Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. You're listening to the Friday fix.

Every Friday, I share a quick mental strength strategy that can help fix the thoughts, feelings, and actions that can hold you back in life.

Today I'm talking about how to create an environment that is conducive to building mental strength.

Before I talk about what it means to change your environment or when to do it, though, I want you to think about how you might answer the following questions.

If you work in a really stressful environment and it's starting to impact your health, should you change jobs, or should you work on finding ways to manage your stress better?

If you aren't happy with the place that you live, should you practice more gratitude or should you move to a new place?

And finally, how about if you feel bad about the size of your body? Should you work on losing weight?

Or should you practice accepting yourself just the way that you are? Well, there's no absolute right

angle to tackle a problem. But we get into patterns where we tackle all of our problems from the

exact same angle sometimes. That's where the real problem comes in.

Some people always work on themselves when they feel like something isn't going well.

They take a deep breath and try to force themselves to do better or to feel better,

no matter how tough the situation is that they're in. Other people always try to fix this

situation. If they're not happy, they change jobs, they move to a new place, they end a relationship, or do anything that they can to create the perfect environment when the real problem is that they lack inner peace. Most of what I talk about on the podcast and in my books is about how to build inner strength so you can cope with whatever life throws your way.

When we're not happy with ourselves or we want to be happier or less anxious, quite often we think the change needs to come from within.

We think the solution is to work harder on fixing ourselves.

We chalk up our problems to character flaws, moral weaknesses,

lack of skills, or a lack of mental strength. But sometimes the problem isn't with us. It actually

is the environment. Making a few changes to the outer world could go a long way toward helping

you build inner strength. I've worked with a lot of

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