Ana Melikian: THE MINDSET ZONE | The Tyler Wagner Show #1100

All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode. Today we have Anna Malikin with us, so welcome to the show.

Wonderful to be here.

Grateful to have you here. Uh, if you can, just to start us off, tell us a little bit more about you and what you got going on.

Uh, so I'm based in Phoenix, Arizona, and I'm on a mission of helping purpose-driven leaders and organizations increase their impact while preventing burnout.

I love it. And actually, I think in our last conversation, I was telling you a lot of my clients probably need help with this. You know, a lot of times, really, no matter where you're at, if you're an entrepreneur, burnout is kind of inevitable at some point because, you know, you work really hard, you get to, you get to a place, then you start to plateau, burn out, and then you got to restructure things to be able to get to the next level. So Um, let me ask you this before, or actually let's even start a little earlier. When you were in like middle school, high school, uh, days, what did you think you would be doing as a career?

At that time, I was really wondering, um, because in Portugal we have to decide at the end of high school when we apply to college, what is the major that we are doing. It's not like here in the United States. So there is all of us are in like since the 15, 16, like wondering what do we want to major in. And I knew that was something with sciences because that is what I was good in, in, in school. But I was in between things like biology, computers, and psychology. That was what I decided eventually to go to.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. And then what was your first career? Like after—

in psychology. So I did, I was a psychotherapist for many years. I was teaching in universities in Portugal and in Spain. So I was in the training world. I was doing speaking already, training and speaking at the time. So, but my world was psychology all the way around.

That's so cool. Alright, before we get into what you're doing now, I'd like to dive a little deeper into that cuz psychology's really interesting. It's the, I mean, I guess there's other things that do this too, but it's one of those studies where it's like you're studying yourself. You know, it's like the brain studying the brain. So I don't know, that's why I think it's such an interesting thing. So do you, can you trace back, like why do you think What drew you to that? Just like, was there any life events that you think made you more interested in that?

I always like to solve puzzles. So problem solving was always something that I enjoy doing naturally. Could be, uh, I was wanting to do some kind of a craft and I had to put things together and solve the issue or, and I was very curious, so for that things in science were very appealing for me. And even computers was a big puzzle to be solved. And can you find a bigger puzzle than human beings? So that is what attracted me to go to psychology because I thought I will never stop to be fascinating and there will never be an absolute solution for this puzzle. So that will keep me, um, hooked and entertained for my life.

I love it. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people will choose a career where they can like exit it, right? But I think me and you are similar in a sense where I've chosen something like podcasting is more for me a passion project. It's not my main thing, but I've chosen it because I realized it's something that when I'm 80, 90 years old, I could still do and still love doing. Right. So I think that's a better way of choosing things rather than like being like, oh, I'm going to do this for 40 years and then get out of it and then do what I really want to do. I— it's better if you just do what you really want to do the whole time, right?

I totally agree. And I love the podcasting also because what better thing? Having interesting conversations with interesting people is always a great thing.

Yeah, I know. I— it's one of the most enjoyable things for me. Um, I have a bunch of questions. Sorry, psychology is like, like Jordan Peterson. He's one of my favorite authors, and I just, I love watching his stuff. He's a psychologist too. Um, so two more questions on psychology. Maybe I'll have more, but, um, one, what are like top psychology books you'd recommend? Just curious.

That is an interesting question that I don't have immediately an answer, but for most listeners I will advise if they didn't read already to read Mindset from Carol Dweck.

Okay.

She's a psychologist too. The book is based in a research in psychology and is really a transformational book for many people personally. And I think when we speak about mindset, and that is one of my areas that I love to speak, my podcast is The Mindset Zone. Our work is absolutely one of the core, um, if you are working with mindset.

Got it, got it. Okay. Um, and obviously I'm assuming you can't name names, which really isn't important in this scenario, but through your times as a psychologist, are you able to tell any stories of like situations where a person came in and they had this issue? And obviously you would have to leave out any details that could track back to the individual, but um, you know, and then through the psychology sessions, let's call it, with you, you are able to talk with them or ask them the correct questions to have them be able to get through it. I, I'm just curious, like, how that process kind of works its way through all the way.

So a lot of my initial work was in psychotherapy. So we are focusing in helping, and in my case, I was my specialty was with people with anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. So, and the main tool that we have is the spoken word and communication in general. Also the nonverbal is also very important. So absolutely through the tools that we have in psychotherapy, to the spoken therapy, We can help people move from really difficult mental illness and situations into a normal functional life. And it is a lot of, there is the cognitive work that we can do, but there is also the behavioral work that can be done. And even there are many modalities in psychotherapy that we can pull out from to make things happen and to help people start to, to come out of the dysfunctional of a mental illness to a more functional life. Then when I move here to the United States and I decide to become a coach, was a lot of using the same tools, the same, and the background that I have, adding new tools from the coaching. And it was the pleasure of working with people that had a functional life, that they want to excel. They want, I like sometimes to compare with, if you imagine like a line with a zero in the middle, and there is, uh, to one side of the line, to the left, you have the negative numbers. People with mental illness will be in that negative on the scale, and you have to bring them to the zero, to a functional life. Then coaching is working with people that are around zero that want to excel going into the positive side, the right side of the scale to +10. So taking really advantage of their potential. But the tools in many ways are also in coaching a lot. We use the words. We use our beliefs and the boosting our self-limiting beliefs, but also what we do, the behaviors, our feelings. We all have to enter all that in consideration to help people create and sustain change.

Got it. Got it. Very interesting. So it isn't like— so if they're in the negative, as you— the analogy, I guess we'll call it, that you use.

Yes.

First goal is get it to zero and then build from there. So you're not jumping from negative to positive. Like we gotta get to a neutral first.

Yes.

Got it. Got it. And is it, cuz I feel like you hear this a lot in, I think in general you just hear this a lot, but I feel like it's mostly in movies. They'll like, when people go in for like therapy sessions or anything like that, most of the time, like the therapist, if you will, they're not really saying much. They're just, they're asking questions, very few, and then the person is doing most of the talk. Like, in, in your case, is it, is it really more asking the right questions and having them figure it out themselves, or are you actually kind of giving them a plan as well?

Both. So think about psychotherapy as going to a gelato place where you have hundreds of diverse to pick from. There is literally hundreds of psychotherapy models out there for all tastes, shapes, and sizes. So if everybody, anybody out there, did you work with somebody and didn't work, don't give up because you just have to find the right fit. But like the big models, you will have cognitive psychology, that, and cognitive therapy that is a lot based on working our beliefs. But even there, there is, yes, there is the question, it's asking the right questions, helping people to see things from a different perspective, but also doing, but also being aware. There are many tools that we can use to help people to increase their awareness. And there are other modalities that focus more on the feelings. Uh, so really, um, and it's very diverse. And then the image that come on the movies is just one little slice of it.

Ah, got it. Got it. Okay. Interesting. I didn't actually realize there was like that many different models. So that's interesting. I didn't know that.

You have models of psychotherapies, uh, for instance, culture therapy that you, the therapist will ask you to If imagine you are a sculpture, represent physically the problem that you are feeling. That is one technique, let's not— that can be used in certain models of psychotherapy. So the diversity is incredible. And there are psychotherapy models that focus more in review of the past to help us with the present and with the future. But there are also The ones that are totally focused on the future. One of the better known ones is called solution-focused therapy. That is a lot on the principle that even when you are with a problem, there is always moments of exception to the problem. Let's focus on what is happening on that exception and what can we learn to amplify their moment. And to that become your new normal. So the diversity is incredible.

Wow. Very interesting. Um, and then what was it that then shifted you into helping, uh, people with burnout? What was the shift there?

So when I start to work, uh, uh, in more in the coaching and helping people, uh, in terms of business coaching, business entrepreneurs to succeed and to, um, grow their companies. And even in my own journey as my own business is so easy to get into these burnout cycles. And you were referring this in the beginning. When we are starting our business, we have to put a lot of hours and sometimes we can overextend ourselves. So we can learn from it or if we are always repeating certain patterns, that is when it becomes a problem and when burnout can be a problem because if we really burn out, then it takes time to recover from it. And what I realized is that we really have the tools that allow us to see where we are and we can achieve much more in terms of impact, in terms of positive impact out there if we learn how to be in a full engagement mode instead of relying on the pushing, pushing that leads to burnout. So don't see burnout as on and off. See, I see burnout as a continuum. So you have like, again, a line if you want to, so to imagine a continuum with the one extreme will be burnout, full burnout. People need to recover and they have to take out time to coming out of the ashes. And, but at the extreme, we have full engagement, the flow of high performance. So we are somewhere in this scale and we want to avoid as much as possible to fall into full burnout because literally it takes time to recover physically, emotionally when we have the full burnout. And when we have the reg flags. We can start to always try to be in that engagement, the full engagement mode. That is where we can create a bigger impact out there. And when we have organizations, make sure that the culture of the organization sustains that full engagement and avoids the burnout.

Interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way with like Basically, I think a lot of people associate burnout with like an amount of time they're working, like they're working too much. But the way you kind of described it, it's, it's more about the way that you're working, correct?

Yes, of course. Obviously there is a question of capacity, and if we always demand, uh, if you are working constantly 80 hours a week At some point, your body's going to say, okay, enough is enough. If you are working that number of hours, but you are on purpose, you have a great team, you are doing something that energizes you, you have a, that will help you to stay in that mode and prevent the burnout for a while. But if you are cutting sleep, that will catch up with you one way or another eventually.

Oh yeah. No, no, I remember earlier that 100%, the sleep thing's for real.

Yeah, we have this illusion. I don't need that quantity of sleep. By what we know from research, yes, there are a very small percentage of people that have a genetic modification that they are okay with 4 hours sleep. But that is like 1% of the population. All the rest, 7 to 8 hours sleep is what they need, even if they deny it.

So wait, because I missed the number for the like 1%, how many hours do they need?

They even, there are people, there is a genetic modification in some people that 4, number 4 hours and the, the, will be enough for them feeling recharged and totally like functional. But for most humans, we need the 7 to 8 hours, even if we spend years. And my, in my case, I, after my daughter was born, I spend years sleeping less than 5 hours. And then I paid the price for it. Um, and I was theoretically, I was functional. I run a successful business while sleeping 5 hours from average. At night, but the body said, arrived to a point that they say enough is enough.

Okay. Gotcha. And then you, you basically, would you say like you got burned out then?

Uh, and the burnout comes in many different ways for many different people. For me was I had, I was diagnosed with cancer. So I had to decide what was important, uh, saving myself and the restructure my life. It's what I decide to do. And what, because when you, and it doesn't need to be cancer. When you have a situation that the doctor say that you really have to put your things together and that changes your perspective and priorities immediately. And for me, the fascinating thing now looking back is that it really allowed me to learn to that I can have even a bigger impact with my work, working less hours. I just have to, it's the whole thing, work smarter, not harder, but it's common sense, but it's not common practice. And, um, and we have to make it common practice.

Yeah. And from, from the times that I've talked to you, you seem like very calm and like just relaxed about, is that something you've kind of trained yourself on to lower your stress? Stress levels and stuff.

Absolutely. We, we have to recharge our batteries, and the— as more grounded you can be, the— I think the better we are to be able to be effective out there in the world.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, you know, it's interesting, I was listening to Joe Rogan podcast, is like there's also the opposite problem for some people that like they don't do enough. So their battery is like, it's, it's like kind of like they're not using enough energy so they can't sleep at night. And Joe Rogan talked about that, how he kind of, he views every day as like you have like a battery of life and you need to like basically work hard enough to burn it down so that you can sleep well. And then in the morning you're good and it's recharged, you know, but Um, you know, like if you sit on the couch all day, it, it's, it could potentially be hard to sleep at night because you didn't use any of the energy.

So it's interesting. There is a rhythm. Nature has a rhythm. We as human beings have a rhythm and that we have to learn how to tap into their natural rhythm, uh, to achieve, to, if, if we learn to tap into our rhythm and, and learn to live on purpose, we really can do an incredible impact out there in the world. But if we are not, like you're saying, if our life doesn't have that meaning of purpose, and people even from other reasons, they lose their jobs, COVID happens, and suddenly they saw everything that they want to see Netflix, and now what? Then that creates a cycle that is not a very positive cycle, and you need something that gets you a sense of purpose.

Yeah, I agree. There is like a harmony and like ebbs and flows. It's not just relax or work. It's, it's, it's really both is needed. Actually, a guy I recently just had on the podcast, he helps people with retirement because he discovered that You know, a lot of people before they retire, they think in their mind like, oh, this is going to be so easy. I'm going to retire, set everything up, and I'm good. No more working. Life's easy. But then you have a whole other problem. Like, what do I do with all this time? You know, like, now I have all this time. I've left all my friends from work. I have no structure. You know, it's a whole nother issue then.

Absolutely. And I think there, gender-wise, men is a little bit more At least I still remember my dad, that, and my mom when they retired. My mom was okay, no problem. She always finds something to do and meaning in many of the things, helping others, helping the family. But my dad, he lost a lot of his social recognition identity that he had in his profession and was, yes, he enjoyed the travel and all of that, but He lost a part of himself that he never really recovered, uh, when he retired.

Huh. Yeah. I wonder if it's, yeah, I think that's very common because yeah, I mean, imagine if you're in a profession, you know, in a corporate, let's just say it's corporate for like 30, 40 years. They're used to that same good morning, the recognition every day or 5 days a week. And then that just poof, one day is gone. It's really wild. And it shows, maybe you could speak to this. I'm curious. It shows how like we as humans, sometimes we think things will be like something and they are just completely not even close. You know what I mean? You assume retirement would be easy and everything's good. And then when you get there, you're like a week into it, everything is nothing as you imagined. Like, that's so—

Yeah, maybe more than a week, but everything—

A couple months, yeah, I don't care.

And everything depends, because if you hate your job, retirement can be heaven.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that, yeah.

So, but it's a change. And even we know, interesting, going back to psychology, even positive changes create stress. You can be in love and want to live with a person and you get married or you decide to live together and it's a positive change, but that positive change creates stress and how we deal with it is the question. So life always throws us challenges. It's how we deal with those challenges is always the question.

Yeah, I agree. So how would you help? How long have you been helping people with burnout now?

So if focus totally on the, like, the main priority in my business is being now a couple of years, um, that I have done work on this in the human potential, that I think, uh, helping people increase their impact while preventing burnout is really helping people tap into their human potential. And that has been my life work is one way or another, is all about tapping into the human potential.

Hmm. What would you— I guess so, for helping people with burnout or helping people with their human potential, is there anything that you could provide for people, you know, that are listening to the podcast that they could do, maybe like a self-assessment on how to improve?

Okay, so I can give a framework and then a very practical methodology.

Beautiful. Couldn't ask for more.

So, uh, framework in terms of human potential. I think even many of your listeners, I imagine, are entrepreneurs. They have their own businesses. And since we are speaking about psychology, we can say that most business problems are personal problems in disguise. Let's be honest, we get stuck in certain patterns and we have to do some self-development work to get out of that pattern. So we can recognize that individually there is a lot of potential that we have within us that if we learn to get unstuck, we can release a lot of energy and possibilities that way. And that is usually as we see human potential at that individual level. That human beings are connecting beings. We live as social beings with others. And even in our business, we cannot have a business alone. We have to have other people, even if it's just the client to buy from us, or other people in our teams, or the world in general where we function. So if we take that, that power of connection from the networking, from the team, and we also consider that human potential. There is another source of— is that the, uh, the we part of human potential that we can tap into and achieve much more together that we can do alone. And then, so there is the individual, there is the, the team, let's see, the network. And then we are part of bigger systems. We are part of a, uh, culture, society, planet. And that is that systemic approach that is even another human potential that we can learn to tap into and to release its power. So think about the individual perspective, the group perspective, and then the systemic perspective. And yes, as individuals, we have more control over what we do in, in terms of releasing that individual. Potential, but let's not lose the, uh, from our minds that there is other dimensions that we can leverage to take things to a bigger level. At the individual level, one of the things we, even for people that they love personal development work and self-development work, is really easy to stay stuck and really easy to Sometimes they have a glimpse of something working and then stop working and see other people that are evolving more and we feel, what is happening? Why? Why is that happening? So I use a methodology that I call the PIE method. So P-I-E, keep it simple. When I speak, I like to give the PIE method because they don't need to have a cheat sheet. They can memorize 3 letters, P-I-E. I, E. P is for pressing the pause button. We have to learn to press the pause button in our lives. Maybe you are familiar with that quote, between a stimulus and a response, there is a space. In that space is the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Totally, yeah.

Yeah. The trouble is we have to be able to see the space between the stimulus and the response. And because it's only when we manage almost to create the slow motion and see that space, because sometimes it's a trigger, that we are able to choose our response. So training ourselves to press the pause button that allows us to see that space more often than not. It's like you have to see it like a muscle that you can exercise and become very good to ground yourself and see, oh, it's a trigger. Ah, usually I do this, but maybe I can try this different thing. And in the beginning, it's more like, oh, I got triggered and I did that thing again and again and again. So it's thinking back and consider in that pause, what if I had the chance to redo that or if that happens in the future? What can I do that is different? So start to rewire your brain. So pressing the pause is the essential skill to learn. And I will say that there are 3 types of pauses. That is like the, the macro pauses that you are going to a retreat, you are working with a coach, you take a good amount of time to do that work of stopping, self-reflection. Self-growth, wonderful. But then if you want to keep that momentum going, you really have to start to have scheduled pauses in your day, creating rituals in your day-to-day where you're journaling, where you do meditation, whatever works for you to exercise that muscle, because only by doing that you are ready to do the micro pauses. That is that When the stimulus, the trigger happen, you are able to press the pause button to choose your response. Self-leadership. So that is the P, pause, pressing the pause. Then the I is all about increasing your self-awareness. We can change a lot by increasing our self-awareness. And many of the personal development systems speak about is this, of increasing the self-awareness. And many, if you look in the world of the mindset, they will say that the thoughts, changing the thoughts that you have, will change the way you feel and what you do and the results you get. And there's a lot of truth on this, but the reality is a little bit more complex because if it was enough to change our thought patterns, our beliefs, to change us forever. We could spend the day listening to TEDx or TED Talks, and we'll be totally transformed in the other side. And the reality is a little bit more messy than that, because usually we have this tendency to see things in a linear way, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, but I like to ask people to think about them as a triangle. So if you imagine a triangle, it's a form with 3 sides that if it loses one side, ceases to exist, disappears. We need all these 3 dimensions. We need our thoughts, we need our feelings, and we need to do something, our behaviors, our actions. And for some people, it's easier to start to work on their thoughts. Wonderful, very powerful, but that, that will have a reflection in the feelings and in what we do. But some people, Or in some circumstances, it's better to do something different. When you are really stuck, sometimes going for a walk in nature can be the best thing that you can do. That is doing something.

I agree with that 100%. Dude, I actually posted something else. I was like, if you ever have a problem, go for a walk in nature and it'll solve itself. Now, obviously, that's not like necessarily true, but a lot of times what's in your head when you're trying to solve something at your desk, If you just walk in nature, literally the solution just comes to you. So sorry, go ahead.

Absolutely. But that is the thing even. And there are some people that are more neck up person. So the thinking is what they are more aware. Start there. But then ask how that influenced my feelings and my behaviors. Other people, they have their feelings in the top of their skin and they are very sensitive. So the feelings. They are more in sync with their feelings, and poets, creatives are very much like that, and that is beautiful. But let's see how that affects their thinking and beliefs and what they do in their day-to-day. And the people are more doing people. So start with whatever is easier for you and then always increase your self-awareness on how one dimension affects the interplays with other dimension. And that is a very rich way of increasing your self-awareness in a very powerful way. So you have pre, P for pressing the pause, I for increasing your self-awareness, and then the E is to embracing the experimentation mindset. Because if you are doing an experiment, all results are welcome. Of course, we have the expectation of a certain result, but lots of advances in science happens when we get the unexpected result. So, and if we embrace this mindset of experimentation, we see that there is no failures, just helpful information to learn from. And that creates a much more, like, a failure-proof approach because, oh, it didn't work. Why? Let's be curious about and learn from that. To experiment again for the next experience.

Mm-hmm. I love that. That's awesome. That's definitely a clip. So get ready, social media. That pie, it's so awesome.

Yeah.

Very cool. Uh, I guess one of the last questions I have for you here is like, what are, what's your overall goal with, and like, how are you structuring this and helping people with, with their burnout? Like, Are you— I know you've been doing it for a few years, but are you like building a community? Are you— is it one-on-one? Like, how does it all function and what's the future?

So the ideal thing, for instance, when I speak to organization or to an association, I like to— even when I do the talk that is explaining my framework around burnout and increasing our impact, I use an assessment tool that is validated by loads of the more than 30 years of data that allow us to do an assessment where are people in that burnout-engaged continuum. So the first element that when I work with a group, association, or organization is creating the A. So think ABC. A for awareness. We do an assessment. We know where people are. And we see the impact of that at many levels— financial, physical, emotional, operational, spiritual in terms of their purpose. Great. So with that data, then we can design, we can co-create an action plan. And then we can move to B, that is all about boosting opportunities. Uh, we, we, if we develop that self-leadership skills, If we develop ourselves as human in that human potential, we are boosting the opportunities of choice, of making the choice when there is a stimulus to choose our response as individuals and as groups. And then the C is cultivating work sustainability because we speak so much about environment sustainability, but we also have to think how can we create cultures, in the corporate American, internationally, and in any organizations of any size that is healthy for us to work, to really see results, but also take care of ourselves and have some fun in the process.

No, 100%. I, um, sorry, as you were talking, I was just thinking like, so you, you actually, there's two different models for you here. So one, it could be for one person or You're saying like a corporation or association could actually bring you in.

Yes.

And then you could literally train all of their employees on this. So that's really cool because the beauty of that is then everybody, the whole team is on the same page and the operation is just 10 times, you know what I mean? That's amazing.

Yeah. And sometimes I start work with the leader of the organization and then the, or the leadership team and they see, oh, this is working. So let's bring this to the rest of the organization that. That many times is the ideal thing because they know the value and they are like the advocates to make it work to the rest of the organization.

I love it. That's so cool. Um, well, here, look, I want to leave it to you. If there's anything we didn't cover, please do. But I feel like this is kind of a good, uh, cliffhanger because obviously, I mean, when it comes to psychology and stuff like that, I mean, we could go 6, 7 hours, right? Or forever. Um, but, um, but yeah, if there's anything that you wanted to cover on this one, and you know, maybe we'll, we'll have you on again in the future as well. Um, but please do. And then after that, I'd love for you to share, you know, where people can stay in touch with you and stuff like that.

Yeah. So I, I just want to leave with a message wherever people are, just don't lose hope. Uh, it's possible if you are stuck, if you are in the red. You don't have to be there forever. There are tools. There are many experts out there that can help you. There are many people out there. Sometimes you have to ask for help. That is the, uh, you have to be vulnerable and you have to be courageous because I think vulnerable and courageous go together to ask for help, but there is help out there. Please don't lose the hope. So that is what I would like to live. And of course, people can, in terms of finding my work out there, the best way is my website, annemalikin.com, my first, last name, and last name,.com. And if they are listening to this podcast, first make sure that you are subscribed to this amazing podcast, and then go on and check Mindset Zone Podcast and follow me there too.

Amazing. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.