There is somebody that will fundamentally change because of what they're about to hear us talk about. (upbeat music) Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. My guest today is the uber inspiring, super authentic queen of grounded, science-backed personal development, my friend, Mel Robbins. Chances are if you are at all online, you already know this woman because she's like everywhere. But if her name does not ring a bell, Mel is a former lawyer turned CNN legal analyst turned many other jobs, turned mega bestselling author, talk show host and one of the most widely booked public speakers in the world. Her work includes the global phenomenon, "The Five Second Rule," four number one bestselling audio books, the number one podcast on Audible, And her videos have over a billion views online, including her TEDx Talk, "How To Stop Screwing Yourself Over," which is one of the most popular of all time with 27 million views. The occasion for this conversation is Mel's brand new book, "The High Five Habit," which you should all pick up. It's packed with practical, life altering science and experience-based wisdom and tools that you, myself included, really need to hear. Nobody loves making a real difference in people's lives more than Mel. I adore this woman. And I'm pretty sure you're gonna fall in love as well. So click that Subscribe button and without further ado, this is me and the wonderful, Mel Robbins. I can't believe it took this long for us to do this. You know, I have never done a formal podcast tour. What do you mean? Meaning the only podcasts I've been on are Lewis Howes' and. Maybe Tom Bilyeu, you've done a few. Who else? I don't know, you've done a smattering out there. I did a search.
Not really. (Rich laughing) A couple, but it's been awhile. Yeah. It's been a while. I mean, if you think about it for a book like "The Five Second Rule" that sold a couple million copies and done so well, like zero. Yeah, but when you have a platform as large as yours, the need to go on other people's podcasts is not as relevant. But here you are.
Well, unless you're interested in making an impact. Yeah, well, we're a cross-pollinization I guess, right?
Yeah. But it's good to have you here. I'm delighted to be in your presence. This has been a long time coming. And, I was trying to remember the last time I saw you, and I'm pretty sure we were talking about this for the podcast. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you was on the set of your television show, literally like maybe a week or two before everything locked down in the pandemic. I think days, Rich. Yeah, I think so, right? Days. Because your show ended very abruptly shortly thereafter as a result of that. Yeah. Wow. They found, I'll never forget it. So, it had always been a lifelong dream of mine, growing up watching Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. I grew up in the Midwest and I'd come home from school and they'd be on television. It had always been a dream of mine to host my own daytime talk show. So when the opportunity presented itself when I was 50 years old, I jumped at it. It was not the right fit for me, at all. In what way? You seemed pretty at home. On the television set? Yeah. Well, I'm at home kind of creating something and working with a big group of creative people. And I love helping people and I love life coaching. That is really something that, it just brings me alive. What I didn't like is, ever since I've been an entrepreneur, so for the last eight years, 10 years, as I've been kind of recreating myself and building my career, I've been in control for better or worse of everything that I do. When I signed on with Sony Pictures Television to do a daytime syndicated talk show, I was profoundly fucking naive about just how much was out of my control. And also Rich, how much I fucking hate being out of control in terms of not having the final say in what I'm doing. Well if anything, it confronted you with that, I don't wanna say character defect, that predisposition, right? That you had to work through. I mean, it's a machine. There were so many people there, it's crazy. 131.
I mean, it was a sight to behold just knowing you and then being there and being like, "Wow, like this is an operation." Well here is what I learned about myself. So, I personally believe that absolutely everything that is happening to you is preparing you for something that's coming. And if you look back in this moment, Rich, I know that you can look at all the moments in your life and you can see how those dots connect you to this moment. There was a lesson, there was an experience, there was a person, there was something even in the worst moments. And I know you, sleeping on that mattress, you know, at the worst moments of your life in that apartment, when you were still practicing law and barely hanging on, there was something that you learned from that experience that you probably still use at this moment in your life, correct? 100%. Yeah, I mean, I have all kinds of things I wanna say about that, but before I do that, I'm gonna put on my Mel Robbins' glasses. They're not black, they're like brown, but they're the closest that I have. They're great looking on you. Yeah, it is. I think part of that also, you know, we're around the same age. When you get to a certain age, you're able to cast your gaze backwards and see how everything kind of conspired to create the person that you are today and it all makes perfect sense through the rear view mirror. And what's interesting is that, although our journeys are very different in many ways, there's so much overlap in the variety of experiences that have brought us to this place. I mean, law school, being a lawyer, being an unhappy lawyer, you know, a whole financial dismantling, being the parent of young adults and et cetera and all of that, you know, that comes together. But when I look back on my life, yes, all these different things that I did that seemed to not be related to each other or didn't really appear to have any, you know, kind of stickiness to anything that I do now, of course they all inform, it all. it was this perfect soup that has allowed me to be able to kind of do what I do now. And it's certainly the case in your story. Yeah, and, you know, I think life is not really meant to be enjoyed. It's a school. How dare you? What do you mean how dare you? Not meant to be enjoyed. Well, you can enjoy it. Yeah. But life is school. And it's there to teach you something. And maybe it took me 50 years to figure this out and to be able to look backwards and see how the dots connect, but I think the real secret is to be able to stand in the moment today and have faith that this is yet another dot that is leading you somewhere that you're meant to go. Right. And that attitude is what got me through, first of all this past year which has been one of the worst years of my life. I can't talk about most of it because the attorneys would start calling. (laughs) Or my kids might hear some of it and they can't know. But, you know, the talk show for example, when I went into it, this is what I said to myself. "I've got an opportunity to go after something I've dreamt about since I was a kid. And I know it's not about a show. I know that this is an experience that is preparing me for something else." And having that sort of, this is a dot on the trajectory and the map of my life allows me to detach from the outcome. 'Cause let's face it, the show was not a success. I got fired from my dream job. It did not get renewed for season two which means it was a failure. But I don't relate to it that way because I know that it was in my life to give me an experience. And the experience taught me this, I am a horrible CEO. I am terrible at running a company. I am amazing if I can have an organization around me that allows me to show up and do what I do best. I left that talk show having been fired from my dream job, realizing I was in the wrong seat in the bus in my business. And that I had to change absolutely everything if I wanted to be happy, if I wanted to work in a way that was effective and if I wanted to really reach the goals that I have. Did you have that awareness in the moment or is that in retrospect that you're able to develop that? I had that experience as I was hosting the talk show because it was the first time that I was surrounded by expertise. I have built my business in spite of myself. (laughs) And you took your executive producer with you, right? Yes. In the wake of that. Yes, and you know what's interesting? She's a genius. She is the, Mindy Borman, absolutely amazing human being. And what she learned stepping into digital is that she was in the wrong place. She kept saying, "I feel like a whale in a swimming pool. I feel like a whale in a swimming pool." You see, I loved having 131 people around me and having a very specific, narrow role in the making of something. She realized stepping into a team of 10 people that she needs a big team to work in. What I realized from the experience is, I need a team of experts around me. Right, and prior to that, you were building your social media empire and becoming this lauded public speaker and writing all of these books and doing it with a team of people, but also in a manner in which it was not sustainable because of your control issues and trying to manage all these people, which is not a skillset. I think you would admit is, speaks to your strengths and it becomes unmet. So the lesson, I guess is what I'm saying, from the talk show was, "Oh, I need to surround myself with people who are better at these respective roles than I am and have somebody who's in charge of managing them for me so I can do my thing."
Correct. Yes, and somebody strong enough to just smack me across the face when I'm stepping out of my lane and stepping into every other lane. Sure, but then the pandemic comes, slaps you in the face and then you're just at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Yeah, yeah. We'll be back in a sec, but first, if you dig this podcast and I hope you dig this podcast, then I think you'll really enjoy my latest book, "Voicing Change." Featuring excerpts from poignant essays by and glorious photography of some 50 of my favorite guests over the last eight plus years of doing this thing, this podcast. It's a gorgeous artful compendium of the show and copious wisdom shared there and all wrapped in a hardcover, coffee table form that provides a great taste of what we do here at the RRP and serves as a beautiful keepsake or gift for the ardent fan. The book is only and exclusively available on our website. Signed copies are available and we are shipping globally direct to any coffee table on planet earth. So to learn more and snag your copy today, visit richroll.com/vc. That's richroll.com/vc. All right, let's get back into it. So, you know, we haven't gotten into this yet, but I have had a lifelong history with anxiety. I was a worrier as a kid. Homesick at every camp that I ever went to. In fact, when we went to sixth grade camp at my little public high school, go away for like five days, I was so disassociated and freaked out so badly that I lied to the camp and told them that my grandmother, there had been some sort of family emergency. First I get them to let me use the camp phone so I can call my parents. Then I hang up and tell them that there's been a terrible tragedy in the family and that my grandmother has fallen gravely ill, convincing my parents to show up. And then when my parents show up and my friends ask me, "Why are you leaving early?" I lie to them and tell them, you know, that there's been this emergency and that I have to go, when in fact, my panic and anxiety drove me to great lengths to get out of that situation. And so when I say I struggled with anxiety, I mean, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder when I was 22 years old in law school, that should have been a hint that I didn't like law school, right? But I went on Zoloft and I took it for two and a half decades. And I only came off it when I discovered the five second rule and started using it to change my physical habits and then my mental habits. I stopped taking a Zoloft when I was 45 and hadn't been on it for, I don't know how old, 52, seven years now. But when the pandemic hit and I was suddenly off airplanes and I was no longer racing around from a speech or wherever, and I had to sit and be with myself, that came roaring back in.
Yeah, terrifying. And what I realized is I never understood how dysregulated my nervous system was. And it was having to be still that made me realize that I literally will duck to Target or run to a coffee shop or make a phone call or swipe through social media as a way to distract myself from having to just be. Even though you have a husband who's a Buddhist and an avid meditator. His Buddhism and meditation does not smooth out my dysregulated nervous system. You're not absorbing it by osmosis. No, it's the reason why we're still married. He would have divorced my ass a long time ago if he wasn't meditating and Buddhist, because he wouldn't be able to deal with me. My favorite story about your anxiety is in the new book, which we're gonna talk about, "The High Five Habit." And it's the story of you getting the job with the Michigan AG and being assigned to write this paper on recidivism and just not doing it at all. And then the day that you're called into his office, just not showing up and completely ghosting him. Yes. (Rich laughing) Yes. It's true. When I think back to what a train wreck of a human being I was, I cannot believe I made it through college and law school and basically was upright for as long as I was. The story that Rich is talking about is, at this point I was not diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I was just a person who was a complete fuck-up. I was drinking too much, trying to regulate my nervous system, I hated law school. So, I go home for the first year summer. What did you do your first year of law school for? I worked for a nonprofit in San Francisco. Did you know when you were in law school,
I was terrible. that you didn't wanna be a lawyer? 100%. Yes, and I think so many people get into this position too, whether you're in a relationship or a job or a major or a neighborhood or whatever, where you know you're in the wrong place.
Right. But there's so much inertia behind it. And the idea of stepping out of it is so fraught and terrifying that it's easier to just keep going. I mean I would say, I actually enjoyed being in an academic environment and I need it. I was coming out of living in New York City where I was just a wild man and I needed some of that structure because I knew what to do every day and I was capable in that regard. So I actually didn't mind like going to class and like kind of, you know, sort of social environment that it provided, but I had no interest in being a lawyer. Me either.
I didn't even know what that meant, even when I graduated from law school, I still didn't know what being a lawyer meant. It doesn't really teach you that part. Well I guess, 'cause there's so many things that you can do.
Yeah. Being a lawyer. Yeah. But so back to the summer, I'm living back home in Western Michigan. I grew up in Muskegon, Michigan, and I'm driving 50 miles a day each way to go to the Attorney General's office in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And at the very beginning of the summer, the AG selects me to do a massive research paper about recidivism rates in the state of Michigan. Basically he wants, at the end of the summer, it gets worse, he wants to make a massive speech about how he has been responsible for lowering recidivism rates, which basically means the rate of re-entry to jail, rearrest and re-entry for those of you that are not criminal defense attorneys or studied this thing. I had no idea how to do a project like this. I also didn't at the time that I was dyslexic or ADHD. Like law school was a nightmare for me, all the reading and the writing. And so I would literally drive there. I would be terrified to walk into work, knowing I had this big assignment. Everybody else had little things to do. So I would sit and I would procrastinate all day. Do nothing, like literally not even crack open a book. I didn't even open up Lexus Nexus. I did nothing. And this went on for three months. I would drive there five days a week. I would do nothing all day. I'd go to lunch with the other interns. I'd then sit around, I'd do nothing all day. I didn't even have social media or the internet to like, just blow off the time, I was literally doing nothing. And then he called me in, you're right. I'll never forget it. I don't remember a lot of that summer, but I do remember being called in. And I remember my cheeks being bright red and my armpits were sweating like crazy. And I was wearing a suit that my mother had probably bought me at JCPenney's. And, he stood there and said, "How is it coming? You know, the speech that I need to give is coming up. I'd love to see what you're working on." And I literally blustered. I was like, "Oh, well yeah, there's tons of data to go through and the research departments are really helpful. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm gonna get it to you. I know I'm going back to school next week. I promise you it will be done." I walked out his door. (Rich laughing) I didn't even stop by my office to turn the lights off. I went straight out to the parking lot. I jumped in my parents' car and I drove right back to Muskegon, Michigan, and I never went back. Nothing. (Rich laughing) Nothing. It's unbelievable that you're such a capable human being when I hear that story. It is unbelievable. If I can change from somebody that is literally riddled with anxiety and just completely on edge all the time. Yeah. To a person who is, I think I'm tremendously self-aware, both the internal self-awareness and external self-awareness and change my habits and the way that I think and really heal my nervous system, you can too. Yeah so, this happened before you were technically diagnosed and you went on to have, you know, success. You were in legal aid, you were a public defender. You become this analyst for CNN. Oh, that was later. That was later. I mean, at what point do you start like reckoning
I have the craziest story. with all of that? Well, let's take it back, like talk me through this journey. Because as you mentioned, you haven't been on a lot of podcasts. You haven't been on this podcast before. And I think, the kind of origin story here is super important and impactful in terms of like contextualizing everything that you're doing now. So after law school, so I'm now on Zoloft, thank God. But after law, which helped picture as, it was lifesaving. It literally for me, what it did is, it just turned down the volume of the negativity in my head. I mean, I understand a tremendous amount now about anxiety and panic attacks and worry. And there's a really significant connection between worry, anxiety and panic. I believe all anxiety begins with worrying. That your negative thought loop starts going, this is the baby. So when you start to worry about something, the thoughts start to spin, right? And as your thoughts start to spin, your body and your nervous system take notice. Anxiety is simply when worrying starts to get lodged in your body, your body goes on edge. I'm sure, you guys talk about it all the time, parasympathetic versus sympathetic nervous system. But, it begins with a worry. Then your body gets agitated. And when your body gets agitated, I understand the science behind all this now, thankfully, And your stomach starts to feel gurgly. We make the mistake then of letting the worries pick up, "Oh shit, my stomach's on edge. That must mean that something bad is gonna happen." And that only ticks up the anxiety in your body. And at some point, this gets so pronounced that your body goes, "That's it, I'm getting her out of here, panic attack time." And so, when you start to attack the worry loop, that's how you can slow down the anxiety. But I didn't know any of that back in the day. So, I was a legal aid attorney and then my husband, I did that for four years, and then my husband got into business school. And we moved up to Boston. And the only job I could get was with a large law firm. And so I worked there for a year, I hated it, Rich. I hated it. Oh my God. I went from being in a courtroom five days a week to sitting in a suit in an office writing briefs. Like again, like this was like penance for the attorney general stunt that I pulled. And luckily I got pregnant. And when I was pregnant with our first daughter who's now 22, so this is 22 years ago, 2000, 1999. When our daughter was born, I had severe postpartum depression. And when I finally came out of it and I was allowed to be with the baby, like I had to be supervised, it was that scary. And when I came out of it, I turned to Chris at one point and said, "I can't go back to law, that law firm. I do not wanna be a lawyer anymore." And for me, he said, "How do you know?" And I said, "I don't ever wanna answer the question, what do you do, with I'm a lawyer." And Chris, he wasn't a Buddhist then but he was very calm, very grounded, thank God. He looked at me and said, "That's great. You realize we've just bought a house and you can't be with the baby full time, she's gonna be in daycare. I've done the numbers and you can do whatever the fuck you want, but you have to make $60,000 a year." Right. "And you have four weeks to figure it out." 'Cause that was when I had to go back to the law firm. Right. And so I'll tell you, when you have a problem defined like that, "What do you want?" I'll tell you what I wanted. I wanted a job in the next four weeks to pay me $60,000 a year. If you can define what you want, you can make it happen. I networked like my life depended upon it. And I ended up, the night before, Rich, I was supposed to go back to that law firm. I have a habit of ghosting people, let's just put that out on the table, let's seal the bell. Yeah. So the night before I was supposed to go back to, this story is so cringy, I don't write about this in the book, wait to hear this. The night before I'm supposed to go back I get an offer for $55,000. Chris and I are like, "Okay, we'll make it work." The next day, I go in to my first day back at the law firm, where I've been out on paid maternity leave (laughs) to walk in the door and quit. And when I walk in, they are hosting a surprise baby shower for me. (laughs) Your head must have just lit up with all those thoughts of, "I should have ghosted." Yes. "I should have just never gone back." Oh my God. So we have the shower, you know, they have like breakfast for everybody and presents. And then I have to walk into my boss's office and tell her the news. And she was so shocked. Like if you ever had that experience where you're talking to somebody and as you're talking you realize they are managing their facial expression, 'cause they don't know what to do. Right. So, that was really fun. Yeah. But it kind of flipped for me because as I went around and said goodbye to people, there was one partner who stood up as I was talking and walked past me and closed the door behind me. And I thought, "Oh my God, what's about to happen?" And he sat back down and said, "I hate it here too. If that startup company is hiring, could you give them my name?"
Yes. Oh my God. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna be okay. No more bate stamping. No more bate stamping. So I go to this little tech startup called, at the time it was called Emode. And it was founded by this super, super smart guy, James Currier. And I was like the fifth person in the door and I was handed a job in 1991 as the director of content and it was my introduction to digital marketing. And I spent gosh, a year or two there and then I went to another digital kind of marketing platform for creative services and ended up getting fired from that job, which I should have because I did not know what I was doing. They hired me. I was able to talk myself into a great job and then clearly, within four months I had no clue what I was doing. And then, I went to another one and, in a lower level, and kept working. And that's when I started going, "I'm not really happy. I don't really know what I wanna do. I've done the lawyer thing. Now I'm like in digital marketing, what the heck." The first .com bomb happened and there weren't a lot of jobs and so I hired a life coach. And the life coach that I hired was teaching a course at the Sloan Business School on Life Design. And, I started working with her. And the piece of the story that I left out is that in 1994, my husband and I started doing all these life improvement courses with a company called Landmark Education in New York City. And so I had like six years of landmark courses under my belt. And I had had a ton of training in just ontology, which is the study of being. I had had a lot of training as a coach. I had been trained to lead courses for them, but I had never really done anything coaching wise and life coaching really wasn't a thing. And so I hired this person to help me figure out what to do with my own life. And a couple sessions in this person goes, "You should be coaching people." I'm like, "Coaching people? What does that look like?" And so it took me about six months of training and finally I was ready to start a life coaching business. And that's what I did. I didn't know that about you. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. And at some point you started doing radio, right? Okay, that's a whole other story. Okay, I literally. I'm seeing like the little beads, you know, along the string.
The dots connecting. That are all adding up to, you know, the Mel Robbins of today. Okay, so here's what happened. So this would have been, I get so lost in the timeline of my life, because you know what I feel like? I feel like, do you remember that "Looney Tunes" cartoon where is it Daffy Duck wanders into a construction site on sleeping medication? I've told this story before. No, it's. Who is it? I think it's Swee'Pea Who the hell is Swee'Pea? The little baby in "Popeye." Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, and Swee'Pea kind of crawls onto a construction site and onto an I-beam. And then the crane lifts the I-beam up and the baby is like crawling along the I-beam. And right when the baby is gonna fall to its, you know, imminent death, the other I-beam swings around and it crawls onto the next one. That's my life. My life is exactly like that as well. That is my life. Like, as you're hearing this, like me tell the story of my career which is somewhat embarrassing, it's a testament to resilience though. I literally fail over and over and over again. I lose my way a million times before I find myself. And even when I find myself, I eventually feel lost again and go looking for myself again. Constantly seeking, constantly growing, constantly failing. And so, I start this life coaching business. I love it, it goes incredibly, incredibly well. This would have been like 2002 to like 2000, I don't know, I'm guessing here, six maybe. And, what ends up happening is a friend of mine emails me, forwards an email to me. And when you look at the chain of the forward, what you see at the bottom is that somebody at Inc. Magazine looking to write an article about life coaches. And I immediately scan the thing and it's a month old, the deadline has passed. I have none of the credentials they're looking for. I have none of the types of clients they're looking for. And I start to go like we always do, down the list of reasons why I should not respond. Like we're always arguing against ourselves, always holding ourselves back. And I immediately say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What would somebody who's more successful than me do?" And I'm like, "They'd fucking apply." Right. So I take a sip of wine, I start typing like crazy. And I just freeform this hilarious response back a month late with none of the credentials, dah, dah, dah. She writes back the next day and says, "I was about to turn the article in. What if I come to Boston next week and TART trail you?" Wow. So she comes, she follows me around for a day. She ends up publishing an article and I'm like, "Oh, yes." 'Cause, oh, that's right. 'Cause the article released in 2005. I can't believe how old I am, 2005, my God, that's like 16 years ago. And it seems like yesterday. And I'm pregnant with our son and our third child. And I'm like, "This is gonna be amazing. The timing of this article is fabulous. This article is gonna print Rich, and I am gonna have an avalanche of clients. It's gonna be awesome." The article prints, fucking crickets. Not a single client, not a single inbound email, nada, nothing, nothing. So, I forget about it. I'm out to dinner one night. My phone's ringing. It's a New York number. Like who the heck is calling me from New York? I pick up the phone. And, "Is this Mel Robbins?" "Yeah, it's Mel Robbins." "Hey, this is Mary Duffy from CNBC." I'm like, " Oh, hi Mary Duffy. How are you?" Having no idea who she is. She's like, "Well, I saw the article in Inc. Magazine and we'd like to fly you down and talk to you." So literally a week later, I find myself on a plane, down to New York, drive over to New Jersey, walk into the offices, I sit down and I'm in a meeting with the executives at CNBC. And they're in a development meeting. "Oh my God, coaching is hot. We think you're amazing. We wanna do a show. We wanna tick it between Cramer." And Donny Deutsch was on at the time, "The Big Idea." "And we'd like you to do dah, dah, dah." I walk out of there with a fricking development deal. Oh my God. To do. That really is like a Swee'Pea thing. Yes, to do a talk show, no, to do like a call-in advice show for the money audience on non-money topics in between Cramer and Donny Deutsch. So they decided that, by the way that never happened, okay? Not the story, but the show. So in the meantime, they are like, we should put you on Donny show's all the time to start to seed you to our audience. So I'm now being brought down to New York once a week to appear on "The Big Idea," Donny Deutsch's show as like a panelist. And I am just kind of doing my thing. Meanwhile, something else is happening. There is a show that is being cast by Fox called, it was a business makeover show where they were going to do something like the Gordon Ramsey show with kitchens, right? They wanted to do that with small businesses. Now mind you, this show has been played out now a million times, but I'm talking 2007 here and 2008, this is the time zone that this was happening in. And so I'm now starting to feel like holy cow, like my fricking gravy train is coming in. I'm not only like in development at CNBC, which means Jack shit by the way. I am now, oh, I don't even know about this yet. So, I am. So the show's in development and the executives at Fox are talking to Donny Deutsch about hosting the show. I know nothing about it, Rich. I'm just happily life coaching. And I am happily appearing on "The Big Idea" thinking I am a big shit, which I am not. All of a sudden my agent calls me and says, because I didn't even have an agent, I had to get one 'cause I didn't know how to negotiate the contract 'cause I was a criminal lawyer, blah, blah, blah. This guy that represented me called me and said, "You're never gonna believe this." I said, "What?" He said, "There is a guy who runs all of non-scripted, meaning reality programming at Fox. He's responsible for 'American Idol,' the whole deal. And they wanna talk to you about hosting a reality show for Fox that's a business make-over show." I'm like, "You're kidding me." And he said, "No, they want you on a plane tonight out of Boston." I'm like, "You're kidding me." So I pack up, I go to the, oh, this is hilarious story. Are you ready? Brace yourself.
Yeah. So I pack up, I go to Logan, it's 2007. I'm terrified of flying. I'm wearing sneakers, sweats pants, a sweatshirt. I have a roll-on suitcase that has the single best suit I own and a pair of high heels in it, because you have to dress the part. Like interviewing is all about walking in as the person. I have my makeup in there, I'm ready to go. The meeting is at 8:30 in the morning in LA. I get on this plane and I am sitting in my seat, breathing through my breathing exercises 'cause I had not invented the five second rule yet. As I'm having a panic attack, and all of a sudden it dawns on me, I've left my suitcase at the Starbucks in the airport. Oh no. (laughs) I have the interview of my life tomorrow morning. Right. In LA. By the time land in LA, you can't go to the store. It's midnight. Yeah, you're tossed. Yeah. So I get up early, I go to the front desk of the hotel they've put me in, the nicest hotel I've ever been in. I feel already like the world's biggest fraud. I don't belong here. I am in pit-stained t-shirt and dirty sweats. My hair is greasy as hell because I have literally been sweating all night thinking about what I'm gonna do. And I said, "Is there anything open? Do you have anything in lost and found that I can borrow? I don't even wanna steal it, I just need to wear it." Nothing, nothing, nothing. He's like, "Oh, actually there is a Target that is on your way to the place that you're going to go that opens at 8:00. So the car service picks me up. I tell them to be in line at the Target. I ran through that Target like I was in one of those shopping spree game shows. Black pants, black shirt, black high heels, dry shampoo, running, running, running, you know, like, a little like thing, like the foundation thing, running, running, running. Run out, I change in the backseat of the car. You know, all this, I snap across the heels because the heels are connected, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I get out of the car and I realize I have grabbed a size 10 heels and I wear a size eight. So I'm now in like three-inch high flip-flops that are ringing, as I'm walking. And I shuffle my way down the thing. And I walk into the meeting and I land the role. And this should have been the last time I ever did television because I have been screwed all three times I did TV, except for CNN. So what happened, did that show never transpire? Thankfully it never aired because this is what happened. When I landed the role, the role was to basically do extreme office make-over. You take a struggling business and you get to have the extraordinary job of making over the whole thing. Everything from training employees to the whole physical space itself. Remember the "Extreme Home Makeover" where they'd like, you know, kind of move the bus. And so that was the show concept. Four months later, when we were ready to tape the show, they had brought on some big names in reality, Endemol, 51 Minds, and the show had completely changed. And it was now a show called "Someone's Gotta Go." And I was told that I would be firing people from real jobs on national TV on a reality show. Wow. Yeah. And I. Welcome to Hollywood. Well, I, you know, it's not what I signed up for and I love helping people. And so I remember calling my husband sobbing from the hotel room and calling my agent sobbing, "I can't do this, I'm quitting." And he's like, "I don't think you understand what you've gotten yourself into. There's a crew of 150 people. There's Fox and two massive production companies. They have already cast the entire season, Mel." And it's an unbelievable opportunity. I mean, essentially. If you like that kind of thing. Back in Boston coaching however many people and nobody calling you after that article came out. But I was happy. Yeah. Like I think that that's the thing, is that we chase the next bigger thing. And look, I, all of these experiences are amazing, but what was immediately apparent when this train left the station is this is not a train I wanted to be on. And so we shot the first two episodes and it was, you know, I mean, the people were lovely but it was a horrible experience. It was the typical reality show. They put you in a bubble, they take everybody's phones. They take the television sets out of the rooms that people are staying in. And again, this was 2007. This is not like when everybody's watching "Love Island" and we all know what the reality show thing is. And these were people that had signed up thinking they were getting a make-over. So the people who had signed up for the show, the business owners, were actually told that somebody was getting fired in the opening scene because they wanted to capture the authentic reaction. That's awful. And if you're a person that for me, it was never about doing this for show. I thought that I was on a show that was gonna help businesses. And look, I realized that a lot of times you're gonna fire people to help your business, but that's not at all what I wanted to do. And we were teetering on a recession and at the same time, my husband's restaurant business was starting to face some real challenges as restaurant businesses often do. And so the thought of actually going in and pushing a small business owner over the edge on national television was gut-wrenching. We shot two episodes. I don't know how I made it through it. And then luckily again, the I-beam comes over and as I'm falling, I'm caught. The legal department at Fox said, "The recession is coming on. This is the wrong show at the wrong time. And this has tabled." And so instead of airing it on January 6th on my husband's 40th birthday with "American Idol" as the lead in. Oh my God. (Mel laughing) Oh my God, holy shit. I dodged that, but then got handed. Life would have been very different if that show aired for you, I think. I think my career would have been over. You think? I do. Well, I, you know, look, I mean, everybody can remake. Well the timing saved you. Themselves over and over and over again. Right, you would have been vilified. Vilified. And I didn't believe in what I was doing. And you would have to kind of wear the mantle of, you know, the evil person who, you know, delivers the hatchet. Yeah, like I wasn't, if you're not vested in it, you can't defend it. And you know, if I believe in what I'm doing, I will fight anybody to the death over it. But I didn't believe in what I was doing. That's why it was the kiss of death. I didn't realize you had all these television experiences prior. So, I'm not even done. Yeah. So, what happens next is I go, "Oh, thank God." And then the agent, lawyer person calls me and says, "Well, I have some bad news. And I said, "What's that?" And they said, "The executives at Fox want this to air and you're locked under contract so you can't do anything for the next year." And I thought I was all smart because I negotiated a deal where I had more of a backend and I only got paid as the episodes aired. So I found myself unemployed. And I felt like such a idiot, that I didn't even have the confidence to go back to coaching people. And it was at this point that my husband's second and third restaurant started to fail. The liens hit the house. And I was 41 years old. A former lawyer turned digital marketing failure who became a happy and successful life coach, who then got too big for her breeches and stepped into television. Got handed one kind of experience after another. And now I'm 41 years old and I have no idea what to do with my life or what I should do. And I feel like a complete failure. And at the same time, my husband's restaurants, which we've secured with our house and our life savings and our kids' college funds are going under. We're $800,000 in debt. I'm unemployed. And it was certainly at that moment, the worst moment in my life. So this is like 2008. Yeah, lousy year for a lot of people. Yeah. Housing crisis. Not a good year for us either. Yeah, it was brutal. And that's a phase that was pretty protracted, right? You guys really went through it. And the more I learn about, you know, what went down for you, it's kind of amazing to me. I mean, we can talk about all the entrepreneurial success, et cetera, but more importantly that your marriage survived this, because you guys were at loggerheads. Oh, yeah.
Big time. Big time, because, it's a lot easier to be angry than to be afraid. And so when the shit hit the fan in my life, even though I had made a ridiculous number of mistakes, many of which I've been talking about with you, I reacted to this crisis in my life and my marriage and in our finances like a lot of high functioning adults by screaming at my husband and drinking myself into the ground. (laughs) Like any respectful person would do, right. It was a low moment. And look, I think that you know when you hit rock bottom. You'll know when you hit rock bottom because you finally hit something solid within yourself. And what happened for me, is I spent eight, six months screaming at Chris and drinking like crazy. And, you know, it was a terrible period in our lives. Our kids even remember it. This is the part that sucks. They remember coming downstairs in the morning and I'm still asleep in the chair in the living room. They remember Chris being angry all the time. They remember sort of the standoff. Like it's one thing to be roommates with your partner, it's another thing to be in a standoff, which Chris and I were. And you know, it wasn't Chris's fault. This is the restaurant business. I mean, this is the risk of entrepreneurship. It's not like he went into business and was like, "Let's just this up and go a million dollars." That's not at all what happened. Yeah. You know, I, you pick locations and some are great and some suck. And if you do that at the second location, you're gonna be in trouble with your business model. And what happened for Chris and we're still unpacking this to this day, is that he, as the business started to fail, started to marry that with his own identity and think that he was a failure. You talk about that in the new book. Yeah. And his self identification with that failure being very personal. Whereas his investors didn't see it that way, they realized this is a calculated risk. Yap. And you in turn, you know, seeing Chris through the lens of that failure, such that no matter what he did, whether he's mowing the lawn or taking the kids to the park or, you know, coaching a sports team, was all indications of that failure as opposed to contributing to the family welfare. Right, I mean, it took a number of years. I mean, basically what ended up happening is, you know, as the liens were hitting the house and the bankruptcy letters were arriving, and Chris was scrambling with his business partner to pull the business out of the wreckage, which by the way, they ultimately did and ended up selling off the units, not for great success, but they certainly did not provide the return on the investment that they had hoped, but they mitigated a tremendous amount of loss and risk. And the thing that I think a lot about is that, you know, Chris's business partner has a way more optimistic, what I call a high five attitude. And he was able to separate his identity from what had happened in the business. And for whatever reason, Chris just couldn't. And so he left the business in 2014 and just really, really, it's been a long process for him to separate who he is from what happened in that business. So here you are, it's 2008. I feel like I'm having a hot flash. Oh my God. Don't ghost me. Are you gonna get up and just leave and just walk out on me? I'm getting hot. Somebody bring me a fan.
Come on. Okay, here we go, it's all the lights. 800 grand in debt. Yes. Now, in retrospect being this, you know, person who embodies self-empowerment, it's very easy and almost cavalier to say, "Things like this happen for a reason. They're happening for you, not to you." Julie would call it your divine moment, right? But when you're in that, it's like, you can't hear that. You don't wanna hear that. You're like, "Fuck off, you don't understand my pain." Of course.
I need a solution now. Yes, I agree. Look, when you, like here's the thing about mindset. A mindset will not change the shitty situation you're in. A positive mindset changes you, which changes your ability to deal with the shitty situation that you're in. Well, this goes to so many of the things that you talk about and a subject matter that I love and then neuroscience proves this out, this idea of developing a bias towards action. You know, in AA we call it mood follows action. The idea being that, we're all victims of some level of analysis paralysis and we're waiting until we feel like doing something or we are, you know, blessed with the spark of inspiration. But in truth, the only way to shift out of any of these kinds of scenarios is to take an action first, right? As hard as that is. And the emotions, the perceptions, all of that follows action, not the other way around. 100% true. So, how I discovered this in my life is during this horrible period in life. So 2008. Every morning I would wake up and I would immediately start spinning the negative thoughts. "We're fucked. I hate my husband. How did we end up here? I can't believe I did that stupid ass show. I've made so many mistakes. I should just flush my life, you know, the last 40 years down the toilet. You know, I'm so embarrassed. I'm the world's worst mother." I'd stare at the ceiling. I was like a human pot roast marinating in fear. And then of course, the anxiety would wave up my body and pin me down to that bed and I'd hit the snooze button. And I would hit the snooze button four or five times a morning. By the time I woke up, the kids would miss the bus. So we got three kids under the age of 10. Chris was long gone 'cause he's a very smart man and he did not wanna be in the house when I was awake. And he was trying to fix the situation that they were in. And I would literally scream at the kids, get them in the car. And from there the day was just horrible. And then every night I would do the same thing. I'd say, "That's it. Tomorrow morning it's gotta be the new me." Everybody that struggles with addiction does this exact same thing. "Tomorrow I'm not drinking. That's it, I'm done with this." And then the next morning, it's the same fucking pattern of negative crap that you're doing to yourself. And this is exactly what you talk about all the time. It's not the what you need to do, it's how. How do you make yourself do the things that feel hard or scary or don't seem like they're gonna work 'cause you're resigned and you're stuck in your patterns? That was me. I knew I needed to get out of bed. I knew I needed to stop drinking. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew this wasn't Chris's fault and I needed to stop screaming at him all the time. But I wasn't doing any of those things. I didn't know how. And so this was the moment I created the five second rule. And again, this is another I-beam or T-beam or whatever the hell beam it's called. I'm sitting in front of a television and I am watching TV. The kids are in bed and I'm drinking a bourbon. And I'm probably on like my fourth Manhattan and I'm having my nightly pep-talk and I'm going, "That's it, tomorrow morning it's the new me. I gotta wake up, I gotta do this. I gotta do the other thing." And all of a sudden, Rich, honest to goodness, I see a rocket ship launch at the end of a commercial. And I go, "That's it, tomorrow morning I'm launching myself out of bed like a rocket." And that was the beginning of the five second rule. What's so interesting about that? Are these? You talk about like hitting your bottom and this is a bottom for sure. But in that kind of reckoning where the pain of your current circumstance exceeds the fear of doing something different, no matter how small that difference is, there's like a crack in the universe, like a little opening, right? Where you have just the slightest bit of willingness that you didn't have the day before. And even the tiniest action, whether it's picking up the phone to make a call or counting back down from five. When you look back now, it's like, I did a couple of little things that changed my life forever. This incident, you know, obviously changed your life forever. And it's kind of amazing in a beautiful, mystical way, how that occurs. I think it occurs when you're ready. Wasn't yours a phone call? Yeah, I've had a couple in my life. I mean, when I, you know, when I got sober, I hit a certain bottom and that was, you know, that was a phone call to say, I'm ready. Like, let's go to rehab. I had it again at 40 on a staircase realizing I needed rehab for life or lifestyle. But I look at those events as great blessings and things to be really revered. And when I talk about it, I'm always quick to remind people that I think we're all blessed with those moments in various shapes and forms, but we do have to be ready. And we also have to be aware because when they're visited upon us if we're not paying attention, they can quickly pass like sliding doors, right? And I often think, "How many other incidents like this have I allowed to slip by?" Where if I had been more aware and present and perhaps in a position to be ready to receive them, my life could have changed in other ways that, you know, in some parallel universe I'd be living a different life. Well, let me tell you my intention for this conversation. That you listening to us, have this podcast be that crack that lets some light in and becomes a sliding door that you might just see, "Oh wow, maybe if that phone call I'm avoiding or counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one or high-fiving myself in the mirror even though I don't think I deserve it and I think it's stupid and I'm a failure and why is this gonna help?" That you try it. Yeah. Because I think that any, you can trace back again, back to our dots analogy. Any change in trajectory was just a moment. And for me, that moment was when the alarm went off, I just counted backwards. Like NASA launches a rocket, five, four, three, two, one, and I stood up. And you know what my first reaction to it was? This is fucking stupid. Correct. Yeah. Resignation. Yeah. It was immediately like, "Okay, so you can get out of bed. So fucking what? You're $800,000 in debt, Mel. How is this gonna help?" And thankfully, I thought, "Well, what the hell do I have to lose? Why not just for one day, anytime Mel you know what you should do but you don't feel like it or anytime your emotions start to hijack you or anytime you feel afraid or anxious or whatever, why don't you just count backwards and see what happens?" And that's what I did. Yeah. And I haven't looked back. I think the power of it, 'cause it is like on some level, it really is fucking stupid. Oh, totally. And when I first saw you on Facebook or whatever before I knew you, and I was like, "Who is this? What is this?" You can say the word, I don't care. I can take a critic. I was like, the five, come on. You know, this is a bunch of bullshit, right? Now I've gotten to know you, I adore you, I love you. I think you're brilliant and talented in so many ways. But it took me a minute to get my head around this thing. But I think where I'm at now with it is that, there's a certain genius in the simplicity and the low hanging fruit nature of it. Like, I had to pick up a phone and make a very difficult phone call. That phone weighs 1000 pounds. Yeah. That's a heavy, that's a leap, right? But to say, "Well, I can count down from five to one, right? I could do that at least." Like, it's creating permission and a welcome mat and something that's so accessible for anybody no matter how much pain they're in or whatever circumstances they might find themselves in. So whether it's counting down from five to one or giving yourself a high five in the mirror, it may seem like childish or silly, but in truth, there's a neurochemical thing that takes place that sets in motion a chain of events that allow you to take that initial action. And that then puts you in a position to take further actions. And that's where the cascading effect happens and lives change. Well, you said it earlier so let me hit you with the science. Because the fact is, I used it in secret for three years. To five, four, three, two, one, pick up that phone that weighed 1000 pounds. And part of the genius of this is that when you start counting backwards, you've already committed to taking action. So the counting itself moves you from a bias towards thinking toward a bias toward action. And the more you repeat it, the more you break the pattern of thinking and you program in a pattern of taking small actions. It creates agile moves, an agile mindset. So that's one thing. The second thing that's crazy cool about this is that the reason why it's so fucking hard to change is because you talk about changing with the prefrontal cortex. You're conscious when you sit in your therapist's chair or you're listening to me and Rich, and you're using this sort of strategic part of your brain. The second that you're in a situation where you're procrastinating or you're thinking negative thoughts, it's your subconscious that's in charge of you. And so in order to change, you have to interrupt subconscious patterns. You see the five second rule isn't just some dumb counting backwards thing. It is a form of metacognition that interrupts the pattern stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus, which flips on your prefrontal cortex. It maybe gives you a moment of control over what you think and do next. That's the genius of it. And the reason why I'm so fucking passionate about this is not only because kids can use it and senior citizens can use it. You don't have to have any kind of education or speak any kind of language. It works for anybody that uses it, is because I am now standing with millions of people that have tried it. And, we have pediatricians around the world that are using it to help kids interrupt thoughts that trigger anxiety. Veterans organizations that are using five, four, three, two, one, to help reprogram responses to triggers. We had an entire wing of a Pennsylvania psychiatric inpatient nursing unit show up at the talk show to tell me that of all of the tools that they give people that have an inpatient commit, the single most positive and effective tool is the five second rule, because it is simple, you remember it, and it immediately interrupts the negative and suicidal ideations that torture people. And speaking of suicide, we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from taking their lives by five, four, three, two, one, asking for help. So I am here to tell you, I don't give a fuck how stupid you think this is. I want you to try it, I want you to share it with people, because interrupting the patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back and pushing yourself to take action or to think something different, it is the only way you're gonna change. And this is a tool that's gonna help you bridge that gap. Boom! I know. (Mel laughing) We just found the clip. I thought that we could pull that clip. Whenever you want. Pull it up. I need more water. Who would have thought? I didn't intend to do any of this. When you're on the I-beam crawling from one thing to the next. Still. What's so funny is that you end up doing this TEDx talk, right? Well, you know, that was a whole thing too. Like I didn't apply. How did that happen? Oh, you're gonna die when you hear this. You ready? So I, TEDx wasn't even a thing. This was like one of the first TEDx Conferences. So it's TEDx San Francisco. And a friend of a friend of a friend is the person curating it. And they are looking for somebody that can talk about career change. Hello, Mel Robbins, the chameleon of careers. Right, 50 careers. Yeah, 50 careers and she's a talker. Now, I had never given a formal speech on a stage. You know, people think just because you're a lawyer, somehow you're a public speaker, not true. In fact, there are a lot of people that practice law that are introverted. I don't happen to be one of them but, I'd never given a speech. And so I get this email from this person asking if I'd be interested in giving a talk about career change for this thing called TEDx. They were offering two tickets to San Francisco and they were also gonna put us up in the St. Regis, the hotel that was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. At this point, we still have $800,000 liens on our house and kids under the age of, you know, 14. And we're like, "Yes, a free vacation." So despite my fears of giving a speech, we go. There was very little training. And, I got on that stage and I literally had like a 21-minute long panic attack. If you look closely, you will see the chest rash start to appear at about minute one. I'm darting all over the stage like a freak. At one point I jump off it. That was not like planned, I just was, I think trying to escape. And at the very end, Rich, I forgot how to end it. Oh, oh, wait. Okay, this is the last part, sorry. So one more thing that you can use. I call it the five second rule. I wasn't supposed to talk about the five second rule. Because at that point I still thought it was so dumb. Like, how am I gonna possibly explain? I didn't know any of the science. I'd been using it for three years, I knew it worked. And I look out there, I forget how I'm supposed to end this thing and I go, "Oh, there's this thing I do. I call it the five second rule. The moment you've got an instinct to act, you've gotta move within five seconds or else your brain will kill it, thank you very much." I think I was so disassociated at that point. I even gave out my email address. (Rich laughing) So I leave. Did they edit it out? Because there's like 28 million views of this thing at this point. I know. So, a year goes by. I literally leave. The first thing I said to Chris backstage is, "I'm never giving a speech again. That is the worst experience of my life." He's like, "It wasn't that bad, don't worry. You know, like there are only 500 people out there." A year goes by Rich, a year. And then somebody puts it online. I don't even know it's online. Another year goes by and now it's got like a million views. And it's at this point, I'm starting, I get my first email. Like, "Hey, I saw that thing you did for TEDx." I'm like, "Were you there?" And they're like, "No, it's online." I'm like, "It's online?" I had no idea. So for a year people asked me to come speak at their events, I didn't know normal people got paid. I thought you had to be a bestselling author like Rich Roll. I thought you had to have a podcast like Rich Roll. I thought you had to like be somebody like Rich Roll. I did not know that normal human beings, especially those of us that fall off I-beams or A-beams or whatever they're called as part of our success strategy, got paid to do this. So I just happily speak for free at seven different events that year. So now we're probably talking what? 2013. And somebody comes up to me and says, another I. Is it an A-beam or an I-beam? I-beam. I-beam, okay. So another I-beam moment. She walks up to me and goes, "Oh my gosh, can I ask you a question? I was a speaker at the event too, you were so great." I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely." And she said, "Did you get your check yet?" And I said, "Check? You got paid for that?" And she looked at me with horror and goes, "You didn't? I just assumed you did." And I thought, "I am a complete moron." Like I, it didn't even occur to me to ask to get paid. And so I made myself this promise, this is genius. If you have no idea how to break into an industry, this is how you price yourself. I said, the next time somebody calls, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna count backwards five, four, three, two, one, and you're going to say, "Yes, I'm available. What's your budget?" And then you're gonna count backwards five, four, three, two, one, 'cause it's really effective at putting yourself in pause and say, "Normally I'm double." I love that. I love the, "What's your budget?" Because you always want them to put their number out first and then you know what you're dealing with. And see at this point in my career, I was so just grateful and desperate. That's a terrible combination, to be grateful and desperate. I'm so grateful that anybody would hire me and so desperate for the money 'cause dude, we still had liens on our house. Yeah. We were barely making the ends meet. In 2014, Chris was just leaving the restaurant business. He hadn't been paid in six months. So how do you go from having a panic attack on the TEDx stage to being this, you know, crazy in demand speaker? I mean, first on a, you know, a pure kind of like trajectory, but also on a skill level. Like how did you learn how to do it? Because, for people that haven't seen Mel do her thing, I mean, you're masterful at this. I mean, nobody can command a stage the way that you do. And, you know, I was watching some of your stuff online earlier today, having my own panic attack because I gotta get on a plane tomorrow and go give two speeches out of town and I haven't done this in like two and a half years. And I think even on my best days, I'm like a B minus at this and I really wanna get good. And I've been trying to figure it out myself and I realized there's so much to learn and so many things I don't know about how to do this. While I feel like I'm capable of it, but I've lacked like the guidance from other people to kind of help me figure it out. This is something I'm a genius at. And I had to get through tremendous fear to discover that I'm a genius at it. And so, I want you listening to us to know that there is something that you are meant to be doing, and it is your fear and your negative story and sort of the pain of going from being out of shape at something to getting into shape in something that is keeping you from tapping deep within you into that thing that you're meant to do. And, what I'm meant to do is not be on stages, I'm meant to move people. And, what I mean by that is everything that I do has the intention to either move you into action or move your state of thinking or your state of emotion or emotional state. And so what happened for me is first of all, I was talking about something that I deeply believe in, because as that TEDx talk started to gain momentum, people started to write to me from around the world. I was literally spending three or four hours a night, Rich, writing emails back. "Okay, well you can use it for procrastination like this." And then I started getting tons of questions about anxiety. So I would start picking up the phone or emailing experts to understand how to answer these questions. And I finally was, I became so masterful about the topic and so passionate about it, not because of my experience, but because this stupid thing was working for people around the world and now I had some of the leading experts in neuroscience and habit research and anxiety and pediatric medicine and oncology validating why it worked. And so now I'm like, "Oh, I need to tell people about this." And it was because of the impact it was making in other real people's lives that emboldened me that I gotta get my ass on that stage and I gotta figure out, because here's the problem, right? I have the world's stupidest topic to talk about, dumb. I am literally gonna get in a stadium in front of 25,000 people and for an hour. Tell them to count back from five. And say, "You can change your life in five seconds." Who the fuck is gonna do that? I better show up and be so entertaining and so moving and so convincing and so just irrefutable, that you not only believe me, you're fucking bawling at the end of that speech because you realize, "Holy fuck, I have missed so many five-second moments. I have given up on myself. I have doubted myself. I fucking hold myself back. I can't do this to myself anymore." Because it is true, Rich, your whole life comes down to these five second windows. These moments of hesitation, these moments of opportunities where you either step forward, lean in, speak up or you fucking lean back and you hold yourself back. Your marriage, your finances, your expertise, your business, it all comes down to how and who and what you do in this five second window. And I am here to tell you, if you learn how to manage your response, what you think and what you do within this five second window, you can do or be anything. But most of us stop and hesitate and then the habit of doubting ourselves takes over. The habit of saying, "I don't deserve that." The habit of you pulling away from what you want. That is why I'm so passionate. And so, in terms of how to be masterful at public speaking, start with the audience. It's always about them. What do you want them to feel when you're done talking? Empowered. Yeah. Inspired. Yeah. I want them to feel a sense of agency over their lives. I want them to feel like there is a path that is ready to unfold for them. And I wanna give them tools to begin that process. I would pick one tool. So this is the thing that you're so good at. I mean, for all of the things that you talk about, I think under appreciated or under discussed is this incredible skill that you have to communicate complex ideas clearly by distilling them down into very kind of, simplistic is the wrong word, but like elemental. I like simplistic. Dude, I'm not a celebrity person at all. I'm not a mass media person at all. I like the average person. The average person has a ton of shit going on and a lot that they're shouldering. It's why I wanted to do daytime talk, because the person that's still watching daytime talk has very few resources and has been left behind by most media. But I love real people. And you can only reach real people when you're having real conversations and you're discussing real problems. And simplistic solutions are what work for complicated problems. Life's complicated enough, my God. If you can remember the tool, you'll fucking use it. Which brings us to the high five. Oh, this is even dumber than the five second rule.. Staying on the theme of fives, right? Yes. How can I extend this thing? Well, we should point out, so you end up writing this book, "The Five Second Rule" that like blows up. Oh, that's an I-beam moment though. The book launch failed, dude. No, it didn't. Yes, it did. The story of "The Five Second Rule" book, you guys. So I self-published that book, okay? 'Cause I just thought, okay, I wanna own what I do 'cause I'm a control freak. I wanna own what I do and I really care about this message and nobody's gonna tell this the way that I wanna tell it. So I self-published the book. I study all the bestselling authors to figure out, how do you get on the list? Because if you get on the list then, you know, mass media will pay attention and more people will get the book, whatever. No one told you that if you self-publish the lists are out the window? No. So I literally self published the book not knowing you will not make a single list. And not realizing, there won't be a single bookstore to carry the book. So I put all my effort into marketing for this big book launch. We're gonna sell as many books as possible so I can get on the list. And here's what happens. I do everything you're supposed to do. I have a puny ass newsletter list at that point, like 8,000 people or whatever. I am on like one podcast. I'm doing a couple speeches. And on the day the book goes on sale, I pour all the energy at getting people to buy an Amazon. Within two hours, everybody is writing saying it's out of stock and I'm thinking there's no way 20,000 books are out of stock, no way. Like, I don't have that many people on the newsletter list. And my Aunt Sally only bought four of them. So like, you know, there's no way there's 20,000. And this is what I know now, if Amazon has a product that is unknown and they get an unexpected surge that's pretty consistent, they turn off inventory. I didn't know that. Yes. They just assume it's fraud. Correct. And they also wanna make sure they can check with inventory to make sure the supply is okay before they say it's being shipped. So for the first two weeks of my book launch, as I am now exhausting everything that I've worked for six months to try to do. All the traffic that I'm sending to Amazon is going to a page that says, "Out of stock." I am literally crying everyday. Meanwhile, Tony Robbins has launched a book the same day. So every where I go, his face is everywhere. He's in the front of every bookstore. He's in every airport. I'm like, "Dear universe, why?" I get asked every time I speak, "Are you Tony Robbins' wife?" Because my last name is Robbins. I'm like, "No, I'm Christopher Robbin's wife," which is actually my husband's name, Christopher Robbins. I literally thought, "What have I done wrong? Why me? Why am I the bad news bearers? Why do I always have to sneak in the backdoor? Why does nothing ever work out for me? Why do all these other people get to have it easy? Why are they all friends? Why do they support? Like, why, why, why?" So I am literally licking my wounds thinking that this is the worst thing that's ever happened. Meanwhile, I have completely forgotten that I also self-published the audio book. When people went, I didn't know this was happening, but about four weeks later, when I have just chalked up the book as a total failure, I get an email from Audible that says, "Your monthly report is due." And I literally fall out of my chair. It was six figures. Wow. So you just directed everybody to get the audio book. Correct. And this was at an inflection point for audio books, audio books hadn't quite tipped over into being as mainstream as they are now but that was. In 2017. Yeah, that was like right around the time where it started to become a thing. And Audible is owned by Amazon. So everything that happens on Audible impacts the Amazon algorithm. So all of a sudden, "The Five Second Rule" shot up. It was the number one audio book of the year in 2017. It was the number six most read book of the year on Amazon. It has been translated into 36 languages in four years flat. It has sold millions of copies. And here's the most important thing I want you to hear. It has never made a bestsellers list. Right, it's so crazy. But here's the thing I want you to understand, your dreams have a purpose. I've always dreamt of being a New York Times bestselling author, never have been. That dream has a purpose. And the purpose of that dream is to pull me through my bullshit and my fears and my anxiety and my sense of unworthiness to make me work for something. But those dreams are not necessarily to be fulfilled. They are a vehicle that gets you moving. There is something so much better in store for you than that dream. There's something bigger. Because what happened to me is, by not making that dream, I've learned an entirely new business model. I mean, I have a huge partnership with Audible now. Right, you've done a ton of stuff with Audible. You're one of their leading partners in the whole sort of listening space all together. Yap, I never would have known that had I achieved my dream of being a New York Times bestselling author. If I had had a successful traditional book launch, I never would be where I am right now. Yeah, there's no way. No way. It would have satisfied your ego temporarily. Correct. For the two weeks or whatever that it was on the list. And then after that, although all the rest, first of all, you wouldn't have sold that many audio books because the book would have been available. Yap. And you definitely would not have made the cake that would have all gone to the publisher. Yeah. Which is insane, because I'm sure you just printed money off of the audio book. Yeah. So self-publishing looking pretty good now. Oh, extraordinarily great.
Unbelievable. But so ,here's the other thing that that taught me. It's what gave me that sort of high-five attitude, this mantra. And the mantra, because as I was schlepping through airports and the book is out of stock and Tony Robbins' face is everywhere, and I'm thinking I'm the world's biggest failure, I kept saying this to myself on repeat. "There is no way, Mel, if you've worked this hard that you will not be rewarded. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet. Keep going. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet, keep going." And so I repeated that over and over and over and over and over again, as I wanted to throw in the towel, as I would start to bash myself, as I would start to feel sorry for myself and be like, "Nope, there's just no way I'm gonna believe that something amazing isn't gonna happen. I've worked too hard. Something amazing that hasn't happened is coming." And when you get yourself into that mindset, it creates a sense of resilience and momentum and resolve that you need in order to keep going when the shit hits the fan or when you feel disappointed or when life is beating you down. And that was the other gift of that moment, is developing a little tool to flip my mindset when I wanted to start to feel sorry for myself. Throw the timeline out. Divorce yourself from expectations. Double down on that belief. And, maintain your like adherence to just moving forward and action. Yeah. So much easier to say than to do. That's why I focus on tools, because we all know what to do. It's the how. Yeah. I think when we start to talk about the self, the quote, unquote like self-help or self-improvement space, you start to hear words like, you know, motivation and inspiration and how do I find my purpose? And, we need to be living with passion. And, I just think for the most part, it does more harm than good in the sense that, it confuses people. And I think it makes people feel bad about where they are in the moment. Because it often lacks any kind of practicality. Like it's sort of a measuring tool. Like, "Oh, I don't have passion or I don't know what my purpose is. Like I must not have self-worth that all these other people seem all fired up and excited and here I am little me over here and I'm like." You become a shrinking flower. And so I think the vernacular around it, like, I want you, I'm saying this because I want you to help me make sense of it for the person who's listening or watching who is in that place, who's struggling with the idea of how to move forward and how to make sense of the idea of self-empowerment and self-improvement. Yeah. So that brings us to "The High Five Habit," which is gonna sound so stupid. (laughs) More stupid. You know, this is my brand I've come to realize. I know, yeah. If it sounds stupid and it's backed by science, it's something Mel Robbins wants to talk about. So "The High Five Habit" is for all of us. But particularly if you're somebody that feels stuck or you're easily tripped up or brought down by jealousy or guilt or procrastination or beating yourself up or comparison. And you know, honestly, if you're breathing, that's you. I mean, we all, who isn't? Yeah. This is an idea that once I unpack it for you, you're gonna literally go, "Holy shit." In a good way? Yes. All right, lay it on me. So we all know that we need to love ourselves, right? How do you do that? I don't know. What is the action that you take? Yeah, we all know we're supposed to accept ourselves. We all know we're supposed to have self-esteem and self-worth and self-validation and self-confidence. How do you build it? And, you know, the other thing is that we also are looking outside ourselves for confirmation, validation, affirmation of those things. And so how do you relocate the source of your self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, self-validation, within yourself so that you're in control of it. Big idea, right? So, let me tell you the story about how I discovered this because it was not like a, "Oh, how do I have another high five moment, you know?" I get fired from my talk show. And I am essentially fired from my dream job. I then start having speech after speech after speech after speech cancel. Then Houghton Mifflin cancels my contract for my next book and asked for me to return money that I've long spent and. Why did they cancel it? Because. Just because of pandemic related. They laid off, there are two reasons. First of all, they were laying off 45% of the staff, but more importantly, let me take responsibility. I was a year late on delivering a manuscript. Okay. So let's be honest. I fucked up yet again. I ghosted my publisher and they fired my ass, as they should. A long play to ghost your publisher, right? (Mel laughing) How about spend your money and then ghost you? But I found myself again in this like familiar place having sort of echoes back to a decade ago of, "Oh my God, are we in financial free fall again? Like, is this ride over?" Kids come home. When you did like 100 speeches in a year prior to that or prior to the show. Yap. And then took a pay cut to do this show. Yap. And look, I've been saving money. I've been very smart about money now that I've made it. We've paid back all of our debt, something we're both really, really proud of. And at the same time, when the hits the fan in your life, your old things will get triggered. And what got triggered for me is, I'm about to lose it all again. Right. Meanwhile, just like everybody else on the planet, your kids come home and it's both a blessing and a horror show to have your children in a state of distress as the world is in distress. And I just started to feel overwhelmed. And there was this one morning where I walked into the bathroom and I was standing in my underwear, brushing my teeth in front of the mirror. And I looked up at the mirror and my first thought was, "Ugh." I noticed that my jowls were starting to look like saddlebags on a pack horse at the grand canyon. And, I had like these crazy lines by my eyes and my neck was really like kind of saggy and one boob was hanging lower than the other and my gray hair was coming in. And, as soon as I started kind of critiquing my thoughts, my looks and appearance, then my mind, Rich, started going, "Fuck, I didn't get that email back to that person and I got that presentation I need to do. And my God, did that speech just cancel again? What the fuck am I gonna do?" And then I look down and the dog needs to be walked. And then I think, I got a zoom call in nine minutes. Like I gotta get my together. And before I knew it, my whole mood was low. I felt overwhelmed. I'd taken myself down mentally. I just wanted somebody to walk in and be like, "Mel, it's gonna be okay. Like you've got this girl. Like, it's lift your head up, you can handle this." I don't know what came over me, Rich. This is pathetic. But standing there in my underwear, in front of my bathroom sink, I raised my hand and high-fived my reflection. And I cracked a smile cause it's so fucking corny. I even thought of that guy Stuart Smalley from the SNL skit. Just remember that I'm nice, I'm kind, people like me, went on with my day. That was it. Snapped a photo though? No, not that one. Oh, not that one. Not the first time. And then I kept doing it. I did it probably for a week or two. And here's the weird thing about it, I started when I woke up, after doing this high five your own reflection in the mirror thing, I actually started to feel like I was looking forward to it. And here's why. You know, I've spent a lifetime just like you standing in front of the mirror. And what I realize now is that when I'm standing in front of a mirror, I'm either critiquing or picking myself apart or I'm ignoring myself. And when you start to high-five your own reflection, it starts to build a partnership within you with yourself. When you walk into the bathroom and you see your reflection and you've been greeting it, it's like seeing another person. It's the strangest thing. You start to realize how often you fucking ignore or destroy yourself when you see yourself or beat yourself up. And here's what's also crazy. You have a lifetime, and this is where the science gets wacky and I'm gonna hit you with so much science because this stuff is so cool. You have a lifetime positive association with high-fiving other people. Sure. As a runner, as a racer, you have gotten so many high fives, Rich. What does a high five say to you when somebody gives you one? You feel seen. You feel appreciated. You feel energized by it. And it's an exchange of energy. It's not the same, and you talk about this in the book, it's not the same as like self-talk because there's a participation involved in it, there's like a communion aspect to it. Yeah and, you know, if you think about it, you're so good at celebrating, seeing and cheering for other people in your life. You plan birthday parties. You reach out to people when you're worried about them. You help out colleagues. You cheer for your favorite sports teams. Your high five people like Rich as they're running races past you. You buy people's merchandise. You do all kinds of stuff for other people, but nobody's taught you how to do it for yourself. In fact, the reason why it feels fucking weird to high five your own reflection is because you've been taught to do the opposite. Why is the default to just beat ourselves down like that? I mean, it is crazy, we would never treat anyone else in our lives, especially the people we care about, the way that we treat ourselves in terms of the self-talk or the narrative or the critique or the, you know, the kind of harshness with which we, you know, judge our appearances, our behavior, the way we, you know, think back on things that we said the other day and just are horrified by our own selves. And it's, I don't know if it's everybody. Everybody. Most people. Except for Buddhists. I mean, I think that they're like, like if you're a big practicing Buddhist, that's a monk. Right. That's like just. Why can't the default be the good things though? Well. You know, why is it? You know why? There's cognitive bias. There's a bias towards negativity. And it's a protection mechanism that's a default from evolution. That if you remember the bad shit, you're more likely to spot it when it happens in the future. So you can avoid it. And here's where I think it begins. I believe my theory is that it begins two places, either you or they could be both actually, you either learned the pattern of beating yourself up because you had parents or caregivers that were hard on themselves or hard on you. And so as a child you absorbed that pattern and you now repeat it and you don't even realize it. So those moments you're like, "Oh my God, I sound just like my dad or my mom." That is an example of a pattern that you've absorbed. So particularly for women, we've watched our mothers be critical about their appearance. We've watched our mother's ignore and criticize themselves in the mirror. And so, we learn that from our caregivers. So that's one place. The second place that we learn it is when the drive in your life becomes fitting in. Fitting into groups in elementary, middle high school, college, your neighborhood. That feels safe when you fit in. When you feel like you don't belong, you immediately go into a protection mechanism. And I believe a lot of the negative self-talk is a sorting hat type of mentality that we do to ourselves going, " I can't be with those people. I can't be with those people. It's safe to be with those people." And you start to see yourself and the world around you as places where you belong and places where you don't. And part of the criticism, as fucked up as it sounds, that we engage in all the time is don't be too big, don't be too loud, don't show yourself too much, don't have blue hair, don't do this, other people won't like you. It starts as a way to protect yourself from being rejected but the truth is, you develop a habit of fucking rejecting yourself. Right. Meanwhile, you're further divorcing yourself from who you truly are, because you're not giving yourself permission to be yourself. That gets sublimated in favor of fitting in and, you know, accommodating other people and acclimating your behavior around what will be approved of. Yes. So for me, you know, I have clearly a lifetime of beating myself up and tearing myself down and regretting decisions that I made. And in the middle of stumbling through life, instead of being like, "It's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay." And being like, "You really fucked up now, Mel." How does that help? Right. How does criticizing and being hard on yourself help? You know, what's interesting is I even think of somebody like David Goggins, right? Everybody looks at him, you can't hurt me. Tough, tough, tough, tough, mentally tough. His single biggest mindset trick is the cookie jar. It's reaching into your mind to find a positive thing that's worth fighting through the bullshit for. It still comes down to encouragement and support and something positive. And so to me, the coolest thing about the high five is this. First of all, I'm demanding that you try it, especially if you think it's stupid as hell. I want you to stand in front of the mirror. Number one, because research out of Harvard says, taking a moment of reflection with yourself in the morning and setting an intention changes your productivity. It changes your neurochemistry. It changes how you show up for the day. It changes everything. That's number one. Number two, you have a lifetime of looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing what you hate. I wanna change that. When you raise your hand and high five your own reflection, because you have been raising your hand and high-fiving other people for your entire life. It is already programmed into your subconscious. All of that shit that's positive. "I believe in you. We got this. Come on, shake it off. Well, let's get going. Here we go. I see you. I hear you. I celebrate." All that stuff you've been doing for other people, when you raise that hand, the subconscious part of your brain kicks in and it overrides all of the negative stuff you think. You cannot stand in front of that mirror, Rich, and go, "God, I look fat," and high five yourself. It's impossible. Your brain can't do it. Right. You also can't think about work emails. You also can't think about what's stressing you out. And here's the thing that I also love about it. So this is a field of study called Neurobics, you're marrying physical movement with a change in thought. The other thing that I. It's like neurology aerobics. It is. Basically. That's exactly what it is. I found that part of the book fascinating. Yeah, I mean, I think, look, you're taking this very simple action that we all associate with positive things that's backed up by, you know, the neurochemistry with this mirror work, which has a tradition in psychology in the field of like cultivating self-love. It's not like, like the idea of looking in the mirror and doing the Stuart Smalley thing. Like there's science and research behind this to cultivate appreciation for the self. Yes, and so there's even more here. So the other stuff that's super cool about this is that, you know, we've all bought into this lie that somehow beating yourself up and tough love and being hard on yourself Is motivating. Wrong. All the research shows that it is de-motivating. If you're somebody that's stuck, if you're somebody that has regrets, if you're somebody that is tired of where you are, if you feel like, you know, you just, "Why can't I change?" Beating yourself up is making it worse. You have to learn how to cheer for yourself where you are. Because if you're not, you will never find the motivation to change. So they did this study with kids where they broke kids into three different groups, okay? And they gave the kids very challenging problems. And they wanted to know what was going to be the thing that researchers could do to motivate and inspire kids to work through a challenging problem and what is gonna be the most effective thing that we could do to give somebody that boost that you need to really face something that's hard. So group number one got the old fixed mindset praise where it's like, "Hey, you're super smart, Rich. Hey Rich, you're really good looking in those glasses and I bet they help you make you focus on this problem, keep going, buddy." The second group got the fixed mindset praise which is, "Hey Rich, you're really, really working hard. Rich that perseverance is amazing, keep going." The third group, they got a simple high five. No words, just a high five. The group with the simple high five outperformed the other two groups and then some. Why?
That's so crazy. Why? I'll tell you why. A high five is fulfilling your fundamental emotional needs. It's not about the problem. When you high-five somebody, including yourself, you are affirming that somebody exists. You are saying, I see you and you're celebrating with them. You know how those things go viral all year long of teachers standing outside their classroom doing individual handshakes with kids. It's the same thing. Every one of those kids is being seen as an individual and celebrated. There's also that study of the NBA teams, right? Where they basically looked at how many high fives all the teams were. Back taps, fist bumps, yeah, touching. And the teams that were giving out the most high fives were the highest performing teams. Yes.
That's crazy. The teams that had the least amount of contact like that, of fist bumps and high fives and back taps, perform the worst. Why? Because you're building trust with whomever you're high-fiving. You see when you stand in front of the mirror and instead of going, "God, my jowls look like saddlebags and I'm fucked today because my to-do list is so long and dah, dah, dah, and I shouldn't have had that, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." That sets your mind and your day on a certain course. When you walk into the bathroom and you habit stack this simple high five along with brushing your teeth, you're starting your day by fulfilling your most important needs. You see yourself, you affirm yourself, you celebrate yourself. And for those of you that feel stuck, part of your problem is, you are withholding that shit from yourself until you get to the number of the scale, until you get that job, until you do the thing you're supposed to do. And what you are doing is backwards. You need support celebration and acknowledgement now in order to hit that number on the scale. You see most of us believe we're not worthy of celebration until we achieve something. And I'm here to tell you, if you start celebrating, supporting yourself as you are every single day, it will become a part of who you are, which empowers and equips you to face the shitty things. And more importantly, empowers and equips you to do the things that scare you that you need to do. Yeah, I mean it's, you know, I'm somebody who always, you know, rooted validation or associated love with achievement. If I achieve enough, you know, then I will be worthy of that love. And the idea of self love is so foreign to me. The practice of cultivating that in a manner that's divorced from whether I'm doing anything worthy of it or not feels so strange. But it is true, we are in an epidemic of lack of self-love, right? And there's a discomfort with, like it doesn't feel, like I need to earn the right to even practice that for myself. Yes. Well, let's go back to my husband, Chris. So Chris is an extraordinary human being. We're gonna celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. Gosh, in just a couple of days. And I have watched, I've had a front row seat to watching somebody who I think is the most incredible human being on the planet. The world's best dad, an incredible provider, destroy himself because of one failure, a dumb restaurant business. He would tell you that for years he could not look himself in the eye in the mirror and see somebody that was worth celebrating, because he was convinced that that failure made him a failure. And he found, you know, his path through meditation, through yoga, through therapy, he has started a men's retreat called Soul Degree. But it is also now and oh, and through love and kindness meditation. But he has been practicing the high five. And what he first said is, "It was almost impossible to do it because I still in some part of me feel like I'm supposed to have earned it or it's supposed to come from somebody else." It doesn't feel comfortable giving it to myself. And to me, that's honest. I think that's what most people feel. But it's also fucking sad. Like imagine if somebody that you loved or one of your kids felt that way about themselves. Yeah. I mean, you have people in your life that aren't perfect, that fuck up all the time, that are struggling and you still believe they're worthy of celebration and worthy of support, but we can't see it within ourselves. And so, I'm on a mission to get people to understand that it's only through small habits of support, celebration and love that you will achieve the happiness, the peace, the healing, the success, the fulfillment that you're seeking. You can't withhold that shit from yourself. And if you think about it, I mean the journey towards loving yourself, could there be a more valid, you know, important thing for you to do? Because the ripple effects of that journey, you know, find their way into every single thing that you do. That's what I say that this book is about. It's about improving the most important relationship that you have in the world, and it's the one that you have with yourself. Yeah, I mean, the high five in the mirror is like a Trojan horse to getting deeper into the idea of figuring out how to love yourself. Yes. And to me loving yourself is about fulfilling your most essential needs for yourself. That's what it's about. It's knowing how to soothe your nervous system when you're scared. It's about encouraging and supporting yourself. It's about recognizing when guilt and jealousy and insecurity and people pleasing start taking you mentally down. And knowing how to flip yourself back into a state of empowering and encouraging yourself no matter what. That's what this book is about. Yeah. I know you're all about the simple practical tools, but I have to tell you that my favorite part of the book. (Mel laughing) Yeah, Oh God. You know, you take kind of a left turn in the later chapters of this book. Yeah. And you go down this metaphysical rabbit hole, which I found to be like, I love that stuff. I do too. The story of the painting at the mill, the Vermont painting. Oh, yeah. And the journey there, like I just thought that was. You want me to tell you the story? Beautiful, yeah. And I'm also interested in, like, it feels like I know why you put it in the book, but it also feels like tonally, a little bit different from everything else in the book. But I see this as, you know, when I think of your husband and I think of you, and there's a yin and a yang there, I see you moving more into, you know, Christopher Robbin's land with this story, right? Well. A little bit. Yeah, and I guess here's why. There's levels to fulfillment and to discovering what's meant for you. And the first level is clearing away the surface level bullshit that is dragging you down. The bias towards thinking, the negative thoughts, the habits of comparison and jealousy and people pleasing and all that stuff. And then there's another layer. And the second layer is something that the folks that follow me, 'cause what happened is I, after about a week or so, I just put up a photo of myself, a really kind of not so attractive one online on my story. And immediately people from all walks of life, ages and stuff started. Once again you're creating a movement. Yeah. And I'm like, "Okay, there's something here." And so then I dug in and did a research project for almost a year trying to figure out why something so simple is universally working. And one of the things that people started to report back made me super sad. And it's what my husband was struggling with after the restaurant failed. And that is, that there's this deep sense for so many people that they are unworthy of love. Like at your core for simply existing, that you're not worthy of love unless you're doing something that's worthy of love. And there were so many people that wrote to us as we were kind of researching this saying, "You know, I'm sitting here trying to raise my hand and I'm just crying because I'm realizing how often in my life I have not cheered for myself. I have not truly supported myself. I have not even wanted to look in the mirror. I'm so disgusted by myself." Stories about, whether it was failure or abuse or trauma, that somehow that experience has just scarred me in a way that makes me unworthy of being lovable. And so, you know, when people, sorry. You know, a woman writing about how she's had dysmorphia for 20 years and like couldn't look at herself in the mirror and her writing and saying, after just doing this for five days, she can look at herself in the mirror and actually smile. And just story after story after story of real people, like you and me, who are so disconnected from themselves and from their worth, that just standing for a moment with themselves in the mirror and doing something that's affirming is bringing up so much stuff. And, you know, we have a daughter that really is struggling right now with her health and her wage, is really unhappy. And, we've all had the experience of having somebody that we love who's deeply in pain. And you can do everything in the world. You can say positive things, you can offer up support. But the truth is, the only person that can help you is you. And to know that there are so many people that stare at themselves in the mirror and are disgusted or judgmental, and that this small shift changes something profound, I mean, it's just extraordinary. And that's where it begins. And so, I kind of lost my train of thought. I mean, just the idea that there are so many people who can't even look in the mirror and say something nice to themselves. I think that's a lot of people, a lot of people. Everything changes when you start doing it. And it has this massive snowball effect because when you feel seen and you feel slightly empowered, you might just make a different choice at lunch. You might show up differently at work. You might express your boundary this afternoon. You might go out for that run because you feel a little bit more empowered and emboldened. And so, you know, we talked earlier about the sort of crack that can happen and a little light comes in. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is hitting at a much deeper level for people. And so when you can wipe away that second level and start to treat yourself as if you're worthy. You see all these things that we're seeking outside of ourselves, self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-love, we're looking all around at likes and followers and the number in your bank account, the number on the scale and the car you drive. All those things begin by giving them to yourself. And so when you start to do that. You know, I spoke earlier about how this is creating a partnership within you. When you start to give those things that you desperately need, something else magical happens. You start to have the ability to turn down the noise around you, which only turns up the signals within you and the voice within you. The criticism is so loud. When you can turn that down, you hear something else. What you start to hear is your hopes, your dreams, the things you're drawn toward, your curiosity, those things that you're not giving yourself permission to lean into because you don't think you're worthy. Fuck, you won't even look at yourself in the mirror. So how the hell are you gonna listen to your intuition? And that's what this painting story is about. Your intuition is gonna lead you astray until you're able to reckon with all of that stuff so that you can get at the purity of what your soul is actually trying to communicate. Yeah, and that's what that painting story is about. Yeah. It's about what happens when you are able to just give yourself permission to want the things that you want. And unless you believe that you're worthy, unless that you practice love, you're never gonna think that you deserve the things that you want. Right. So tell the story. Okay, so I'm probably gonna sob hysterically. I'll shorten it. So the bottom line is that, so in 1990, I was a senior in college at Dartmouth. And my parents came to visit from Western Michigan. And we went to this place called Simon Pearce, which is a famous glass-blowing mill. And as we walked into the restaurant, I had an experience that you may be able to relate to. And that is, I walked in and I immediately saw this painting hanging on the wall. And it was about the size of a door, only horizontal. And it was a Vermont landscape. And I was drawn into it immediately. Like I was no longer in that restaurant. I was standing in that field. I could feel that breeze, I'd never ever had an experience like that with a painting. Have you ever had an experience like that with art? No, I mean, not like that. Not like that. I mean, yeah, my sense was that this is very atypical for you. Very. So I kind of lost it. The restaurant was quiet and then I leaned back and suddenly kind of back in the moment, I'm like, "I'm gonna own this painting someday." It just, that was what was right there. And I looked at the price and it said like $3,000. I'm like, "Not today." And I went back and I sat down and that was it. But the painting never left my mind. You see there's something called the Zeigarnik effect. I always say it wrong. But it's like, there's a checklist in your brain that when you have a moment where you're like, "This is important." Your brain puts it on a checklist. Yeah, there's like a notch. Yes, a notch happens. And now your brain, as part of the filter in the brain, is always gonna be kind of scanning the subconscious to let anything into your mind related to that incident. It can be positive by the way, like with the painting, or this is how trauma happens too. Like you have this high intensity emotional experience that notches something in your brain and now your brain kicks in to remember. So bottom line is, I always thought about that painting. Years go by. Whenever somebody would say Vermont, I'd think of the painting. I don't know why, I can't explain. I've never wanted a painting before. I was not an art student. Just going to law school. You sound like you're out collecting art. No, no. And so I, you know, fast forward the story 10 years and my, Chris and I are engaged and we're gonna go up to Vermont to see the leaves. And immediately I'm like, "We gotta go to Simon Pearce. I gotta show you the painting." So we pull up to the mill and we walk in and right in front, there is, boom, a painting by the same artist, Gaal Shepherd. And I'm like, "Oh my God, it's here." And we race all around the place and it's gone. And the funny thing was, and this is the way your brain works. Chris was more disappointed than I was. I literally turned to him and said, "It's okay. Dude, like it'd be weird if it were still here after 10 years. I'm gonna track this thing down." I actually said to him, "You know what's gonna happen Chris? I'm gonna be able to buy this like four years from now. It's gonna be hanging in the corporate lobby of some fucking building. And I'm gonna have to track down the owner and pay like quadruple the money they paid, but I'm gonna own this damn thing." You have a mission now though. I have a mission, yes. So a couple years pass and it's my birthday. I think I was turning 30 and Chris says, Chris gets a couple people to give money. And he said I could buy anything I wanted with it. So I had what? 500 bucks. Now I'm pregnant at the time with our first kid. I should have bought a crib or stools. But for whatever reason, the Zeigarnik effect takes over, and I'm like, "The painting." So I call the mill and I get this guy on the phone. I'm like, "You know, I'd wanna buy a Gaal Shepherd piece." And I said, "Could you send me Polaroids?" And he's like, "Sure." And I tell him the budget and he goes, "I'll send you Polaroids of some of her smaller things." She's like blowing up in the meantime, right? Yeah, she's a very, very successful Vermont landscape artist. And so I say to him, "You know, by the way there's this one painting." And I describe the painting I'd seen over 10 years ago. And he said, "Well that was way before my time but I bet Gaal will know." And I'm like, "Gaal? You know Gaal?" He's like, "Of course I know Gaal. She like lives down the road. Here's her number." So for two days I paced around the apartment with 500 bucks in my pocket driving Chris crazy. 'Cause I felt like, what am I gonna say to her? And I must be a weirdo. I've been stalking this lady. I've been thinking about her for 10 years. I can't afford her painting. You know, who am I to buy a painting? Like what the hell? So finally Chris is like, "Would you fucking call her or I'm gonna call her, you're driving me crazy." So I call her and I start talking a mile a minute and she was amazing. And then I said, "By the way, there is this one painting." And I go and I explain this painting. "There's a stand of Poplar trees down the center and a big mountain scape behind it and this beautiful blue Vermont sky and geese flying in formation overhead." And, I could hear thinking the other end of the line. And she said, "You know, Mel, I've done so many large scale paintings over the years. I'd hate to mistake the one you're talking about. But I'll tell you what, what if my husband and I meet you and Chris at the mill at Simon Pearce. And we'll walk all around and have lunch and I'll tell you the stories behind every painting. And if you don't see what you like there, I'll take you back to my studio, which is a couple miles down the river. And you can look at everything I'm working on and if you don't see anything you like there, then you can go through all my slides and see if you could find that painting that you saw 10 years ago." And I said, "Deal." So a month passes. We go up to the mill. I walk in, we meet each other, she's amazing. She's like twice our age, just an incredibly cool lady. She's walking around. As we're walking around looking at these paintings, Rich, I'm like eight months pregnant. I'm realizing, "These are 10 times the amount of money that I have. I can't afford this. Like I don't have this kind of money." And I'm getting like more and more into that imposter syndrome, what am I doing mode. "Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. I'm meeting somebody idolize. I don't deserve to be here." Wasting her time 'cause she thinks she's gonna get a payday out of this. Correct. We sit down and she goes, "Now that you're sitting down, I have something to tell you." She said, "There's only been two times in my career as an artist that I've done two studies of the same piece. And your painting is one of them. It's one of a pair." She knew all along. She knew all along. She was playing games with you about not knowing which painting. Yeah. And she said, "The sister piece to the one that you saw all those years ago is sitting in my studio right now where it's been for the past 11 years." I start sobbing. Everybody's like totally emotional. Her husband's like, "You should have seen her when she was on the phone with you. It was like she saw a ghost." So we get in the car and we drive to the mill. And when we walk in, there in the center of this massive kind of barn-studio space is an easel with a painting, taped up with painter's tape on it. And it was the sister to my painting. There were slight differences, not as much movement in the grass, but it was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. It was as if time suspended and I was standing before that painting in 1990 saying it would be mine. And there I was 11 years later standing in front of it. And then I realized, "Oh my God, I can't fucking afford this." And Chris walks over and he's like, "What's wrong?" And I'm like, "Just promise me someday, like promise me that, I don't need jewelry. I don't need a car. Like just promise me, you'll buy me this thing." And he kind of leans over and goes, "Hey Gaal, how much for the big one?" And she said, "Mel can have it for 500 bucks 'cause clearly when I was making it 11 years ago, I was making it for her." And so it hangs in my kitchen. It's on the back of the book. This is the gully though, right? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah. And, it's a reminder every day that your mind is designed to help you get what you want. I never stopped believing that I could make it happen. And when you tell your mind what's important to you, there is extraordinary science that proves that your mind has a live and ever-changing filter, a live network that changes how it views the world, what it lets in, what it blocks out. And if you program your mind correctly, and if you're clear about what you wanna create, your mind will help you get what you want. It's such a beautiful story. But I also think it's more than that because there's this quantum metaphysical piece to it because it's not just you with that notch and the Zeigarnik effect. It's also Gaal. Yeah. And the intention that she put into that painting and whatever was going on with her, deep down this knowingness that it was meant for you. And it took however long it took for those I-beams to swing and sync up so that that union could take place. Correct. But what I make of this, and I'm interested in hearing a little bit more of what you think but, like there's just more going on. Yes, always. Than we're able to perceive. And I find great comfort in that, especially when I'm stuck or when I'm in a place where I can't see the way forward. It helps remind me that this difficult situation is happening for me and not to me. And you know, I've mentioned this a couple times. This is another example of that. This is another form of high-fiving your mindset. And that is, saying to yourself, "There's something amazing that's coming." Like as long as you stay in this mindset, "I'll just keep my head down. I'll keep focused on what I want. I'll keep chipping away at it because something amazing is going to happen. This is preparing me for something." All those years, I never gave up believing that it was possible. If you divorce the timeline from something, you can always make a case that it's possible. And when you stay in that frame of mind, it changes how you show up. And it also changes the filter in your brain. It's why every time somebody said Vermont or why whenever I picked up a heavy glass that was hand-blown, my mind immediately brought the painting from the back of my mind to the front of my mind. Your mind is designed to show you and help you and to keep things front and center if you are managing all of the basics. Now, if I had believed I was unworthy or undeserving or whatever, which I did in other areas of my life for sure, but for whatever reason, this painting, I kept an open mind and I never, ever, ever thought I didn't deserve it or wasn't worthy of it. Because the second you go there, your mind's like, "Oh, it's not important anymore." Yeah, it would have been lost. A million things would have happened before even the opportunity to call Gaal, which you never would have made that call because you wouldn't have felt worthy and you would have felt like you were wasting her time. So I think the power is in this idea that when you lodge into your brain a certain possibility and you hold onto it, you create a frequency and a state of being that allows the possibility to exist for it to happen. Short of that, it's not happening, right? And it's not like toxic positivity where it's like, "Well, I believe it's gonna happen so it's gonna happen." You're putting yourself in a position for the outcome to go favorably for you. Yes, and I think. On somebody else's timeline. I mean, this is like 20 years or whatever, right? Yeah, it was like 11 years. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, and I think that even bigger is all of the, not my research but research by people way smarter than me on how this reticular activity system in your brain is designed to bring in information or block it out. And so just like there's a default, a negativity bias, a confirmation bias. You can actively make sure that your filter, this live network that's like a hairnet on your brain deciding what comes in, what goes out. There's only four things that come in and out of your brain, your name, any threat, any sign that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else, 'cause everybody's had that. "Who are you looking at?" I get a sense of that. And four, whatever your brain believes is important to you. That fourth one is where the treasure is, because when you get intentional about what's important to you, your reticular activity system is already paying, always paying attention. I'll give you an example. You've shopped for a car, right? And the second you're like, "Oh, I wanna get the new Bronco." You see them everywhere. Right. Everywhere. You know why? You told your brain that's important to me. So your brain is like, "Okay, block out the Hondas, let in the Broncos." Yeah, you use the red Acura example in the book and then this idea of seeing hearts everywhere. Yes, so this is another little sticky tool that sounds super stupid. But this is the key to kind of experimenting in an interesting way with just how quickly you can change the filter of your brain. Starting tomorrow after you high-five yourself in the mirror, I want you to play a little game. Look for a naturally occurring heart shape. It could be a rock, it could be the shape in a cappuccino, it could be a stain in the floor of your garage, it could be anything. And what you're doing is you're telling your mind, "I wanna see a heart shape." And your mind will literally start to filter the world for it. And when you see it, this is how you can amplify the exercise in terms of changing the network patterns in your mind. Just take a moment and be like, "Oh my God, I found it." Like, kind of like let that, "Oh, scavenger hunt, I win." The universe put this here for me effect happen. And what will start to happen, 'cause you'll see it all over my story, is you'll start to see hearts everywhere. And the reason why I want you to start with this heart game is because you won't do anything I'm telling you to do until I can prove to you that it actually works. And when I can prove to either through the car example or through this heart rock example that you can in real-time change what your brain shows you that you normally walk by, you will start to realize that you can use that to your advantage. If you start to treat yourself every morning in a way that shows your brain that I love myself, I support myself, I encourage myself, I put myself first, your brain will start to show you other examples of that throughout the day, 'cause right now the opposite is happening. Right, you just find examples of why you're a piece of shit or unworthy or. Yeah. Yeah. Like for example, my daughter was like, you know, beating herself up. And if she looks in the mirror and trashes herself, if she misses the dentist's appointment she goes, "See, I can't do anything right. I missed the dentist appointment too." I don't have that story about myself because I've been practicing the high five habit. And so, I miss the dentist appointment and I'm like, "Oh shoot, I need to get better at planning. I'll call him and apologize and reschedule." I don't take it to the, I'm a shitty person level. Right. It seems like tiny little things like, oh, the dentist appointment missed or whatever. But those associations, when you string them out over the course of even a single day, imagine what the experience is, the difference in your daily experience. I mean, when you talk about like sliding doors. That leads to so many unforeseeable outcomes that you can't predict. And if you do that every day for a year, what does your life look like? What are some of the decisions that you're gonna make or not make based upon practicing like a profound level of self-love? I think that that's why it's so hard to change, is it's the aggregate effect of all those small, little negative thoughts that keep you feeling like, "Why even bother?" Well, on some level we're addicted to those thought patterns. They are doing something for us. In a perverted way they're providing a sense of comfort. I actually don't think that we're addicted to them at all. You don't think so? No. I have a much more kind of clinical opinion about it. I think our brains love patterns, that's it. And we. Just give it a different pattern. Yeah. We've made the mistake of making our patterns personal. They're not, they're just a pattern. You've had a pattern of thinking this stupid shit for a long time. And if it's not working for you, you have to break the pattern because patterns repeat. But addiction in the strictest definition, meaning you just keep doing the same stupid shit over and over again even though you're getting bad outcomes. Got it. In that definition, then yes, I agree with you. I wanna say one other thing if we have time, I don't know even where we are with time. We're gonna end this shortly, but go for it. This was a really profound piece of research that we stumbled into from Dr. Judy Willis, a leading a neuroscientist and big researcher that we talked to in this book. And it was something that I had never fully understood. And so one of the high five habits is what I call giving your heart a high five. And this in many ways, I think is just as profound as high-fiving your reflection and just the depth of research that goes into explaining why it has such a profound impact in terms of how you relate to yourself. But high-fiving your heart is putting your hands kind of right on your heart, one on top of the other and saying, " I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." And I started doing this when the pandemic hit and I had started to wake up to a wave of anxiety. And one of the things that we learned in writing this book is that the first thing that you need to be able to do before your brain can even engage in new patterns of thinking is to settle your nervous system. So, you know, we wrote a bunch about the vagus nerve, but when you put your hands over your heart first thing in the morning and give your heart a high-five and say, "I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." First of all, it's true, because if you can say those words, you're okay, you're safe,, you're loved. But secondly, it tones what's called the vagus nerve, which I know you talk about on this show. That is the secret to switching between parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system. So if you're somebody like me who has lived your life on edge, if you grew up in a chaotic household, if you've experienced trauma, if you constantly feel like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, if you wake up and the first thought is, "I've done something wrong, someone's mad at me." I want you to try this other high five habit by high-fiving your heart. You can say it 15 times if you have to. "I'm okay, I'm safe. I'm loved." It will soothe your nervous system and settle it, because you cannot have new thoughts or learn new behavior if your nervous system is on edge or on hyper alert. And it makes sense. If somebody were to run in here and suddenly like, come in here with a gun and rob you, would you be able to do a math problem at the same time? No, and if you're jittery or anxious, try reading a book. You're not gonna be able to really comprehend anything that you're reading. Correct, and so this is one of these other things that builds you learning how to sooth yourself, you learning how to calm a wiry nervous system so that you are able to receive the benefits of being able to raise your hand in the mirror. You know, we have, I don't name her in the book, but there's a person in this book that we write about that is using these tools in a domestic violence shelter. And one of the things that I love about learning how to fulfill your deepest emotional needs for yourself is that, even when, and these are her words not mine, you know, she wrote and said, "You know, Mel, here I am in a situation where I have nothing. I am starting over for real. But these tools are reminding me that at least I have myself." Beautiful. I think that's a good place to end it. I could talk to you forever. I know. We have to five, four, three, two, one, in order to just end the podcast. Yes we do. (Rich laughing) I adore you, I love you. You're so powerful. And I think, you know, such a service to humanity with everything that you do. And I just, I loved that conversation so thank you for being here today. Thanks Rich. I appreciate it. The new book is "The High Five Habit" available everywhere. When we publish this podcast, there's a picture of Mel in the back, in front of the painting. That's right. That we told the story about. Everybody go pick it up. It's on Audible also, right? As an audio book. Yap. And also you've got this high five challenge thing. Oh yeah, join me and Rich, the high five challenge. It's a five day, totally free to do the challenge. I'm getting 5 million people to wake up five mornings in a row and high. Just 5 million. Yeah, just 5 million and start their day by high-fiving themselves in the mirror. And, every day there's video pep-talk, deeper dive into things like self confidence or self-esteem. And what's really cool is it's powered by something called GrowthDay and that allows you to be part of a community of people. You can upload photos, get cheered on by lots of other people, but more importantly, you won't be alone standing in your bathroom and in underwear doing this cheesy thing. You'll have me supporting you and millions of other people. So come to the high five challenge. Yeah, so where? They go to highfivechallenge.com. Yap, you can, or Rich is gonna provide a link. And if you end up joining GrowthDay, you might get a kickback to Rich and support the podcast. Some kind of affiliate thing? Yes. Well, you can go to highfivechallenge.com if you wanna support the podcast. It looks like there's some kind of, I dunno, swing back my way if you do that. I'll put that link up. But only if they end up staying with the app. The challenge is free, the challenge is free. Awesome, and don't be a stranger. Come back and do this with me again sometime. Anytime, you ask, five, four, three, two, one, I'll be there, high five, baby. Five, four, three, two, one, peace. High five. (laughs) (upbeat music)
