If You Feel Overwhelmed, Stressed, or Stuck, Listen to This

Today's episode is a conversation you are going to want to revisit over and over and over. You are about to learn the skills nobody ever taught you, but you need now more than ever. It's hard to not feel exhausted and just overwhelmed in today's world. You are constantly being bombarded with bad news, followed up by worse news. All of that while you still try and deal with the hurdles of just living a regular life. That is where today's guest, therapist Kier Gaines comes in. Mel absolutely adores this man and constantly seeks out his advice as a source of calm, ease, and understanding. But it isn't just Mel. Across platforms, millions of people turn to Kier Gaines because he has a knack for turning complicated emotions you don't quite have the words for and explains them in a way that makes sense. He then gives you tools to come back to yourself so you don't get flooded in those emotions. This is a conversation about how to handle life in today's chaotic world. You’ll laugh, and you’ll probably tear up a little bit, but at the end you will feel the sense of calm that Kier is known for bringing, and you’ll be ready to show up differently in all of your relationships that matter most to you. In today's episode you will learn: -What to do when everything feels like too much -How to stop trying to control other people and finally find more peace -What to do when you're spiraling, overthinking, or about to lose your cool -Why you keep having the same arguments, and how to break the cycle -How to build confidence that doesn't depend on other people's approval -The simple mindset shifts that will help you feel more grounded, more present, and more in control of your life By the end of this episode you will have control of your emotions and be ready to stop letting them control you. You’ll walk away with tools you can start using today to show up in your life with more clarity, calm, and confidence. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-424/ Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast If you liked the episode, check out this one next: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-364/ Connect with Mel: Order Mel’s new product, Pure Genius Protein Get Mel’s newsletter, packed with tools, coaching, and inspiration. Get Mel’s #1 bestselling book, The Let Them Theory Watch the episodes on YouTube Follow Mel on Instagram The Mel Robbins Podcast Instagram Mel's TikTok Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes ad-free Disclaimer 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. In this episode: 00:00 Meet the Guest 04:49 What To Do When Life Feels Exhausting 09:38 How to Build Resilience When Life is Hard 12:41 What to Do When You Feel Insecure 23:24 Do Men Hide Their Feelings? 32:05 Tools Every Man Needs 37:00 How to Build Self-Trust and Confidence 43:47 Self-Care For Depression 46:45 Tools to Stop a Depression Spiral 51:15 How to Know If You’re Depressed 53:51 Stop Feeling Overwhelmed in 60 Seconds 58:32 Start Before You Feel Ready — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

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

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:08Mel Robbins?

  You made it here.

• 0:11Mel Robbins?

  You can exhale. Seriously. Take a breath. In fact, I'm gonna do it with you right now.

• 0:20Mel Robbins?

  Drop your shoulders. Don't you need that? Because if you've been walking around with a tight chest, short fuse, or nonstop thoughts spinning in your head, this episode is your permission slip to stop holding it all together for just a minute. If you've been feeling overwhelmed lately, like you're snapping faster, shutting down quicker, overthinking everything, carrying stress in your body like it's a second job, you are not alone. You're human. And here's the hard truth. There is so much you cannot control. You can't control other people, or the headlines, or what your partner says, or the mood your boss is in, or how fast the world is changing. But you can control how you show up in the middle of it.

• 1:04Mel Robbins?

  And that's why I am so excited about today's episode. We have therapist Kier Gaines in the house. If you do not know who he is, oh my gosh, I am one of his biggest fans. I have been sending this man's videos to my team for over 18 months, saying, get him on the show. He is finally here. You are going to love him. Kier is a licensed therapist and one of my favorite voices online. What does he talk about? Oh, how to handle life, how to handle relationships, how to handle yourself, especially when everything is coming at you. He has the kind of wisdom. It's unbelievable. It's like talking to a good friend and a storyteller who's also a therapist.

• 1:49Mel Robbins?

  He reminds you that you're human, you're laughing as you're learning. You're like, how did you get in my head? Are you in the bedroom as I'm arguing with my... What is going on, Kier? How do you know me? He is truly incredible. And I cannot wait for you to not only meet him, but what you're gonna learn today is exactly what you need to hear right now.

• 2:17Mel Robbins?

  Did you know that the average American only gets 13 grams of protein for breakfast? Now, the medical experts are recommending that I get at least 100 grams. If you're only doing 13 grams for breakfast, you're already losing out of the gate. And that's exactly why I got involved and became a co-founder in a company called Pure Genius Protein. As soon as you twist the cap and throw this sucker down, you've got 23 grams of high-quality protein handled. Plus, it's sugar-free, fat-free, has no artificial flavors or sweeteners, and it's only 100 calories. Use code MEL10 at Pure Genius Protein for 10% off, 23 grams of protein in three seconds for under $3 a shot.

• 3:02Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am extra excited that you are here today. This is a winner of an episode. And look, it's always an honor to be together and to spend time with you. And I also wanted to say, if you're a new listener, or you're here because somebody shared this with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family and tell you, this is an amazing thing you're gonna experience. Because today, we've got the incredible Kier Gaines on the show. Now, Kier Gaines is a licensed therapist and a mental health advocate. He just has this rare gift, because he explains emotions and relationships in a way that makes you feel seen, not judged.

• 3:45Mel Robbins?

  And then he gives you tools that you can use immediately. And he also brings in like, all these examples and stories. You're gonna be like, how are you in my head? Now, I've been following his work for years, because in the absolute madness of the world today, Kier Gaines is a lighthouse. But don't take it from me. His millions of followers love the way he breaks down mental health in a way that's understandable, clear, frankly, kinda cool, and it just makes sense. Especially on the topics of relationships. I swear to gosh, as you've listened to this, you're gonna be like, are you in my marriage right now? Like, what is going on here? He talks about emotions in a way that's not like, soft and weird. He's gonna teach you how to be powerful.

• 4:30Mel Robbins?

  And we're also gonna touch on masculinity. And this is what every man in your life needs to hear. He is the author of the brand-new book, I'm calling it now, it is going to be a blockbuster. It All Starts When You Do. I got an advanced copy. It is fantastic. Kier Gaines, it is an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely crazy. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me and your beautiful staff welcome me in. It feels like a very, like a very warm place. It's warm and inviting.

• 5:02Mel Robbins?

  It is.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 5:04Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, it is. That's how I roll through life. You know, I think that there's a lot of people, or at least I used to be this way. I would wake up in a bad mood. And at times in my life, there was a particular reason why. But I think it became a habit to wake up and be in a bad mood for no particular reason.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:23Mel Robbins?

  And so I decided that I would just become the kind of person that went through life with an optimistic, warm, and positive outlook. And it really started to shift everything.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like when you project that out into the world, you also invite it into your life. I'm not quite where you are yet. I'm, I'm, I'm still a little... I'm getting into my old curmudgeon guy, where I wake up some mornings, I'm like, I don't wanna talk to anyone, don't look at me. But just taking a moment and being grateful and understanding that I can hold two complex things at one time. I can be grateful for the life that I have and all the amazing things that are going on. And I can also be frustrated by some of the BS that comes along with it. It just gives me a little bit more harmony. I don't know if I believe in balance, but it gives me a little bit more harmony in my life. It's a more authentic way for me to live.

• 6:16Mel Robbins?

  I think that's the best way for all of us to live.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I agree.

• 6:19Mel Robbins?

  And it's a really hard skill to hold space for those two things.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  It is.

• 6:23Mel Robbins?

  You're already like, starting to drop life-changing, small, little things.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I speak from the heart, Mel Robbins.

• 6:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes, you do. And here's how I want you to start. I want to start by having you just prepare the person who's listening. Buckle up. Like, what is it that could change about their life or their relationships if they truly lean in and take to heart everything that you are about to drop in this episode today?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  If you lean in and take to heart everything we're gonna share, what I believe will change for you is the way you manage your stress, the way you manage your relationships, the way you manage the things that are happening in your life. Because it'll go from just you reacting to things, just bouncing off of every single thing that's happening in your life like a pinball, just bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. It'll go from that to you moving with more intentionality, clarity, and way more awareness. You know, the world will have you believe that everything falls into the category of this insatiable desire for hurry. You have to hurry up and do it. You're always in a rush. There's always another thing.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  There's always a to-do list to check off. No, sometimes the best thing you can do is to pause. And that's counterintuitive, because we don't pause. We don't, I don't have time to pause. I don't have time to break. I don't have time to think about it. I just have to do, do, do. But when you pause, you're able to gain more control over what's going on with you. You're able to sit and just be. You're able to look at things from a thousand-mile view. When you're on the dance floor, Mel, it's hard to tell what's going on around you. You just see motion and bodies. But from the balcony, you get a different perspective. But you can't get that view, and you can't get that perspective if you're constantly reactive.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  If you're not responding to things, if you're not accumulating any intel and information, if you don't have any wherewithal, if you're just on go. I get why you think you need to be on go all the time, but give me a chance to prove you wrong. Because I don't think that's the case, and I do not think that's beneficial for you.

• 8:34Mel Robbins?

  Why is it so hard to just exist and live in the world today?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. For a million reasons. What a crazy world we live in. You know, the world isn't really designed to support your peace and happiness. And that's not how the world is designed. The world is designed for your productivity and for your attention. And that's it. It's meant to absorb your attention and churn productivity out of you. And works for the world. That's how we get buildings, and how we have infrastructure, and how we have all these beautiful creature comforts around us. Sucks for the individual, though. It zaps you of almost everything that you hold dear, everything that's warm and fuzzy about you.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  But if you just take a look at where we spend the majority of our time, social media, watching the news, being subject to marketing. Well, how do these things make you feel? What are they designed to do? Social media is designed to make you feel like you're behind. Marketing is designed to make you feel like you're being left out. The news is designed... I don't know what the news was originally designed for, but now it's designed to scare the hell out of you. This is billions and billions and billions of dollars engineered against your own wellness. And a lot of us don't even have a counter-strategy. We have nothing to combat that whatsoever.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  So in my work, what I do in what I call an emotional readiness architecture, ERA, which is just a, a really sexy, fancy therapist's way of saying, your emotional fitness, how prepared you are to deal with the slings and arrows of life, how well you can traverse and navigate the things that are happening to you every single day. It's never too late to gain those tools. It's just a matter of how you go about doing it, what's your guidance and what's your instruction. That's why I'm such a fan of therapy. I don't know where you are, person who's listening to this, with therapy. You may think therapy's amazing. You may think therapy is okay, but you haven't found the right therapist. Trust me, I get it. Or you may think that therapy is complete BS, which I understand if you've had a bad

• 10:51Speaker 01

  experience. But that guidance piece is so important, because it's hard to protect ourselves from messages that we don't have any control over. Again, when you open up your social media feed, you are being subjected to tens and millions of bad takes and half-chewed ideas, unsolicited, and without your consent. And it's like you're drinking from a fire hose. If you drink from a water fountain, it quenches your thirst. If you drink from a fire hose, it breaks your teeth.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  And every single day, we're getting our teeth broken by opinions and views that we don't necessarily care for or jive with. How do you protect yourself? What do you have to secure your ability to move through guilt and shame and blame and to build self-awareness and to secure self-honesty? And I realize that there's a gap where people don't have that. And Mel, that's been my life's work.

• 11:48Mel Robbins?

  Well, I loved what you said about emotional fitness.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:54Mel Robbins?

  And the reason why is, like, first of all, I don't like the word "mental health." Because I feel...

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Oh, give it to me. Why you don't like it?

• 12:01Mel Robbins?

  Well, I don't like it because it feels like there's something wrong with you.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  That's, that's the way a lot of people feel, actually.

• 12:06Mel Robbins?

  You know what I mean? Like, if we're talking about mental health, like, there's something wrong with my brain and the way I think, depressed and anxiety and all this stuff that I'm... And I love the idea of emotional fitness, because what, what I immediately think is strength. Because I'm constantly saying to my kids, "It's not about mental health." Like, mental health means happiness. Don't you want that? Mental health means you can bounce back. Mental health means you're self-aware enough to know that something on the outside is getting on the inside and it's time to, like, step... Like, this is about power. This isn't about, like, weakness. And so, I love what you said about emotional fitness, because I want that. I want that kind of strength. I want the ability to dodge the arrows that are being shot at me.

• 12:51Mel Robbins?

  I want the ability to be strategic and to be stronger, especially in the world today, and not so reactive. I'm not talking numb. I'm just talking able to catch myself and strategically respond to what's happening versus constantly breaking my teeth from the fire hose. And you mentioned tools. And I know we're gonna get into them, but can you preview a little bit about what you actually mean when you say there are tools that you can learn and skills that you can build that strengthen your emotional toughness, especially for a world that we're living in today?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  What you're heading towards is what a lot of people think about mental health. But I think we're moving towards more resilience. And resilience is one of the tools that you use within emotional fitness.

• 13:40Mel Robbins?

  Now, resilience sounds kind of cushy. So, how do you define? What does it mean if you are somebody that has built the skill of resilience?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  It means that you're able to bounce back. It means that bad things happen to you, but bad things happen to you and... The bad thing that happened to you is not the punctuation on the sentence. You still have work to do. Things are hard. Things are hard and I'm sad. I'm sad and you're able to still move through. I'm a big football fan. I'm a huge football fan. And I don't know person who's listening. I don't know if you're a football fan, but just indulge me for a second, please. In football, there's a position called a running back. And I'm pretty sure this ain't gonna be my last football reference for today, so forgive me if you hate the sport. But when you're a running back, you're the person in the backfield who takes the ball...

• 14:28Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  And you're supposed to run up the field and get a touchdown. That's, that's your job. The problem is, there are 300-pound dudes trying to kill you in between you and the touchdown. And sometimes, one of these guys stops you, and you don't always immediately get tackled. You don't always immediately get tackled, but any good running back coach is gonna tell you, even when you get stood up, even when you have five people piling on your back, you never stop chopping your feet. You never stop your feet from moving. You're always supposed to keep those feet going. That's resilience. Even when you hit the 300-pound obstacle, even when you can't see what the end zone is like, even when you feel hopeless, even when you feel down, even when you feel unsupported, you keep chopping your feet and progressively moving forward. But that takes self-honesty.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  You gotta be honest about the circumstances that you're surrounded in. You gotta be honest, not just about your strengths, but about your deficits, too. And not allow that to sink you, sink you into a hole of self-deprecation, where you only say negative things about yourself. No! Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. What makes you immune to that? I'm not afraid of my weaknesses. I hold them tight. And then, that allows me to say, "Mel, I'm not very good at this thing. You think you can come in and help me with this? You think you could tell me what you did as opposed to me trying to just do it solo?" That's how I keep my feet chopping. That's how I build resilience. That's one of thousands and thousands of tools that we use in order to make sure that our wellness is intact.

• 15:54Mel Robbins?

  And we're gonna talk about a bunch of them today. And I had the honor of getting an advanced copy of your book, It All Starts When You Do. This is going to be a blockbuster. I read a lot of books. This one is fantastic.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Thank you, Mel Robbins.

• 16:11Mel Robbins?

  It is so relatable. It is so entertaining to read, and it has so many takeaways. And I want to read to you from what will be this blockbuster of a bestseller that's changing lives. This is page 24.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:26Mel Robbins?

  And the chapter is entitled, "Do You Accept the Uncomfortable Truths in Life?" The problem here is obvious. If you keep listening to that deep-down voice, you'll never get what you want out of life. You'll keep thinking that happiness, financial freedom, love, peace, and success are for other people, not you. In those moments, what's happening is that you're a person experiencing insecurity. And you have to follow the trail of breadcrumb to figure out what you're insecure about. You need to know the source of your insecurity so that you can treat it.

• 17:06Mel Robbins?

  That diagnosis is the first critical step in starting to feel more secure and having more faith in yourself. Can you talk a little bit about that and this sense of, "I just don't believe in myself. I feel insecure"?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't believe in myself is one of the uncomfortable truths that I talk about in the very beginning of the book. And what an uncomfortable truth is, is a part of our live reality that we are afraid to accept. We either think it's some type of indictment on our strength and capabilities. We think that it's a statement that we lost, that we're waving the white flag. We try to avoid it at all costs. And we're very good at avoiding things. We have a lot of fancy psycho-language now for avoidance. But the uncomfortable truth isn't something that you run from. It's something that you walk towards, because you can't overcome something that you refuse to acknowledge is true. So, with insecurities, in my practice, I find that they come from a lot of different places. Two consistent places that I find.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Either, one, it's some type of striving for perfection that you fall short of. By the way, perfection is not a thing. And even if you hit your idea of perfection now, it won't be your idea of perfection in five years. It's a frivolous journey. Or, two, it comes from a recent failure or some type of loss that you've taken that was significant to you. It was, it was meaningful. But yeah, insecurities, the way that we walk out of them, one of the tools that I like to use are "I'm" statements. I'm sure you've heard a lot of times about "I" statements when you're having a disagreement with your partner. Instead of saying, "You never washed the dishes." You say, "I would like to have a house where the dishes are washed," and I don't feel like I have enough support in that.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Because you take the blame off of the person, you make the problem the problem. You don't make the person the problem. But these are "I'm" statements. And "I'm" statements, "I" am, really help you identify where the soil is the most fertile for your insecurities to grow. So, "I'm blank," or "I'm always blank." Whatever's in that blank is gonna be a good indication of where your roof is leaking. So, if you say, "I'm such a, I'm always finding a way," or are you saying, "I'm always messing this up?" Are you saying, "I'm such a smart person," or "I'm such a dummy"?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  That's a, that's gonna tell you where your internal dialogue is and where some of those leaks are coming from. Because you don't always find your insecurities. Sometimes, your insecurities find you.

• 19:48Mel Robbins?

  Give me an example.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. I'll use myself as an example. I don't get to do this in my sessions a lot. Because it's not about me, it's about the person. All right, so, I have insecurities around parenthood.

• 20:00Mel Robbins?

  You do?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  See, look.

• 20:03Mel Robbins?

  Well, you wanna know why I react like that?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Why?

• 20:06Mel Robbins?

  Because I first bumped into your content.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:10Mel Robbins?

  And...

• 20:12Mel Robbins?

  It was so jaw-droppingly profound. And I can't remember if you were brushing your daughter's hair, or you're doing something about a bike, and you were in a garage, and you were calmly talking about something that went down, because you have two young daughters.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:28Mel Robbins?

  And two, and kids tend to act up.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 20:32Mel Robbins?

  And then you were very calmly explaining. And I can't even quite remember what it was. But as I watched you, and you were explaining something about how your daughter reacting was appropriate for her age.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:46Mel Robbins?

  You reacting to your daughter being upset, even though you had a busy day at work, even though you had a lot going on. And you're like, I can see you in the garage, and you were like, I don't want to be cleaning the garage. But you choosing not to react to her and modeling something different. I sent it to my husband, Chris. I said, this explains everything I did wrong as a parent. I now know why I pay for my adult kids to have therapy, because of all the things that I was completely reactive about, that showed that I was emotionally immature. And it was so powerful, what you were modeling, that you have become somebody

• 21:29Mel Robbins?

  that I believe is leading the way in modeling the way to parent extremely effectively, because you're managing yourself while also building up strength and independence in your children.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but let's go.

• 21:46Mel Robbins?

  Can you, can you receive that?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  I receive that.

• 21:48Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  And that's the absurdity of insecurity sometimes. Going back to what I originally said, the insecurities come from two things. One, a recent failure, and this is me catastrophizing catastro- I suck at that word. Making a catastrophe out of a failure. And the other thing is some strike of perfection that I'm trying to reach. I have this idea of what parenthood looks like in my mind that is not realistic. And I think a lot of us have that. It doesn't take into account your own lived experience, the fact that you're tired, the fact that you have complex adult stuff going on. Me, and thank you for the compliment. I really do receive that, and I hear you. But it doesn't take away my insecurities about parenthood.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  And sometimes I really have to check myself. And this is where the resilience comes in. I really have to check myself and realize that I'm allowed to be human. Or if I'm feeling insecure because my daughter isn't doing the best in math, I automatically take her failures and make them my personal failures. But that's not happening to me. It's not happening to me. And it's not something that's necessarily formed against me.

• 22:58Mel Robbins?

  What do you mean it's not happening to you?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Well, her not being the best that she can be in math is just a circumstance of something that needs to change. It's not necessarily something that's happening to me. It's more of an indicator that perhaps we need to adjust something.

• 23:11Mel Robbins?

  Okay, I want to stop right there.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:13Mel Robbins?

  Because as you're listening to Kier, I want you to stop and think about a situation in your life, because we all have it.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Break it down to them now.

• 23:23Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, where we, literally because of what your either kid is doing, or what's happening with your parents, or what's happening with your partner, that you think that the fact that your partner is out of shape, or put on weight, or you think because your adult kid is struggling in their twenties, that it is a reflection on you.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  No, not always.

• 23:49Mel Robbins?

  But you just, you just said something I think is really important as a tool. And I'd love to have you unpack it, which is, how do you catch yourself when you recognize that your nitpicking on your spouse isn't actually about them losing weight? It's you managing what you think other people think about. You see what I'm saying?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I see what you're saying.

• 24:11Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, and now, because you were just exposing that if, if your daughter's not doing well math, you immediate collapse, like, I'm not doing a good job as a parent. And you said, very quickly, which is why I want to expand this a little bit. No, no, no, no, there's a different way to look at this. We have a circumstance. We have a situation that needs attention.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:30Mel Robbins?

  But this is not a reflection on me. What I do about this is.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think that goes back to resilience and greater awareness. It's easy, you're the easiest person to blame in your life. If you blame someone else, you run the risk of rupturing and losing that relationship of them being mad at you. Mel, what you want to leave yourself?

• 24:51Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Where are you going to go? It's very easy for you to make yourself the little whipping boy of all of the negative experiences that are happening in your life. So what I ask myself is, okay, what else can this be attributed to? I used to have, my first car was this car called a 1992 Buick Roadmaster. I was in love with it, but it's basically a refrigerator on wheels. I paid $1,400 from it, from an auto auction, and it broke down every other week. And sometimes I would try to cut the car on, and it wouldn't work, or there'd just be steam popping up out of the hood. And my first thing was so, it was such a catastrophic way of thinking. You know, the engine's dead. The engine's messed up.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  But when something breaks on your car, the cheapest and most effective way to try to problem solve is to deal with the easiest-to-fix option first. Is there a tube that may be leaking? Because that's a $10 fix. Replacing the engine is a $2,500 fix. Okay, maybe a tube's not leaking. Is there a seal that's leaking? Is my water pump okay? Is my radiator okay? I walk back to easier, more simpler fixes. What else can this problem be attributed to that isn't necessarily something that I did? And also, you have to understand that blame, it grabs all of our awareness. It is a brilliant awareness grabber, but it's not helpful. It's not a helpful tool in your relationship. It's not a helpful tool in your self-messaging. Blame is not helpful. Accountability is helpful,

• 26:21Speaker 01

  because accountability says, these things are my responsibility, and I'm going to be empowered to actually do something about it. Blame is just looking for somebody to pin it all on. It makes you feel better a little bit in the short term, sure. But in the long term, what does it accomplish? What does it change? What does it transform?

• 26:38Mel Robbins?

  Kier, that right there. That right there. That is an example of exactly why I wanted you on this show. I know as he was saying it, you're thinking, okay, I got to rewind that. I'm going to be playing that one over and over and over. And I also know there are people in your life that are coming to mind. And I want you to take a moment while you listen to a word from our sponsors, to copy this link and text it to your friends. Just share it with people. Everybody needs some Kier Gaines in their life. But I want to tell you, don't go anywhere, because he's just getting warmed up. And we will be right back after this short break. So stay with me.

• 27:24Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today, you and I are laughing and learning and feeling a whole lot better with the extraordinary therapist, Kier Gaines. Let's jump right back in. Kier, I have so many just specific things to ask you. But before we go any further, I know that this is going to be an episode that so many people send to the men in their life.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:50Mel Robbins?

  Their partners, their brothers, their sons, their dads. I would love to have you speak directly to the guy.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:58Mel Robbins?

  Who got this in a text. And because it was you, they hit play, or because it was their wife who said, you really need to listen to this dude. I think this is going to really help you at work.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  If you're listening to audio, her head is shaking while she's doing this.

• 28:12Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I am. It's like a bobblehead right now. And so I, I, because that's kind of how I feel. That's the intention.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:19Mel Robbins?

  You know, when I'm sending that link to my brother, or to my husband, or my son, you, you need to listen to this. And it's typically an episode with a guy.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:27Mel Robbins?

  I would love to have you speak to the guy who actually hit play on this. Because somebody loves them and thinks you can make a difference. What is available to a guy that is so powerful if you build mental fitness? And you have more peace in your life?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  One thing that I need you to understand is that in a boy's maturation, and I said this before in, in an interview.

• 28:55Mel Robbins?

  What is maturation? That's a big word.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Maturation? So maturation is just a state of your maturity. As you were growing up, in your upbringing, in your development, as you were becoming a full person, every single stop along the way is designed to separate you from your emotions. And I already said it, you're really, really good at the things that you practice. So when you are a little teeny boy, and you cry, and you just want your mom to pick you up and hug you, somebody's probably going to say, hey, stop holding that boy like that. You're going to make him soft. Separating you from your emotions. When you become a little kid, and you fall off of your bike, and you cry because your knee hurts, it's bleeding, somebody's going to tell you, hey, get up, get back on that bike, stop crying.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  When you become a young man, when you're a teenager and the person you love broke up with you, they say, "Hey, hey, it's other fish in the sea. What you crying over another person for? Why you crying?" And then you get married, or you have a long-term partner, and you begin to express your displeasure, or you begin to express your frustration, or they say something that's hurtful, or inflammatory, or just makes you not feel very good. And they say, "What are you, what are you, this is a new word that you sassy. Oh, now you being a sassy man. What are you, in your feelings?" And all of these are designed to separate you from your emotions. And what happens is, your internal sense of being gets thrown off and off-white, where now you can't access those emotions when you need to.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And then you don't have the ability to know the complexity of what you feel. So, like, there'll be an emotion that happens, and you'll be angry. There'll be something that happens that evoke an angry emotion. And most people say anger is a secondary emotion. I think it's a primary emotion.

• 30:37Mel Robbins?

  What does that even mean, secondary, primary?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Secondary emotion, it's just, it's, it's secondary, when they say anger is a secondary emotion, what they're saying is, there's something under the anger that's causing the anger, which is true, but I have a different interpretation.

• 30:50Mel Robbins?

  Tell me.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I think it's primary, which means it comes first. The anger is the first feeling that you feel. But when you sit with that anger for a little bit, and you realize what else may be attached to it, you realize that you're angry because you're disappointed. "Oh, so you're not just angry, bro, you're also disappointed." And that disappointment is what we call a secondary emotion, which is the second emotion. Why are you disappointed? And then when you sit with that disappointment and you process it enough, you feel disappointed because you feel hopeless. "Oh, so you feel hopeless." And you're trying to solve for anger, but what you really feel is also hopelessness.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  If you have a migraine, I don't think allergy medicine is gonna fix that. So now you're trying to, you have a prescription for a feeling that's not working, and you remain angry. And when you're angry out in the world, anger does multiple things. It gets attention, because I know men have all the power in the world, absolutely, I get it. All the power in society and infrastructure, patriarchy is a real thing. But in men's individual lives, men don't feel powerful. They don't feel powerful. So what happens is, when you get angry, you get attention. You get, you can regain some of your power and control, but it's at the expense of your relationships. So, if you don't hear anything else I say,

• 32:15Speaker 01

  just know that we, men have been designed to rebrand their emotions into something that is way more palatable socially, way more acceptable socially. It's a man being sad, like, who cares? Cry me a river, build a bridge and get over it. You have all the power, who cares? But that sadness permeates not only into your family, but into the deepest parts of your life and your being. And if you don't have enough practice accepting that sadness without making yourself feel bad about it, you won't know how to fix and solve it. You won't know what medicine to take in order to remedy the wound. The manliest thing you can do isn't to ignore your emotions. That's been the motif for like, the past thirty, forty years, I get it.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Maybe when we were out west and the Marlboro Man was a thing, and you lose your kid to some type of illness at the age of five, when life was hard on the frontier, maybe that was true. We live in a different society. I have a phone and I can, I can get a sandwich right now if I want it. I can listen to whatever song I want. I don't even eat fish with a head on it anymore, because I don't have to, okay? We don't, we're not those people anymore. That time is done, and we need to adapt with the time. And, and I think just masculinity is having a really tough time adapting. But you don't have to. And instead of rebranding and avoiding your feelings, actually understanding them, having words to them, and controlling them is how you become, as my mentor Jason Wilson says, "A comprehensive man."

• 33:45Mel Robbins?

  You said that while men may express anger, that's actually not what they're feeling. So as a therapist, and with the global reach that you have, what do you want us to know about what the typical man is actually feeling underneath the pressure of life? Given that you've had a lifetime of being separated from your emotion? Just so we can start with a little bit of compassion, because, you know, this is an area that I think is really important for women to understand, too?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it is. And it's also important that women understand that men are not women's problems to solve.

• 34:27Mel Robbins?

  We'll come back to that.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a whole nother thing. Um, you know, I believe that underneath everything is a sense of fear. And it's a sense of fear that doesn't have the faculties, or like, the, the momentum, the understanding, the touchpoints, the, the amount of, the fingers on it. That fear doesn't have a place to go, and doesn't have a place to be processed. It doesn't have a safe place to be expressed. And I typically say there's two types of men. There are men who are afraid, and there are men who are terrified of being afraid.

• 35:03Mel Robbins?

  Hmm, what's the difference?

• 35:04Speaker 01

  The men who are terrified of being afraid put up a bigger front. That's where we get the machismo, that's where we get a lot of red pill content. That's where we get a lot of men not indulging in masculinity, or not executing masculinity, but performing it. And when you perform something, it's not authentic. It's not authentic to who you are. It's not gonna be helpful to the people around you in the same capacity. It's a performance. And I would love if men, if we just take a step back from performing and focus on actually being. Be the thing, don't perform it. Be the thing. But to be the thing is a lot harder than to perform it. Because you could put up a facade, I can lie to you, I can act tough like I'm a million feet tall in this interview, and then I go crying in the car.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  And what is the point of having all of these social wins and being some big giant socially, but being a personal failure? What matters most to you? Is it how you appear in the world to everyone else? Or how you appear to yourself in the quiet moments? Because that's who you really are.

• 36:04Mel Robbins?

  Can you give the person listening an assignment? For exactly what they should do when they're done listening to this episode with a male friend of theirs?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Let's do it. How about this? Let's do a heavy lift and a light lift.

• 36:18Mel Robbins?

  Great.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Because everybody ain't in the same place with this.

• 36:20Mel Robbins?

  No kidding.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Different readiness, alright. So let's do light lift first. I want you to pick up the phone, I want you to call a friend that you have not talked to in more than two weeks. You don't have to have something to talk about. There might be some weirdness, because you feel like you have to have a meeting agenda. I want you to call them. I don't want you to talk about business. I don't want you to talk about work. I want you to just talk about yourselves. It could be a three-minute phone call, but I want you to pick up the phone and just tap in. And if you need a, a template for something to say?

• 36:49Mel Robbins?

  Yes, I do. Tell me what to say, Kier.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 36:52Mel Robbins?

  Because I've not called somebody in two years. I keep texting people.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Hey, no problem. And, and that's one of the points, that's why I feel so empty, because we need those real-life touchpoints. Hey, bro, I haven't heard you, I haven't heard your voice in a while, or I haven't, I haven't heard from you in a minute, man. I was just thinking about you, bro, just calling to check up, how you been? And they may hit you with something, "Oh, man, men love to hit you with that, I can't complain." Push it a little bit.

• 37:14Mel Robbins?

  What do I say?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Instead of saying, when they say you can't complain, what's been going on good in your life? What's good in your life right now? What are you excited about? What's coming up next for you? And then that's how you start the conversation, you share a little bit about yourself. Bro, you can get the hell off the phone, if you're not comfortable. That's the light lift. Call somebody and check in on them. Heavier lift. Schedule breakfast with one of your bros. Go out to breakfast.

• 37:37Mel Robbins?

  Breakfast, why breakfast?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Because one of the problems with therapy is it's not really oriented, the way that men externalize and talk about their problems. Men don't even have face-to-face conversations, we prefer shoulder-to-shoulder. And a lot of my therapy sessions, we toss the football back and forth. Because it's easy to do something, it's easier to talk about something that's hard when you're doing something that's easy and physical. We toss the football back and forth, we toss the ball back and forth, we may play Connect Four. My female clients, "Oh, we can just go, sit down and boom, we're off to the races. We're having a great session." With men, it's a lot harder to kind of get that pump prime. So, breakfast is, talking over food takes away a lot of the angst and awkwardness of having a face-to-face conversation.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  It also allows you to share space without words. Some people feel awkward when there are pauses in the conversation. But when you stuffing your face full of cheese fries, it takes away the awkwardness. It's giving yourself a lower barrier to entry. It's, it's bringing that branch down to pick the fruit off, it's making it easy, low-hanging fruit. Go out to breakfast.

• 38:42Mel Robbins?

  Kier, I love that, and I just want to stop asking questions and have you talk. But I need to hit the pause button for a second, so we can give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. But don't go anywhere. Kier and I are gonna be waiting for you, like good friends, after this short break, so stay with us.

• 39:08Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with licensed therapist, Kier Gaines. I told you, this is gonna be exactly what you needed to hear today. I'm right, I know it, and I know you wanna jump right back in, so let's do that. I wanted to ask you about something you said just a couple of minutes ago. "Men are not women's problem to solve."

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:29Mel Robbins?

  Let's unpack that.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 39:31Mel Robbins?

  Because when you talk about holding you close, holding you accountable, I think we tend to fall to the accountable side, and solving lots of problems for you, whether it's your weight, or it's your motivation, or it's your drinking, or it's your tone of voice, or it's your anger. So, as a therapist, Kier, what do you want us to know about what we're doing wrong in our relationships with men? And what we can start doing right?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  You cannot want something for someone more than they want it for themselves. If you do, when the novelty, or the newness, or the excitement of this change wears off, you will be stuck holding all the baggage. And in our society, and this is something I didn't know about women until I became a therapist and started having a lot of female clients. In our society, women are praised and rewarded for over-functioning.

• 40:25Mel Robbins?

  What does that mean?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Over-functioning is when you do way more than was necessary in order to meet the goal. And we will clap women out of the building for over-functioning to their own detriment. And a lot of times, we don't have a mechanism that says, "Hey, I'm gonna take some of this off of you because it's too much." And you get good at the things you practice. When you are a woman, especially in Western civilization, if you are a woman who's practicing taking on too much, taking on too much, taking on too much, your button that tells you, "Hey, your bucket is not only full, but it's overflowing and flooding your apartment", that button gets broken. So now, you are a person holding everybody else's stuff. And a romantic relationship doesn't work

• 41:10Speaker 01

  when you are taking an inordinate, or an unfair amount of the stuff, putting it on your back. It's supposed to be equity there. You all are supposed to take and give from each other. But when you're making your responsibility to take, take, take, take, take, take, take, and then you don't have that mechanism that says, "Hey, I'm going to give you a little bit of this because it's too much", or you don't have a partner that you trust to accept the thing that you're gonna give them that's too much, it bogs you down.

• 41:36Mel Robbins?

  You know, it makes me think about the fact that a lot of people don't feel good about themselves unless somebody else is approving of everything that they're doing, right? How do you get out of that trap?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness, you have to really value what you think about yourself. You have to really value what you think about yourself more than what other people think about you. Which is tough, because society isn't really built that way. There's nothing wrong with caring what other people think. There's nothing wrong with that. That in and of itself is not a problem. But when you care what other people think to the elimination of being cognizant, aware of, and deeply caring of what you think, and how you present, and what you want, then it becomes an issue. Because other people's opinions begin to override yours. And one of the ways that you do that is, "Ooh, a lot of people aren't gonna like this." You have to spend time with yourself by yourself.

• 42:29Mel Robbins?

  You're right, I don't like that.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  I told you, you weren't gonna like it. I told you. You have to spend time with yourself by yourself.

• 42:35Mel Robbins?

  So, give us an assignment. Like, if somebody recognizes they're always looking outside themselves for approval, they're always looking to other people's opinions, they're always thinking about what other people might be thinking, you're checking outside instead of checking inside, and you recognize, "I don't really approve of myself. I'm not proud of myself." How do you begin this? What are you doing when you're spending time alone?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  You have to practice being the person that you say you are.

• 43:01Mel Robbins?

  Break that down for me.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  You have to practice being the person you say you are. If you believe yourself to be a kind and caring person, what are you doing on the weekends? Go to a soup kitchen and donate your time. Go to a clothing drive and donate your time. Give yourself to community more, to reaffirm and reinforce that you are the person that you say you are. If you say you're a helpful person, go be helpful to someone. Who in your family needs assistance? I just helped my cousin who's 70-something years old clean out her garage, because I realized I wasn't spending enough time engaging with family. And it reinforced the idea that I am a person who's centered on family. If you are a person who says, "I wanna read more books", sit your ass down and read a book. Like, you have to do the things. We think that proving it is only for other people.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  No, you gotta prove it to yourself too. How can you prove to yourself that you are the person that you, A, want to be, and B, the person that you say you are? But you gotta take those small steps. Be undistracted, that's another one. When's the last time that you weren't on your cellphone? When's the last time that you took a flight, and you didn't use your cellphone, or headphones, or distracted yourself with some type of media, and you just allowed your thoughts to exist? What are you doing in the morning? Do you wake up and just sit in silence? When's the last time you didn't feel the need to fill space with words? How are you giving yourself an opportunity to even hear yourself think, undistracted? That's how we get to know ourselves better. That's how we make sure that we are in tune

• 44:30Speaker 01

  with a version of ourselves, this updated software, not the shadow of who we were 10 or 15 years ago.

• 44:36Mel Robbins?

  I love that simple sentence that you said. You think you're proving who you are to everyone else, and we forget that you gotta prove it to yourself. It's like when nobody's there.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  You're there.

• 44:48Mel Robbins?

  The things that you, yeah, you're there. And the things that you're doing first thing in the morning when no one's watching, that's actually who you are.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you gotta believe yourself. If you don't give yourself enough evidence to believe the things that are going on in your mind, it's just, it's well-dressed, wishful thinking.

• 45:04Mel Robbins?

  You know, I think one thing that's really, like, revolutionary, at least it was to me, is, you know, when I was in my 40s, I was miserable. For a lot of my life, I was miserable.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Talk about it.

• 45:13Mel Robbins?

  Oh my God, I talk about it a lot. But for my 40s in particular, we were struggling financially. I was such a jealous bitch. I was not the kind of person that you wanted to be friends with. Because I was the kind of friend that I was happy for you if I was doing better than you.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:30Mel Robbins?

  But the second that you were doing good, I now feel bad. And you don't wanna be friends with somebody who does not like themselves, because they end up hating on you.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 45:43Mel Robbins?

  Right? And so, I just remember constantly being burned up inside when I saw somebody winning. You know, getting to build the new kitchen, while I've got leans on my house. You know, being able to take their kids on vacation, or joining the fancy club. And, you know, I'm struggling to just pay the frickin' bills and put gas in the tank. And it just, it just was like, "Ugh." And I remember thinking, at one point, "I don't want to spend the rest of my life as this version of myself." I want to be somebody that is confident.

• 46:24Mel Robbins?

  I want to be somebody that can celebrate somebody else's success authentically.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 46:29Mel Robbins?

  Without it, like, making it mean something horrible about me. I want to stop stewing in place and start doing the things that I know I'm capable of doing. I would love to hear you speak to that concept, that there is a version of you right now that is taking you in a certain direction, and you don't have to spend the rest of your life as this version of yourself.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, first things first, I think that's a brave thing to admit, that you could sit and be present with who you were in the moment, and not like that version of yourself. Self-love and self-honesty are two things that I talk about a lot. And I think you need that in order to make the change. There's two versions of us. There's this ideal self, which is who we ultimately wanna be. And then there's this actual self, which is, like, it's who we are. If you can get closer to accepting who you actually are, and learning that the person who you ideally would like to be is just a fictitious character in your mind that you don't have to aspire to,

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I think that's a great way to start to pull some self-honesty. If you can see yourself reacting to something that's not the way that you would like to ideally, I think stopping and saying it out loud, "You know what? I don't like the way I reacted to that", and choosing to move in a different direction, I think that's doing some of the pre-work. I like to ask people that I know, love, and trust, "What do you see when you see me? What do you see? How do I usually react to this thing?" And I listen to them, and it does not feel good. Because sometimes they keep it a little too real. Sometimes it burns. But it's valuable information, because I wouldn't be able to see that by myself.

• 48:18Mel Robbins?

  You've been very open about your diagnosis of depression.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:23Mel Robbins?

  What does progress look like when you're depressed, or when you're feeling anxious?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Mm, it doesn't look the way you expect it to, I'll tell you that. You have to shrink your expectations in the moment. Anxiety is a beast. Because with anxiety and depression, usually where there's smoke, there's fire. Where there's one, there's usually the other. That's just how it goes. Or there's typically the other. So, with anxiety, you have to understand that it attaches a narrative to your thoughts. It's your brain trying to predict what's happening next without enough information. So, it makes you feel terrible. And it compromises the way that you feel. And depression is a mood disorder. It's going to distort the way that you're oriented to your own feelings, oriented to the world around you. So, you're a little compromised in the moment. You're not bad, you're not broken.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  You're just a little compromised. And when you're not working at 100% efficiency, it's hard to have the goal to complete 100% efficient tasks. So, you gotta shrink your expectations to meet the moment.

• 49:24Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  We live in a society where thriving is typically the goal. The goal is to thrive. You're supposed to get out here and be the best that you can be. But with anxiety and depression, sometimes the goal isn't to thrive. It's to survive the moment. A lot of times, in session, people think of doing well as getting, on a scale of 1 to 10, from a 2 to a 5, from a 5 to an 8, from an 8 to a 10. That's amazing. With depression and anxiety, sometimes we're trying to get back to zero. And a win, when you have depression, sometimes it's getting from a negative 5 to a negative 4. That's a win, because we're trying to get back to zero. We're trying to get back to baseline. Sometimes, with depression and anxiety, a win is when you go from negative 5, and you slide to negative 6.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  A win is being able to not slide down to negative 8. You understand what I'm saying?

• 50:12Mel Robbins?

  I understand what you're saying.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  It's stopping the slide. It's, it's, it's a very difficult way to live your life when you have an idealistic viewpoint of what it is that you're supposed to do and what it is that you're supposed to accomplish. You just have to survive the moment. Let's survive the moment. Once we get past this, is this the best we can do? What's possible for us today? Can we get some sunlight today? Can we get some food in our system? Do we feel like being a part of community, calling a friend and having somebody sit with us? Do we need a little bit of solitude right now? Cause solitude is not isolation and sometimes solitude is medicine. Are we ashamed of the way that we appear? We don't want people to see us. Do we need to feel love? Do we need to feel understood? That's step one. Step two is how do we go about getting that?

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Do we have the energy to get it? Not tomorrow. Let's not worry about tomorrow. Right now, can we survive the moment right now? Can we get that for ourselves? That's a win. Shrink the expectations in order to meet the moment.

• 51:10Mel Robbins?

  For somebody that is either in the slide or they have somebody that they love who is sliding, do you have specific recommendations for what you could do first or just small things? Cause you mentioned getting outside, taking a shower. Like what are a couple of things that someone can hang on to specifically? That as a therapist, these tend to just even in the moment, stop somebody from sliding further.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  A number one, get yourself connected with a licensed mental health professional. A number one, a number one, just so you could have another person in the room who sees what you're going through. They have a history of dealing with these things. They can see your symptoms and they can give you a realistic treatment plan on what to do to start to climb out of this thing. They can also give you a realistic idea of where you are in the process and more importantly, where you can go and, and also tell you what you need for some people. I, I know a lot of people don't approve or they feel a certain way about medicine or getting medicated. Meds exist for a reason and for some people, you gotta take your meds, big dog. Like that's why you feel that way. You gotta take your meds, big dog. For some people it's different.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  For some folks, it's a, a mix of doing. I can tell you what I do.

• 52:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes, I want to hear what you do.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, man. I've been deploying so many strategies, yo. I go fishing with my friends. I spend time with my wife, who is somebody that I just so happen to like tremendously. I spend one-on-one time with her. I try to clear my calendar. I try to do nothing. I think that we're always so busy doing stuff. We're not human beings anymore. We're not being anything. We're human doings. We're doing everything. Um, I try to clear my calendar. I try to read books that I actually enjoy. I like to eat by myself. I love to eat by myself and just let my thoughts wander. I get some sunlight first thing in the morning. I've been going to bed on purpose, Mel Robbins. Instead of falling asleep on the couch.

• 53:12Mel Robbins?

  Okay, hold on. That's a big distinction.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:15Mel Robbins?

  I'm going to bed on purpose.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  I'm preparing for bed, winding my body down and I'm trying to keep the same window of a bedtime every night. I try to go to bed like nine, 30, 10 sometimes. Have you done that before?

• 53:28Mel Robbins?

  All I'm gonna say is the happier and more successful I have become, it's directly tied to how early I go to bed.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Going to bed early is like the, it's, it's the key to successful adulthood. Go to bed early and try to just improve your sleep hygiene by trying to make it, um, the same time every night.

• 53:47Mel Robbins?

  When you get into those periods, cause my husband struggles with depression too. And you're in that moment where the depression and the mood disorder just, it's like the heaviness and the grayness and the doom and gloom. Is there something that you say to yourself, Kier? To help you either lift your head up a little and know that this too shall pass? To know that this is a, it's just a stop? It's not the destination? Like, is there something that you say to yourself to give yourself hope?

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I localize it.

• 54:25Mel Robbins?

  What do you say?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  I say, I have to call it by name.

• 54:28Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  So ah, the depression is kicking in. I'm feeling depressed right now. I won't always, I haven't always, but in this moment, this is what it is. And when I call it by name and I tell like, depression, you can't hide from me, bro. I know it's you. I see you right there. You looking at me, I'm looking at you. You looking at me, I'm looking at you. I know you're there. I've dealt with you before and I know you won't always be here. So I'm gonna do what I need to do to survive the moment. Because when you pass, I still have to be a husband. I still have to be a father. I still have to run my business. I still have to be all the things in the world, everyone, including myself. Those are my responsibilities and I wear them proudly. But right now, I need to make sure that the venom doesn't spread.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  You know, depression sometimes is the rattlesnake bite that hits you in the arm. And what I do is I just try to tie it off at the elbow. Cause the arm is as infected as it's gonna get. It's not gonna spread from my arm to my chest, to my heart and throughout my body. And I stop the spread of the negative feelings or the negative forecasting or by just being keenly aware that my mood is compromised. And some of it is out of my control. All right, cool. Now what can I control?

• 55:37Mel Robbins?

  You know, for somebody who's listening right now, who has never even considered that maybe what they're experiencing in life is depression. As a therapist here, are there just kind of a list of symptoms or experiences that you want the person listening to know? Well, these could be signs that this is more than the challenges of life. This is more than just you're in a bad mood or going through a bad period. This is more than, and that you deserve to get some support.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they, they are. They're about, ooh, don't make me lie. I think there are 10 to 12 symptoms that we look for. And I think you gotta hit about five or six of them and it can't be attributed to anything else. So I know off the top of my head, one of them is when you lose interest in things that typically brought you joy or brought you some sense of satisfaction. When you just genuinely lose interest in them, just for a reason that you can't quite put your finger on. One of it is when it affects your, either your relationships, your ability to take care of yourself, whether you go into work every day, how you feel about the work that you do, whether you're starting to withdraw from other people, which is tricky because sometimes you withdraw, sometimes you feel bad about your job, but it's not necessarily depression.

• 56:55Mel Robbins?

  Right.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  This is why you have to get diagnosed by a licensed clinical professional. Because they'll be able to ask the questions and we give people an inventory sometimes before you walk in that measures your likelihood of having depression. We look at sleep, how you're getting sleep, whether you have insomnia or hyper insomnia, which is you can't stay awake or you can't stay asleep. Sometimes we look at weight gain. Weight gain that can't be attributed to anything else. And it hits everybody a different way. I can say you lose interest in the things that you once found really exciting. Or I could say you have, you experienced some type of weight gain or sleeplessness. You can have depression and none of that stuff happens to you. You have high functioning depression where the way you present out in the world,

• 57:39Speaker 01

  you can come in every day, you can do your stuff, you can be everything you need to be. You can laugh, ha, ha, yeah, see you tomorrow, Tina. You could, you could just be your normal, you could perform your daily routines and in your private moments. You start to deconstruct slowly. So you can listen to the symptoms that I'm giving you.

• 57:56Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  But if, if there's something in your life that feels like it needs to change and your mood has been compromised and it's been going on for a period of time, let's say it's been two weeks consistently. Let's say it's been two months consistently or it's reoccurring when these things keep happening. And despite what you try to do, you can't get out of that rut. I want you to understand, if you could, you would have already. And that's not an indictment on your capabilities. That's a snapshot of where you may be in the moment. And that is a signal that you may need some more help.

• 58:25Mel Robbins?

  I love that. I love that. If someone's listening right now and they're just overwhelmed by life, what is the first?

• 58:32Speaker 01

  You mean all of us?

• 58:33Mel Robbins?

  All of us, yes. Well, what is, like if you're in that moment though, what is one thing you could do in 60 seconds to support yourself?

• 58:44Speaker 01

  I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to pause. Just pause. I know overwhelmed creates this profound sense of urgency. But when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. So let's pause just for a moment. Let's just pause. Second, I want you to call it out by name. Because that's an uncomfortable truth that I talk about. I'm overwhelmed. We're afraid to admit it because we think it speaks to our incapability. Not necessarily true, just speaks to your circumstances. So you pause, you name it, call it out. Call it what it is. Let it exist outside of just your mind. I'm overwhelmed right now. Localize it. I'm overwhelmed in this moment.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Then I need you to understand, the third thing, I need you to understand that you don't have to fix it right now. You don't have to fix it all. Overwhelmed is really profound because oftentimes when we're overwhelmed, it's not because, just because we did something wrong or because we missed a step. Sometimes overwhelmed is a failure of systems that are supposed to be designed to hold you up. And you can't fix systems in a moment's notice. So you don't, you don't have to fix it all. You don't have to have all the answers. You just need to slow it down. I told y'all I was gonna say another football reference, but it makes, it makes me think about this running back. His name was Brandon Jacobs.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  He used to run for the New York Giants back in the day. Mel, this dude was like, he was six foot four. He had a neck the size of a torso and he was 264 pounds. Most running backs are like 210. This man was 264 pounds. That's not a person. That's a wrecking ball with arms and legs and a consciousness. And his job is to run through your face and astro project your soul into oblivion. That man was terrifying. And he was a running back. And I remember a coach was asked one time, how do you stop Brandon Jacobs? How do you, how do you stop him? And the coach laughed, you don't stop Brandon Jacobs. You slow him down enough for the defense to catch his breath.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  You don't always stop overwhelmed when you're already in it. You slow it down enough for you to catch your breath. And once you catch your breath, you can gain that consciousness and awareness that we talked about at the very top of this episode. And then you can try to figure out what it is that you can do about it, how you can offload some of the things you're dealing with, what systems you can probably set in place in the future to make sure this doesn't happen. Who do you need help from? What skills do you need to build? What part of this thing is overwhelming you? Because it could clump it all in a one ball. Parenthood is crazy overwhelming for me, but it's not always parenthood. Sometimes it's just the constant emails from the school. So it's being able to dissect it and figure out what part of this is affecting me most, but just slow it down. You don't have to fix it.

• 1:01:42Mel Robbins?

  You know what I love? And I want to highlight this because I want to make sure you take it away as you're listening. Because overwhelmed is one of those words like stressed that we throw around a lot. And when you just said, hold on, overwhelm, in those moments, hit the pause. And now let's separate the circumstances that you're in that are flooding you

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:03Mel Robbins?

  from your capacity and your capability of handling it. And I also appreciated you saying, and you typically don't need to handle it right now.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. It feels urgent. It feels like you do.

• 1:02:18Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  And you can try, but overwhelm comes from more profound circumstances than just a misstep or you overlooking something. It's you juggling more than your bandwidth will allow. So you have to develop a methodology, some type of system, some type of game plan. But you can't, you can't do that in this very moment. You got to handle business. You don't have the time. You don't have the time in the moment. And though your brain may want you to do that, it doesn't mean that's within the realm of your capabilities.

• 1:02:46Mel Robbins?

  I would love to have you speak directly to the person who's listening and really think about all of the wisdom and tools and stories and perspective that you have poured into us today. If there's one action, let's simplify this, that the person takes after this episode is over, what do you think the most important thing to do right after this is?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Hmm. I think the most important thing that you can do after listening to this conversation, first off, thank you for listening. Thanks for your awareness. That means a lot. A lot of us don't have time. We're still in time, so I appreciate you. I think the most important thing that you can do is ask yourself the uncomfortable question. I think it's easy to soft lob a question that you can knock out of the park or put yourself in a place where you don't have to feel discomfort, which I completely understand. But I don't think that serves you very well. And I think you know that that doesn't serve you very well. I used to conduct interviews and we used to ask people all the time, what's your biggest weakness? And they would lollipop it. And they say, oh, my biggest weakness is that I care too much or that I work too hard. That's bull. Stop that.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Stop that. That's the comfortable thing to say. But exploration isn't comfortable. And transformation isn't comfortable. And while comfort feels good, it comes at a price. And my question to you is with the price that comes with the comfort that you get from not asking yourself the hard question, from not facing the hard uncomfortable truth, are you willing to pay that price? Not just today, but are you willing to pay that price for the rest of your life? You are not some type of passenger to your life. You are not in the backseat. You were in the driver's seat. And you can take your hands and put them at 10 and 2, and you can control this vehicle and drive it to where you want to go. But you have to have the awareness.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  You have to have the emotional fitness. And you have to have the tools. You can do it, but under those circumstances.

• 1:04:46Mel Robbins?

  Kier Gaines, what are your parting words?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Oh, what do we have here? I have learned over time, Mel Robbins, that the internet is full of, we get a lot of advice from the internet. And the internet is full of people who want to tell you the thing that makes you feel good. And oftentimes they'll tell you things like, oh, goodness is just going to happen to you. Success is going to happen to you if you believe enough. You know, all your goals, you can accomplish them. It's going to just happen. It's going to fall in your lap. I wish that was true. It's not. It's not going to happen for you if you don't consciously walk toward it.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  And the life that you want to live, the person that you want to be, that journey doesn't start when it's convenient. That journey don't even start when you're ready. That journey starts when you do. And you have to get it started. There will never be a perfect moment. There's only the moment that we have in front of us right now. So take advantage of that moment and just start.

• 1:05:59Mel Robbins?

  Well, I've learned, Kier Gaines.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  What'd you learn?

• 1:06:02Mel Robbins?

  I learned what it looks like when somebody's walking in their purpose.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Is that me? You talking about me?

• 1:06:07Mel Robbins?

  That is you.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it was hard for me to accept that about two or three years ago. I'm starting to feel it now. I feel it now. I accept that.

• 1:06:16Mel Robbins?

  Well, you know what? My favorite definition of purpose is it's not what you do. Purpose is what happens in others when you do what you do.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Hmm. I definitely feel that. I definitely feel that every day. That's really meaningful. So thank you for that. That's an offering that isn't light. I take that very seriously and I really appreciate it sincerely.

• 1:06:38Mel Robbins?

  Well, thank you. Thank you. I want to see you sore. I do. Like I can feel the positive ripple just coming from the vibration of this conversation out into the world. And it's, you know, the thing is, is that this will be around forever as a resource to people. And it'll just keep circling around and around and around. And I'm so excited for that. So thank you for hopping on a plane. Thank you for being here.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  For you anytime.

• 1:07:09Mel Robbins?

  Yes. All right. Well, this is just the beginning. I have a feeling. Thank you.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:07:16Mel Robbins?

  And I also want to thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to something that will truly change your life. Like I feel like there are those conversations that you have, you never know when it's going to hit. But when it does, it's like the page of a book where you flip one page and the chapter ended, and now you're staring at a brand new one. And one of the things that Kier said to you is that you don't know how much time you have and that there is no perfect time, that now is the perfect moment to get started. And what I'm really excited about is absolutely everything he shared with you.

• 1:08:01Mel Robbins?

  He poured into you. He made you laugh today. He made you think. I hope what he actually did was make you realize that you are the driver of your life, that you can create a completely different future. You can feel different, that you are capable of building emotional fitness and of becoming the kind of person that you're proud of. And I know you also got the tools that you need to start doing that. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And I can say that because you now have this episode to listen to on repeat. And that is a resource that will help you get started.

• 1:08:45Mel Robbins?

  So go do it. Okay. Here's, here's the hard truth. You, Kier Gaines, oh, okay. And then we said, okay, so please help me welcome her. What am I doing here?

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  I think you can do either one.

• 1:09:02Mel Robbins?

  Okay. Kier Gaines. Kier, I just want to keep, Kier, I just want you to keep on talking. But I got, Kier, I love that. So Kier, I was thinking about, Kier, I was thinking about this. Kier, I was thinking about something over the break. 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,

• 1:09:45Mel Robbins?

  psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.