Melody Wilding: How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It’s by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you’re not.

I’m Melody Wilding, bestselling author, human behavior professor and award winning executive coach. Get ready and let’s put psychology to work for you.

You may not know this about me, but I love to lift weights. There is something so empowering about challenging myself, physically seeing yourself and feeling yourself getting stronger, weak by week, and measuring that progress over time. And I have noticed so many parallels between weightlifting and our physical health and our emotional health.

Just like how consistent weight training builds your physical strength, we need regular emotional exercise to prepare for life’s challenges. Now, more than ever. Whether you are deliberately practicing difficult conversations, you are recovering between periods of intense stress you are developing. The wherewithal to handle heavier emotional loads without breaking down.

Just like physical fitness doesn’t happen accidentally. Our emotional wellbeing also takes consistent training and attention, and like I said, this is more important than ever before, when we are living in a time when it seems like every day there is a new crisis at work, there is a new change that you have to navigate, there’s a tough personality you have to work with and figure out how to manage.

The emotional demands we face every day are intense, and most of us are not taught the skills we need to handle them effectively. So that is exactly why I wanted to have my friend, Dr. Emily Anhalt on the show today. She is a clinical psychologist. She’s the co-founder of Coa, which is the world’s first gym for mental health, and she is the author of the brand new book, Flex Your Feelings. Emily has spent 15 years researching, developing practical approaches to emotional fitness that can really transform how you show up at work and in your entire life.

And today, she’s here to help you develop the seven essential traits of emotional fitness so that you can handle more and bigger challenges without burning out. So Emily, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Thank you so much for having me. What a delightful intro.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Now, if listeners actually use what you share today, if they put into practice some of these emotional fitness practices, how will their day-to-day work life, what will be different for them?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: So people who practice practice emotional fitness consistently tend to feel at work, less reactive, more intentional, more satisfied with their choices instead of feeling. Almost hijacked by stress or conflict or self-doubt, they’ll start to make choices with clarity and curiosity and confidence. In my experience, people who practice emotional fitness will find it easier to have tough conversations.

They will navigate uncertainty more gracefully, and they’ll be able to stay. Grounded even when things are feeling really messy. And then over time, that builds not just better outcomes, but better relationships and a healthier relationship to your work and to your life in general.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And know, I, I have this philosophy. My, my entire business, all of my programs run on, which is this idea of your Professional Power Position. One half of that is managing your own psychology. The other half of that is being able to influence others, but it’s, it’s really hard to influence others and shape the situations around you if you’re not steady within yourself. Everything you were saying, whether it was, you know, showing up differently to challenges, navigating uncertainty, it’s like this is just a toolkit. This is a toolkit for being a human today. Because I was just thinking, wow, I could have everything you were saying, I could have used five times today already, and it’s only Monday in the middle of the afternoon. So I think this is going to be really handy for a lot of people.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: I mean, I, I think about how years ago most people’s jobs required them to use their bodies. There was a lot of physical fitness involved, and so the better of shape you were in, the better and more safely you could probably do your job. And these days we’ve kind of traded that and most of us are mind workers now.

You know, most of us are having to think a lot more than use our bodies at work. And so it would follow that it’s just as important that we’re working out our minds and emotions so that we can show up really ready to work from a healthy place.

Melody Wilding: What a great point. I never made that connection, but you’re so right, and I think that probably helps a person who’s listening feel better about this being. Purposeful and this mattering versus, oh yeah, mental health, because it feels like this invisible, abstract, intangible thing. But when you put it that way, you know, it’s almost like you’re, you’re treating yourself a bit more like an athlete.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Mm.

Melody Wilding: Yes, your, your main, your main muscle or tool that you’re using is your mind, and you

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yes.

Melody Wilding: sure that’s on lock. You’ve used this term emotional fitness. What does that mean?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: So I define emotional fitness as an ongoing, proactive practice to improve your mental and emotional health. So emotional fitness is like physical fitness, but for your inner world, it’s a ongoing commitment you have to doing the work that will allow you to face discomfort and make choices intentionally about how you wanna show up with other people, even when you’re feeling emotional, even when you’re in complicated situations. And in practice, it really just means noticing what you’re feeling, understanding it, and acting in a way that reflects your values, not just your defenses and your impulses.

So, being emotionally fit is not about being perfectly regulated all the time. It’s about building a kind of emotional range and flexibility to deal with whatever life throws at you.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. How would you know if you’re emotionally unfit?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Right. So I would say especially at work, the signs are often subtle but familiar. So if you’re in an emotionally unfit state, you might shut down during conflict or get really defensive. You might spiral after getting feedback. You might avoid difficult conversations altogether. You might find yourself overthinking or people pleasing or staying busy to avoid feeling anything at all. Or you just might not feel satisfied with what you’re doing, you just might not be enjoying the relationships you have at work. On the other hand, emotional fitness is that ability to get curious about what you’re feeling and to choose your responses thoughtfully, even when things are hard and,

it’ll show you how you can step into your leadership self and collaborate and set boundaries and, and do all the things that you need to do to feel really good at the end of the day about how you’ve shown up at work.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. I mentioned, uh, a moment ago that, this is, it’s intangible, right? And I think many of us, you know, especially when you and I were a bit younger, mental health wasn’t really something we talked about, let alone talked about in the context of our careers or the workplace.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Right.

Melody Wilding: Why do you think it is tough for people to be emotionally fit some of those reasons?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: I mean, a lot of it is just that it was not prioritized for us growing up. There was no emotional fitness or EQ classes. In fact, you know, for people our age especially, there was no talk of even things like mindfulness or meditation or therapy or any of the tools that people now have at least a little more exposure to, to help them with this.

So part of it is that. And then another part of it is just that it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable, and nobody really wants to be uncomfortable. You know, I think if you went to the gym and you said, all right, I’m gonna work out. I’m gonna get stronger, but as soon as I feel any physical discomfort, I’m gonna stop, you’re never gonna get stronger. You’re never gonna do any more today than you could yesterday. And I don’t think people realize that the same is true with your emotional health. That if you’re not willing to get a little bit uncomfortable, you’re not going to grow as a person. Every single thing you want in work and life lives on the other side of some discomfort, and so a lot of emotional fitness is just building yourself up to have the capacity to handle that discomfort so that you can see what lives on the other side of it.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Yeah, we talk about that so much in my programs. Tolerance for discomfort. Right. And even tolerance for ambiguity.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: before, like living in the messiness and knowing how to surf that without falling into, use the word defenses before. And I wanna go there because when I hear that, like my psychology brain is like, oh yes.

Tell me, tell me about your psychological defenses. And, what I’ve always appreciated about your work, because I have followed you for probably going on 10 years now,

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Wow.

Melody Wilding: we met and became friends, but I have always appreciated that you have such a rich, psychology background, and in particular you’ve studied analytic psychology.

So how has that influenced your work, the how you are approaching emotional fitness, how you help people apply it to their lives. ’cause that that really is a unique lens to bring to it.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: For sure. And, uh, for those who aren’t familiar, analytics psychology just really emphasizes the importa of depth. It’s about looking beneath the surface of things to understand what’s driving behavior and it privileges the importance of relationships, the relationship we have to ourself, the relationship we have to other people.

And it assumes that there are things that each of us is kind of hiding from ourselves. And that as you understand what those things are, you gain agency and control over your life. So that’s been foundational to my approach. I think a lot of what makes us emotionally unfit is not just about skills, it’s about the blind spots we have.

It’s about, the patterns that we’ve been repeating without even realizing it. It’s about the defenses that have protected us at some point, but are now getting in our way. It’s about the stories that we have, that we’ve internalized, that we assume are truth and are not necessarily truth. So my work isn’t just about managing emotions, it’s about understanding them.

Because when you understand your inner world, your inner landscape, you stop being ruled by it.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. Yeah. And you can put into context, I think there’s a balance here. I would love to hear your perspective on this, that there’s a balance here between under understanding it but not, not getting caught the cycle of, but why, but why, but, and there’s at least my approach is, let’s understand where this came from in so far that it helps us have the context and the objectivity change it going forward. Because I think it can be, um, sometimes we can get into that almost naval gazing in, in a way of, or, or even using it as, we had this one thing happen in our childhood and now we’re afraid of rejection, let’s say, and we can use that to avoid certain situations going forward.

So where, how do you find that balance between examining the past but not getting into circular exploration around that?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: I think there’s a really big difference between living in the past and reflecting on the past. And I think reflecting on the past is very powerful because it helps us understand why we are the way we are. Helps us understand how we got to where we are right now. And I I’m with you that there’s such a thing as just sort of ruminating or obsessing over the understanding part.

And when I see that often, I think a lot of that is, especially those of us who are, you know, used to using our minds, we keep trying to think our way out of our feelings and unfortunately the only way to get through feelings is to feel your way through those feelings. So I do think. Understanding where we came from is really important because if we’re stuck in something now, it probably has its roots in our past in some way.

And sort of digging down to understand those roots, I think can be really powerful. But there’s almost this pendulum swing. I talk about this in the book where I. You can be too stuck where you can’t move forward and there’s nothing you can do, or you can be too kind of avoidant where you’re not looking at the important things enough.

And the goal is to kind of get to the center where you’re willing to look at the hard things, but then you use them as a springboard to move forward. And finding that balance is really complicated. You know, we all have our unconscious investments in staying in the past or pretending the past doesn’t exist.

So that’s why it’s such an individual journey we each have to understand. What role those things are playing in our life.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, absolutely. And, and thank you for indulging me.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Totally.

Melody Wilding: appreciate it.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: into those, um, seven traits of emotional fitness. Can you give us a, a high level overview and then we’ll, we’ll dig into a few of them.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Absolutely. So just a really quick, uh, for those who aren’t familiar with the, the seven traits at all, they came from a big research study I did where I interviewed a hundred psychologists and a hundred entrepreneurs, and I asked them the question, how would you know if you were sitting across the table from an emotionally healthy leader?

What does that look like? What does that feel like? What do they do? What do they not do? And out of this research came these seven things that emotionally healthy people seem to be working on and prioritizing all the time.

And those seven things are mindfulness, which I define as the ability to become more comfortable, being uncomfortable.

Curiosity, which is pursuing growth over defensiveness and prioritizing continued learning.

Self-awareness, which is understanding your emotional strengths and struggles and triggers and biases.

Resilience, which is bouncing forward through setbacks and failures.

Empathy, understanding the emotions of others.

Communication, putting words to your needs and expectations and boundaries.

And finally, playfulness, being a yes and person and fostering space that deepens connection.

So those are the seven.

Melody Wilding: And I can see how many of them compliment or amplify each other, how

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Definitely,

Melody Wilding: goes hand in hand with playfulness. If you’re curious, then you’re more able to be playful, for

Dr. Emily Anhalt: yes.

Melody Wilding: Which of these, if you had to pick two that you think are most underdeveloped for the vast majority of people you talk to, which would those be?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: You know what’s funny is, everyone’s different. People have different strengths. I wouldn’t say that there’s any that feels really lacking across the board. The first one is mindfulness for a reason. I don’t think anyone likes discomfort, and most people are comfortable with certain types of discomfort and uncomfortable with other types of discomfort.

So for example, I’m pretty comfortable feeling tough emotions ’cause of the work that I do, but I’m really uncomfortable being physically uncomfortable. It’s very hard for me to take a yoga class or something like that. And so, you know, we each have our areas there. So I would say everyone could work on their mindfulness, but when I think about the ones that tend to be most underdeveloped at work, specifically for the most people, I would say self-awareness and playfulness. You know, when it comes to self-awareness, research shows that 95% of people would say that they are self-aware, but that only 10 to 15% of people are self-aware and there’s a reason for this. It’s because you don’t know what you don’t know. You know everything you do know about yourself, and that feels like a lot, but you don’t know all of the things you don’t know about yourself.

And it’s much easier to see what someone else doesn’t know about themself than it is to see what you don’t know about yourself. So even the people out there who are like, oh, I’m so self-aware, I find hmm, real self-awareness is being able to say, I know there’s more to this than I’m able to see right now.

And if I do the work more will be revealed to me. So self-awareness is a big one. And then playfulness I think is important. I think it’s really undervalued in adulthood and in the workplace because it’s seen as this sort of childlike thing. But you know, I’ve read studies that show that playfulness, increases creativity and spontaneity and productivity. But I’ve even seen a study that shows that people who play regularly live longer by a significant number of years than people who don’t play regularly. That’s how important it is, and at work, it’s especially important, because we only play when we feel safe.

And so if your work is not playful at all, that means that people don’t feel fully emotionally safe to play. And that’s often because leadership isn’t modeling it or because it feels like there isn’t room to make mistakes or it doesn’t feel like there is a kind of yes and energy there. So I would say those are the two that I tend to see in the workplace specifically.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. When, when it comes to playfulness in the workplace, would, what are different ways to think about that? Would a way to approach it be almost like experimentation? Because I think, you know, if I’m, if I’m putting myself in the, the seat of the most skeptical listener,

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah,

Melody Wilding: they might be saying, but I have

Dr. Emily Anhalt: I.

Melody Wilding: to do.

I can’t, you know, play games with my, with my team all day. And so how might we, what would it look like to operationalize playfulness in our work a little bit more?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: So I think this is a, a way in which plays often misunderstood. When I ask people when the last time they played is they’ll, they’ll often tell me about a board game or sports game or video game. And those are great types of play, but I think about play at work more as that kind of yes and attitude where when someone comes to you with an idea, you meet them in that idea and you expand on that idea and together you get somewhere that neither of you could have gotten alone.

It’s sort of about removing constraints and thinking big. And so when you think about it that way, brainstorming is a type of play or taking a joke too far with a friend is a type of play. Really anything new that’s ever been created is a result of play playing means trying something on to see what it would be like if it was real.

And we have to do that before we create anything, you know, anytime a, a startup is essentially playing what it would be like to be a company, so. Opening our mind to the importance of this kind of approach and attitude I think is really powerful. And to do this, sometimes it’s just as easy as saying, all right, for the next 10 minutes, no one’s allowed to say no to any idea.

We’re just gonna say yes and, and we’re gonna see where it takes us. Or it might be a little more concrete, like start your meetings with a little icebreaker game or icebreaker question to help people connect with each other, because we tend to do better work when we enjoy our relationships and play is really powerful for that.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. Yeah. It reminds me, um, when we start new cohorts of my Resilient program, something we have people do when they introduce themselves is talk about what their superhero trait would be.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Ooh, I like that. What’s yours?

Melody Wilding: it’s, it’s what would mine be? That’s a great question. Yeah. Usually I’m on the side of asking people the questions. I think. I think mine, I’m gonna regret this, but I think mine would be mind reading.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Ooh, like that. I mean, all therapists wanna see inside minds, obviously, so that makes perfect sense. I think. I would hope so. So I think my, my real superpower is that I can explain complicated psychological concepts in ways that feel more digestible, but I think that if I were to pick a superpower, it would be that anyone who is around me feels really safe to show up as their best self. I think that’s really the work I’m trying to go. So we’re trying to do, so maybe I’d pick that.

Melody Wilding: I love that. I love that.

So let’s go back to, you were talking about self-awareness and you said 95% or 90% of people think they’re self-aware, but aren’t. How do we actually gain that self-awareness and know it’s true Self-awareness?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: For sure. It’s sounds like what, how do you find out what you don’t know? And generally I give three places to start. One is therapy, like Let’s Be real. Therapy is this incredible place to find out all the things you don’t know about yourself because you are forming a relationship with someone else who’s been trained to help shine light into your blind spots and to help you see the patterns that you’re repeating, and to help you understand the ways in which you are bringing into your life the things you may or may not want to, continue. So therapy is a big one.

The second one I talk about is journaling regularly. And it does not have to be some crazy extensive journaling. I just write down one line a day every day about how I’ve been feeling. But there’s something powerful about getting thoughts out of our head and down onto paper, it creates this distance between us and them that allows us to see things differently. And also over time you’ll see patterns and we tend to have a really selective memory. Like when you’re feeling depressed, your brain’s gonna convince you that you’ve never felt good before and you’re never gonna feel good again. And there’s something powerful about seeing like, oh, just last week I was saying that I was having the best day ever. Even though right now things feel so hopeless. So that’s powerful.

And then finally feedback. Asking for feedback. Ask for it early and often because other people will be able to reflect a different reality to you. And even though that reality will be partially their stuff, it will give you more data to understand how you’re being perceived in the world and if there are things that you might wanna shift.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. That last one is so key

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: you were saying, asking for feedback

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: that that’s the part that is important because when we are the one, you use the word agency earlier and when we are the one actually soliciting the feedback, we feel more in control

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: having it thrust, thrust on us.

And so I think that looking for those opportunities, uh, is, is huge. Okay.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: In the book you have this big idea of emotional pushups to help us become more emotionally fit in these, these seven different areas. What are some of your favorites?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yay. I love my emotional pushups. So the concept of emotional pushups is the idea of, you know, a physical pushup is this little physical exertion that’s a little uncomfortable, but if you do them often you get stronger. And not only can you do more pushups, but you can do other things. You can lift heavy groceries and you know all of that.

You’re less likely to get sick later, that kind of thing. So an emotional pushup is anything that puts you just a little outside of your emotional comfort zone. So you can grow and what’s outside of my emotional comfort zone might not be out of yours. So it’s a lot about figuring out what are the things that I avoid that actually might be good to lean into, and how can I do that?

So I can give you an example actually, that goes with what we were just talking about, which is feedback. One of my favorite emotional pushups to suggest that we should all probably be doing often, I personally do this pushup once a month with a different person in my life each month. And what it looks like is I pull up a text message, I put someone in there whose opinion I respect and who I haven’t asked the question yet. Uh, someone I interact with often. So it might be a colleague or a sibling or a friend, or you know, it might be your kid or you know anyone that you’re around a lot and you send a message that essentially says, hey, I’m working on my emotional fitness, and in particular I’m working on asking for feedback to get to know myself better.

Would you be willing to share one thing I’m doing well as a friend, colleague, boss, mom, whatever, and one thing that I could do 10% better, I. And just shoot that text message off. And then when you get an answer, pay attention to how it feels to see it. You might be really surprised by what you see or it might not be that surprising, but I try to send this message often and it has been pretty profound to see like, wow, a lot of people in my life are rep reflecting this particular thing to me, or, huh, I never realized that this thing that I do had this particular effect on people, whether it’s positive or negative. So this is just a way of it being a regular practice in your life that you’re asking for feedback. And the 10% better phrasing tends to go over well because it’s a low lift. You know, you’re not saying to someone what’s what, should I completely change by myself? You’re saying, how can I get just a little bit better in this relationship?

Melody Wilding: Yeah, that’s such a great idea and I, that’s a framework you can use at work too, whether it

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Definitely.

Melody Wilding: you’re soliciting this, this feedback, whether you’re asking in your one-on-one with your manager, Hey, how did that meeting go? What was one thing you think I did well? What’s one thing I could do

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yes.

Melody Wilding: better next time?

Just even generally. A great framework to use whenever you’re getting feedback, no matter the circumstance.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: a hundred percent.

Melody Wilding: What else? What are some of your other favorite emotional pushups?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Really emotional pushup is anything that makes you a little uncomfortable. So it might be apologizing for a mistake. It might be pause before you pour yourself a drink in the evening to ask what you might be trying not to feel in that moment. It might be putting your phone away at 8:00 PM and actually just sitting still with yourself and letting yourself be bored. It might be, saying no. When you’re a people pleaser and you wanna say yes, but you know, if you say yes, you’re gonna be overwhelmed. So an emotional pushup might just be saying a kind, but firm. No.

Uh, and then it could be any, anything that makes you a little uncomfortable, public speaking or, um, you know, anything that allows you to move a little more toward the version of yourself that you wanna be, but that you’ve been avoiding, because it gets your nervous system a little out of whack.

Because the more you do it, the more you practice it in little steps, the less. Intolerable it will feel and the more options will open up for you.

Melody Wilding: Mm. More capacity you build

Dr. Emily Anhalt: a hundred percent.

Melody Wilding: What has been an emotional pushup that you have done lately that’s been meaningful for you?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Oh, that’s a good question. Let’s see. So with my book coming out, I have been all kinds of uncomfortable and as much of an attention seeker as I am, you know, I do public speaking, I like performing and all of that. I’m very uncomfortable asking for people to pay attention to me constantly in this particular way.

You know, write me a review. Buy my book. Tell me what you think. Come to my book party. You know, there’s a lot of very vulnerable, asking for favors involved in writing a book, and it’s been really uncomfortable and I’ve found myself kind of undercutting myself a lot about it. And at some point I realized that’s not serving me and I need to stand behind what I’m doing and trust that the people who care about me will show up.

And if they can’t, then they won’t, and that’s okay. So my emotional pushup has been, when I write an email and, and I instinctively say something like, if you could just, whatever, I’ll go back and say, no, I’m taking out the word just, I’m just standing behind my ask and trusting that it’ll be fine. So little moments like that, of leaning into that discomfort, knowing that I would rather be a person who stands really confidently behind my asks than someone who’s timidly undercutting myself in those asks.

Melody Wilding: Yes. So much definitely relate

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yeah, I know you get it

Melody Wilding: yes, my book came out a little over a month, uh, before yours. And yeah, it, it’s a lot of it’s a lot of putting yourself out there. It’s a

Dr. Emily Anhalt: for sure.

Melody Wilding: for help and support. And when you’re someone who prides yourself on being very independent or being the helper to others,

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Right.

Melody Wilding: the tables feel turned like that. I love the idea of. Write it first, you know, get it out and then edit it so you’ve, you’ve sort of processed the emotion, like the insecurity and the, the feelings you have about it by just getting it out and then you go back with your more confident lens and, and sharpen it up. So that’s one thing. The other thing that’s really helped me is to recognize that. Well, two things. are adults. You, you were mentioning this, that if they wanna help, they will. If they don’t, that’s fine too.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Mm-hmm.

Melody Wilding: have to trust them to make decisions about their time, their bandwidth, what they are willing to do. And so I constantly have to remind myself that people are adults. I can make a request and they can speak up if that doesn’t work for them, which surprisingly difficult.

Again, when you’ve been in an accommodator

Dr. Emily Anhalt: I.

Melody Wilding: the one who it keeps everything together for other people sort of mode for very long. And the other thing is that the other person does get something from

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yes, totally.

Melody Wilding: people, people want to support you. They feel good after being able to to to help you or to know that, oh, I contributed to Emily’s book doing great.

Or, yeah, that’s my review up on Amazon, the one that she shared on her social media. It gives other people, there’s something in it for them too, that dopamine rush that just knowing just as we like to help other people and we get a lot out of that. Other people do too, so we have to keep that in mind as well.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: It’s so true and beautifully said.

Melody Wilding: What surprised you when writing this book?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: So I’d say one of the things that surprised me about emotional fitness in general, and as I was writing it, is how much less fixed it. It can, it is than it can feel. You know? A lot of people just assume, oh, I’m not good with emotions, or I’m not really cut out for leadership. But my research showed that these skills are trainable and although each of us is sort of predisposed to certain things and, and there are things that come naturally to us, there is this way in which if you practice it, you will get better at it. And we forget that in adulthood ’cause we’re not starting brand new things that often anymore, so, so you forget, you know, if you’re not great at conflict, you can practice and get better at conflict.

If you’re not great at communication, if you’re not playful, if you’re not great at naturally empathizing with people, you can do this work and get better at it and there will be huge ripple effects through your life. So. To me, that’s just so empowering because it means you don’t have to be born emotionally fit.

You can build your emotional fitness.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, there’s, there’s hope. There’s hope for all of

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Yes, there’s hope for all of us.

Melody Wilding: That’s right. where can people find you? Where can they get the book?

Dr. Emily Anhalt: So I’m on all social platforms with the handle @dremilyanhalt. You can find me on my website, dremilyanhalt.com. And the book is called Flex Your Feelings, Train Your Brain to Develop the Seven Traits of Emotional Fitness. And if you type in, Flex your Feelings and my name on any of the platforms, uh, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anything like that, local bookstore.

Um. Book bookshop.org. Is that the local one? I like that one a lot. Um, you can find it. So be in touch. And by the way, melody, I just wanna say that you are such a delight and joy, and I’m so grateful to be connected. And I see you with your emotional fitness in all kinds of ways and supporting so many people with theirs.

So thanks for being a, a friend and colleague.

Melody Wilding: Oh, well, that, that means the world coming from you especially, and I am so excited for this book. I’m so excited for you and all the possibilities and options. This is going to open up for you we’ll make sure all of that is linked up

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Cool.

Melody Wilding: the show notes for everyone to grab. And just thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Thanks for having me.