Hey, it's your friend Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robins podcast. Today, you and I are going to have a conversation about the one thing that you need to do this week. Just one thing. There's a reason why you and I are going to talk about this today because I know you need to hear this. There is only one thing that you and I are going to be doing this week. I'm thinking about this right now. It's a vacation week. There are kids home, and I have downtime. But look, there's always chaos in your life, regardless of when you're listening to this. But especially during the holidays, this is a message you need to hear. It's a message I need to hear. It's a message everybody needs to hear because there's only one thing I want you to do this week. Nothing. Do nothing. Wait a minute. Mel Robbins, are you smoking something over there? Did you just say do nothing? Here's the funny part about this. I bet you might be doing something right now because you're 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 because I can even feel it over here. I say this because we got to talk about the art of doing nothing. Look, I'm not stupid enough to think that you can actually do nothing. I mean, obviously not. This is a metaphorical conversation because you probably have to work. Doing nothing sounds like a luxury, doesn't it? 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. 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. I want you to know that if you have young kids or you're taking care of aging parents or you're working two, three, four 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.

I personally love working between the week of Christmas and New Year because nobody's there 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 doing a million things on your to-do list. You are 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. 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. I'm addicted to being busy. I'm addicted to my to-do list, writing them out, crossing them off, throwing them away, losing them, writing another one. The world has glamorousized, being productive, being busy, go, go, go. Hustles, hustle culture, having a side hustle. There's so much to hustle around some days. I literally have no idea what I'm doing.

You may always be on the go like I am, but are you actually getting anywhere? That's why I want to talk about the importance, the art, the science of learning how to do nothing on purpose. Before we jump into it, I don't want you to worry because this is not another podcast episode about meditation. That's not what I'm going to jam down your throat right now. 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. This week, the only thing that I want you and I to do is nothing. 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. I need this as much as you do.

When I landed at the airport this week in Albany, Chris picked me up. I haven't been home in a week. I jump into the front seat of his pickup truck, and I turn around. I'm like, How about we stop at the grocery store on the way home? He's like, But I've already gone twice this week. I'm like, Well, we probably need something. 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? Here's another one. Last night, Chris built 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 cribpage and backgammon, and so we played around a cribage, 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. I hate that. As the game was wrapping up, Chris got up and went to bed.

Do you know what I did? I sat and scrolled through my freaking phone. I don't even know why I did it. I literally sat there, and I started scrolling through Instagram. Next thing you know, 35 minutes have gone by. My husband has gone off to bed. He's sound asleep, snoring, saw on 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... I need to buy and all that stuff. I was so busy. I could have enjoyed myself if I had put the phone down. Instead, I picked it up because 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 got to be... I could have just gone to bed like Chris did. Had a nice night's sleep. 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, and I have 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've got a lot to learn.

Let me give you this advice about doing nothing because I do a better job of doing nothing than you do, Mel Robbins. 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 at melrovins. Com, questions about busyness, about stress, about burnout, about never having time for yourself, about anxiety, about feeling like you're last on your list. Well, in just a minute, I'm going to address a bunch of those questions from listeners. But before I do, I want to have you just stop for a second. If you are lucky enough to be off of work this week, I want you to stop and think, What would that mean for you? If you are somebody who has to work this week, I want you to think, what would a moment of doing nothing look like for you? If you're somebody that has a ton going on, you have that feeling like, but I can't. But nothing? 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 because I don't want to do anything. You know? That'd be pretty awesome. Now that you have this visual in mind of what doing nothing might look like for you: a hot bath, a nap, sitting on the couch, maybe just waking up and sitting in silence before the kids get up. Just hold on to that visual. Because now what we're going to do is I've got a couple of questions from fellow listeners about what's getting in the way of finding this time to do nothing. The first question is one I know you will be able to relate to. I love this question. It comes from a listener named Jenny, and she writes, 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 read it again. Jenny said, Mel, I've deflected a lot of this type of advice from fitness influencers and efficiency experts. 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 remain 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? Whoa. 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? First things first. Let's just call it what it is, okay? That most of the crap that you're seeing online is not actually true.

People are not as efficient as they look, and I love the home edit, but I guarantee you the second that they leave the television show or the Instagram shoot, that color-coordinated bookcase and that beautiful pantry in the gorgeous plastic see-through things and the spinny things that look like you're not supposed to touch anything there, that pantry does not look like that in 24 hours. Give me a freaking break. Experts stylized that thing. Production assistants bought all that crap. They put it in there. The home edit, it's home-decorating porn. Look, I love looking at it. I love the two founders. I love an organized shelf because to me, an organized shelf, it's like an art exhibit. A great night for me, hand me a glass of wine and photos of a color-coordinated pantry, and I am happy as a clam. But can we be honest? There is no normal human being that can keep a pantry looking that way. 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 ADHD, and there's absolutely nothing about my life that is perfect. I notice that there are a lot of people in the self-help, in the influencer space that are either single or they are male and they have a full-time partner at home or they have no children. 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. 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.

I say this because it frustrates me that you and I look at the incredible advice that's out there, and we don't flex it to actually work in our life. 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. 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 will 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. There, I said it. And after we hear a quick word from our sponsors, I'm going to say something else because we have to address the second reason why this type of advice frustrates me. I was just ranting about these ridiculous standards that you and I hold ourselves out to, how perfect it is, how unrealistic it is.

That brings me to the second reason why I get so frustrated about the advice that you see online, because it's presented as if it's like all or nothing. There's nothing flexible about it. The only advice that will really work is something that works for you and your life right now. Like you, my life is really complicated. I can't fit in two hours of exercise, but I can fit in 15 minutes. I can't fit in training for a marathon, but I can walk three days a week. And so what you're going to find is that if you hold yourself to an impossible standard, you're going to feel like that standard is impossible. If you become not only realistic about the demands of your life, but you also become very rigorous about what you demand of yourself in terms of, I'm not going to force myself to some ridiculous standard. I got two toddlers. I'm a single parent. It's not safe for me to walk alone outside and leave them alone. I just can't do it. That's just hopefully getting rid of the comparison thing because I do it too. I often have this conversation with Christine, who's our Chief Operating Officer of 143 Studios, which is our production company, and she's also my sister-in-law.

I love her because I'm the flighty, creative, bald, or opera genius type person. I call myself a genius, like ingest, but I'm creatively fruity all over the place, just flying high. She is a CFO, Excel spreadsheet, get everything in the columns lady. Mel says yes, Christine says no. That's basically the joke inside the company. Mel said yes, but Christine said no. 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. I see a friend of mine, and he is going on a book tour that is lasting three months. I turn to Christine. I'm like, This is unbelievable. This is so cool. Da da da da. She turned 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. 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 and a business to run. Please, stop making yourself feel like shit because you are looking at somebody who has totally different life circumstances than you. By the way, this does not mean that there's something wrong with a 23-year-old fitness influencer. 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. 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. Now let's address the actual question she asked. Jenny said, How do you make time for rest when it feels like a guilty pleasure to sit down every once in a while? Can we just take a moment?

It feels like a guilty pleasure to just sit down? That is fucked up. I mean, and I feel it. I feel like there's something wrong with me if I'm not doing something. So I get this. One thing that I want you to know is stop calling it guilt. We got to stop calling it guilt because 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 Piña Kalada in my hand, I don't know how to relax. It's true. It's a sickness. 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? I don't even know. Funny, my mind's blank. I can't think of nothing. I don't even know. Can you think of when you did nothing last? I'm always doing something. 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. Here's the other thing. We live in a world that has trained us to always be on. Between the phone and a gazillion things to watch on TV and constantly e-mails 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. 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 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. Now, I love taking baths, but normally this is embarrassing to admit this to you. I'm on my phone in my bath. I am literally a sicko. I sit on my phone in my bed, and I relax in my bed by answering emails. This is literally awful that I do this. Why? Because I don't know how to do nothing. Oh, my God. It's so funny. We're so funny. 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 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 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 because I can't sit there and do nothing. I want you to think right now about one moment of doing nothing and what that looks like for you.

When we come back, we're going to take our second question, and this is going to help you get out of your head, stop judging yourself, and start enjoying your life by thinking about nothing. Welcome back. I'm so excited for this next question from a listener named Paige. And Paige writes, Hi, Mel. Can you please talk about how to get out of your own head in order to start living your life? When I'm thrown into social situations or new experiences, I tend to get so wrapped up in my own head that my anxiety skyrockets. It can sometimes feel like I have a spotlight on me with a panel of judges grading my every move or every sentence that comes out of my mouth. My head just can't seem to realize that no one is paying that much attention, and it's preventing me from just enjoying myself. Your podcast has been a life-changer. Can you please help me? This is an excellent question because there are two aspects to the art of doing nothing, everyone. One is the doing. But there's a second part to doing nothing, and that's how do you think about nothing? How do you quiet your mind?

Because for me, that's the part that makes the physical doing nothing hard. Let's just say that you've got this awesome, comfy bed in your studio apartment, and you're just going to sit on your bed. Just going to sit there for five minutes. Just really do nothing. You know what will happen? Your thoughts are going to race. Your thoughts are going to be like, What am I doing? Why am I sitting here? I should be doing something. Okay, what's going on? Oh, that wall needs paint. Oh, look at the rug. I should probably do something about that rug. I haven't washed these sheets. You're going to literally be like... In our house in Sherburn, we had mice or squirrels. I don't even know what the hell they were. They lived in the walls. It's an old farmhouse. What are you going to do? You can't get rid of them. They just come in. Honest to God, every night when I would turn off the lights, do you know what would happen? It was like a mouse parade. That's what you would hear in the walls of my house. It was like, They turn on the second the lights go off.

Then you turn on the lights and then they stop and you're like, What is happening? That's your thoughts. Try it. Try to just sit there and think of nothing. You can't. You can't. She wants to know, How do I get out of my own head? How do I think about nothing? Here's how you do it. First of all, you cannot trust yourself, okay? I am not going to sit there and say, Just try to think about nothing, because it's impossible. You are a complete novice at this. If you're a novice to this and you can't sit still or your thoughts are always racing, you need freaking help. And lucky for you and me, there is free help everywhere. Download the com app, download Headspace, listen on Audible, listen on Spotify, listen on iTunes, listen on Amazon Music, listen on YouTube. Do you know how many free playlists there are with guided meditations or with that SMMR? I don't even know what it's called. Asmr? Asmr? Msmr? I don't know what it is, but it's that sound where it's like. You just listen to it and it calms your mind. What I'm trying to tell you is do not try to calm your racing thoughts on your own.

Get freaking help. Get a free app, find a playlist you like, create a playlist of music that just makes your mind go quiet. Get help with this. Here's a couple other things you can do. You can put an alarm in your phone that goes off randomly. Let's just pick a time. How about 2:13? 2:13 PM every single day, write a little alarm that just says, Take a breath. Do nothing for one minute. That's it. Now, why would you want to do that? Why do you want to do this? I'll tell you why, and it's common sense. If you're always on and your thoughts are always racing, right? Is that a good thing for you? Of course not. Think about your computer or your phone. You know how when it overheats, or it's been on for three or four days in a row because you haven't turned it off, and then all of a sudden it starts rainbow wheeling or glitching or it's slower? What do you do? You unplug the computer or you turn off the phone. The art of doing nothing is so important because it's an intentional moment to unplug from life. It's an intentional moment where you restore your energy, where you interrupt the chaos, where you bring your power back inside, where you regroup, and you need that, and so do I.

Stress levels are so high because you're always on. You're always running from one thing to the next. You're like your phone. It occurred to me the other day because my phone was getting glitchy, and I thought to myself, When is the last time I turned this thing off? I bet this phone has been on for three weeks in a row. Just going, going, going. It needs a moment to do nothing. It needs a moment to reset. And so the reason why the one thing I want you and I to do this week is nothing, is because we need it. And for those of us like you and me who have a lot going on and you got other people you got to take care of and you got a lot on your plate and you got demands at work and you can't just take a week off and do nothing. You can't go to an ashrom. You can't go to a yoga retreat. Wouldn't that be nice? That would be just freaking fantastic. I would love to go to one of those retreats where you pay a ridiculous amount of money and they take your phone away and then you're forced to hike or just lay around.

That would be amazing. I would love to go do something silent, but that's not my life right now. But I can figure out how to insert the art of doing nothing every day for a minute. If you're lucky enough, again, to be off work this week, you can take this as the theme of the week. How do you do less? How do you find moments of nothing? How do you sit with the discomfort of not doing your to-do list, not racing to the grocery store, not trying to get something else done? What if you just let yourself be for a minute? That is exactly what you need. It's exactly what I need. This will be interesting because the truth is I have no freaking clue how to do this. I'm just as novice at this as you are. I'm going to set the reminder to 13. Stop, take a breath, do nothing for a minute. I'm also going to have a song ready because songs really help me. In fact, I found a really good one. I heard this song the other day. Let me see if I can find it because this was so good.

I put this in my family group chat. You know it's a good song when it's in your family group chat because it's going to be enjoyed by all the generations. Although, I'll admit that nobody actually wrote back and said that's a great song, but I think it's a great song. I found this song, and Itried to think, this is a good technique for me. This song is very old. It's called Genesis, and it's one of those trippy songs like you might expect in a yoga class. Here we go. There's a theme here. I like trippy music that has a George Winston meets Yoga, meets Psychodelic medication vibe to it, I think. When I hear music like that, I just pay attention to the music and I notice my thoughts melt away. For me, my little thing that I'm going to do, 2:13, goes off, do nothing for a minute, take a breath, and I'm going to put that song on because that will focus my mind on something other than all the crap that's normally spinning. That's what I'm going to do. I know what you're probably thinking right now because I get this question a lot.

Mel, what's the difference between being lazy, being procrastinator, having excuses and doing nothing? Let me attack those one by one. Being lazy is fine. If you know you're lazy, more power to you. That's great. You know what's great about lazy people? Is they don't make themselves wrong. You know you're an overachiever if you beat yourself up, up when you're not doing everything that you need to be doing. People who are truly lazy do not give a damn about the fact that they're not doing anything. You know people like this. They're not motivated, they don't care. They're not looking to change the world. They don't care. Here's the thing that I feel about human beings. If it works for you, do it because it's your life. Nobody said that you have to go change the world. If you enjoy your life and you consider yourself to be a lazy person, you're winning at life because you enjoy it. We could all learn something from lazy people because people that are truly lazy have no problem being lazy. That's number one. Number two, procrastination. Procrastination is a habit that is triggered by stress. Let's say that again.

Procrastination is a habit of avoiding what you need to do because you're stressed out. There's a lot of research around this, and we'll do a much bigger episode around it. The third piece that you said was excuses. Excuses is when you are actively campaigning to not do something. That's what an excuse is. It's when you are convincing yourself not to do something. Do you notice that all three things that I just explained, being lazy, procrastinating, and excuses, those are things that are very busy. When I'm asking you to do nothing, I'm asking you to be hyper-intentional about unplugging for a second. Hyper-intentional about removing the stress, removing all of the pressure that you feel. I'm asking you to do something really positive for your mental health, for your stamina, your energy, for your resilience, for your presence. That's what doing nothing is. It's not being lazy. It's not procrastinating. It's not an excuse. It's literally just allowing yourself to take a break for a second because you deserve that. One of the things that I'm going to ask you to do, again, you can join me 2:13 PM, baby. Boom. Let's take a breath and do nothing for a minute.

Then I'm going to play my music, and I'm going to see what happens. I'm still questioning whether or not I can do this, but I'm going to try. I'm going to give you that. I'm probably more addicted to being busy than even you are. And it feels very weird for me to do this, but I know I need to. I got to start somewhere. And I suppose one lousy frigging minute is a good enough place to start. All right. Now, I got one more thing I want to say in case nobody else tells you. I want to tell you that I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to do this. I'll talk to you in a couple of days. I love you. Is this on? Oh, good. Because instead of bloopers, I want to give you a gift. What's the gift? It's a free workbook that will help make this year one of the best years of your life. This workbook is something I designed using the latest research to help you get clear about what you want and to empower you to take the next step forward in your life.

And the cool part? You can get your hands on this puppy in less than a minute. Just go to melrovin. Com/bestyear. That's melrovin. Com/bestyear. Let your friend Mel guide you step by step through creating your best year yet. Why wouldn't you take this opportunity? It's free, it's quick to download, and it's ready for you right now. And as your friend, I got to tell you, you deserve to have the best year of your life, especially after everything you've been through. Here it is. I'm offering to help you. Why wouldn't you take it? Sign up at melrobinz. Com/bestyear, and do not miss out on the life you could be living this year. Oh, and one more thing. 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. 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. Stitcher.