i should take my own advice

0:00Emma Chamberlain:One of the things I'm known for is giving advice. On this very podcast, I give advice every other Sunday in a series called Advice Session. And in my real life, there's nothing I love more than sitting down with somebody and talking through a challenge. It's up for debate whether my advice is any good. I think all advice should be up for debate. Advice is biased. Advice is based on people's personal experiences in life. However, I will say I'm someone who's always prefacing my advice with, you should take this with a grain of salt. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm not a professional.

0:37Emma Chamberlain:I'm just yapping. You need to figure it out for yourself. But regardless of all of this, I'm known for giving advice. And so you'd think, oh, if Emma gives a lot of advice, then she must handle almost every situation with perfect tact and grace. She can take her own advice and find the solution so easily and so seamlessly. Life must be so perfect and so easy for Emma. No, unfortunately, no, that's not how that works. I struggle to take my own advice. But even if you're a person who has flawless, incredible, perfect advice, having the wisdom to be able to give advice is one thing. But executing on advice is a whole other thing.

1:23Emma Chamberlain:It takes discipline to handle things the right way. Oftentimes, handling situations well comes with delayed gratification. Instant gratification is usually a red flag. And so that's why it's hard to follow advice sometimes. It requires you to be the bigger person, to have uncomfortable conversations, to stand up for yourself. So even though I often know what the answer is, what should be done, that doesn't mean I always do it. And so today I thought I'd sit down and share with you all my own advice that I struggle to take the most. This episode is presented to you by eBay. We all have that piece.

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2:38eBay, things people

2:40Emma Chamberlain:love. When someone comes to me and says, Emma, I'm feeling burnt out. I feel overworked. I'm exhausted. I'm starting to feel depressed. I just don't know how to keep going. What should I do? My advice is you need to listen to your body. You need to slow down. Now, sometimes that's unrealistic. Sometimes we have things that we actually have to do. If that's the case, then everything else gets thrown in the garbage temporarily. Actually, let's say it gets thrown into a storage unit, a metaphorical storage unit, so that we can get it back out later. The only thing on the agenda should be what needs to be done indefinitely until you start to feel better.

3:20Emma Chamberlain:You know, it's so important when you're feeling burnt out to take it seriously and to let yourself truly rest because that's the only way that you can recover from it, at least in my experience. And I've experienced burnout quite a few times in my life in pretty extreme ways. You can't just keep working through it and then one day wake up and it'll just be gone. If you keep pushing through it and you keep working at the level that you've been working, it's only going to get worse. That's the nature of burnout, you know? Burnout is more extreme than, I don't know, just being a little tired. Like, it's very different.

4:02Emma Chamberlain:Let's actually look up the definition of burnout. Burnout, according to the internet, is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged or excessive stress. It's characterized by feelings of cynicism, detachment, and reduced personal accomplishment. Unlike typical tiredness, burnout is persistent and doesn't easily resolve with rest. It can significantly impact one's work, relationships, and overall well-being. Okay, well, listen, I know what you're thinking. Emma, your advice is saying to just rest, take as much off your schedule as possible and then rest. Yes, but that's not the full extent of my advice.

4:39Okay. That's step one.

4:41Emma Chamberlain:How I've gotten through burnout is by doing the bare minimum and in the moment of rest, analyzing my life to figure out what is causing the burnout and try to come up with solutions as to how I can restructure my life so that I'm not under as much stress, okay? So that's my advice for burnout. Now, I have a really hard time slowing down. This happened to me like in the last month. I've been working very hard in all areas of my life. In my work life, I've been working harder than I probably ever have in my life, six, seven days a week from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep. And then on top of that, I've been really focused on certain creative hobbies I love the watercolors.

5:28I love making stuff out of clay. I've been doing a lot of different arts and crafts and trying to improve on those skills. So when I'm too tired to work,

5:36Emma Chamberlain:I'm working on my creative little hobbies. And then in addition to that, I also am very regimented about my exercise routine because it keeps me feeling good mentally. So this sort of structure in my life of like, I'm working nonstop, but then when I do need to stop a little bit, I'm doing a creative task or I'm like exercising and, and then, and I'm never sitting down and doing nothing. I'm never on my phone. I've been scrolling around. I'm never wasting any time. I'm always doing something active with my brain or with my body or with something like I have been in this routine lately. That's like almost too productive to the point where it's like, I'm never just sitting down and resting.

6:17This is self-inflicted. No one's telling me to do this. I don't need to do this. I started to feel a little bit burnt out. And for me, it feels like not feeling like my sleep is recharging me, like never feeling rested, even if I'm getting a lot of sleep. I start to get a bit irritable. It gets harder for me to motivate to work. Like I'm not excited to work on stuff that I normally would be excited to work on. Everything starts to feel like a chore. I start to isolate myself. I'm too exhausted from the structure of my life to like

6:49Emma Chamberlain:be around other people, little signs start to pop up. And I know that I should nip it in the butt before it gets bad. That's my body begging me to slow down a little bit. But you want to know what I always do? Even though I know I shouldn't ignore it, I keep pushing through until one day I wake up and I am done. And I feel depressed. I can't get out of bed. I feel psychologically horrible, dark, bad, and then it gets worse and then it gets worse. I have a really hard time not getting to the point where I burn myself out, maintaining a work-life balance for like an extended period of time. Like I'll get a grasp on it and it'll be really good for a while, but I'm just kind of an extreme person I've realized.

7:34Emma Chamberlain:And I'm kind of addicted to working on things. I think because it distracts me from anxiety. It makes me feel in control and I'm a control freak. I think there's some sort of like fucked up reason why I have a tendency to run myself into the ground. And I know better. All the advice that I would give to other people about burnout, I time and time again fail to follow myself. And it gets to the point where I feel actually depressed and it can actually devolve into a depressive episode even at times. I will say, I'll give myself credit. I've gotten much better at it as I've gotten older. When I was younger, oh my God, it was chaos.

8:13Emma Chamberlain:I was like in a constant state of burnout for like years, but I didn't know how to recover from it properly. Even when it was at its worst, instead of just truly resting, I would lay in bed and feel guilty. Whereas now I know like, okay, I can now be like, all right, this needs to heal. So I need to just give myself a set amount of time to chill and figure out how to not get to this point again. You know, when I had this most recent spurt of burnout, I think the root of the problem was anxiety. I've had a lot of anxiety recently. I have a lot of anxiety all the time. Big whoop. Emma's favorite thing to do, be anxious.

8:52I've been particularly anxious as of recently. Everything's fine. My anxiety has just been up a little bit, right? And in order to distract

9:00Emma Chamberlain:myself from that, I've thrown myself into work and into my hobbies and into exercise 100%. it's given me this sense of control. It's given me this sense of distraction. All this other stuff is actually like what I need to be working on anyway. Like I, all those things are important for me to have in my life anyway, but I've taken it too far and I'm not doing anything else and not giving myself any time to rest. And so that's the root of the problem. I need to figure out a different way so that I'm not almost addicted to everything in my life. Does that make sense? I know it sounds like ridiculous to be addicted to working and like doing arts and crafts and like going to workout classes.

9:41It sounds ridiculous, but it's like I'm addicted to the distraction that those things give me. And then I never have any downtime to relax and just be peaceful and quiet because I'm constantly working on something, doing something. I'm always being productive. I'm addicted to the productivity because it's distracting me from my anxiety.

9:58Emma Chamberlain:Do you see what I mean? So I know better and I shouldn't even be getting to this point. It's hard advice for me to follow. Okay, next. Whenever someone comes to me and says, Emma, you know, I'm feeling really bad about myself because I'm having a hard time not comparing my life and my journey to other people's lives and journeys. Comparison is really bringing me down. Listen, it's natural. It happens. But comparison is the thief of joy. And my advice is usually to, number one, put the jealousy and comparison into perspective, right? The grass is always greener. We look at other people's lives and romanticize them and fantasize about them in a way that's completely unrealistic and just not rooted in reality at all.

10:45Like a lot of our comparisons are actually delusional. Let's say we're in a relationship that's struggling. We'll look at other people's relationships that look so happy and so wonderful and compare. But you never know what's going on. That couple might be cheating on each other. It might all be an illusion that they're a happy and healthy couple. They might be fully fucking cheating on each other. You know what I mean? Like you never know. So that's usually the step one. And then the step two is usually to work on yourself, on your self-esteem. You know, if you feel good about yourself, you're not going to compare yourself to others as often.

11:19Now, I'm so hyper aware of how damaging comparison can be. I'm also hyper aware of how delusional it tends to be, like it's not even rooted in reality. I'm so hyper aware of how to fix it. As hyper aware as I am of these things, I still compare myself to others. I'll still go through little phases where i'm comparing myself to others and I don't even check it Like I know i'm doing it and I know it means I need to do some work on myself because when I find that i'm doing that a lot it's usually because I'm, not tending to my self-esteem my confidence. There's a like there's a disconnect something's off You know what I mean?

12:00Like I i'm not in a good place with that I still get to that point. And sometimes it'll go on for like six months and then I'll be like, wait, I've been feeling like shit lately. And that's because I'm in a little routine of comparing myself to others. You know, I'm stalking people on Instagram who are hot. I'm seeing like a cute couple on the street and being like, they look so happy. Like, why are they, they look so happy. Or like walking past a bar and seeing a group of friends and being like, wow, that group of friends looks like they're having so much more fun than I've ever had in my life.

12:34Like it creeps in and then I'll have the epiphany one day, like, wait, I've been

12:39Emma Chamberlain:doing this. Like I've been in this state of mind for a few months now. And this needs to be addressed because this is unhealthy and it's making my quality of life worse. Sometimes it takes me a lot of time to realize that I'm doing it and then to put in the work to stop doing it. And then it creeps back in again, you know, and then I have to handle it again. It's like whack-a-mole. It's a really hard one to manage. And I have a tendency to let it linger for too long because I'm just too lazy to like address it. You have to be disciplined and motivated to catch these toxic mindsets and then to eradicate them.

13:14Emma Chamberlain:Like it really is like it's almost like owning a home. Your brain is like a home. You're constantly up keeping a home. And it's exhausting, you know, and sometimes you're going to miss something. You're going to miss that you had rats in your walls and they've been pooping in there and now it smells like poop. You know what I mean? Like you're going to miss that. You're going to miss stuff sometimes because you're not always going to be paying super close attention to every single thing that's going on all the time. Or you might have a suspicion like, I think we have a cockroach infestation, but I just don't want to deal with it right now.

13:43So then you ignore it, ignore it, ignore it until it becomes a bigger problem. I don't know. I feel like taking care of a home and taking care of your brain is very much the same thing. And in an ideal world, we would have a firm grasp on where we're at at all times. And we would handle little toxic things that pop up as they pop up. And the second they pop up, we handle it. But again, that's not always realistic. We don't always have the energy to do that. And I don't. I try to be as good about it as I can. But I'll let it linger for a little bit too long sometimes. Okay, moving on.

14:13Emma Chamberlain:A piece of dating advice that I've given many times is to stay emotionally vigilant because love and lust can really cloud our judgment. It can make us accepting of bad behavior. It can cause us to make excuses for bad behavior. It can have us prematurely come to conclusions about the fate of the relationship. if you let yourself be blissfully, ignorantly in love, it can bite you in the ass. You have to stay vigilant. This is advice that I give to other people. And I also am constantly giving to myself like when in love, it's so easy to just become like your brain fills with like mush because you're just so excited and you're so in love, you think, and you just want this to be the one and you want this to be your soulmate, and especially in the honeymoon phase, you probably think that this person's your soulmate because everything feels so wonderful and new and exciting.

15:17Emma Chamberlain:And the reason why that's so harmful is because who you're dating is really important. You know, whether it's something casual for the time being or it's the person you're going to be with for the rest of your life, it's so important that you're with the right person. Because even if you're just casually dating, who we surround ourselves with impacts our lives so much more than we realize. If we're around somebody who is lazy, we will often become lazy. If we're around somebody who's negative, we will often become more negative. We should be incredibly critical of the people that we're dating.

15:52But funny enough, it's so hard to be critical. I've gotten a lot better at it, a lot better at it. I used to date somebody and be like, I'm marrying them like a month in. I wouldn't usually say that to their face, but I was thinking it. And they might have some red flags. I'd be like, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. It's no problem. I don't even care. Or I just turn a blind eye, whatever. I've gotten a lot better, but I still jump to conclusions. Okay. Next advice I give to anxious people, fellow anxious people. It's pointless to worry about things we cannot control.

16:26Emma Chamberlain:All that we need to focus on is what we can do in our lives. However, this is the hardest piece of advice for me to follow. Because even though I know that it's like technically a waste of my energy to worry about things that I can't control, of course, I'm still worried about them. There's a lot of scary things that I can't control. That's actually a root of a lot of my psychological issues. And it seems that the older I get, the harder this is for me to handle. But it's a practice that I'm constantly working on. You know, when I find myself worrying about things that I can't control. I have to sit down and repeat in my head over and over again, you cannot worry about things that you can't control.

17:07You cannot worry about things you can't control. And I just do whatever I can to try to let it go. But it's so fucking hard. It's so hard.

17:16Emma Chamberlain:And it doesn't work every time. And I'm still figuring it out. So is that good advice to give? yes and no, because I think it's true, but executing on it as an anxious person is so fucking hard. And I will say again, I've gotten a lot better at it over the years. I know that it's just kind of a mind game. It's just a mindset shift and it gets easier with practice. But again, it's like whack-a-mole. It'll get really bad. And then I'll get into a practice of like calming myself down and, you know, self-soothing in a way. And like even sort of getting into the practice of accepting the fact that there are things that I can't control and that's just how it is and there's nothing I can do.

17:59So it's not worth my worry. I'll get into a practice like that and then I'll lose it. And then it'll get worse and it'll get worse and it'll get worse until it's unbearable. And then I'll handle it again. If I were to be following my own advice, I would never let it get to a bad point again. I would put more effort and more time and more energy into keeping it under control. But I don't necessarily do that. And I should, because it's a serious issue that I have.

18:26Emma Chamberlain:I briefly paused this episode to let you know that this episode is brought to you by Uber. Heading back to campus this fall, you should check out Uber One for Students. It comes with a bunch of perks like$0 delivery fees, up to 10 % off eligible orders and 6 % back in Uber credits on rides. Plus daily freebies from your favorite brands. Try it out now and get your first four weeks free. Become an Uber One for Students member and start saving on Uber and Uber Eats. Eligibility and member terms apply. Now back to the episode. Another piece of advice that I always give to people is that we need to be touching grass.

19:06We need to be outside. Humans need to be in nature. It's so important for us.

19:12Emma Chamberlain:It grounds us. It brings us joy. It puts things into perspective. There's something about being outside and just seeing the world that puts things into perspective. If you're inside on your computer, on your phone, you get sucked into that world and that starts to feel like the world. And then the second you go outside, it's like, oh, okay. I see. There's this. This is what it really is. You know what I mean? This is what the world really is. However, I do not prioritize being outside enough. I am inside so much. It is so depressing to me and it genuinely makes me sad, but I just, everything that I do makes most sense to do indoors.

19:51Like when I'm working, Everything requires some sort of technology, computers, recording equipment. Makes most sense to do that indoors. All of the arts and crafts that I like to do makes most sense to do indoors. My favorite exercise, hot yoga, hot Pilates, stuff like that. That's all indoors in a room. Like I've spent so much of the summer indoors. I went on one vacation and I was outside like the whole time and it was amazing. And then I got home and I've barely been outside since. Like I completely lost my tan. I'm indoors in the AC looking outside like I should maybe bring my laptop out there and like work outside or something.

20:28But it's like I know I should and I know it would make me feel better, but it seems like too much work and it's hard for me to motivate to do it. And then even in my free time, I could go outside and go on a walk, but sometimes I'm like, oh, fuck it. I'll just walk on the treadmill. I have a tendency to be inside too much and I know how bad it is. I know that I would be a happier person if I was outside more often, but I really struggle to motivate to do it. And it's not because I'm sad or like, it's not even like a sad thing. It's not like I'm sad. I just, it doesn't make sense in my schedule.

21:02Does that make sense? Like I don't know how to schedule it in and it's not quite enough of a priority for me to like force it into my schedule because there's other things that are more important to me. And then I just end up inside all the time. And it does impact my happiness a little bit. I mean, I touch a lot of metaphorical grass. I don't scroll on social media anymore. I don't like I'm very much off the internet. And that's where that saying came from. People who are chronically online need to touch grass. But I actually need to touch more real grass.