10 Genius Hacks To Keep Your Home Organized (When Getting Out Of Bed Is Hard) | Mel Robbins Podcast

foreign s and forms submitted at melrobbins.com podcast where people are writing and feeling overwhelmed and they're making themselves wrong for not feeling motivated they're looking for motivation and today we are picking up this life-changing conversation with questions from your fellow listeners and I am just so excited that you get to experience more of Casey Davis hey it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast I'm so glad you're here thank you so much um we got something really exciting to talk about in the last episode of the Mel Robbins podcast you and I were talking about laundry dishes taking care of yourself and how to find the motivation to get the little things done without beating the [ __ ] out of yourself and we learned how to do that from our extraordinary expert therapist and best-selling author Casey Davis now Casey blew you and me away I mean if I was wearing wind pants they would have been blown right off my body Blown Away honestly I personally think it was worth more than a ticket to Taylor Swift's tour and if you have not heard that conversation don't you worry after this one you can go back one episode and you can hear Casey teach you how to remove the shame the guilt the Judgment that you and I put on ourselves about the little things that we need to get done but I want you to stay with me right now why because my Mission with this part of the conversation with Casey is to prove to you that if you didn't get the dishes done or you didn't get the kids on the bus on time or if you got dirty dishes piled high in the sink you're not broken you're doing just fine in fact you're doing better than fine and Casey and I will prove it to you her hacks are genius her advice is a game changer and today we are picking up this life-changing conversation with questions from your fellow listeners and I am just so excited that you get to experience more of Casey Davis so you ready to jump in Casey I'm ready let's just start with your concept that when it comes to getting things done momentum is way more important than motivation so research shows us that momentum builds once we start going so in a lot of ways we sit around waiting for motivation to do something when in reality sometimes motivation precedes the action like you do something and then you feel that motivation and the problem with motivation is twofold you know we talked last time about how if you're looking at your laundry and going I don't want to do that I don't understand why it's important I don't care I don't deserve clean laundry that's a motivation problem but if you're going I wish I could get that laundry done but I just feel Frozen to my seat that's a task initiation problem and that's when you really want to focus on building momentum well what do you want us to do instead one of the things I like to say is that we can use use five percent momentum to do five percent of the task instead of just waiting around for a hundred percent momentum to do everything and so thinking to yourself you know I don't have to do all the laundry but I can fold one thing I don't have to do all the dishes but I can do two dishes I can set a timer for five minutes and clean for five minutes that makes perfect sense but sometimes something that makes sense isn't so easily applied when you feel like [ __ ] and so I want to dig into our listener questions so you can unpack this further Casey because I keep getting DMS and forms submitted at melrobbins.com podcast where people are writing and feeling overwhelmed and they're making themselves wrong for not feeling motivated they're looking for motivation for example here are two questions from listeners who have recently written in here's the first one Mel I'm having that moment where I'm so overwhelmed I can't get to anything I've been laid off and it's been a couple of weeks zero motivation or this one from another listener after a bad re-breakup with my high school sweetheart of several years I have lost all motivation to clean the house or take care of myself Casey what do you hear in these questions I hear a couple of things there's a difference between motivation and task initiation so motivation is the awareness and and the belief that a thing is worth doing and that you would like to do it or you would at least like the results of it so if you're looking at your laundry and you're going what's the point I don't even deserve clean clothes that's motivation issues or if you're looking at your laundry and going I don't care I don't I don't care about it like I literally like it literally doesn't bother me to wear dirty clothes that's a motivation issue and it's maybe maybe you could just wear I mean like who cares I'm not your judge right if you're going I am so so Frozen I can't I can't do it I'm looking at my laundry going I should do that I've got to do that I wish that was done that's not motivation what I hear is these people thinking to themselves I'm not doing anything anymore and what I'm hearing is they are doing something they are processing emotionally a significant crisis in their life and that takes emotional resources and that takes cognitive resources and you are not going to have enough resources sometimes to deal with that crisis and do your laundry like that is normal and human it would be weird you don't have an unlimited amount of cognitive resources every day and if you are using a good portion of those processing pain caring for a child processing a breakup being an emotional pain re-experiencing trauma being terrified about how you're going to pay your bills you are going to use up a lot of your cognitive emotional resources and those executive functioning tools and you are going to struggle to do these other things one of the things that I love saying to anybody and to myself when that happens in life and you feel paralyzed or profoundly overwhelmed or you're in a breakdown is the pile of laundry and the breakdown and the paralysis is a sign that you're mentally well yeah because your body is processing it yeah you know you're right you can't of course you are breaking down of course after a major breakup or getting laid off or losing somebody that you love of course you're going to go through a period of time where you just don't have the energy I think the problem becomes and I when that's your everyday life where it's chronic and not functional yes when it's not functional because you realize you would like to get to this stuff but you can't even get to the beginning of the task you're that depleted yeah and when that happens what do you recommend people do so that's when we want to look first we want to go into self-compassion immediately because we know from studies shame is arresting self-compassion is motivating we see greater psychological functioning with people that can exercise self-compassion so we get in that place where we're feeling Frozen we can't get things done we want to First address how am I speaking to myself about this am I saying I'm not doing anything well is that true it's not I am doing something right now I'm doing something very important I'm listening to my body I'm processing pain I am being tender with myself I am giving myself reasonable expectations and you still deserve clean clothes so that's when we want to look at some of these little life hacks that's when we want to look at good enough is perfect because the options aren't lay in bed all day or get up and do all of your laundry what if the option was lay in bed for 10 hours today and then get up and launder one outfit I love what you just said so I want to take my little yellow highlighter and make sure that you listening heard exactly what Casey just said because this is an important distinction shame causes paralysis when you start to make yourself wrong and you feel paralyzed you are likely in shame self-compassion I'm allowed to be human I'm doing exactly what I need to which is processing all this emotion a little bit later maybe I can wash one outfit or I can throw some water on my face but right now I'm just going to give myself the rest that I need because I deserve to process this that is a life-changing distinction and you now know kind of the emotional feel of both one is paralysis that's shame and that's the beat down and we want you to get out of that cycle and to use this Mantra you talk about a lot I'm allowed to be human I am I'm allowed to be human and I we talk a lot about like nobody has to be perfect but in our head we still have categories of acceptable imperfection and unacceptable imperfection what are some of the big categories that you see in your work that people say are unacceptable categories we covered not brushing your teeth but what are unacceptable categories like being mean to somebody what do you mean like if you were rude or you were mean to someone or if you blew a huge deadline if you didn't show up to something that was really important and now you look absolutely ridiculous in front of your whole profession like things where you've upset someone or someone's angry with you or you've let someone down and we're not saying that that that was you know let's repeat it because it's not functional we're not saying that people don't get to have their feelings about whatever you did or said or however you showed up it's just that like I can make like a genuine bona fide mistake and it can be very wrong of me to have done and I still get to be human humans do very wrong things sometimes and what I want to respond to it by going okay I don't like that I don't want to do that again how can I grow and heal so that I can move away from that um and I think that that's kind of what it comes down to and if you're someone who finds yourself in this state chronically that's when we want to start thinking about accessibility how can I make my home more accessible how can I make these tasks more accessible because there's a difference between you know I'm nine months pregnant for only three months and it's hard for me to bend over and so things just kind of pile up and I just let it because I have the right priorities and it'll get but if you have some if you're someone with chronic back pain that's not really something you can just go well it'll just pile up and I'll get to it when I feel better right right that's when we need to think a little long term which is like well maybe you need a grabber if you've ever had like surgeries and you can't like reach out and reach down you like pull the handle and it's a long stick and there's like a little tongs at the end that pick things up for you wow um maybe you need somebody we're so what I'm getting from you Casey is that when you caught when you get caught in this Loop where everything's a moral obligation and everything that you're not doing is evidence that you're a loser and that you can't get yourself together you get so stuck in making it a problem that you don't see the obvious solutions that are right in front of your face if you were to simply just give yourself a freaking break yes because if what's wrong with you is that you're failing the only solution is try harder but if if the issue isn't some moral failure then you trying harder on the same kind of broken Wheels isn't going to produce anything else so but if you go this is a morally neutral problem but I deserve to function how can I get creative how can I fix this all of a sudden the world opens up and there's all of these creative possibly can I stop folding my clothes can I use paper plates for a bit can I get a wheelie stool can I get a grabber can I you know can I do a toy library for my kids where two-thirds of their toys stay in this closet and they only have some of their toys out and they can check them in and out as much as they want but then they right like all of a sudden you have so many ideas what if my what if I had a 32 gallon trash can on Wheels in my kitchen instead of these tiny little trash cans because my kids I seem to I seem to fill up trash cans twice a day and I don't seem to take out trash enough to keep up with it and so most of us think well the answer is make yourself take the trash out make yourself more motivated make but what if we Focus Less on that and there was just a simple upgrade the trash can to be bigger it's so great I I was recently thinking about how much we aim criticism at Who You Are I got to be more of it I have something wrong with me instead of looking at well what are you doing and what could I change about what I'm doing like putting a bigger trash can on Wheels in the space instead of making 55 trips every day and where where things are like what's what is it about the environment what is it about the way that you're thinking about things um I want to give you a couple of our listeners um sort of challenges and role play a little bit with you about what hacks or mindset flips or what you would want them to do as a first step one listener writes in the midst of my son's autism diagnosis every single task felt like it would kill me I had to talk myself through everything step by step to avoid the anxiety for months when somebody's in that kind of a state I felt I I used I said this about 18 months ago out loud I can't handle one more thing if one more thing breaks down in my life if one more bad thing happens I you're gonna have to check me in to an inpatient facility I can't handle one more thing she was talking herself through coaching step by step by step what's another strategy somebody could use so we want to start with the perspective which is I would say to this person we often picture a highway as life and these sort of like side roads as like not life and we're off on the side road with a broken car kind of going well I'm I'm pushing the car I'm pushing the car and I just want to get back to life this isn't how it's supposed to I can't and I think it's more helpful to Envision that like there's not this like mystical place of life where everybody's running on like firing on all cylinders like life is in fact getting an Autism diagnosis for your child and needing to process through that and just figuring out how we move forward there's nothing that this person is doing wrong they are using so much cognitive emotional energy to process this diagnosis I would also just say from a personal perspective that your son's going to be okay your autistic child can have a very happy full life and so can you and and so you're going to be okay you're not doing anything wrong you are not supposed to be able to do more than what you're capable of doing now and you're right what can we do to keep things survival you know level functional while you get through this and that's when I would say if this person first off I want this person to start using paper plates immediately I want paper plates I want paper napkins I want you to be able to throw everything away right after a meal I want you to as much as your budget allows Outsource anything you can whether that's cleaning or laundry or grocery delivery I want you to um pick one tiny corner of your house that you can make beautiful and you can get it beautiful in under five minutes and that's where you get to go and sit when you just can't look at anything else I want you to make a hygiene kit for yourself with baby wipes and dry shampoo and something that smells nice and I want you to go on Amazon I want you to buy those toothbrushes that are single-use toothbrushes that are pre-pasted in individual packages and I want you to put little hygiene kits all around your house because you're just going to be in the middle of it and smell yourself and go oh gosh and then you'll you'll never be more than a few steps away from ability to take care of yourself when you can't leave your child alone in the room I want you to put a laundry basket and a trash can in every room of your house so that anytime you create laundry or trash you're only a few steps away from being able to be done with it in one step not three four five steps and I want you to rest I feel like that's what your best friend would do for you what you just did was beautiful and I think it's also an extraordinarily tactical example of your space should serve you and so is the visual of the highway so I'm thinking about one of our daughters who is uh you know just processing a breakup and she sounded so good today this is like 24 hours and she's like yeah but I'll be crying probably in an hour because that's my process so I'm going to take myself on a walk and I'm not gonna force myself to do anything today and as I was listening to her I'm like wow that's exactly right you don't have to motor through it you don't have to get on a Revenge diet you don't have to gossip about it all day you can just take a step back and allow yourself to be human I have another uh listener that says personal care I get completely overwhelmed by taking care of myself I hate how I look and I hate how I feel because nothing ever changes hmm so I'm going to assume that this person maybe is talking about I hate how I look physically so I have a lot of body Consciousness things like that so the first thing I would say there is that if that is somehow related to difficulty in showering and doing things like that because that happens I don't want to see myself naked in the shower we're just going to cover the mirrors you don't need to look in the mirror to shower I want you to get a smaller pocket mirror so that when you want to put your makeup on when you want to check is it when you want to look at your hair you can do that in pieces as though you as you need to but you don't have to look at yourself all day long and I'm not saying oh that's going to cure the way you feel about yourself but I am saying that's going to give you some relief today you should be able to have a place in your life where you get to exist without constantly pondering how you look where you can have a first person experience of life not a third person experience where you're always sort of going what do I look like when I do this what do I look like when I do that then depending on what this is but this is a good one one thing and again I'd have to know more about this person but this is just sort of a tangential thing is that go into your closet and get rid of the things that you bought because you don't think that your body deserves clean cute clothes the things you bought just because it covers you the matronly [ __ ] that you bought because you don't think that you deserve to wear XYZ now get rid of the things that are three sizes too small that you'll never fit into again but you're going oh one day like let's let's address your closet because what I found is a lot of times when I was disliking my body it was not information I was getting from my body it was information that I was getting from my clothes it didn't look right on me it didn't fit right on me it didn't well they're closed your body is not made to fit clothes clothes are made to fit your body Hallelujah Casey Davis drop in the knowledge again say it again your body is not meant to fit into clothes clothes are meant to fit your body you know I can even I'm going through menopause and I know a lot of you see me and you are like you're really skinny but my body has freaking changed and the things that fit me two years ago don't fit I was wearing a pair of jeans yesterday that I absolutely love they got cute little like cargo things on the side legs the waist is so damn tight and I thought to myself why am I holding on to these because I'm waiting for my menopause middle to go down and yet I'm sitting here in basically a tourniquet around my waist and it's reminding me all day long that I'm changing and I'm aging and that makes me feel like something's wrong and there are I would say half of my closet has clothes in it that I that I actually cannot fit into and it does when I walk in remind me of where I'm not and I love the analogy that you gave about the fact that life is not like all these little side roads and some days you're going to get back to the highway I'm on the leg of the journey at Mile 54 with the mile marker and there's a lot of clothes in this closet that need to be taken out of the trunk of the car that I'm driving and left on the side of the road or in a donation bin because they're not a part of this stretch of the road trip called life and I would also tell that person that you don't have to care about yourself in order to begin caring for yourself oh say that again you do not have to care about yourself in order to begin how to learn to tenderly care for yourself we so many times we feel as though we don't deserve to be clean and we don't deserve cute clothes we don't deserve that shower we don't deserve to get up and do these things and I think that when we look at that belief system of I have to wait to like myself before I start treating myself a certain way it actually happens backwards we begin with self-compassion and tenderness to care for ourselves and slowly but surely it helps us to begin to care about ourselves and I kind of liken this to you know if you go to the pound right now and pick up a dog like you could pick up the radius dog there there is no dog that's like oh this does this dog deserves XYZ now you can go pick up the most Behavior prone yappy dirty flea infested dog and you bring it home and why do you care for that dog because you just decided to you literally just decided that that dog is gonna be you're gonna care for that dog you just decided it was worthy the dog didn't have to do anything can we break this into just a simple series of actions because so many people around the world look in the mirror and see a person that they do not like in fact you know in the research that we did for the high five habit 50 of men and women don't even look at themselves in the mirror and for somebody that feels such a low level of self-worth that they're unworthy intellectually they can get that you can start caring for yourself in a kind and loving way before you feel like you care about yourself but what are one or two actions for someone listening that gets that intellectually but doesn't know how to put that into physical practice sure um so I think one of the things to remember is that self-esteem is really overrated and it's actually not connected to like better outcomes in how you feel that it's self-compassion that is connected to better outcomes in your life and that's great because self-compassion doesn't require that you like yourself because we can show compassion of people we don't like I do it all the time I would also say that if you were looking for an action to do yes um some of the things that we've talked about I think would work like the hygiene kits and just like making things easier for yourself is in itself an act of compassion it's saying I deserve to access this task but I also want that person to pick one thing one little like weird Bugaboo about their morning and I want it to be inconsequential I don't want it to be big I want it to be something like I don't like the way that my feet are cold when I walk from my bed to my bathroom or I don't like when I wake up and I have to be chilly when I take the dog out first thing in the morning I don't like that I have to sit there and make like something really simple and I want you to pick that one thing and I want you to start doing it for yourself at night meaning what so give me an example so I want you to go before you go to bed I want you to move a pair of slippers in front of your bed or I want you to move a robe by the back door or I want you to set your coffee to automatically make coffee and I don't want it to be dishes I don't want it to be cleaning I don't want it to be laundry I want it to be something specifically that has no reflection on oh you're doing good right so oh I cleaned my kitchen because I deserve it now something that literally you experience an immediate oh that does feel good just that one thing I love that I absolutely love that um let's talk a little bit about thinking about rest because we're in this like culture or we're in this cultural moment where women are feeling all this pressure to be everything what got modeled for us in our households growing up was mom did everything and at the same time there's also this incredible grind and hustle culture at work and hybrid work has made it worse and the fact I have never experienced in the 10 years that I have been coaching people the amount of burnout the amount of people who can never catch a break from work or family or chores or this the pace that kids are being pushed on travel teams and like everybody is just running this race to nowhere and we've forgotten how important rest is and so how should we think about rest so that we don't feel guilty we should think of rest as a right and not a reward oh can you unpack that for us sure right not a reward we we often get the message from childhood that rest and Recreation is a reward for productivity right you do well you get something extra so you you have to do your do your chores then you can go play do your homework then you can go play video games um you know if you don't work hard in class can't go to recess there's all these and there's nothing wrong with that necessarily like you know people want to teach children responsibility and priorities and all that but sometimes the unintended message is I can't go do the fun thing I can't go do the rest thing until the productive thing is done and that's fine when you're a kid and your list of things that must be done is finite yeah unpack your backpack you know take out the trash and do the dishes and great then go run off and do whatever and then you become a 35 year old woman and you're like wait but the things that that have to be done is like unpack the backpacks then do the dishes then take the trash out then feed the cats then vacuum the floors and scrub the baseboards and then call the doctor and then do and it's like we think we have to get the whole list done before we can rest and relax and that so we never relax and when we finally burn out or we get overwhelmed and we collapse and we're Frozen and we think to ourselves I'm resting now but you're not because people who rest in shame work in shame people who work in shame rest in shame when you think that all those tasks are moral obligations and you're not going to be good enough if you can't stay on top of it then if you do go and sit down all you're thinking about are the things you should be doing and you don't actually rest and so you get up now you're behind and you're tired and you think I can't do this and then for a lot of people they they get so overwhelmed and burnt out that they kind of Go Frozen and can't do anything and then they go well I must be lazy I must try harder I gotta do more when it's like whoa maybe you need to do less how do you put that into action because as you were talking I'm like that's me because I don't know anybody at least no women that are able to truly take a break rest and not feel guilty about it yeah so I think that there's been a lot of talk about taking breaks and how important that is and I want to go in a slightly different direction one because a lot of people can't they physically can't yeah things will fall apart things will not be functional if they right and I think that if you are someone privileged enough to have the time money energy to be able to take breaks you then you've heard that advice you can just go do that right right so instead of thinking about how am I going to get a brick how am I going to get a brick how am I going to break and yes we need breaks however let's think instead about how we can get rest by just making things easier for ourselves so the example that I use a lot is let's say you have a mom and she's overwhelmed maybe she's a single mom she's overwhelmed and so the the traditional sense of a break would be like well can you get someone to babysit the kids so that you can take a few hours a week right that's fine that's nice but but you know what that doesn't happen because then you think it's going to take me time to find somebody and then I'm going to have to coordinate it and then I'm going to owe them the two hours and so that's a wonderful thing for researchers to recommend but in a normal person's life it doesn't [ __ ] happen yeah so instead let's go how can we make something easier so what if Friday Nights At This Woman's house are rest nights and instead of cooking she orders a pizza or instead of cooking she makes a giant grazing plate for her kids and she puts it out and goes eat what you want or if they're older what if she goes it's make your own dinner night and I don't care what you make get the ice cream out of the freezer I don't care right so so you you find a way to give yourself a big break on how you're feeding and then you say Friday nights are also movie nights and that means we all make a palette in the floor we turn on the TV and I don't care what time you go to bed and in those few hours maybe she doesn't get to go anywhere maybe she's not maybe she can step away and do a fun project but at the least she gets to sit there and do nothing and things are just easier there are no dishes to clean up she uses paper plates she doesn't have to do the Bedtime rigmarole of who you know I don't want to sleep and read me another story no we're just gonna sit here and watch TV or that's the night we all sleep in mom's bed or that's the night right like let's find a way to make Fridays or Sunday afternoons or Saturday mornings easier for a period of time where you just kind of go hands off needs are met your kids are going to think it's fun you're going to give yourself a break I mean that's why my shoulders just dropped it's now going to be movie night and fend for yourself on Friday nights you have a saying about paper plates that I would love for you you have this like Mantra about paper plates yeah hit it yeah so my Mantra about paper plates is you can't save the rainforest if you're depressed and this came about because I was making a video trying to help somebody in a deep depression about how do they do their dishes and I brought out like everyone's gonna have that Tupperware molding in the back of the refrigerator and that's what's keeping you from doing anything around your kitchen and what I want to say to you is just throw the Tupperware away just throw it away you can save the rainforest if you're depressed better that we take some shortcuts now to get you back to being a functional human being where you can actually have the energy and the capacity to contribute to environmental causes in a way that matters right we know that there's a way to contribute that makes a big impact and that is you know through your politics through perhaps your donations perhaps you're volunteering but we're not going to save the Earth just by convincing depressed people to hang on to their moldy Tupperware and their cardboard boxes [ __ ] awesome I just I wish you lived next door to me and by the way I've never seen an environmentalist shame a diabetic for using single-use plastic syringes and yet I have seen so many people in the name of environmentalism Shame a new mother or a person in grief or a person with really bad ADHD or Autism for using a single-use toothbrush or a paper plate you have a concept called Fair rest and for those of you that are living with family or a roommate and you feel like you're the one that does everything what is the concept of fair rest and how can you use it so that the kind of division of labor so to speak which almost never really works in people's households and in the apartments that you share with roommates how do you use this concept of fair rest so this is a different way of looking at division of labor because the traditional way of looking at it is equal labor so the work should be equal but when you talk about the work should be equal let's just say we're talking about a marriage what that sets you up for is comparison competition and like every man for himself because then it's me having to prove the labor that I'm doing and how worthy it is and then my husband has to prove how valuable his labor is and who's doing more and unless you have the exact same job and even that it's like who's going to compare a corporate attorney to a an author or a stay-at-home mom like you can't you know a coal miner to a teacher to a psychotherapist to a you know a doctor like there you can't there's all sorts of different ways why people's jobs are difficult or any of those things so it out it makes I have to look out for me I have to prove the value of my labor and then fight for you know only getting what's going to be fair no no no back it up it doesn't actually matter whether the the work is equal it matters whether the rest is fair and to make the rest Fair it might be that one person is going to be working more or harder than the other and different seasons um so an example of this might be let's say that an easy example let's say let's take that corporate attorney and that stay-at-home mom and they're going and he's going I work so many hours and she's going I work non-stop too and we look at how can we work together to make sure each of us is getting Fair rest hmm and you can look and go okay well what if that corporate attorney you know even though he works all the time he's still off the clock sometimes and he still gets that lunch break he still has what we call time autonomy to decide what and when to do things and you have this stay-at-home parent who you know has a more flexible schedule maybe she does get to have that rest in the middle of the day or something but she's also doing care tasks which are cyclical in nature they never stop they never stop she's always on call she's always on call and so it might be that they need to have a conversation about on Saturdays you be the default parent right you be the one that changes the diapers and makes the dinners and you know listens for the fights and does those things and on Sundays I'll be the default parent and and on on you know when you're not the default parent you get to just exist in your home you get to go read a book you get to do this you get to do that now that's not a prescription that's not going to work for everybody but if you have a dentist and a teacher let's talk about Fair rest let's talk about both of us deserve at certain point at night to clock out I both deserve a functional house but everyone deserves to clock out of home labor and out out of House labor it shouldn't be the case that one person spends most of their time facilitating the life of the other and what I liked best about what you said because you once again flipped the paradigm is that for most of us that are struggling with division of labor in our relationships and households where we're in a deadlock and a fight about the importance of the work that you're doing justifying that you need time off and you know interestingly when I started um you know my career this this part of my career and my speaking business really took off it was at a moment in time where Chris had left the restaurant business and he was what we started calling the first call parent which meant he was the first person on the list at school that got called when there was something going on and he was a stay-at-home dad and what I noticed was very interesting and that is that as I took on the role of primary and solo breadwinner I also took on the gender kind of stereotype of feeling like my work was more important and here I had been the first call parent for over a decade and yet now that I'm making the money and I'm doing all the things and I'm out and I'm traveling and I'm working and I'm bringing home the bait and I'm doing all this stuff I as a woman valued my contribution as much more than what my husband was doing by taking care of the kids and we would have all of these battles about you know I need time but you've been out and I haven't had a break like but we were in the non-stereotypical gender roles in our marriage and I found it extremely enlightening how work out of the house or the type of work that you do makes you think you deserve more yeah and by making the conversation about rest because we all believe that and can see that we deserve rest and in talking about the fact that when you're the first call parents you're in a never-ending cycle there is no lunch break there is no time off while somebody's taking a nap because you're probably trying to fold laundry um you'd need rest and so by talking about it in this way it actually brings compassion instead of competition into it I love that I love that I love that and I was thinking about this the other day like there's been a lot of talk on my tech talk Channel about division of labor and especially this idea of well I bring home the bills you know that they should be taking care of everything else and I think then you have you know well this is actually being at home's horrible actually and then we get in the competition but but think of it this way there's a big difference between a couple saying hey this is how much I work and here are the things that need to get done and if you were to do XYZ then we like how can we divide these so that you and I have the maximum amount of free time it's not about what do I deserve what do I like I shouldn't have to take out the trash because I did XYZ it's if I take out the trash right now while he's doing bedtime then we'll both get to hang out afterwards and it's not a Tit for Tat it's yeah it's not it's okay we decided that you know I'm gonna stay home and you're gonna do this and because of the amount you work I'll do most of this stuff not because oh I have to keep pull my weight or you don't have to do this but because it just makes the most sense because then we can both have time but the other half of that is having an explicit conversation about what is sort of the minimum standard of functionality because everybody deserves to function and letting go of perfectionism like one of the reasons why um I I think we miss this conversation is that it's not just about who's taking out the trash it's also about when one of you comes home and the trash isn't taken out how do we respond to that do we go right to accusatory do we go right to you should have done it do we go right to or do we go to Grace do we go wow I wonder if they had a hard day today I am guilty of all of this Chris and I have um had all of these issues in our marriage like the one thing that's very triggering for Chris is when I stack the cardboard boxes by the garage door and I don't flatten them and when he sees the Tower of cardboard boxes he says look I feel like you think I'm the maid here and so we've had that conversation I got a lot out of this concept of fair rest and maximizing the amount of free time and I'm going to bring that into my conversations with Chris because we haven't talked about it that way what flipped it for me Casey is that I started to see how gross it was that I was adopting this very masculine traditional value work higher even though I'm like didn't feel that way at all it's almost as if Society itself had me absorb those messages because it's so Insidious the way it can impact you I I started to realize I can't do what I do and have the family life that I want without him here full-time oh yeah there's not another person I can pay like even that well what would I pay somebody to clean the house it's not the same because that's their dad and so it's Priceless and so when I finally absorbed that and I believed it and felt it we became equal in terms of the contribution but I have never had the conversation about what rest you need how do we maximize our time together how can we be in better partnership and I think that's a game changer completely especially a game changer when you have that first call parent because you unless the person who's not that default parent they have to be proactive about inserting themselves into situations in order for that first call parent to rest even if they're still at the house right because you you'll often have a dynamic where okay partner a is the default most of the time and so when someone cries do I wait to see if they're going to do it and if they don't okay I'll do it if they're busy I'll do it I help I do okay but it's not just if they're busy you do it it's sometimes you have to get up and do it so they don't have to they don't have to be busy that's not the only justification for being able to just sit on your couch for more than five minutes at a time it's a right to rest yes not a reward um I remember when I was struggling profoundly with postpartum and I know you had a very significant struggle too I was so sick and so weak and so depressed that I was in bed severely medicated for 12 weeks and it was a really awful moment in my life and you know it was severe enough that they didn't want me to be alone with the baby with Sawyer and I remember during that time that our cousins Lisa and Steve paid to have their cleaning person come to our house once a week and it was one of the greatest gifts somebody could have ever given me and I also had my parents who could stay but just for you know they stayed for a couple weeks and then Chris's parents came and then I had a very dear friend Joanie sit with me while Chris could go off to work because I couldn't take a shower I couldn't brush my teeth I couldn't get out of bed and I needed to be recovering and I'll never forget that and I wondered what thoughts you had about what the person listening can do to help someone that they love through a really tough time like postpartum or depression or the loss of a loved one or just those moments where something happens or you find yourself in a stretch of the highway called life where laundry is overwhelming brushing your teeth is like scaling Mount Everest what can someone do to help so you know taking into consideration that you know you have to kind of look at who that person is to you right the way you would show up at someone's front door of your best friend maybe wouldn't want to show up at the front door of someone who you know you work with but that being said um one of the things that I have found that almost works for everyone and I know that sounds like I'm just like the paper plate Queen but like if you take someone in a hard time a giant stack of paper plates play purple like all paper stuff it's magical because here's what happens it's already there they may they may not ever go out to do that because you know they care about the environment because they don't think it's that bad but if you already put it there they're not making any environmental impact by just using it that's true that's my favorite like gift because I don't need to know their dietary restrictions I don't need to go into their house if they're not comfortable with that I don't know like everyone can get a break from doing dishes and you take all the guilt Away by just being like I'm leaving it on your front porch oh I love that Casey Davis you are a treasure thank you thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you for having me so much thank you oh my God I told you you would love her I feel like that conversation was such a gift and do me a favor if you got anything out of this conversation pass it on pass it on to everybody that you know because everyone is struggling with this topic and we're not talking about it the fact is at some point in your life or in your best friend's life or in the life of one of your family members you're going to go through a hard time and what's so amazing is you now know how to help yourself and you know how to help someone else through it I say it all the time that these low moments and the high moments are temporary but together we can help one another through them we can get rid of the shame and the judgment and be a little bit kinder to ourselves and one another and one more thing I don't give a [ __ ] what your house looks like or how high the laundry pile is or how many dirty dishes you have or whether or not the milk in the fridge is sour or fresh or plant-based I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to stop folding laundry to stop making yourself wrong and to start being Kinder more compassionate because you'll immediately create a better life alrighty I'll talk to you in a few days hey it's Mel okay you ready you are in for an absolute okay Jesus okay do I have chocolate on my teeth Jesse okay okay oh [ __ ] okay I did but I didn't okay I don't know what that okay I should probably start over so I clear my throat oh and one more thing and no this is not a blooper 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 and 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 [Music] foreign [Music] thanks for being here make sure you pass us on if you got value and if you love this go right here

Channel: Mel Robbins

Views: 74,311

Keywords: Mel Robbins, Mel Robbins Motivation, Mel Robbins Advice, inspiration

Id: hLGT9ZmkRb4

Length: 51min 20sec (3080 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023