The Mental Fitness Podcast | Building Mental Strength & Resilience

We’re always looking for the perfect routine, the right self-help book, or the one habit that will finally improve our mental health. But what happens when those quick fixes don't work?

Dave and Luke explore why the search for a perfect solution can leave us feeling like we're the problem, and how approaching mental fitness with curiosity instead of judgment can change that. They discuss the difference between curiosity that traps us and curiosity that helps us grow, drawing on research and personal experiences to show why asking better questions matters.

They also revisit Benjamin Franklin's approach to personal improvement before introducing a practical six-step framework for running your own 14-day self-experiment. From improving sleep and movement to strengthening relationships, they share simple ways to test what works for you and build mental fitness habits that last. Rather than searching for the next quick fix, Dave and Luke encourage listeners to approach personal growth with curiosity, pay attention to what works, and build habits that fit their own lives.

Chapters
[Start] Why Quick Fixes Don't Work: Dave and Luke explore the pressure to find the perfect wellness routine and why mental fitness starts with curiosity rather than trying to fix yourself.
08:56 Curiosity That Traps vs. Curiosity That Frees: How shifting from self-judgment to genuine curiosity can help you better understand your thoughts, habits, and behaviors.
18:45 Building Confidence Through Small Wins: Why personal experience builds self-belief and how small, achievable changes can strengthen your mental fitness.
27:48 How to Design a Self-Experiment: The importance of changing one variable, maintaining your foundations, and tracking what actually happens.
37:00 Your 14-Day Mental Fitness Experiment: A six-step framework for testing new habits, with practical examples for improving your health, relationships, and self-awareness.

Links and Resources
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Most of us know what we should be doing for our mental health. Sleep more, move more, eat better. Knowing isn't the problem. Doing it consistently is.

Dave and Luke sit down with Dr. Steven Storage, a double board-certified psychiatrist, to explore a simple idea: mental health is brain health, and your brain isn't stuck the way it is. Dr. Storage explains why he often starts with lifestyle changes before medication and how everyday choices can support the way our brains function.

They break down the foundations of brain health, including sleep, exercise, and nutrition, with practical strategies for getting better sleep, moving more, and making healthier choices without aiming for perfection. Finally, they tackle the hard part: making those changes stick. Dr. Storage explains why motivation isn't enough and how small steps, accountability, structure, and a meaningful “why” can help you build habits that last.

Chapters
[Start] Mental Health Is Brain Health: Meet Dr. Steven Storage and hear why he believes understanding the brain can change the way we approach mental health.
08:29 Lifestyle Before Medication: Why Dr. Storage often starts with lifestyle changes, how medication can still play a role, and why addressing root causes matters.
13:21 Protect Your Sleep, Move Your Brain: Three practical sleep strategies and what cardio and strength training can do for brain health.
28:56 Start Ridiculously Small: Why motivation isn't enough, how to start exercising when you hate it, and the importance of finding a “why” that matters.
43:57 How to Make Healthy Habits Stick: Why we fall back into old patterns and how structure, consistency, accountability, and starting small can make change last.

Links and Resources
Connect with Dr. Steven Storage

• Instagram
• TikTok
• Amen Clinics

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Have you ever kept doing something you already decided you wanted to stop?

Dave and Luke explore the gap between what we decide and what we actually do—and what that gap can tell us about our agency. They unpack why we can feel stuck in compulsive habits even when we know better or no longer enjoy them. Rather than defining freedom as simply doing whatever we want, they offer a different perspective: real freedom includes being able to say no to something you want because you want something else more.

They share a three-question test for recognizing when a habit may be eroding your agency, explore how triggers and your environment influence behavior, and look at what research on limiting mobile internet access can teach us about changing our defaults. They also use Odysseus and the Sirens to show why making decisions in advance can be more effective than relying on willpower in the moment. Finally, Dave and Luke walk through a five-step “agency reset” you can use to identify triggers, interrupt compulsive habits, and make choices that better reflect the life you want to live. The goal isn't perfect self-control. It's giving yourself more freedom to choose how you spend your time, attention, and energy.

Chapters
[Start] When Your Actions Don’t Match Your Decisions: Dave and Luke explore everyday examples of habits that can begin to take away our ability to choose.
03:55 What Does Agency Actually Mean?: What agency means within the mental fitness framework, plus a three-question test for recognizing when a behavior may be taking away your freedom.
15:34 Why Knowing Better Isn’t Enough: Self-deception, triggers, dopamine, and why wanting something isn't always the same as enjoying it.
26:25 Present You vs. Future You: Why immediate desires can overrule long-term goals—and how giving your future self a vote can change today's choices.
37:16 Exercise Agency Before You Need It: What Odysseus and the Sirens can teach us about making decisions in advance, plus the five-step agency reset.

Links and Resources
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When Jil Hunter's body started shutting down after the birth of her fifth child, doctors thought it was MS. It wasn't. What she actually needed was language for what she was feeling. 

Dave and Luke are joined by Jil Hunter, creator of the YouTube series Lulubug's Garden, to talk about her years-long journey with severe postpartum anxiety. They talk about Jil’s experience with physical symptoms doctors couldn’t explain, and how one meeting with the right doctor finally gave her the language she needed to begin her healing journey.

Jil now uses what she knows on her show Lulubug's Garden, a YouTube series that teaches kids to recognize, name, and work with their emotions through puppets, music, and story. But this isn't just a parenting conversation. It's a conversation about why naming a feeling changes what your brain does with it, and what happens when someone finally builds the thing they wish had existed for them.

Chapters
[Start] Jil Hunter’s Mental Health Journey: Jil shares how severe anxiety began affecting her physically after the birth of her fifth child.
06:30 The First Moment of Hope: How one doctor helped Jil reconsider the possibility of MS and recognize anxiety, postpartum stress, and burnout.
11:13 Healing Wasn’t a Quick Fix: The therapy, physical self-care, and other forms of support that shaped Jil’s four-to-five-year healing journey.
15:03 Why Naming Emotions Matters: How emotional vocabulary can help people separate feelings from identity and choose how they respond.
21:23 Creating Lulubug’s Garden: How Jil turned her own experience into a children’s mental health series built around puppets, music, and storytelling.
31:45 Teaching Emotional Regulation: How Jil’s growing emotional awareness changed the way she parented and helped shape the tools she now shares with families.

Links and Resources
Lulubug’s Garden

Lulubug’s Podcast for Parents
Apple | Spotify | YouTube

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Most of us measure our health by what we can track. But there's a second half to the equation that never shows up on a wearable: vitality. 

Dave and Luke define what vitality is and why so many people struggle with it. You can be free of mental illness and still feel like you're going through the motions, somewhere between struggling and truly flourishing. Learning to recognize that middle ground can help us understand what might be missing from our day-to-day lives.

They walk through research on languishing, mind-wandering, flow states, and purpose as a predictor of longevity. Along the way, they break vitality down into four areas: aliveness, presence, engagement, and meaning. Dave and Luke share their own stories about what those ideas look like in real life before providing a four-question self-audit to help you take stock of your own vitality. This doesn’t need to happen all at once—just one small rep at a time.

Chapters
[Start] Health vs. Vitality: Dave and Luke discuss the difference between health and vitality, and why most people only train one of the two.
06:56 The Wandering Mind: What research on mind-wandering reveals about presence, attention, and mood.
14:01 Finding Flow: Csikszentmihalyi's research on the flow state, and why engagement tends to show up more at work than in leisure.20:29 Purpose and Meaning: How purpose and meaning are intertwined, and how we can define purpose for our life.
35:54 Common Vitality Pitfalls: Where our attempts to feel more alive can go wrong, and what to keep in mind instead.

Links and Resources
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Forgiveness sounds simple—until you’re the one trying to do it.

Dave and Luke dig into what forgiveness actually involves, and what it doesn’t. They start with the story of Everett Worthington, a psychologist who spent his career researching forgiveness, only to have his own research tested when he experienced a devastating personal loss.What happens when the person studying forgiveness has to put his own research into practice, and when the hardest person to forgive turns out to be yourself?

They explore what modern research suggests about forgiveness and why the practice has played such an important role across religious and philosophical traditions.Dave and Luke walk through the research-backed REACH method for forgiving someone else, then offer their own simplified adaptation for approaching self-forgiveness. The result is a practical conversation about releasing resentment without excusing harm, and extending the same compassion to yourself.

Chapters
[Start] Can Forgiveness Be Learned?: The personal story that put a leading forgiveness researcher’s work to the test.
02:05 What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t: The misconceptions that can make forgiveness feel impossible or unsafe.
12:14 What Forgiveness Does to the Brain: How the mind and body may respond when we begin releasing resentment.
17:58 The REACH Method: A research-backed process for moving toward forgiveness without dismissing the original harm.
26:55 When You Need to Forgive Yourself: How Dave and Luke adapt the process for regret, shame, and self-compassion.

Links and Resources
Sign up for NUE - The Mental Fitness App

We’ve discussed the importance of having connection to oneself, but today we are turning to a pillar that's just as critical to our mental fitness: connection to others. 

Dave and Luke dig into research on the relationship between strong social connections, loneliness, and long-term health. They unpack what the data says about meaningful relationships and why simply being around other people isn't the same as feeling connected.

Dave and Luke then walk through studies on personality change, and why believing that change is possible can shape how willing you are to practice new social behaviors.They give a simple framework for building real connection in everyday life, and share the common pitfalls that can sabotage people's best intentions. We all need each other more than we know.

Chapters
[Start] Why Connection Matters: The role connection to others plays in mental fitness.
04:43 Can You Change How Social You Are?: What research suggests about personality, behavior, and becoming more social.
14:34 The Labels We Give Ourselves: How the way we think about our personality can shape our behavior.
20:47 What Builds Real Connection?: A look at how relationships develop and deepen over time.
32:22 Putting Connection Into Practice: A practical framework for becoming more intentional about connection.

Links and Resources
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How do you know if what you’re feeling is a real problem or just a rough patch?

Dave and Luke sit down with Dr. Karen Manotas, child and adolescent psychiatrist, to dive into the answer behind this very question. Dr. Manotas shares her journey working with kids in crisis to building school-based psychiatry programs across Utah, driven by her belief in access to care for everyone. Over the years, her work has shown her that, no matter your age, self-awareness has its limits.

Dr. Manotas breaks down why we as humans are able to pick up on sudden changes, but have a harder time recognizing gradual changes. She shows how conditions like depression and anxiety can distort our read on ourselves in opposite directions. Dave and Luke ask how everyday people can recognize changes in themselves and check in with loved ones who may be struggling. This conversation is packed with clinical depth, as well as everyday wisdom that can be applied across all ages.

Chapters
[Start] Meet Dr. Karen Manotas: Dave and Luke introduce Dr. Karen Manotas, who shares her story of leaving traditional psychiatry to build school-based mental health care across Utah.
05:08 The Surprising Truth: The overwhelming pressure on teachers and school staff, and the generational shifts in how kids handle stress.
14:02 Spotting the Slow Signals: Why gradual changes are so much harder to notice than sudden ones, and the key warning signs that signal something is really wrong.
30:01 When to Seek Professional Help: How to ask for help, check in with a struggling friend, and a look at the 11-year average gap between symptoms and treatment.
41:37 What is Mental Fitness?: Karen defines her version of mental fitness and gives clear sources of where to turn for help when the need arises.

Links and Resources

Connect with Dr. Karen Manotas
Karen Manotas, MD | University of Utah

Suicide and Crisis Lifeline | Call or Text 988
Crisis Text Line | Text H-O-M-E to 741741
SAMHSA National Hotline

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What if the secret to being more interesting has almost nothing to do with being interesting?

Dave and Luke dig into the science of building real connection with others. The secret isn't charisma and charm, but being genuinely interested in those around you. Drawing on multiple research studies, they unpack why asking meaningful questions can do more for a relationship than trying to be interesting.

Dave and Luke share their own takeaways and provide a three-step framework called "the one more question rule" to help you learn how to become a better listener. This conversation shows the low-effort habits anyone can start using in their everyday interactions, giving the reminder that connection to others is one of the core pillars of mental fitness.

Chapters
[Start] Being Interested vs Interesting: Dave and Luke introduce Dale Carnegie's ideas on how to become more likable and what promotes genuine connection.
03:22 The Research: A look at different research studies that show the importance of listening to others and being involved in their lives.
15:56 The Three-Step Framework: Three steps to help naturally change your mindset to become a better listener to others.
23:36 Common Pitfalls to Avoid: Common mistakes to keep in mind as you start to implement better listening skills.
39:18 A Tool for Mental Fitness: Why genuine connection matters for your overall mental health and fitness.

Links and Resources
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What if writing bad poetry turned out to be one of the most powerful tools for mental health? 

Dave and Luke sit down with therapist, author, and self-proclaimed "bad poet" Margaret Bryden, MBA, CMHC. They discuss her debut book How I Understand It: A Bad Poet's Guide to Mental Health and Resilience. Margaret shares her experience with private practice and psychiatric hospital work to make a case for poetry as a legitimate mental fitness practice anyone can pick up.

Margaret reads several of her poems from her upcoming book and unpacks the psychology and personal stories behind them. She offers her own deep dive into eight specific benefits that writing offers that reading by itself can't. Her insights show that poetry and writing don’t need to be perfect to heal; it just needs to be purposeful. You don't need to be good at writing to benefit from it. You just need to start.

Chapters
[Start] Welcome Margaret Bryden: Dave and Luke introduce Margaret Bryden, who shares her journey about finding poetry.
11:59 "The Happiness Paradox": Margaret reads her poem on why chasing happiness directly leads to unhappiness.
24:39 "My Many Imperfections": Margaret reads her poem about exploring perfectionism and self-criticism as a form of control.
32:03 "About Not Fitting In": Margaret reads her poem on embracing being an outsider and not conforming to the boxes we build for ourselves.
38:15 Eight Ways Writing Heals: Margaret runs through her framework on writing and how it can help with self-awareness.

Links and Resources
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Connect with Margaret Bryden:
Sage Insight Therapy | Website
Sage Insight Therapy on Facebook
Sage Insight Therapy on Instagram
Preorder Margaret Bryden’s Book: How I Understand It: A Bad Poet's Guide to Mental Health and Resilience