Mel Robbins ON: If You STRUGGLE With Stress & Anxiety, This Will CHANGE Your Life! | Jay Shetty

Ironically, the purpose of hiking is not to get to the top, but to be on the trail if you focus on the damn trail, whatever step you're at and keep reminding

your

self that

this

will

take me somewhere that is where Meaning Comes into Your Life because he's a best-selling author and hosts the #1 Health and Wellness Podcast on Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hello everyone, welcome back to the world's number one health podcast by the way, thank you to each and every one of you who come. I return each week to listen, learn and grow. Today's guest is someone who was there once before and when she showed up last time you blew up, the community was showing the love, feeling the love and the comments and response were incredible.

I've been wanting her. to come back and we were waiting to announce that she herself has a new podcast so if you don't listen to her show yet I'll announce it in a second please go and subscribe it's already crushing it's going to be absolutely huge uh and I know you'll you're going to love it. I'm talking about the one and only Mel Robbins who became one of the world's most trusted experts on confidence and motivation the hard way by first ruining her own

life

as Mel, one of the most secretive and followed podcast hosts and authors in the world. world, is sought after by the world's leading brands and medical professionals for its research-backed tools and motivation;

At the same time, most have amassed millions of followers online with her advice. viral every day Mel is a New York Times bestselling author and Phenom self-publisher and her work includes the high-five habit, the five-second rule, and Mel Robbins' #1 podcast ranking, that It's the one you have to surprise. Subscribe. to the female lead of Mel Media Company produces provocative,

life

-changing content with millions of books sold, billions of video views, six #1 audiobooks, and one of the most viewed tedx talks in the world. Mel's work has been translated into 41 languages ​​and has

change

d lives. of millions of people around the world and in addition to all

this

, Mel is one of my dearest friends.

We met last week in Montreal, where we were both giving keynotes. It was around 10 p.m. m. and I got this text message that said, “I heard you.” I'm in Montreal I said I still am and we hung out for a couple of hours at the end of the day uh I love this human I believe in everything she said and she lives it all she's the same off screen as she is. she's on the screen uh please welcome to my welcome to the show my dear friend uh an incredible thinker Mel Robbins oh my god, can I just hug you?

Yes, of course you can. Oh God, oh my God, I love you too. I love you too. you just know we're the best, I think we know, when we connected the first time we met, I was thinking about that last week in Montreal, the first time we met, we were both talking and we spent a night together. then and we just hit it off and I appreciate that was like four years ago, yeah, you know, I think we've all had this experience where you've been in a bar or at a big party and you look across. a room and

your

eyes meet someone and it's like immediate, like a tractor beam, an electric pull.

I felt this way about you for a long time just by seeing what you post on social media, so I had fallen in love with you brain and soul. with you for a long time and when we met it was like, oh my gosh, and you know, what I love most is that I love both you and your amazing wife. I love that you are decades younger than me and very creative and this is what I love most about you. I consider you not only a very dear friend but also my personal monk. There you have it.

I love it. I love it. Just put me in your pocket, right there, to talk to you today, literally, for the last time. You came, it was amazing and I've really wanted to have you back as much as you want to come back, uh, but I know there are some things we want to talk about today and I wanted to start with this. Idea that you've always talked about how you learned things the hard way, there were always challenges and even now when we talk offline we share that even last week we were talking about the challenges we were both going through to build this opportunity for serve. others and I wanted to ask you what you think is the most difficult thing that you are working on right now, what is the most challenging thing that you are working on internally or externally, it could be creatively, it could be a habit, what is it, what is something with what you're struggling with or dealing with you're working through happiness wow okay yeah happiness that's interesting.

I was getting ready to come here this morning, so my daughter goes to school here at Thornton Music School. a senior and she spent the night with me last night. I'm going to tell you the story because it's relevant to both learning things the hard way and happiness, so she slept in my bed with me last night and it was amazing and I just love her and she's 22 and she's about to break into the next chapter of his life. It's so exciting and I miss her terribly terribly and oh, I'm going to completely choke when I think about it because I'm still living. across the country and I think one of the hardest things you have to do in life if you really love someone is encourage them to leave to encourage them to grow and I can't believe I choked up.

I mean this because I mean, this just happened this morning and I was laying in bed and she was fast asleep, you know, lying around like those 22-year-old kids who sleep and sweat and you know, like that, and I thought, oh , I want to take a photo. of this moment and then I thought no, she's going to kill me because she looks terrible and you know how that happens when you're 20, so I closed my eyes to capture the memory and I thought why is it me? always clinging to what makes me unhappy, what is it about this campaign?

I call it the misery campaign instead of focusing on the fact that here I am, first and foremost, lucky enough to be in Los Angeles to have the means. go see her on parents weekend that I have a relationship with her where she would want to come and just snuggle and spend the night that she is pursuing her passion and her dream of being a singer-songwriter that she is just killing it, that she is happy? Why do I always default on the loss? So when I say I'm working on happiness, what I've realized about myself, Jay, is that I've done a lot of things in life, but I've spent the vast majority of my life.

Being so busy and staying so busy as a means to leave behind, I think it was a deep-seated unhappiness and when the pandemic hit and I had to slow down and I had to really say to myself, okay, you can't go anywhere. that you cannot regulate. your

anxiety

running to Target you can't get on a plane you can't you like it's you and you like you and yourself right now Mel and all the coping mechanisms you used to have that distracted you from the fact that you're just not that happy. that they're no longer there and unless I want to drink myself to the ground, which I don't do and make it drowsy or hit the vaporizer or take a gut, unless I want to make it drowsy, I have to deal with it. and so I have spent the last two years and I continue to focus right now on the number one goal that I have, which is to learn to be happy and content wherever I am, and that is why this morning is the perfect example of how to capture this deep sadness, which is part of the human experience, missing someone deeply is also about loving them well and realizing that I was going into the negative and part of being content and happy wherever you are is not trying to fix things, it is being okay with the things it allows. the emotion arises and then I realize that there is a different way of feeling and then in that moment I'm just doing what I'm doing a lot, which is just breathing in those deep moments where I think, why am I complaining?

This is so stupid, why am I obsessed with this tomorrow and I'm not even here right now and reframe things in a more positive way? This might surprise people because I'm a very positive person, I'm a very optimistic person, but when I really slow down, my mind runs a million miles an hour and it's usually 15 steps ahead, which means I'm never happy where I am. I am and that's why I've been doing a lot of work on my nervous system, on my body, instead of going to the right. Up here and trying to fight with my thoughts, I've been coming down here to just anchor myself in my body and slow things down and physically be where I am, where my feet are, and then a second thing happened, so again I'm working on happiness , that's what I really like to work on, it's like a muscle, right, I'm in the bathroom and I'm terrible at hair.

I know it looks pretty decent today, but I usually look like a damn Labradoodle. on a human day like that is me, I've never noticed the hair situation and I finally said that's it, I have to figure out how to make my hair look halfway good, like I'm not even looking for something amazing. I was just looking for him to be okay, so I was watching YouTube. I'm learning the tutorials. I have the right sprays, so Kendall comes over after she wakes up and I'm sitting there trying to curl my hair into this big fat curl.

I'm terrible at that, Jay, and all of a sudden I hit my fucking ear and I was like, oh, and I was like, oh, my God. I just burned my ear and Kendall casually says, "Well, you have to learn somehow" and she walks away. Outside of the bedroom, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that because that's how you learn, that's how you learn how close to holding a curling iron to your ear you burn yourself and then your whole body absorbs the lesson and you don't do it. Next time I go so close to the fire and I'm doing that dance with happiness and contentment that when I feel the Fire of discontent or friction or complaining or looking for what's wrong, I move the curler away from my ear a little and go. . returning to a safer and calmer place, that was a beautiful response.

I didn't know what to expect when I asked that question. I really appreciate that you went inward because you could have taken several paths. I completely understand and empathize with what you're saying because my mom and family do something similar and I love my mom. I have a great relationship with my mum, she's amazing and everything good about me is down to her, but every time I go back to London on the day I land, my family

will

say, well, you're only here for 21 days. Me, 21 days is three weeks, even if you add up all the weekly hours you spend with someone, it probably won't make up 21 full days, yeah. total presence and then one week we will go and say oh, you only have 40 14 days left or you only have seven days left oh, you leave today and that mentality continues to force you to think that day 21 is day one, since on that day they are missing 21 days is the same as one day left and you are living the 21 days since there is only one day left and I took the time and sat with my mom.

I had that conversation with her so many times and I told her mom, if you celebrate that we have 21 days, I will make the most of it and we will create new memories and new experiences, then you will be happier for these 21 days and yes, you are going to miss me just the same, it won't to

change

that and I'm going to miss you, so I have a personal experience of that on the other side of having that conversation with my mom where she has really grown to understand how that thought has not served her well and she is much happier about it now when I come back so yeah I definitely relate to what you mentioned at the end although it was really interesting to me when you talk about happiness it sounds like you think you deserve it and it sounds like you think it's yours to take as a goal Of course Direction is there, yes and I think what happened is unconsciously, all consciously, many of us do not feel that we deserve happiness or we do not feel that we are worthy of happiness or we actually think that mediocrity is a safer place to live because then we don't have our unmet expectations we don't have the fall of I wanted this but I understood this well and so it was.

I had a friend message me the other day and say, look at this, and it was about how we really shouldn't strive for happiness. We should strive for mediocrity because mediocrity is where most people will end up so literally this is the message so my friend texts me and says what do you think of this? I think it sucks. I think that's the worst advice I've ever heard. The dumbest thing I've ever heard here is the Jay thing, so one of the things I also want to say is that I'm 54 years old and it took me a long time to realize that I wasn't actually a happy person and I don't think I really I understood what happiness is and maybe I'm using the wrong word, maybe the word is the problem because I always associated happiness with parties and laughter and I'm full of joy and I'm and you just know it's a very positive thing and again, I'm a positive person, I'm a very optimistic person, but if you put a speaker in my head and broadcast the things I said to myself, you would literally record me.

The seventh floor of Mass General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, because it was a constant drum ofnegativity and one by one, J started to work through my marriage and my finances with my

anxiety

while building a business, you know. A lot of people are surprised to learn that most of what they see I've built has literally been built in the last six years, so when I started fixing things outside of that default drumbeat it didn't go away, it was just a situation in the one that didn't I no longer had anything outside of me that was rationally wrong, so I turned my back on him and started hammering myself in crazy ways.

I'll give you an example, so this is where I started having this breakthrough, so I was sitting my husband down. and I just bought a house in Vermont and I know that you know that you are in your new home, it is an incredible thing to do, it is the house of our dreams, it is the house that your parents built, it is the family home that not only were we able to buy this , we have been able to completely renovate it, make it our own, this place is the closest place to God I have ever been, we sat between mountains with a 140 mile view towards a valley with waterfalls, like it was just spectacular when I sat in therapy sessions eight years ago and my therapist was asking me to come up with something like a um, you know, a totem or a spirit guide or a Vision, whatever for truth or God or whatever, it's always this View and so, I've here eight.

Years later we live there and I'm sitting on this covered terrace looking out over the valley, my daughter is sitting next to me her other daughter who lives in Boston, she's 23 years old and it's Sunday and normally on Sundays I'm not even present on Sundays because now I have Sunday terrors now I'm thinking about next week she's starting to do that now okay I have to go I have to pack the car I have to go I have a big week at work this week and it's 7:30 in the morning on a spectacular day and the energy is starting and I recognize the energy because that's the campaign of misery that I've lived with for 50 years and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking oh, this is interesting, that's me and then I stop at that moment, Jay, and I thought, I don't feel that right now, I just feel like exactly where I'm looking at this view is exactly where I'm supposed to be and it was like that. deep is almost like that moment where Eckhart Tolle is on the bench at the beginning of the Power of Now where I have this deep experience where I think wait a minute is this What a happiness it is that I'm not 15 steps ahead, I'm just being able to be here without anxiety and no

stress

, I mean, it's like a revolutionary experience for me.

I don't think I've ever felt the downside of a racing nervous system, an anxious mind or a to-do list that was a mile long and I don't want to go back to that kind of frenetic activity that creates chronic

stress

and you know the challenge. for me right now it's how can I stay in a space that's happy because I love the game of building a business I love pushing myself I love it I like it and I realized, oh wait, you actually need both, you need some spiritual quiet time deep and you need the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, Boston or New York in small Sprints, but that can no longer be your default option, woman and That is a great insight and reflection.

I think when you get to that and it takes a lot of self-acceptance to get to that because I think we think of life as binary, like you have to make a decision. you're going to be a hustler or you're going to be peaceful you're going to be a winner or you're going to be a loser you're going to be wisdom and zen or you're going to be money and right materialistic and it's almost like you feel like you have to make those decisions early in life. life and I think when you got here we were talking about something and I really think it's something that many of our listeners will resonate with the idea that Many of us experience the pain of not pursuing what we want or what we need or what we feel which is our calling because of the pain that comes with it, yes, and so we settle for the pain of where we are, yes, and I think those two ideas are related because, again, we think that there is a choice that you have to do at any time where it's like I'm going to live the life of my dreams or I'm going to be stuck forever and then we're like, well, well, I'll be stuck forever because my dream seems so far away.

I remember being there and it's always hard to help everyone listening realize how much I felt that way. So how old were you? This was six years ago for me, yeah, oh my gosh. that's right you guys have this crazy parallel yeah six years ago so six years ago I was working in a secure corporate job within six months I was about to marry Riley and I was earning £31,500 a year and that was my salary in This company and I was doing very well in the company so I had a good path to progress there and I'm sitting there.

I've been there for two years and I think I don't think this is where I'm meant to be. I was looking at people who had been with the company for decades. I've always told people to look 10 or 20 years ahead of you and look at that person in the company and go where I want. be and I said well, even if they paid me as much as they paid that person, even if I got all the benefits that that person got, I don't think I'd want to do that when I'm 50, so I thought, okay, then I have to take a risk and obviously it was like a two year journey to even convince myself, let's talk about that, if anyone is sitting there right now, passionate about something, wanting to be inspired, wanting to do something, but He is settling for the pain. of where they are and that's why I asked that question about mediocrity and happiness yeah, it's really that dance between I'm going to settle for where I am where I'm going to be where I want to be how do you think about that?

Journey, how do you know what just came to my mind? Yes, rare grade cancer. If you were diagnosed with a cancer that was treatable, would you try to treat your cancer? Yes, of course you would, because otherwise it would kill you when you feel this calling or this is this burning desire and I feel like we all have this flame inside of us we're not like a cauldron where the pilot light can go out that's not how a human being is connected to you whether you are trapped or whether you are in pain. If you are suffering, you still have this flame inside you that burns and when you actively engage in your own campaign of misery and actively tell yourself the reasons why the ones that won't work or the reasons why you can't do it. or the reasons why now is not the time or you are never going to make it happen or it was great for Jay or great for Mel but nothing ever works because when you engage in your own campaign of misery you are literally creating a Cancer inside of you that It devours you and we don't realize that by participating in this campaign of misery because it is active that flame burns inside you and you are actively convincing yourself not to do anything, it is an active commitment, that is why I call it a campaign because that flame is going to keep burning, that's why the campaign has to get stronger and the excuses have to get stronger and you know what starts to happen is you start listening to that campaign and you start to feel pain because there's something burning inside you. and the only cure for this is to stop listening to that campaign and simply start taking small steps, just one each day, towards what you want.

I talked to my daughter about this all the time so she absolutely dreams. from being a solo singer-songwriter with a successful career, you literally tour stadiums and if I'm completely honest, this girl has all the talent and everything, she's one of those five tools and she's a great person, kind and just amazing and she's even In a program, the best in the country, you have everything you have to do, you just have to do the work, what is work? Well the job is just writing shitty songs every day, the job is not listening to the misery campaign because All around you you're going to see evidence that this person is better that person this or this is that or that uh when you hear that campaign in your head is like a cancer inside you that causes pain because you can feel when you are giving Tap into your own potential and that is the worst kind of life to live and we are all what I remember.

I was the chairman of that campaign in my own life. As you know, I was like when you and me. I want people to understand this is that all of you believe that you are doing something good with your life at some point you were the presidents presidents of this campaign of misery in your own life. I remember saying well, that's never going to happen for me, those things just happen. Those people I also remember seeing things and this was the key that I realized that I had to go with me and my friends and my dream when I was young was to be a spoken word rap artist, so that was my goal as I always did.

I've done. I loved the words. I have always loved having a large vocabulary. I have always loved folding words and making them rhyme. And I think that's why I love words today and what we do so much is that. And I would sit there and watch. rappers or artists that were on the rise and we criticized them and almost badmouthed them, we criticized them and talked about how trash they were and how untalented they were and if we had those opportunities, how good we would be. be and I realized that today's culture is propagating it even more because now we just scroll through Tick Tock or Instagram and you will see someone who is doing what you want to do and you may think that you can do it better, but instead of doing it If we spend our time watching someone else do it and it goes well, that sucks, that's stupid, right?

In fact, I have friends who sometimes message me things like that and say, look, you know, I've wanted to make videos for a long time. meanwhile and they send me someone who in their opinion made a bad video and I said: you know what's really interesting when you're on social media, you look at everyone who's doing worse than you. I said when I'm on social media. look at everyone they are doing better than me and learning well, it's like there are two mentalities: either you are criticizing someone or you are creating, learning and growing, so I feel like what you are saying is so true and I think I had such a good time .

A long time thinking I had something but then I didn't do anything with it, yeah, so a couple of things, yeah. I want to give you all a visual yes because I find J in words. I have to have a picture like my mind is the word mind that you are in. the stands commenting on the game or you are on the field playing it and right now I want you to think about that flame inside you, that dream that you have and I am going to return to my daughter who is on the field but she will be the first to say that for many years she was involved in her own campaign of misery sitting in the stands telling herself why she can't get on the field right now and that's why I like that image because at any moment I literally like Cortes Fair to the truth, are you in the stands criticizing the people who are playing or being jealous of them or in the stands telling yourself it's not time to jump or are you on the damn field?

There are only two places to be in life. That's it, there is no middle ground here and what I also want to say is that being in the stands is noisy, what you are doing is something active, this is not something passive that we do to ourselves, we actively argue against it. our dream and our potential and that is one thousand percent linked to your happiness and your confidence because if you are arguing against the potential that God has given you, you are actively destroying your confidence, you are actively destroying the possibilities in your life and this is what I've heard people know when they have impostor syndrome, they know it, they talk about it openly and I also hate the term fake it until you make it and here's why when you say I'm going to fake it until you make it, calling yourself fake amplifies your He hesitates instead of saying this.

I'm going to get on the field and try until I succeed because the pain of sitting in the stands and never going down there is much greater than stumbling on the field. you are causing yourself so much pain by thinking about it get out of the damn stands and get back on the field in your life. I did this to myself for years about the podcast, you know, I'll tell you some crazy stories, so here I have a big hit in the audiobook world, the most successful self-published. The audiobook in the history of audiobooks is the five-second rule leading to a seven-book audible original that deals with audible because of the success of that and I said to myself, Jay, I'd watch you, you know, and I would watch a ton. of our other friends you know have these amazing podcasts, Rich Roll, like you know everyone and I would say I missed the vote.

I arrived too late. There are two million podcasts available now. I can not do this. I don't have anything different to say than Jay Jay already has it, you know, why would he jump in there once in a while? I'd like to be in the stands for six years and you know what else I'd say to myself, well, you're just successful. because audible is your partner and if you try this you're going to fall on your face and you don't have time and here's another thing I tell myself,Who the hell is going to come to Boston to sit in a studio with you Mel everyone is on remote control now Boston is not a place for media, no one travels there like I'm in the fucking stands telling myself no, no, no.

Now, this is the thing about misery campaigns: they don't really silence the pain and attraction you feel because your dreams can't really abandon you, they are made for you and that's why all those campaigns or the drinking or numbness or Avoidance of what is inside you does not make the dream go away, it only creates more pain and you finally know that it was two years ago that I must follow my own advice and I have to do something important. changes because I knew that when I was going to enter the podcast phase I was going to make it the only thing I was doing that I needed to complete all the speaking commitments I had.

I needed to create different boundaries like I had done before. get serious about taking the steps and getting on that court and that's what I've been doing for the last two years and a lot of people don't know that I actually started in 2007 hosting a local radio show and I've wanted to get back to radio. for almost 12 years because I love the intimacy of it and I don't like, you know this, you can't share your life in real time in an audiobook, no, you definitely can't. in a 60-second reel, but I too sat in the stands and actively participated in my campaign of misery.

Here is another area of ​​my life where I participated in a campaign of misery. Loneliness. I've been deeply alone for a while and out of loneliness I don't do it. I don't mean to be alone because there are people around me, but I have done it and I think a lot of people feel that way and I know a lot of women do, especially when their kids grow up and social things change and I think a lot of us are. struggling with adult friendship and especially coming out of quarantine people now don't want to leave my house not because of anything that's going on but because I like being home yeah so I started taking seriously the fact that I was really in the stands in my life complaining to myself that I didn't see my friends that I don't have friends that I'm really alone but I wasn't on the court what are you going to do about it? because it's easy to start making friends if you text people every day and make plans yeah, oh, Jay is in Montreal, why don't I text him?, oh, he's in the same hotel , why don't I go up seven floors and go?

See it because my monk is in the attic. You know what I am saying. I love what you say. I can resonate with it a lot and there is a journey from where your misery campaign is right now. Oh, that's a great question. Where is? my current campaign, where are you in the stands of your life? Jay, mine is, actually, I grew up loving uh. I went to public speaking at drama school and public speaking became a big part of my life and drama stopped and drama is something I would love. to get back to really oh yeah, I loved acting growing up.

I loved the idea of ​​getting involved in someone else's emotions and I love the idea of ​​learning about new characters and understanding them and I still want to do that and two years ago, three years ago, when the movie Bad Boys came out. Sony asked me to appear in their TV movie trailer, so I played the role of a therapist with Will Smith and myself with Lawrence, and there was so much going on that it was very uncomfortable for me because I hadn't done it for a long time. For so long I went to drama school for seven years, it was very uncomfortable to do it and that week I got an acting coach and I and I practiced and I learned all my lines and then I got there that day and they gave me a new script.

They said all the scripts changed and I'm leaving, guys, I had five days. I found out five days ago. I had an acting coach every day. A friend two hours a day and they gave me a new script and then they came 10 minutes early. I've been waiting for two hours to learn this new script, and we get there and they say, "Oh, by the way, Will and Martin have scrapped this script, there's no more script, they'll just freestyle and you'll have to freestyle." Like you want me to freestyle, we're two of the best to ever do it and I'm not a comedian now.

Were you friends with Will at this time? No, uh, not in the way we are today, okay, like that, because I think people might be like yeah, but you guys are friends, not friends of mine, yeah, and I didn't know Martin at all. I've never met him in my life, so it feels completely impossible. I'm completely in my discomfort zone. M and I had a lot of fun, yes I was in the corn, I had fun, but from that day on I retired and that's how it's been, if I'm completely honest, that's where my heart is.

I love the idea of ​​becoming one. I've always loved biographies and I've always loved autobiographies. I've always loved true stories, so if I had the opportunity to learn or play or be in a true story that would fill my heart with so much joy, is there anyone who would like that? I dream about one thing, no, no, I don't have that answer, I'm not clear on it, um, but yes, that would be my honest answer to that question. That's something I'm in the stands about. There are so many excuses. Well, Jay, if you did that, that discredits all the work you've done so far.

Well, Jay, if you did that and it doesn't work, what happens to the people you train in that industry? uh, if you did it and you did it very well, then people will call you a traitor because you just did it, you chose to do something completely different and it doesn't mean that I want to do that and stop doing what I do today, it's just that there's a part of that expression that inspires me so creatively that I would like to try, yes, and again, it is to try well, yes, and I wanted to achieve it, so that is what I want to talk to you about, is what was the heart of my previous question.

I'm very glad you asked me that, thank you. I have never spoken publicly about it. I have never shared it. Really with no one besides my wife what's the difference because I think this is where things go wrong. I know many. people who talk to me about their dreams and even mine and I want to clarify mine in a second the one that I just shared with you what is the difference between a dream and a big delirium and I am going to share with you what my initial thoughts are before listening yours when I say I would like to do more drama or acting or experiment with that phase of my life my dream is not right now to win an Oscar my dream is to try to express myself creatively and see if this vehicle is a form that brings me joy, happiness and meaning to my life, yes, that for me is not an illusion because it is giving me the opportunity to put my uh using images like putting my uh you know what they are called stabilizers on my bike. and see if this is really true.

I often find people whose first dream is: I want to build a billion dollar company or they've never built a business at all or they have entrepreneurial experience or I hear I want this to be number one. in the world and while those are good aspirations, I'm not sure what I really think and this is just my personal opinion. I never had those when I started and I feel like sometimes without the skills without learning without experiencing those things In fact, I can prevent you from doing it because it is very difficult, it is very far and there is a very big path to fall, so I want to understand how you decipher between sleep and deception when you talk about deception.

What I hear now is arrogance and vanity. and let me explain the difference here because I think confidence is the willingness to try and this belief in yourself and what you're trying to do well. I think arrogance and vanity is thinking that you're better than everyone else, yeah, and then I. When you frame delusion as something great, it feels like it comes from insecurity, right? It feels like it comes from wanting to be better than from a place where you're willing to take risks and try to get into someone's life court. way that is aligned with this within you and that is what I process in my own brain when you ask me what the difference is between dreams and delusions, yes, now if you have a true dream, is it ever delusional? and my answer to that is never and here's why I believe dreams are not meant to be achieved.

I believe that your dreams are a directional sign that the dream is out there in a different chapter of your life calling you from this moment in that direction and that the reason The reason you still have this Burning Flame within you that relates to something that you did when you were younger that you loved very much is because when you walk towards performing and what that requires of you to get on the court and walk towards that. dream and see the dream could be an Oscar the dream could be something like that it's an award it doesn't matter it's on the path of acting what I believe about dreams is that dreams are deeply personal they are connected to that flame inside you you are programmed with them when you were born, it is absolutely part of why you are curious about things, why you are interested in things naturally, this is part of your natural intelligence and when you step on the court and start walking towards them, that is which is supposed to happen because if you allow yourself to take on some roles in acting, something will come to life within you, that is the purpose of your dreams, to make that flame burn brighter within you, it is about you awakening something and your Dreams are the directional sign that is trying to tell you which way to move forward by returning to my daughter, will she ever have a stadium tour?

I don't know, I could, I could, that's not the point, the point is for something to happen. live within herself by stepping into the court of her life and writing music and releasing it, yeah, no matter what, the reason she wanted to launch the Mel Robbins podcast is not so it could become the number one podcast in the world. world, of course. I have those goals, of course, I want to be the number one podcast host in the world, of course, that's what I want, but the reason I pursue this is because I wanted to connect with people on a deeper level. come to life creatively.

I knew I wanted to build an ongoing conversation that went deeper and I also knew I wanted to learn more because when you're constantly posting content or you're standing on stages or you're writing books, it's kind of a one-way conversation, yeah, and part of my solution for loneliness was to stop complaining about it and do it right, what would truly make me feel more connected, what would be of greater service to people, what would create a deeper impact, that's why I'm doing this, yeah, that's it what I mean, the clarity and the reason I really want to make this very clear for people is that last night I had a friend that I was talking to and they want to start a podcast and it was the most beautiful intention, right, everyone wants start a podcast, everyone wants to start anything today, sure it's very nice and they should do it, but what I've learned is that anything I started intentionally is not only more likely to come to light.

Consistency and creativity for me has not only been a success, but it has also made me happy, so what I'm trying to do is how to plant a seed that will not only grow steadily until it gives you joy. it grows to then give you that flower to then give you that fruit and then to give you the seed to make more instead of like it has the flour, then we cut it, then we break it and you know, when I look at it I think a lot. Many people are so obsessed with the result that all they get may be the result and then you have nothing else and then that result feels unsatisfying.

It's like when we had Gwyneth Paltrow on the podcast, she was talking about what it was like to win an Oscar as a teenager. She eliminated all aspiration because she is doing well, what do you do next? When you've done that, you've reached the epitome of that career in your teens and now it's like, well, what do you do next? and it's like, well, when it was always when it was if it was just about the result not to talk about her but if it was just about the result then you stop and then I just want to clarify that what you just said is that you started, not to be number one, you started.

It was because of the impact that you wanted to have on the stories, you wanted the total connection with your audience and I think if people leaned more towards that for me, that would be the real dream, yeah, and you know it's interesting. I'm still raising my daughter because she's an artist, yeah, and when she leans into the fact that she's not trying to impress her friends and her pop music show, she's not trying to impress anyone, yeah, she wants to tell stories. , yeah, with his music that inspires people, yeah, and when you really get into the reason why you're doing something, so I'm going to give you all another image because there are two images that I think about a lot life.

For me, one of the most powerful things I use to train myself is that when I'm in the middle of something I always remind myself that I'm on the bridge, so by launching this podcast, something I've been thinking about for over eight years, something I've been convinced of for a long time, something I finally stepped onto the court and started working on about two years ago and now we're here. I know this is literally the first step in a longsuspension bridge that takes me somewhere and when you remember that you are right on the bridge you stop focusing on How long will it take and what will it feel like?

And I'm not there yet. You're on the bridge and you're going to be on the bridge until you get to the other side and then guess what will happen when you get there. On the other side is another damn bridge, each episode is like its own Bridge, yes, the other image I use a lot is a path leading up a mountain because the investigation is very conclusive and Jay and I can try to get it into your head that the meaning It comes from working on something I'm going to do. say it again meaning comes from working on something with intention that is important to you it is that simple you can create meaning in your life by planting a garden if it is important to you and for me I think a lot about you know the act of going for a walk Ironically, the purpose of hiking is not to get to the top, but to be on the trail and if you constantly look at the top, you will be out of breath, you will tell yourself that you have done it. much more so when we'll get there and you'll miss the whole point of your damn life, which is the course, the trail, the bridge, the mile markers, all of that, so part of my desire to be happier is to continually continue. reminding myself that it's not about climbing that mountain because when you get to the top of that mountain, the top of one mountain is just the base of another and if you're going to go up eventually you have to come back down, that's life .

If you focus on the damn Path, whatever step you're on and keep reminding yourself, this is going to take me somewhere, that's where the meaning of your life comes, because Jay and I will tell you guys in why they put all this effort. When you write a book that gets published, you say, "Okay, now what, yes, it's true, yes, and we want it to be something else. We want to think that there is this silver bullet that if you make it to the mountain, if you launch the podcast , if you meet the person of your dreams then you will be happy and the truth is that for me personally, happiness was really about ending the campaigns of misery in my mind, it was about identifying where I was arguing against myself. myself and my potential, and it was to allow myself to get back on track or start crossing that bridge, yeah, that's right, I love those images, they're so powerful and so beautiful, and I mean, when you said the bridge, I love it. remembered, I think this is from the Christian tradition, I think it's from the Bible, but this statement says the world is like a bridge, don't build your house on it, cross it and I have always spiritually gravitated towards that statement very deeply, so when you said british, that was the first thing that came to mind. the world is like a bridge, you know, I like that term too, for a couple of reasons, so yeah, you know, earlier I was telling everyone how I woke up this morning and I'm here visiting my daughter, who's 22 years old. and he's in his last year of college, and me.

I felt this deep sadness and I noticed it and I allowed myself to feel it because I wouldn't feel that if I didn't love her so deeply and then I visualize this bridge that this is just one step on a very long bridge that I'm crossing a bridge that, as a parent, I like. The most important thing for me to do as a parent is to encourage my children to fly into this world, to leave and to become who they are meant to be, which means that you are going to leave and there are a lot of goodbyes and it sucks, but it is also beautiful and it also makes me happy. love this idea of ​​a bridge because when it comes to anxiety when it comes to separation, there is this concept, uh, when you say goodbye to someone or when you're about to leave someone who's going to do something anxious, can you bridge that moment the next moment when you are going to see it?

So I'm sure you do this when you say goodbye to your parents in the UK. You hug yourself and say I can't, you know it from me I just said I can't wait to see you over Thanksgiving break. I can't wait to hear how this goes tomorrow so you stay connected and bonding and closing that kind of stuff. of the loop of the end of something because things are not really ending, yes, they are always the beginning of something more, yes, one of the questions that we get a lot in my direct messages and comments and everything is and I think that people unconsciously or consciously It also has this.

The idea that you just brought up is the expectations of your parents, so some people had parents who had very high expectations or different expectations than what the children wanted, since you are very aware of what your daughter wants to be and you are happy. support it as long as she wants it to be that way, some people have the experience that my parents had very high expectations but they are not the expectations that I want or my parents didn't really have any expectations of me and were actually more negative and didn't really they believed in me at all and didn't really think I would get anywhere anyway or when I want to try something I get the toxic response of well you're not going to make it anyway so I think we, we deal with parenting and a feeling of not believing in ourselves in two ways: one is that your parents saw the path they gave you but you say that's not my path, this is it and then your parents don't believe in all that.

Your parents never believed in any path you would take and I think a lot of people I listen to right now feel like Jay. I'm just surrounded by family and friends, friends who don't believe in me, don't believe in my ideas don't believe in the partner I want to be with I just don't feel like people support my decisions yes Chris and I have been married 26 years We have three children, they are 23, 22 and 17. There is no doubt in my mind. I have ruined them. Yes, how could you not? Yes. I mean, we're talking about millions of times when someone needs emotional support and you don't match that moment, right?

And I love this term Parental Discord because it allows those of us who still have a good relationship with our parents to recognize a fact and the fact is that there are things that happened in your childhood that you may not even remember and that left you with patterns. of negative or toxic thoughts that are difficult for you to achieve. getting rid of it as an adult is a given and that's why I want to start by saying that because we all deal with this and it's a result of childhood, in fact, Dr. Russell Kennedy, who is amazing, you should have him on your podcast says that all anxiety results from a feeling of separation from your parents when you were a child probably before the age of five a time when you felt separated there was a mismatch maybe you were sitting on the floor you don't even remember this you are silent playing you are in a space happy and mom or dad comes home and they're frustrated and suddenly they lie, you know, like everyone does at some point, because everyone has a volcano moment, it's a fact and it surprises you when you're a kid. your body remembers that and there is a concept in research called hauntings in daycare that many of us

struggle

with as adults with behaviors that we think where that came from and where it comes from is the fact that if you are now an adult and you had an experience when growing up in a home where your parents were angry or your parents were abusive or your parents just ignored you and you felt detached or nervous when you find yourself in those same situations as an adult, your body has a feeling first we think we think first we don't your body You have the sensation first and then your body repeats the behavior you actually observed as a child.

I speak English because I observed and absorbed the language that my parents spoke and that is why there are patterns that you are struggling with things that do not serve you as an adult and that are not yours, so I want to say that, first of all, it is okay for one of the greatest gifts of being an adult is separating from your parents and deciding how you want to talk to them. yourself how you want to change your way of thinking how you speak how you support so that's number one number two it's very common and natural to feel this kind of complex mix of guilt and pressure for wanting to please your parents why because I needed them to survive when I was a child, it's not like you can leave and what we learn when we are children is that there is a give and take and that many times that love that you need and that support that you need is very transactional that mom and dad are. you are in a very good mood and you get a lot of attention when you do law and sports or do well in school or do what they want you to do and what we women learn in particular is that if you are not doing what I want you to do is bad because guilt, by definition, is feeling bad about what you just did.

We learned that feeling during childhood and it happens to everyone, so I want to say this simply because I want to normalize it. These are things that don't mean you're damaged, they're things we have to heal on our own as adults, so here's rule number one: if your parents or family don't pay your bills, they have no say. If your parents pay your bills, yes. There's going to be power in what they say, there's a transaction there because they're paying your tuition or they're paying whatever and not all parents are transformed, so I say that because it's one of the quickest ways to free yourself.

It is paying your own way and when you pay your own way you begin to feel very empowered to pave your own way. As a parent, I believe my job is to help my children discover who they are and you do that by listening you do that by validating their experiences you do that by not seeing them as an extension of you that the school they enter somehow means that you are a good father or a bad father the best thing you can do for your children is figure out what will make them happy and support them to do that and the other thing you can do is help them make decisions by helping them discover what decisions are right for them, so I say all this because from zero to 18, so let's use another metaphor because again I love metaphors life's great road trip okay, every year of your life is a mile marker from 0 to 18 you're not even driving the damn someone else's car you're in someone else's car, they're telling you what to do, they control what happens the moment you get to college or leave home, you can navigate your own life, but not if someone else Pay for it, yes, I think that perspective makes you stronger if you're willing to take it. that risk, but what we've found, you know, the research shows this as well.

A few years ago I looked up a study that talked about how to tell with men and women when men see a job description and can do it. like 50 to 60 right, that's a HP study, don't say I can do it well and then when a woman sees a job description and even if she can do 80, she'll say, "I can't apply because I can." I don't do 20 and by the way, I think we do it in dating too, so yeah, so that disproportionate doubt that comes up there or that lack of self-confidence as someone who is a mother to girls like Do you see that being develop differently for you and for them?

So there is a huge amount of research on this with girls and confidence and I have a theory about what happens and I know what age it usually happens in girls because Girls

struggle

with crippling perfectionism in numbers that far exceed what It happens to boys and I think there is a specific reason why at the age of 12 boys and girls have exactly the same levels of confidence. Jay at the age of 13 girls confidence drops. a cliff according to research and I think I know why, in my personal opinion the reason is because that is the average age a girl goes through puberty and starts menstruating.

Now, this is the interesting thing about girls when they go through puberty. a public conversation and what's the first thing someone says to a girl when she's on her period, you're a woman now and it's also something that happens to your body, so there's an implicit maturation, this implicit notion of sex, there's also the fact that your breasts are growing and you're bumping and people are self-conscious and now you're wearing a sweatshirt you also know who's on their period somehow everyone knows when this happens, everyone talks about it and then at that moment you lose control of the conversation about your body and for most girls it is incredibly uncomfortable, like I remember one of my daughters wore a gigantic sweatshirt for two years just to hide her developing body, other girls may show it because you get more attention, but it becomes This conversation public about where you are in relation to everyone else and most girls, plus the socialization you get from the media and culture, you start wanting to look different, you start obsessing about yourself, if only I could get a perfect yes .

I put on the perfect sweatshirt and no one will notice and you start micromanaging as a defense mechanism in the face of public judgment. That's what I think happens because perfectionism is outside the church too. When you reach puberty, it is usually when you are 15 years old. It benefits you, I mean, because if we're not talking about what's going on with your balls, it's not like a conversation about that, we're talking about the fact that your voice is deeper, you've gotten taller, it benefits you in the high school sports and so it doesn't affect your guys' confidence, it actually gives youIt helps and that's where it starts in my personal opinion, along with the fact that in general there are a lot of things happening generationally where kids are encouraged to take risks.

Children play sports in which they are defeated. around, boys are picked up and shoved back into the game, girls are coddled some more and told to be a good girl, be a good sister, go hug your uncle, all those things that send a message that leads women to struggle with confidence, what do you do? So think about some of the things you did next and want your daughters to do to develop greater confidence, what are some of those steps towards greater confidence? Because I think it's very difficult, the right to trust requires you to do so many things that you don't want to do to develop it.

Yes, I think the problem. with the word confidence, when I look it up in the dictionary, it's one of my favorite definitions of a word, one of the definitions is recognition and self-confidence in one's abilities, just like you're recognizing and you're aware of and you're You're confident in your own abilities and qualities, so when I look at that definition, I think that it requires you to do things that, like you, don't build your self-esteem when you sit on the beach, but you do build yourself. -respect when you went up a hill and then back down like your self-confidence didn't grow because you sat in your garden and did nothing, your self-confidence grew because you learned to garden or do something well, your respect for yourself yourself, your self-esteem and your self-confidence grow when you do things that yes, that are not obvious, easy or simple, but as you say, we are not trained that way, what are some of the steps? that people could take towards self-awareness, yeah, first this is what I want to tell you and then I'll give you some steps, so confidence is one of those topics, Jay, that we have backwards.

Everyone hears the word trust and thinks it is belief. here, yes, I agree, confidence, my definition of confidence that I want everyone to walk away with is that confidence is the willingness to try in research. There's something called The Confidence Competence Loop and what that means is when you try something for the first time like me. I was curling my hair this morning and I burned my ear and my daughter casually says that I have to learn somehow by trying and by the way, ruining it and burning my ear. I'm still gaining a little confidence. I know how to hold this a little. a little further from my ear.

Now, as I gain confidence by burning my ear, I'm going to try again and I'll be a little better and I'll gain a little more confidence and then I'll try again and I'll learn even more, so confidence at the heart of confidence It is action, it is the will to try and all you need is to know that if you try you are not going to die, you are just going to die. learn something and when you learn something it takes away a little bit of the insecurity so it's a little bit easier to try again so I would follow the 60 rule and I use sixty percent because that's the number that was in the HP study . about men applying for jobs when they feel sixty percent qualified, if you look at something you want to do or try or apply for and you feel like it's sixty percent qualified, okay, I got sixty percent of the things because the truth is It's a job description for everyone. a dating profile that are not requirements, it's a wish list, okay, if you have sixty percent of these things, do it, that's rule number one, the sixty percent rule, the other thing is that if you're thinking about doing something you're afraid to do maybe it's signing up for an improv class maybe it's ordering podcast equipment maybe it's signing up for a genie like even thinking about thinking about it you're thinking about it if you want to climb you're in this wobble- wobble if you lean more towards I would really like about 60 right weight versus 40 I'm a little nervous, do it that's how you build confidence because going back to the original thing we're talking about, doubt grows when you engage in negative conversations to dissuade you from the things you want to try.

There's a lot of pain, Jay, in talking yourself out of trying things and it makes me so sad and frustrated to see so many of you listening, wasting years. of your life really feeling this desire to try something and putting all your energy, all your energy, into convincing yourself not to do it. Here's something I just recorded in an episode about this and it's fall so I'm thinking a lot about the fact that I know that in the fall season at least in New England and I realize that in other areas of the world it doesn't It is autumn at this time the leaves are falling from the tree.

Here is an interesting fact. This is not something beautiful and elegant. What happens is the tree pushes those idiots around. of its branches as an act of survival because the leaves have a huge surface area and require a lot of water to capture the sun and convert it into energy for the tree and during the winter there is no water and if those trees, are the leaves there? They are there? The tree is going to die and is an energy conserver. It's an energy problem. You are putting so much negative energy into things that you won't let go, you will complain, complain, complain, complain, complain, complain about relationships that don't work with your excuses.

Do you know how much energy it takes to get to a job you can't stand and yet you do it every day? Imagine if, instead of sitting at your desk, you resisted complaining, gossiping, and making excuses—imagine if you simply redirected some of that energy. towards looking for something more than, like leaves falling from a tree, you make the decision that today I'm going to let go of gossiping and complaining about this because that's draining my energy and I'm going to direct my energy toward something positive because once I get rid of that I have room for something positive to grow and complaining to yourself and depriving yourself of just trying something, yeah, and we don't think about it that way, it takes the same amount of energy, I think more, yeah. more potentially, definitely, yes, it's more exhausting, but it is, if anyone wants to think about it, yes, it's that same energy, but put in a different direction, it could change the course, it does change the course, yes, and just you have to try it.

I love it. willingness to try, so the 60 rule has a confidence advantage, okay, the second thing you can do with confidence because it's based on action, this is where the five second rule is a game changer. , just use my five second rule literally in those moments when you feel you have a habit of doubting, you have a habit of doing what psychologists say, you have a bias towards thinking, so a second conclusion is to use my five second rule and when you catch yourself doubting when you catch the doubts that arise when you catch the feelings and the excuses arise, count backwards five four three two one and by the time you get to one, the prefrontal cortex will have focused on counting and you will have literally a fraction of a second. move and the trick about this is that when you start counting you have made the decision to try and the counting itself is like a Trojan horse because it is the first action.

Yeah, I love that rule and the book is there too in case anyone needs all the added information I think our last interview was about that so I want to ask you about one last area of ​​thought because we were talking about that earlier and I think much of our community does. I have to ask you because I just wrote a book. called Eight Rules of Love that's coming out next year and I talk about this in one of the chapters so I'd love to hear your perspective on it, but the idea that you've been married for 26 years, congratulations, it's amazing and beautiful. in that time you and your partner will go through different stages of personal growth Personal evolution collect collective growth Collective evolution sometimes you are going to feel ahead they are going to feel behind sometimes they are going to feel ahead you are I am going to feel behind sometimes it's not even about front behind the question I have is if someone is listening and their partner or even if they are not in a relationship with their friend.

I was mean to someone the other day and they said yes. My friend is a little envious because I just got my dream job where I'm meeting the guy who, you know, we always feel ahead of the people closest to us, even if we love them and want them to win. feel if someone is in a relationship someone has a friend who sits behind or maybe it's the person who sits behind someone else what do we do in that scenario how do we support ourselves do we support others how can we think about that because I think that feeling ahead or behind is never fun, even feeling ahead is not fun, yes, when you feel behind, that's your insecurity, putting a lid on what you think is possible for you, so that's the first thing, recognize that It's on security blocking you and you can use that as a sign that oh, all I have to do is start walking towards things.

The second thing I want to share with everyone is that it's normal to feel envious or even be a bit of a jerk when someone you care about changes and I love them. tell a story to explain why and the story I'm the villain okay I've played into my poor marriage Chris is wonderful yes Chris is amazing so Chris a couple of years ago decided he was going to stop drinking completely and continued this deep spiritual journey and he was going to stop drinking for a couple of years and became a Buddhist meditation and yoga instructor and started his men's retreat business and I'll never forget the first night he didn't drink.

I opened a bottle of Rose. I'm pouring a glass of Rose. It's all great because I'm cooking really well the second night as I open a bottle of Rose and Chris opens it like he doesn't know, like a Saint Croix. I'm starting to feel agitated, I'm starting to feel the campaign, the complaints, this and that, and I notice it and I say, don't say anything, the third day is when Mel the villain showed up and I'm not proud. I have to admit this, but I want you all to hear this so you understand what is really going on within your relationship.

I open the rose, I'm pouring my glass of wine and I turned to Chris and said, come on, do you want to have a glass. He got up with me and told me I'm not fine and I told him it's like the smell of juice I don't want a glass of wine stop asking me and I said okay I'm sorry it's just that it makes me feel bad and that's when he said something he just said that no one cares what's in your glass except you and if what I'm putting in my glass makes you question what you're putting in yours then maybe you have work to do and it's easier for everyone to question someone's change from another person and even sabotage it because your change in growth creates a change in energy and waves and changes in patterns that make you wake up and start realizing that maybe some of the things you do don't work for you, so That when that friend of yours stays to write a business plan, how many of us think on a Saturday night?

Oh, come on, he'll work on it tomorrow. Do you have to go to the gym today? Stay in bed with me. That's the same behavior as dragging someone to join. I come in with you and pour what's in your cup, so I want you to understand that this is normal and it's a very good sign because it means that your behavior is not only changing you, but it is also sending ripples to someone else who ends up to wake him up. call to action and most of us push against those calls to action and that's what they're doing because it's very safe to do and that's something that's really important to understand and I think that's the best way to support someone. because we all know that we can't change someone else if you keep a laser focus on what you're doing because the bigger the change and the happier you become, the harder it will be for your friend or your family to ignore it. and the more it's going to stir things up the more things and eventually inspiration and the best thing you can do is ask leading questions, don't tell anyone what to do, that's the worst thing you can do in a relationship or friendship or as a parent.

Like, literally, hey, you don't seem happy, is there anything I can do to help you? a wife is do you need me to listen to you or would you like to know what I'm thinking? And nine times out of ten my kids, my husband, the people who work for me just want me to listen to them, and that's what I think when you believe. an opportunity for someone to stop engaging in their own doubts and their own very active and painful reasons why they can't accompany you to the gym or reasons why they won't meditate or reasons why they won't I will join you in dry January or whatever or the reasons why they can't.

Not everyone has a friend. We can't look for work. We'll never find anyone. That's not true and you know it, so create the space. you are the light on the path ahead and when you hold your light higher, eventually those jealousies and those excuses actually allow them to go away and you separate, you become part of the force that pushes them forward and the other thing that you have What to understand is that there will be stages in your journey in life and this is one of the most difficult things that people are going to go through and takea different route.

It's okay, you can come back another time. Alright. And you know the last thing I want. What I wanted to say about this is that it is a very simple exercise that you can do with someone and this helps someone who is struggling with happiness and doesn't know how to start or who is struggling with confidence and isn't able to take action or who They are resisting the changes you are making and you would love to see them make it. We did this with our daughter who is now 23 years old and last summer when she graduated from college, she was very unhappy.

I mean, two years of college had imploded and she was extremely depressed and she basically drank herself through it and she graduated and she wasn't happy. The big life change nothing was going according to plan. I had planned this big trip to go to Cambodia and do a big service trip for four months that wasn't going to work out. She just lost it, so Chris and I sat with her for a couple of hours and then I told her and she said, "I don't know what to do. I'm 22 years old. I'm stuck. I'm miserable. I don't even know how." To begin with I said, I really think so.

I think you're just scared. Take out a blank sheet of paper. Draw a line down the center of the left side. I want you to write. "Happy me." She now closes her eyes and thinks for a moment. that you remember being happy or being more confident or being alive could be any word you want and you might have to go back to childhood. Our daughter closed her eyes and said it was her last year of high school and I said she was fine so she writes everything down. of the things you were doing in a week of your life in the last year of high school just describe your life to me oh, I got up and did it in detail all I got up at seven in the morning or 6 30 I was leaving home at seven I was with my friends all day I really wanted to go to college I was playing college lacrosse I worked out six days a week I only partied with friends twice a week You know I was in a healthy relationship I ate four dinners a day night at home great write what your life is like now I sleep until one I drink every day I feel like I don't see my friends because everyone is scattered now that we graduated I have nothing to look forward to my trip to Cambodia is canceled I'm not exercising, okay compare the two, your own life experience provides the map and we want to overcomplicate these big words like happiness, I know I did it for decades or confidence, it's actually found in the little things if Do this simple exercise Draw a line on a piece of paper and write what life was like in great detail.

When did you wake up? When did you go to bed? How are you with your friends? Family? What were you doing at work? Exercise What were you? you are eating, if you then compare it with how life is, now you know what to do and the fact is that your whole life is little things, when you wake up, it is the first thing you look at, it is what you do with your body, it is how you greet to your spouse it's how you talk to yourself it's what you say to yourself when you look in the mirror it's the mood you intentionally walk into work with it's how you greet your animals or your roommate when you finish work day is the tone of voice you use is your entire life and if you took the time and intentionally wrote down a few simple things you do when you are happy in life and focused for the next seven days on just adding one of those in one day, You'd be very surprised how doing some of the little things right really starts to change your life in a completely different direction.

So powerful, no, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you back on the show. The Miles Robin podcast is good. now you can go and listen, subscribe, share, please, please go and do that, Mel, I love sitting with you. I love it, today was that perfect balance that I was talking about before, playing tennis going back and forth and at the same time just getting something. Really practical and insightful advice from you on a systematic strategic step-by-step breakdown of how to get things done. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a dear friend to me and Robbie.

I hope that you, Chris, we all get to spend a lot more time together, uh, really, or even if it's a lot, not a lot more time, but it's a deep time together that would make me very happy and I wish you all the best in defeating misery campaigns for you and everyone else in the world through your show it through your books on Audible through your book on the five second rule and also for helping me start working on my misery campaigns misery, so thank you very much Malay, I deeply appreciate you, very grateful to you.

I love you, Jay, and I can. I don't wait to see you perform, yes, no, no, I have to do it now that I have responsibility, so I want to offer another mistake that I made and I made it with both Chris and our daughter Kendall, so Chris, since he is in college in Seoul. which is Men's Retreat and our daughter Kendall while she writes music. One of the best things you can do to help build momentum is to point out the steps Teeny is taking. I made a mistake with our daughter for a long time and kept talking about it. the big things or I kept saying but you're not writing songs or this would be a great song or you know, play me something new and she would stop talking about this stop telling me what to do because when someone loves you, they respect your opinion and trust me, they They know when they're not doing what they need to do every day, so you'll be more supportive of someone when you say you know I'm really proud of you for the fact that you're so relaxed about this.

I'm very proud of you for the fact that you're not beating yourself up about, uh, that it didn't happen sooner. I'm so proud of you for marching with your own drone. I'm so proud of you for writing a song today and performing it. That's incredibly incredible, recognizing that the little things are incredibly powerful, yes, because the person has to overcome so many of their own things that if you say, "oh, you should do it this way," or "have you tried that," or " It would be great if you do this, you're not really building momentum, you're pointing out what wasn't done and that was something I was guilty of for a long time, stopping and trying to look for, oh, what are they doing and giving them that pat? the back, that hug, that high five, that verbal recognition of the effort made or even the fact that they have not done anything but are thinking about it, that is also worth it and the reason why we do it, you know that this It's because we don't give ourselves a pat on the back for doing something small, so we don't even recognize when we do something small, we're waiting and telling ourselves that all you did today was go to the gym, all you did this week was go. to the gym twice, that's not enough, yeah, and since we talk to ourselves like that, when someone in our life does it, it pushes us to go, yeah, they only went to the gym twice a week, too, that's terrible , yes, etc.

I couldn't agree with you more and yes, I think I've had to be my own cheerleader for a lot of my life and notice the little things I've done and the little progress I've made with radio. Definitely seen, so she appreciates it. I just notice those smaller things, but I realized that every time I'm triggered by someone's lack of growth it's because I'm triggered by my own lack of growth and I'm just reflecting that. About them, I'm mad at myself for not going to the gym more this week and because they haven't, now I'm releasing that to them and that's been a great way to go well, well, I need to be kinder to myself. also for the small victories, yes it took you two years to launch this podcast, but there were things in those two years that you learned to get to where you are now that you made so many steps of progress and that's why you know and there are also so many small steps to fill in things so you can create space, yeah, and one of the other things I want to offer as well is yeah, that tendency of us to jump in and say, oh, did you try this or did you do this or did you oh and?

It's like creating a snowball, it comes from the fact that a lot of us don't encourage ourselves, but it also comes from a really altruistic loving space, yes, because you love this person so much that you want it so much for them that as soon as like you see a little step forward and you say, ah, let's do this and you want to join them, so it can come from both your own lack of support for yourself and a flaw, yes, unintentionally, but it also comes from a really good place because you're so excited and then you amp things up and then they feel crushed, yeah, because what they did now doesn't seem like enough.

I love that clarification. I agree with this, both everyone who has been listening and watching today make sure to tag Melanie on Instagram tick tock on Twitter, whatever social media platform you use, with all your best ideas, nuggets of wisdom of this episode, there were so many scattered throughout the entire time we were talking, be sure to screenshot the episode share it with a friend maybe there's someone in your life who would benefit from listening to this with you and then having a conversation about it. I think that's something I really encourage. I think when we're having an experience collectively it's even better than saying Hi, I just heard something amazing, listen to it friends, listen to it, family and then discuss it among yourselves.

I hope we have given you enough tools, knowledge, and thoughts to start a conversation and ask a powerful question. May you leave here today feeling happier, healthier and more healed. Thank you very much by the way Community, I love you deeply and thanks to Mel for joining us again today and we'll see you next time, thank you all if you want. To see more videos like this, be sure to subscribe and click the boxes here. I'm also happy to let you know that you can now get my book Think Like A Monk from think like a monkbook.com.

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