On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 5 Ways To Reduce Helplessness in Difficult Times & How To Improve Your Relationship With The News

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on Calm How many times have you heard bad news first thing in the morning and then end up feeling bad for the rest of the day? Or how about reading a bad comment online and feeling restless about it? The news that we consume everyday can highly affect our mental health which can result in us feeling stressed and helpless. In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty shares facts of how to reduce the feeling of helplessness and how we can improve our relationship with the news.Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/ Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro00:28 The feeling of helplessness02:17 The Seligman Experiment07:24 Step #1: Choose when & where you consume news10:28 Step #2: Expose yourself to good news12:24 Focus on the things you’re doing well16:53 Step #3: Find your role in the community18:52 Step #4: Practice self-care21:58 Step #5: Pray for courageLike this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II? An opera singer who burned down an honorary to kidnap her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils, haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica podcast. Check it out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing.

I can't wait to share 10 incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty, and on my podcast on purpose,

I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Join the journey soon.

I read a study a few years ago that said we're exposed to more tragedy today in 24 hours than we were in our whole lifetime 25 years ago. Just think about that for a moment. years ago. Just think about that for a moment. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now, today I want to address a theme that I believe is on all our minds and all our hearts. When I've been speaking to people, whether it's on Zoom calls, meetings, bumping into you all on the streets, the word that I've heard repeatedly is helplessness. What I'm understanding from listening to you all on social media comments in stories is a feeling of a lack of control,

a lack of influence, and feeling like a sense of the world experiencing a downward spiral. Now raise your hands if you're with me, if you've been feeling that way not a long if you feel that way. I know a lot of people right now will be saying, thank you so much for talking about this, thank you for raising it. It could be what's happening in the political landscape, it could be what's happening in the economic landscape. It could be what's happening right around the corner from you potentially. And I wanted to address this theme of helplessness because I think often we understand or hopefully we understand that it's expected,

that it's normal, but we don't understand it deeply enough and we don't know what to do with it. But the first thing I definitely want you to understand is that it is not surprising that we feel this way. When we see the events, the decisions that are being made, they can be highly discouraging, they can be highly disheartening. So if you are feeling this way, I want you to know you're not alone and there's nothing wrong with you.

It's not like you're broken or you need to be fixed or some part of you needs to be mended or you'll mad at yourself for feeling that way. A lot of people are feeling that way. So the idea of learned helplessness actually comes from tests on animals, but we find that human conditioning is similar. So in 1965 Martin Seligman and his colleagues were doing research on classical conditioning

and this is the process by which an animal or human associates one thing with another. So in Seligman's experiment, they would ring a bell and then give a shock to a dog sadly. Now after a number of times, the dog reacted to the shock even before it happened when the bell rang. So it started to see that when the bell rang it was going to get a shock and it felt the experience of a shock even when just the bell rang and they did not give it a shock. Then something unexpected happened. Seligman put each dog into a large crate that was divided down the middle with a low fence. Now the dog could see and jump over the fence. It was pretty simple.

But the floor on one side of the fence was electrified, but not on the other side of the fence. Seligman put the dog on the side that was electrified. And when they gave that side a light shock, they expected the dog to jump to the non-shocking side of the fence. But instead, the dog just laid down. The dog had got so used to that feeling of helplessness and accepting what he was going through that it just sat there. And Seligman explained this condition as learned helplessness

or not trying to get out of a negative situation because the pastors taught you that you are helpless. Now, how many of you feel like that sounds like you? So today, learned helplessness is described by medical news today as a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation so they do not try, even when opportunities for change become available.

According to the American Psychological Association, learned helplessness occurs when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable, stressful situations then does not exercise control when it becomes available. And Professor Martin Seligman, one of the psychologists who did that study, he says that there's three key features, becoming passive in the face of trauma, difficulty learning that responses can control trauma, and it can increase

stress levels as well. I'm sure many of you listening to this can relate to a lot of it. How many of you now look at what we're seeing in the news or what we're seeing around of us and just go, well, I can't do anything about it. I feel super helpless. I'm completely out of control. And this is a repeated feeling every single year. I read a study a few years ago that said we're exposed to more tragedy today in 24 hours than we were in our whole lifetime 25 years ago. Just think about that for a moment. 25 years ago, the amount of negative input you were exposed to, today we're now exposed to that in 24 hours. So what you would be experienced in 70 years would be experienced in one day.

That is scary. And that is why we're so overwhelmed, why we feel so helpless. Before, you might have heard about a challenge in your own family, of course, maybe in your friends group, maybe about 25 people. And then maybe you started to hear about what was happening in your town, and maybe in your city, and then you started hearing about what was happening in your state. And then you started hearing about what was happening in your country. But now you know about pretty much everything happening in every city, every state, every country around the world.

Now, I'm not saying that being informed is an issue, but being overwhelmed by that much information, our brains have not caught up to know how to process that. No one has taught us the skills in how to process this feeling. Right? No one has taught us how to process the feeling of learned helplessness and overwhelming information. So today I want to share with you a few insights on how to do that.

The first thing I want to talk to you about is reducing what is called doom scrolling and reducing how much news you consume, the time of day you consume it, and where you consume it from. So let me speak to you a bit about that. The first is, let's talk about the time of day you consume it. You want to limit consuming news, first thing in the day or the last thing in the day. I'll tell you why. When you consume news, the last thing in the day, and it makes you feel nervous and anxious. Now what happens? You sleep with that energy. You're now having nervous and anxious sleep, which means you don't get that deep sleep. And then when you wake up, you're waking up with some of those negative thoughts. Now if you look at news right in the morning, what it does is it takes energy away from

you. If you want to start your morning in a boosted mood with a good attitude, trying to take on the world positively and you insert some bad news, you now feel set back. So that's the first thing. If you are going to consume the news, don't do it first thing in the morning or the last thing in night. Now the second thing is, how do you consume your news?

Are you consuming it with the TV on all the time? That's probably not healthy. Are you going to the right sources and are you taking it in in a way you like to consume it? For example, if you're watching news, you're not getting to reflect or think because the news is designed in such a way to give you stat after fact, after headline, after the lower third with the latest news update. So you don't get a chance to reflect whereas when you read the news,

you get gaps, you get to take pauses, you get to reflect, you get to think. Think about just how interesting that is, that you get so much more time when you read versus when you watch. Now, studies have linked poor mental health to news exposure during negative and traumatic events, such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters,

says ABC News. And it said that the more news a person consumes during and after these events, the more likely they are to suffer from depression, stress and anxiety. Now this was a study that ABC talks about back in 2014. 4,675 Americans were surveyed in the weeks following the Boston Marathon bombings and collected data on how much media they consumed. Participants who engaged with more than six hours of media coverage per day were nine times more likely to also experience symptoms of high acute stress than those who only watched

a minimal amount of news. And want you to take this news angle very, very seriously, you may think that being fully informed is helpful, but if it makes you helpless, then you can't comment it with the positive attitude. Now again, I'm not telling you to not be informed. I'm allowing you to get a mental break so that you can be informed effectively. The second thing that I want to encourage you to do is I want you to encourage that I want to encourage you to do, is I want you to encourage you to expose yourself to good news stories, to positive news stories.

One of the reasons why on my Instagram feed, I share so many of these joyful moments, whether it's a dog, whether it's someone in the military, reconnecting with a loved one, whether it's a child doing something wonderful. It's because for us to see beauty in the world and because our minds are trained to amplify the negative, we have to overexpose ourselves, but consciously to positive notes. Now notice how when you're scrolling through your comments, you will scroll past all the ones that say, you look amazing.

Oh, how beautiful. I love your dress. And then as soon as it gets to the one that says, oh, she's so pretentious. Oh, she is just trying to get likes. You obsess over it. And now you repeat it to a friend. That's the comment you talk about to a friend, oh, could you believe it?

That people are just so mean. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't talk about that. But did you give the same level of presence to the positive comments? Did you give the same level of intention to the positive comments? Right, we focus so much, we fixate so much on the one person who says that we look tired today.

Then the 99 people who say you look vibrant, you look energized, you look focused. I'm not saying only to listen to people who, you know, make us feel good or glorify us. But are we giving the positive, beautiful, joyful moments in our life and day, the same level of presence and attention as the negative ones. What I'm asking you to do is increase your presence and attention for the positive feedback you receive. So what I want you to do is today, if you're going through your comments or you're with your friends and someone says something positive to you, I want you to take it in. I want you to even ask a question.

If someone says to you, I've been loving your energy recently. Instead of saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just doing whatever. We try and say something modest. Ask why? Why is it? What have I done recently?

And then that person will say something like, well, you know, I just feel like you've been just trying to boost everyone up and look for the positive and you'll be like, oh, wait a minute, I am doing that. Right? I am doing that. I think what's so fascinating about this is that we don't even recognize what we're doing well because we don't take a moment to recognize what we're doing well.

We'll spend ages focused on what we're not doing well, but we won't even spend a moment on what we are doing well, but we won't even spend a moment on what we are doing well. So I want you to take that moment to not only focus on more positives externally, but also focus on positives internally. So if something bad happens in the news, we'll all talk about it online, but if something good happens on the news, we rarely share it in our stories, we rarely talk about it. But I see you all sharing the joyful moments that I post on Instagram. Because you believe it's there. But also amplify it within yourself. Talk about it within yourself. Have you ever had one bad moments spoil your entire day or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stressed or anxious over that big moment or difficult conversation?

You should try meditation and I know what you're thinking. Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing. But really, all the time you need to start your own mindfulness practice is 7 minutes a day, with the daily Jay, my daily guided meditations on the calm app. You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat, you can try it while you brush your teeth. Do the dishes or walk your dog. My goal in 7 minutes a day is to help you find calm and feel grounded in your busy world. Plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions

to get you closer to the life of your dreams. Here's what one of the listeners of the Daily J had to say about their meditation. Wow, I just had a super hard day at work and couldn't get my bosses comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily J which related to my work issues, opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going to calm.com forward slash J to get 40% of a calm premium membership. That's only $42 for the whole year for daily guided meditations. Experience the daily J only on calm.

Hey, it's Debbie Brown and my podcast deeply well is a soft place to land on your wellness journey. I hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness and mental health around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your journey. From guided meditations to deep conversations with some of the world's most gifted experts in self-care, trauma, psychology, spirituality, astrology, and even intimacy. Here is where you'll pick up the tools to live as your highest self. Make better choices. Heal and have more joy. My work is rooted in advanced meditation, metaphysics, spiritual psychology, energy healing, and

trauma-informed practices. I believe that the more we heal and grow within ourselves, the more we are able to bring our creativity to life and live our purpose, which leads to community impact and higher consciousness for all beings. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well is available now on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Big love, namaste. This is what it sounds like inside the box card. I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plung into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm going to end up. And I jump.

Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The Rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme.

You're either going to die or you can have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to the city of the rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Or cityoftherails.com. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet.

Oprog. with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it. Kobe Bryant. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Kevin Haw. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change.

Luminous Hamilton. That's for me being taken that moment for yourself each day, being kind to yourself because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more. If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty

on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. Now, the third one I want to mention is the feeling of scale. Often we feel helpless because of the scale of the issue. It's too big for us. Right, we feel too small. And I remember when I lived as a monk, we would walk on this beach in South India with the senior monks. And South India is known to be a fishing space. There's a lot of fish nets, a lot of fishing boats. And so often

what happens is that certain fishers escape the net, but then they end up on the shore and you see them struggling on the sand in the heat without the water and they're about to die. Now as monks obviously, we didn't eat fish and our monk teachers would encourage us to pick up the fish and put them back in the water. Now, as we did this, sometimes I would look at the amount of fish and think, well, we're going to save like 10 fish today, maybe 20. Like, what's the point? And our monk teaches would remind us that to us, it's just one fish, but to that one fish, it's its entire life. You may think I can only support or

help 10 people. I can only comfort five people. What is the point of me even trying that doesn't change the situation? And the really interesting thing about that is that if you've ever talked to someone that you've helped and they tell you you changed my life and they tell you that you helped me during my toughest time. To that person it's their entire being. So let's not get caught up in this game of scale and think oh if I can't save a million people there's no point. If I can't support a hundred people then I'm not significant because because to that one person it's their entire life experience. The next step is what Alex Bannon in his book, he talks about this concept, about three doors, and he talks about this in relation to trying to get inside a club. And what he says is that there's always three doors into a club.

You have the main entrance where everyone's lining up. Then you have the VIP entrance where all the, you know, high net worth individuals, connected individuals, influencers, whatever you want to call them line up. But then you have the third door. And the third door is the door on the side. It may have some security outside it. It's not the conventional door. It's probably not even an entrance.

You might have to like get through somehow, but most of us never anticipate that that door even exists. Learned helplessness is where we go, well, I'm not a person who can make a big difference. I'm not someone who can make a small difference. There's no difference I can make. Now he's talking about it in terms of success, I'm talking about it in terms of making a difference. Every single one of us can make a difference. And I think what's happened over time is that we've got less involved in our communities

or less involved around projects that we believe in. So we have to start taking action. We have to start finding roles in our community where we feel purposeful, where we feel impactful, whether it's helping a local charity, whether it's getting involved in a local movement, that gives you the sense of community belonging and impact that you're missing. You may not feel powerful alone, but I promise you, you will feel more power and influence and control in numbers. If you're part of a group that's trying to make a difference, you're going to feel more empowered. You can make a difference.

If you think you're doing it all alone, you will always feel helpless. Loneliness can create a lot of helplessness. The next step, I probably should have addressed earlier is the idea of self-care. When you're overexposed to the news, when you're underwhelmingly taking care of yourself, chances are that things trigger you more. Give you an example. How many of you when you get bad news if you've slept well feel like you deal with it better? Say yes. How many of you feel like when you've

eaten, you make quicker, faster decisions, or if you get a difficult decision, you make a better one. Say yes. When you're taking care of yourself, you're able to respond to trauma and triggers far better than when you're not taking care of yourself. And I think a lot of us feel that we should be going out, that we should be making a difference, but then we wallow in that pain rather than going, well, actually, if I'm strong and well placed, I can make a difference. I can actually have an impact. I will be not held back as much as I think I will. What also happens when we align forces with the community is that we feel a sense of support and encouragement which we need and a sense of belonging. Most of us feel alone when we feel helpless, we feel wow, I'm feeling terrible.

And when you look online, you often see people who don't agree with you, so you think, oh well no one agrees with me as well. And that's why community gives you a sense of that comfort. Now one of the rules of self-care is self-talk and often when we are seeing a challenge we often think well things are only getting worse. When you say a statement like things are only getting worse that's not factual or accurate and the emotionality of that statement makes it very hard to deal with. Or if you say things like it's all doomed, we're all doomed. When you have that mindset, it creates that environment, it makes you spot that more, right? It makes you aware of that pattern more and now that's all

you see. Now also you don't want to do the opposite, which is toxic positivity, where you're like everything's great, everything's amazing. But notice everything's wrong or everything's amazing are both not accurate statements. But when you understand you think, oh yeah, of course I was triggered. I didn't get enough sleep that night or I mean everyone seems to be triggered by this. So I'm not alone, which means maybe there's some of us that can do something about it. Okay, I'm really discouraged by this right now, but I'm going to find inspiration later to solve this. I'm struggling with this today, but I know that my meditation will help me.

Right, so you're creating a real conversation with yourself. And the best way to think about this is how do you talk to your friend when they're being helpless? You wanna talk to your mind in the same way. We have to learn to talk to our mind as if it's another person because it almost is. The mind is conditioned to have certain beliefs and certain patterns and therefore needs to be coached and guided out of that setting.

This is something we haven't talked a lot about on purpose and I'd love to see your feedback on this. I really do believe meditation or prayer or conversations out loud can be really, really useful. A lot of people pray and research has shown that prayer increases optimism and adaptability and it also improves some of our health challenges as well. Now how do you pray? Often we pray for our situation to change or our surroundings to change Pray for our situation to change or our surroundings to change. But instead, praying for the strength, praying for the courage, praying for the skills is a better long-term strategy. When we pray or meditate on hoping things will change

or hoping things will get better, we feel more out of control. When you feel your skills are improving, When you feel your skills are improving, when you feel your talents are improving, when you feel your resilience, your adaptability is growing, when your grit is growing, you feel a sense of control and navigation. For example, let's say you're driving a car

and the weather gets really bad. You can either pray for it to stop raining or you could have skilled up in driving in the rain. Which one makes you feel better? Knowing how to drive in the rain is far more giving you confidence than hoping it will stop raining. When you try and find confidence in things you can't control,

you actually lose it. But when you find your confidence in things you can't control, you actually lose it. But when you find your confidence in things you can control, it's always with you. So we can pray for no difficult times, or we can pray for courage, for confidence, for skills, we can actually work on developing the skills. Often when I'm in a bookstore, what I do is I ask myself, what skill do I need right now that I don't ask myself, what skill do I need right now that I don't have? Right, what skill do I need right now

that I don't have? Maybe I've been struggling with stress, maybe I've been struggling with leading my team, maybe I've been struggling with emotions. Let me read about that. Let me listen to a podcast about that. Let me ask an expert about that. Right, let me absorb myself in actually upskilling so that now when I'm in that situation, which is not surprising, I will actually have the tools to overcome it. I really hope that this episode helps you today because I want you to shift from a place of helplessness to a feeling of making a difference. I want you to shift from a place of helplessness to knowing you do matter, that you can make things better.

And that you and me and all of us have lived through a lot of incredibly difficult situations. I'm with you and I'm wishing you all the best. I'm so grateful that we're building a hopeful, courageous, powerful community here at On Purpose. Thank you for listening. I'll see you soon. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable, now more than ever. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One-E-Feed podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests

who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression, and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The one you feed has over 30 million downloads and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple Podcasts. Oprah Magazine named this is one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself.

The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better. It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations with world-renowned experts and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Jemma Spig, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if you could tell the whole truth about your life,

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like Abbermote, Rachel Cargol and so many more. It's okay that you're not okay. New episodes each and every Monday, available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.