There Is Only One Thing You Should Do This Week

(01:33):

Wait a minute, Mel Robins, are you smoking something over there? Did you just say do nothing? And here's the funny part about this. I bet you might be doing something right now. You are a multitasker and so am I. You're listening to me while you're doing the dishes. While you're walking the dogs. Heck, you and I might be at the point in our relationship where you are actually sitting on the toilet and I'm in the bathroom stall with you as you're listening to this. Don't tell me that you have not taken me into the bathroom. I can even feel it over here. And I say this because we got to talk about the art of doing nothing. And look, I'm not stupid enough to think that you can actually do nothing. I mean, obviously not. This is like a metaphorical conversation because you probably have to work.

 

(02:29):

I personally love working between the week of Christmas and New Year because nobody's there. So you can work half a day and you get the full-time pay and it's way more stress free and you can get more done because you aren't in a million meetings. But if you do have the time off, let me guess, what are you doing with the time off? You're rearranging your cupboards. You're probably trying to learn Spanish. You're doing a million things on your to-do list. You are like just keeping busy this week. Just stop. Please. I want to explain this concept, this metaphor of doing nothing, being able to do nothing, whether it's just for a minute or it's for a day or it's for a week. This is so important. And I'm having the conversation not only with you, I am talking to myself right now too. I have a hard time doing nothing. Why? Well, because I'm just like you.

(04:31):

Because when somebody tells me, Mel, just do nothing this week, you know what I say? How about you go F yourself because I got a company to run and I got bills to pay. And I don't know if this is something that trust funders do or people that don't have to work, but I got kids home. I got stuff to do. And so I want you to know that if you have young kids or you're taking care of aging parents or you're working 2, 3, 4 jobs or the night shift, I'm talking to you too because the art of doing nothing is something that we all need in our lives. We have to figure out how to create moments when we're thinking about nothing, when we're doing nothing because these moments help you refuel. I think one of the reasons why you and I are constantly so stressed and our minds are like a flywheel always going, and we're not that present is because we are never not doing something.

 

(05:36):

And so this week, the only thing that I want you and I to do is nothing. And I'm going to break this down, don't worry, because doing nothing might just mean that you're going to learn this week how to find five minutes to do nothing, to think about nothing. It could mean pushing off your to-do list to next week and committing to doing nothing on it this week. And I need this as much as you do. I mean, when I landed at the airport this week in Albany, Chris picked me up and I had been gone on a business trip for almost a week and I had also managed to loop in spending some time with our daughter in Los Angeles. And so here I land, I haven't been home in a week. I jump into the front seat of his pickup truck and I turned her.

 

(06:30):

I'm like, how about we stop at the grocery store on the way home? And he's like, but I've already gone twice this week. And I'm like, well, we probably need something. And then I caught myself and I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I filling the time with something? Why can't I just sit in this pickup truck and do nothing? Why can't I just go home and put my bags in the closet and just enjoy time with our son and with our dogs? Why do I have to do something? And here's another one. So last night, Chris builds a fire and we're sitting there in front of the fire. It's absolutely beautiful. We have a nice quiet evening. We love to play cribbage and backgammon. And so we played around a cribbage and he beat me. I know you're thinking normally I beat him, but it was one of those nights where he just had all the hands.

 

(07:19):

I hate that. And so as the game was wrapping up, Chris got up, walked into the bedroom, went to bed. Do you know what I did? I sat and scrolled through my fricking phone. I don't even know why I did it. I literally sat there and I started scrolling through Instagram and next thing you know, 35 minutes have gone by. My husband has gone off to bed, he's sound asleep, snoring, saw logs. He's already in la la land, in his deep dream state. I have wasted 35 minutes getting all jacked up about everybody else's life and what people are doing in their businesses and the stuff that I'm not doing and the things I need to buy and all that kind of stuff. I was so busy. I could have enjoyed myself if I had put the phone down. Instead, I picked it up. I got to be doing something. I got to be thinking thoughts. I got to be doing the thing. I got to be throwing through the thing. I could have just gone to bed like Chris did, had a nice, nice sleep. No, no, not me. I got to always be doing something. Here's the irony of the topic today, everybody. I have no idea how to do nothing.

 

(08:32):

This is something I don't know a lot about and I need more of it in my life. I know you feel the same way, and I want to talk to you about this because of the number of questions that are pouring in from you@melrobbins.com. Questions about busyness, about stress, about burnout, about having time for yourself, about anxiety, about stress, about feeling like you're last on your list. 

(09:27):

If you're somebody that has a ton going on, you have that feeling, but I can't but nothing. What if I did that? Take a breath. What would nothing look like if you could spend an hour doing nothing, not really thinking about anything, not any agenda, but just doing nothing. What comes to mind for me immediately is running a hot bath. That's what comes to mind to me. Just run on a hot bath. I'm not even going to bring a book. I don't want to do anything. That'd be pretty awesome. And so I'm going to jump into some questions and I think through these questions, you and I are going to figure out what it means to do nothing. I am no expert at this and I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those conversations that you and I have where you're going to write to me and be like, woman, you got a lot to learn.

 

(10:39):

Lemme give you this advice about doing nothing because I do a better job at doing nothing than you do Mel Robbins. So our first question I love this question comes from a listener named Jenny and she said, Mel, I'm a new listener to the podcast. I love your energetic voice and find that it energizes me too. I'm a single parent of two kids and I find it difficult to listen to episodes that tell me I'm never too busy, never too tired to x, y, z. I've deflected a lot of this from fitness influencers and efficiency experts, but from a self-help standpoint, I find that doing everything and dreaming big can't be shoehorned into a life that already has very little wiggle room for even day-to-day stuff. Can you relate to that? I can certainly relate to that. I'm going to say that again. I think that is so relatable. I've deflected a lot of this type of advice from fitness influencers and efficiency experts, and from a self-help standpoint, I find that doing everything and dreaming big can't be shoehorned into a life that already has very little wiggle room for even day-to-day stuff. This is all leading up to my question, which is how do you hopeful in the trenches when surrounded by achievers, how do you make time for rest when it feels like a guilty pleasure to sit down every once in a while?

 

(12:08):

Whoa. So first, let's talk about something. Let's talk about this part of her question. How do you remain hopeful in the trenches when surrounded by achievers? So first things first, let's just 

(13:10):

So let's just say number one, stop torturing yourself with the impossible standards that you see on social media. Rule number one. Rule number two, I agree with you. I personally believe one of the reasons why so many of you relate to me and you constantly write and say, Mel, you are so relatable. I'll tell you why. Because I have three children. I have two dogs, I have aging parents, I have a lot of stuff going on. I have a DHD, and there's absolutely nothing about my life that is perfect. And I notice that there are a lot of people in the in influencer space that are either single or they are male and they have a full-time partner at home or they have no children. And advice from a single 30 something who has nine hours a day to exercise is not advice that's going to work for my life.

 

(14:06):

It's just not. If you are 30 years old and you have eight hours to exercise, that advice will work for you. If you are a guy and you have a partner at home that takes care of everything, yes, you can have 15 side hustles because you don't have to do shit when you get home, let's call it for what it is. In a normal person's life, the advice often doesn't work. I don't know about you, but I don't have three fucking hours every morning for my morning routine. I'm lucky if I have 30 minutes and hell, half of the mornings when I wake up, my dogs are already standing there right by the bed waiting for me to take them out. And I say this because it frustrates me that you and I look at the incredible advice out there and we don't flex it to actually work in our life.

 

(14:57):

And so when you are listening to somebody, whether they are an efficiency expert, which sounds like a nightmare frankly, or they're a fitness influencer or they're somebody that's telling you how to eat right? I personally take everything with a grain of salt and I take it with a grain of salt because I know that in order for advice to work for me, I got to flex it in a way so that it'll fit into my life. And so we've already learned two things. If you are in the doldrums and you're constantly comparing yourself or beating yourself up because you think everybody else is out achieving you, you're wrong. People are putting up fake achievements and perfection online to sell you something. The second thing is the only advice that's going to work 

(17:00):

I do it too. I often have this conversation with Christine who's our chief operating officer of 1 4 3 studios, which is our production company, and she's also my sister-in-law. And I love her because I am like the flighty creative ball dropper genius type person. I call myself a genius like ingest, but I am creatively fruity all over the place, just flying high. She is a CFO Excel spreadsheet, get everything in the columns kind of lady. Mel says, yes, Christine says, no. That's basically the joke inside the company. Mel said yes, but Christine said no. So anyway, I was complaining to her the other day because of course, like you, I bash myself when I see other people out achieving me because I've got to win some imaginary competition here in life. And I see a friend of mine who is going on a book tour and he is going on a book tour that is lasting three months.

 

(17:58):

And I turned to Christine, I'm like, this is unbelievable. This is so cool. And she turned to me and she goes, he doesn't have children. You can't be on the road that long, Mel, it's not going to work for you. And I'm like, oh, that's right. She's like, you got to stop comparing yourself to people whose lives don't look like yours. You will never be able to achieve what somebody who is a single male can achieve because you've got other demands on your time right now. You will never be able to achieve what a 23-year-old can do right now because you've got aging parents and three kids in a business to run. And so please, please stop making yourself feel like shit because you are looking at somebody who has totally different life circumstances in you. And by the way, this does not mean that there's something wrong with a 23-year-old fitness influencer.

 

(18:51):

I think that's freaking fantastic that somebody's doing that with their life. There's nothing wrong with somebody who is going on a book tour for three months. I think that's fantastic. And there's clearly a part of me that wants to do more of that, but at the moment, I got to face reality. And the reality is based on my values, based on what life looks like right now, I'm not going to do that. But what I can do is figure out what advice I respond to, what changes I want to make, and then I can fit that into my life. Okay, now let's address the actual question she asked. 

(21:20):

We got to stop calling it guilt because it's just a pattern. You have a pattern of always staying busy, and I don't think we feel guilty. You know what? I think you and I feel when we sit down and do nothing, we feel weird. We don't know what to do with our hands. We don't know what to think about. We don't know how to relax unless I'm on a vacation on a beach chair with a pina colada in my hand. I don't know how to relax. It's true. It's a sickness. And I am going to go on the record and blame Eileen and Warren Bier and Betty and Frank Schneeberger, my DNA, my grandparents. You're to blame for this, but now I'm stuck with it. So what am I going to do with it? First of all, we're not going to feel guilty, everybody. We're going to call it what it is. It's freaking weird. It's weird to do nothing. You are ambitious. That's why you listen to this. You're up to something. That's why you listen to this. You're constantly looking to improve something. That's why you listen to this and you hang out with me. You and I are busy, but we have to learn how to have moments where we do nothing. When was the last time you did nothing?

 

(22:51):

I don't even know. Funny. My mind's blank. I can't think of nothing. I'd be like, I don't even know. Can you think of when you did nothing last? I'm always doing something. And it's true. It's not that I feel guilty. I just don't know how to do nothing. I don't know how to rest. I don't know how to just give myself a break. I'm not wired this way and neither are you. And here's the other thing. I believe that we live in a world that has trained us to always be on between the phone and a bazillion things to watch on TV and constantly emails to answer. There's always somebody who needs you. There's always something that needs to be done. And feeling needed is a way to feel connected and important. And so I don't think any of us feel guilty. I think we just don't know what to do. We don't know how to do nothing, and that's why I am going to come back. I want this week, this is the theme. Let's practice the art of doing nothing, even if it's just for a minute. Here's what I'm going to commit to today, and then I'm going to go to the next question. I am going to take a bath.

 

(23:59):

Now, I love taking baths, but normally this is embarrassing to admit this to you. I'm on my phone in my bath. I'm literally a sicko. I sit on my phone in my bath and I relax in my bath by answering emails. This is literally awful that I do this. Why? Because I don't know how to do nothing. Oh my God. Aren't we funny? I bet even if you go and treat yourself to getting your nails done, which I have not done in a month, my feet literally look like I've been farming all day and I'm a bird with talons. I'm so embarrassed. Thank God it's not flip-flop season. But even when I go get my nails done, the poor gal will be literally looking and trying to get me to keep my hands still. And what am I busy doing? I'm doing the same thing you're doing. I got my phone over there and with wet fingernails, I am trying to scroll through my phone. I can't sit there and do nothing.

 

(25:08):

So I want you to think right now about one moment of doing nothing and what that looks like for you, and now we're going to move to the next question.