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My guest today is someone who is devoted to personally enriching the lives of millions of people by 2025. Mat Zinman is an author of Z-isms, wellness and kindness advocate, podcast host, and also the CEO of Internship Institute. Throughout today’s episode, we dive into Matt’s unique perspective on life, his entrepreneurial journey, some of the thought-provoking ideas covered in his book, including gratitude, self-kindness, the law of attraction, boundaries, growing beyond our past, and more. I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Show Notes
Matt’s Non-profit – Matt talks about his non-profit organization, “Internship Institute,” the objective behind it, and how it helps students and employers.
Tapping Into Gratitude – Gratitude is a practice that helps us enrich our lives in many aspects. Matt talks about how he practices gratitude and how you can integrate it into your life.
Self Kindness – What is self-kindness, and how we can use it to improve our decision-making, boundaries, and relationships.
Matt’s Book – Z-isms: Insights to Live By, the book written by Natt, focuses on positively impacting as many lives as possible. We talk in-depth about the concepts covered in the book and some of Matt’s life experiences that shaped his perspective about life.
Law of Attraction – How our emotions and thought patterns influence our achievements in life.
Fighting Depression – What happens when you’re heavily depressed and how to guide your thoughts to fight the negative emotions.
Time & Energy Management – Strategies for effectively managing our time and energy on a personal and interpersonal level.
Eliminating Baggage – Certain things and memories from our past can sometimes drag us down. We talk about how self-kindness can help us grow beyond our past.
Contact Matt Zinman
Website: mattzinman.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mattzinman
Mentioned in the Episode
Matt's Book - Z-isms: Insights to Live By:
amazon.com/Z-isms-Insights-Live-Matt-Zinman-ebook/dp/B085FQM7CD
Bobbi's Takeaways
Matt’s point about self kindness invites us to notice what we say about ourselves. We are often our own worst critics, and what we say can reinforce beliefs we have about ourselves and the habits and patterns that follow. Noticing our negative self talk creates the opportunity to choose a reframing. We can’t change the past, but we can change the story we tell about it so that we stop allowing the past to haunt us. Here are three things that can help us to do that:
An approach from Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, is the three P’s from learned optimism. The old story is just a story; it is not truth. We rewrite our stories by narrowing how much it is personal, permanent, and pervasive. What do I mean by personal, permanent and pervasive? Think back to your worst subject in school. I’m going to use math as an example because it is the only class where I ever received a B- on a test. I was devastated! The story I told myself about that B- was very important. One story is this: You are so stupid and you’ll never be good in school. Notice that it is personal, it’s permanent and it is pervasive, meaning now it’s not just about math but all of school. Another story is this: Wow. You didn’t study as hard as you could have. Next time you’ll study harder and you’ll probably do better. I’m still owning it but it is no longer permanent and it’s not pervasive.
A second strategy is that we detach our present from the past by choosing a different story and by acting into that new story. Self-kindness is leaving the old story behind and acting into the new optimistic future. This does mean that you have to write that new story for yourself.
I’m reading Jim Kwik’s book, Limitless, and I highly recommend it. One of the things that he talks about is silencing the inner critic and one of his strategies is to name your inner critic with a villainous name. Mine is now Jezebeth (which according to a site I found is the demon of falsehoods.
Earned confidence is simple and profound at the same time. You are here, so you have made it through everything that has happened. That means you have it within you to tackle anything else that comes your way. Your belief and courage comes from your life experience. This is not to say that we always faced everything with perfect strength, courage, and skill. But we made it, and we are here and able to face anything that comes our way with courage and resilience.
Gratitude is a key piece of enriching our lives. We have heard this before, but what’s most important is to feel it, not just to write it down in a journal. I’ve subscribed to a new app on building healthy minds and they talk about how gratitude can be as simple as paying attention to something that you appreciate while out for a walk. Today, when I was out for a walk I noticed that the magpies were out in full voice and I thought, I love to hear them sing and I just savored that moment instead of rushing past it.
