The Real Reason You’re Exhausted: How To Gain Control of Your Time & Your Life

You can't do nothing. The ability to just sit and be is really hard. I'll be the first to admit that I am addicted to this feeling like I gotta be up to something. How do you know, Dr. Lions, that you are struggling with an addiction to stress?

If I'm busy, then it means I have value, and if I have value, then I'm worth something to someone else. Maybe eventually even to myself.

Oh, (censored) . That hit. But it begs the question, how do you heal this addiction to being stressed and busy?

I don't think you're gonna li- like my response. Which is...

Hey, it's your friend Mel Robbins, and I am so glad that you're here with me. I always love spending time with you. It's an honor to be able to spend this time together. If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. If you're listening to this episode because somebody that you love sent this to you, do not be offended. Okay? You're not the only one that struggles with busyness and feeling overwhelmed and feeling exhausted all the time. And around this time of year, I was just sharing with you about this, my busyness goes into overdrive. Like I just suddenly feel like I'm behind. I haven't bought gifts for people, I don't even know what I'm cooking for dinner tonight, so how on earth could I possibly know what I should be doing for the holidays? The work starts to pile up because we're getting into the end of the year and Q4 and so it's just like you're on the treadmill of life, everybody's doing the best they can, and this time of year, it's as if somebody walks over and is like, "Let's move you from a nice fast walk to about a speed of 11 miles per hour," right? And you're like, "Oh, oh, oh." Oh my gosh. I hate it. Don't you hate the fact that everybody around you is busy? Think about how hard it is to make plans with your friends. Have you been on a text chain recently where you're like, "Oh my gosh, I miss you, I love you"? You know, I'm gonna give a huge shout out to my friend Maxine, because my friend Maxine, she is so good about pinging me and staying in touch, and she will throw out a date and I'm like, "Oh man, I'm down in Boston taping," then I'll throw out a date, and she's like, "Oh boy, you know, I'm doing this thing for work and I'm gonna be gone too." And then next thing you know, it's four months from now, and then we nail a date and then four months from now comes and something else has happened and now both of us have something else going on and we can't take time for a walk. Aren't you sick of this? Like, really sick of this? And the reason why I wanted to talk to you about this is because busyness is one of those things that sneaks up on you. It's like Lyme disease. You didn't even know the tick bit you, and next thing you know, you can't get out of bed. And you're like, "What the hell just happened? How is it that I go through life hyperventilating and my to-do list never ends and I'm not really sleeping well because I'm thinking about all the things that I didn't do?" And you wanna know else this shows up? Last night I got home and I've been on the road, uh, promoting the Let Them Theory book, thank you, thank you, thank you for ordering it, for supporting it. And so I get home, I've been on a business trip for a week. The dogs are jumping up and down, we're all excited, I haven't seen Chris in a while. We sit down, and instead of sitting and talking, what do we do? Well, he turns on the TV and I open up my phone. And then I put my phone down, I'm like, "Hi. So, you know, how was your week? What'd you do today?" And we start talking and then he starts watching TV and what did I do? I crack open my laptop and Chris reaches over and goes, "Boop," and shuts it, and goes, "I thought we were just gonna hang out." And what I noticed in that moment is something that I know you struggle with. You can't do nothing. The ability to just sit and be is really hard. I need help with this. I need help with this. I need to understand why the internal engine inside me gets revved up so quickly. And you need help with this too, because if you can't stand in a line at a store without staring at your phone and occupying the time, or if you're like me where you're just constantly running from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, you don't even know what you're doing. And when I moved to Southern Vermont, I had this realization. We don't have any big box stores where I live and I had basically nowhere to go except for this general store that was built in the 1800s that is absolutely amazing but it's not exactly a Target, and I realized when I moved to a place where all of the things that I kept myself busy doing were not here, how addicted I was to literally being busy doing nothing. I would, you know, be bored at home, I'd dart over to the grocery store. I have food in my pantry. Why am I going to the grocery store? I would dart on over to the mall. I've got clothes. Why am I going to the mall? I would dart on over to a coffee shop. I can make coffee at home. Why am I going to a coffee shop? Because I have come to realize that my addiction is not alcohol, it's not drugs, it's not porn, it's not, like, opioids, and thank God. But it is a very serious issue and it's a addiction to being busy. The first step is truly an understanding what's happening inside of you and just like that little tick that bites you and it turns into Lyme, this has gone undetected and spun out of control. You know, one of my favorite commencement addresses is by the late best-selling author David Foster Wallace. And in 2005 at Kenyon College, he gave this address that was later turned into the book This Is Water. And he tells this story about two little fish swimming b- down the, you know, wherever they're swimming, and this older s- fish swims by 'em and says, "Hey boys, how's the water?" And the little fish look at the older fish and go, "Water? What's water?"And the point of the story is this, it's hard to see the thing that you're swimming in because it's all around you. Just like it's hard to know when that tick bit you that Lyme is forming. And I believe that busyness is the water we're all swimming in right now, and none of us know it. And that's why we never see (laughs) each other. It's why we cancel plans. It's why we stay and work late and work over the weekends instead of seeing our friends. It's why we don't make time for what's important. We don't even understand what's actually happening. And today, you and I are gonna get a master class in what is happening and recognizing the water that we're swimming in so that we can truly decide how we wanna feel and how we wanna move through our days. And so I called my friend, Dr. Scott Lyons, and I'm gonna tell you about him in a minute, but I reached out to him because I recently saw something that he wrote all about this epidemic of an addiction to stress and busyness. And I was like, "Addiction?" And so first thing I did is I went, you know, to Google and I looked up the definition of addiction, and an addiction is any pattern of behavior that you engage in that is harming your life. That's what an addiction is, this pattern of behavior that you engage in repeatedly even though it's harming your life. And when I thought about it that way, I was like, "I guess this is a pattern of behavior 'cause I am always busy, and it has a negative impact on my life." And I'm sure you are now thinking about it too and thinking, "Wait a minute, being busy all the time isn't helping me. Being stressed all the time isn't helping me. I've never thought about it in this context." And so I reached out to my buddy, Dr. Scott Lyons, and his resume is crazy long, so I'm just gonna kinda cut to the short 'cause I know you're too busy to hear a long resume. That's a joke, but it's also true. He's a medical doctor. He has a PhD in psychiatry. He developed this somatic stress release process that is now taught in 20 countries, and it restores your biology to a state of calm and peace. It's really unbelievable. He's a best-selling author. And so I reached out to him. He was actually out at Kripala with all of these incredible experts and PhDs in holistic medicine, and I caught him in between sessions he was leading out there on the topic we're talking about. And so what you're about to hear is a conversation that Dr. Lyons and I had. I want you to hang with me and listen all the way to the end because as Dr. Lyons and I go deeper and deeper and deeper and give you more and more examples, you're gonna be like, (imitates explosion) "Holy cow, I had no idea how deep this went and what this was actually about," which is why I can't wait for you to hear this, because I love looking at topics in a whole new way, because when you truly understand something differently and more deeply, it gives you the power to change how you show up, and that's what I'm super excited about. So as you're listening to Dr. Lyons, you may hear a little background noise because Dr. Lyons is literally at a conference teaching people that have paid to be there, but he jumped out and made the time for you and me. And so here's what I wanna do, I am going to play the very best things that he said, and he said a lot of amazing things, so that you can learn from Dr. Lyons. And then in between each one of the things that he's teaching you, I'm gonna unpack it a little bit to make sure you really get it and you know how to apply it to your life. So the very first thing that I asked him was, "How do you know, Dr. Lyons, that you are struggling with an addiction to stress?" This is what he had to say.