7min chapter

The Mel Robbins Podcast cover image

If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life

The Mel Robbins Podcast

CHAPTER

The Power of Connection and Self-Care

This chapter highlights the essential role of human relationships in determining happiness, backed by a significant happiness study. It also addresses the stress faced by parents, urging the importance of self-care and setting boundaries amidst societal pressures.

00:00
Speaker 1
And
Speaker 2
we also know based on the data that one of your prior guests, Bob Waldinger, one of my colleagues from Harvard, is the head of a study that has been running for 75 long years, the longest running study on happiness, and found that of anything else, not money, not your wild travel stories, of all these things that people think are going to make you happy, the quality of human relationships is the greatest predictor of your happiness. And you don't meet a best friend overnight, right? Like you chat with your barista, you chat with someone at the grocery store, dry cleaning, the drugstore. And over time, it's one awkward hello after another, after another, until you kind of fall into friendships and relationships that one day could be part of this study,
Speaker 1
one of the greatest relationships of your life. I am so grateful that you canceled everything on your calendar in order to be here with me and the person listening today. So thank you. I already know the first person I'm sending this to. And as we take a quick pause, we can hear a word from our sponsors, which allow me to bring this information to you at zero cost. Please take a moment and share this episode with somebody who you would love to see feeling less stressed because the information that we've already covered and all that is to come will help them feel better. And it's something simple that you could do. Okay. Alrighty. We'll be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us. I love this time of year because we're all thinking about goals and priorities and what we want. But have you had to take a vacation to the list? Because you should. And right now is the perfect time to plan your trip. And all you need is one website. Say hello to Expedia. One-stop shop for killer vacation planning. Expedia literally has every tool and everything you need to plan a great trip. Download the Expedia app or visit Expedia.com to start planning. You do need to be a one key member to use price tracking. Signing up is easy and free. Expedia, made to travel. It takes a lot to grow your business. A lot of audience attracting, a lot of lead scoring, and all the channel managing you can manage. Plus a lot of long days, late nights and weekends. A lot of wishing there was an easier way. But with HubSpot's new collection of AI tools, Breeze, it's easier than ever for marketers to attract audiences, increase leads, and score customers fast. Which means pretty soon, your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot slash marketers to learn more. There's
Speaker 2
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Speaker 1
Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and I'm here with the amazing Dr. Aditi, and let's just jump right back into it. Let's move on to the third kind of thing that's in the background that so many people are dealing with. I saw you put up a social media post about this report from the Surgeon General about the level of stress that parents and caregivers are facing. And he used very strong words to describe what a crisis this is. And I wanted to talk to you about it and hear your point of view and more importantly, what to do, because I think we all just as parents and caregivers go, of course, it's stressful. But as we're seeing with every topic, labeling it and calling it out as a form of stress is really important because that makes you realize you have to do something to take better care of yourself, that this is a real thing and it's not you.
Speaker 2
So the Surgeon General snapshot paints a bleak picture. It shows that parents are struggling and quite badly. In this snapshot of data, 50% of parents, almost 50% of parents say that they are overwhelmed with stress on most days. 65% of parents are lonely. 77% of single parents are lonely. And we know that from prior data, 75% of parents have parenting burnout. And I think that based on all of this data, my hunch is actually that this data, as shocking as it may seem, is actually underreported. For all of the reasons you and I have talked about, feeling a sense of guilt or shame, feeling like, oh, I can do it all. I'm not stressed. This is just what parenting is. And so people aren't coming forward and actually sharing that, yes, in fact, I am stressed. I'm surprised that it's only 50% of parents because I'm a parent and I know all of the science and I'm still stressed simply because we need a cultural shift. When we're talking about parenting stress, of course, we need a cultural shift. We need better policies, childcare, parental leave, all of these things. And while people are working on that, we also need a cognitive shift within ourselves to think about parenting. And the Surgeon General says it beautifully. Parenting is sacred work. And another phrase which I loved in his report was that, put, caregivers need care too. And so my solutions are more on the individual basis while the cultural shift is happening. There's more conversation about childcare and parental leave than ever. But what can we do while these policies are being worked out? We can think about what we can do in our own lives. And we lead with parenting ourselves. We are so good as parents on setting boundaries and limits for our children when it comes to bedtime or screen time or what they eat or how much they socialize. We are fantastic with creating all sorts of guidelines for our children. And yet we don't do that for ourselves. We tell our kids to go to bed at eight o'clock or seven o'clock because they need a good night's rest. Their brain and their body needs to develop. Yes, an adult's brain is not developing in the same way as a child's. But due to this concept of neuroplasticity, it's this idea that your brain, it's not a grab bag. It's not like, oh the brain i have at birth is a brain i've had for life it is constantly evolving and changing based on external stimuli so when you do prioritize your sleep or connection or do movement or when you do all of these things which might you know bring an eye roll from parents you are actively changing your brain and so the science of action is important yes for that sense of agency like we talked about, for parents as well, but also because it actively changes your brain so that you can manage the stressors better. The fascinating thing about parental stress in this particular study was that there are many types of stress and they change based on the lifespan of the child. Wait,
Speaker 1
lifespan or age? The age of the child.

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