#185 - Build a Sharper Mind with Dr. Joseph Conerty

In this episode, Dr. Joseph Conerty shares practical lessons from psychology, therapy, and business ownership that can help you think clearer, communicate better, and build healthier routines. He breaks down how to listen more effectively, build trust faster, and protect your energy through exercise, sleep, and work-life balance. You’ll also hear what surprised him most about going from employee to business owner and the mindset shift required to make it work.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade Podcast with Ryan Coté, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth. 

Hey, Joe. Welcome to the Morning Upgrade Podcast. How's life? 

Thanks, Ryan. Good to hear from you. I am excited to talk to you. Let's start off by you introducing yourself. I got a quick 30 to 60 second bio, personal, professional, whatever you want to tell us about yourself. So I'm a practicing clinical psychologist. I'm up here in North Jersey in Baldwin. I got my own solo practice up here and I've had this for maybe a touch over four years. Worked at a group prior to this. And then for the first probably eight and a half years of my career or so, I was within the VA system doing a lot of trauma work. So very different work. I had a good variety of it. Personally, in addition to my love of psychology and wellness and whatnot, I also used to be a musician. I still very much have music in my life. And someone who's always trying to find the next way to maximize my diet and fitness routines. Those are my primary interests. 

The VA trauma work, what does that mean? What would a typical day look like there? 

A lot of the work I was doing was outpatient stuff. I wasn't working inpatient, but it's back-to-back individual therapy appointments with veterans. Most of the time I was working with what we call the OEF OIF veterans. So these are the Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom Vets, the Afghani Iraqi Vets. These are the guys that have done anything from like one to three tours, sometimes back-to-back. A lot of combat, a lot of things I had to witness. They come back, they need the help. They lean on the VA appropriately to help process some of the stuff so they can integrate back into civilian lives. 

Do you have a family? 

I don't mind asking. Actually, I do not have kids. I do not have a family. 

How did you, in terms of your mindset, not bring it home with all this heavy, heavy conversation? Is it something that you... 

So my wife is a nurse at an assisted living facility. And she says that, it sounds kind of cold, but it's just you normalize to people passing away. Is that similar with you? Were you just normalized to hearing those stories? 

When I say normalized, I don't mean you don't care. I just mean it just becomes part of your routine where it doesn't affect you as much. How do you deal with that? 

Yeah, fair question. At first, it's hard. At first, it's very hard. You're not yet desensitized, is the word that we use, right? We know this stuff's not normal. You can lose some of your sensitivity to it. After a few years of doing it, you do adjust. And it's not that you become calloused. It's just that you have the mental capacity to emotionally process these things, which only helps you help them also emotionally processing it. So it's a win-win. Some of the most important things then is the same it is now, and that's balance, work-life balance. If I was doing 12 plus hour days, it would be very difficult to have a work-life balance because even if I wanted to exercise and do things with friends just to make sure that I was doing things not work-related, I'm not going to have time in the day and also sleep. The VA was interesting that they kind of had an early schedule. Typically, it's an 8 to 4.30 schedule. So I was home before 5 on most days. I had enough time to exercise, go out to dinner with someone, do things to make sure that I wasn't sitting there in the residue of the day and therefore, as you said, bringing work home. And that makes sense. Desensitized would help you help them because if you're emotional and your nervous system is triggered from it, it's going to be harder for you to help them. So I didn't really think of it that way, but that makes a lot of sense. 

Yeah, exactly. Being there rocks. 

Yeah, exactly. So I know you're into health and wellness. And so maybe we'll talk a little bit about some of your habits on that front, see if there's anything we can pull from that. But let's start off with your morning routine. I know you have a different routine for days versus weekend, weekdays versus weekend. But how do you start your mornings? 

Sure, yeah, definitely different on some differences anyway, my workdays versus my weekends. You know, for the workdays, what I'm bearing in mind is that once I get to work, I am sitting quite still all day. I'm sitting for three to four hours at a time, maybe take a bathroom break, but that's it. So I need my routines there on the weekdays have to kind of compensate for that. When I wake up, I'm not bumbling around, kind of casually having a cup of coffee, and as much as I'd love to, but it's not what I'm doing. I wake up, I pop right out of bed, immediately make the bed. I do all the things to make sure that I'm keeping everything in order. Immediately have a bit of matcha. It's great for the body, great for the mind. And then I will go and exercise. And I change up what the exercises are because I don't want to get bored of it. The lightest kind of exercise I do is maybe I go walk a 5K at a brisk pace. Otherwise, I'll go to the gym, lift some weights, and make sure I keep it heavy, wake myself right up. I do something vigorous if I can. I find that helps much better, especially in the afternoon when we all kind of get that 2 to 3 p.m. Lag. That's when I'm seeing clients. So I have to be alert. I make sure that I eat very healthy in the morning. You know, a lot of protein, fruit, things that are going to start my day right. You know, if I start my day with good habits, I tend to continue throughout the day. If I kind of start with indulgences, it usually derails pretty early after that. I will do a bit of stretching before I leave as well. Again, just because I exercise, but also because I'm sitting all day. And then I get right to work and I start right at it. 

Why did you get into therapy? Why that career or profession? 

Once I kind of understood that there's this place that people can go and realize that they can change, they can break out of repetitions, whether they behave in repetitions, feelings, things happening again and again in relationships, things happening again and again at work. Once I realized that people can actually change those things in a fairly brief period of time, I was just kind of enamored with the idea. It seemed like such a neat thing to be able to sit privately with someone calmly and sensitively and just through fostering the right kind of thinking and reflection and feeling that you can create this real world change that's sustainable. It alters a person's life trajectory. It just grabbed me. It must be very rewarding. You're working with a client and just seeing him or her progressing and having breakthroughs and whatnot. Before we started recording, I was trying to think of what questions I can ask you that'd be relevant to your expertise. And obviously you're talking to people all day. So I always like to ask about lessons or tips that are relevant to the guests that I'm speaking to, of course. And so for you, A lot came to mind for me, you know, communication, rapport building, trust. That's going to be huge for you, obviously, because if someone's speaking with you or, you know, using you as their therapist, there's obviously trust involved there. 

And so what have you learned for communication in terms of like building rapport and then quickly developing trust with a client? 

These are important questions. We start off our training as therapists with these very questions. While there's plenty of theory to learn and certain approaches to learn in different schools of thought of therapy to learn, you know, how do you treat panic? How do you treat generalized anxiety disorder? We defer that stuff until a person has those basic counseling skills down, those basic skills to connect. And we make sure that's our core skill. And yeah, it's a sensitive situation therapy. People are coming at a point of vulnerability and it can be kind of difficult to drop one's guard. We find that doing a little bit of talking, kind of assuring a person, kind of orienting them to what the process is like helps very quickly because a lot of people don't know. But then asking simple questions, getting them talking, showing interest in what they're saying and genuine interest, not just thinking it, reflecting to them that you're listening, understand it, that helps. It spurs on the conversation very quickly. And we know that people who study how to have conversations talk about this all the time. Empathic reflection, empathic reflection, you hear that over and over. Kind of reflecting back to them that you're listening, you feel it, you hear it. It just keeps the conversation going. And as they keep going, more and more comes out, right? Just kind of pulling on the thread, pulling on the thread. And when you reflect back to them that you understand their perspective, that's just inherently validating. And where we're validated, our guard comes down further. We talk more. People start to get comfortable. They'll share more. They might share things they don't normally. And if you continue to validate that, that's when you develop bond. Now you have some rapport. Once some time passes, maybe there's some places for some humor. You don't want to do that too early because it could seem like maybe you're not quite listening or focused. But especially once you get to a place of where the person can trust you hear them, you share their perspective, and you know how to inject some levity in some things where it might be a little bit of gravity, then you'll have a bond that lasts, a bond that could actually survive any kind of knocks, a bond that'll test time. I try to practice listening more and talking less. But I'm thinking you're in with the client. How do you listen to them intensely without thinking about what you want to say next? Because I struggle with that. You're supposed to listen, listen, and focus on what the person is saying. Repeat it back to them so they know you're listening, whatever. How do you listen while also thinking about what you're going to say next? I know that question makes sense, but I struggle with that. You want to listen, but I need to respond to what they're saying. And so I find sometimes I'm half listening because I'm trying to think of what I'm going to ask them next or say next. That's a great question. This comes with practice, for sure. And again, people who study conversations talk about this, that it does seem like if you watch two people converse, it looks like two people or one person's waiting for the other person to stop so they can talk. So you're kind of describing what's going on in the mind when it happens. Sometimes someone's already thinking about what they want to say next. It does take practice. I am thinking, though. It's not that I'm not thinking and I'm only listening, per se. Sometimes I'll describe it as what I call a duck on water. If you see a duck just kind of gliding along, like on a placid lake, they just look so still as they're moving forward. But under the water, their legs are kicking, kicking, kicking, kicking, kicking. And that's kind of like what's going on. I'm not necessarily betraying it on my face, but my mind is working very quickly while I'm listening to them. And I'm focusing on not only what they're saying, but I'm trying to get a sense of what they're feeling, what I suspect they can see. I'm beginning to infer what they might not be able to. And I'm thinking about asking a question that's going to clarify that, maybe affirm that. I'm thinking about what I'm going to ask next versus what I'm going to say next. I'm thinking about asking them a question about what they're saying, which does give me a chance to speak. It continues a dialogue, but it's encouraging them to speak rather than my taking the microphone, so to speak, as if it's my turn to go. That's how I'm thinking of it. Love that. I want to learn more about the habits that you rely on to keep your mind sharp, because that's your biggest asset with your profession. And then I also want to ask you about a big challenge in your business. You started four years ago, so you can't say COVID, so that's good. We got something fresh to come to. 

Come to that question with. But let's start with the health and wellness habits. What are you relying on? You mentioned matcha. I mentioned sometimes going for a walk, going to the gym. What other habits or health and wellness tips can you share with us that you rely on to keep your mind sharp? 

A big one that we all overlook, including myself, even though I know it's important, is sleep. We're getting just more and more research. Rules of research are showing just how wrong we've been about how important sleep is. We kind of know that we do better with it versus without it. But we're even seeing longitudinal studies about the impact of sleep deprivation on our lifespan, on our life expectancy. Even how early dementia symptoms present in life is going to be correlated with sleep as an inversely correlated, well, actually directly correlated. Well, depending on how you look at it, the less sleep you're getting, the more early the symptoms are going to present. I actually recently, not to endorse a product, I won't use the brand name. I recently acquired a ring that tracks many of my things, many of my vitals, including my sleep, all of my sleep phases, how much deep sleep I'm getting, how much REM sleep I'm getting. And when I first got it, I was humbled at how off I was. I was overestimating how much sleep I was giving myself. I was way off. When I adjusted my routines, my bedtime routines, so that I could actually get to bed a little sooner, just even within a week of adjusting to my sleep of where it should be, I noticed my daytime clarity was so much better. I just generally felt better. My energy was better. Everything was better. There was nothing that wasn't better. And I've kept up on that since for the most part. 

Do I have my off weeks? Of course, we all do. But sleep, it's such a, I know, a simple and not so interesting answer, but it is profoundly important for our mental and physical health. 

Relate to that 100%. I have mixed feelings about those trackers. I used to use one of the strap ones you wear, not the ring that you mentioned. I know which brand you're talking about. But the problem I have with it is that sometimes I feel like too much information, it's not a good thing. There have been many times where I'd wake up feeling... Pretty good. Like, Oh, I'm ready to start the day. And I would look at my band and it would say, Oh, you, you had a crap night's sleep. I'm like, Oh, I did. I feel pretty good. And then I'm in my head. I'm like, Oh, great. You know, that day, another day is going to be, you know, lost on me. And so I don't know. I feel like it's, I like to count my steps. That's a, it's a big thing. I count my steps, right. And there's a certain amount, but I have a mixed feeling on the, you find the ring helpful. Like you, you, you make changes based on what you're seeing with the data. Yeah, I could answer it and maybe also answer kind of the rhetorical move you're making with this other comment. I find it helpful. I can look at all that data and I feel like I can sift through it to make sense of it and not necessarily feel discouraged by it. But let's remind ourselves here, I'm a psychologist. I'm very comfortable with sifting through numbers and data about people's behavior and knowing how to pull truths out of it. For someone who's not used to a data-informed approach to the perspectives that they've got in life, I can see them opening up these apps and seeing a low readiness score, like their heart's sinking, but I feel okay, and just not really knowing what to do with that. So I'm comfortable with it, but I could totally relate to why someone else might just find it either information overload or even just frankly wrong and not relevant to what they're concerned about. I could see both sides. Yeah, I worry about the mind over matter thing, you know, because sometimes I feel like that's the thing I believe in, like the mind over matter stuff. Yeah, not everyone believes that, but if it's in my mind and I see something that's like a low sleep score, you know, I feel good. Then I also start not feeling good. But I also can see the side of like, yeah, we have access to these tools that give us the data that we never used to have. And now with AI, it's going to be even more effective. I mean, there's probably a time where I'm going to live forever, you know? And so, you know, I could see the side of having the data to make improvements, you know? So I see both sides as well. Yeah. Let's end with this, Joe, we'll talk about challenging your practice. So you started your solo practice four years ago, you said, and so that would be like what, 2022. And so what, what's the, I mean, it was, it's always a challenge of starting your own business, but is there like one specific challenge or like, Oh man, this is, this is uh i'll come in this is going to come to an end i'll give you one i'll give you one example like a previous guest started a beverage company with his wife and uh there was a change in the law with something played his product that was potentially going to shut them down you know if the law went into effect and that was like his little crap moment this all could come to an end obviously it was a challenge for him so i don't know if you have anything like that in your practice but what's the biggest challenge you've overcome and how did you how did you do so Sure. So the biggest challenge for me, it wasn't a finite moment. It wasn't like an external force bearing down on me. It was a transition of having been a W-2 employee up until that point to now being the person who also has to run the business, not just be a therapist. I was interested in learning how to run a business, but of course, not knowing what that really meant, I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Fast forward a few years later, having to hire a CPA, changing the tax structure of my business, becoming an S-Corp, understanding what that means, running an accountable plan, having to hire marketing, having to be very conscientious about marketing and my website. These are things that for the first decade plus of my career, I gave exactly zero seconds of thought to. Having to use that part of my brain, it's a very different part of my brain than what I'm using for therapy. And to make sure I have enough juice left in my brain to squeeze out at the end of the day to monitor these things, that's been an extra, it's a new challenge. It's ongoing, but I feel like I'm getting better at it. 

What you know now, you've been W2, now you're a business owner. Is there anything that surprised you becoming a business owner? Could you see yourself? Are you happy with the transition? Has anything surprised you? 

The thing that surprised me, I guess I'd say, I know this might sound naive. It is naive. I went into opening a business fairly naive as to what that meant. I knew what it meant to be a therapist. I knew what it meant to be a trusted clinician. I just assumed, well, I'll do that on my own. And that's what, you know, that's what running a practice is. It's not, I guess the naivety was, it really is the case that if you do not get savvy about your money, if you do not get savvy about your business, about your marketing, you won't, it's not just that you simply won't thrive. You might not be able to generate enough revenue to live off of it. I think I just kind of assumed somewhat blindly that like, at worst, I'll be adequate. And I was surprised to find, like, no, no, no, you need to swim, my friend. And if you don't swim, you will sink. And that was a scary realization. There's no safety net anymore. It's only you. But that also is what's motivating and driving. I've embraced it. And it must be hard to manage your time too, because you're used to working for someone that you probably had your day kind of structured, you know, with your boss and whatnot, and then your team members. And now it's like, you've got a clean slate. Now you have clients and stuff like that. But so you've got structure to your day. But in the beginning, at least you had to like set your own, you had to motivate yourself to get going and figure out what you're gonna do next. You know, that must have been a, that must have been a hard thing to get used to. It was, especially balancing some other things I'm doing. Like I'm currently on the board for the state's psychological association. I used to be the president of my organization that I was in and finding, you know, slots of time where I was only dedicating attention to that while pivoting then back to clients and then pivoting to business stuff. That was an adjustment. I enjoyed it because I enjoyed the variety, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge at first. Yeah. Well, you're about to hit the five-year mark, and not a lot of businesses can say that. So congratulations. Obviously, you're doing it. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, Joe. Well, this has been great. Let's wrap up with you sharing your website, whatever you want to share. The floor is yours. Sure. Thank you. I appreciate it. And again, thank you for having me. I love having the opportunity to talk about these things. My website is www.dr, as in doctor, and then my name, josephconnerty.com. And just spell your last name for us. Yeah, sure, sure. It's C-O-N, as in November, E-R-T-Y, Connerty. Perfect. Okay. Well, thanks, Joe. I appreciate it. Great talking with you. Great job. Likewise. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to the Morning Upgrade podcast. Please subscribe and review. And don't forget to visit us at morningupgrade.com for more content.