Call Her Daddy - Where'd all my friends go? (ft. Mel Robbins)

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

This week, Father Cooper is joined by author and motivational speaker, Mel Robbins. Have you ever felt insecure about the number of friends you have? Do you define your worth by your friend group? Alex and Mel normalize going through periods of life where friends fade and the focus shifts - to being a good friend to yourself. Mel shares concrete advice on how to alter this pattern of thinking, so that we stop defining ourselves by external factors and take control of our lives.

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call Her Daddy. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back, Daddy Gang. Today is part two with life coach and motivational speaker Mel Robbins. I'm so happy. I was reading all of your DMs and it seemed like you guys loved part one. If you guys haven't listened to it, go listen to it. It's called To Those Feeling Lost in Their 20s. And also I would like to correct it's not just in your 20s, it can be in your teens and your 30s and your 40s and your 50s and so on. Just feeling fucking lost in life. And Mel did an incredible job making us all feel a lot better about our lives. So today Mel and I are back for part two and we are talking about friendship

specifically the evolution of friendship. This is a topic that I've been speaking about a lot lately on the podcast and I've been getting a lot of DMs that you guys want me to talk about it more. So we're going to add another phrase to our repertoire. Let's stamp this one in there, Daddy Gang, okay? Repeat this with me. It is okay to go through periods of time and not have a large group of friends. People move, people change, people get married,

they have kids, you grow apart, your likes, your interests change, and that is totally fine. So let's dive right into it with Mel Robbins here we go so Mel I have been getting so many messages from the daddy gang about getting out of school and being like where the fuck are all my friends what happened the anxiety around the transition from having school as a way to basically have your friend groups all in one place and then getting out of school it changes and i know my friend groups have changed since I've graduated.

Why is it problematic to define our worth by our social circle? Well, it's problematic to define your worth by anything outside of you because then you're not in control of it. There's the shit outside you, which is what you chase. the likes the fancy job the good-looking people the the top tier fraternity and sorority all of that driven by what you hope people will think about you because of it and then there is the internal aspect of life which is how do you feel about yourself and we all literally go through periods of our lives where we define ourselves by the external, how much money we have in the bank,

the number on the scale. I love that you stopped having likes on your posts. Yeah. What did you learn from doing that for yourself personally? I feel so much happier. Well, you know what I love about this example is that you are embodying the advice we talked about, which is get intentional about how you use social media as a tool for growth and for your own

happiness in life and for your business. And so you've gotten clear, it's not for your friends, it's for you. You've gotten clear that it doesn't help you as a businesswoman because you got to stay connected to your own instincts to be looking around and externally referenced is what I would call that. We're externally referenced. When my daughter was rushing, she had this huge conflict because obviously on campuses, there are external reputations for houses and everybody gets so freaking the top tier and the this, and this house is the girls you date, and this is the ones you sleep with, and this is the ones you marry, and those people are

the creatives, and this one's this one, and everybody's labeled. And we are paralyzed in being able to make decisions for ourselves because we make decisions based on what we want other people to think. And one of the biggest breakthroughs, I'm very proud of this insight that she had is that in choosing, she's like, wait a minute, I actually need to choose a house based on how I feel when I'm with the people in that house versus what the fucking guys in the fraternity are going to think. And that's not to say that any house is better than another. But there is one that feels better for you.

Everyone can relate to this. There's the friend group that you're like, oh, they're the cooler ones. And I'll come off cooler if I'm with them. But then there are the friends that maybe because like socially, maybe that one friend isn't as cool, but you're like, but I feel so myself with that person. I feel so happy when I'm with this group.

But that group, I come off cooler and they have the cool clothes. And it's like, what the fuck are we doing? I'll tell you what we're doing. We don't understand relationships. So the basic truth about relationships, friendships, family relationships, romantic relationships, is relationships are amplifiers. So if you are chasing people that you can't be yourself with, that is going to amplify your insecurity. If you are with people that make you feel like yourself, it is going to amplify your insecurity. If you are with people that make you feel like yourself, it is going to

amplify your authenticity. And so profound change in your life starts with you. All change begins with you. And so let's talk about friends because this is a really important topic. And I want to share a little bit of research. So they did this study at the University of Kansas, and they actually studied college friendships versus adult friendships. And here's the rule around friendship, everybody. We underestimate how much friendship is based on proximity. And if you think about high school, you were friends with people because you went to high school with them.

And when college, it's why you have friends on one dorm floor, but when you live off campus, you have friends on another floor, you know, on another part. And it's why when you join a sorority or a sports team, because you're spending so much time, it's why when you work, you tend to have friends with every job that you have. So here's the thing. In order to be casual friends, on average, it takes about 40 hours of time together for a student in college to feel like you and I are friends. So that could be classes. It could be I see you at the same dining hall. It could be we live in the same dorm. It could be we're on the same sports team. When you're an adult just out in

your life, it takes 94 hours of time together before you start to consider someone a casual friend. Wow. Why? Because in college, friendships is also about patterns. So there's so much resonance. I'm a junior. You're a junior. Oh, you know this person.

Oh, you just had that bread at Collis. Oh, they got this there. Oh, I did this. Oh, you took that person's class. So there's all these moments of like ahas and connections and convenience and patterns. And it's why when you quit a sports team or you change where you live, your patterns change, your friends tend to change. And this was really interesting to me. And that is that it takes about 17 more hours, so 57 hours, for a college student to move a friend from casual to close. When you become an adult, it goes from 94 hours to 160 hours to move somebody from a casual friend that you see at work to a close friend that you would travel with or tell your secrets to or whatever. And it has to do with the fact that when you are

now out on the road of life and you are now with people of all different ages who may have kids, who may be engaged, who may be divorced, who may be dating, who may be single, who may be not, the patterns of your life change. And so it takes more time to intersect with people on the things that you have in common or the things that really amplify what you want to amplify at this stage in your life. You all are also living in a pandemic. And so everybody's fucking fucked up and disconnected and feeling anxious and just going through shit. And the other thing is that you are reaching for friends right now, probably, that are older friends, because they remind you of a time when you felt more certain about yourself.

And if you're engaging and trying to shoehorn yourself into a friend group, that is going to make you feel more lonely because you are drawn towards them because you are insecure. Remember, relationships amplify what's inside you. And if you're chasing the wrong relationship, it will amplify insecurity. We need to normalize that you don't need a big friend group. I also want to normalize that there are a lot of women that are not part of a girl gang. Like, I mean, we're all part of daddy gang, but you know what I mean? There are those of us, myself included, that feel more comfortable one-on-one

and have never been the kind of person that's going to have 18 bridesmaids. And there's nothing wrong with either way. What actually makes you feel good? And so I also want to give you another analogy because this one has helped me think a lot about friends. Because you're not only going to go through this in your 20s. You will go through this when people start to get engaged. You'll go through this when some people start to have kids. You will go through this again if people get divorced.

You will go through this again when people move. And so learning how to not make it personal, people may not be hanging out with you because they have shit going on. Totally. And so it's not like, I don't want to see you. It's just like, oh, well, I always think of these two because we're on this text chain. And a lot of times it's not even personal. It's not personal.

Like you said, proximity. There's my, one of my best, best friends, we've now never lived in the same fricking city. And, but she is the person, like if God forbid something happened, because she did it to me. Like if something happens in her family, my family, we we're calling each other but on the day-to-day shit i'm not like hey kristin like what are you up to i bet no one even knows who the fuck that

is i never talk about her on my show it's like she's my best friend but on the day-to-day i'm talking to whoever my boyfriend or my producer that's now my one of my good friends or like my whoever's near me i'm like oh hey i'm not gonna call kristin all the time so it's now my one of my good friends or like my whoever's near me I'm like oh hey I'm not gonna call Kristen all the time so it's like knowing and not taking it personally if you feel at times a pull away from a friend if you're not in their life day to day it's hard sometimes to keep in touch and also if it's not actually because of just like proximity and like they actually don't really like you as much or fuck with you and like okay like my mother always said why would you want to be friends with someone that doesn't want to be friends with you because you feel insecure and you think if that person likes me then that's going to make me feel better you're chasing something external you got

to bring it back in house inside of you because if you're insecure and that's why you're chasing a relationship or a friendship that friendship or relationship will amplify how insecure you feel because you and your gut know it's not a fit. So let me give you a metaphor that you're going to freaking love. I love this metaphor. I'm ready. When you think of friendship, picture yourself as this massive tree. There are three types of friends that you will have in your life.

You will have leaves. And leaves are really necessary for a tree. There are three types of friends that you will have in your life. You will have leaves. And leaves are really necessary for a tree, but they only last a season. And just because at the end of that season, those leaves wither and fall to the ground doesn't mean you're not friends. Totally. It just means that they came in, they had a very important purpose in your life. And we often mistake friendship and thinking it's supposed to be meant forever, when really the lesson or the experience is what was meant to be with you forever. And so those folks are so important. All those people that you knew from college that you don't pay attention to anymore, they're all leaves. All

the people from high school, they're all leaves. That's it. So the second type of friend is a branch. And branches have been around longer, They're stronger. They're thicker. And we tend to think that branches are going to be with us forever. But when there's a huge storm, branches break. It hurts. But for whatever reason, that branch was not strong enough. But they served a really important purpose, right? And then there are the roots. And the roots are those people that go the distance and roots are always growing. And if you have one person that you can call at four o'clock in the morning, this is based on research. You got one person that you can call at four o'clock in the morning. This is based on research. You got one person that you can call at four o'clock in the morning, just because you wake up

and you feel a little lonely. You are doing okay with friends. That's the one you need. One other thing I think we should address about friendship is this feeling that nobody supports you. Half of them can't support themselves. Right. And if they're not pursuing their dreams, why on earth would they cheer for you as you're pursuing yours? Yeah. And so it's important. I can tell you a quick story that I think will kind of explain why it's confusing that people that are closest to you don't celebrate when you start to change or don't change with you. Okay. So I'll tell you a story. This makes me look like an asshole.

No. I love these kinds of stories. I me look like an asshole. I love these kind of stories. I've got tons of them. I love it. Shout out to my husband, Christopher Robbins. Christopher decided a couple of years ago that he was going to stop drinking for a little while. And at first I thought that was an amazing idea. And by day three, as Chris is pouring his seltzer and I am opening up the fridge and grabbing the bottle of rosé and opening it up at 6.30 at night while I'm cooking dinner and I'm starting to feel like an alcoholic, I'm feeling confronted by the fact that he's now changed a pattern in his life. And so I start being an asshole. Are you sure you don't want to just pinch? Like,

it's more like juice. It's not really like wine. You know, it's like, you sure? And Chris looked me dead in the eye and he said, do not ask me to drink. When I've told you I am doing so, I'm not drinking. And I was like, but I feel bad. I don't want to drink alone. He said, Mel, nobody cares what's in your glass but you. And if you're concerned about what's in your glass because of what I'm doing, you better take a look in the mirror and make some changes.

But don't fucking try to drag me down to you. Damn. So when somebody in your life who's been your drinking buddy or has been like trashing people and they spend their time gossiping or, you know, they're the party or whatever, or they're the person at work that always pulls you aside and you engage in the gut, like it's fun. Yeah, we get this. When you start to change, they're not going to like it because your new behavior is magnifying something that they don't like about themselves, something they've been thinking of. You know, one other thing to think about is think about the last five people you were

texting with. Are they actually helping you achieve the changes that you want? Are they making you feel good about yourself? Great point. And the people that you spend the most time with are really important because behavior is contagious. I mean, they have proven this. Google the Framingham Health Study. If you hang out with people who smoke, over time it lowers your tolerance and resistance to it,

and you are more likely to start smoking. If you hang out with people that are divorced, same thing. It starts to normalize the behavior and your resistance to it. The positive is also true. If you hang out with people that exercise, you're more likely to exercise. If you hang out with people that tend to eat well, you tend to do that. And so I'm not saying don't hang out with people. I'm saying if you have a ton of friends that drink all the time and you still want to be friends with them, just text and be like, hey, I know I haven't been like coming out a lot. I'm really trying to get control of my drinking because it's been out of control. But can we like make a date to

go out to dinner? Can we go like do this thing? Be proactive about finding other ways to hang out with people. So now we're starting to look inward. We're starting to be self-aware. But for some of us, we have these people pleasing tendencies that can be all consuming. How do people pleasing tendencies relate to experiences we had as children? The female brain, biologically, neurologically speaking, is a hardwired machine for connection. Our worry center is bigger than men's. Their sex center is bigger than ours. We have better skills when it comes to empathy. So you have this spidey sense that is a superpower because it is going to help you with intuition, but it is also fucking crippling

because you have a sense of what everybody's feeling. And so the reason why we become people pleasers, and we all do, by the way, you want to, on some level, connect with people and be liked by people. Otherwise you would be a narcissistic asshole. But you want to have a level of self-awareness where you understand when your motivation is simply to be liked or to manage rejection. And when your motivation is actually because it feels right for you. But you also have to know, generally speaking,

when little girls fall, what happens is we reassure them. Oh, honey, you're gonna be okay. So when you cry, you get upset, you're nervous about something, we tend to coddle little girls. Little boys, we pick them up, we dust them off, we send them back in. We teach boys how to brush off failure and step forward and take a risk. We teach girls to sit with uncertainty

and be afraid of failure. And we see in the research over and over that boys innately learn how to take risks, but we become perfectionists that start to spin and look around us at our parents, at our friends, at our bosses for the validation, we have not learned how to give to ourselves. So when it comes to people pleasing, number one, you just need to be aware it's a normal behavior. We all do it. It becomes a problem when you hand over all the power in your life to other people's judgments and opinions. And so the other thing that's important to understand is that as women, we are wired for connection. It's a good thing. But right now in your life, what I want you to start thinking about is instead of putting other people first, how could you possibly put yourself first in your

own life? Because the only cure to people pleasing is A, to be aware of when you're doing it, and B, to start to identify the need you're trying to fill. Because at the end of the day, the love or the approval or the validation that you're seeking from other people, you actually just want from yourself. We want other people to like us because we spend most of the day treating ourselves like shit.

And if you spend all day trash talking yourself and doubting yourself and picking apart your banana roll and like looking at everybody else those are habits of rejection of self that's why you're seeking validation from other people that's why you're seeking love from other people so desperately and why you're so clingy and needy because you spend so much of your time trashing yourself and engaging in behavior that's abusive, honestly. Yeah. You want to know the secret to a happy relationship?

Yes. Be a happy person. And only you can make yourself happy. Look, I can make my husband a cup of coffee. I can make him have a phenomenal orgasm. I cannot make him happy. He has to figure out how to do that for himself. And nobody else can actually make you happy. He has to figure out how to do that for himself. And nobody else can actually make you happy. There are plenty of people that you know that are dating a nine and they feel

miserable inside because relationships magnify what's already in you. Yeah, there's the chemistry period where it's like, fuck yes, new person. This is incredible. But after that wears off and it does, what you will be left with is the hole that you walked into that relationship with inside you and a person who is incapable of filling it because they can't. You have to do that work internally. And one of the things that I want to say at a deeper level is there are many of you listening that have something that has happened to you in your past that you've survived, whether it's trauma, discrimination, poverty, abuse, it could be an abandonment, a number of things that has left you with stored trauma. And it has

left you with a narrative in your own mind that you are not worthy of love. You are not worthy. And you look at the things that you survived as evidence of that. And I'm here to tell you that the fact that you survived those things means you are worthy of love and you are worthy of happiness. And if you are breathing, you need to wake up every day and look yourself in the mirror and see a woman who is your co-pilot in life that needs you to wake the fuck up and start being kind to her and cheering for her and doing shit that actually makes her happy because she's trying hard. And there's a moment where you will realize, wow, I really am a kind of a jerk to myself. And wow, I've been punishing for myself for the stuff that other people did to me. And so if this is an awakening for you, seriously, do the deeper work to address the things that happened to you that were not your fault and take responsibility for the healing that you deserve.

Because you can heal and you can be happy, but it begins with starting to build a relationship back with yourself and understand that another person cannot heal you. Another person can distract you. Another person can make you laugh. Another person can make you come. Another person can keep you company, but they can't heal you. You will do that for yourself by pulling over, taking a deep breath, and taking an assessment of where are you happy

in your life, where are you not? What are the things that are working? What are the things that are not? And then literally you have the brains and the wherewithal within you to just take the next right step. Just walk toward, toward the things that feel like they're drawing you forward. And you don't need money to do that. You don't. Like there are free YouTube videos that you can watch on this stuff. There are people you can follow online that can start putting really good healing information. And so, you know, they did this big research study about of all behavior change, Alex, that anybody could engage in, from eating kale to exercising,

to spending more time with friends, to all of meditating. There is one behavior change, everybody, one habit that has the biggest impact on happiness and meaning. And that one behavior change is making it a habit to be kind to yourself. And it is the one habit we practice the least. You are relentlessly criticizing yourself. You are focused on what's going wrong. You are picking your body apart. Fucking knock it off.

It's time to be an adult. It's time to grab that steering wheel. It is time. I get so emotional because I like see how awful. You guys are so smart. You have so many resources at your hands. You have information that wasn't available when I was young. And I think about all the years that I suffered because I didn't know. And I'm here to tell you, you don't have to suffer. You can take the steps and do the work to change the direction of your life. Mic drop. Mel, I can't thank you enough. The Daddy gang is indebted to you at this point we're like

i feel like we just got a crash course on life and how to enjoy it so thank you so much amen mel i need a hug oh my god we did it we did it oh my god so. So good guys. Okay. Daddy gang. That is it for this week's mini mini episode. I would love to hear from you guys on which experts and topics you would like to hear and see on the upcoming mini episodes. Any books that you've read that you think would benefit the daddy gang, send them my way. Any therapists, really anyone that you guys would like to hear from I will reach out to and have on for you this is a giving podcast over here so daddy gang you know the oh well I actually will I can't leave without saying this there is a huge guest coming on call her daddy this Wednesday so make sure you guys go look at my Instagram because I will be announcing

the guest this Sunday. Okay. You guys know the motherfucking drill. I will see you fuckers this Wednesday.