I've read to study a few years ago that said we're exposed to more tragedy today in twenty four hours than we were in our whole lifetime twenty five years ago. Just think about that for a moment. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now today I want to address a theme that I believe is on all our minds and all our hearts.
When I've been speaking to people, whether it's on zoom calls, meetings, bumping into you all on the streets, the word that I've heard repeatedly is helplessness. What I'm understanding from listening to you all on social media comments in stories is a feeling of a lack of control, a lack of influence, and feeling like a sense of the world experiencing a downward spiral. Now, raise your hands if you're with me, if you've been feeling that way, not along. If you
feel that way. I know a lot of people right now will be saying thank you so much for talking about this, thank you for raising it. It could be what's happening in the political landscape, it could be what's happening in the economic landscape, it could be what's happening,
you know, right around the corner from you, potentially. And I wanted to address this theme of helplessness because I think often we understand, or hopefully we understand that it's expected, that it's normal, but we don't understand it deeply enough and we don't know what to do with it. But the first thing I definitely want you to understand is that it is not surprising that we feel this way. When we see the events, the decisions that are being made.
They can be highly discouraging, they can be high disheartening. So if you're feeling this way, I want you to know you're not alone and there's nothing wrong with you. It's not like you're broken or you need to be fixed, or some part of your needs to be mended, or you're mad at yourself or feeling that way. A lot of people are feeling that way. So the idea of learned helplessness actually comes from tests on animals, but we
find that human conditioning is similar. So in nineteen sixty five, Martin Seligman and his colleagues were doing research on classical conditioning, and this is the process by which an animal or human associates one thing with another. So in Seligmann's experiment, they would ring a bell and then give a shock
to a dog. Sadly, now, after a number of times, the dog reacted to the shock even before it happened when the bell rang, So it started to see that when the bell rang, it was going to get a shock, and it felt the experience of a shock even when just the bell rang and they did not give it a shock. Then something unexpected happened. Seligman put each dog into a large crate that was divided down the middle with a low fence. Now the dog could see and
jump over the fence. It was pretty simple, but the floor on one side of the fence was electrified, but not on the other side of the fence. Seligman put the dog on the side that was electrified, and when they gave that side a light shock, they expected the dog to jump to the non shocking side of the fence,
but instead the dog just laid down. The dog had got so used to that feeling of helplessness and accepting what it was going through that it just sat there and Seligman explained this condition as learned helplessness, or not trying to get out of a negative situation because the past has taught you that you're helpless. Now, how many of you feel like that sounds like you so today.
Learned helplessness is described by Medical News Today as a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not
try even when opportunities for change become available. According to the American Psychological Association, learned helplessness occurs when someone repeatedly faces uncontrollable stressful situations then does not exercise control when it becomes available, and Professor Martin Seligmann one of the psychologists who did that study. He says that it has three key features becoming passive in the face of trauma, difficulty learning that responses can troll trauma, and it can
increase stress levels as well. I'm sure many of you listening to this can relate to a lot of it. Right How many of you now look at what we're seeing in the news or what we're seeing around of us and just go, well, I can't do anything about it. I feel super helpless. I'm completely out of control, and this is a repeated feeling every single year. I read a study a few years ago that said, we're exposed to more tragedy today in twenty four hours than we
were in our whole lifetime twenty five years ago. Just think about that for a moment. Twenty five years ago, the amount of negative input you were exposed to today, we're now exposed to that in twenty four hours. So what you would be experienced in seventy years would be experienced in one day. That is scary, and that is why we're so overwhelmed, why we feel so helpless. Before you might have heard about a challenge in your own family, of course, maybe in your friend's group, maybe about twenty
five people. And then maybe you started to hear about what was happening in your town and maybe in your city, and then you started hearing about what was happening in your state, and then you started hearing about what was happening in your country. But now you know about pretty much everything happening in every city, every state, every country around the world. Now I'm not saying that being informed
is an issue. But being overwhelmed by that much information, our brains have not caught up to know how to process that. No one has taught us the skills in how to process this feeling. Right, No one has taught us how to process the feeling of learned helplessness and overwhelming information. So today I want to share with you
a few insights on how to do that. The first thing I want to talk to you about is reducing what is called doom scrolling and reducing how much news you consume, the time of day you consume it, and where you consume it from. So let me speak to you a bit about that. The first is let's talk about the time of day you consume it. You want to limit consuming news first thing in the day or the last thing in the day. I'll tell you why. When you consume news the last thing in the day,
and it makes you feel nervous and anxious. Now, what happens you sleep with that energy. You're now having nervous and anxious sleep, which means you don't get that deep sleep, and then when you wake up, you're waking up with some of those negative thoughts. Now, if you look at news right in the morning. What it does is it takes energy away from you. If you want to start your morning in a boosted mood, with a good attitude, trying to take on the world positively, and you insert
some bad news, you now feel set back. So that's the first thing. If you are going to consume the news, don't do it first thing in the morning or the last thing in night. Now. The second thing is how do you consume your news? Are you consuming it with the TV on all the time? That's probably not healthy. Are you going to the right sources, and are you taking it in in a way you like to consume it.
For example, if you're watching news, you're not getting to reflect or think because the news is designed in such a way to give you stat after fact after headline after the lower third with the latest news updates, so you don't get a chance to reflect. Whereas when you read the news, you get gaps to take pauses, you get to reflect, you get to think, think about just how interesting that is that you get so much more
time when you read versus when you watch now. Studies have linked poor mental health to news exposure during negative and traumatic events such as terrorist attracks or natural disasters. Says ABC News, and it said that the more news a person consumes during and after these events, the more likely they are to suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety. Now,
this was a study that ABC talks about. Back in twenty fourteen, four thousand, six hundred and seventy five Americans were surveyed in the weeks following the Boston Marathon bombings and collected data on how much media they consumed. Participants who engaged with more than six hours of media coverage per day when nine times more likely to also experience symptoms of high acute stress than those who only watched a minimal amount of news. I want you to take
this news angle very, very seriously. You may think that being fully informed is helpful, but if it makes you helpless, then you can't come at it with a positive attitude. Now again, I'm not telling you to not be informed. I'm allowing you to get a mental break so that you can be informed effectively. The second thing that I want to encourage you to do is the one you'd encourage you to expose yourself to good news stories, to
positive news stories. One of the reasons why on my Instagram feed I share so many of these joyful moments, whether it's a dog, whether it's someone in the military reconnecting with a loved one, whether it's a child doing something wonderful. It's because for us to see beauty in the world, and because our mind are trained to amplify the negative, we have to over expose ourselves, but consciously
to positive notes. Now, notice how when you're scrolling through your comments, you will scroll past all the ones that say you look amazing, Oh, how beautiful, I love your dress, And then as soon as it gets to the one that says, oh, she's so pretentious, Oh she is she trying to get likes? You obsess over it, and now you repeat it to a friend. That's the comment you talk about to a friend. Oh could you believe it?
That people are just so mean? Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't talk about that, but did you give the same level of presence to the positive comments? Did you give the same level of intention to the positive comments? Right? We focus so much. We fixate so much on the one person who says that we look tired today, then the ninety nine people who say you look vibrant, you look energized, you look focused, I'm not saying only to listen to people who you know make us feel good
or glorify us. But are we giving the positive, beautiful, joyful moments in our life and day the same level of presence and attention as the negative ones. What I'm asking you to do is increase your presence and attention for the positive feed about you receive. So what I want you to do is today, if you're going through your comments or you're with your friends and someone says something positive to you, I want you to take it in. I want you to even ask a question if someone
says to you, I've been loving your energy recently. Instead of saying oh, no, no, no, no, you know, I'm I'm just doing whatever, we try and say something modest, ask why why is it? What have I done recently? And then that person will say something like, well, you know, I just feel like you've been just trying to boost everyone up and look for the positive, and you'll be like, oh wait a minute, I am doing that, right, I
am doing that. I think what's so fascinating about this is that we do and even recognize what we're doing well because we don't take a moment to recognize what we're doing well. We'll spend ages focused on what we're not doing well, but we won't even spend a moment on what we are doing well. So I want you to take that moment to not only focus on more
positives externally, but also focus on positives internally. So if something bad happens in the news, we'll all talk about it online, but if something good happens on the news, we rarely share it in our stories. We rarely talk about it. But I see you all sharing the joyful moments that I post on Instagram because you believe it's there, but also amplify it within yourself. Talk about it within yourself. Have you ever had one bad moment spoil your entire
day or felt overwhelmed for no reason? What about stress or anxious over that big moment or difficult conversation? You should try meditation. And I know what you're thinking, Jay, you used to be a monk. I don't have time to sit in the woods for hours doing nothing, but really all the time you need to start your own mindfulness practice is seven minutes a day with the Daily j my Daily Guided Meditations on the car mapp. You don't need to close your eyes or find a special seat.
You can try it while you brush your teeth, do the dishes, or walk your dog. My goal in seven minutes a day is to help you find a calm and feel grounded in your busy world, plant beautiful intentions for an abundant life and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams. Here's what one of the listeners of the Daily JA had to say about their meditation. Wow, I just had a super hard day at work and couldn't get my
boss's comments out of my head. Then I did the Daily J which related to my work issues, opened my eyes at the end of the session and felt renewed again. Previously, today would have destroyed my whole weekend. Meditate with me by going too calm dot Com forward slash Jay to get forty percent off a Calm Premium membership. That's only forty two dollars for the whole year for Daily Guided me dtations experienced the Daily J only on Calm now. The third one I want to mention is the feeling
of scale. Often we feel helpless because of the scale of the issue. It's too big for us right We feel too small, and I remember when I lived as a monk, we would walk on this beach in South India with the senior monks, and South India is known to be a fishing space. There's a lot of fish nets, a lot of fishing boats, and so often what happens is that certain fishes escape the net, but then they end up on the shore and you see them struggling on the sand in the heat, without the water, and
they're about to die. Now, as monks, obviously we didn't eat fish, and our monk teachers would encourage us to pick up the fish and put them back in the water. Now, as we did this, sometimes I would look at the amount of fish and think, well, we're going to save like ten fish today, maybe twenty, Like what's the point? And our monk teachers would remind us that to us, it's just one fish, but to that one fish, it's
its entire life. You may think I can only support or help ten people, I can only comfort five people. What is the point of me even trying? That doesn't change the situation. And the really interesting thing about that is that if you've ever talked to someone that you've helped and they tell you you change my life and they tell you that you help me during my toughest time.
To that person, it's their entire being. So let's not get caught up in this game of scale and think, oh, if I can't save a million people, there's no point. If I can't support one hundred people, then I'm not significant because to that one person it's their entire life experience. The next step is what Alex Banion in his book, he talks about this concept about three doors, and he talks about this in relation to trying to get inside a club, and what he says is that there's always
three doors into a club. You have the main entrance where everyone's lining up. Then you have the VIP entrance where all the high net worth individuals, connected individuals, influences, whatever you want to call them, line up. But then you have the third door and the third doors the door on the side. It may have some security outside it, it's not the conventional door. It's probably not even an entrance. You might have to get through somehow, but most of
us never anticipate that that door even exists. Learned helplessness is where we go, Well, I'm not a person who can make a big difference. I'm not someone who can make a small difference. There's no difference I can make. Now. He's talking about it in terms of success. I'm talking about it in terms of making a difference. Every single one of us can make a difference. And I think what's happened over time is that we've got less involved in our communities or less involved around projects that we
believe in. So we have to start taking action. We have to start finding roles in our community where we feel purposeful, where we feel impactful, whether it's helping a local charity, whether it's getting involved in a local movement that gives you the sense of community belonging and impact that you're missing. You may not feel powerful alone, but I promise you you will feel more power and influence
and control in numbers. If you're part of a group that's trying to make a difference, you're going to feel more empowered. You can make a difference. If you think you're doing it all alone, you will always feel helpless. Loneliness can create a lot of helplessness. The next step, which I probably should have addressed earlier, is the idea of self care. When you're overexposed to the news. When you're underwhelmingly taking care of yourself, chances are that things
trigger you more. Give you an example, how many of you, when you get bad news, if you've slept well, feel like you deal with it better? Say yes? How many of you feel like when you've eaten you make quicker, faster decisions, or if you get a difficult decision you make a better one. Say yes. When you're taking care of yourself, you're able to respond to trauma and triggers far better than when you're not taking care of yourself.
And I think a lot of us feel that we should be going out there, we should be making a difference, but then we wallow in that pain rather than going well. Actually, if I'm strong and well placed, I can make a difference. I can actually have an impact. I will be not held back as much as I think I will. What also happens when we align forces with a community is that we feel a sense of support and encouragement, which
we need, and a sense of belonging. Most of us feel alone when we feel helpless, we feel well, I'm feeling terrible, And when you look online you often see people who don't agree with you, so you think, oh, well, no one agrees with me as well, and that's why community gives you a sense of that comfort. Now, one of the rules of self care is self talk, and often when we are seeing a challenge, we often think, well,
things are only getting worse. When you say a statement like things are only getting worse, that's not factual or accurate, and the emotionality of that statement makes it very hard to deal with. Or if you say things like it's all doomed, we're all doomed. When you have that mindset, it creates that environment. It makes you spot that more, right, it makes you aware of that pattern more, and now
that's all you see. Now. Also, you don't want to do the opposite, which is toxic positivity, where you like, everything's great, everything's amazing, but notice everything's wrong or everything's amazing. Are both not accurate statements. But when you understand, you think, oh, yeah, of course I was triggered. I didn't get enough sleep that night, or I mean everyone seems to be triggered by this, so I'm not alone, which means maybe there's
some of us that can do something about it. Okay, I'm really discouraged by this right now, but I'm going to find inspiration later to solve this. I'm struggling with this today, but I know that my meditation will help me. Right. So you're creating a real conversation with yourself. And the best way to think about this is, how do you talk to your friend when they're being helpless? You want to talk to your mind in the same way. We have to learn to talk to our mind as if
it's another person, because it almost is. The mind is condition to have certain beliefs and certain patterns, and therefore needs to be coached and guided out of that setting. This is something we haven't talked a lot about on on Purpose, and I'd love to see your feedback on this. I really do believe meditation or prayer or conversations out loud can be really, really useful. A lot of people pray, and research has shown that prayer increases optimism and adaptability,
and it also improves some of our health challenges as well. Now, how do you pray? Often we pray for our situation to change or our surroundings to change, but instead praying for the strength, praying for the courage, praying for the skills is a better long term strategy. When we pray or meditate on hoping things will change or hoping things
will get better. We feel more out of control when you feel your skills are improving, when you feel your talents are improving, when you feel your resilience your adaptive ability is growing, When your grit is growing, you feel a sense of control and navigation. For example, let's say you're driving a car and the weather gets really bad. You can either pray for it to stop raining, or you could have skilled up in driving in the rain,
which one makes you feel better. Knowing how to drive in the rain is far more giving you confidence than hoping it will stop raining. When you try and find confidence in things you can't control, you actually lose it. But when you find your confidence in things you can control, it's always with you. So we can pray for no difficult times, or we can pray for courage for confidence for skills, we can actually work on developing the skills.
Often when I'm in a bookstore, what I do is I ask myself, what skill do I need right now that I don't have? Right What skill do I need right now that I don't have. Maybe I've been struggling with stress, Maybe I've been struggling with leading my team. Maybe I've been struggling with emotions. Let me read about that. Let me listen to a podcast about that. Let me
ask an expert about that. Right. Let me absorb myself in actually up skilling so that now when I'm in that situation, which is not surprising, I will actually have the tools to overcome it. I really hope that this episode helps you today, because I want you to shift from a place of helplessness to a feeling of making difference. I want you to shift from a place of helplessness to knowing you do matter, that you can make things better, and that you and me and all of us have
lived through a lot of incredibly difficult situations. I'm with you, and I'm wishing you all the best. I'm so grateful that we're building a hopeful, courageous, powerful community. Here it on purpose. Thank you for listening. I'll see you soon.