It's just been inspiring to see the reaction and see the response and I'm sure it's very similar for you guys.

It's motivated to keep doing what you're doing and to keep helping more people and reaching more people and not just reach more people but to help people understand.

But it's all good.

What's up everybody? Welcome to Episode 80 of the Matt Happy Podcast. I'm Payman really excited to have Alexi Hidalgo on the show today.

She and I had an amazing conversation a few weeks ago. She's about all things positive content, really, really great stuff that she's putting out and inspired me to continue trying to put up work that inspires people and work that makes people feel good and heard and understood.

She also has a great podcast called The Moments Pog and everyone here should check that out. But without further ado, we wanted to release this episode a little early on Thanksgiving week signing off.

The Matt Happy Podcast is brought to you by Optimism. Enjoy the show with Lexi Hidalgo.

Lexi, thank you for being here. Yes, of course. So happy to be here. What's going on? Excited to have you. So is your real name Lexi or is that short for something?

Well, see, I could go into this for hours. My real name is actually Alexis. I've gone by Lexi since I was younger. The name Alexis Oes. I don't know. I just never liked it. It felt too mature. It felt too professional.

But now when I think of the name Alexis, I think of the most evolved version of myself, I guess you could say. So there's certain days on Alexis in certain days on Lexi. And I'm choosing to be Lexi today. So yeah, it's short for Alexis, but usually just Lexi.

It's funny. Yes. So my name's Payment, which is actually a Persian name. So I was born in Italy. My parents are from Iran and then I moved to LA when I was six. I think for me, it was always like hard because I didn't really like my name growing up because it's really hard to say and spell.

And all this stuff. And as a kid, you just like really want to fit in. So I always think it's funny. And we always ask about names because you know, there's like a certain like experience you went through just like with your nickname or like with your full name. And I think for me, like now, now I love my name. I think it's unique. And also after you meet me, it's like I'm probably the only payment.

You know, so it kind of sticks in your head. I love it. But did you like first move to your did you go by something else? You were always I never did. Yeah, I never did. So it's funny. I think I got lucky in a way because like there's not like a clear like nickname that that word work well.

I wouldn't even know what to go with. Yeah. And I think like a lot of people would change to like a pretty like generic name if they did change it. But I just like got through the harder part. And then I was like.

Now I like now I have like all the benefits of like not having a very standard name. But one one thing we always start with on the show, you know, we have this mental health journal that we released last year. It's called the Matt happy journal. There's like a bunch of prompts in there. So awesome. Yeah. And we always ask and we got to send you one if you don't have one. But yeah, we always ask, you know, one prompt from there. And for me, my question for you today is you can answer it. And then I'll answer is what's one thing that you're currently struggling with or trying to work on?

In your life could be small, could be a big. It's a good one. You know, I was actually thinking about this today. And I would probably say right now something I'm struggling with and doing my best to work through is stepping out of my comfort zone.

I'm so comfortable doing a lot of crazy things like if someone put a log over the grand canyon and told me to walk across it, I will do it in a heartbeat. I love living on the edge, but I hold myself back so much sometimes because I just get nervous and I let think takes so much control over me. And I think like what if this happens, what if that happens.

And I'm working through it like I'm doing big things and I'm taking big steps. And even for me to just I don't know, have a conversation with someone about mental health that's not just with me sitting in my room talking to my mic is really cool and really big step in the right direction.

So working through it, but I'm definitely been struggling with that lately.

Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that so funny because comfort zones in general are a funny topic because like what you just mentioned, which is like walking across the log on the grand canyon, like to you, that's actually still technically in your comfort zone, even though externally it could seem like it's not.

And like I found for myself like I started therapy like two years ago and it's pretty crazy just like how much I've been able and I always talk about the show about how much I've been able to like learn about myself in that time. And there are so many areas where I wasn't even talking about the thing because anytime I would like I would just like feel very like weird inside and like obviously like that's like the feeling that you are getting out of your comfort zone.

And now even for me and I think I'm going to copy is just because it's really good and I think like for me in work, you know, the company's gone a lot bigger and we have a 30 person team, we have a big office, we have all these expectations and stuff.

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