Emotionally Fit with Dr. Emily Anhalt

Nothing lasts forever—the good or the bad—so learning to be present in the moment is a core skill of emotional fitness. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by Karan Singh, COO at Headspace and Co-Founder of Ginger, to highlight the importance of mindfulness to weather all that life brings our way: fully soaking in the joy while we have it and trusting that the tough moments won’t last forever.

We’ve all had bad days. Bad years. Bad fights. Bad jobs. Hard losses. And in this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily isn’t going to tell you that it’s all going to be ok. Nope. Instead, she’s going to tell you to feel it. Because sometimes it’s better to let yourself feel shitty than it is to push your feelings aside and move on too quickly. Co-Founder and CEO of Nira, Hiten Shah, joins this episode to talk about how a more realistic outlook helped him deal with a particularly tough time in his own life.

So much of what we do in life is in service of avoiding discomfort. We avoid tough conversations. We avoid challenging the status quo when we know we could do better. We turn to drugs and alcohol to avoid facing other uncomfortable realities. But unfortunately the things we do to avoid discomfort often end up leading to more discomfort than the original thing we were trying to avoid in the first place. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks to Chris Messina, credited with creating the hashtag, about why the most effective path to emotional growth is to become more comfortable being uncomfortable.