And when you think about little hamsters, my first pet was a hamster. Corrigan the hamster. I loved that little guy. And his instinct was to scurry. He scurried all over the place. I used to put him inside one of my sleeves and he would scurry up to my shoulder. It was very, very sweet. I also eventually bought him a hamster wheel because they like to scurry, the hamsters do, and they’re doing it for the joy of scurrying. “I love to scurry,” they say. You can see it in their little eyes. So they love getting on a wheel that just lets them scurry and scurry and scurry. Although if you watch them on YouTube, which I frequently do, they sometimes get thrown clear by the centrifugal force. They go so fast that they get caught and the wheel sort of spits them out. They love it, they’re having a great time.

But there’s a metaphor for that in our culture right now and for the last several hundred years, and that is that we’re supposed to get up every day and just do things because they’re “things you have to do.” And the pressure to do them, to get out of bed, to put on the right clothes, to put on the right makeup, shave the face, do whatever it is you have to do and then go through the commute and do the work or be the mom who gets the breakfast, who does the things. And it just—you know, for a few days it would be fine. But it’s day after day after day after day, and we’re always getting messages that we’re not doing quite enough. The culture keeps speeding things up. I remember when they didn’t put up Christmas decorations in stores until December. Now they do it in October.

It’s like get ready faster, get ready faster, to do the things, to consume the stuff. We’re getting that pressure from the outside. Meanwhile inside, we’re feeling this anxiety that says, “I’m not keeping up. The hamster wheel has to go faster.” And it doesn’t feel good, and it doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere except to total burnout. And it’s when we start to get to burnout and the wheel is still going so fast that we start to get frantic to keep up.

Since I wrote Beyond Anxiety, I’ve had so many interviews and discussions with people who are in this frantic hamster mode, and it’s worse than being just depressed, I think, because it’s being sort of flat-affect, you don’t feel any joy in life, and you’re at constant maximum effort. It’s not fun, it’s not nature, it’s not how we’re meant to live. That is not how you were meant to live.

So what would you do if you could? How do you get off the hamster wheel? Because there are all these pressures from the outside telling you that you must do them, and there’s pressure from the inside telling you that you have to keep up or you’ll be spat out the side. And I have found that stepping off the frantic hamster wheel, for me, is about taking one true step and that is one step that gets off the wheel and moves towards something that is truly, deeply meaningful for me. And it does not have to be big at all.

Whatever version of the hamster wheel you are in, I regret to say is probably not going to let you go anytime soon. But there are periods when you can stop it and take one true step. It’s like you jump out of the wheel for a minute, you take a bathroom break, you ask your spouse or the neighbor to take the baby for 10 damn minutes so you can get a shower. And you use that time to take one true step toward what is actually your destiny.

How do you know what’s actually your destiny? You feel it as a sense of deep relief. But it has to come from a very small movement. So this is where Ro and I went to New York and we did a really fun double podcast with Amie McNee and her partner James, who I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember his last name, but he’s brilliant and I love them both Amie McNee has written a book called We Need Your Art. Boy, will that ever help you take one true step. So we were talking to them about how to just take tiny steps, and Amie specializes in helping people regain their creativity, which I will tell you is the step toward happiness. Anything that you do that is genuinely creative doesn’t feel hamster wheel, it feels purposeful, it feels like it’s building on something. We’re getting somewhere when we do that.

And Amie always advises people: Do five minutes of a creative practice every day. And she said it’s like, it’s as if saying “Do five minutes” is planting a spear in their hearts. They’re like, “Can’t I do five hours?” She’s like, “You maybe someday could, but I can’t guarantee that you can do it tomorrow.” Five minutes you probably can do tomorrow, unless you are in an extraordinarily busy part of the hamster wheel. Everybody—you know how they say, “You gotta eat.” Trust me, you don’t gotta eat. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have sort of shoved food into my face while I was working, while I was on the hamster wheel. I did not stop to eat, but I do stop to pee. I’m sorry that may be too much information, but honest to God, it was the only time. When I was at my peak hamster-wheel frenzy, that literally was the only time when my body said to me, “No, you have to take one true step and it is toward the bathroom.”

So while I was in there, I learned that I could drop into the wisdom of my body, and I could take one true step in the direction of my spirit, in the direction of my heart. So here’s a little process you can use that I sort of came to rely on.

Take a little, little, little break. You don’t have to have a huge break when you’re feeling both frozen and frantic. And ask yourself, “What is one tiny thing that I know to be true even if I don’t know what to do about it?” So this will shift you from “I don’t know what to do!” to “You know what? Actually I do know something.” And that’s a world of difference. It’s the tiniest shift from the outside, but from the inside it can set you on a whole new course.

And you’ve probably heard me say before here and other places that I have scoured the world talking to people about what feels most true to them. And the one thing that I’ve found that feels the most true to the most people is the sentence: “I am meant to live in peace.”

So take that one little break and know this. Say it to yourself. “I am meant to live in peace.” Let it sink in. And when it does, to quote the recently departed Melody Beattie, that tells you something else, something absolutely revolutionary, which is “at no time, on no day, at no hour, in no moment are you required to do more than you can do in peace.” And that can blow your whole life out of the water.

But don’t do it today. This is just a restroom break. We were joking with Amie and James because they’re both originally from Australia. Jamie lives in the UK, has for years, but they think it’s so funny that we call lavatories “restrooms.” It’s like we don’t actually pee here in America, we just rest. So take a rest break and feel the truth of the idea “I am meant to live in peace.” And then if you’re really feeling brave, go to “At no moment am I required to do more than I can do in peace.” Boy, that busts the culture wide open because it wants you not to be in peace.

All right, then ask yourself this: “If I were to move, to take a step, an action in any direction, even if it is literally physically moving one inch forward, what would feel like relief?” Not, “What should I do?” Not “What can I do to build my future?”

When I was in England doing my long walk with my friends there, my new friends, one old friend and some brand-new friends, there was a wonderful guy named Dave Elitch. He’s a wonderful famous drummer. I hope he doesn’t see this and know that I can’t pronounce his last name, but he is a specialist in helping people have a lot of endurance as drummers. He’s an amazing drummer and he does this through a really zen-like process of getting centered in himself psychologically and then letting his body move and his posture move in ways that it is naturally meant to move. 

So we’d been walking for like six days, and at the end of six days, he finally got me to trust him enough to sit me down and he held one of my arms and he said, “Let me hold the arm.” And I was afraid to do that, but gradually, gradually—he was such a kind man—I let him hold my arm, and he moved it forward an inch and put it down on my lap. And then he did the same with the other arm, and I felt my body move forward about an inch and everything changed. The tone of my voice changed, it stopped crackling like it usually does. There a feeling of relief and wellness sort of ran up my spine and through my nervous system, and it was just because someone was teaching me very gently—he is a heavy metal drummer, you wouldn’t think of him as the gentlest person in the world. He is, so far as I could tell. So he moved me forward one inch and changed the whole way my body felt.

And I’m going to ask you all right now, first, know that you are meant to live in peace. And then find anything in your body that is in the slightest degree of tension or discomfort and just move. Even if it’s just an exhale, move in a way that brings relief. And then notice that relief that is the key to your destiny. That is how you get back on track so you’re not just on the hamster wheel.

And then finally, ask yourself this question, “What would I do if I completely trusted that a step this tiny is all I ever need to do? What if I could trust that? Who would I be?” Imagine it. Don’t do it. It’s very confronting for people to take tiny steps in our culture. This is what Amie was telling me. She can’t get people to do it. I’ve had the same thing in my coaching career. I ask people to take a tiny step, they will not do it. Instead they go off and try to climb Everest, and then they’re miserable again.

But it’s the tiny steps, the tiny reliefs that start to become a way of moving in the world because this is nature expressing itself in us. It’s more than that. It is the soul of nature moving through us, and it is always gentle and it is always supportive, and it never asks us to do more than we can do in peace. It invites us into clarity, the way we might gather up an animal or a child in our arms to get it to feel free to come out of hiding. Because our real selves are in hiding when we’re in the frantic hamster dance.

So you’ve just done it today if you played along with the group. That can be your exercise for the day. But if you do it tomorrow and you do it the next day and you do it when you feel exhausted and paralyzed and frantic at the same time, that tiny break, that tiny movement toward relief, the one thing you know for sure, it starts to change everything.

And the hamster wheel of the world starts to unravel because it’s actually been built into our minds. And when we take these tiny steps, it starts to soften and sort of slump and then relax. And we find ourselves instead carried like surfers on a wave just balancing, just joyfully trusting the elements and moving forward without any frantic frenzy.

So if you can do this whenever you notice the frantic hamster, then I think your life is really going to change a lot. So let’s go. I wanted to now do our meditation because that’s another way that you can get off the frantic hamster wheel. Those of you who’ve been here before know our odd little meditation. Those of you who haven’t been here just play along. It is research-based, y’all! So this is not just a crazy question, it’s a crazy question that comes from research.

Ask yourself: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the atoms in the space between my eyes and can I notice not with my human mind, but with my eternal mind that most of those atoms are space, empty space, and inside there’s a hum of energy. Can you imagine? Can I imagine the hum of the space between my eyes? Can I imagine the space between the bottom of my chin and the bottom of my spinal column? Can I imagine the stillness in which my heart is beating that holds my beating heart? Can I imagine the silence that is always under everything I can hear?

And can I imagine that the silence, the space and the stillness holding all of us passing right through the globe of the earth and the water molecules of the ocean and the rock molecules of the land, all of it, all of it, energy interconnected with our being? Can I imagine the space that holds us all, the silence and stillness that is conscious and filled with compassion for each of us? Can I imagine the love and the softness that is space?

That will get you way off the cultural hamster wheel because the culture never will encourage us to think that way, not modern culture. So now that we’re off the hamster wheel for a bit, let’s look at some questions.

First: “There are times when I can’t distinguish between taking a true step and just playing rebelling against the culture for the satisfaction of rebellion itself. Any guidance on this?”

As long as it feels like relief. Do it as long as it feels like ahhh. If it just feels like, “Rawrr!”—you can do that too, you can totally do that, but you will be falling into the cultural trap of fighting the pressure of society with pressure of your own and using tools like anger and attack, which are all over our culture. So you can have an arm-wrestle with the culture if you want, and you can feel like a maverick and you can go and march for peace and you can do all those things—and I love it!—and the truest steps will make you go, “Ahhh.” And if it feels that way, you know it’s one true step. If it brings peace, you know it’s one true step. Nothing wrong with the other, it’s just fun to be in peace.

Next question: “How can I stay on course and in the way of integrity in the midst of college life? Also tattoo ideas to stay on course?”

I love it. My third child, my daughter Ellie, is a musician and when she was college-age, when she was in college, there’s a note in music that simply means rest. It’s a little squiggle and it means don’t make any noise during that. It’s called a rest. And her first tattoo was just that rest sign right above her heart. I don’t know if you want to borrow that from Ellie, but that was her way in college and she did a brilliant job of finding, always finding relief, even though it was not easy. She is, and so many of the young people I know now, please know that anxiety is a crucial pandemic among young people. You are going to be okay, we are here with you. 

Take the courses that feel like relief. Go to the professors that feel like relief. Find the friends and the spaces that feel like relief. And have a tattoo made, yes, of anything that rests your heart, of anything that reminds you of a time when life stepped forward and said, “I am the one you have been looking for and I’m silent and I’m kind. Never forget me.” And use anything that symbolizes that. If you want to put it on your body. I have a tattoo on my leg that says, “Only the truth has legs.” That keeps me on course.

Okay, next question: “I had anxiety for many years and then I discovered what I loved. At first, this helped the anxiety go away, but now even that makes me anxious. I don’t know how to not let anxiety take over.”

This is so true. This is so typical of the way anxiety gathers us into its little clutches. In my book I call it an “anxiety spiral.” And here’s how you get there. You start to try to please the culture with your new beautiful thing that you love. I don’t know what it was for you. For me, it’s painting. And sure as you’re born, I started painting every day and went nuts with the intoxicating joy of it. And then I started trying to please people, and it just got really anxious. What if it doesn’t work? You can’t erase watercolor. Why am I doing this? And fortunately I recognized it as the creep crawl of culture, and it always shows up as people-pleasing.

Even if you think you are a radical artist who, you know, you wear machine parts in your ears and you’re totally out of the mainstream, as soon as you start trying to please your friends or some ideal of goth or whatever it is that you picked up, if it’s cultural, it will drag you into anxiety. But if it’s natural, if it takes you away from anything you’ve ever done into just “ahhh.” Just keep feeling for relief, you guys. And I lean, I mean literally physically taking those tiny movements that Dave taught me to take. I’ve been trying to practice. And do that with your body and then do it with your activities and then do it with your relationships and refuse to be pulled into, “Okay, now how do I please people with this?” At no moment are you required to do more than you can do in peace. And people-pleasing is never peaceful. Good luck with that.

“I’m a therapist,” says the next person, “who often finds her clients unwilling or unable to take the tiny step. How can we help facilitate this for them?”

I once had a therapist who was more like a life coach, and I think I credit her with turning me into a life coach, and she used to write everything I had to do on a whiteboard. And she’d be like, “Okay, how much of this can we just get rid of? How much of it absolutely has to be done? And of what has to be done, what is the smallest step you could take?” And having her as a cheerleader, I didn’t always do it, but because she hung in there, this woman who had been widowed in her forties with five teenagers and gone back to school to be a psychologist. She was coming from the trenches. She had been there, and so I knew she was in my corner and by God she knew what she was doing. 

So I would really suggest that you’re incredibly aggressive with yourself about finding relief, about getting off the frantic hamster wheel, and then you can be that still point for your clients. And even if they don’t seem to be taking it in, I’m telling you, I still to this day go back to the sessions that I had with my therapist, with her whiteboard. And she’s passed away now, but she’s still teaching me, and you will do the same. And then trust. Trust. Remember the third step is, “What would I do if I trusted that even the tiniest step is enough?” Let yourself believe that as a therapist, as a parent, as a friend, as a lover, as somebody who wants other people to be happy. Give them one tiny thing and then trust that what you’ve done is enough and then don’t please them. Keep moving into your own relief.

Okay. “What would you say,” says the next question, “to folks who feel this concept feels too good to be true? Also, wondering how you embrace this in our society that sees busyness as a status symbol?”

I’ll take the second point first, how do you embrace this in a society that sees busyness as a status symbol? Have a cover story. What are you doing? “I need to pee.” That’s a cover story. Another cover story might be, “I have to write this down.” And nobody actually knows how much time it takes to write it down. Maybe you give yourself an extra half-,hour and nobody needs to know that. So have a cover story. It’s not a lie, it’s just giving yourself space so that you can say to a culture that exalts busyness, “I am really seriously busy. Yeah.” You build in breaks.

All right, and for people who think this concept feels too good to be true, I have one word: watch. Try it and see. That’s it. I will never convince you of it verbally because your verbal mind is part of the culture and it loves anxiety and it loves to push you. And you’re not going to see results if you just try to do it through verbal logic. Do it and watch. And then check. It’s too good to be true? It’s too good not to be true. That’s where I am with it because I watch.

Okay, question: “Do you make plans, schedule things in small steps? Otherwise, small steps seem so hard.”

Isn’t that weird that they seem hard? Yes, I schedule things in incredibly tiny steps. I schedule things like I will, like I want to declutter my house right now. So I thought, “I will get rid of 20 things a day.” And I was like, “No, I’ll get rid of 10 things a day. I’ll get rid of five things a day, and that includes wrappers for food.” Oh? I could do that. So of course you’re going to do other things in your life. You can stay on the hamster wheel all you want, right? I’m just asking you to take a few true steps, one a day, two a day, and just watch what happens. 

What happens is you actually get more productive, even at your hamster-wheel things. It’s amazing. And then the small steps seem hard because you haven’t taken them and then seen what they do. Once you see what they do, you’ll be like, “Oh yeah, this is like brushing my teeth. It works. I’m going to do it”. It’s not hard. You’ve been told it’s hard. Don’t believe the lie.

All right, question: “Is it normal to cry during this? I get so tapped in, I well up with so much peace and love that the floodgates open. I am full of so much emotion.”

This is what I’m talking about. This is the astonishing effect of taking one true step, that you put yourself in alignment with your destiny, with the forces in the universe that have made us conscious and that keep us conscious and that have nothing but the best intentions for us. When we step into truth, a river of love just rises up to carry us. And it’s astonishing. You have to feel it. Try this and feel it. I cannot tell you. 

But whoever sent this question, we’ve been leaving off names because of things, I love that this person has actually done it because being flooded with so much peace and love that the flood gates open, that’s what you get. That’s what I got when Dave Elitch moved my arms forward an inch and let my spine find its proper alignment. So much gratitude, so much love. It was amazing. There’s so much beauty and love that is waiting for us to take one true step.

Okay, finally, the question is: “How do I hold space for this quiet time and still speak my truth, which has been stifled for so long?”

It reminds me of Virginia Woolf wanting a room of one’s own, just a place to sit and write down what happened to her. And the quiet thing, the quiet step, could well be getting a journal, opening it, and writing down the truth that has been stifled for so long and letting yourself know it, letting yourself feel how deeply the universe cares about this so that when you tell other people, you’ll do it in the right time to the right people and you’ll get this reaction of love and peace and harmony. Because if you don’t get quiet in yourself with it, if you don’t take the one true step inside yourself and you’re waiting for others to do it for you, it won’t feel satisfying because it’s your heart that needs to heal. And it will do so in small quiet moments as well as times when you may speak up very loudly.

But today is just about getting off the frantic hamster wheel, and I am so grateful that you all joined me here for a few minutes. And it got me off the hamster just sort of prepping this, and I am very excited for all of us to do this and bring that floodgate of love and peace into our lives individually and collectively, here in The Gathering Room and everywhere. 

Thank you. Much, much, much love.