BUY THE BOOK! "The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About" by Mel Robbins, published by Hay House LLC is available wherever books and audio books are sold: https://www.melrobbins.com/letthemtheory https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-let-them-theory/id6532590423 Mel Robbins is a global podcasting sensation and the bestselling author of “The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About.” Mel joins Oprah on “The Oprah Podcast” to discuss what feels like the overwhelming emotion of our times: anxiety. Mel offers practical, effective tools and strategies—based on science and her own personal experience—to help ground your anxious thoughts and keep you connected to your capability. She answers questions from listeners about their own feelings of anxiety. Advertisement Disclaimer: Please see Indications and Safety Summary with Warnings for Zepbound® (tirzepatide) at zepbound.lilly.com/risk Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprah/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode with Oprah and Mel Robbins?
Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining me on the Oprah podcast. I'm back with Mel Robbins. Oprah Winfrey. And we're talking about something that I know impacts so many of you, millions actually, and some people very close to me as well, anxiety.
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Mel Robbins is a force.
Her latest book, The Let Them Theory, spent 15 weeks on top of the New York Times bestseller list and is being translated into 51 languages. Mel B dropped in jams and I'm like... Her podcast is followed by millions and often lands in the number one spot. When I started my own podcast, Mel Robbins was one of the first people I called. You're never stuck. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever stuck.
Mel is back to talk about what feels like the overwhelming emotion of our times, anxiety. I want you to never say I have anxiety, ever.
Chapter 2: How does Mel Robbins define anxiety?
We will unpack what anxiety actually is. All anxiety is separation anxiety.
answer your questions what tools does the next generation need to cope with anxiety
How do you let go of your anxiety and still keep your edge?
And hopefully give you the tools to calm some of those runaway thoughts.
I am a woman who has struggled profoundly with anxiety, and because I didn't get control of it, I actually made my daughter's anxiety worse.
As Mel says, how to stay connected to your capability.
And the decision that changed my life was the decision to get out of bed that morning.
So many of you may already know Mel's personal story, but in case anybody listening or watching doesn't know, you struggled with anxiety in college. Oh my gosh, yes. And law school.
And how did it start showing up for you? Oh, Oprah, I think I came out of the womb as a worried and anxious child. Like I had a nervous stomach. I couldn't go to sleep over camp. And for college and law school, I just was in a chronic state of feeling stressed out. I was not in my body a lot of the time. And we're gonna talk a lot about what anxiety is and what it isn't. And I didn't understand
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Chapter 3: What tools does Mel Robbins recommend for managing anxiety?
And then you dread it. And then it gets worse. Okay. You said we're going to talk about what is it and what isn't it. So anxiety is just an alarm system in your body. That's all that it is. Anxiety rises. It's just like stress. So if you have something stressful going on at work today, you're going to feel, what would you feel if you had a stressful day at work?
Um, I would feel maybe a little tension. I would feel a little sense of anxiousness, like gotta get it done, gotta get it done.
Uh-huh. Yeah. And that's a sign that you're mentally well.
Yeah.
Because you have a lot of things going on. Right. And that stress is basically the same thing as anxiety. Anxiety is what happens when your body goes from a calm resting state. Yeah. into a tense and on edge fight or flight state. And there's actually a lot of medical research about this. You go from this part of your brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, to the amygdala part of the brain.
Amygdala, yeah. Turning on the stress response. And it was helpful for me to learn that anxiety is really switching from this part to this part of the brain in response to something that's going on. The problem with anxiety is that it starts to rise up in situations where you don't really know why you're anxious. It's like the alarm is going and you don't know how to turn it off.
Well, why does it do that? One of the main reasons why it does it, at least for me, is I didn't understand it. And if you don't know what anxiety is, you start to become afraid of it because you're on edge all the time. You become anxious about the anxiety. Correct. And so I want you to start to do one thing. I want you to never say, I have anxiety. Ever. Okay.
Because then you become defined by it. Okay. I want you to say either I feel anxious or I feel alarmed because... Of whatever the situation is. Correct.
Got it.
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Chapter 4: How can changing your perspective transform anxiety into excitement?
And if you know how to tone the vagus nerve, you can press your hand on your heart. You can breathe certain ways. It goes through your vocal cords. It's very hard to feel anxious in church when you're singing a hymn. Why? Because as you're singing, it stimulates the vagus nerve, which acts like a tuning fork to tune to your body that you're actually okay.
And as you're singing, you're not up here, you're dropping into here and you connect back with your power and with source and with God and with your capability to face anything in life.
It's not up here. It's in here.
Correct. And most of us live up here and they're like, what's going on? And just like an alarm going off in a house, screaming alarm, alarm, alarm doesn't turn it off. Running out of the house doesn't turn it off. Taking a moment and finding the switch and switching it off turns it off. And we're going to talk today about how you can do that in very, very simple ways and why it's important.
And when you do that, you stay connected to your capability to face anything.
And your power. Correct. That's right. You're not giving your power away again. Correct. Correct. So our listeners knew that you were going to be here and they reached out to us with questions for you about their anxiety. So Leah. Hi. Leah. Hi. Hi. As a business consultant from Maryland. And how has anxiety impacted you?
Did you hear what did you were you able to hear what were you listening to Mel when she was talking about up here and not here?
Yes, and I definitely can feel that buzz. That's something that was one of the first identifications for me, that anxiety buzz entirely for me was an indicator. As a child, I was never an anxious child. But as I got older, I started to realize a lot of things that Mel shared about other people's worries and concerns.
And that started to create a buzz in my own personal body about my own thoughts and my mindset. So I absolutely agree with that head conversation and not a heart conversation. Yeah. Yeah. What's your question? So my question for Mel, and thank you, Oprah, is how do you let go of your anxiety and still keep your edge and still keep your tenacity?
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Chapter 5: What lifestyle changes can help reduce anxiety for the next generation?
Absolutely. I definitely have a new thing to say every day when I wake up. Thank you.
Awesome. Thanks, Leah. And you don't lose your edge with that. No. You will not lose your edge.
You actually gain it.
You gain it. You gain it. Thanks, Leah. Thank you so much for joining me on The Oprah Podcast. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more life-changing anxiety strategies from the incomparable Mel Robbins.
And later... And the decision that changed my life was the decision to get out of bed that morning.
How Mel's rock-bottom moment became one of her greatest gifts.
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Chapter 6: How does Mel Robbins suggest men address mental health and anxiety?
I mean... I feel like with college students, it comes up a lot that people go out and then they have homework to do the next day. But I kind of, I guess, had conflated the two between homework.
Well, what's exciting about this is if you're somebody who is feeling anxious because, or the alarm in your body is ringing a lot, ask yourself, am I getting enough sleep? Do I get outside once a day? Am I off my phone? Am I cutting back on the drinking? I see people outside, they're literally, they can't cross the street. They're on the phones crossing the street.
But I'm saying this not to be like a pain. I'm saying this because there are metabolic and lifestyle choices that actually spike your anxiety. And if you are truly interested in reconnecting with yourself and getting out of your head and flipping from this fight or flight nervous system into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your calm nervous system, you have power.
And so if you're anxious about something that you can identify, that means that you're actually functioning in a healthy way because you're having a normal stress response to being at a very competitive college. It's normal to feel stressed out. You should. You have a lot of work.
But if it's really impacting your life over and over and over again, you need to start to look at your lifestyle choices Because those are actually making the anxiety worse because they keep you up in your head and they keep you disconnected from the things in your life that actually ground you.
Well, I'm curious about the pressure you feel as a young man today in college and the pressure some of your friends might be expressing as, you know, men functioning in the world today.
Yeah. I think that one thing that men in my generation, but honestly, in all generations kind of struggle with is taking care of our mental health like we do our physical health. Do y'all talk about it?
Does anybody talk about it?
I think it's very hard for men to get into spaces where they can feel comfortable and safe talking about it, and I don't think it has to be so scary. I take anti-anxiety medication on a low dosage, and I go to therapy, and I think they're wonderful things, and I treat them like I'm taking a protein shake or going to the gym, but for my mental health instead of my physical health.
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