writing books (weekly word‑count goals, pre‑brewed ideas, and responding to audience questions), and parenting advice that emphasizes giving children coping skills, allowing them to experience pain, and stepping back from a concierge role. For performance under pressure, Amy outlines three strategies: adopting a "go‑for‑the‑gold" mindset, establishing pre‑game rituals, and calibrating one’s emotional state to match the task. Throughout, she stresses experimentation, self‑awareness, and aligning actions with core values as the foundation for a purposeful life.
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Today's special guest is psychotherapist and mental strength trainer Amy Moran. You're in for a treat. Amy, a huge welcome to the Habits of High Performers podcast. How are you?
I am doing well. Thank you so much for having me, James.
It's a delight to have you on the show. I mean, we talk about habits that can help us thrive because let's face it, everyone's facing some kind of stress and some kind of challenge right now. The world as we chat today is in chaos, and that creates some mental chaos for us as well. So you are the mental strength legend. You've wrote "The Mental Strength Playbook." I wanna start with what is the opposite of that? What is mental weakness?
Mm, good question. I think it's when we are convinced that we're defeated before we even give it a shot. I think so much of mental strength is about experimenting, It's about our willingness to try to do things differently, to learn, to grow, to make ourselves uncomfortable. When we aren't doing those things and we just stay stuck and we don't bother to try, we don't do anything differently, when we are convinced that there's nothing we can do and we give up before we even give it a shot, that's what keeps us stuck and weakens our ability to grow as a person.
Yeah, spot on. And has there ever been a time that you can think of in your life where you go back and you're like, oh, I was being weaker in that moment. Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Caroline@jjloughlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.
Oh, there's plenty of times, even to this day, as I talk about mental strength on a daily basis, it's still something that isn't natural to us to say, I'm going to put myself in this position where I'm going to grow. I'm going to do the hard thing. Our default mode is to choose the easy path, and to do the things that we've always done before. So to stretch and grow and do things differently, to make yourself uncomfortable, is something I'm constantly working on.
That's awesome. And if you think of habits, are there any habits that kind of destroy mental strength? Are there any things that people do regularly that seem kind of innocent but actually they're really making that mental strength diminish?
Yeah, there's several things. And, uh, one thing would be feeling sorry for ourselves. And it's healthy to be sad. It's really healthy. We grow a lot from grief. We can learn from our pain. But as a therapist, I'll tell you, when people dig their heels in and say, my life is worse than anybody else's and there's nothing I can do about it, they stay stuck. So I think self-pity is number one. Number two is when we give away our power, when people get caught up in this victim role where we say like, oh, my boss makes me work late, or my sister makes me feel bad about myself, or my coworker wastes my time. Like we're implying that other people are really in control of how we think, how we feel, how we feel about ourselves, how we spend our time. And taking back your power is really key to saying, well, actually, no, I'm in charge of my day, what kind of day I have, and who I spend it with, and how I spend my time. And even in those moments where we, we feel like, well, it wasn't really a choice, I had to go to work today, just reminding yourself like, no, it's still a choice. Nobody made me go to work. I I didn't want to not have a paycheck or I didn't want to get fired, so I went to work today. Just taking that back sometimes is huge in helping us to grow mentally stronger.
Yeah, I like that idea of ownership and just taking accountability for your life and your actions and your feelings and your thoughts as opposed to fobbing them off on someone else.
Right, because I hear that a lot where people are like, "Oh, in today's world, the media wants to make you feel bad," or "Social media makes you feel bad about yourself." It really doesn't. Those are things that we have control over. We can decide how much we use them, how much news we consume, or how we respond to it in the moment.
Beautiful. And if we think very tactically for a second, if we start a day off, we wake up, is there anything that we can do early in the piece each day that help build mental strength?
Yeah, you know, I'm not big on like 4-hour morning routines where people are like, I'm gonna take a cold plunge and get up at 4:00 AM and meditate for 3 hours and then go the gym all before I go to work. I don't think we need to do that, but I think sometimes just being intentional about the day and knowing like, what is it I want to get out of today? What do I have to offer the world today? If you just woke up and spent just a minute reflecting on it before you start complaining that the weather is cold or you start thinking about all the things you have to do today, I think just that quick moment of just being intentional about what kind of day do I want to have and how do I want to show up in the world today.
And I guess the opposite of that is getting up, looking at your phone, scrolling on social media and the news, and being reactive.
Right, right. When we do that, I think we're much more likely to stumble through the day feeling bad and not paying attention to the choices that we have about how we want to show up.
And when you talk about those intentions, is that written? Do you have a journal? Do you write down your intention or do you just think it?
You know, so I'm a, I'm a big thinker, but before I go to bed, I often will just do— just to take a minute and just think like, what am I grateful for today? What do I hope might happen tomorrow? And what's something I did today that proves how mentally strong I am? I could just call it GHI, gratitude, hope, and inner strength. And just that minute of just running through that, like, you know, what am I grateful for today? Maybe a stranger smiled at me and that made my day. Great. What do I hope is going to happen tomorrow? Well, I hope I talk to one of my friends. I hope I get to spend some quality time with my family. And then what did I do today to build inner strength? Maybe I spoke up when it wasn't easy to do that, or maybe I stayed quiet in a moment when I wanted to say something and that was good too. Just recognizing that no matter what kind of a world we live in, there's so many things out of our control, but there's certain things I can control. And one of them is just saying, what did I do today to grow mentally stronger? That's something I can always control no matter what's going on.
That's awesome. It's interesting, I've done lots of reading over the years, as have many, on concentration camps and what people go through and people who survive it, their stories. And it's interesting, like the word gratitude and hope, like those words come up a lot. And they were intuitively doing these things, like being grateful for small moments, being hopeful for future potential moments. Is there any science that kind of backs that up now, or neuroscience that goes, actually, those things are really great for building the mental strength?
There's tons. I mean, gratitude, it's like an underrated superpower. And so many people will say like, oh, you know, just be grateful. But we don't really talk about what that means. And if you're just like, oh, I'm grateful I have water to drink and air to breathe, like, that doesn't really drum up feelings of gratitude that are going to be helpful. So to get specific, like, what today was I grateful for? And it might be, again, that smile from a stranger when you were having a rough moment. But to just find those really small things. And we know from the research on gratitude that it makes us 15% happier. Grateful people get an instant boost in their mood. Grateful people live longer. We tend to take better care of our health when we're practicing gratitude. You're much more likely to manage what you're eating, your exercise, go to doctor's appointments, all of those things. Grateful people have better relationships. Like, nobody wants to be around somebody that complains constantly. But when you have When you express gratitude regularly, people are drawn to you. Like, the list could go on and on, but it literally affects just about every area of your life. And it's something that we can all practice. And even if you only have 2 minutes to do it, you can put some gratitude into your day. And when it comes to hope, like, what's the reason to get out of bed tomorrow? Look, you need some hope that perhaps you have the opportunity to make the world a little bit better. And it really boils down to our belief in how much agency we have. If I think, yep, I can at least make my life or somebody else's life even just a little bit better, maybe I send a text message to somebody tomorrow, like, well, then I have some hope that there's a reason to get out of bed tomorrow. I just think that's so important. We talk so much about like self-care. And as a therapist, I work with a lot of people who are struggling with anxiety and depression. And their brain will tell them, "Just stay home. You deserve to sit on the couch. You know, you don't go to work today. You can call in sick." And sometimes people will frame that as, "Well, I had to take care of myself." But really, sometimes we need to focus on our contribution to the world, not just what's going to make me feel good right now. And people get that mixed up when it comes to, say, self-care. We all need to have some hope that I have the capability of making the world a little bit better and Even if I can't solve a problem, if I have a loved one who's sick, I can't fix it. But what do I hope? Well, maybe I hope that I can at least make an impact on their life, my life, somebody else's life today. And that really gives us that fuel and that drive to say, I'm going to go out there and try anyway.
That's awesome. And you're right. I understand the idea of a mental health or a mental sickness day at work. I get that. But what I'm hearing is actually sometimes the best thing to do is to go, I'm not letting my anxiety cripple me at home today. I'm actually going to go to work. And because otherwise work maybe becomes the enemy, I start to connect this anxiety with work. Do you have any tools for the person that maybe does experience that, that could go, hmm, I don't want my anxiety to keep me at home today. I'm going to do something physically to help me get through this?
Yeah, so, you know, a couple things. We know that when we're battling something, depression, anxiety, or you're just stressed out, your brain will try to talk you into doing things that aren't necessarily good for you. Your brain, if you're depressed, will be like, "Just stay in bed today. There's no reason to leave." Or, when you have really high anxiety, it'll be like, "If you just called in sick today, then you could relax." But, those things may not be good for you in the long run. Sometimes, you have to push yourself and then like, "Okay, I feel satisfied I got through the day at work. So now, I feel better when I come home." So, one thing can be to write yourself a letter of why you should do something. And then you talk yourself into it in the moment. This works with other things too. So for somebody who says, "Oh, I really should work out, but at the end of the workday, I'm tired and I go home every day." Write a list of 10 reasons why I should go to the gym and you tape it on the steering wheel. And before you start your car, read that list over. And sometimes you talk yourself into doing the things that are good for you. Or I used to have a therapy client who he would say, "You know, sometimes in the morning I just call in sick because I struggle to put myself." out there. I think, "Eh, I'll just stay in bed today," and I let the depression win. So, we made a deal. He was going to call and leave me a voicemail. And, on the voicemail, he'd say, "I know I should go to work today. I realize that's good for me, but I'm going to call in sick anyway." Well, he calls and he gets about halfway through the voicemail one day and he said, "Well, this is stupid. I'm just going to go into work." But, it was one of those moments where he could talk himself into it like, "Yep, I don't feel like doing it." So, sometimes we set little goals for ourselves. I'm going to spend the next 10 minutes getting ready, even though I don't feel like it. And if at the end of 10 minutes, I convince myself I don't want to go to work, well then maybe I'll let it slide today. But if at the end of 10 minutes, I might feel like I now have the energy to spend 10 more minutes getting ready or to go eat breakfast. And usually getting started is the hardest part. And that's one of the best things we can do when we're struggling with something is to say, "Let me just try this for 10 minutes." And 10 minutes into it, usually we're like, "Oh yeah, I can do another 10 minutes. I can keep going." You build some momentum. So sometimes it's about talking yourself into it with a letter. Other times it's about saying, "I'm gonna take some action even though I don't feel like it and see if I can build some momentum so I keep heading in the right direction." So helpful.
And Amy, in terms of anxiety, 'cause I would arguably say that everyone experiences anxiety, like it's kind of a human thing to experience it, but Debilitating anxiety obviously is a very different thing. Are there any tools that we can use in the moment when that anxious feeling comes on to help suppress it or to help manage it?
Yeah, you're right. And we should all have anxiety sometimes. Anxiety's meant to keep you safe. You wouldn't look both ways before you cross the street if you didn't have anxiety. But a lot of us have faulty alarm systems and our anxiety bell rings really loudly when we're not in a life or death situation. So your body might respond to giving a presentation the same way it would as if you were dangling off the edge of a cliff, right? Your heart starts to beat fast, your palms get sweaty, suddenly you feel like you can't think straight. So, I will encourage people to just recognize like, what are the physical symptoms that I have right now? And, what might that be? Okay, it's just my body's response to the fact that I have to get up and give a presentation. So, one strategy that works is you just name it. Research will show when you put a name to an emotion, it moves the part of your brain from the amygdala, which is where all the emotions happen, to the other part of your brain where we do more of our logical processing. Your body and your brain starts to make sense. Okay, this is anxiety. I'm not about to die. I'm just gonna get up in front of a room full of 10 people and I might embarrass myself, but it's not life or death. So label the emotion, whether it's anxiety, sadness, fear, whatever. Feeling word you can come up with. Put a name to it. Name it to tame it. Sometimes that brings it down enough that somebody says, okay, I put a name to it. Now, here we go. And you can take a step forward. Somebody else might say, oh, I still have all these physical symptoms. My voice is shaky. My palms are sweaty. I can't even like hold this paper up in front of this room full of people. How am I going to read it? You can convince yourself that rather than saying, I'm so scared I can't function, you can do what we call a reverse worry list, which means that you're gonna write down everything that you're really excited about. I have dinner on Friday night with my friend. Next Saturday, I'm going hiking with my cousin. Two weeks from now, I have a weekend getaway with somebody else. Whatever things in life you have to be excited for. Maybe you're gonna eat your favorite kind of sandwich at lunch today. It doesn't matter. Come up with a list of as many things as you can that you're excited about in life. And then you read over that list and you tell yourself, actually, I'm excited right now because the physiological symptoms of excitement are almost exactly the same as anxiety. When you're really excited about something, your heart starts to beat faster, your breathing changes a bit, your palms get sweaty. So suddenly those same exact physical symptoms that were going to hold you back can actually become an asset. So before you step up on stage, you're like, hey, I'm excited to be here. You'll give a much better presentation than if you tell yourself, I'm so nervous, I can't function. Just that slight shift in how you interpret your body's biological reaction can make a huge difference in how you perform. So that can help people too. Sometimes people find it helpful to have something that helps them calm down a bit, a little breathing exercise. I like to do one called smell the pizza because I would have therapy clients that are like, uh, somebody taught me this box breathing thing, but I can't remember what it is. When I come— when I get stressed out, I just Freeze up, or somebody said 4-7-8, something about breathing, but I don't know when to breathe in and when to breathe out. So I teach people to smell the pizza. And it basically works like this. You breathe in through your nose like you're smelling a piece of pizza. But then you just hold it just for a second at the top. And now you imagine like, oh, I actually want to take a bite of this pizza, but it's really hot. So I'm going to cool it down by breathing out through my mouth like I'm cooling off a piece of pizza. And you make your exhale just a little bit longer than your inhale. If you do that 3 times, you're using your body to tell your brain, oh, we're safe. Because when your exhales are longer than your inhales, your brain gets the message, we're not going to die. We're not in danger. Because if you were running from a lion, your body's not going to do that. Your breathing is going to be much different as you're running away. When you do that and your exhale is longer than your inhale, your brain's like, "Oh, guess we're good here." Suddenly your physical symptoms decrease, you can think straight, your anxiety goes down. So those are 3 strategies I always encourage people.
That's so good.
That's so helpful. Put them into practice and see what works for you. You know, I think it's all about experimenting and you might find, "Okay, before a big presentation, doing that reverse worry list helps me feel excited and that works well. But maybe in my personal life, if I'm going to make a difficult phone call, Maybe smelling the pizza works a little bit better because my anxiety is a little bit different. So I think mixing and matching and experimenting and figuring out what works best for you in which circumstance is really important.
That's amazing. Thank you, Amy. It's interesting. I think about two things that gave me anxiety for a long time, and that's one, turbulence on a plane and speaking on stages. So if I rewind 10 years, tiny bit of turbulence, within seconds I would be like drenched, my hands would be sweaty, heart rate would be up. 10 years ago, the thought of speaking to 5 people in a room and having to stand up in front of them, that just wouldn't happen. But through some of these techniques you're sharing, particularly the breathwork, the extended exhale to get the parasympathetic nervous system kicking in, that has helped me. So, I can stand in front of 10,000, 20,000 and be happy to be there and be a joyous experience, still excited, still heart rate up a little, sweaty palms, but not debilitating. Same with flying. It's like, I can do it now. And the turbulence kicks in and my mind thinks differently. And I use what you've just shared, some similar breathwork techniques. So I think what you've shared is really powerful.
Thank you. I too used to be the person who found public speaking horrifying, the idea of getting up in front of a group of people. And to this day, like you say, I have anxiety that kicks into overdrive in random situations. Sometimes I might be making a phone call or talking in front of 3 people. And just like everyone else, my anxiety will still kick in, but just knowing, oh, this is just anxiety, I don't have to respond to it. It's the reaction that we have to those physical symptoms that can make it worse. When somebody starts thinking, this is horrible, this is awful, everybody's going to see how nervous I am. The more you start thinking those kinds of thoughts, then the more nervous we feel. And then as our anxiety goes up, the harder it is to calm ourselves down and think clearly. So when you develop that confidence of Okay, I can handle anxiety. It's not the end of the world. And you accept that, yeah, it's still gonna happen sometimes. The funny thing is it stops being such a huge problem in your life.
Powerful. And Amy, may I ask what got you into, you know, wanting to write books and get your message out there and really focus on mental strength?
You know, so I was a therapist and started my career thinking I'll teach everybody all this stuff I learned from my textbooks. And my mom passed away suddenly, uh, when I was 23. And it just made me realize, gee, a lot of the stuff that I've learned didn't seem like it was as helpful as I had hoped. And I thought, here I am, a therapist teaching people these skills, and I felt like it fell short when I was grieving and at the worst points in my life to that point. And so I started being interested more in mental strength. How do you get through tough times? How do you grow from hardship? How do you learn from it? And I was glad that I did, because the 3-year anniversary of the day my mom died, my 26-year-old husband passed away from a heart attack. Wow. And suddenly, like, the two people who were closest to me, who were here one minute and they were gone the next— and that was really what made me start paying much, much closer attention to this whole mental strength thing and figuring out how do you be mentally strong. And I had written a letter to myself on one of my lowest days about what mentally strong people don't do. And I thought, "Ah, I'll publish this on the internet and maybe a few people will read it." And I got paid $15 for it. And I needed the money at the time, to be honest, because I was a widow and I had to pay the bills. And 50 million people read the list. And one of them was a literary agent who said, "You should write a book." And so, I did. So, that was my first book. And now, it's been 13 years since I've written it and people are still asking me questions about mental strength. So, as long as people keep asking questions about it, I'll keep writing books. My 7th book, The Mental Strength Playbook, is the one that just hit the shelves. So, I'm happy to— 7th. 7th. So, I'm happy to keep talking about it. Amazing. As long as people keep asking questions, I'll keep writing.
I think that's amazing and phenomenal response, because I think in times of pain and loss, it must be quite difficult for people to go, you know, what would mentally strong people do? But that was your, like, innately you moved at some point to wanting to identify that and then clearly sharing that with the world. That's kind of in you to help others. So very cool that that's kind of what you go deep on. And 7 books later, tell me about— I wrote 1 book and I loved the process. It was a long process. How do you find the time? What's your process of writing look like?
So, yeah, when I wrote the first book, I was still working full-time as a therapist. I was writing freelance. And then I had this opportunity to write a book with a tight deadline. And I think I just didn't know any better. So I was like, "Okay, I'll write a book." Since then, my deadlines have been— I've had more advanced notice that I was going to write a book, or I've come up with the idea and then pitched it and talked to people about it. And when I'm in book book writing mode. I will spend a couple of months. I come up with a weekly deadline, a word count. I like to work, write like 3,000 words a day. Sometimes, depending on what's going on in my life, it might be I only work weekends or 3 days a week on the book. And, um, and I always know like ahead of time for a while. Like, it's not like I come up with an idea and then write the book. It's usually something that's been brewing for, for months and years. And then I'm like, yeah, that works. And so I wrote like 13 Things Mindless Young People Don't Do And then the biggest question I was getting from people were, how do we raise mentally strong kids? So I wrote a parenting book next. It was 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do. But as a therapist, it was something I had done for years anyway, was running parenting groups and working with families. So it seemed like a good fit. And then I wrote a book for women because all of these women were saying, we see so many men and to talk about mental toughness, what does it look like to be a strong woman? And so Whatever it is that my readers ask tends to be the next book, but I spend a lot of time podcasting on my own show about it or writing articles about it, putting ideas out into the world so that by the time I sit down to write the book, feels like I've been thinking about it for so long that the ideas are able to flow pretty quickly at that point.
That's incredible. And I will put a link to your podcast in the show notes for the person listening right now if they want to go and listen and go deep on mental strength. You've got to go and check out Amy's podcast. And all your book, I'll put your book links in below as well. So the parenting one, I would actually like to chat about that for sure. I've got a 10-year-old, he just turned 10, and I would love to know what mentally strong parents don't do.
Yeah, so the parenting book is really about things like not taking responsibility for a kid's behavior or for their emotions. 'Cause I would see a lot of people in my therapy office who would feel like, gosh, if my kid is sad, it's my job to cheer them up. Or if my kid is struggling with frustration for their homework, I have to swoop in and fix it, right? And we live in a world where a lot of parents feel like that. Like they feel kind of guilty. My kid isn't happy, it must be that I'm doing something wrong. And I wanted parents to know, no, you can let your kids be sad. And I know it's tough. I know it's tough to watch them. I was a foster parent for a decade. And I know that we want kids to be happy, but one of the best things you can do is give them the coping skills that they need so they can cheer themselves up, so they can calm themselves down. Another big one is not shielding kids from too much pain. We live in a world where, of course, you don't want kids to be exposed to all the horrible things that go on in the world. But on the other hand, as a college professor, I was seeing so many kids who would start college and they had no idea how to deal with struggles with their roommate, or what to do when they failed a test, or how to deal with the loneliness of college, because they hadn't been taught a lot of those skills because their parents had really shielded them from so many things. So, and I guess the, the study that always stuck with me is they asked college kids, like, were you ready for college? The vast majority of them said academically, yes. But the one skill that they say they wish that adults had spent more time teaching them was emotional skills. They're like, yeah, but I have no idea how to deal with sadness. I have no idea how to manage my anxiety when my mom or dad isn't right there. So the parenting book is really about that, about giving kids the tools and resources they need and then stepping back and working more like a guide rather than a concierge or working as the person who's always fixing everything for them. But it's about teaching them the skills instead, which is tough for us because our anxiety is high. It's tough to watch your kids make a mistake, or it's tough to think about the fact that they might get hurt, whether their feelings might get hurt or they might fall off of something when they're climbing. And so it really goes back to managing our own emotions too.
That's so helpful. I will get that for myself. I'll get it for some of my clients. I think that's something as a parent we want to do is try and raise kids who are independent. And I think my success metric I've set for myself is that I want to make Finn independent from me as early as possible. So he doesn't have to be 18 when he's independent. If he can be independent emotionally from me way earlier, then I think that would be fantastic.
I think so too. I think that's a wonderful goal. You know, by the time kids are like 12, I think our role should substantially shift from being the person who's doing a lot for them to letting them start to take on a lot of those things and letting them practice, especially while they're still under your roof. Because you think by the time they're 12, if your child was really gonna move out when they're 18, that's only 6 more years for them to practice all the skills before they're out there on their own. And then when you notice that there's a deficit, that's your opportunity to step in and make sure that they have a new skill or that they can work on something before they leave the house.
I love that. Often I'm working with professional athletes, and so I deliver mental skills programs for athletes who are working under pressure, tight deadlines, selection. They've got the international television looking at them. There's lots of challenges for them. And so often for me, delivering very, very simple tools that I would say are almost common sense, but not always common practice. So when you think about pressure, whether it's an athlete or someone at work feeling pressure, what are the most essential mental tools to lean on when we're feeling pressure?
Ooh, that's a good question and a fun one. I think there's several that I talk about in the Mental Strength book. Like one is to go for the gold. So this one is really when we step into a situation, like, how are we thinking about it? So if I had to give a presentation in front of 50 people, do I step up there thinking, "Oh, I hope I don't embarrass myself," or do I step up there thinking, "Gosh, I'm going to deliver the best speech I can deliver"? Research shows that there's a huge difference in the way that we perform. If I step into the room thinking, "Oh, I just don't want to be the worst one," I'm giving a presentation, or I just don't want to embarrass myself. Or I was working with a sales team and they just kept saying like, we don't want to be the worst division in the whole company. And of course, they didn't perform very well. But if you walked in there and you think, okay, I'm going to do my best, you don't always have to think I'm going to be the best that there ever was, but maybe just walking in thinking I'm going to deliver the very best that I can, you'll perform much differently. So, I always encourage people, high-stakes situation, Sometimes our go-to is, "I just want to scrape by and get through it without getting fired." It's the last thing you want to do. You want to say, "How am I going to knock this out of the park and what would that look like?" And then your performance change, you do better, and then you feel better. Another one is to always make sure that we have some kind of a pregame ritual. And you might do this with the athletes. And you're right, it seems natural in a lot of situations. If a baseball player steps up to the plate, they often have a ritual before they swing the bat, or a basketball player on the foul line, usually has a ritual of how many times they dribble the ball. We can use that in our own life about before you get on a sales call, what's your pregame ritual? Or before you have your big weekly meeting that you present at, what's your pregame ritual? And it's not about being superstitious or thinking, "Oh, I didn't wear my lucky socks, so therefore I won't do well." But it's about getting your brain into that mode of, "Okay, this is our Go time. I need to make sure that I'm in this right frame of mind and here's how I get myself there. And for some of us to know too, what sort of energy do I do my best under? And in the book, I talk about another strategy that's called calibrate your state. And I'm really talking about your energy or emotional state. To do a speech, you might do best when you're in a calm situation. Somebody else might do best when they're really energized, right? You've got the people backstage that are jumping up and down to give themselves some extra energy and you've got the next person who's meditating to calm themselves down. And it's about knowing, like, what state do I need to be in? If I'm gonna edit my book, I do much better in a calm state. When I'm writing my book, I need a little more energy. So how am I going to get myself in the right state of mind for the task at hand? And knowing that, that maybe I go for a brisk walk before I get on this sales call, or maybe I have some calming music and I meditate for a few minutes. So I think knowing what state of mind you're going to do best in for whatever task you're facing. You can calibrate your state. And then I think having some sort of a ritual to get yourself in the right frame of mind is helpful too. And then that mindset, what's my goal? Am I just going to try to not embarrass myself or am I going to knock it out of the park? That way of thinking will affect how you perform too.
That's so powerful. And I really love that. And it's interesting, I remember a keynote, I don't know, 4 years ago, and it was at a large stadium, like a rugby stadium in New Zealand. And it was for one of our largest companies in the country. So I was excited about it, but nervous about it. And about 5 minutes before I was going on to speak, I was like, I don't feel the greatest. I look at my watch, I'm like, my heart rate's 133 beats per minute and I'm just standing still. I'm like, this isn't good. And I knew if I got on stage at with that level of heart rate, I'm going to be speaking really quickly. I'm probably going to forget my words. I'll fast forward the slides when I shouldn't. So I just did what you suggested earlier and just went to the toilet and did some breathwork and just extended exhales was all I was thinking of. And within about 90 seconds, I was under 100 beats per minute. And I was like, oh, I feel better, less sweaty, feel more calm. And the keynote went fine. But had I not had a little tool, a basic ritual to get me through that, then it could have ended quite differently.
Right. That's a really good example because how often do we not pay attention to those things or we don't have the self-awareness to know, oh yeah, my heart rate's that high, my performance is going to suffer. That little thing, couple of minutes of a breathing exercise can make all the difference in the world, but we need to know. What energy state do I need to be in right now to do this task in front of me? Which thing is going to be better? And to know that too, that you need to tweak it so that another time you go to do a keynote and your energy level is really low, you might have to do something to pump yourself up just a little bit so that you get out there on stage and deliver your best performance. So, again, about self-awareness and having some of those tools that we can use right there in the moment are important.
And with the book, if there was one thing in there that you thought, if somebody only had 10 minutes to read one chapter or one principle, what's one that really sticks out for you that you think this is super important? I think everyone needs to know this.
You know, one of the ones that I think sounds most counterintuitive, but I've seen it make the biggest difference in people's lives is to schedule time to worry. And this one works for like a lot of my therapy clients that will say, oh, I'm a worrywart or I worry all the time, or I'm always double second-guessing everything I do or making catastrophic predictions. Setting aside 15 to 20 minutes a day to worry actually helps. You have to put it in your calendar in order for it to work. And there's research studies on this. So if I said, all right, 7:00 to 7:15 every evening, I'm going to sit down at my kitchen table and I'm going to worry. I can worry about everything. What I'm going to do tomorrow or what's happening in the world next week. But you sit down and you worry as much as you can for 15 minutes. And then whenever you worry outside of that time, you just remind yourself, it's not time to worry about that yet. I'll worry about that later. And the first few days that you do this, you're going to think, oh, I constantly have to tell myself I'm going to worry about this later. And it's kind of annoying. But if you stick with it, after about a week, your brain finally starts to trust you. Like, I don't have to ping you all day long to remind you to worry about that thing because I know you're going to let me worry about it later. And so, but a lot of us do the opposite. We tell ourselves, oh, stop worrying, I shouldn't worry so much. Or we think, if I just worry about this a little longer or a little harder, I'll find like this magical solution. But there's no evidence that thinking longer and harder about a problem even leads to a better solution, for one. But for two, a lot of things worry about aren't even our problems to solve. I can't fix the economy. I can't change somebody else's behavior. But if you just give your brain permission to worry, you put it in your calendar and you actually do it. And then when your time's up, get up and go do something else. Don't let yourself sit there. Your brain will start to then become so much more focused throughout the day. Like, I'll have people that come into my therapy office and they look physically transformed, like the weight of the world has been lifted off of their shoulders. But one of the biggest things they'll tell me is, I can concentrate now. Like throughout the day, I'm not always worrying. I don't have all these things going on in the background where I'm imagining worst-case scenarios. I can actually pay attention and I can focus for the first time in my life because I know I'm going to worry about that later. And a lot of people will say that, like, I just feel so much more productive. I feel lighter. I feel like things are working. So if anybody listening struggles with worrying a lot, Schedule time to worry and just give it a shot for a few days and see what happens. First couple days are rough, but once you can get past that, it can make life so much better.
I'm going to do it. I definitely worry. I think about things. I worry about things in the future. So I'm going to try that. Definitely, I'll give it a try for the next month. I think it'll be awesome. So thank you for sharing it.
Absolutely. I'll be curious to hear what you think of it.
Yeah, I'll flick you a message, 100%. And I want to ask you one last question. Before I do that though, I want to encourage everyone, go into the show notes right now, grab a copy of Amy's most recent book, The Mental Strength Playbook. I'm going to list all of her other books as well, plus her podcast and her socials. Amy, it's been amazing to chat to you, and I've learned way much more than I ever thought I would. So thank you so much. Um, last question. So we fast forward many years into the future, and you know that it's your last day here on Earth, and someone very young that you love walks into the room. And they say, Amy, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What might you say to them?
Oh, that's a good question. I think I would say, get true to your values and know what it is that's important in life and get some clarity on that. And then once you know what your values are, your priorities become clear and it doesn't matter so much what other people think and it doesn't matter so much the little things that we often worry about as long as you're living according to your values, then you'll have a life well lived.
Beautiful, lovely advice. And I think there's lots of listeners that needed to hear that today. So deeply appreciate, appreciate you and the work that you do. And I hope the book continues to go great as it has been doing. And I hope everyone goes and checks out the podcast. So thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
That's a joy. Thank you.
