Social Anxiety
Five lessons for social anxiety
from "The Wild Robot"
Packed with plenty of themes, the movie “The Wild Robot” has a lot of lessons to offer
“The Wild Robot” is a whole rollercoaster of a movie packed with themes and lessons.
Lucky for you, I watched it through the lens of social anxiety.
I want to discuss the five lessons I extracted from the movie (more like they 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.
5 Quick Ways To Manage Your Social Anxiety
There’s no substitute for effort, but you can speed up the process if you understand and take these 5 ways seriously. This is your starter pack; what you do with it is up to you.
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. 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 broke it down into smaller subtasks.
This brings us to lesson 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 could 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 find the event, put it on your calendar, and prepare to attend.
Those are your subtasks.
Once Ross checked off all those subtasks, the gosling was prepared to migrate for the winter.
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 it, 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 there with her. At some point, the fox mentioned that the winter storm was hitting harder than usual and that many 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. 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.
5 Quick Ways To Manage Your Social Anxiety
There’s no substitute for effort, but you can speed up the process if you understand and take these 5 ways seriously. This is your starter pack; what you do with it is up to you.
This brings me to lesson 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 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.
This brings me to lesson four: We must consistently reprogram ourselves.
When presented with new information or experiences, we often overwrite what we once believed accurate. 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.
At this point in the movie, Ross figured out that even though she didn’t belong on that island, she was, in fact, the 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 overwrote herself because she was a mystery to them.
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 herself.
5 Quick Ways To Manage Your Social Anxiety
There’s no substitute for effort, but you can speed up the process if you understand and take these 5 ways seriously. This is your starter pack; what you do with it is up to you.
This brings me to lesson 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, as the wild robot that she was.
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 will 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 “The Wild Robot”; I cannot recommend it enough.
Hopefully, parts two and three will be based on the trilogy with the books.
Those will come with even deeper revelations because of Roz’s transformation and growth, which will occur at some point after she leaves the island.
It’s the only way to save the animals and determine where she comes from. 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 provide 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 apply them again.
We explore five lessons I learned from the movie The Wild Robot (through the lens of social anxiety).
Lesson 1: Taking action
Lesson 2: Breaking down tasks
Lesson 3: Acting with kindness
Lesson 4: Reprogramming yourself
Lesson 5: On belonging
I'm Roxana
I went from being scared to ask a question out loud to hosting summits online. I love coffee, french crepes, and working from home. My mission? Help others build their social confidence to make friends, have conversations, and be comfortable around people!
Did you find value in my content? Support me by clicking the button!
Recent blog posts
Latest Episode
About the blogger
I'm Roxana Alexandru
As a social anxiety expert I share my best strategies and tips that I’ve learned on my journey to help you manage your social anxiety.
Like what you see here?
Check out the blog!
Must Reads
Grab these freebies
Free Challenge
5 tasks. 3 difficulty levels. Test your social anxiety through exposure therapy.
Grab these freebies
Free Template
Get the template that I personally used and create your own steps for your journey.
A podcast meant to help you be comfortably you, no matter the situation. My goal is to give you the confidence to go out into the world, share your worth, build meaningful relationships, and see yourself as highly capable. It all starts with being your awkward self comfortably.
Awkward together
The “Be socially confident” newsletter drops weekly to inspire, entertain, motivate, and educate you about social anxiety (who knew it could be so much fun?!). Honestly, if anything, you’ll get a kick out of my own experiences and the funny GIFs.
Call me Rox!
I’m obsessed with social anxiety. In a healthy way! After a decade of being debilitated by it, I finally have the tools I need to manage it (the journey itself is no joke). I now use my experience to help others.
FREEBIES
FREEBIES
5 Days. 5 tasks. 3 difficulty levels. Test your social anxiety through exposure therapy.
