Moment 41 - The Reason You’re Feeling Stuck: Mel Robbins

00:01When 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 was couldn't get out of bed, was feeling a. Depressed, couldn't find, you know, described herself as you, as you did, 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? Um, because. I know you weren't this, you couldn't have been this person dude. It's also been 31 years. I mean come on. I've had, I've I've like basically been changing for as long as you've been alive for crying out loud. So 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.

00:57Being 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, so remember how we've talked about how, uh, 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, uh, system of signals and alarms. And they are 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 one O1 maslow's hierarchy of needs.

01:51You 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 when you need um uh. 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. we're stagnant, yeah, we're 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.

02:57Or 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 is that you would also describe that as a moment where your life has like an absence of purpose.

03:29I think about, I think about various examples, olympians that come back from the Olympics and they, they're like 80% chance of depression after they've, you know, you know. And then I think about people who have, yeah, lost purpose in their lives for whatever reason, been fired from their jobs or whatever, all people that are in jobs that are, uh, you know, absent of purpose, completely a feeling of being stuck and, and then you said, 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, um, psychologically disorientated the way I' describe it, um. I act, I have a different take on purpose. Uhm, 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.

04:27And for the olympian, when you are a. 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.

05:25And 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 we' you know, because I always try and like check things against the, the caveman of my, you know, my ancestral beings, the, the idea of being seen when I was, you know, my ancestors 10,000 years ago. What kind of role does that play in from a survival perspective? Let's, well I. I mean I'm free styling here, so. okay. 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, uh, 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.

06:26And 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 they 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.