Dr. Bryan E. Robinson's focus is on helping perfectionists find work/life balance, and he is a nationally recognized expert in work addiction. He asks readers and his clients to discover how to BE and not just always focus on DOing.
LISTEN to today's conversation with Dr. Bryan E. Robinson!
LISTEN to today's conversation with Dr. Bryan E. Robinson!
This winter, Robinson will release #CHILL Turn Off Your Job and Turn On Your Life (William Morrow Hardcover; on sale: 12/31/18). He has been interviewed most recently for The Washington Post, The Atlantic WebMD, and many other outlets in the past on the subject of work addiction, and Alanis Morisette speaks highly of him, saying, "Bryan Robinson is a leading-edge voice in the world of work addiction recovery. Born from his direct experience, these meditations are chock full of warm and powerful wisdom, guidance, and empathy.”
#CHILL BY BESTSELLER BRYAN ROBINSON HELPS OVERACHIEVERS FIND A BETTER BALANCE
“Bryan Robinson is a leading-edge voice in the world of work addiction recovery. Born from his direct experience, these meditations are chock full of warm and powerful wisdom, guidance, and empathy.” –Alanis Morissette
ASHEVILLE, NC–How many times have you worked late into the night or even on weekends to perfect that presentation or just catch up on email rather than relaxing with a hobby or spending time with friends? Well lucky for you—and for all overachievers in the workforce—Dr. Bryan E. Robinson, a licensed psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has given you permission to stop working and just #CHILL: Turn off Your Job and Turn on Your Life (William Morrow Hardcover; on sale: 12/31/18).
Between camps, classes, podcasts and apps, practicing meditation and mindfulness continues to rise in popularity and is on track to be *the* wellness trend of 2019. In #CHILL, Robinson explains how ending work addiction can be achieved by reframing priorities and cultivating mindfulness in daily life. Perfect for “New Year, New You” goals, work-obsessed folks and others will learn how to let go of anxiety and achieve and maintain a healthy work/life balance that so often we lament doesn’t exist.
Structured with month-to-month guides that are crafted to ground even the busiest of minds, #CHILL provides advice, inspiring quotes, and gentle guidance needed to calm anxiety, break the addiction to work, and foster a peaceful, balanced life. Robinson’s wisdom in #CHILL will assist in helping the overworked relearn and realign what truly matters so that they can still excel at their job without sacrificing their joy.
Dr. Bryan E. Robinson is a licensed psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He currently has a blog on Psychology Today called “The Right Mindset.” He has been interviewed by Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among countless other magazines. Robinson’s prior books have been published into thirteen different languages including Arabic, Korean, French, Italian, and Japanese. Visit him at www.bryanrobinsonbooks.com.
EARLY PRAISE FOR BRYAN ROBINSON AND #CHILL
“Bryan Robinson is a leading-edge voice in the world of work addiction recovery. Born from his direct experience, these meditations are chock full of warm and powerful wisdom, guidance, and empathy. This front-line contribution helps us to recognize work addiction’s corrosive effects on health, relationships, and livelihoods and to recover daily with more work/life balance. On a personal level, I am grateful to know that these many glimpses of wisdom are available for all of us who suffer from this quiet and so-called “respectable” addiction and for how I have been helped by Bryan Robinson on my own journey of recovery.”—Alanis Morissette, singer-songwriter
“Perhaps the biggest challenge to practicing mindfulness is being mindful enough to remember to be mindful. Bryan Robinson has solved that problem by offering daily tidbits of insight, encouragement, and advice to remind us to focus on what’s important in our busy lives. Reading each day’s reflection is a step toward greater clarity, balance, contentment, and peace.”
—Mark R. Leary, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University
“The suffering of addiction runs deep and wide in this world; work addiction, in particular, is an important and underestimated one. I’m truly grateful to Bryan Robinson for bringing it to greater awareness.”—Tara Brach, Ph.D., author of Radical Acceptance
“Only when I, like Bryan Robinson, was forced by one too many episodes of burnout to uncover childhood sadnesses did I begin to see work as an irreplaceable part of my life, but not the whole of my life. And only then did I begin to focus on what I could uniquely do instead of trying to do everything—thus beginning to be far more effective as a worker.”—Gloria Steinem, activist/writer
“#CHILL Turn Off Your Job and Turn on Your Life”
In an interview, BRYAN ROBINSON can discuss:
How to approach work environments that are not conducive to living a #CHILL life
#CHILL as a way of being in the world. It's about finding that sweet spot between “tasking,” and staying in the present moment where life really happens.
How to achieve balance between doing (your job) and be- ing (your personal life)
How workaholism affects people on a cellular level
How to do “Great Work” and what that means
Ways to incorporate healthy meditation and self-care to pursue living a #CHILL life
An Interview with
BRYAN ROBINSON
In your book you talk about the difference in being “driven” and being “drawn.” What’s the difference?
When you’re “driven,” you’re the slave of external circumstances and demands (hurrying, rushing, doing). When you’re “drawn,” you’re coming from Chill, your center (your being)—you’re the True Self.
What’s the difference in a chilled worker and a workaholic?
A chilled worker is in the office dreaming about being on the ski slopes. A workaholic is on the ski slopes dreaming about being back in the office. If you’re a workaholic, you have difficulty turning off your “task mode.” If you’re chill, you are able to balance work and the other areas of your life: relationships, play, work, and self-care.
What goes on at the cellular level when we’re busy versus chill?
Our nervous system is composed of 2 branches: the sympathetic (fight or flight) and the parasympathetic (rest and digest). We need both to function in the world. The sympathetic branch is the gas. It speeds us up, gets us motivated, and carries us where we need to go. The parasympathetic branch is the brakes. It slows and calms us down so we don’t burn out our motor.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where the gas is more valued and people who cave to that life approach end up giving short shrift to loved ones and themselves. And they suffer the consequences of stress, burnout, and relationship collapse. A chilled person is able to use their gas and brakes in an integrated way so they accomplish tasks in a clear, confident, and competent way. They don’t burn out. They have more energy. And they enjoy the outcome of doing as well as the process of being.
What role does meditation play in #CHILL?
Meditation has gotten a bum rap over the years. Many people still associate it with the drug culture of the 1970s: sitting on a cushion, burning incense, playing “weird” music, mumbling a strange mantra, and sitting there for hours on end. The 21st version of meditation has been backed by hundreds of scientific studies. There are 1440 minutes in a day. I suggest taking just 5 of those minutes to meditate. It will change your life and help you experience it in a different way. Meditation is nothing more than focusing. You can do it anywhere: in your office chair, car (as long as you’re not driving), at home—and you don’t need any of the old 1970s accoutrements. Just you, your mind, and your desire. In #CHILL, I describe a cafeteria of different ways to meditate that you can choose from.
In your book you talk about “Great Work.” What do you mean by that?
Great Work is more than winning accolades, earning fat paychecks, getting that promotion, or staying ahead of deadlines. Great Work is toiling with greatness—compassion, empathy, self-care and care for others, honesty, integrity, lovingkindness, admitting mistakes and fixing them, self-correction.
In other words, it’s not simply the product of your efforts or completion of tasks; it’s the process you go through to get to the task. That’s what #CHILL is all about.
What does a reader learn in your book about how to chill?
You learn that Chilling isn’t just something you do; it’s a perspective—a way of being in the world. It’s not just finding a hobby, exercising, meditating, or relaxing, although that’s part of it. It goes deeper. When you’re in Chill, you are leading your life from 8 states of being all of which start with the letter “C”: Calm, Clarity, Confidence, Curiosity, Compassion, Creativity, Connectedness, and Courage. When you are in one or more of these states of being, you’re in what I call CHILL. You can use these 8 C words to become intentional about “being” instead of “doing.”
What role does survival coping mechanisms have to do with the ability to chill?
We are hardwired for survival. Mother Nature wants us to survive and perpetuate the species. She doesn’t give a hoot about us being happy. That’s where we have to do Great Work. She has hardwired us to overestimate threats and underestimate our ability to handle them. So we react automatically to people and situations that are not actually threatening. #CHILL shows you how to not see everything as threats and surmount them by underestimating threats and overestimating your ability to handle them.
You have a quote, “Ask not what your life can do for you; ask what you can do for your life.” What does that mean?
It means that life is not personal. It will throw us curveballs every day. So we are not victims of life’s circumstances. We have a choice every minute of every day to overcome the hurdles or obstacles or roadblocks. When you #CHILL, you empower yourself and find a solution to scale the wall of roadblocks. That builds those “C” words: Calm, Clarity, Confidence, Curiosity, Compassion, Creativity, Connectedness, and Courage.
Parting thoughts?
Everything has bookends. If you want to #chill, you must be willing to accept its opposite. You can’t have an up without a down, a front without a back, a bottom without a top. We must be willing to accept the opposite of our desires. If I want to succeed, I must be willing to accept defeat. Here’s the paradox. When I can accept both triumph and failure and happiness with disappointment and pain with pleasantness—when I can embrace everything life sends my way—then I’m in what I call the state of #Chill.
