Self-Care & Mental Wellness: Madi Snow On The Top Five Selfcare Practices That Improve Mental Wellness

An Interview With Maria Angelova

Practice pausing when things get overwhelming or when you feel urgent. It can even help to step away and take some deep breaths. Often when we’re overwhelmed, there will be a sense of “there’s no time, I just need to throw myself in more” — the problem is, you have less access to complex problem solving when you’re overwhelmed. So you’re working on high-level problems with half your brain turned off. Stepping away and taking some deep breaths, looking out a window at tress if you can, helps turn off the urgency of your sympathetic nervous system and gives you more brain resources.

Let’s face it. It seems that everyone is under a great deal of stress these days. This takes a toll on our mental wellness. What are some of the best self-care practices that we can use to help improve our mental wellness and mental well-being? In this interview series, we are talking to medical doctors, mental health professionals, health and wellness professionals, and experts about self-care or mental health who can share insights from their experience about How Each Of Us Can Use Self Care To Improve Our Mental Wellness. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Madi Snow.

Madi is a Stress & Productivity Coach-Educator who worked in healthcare for a decade and has a Masters Degree in Pathology. Melding her knowledge of human stress physiology with the psychology of how we perceive and experience stress, she helps clients define a sustainable stress-success balance. A dedicated mental health advocate, Madi is passionate about giving people success in partnership with their mental health rather that at the expense of it.

Thank you so much for doing this interview with us. It is a great honor. Our readers would love to learn more about you and your personal background. Can you please share your personal story? What has brought you to this point in your life?

I worked in healthcare for about a decade. First in hospice and oncology, then community mental health, and finally I got my Master’s Degree to be a Pathologists’ Assistance and worked to help diagnose and stage disease in patients so they can get the care they need. Working in pathology was incredibly powerful because I was helping to make the diagnoses of patients just like the ones I helped care for early in my career when I was in oncology. While I was working as a PA — I still had a heavy interest in psychology, one of my undergraduate majors. I noticed that no matter how much success my colleagues and I obtained, it didn’t seem to be enough. We were always chasing “more” in a way that felt stressed and frantic, rather than grounded and excited. I started taking classes in positive psychology and getting coaching certifications out of interest in my spare time, from there I started drawing parallels between our stress and how we’ve been conditioned to work and learn. After seeing how much interest there was in learning a better way to navigate stress, in November 2020 I left healthcare for coaching. I worked with a virtual health coaching company while building my business until May of this year when I left to go fully in on the stress coaching work of my business.

What is your “WHY” behind what you do? What fuels you?

I realized, I was part of a large part of the employed population that has incredible drive, work ethic, and passion for work without having being given the tools to mitigate the stress that comes along with that drive and passion. So many fields select for individuals who are incredibly success-driven, but they don’t help those individuals define what sustainable success looks like for them. The answer is always “more” — which absolutely has an endpoint in burning out. Working in healthcare, I saw a number of incredible practitioners burning out in their first few years of practice. I also witness the aftermath of burned out professionals who “just toughened up” — they care less, they make more mistakes, they’re exhausted. My fuel comes from wanting to help keep passionate, caring professionals in their careers and happy in their careers for a long time.

I also have a mental health diagnosis and that’s often seen as a deficit — it’s also how I saw my diagnosis for a long time — but we all have the potential to overdraw on our mental health. I want to help create a world where we work in partnership and awareness of our mental health, rather than constantly fighting it. To be human is to have mental health — we can’t only care for our physical health when we’re sick. We need to approach our mental health the same way. It doesn’t only exist when we’re suffering, it’s also present when we’re thriving.

Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake or failure which you now appreciate has taught you a valuable lesson?

A “failure” that comes to mind is when I applied to be the supervisor of the area I worked in Pathology. I knew I was under qualified when it came to seniority, but I was incredibly passionate about making the lab better for my coworkers and I was positive I knew how to do that. In the interview process, one of the directors asked me what kinds of things I do for personal development. I cited all my accomplishments and textbook knowledge and how I continue to educate myself on the latest cancer-staging protocols. He then asked whether I had done any work on interpersonal development, reading books — courses. I was stumped. No one had ever mentioned getting better at PEOPLE, only at the science of medicine.

I didn’t get the promotion, which felt like a blow at the time. Since then, I’ve invested so much time and energy into learning about people and coaching — I can’t imagine what a tyrant of a supervisor I would have unintentionally been. I thought I knew what people wanted and didn’t need to ask. They would have felt completely railroaded!

I continue to reflect on not getting that job because it was a hugely pivotal moment for me. I gradually started seeing how I was making decisions FOR the lab and while many of my coworkers appreciated it, letting them into the conversation and being able to coach them to make the decisions would have been invaluable. Not getting that position is what gives me pause when I tell people what the science says as fact and giving them space to interpret how it impacts or shows up for them.

You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

The three character traits I see as most instrumental are Resourcefulness, Self-Awareness, and Perseverance.

When I graduated from college in 2009 — it was a recession and it was TOUGH to get a job with degrees in Biology and Psychology. A lot of my friends were jumping into graduate school without a lot of a plan for what they would do with it. I knew I wanted to be involved in medicine in some way — but couldn’t choose between the psychology path or the biology direction. So, I tapped into my resourcefulness and started looking at what I was qualified to do in each of the areas. What was available? How could I make money while simultaneously exploring my interests. I worked in hospice/oncology, community mental health, and finally landed in pathology — now I combine knowledge and skills from all three of those fields to create education for others to understand and partner with their brains and stress.

I’ve always had the self-awareness to know when something wasn’t working for me and I got really curious about why — was I ‘lazy’ or was the work not challenging enough? My introspection and ability to take responsibility when something wasn’t working for me, rather than being frustrated and giving up, have given me so many paths to success.

My perseverance is well-documented in my family and truly without it — I wouldn’t have been able to navigate the difficult fields I’ve worked in. I’m able to use grit when I need to AND recognize when it’s time to pull inward and take time for myself. Perseverance isn’t just about blindly grinding forward — when I pair it with my self-awareness, I’m able to make decisions for how I can best move forward. Sometimes moving forward feels like holding your ground and I think the combination of bulldogged commitment and awareness around what I need is a critical formula for sustainable success.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting new projects you are working on now? How do you think that will help people?

Right now, I’m excited about my 1:1 Stress Coaching program — it’s consistently giving my clients perspective through helping them understand how they think and work. I see my clients gradually shifting the balance away from pure work and prioritizing their life more. They’re defining what relationship they want to have with work and that’s incredibly exciting to me — introducing that freedom and choice when work can feel like a ball and chain so often!

I also have created a 4-week Stress Masterclass Series that’s going into its third round at the beginning of January. It’s 4, one-hour masterclasses and accompanying worksheets to help apply the material. The idea is to get education around what stress actually is to as many people as possible and help them reframe things like PTO and work-life balance. Along with giving them tangible ways to navigate their individual stress, rather than treating “Stress” as monolith.

I’m beginning to offer my 4-week Series to businesses so they can help fortify their employees with more tools in navigating their stress. Companies can give people resources, but until employees understand how their stress accumulates, they can’t effectively use the resources.

OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview, about the interface between self-care and mental health. From where you stand personally or professionally, why are you so passionate about mental well-being?

I’m passionate about mental well-being because during my time in medicine I saw so many incredible professionals losing their compassion for patients and the drive for the work they love by deprioritizing their mental wellbeing and not understanding what their brains need. When we don’t know what we need, we’re stuck in endless loops trying to feel “better” but then overworking ourselves and crashing. Prioritizing mental well-being for me is about helping truly driven and successful people FEEL successful and recognize how to take care of themselves along with the work they do. Rather than trying to find a perfect work-life balance, allowing life to happen during work because it’s all one thing. We’re humans who work. Not employees who have annoying human interruptions.

Based on your research or experience, how exactly does self-care impact our mental wellness?

Many of us have been raised to prioritize people and work over ourselves. We’ve been carefully taught that to be a “good” person, you choose others — if you choose yourself, you’re not contributing to society or you’re selfish. While it’s understandable that never thinking of things outside ourselves isn’t helpful, it also created an imbalance where we see things that contribute to our wellbeing as “guilty pleasures”.

When we label something as guilty — we stay away from it as much as possible, then binge on it when we allow ourselves to indulge. It’s a product of our brains seeing what we enjoy as a scarce resource. Our brains also need to see some reward for our efforts — which we’re taught we shouldn’t need because work itself should be a reward. When our brains don’t get that reward — they stop giving us motivation to show up. As we have less motivation, we start relying on willpower alone (which uses a huge amount of energy) and start feeling frustrated and more stressed. Eventually this pattern leads to burnout.

Here is our primary question. Can you please share your “Top Five Selfcare Practices That Each Of Us Can Use To Improve Our Mental Wellness”?

The first, Practice pausing when things get overwhelming or when you feel urgent. It can even help to step away and take some deep breaths. Often when we’re overwhelmed, there will be a sense of “there’s no time, I just need to throw myself in more” — the problem is, you have less access to complex problem solving when you’re overwhelmed. So you’re working on high-level problems with half your brain turned off. Stepping away and taking some deep breaths, looking out a window at tress if you can, helps turn off the urgency of your sympathetic nervous system and gives you more brain resources.

Second, Notice your energy throughout the day — we can’t manipulate time, but we can manipulate how we use our energy when we’re familiar with how it ebbs and flows. Often, we’ll try to work for 8+ hours without stepping away — which is the equivalent for our brain as if you were going to workout by holding a heavy dumbbell over your head for an entire day. Your body needs to work in sets. And so does your brain. Noticing the rhythm of your energy and switching to easy tasks when it’s low. Or asking if you’ve eaten in the last 3–4 hours if things are getting sticky. You’re not a computer — but when you notice and work with your individual human energy, you can almost feel like one.

Thirdly, Recognize that you are a human who works -rather than a worker who occasionally has annoying human interruptions. You have one brain and while you can shift your focus, if you’re overwhelmed at home — that’s going to show up at work somehow. There is no “leaving it at the door” completely because you can’t trade your humanity for a productivity-driven robot version of you. Your humanity is what makes you care about your work, it’s what makes your work so good! Rather than seeing the things that make you human as an inconvenience, try noticing them neutrally. “Oh I’m feeling foggy, that’s definitely a human thing if I haven’t eaten or taken a break recently. Maybe I can step away and give myself some space.”

Fourth, Give yourself 2–4 specific priorities every day. Motivation comes from two things — having a direction and see progress. Giving your brain specific priorities for the day or part of the day is like having a destination in your GPS. You can change it, but without the destination — your brain will just be constantly “recalculating” your course. You also need to see progress, which means giving yourself credit for what you’ve done through the day. Too often, we focus more on what we haven’t finished, which gives our brain information that we’re “never going to get there.” Over time, our brains stop giving us energy toward those tasks because it’s not seeing the progress. We start feeling demotivated and burned out — hopeless. Giving yourself a sense of direction and credit for moving toward that direction is key for maintaining motivation and overall mental well-being.

And the final self-care practice, Audit your expectations regularly and ask if they’re realistic. We feel stress when we have expectations and reality doesn’t meet them. So if you expect to “clear your inbox” every day, but you can’t control when people send emails so they’re always coming in — you’re going to feel stress when the reality of the inbox hits. Check your expectations against reality and shift them. Create more flexibility in your expectations so they can shift as reality does. Do you expect to have the same amount of work done when you’re understaffed? You’re going to feel stress when the reality of how much can be done with fewer people hits. Giving your expectations more room to shift is a great tool to mitigate frustration and care for your mental wellbeing.

Can you please share a few of the main roadblocks that prevent people from making better self-care choices? What would you suggest can be done to overcome those roadblocks?

One of the main roadblocks is how it’s been framed as “selfish” or “lazy” to prioritize ourselves — from a young age most of us hear messages that value productivity above all else. If we value our work identity — which is absolutely important — we can feel like choosing ourselves is in violation of our values and identity.

The lessons we’ve learned from a young age help us get ahead to a certain point, they work until they don’t anymore. And when you’re running a modern life on old brain “software” — you’re going to feel stress and pressure.

Rather than looking at making choices for yourself as selfish, understand that your well of energy (emotional and physical) has a bottom. You can refill it and have more space for work and responsibilities, but if it’s consistently running dry — you’re going to end up being the less careful, conscientious worker. You’re going to begin resenting the thing and people you enjoy showing up for. The identity you’re so proud of will slip away. Self care helps fortify all the good work you’re consistently wanting to show up for as well as giving your brain more of a reward for showing up everyday.

We can’t exist on pride in work alone, humans are complex creatures that require more enjoyment — making time for yourself allows for that enjoyment to fuel you.

In one sentence, what would you say to someone who doesn’t prioritize their mental well-being?

When you’re not caring for and actively prioritizing yourself, you’re building a tinderbox for burnout in life and work.

Thank you for all that great insight! Let’s start wrapping up. Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does this quote resonate with you so much?

Viktor Frankl’s quote “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It resonates with me because the average adult spends around 47% of their day in autopilot — simply responding in the same patterns every day. When we harness the ability to remove ourselves from autopilot and pause — we give ourselves the ability to choose our next actions. Autopilot can be great for saving precious brain energy (Steve Job’s black turtlenecks) — AND it can make us feel like we’re victims of our own lives. When we create the pause — we create space and freedom for how we want to direct our responses.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? They might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)

I would love to have a meal or chat with Brad Stulberg — we have so many similar principles and reading his book The Practice of Groundedness, I was just nodding aggressively the whole time. We come at similar topics from different backgrounds which I feel like would produce some fantastic conversation. He also spoke about his diagnosis with OCD and that resonated with me because my personal mental health diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder is a driving force for wanting to create a world where we’re not operating in spite of our mental health, but in partnership with it. It also doesn’t hurt that when I read his bio I found out he lives in our favorite town, Asheville, NC!

I truly appreciate your time and valuable contribution. One last question. How can our readers best reach or follow you?

You can find me on Instagram @CoachingByMadi (where I’m most active)

My website is www.MadiSnow.com and has all my current offerings

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.