The Real Reason You’re Exhausted: How To Gain Control of Your Time & Your Life

Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Is it just me, or is there something about this time of year that suddenly makes you feel like life is on overdrive?

Mel Robbins: You know, I've thought about this a lot because I feel like I'm already a very busy person, but I feel like I'm hyperventilating and sprinting through the day. And I think I nailed what it is. It's that phenomenon that right as this time of year hits, all of a sudden it's Christmas decorations. It's Thanksgiving stuff. Like everything's everywhere. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm behind. I'm not even ready yet. I haven't even thought about this stuff. Holy cow.

Mel Robbins: And here's what I want to do today. I want to take a deep breath with you because if I'm being honest with you, I don't just feel this crazy busyness this time of the year. I struggle with being too busy all year long. And so I would love to calm down. I would love to get control of this. I would love to slow down.

Mel Robbins: And I've called in a heavy today to give me a coaching session that you need too about everybody's addiction to being busy, to looking at their phone, to running to this thing, to doing that thing, to shopping for this thing, to running there, to doing there, get the Christmas tree, go over here. And what you're going to learn is this is way bigger than what's on your holiday list, what you need to do this weekend. It's way busier than things going at work. This actually has to do with your body. And so today you're going to learn not only how to understand busyness and this addiction to busyness, more importantly, you and I are going to learn how to heal it.

Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel Robbins, and I am so glad that you're here with me. I always love spending time with you. If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. If you're listening to this episode because somebody that you love sent this to you, do not be offended, okay? You're not the only one that struggles with busyness and feeling overwhelmed and feeling exhausted all the time.

Mel Robbins: And around this time of year, my busyness goes into overdrive. I just suddenly feel like I'm behind. I haven't bought gifts for people. I don't even know what I'm cooking for dinner tonight. So how on earth could I possibly know what I should be doing for the holidays? The work starts to pile up because we're getting into the end of the year and Q4. And so it's just like you're on the treadmill of life. Everybody's doing the best they can. And this time of year, it's as if somebody walks over and is like, let's move you from a nice fast walk to about a speed of 11 miles per hour, right? And you're like, oh my gosh, I hate it.

Mel Robbins: Don't you hate the fact that everybody around you is busy? Like just stop and think about how hard it is to make plans with your friends. Have you been on a text chain recently where you're like, oh my gosh, I miss you. I love you. You know, I'm gonna give a huge shout out to my friend, Maxine, because my friend, Maxine, she is so good about pinging me and staying in touch and she will throw out a date and I'm like oh man I'm down in Boston taping and then I'll throw out a date and she's like oh boy you know I'm doing this thing for work and I'm going to be gone too and then next you know it's four months from now and then we nail a date and then four months from now comes and something else has happened and now both of us have something else going on and we can't take time for a walk. Aren't you sick of this? Like really sick of this.

Mel Robbins: And the reason why I wanted to talk to you about this is because busyness is one of those things that sneaks up on you. It's like Lyme disease. You didn't even know the tick bit you. And next thing you know, you can't get out of bed. And you're like, what the hell just happened? How is it that I go through life hyperventilating and my to-do list never ends and I'm not really sleeping well because I'm thinking about all the things that I didn't do.

Mel Robbins: And you want to know else this shows up? Last night, I got home and I've been on the road promoting the Let Them Theory book. Thank you, thank you, thank you for ordering it, for supporting it. And so I get home. I've been on a business trip for a week. The dogs are jumping up and down. We're all excited. I haven't seen Chris in a while. We sit down. And instead of sitting and talking, what do we do? Well, he turns on the TV and I open up my phone. And then I put my phone down. I'm like, hi, so how was your week? What'd you do today? And we start talking and then he starts watching TV. And what did I do? I crack open my laptop. And Chris reaches over and goes, boop, and shuts it. And goes, I thought we were just going to hang out.

Mel Robbins: And what I noticed in that moment is something that I know you struggle with. You can't do nothing. The ability to just sit and be is really hard. I need help with this. I need to understand why the internal engine inside me gets revved up so quickly. And you need help with this too. Because if you can't stand in a line at a store without staring at your phone and occupying the time, or if you're like me, where you're just constantly running from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, you don't even know what you're doing.

Mel Robbins: And when I moved to Southern Vermont, I had this realization. We don't have any big box stores where I live. And I had basically nowhere to go except for this general store that was built in the 1800s that is absolutely amazing, but it's not exactly a target. And I realized when I moved to a place where all of the things that I kept myself busy doing were not here, how addicted I was to literally being busy doing nothing. I would, you know, be bored at home, dart over to the grocery store. I have food in my pantry. Why am I going to the grocery store? I would dart on over to the mall. I've got clothes. Why am I going to the mall? I would dart on over to a coffee shop. I can make coffee at home. Why am I going to a coffee shop? Because it is a very serious issue and it's an addiction to being busy.

Mel Robbins: The first step is truly understanding what's happening inside of you. And just like that little tick that bites you and it turns into Lyme, how this has gone undetected and spun out of control. You know, one of my favorite commencement addresses is by the late bestselling author, David Foster Wallace. And in 2005 at Kenyon College, he gave this address that was later turned into the book, This is Water. And he tells this story about two little fish swimming down the, you know, wherever they're swimming in the water. And this older fish swims by him and says, hey boys, how's the water? And the little fish look at the older fish and go, water? What's water? And the point of the story is this. It's hard to see the thing that you're swimming in because it's all around you. Just like it's hard to know when that tick bit you, that Lyme is forming.

Mel Robbins: And I believe that busyness is the water we're all swimming in right now. And none of us know it. And that's why we never see each other. It's why we cancel plans. It's why we stay and work late and work over the weekends instead of seeing our friends. It's why we don't make time for what's important. We don't even understand what's actually happening. And today, you and I are going to get a masterclass in what is happening and recognizing the water that we're swimming in so that we can truly decide how we want to feel and how we want to move through our days.

Mel Robbins: And so I called my friend, Dr. Scott Lyons, and I'm going to tell you about him in a minute, but I reached out to him because I recently saw something that he wrote all about this epidemic of an addiction to stress and busyness. And so first thing I did is I went to Google and I looked up the definition of addiction. And an addiction is any pattern of behavior that you engage in that is harming your life. That's what an addiction is. This pattern of behavior that you engage in repeatedly, even though it's harming your life. And when I thought about it that way, I was like, I guess this is a pattern of behavior because I am always busy and it has a negative impact on my life. And I'm sure you are now thinking about it too and thinking, wait a minute, being busy all the time isn't helping me. Being stressed all the time isn't helping me. I've never thought about it in this context.

Mel Robbins: And so I reached out to my buddy, Dr. Scott Lyons, and his resume is crazy long. So I'm just gonna kind of cut to the short because I know you're too busy to hear a long resume. That's a joke, but it's also true. He's a medical doctor. He has a PhD in psychiatry. He developed this somatic stress release process that is now taught in 20 countries and it restores your biology to a state of calm and peace. It's really unbelievable. He's a best-selling author. And so I reached out to him. And he was actually out at Karpala with all of these incredible experts and PhDs in holistic medicine. And I caught him in between sessions he was leading out there on the topic we're talking about.

Mel Robbins: And so what you're about to hear is a conversation that Dr. Lyons and I had. I want you to hang with me and listen all the way to the end, because as Dr. Lyons and I go deeper and deeper and deeper and give you more and more examples, you're going to be like, holy cow, I had no idea how deep this went and what this was actually about, which is why I can't wait for you to hear this. Because I love looking at topics in a whole new way, because when you truly understand something differently and more deeply, it gives you the power to change how you show up. And that's what I'm super excited about.

Mel Robbins: So as you're listening to Dr. Lyons, you may hear a little background noise because Dr. Lyons is literally at a conference teaching people that have paid to be there, but he jumped out and made the time for you and me. And so here's what I want to do. I am going to play the very best things that he said. And he said a lot of amazing things so that you can learn from Dr. Lyons. And then in between each one of the things that he's teaching you, I'm going to unpack it a little bit to make sure you really get it and you know how to apply it to your life.

Mel Robbins: So the very first thing that I asked him was, how do you know, Dr. Lyons, that you are struggling with an addiction to stress? This is what he had to say.

Dr. Scott Lyons: So I think some of the more common ways we recognize that people are addicted to stress, addicted to drama, addicted to busyness is they are constantly doing. They are in constant motion. They are in the constant state of anxious, even though they may not realize it, other people can see it. And so you'll notice it's in the language they use. They're making mountains out of mole hills, they're venting, they're gossiping, they're overscheduling. It's always about the doing, it's taking up space where they are not being in the space within themselves. It's an avoidant technique and it is a form of control.

Dr. Scott Lyons: So whether it's an avoidance of their emotions, whether it's an avoidance of intimacy and relationships, whether it's an avoidance of having to deal with things in their life, how are you using that nether version of busyness to keep avoiding, should be out of touch with the things that need to be held, seen, supported and felt within yourself? What are you avoiding in yourself still? Especially with people who are really attached to being in stress. And I know that sounds so wild because who would want to be attached? Who would want to be connected all the time to a sense of stress? But when we go into the science of it, you'll realize we all actually do that.

Mel Robbins: I don't know about you, but I really relate to the always in the doing. I feel like I am a doing machine. But did you hear the word that he said? Avoidance. That there is a huge connection between being stressed out all the time and avoiding something. Massive undeniable link between having to go here and there and there and there and be busy and take it all on and avoiding something.

Mel Robbins: And, you know, I knew that I was going to talk to Scott. And so I looked into some of the research around what is it about productivity and doing and feeling like you got a lot to do when it comes to the research. And I found this really interesting thing that Stanford professor Albert Bandura in 1977 suggested that completing tasks fulfills your intrinsic human need to feel competent. It's why when you check the boxes on your to-do list, you feel rewarded. That makes a lot of sense, right?

Mel Robbins: And so naturally, my next question to Dr. Lyons was, well, isn't being productive a good thing? I mean, aren't we supposed to get things done? And I realize this is kind of one of those balances of when is enough enough. But if you also think about it, being super busy and being productive makes you successful, doesn't it? Dr. Lyons has a different take on this because based on the research, there's a secret about busy people and how much they're actually getting done.

Dr. Scott Lyons: Even if they're busy, they're most likely not getting things done, at least not in the expanse of their life. Maybe it's one particularly focused thing, like, oh, I'm really good at filling my schedule, or I'm really good at this one aspect of work, and they really hyper-focus on and they obsess. And yet all the rest of their life, their house, their apartment, their bedroom is a mess. Nothing else is getting done except the thing that they're choosing or they've chosen to hyper-focus on to avoid themselves or the feelings underneath or their relationships or the fear and vulnerability of intimacy.

Mel Robbins: I don't know if you're sitting there and going, did Dr. Lyons come into my house? Because it's true. From the outside, it probably looks like Mel Robbins is a duck that is just on the surface of the water and she is smoothly going through the water. She got it all together. In fact, as I sit here thinking about my day right now, I don't even know what the heck I'm going to cook for dinner. And now my heart's starting to race. Like I'm sitting here doing a podcast episode. I haven't gone grocery shopping in two days. I don't know what I'm going to do for dinner. Now I'm starting to get freaked out about that to-do list.

Mel Robbins: And so I think it's a very interesting thing to consider. What is all the busyness about? Why are we so busy? And I'll be the first to admit that I definitely am addicted to this kind of adrenaline and this feeling like I got to be up to something. And the other thing that I thought was interesting is the research that he's done that shows that the people that are so busy and they're so busy and they get so, aren't actually getting things done. And so I wanted to dive a little deeper and ask him, if this is truly an addiction, none of us want to be stressed. None of us want to be this busy. I mean, the point of life is to enjoy it and live it. It's not to run through your to-do list until you collapse into bed. What's actually going on underneath the surface? And this is what Dr. Lyons had to say.

Dr. Scott Lyons: When you like go to the underneath surface like what underneath the pattern. What underneath the survival strategy. And I think about this quote or this proverb that says a child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

Mel Robbins: That hit. That hit. If you have any ounce of anger, that hit for you. Because here's what I kind of got out of that. That there's also this like self-righteous feeling around the busyness, which creates this anger when it's not appreciated or reciprocated or recognized. Dr. Lyons, will you say that again?

Dr. Scott Lyons: A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. Meaning, what will we do to get the thing that's so deeply missing in us? And that's the most surprising thing about addiction and drama. You can get so distracted and see like, okay, that person's always busy. They're always making challenges that aren't unnecessary. Their emotional responses are totally disproportionate to what's actually happening in the environment. We all recognize that and we can go, okay, that's just who they are. They're a drama queen. They're addicted to the stress. They're addicted to the chaos. They're just constantly of chaos and crisis.

Dr. Scott Lyons: But the reality is underneath the surface of that is a deep wound that is desperately trying to be filled, that is desperately trying to be avoided simultaneously. And that's the tension here. That is such a unique tension of going, I want you. I want connection. I want to be less alone. I want to be healed. And at the same time, that connection, that intimacy, the techniques or the tools of healing feel so dangerous. And so they're just running from themselves consistently as a way to survive and burning down the village to try to get any sense of sensation and experience aliveness because the numbness it takes to avoid that underlying pain is so significant that you have to do something extreme to feel alive above that.

Mel Robbins: Well, that's a pretty dark way to describe busyness. I mean, but I did feel like he was talking to me because if you're truly somebody who feels on edge all the time, you don't ask for help. Like you're either like, I got it, I got it, I got it. Like how many times have you said yourself, it's just easier if I do it. Or if you're like my husband, Chris, who is definitely more introverted and his demeanor is more calm, he just assumes that he should do it himself. He's not used to getting the help. And so he never asked for it.

Mel Robbins: And Dr. Lyons keeps going deeper and deeper into this because on the surface, it's busyness. On the surface, it's performance. On the surface, it's perfectionism. On the surface, it's this sense that you just can't screw up. You can't drop a ball, that something bad is going to happen if you don't take care of it, that everybody is on your shoulders, that, you know, you got to take care of everyone else. It's up to you. And I think most of us feel that. But Dr. Lyons is talking about the fact that this busyness and this inability to just be still and just be quiet or just do good enough or to let a ball drop, it's actually a sign of something way deeper.

Mel Robbins: Now, I need to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our sponsors, but Dr. Lyons was just getting warmed up. We're just scratching the surface on this thing. We've got a lot of tools coming. We still have to unpack what's going on. Don't go anywhere. I'll be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us.

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Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel Robbins, fellow addicted to busyness friend of yours. I hope you shared this with everybody in your life who's overwhelmed and exhausted and cancels plans and works weekends and takes on extra shifts. I'm thinking about all my nurses out there, thinking about my teachers. I'm thinking about first responders. I'm thinking about all the single moms out there who are taking it all on and single dads. You know who you are, and you have another way to look at this, thanks to Dr. Lyons.

Mel Robbins: And so what I wanted to understand from Dr. Lyons next is what makes it an addiction, right? Because I had always read that addiction has to do with neuropathways and it has to do with the dopamine cycle and it has to do with the way that your nervous system and all that stuff is firing and wiring together. And so I was like, what does that have to do with stress?

Dr. Scott Lyons: There's a lot of really interesting research that we can unpack. And it all comes back to why any addiction? And Gabor Mate is this brilliant physician and addiction specialist. And he says, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And that is the lead in for understanding what's happening in the brain. You know, we register emotional and physical pain in the exact same way. It's not discerned. A heartbreak is significant pain. An abandonment wound is registered in the same way that when we break an arm. And it's important to understand that because our basic human nature is to get relief from suffering.

Mel Robbins: Okay, when he said that, I'm like, okay, I got it. Because I certainly have been the kind of person that after a hard day of work, I'll pour gin and tonic or a Manhattan. It's almost like I'm pulling a lever in my brain to signal I can relax now, right? If you pick up a cigarette or a joint or a vape pen or you put in that Zim that everybody's chewing, why do you do that? Because you're seeking relief from something. If you're seeking relief from something, that means you're trying to soothe your pain. And that means that there's something going on deeper inside of you and you're using something outside of you to try to cover up this thing. That's the basis of addiction and as weird as it sounds, I've never thought about stress as some sort of pain release. I mean, stress causes me a lot of pain. It causes the people in my life a lot of pain when I'm stressed out. It's exhausting. It wears me out. And so I don't really understand, at least not at this point, how is this an addiction in the sense of how we think about all addictions? This is what he had to say.

Dr. Scott Lyons: And we have this whole physiological process called endorphins. Endorphins are those things that are releasing into your body to help you feel more pleasure, to feel pain relief, and emotional warmth, actually. And it makes us feel more connected to each other. And those chemicals in our brain and our body are so significant for helping us relieve some of that underlying suffering. And if we've had childhood wounds or trauma, like most of us, yeah, we're running on a continuous process of unprocessed trauma that it constantly elicits a sense of pain. It's in our brain we're going, we are in constant pain. That is being registered. And so understanding that we are in constant search for the things that could relieve us from that pain.

Mel Robbins: Now, when he started to explain it that way, I immediately thought of a moment in my life where I was absolutely miserable. I'm going to take you back like 30 some years. When I was in my third year of law school, I hated my life. I hated myself. I did not know what I wanted to do. I just knew I did not want to be a lawyer. I had no idea how I was going to pay off the debt. I had no idea what kind of job I was going to get. I was in a really toxic situation in two relationships. The guys didn't know about each other. I'm not proud to tell you this. I'm just telling you that this was the state of my life. Peak dysfunction. I've never been to a law school reunion. Now you know why. I do not like the person that I was back then. I did not know I had unresolved trauma. I did not know and was not being treated for anxiety. I did not know that I was really, really struggling internally. And so I just took it out on everybody and myself and everything around me.

Mel Robbins: Let me tell you what my day was like. The alarm would go off. My eyes would open. And the first thought was self-hatred. And I hate my life. And I can't believe I'm still waking up in what feels like a nightmare. I'd then reach for a cigarette and light that cigarette up. I'd roll out of bed. I'd pour a cup of coffee. I'd race around. I'd be running late. I'd hop in the car. I'd drive to Dunkin' Donuts, even though I was late, right? This is addiction to busyness. You think that you can like literally bend time. I get to class. I run in late. I sit in the back. I smell like cigarettes. I'm 10 minutes late. I'm like pig pen and it's Snoopy, you know, with the stuff flying around. And I've got a big, big gulp of black coffee with me, which is great for the anxiety when they throw that on an empty stomach. But little did I know at the time.

Mel Robbins: And I would literally go from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. I would be at the library and I could barely focus and study. And so now it's starting to make sense to me. I was super busy, busy doing nothing, but destroying my life and causing pain to myself and spinning my wheels. And then guess what? I would drink a bottle of wine and go to bed and I would wake up and do the whole damn thing again. I was absolutely stuck. And I knew I was miserable.

Mel Robbins: But here's the thing about being unhappy or just having the sense that things aren't right or they're not aligned or not really liking where you are or not knowing what the next right step is. As long as you keep busy, you don't have to think about it. As long as you are running from one thing to the next, you don't have to have the hard conversation. As long as you are darting from this and darting from that, you got a to-do list. You don't have to deal with the things that bother you. And I think that's part of the reason why everybody's always on their phones, because if you have a random moment right now, you actually have to be with yourself.

Mel Robbins: And that's what Dr. Lyons is talking about. He's talking about this inability to sit with ourselves. To be connected to ourselves. Because the truth is when you're doing something, you think you're doing good. When you're doing something, you think it's the doing that brings you value. When you're doing something and performing and heaven forbid you do it well, then you get the praise, then you get the love. But if you have to sit quietly with yourself, I mean, have you ever heard those reports of people that go to these silent meditation retreats and have a psychotic break, that's because they have to sit with themselves. And we're all running from ourselves at some level. We're all running from our thoughts on some level.

Mel Robbins: And yes, you have to take care of the kids and the dog and you don't want to get fired from work. But there's a way to downshift and unplug from this internal thing that keeps you from just connecting with yourself and perhaps facing what you're running from. And that's what Dr. Lyons says is the core reason why there's an epidemic of an addiction to busyness and stress. Because nobody wants to do the internal work. Nobody wants to look internally at what's not working. I'd rather just be out here and post the nice photos and post the filter and make y'all think like I got it going on. As long as I'm busy, you can't catch me. As long as you're running, you can outrun this stuff. The fact is you can't. And that's what Dr. Lyons is saying this conversation is about. It's about the power of doing the real work and facing what this is truly about.

Mel Robbins: And, you know, as I'm having these epiphanies that I share with him and now I'm sharing with you, he's like, well, that's not even the half of it, Mel. It's not just that this is something that's wired in your brain and you start to crave the distraction, right, from stillness. There's a whole nother mechanism around busyness and this kind of chronic state of stress and having to do something all the time, whether it's looking at your phone or running the errand or logging on to work again or jumping on this or doing that or saying yes or overscheduled. And that's dopamine. Check this out.

Dr. Scott Lyons: One of the other components of addiction is dopamine, right? It's a neurotransmitter associated with reward and motivation and pleasure again. Notice how we're talking about those two neurotransmitters are about pleasure seeking or moving away from pain. And that's so essential. And even busyness. Yeah, I'm doing more and more and more and more. I'm doing all these social events. I'm doing all these work activities. I am doing and the doing keeps me away from the feeling. And so I get another dopamine hit because the feeling that I would be feeling if I could is likely the things I've been avoiding for a long time. And that's painful.

Mel Robbins: I really want you to ask yourself, what are you avoiding? Like imagine if I could press pause on your life and you had to just sit with yourself for a week. What would come up? What would you want to work on? What are the conversations that you need to have? And as he was kind of going deeper and deeper, I gotta be honest with you, I really started to look at my own life. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she was asking how things were going at work and I'm like, things have been crazy busy because I have this new book, The Let Them Theory coming out. We're in the middle of the promotion and plus the podcast has just been really incredible and we've hired a bunch of new people. And so there's a lot going on. And she looked at me and she's like, Mel, you've always got something going on. You're always on the move. And I stopped to think and I was like, you're right.

Mel Robbins: And I have a lot of like energy about it. But when I think about my husband, he's always got something going on. Always. He just seems to be a little bit calmer about it. But there always something that he is doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. It like every single second of our lives has become scheduled. And then the second that the day is over we both fall asleep on the couch. I bet you can relate to that.

Mel Robbins: And here's the thing. It's not just a coincidence that you feel busier than ever, because this has been building for a long time. And what Dr. Lyons is teaching you is that this is actually probably your default state at this point because of the fact that you're used to it, the fact that you get this dopamine hit every time you check a box and you move to this and you do that and do the other thing and you're exhausting yourself and he had something else to add to this which I feel like almost every expert you feel this way, it's like it's your childhood, like really? Is there a different answer ever?

Mel Robbins: It's your childhood. This has been something going on since your childhood. You've been running away from this stuff since your childhood. Well, I'm not the expert in this, but Dr. Lyons is. And that's exactly where he went next.

Dr. Scott Lyons: So if you think about maybe some of your earliest environments, the ways in which you became familiar with your family, with the people around you, with the environment, and we call that the baseline experience.

Mel Robbins: Yeah.

Dr. Scott Lyons: So if I grew up in a chaotic household like I did, where there was a lot of physical abuse and alcohol and drugs. That was my baseline way of knowing how the world works. And there's a way in which I'm going to find that I'm going to seek it out consistently. You know, we can think of Freud talked about as repetition compulsion. We keep going towards the familiar in hopes that we can eventually find something else. That's why we keep entering into these same relationships over and over again, hoping that next one will be a better person. But the reality is until we've addressed the why we're seeking those people unintentionally, we're going to keep repeating the same pattern. So chaos is a familiar hell. And we will always chase the familiar hell because anything else feels like an attack to our nervous system.

Mel Robbins: I just want to highlight that line. We keep going toward the familiar, hoping to find something else. I'm very familiar with running from one thing to another. And you want to know something sickening? I'm just laughing at myself here. Because what else are you going to do? Is that I have said, probably for the last three years at work, it's going to get better in about two months. I promise you things are going to slow down really soon. We are working really hard here to get into a rhythm, to have systems, things are going to get predictable. You want to know what's happened? Things have gotten more chaotic for crying out loud. And I think I am partially to blame. If I'm constantly moving toward more, more, more, more, more and I expect it to become less, less, less, less, less, then I'm part of the problem.

And one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation with you is because I think oftentimes you don't think you have a choice. You think if only I can just get through this workload, once I just get this paper done, once I just get through this month or I pay off this bill or we have this issue resolved, then I will be able to slow down. Then I can bring a state of calm. And here's what I'm going to tell you and why I wanted you to listen to Dr. Lyons today. It's because the things around you and outside of you and the chaos at work or the stuff that you're dealing with, with your aging parents or the breakup that you're going through, that is all happening outside. It is possible, according to Dr. Lyons, for you and I to be in very stressful and demanding situations and actually flip the switch and not add to it. That you can have stress happening outside of you and not trigger the addiction to stress inside of you, that you can have a lot that you are responsible for, because I know you're responsible for a lot and doing a lot, without tipping it into an addiction of always being on and always saying yes and always revving the engine at a super high level, that there's another way to go through this.

And part of the issue with why it's very hard to recognize this, let's go back to David Foster Wallace. What's water? I'm swimming in water? I don't even know I'm swimming in something. I thought I was just like moving my fins and moving around. But this thing is water? Recognizing that this is how you're wired right now. It's in and it's out. It's busyness and stress. It's always doing, doing, doing, doing. And what's funny is every generation sees it in the younger generation. Because I bet you see it in your kids. Oh, they're always on their phones. They're always online. They always have to be texting. They always have to be with the TV. They always have to be this. My mom's like, she's always working. She's always traveling. She never has time. She can't call. She's busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. And I'm sure that my grandmother said to my mom, oh, she's always at a retail store. She's always running the service league. She's always playing tennis. She's always with Mahjong. She's always doing this. She's always doing that. This is not unique to the younger generation. Let's water. See you're swimming in it. So you don't see it.

If you can't make a date with your friends until sometime three months from now, this is a problem. If you collapse at the end of the night and beat yourself up for the things you didn't do, this is a problem. If you are constantly feeling like you got to get it right, you got to get it right, or something terrible is going to happen, you're going to get fired. This is a problem for you. If you need a drink at the end of the night to turn your brain off, this is a problem for you. If you can't stand in a line and not have to stare at your phone, this is a problem for you. If you can't turn off the news at night, you just sucked into the headlight. This is a problem for you. And Dr. Lyons is saying there's a better way to live and move through life recognizing that this is something that you do automatically is the first step. And he also had something a little bit more profound about why it's important to recognize that this is actually something that you're dealing with. This is what he had to say.

Dr. Scott Lyons: I think it's really important to recognize that we contribute to our own suffering. And that's such a hard thing to hear because when the world feels like it's against us and we're in that place of victimhood, which so many of us do, that is one of the essential qualities of this addiction to stress, that the world is coming at us, that it's coming for us, but it's not with us, that sense of being alone. And that is that child who's burning down the village to feel the warmth, to feel that comfort, to feel supported, to fill the gap of those underlying needs, childhood needs that were missed.

Mel Robbins: Now, every time he brought up childhood, I'm like, okay, let's not go there. Like I'm annoyed now. Does this have to do with my child? I don't understand why everything has to go back to childhood. When you first said the child who does not feel the warmth of the village burns it down. I'm like, ooh, get it. Got it. That's that. Turn my back on you and burn it down. Cause now I'm angry. Cause I did all this stuff for you. And now I'm not getting back what I expected from you. That is that duty and obligation and transactional way to go through life. Do not want that, but I can relate to that, okay? But I literally was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want this to go back to childhood because how does my stress as an adult have to do with childhood? How does what I'm avoiding right now and my inability to connect to myself have to do with childhood? So, because now I'm getting like, I want a different answer, Dr. Lyons. He doubled down. Here's what he said.

Dr. Scott Lyons: I would go back to the question, how, if at all, did we feel loved as children? How did we understand our value and our worth? Was it freely given to us? Did we have to do something in order to get something? And oftentimes, even when a parent is unavailable or they're busy on their phone, as a child, we turn it around at ourselves. They're not available because I'm too much. And I have to prove that I have value to them. And so I'm going to stay busy. I'm going to be a perfectionist. I'm going to go do that other grad school program. I'm going to keep earning everyone's love and keep dismissing myself and keep abandoning myself in the meantime to try to get them to come to me. Meanwhile, I have continued to leave myself. And that is a significant issue. So of course, this idea of worthiness, of busyness, if I'm busy, then it means I have value. If I'm doing something, I have value. And if I have value, then I'm worth something to someone else. Maybe eventually even to myself.

Mel Robbins: All right. I got a lot I want to say about that, but I want to take a quick pause. I just let all that sink in while you hear a word from our sponsors. Please share this with somebody who you know needs to hear this, would benefit from it, which means everybody that you know. And don't go anywhere because I'm going to be waiting for you after a short break and we're going to unpack everything that Dr. Lyons just said. Stay with me.

[Pause for sponsors]

Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And just before the break, I played you a clip from this conversation with the amazing Dr. Scott Lyons. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to play that clip again, and then you and I are going to unpack this.

[Clip replay]

Dr. Scott Lyons: I would go back to the question, how, if at all, did we feel loved as children? How did we understand our value and our worth? Was it freely given to us? Did we have to do something in order to get something? And oftentimes, even when a parent is unavailable or they're busy on their phone, as a child, we turn it around at ourselves. Oh, they're not available because I'm too much. And I have to prove that I have value to them. And so I'm gonna stay busy. I'm gonna be a perfectionist. I'm going to go do that other grad school program. I'm going to keep earning everyone's love and keep dismissing myself and keep abandoning myself in the meantime to try to get them to come to me. Meanwhile, I have continued to leave myself. And that is a significant issue. So of course, this idea of worthiness, of busyness, if I'm busy, then it means I have value. If I'm doing something, I have value. And if I have value, then I'm worth something to someone else.

Mel Robbins: All right, you got me. If you look back at your childhood and you think about the times that you felt the most celebrated, it was because of something you did. Your team won the championship. You did great at the debate. You brought home a great report card. You did well in the dance recital. I just think this is how it happens for all of us. I think about being a parent. I certainly poured on the praise when my kids did the right thing or they did something really cool. I probably wasn't so great when they were annoying or when they were not doing what I wanted them to do. This is why they have therapy. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding at all.

And so this brings us full circle to the to-do lists and the satisfaction that you feel when you think you're performing and when you think you are getting everything done and how easy it can become to go from getting a couple things done to feeling like you need to get a million things done. And it is true that if you got a lot of positive attention when you were acting correctly or when you were doing great things that people could brag about, which is basically how every single person was raised, then of course you would feel great when you're getting things done. Of course your self-worth gets tied to whether or not you're doing something. And it also explains why when you're not doing something, you feel like a loser. When you lose your job, you think that means that you have lost your worth. That when you don't get into the top, top, top, top school, that somehow that means you're the bottom, bottom, bottom of the human race. This makes perfect sense because all of us, including you, including your parents, including your grandparents, including your kids, felt the most loved and adored when they were doing something that, quote, earned it.

And this is the major mistake in human wiring, I think, that you interpret the doing with worthiness. And if you want to feel worthy, then you just start doing more stuff. And it's also why when you feel stuck in life, you don't even know where to start because you want to make sure you do the right thing because you already feel bad. Wow. Dr. Lyons just kind of hit me over the head with that. It makes a lot of sense. And so slowing down means overriding all that programming. Slowing down, it's like an act of defiance, what do you define? Your own life experience and training. Because if you really think about your childhood, when did you feel the most loved and adored? It's when you were performing. It's when you did things that made your parents happy or made people celebrate. We all had that same experience. Every single one of us has been trained to believe that we're worthy when we're doing something. Every single one of us received love and attention when we got good grades or when the team won. And when you get the right answer in class, everyone's like, yay. And you're like, oh, I feel good. I'm worthy. Everybody likes me. Or when you win at something in school or you get good grades, you're like, yay. You're like, oh my gosh, this feels good. And everybody wins. This is amazing. Or you bring home a little drawing and you're like, oh, mom and dad, this is great. And they're like, okay, that's nice. And they put it aside and you're like, oh, it's not good enough. I'm not worthy. And so you get trained to seek positive attention.

And what are we rewarding today's society? Oh, the hustle. Oh, the doing. Oh, the million dollars in the bank. Oh, this thing, that thing, the likes. No wonder we're all addicted to this. This is just basic human experience. But understanding that that's what the training is helps you understand that that's why the default has become to always be doing or to think that you have to perform in order to be worthy of love. And that's not how life has to be. And that's why it's an act of defiance because you're defying your own life experience for the sake of something that's gonna be better. It's basically you saying to yourself, I'm worthy as I am. I'm unemployed and I'm still a good person. I did not get into that school and I am lovable and I'm amazing. And most of us don't know how to do that.

And so it was about this point in the conversation, I was like, Dr. Lyons, you buried the lead, man. Okay. You got me. If you had come out of the gate saying this stuff about childhood I would be like delete. We not doing this episode but this is exactly on the money. And so it begs the question how on earth do we heal this? Because I don't know about you. I don't have time to sit still. I'm not going away to a silent meditation retreat. I have a lot on my to-do list, but I don't want to be addicted to stress. And I don't want to be addicted to busyness. And I don't want to be a freak around my family. And I don't want to collapse in my bed every night and have this sense that I barely got through the day. I know there's a better way to move through life. And I'm sure you want that too. But it begs the question, how on earth do you heal this addiction to being stressed and busy? And this is what Dr. Lyons had to say.

Dr. Scott Lyons: I'm going to just pause with that question. What is the first thing we do in healing this addiction, distress, this attachment to busyness? I'm going to pause. And I'm going to say, what happens in the pause? Do you try to fill it? Do you have all these thoughts come up? Do you have this impulse to sort of bulldoze the opportunity to kind of reflect. And that's where I would start actually, is in what happens in the pause, what happens in what we might call boredom, what happens when there isn't a stimulus to keep us going or some type of something that we're seeking or attaching to that relieves the pain for us. What happens when we stop trying to manifest situations and relationships and environments that take away, that create that endorphic pain-free response and have to come back to ourselves. So that first step is self-awareness. That first step is going, oof, this is uncomfortable.

When I was navigating my addiction to drama, which is, I'll be honest, it's an ongoing process. It is an ongoing process. But I remember sitting in a bathtub and having this impulse of like, oh, I got to go pick up my phone and call someone. Or I got to go read a book. Or I got to do this. Or I got to do that. And I simply turned around and I asked myself, what am I running away from? What's under the hood of this impulse to distract? And it was too much to actually deal with by myself. That's what I came to clarity about. It's like, oh, it's so much stored up that never got seen, that never got felt, that never got experienced, that never got held, that never got supported, that that's what I need. I'm gonna eventually be able to do that for myself, but maybe not right now. So finding someone who can hold you in the discomfort of silence, the discomfort of not being in an activated, stressful state, or the anxiety, or the trauma, or the busyness, and just say, I'm here with you. This is scary. This is scary. Because the moment we start to settle in our nervous system, there's an alarm that goes off that says it's not safe.

A lot of these skill sets you will learn with someone else. I sit with people all the time, and I don't know how many times I've had to repeat to them, and that was then, and this is now. And that was then, and this is now. And it's not something that they'll understand cognitively. They have to embody it. They have to experience it. In the same way, you might know you're safe, but unless you feel you're safe, you're not safe. And it takes time to rebuild and reestablish safety as something that is safe, calmness, settledness as something that is safe, and stress as something that is safe. We want to have the full range of that human experience with the baseline of safety, which so many of us have never truly experienced.

Mel Robbins: You know, and Dr. Lyons said this to me, because there's a lot of big words there, right? And oftentimes when you talk about busyness or stress and then you take it to trauma or I'm not safe, it feels like a giant leap. But I wanna give you a little exercise that I think is extraordinarily revealing. The next time you are standing in a line at a store and I'm not talking about a line where you're like next up, I'm talking like there's three or four people in front of you. This is going to take five to 10 minutes. I want you to just not reach for your phone. I want you to try to stand in a line, I kid you not, for five to 10 minutes and just be with yourself and be with your thoughts. And something crazy will happen. You ready? You're going to start to feel the alarm that Dr. Lyons is talking about. You're going to start to feel agitation. You're going to start to rock back and forth. You're going to start to look around. Why? Because your body is used to being stressed and busy. You have trained yourself to always be distracted and disconnected from yourself. And those five to 10 minutes in that line before you get up to the cash register to pay for your groceries is going to be the longest five to 10 minutes of your entire life. Because you have no idea, neither did I, how much of a problem this is. That we reflexively reach for a device that connects us to the world and disconnects us from ourselves. And we have gotten to the point where none of us can even be with ourselves for five to 10 minutes in public standing in a line that your brain is so used to being connected all the time to looking at something all the time, to answering the emails, to sending that text, to not knowing what to think about. So you got to distract yourself with social media. This is a huge problem.

And I'm asking you to do this because I think when you hear Dr. Lyons say these big, scary words, you're like, well, that's not my problem. And so I want you to zoom in to an experience that reveals the alarm. Because if you can't stand in that line for the five to 10 minutes and not look at your phone, you have work to do. And so do I. Because I can make it about five minutes. And then it takes massive restraint. And I am working on this muscle. This is how big of a problem this is. And if you have ever complained about kids and how much they're on their phones, this is what I'm talking about. And it's in you too. 1000% in you too.

And one other thing that's interesting about this conversation is, I guarantee if I asked you, who is the first person that needs to listen to this episode? You have a friend that they're always busy. They're always overwhelmed. They're always running a million miles an hour. They always put everybody else first. They just are this person. And I know you're going to send this episode to them, but I asked Dr. Lyons, okay, so I'm very clear that I struggle with this. What could Chris do to help me? Or what could I do if I see this in one of my adult kids? Or I see this in like I see this with my daughter, for example, and I see this with another colleague of mine that just works themselves to the bone. It's not necessary. They can't unplug. How can you support someone other than sending them this episode? How can you support someone who is clearly struggling with this addiction to busyness and stress? And this is what he had to say. And buckle up because it's a punch in the face.

Dr. Scott Lyons: I don't think you're going to like my response. Which is, if you're already looking at how you can help others, what are you avoiding in yourself still? How are you using that nether version of busyness to keep avoiding, to be out of touch with the things that need to be held, seen, supported, and felt within yourself? Lord knows I'm a psychologist. I went to a lot of school. I've helped a lot of people through the last 30 years. And my goodness, there's no better way to avoid yourself than to help someone else. And it is a form of control. So I want to just name that, oh my gosh, my neighbor is addicted to drama. They're so busy. They're so stressed. It's so hard to be around. What comes up in you? Come back to you first. Can you stay in yourself? Because until you can, you can't address or connect with them. Any type of change or transformation takes relationality. And if you're not home in your own process, in your own experience, in your own groundedness, there is no relationality to go and do some type of intervention with someone else.

Mel Robbins: Don't you just love a psychiatrist that just slaps you across the face? I know I do because I don't have time to talk this out over years. I'd rather just get the hard truth right there. And here's what I got out of that. There's a friend of mine, David, who has made a huge difference in my life and he's just a gifted, gifted coach and thought leader and he's very dear friend and he has this saying, leaders bring the weather. And I just want to amend it for this conversation because I think you bring the weather. And what Dr. Lyons is saying and what my friend David is saying is that your energy, your stress, your busyness actually is like the weather. If it's raining, everybody gets wet. If you're addicted to stress and busyness, everybody around you is gonna get soaked with that. And what he's basically saying is before you think you're gonna solve everybody else's problem, you're gonna get your kids off their phones and you're gonna get your family more present and you're gonna do all this stuff for everyone else, you got to get your own house in order. You got to bring out the sun because it's only from a grounded place where you're connected to yourself that you'll actually be able to help someone slow down and reconnect with themselves.

And I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute, that's it? You just literally revealed, Mel, that I'm addicted to stress and busyness and I'm like, yes, I am. And yes, I need to reconnect with myself. And yes, I need to stop running. And yes, I need to really separate what I'm doing from my worth. And I need to learn how to be with myself. But how do I be with myself? Great question. The next time you're standing in line, try to not look at your phone for five minutes. It is a radical and difficult thing to do. And just be with yourself. The next time you come home and you walk into the house like a freaking hurricane, take a deep breath. Don't look at your phone. Remind yourself that you're bringing the weather. Settle yourself and be with yourself. This is a muscle. You know, I know it sounds kind of unsatisfying, like, well, how do I end the drinking edition? Don't drink. Easier said than done. I get that. I mean, I am the number one offender of this, but I know there's a better way to live. And so all day long, I am constantly catching myself. Don't send that text. Come back and connect with yourself. Don't look at your phone. Just be present with yourself. Close the laptop and just sit next to your husband and watch TV and be with yourself. Oh, I'm like telling myself I got to work. No, no. Mel, before you escalate, let's deescalate. Simply noticing and knowing what you're swimming in is the first step. Just remember the fish. What's up, boys? How's the water? Now you can say the water's good because now you know that's what you're in. And once you know what you're swimming in, now you're more empowered to truly decide how you want to swim.

And I know for me, I definitely want to slow down. I do not want to be addicted to stress. And I have big goals and big dreams and so do you. And I think I'm going to be more productive and more effective if I can stay connected to myself instead of running myself into the ground. I want to thank Dr. Scott Lyons. I want to thank you for hanging in this conversation because it was a bit of like a mental tongue twister situation because I didn't want it to go that deep. I kind of want to just be like, tell me how to stop doing this. But true to form, that's more denial when it comes to addiction, right? Oh, it's not that very problem. Just give me the tools, make me more productive, and then I can take time off, but I'll be looking at my phone. No, we're done. We're done. We're done.

And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to tell you. I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to take this wisdom and just do the simple, important daily work to reconnect, to remind you that it's in the being, not the doing, that you're going to find the worth and the love and the freedom that you deserve. Because the experience of life is how it feels to live it. And I, for one, I'm sick and tired of being busy. And I really want to drop in and truly enjoy it before it's over. And in order to do that, I got to be here for it. And so do you. All right. I'll see you in the next episode because I'm going to be waiting for you there. I'll talk to you then.

[Outtakes and banter]

Mel Robbins: Why don't I do this? You ready? What was that? Oh, gotcha. Okay. I'll just say the thing. Okay. It's okay. Okay. Great. Okay. Great. Great. Great. Okay. This was so easy, guys. Thank you.

[Unidentified voice]: Was it?

Mel Robbins: Yeah. And so here we go. Tomorrow, we're just doing the family one, right? Yep. Oops. Excuse me. That will be... It's not going to spell. Oh, Jesus. I'm going to call it. Let it out. Go that way. Oh, my God, guys. That was really weird. I hope you were so rolling on that. Oh, my God.

[Legal disclaimer]

Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.