Have you ever finished a book you didn’t like because you had already put time into it? Or stayed at a job that wasn’t right for you because it was hard to imagine starting over? In today’s Emotional Push-Up, Neil Devani, founder and managing partner of Necessary Ventures, joins Dr. Emily to talk about the decisions and situations we hold onto, even if they’re not right for us, because of the time, money, or resources we’ve invested into them. Listen in to practice approaching these situations a little differently.

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 Neil Devani, founder and managing partner at Necessary Ventures. Neil, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Thanks for having me.

It's always a pleasure to see you. I'm curious, Neil, have you heard the term sunk cost fallacy?

I have. I am familiar.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your understanding of it.

I think about it as being the opposite of pot committed from a poker standpoint, where pot committed is when you've invested so much in the round and you're going to make an investment, even though you'll probably lose just to see what the other person has. So you're putting good money in after bad just to see what happens. Sunk cost is the inverse of that, where it's better to cut your losses and move on. You don't want to throw good money after bad or good time after bad, but you do anyway because you feel like you're pot committed.

I love that. I have never heard it put that way. That is a really cool way to think about it. Thank you for that. Yeah. The way I think about sunk cost fallacy is when we're reluctant to abandon a strategy or decision or path because we're really invested in it, even if it's clear that changing course would be better for us. So I don't think that was as eloquent as your description. But this couldn't be things like finishing a movie you don't like because you paid for the ticket, or continuing to date someone you're not interested in because you've spent a lot of time investing in the relationship, or staying at a job that isn't right for you because it's hard to imagine starting over.

The idea here is that sometimes we hold onto the mistakes that we took a lot of time making. But the problem is that we end up spending more time and more energy and more money as a result. So Neil, I imagine as an investor, you have seen this play out with founders who are hesitant to pivot or even fold their company because of all they've invested into it, or I imagine investors who continue to put money into something because they've already put so much into it. Tell us about that. How have you seen this shown up for you?

Yeah. Those are really good general categories. I've definitely seen that with folks being afraid to let someone go who's clearly not a fit for a role, folks being afraid to quit a role that's not a fit for them, investors backing up companies that clearly aren't working out, the founders being afraid to pivot the company. All of those things I've seen numerous times professionally. Personally, I think the stuff with relationships is also definitely right on. I think that defines the majority of my relationships when I was a teenager and in my 20s. Yeah. Even more challengingly, I think with friendships where they're not necessarily in this mutually exclusive frame. You can have lots of friends and you're not sure how to continue a friendship once it reaches a certain point. That's another difficult situation that I think this thinking can apply.

Yeah, that makes sense. One interesting way I've actually seen this show up in therapy is that often when a patient is starting to heal or make progress, they start to realize that with the right support, they might have been able to feel better a long time ago. And it's so painful to realize that and to mourn all of that lost time that they spent struggling, that they can almost convince themselves that it would be better if progress isn't possible at all. And I will sometimes see them start to sabotage their own progress because healing would mean facing this idea that they could have felt better a long time ago. I've seen this in my own therapy, too. I think we all do a small version of this at one point or another.

So today's Push-Up is all about taking a look at this tendency we have and seeing if we might decide to make a different choice. So Neil, step one of this Push-Up is to reflect on something in your life that you're hesitant to abandon because of all you've invested into it. This can be anything from ordering a lot of food when you're hungry, and then eating more than you actually want because you already spent the money on it. It could be feeling like you have to finish a book you're not enjoying because of the time you put into it. It could be, like you said, hanging onto a friendship that isn't serving you because of how much time you've spent with them. So for those tuning in, press pause here while you think of your example, or keep listening to hear what Neil shares. So Neil, what example comes to mind for you here?

Yeah. The biggest one for me right now is definitely sleep. And I can unpack that a little bit. I'm fully aware that when I make the time to have a good routine before going to sleep, and I'm very stringent about the routine when I wake up and I get myself enough time to sleep, I'm going to have a much better day. I'm more likely to work out. I'm more likely to eat healthy and make good choices. I'm more likely to just have more energy and a better mood throughout the day. But I always get pulled into this idea of, well, I could probably just push it tonight and maybe I don't need eight or even seven and a half hours of sleep.

I can perfectly function with six hours of sleep. So I'm just going to do a couple extra things, whether it's work or fun, whatever it might be, and just try to push the limit a little bit, and then pay the price the next day. And then that can cascade into multiple days. So that's something that I'm still trying to work with and figure out. And I think what you mentioned earlier is definitely true about that one where it's like if I had just been doing this my whole life, maybe I would be completely different than I am. I don't know.

So your example is when you give up a few hours of sleep, you get to the point that you say, "Well, I've already given up several hours of sleep, so I might as well just not sleep at all. Or I might as well give up several hours every night because I've already invested in this path of sacrificing sleep for other things." Is that right?

Yeah. You'll look at your life and how you've approached sleep historically maybe for the past however long and the progress you've made in your life and say, "Well, I've been able to do all the things that I've done without being more stringent about my sleep." And so even though I have this information that being a bit more disciplined is better on a day-to-day basis, I also know that I've been able to accomplish all of these things without being that disciplined about my sleep on a day-to-day basis. And so I can continue. And I think there's a degree of sunk cost fallacy because you're just continuing with the path and saying...

It's like that therapy concept you mentioned where if I make the pivot more permanently to be better about my sleep consistently and I find a massive benefit, even if it's not professionally-related or personally, it's just mood, that's still something that I could have had sooner. And so there's this unconscious bias against it where I'm just going to continue being inconsistent, where some nights I'll be really good about it, and some nights I'll just grin and bear it because I know I can. And that feels suboptimal. I don't actually know if it is or it isn't. The only way to know would be to make a hard transition over to being 100% consistent about being disciplined. And so that's something that I'm working on.

Oh, that's a perfect example. Yeah. It's like, "I could start to get really good sleep. But if it's too good, then I shouldn't have been sleeping this whole time. And that's really tough. So better to keep doing what I'm doing." I love that. Perfect example. So step two then of this Push-Up, Neil, is to create some space for yourself to maybe mourn the lost time, money, or effort that you've put into this thing. So for those tuning in, this could be as simple as just acknowledging to yourself that it's hard to let it go.

You might talk about it in therapy or journal about it, or just say to yourself, "Damn, I wish I'd known this earlier, but I didn't. I made the best choice I could at the time." So for those tuning in, think about what that might look like for you. Neil, when you think about your example, what comes to mind? What would it mean if you were to get better sleep and realize, "Oh, wow. I was capable of even more if I'd been sleeping this whole time"? What would it look like to maybe grieve and mourn that time lost, so that you can fully step into the future with it?

I think I'm pretty... I've definitely faced this before and other issues in therapy, and I've gotten to a point now where I've just accepted that this is the time for that change to have been made or that change to happen. And so the grief is less. I think the first time I grieved it, it was really difficult to think about what my life might look like, all these fantasies or machinations about where things could be versus where they are today. And that starts to really dig at your own insecurities. But the reframe, it's been really helpful, for me is to say, "Well, I just wasn't capable then, and I'm capable now. And so better to be capable now than capable never." And so just to continue making that progress forward means that you can't go from step one to step five. You have to get to step four, and then you can get to step five, even if at step one, you can see what step five looks like and you know what it is.

I really love that. And it reminds me too of a quote that I love by Maya Angelou. She said, "Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know until you learned it." We can't be able to know things or to do things before we learn how to do them or become capable of doing them. It's nice to have compassion for that.

Yeah, yeah. I think the benefit of making enough mistakes in your life is you start to realize that regretting them is a waste of time. You can learn something from it, which is great, or you can just move on. You can do both. They're not mutually exclusive. But just sitting there and dwelling on it and regretting it brings you literally no value, just negative value. And it's really easy to say that in this rationalist sense. But when you really embrace that fact, it becomes a little easier to forgive yourself and just pick up and move on.

I love that. Thanks for sharing this example. I think it's a good one. So then the final step of this Push-Up, Neil, is to get curious with yourself about what choice you might want to make moving forward and to take one small step toward that direction. So do you really want to keep investing in this path? Or would it be better for you to change course? And if you decide that changing course is the better option, how can you take that first step to make it happen? So Neil, I'm curious, what does it look like maybe to take a step toward better sleep rather than continuing the pattern that you've been doing so far?

Yeah. I think there's a degree of acceptance of some inconsistency, right? And that makes it easier. I've coached myself through various behavior changes, lifestyle changes, and had some help in doing so. I'm not doing this entirely on my own. But in each case, going from being very inconsistent to being very militaristic and overly focused on 100% hit rate, to just having some flex is the general arc and the general trend that I've gone through and what usually gets me to a degree of long-term consistency and stability. So in this case, I think it's the same pattern probably, which is finding a way to be 100% consistent about it, and then eventually finding the happy medium where it's not going to be perfect and that's fine, and every day is a new day. But just leaning into the positive reinforcement as much as possible, just getting that to be the way that the change sticks as opposed to trying to force it in some way.

Yeah. I think that's a great overarching strategy, but I also think it can be helpful for us to create a small concrete step that we could take. So in your case, I wonder what it would be like just tonight to put yourself in a position to get a really good full night of sleep. And then when you wake up tomorrow, to spend literally 30 seconds writing down how you feel. And then at the end of tomorrow, reflecting, "Did my day go better? Did it feel different?" So that you can start to positively reinforce, "Oh, this is maybe a change that I want to make, instead of feeling like I have to just keep going as I have been."

Yeah, yeah. I like that idea. Taking the morning to write something down and to build that into or bake that into the positive reinforcement. The way I do it now is usually with a pretty short meditation in the morning and just reflect on a few things to be grateful for, few things to affirm myself, and a few goals that I have. And that's the very short meditation. Writing that down, I think, would probably be a lot more effective or concrete in terms of sinking it into my consciousness for the day. So I'll try that tomorrow.

Okay. I'm excited. Circle back with me. Let me know how it goes.

I will.

And thank you so much for flexing your feels and breaking an emotional sweat with me today. I always enjoy our conversations. It's great to see you.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Neil. 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!