Shownotes:
Join me in a captivating conversation with mental health advocate Mandy Froehlich. We delve into the realms of emotional engagement and resilience, uncovering insights that will challenge and inspire you. Mandy shares her unique perspective on navigating life's ups and downs, emphasizing the power of positive emotional engagement and practical resilience strategies. Tune in for an episode brimming with wisdom and transformative ideas, guaranteed to leave you with valuable takeaways for both personal and professional growth.
About Our Guest:
Mandy Froehlich is a distinguished mental health advocate, educator, and author. Her professional path started as an elementary teacher who loved technology. As her story goes, she became incredibly burnt out long ago when there were no pathways to healing. Nobody wanted to talk about sad teachers, or so she was told. Although edtech and mental health might seem like completely different topics (they're not), they were her life for many years. She was a technology integrator and then a Director of Innovation and Technology, but she was trying to heal from the stress and strain of the classroom many years after she left it. Her goal was to help other people and advocate for policy change. She strives to be the mental health advocate that she needed years ago.
Thrive Global Article:
Emotional Engagement and Resilience: Mandy Froehlich's Guide to Thriving
Connect with and learn from Mandy Froehlich:
Website – MandyFroehlich.com
X/Twitter – @FroehlichM
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello, my friends. We have an amazing guest. We have my friend Mandy Froehlich. Hi, Mandy.
Mandy Froehlich: Hey, how are you doing?
Lainie Rowell: I'm better now that I'm talking to you. And I'm going to do a quick little intro for those who may not already know of your amazingness. And so for those who are just now being introduced to Mandy Froehlich, she is a mental health advocate, author, educator, and consultant.
She is doing so many things to make this world a better place, and I am just thrilled to share this time with her.
Mandy Froehlich: Aw, thank you so much. I appreciate that. I try, like we all do, trying to do our little part help everybody else that, that's out there, you know?
Lainie Rowell: Of course, of course. Mandy, is there anything you want to add to that bio?
Mandy Froehlich: Oh my gosh, I don't think so. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it covers pretty much everything.
I guess mom of college kids might be another one. Just trying to make it through that transition of all of the kids being out of the house. That's an entire job in itself.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I'm so happy to have you here in addition to just wanting to spend more time with you because you are someone I look to for what do we need to be thinking about and doing with regards to mental health. So first couple questions really focused on emotional engagement and mental health.
And so let's talk about emotional engagement first. And how do you see it fitting into our overall well being? And why do you think it's crucial for finding this fulfilling experience, both personally and professionally.
Mandy Froehlich: Well, emotional engagement is really it's a term from marketing technically, and it's popular in that space, and what it is, is it's when marketers try to get the consumer to react in an emotional way to something that is happening.
Something that's happening in like in a commercial or in an ad. It is a psychological term as well. But in marketing, it's really getting you to try to engage with the product because you feel this emotional attachment to the product and, and that product's going to fix things and it's going to make you better.
And it's going to make you a hero or whatever it is. And I always loved thinking of it that way because for me as we're kind of navigating through our lives personally and professionally, we really are looking for those things to emotionally engage us that are going to make us happier, make us feel more joy or for some of us, it's just make us feel something, right?
When we think about finding fulfillment and that emotional engagement in our personal and professional lives I think about, first of all, positive emotional engagement. I want to make sure that if we are engaged it is in a positive way because you can also have emotional engagement with a negative association, which would mean that you are engaged emotionally with something, but you're angry and you're fighting against it. So what we're really referring to is the positive engagement. We want to look for those things in our personal and professional lives because that's really what tethers us to who we are and what we're doing.
It's that emotional piece. There's lots of ways to find those positive emotional engagements. There's also lots of ways to find the negative ones, but there's a lot of ways to find the positive emotional engagements, like finding your purpose in your personal life, finding your purpose in your professional life.
When we talk about how crucial it is to find those things. It really is what tethers us to being who we are.
Lainie Rowell: I hear you talking about that positive emotional engagement, and yes, we definitely want to seek that out, though not everything is in our control, I think it's fair to say. And sometimes we're in really high stress environments, there's things that are going on, and we really need that resiliency, right?
So what are some of the practical tips that have worked for you and others to kind of help us build up that resilience in this tough time, those tough situations?
Mandy Froehlich: Yeah, sure. I think one of the important parts of building resilience is understanding that you need to build resilience outside of those stressful times so you have it ready for the times that you're in a high stress environment because it would be like deciding to run a marathon while the marathon's going on.
You can't do that. It doesn't work and so in building resilience, there's a lot of little things that you can do. So one of the books that I always recommend is Micro Resilience and it is by Bonnie St. John and Alan Haynes, and it gives a lot of research into what resilience actually is, and my favorite example is that they studied a bunch of people who were tennis players at Wimbledon.
And obviously they were all really great players, right? But consistently some people were better than other people and they wanted to know why, why were some people just always better, even when they had a group of top notch tennis players there.
So what they did is they studied the tennis players and how they played, and then they studied the moments in between the plays. And what they found was that the people who were at the top of their game, were the ones that reset in those moments. They had some little habit that they would maybe spin their racket or they would do something like that.
That they would reset. They had some sort of a strategy during that time to bring their energy or their anxiety back down. That was the only difference between the tennis players that were playing at a really high level and the tennis players that were not doing quite as well.
That's really what resilience is about is it's resetting in between those times where we have a lot of things going on and strategies there's so many strategies for resilience and micro resilience and part of the issue, I think that we're running into just as humans is that.
Resilience and mental health issues, they're all so personal. And so I can tell you everything that I do for resilience, and that may not work for anyone else. Because they have to be able to find their own thing.
But really little things for bringing yourself into focus, and a lot of them fall under self care, of course so that would be taking care of your mind, body, your soul making sure that you're feeding all of those things.
It can be anything from leaning into a spiritual practice it could be maybe practicing some mindfulness, which some people consider spiritual and some people don't. It could be leaning into a new hobby. Recently I started horseback riding again. That's not a new hobby.
That's a hobby from when I was a kid. It was something that really brought me joy and that as an adult I've leaned back into. So. There are a lot of different strategies for resilience. The trick is figuring out what it is that works for you.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, we're all so unique and dynamic. And so what works for me might not work for you and vice versa.
We have to test out these practices and one thing I want to go back to when you were talking about the tennis players and how they would reset in moments and it's kind of like spin the racket to reset, right? And it could be breath, it could be whatever is going to work for you.
But I wanted to ask you, is it fair to say that part of that resetting, and sorry for the pop culture reference, friends, but it reminded me of Ted Lasso, Be a Goldfish, right? Have a 10 second memory. Is that kind of part of what the resetting is? Is to kind of let go, because when you're in it, it feels like this is how it's going to be forever.
Mandy Froehlich: Yeah, I would say in the moment, yes, that's true. But I would add on that as long as you come back to it and deal with those emotions and feelings that happened during the course of that period.
And so one of the areas that I think in building resilience that is most often I don't know if shied away from is the right term, but would be that healing piece because it's kind of ugly, frankly, and it's messy and it's chaotic and it often doesn't feel good. You know, it's not that light coming from the heavens and all of a sudden you feel better. It's usually has something to do with crying and tissues and snot and all of those things. And that's what healing is. And so people shy away from it because it doesn't feel good.
But in order for us to build resilience, we have to be able to deal with the things that happened to us. Whether that was a buildup of stress, whether that was a disconnection in a relationship, whatever that means for that time. So I would say yes, like memory, like a goldfish. As long as when you get to the end of that, you're going back and dealing with what you need to deal with.
Lainie Rowell: Yes, because a tennis match is a very specific like you don't get to say, Hey, I'm going to need like 10 minutes to process through this. Can you all just talk amongst yourself? And then we'll get back to the match, right? That's not going to fly, right? So I think this is actually a really interesting nuance to resiliency that I maybe never thought that carefully about, which is, that we don't want to dismiss the feelings.
We do have to feel. We have to deal with them. It's sometimes not going to be in the moment that they come to us. And so we need to regulate and get out of that in the moment, but we have to still go back to it. And so that's helpful for me.
Mandy Froehlich: Yeah, exactly. And I also think too, that even if you get to the top of your resilience game and you know your strategies and you have healed the best that you think that you can possibly heal, that you've really focused on that, it's not that bad things don't happen or that bad things happen and you don't hurt, it's that every time that it happens, you're able to deal with those emotions and move through that hard space a little bit faster and a little bit easier, and so I think that's also another misconception is that.
You know people think that once they've healed and, and they've done all the hard things and that everything would be easy from now on, it's absolutely not true. It's just that the next time it comes about, you know what you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to feel.
So, I think that's also an important distinction.
Lainie Rowell: And I think sometimes we are told things that, are meant to be helpful, but are also a little misleading. So they'll say, okay, with grief, you got to give yourself a year after a year. Well, I mean, it's not necessarily true. First of all, we're not all the same.
But also, it's not that it goes away after a year. But it's resonating with me how you're saying the way that you're going to be able to move past it is different. It's not that I won't feel the thing. I can shift out of it faster.
Mandy Froehlich: Right. Right. And faster means something different for everyone too then, right? I mean, that's the difficulty in all of these things because it's. So personal, like what might take one person a year, might take another person two, might take another person six.
Well, then all of their fasters are different. And I agree there are so many little quotes or quips out there that I do think they're meant to be helpful. I think that they're supposed to be inspiring but I think at the end of the day, some of them actually just induce guilt.
And make you question why you're in the space that you're in and so you have to take everything that you read just with a grain of salt and only use it if it is actually helpful.
Lainie Rowell: That's great advice. So we've been talking about resiliency and healing and times are definitely challenging and there's stressors that are different for everyone. What are some of the ways that we can move towards, and I think this is one of the spaces that positive psychology has just really empowered us over the last few decades, is what can we do to flourish? What can we do to thrive? And part of that is going to be that harmony between work and life.
So that's easier said than done, obviously. And so I wonder in your experience, what are some of the things that maybe are stumbling blocks and what are some of the things people could do to get to that harmony?
Mandy Froehlich: I think that first thing I'd like to do is talk a little bit about the harmony and the balance, because we hear a lot about that, that balance between our regular personal life and then our work.
I want to be clear when I talk about balance, it's not 50 50. There are going to be times where you're working a lot one week and then times you have a little bit less time at work and you're with family or friends or doing whatever it is that you do in your personal life.
So balance is really about finding that good average of spending time in those two places. I just wanted to first say that about balance or harmony. And then, as far as getting tripped up or some things that we could do to help ourselves, I think number one is, Really get to know yourself well and in all aspects the things that you're good at, the things that you excel at if I said to any listener for the podcast, if I said to you what are the things that you are just fantastic at?
If you don't know that, you need to know. And sometimes the things that we're fantastic at are not always the things that we like, but a lot of the times, the things that we are fantastic at are some of our passion areas that we could lean into. And so that's really, really important.
It's also important to know why you do the things you do through the lens of being human and what that means for how you act. I'll give you a very personal example. One of the things that sort of runs in my family are these very obsessive tendencies and my mother was bipolar and we had all the bipolar stuff going on in my household as I was growing up and she turned to some very unhealthy coping mechanisms for that.
And so as I got older, I never did any of those coping mechanisms. I never drank. I just never did any of those things. But what I did do was start working really, really hard. And what I realized over the course of time was that my mother's drinking. was my workaholicism. And so it was a combination of me wanting to try to prove myself and ignore the rest of my life. The difference between the two is that me being a workaholic is socially acceptable, not only socially acceptable, but in our society, there's massive applause going on for all of the workaholics of the world constantly.
And so I was not only getting the positive reinforcement, I was also allowing myself to numb myself towards some things that were going on in my personal life that needed to be addressed. It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, and I only did it through the process of understanding myself and understanding my past, and how the things that happened in my past impact my now.
Those are some of the reasons why it's just so crucial to understand who you are and why you do the things you do. And that's not always bad, but it's also not always something where you have to be embarrassed of it or anything like that. Sometimes, you know, you do something in your life because...
You were taught in a certain way that was a really good thing and you continue to do that and that's amazing. But a lot of times when we're talking about healing and resilience and, and finding fulfillment and all of that stuff. It's about recognizing the pieces of you that need attention or need to be known in order to be able to move forward.
Lainie Rowell: That was really helpful to me. So I'll just say I relate to this because I feel like my coping mechanism during the pandemic was to become a workaholic. To me, it was a time where there was so much that I had no control over, and full disclosure, I do like me some control.
And this was a time where things that I would normally have at least some sense or possibly illusion of control. It was all gone. It was all just wiped away instantly. And I hear you about, well, there's some things that we do to cope that society says, Oh, that's bad. And then there's others that maybe society is somewhat neutral on.
And then there's others society actually applauds. And it could be that it does have. a positive impact on your life, but if it's that you're not coping with what you really need to be working on, then you're just kind of burying those feelings, burying what's really going on. Is that fair to say?
Mandy Froehlich: Yeah, absolutely fair to say.
And so when we talk about stumbling blocks, like that's definitely one. For example, I definitely have control issues as well, no doubt. And so when you find that sense of control somewhere you find, or if you feel maybe all of the human things. You're not important. You're not making a difference. You lean into those places that you feel like you are. And then all of a sudden you find yourself in a stumbling block where there's other things that are not going right anymore.
I think that's what happens with a lot of workaholics. There will always be things that happen in our life that cause a stumbling block. You could say that my home life when I was growing up caused that stumbling block, but part of resilience is being able to know yourself and navigate through those in order to be able to get to that place where you feel harmony.
And that's kind of how I advise people. I could continue with the micro resilience and all of those types of things, but when it really comes down to it, micro resilience and self care and all of that is so vitally important. But it's not going to completely get you to where you want to go until you start to fill some of those, like, holes that have been left in your soul from different things that happened over the course of a lifetime.
And I'll then allow that self care to kick in, that positive psychology, the gratitude, all of those things. And so that they really need to be practiced in tandem.
Lainie Rowell: I really appreciate that. And going back to your earlier analogy about, well, you're not gonna just jump into running the marathon.
You're not gonna learn to run the marathon while you're running the marathon. Did I get that close? I you said it. But the idea that you would show up on. the day of the marathon and be like Let's do this. I can, I can totally do this. To be clear, I am not a marathon runner, but I know marathon runners, and I know how rigorous that training schedule is, and how you have to fully prepare for it, and you don't just jump in.
And so, we need to be doing these practices. Obviously, I lean to gratitude, but also meditation and these other things that we can do so that when these challenging times hit us, we've got those skills and also just to have that balance, right? Because for those of us, and I think I speak for you, Mandy, but please correct me if I'm wrong, who find such fulfillment and joy and feel really purpose driven in our work, it's very easy to prioritize work over almost anything.
Mandy Froehlich: Absolutely. And then it's also easy to fall a little bit into the trap of where your purpose and your work collide if you start getting a little bit off track by certain things like money, so there's also that piece of it too, but yes it is really easy to lean back into that especially if you have found your purpose.
And that's why the harmony thing is so important as well. You need to find as much purpose in your personal life as you do in your professional life, really, to keep it balanced.
Lainie Rowell: So Mandy, tell us a little bit more about how we can build up that resilience.
Mandy Froehlich: Yeah, sure. So we just talked about harmony, for example, and balance and things.
And one of the pieces of self care that I think is really important is to make sure that we are also practicing self care in a balanced way, in a holistic way because a lot of people rely solely on physical self care. That's kind of their thing that they go running or they do yoga or something to that effect.
But really I practice four dimensions of self care. So there's physical, intellectual, emotional, and. spiritual. And spiritual does not necessarily mean religion, although it can. A lot of people get hung up on that. Like, I don't practice a religion, so I can't do spiritual. Spiritual is really just about finding the balance in your soul, finding your center.
So whatever makes that type of thing happen. For some people it's running animal rescues. Sometimes it's practicing mindfulness, things like that. But oftentimes under emotional self care I also include things like healing and seeing a counselor and stuff like that.
So even within the realm of self care, that piece of knowing and understanding ourselves and finding that harmony is still in that space. And of course, self care is backed up by a lot of positive psychology things and gratitude and all of the research behind that as well. So even those four quadrants they include both the healing piece and the making sure that we're taking care of ourselves in multiple ways.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely. So, just to recap, Mandy, we've got the, when we want to balance our self care, we want to balance the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual, and the physical, correct?
Mandy Froehlich: Yeah. And some people have listed up to 16 different types of self care. Like that just didn't feel manageable to me knowing that I needed to work in all of those areas that felt very overwhelming. There is a self care, that's a lot of people recognize, and that's social.
And that's because we are by nature, social creatures. We need to feel like we belong. It's how we build our identity and things. And so I can see that one, but for me social falls under emotional, just because it's the emotions from those connections that are the piece of the self care that matters.
It's not actually just being around people.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I would add, I think that the social could potentially be a through line for all of them. Because when I think about the intellectual, that yes, there's times where I want to learn independently, but there's other times where I want to learn in a community.
And spirituality, when I think about gratitude, so much of that is to do with others and nurturing relationships. Not always, but sometimes. And so, I think for me, and even if you wanted to get to physical, well, a great commitment device is to have a workout buddy. So, I think that you don't necessarily need that to be a separate one that could actually be one that runs into whichever of those four that you think are best for you. And so that's going back to that theme we've talked about, you know, it's all personal. It's like I could say this, but that's not necessarily going to be a fit for someone else. And so it's all about finding your strengths, finding your purpose, and really figuring out what works for you.
Mandy Froehlich: Right. Absolutely.
Lainie Rowell: Mandy, this has been so much wisdom and I know people are going to want to connect with you. What is the best way for them to do that?
Mandy Froehlich: Sure, you can find me at, @FroehlichM on the Twitters, and at MandyFroehlich.Com on my website. On the internet.
Lainie Rowell: On the interweb, we've got that. Okay. Mandy, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom. And thank you all for listening.
