Harsh Thakkar (00:01.454)
All right, we're live on another episode of Life Sciences 360. This is gonna be a very interesting episode, right? Because the topic is so broad and I'm sure tons of you are gonna find value. So imagine you are at the peak of your career, crushing all your goals, earning all accolades from your colleagues and industry peers, yet you still have something in your head. Maybe you have a sense of isolation, maybe there's some intellectual loneliness, whatever it

Today we're gonna dive deep into the mind with Dr. Robin Odegaard, a high performance business psychologist and a professional confidant who seemed to have worked with individuals like I mentioned above and crack the code on how to overcome self -sabotage and complex priorities. So let's dive in and welcome to the show, Dr. Robin.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (00:54.484)
Thanks for having me, Harsh. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.

Harsh Thakkar (00:58.432)
Yeah, I know you work with a wide range of people, everything from lawyers, celebrities, neurosurgeons, biotech CEOs, and the list goes on. What inspired you to pursue a career in this line of high performance psychology, business psychology?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (01:14.314)
Yeah, well, as we were talking before we got on recording, I was a competitive beach volleyball player in my 20s. And there were days I could get on the court and I could do no wrong. Like I could play the game. And then there were other days I would get on the court and my partner would be like, Robin, this is a volleyball. Have you ever seen one? where did my game go? What happened to my game? So when I had the opportunity to go to college when I was 32, I knew I wanted to understand human performance.

And so I started with an undergrad in psychology, because that's where you start if you're going to do that. So my undergrad is in psychology and I studied behavioral interviewing, which is a way to ask people questions that help them better understand who they are and where they want to go rather than telling them where to go. And then my master's in doctorate I did in business psychology with a concentration in high performance in sport. And then when I came out, I worked both as a sports psychologist and as a business psychologist.

And I've taken the knowledge from both of those places and kind of married them together into the high performance space I work in

Harsh Thakkar (02:17.898)
Yeah, it's so invaluable to have, you know, for your clients or the types of people you work with to have a person like you because obviously, as I mentioned, and now I understand as I was preparing for this episode, why there is this saying that it's always lonely at the top, right? Like, I never understood where that came from, but now I can connect the dots and sort of, you know, see why people who are super accomplished

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (02:37.171)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (02:45.75)
And I read something about this on LinkedIn as well. Somebody posted saying like, you cannot be extra ordinarily successful and have an ordinary life or have an ordinary everything, right? So like, there is something's got to give, you know, if you're, if you're successful in your career, maybe there's other balls that are being dropped somewhere that you don't know of, right? Or there's other things going on. So I know you talk a lot about

in your content and talks about head trash and self -sabotage. So just to set the stage, can you explain to the listeners what exactly is head trash and how does it happen in these type of individuals?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (03:20.234)
Mm -hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (03:28.848)
Absolutely. So head trash is different for each of us. It depends upon where we are in life. But basically the short of it is it's the voice in your head. The voice in your head that's telling you you're not good enough. You can't do this. You may have imposter syndrome. Who do you think you are? Why should people believe you? You're such a fraud. Like that voice, that running commentary that so many of us have, that is the foundation of head trash.

Harsh Thakkar (03:54.415)
And how does this typically happen in individuals? Like at what point? Like is there, are there any behaviors that you see when somebody is going from an average to a uber successful, you know, person in their field? What are some of the triggers or what are things that you observe or maybe your clients have told you, hey, this is when I first had this voice in my head telling me this.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (04:20.008)
I think all of us have a voice in our head, even from childhood, like a parent may be critical of us or a teacher or a coach that we really hold in high regard is critical of us. And we internalize that. We don't even realize as children that we internalize those voices. And so all of us have it, regardless of our success level. The challenge is as we get further along in our success and our careers and life gets more complicated, more things are going on, the voice gets louder.

the voice may start gathering what I call evidence, like failures, things you did wrong, and then something will go sideways and the voice will be like, see, remember, this is like last time you failed, you're terrible. And so I do think that the voice gets louder. Also, as we get more successful, we have fewer people that we can talk to and trust and have confidence in that they're going to keep it to themselves. And it gets more challenging because you can't talk through it. It's just you and the voice in your head and nobody on the outside going,

Harsh Thakkar (05:00.527)
Mmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (05:18.57)
Do you believe them? Is that true? I can't even tell you how often I ask my clients that. Do you believe the voice in your

Harsh Thakkar (05:25.364)
Yeah, yeah. No, it's very, you know, it's very interesting what you just mentioned, because, you know, being a parent, I've been reading books and, having conversations with my wife about the things I should say to my three year old and the ones that I shouldn't. And this has come up, right? Like it's it's it has come up like, hey, maybe we shouldn't say it in this way, because that might stay in his, you

brain or he might think even 15 years down the line that, my dad used to say this, right? And I can relate to some examples that maybe my parents said, of course, they didn't mean anything bad. They were just being, you know, wanted me to be safe or wanted me to be happy. Their intention was not bad, but maybe the choice of words still is somewhere down in my brain where, you know, it comes off as if somebody else says it. I'm like, this sounds like what my parents

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (05:58.292)
Mm -hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (06:23.272)
and it becomes part of our subconscious so that we don't even consciously realize that we have these opinions and these ideas until someone starts helping us kind of pull it apart and then it becomes, wait, I do believe that about

Harsh Thakkar (06:38.335)
Right, right. So what are some of the techniques that you use with your clients or the individuals that you work with to help them recognize and maybe combat the self -sabotage?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (06:52.394)
So one of the things that I found to be really interesting is that when I talk to my clients, it becomes very obvious that there are kind of two parts to our brain. There's the subconscious part and there's the conscious part. And the conscious part is the part of us that we ever act together, we're fine, it's all good. And then the subconscious part is the underlying, the self -sabotage, the head trash. And so when I start talking to them, I can hear.

the self -sabotage and the head trash as they talk even when they can't. And so I'll often ask them one of my favorite questions is what would you like to be different? And if I ask that question, which is a very different question then, what are your goals? What's your dream? What's your fabulous outcome? But instead, tell me about right now and what you'd like to be different. It lets them talk through it in a way that I can start picking out the pieces and say, I'm hearing this. Is that?

Harsh Thakkar (07:24.555)
Hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (07:49.48)
conscious brain or is that subconscious brain? What's going on there? And that process, our subconscious brain, emotional brain, doesn't have access to language. And so there's a lot of times where it thinks and feels things that our conscious brain doesn't really understand. And it's not until you have to start explaining it to someone else and that someone else, i .e. me, can start asking questions that your conscious brain gets access to it and go, wait a minute, I don't even think

Harsh Thakkar (08:13.112)
Mmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (08:19.242)
Well, your subconscious brain does.

Harsh Thakkar (08:21.718)
Right, Yep. And that's, guess, I don't know if there's any relationship between that and, you know, things like having a sounding board or having somebody, you know, because I can see what you're saying and how there can be, you know, like two sides of this. And once you start talking to people, it sort of helps you figure out which side or how strong do you feel about it. So,

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (08:45.79)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (08:50.414)
Like for the people that you work with, I'm sure once they have maybe one conversation or as you're working with them and they have had a series of conversations with you, what are some of the struggles they have from not falling back to that old habits that they have? Like, because you're not there with them 24 seven, right? Maybe they do a two hour talk with you. Then they take a week off and they go and, you know, do whatever they're doing in their life.

So how do you stop them from not falling back to where they were before?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (09:23.401)
So there's kind of a two point question right there that you asked. First of all, my business model is different than most high performance psychologists, executive coaches, in that my clients get an individual ringtone in my phone. And so in between the sessions, in between our actual conversations, if something goes sideways or something's not working or something amazing happens, I encourage them to text me or call me and say, hey, this is what's going on. And sometimes it's just a quick text conversation.

Harsh Thakkar (09:25.464)
Yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (09:36.95)
Nice.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (09:52.458)
Sometimes it's just, hey, I'm just checking in, how you doing? So that's one way I support my clients that's different is that I am available. Not 24 seven, I do sleep, but I am more available than most people are. But the second part of your question is, okay, so yeah, I'm not there 24 seven or they may not be in a position to text me or call me right when something's happening. So what do we need to do? And part of it is recognizing it and understanding.

Harsh Thakkar (09:52.483)
Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (10:02.48)
Yes

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (10:18.738)
what's happening and what their form of self -sabotage is. And that's something we kind of have to unpack together, which is, you know, do they have imposter syndrome or are they one who has tall poppy syndrome? The idea of if I stand out too much, I get my head cut off, which if you haven't read the book, The Big Leap, highly recommend it. talks about how we have this ceiling we put on ourselves. You do they self -sabotage in that way?

Another really common form of self -sabotage with high performance is alcohol. They drink way more than they should. They don't get enough sleep. They don't eat well. Those kind of self -sabotage things come in. So it's a matter of not only what is holding them back, but then how do they self -sabotage and how do we catch that so they notice it when it's happening. And that takes time.

It absolutely takes time. Sometimes we'll talk about it and it'll be six months and they're like, I'm still doing the thing. I'm like, but we're catching it sooner now. You're not falling into a route hole where you're doing the thing for three months straight. You may do it one day and then we get back on track.

Harsh Thakkar (11:17.635)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (11:26.168)
Right, right. And another thing I wanted to ask you is, because like, let's say for example, me doing the stuff that I do with consulting, I have a niche. I work with life science clients. It's mostly pharmaceutical or biotech or medical device companies. And that's about it. And I know the little nuances of how each of those operate. But in your case, the range of clients is so wide.

how do you approach working with, let's say, an athlete versus a biotech CEO?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (12:04.34)
So the thing about my clients is they are all human beings. And as human beings, there's certain things that get in our way, trip us up. And there's a certain set, especially in the Western culture, of behaviors that might trip us up, like hyperindependence. I can do it myself. I don't need to ask for help. That's a form of self -sabotage. I recognize that in whether they're athletes or a biotech CEO. There are other things like

Harsh Thakkar (12:12.226)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (12:23.458)
Hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (12:32.222)
The alcohol I mentioned, ignoring their health and wellbeing, common among high performers regardless. So for me, it's not, mean, am I interested in what they do and what their business is and do I want to learn and do I help them with that? Yeah, I'm an executive coach, but I start with the fact that they're human and where are they? What's their challenge and how can I help them with

Harsh Thakkar (12:54.818)
Yeah, no, definitely that's a great point. When you mention it that way, I'm thinking like as a business owner, early days, I was trying to do a lot of stuff myself, slowly started outsourcing different parts of the business, and now I'm more effective, I have more time, whatever, and the same could be true for sports, right? Like if it's a team sport, and if one person's trying to score and do everything, then why do you need all the other people? And that's not a way to,

win in any of the sports. So yeah, I can see how those two are comparable.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (13:30.088)
And all of us have business, whether it's we're athletes and our business is playing our sport or we're CEOs or whatever business we have. We also have our personal lives and all of us have stuff, family members that are off their rocker and all kinds of things that happen in our personal lives, which if we don't manage that, we'll bleed into our professional lives and negatively affect us. So the fact that I kind of work in that space between executive coach and therapist and best friend where the whole person exists.

makes a big difference.

Harsh Thakkar (13:59.862)
Yeah. Right, right. I want to switch gears and talk about complex priorities. know, lately, I feel like in the past, especially since COVID, there's been, you know, tons of content on productivity and, you know, mindfulness and, you know, things like eat the frog, do the hardest thing first and stuff like that.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (14:24.296)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (14:25.654)
I want to hear your take. Maybe you might want to bust some myths and do something there. what is a common challenge people have with managing complex priorities?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (14:36.977)
One of the big things I see with complex priorities, and you've heard this, this is not rocket science, things become emergencies because they aren't dealt with when they're urgent and they aren't prioritized well. And so the thing that I like to do with my clients is a thing I call the foresting project. And it's because if you think about your life as a forest, it's so overwhelming with all of the trees and all of the things and everything has to happen that we're not looking at the individual trees. We're not saying,

this tree right now in front of me, what do I do? I need to prune it. Do I need to pull it up? Do I need to fertilize it? What needs to happen with this tree? We're just trying to manage the whole forest and it becomes extremely complex. So what I encourage my clients to do and it takes time and the process happens kind of slowly at the beginning, but it makes such a difference. I use index cards. You don't have to. You can do it online, but create color coding where you've got, okay, your personal life and your personal life has all the people in it, whoever they

Harsh Thakkar (15:15.704)
Hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (15:36.336)
and maybe you have volunteer stuff you do and maybe you have a church life, but everything in your personal life, create index cards for each thing individually, each tree, if you will. Same for your work. Create all your responsibilities and then look at each one of those cards individually and get a feeling words list. You can just Google feeling words list. They come up and right on the back of that card, what feeling words do you associate with that person, that thing, that job?

Harsh Thakkar (15:45.954)
Yep. Yep.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (16:04.348)
And how much time each week do you think you spend on it? And would you like to spend more time or less time on that? And just go through each of the cards. And this is something I actually do physically do with my clients, but you can do it on your own. just takes some focus. And when you get done, here's what I'll guarantee you. You'll have way more time than there actually is in a week on the back of each of those cards. But it'll also tell you which cards are bringing you joy, which ones have happy feeling words on them, which ones have not so happy feeling words on

Harsh Thakkar (16:11.081)
right.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (16:34.622)
The ones that aren't happy, can you delegate them? Can you move them out? Can you do something else with them? Can you remove that tree or at least prune it back some? The ones that have happy words on them, can you fertilize it? Can you help that tree grow? And so that process, which takes time upfront, is really gonna help you pinpoint your complex priorities and what really matters to you and what is just noise that's taking up your

Harsh Thakkar (16:48.024)
Hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (17:01.846)
Yeah, and I actually read a book, I think it's called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. And he talks about something very similar to what you said, where he's basically, obviously the book is about how to be effective with your time. But he has this thing called time audit. And he basically says, just write down the things you're doing in your day,

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (17:08.856)
Hmm. Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (17:30.638)
just say eight to five, that's when you work. Just take 15 minute chunks and write down what you're doing, whether it's calling your mom or taking your dog to the vet, whatever it is, just write it down and then see whether A, you get energy or does it suck your energy? And B, because the book is designed for entrepreneurs and owners, business owners, whether it's making your business money or not. And it's fine, not everything has to make you money.

You do some things out of pure joy. Like I can go, you know, take my son to the park for an hour and I get more joy out of that than sitting at my desk for three hours and, you know, making a few thousand dollars, right? So not everything has to do, but his idea is the same. Do everything and then start looking at things. Okay, these are seven things that I could probably hire an admin person at $20 per hour.

to do and I never have to do these again. So like that's how he walks into doing this time audit. I actually did that for three weeks, it was very hard. Yeah.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (18:36.49)
It is hard, yeah. The things I've noticed with my clients around this, one, if you are a people pleaser or a perfectionist, this is gonna be very, very hard for you. It's gonna be very difficult. That's one of the most challenging things my clients deal with is people pleasing and perfectionism. And then the other thing is that as you move through this, letting go of things and deciding if it's 80%, if somebody else can do it at 80%, it's okay to let them do

Getting rid of that 20 % is really challenging. And you mentioned bringing in an admin. The sooner that you bring in an admin into your life, the easier it's going to be able to offload things. I have a client right now, very busy CEO, working on selling his business, bringing on another business. And he should have hired a PA probably about three years ago. And he didn't at that time because he was like, it's still okay. And now he's so overwhelmed. He doesn't have time to train a PA.

Harsh Thakkar (19:33.614)
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's I've read that quote, you know, by many other many other people have said that quote is like 80 % done by somebody is better than 100 % done by you.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (19:46.538)
Yeah, and you just have to deal with the fallout of that 20%, which is so much easier than doing the 100 % yourself.

Harsh Thakkar (19:49.676)
Yeah, yeah.

Harsh Thakkar (19:53.67)
Right, right. Yeah, so you did share some tips. I was gonna ask you about that. But what I wanna ask you now is that, especially when dealing with complex priorities, you might work with maybe individuals or in some cases, you might work with organizations or companies. So can you share an example or maybe just, let's say if you're hired by a company where,

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (20:13.225)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (20:20.642)
They basically want you to train all their employees. have you worked on a project like that or how did you help them deal with

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (20:27.434)
I have. So I've worked with a few board of directors. I've also done some work with J &J, Johnson & Johnson. I'm working with some of their executive teams. And the thing that I help people with the most, and I know this is going to sound cliche, but is understanding communication and conflict resolution. And the first piece to this, the one piece that very few people think about is that if you're engaging in any communication or conflict resolution, you have to manage your state, your emotional state.

And what that means is I like to think about it as kind of a stoplight, red, yellow, green. And if you put it on a scale of zero to 10, zero being absolutely horrible, go back to bed, start over, this is terrible, and 10 being completely euphoric, you can't make decisions on either end. If things are so bad you can't function, take a break. Do not try to have conversations, don't make decisions.

Don't engage in conflict resolution, take a break. The same goes for the other end of the spectrum though. If you are so euphoric that life is fabulous and everybody loves you, don't sign contracts, you're not gonna read them. And so helping people understand their state where if you're at a say, seven, eight, that range, which is kind of the top of the yellow, the bottom of the green space, that's where you're gonna be at your peak for making decisions and having good conversations with people.

Harsh Thakkar (21:39.138)
Hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (21:55.676)
Outside of that, it starts getting messier. And think about when you're talking to someone, look at the signs, read the room, what might their state be? If they're down in the red zone, they're at a four, don't try to have a conversation with them, it's not gonna go

Harsh Thakkar (22:12.074)
Right, Yeah, and especially with work, it's so important because we have our personal lives and we have things at work and office politics and team dynamics, all sorts of stuff. So there's a lot of stress on people. I can recollect many times where I go into a meeting and the person on the other side is like, my father -in -law is sick or my daughter.

had an accident yesterday and my first thing is like, hey, FYI, this is not urgent. We can talk three days later if you want. And no, no, no, let's talk now. So I'm always being more mindful of that because now, especially being a parent, I know that when I have that situation, I still accept meetings, but I'm not at seven or eight. I'm going at a four in those meetings.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (23:04.458)
Right.

Right, exactly. I have a client and I share this story with permission who, his ringtone went off on a Saturday and I thought, that's weird. He doesn't usually call me, period, and certainly not on Saturdays. He usually texts me. So I picked up the phone and I just said, hey, he didn't even say hello. He said, Robin, my father just went on life support. Help me decide if I have to kill my dad today.

that level of intense conversation, there aren't very many people on the planet that you could have that conversation with, just pick up the phone and have. So a lot of people are carrying around the stress and the angst and all of the everything that comes with that, even multiple weeks later, because they never work through the stress of

Harsh Thakkar (23:53.324)
Yeah, no, it's it's this is gonna be you know, this is a timeless topic because it seems like every day at least for me my list of things I need to do multiplies by five or ten and it's good

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (24:07.046)
Mm -hmm and sometimes clients before they become clients will say I don't think I have time to work with you and I said if that's the case you actually can't afford not to work with me because you're gonna get so much more value out of offloading a lot of the angst and then you'll be better prepared to do the work and not have the self -sabotage and head trash holding you

Harsh Thakkar (24:27.56)
Right, right. Yep. Yeah. So I know when we started this conversation, I we talked about the phrase being, you know, being at the top is lonely. And I'm sure we've heard this from a lot of music lyrics. We've heard it from people, you know, who have these conversations. So why like what? Why is being successful lead to loneliness? Like, is there a relation?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (24:54.256)
Absolutely. And the reason is because the further up the food chain you get, so to speak, the less you can share angst with the people around you. So if you're a low level employee, you know, just fresh new employee, you can sit in the lunchroom and complain with your fellow employees, right? This is terrible. Can't believe they did that. This happened. My boss. Like you, could just, you can offload it that way. But as you get further up and especially as you get into the executive position, and if you're the CEO and founder,

You can't complain like that. It's bad for morale and it's bad for how people think about you. You certainly can't go to your board of directors and be like, the sky is falling. You have to hold that in, right? You can't do that. That'll give you a vote of non -confidence. You certainly are not gonna go to your investor and be like, I don't think this is gonna work after all. No. So you don't have anyone you can go and talk to and offload that angst and get good feedback. Good, am I thinking about this right? Is there another way? Is there a different angle?

Harsh Thakkar (25:35.326)
Yep.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (25:53.652)
You don't have that option. Some people choose to bring that home and talk to their spouse. But as one of my clients once said to me, if I bring it home to my wife, all I do is ruin the evening for everybody. That's miserable. I don't want to bring it home to my wife. So when I've asked my clients before you had me, who were you talking to? If you really needed to talk something out, who were you talking to? And what I hear is bartenders, taxi drivers, strippers, the barber.

Harsh Thakkar (25:57.699)
Mm -hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (26:23.134)
the trainer at the gym, I'm like, you don't have confidentiality agreements there. But if they really need to talk to, it's basically whatever stranger happens to be around that they can offload to.

Harsh Thakkar (26:34.062)
Yeah, yeah, no, it's definitely, you know, something that I have started seeing now, especially after transitioning from being an employee. you know, as you rightly said, I remember when I was an employee from like 20 up until 2022, every like either Thursday or Friday evening, we would get together after work with friends

It's not always complaining, right? Sometimes we're just there to celebrate like, hey, we finished this project. You know, thanks, John, you did an amazing job at, you know, coming in this stage and thank you. And a lot of times it's celebrating, but other times it's like, we just got bought out. Like, what the heck? You know, yeah, last week we, they told us everything was going great. So, but now I don't, you

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (27:11.498)
Absolutely.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (27:17.808)
Exactly. This is a mess. Yep.

Harsh Thakkar (27:27.542)
I can't talk to people on LinkedIn. You know, I can't DM them and I have some few friends that I occasionally reach out to and I will, you know, tell them, Hey, such and such client said this to me and I'm really, I'm really ticked off. Like what, how would you approach this? Right. And there, it's not like I'm sharing confidential details. I just want to put that on the record, but they're like a good sounding board for me. like, yeah, just sleep over it. Don't say anything

You know even making LinkedIn announcements about certain things. I've said it to people and they're like Don't say it just let it happen and let others find out just keep your mouth shut That's the best strategy because when you say something it might be taken, you know Five different ways and then you have to explain it.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (28:16.03)
Yeah, and that's the difference between men and women too. Women tend to have friends, so they can offload the angst. They may not get good advice, but at least they can offload the stress. Men more often, the higher they get up, they have colleagues, people they drink with, people they golf with, maybe they have bros. They don't have people they talk to. So that's why most of my clients, not on purpose, but most of my clients are men.

Harsh Thakkar (28:43.212)
Hmm. Yeah. And it's also hard to talk to somebody that's not in your same, you know, profession or like, maybe they'll give you some, I don't know, maybe they'll give you their advice or whatever they think. But if they're not in your situation, it's hard to ask somebody how you're feeling without giving them any context, especially like, yeah, yeah.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (29:06.492)
Exactly. It's the context that matters. So if you're just talking to a friend in a one -off situation, they don't have any of the context. Or if you have a coach or a confidant, someone who's with you for the journey, you can call them at the spur of the moment and go, this thing went sideways, these people are involved. I already know, I know those people, I know about that thing. I can jump right in, right then and there. One client once said to me, Robin, you're like a smoke jumper. You parachute in and help me fight life's fires from the inside.

Harsh Thakkar (29:36.283)
Yeah, yeah. And especially you brought up the other example is in many cases, because of their profile, like, you know, if you're a biotech CEO at a very reputable company, you have to watch everything you say, right? So it becomes exactly, I'm at least not in that situation, but I can't imagine how those people, you know,

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (29:54.132)
Yep, be bad with the stock price.

Harsh Thakkar (30:03.124)
live their everyday life where they have to sort of understand, okay, here I am in this room, I can only say such and such things. If I say anything else, it could be taken sideways.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (30:11.646)
Mm -hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (30:15.888)
Exactly. And that's why my clients really like the fact that I work on Zoom or via phone. They don't have to be seen walking into my office. That's not going to end up in the press.

Harsh Thakkar (30:23.596)
Hmm. Yep. So what are some of the things that people, especially when you're working with clients, what are some of the things you recommend outside of them talking to you about it? Do you ask them to go and make more friends or how do they fight the isolation? Do you ask them to pursue a hobby or what can they

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (30:49.138)
It depends upon who they are and what they're doing. I have clients who have lots of hobbies. I mean, so many hobbies that they can barely keep them all straight and they're still wildly unhappy. And so that's just finding out like, why are they unhappy? What's going on? What's happening? But what I find is that, especially if I'm working with someone who is in a, I'm going to call it a startup space, but a space where they are creating change.

Harsh Thakkar (31:15.426)
Mm -hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (31:15.858)
They're so focused on that that they forget, I have a family. I have a spouse. I have a dog that I haven't seen in a week. So I do encourage them to kind of find, I'm not going to say the word balance because I don't love the way that makes us feel like, my life is unbalanced, but make sure that there are things that are important. Going back to that foresting project, what were the things that are important and where are we spending our

Harsh Thakkar (31:39.372)
Right, right, yeah. Because, you know, obviously I've also seen this phenomenon where when I was just, when I was working as an employee, you know, every day was sort of like the spikes were smaller. Like I would have a good day and back and it would be normal. But especially when you start getting more success, you know, whether you are entrepreneur or whatever.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (32:03.05)
Mm -hmm.

Harsh Thakkar (32:08.608)
If you're sport and you win a game or you win a championship, the next time you want a ceiling above, like you want a little bit more and the spikes are high and the fall is really high as well, right?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (32:22.546)
It's far, yeah. And we have to be careful about not sabotaging our future. The thing that we forget is that the easiest thing to do is to make today just a replica of yesterday. And then you end up with a future that looks just like yesterday. And we think about time travel, we worry about going back and changing, we changed the present, but we never think about the present as changing the future.

So do things that'll make your future self happy. The thing that's hard about that is humans are really bad about doing good things for strangers and your future self is a stranger. So you have to pull that motivation from your future self into the present and make decisions today that are gonna give you a good future and not have those crazy high and lows, but create a space where you can have joy and happiness.

Harsh Thakkar (33:13.271)
Yep.

Yeah, no, listen, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned a lot about the work you do and it's super interesting how you are working with different types of people, different settings, but yet you have a very good understanding of human brain and how we all have these similar problems even though we're in a different environment. So I've learned a lot from you today.

For anybody who's listening or watching this episode, how can they connect with you or do you wanna maybe give them shout out to any of your books or any talks that they can watch to learn more?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (33:55.722)
So there is a talk on my YouTube channel called Take Out the Head Trash, How to Fight the Demons, Keeping You Awake at 3 a and it has a lot of good points on it. There's also, what is the word I want to use? Resources that I mentioned in that talk. So if you go to the YouTube channel in the description, all of those resources are there as well. And if you're interested in my challenge with imposter syndrome, my TEDx talk is a good option as well. So if you Google

Harsh Thakkar (34:02.188)
Mm -hmm.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (34:23.85)
My website will come up, mentalmcgiver .com, my LinkedIn, drrobinodegard .com, my YouTube, which is DrRobin, at DrRobin is my YouTube. You can find all of it there. And I would love for them to reach out on my website. There's a button that says, let's talk. And if you click it, you can get 25 minutes on my calendar. I'd love to have conversation.

Harsh Thakkar (34:43.97)
Great, yeah, we'll add those in the show notes of the episode just so they can go check it out. Because we'll put this on the YouTube channel for the podcast, so we'll add that there so that way they can check it out. Before we conclude, any final thoughts, any final words for our listeners?

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (34:55.421)
Nice.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (35:02.548)
So I wanna say thank you to you Harsh for the work that you did to make this really, really great. And then I guess finally I would love to say you get to decide how you want your life to be and I would encourage people not to choose I'm not worth it, it doesn't matter, I'm okay. That whole Western philosophy of life is fine, go out and find somebody to talk to.

Spend a couple of hours talking to somebody you trust and I guarantee you it's going to make a difference if you can be open and honest.

Harsh Thakkar (35:34.718)
Yep. That's it. That's, that's the podcast. Thank you, Dr. Aabman. I appreciate it. All right.

Dr Robyn Odegaard - MentalMacGyver.com (35:40.126)
Thanks, Harsh.