Notes on Mel Robbins –lessons to learn, habits to acquire, things to do (and things not to
do).
My personal trainerintroduced me to the work of motivational speaker and coach Mel
Robbins. She has posted many videos up on You Tube. I watched three,
taking notes and commenting as I went. Below is my first response,
blending my own personal experience into the key points raised. It's
a rough document, very much as written. I am a little short of time
at the moment, for reasons that will become apparent. Reflection and
revision will come later, after watching more videos.
I see that Mel Robbins isdescribed as a “best-selling author.” That's an appealing
description, for the very reason that I am a writer myself, a strange
kind of writer who has chosen to publish in free access rather than
commercially. That maybe ought to change.
I'll start with the firstvideo, on anxiety, and take each point as it comes. I'll then move to
a couple more videos, identifying a core theme and pattern as I go.
Mel begins by noting theobvious and familiar symptoms of anxiety: nervousness, restlessness,
feeling tense, racing heart, sweating, having a tight feeling in your
chest, the list goes on.
Every place I have workedwith others, indoors in offices or on the shop floor, I have
experienced these very things to an extreme level. Anxiety feeds on
itself to create a vicious spiral. You become paralysed, trying to
remain inert, in order to avoid sweating heavily, and it doesn't
work. You start to worry about personal hygiene and any comments that
others may be inclined to make. Which makes you even more nervous and
anxious, causing your heart to pump even faster. The situation is bad
for your mental and physical health, and potentially lethal, leaving
you with a chronic health condition.
Identifying the symptomsis easy enough, acting on them, and acting effectively, is more
difficult to do. I toughed it out for decades. Which is not the
wisest course of action.
Mel makes it clear fromthe start that her recommendations are for most people but not all.
People who suffer from acute anxiety need to seek professional help.
I am a person who has suffered from acute anxiety my entire life.
After suffering yet more issues with physical health I went to my
doctor in 2019 complaining of 'psycho-social anxiety.' She listened
patiently and suggested Asperger's or autism. In 2021 I was diagnosed
with ASC. The anxiety I had suffered and continue to suffer is
secondary to that condition. That said, I attended a couple of
anxiety classes, one in 2019 and another in 2020, and learned plenty
from both – being present and living in the moment, mindfulness,
meditation, breathing techniques, keeping a journal to objectify or
externalise your thoughts and then reflect back on them. Acquiring
such habits and practising them daily can help. It turns out that I
have since youth developed my own coping and survival mechanisms
which work – writing comes as easily as breathing to me. I also
love to hike or ramble, get outdoors into nature. But, as Mel makes
clear later, cleaving to survival mechanisms can hold you far short
of your dreams, desires, and potentials, ultimately thwarting your
talents and making you unhappy.
The need to survive comesfrom living in the face of uncertainty. Such is life. In my case the
uncertainty is made all the worse by the lack of internal filters and
editors, meaning that the world is present to me immediately at all
times as a whole. The result is sensory mixing and saturation,
leaving me overwhelmed and in retreat and paralysis.
What's the quickest wayto conquer uncertainty? Mel's answer to the question is to change the
story you're telling yourself.
Mel's story reads as verysimilar to mine, except that I have never taken medication for
anxiety. 'I have suffered from anxiety for most of my life,' she
says. Me too. I barely survived school. I got through university
simply by taking charge and taking over, dominating classes and
tutorials. It was hard work. I had to prepare hard, entering classes
with a battery of notes, all memorised to the last word. Imagine the
time that that took, imagine the energy it took. The brain is
high-maintenance. Although the brain is just 2% of body weight, it
accounts for 20% of the oxygen, and hence calories, consumed by the
body. You need to use the brain sparingly. Tendencies to
over-thinking need to be checked by some kind of ending point.
Without that check, the brain can run to infinity, exhausting the
body (I know, because this is precisely my problem).
Mel mentions that she wason medication for two decades from the age of 21, describing it as 'a
life saver' for her 'during some very dark years.' I have never been
on medication a) for the reason I never sought help, simply toughed
it out by grinding out results in my studies and work and b) I
refused it when offered it 2020. I prefer to make changes in the way
I live my life than rely on crutches. Mel says she suffered severely
from a depression 'that was so bad I could not be left alone.' The
question of depression cropped up with my doctor. The Patient Health
Questionnaires I completed recorded 'severe' and 'moderate'
depression at different times. Discussion indicated that the problem
was less depression in myself – it takes nothing to bring me back
to life and smiling – than in my very realistic and accurate
appraisal of my objective circumstances. The conclusion I drew there
is that it is less me that needs to change than the world … which
could take an awful long time.
Mel continues: 'when Ispeak about mental health and the struggles many of us face - I have
lived that nightmare, I have studied these topics.' Me too. She says
she has cured herself. I'm still trying hard, and failing. I have
spent the past couple of years reaching out for help only to find
there is precious little, only plenty of hindrance.
I've seen death anddestruction quite a few times in my life now. I was in the
Hillsborough Tragedy which led to the deaths of ninety-seven
Liverpool football fans. I went down the tunnel of death myself, but
had time to turn around and find another entrance point. I watched
the horror unfold from the next pen. I've seen some horrible things,
and suffered plenty, including a near fatal heart attack. Anxiety is
a wretched condition. Anxiety has been the biggest blight on my life,
stopping me from doing a thousand things well within reach of my
talents and abilities. Anxiety can steal your hopes and dreams, it
can steal your life away; anxiety can end your life. With three
degrees, from a first in history to a PhD in philosophy, politics,
and ethics, I should have been a top-flight academic. I could never
handle the workload. I would always over-prepare to make sure I had
every part of the brief covered. I could never handle classes, I
couldn't cope with constant demands and talking heads. Anxiety has
cost me a lucrative career. Anxiety almost cost me my life. Take
anxiety seriously. People who don't suffer from anxiety don't see the
problem and hence don't think it exists. Anxiety is the worst. Once
it gets a grip of you, it never lets you go. I fought it alone and
fought it to a standstill. When something is wrong, you have to find
the courage to admit to yourself and others that you have a problem
you have to identify what is wrong. And then you have to find the
courage to make changes, express vulnerability, and reach out to
others for help. It's the most courageous thing to do, not least
because most others are weighed down with struggles of their own and
lack the time and energy to help you out. I preferred to go it alone
and conquer stress and anxiety by racking up a series of
achievements. The problem is that such an approach generates stresses
and anxieties of its own. You end up on a never-ending treadmill that
goes nowhere, treading ever the harder as time goes by.
So what is the way out?'Habits' is a key word. There are good habits and bad habits. You
need to identify bad habits and start the process of converting them
into good habits. 'Anxiety begins with the habit of worrying,' Mel
says. (I am one of life's worriers). Through the act of worrying you
become locked into negative thought patterns that in turn trigger and
incite physical conditions. You become locked into a flight or fight
response, as if always being pounced on by lions hiding behind
bushes. The physical symptoms associated with that agitated state are
familiar - sweaty palms, racing heart, shortened breath. This is
anxiety. There is good stress and bad stress. Good stress incites you
into taking action in response to a threat. Once the threat has
ended, the warning systems stop sounding the alarm. Anxiety occurs
when the alarms continue to sound, leaving you in a heightened state
of alert. Intellect takes over from instinct, you start to over-think
and you never stop thinking. Energy is depleted and, in time, the
body comes to be exhausted.
The feeling is normal,Mel rightly says. What is not normal is when the body doesn't come to
fall back into a relaxed state.
What the quickest way todeal with it?
Mel says that the feelingcan be 'manipulated.' By this, she means that you can change your
thoughts and describe that agitated body state as something normal
and exciting.
OK, let's explorefurther. This sounds like turning negatives into positives, which
sounds good but is somewhat question begging. Positive energy, I
would say, is energy that should be channelled positively and
productively. That's not always easy to do when 'life' and its
relentless demands absorb your energy in so many negative ways. I
would recommend cutting out the negative and toxic as far as you are
able, keep the unproductive if it involves something pleasurable or
allows you to switch off and recharge.
Mel has something else inmind, asking us to stop being afraid of the unknown, to be curious
and pumped to learn.
That may well work …Each person is different. As an autistic person, living in face of
chaos and uncertainty and the unknown is the default position,
leaving me to crave regularity, order, and stability. 'You're not
nervous, you're excited,' Mel says. I like enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is
a great quality to nurture. But as an autistic person I get
'excitement' as a matter of course and need a little peace and quiet.
It all has to be tailored and tempered for me.
But I do like what shesays next: 'You're not fearful of the future, you can't wait to see
what the Universe has next.' You have to try to avoid becoming locked
into the past, as if the good or bad experiences long gone are all
that your life could ever be. Embrace the future and see what you can
do with it.
'Change the narrative inyour head and your body chemistry will follow suit.;
It's a simple science,Mel says. As a philosopher, I would also say it is the basic
Aristotelian ethics of habits, practices, and dispositions.
Character-construction, settling human beings within modes of conduct
and communities of practice. It is a key aspect of my philosophical
work.
Mel is all aboutstrategies for dealing with anxiety, showing people the way out.
I like the way that herwords are comprehensible and that the habits and practices she
recommends are accessible, within the reach of all who are struggle.
You can fix this 'one excited positive thought at a time.' I like
what she says next most of all: 'you do not have to do it on your
own.' My biggest worry with many 'positive' 'self-help' happiness
philosophies is that they can tend to focus heavily on the
individual. Individual responsible is hugely important. Successful
living, which we may call 'flourishing,' requires inner motive force
and agency. At the same time, there is a need to recognize that human
beings are social beings – we need each other in order to be
ourselves. Being alone and striving alone is often more than half of
the problem. I've done everything and more the self-help tough guys
demand, and it has simply worn me down.
Mel encourages us to asksome questions before identifying ourselves as someone who has social
anxiety. Sometimes, what seems as anxiety is merely a perfectly sound
reluctance on your part to join in with activities which you don't
enjoy:
💡 Is thatreluctance to go out just a sign that you prefer to be home?
💡 Does thenervousness just mean that you’re more interested in deeper
connections, not a frat party?
💡 Is theuneasiness about seeing people from your past just a recognition of
how much you’ve grown?
She describes herself as'a homebody at heart.' In a world made by and for extroverts,
introverts experience great stress in trying to 'fit in' and
participate in social action. That anxiety is the kind that can be
dispelled easily. What is right for you is right and you don't have
to measure up to the expectations of others or live in the opinion of
others.
Her next commentresonates deeply with me: 'I feel both excited to see people I like,
but also a weird feeling in my stomach about small talk with people I
don’t know as well.'
I do little talk, big orsmall, with people I don't know well, nor with people with whom I
seem to have little in common. I speak openly and excitedly with
people I like. It's a select group. I'm not being snobby or elitist.
People drain me. Social interaction and communication is difficult
for me, involving an inflation of information in all directions. So I
have to keep it tight to the select few I really like.
Mel's next sentence iskey and crucial and should be underlined:
'It took me a really longtime to embrace the fact that there’s nothing wrong with me.'
There is nothing worsethan going through life having to pretend to be someone you are not
in order to meet the expectations of others you don't really know and
don't particularly like.
'I just can’t standsmall talk. And I don’t care for big groups. I prefer deep
conversations with a handful of people.'
I love small talk withpeople I like; I can go as deep as deep can go with such people. I
avoid large gatherings. In parties I will be the quiet one on the
fringes wondering if I might be allowed to slip away now (now that
there is no more to eat!) For me, it's less a case of small or deep
talk as genial company.
The Secret to StoppingFear & Anxiety (That Actually Works)
NOVEMBER 21ST, 2022 |53:25 | E15
Let me move on to thenext Mel Robbins video.
She begins:
'I used simple researchfrom Harvard Business School and UCLA to tame my fear of public
speaking and become one of the most successful keynote speakers in
the world.'
Interesting. I wentthrough university and academic life being scared stiff of public
speaking, and I ended by being even more terrified. People told me
that I would get used to it in time and I never ever did. At one
point it led to a nervous breakdown. So as time passed, I reduced the
speaking to a minimum and then stopped. By the end I was having to be
dragged to speak in front of people.
You can overcome certainfears. Mel talks of overcoming her fear of flying. I had a fear of
flying. I never flew until 2014. I overcame the fear.
Fears that hold you backfrom doing the things you want to do can be confronted and overcome.
(Deep down, I know that I never actually wanted to speak in public or
become a teacher or lecturer, so had little inner motivation to
overcome the fears I had).
Your fears make youlesser than you are, limiting your horizons and diminishing your
potential. 'Anxiety robs you of happiness and confidence,' Mel says.
It robs you of all that makes life worth living; it can ruin your
life. She thus seeks to coach people through their biggest fears.
'Stop letting your fear make your life small.' Agreed.
'Board that plane, steponto that stage, apply for that promotion, and never let your nerves
stop you from living your life the way that you want to again.'
I think the key wordthere is 'want.' In the past, I had a tendency to try to overcome
weaknesses by becoming good at things I didn't really care about.
From being considered distinctly average at school, I became a
straight A student. I went on to university. I loved the grades and
the certificates but, it is clear, I saw them as forms of validation.
I never enjoyed academic life. In life terms, these count as wasted
years, years I could have spent doing something else, something I
enjoyed.
I move to the next video:
If You Struggle WithAnxiety, WATCH THIS! | Mel Robbins
Here, Mel begins bydeclaring that she was anxious, competitive, and insecure –
describing this as a deadly combination.
She mentions that a lotof her attitude was an outgrowth of an incident at school. I suffered
a lot of incidents at school. I was usually behind in classes,
learning at a different pace and in a different way. That made me the
target of abuse, verbal and physical. That abuse was systematic and
lasted years. I suspect that one reason I became so addicted to good
grades was because, deep down, I felt myself to be conquering my
adversaries and proving them to be wrong. You need to come out of the
tendency to live your life and exercise your talents in the opinion
of others, whether confirming others' expectations or confounding
them. Be true to your own potentials, your own dreams and desires.
Mel talks of dealing withinternal conflicts we have never resolved, creating 'survival
mechanisms' to keep you safe. The notion of coping mechanisms is
familiar to autistic people, helping us to negotiate an often chaotic
and noisy world, checking the ever-present danger of sensory
overload. The problem, as Mel says, is that whilst such mechanisms
can keep you safe and secure, you need to update the strategy as you
get older. If your life becomes geared to the operation of coping and
survival mechanisms, your potentials can lie fallow and go without
realisation. You may survive that way, but you will never thrive. A
life reduced to survival is no life at all. People need a meaningful
life, a reason to live, a purpose that drives them forward, a
direction, an enthusiasm. The problem with survival mode is that, at
some point, you ask the reason why and, finding none, collapse
exhausted.
Mel states that 'thenumber one thing that people are dealing with is unresolved conflicts
when they were young.' It's arguable that I never get over bad
experiences at school, developing as they did feelings of inferiority
and insecurity. She records that she employed her survival strategy
into adulthood. Again, I can see that I did the same. I can also see
that I redefined it in public as a success story, each top grade,
each qualification being presented as a triumph. In terms of a
practical working life, my academic successes never actually led
anywhere, except to more studying and more courses.
That competitiveness andstriving is grounded not in confidence and in your own natural
proclivities but in insecurity, in the need to prove yourself to
others. Mel makes a very good point when she says that 'people don't
catch your anxiety.' They see the outward signs of success and
conclude that you are a successful and ambitious goal-getter. That is
how I was perceived for years and I was more than happy to take the
perceptions of others as proof that I was flourishing well. Publicly,
I cut an impressive figure, privately, I didn't exist.
Mel next talks aboutgrounding mechanisms comprising a number of techniques. These
mechanisms are all about being present in time and space.
Technique number oneconcerns the physical aspects of living, holding someone's hand or
giving them a hug, centring them by touch. This can also involve
sitting close in front of someone and making eye contact. Getting
close to someone physically is therefore technique number one,
grounding a person by physical touch.
That may well work formost people. I have to add that autistic people may find such a
technique challenging, but not impossible. It depends on the person.
I tend to need a little warning but am fine with it all so long as I
am expecting it.
A long walk in thecountry also grounds you and calms you down. I do this a lot.
Technique number two isask people what they are feeling, emotionally as well as physically.
There is no need for an answer to this question. The questions are
not looking for answers and solutions but are merely about being with
a person.
Anxiety is all aboutuncertainty and, typically, that uncertainty concerns something a
person is unable to control in the present or the future. For
grounding techniques to be applied, let alone work, you need a
grounded and calm person in your life. Where are they?? And where do
such grounding mechanisms come from. You can talk about Buddhist
practices. There really doesn't have to be such discipline and
training. People innocent of learned wisdoms, but steeped in
experience, have learned the art of deep listening. Someone once
asked me what the wisest saying I had ever heard was. I couldn't
remember any one in particular so made one up on the spot: Keepyour mouth shut and ears open, learn what others have to say (and
learn that others do have something to say).
In the end it is simplyabout being in observance, with no need for judgement or resolution,
opening your eyes, ears, and heart to others.
Mel emphasises that'anxiety is not a disease.' By anxiety here she is referring to that
general anxiety that most people suffer from, and not acute or
chronic anxiety. The former can benefit from her techniques, the
latter need to seek professional help.
Her principal lessonconcerns action over waiting. It's about the actions you take. She
insists that the more consistently you take action, the quicker you
will start to believe in yourself, ceasing to be the kind of person
who sits around feeling unworthy and unhappy.
She repeats the pointover and again, it all starts with action.
I have some issues withthe next bit. 'Who is the problem?' Mel asks, eliciting the response
'I am' from the audience; 'who is the solution?' she asks, 'I am' say
the members of the audience. I'm not altogether sure that this is
entirely true. Since human beings are social beings, both problems
and solutions tend to be social in nature. I'm leery of personalising
social responsibility, just as I am leery of socialising personal
responsibility – this is a two-way process. You can't solve your
problems alone – a point that Mel makes herself elsewhere. But she
is right to say that a person is an active agent in his or her own
problem solving. That is the important lesson that she is hoping to
deliver here: remember that you are powerful, intelligent,
knowledgeable, and courageous agents who are able to take the
initiative and be proactive in seeking resolution: 'don't wait for
others.' This is important advice. If you wait for others you will be
waiting forever. I have actively sought out help from others, from
various authorities and organisations – there is next to no help
available, you are indeed on your own as far as the 'official' world
is concerned.
Mel next comes to peoplewho struggle with procrastination.
Procrastination is mymiddle name. I tend to defend procrastination as something that is
creative, an exploring of the full range of possibilities before
bringing an act to completion. Mel has something else in mind. She
notes that the people who struggle the most with procrastination are
PhD students, engineers, entrepreneurs, and such like, people who
have a lot on their plate, people who are juggling a lot of things,
people who are analytical in their approach, thinkers. Here I am! PhD
philosopher and writer. I am thinking all the time. Struggling with
procrastination can stress you out, Mel writes.
But procrastinationitself is not the problem. She mentions the phone calls you have to
make. You put them off, and spend the day worrying. You are exhausted
by the stress but have got nothing done. But it is stress rather than
procrastination that is the issue. With procrastination you are
taking a break. The way she describes it here, procrastination is an
avoidance strategy, an attempt to put things off until you feel
strong enough to deal with them.
She now comes tosomething that is music to the ears of an Aristotelian philosopher
like myself: habits.
Habits are important,habits are key. Flourishing well as a human being requires that the
cycle of bad habits is broken and replaced by the regular performance
of good habits.
Procrastination is ahabit that leads to avoidance and evasion. The problem is that the
break that you seek to take from stress can take over your life,
building up more problems and more stress.
Mel talks about creatingStarting Rituals, things that push you to start an activity. The
trick to breaking a cycle is starting. She recommends only working
for five minutes. Whilst this doesn't sound like being very
productive, it works like a trick. 80% of people who commit to
working for just five minutes will keep going. The trick is to get
started in the first place.
The trick works bybreaking the connection between the trigger, which is stress, and the
response, which is procrastination. Whenever you feel stress, know
that you have a choice and that choice is made in that five second
gap. In that five seconds the habit of procrastinating and beating
yourself up can take hold again, or you can choose to just get
started.
Mel comes to what shecalls 'hyperdrive.' She describes herself as an over-achiever,
someone who was a super busy go-getter because it won her praise and
attention. This is precisely my experience with my academic work. It
'also insulates you from other people,' she says. I ended up
elevating myself over others, intimidating them, even, and certainly
distanced from them. Far from resolving a problem, such an approach
makes a bad situation a whole lot worse. The 'hyperdrive to achieve'
comes from a feeling of inadequacy, she says. This accords with my
own experience. I gained recognition, respect even, but not
relationship. 'Being the best is annoying,' she says, 'a hangover
from something in the past.' The push to excel in academia stemmed in
part from an interest in the subjects of study, but largely from the
need to prove myself powerful and clever. It all came from a feeling
of inferiority that was developed into me at school. 'We walk around
thinking the same stuff from the past,' Mel says. You have to let bad
experiences from the past go. In seeking success as no more than a
triumph over the past, you never move forward.
'There is a gap betweenthe world and the things that trigger you and your response, and your
entire life is that gap.' This is the five second window between
instinct/stimulus and your reaction. Once you start to understand
that your whole life plays out in this five second gap between fear
and courage, between self-doubt and confidence, then you realise that
you have the ability to control it. Response is where your power
lies, in the possibility of choice - you get to choose what happens
in this small gap. When triggered, you get to choose whether to
succumb to an excuse or to push yourself forward.
She says that once youstart to speak up you will be 'shocked' and 'surprised' at the way
you will close the gap and make choices, exercising conscious control
over how you live. The magic happens in that gap between stimulus and
response.
A lot of times theproblem concerns the pattern of negative thoughts which tell you that
you are not good enough and not smart enough, and have you worrying
that this or that may happen. Ask yourself how such thoughts help
anything. A productive worry is a worry that motivates you to take
action. Good stress operates the same way. A destructive worry is a
worry that has you circling the drain mentally. You need to interrupt
destructive worry as soon as it starts to happen and send it packing.
If you are always thinking that you are not good enough, then you are
never going to believe the mantra that you are good enough. Mantras
work not by repetition but by belief; they don't work if you don't
believe them to be true. You need to break the chain of destructive
thoughts. Mel thus emphasises the power that lies in creating a
meaningful mantra. You need to be able to identify the patterns
whenever they appear and create a meaningful mantra. This is
empowering and serves to lift you up.
You can be paralysed byfear. The key is to break the pattern.
The next part is ofpersonal and very present interest to me. Mel asks us to identify the
'one thing you have been thinking about that you have stopped
yourself from doing.' She speaks of you being terrified of putting
yourself out there. She gives starting a business as an example. Yup.
I've been dealing with Business Wales these past three months with a
view to setting up my own publishing company, selling the dozens of
books I have written but made available in free access. I've been
stalling, looking at all the work it involves. It can be done. It
needs to be done.
'If you are stillparalysed,' she says, then 'you have not been able to change your
thinking pattern.'
This paralysis is changedthrough action. 'Because if you sign up for that class or go on that
retreat, if you post that blog, start that business, then you will be
proving to yourself through the actions that you are taking that you
don't care what other people think. Try that today.'
OK … but … I wouldphrase it differently. The action needs to be something that you
really want to do, rather than just proving a point. That's possibly
what she meant. It's just that in not caring for what others think,
there is no need to even mention others.
'What you are stoppingyourself from doing and what you are committing to doing today?'
Good questions. But becareful of seeing 'action' as such as a solution. Action in itself
can often be a neurotic response to pressures, feeling the need to be
busy to put your mind at ease. But the general message is sound
enough: find your interests, dreams, talents, and desires and start
to act on them. Identify what you want to do and start getting it
done – that's the surest way to break the paralysis.
Mel next comes to an oldbugbear of mine, the distinction between the things you can't control
and the things you can.
There are things youcan't control in the social or objective world, and the things that
you can control in your thoughts and actions.
I've never liked thisdistinction, for the reason it shifts the onus of responsibility upon
the person, completely ignoring societal and institutional
transformations that need to be made to make personal responsibility
and action possible, meaningful, and productive. We live in a social
environment. By placing the emphasis on changes that we can make as
persons, the social and institutional context is ignored. It requires
both. Many problems that we face have their origins outside of us, in
relation to others or in respect of social bodies and institutions.
Often, the emphasis on personal transformation reduces to
accommodating oneself to a world that inhibits and impairs your
potentials. There is a social and institutional agnosticism here that
is tantamount to resignation and cowardice. I know this from past
dealings with various organisations and authorities, employment
agencies who shift all responsibility to the individual agent when it
comes to finding employment, autism bodies which emphasise all the
changes an autistic person can make to adjust to an uncaring and
unchanging world. I've been here and done it to death. It can only
work to a certain extent, maybe enough of an extent for enough people
for its adherents to justify it as the best available approach. I've
always been one of the 'odds,' one of the exceptions, one of the
people whose talents get unrealised and wasted. And, for the record,
I have done everything required of me by various organisations and
agencies in the cause of self-help. They haven't worked and have come
close to wrecking my mental and physical health. It's not enough. The
social and institutional dimension has to be factored in rather than
ignored. It is lazy to simply claim that these cannot be controlled.
A distinction such as this makes a politically and sociologically
illiterate distinction between two essential aspects of human nature
– individuality and sociality. The social refers to human beings in
their collective identity. Whilst it is true that this cannot be
controlled individual and lies outside of the individual's power, it
can be transformed collectively. But that's politics. Teamwork makes
the dream work.
In terms of what theindividual can do for himself or herself in the here and now, the
advice is sound enough. Whilst the individual can't control the
supra-individual events and forces going on in the social world, he
or she exercise control in the gap between what is happening in your
life and work and what your reaction is to it. That gap, Mel says, is
five seconds long. 'If you understand that you can change what you
think, that you can change your habits, you can pivot and change even
the philosophy of your company, changing decisions, managing your
reactions, you will be unstoppable.'
Possibly.
There are aspects of yourlife that are energising and aspects which are depleting. If you are
not careful, you can get trapped in sterile grooves that tire you out
and keep you confined in a lane that takes you to a place you don't
want to be.
Everyone has a place tobe; everyone needs to know their place and know how to get to where
they need to be.
Mel describes her careeras a public speaker. For all the money she was making, it was
'depleting the hell' out of her. 'It's so important to pay attention
to what is energising you about your own business, because that's the
secret of seeing around corners.' She started to look around the
corner. 'To get to the next level of your business, you have to
decide right now what habits do you have as a leader do you have to
change now. Because you will not see around the corner, you will not
engineer the next quantum leap, unless you personally change.' This
was the process by which she went from being a speaker to writing a
number one book on Amazon. She did this by 'constantly innovating
myself.'
'I am the biggest singleproblem in my company, and if I don't constantly pivot and evolve
what I am focused on, I am going to be my blockade.'
Think where you want tobe and identify what habit you have to change to get there.
This is of directpersonal significance to me. I describe myself on my business card as
a speaker and tutor. I created that business card for my e-tutoring
business, Peter Critchley e-Akademeia. I no longer tutor and I have
long since given up public speaking, and didn't do much of it in the
first place. Speaking and tutoring are not things I enjoy and not
places I need to be. I am a writer. I have written over one hundred
books and made them available in free access. I am investigating
possibilities of creating my own publishing, “Writing Voice
Publishing,” to sell my books and make myself some well-earned and
hugely deserved money. Mel Robbins here has plotted my course. It
needs to be travelled. I need to get started.
You have to let go of thepast. If your mind keeps returning to the past, for fear of an
uncertain future, then you are going to be depressed. Because the
things that happened in the past cannot help you now. You can neither
change nor control the past, the only change and control that is
available to you lies in the here and now. Likewise, it you are
living in anticipation of the future, whether hopefully or fearfully,
then you are going to be in a state of constant anxiety, for the
reason that you are constantly thinking about things that haven't
happened yet and more than likely take place in ways that contradict
your expectations. 'Being in the present is where the gold is,' Mel
writes. 'Being in the present moment is where you will have the
greatest control, where you will have the most ease and where
happiness will flourish.'
40% of happiness levelsare set by genetics, 60% you are in control of.
Mel states that itdoesn't matter what has happened to you in the past. She claims that
some of the happiest and most grateful people in the world are those
who have had the worst things happen to them. Anyone who has read
concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl's 'Man's Search for
Meaning' can confirm this. I can confirm it from personal experience,
having survived the horrors of Leppings Lane in the Hillsborough
Disaster.
The happiness that youare in control of comes down to your thoughts, your mindset, and your
attitude and you are 100% in control of those things. The key is to
develop the skill of being present in the moment, not in the past or
future, attuning your thought processes to the here and now where we
all live.
Be present.
You can learn thediscipline of being present by checking yourself whenever your
thoughts start to drift back to the past or forwards to the future,
showing a tendency to stay there. That's not where you are and not
where the people who can help you are.
Being present doesn'tnecessarily mean that the people you need are going to present
themselves immediately. They are there somewhere in the here and now,
I am told. They are few and far between in my experience. But they
are there and nowhere else. People are also stressed by struggles of
their own. Time and energy are scarce resources, and people tend not
to have much to spare. But here is the crucial paradox to grasp and
hold on to: energy, like love and power, is expanded by being shared.
By looking to others to lift your burden, you can help to lift theirs
in turn, establishing practices and processes of mutual aid. As a
result, we come to expand our being outwards in relation to others.
That's my concludingthought. You can do much by realising the power of your own agency,
you can be proactive and take charge and determine to turn your life
around. I will go with plenty that Mel Robbins says, and hope that
the little clauses and qualifications I have added don't cloud and
confuse issues to such an extent as to encourage a lapse back into
bad habits. You can take charge and take action, that's both simple
and true. But, speaking as someone who has been proactive my entire
life, as someone who has set high ambitions and realised them,
someone who went from the building sites to university and PhD, who
managed to just about cope with the stresses and strains of autism,
going undetected until just a couple of years ago, I'll just say that
there is no substitute for establishing warm, affective, mutually
supportive and meaningful bonds with significant others. Social and
emotional support is essential for flourishing well. And, often, in
the main, even, such connections merely involve the presence of
sympathetic others. Those others don't necessarily have to being
doing anything; usually, simply being there is enough. I have took
part in two courses on anxiety in the past, one in 2019 and one in
2020. I learned plenty from both. I made notes of the things that can
be done and ought to be done, which are plenty. I saw some people in
those classes who were in despair. One woman was clearing tearing her
hair out and picking at her scalp. It must have taken enormous
courage for her to simply turn up to class. That first step is always
the biggest one to take. She took the information home with her, paid
attention, joined in the exercises. The same with regard to another
woman who seemed depressed as well as anxious, suffering grief at the
loss of her mother. But my point is this: it was less the information
on anxiety that they received than the simple fact of joining with
others to express their concerns and share their experiences that was
the most uplifting thing of all. The truth is that human beings, as
social beings, need each other in order to be themselves.
The classes came to anend with the beginning of Lockdown. I shudder to think what became of
some of those poor ladies in the isolation that was to become our
common fate. But I praise their courage and bravery in joining with
others in public space to reveal their vulnerability and fragility.
We can talk about empowerment and agency and affirm our talents and
abilities to take charge and take action. And I would agree that we
can 'body-build' our capacities to be successful and self-determining
in the world. It is healthy and appropriate to stress the qualities
for successful living. But establishing warm and affective bonds with
others is at least as important a quality to nurture as any other.
The members of the anxiety classes I attended came to life in the
company of others, making it clear that they had been starved of
sympathetic ears. Everyone has a story to tell. The tragedy is that
not everyone has someone in their lives who is prepared to listen.
I have also noted theextent to which anxiety seems to affect women more than men. That
might just be a coincidence, an accident of my own particular
experience. I attended two different courses for anxiety, with just
one other man present for one, both courses led by women. Either
anxiety affects women more than men, or men are much less brave than
women, choosing to tough it out and hence suffer alone. It's not the
right way. I agree with philosopher Martha Nussbaum who writes about
'the fragility of goodness':
"To be a good humanbeing is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust
uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be
shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to
blame. That says something very important about the condition of the
ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a
willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant
than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very
particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility."
Martha Nussbaum, "TheFragility of Goodness"
I know all about anxietyand what it does to you mentally and physically. Living with a
relentless anxiety wears you down to such an extent that you tend not
to ask for what you really want, out of expectation that your desires
will not be met, having rarely been met in the past, and for fear
that refusal will destroy the little locked-away hopes and dreams
that keep you alive.
But, maybe, there arerisks worth taking, exchanging saving illusions for rich realities. A
greater joy lies that way. If you have the courage to believe that
life could ever get that good.
"Ever tried. Everfailed.
No matter.
Try Again.
Fail again. Fail better."
~ Samuel Beckett,Worstward Ho
In my assessment for AS,I said that over time I learned to keep trying, to keep working hard,
so that in the end I came to fail so beautifully that most everyone
took it to be success. I knew I was falling far short of all that I
could be and all that I ought to be.
You can turn that around.
Take anxiety veryseriously. Anxiety is a debilitating condition that can steal your
hopes and dreams, ruin your life, end your career, even end your
life.
I write further onanxiety here
Anxiety and Autism: Constant and Common Challenges
And here on my anxiety classes
