#30 | Dr Julie Smith | How to live a meaningful life.
Jun 6, 2022
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Dr Julie Smith, clinical psychologist and best-selling author, offers practical advice on mental health, including anxiety, depression, stress management, and finding deeper meaning in our lives. She discusses the power we have over our emotions and how to live a meaningful life by determining our values and redefining success. The podcast covers topics such as therapy, education, social media, non-alcoholic beer, and the tension between metrics and creativity.
You have the power to influence and bring down the intensity of painful emotions.
Therapy serves as an educational tool to learn about how your brain and mind work, leading to empowerment and positive changes in your life.
Achieving a balance between work commitments and personal values by regularly reassessing what is most important can help navigate through uncertainty and prioritize the areas of your life that truly matter.
Deep dives
Importance of Influencing Emotional State
You have the power to influence and bring down the intensity of painful emotions. By understanding that you can impact how you feel, you are not at the mercy of your emotional state.
Recognizing the Role of Therapy
Therapy serves as an educational tool to learn about how your brain and mind work. By gaining this knowledge, you can better navigate your emotional state and mood, leading to empowerment and positive changes in your life.
Balancing Workload and Prioritizing Values
Achieving a balance between work commitments and personal values is challenging. By regularly reassessing what is most important to you and how aligned your actions are with those values, you can navigate through uncertainty and prioritize the areas of your life that truly matter.
Coping with Overwhelm and Making Decisions
The pressure of managing multiple responsibilities and opportunities can be overwhelming. It is essential to acknowledge that you cannot do everything and focus on what aligns with your values and long-term goals. Tolerating uncertainty and making choices based on meaningfulness rather than outcome can help reduce stress and maintain a sense of direction.
Effectively supporting others with their mental health
A key insight from the podcast episode is the importance of providing support to others struggling with their mental health in a way that empowers their recovery. This means avoiding the trap of becoming a rescuer and taking away their agency. Instead, practical support that helps them engage in their own recovery, such as assisting with daily tasks or providing companionship, can be more effective. It's also important to understand one's limitations and not feel the pressure to be a therapist, but rather be a supportive presence in their lives.
Defining meaning and success in life
The podcast explores the concept of living a meaningful life and defines it as aligning one's actions with personal values and finding purpose in daily life. It emphasizes that the meaning of life may change over time as values evolve. Success is viewed as the ability to live in line with those values while also finding joy and fulfillment along the way. It highlights the need for ongoing reflection and calibration of values, supporting the idea that success is not a fixed destination but an ongoing process.
In this episode, Fergus is joined by Dr Julie Smith: clinical psychologist who has taken social media (and the Sunday Times bestseller list) by storm.
Julie is the author behind 'Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?' which at the point this episode was recorded, has spent 18 weeks at number one on the ST bestseller list.
Julie offers direct, practical advice on mental health to her millions of followers across platforms - and covers everything from anxiety, to depression, to stress management, to how to find deeper meaning in our lives, and much much more.
Julie's advice is applicable to us all, and her content, book, plus this conversation will develop our internal toolbox for a healthier, happier mind.
Expect to understand the power we have over our own emotions.
Expect to reconsider how you frame goals versus values, and what success TRULY means to you.
Expect to understand how to live a meaningful life.
