Bryan E. Robinson: ...that it's okay to stop working and just #chill

[Music] Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black and I'm Laura Owens. Are you a workaholic, a perfectionist, and overachiever? Maybe all three of those things. Our guest on this episode, Dr. Brian Robinson, is a licensed psychotherapist who describes himself as a recovering workaholic. And he's the author of a new book aimed at helping people break the cycle of overworking. The book is called #Chill. Turn off your job and turn on your life. Brian, thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you. It's great to be here. So, talk to us a little bit about your background and when you decided you needed to change your workaholic ways. Well, it's a long story, so I'll try to be brief. I am of what I call recovering workaholic. There was a time in my life when I used my work like many people use alcohol or food or drugs. I overdid it, I binged, I slept in my clothes, I hid it from my family when they complained and snuck it around just like an alcoholic with a sneak of drink. I got high, I went through lows. I, well, alcoholics have blackouts, I had brownouts, brownouts are when you're not present in the moment. Your mind's somewhere else and you don't remember conversations or you ask a question and you've already been given the answer three times. So, it's a severe extreme workaholism is not only a problem to the mind, it's damaging to the body and it's associated with higher heart attacks, gastrointestinal problems, and other kinds of immune disorders. So, it's clearly a problem and a lot of people don't understand that. When I was at the university, the research I did, I did the first study on the effects of workaholism on children. I actually did a special segment on 2020. And what we found was that children of workaholics, in some cases, are worse off than children of alcoholics because they have higher anxiety, depression, and the ability to control themselves rates compared to children of non-workaholics. It's a mental health problem. And what do you think led you to become a workaholic and what leads a lot of people to become a workaholic? Well, what led me, and I mentioned this in the book, and many people I have found in my own research, is that we often grow up in homes where there are one or two extremes. One is where our families are perfectionistic, of demands are high. We have to be perfect. That was not my situation. Mine was the opposite extreme where food was lying across the room. And people were chaotic and it was in order to stabilize the chaos as a child, you latch on to something to do. And for me, it was writing. When I was seven years old, I would make up these little stories of getting children into trouble and getting them out of trouble, gave me a sense of the control over my life. I wrote the church Christmas play. I directed the church Christmas play. I built the set and I acted the lead role. Everybody thought that was great. And in some ways it was, but I was overdoing it already and I was only a child. So that legacy for all of us gets carried into adulthood and we don't even realize the water we're swimming in because it's so familiar. It breaks down our relationships. One of the other studies that I did at the university, the first study on the effects of workaholic on marriage is that workaholic marriages have a 40% higher divorce rate than marriages among non-workaholics. So I wanted to say that I've written other books about workaholism and a lot of this is in the other books. This book is for everybody. What I have found as I've continued my work and my psychotherapy practice, many, many people who are not workaholics have some of these same traits in patience, perfectionism, hurrying and rushing, inability to relax. I have so many people who tell me they don't know how to relax and when they do try to relax they get anxious. So I think our society is enabling this type of personality profile where many people are burning out and suffering similar traits to people who are workaholic. So this book has to take Jill. It's for everybody how to slow down, take a breath and bring more work life balance. And I think it's probably gotten a lot worse with everybody carrying their cell phones around all the time because for me personally I'll say okay I'm going to take a break from my work and then I end up being on my phone and that doesn't seem to be any better. I don't feel like I'm getting that full mind reset. So how can I make it so that I feel okay with doing nothing and meditating and not checking my phone? Well the best way I have found is I talk to my patients about meditation. Their hands go up and they say I've tried it. I can't clear my mind. I can't do that. I don't have time for it. But here's the deal. Meditation has gotten a bum wrap. It's not that complicated. You don't have to sit in a lotus position. You don't have to burn incense. You don't have to go to a certain place to do it. You don't have to play Indian music. You can do this in your car if you're not driving. Of course you can do this at your office. You can do this at home wherever. Five minutes a day. Five minutes a day. We have 1440 minutes in every day. If we take five we still have 1435 to do all the other things. And what we're finding not only the research but the people in my practice who do this are telling me it has changed their life. And these are high profile folks. They're physicians. They are attorneys. And that five minutes what it does is it puts on the brakes for five minutes. And if you do that on a regular basis you start to become less reactive to things that normally would frustrate you. You're more patient. You're less perfectionistic. You have more self-compassion. You give yourself a break. It's a completely different situation. When you're in a place that I'll call #chill and that is a place inside. There are eight c words that go along with that. One of which of course is calm. Clarity. Because when you take five minutes a day to just meditate, just be with your breath or just watch what's going on inside without judgment. You start to notice that the cloud lifts. You have more clarity of what's going on inside and how you want to handle your life. Compassion for yourself and other people. A deeper sense of connectedness with yourself and other people because you're more present in the moment to be with people instead of zipping by them to get the task done. Courage. You're more likely to stick your neck out a little bit and take risks. Which helps us grow curiosity. Curiosity is huge. It's one of the best medicines there is. Whenever we make a mistake or we feel defeated, when we can go into this place of curiosity and just ask, what just happened instead of beating ourselves up and calling ourselves names. It changes everything about how we feel and it keeps us in that place that I'll call #chill. #chill is not just about kicking back with a beer and watching the football game or getting a massage or hanging out by the pool with your favorite beverage. Those are great things to do but it requires more and that more is paying attention to how we're facing a life's curve balls because life is not personal. Life is going to show up for all of us and it's not going to be what we want it to be. It's not supposed to be. We have to learn to live life on its terms and not on ours and that requires us to not react to every little thing that goes wrong but to learn to act and to accept what's coming our way. That's not easy to do but with a little bit of practice and with a little bit of meditation five minutes a day, you start to notice it gets easier and easier and easier and you feel better inside your skin. We're so glad you're part of the nobody told me family and we wanted to let you know more about one of our sponsors Zola dot com. If you or a friend or relative need to plan a wedding then you owe it to yourself to check out Zola dot com. I wish Zola had been around to help me with wedding planning when I got married. Zola is the wedding company that's reinventing the wedding planning and registry experience. Zola takes the stress out of wedding planning with free wedding websites, your dream wedding registry, affordable save the dates and invitations and easy to use planning tools. Get started by creating a free wedding website in just minutes at Zola dot com. Choose from over 100 wedding website designs and find the one that suits your style and your type of wedding. You can put your Zola registry on your wedding website so guests can get all the details they need and by your wedding gift in one convenient and beautiful place. The Zola store has the widest selection of gifts at all different price points. There's something for every guest to give. Guests love free shipping and returns, price matching and more. So to start your free wedding website and also get $50 off your registry on Zola, go to Zola dot com slash no. Nobody told me again to start your free wedding website and also get $50 off your registry on Zola. Go to Zola.com/NobodyToldMe. I'm guessing there might be some people who are listening to the show who maybe don't know how to get started with meditation and maybe have heard about some apps like Head Space. Do you recommend people start with that or is there another way? I'll recommend that people start with very small steps. That's why I say five minutes because for me I do five minutes a day but sometimes now I want to go longer because I love it. It feels so good. So, that's the first thing is don't buy it off more than you can chew. Just keep it simple and remember it's portable, it's free. It has no side effects except the positive ones and you can do it almost anywhere. So that's one thing. One of the easiest ways to start is with what we call it, there are many types of meditation, a guided meditation where someone walks you through. The meditation is focus. That's all it is. You can focus if you have a guided meditation. You visually watch whatever they're telling you to watch. The kind of meditation I do is I focus on my breath and it's very simple. But here's what happens. Here's where people give up. When you focus on your breath just the intake through your nose and this is all in the book and out through your mouth your mind is going to start to wonder. That's meditation, your mind is supposed to wonder. All you do is bring it back to your breath again and in through your nose, out through your mouth and just focus on your breath and it's going to wander again. Back to your breath. Without frustration, understand this is the way meditation works. Most people think they can't meditate because their mind wonders, well it's supposed to. But after you do this for a while, your mind wonders less. It's like when I started working with my personal trainer, I couldn't lift my weight. I couldn't bench press my weight. I can now, but it takes time. If you do this five minutes a day or more on a regular basis, you start to notice you're less reactive, that you're more peaceful, you have more clarity. Here's the ironic part and the research backs this up, you are more productive, more effective and more efficient. So multitasking and herring and rushing does not help us produce more and better quality. It's the reverse that's true. If you remember Esaubs' fables, the tortoise won the race, not the hair. And how do you define meditation? I mean, you've talked about some of the misconceptions that people have about it. How do you actually define it for someone who says, "Oh, it's just not for me"? I define it as focus. Like right now, if I ask everybody who's listening, maybe you can do this later and then again, this is in the book. These are microchillers, that's what we call them. Three to five minutes, that's all you need. If you just take three minutes, sit down and just, we call this open awareness meditation, focus on every sound you hear. You might hear your stomach, your herbal, you might hear a plane in the distance, you might hear cars, you might hear the heating system. And as you do that, what it does, it brings you into the present moment, simply focusing on the sounds. It's very simple. And being in the present moment is what slows down your heart rate, slows down your respiratory rate, loosens your muscles, and what you're actually doing on a neurological level is you're activating what we call the parasympathetic nervous system. You're telling your brain, "I'm in charge, not you." So you're out of your thinking mind and you're just focusing. And as you do that over time, your nervous system learns to relax even in times of stress. That's the key. I know a lot of people don't understand what does that have to do with me producing. What does that have to do with me having a better life? They don't see the connection, but there is definitely a connection. And we have the research showing the MRIs, we have the brain research. You can see the difference in the brain of people who meditate on a regular basis versus those who don't. One of the things we notice is the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, does not shrink as you get older. So your memory is better, your clarity is better. Your immune system is better. Your overall physical health and even your life, you live longer as a result of it. So it has not only mental advantages, but also physical advantages. And I read an article that you wrote about the one eye-popping habit that adds years to your life, changing your outlook. How is that even more helpful than getting more sleep or more exercise? Well, if I, Mother Nature, first of all, has wired all of us with what scientists call a negativity bias. And what that means is that we're wired, hardwired to overestimate threats and underestimate our ability to handle them. The reason for that is so we can survive. But most people today, they want to live more than just the basic survival level of filling safe and comfortable. They want to live fully. And to live fully, Mother Nature says, "Hey, that's up to you. You've got to go do that." All I care about is that you perpetuate the species. I want you to live. So the outlook we have tends to be more negative than positive. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. If somebody's coming at you with a knife, you want to be able to recognize it and be prepared for it if there's a fire in the building or if there's a terrorist attack. Most of us don't experience those kinds of things. The kinds of threats we have are, do we have enough money to pay the bills? Is this relationship going to work? Are my kids going to be okay? They're just everyday things and I'm going to do well on the job. So really what we're talking about here is being able to function with just the everyday kinds of things that life brings to us without reacting but facing them in a way that were calm and we're clear and that we can overcome obstacles that show up to us. One of the things that you advise in the book, you urge people to embrace maybe, to be okay with not having a definite outcome and realizing the every possibility has numerous ways it can resolve. Why is it hard to do that at times and how can we overcome that? Well, there again most of us want predictability. We want to know what's going to happen. We want to be prepared. That's part of Mother Nature's wiring again so that we can be ready if something is coming down the pike that we need to know about or if there's a threat living in the distance. Most of the time there isn't but still we have worry, we have uncertainty, we have unpredictability. The problem is we can't control what we don't know. And when we can make peace with not knowing and get in that place of hashtag chill where we can accept it without having to know it brings incredible serenity. We can't control, there are certain things we can't control. Most things we cannot control but what we can control is our response to what's happening and that's huge. When you can bowl it down and ask yourself what can I control and what can I not control and I can focus on what I can and let the rest go, it can bring incredible peace of mind. And something that everybody can control is how they choose to wake up every day and starting the day off on the right foot. What are your ideas for that? Well, one of the things that I try to do when I can is to meditate first. I can't do that, I understand that but the five minutes of meditation. If you can't even when you're on your way out the door depending, I mean some people have kids and they have to get them ready. But as you're doing some of these things you develop the muscle memory to be mindful while you're doing it. Instead of thinking about am I going to meet that deadline today when you're with your kids, be with your kids when you're in the shower, be in the shower instead of worrying about what's going to happen next. So the present moment mindfulness is the key because that keeps our blood pressure down, it keeps us relaxed, it keeps us in a state of hashtag chill that contains all those other eight C words that I mentioned earlier. What we're really talking about here is present moment awareness. And that's really the key that starts to teach us that we don't have to react to every unpleasant thing that comes our way and we learn to start to relax and live more on life terms instead of expecting life to be on our terms. Life is never going to work on Brian Robinson's terms. And along those lines another piece of advice in hashtag chill is recognize you are good enough. Exactly. You know we have a term called shortcomings but we don't have a term called tallcomings and that says a lot about the mother nature wiring that I mentioned before. We're more inclined to focus on our shortfalls and not to pay attention to our tallcomings. We're also wired with an inner critic especially if you're an artist. you know this because it gets in the way. And again, that's part of that negativity bias so that we don't get our head blown off with humiliation or failure. But the key is to start to focus on, you know, what are my tallcomings? What do I do well? What are my good qualities? I'm smart. I'm creative. I'm talented. I'm compassionate. People like me. What are those things? The other thing I talk about in the book is something called a to-be list instead of a to-do list. It's fine to have a to-do list. Most people when I say what is your to-be list, they look at me like I've been sniffing the ink cartridge from a computer. And they don't really even know what to say because it's not something that comes to our mind. But when you start to think about it, what is your to-do to-be list? It's great to have one. That brings the balance to the doing. It's about doing and being. And those two things can coexist. We can have shortcomings and tallcomings. We have it to-do list and it to-be list. We can do and we can be. And I also love how you say we should have lifelines instead of deadlines. Can you explain the difference? I love that. Right. Well, you know, just the word deadline. It's a bad word. Yeah, it's a good one. I'm going to die if I don't get this done. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, we talk about instead of having sick days at work, have health days. People are talking about that more. It's that same concept. It's just flipping it around and saying, you know, what are my lifelines? What are the things that I want to do in my life? And how what is the process that I go through? It's not just about the outcome, but how am I doing it? I talk about great work in one of the chapters in the book. And great work is not just producing, although I know that's important, the quality of what we do. But it's also about how do I get there? Am I respecting the people around me? Do I look them in the eye? Do I acknowledge them? Do I treat the janitor and the judge on an equal basis? Do I have respect for people? Do I care for people? And do I care for myself? Do I treat myself with respect and with compassion? One of my new years' intentions is to is to love. Well, let me use the word forgive. Forgive. Forgive everything that gets in my way. And everybody who's listening to this is going to have tomorrow. Many things will get in your way. It'll be traffic. It'll be someone stepping in front of you unwittingly at the grocery store. It will be the barking dog. It will be the crying baby behind you on the airplane. It will be the weed eater, a neighbor claiming their lawn. That's life. When we can accept it and say, okay, I'm going to forgive that person every time it happens. It's a fun thing to try. It's not easy to do. But that's one of my intentions for the New Year. I want people to know I am not perfect. I have not arrived anywhere. The things in this book are the things that I work on on a daily basis. Because I want to be a better person. Because I feel better in my skin when I feel like I'm living in my life fully. But if I want to live my life fully, it's more than just hurrying and rushing and staying busy and zipping through the present moment. It's about taking a breath, bringing myself back into this moment where life truly exists. And you talk about embracing rejection and tell us why you feel that's important. Well, life has bookends. You can't have an up without a down. You can't have a back without a front. You can't have a right without a left. You can't have success without defeat. I don't even really believe in defeat. I just think that's what we call it. But anyone that you name we could talk about Michael Phelps or Michael Jordan or Merrill Streep. People at the top of their game did not get there in a linear fashion. They did not have one success after another. It doesn't work that way. So when defeat comes or rejection comes, we accept it as part of the process of moving forward. It's the people who take it as the end of the road who in quotation marks fail. But people who have what we call a growth mindset, and I'll talk about this also in the book, a growth mindset is embracing rejection, embracing defeat. Take in that towel that you want to throw in and wiping your brow and getting up, brush yourself off and you keep going. Those are the people at the top of their game. It's not rejection is not a bad thing. You can learn from it. It can make you stronger. I feel like I've had times when I have been burning the candle at both ends and definitely been experiencing the signs of burnout. Maybe at the time I didn't realize it. What should we do? What's the first step if we're feeling completely overwhelmed and overworked and just don't even know where to begin? And that might be when people are reaching for this book. That's when I would be. Well, that would be what I would recommend. Purchase this book. Right. Take it up. It's seriously find something within yourself. We tend to go outward when we're burning out. And my suggestion is to go inward without judgment with self-compassion. Treat yourself as you would be your best friend or someone you love. And if someone you love and really care about and really admire came to you and said, "I'm burning out and I don't know what to do," you would probably put your arm around them. You would talk them off the ledge. You would encourage them. You'd be their cheerleader. That's the first step because that gives us the energy and the fortitude to get back in the saddle. So the first step is self-compassion. There's a lot being written about this now and a lot of research being done on itself compassion is great medicine. And we're not talking about being self-centered. We're talking about treating ourselves with love and respect the way we would want other people to treat us. That's where everything comes from. So that's the first step. And then ask yourself, the first three things are sleep, nutrition and exercise. Those three things are the trifecta for health. And that's the second step is the self-care plan where you make sure you're getting good sleep, you're getting good food and that you're getting some kind of exercise. In the book I talked about an acronym called HALT and it's a great little acronym to follow in the back of your mind that can help those of us who are going and working and doing to be aware of when we're not doing well or feeling well. We might be hungry. We might be angry. We might be lonely or tired. So it's a great little way to keep us attuned to paying attention to taking better care of ourselves if I'm hungry. I need to go eat something. If I'm angry, I need to take a breath and look at that anger and find out, you know, get in touch with it inside. If I'm lonely, call a friend. And if I'm tired, rest. So those we call them microchillers are the kinds of things that I have in my book so that folks can take three to five minutes a day to refuel and recharge their battery so that they're more effective at what they do. Brian, who do you admire in terms of being able to really have this life thing all balanced? That is a great question. Well, I guess I have to say, you know, Buddha, of course, I am Buddhist and Buddha is one and the Dalai Lama is someone else whom I've met twice and just really respect. They're people who the people that I respect the most are those who don't react, who are able to stay in their chill state, no matter what's happening around them, no matter what people say to them. And I've seen the Dalai Lama do that and it just is so inspiring. It's something I'll probably never be able to do, but it's something I'm always going to aspire to when someone cuts me off or about a year ago, I was here in Asheville, North Carolina, was getting off from the interstate and I casually looked over and a woman who'd been in front of me and a little red car gave me the finger. And at first I was shocked and I thought, what the heck is that about? But then I looked inside me and I saw my anger wanting to roll the wind it down and yell, "Lipsin it is that or and give her the same gesture." But I was able to stop and say, "Wait a minute, that's not you're not me, you're a part of me, my anger is a part of me, that's not who I am." So I want to stay in that chill state. And by doing that, I feel like I just made a touchdown or hit a home run. It's a great feeling to be able to stay in myself and not let external circumstances pull me out of that. It's a daily challenge, but it's something we can all practice and get better at. On Nobody Told Me We Always Ask Our Guests, What Is Your Nobody Told Me Lesson? And you've written more than 30 books and been a psychotherapist and a professor and what is your Nobody Told Me Lesson? What do you wish somebody had told you [BLANK_AUDIO] would have helped you in different stages of your life. - Well, that I had more power inside me than exists around me. Nobody ever told me that. I never heard that from anywhere. Everything I heard was, it's all about pleasing people and doing what people want you to do. It's a hard lesson that I have learned that grass grows through concrete. And it exists within every one of us. We have the power to be who we want to be. And we don't have to let ourselves be manipulated and controlled by outside circumstances. Victor Frankl, I'm talking about, going back to you previous question, there's a book called Man Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. He would be someone that I would be here. He was in Dockow and Oswich and his wife died there. But he survived, and the reason he survived is because he was in sub-degree weather. Had no food, people were dropping dead around him like flies. And he said, "The Nazis will never get myself to will. "I will always have it." And that's how he got through it. And he meditated. And the kids in the caves in Thailand last year survived by meditating. They're innerged, they harness their energy and they're able to focus and to not give up. So it's a powerful thing, but there are real life situations where we can see that people really make it through. But nobody ever told me that I have that kind of power within me. I mean, I think it exists in all of us. It's simply a matter of finding it. And it's the place that I call #Chill when you're in that state and there are ways to get there. There are lots of routes to get there. Then your power inside you is greater than the power and the pressure that comes from life. And Brian, how can people contact you on social media? Well, the best place is to go to my website. And my website is www.BrianRobinsonBooks.com. And Brian is BRYAN. That's BrianRobinsonBooks.com. And by the way, I have a test that folks can take for free. It's called #ChillAreYou. And you can take the test online on my website and it will electronically score it for you so you can see where you fall. I also have some of the blogs from Psychology today on there and other works that I've done that people can take a look at. And if you want to email me, there's a place on my website. You can contact me and give me feedback. If you buy the book and read it and tell me what you think. Super, super. And the book is absolutely great. We love it, Brian. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for joining us. Our thanks to our guest, Dr. Brian Robinson. Again, his book is called #Chill. And again, his website is BrianRobinsonBooks.com. That's Brian Spell B-R-Y-A-N. 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