SAMIA: Hello, Salam, Shalom, Namaste, Sat Sri Akal, Aloha, Ciao, Bonjour, Buna!It's so, so good to be with you all. And happy new year by the way because, my gosh, it's just been a few days since we hit the new year! So extra, extra welcome to you all. And extra welcome to our guest for today Korey Samuelson. I'm so excited to have you on Korey. Hi!

KOREY: Hi, how are you? I'm very delighted to be here, it's gonna be awesome.

SAMIA: Yes indeed. I'm so much looking forward to having our chat today, because Korey is a Mental Strength Coach, an author, and he's the host of the upcoming Mental Toughness Mini Summit. And I can't wait to learn more from you Korey. So tell me more about who you are and what you do?

KOREY: Yeah, thanks. So my background is as a fitness trainer. And one of the things that I noticed was that my clients... the challenges that they face, although obviously they are physical challenges, in the end, at the very base of it is a mental challenge. So when I would work with them in the gym, they would make progress, they would follow my directions, you know, they would do the exercise, learn the techniques. And then when they would go home that's when the real challenges happened because they had to basically choose the right foods, rest enough, you know, decide to go to bed on time, that kind of thing. And I started to realize... and I'm sure this is the same in many different areas of life, but fitness being so physically oriented, people forget that connection between the physical and the mental. And so I started to really look at what is the real challenge that is faced, where do people really need to make progress? And it's in the choices that they're making. So that is where I started to really look at… even in my own life, and I... and we might get into some of that as well, but... yeah, looking at the mental challenges that we face. And I like to say that even regardless of how physically challenging something might be, or how physically oriented the task itself, we can fail physically, but more often than not we fail mentally because we just gave up, we think this is too hard, I can't figure this out, whatever it happens to be… just you know, negative beliefs or stuff like that.

SAMIA: Yeah, I'm 100% with you on that, which is, you know, one of the reasons why I'm so excited we are having our chat today. And I want you.... can you tell me more about the book that you wrote because I know you wrote a really brilliant book. And I especially love how you talk about all of this and approach this whole issue in your book.

KOREY: Sure, yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So I wrote this book called... I called it the "Gymchridion”, with the subtitle, “Everything that you need to master your life, you will learn in the gym". And the idea behind it is, I am a big follower, although I don't consider myself a pure stoic, but I really have found a lot of value in the stoic philosophy. And I still read Epictetus, Seneca, Marcos Aurelies, and a whole bunch of other ancient Greek thinkers in that line of thought. And so there was a manual that was put together by one of Epictetus, one of his students named Arian. And he collected talk, or he collected snippets of Epictetus speaking to his students and collected them into a manual called the "Enchiridion", which in ancient Greek means "close at hand". So this was a manual that people, the students themselves, could take out of the school when they were going about their lives and just refer to it so that they would have his lessons. And so one day I was... it just occurred to me, I thought… What would it have been like if Epictetus himself had been a fitness trainer in the modern day, or, you know, with a little bit more of a modern set to it? What advice would he be giving to his students in living? …which the stoics believe is the way that we should approach life… living a good life, being a good human being in the context of getting fit or using exercise as the base. And so that is where the idea for my book came up and so I made up this word "Gymchridion" which would be a gym manual ready at hand. So that was the idea, and yeah…

SAMIA: I just love it. Applying the lessons of the gym into the rest of your life... I just really, really love that. And... oh my gosh, yeah, tell me more, like, tell me more. So like for example one of the... I guess thoughts that's sort of coming into my mind when I think about the physical fitness industry, the thing about the, sort of like, culture that I have experienced in the gyms and so forth… it's in some ways, it seems to be in contrast to what you're talking about. I absolutely love your approach. But you know, what I generally experience in the physical fitness industry, is that people don't make this connection between physical fitness and the rest of our life, and what happens in the gym and the rest of our life. And most of the time when, you know, we're dealing with the physical fitness industry it's just very, very focused on, you know, how you're looking and how you're, you know, you're going to be feeling in your body in terms of your physical fitness and strength, and all that kind of stuff. And yes, there are allusions to the fact that hey, if you are physically fit then the rest of your life will also be great. But I don't really see that happening for a lot of people. Like, what's your experience?

KOREY: Yeah, that is very astute of you because that is exactly what my experience was. So I had an older brother who was into weightlifting when I was young. And he's 12 years my senior so he was my hero. And so when I got to the age where it was like, “hey, can I lift weights too?”, he would give me little dumbbells and stuff and I would try to do my best. And then eventually I started going to a gym when I was still in high school or junior high and it became a part of my life. And slowly but surely I learned how to exercise. And even before I became a certified trainer, I was helping friends and family with their exercise, with nutrition, etc. So it was very natural after a while, although I didn't do it until I was in my 40’s, that I became a certified trainer. And so one of the things… and this was part of the writing of the book as well, is I made this connection… because one day I was miserable with my life. You know, my social relationships weren't great, my finances weren't great, the work that I was doing at the time I think I was in warehousing, although I might have moved on from that… but I was trying other areas like selling cars, I was a window cleaner for a while, doing snow removal in the winter... I mean, just jumping around trying to figure out what am I doing? And I was messing around with the blog, and all this… And again one day it occurred to me that, I looked at my life and I… and how unhappy I was, and how lonely I was. And I thought, “what is it about my health and my fitness that I've got that in order and the rest of my life is not?” And I realized it was because as far as my fitness and my health, in that area I had a set of principles that I was living by. Like you know, there are rules in the gym. The overload principle for example where you try... you do your best to lift heavier and heavier weight if you want to build muscle, or you run for a longer distance if you're trying to increase your cardio. So that's a principle of health and fitness. And then there's also skills that you need. So the skill of the exercises themselves, and I was very good at those. I learned the skill of lifting weights, the skill of running, the skill of stretching… And then finally there were systems, that was a part of that as well. So I had pieces of all these areas in my life as far as my health and fitness, and I was following them rigidly. And after a while it wasn't a struggle or an effort. It was just, hey, yeah, this is what I do, this is my life… And I had gotten to a certain level of health and fitness with that, which I thought I was happy with. Like, as far as fitness and health, I felt this is taken care of. On a scale of one to ten, with one being not fit at all, and ten being really, really fit and in charge of that area, I'd say I was probably an eight or a nine, you know. Everyone always aspires to be a little bit beyond where they are…

But the rest of my life, like, some areas were like a two or three. And I realized I don't have principles. I... not that I didn't, but they weren't consciously being thought of in the same way as my gym life and my exercise. I didn't have any real hard good skills, hard and soft, but no real skills in the area of relationships. And then finally I didn't have the systems in place. So I was just living, you know, willy nilly...

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: ..hit or miss… and quite often I would say I was missing the mark. And so just as you were saying there… people go into fitness and exercise and they hire trainers and they think, “Oh if I could just, if I could lose this belly, if I could just, you know, build my shoulders up, if I could look a little bit more appealing, perhaps… whatever it happens to be… lower the blood pressure…” I mean, obviously there are health and fitness goals that you need just to survive… But if we think beyond that, and people are thinking, “if I had a six-pack, if I could win that race… (whatever it happens to be), then my entire life would be perfect”. And I did not find that at all. Because I was walking around muscular, strong, flexible, like, really low heart rate, top notch… But I was miserable everywhere else. So just as you were saying, that solved my health and fitness issues, but the rest of my life not so much. And you see the parallel quite often with entrepreneurship, for example, where people say, "oh if I only had this amount of money in my life everything else would be better". But I actually heard somebody talking about this just the other day, and he was saying… he's in the entrepreneurial space, he's a very successful businessman, Alex Hermosia, I think his name is… And he said, “money solutions solve money problems. But they don't solve health problems, they don't solve relationship issues”. So if you have other problems and they're not money, solving that money problem… not so much… And the same for me. I didn't get the confidence with, you know, with the opposite sex. I didn't feel satisfied in my career. I just walked around feeling fairly good about my physicality. And yeah, so yeah, you kind of opened up a can of worms there, but yeah, that was what I noticed for myself, so you hit the nail right on the head.

SAMIA: Oh, thank you so much for sharing that and being so honest in sharing that. And you raise so many excellent points. And you know one of the things that I sort of noticed that you were talking about are/is this...these three things that you had in place when it came to, you know, making... that allowed you to have excellent physical fitness. So I think you said you had principles, you had skills, and then you had systems. So off... I mean I'd love to talk about all of them, but I would love... I think just for, to start with, maybe if you could talk a little bit about systems. Because I think that's the part that most people will be most unfamiliar with. Like how do you understand systems? What do systems do for you? Like, why do we really need systems?

KOREY: Sure… and the idea of systems… I mean, moving from principles, to skills, to systems… You have to have the principles. The skills basically put the principles in action. And then the systems allow the skills to be mastered. So it all flows into one big... a system in a way, right. The systems themselves are the nitty-gritty details, if you think of it that way… And one way to think of systems are habits. So if you, if you constantly have to do something yourself, like, you have to put a lot of thought, a lot of effort, a lot of, “okay, I gotta focus now and do this”... that's not really a system at that point because it takes that conscious effort. But if you have a habit, there is a system in place that is not conscious, that you can think of it as “non-conscious”, if we're just talking about habits themselves. And so when you, for example, have a system or a habit of choosing healthy food, then that's where you get to the part where you don't have to put effort in. Choosing a healthy food is just automatic. And when you go to the grocery store for example, you don't look at, or you don't see the unhealthy choices in the same way. They might not even register. Or you might see the color and the flash because they are marketed differently than healthy foods. You know they're made to look fun and very appetizing and whatnot, but somebody who has the habit of choosing healthy foods, they'll just walk by them. They might see them but they don't start to think about, “oh, that would be so tasty to eat right now”. They're like, “oh man I... maybe, maybe I'll just buy it but I won't eat them. I'll save them for Saturday, you know, put them in the cart”... whatever.

But somebody who has the habit, the system in place, they don't have to consciously think, “okay, I don't do that kind of thing. I'm looking for apples, I'm looking for lettuce. I'm looking for the spinach”... whatever it happens to be, right. And so that's… a simple synonym for a system is a habit.

Then you can also take that... so if we look at the habit, or sorry, the system, of financial investing for example, instead of just creating money yourself by trading time for money, you actually will invest your money. And then the system of the investment itself, if it's a good investment, will start to generate that money and it actually grows on its own. So now you've got a way to grow your money as a system as opposed to just you putting in the effort. That's a system in itself, but it's a very rudimentary one, because again you have to put the effort forward. And that's the difference between people who become really wealthy and those who just live month to month, from paycheck to paycheck.

SAMIA: That's so true.

KOREY: So, yeah. So that, like I say, the systems put the skills into practice, and that's how you master the skills themselves. And the skills are how you put the principles into action. So it all fits together, yeah…

SAMIA: Very, very cool. I love that. And can you maybe give us an example of a principle that then translates into a particular skill, that then you implement as a particular system?

KOREY: Sure. So what I was saying before... So if you're thinking about health and fitness, the overload principle for example is something that you make use of if you are weight training, even calisthenics, so if you're doing body weight training. So if this is my body here, and I'm standing upright, my head's here, my feet are down here… the more I lean over to do push-ups for example, if I'm doing push-ups on the floor, then this is… we consider this a regular push-up -- feet here, arms here, head here, and I just push my body away from the floor. If that's too much, then I have to... if the overload or the load itself is too much, then I could lean myself up, and maybe lean on a bench or a box, and then I'm doing “Incline” push-ups. If it's too easy, then I can put my feet up on something and my head closer to the ground, and now I'm doing “Decline” push-ups. And that is a way to play with the load. But the principle itself, of overloading the muscles in this case -- the chest, the shoulders, the triceps -- they have to be loaded enough over time that you build strength. Because if you just do 10 push-ups for three sets every time you go in the gym, chances are they'll start to feel very easy, but you won't become necessarily stronger. So you have to keep building up the resistance. Now there's a very similar principle in psychotherapy and therapy for people who have a fear. For example, it's a fairly common one… let's say somebody has a fear of being inside an elevator because perhaps, you know, we'll call it claustrophobia. So they're afraid of being in an enclosed space. So a fairly similar overload principle for somebody trying to overcome that fear is that the therapist will say, “okay, let's approach this elevator here. You see it down the hallway, the doors are closed, there's no threat here, how do you feel?” “I feel fine”. “Okay, so let's move 20 feet away from that elevator, how do you feel?”

“I'm starting to feel a little anxious”. “Okay, well, let's just stop there”... So over time they increase the resistance that they can overcome… So they just stand… okay, 20 feet from it I'm fine, I'm feeling good. Now let's go 10 feet. Okay, I'm getting a little anxious again. Okay, let's just hang out here and let that feeling die down… And then eventually, okay, now it's going to be 10 feet away with the doors open, how do you feel? Okay, I'm starting to feel anxious again. And then the idea being, okay, just getting a little bit closer, a little bit closer… working on that similar principle, very close to overload, where you're just… you're feeling the resistance, but you're getting a little closer to where you are… a little bit uncomfortable, but not too much that you can't handle it. Like…

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: ...maybe, you know, you've got a loaded barbell on your back and it's way too much weight. And if you were to step away from the rack with it, it would just crush you. That's obviously way too much. And for somebody to say, “get in that elevator and just feel the panic and you'll get over it”... yeah, that can work. But it can also make it way, way, worse. So… right… So that's a couple of examples.

SAMIA: Oh, thank you for that. And you just made me think of so many, like, important life lessons that we can draw from that... You know, the idea of, you know, making sure you're challenging yourself in life so you can continue to grow stronger and, you know, not stagnate in that way. But also, you know, the idea of… when something is challenging, you do what you can do in the moment and over time, you know, you build up capacity. So not trying to do the the most difficult thing right away necessarily, you know and... Oh my gosh, there's so many other lessons that we could draw from that. Oh my gosh, okay, so I'm definitely starting to see the connections between, you know like, the lessons in the gym and how you can bring them into our life. I just love it, it's so wonderful. So can you tell me more about... I mean, nowadays of course you're all about mental toughness, you're even going to be doing the Mental Toughness Mini Summit very shortly… Tell me more about that. Like, what do you focus on in that context of, you know, talking about/addressing mental toughness?

KOREY: You mean in the summit itself or just as a mental toughness...

SAMIA: Yeah, tell us more about the summit! That will give us a good idea of how you approach it in general too.

KOREY: Sure, sure. So the idea behind the summit itself is that we're talking to experts, authors, entrepreneurs, where they have... well, they may not have thought about it themselves, but I'm asking them questions about, well, what does someone do when they don't want to do something...

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: ...and that's where that choice comes in, right. It's not physical in these capacities… So if you have someone who, perhaps wants to write a book and they feel frustrated by that process, or they have, you know, what's called writer's block for example… that's definitely mental... It's a mental challenge, it's something that they have to work through not necessarily by sitting down and looking at their deep seated, you know, psychological issues from childhood -- that's not what it's about. It's just that in the moment of choice, of, “I want to write. This is the time that I want to write. But I'm having a challenge with this. Like, this isn't working out for me right now and I'm getting angry at myself, beating myself up”. So what are the things that the person, that the expert that I'm talking to… maybe they've already written a book -- and most of them have, that I'm interviewing for this summit… they are authors themselves, but they're also experts in their own fields.

So for example, I've spoken with a university professor who looks at ancient Greek philosophy. And one of the books that she wrote… Her name is Heather Reed. She wrote a book called the "Philosophical Athlete", and she looked at being a good person, which is why I was really excited to talk to her (about) being a good person through an athletic pursuit. So looking at ethics and athleticism. And she's also written about the philosophy of sport itself… Olympic philosophy, and how that idea for the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans differs from the way that people look at sport and and athleticism in Olympics nowadays. So that was really interesting. I... from my own perspective, like, I was looking forward to just…to chatting with her about that.

Someone else that I was speaking with… Anthony Mativier, he's a memory expert and he actually has created “The Magnetic Memory Method”. And he went through his own… he actually had a lot of mental challenges as he was growing up. He didn't call it manic depression or anything like that, but that's kind of how I took it to be, where he would say, you know like, sometimes he was, like, full of energy and then other times he had such low energy that he didn't want to do anything. And I was asking him, okay, how did you deal with that? Because he did deal with it and he used memory techniques and the research that he was doing through that to help himself through it. And one of the things that he said is that stubbornness is something that we have and we just apply it in the wrong areas of our lives. So we might actually be very stubborn to set aside time to play video games, is what he said. So that stubbornness is there, where we're like, “okay, no, I don't… I'm not going to talk to my friends, I'm not going to go out with my family. I'm playing video games”. And that's what they're stubborn about. And it's just a matter of how do you take that, that innate stubbornness, and point it in a different direction, yeah. And then another fellow that I spoke with, Brendon Rearick, he is basically a strength and conditioning coach. And his mission is to make exercise the number one prescribed drug before the year 2055…

SAMIA: Nice!

KOREY: …which is really interesting in itself. And we actually spoke directly about mental toughness and his three suggestions for that. So yeah... yeah, it's everyone... Well, not everyone, but I mean, I think, most people get the idea that, our challenges in life… and I keep saying I beat it like a dead horse… Our challenges in life are mental challenges. Because if you take away somebody's money...

SAMIA: Yes.

KOREY: ...they're going to be in a certain mental state. And if they're strong enough, or at least skilled enough, let's put it that way, so it's not necessarily toughness… or just... I don't want to say that, say it as though it's a character flaw to not be strong… But it's a matter of skill and it's a matter of training and it's a matter of conditioning, which is why I personally liken it to fitness training and becoming strong in the gym. Because there's a process to it and we can't just... although mentally it's different, it's a… it... there are different mechanisms in place so you can be stronger at a different pace than you can become stronger physically for example. But at the same time, if you think that it's instant, I think that can then become its own hurdle. Because if you find that it doesn't come as quickly as you want, then that becomes part of the challenge itself, because then you… people start to think, “oh, I don't have it in me. That person over there is strong, this one over here can handle it… you take away their money and they somehow bounce back from this loss of finances or losing a job or, you know, the pandemic happens and everything goes out the window”…

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: …”But I'm not dealing with this very well”. And then that becomes part of their own challenge. So yeah, and... yeah… I hesitate to say that it's... although we do speak in these terms where it's a strength of character, but it's... I don't want people to beat themselves up if they think they don't have that strength, because it does... it's a process. It can be as simple as a choice, but for most people there is training, there are choices. And if you think of it as physical training...

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: ...then that character strength can be developed.

SAMIA: Yes.

KOREY: And this is something that stoics said that, you know, some philosophies back in the day, they said that it was more of an aristocratic character trait to be a virtuous person. But I think the stoics were some of the first ones to say, no, no, it doesn't matter if you're a slave or you're an emperor, everyone has the same capacity to become a good virtuous person. And that's where my idea of strength comes from. It's about that development.

SAMIA: Yeah, and I just absolutely love that because, you know, it made me think about how when I was not yet a happiness expert myself, but I was a happiness expert in training you know... because I wasn't always a very happy person. In fact I'm a survivor of child sexual abuse. So for literally two decades of my life I was, like, really struggling with my mental health and my happiness and my inner peace. And how I sort of overcame that struggle, or healed from that struggle, this is definitely a process of learning, growth and training. And actually, one of the most impactful teachers/mentors that I've worked with in my life, my happiness expert, Dr. Aymee Coget. And you know she's the one actually that... she was actually the first coach that I ever worked with. And one of the things that she had us do was actually, you know… I can use the language of “retrain our brain”. And one of the things for example that we retrained my brain to do was to think in more positive ways, to let go of my tendency to think in blaming ways and judging ways and, you know, criticizing ways. And you know most of the time, honestly, like, it wasn't even so much of a problem with me judging, blaming, criticizing other people. The big problem was me blaming, judging and criticizing myself really, really harshly. And so that really kept me stuck in this really negative place in my life, you know. And so I remember Dr. Aymee, you know, she would, she... one of the most important exercises, like to this day, that I believe that I learned is how to, you know, learn to transform negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Anytime I would have a negative thought, Dr. Aymee said, “you have to write it down, you have to become aware of what negative thoughts you have. Write them down”. And then you have to think, “okay, this is a negative thought that I'm having but how can I turn it into a positive thought? What's something good that I can find in this situation?” And focus on that.

And when I first started that exercise, in that practice, it was so difficult to think of positive things, that… how do I take this negative thought or this negative situation that I'm feeling myself in and find something positive in it? It's just bad, it's a bad situation, it's a bad feeling. How do you find some…? But it's a skill, like, you know… And also… but it's not just a skill... It's also about that principle that underlies the skill that you're trying to learn. That, you know, it starts with the belief that you can find something good in any situation. You can, you know, for example, even if there's nothing good in this situation, you can respond to it in a good way, you know. So there are different beliefs that support your ability to have that skill of turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts. And then just like you said, once you have the skill down, then you put systems in place so that you're not getting so many negative thoughts in the first place. So you know, it's amazing you come back to what you were talking about in the beginning.

KOREY: Yeah, and you can... you know, a famous example of that is Roger Bannister and the first sub-four minute mile. Because up to that point before he ran 3 minutes 59 seconds… whatever… I think was the first, first time anyone had ever run a mile in less than four minutes, even though it was just fractions of a second. Doctors were saying the human heart will explode, it's physiologically impossible to do this. And you could think that. So that's kind of what a principle would be in that instance. It's just a belief, it's a model of the world. These were experts saying these things to people who just thought, well, they're the experts. I don't want my heart exploding… like, I would never try to run a sub-four minute mile. Yet he did it. And then all of a sudden tens of other people did it...

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: ...either that year or the following year. And then eventually there are high school students now that are running under four minutes a mile. And now that's just, oh yeah, that's done, that's fine. So yeah, you can, you can think of… like, a friend of mine, we were talking one time. He was thinking of writing a book on mental models. And he says, “what do you think, like, what's another way of thinking of a mental model?” And I said, “well, are/is that any different than a principle?” And we really couldn't see any real difference between the two. So if you think of… People sometimes get confused, well, what's a principle, what's the difference between that and a belief? What's that… a mental model? It's all kind of the same thing. It's what you imagine to be true. And we don't necessarily make our choices and set goals and live our lives based on actual reality.

SAMIA: Yeah.

KOREY: …You know, the one we all share… And another way to think of this is, we all… this is the way I… this is the principle of mine at least… There's one reality, but we all live in different worlds. So again, we don't necessarily act on reality but we act on what we imagine reality is. And so that's why some people have religious faith and some people, you know, they're just irreligious. They’re just… no, that's not for me. And they can both be good people. They just have completely different, and you can almost think of it as opposite ways of thinking of the world… yet they both make choices. And where the difference comes in though is, sometimes the person who has faith has a completely different perspective when things are the most bleak, that they have a strength that the person who doesn't have religious faith, potentially, right, might not have. Because now everything else, all of their physical support, their friends, their family maybe, all of that is gone, and they only have themselves. And if they don't have enough belief in their own abilities then become… they lose it, they're out... they've been taken out. Whereas someone in the same situation who has, maybe, religious faith, there's something there for them to believe that the other person does not have.

SAMIA: Yeah. 

KOREY: …But it's not necessarily always the same. Someone else who has religious belief might actually think, you know, “why have you forsaken me? Like, everything that I wanted, or in my life is now gone. I'm being punished”. And they might become bitter, whereas the other person says, “no, I'm still fine. I have myself and this is where I put my…” you know... So anyway, I'm just getting into the weeds with things I like to think about. But yeah…

SAMIA: Oh my gosh, I think you'll have to come back Korey and we can talk more about that because actually just earlier today I was listening to another one of my favorite teachers who was talking about exactly this idea actually, creating a distinction… oh my gosh... I won't get into it, but this is one of the things, the topics or issues that I'd love to talk about also. But okay, so let's wrap up for today… And do you have any last words that you want to share before we go?

KOREY: I'm not sure, I think... I guess I'll finish what we were just talking about where I was saying we don't necessarily act on reality. Imagination is something that I think… and Einstein said this, he said, imagination is more important than knowledge, because… and I'm paraphrasing, but basically, there is no limit to the imagination, whereas knowledge, you know, we have limited knowledge. And trying to learn everything that's available is, for one person, is beyond us, even as a society. I mean, obviously, they're trying to gather all the knowledge. But from just our own experience of life and what we are striving toward, if a person can understand, or hold even just loosely, that what they think or what they imagine is real, and is a limitation for them, is only a belief. It's only what they're imagining at the moment. If they can imagine past that, then they can think beyond what they know and what they are limiting themselves by at the moment. So that person who is scared to go in the elevator, other people go in the elevator and they don't even think of it. They're like, they're talking about, well... they're just talking with their friend… They don't think, “I'm in a in a closed space, I could be killed”. But this is what somebody who has that fear is imagining. They're not just in the moment. The stoic philosopher Seneca said that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality. I think he did not go far enough. I think we only suffer in imagination, because if we're just in the present moment then there's nothing to be afraid of. Because fear is imagining something that might happen, that's in the future, that's not happening right now. So imagining that elevator's door is going to close and it's just going to plummet, that's not happening, but that's what's causing the anxiety and the fear. So yeah, imagination… that's usually where I draw everything too in the end. It's… what are you imagining is true? And could you imagine something more useful, something that you would prefer, instead? So what you were saying about, you know, you were beating yourself up, yeah, and looking… learning from your coach to look for the good in the situation instead of imagining what you assumed, this is real… No, there's actually something beyond what you're just imagining. There's endless possibilities beyond just this one thought or group of thoughts, but it sometimes does take a little bit of conditioning.

SAMIA: Yes, building mental strength, building mental toughness. Awesome, thank you so much Korey, once again. And we are going to be adding your links in the show notes. We'll even add a link to the Mental Toughness Mini Summit. So I hope, everyone who is listening, if it has not happened yet, make sure you sign up for the Mental Toughness Mini Summit and join it. I'm definitely signing up myself. I really... I'm looking forward to learning more from you that way, and in other ways. So yeah, until we connect next time, I wish you lots and lots of peace and joy. :)