Burnout-Proof Your Brain with Dr. Emily Anhalt

Hey, I totally get it. Being uncomfortable sucks. None of us likes to feel that way, and we work really hard to avoid our discomfort. But I can also come from a place of like, you're gonna have to deal. You know, if you wanted to get physically stronger and you said, hey, I want to get in shape, but I never want to feel any physical discomfort, any gym coach would say, well, I don't really know how to help you then, because you have to be a little discomfort— a little uncomfortable to get stronger. And And the same is true with our emotional fitness. One thing that I see over and over again is that the things that we do to avoid discomfort end up being so much more uncomfortable and so much worse for us than the original discomfort we were trying to avoid. So even though facing it in the short term doesn't sound like a lot of fun, you are saving yourself so much strife and energy and resources in the long term.

Dr. Emily, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. Today we are here to talk about your book, Flex Your Feelings: Train Your Brain to Develop the 7 Traits of Emotional Fitness. And my first question centers around Elmo. You kick off the book talking about a tweet that Elmo put out. I'd love to have you Kind of recap that for the audience and talk about why you decided to put that in chapter 1?

So the reason the Elmo quote made it so early is that it felt like an almost silly juxtaposition of how after and during COVID things were so extreme that even Sesame Street was like, is everyone good? People were really struggling. And when I think the pandemic was this real catalyst to help people understand that mental health is important for all of us and that life is going to throw things at you whether you are ready for them or not. And so we should all probably be thinking about our mental health a little more proactively, which is what the whole book is about. So it, you know, it felt like a silly way to bring up a serious subject.

I thought it was a great way to introduce the audience to your style of thinking and writing. And I thought it was a very engaging way to, I don't know, like step into your world So I thought it was very thoughtful. Uh, we're here today to talk about emotional fitness and our feelings.

Mm-hmm.

And as you and I were talking about before we press record, this audience consists of a wide variety of people, but mostly young professional men. There's definitely an intersection with business. So we have a lot of young professionals in the audience, and I think everybody will resonate with a line that comes earlier in your book where you say that The truth is that life is uncomfortable, especially when you're aiming high. There are a lot of people in this audience watching and listening to this podcast that are aiming high. And so talk to us a little bit about why life gets uncomfortable when we aim high.

For sure. I, I think if there's one thing I can stand behind 100%, it's the idea that everything you want in life lives on the other side of discomfort. And people who are willing to tolerate discomfort will have so many more options open to them. And so if you are aiming high, if you're trying to accomplish a lot, if you're trying to go to places other people haven't been able to go, then there's that much more discomfort that's gonna be between you and that state, that being, you know, that accomplishment. So the better you are at tolerating it, the more successful you're going to be.

A lot of people have a tough time coming to grips with that though. They want to sit within their comfort zone. They want to sit back and watch Netflix and feel amazing all of the time, but that doesn't lead to a life that's very meaningful. So what do you have to say to people in the audience that are like, yeah, thanks, Dr. Emily, but like, I'm thinking of turning off the podcast today because I don't really— I don't really want to be told like, I have to get up off the couch.

So I can come at it from 2 different places. I can come at it from a place of compassion and empathy and say, hey, I totally get it. Being uncomfortable sucks. None of us likes to feel that way. And we work really hard to avoid our discomfort. But I can also come from a place of like, You're gonna have to deal. You know, if you wanted to get physically stronger and you said, hey, I want to get in shape, but I never want to feel any physical discomfort, any gym coach would say, well, I don't really know how to help you then, because you have to be a little discomfort— a little uncomfortable to get stronger. And the same is true with our emotional fitness. One thing that I see over and over again is that the things that we do to avoid discomfort end up being so much more uncomfortable and so much worse for us. than the original discomfort we were trying to avoid. So even though facing it in the short term doesn't sound like a lot of fun, you are saving yourself so much strife and energy and resources in the long term.

Yeah, it reminds me of a podcast I was listening to recently where Naval Ravikant said something like, if you're facing multiple decisions, multiple opportunities, and you don't know which one to choose, His advice was choose the one that had the most short-term discomfort, because if they have equal payoffs, the one that has most short-term discomfort, you're probably assigning more weight to the difficulty than there actually is. And if you lean into the discomfort a little bit, that's probably the right path. I, what do you think of that advice?

That's interesting. I don't know if I could make that big of a generality about it. I think it depends on the thing, but for sure. The more short-term discomfort you lean into, the more your life will expand in ways that you couldn't have predicted. You know, it's not just about the long-term gains. There are short-term gains too. Like, let's say we're talking about physical fitness. When you are doing a little bit of working out every day, not only are you going to get better at working out, but you're going to get better at other things. You're going to be able to carry groceries and pick up your kid and, you know, walk around for longer. And then there's also the long-term benefits of less disease and living longer and having a higher quality of life. And the same is true with our emotional fitness. There are the long-term gains. Like, I think a lot of depression and anxiety and, you know, our big mental health struggles are a result of us not having emotional fitness. But there's also short-term gains where as soon as you start doing this work, your relationships will start to improve.

You will feel more authenticity and satisfaction in the life that you're living, and you'll just be capable Yeah, you talked in the book about how, and I thought this was a fun metaphor, you talked about how as we, as the baseline of movement has started to slip away, as we've become more of an information-based society, we've had to be a little bit more proactive about our physical health. And so 100 years ago, 500 years ago, somebody went for a run. And they chose to go for a run. That would be really silly. Why are you choosing to expend this limited resource of energy that you have? Right? Because people were very physical back then, a lot of manual labor in your day-to-day life. So now that we're in this information age, we're all sitting behind computer screens and sitting is the new smoking. So gyms are very popular now. Everybody has a gym membership. Everybody's getting into some form of running. Running clubs are popular today, and that's it. That's the idea of being proactive about your health, like you just highlighted, so that later in life you get to reap the rewards of that. But we're very reactive, it sounds like, with our mental health. And that idea of becoming proactive and choosing to exercise and flex your feelings, it hasn't— I would say it hasn't really caught on with the whole population yet. So that's the movement that you're starting to create with this book. Could you dive into that a little bit more?

Yeah, my co-founder Alexa has this quote. She says, burnout is the workplace injury of the 21st century. And, you know, back when we were using our bodies to do work, if you weren't taking good care of your body, that could really jeopardize your livelihood. And I don't think people understand just how important it is to invest in your mental and emotional health when you are using your mind all day long. There really is this stigma that mental health is something that you pay attention to when things are really falling apart, and that if you pay attention to it any earlier, then that means something's wrong with you. And And, you know, no athlete has ever reached their greatest potential without a coach and a lot of training. We're not going to reach our greatest potential as thinkers, as ideators, as, you know, people trying to create new ideas in the world without the support of, you know, whether it's a therapist or community or, you know, all of the ways that we should be investing in our emotional health.

We'll definitely get to some actionable ways to improve your, your mental and emotional health in a few minutes. But because we do have a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience, I wanted to use an analogy that you had in the book, which is you said basically, if you accept the notion that entrepreneurs run on the emo— run the emotional equivalent of ultramarathons, but most entrepreneurs don't prepare, then burnout, it's not really very surprising. That's like me getting out of bed and trying to run an ultramarathon tomorrow, a physical ultramarathon. Of course I would crash and burn out and, you know, Yeah. Probably fall down and injure myself or something and, and not be able to walk the following day. Right. So like, where does this issue stem from? I mean, why aren't we— this is a big question, but like, why, why don't the US public education school systems start promoting emotional fitness and help us to name our feelings and things like that at a younger age?

I think that movement is starting to happen. There was just a lot of stigma about that for a really long time, and people were told to sort of shove down their feelings and I'd guess that comes from, you know, whether there were times in our existence as humans where there really wasn't time to focus on our emotions, we had to survive. And now we're not just surviving, we're thriving, and there is more room and more importance of processing all of those emotions. You know, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs are very thoughtful. You know, they're preparing themselves financially, they're preparing their networks, they are doing everything they need to do to raise money, to make sure their idea holds water. And yet they do very little on the whole to prepare for the emotional roller coaster that is entrepreneur life. And I worked with this VC, Michael Deering. He was amazing. And he said once, there is plenty of money and plenty of talent in tech. The real runway that founders run out of is the emotional capacity to handle the grinding of the gears of startup life. And that, that is actually the finite resource that we should be paying attention to before you even start a company. Make sure that you are mentally and emotionally ready before you throw yourself into what is without a doubt one of the most taxing tasks that you can take on in life.

Yeah, that, that's so true of so many areas of life. Uh, my wife and I just had a baby 7 months ago, and I think you could say the same thing about having kids. Yeah, sure.

I mean, there's nothing more triggering than parenthood, I would say. So do as much of your own work as you can before and during.

Absolutely. Now back to the entrepreneurship thing, because I think this will be really valuable for the audience. As you were explaining, sort of the, the first step should be mental and emotional preparation before you get into business. I was thinking back to one of the OG business books, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. And in that book, he talks about how 95% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years because they run out of money. And I think in a lot of ways, back whenever he wrote that book, let's just say it was 1980 or 1990, that was probably true. But now, as there's a lot more education and I think a lot more preparation that happens on the money side of things, but there's no preparation, uh, there's no equivalent of The E-Myth Revisited talking about why 95% of entrepreneurs burn out in the first 5 years. And I think your book can kind of step in and fill that void for a lot of people.

For sure. I mean, there's a stat that shows that 60% of startups that fail cite co-founder conflict as one of the main reasons that things didn't work.

Hmm.

You know, we're entering into these relationships without a lot of training on how to be successful in relationships. And really, that's what emotional fitness and psychology is. It's the study of the relationship you have to yourself and other people and the focus on improving it so that you can be successful. Business is just a series of relationships. Life is just a series of relationships. So in my mind, as soon as you start doing your own work, you will see the effect ripple into all of your relationships and thus everything you're trying to do.

And those problems have existed for people forever. You quote Marcus Aurelius in the book pretty early, and 2,000 years ago he was talking about A lot of the same problems that we deal with today. But I think very much like you highlighted earlier, this is really the first time where we're giving space to emotional fitness. And it started to be, you know, emotional intelligence has become a very common term and there are a lot of books on emotional intelligence now. So I think, uh, hopefully we can start to solve some of these problems permanently for people before those burnout stats and the co-founder conflict Stats continue just to get out of control.

Yeah. I really, you know, trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. We know this, but so does healing. Like every bit of work you do on yourself right now will benefit everyone you interact with and everyone who comes after you. So see it as an investment in yourself, your relationships, your family, and humanity in general. Wow.

That's a powerful way to think about it. Yeah. One of my mentors, Brian Tracy, who's been on the podcast a couple of times, he talks about the law of accumulation. And he says that, yes, every positive step in the right direction, you know, that is a, a step in the right direction. But every piece of information that you consume in the wrong direction, whether it's gossip on TV or the news or social media or a poor exchange in your relationship, uh, a bad diet choice, that all works in the opposite direction. And we only sometimes focus on the positives. We forget about all the negative steps. But what you just said was sort of the inverse. In that a lot of people do think about trauma being passed down from generation to generation, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about the fact that healing also gets passed down. That's so positive. That makes me feel really good about the choices I'm making today. I'm like, let's pass on the healing to our son.

I see it even just in seeing the photos of you with your son that, you know, there is something really profound about looking at your kid and saying, you know, if I would throw myself in front of a bus for you, why wouldn't I work on myself for you? Why wouldn't I try to improve myself for you? You know, and I see you doing that. It's really powerful.

Yeah, it's so very true. We have a client at Book Thinkers, Dr. Robert Melillo, and he talks about neurodevelopmental disorders that, that can happen really early in childhood. And one of the suggestions that he makes before you attempt to conceive a child, you should spend let's say 3 months preparing for that with clean eating and positive affirmations and stepping into the light and healing trauma and getting ready for that experience from a biological, but also sort of just a, I don't know, an energy perspective. And you could make the same case that your book is suggesting the same thing before stepping into a business or a relationship, like spend the time healing yourself and preparing. And conditioning and exercising so that once you step into the game, it's not your first time dealing with a lot of these different traits that you suggest.

For sure. If you don't confront all of the complicated dynamics of your past relationships, your future relationships will confront those complicated dynamics. So you really are doing yourself a huge favor by looking at it now.

So you said that we're starting on the emotional— we'll say emotional literacy. I think there are a couple of things that the public education system should implement as fast as possible in an efficient and reasonable way. One is financial literacy, but I think another one is emotional literacy. And so you said we're starting to make some of those changes. Do you have any idea what that looks like? I mean, I'm not in a middle school or high school very often, but I'd love to know if you have any insight as to what, what schools are starting to incorporate.

Well, just think about how different public conversation is about these things. You know, when I was in middle school, there was no meditation, there was no mindfulness, no one was talking about therapy at all. Therapy was a very hush-hush thing that was reserved for people who were really having a hard time. We didn't talk about EQ in any of my school programs. And now I don't know how much is being done in schools themselves, but I just see it first of all, becoming a much more common thing that kids are allowed to talk about their feelings. They're more likely to be in therapy even if they're not, you know, absolutely at their worst-case scenario. And my hope would be that emotional fitness is like PE, that there is just a class in school every day where you learn how to understand your emotional life. And, you know, it doesn't have to all be so touchy-feely. A lot of it is just practical, like what do I do when I'm angry? What do I do with that feeling? What do I do if someone Is upset with me and I don't know why. How do I have tough conversations? You know, these are really important lessons for life. We should be thinking about them.

Yeah, I think so too. We, we don't need to drop the physical exercise piece of it, but we need to add the mental and emotional exercise and probably the financial exercises as well. I think everybody would be in a better position. But you're right, I think overall the The cultural conversations about these subjects are more, more prevalent today than they ever have been. And things like naming your feelings and, you know, like having a little bit more awareness of how you behave, those are all such, such important things for us. What does an emotionally healthy person look like? That was a fun question that you brought up in the book. And you said you studied 100 entrepreneurs and You talked to psychologists and asked them what characteristics define emotionally healthy people. So what was that process like? How did you start it? It seems like a big task.

For sure. So, you know, I grew up in Silicon Valley. I've been exposed to the world of entrepreneurship for a long time, and I went to grad school here as well. So I was learning how to do therapy with a lot of people in tech and just seeing that, you know, people who are in the workforce are mostly doing fine, but still want to level up the relationship they have with themselves and other people. So I wanted to understand what a more proactive approach to mental health actually looks like. So I did a big research study. It's called an interpretive phenomenological analysis, which is just a fancy way of saying I interviewed 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs. And I asked them the question, how would you know if you were sitting across the table from an emotionally healthy leader? What does that look like? What does that feel like? What do those people do? What do they not do? And I coded these interviews for themes. And the themes kind of revealed these 7 traits of emotional fitness, the 7 things that emotionally healthy people are working on all the time. And those 7 things are mindfulness, curiosity, self-awareness, resilience, empathy, communication, and playfulness. And so my book is an exploration of these 7 traits. And for each trait, I give a clinical example of my work with an entrepreneur. And I give emotional push-ups, which are these actionable tools and tricks that you can use to, to improve yourself in that area. So how could you tell if you're emotionally unfit versus fit? I would say, if you're emotionally unfit, you might shut down during conflict, you might spiral after feedback or avoid difficult conversations altogether, you might be an overthinker, you might be a people pleaser, you might be staying busy just to avoid feeling anything or numbing your feelings with all kinds of things, you know, all the ways that we move away from our feelings. On the other hand, emotional fitness looks like being able to be curious about what you're feeling and choose responses that move you toward the things that you want, even when life is messy. And it really allows you to lead and collaborate, set boundaries and have healthy relationships.

One of my favorite aspects of your book is that you're not just preaching, you're giving exercises and As, uh, there's a quote that you'll catch me saying pretty often, which is a Napoleon Hill quote. It says, action is the real measure of intelligence.

Mm-hmm.

And so I would encourage anybody who decides to buy a copy of Flex Your Feelings— by the way, link will be in the bio, uh, if you wanna grab yourself a copy— that you implement what you learn here. And it starts by taking a little assessment. So you have a test in the book where people can rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where they currently stand across those 7 traits. And I'd be happy to share what I rated myself at. Let me ask you a question first, or maybe we could both share. I don't know if you've done the assessment yourself recently and if you'd be comfortable sharing, but I always put this stuff out there. I'm like, why not?

I love it.

But I guess first, like, what's, what's a healthy average? Like, do you want people to be above 3, 4, 4 point something? Like, what's What's emotionally healthy look like?

So the assessment is you're essentially giving yourself a self-rating from 1 to 5 in each of the 7 traits. And I don't think there's any place you have to be at the start. You know, I want people to feel like there's no wrong place to be when you start this journey, because some of us were given these tools early and some of us weren't, and that's okay. And one of the big things I found through this research is that these things are trainable. And even if you're not Naturally empathetic or not really a great communicator, you can learn how to do those things better. You know, we forget as adults that when you practice something, you'll get better at it. And the same is true with this work. So wherever you are, it's great. And whatever trait you start working on, the others will naturally improve as a result.

1000%. Such an important thing that you just highlighted. And that's that everything we're about to walk through, these 7 traits at a very high level, Maybe if the audience decides to score themselves, uh, maybe to create a gap between where they are and where they want to be, and then use your book to fill that gap. I think that every single one of these can be improved. And so when I look at the rate, I have them up on my screen. When I look at the ratings that I gave myself, I'm now thinking back to 10 years ago, I would have, a lot of these would be a lot lower than they are today. So for instance, for mindfulness, which is something I spent an incredible amount of time thinking about, I gave myself a 5. I am willing to be uncomfortable, uh, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, all of the -lies. So I gave myself a 5 today, but 10 years ago I would've been a 1 or a 2, maybe. Yeah. What about you? Where are you today?

But before I tell you, how would you say you went from a 1 or a 2 to a 5?

Through exposure. By— I, I love—

Leaning into your discomfort.

Leaning into my discomfort. I love the analogy of your comfort zone as a rubber band. I love the idea that if you stretch the rubber band slowly, it expands, but if you pull it too fast, it might snap. Mm-hmm. And so I've never, I have overextended myself in the past and burned out in different ways, but for the last 5 or 6 years straight, I've been slowly expanding just like one step outside of my discomfort. out of my comfort zone at a time.

Nice. I love that. So for myself, it really depends. I am very comfortable with emotional discomfort because of the work that I do as a therapist. But I'm quite uncomfortable with physical discomfort. And that has been my emotional fitness journey is learning how to sit in physical discomfort. And, you know, I never used to work out or do the things that I knew my body needed because they were uncomfortable. And I've really been challenging myself to do that. So I would say when I average my comfort with emotions with the work I've been doing on my comfort with discomfort, I'd probably give myself like a 3.8. I'd round it up to a 4.

I think that's fair. Yeah. If you had asked me 10 years ago, I'd say, okay, maybe I'm a 3 or a 4 with physical discomfort, but I, I was like a 0. I was like a negative 1, um, on the mindfulness scale 10 years ago. And But now I'm pushing myself pretty hard on both of those. So let's move on to curiosity.

All right.

You could imagine through Book Thinkers, uh, you know, I'm constantly humbled by how much I don't know on this beautiful planet. So I gave myself a 4.5 there.

Nice.

I think that a great test for this recently for me has been the political spectrum that exists in America. And I think that not reacting emotionally to people who have different points of view and displaying curiosity has been something I've worked really hard on over the last couple of years. And so that's pushed that number up for me as well. Uh, and I'm, I'm curious where you fall on the curiosity spectrum.

That's a good one. And when I talk about curiosity, it's not just about having a learning mindset, although that's a big part of it. It's also about, I see curiosity as the opposite of defensiveness. So when we're defensive, we're keeping uncomfortable information out. When we're curious, we're asking for all of that information to come in so that we can grow and learn. So I would put myself, you know, I'm a person who kind of knows about myself that my initial reaction to things can be a little bit defensive. And I have trained myself to create space between my initial reaction and my response so that when I do respond, it's from a less defensive place. So for that reason, I would give myself probably a 4 again.

Okay, amazing. Well, that leads into self-awareness. I've done the same thing over the last 10 years or so, I think one of the ways that I've really improved my emotional intelligence and regulation has been through, which is an example of discomfort, but has been through meditation and other forms of mindfulness practice. And I was very unaware, very self-unaware in the past, but I've really worked on recognizing my strengths, my shortcomings, and everything in between. So I give myself a 4 on that one.

That's awesome. I love that. This is one place I would give myself a 5, just because I've kind of made a whole life of understanding the mind and used myself as one of the ways to do that. I've been in therapy my whole adult life, just understanding who I am. But really, I would say the biggest marker of self-awareness is the willingness to accept that there's a lot you don't know. Like, I don't think I'm a 5 because I know everything there is to know about myself. I'm a 5 because I'm very open to the idea that I am still probably hiding all kinds of things from myself and that I need to be open to looking into those blind spots whenever I can.

Yeah, what a mature answer. I think that's amazing. We all have so much work, I think, to do there, but the awareness of that is important. And the next, the next of the 7 traits is resilience. And this is an interesting one because I, I'd love to hear I mean, I've read the book, but I'd love to hear you tell everybody a little bit about how you view resilience, uh, and what your rating is, and then I'll share mine.

Okay. So I talk about resilience as the ability to bounce forward through setbacks and failures. And I say bounce forward instead of bounce back because the difficult things we go through in life change us. And I don't think we ever go back to being the person we were before we went through a hard thing. So that shouldn't be the goal. It's really more about using the tough things that we go through as springboards to learn and grow from and move into the next version of ourselves. So, you know, a complicated thing about resilience is some of the most resilient people out there are so resilient because they had to be. And although I have certainly faced some really tough things in my life, I would say on the scale of humanity, my resilience has not been tested as much as a lot of people. And so I would not say that this is one of my leading strongest traits. You know, I don't, I don't think that I'm struggling in a major way, but I think that I, I, you know, I could probably have a lot more to learn here. So I'd probably give myself a, I don't know, 3.5.

I want to change my answer, but I circled it on the physical book and I have a picture of that up on my screen, so I can't change it. Uh, I— that's, that's a great perspective that you haven't— and I, I fall in the same boat, although I've definitely experienced some some difficult things in my life, a lot of them manufactured. Um, there are certainly people who have been forced to deal with much more difficult things. I gave myself a 5, I think, because I have spent so much time studying philosophies like Stoicism and understanding the difference between what is in my control and what is outside of my control that I do not react at all to things that aren't You know, within my control. And so whether it's a business challenge or it's a super complex thing that needs to be urgently done in 5 minutes, like it doesn't knock me off balance because I've been through so many difficult situations. And I'm answering this through a business lens, but I've been through so many difficult situations that I just feel very confident that I'll be able to bounce forward regardless of what the situation is now. Hearing what you've talked about, yeah, you know what, if I was transported into a different time period or a different situation but with the same brain, how would I react? I don't know. That's a great question.

And, you know, it's not like our problems are only worth something if they're the worst problems out there, you know. Pain and, and sadness, and, you know, they're made of the same chemicals across all people. Our, our experiences are worthy of our, you know, um, attention no matter what. But like you said, if I suddenly had to face intense and horrible hardship, I can't say that I would already necessarily be fully equipped for that. And so perhaps this is a trait that you can work on, but that you have to always be working on as you face difficult things.

Hmm. I have a lot to think about there, but thank you for that. All right, 2 more, actually 3 more. So we have empathy, which is The ability to regularly put yourself in somebody else's shoes. This is one that I would've given myself a 0 10 years ago, and now I give myself a 3, and I'm really proud of that.

Awesome.

I've had to work at it. It's not, you know, if you look at like a CliftonStrengths test or something, it's not natural for me to be empathetic. It never really has been, but that is a skill that I have been actively working to improve. And so I'm really proud of my 3 today.

You should be. Absolutely. It's a forever journey, all of this. So good for you. That's awesome. So myself for empathy, you know, I want to get real honest with myself and say, I initially want to say, oh, I'm a 5. You know, I empathize for a living and I have strong boundaries and all of that. But I think the realest truth is that when you've been doing this work for a long time, You sometimes are not empathetic in every part of your life because you're being so empathetic in your work life. I think there are times that I spend all day empathizing with my patients, and then I'm not always as empathetic as I would want to be with my, you know, friends and community, etc. So I'm going to give myself a 4.5 on this one.

Still a strong number. Uh, communication is the 6th of the 7. And I decided to give myself a 4. Again, in the past, I had a very difficult time articulating what was going on inside of my head, and therefore I wasn't great at communicating, but I also wasn't great at listening because I was so self-conscious and insecure about what was happening in my life. And so I was a pretty poor communicator. I also struggled with a lot of social anxiety and public speaking anxiety, uh, which I know you did as well for a little while. And so, yeah, today I gave myself a 4 because I talk for a living and I talk all day, every single day, and I listen all day, every single day. So I've improved that one a bit.

I think you're a great communicator, so that makes a lot of sense to me. I would give myself close to a 5 on communication. I think communication is one of my superpowers. I just really love putting words to ideas and I was not always a good listener. That is something that I have really improved through becoming a therapist. I was a person who really listened in order to speak, you know, waiting for my turn to speak for a long time. And I had to learn how to be comfortable in silence and really take in what people were saying. So now I think I'm somewhere between a 4.5 and a 5, but it took a lot of really dedicated work.

Yeah, it does. And all of these can be improved, which is what we're talking about.

Definitely. A 5 does not mean you're good, you're done. It just means it's a big strength of yours.

Absolutely. And then the last one, which was fun and, and sort of unexpected as I worked my way, you know, I saw it in the beginning of the book, but playfulness.

Hmm.

I think that playfulness is one that will surprise a lot of people who have made it this far in today's conversation. And I give myself a 4.5 on playfulness. I can be accused of taking life too seriously sometimes from a business perspective, but then again, you can find me jumping off of a boat in You know, the Mediterranean Sea when we're visiting Greece with a bottle of champagne in my hand, or on the ground rolling around with our 7-month-old making like goofy noises, you know, and hanging out with the dog. So like, I think playfulness and, and bringing a level of playfulness into everything I do is also another thing that's improved over time, but still some more work to go.

That's a good one. I think I'd give myself the same. I think I am a really playful person. I love to gamify everything. I, I I think I'm very yes, and a lot of the time, but I have a very distinct rigidity sometimes. You know, I have pretty intense ADHD, and one of the ways that I've managed that is by creating structures for myself. And I don't always do a great job of being lax about those structures. I think I could be a little more playful in those spaces sometimes. So I'll go with a 4.5 too.

Well, for anybody in the audience that has followed along and maybe you've journaled your own numbers, If you have room for improvement, which we all do, then grab a copy of Flex Your Feelings and do the emotional pushups. Um, you know, I think you gave— this was funny to read it this way, but it makes total sense. You know, when thinking about the first one, uh, you talk about meditation as an opportunity to sit in discomfort and grow as a human being. And a lot of people would say, oh, sitting silently in a room, like, that's not uncomfortable, but that probably means you haven't tried it, right?

I think it's uncomfortable.

I think so too. I think so too. When I first started meditating 10 years ago on a regular basis, I mean, it was miserable. I would procrastinate all day and I found it very difficult, you know, but here we are. I've, I've had some, so much exposure to it over the last decade that Now I really enjoy that, that quiet time. Uh, I think it's, uh, I forget who said it, maybe George Bernard Shaw or something said that all of man's or woman's problems stem from their inability to sit in a room quietly by themselves. And, uh, isn't that the truth? Yeah. Especially now with social media and everything mining our attention.

Yeah. With the tiny omnipotent rectangle in our pocket. Yeah.

So, um, could you give a couple more examples of Just some of the different pushups or challenges that you have throughout the book that people can expect to learn more if they decide to get a copy?

Sure. I mean, ultimately an emotional pushup is anything that puts you just a little outside of your comfort zone so you can grow. And that's going to look different for each of us. What's uncomfortable for me might not be uncomfortable for you. So an emotional pushup might be apologizing for a mistake. It might be asking for feedback. It could be Letting yourself actually feel sad about a loss instead of pushing right through, or celebrating a win. Or it could be pausing before you pour yourself a drink to ask what you might be feeling and trying not to feel, or not looking at your phone at a red light and just sitting with your boredom and loneliness for a second. Anything that makes you a little uncomfortable— an emotional push-up is leaning toward that discomfort instead of away from it, and trusting that you're expanding your capacity not only to handle discomfort, but then also to move into all of the opportunities that that allows for you.

And like you said, all of us, there's this beautiful life that sits on the other side of discomfort. You know, all of the value that life has to offer sits on the other side of discomfort. And your book is truly a testament to that. So where can people go if they want to get themselves a copy of the book?

Anywhere the books are sold, you know, Amazon, or if you're not an Amazon person, you can go to bookshop.org, which is local bookstores. It's like a bookstore of local bookstores. That's a good one. Barnes& Noble, anywhere that you might get a book, that is, just type in Flex Your Feelings and my name, Emily Anhalt, and it'll come up.

Okay, amazing. Couple of rapid-fire questions and then we'll wrap it up here.

Okay.

So if your book was deleted, gone, disappeared, and all of your work goes with it, but you could leave the world with just one simple message from the book, What would that be?

Hmm. What a good question. I think it would be what we've spoken about, that everything you want in life lives on the other side of discomfort. Mm-hmm.

What is one uncomfortable thing that you are currently engaging in?

Uh, a regular fitness practice.

Share more. Why is it uncomfortable?

You know, I talk about this in the book, but I was a really sick baby. And I did not develop the capacity to sit in my physical discomfort very well. And so now if I'm in a yoga class, and the teacher is having us hold a pose for more than a few seconds, I start to panic almost. And I've been working on reminding myself that I can handle that discomfort and that I'm getting stronger and that it's not as bad as I worry it is and that it won't last forever. And so I've been working out every And I have noticed such an incredible difference, not only in obviously working out is good for me, but in the way I feel about working out. I don't dread it anymore. I've started to appreciate it. So it's been cool to see how that works over time.

I'm going through that with running right now. So one specific aspect of working out, I've always loved sort of the short, intense exercises. So I love lifting weights and I love Uh, I love playing sports like basketball, et cetera, but I did get into the sport of triathlons. And so last year I did a few sprint triathlons. This year I have a few more sprint triathlons and then I'm doing an Olympic.

Wow.

And so I have a sort of a running coach, uh, a friend of mine, and he's really been pushing me. And I find that the longer runs are very difficult to sustain. Because you, you know how much farther you have to go. And totally, it's like an extended version of, of, uh, holding a pose for me, you know? And I just, some people can lose themselves just like they can with meditation, uh, while they're running. And it's, uh, it's a blank space and you just feel the rhythm of the run. But for me, I have to win the battle.

Hmm.

100 times in a row sometimes, uh, during a longer run. So that's been, that's been one for me.

I feel for you. I'd say the other one too is it is uncomfortable how much vulnerability and attention seeking is involved with releasing a book.

That's what I thought you were gonna say when I first asked.

Yeah, that's definitely part of it too. Asking the people in your life to pay attention to this thing you've done and really support you and have a lot of focus on this one particular thing is definitely uncomfortable, but I'm learning to lean into it.

Yeah, it's like the whole network marketing thing. You know, if you believe that your family is better, you know, or your friends are better if they go through this program or buy this thing, then you're hurting them by not pushing it out there. And it's like, that message is very relevant for authors. I mean, there's an opportunity cost to the people in your life not buying and reading this book, but finding a way to communicate that where you still feel authentic and you don't ruin a relationship or create an moment. Like, that's not an easy thing to do. But bestselling books are books that are actively sold, not books that are best written, right? That's not the title. So good for you for embracing that discomfort. Well, listen, it was a, it was a great conversation today. Uh, I'm so happy for you. And by the time that this show goes live, your book will be coming out. Um, so one more time, just for the audience, where can people go to get a copy of the book?

Grab a book anywhere you get your books— Amazon, Barnes& Noble, bookshop.org— and you can find me on socials. My handle is @dremilyanholt on all the platforms.

Okay, great. We will have all of that in the show notes. Thank you.

Thank you.