Transcript of If You Find Yourself Now An Empty Nester, WATCH THIS! | Mel Robbins Clips

And what I also love about what we're going to do in this time together today is that this is one of those episodes where I'm not only talking with you, I am talking to myself at the same time. Because now that our last kid has left for college, I am also back at home, living in the empty nest. So the advice that you and I are going to talk about for going through this massive period of change in our lives, this is the same thing that I'm saying to myself, because the truth is, things Don't change with time. It's what you do with that time that matters. I'm going to say that again. It's not time that changes things. It's what you do with that time that matters. And the first place I want to start is by putting this massive transition into the proper context. Because when you understand the larger context of what's happening and why you feel the way that you feel, it's not going to scare you that much. You're not going to feel lost. Because if you're you're sad, or you feel lonely, or you suddenly don't know what to do with all this time, I want to tell you something.

This is a mentally healthy response to a major life transition. I think you need to hear that again. Feeling sad or lonely, or like you don't know what to do with the time or the silence, you're having a mentally healthy response to a major life transition. And yes, I'm reminding myself of this every single day right now. This is a major moment and milestone in your life. I've been thinking a lot about it in the context of the Olympics because you've been training for this moment for at least 18 years. Depending upon how many kids you have, you've been in this parenting game for a long time. And like all Olympians, the second the games are over and the fanfare ends, it's a mentally healthy response to feel a little sad, to feel to feel a little depressed, to feel a little lost. In fact, can you just stop and give yourself a little credit for how you showed up and what a whirlwind these last 18 years? I mean, it's been all about the kids all the time. The only other things that you've been able to squeeze in there is work deadlines and maybe things you need to do with your aging parents.

That's been your life for 18 months straight. From the stress and anxiety and the fights and the frustrations over college applications, which for us here in the Robbins household, that lasted all the way into the summer because our son was waiting to hear from a waitlist spot that never materialized. Once you do know where you're going to go to college, then what are you focused on? Wrapping up high school, which I call the Seasons of Lasts. The last game is a senior, the last party, the last time you're going camping with your friends, the last big sleepover, the last time you're seeing your friends, the last prom. Then it's all about the Suddenly, when they graduate from high school, now it's the first, the first time we're going to college. And you know what happens when you start focusing on actually going to college? You become maniacally obsessed with surrounding your kids with as much stuff as they can take I'm going to tell you something. As much college shopping as we did, I'm drawing the line at the headboard. There was no way I was buying my child a headboard for a college dorm room.

Have we lost our minds for-We're bringing headboards to a dorm room. You've already spent your life savings at Sam's Club and Walmart and Target. In fact, as we were at Walmart, and we have just two cart loads full of stuff, and the woman is checking us out, scanning all the items. She looks up and she goes, Is someone going to college? How did you know that? Was it the $500 that I was spending on everything from a pack of socks to twin XL sheets? You're right. He's going to College. That's why you're exhausted. That's also why you're broke. Then you load all this stuff up into your car, and you head off to College. The entire drive, am I right? They sit silently on their headphones staring at their phone for the entire drive. They don't even talk to you. Then you pull in, and you got all these friendly volunteers, and they got the signs, and they're waving, and you roll down the windows, and you're extra friendly, and your kid says nothing because they're still on their headphones looking at their phone. Then a super cute, upper-class person comes out, and they've got this big tub on wheels, and they roll it up to your car, and then you throw all that crap that you just bought into it.

Then off you go, right into the dorm and into the cement cubicle that they are going to call home for the next year. That's when it hits you. Maybe I should have bought the headboard. I mean, this is a little depressing with the cement walls in here. I have to give some props to our daughter, Sawyer. She was home, and she's 25, and she went with us to help move her brother in. I got to say, the second we walked into that bare cement dorm room, it's like her muscle memory took over. Boom. Ocd. Four years of the college experience put right to use. That bed was lifted up. The plastic drawers that we bought were stacked in the right place. All of a sudden, the whole thing was pulled together. It was absolutely amazing. The desk is in the right place. The bed is now lofted. Those plastic drawers were stacked and put in the right thing. And all of a sudden, just like that, 90 minutes is over, and it's time to leave. Because if you stay any longer, it would be weird for them and for you. And then it's the last hug.

And in case no one told you, that last hug, that last hug was the medal ceremony for the 18 years you just put in as a That was it. All that work leading right to that moment. And if you stop and think, How did it end? Mom, you're embarrassing me. Okay, I think you guys should leave now. Orientation is about to start. Do you have to take one more photo? And then you get back You get in the car and you drive home. And then you get back home. Have you even stopped to realize that you've been drinking from a fire hose for your kid for the last 18 years? I mean, It's astonishing when you really stop and think about how much energy you and I put into this. Here's what I want to say to you. First, I want to say, You did it. I am so proud of you and me. We did it. Your kids may not be celebrating you, but I will celebrate you, and you need to celebrate yourself. And look, if they were handing out gold medals in parenting, you get one. Whether you bought the headboard or not, you deserve a gold You earned it.

And while I'm on that, I want you to send this to every single parent you know, because they deserve a gold medal, and they need to hear that. And so I'm sitting, I'm like, Come and get it. I will tell them they deserve a gold medal. And by the way, if you're one of the millions of young adults who listen to this show around the world, this is the episode to send to your parents, because they are going to need to hear the advice that I am about to share. And what I love most about the advice you need to hear is that it's the same advice that the young adults and the college students and the kids that have gone off to the military that they need to hear. And you never stop and think about the fact in this moment that the transition to college is the exact same emotional experience as the transition that you're going through, where your kids have left for college. You and your kids are on a parallel emotional track right now. You have so much more in common based on the shared emotional experience and the transition and the things that you need to be doing for yourself that they also need to be doing for themselves.

And I personally think it's really cool that I'm going through the same thing as my kid right now. It really helps me to think about it that way. And so I said that we were going to start by zooming out and looking at the largest possible context of what is actually going on during this major transition in life. Because we can call it transitioning to college. We can call it learning to fill up an empty nest. But what you're really just going through is a major life change. That's it. That's all we're doing here. We're going through a major life change. And this is going to happen over and over and over in your life. It happens if you break up or get divorced. It happens if you move to a different city. It happens if you lose someone that you love. And it can even happen if you start to realize, I'm just not willing to accept a life where I'm not as happy as I deserve to be. And as you start to make changes, you're going through this major life transition. And so let's just talk about what happens when you go through any life transition, and the reason why this change is so hard.

Well, the first reason why it's hard is because you have to go through it. There's no avoiding the hard part of this. That's what makes it hard. You don't have a choice but to go through it. Let's zoom out and talk about what is actually happening when you are experiencing a major change. Because when we talk about change and we use language to describe it, we always talk about the change we're feeling emotionally. That's why we're like, We're sad, we're lost, I feel lonely. We use all these words that describe the feeling of it. But a major life transition is so much bigger and cooler than what you're feeling. When your life goes from one chapter to another, it's change that's happening at a physiological, a neural biological, a biological, a psychological, and all kinds of allologicals levels, right? And we're only talking about how we feel. But I want you to understand what's happening at a deeper level, because then you're going to to be able to move through it in a more empowering way. What you're actually doing is you are unlearning the way you used to do life. You're unlearning the patterns from the old chapter, and you're just in the process of learning a whole new way to do things.

That's what's happening. And whenever I think about a major life change, there's this visual that always comes to mind that helps me. Imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning, and all of a sudden, there's just this huge surprise snowstorm, and everything around you is covered in 2 feet of beautiful, pristine, brand new snow. Now, imagine that you have to plow a path through that snow. That path that is getting plowed through that snow, that's the process that your body is going through right now, and your brain brain and your nervous system. As your body, brain, and nervous system is trying to learn new patterns, this is why it feels unnerving. You're learning new brain pathways. Your senses are pushing through an entirely new experience, whether that's the experience of all the new sight, smell, sounds in college, or it's the sudden experience of feeling empty at home. And I think part of the reason why change is hard is we only use words that describe the emotion. I'm sad, I'm lonely, I'm empty, I'm lost. What if I told you those are just words that describe this unbelievably cool thing that you're able to do, which is plowing new paths forward in your life, learning new patterns, learning how to change and grow.

And if you When you think about this transition as simply the normal human process of unlearning the way that you used to do things and learning and plowing forward through a new way of moving through your life, what you're doing is you're mastering this super important skill of resilience, of growth, of truly being able to transition through any change and know that you're going to be okay. Change is only overwhelming if you don't understand the larger context of what is happening and why it takes time. It is so easy to get overwhelmed by your own emotions if you don't see the bigger picture, that it takes time to go from the snow falling to plowing this new path, and it's going to feel like you're pushing through something. This is normal. And so I wanted to start by validating both for you and for me. I'm reminding myself of this every day, that there is a simple truth about life. All change is hard. Because it doesn't just feel like, boom, you're a snowplow. It feels more like, oh, my gosh, this just happened, and now I'm knee deep in snow, and I only have a spoon.

That's what it feels like. But you're going to keep reminding yourself that it's supposed to feel like this. And eventually, with a little bit of time and continuing to push yourself forward, you're going to be plowing a new path. Because any change in your life is just requiring your body to learn new patterns in life. That's it. I'll give you an example of what your kid is dealing with right now and what your You're probably dealing with right now. Let's just talk about the five senses. One of the reasons why it is so overwhelming for kids to transition to college or transition into the military or transition into a full-time job right out of high school if they moved out and they're not living with you is because because it's sensory overload. Every smell, every sound, the food tastes different, the texture of the rug they walk on, the fact that they're now in a room sleeping with a human being that they don't really know, and maybe that person doesn't even sleep through the night, so they're walking in and out of the room. This is sensory overload. That's why it feels like you're in the middle of a snowstorm with a spoon.

You're just figuring out how to absorb all this. And that's why this visual helps me personally, because I'm like, Oh, this makes sense. I'm just plowing new pathways. I'm learning new behavior. I'm allowing my mind and body to absorb something new. And for me, the sense that is just an overdrive right now that's unnerving is sound. Or should I say the lack thereof? It is eerie how quiet it is in this house. I mean, I used to think our dogs were annoying because they bark too much. Now I cannot wait for them to bark because it's a sign of life. It feels unnerving because it is unnerving. Let me just think about that word unnerve. Your nervous system knew what it felt like to live in a house when your kids were there. If you are unlearning patterns, you're unnerving it. Kind of cool if you think about it that way. So it's appropriate that you're not used to it. And that's all that unnerving means. You're not used to it yet. I'm going to warn you and me, we got to be very careful about the words that we're using right now, because it sounds very different to say to yourself, This client is so unnerving.

Versus, I'm learning how to be with the quiet during this transition. Do you feel the difference? One set of words actually jacks up and amplifies the feeling like something's wrong, the other validates that you're going through a mentally healthy body response to learning how to be with something new. That's all that this is, is a new pattern. And that's why I'm sharing this larger context with you. And I also want to remind you of something. You've been doing this change thing your whole life. You are built to learn new patterns. You have done this before. More, which is why you need to just keep reminding yourself, just like I had to, remind myself these last couple of days, I know how to do this. I know this is going to take time. Just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. I will get used to this. Because what happened for me is right after we dropped off our son, we move him into his room, we hop back in the car, we drive back home, we had a big dinner out, and then we went to bed. And I then had a super busy week at work to distract myself.

And then over the weekend, Chris Chris and I went away for the night to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary. And then we drive home on Sunday, and I walked into the house on Sunday after dropping him off in a whirlwind week at work and distracting myself. And I'll tell you what, we cracked open that door. It was scary quiet. Talk about unnerving. And I looked at Chris and I thought, This is what everyone's talking about. I felt the emptyness in my bones. And then the emotions started to swirl. And as my emotions are swirling and that an emptyness is taking hold, and I'm letting myself just become gripped in the emptyness, I literally turned to him like a lunatic, and I'm like, I don't care what it takes. I'm not going to live alone on this If our kids move to New York City or Los Angeles, I'm moving there with them. God bless Chris. He smiled and he looked at me and he cocked his head. A little compassion. He's like, It's okay, Mel. We can move wherever you want to move. And this is why you got to be careful with your words.

Because if I had felt that sense of emptyness, and I simply just reminded myself, this is exactly what I should be feeling. Because I'm just learning a new pattern in my life. And just because it feels uncomfortable doesn't mean it's bad, Mel. You're stepping into a new chapter. You're stepping into the snow with your spoon. But every single day, you're going to make headway because you were built to do this. Your body knows how to do this. That's why it's busy learning new patterns. And just because you're not used to it yet doesn't mean it's going to be bad. I know I'm not the only one dealing with this topic of now transitioning to an empty nest. And can I just start by saying, I freaking hate that term empty nester. It makes you focused on the nest when you should be focused on your wings. And what I'm seeing a lot of in the inbox at Melbbins. Com.