Psychological Resilience
Dr. Ashley Smith is a licensed psychologist, speaker, and author who challenges audiences to master their minds, push past limits, and live boldly. As the co-founder of Peak Mind: The Center for Psychological Strength, she translates cutting-edge psychology and brain science into actionable insights for overcoming fear, building courage, and expanding what people believe is possible.
Born with a rare visual impairment that makes her legally—and increasingly—blind, Dr. Ashley knows firsthand what it takes to conquer both real and perceived limits. She has built a life filled with bold choices—and now teaches others how to do the same. By blending science with powerful storytelling and practical strategies, she shifts the way audiences see the world—and themselves.
Her message is simple: Your mind will hold you back—if you let it.
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-Transcript-
Brad Burrow (00:01):
Welcome to In a World With Real Media. I’m your host, Brad Burrow. In this podcast, we’ll dive into the lives of the most successful people in business. We’ll learn how they overcame adversity, took advantage of opportunities and learned from their experiences. Learn from our experts. Get inspired, then go live your story. It’s in a world with real media. Hello and welcome to In A World With Real Media. I’m Brad Burrow, the host today, and we have Dr. Ashley Smith with us today. She is an award-winning psychologist, international speaker, author, and co-founder of a Peak Mind, the Center for Psychological Strength. Okay, boy, that was a lot. So
Dr. Ashley Smith (00:48):
We should
(00:48):
Clap
Brad Burrow (00:49):
For me getting through that. Okay,
Dr. Ashley Smith (00:50):
Nicely done. Nicely done.
Brad Burrow (00:52):
So well, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. And by the way, this, I’m going to show everybody this. She sent me this great sheet that really helped me prepare, and that’s awesome. That’s a big deal. But there are a lot of things that I want to talk about today. But first, can you just get into your background a little bit, and I want to talk about the retinal issue that you have. And I was reading your background. I’m like, how could this person be so positive?
Dr. Ashley Smith (01:23):
Yeah, haven’t always. So my backstory, there’s the professional hat. So I’m a psychologist and have been for 8,000 years. It feels like about 20 years. That’s a long time. And for me, psychology was sort of a happy chance. I liked the textbook. I was really socially anxious in college, and I was going to major in math, started the first math class, couldn’t get numbers to come up on the calculator, was too embarrassed to ask. So I was like, well, I guess I’m a psych major. And so, right. It worked out well because I really fell in love with it. But then to do anything with psychology, you have to go to graduate school. So I went to graduate school, ironically, ended up studying social anxiety and then realized these light bulbs were going off as I was learning about it. And I was like, well, this explains a lot about my teenage years. And then from there,
Brad Burrow (02:13):
So you were realizing things about you? Yeah,
Dr. Ashley Smith (02:14):
I had no idea. Right. The joke in psychology is, it’s not research, it’s me search, but I didn’t know. And I started studying social anxiety and it made sense for me personally as in sort of filling in explanations for things I had struggled with as a younger person. But then anxiety also just makes sense from the field. We know a lot about how anxiety works in our brains and therefore what to do about it. And so I fell in love with it. And so I specialized in anxiety. And from there I’ve worked in anxiety specialty centers and then in private practice really helping people retrain their nervous systems along the way. I hit a point, well guess backing up, I have a rare vision impairment that you mentioned.
Brad Burrow (03:03):
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Dr. Ashley Smith (03:03):
Yeah. It’s called occult macular Dystrophy. So I’m special, and I kind say that tongue in cheek, it’s really rare. For most of my life I didn’t have a diagnosis, so I was probably maybe late thirties before I got a diagnosis.
Brad Burrow (03:19):
Is that right?
Dr. Ashley Smith (03:19):
Yeah. Wow. So it took a long time for science to catch up. So for childhood and teen years, it was a lot of, clearly you can’t see, I passed every test that most of the tests they would do. So none of the known conditions applied. And so Fred, I spent a really long time with people saying, yeah, we don’t know what it is, but it’s stable. It’s not going to change. And then I hit my mid twenties and it started to change.
(03:46):
And so the way my vision works is I have a blind spot in the central vision. So it’s like if you’ve ever used Canva or a Photoshop where you can kind of blur the feature, it’s like that in the middle and then it’s sort of cone shaped. So the further out I go, the bigger the blind spot gets. And what that means is I have a hard time with fine details, like recognizing faces from a distant, if I can touch you, you’re okay. But any distance is hard. Print, like reading books or screens is difficult and I’m no longer able to drive. So for me, things started to shift in my twenties, but I was really good at faking normal. I have good memory, good context clues could just sort of figure it out. So most people didn’t know that I have this vision impairment,
Brad Burrow (04:37):
I would not know.
Dr. Ashley Smith (04:38):
Yeah, I mean, again, I fake it really well. My doctors call me well adapted and I’m like, yeah, potato, potato. I also spent so much time again being socially anxious, which is being afraid of being judged that I hid it because I didn’t want people to know this about me. And then I can’t even say long story short, it’s just long at this point when about 10 years ago, my vision loss progressed to the point where I couldn’t drive anymore. You can fake a lot of things, but you cannot fake sight when it comes to driving a car. So for me, that was a really low point because I just felt like honestly, life
Brad Burrow (05:16):
You didn’t have control and
Dr. Ashley Smith (05:17):
Yeah, no control. I was convinced if people knew this about me, they would shun me. I was convinced I couldn’t be independent, wouldn’t be able to be successful. So I kind of bottomed out. And my day job as an anxiety specialist, I have good coping skills and they weren’t enough. They just weren’t cutting it. So I did what I know how to do and that’s turned to science. And I started looking at the science of happiness, and that’s kind of was a turning point for me. I started figuring things out. I figured I can’t be the only person ever to struggle or hit some hardship, and I don’t want to be miserable. I can’t change my retinas. What can I change? And that started this 10 year journey of making peace with my vision of figuring out how to live a big, bold life regardless of whatever happens to you. And then this mission of trying to help other people
Brad Burrow (06:10):
Do
Dr. Ashley Smith (06:10):
The same.
Brad Burrow (06:11):
That’s amazing.
Dr. Ashley Smith (06:12):
Thank you.
Brad Burrow (06:12):
Amazing. So it’s a huge jump from where you were at bottom to where you are right now.
Dr. Ashley Smith (06:20):
Oh yeah.
Brad Burrow (06:20):
And it’s like I always use the analogy of eating the elephant one bite at a time.
Dr. Ashley Smith (06:25):
Yes.
Brad Burrow (06:26):
I mean, how do you start from where you were? I mean, what is that? And we’re kind of getting in deep already, but that first step, I mean, what is that first step? And maybe it’s the most important step.
Dr. Ashley Smith (06:37):
Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years because at some point I realized, wait a minute, I don’t think about my vision every day. There was a point in my life where, I mean, if my eyes are open, I’m aware of what I can and can’t see, so there’s no escaping it. But for a long time I just had this loud thought screaming through my head, I can’t see. I can’t see. And then the really whispered fears behind that, where you’re going to be miserable, you’re going to be alone, you’re going to be unsuccessful, all of these things, and that’s not there anymore. When I realized that, I started to figure out, okay, well how do you get here? How do we reverse engineer this path toward what psychologists call acceptance, which is really this, it is what it is attitude. Because I don’t know that I could have mapped it out. So to your question about what’s the first step? I think the first step is really even being open to the possibility that things could be different, but you might have to change something that you don’t want to change. I wanted to change my vision, but that’s not changeable, at least not yet. Come on science.
(07:44):
But what I can change is my attitude. And I want to be really clear. It’s not about just being positive. At no point am I like, yay, I’m so glad I have a blind spot. This is epic. No, it’s not about denying reality, but it is looking at what is and isn’t in my circle of control and starting to do the things that you actually can change.
Brad Burrow (08:06):
Do you remember when that kind of light bulb came on for you, where you realized that you needed to change or you needed to change your focus?
Dr. Ashley Smith (08:15):
It’s interesting. I’ve been asked that before. What was the turning point? And for me at least, I don’t remember it as this definitive, distinctive moment, it was more like a happy series of events. I think at one point I just got so desperate that I just started looking into happiness. And I remember reading a book called Stumbling on Happiness by a psychologist named Dan Gilbert. And in it he cited a study where they had looked at the happiness levels of people with normal sight and people who were blind, and there was no difference. And that rocked my freaking world because I assumed blindness meant despair.
Brad Burrow (08:54):
Hard to, isn’t
Dr. Ashley Smith (08:55):
It right? And it is, and I get it. I mean, for me, science is my love language. So data speaks to me, and here it was, and it was saying, you might have this wrong. And in my work as a psychologist, I spend day after day for decades teaching people that what our brains tell us isn’t true. They lie to us, they twist things, they distort things. So I was confronted with proof that mine might be doing the same thing to me. And then I started seeking out other content around blindness, and I found a man who I found his TED talk. His name is Isaac Lidsky, and he’s blind and wildly successful by anybody’s metric, financially, socially, career wise, and he’s blind. So here was an example of someone doing things right, challenging all of the fears that I had. So it was things like that that really helped along the same,
Brad Burrow (09:51):
Have you ever met him by chance?
Dr. Ashley Smith (09:52):
No, I’ve emailed
Brad Burrow (09:53):
Him. You need to meet him.
Dr. Ashley Smith (09:54):
I know he’s going to think I’m a stalker at this point because I talk about him all the time. And I did a TEDx talk a couple years ago and I mentioned him and I was talking about my journey and mentioned him. We’ve exchanged some emails after I found his Ted talk. I’ll reach out to anybody. What do you have to lose? So I emailed him and he emailed back graciously and then said, well, if you like this, you might like my book. So I read his book, which was amazing, and that was great.
Brad Burrow (10:22):
Very cool.
Dr. Ashley Smith (10:22):
We haven’t met yet.
Brad Burrow (10:23):
Yeah. Well, that’s going to happen.
Dr. Ashley Smith (10:25):
I hope. So.
Brad Burrow (10:25):
We’re speaking into existence right now. I
Dr. Ashley Smith (10:28):
Hope we do have some mutual friends, so it could happen.
Brad Burrow (10:31):
Yeah, yeah. Well, sorry I cut you off.
Dr. Ashley Smith (10:33):
Yeah, no worries.
Brad Burrow (10:34):
One of the things that I wanted to talk about, you’ve got a great list of topics. So dealing with anxiety, I think we need to talk about because
Dr. Ashley Smith (10:42):
Absolutely.
Brad Burrow (10:43):
But first, one of the topics is how our minds work and mindset. And I believe that speaking positively and speaking things into existence that when we reinforce positive things, positive things start to happen. Now, I don’t know the science behind that.
Dr. Ashley Smith (11:04):
Yeah, well, so it’s really interesting. Did you ever read this secret? It went,
Brad Burrow (11:09):
Yes, I know what you’re talking about.
Dr. Ashley Smith (11:11):
Yes. So it was wildly popular maybe 15 years ago. And this is I think sort of what drives when people are into manifestation. I’m not, so I can’t speak to that, but when I read this secret, it was everything you just said, right? Think this and you put it out in the universe.
Brad Burrow (11:24):
I’m going to live in this huge house and I’m going to have a very successful company.
Dr. Ashley Smith (11:28):
Yeah, I read that as well. That’s just cognitive psychology, which is what people need to understand about our minds. There’s a couple pieces, but one is what you think drives how you feel and what you do. So I always love to give the example of imagine I’m walking along and I step in a pallet dog poop, and I think that’s stupid, sort of they shouldn’t have a dog. I’m going to feel angry, and then I’m probably going to snap at the next person looks at me sideways.
(11:54):
But if I walk along and I step in that poop and I think, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I stepped in. And then what if I get there and the broad thinks that I stink, but I took a shower, I’m going to feel anxious. And then what am I going to do? I’m going to be checking my shoe and I’m going to be making excuses, and I’m going to be fidgeting and not present. Or I can walk along, step in the poop and think that stinks. Oh, well, it’s not that big of a deal. Wipe it off and go on, and I’m going to feel neutral and I’m probably going to go on about my day. And my point is, it’s not about the poo, it’s about what your mind does with the poh that makes a difference. So yes, what you say to yourself, what you believe, the thoughts you entertain, they do shape our outcomes. Because if you move through the world, assuming people suck and they’re selfish, you’re going to be defensive, you’re going to be guarded, you’re going to react accordingly. If you move through the world with the assumption that humans are doing the best they can, and most people are good, you’re going to give grace. You’re going to be more open or friendly, you’re going to get very different reactions from people in that
(12:52):
Way. So that’s where mindset really matters. But the thing that people need to know is that our brains are designed to keep us alive, and they’re designed to keep us alive while conserving energy. So to do that, that means they have to process a ton of information very, very quickly to keep us alive. So they take shortcuts and they’re skewed toward the negative, so they’re going to assume the worst.
Brad Burrow (13:15):
So automatically,
Dr. Ashley Smith (13:16):
Automatically your brain is skewed to the negative. And if you don’t know that, then you’re just running around with this negativity bias on full alert and it is going to shape how you move through the world. It’s going to shape the decisions you make, the things that you do or don’t do. So it’s huge.
Brad Burrow (13:33):
So you’re kind of getting into how our minds work. Is there more depth that you want to get into talking about that?
Dr. Ashley Smith (13:39):
Yeah, I think really the big thing that I wish people knew is that you are not your mind. So if you can look at, you have a stomach and it has a job, it growls and grumbles, and sometimes you listen to it and sometimes you don’t, and you have a heart and it has a job and it pounds. But you don’t say, I am pounding. You’re like, yeah, my heart’s pounding. We have a mind. Its job is to think its job is to look for patterns, and its job is to predict danger again, to keep us alive. So if you can start to look at it as your mind is just this thing, and sometimes it helps you out and sometimes it doesn’t. Then that opens the door for us to start to say, okay, I’m going to be in charge and I’m not going to listen to everything that my mind says. It’s not always factual, and it’s definitely not always helpful
Brad Burrow (14:19):
A lot. And anxiety is a big thing that happens because of that, right?
Dr. Ashley Smith (14:24):
Yeah. Anxiety is our built-in warning system. So every human being on the planet feels anxious, not even just humans see slugs up to human beings. We all have anxiety, and it’s a threat detection system. Its job is to be on the lookout continually looking for things that could indicate potential danger or bad. And that’s it. And it’s on high alert right now.
Brad Burrow (14:45):
Yeah. So how do you get to the point where in your journey that happened, but overcoming that signal that’s going to come naturally?
Dr. Ashley Smith (14:59):
Well, I think what you just nailed it is understanding that it is going to come and it’s going to come naturally.
Brad Burrow (15:04):
You can’t stop that from happening.
Dr. Ashley Smith (15:05):
No. So the goal isn’t to get rid of anxiety, and I tell that when I was doing one-on-one patient work that was always like, hi, I’m Dr. Ashley, nice to meet you. We’re not going to get rid of anxiety.
Brad Burrow (15:14):
Is that right?
Dr. Ashley Smith (15:14):
Yeah. It’s not what people want to hear.
Brad Burrow (15:16):
They’re like, okay, I’m out of here.
Dr. Ashley Smith (15:17):
Yeah, right. They’re like, I’m out. I wish we could. But the reality is you want anxiety. If you didn’t, you would bolt into traffic without looking both ways. You’d go into public without wearing pants. We would do these things that would end up with really harmful consequences for us. So we need anxiety. But I think the goal is really to understand it and to have that, I would call it psychological strength, to be able to recognize in the moment when you’re getting those signals, to be able to stop back and say, well, that’s anxiety. What is it telling me? Is this a real threat? Do I want to listen to it? Is it helping me or is it hurting me?
Brad Burrow (15:55):
Like a checklist.
Dr. Ashley Smith (15:56):
Bingo. Yeah, exactly.
Brad Burrow (15:58):
So we have to learn how to go through that checklist when we have anxiety.
Dr. Ashley Smith (16:01):
Yeah, absolutely. And then there’s this being willing to be uncomfortable because anxiety by design is so unpleasant. Think about if you’re driving down the road and a car pulls out in front of you and your muscle tense and your breath catches, you slam the brakes because anxiety said danger, you reacted immediately. It’s not like you stopped and processed right this angle and this speed, you die. So anxiety is so powerful and so unpleasant that we’ll do just about anything to get rid of it. So if you really want to be in the driver’s seat of your life though, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable. It does mean anxiety’s going to flare up sometimes, and you got to sit in the ick and be able to say, yep, I feel anxious, but this is discomfort, not danger. I’m just going to embrace it, own it.
Brad Burrow (16:48):
How do you teach people to do that?
Dr. Ashley Smith (16:50):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (16:53):
Is it like a class that you need to go through? I mean, I’m sure you’ve taught hundreds of people how to do that.
Dr. Ashley Smith (16:57):
Yeah. I mean, I wish they taught this stuff starting in kindergarten. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we just from itty bitties all the way through, grownups started teaching people about thoughts and emotions and emotional intelligence. Most of the work that I’ve done historically has been one-on-one in therapy, and it is teaching people, it’s like given the education, the things we’re talking about, it’s helping them starting to see their own patterns. When do you feel anxious? What are the thoughts that go through your mind? How do you feel it in your body? What do you do?
Brad Burrow (17:26):
Is it typically something that’s happened in their life that keeps happening over and over that triggers that? Or
Dr. Ashley Smith (17:32):
It can be. I mean, it’s a really interesting question because the anxious part of our brain, it’s called the amygdala. I like to think of it as the caveman where it’s really powerful, but it’s not sophisticated. So it only does good and bad. So if you ever have an experience that was bad for you, your caveman’s sitting there, that amygdala, and it looks for anything associated with it. So it connects dots. So there was the classic Baby Albert study way back in the I early 19 hundreds where they took a little poor little toddler, they had a white rat, and then they crashed some symbols behind him. So he startled, and then his brain, his caveman associated white rat with fear, and then it translated to anything white and furry, including Santa Claus’s beard. So our brains do, that’s how triggers are formed. So certainly if you’ve had a traumatic event, you’re going to have a lot of triggers, A lot of dots got connected, but we have those with all kinds of things.
Brad Burrow (18:27):
Any trauma, right?
Dr. Ashley Smith (18:28):
Yeah,
Brad Burrow (18:29):
Any type of thing. So we do a podcast with City Union Mission, and they have counselors that are trained in trauma, how to recognize it and help people.
Dr. Ashley Smith (18:39):
Similar
Brad Burrow (18:40):
Things to what you’re talking about.
Dr. Ashley Smith (18:41):
Absolutely.
Brad Burrow (18:42):
Yeah. So what does that process look like? I’m really curious about it, how you train somebody to recognize, okay, that’s what this is. It’s not what you think it is.
Dr. Ashley Smith (18:56):
Therefore,
Brad Burrow (18:58):
I mean, that’s got to be muscle memory type thing. It
Dr. Ashley Smith (19:01):
Is. And it’s skills. And so I would say actions speak louder than words is the most important thing. So you’re not going to be able to reason with your amygdala. It doesn’t speak English. It only does good bad. So I think of it if you were trying to talk to,
Brad Burrow (19:16):
I’m picturing a video in my mind right now of a caveman.
Dr. Ashley Smith (19:19):
Yeah, well, I love it. And then it’s like, ah, danger. And you can’t reason with it. So that’s not going to work. This is why you can’t talk your way out of anxiety always, right? If you’re trying to say, it’s probably going to be fine, or just don’t worry about it, it doesn’t work. So you have to take your amygdala into this situation and show it that it’s okay. So what I mean by that is this is really, it’s easy when we’re talking to concrete things like I’m freaked out by bugs rationally. I know I’m a million times bigger than a bug. No one’s ever died from a cricket. It’s not going to hurt me. I know all of this stuff logically, but my amygdala doesn’t know it. So if I want to conquer this fear, I have to face it. I’m choosing not to because bugs are gross.
(20:02):
But if I were going to, it might be starting out small, looking at pictures of bugs, let my amygdala freak out. It’s going to be like danger, Ashley, you need to escape. And if I say no, I’m going to stay here. Okay? My actions are saying, this is not a threat. Over time it will chill out and then you can work your way up. Now, when we put this into, say, social situations, for me and my research way back in the day, that’s all about fear of being judged. Well, you go face that fear, you start doing things to get judged, right? Introducing yourself to people, sharing your opinion, speaking up, wearing your hair, all crazy, really, whatever. This is where you get to confront this big, bad, scary and realize one of two things. Either the scary thing doesn’t happen or you can handle it if it does. For me in vision, it was starting to put my story out there. So the first time I shared publicly about
Brad Burrow (21:01):
It. So you were anxious about doing that?
Dr. Ashley Smith (21:02):
Terrified. Terrified. Because my mind promised me, if people know your career is over, your social life is over, you’re doomed. And I believe that in every fiber of my being.
(21:14):
And that’s why having to stop driving was so big is because everybody knew then I had to confront it. And thankfully, thankfully I had to because that’s what really let me get to this point. But when I started speaking about it, I remember first time I shared, I wrote about it for some fundraising, and then I came undone, like fetal position sobbing in the floor, and that was my amygdala freaking out, what have you done? You can’t take it back. But it chilled out. Turns out no one shunned me. People were either unfazed by it or really supportive. And so then
Brad Burrow (21:50):
Maybe the opposite of what you thought would happen.
Dr. Ashley Smith (21:53):
Bingo. And that happens a lot of the time, and then occasionally it doesn’t. Occasionally anxiety gets it right, but when you face that fear, then you also get to prove to yourself that even if that worst thing happens, I can handle it. And that’s important to know. I have a lot of trust now in myself to no matter how uncomfortable or hard something gets, I can figure it out. But you can’t just positive talk your way into that.
Brad Burrow (22:15):
So you recognize when that’s happening now, probably. Is it pretty clear to you when that’s happening?
Dr. Ashley Smith (22:20):
I would like to say yes, but I still get caught off guard sometimes where, I mean, I’m human and we don’t ever get perfect at this stuff, but definitely a lot more awareness of what’s coming up inside and how do I feel? What is that emotion? What is it telling me? What is my mind telling me? Sometimes it’s not till hindsight and I’m like, oh man, it got me there. It got me. It got me to do old things. It got me to hide or avoid, and then you have an opportunity to redo it.
Brad Burrow (22:47):
It reminds me of the film A Beautiful Mind, and I wanted to ask you about another one too. Did you ever see the movie In Out? I
Dr. Ashley Smith (22:55):
Think that’s Inside
Brad Burrow (22:56):
Out. Inside Out. That’s
Dr. Ashley Smith (22:56):
What, yeah, I saw the first one. I haven’t seen the second one yet.
Brad Burrow (22:59):
I wondered what you thought about that movie. Brilliant. I thought a lot of people, I talked to some other people in your line of work that thought that was the best showing of how the Mind works that they’d ever
Dr. Ashley Smith (23:10):
Seen. I remember when it came out, I was doing a lot of pediatric work back then, and I had been talking to kids with that metaphor for a long time. Anxiety is separate from you, your mind is separate from you. And then this movie comes out, and so I’m like, just go watch Inside Out, just go watch Inside Out and then we’ll talk. It’s really well done. We do have all of those different parts and pieces that show up, and if you can start to name them, you get to decide who’s in
Brad Burrow (23:36):
Charge. Yeah, really interesting. Really interesting. Say that again?
Dr. Ashley Smith (23:41):
Amygdala.
Brad Burrow (23:42):
Amygdala. That would be a In the movie.
Dr. Ashley Smith (23:46):
Yeah. The only thing I didn’t like about Inside Out was they made the anxiety character sort of wissy like, oh, and I would make it big and scary.
Brad Burrow (23:55):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah. I thought that was, I wanted to ask you about that.
Dr. Ashley Smith (23:59):
So I
Brad Burrow (24:00):
Building confidence.
Dr. Ashley Smith (24:01):
Yes.
Brad Burrow (24:02):
Talk to me about building confidence. I mean, we’re kind of training, right? We’re
Dr. Ashley Smith (24:07):
In
Brad Burrow (24:08):
Our whole life, we’re training right? To handle situations better, to recognize situations. Owning a
Dr. Ashley Smith (24:15):
Business.
Brad Burrow (24:17):
I handle things differently now than I did 28 years ago when
Dr. Ashley Smith (24:21):
We started. Absolutely.
Brad Burrow (24:23):
But learning, talk about that. Building confidence has got to be part of that.
Dr. Ashley Smith (24:27):
It’s huge. It’s huge. And I think of confidence and anxiety being opposites. People would come in and say, I want more confidence. And then I would go do all of these things. And what they really mean is I’m afraid to go do these things. Either afraid people are going to judge, it’s not going to go well or I can’t handle it. But confidence is one of those actions speak louder than words. It’s earned. You have to go out and do things to gather experience, and it’s that experience that’s going to build your confidence. And it’s everything we were just talking about in the sense of you have to stretch out of your comfort zone. You have to put your real self out there and you can do it in little bits. That’s what I did with vision, and that’s what people with whatever it is, you put your real self out there because then you get to see real time reaction if you’re faking it. Anxiety can always whisper. Yeah, they like you, but they don’t know the real you, so you do that. The other thing from a business standpoint, it is venturing into my own business. I know where you’re coming from with that, and you walk into it thinking you have to have it all figured out. You see all of these other people who have it figured out, they don’t. No one does. They’re feeling their way forward
Brad Burrow (25:37):
Too. They look like they do those, right?
Dr. Ashley Smith (25:39):
I had a patient once who said, social media is comparing everybody else’s highlight reels to your behind the scenes.
(25:45):
Yeah. No one knows what they’re doing, but you figure it out as you go. And failure is a great teacher, and if we can not be afraid of failure, no one likes it, but if you can start to recode it as, I’m going to try this, I’m going to experiment and I’m going to gather my data, it helps. But I think for confidence specifically, it really comes down to trust. Trusting that other people are going to respond favorably and trusting that you can handle it if they don’t. And the only way you’re going to build trust is by doing things.
Brad Burrow (26:14):
And that’s hard for people.
Dr. Ashley Smith (26:16):
Yeah,
Brad Burrow (26:16):
Hard for me. Creative people I think are different than other people as well, because we put our hearts into our work. And for me, if I’ve created a video or something and I feel good about it, then I show it to somebody and maybe it doesn’t go over so well.
Dr. Ashley Smith (26:35):
Yeah,
Brad Burrow (26:36):
It’s like a personal thing. It is. It’s like I put my heart and soul into that,
Dr. Ashley Smith (26:41):
But are you willing to take that risk? Right? And that’s what it is. That gets back to, it’s not about not ever feeling anxious or pained or uncomfortable, it’s about being willing to experience the ick to do what matters.
Brad Burrow (26:54):
Yeah.
Dr. Ashley Smith (26:54):
It’s the same thing when I write.
Brad Burrow (26:55):
There’s your book title, by the way. Are you willing to experience the ick?
Dr. Ashley Smith (26:59):
Yes. There we go. Maybe that’ll be the next one.
(27:03):
But I get it right. And there is that piece of I feel good about it, but how am I going to put it out there? And I personally try not to think about the outcome, but more the process. Does this line up with what I want to say? Can I try to trust myself? And not that committee in your mind, that saying, what are they going to think? Is this going to be a success and all of those things. But there is a risk. Some of it is you leap and you trust that you’re going to work through it.
Brad Burrow (27:31):
Yeah, I think that’s one of the things for me personally, on the creative side, it’s like I do have anxiety about how it’s going to be received, and that kind of drives me to go deeper into the details and to get the feel how I want it and all those things. But on projects, the time when you are going to show somebody for the first time, that’s like an anxious moment.
Dr. Ashley Smith (27:56):
Well, it is. You don’t know. And that’s really the heart of it is when we don’t know. So when we’re in some sort of uncertainty, anxiety is going to heighten. That’s just what it does. Because again, its job is to look for danger. Now, if we’re just moving around day-to-day life and we have this assumption of certainty, I mean, we never actually know for sure what’s going to happen, but if it’s day to day is working the way it always has, we think we know what’s going to happen. Anxiety chills out. But when, and you’re aware of, I dunno how this is going to go. It could go poorly. Anxiety pops up, it’s going to every time
Brad Burrow (28:33):
It’s like I’m going to protect you.
Dr. Ashley Smith (28:34):
That’s it. Right? It’s there to protect you and the things you care about. So we also tend to get anxious around the projects and people that we care a lot about.
Brad Burrow (28:42):
So the science of happiness, what does that mean?
Dr. Ashley Smith (28:45):
Yeah. Well, it’s applying science to this area of happiness. So understanding is studying, researching what are the ingredients, if you will, of happiness. And I like that.
Brad Burrow (29:01):
So what are they?
Dr. Ashley Smith (29:03):
I wish I knew. So I mean, there’s a lot of stuff out there. And
Brad Burrow (29:07):
If
Dr. Ashley Smith (29:07):
People have been looking at happiness for eons, philosophers, back to Aristotle days, and there’s lots of theories, there’s lots of stuff. I think the first piece is what is happiness? And we have to get clear on that. I remember my master’s thesis was actually on happiness and anxiety in optimism in adolescence. And I remember sitting at a Village Inn, which is a diner with my two best friends, and I was walking ’em through my study design and I was like, yeah, so I’m going to measure happiness and optimism and anxiety. And they said, well, Ashley, how are you defining happiness? And I was like, happiness. And they kept pushing. They were being so annoying. They’re like, yeah, but what is it? And I was like, I don’t know. And they were right. If you’re going to study something, you have to be able to define it. So if you really stop and pause and think about, well, what is happiness? It’s harder to answer than most people realize. So where I’ve landed is on two levels. There’s surface level happy, which is the fleeting emotion, which really is pleasure, joy, fun, peace. It’s this come and go. I kind of like what’s happening right
Brad Burrow (30:14):
Now
Dr. Ashley Smith (30:15):
That’s going to come and go? You can’t stay happy all the time, right? Again, a car will pull out in front of you. You’re going to be anxious or your favorite TV show ends. You’re going to be sad. So you can’t be happy all the time on that level. Even if we look at pleasure, think about eating your first bite of ice cream and it’s like so good, but if you keep chasing it, what happens by 1000? You’re sick.
(30:36):
So I tend to think of there’s fleeting passing happiness, but then there’s really deep contentment. And that’s more of a sense of satisfaction that I have lived my life well, and that is not always pleasant. It is not always fun. It is not. I didn’t like writing my dissertation. It sucked what I do it again in a heartbeat because it contributes to my meaning and my life’s purpose, that satisfaction. And so I think we have to look at that. And then if we start to say, okay, cool. What are the ingredients that help you get there? There are some things that very consistently tend to boost happiness, social connection, relationships matter more than almost anything. And that is your ongoing relationships. Your partner has a huge impact on you. There’s a study that came out I think last year that your manager has just as big of an impact on your quality of life as your partner. So that’s huge. But there’s also the just connecting one human to another. You and I are both going to walk away from this conversation feeling energized. I know I will. Saying hi to a stranger. I take Uber because I don’t drive chatting with my random Uber drivers is a way to feel connected. So that boosts happiness, living in alignment with your values. So do the things that matter. It’s are you willing to experience the ick to do what matters? You clearly are creative, so you are not going to be happy if you let fear get in the way of you being creative.
(31:59):
So you’re going to have to say, yeah, I’m going to take the fear with me while I pursue creative work. Mindfulness is the other one. Really training your brain to be present without judging it. Those are three of the biggest things that contribute to
Brad Burrow (32:13):
Happiness. Do you have exercises that you tell people? I mean, I’m sure you have a whole toolkit of, oh, you need a little bit of this and you need a little bit of that.
Dr. Ashley Smith (32:20):
Tons and tons. And I guess along those lines, gratitude would be the other one that I would throw out. So yeah, a gratitude practice. My favorite way to do, it’s an exercise called 3, 2, 1. And I got it from a friend and colleague, Dr. Caroline Danda. She’s another Kansas City psychologist. But it’s each day writing down, what are three good things that happened today? Two things you’re looking forward to in the next 24 hours, and one good thing about yourself or one victory. And as you do that, you start to train your brain to look for the good. It already looks for the bad.
Brad Burrow (32:50):
That’s
Dr. Ashley Smith (32:50):
That negativity bias. It does that by default. It looks for the problems, looks for the problems. If you start to train it to look for what’s going well, you start to balance things.
Brad Burrow (33:00):
That’s maybe one of the things that people have the hardest time with. I mean, in our society, you look at what’s happening in our society right now. We don’t look at the positive things.
Dr. Ashley Smith (33:10):
No,
Brad Burrow (33:11):
We’re kind of, yes, we default there, but we don’t have any reinforcement really on the positive side very much.
Dr. Ashley Smith (33:19):
Well, but look at it. When it comes to the media, what are people going for, whether it’s traditional media or social media, what are they going for? They’re trying to get your attention. What captures attention, fear, and anger. Right? That’s anxiety by design. When something triggers our anxiety system, I mean, you get the heart rate goes up, your breath hitches, you get these hormones that cascade. But one of the things that happens when anxiety gets triggered is it hijacks our attention. Your attention gets very narrowed and focus on the threat. So things are going for our attention. That’s not the warm fuzzy stuff. So we have to really work today, especially to cultivate
Brad Burrow (34:00):
That more
Dr. Ashley Smith (34:01):
Than ever. Would you agree? More than ever? Yeah. But here’s one of the things that I also like to say, because people are, they’ll say, this is a terrible time to be alive. There’s nothing good going on. How can you find positivity in this? And one, finding the positive or finding the bright spot is not denying the negative. I’m not saying, oh, it’s all good. I’m not denying that. But I’m saying in the middle of this chaos, there are bright spots, and there’s this story I love to tell, is this woman named Gerda Iceman Klein, and she survived the Holocaust. So she was in a concentration camp as a teenager, and I heard her give this interview where she says, oh, I get chill bumps every single time. She says, no one talks about the good parts of
Brad Burrow (34:43):
The Holocaust.
Dr. Ashley Smith (34:45):
And she goes on to tell this story about how her best friend in the camp found this one wild raspberry, picked it, smuggled it back and gave it to her. She’s literally starving and save this raspberry to share with Gerda. And I take that she wasn’t saying the Holocaust wasn’t that bad. She’s saying in the midst of this horrific atrocity, there were still bright spots. And I take that as if Gida can find one in the Holocaust, we can sure
Brad Burrow (35:15):
Find
Dr. Ashley Smith (35:15):
One now if we’re willing to look.
Brad Burrow (35:17):
Yeah, an interesting side note, it’s releasing tomorrow, as a matter of fact, a podcast I did with Merrill Eisenhower, and he was Dwight d great-grandson, either great or great, great. Anyway, Merrill had just gotten back from ow, and his great-grandfather actually liberated that camp.
Dr. Ashley Smith (35:41):
Wow.
Brad Burrow (35:41):
So he actually received an award. They have, I think it’s called the Walk for Life, but it’s just heavy stuff. But
Dr. Ashley Smith (35:53):
It is
Brad Burrow (35:54):
Having hearing stories like that, people that have gone through incredibly bad things and now they’re giving awards to people that helped. And it’s just really a cool thing to
Dr. Ashley Smith (36:10):
Absolutely hear
Brad Burrow (36:11):
About. But that sounds like a feature film to me. It’s like hearing stories like that,
Dr. Ashley Smith (36:16):
But it goes back to that poo happens, and it’s not about the poo, it’s what you do with it that matters. And I think in mental health especially, people talk a lot about PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, which is the negative side of trauma and the way it can disrupt your healing and you can get stuck in it. And people don’t talk nearly as much about post-traumatic growth, which happens just as often, which is because of something hard. You come out the other side stronger in some way. And I think that’s really important. And it’s not saying, again, I’m so glad this happened or it wasn’t that bad. It’s saying, these are the cards I was dealt. This is the hand I’ve got. I’m going to play it the best that I can. That’s a choice. People don’t recognize that as a choice, but it’s a choice.
Brad Burrow (37:06):
Yeah, A tough one.
Dr. Ashley Smith (37:08):
Yes,
Brad Burrow (37:09):
A tough
Dr. Ashley Smith (37:09):
Choice. Their minds are wired to be negative, so it is really hard.
Brad Burrow (37:14):
So that’s a really good, how do you build strength and resilience? It’s like working out, I would assume it’s a muscle. It’s like you got to tear the muscle down to make it stronger. Is it something like that?
Dr. Ashley Smith (37:28):
It’s a hundred percent like that. So most people think about when it comes to our mind, we are used to thinking about in terms of light bulbs, like, oh, I learned two plus two is four, and now I just know that. And it’ll never shift. And that’s the wrong way to think about it. The way to think about building psychological strength is exactly what you said. It’s building a muscle. It’s going to take repetition, practice and repetition to create new neural pathways. So connections in our brain. The negative one is there. It’s a well-worn path.
Brad Burrow (37:57):
Can we just cut that negative one?
Dr. Ashley Smith (37:59):
I wish we could just insert, I would like to remove that or that memory or that thought. We can’t, there’s no delete button in our brain. If you’ve had a thought, it’s always going to be there. If you’ve had an experience, it might be buried way down deep, but it’s there. So we have to actively build the habit and it is going to the gym. Let’s say you really want to get fit, and you go and you work so hard and you get fit, you’re not done, then you have to maintain it. It’s the same thing. So it’s great to do a gratitude practice to sort of balance your thinking, but then you got to maintain it.
Brad Burrow (38:36):
Do you have training things out there that can help people do these things?
Dr. Ashley Smith (38:41):
Well, I am not doing one-on-one work anymore. So what I do is I speak, so certainly I work with organizations to do trainings.
Brad Burrow (38:49):
Is that locally here or do you go all over the
Dr. Ashley Smith (38:52):
Country? Yeah, so both and in person and virtual. And so it can be anywhere from small teams, 10 people where we’re just really getting into and diving deep into a topic. Or sometimes it’s keynoting big events, the audiences of a thousand. And so I certainly, I speak, I write, so I have a monthly newsletter that goes out that are my thoughts on whatever topic is relevant at the moment. I have a book that is a lot of the stuff that we’re talking about, but in short, little digestible chapters. And then I’m dabbling with social media, so you can watch my content and you’ll cringe. Especially with, Hey, this beautiful setup, you’re going to be like, oh, I’m embarrassed for you.
Brad Burrow (39:32):
No. So the book, what’s the name of the book?
Dr. Ashley Smith (39:34):
It’s called The Way I See It, A Psychologist Guide to A Happier Life.
Brad Burrow (39:37):
Okay, awesome. And so you are doing some social media and stuff then?
Dr. Ashley Smith (39:42):
I’m trying, yes. It’s at Dr. Ashley Smith’s.
Brad Burrow (39:45):
Great. That’s great. How’s that going? Are you connecting with people?
Dr. Ashley Smith (39:48):
I am. I mean, so LinkedIn is the platform that makes sense to me, just intuitively that one makes sense. I’m not a big consumer personally, so dabbling with Instagram and TikTok, it’s new
Brad Burrow (40:00):
Territory
Dr. Ashley Smith (40:00):
And I’m trying to treat it as an experiment to figure out which is how I live life in general of let me experiment and see what I learn. So that’s what I’m doing right
Brad Burrow (40:09):
Now. Yeah, the younger generation coming up on TikTok and Instagram. YouTube, my youngest son doesn’t even really watch TV at all. Maybe if a sports game’s on or something like that, but Instagram, YouTube is his kind of go-to.
Dr. Ashley Smith (40:27):
Yeah,
Brad Burrow (40:28):
I think YouTube and Google be thinking that way to reach
Dr. Ashley Smith (40:30):
Younger, absolutely.
Brad Burrow (40:31):
Younger audiences, we still have the same problems, just different manifestations of those problems,
Dr. Ashley Smith (40:37):
I think. Absolutely. Yeah,
Brad Burrow (40:38):
So it’s pretty interesting. Okay. Overcoming adversity.
Dr. Ashley Smith (40:42):
Yes.
Brad Burrow (40:43):
The last thing, and then we will wrap up, but what are the steps to overcoming adversity? I mean, we all have adversity. What would you say to that?
Dr. Ashley Smith (40:52):
Yeah, that’s a really great question. So one, I would say yes, we all have adversity. It is you are not going to get out of life without something happening. I think it is a mistake to try to believe we can get to a problem free point in life. There’s always going to be a problem, always. So there’s an acceptance of that. But really when we hit adversity, I think there are several things. It’s how do we make meaning out of it? And so if we really go back, this is way back to my research days, looking at optimism isn’t just a Pollyanna, it’s going to turn out okay. It was really about how do you explain bad events? Do you make sweeping generalizations like, this happened, I failed, I will always fail. Or do you put it in perspective of well, I failed that time.
(41:38):
In that context, that helps. So when we can start to approach adversity as that was an isolated thing, it’s not about me being flawed as a person and I can learn from it. So it really is how do we make meaning from it? And then what do we do moving forward? And I think there is also, I guess a part too of embracing the suck. You can’t skip that part. You got to feel it. If someone think about if you lose a loved one, you’re going to grieve, you’re going to grieve, and that sadness tells you, you cared. We don’t want to get rid of it, we don’t want to skip it. You can’t bypass it. So it’s feel the feelings, feel the ick, make sense out of it in a way that’s helpful and accurate, and then decide how you’re going to carry forward and then keep doing things and take that with you.
Brad Burrow (42:24):
Do you find that people struggle with learning from adversity?
Dr. Ashley Smith (42:28):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (42:28):
I mean,
Dr. Ashley Smith (42:29):
I
Brad Burrow (42:29):
Dunno. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the idea of failing forward.
Dr. Ashley Smith (42:36):
I love that.
Brad Burrow (42:37):
And that failure is a part of success.
Dr. Ashley Smith (42:40):
Yes.
Brad Burrow (42:41):
But it’s hard to believe that when you’re in the middle of a failure, of
Dr. Ashley Smith (42:44):
Course, I mean, okay. And also I believe what you just said completely and still don’t like to fail. And still when I’m putting something out there, the anxiety part kicks in of like, is this good? What if it doesn’t? That’s part of it. But I think about toddlers learning how to walk. They fall a thousand times. That’s how they learn how to walk. And we cheer them on every time. But somewhere along the way, all of a sudden failure is not okay. And it starts to be a bad thing. You’re expected to have it all figured out. And it’s been since becoming an entrepreneur and doing that of really trying to grapple and let go of old perfectionism and hold onto failing forward, like fail fast, learn the lesson, move forward. That does not mean I enjoy it. It feels like crap.
Brad Burrow (43:30):
Yeah, it does. It really does. If we could embrace that, embrace doesn’t sound very good. It’s like you don’t want to embrace failure, but really it is. If you really learn from it,
Dr. Ashley Smith (43:41):
But
Brad Burrow (43:42):
You get better because of it, then it’s not such a bad thing.
Dr. Ashley Smith (43:46):
But I think it is embracing it. It’s back to that. Are you willing to experience the ick to do what matters If you want to, I had my first guitar lesson a couple weeks ago and it’s like, okay, my friend who’s teaching me is amazing. It’s a completely unrealistic for me to expect to be there. You got to jump in and my fingers dunno how to do it. My brain doesn’t know how to tell them where to go. There’s no substitute for just getting your reps in. Whatever that, whether it’s music or business or relationships or gratitude or thinking, you got to get the reps in.
Brad Burrow (44:17):
You mentioned something earlier about relationships and how we want to have relationships we’re made that way. Talk about that from a leadership standpoint. You probably get asked to speak about that. I bet, huh?
Dr. Ashley Smith (44:30):
Yeah, do actually, and it’s interesting. There’s a trend, at least it seems in the moment toward authentic leadership. And so it is. There’s a lot of generational differences. And then people are like, oh no, that’s unprofessional. Leaders should always show up and have all the answers and this and that. And then there’s the other side of people showing up with all of their messy insides everywhere, and it’s neither of those. I think authentic leadership is really that being a good human being, a little bit vulnerable, meaning you’re sharing your actual inside experience
Brad Burrow (45:02):
As a leader. That’s scary.
Dr. Ashley Smith (45:03):
Well, it is, right? And yet, think about in your own experiences, either in relationships when you have shared, pulled back the curtain a little bit on here’s how I actually think or actually feel. You feel closer to that person. It builds trust. There’s more loyalty moving forward. It’s the same thing. If you think about any mentor or leader you’ve had. I guarantee they did either that where they felt real and they shared they could own mistakes, they took accountability and they also recognized you. They made you feel valued and seen.
Brad Burrow (45:39):
Do you think employees, people, well, people that you’re leading I should say, are attracted to that?
Dr. Ashley Smith (45:45):
Yeah.
Brad Burrow (45:45):
I mean that’s not something that would cause them anxiety.
Dr. Ashley Smith (45:49):
No, I don’t think so because
Brad Burrow (45:51):
What I’ve always felt it’s like don’t want to be too transparent.
Dr. Ashley Smith (45:57):
Yeah. I mean there are times I think when you can’t necessarily be transparent if you’re in a very large organization. Not everybody needs to know everything that’s being considered. Leaders have their roles and they make decisions that other people don’t get to weigh in on. But people do better when they have real information. I even think about it with kids. Think about a little kid, and let’s say a parent gets a diagnosis of cancer
(46:22):
And
(46:23):
They don’t want the kid to worry, so they don’t tell them, but kids aren’t dumb. They can pick up that something is wrong, something is off and their brain will fill in the narrative. So it
Brad Burrow (46:32):
Is You don’t want that.
Dr. Ashley Smith (46:33):
No. I would rather be honest and upfront, even if it’s hard. And I think we need to do that in all of our relationships, parent child partners, leader to employees that we are being honest. We’re being authentic and helping people trust. I think it is really building trust. And we also do that again by seeing and valuing them.
Brad Burrow (46:59):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. How about somebody get ahold of you? If somebody sees the podcast and is like, I need you to speak to my team, I want the
Dr. Ashley Smith (47:07):
Book,
Brad Burrow (47:09):
All of it.
Dr. Ashley Smith (47:10):
Yeah. My website’s the best place to go, and it’s Dr. Ashley smith.com. And so there’s a lot of information about the speaking that I do. My book and the places you can find it, there’s a contact page. My email’s on there. So that’s really the best place. LinkedIn would be the second, and it’s at Dr. Ashley Smith,
Brad Burrow (47:27):
And we got to do a podcast. You could have a great podcast.
Dr. Ashley Smith (47:31):
Thank you. I think it would be a lot of fun, but I got a lot of projects right now.
Brad Burrow (47:36):
Yeah. Well thank you for joining us. So the last thing that we always do is the movie voice. And I kind of prepped you for this a little bit, so I’ll just give you a little bit of coaching on how to do it.
Dr. Ashley Smith (47:45):
Okay? Okay. Please do. Because I’ve never tried this and I might fail.
Brad Burrow (47:48):
Well, you’re going to do great. So you just go, you get really close to the mic and you do the airy voice in a world with real media in a world with real media. That’s awesome. Oh my gosh, you did awesome. Thank you. So you may be getting jobs as a voice
Dr. Ashley Smith (48:07):
Overarch. There we go. Anytime we need that. Dark,
Brad Burrow (48:10):
Deep in a media in a world, the one in the mind, right? The one that’s speaking.
Dr. Ashley Smith (48:15):
There’s an idea. I love it.
Brad Burrow (48:18):
Well, thank you for being on. This is really awesome. I think I learned a lot today.
Dr. Ashley Smith (48:22):
Thanks for having me. That’s really,
Brad Burrow (48:23):
Really cool. So this is the Inner World with Real Media Podcast. Be sure to go to the website that we mentioned. What is it? Dr. Ashley smith.com. Check it out, follow her. Share this podcast. There’s a lot of great information that you could be sharing with your employees, with people that are struggling with anxiety, which is most people, and they’re going to learn a lot from this like I did today. So be sure to share it, like it, comment, all those things. Thanks for being on here, and we will look forward to seeing you next time. This has been In World with Real Media. Thanks for joining us. And be sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow real media on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. So you never miss an episode.