Call Her Daddy - To Those Feeling Lost in Their 20s… (ft. Mel Robbins)

Episode Date: March 6, 2022

This week, Father Cooper is joined by author and motivational speaker Mel Robbins. Have you ever felt lost or uncertain with the direction of your life? Why is this feeling especially amplified in our 20’s? Alex and Mel break down how this sense of uncertainty is rooted in insecurity, comparison, and regret. Mel shares concrete advice on how to regain control of your life and provides a new perspective on how to positively approach social media. Enjoy!

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call Her Daddy. Hello, hello, hello. What's up, guys? Welcome to another mini episode of Call Her Daddy. I hope you guys are feeling extraordinary today. I've got a question for you. Have you guys ever felt or do you currently feel stuck in life? You're like, you know what, Alex? It's a fucking Sunday. I'm hungover. I made some bad decisions last night. I don't need this. Such a loaded fucking question. No, but actually, do you find yourself constantly comparing yourself to your friends? Oh my God, my friends are advancing in their careers. They just got a promotion or oh my God, my friends engaged.

They found their life partner. They're getting married. They're pregnant. Oh my God, I'm not doing life right. Today's guest is a life coach and a motivational speaker, Mel Robbins. She has authored multiple books and gives countless talks on this exact topic. How to identify and overcome this common feeling of being stuck and uncertain in life. As you guys listen, I urge you to ask yourself these questions

that Mel poses and examine your own life. I promise you, you will feel better after this episode if you really focus and you really actually go through the exercises. Enjoy this week's mini episode, Daddy Gang. Here we go. Mel Robbins, welcome to Call Her Daddy. Alex. I'm so excited. You have single-handedly elevated my reputation in my two daughters' eyes. I cannot thank you enough, whatever you fucking need from me. Well, I was fangirl. I've been listening to you for a while. So I was not wearing the sweatshirts

and stuff, but I am in the daddy gang. I'm like the elder in the daddy gang. And my daughters and I talk about your episodes because I am so proud of the turn that you're taking and how you're talking about sex and confidence and mental health. And so 23 year old, 21 year old, when you reposted that shit, literally, I thought Verizon was going to go down with the number of texts I got from all my daughter's friends. Well, I am so happy you're here because so basically Mel is here to help us move past feeling stuck and uncertain about where we're at in our lives. Today, we're hopefully going to get a lot of tangible advice moments on how to manage something we all do, which is constantly comparing ourselves

to everyone and therefore in turn feeling so insecure. Why is it so common to feel an overwhelming sense of uncertainty right after college? It's not only common, it's normal. And in fact, if you don't have this internal upheaval, I think there might be something wrong with you because you're probably a little numb or on autopilot or drinking too much that your hangover is numbing out your feelings. But if you really think like let's we're going to talk about this from a common sense perspective. So the reason why you feel stuck and you feel lost and you feel uncertain and sometimes directionless when you hit your 20s and your 30s is because for the first two decades of your life, everybody else told you what to do. Everybody called the shots. And there was structure. There were guardrails. I mean, if you think about it, you literally went from kindergarten to first grade to second grade to

third grade. When you graduated from high school, if you didn't go to college, you went to junior college or you got a job. And if you went to college, you were then freshman year, sophomore year. Then you went to study abroad. Then you lived off campus. Like you were in lockstep with everybody. And then all of a sudden you graduate and you party all summer after senior year and you wake up and you go, what the fuck? And even if you are somebody who knew because you came out of the womb knowing you wanted to be a doctor, you had just this certainty about what you were going to do with your life. What happened to you in your 20s is all of the structure dropped off. Your friends scattered.

Everybody went in different directions. You now have rent and student loans. You probably don't even know what the interest rate is on your student loans. You don't know how to balance a checkbook. You don't know what benefits you should register for. You don't know how to get a job. You don't know how to function in the virtual environment. And you have no guardrails. It is the first time in your entire life where nobody is telling you what you have to do. But hold on a second. Okay. So here's the good news. I've got so much good news. I'm already

stressed. I've got so much good news. Okay'm like, you're right. Don't be stressed. Don't be stressed. I've got so much good news. Okay. Okay. Because the bottom line is, if you could figure out how to get into college or get a job or get an internship, you can figure out your life. And here's the other thing. If they offered classes in college about how to do your taxes, none of us would have gone. Oh, that is so true.

Yes. That is not, in my opinion, what you learn in college. Yeah, wait, tell us what we learn in college, because I bet a lot of us with those loans, you're like, yeah, please tell me, make me feel better about why the fuck I went to college. Well, I have an interesting story. So I grew up in Michigan and I went to Dartmouth.

And when I got there, we pulled up in front of Russell Sage, my freshman dorm, we kind of put the dorm room together. And you know that moment where you all of a sudden hit that line, you can't explain it, where you're like, you need to leave now. This is embarrassing. So I hit that line. We walk outside. I start crying.

My mom starts crying. She hugs me. I feel like I'm never going to see her again. My dad hugs me. And he says this, some of the best advice I've ever gotten. He said, do not let studying get in the way of your education you're like I have the coolest dad on the fucking planet I feel like that's like what any person would want but I'm assuming he didn't mean go rage

your face off Mel don't go do well I didn't figure that one out for a couple of years. Okay. But can you dissect what that means? Yes, I can. Life is the best school that you will attend. Life is always teaching you something. Always. And it's teaching you about the most important subject. And that is you. It's so interesting, too, when we talk about going through school.

I think a lot of people struggle. And I know for me, it was like you had a gauge, right, of like how you're doing because there's literally a grading system. Oh, I'm getting an F. I'm failing or a D. That's not good enough. When you leave college, there is no guideline of knowing if you're failing or succeeding. And so there's this unlimited expectation and also scale of like I think I'm doing well but then you look over and you're like but my friend's making more money so maybe I'm not doing as well as I thought and so it's like this constant unknowing of like how do I even fucking know if I'm doing life right right now because I no longer have those guidelines and where am I

going and what am I doing and it just spir spirals. Right. So when we're younger, everybody tells us what we're supposed to measure. That's why we chase great grades. That's why we work hard. That's why we chase the right friend group or the right person that we're supposed to date because the things that we're measuring are outside of us. Yeah. When you become an adult,

the greatest opportunity of your life is to figure out what you want to fucking measure for yourself. Every major life change will cause you to stop and pull over on the side of the road of life and go, who am I, where am I, and what do I want to do next? And so when you feel lost, when you feel uncertain, when you feel stuck, first of all, it's a good thing because you are now waking up and you're aware that something's not working and you want more. So I think about life as one long ass road trip. And right now at this moment in your life today, as you're listening to Alex and you're

listening to me, Mel Robbins, you are at a particular mile marker. You will not be here forever. And what I want you to understand is that the mile markers of zero to 21, you were in somebody else's car and someone else was driving. You didn't have a choice about it. Typically, I'm talking about your parents. Like you were born into the family you were born in under the circumstances that you grew up in. You faced whatever you faced. Somebody else was in control largely of where you went and what you did and when you went it and the speed at which it went. And then all of a sudden when you graduate from college, you find yourself on the side of the road. Yeah. And here's the cool thing. Are you going to be a passenger or are you going to be a driver in your life? What do you say to the next generation, like kids in Gen Z,

who are questioning the entire point of college? College isn't for everybody. Yeah. I think one of the things about life that you always want to be working on is building skills. And you do that through experience. You do it through failure. You do it through relationship. And also deepening your self-awareness. And both of those things are going to change over time. And so being somebody that's self-aware enough that you understand that either the financial pressure is not worth it or that you're not fucking motivated and you'd rather

get out into the market and start a side hustle or take a gap year or try to do an internship while you're waitressing and gain some experience. Maybe you've known forever that you just wanted to work in the family's business. And so having self-awareness that something is not for you is one of the biggest fucking power moves you could ever make because you are listening to yourself. And for a long time, a lot of us figure things out by following other people, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, parents' directions, and you live with discomfort because you know it's not the right direction. And at some point, you will either face a breakdown or you will have an awakening where you go, oh, this is what Mel

and Alex were talking about. It's time to step out of the passenger role where I'm just going along, going through the motions and to take the wheel and turn my life in a new direction. I get it. Everyone's like, oh my God, you sound like you have it all together. Is there a moment in your life specifically that you can think of that that happened for you where you were like, wait, what am I doing? Yeah, I could tell you a moment like that almost every year of my life. Okay. Well, because look, the one thing that's constant about your life is things are always going to be changing. That's why you need to develop self-awareness. Because the only person, let's go back to the analogy of are you a driver or are you a passenger?

First of all, if you're lost, pull over. Don't keep driving. Take a minute. Get quiet. Think about where's the next place you want to go. Yeah. And so you're okay. You will figure this out.

You got plenty of time. And so everybody needs to just relax. Yeah. You don't need to figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life. You don't need to discover your purpose or passion right now. You just need to live a little and try some stuff. And we're going to talk more about risk-taking, more about like being a little bit more confident, practicing it, developing self-awareness. But what you ask me is, have I ever done this? You know, Alex, the reason why I seem so wise is because I have fucked up so much. And it'd be wonderful if I could read this shit in a book and then just apply it. But the,

whatever reason, I am very emotional. I struggle with anxiety. I had attachment issues when I was younger. And so it's because I have screwed up so many times that I can sit here down the road of life, a little bit further down the road and say, y'all are going to be just fine. Calm the fuck down. We're going to give you some things to think about that are going to give you control. So when I graduated from college, I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. And talk about regret. It seemed like everybody that I knew had done that campus recruiting thing and were like kind of marching down to New York or DC and getting these jobs in these consulting firms and investment banking.

And I had a double major with a certificate. So I was a film and history major with a women's studies certificate. What job do you get with that? Part of the reason why I had all those majors is I couldn't fucking pick a major. Totally. I feel like that's so fucking relatable. So it's nice to hear that you're sitting here with all of your credentials and yet you're like, hey guys, I was the girl on campus that I had no fucking clue what I was doing. No clue. Absolutely no clue. And then of course I felt like, okay, wait, did I just waste four years? And then I felt like I clearly did because I don't even know what job I could get with this.

So then I felt guilty and regretful that I didn't do finance or I didn't do economics or I didn't do something practical. And so what did I do? I followed my boyfriend because he had a job. So I jumped into his car and we drove down literally to Washington, D.C. And then he went off to his job and I had a panic attack in an apartment on N Street in Georgetown. And this friend of mine said, well, just go to a temp agency. So I go to a temp agency. The first job they placed me in is working in a law firm. I sat in a windowless conference room for a year, Alex, and I stamped paperwork with a hand stamper. And I hated that job. I hated that job. But I felt

compelled to stay in it because I felt like if I jumped from that thing and I didn't know what I wanted to do, then that then signaled that I was even more of a screw up. And so I stuck with it. Because here's the thing, everybody. Relationships, whether they are friendships or romantic relationships, just magnify the shit that's in you. And so as everybody else is moving in other directions, it's magnifying my insecurity. And so what do I do? I just follow the pack because I don't know what else to do. So I apply to law schools. And I didn't even want to go. And this is a major takeaway, everybody. Every single thing that you do in life, the things you screw up, the things that you think are a waste of time, they are preparing you for something else. Everything in your life is teaching you something.

It's in the shittiest moments that you discover who you are. And there will be moments in life where you take that steering wheel and you drive in the direction because you're determined and you know it. And there will be times that you do it out of desperation. Right. It's okay. I've never been listening. That's like amazing. But there are some moments in my life that I'm like, do I regret that? How can we look back on negative moments in our lives without regret? So I want to unpack regret. You can't look back on things without regret. So there was just this huge three-year study that bestselling author Dan

Pink did. It's been published in the Wall Street Journal about regret. The most common feeling or emotion that people feel is love. The second most common thing you'll feel in life is regret. And regret serves a purpose. I'm not proud to admit this, but for a long time, I would exit relationships by cheating on my boyfriend and finding an off-ramp and starting a new relationship. Interesting. A really awful form of anxiety and people-pleasing. I hated that I did that. And so I deeply regret that. And for decades, I had the kind of regret that is really destructive. It's when you ruminate and you keep going back to it and you point at it as evidence that you're a shitty human being. If you weren't in pain, you would have acted

differently. Like most of us fuck up and do things we regret because we're trying to survive something. Like most things you regret, you actually didn't do consciously. But punishing yourself, it's like taking a sledgehammer and hitting yourself over the head with it over and over again. And so let's talk about productive regret.

Okay. And productive guilt is really good because when you regret something and it motivates you to change, that's a really important way that life is teaching you the lessons you need to become who you're meant to become. How does social media impact how we internalize the ideas around success and failure? You know, social media gets a lot of negative publicity. And, you know, I'm not going to deny the fact that there was that big research study that showed that 40% of 13-year-olds, 13-year-olds identify Instagram and Facebook

as when they started actually feeling bad about how they looked. However, social media is just a thing. The real power is in you getting intentional about how you fucking use it. Yeah. I would have a very different conversation with a 12, a 13, and a 14-year-old. You are now in your 20s. If you can spend an hour looking through social media for nail designs so that you can take them to your manicurist, you can figure out how to use social media to get what you want. Way too many of us are using social media the wrong way.

Okay. You're hyper-obsessed with what you're posting. And the reason why you're hyper-obsessed with what you're posting is because you want people to think a certain thing about you. Should I post this photo? Should I post that photo? Should I put the filter on it? Should I write this caption? Should I put about you. Should I post this photo? Should I post that photo? Should I put the filter on it? Should I write this caption?

Should I put emojis? Should I not do that? Should I post it tonight? Should I post it tomorrow? Certainly on Instagram, certainly before you do a TikTok video, there is massive intentionality because you are being a micro manipulative person about what you want people to think. You need to put that exact same level of power, responsibility, and intentionality

into what's coming into your feed. Because every account that you follow, you are giving them the most important thing you have, which is your time and your attention. And you are careless about who you let into your feed. If there is a post or a person who is making you feel like shit or triggering you or making you feel insecure, mute them. Who gives a shit what your friend from high school thinks? You don't need to follow her on Instagram. Social media is for me. It's not for my friends. You need to get serious about this

because you live in the single coolest moment in the world. Do you know when I was your age? Holy shit. There was no information. Like if you went to therapy, you literally wore a hoodie over your face. You wouldn't walk into a self-help section of a bookstore. There were no podcasts. There were no online courses. There was no social media. Textbooks were printed every 10 years. You would stare at people on television and wonder how the fuck did they do that with their life. You have access to incredible information. If you want to change your life, follow people who are doing what you want to do. You can stalk people legally. Yeah. It's so true. When you are scrolling through social media at night, we call this revenge procrastination. All day long, you're at work and it's boring or it's this or it's that. And you didn't quite get to do what you want to do. Right. And so it's almost

like you're getting back at your job by taking time to do nothing for yourself. Even though you know in your heart that sitting on the phone and scrolling through this shit, it's not getting anywhere. It doesn't make you feel good. It's a form of revenge procrastination. You're getting back at a life during the day that doesn't really fill you up. This is going to be helpful because people may say,

it sounds great, but I have anxiety. So this is a huge topic. Yes. I am an expert in this. It would be fucking weird after living in a pandemic for two years if you didn't feel some level of anxiety. Yeah. Anxiety is a normal response to uncertainty

or a threat. So rule number one is I want you to stop saying, I have anxiety. When you say, I have anxiety, you are marrying anxiety with your identity. I want you to start saying, I feel anxious. The most common time for people to feel anxiety is either first thing in the morning or when the sun is going down. Now, there are two things that can spike your anxiety in the morning. Number one, your cortisol, stress hormone levels are the highest in the morning,

and your dopamine tends to have dipped. And so you are primed to feel that sense of uncertainty. And if you've been drinking, anxiety is actually a symptom of a hangover. And so as the alcohol leaves your blood system, or not, if you're still waking up and you're still really drunk, your chemistry and your neurochemistry is changing. And so that plummet that you feel after a big night of partying, that is to be

expected. And here's one more tip. I did not know until after I had stopped taking Zoloft for two decades that a common side effect of taking Zoloft and other medication is blacking out when you drink any amount of alcohol. I literally don't remember my 20s. Wow. Let me talk about the end of day. Okay. So anxiety at the end of day, that's typically tied to past childhood drama. And what a lot of people who grew up in chaotic situations or abusive situations in their household, when the sun starts setting is when adults come home and the shit hits the

fan. And so if you notice that you feel anxious near the end of the day, it is probably a trauma response to the chaos and the abuse or the kind of gripping that you felt as a kid because something was about to happen. And so if this is the case, give yourself the gift and go work with a professional to unpack it personally. All that anxiety is, in the most basic sense,

is it's a response to uncertainty or stress. And it's got an important role. Anxiety is an alarm system in your body. You have the same alarm system with excitement. Physiologically in your body, there is zero difference between waves of excitement and waves of anxiety. Your pits sweat, your stomach churns,

your hands get clammy. The problem with anxiety is our thoughts. And so the secret with anxiety is first of all, it's a feeling. So when you label it as a feeling and then you go through and you list all the situations or people that trigger it, now you've got a map that will allow you to start to put tools in place to either avoid those situations or take better care of yourself or make a plan for how you're going to deal. The other thing that you can do is when the thought comes, you can interrupt it because this pattern of worrying, which is not triggered by a text, by the way, it's triggered by the fear of rejection. So any situation where you are worried somebody's going to reject you,

your normal response is to feel the wave. You will probably always have that in your life. Yeah. And so the other thing that you can do is just name it. You're like, oh, here it is. I'm just afraid of getting rejected. That's all. That's it.

So like productive regret. Do you think that comes from having many moments of destructive regret? I think it can come from big things and little things. Like there are little things we regret. Like I regret how much time I wasted. I regret how long I doubted myself. I regret that in my last job, I never spoke in a single meeting. I regret that I didn't put myself out there more.

I regret that I spent time chasing friends who clearly didn't want to hang out with me instead of like moving toward people that made me feel more like myself. There are a bazillion ways, especially we women, we are amazing at beating ourselves up. We are amazing at trashing ourselves. We are amazing at questioning.

And so you can regret just about anything. The important thing is to go, okay, here it is, negative emotion. Pull the fuck over on the side of the road. Put yourself in pause. What is it trying to teach me? What behavior do I need to change so I don't put myself in the situation again? That is so helpful, especially for you get out, even in college.

I mean, anyone in their like young semi-adolescent into adult years where you're like, if we can, if we can take also one thing from what you just said, it's like, wait, guys, when you're feeling like shit, pause for a second. And instead of marinating in that feeling, be like, wait, what am I learning right now from this that I know I'll try to never do this again, or I'll try to change this, this this this this and so I don't end up back here that is such a tangible thought process of when you're in the shit don't let yourself just sit there what you're just wasting your time like or living in the oh I should have why are you dwelling on things that you literally can not change you can only change what you do moving forward right and so the faster you're like hey what am I learning what can I change

yeah I'll give you a quick exercise you can do. This is free. Take out a piece of paper, draw a line down the center. On one side, write, what am I doing that's making me feel like shit? I'm drinking seven nights a week. Write it down. That'll do it. Yeah, that'll do it. I'm having casual hookups and getting emotionally attached. That'll do it. I'm constantly doubting myself. That'll do it. I'm not taking care of my body. That'll do it. I've withdrawn from my friend group. That'll do it. I have stopped talking to my therapist. That'll do it. Now on the right-hand side of the page, write down, think about a time in your life when you're happier. Or think about the kinds of things that you do that make you feel better. Oh,

I take care of my body. Oh, I spend more time with friends. Oh, I plan you feel better. Oh, I take care of my body. Oh, I spend more time with friends. Oh, I plan shit to do. Oh, I take a class. Oh, you know, I have boundaries. Oh, I drink two nights a week or I don't drink at all or whatever it may be. Now compare those two and adjust accordingly. There's your map. There's your map. Yeah. So that's like actually really good advice as much as I could see people. Well, let me give you another way. Let me give you another way to think about it. When you're in your head, you're behind enemy lines. When you're in your head, you're in fantasy land.

The reason why writing this shit down matters is because we are getting you out of the fucking subconscious. And we are getting you out and rescuing you from behind enemy lines where that anxiety and that self-doubt and that guilt and that regret and all that shit that you ruminate on, which by the way, we're going to talk about the female brain, women are more prone to and biologically designed to do. We yank you out of enemy lines and we ground you in the present moment. And when that shit is written on a piece of paper, it is grounded in reality. And here's the thing, there are four W's in life, right? Okay. Never in the history of the world has wishing, wanting, or worrying about something actually made it happen or helped you. Wishing, wanting, or worrying does not help you. There is only one W that is going

to help you change your life and that is working for it. And you are not working for shit when you're thinking about it. Thinking about something is not the same thing as taking action. And too many of us are wasting years and torturing ourselves thinking about what we need to do and spinning thoughts, but we're not taking the actions. Thinking about shit's not going to change your life. Only action will change your life. Okay, guys. So that is it for this week's episode. I truly can relate to so many things that Mel discussed this week. I remember feeling so fucking lost after college, taking a job that I hated, truly hated, would cry after work on my way home on the subway feeling like I was wasting my time watching friends get their dream jobs right out of college and being so fucking miserable I remember feeling

so much regret sitting at that job and wondering should I not have moved to New York City I can't even afford to live here and actually live like a happy human being like maybe I shouldn't have maybe I moved into the city too fast but like there were so many things that I regretted but like Mel said what feel like the lowest points and moments in your life really are just setting us up for the next phase of where we're meant to be and I learned so much from those low moments ironically I look now I'm able to look back and it's like if I did not go through those certain moments of feeling so depressed, so lonely, so isolated, I wouldn't have started to call her daddy. I wouldn't have had to move in with these certain random roommates that then connect like I wouldn't there's so many pieces that I can now look back and be like, damn,

thank fucking God that shit happened. So there's always a silver lining, as they say. Mel will be back for another mini episode next Sunday, and she's going to continue to deliver the facts and advice we all need to hear specifically with regard to friendship in your 20s, proximity changes. We're not used to not being close to all of our friends like high school and college. How the fuck do we deal with that isolating feeling? Mel is going to fucking go through it with us and make you feel a whole lot better about it. Daddy gang, you know the motherfucking drill. I will see you fuckers.

Oh, wait. You guys are going to fucking love this week's upcoming guest on a main episode of Call Her Daddy. This Wednesday. You guys like euphoria i will see you fuckers this wednesday