Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)
Amy Morin on How to Build Real Mental Strength | Mental Health | YAPClassic
Fri, 28 Mar 2025
Losing her mother and husband fueled Amy Morin’s quest to understand mental strength—an essential part of Mental Health, positivity, and wellness. On one of her darkest days, she published an article titled "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do." Read by 50 million people, the piece catapulted her to ‘self-help guru’ status. Now, she trains people to build their mental strength. In today’s episode, Hala and Amy discuss tools and strategies for maintaining mental strength. In this episode, Hala and Amy will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:59) Early Passion for Mental Health (02:06) Personal Tragedies and Resilience (04:41) The Turning Point: Writing the Viral Article (08:57) Becoming a Thought Leader (12:25) Understanding Mental Strength vs. Mental Health (15:21) Tools for Building Mental Strength (24:56) Dealing with Anxiety and Past Memories (29:08) Reframing Your Story (30:02) Dealing with Traumatic Memories (33:26) Healthy Ways to Treat the Past (34:52) Turning Negative Days into Positive Experiences (37:00) Overcoming Jealousy and Social Comparisons (40:12) Understanding and Managing Entitlement (44:37) The Importance of Solitude (47:55) Advice for Introverted Entrepreneurs Amy Morin has been dubbed "the self-help guru of the moment" by The Guardian. She is a psychotherapist, popular keynote speaker, and international bestselling author. In 2013, she wrote a viral article "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," picked up by websites like Forbes, Business Insider, and Psychology Today. Her debut book of the same title is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. In 2015, she delivered one of the most popular TEDx talks of all time, “The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong,” now viewed more than 23 million times. She’s a contributor to Inc., Forbes, and Psychology Today, reaching more than two million readers each month, inspiring them to develop a stronger mindset and tap into their motivation. Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify OpenPhone: Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at openphone.com/profiting Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold Factor - Get 50% off your first box plus free shipping at factormeals.com/factorpodcast Rakuten - Save while shopping at rakuten.com Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services - yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset, Mental Health, Health, Psychology, Wellness, Biohacking, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Productivity, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self Healing, Positivity, Happiness, Sleep, Diet
Chapter 1: How did Amy Morin's personal tragedies shape her career?
And in this Yap Classic episode, we're revisiting my conversation with Amy from last year about the secrets to building unshakable mental toughness. We explore how to reframe setbacks, develop psychological armor, and create a mindset that doesn't just endure entrepreneurial storms, but thrives in them. So let's get those mental muscles loose and ready. It's time to get to work with Amy Morin.
Amy, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I am very excited for this conversation. And when I was learning about your story, I was surprised to find out that you knew you wanted to be a therapist pretty early on. You know, most people I talk to, they take twists and turns to finally figure out what they want to do.
But you had a passion for mental health pretty early on. So can you tell us about that?
I knew I wanted to go in the health field and do something, but originally I thought I was going to be a doctor. And it was my first day of college. We had to dissect cats. And everybody in the room was super excited to dissect a cat except for me. And I realized maybe it's not actually the medical part that I'm excited about.
I wanted to help people, but perhaps being a physician was not my thing. So I called my sister. who was a psychology major. And I said, quick, I need a new major. I think psychology, what do you think? And she said, go into social work, because at least then you get a degree in social work where you get a license, a bachelor's in psychology is kind of broad.
So I switched my major on day two of college. But I always thought maybe I'll switch it to something else down the road, but absolutely fell in love with it, decided to get my master's and knew at that point that I really wanted to become a therapist.
That's amazing. And it ended up coming pretty in handy for you because your 20s ended up being a really traumatic decade for you, a really grief-stricken decade. So I'd love for you to share with us what happened because I know it's a core part of your story.
Yeah, I am so grateful that I became a therapist not knowing what was going to happen next. But early on in my career, in the first year of being a therapist, my mom passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. She had a brain aneurysm. And it was really this first huge loss in my life where I thought, how am I going to deal with this?
I had all the skills and tools I'd learned in college, but now to put them into practice and figure out how do you go through grief was a completely different experience. And then on the three year anniversary, it was three years to the day that my mom died, my 26 year old husband died, and he had a heart attack. I didn't even know you could have a heart attack at 26.
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Chapter 2: What was the impact of Amy's viral article on her career?
It's really sad. So how did you end up taking what you've learned in school and then maybe applying your own knowledge of how you actually got out of grief to do something productive with all of that sadness and everything that was going on?
Well, it was really one of the worst days of my life. It was shortly after my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. And we figured out it was terminal that I wrote myself a letter of what mentally strong people don't do. And it was a combination of things that I had learned through my own journey, things that I had learned as a therapist, and some of the things I learned in college too.
But all combined, figured out if you just don't do these certain things in life, you can get through almost anything. So wrote myself that letter. And by then I had become a freelance writer. And that became out of necessity because my husband had been the primary breadwinner.
So back in the day when I needed more money, I was freelance writing in the evenings and on the weekends again so I could keep my house. So once I had this letter to myself, I thought, ooh, this is helpful. Maybe it will help somebody else. So I published it online, got paid $15 for publishing it online. But 50 million people read the article. It was 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do.
And that just opened everything up for me. From that article, I got a book deal and the opportunity to do lots of things that I probably wouldn't have been able to do or ever thought I could do. And it turned into something amazing. And I'm so glad that I now get to share what I learned about from my own personal journey, from my work as a therapist.
And I get to talk about mental strength on a completely different level than when I was in a therapy office in rural Maine back in the day.
Yeah, when I read your story, it just made me light up because you're in my podcast network. We've done a lot of work together over the years. And I've always just known you as this thought leader in your niche. Little did I know that it all started with this viral article. Now you're telling me you just got paid $15 for it. And that led to a book deal, led to a TED Talk that had 23 million views.
How did all that feel? Like it seemed to happen pretty quickly.
It did. It was wild. So the day that I published the article, I put it on a website called Lifehack. Their website broke. I didn't know it was because of my article. I just thought, well, that's interesting. Their website's down. And a few days after it was up, Forbes picked it up and it ended up on Forbes.com. And then 10 million people saw it on Forbes alone.
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Chapter 3: How can you differentiate mental strength from mental health?
So a lot of people who tune into this show are entrepreneurs. And this reminds me of that concept where they say the best customers are your former self, right? You're always better off helping people with either service or in your case, advice and guidance. for something that you've already been through. So all the entrepreneurs tuning in, always think about that.
Whatever you've been through or done for yourself, the people who are struggling with that same problem, they're actually your best customers.
I think there's a lot of truth to that because if you've struggled with it and you know, I wish this had been available, I wish I could have been able to have this opportunity then, you're going to be able to reach back and help a lot of people who are in that place you used to be. Totally.
So something else with your story that I find fascinating is that you were a therapist, right? You were having clients and then you decided to do freelance writing on the side. And at some point, you must have decided, hey, I'm going to take a foot into thought leadership, right? And even Forbes, I believe they called you a thought leadership star. I have that in my notes.
And from my perspective, when I think of examples of people who are top of their field, you are definitely somebody who comes to mind as somebody top of their field in this mental health space. So my question for you is for those out there who have what I'd call a normal job, right? They're a doctor, they're a lawyer or whatever they are. And they want to become more of a thought leader, right?
Having their own opinions, their own contributions. Maybe they want to write a book, have a blog, start a social media profile. What do you think they need in terms of original content or research? Or what do they need to actually start? Or is it just their story? Like, what are your thoughts on that?
I think it's about adding something of value that doesn't already exist. So I hear a lot of people say, well, with AI now, there's no sense in even writing things because there's too much content out there or there's going to be so much out there that you just can't compete. But the truth is, your story is going to be different than everybody else's. You always have your story.
You can use your life experiences to put a different spin on something that is already existing. Clearly, the topic of mental health is not new, but I was able to add to it and change it in a way that was interesting to people. I talked about what not to do rather than what to do. I talk about mental strength as opposed to just mental health. Those slight changes make a huge difference.
So I think for somebody who feels like, I don't know what to put out there, And know that it can be kind of controversial too, that you don't have to say things to just stay in the middle of the road because most people will say it has to evoke some kind of emotion. And you don't want to put content out there just to be provocative and try to irritate people, but it's okay to have an opinion.
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Chapter 4: What tools can help build mental strength and counter negative self-talk?
And I would see a lot of people who would go through something in life and they just felt like life had wronged them. And because of that, they were deserving of either something good to suddenly come their way or they were hopeless that anything good was ever gonna come their way, but they didn't try. They'd kind of given up on life.
and the ability to make life good for themselves or for somebody else, and they really felt like they didn't have any contribution. And because of that, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wake up every day saying, there's nothing I can do to make my life better, and I truly believe that, I guarantee life won't get any better.
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Chapter 5: How does embracing change and arguing the opposite perspective help in mental resilience?
And of course, if your boss says you have to work late, you might choose to do it, mostly to avoid the consequence of not getting in trouble at work, but it's a choice. And when we just change our language and say, you know, this is a choice and I'm in control of how I feel. Even if somebody was rude to me today, they didn't necessarily ruin my day unless I let them.
And when we switch our language, it just empowers us to say, I have control over so many things in my life. I can't control everything, but I can at least control myself, my thoughts, my feelings, and my behavior. And when we take back that power, somehow that just really helps us to say, and I want to live to reach my greatest potential.
I want to go out there and do these things and really gives us, I think, the power to go out there and start to create some positive change.
And I feel like when you are empowered and you don't always talk in a way where you act like a victim, it's also really good for business because I feel like It's authoritative. You build respect because really successful people that you'd want to work with, they can tell in an instant if somebody has a victim mindset, it's a really big turnoff, wouldn't you say?
It is. And it might be those simple little things that we say in a meeting, like, excuse me, please, would you mind if I... said something or I hate to interrupt, but when we apologize way too much, those little things certainly send a signal about how I expect you to treat me. If I don't act like what I'm saying has any value, I guarantee nobody else is going to either.
Another way that you recommend that we counter negative thoughts is to embrace change in a healthy way and argue the opposite perspective. Can you give us insight on that tool?
So often when something is changing, we think about all the bad things that could happen. And it might be something small. You're changing your software program. We think, oh, it's going to be too hard. We underestimate ourselves. We overestimate how challenging it's going to be. So just step back for a minute and think, what are the chances this might work out better than I'm imagining?
And just arguing the opposite when you're predicting horrible things, just argue the opposite that something amazing might happen. And your brain will kind of say that, all right, even though there is a one in a hundred chance things will go poorly, maybe there's also a chance things will go well and it can help you give a more balanced perspective. so that you don't just believe the negative.
Otherwise, we convince ourselves, this is 100% true that this thing is going to happen. So you just want to expand your mind to say, or maybe something amazing will happen too.
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Chapter 6: Why is it important to control complaints and focus on attitude?
The more that you talk about those things that annoy you, the more real estate you're giving them in your life. So if we took the example of a traffic jam, talking about it, complaining about it, spending a lot of time thinking about how this shouldn't be happening to me, means I give that way more power in my life than I need to.
But it also reinforces that idea that if I go home and I complain about this, then somehow I'm getting all of that out. So I'm not bottling it up. You're much more better to walk in the door and talk about the best thing that happened to you today to improve your mood and help you feel better rather than just dwelling on the negative. Yet again, our brains are hardwired to go for the negative.
So it's easy to just think about, yeah, the one bad thing that happened today and overlook the nine good things that happened. So you have to go after the good sometimes and say, all right, so there was a traffic jam, but I don't have to dwell on it. And another strategy is to just practice acceptance. So much suffering in life comes because we think this shouldn't be happening.
So if you're in a traffic jam and you think, oh, this isn't fair. Somebody up there got in an accident or some people are going too slow and they're in my way. The more that you keep thinking all of those thoughts, the worse you feel. On the flip side, if you just reminded yourself there are millions of cars on the road every day, traffic jams are bound to happen.
And how am I going to spend my time while I'm stuck in traffic? Maybe you listen to a podcast. Maybe you listen to music, talk on the phone to somebody that you enjoy talking to. There's so many options about how you respond to those obstacles in life.
For me, I also feel like perspective really helps because I know personally that when everything's like going amazing in my life, it will be that time period where little things like a traffic jam, I'll get upset about. But if like somebody's dying or like the war is happening in Gaza right now, now anything that happens, I'm like, well, who cares?
I'm not dying. And that's the thing I think about difficulties in life. Sometimes it does help us put things in a different perspective. I used to be terrified of public speaking. Well, then I gave the eulogy at my husband's funeral. Suddenly, I didn't mind public speaking anymore. It was really not a big deal.
And I think when we go through those difficult things in life, when we're experiencing difficult times, it helps us put those little tiny things into a completely different perspective.
Totally. And I feel like in the time periods where you're not having something traumatic, it's like doing something so that you can regain that perspective and realize like, hey, this is a traffic jam, but I've been through way worse, right? Exactly. Okay. So let's talk about anxiety. You have this cool concept in your book called anxiety alarms. Can you talk to us about that?
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