5 lessons for social anxiety from the movie "The Wild Robot"

In this episode, we will explore five lessons I learned from the movie The Wild Robot. The movie touched on so many themes that I couldn't help but be inspired by it. As I watched, several lessons, notably related to the robot's perseverance in trying to belong on an island filled with animals, came to light. It made me think about social anxiety and understanding our self-worth.

Get the 35-task social anxiety challenge workbook offer here:
Social Anxiety Challenge Workbook (honestrox.com)

❤️ Sign up for my newsletter, Awkward Together:
Awkward Newsletter - Social Anxiety Expert

 ✨ Instagram

✨ Website

✨ Youtube 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:13 Lessons from The Wild Robot
• 3:29 Lesson 1: Taking action
• 4:28 Lesson 2: Breaking down tasks
• 7:01 Lesson 3: Acting with kindness
• 8:42 Lesson 4: Reprogramming yourself
• 10:23 Lessong 5: On belonging
• 11:46 Conclusion

Transcript

Welcome back to the You're Worth Knowing podcast. Today, we're going to do a different type of episode. We will take some lessons from a movie, specifically "The Wild Robot." Now, if you haven't seen the movie or you haven't read the book, there are three books in the series.

I highly recommend you do both. Yes, even if you're an adult, in this case, one complements the other, and they're both done so masterfully well that you won't regret spending the time. And, of course, this goes without saying: If you have kids, just run, run to watch the movie with them, run to read the books with them.

The story is riveting and beautiful. I have had the opportunity to experience the movie in 4DX, which is quite something if you haven't experienced it. There are a couple of extra layers to it. I was also immersed in the film through the 3D glasses.

But the snow, the wind, the water, the kicks, and the shakes made me feel part of the movie because the whole chair moved with it. So, I can't recommend the film enough, especially the added 4DX experience. If you have it available, go for it. Now, why am I talking about this movie in this episode? What does it have to do with social anxiety? 

So many lessons can be learned from this story, not just through the lens of social anxiety. There are many themes to explore, from adventure to uncertainty to friendship and family. As I was watching it, I had social anxiety in mind.

I want to discuss the five lessons I extracted from the movie. I won't say that the extracted ones were revealed to me based on what the main characters experienced.

These lessons can be taken with us on our journey towards cementing our self-worth and showing up confidently—yes, even with social anxiety. There will be spoilers, so here is a disclaimer as I discuss some of the narrative, plotlines, and themes.

So, if you don't want to know anything about it, maybe come back to this episode once you see the movie or read the book. 

Now, the main character is a robot called Roz. And she is swept away. I will use the pronoun she, but it's a robot. So technically, "it," but a storm sweeps her away onto an Island, and she finds herself looking for tasks for clients because she's built to help families with their chores and errands, right?

But on an Island, no one can give her any directions. She doesn't know what she needs to do. There's no one there to tell her what her next task is. She's on her own to figure that out. 

This brings me to lesson number one: You'll figure things out on the way simply by taking action. We all know that sitting at home, wishing for friends, scrolling on your phone, and wishing you had someone else's life is not taking action. 

It all starts with motion. So, in the movie, an unfortunate accident prompts Roz to take action. It gave her an initial task to accomplish. So, while technically, you could wait for an extroverted friend to drag you to an event or a social gathering, why not force the encounter yourself?

Reach out to that friend and see if they're going anywhere anytime soon and if you can tag along. Once Roz had her task of preparing a little gosling for migration, she set about breaking it down into smaller subtasks. 

This brings us to lesson number two. Breaking down the task into subtasks as much as possible will help you build up to the more significant task. You'll have a higher chance of managing and digesting a subtask than going straight for the higher goal. 

For example, Roz had to help the gosling learn how to eat first, then how to swim, and then how to fly. Each subtask had its steps. Ultimately, all combined, this gosling would be able to migrate out of the island.

Similarly, to your goal of going out to an event or social gathering to practice your skills, you first need to contact someone. You need to figure out where the event is. You need to put it in your calendar. You need to get ready to go. Those are your subtasks. Once Ross checked off all those subtasks, the gosling was prepared to migrate for the winter.

Okay. So, before we get to lesson number three, you have to understand that the robot stayed behind on the island during winter. Once the gosling left, she was on her own. She only had one friend with her, the fox, who had, during this entire time, helped her get the gosling ready for migration. 

All the other animals very much disliked the robot and the fox. They were the outcasts on the island. The fox because it just wanted to eat everyone around, and the robot because they considered her a monster, a metal monster. Now that winter had hit the island, All the animals were sheltering and hibernating under the thick blanket of snow.

Roz was in her little hut, with a nice little fire going, and the fox was in there with her. At some point, the fox mentioned that the winter storm was hitting harder than usual and that a lot of the animals were suffering or were about to die. 

So together, they set out to find the animals and warm them.

But during this scene, the fox tells Roz they might as well just let the animals die, right?

He's probably resentful that they don't like him, but she replies, well, what good does it do to be the last one standing?

Even though the animals don't like either, they must save them because they coexist on that island. 

Which brings me to lesson number three. No matter who you think doesn't like you, or if you don't like them, acting with kindness is the only way forward.

It's a responsibility you have to yourself first. 

What good does it do to remain selfish, to keep a grudge, or to stay potentially incompatible with someone? It does no one any good. Kindness is the only way to bridge the relationship, create trust, and hopefully turn things around. You know that nothing will improve if you stay resentful and distant.

So you might as well take the risk, be kind, and see if the relationship can turn around. This is what we saw happen with Roz. Once she went out with the fox to retrieve all the frozen animals from under the snow and threw them in her warm hut, they came to a truce together and became loyal to her.

They became her protectors in turn. So, that's a lesson to take home. 

Throughout the movie, the robot contends that she's just not programmed for any of the tasks handed to her. Nothing in her code told her how to care for a baby gosling or to navigate putting predators and prey together under the same roof.

Every day, she faced a new challenge in the wilderness that she had to improvise upon. She only succeeded with her tasks by overwriting her programming to adapt to her environment. She had to overwrite her programming every step of the way, bringing me to lesson four.

We have to reprogram ourselves consistently. Overwrite what we once believed accurate when presented with new information or experiences. We have to adapt. That's what it comes down to. We have to adapt to the situations we're thrown into. We must rewire our thoughts about ourselves, deconstruct, relearn, unlearn, pivot, experiment, etc.

That's all within the scope of reprogramming or overwriting. And it's the only way to thrive and succeed no matter what we face. So, Roz Could have kept her programming, but then she would have never learned the language of the animals.

She never would have been able to raise a gosling, create boundaries, or decide what she wanted for herself. Only when you reprogram and build upon your initial code can you grow and figure out what you want out of life and from yourself. So, at this point in the movie, Ross figured out that even though she didn't belong on that island, she was, in fact, a wild robot because she no longer belonged with her species.

She wasn't defective; she was just different. The robots who came to pick her up and bring her back to the factory did not understand her. They wanted to retrieve information from her memory to see how she, you know, what she did to overwrite herself because she was a mystery to them. She was a defective robot.

And yes, she was also a mystery to the animals on the island.

As much as they cared for her, they still didn't know what she was or where she came from. She barely understood that, you know, herself, which brings me to lesson number five. Please don't wait to be understood to belong; this is probably their hardest lesson. Roz knew the animals would never understand her because she didn't fit in with them, yet she confidently called herself the wild robot because she finally found her home. 

She belonged on that island with the animals because she made it so she wanted to be there, and she did what was necessary to be part of that environment. Undoubtedly, that was where she wanted to be and where she, you know, was happy even though she was the only metal object on the island. 

Eventually, she was accepted as herself, in her form. She carved a space for herself, dug into it, and made space for others to join her. Being welcoming, open, and vulnerable will make it easier for you to belong within a group, a neighborhood, an organization, etc.

Removing yourself or being secluded and isolated will strip you of that opportunity. You will likely continue to be misunderstood because that is a human condition. We all feel misunderstood at some point, but that's not an excuse not to feel like you belong somewhere. 

I'm sure that if I were to go back and rewatch this movie, I would come up with another five lessons. There are so many things happening in this movie that are wholesome and that you can take away from if you start observing and thinking about how the characters interact with each other and how we can apply that in the real world.

You can do this with any movie. Honestly, I think this is going to be a nice episode format where I dissect random movies or books, extract lessons from them, apply them to social anxiety and self-esteem, and find out how you can build your confidence and feel like you are worthy of just yourself.

Because your worthiness should never be on the table, you should always carry that with you regardless of what happens or how misunderstood you might feel. Your worthiness is never on the table. You are always worth knowing.

So, with all of that being said, I highly recommend this movie again; I cannot recommend it enough. Hopefully, there will be parts two and three based on the trilogy with the books. Those will come with even deeper revelations because of the transformation and growth that Roz experiences because, at some point, she leaves the island.

It's the only way to save the animals and determine where she comes from. And then, in the last book, which I won't give too many spoilers on, she saves an entire ecosystem and has to push herself to the brink of extinction, honestly.

Again, I won't give out more information or details on this, but take these lessons for what they are. Let me know if you find them reasonable and if you can find a way to apply them again. Like I said in last week's episode, it's a fresh start. We'll take it as it is.

It's January. It's the beginning of the year. It's Q1. We're still motivated and inspired. So, see if you can grab some things from this episode, run with them, and run with them. All right. And I'll see you here. Take care. Next week or in two weeks again. I know this is supposed to be bi-weekly. I'm playing around with making it weekly or bi-weekly, but I will post as much as possible. My only goal is to throw as much content towards you as possible.

I hope to help you manage your social anxiety this year. That's my goal: to help you get better with social anxiety. So, thank you for being here, and I'll see you next week on the You're Worth Knowing podcast.