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

Mel Robbins (00:23:49):

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 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, okay? I've never been to a law school reunion. Now you know why I do not like the person that I was back then.

(00:24:49):

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. 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 Dunking Donuts even though I was late, right? This is addiction to busyness. You think that you can literally bend time. I get to class, I run in late.

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I sit in the back. I smell like cigarettes. I'm 10 minutes late. I'm like Pigpen, and it's Snoopy 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 with a bunch of nicotine. But little did I know at the time, 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.

(00:26:27):

I was absolutely stuck and I knew I was miserable. 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. 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 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. And that's what Dr. Lyons is talking about. He's talking about this inability to sit with ourselves, to be connected to ourselves.

(00:27:27):

Because the truth is, when you are 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. 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.

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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's about the power of doing the real work and facing what this is truly about. And as I'm having these epiphanies that I shared 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 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 onto work again or jumping on this or doing that or saying yes or overscheduled, and that's dopamine. Check this out.

Dr. Scott Lyons (00:29:59):

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 going to all these social events, I'm doing all these work activities I am doing, and the doing keeps me away from the feeling 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.

(00:31:42):

And I have a lot of 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's always something that he is doing, doing, doing. It's 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. 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? It's your childhood. This has been something going on since your childhood. You've been run 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 (00:33:02):

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. 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. 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 (00:34:13):

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. 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.

(00:35:13):

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 get through this round of chemo or we have this issue resolved, then I will be able slow down, then I can bring a state of calm. 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. 

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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. 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. And what's funny is every generation sees it in the younger generation. 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.

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She's always running to 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, or 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 headline, 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 as 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 (00:39:01):

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 (00:39:40):

Now, every time he brought up childhood, I'm like, okay, let's not go there. 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. Now I'm angry. 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. 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? Because now I'm getting like I want a different answer. Dr. Lyons, he doubled down. Here's what he said.

Dr. Scott Lyons (00:40:38):

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 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. 

Mel Robbins (00:41:51):

Alright, you got me. I don't think there's a human being on the planet that 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. You 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.

(00:42:44):

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.

(00:43:39):

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 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.

(00:44:39):

It's like an act of defiance. What are you defying 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, Ooh, I feel good. I'm worthy. Everybody likes me. Or when you win at something in school or you get good grades and your parents are like, yay. And you're like, oh my gosh, this feels good and everybody wins and this is amazing.

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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 reward in 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 going to be better.

(00:46:07):

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've buried the lead man. Okay, you got me. If you had come out of the gate saying this stuff about childhood, I would've been like, eh, delete. We're 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, 

Dr. Scott Lyons (00:47:30):

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 and that takeaway, that create that endorphin pain-free response and have to come back to ourselves? So that first step is self-awareness.

(00:48:33):

That first step is going O, this is uncomfortable. When I was navigating my addiction to drama, which 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.

(00:49:23):

I'm going to 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 skillsets 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 are 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 a baseline of safety, which so many of us have never truly experienced.

Mel Robbins (00:50:48):

And Dr. Lyon said this to me because there's a lot of big words there. 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 want to 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 next up, I'm talking like there's three or four people in front of you. So this is going to take five to 10 minutes. I want you to just not reach for your phone.

(00:52:39):

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'm working on this muscle.

(00:53:41):

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, 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 a punch in the face.

Dr. Scott Lyons (00:55:03):

I don't think you're going to run 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? 

Mel Robbins (00:56:07):

You just love a psychiatrist that just slaps you across the face. I know I do. 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 going to get soaked with that. And what he's basically saying is, before you think you're going to solve everybody else's problem, you're going to get your kids off their phones and you're get your family more present, and you're going to do all this stuff for everyone else.

(00:57:12):

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, 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.

(00:58:06):

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 fricking 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. I know it sounds kind of unsatisfying, like, well, how do I end a drinking addiction? 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.

(00:59:22):

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 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, so, and I think I'm going to be more productive and more effective if I can stay connected with 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. It was a bit of a mental tongue twister situation. 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?

(01:00:23):

Oh, it's not that part of my 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 though. No, we're done. We're done. We're done. And in case no one else tells you 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, am 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.

(01:01:15):

And so do you. Alright, I'll see you in the next episode because I'm going to be waiting for you there. I'll talk to you then one more thing. I know you're thinking, oh my God, Mel, I want to watch more. Do me a favor first, hit subscribe because that tells me you love this kind of content. And it also supports me in being able to bring you all of this inspiration and these research back strategies every single day. So just hit subscribe. Please, please, please. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And also, I know you probably want some more inspiration, something beautiful to watch. So check out this video next. I picked it for you. I know you're going to enjoy it.