May 14, 2025 • 25 mins
Dr. Emily Anhalt explains how to make mental health your superpower
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome doctor Emily Anhalt to the show.
Emily is a clinical psychologist and the co founder of CoA,
which is a gem for mental health. She is the
author of the brand new book Flex Your Feelings. So, Emily,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you so much for having me. It's so great
to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Awesome. Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little
bit more about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Absolutely so. I am a clinical psychologist. I grew up
in Silicon Valley. I have been studying and practicing clinical
psych for about twenty years now. I had reaching ADHD
as a kid, still do, and so somewhere along the
way I realized that it would be helpful for me
to understand how my mind works. And then in high
school I had a psychology teacher who helped me understand
(01:09):
that when you know a lot about psychology. You know
a little about everything because the world is spoken in
the language of relationships, and psychology is the study of
the relationship we have to ourselves and to other people.
So my work in siliconbatilely led me to this interest
in the psychology of the high performer, and I wanted
to figure out what a more proactive approach to mental
(01:29):
health looks like. And so a number of years ago
I did a big research study where I interviewed one
hundred psychologists and entrepreneurs, and I asked them, how would
you know if you were sitting across the table from
an emotionally healthy person, What does that kind of person do,
what do they not do? What does that feel like?
And out of this research came these seven traits of
emotional fitness, the seven things that emotionally healthy people are
(01:51):
working on all the time. And that is what my
book explores is how to do your emotional pushups, how
to do an emotional workout every day so that you
become more mentally fit and strong, excellent.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And I'm sure whenever people hear the tagline about your
company of co about being a gem for mental health,
I'm sure they go Oh, oh, that's interesting because we
aren't used to thinking about mental and physical health in
the same way, but maybe you can talk about what
the parallels are.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Absolutely so, if you think about physical health, a lot
of people like to think that if they are not sick,
that that means they're healthy. But if you speak to
someone with good physical fitness, someone who sleeps eight hours
a night and eats well and exercises, they'll tell you
just because you're not ill does not mean that you
are in tiptop shape. And the same is true with
our emotions. There is this idea that you're either mentally
(02:45):
ill or mentally healthy, and the truth is most of
us exist somewhere in between where things are mostly going fine,
but we could all level up the relationship we have
to ourselves and other people. And so emotional fitness is
similar to physical fitness in that it's a more proactive
and on going approach to strengthen your emotional health so
that you actually prevent some of the emotional health struggles
(03:06):
that may have sent you looking for support down the line.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, and it's interesting to think about it from this
perspective because you know, you picture people at the gym,
they're usually not just there to ward off disaster. I mean,
some of us have you had back issues or something
and that's why we're there, But many other people it's
because they want to be, you know, jacked up. They
want to look good, they want to be the best possible,
most energetic version of themselves. And are you saying this
(03:31):
is something we can do with our mental health as well.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Absolutely? Yeah. I think that people often wait until things
are really bad to work on their mental health. But
that's little like waiting until you have early signs of
heart disease to start doing cardio. So emotional fitness is
the idea that if you start right now, you are
going to see so many benefits. You're going to see
healthier relationships, You're going to feel like you're living a
more authentic life. You're going to just be more happy
(03:54):
with the choices that you're making because they're based on
a more mentally healthy perspective of who you are and
your place in the world.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So mental health, positive mental health is something that can
be learned.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Absolutely. You know, we all have certain predispositions and certain
resources available to us, certain levels of resilience, et cetera.
But yes, it is a muscle you can flex and
if you work on it a little every day, it
will get stronger and you will see huge benefits in
your life.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Well, let's talk about that. I mean, what does it
mean to be emotionally fit? Why don't you just do
a quick run through of what those seven things are
that the clinical psychologists could could see with the healthy
person across the table from them.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Absolutely. So. The seven traits are mindfulness, which I define
as becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable. So just like if
you are working out and you're not willing to be
a little physically uncomfortable, you're probably not going to get
any stronger. With emotional fitness, you have to be willing
to be a little emotionally uncomfortable in order to get stronger.
The second trait is curiosity, which is pursuing growth over
(04:55):
defensiveness and continued learning about yourself and other people. The
next is self awareness, so understanding your emotional strengths and
struggles triggers biases. Knowing who you are then comes resilience,
which I define as bouncing forward through setbacks and failures.
And I say bouncing forward instead of bouncing back, because
(05:17):
I don't think we ever really go back to being
who we were before we went through a hard thing.
So that's not the goal. The goal is to learn
and grow from the tough things that we go through.
After resilience is empathy, so understanding the emotions of other people,
being able to really feel what other people are feeling.
Then communication, being able to put words to your needs
and expectations and boundaries. And then finally the seventh trait
(05:40):
is playfulness. Being a yes and person and fostering a
space to deepen the connection you have to yourself and
other people.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Awesome and are What are the benefits of being emotionally fit?
So if somebody has high scores on these various different dimensions,
or at least some of them, what are they able
to do? What are some of the payoffs one might
see in life.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
One of the complicated things I think about emotional health
is it's a little less quantitative than physical fitness. You know,
when you go to the gym, you can measure exactly
how much weight you can lift and it's more than
last time, and there's this very data driven aspect of it,
whereas with mental health there's sort of a nebulous feeling
to it. My experience is that people with good emotional
fitness just describe their life as feeling more authentic and satisfying.
(06:30):
Their relationships feel healthier, the voice that they speak to
themselves in is kinder and more compassionate. They are able
to weather the storm of the difficulties that life throws
at them with more grace and ease. You know, it's
all those sort of indescribable things that make life feel
more satisfying to live. All of those things will get
(06:50):
better as you strengthen your emotional health.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Excellent. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I will be back with more from Emily
and Halt with her talk of emotional fitness. Well, I
am back with Emily Anhalt, who is the author of
the brand new book Flex Your Feelings. She has a
clinical psychologist and is sharing all sorts of ways that
(07:16):
we can become more emotionally fit. So one of the
things you do in your book is you talko a
lot of different case studies, particularly like people in the workplace.
You know, managers that you've done reviews with who have
various blind spots, maybe not scoring so high on these
self awareness or mindfulness. You know, levels of your scale.
I wonder if you could talk us through some of
(07:38):
a turnaround you've seen and somebody who is able to
manage their team more effectively after working on their emotional fitness.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Sure thing. So in the book, for each trait, I
share a clinical example, and then I share what I
call an emotional push up, an actionable exercise that you
can do in that moment to strengthen your emotional health
in that area. So you want to hear one of
the examples, so I can share that in the chapter
about mindfulness, which is becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable, I'm
(08:09):
speaking about my work with a woman who really had
a lot of discomfort with uncertainty, and what she found
was that her inability to tolerate uncertainty was causing all
kinds of problems because the things she would do to
try to get certainty were more problematic and uncomfortable for
her than the uncertainty was in the first place, which
is so common. The things we do to avoid our
(08:30):
discomfort often end up causing more problems for us than
the discomfort itself. And so through our work, she learned
how to lean toward her discomfort instead of away from it,
she learned how to prove to herself that she's more
capable of handling these hard feelings than she thought. She
did experiments and showed herself, Oh, this thing that I
thought would be so intolerable is actually not as bad
(08:51):
as I thought. And there's all these benefits on the
other side that I really want to keep maximizing for.
And over time, as she learned to tolerate her discomfort
a little bit, all of these options started opening up
to her. So for her specifically, she was in sales,
and the uncertainty of whether a deal was going to
go through would push her to demand answers before people
were ready, and then they would be frustrated with her.
(09:12):
And she started to learn how to just breathe through
those moments and tolerate those feelings of discomfort long enough
to see how things naturally played out. And she saw
this ripple through her whole life. You know, her friends
who would be frustrated with her for always needing a
plan in every moment, started to feel relieved as she
was able to tolerate the uncertainty of what would happen
that night, that kind of thing. And so this is
(09:34):
just an example of these little moments, these little opportunities
we have to breathe through tough things, show ourselves we're
stronger than we think, and in that we actually strengthen
ourselves and become more able to deal with all of
the hard things we might face.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, and you mentioned, you know, the emotional push ups,
the push ups that we're going to do, and many
of us are at least vaguely familiar with some of
the basic physical fitness ideas like push ups are set up.
I wonder if you could share just a few basic
emotional fitness push ups or sit ups that are things
we could try in the next day or two to
(10:10):
maybe make ourselves a little bit more emotionally fit.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Absolutely, so, you know, physical push up is just this
small physical exertion puts you a little outside of your
comfort zone so that you can grow stronger. And if
you only do one, you're probably not going to get
much stronger. But if you do a few every day,
not only will you be able to do more push ups,
but you'll also be able to do more in other
areas of life, like carry heavier groceries, pick up your kid,
(10:35):
that kind of thing. So emotional push up is anything
that puts you a little outside of your emotional comfort
zone so you can grow. And what's outside of my
emotional comfort zone might not be outside of yours. So
part of this is thinking about what makes you a
little uncomfortable and figuring out how you can lean toward it.
So some examples of emotional push ups would be if
you're someone who says yes to everything that's asked of
(10:56):
you and then you end up feeling really overwhelmed and
resentful of people, and motional push up for you might
be just saying one kind but firm no to a
small request that's made of you today, Whereas if you
tend to focus more on yourself, an emotional push up
might be to offer someone else help with a small task.
Other emotional push ups are apologize for a mistake, or
(11:19):
meditate for five minutes in the morning, or celebrate a
win instead of rushing right past it, or maybe pause
before you pour yourself a drink in the evening to
ask what feelings you might be trying to move away from.
Or an emotional pushup could just be put your phone
away after eight pm and not have your phone be
the thing that you look at until the very last minute.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Of your day.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So one of my favorite emotional push ups to suggest
if everyone wanted to do one right now, would be
to ask for feedback. It's a really powerful thing to
get a sense of how other people feel about us.
So take out your phone and send a text to
someone in your life that says something like, Hey, I'm
working on my emotional fitness. I am hoping you can
share some feedback with me. What is one thing that
(12:01):
I am doing well as a friend, a colleague, a sibling,
a parent, whatever it might be, And what is one
thing that I could do ten percent better? And send
that text out and see what comes back. You're going
to be working on your curiosity, your self awareness, your communication,
and all of these things affect each other. So as
you work on any of the seven traits, the others
will naturally improve.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I love the ten percent better yes idea, because it's
not just like, Okay, what am I terrible at right?
You want me to do? You know that I'm really
failing at left and right as a spouse, you know, friend,
a parent, whatever else, But just what could be a
little bit better? Because most people have at least something
that they could be ten percent better in and even
if the person is generally happy, like it coaxes out
(12:45):
a little something for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
And it's easier to give ten percent better feedback too,
because it feels a little like you're just giving a
person a little suggestion, a small improvement, And so I've
found that that kind of removes the barrier to entry
for people to write back honest feedback.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And I bet a lot of people doing this though,
even if it is only a ten percent improvement, realize
that they are not very high on the defensiveness score.
I mean that they get more defensive instead of approaching
things with a sense of curiosity for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And what's interesting is a lot of people are defensive
against the positive feedback. So this also helps you learn
how to take in the beautiful things that people think
about you and fold them into your ideas of yourself
so that you're not only focusing on the negative things.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I do wonder about that defensiveness though, and versus you know,
approaching things with a spirit of curiosity. Is there anything
we can do in particular on that dimension to improve
because I imagine that would be very impactful, particularly in
a workplace environment.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
For sure. One of the things that I recommend is
giving yourself a little bit of space between your defensive
feelings and the action that you take. Often when someone
gives us a piece of constructive feedback, the first thing
we feel is defensive, and so the first thing we
do is we become overly apologetic, or we deny what
they're talking about, or we tell them why they're wrong,
or we give them a piece of feedback right back.
(14:03):
And if instead we just said, all right, give me
five minutes to think about that before I respond, and
in those five minutes, you just sat quietly with yourself
and wrote down what you were feeling, and wrote down
what you were worried about, or what you think this
feedback means about you, and what actually might they be
trying to do to help you and improve with this
feedback that kind of thing. In that space, our defenses
(14:26):
tend to come down a bit and then you're going
to be able to speak from a less defensive place.
So just create that little bit of space. Just tell someone, hey,
thank you for this feedback, give me a few minutes
to think about it, and then let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And on the other side of that, you talk in
the book about complaining without blame and what this might
look like in a conversation. What are some ways we
can adopt this mindset of complaining without blame, so still
trying to get across that there's something that you might
not be happy with, but without telling the other person
that they are terrible as a result.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, I love this phrase. The idea here is if
you want to enlist someone to help you with a
problem without them feeling like you're blaming them for the problem,
you can say, hey, can I complain without blame for
a second. So, for example, let's say you and your
romantic partner have kind of just been sitting around the
house a lot lately, not really going on any dates,
and you'd like to change that, but you want to
(15:17):
prevent them from feeling like you're saying you aren't taking
me on any dates. This is a you problem. You
might say, hey, can I complain without blame for a second.
We haven't really been going out lately. Can we change that?
And now the other person is going to be able
to let their defenses down and see it as a
problem that you're working on together. It's sort of us
versus the problem instead of me versus you, and they
(15:38):
might say, yeah, you're right, we haven't really been going out.
What if we have a daily or a weekly date
night from now on and every Tuesday we go out
no matter what. That kind of thing. So it's just
a way to help people lower their defenses when you're
going to give them a piece of feedback as well.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And let's talk about playfulness, because this might be sort
of a more unexpected one that mentally healthy, emotionally fit
people have a spirit of playfulness. But what does this
wind up looking like in sort of our day to
day interactions.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, playfulness was the one that surprised me until I
realized how kind of obvious it is because play is
such an undervalued and important part of life. I read
a study ones that showed that people who play regularly
live longer by a significant number of years than people
who don't play regularly. I love the improv definition of play,
which is saying yes. And it's the idea that when
(16:30):
people come to you with an idea, you expand on
that idea and together you get somewhere that neither of
you could have gotten alone. So brainstorming is a type
of play or taking a joke way too far with
a friend, is a type of play, and so my
hope is that people start feeling the permission encouragement to
infuse more play into their daily interactions and their life.
(16:51):
Maybe you start your meetings with an icebreaker game or
an icebreaker question, or maybe you just try to say
yes and to a few more ideas that come to
you today.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
All right, well, we're going to take one more quick
ad break and then we'll be back with more about
flexing our feelings. So I am back with doctor Emily Anhalt,
who is talking about how we can become more emotionally fit,
all the way we can do our pushups and sit
ups in our daily life in order to interact better
(17:23):
with our friends, our colleagues, our family members from a
place of emotional resilience and strength. So, Emily, we always
talk about people's routines. I wonder if you have any
daily routines in your life that help you be more productive.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Sure, so I mentioned I have ADHD, and I feel
like I've developed a lot of structure in my life
to counteract that. So I do have a lot of
routines because routines kind of keep me doing what I
need to be doing. So, for example, in the morning.
I have a whole morning routine. I wake up, I
resist the urge to look at my phone as much
as I want to. I make myself a cup of tea.
I meditate for exactly five minutes because that's all my
(18:02):
ADHD brain can handle. I do a quick workout just
to get my body moving. I eat some kind of
healthy breakfast, and then I write just one line in
a journal. I have a line a day journal. So
I'm not the kind of person who could write for
half hour every day, so I challenge myself just to
write a single line about how I'm feeling that day,
(18:23):
or what I'm grateful for that day, or whatever it
might be. And I've been doing this for so many
years that now I have an idea of how I
have felt on this day for the last five or
six years, which is really cool way to see patterns
that kind of thing. And then once I've done that,
then I dive into my emails and get started in
my actual day. And this has just been a really
lovely way to make sure that I'm setting the tone
(18:44):
for my own life instead of letting my phone decide
in the morning how I'm going to feel that day.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, absolutely well. We love morning routines here on a
show called Before Breakfast. I also wonder how you tend
to structure your workday, because I guess you have lots
of different projects that you're dealing with.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I don't have a very clear structure of my workday
because every day is different. Some days I see clients,
some days I'm teaching, some days I'm writing, some days
I'm just trying to manage all of the odds and
ends that kind of thing. But in general, I did
my doctoral research on ADHD and success, and a lot
of what I've found is the power of shifting your
(19:22):
work environment to match your work needs instead of the
other way around. And so I learned at some point
what I need in order to get work done. I
need to be in a comfortable chair. I need to
have a snack nearby. It needs to be a certain
time of day. You know, I don't do my best
work super early in the morning or super late at night,
and so my workday is a lot of me setting
up conditions to allow myself to optimize for how my
(19:44):
mind works best, and then leaning in.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
But do you generally like plan your life in weeks
like these are the days that I generally will do
X and Y or like, these are the days I'm
not seeing clients, and so that's when I'm going to
organize these projects. I'm just curious how you plan it out.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I actually plan my life in half hour segments. You
would really laugh if you saw my calendar. It's very specific.
But yes, there are certain days that I see clients.
There are certain days that I, you know, focus more
on getting emails all of that kind of thing done,
and there's chaos and structure at the same time. I'd
say that really defines my work style.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah, exactly, because you know, we do. We have talked
a little bit about, you know, neurodivergent personalities on this show.
We've had a couple of guests who have also talked
about their experience with ADHD and the like. I'm curious
how you feel about ADHD and productivity. I think a
lot of people are coming to new realizations that these
two things are not completely at odds as we might
(20:40):
have thought in the past. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I mean, my research really showed that ADHD is just
a different way of being in the world, a different
way of working in our systems were not necessarily created
with that way of being in mind, and so you
have to be willing to restructure your environment a little
bit if you can. So, for example, there's a whole
lot out there about how procrastination is really a bad
thing and you should be fighting your urge to procrastinate.
(21:04):
And I have found that I need to procrastinate because
the anxiety of an impending deadline is what allows me
to kick into gear and get things done. And so
instead of trying to get myself not to be a procrastinator, instead,
I've worked on learning how to procrastinate effectively figuring out
how long something's actually going to take, and not waiting
so long that I can't get it done in time.
(21:25):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Okay, Well, so one thing we always talk about on
this show is what is something you have done recently
to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Oh? I love that question. Uh, can I share three
things that come to mind?
Speaker 1 (21:40):
We will take three.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Okay, So the first one is I have this thing
called the gratitude trio, which is that every day I
try to very quickly think of three things I'm grateful for.
One thing I'm grateful for about myself, Like, oh, my
body is working and it allows me to move. One
thing I'm grateful for about someone else in my life, like, oh,
this friend reached out to me who haven't spoke too
in a while, and it really made my day. And
(22:02):
one thing I'm grateful for about the world in general, like, oh,
it's about to be stone fruit season and that's exciting
and I'm going to get to eat all my favorite fruit.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
So doing a.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Gratitude trio every day really takes it from great to awesome.
The second one sounds really simple, but just taking a
moment to revel in the fact that you are alive.
I think sometimes we take for granted how incredible it
is that we've won this cosmic lottery and we get
to exist, and it's this beautiful, profound truth. So sometimes
I'll just take a really slow breath and think, holy shit,
(22:32):
I'm alive. What an incredible thing. And then finally, my
third one is send a text to someone in your life,
letting them know that you're thinking about them. There's something
so nice about just maintaining those connections. It will make
people's day, it will spark conversations, and it reminds me,
you know, wow, I have community, I have love, in
my life. There are other people going about their days
(22:53):
right now. I'm not really in anything alone here, and
that also takes things from great to awesome for me.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I love it. Yeah, the cosmic part is is fun
for me. I have these random obsessions and lately I've
been obsessed with this. Be a little detour here, but
the post the end Permian extinction two hundred and fifty
two million years ago, ninety percent of species on the
Earth were wiped out. You know, people are more familiar
(23:19):
with the extinction that ended the dinosaurs sixty six million
years ago, but there were there were numerous extinctions through
Earth history, and I was just sort of like, wow,
ninety percent, Like isn't it nice that we came back right? Like,
you know, it could have been one hundred percent, or
you know, maybe the ninety percent, the ten percent that
lasted could have been ten percent that led somewhere else
other than to eventually, you know, primates that developed the
(23:41):
ability to you know, use fire and walk upright and
listen to time management podcasts and also starts the wondering.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Really though, our existence is such a miracle, and I
think there's something really lovely about taking a second to
appreciate it all right.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
We made it through. Our ancestors made it through the
post Permian extinction, so it's good to know to know.
So Emily, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Absolutely find me on socials. I'm on all the platforms.
My handle is at dr Emily an Halt. My website
is dr Emilyandhalt dot com. And I would love to
stay in touch about and hear about everyone's emotional fitness journeys.
And oh, grab a copy of my book Flex your
feelings on anywhere that you would find.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Books excellent, Well, please do that, and thank you Emily
for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If
you have feedback, we know that feedback is important and
I will take your feedback. You can tell me how
to improve by ten percent or fifty percent or whatever
else you want to let me improve by. But if
you have feedback for me about this or any other episode,
you can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam
(24:39):
dot com. And in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions,
ideas or feedback, You can reach me at Laura at
(25:00):
Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome doctor Emily Anhalt to the show.
Emily is a clinical psychologist and the co founder of CoA,
which is a gem for mental health. She is the
author of the brand new book Flex Your Feelings. So, Emily,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you so much for having me. It's so great
to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Awesome. Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little
bit more about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Absolutely so. I am a clinical psychologist. I grew up
in Silicon Valley. I have been studying and practicing clinical
psych for about twenty years now. I had reaching ADHD
as a kid, still do, and so somewhere along the
way I realized that it would be helpful for me
to understand how my mind works. And then in high
school I had a psychology teacher who helped me understand
(01:09):
that when you know a lot about psychology. You know
a little about everything because the world is spoken in
the language of relationships, and psychology is the study of
the relationship we have to ourselves and to other people.
So my work in siliconbatilely led me to this interest
in the psychology of the high performer, and I wanted
to figure out what a more proactive approach to mental
(01:29):
health looks like. And so a number of years ago
I did a big research study where I interviewed one
hundred psychologists and entrepreneurs, and I asked them, how would
you know if you were sitting across the table from
an emotionally healthy person, What does that kind of person do,
what do they not do? What does that feel like?
And out of this research came these seven traits of
emotional fitness, the seven things that emotionally healthy people are
(01:51):
working on all the time. And that is what my
book explores is how to do your emotional pushups, how
to do an emotional workout every day so that you
become more mentally fit and strong, excellent.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And I'm sure whenever people hear the tagline about your
company of co about being a gem for mental health,
I'm sure they go Oh, oh, that's interesting because we
aren't used to thinking about mental and physical health in
the same way, but maybe you can talk about what
the parallels are.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Absolutely so, if you think about physical health, a lot
of people like to think that if they are not sick,
that that means they're healthy. But if you speak to
someone with good physical fitness, someone who sleeps eight hours
a night and eats well and exercises, they'll tell you
just because you're not ill does not mean that you
are in tiptop shape. And the same is true with
our emotions. There is this idea that you're either mentally
(02:45):
ill or mentally healthy, and the truth is most of
us exist somewhere in between where things are mostly going fine,
but we could all level up the relationship we have
to ourselves and other people. And so emotional fitness is
similar to physical fitness in that it's a more proactive
and on going approach to strengthen your emotional health so
that you actually prevent some of the emotional health struggles
(03:06):
that may have sent you looking for support down the line.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, and it's interesting to think about it from this
perspective because you know, you picture people at the gym,
they're usually not just there to ward off disaster. I mean,
some of us have you had back issues or something
and that's why we're there, But many other people it's
because they want to be, you know, jacked up. They
want to look good, they want to be the best possible,
most energetic version of themselves. And are you saying this
(03:31):
is something we can do with our mental health as well.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Absolutely? Yeah. I think that people often wait until things
are really bad to work on their mental health. But
that's little like waiting until you have early signs of
heart disease to start doing cardio. So emotional fitness is
the idea that if you start right now, you are
going to see so many benefits. You're going to see
healthier relationships, You're going to feel like you're living a
more authentic life. You're going to just be more happy
(03:54):
with the choices that you're making because they're based on
a more mentally healthy perspective of who you are and
your place in the world.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So mental health, positive mental health is something that can
be learned.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Absolutely. You know, we all have certain predispositions and certain
resources available to us, certain levels of resilience, et cetera.
But yes, it is a muscle you can flex and
if you work on it a little every day, it
will get stronger and you will see huge benefits in
your life.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Well, let's talk about that. I mean, what does it
mean to be emotionally fit? Why don't you just do
a quick run through of what those seven things are
that the clinical psychologists could could see with the healthy
person across the table from them.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Absolutely. So. The seven traits are mindfulness, which I define
as becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable. So just like if
you are working out and you're not willing to be
a little physically uncomfortable, you're probably not going to get
any stronger. With emotional fitness, you have to be willing
to be a little emotionally uncomfortable in order to get stronger.
The second trait is curiosity, which is pursuing growth over
(04:55):
defensiveness and continued learning about yourself and other people. The
next is self awareness, so understanding your emotional strengths and
struggles triggers biases. Knowing who you are then comes resilience,
which I define as bouncing forward through setbacks and failures.
And I say bouncing forward instead of bouncing back, because
(05:17):
I don't think we ever really go back to being
who we were before we went through a hard thing.
So that's not the goal. The goal is to learn
and grow from the tough things that we go through.
After resilience is empathy, so understanding the emotions of other people,
being able to really feel what other people are feeling.
Then communication, being able to put words to your needs
and expectations and boundaries. And then finally the seventh trait
(05:40):
is playfulness. Being a yes and person and fostering a
space to deepen the connection you have to yourself and
other people.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Awesome and are What are the benefits of being emotionally fit?
So if somebody has high scores on these various different dimensions,
or at least some of them, what are they able
to do? What are some of the payoffs one might
see in life.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
One of the complicated things I think about emotional health
is it's a little less quantitative than physical fitness. You know,
when you go to the gym, you can measure exactly
how much weight you can lift and it's more than
last time, and there's this very data driven aspect of it,
whereas with mental health there's sort of a nebulous feeling
to it. My experience is that people with good emotional
fitness just describe their life as feeling more authentic and satisfying.
(06:30):
Their relationships feel healthier, the voice that they speak to
themselves in is kinder and more compassionate. They are able
to weather the storm of the difficulties that life throws
at them with more grace and ease. You know, it's
all those sort of indescribable things that make life feel
more satisfying to live. All of those things will get
(06:50):
better as you strengthen your emotional health.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Excellent. Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I will be back with more from Emily
and Halt with her talk of emotional fitness. Well, I
am back with Emily Anhalt, who is the author of
the brand new book Flex Your Feelings. She has a
clinical psychologist and is sharing all sorts of ways that
(07:16):
we can become more emotionally fit. So one of the
things you do in your book is you talko a
lot of different case studies, particularly like people in the workplace.
You know, managers that you've done reviews with who have
various blind spots, maybe not scoring so high on these
self awareness or mindfulness. You know, levels of your scale.
I wonder if you could talk us through some of
(07:38):
a turnaround you've seen and somebody who is able to
manage their team more effectively after working on their emotional fitness.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Sure thing. So in the book, for each trait, I
share a clinical example, and then I share what I
call an emotional push up, an actionable exercise that you
can do in that moment to strengthen your emotional health
in that area. So you want to hear one of
the examples, so I can share that in the chapter
about mindfulness, which is becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable, I'm
(08:09):
speaking about my work with a woman who really had
a lot of discomfort with uncertainty, and what she found
was that her inability to tolerate uncertainty was causing all
kinds of problems because the things she would do to
try to get certainty were more problematic and uncomfortable for
her than the uncertainty was in the first place, which
is so common. The things we do to avoid our
(08:30):
discomfort often end up causing more problems for us than
the discomfort itself. And so through our work, she learned
how to lean toward her discomfort instead of away from it,
she learned how to prove to herself that she's more
capable of handling these hard feelings than she thought. She
did experiments and showed herself, Oh, this thing that I
thought would be so intolerable is actually not as bad
(08:51):
as I thought. And there's all these benefits on the
other side that I really want to keep maximizing for.
And over time, as she learned to tolerate her discomfort
a little bit, all of these options started opening up
to her. So for her specifically, she was in sales,
and the uncertainty of whether a deal was going to
go through would push her to demand answers before people
were ready, and then they would be frustrated with her.
(09:12):
And she started to learn how to just breathe through
those moments and tolerate those feelings of discomfort long enough
to see how things naturally played out. And she saw
this ripple through her whole life. You know, her friends
who would be frustrated with her for always needing a
plan in every moment, started to feel relieved as she
was able to tolerate the uncertainty of what would happen
that night, that kind of thing. And so this is
(09:34):
just an example of these little moments, these little opportunities
we have to breathe through tough things, show ourselves we're
stronger than we think, and in that we actually strengthen
ourselves and become more able to deal with all of
the hard things we might face.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yeah, and you mentioned, you know, the emotional push ups,
the push ups that we're going to do, and many
of us are at least vaguely familiar with some of
the basic physical fitness ideas like push ups are set up.
I wonder if you could share just a few basic
emotional fitness push ups or sit ups that are things
we could try in the next day or two to
(10:10):
maybe make ourselves a little bit more emotionally fit.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Absolutely, so, you know, physical push up is just this
small physical exertion puts you a little outside of your
comfort zone so that you can grow stronger. And if
you only do one, you're probably not going to get
much stronger. But if you do a few every day,
not only will you be able to do more push ups,
but you'll also be able to do more in other
areas of life, like carry heavier groceries, pick up your kid,
(10:35):
that kind of thing. So emotional push up is anything
that puts you a little outside of your emotional comfort
zone so you can grow. And what's outside of my
emotional comfort zone might not be outside of yours. So
part of this is thinking about what makes you a
little uncomfortable and figuring out how you can lean toward it.
So some examples of emotional push ups would be if
you're someone who says yes to everything that's asked of
(10:56):
you and then you end up feeling really overwhelmed and
resentful of people, and motional push up for you might
be just saying one kind but firm no to a
small request that's made of you today, Whereas if you
tend to focus more on yourself, an emotional push up
might be to offer someone else help with a small task.
Other emotional push ups are apologize for a mistake, or
(11:19):
meditate for five minutes in the morning, or celebrate a
win instead of rushing right past it, or maybe pause
before you pour yourself a drink in the evening to
ask what feelings you might be trying to move away from.
Or an emotional pushup could just be put your phone
away after eight pm and not have your phone be
the thing that you look at until the very last minute.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Of your day.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
So one of my favorite emotional push ups to suggest
if everyone wanted to do one right now, would be
to ask for feedback. It's a really powerful thing to
get a sense of how other people feel about us.
So take out your phone and send a text to
someone in your life that says something like, Hey, I'm
working on my emotional fitness. I am hoping you can
share some feedback with me. What is one thing that
(12:01):
I am doing well as a friend, a colleague, a sibling,
a parent, whatever it might be, And what is one
thing that I could do ten percent better? And send
that text out and see what comes back. You're going
to be working on your curiosity, your self awareness, your communication,
and all of these things affect each other. So as
you work on any of the seven traits, the others
will naturally improve.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I love the ten percent better yes idea, because it's
not just like, Okay, what am I terrible at right?
You want me to do? You know that I'm really
failing at left and right as a spouse, you know, friend,
a parent, whatever else, But just what could be a
little bit better? Because most people have at least something
that they could be ten percent better in and even
if the person is generally happy, like it coaxes out
(12:45):
a little something for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
And it's easier to give ten percent better feedback too,
because it feels a little like you're just giving a
person a little suggestion, a small improvement, And so I've
found that that kind of removes the barrier to entry
for people to write back honest feedback.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And I bet a lot of people doing this though,
even if it is only a ten percent improvement, realize
that they are not very high on the defensiveness score.
I mean that they get more defensive instead of approaching
things with a sense of curiosity for sure.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And what's interesting is a lot of people are defensive
against the positive feedback. So this also helps you learn
how to take in the beautiful things that people think
about you and fold them into your ideas of yourself
so that you're not only focusing on the negative things.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I do wonder about that defensiveness though, and versus you know,
approaching things with a spirit of curiosity. Is there anything
we can do in particular on that dimension to improve
because I imagine that would be very impactful, particularly in
a workplace environment.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
For sure. One of the things that I recommend is
giving yourself a little bit of space between your defensive
feelings and the action that you take. Often when someone
gives us a piece of constructive feedback, the first thing
we feel is defensive, and so the first thing we
do is we become overly apologetic, or we deny what
they're talking about, or we tell them why they're wrong,
or we give them a piece of feedback right back.
(14:03):
And if instead we just said, all right, give me
five minutes to think about that before I respond, and
in those five minutes, you just sat quietly with yourself
and wrote down what you were feeling, and wrote down
what you were worried about, or what you think this
feedback means about you, and what actually might they be
trying to do to help you and improve with this
feedback that kind of thing. In that space, our defenses
(14:26):
tend to come down a bit and then you're going
to be able to speak from a less defensive place.
So just create that little bit of space. Just tell someone, hey,
thank you for this feedback, give me a few minutes
to think about it, and then let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And on the other side of that, you talk in
the book about complaining without blame and what this might
look like in a conversation. What are some ways we
can adopt this mindset of complaining without blame, so still
trying to get across that there's something that you might
not be happy with, but without telling the other person
that they are terrible as a result.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, I love this phrase. The idea here is if
you want to enlist someone to help you with a
problem without them feeling like you're blaming them for the problem,
you can say, hey, can I complain without blame for
a second. So, for example, let's say you and your
romantic partner have kind of just been sitting around the
house a lot lately, not really going on any dates,
and you'd like to change that, but you want to
(15:17):
prevent them from feeling like you're saying you aren't taking
me on any dates. This is a you problem. You
might say, hey, can I complain without blame for a second.
We haven't really been going out lately. Can we change that?
And now the other person is going to be able
to let their defenses down and see it as a
problem that you're working on together. It's sort of us
versus the problem instead of me versus you, and they
(15:38):
might say, yeah, you're right, we haven't really been going out.
What if we have a daily or a weekly date
night from now on and every Tuesday we go out
no matter what. That kind of thing. So it's just
a way to help people lower their defenses when you're
going to give them a piece of feedback as well.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And let's talk about playfulness, because this might be sort
of a more unexpected one that mentally healthy, emotionally fit
people have a spirit of playfulness. But what does this
wind up looking like in sort of our day to
day interactions.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, playfulness was the one that surprised me until I
realized how kind of obvious it is because play is
such an undervalued and important part of life. I read
a study ones that showed that people who play regularly
live longer by a significant number of years than people
who don't play regularly. I love the improv definition of play,
which is saying yes. And it's the idea that when
(16:30):
people come to you with an idea, you expand on
that idea and together you get somewhere that neither of
you could have gotten alone. So brainstorming is a type
of play or taking a joke way too far with
a friend, is a type of play, and so my
hope is that people start feeling the permission encouragement to
infuse more play into their daily interactions and their life.
(16:51):
Maybe you start your meetings with an icebreaker game or
an icebreaker question, or maybe you just try to say
yes and to a few more ideas that come to
you today.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
All right, well, we're going to take one more quick
ad break and then we'll be back with more about
flexing our feelings. So I am back with doctor Emily Anhalt,
who is talking about how we can become more emotionally fit,
all the way we can do our pushups and sit
ups in our daily life in order to interact better
(17:23):
with our friends, our colleagues, our family members from a
place of emotional resilience and strength. So, Emily, we always
talk about people's routines. I wonder if you have any
daily routines in your life that help you be more productive.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Sure, so I mentioned I have ADHD, and I feel
like I've developed a lot of structure in my life
to counteract that. So I do have a lot of
routines because routines kind of keep me doing what I
need to be doing. So, for example, in the morning.
I have a whole morning routine. I wake up, I
resist the urge to look at my phone as much
as I want to. I make myself a cup of tea.
I meditate for exactly five minutes because that's all my
(18:02):
ADHD brain can handle. I do a quick workout just
to get my body moving. I eat some kind of
healthy breakfast, and then I write just one line in
a journal. I have a line a day journal. So
I'm not the kind of person who could write for
half hour every day, so I challenge myself just to
write a single line about how I'm feeling that day,
(18:23):
or what I'm grateful for that day, or whatever it
might be. And I've been doing this for so many
years that now I have an idea of how I
have felt on this day for the last five or
six years, which is really cool way to see patterns
that kind of thing. And then once I've done that,
then I dive into my emails and get started in
my actual day. And this has just been a really
lovely way to make sure that I'm setting the tone
(18:44):
for my own life instead of letting my phone decide
in the morning how I'm going to feel that day.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, absolutely well. We love morning routines here on a
show called Before Breakfast. I also wonder how you tend
to structure your workday, because I guess you have lots
of different projects that you're dealing with.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
I don't have a very clear structure of my workday
because every day is different. Some days I see clients,
some days I'm teaching, some days I'm writing, some days
I'm just trying to manage all of the odds and
ends that kind of thing. But in general, I did
my doctoral research on ADHD and success, and a lot
of what I've found is the power of shifting your
(19:22):
work environment to match your work needs instead of the
other way around. And so I learned at some point
what I need in order to get work done. I
need to be in a comfortable chair. I need to
have a snack nearby. It needs to be a certain
time of day. You know, I don't do my best
work super early in the morning or super late at night,
and so my workday is a lot of me setting
up conditions to allow myself to optimize for how my
(19:44):
mind works best, and then leaning in.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
But do you generally like plan your life in weeks
like these are the days that I generally will do
X and Y or like, these are the days I'm
not seeing clients, and so that's when I'm going to
organize these projects. I'm just curious how you plan it out.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I actually plan my life in half hour segments. You
would really laugh if you saw my calendar. It's very specific.
But yes, there are certain days that I see clients.
There are certain days that I, you know, focus more
on getting emails all of that kind of thing done,
and there's chaos and structure at the same time. I'd
say that really defines my work style.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Yeah, exactly, because you know, we do. We have talked
a little bit about, you know, neurodivergent personalities on this show.
We've had a couple of guests who have also talked
about their experience with ADHD and the like. I'm curious
how you feel about ADHD and productivity. I think a
lot of people are coming to new realizations that these
two things are not completely at odds as we might
(20:40):
have thought in the past. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
I mean, my research really showed that ADHD is just
a different way of being in the world, a different
way of working in our systems were not necessarily created
with that way of being in mind, and so you
have to be willing to restructure your environment a little
bit if you can. So, for example, there's a whole
lot out there about how procrastination is really a bad
thing and you should be fighting your urge to procrastinate.
(21:04):
And I have found that I need to procrastinate because
the anxiety of an impending deadline is what allows me
to kick into gear and get things done. And so
instead of trying to get myself not to be a procrastinator, instead,
I've worked on learning how to procrastinate effectively figuring out
how long something's actually going to take, and not waiting
so long that I can't get it done in time.
(21:25):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Okay, Well, so one thing we always talk about on
this show is what is something you have done recently
to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Oh? I love that question. Uh, can I share three
things that come to mind?
Speaker 1 (21:40):
We will take three.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Okay, So the first one is I have this thing
called the gratitude trio, which is that every day I
try to very quickly think of three things I'm grateful for.
One thing I'm grateful for about myself, Like, oh, my
body is working and it allows me to move. One
thing I'm grateful for about someone else in my life, like, oh,
this friend reached out to me who haven't spoke too
in a while, and it really made my day. And
(22:02):
one thing I'm grateful for about the world in general, like, oh,
it's about to be stone fruit season and that's exciting
and I'm going to get to eat all my favorite fruit.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
So doing a.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Gratitude trio every day really takes it from great to awesome.
The second one sounds really simple, but just taking a
moment to revel in the fact that you are alive.
I think sometimes we take for granted how incredible it
is that we've won this cosmic lottery and we get
to exist, and it's this beautiful, profound truth. So sometimes
I'll just take a really slow breath and think, holy shit,
(22:32):
I'm alive. What an incredible thing. And then finally, my
third one is send a text to someone in your life,
letting them know that you're thinking about them. There's something
so nice about just maintaining those connections. It will make
people's day, it will spark conversations, and it reminds me,
you know, wow, I have community, I have love, in
my life. There are other people going about their days
(22:53):
right now. I'm not really in anything alone here, and
that also takes things from great to awesome for me.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I love it. Yeah, the cosmic part is is fun
for me. I have these random obsessions and lately I've
been obsessed with this. Be a little detour here, but
the post the end Permian extinction two hundred and fifty
two million years ago, ninety percent of species on the
Earth were wiped out. You know, people are more familiar
(23:19):
with the extinction that ended the dinosaurs sixty six million
years ago, but there were there were numerous extinctions through
Earth history, and I was just sort of like, wow,
ninety percent, Like isn't it nice that we came back right? Like,
you know, it could have been one hundred percent, or
you know, maybe the ninety percent, the ten percent that
lasted could have been ten percent that led somewhere else
other than to eventually, you know, primates that developed the
(23:41):
ability to you know, use fire and walk upright and
listen to time management podcasts and also starts the wondering.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Really though, our existence is such a miracle, and I
think there's something really lovely about taking a second to
appreciate it all right.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
We made it through. Our ancestors made it through the
post Permian extinction, so it's good to know to know.
So Emily, where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Absolutely find me on socials. I'm on all the platforms.
My handle is at dr Emily an Halt. My website
is dr Emilyandhalt dot com. And I would love to
stay in touch about and hear about everyone's emotional fitness journeys.
And oh, grab a copy of my book Flex your
feelings on anywhere that you would find.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Books excellent, Well, please do that, and thank you Emily
for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening. If
you have feedback, we know that feedback is important and
I will take your feedback. You can tell me how
to improve by ten percent or fifty percent or whatever
else you want to let me improve by. But if
you have feedback for me about this or any other episode,
you can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam
(24:39):
dot com. And in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions,
ideas or feedback, You can reach me at Laura at
(25:00):
Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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