In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks to longtime friend and Hollywood actress, Alessandra Torresani, about taking the time to notice, honor, and enjoy the small things that go right in life, i.e. celebrating the small wins!

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 Monday 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 pushups, 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 here with Alessandra Torresani, Hollywood actress, podcaster extraordinaire, and lifelong friend of mine. Alessandra, it's so good to see you.

Hi, Emily. This is so fun. I'm ready to do my pushup.

Oh, fantastic. Can't wait to break an emotional sweat with you. So today, what I want to talk about is celebrating small wins. And by that, I mean taking the time to notice, honor, and enjoy the small things that go well or right in life. I'm curious, how good are you at doing this?

Oh my gosh. I feel like not that great, if I'm going to be honest. I love to beat myself up. It's my favorite thing to do. So I don't celebrate the small things. I only celebrate the really big things, which don't happen that often. So then you don't really have a lot of fun. So I need to really practice celebrating the little things in life, the little successes.

I love it. And you're really not alone. For sure, one thing I've noticed in my work, especially with high achievers, is that it can be tough to celebrate small wins for all kinds of reasons. I think some people worry that if they focus on what's going well, it'll make them complacent and they'll stop going after bigger and better things. Some people worry that celebrating makes them self-centered or indulgent. Some people feel bad focusing on their wins if everything isn't going perfectly for everyone else. And I think some people just barely pause long enough to even notice when they have had a small win.

That being said, these same people tend to obsess and ruminate over things when they go the wrong way.

Yes.

So funny how that goes.

I love to celebrate the disasters. I'll tell you that much. I love to just soak in those. Yes.

We're good at that, right? The problem is, though, only focusing on what's working or only focusing on achieving the next goal in perpetuity can really quickly make life feel miserable. And I think that we shouldn't make ourselves miserable in pursuit of a good life. Life is the pursuit. And by celebrating our small wins, we're putting a little bit of gas back in the tank to allow ourselves to keep pushing forward. What do you think about all that?

I think that everything you said is totally right, and I think that what it takes is practice. It doesn't just happen overnight where you're, "Oh my gosh. All of a sudden I'm going to celebrate things. Everything's going to be better." You have to remind yourself to do it.

To me, sometimes I'm in a state of my mind, because I live with bipolar disorder, where sometimes a small win is just being able to get up out of bed. And that's celebrating something that's very small. And I forget about that. And I think if we look back five years from wherever we were, we could go, "Wow, look at where we are now. We didn't think we would be here."

I love that. And I'm so in agreement that it is something that can be practiced.

Yeah.

The whole point of this podcast is that we tend to see our ways of being in the world as really fixed. If this is how I am, this is just how I am. But what I've really learned through therapy and through emotional fitness in general is that the more you do something, the less effort it ends up taking, like any kind of exercise, and the more you can stretch yourself to do.

Yep.

So to that end, today's pushup is going to be about practicing celebrating small wins.

Yes.

And so what I would love for you to do is start by thinking of one small win you've had recently. It can be anything. It can be, like you said, just being able to summon the motivation to get out of bed. It can be that you finished a project you'd been putting off. It can be that you were kind to yourself, whatever it might be.

And for those of you who are listening, you can press pause while you think of your small win or just listen on to hear what Alessandra's is.

So Alessandra, what would you say your small win is for today?

Yeah. I think that my small win is I've put a lot of effort into having a podcast, where every single week I seem to open up a little bit more about myself over and over. And I am very critical about myself and I don't like my voice, and I listen back and I get so frustrated. And I almost felt, "What's the point of it all? You're putting out this knowledge, these interviews, these stories, and sometimes you don't get the validation back," right?

So you don't know the wins, right? You just feel like it's almost a failure that no one's there. And I recently got asked by a wonderful organization to share my story, because they had heard it because of the podcast. And it's an opportunity that I never thought that I would be able to have. And so to be able to share my story with a wider audience, it took three years of this podcast for me to finally hit this moment. And so I would like to celebrate that.

Well, first of all, I want to say this doesn't feel like a small win. That feels like a huge win.

This is a big win. Yeah. But it is a small win in the sense where even the opportunity of someone reaching out, I think, was the small win of going, "Wow. I can't believe that someone cares to hear about the struggles," because in my mind, a big win would be getting a huge hundred million dollar movie, Avatar, Disney movie, a Marvel picture. This is like, "Wow, it's my little story that someone cares about."

Mm. So the small win was hearing that what you had put out there, that in the moment you weren't so sure about, really landed well enough that a person said, "I want more of that."

Yes.

That's powerful. Okay. So the next step then of this small win, of this emotional pushup, is to text someone in your life who you want to celebrate with. And for anyone who wants a template, you might say something like, "Hey there. I am working on my emotional fitness. And today's challenge is to celebrate a small win with someone I care about. So I'm so excited to share that I was reached out to by this organization. They loved what I had to say. And I'm feeling really proud of myself, because I didn't always know that it was working and it feels really great. Thanks for celebrating with me."

Oh, I love that template. So then I text someone that?

Yeah.

It's funny, because there's a few people that I'd want to send this to, and not because I'm like, "Oh, I want to share this moment, but, really, it takes a village right, for your own success. So there's a lot of people that I feel like I'd like to reach out to and share this, because if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be in a place where I am right now with the podcast.

Yeah.

So I think it's really fun. So I'm actually going to send this to my sometimes co-host of my show. On EmotionAL Support, I have a little segment called Beauty and the Brain with a neuroscientist to the stars David Haggerty. And it's really fun and we have a great banter.

But truly, he was one of the people that I met at this organization. And we had come up with the idea of wanting to do a podcast. And he was like, "I'll be your first guest. I will show up. I will do that. I will answer questions for you if you don't feel comfortable." So to be able to celebrate with him would be really something special.

Oh, I love it. Would you be willing to share? What do you think your text message will sound like? So people have an idea.

Yeah. I'm going to write and I'm going to say, "I'm celebrating my small win today, and it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you and many other people who have supported me since day one of EmotionAL Support. Thank you for making me feel not alone."

What a wonderful message that will be to receive. And I imagine it will set you up in a wonderful way to be celebrated as well, because I will say one thing I notice is, as we tend to do, sometimes when we're celebrating our own wins, we very quickly celebrate other people. It's more comfortable to say-

Yeah.

... "It's because of you," which is wonderful.

Right. Totally.

But I also think there's something to say about saying, "I did this and I'm proud, and I want you to be proud with me."

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Isn't that funny? I feel like we always think... Well, we know that it takes a village. But sometimes, it is okay to just tap yourself on the back and know, "I did this myself."

Hell yeah. I love that. Well, thank you so much for flexing your feels with me today.

Oh my God. Thank you.

It's such a pleasure. And for those of you who want more Alessandra, fear not. We have a Taboo Tuesday coming with her tomorrow.

Ooh.

So you can learn all about what it has been like for her to be an actress in Hollywood on set who also struggles with bipolar disorder. So Alessandra, thank you for sharing yourself with us today, and I hope you have a beautiful day.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for listening to Emotionally Fit, hosted by me, Dr. Emily Anhalt. New pushups drop every Monday and Thursday. Did you do today's pushup alongside me and my guest? Tweet your experience with the hashtag EmotionallyFit and follow me @Dr. Emily Anhalt.

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 JoinCoa.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!