Have you ever tried to make an important decision with a colleague, romantic partner, friend, or family member, but gotten completely stuck? In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by her co-founder and Coa’s CEO, Alexa Meyer, to share an effective, proactive tool they’ve used to get through decision impasses.

Thank you for listening! Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why the Emotionally Fit podcast with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Tuesday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health. Join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

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The Emotionally Fit podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health. Katie Sunku Wood is the show’s producer from StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by nodalab, and featuring music by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!

Ready to break an emotional sweat? Welcome to Emotionally Fit with me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. As a therapist, I know that staying mentally healthy takes work and repetition. That's why I'll share Emotional Push-Ups, short, actionable exercises to help you strengthen your mental fitness. From improving your friendships to managing stress, let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

Hey there Fit Fans! I am so excited to be here today with my co-founder, Alexa Meyer, who is the co-founder and CEO at Coa. Alexa, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Thanks for having me, Emily. Always excited to be here.

Me too. And Alexa, as you know, as co-founders, we have to make a lot of decisions together. And most of the time that's a pretty easy thing to do because we do a lot of proactive communication and we tend to really share a vision for our company. I've found that we are on the same page quite a bit of the time. Of course, though, sometimes we do disagree. And today I wanted us to model one of the tools that we use for these moments. Are you up for doing this with me?

100%. Excited to dive in.

Me too. Okay. So this tool is great for when we're in a disagreement and can't quite seem to land on a decision. And I've found that this works great for co-founders, but also colleagues, romantic partners, friends, really anytime you're at an impasse with someone. So the way this works is that when you and your partner can't agree on a decision, you have the discussion again, but swap positions and then you have to argue the other person's side of the disagreement. And the reason that this works is firstly, it loosens everyone's attachment to being right. Because once you've argued both sides, you kind of have a horse in both races.

Second, it helps you see the other person's perspective. It forces you to put yourself in their shoes and to examine the argument from a different place.

And then third, you'll often find that you think of new points that the other person hadn't even thought of for their side of the argument. And once those new points are on the table, sometimes the choice becomes more clear. We've definitely done this where I've been arguing one side, and then I force myself to argue your side, and I come up with another argument for your side that is compelling to me, and suddenly I switch sides. So it can be a pretty useful tool.

So Alexa, when I was thinking about what argument we could kind of have, again for the purpose of this podcast, I was thinking about something that I get the sense a lot of people have grappled with over the last year or so, which was the decision you and I had to make, I don't know, maybe six to eight months ago about whether or not to have an in person retreat for Coa before COVID was really over, when things were kind of opening up and not really. And some people felt safe to travel and some didn't. And some people had new kids and some didn't. And it was complicated trying to figure out whether or not we should have this retreat. So what I'd love for us to do is let's take up our original positions on this, talk it through a little bit, and then let's force ourselves to switch sides and have the argument again. Does that sound good?

Yeah, sounds great.

Okay. So if I recall correctly, I believe I really wanted to have the retreat six to eight months ago. I thought that we should do it, and I think you took the position of no, it's not actually a good idea right now.

And for those listening [inaudible 00:03:18], this is for a team employee offsite, in person retreat.

Right. Getting our whole team together. We've been working remotely, haven't even met some of each other. So trying to figure that out. So Alexa, maybe you start us off with why you didn't think we should do it.

Yeah, I remember it was a time when some of our teammates weren't even comfortable getting on an airplane. We're a team that's split across the US, some West coast, some East Coast, some in Texas, and Omicron was just starting to wrap up. And so some of the team wasn't going to be able to make it. And so to me, to get everyone together when not everyone was going to be able to be there didn't make sense as it might have felt exclusionary to some of the members of our team that wouldn't be able to attend.

And that made sense to me. But my thought was, we have no idea how long this COVID thing is going to rage on for. I was starting to feel the effects of not having any in person time. I was feeling like we would really benefit from being in the same room as each other, even if not everyone could be there. And I think I was also just craving the energy boost of getting together to the point that it felt worth it to me anyway. So when I think back on some of the arguments I made, I think I said we could wait forever and we might never end up having this retreat. And I haven't even met a couple of the people on our team yet. As a founder, that just doesn't feel right. I want to make that happen. I want to change that. What were some of the other things that were on your mind about why it wasn't the right choice?

Yeah, there's cost. As a early stage growing startup, in person stuff can be expensive. And so investing in it when not everyone would be able to be there, and then probably having to do another one when everyone could be there didn't feel like a smart use of funds at the time. It was, what else could we do to connect the team in a way that would include everybody? And so there were some ideas around doing a online offsite where we would bring the team together to focus on not work that day, and do play exercises, connecting exercises, facilitated over Zoom and have food delivered to people's homes. So it could feel like a fun, relaxing experience program.

Yeah, I think my argument to that was, well, we've saved a lot of money not being in an office together for this whole year and a half. We would've spent a ton of money if this were not a remote world coming to an office. So can't we put some of that money to a retreat, I think that was one of my arguments. I think I also just missed you and wanted an excuse for us to be in the same place at the same time. And I think I also made the argument of we're a mental health company and being together will be good for our mental health, assuming that we can do it safely, it'll be a good thing. So should we walk the walk?

Yeah. And then I think the way that this can [inaudible 00:06:10] us out to other disagreements that we've had is are we using this one solution as an answer to a larger problem? And are there alternative solutions that we might be able to explore, like you and I just doing visits to see one another, which should be less costly, or we can stay with friends in our given cities, I'm in New York, you're in San Francisco, or just visiting the team and having one on one dinners with the people in San Francisco or the people in New York where there's some concentrations. And so thinking of other solutions to the problem of not feeling connected.

Totally. All right, so now let's swap and let's see if we can think of arguments for the other person's side that haven't been brought up yet. So when I put myself in your shoes and I think about it, one of the things that comes up for me immediately is I just said we're a mental health company. We should be thinking about what's good for mental health. But expecting people to do something that doesn't feel safe is not good for mental health. So certainly I could make the argument that we'd actually be taking better care of our employees by not putting people in a position of having to choose between togetherness and safety. So that's one thing that pops up for me. So now what are some arguments for doing it that you can think of that I hadn't already brought up?

For doing it, I mean, that's easier when we're going on the other side of doing it. I was like, it's fun. I love bringing the team together even if it's not everyone. I badly want to see everyone in person. Can we do it in a way that still includes the people that will have to be remote? Sure, we can set up some people in person and some people are on a big screen over Zoom somewhere, and still doing some of the interactivity while having some of the people in person. It is cheaper if it's a smaller amount of people coming together in one place than it is the whole team coming together. It's definitely emotionally, was exciting for me to do.

Let me think of what else when I put myself in your shoes around this. Oh, I think I also thought about if I was one of those people who didn't feel comfortable traveling, that I wouldn't have felt great about that choice. And there were several people who were telling us that they weren't ready. We had two people who had just had babies and were certainly in a totally different position when it came to how much risk that they were able to take, that kind of thing. And so that was one argument for the other side. Anything else come to mind for you when you thought about why we should do it?

Yeah, and the opportunity for not just connecting but actual work and collaboration around certain things. I think there was certain teams where 100% of the team was able to do the offsite, so the engineering team. So we could have had it structured around a particular part of the business in product and engineering, and done a lot of in person and collaborative work there without it feeling super exclusionary to the emotional events team.

So after all of this, we ended up deciding not to do the retreat then. And I remember having an aha moment when we did this exercise of I'm taking this very firm stand about how we are a mental health company and we really should be doing everything we can to promote mental health. Not thinking about the fact that from the other side of this argument, there is also a really important thing to think about mental health, of whether that's actually what's best for the team. And so I remember my mind kind of getting changed as I swapped positions there. What happened for you in this exercise? Anything? Did it feel like it made the decision more clear, less clear?

It was more clear, but I think through this process we were able to ideate on other solutions. So I think that was the most valuable part of doing this. And in any scenario, the thing that I really love about doing this with you or with other teammates is often other options pop out of it that sort of sometimes meet in the middle, or sometimes just an alternative to whatever problem is trying to be solved. And so we ended up doing the online one with the team and it was a big play day. And our team, so many of us are always facilitating as we run the emotional fitness classes. And so it was a chance for the ones, our emotional fitness instructors to actually sit back and be a participant for once. And we hired an outsider to come facilitate some stuff for us, which I think was really fun and enjoyable for everyone.

That's a good point, that there's this sort of third space that gets created with this where new options entirely open up besides just the two that each person might have been arguing for or against. So absolutely. I love that. Alexa and I use this a lot. We've swapped positions many a time. We use all kinds of tools with each other from trying to explain things and the other person's point of view. We're slightly different people. So sometimes we'll say, hey, when you do X, it makes me feel like, I'd imagine you feel if I did, Y. Because we have different feelings about the same kind of thing.

Some other tools that we use, we try to shift our mindset from me versus you to us versus the problem. So if we find ourselves sort of locating the problem in each other, we can remind ourself, okay, we're on the same team, we want the same thing. How can we actually see this as a problem that we are united against instead of being in opposition of each other? That kind of thing. So yeah, I'd be really excited to hear how this lands with the audience. Use the hashtag Emotionally Fit and tweet at us and let us know what you think about this perspective. But overall, Alexa, thank you so much for being here, for flexing your feels, for breaking an emotional sweat with me and for breaking emotional sweat with me every day. We really go through it together and I'm grateful to have a partner in all things.

Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. Have a great day.

You too. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Emotionally Fit hosted by me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. New Push-Ups drop every Tuesday and Thursday. Did you do today's Push-Up alongside me and my guest? Tweet your experience with the hashtag #EmotionallyFit and follow me at @DrEmilyAnhalt. Please rate, review, follow and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts. This podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health, where you can take live, therapist-led classes online. From group sessions to therapist matchmaking, Coa will help you build your emotional fitness routine. Head to joincoa.com, that's join-c-o-a.com, to learn more. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @joinCoa. From StudioPod Media in San Francisco, our producer is Katie Sunku Wood. Music is by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!