Knowing It vs. Living It | Dr. Ken Martz on Anxiety

Guest: Dr. Ken Martz is a licensed psychologist, author, and founder of Lionheart Therapy Solutions, specializing in emotional management and anxiety for highperforming men.

Episode Summary

Dr. Ken Martz has more than 30 years of experience in mental health and addiction treatment and is the author of the international bestseller Manage My Emotions. This episode traces his path from a hospital gown after a panic attack in a post office line to building the Unshakeable series, and lands on a distinction he named plainly in the conversation: he could talk about selftrust long before he was actually living it. It's for the high performer who understands exactly what needs to shift and still finds themselves operating from the opposite of it.

Key takeaways:

• Knowing vs. Living: Why understanding a concept intellectually, even well enough to teach it, isn't the same as choosing it.
• Internal Metrics vs. External Metrics: The shift from tracking revenue and perception to tracking laughter, gratitude, and authentic presence, and why the external numbers follow rather than lead.
• The Backpack of Micro Wounds: How small, unregulated stressors accumulate for years until a single moment forces a reckoning.
• You Don't Need a Hospital Moment: Why the body can change gears in seconds once it's actually invited to, without waiting for a crisis.
• A Relationship Shift, Not a Strategy Shift: Why the work underneath performance anxiety is a relationship with yourself, not a new tactic.

Guest Bio and Links

Dr. Kenneth Martz is a licensed psychologist, author, and international speaker specializing in emotional management and anxiety, particularly among highperforming professionals. With more than 30 years of experience in mental health and addiction treatment, he has worked across outpatient, residential, and hospital settings and previously served as Special Assistant to the Secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs. He is currently the founder and operator of Lionheart Therapy Solutions with signature programs in the Unshakable Men series helping men connect with their courageous heart, and move from anxious to unshakable. Dr. Martz is the author of several books including the international bestseller Manage My Emotions, and he has delivered more than 100 presentations around the world on emotional resilience, leadership psychology, and addiction recovery.

Website: https://drkenmartz.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkenmartz/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.kenmartz/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrKenMartz

Full Transcript

Dawn: Welcome back to the SelfTrust Solution Podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Ledet, the selftrust coach. And today, I'm joined by Dr. Ken Martz, a licensed psychologist, author, and international speaker with more than 30 years of experience in mental health and addiction treatment. He's the founder of Lionheart Therapy Solutions, creator of the Unshakeable Men series, and the author of several books, including the international bestseller Manage My Emotions. His work has been featured on Time, NPR, CBS, NBC, and Business Insider, and he has delivered more than 100 presentations around the world on emotional resilience, leadership psychology, and addiction recovery. But what we're talking about today starts long before any of that. It starts in a post office and a hospital gown, in a moment when everything that looked like it was working made it very clear that it wasn't.

Dr. Martz, I'm so glad you're here today.

Dr. Martz: So glad to be here. Thank you for having this kind of conversation and making it real for so many folks. So often we get busy and don't have the time to slow down and go into that inner world of where am I at and how do I show up most fully.

Dawn: So true. Take us back to that season where on paper everything was working. What was actually happening for you?

Dr. Martz: I remember a time where I was doing the school thing, I was in college, doing my best life, enjoying myself, having fun with my friends. And in the meantime, I was getting my honors, getting good grades, doing my best, trying to keep up all of that at all times, at all classes, because you've got scholarships and things of various natures where you need to perform. And all my friends are performing, everybody's doing well. I remember one day I was sitting in one of my classes, and we were reviewing the test after the exam, and one of the questions was answered incorrectly, let me say it that way. So I raised my hand and said, "Excuse me, on question number 42, B should be one of the answers." And of course I was right, because that was just the way it was. It was at least a good alternate example. After we discussed this for a period of time and went back and forth, and they said, "Well, what about this, what about this," he stops from where he was explaining and stares at me and says, "Ken, didn't you get a 99 on this exam?" And I said, "Yes, I did, and that's why I need that last point." It was a playful moment, it was real, but it was also a moment of the pressure we often find ourselves in about needing to struggle, do more, achieve more, move towards that perfection in the world, as if there is such a thing, as if a blemish isn't okay.

Dawn: It seems like a message we learn along the way that actually probably starts even earlier than that.

Dr. Martz: I specialize in anxiety in men, and very often one of the things we end up talking about is how men are trained out of trusting themselves. You're not allowed to experience emotion. You're not allowed to experience anything but perfection and drive and success. So what starts to happen is, if I don't trust myself, I have to be perfect, because there is such a thing as perfection, as if. I mean, honestly, I believe perfect is possible as long as you define what perfect is. It's when we're holding ourselves up against this nondescribed, ambiguous version of perfect that we create, that we create friction.

Dawn: Yes.

Dr. Martz: Without that clarity, without that focus, I'm trying to be perfect in every area rather than in prescribed areas. Even if I'm a perfect psychologist, I still suck as a lawyer. Even if I'm a perfect psychologist, I still suck as a football player. I don't have to have every skill in every discipline, even if I learn a little bit across disciplines for the experience.

Dawn: Sure. It's so tied to, it's when we tie our identity and our person to results that we then think we need to do more of it.

Dr. Martz: Yes. We have it so backwards.

Dawn: Absolutely. So bring us to, you mentioned this post office moment. Tell us about that, what you remember, and what did you understand at that time?

Dr. Martz: Sure. So fastforward a week, a month, a year, and as I continue on that path of pushing, driving, doing my best, being number one, being awesome, which sounds really good, one day I was wandering off to the post office, just mailing a couple of things, and the mailing was actually an application to one of my schools, which in and of itself would be lifechanging, getting that particular location. I'm standing in line there, and all of a sudden I start sweating, and all of a sudden I can't hear because it's getting so loud, and I can't see because it's getting blurry, as I'm just getting overwhelmed. Before laying down, before the ambulance, before, as far as I can recall, I woke up back at the hospital, in the hospital gowns that don't quite fit right, and you're sitting there and they say, "Well, what's wrong with you? You're this young, healthy, strong male with no other reasonable condition. Are you stressed?" No, no, of course not. "Are you worried about things? Are you pressured at school?" No, no, of course not. It's easy trying to get 100 all the time. As I mentioned, sometimes it starts even earlier, where we get, as guys in particular, dissociated from our experience of our emotions. I joke sometimes that guys are allowed to have two feelings: angry and fine.

Dawn: And so stressed, anxious, selfdoubt, are you really not identifying as being stressed at this moment, or is that just what you're telling the hospital staff? What's going on?

Dr. Martz: Both. At that moment, I had no clue of the level of which I was carrying.

Dawn: What did you think it was in that moment, if you go back to it?

Dr. Martz: Really had no idea, because they started down the whole path of, "Well, is it your heart? Is it your stomach? Is it this?"

Dawn: So you're thinking there's a medical underlying purpose.

Dr. Martz: Sure. Not to dismiss stress as not being medical by any means, but you're thinking there's something else.

Dawn: Yeah. Okay. Because why would that be stress? And to you, I'm really curious, because the way you say, "No, of course not," about stress or pressure at school, did it have a negative connotation to you?

Dr. Martz: At that time, not so much the word stress, but the pressure, the connotation of amounts of it, can you handle what you're doing, the connotation of, is there an overload here?

Dawn: Because what would that mean if you were to admit, yes, there was an overload, or yes, there was more than I can handle?

Dr. Martz: Oh, that would mean an issue about trust. That would mean an issue about, well, am I good enough? Can I manage my selfdoubt? Am I good enough in all areas? Am I perfect? And as I said, that's never possible.

Dawn: You just answered why so many people do go that far into burnout, because when you identify it as a problem of your capacity and capability and your identity, then of course you dismiss it and say, "I can handle this, I can keep going, it's not too much."

Dr. Martz: Absolutely. And I'd add to that, as you limit yourself from the emotional awareness which would otherwise give you the cues about that selfknowledge, that's where it becomes a particular problem, where it's not just about the doubt, it's a selfregulation problem, it's a physiologic level. This feels normal because I work on this level. Executives I work with all the time are working at this level all day long, and from the outside it's obvious, but from the inside this just feels normal to keep on that pressure level.

Dawn: I'm competent at this level.

Dr. Martz: Well, yeah, that happens in so many things. My air conditioning went out at some point, and it got really hot before I could get someone out to fix it, and at some point 80 degrees felt comfortable, which is not normal when you live in New Orleans.

Dawn: Yeah, but you do sort of get to a place where you're used to where you are.

Dr. Martz: Yes, and I think that's a little bit of what you're talking about, when we've endured it or allowed it for so long, we regulate to it in a way. There's nothing wrong with, when I talk about stress management, I usually talk about it in terms of, you're never going to get to zero stress, or I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. But I can't have so much that it's causing physical problems, or other conditions, or mental issues, or stress with my wife or my coworkers. It's how to manage it at the appropriate level, not too much, not too little, just right. I always talk about Goldilocks. There are multiple ways to manage that, either by reducing the stresses from our lives and unplugging, which is often challenging, or by increasing some of our activities that we use for resilience. For me, that's yoga, meditation, walking. So what do we do to engage so we have more energy to handle the same levels of stress?

Dawn: I want to challenge you on that one statement though, that if you didn't have any stress you wouldn't get out of bed in the morning.

Dr. Martz: Absolutely.

Dawn: No, because here's what's happening. When you do that, you're giving stress the power, you're giving stress autonomy. The truth is, whether you have stress or not, you can choose to get out of bed. We choose to do things outside of external motivators all the time. So I want to suggest that, at least in the selftrust coach world, what we know and what we see is that you absolutely can. It doesn't mean you don't use stress in normal great ways like you're talking about, but I do want to make clear that you can get out of bed even with zero stress.

Dr. Martz: You can, yes. Absolutely.

Dawn: So let's go to this, you've described talking about selftrust but not living it. When did you first notice that gap in yourself, when you named it, recognized it?

Dr. Martz: Sure. As I mentioned, it really is easy to get into that autopilot where this just feels normal, and it really takes that space, which may be obvious to others, to step back from ourselves. So very quickly from there, I started into, I mentioned my yoga practice, my meditation practice, I also teach now, it's one of my books, it's become a core piece of my life, where it's a time and space to step back and be able to see the screen of myself separate from in the middle of living it. Very often when we're in the middle, face to face, we can lose touch with the emotional element.

Dawn: Sure. But tell us that time for you when it came to noticing the gap of being able to talk about selftrust but not living it yet.

Dr. Martz: Well, that's a journey. I think of it not as one instant, motion right at that moment, so much as it went to a boil, bringing it back down, because it continues to evolve almost like a spiral over the years, where where I was at in my 20s is different than where I'm at in my 30s. You learn.

Dawn: 100%. But we can't give language to something. It's definitely a journey that you then continue on. But until you named it, and that was either in a moment or a series of moments, I often talk about, for me, it was when I sold my car to force myself to work normal hours. And then I realized, "Why am I having to force myself to do something I could absolutely just choose to do now?" And that's what set me on the journey of recognizing how much I had lacked selftrust. So I'm just wondering if there was a moment like that for you, or a series of moments. Was it the hospital moment?

Dr. Martz: No. Well, the hospital moment would have been a starting point of a journey, of where I've learned, every time, even through the years, that understanding of needing to step back, needing to reset, is an ongoing, deepening learning. Not only staying, because it's fine to go and be active and be fully in, so long as we have that ebb and flow of, I can go back and pull back and rest, I can take the 30,000foot view and then go back in. So there's an evolution there about trusting myself at all levels, at the rest mode and the highstakes mode, and all the range in between.

Dawn: Yeah. What do you think, looking back now, was underneath all of the striving and performing? Was there something you were trying to solve for?

Dr. Martz: At that stage, it's about how to be the best, how to be strong, and about protecting from any weaknesses, which go hand in hand, on one level, from one perspective of the world. But as you evolve from that, as you can step back out of it, I always use that metaphor of being in it versus being able to step back out of it, to say, "Oh, wait a minute, that sounds funny when I say it out loud," which I say with clients almost daily. It's like you're living this story, but when I step back out of it, now I can actually experience both where I'm at today and as a growing process. That extra point on the exam, I don't even remember what the topic was. These things don't necessarily carry the life meaning that they feel when you're in the middle of them. But we put large pressure on things that are small, and how do we stay aligned to more of a clarity of what my values are, what's important, because as I keep those clarities of, these are what I want to be, this is who I am, rather than the stories of who I am.

Dawn: You mentioned that you made a decision to stop outsourcing your worth. Do you think that's what that one point was tied to at the moment?

Dr. Martz: Yes. So right at that moment, it's about using what other people think of me as one of the metrics of success. Managing perceptions of other people, let me tell you, the easiest losing battle out there.

Dawn: Absolutely. And honestly, it's downstream, right? Because if you manage your perception of yourself first, you're inviting people to see you the way you do, and some people won't, and that's okay.

Dr. Martz: Yeah, absolutely. And the message wasn't for them.

Dawn: You describe moving from overriding yourself to listening to yourself. What did that shift feel like?

Dr. Martz: That's a completely different journey. That's the area where, beginning to understand that when I stop to step back and identify what my values are, what my core issues are, what my core pleasures are, what my core skills are, I can just lean in and be good at what I do, rather than trying to be good at every course topic, or get everybody to like me. Because the more people you get seen by, some people will be really offended even by just me being me, and that's okay, and sometimes that's not because I'm doing anything wrong, and it's really important to always remember that. Sometimes it's that if I'm resonating at a level of confidence that's scary for them, that they're not willing to face yet, that gets really scary for some folks, and they may just not be the right person for my space at that time, but they may be able to have something that will help them on their journey, to realize, oh, this is a journey, it's not a once and done. Yes, even scary Ken was at one point human. Even today, I know it's still part of a journey that will be different from where I'll be a decade from now, because this has been such a constant and evolving journey. As we grow to different levels, decades, years, experiences, new doors open up, and we get to be beginners again in new areas and grow more skills. So starting back in college, I never dreamed I'd be doing some of the things I do now, back on that day.

Dawn: What do you notice, in the way of control, oftentimes we can see a lot of friction in ourselves when we're trying to grab control of something. Is there anything between then and now that you've noticed about that?

Dr. Martz: Absolutely. There's a difference of control where you're trying to manage others and doing perception management, and managing through external metrics, which is very common in the business world. In the business world, I'm looking for my key performance indicators, what was my revenue, what was my sales numbers, what was the conversion rate, a whole range of things that are all external. But as you move towards internal types of metrics, how many times did I laugh today, how many times was I grateful today, how many times did I live authentically with my skillset today, how many hugs did I give today, there's a whole range of very different metrics that are about the internal side rather than just external performance. And when I'm at my best internally, rather than ruling it by external guidelines, I actually show up more strongly and more as a leader.

Dawn: Mmhmm. And more successful.

Dr. Martz: Yeah, the external metrics follow. It's when we try to put them ahead that it just doesn't work, it doesn't feel authentic, it feels like control versus clarity.

Dawn: Right.

Dr. Martz: In one of my leadership talks, I talk about walking through the different layers of growth. Remember your first job? Everything is brand new and anxious and new. Then you get practice at that job for a couple months, and now you know where the restrooms are, you know the policy and procedures, and that's comfortable. And then it gets boring, and then maybe you get promoted, and you're a supervisor, and now you've got a whole set of new skills again. And then you're an executive, and then maybe you try to run a business on your own, and then you're fully let go of the nine to five and move to fully on your own. There are ways our jobs and titles and duties evolve. One of the things I often talk about, in a large organization, folks often start working just a little bit above their role and building that confidence even before they gain the new title. There's a process of continuing to evolve that range of internal, not external, skills, and it shows up in professional growth.

Dawn: 100%. That's exactly what we do in identity work. We have to be in that space, see ourselves in that space, act as that person, which we already are. We don't have to grow into it, honestly, we're just removing the barriers and the veils that prevent us.

Dr. Martz: Yeah, and those are there for a good reason, by the way. We can't start out as an infant with the ability to know how to write books like Manage My Emotions, that would be a terrible childhood. We move into those spaces as we grow and get older and accumulate experience. But I love how you said that, because it's true, we do behave at the level of the position ahead of us, that's how we get the position ahead of us in the working world. The same is true for entrepreneurs, and for us as fully embodied humans, of what we're here to do. We start to move into those, what I call various rooms, we expand the house. But the house has always been there.

Dawn: So good. So you work specifically with highperforming men who are moving from anxious to unshakeable. Tell us more about that.

Dr. Martz: Yeah, absolutely. I've worked through some of that journey, and over time it wasn't just yoga, it wasn't just meditation, I'm still a bit of an academic at heart, learning and learning more tools to find what works best for whom. So what worked for me is a foundational part of the journey that I can more easily take other folks through. Once I know something did or didn't work for me, I know how best it works, I know what to watch, I know what worked for one person, and I can more easily guide others through a whole diverse range of tools, and I know which one's best for the individual in front of me. If tool A doesn't work, tool B will work, or tool C will, and that's why we have a whole toolbox in the garage, the range that's available for the individual at the stage they're at. Because the things that would have worked for me when I was in the hospital are not the things that would work for me today. When I was in that moment, it wasn't even in my awareness that this level of tension wasn't normal.

Dawn: What do you see most consistently in the men who come to you? What does that look like before working with you?

Dr. Martz: Right. Very similar to what we've been talking about, where there can be a pressure of no one can see this. The business world is about, I'm going to show my strength, because any weakness is a risk, you're not going to get a promotion, you're going to lose a sale, you're going to get fired because you didn't meet a quota. So very often there's this pressure, pressure, pressure approach, which time and again, when I take a vacation week or time around the holidays, I'll have some of my biggest insight, my largest business leaps, when I can unplug and go into that quiet space.

Dawn: So what's the most common thing they try first that doesn't work? What are they reaching for that isn't the answer?

Dr. Martz: Gotcha. The same path they're already on. If this isn't working, try harder, if this isn't working, try harder, do the same thing over and over rather than being able to shift approaches. "I have to keep doing this because I have this job. I could change jobs, but I've got a family, there's stability needs, it takes time." Plus changing jobs raises fears of, what if I'm not good enough at that, what if I don't like the new place, what if it's just more of the same. I hear that all the time.

Dawn: Yes. It sounds like, and tell me if you agree, that they keep overriding themselves and keep trying to manage the perceptions of others.

Dr. Martz: Right, absolutely, which is exhausting.

Dawn: Exactly, and you can't do that indefinitely.

Dr. Martz: And one of my goals is that everybody doesn't need to have a hospital moment. You don't need to crash before you can say, "Wait a minute, it's time to step back, it's time to build something differently." And very often I go back to the nervous system regulation issue, that they've gotten so, especially by the time they're coming in, they've been doing this not for months but for years, on that same rat race of, I'm stuck in this moment, or I'm stuck in this spot that's just shy of a million dollars in my business and I can't break it, I can't break out of that rut I'm in. Sometimes the solution is exactly, A, stepping back, B, hearing the story you're telling of what it means if you cross that particular threshold, whether that's a grade, a million dollars, some other performance indicator, and really begin to shift the conversation. I had a client turn to me one day and say, "Hey, Ken, thank you." I said, "For what, what'd I do?" He said, "You're the first person, I've been to three counselors before, and you're the first person who hasn't treated my anxiety like a terminal illness." And I had a range of feelings about that. I'm glad, I'm so glad we could make that change for him, I'm glad they found me, but also, what's happening out there, and I'm so sorry it took that long to find this. I don't take that as a statement about Ken being awesome so much as, you've got to find the right tool, the right person, the right time, and be able to step into that. It's going to sound funny when I say it this way, but I love working with panic disorder, because it's just so clear and objective. Some of my guys will walk in and, after 10 years of this, which is far too painful to be in for one year much less more than one, by week two it's like, "Oh, you mean it doesn't have to be this way?" By week four it's like, "Oh, I didn't need any rescue medication this week." By week six, we're counting how many weeks it's been since rescue medication. By month three, we're talking about, "Hey, how do we build a life differently now that we're not worrying about all that mess?" And so you start to move towards a journey, when I'm so busy caught up in the stress mode, I can't step back to see what I want my life to be like, and start to steer from what I want rather than what I don't want. So really moving them into a journey where confidence moves back inward, rather than trying to get it from an external source.

Dawn: And making it internal, like, like something's wrong with you.

Dr. Martz: Yes.

Dawn: And I think that's the biggest gift you give in what you're sharing, that you've taken something that's really awful to live with, and not only can we help you with this, but you're okay. This doesn't mean you're broken, that there's something wrong with you. They can lay that down, and boy, is that a big weight to put down.

Dr. Martz: Yeah, absolutely. And you can still grow, but without it being a pressure.

Dawn: Yeah, because I picture them walking with this like a backpack on with a thousandpound weight in it.

Dr. Martz: Yes. Of course you can still perform, you can keep going, but man, what if you just put that down? You're gonna fly. And so that's one of the conversations in there, in simple terms, the two core issues. One is, I've been accumulating all these micro wounds all day long for decades, the stressors. I kind of joke about coffee, I'm gonna pick on coffee for a second. Coffee's great, gets you up in the morning, but by the time you're having your third cup, you're already in tolerance mode, you're telling your body, "I know you're tired, and I'm gonna push you beyond your limit because there's more work to do," rather than being able to regulate, this is the amount of work that's appropriate for me. Rather than being able to do that for my internal work, I'm now day by day accumulating those micro pressures, micro stresses.

Dawn: To your point, it's the, I use the backpack example too, it's like I'm carrying around one more thing, and one more thing, and one more thing, and now I expect that I'm chronically not finishing my todo list, for example.

Dr. Martz: And that's one bucket of areas, and the other becomes, with all those tiny things, it's sometimes hard to see, was there a bigger issue even earlier that kind of got buried?

Dawn: Yeah, it's like when you're focused on the one point on the task, to use your example, when there's just a whole degree at hand.

Dr. Martz: Absolutely. Not even a degree, because they don't even teach you that stuff. The tagline of my book was, what I wish I learned in school, about anger, fear, and love. There's a whole range of how to step outside of that and be personable, not just, "Here's a clinical study that did this, this is perfect for the trauma you experienced at this age." The human moments, some of the most transformative moments, are just seconds of being seen, of something someone was afraid to say, thought nobody knew, thought nobody understood, how they were scared to be imperfect or scared to get it wrong.

Dawn: Human.

Dr. Martz: Human, yes. If we could all just embrace our humanness, and each other's, then we'd have this really beautiful world.

Dawn: Yes. Tell us, for the high performer listening right now who recognizes themselves in what you're sharing, in your before story and the people you work with, what do you want them to know?

Dr. Martz: First thing is, it doesn't have to be like this. And B, change can happen very, very fast. The challenge we face is we're often on that autopilot, our bodies are physiologically designed into autopilot. If I get too hot, my body cools down a little. If I'm too cold, my body regulates to stay at 98.6. If I'm hungry, my body says, get me some more food. If I've had enough food, my body regulates to stop eating. Our body keeps us at the same point we're at, but we can change gears relatively quickly. Very often when I'm working with someone, we'll do a couple of exercises that are actually very quick to learn, and it's like, oh my gosh, my body responds differently in seconds. The problem is not usually that we can't change our emotions or manage them, but that we don't realize we have the remote control in our hands, and we can change the channel pretty darn quickly, from the Hallmark Channel to the Horror Channel to the Comedy Channel.

Dawn: Absolutely. So tell us about the Unshakeable programs and what you're focused on right now.

Dr. Martz: As I mentioned, there's often a very evolutionary time. There were times I was taught and learned about myself, I loved doing onetoone work, and I still do, there's something very unique about that onetoone time. As I've evolved through the years, I've started to trust myself more about additional skills and other ways, that I only have one mouth and one pair of ears, and onetoone I can only sit and talk to so many people in a given day. But there's a lot of value to share in multiple ways, through books, through podcasts, through speaking engagements, through teaching, which I do, but I'm growing also very much on the side of my group programs, because it doesn't take the place of individual work for certain pieces, but it expands it, it allows people to know they're not alone in that same conversation. Even if I have individual sessions, I may be having the same conversation with five people in a day, but they still feel like they're alone in it. In group, that allows a space for folks to know, "Oh wow, if you can have the courage to see that, I can see that too, I can see it in you, oh, I got some of that too." So the group programs allow a structured place to go through that journey together, in a smaller group, to say, "Oh, I'm not alone in this, these are the tools, I see you growing as I'm growing," and start to really celebrate each other in that success. So I have a series of those, from Unshakeable Prime, which is about what is an emotion beyond angry and fine, to Unshakeable Leadership, which is really focused on what are my identity and my old identities that have been holding me back, what are my skills, and how do I lean into those skills to carry forward as my leadership. And Unshakeable Relationships, about how do I get to be seen and trusted in my relationships, intimate relationships, and trust, because once I have my identity, it starts to change who I am at work. I can change that mental block of, I can't get past a million dollars, or I can only do this one business, and so my folks now have two, three businesses, and how do you begin to grow with ease rather than pressure. It changes relationships, it changes business, and grows ways to reach more folks.

Dawn: So much. Where can people find you and learn more?

Dr. Martz: The easiest place to catch me is drkenmartz.com. It's got everything there, from free stuff, some of my books, to yoga class, to my blogs, as well as, if you like books or audios, I'm over on Amazon. Lots of ways to follow me, all through my website, we'll have options there. I also often offer a free consultation, my calendar's right there, I try to be very accessible, to find out what you need and how we work it, and what your next step is, so you can move from that frozen autopilot into a life you've wanted to build for so many years but didn't know was so close behind it.

Dawn: Awesome. We're gonna have all of those links in the show notes for you, so definitely go check out those. Dr. Martz, what I keep coming back to in this conversation is something you said early on, that you could talk about selftrust, but you weren't living it. I think that's the most honest thing a high performer can admit, because the ability to articulate something, to understand it intellectually, to even teach it, none of that is the same as choosing it.

Dr. Martz: Yes. And we all do it. In fact, that is the process of learning often, is that we hear it, we hold it as something we want to understand, then we understand it intellectually, and then we move into embodying it. Sometimes teaching it is a great way to do that as well.

Dawn: So living it, we want to do all of that, and letting it actually change how you move. So what you walked through wasn't a strategy shift, it was a relationship shift, is what I see. A relationship with yourself, and really that's the work. So thank you for being here and for the honesty you brought to this conversation.

Dr. Martz: My pleasure. This is an ongoing practice of going from reading about water to actually drinking it, to actually embodying it. It's a life practice and a life journey, so thank you for sharing these conversations, because we need that support along the way.

Dawn: Yes. And if what Dr. Martz described landed somewhere familiar, meaning if you're performing well on the outside and kind of running empty on the inside, scanning for external signals instead of checking in with yourself, that's exactly where I want to meet you right now. Before we go any further, I want you to take one step. Head over to theselftrustcoach.com and take the selftrust identity map. Before strategy, before motivation, before more effort, you need to know where your identity is operating from, because that's what determines everything that follows. It's free, it takes three minutes, and it will give you a precise read on where your identity is actually operating from right now and where to focus next. That link is in the show notes as well. If this conversation moved something in you, the most generous thing you can do is pass it on. Subscribe, follow, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. These are real stories from real people who've stood exactly where you might be standing right now. And there's more coming. We'll see you next time.

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