The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 41 - The Reason You’re Feeling Stuck: Mel Robbins

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Mel Robbins is the author of The Five Second Rule, a business woman, a life coach, and a sensation in the world of self improvement. Mel also runs a seven figure business which provides courses in self-improvement and life coaching. One of the most sought after motivational speakers in the world, Mel managed to turn around her boring, grey life into one that takes her all over the world meeting all types of inspiring people. At a point in her life Mel was really struggling with depression, couldn’t get out of bed in the morning and generally just felt stuck in her life. Since then she’s been on a journey to understand why she felt like that and what actions needed to be taken to get her out of that place. Today Mel uses those experiences of being in a dark place and dives into the reasons we might feel stuck in certain circumstances. She brings it down to one fundamental reason and what you can do practically to get yourself out of a situation that isn’t serving you. Episode 108 - https://g2ul0.app.link/4h2xVz6KWmb Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Mel: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ https://twitter.com/melrobbins

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you that listen to this show let's continue when you look back on the person you are now and the tremendous wisdom that you've just demonstrated, just speaking to me just then, do you recognize the Mel that couldn't get out of bed, was feeling depressed,

couldn't find, you know, described herself as being lazy? Do you recognize that person? And what's at the very essence in the engine room that drove that change? Was it passion? Was it finding your calling? Because I know you weren't this person.

You couldn't have been this person. Well, dude, it's also been 31 years. I mean, come on. I've like basically been changing for as long as you've been alive, for crying out loud. alive for crying out loud. And also human beings are designed to grow. But not everybody seems to because you have, they don't understand being stuck. Yeah. Interesting. See, being stuck is one of the most universal feelings of the human experience and nobody understands what it is. What is it?

Oh, it's amazing when you hear this. It's like, pew. So remember how we've talked about how the human beings have this crazy amount of natural intelligence wired into us. And inside your body, we've talked about one of the signals, anxiety. Anxiety is a signal that means pay attention. That's why you go into fight or flight, you're in an alert mode, Okay. That's all it is. It's a signal, an alarm system, and your body has a sophisticated system of signals and alarms, and they're all tied to fundamental needs. Anxiety is tied to your fundamental need for safety. That's why it's a signal.

Let's talk about your most important fundamental needs. Let's go right back to psychology 101, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You need food or else you die. So when you need food, what is the signal that your body sends you? Hunger. When you need water, what is the signal? Rest. When you need air, yeah, you're catching your breath. When you need rest, what do you feel? Tired. When you need connection, what do you feel? Lonely.

Human beings are designed to grow. When you stop growing, what do you feel? Stuck. Yeah. I was going to say stagnant, but I guess stuck is, yeah. Or stagnant. Yeah. Or still. Trapped, I guess stuck is, yeah. Or stagnant. Yeah. Or still.

Trapped, I guess, is, yeah. Yeah. Feeling stuck is a signal that you've stopped growing. That's it. And when most people feel stuck, since they don't understand that it's tied to a fundamental need for growth, we believe it's an existential crisis and we blow up our lives. For most human beings, what actually will get you feeling like you're not stuck is having something in the future that you're looking forward to. Or taking a class where you're learning something or changing a

routine so that you try a new class at the gym. Learning anything gets you back in touch with a fundamental need. It makes you start to feel like things are moving. And from that place of feeling a little bit more empowered, you'll be able to make better decisions about what big things need to change in your life. And you would also describe that as a moment where your life has like an absence of purpose. I think about various examples, Olympians that come back from the Olympics and they have an 80% chance of depression after they've, you know.

And then I think about people who have lost purpose in their lives for whatever reason, been fired from their jobs or whatever. Or people that are in jobs that are, you know, absent of purpose completely. That feeling of being stuck. And then we talked also about the importance of goals and ambitions going forward. When humans don't have that forward ambition

or that thing to look forward to in the future and their current situation lacks purpose, they become very psychologically disorientated, would be the way I'd describe it. I have a different take on purpose. I think everybody's purpose is exactly the same. What is that? I think your purpose is to share your true self,

to be fully seen. And for the Olympian, when you are training and you're in that arena, that is an experience of being seen. And for most people that are lacking purpose, they feel profoundly invisible. And being seen fundamentally comes back to whether or not you even see yourself. And when you start to feel empowered and you start to see yourself and meet you where you are, what happens is every day that you're able to stand with yourself to accept where you are to give yourself the compassion to give yourself the support and the love and the respect and the worthiness that you deserve you're going to go out into the world and share more of

yourself that olympic athlete is sharing more of themselves. And so I think our purpose in life is to come back home to ourselves, to reconnect with ourselves, and to empower ourselves to go back out into the world and share our stories and share our experiences and share our full selves with the rest of the world. From a prehistoric standpoint, let's say, because I always try and check things against the caveman of my ancestral beings, the idea of being seen when I was, my ancestors 10,000 years ago, what kind of role does that play in from a survival perspective?

Well, I mean, I'm freestyling here. So my suspicion is, if you were not within your mom's eye view, your ass was going to get eaten. And so I think that, you know, if you wandered off as a kid, you were in danger. If you weren't hunting with the pack, you were in danger. And so being seen means safety. And that's why when you look at psychological safety, there are three fundamental needs. The need to be seen, the need to be heard, and the need to be celebrated for the unique person that you are. Those are your three fundamental emotional needs when it comes to feeling safe and whole as a human being. And most people's experience by the time they are done with childhood is they feel invisible. They feel like nobody gets them. And they feel completely disconnected and

unloved or not celebrated.