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13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do

Hello there, Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English Podcast, today we have another book episode where I talk about books that I’ve read that I think can, not only help my life but also help your life.

This book is called “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do” by Amy Morin, and think of it as exercise for your brain, this is going to make our brain stronger and become mentally strong.

In this episode, I’m gonna talk about a few things from the book, I’m not gonna talk about all 13 things - that would take too long.

When I saw this book online, I was reading the preview and the name sounded… ah just like another, whatever book… Nothing special but then I saw the 13 things and a lot of them connected with me, they seemed very current and modern, (and) issues that we are facing today with the social media, the way our world works, the modern world works today, so I (just) decided to check it out, also the author’s story really intrigued me.

She’s a young woman in her twenties, her mother died suddenly and a few years later, her husband passed away suddenly as well, so extremely dramatic things happened in her life but she was able to find the strength inside herself and put 13 things in a book which helped her get through these rough times and to become the successful psychotherapist that she is today.

I really enjoyed it, give some practical ways to deal with bad habits I might have and may be that you have, the way that we look at the world, and the way that we connect with the world and the way we look at the world through social media, the way we connect to the world, and the negative aspects that can bring into our lives.

The few things I’m gonna talk about are:

How social media is destroying relationships and making us lose touch with our true values, and I’m gonna give you two ways you can fight this problem.

I’m also going to talk about how strong-minded people don’t expect instant results, you can’t become king in a day through social media and the media in general, one is to think we can become rich and famous quickly and everything happens very quickly and we want everything right now, this creates stress and anxiety, and in this book, she hopes you deal with this problem and how to not think how we’re going to get instant results all of the time.

And lastly, strong minded people don’t try to please everyone.

Are you a people pleaser? Do you try to make people happy all the time? Do you try to make your boss happy all of the time to the point it stresses you out? I know I’ve been there before and I’m gonna give you some tips on what you can do to avoid being a people pleaser.

That’s enough introduction, let’s get into the lesson.

So the first one I’m gonna talk about has to do with how we live our lives today and the problem that social media has caused us and not only social media now but it has really, really exaggerated this problem.

So, how often do you find yourself on Facebook or Instagram looking at others’ photos, and posts and feeling jealous, (and) envious of what they’re doing or what they have, and it makes you feel inadequate; makes you feel that you don’t have enough.

Envy is a word that means we want what other people have, we are envious of what they have, and we think their lives are better which often, I think, just comes down to think that they’re happier than us.

This happens so often these days because of social media and it’s really, really sad and unfortunate because it’s so easy to tap into other people’s lives and just do it in a very superficial way online through our Facebook or Instagram accounts.

It creates this illusion that other people’s lives are so much better than ours and obviously, when people post good photos, (and) vacation photos,(and) things they bought… They only post things that are positive. Most people don’t post the bad things that happened in their life, they post the good times.

(So) some people are having a lot more good times lately so they’ll be posting a lot more but then when they’re going through bad times, you don’t see them as much… but we only attach to the good stuff and I think naturally we tend to, by default, think other people’s lives are better than us when we get connected on that stuff on Facebook.

The big problem with this, is we get easily sucked into a rat race and working around the clock, almost killing ourselves through work, trying to achieve this level of success that we’ve created online through social media, the success of being on vacation all the time, having really nice things…(and) We kill ourselves just working too much, we get burnt out, stressed out, frustrated, because our lives don’t match what we see online of our friends but in the end… Relationships are what counts and relationships are key … Healthy, strong, good relationships.

A side effect of being envious of others online is this envy turns into resentment, and resentment means that you almost are angry at this person or you don’t want to be around them, you think they’re better than you or you feel bad at what they’re doing because you don’t have it so that creates a disconnect there and it’s all based on these photos and videos … This illusion that we created.

And what also happens is that it’s easy to lose touch with our values, we forget about what’s important to us cause we’re so focused on what’s happening to others, we see the social media (and media in general) and it creates this false values and they try to sell these values to everyone and their objective is to try to make everybody think the same value should be important to everyone but that’s not true, we need to hold true to our own values.

Couple ways to do this, first one is be grateful for what you have.

When you feel envious of what other people have or you resent what they have or you feel angry of what they’re doing cause you don’t have that… Stop yourself and feel grateful what you do have, cause I can guarantee you that somewhere in the world, somebody has it much worse than you do.

The other tip that I have here is to find real solitude, often (if we’re…) done working, done studying, we’ll relax. When we relax, what do we do?

We take out our phone and we look at Facebook, or we go on TV and watch stupid television programs … That’s not real solitude. We need to disconnect from that, we need to find solitude and be by ourselves, and our own thoughts and not be bombarded by the lives of other people even in our relaxation moments. So you can read a book, you can meditate, you can go for a walk outside, listen to something inspiring or motivational or educational and truly disconnect from the world.

This can help you not always be connected with other people’s lives in a very superficial way.

The next thing from this book that I really like is, mentally-strong people don’t expect immediate results.

The modern world has shown us this false reality of immediate results and instant gratification, we wanna feel happy now, we want to achieve success now.

Maybe at your company you’ve seen some young 20-year old kid who’s an intern and he’s in college and he comes to work at the company as an intern and he thinks he’ll be a manager in a year or two: the way he acts, the way he works is as if he isn’t manager in a year, he thinks he’s doing something wrong. You’ve been there for ten years, putting in good work, and this young kid comes in thinking that he can be a manager in a year and posts a photo of him in his new BMW on Instagram once he becomes a manager.

It’s that whole social media thing again and instant gratification, you also see companies that have become billion-dollar companies in a few months and they show you how “you can too” become an overnight success but in reality, this is less than 1%.

This is like .0001% most of the cases, most successes take a long time and you’ll need to go through a lot of failures to get to the success that you’re looking for.

Perseverance is key, perseverance separates the champions from the rest. To do this, just make, again, connecting to the first one, stay true to your values, find goals that connect with your values.

Begin with the end in mind like from Steven Covey’s book, which is also an episode of the Feel Good English podcast… Think of what you want in the end and then create goals based on that and keep working until you achieve those goals.

Don’t lose sight of your values based on what you think would be cool online or what you think other people would accept, so focus on your goals and persevere, know that hard work, patience and focus will bring you the success you’re looking for.

And the last one here, mentally-strong people don’t worry about pleasing everyone.

Now this is something that I’ve struggled with, I think I’ve … (I like) people to be happy, I like to make people happy, and sometimes maybe too much. I want them to be happy so I do what they want, so sometimes I find myself doing things for others that maybe I shouldn’t be doing because it’s not the best thing for me.

Part of getting older is that we recognize things in ourselves that might stress us out, make us tired, make us feel bad, and we find solutions to these problems. So, if you find it hard to say “no” to people, often times they will take advantage of you because they know they can, because they know you’ll do what they want, and this will cause to feel burnt out, to feel frustrated and stressed out because you’re just doing more than you should be doing.

Some signs you might be a people pleaser, sometimes you find yourself saying “no” to somebody but then for many days or weeks after that, you still feel bad about it, you don’t feel confident about saying “no” to somebody… Or maybe, you do something and you don’t feel good about it, maybe it’s something against your values, maybe it’s something unethical or dishonest… for some reason you’re doing it because somebody else wanted you to do it. That’s definitely a sign that you’re a people pleaser.

Another example, maybe at work you find yourself doing way too much work cause you don’t want your boss to get upset because when he gets upset, he has a crazy temper … He gets mad and he yells at everybody and everybody feels bad so you spend a lot of time trying to avoid the situation by doing every little thing he would want you to do.

You might even be doing more than you think you need to, also along with that, you probably can’t do enough to make him happy all the time because you can’t control other people’s thoughts. No matter how hard you try, some people get upset, it’s not your responsibility to keep them happy, only they can control their thoughts, only they can make themselves angry and only they can make themselves happy so stop trying to control their emotions all the time.

Learning how to say no and being firm and not coming up with fake excuses like: “Oh, no. Sorry, I can’t go because I have towash my dog.” Coming up with these white lies or things that aren’t true, makes it not a true “no”, saying no and coming up with a real reason “Sorry, I can’t go tonight because I’ve worked too hard and I’m just tired.” Or “Sorry, I need to be alone tonight, so I can’t go with you but I would love to go another time.” So being honest, saying no when you need to.

And another great tip here is treat yourself like a best friend.

How would you treat a best friend if they had problems or if they had issues or if they ask you to do something? For example, if somebody… If I ask a friend to go and he couldn’t, I would never be like “Oh, what’s his problem?” I understand when other people have other things going on and I can also understand that I can see him in the future. So treating myself in the same way, being very generous with myself, being very open with myself can really help so ask yourself… Am I treating myself how I would treat a good friend of mine or a family member of mine?

So, going through the vocabulary from this lesson, at 50 seconds you hear me say, tap into … You have to tap into, two words, t-ap. Into, one word. To tap into means to connect with something or to understand something, to put mental energy into something to connect with it so you can use the resource for what it is. I’m gonna tap into this energy, I’m gonna tap into this emotion. One minute, twenty-five seconds, by default, if you do something by default or something happens by default, it’s the automatic response to a stimulus. So when this happens by default, this will happen… An example, when I get home by default, my lights turn on, they’re automatic or when the teacher comes into class, by default, all the students start getting crazy. So it’s an automatic response, one minute, thirty-four seconds, sucked into a rat race.

So a couple of things here, to get sucked into, means to get pulled into pretty abruptly or aggressively to get pulled into, and rat race is an expression meaning, usually we talk about the work cycle, always working to make more money and then working more to make more money, working more to make more

money… So think of a rat in a track or in a device that he keeps going in circles, always going in circles, he gets the cheese, he does something, he gets the cheese. He comes around, he gets something, that is a rat race, literally, but metaphorically, we talk about a rat race as a living in a rat race, meaning I’m always doing the same thing.

Big point in this episode is envy. Envy is when you want something somebody else has, you want the life they have, you want the things they have. You’re envious of their life and in the episode, I talked about how envy turns into resentment, now resentment is when you resent somebody, you have anger towards them or maybe they… Because you want what they have, you don’t have it. Instead of just feeling bad about yourself, you actually start feeling angry with that person, you resent them or if somebody did something bad to you in the past, you resent them for that. You still have bad feelings. Remember that time she cut off my hand? And oh, yeah… I only have one hand. I resent her for that. With good reason, right? Two minutes, twenty-eight seconds, we lose touch with our values. To lose touch with something, means you forget about it or you get distracted. Often you hear, lose touch with reality, he’s lost touch with reality, he’s gone crazy. So we lose touch with our values, social media makes us lose touch with our values so we don’t really know what’s important to us. Four minutes, eighteen seconds, a very important business word… Intern. An intern is somebody who works at a company often when they’re studying in college and they’re getting experience that’s connected with their degree. So he’s an intern, he’s doing an internship at the company. He doesn’t work there, he’s just kind of training. Then at six minutes, twenty-five seconds, burnt out. It’s a phrasal verb, to burn out or to feel burnt out like fire burns you, simple tense, burnt. To feel burnt out or to burn somebody out means to use up all of the energy, you’re totally exhausted. I’m burnt out, I’ve had enough, I can’t handle it anymore. I’m done with this. I’m totally burnt out; I need a vacation. Work is burning me out.

And lastly, seven minutes, forty-four seconds … we say something called white lie. To tell a white lie, lie… li-e… is a little small, kind of innocent lie. It’s not a big, dangerous lie. A white lie is just like “Oh, I can’t go with you to that bar because my mother is cooking me dinner.” When (maybe) she’s not cooking you dinner. It’s not really going to affect anybody else’s life that badly but it’s kind of an innocent lie, we all tell little white lies now and then, right? And in the book, it’s talking about how when you say no to somebody, try to avoid using these little white lies, try to be as honest as possible because if you say no and then give a white lie, you’re actually not saying no truly and taking care of yourself, you’re just saying no to make the other person happy.

So great book I read through the 13 Things Mentally-Strong People Don’t Do and I saw a lot of them that connected with me which lead me to read this book. I hope the few things that I shared today can help you too. Again, if you like this book, go to my website: www.feelgoodenglish.com and you’ll find more notes and show notes and links and resources and also a link to the book or the audiobook which you can buy. And books like this are really good, they make you stronger mentally, they help you be more consistent and happy and confident about the choices that you make in life. So mental strength, it’s just as important as physical strength so I consider these books as going to the gym for your mind, and I hope you do to.

Any questions, send them to kevin@feelgoodenglish.com.

In the US, we have Yo Mama’s so Fat jokes, don’t know if you’ve ever heard one of these, but anyway, here’s one:

Yo Mama’s so fat when God said “Let there be light,” he said to your mom, “Hey, excuse me. Step out of the way please.” (chuckles)

Thanks for listening and I will talk to you soon