Our minds are amazing at many, many things. Our minds are capable of remembering the birthday of the ones we love, calculate a budget for our next trip, think about our next writing project, and come up with questions for a podcast.

Our minds are also capable of ruminating, dwelling, coming up with strange thoughts, announcing all types of bad scenarios, and many more challenging scenarios …

• Why are our minds both so awesome and so challenging to deal with at times?
• How can we skillfully and effectively deal with our busy minds?

In today’s episode, I interview Josh Malina, host of the podcast “Anxiety Book Club.” We discuss the different ways in which our minds influence our physical and mental health and the different approaches to deal with them.

Josh and I discuss how mindfulness and meditation can help us deal with our busy minds; he points out different times in which anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and worry thoughts took him away from being present and pushed him to play-it-safe.

You will hear from Josh about his regular mindfulness practice and how it has helped him transform his relationship with his thoughts, become an observer of his thoughts, and to be non-judgmental of his worries, fears, and anxieties.

We discuss in particular three practices: exposure exercises, acceptance and commitment skills, and internal family systems.

I leave you with this quote:

• What is OCD
• What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• What is Internal Family Systems
• What is perspective taking
• Values
• Exposure therapy
• Talk therapy
• Transcendental meditation
• Choiceless meditation
• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

About Joshua Malina

Joshua Malina is a podcaster and a mental health advocate. He does monthly interviews with authors on anxiety, OCD and more. He is the host of the Anxiety Book Club Podcast, which helps its audience learn about mental health and anxiety through books and laughs!