Mel Robbins: "Saying These 2 Words Will Fix Your Anxiety!" The New Trick For Stress, Anxiety & Breaking Every Bad Habit In 2024!

32:32But here's the thing. You're not making your behavior decisions with your brain. You're making them with the sensation in your body. If you don't feel like doing it, you don't do it. See, before it even gets up here, you feel it in here. And this was the thing that was revelatory for me. It's like, oh my God. Like, my emotions drive my entire life. And that's why I feel out of control. And that's why I'm frustrated with myself. And that's why I can talk till I'm blue in the face about what I need to do and what I should do and what this and what that. But when push comes to shove, if I don't feel like doing it, where I'm scared or in this or in that, I don't do it.

33:07That means my emotions and the sensations in my body and the patterns that have been hardwired for a long time and the coping mechanisms that just run on autopilot, that's what's driving you. It's not up here. So we've broken our cycle. No, we have. Well, I don't know. I do. I wake up every, I still, I know all this. And this is the other, like, I think, is a really important thing for you to hear, not you, Stephen, but everybody watching and listening to us. And that is that I personally feel like it's important to understand that you may never like the things you need to do. And you can still do them.

33:47Like I, I will never like getting out of bed. And I still get out of bed when the alarm rings. I don't like emptying the dishwasher and I still do it. I don't like exercising. I still do it. I don't like eating healthy a lot of the times. I still do it. I don't like taking a breath and centering myself. When I really want to just scream at my husband and I still do it, because I let my emotions and my anxiety and my trauma responses and my fears run my life for far too long. And I would rather be in the daily, I don't know if you call it a battle or you just call it. But I'm just in a daily dance with myself to constantly come back to alignment and peace and showing up as the kind of person that I want to be, rather than how I may feel in the moment.

34:55One of the things I did want to speak to you about is about how we know what we want and how we set goals. Again, we're in that part of the year now where everybody's thinking, you know, we've talked a little bit about how one changes themselves. But then even knowing what direction to aim at is a whole challenge in and of itself. How does one know 30 years old in my life? What real goals I should be aiming at is part of the concern I've had is I wonder if I'm driven or being dragged. And what do you think? I don't really know the difference. Yeah, you know. No, I don't. You are the most driven person I know.

35:30Why? Why? I don't know. I'm going to ask you. Just give me this part from my interview. Well, this is something that I'm not. Why are you the most driven person I know? Why are you? Me? Yeah. Um, I think I was out running something for a very long time. Sounds like being dragged. Is it? I genuinely have sat here with hundreds of people. Every single time they explain their motivation to me, I guess, sounds like you're being dragged by shame, your father's opinion of you, insecurity, whatever. Like the other. That's a negative way to say it. I mean, I feel like that's the way people don't like it.

36:05Well, I'm powerless. They sound like they're attached to the back of the lorry and it's flying down the motorway. Well, if you recognize that's what it is, you suddenly become powerful. Yeah, and you can drive. Yes. Yeah. So for me, if I put it through the lens of like the bad things that happened, it would probably be, um, just like out running, like a psychiatrist once said to me, it's very interesting to me that when this, you know, incident happened in the fourth grade and this kid climbed on top of you while you were sleeping, you are in a state when you're sleeping, where you are completely, supposedly safe.

36:47And so I'm not sure, Mel, your nervous system ever reset back to a place of feeling safe. And then the hyper vigilance of having, you know, caregiver who is always kind of very erratic with their personality also made me feel always on the move, always on the move, always on the move, you know, if you're on the move, nobody can catch you. And so slowing down if you put it in that context becomes unsafe, right? However, if you look a lot of our experiences growing up, most of us get a lot of positive attention when we achieve. And so we become, whether you want to say driven or dragged, it's probably just a matter of whether or not you're in control of it.

37:31A lot of us are driven by the desire to want to feel seen, the desire to feel loved, the desire to get the accolades, which is why so many of us feel driven to achieve, because it's tied into a sense of self -worth, it's tied into a sense of being loved, being seen. For me, I think I was probably to use your words dragged since I wasn't in control of it. But more and more, I feel profoundly driven. I often think people need to be dragged to a place where they realize that it's failed them. Something has failed them for them to then take stock and decide to become a little bit more intentional and to take hold of the steering wheel.

38:18Because in my situation, I was 100 % track to thinking that I needed a million pounds of six pack of girlfriend and a ranger of a sport. And then upon getting those things, it was like almost a bit of an existential crisis, like, what the fuck am I doing here? What failed me and why did I come to this part? And then in that moment, I could really take stock of what my own intrinsic drivers were and then do things a little bit more intentionally and aligned with disassociated from the thought that any of these things would validate me at some deeper level. I think a lot of this that we're talking about isn't conscious decisions that anybody's making.

38:53That there is so much conditioning and programming that happens that we are unaware of as we're growing up and as we're moving through young adulthood that you don't even realize how much you avoid stuff or how much you're coping by being busy or you're coping by drinking too much or you're chasing stuff because you feel a deep sense of self -loathing. And that most of the decisions, at least this is for me, were all reactions. Just again, like just trying to do the best that I can but not really in control of anything. And until I really believe this, until you can drop into your body and just calm down your nervous system and not be revened that internal engine so much.

39:45But to be able to just, this is not a technical term, I feel like I've smoothed out my nervous system by doing traditional talk therapy, guided MDMA therapy with my husband, EMDR, all of the behavioral activation therapy, which is kind of leading with a behavior first approach and start acting like the person you want to be. Let them. Let them. Okay. Well, I was so fascinated by this theory, this let them theory, which is kind of a behavioral technique, I guess. Would you describe it as a behavioral technique? No, I would. What is it? So the let them theory is based on a simple truth. The fastest way to take control of your life is to stop controlling everyone around you.

40:45You have no idea how much time and energy and attention you are wasting, trying to control other people. You have no idea how much energy you are burning through, thinking about, worrying about, obsessing about what other people are doing, what they're not doing, what they're feeling, all of which you have zero control over. And so the let them theory is this simple theory that I credit my daughter with teaching me that has created so much peace in my life because like every other human being on the planet, I had no idea how many opinions, how much frustration and expectations I had about what other people were doing or what they should be doing.

41:44Like it's just unreal, how obsessed we all are with everybody else and what they should be doing and what they're not doing. And when you start to use the let them theory, you will notice, it's just unbelievable, how much you need to use it. There are exceptions. I mean, I can explain a lot about this. I'll give you the quick story about how I learned it because I think it's very helpful. So it was our son's junior prom. So he's a 11th grader in the States. And like most moms, you know, completely obsessed about everything, it's also my son and this is his first prom and I had had daughters. So it was a totally different circus with our daughters.

42:31And I thought that his would be drama free because he's a guy, but it actually became more dramatic because he doesn't say anything. And so everything Stephen was a last minute scramble, right? Like from getting the talks to he needed to have these certain Stan Smith, the Dita sneakers. And we had to overnight those to the fact that he was just going to go with his friends and then all of a sudden he asked to date and then she wants a boutonare, she doesn't want to boot near and then we're going to the pre and every step of the way I had internal opinion. Why isn't he doing it? So we get to the pre prom photo party.

43:06That's a lot of peace. And our daughter happened to be home from college and so she was there for the weekend. And all of a sudden it starts to rain out of nowhere. And by rain, I mean a hail storm. It is raining sideways and I realize none of these kids have umbrellas. None of these kids are prepared for this. And so I turned to our son and I'm like, oh, where are you guys going for dinner? And he's like, well, I don't know. And I turned towards my husband and I'm like, they don't have plans for dinner. What would he mean? They didn't make a reservation for the prom. And so I start to get all worked up.

43:42And now all the other parents are like, wait, you didn't make, do you want me to call the end? Would you guys want to start our pizzas? And the ramp up is happening. And I start to jump in and my daughter grabs my arm and she says, let them just let them do what they want. And Oak yells over and says, hey, mom, I think we're going to go to this taco thing. Now the taco place that they were going to, Stephen, is like the size of this table. There are 20 kids. It is hailing outside. They are dressed to the nines. And I could feel that volcano of control coming up like, you can't go to the taco place.

44:19You're in a toxin. You got the new sneakers and she, her dress is going to get ruined. You don't even have an umbrella. What are you thinking? And Kendal has my arm. She's like, let them. If they want to go to a taco stand in the pouring rain and ruin their dress, let them. It's their problem, not yours. And as she said it, I started just repeating those words, even let them. Let them, let them, let them ruin issues. Who cares? Let them, let them do what he wants to do. Why am I worried about what he's doing? Why am I not worried about where I'm going to have dinner? And so it was just this moment and it immediately kind of unhooked me.

44:59And then from that point forward, I just noticed a million situations sitting at the restaurant that night and the waiter is busy with other stuff and they're not coming to the table. How does everybody feel when that happens? Let them, let them be busy. Let them take care of the other table. Standing in line and people, I don't know what it is about the world today, but people cannot stand in lines. Fidgeting and this and that and the other thing. And the person is letting in people from that line and they're not letting in people from this line. Let them, let them. And some of the like really important topics too.

45:38Like if your kid wants to drop out of school, you can say what you need to say. Ultimately, it's their life. Let them. What's going on there at the heart of that? Is that just a lowering of one's expectations? So that going back to the point we said about expectations and happiness, we. Eleviate the chance of disappointment and because we're just like, we're saying, that's fine, let it go. Like what is that? The very crux of that on a psychological level that's allowing us to feel liberated from that stress and need for control. What do you think it is? I think when we take on other people's problems, we create expectation for them.

46:23Like in the case of your son, you had an expectation of what his night would look like and where his trainers and tux were going to go. And that unmet expectation is causing you unnecessary suffering, control, stress, angst, vigilance. And just by saying, you know what? Like I wish him, well, you're just cutting the cord of a whole other stream of expectation that you absolutely do not need. You didn't need to volunteer to make your yours. And look how much stress are created. Yeah. And look how much agitate created. So there's so many things going on, Stephen. And first of all, I should also say there are exceptions.

47:00First of all, you're not just going to let your kids do whatever they're going to do if you're a parent because you're supposed to put the guard rails up. Right. But there is so much controlling that we do in our lives of other people. And it is ruining your relationships. And a great example of a way to use this is, let's say that you see that your friends are going out for brunch this weekend. They didn't invite you. Happens all the time with my team. Madam. Let them. Because here's the thing that's really important is it's really not about other people. See energetically, you're hooking yourself into other people because you have an opinion about what they should or shouldn't be doing.

47:37And that opinion is usually driven by your insecurity or it's driven by your controlling nature or it's driven by your anxiety or it's driven by whatever it is that you may have. But once you get your energetic hook into somebody else, you have now just lost control because you are now trying to gain control of anything in your life. What your friends are doing for brunch this weekend by focusing on them. When you say let them, this is what's very interesting. It's very different than saying, I'm just going to let go. I don't give a hoot. I don't care. Blowny. If you're feeling a wave of energy about it or emotion about it, you do care because the emotion is evidence that it is impacting.

48:16You and so most people understand that you should just let it go or you shouldn't care, but they don't know how. When you say let them a couple really interesting things happen. Number one, you acknowledge what's happening, which both acknowledges that your friends are out to lunch without you. And it also acknowledges that it bothers you. And when you say let them, you're acknowledging the situation and you're almost saying, I'm above it and I'm permitting this because I see it happening. And then something really interesting happens because you're no longer all worked up about what they're doing.

48:52You are forced to look back at yourself. Let them, if my friends are going out to brunch and they didn't invite me and it bothers me that much. And I'm just going to let them do it instead of sitting here, stewing about it. What do I need to take responsibility for? You're toxic. Yes, probably. Or I didn't, I don't ever invite anybody out. Or if I want more experiences with my friends, I should be the one organizing everybody to go out to brunch. Or maybe my friends can just go out and I don't have to always be included and it doesn't have to mean anything. And maybe I've got work to do with therapy.

49:34And so what happens is as you start to use let them to lower your expectations, to stop focusing on other people and what they're doing, it forces you to take responsibility for what you want in your life. Link to that was this thing that I found which people just loved when you said it, which was you should stay in your peace and stay in your power. Yes. And it sounds somewhat correlated to that. Very much so. So when you start using it, you will notice how often you get agitated or frustrated by what other people are doing. And it's strangers in a coffee shop. It's your relatives. It's like we were just in a situation this here in the States for Thanksgiving where we were down visiting my parents and they're in a place that small.

50:28So we had a place that we had to rent so that we could all kind of be together, but it wasn't that close. And every time it was a moment where it was, are we going to there? As we're going to our husband and somebody had an expectation about where we should be. Normally the old male will get hooked right into that person. I just feel like glad. That the people in your life are allowed to have their emotional reactions. And it's not your responsibility to manage their emotional reactions. Part of the reason why we get hooked into these toxic dynamics with people is because you're part of the dynamic.

51:05Somebody does something that triggers you. You go right in. You start to change how you show up. You start to compensate. You start to people please or you get all mad and angry and next thing you know it erupts and it's the same thing over and over and over and over again. And you wonder why it never changes. Well, part of the reason why is that person's never going to change. You cannot control that. But you can change the energy you're putting into the dynamic. When you were asked what was the worst advice you've ever given? Do you remember what you said? I do not. What is it? The worst advice I've ever received is that someone else can make you happy.

51:39Oh, it's so true. It's so true. Money can't make you happy. Someone else can't make you happy. And it's correlate. It's what you were just saying there in a way. It's very correlated because a lot of us are putting our energy into trying to push other people to show up a certain way. When if you were to pull all that energy back and conserve it for yourself, you suddenly start taking responsibility and you have more energy to take the steps and to change the way that you think so that you can have what you want in your life. And there are exceptions. Look, you're not just going to let somebody get behind the wheel of a car if they've been drinking.

52:21So if it's dangerous, if it's self -destructive, if it's discriminatory, you have to step in, in my opinion, and do something. But here's the rub. Hold the intervention with your friend who is an addict. Offer to pay for the treatment center if you can afford to do so. But then you have to let them do what they're going to do. It makes the responsibility of how you show up entirely on you, which means you are now operating based on your values and based on what you want in your life and based on the kind of person that you want to be, not because you're doing it out of obligation or manipulation or that sort of transactional nature that we get into with people.

53:08It seems to be both selfish and self -less at the same time and away. I don't think it's selfish at all. Really? I actually think it's one of the most generous things you could do. How is not controlling other people a selfish thing to do? I'm not saying I don't care. I'm saying I'm aware that you are a independent human being with his own feelings, and his own life path, and his own values and expectations. And when I step in and try to fix everything for you or change how you feel, I actually rob you of both the breakdowns that you need. I rob you of the responsibility that you need to take.

53:50And I don't own the part of the equation in every relationship. Every relationship has an energetic exchange. I do something, and now you are going to react. And are you going to react based on what's aligned for you or are you going to react as a way to try to change how I am? Taking that hook out though feels like it serves you in a profound way as well, which is the self -selfish part of the equation. It doesn't feel selfish, but over the long time it's going to serve you. So it is an active self -preservation or taking care of oneself. Yeah, and I also feel like there's a healthy dose of curiosity in this, because it's going to reveal all the things in your life that really bother you.

54:32Because right now you're distracting yourself by being upset about other people. Instead of pulling that energy back in and going, if it really bothers me that my sister -in -law never comes to visit me, then I clearly care about this relationship. And so do I care about the me being right and then always coming to me? Do I care about tit for tat? Or do I actually just care about building a good relationship with somebody? This is also extraordinarily effective if you're dealing with somebody that has any toxic tendencies, any narcissistic traits, like when you look at the research around, especially narcissism and the fact that people are not born that way, they're made that way, and it's highly unlikely that they're changing based on the supply that they constantly need, when you go let them.

55:24I'm going to see what's coming. I'm going to anticipate what's coming. I'm going to let them have their tantrum, which is what typically happens. And I'm going to go into this wide open. I'm not going to allow myself to get triggered by it because I am saying I know who this person is. I know what's going to happen. I've been in this dynamic for years, and I'm going to let them do what they do. And when that happens, you also kind of, it's almost like a emotional force field that goes up. Does this apply to Chris too? Oh, hell yes. I mean, I'm trying to think of, how is Chris? We talked about him a bit last time.

56:06Chris is fantastic. He's getting a master's in transpersonal psychology. Oh wow. And he I'm really, really, really proud of him. He has started that he's been doing men's retreats for six years. And why? Why? Was there a catalyst? Yes. He came out of his restaurant business, a broken human, because the venture did not succeed. And he felt like an abject failure. And based on all the messaging that men in particular get about providing, he felt like he had completely failed his wife and his three children and all the friends and families that had invested. And as I scrambled and did whatever I could to start try to keep us afloat, when things started to take off for me, the shadow that I cast just made him feel even worse.

57:11And so he was looking for something that would allow him to really reconnect with himself to connect with other men. And so he created something called Soul Degree. And it's been a real passion project of his. He just does two or three retreats a year. He just opened up next year's registration and sold it out in 24 hours, which tells you a little bit about the demand and the desire for people to have deeper experiences and deeper connection. And you know, to kind of circle back on that topic about goals, if you want to go there. I think it's very important, you know, every this time of year, when January 1st rolls around, January 1st is what's called a temporal landmark.

58:04And a temporal landmark, I'm not going to get the definition right, but it is this term used for moments of significance, moments that create a before and an after. And we've all had experiences on birthdays. Yeah. Turning 30 was one of them. Yes, of course, right? A before and an after. The reason why there are more people that go to a gym on the first of a month is not only because of the incentive with pricing, but it's because it's a temporal landmark. Quarters in a business, temporal landmark. But January 1st is a really huge temporal landmark. I think it's very important to do an assessment or an audit of where you are before you jump into what's next.

58:49And I think this is the piece that everybody misses when they sit down and they write out allisticals. The most important part of setting goals for yourself, I believe, is first understanding where you are. And there's a simple exercise that you can do. It's sort of like if you think about directions, it's mathematically impossible to give somebody a set of directions unless we know your starting point and where you want to go. And most people pick their head up and go, I want to go there without going, well, where am I right now? And so just take out a blank piece of paper and write out all the categories of your life.

59:30There's no formula for this literally. You could do 10 different categories. You could do five. You could do relationships, money, my health, my happiness. And just rank them. Where are you? One to 10, one to five, whatever you want. And explain why. And I think a really good goal is to simply say to yourself, how do I make this number two or three points higher? That right there changes your direction. You know where you're starting from. And you ask yourself, well, if my health is a two, what would a five look like? And can I work towards that? And to me, that's what goals are. Goals are that sort of point on a map that are your next couple steps.

1:00:21Dreams are something else. And dreams are just as important because dreams are that moment where you pick your head up. And you get really quiet. And you tune in to what your mind body and spirit is telling you, kind of aim that inner compass out into the distance. And you ask yourself, where do I want to go? Like if you think about five or 10 years from now. And the easiest way for me to figure out that is who am I jealous of? That usually shows up a lot faster than who am I inspired by because jealousy is just block desire. You can't feel jealous of somebody unless you authentically want something for real that you think that they have.

1:01:18And the jealousy happens because you have somewhere in your psyche told yourself you can't have it. And that's why it comes up as negative. But I want you to consider if you were to allow yourself at this time of year or right now after this podcast to just span the world and ask yourself, who am I either inspired by or who am I jealous of? Give yourself permission to do that. And then get curious, well, what is it exactly? Because it might not be the fancy cars or the things that you see, it might be a sense of peace. It might be that they seem to have a great family life. It might be that they have a very vibrant energy to them, that there's something behind the stuff on the surface that really is aligned with what is hardwired in you.

1:02:20And pay attention to that because those dreams are there for a reason. See, I think that they are the beacons out in the future that are directional signals. Just because you have this dream doesn't mean you're going to get it. The dream's purpose in your life is to get your head out of the sand and to look out ahead and to point you in a different direction. Dreams, dreams and goals. It's funny because what you were saying that I was wondering what your dreams and goals must be. And it made me think of this comment that I saw on our last conversation last time you came on the podcast. It said, dear Mal, you've touched me.

1:03:07I've had a similar molesting experience. I came out after the experience and I told my parents about it. But I didn't tell them for many, many, many years because I thought I would be blamed for it because that is how my mother always treated me. I can finally totally relate to somebody in you. I've been living in fear all of my 71 years of life. Fear, capital words, controls me to this day. Now, thanks to you, I have the answers. I can now live the rest of my days better. I've spent my life trying to fix me. With you, I have directions to follow now. So thank you, Mal. Thank you for sharing that.

1:04:04One of the things that is profound about the Let them Theory is that if you're in a situation where you're terrified of somebody's reaction, just tell yourself, let them. Let them have the reaction that they're going to have. Because if you allow the space for your parents in that situation, to have a really horrible reaction, you've anticipated that it's coming and you've also allowed them to be human. And you empower yourself to then do what you need to do for yourself, which is to say it out loud and to tell the truth about what happened to you. Because it's not about your parents' reaction.

1:04:58It's about you finding the courage and making the decision and taking the action to say this happened. And that's the beginning of your life moving in a completely different direction. Because fear is something that runs people's lives. It makes you avoid. It makes you shrink. It makes you live in silence. It makes you deny what you're feeling. And too often, the fear that we feel the most is we're afraid of what other people are going to say. We're afraid of other people's reactions. Let them have it. Let them be human. Let them do. And I'm not saying let people treat you poorly. What I'm here to tell you is that when you take responsibility for your truth and you take responsibility for expressing it and then you take responsibility for your boundaries and you take responsibility for your healing, you do have the possibility of living the rest of your life in a completely different way.

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1:06:48We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and arrows. Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. When did you receive your diagnosis of ADHD? I was I think like 47. How did it change things? It was amazing. I absolutely amazing. You were recently diagnosed, right? It changed everything because I finally had an explanation for something about the way that my mind worked and the way that I felt that made me for 47 years feel like there was something defective about me.

1:07:54And I couldn't figure out what it was. And I was diagnosed the way that most women that are adults are diagnosed. And it goes a little something like this. You have a kid. So my husband and I have three children and our youngest Oakley was this just amazing kind of casserole of things. And one of the things that he was is that he had a lot of trouble in school. He just we didn't even know that he couldn't read. I mean talk about being a parent that asleep at the wheel. We didn't find out that he couldn't read Stephen until he was in the fourth grade. And the reason why we didn't know and the school didn't know is because he had so overcompensated in the classroom by being so verbal first kid with the hand up blah blah blah blah like talking talking talking that nobody knew that he was having trouble.

1:08:53And all of a sudden the math problems get harder because they become word problems all of a sudden reading comprehension. And you know not not to mention the fact that he also had dysgraphia which basically means that it looked like he was writing with his feet. I mean his handwriting was so bad. And I was befuddled by this because he could literally sit in front of the TV and play video games for hours and have hyper focus and all this dexterity. And so I just thought always acting out he can't stand school. So we have this great teacher in the public school system who says you really need to get him tested.

1:09:28And I wouldn't test him in the school. And luckily we were at a point where we could afford to go get I think it's called a psychographic something something it's like a long word. And sure enough the testing comes back. And the PhD neuropsych guy is like yeah well he has profound dyslexia he has profound dysgraphia he has executive functioning issues which is basically the conductor or the secretary in the brain sort of helping you state organized in a couple steps ahead he has ADHD. And as I'm reading through this report I'm sitting in the pediatricians office Stephen and I'm looking at this report and I'm reading it and I look up at his pediatrician who had become good friends with because we had three kids in the practice at this point I'm like Mark.

1:10:20Do you think maybe I have ADHD? And he puts his paper down Stephen and he goes do I think you have ADHD? Of course you have ADHD. You are the most ADHD person parent in my entire practice. I'm like what do you mean? He's like now you're a brilliant and yet you never do what you say you're going to do. You will leave here and tell me you're going to call you never call back. Your kids go years without coming in because you miss all their wellness appointments. You scramble every single year for the physicals that your kids need and you beg us to eat his clockwork. Of course you have ADHD and I look at him Stephen and I'm like why didn't you tell me?

1:11:02He said because I'm not your doctor and so I went and I got the testing Stephen and turns out yes ADHD dyslexia same profile as my son and what was interesting about getting the diagnosis because I didn't understand what ADHD was. I always thought that ADHD is that you can't pay attention. That's not what it is at all. And so learning about what it is and learning that boys and girls present completely differently. So there's an entire generation of women. I don't know if you know this but there's an entire generation of women called the lost generation and what happened is when they were studying ADHD I guess in the late 60s and early 70s they only looked at boys.

1:11:53And so boys tend to show the symptoms of ADHD around the age of seven and it typically is around the hyper activity or the inability to kind of like focus and control their body movements. Girls on the other hand don't start displaying symptoms until about the age and the symptoms are very different. Girls become inattentive but in a kind of daydreaming fashion. They become a little bit more disorganized and they aim all of this back at themselves. And so as you become kind of more inward and you are inattentive and you're disorganized and you start to wonder what's wrong with you and now plus the average age of girls for puberty is right around then too.

1:12:44So all this other stuff is starting to happen and hormones are starting to change. If you don't get properly diagnosed and treated and by treated I mean the whole array of things that you can do whether you're talking about medication or just the different habits that you can have or systems that you can develop to support yourself. If you don't get properly tested and you don't address it do you know what the number one thing that happens? You develop anxiety. Well of course because you're sitting in a classroom and you can't get yourself to focus and you're disorganized and you start to feel the sense of alarm that you're going to walk into a test and you're not going to be able to do it.

1:13:29That you're going to yet again open your locker and the stuff's going to fly everywhere. That yet again you're going to forget your friend's birthday or you're going to forget to do this thing and so all of this anxiety rises to the surface so get this. So they call us the lost generation of women because what do you suppose if we were not diagnosed so I'm 55. If I'm in elementary school in the late 70s and the you know and and they've only studied boys and so none of this is on anybody's radar screen. You now have a generation of women who are developing anxiety at big levels in high school and college.

1:14:10I was textbook and so we get treated for the anxiety and medicated for it without addressing the underlying issue all along which was undiagnosed ADHD. So for me it was absolutely life changing and it was life changing to understand that ADHD is not about your inability to focus. It is about the fact and I'm sure you probably have dug into this and you know this but for you know anybody anytime I talk about this the number of women that are going to write in the number of dads that will write in about their daughters the number of people have say oh my god I had anxiety in high school too and now I've been diagnosed with ADHD and it was because of my kid going through this and this is exactly my story it is happening over and over and over again and so here's what really also help me Steven and it's this.

1:15:08Understanding that focus and the ability to focus in appropriate ways requires two different neural networks in your brain and you can think about it this way. If you think about you know the prefrontal cortex this kind of part of your brain really has the job of almost being like a conductor of an orchestra this is the best example that I've heard in terms of what's happening if you have ADHD and what's happening is if you think about an orchestra and and the orchestra is warming up right it's like oh my drums are here ting ting ting ting ting and people are shuffling in their seats we know that sound right and then all of a sudden the conductors like and everybody is silent right in order to conduct an orchestra you got to be able to do two things at once you got to be able to ssh lower the volume on the strings over here and then you got to be able to amplify the focus on the percussion over here and what happens when this part of your brain is not switching properly is you are like Mel Robbins in college and I would be with my books and I would be in the stacks at Baker library at Dartmouth College and I'd be there because I'm going to study right and my orchestra conductor cannot shush anything so the second I sit down if I'm going to study I have to do two things I have to be able to quiet all the ambient noise I have to be able to quiet all the signaling in my body so that what I can amplify my attention on what I'm reading when this part of your brain doesn't work what ends up happening or at least this is the way that it's been explained to me is that I can't focus on my books because I'm paying attention to the fact that my stomach is grumbling and I hear people walking and then I'm looking around and then I'm paying attention to the fact that I have to go the bathrooms so that I'm up then I'm walking around and that is how I lived for a very very long time.

1:17:32Do you think that's a survival response? What do you mean? Becoming very aware of your surroundings. You know what I mean? Has anyone ever researched whether or not there's a link between trauma and ADHD? Yes. And Gabel Mate, I believe, is the one that's made a pretty pretty compelling case to me that ADHD appears to be linked to childhood trauma which is you... I'm going to butcher this so please forgive me everybody. The case he made to me was that when you have a heiotic or traumatic or stressful childhood as a survival mechanism you learn to tune out and that's that's that's protective so if your parents are always screaming in the house for example it makes a lot of sense for you to learn to tune out in that moment but also to know when to tune in obsessively and maybe that's the hyperfocus bit.

1:18:22The bit that he really stressed to me was that kids that go through some kind of interpretation of a stressful environment at a young age or a traumatic environment are more likely to have ADHD because they've learned to tune out in order to sort of conserve and survive so like my rough understanding of it. Well it makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you also have a really chaotic environment it might not be safe for you to tune out. And so you've got to stay in that hyper -vigilant mode which I think would fry the conductor in your brain. It does yeah. Because you're both paying attention to the the survival signals in your body at the same time as the chaos in your house and even if you're tuning out the parents who are screaming at each other you are still tuned into it because heaven forbid it escalates.

1:19:08Yeah. You got to know. Yeah. And so I think it makes perfect sense honestly but it was just a game changer and it was a game changer to know kind of the distinction between boys and girls and the link with anxiety in terms of it developing in a pronounced way for those of us that have had this experience of having this as a diagnosis learning it late in life and then tracing it back and going oh my god I've been treated for anxiety for all these years when the real issue was this attention issue. And if you take Gabor Matae's theory which I think is probably accurate dial it back even further and it's probably some form of childhood trauma that put a kink in the wires.

1:19:55Menopause you talked about menopause earlier. Yes do we have to I mean Jesus okay. Why why do you want to know? Why did you respond like that? You know because it's really confounding and it's confounding because there's I don't even know if that's the right word it's overwhelming. Everybody in my age is talking about it because what happens is you start to lose control of your body and you're going through all of these changes that you feel like you are not in control of and so you know I realize I look like a very lean person and so the truth is that I am a very lean person. I have not changed my habits in I don't know eight years I have very very healthy habits because I force myself to do things I don't feel like doing and yet they're not working and my body is expanding and brain fog is increasing and I am like a furnace to sleep next to it night and all of which is a function of the changing levels of estrogen in my body and what's very challenging about dealing with kind of hormone changes is that there's so much conflicting advice out there and to truly know what's going on in your body you have to be drawing blood you have to be looking at what's going on in the inside that is extremely expensive for most people it also is a big maintenance issue it's a gigantic pain in the ass and it doesn't feel like anybody really has a good handle on this and I think as a woman it's very frustrating to know that women were not even involved in medical research until the late 80s and it's even more frustrating to know and look I could be wrong on this but we had an expert on our show explain that they only use postmenopausal women because they don't want women's hormones to throw off the results of the testing that they're going through with medication and so it just feels like a massive gray area for more than half the population our entire network from the brain through the entire body is running on estrogen there's new research around like just stopping menopause altogether because women's health out women's I'm you know I'm not a medical expert so I'm trying to learn all this stuff to educate myself do I take a pill do I put a cream on do I have this little patch do I sleep on a pad that makes me cold so my husband won't like complain that I'm sweating like through the sheets do I do on bamboos it like it is so overwhelming and then and you know and I even feel my cheeks getting hot so it could be a hot flash coming on I don't know all I know is I'm drinking my water and I'm taking my progesterone and I'm doing my estrogen patch and now I've tried the blood draws and everybody has a different opinion is it your gut health is it your estrogen health I don't know I just know my body is changing and some days I feel like a a past I've merit that's being put out to pasture and part of the issue is the lifespan we have if you think about it like our our life expectancy has way eclipsed the fertility cycle of women and so we now for most of us will have another 30 or 40 years if we take care of ourselves and that's a long time to live a very vibrant and amazing life which I believe that we can and to have a body where your entire system needs estrogen and yet your body is starting to lose it and so that's part of the reason why there's so much interesting research going on around whether or not the answer is to just keep us menstruating so that we're naturally producing this in our bodies so interesting it's really because I'm I'm not going to go through menopause myself but obviously you'll do manopause though because you'll probably have a drop in testosterone uh -huh but on the subject of menopause I'm going to be surrounded by women that are going to go through it oh my god bitchy and bloated and all the bees so get ready and I want to I want to make sure I understand that's why I'm so curious about it but it's I think it's crazy thing is I only learned about it like a year ago on this but you didn't know about menopause no well that's true you're a 30 year old man why or 31 why would you know about menopause I learned from interviewing people on this podcast and I became so fascinated by it because people aren't talking about it enough or at least they haven't historically the conversation is as in my view as risen in cultural um popularity over the last couple of years but well here here's my take on it Stephen thank god it has yeah because if you look at the fact that women were not included in you know the medical research until the late 80s and you realize that more than half the population are women and that menopause and women's hormone health was a chapter in the OB -GYN hmm uh schooling and it is an enormous part of how a women woman's body function like if we pull away all the skin and what you see is all the wiring the fuel that is really circulating through a woman's body is estrogen and other hormones this is again I am not a medical expert I am just a woman who is trying desperately to figure out how to make sense of an extraordinarily important topic that until recent years has not been looked at with the scientific rigor that it deserves and demands and that women around the planet need and it has just been kind of like an afterthought that okay you're gonna take some hormones and then that'll be that you'll be through it I mean most of the advice that I got when I started to get the thickening and the hot flash has started to come and it's too much information for me to talk about all the other uh symptoms that you may feel when you go through menopause is basically like well you know it'll take about 10 years and then you'll bounce back that is not acceptable when it comes to how we can care for and empower more than half of the people on this planet and there it is exciting though because I do believe that somebody will figure this out soon that there will be more research there already are companies popping up all over the place that are doing really exciting stuff it's just kind of one of these issues that's really confusing because if you google it or you listen to an expert on the topic it really does depend on your personal history because if you've had any form of breast cancer or or history of that in your family it can be very dangerous or life threatening for you to take hormones and so again I'm I have a lot to say about this because I'm in the middle of it but I don't know a lot and I think that's the thing that's scary my last question for I go to the book the hardest question that people ask me I've struggled with it for a couple of years and I still struggle with an out of you know this is they ask me what's driving me and I always I I pause because I don't want to give a bullshit answer like what I do I really know at the core of me what's driving me you talked about a lot of it being subconscious I don't really know and the other thing that people ask me is what's your goal and because I think I've got this sort of predisposition now or this perspective that I don't know I don't know if there is a goal I know that you know there's this state of being that I want to arrive in every day this feeling I want but is there a goal because I've completed loads of my goals and it wasn't that so I'm cautious about setting any goals so I'm going to throw the question at you what is your goal is there a goal is that a shit question because I've read that quote to you that's I mean someone can't have more profound impact on other persons life than that so I'm like you know you did it you have the gazillion followers you've climbed the mountain you've got the car the money savings the kids are good relationships in a great place my goal is to enjoy it as much as I can.

1:29:05Another goal is to have a great relationship with my kids and my husband.

1:29:18I think having it's very fulfilling to have our adult kids be such good friends I really love that. When does that make you emotional? Because they're cool I mean I just you know what makes me emotional is because I know they're choosing to spend time with us and I saw this thing on it's it's floating around I'm sure you saw it too about how the amount of time you spend with your parents just declines over time it literally goes off a cliff and so I just love the time that I have with them because I think they're all really interesting and unique and I love that they choose to spend a lot of time with us.

1:30:18We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not now who they're going to leave it for. You're about metapod. I can't imagine what it might be depending on the answer. The question left for you I love how these are always the most difficult questions my questions are walking the park. What is the most difficult challenge that you have overcome?

1:30:40I'd say there's some I have a bazillion answers to this like I wanted to say getting out of bed every morning when I don't feel like it because that ability to feel resistance in your body and get out of bed and face the day is the skill that you need for any change and I over and I face it every day and every way I think the most difficult if you were to measure it in time challenge would be rewiring my nervous system if that's even possible technically that's probably not a thing that you do but to deprogram all of the crap that was there and you can't get rid of it entirely but to make the pathways in my body that used to be driven by either trauma or fear or anxiety that were so hardwired to make those not be the default and to gain a level of self -awareness and have the tools to be able to catch myself and be like up not going to be the grizzly bear right now and focusing on being action oriented as you said yeah and just prioritizing peace.

1:32:09Well thank you thank you so much for your for your brilliance. I could talk about some of the specific things that I think are so exceptional about you but that would probably be here for another two hours or so so thank you so much because you you know you um you have a wonderfully unique talent wisdom ability to dissect understand reflect express be authentic vulnerable in a way that the world so desperately needs it needs someone with that talent for understanding introspection processing communication and that's what you have and I don't it's hard to think of many examples where I've seen that like you are very much one of a kind and it's a and it's a responsibility unfortunately it's a great responsibility you know I don't feel that way I feel like it's so much easier than faking it dude I look at you and I go you've got so much talent that it's a responsibility because you can impact 71 year old you know lady here so pivot how life I give that's a responsibility and you know what I think is a great thing in life meaning for responsibilities I think we're all trying to find it and I think that's what you have the gift of so um you know I'm always gonna be your number one fan and oh if gosh I actually just think you're at the beginning of your journey so I'm excited to see all of it play out thank you thank you can I say one more thing no I'm joking yeah of course you can I that comment by what was her name I don't think she left her name I shouldn't okay so that comment I'm gonna name for you that that comment makes me one of the reasons why I think I'm so driven is because I know how many people go through life day -to -day feeling invisible and stuck and not seen and so if I can share any small thing that I've done that has made a difference or any detail about a challenge that I'm facing even if it's complaining about menopause and hot flashes and bloating if that means one human being out there somewhere across the world goes I'm not the only one that's why I do what I do because I lived inside of body and a brain for too many decades going I think I'm the only one who feels this way I think there's something wrong with me I don't think I'm ever going to be able to fix this and it's simply not true you're not the only one there is somebody on this planet going through it and has changed your life the better and if they've done it so can you thank you welcome do you need a podcast to listen to next we've discovered that people who liked this episode also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we've done so I've linked that episode in the description below I know you'll enjoy it Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead and over the course of my career I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite they're also a sponsor of this podcast NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform you'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place their technology has been a real game changer especially for my team at Flight Studio as over the last year we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode we no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with NetSuite so if you'd like to learn how it can help your business head to netsuite .com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning that's netsuite .com slash Bartlett