#23 - Dr. Nick Wignall: Mental Health Habits for Entrepreneurs

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 00:00

Mental health habits for entrepreneurs. So if you've been here for any length of time, you know that I'm a psychologist and a lot of what I do explores the psychology of success, right? How can we build a values aligned life and business and what gets in our way. So a little bit ago, I sat down with one of my friends, Dr. Nick Wignall, who's a fellow psychologist. And a lot of the work Nick does revolves around helping people improve their emotional health and wellbeing. So Nick and I sat down and shared our favorite habits.

to help entrepreneurs improve their mental health. So this video is gonna live both on my channel and on his. And it's a casual conversation where he and I just take turns sharing some of our favorite tips and habits. So throughout this conversation, some of the things we cover include how to avoid overwhelm and close open loops, how to take back control if you struggle with constant worry, how to overcome self-limiting beliefs, how to overcome insomnia and improve your sleep quality, simple exercises to manage burnout,

how to build confidence and overcome insecurity, how to jump off the hedonic treadmill and finally do fulfilling work. And then we kind of wrap it up with some of our final thoughts and a few recommended resources. So hope you enjoy this conversation with me and Dr. Nick Wignall. Let's get started. Corey, what's up man? Hey man, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's going to be fun. So we're doing a, we're to do a conversation on mental health habits for entrepreneurs, which sort of a specific population that has, you know, unique kind of

challenges and is increasingly, I think, thinking about mental and emotional health. I know you, well, tell us just super briefly about your background. You're a psychologist like I am, but you currently coach and focus on entrepreneurs. Is that right? Yeah. So I am a licensed clinical psychologist, but over the last few years, I've moved more into executive coaching. So now a lot of what I do is working with entrepreneurs to kind of build values aligned lives and businesses.

And a lot of my content, my writing and videos and things explore the psychology of success. So how do we define success? What stands in our way of success and how can we kind of navigate life post success? Cool. That sounds awesome. Yeah. It's funny too. I practiced for like seven years clinically and then the last few years have switched into doing a lot of corporate work, kind of consulting work in the, business world. But still obviously write and do a lot of videos on the side too. So.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 02:22

Yeah. Fun kind of parallel paths, but all right, dude, let's, dive in. So I think what we'll do is we'll just switch off kind of sharing our favorite habits specifically for entrepreneurs who want to kind of build better mental and emotional health. And why don't you kick us off with your number one? Yeah. So the simple one to start off with is finding ways of simplifying to avoid overwhelm, right? So as an entrepreneur, you're never off work, right? Like you can't clock in and clock out.

When I had a regular like nine to five job, when I didn't want, like when I was off work, I didn't think about work, right? That was somebody else's responsibility to think about all the things that may or may not be breaking from, you know, 5pm until eight or 9am the next day. Right? As an entrepreneur, everything is kind of on you. And beyond that, there's always more to do. There's always something else you can be doing. So it's really, really hard to turn off, but it's also,

it can be overwhelming because you have so many things to keep track of. And there's actually this sort of psychological phenomenon called the Zygarnik effect. And basically what it says is we are more likely to remember unfinished tasks than finished ones. So what that means is if you feel constantly overwhelmed and you can't really put your finger on it, one reason could be

that your brain is trying to keep track of all of these unfinished tasks, right? Think about it like when you have like Chrome open and you have too many tabs open, how that bogs your computer down and it runs a lot slower because it's trying to keep track of all those tabs. Our brains kind of function similarly, right? So if that's one of the things, and again, it goes as an entrepreneur, there's always more you could do. There's always dozens or a hundred things you're trying to keep track of in one way or another. Trying to find ways of

dealing with that zygotic effect to avoid that overwhelm or at least reduce it is super important for our own mental health. Right. So one simple thing that I do, I personally do is I create what I call a needle movers list. So the difference between a needle movers list and a normal like to do list to do lists are sort of like, you know, Hercules fighting the mythical Hydra, right? Every time you cut off one head to rise in its place.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 04:43

your to-do list is never finished, right? Cause there's always something else you can add. A needle movers list to me, I'm trying to find an example cause I have a bunch of stuff on my desk, but a needle movers list to me is the top one to three things that if you got nothing else done for that day or that week, as long as you got those one to three things done, you would make meaningful progress. They would move the needle the furthest toward progress, right?

I personally like to like physically write it out on like a post-it note because one, I can't fit much on a post-it note. And two, I get the satisfaction once I finish of like, you know, right, you know, drawing a line through it or crumpling it up and throwing it away. That's just like an extra little bit of satisfaction. but it's a forcing function. It forces me to be like, okay, I can only write down the most important, the most critical one to three things that have to get done. And as long as they get done,

most of the things are going to kind of fall into place. It's a really, really great way to help reduce how many things I had to keep track of and focus my attention on the few things that actually matter the most. that's my first tip. love it. That's so funny because I do something really similar for years. I call it my 455 drill. like 455 symbolically is like five minutes before you leave work, right? Whether you actually leave work at five o'clock or not. Probably don't if you're an entrepreneur listening to this. But would it

Basically, I take a few minutes at the end of every day before I finish up and go play with my kids or whatever. And I get a little, I use index cards and I just write down the one, two or three things I want to, like the most important things I want to get done the next day. And so I think that to me, that sort of helps with the Zagarnick effect like you described. It sort of closes this loop of like, what do I need to do tomorrow? I've decided at the end of one day what I need to do at the beginning of the next day. So there tends to be less sort of worry and overwhelm about.

what I'm gonna be doing. And then also it has the benefit, like you said, of really focusing you at the beginning of the next day and helping with procrastination and overwhelm and stuff like that. That's a great tip, I love it. Thanks. And I like your addition too. Like that, I really like sort of ending your work day with like, okay, throughout today, I've decided these are the most important things for tomorrow. Cause when you sit down at your work desk the next day, you're just like, okay, there's so many things. It's just like, no, no, no. Yesterday, you know, past,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 07:08

past me already said, hey man, here's your assignment for today. And it just, it helps you just focus and focus on taking action rather than trying to figure out what you need to be doing. It's great. Totally. Yeah. And even I found too, like even sometimes things come up, you know, I'll get an email late at night and have to do something. I'll have to change it up. And like, that's fine. Like you can, you can be flexible with it. You don't have to be perfectionistic about it. Um, but even if you don't get to those things that you wrote down, it's still really helpful for the reason you mentioned of kind of lowering overwhelm and those, um,

David Allen, his productivity guru, he talks about open loops. And when you have open loops, right, it tends to lead to anxiety and overwhelm and stuff like that. So kind of closing some of those loops, whether you actually deal with them the next day or not is still super helpful.

All right, I will go to that's actually a really good sort of transition to my first tip, which is scheduled worry. So this is a, I pulled this out of my, I have a course on anxiety on chronic worry and anxiety and that kind of the, one of the pillar exercises in that is this, this habit called scheduled worry. And to kind of set it up a little bit, let's talk about anxiety. Cause one of the things that will often come along with being an entrepreneur is like you said, there's you have all the responsibility.

Right? There's all sorts of things to be thinking about. You are, you're the CEO, your sales, you're the janitor, your operations, your everything, your accounting, often, at least when you're getting started, but you're still thinking about all that stuff. Right? So, worry and anxiety seem to be pretty inevitable with that. And people differ in terms of how well they kind of manage it. But if you struggle with a lot of, a lot of anxiety, what's key to understand, I think, is that while there's all sorts of things that trigger or predispose you,

feeling anxious, there's only one thing that actually causes you to be anxious, which is worrying. This mental activity of thinking negative, unhelpful thoughts about the future and what might happen. That's the only direct cause of anxiety. So if you struggle with lot of anxiety, or you want to be less anxious, if for no other reason, you'll be more productive and focused, and more creative certainly in your work, it's essential to

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get control of your worry, your tendency to worry, especially chronic worry if you worry a lot. And this habit, scheduled worry, is the best way by far that I've found to deal with chronic worry and all the anxiety it produces. And it's totally counterintuitive because what you're doing is you're essentially scheduling time to worry on purpose every single day. That's really kind of strange. People are like, hell no. When you first describe it, they're like, why would I do that? So.

I'll describe what it is and then I'll explain I think why it really tends to be surprisingly effective. So it's pretty simple. You just pick some time every single day. So a common time is like, like I, when I do this, I do it after I put the kids to bed, but before my wife and I start watching a show or something. So like 7.30, 8, towards the end of the day. You don't do it right before bed, but early evening tends to be a good time. You pull out a piece of paper, like a notepad, and you just start listing everything you can think of that you're worried about.

could be the tiniest thing from like something you forgot at the grocery store to nuclear war. know, anything and everything you're worried about. Could be to-do's, could be problems, but mostly worries. The key is, it's just a brain dump. You're just pulling them out of your brain and putting them down on paper. You are not solving them or analyzing them or thinking about them really. You're just getting them out of your head and onto paper. And you do that for a fixed amount of time. 10 minutes is like a good place to start.

And then as soon as your timer, you set a timer, as soon as your timer goes off, you're done. You take the paper, you crumple it up, you throw it away. You don't even keep it. You don't go back to it. Because the content of the worries is not important. What's important is, and this gets into like why this actually works, why worrying more can help you worry less and feel less anxious throughout the day, is that it's a lot like if you need to housebreak a new puppy. You get a new puppy.

It just like poops all over the place because it's not helping. It doesn't know. And so it just does it whenever and wherever. Right. Which is annoying. But how do you get a puppy to learn how to do its business in the right place? You can't like give it a logical argument for why it should do it outside and not in the living room. Right. You can't just whack it on the nose of the newspaper. Like that's not going to work. Similarly, you can't start explaining to your worry why now is not a good time to worry logically or start criticizing yourself for worrying. That's not going to help. What you have to do is

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 11:34

If you want your worry to happen less at unhelpful times, like throughout the day when you're trying to work, you need to train it to do it at the right time. So if you talk to any animal trainer, if you want to housebreak your puppy, basically what it involves is rewarding it for doing its business in the right place, the little dirt patch in the backyard or whatever it is. And an effect of that is it will stop doing it in the wrong places. So this is what you're doing with scheduled worry.

you are reinforcing your brain for worrying at the right time, quote unquote, right time. And by extension, training it not to worry as much outside of that. So the more you get into this habit, the more you reinforce your brain for worrying at the right time, your scheduled worry time, the less worries you will have, they won't disappear entirely, you'll still have some worries, but you will have fewer of them.

and you will find it easier to let go of them and stay focused instead of getting lost in spirals of worry and catastrophizing, which really sends your anxiety through the roof. So this habit is really, really helpful. And then the other big reason it tends to work really well is, and this is arguably the more important reason, it changes your relationship with worry and anxiety. A lot of excess worry and anxiety, the kind that tends to be really problematic, ultimately stems from

We think of worrying anxiety as bad, we treat them like enemies. So we get critical with ourselves when we feel anxious, right? When we start worrying about the fact that we're worrying or worrying about being anxious, which makes you anxious about being anxious and then you get way more anxious, right? When you deliberately invite worry and some of the anxiety that comes with it, what you're teaching your brain is, okay, I don't like worrying anxiety, but I'm not afraid of it. It's not bad. I'm willing to have it for a little while. That's an incredibly powerful...

lesson to teach your brain because when you later on when you do start worrying or feeling anxious you'll have that initial level of anxiety but you'll be less likely to throw that second layer of anxiety on top of it that anxiety about anxiety or compound anxiety and almost always when people really struggle with a lot of anxiety that's what's going on it's compound anxiety it's anxiety about anxiety and just one layer of anxiety is surprisingly manageable when you've been used to this like

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 13:50

double stacked layer of anxiety. So anyway, it's actually a really quick little habit. You can do it 10 minutes a day. actually, and it's not as bad as people think, it tends to produce less anxiety than people imagine. But long run, if you stick with it, it's so helpful for reducing chronic worry and all the anxiety that comes with it. So that's my first mental health habit for entrepreneurs. I really like that. So I...

I fully agree that that is very helpful and putting constraints and basically like limiting, like, okay, I am allowed to worry. However, I am allowed to worry here in this way, right? That way, like you regain, I mean, I gravitate toward things like stoicism and things because of the practical application around like what is outside of my control. What is within my control? I can't control outside circumstances, but I can control how and when

I worry about those external things. Right. So I love that concept of, you know, either after work and before family or before bed or whatever, this is my designated worry time. Right. Because I think a lot of people, you know, if we think about when do we tend to ruminate the most, right. Or think about the same thing over and over and over again. Right. Kind like how cows are always chewing.

That's called rumination, right? They're chewing on their cut humans. We ruminate mentally all the time. We think about the same thing over and over and over again, right? When do we typically ruminate? We ruminate in the shower because hopefully by this point in your adult life, you can, you know, bathe yourself without it taking much mental effort. So your own autopilot when we're driving and when we're laying down to go to bed, most people don't have designated thinking time to let their mind sort of unravel and wander around.

So it only does that for most of us when we are otherwise, you know, unoccupied, right? When I'm in the shower, when I'm driving my typical route, when I'm laying down, because now I'm not staring at a phone. I'm not jumping from one distraction or responsibility to the next. It's just me and my thoughts. And if that is the only time you're giving yourself, that's when you're going to worry. All these worries that have been kind of, you know, in the background, you don't have anything to

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 16:11

preoccupy yourself with now we're going to come to the forefront and now you're going to be up for an extra hour. That's going to affect your sleep. Right. And now you might have messed up dreams and things too. Right. So, having that like, and I think this is especially easy for people to, who already have a journaling habit to incorporate into their routine. Right. If you already have that, that habit of journaling and reflecting like the end of the day or, know, twice a day, morning and evening, whatever.

That is something that you can add in of like, are my, what were my worries for the day or what is currently on my mind that I'm worrying about and just fold that into what you're already doing. Right. Yeah. he's going to pair it with that existing habit. Yes. this we can either consider it my, my second tip or, a follow up to yours. And I really, want, I want to get your tips because this is actually a slight deviation from, from your recommendation. So I really want see what you think.

I am a very solution focused person, right? But both personally and professionally, like it hurts my brain almost to do something like that of like, let me write down my worries and not do anything about them. Sometimes writing them down helps me see like, this is ridiculous, right? Like I wouldn't even utter this into reality because it is so just, just insane, right? So writing it down, I'm like, okay, yeah, this is, this is a non-issue, right? This, is just some weird insecurity that like,

has no real basis, right? However, a thing that I do a lot when I see both myself and with clients, when I see people who are struggling with a limiting belief or an anxiety to the point that it's sort of crippling them, like it's holding them back. So it isn't just like a low grade chronic anxiety about all the things, but like, Hey, this specific worry is holding me back from taking the action I know I need to be taking in that situation.

What I really like to do is what I call fear inoculation, right? I'm not that kind of doctor, but my understanding, you know, very simple understanding of how vaccines or inoculations work is you introduce a little bit of the bad thing in a controlled environment so that you can build up a tolerance or an immunity in case you ever come across the real bad thing out the real world, right? Fear inoculation for me operates on the same principle of let's

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 18:36

let's face this worst case scenario. you know, let's catastrophize for a minute. Like let's create this space of think through your worst case scenario. Now, assuming that worst case comes true, what are you going to do about it? Right? Cause what most people do that, that causes them to spiral is they treat their worry like, like a rhetorical question. Well, what if I fail? Well, what if people make fun of me? Well, what if this, well, what if that, but they never answer it.

So rather than treating it as a rhetorical question, actually answer it. What if people make fun of you? What if this thing fails? What if you're not smart enough to do it? What if all this other stuff play that through? Now with that assumption place that your worst case scenario comes true, how will you deal with it? How will you recover? What can you learn from it? And what most people find out through the course of doing this exercise is they're like,

Even if my worst case scenario comes true, I will survive. And I now feel prepared that even if it happens, I can make it through. can come through to the other side and I will be fine because I will learn from that failure or I will realize that the people that I'm afraid of judging me aren't in my corner and weren't in my corner the whole time. Right. So like with fear of ridicule.

A really, a quote I really love is from the rapper Nipsey Hussle. And he says, you will never be criticized by somebody who is doing more than you. You will only ever be criticized by somebody who's doing less than you. So many of us, especially like in the entrepreneur and like creator spaces, you know, our job is to put ourselves and our ideas out into the world. And we invite ridicule, right? But you realize I am so preoccupied with what

what strangers or what they, whoever they is in air quotes, what they might think or say. But in reality, people who I respect and who are in my corner and who want to support me, they're not going to tear me down, which means that people who might try to tear me down aren't really in my corner. So why do I care what they think or say? Right? Like you and I, like, you know, we have YouTube channels, we have newsletters, we have all these other things. The few times

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 21:00

where either of us, I'll speak for myself. Anytime I've gotten like hate, quote unquote, or like trolls, especially like in a YouTube comment, I'll sometimes I'll click on their channel. They have new videos. They don't have anything. They don't do anything. Right? So it's like, why am I going to let you dictate how I show up in the world? Right? So even if my worst case scenario comes true and people like this make fun of me or ridicule me, I'll be fine because the people who matter,

are going to be supportive. What I'm trying to put out into the world is more important than this thing I'm afraid of. Right? So I really, really liked that fear inoculation and answering the rhetorical because it helps you see that you are more prepared to deal with the things you're afraid of than you were initially giving yourself credit for. Yeah, no, I dig it. It's, it's very similar to, I think it worked on the same principle as, if you ever heard of, Tim Ferriss has a thing called fear setting.

which is really, really similar to this. But it's also basically like the cornerstone of all treatment for any type of anxiety, which is exposure therapy, exposure and response prevention, which is, like you said, it's essentially inoculation, it's psychological inoculation. So I love that. think it's great. I think it can also be, I wouldn't do it at the same time as scheduled worry, but in addition, as a separate exercise, making some time deliberately to go through and actually think through a particular worry that keeps buzzing around.

I'm going do it in a thoughtful way, whether that's writing yourself like a journal or in conversation with someone, talk through it with someone in it. But the point is you're being deliberate and structured and thoughtful about it instead of just letting worry happen to you and getting lost in it, which is what tends to generate all the anxiety and cause all the problems. So I like that. I dig it. Yeah, I agree. I agree that they're complimentary, right? Like for normal day to day worry, just sort of set that time to just, you know, worry dump basically. But then

if you find a particular worry that is recurring or is especially difficult to like let go, then that might be a good candidate for the fear inoculation. But yeah, the, Tim Ferriss thing with fear setting the, the, the old, the, the old version is premeditatio malorum, which again is from stoicism of like thinking on evils or contemplating things like that. And as we both know, like modern psychology with exposure and response prevention,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 23:24

A lot of that is rooted in ancient philosophies like stoicism to things too. it's all, yeah. There's another new one under the sun. Everything's a remix. Yeah. No, but that's great. Cause I think everybody, everybody sort of vibes with or clicks with things in a slightly different way. So you and I could explain the exact same principle, but the way you describe something, the language you use, the metaphors you use to talk about it are going to really work with some people just based on their own background and

temperament and all that kind of stuff and not work with other people. And so I think, yeah, there's nothing new under the sun, but that's the whole art of all of this is like, there are only so many fundamental ideas here. It's all about how do you present them and how do people take them on in a way that will actually.

be helpful. So I think hearing the same thing or similar things described in different ways is actually really underrated. think that's really, really helpful is to find the same principle, but explain in a way or approach in a way that really resonates with you as an individual. think that's super important. I love that. All right. So I'm going to go, my second one is we talked about a little bit, you brought up sleep a little bit. so scheduled worry, one of the benefits of scheduled worry is it does tend to help a lot with sleep, which is

Huge, mean, sleep, it's so easy to sort of ignore or forget about the importance of sleep. Even though we know intellectually, everybody knows getting good sleep is important. But it's one of those things that is, it's like important but never urgent. It always sort of falls down the priority list of things. So I wanna talk about sleep a little bit. And my second tip is, I pulled this from another course of mine, a new course of mine on insomnia, but it's called Protect Your Sleep Runway. So the frame for this one is,

For a lot of people, the type of people who tend to struggle a lot with insomnia tend to be high achievers, over-thinkers, analytically minded people. Entrepreneurs certainly fall into this category. There's something about that, mindset there that makes you more vulnerable to insomnia and sleep issues. It doesn't mean it's gonna happen to you, but in some ways you're more vulnerable. And the way I think about this is, if you've got the type of mind that wants to start your own business or that is like,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 25:33

just very analytical problem solutions focus like you were talking about. You're always like working on solving problems. You've got a big mind, right? It's like a jumbo jet. Think like a giant 747 plane. They're so impressive. Whenever I'm at an airport, I'm always just like, I feel like a kid watching those things take off. Like it's so, it's like crazy that it actually works that we can do that. But if you think about it, our minds are kind of like big jumbo jets. They go at tremendous speeds, way high up in the air.

doing incredible things all day long, right? Your mind is working like crazy, doing awesome stuff all day long, right? But think about how 747s land. You know, I'm not a pilot, but I have it on some good evidence from people that what happens when you're in a plane is you don't just fly at 500 miles an hour until you're directly above the airport and then dive bomb to the gate. That doesn't work. It's not gonna work. What happens, and we take this for granted,

But literally every single time you're on a flight, the way you land is a 45 minutes to an hour before you're at the airport, the plane starts this slow, gradual descent. In fact, it's so gradual, you often don't even notice it. And then even when you hit the runway, you still, you go through this process of you slow down dramatically, and then you, at like a snail's pace, you crawl to your gate. You're going one or two miles an hour, right? So every pilot knows this.

And it's not like sometimes pilots do this and sometimes they do it every single time this is how airplanes get landed. So I'm going to great lengths to explain this metaphor because I think it really applies to how our minds work and how our minds get in the way of our ability to sleep well and to take advantage of all the benefits, physical, mental, emotional, that come with really good sleep, which are myriad. So your mind before bedtime, it's like a jumbo jet.

You can't be going 100 miles an hour all day long and then just plop into bed and expect your mind to shut off and you fall asleep. Like that's crazy. That is an insane expectation. And if that's your expectation, you're gonna lay down in bed, you're not gonna fall asleep after five, 10 minutes, and then you're gonna start worrying and getting frustrated. Why am I not falling asleep? What's wrong with me? You my partner just like lays down in their head, it's pillow and they pass out. Like what's wrong with me? What if I don't sleep tonight? Blah, blah, blah. You do a lot of worrying.

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Guess what? Now you're even less likely to fall asleep. It's gonna take you longer because you're worrying about not sleeping. All because of this expectation that you should be able to fall asleep quickly just because you happen to get into bed. But that's nonsense. Your brain needs to relax before it's ready to sleep. I always think of there's this spectrum, I call it the arousal spectrum. On the low end is sleep. You're literally asleep. You're like barely conscious. The next stage is relaxation.

where you're very relaxed, you're on the couch, you're watching a show, something like that. Beyond that is alertness. Most of the day we're in alertness. You're checking emails, you're listening to a podcast, wherever, you're pretty alert. And then on the far end, there's arousal. This is where you're you're giving a big speech or you're having a panic attack or something. You're really aroused. But the point of that is you can't go from aroused or alert to sleep. You can't skip stages. You have to go through relaxation before you can get to sleep.

all worked up about the like: 1400

really matters is that before sleep, you're not doing anything effortful. is the key. Effort is the key word. Anything you do that's effortful, striving, goal-oriented, problem-focused, anything like that, no matter what the activity, if that's your mindset behind it, that I need to figure something out, I need to solve something, even if it's something that's like, even if it's like, I need to...

meditate super hard because someone told me that meditating is going to help me sleep. Well, if you're meditating with this like effortful, intense mindset, it's just going to make you more aroused and you're having a hard time falling asleep. So what's key to the sleep runway is it's devoid of any effortful activities. It's only you're only doing things that are genuinely relaxing that have no function. You're not being productive. You're not getting anything out of it. It's purely for relaxation.

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Now, the type of person listening or that this kind of conversation is for, the kind of entrepreneur, this is surprisingly hard to do something totally devoid of effort, goals, productivity, anything. But I promise you, if you get in the habit of doing this consistently for a few weeks, your sleep will transform. You will be shocked at how much better, how much easier it is to fall asleep.

how much more likely you are to sleep through the night without waking up and having a hard time to go back to sleep, and how much better you feel in the morning. But the key is, like pilots, you can't do it every once in a while. This is a consistent thing. Sure, there's always some exception every once in a while, right? But generally speaking, you need to, that's why I call it protect your sleep. There's gonna be all sorts of things vying for your attention that pop up. You do it for a couple days and then, oh, this is super important, I gotta do this thing.

If you really want to improve your sleep, and you should, because all sorts of things get way easier when you're sleeping well, you need to protect your sleep runway. So I think that's my second sort of long-winded tip, but it's not rocket science. Conceptually, it's very simple, but it's like anything else important. It's like exercising. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter what you're doing. What matters is that you do it consistently on a regular basis. And so if you want your sleep to be better, building and protecting

your sleep runway consistently. So helpful. All right. I'll show it now. No, like I love that cause like, you know, you think about somebody like a bodybuilder, a lot of people think all bodybuilders spend most like professional bodybuilders spend most of their time working out. They actually don't, they spend most of their time sleeping. Right. Like sleeping. Yeah. Yeah. Because they understand like in order to achieve peak performance, you have to have peak rest basically.

Right. And that's, that's the thing. Like you see them in the gym, you don't see them at home sleeping and resting. Right. And for, for entrepreneurs or anybody who wants to achieve any level of, of higher performance, prioritizing rest, isn't fancy or flashy and is frequently done in private, right? Like nobody goes on Twitter, be like, damn, I had such a great night's sleep last night. That's the never the tweet. Right.

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And so we don't see that. So we don't think it's important. Right. And then we hear people tell us, you should only, you know, everybody, got to wake up at 4 a.m. and you got to, you know, just grind it out until midnight. So you're getting four hours of sleep unless you are in a very small percentage of people who have a gene that allows you to function off of two to four hours of sleep. You're not going to function on two to four hours of sleep for very long. You're just not. OK, again, there are very, very few people who legitimately can.

you statistically, you're not one of them. Okay. So, so, so learning to accept that and prioritize rest for what it truly is. Right. a couple of things on that sleep that I, that I really liked doing and that I've found really helpful. cause I agree. Like we, get too caught. Like we have somehow turned, we've somehow folded sleep into the productivity space a lot of times. So we have all these protocols, all these things, all this X, Y, Z, whatever you got to do.

the red light and you have to do this and you have to do, and it's just, it feels like a job, right? And then now you're just like checking it. Okay, I did this, I did that. Like, and it can be overwhelming. And now you feel like, well, I have to be productive. And it's just like, cause like you said, then it becomes active, right? It's the sleep, it's the sleep effort paradox. The harder you try to sleep, the less likely you are to sleep. Exactly. And it's almost like when people suck at meditating is because they're sitting there thinking like, I'm not meditating. Right.

And then now it's just like with worry, like, I'm worrying. So now I have shame and frustration that I'm worrying. It's the same thing with sleep. I'm not asleep yet. Like all this sucks. Like I'm bad at this. Right. And it just, creates this cascade. I personally really like body scans, which is like a form of mindfulness for sleeping and all body scan really is, is

You can just, the way I do it, you can just imagine there's like a ring. Now, if you're claustrophobic or you hate MRIs or something, maybe don't do this one, just imagine a nice calming ring of light and it starts at your feet. And as that scan, this ring of light goes up your body, as it hits your feet, relax your feet muscles. And as it goes up to your calves, really be mindful of relaxing your calf muscles. And it goes up super slow, super calming.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 35:07

typically by the time it gets to your head, you're unconscious because you're, you're, you're slowly relaxing those muscles. And this is where your focus is, right? Especially if you're prone to worrying at bedtime, this it's sort of like counting sheep only there's no math involved. It just, gives you like this slow and it's also like, sort of like a, like a progressive muscle relaxation thing of like, let me, I didn't realize I had, I held tension in my calves. Right.

A lot of us hold tension in random places that we're not even aware of. And that can cause us to struggle to get to sleep too. Right? So that scan personally really, really helps me. Um, but you know, I've won on that. Um, was a little peppy of mine. What I, I think that's great. think that can be super effective. My, my nuance to that would be, uh, do that with the goal of relaxing. Don't do it with the goal of falling asleep. If you go into it with a mindset, I'm going to do,

this meditation in so that I can fall asleep, that's going to lead to effort, right? Which is going be counterproductive to sleep. You do it with the goal of relaxing, right? Or just simply because it's good for you. And that counterintuitively is going to make it more likely that you actually fall asleep. But if you're doing something directly to fall asleep, if your motivation is to knock yourself out with it, you're going to have a rebound effect and it's not going to work.

Exactly. And then you get impatient. You're like, okay, I need to get the ring up to my head real quick because then I'll be asleep. It's like, no, no, no, just, wherever the ring is, just focus on that part of your body and just sort of like very, um, non-directed, right? I'm just like, I'm not trying to do anything specifically other than just focus on this part and over it. Cause then you're not worrying. You're not staying up and then sleep becomes a by-product of this. Yes. It was written once. Um, and then one of the things

I am a huge fan of like applied classical conditioning. So for those of you who, you know, don't remember the, the interest, like, lesson on classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning Pavlov, basically he would ring a bell and a dog would salivate when it would hear the bell, right? That isn't a natural reaction, right? Dogs don't just randomly hear a bell and start drooling. What Pavlov kind of found was when he rang the bell, a dog would do anything.

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But when he, and again, this is an oversimplification, but when he would present food, the dog would naturally salivate because it saw food. That's a natural response, right? Well, over time Pavlov, he would ring a bell and then present food. Over time, dog learned when I hear this bell, that means food is coming. So over time, the dog would start to drool as soon as it heard the bell before it even saw food. So over time, Pavlov didn't even have to

to show food, just ring the bell and the dog would drool. Okay. Cause it had built an association between the bell and food. We operate a lot of us off of very similar things. Okay. and you can actually use this. I use this a lot, in writing to, get into like a flow state, but it also applies to sleep. So for me, I have like writing playlists that I only listen to when I am writing. So my brain over time associates,

When we hear this music, we get into a flow state, a deep state of focus and things. Okay. You can do a similar thing with sleep. Now this doesn't mean you can apply lavender lotion and or the lavender essential oil. And that is going to make you go to sleep. Right? I call BS on all that stuff. Cause I haven't seen any evidence to sway me. However, you can literally put on something like blueberry muffin body lotion or something. If you

only put that on at bedtime, over time, your body, your brain will associate the smell of this with bedtime. Right now it is 12 45, 12 46 PM. time. If I set my alarm, I would instantly start to get tired because I only set my alarm at bedtime. So my brain associates the act of setting my alarm

with, it is bedtime. It is time to begin winding down. Okay? You can do this with any, with any like sense, right? Like it can be a specific fit. Maybe you watch a specific thing. Maybe you listen to a specific song and it doesn't have to be like Inya or a soundscape. Like you could, you could theoretically go to sleep, listen to Slick Knot. Like if that relaxes you, like that's fine. It, the thing itself doesn't matter. What does matter is you only do that thing

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 39:53

at bedtime. Okay. That can be super, super helpful. And it's a way for you to do something without effort, right? Like I just, play this song or I, I smell this thing or whatever that signifies bedtime. And over time, your brain can associate that with bedtime, which makes it easier for you to, without effort, slowly go to sleep. Nice. Love it.

All right. What's your third? You guys, you're up for the third tip. What do we got? Yeah. So for this one, uh, I want to talk about burnout, right? And managing your burnout battery. Um, and I have like, uh, like a 20 minute video on my channel about all the nuances of this, but, um, I'll, simplify it for this tip. So burnout is, mean, it's a huge issue for a lot of people, right? Not just entrepreneurs. Um, and there are a lot of things that you can do around like,

identifying like the sources of burnout and trying to minimize it and avoiding it. But let's assume for now that you're already sort of butting up against burnout. The reason I like a battery as a metaphor, especially because, you know, rechargeable batteries. The thing that a lot of people get wrong with burnout is they're like, you're burnout, go get a mani-pedi or go take a quick vacation. And then magically everything's going to be solved. That doesn't typically work.

for most of us, right? Because we're not really considering what is actually causing our burnout on a day-to-day basis. So before you can recharge from burnout, you have to disconnect from the things burning you out, right? So again, just like, you know, with a rechargeable battery, you typically have to disconnect that battery from the thing draining its energy before you can even begin to recharge it a lot of times.

At least with old school batteries, right? Like I'm 35. So like old school batteries, you had to disconnect. Bill Gates is, you know, he, he famously would do these think weeks, right? Where he would disconnect from, you know, his, his day-to-day business endeavors and just like rent a cabin and go out and, just be away from society. It wasn't a vacation so much as a time to have this protected space of contemplation and reflection.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 42:16

Right? Because a lot of us, we live in a very reactive mindset. We're constantly putting out all these fires. We're constantly worrying. We're constantly dealing with all these unfinished tasks. And over time that just, it drains us. Right? Even if we enjoy what we're doing, we're so reactive all day, every day. It's very draining. So

If you can disconnect from these things, even for just like an hour, it doesn't have to be like a week or two week long disconnection, but building in some time in your day to disconnect from the things draining you and then take that time to reflect, right? Because the best breakthroughs typically come from contemplation, right? So finding a way to, to move from a reactive mindset to being more

proactive and getting ahead of things and thinking about, okay, what are the sources of my stress right now? Like now that I'm disconnected and I can kind of think a little clearer, what typically is draining my energy? What can I do differently when I go back? Where do I actually want to be going? Where do I want to be moving my life, my company, whatever in the future? That currently, because I'm so just mired in this reactive mode,

I'm not making meaningful progress because that's likely a source of the burnout that I'm feeling. Right. So taking this protected time where you're disconnected, so you can actually just reflect. And again, this can be as simple as like a daily journaling habit, right? Like that you can take 15 minutes a day in the, in the morning and the evening for this space. If that is all you can reasonably manage. Okay. But the issue is fish for entrepreneurs. If you can't take a week off,

because your company would just catch on fire, that's the symptom of way deeper issues with your business, right? That it would behoove you to figure out, right? But a lot of entrepreneurs think that like, can't leave, I can't take a day off. It's like, that isn't gonna change unless you take the time away from that to solve that very specific thing, right? So having this time of disconnecting and reflecting, and then once you've done that,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 44:41

So you've removed yourself from the things draining you temporarily. You've reflected on what you can do differently when you return. The next step is to actually recharge your battery. Right? A lot of us, when we're, when we feel burnout, we're not doing the things that recharge us. Right? Typically when I talk to entrepreneurs who are like, yeah, I'm really strong with burnout. What do you enjoy doing? I enjoy X, Y, Z. When was the last time you did any of those things? it's been weeks or months. It's like, well,

There's no secret, it's not while you're burnt out, you're not doing anything to recharge your battery. But your battery is hooked up to so many things, draining it on a day-to-day basis. So, you know, there's this, I forget who it feels, Thich Nhat Hanh, or if it was just like sort of like a meme, but there's this whole thing with Buddhism of around like, you know, meditate for an hour every day, unless you're too busy. In that case, meditate for two hours. Right? And it's like, it's a tongue in cheek thing.

But there's a lot of truth behind it, right? Like if you feel too busy to disconnect, reflect and recharge, you need more time, right? You need to prioritize that because without that, you know, think about the trajectory you're on. It's only going to get worse most of the time, right? But after you disconnect and you reflect and then you do those things to recharge, well, now you can return to work, recalibrate it. You can come back with,

better, healthier boundaries. You come back with better clarity. You come back with better strategies of how you can move forward and how you can show up in the future. That for me is a very practical, sustainable way to address a lot of the burnout a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. Nice. Yeah. think, yeah, burnout such a, such an overwhelming concept.

that I like just sort of focusing on. And I like the idea that it's more about agency, right? Like carving out some time to where you're actually being deliberate and proactive rather than just constantly playing defense and reacting to things. I think that makes a ton of sense. And definitely jives with my experience of burnout. That seems to be a huge ingredient in it.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 47:00

Nice, okay, well I'll go on to my third one, which is something I call the assertiveness ladder. So assertiveness, at least in kind of psychobabble, psychological jargon, assertiveness means that you are able to ask for what you want or say no to what you don't want in a way that is honest to your own wants and needs and also respectful of other people, right?

Now where this comes in for entrepreneurs, think, is I think a lot of people struggle with, you mentioned limiting beliefs earlier, but thinking, I want to do this, I need to do this, I should do this, but I'm just basically, when you drill down, like I'm afraid, it feels like I can't do it, what will people think, whatever. So fear getting in the way of you either asking for what you want, going after what you want, or saying no to something you don't actually want. So I think everybody, it's fairly self-evident.

that this is a, all of us struggle in some aspect of our lives with this, asking for what we really want or saying no to what we don't And I think acknowledging that's good, acknowledging and becoming more aware of limiting beliefs and thought patterns and stuff like that that makes this hard all super important. But what I always find frustrating about this dilemma, I don't have to hear good solutions for is like, okay, I thought about it, I'm aware, I know I have this limiting belief, but like, but what do I do? I still, I'm still afraid.

to cold email this person, or I'm still afraid to go ask for investors, or I'm still afraid to launch this new business, or whatever it is, some big act of assertiveness. I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they think too black and white about taking assertive action, meaning there's this big thing I wanna do, the 10 out of 10 thing, right? I wanna start my own business. But being assertive is a skill, and like any skill,

you don't go from zero to 10 right away. If you wanna learn to play guitar, you don't just pick up the guitar and start shredding like Van Halen. That doesn't work, it doesn't work that way. You play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star first, and then you work up to Happy Birthday, and then Brown Eyed Girl, and then you work your way up slowly, right? You start small and work your way up slowly. So if you want to get better at being assertive, asking for what you want, going after what you really wanna do, or saying no, putting boundaries on things you don't want,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 49:18

treat it like a skill and start small and work your way up. So instead of dwelling on here's the 10 out of 10 thing I wanna do, but it's super hard and overwhelming and I keep avoiding it and then feeling bad about avoiding it, right? Like starting my own business, say. Ask yourself, what's the three out of 10 thing? So starting my own business or getting investors or...

Launching some new product or starting a blog starting a YouTube channel, right? It's just it's terrifying. Let's say let's say starting YouTube channel We're doing a YouTube video here if that's too terrifying, right? What that's like a nine out of ten on the fear scale What's a three out of ten on the fear scale go down the rungs of the ladder a few steps and find something that's in the kind of mild to moderate range What if you just recorded yourself talking with no plans of sharing it? And what if every single day?

You spent two minutes recording yourself talking about some idea you're passionate about. No intention, you're not gonna post it at all. No one else is gonna see it. But you're just gonna do it. Because you're building in a small incremental way, you're starting to build the skill of putting videos out on YouTube, for instance. So I think the assertiveness ladder is to instead of thinking of big decisions, things you wanna do or big things you wanna say no to,

as these all or nothing binary decisions, think of them like a ladder. There are probably 10 or 12 steps you need to work up to in order to feel confident and competent doing the big one. And this is a much more, I think, it's a less anxiety-producing way of thinking about big decisions and big goals, but it's also a more empowering one because frankly, again, this is how we learn to get good and confident at anything in life.

So why would it be any different with something, you know, quote unquote, kind of psychological or emotional? It's same thing. So if you have big goals in terms of what you want or what you don't want, and you're having trouble doing those, break it down, create a, literally create a ladder with 10 rungs, put the big thing at the top, and then fill in what are the things around the like three to four, two, three, four, what are some two, threes or fours in that same area?

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And how can I practice those on a regular basis so that I can get both more confident and more competent? And then once I've done that, I can work my way up to fives and sixes. I do fives and sixes for a while. After that, I work up to sevens and eights. It's not a very sexy or glamorous approach, but this is what works. And we know it works. We all acknowledge that it works in all sorts of areas of our lives. But for some reason, when it comes to confidence and like doing something big and bold, we think we should just be able to do it.

Which is crazy, right? You have to work up the ladder. So the assertiveness ladder, working your way up slowly and incrementally to big decisions of one type or another. I love, and so the whole idea of seeing things as like a series of skills deficits that if you practice it as a skill you improve, I think that applies to everything we're talking about today, right? Like, and that is, that's also like just a very empowering way to approach

your goals, your struggles, whatever. I've just said, okay, maybe I suck at this right now, but with enough practice, I can get better. I may never achieve perfection, but I can very much make progress in this thing. In dealing with overwhelm, improve my sleep, burnout, all of these things, right? If you just see it as a skill to be practiced, right? And I really like, you know, kind of what you said around competence can breed confidence, right? If you just,

do more of the thing and you develop a track record for success at doing that thing, that helps you build belief in your abilities over time, right? I think that's the only way to build confidence, frankly. The only way to change beliefs is through your behavior. That's the only way you start to feel more confident. I think people think they can think their way into believing something better about themselves. You can do that, but it's not really going to move the needle. What's going to move the needle is evidence.

that you actually can do the thing. But you can't just skip from stage one to stage 10, right? You gotta do the work and go through the levels. So I think that's, it's so, and the crazy thing is we know that in every other area of our life. We acknowledge that in all sorts of areas, but we have this weird bias when it comes to our sort of developing like emotional or psychological skills to where it should just be able to happen, which is crazy.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:58

Well, and like confidence without competence is delusion. That's another way to look at it too. Like I have no track record, but I'm going to be great at it. Probably not. But so a couple of thoughts too with that. One, this whole idea of like, nose don't kill you. Right. Like even if you, you pitch yourself or you do something like, so like this, for example, I hit you up, I was like, man,

Would you like to do a video where we talk about mental health stuff for entrepreneurs? It was like, he could say no. And if he does, cool. I'll go on about my day. Right? Maybe it wasn't right for him. Maybe he just, you know, maybe he doesn't want to work with me. Maybe he doesn't like the topic. Cool. Moving on. But you said yes. Right. And it, it, it's a cliche, but the whole idea of like, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take. Right. That, that it's cliche, but very true. Right.

A no isn't gonna kill you, right? Like a no isn't gonna ruin the rest of your life, right? But if you never ask, you're guaranteed to get that, right? To get that no. So I think that's really- But I would also say, if you've got someone you really, let's say you wanna start a podcast and you've got your first guest and you know you really wanna ask them on, but you're totally intimidated because they're out of your league in one way or another, right? I think the question is, what's a much smaller, easier

I can do and practice in that same area that will help me build confidence and competence to eventually be able to do that. Right? So like who who's a smaller time person that I feel less intimidated by that I could ask who's a slight stretch. What are other areas of my life when I can just start asking people to do things? How can I practice and build up that that reservoir of evidence that it's okay to ask for things even if you get rejected?

You can tell yourself that to your blue in the face. It's not going to matter. You're only going to feel differently. You're only going to feel more confident if you accumulate evidence that you can ask, be rejected and nobody dies. Like it's okay. So you have to be behavioral about confidence I think is like the bottom line. Exactly. And even if you, lower that bar and you still get that note, okay, that's fine. Right? Either you need to lower the bar maybe a little bit more or

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ask somebody else at that same bar or do something else at that same bar, right? Like it's okay. That's the whole point actually getting rejected and learning like, I'm all right, right? It sucks. It doesn't feel good, but like it's fine. That's the whole point. The more evidence you get that that can happen, the more confident you will feel asking that, making that big ask because you will be, like you said before, inoculated to the nose, right? But that only happens through behavior, not self-talk.

Very much. And one other thing I will add to that around like the anxiety of asking, right? Because again, like entrepreneurs, you will never meet an entrepreneur who hasn't failed or got rejected in some capacity, right? Like that just, it doesn't exist in entrepreneurship. But for people I see who especially struggle to put themselves out there, right? Whether it is to pitch themselves on a podcast or to do a speech or to do anything. A big thing is they get super self-conscious and very

anxious, right? And a lot of times that type of anxiety is very self-centered, very focused on yourself, right? But if you think about it, a lot of people who struggle to be assertive and things, let's say we're at a restaurant. If you struggle with confrontation or assertiveness and the server gets your order wrong, you may just be like, okay, it's fine. Thanks. I don't want to be assertive. I don't want to have a confrontation.

But if they get your friend's order wrong and your friend has a food allergy, right? That's when you're like, you know, mama bear mode of like, no, no, this isn't what they ordered, right? Like they need this over here. And you immediately advocate for somebody else, right? What I have found really helpful is looking at less about what do I want versus what does the world need or what do the people I want to serve, what did they need? What is important for them to have?

That helps me personally get out of this self-centered self-consciousness and focusing more on being selfless and serving others of like, this needs to exist. This thing needs to happen, right? Because of the benefit to the people I care about, that helps remove me and my own self-consciousness from the equation. I like that. I think about that as the difference between emotion-based reasoning and values-based reasoning.

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So like, no, I'm not gonna like send this thing back, because like, I would feel awful, I don't wanna make them feel embarrassed, but it's all about feelings, right? As opposed to, what's the right thing to do? What's the right thing for me, what's the right thing for that? They probably wanna know if they screw up a dish, right? That's important. So even if it feels bad, the question is, is it the right thing to do or not? Because oftentimes, whether something feels good or not,

has a very low correlation with whether it happens to be the right decision or not. There's all sorts of things that are the right thing to do that feel awful. Working out feels terrible, right? But it's good for you. It's really good for you. So I think not to get too hung up, you want to be aware of your emotions, but you want to take orders, right? Just because it feels bad doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. And that sounds obvious when we say it out loud, but it's so important to remind ourselves of that in the moment, I think. And that's actually a great segue into my next point.

around values and feelings and things. And this is learning how to jump off the hedonic treadmill, right? A lot of people, you you've probably heard the term hedonic treadmill, but I want to kind of break it down and go a direction that I found really helpful, both for myself and a lot of the people I work with. So hedonic, right, comes from hedonia, which basically means like pleasure seeking or pleasurable, right? Like hedonism is

pleasure seeking, right? He's a hedonist or whatever. In therapy, we, you one of the symptoms of depression is anhedonia, which means you don't enjoy things that you used to enjoy, right? A lack of pleasure.

A third term that very few people have typically heard of is what's called eudaimonia. Good luck spelling it on your first try. It's E-U, eudaimonia. And without getting into the weeds and the etymology of it, the way I interpret eudaimonia is basically fulfillment, okay? Or sort of self-actualization. So I'll an example. Hedonia or the hedonic treadmill chasing hedonic things.

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you basically do things that feel good in the moment, right? And that's why people get trapped on the hedonic treadmill because they're chasing this quote unquote superficial pleasure, right? I've like, I buy more things, I do more things that make me famous, or I chase likes, I chase these vanity metrics that are superficially pleasurable, okay? But because they're so fleeting, I have to constantly, and you know, hedonic adaptation, I get used to that, I have to constantly chase more.

And that just becomes a treadmill, a never-ending pursuit of superficiality, right? Eudaimonia is different. So there's this guy, his name's Justin the Big Pygmy Wren, and he he's a UFC fighter. So he's, he has some philanthropies around helping the pygmy population of the Congo gain access to like clean drinking water and a lot of other like basic human rights and things, okay?

so that's, and he's obviously he's a big white dude. So they call him the big pig me because he helps the pig me population. Right. Okay. And Justin, even though he's gotten malaria at least three times, he even did like a Ted talk when he actively was, was the recovery from malaria. and even because apparently with malaria, even if you get the vaccine, you can still get it. Okay. and for us to go down there frequently, he's just, he's gotten multiple times.

So if you were to ask Justin on a day he has malaria, Hey Justin, do you feel good today? Right? Are you experiencing hedonia? He would be like, hell no. Like I feel awful. But if you said, Hey Justin, despite how bad you feel, is this worth doing over the long run? And every day he would say, yes, despite the fact that today sucks, it is worth doing. That to me is the difference between hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia

is chasing something because it feels good right now. Udimonia is thinking, I'm not going to chase a superficial feeling of happiness on a day-to-day basis. I'm going to pursue things that I have high conviction in that are purpose-driven and fulfilling for me to be doing over the long run. Because especially with entrepreneurship, some days, a lot of days, sometimes stuck. Right? It feels like a grind. It's stressful. You feel like you're white knuckling it through the day sometimes.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 01:03:15

You have a down quarter, all these other things. But if you have high conviction, because you have thought about what are my values? What do I have high conviction that the world needs that I am passionate enough about to bring forth into this world for the people I want to serve? That will help you weather the storm when everything sucks, because you will still sit there on a quote unquote bad day and be like, this is still worth it in the long run.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs get caught up in chasing, you know, whatever the current FAT is, right? We had all the crypto companies and the NFT projects, and then we have a lot of AI things, and all those are fine if you have conviction in them. But a lot of entrepreneurs just chase whatever's trending, and then when they have a bad day, they're like, well, this sucks, and I don't have conviction in it. So really thinking about what are your values? How can you build a life in a business aligned with those?

that you have high conviction in and is worth doing over the long run, that to me will help you weather and kind of flatten out those low days over the long run. Nice. Yeah, I like that distinction. Hedonia and eudaimonia. Nice. Good to think about. All right, Corey, this has been awesome, man. Let's, I thought we would round out with a sort of what we've been doing, but in miniature, which is maybe each of us can go back and forth and share something we would recommend.

along the lines of what we've been talking about, something of our own that we'd like to promote, and then a final thought to close us out before we go. So why don't you kick us off? What's something you've come across recently that you would recommend to other folks watching this video? Yeah, so especially for people who like psychology and things, there is an entrepreneur and a writer I love. Her name is Ann-Laure LeCunf. She runs a company slash website called Ness Labs, N-E-S-S Labs.

She's actually at the time of recording finishing her PhD. I think in neuroscience. So she'll be like a fellow like psychology type person I Think neuropsychology I could be wrong. She let she likes brain things so you can look her up But one of my favorite articles from her is called liminal creativity If you just Google liminal creativity, it'll pop up and Laura LeCun from Nest Labs It is phenomenal and it's basically around

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 01:05:43

How can you expose yourself to different ideas from different disciplines and find the unique intersection between them to develop your own nuanced insights that help propel you and your career forward? It's a phenomenal article. Can't recommend it enough. Nice. Yeah, her newsletter's awesome. I read it every week. Okay, so the thing I'm gonna recommend is an old book. It's called The Inner Game of Tennis. Have you read this, Corey?

No, but I keep hearing about it. need to. So it's such a I mean, it's it fits the bill of like a cult classic. Like it's kind of it's kind of a strange book, but it's so good. It's written by this guy who is a Timothy Galway. He was a tennis coach for a long time. And he had this observation that at the very highest levels of performance, like the best pro tennis players in the world, what separates the truly great performers from the excellent but not quite great is their skills.

What he calls the inner game. So at the highest levels of performance whether it's in athletics or music or art or business or whatever it is Everybody has the outer skills the techniques the tactics the all that kind of stuff what separates the the truly like the best from the best is How well do they manage inner difficulties the inner game? So I won't go into into detail, but it's just it's a phenomenal book. It's so thought-provoking and

You'll have lots of lightbulb moments and I love it. I've read it three or four times. It's very short. You can get through it really quickly. But in kind of a sea of bloated, kind of crappy, nonfiction self-help books, this is one of the ones, one of the few that I really think is excellent and worth everyone's time. So check it out, The Inner Game of Tennis. All right, something of yours that you'd like to share with folks.

Yeah, my biggest thing is just my newsletter. I share all of my articles, all of my videos, you know, upcoming things in my newsletter. You can either go to Corey Wilkes, side.com. That is my main website and find everything there. If you wanted to go straight to the newsletter, you can just go to creator alchemy.com for the newsletter specifically, but Corey will excited.com gives you access to everything else. I am Corey Wilkes side across the internet. yeah, that's my thing. Right on. I think I am going to share a.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 01:08:03

I wrote an article a while ago called 13 Spiky Points of View on Emotional Health. And these are beliefs I have about emotional health that I feel very strongly about, but are controversial. I would say the majority of therapists, psychologists would disagree with them, but I believe very strongly in them. So if you're intrigued by that, check out that article. I'll put a link in the description. And then let's see, final thought, close this out.

This was awesome, man. If people have any questions, feel free to hit us up. I'm always down to talk about psychology stuff and especially the psychology of success and what holds us back from it. So any questions, feel free to hit me up. Right on. Thanks Cory. This has been great. Awesome. Thanks, man. All right. So that was my conversation with Nick. I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out Nick's channel and his newsletter. I'll link those below. And again, he does a lot around exploring emotional health and wellbeing. So if you're interested in those topics, definitely check out his content.

And if you're interested in exploring the psychology of success, check out my newsletter link below as well. Until next time, take it easy.