Mark Ostach - Walk Forward
Embark with us on a life-altering journey as Mark Ostach, a luminary in the fields of mental, emotional, and digital health, returns to share pivotal insights in our grand finale of Mental Health Awareness Month.
Links and Resources from the Episode:
Click here for Mark's website
Click here for Mark's LinkedIn profile
Click here to purchase Mark's Gratitude Journal
Click here to download Mark's book "If You Really Knew Me..."
Click here to purchase Mark's book "Courage to Connect"
Click here to enjoy Mark's podcast
Click here to get Mark's newsletter
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
“Mark Ostach - Walk Forward”
Original Publish Date: 5/28/2024
Hosts: John Broer & Sara Best
John Broer: Hey, we're back here on the Bosshole Chronicles. Sara - I see Sara on the video. Sara, what's going on?
Sara Best: Hey, John, it's good to see you. I love when we can do this together and it's so great to work with you. This is actually part four of our four-part series for Mental Health Awareness Month.
JB: Yes, by the way, thank you for really championing this. You set up four really remarkable subject matter experts through the month of May. Today is no exception. I'm just so excited because it's a returning guest and he's such a powerful force in the world of wellness and goodness. Who are we talking to?
SB: Today, John, we are talking to Mark Ostach. He is a return guest. What I can say about Mark is he speaks the greatest messages on mental, emotional and digital health, and today is no exception. He just oozes this calm and the spirituality and vulnerability you know. He's very quick to you know tell stories about himself, but what he offers all of us, I think, is hope. Each and every day, there's something we can be doing to take care of our mental health, and I think it's a perfect way to wrap up our four part series by talking to Mark.
He has some exciting things in the works, too, that we get to reveal to the rest of the world. So let's dig in, John.
JB: The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.
SB: Mark, oh my gosh, it is so good to have you back on the Bosshole Chronicles. Thank you for being here today.
Mark Ostach: So good to see both you, Sara and John, again. Good to have you.
SB: Yeah, I look forward to your e-newsletter. I think I recently told you it's like Christmas, like oh, it's in my inbox, I get to open it and I know there's going to be something really important and good for me to tune into. Also to tune into also your podcast. But this one that really struck me recently is the perfect topic and conversation we can have as we wrap up our series in mental health awareness, because May has been mental health awareness month. This particular newsletter is you kind of talking about feeling stuck, but there's an opening line that totally grabbed my attention and it explained in a heartbeat what I've been feeling lately.
You said the average person spends 4.5 hours a day on their phone. That's the equivalent of your finger covering five miles in distance on scrolling, which blew my mind and if I really think about it, I'm familiar with that. I understand that I don't mean to do that, but there's a thing that happens, and so you took that information and you shared some insights about fear, anxiety and being stuck. So I want to turn it over to you and say share with us the message there and what we can take away.
MO: Yeah, I love it. So just the highest level. I think Mental Health Awareness Month is great, but I think sometimes we, just for purposes of definition, you have mental health diagnosis that a psychiatrist or a psychologist would diagnose, which is like very select, and I don't do a lot of work personally there. But then you have like this other kind of section that a lot of us fall in and out of. You know, two out of four people have depression and anxiety. That I think I would call like just general life being defined under. You know, depression, anxiety and fear, and I think oftentimes a lot of those things perpetuate when we are not moving forward.
So that stat you referenced on four and a half hours on our phone each day. Uh, that's five hours of distance covered if you were scrolling. That stat set me off on this spirit-filled thought of we need to create a movement of movement. I'm a chronic walker, so one of my coping mechanisms I also flee during conflict. One of my creative avoidance on fleeing is going on a walk. So the dogs get walked, sometimes two or three times a day when I'm in a bad way. But all joking aside, I truly believe that moving forward is required in life, and when we're stuck we stop. And when we stop we get into loneliness, fear, anxiety, and those perpetual patterns that keep us stuck just continue to just exponentially grow. So the heart of what I feel like my mission is currently in this next season is really helping people walk forward. Just today I received in the mail a prototype of a journal called Walk Forward, oh cool.
JB: Beautiful.
MO: So these are designed to get you into daily walking patterns and there's five steps to a Walk Forward journal. Yeah, yes, worship, worry, wonder, whisper and walk. All those Ws. Basically, the idea is that a lot of leadership consultants talk about curiosity as a core skill set for leaders to gain.
And when you're curious, you can expand your current thinking. Well, I believe part of the patterns that keep us stuck are just recycled in the emotional bath that we feel and the fear and anxiety that continues to poke its head up every morning we wake. So when we can kind of start with gratitude worship, cast our worries right and identify claim, hey, I'm anxious today I'm going to release that to you and then receive a sense of whisper that's still small voice, Jiminy Cricket, God source, whatever you want to call it, it exists within you. So as you listen to that whisper, you then have an opportunity to journal what it is you're hearing or sensing, and the idea is, whether you are spiritual or not, you're going to probably use your creative writing skills that you haven't used since seventh grade English to gain a new perspective of what's keeping you stuck. So I'll give you a "For instance, the other day my daughter's birthday was being hosted at our house and we've decided to have big birthdays, family friends.
Come on by, and it was one of those things where the forecast was like rain and I became anxious of the rain. Where is everyone going to go? We have this beautiful home that has all these outdoor spaces. Now we're going to be stuck inside. As I took that anxiety which turns into an obsession for me and keeps me internally distracted, I took that in my morning time.
I wrote down what I'm thankful for and then, when I paused as I released that anxiety, I invited the question again my worldview is God. Your worldview could be Jiminy Cricket or your own inner spiritual sense. I said what do you want me to know about this anxiety? And then I just free flowed rope and what I heard is that it is not my job to bring up the sun. People are coming down from the sunshine and it's not my job to orchestrate the sun to rise. My job is to open the house and welcome people with a peaceful energy and invite them to celebrate my seven-year-old daughter. So because I had that creative kind of shift and I was able to see that it's not my job to make sure people come prepared for the weather, I almost laughed at myself and then my anxiety simmered. And then the last step of the Walk Forward journal is what are you going to do next? What's your next walk today and who do?
You want to encourage along their way. So since I got out of the anxious brain, I decided my next step was to prepare some doormats so when it was rainy, people could wipe their feet off.
SB: Right.
MO: And I was able to encourage a friend who I know is going through a battle with alcoholism and divorce and I felt equipped to have energy to text him an encouraging message. So that's the example of an everyday person who has bouts of mental health issues can begin walking forward in the anxieties that they drive them to, the patterns that cause anxious ways.
JB: You just said something that just really sparked something for me, because today, I think people would describe themselves as being caught up in this race, almost like a hamster wheel. There's an anxiety associated with just the desire or the drive to constantly be doing, yet they feel stuck. Because stuck, I mean, I think of the word inertia and and again the word inertia a definition. One of the definitions is resistance or disinclination to motion, action or change. Yes, and man you are talking about at the heart of it, people are feeling like I have so much to do, yet I feel stuck. Those two things seem totally disconnected, yet they are connected and yet there is this state of inertia and that weighs on people. I mean, the pressure is heavy, but that example is so perfect of literally stopping, literally stopping and stepping out of that state and looking at it in a very different way. Right, I think that's so cool, if I'm hearing this right.
MO: You're understanding it, and it goes back to like, uh, when we're locked and loaded, scrolling, we're seeing a lot of people doing, and that doing perpetuates our sense of lack and it gets us to drive that false self that has to create more content or show more progress yes, even if we're coming from a place of exhaustion.
So I really think, and it's already happening, but, like you know, just the general social media fatigue, it's, it's there, I mean, built into the walking journal. We have rest pages. So for my marathoners out there, even my power mall walkers, you have to have a rest day. So every five days of journaling you have a rest date, and that rest day you're encouraged by a of journaling. You have a rest day, and that rest day you're encouraged by a quote and then you're encouraged to rest on the page. And I think one of the things that most leaders that are high functioning like check any podcast that has millions of listeners a lot of the people they're interviewing have built in sleep and rest and rhythms that are their needs, which then allow them to bear more fruit because they've taken care of themselves. Yeah, and scrolling is the worst time suck and it's a universal. It's worse than smoking in the 1930s.
JB: Okay, I am laughing because right before we hit record, what was I talking about, Sara?
SB: Instagram. Cooking recipes. Pork chops.
JB: Yeah, that's right. Now, this one was a pesto thing, but anyway, I'm. Yes, it is, it's. It's an, it's an addiction, and it's not a healthy one, that's for sure.
SB: Well and I can speak from firsthand experience. Like time passes, sometimes I've woken up in the middle of the night and unfortunately, jumped on Facebook or Instagram. I try not to do those things very often, but I never feel good after I'm done doing that. I never feel good about myself. I feel incomplete. I feel somehow disconnected, maybe enlivened. Or I was entertained by something funny or I got to watch a dance video, but other than that I just feel all kinds of yuck. So this going from scrolling to strolling makes a ton of sense. It's part of your five steps. In the newsletter you talked about also ending your digital day. We know you to be a digital detox expert. That was my first introduction to you. There's nobody I know around who talks about this stuff and introduces this to companies the way you have Mark and the way you make it available to people. So tell us moving, strolling, walking, getting off the phone what advice do you have for people?
MO: Yeah, I think small steps create momentum. It's like compounding interest in your bank account is with "Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's the 1% each day. Yes, digital life. From that vantage point, it simply could be 10 minutes less on Instagram each day. Be like a lot of people, myself included. When you like, I'll go through bouts where I, just when I was writing this walk forward journal my wife I said I'm off social media and whether it's three weeks or three months, it is on my spirit to finish this work and I cannot be distracted. And I took like two months off. I was on LinkedIn because that's easy for me not to get sucked into. Long story short, I think that if you're going to take a break on social media or you're going to reevaluate your digital time, you need to replace it with something else. It's called replacement therapy and the addiction community knows it well. If I'm going to stop drinking, I'm going to drink seltzer.
If I'm going to stop smoking, I'm going to start. You know doing lollipops, right, you need to determine what you're going to replace. So this is this is the conundrum that we're faced with is that the post COVID damage to our ability to be spontaneous in social settings has restricted us to the comfort culture of our air-conditioned homes our 400 TV channels to surf from. Pick a hobby. People, pick a freaking hobby. Find and resurrect an old guitar. Get into fishing, swimming, you know. Volunteer at a kid's school. Volunteer at your church. Join the HOA, like I just did, which could be one of the most challenging homeowners association. I was like HOA.
JB: Yeah.
MO: Don't do that, people. If you're listening, stay away.
JB: We're having that conversation in our household right now.
MO: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because here's the truth. Social media and the internet sells us a bag of beliefs that are never going to come to pass. Yeah, so oftentimes we're all looking to be known and we're looking for more purpose and we want to be heard, and the best way to do that is to get out of your own way. So I said you see "Purpose driven life right behind me by Rick Warren. The first sentence of the first chapter of the book says it's not about you. So it's not about you, but you are you. What do you do to express you? So he talks about and I boldly believe this that you need to make a dent where you're sent. And the internet is this black hole. So you're not really anywhere on the internet, you're just in this space that just exists. So if you can make an impact with the gifts you've been given in your community, your school, your church, your office, your grocery store, not only will you have joy, but you'll have real world experiences that build confidence to get you out of your way when change is occurring. And that's why, when we're stuck, we stay in a place mentally and physically. I know I'm a bit on my bandwagon here, but when we're stuck, we isolate. When we isolate, we go down.
And one recent research study that I heard about, this person that I had was testing rats and was looking at two different conditions. One rat was placed into kind of a small area that he couldn't get out, was given two water bottles. This is an old research study. One water had water, one water was laced with cocaine and he watched that the rat would go 10 out of 10 times to the cocaine water and eventually that rat died out of cocaine overdose. And he took the same environment clear water, cocaine water and he put a group of rats eight rats in it together and all of the rats drank from the regular water. Why? Because they were in social community. They had significance other than just to go get fixed or get high or get a rush by themselves. So even though social media poses as a way to stay connected, it is so disconnecting.
I'm not all in anti-social media. I think that there's great ways to promote and do positive. But if you were to be a digital citizen of your own life and you were to say, hey, how am I finding joint value and impact in my life? It's not going to be the amount of posts you post and the amount of you know things you've liked or laughed at.
JB: Yeah, for sure.
SB: So, Mark, in your newsletter there were five specific ways that you know we can walk forward today away from anxiety, fear, away from the phone, into action and movement. Could you just walk us through those before we wrap up?
MO: Sure, I'll give you kind of quick hitting tips. If you feel like you're listening to this podcast and you're currently stuck in a season relationship or job that's not allowing you to advance forward, here are five things you can do. Okay, first thing is is the most important thing is starting your morning with sacred space. No phone. Get in your journal, your gratitude notebook, your Bible, your devotional book or simply a hot cup of coffee outdoor on your porch and use that as a non-negotiable through your day. So, 15 minutes of your sacred space.
Additionally, if you can move outside twice a day, it sounds silly whether you're going to the mailbox or taking a lap around your office or your home. Getting outside, getting outside, getting vitamin D and moving is incredible. The third thing is when I walk, I like to pray, meditate or visualize what a successful day looks and feels like. Some people call it future casting, but oftentimes it takes no more than 90 seconds to close your eyes or to walk around and just use that inner mind's eye to picture how you want tomorrow to be. That's different than where you feel today.
SB: Nice.
MO: This last part, which is really, really vulnerable, is getting feedback from trusted friend on any blind spots that they see in the patterns that are keeping you stuck. Now, we all have those people in our lives, and I've been one of them, where you sound like a broken record for a month or a year or longer, where you're stuck in that, complaining and explaining it almost feels like you're. You know it's your own greatest hits of the things that are keeping you stuck.
SB: Yes.
MO: I don't know what you're talking about.
JB: Oh I love that yeah.
MO: Exactly so somebody that you trust might say hey, "you know what You've been saying. You want to switch jobs for four years. Yeah, to be honest, I don't really see you taking the appropriate actions to switch jobs. So stop talking to me about that.
JB: For one, yes, two, you might want to have a hard, tough look in the mirror and say I need to do something different. If I may, really quick, Sara, this reminds me of the front of t-shirt, back of t-shirt. Yes, I don't know if you've heard that one, Mark. We had Mike Zani on, CEO of Predictive Index and he talks about front of t-shirt, back of t-shirt. Back of t-shirt is all the stuff that people, what is it?
SB: The stuff people say about you when you leave the room. That's right, right, it's on there. You might be aware of it, but you don't have quite the line of sight to it, as you do to the things on the front of your t-shirt which are your strengths?
JB: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
MO: Sorry, oh, that this area again for those listening to walk forward, getting feedback from a friend on what's, on the patterns that keep you yes.
Yeah, you have to realize. Imagine the negative emotion fear, anxiety, shame, guilt as it bubbles up like, like weeds in your, in the garden of your heart. If you don't pull those weeds, they're going to perpetuate and take root. And if you've ever had an actual weed problem in your garden or your yard, man, it spreads. The root system is incredibly invasive. So the problem becomes is that our bodies get trained to produce the emotions from the trauma or drama in our life and it keeps us marinating in our own funk. That's rich, yeah. So perspective into blind spots is like, hey, like, and we try to do that in our marriage Like what can we do differently? And it's always, it never goes over. Good, it's like. But you have that level of openness and you begin to get convicted when you feel those patterns popping up. You hear that other person's voice say this is what I'm talking about, without them even saying that.
SB: Can I just share. A number of years ago I asked a trusted neighbor and friend he's like a father actually to all of us. I asked him if there was something I could do better or differently was actually part of an assignment from a coaching thing I was involved in at the time and he looked at me right in the eyes and he said yes. He said you say things to your kids, you threaten them and you don't follow through.
You're so inconsistent and, honestly, God, I didn't see that. And he was so right, yeah, and he said you need to be your word, like if you're telling them this is what's going to happen to them, that's what should happen, and that was game changing. It was hard to hear, but it was so true and it was so very helpful. It was good practice at receiving that feedback.
JB: That's a great example, Sara. John do you have something else on your mind? Oh well, I was laughing at that, but I was thinking about the fifth one on end your digital day one hour before bed and sleep device-free. That convicted me. I don't do that. I do some of the other ones, but that's a really powerful one because it's again, it's almost like that addiction that you don't get rid. I do some of the other ones, but that's a really powerful one because it's again, it's almost like that addiction that you don't get rid of it and it just you fall asleep with it and that's. That's not good, that's not healthy.
MO: Yes, and you know there's a interesting perspective into this one, because a long long time ago, the day started at sunset. So when you think about, in today's modern culture, when you're like, hey, I got to get a jumpstart on the day, I'm going to wake up a half an hour earlier and get on email quicker, truthfully, your day, from the standpoint of all of humanity, started at night, so your night really sets a course for your day. So, if you imagine this, imagine the activities you do before bed, as little love letters or letters you're writing to yourself that get planted in the mailbox of your mind and that get opened up in the morning when you rise. Wow, yeah, I have a lot of junk mail, so sorry about that.
JB: Mark, I got to work on that. That's beautiful, that's a great, that's a great metaphor, analogy, whatever, it's awesome.
MO: Yeah, thank you.
SB: Well, and a couple of things that I want to make sure our listeners are aware of, and we've talked about your gratitude notebook before. I've purchased it many times over and shared it with clients. We've given it to clients as thank you gifts, but, in keeping with number one on your list in the newsletter and number one in Walk Forward, which is something we'll talk about next, the Gratitude Notebook gives people the tools they need to begin to form a practice of gratitude and to include that in their morning, and I love, mark, that you emphasized hey, it's not ours. Take a few minutes in the morning, create that space, say thank you to God or pray to whatever. However, you need to do that, but create that space and each and every day that grows. So the gratitude notebook is something companies can order for their employees. They can have it branded. Do you still do that, where you can co-brand?
MO: I still do it, branded yeah. They're the size of an iPhone so they fit in your pocket or your purse and if you're planning an event or end of the year celebration or doing a mailer to your hybrid team, it is a great little thank you, both as appreciation from your company culture to your team, and it also empowers them to create a new habit that's going to better your business because they're going to be in a better space for priming the pump of gratitude. Amen to that.
JB: And links to all of those links to that are in the show notes. Go to that. Sorry, Sara.
SB: Well, I think we make it a practice to give those out during our leadership academies too, because gratitude and the practice of gratitude new, good and grateful is something we want leaders to open every meeting with, and they start their day that way, but they should start their meetings that way as well. The notebook. Tell us about your mental health workshop. People know about you already that you're a well-known speaker. You're sought after. You have hundreds of speaking engagements under your belt. What's the workshop like?
MO: So, whether you have 15 minutes or a full 60 minutes, I help people for mental health specifically focus on the music of their mind, so how our thought patterns produce the soundtracks we hear, and it's fun. And, you know, we allow people to um, create a new anthem and that anthem allows you to speak life into yourself and to uh kind of the atmosphere around you. So it's a super fun, a super fun message. Planning new habits in the music of your mind is the title, and then, of course, fostering social connection and wellness in the workplace is another kind of staple.
So all that's to say, if you're planning an event, it doesn't have to be a mental health awareness month If you're looking to improve the mental wellness or fitness of your team. I'd love to just share a message or explore a conversation, and I'm always so thankful for people like you, Sara and John, that see the impact of the work and can help advocate and spread the message, knowing that that's how our community gets better and bigger.
SB: Absolutely. I just read an article from the Harvard Business Review in the last two weeks that said, burnout is continuing to rise. So it is more urgent than ever that we build space and time in our company events. We make space and time to come together and understand and listen to an expert like you. Okay, so tell us about the Walk Forward Journal. When will that be available? Thank you for letting us be introduced to that.
MO: Yeah, so the "Walk Forward Journal is gonna be available by August 1st.
JB: Nice.
MO: It'll be an opportunity for people who are ready to get unstuck through the practice of journaling. And it's a lot of fun because, in addition to those pages, there's actually quotes on each walking page and a little QR code so you can scan the quote and it creates a little Instagram tile or whatever you know social tile and post it on social. But you can easily text it to a friend that you're encouraging on their walk.
JB: Wonderful.
SB: Love this.
MO: Yeah, it's a way to just kind of like, um, you know, get out of your own way and then, as you move forward, encourage somebody else, cause that's the aspect of community. Like, I like walking with a friend, uh, and I also like walking with my dogs, um, but the point is is, you know, my therapist told me once that your mind can be in a million places at once, but your body can only be in one.
So when we get our mind aligned to our body, which oftentimes takes physical movement, so whether we're farming or walking or simply just grounding outside with your shoes and socks off, all those things create movement and you get it when you're moving. I coach soccer. It's the one hour of the week that I think about nothing but wrangling nine and 10 year old kids. Truthfully, I'm so, my, my body's moving. I'm chasing, I got the whistle. Like I can't think of anything else. So burnout and John you even alluded to this earlier but like part of the conundrum is that the true friction is inside, right, we all know this the battlefield's in the mind. So when your mind's spinning and it's spinning oftentimes from the scrolling of the rat race or the content kind of loop that spinning is going to create friction and that friction is going to keep you in fear.
So movement peace. Scrolling for scrolling gratitude. You guys got it all in the show notes. I'm thankful to launch that journal. This is the first podcast that I've shared the launch date and my publisher and my website designer is going to say August 1st. You didn't say August 1st. It's going to be out there.
JB: It's going to be out there as of Tuesday, so that's a hard. That's a hard date. Now that's cool. This is a happy accident that we get to be the podcast to tell the world we're privileged, and so much great stuff, mark, that you're creating to make the world better yeah.
MO: Thank you so much. I always enjoy talking with you. You both are friends and I appreciate being back on the podcast.
SB: Yeah, and Mark, I just want to tell you I'm just so grateful for your clear, soothing message. You know, over and over again, it's quite a comfort, uh, to a person like me, and I know it is to many, many others.
MO: So I just thank you, Mark, I thank you I thank you too, and, Sara and John, I'll pencil you in for a case of Walk Forward Journals to pass out to your friends and family.
JB: Please do.
SB: Please do. We'd be happy to do that. Yeah, it's time to order some more gratitude notebooks. Mark blessings to you and your family. Thank you so much for being here today.
JB: And we'll see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles. We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bosshole Chronicles and if you have a Bosshole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, We'll see you again soon.