Israa Nasir - Escaping TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY

Israa Nasir is a New York City–based psychotherapist, writer, and the founder of WellGuide, a digital community dedicated to mental health awareness. 

With a master’s in counseling and advanced training in Cognitive Behavioral and Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, she’s dedicated her career to mental health.

Israa has built a community of over 350,000 followers with her evidence-based approach to mental health and productivity. She’s the author of Toxic Productivity, where she unpacks the hidden drivers of overwork and offers tools for balance. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Time, and she’s spoken at Google, Instagram, Microsoft, and major conferences like SXSW.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Isra Nasser
• 4:16 The Trap of External Validation
• 7:39 Three Ways to Build Internal Validation
• 14:49 Redefining Rest and Its Importance
• 19:05 Setting Realistic Goals and Flexibility
• 24:55 Overcoming Obsession with Others' Opinions
• 30:59 Fiction vs Self-Help for Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is how I Built my Small Business, a show that started with business founding and growth stories in season one and has evolved in season two to highlight more expertise from incredible thought leaders. Each episode is an invitation to learn through storytelling, and at the end, I always distill the key takeaways for you. Today's guest is Isra Nasser, a New York-based. Today's guest is Isra Nasser, a New York-based psychotherapist, writer and founder of WellGuide, a digital community for mental health awareness. With a master's in counseling and advanced training in cognitive, behavioral and rational emotive behavioral therapy, she's dedicated her career to mental health therapy. She's dedicated her career to mental health. Isra has built a community of over 350,000 followers with her evidence-based approach to mental health and productivity. She's the author of Toxic Productivity, where she unpacks the hidden drivers of overwork and offers tools for balance. Her work has been featured in Forbes, harvard Business Review and Time, and she's spoken at Google, instagram, microsoft and major conferences like South by Southwest.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Why do we pursue the things we pursue? Why do we do what we do? What I was seeing in the research was that our emotions that are not resolved will compel you to do things to get externally motivated self-worth.

Speaker 1: 1:29

And why do you think it is that we feel such a level of? Maybe it's false reward from being so busy, keeping ourselves constantly chasing these goals?

Speaker 2: 1:46

constantly chasing these goals. So the way we are wired to operate, we need both internal and external motivation, and we need internal and external validation. As human beings we need both. What's happened is, over time, as a society, we have over indexed on the external, and as our society shifted to a little bit more tech enabled, globalization started happening. Jobs became more competitive, like the narrative around success started to change. It no longer was just oh, success is you just have a job and you have a family and you live in a suburb community. It was like you need to have an incredible job, you have to be a founder before 30. And so the pressure really changed late Gen X onwards, and that's, I think, because of the intersection of technology, capitalism, like.

Speaker 2: 2:30

I don't think we can talk about this without talking about that globalization. So all of these forces have shaped our culture and what has come out of that is this idea or understanding that success can only happen if you look like what other people are doing and that's amplified. What happens is people. They overwork, they hustle and grind and you sleep on your death, and then you come to this breaking point where your ambition no longer matters to you. It doesn't spark joy in you because you have over committed and you've overdone. So the idea here is how can we shift to be sustainable over the long term, so we don't lose connection to ourselves and our passions? And one way is to internalize some of that validation.

Speaker 2: 3:15

And there's many ways people can do this, but I talk about three that I find to be easy to access and available for everyone. So the first is engaging in a creative hobby for the sake of creation. So not hobbies to monetize, not hobbies to put on Instagram or create an Etsy shop out of. Don't even track your progress, right, you don't have to get better at it. Last year was my year of hobbies, and every three months I picked up a new hobby and intentionally made the decision to just be mediocre at it, and you know it was very challenging, especially the performative hobbies like improv. Like I really just like my internal desire to like excel really kicked in on stage, but I really had to be like no, you're not, you're just doing this for vibes, you know. And so that's a really good way to start building that muscle, because it exists. We develop that way.

Speaker 2: 4:09

We just lose it over time because of the academic system, the way our parents are work culture right, and now social media. So one is hobbies, one is IRL communities. Digital communities are really amazing for increasing access and connection, but they don't actually give you the benefit of what it means to sit face-to-face with someone. So having more face time with your community, your friends, your neighbors, in, again, a non-performative way, is very important. So no one's taking Instagram photos of your tablescape, we are just having a dinner and maybe we're eating out of paper plates and maybe it's just takeout. Maybe no one is dressed up and we're just sitting on the couch.

Speaker 2: 4:51

We need to bring that energy back so that the present moment is enough, so that we don't have to capture it for a future state of validation by performing it for the world. The third one is to identify where in your life you can invite some good enough points. You know, before you start a project or before you start planning your trip or whatever it is that you're doing, identify the pieces that are okay to just be good enough and release the pressure of perfection. So intentionally accepting where you will be good enough allows you to show up better, for where it matters that you are perfect or you are excellent, and so these three things are just habit shifts that we can make, that can start building that muscle of internal validation.

Speaker 1: 5:30

I like what you're saying and the first point that you made about non-monetized creative outlets really hits home, because that's what I've done with this podcast. You touched on a point earlier where you had said capitalism and being in America with it. So capitalistic and it's almost impossible to not at least a little bit compare yourself. When you're just starting out your career, when you're in your 20s, going into your late 20s and into your 30s, most of us, I would think, at some point in our lives, live check to check. So how are people supposed to break out of check to check without checking, kind of eating into that sacred time that they've set aside for themselves the evening hours, the weekends, like I know that when I was in my early twenties I worked seven days a week because I felt I didn't have another choice.

Speaker 2: 6:27

And I think that's a reality for many people. And so the idea of rest and creativity and joy. It's not meant to be a reward you get after you finish your work. I think if we get out of this like black and white, thinking that I have to be done work and then only I can rest because now I've earned it or now I actually have the time for it, right, that keeps us trapped in the no rest loop. So I think that the point is to integrate rest into your day-to-day habits. That requires you to shift your fundamental definition of rest.

Speaker 2: 6:57

A lot of us think that resting is like endless times of doing nothing, that you need the whole day to be sitting at the beach to recuperate. But research shows you could do a 90 second meditation and a three minute meditation and that still counts as a restful activity. Thinking about the rest in this micro way is really important. And the second thing is research has shown there's actually seven types of rest. So there's, you know, spiritual, emotional, physical, communal. There's seven different categories of rest, and so thinking about what is accessible to you that week. So I think it's about diversifying what rest actually looks like in your life as well.

Speaker 1: 7:37

And how do you feel about goal?

Speaker 2: 7:39

setting. I think goals are really important. I think, the way that we are wired neurologically, we need an end point, otherwise time can feel very overwhelming. I think that there is a danger when we set too many goals. Let's say I'm just going to use my example of writing a book. Now that is so big.

Speaker 2: 7:58

In order for that to happen, multiple things need to be true. First, right, and so I could shift my perspective into. My purpose is to share information with people, and then I can create goals around that that are more specific and time-bound, like really thinking about what can I achieve in the next 30 days that will help me achieve this bigger thing that I want? Right, and sometimes it's a small thing, like changing your routine. Literally, it will take you four weeks to change a habit in your life, so it's like thinking about it like that.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Like, let's say, let's say I want to write a book, just to elaborate a little, I first maybe need to get in the habit of writing. Well, right, and so maybe for three months, for 90 days, I'm going to make a commitment that I'm going to write for 15, 20 minutes a day, or I'm going to write three pages a day. That gets that muscle going and that makes me more likely to achieve the goal of writing a book versus just being like, oh my God, I got to write a book and I start writing a book. And the most important part of goal setting is something called psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is your ability to adapt when changes happen, so it's your mind's ability to shift perspective and adapt when new information starts coming in, aka change. So like that's a really important part of goal setting, because uncertain things happen all the time, like our entire life is uncertain. So goals are important because it keeps us anchored, but we need to have the ability to adapt our goals as our life changes.

Speaker 1: 9:30

That would make you enjoy the journey.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Exactly. Enjoy the journey. You understand the steps that are required for the journey, right. It gives you more power in knowledge and insight on how things happen. I guess like a more accessible example would be like January one. Everyone's like I'm going to work out four days a week, it'll be a 60 minute workout session and I'm going to change my body by summer. Those people often are no longer at the gym by day 45, right, and so why? Because the goal was too big. So going from zero to four days of working out a week is not realistic. So that's what I mean by realistic Look at your life and think about what is the smallest unit of behavior change that you can integrate that will move you towards the larger goal. Maybe it's just one day a week you start with. Maybe you start with 15 minutes, right, and then you just build up from there.

Speaker 1: 10:20

Well and this takes a lot of work to go internal and to really think about what it is that you want to achieve and why. How do you feel about other people's opinions of you? Or like, how do you teach others to maybe not care about what other people think of them, their perspective on how successful they are? I mean, I know so many people who deeply care that their public perception is one of immense success.

Speaker 2: 10:51

Yes, there's like two questions in there. So one is like how do you stop caring about other people's opinion? Two is how do you separate the sense of pride you feel from what other people view you as? And I'm kind of smiling when you ask the question, cause I'm Asian, I was raised by Asian immigrant parents. Like this is like the lifeblood of the culture, at least Pakistani culture is. Like what are people going to say? That's like an actual phrase that parents use all the time. So it's like a really big part of many people's fundamental framework and worldview, right, even if you're not Asian. But so the first point is I think it's okay to feel pride in the way other people perceive you. That I don't necessarily feel like we have to get rid of that. I think what we have to add is that your sense of pride in what you do is stronger than the pride you get from the way other people view you. External validation is important. We don't want to get rid of that. What we want to strengthen is our own ability to see our value even when other people don't. That is the journey, right, and so the way to kind of stop caring about other people's opinions.

Speaker 2: 12:00

First of all I'll say to any listener who struggles with this is that this is not like an overnight. There is no quick fix to this because this is a lifelong learning. We learn very quickly, irrespective of who your parents are, that you got to fall in line right, depending on what career you've chosen. Some workplaces really, really demand that you know. If you are like a young doctor, you have to fall in line. You have to care about what your superiors think of you, right. So if you struggle with this and it leads you to people pleasing, it leads you to like avoidant conflict tendencies. You don't say what you want or what you need. It's not something that you can make go away in like 30 days, and that's not the point. The point is for you to slowly build self-trust again.

Speaker 2: 12:42

When people struggle with caring too much about other people's opinion, what's lacking is self-trust. What's lacking is the trust in your own ability to care for yourself. In the discomfort of someone's disappointment it's too overwhelming. So you're like I don't want to feel that disappointment because I don't know if I can handle it. So the journey really begins with that. How do you start trusting yourself again? You know a very low hanging fruit way of doing it is try to make decisions without asking someone for input.

Speaker 2: 13:13

If you're somebody who all like this was me, and to some degree it is me I'll always text my younger sister before buying an outfit. Because she's younger than me, you know, she's a little more connected to fashion trends and she's more stylish, so I had become dependent on her validation to purchase clothes. Now, in order for me to kind of break out of that habit, I did have to start slowly buying like a shoe or a dress without texting her. That was very hard for me, and so the baby step was I'd buy it and then I'd text her right, and then slowly it shifted away from like I'll buy it and then she'll just see it when I'm wearing it. It's like in these small ways you start building your own sense of trust, and so this can happen for other things too. This is like a little bit of a low stakes example, but that's how you can do that.

Speaker 1: 13:56

I was having a little bit of a chuckle when you were saying that, because I am notoriously indecisive and I think maybe it has something to do with the way that I was raised as well Big family, asian family and recently was on a group trip with some friends and it's like when decisions would come up, what do you want to do? I mean, I think I freeze and I'm like well, I'm happy to do whatever. What does everybody else want to do? I think that it's really hard to trust your opinion when you haven't had practice with it.

Speaker 2: 14:26

The answer is in the thing you just said when you haven't had practice. So it is a muscle that everybody can learn. It doesn't even matter if you have a clinical condition like anxiety or ADHD. It's just a learned behavior. It's nothing inherent or moralistic. Or a lot of times people say that you know, oh, you're so indecisive. There's like this, like moral judgment to it. But it's not. It's just a learned behavior that we can unlearn.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Yeah, you're right, we just need to practice it in little ways there, we just need to practice it in little ways. There was something that you mentioned at the beginning of your book that also resonated with me, and that's when you were talking about how you used to almost only read nonfiction books, and there is something about constantly wanting to better ourselves, right, constantly wanting to be a better and better version, right, like constantly wanting to be a better and better version. So how do you tackle your real deep desire to learn and improve and have that personal development, while also understanding that there is a point at which you really need to learn, have more balance?

Speaker 2: 15:33

I think we have to have balance by understanding that fiction teaches us as well. Fiction teaches us critical thinking. Self-help books will give you the solution. They'll be like A plus B equals C, whereas with fiction you have to read through and kind of do deductive reasoning and then realize at the end it was like, oh, a plus B equals C. Right, you are building intelligence through fiction. You are also building empathy.

Speaker 2: 15:55

I think there is a very strong correlation between the lack of empathy societally and the increase of personal, individual self-help. Self-help is always individual, it's about you character. You have to understand them. You can't just sympathize with them, you have to empathize with them, and that changes our emotional intelligence. So I mean, this is something I think about a lot, by the way, and so I think fiction teaches us critical thinking, deductive reasoning, empathy, and we have to understand that those are valuable, key skills that are required us, required for us to be in good relationships, romantically, be good friends and also be good leaders at work. If you cannot empathize with your teammates at work, like you're going to be a nightmare to work with, no one's going to want to work with you, and so I had to shift into that mindset and really, really go back to my roots of reading.

Speaker 2: 16:47

As we have grown older, and especially in this, like big boom of personal development, self-growth in the last 12 years, every new book that comes out is telling you, hey, like you're missing this fundamental thing including mine, right, and it is enormously beneficial for people Like I have learned so much from so many books. And so what I say to people and I've always said this and I don't know if it's the best thing to say, but I have always said it is like, only pick up this book If you are at a moment in your life where you need it. Like if you are at a moment in your life where you need it, like if you're not struggling with productivity, if you feel kind of good about your job right now and you don't really care about other things, like don't pick it up. Pick it up. Pick up any self-help book when you genuinely need it, not because you heard about it in a podcast or you read about it in the New York times, because the self-help industry is about perpetuating deficiency.

Speaker 1: 17:33

How do you feel about this concept of, like, chronic busyness, and is it something that you've seen across nations, or is this America's problem?

Speaker 2: 17:43

I definitely think it's like a North America problem, for sure, with some Western European nations, but predominantly at a global scale. It's definitely a North America problem and problem. But then you can also see that North American countries have some of the highest GDPs in the world. So, like there, there is a reason, right? I have a lot of friends who work in finance and I'm always like we should, you know, blah, blah, blah, four day work week, and they're like the countries that employ it are either really really tiny or their GDPs are failing, and so it's like this constant battle between, you know, capitalism and wellness. But I think that work is center to North American identity, right, the nationhood or the story of America is you can come here and you can build yourself from anything, not from nothing to anything, right, it's in like the origin narrative of America, so it's very hard to kind of take that away.

Speaker 2: 18:38

The factories came up here, like invention happened here, right, but in other countries, like I grew up in the Middle East, like, the relationship to work is very different and those countries are very wealthy as well and they operate, right, but it's not centered to their existence. I'm originally Pakistani and work culture is very different there, and so I definitely think that there's a pro and con to each. I think that the way our work culture is set up, it leads to a lot of loneliness, like you're kind of seeing this in South Korea, right? Like the work culture there has become so immensely toxic, and so the birth rates were falling, and so they had to create this like mandated, like cut off time to work, and so the birth rates were falling, and so they had to create this like mandated, like cut off time to work, and like they're trying to implement a four day work week so that people can have time to have families and have children. You know there are there are some places in East Asia that are adopting this culture too.

Speaker 2: 19:28

But I think it's just about coming back to balance. I think we need to be productive, we need to have innovation, we need to be creative and work hard, but the way I see it is, these type of spurts of very unhealthy or imbalanced productivity should be exceptions in your life. They should not be the rule in your life. So even in the workplace, there are going to be sprint times where you're just like I got to get this, like me when the book was coming out in November, six weeks before, I was just like 18 cylinders, like I don't, you know, right, I was just going so fast. But I knew that I had a deadline, I knew this was an exception and I think that's what we need to bring into our regular lives.

Speaker 1: 20:07

Is high spurt, like high productivity, like no boundaries, doing work till like midnight, like that should be exceptional like no boundaries, doing work till like midnight, like that should be exceptional, yeah, and yeah, not the norm for sure. I asked you that question because I also have a very multicultural family and my husband is from New Zealand and it's probably one of the most obvious differences that I've recognized between their culture and ours is Kiwis truly know how to just be without doing, and I know very few people in America who can just be, and I just have wondered, like, where did we go wrong? Like is this hitting us in early childhood? Is it our education system or is it the cost of living? Do we just want too much? Like are we such consumerists that we need so much money? And so then that drive for money is causing us to kind of be workaholics and overachievers. Like, how do you feel about money and its relationship to why people are chronically busy?

Speaker 2: 21:18

You're kind of speaking to a socio-political, cultural context, right, and there's no one singular answer as to like why America is the way it is. America just has more potential, right, like people don't move here because they don't want potential. Like as somebody who's an immigrant, my parents moved from Middle East to Canada. Like in Canada, as part of like of this conversation of like North America, there is potential to achieve a lot People are just kind of like striving to use money as a way to protect their futures. You know, in a way that I don't think we did before In the US, if you don't have a job, you don't have healthcare, you need to work in order to go to the doctor. Like that is always mind blowing to me because it's just not a good system, right, we're the only country with like medical debt. So money is a really important thing, but I think it provides a lot of security and safety to people and so it drives you to do more.

Speaker 1: 22:20

However, there's like other factors that also play into it. Yeah, and I, I well, I think that I see a little bit of overlap in the. You know, enough is never enough when it comes to success, but I also feel that many people feel that enough is never enough when it comes to money too. So I just there's a little bit of a parallel there Absolutely, yeah, as a therapist, I know you're, uh, you have WellGuide, which I believe is a digital mental health support group or system, and you're writing, you're speaking. I mean, you are quote unquote very successful in what you're doing. What kind of boundaries do you set for yourself?

Speaker 2: 22:54

It requires a lot of emotional regulation. I genuinely believe that emotional regulation is the key to making it an anything relationship, friendship, parenting, whatever, instagram content creation. The goal is not to never feel stuff, because you'll always feel it. You're a human person, right? It's your emotional reaction is like an uncontrolled activity in your brain. The power is in regulating it and talking yourself through it. It's also really important to surround yourself with people who are going to keep it real for you, who you can talk with, you can share, and they don't need to be in the same industry as you, but they can be real with you and they can say, hey, this is not necessary, or you're spiraling, or, I think, asking for help and reaching out and being vulnerable with like two people or three people. That's really helpful in helping set boundaries.

Speaker 1: 23:39

And, aside from this, are there any other tools that you use for that emotional regulation that you had mentioned?

Speaker 2: 23:45

For some people, like affirmations are really helpful, but for me, like I just need to talk myself through it. And the conversation is either you follow your irrational thought, right, so oh, if you don't post today, like your analytics are going to drop, okay, so what. And then blah, blah, blah will happen because of that. Okay, then, so what, right. And then so you kind of follow this. So what line of thinking to help you realize that the thing that feels so big for you is actually not that impactful or consequential. So you kind of like lay bare your own irrationality through talking to yourself, and so that's a really powerful cognitive tool that you can use. And then I also do a lot of like voice memo journaling. I can't always sit down and write, but I'll use the voice memo app and just kind of like get the thoughts out and it's not going anywhere. No one needs to hear it again, even I don't, but it's helpful to just get it out.

Speaker 2: 24:38

It's another form of journaling if you don't like writing. And then I also have a list of things that I enjoy doing when I feel bad, and it's in my notes app, because when you feel bad and when you feel like very activated, you can't access the logical part of your brain just because the way the brain is working in that moment the front part of your brain has shut down and that's a logical center, right. So a lot of times, like, you can't even remember like the most basic things that help you feel better, you just can't. And so having it written down in a note on your, on your phone, is like so helpful. You can just like pick it up and you know we have decision fatigue right now on streaming so just the write down for movies that you really like going back to an album that you like listening to, that makes you feel better, so that you're not searching in that moment.

Speaker 1: 25:22

I really liked that one where you were saying, well, so what? And then you answer it, okay, oh well, so what After that? That's a really great exercise that I'm going to try to remember. I know that self-pressure is something that I personally struggle with. I know other people that struggle with it. Self-pressure is something that I personally struggle with, I know other people that struggle with it, and I was also wondering if you have any ideas for where that self-pressure actually comes from, because my logical brain can say, okay, now is the time to just relax, stop worrying about that, but then I'll have this pressure that I'm not doing enough.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Sometimes the self-pressure can be too great and it's not well-placed. Self-pressure is effectively your inner critic, right? And the inner critic is this voice that we have in our head that is developed over time. That is usually like a mix of parent, some teachers, maybe you had some friends who you had some negative experiences as a child with. It's usually a voice that developed very early on in life that polices you and it becomes so fused with our self-concept that when we get into adulthood we actually forget that this is not our voice. So when you're resting and there's a voice telling you you are lazy, get up. There's a pile of laundry on the floor, like what kind of person leaves their laundry on the floor. We believe this is our voice telling us this. It's not. It is our inner critic, which is a separate voice. So when we want to kind of combat self pressure we have to first identify the inner critic. You know, I think it requires some introspection, but not time consuming introspection. You can really just pause and ask yourself who sounds like this in my life.

Speaker 2: 27:05

Every time you have a negative thought that's critical of policing or shaming, literally, all you have to do is just be like who does this sound like and you'll be like oh my gosh, it sounds like my mom, right. Or it sounds like that whatever PE teacher who told me that I couldn't run or whatever right, and so like that itself in the small habit, will create this distance. So what we're looking for is to create distance from the thought so that we can externalize it and that we can manage and process, because when it's fused with our sense of self, what you feel is shame, not guilt. Shame is a really powerful emotion and shame can make you do destructive things without even you realizing it. When you actually push it out, it first becomes guilt. Guilt is a much better place to be in, because guilt is I'm doing something bad. It's so action oriented. You'd move to change how you feel right, but guilt is easier to release than shame. Shame is very core. So the first thing you want to do is you want to like, hey, like who does this sound like Right? And then just kind of start going from there. Then you can do the. So what conversation? Then you can fact check yourself Right, whatever this thought is, you can say is this true? Is there evidence for it Right? What's the evidence for and against Like?

Speaker 2: 28:13

You can do this like a lot of cognitive work and at the same time, I think it's really helpful to learn how to relax your body when you're feeling uncomfortable. That was my problem, because my defense mechanism is intellectualizing. I can just like I can cognitively, do all the things right. I can do the distance, I can do the fact checking, but I was not very in touch with my body. So my body would be wound up.

Speaker 2: 28:35

I would be stressed Like my shoulders would be wound up. I would be stressed Like my shoulders would be up to my ear, like I'd be restless, I would feel uncomfortable, like I just was so disconnected from my body. It's kind of like thinking back. I'm just like wow. So it's also helpful to like really get into your body and the easiest, smallest way is to deep breathe. Four deep breaths, take it in for four, hold for two, let it out for six, take it in for four, hold for two, let it out for six. Just super simple. Then you can go into the more complicated, involved somatic practices, but just the most basic thing is just take a couple of deep breaths and like relax your body.

Speaker 1: 29:05

So important. I think a lot of us shallow breathe without even realizing it, throughout the entire day.

Speaker 2: 29:12

It's called like digital asphyxia. I don't know if you've heard the phrase, but you might notice that you're actually holding your breath while you're scrolling, like once I noticed it I couldn't not notice it, cause your body's so stressed because of the scrolling Cause it's so overwhelming for the brain that actually you can hold your breath for some time and not realize it. That makes you feel really bad.

Speaker 1: 29:35

Yeah, wow, that's making me also want to check in on my kids and make sure that they aren't holding their breath throughout the day. Yeah, we need to breathe. Like our cells, they need oxygen. Well, so, just as a final question here, if you could go back and sit down and have a conversation with yourself when you were in your early twenties, how do you imagine that conversation would go?

Speaker 2: 29:57

I think that a I would tell her that I admire a lot of things about her. I would tell her that her fearlessness, her like ability to like leap and just do the things without fear took her to amazing places. So I would definitely tell her to keep that. I think it's important to appreciate the things that have helped you come this far. Her to keep that. I think it's important to appreciate the things that have helped you come this far. So I would say that. And the second thing I would say to her is to maybe not be so concerned with achieving fast. Really just think, take some time Like it's okay, like it's not a failure just because it didn't happen as fast as you wanted, like I think I was very consumed with speed, you know, and if it wasn't happening fast enough, it wasn't good enough. I think I would tell that person to slow down a little and appreciate things a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 30:48

That's very sweet. Yeah Well, Isra, thank you so much for coming on and it's been a great conversation. Thanks for coming.

Speaker 2: 30:56

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I loved your last question, by the way.

Speaker 1: 31:03

Today's key takeaways. Understand where motivation comes from. Unresolved emotions often push us toward chasing external validation. As humans, we need both internal and external motivation, but today's culture puts heavy pressure on achieving success in outward, performative ways. The antidote is to reconnect with yourself and to ask yourself what nourishes me, not just what looks good to others. Other ways to reconnect with yourself are engaging in a creative hobby purely for the joy of creating, not for any performance or productivity. Invest in real life, community friendships, family and groups where you feel grounded and connected in real life. Practice self-acceptance by giving yourself good enough points in areas where perfection just isn't necessary.

Speaker 1: 32:02

Rest and joy aren't rewards you earn only after finishing your to-do list. They're really essential daily practices. Even a 90-second to three-minute break can reset your mind and body. Remember the seven types of rest that you may need. There's physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual.

Speaker 1: 32:27

Goals anchor us, but instead of focusing only on the big picture goal, ask what can I realistically achieve in the next 30 days? These shorter horizons keep motivation fresh and it reduces overwhelm. Big spurts of productivity are normal, but they should be the exception and not the standard. There will be times when you really need to work overtime, but you shouldn't be doing that all the time. Build rhythms of sustainable output rather than living in constant overdrive. Try the so what technique when something feels overwhelming. This will help you see whether it's truly as big as it seems.

Speaker 1: 33:12

Keep a note in your phone listing activities that lift your mood. When you're down, you can easily access this list and use logic to guide you back to things you know help. When we're emotionally dysregulated, it can be very hard, if not impossible, to think logically. When you hear a harsh, critical inner voice, ask whose voice does this sound like? Naming it helps separate it from your true self. And then practice compassion and speak to yourself like you would a good friend. And finally, achievement is not a race. So slow down, take deep breaths throughout the day and remember life isn't just about reaching the finish line, it's about the entire journey. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.