Your Best Life Is On The Other Side of THIS | Mel Robbins

The biggest failure of my life is what led me to discovering the 5-sec rule which is the basis of my entire media business it was the first book I put out um I hit rock bottom in uh 2008 I'm a lot older than you too I'm like your older uh sauser sister you probably think that I yes you better have your seat bels on because we go this is going to um no I hit rockot my husband's restaurant Business was failing and I had been uh laid off the recession hit the United States and I

found myself at the age of 41 with three kids under the age of 10 unemployed and nearly a million dollar in debt wow we had secured the restaurant business by cashing out our life savings the kids college plans we had taken out a home equity line because hell that's free money we had cashed out our credit cards we had shoved it all in and the first uh location had done Dynamite and the next two who were complete dogs and um when failure hit cuz I never dreamt that at 41 I would be facing bankruptcy divorce

and a drinking problem so when failure hit I faced my issues like a lot of high functioning people do and that is by screaming at my husband and blaming everything on him and drinking myself into the ground avoiding my problems and hiding for my friends that's basically what I did that does not sound like the Mel Robbins you Know and um I knew what to do and this is the kind of central thesis of the work that I'm putting out into the world and the things that I'm sharing we all know what we need to

do we don't have a [ __ ] clue how to make ourselves do it when you're afraid when you're anxious when you're beaten down when you're doubting yourself when you're jealous when you're insecure those States whether they're emotional or mental they drag you down And so at the age of 41 I would wake up every morning you two and I would be pinned to my bed by anxiety it was like a gravity blanket that was just pinning me down and I would stare at the ceiling and I would think about my problems and I would

think about um what a failure I was and I felt like the world's worst mom and we lived in this really nice suburb outside of Boston and so everywhere I looked I saw people who were successful and people who had nice Cars and I could not pay for groceries I had to ask my father to pay for our mortgage while we were literally trying to figure out what to do and that was the moment that I discovered the 5-second rule by mistake by mistake you two so I was a lawyer I then got into kind

of the first.com wave I never intended to become a motivational speaker I never thought about writing a book I had to save my own ass because I realized nobody was going to come and do This for me and every night I would sit there and I would give myself a pep talk I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like this in your life where you're like all right that's it tomorrow morning I am changing tomorrow morning I'm getting out of bed tomorrow morning I'm going to stop drinking I'm not going to be

a [ __ ] to my husband I'm going to look for a job I'm going to tell my friends the truth about what's going on I am the new Mel and then the next Morning I'd wake up and the old shitty drunk angry [ __ ] Mel would still be there and I would continue to feel stuck and then one night as I was sitting there giving myself this talk that I got to change I saw this rocket launch at the end of a commercial and I thought that's it that's the secret tomorrow morning when

the alarm goes off instead of lying there and letting that anxiety and fear consume me I'm going to launch myself out of bed like a rocket I'm Going to move so fast that I'm not going to be in that bed when that anxiety hits now look I'd had four burad Manhattan at night so it was probably the alcohol that gave me that idea because that is the dumbest thing that anybody is ever said in their entire life right well the next morning for whatever reason the alarm goes off and I remembered the rocket launch and

I started counting backwards 54 3 2 1 and I stood up and that was the beginning and I used it in Secret for three years to 54321 push myself to take action 54321 put myself in pause and not scream at Chris and slowly but surely one decision at a time my whole life changed I picked up the phone and networked until I got got a job I uh start T not stop drinking entirely but could stop after a glass of wine or a Manhattan instead of like drowning myself in it uh 54321 I was pushing

myself forward and exercising and telling the truth and Working on my marriage and then um in 2011 somebody asked me uh if I would be willing to give a talk about career change because I had changed my career so many different times and it was at a thing I had never heard of called tedex and it was one of the first tedex conferences ever so there was no real formal vetting process and it was the first time I had ever stepped on a stage yes I had been a a criminal defense attorney but it's very

different to talk To a jury and a judge than to stand on a stage and stare out into an auditorium with a bunch of people with their arms crossed looking at you I get out there the speech is about changing your career right getting out of your own way it was not about the 5-sec rle in fact I was not going to talk about it because telling people you can change your life by counting backwards from five sounds like the stupidest thing you've ever heard in Your entire life I had no idea why it worked

I was just using it in secret so I start that speech I basically have a 21 minute long panic attack on stage if you look closely you will see the neck rash that grows through the entire Ted Talk and at the very end I forget how to end it and I pause and I say oh there's this thing I do I call it the 5-sec rule the moment you have an instinct to move you got to move within 5 seconds before your Brain kills it I was so disassociated you two I gave out my email

address on stage and then left the stage a year passes I go on with my life I say I'm never giving a speech again that was the worst thing that ever happened to me Ted X uploads it I don't even know it's online another year goes by so now it's 2013 and I'm starting to get messages on Facebook about some speech I gave in San Francisco and I'm replying Like oh were you there that's how this all began and then I gave speeches in 2013 for free at Women's conferences and then somebody came up to

me at the end of the Pennsylvania Women's Conference and said hey I spoke in the morning and I loved your session can I ask you a question speaker to speaker and I said sure and they said did you get your check yet and I said check you got paid for that and she Looked at me in horror and said you didn't and I was like no I didn't even know that normal people got paid to stand I thought you had to be a celebrity or a best-selling author I did not know that this was a

thing that you could do here's the thing that has got that got me through kind of the loss of the talk show and the way that I think about things that I hope helps um if you're listening you're kind of struggling with Something um I believe and I went into the talk show saying this to myself because there's a 99% chance based on the history of people that have tried to have a daytime talk show that it was going to fail and I went in there saying this I'm not doing this because I expect to

have a successful talk show I'm going to put a th% into it so so that I have no regrets and I wouldn't change a thing but I'm going into this because I know that there is a skill a Person or an experience I am meant to have that will help me for the next chapter that I can't see coming and the experience was number one meeting Mindy Borman who um is my executive producer now my business partner and CEO and it was also in working with a team of 130 people and finally being in the

right seat on the bus Lewis and not having to manage everything but being in your lane yes and and having a team and you not being the one doing everything I Know that feeling well it's not even that I was doing everything it's that I didn't have anybody managing me right and so your mind is g to go into like opportunity opportunity opportun as opposed to focus mode right and so if you ever wonder why it feels like we're running in circles it's because I'm the one leading Us in circles right yeah and and and

so it's a very hard thing to spot when you're in the middle of it yep but when I got into a Machinery that operated in a way where I was in the right seat on the bus it was absolutely liberating and that was the biggest gift of all and then the third thing is I think the the daytime talk show and being faced to face with your audience and having such a big daily audience um it was really amazing to be able to have an impact on a large number of people who feel forgotten because

they're a little bit older if they're still watching TV and a lot of the folks who are still watching TV at home during the daytime uh do not have the resources that you and I have and may not have access to therapy or live in a community where it's stigmatized and so having a platform that was reaching people um that really appreciated this kind of content and also working with a really diverse range of experts absolutely incredible so I felt like I was organizing a killer dinner party Conversation every day with real people's problems and

the world's best experts and so you kind of do a similar thing here on your podcast so I know I want to continue to do that but I'm in the middle of creating it so if I said anything other than I know it's events I know it's more courses I know collaborating with more people and getting outside my comfort zone and I also know that as I set out to to to write down what I want to do there is so Much freaking fear that I have why is that because I think because I still

feel like I'm not worthy I feel like I don't deserve it like it's old [ __ ] and I think that's the other thing about patterns everybody is just because you identify and for me as a kid for whatever reason I I have my own version of feeling invisible and feeling like I'm not good enough and so my way of coping both with my anxiety and being a survivor of sexual abuse and Um and wanting love which we all need is I was like an overachiever and so I'm the kind of person that's super busy

and a go-getter because it got me attention and if I was the one that was super super busy and achieving I not only got praise but it also insulates you from other people not picking you because you're the one in a leadership role doing the picking right and so there's a part of me at the age of 51 That is realizing that you know this these feelings of feeling unworthy and this hyper drive to try to achieve it's all coming from a place of feeling inadequate or like what I'm doing is not enough and so

that's at 50 having a talk show having a best-selling book having the audible Originals having the platform everywhere having the impact I still don't feel being the most booked female speaker in the world like You still don't feel it's so stupid it's annoying and human beings are annoying we are stuck with this wiring like if you think about it like all of the crap you believe is probably a hangover from age zero to 10 that as adults we walk around thinking the same stuff we thought as kids and I can't stand that I feel that

way but knowing it it allows me to catch it before it has me before it stops me from yeah having an event or writing That Nextbook or taking a risk what do you think the biggest fear is because you say you say not worthy or not feeling enough is that I mean it's just people liking me I think like a you know being a a people pleaser yeah we're so similar in every way it's crazy it's great you know what don't like you it's lonely Dude what happens if% what happens if 99 perc of people

like you and one% doesn't like you oh I don't give [ __ ] about that okay but if it's like if it's 5050 I think the the work that we all have to do every single one of us whether you bulldoze whether you people please whether you avoid conflict whether you're impulsive whether you uh yo-yo your decisions uh whatever it is that is your Pattern you know you the the constant trashing yourself I think the the the journey journe of your whole life is figuring out how to truly like and love yourself yeah it's it's

so true I mean I remember this was my whole life was never loving myself and needing to go prove to others originally that I'm worthy this was H happen in sports and business until I started opening up and accepting myself and and and taking off the mask when I turned 30 talking about Sexual abuse and and just kind of saying screw it I don't care what people think about me anymore this pain inside is hurting so much it's not worth living with it so I'm going to start sharing and allow myself to heal and allow

myself to finally love myself and it's so funny that we could just write a book with two words that says love yourself and that's all the book needs to say because a lot of us never remember to love ourselves remember to acquire Skills which are important remember to love other people remind ourselves to take care of our health but if we don't love ourselves internally if we don't think we can give ourselves a hug because we're not deserving of it then none of this stuff is going to matter to the point of we're always going

to need to do more to feel something right it's well nobody teaches you how to do it and see that's the thing and and you know I mean if you look at human development We're the only species that literally can't survive without another human being taking care of you and so we are biologically hardwired to bond with other people and that is very from the very beginning of when you come out bonding with somebody else and making sure they pay attention to you is your survival imperative so you are born needing somebody else and I

think what ends up happening is there's never that kind of clean break or pass off between Needing your parents to take care of you needing your friends approval to fit in to truly having ownership over giving yourself what you didn't get giving yourself what you needed and that's the piece that I've been doing a lot of during the the great pause is slowing down because so much of my busyness was fueled by uh you know praise me love me am I doing enough you know please tell me I'm doing okay okay I can breathe now

I'm okay now and when I slow down and Maybe it's a function of the anxiety that's when things get scary because that's when you really got to be with yourself and so it's in getting off the road slowing down recognizing that I'm super grateful for all the opportunity and I know the work that I'm doing makes a tremendous impact and I particularly love hearing from mental health practitioners that the 5-c rule I've heard from so many people in inpatient psychiatric words Lewis that Use the 5sec rule in the videos we put on YouTube in their

group counseling sessions with people and knowing that it is helping so many people it is like the greatest gift on the in on the planet to know that it's making a difference but I know that in this next chapter that I consciously create I want to have more fun I wanna I really want to love the process yeah I don't want to make it so hard on myself and be gripping everything so tight and it's really easy For me to see it in other people because I know what it feels like in here I'm working

hard to break the patterns that still hold me back and the big one that holds me back is um bulldozing that's the it's it's it's literally when I start to feel any level of tension this is particularly true in my marriage um I'm married to a saint thank God Chris Robbins meditates every morning it's the only reason why we've lasted 26 years um it's how he puts up with me when I feel My like whatever emotion rise I immediately raise my voice wow it's how I assert power in the relationship and I am so committed

Lewis to Breaking that pattern wow and being a more fun person to be around and a Kinder person to be around wow that's beautiful that you're getting this during the pause what do you think was what do you think was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself during the talk show experience Before the pause because you you covered so many topics and you had to research about so many things and you brought so many people on experts but then just everyday people going through their challenges what's the thing that you learned that was new because

this is something you've been studying for years and and talking about and was there anything knew that you were like shocked about you learned about yourself about Human behavior this is going to be a really well first of all there's two things the first one I'll make it deeply personal and the second one will be a thing that I learned okay um the talk show experience was almost like it's it's weird it almost feels like it didn't happen really yeah it was your whole life for like two years years yeah but you know 175 shows

it was in Super Intense you know it was it was almost a spiritual experience because I had dreamt about it for as long as I could remember and I stepped onto that talk show set with such a level of Mastery and the reason why I had a level of Mastery is because I could look backwards at my life and see that I had been heading to that moment for my entire life that the ability to create trust and take a complicated amount of Information and get down to the human connection immediately that began back in

1994 when I was a legal aid attorney doing criminal defense work in New York City my ability to understand what victims of domestic violence go through uh goes all the way back to 1986 through 1988 when I was a crisis intervention counselor volunteering on a domestic violence hotline my ability to read a teleprompter had to do with being at CNN my ability to work 18-hour days Uh was uh a function of the reality TV show world my ability to relate to somebody who had lost everything was a function of what Chris and I had gone

through my ab like just everything all of a sudden was like and it's why I can say with such urgency that you have to have faith that this is happening for a reason that this is leading somewhere and if you only just stay awake and you pay attention to what Your body's trying to tell you in those moments when you have a a signal come up like I I I think right now aren't you so happy you're a digital entrepreneur I've been speaking about building an online business for over a decade and so now I'm

like oh I know what to do and everyone's coming to me for the solutions and our and our team is digital so are virtual so we know how to run everything and we we do Zoom meetings every week already yes and so I Literally when I think back three years ago where I would like saw one of your videos or Gary's videos or somebody I'm like oh I just need to start filming the book lines at these and it was a it was a moment it was this little amount of wisdom inside of me that

I listened to and I am telling you that is the power you got to tune out the noise and you got to learn how to make what I call a quiet decision yeah quiet decision where You and you hear what your heart is is urging you to do and so I sit here because aside from the talk show ending and the the uh the book getting cancelled I was literally like okay so online courses we do Zoom we've got this amazing social media platform will figure it out and luckily I was like a squirrel with

a nut and I put a lot of money away because I was not gonna make the same mistake twice smart yeah and you've been doing a Lot of research and you've been diving in and and making sure you make the right decisions we've been texting and CH chatting about different stuff and uh the biggest the biggest insight though is we did a show that had uh I I can't believe I can't remember the gentleman's name he's an he's from Washington DC and it was a show about heroin and heroin addiction or the opioid addiction and

heroin and how this has been an epidemic in the Black community for 20 years and it only became a big National story because opioid addiction got linked to heroin abuse and it became a white problem and so he came on the show with three former addicts it was the most profound show that I have ever done because I learned something that I never even understood as a public defender and that is living in poverty and living with systematic racism creates trauma And when people experience trauma in their bodies and in their nervous systems your response

particularly if you have no resources or treatment and the vast majority of us do not get treatment for the trauma that we experience most of us want to numb it and he connected the dots between The Chronic trauma that the folks that he was serving had experienced growing up in extreme poverty in among you know around violence dealing with racism and Bigotry and violence and the natural inclination to reach for something to help you numb that pain and he connected the dots between deep emotional trauma and addictions that result in a way that I had

never heard anybody explain so eloquently and it was such an eye openening experience welcome to an absolutely heroic episode of the Mel Robbins podcast H it is my favorite time of year I am such a good mood what time of year am I talking about graduation Season I love graduation season first of all do you remember your graduation you got the robe on you got the cap on maybe you're smart enough to get those braid things that people get that are really smart everyone's celebrating you your family comes into town you finally finished your final

exams you're done and you've got this casserole of human emotions you got the sadness you've got the excitement and your whole month is all about the last the last time you're Going to get together the last time you're with your class the last time you're doing this and then that of course leads to a whole new season of first oh it's the first time you're going to do this thing and the first time that you're going to do that thing it's such a cool moment and beyond your graduation I don't know about you but but

I love graduation ceremonies give me a commencement ceremony and I am a happy camper why well you can't sit at a Commencement ceremony and not feel inspired first of all can we talk about the music oh give me some Pomp and Circumstance people and I feel like I'm going places I suddenly feel as if I have royal blood in my veins right it's so Regal I feel like I need to do something important I mean even that song and a robe you could be wearing a tank top and running shorts underneath and you feel like

you've just earned a doctorate and So the music it just sets the scene and my personal favorite part of a graduation ceremony I bet you can guess it that's right the speakers whether the speakers are just a recent graduate or it's the valdi dictorian or the the student student that the fellow students elected to speak or it's somebody famous and successful you cannot hear a graduation speech and not think about your own life I can't ever remember attending a graduation and not wanting To sprint out of there and go change everything about my life and

just last weekend I heard one of the best graduation speeches I think I've ever heard and the speaker was Kevin feige he is the chairman the president the guy that runs Marvel Studios so for our Avenger fans out there black panther Iron Man Kevin feige he is so freaking cool and you want to know something even cooler his entire commencement address for USC it was Superhero themed how freaking cool is that not some generic here or five takeaways about resilience kind of [ __ ] no this was personal it was hilarious it was poignant and

there were lessons that he shared that I feel personally more applicable to my life than even the graduates sitting there and so I want to share a few of those lessons with you okay so first of all I love this failure is never the end of a hero's Story and it shouldn't be the end of your story either second thing that he shared with us in life always lead with a yes that's what a hero does because the world is always going to say no your friends are going to be critical your boss is going

to have their own agenda the world says no you know what a hero says a hero says yes a hero says I can find a way a hero says yes it's worth the risk in fact how many times in a superhero movie is there That scene where they're going over and calculating the odds of a mission and the odds of the mission being successful are one in a trillion what does a hero say we got to try I'm going to take those out Gods because a hero leads with yes and that's what makes you a

hero forget the superpowers forget the weapons that you may have what makes you a hero in your life is your ability to say yes to pick yourself back up to go for it even when the odds are against You that's what is going to make you a hero and listening to him just last week I was reminded of a simple truth you have to be the hero in your own life there must be some Mission some purpose some dream that you have that is greater than the day-to-day things that are going to weigh you down

and you've got to be your own hero when it comes to fighting for that thing that you care about and there will be times that you want to give up and those moments when You want to give up those moments where you think you're about to fail those moments are what Define your life I'll never forget that line that Kevin feige he said failure is never the end of a hero's story often times it's the beginning of one and that brings me to the episode today last year I met a woman who was about to

give up on her dream see she had always dreamt of being a touring stand-up comic and in her wildest dreams Like this is the big one when she allows herself to be the hero of her own life she's got a series on Netflix that is what she's been fighting for for and she had been working hard on this stream for 20 years and she was about to give up throw in the towel I'm done but what did we learn that failure is not an option when it comes to your dreams and luckily for Barbara she

met me right as she was about to give up and I gave her the coaching session of a lifetime and what You're about to hear is me picking a woman back up and reminding her that failure is not an option when you are in the fight of your life to make your dreams come true you got to do whatever it takes so I moved um back home uh two years ago where where was that South Florida the same place where okay and um and I feel so safe and comfortable for the first time in my

whole adult life yeah well no not really see [Applause] I I've been an actor since I'm like 18 years old and it's been effing hard yeah so I started coaching people because I was like I'm talking Robins right now um I love that part too and I started a podcast I mean I I started directing and editing documentaries and I love it what's wrong um I still so I still want to act and um yeah I'm 46 years old so I feel like Um it's it's okay to be comfortable and and and small and hold

on it's okay to be comfortable if that's what you want yeah it's not okay to be small cuz that's not what you are all right I'm going to say that to you it's okay to be comfortable it's not okay to be small being too small in life telling yourself that you should be small that ah it's okay you know I I that's the number one an issue shrinking yourself you see I for the last couple years every single January I have taught a course about the science of dreaming and not just dreaming but dreaming big

and dreaming big as a way to create a whole new chapter in your life a way to tap into your potential and more than 200,000 people around the world have taken this science of dreaming course with me and here's the number one thing that I noticed after Teaching this course over and over and over again to people around the world it's that telling yourself that you're small putting a lid on your own dreams on your own potential convincing yourself that me is okay that's the biggest problem if you're somebody who doesn't know what you want

I guarantee you it's because you do things that make you feel small and then you tell yourself that's okay and here's the thing that I'm really worried about I'm Worried about the fact that if you continue to do this if you continue to tell yourself I don't know what I want I can never have it I'm 46 I tried it's hard it's not going to work out for me if you are the one that is against your big dreams in life that is the reason why you're unhappy that you are the single biggest loudest voice

for why you can't have what you deserve that is the source of misery That is the source of feeling lost and so we got to stop that right now because the fact is I don't care how long you've worked on your dreams how long you've avoided your dreams how long you've been scared of your dreams how long you've downplayed your dreams those dreams are still very much alive in inside of you you're not supposed to be small you're not supposed to be arguing against your dreams let other people do that you're the one who's supposed

to Have the biggest and the loudest and the brightest voice when it comes to the matter of your dreams you know it reminds me of this quote that I just love let your light shine so bright that other people can find their way out of Darkness you know if you're not supposed to be small what are you supposed to be you are supposed to be this big beautiful flame that flame that is burning so bright inside of you as you're marching Toward the things that really call to you that's your self-expression that's your happiness that's

your creativity that is a human being that is alive and for those of you that look at me and that you're like oh my God Mel like I just you're just so inspiring you keep Reinventing yourself every time I reinvent myself do you know how I do it it's because I start to realize I'm feeling small I start to realize that I'm feeling a little lost that I'm Feeling the energy drain that I'm not feeling like a flame burning bright that I'm full of excuses and I do this exercise that I'm going to share with

you right now to get me back in touch with that dream that you can never run away from because what are you learning from me your dreams are meant for you and they are either going to be something something that you pursue that helps you become brighter and more embolden and more of yourself or there Something that's going to haunt you I can give you example after example after example of this I'll give you an example in my own life so in 2007 so we're talking 15 years ago I got a part-time job on Saturday

mornings hosting a local call-in radio show in Boston Massachusetts I absolutely loved that radio show loved it and from the moment I hosted the first call-in show I knew This is exactly what I want to do in life and the truth is I even knew it before and the reason why I knew it before is because I had been a humongous fan of Howard Stern I mean I listened to Howard Stern way back in the day when uh he was like shock jock material before he went through Psychotherapy and became really amazing at interviewing people

like back in the really disgusting days I was a Howard Stern junkie and there was something about the energy of Listening to Howard and everybody on the show that I just felt drawn to it I could not stop thinking what an amazing thing it would be to be able to do that with your life and so here I get years later to be on the mic I'm hosting this show I absolutely love this show that show ends up growing into a week weekday show I end up winning an award next thing you know CNN is

calling and I find myself then in 2011 leaving radio and going onto television as a legal analyst For CNN but here's the thing radio never left me every time Howard Stern would pop up on my dial I would feel the pull as podcasting started to happen and become a thing in 20112 12 and I started seeing more and more podcasts pop up I started to feel the pull what is that pull feels like jealousy it feels like longing it feels like desire it feels like sometimes it can feel like inferiority that you get close to

your Dream and you want it so badly that you literally put up all kinds of reasons to protect yourself from your dreams so maybe it's the people you're really insecure around that's my daughter she has a dream of being a singer songwriter of doing Stadium tours just the other day you know I saw that Taylor Swift had just done something that nobody's ever done she's got all 10 songs on the Billboard 100 top 10 freaking Unbelievable and I texted it to my daughter and you know what she texted back please don't send this stuff to

me CU I'll never be able to do that you know what that is that's somebody who is deeply in touch with their dreams but they're terrified of them and so we're going to talk about that but what I want to explain to you is there is something inside of you and you know it there is something meant for you and you either So afraid of it that you push it away or you long for it like I did since 2011 if you watch my Ted X talk which now has 29 million views you will notice

that in that tedex talk I talk about my goal back in 2011 on that stage I said my goal is to be the number one radio host in the world so here we are 11 years later and we're launching the podcast and it's taken me 11 years to get closer than ever to the thing for these past 11 Years have I stopped thinking about the dream nope have I noticed other people that are pursuing my dream yep have I felt jealous have I felt insecure yes I have all of those just like you do that

is evidence that your dream is alive why has it been tough you really love her you're getting on a plane and you're going to go see her yeah I love her bu okay so I guess I'm kind of coming to the realization that I haven't been Hearing her properly connecting with her on the level that I should be and now trying to figure that out yeah so a couple months ago she had we we've been having counseling and that's good MH my husband and I go counseling it helped she was doing it before and then

it kind of became the group and then now I kind of see a little bit on my own so I've recognizing these things but I also know like a couple of months ago in counseling she admitted on her last tour That she had them emotionally connected with somebody else so obviously that put a big fire under my ass yeah and U supposedly supposedly I handled it really well so she's wanting to you know do all this she's worked a lot on herself for uh kind of getting to the point where she's at she's got a

spot on the bookshelf that's 12 15 composition books deep of Just Thoughts ever since she was back I think she said till like 12 Amazing because of some things that happened to her before that age of attention this is flag 2 services to Pittsburgh out of AG 17 this Serv has a final boarding doors are closing in about minutes and they will not and then a lot of regrets come up and a lot of things you wish you could do over and then you start realize there [ __ ] from your past that really messed

with you that you shov down that happened when you were a kid this is I Think the cycle that we all hit we all it and here's the amazing opportunity you not only have an amazing opportunity to change the person that you are and to change the relationship that you have with your wife but you have an amazing opportunity to change the relationship you have with yourself yes because your thoughts your feelings they actually matter too and you can't get I've been NE yes see relationships are Amplifiers you go into a relationship and you're not

right with yourself that relationship just magnifies what's missing what did you just get from that I like that well it's going to expose those demons more yeah and here's the thing that most men at least in a traditional gender sense don't understand that it takes tremendous strength to be vulnerable it Takes tremendous strength to talk about the [ __ ] that's bothering me yeah it takes tremendous strength to admit that you're wrong and to be scared and that's actually what makes you connect more deeply to your partner my husband of 25 years failed miserably in

the restaurant business nearly bankrupt lost it all when he left the business he was an alcoholic and completely lost and demoralized and um I did not know until Recently because it was through these Rock Bottom moments that my career took off I invented this little thing called the 5sec rule that I used to get out of bed when the anxiety was so crushing the only thing that would help me escape it was drinking myself into Oblivion got to numb it all out and um I started using this little brain hack to 54321 shut down the

noise in my brain and launch myself forward through the fear through the pain through all of it and my whole Life turned around Chris's life turned around but I did not know until recently when we've been in couple's therapy that the man has for the last eight years just been the hell out of because he feels like he failed he feels like he wasn't there for me he feels like he didn't do his job providing yeah and then starts to get success start find themselves Lind I'll Be is that the opportunity to connect with her

take look at your only I can see that I can see that see you got to learn how to love yourselfi regardless of what happened regardless of what you did or didn't do regardless of all that you got to learn how to look in the mirror and see a man who is worth roting for of it is not too late to change it is Not too late to change your life it's not too late to change your marriage but it's an inside out job you start to show yourself some kindness and some love yeah and

you start sharing more of the stuff that's coming up for you and that is the path that's going to actually heal you and it's going to stop yes yeah yeah so to speak yeah definitely yeah name a Mojo I think that's what she met at me I had a nice Swagger and everything but it's uh Gotten diluted or by life I think so maybe my own just being stagnant and accepting instead of keep pushing you know my good friend Joel Maron who you should follow just sent me a freaking thing that he wrote today oh

my God Joel praise you Joel Joel I cannot believe this Joel I'll give you his name he literally wrote me this whole thing that he wrote today that you need to Hear find out uh m a r i o n he wrote me this whole thing about the fact that when we are born we have incredible potential but so few of us realize what we're capable of and it uses this analogy this is in your DNA you were created to be a Lamborghini in life you have literally everything inside you to be able to perform

like that Lambo you're manufactured that way that engine 729 horsepower engine is in There that insane torque you have unbelievable intrinsic ability to go from 0 to 65 mph in under 3 seconds but for most of us we never experien close to those numbers that we are created to perform at and so he tells a story about how he was test driving one but the neighborhood he's in has like 35 M hour speed okay he ended up not buying cuz he never experienced Cent right what you're talking about is you're talking about The fact that

you actually know there is that inside of you and when you lose your capacity you built and you stop growing and you stop stretching yourself and you pushing yourself forward learning new stuff expressing yourself something inside you starts to feel like it's dying and so I'm telling that engine yes it's still there and the reason why it's still there is because you're Missing and you can only miss something you know okay so I think Joel sent me that for a reason in times in my life when I felt lost or stagnant I say I feel

like a racehorse tied to a pony ride at a kid's birthday party like I'm built to [ __ ] run yeah yeah and I hate it when I feel like just tied down like that yeah and so there is something inside you that you've been Holding back what do you think it is not really sure well I would take on a challenge not sure if it's a passion that I've ever tapped into or something that I've missed since you know earlier years who knows I think you should take on a challenge I think you should

take on climbing some mountain or some kind of race or some like Fitness thing something that's a little out of your comfort zone to give you something to push You it doesn't have to be the perfect thing just something that you're up to is enough yeah yeah but I want to acknowledge you for the fact that you recognize that there's an issue and you're taking the steps to go make the effort you're getting on a plane you're flying to surprise your wife not only that but I deal with motion sickness vertigo and and I don't

drive well at night so I'm about I've got the B the bands on great they work I Took my motion sickness pills I love that I give you a high five for that that's fantastic we're doing what we can doing it then she know she doesn't know you're coming she does now she didn't a couple days ago but then she was we were trying to do the uh pregnancy reveal to some of the family cuz we just found out last week congratulations so she was all like I don't know I'm going to do it you're

there and I'm here and I want to video Chat my family and be able to like tell them cuz she's up where some of the family she was seeing some coming to visit so I told her I'll tell you what well I'm actually coming up there so she was pretty surprise but you know that's awesome you're going to be an awesome dad you want to know who the best dads are yeah the ones who are actually right with themselves that's true the ones who are able to talk about their emotions the ones who are able

to be human this Is my second child like I this is her first but I told them like my son's uh almost 23 that's amazing so start over like yeah it's been a it's been a lot of emo you're not going to start over you actually are building a p okay okay and my son's been great he's he's like guys would be super impressed with how good my son is he hasn't seen his mom since he was 6 years old so I kind of raise him on I mean there's people in out of the life

but you Know yeah you got you got a moment in your life to make yourself really proud of yourself yeah I appreciate it and uh if I were a betting woman some days I am depends how much liquor I I'd place my beted on that's what I'd like I want that more than anything don't wish for it don't want it and my wife deserves it do the work no no hold on what go ahead you deserve it I deserve it I Okay give yourself what you're seeking from other people seek redemption and forgiveness because you

deserve it from yourself and in my book forgiveness means that you have stopped wishing things could be different accept everything that's happened or didn't happen as a [Music] lesson and as long as you hold on to that [ __ ] from the past you're actually still there Yeah okay what' you get out of this um I got a little more resiliency a little pick me up and um I'm glad I came and talked to you very much and took the time I wasn't sure if I was imposing cuz I didn't know if it was more

like a a female thing but uh I have plenty of emotion that I'm pretty open with sometimes too open maybe I I don't think so I'm also going to introduce you to my husband so he created a men's group Called or a men's retreat called Soul degree where he takes guys out into the woods for 5 days to actually have these kinds of conversations and he's had guys from 22 to 60 plus multiple tours of Duty professional athletes regular just everyday folks like all of us and it's remarkable and what he also does because he

only does these a couple times a year is he um also has uh calls every month where uh it's guys get on and he leads a Meditation and then there's a topic that you all discuss and it's really freaking cool and so I will make sure that you have his information and I will get both of your email addresses and I will have my team email you a credit so you can listen to one of my books on Audible that's cool I've been doing a lot more trying to listen to stuff and you know you

just don't know what direction to go because some stuff it's just some people just want to make Some money on you and you you know there's so much out there you just want to find the right path yeah as best as possible yeah so awesome thank you what are three things that very successful people run every day that helps them be successful they get their ass out of bed uh they you and I both struggled with that oh my God I still struggle with it so do I it's I don't think people believe me it

is a thing every day of my life every day of my life it's Such a trip well I I understand why for me anyway I don't know the reason why it's hard for you but there are a there are levels of reasons why it is so hard to get out of bed for me and why you have to get your ass out of bed um and I'll explain why it's important in a second but first I want to explain why it's actually difficult for me so number one from a physiological standpoint it was very helpful

for me to learn that your cortisol levels are their highest When you first wake up in the morning and so cortisol being the stress hormone it's also something that can then flood your body with a sense of like worry or heaviness or overwhelm and so knowing that that was just a fact in terms of what's Happening your body was helpful second for me personally part of my childhood trauma was having a incident where you know somebody did something to me in the middle of the night and that encoded an experience in my body that is

Triggered by waking up because at the age of I guess I must have been like nine I had an experience where I woke up one morning and an older kid had climbed into my bed and done something and the second I woke up Tom I was in full alarm State figh ORF flight kicked in I disassociated and I knew something bad had happened and then I had a second response which is did I I did something wrong right and so you know you talk a Lot on the show about habits and how habits have three

parts the trigger the pattern the reward waking up in the morning is a trigger Tom for my body to remember this experience of feeling something's wrong so that's the second reason and the third reason is is because I have [ __ ] amazing sheets and my bed is super comfortable and my husband uh used to be next to me but he would he now gets up at like 5:45 he just rolls right Out of bed and I love to just stay in that bed Dom under those sheets it's so cozy it's so snuggly it's absolutely

amazing and so that's why it's hard for me I don't freaking feel like getting up and then on top of it and you and I both know this that an object that is resting will stay resting unless there is a force that acts upon it to get it to move and so it is always hard for me and how I've resolved this is by basically realizing that there are a few things That I will never feel like doing I will never feel like unloading the dishwasher I will never feel like folding uh clean clothes I

will never feel like cleaning that damn cat box or picking up the dog poop in the yard yeah and I don't ever feel like getting out of bed and I still have to do it it's interesting so I think for me my cortisol levels are too low oh so whatever it is that gets people out of bed from a physiological level I don't have that so I've always Felt to me it feels like the the neurochemistry of sleep is slow to be flushed out of my system maybe it's just that the cortisol doesn't pump enough

and so getting out of bed just seems like this Herculean task because even if there's something I'm excited to do I find myself still wanting to lay in bed and then the whole warm and cozy thing yeah that goes a long way like even now I will if I'm sleeping alone like Lisa is traveling right now so I'm sleeping Alone so I always wake up before Lisa so I can't turn the AC off I need it to be cold when I sleep now how cold do you keep your bedroom 68 degrees so I keep mine

between 66 and 68 and that's also part of the problem the bed is warm yep and it's like climbing into an ice pack to throw their sh off yes so I give myself 10 minutes to get out of bed 10 minutes so yeah yeah yeah I that for me going from four or 5 hours to 10 minutes was like oh my god well that is a huge Thing for do 10 minutes I try not to fall back asleep is the honest answer so I I when I wake up even though I've woken up naturally because

I don't use an alarm you don't use an alarm I'm like like it it's I wake up rough like Lisa in the beginning of our relationship it was really almost contentious because I was so grumpy in the mornings and I'm like you don't understand like whatever the the chemistry is of sleep I have a hard time Shuing it off and I remember I heard a joke one time I'm going to totally bastardize this but the guy was like uh to all you morning people what the [ __ ] are you talking about he's like I

don't even want to talk like what are you people going on about you're so happy you're so smiley and I was like yes that's exactly how I feel so everything just feels when I wake up so anyway I give myself 10 minutes to get out of bed so and so when you're in bed y are you Thinking about something are you looking at the ceiling are you what so this would I think surprise everybody I sleep completely bundled up under the covers like like with the pillow over your head not the pillow but the blankets

oh see I put pillows over my head and I a little breathing hole right here it's like a safety thing I think hiding I couldn't have that on my face on my body that would feel nice when on my face uh so I'm under the covers and Now this isn't true historically but for the last probably two years I sleep with a book playing in my headphones a book playing while you're sleeping while I sleep it is incredible what and I don't this isn't one that I necessarily recommend but if people struggle to stay asleep

so my I fall asleep easily I have a hard time staying asleep so I will wake up three times a night every single night the third one being the final time I Wake up yep and I have to switch my headphones out so they don't die and I have three sets of headphones so headphone one I fall asleep and that's in ear headphone 2 in ear headphone three over the ear you sleep with headphones so are you on your back yeah yeah yeah yeah but it is it is unbelievably comforting I can't even tell you

is it the same book uh well no it changes once I finish the book okay but I'll read it in these little Increments because I have to keep rewinding it and don't worry we will get to the other two things that amazingly successful people do but yes so it's the same book okay until it's done I read it in these tiny little increments it's a specific kind of book what kind of book it has to be a book like have you ever read like a biography of Lincoln which Happ to be what I'm reading now

and they'll spend like 17 pages on what the grass was like in his front yard and so It's like you don't have to like really scrutinize every sentence you can sort of drift in and out and so what ends up happening is I drift and then I'm gone and I'll wake up and let's say I started on chapter 2 I wake up and it's like chapter nine so I'm like okay I know to go back to chapter 2 and then I fall asleep again and then I wake up again I go back to usually chapter

2 and then I'll sleep so when I wake up I've got the book's still playing so then I'm Like well I'm interested I'll turn off the AC so it starts warming up I stay under the blankets so I start and I'll even pull another blanket over me so I start getting too warm yeah then I'm like cool my 9 minutes and 42 seconds are up I need to because I I have a rule I have to be standing up before the 10th minute hits okay and so I'm up out of bed before the 10th minute

hits but that that has worked like a charm for me wow I this is very complicated I'm just Sitting here about the management that you have to do do around this but if you know I think that's the most important thing about advice is everybody's looking for the Silver Bullet when in fact it's got to work for you yeah that would never work for me I'm already starting to think about why I sleep on this ear and what about the headphones and I'd forget to charge them and then I'd be awake and staring at the

ceiling and and so that's that's fascinating um You know one of the things that I uh also got from what you were saying is that because of the cortisol like flying through my system because I am somebody that has had a very disregulated nervous system meaning I have sort of lived life with the accelerator on on edge that when I would wake up and I would feel that wave of like being on edge it it had a very weird effect of not motivating me to get out of bed but pinning me there and Ironically intellectually

I know and this is one of the reasons why it's important to get up because if you can get up you can start moving and if you start moving you can keep moving and as you move the chemistry changes and your mood shifts and within five minutes you feel different even if it's just like a little incremental bit of difference even though I know that the feeling in the body was so heavy that I thought I'll just lay here and hopefully it'll go away and it just gets worse and that's why I asked you what

you do in those 10 minutes because one of the reasons why I say get out of bed is because most people reach for their phone and most people win the battle for success for dreams for mental health for happiness for confidence in the first 30 seconds of being awake because they reach for the phone and they immediately direct their attention at other people's Lives yeah and so that's why I say I know nobody will I when I tell people don't look at your phone leave your phone out of hand everyone's like and then they go

and do it but if you just get out of bed immediately you got a fighting chance to be awake enough to not do that yeah and so I think most people if they're struggling with being successful or happy or whatever I guarantee you you give your attention to social media or your phone before you've Done the second thing and so now we're on to the second thing which is set a freaking intention for the day set a mark for what's one thing that matters to you what is the one thing that you're going to make

progress on today and that one thing could be how you're going to show up with your family it could be today I'm getting to that that gym or it could be some project at work that you're going to move the needle on or it could be some habit that you've learned On impact theory that today is the day I'm going to do that thing that I learned from Tom and you're going to do it and it's so important for you to direct your mind that this matters to me because your mind is paying attention and

if you set a little Habit in place and successful people do this you have something that matters to you because the other thing about successful people is we're all [ __ ] busy and we' have a million things going on and the second That we look at our phone or we walk through the front door of our business or we step into the kitchen other people will now need you and you will most likely spend the rest of your day andless you have a huge staff and you've got amazing boundaries and you got a light

lot of white space in your calendar and that is not me you will spend the rest of your day Tom reacting to everybody else's stuff Y and so if you can get into the habit of going Today the most important thing for me to make progress on is X you have directed to your mind that this thing matters now if you can actually inch It Forward before you look at your phone before you start your workday before you start responding to everybody else you will start to develop a superpower because you will see yourself prioritizing

what matters to you and that's critical So for anybody with a side hustle do not be working on that thing just at night when You get home your dreams your business it deserves the first 10 minutes of the morning and if you literally just lay like one brick on that path between where you are and where you want to go that one 10 minute of effort every single day on the thing that matters most to you that changes everything for time because I think most people are struggling with the fact that you have all these

things that you want to do but your life is organized in the exact Opposite of what is important to you that you've let everybody else dictate how you spend your time you've let everybody else kind of take over your day and you haven't done the basics of waking up get moving think about what matters to you and if you can just inch It Forward you know there's even research about this uh I know you've talked about this too the the progress principle which they've studied extensively at Harvard Business School That when they look at very

successful people and they ask them okay you know what makes for a fulfilling week and they were specific to work but I think this applies more generally what made for a fulfilling week for most people that are successful is I made progress on something that matters to me I felt a sense of control and progress over the things that I care about and so if you really are someone and this used to be me for sure where You feel like you're last on the list you never have time to get to what's important that everybody

else's needs come first that years keep going by and you're not seeing yourself make the changes that you want to make or not make the money you want to make or not launch that business or start that thing take a look at the first three or four things you do in the morning and see where you put your attention because I guarantee you it is not aligned with What you actually care about and so if you can grab that back you can do the third thing and the third thing for me is it's sort of

this combination I call it aligned action and that is that successful people act before they feel ready they act like the person they want to be instead of the person that they feel like today that they you know and you talk about this too this is the philosophy that you believe in which Is uh behavioral activation therapy act like the person you want to become can you give me an example of that oh yeah so I'm launching a podcast I've been thinking about talk about not taking your own advice okay I most people don't know

this but I got my start in the media business this is my first taste of the media business business in 2008 by hosting a local call-in radio show on Saturday mornings in Boston massachus I did not know that yes I paid for my kids Braces by reading Invisalign ads for a dentist in Boston that I still go to shout out to Dr Ronan uh he did not pay me to say that that was a long time ago um and I love that show Tom I freaking loved it why did I have a radio show I'll

tell you why because for those of you that have seen my first here with Tom this was the period in my life where Chris's restaurant was going off the rails we were nearly a million dollars in debt there were leans on our house I Had lost my job I needed money that's why I had that job it paid $25 an hour for two hours every Saturday and I felt like the world's worst mom because every other parent was at Town soccer somebody else thank you thank you thank you to The Graces for driving our kids

they were taking our kids to soccer for us while I could go h this radio show and Chris was doing whatever he could to save the business that show was a Lifeline I would talk to real people Every single day it made me feel connected to people it made me it gave me a sense of purpose I loved the intimacy of it and so ever and that show eventually grew and it became syndicated and then I won something called The Gracie award for my coverage of trayvon's murder and that got CNN's attention and they called

me and said hey you know we would love to have you be a legal analyst here and so that then got me on CNN and ever since I left Radio I have missed it and I've been wanting to get back to it and in the back of my mind especially after I wrote the 5sec role I kept thinking I need to launch a podcast I need to launch a podcast I love podcast I I I have I I need to do this and it mattered so much to me I was so like drawn to a

Time that I think that often times when the dream is such a call the excuses match the desire for it right and it was never the right time it just never I just talked Myself out of it over and over and over and over and over again and so finally like 18 months ago I literally woke up one morning I had my own wakeup call and I'm like that's it like you're going to let another 10 years go by unless you make a [ __ ] decision to get started how did you get started so

you decide you're going to do it and like take people into the weeds a bit this is where I think people go off the rails they're sitting at home thinking yeah I Want to start a podcast as well and I want to hear because I know that you end up doing it on a way more professional stage but walk people through what who you call was it a relationship that you built 20 years ago I want people to follow that yeah so first things first I went to my friend Google honest to God even though

I know Tom and I know Lisa I waso too embarrassed to ask you because you know you guys are like out here with all These millions of subs and you've like been doing the show for a while and same thing with lwis like you know you and I have some amazing friends and often times I find that going to people that already seem like they're at the top of the top that's intimidating because it it magnifies at least for somebody who's got a lot of insecurity like me it magnifies the distance between where you are

starting and where somebody is years down the road because part of your um Genius Tom is that like it's easy to look at what Tom's built and forget the fact that this dude has been studying film since he went to USC for film school this guy is a insanely successful entrepreneur that's bringing all of that Sweat Equity and learning to the table this is somebody that's dedicated himself to like years of figuring this out and sampling and editing and so I personally find that when you go to somebody that's already there it could Be a

little discouraging so I went to Google and I'm like how do you start a podcast honest to God because I I'm smart enough to know it's different than radio and I didn't even know what equipment people have I didn't know anything about okay do you go to like how do you put a podcast up do you put it everywhere I don't know like is there a form that you put the title on and the captions and then do you send it somewhere like I know how to upload a Video to YouTube I know how to

but I don't know anything about this market and so I went to Google um you're going to laugh at me but I bought a course about podcasting not laughing at all um I uh studied a bunch of videos about the type of equipment that people bought um I then just started stalking people that are doing it and I started to say myself okay what does somebody that already has a podcast what do they do that I'm not Currently doing and so the first step is obviously learn about it identify a group of people that serve

as what I call your lights on the path and so lights on the path are people that are anywhere from one step ahead of you to 10 years ahead of you and these are all people that can guide you forward if you study what they did and most of them by the way we live in the most magical period of time you have no [ __ ] excuse for not walk toward what you want I realize it may be harder for some of us with mental health issues I realize that not everybody starts at the

same uh starting line because of bias and all kinds of things that can happen to people but the bottom line is through your actions and attitude you can create anything you [ __ ] want and look I'm sitting here saying I've been wanting to do a podcast for eight years and for six years I was nothing but excuses for why I couldn't get started and then finally I'm like [ __ ] it I got to start and so you start by Google the topic number one become a student of what you want to be first

that's the mindset what can I learn what are people doing that is calling to me what are people doing that I don't like and so as I started being a student of this really important that's why I say Google Google is a search engine become a student of what you want to learn about or launch in your life and there's a bazillion books There's master classes there's free videos there's workshops and what's so cool people like Tom are unpacking this [ __ ] for you with people and so you can also hear people's stories and

so I probably just immerse myself in it Tom and I'd say the first person that I called was rich Ro and rich rooll is uh a really good friend of mine and amazing human amazing human being and he was really cute uh I called and said okay I'm going to do this thing what would You tell me knowing everything you know having been doing the podcast for seven years and you know interesting about rich that guy is an artist incredible Storyteller amazing uh story you know personal story his hands are in every aspect of every

aspect of that podcast like that is Rich's gift to the world and what he said to me is he said turn on a mic it's good advice turn on a Mic start recording [ __ ] but I'm not ready but I don't have the equipment but I haven't done this but Mel if you want to do this thing turn on the mic and start taping episodes and then listen to it and they're going to sound like [ __ ] and you're going to realize it's a hell of a lot harder than you think it is

and so here's the second thing so number one become a student right of what you want and even if you don't know people or you don't have a network that is you know Like the one that you and I have built over time you can still learn from people they haven't met full stop especially with YouTube it's crazy it's incredible and then you just reverse engineer it and so what you'll do is if you were to Simply do this exercise like we're just going to stick with the podcast episode but you could insert anything how

do I start a dry cleaning business you could Google I don't know how to do That but I bet there's a video about it how do I start a catering business do I need a commercial kit kitchen to do that like all these things somebody has figured out and they have put a video out or they've written a blog post or they've written a book or they're doing a course right now and it as you're a student here's your assignment from Mel Robbins write down all the actions that you're learning about that people do oh

I gota for Podcasting I got to learn how to edit Audio Oh I got to learn about equipment oh I got to understand all these platforms oh I've got to listen to a ton of podcasts to understand what I like and what I don't like oh I've got to record some oh I've got to under like there's a bazillion things right and so keep that list handy because every day you can wake up and look at that list and there is your road map to what you want to create in your life and what Happens

next is there will be something on that list that is the starting line for real like when [ __ ] gets real and for me that was turning on a microphone which I started doing about 6 months ago how did you deal with being bad if you were bad in the beginning oh I was terrible well because I you know I Yammer on and on and on and I I I have a very dyslexic ADHD brain and so I'm all over the freaking place and it was interesting because I just assumed Having done six audio

projects with Audible and you know these two self-published audio books that okay we got a lot to talk about well one of the big takeaways for me in being a student of this is that the podcast is not about me it's about what my intention is that I want to to have the listener experience and if you are going to create something that has an intention it has a very different level of artistry and discipline and purpose To it and so I figured out very quickly that yes I personally want a podcast to sound like

two friends having a conversation and without a certain level of prep and intention on my part it was not going to turn out that way it was going to be Mel Meandering all over the place I mean even just here like you and I sit down and we're 20 minutes into a conversation and we're already like you know we're Like time out and so I needed to in my student mindset I needed to be honest with myself that there are things that I have as natural talents and skills just like everybody does but I also

have major weaknesses that I got to get under control so that I don't derail possible success and fulfillment with this project based on my weaknesses that's the part I want to understand though so you have these weaknesses they're Rearing their head you're having some kind of emotional response how do you soothe yourself through that is it just a belief that hey I can learn I'll get to the other side that the sort of awkwardness is a natural part of the progression or what do you do to keep that emotional demon from consuming you it's an

excellent question it brings us to number three right because we've talked about get up we've talked about setting attention oh we've talked about Aligned action and part of aligned action is about your attitude so I think I I am proud of this unwavering faith and optimism that I have programmed into my Noggin over the past several years that I believe that whatever it is that I'm doing is leading me somewhere else that every experience especially like the shitty stuff that you can in The universe is guiding me somewhere kind of way no I just feel

like so so it could be mystical and spiritual but for me it's more of an internal grounded faith and uh you know I think you and I talked about this but I I I I had this kind of uh you know wakeup call moment where I realized oh my God you know you and I are sitting here today Tom and if you and I look back at our lives you can see how everything that happened led you right here and that even the hardest Moments had a deep purpose in shaping who you are your skills

your expertise your heart your soul your habits your perspective and knowing that that's always been true and do you believe that that's true that everything that's happened to you has somehow prepared you for what's happening now I don't believe that it's prepared me I think that it shapes you for sure I think most people live by the law of accident though and I'm terrified to live by the law of Accident what is the law of accident that things happen and I just go with them so I'm every yes I don't think everything happens for well

so one of my favorite quotes everything happens for a reason but sometimes the reason is that you're dumb and unprepared or whatever stupid you make dumb decisions and yeah that I will agree with but I think that we make meaning and purpose out of things I don't think they intrinsically have meaning and purpose so I think that Life so I think the second law of Thermodynamics is true that everything leads towards entropy AKA chaos and the only way to get it back on track is what you're walking us through which is you inject energy back

into the system and so this idea of aligned action makes a lot of sense to me you have to figure out okay I set my I got out of bed I set my intention and now I'm going to do things that align with my intention yes but that's going to be hard there going To be things knocking me off course so it's interesting that you have a deep faith that like I guess you've made sense of everything no here here's let me see if I can explain it this way um I know I guess it

it makes me feel grounded confident and assured that all the [ __ ] that's happened back there stuff I would not want to repeat but if it brought me to here I would that it has shaped me prepared me it has had a purpose do you Think things sometimes shape you for the worst though I think things shape you for the worse until you get the lesson or the wakeup call or the frustrated kind of rock bottom moment is Mel Robbins just unusually good at making use of that I actually think you are oh I

think you know I think that I I hate the fact that I have to hit a [ __ ] wall to audience though it's really interesting so for the the audience one of the first Things you said when you got here was I'm actually doing really well right now I've learned to like reject all the self hatred and beating myself up and all that and my reaction was that's amazing but you've made such extraordinarily good use out of all your struggle you are uniquely able to take that mess of life and turn it into this

really simple idea that people can deploy immediately I literally find it comforting Knowing that somehow every experience of my life is going to be connected to Something in the future because you're good at learning lessons I have to put that caveat yes and when I believe that the [ __ ] that's going on is going to somehow connect to Something in the future it allows me to be more resilient it allows me to a little bit more um is it objective yeah objective when things are going wrong or when I'm in a really Low point

or when I listen to my first couple like episodes that I record okay Rich Roll I'm going to do a podcast episode now and I listen I'm like holy [ __ ] this sucks and I just took on an advertising part like this really sucks I got a lot of work to do I go yeah and thank God you had that call with Rich and thank God you're listening list to it cuz you're right Mel if you want this to really make a difference in people's lives if you want to really do something Awesome here

you're going to have to [ __ ] like learn something new walk me through that process so what are you doing now the first or what did you do the first few episodes before I came here so we have taped about 17 versions of episode one not because I'm like trying to be perfect but because I have a certain standard for what I want to put out there and I Literally as we've gotten closer and closer and closer and closer and closer to launch I just knew that what we had put out was not what

I was supposed to put out and that and I and I kept standing though not like in a place like we're fed like we're we're literally launching four days from this interview time two hours ago I was in the corner of my hotel room in La my team had built a a a uh remember when we were kids you make Those little forts out of uh uh uh sofa cushions y I am in a fortress of sofa cushions on the floor of the uh hotel room a mile from here so the question be first off

people don't believe that but then the next question becomes okay so you have all of the same insecurities and fears and doubts like wants the projects to work and afraid that it's not going to work out so that is super relatable but what then makes the difference like if Mel Robins struggles With all the things that average human struggles with how do you then go on to achieve extraordinary success and most people don't um so there is probably a multi-layered answer so I'll number it as I go along um I think that number one work

ethic I'll outwork anybody um I know that the secret to success is not getting it right it's actually uh getting after it until you get it done and um so work ethic work ethic work Ethic anything is possible if you are willing to give up your timeline and you're willing to put your head down and put the work in the second thing is um I know that failure and screw-ups are a massive uh part of Paving the road to success like you know I'm not a lucky person that can just study stuff and impl ment

it and then it all works out I have this deeply personal process that everybody shares by the way of studying Everybody who does it really well and then implementing their best practices and then tweaking it so that it feels right and so failur screwups detours all of it uh is part of the road to success the third thing is and you know I write about actually all of this stuff in the high five habit there is this mindset trick that I created that is an entire chapter in the high five habit that I created when

I was um launching the 5-sec rule book which uh The hard cover book was a huge failure believe it or not and um when we launched the hard cover uh it originally uh we had the bottom line is that when I launched the hard cover Evan the hard cover was not available for sale my marketing kicked off like there was a screw up with Amazon I started marketing I told everybody to go buy it and it read is out of stock couldn't even pre-order it it was like out of stock huge mixup on my part

I was a Self-published author and as my attitude was going down the drain I literally started saying this thing to myself on repeat and everybody you should just steal this um it's like chapter 13 in the book this moment is preparing me this moment is preparing me this moment is preparing me for something amazing that hasn't happened yet and every single thing in my life that has been a struggle or a hardship or a heartbreak Or anything even losing people I love to the disease of hopelessness and addiction those moments of going through tremendous grief

and heartache prepared me to help other people to do it and so when you can start to ground yourself in this idea that I never really liked by the way Evan that whole phrase life is happening for me because there's a lot of that I didn't I don't want it I don't believe it's for me but there's something about tweaking it like this is Preparing me it allows me to take control of a situation I don't like I didn't want I didn't plan for it's not what I deserve but if it's preparing me for something

it flips my mindset into this attitude that allows me to endure it and allows me to have perspective that someday I will look back on it and understand the wisdom that I gained from it and so you know the failure of the hard cover with the 5sec rule prepared me for something All right it introduced me to my business model that has a huge partnership with audible like the 5c rule because of the failure of the hard cover became the most sold and listen to audiobook of the year of all of 2017 and opened up

a whole new business model and you know which by the way is still bearing out everybody because as the book sells out around the world it's the audio book like we were the number one selling audio book in the world last Week number two selling title on Amazon because of the audio book and so there's a whole new business model I learned and so you need to understand that every failure that you have everybody it is actually preparing you for something else that's number three that sort of attitude um the other thing honestly is I've

been successful in spite of myself Evan because it's only since learning the high five habit that I have been able to Truly reset my default thinking and become a person whose default is to cheer for herself do I have insecurities yes do I have self-doubts yes but the one thing I don't do anymore is I do not beat the hell out of myself anymore you see even All Those Years everybody when uh my speaking career was taking off I was literally my biggest critic it was never enough it was well I kind of you know

even though the audience is giving me a Standing ovation and the clients just hired me to do seven more events Evan I'm like well God I really screwed up minute 43 I really blew it that time like I was relentless with myself and there's a difference everybody between having a level of excellence in what you do and high standards which I know Evan has a level of excellence in what he does and he also marries his process with Excellence but that's very different than Relentless self-criticism you know what I mean and and what happens with

Relentless self criticism self-hatred self-doubt all of that Beatdown is that number one you slow down your progress number two you miss opportunities number three you uh lose lose inspiration and motivation because everything is a grind number four you have no joy in what you're doing because you are singularly focused on finding Stuff that's not going right and number five you literally will never be happy and content because you're not allowing yourself to celebrate and Empower yourself for all the things you're doing right which only creates more positive momentum and it was the high five habits

something I created by mistake in April of 2020 that completely changed my habits my attitude the reason why this is the most successful thing I've ever done is because I'm Different uh using the high five habit I've asked for help I've I've gotten out of the insecurity of needing to do it all myself I'm enjoying the process of it even though it's kind of a show behind the scenes like this is um just the greatest gift in the world because it changes how I experience my life and that's the biggest thing everybody that's the final

takeaway in terms of success and why most of you don't have the success you deserve because you're Too hard on yourself you are focused on what's not working instead of celebrating what is you're beating the hell out of yourself every day which is demotivating if you want to be more successful than you could ever imagine you must read the high five habit you must start to put these practi IES in place you must start to see the good you must start to flip your attitude when it's going down and you must must must be able

to use the tools In here to become somebody that is supportive encouraging of yourself hey it's Mel thank you so much for checking this video out and if you like this one I have a feeling you're going to like this one too I'll see you there