Raj Girn: We really touched upon something that is begging a specific question to you. Limiting beliefs is only one symptom of the overarching umbrella of where mental health can be challenged to hold us back from reaching our full potential. And it doesn’t help that we live in a world that is set up to make it even harder with the societal and cultural demands that are projected on us by other people. It’s why I believe that mental health, or lack thereof, is a chronic pandemic, not just a passing one like COVID. Monica, you’ve kind of alluded to this already, but I kind of want to deep dive this a little bit. You’ve created two resources that help elevate mental health, which are accessible to everyone.

So for anyone out there who feels that they’re not quite ready to go down the road of kind of the one-on-one therapy treatment, or perhaps you’re not in a financial position to go down that road, this part of our discussion is for you. Before we talk about what these are, I want to ask you, Monica, if you can share your insights on the difference between making a lifestyle change to soliciting Band-Aid solutions, because I want to go there first before we go into the resources. Why do you need to do the work? This is my, I guess, the overarching question. Why do we need to do the work, to long haul, rather than do the quick fix? Why is that important?

Here is Part Two of our conversation:

“Limiting beliefs is only one symptom of the overarching umbrella of where mental health can be challenged to hold us back from reaching our full potential.” ~Raj Girn

Dr. Monica Vermani: So Band-Aid solutions, just plain and simple, don’t work out. They’re quick fixes, as you called it, and that means they provide temporary relief. And many times we are doing this and we’re as a society being propelled to look for quick fixes, you know over the counter medications, sleep AIDS, alcohol, drugs, comfort buddies (where we talk to people), but we don’t really sort out how to solve the problems. And so Band-Aid solutions provide temporary relief, but they don’t really change the content of your life for you to get moving forward. It’s like that hamster on the wheel. You’re kind of stuck. And each day you need another Band-Aid solution to get through the day. But it doesn’t solve the dynamics to actually help you propel, move forward, grow and be a better version of yourself. And many times sometimes those Band-Aid solutions can also turn into addictions like alcohol, drugs, lorazepam or medication that is short acting to just bring down anxiety and depression.

If you don’t understand the purpose of your symptoms, you really don’t move forward. And to me, all human behaviour has a purpose. All symptoms have a purpose. And like we were speaking earlier, stages are that things get worse and worse if you don’t address them. And at some point the uncomfortable feelings will make you shift. And so it is important to not just look at Band-Aid solutions, but realize every time I use a Band-Aid solution, I tend to get more intense with my symptoms. Let me find something that actually solves my problems to help me move forward, rather then feeling like same day, different problems, same shift, same quick fixes. And at some point your quick fixes also hit a plateau where you need more and more of something such as a substance for that desired effect. So it can turn into detrimental issues like health conditions, weight gain, organ failure that we need to look at. Are my quick fixes helping or are they deteriorating my relationships, making friends leave me now or having family conflict more and more.

Oh, my gosh. You know, it’s everything that you just mentioned. There is something I know is going to resonate with everyone that is watching, listening and reading this. And I want to now mentioned to people that what I’m getting out of what Monica is talking about here is that we have to go deeper to figure out what is, in fact, happening here that is not allowing us to propel forward in a positive manner. And one of the two resources that Monica has that allows you to kind of maybe open yourself up to what that could be with you is a book that she has dropping this fall. And it’s called `A Deeper Wellness: Healing Your Past, Dealing with Your Present and Taking Control of Your Future.` Monica, can you share what people should expect from this book once it comes out?

Yes, this I’m very passionate about. I have spent a lot of time in the last while creating these resources. A Deeper Wellness is both a book that’s coming out, and you’ll be able to pre-buy it in July and by fall, which is the time where, again, kids go back to school. You know, the hustle bustle of life starts. And we also go through seasonal effects, seasonal affective disorder and issues coming with winter is coming. I found it’s a good time in the middle of September to actually launch and publish this book so that people have access to working on themselves during a time that things get back to normal. And as well as COVID shifting, we’re getting back to a place of finding a new normal. And so this book is about life lessons that you can implement in your life, regardless of the problem you’re going through.

The book mimics also the same methodology that I have in my online platform of 18 life lessons. And those life lessons are people who can’t afford therapy. Under the cost of one therapy session with me, you can have 18 life lessons online where there are many videos with me going over core topics like anger, anxiety, stress management, working through panic, working through anger, guilt, boundaries. And so these are 18 life lessons and material I use every day in my sessions in this beautiful office. And many times what we need to do is just take out a little bit of time. And so I’ve made these videos under 15 minutes. There’s a video, there’s also a handout. And they’re both about deeper wellness and they’re called that. So the book is ‘A Deeper Wellness.’

And then the 18 Life Lessons is the other resource that actually can go hand-in-hand or can be used on its own. And again, under the cost of one therapy session with me, you’re getting 18 life lessons to just embark on betterment. I understand, with the demands of children, family, overworking, that people don’t have time to show up at an office or they can’t fit it in their schedules. We still need to take responsibility to work on ourselves, not for others, but for ourselves. And the more you work on you, you are better for everything that you touch outside of you.

So powerful, Monica. Let’s just give people the opportunity to know where they need to go to get both of these resources. Now where the book is concerned, where, in July, can they go to pre-order this book?

So the book will be available on my website drmonicavermani.com as well as on Amazon starting September. And for pre-sales, you can go to my website, drmonicavermani.com. And for the online 18 life lessons, you can go to adeeperwellness.com. And so they’re both available again on my website. Easy to access. It’s not a class. It’s one that’s safe, self paced. You do whatever you like with it. The other resource that I’m offering right now is corporate wellness, too. And for that you can go to my website also for MVStartLiving.com.

So let’s touch upon that one, because that one we haven’t talked about yet. Who is that specifically for and what is it that they’re getting from this?

So corporate wellness today is a huge need. We all work. And the stats today show one in five Canadians suffer from a mental health condition. That’s huge. The cost of the Canadian economy exceeds $50 billion annually due to mental health concerns. Another stat that really hits home for me is in 2019, the World Health Organization included burnout as another occupational syndrome of workplace stress. And so it’s important for us to recognize, and especially in COVID, I’ve seen a lot of people over work and overextend or feel threatened by changes and not feeling as sharp due to mood anxiety and stress symptoms that they’re overworking, feeling they need to overcompensate and they don’t have their peer groups to compare and see where they’re at. So they’re overextending. And burnout is becoming a more common condition for many of us.

So today’s platform of corporate wellness is becoming a need and a necessity. I’ve had many companies come to me and say, “Can you come in as a professional who works with patients and talk to our employees using their benefits?” Many times we have them. We don’t use them. And so I’m having people say, come educate my patients. What do you do? How can they benefit? What services do you offer? And I offer a number of different modalities, but many people don’t know what they can ask a therapist for. You can work on trauma. You can do the reframing of your thoughts. You can work through exes and relationship break ups. You can work through low self esteem or issues that you’ve held on to since childbirth that continue in patterns. And corporate wellness has become a need because many companies today are realizing the loss of productivity is too great. And we hit employees every day with so many more demands and uncertain times.

“Corporate wellness has become a need because many companies today are realizing the loss of productivity is too great. And we hit employees every day with so many more demands and uncertain times.” ~Dr. Monica Vermani

People’s stress levels are higher. Each and every one of us are born not knowing when and how we’re going to die. But that’s teaching us how to be comfortable with uncertainty. However, the way our society is, we keep being afraid of uncertainty and change, and that’s accumulating a lot of stress and it’s impacting your workplace, your family life. And so today’s companies are starting to recognize the loss of productivity is one thing. The other thing is many people are having higher turnovers. And so to keep employees happy, you need to bring in health and well-being into the workplace. It allows the environment to be healthier. It also allows you not to have more productivity loss.

And so these corporate wellness programs that I offer are specifically unique to your company. I do a discovery call. We talk about what are specific problems that you’re going through. And then I tailor my topics to whatever your people need. Now, there are generic ones, like mood anxiety and stress management, and there’s also more specific ones that allow people to understand how to break down anger, healthy communication, reserving judgment, looking through social anxiety, worrying about how people criticize or scrutinize each other, not taking things personally. We were talking about earlier limiting beliefs. And some of our limiting beliefs are really cognitive distortions, distorted ways of seeing reality.

Many times when you’re in pain, you’re wearing a filter that tends to also taint how you see other people in your life. And instead of including them as support and people you can draw resources from, you tend to exclude them and feel nervous and afraid of them. That self doubt, that I don’t know if I can handle it. And so, today’s corporate wellness world is becoming a need, and most very prominent companies are reaching out to bring in psychologists or other professionals. One reason why my programs are unique is many times human resources is the one that offers mental health support and education. But I’m somebody who does this for a daily living with assessment and diagnosis and treatment. So bringing in a psychologist, I not only am able to educate accurately, I’m also able to provide them with tools and strategies and answer questions on a diagnostic level as well as a treatment level.

For anyone that is just joining us. I want you to rewind this back and start from the beginning. There are so many things that we’ve touched upon which have been kind of centered around the whole idea of limiting beliefs, getting in the way from you reaching your full potential. But there’s so many other things that we’ve touch upon that I feel that if you are somebody that feels that what’s going on in your life is holding you back from reaching your full potential, I want you to listen back to this conversation that I’m having with clinical psychologist Dr. Monica Vermani. Because there’s a lot of things that she touched upon that are also things that we don’t think about that may be impacting our concept and our idea behind what limiting beliefs are and also deterring us from getting the appropriate assistance and help. So here’s what I want to do right now before we close off. I want to round up our conversation by asking you, what do executives and entrepreneurs need to know about combating the limiting beliefs in their personal and or spiritual life and their professional life to be able to step into their full potential as a human being that maybe I haven’t touched upon?

One of the biggest limiting beliefs that I encounter in this office of mine is I’m not good enough. And I have to admit, it’s heartbreaking to see people be so hard on themselves with these high standards. No mother gave birth to a child and a rule book. And we live life with this rule book of I should be doing this, I should be doing this, I should have done this. I could have done that. And there’s a lot of regret and sadness and harshness to ourselves. And so I’m going to say the biggest advice I can give right now, that is something we each have to pay attention to, is aligning with ourselves. We need to start learning how to align with ourselves. You need to start working with yourself in order to move forward. Many times we’re headbutting with ourselves. We’re not working with ourselves. You need to trust yourself. It’s your life and you need to realize you matter in the equation of your life.

“The biggest advice I can give right now, that is something we each have to pay attention to, is aligning with ourselves. We need to start learning how to align with ourselves. You need to start working with yourself in order to move forward.” ~Dr. Monica Vermani

You need to add yourself in the equation of your life. Many times at our grave, we’re not complaining that we don’t spend more hours at work or sometimes complaining about the life that we missed out on. You need to add yourself in your life. And so aligning with yourself is about seeking help, is about making time to learn information that can help you get out of mindsets and limiting beliefs that are limiting you, holding you back, and allow yourself to move forward. And so each and every one of us, professional and personal, we need to look at, am I living my highest and best quality of life? Am I living in a place of joy? Joy really comes from gratitude. And gratitude means you’re slowing down enough to notice what is good in your life. Most of us are in that rat race. We don’t see things. And that’s where the quick fixes come in. We’re so busy, we’re looking for a quick fix versus trying to really solve the problem at hand. And so the biggest thing I can say is connect to your spirit.

What is spirit? It’s you liking your own company. You liking yourself. Many times we don’t like the content in our heads and we don’t like being with ourselves in silence. It is important for you to work through all these limiting beliefs that shoot up in your head and jump around as a monkey brain does and realize, do I like the content in my head when I’m alone in silence? Do I like my own company? Because if you don’t enjoy yourself, then you’re not going to be very good to everybody around you that you’re interacting with, whether it’s work, social intimacy, family life. Self care is important. And so align with yourself. Make your faith bigger than your fear. What is faith? Belief in your skill set. And we do the best we can with what we have, and so we realize that here and now I’m doing the best I can with what I have and tomorrow I’ll learn something that makes me better. But here and now, I’m doing the best I can and I can have faith in my skill set to date. Life has always brought me what I can handle. I’ve handled it. I’m here. And so the next chapter is about removing self doubt, which is where fear and anxiety comes from. Making faith bigger than your fear and allying with yourself to start making you a priority and you mattering in the equation of your life.

Amen to that. Any final words that you want to leave everyone with, Monica?

I think the biggest one is start where you are. We don’t need to compare ourselves. Like I said earlier, when you see somebody who’s doing better, don’t be hard on yourself that I’m not there. Instead, look at what are the things I can do to become a better version of myself and start where you are. Don’t start thinking about I’m too old, I can’t do this and I’m not smart enough. What’s the point? Things are set in place. Start where you are. Learn to be a better version of yourself to you today. And there is a ripple effect. As you get better in one area, even on a baby steps front, you’ll find there’s a momentum that starts developing where each and every area of your life gets better. Live in your truth. Look at your impact on yourself and then look at your impact on others and slow down, pause and reflect.

“There is a ripple effect. As you get better in one area, even on the baby steps front, you’ll find there’s a momentum that starts developing where each and every area of your life gets better.” ~Dr. Monica Vermani

My website includes podcasts of meditations and free articles right now just to help us get through these difficult times. And I’m going to say take time to just listen for t10 minutes and pointers that you might know, but you need the reinforcement. I know a lot, but I don’t know everything. And the one thing I realize is the more I read and speak to mentors and guides of my own, the relentless reminders and the repetition is actually what helps me wake up in the morning and put into place all the healthy habits. We all need reminders. We all need support. And those supports turn into a tribe that help you move forward in life and also dispel your limiting thoughts. I do it as a professional, but many times some of your support guides to the scriptures and articles and readings out there also help you dispel and reframe negative thoughts that don’t serve your highest and best.

As we close off Monica . . . My God, this begs me having to bring you back on, because there’s just so much that we’ve touched upon that I feel requires a deeper discussion. So I really welcome you to come back, which I think is going to be very valuable for everyone out there. But before I let you go, I want to kind of regroup on the different places that people can go for the various different services and resources that you talked about. We talked about your one-on-one patient therapy practice. We talked about your corporate wellness. We talked about the book that’s coming out shortly. And we also talked about the 18 resources that people can tap into. Can you go through them one by one again and let people know where they need to go? Because we need to send people specifically to the right location.

First and foremost, please go to drmonicavermani.com. And my website is this beautiful resource that explains individual therapy, gives you knowledge on symptoms. The first step to treatment is awareness. So first of all, if you can understand your symptoms, you’ll be able to know what you need to look for. And so go to my website, to understand and read more about things on that website. You will always find podcasts, which are the recent articles I’ve been writing on mental health tips, meditations and also articles to help you understand little things that you can work on.

Then for corporate wellness, you can go to MVStartLiving.com. Which again, you can have access to this platform straight on DrMonicaVermani.com as well. You’ll notice on my website there’s individual practice, online practice, which is the life lessons, and then corporate wellness. And for the book, it’s ADeeperWellness.com, which again, you can find online at just DrMonicaVermani.com. So if anything, I want you to remember DrMonicaVermani.com and you will be able to navigate yourself on that page to find the book for pre-sales as well as registration. Sign up to a newsletter that I publish every month on different articles I’ve been writing every month. You can listen to the article instead of just reading it. And there’s a meditation every Friday and you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook as Dr. Monica Vermani and those areas are also publishing the article, the meditations, as well as health care tips.

And if you’re like me guys and you’re super busy, the one thing that I recommend that you guys do is go and subscribe to the monthly newsletter, because everything that Monica does within a given month, she sends out through that, which I think is an amazing resource. Straight into your inbox. I’m a super fan of having everything sent to me in one go. So if you’re one of those people, just go make sure that you do that. Monica, thank you so much for joining us for this really important discussion and come back soon for some great conversation, because as I mentioned, we have discussed so many things that begs deeper discussion. And I really want to have the opportunity to give that value to people here.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. This is a beautiful topic. And I think it’s important for each and every one of us to start pausing, reflecting and recognizing the quality of our thoughts. And again, you matter. So please make time for you in the equation of your life. That’s what we’re here for, to live our journeys, amongst others, but live our journeys.

“I think it’s important for each and every one of us to start pausing, reflecting and recognizing the quality of our thoughts. And again, you matter. So please make time for you in the equation of your life. That’s what we’re here for, to live our journeys, amongst others, but live our journeys.” ~Dr. Monica Vermani

Absolutely. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and Dr. Monica Vermani today.

Folks, I really hope that you got some real value from our discussion and that you understand the importance of being mindful about the blocks that hold you back from reaching your full potential and more importantly, do something to overcome them so that you can soar to the heights that your work that you have spent your life doing can help you actually accomplish.

For more trainings like this please subscribe to our YouTube channel at The Open Chest Confidence Academy on our podcast platforms at Apple, Google and Spotify search the ‘Transform Your Confidence Show.’ I also encourage you guys to join our free coaching newsletter community. Just head over to TheOpenChestConfidenceAcademy.com/newsletter. And finally join our free professional development incubator on Facebook at Transform Your Confidence.

Until next week, take care of yourself, guys. Thank you.

To contact Dr. Monica Vermani: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Web