Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

Finding Happiness After Burnout: Todd Patkin’s Journey to Healing

• Travis White | Mental Health Advocate • Episode 49

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In this powerful episode of Overcome – A Mental Health Podcast, Travis White sits down with author, entrepreneur, and happiness expert Todd Patkin to unpack the truth behind burnout, perfectionism, and the quiet battles that even the most successful people face.

Todd opens up about his childhood struggles with bullying and separation anxiety, the pressure of perfectionism, and the emotional crash that left him suicidal at the height of his business success. He shares how a devastating breakdown became the turning point that led him to create his 12-Week Program to Happiness a blueprint built from lived experience, research, and a commitment to changing his life from the inside out. 

Together, Travis and Todd explore how high achievers silently suffer, why self-talk matters more than we think, and how simple daily habits like exercise, mindset shifts, and living in the present can create remarkable transformation. They also dive into Todd’s message about loving yourself without conditions and the importance of letting go of external expectations in order to build a life that feels meaningful. 

What We Discussed

  • Todd’s early struggles with bullying, anxiety, and perfectionism
  • The hidden mental toll of high achievement
  • His emotional collapse and turning point
  • The foundation of his 12-Week Happiness Program
  • How to rewire negative self-talk and build self-compassion
  • Practical daily habits to improve happiness
  • Why success doesn’t equal fulfillment
  • How to protect your peace and prioritize what matters
  • The legacy Todd hopes to leave for future generations
  • The healing power of sharing your story

Learn More About Todd Patkin

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Hello and welcome to Overcome, a mental health podcast. I'm your host, Travis White. This is a place for you to share your mental health stories. I'm very excited to introduce tonight's guest. We are speaking with Todd Patkin. Todd is a successful entrepreneur, business leader, and author who has dedicated his career to helping others discover what truly matters in life. Todd, welcome to the show. Thanks Travis. And without wasting any time, I'm just going to turn the time over to you and have you tell us about your journey. Well, Travis, as a young kid, I was bullied a lot. And that led me to be a perfectionist. I wanted to really be more successful in the future than the bullies, because I couldn't beat them up. I was a lot smaller than them. I also suffered from a lot of separation anxiety. I couldn't stay over a friend's house at night. The mother had to drive me home. And all of this led me to Tufts University. And they say if you can't get into Harvard, you go to Tufts. So I had the separation anxiety, even though my parents paid for a room for me. I slept home most nights. I needed to be with my dad and my mom. And I had the perfectionism. I needed to get straight A's in college, which was very, very difficult. So I'd say by the time I joined the family business at 22, I was pretty burnt out. But it was the ideal job for me. I was able to... motivate a young group of people to run my stores, my auto parts stores. And we really became so successful growing by 20 % a year that I loved it. Every single minute of it. But at the age of 36, I had a terrible nervous breakdown. Travis, I was suicidal for a week, wanted to kill myself. And I had to ask myself at that point, Todd, you've got a wonderful wife, a wonderful son, more money than you ever dreamed of and you wanted to kill yourself. something's broken. And that's how I came up with my 12 week program to happiness. I looked at all the things that I was doing that were right and I kept them in the book and I looked at all the things I was doing wrong and I tried to change them many times 180 degrees, completely living the opposite way. And that's how I came up with my book. good. I love it. And I can relate to the burnout, the anxiety, and especially the suicide feelings because I've had those myself. But you're you come from a background and you're a high achiever. Why do you think so many high achievers quietly struggle with things such as depression and anxiety? Well, I think when you're exhausted, you certainly, you know, don't feel as well. And when you're always going for the next goal, you know, you achieve one thing in your perfectionism, so you don't party and celebrate the success, you're always going on and saying, what's next? So you're not really learning to love yourself. That's my definition of happiness. Learning to love yourself just because of who you are. You're always feeling like the only way you can, you know, be proud of yourself or feel good about yourself is achieving something more. eventually a crack. You have set a standard where you feel like you're a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10. And so when you perform at a 3, you can't handle going from a 10 to a 3. Whereas a normal person considers themselves a 6. So when they perform at a 3, it's a very easy gap. So I think the gap is the big difference. Yeah, I could see that. And yeah, I think of my moments where I feel like I'm at that tense spot. And when I go down, it's like, yeah, it's, just turns your life around. Like it's, it's very hard to get through, but somebody who's not, you know, loving themselves or doesn't know how to, you know, find that true form of happiness. What first steps would you tell them to take? The definite first step, as boring as it might sound, Travis, is exercise. Exercise is the quickest way you can go from unhappy and stressed out to feeling powerful. So if you're on the couch, if you're on your iPhone, if you don't exercise, that is critical. The serotonin is released in your brain and you'll feel much better. That's on your happiness journey. My 12-week happiness workbook, Most of the things will be very easy for you to understand, but they're very, very difficult to do. So you need to start out with that exercise so you put yourself in the right frame of mind to push through these other 10 exercises. The second one is listening to motivational and inspirational tapes before you get up in the morning out of bed, because that puts the mind in this right spot. Number three is the most important thing, and that's being easier on yourself. Most people say things to themselves all day long that they wouldn't even say to the worst enemy. Things like, can't believe how fat I am, I can't believe how stupid I am, I can't believe what a bad son I am, what a bad father I am, what a bad husband I am. And that's very destructive. Even at the cell level, scientists have seen that your cells move more slowly when you're putting yourself down. You can always play a little game with yourself. You can pretend that a friend of yours is feeling down. How would you react to them? You'd probably say, listen, it's not that bad. Things will get better. Let's go out for an ice cream. But if the exact same thing happened to you and you were feeling down and you came to yourself, what would you say? Would you say it's not that big a deal? Let's go out for an ice cream. No, you'd probably hammer yourself into the ground. Can't believe you did that. You're so stupid. You've done it before. So we really want you to realize that you need to be. treating yourself at least as good as you treat one of your best friends. The way to change things is to talk differently. So for example, if I have a speech and the first 95 % of it is exceptional and the last 5% of it I screw up, in the past I would have really beaten myself up and said, my God, Todd, you screwed up the whole speech. Everybody must be laughing at you. Today I say, Todd, what a great speech. You hammered it home. You did great. You screwed up a little at the end, but people probably didn't even notice it. So it's the way that you talk to yourself. The other thing we want people to do is celebrate their successes. Most people don't celebrate their successes. They only hammer themselves down when they make a mistake. Yeah, that's for sure. And I, I think that's one of the most important things I've learned in the last year as I've been going through some of my own struggles is even if it's a like a small thing, you need to celebrate the smallest of wins because your, your body starts recognizing these wins. then, at some point you, the negative, negative thoughts kind of start creeping their way out of your mind. Absolutely. The next thing that we talked about is living in the present. We spend 49.6 percent, I'll repeat, 49.6 percent of our time not in the present. Either in the past because someone hurt us and we're upset about it, we cling to it, every day we wake up I can't believe they did this to me. Or you're freaking out about the future, you're worried about things that are going to happen in the future that probably won't even happen. And if they did, you'd survive it. So you have a speech coming up and you're convinced that you're going to ruin it and it's going to kill you. You won't even survive it, which is so silly. All the speeches you've done in the past, you've aced the chances of you acing it again as a 95%. And even if it didn't go well, you would survive it. The thing after that, we talk about Travis is playing to your strengths. God's given all of us certain you know, things that we can do better than other people and things that we do worse than other people. We want to be spending our time doing the stuff that we're better at. So we make two lists, a list of the things that we think we're better at than most people and a list of the things that we love to do the most. And when we have something on both lists, we circle them. That's what you really should be spending your life doing. That's what we call your zone. The things you love to do the most. and the things you're best at. That's what, as I said, you should be doing most of it. And that's what you want to try to move your work to. So that's the job you have. Those are the hobbies you have. That's what you're spending most of your life doing. Yeah, I absolutely love that. And that's a different perspective than I've. The different I did that I haven't heard before, so I actually really like that. And it's like I want to take this and start writing stuff down. So how do you help people shift from letting negative moods dictate their livelihood? How do you get them to change their thought pattern? Well, the first thing I do is I explain to them that your children will always be like you. They won't be like you tell them to be. So if you go to the gym, they'll go to the gym. If you live a negative life, they'll live a negative life. And many people have said to me, Todd, listen, my grandfather was negative. My dad was negative. I'm negative. That's just in our genes. And then I say, OK, do you want your kids to be negative? And I'll literally have grown men break down and cry and say, Todd, help me. I don't want that for my kids. So we want you to be motivated so your kids won't be negative. I often say put a little note next to your shaving kit if you're a man or your makeup kit if you're a woman. So you remember every day, my number one goal today is to focus on my mind and take away the negative thoughts. That way you're focused on it every day. And then as I said, it's just a number, first you wanna catch it just like in the old days when people smoked a cigarette and they wanted to stop. They were told, just catch it when you bring it to your lips. You might not be able to stop, but at least you'll catch it. And that's what I want people to know. Catch it when you start being mean to yourself. The following week, we can try to change it. And that's where I mentioned that if you had a really bad last five seconds or 5 % on your speech, change the way you think about it. Maybe you're someone who comes home ah When you have a bad day and you come home and say that was absolutely the worst day of my life How does that make you feel? How about coming home and saying, you know today was a little bit off How does that make you feel a little bit different a little bit less heavy? So we want to try to change the way we explain things in our mind Very well said. And to me, that's looks like just a lot of habit changing, rewiring your brain to be better instead of going with the old flow. so with your early struggles of being bullied, uh separation anxiety and perfectionism, how did that set the stage for later challenges? Well, I I struggle still with some separation anxiety if I'm going away for a long trip. It's difficult for me the night before. I tend to get a little bit nervous. I think with the perfectionism, I always have to fight that and realize, as I said, I do a lot of speeches. And very few of them are going to be perfect. So I try to look at it and honestly say, overall, was it a good speech? My purpose of all of this is just to help people. So if I give a perfect speech, am I helping people that much more than if I say the exact same thing and I make a little bit of uh a mistake? It's pretty much all the same thing. So I have to battle those three things. But fortunately, I've been able to switch my brain over to doing the 12-week program that really works. I'd also tell people they can go to my website at ToddPatkin.com. and download for free, Travis, the workbook. It's all free. Or my autobiography. It's all free as well. And what's the deeper message that you want people to take away from your journey and like speaking and your book and everything? What's the, if you could give leave them like or say you know how this is the main thing that I want you to take away. I just want you to know that when we say God loves you, you're a human being, which means you're fallible, which means you're gonna make mistakes. So when you make mistakes, if you're always beating yourself up, then you're forcing yourself to always be upset because you inevitably, as I said, are human, so you're gonna make mistakes. I'll repeat that again. You're gonna make mistakes because you're human. So if every time you make a mistake, you're you know, plowing yourself into the ground, you're living a terrible life. You've got to turn it around and if you make a little mistake, it's not that big a deal. You need to learn to love yourself just because you exist, not because you're always scoring goals. Yeah, I love that. And I think the key thing right there that I really, that really stood out to me was we're all human. I think so many times we go throughout life and we forget that we're human beings and we're prone to make mistakes. Perfect. So what are three daily habits anyone can implement to start improving their happiness right now? Well, the most important thing is exercise, as I said. Then they want to start speaking to themselves differently so that if they say, you know, I can't believe how stupid I am, you say, you know what, that wasn't the smartest thing I just did, but usually I do smart things. So I'm a smart person who just did a dumb thing instead of saying, I can't believe how stupid I am. And then I think we also want to work on fear of the future. How many of us are afraid of things? happening in the future as I said that never will even happen and if they did happen they wouldn't actually destroy you you get through it. Very well said. What legacy do you hope finding happiness in your work will leave for future generations? Well, I I hope that the people that I touch will start to learn that it's not all about getting a beautiful car, you know, having a beautiful house. It's more important just spending quality time with your kids. Too many of us have heard the word quality time and think we can just spend one or two hours a week with the kids. It's quantity of time. You need to spend a lot of time with your kids. That's what they want. They want you to be there when the dog jumps up and knocks the ice cream onto the father's head. They want you all the time. So that's what I really want people to learn is you don't have to be perfect. Spend more time with your kids. Spend more quality time with everybody in your life. Don't work all the time. Work is an addiction. We become addicted to work because we are getting praised and we're winning awards and the serotonin in your brain lets out. You know, there's a study called the five regrets of the dying and they interviewed over a thousand people in hospice and they asked them what were their biggest regrets and they took all of the regrets and they added them up and the five top ones, the first one, was interesting. It said, wish I had lived a life true to myself, not a life that others wanted me to live. And in those days, if a father wanted someone to do a certain profession, they did it, even if they didn't want to do it. But the second one is, I wish I hadn't worked so much. You have to ask yourself when you die, what do you want on your tombstone? Do you want it to say Bill was a great worker or Bill was a great son? husband and dad. These are the things you should be asking yourself. That's very interesting. I like that What uh Advice do you have for listeners who feel trapped by external expectations? I think at some point you just need to grow up and realize that it's about you. You know, they say that the reason why people who are 60, 70 and 80 are actually happier than people who are younger is they get to the point where they don't care what other people say about them. They don't, you know, they care about all of that stuff. They don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be jet setting around the world and, you know, making speeches and being Tony Robbins. They can just do the best they can do. So. Don't listen to other people. They're always going to be talking about you. If you do bad, they're going to put you down. If you do good, they're going to be jealous and put you down. Just be a good person. Yeah, I absolutely love that. I think like for me, the more that I, the less I care what others think, it's like the better off I do, like the better I do inside my mind and it's, yeah, you need to live for yourself. Absolutely. What warning signs should people pay attention to before they hit their breaking point? Well, certainly exhaustion. Um, before I broke down, was just physically and mentally exhausted. I was, Travis, took me by complete surprise to be honest with you. So I don't really know about warning signs. You know, try to eat the right stuff, try not to overdo it. It's when we're really exhausted. We've been stressed out for so long that it hits us like a ton of bricks. But again, you know, the big thing that we, the elephant in the room is medications. Cause if you've been suicidal, I assume you've taken meds. And I tell everybody, I'm not a doctor. I don't want to get in trouble. You got to see a psychiatrist. But if you can't get out of bed for two or three days and you want to kill yourself for two or three days, mean, med saved my life. Yeah, and it's one of those things that's really hard to be that vulnerable, I was in a spot where there's some medication and some, honestly for me, was brother-in-law and I had to end up calling the suicide hotline at one point. because I was just to the point where I didn't know how to go on. That's great that you did that. What role, or let me rephrase it. After your breakdown, how did you begin your process of moving on? You know, was so long ago that I come back to the meds. I was broken and three weeks later I was myself again. So for me it was really the medication and the exercise were the two big things that got me back on track. And have you have you done like any type of therapy or have I guess I guess you get kind of talked about it. You got you talk a lot about self talk. So I guess that kind of avoids the question I was going into. Well, I haven't done a lot of therapy. What I find is this. Every three or four years I get down again and I struggle. And when I'm struggling, I don't really want to see a therapist because they bring you down further, I feel. And when I'm riding high, I don't want to see a therapist because why do I want to be brought down? So I've never really done much therapy and I'm sure that's to the detriment of myself. And there's one thing that I always say on the show, or I've said a few times I should say, is I don't think therapy is for everyone. think everyone has their own ways of healing, whether it's a book, meditation or whatever. But I've had a couple people that got into therapy. They're like, you know what? This isn't for me. So power to you for doing what you had to do. to get through the struggles. Thank you. Thank you. If you could, knowing what you know now, if you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you say? I think I'd say stop being so hard on yourself. You don't have to be perfect. Every test doesn't have to be an A+. You know, if you get a B, I used to study for tests at Tufts University for 20 hours, even though I knew it after eight hours. I was so nervous I wasn't going to get an A, that 12 hours was wasted time. So I would say, look, if you get a B, it's okay. If you, you know, do anything and it's not perfect, it's okay. I would have really changed that whole perfectionist, because now I'm 60 years old and I don't need to be perfect. I laugh at my mistakes. I had a fortune cookie that said you grow up the first day you're able to learn to laugh at your own mistakes. So I'd be a lot less hard on myself. Yeah, and I haven't really struggled much with perfectionism, but I have struggled, like have been really hard on myself and I would have kept that fortune. I like that. It's one of the probably better ones that I've heard. How can we recognize when success is actually costing us our happiness? Well, I think the one thing you don't want to do is make, you know, think that money leads to happiness. Money can certainly make life happier, makes life easier. But if you're always trying to get more money, I think you're fooling yourself. As you said earlier, just as many rich people commit suicide as poor people. So I would just encourage people not to always focus on the things in life. focus on how you feel and how your relationship with your kids and your wife and your parents. Yeah, I totally, totally agree with you. And the end is like, it's, I always hear this thing too. It's like, what was it? It was something along the lines of like, you know, thinking about the job because some people focus on their career over family or whatever. job, most jobs will get rid of you and replace you within a day. Whereas your family is always going to be there. They're the ones in the end that really matter. I love that. The other thing is ask yourself when you pass away what you want on your tombstone. Do you want it to say Bill was a great worker or Bill was a great son, husband and father? Whatever you, you know, that's what you should be, if that's what you want, then that's what you should be working for. If you don't want it to be Bill is a great worker, then why are you working 70, 80 hours a week and not seeing your family at all? Yeah, I actually think I read a statistic just recently that said the average man spends what was at 1.7 hours a day with his kids. Yeah, me thinking like I'm a father of three and I'm like, I don't want to be that guy. Kids want you as much as they can, as I said. They would rather have you for 12 hours a week just sitting on the couch watching uh their favorite cartoon than two hours a week you taking them to their favorite amusement park. They want the time with you. Yes, they totally do. And it's the best feeling when one of them comes up and hasn't seen you all day and just like gives you a big hug. I'm like, this is worth like working from home and doing what I do. Absolutely. Um What? to You've asked some great questions as good as anyone's ever asked me, so you did a great job. thank you. I had one more and I just, I lost the thought. That's fine. There's another thing that I can mention. It's really important that you hang out with positive people. So I encourage people to make a list of the five people you spend the most time with and rank them on a scale of one to five. So you have your five people next to them, have a letter, I'm sorry, a number. Number one is they're absolutely brutal. You can be having a great day and they pull you down. Number five is they're so positive that you could be having a rotten day and they pull you up. Add up those five numbers and divide by five. That gives you your average number in terms of the effect that your friends are having on you. And if you're a one or a two, you need to make changes. And if you're a four or five, you're fine. And how do you make changes? You say to your friend, you know, we've all been really negative. And it's been affecting me. I don't want my kids to be like that. So I've taken a new course and I'm becoming more positive. I'd like you to do it with me. And if the person doesn't do it, you say it again. And if they don't do it again, you start spending less time. That's actually a fantastic way to do that. Cause I have had multiple conversations with people where it's taking the negative out of your life. And it's like, even if it's a person that's bringing you down, you, the best thing to do is get rid of that person. Like, yeah, give, yeah. And I actually brought this up, the same thing with my therapist. And he said, Yeah, sometimes the only hard part is if it's family. Because family, you can't really just x-nay them and say, get out of my life. Yeah. Exactly. And so it's all about setting those boundaries. Absolutely. Where can people find you? So if they go to ToddPatkin.com, that's T-O-D-D-P-A-T-K-I-N.com, ToddPatkin.com, they can download my workbook for free. It's my 12 Weeks to Happiness. That 12 weeks has helped many, many people feel happier. It will help you. You can download my autobiography. You can go to my videos where you'll see me speaking about each of the 12 weeks. I also have a TED Talk, so much more at that website. And where do you, what's your speaking engagements like? I'll pretty much go anywhere where someone can get a hundred people in the room for me. And I'm free. I don't charge. just, uh, you know, expect them to pay for my airfare and hotel. That's really cool. I feel like we've covered a lot of topics and kind of different, went through quite a few questions there. Is there anything that you would like to bring up or discuss that we did not go over? I just want to remind people if you're in rough shape, go to the gym or at least go for a walk. Exercise makes the first and greatest deal if you're struggling. And then one last question that I ask every guest here. What do you feel is the biggest stigma when it comes to mental health? Even though it's stigmatized, it's so important you share your journey like Travis is sharing his and encouraging us to come on board with other people. I was probably the first person back in 2012 to be so vulnerable to write my book about my breakdown. I tell everybody I'm broken, I'm on meds, so it's easy for me. I can't tell you how many people tell me they've broken and been on meds, but they don't want to share it. So I want to encourage as many people who have been broken to share it with other people. You can save a life. When someone's broken, they would rather talk to someone before who went through the same situation than a psychiatrist. They'd really rather talk to someone like you, me, or Travis. Yeah, let me you just spawned another question in my mind. When you wrote your book. What was that process like? it cause was it war like it was really hard to write down the words because it brought back memories or did you find it more therapeutic? Yeah, definitely therapeutic for me to work through it. My whole goal in writing the book was to help people. I had done so many things when I was young that I was so embarrassed about and felt like I was the only person. In high school, there was a girl who bullied me. I couldn't imagine there was another man in the history of the world that was ever bullied by a girl. And it humiliated me and ruined my senior year. And now I was 60 years old. I bet there's been... know, thousands and thousands of people have been bullied by girls. So that was the purpose of the book is to let people know they shouldn't be ashamed for things that happen. We're all human beings. Yeah, and it's you're you're doing a good thing because you're letting people know they're not alone. Everybody goes through stuff. My story, your story might be a little quite a bit different, but I'm sure in there we have some similarities across paths at some point. course. Uh, I, that's all I have for you. That's all the questions I have for you. So thank you. Yeah. It's a pleasure having you on. Um, and thanks for all that you're doing. Um, and all the people that you're helping. I love, I love the stories that I hear and I especially love, um, people who come on and say that they, they're trying to help other people to make them feel not alone. uh Thanks to all those that are listening. If this episode touched you in any way, please give us a like and share the podcast. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.