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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back on the person you are now, and the tremendous wisdom that you've just demonstrated, just speaking to me just then, do you recognize the Mel that was, couldn't get out of bed, was feeling depressed, couldn't find, you know, described herself 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?

• 0:35Steven Bartlett?

  Because I know you weren't this person, you couldn't have been this person.

• 0:38Mel Robbins?

  Well dude, it's also been 31 years. I mean, come on, I've had, I've like basically been changing for as long as you've been alive, for crying out loud.

• 0:46Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 0:46Mel Robbins?

  And also, human beings are designed to grow.

• 0:49Steven Bartlett?

  But not everybody seems to, because you have these...

• 0:52Mel Robbins?

  Because they don't understand being stuck.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 0:55Mel Robbins?

  See, being stuck is one of the most universal feelings of the human experience. And nobody understands what it is.

• 1:04Steven Bartlett?

  What is it?

• 1:05Mel Robbins?

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

• 1:43Mel Robbins?

  Let's talk about your most important fundamental needs. Let's go right back to psychology 101, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You need food, or else you die. So when you need food, what is the signal that your body sends you?

• 1:57Steven Bartlett?

  Hunger.

• 1:57Mel Robbins?

  When you need water, what is the signal? When you need, um, uh, air? Yeah, catching your breath. When you need rest, what do you feel?

• 2:07Steven Bartlett?

  I'm tired.

• 2:08Mel Robbins?

  When you need connection, what do you feel?

• 2:10Steven Bartlett?

  Lonely.

• 2:11Mel Robbins?

  Human beings are designed to grow. When you stop growing, what do you feel?

• 2:18Mel Robbins?

  Stuck.

• 2:19Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I was gonna say stagnant, but I guess stuck is, yeah.

• 2:23Mel Robbins?

  Or stagnant.

• 2:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:25Mel Robbins?

  Or still.

• 2:26Steven Bartlett?

  Trapped, I guess is, yeah.

• 2:27Mel Robbins?

  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.

• 2:57Mel Robbins?

  Or taking a class where you're learning something, or changing a routine so that you try a new class at the gym. Learning anything gets you back in touch with a fundamental need. It makes you start to feel like things are moving. And from that place of feeling a little bit more empowered, you'll be able to make better decisions about what big things need to change in your life.

• 3:24Steven Bartlett?

  And is that, you would also describe that as a moment where your life has like an absence of purpose. I think about, I think about various examples, Olympians that come back from the Olympics and they, they have an 80% chance of depression after they've, 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, or people that are in jobs that are, 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 psychologically disorientated, would be the way I'd describe it.

• 4:11Mel Robbins?

  I have a different take on purpose.

• 4:15Mel Robbins?

  I think everybody's purpose is exactly the same.

• 4:18Steven Bartlett?

  What is that?

• 4:19Mel Robbins?

  I think your purpose is to share your true self, to be fully seen. And for the Olympian, when you are training and you're in that arena, that is an experience of being seen.

• 4:40Mel Robbins?

  And for most people that are lacking purpose, they feel profoundly invisible.

• 4:47Mel Robbins?

  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 gonna go out into the world and share more of yourself. That Olympic athlete is sharing more of themselves. And so I think our purpose in life is to come back home to ourselves,

• 5:31Mel Robbins?

  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.

• 5:48Steven Bartlett?

  From a prehistoric standpoint, let's say, you know, because I always try and like check things against the caveman of my, you know, my ancestral beings, 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?

• 6:05Mel Robbins?

  Well, I, I mean, I'm freestyling here, so my suspicion is if you were not within your mom's eye view, your ass was gonna get eaten. And so I think that, you know, if you wandered off as a kid, you were in danger. If you weren't hunting with the pack, you were in danger. And so being seen means safety. And that's why when you look at psychological safety, there are three fundamental needs. The need to be seen, the need to be heard, and the need to be celebrated for the unique person that you are.

• 6:46Mel Robbins?

  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.