How to Know If You've Got Existential Angst
Hello. Welcome back to Mindset Rx. I'm your host, Dr. Robyn McKay, this is the podcast and LinkedIn live for emotionally intelligent leaders who are ready to set the tone for a positive, productive and purposeful day, week, month, year, life Legacy, all the ways that we are meant to be contributing and mastering our lives. This is the place for you and I'm happy to be here with you. Today is a conversation I've been wanting to have with you all for a while.
It's something that for the high-achieving accomplished people who have come into my practice for the last 13 years have been struggling with, it's largely unnamed and unrecognized, especially in the medical model, the model of healthcare that most of us are still interacting with, and unless you really dig deep into understanding yourself and understanding what you're thinking, why you're thinking what you're thinking, you might miss this, so I wanna bring this forward, and it's about existential angst.
I don't even like that word angst, but I think that does a pretty good job of describing what's been going on for a lot of high achievers, especially now since 2020, when the world shut down and we were sent home to work and figure out our lives in a very different way than we have in the past. A lot of people took a look around and started asking questions that they've never asked before or never paid attention to when they were asking those questions, questions like, Is this all there is? What am I meant for? What's the purpose of all of this? Is there even a point to me being alive and what about this work I'm doing, does it even make a difference in the world? And those are some of the questions that arise when somebody's in an existential Crossroads, it can tip into angst, it can tip into anxiety, it can even tip into existential depression.
The problem with the model that most people are still engaged with, in terms of, I'm using air quotes here, "fixing" existential angst, is that we think that if I just... If I'm depressed, if I just take a prescription medication for it, I'll feel better. And actually, what I found personally and anecdotally from many, many of the people I've spoken with over the years, is that while there is a place for pharmaceuticals, I think in mental Well-being, mental health.
I think that when we're dealing with existential nature, things that are existential in nature, Why am I alive? Why am I here? What am I doing here? What a lot of the pharmaceuticals will do is mask those questions, numb a person out so that they just don't ask the questions anymore, and that's definitely one way of overcoming that sense of existential dread that you might have been experiencing.
It's not the only way, and I don't think it's the most productive, healthy or the best way to maximize your potential or to contribute in the way that you're meant to be contributing in the world, the alternative... As I've seen it, as I've experienced it myself, as I've worked with other people on their journeys through the existential questions, are to lean into those questions, to lean into that sense of anxiety, to lean into the sense of depression and learn more about it. Learn more about it.
So that's what we're talking about today. I'm so happy that you're here with me. If you are live with me, say hello so that I can say hello back, if you're listening to the recording or listening to the podcast instead, I'd love it for you to leave a five-star review, I'd love you to share this with your networks as well. As you know, this is a grassroots movement, kind of an underground movement to create a new timeline, new pathways to making contributions that matter in the world, to mastering things in your life that you haven't quite mastered yet. And doing so in a way that is healthy and productive and optimistic, letting go of the grit, grind, persistence, tenacity, all of those old ways of working and to turn our attention to the positive psychology of being here at this time, developing consciousness of hope and optimism, strength, joy, gratitude, all of those positive frequency emotions that are actually gonna, I think, turn the page on what we've got going on in the world faster than anything else.
So... Either way, I'm so happy that you're here with me. And the announcement that I have, I have two actually, before we get into the meat of what I wanna talk about today, one announcement is that May is Mental Health Month. And if you're listening to this recording... When it comes out, May is just around the corner. One of the things that I do as a service to the organizations that I work with, the Fortune 500 companies, the smaller organizations that I work with, during Mental Health Month is, I want to give back.
So if you'd like me to come in and do a talk for you, if you'd like me to come in and have some conversations with your people about recovering from burnout, preventing burnout from happening again, and some alternatives to the old ways of living and working... I'm happy to do that. You can reach out to my assistant, Brandi, B-R-A-N-D-I, Brandi@drrobynmckay.com and ask for the details on how you can bring me into your organizations to talk about mental health and well-being, especially during the month of May, where that's the highlight and focus. So that's one thing I have going on. The other thing I have going on is that we have a wait list, I'm opening up the McKay Academy of actualization, and this is for intelligent intuitive leaders who are ready to actualize their highest potential, to actualize their greatest hopes and dreams, and to start creating a new world for themselves and other people. If that's you and you'd like to get on the wait list for early notification on enrolling our first cohort, you can...
I will drop the link in the show notes, but it's drrobynmckay.com/waitlist and you can get on the wait list for that. Those are my two announcements. Let's get on with existential angst. I think that the first time I experienced any kind of existential angst was when I was about five years old, I know that seems so young, but it really was the case for me, looking back now, I didn't have those words, of course, at five, but at five I knew I wanted to be a doctor, and I knew that I wanted to write a book, and I thought I would start writing a book because I knew that's what I wanted to do. The problem with that was as I laid down on my tummy with my notebook and my pencil and I started to write, I realized two things, One is I was just learning all of my letters, so that was kind of a problem, and I didn't really know how to spell. And more importantly than that, I didn't have any words, there were no words coming out as though I didn't have anything to say, which I know now isn't the case, it was just that I wasn't tapped into that part of me that knew what she wanted to say, or she had a misapplied understanding of what it meant to be a writer. But you know at age five, give a kid a break, but it really was troubling to me, and I remember thinking that...
I was appalled that I didn't have anything to say. Even though I knew that I would write books and certainly that has come to fruition later in my life. I don't think everybody experiences an existential crisis or existential angst, but I do think that those who feel things deeply, the emotionally intelligent among us, the intuitive among us, we're the ones who feel life very deeply, and as a result of feeling and experiencing life very deeply, what ends up happening, I think a lot of times is that we become disillusioned by the way things are going in our lives. We ask questions like, Is this all there is? We ask questions like, what's my purpose? What's the meaning of all of this? And sometimes those questions take us by surprise, especially for accomplished people who have spent so much of our lives educating ourselves, investing time, money, energy, brain power into cultivating our mastery of our fields, we reach a point, and there always is a point. We reach a point where even what we've been doing for as long as we've been doing, doesn't feel as fulfilling, it doesn't feel as meaningful, and it feels like there's something missing, it feels like that there's something else I'm supposed to be doing, but I don't know what that is. And the intellect being a very linear processor in the brain, goes right to trying to answer the question, trying to solve the problem.
Well, I don't know what's next. So then there's a referential back to... Earlier times when I didn't know what to do next, when I didn't know what to do next, when I was 20, what did I do? Well, I took another class, or I changed my major, or I applied for grad school. And I was just having this conversation with a client today about how so many of us, regardless of age, still refer back to the student archetype that we really mastered. In fact, any time something terrible, awful, horrible happens in a person's life who is more prone to existential angst or existential anxiety. Any time something like that happens, we automatically refer back to a time where we felt on purpose, where we felt like we were fulfilling our potential and often that has to do with education.
Because, really think about it. If you're a halfway decent student, you know how to use a syllabus, you know how to schedule your time, you know how to study for exams, you know how to write papers, these all feel really good and fulfilling because it's something that we've already mastered.
So when it comes to a point in our lives where we don't know to do next or we are feeling really burned out or really frustrated with how things are going in our lives, one of the first things we're gonna do is look back at a time where we were doing something that we felt fulfilled and on purpose, and that oftentimes is education, so automatically the intellect will say, I should go back to school, I should get another degree.
And in some cases, I would say that's important. Certainly, I had that experience when I was 28, and asked a question like that. I remember I saw a picture from my high school graduation, and it was one of those pictures where the kid looks like she's got the world by the tail, bright eyes, cap and gown, big smile, so excited about the future. 10 years later, that girl was nowhere to be found. I was depressed, I was anxious, I wasn't sleeping well.
I was married to my college sweetheart living in Kansas, getting my nails done on Thursdays, life was okay, in fact, it was better than okay, but there was something inside of me that looked at that picture and was like, Where are you... Because this life I'm living right now, it doesn't in any way resemble the vision that that 18-year-old version of myself had. And there was a deep sense of disappointment, and also I remember feeling a little bit mystified. Why is that? Why is that the case? That all these years later, I'm not living the life that I had envisioned. I thought that that was the track I was on, and certainly I could pinpoint where I had gotten off track.
With anxiety, depression with my families, breaking up, my mom and dad got divorced with going to college a long way from home, like all of those things contributed to the anxiety and depression I was feeling and I just wasn't on my highest life and I certainly wasn't living out my highest potential, and that part of me who knew that I was here to live life out loud, the part of me who knew I was here to do something, to make a difference in this world, to help people, to contribute to the advancement of the human race, that part of me, she knew that this wasn't all there was. She knew that there was so much more.
And so I had to live in that gap of understanding that what I had created as a 28-year-old young woman who didn't have even a master's degree at that point. Even though when I was a child, I recognized that I wanted to be a doctor, by the time I was 28, I'd graduated with my undergrad and had gone to work because that was what the people around me were kept on saying that I should do. And I didn't get into medical school, and the first time I tried. And let me just say thank God I didn't go to medical school given everything that has transpired since then, I am so grateful that I found my way to Psychology, and that I'm actually able to support the people who are in medicine as part of my work. So when I'm 28 and I'm asking that question about, What do I do next? I knew in my heart of hearts that I had to go back to school, that getting my advanced degree was not optional, that it was an important part of my destiny, it was an important part of my soul's path.
So there are some cases where returning to university to getting an advanced degree are important, but then there are a myriad of other times when it's not, but unless and until you understand and can discern what's going on internally and really listen carefully what the next step is for you, if you're in an existential crisis or existential angst, going back to school can just keep you on that old durable wheel loop, just keep you occupied and keep you away ultimately from your destiny, from your highest level timeline. I believe that everything is conspiring for our good, so I'm not saying that if you've gone back to school and you've regretted it or gone back to school and are looking at that saying, Well, what was the point of that? That just again, highlights the existential nature of what you are experiencing. So let's talk about now, if you're somebody who's been working in the corporate space, you've risen to a level of VP or you're in the executive suite, and you've worked your whole life to achieve what you've achieved, nothing's ever been handed to you. And now you're sitting here at these high level tables and you have a tremendous amount of influence, you can still have an existential crisis, in fact, I really believe that those are the times just when we get settled, just when we start feeling comfortable, our souls wake up and say, Hey, hey, sister, you're not done.
You're not done. There's more, there's more to life than this. There's more to life than nine to five. There's more to life than meetings where you're butting heads with your colleagues, there's more to life than arguing with one of your colleagues, there's so much more and you're meant for more. The problem with existential angst is that we live in a culture, we live in a world where if you've achieved a certain level of a success, there's an embedded, an unspoken, an embedded and unspoken message that gets transmitted, which goes something like this, "I've achieved so much already, how dare I want more. It's not fair that I wouldn't want more. I feel selfish that I want more." And yet I'm here to tell you that the human spirit is expansive, the human spirit is always expanding into more... You can look around at nature.
I'm reminded of a tree that was planted next to the sidewalk that I would walk by every day on my way home from school, when I was a little girl, and it was old, it was an old cottonwood tree, and the roots of the cottonwood tree had started pressing up against the concrete, until the concrete actually broke because the roots, and the root system of that tree had become so enormous and had even broken the concrete, which appeared to be unbreakable. See, we're not so different from plants, we're not so different from nature, because we are a part of nature, we are meant to expand, we're meant to grow, we're meant to continue to become. I have a teacher who used to say, "If you're not growing, you're dying." And the human spirit has this will to live, this will to not just survive but to thrive. And I believe at this time that we're living in the world right now, there is that awakening that so many executives, so many emotionally intelligent professionals, who are intuitive, just by nature, so many of you are waking up and saying, "What? What am I doing here? This company doesn't even line up with what I hold precious and dear. Is this even making a difference in anyone's lives? And if it's not, how can I make a difference?"
And I believe that's why we're seeing this great resignation and the great reshuffle and even the great awakening. That the transformational coaching industry is so invested on amplifying. 'Cause people are waking up. But the world has coded us in a way that when we wake up, we make our awakening wrong, and that's where we get into, how can I just feel better? How can I numb out? And that's where, if we go into the medical system, more likely, you'll get a prescription for something that will help you feel at least not as bad as you used to, so you'll feel numb, or maybe you'll feel a little bit better. But it very, very gently put you back into a slumber, doesn't it? So I also wanna share this, that, one of the reasons that I brought this topic of conversation to LinkedIn live and to my podcast is because quite frankly, in the past couple of years, I've even had my own existential angst. As I've been looking at the work that I'm doing, as I've been looking at the world that we're living in, and wondering what's the point of all of this?
And for me, what I've recognized is that, first of all, it's hard to recognize, it's hard to even see it in yourself when you're in an existential moment. You can kind of get at it, you can kinda say, maybe that's where I'm at, but what I have found so helpful is, I've always had people in my life who can name things for me, and when they name it, it's spot on, and I had a dear friend of mine say to me recently, "I think you're in an existential angst. Maybe you're not, but it feels like it to me. There's a texture to it."
And it was in that moment that I recognize that, yes, in fact, I was in an existential angst. So when you think about it. At least when I thought about it, what occurred to me was that, I'm getting ready to start this McKay Academy of Actualization, it's really, I believe what I came here to this world to do, to contribute. I know that, I know that in my heart, and yet as I have moved in the direction of opening it, what I've been feeling is, there's so much responsibility, there's so much work, and is it even gonna make a difference? Is it even going to make a difference. Now, intellectually, we can make sense of that and we say, you can say, "Of course, it's gonna make a difference, of course, there are people who wanna learn your methodology, and you've been able to create beautiful, amazing life for yourself, and you've been able to support your clients in creating beautiful, amazing lives for themselves as well, even in the midst of a pandemic, even in the midst of everything that's been going on in the world," and that's true.
I have 13 years of evidence, that that's true. What I had to land on, as I've been moving through this process of opening the academy, is that, this academy is my destiny, it's what I came here for, and finally, 22 years after I had my own awakening, 22 years, I have been developing and learning and mastering everything that I'm going to be teaching in this academy, 22 years. And this masterpiece, this gift, this art that I'm going to be bringing into the world, is kind of a swan song, it's an opus. And I'm not saying that to brag. I'm not saying that to do anything other than to illustrate that, when we have these big visions, that come into our lives, I think those big visions can feel so overwhelming or so weighty or so... Just so much, a sense of responsibility, and the sense of duty, that we might have to those visions, seems to overwhelm the natural and effusive joy that we're meant to have. Our big visions are not meant to be burdens, they're meant to be gifts. In the old way of working, we would treat that gift as a burden, we would have a sense of over-responsibility. And when any time you're bumping up against duty, responsibility or obligation, if you are even a halfway awake, emotionally intelligent leader, you're gonna bump up against some existential angst.
You're gonna bump up against all the reasons why not. You're gonna bump up against self-doubt. Even self-betrayal. You're gonna say, "I don't wanna work so hard." Well, guess what, what if your vision, what if that thing that's in your imagination that you've seen so clearly for so long, what if that's meant to make life easier for you and not harder. What if you're meant to influence and affect the lives of even more people than you already are, and to do so in a way that is easy, graceful, joyful, miraculous, rather than gritty, tenacious, slogging energy. What if? But we don't consider that because the intellect is so used to looking at the grit, the tenacity, and hard work, that we're not able to necessarily automatically see the opposite, the polar opposite of it. And I believe that that's where we're meant to be looking when we're in existential angst, looking for the opposite of what is showing up.
Tapping into the possibility, our own divine possibility or highest level potential, as well as the potential of that idea, that vision that has emerged, as a result of you sitting with the questions that you've been sitting with, without numbing out, without drinking a bunch of wine to just kind of satiate or to soothe that anxiety that has risen, but sit with it, and call through it, and find the gifts in that, find the gifts in the anxiety, find the gifts in the depression. To do so by yourself, is not advisable simply because it's a little bit like a surgeon doing an appendectomy on herself, she certainly probably could, but why would she. That's just silly. So the existential angst, I believe, is also a signal that it's time to seek out your mentor.
I love sci-fi, and one of my favorite characters who I think expresses angst to a T is Luke Skywalker, in the New Hope, so that would be episode four, but the first episode for Gen X, of course. But I remember there was a scene of Luke Skywalker standing on his home planet of Tatooine, he's living with his aunt and uncle, he's fixing the droids, he's doing his normal life, and he's whiny. Oh my God, he's so whiny. And I think that's a lot, when you're getting ready to embark on your journey, toward fulfilling your potential, just like Luke was, he didn't know he was getting ready for that, but certainly that's what the universe was preparing him for in this normal, average, boring, world that he was living in. And when you're preparing for your journey and you start feeling that welling up of angst or anxiety, depression, around your purpose, around your mission, what you're meant to be doing next, it's a signal that your intellect, your grit, your hard work, your tenacity have gotten you as far as they can get you. And anything you do, if you press into the intellect even more, you're going to get more of the same.
So in some ways, you've reached the end of yourself, that doesn't mean that you've reached the end of life, but it does mean that there is going to be an opening for a mentor to come in, for somebody to walk shoulder to shoulder with you, as you discover and explore your inner workings, as you seek what's inside of you already. To do so by yourself, I've done that, a couple of different times, and I found it, not all together fulfilling and not altogether helpful. And here's why, when you are on a quest, for whatever your next level purpose is, it's also important to have a witness. Somebody just to see you, to process through things with, to move through the energy, the psychology of it, within for you. And it's important to have somebody, not just a friend, but somebody who's wise enough, who has done their own work, who understands the ways of the forest, hashtag, sorry not sorry, for the Star Wars reference continuing. But you need somebody like that in your life, and I remember, and this has happened twice to me, that I can remember once when I had just finished my undergrad, I was... It was the mid-90s when I finished my undergrad, and there was just a bunch of research coming out on the importance of mentors, especially for girls in STEM.
I had majored in Biology, so I was a STEM girl. I didn't have a mentor and I craved one. I've craved one, and I remember thinking that I want a mentor in my field, I want a mentor in my field. And pretty soon these women started showing up, women in STEM. In fact, my first boss, out of undergrad, when I was working in biotech was a female PhD. Microbiology, PhD, from University of Chicago. And then when I went into grad school, Barb showed up, Barb Kerr who I wrote, Smart Girls in the 21st Century with, she showed up in my third year, everyone else had a thing and I didn't have a thing, and I prayed and I said, "I want my mentor," and here she came, Distinguished Professor, opening doors and saying, "Yes," and giving me opportunities that were beyond anything I could have hoped for or imagined.
And then the last time, I think, I said two times, but the last time, this is three, was in 2017, I remember exactly where I was, I was standing in my kitchen, I had just been married to my husband less than a year, and I stood in my kitchen and I said, to myself, to the universe, "I'm ready for my next mentor," and within a very short period of time, I connected with my next mentor, who I continue to work with to this day. So I shared this with all of you because there is an existential nature to everything that we do as intelligent, intuitive, emotionally intelligent people, and we can use the existential crises or the existential angst to propel us into the next chapter of our contributions, in the next wave of mastery that we are calling forward. I believe that if you're really paying attention, existential angst is a gateway, to your destiny, if you're not paying attention, it's a gateway to nowhere, but pay attention. Pay attention, because when you are in an existential moment, in your life, and moments can last days, weeks, months, hopefully not years, but when you're in that existential question, there are a myriad of portals all around you with solutions, that your intellect cannot understand or even recognize.
So it is an opportunity for you to use your intuition, for you to tap into the voice of your human spirit. That which makes you you, to find new solutions and find new mentors, new guides, new opportunities, to express yourself and to really learn, as much as you can about yourself, to master your own psychology, first, and simultaneously make contributions that only you have been coded to make. Only you are coded to make those. So let's use the existential angst as a portal to your destiny, shall we? That's my encouragement. And that's where I'm going to close today.
If you liked what you heard, again, please, I'd love it if you leave a five-star review on the podcast, if you would like to get on the early notification list about the McKay Academy of Actualization, which is coming soon, you can sign up for that at drrobynmckay.com/waitlist, and we will send you information about that Actualization Academy, which by the way, is all about the methods that I used myself, and that I've used with countless other executives, leaders in healthcare, in tech, and in entertainment, to actualize their highest potential, to pull themselves out of that existential angst and get them on their path to their destiny as well. Alright, big love for now, I will see you all next week.
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