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

24:54No, not always.

24:55Mel Robbins:But 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? Oh, no, I see what you're saying. And now, because you were just exposing that if your daughter's not doing well math, you immediately 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.

25:31Mel Robbins:We have a circumstance. We have a situation that needs attention. Yeah. But this is not a reflection on me. What I do about this is. 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 going to leave yourself? No. 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?

26:12I 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 fourteen hundred dollars 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. 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.

26:51Is 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 because accountability says, these things are my responsibility and I'm going to be empowered to actually do something about it.

27:35Blame 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?

27:45Mel Robbins:Keir, that right there. That right there. That is an example of exactly why I wanted you on the 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 keyer gains 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.

28:21Mel Robbins:So stay with me.

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29:05Mel Robbins:Shop now at ultrarunning.com and use code MEL10 for 10 % off at checkout. And if you want even more savings and you've got an HSA or FSA account, you can use those pre-tax dollars on Ultra Shoes through TruMed. Just head to trumed.com slash ultra to check your eligibility, and it may save you an average of 30%. True Med is for qualified customers. HSA, FSA, tax savings vary. Experience Ultra and stay out there at ultrarunning.com. That's A-L-T-R-A running.com. One thing I always worried about as a parent is starting the new school year and my kids feeling behind. And that's why you need to know about our sponsor, IXL.

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30:38Mel Robbins:Visit ixl.com slash mel to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. This is a paid ad by BetterHelp. You know, when my husband Chris and I found ourselves facing bankruptcy, I had to reinvent myself. And that setback forced me to start taking action one small step at a time. Real growth, it often comes from those hard moments when life has forced you to adapt and change. Now, therapy with BetterHelp, the world's largest online therapy platform, can be the perfect space for you to pause, reevaluate, and get the support that you deserve to navigate life's unexpected changes.

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31:59Mel 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. Okay. Their partners, their brothers, their sons, their dads. I would love to have you speak directly to the guy 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.

32:42Mel Robbins:I think this is really going to help you at work. If you're listening to audio, her head is shaking while she's doing that. It's like a bobblehead right now. And so I, because that's kind of how I feel. That's the intention. Yeah, yeah. You know, when I'm sending that link to my brother or to my husband or my son, You need to listen to this. And it's typically an episode with a guy. Okay. 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?

33:21One thing that I need you to understand is that in a boy's maturation, and I said this before in an interview.

33:30Mel Robbins:What is maturation? That's a big word. 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.

34:02When 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. 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 are 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.

34:38And they say, this is a new word that you sassy. Oh, now you're being a sassy man. What are you and 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 whack. Well, now you can't access those emotions when you need to. 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 to evoke an angry emotion. And most people say anger is a secondary emotion. I think it's a primary emotion.

35:12What does that even mean, secondary or primary? Secondary emotion is just, 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. Tell me. 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.

35:51Why 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 if you have a migraine i don't think allergy medicine is going to 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.

36:31Patriarchy 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 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, just know that 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.

37:13And 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 30, 40 years. I get it. 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 get a sandwich right now if I want it.

37:49I 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're not those people anymore. That time is done. And we need to adapt with the time. 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 and having words to them and controlling them is how you become, as my mentor Jason Wilson says, a comprehensive man.

38:20Mel 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. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it's also important to women understand that men are not women's problems to solve. We'll come back to that.

39:03Yeah, that's a whole other thing. 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 momentum, the understanding, the touch points, 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. What's the difference? The men who are terrified of being afraid put up a bigger front. That's where we get the machismo.

39:44That'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 going to be helpful to the people around you in the same capacity. It's a performance. And I would love 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.

40:21And then I go cry in a car. 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.

40:39Mel 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? Let's do it. How about this? Let's do a heavy lift and a light lift. Great. Because everybody ain't in the same place with this. No kidding. Different readiness. All right. So let's do a 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.

41:09I 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 template for something to say. Yes, I do.

41:25Mel Robbins:Tell me what to say here. I got you. Because I've not called somebody in two years. I keep texting people. Hey, no problem. And that's one of the points. That's why I feel so empty because we need those real-life touch points. Hey, bro, I haven't heard your voice in a while. I haven't heard from you in a minute, man. I was just thinking about you, bro. Just calling in to check up. How you been? And they may hit you with something. Oh, man, men love to hit you with that. Hey, I can't complain. Push it a little bit. What do I say? When they say you can't complain, what's been going on good in your life?

41:53What'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. Breakfast. Why breakfast? 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.

42:25And 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. It also allows you to share space without words.

42:59Some people feel awkward when it pauses in the conversation. But when you're stuffing your face full of cheese fries, it takes away the awkwardness. It's giving yourself a lower barrier to entry. It's bringing that branch down to pick the fruit off. It's making it easy, low-hanging fruit. Go out to breakfast.

43:16Mel Robbins:Keir, 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. Kira and I are going to be waiting for you like good friends after this short break. So stay with us. When it comes to your health and wellness, trust matters. Whether you're working toward fitness goals, building a wellness routine, or just stocking up on everyday essentials for your family, where you shop really matters. And that's why I want to tell you about our new sponsor, iHerb.

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44:34Mel Robbins:Visit iHerb.com slash Mel and use code MEL20 for 20 % off your order. That's iHerb.com slash Mel with code MEL20. Have you ever noticed when you're learning a new language, the hardest part is now trying that new language in real-life situations? Well, our sponsor, Rosetta Stone, just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire. It's their biggest launch yet. I need to tell you about the coolest new feature. It's called Chat Missions. It turns conversation practice into a game. With Chat Missions, you're put in an interactive scenario, like ordering a restaurant or having to ask for directions. It is so cool.

45:12Mel Robbins:It's a really supportive way to build confidence around either refreshing your knowledge of a language that you took in high school, hello, Mel Robbins French, or learning a new one. And you can build your skills before you're put to the test in real life. So if you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. The Mel Robbins podcast listeners can get 20 % off their Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone Sapphire in 25 languages. Visit RosettaStone.com slash Mel to redeem your 20 % off.

45:45Mel Robbins:That's RosettaStone.com slash Mel. Hi, Mom. Hi, Oakley. I was just sitting down to record an ad for our sponsor, Wayfair, and I was like, wait a minute. Oakley just moved into his off-campus apartment, and you just assembled your new bed from Wayfair. So I want to hear all about it. How amazing was it? The bed is amazing. I mean, I just moved in last night and I was expecting a super painful and hard setup process because that's what I've been used to. And it only took me like 30 minutes. It was super straightforward. I had all the pieces and all the tools needed. It looks amazing. I'm pretty sure it's going to last me a lifetime.

46:23Mel Robbins:So that's amazing as well. Fantastic. All right. I love you. And I also love Wayfair. And I'm glad you love your bed. I love you, Mom. And I love Wayfair as well. There you have it. Right there. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5 % back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair. Every style, every home. Wayfair. Every style, every home.

46:58Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. today. You and I are here with licensed therapists, Kier Gaines. I told you this is going to be exactly what you needed to hear today. I'm right. I know it. And I know you want to jump right back in. So let's do that. I wanted to ask you about something you said just a couple minutes ago. Men are not women's problem to solve. Let's unpack that. 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.

47:40Mel Robbins:So as a therapist here, 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? 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 overfunctioning. What does that mean? Overfunctioning is when you do way more than what's necessary in order to meet the goal.

48:21and 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 going to 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 in, 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.

48:58And a romantic relationship doesn't work 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 make it 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 going to give them this too much, it bogs you down.

49:26Mel 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? 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.

50:12And one of the ways that you do that is, ooh, a lot of people aren't going to like this. You You have to spend time with yourself by yourself. You're right. I don't like that. I told you you weren't going to like it. I told you. You have to spend time with yourself by yourself.

50:25Mel 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? You have to practice being the person that you say you are. Break that down for me. 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?

50:59Go 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 want to read more books, sit your ass down and read a book. Like, you have to do the things.

51:33We think that proving it is only for other people. No, you got to 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 got to take those small steps. Be undistracted. That's another one. When's the last time that you weren't on your cell phone? When's the last time that you took a flight and you didn't use your cell phone or headphones or distracted yourself with some type of media and you just allowed your thoughts to exist? What do you do in the morning? Do you wake up and just sit in silence?

52:05When'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? Undistract it. That's how we get to know ourselves better. That's how we make sure that we are in tune with a version of ourselves, this updated software, not the shadow of who we were 10 or 15 years ago.

52:26Mel 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 got to prove it to yourself. It's like when nobody's there. You're there. 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. Absolutely. And you got to believe yourself. If you don't give yourself enough evidence to believe the things that are going on in your mind, it's just as well-dressed wishful thinking. 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.

53:01Mel Robbins:For a lot of my life, I was miserable. Talk about it. 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. The second that you were doing good, I now feel bad. And you don't want to be friends with somebody who does not like themselves because they end up hating on you. Oh, for sure. 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 liens on my house, you know, being able to take their kids on vacation or joining the fancy club.

53:50Mel Robbins:And, you know, I'm struggling to just pay the freaking bills and put gas in the tank. And it just, it just was like, oh. 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. I want to be somebody that can celebrate somebody else's success authentically. For sure. 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.

54:46Yeah. First thing is 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 want to 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, I think that's a great way to start to pull some self-honesty.

55:34If 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.

56:08Mel Robbins:You've been very open about your diagnosis of depression. Yeah. What does progress look like when you're depressed or when you're feeling anxious? 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.

56:45So 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 a moment. You're not bad, you're not broken. You're just a little compromised. And when you're not working that 100 % efficiency, it's hard to have the goal to complete 100 % efficient tasks. So you got to shrink your expectations to meet the moment. 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.

57:21But 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 five and you slide to negative six.

57:56A win is being able to not slide down to negative eight. You understand what I'm saying?

58:02Mel Robbins:I understand what you're saying. It's stopping the slide. 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? Because solitude is not isolation.

58:37And 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? 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. For somebody that is either in the slide or they have somebody that they love who is sliding,

59:06Mel Robbins:do you have specific recommendations for what you could do first or just small things? Things, because you mentioned getting outside, taking a shower. Like what are a couple 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? A number one, get yourself connected with a licensed mental health professional. A number one. A number one. Just so you can 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.

59:53They can also give you a realistic idea of where you are in the process and more importantly where you can go. And also tell you what you need for some people. 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 got to take your meds, big dog. Like, that's why you feel that way. You got to take your meds, big dog. For some people, it's different. For some folks, it's a mix of doing—I can tell you what I do. Yes, I want to hear what you do. In addition to seeing my therapist. Oh, yeah, man, I've been deploying so many strategies, yo.

1:00:25I 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. 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.

1:01:02Mel Robbins:Okay, hold on. That's a big distinction. Yeah. I'm going to bed on purpose. On purpose. 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 9, 30, 10 sometimes. Have you done that before? All I'm going to say is the happier and more successful I have become, it's directly tied to how early I go to bed. Going to bed early is the key to successful adulthood. Go to bed early and try to just improve your sleep hygiene by trying to make it the same time every night. When you get into those periods, because my husband struggles with depression too, and you're in that moment where the depression and the mood disorder, it's like the heaviness and the grayness and the doom and gloom.

1:01:52Mel Robbins: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? Yeah, yeah. I localize it. What do you say? I say, I have to call it by name. Okay. Say, 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.

1:02:34I see you right there. You're looking at me. I'm looking at you. You're 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 going to 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 to 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. You know, depression sometimes is the rattlesnake bite that hits you in the arm.

1:03:04And what I do is I just try to tie it off at the elbow because the arm is as infected as it's going to get. It's not going to 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 by just being keenly aware that my mood is compromised and some of it is out of my control. All right, cool, then what can I control?

1:03:27Mel 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. Yeah, yeah, there are. They're about, oh, don't make me laugh. I think there are 10 to 12 symptoms that we look for, and I think you got to hit about five or six of them, and they can't be attributed to anything else.

1:04:12So 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 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.

1:04:45This 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 hypersomnia, 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 can say you experience some type of weight gain or sleeplessness.

1:05:23You can have depression and none of that stuff happens to you. You can have high-functioning depression where the way you present out in the world, 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 can just be your normal. You can 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. But 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.

1:06:08And 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.

1:06:15Mel Robbins:I love that. I love that. If someone's listening right now and they're just overwhelmed by life, what is the first - You mean all of us? All of us. Yes. If you're in that moment, though, what is one thing you could do in 60 seconds to support yourself? I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to pause. Just pause. I know. Overwhelm 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.

1:07:00We're afraid to admit it because we think it speaks to our incapability. Not necessarily true. It 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. 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. Overwhelm is really profound because oftentimes when we're overwhelmed, it's not just because we did something wrong or because we missed a step. Sometimes overwhelm is a failure of systems that are supposed to be designed to hold you up.

1:07:45And you can't fix systems in a moment's notice. So 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 going to say another football reference. Let's do it. It makes me think about this running back. His name was Brandon Jacobs. 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.

1:08:24And his job is to run through your face and astral 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 stop him? And the coach laughed. You don't stop Brandon Jacobs. You slow him down enough for the defense to catch his breath. you don't always stop overwhelm 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 into one ball.

1:09:17Parenthood 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.

1:09:32Mel 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 overwhelm 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 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. It feels urgent. It feels like you do. And you can try, but overwhelm comes from more profound circumstances than just a misstep or you overlooking something.

1:10:16It'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 that 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 a moment. And though your brain may want you to do that, it doesn't mean that's within the realm of your capabilities.

1:10:36Mel 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? 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.

1:11:16I 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, stop that. That's the comfortable thing to say. But exploration isn't comfortable and transformation isn't comfortable.

1:11:52And 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 back seat. You are 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.

1:12:28You have to have the emotional fitness. And you have to have the tools. You can do it, but under those circumstances.

1:12:36Mel Robbins:Kier Gaines, what are your parting words? Oh, what do we have here? I have learned over time, Mel Robbins, that the internet is full of, we get a lot of our 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, it's 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.

1:13:22And 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.

1:13:49Mel Robbins:Well, I've learned, Kier Gaines. What you learned? I learned what it looks like when somebody's walking in their purpose. Is that me? That is you. You're talking about me? That is you. Yeah, you know, it was hard for me to accept it about two or three years ago. I'm starting to feel it now. I feel it now. I accept that. 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. 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.

1:14:25I take that very seriously, and I really appreciate it sincerely.

1:14:28Mel Robbins:Well, thank you. Thank you. I want to see you soar. 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. I'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. For you anytime. Yes. All right. Well, this is just the beginning. I have a feeling. Thank you. Thank you. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to something that will truly change your life.

1:15:14Mel Robbins: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. 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.

1:16:05Mel Robbins: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. So go do it.

1:16:41Okay.

1:16:41Mel Robbins:Okay. Here's the hard truth. You, Keir Gaines. Oh, okay. And then we said, okay, so please help me welcome or what am I doing here? I think you can do either one. Okay. Keir Gaines. Keir, I just want to keep, Keir, I just want you to keep on talking, but I got, Keir, I love that. So Keir, I was thinking about, uh, Keir, I was thinking about this, Keir, I was thinking about something over the break.

1:17:09Mel Robbins: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 psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

1:17:45Mel Robbins:Sirius XM Podcasts.

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