June 2, 2025 • 34 mins
Dr. Emily Anhalt is a clinical psychologist and the author of Flex Your Feelings. As the co-founder of Coa, the world’s first-ever emotional fitness gym, she introduces a new kind of workout that strengthens our emotional muscles. In this episode. Dr. Emily. shares how we can build traits like mindfulness, vulnerability, and curiosity—not just in theory, but through daily practice. From handling setbacks with intention to becoming more self-aware and less reactive, we talk through practical ways to expand our resilience and deepen our emotional capacity in everyday life.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Today on the bright side, we're talking emotional fitness. Psychologists
and author of Flex Your Feelings, Doctor Emily Anhalt is
here to show us how characteristics like mindfulness, self awareness, curiosity,
and resilience aren't just fixed traits. They're actually muscles we
can train through discipline and exercise.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So many of us feel like life is happening to us.
It doesn't feel like we're necessarily making choices, and actually
self awareness shows you that you are designing your life,
and the more you understand about that, the more you
can do it in an intentional way.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm simone voice, and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. When you hear the word fitness, what comes
to mind probably your body right weights, cardio, maybe that
peloton in your house or sweaty jim bench. Physical fitness
(01:00):
is what we've all been taught to focus on. But honestly,
it wasn't until I discovered the work of today's guests
that I realized fitness doesn't always have to be physical.
It can be emotional too. Doctor Emily Anhalt is the
author of Flex Your Feelings, A Guide to cultivating these
seven essential traits of emotional fitness, and doctor Emily is
(01:21):
an expert in this space because she's a clinical psychologist
with over a decade of experience helping entrepreneurs, founders, and
high performing executives build emotional strength and learn how to
better manage stress, and now she's sharing those secrets with us.
Doctor Emily is a co founder of CoA, one of
the first ever gyms for mental health that focuses on
(01:42):
hyper practical tools to help improve mental and emotional well being.
We're talking live and on demand classes led by therapists
and super specific coursework like strengthening emotionally fit leadership for
BIPOC leaders. What I love about today's conversation with doctor
Emily is that it's super We're practical. You can literally
walk away from this episode with exercises to strengthen characteristics
(02:06):
like empathy, compassion, and playfulness. You want to be more
curious and less defensive, there's a workout for that. You
want to be more resilient and able to bounce forward
from life setbacks. There's a workout for that. You want
to be more self aware so you can confront your
blind spots and truly design your own life well. Doctor
Emily's got a work out for that too. Whether you're
(02:27):
processing a breakup, navigating workplace drama, or fighting off a
midlife crisis, Doctor Emily is giving us the research backed
tools and language to flex those feelings and gain emotional stamina.
Here's my conversation with doctor Emily Anhalt. Doctor Emily Anhlt,
(02:50):
Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You are the co founder of CoA. It's a home
for therapy, community and emotional fitness classes. I love the
phrasing of that class is in session. Can you describe
what it means to be emotionally fit?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Absolutely so. Emotional fitness is an ongoing, proactive practice of
working on your mental and emotional health. I liken it
a little bit to physical fitness, where a lot of
people think if they're not sick, that means they're healthy.
But if you talk to someone with good physical fitness,
someone who eats well, exercises sleeps enough, they'll tell you
just because you're not ill does not mean you're fit.
(03:31):
And the same is really true with our mental and
emotional health. You don't necessarily need to be struggling with
daily panic attacks to be working on your mental and
emotional health, and so I wanted to help people figure
out how to do emotional pushups and work on their
mental health in a more proactive way.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So, as a mental health professional, what was the spark
that caused you to reframe mental health through this lens
of fitness.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, I grew up in Silicon Valley and I did
my training with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I found
that we had that very pathologizing perspective about mental health,
where people were either mentally ill or mentally healthy. And
my experience with entrepreneurs is that most of them are
high performing people. They're doing mostly pretty well, but that
(04:14):
doesn't necessarily mean that they are in top emotional sheep.
They still want to level up their emotional life, the
relationship they have to themselves and other people. And so
I wanted to find a slightly less stigmatized way to
think and talk about mental health. And it feels like
these days people understand how important physical fitness is, and
that wasn't always true. You know, we didn't have a
(04:36):
lot of workout classes available to us twenty years ago,
and now it's really common. And my goal is to
do the same thing with emotional fitness is to make
it just an everyday, not even that interesting practice, because
it's something everyone's doing that we're working on our mental
health the way that we would go to the gym.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So it's mental health for the ice bath.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Crowd totally, but really it's for everyone.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It is for everyone, because as I was reading your book,
I was like Wow, I was just highlighting and adding
notes to the side and just thinking, gosh, this is
so practical and it's so easy to implement, So I
can't wait to dive in. Your book covers seven essential
traits of emotional fitness mindfulness, curiosity, self awareness, resilience, empathy, communication,
(05:22):
and playfulness. Now, the way that you described mindfulness, doctor Emily,
completely changed my perspective on it. You say it actually
has more to do with discomfort than anything else.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Right, So there are a lot of ways to define mindfulness,
but I have found that the most powerful way I
can think about it is becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable.
So much of what we do in life is us
trying to move away from our discomfort. But so often
the things that we do to avoid our discomfort end
up being more uncomfortable and a worse for us. Than
(05:55):
the original thing we're trying to avoid. Like picture the
person who's uncomfortable having tough conversations and so they just
avoid talking about tough things, and then later they're resentful
and in these horrible relationship dynamics with all of these
unsaid issues. So for me, mindfulness is about coming back
to a present moment and sitting in our discomfort long
(06:16):
enough to make the best choices instead of just the
most comfortable choices.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
But that's not as comfortable as just, you know, observing
the beauty of life around you, which is I feel
like a lot of the messaging that we hear about mindfulness.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
For sure, but I mean in a way, it's saying
the same thing. Because mindfulness in the traditional sense is
about coming back to the present moment. And I think
often when we are not in the present moment, it's
because the present moment is uncomfortable. So the more we're
able to tolerate discomfort, the more present we can be
in our lives, the more we can actually live our
life with intention.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Well, you've really made mindfulness the cornerstone of all these
emotional fitness traits, and you write in order to get
emotionally fit, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable.
And I love this line from your book. You said, quote,
every single thing you want in your work and personal
life lives on the other side of discomfort. Can you
(07:15):
walk us through a mindfulness push up that we can
try in order to build up our tolerance for discomfort?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
For sure, So what makes me a little uncomfortable is
going to be different than what makes you a little uncomfortable.
So a push up for me will look a little
different than it might for you. So I'm actually going
to walk us through it, and maybe we can each
think of an example to show that they might be different.
But the first step of a push up in the
mindfulness category is think of one thing that makes you
(07:44):
just a little more uncomfortable than it seems to make
other people. And by this I don't mean something that
makes you panic or something where you don't feel safe.
This is just something that makes you a little uncomfortable.
So for some people it might be public speaking, For others,
it might be having tough conversation or saying no. For me,
the example I'll use is I'm not very comfortable being bored.
(08:07):
I don't like sitting still. My mind always wants to
be working, so I'm on my phone a lot when
I should probably just be still with myself. So what's
one thing for you that makes you just a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Something that makes me uncomfortable is saying no.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Saying no, Okay, that's such a good one, all right.
So once everyone has a sense of which type of
discomfort they're going to work with, the second step is
to think about what you do to avoid your discomfort.
What are you doing to move away from that feeling.
So for me to avoid being bored, I'm usually scrolling
on my phone or doing something mindless just to not
have to be still with my own thoughts. So what
(08:43):
do you do to avoid saying no?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I'll dance around the know and I'll kind of fill
it in with other rationales. I'll try to just avoid
actually confronting the know and the truth totally.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think that's a really common thing. People say yes
when they want to say no, or they say oh maybe,
and then they never get back to it.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We all do things like this.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
So then the third step is to think, what are
the consequences of this avoidance? In what ways are you
actually paying a higher price by not leaning into your
discomfort than you would by just dealing with it. So
in my case, I end up feeling really brain dead
and gross scrolling on my phone for an hour, versus
how I would probably feel if I just took a
(09:27):
few breaths and sat still with my thoughts. So what
do you think the consequences might be for you? Kind
of dancing around and not saying no when you want
to that I.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Have to then do clean up work after. I have
to then have an additional conversation, which requires more emotional labor,
and say, actually, I didn't want to do that. I
should have declined on the spot totally.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And I can imagine maybe sometimes you start to feel
resentful or overwhelmed of these things that you would have
liked to say no to, but you didn't. So those
are great examples. So then the final step is to
think of a sh shock absorber, or one little thing
that allows us to sit with that discomfort, to practice
leaning toward that discomfort. So for me, I challenge myself
(10:09):
when I am in quick situations of boredom, like at
a red light or waiting online. I challenge myself not
to be on my phone in those moments, and if
I find myself feeling bored, I will literally take three
slow breaths and just remind myself I can handle it,
and I'll look around and I'll try to name some
interesting things that I'm seeing. So these are the ways
(10:30):
I've dealt with my discomfort in those moments. What do
you think you could do to take a small step
toward saying no? And that's what you want to say.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I actually am curious to hear your prescription for this problem.
What would you suggest I do in order to take
baby steps toward saying no?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So one suggestion might be saying, let me think about that,
and I'll get back to you in ten minutes or
one day or one week, whatever makes sense, and then
in that time, really checking in with yourself, what do
I want to say? What am I afraid will happen
if I just say no? How can I say it
in a way that feels like it aligns with my
values and is still really clear? But by giving yourself
(11:08):
that time, by saying let me think about that, you
have some time to wrap your mind around the discomfort
versus feeling like you have to just say no right
in that moment.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Can I add a little complication in there.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
So something that makes me uncomfortable is when I say
something like that, I actually have been getting better about
kind of putting a comma in whatever the conversation is
and saying, let me think about this. I find that
sometimes that makes other people uncomfortable, and they will they
seem uneasy like, and they start to kind of rush you. Well, okay,
(11:42):
well when are you going to get back to me?
And when am I going to get an answer? How
do I how do I navigate that?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well, you're naming another type of discomfort a lot of
us feel, which is we are not very comfortable with
other people's discomfort, and it can feel like it's our
job to fix it or make them feel better. And
I think part of this whole idea around mindfulness is
that we could all benefit from learning how to deal
with our own discomfort a little better. So I think
I would challenge you in those moments to remind yourself
(12:10):
that it's not your job to keep other people from
feeling uncomfortable with your choices and your needs. It's their job.
But what you can do is model that you are
comfortable in your own self in that moment, So if
you see them being like, oh, well, when you're going
to get back to me, you can say, ooh, I know,
I know it'd be nice to have an answer right now,
but I want to give you a really authentic answer.
(12:31):
So give me ten minutes or give me a day,
and I'll get back to you and then, you know,
trust them to be their adult self and deal with
whatever that makes them feel.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Bright side, bessies, are you listening to this? This is
incredible therapy right now. I mean I should stop this
podcast and pay money because that was incredible, the work
that we just did just now, that was so helpful
to me.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Let's go getting emotionally swollen.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back. Okay. Next, I want to talk about curiosity.
We often think of curiosity as something we either have
or we don't. You know, we're born with this curious
itch or we're not. How is that mindset holding us back?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So I define curiosity as pursuing growth over defensiveness. So
when someone comes to you with tough feedback, or when
you're faced with a difficult situation, do you get defensive?
Do you blame other people or become overly apologetic or
shift kind of away from yourself, or do you lean
(13:40):
in and ask questions and see what you can learn
from the experience and figure out how you can grow
from the experience. That, to me, is what curiosity is
all about. It's having that learning and growth mindset. Wow,
and it can be practiced. It is a muscle that
can get stronger. None of us like hearing bad feedback.
You know, it doesn't feel good for any of us.
(14:00):
But the more you take in, the less essentially intolerable
it can feel.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Curiosity is pursuing growth over defensiveness. I've never heard anyone
define it that way. That's really eye opening.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
I see curiosity as the opposite of defensiveness because when
we're defensive, we're working hard to keep difficult information out,
and when we're curious, we're actively asking to take information in.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Right, So calling it in.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It's antidote in a way.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Like if someone came to you and said, hey, I
really didn't like how that presentation went, your defensive self
wants to say, well, you know, I didn't have all
the information I needed or I'm so sorry I should
have done better, and the curious self says, okay, let
me take a breath and ask, well, what could have
been different? How could I show it better next time?
What did it feel like for you? You know, it's
(14:53):
not feeling like you have to fix something right away,
it's just asking questions to learn more.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
You just pointed out an overlooked aspect of curiosity, which
is extending curiosity to ourselves. How could that take shape
in a curiosity push up?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
So the best push up I can suggest for this
is to ask for feedback. Ask for feedback often, ask
for it proactively. A lot of people in your life
are not going to tell you what they really think
about you unless you ask, And so the pushup I
would prescribe for everyone is take out your phone right now,
pull up a text message and address it to someone
(15:32):
who you spend time with, you collaborate with, and whose
perspective you respect, and send them a message that says
something like, Hey, I'm working on my curiosity. I'm working
on taking in feedback, and I'm curious if you would
be willing to share what is one thing I'm doing
well as a friend or a colleague or a sister
or a boss, and what is one thing I could
(15:53):
do ten percent better? And send that message off and
just wait and see what comes back to you. You
might be really surprised. And when you do get that response,
pay attention to how you feel. Does your stomach clench
up when you see what you could do better? Does
it feel like you don't want it to be true?
Or do you tell yourself, oh, yeah, I already knew that.
Or can you sit with it for a second and
(16:14):
really take it in, let your defenses come down a bit,
and see what it might have to teach you.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
What I'm hearing from you right now reminds me of
another one of your essential traits of emotional fitness, which
is self awareness. Yes, and you offer up some research
in the book Doctor Emily that really had me giggling.
There's this statistic that you share that says that most
people believe they are self aware, but studies show only
fifteen percent of people are actually self aware. Yeah, which
(16:41):
means they're not self aware at all. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I mean, most of us are not as self aware
as we think. And that's because so I know everything
I do know about myself, which feels like a lot,
and I can see some of the things that other
people don't know about themselves. And so in contrast, it
feels like I know more about me than you do
about you. But what I don't know are the things
(17:04):
I don't know about myself, the things that other people
see that I don't see. There's so much you don't know,
you don't know, and so that you're so right that
curiosity leads right into self awareness because once you lower
your defenses and you ask for information to come in,
self awareness is you integrating that information and learning more
about yourself, peeking into those blind spots and figuring out
(17:26):
how you might be repeating patterns or showing up in
a way that you didn't really intend to.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You mentioned feedback as a tool for strengthening curiosity. You
also say that we can build self awareness through feedback.
That's one element. Another is through introspection and also therapy.
These are all tools that we can have in our
self awareness toolkit. What are the questions that we should
be asking ourselves throughout each of these processes.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So when it comes to therapy, I think therapy is
really misunderstood and still very stigmatized. A lot of people
wait until things are really tough to go to therapy.
They wait till they're in crisis and don't get me wrong,
that's a great time to get support. But if you
go when things are mostly fine, then you can do
this more proactive kind of work. You can understand your
patterns and learn who you are in relationships, and you
(18:14):
can prevent a lot of the struggles that might have
become a problem later. So the question to ask yourself
there is is it worth a try? Do I want
to know what I don't know? So therapy is great
for that. The other thing I recommend is journaling introspection,
and that is because thoughts and feelings tend to be
different inside our heads whirling around than they are when
(18:36):
we write them down on paper. We create a little
space between ourselves and them that can be super helpful.
And it's also this record keeper. You know, when you're
feeling depressed or down, your brain will convince you that
you have never felt good before and you never will again.
And journaling is a way to see, oh wait, just
a week ago, I felt actually pretty good. I had
a great day. Maybe things aren't as dire as I thought.
(18:57):
I've been keeping a journal that's just one line a day,
and you can literally type into Google line a day
journal and it just prompts you each day to write
one line about how you're feeling. But I've been doing
it for five years, so I know how I have
felt on this day over the past five years, and
it's pretty wild to see the patterns that show up, like, oh,
(19:18):
I'm more creative in the spring. Maybe I should start
more projects in the spring. Or huh, every year right
before Thanksgiving, I'm a little anxious. Maybe that's because I'm
seeing my family and things are coming up. That's good
to know. So that's a really powerful practice as well.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
You're collecting data, one hundred percent self data. So once
we start that process of holding up the mirror, how
will we start to see the power of self awareness
in our lives.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So the things that you're not aware of are still
affecting the choices that you're making. So we have all
kinds of complicated dynamics from our past. We talk to
ourselves in a particular way. We have beliefs about what
we do and how worthy we are of things, and
what's possible for us that we're not fully aware of
(20:05):
the sort of subconscious ideas, and those ideas are sometimes
in the driver's seat. So if deep down you don't
believe that you are worthy of succeeding, and then you're
up for a promotion. Without realizing you're doing it, you
might steer away from that promotion. Self awareness means that
(20:26):
you start to shine light on these things and you
have more of an idea of why you are this way,
and so you can then make a more conscious choice.
So if I have the self awareness to know that
sometimes I don't feel worthy of success, then when a
promotion comes around, I'll have the self awareness to say,
all right, some part of me doesn't feel like I
deserve this, but I want to step into this. I
(20:46):
want to work on my self confidence, so I'm going
to go for it. There's this incredible quote I love
by psychologist Carl Jung, and he said, until you make
the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you
will call it. And what he's saying there is so
many of us feel like life is happening to us.
It doesn't feel like we're necessarily making choices. And actually,
(21:10):
self awareness shows you that you are designing your life,
and the more you understand about that, the more you
can do it in an intentional way.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That is so good. Self awareness allows you to design
your life. Yes, and that's what we all want to
do for sure. Yeah, so good, Okay, moving down this
list of traits of emotional fitness. Resilience is an interesting
one because I've observed a backlash to it in recent years.
(21:42):
Curious if you've picked up on that too, and can
you bust some common myths about what resilience really means?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
For sure? And I feel you on the pushback around it.
One thing I wish the world understood is that we
should not be telling people to be resilient if what
we mean is to suffer more quietly. This is something
that I feel like there's all of these entities that
are in power that are telling people, hey, just pull
yourself up by your bootstraps, be more resilient. But they're
(22:10):
not really saying be more resilient. They're saying, stop making
noise and stop bringing attention to problematic systems. And that's
not what resilience is about. Resilience is about bouncing forward
through difficulties and setbacks and failures.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
What do you mean by bouncing forward?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yes, so I say bouncing forward instead of bouncing back,
Because the difficult things we experience change us. We never
go back to being the person we were before we
went through a hard thing, So that shouldn't be our goal.
Resilience is about using our experiences as a springboard to
move forward and learn and grow. And I guess one
(22:49):
of the myths that I would want to bust is
this idea that everything is for the best. I don't
think everything always has to be for the best. It's
okay if a difficult experience didn't make you stronger. It's
okay if you're not grateful for the horrible things you experienced.
Sometimes things are just really painful and tough, and that's okay.
(23:10):
Surviving is enough, and resilience is sometimes just about continuing
to put one foot in front of the other.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I'm so glad you said that, because I know there's
someone listening who needed to hear that today. What are
some common obstacles to resilience?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
You know, what's an interesting thing about resilience is a
lot of the most resilient people out there are resilient
because they had to be. They went through a lot
of hard things really early and they were forced to
develop an ability to keep moving forward. And so sometimes
an obstacle to resilience is just that you don't have
confidence in yourself to go through hard things if you
(23:45):
don't feel like you've been through a lot of hard things.
Other times it can just feel like if you are
sitting still in your pain, that you're not being resilient.
Maybe that's another myth I'd want to bust is. I
think some people think that resilient people are the ones
who move forward with a smile on their face. Everything's
always fine and they're not going to let anything hold
them back. And to me, sure, resilience comes from being
(24:09):
able to feel your feelings and acknowledge the things that
are hard and then decide that you're going to keep
moving from there.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I just had a conversation with someone on our show,
Sarah Spain, about her fear of failure, and she told
me that she made a lot of decisions in her
life from this position of a fear of failure. Is
there a connection between resilience and overcoming a fear of failure?
And if so, how can we strengthen that resilience muscle
(24:38):
to push past that?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I mean, I would say that a resilient person is
not someone without fear. A resilient person is someone who
does the thing anyway. So perhaps it's not that you
shouldn't fear failure, it's that you should decide that even
though the idea of failure is scary, you're going to
go after it anyway. This feels like it throws back
to the mindfulness trait, which is if the fear of
(25:03):
failing makes you uncomfortable, you might not go after anything
because you don't want to fail. And so mindfulness might
be saying, yeah, if I fail, that's going to be hard,
but not trying is going to be its own kind
of difficult. Regret hangs a lot heavier than failure, I believe,
you know. I think people regret the things they don't
do a lot more than they regret the things that
(25:24):
they do try. So yeah, I would say, you know,
power to all the people who are moving forward despite
fear with fear. To me, it's not about getting rid
of it.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
We'll be back with more after this quick break, and
we're back with doctor Emily Anhalt. I want to kind
of zoom out now that we've talked about these essential
traits of emotional fitness and think about the implications in
the real world and the work world. So you species
(26:00):
and working with entrepreneurs and leaders. You mentioned that you
kind of got your start in Silicon Valley, and according
to your website, seventy percent of employee mental health is
shaped by how their leaders behave so with so much
power and nowadays seeing so much power concentrated in fewer hands,
how can leaders in the workplace create a supportive environment
(26:23):
for people across race, gender, ability, and other identities relying
on these principles in your book.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It's a big question. I don't know there's one perfect answer,
but I always say start at the top, start with leadership.
If you are a leader and you want to create
an environment where people feel like they can work on
their emotional fitness, you better be working on your emotional fitness.
People are going to do as you do, not as
you say, And I compare it a lot to being
a parent. I know it's not exactly the same, but
(26:54):
like a parent, employees are going to look to a
leader to understand how they should be showing up what's acceptable.
You know, if a leader says you should care about
your mental health, but there's no mental health care included
in the insurance, and you're not allowed to take a
mental health day, and when you ask to have a
weekly spot for your therapy. You're denied, then people are
(27:16):
not going to think that it's actually safe to work
on their mental health. But when a leader says, hey, everyone,
just so you know, Thursday's at two pm, I have
my therapy. So that's going to be on my calendar.
And here are the ways that I'm showing up for
my emotional fitness. I would like feedback in a regular
and ongoing way. And here's how I'm going to try
to create a playful environment. When leaders model it, other
(27:37):
people are much more likely to step.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
In leading by example. Yes, when I think about emotions
in the workplace, I think about how women have historically
had our emotions weaponized against us and use to justify,
you know, reasons why women shouldn't be in positions of leadership.
And when you look at the research, it's just so
(28:00):
not true. Traits like empathy and communication traits that you
discuss in your work are actually the traits that make
us excel as leaders. So I'd love to reframe this
with you. How can women use emotional fitness to their
advantage in the workplace?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
You know, there's a way in which women have been
using emotional fitness to their advantage in the workplace and
all kinds of ways in the sense that it has
made us better at our job for a really long time.
We have not always been held up or celebrated for that.
But I do think that women have perhaps more permission
from society to be emotional creatures in general, even as
(28:41):
we're penalized for it in the workplace. It's a complicated
dox there. Yeah, yeah, same with how you know, men
are told anger is the only feeling you're allowed to have,
but then we come down on them when they're angry.
You know, we're all kind of struggling with these paradoxical
expectations of society for sure. But what I would say
to women is one find your community. Women need other women.
(29:03):
We need to feel lifted up by people who get it,
and to do the same thing lift other women up.
I think sometimes it can feel like success is a
pie and there's only so much to go around, and
we each have to be really careful to get as
much as we need for ourselves. But I have found
that actually, as you lift other people up, you will
be carried up with them. So support other women and
(29:26):
then keep advocating. You know, I'm just I'm so impressed
with the women who have said even though I might
be penalized for this, I believe in it, so I'm
going to do it anyway. I really celebrate those women,
and I try to be one of those women. So,
you know, I wish I had a perfect answer for
how to take down the patriarchy with emotional fitness, but
we can all just do a push up at a
(29:46):
time and hope that we're moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well. Also, to be fair, a lot of us have
had experience working under women who are emotionally unfit. Yeah,
it exists across all genders totally. So let's say someone
listening right now is working with or under someone who
is emotionally unfit. What can they do to support themselves
(30:10):
in that environment?
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah. I have a lot of people who'll come to
me and say, how do I get my partner to
go to therapy or how do I make my boss
work on their emotional fitness? And the tough thing is
we can't really make anyone else do anything. Therapy does
not work if the person doesn't want to be there.
No one can lift your weights for you. If you
go to the gym and you're not willing to lift
your own weights, you're not going to get stronger. So similarly,
(30:32):
we can't kind of, you know, force our boss to
lift their emotional weights. What I have found is the
most effective thing is do your own work and be
really transparent about it wherever you can work on your
own emotional fitness, and then to anyone who will listen
and say, wow, look at all these incredible benefits that
I've gotten from doing this work. Because other people will
(30:54):
see that and feel more inspired to do that work themselves.
And then a big part of a motiontional fitness is boundaries.
And ultimately, if you work in an environment where the
people you're working under are not emotionally fit and are
making the environment feel unsafe for you, you don't really
get to control them, but you do get to make
choices for yourself. You can step into your agency and
(31:15):
say how much of this am I willing to tolerate,
what are my other options, and what is ultimately the
best choice for me moving forward.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I want to end our conversation by talking about playfulness.
I really appreciate the balance that you brought to this book,
because the last trait of your emotional fitness regimen is playfulness?
Why is that so important?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, play is so undervalued and I think somewhat misunderstood
these days. A lot of people think about it as
something mostly for kids. Or when I ask people about
the last time they played, they'll tell me about a
sports game or a video game or a board game,
and those are great types of play. But I really
love the improv definition of play, which is that when
someone comes to you with an idea, you don't say, well, yes,
(32:05):
but and you don't even just say yes. You say yes,
and you meet them in their idea, you expand on
their idea, and together you get somewhere that neither of
you could have gotten alone. So when you think about
it this way, brainstorming is a type of play. Or
taking a joke too far with a friend is a
type of play. Anything that sort of removes constraints u
(32:27):
lets you think big and focus a little less on
the end goal and more on the journey is play.
And we forget how immensely important this is in our lives.
And in fact, I read one study that showed that
people who play regularly live longer by a significant number
of years than people who don't play regularly. That's how
important it is to our well being, so we have
(32:49):
to weave it into our life more. We have to
actively play Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I didn't know that. Now that's going to be one
of my favorite statistics. Okay, finally, Dot Emily, we like
to ask this to all of our guests on the
bright side. What's an area of your life where you're
seeing the bright side lately?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
You know, I feel the bright side every time I'm
with community. I think there are so many of our
relationships that are being replaced by technology these days, and
it's so tempting to really live in this world of
technology and we forget how important real heart to heart,
person to person interactions are for our mental and emotional
(33:31):
and really physical health. So anytime I'm with my people,
I'm feeling the bright side.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yes, I totally agree with you. Amen to that, Doctor Emily.
This has been fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Thank you so much for having me. You are an
incredible host. This is a lovely conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Doctor Emily Anhalt is a clinical psychologist and co founder
of the mental health startup CoA, the Gym for Mental Health.
Her book Flex Your Feelings Train your Brain to do
well at these seven Traits of Emotional Fitness is out now.
The bright Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and
iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
(34:12):
me Simone Boyce. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our
producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, and Darby Masters. Our
production assistant is Joya Putnoy. Acasts executive producers are Jenny
Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are
the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry is the
(34:34):
executive producer for iHeart Podcasts. Tim Pealazola is our showrunner.
Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Today on the bright side, we're talking emotional fitness. Psychologists
and author of Flex Your Feelings, Doctor Emily Anhalt is
here to show us how characteristics like mindfulness, self awareness, curiosity,
and resilience aren't just fixed traits. They're actually muscles we
can train through discipline and exercise.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
So many of us feel like life is happening to us.
It doesn't feel like we're necessarily making choices, and actually
self awareness shows you that you are designing your life,
and the more you understand about that, the more you
can do it in an intentional way.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm simone voice, and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. When you hear the word fitness, what comes
to mind probably your body right weights, cardio, maybe that
peloton in your house or sweaty jim bench. Physical fitness
(01:00):
is what we've all been taught to focus on. But honestly,
it wasn't until I discovered the work of today's guests
that I realized fitness doesn't always have to be physical.
It can be emotional too. Doctor Emily Anhalt is the
author of Flex Your Feelings, A Guide to cultivating these
seven essential traits of emotional fitness, and doctor Emily is
(01:21):
an expert in this space because she's a clinical psychologist
with over a decade of experience helping entrepreneurs, founders, and
high performing executives build emotional strength and learn how to
better manage stress, and now she's sharing those secrets with us.
Doctor Emily is a co founder of CoA, one of
the first ever gyms for mental health that focuses on
(01:42):
hyper practical tools to help improve mental and emotional well being.
We're talking live and on demand classes led by therapists
and super specific coursework like strengthening emotionally fit leadership for
BIPOC leaders. What I love about today's conversation with doctor
Emily is that it's super We're practical. You can literally
walk away from this episode with exercises to strengthen characteristics
(02:06):
like empathy, compassion, and playfulness. You want to be more
curious and less defensive, there's a workout for that. You
want to be more resilient and able to bounce forward
from life setbacks. There's a workout for that. You want
to be more self aware so you can confront your
blind spots and truly design your own life well. Doctor
Emily's got a work out for that too. Whether you're
(02:27):
processing a breakup, navigating workplace drama, or fighting off a
midlife crisis, Doctor Emily is giving us the research backed
tools and language to flex those feelings and gain emotional stamina.
Here's my conversation with doctor Emily Anhalt. Doctor Emily Anhlt,
(02:50):
Welcome to the bright Side.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You are the co founder of CoA. It's a home
for therapy, community and emotional fitness classes. I love the
phrasing of that class is in session. Can you describe
what it means to be emotionally fit?
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Absolutely so. Emotional fitness is an ongoing, proactive practice of
working on your mental and emotional health. I liken it
a little bit to physical fitness, where a lot of
people think if they're not sick, that means they're healthy.
But if you talk to someone with good physical fitness,
someone who eats well, exercises sleeps enough, they'll tell you
just because you're not ill does not mean you're fit.
(03:31):
And the same is really true with our mental and
emotional health. You don't necessarily need to be struggling with
daily panic attacks to be working on your mental and
emotional health, and so I wanted to help people figure
out how to do emotional pushups and work on their
mental health in a more proactive way.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So, as a mental health professional, what was the spark
that caused you to reframe mental health through this lens
of fitness.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, I grew up in Silicon Valley and I did
my training with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I found
that we had that very pathologizing perspective about mental health,
where people were either mentally ill or mentally healthy. And
my experience with entrepreneurs is that most of them are
high performing people. They're doing mostly pretty well, but that
(04:14):
doesn't necessarily mean that they are in top emotional sheep.
They still want to level up their emotional life, the
relationship they have to themselves and other people. And so
I wanted to find a slightly less stigmatized way to
think and talk about mental health. And it feels like
these days people understand how important physical fitness is, and
that wasn't always true. You know, we didn't have a
(04:36):
lot of workout classes available to us twenty years ago,
and now it's really common. And my goal is to
do the same thing with emotional fitness is to make
it just an everyday, not even that interesting practice, because
it's something everyone's doing that we're working on our mental
health the way that we would go to the gym.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So it's mental health for the ice bath.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Crowd totally, but really it's for everyone.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It is for everyone, because as I was reading your book,
I was like Wow, I was just highlighting and adding
notes to the side and just thinking, gosh, this is
so practical and it's so easy to implement, So I
can't wait to dive in. Your book covers seven essential
traits of emotional fitness mindfulness, curiosity, self awareness, resilience, empathy, communication,
(05:22):
and playfulness. Now, the way that you described mindfulness, doctor Emily,
completely changed my perspective on it. You say it actually
has more to do with discomfort than anything else.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Right, So there are a lot of ways to define mindfulness,
but I have found that the most powerful way I
can think about it is becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable.
So much of what we do in life is us
trying to move away from our discomfort. But so often
the things that we do to avoid our discomfort end
up being more uncomfortable and a worse for us. Than
(05:55):
the original thing we're trying to avoid. Like picture the
person who's uncomfortable having tough conversations and so they just
avoid talking about tough things, and then later they're resentful
and in these horrible relationship dynamics with all of these
unsaid issues. So for me, mindfulness is about coming back
to a present moment and sitting in our discomfort long
(06:16):
enough to make the best choices instead of just the
most comfortable choices.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
But that's not as comfortable as just, you know, observing
the beauty of life around you, which is I feel
like a lot of the messaging that we hear about mindfulness.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
For sure, but I mean in a way, it's saying
the same thing. Because mindfulness in the traditional sense is
about coming back to the present moment. And I think
often when we are not in the present moment, it's
because the present moment is uncomfortable. So the more we're
able to tolerate discomfort, the more present we can be
in our lives, the more we can actually live our
life with intention.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Well, you've really made mindfulness the cornerstone of all these
emotional fitness traits, and you write in order to get
emotionally fit, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable.
And I love this line from your book. You said, quote,
every single thing you want in your work and personal
life lives on the other side of discomfort. Can you
(07:15):
walk us through a mindfulness push up that we can
try in order to build up our tolerance for discomfort?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
For sure, So what makes me a little uncomfortable is
going to be different than what makes you a little uncomfortable.
So a push up for me will look a little
different than it might for you. So I'm actually going
to walk us through it, and maybe we can each
think of an example to show that they might be different.
But the first step of a push up in the
mindfulness category is think of one thing that makes you
(07:44):
just a little more uncomfortable than it seems to make
other people. And by this I don't mean something that
makes you panic or something where you don't feel safe.
This is just something that makes you a little uncomfortable.
So for some people it might be public speaking, For others,
it might be having tough conversation or saying no. For me,
the example I'll use is I'm not very comfortable being bored.
(08:07):
I don't like sitting still. My mind always wants to
be working, so I'm on my phone a lot when
I should probably just be still with myself. So what's
one thing for you that makes you just a little uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Something that makes me uncomfortable is saying no.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Saying no, Okay, that's such a good one, all right.
So once everyone has a sense of which type of
discomfort they're going to work with, the second step is
to think about what you do to avoid your discomfort.
What are you doing to move away from that feeling.
So for me to avoid being bored, I'm usually scrolling
on my phone or doing something mindless just to not
have to be still with my own thoughts. So what
(08:43):
do you do to avoid saying no?
Speaker 1 (08:46):
I'll dance around the know and I'll kind of fill
it in with other rationales. I'll try to just avoid
actually confronting the know and the truth totally.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think that's a really common thing. People say yes
when they want to say no, or they say oh maybe,
and then they never get back to it.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We all do things like this.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
So then the third step is to think, what are
the consequences of this avoidance? In what ways are you
actually paying a higher price by not leaning into your
discomfort than you would by just dealing with it. So
in my case, I end up feeling really brain dead
and gross scrolling on my phone for an hour, versus
how I would probably feel if I just took a
(09:27):
few breaths and sat still with my thoughts. So what
do you think the consequences might be for you? Kind
of dancing around and not saying no when you want
to that I.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Have to then do clean up work after. I have
to then have an additional conversation, which requires more emotional labor,
and say, actually, I didn't want to do that. I
should have declined on the spot totally.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And I can imagine maybe sometimes you start to feel
resentful or overwhelmed of these things that you would have
liked to say no to, but you didn't. So those
are great examples. So then the final step is to
think of a sh shock absorber, or one little thing
that allows us to sit with that discomfort, to practice
leaning toward that discomfort. So for me, I challenge myself
(10:09):
when I am in quick situations of boredom, like at
a red light or waiting online. I challenge myself not
to be on my phone in those moments, and if
I find myself feeling bored, I will literally take three
slow breaths and just remind myself I can handle it,
and I'll look around and I'll try to name some
interesting things that I'm seeing. So these are the ways
(10:30):
I've dealt with my discomfort in those moments. What do
you think you could do to take a small step
toward saying no? And that's what you want to say.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I actually am curious to hear your prescription for this problem.
What would you suggest I do in order to take
baby steps toward saying no?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So one suggestion might be saying, let me think about that,
and I'll get back to you in ten minutes or
one day or one week, whatever makes sense, and then
in that time, really checking in with yourself, what do
I want to say? What am I afraid will happen
if I just say no? How can I say it
in a way that feels like it aligns with my
values and is still really clear? But by giving yourself
(11:08):
that time, by saying let me think about that, you
have some time to wrap your mind around the discomfort
versus feeling like you have to just say no right
in that moment.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Can I add a little complication in there.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
So something that makes me uncomfortable is when I say
something like that, I actually have been getting better about
kind of putting a comma in whatever the conversation is
and saying, let me think about this. I find that
sometimes that makes other people uncomfortable, and they will they
seem uneasy like, and they start to kind of rush you. Well, okay,
(11:42):
well when are you going to get back to me?
And when am I going to get an answer? How
do I how do I navigate that?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Well, you're naming another type of discomfort a lot of
us feel, which is we are not very comfortable with
other people's discomfort, and it can feel like it's our
job to fix it or make them feel better. And
I think part of this whole idea around mindfulness is
that we could all benefit from learning how to deal
with our own discomfort a little better. So I think
I would challenge you in those moments to remind yourself
(12:10):
that it's not your job to keep other people from
feeling uncomfortable with your choices and your needs. It's their job.
But what you can do is model that you are
comfortable in your own self in that moment, So if
you see them being like, oh, well, when you're going
to get back to me, you can say, ooh, I know,
I know it'd be nice to have an answer right now,
but I want to give you a really authentic answer.
(12:31):
So give me ten minutes or give me a day,
and I'll get back to you and then, you know,
trust them to be their adult self and deal with
whatever that makes them feel.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Bright side, bessies, are you listening to this? This is
incredible therapy right now. I mean I should stop this
podcast and pay money because that was incredible, the work
that we just did just now, that was so helpful
to me.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Let's go getting emotionally swollen.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
We've got to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back. Okay. Next, I want to talk about curiosity.
We often think of curiosity as something we either have
or we don't. You know, we're born with this curious
itch or we're not. How is that mindset holding us back?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So I define curiosity as pursuing growth over defensiveness. So
when someone comes to you with tough feedback, or when
you're faced with a difficult situation, do you get defensive?
Do you blame other people or become overly apologetic or
shift kind of away from yourself, or do you lean
(13:40):
in and ask questions and see what you can learn
from the experience and figure out how you can grow
from the experience. That, to me, is what curiosity is
all about. It's having that learning and growth mindset. Wow,
and it can be practiced. It is a muscle that
can get stronger. None of us like hearing bad feedback.
You know, it doesn't feel good for any of us.
(14:00):
But the more you take in, the less essentially intolerable
it can feel.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Curiosity is pursuing growth over defensiveness. I've never heard anyone
define it that way. That's really eye opening.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
I see curiosity as the opposite of defensiveness because when
we're defensive, we're working hard to keep difficult information out,
and when we're curious, we're actively asking to take information in.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Right, So calling it in.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It's antidote in a way.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Like if someone came to you and said, hey, I
really didn't like how that presentation went, your defensive self
wants to say, well, you know, I didn't have all
the information I needed or I'm so sorry I should
have done better, and the curious self says, okay, let
me take a breath and ask, well, what could have
been different? How could I show it better next time?
What did it feel like for you? You know, it's
(14:53):
not feeling like you have to fix something right away,
it's just asking questions to learn more.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
You just pointed out an overlooked aspect of curiosity, which
is extending curiosity to ourselves. How could that take shape
in a curiosity push up?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
So the best push up I can suggest for this
is to ask for feedback. Ask for feedback often, ask
for it proactively. A lot of people in your life
are not going to tell you what they really think
about you unless you ask, And so the pushup I
would prescribe for everyone is take out your phone right now,
pull up a text message and address it to someone
(15:32):
who you spend time with, you collaborate with, and whose
perspective you respect, and send them a message that says
something like, Hey, I'm working on my curiosity. I'm working
on taking in feedback, and I'm curious if you would
be willing to share what is one thing I'm doing
well as a friend or a colleague or a sister
or a boss, and what is one thing I could
(15:53):
do ten percent better? And send that message off and
just wait and see what comes back to you. You
might be really surprised. And when you do get that response,
pay attention to how you feel. Does your stomach clench
up when you see what you could do better? Does
it feel like you don't want it to be true?
Or do you tell yourself, oh, yeah, I already knew that.
Or can you sit with it for a second and
(16:14):
really take it in, let your defenses come down a bit,
and see what it might have to teach you.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
What I'm hearing from you right now reminds me of
another one of your essential traits of emotional fitness, which
is self awareness. Yes, and you offer up some research
in the book Doctor Emily that really had me giggling.
There's this statistic that you share that says that most
people believe they are self aware, but studies show only
fifteen percent of people are actually self aware. Yeah, which
(16:41):
means they're not self aware at all. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I mean, most of us are not as self aware
as we think. And that's because so I know everything
I do know about myself, which feels like a lot,
and I can see some of the things that other
people don't know about themselves. And so in contrast, it
feels like I know more about me than you do
about you. But what I don't know are the things
(17:04):
I don't know about myself, the things that other people
see that I don't see. There's so much you don't know,
you don't know, and so that you're so right that
curiosity leads right into self awareness because once you lower
your defenses and you ask for information to come in,
self awareness is you integrating that information and learning more
about yourself, peeking into those blind spots and figuring out
(17:26):
how you might be repeating patterns or showing up in
a way that you didn't really intend to.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You mentioned feedback as a tool for strengthening curiosity. You
also say that we can build self awareness through feedback.
That's one element. Another is through introspection and also therapy.
These are all tools that we can have in our
self awareness toolkit. What are the questions that we should
be asking ourselves throughout each of these processes.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
So when it comes to therapy, I think therapy is
really misunderstood and still very stigmatized. A lot of people
wait until things are really tough to go to therapy.
They wait till they're in crisis and don't get me wrong,
that's a great time to get support. But if you
go when things are mostly fine, then you can do
this more proactive kind of work. You can understand your
patterns and learn who you are in relationships, and you
(18:14):
can prevent a lot of the struggles that might have
become a problem later. So the question to ask yourself
there is is it worth a try? Do I want
to know what I don't know? So therapy is great
for that. The other thing I recommend is journaling introspection,
and that is because thoughts and feelings tend to be
different inside our heads whirling around than they are when
(18:36):
we write them down on paper. We create a little
space between ourselves and them that can be super helpful.
And it's also this record keeper. You know, when you're
feeling depressed or down, your brain will convince you that
you have never felt good before and you never will again.
And journaling is a way to see, oh wait, just
a week ago, I felt actually pretty good. I had
a great day. Maybe things aren't as dire as I thought.
(18:57):
I've been keeping a journal that's just one line a day,
and you can literally type into Google line a day
journal and it just prompts you each day to write
one line about how you're feeling. But I've been doing
it for five years, so I know how I have
felt on this day over the past five years, and
it's pretty wild to see the patterns that show up, like, oh,
(19:18):
I'm more creative in the spring. Maybe I should start
more projects in the spring. Or huh, every year right
before Thanksgiving, I'm a little anxious. Maybe that's because I'm
seeing my family and things are coming up. That's good
to know. So that's a really powerful practice as well.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
You're collecting data, one hundred percent self data. So once
we start that process of holding up the mirror, how
will we start to see the power of self awareness
in our lives.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
So the things that you're not aware of are still
affecting the choices that you're making. So we have all
kinds of complicated dynamics from our past. We talk to
ourselves in a particular way. We have beliefs about what
we do and how worthy we are of things, and
what's possible for us that we're not fully aware of
(20:05):
the sort of subconscious ideas, and those ideas are sometimes
in the driver's seat. So if deep down you don't
believe that you are worthy of succeeding, and then you're
up for a promotion. Without realizing you're doing it, you
might steer away from that promotion. Self awareness means that
(20:26):
you start to shine light on these things and you
have more of an idea of why you are this way,
and so you can then make a more conscious choice.
So if I have the self awareness to know that
sometimes I don't feel worthy of success, then when a
promotion comes around, I'll have the self awareness to say,
all right, some part of me doesn't feel like I
deserve this, but I want to step into this. I
(20:46):
want to work on my self confidence, so I'm going
to go for it. There's this incredible quote I love
by psychologist Carl Jung, and he said, until you make
the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you
will call it. And what he's saying there is so
many of us feel like life is happening to us.
It doesn't feel like we're necessarily making choices. And actually,
(21:10):
self awareness shows you that you are designing your life,
and the more you understand about that, the more you
can do it in an intentional way.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That is so good. Self awareness allows you to design
your life. Yes, and that's what we all want to
do for sure. Yeah, so good, Okay, moving down this
list of traits of emotional fitness. Resilience is an interesting
one because I've observed a backlash to it in recent years.
(21:42):
Curious if you've picked up on that too, and can
you bust some common myths about what resilience really means?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
For sure? And I feel you on the pushback around it.
One thing I wish the world understood is that we
should not be telling people to be resilient if what
we mean is to suffer more quietly. This is something
that I feel like there's all of these entities that
are in power that are telling people, hey, just pull
yourself up by your bootstraps, be more resilient. But they're
(22:10):
not really saying be more resilient. They're saying, stop making
noise and stop bringing attention to problematic systems. And that's
not what resilience is about. Resilience is about bouncing forward
through difficulties and setbacks and failures.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
What do you mean by bouncing forward?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yes, so I say bouncing forward instead of bouncing back,
Because the difficult things we experience change us. We never
go back to being the person we were before we
went through a hard thing, So that shouldn't be our goal.
Resilience is about using our experiences as a springboard to
move forward and learn and grow. And I guess one
(22:49):
of the myths that I would want to bust is
this idea that everything is for the best. I don't
think everything always has to be for the best. It's
okay if a difficult experience didn't make you stronger. It's
okay if you're not grateful for the horrible things you experienced.
Sometimes things are just really painful and tough, and that's okay.
(23:10):
Surviving is enough, and resilience is sometimes just about continuing
to put one foot in front of the other.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I'm so glad you said that, because I know there's
someone listening who needed to hear that today. What are
some common obstacles to resilience?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
You know, what's an interesting thing about resilience is a
lot of the most resilient people out there are resilient
because they had to be. They went through a lot
of hard things really early and they were forced to
develop an ability to keep moving forward. And so sometimes
an obstacle to resilience is just that you don't have
confidence in yourself to go through hard things if you
(23:45):
don't feel like you've been through a lot of hard things.
Other times it can just feel like if you are
sitting still in your pain, that you're not being resilient.
Maybe that's another myth I'd want to bust is. I
think some people think that resilient people are the ones
who move forward with a smile on their face. Everything's
always fine and they're not going to let anything hold
them back. And to me, sure, resilience comes from being
(24:09):
able to feel your feelings and acknowledge the things that
are hard and then decide that you're going to keep
moving from there.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I just had a conversation with someone on our show,
Sarah Spain, about her fear of failure, and she told
me that she made a lot of decisions in her
life from this position of a fear of failure. Is
there a connection between resilience and overcoming a fear of failure?
And if so, how can we strengthen that resilience muscle
(24:38):
to push past that?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I mean, I would say that a resilient person is
not someone without fear. A resilient person is someone who
does the thing anyway. So perhaps it's not that you
shouldn't fear failure, it's that you should decide that even
though the idea of failure is scary, you're going to
go after it anyway. This feels like it throws back
to the mindfulness trait, which is if the fear of
(25:03):
failing makes you uncomfortable, you might not go after anything
because you don't want to fail. And so mindfulness might
be saying, yeah, if I fail, that's going to be hard,
but not trying is going to be its own kind
of difficult. Regret hangs a lot heavier than failure, I believe,
you know. I think people regret the things they don't
do a lot more than they regret the things that
(25:24):
they do try. So yeah, I would say, you know,
power to all the people who are moving forward despite
fear with fear. To me, it's not about getting rid
of it.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
We'll be back with more after this quick break, and
we're back with doctor Emily Anhalt. I want to kind
of zoom out now that we've talked about these essential
traits of emotional fitness and think about the implications in
the real world and the work world. So you species
(26:00):
and working with entrepreneurs and leaders. You mentioned that you
kind of got your start in Silicon Valley, and according
to your website, seventy percent of employee mental health is
shaped by how their leaders behave so with so much
power and nowadays seeing so much power concentrated in fewer hands,
how can leaders in the workplace create a supportive environment
(26:23):
for people across race, gender, ability, and other identities relying
on these principles in your book.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
It's a big question. I don't know there's one perfect answer,
but I always say start at the top, start with leadership.
If you are a leader and you want to create
an environment where people feel like they can work on
their emotional fitness, you better be working on your emotional fitness.
People are going to do as you do, not as
you say, And I compare it a lot to being
a parent. I know it's not exactly the same, but
(26:54):
like a parent, employees are going to look to a
leader to understand how they should be showing up what's acceptable.
You know, if a leader says you should care about
your mental health, but there's no mental health care included
in the insurance, and you're not allowed to take a
mental health day, and when you ask to have a
weekly spot for your therapy. You're denied, then people are
(27:16):
not going to think that it's actually safe to work
on their mental health. But when a leader says, hey, everyone,
just so you know, Thursday's at two pm, I have
my therapy. So that's going to be on my calendar.
And here are the ways that I'm showing up for
my emotional fitness. I would like feedback in a regular
and ongoing way. And here's how I'm going to try
to create a playful environment. When leaders model it, other
(27:37):
people are much more likely to step.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
In leading by example. Yes, when I think about emotions
in the workplace, I think about how women have historically
had our emotions weaponized against us and use to justify,
you know, reasons why women shouldn't be in positions of leadership.
And when you look at the research, it's just so
(28:00):
not true. Traits like empathy and communication traits that you
discuss in your work are actually the traits that make
us excel as leaders. So I'd love to reframe this
with you. How can women use emotional fitness to their
advantage in the workplace?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
You know, there's a way in which women have been
using emotional fitness to their advantage in the workplace and
all kinds of ways in the sense that it has
made us better at our job for a really long time.
We have not always been held up or celebrated for that.
But I do think that women have perhaps more permission
from society to be emotional creatures in general, even as
(28:41):
we're penalized for it in the workplace. It's a complicated
dox there. Yeah, yeah, same with how you know, men
are told anger is the only feeling you're allowed to have,
but then we come down on them when they're angry.
You know, we're all kind of struggling with these paradoxical
expectations of society for sure. But what I would say
to women is one find your community. Women need other women.
(29:03):
We need to feel lifted up by people who get it,
and to do the same thing lift other women up.
I think sometimes it can feel like success is a
pie and there's only so much to go around, and
we each have to be really careful to get as
much as we need for ourselves. But I have found
that actually, as you lift other people up, you will
be carried up with them. So support other women and
(29:26):
then keep advocating. You know, I'm just I'm so impressed
with the women who have said even though I might
be penalized for this, I believe in it, so I'm
going to do it anyway. I really celebrate those women,
and I try to be one of those women. So,
you know, I wish I had a perfect answer for
how to take down the patriarchy with emotional fitness, but
we can all just do a push up at a
(29:46):
time and hope that we're moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well. Also, to be fair, a lot of us have
had experience working under women who are emotionally unfit. Yeah,
it exists across all genders totally. So let's say someone
listening right now is working with or under someone who
is emotionally unfit. What can they do to support themselves
(30:10):
in that environment?
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah. I have a lot of people who'll come to
me and say, how do I get my partner to
go to therapy or how do I make my boss
work on their emotional fitness? And the tough thing is
we can't really make anyone else do anything. Therapy does
not work if the person doesn't want to be there.
No one can lift your weights for you. If you
go to the gym and you're not willing to lift
your own weights, you're not going to get stronger. So similarly,
(30:32):
we can't kind of, you know, force our boss to
lift their emotional weights. What I have found is the
most effective thing is do your own work and be
really transparent about it wherever you can work on your
own emotional fitness, and then to anyone who will listen
and say, wow, look at all these incredible benefits that
I've gotten from doing this work. Because other people will
(30:54):
see that and feel more inspired to do that work themselves.
And then a big part of a motiontional fitness is boundaries.
And ultimately, if you work in an environment where the
people you're working under are not emotionally fit and are
making the environment feel unsafe for you, you don't really
get to control them, but you do get to make
choices for yourself. You can step into your agency and
(31:15):
say how much of this am I willing to tolerate,
what are my other options, and what is ultimately the
best choice for me moving forward.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I want to end our conversation by talking about playfulness.
I really appreciate the balance that you brought to this book,
because the last trait of your emotional fitness regimen is playfulness?
Why is that so important?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah, play is so undervalued and I think somewhat misunderstood
these days. A lot of people think about it as
something mostly for kids. Or when I ask people about
the last time they played, they'll tell me about a
sports game or a video game or a board game,
and those are great types of play. But I really
love the improv definition of play, which is that when
someone comes to you with an idea, you don't say, well, yes,
(32:05):
but and you don't even just say yes. You say yes,
and you meet them in their idea, you expand on
their idea, and together you get somewhere that neither of
you could have gotten alone. So when you think about
it this way, brainstorming is a type of play. Or
taking a joke too far with a friend is a
type of play. Anything that sort of removes constraints u
(32:27):
lets you think big and focus a little less on
the end goal and more on the journey is play.
And we forget how immensely important this is in our lives.
And in fact, I read one study that showed that
people who play regularly live longer by a significant number
of years than people who don't play regularly. That's how
important it is to our well being, so we have
(32:49):
to weave it into our life more. We have to
actively play Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I didn't know that. Now that's going to be one
of my favorite statistics. Okay, finally, Dot Emily, we like
to ask this to all of our guests on the
bright side. What's an area of your life where you're
seeing the bright side lately?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
You know, I feel the bright side every time I'm
with community. I think there are so many of our
relationships that are being replaced by technology these days, and
it's so tempting to really live in this world of
technology and we forget how important real heart to heart,
person to person interactions are for our mental and emotional
(33:31):
and really physical health. So anytime I'm with my people,
I'm feeling the bright side.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yes, I totally agree with you. Amen to that, Doctor Emily.
This has been fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Thank you so much for having me. You are an
incredible host. This is a lovely conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Doctor Emily Anhalt is a clinical psychologist and co founder
of the mental health startup CoA, the Gym for Mental Health.
Her book Flex Your Feelings Train your Brain to do
well at these seven Traits of Emotional Fitness is out now.
The bright Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and
iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
(34:12):
me Simone Boyce. Production is by ACAST Creative Studios. Our
producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, and Darby Masters. Our
production assistant is Joya Putnoy. Acasts executive producers are Jenny
Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and Reese Witherspoon are
the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali Perry is the
(34:34):
executive producer for iHeart Podcasts. Tim Pealazola is our showrunner.
Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Host
Simone Boyce
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