Best Mel Robbins MOTIVATION (2 HOURS of Pure INSPIRATION)

want to be happy build a life not just a business hey it's evan carmichael and this channel is created to help you overcome the number one challenge that is holding you back a lack of belief in yourself you watch these videos because you know there's something more inside you too you've got michael jordan level genius at something so today let's live your best believe life and get some incredible motivation from the one and only mel robbins there's new research right out of harvard that proves that if you take just one minute of an intentional reflection about who you're going to be today it changes your level of productivity it changes how you show up as a leader it changes your ability to impact people and it changes uh your effectiveness simply a single minute of setting an intention about who you're going to be today and so when you stand in front of that mirror and you don't ignore yourself like ed and my husband do or criticize yourself like 91 of women do on default and you take a moment to intentionally be with yourself and you think about the day ahead even if you've got a lot of stressful stuff going on especially actually if you have a lot of stressful stuff going on and you then raise your hand and you begin your day with this high five to yourself you are sealing that intention that you believe in yourself and that you got it positive mantras don't work and they don't work because people pick positive mantras that they don't believe so if you are in a studio apartment eating rice and beans barely able to pay your bills standing in front of a mirror and saying i'm a millionaire i'm going to be a millionaire someday what happens based on research is your brain's like uh actually have you seen where you live like have you seen that you've quit every job that you've had have you seen and heard your negative self-talk i don't i don't think this is gonna like your brain's like uh-uh your brain has a great detector and so the mistake people make is they pick a mantra that is the exact opposite of the way they treat themselves is it like so the way that i've come to be maybe even in the last two months is my brain actually needs evidence yes right yes like so and you know what evidence at once it wants action right oh yeah prove it to me behavioral activation therapy act like the person you say you want to be and then maybe i'll believe you yeah now should you still interrupt the beat down absolutely absolutely you should what i'm saying is you got to stop beating the hell out of yourself but you can't jump immediately to and it's going to all magically disappear and i'm going to love my body after beating myself up and hating myself for 20 years it's not going to happen that fast so you know if you want to do mantras do a more pathetic mantra you know do something that's like a little bit like more achievable like you know instead of uh you know i love my body after trashing your body for 20 years say i deserve to be healthy even if you hate your body anybody and any brain can get behind yeah you do that's right i'm glad you're waking up you do deserve to be healthy now now prove it let's take some actions that show you that so no mantras don't work if you're picking a mantra you don't believe and if you're picking a mantra that is the opposite of the way you treat yourself and the actions you take so literally it also when it comes to productivity and focus and fulfillment it's not when you get up it's how you get up and there's all this crazy research like i'm not some sort of like psycho about the alarm clock or the snooze button i personally love sleeping in but i also know that as somebody that struggled with anxiety for three decades lying in bed in the morning or at night is the worst place i can be absolutely that is where the anxiety can pin you down like a gravity blanket and so understanding that the habit of hitting the snooze button has a detrimental impact on your productivity all day because what happens is when you wake up your brain is typically ready to wake up when you drift back to sleep after hitting the snooze button your brain drifts back into a sleep cycle which based on research takes about 75 minutes to complete when the alarm goes off nine minutes later your brain is now trapped in a sleep cycle and researchers say it takes you about four hours to snap out of what they call sleep inertia that impacts your productivity all day long and so you're complaining that i didn't get enough sleep and you feel groggy no you actually got plenty of sleep you screwed yourself over by hitting the snooze button and now your prefrontal cortex can't snap back into operation until you're ready to go the reticular activity system the ras for short um for if you don't know what it is picture a hair net over your brain that is a live network and the ras is a filter and it has a huge job and it is a filter that blocks out 99 of the world and lets in about you know point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent and it is always changing there are only four things tom that get through the hair net on your head the sound of your name and you've experienced this because you've been walking through a crowd and you're like did somebody say my name right this cocktail party effects cocktail party effect the second thing that gets through is any sort of threat so if you hear a loud noise and you go like this there are lots of noises you didn't hear but the loud one you kind of duck because it's a threat the third thing is when your partner is interested in sex with either you or someone else that's right like why are you checking that person out right you know because the brain is letting that information in the fourth thing and this is where the transformation begins your brain will let in anything that it believes is important to you the zygarnic effect is the documented fact that when something is important to you and i'll explain what that means your brain opens up a checklist in your mind and now your brain wants it puts this item on your checklist it will store the checklist in your subconscious it's encoded in your ras and your mind is now on the alert to spot things related to it the way that you make yourself feel like something is important is your nervous system goes on alert while you're thinking about it you're either super excited about something oh this is super important or this is the trauma effect you go on alert and you have something really bad happen which is why things continue to bring it up throughout the rest of your life so when you understand that if something's important to you your filter will change in real time how you see the world you now know how to change your brain to work for you and looking for hearts is the way i'm going to prove to you that this happens i want to give you one other example because everybody's experienced this if you've ever gone shopping for a new car or you've dreamt about having a new car what happens immediately when you get excited about that new car is your mind goes zygon artifact oops okay tom wants the new bronco that's cool so what do you see now you see broncos everywhere now they were always there but your mind is letting them in because the zygon art effect is now made it on a checklist it's changed the ras and so i am going to prove to you that it is unbelievably cool that you can change the way that you view the world by looking for heart-shaped objects so tomorrow when you wake up you're going to start your day by high-fiving yourself in the mirror i want you to examine what the resistance about because you're going to start to then un be able to unpacked what's holding you back then you're going to go out in the world just like tell your mind i want to see a heart today look for a rock look for a leaf look in your like latte is there a little shape there is there an oil stain on the floor and when you see one stop and go i i just like there's a scavenger hunt i never would have seen that before thank you brain now your brain's like more hearts you will start to see hearts everywhere and when you can start to train your brain and realize whoa this is actually a cool thing this is high-fiving your mind when you can see hearts you can now go wait a minute if i can change what i see based on what i tell it maybe if i got serious about not constantly saying i'm a failure i wouldn't attach that or see it everywhere maybe if i got serious about saying i can figure anything out this is happening for a reason instead of i'm you say okay i'm going to learn something with this it changes the way your brain filters everything and this is such an important piece to the book because we've all had the experience where you love somebody deeply and you see all their incredible attributes and all they see is failure or all they see is the weight that they can't lose and it doesn't matter what you say it doesn't matter what kind of pep talk or support you give them your loved one still only sees what they hate about themselves blame the filter in your brain you have been about your appearance or the weight on your scale the fact that you're a failure for so long your brain believes it's important to you to see reasons why this is true and one of the things i got to say about this and everything in the book is the tools are simple tom but it's super important to say just because you change and start celebrating yourself it's not going to make the weight disappear suddenly it doesn't change the number on the scale overnight what it changes is you and that changes your ability to deal with the problems and the issues you want to change in your life how does your favorite sports team begin the game by high-fiving each other to send yourself out into the game but when researchers actually studied nba teams they could predict who's going to be the most successful teams at the end of the season and who's going to be at the bottom of the league based on one characteristic at the beginning of the season in the preseason and that is how many times does the team in the preseason do fist bumps high fives or pats on the back and what they found is it's the teams that do that the most in the beginning have the winningest record and the reason the question is why well the reason why is these gestures are more than gestures they're symbols of trust and partnership they build momentum and so many of us are struggling in life with people pleasing and guilt and all of these emotions because we have broken that partnership with ourselves and this is a way every morning after brushing your teeth we're going to stack this habit put the toothbrush down pick up your hand look yourself in the mirror and say how am i going to show up for that human being today and seal it with a high five that's it that's it why high-fiving yourself creates the raz and why that's super powerful in your life so this all begins with a high five in the mirror examine the resistance to why you're not doing it and i then go really much deeper into a lot of the research around negative self-talk right because one of them really powerful things about a high-five that i also love and look i'm a motivational speaker i tend to have a lot of positive things to say but when it comes to encouraging myself the cool thing about a high five lease is you don't have to say a damn thing the gesture itself communicates everything so you don't have to have a positive mantra or something to say all you have to do is do the high five and it communicates everything which is amazing because most of us have a default in our minds that is not only negative it's abusive i i screw everything up somebody's mad at me it's all my fault um you know i'm not worthy whatever it is that you say to yourself i'm not smart enough it's not going to work out but it runs on repeat it's all stored right here and so it's not as simple as just high-fiving yourself and saying something positive when you're a kid your parents force you to do the things you don't want to do get out of bed make the bus eat your vegetables be nice look the people in the eye turn your homework in don't talk back like all the things you need to do right and what is really interesting about becoming an adult is nobody tells you when you become an adult now it's your job nobody is coming to save your ass nobody is going to tell you to get out of bed nobody is going to do the work for you nobody's rescuing you nobody's discovering you it's up to you and here's the other piece that nobody tells you you're never going to feel like it by the time you're 18 you are already stuck in your ways you're stuck in your story about yourself you're stuck in the habits that you have many of which you picked up by either witnessing what your caregivers were doing or reacting and trying to survive the situation that you were in with your caregivers so you have a whole set of patterns that you're stuck with your brain is designed to repeat patterns and so now you have a choice you either live with the patterns that you have or you spot them and you freaking break them and replace them and this is why you're never going to feel like doing the things that you want to do and you have to parent yourself because your brain will always default to its its patterns and so from this point forward here's what you should assume i will never feel like doing what i need to do ever so stop waiting to feel like it stop waiting for motivation stop waiting for inspiration to strike you in the ass and make you get off the couch and finally take the advice that you're giving and take care of your health stop waiting to feel like you're going to turn off netflix and do the kind of evening routine cycle to make sure that you're going to get a great night's sleep stop if you want an amazing life you're going to have to work for it if you want to change you're going to have to break patterns and the number one rule that is going to help you is to assume you are never going to feel like doing that stuff so stop expecting it and push your freaking ass to do it and you can use the the five second rule count backwards five four three two one that'll help you break the pattern inhabit research it's called a starting ritual that interrupts an old pattern and prompts your mind to focus on a new one and then you move that is the only way to change just like your parent was annoying get up the bus is coming i don't care you're not getting up from this table until that plate is clean you didn't feel like in it but you did so that tells you something you are capable you just don't feel like it i think your purpose is to share your true self to be fully seen and for the olympian when you are training and you're in that arena that is an experience of being seen and for most people that are lacking purpose they feel profoundly invisible and being seen fundamentally comes back to whether or not you even see yourself and when you start to feel empowered and you start to see yourself and meet you where you are what happens is every day that you're able to stand with yourself to accept where you are to give yourself the compassion to give yourself the support and the love and the respect and the worthiness that you deserve you're going to go out into the world and share more of yourself that olympic athlete is sharing more of themselves and so i think our purpose in life is to come back home to ourselves to reconnect with ourselves and to empower ourselves to go back out into the world and share our stories and share our experiences and share our full selves with the rest of the world i'm not used to being still i'm not comfortable being in my own body at least i wasn't i was used to the external validation and the external energy and racing from one thing to the next and i equated being busy with being successful and happy and okay and when all of a sudden the world stopped and there was nowhere to go and everything was getting cancelled and i had been fired from my dream job as a talk show host and my book contract had been cancelled and the speeches were cancelling and the kids were now all home and they were in various streets of psychological breakdown and the world was upside down i lost my coping mechanism which was to distract myself by being busy and that's when the anxiety became roaring back and i learned the most powerful thing in the world which is the ability to stand face to face with yourself in the mirror and know that no matter what you are going to be okay because you have your own back that no matter what no matter how hard this is right now it really is temporary and if you look at your life like a giant school and some years are a party and some years suck and those years that suck are the years that you learn the most and that everything is teaching you something and what this last year and a half of my life has taught me is that the strength that i've been looking for all over the place running around has actually been in here all along and when you slow down and you start to stand with yourself face to face and you rely on yourself for the support and the pep talk and the empowerment and the celebration and the validation that you've been looking for in so many other places you will unlock a level of confidence and a level of resilience and a level of just strength that's been in there all along it's actually been building during the parts of your life yeah god that's so true but in those moments so what makes you just keep going then right because so many people do i feel like they give up on themselves yeah of course you do that's that's one of the reasons why so many people immediately brush this idea of high-fiving your reflection as stupid or weird or corny because they've already given up on themselves why would i do that what good is it gonna do like i'm so far gone or i've screwed up so many times how on earth is something so silly gonna actually change something it doesn't change the past it changes you and how you relate to you it helps you build a partnership with the most important person you have in your life yourself your relationship with yourself is the foundation of every single relationship that you have if you don't love and respect yourself how on earth are you going to do that for other people and worse if you don't love and respect yourself you are going to go into relationships and become phenomenally codependent the second somebody gives you any kind of attention which makes you phenomenally vulnerable to getting knocked on your ass when they decide they don't want to give you any more attention because you don't love them respect yourself so why would they love and respect you it all comes back to you now there's another exercise another habit that i have i call looking for hearts this is going to sound so dumb but please this is so freaking cool it's unbelievable you won't try this stuff in terms of the big stuff like it's hard to change what you think about yourself really hard i mean that stuff is wired into your nervous system you look back you see tons of evidence but i am damaged but i have done things that i regret but i am but i am a bad person but i screwed up that relationship and i did this thing and i'm a up and like all this garbage you say to yourself it is like in your body so you're gonna have to get intentional and be like i'm done living with this crap and the the imagery that i have is like imagine it snows when you get intentional with the high five habits you can literally plow a new path in snow that's what a neural pathway is and i can show you that it's true if you play the heart rock game with me i want you to after listening to this spend the rest of the day and just tell your mind i really want to see a heart whether just a naturally occurring shaped heart whether it's a rock on a path or a uh a a a symbol in a an in on the top of your coffee or a stain on the floor of the garage or a leaf on the ground i want you to be like i gotta find a heart today and just be open to it and all of a sudden you're gonna find one and then here's how you really like amp up your hair net on your brain going ooh she really thinks this is important let's let's look for more hearts i want you when you see that heart to go oh i found it the the universe god that that was put there for me that is cool and when you kind of do that little like mood vibe through your nervous system it is like the opposite of negative trauma it's like a positive wave in your nervous system that makes your brain go this is really important and so now you'll start to see once you play this game you'll start to see it everywhere and when you play this game with your ras look for hearts and you start to see whoa wait a minute my brain is showing me what i'm telling it i want to see oh wait a minute there's a bronco i don't even want one and just because i heard mel talking about it now i'm seeing a bronco whoa now you can get into the deeper thing of getting intentional about how you talk to yourself intentional about not getting down dragged down by guilt or insecurity or people pleasing or anxiety or fear or failure all that crap that takes your attitude low i want you to stay in a high five attitude so i have been practicing this habit for a little over a year and it all began in april of 2020 and this is not something that i was like okay i gotta write a book it's gotta have a five in it it's gonna be five years since i've written a book thank you dyslexia and adhd what am i gonna write about what am i that's not how this happened the high five habit saved me it was a ladder that helped me climb out of a hole i had fallen into emotionally physically spiritually and a year later after practicing what is going to sound like a weird stupid thing which you will resist and jay you and i are going to unpack this because it's sad why everybody resists it it has to do with the dust that's accumulated and i will tell you after a year of practicing this i don't even see a face or a body i see a soul i don't even have to high-five myself i still do because it feels good and we're gonna explain the science that is bananas about why this actually works for everybody who tries it because this is not something that's new you are tapping into programming that's already in your mind and body and now directing it back at yourself it's incredible i don't ever criticize myself i don't ever see what's wrong i see a human being who's trying who deserves love and respect and i know that it's my job to give it to her you know the five second rule which i created i don't know over a decade ago that's gone on to help me change my whole life it's a little starting ritual and a brain hack that you can use to help yourself take the actions and change the thoughts that change your life it helped me be more productive it helped me get stuff done the high five habit has changed who i am it has deleted a lifetime of criticism and negativity from my mind and it has reprogrammed the soundtrack to be somebody that's supportive and a cheerleader it's extraordinary like so my brand of self-help is mel's life is kind of at the moment and she can't figure out how to help herself so she stumbles by accident on something really stupid on its face and it feels good and then i share with my audience and if they pick up on it and they then i'm like okay we're on to something so for me the high five tom began i'm fired from my talk show my book contract is canceled every speech has been canceled my kids are now home so we've got three kids 22 20 age 15 all in varying states of distress i am triggered because my origin story as you know from being on the show and us being friends the five second rule was 12 years ago losing everything and so i'm now having this feeling like i'm about to lose everything and i'm also feeling like i'm losing grip on reality as the pandemic is hitting and as my kids are in distress and i don't know what to do just like everybody on the planet i find myself in my bathroom one morning in my underwear and i am having this spiral of negative thoughts i look like i don't know how to fix this i wish somebody would solve this for me i feel overwhelmed i feel scared about my parents health i feel scared about everybody on the front lines and even though i'm literally like you somebody that empowers other people i didn't know what to say to myself and as pathetic as it sounds i found myself just raising my hand just in a way to basically be like shut up mel come on girl you like put your shoulders back lift your you you got this you can do this and something shifted and i went on with my day and then the next morning i walk into my bathroom and this is the other weird thing about the high five i've literally either criticized myself or ignored myself in the mirror for decades when you start to have a moment with yourself the crazy part is you start to build a partnership with yourself that's interesting like you know when you are pulling out of your driveway or you're walking down the street you see a neighbor and they greet you you will start to have that experience when you create this intentional moment with yourself in the mirror every morning and so as i started to do this i thought this is actually making me feel like the wind is at my back when i leave the bathroom it's making me feel just like when you leave a huddle in sports and you high five or you're a runner running a race or doing some big endurance challenge and some spectator high-fives you or another racers like come on you got this as you're dragging down low it gives you a little energy like i think too about this high five a lot like i know you know you're friends with david goggins i'm a huge fan of goggins and so and i know there's a lot of people that watch this show especially men that are like this sounds kind of stupid this is the equivalent of goggins cookie jar moment so we all think like we've all been raised like tough love hard on myself the research is clear on this being hard on yourself is not motivating it's demotivating and if you already feel like a failure or you feel a sense of shame or you're overwhelmed beating yourself up for where you are does not work it drives you into the gutter the most motivating force in the world on the planet based on research hands down is empowerment encouragement support and celebration and for our entire lives we have outsourced that to somebody else the research is very clear so the nba study they did this big study looking at nba teams and they could predict in the study who was going to be in the championship rounds based on in the preseason what teams had the most high fives fist bumps and back paths why because those kind of gestures create partnership and trust and i'm here to tell you when you start doing it in the mirror you're creating partnership and trust with yourself well let me explain what happened so this really interesting concept called ghosts in the nursery and so trauma patterns get automated and because they're not experienced in your brain they're felt in your nervous system and so it's why you can have a pattern from your past but be completely unaware that it's running your life right now because it's stored not in your conscious thought but in your nervous system and you feel it in your body before it even gets into your head and so from there's this concept called ghost in the nursery which basically means there's all kinds of that goes on when you're little that you may or may not remember in your mind but your body remembers it so for example if you had parents that were just stressed out and they come home and they've been busy and you're sitting there playing on the floor and there's there's toys everywhere and mom or dad's reaction to a mess is to scream that creates this kind of thing in your nervous system now you may not remember that episode that happened on may 17 1972 but your nervous system remembers what it's like so fast forward you're now 51 years old and you walk in the house and there's a mess everywhere and even though you have said i'm not going to bulldoze and yell at anybody my body recognizes the situation so what do you do you repeat the pattern you saw and so what i'm working on right now is a pattern that is encoded in my nervous system i was trying to create a video yes or two days ago um for share the mic for share the mic now i'm trying to create a video and i'm like doing take after take because i want to get it right and my daughter comes waltzing into the room and was like how long are you going to be doing this and i was like can't you see that i'm working i literally like screamed at her and she looked at me louis and she goes you have a real problem wow how's your daughter 20. and i said i calmly said you're right i do when i get interrupted i lose control of the response and i'm working so hard and the way that you and i'm clearly not mastering this yet but the way that you do it is as you feel it rise up you have to you know you can use the five second rule 54321 you can use just take a quick breath you can notice the pattern and you've got to create a pause between the emotion rising up and the reaction that gets automated and for many people the reaction loss is to run away it's to leave the room it's to avoid the confrontation the it was just easy you know hold on let me let the clock go even though you you hate being interrupted by anything this is a great interview i did like i didn't do i didn't do the bulldozer i was i was calm because i wasn't a human being i'm only mean to human beings um i know like i a lot of people run away they avoid conflict they say it's just easier but if running away and avoiding conflict continues to create a pattern where you feel invisible and your boundaries are trumped on that's a pattern and you know here's the other thing about patterns running away and being quiet might have saved you when you were little because if you were quiet and out of the room you didn't get hit you didn't get yelled at you were out of harm's way so when you were little it was a genius pattern because it protected you but the issue for adults is that again we walk around with the patterns that we created when we were eight years old in different situations and we are in now and now we are completely a robot to these patterns jealousy is one of the most powerful directional signals on the planet because you're only jealous of people that are doing things or have things that you actually want it's impossible to be fake jealous whatever you're jealous of is hitting something deeply personal pay attention to it instead of stewing in it go oh flip it that's interesting i wonder why i'm jealous what is it about it oh it's that they're doing it consistently it's that they've built a team it's that they've aligned their work together so that they're spending more time together how could i take those things that i'm really now really inspired by and take action and go get them in my life because the thing about jealousy is it's just your inspiration that's blocked jealousy is sort of the insecurity that you have that blocks this inspiration i guarantee you back to the uber driver he's jealous of all the other actors earning oscars because he's so inspired by the thought of doing that in his own life but his insecurity is blocking action his fear is blocking action so instead of it being inspiration it shows up as jealousy and i'm here to tell you the second you feel jealousy freaking stop okay let's unpack that what exactly is it about it and now if i were inspired by it because there's enough success to go around for everybody if i can use that as a road map to then go figure out how i might be able to do that for myself wow talk about a game changer and now let's add in the high five what if every time i took a little step i celebrated myself for just doing it now you're building small wins and momentum in a direction that's meant for you that's how you change your life breaking we encourage people to break boundaries you know they feel like they're limited but you talk about uh your boundaries are there to serve you so obviously it's a different type of boundary but you know yeah so so here's the thing what boundaries do you need to help yourself to protect yourself and which ones do you need to grow past that are holding you back i think that the definition with boundaries that has helped me the most is understanding that boundaries are for me they're not for you and the single biggest mistake that we make in any relationship particularly romantic ones but also work related ones is we do not express what we need any pattern can be replaced change isn't personal it just feels personal change is just about identifying patterns and replacing them with new ones that's it and and it'll take a little while because they're encoded in your nervous system and your default is to just do it yourself um but you have to you cannot as a rule punish other people for you didn't communicate right so i'll give you the perfect example so chris and i have been married for 24 years and when i was before the talk show and i made my living mostly by uh you know doing 100 speeches a year i would be on the road 150 days a year and when i would come home there was always something that pissed me off like what like ah the trashes are taken out the clothes are here or is it something else oh no i'm way worse than that are you kidding i would walk in after being gone for five or six days and there on the island in the kitchen was a vase that had dead flowers the ones that i had bought for myself a week before and it was as if everybody in my family had been walking around the island for six days as if there was some dead flower sculpture in the middle of the island and so i would come home and first of all the only person that's really excited to see me is a dog and my family did sit me down at one point they said you know you realize when you're not here we have our own lives so you don't put your lives on hold while you know for us and we're not putting our lives on hold so it's not that we're not excited to see you but we're not organizing our whole lives around when mom comes home right to be like a dog to be like the dog excited and running up and jumping in your arms and kissing you yeah yeah no no they don't but that but i think that's cool because that means that they're independent and doing their own thing they've set boundaries they've set boundaries with me perfect so for probably six months i would get pissy and i would walk in and put my bags down and i grabbed the flowers and i demonstratedly how many times has everyone done this throw them out loudly like everyone hears you communication yeah i'm getting my communication just throwing these dead flowers out communicate to you that you should buy me flowers like i'm not saying that but that's what the body language is right how dare i have been off i've been in four cities and then you become a mar like ugh i'm disgusting when i tell this story but this is it this is like so well i see you've got some lovely flowers behind you that look alive so that's good to see oh that's nice so i do love flowers so finally i just said to chris you know what would make me feel amazing is if when i came home you had just bought some flowers just go to the just when you're at the grocery store it doesn't you don't have to order like i'm saying buy the five dollar pack of half dead tulips just something okay and and then he said why and this is the most important part of expressing and look you don't have to give an explanation if you're trying to like cut off a toxic person but if you want to express boundaries with somebody because you want them to understand you more deeply give them the why i said because it makes me think that you are excited for me to come home and that you knew i was coming because i'm starting to feel forgotten so underneath the anger louis wow was hurt and feeling like it didn't matter and so i'll be darned i walk in and um there they are and i literally feel so seen what are the key principles of how someone deals with themselves when they love themselves when they care for themselves what are those key tenets those those key values that we can draw ourselves to and measure against say am i doing that for myself so i think at the heart of it are two foundational habits that you need and one you already mentioned it's being kind to yourself it's really that simple and i know you know the study that they did in the uk where they looked at every possible behavior change that you could do in life and whether it was changing in diet meditation exercise relationship changes all of it the one change that has the biggest impact on fulfillment and happiness is being kind to yourself and it's the one change we practice the least because i don't think we know how yeah i don't how do yeah how do we be contest well number one stop the beat down in the mirror and despite the fact that it might feel weird or you're gonna resist it or you got a lot of dust oh boy we gotta wipe it away oh it's more like mud it's not like dust jay has dust the rest of us are caked with mud gotta get some elbow grease in there uh the high five habit every day is wiping that away okay that's number one number two when you catch yourself in the what if loop or the beat down use the five second rule count backwards five four three two one interrupt it and start just interrupting it because you don't have to listen to it you can't always control when it pops up but you can start to create distance from it meditation obviously helps with that but in terms of the hand to fist combat with your own brain i prefer punch back 54321 and then i literally go i'm not thinking about that another strategy that you can use as you're doing the hand-to-hand combat with your own brain is come up with like an avatar for this negative voice okay and make it really good like when our son was really profoundly struggling with anxiety he's 16 now he started to call that worry wart in his head that was beating him up oliver and he looked like this big pimply bully of a kid that was out of the diary the wimpy kid and he would literally say when he was nine years old shut up oliver like you're not invited to sleep like he would literally talk to it and it sounds like you're giving your kid multiple personalities that's not actually what's happening you're leveraging objectivity so you separate yourself from the voice that's talking to you yes um another thing that you can do i love this for worrying oh this is a genius to steal your word uh move when you catch yourself doing the what ifs because we know there's two forms of worrying right there's the type of worrying that just destroys you that's destructive worrying where you just ruminate what if what if what if then there's the positive form of worrying which is productive because it it motivates you to change when you get stuck in the what if what if what if interrupt it with this five four three two one and then go what if it all works out what if this turns out to be one of the hardest things i do but the best decision i've ever made [Music] what if placing a bet on myself was the moment my life changed what if it all works out because you can't argue with that and it literally stops that sort of cycling because worrying is just a habit that you have it's like a pathway that you've plowed in your mind and it's a protection mechanism you're actually not a procrastinator you're not a worrier you're just afraid yeah and by staying in your mind you think you're safe and really what you're doing is you're holding yourself back from living the life that you're meant to live i love that that's such a great answer so that's because i've got a couple of yeah be kind to yourself and then there's another one and then the other ones keep the little promises that you make to yourself and there's two simple ways you can practice this that everybody's gonna hate when you set the alarm the night before i don't believe in having the same wake-up time every morning because i think if you have a normal life things are constantly changing and so i think if you were to have one simple habit which is the night before you go to bed think about when you need to wake up to truly support yourself and then intentionally set your alarm and if you want to get really intentional with the science here make it like a random odd number don't make it six o'clock make it 6 17 because there's a purpose behind that and then when that alarm rings don't think about it like an obligation i want you to think about it like it's a promise that you're going to practice keeping and this is where you can use the five second rule you're just going to count backwards 5 4 3 2 1 to interrupt all of the desire in your mind and body to stay in bed or to hit the snooze button or to argue against what you need to do and you're going to push through that resistance and take action and by getting out of bed simply when you said you would you are again behavioral activation therapy you're acting like a person who keeps their promises if you are afraid of disappointing people if you're afraid that you're not good enough you may catch that in one area of your life but as your life gets bigger and as you change it'll creep in in other areas and one way that those patterns where you don't think you deserve it or you don't think you're good enough or you're terrified of disappointing people comes into play is when you start to expect the worst and so catch it that's the first step you can't break your pattern unless you see it and then you're gonna replace it and what i'm gonna start doing is i've got this little app on my watch you can set it on your phone where every like three hours it reminds me to breathe and i notice the second that the alarm goes off i've been holding my breath and so you can set a little alarm in your phone megan's laughing you can set a little alarm in your phone that just says saver it's a reminder to take a minute you can make it say take a minute take a minute look around comp your compliment yourself on what's going right because expecting the worst is something you taught yourself to do guess what you can teach yourself to take a minute and to savor what's going right and the more you force yourself to do it the more it'll become a habit i know that in this next chapter that i consciously create i want to have more fun i wanna i really wanna love the process yeah i don't wanna make it so hard on myself and be gripping everything so tight and it's really easy for me to see it in other people because i know what it feels like in here i'm working hard to break the patterns that still hold me back and the big one that holds me back is um bulldozing that's the it's it's it's literally when i start to feel any level of tension this is particularly true in my marriage um i'm married to a saint thank god chris robbins meditates every morning it's the only reason why we've lasted 26 years um it's how he puts up with me when i feel my like whatever emotion rise i immediately raise my voice it's how i assert power in the relationship and i am so committed lewis to breaking that pattern wow and being a more fun person to be around and a kinder person to be around first of all stop talking about passion stop talking about launching a business okay when you think about it too big it will paralyze you if you're lucky and you're in a position where your bills are getting paid and you have the luxury of being able to try to think about what you want to do in this next chapter here's where i want you to start i want you to start with what energizes you now how ironic is that given that i'm speaking at the energetic women's conference here in indianapolis today why am i saying energizes and what do i talk what am i talking about when i say energize when i say energizes you i'm asking you what is it that you're curious about what is it that you feel so expanded you feel energized you feel kind of excited whenever you're doing it you're in a phase when you're just trying to figure out what's your next move of just paying attention to your curiosity paying attention to the things that interest you the truth is passion is just energy if you're passionate about something it means you're energized when you do it so let's reverse engineer this and let's just ask yourself a simple question what are you curious about what energizes you and if you allow yourself to explore things that energize you you my friend will start to find the clues about what it is that you should and could be doing because all the research says that if you're doing something that you like if you're doing something that you're curious about you're not only going to enjoy it you're going to be really good at it because if you like doing it you'll spend more time doing it which means you're going to get better at it you talk a lot about taking responsibility for that recognizing nobody's coming to save you something you said in the book it's something that you've said in interviews something that i absolutely think is really powerful how do we use that why is that important to recognize well it's important to recognize because first of all nobody is coming i mean if you've been sitting around waiting for somebody to discover you to pick you to save you to rescue you to give you your shot it's not happening like at some point you got to wake up and realize when you're 18 and you're out of that house you have to parent yourself your life is your responsibility and as a woman one of the things that i found to be extraordinarily transformational is when i stopped in a very traditional sense looking to my partner to be responsible for providing for me providing financially providing the support providing when i realized wait a minute it starts with me i have to be able to figure out how to make myself happy that's by the way the secret to a happy relationship marry somebody who's happy and work on your own happiness preach and so when you stop outsourcing your happiness your validation your support all of it and you bring it back in and you get responsible for it it sounds scary it's so liberating because you could do anything when you're responsible when you're the driver of your life when you're not looking out to anybody else to fix it for you can you ask for help of course but the buck stops with you you're the one that has to do the work you're the one who has to push your own ass you're the one who has to figure out what makes you happy you're the one who has to figure out and become self-aware about what you need and then you're the one that has to find whatever it is the courage or being humble enough to ask for help even if it's asking for help from the biggest ally that you have which is the person staring back at you in the mirror every damn morning the coolest thing about jealousy embrace it let me tell you why okay you're only jealous of the things you authentically want so for example for a long time in my life i was super when we were struggling financially i was super jealous of anybody that had a big house or was putting on an addition and i didn't know what to do with my jealousy so it would consume me i tell the story in this book of going uh into a friend's brand new you know house at a time in our life where chris's restaurants were failing and i was unemployed and we were like profoundly in debt i was it nearly made me self-combust in this woman's kitchen okay and how did i deal with my jealousy because i didn't know what it was we get in the car and what do you think i did for my poor husband why aren't you more successful i should have married somebody in finance like she did why are we in this situ like you just like aim it at people right because you don't know what to do with it my jealousy was not about a house when i finally started to unpack it it was about my ambition very yeah very true and so you cannot be jealous of something you don't want if i believe that jealousy is blocked inspiration i've never heard that before it is blocked by your fear it is blocked by insecurity it is blocked by you of this deep ins like you have this and and like you said it earlier i'm really jealous of this idea mel i wish i had come up with it you have a new book coming out i'm not going to say what the title is but here's what i want you to take away from it there's something about the simplicity of the idea that makes you jealous that is what your inspiration is trying to get you to pay attention to very good so i'm jealous of you you got this show you have the discipline to do it all the time you're translating it into a podcast i've been sitting on my ass talking about doing a podcast for four years what the old mel would do before i understood jealousy is because it's blocked by insecurity i would then tell myself a story you're too late it's already done there's not enough room for you if you do it you're a copycat all of that just blocks what you really want really true pay attention to your jealousy and stop and unpack it what really is it about that person is it their marriage is it the way that they're being treated is it how they take care of themselves what is it about financial freedom and anybody that has it that makes you feel jealous really get to the core of what feels right for you and then get to work on it you can use something called the vagus nerve and a tool that i like to talk about is called high fiving your heart so you put your hands right here right like in the center of your chest over your heart and you say these three words you say i'm okay i'm safe i'm loved i'm okay i'm safe i'm loved and when you put your hands here you are toning and activating what's called the vagus nerve the vagus nerve runs all the way from your seat to the top of your head through every major organ through your vocal cords and it is the key it's the switch between your fight-or-flight state of anxiety and your calm state and so first things first you want to develop a practice first in the morning not only of high-fiving yourself in the mirror which we're going to get to which is all about self-confidence and self-esteem and self-love and self-worth but you're also going to wake up every morning put your hands right here and go i'm okay i'm safe i'm loved you're gonna say it as many times you have to 113 11 times two times until you actually feel your body settle down and you will you will feel yourself ground back into your body you will feel something shift and if you can hear yourself saying those words i'm okay i'm sorry if i'm loved it's true in that moment and by putting your hands right here this is what activates the vagus nerve other things that help you tone the vagus nerve an ice back a hot shower a hot bath singing gurgling humming chanting because it stimulates your vocal cords and so this is a little tool you can use i love doing it first thing in the morning but use it anytime you feel anxious to settle yourself back in your body you can choose what you tell yourself about a situation that's happening but it was helpful for me when i started to understand that your emotional waves and your nervous system response happens before your thoughts appear and so it's really important for everybody to realize you will not be able to control the fact that there will be moments when you're disappointed moments when you feel rage moments when you feel betrayed moments when you feel pissed off moments when you feel short-changed moments when you feel aggravated and these waves come over you you will never be able to control those from coming up but you can choose what you are going to tell yourself about what's happening and the other thing is that when it comes to trauma i mean all of this is sort of dysregulation in your nervous system that's stored there that keeps getting retriggered and so if you're dealing with a trauma response you will not be able to also think your way through it first and part of what has really helped me is when i started to understand oh the wave of emotion and feeling comes before my brain can actually help me get back in control and so when i started to understand that oh there's going to be these waves of emotion don't resist them let them come feel it google word wheel or wheel of emotions you will find that um if you ask somebody name as many emotions as you can most people can name three happy sad angry there's literally like 113 of them from disgusted to hopeless to and if you if you start with a cor this thing allows you to start with a core emotion and go out because back to the flower example i was expressing anger that's not what i was feeling i was feeling invisible and forgotten and so the word wheel is something that we used several times a week to help people go from the thing that they are expressing to them communicating what you're feeling which is a lot like the work that you wrote about in your book yeah around wearing masks yeah getting to the root of the core emotion you're feeling but not expressing oh i can't even don't stop touching your eyes i can't open my eyes anymore okay don't open your eyes don't open your eyes i'm freaking out i need the ice cream please [Music] i'm gonna take everybody back four years ago so this is the first book the high five habit is the first book that i have written and published in almost five years back in 2007 i released a book called the five second rule and lisa and her husband tom played a pivotal role in one of the biggest professional breakdowns of my life and they had no idea that it was happening at the time no clue and lisa i think you just found out about it by reading about it in chapter 12 of my new book yep so here's what was going on i had written the five-second rule book i had self-published it because i thought that um that was the best thing to do i had a dream of being a number one new york times best-selling author and i put it up on my vision board and i dreamed about it and i thought about it and i studied all the authors that we all admire and i did my best to do all the things that you uh are supposed to do in order to sell enough books to grace the new york times best seller list right so i email my newsletter list and i am doing speeches all over the place and i'm pre-selling books as best i can in the back of a room with my pad of paper taking people's like literally for months i did everything i could and when the book came out i sent the email out to everybody and folks on my email list and everybody i'm related to immediately went to amazon to buy the book and here's what happened within an hour or two the book was listed as out of stock now i thought yes yes i have won i am a best-selling author i have sold out of amazon in a matter of a few hours oh my god oh my god this like literally this this proves all the things that everybody said about me in middle school is not true anymore i i've done it lisa and then i started to realize i had not sold all the books because i did not have i had 20 000 books at amazon i did not have that many people on my email list and people started to email back going it's out of stock it's out of stock it's honestly you think your dream like the height of your freaking dreams come true yes i think i've done it like i've so like i am a success i am a phenomenon this is unbelievable i think the dreams are coming true and then within a couple hours people start emailing going it's out of stock mal it's out of stock it's out of stock it's out of stock it dawns on me there's no way i sold 20 000 books there's no way i call the printer that i worked with that helped me self-publish and you know it's a little self-publishing publisher and he tells me that he's seen this happen before where when amazon gets a flood of traffic to something that they're not expecting they will turn off supply to make sure it's not a bunch of bots and to also check inventory and we had no ability to figure this out so for the first couple weeks that the book was available it was out of stock so here i am in this two-week period where i have worked my ass off i have done everything you're supposed to do lisa and my book is out of stock i have sent my entire marketing campaign to a product you can't get and i'm thinking why are you doing this to me universe i have worked hard why do i have to be the bad news bears why am i not part of that super like awesome group of best-selling authors one is it going to be my turn and i start to go down the drain enter tom and lisa villa so when i come here and i am doing your show i show up here and i'm like this is my last hope because by the time this thing gets on air maybe the book will be available i have got to pull myself together so i walk in here and i was just i i didn't know you yet because i only knew like impact theory and i only seen it i knew this was a big deal i knew that being on tom's show could really like change things for me and i walk in here and i feel like a complete failure you are lovely and delightful and i immediately start feeling like i don't freaking belong here i mean they just had this best-selling author and that best-selling offer and this famous person was just here what am i doing here i am a self-published author with a book that's out of stock like i'm i'm failing i hope that they don't know because this is terrible like he is going to figure out before i enter the set that i don't belong here you think imposter syndrome galore oh completely so i'm upstairs in the bathroom and i am having a case no kidding of stress diarrhea like i have got to empty the bowels because i am so sure that i'm about to be called out for the fraud that i am that the book is not successful that tom's made a mistake i look at the mirror my cheeks are as red as a baboon's ass i am sweating profusely i've got pit stains on my red shirt and then there's a knock on the door we're ready for you mel i splash water on my face i literally am like five four three two one like pull your shirt together mel get the out there and i open up the door and i go walk out there and do it anyway that's what you've gotta develop in life and that moment taught me that and there was something else that happened so when i left that set the whole time that the book was out of stock and i'm sitting here going woe is me and i failed again and i screw everything up and why doesn't anything ever work out for me i would catch myself and i would say this there's no way mel that you've worked this hard that something amazing isn't going to happen you have to keep going you have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet that was the mantra that had deep meaning for me in this moment because it was a way for me to take an attitude that was going down the toilet and flip it into what i call a high five attitude that was more empowering and supportive and encouraging and so i kept repeating it lisa the talk show experience was almost like it's it's weird it almost feels like it didn't happen really yeah it was your whole life for like two years yeah but you know 175 shows it was in super intense you know it was it was almost a spiritual experience because i had dreamt about it for as long as i could remember and i stepped onto that talk show set with such a level of mastery and the reason why i had a level of mastery is because i could look backwards at my life and see that i had been heading to that moment for my entire life that the ability to create trust and take a complicated amount of information and get down to the human connection immediately that began back in 1994 when i was a legal aid attorney doing criminal defense work in new york city my ability to understand what victims of domestic violence go through uh goes all the way back to 1986 through 1988 when i was a crisis intervention counselor volunteering on a domestic violence hotline my ability to read a teleprompter had to do with being at cnn my ability to work 18-hour days uh was a function of the reality tv show world my ability to relate to somebody who had lost everything was a function of what chris and i had gone through my ability like just everything all of a sudden was like and it's why i can say with such urgency that you have to have faith that this is happening for a reason that this is leading somewhere it comes back to the core message that i always have for you no matter what's happening around or to you you hold the power because you always have the power to have an honest conversation you always have the power to discuss how things are impacting you you always have the power to make requests and you certainly have the power to draw boundaries and you also have the power by the way if the culture gets worse and worse or you just are tired of it because it's not changing to go find a different job the power is always in you and i think that's something that's so important to constantly remind yourself i get that i don't like where i am but what could i do to change it how can i change how i think about this and i'm telling you right now you know this the second you start changing how you think about a situation the situation changes the second you start changing how you think about what your options are you start to see them the second you stop thinking that you're stuck or that you're a victim and you start thinking about how you solve something you start to see solutions and so the answer is always in you the reason why it's so important to start with a friend cleanse and i'm sure a lot of you how many of you heard that you thought oh my god getting rid of people oh boy oh boy i'm gonna cleanse these friends yes and no a friend cleanse is critical because the single most influential thing around you are the people that you hang out with and if you have relationships that are toxic if you have relationships that cause guilt if you have relationships that are creating drama in your life if you have relationships that are not equitable guess what that's creating the overwhelm that's creating unhappiness that's keeping you doubting yourself if you have friends that um have bad habits guess what that's making it really really hard for you to change your habits for the good you have this behavior pattern where you get angry you have this behavior pattern where you snap you have this behavior pattern where you yell and you get upset and you make people wrong and you don't mean to if you are somebody who's ever said to yourself i wish i could stop yelling or i wish i i i i could just snap i could stop snapping this video is absolutely unbelievable okay and the reason why is i explained this research that was so mind-blowing for me it's called ghosts in the nursery a lot of the patterns that you have that you don't have control over are patterns from your childhood and they are there because when you were a kid you experienced people in your life that were tense did you ever have a parent that was a yeller did you ever have a teacher that was a yeller or a coach that was a yeller and secretly in your little kid body whenever your mom or dad would yell or your coach would yell or your teacher would yell or your grandmother or grandfather would yell you would feel tense right you would feel nervous you would feel on edge of course that's how we all feel right well here's the reason why you might have an issue like i used to have an issue where i would yell at my kids and then i'd feel terrible about it i'd snap at my husband and then i'd feel terrible about it psychologist and then i would say to myself i'm not doing that again i'm not doing that again but i wouldn't have the ability to end it psychologists call this ghost in the nursery it means that any situation where you start to feel tense or you start to feel stressed out guess what happens your body remembers what it was like when you were little to feel tense and stressed out and what were the adults doing around you when you felt that way they were snapping they were yelling and now here you are repeating the pattern and you don't know why and you feel guilty and i'm explaining this to you because it wasn't until i thought holy cow like i know i don't want to snap at my husband i know i don't want to take my anger from work out on my family why can't i stop this that's the reason why it's because it's a pattern that you remember from being a kid that the adults around you were snapping or yelling or being mean any time and when they were you felt tense and stressed out so now that you're an adult when you're tense and stressed out you repeat the behavior that you witnessed crazy right so how do you stop it well the first step to stopping anything is to actually understand what you're dealing with now that you know you're dealing with a pattern now all you need to do is basically say okay i'm going to put a practice in place that's going to interrupt this pattern what's the practice well a really good one is um before you walk in the house at the end of the day if you're stressed out take five take five deep breaths like reset your mood reset your energy before you walk in the house and you'll be surprised by how much nicer you are to the people around you another thing that um that uh you can do and this one's not so fun is you can train your partner your kids your roommates your family that if you're trying to get a hold of how you bring stress home you can train them to say to you hey don't take your work stress out on me when somebody that you care about says that to you it's a humbling experience and the person that says it the most in my life is my son oakley your uh the youngsters seem to love to cross-check the adults so be careful with taking that advice your mind collects mental lint that's right that's all that doubt is that's all that fear is that's all that anxiety is that's all that worry is it's all the people pleasing is this is lint from life that is collected in your brain and you know what lint stands for something get your pencils ready you lose inspiration due to negative thoughts that's all that's happening you're not broken you're just blocked the filter in your mind is blocked just like a dryer filter gets blocked by lint and you can't think this stuff away you got to take action and the single most effective tool on the planet hands down to wipe away the lint in your mind to wipe away the doubt to wipe away the fear to wipe away the anxiety is the five second rule i'm dead serious about this when you feel the fear rise up when you feel the self-doubt start to block when you feel the anxiety start to take over when you feel like you're losing the inspiration to move you're just gonna count backwards five four three two one i know it sounds dumb but trust me on this one counting backwards five four three two one wipes the lint off the filter in your brain that lint that makes you lose your inspiration to act due to negative thoughts and once you get to one it's clear so your confidence and your courage can flow right through you if you can't stand in front of the mirror and raise your hand and high-five yourself just because you got your ass out of bed and you're breathing you will never get what you want in life ever there is something in the resistance to it and if you unpack the resistance you will find the reason why you don't have what you want you either think you're not worthy of it or you think that it's kind of stupid or you have been brought up to believe that for women in particular you're going to be or selfish or not likable if you're celebrating yourself there is something in the resistance to you simply cheering for yourself i have this habit of every single morning i stand in front of the mirror and i take a moment and i raise my hand and i give my reflection a high five and there's so much science behind this so instead of seeing yourself right and have having this moment in the mirror you know what the average person does first of all we beat ourselves down so i would look in the mirror for 40 some years and be like oh my god my freaking jowls look like saddle bags on a goddamn horse going in the grand canyon my eyes have a my neck is only striped my boob one boobs hanging lower than the other i look like my gray hair like i start bringing myself down and when you start going down that road with your reflection then your thoughts go to i didn't get to that email i forgot to text lisa back i oh my gosh the dog still needs to be walked i've got nine minutes for my first zoom you're now checking out and that moment in the mirror every morning could be a profound moment where you lift yourself up and you check back in with your intention so the first piece of research and this is recent from harvard business school is that a simple moment in the morning where you set an intention about who you're going to be today impacts productivity how you show up as a leader it impacts your confidence it impacts your mood all day long just that simple moment of setting an intention so that's research number one instead of standing in front of the sink in your bathroom and criticizing your appearance or mindlessly going on autopilot check back in and let's teach you to make it a habit to lift yourself back up second piece of research and this comes from a whole field of study called neurobics neurobics is like aerobics for your mind i didn't make this up this is literally you can speed up the development of new neural pathways by marrying physical activity with a change in thought and so traditionally i know you've covered this on your show if you for example were to brush your teeth i'm a right-hander if you were to brush it with your other hand and think uh a new thought the fact that your brain is focusing on brushing with your non-dominant hand activates more focus on the new thought it accelerates the learning so you take neurobics a physical activity with a different thought and let me let's talk about a high five for example what does a high five mean to you that somebody did something awesome or i did something awesome correct and if you think about the times in your life when you've gotten a high five it's because somebody's like tom you're amazing tom get your attitude out of the can you got this tom you're gonna make this shot tom we can still win i believe in you keep going you have a lifetime positive association with giving other people high fives stored right here in your subconscious mind when you raise your hand to your own reflection it is impossible for you to think god i look fat who am i i really screwed up my life you can't do it because your lifetime association with this motion is all i believe in you i got you i see you i celebrate you and so you in the moment of doing it override decades of negative self-talk it's incredible now have you ever gotten a high five where somebody misses the hand or it's sort of like it sucks right yeah what do you do when that happens i redo it correct that's because a high five requires you to be present and there is an intention behind it so you can't raise your hand to your own reflection without now grounding yourself in the moment i don't believe in toxic positivity i don't believe that you just like put a positive spin on things and things will disappear and be fine that's not how the world works there are very real challenges that you may be facing you may be facing abuse violence you may be up against structural and systematic racism and bias and discrimination you may be facing extreme poverty you may be facing all kinds of very real and traumatic things in your life simply putting a positive spin on things will not change those very real obstacles what it changes is you when you change how you look at things it changes your ability to deal with the things in your life it changes your ability to face hard things and it gives you the courage and the confidence and the resilience and the stamina to chip away at these large obstacles or these past experiences that created trauma or negative self-talk it's going to give you the ability to take the action that you need and so when you hear me talk about mindset i want you to understand this doesn't make things disappear it actually empowers you to be your greatest self to face the stuff that's very difficult you know because confidence courage resilience these are all things that are inside you and you don't build this stuff in the high moments you build your confidence and your courage and your resilience in the low moments it's like steel it's forged in the fire of your life and so even in those moments where you feel like life is punching you in the face and you just want to give up and you have that like i can't handle this anymore and why does this keep happening to me i am telling you do not give up because you are building your inner strength every step of the way through these experiences that you're facing in your life i'm not saying it's fair i'm not saying you deserve it i'm saying you have the power within you to face whatever you're dealing with to find your strength and to actually change yourself and the situation and the trajectory that you're on for the better there is no fast track to transformation you have to work on it in little ways every day you can't buy self-esteem or self-love you must build it you must stand face to face with the part of you that you hate you must forgive yourself for the hurt that you've caused especially the hurt you've caused yourself and then you got to do the work to become a better you it's the only way to create the self-respect and build the self-esteem that you want you can change there are do-overs in life because you get one every single morning when you wake up look in the mirror and decide who you're going to be today you can choose you can change no you can't go back in time but you can have your own back as you use the time that you have now to take control and create a new chapter that makes you proud of who you are the hardest part of all this is flipping your focus from what you hate and are trying to fix toward what you want to create remember the windshield in a car is bigger than the rear view mirror for good reason you're not supposed to go backwards you're supposed to drive your life forward and that means you must start looking ahead yeah you've screwed up me too the worst things that you've done witnessed or survived they are your most powerful teachers so stop making yourself wrong about what happened and unpack it understand it face yourself in the mirror and learn the lessons that are woven into every mistake every regret you ever have and every painful thing you've ever experienced here's the profound insight i gained that i want you to hear you aren't broken you're just blocked forgive yourself for all the things you did while you were just trying to survive the dallas uber driver oh so as somebody who has gotten into countless ubers and some small percentage of them know who i am and then of course they start asking questions talk to me about chasing your dreams and this quote that you have that an aha moment does not necessarily lead to an aha life um yeah the uber driver in dallas that's in this book um i get choked up when i think about him uh an aha moment i'm choked up i get choked up because what happens for me every single day is and you hear from people every single day you've got millions and millions of people that are inspired by empowered by impacted by your content there are people out there that use your work as a lifeline and it is humbling and what i am really present to in the work that i'm putting out in the stuff that i'm sharing whether it's my failures or the things that i'm using that are helping me and my own struggles is just how much people are holding themselves back and how much pain people feel because most folks know what they dream about and what they want and yet they're spending all of their time and energy arguing against what they want and so you can have all these epiphanies i hope that when somebody listens to our conversation and watches this that they have a massive aha moment but it's not going to mean if you don't take action and do something about it the aha moment is the door that opens but your new life does not begin unless you step through the door and most people and that's what was so kind of you know the simple idea of high-fiving yourself of encouraging yourself of supporting yourself most people when you have an aha moment and the door to your new life opens up instead of going i got this let's go and high-fiving yourself to step forward most of us go i don't know if i'm worth that i don't know if right now is the right time to do this i don't think i'm good enough i've failed so many times i can't go through that door and that's the problem i want to attack right now that there is somewhere in your life that you know what you want you can feel it pulling you and you are actively arguing against it you're bringing yourself down you're beating yourself out like people will cheer for you and me they won't cheer for themselves i'm the same way and so this uber driver the story that you're talking about i get into the car and we start driving and i'm on the phone as we're driving and i'm having a conversation with somebody about this daytime talk show that i launched which was a dream with sony pictures television and then uh was promptly fired after season one it was a huge failure because we didn't make it to season two huge failure in real world terms massive success when it comes to the timeline of my life and so i'm talking to this person about the talk show i hang up the phone and this uber driver comes alive he's like oh my gosh i can't believe you're in my cab and i'm like why and he says because i i want to talk to you about something i think you can help me and i'm like great how can i help you and he says i have a dream of being a oscar-winning actor and creating opportunities for other black and latino men to do the same in acting and i'm like freaking fantastic what the are you doing in dallas right yeah the guy's 25 and so i i go you know the game is in new york in la i mean sure you can act you can write stuff you can be here in dallas but why are you not in la why are you not in new york and he's like you're right you're right you're right i need to move to la like why not and he says i have 700 in my bank account i'm like that's freaking fantastic you have 700 in a car dude drop me off and get driving what are you waiting for and so we have this whole conversation and i write about it in this book where i am actively arguing for his dream and he is actively arguing against his dream and what is so sad is throughout this conversation tom he's like you're right 700 could get me there you're right i am only 25. you're right if i keep thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking about what i want to be doing i'm not only going to drive in circles my whole life is going to spin in circles as i think about what i want and i don't do about it and then you are going to find yourself not at 25 but at 45 or 65 and you're going to be so filled with regret that you never put a put a bet on yourself and so this conversation ends with him declaring that he's going to go to california and me giving him a bunch of tools that i talk about in this book and the point of the story is does he move or not i don't know the point of the story is it's so easy to see what somebody else should do it's so easy to cheer for somebody else we all do that right we cheer for our favorite sports teams we follow our favorite influencers and authors we plan birthday parties for our friends we take on extra work from our colleagues we support everyone around us we do not know how to do it for ourselves you know when you're about to meet a friend somebody you really like at a cafe gonna go have a cup of tea what do you feel right before you walk in the door excitement enthusiasm energy joy uh positive nervousness like that that kind of like butterflies even in a positive sense yeah so at this moment i was 51 years old in 51 years of being alive i don't ever remember feeling that feeling about seeing myself wow for the first time in my life i had this sensation that i was excited to see the human being mel robbins now i've been excited to see an outfit or excited to see a haircut i have never been excited to see the person and so i round the corner and this sense of how profound this is is hitting me and i'm standing there brushing my teeth and i realize something really wild there are always two of you in the bathroom together there's you and there is a human being in the mirror a person who needs you a person who has been waiting for you to wake up and realize they are there and they need you to see them and to hear them and to love them and to support them and so what's interesting because you brought up morning routines right is that we all talk about the importance of setting our day up because it's how it ends up we talk about gratitude and meditation and we know the extraordinary benefits of it but i don't think anybody has truly amplified the fact that there is this dirty habit that we all have every single morning that is a part of your morning routine unless you have weeded this out and it is a habit of either ignoring yourself or beating the heck out of yourself every single morning in the mirror i mean 91 percent of women don't like how they look 50 of us can't even look at ourselves in the mirror you're a big proponent of the growth mindset you guys talk about it all the time on this show right so researchers wanted to know what is the most empowering way to motivate kids through a really big challenge okay they divide the kids into three groups this takes the marshmallow test to a whole nother level you got one group of kids that are doing a challenging task and they're getting the fixed mindset praise which we all know does not work oh tom you're so smart oh tom i love your glasses that's going to help you oh tom you got a great smile oh tom you know i i just love so much about you i know you can do this so that's one group the second group gets the growth mindset kind of phrase tom you are such a hard worker tom your perseverance is unbelievable tom you just keep going that does better obviously than telling you that you're smart because it makes you motivated to work hard the third group they just got a simple high five the researchers didn't even say anything to the kids they just walked up gave them a high five the group of kids that got a simple high five outperformed outworked through all of the challenges all of the other forms of praise why because a high five is something deeper than praise it fulfills your most fundamental needs as a human being when somebody high-fives you you feel seen you feel heard and you feel like somebody has acknowledged you for the unique person that you are literally when i think back three years ago where i was like saw one of your videos or gary's videos or somebody i'm like oh i just need to start filming the book lines at these and it was a it was a moment it was this little amount of wisdom inside of me that i listened to and i am telling you that is the power you got to tune out the noise and you got to learn how to make what i call a quiet decision yeah quiet decision where you sh and you hear what your heart is is urging you to do there are four techniques that i use whenever i'm gonna have a difficult conversation that help me stay focused on what i need to talk about instead of getting hijacked by my emotions number one i always start the conversation by acknowledging my responsibility in the mess that we have to talk about whether it's the fact that i've avoided dealing with this sooner or whether there's something that i've done that's contributed to the situation i acknowledge it right up front and one of the reasons why that's so important is because by accepting some responsibility you're diffusing the other person's emotion you're also honoring them a little bit and it sets a much more level playing field for when you get into the difficult things that you need to talk about it's also going to put the person that you're speaking to a little at ease so they're going to be able to listen number two you want to have a goal never go into a difficult conversation without an outcome defined before you go into it the reason why the outcome is so important is because this conversation is going to be a roller coaster the person that you're talking to might get upset you yourself might feel emotional at some point whether you're angry or you're triggered or you get sad and so when you ride the roller coaster of emotion the thing that is going to stabilize your thoughts is the outcome that you're causing you're having this conversation because you're committed to making the relationship better you're having this conversation because this isn't working and so we need to end it powerfully you're having this conversation because you want to give somebody some feedback that's not so fun to tell them but you're giving it to them because you're committed to their success okay so that goal you feel yourself getting emotional you come back to it you come back to it you come back to it third thing you're going to do a lot in this conversation you're going to listen and you're going to validate so you're going to say what you need to say and then the other person's going to react and instead of arguing or debating i want you to listen and i want you to validate what the person is saying may sound counter-intuitive but honestly one of the most powerful things you can do in any conversation whether you're fighting with your kids over curfew or you're arguing with somebody at work over workloads whatever it may be is here where the person's at the moment you say wow that must be really tough what you're dealing with or oh i totally get why you now were avoiding me if i felt the way that you felt i'd probably do the same thing the second you validate somebody they immediately stop defending themselves it's unbelievable actually unbelievable you've got to try it validate validate validate it is the most powerful thing and then once of course they feel validated that you've heard them now they can listen and that's when you come back to the final thing which is you're going to restate always the outcome keep coming back to it keep coming back to it and yeah it's not going to be fun it's not going to be easy you're going to have all kinds of emotions come up because you've been avoiding this conversation but i'm telling you right now if you find the confidence and the courage to go and to start this thing knowledge your responsibility have an outcome in mind validate the other person validate validate validate and keep talking until you hit that outcome you're going to be really really amazed at how much easier these things become and if you want to make it even easier on yourself rehearse it with another friend first somebody that's not involved in the situation because again difficult conversations comes down to one important thing the ability for you to separate your emotion about doing it from the things you actually need to talk about and the outcome that you want to cause let's start with a metaphor i want you to think about your life like a book a book is divided into chapters some chapters are boring and a grind to get through and others are exciting and you hope they never end and right now you're in a chapter maybe this chapter of your life is a grind it's overwhelming and unsatisfying and you feel stuck reading it over and over again maybe you want to start a new chapter but you don't know what the next chapter is about and so you keep re-reading the one you're currently in here's the greatest thing about life you don't have to know where this next chapter is going you just have to start writing it i want you to envision a blank page what do you want to write what do you see for yourself i don't want you to try to figure out what job or business you should write on that page what belongs on that page are the dreams that you have for yourself and your life and all that's required to start writing is to start saying yes instead of telling yourself no yes you should start that podcast yes you should go back to school yes you should try to launch that business whatever it is that you've been doing whether you're three years out of college and it's a job you can't stand from a major you hate or it's a 20-year career that you're just burnt out on or maybe you stepped away from the workforce to raise your kids or perhaps like so many people right now you've been laid off this is the moment to write your next chapter you're not too late you're right on time all you need is a blank page and a pen one of the things that i think you should always come back to first is take a look at how you set your day up because how you set it up is how it ends up how do i set my day up so that i'm practicing what i call simple discipline simple discipline is nothing more than making and keeping simple promises to yourself repeating it every day the way that you start to change the big things is you change the small things make tiny teeny teeny promises to yourself and then keep them so how do you build simple discipline here are some core skills that i do every morning that have helped me number one i do not sleep with the phone number two when the alarm goes off on my phone it's not near me so i have to get my ass out of bed i get up i make my bed i get moving i get my exercise clothes on i move my body i then journal i take 10 minutes to myself to plan my day when i do that my day is incredible i believe that how you start your day dictates how the day goes you should not just adopt somebody else's morning routine and expect it to work for you you need to customize this you are unique i think about how do you come alive for yourself in the morning what are the five senses what's the first thing that you see when you wake up for me it's a painting that i manifested out of thin air it reminds me that what you put your mind to and what you work toward it will become a reality i always light incense because it makes my senses and my nose come alive i'm super mindful over what i taste first thing in the morning my grandma always had vinegar in the morning with honey and hot water i picked the one thing that matters to me today one of the biggest objections that people had to standing in front of the mirror take a moment look at yourself and then raise your hand as people said over and over and over again i haven't done anything worthy of high fiving high-fiving feels like a celebration i don't have the number on the scale that i want i don't like my bank account i don't enjoy what i do for a living i've made a load of mistakes i'm struggling with trauma i don't have anything to celebrate and what i realized is people are making a fundamental mistake you are withholding the very support empowerment and celebration that you need to change and to do the hard work and to face the things that you're scared of and that's why you're not changing we are pulling into boston college for our daughter's graduation from college it feels like we just dropped her off here four years ago a week ago it is insane how fast time goes isn't it chris it is almost disturbing it's disturbing and so i always get really weepy and emotional on big milestone days because you become so present to how quickly your life is passing you by and the only advice that i have for myself or anybody else in this moment is just be in it be present for it all the ups the downs every day just be in it um because you are going to blink your eyes and your life's going to be over i mean literally i don't mean to be like morose about it but it's true and we spend so much energy wishing things would pass wishing that something would be over wishing that this moment would change and i'm telling you right now your life is the greatest school you will ever attend every day is uh teaching you something every day is a lesson and uh the lesson right now is that we should have showed up earlier because the traffic is very big for years when i felt stressed out when i felt overwhelmed when i started to feel burnt out i would literally react to the feeling of being stressed and overwhelmed by stepping on the accelerator i used to believe that i just if i just ran faster if i just moved quickly i would be able to outrun the overwhelm that i was feeling and what i have found time and time and time again is that you cannot gain control by speeding up the way that you gain control of anything in life is by slowing down and whenever i feel like my own life is like that car where the wheel's shaking and i'm going and i feel like i'm going to lose control and my instinct is to step on the gas and go go go i have taught myself in those moments to stop get off social media cancel meetings take a couple personal days put your phone away get out in nature if you can take a deep breath start your morning slowly because it's in those moments where you slow everything down that you really gain control again because you start to get located in your body bottom line if you feel overwhelmed do what i did do not step on the accelerator take the off-ramp slow down take a day off you will learn when you take your foot off the gas and you allow yourself to coast to a stop that the world will go on you need a break and when you stop racing around and running and dealing with the stress and you will literally see in the calm what the path forward is okay so i wanted to make this video because i know in some area of your life you are wanting to start something you're wanting to put yourself out there more and you are holding yourself back and one place that i see this playing out all the time is the fact that so many people probably you are self-conscious and nervous about putting videos online you're self-conscious and nervous about talking about your business or sharing the breakthroughs that you're having or just showing up in a bigger bolder more self-express way because heck it makes your life more fun when you do and so you have this deep yearning to be doing more and then i know exactly what happens to you you look at the number of people that follow you you then say who the hell am i to say that you then go nobody's going to watch it anyway and i want to share with you brand new research that blows that lame excuse although normal excuse right out of the water it was published literally this month from ohio state university and it proves that when it comes to video content the video content that people find compelling has nothing to do with the number of views that it has it has to do with the person and the message that's being communicated to be compelling to make an impact to be influential because i know everybody wants to raise their influence and their visibility and to show up in bigger ways it is all about the message and you're in control of that do you communicate with passion do you have conviction about what you're talking about you could be talking about oh i don't know uh whether you like white cords or these like black cords with this end or whether you like this kind of end or this end or where you like this cap or whether you oh i love to drink this way because i have a big nose and then this way [Music] and i'm telling you you don't have to have this thing on you could literally talk about anything and if you bring passion and you bring conviction to what you're talking about people will pay attention that's what real influence is it's the ability to show up in ways and have conviction and passion about the things that you believe in whether you're talking about a water bottle cap or you're talking about how to be healthier happier or more effective in your life so enough with the excuses enough with worrying about how many followers you have or whether or not aunt sue is gonna like the video or not or what people are gonna think the only thing that matters is the conviction and passion that you communicate with and of course getting started so based on the research get started put that video out you got to be honest with yourself if there are things about your appearance that are within your control whether it is the shape that you're in whether it's the health choices that you're making whether it's how you take care of yourself in terms of self-love and you're not taking action in those areas the lack of action says to your brain you don't care about yourself and so what i want you to do is pick one thing one behavior that you could do every day the high fives one of them pick another one and i want you to practice doing it and it's a behavior if you think about the person that you want to become what's that person do every day that you don't do right now and when you start to do the thing that the person you want to become is doing you leverage something called behavioral activation therapy and that is a whole body of research that says when you act like the person you want to become it's the most powerful way to change a habit it's even a better therapy than uh talk therapy because the action proves to your brain that you're becoming that person you're seeing the change through the action and so then the brain catches up and starts to relate to you like a person that's confident or a person who adores their appearance or a person that celebrates themselves exactly as they are i think that confidence is the willingness to try see i anchor confidence in action because i don't believe that belief in self is the thing that makes people act confidently i believe that when you are willing to try even though you doubt yourself that the act of trying and seeing yourself move through your doubts and your fears and your procrastination and your perfectionism the act of moving through it is what starts to build belief in self so i define confidence as the willingness to try arrogance is believing you're better than anybody else and i think confidence is this quiet knowing that you can rely on yourself even the most confident people so people that rely on themselves and people that are willing to try and take risks um hit periods where they really doubt themselves and they don't feel confident in their decision making and their actions and so i think it's a skill that comes and goes and that you'll always be working on it because the whole point about life is to grow and as you grow you're going to face new challenges and whenever you face a new challenge it's going to you know bring up fears and doubt and that's why you're going to need to work on the skill of confidence which is the willingness to try that's where it begins you remember that thing we used to do as kids where you go um actually you can give yourself affection i think you know how i have this habit i have this habit of always high-fiving myself in the mirror i send myself into the day go get a mel that's a form of affection you can show yourself love through words and through gifts and through actions because love is a verb and that's the most important thing to think about when you think about practicing self-love and developing habits around self-love so love is a verb what are the actions and habits and thoughts that you would have when you think about how you treat or speak to somebody you love self love is about giving yourself all the things that you freely give to the people that you love and what's so awesome is that when you learn and start practicing how to love yourself it expands your capacity to love other people more deeply because you can't give other people something that you don't give to yourself and i know you're like whoa i love other people but you don't truly love other people if you can't love yourself because there's a part of you that doesn't feel worthy and so you got to practice this stuff and it's everything here are some ways that i practice first of all if someone you loved were struggling what would you recommend they do in terms of how they take care of themselves first of all you got to get a good night's sleep that's a form of self-love put good food in your body that's a form of self-love take time for yourself every day that's a form of self-love moving your body and exercising that's a form of self-love the biggest form of self-love for me is not criticizing myself so when i catch myself criticizing myself trashing myself beating myself up i kick that noise and garbage out of my head and i replace it with something that i would say to somebody that i love instead of focusing on the things that are going wrong i kick that thought out of my mind and i focus on the things that are going right another form of self-love for me is i'm constantly soothing and reassuring myself mel hey i know it's challenging right now but this is preparing you for something mel i know you're nervous but um you got this you can face this and notice i'm using my name mel study after study has come out that when you talk to yourself and use your own name it has a much deeper impact on you you have the experience of almost having someone else be saying it it lands deeper and it's also through gifts i also give myself the gift of buying flowers every time i go to the grocery store i started doing that a few years ago i love flowers i was always waiting for somebody else to give them to me and it dawned on me why the hell don't i just buy it for myself and so i do and you'd be surprised three four five bucks you can always find a small little bouquet at a grocery store stick it on your desk it's a reminder that you love yourself remember love is a verb just treat yourself how you would treat somebody that you love and practice it and you'll get better and better at it i am in the middle of um working on my next book it's called the high five habit i believe with all of my heart and being that every man woman child person grandparent everybody should infuse their days with habits of celebration and self-confidence and the fastest and easiest and most science-backed way to quickly start to change how you see yourself is by adopting a simple habit of high-fiving your reflection in the mirror every single morning now i know exactly what you're thinking are you serious mel robbins that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard in my entire life i know i know i know it sounds dumb but the reason why your first instinct when you think about waking up whether in your robe or your underwear your pjs or your birthday suit and walking into that bathroom and having a moment with yourself and raising your hand and high-fiving yourself is because your self-confidence is in the gutter you believe some garbage about yourself you think you're a bad person or you're unworthy or you're ugly or nobody likes you or how about this one this was the story of my life i have up my life so badly i might as well just flush it down the toilet you have some narrative in your mind that is so negative that when you look in the mirror you see somebody worth trashing you see what's wrong you pick apart your appearance and i want to reverse that because here's the deal about self-confidence self-confidence begins with you you realize the word self is in there right i can't give you confidence i can give you a little boost i can give you tools i can encourage you but confidence is forged in fire it's something that's within you and here's the thing i want you to realize about confidence you are a confident person that's why you miss feeling that way you can only miss what you know you've just been blocked from the feeling of it and wherever you are right now in your life i'm telling you confidence is in there you just gotta figure out how to tap into it and you've been building confidence all along by the way every time that you have fallen on your face or you've tried something and failed or you've gone out and thought you found the love of your life and then your heart's broken and then you pick yourself up again and then you dust yourself you're building confidence the entire time because confidence is not built on the high days confidence is built on the low ones confidence is built when you are struggling because when you see yourself go for something and fall when you see yourself try and get knocked down when you see yourself stand back up after getting abused or traumatized or discriminated against and moving ahead you are building this reserve within yourself where you know you can rely on yourself you know you can face hard things and you can keep moving forward you know you have your own back so it's in there your life has been helping you build it now you've got to just dig in and tap into it and use it to shut that critic up in your head so the way you're gonna do that is every morning i'm not kidding you're going to raise your hand in the mirror and high-five yourself look at how many people are doing this you're not the only one for five mornings in a row i want you to high-five yourself and when you do this i want you to use the hashtag high five challenge you know what's happening when you raise your hand up in the mirror you are taking the lifetime positive association that you have with cheering for other people believing in other people uh celebrating other people saying let's go to other people and you are marrying that positive association with your reflection you know when we moved to vermont i got a brand new uh primary care doctor and i thought he said something really interesting he's this great guy um he's settled here because his wife's family uh is from vermont and so he's now lived here for 40 years and at the end of my uh first appointment with him he said a really interesting thing to me he kind of chuckled because of course i'm very entertaining and bubbly and all this stuff and he said it's going to be really fun to watch what happens to you and i'm like what doctor says that to somebody and i said what do you mean and he said well i'll tell you mel in the years that i've been practicing as a primary care doctor in southern vermont i have seen so many people move to vermont they're seeking a quieter lifestyle they're seeking a change a new chapter and what i find is if you're what you're actually seeking is a safe haven and you're running away from your problems a funny thing happens your problems always go with you and when you move somewhere very quiet the solitude just magnifies that that you were trying to get away from and so if you're starting a new chapter because you're excited and you're reinventing yourself that's fabulous still take time to complete the last chapter that you were in so you step into the new chapter with all of the wisdom and the gratitude and the learning and the growth that you gained if you are starting a new chapter as so many of us do because we are running away from the old us we're running away from a bad relationship we're closing the door on something that wasn't working you better make sure you take the time to think through and journal about this last chapter who you've been the habits you no longer want to repeat the mistakes that you made what you've learned what you're running from and more importantly what changes you're going to make and how this new chapter is going to support you in doing it and in becoming the person that you're meant to be without that intentional moment of reflection and without that intentional moment where you're going to list out the behaviors and thinking patterns and habits you're changing my doctor's right you're just gonna take all that crap you're running from right into this new chapter i think i am um engaged in emotional eating right now uh it is 2 22 in the afternoon and the wheels are off today and i know why the reason why is because i did not stick to my normal routine and i've noticed since i did not stick to my routine my day has sort of slid off the rails in terms of the decisions that i'm making um it's really random like i had my son's chicken nuggets for lunch and there's half an apple that i ate i have not finished the amount of water i normally drink it's 2 23 and i made myself an ice cream sundae because you know why the hell not and so as i'm sitting here enjoying my ice cream sundae i just thought to myself god am i emotionally eating right now oh my god this is so good if i really unpack what i'm feeling right now it's raining it's freezing i am mentally in a creative block and i'm gonna get this tool that we use on the mel robin show out i call it the word wheel so i'm gonna show you the word wheel right now here's how you use a word wheel the average person can only name three emotions happy sad and angry but our emotions are actually much deeper and more complex and the secret to getting unstuck or untriggered or freed up in any situation is to find the words that describe what you are truly feeling so i'm going to start with the core emotion of anger and fear and work out from there and so as i look at the word wheel i feel inadequate as a writer i feel worried that i'm not gonna have a creative breakthrough i feel helpless the big one is i feel inadequate as a writer whoa big breakthrough so i am feeding my inadequacy with an ice cream sundae you know what's interesting is simply finding the word that i feel inadequate as a writer and that makes me feel afraid that the book isn't going to be good that it's not going to be as good as i want it's not going to do as well it's not going to get any um accolades or good reviews it's not going to make a difference in your life as you identify the feeling and for me it's inadequate that sunday doesn't taste very good anymore because it wasn't a sunday that i was craving it was reassurance and comfort from this deeper feeling that i was feeling wow that's powerful stuff really powerful stuff so if you are at a moment where you catch yourself emotionally eating or you just feel untethered or numb pull out the word wheel you can find it at mel robbins.com and um i think you'll find it to be a really incredible tool that will help you locate what you're truly working through and instead of reaching for an ice cream sundae which honestly is going to now tank my mood because of all the sugar and make me feel uh lethargic if you can identify the word which for me is inadequate inferior worried frustrated you can let those feelings rise up move through them and then move on two hours later and let me tell you the impact of having fed my feelings first of all i am totally bloated so uh i realized that that's not big but you know for me my stomach is just like oh because all that sugar and dairy that i just pounded down is now sitting here like a rock and this is the problem with emotional eating is you get caught in this cycle where you feed these feelings and then your body starts to tank and your mood tanks and your stomach gets bloated and so then you start to make yourself wrong and feel ashamed and feel like a bad person because you did it so how do you stop emotional eating and what business do i have giving any of us advice given that i just did it well i'm going to tell you what i'm going to do tomorrow when i inevitably hit that creative block is emotional eating you know that it's emotional if it's uh comes on suddenly if you aren't just craving something but you are reaching for something that is a treat or that's soothing and before i do that tomorrow with my writer's block inevitably happens again i will take a deep breath and i will ask myself what am i feeling why am i reaching for this food am i hungry or am i trying to soothe or comfort or distract myself because i was clearly trying to soothe and distract myself from the feelings that writer's block was bringing up and now i need to get some gas sex or something because i gotta distract myself from the gas pains that i have for my emotional eating but you know honestly the discomfort i'm feeling right now that's not gonna stop me from doing it tomorrow the only thing that will stop this pattern is spotting the pattern and using the tools that i just gave you identify what you're feeling ask you why it is you're reaching for this if you're not hungry but you're trying to soothe distract or reward yourself you're feeding some feeling recognize the feeling put down the ice cream go for a walk choose something healthy address the feeling don't reach for the food okay so there are 7.5 billion people on this incredible planet verse but do you know how many of them you're responsible for truly one you see while you're busy taking care of everybody else who is it that's taking care of you you were given one human being one mind one soul one body one life we are so bananas focused about what people who know nothing about what's going on in your life think and what happens is you can get so concerned about the opinions and the judgments of all these other people that you're taking care of and that you're being nice to that you forget about the one person's opinion that actually matters and that's yours and when silencing yourself and being way more concerned about what everybody thinks becomes a pattern you are holding yourself back you don't go after your dreams because you're way too caught up in what everybody else is thinking for every person that's got a side eye or an eye roll or an opinion about what you're doing i promise you when you make the decision to live your life for you the right people will find you is this going to be easy to chart your own path to hear what people have to say but not let it define what you do next it's going to take a little bit of practice but once you make the decision to live your life for you i promise you everything will fall into place my sparkly sneakers this is a great story about a bunch of topics it's a story about confidence it's a story about being comfortable in your own skin it's a story about being yourself no matter where you are or what you're doing and it's a story about the power of your unique self-expression and your unique self-expression comes out and is amplified when you feel comfortable in your own skin i got into the speaking business gosh six or seven years ago i had a tedx talk that went crazy viral that's what started the speaking business and when i first got into the speaking business i was really intimidated because i was new to it and i wanted to do a very good job and i wanted to fit in so i looked around at what all the top people in the industry of motivational speaking and speaking on the corporate circuit were doing and i noticed that all the women were dressed in heels wearing pencil skirts or beautiful dresses the kind of thing that you might see a news anchor wearing like a nice dress heels so i just wore what everybody else was wearing didn't even occur to me to wear something else because here i am trying to break into a new industry so i look at everybody at the top i copy what they're doing and i am not comfortable in high heels yes if my husband chris and i are going out on date night i can rock them like the best of them but walking through a convention center in them standing on a stage for an hour and a pair of heels while you're trying to hold in your stomach because you're being broadcast on a big screen and you're wearing a dress like it was the least comfortable outfit i could possibly wear very self-conscious in it i'm not that graceful in a pair of heels so i sort of like poop on a stage but that's what i did for the first couple years so i was in miami this must have been probably five years ago i was in miami and i just gotten off stage take off the heels take off the dress put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt i got like an hour to kill before i have to leave for the airport i'm gonna fly to vegas because i've got a speech in vegas the next morning so i'm walking uh down collins ave in south beach in miami and i walk past this store unfortunately it's not there anymore i love this store and there in the window were the most amazing high-top sneakers i had ever seen in my entire life i was like a moth to the flame let me show you these bad boys because these are the originals this right here notice the gold shimmery sparkle and the confident blaze orange i didn't own anything like this i'd never seen anything like this i immediately thought whoa this i bet is what like a justin bieber kind of wears i mean these are insanely cool i went inside and they were pretty expensive i'd never spent that kind of my i wasn't a sneaker head yet but i thought hey i i i spend that kind of money on a pair of nice heels so why not treat myself to a pair of sneakers okay so i get back to the hotel i pack up i hop the flight i get to vegas now i wake up the next morning and i have a tech check which is where you rehearse the speech and go through like all the technology rehearsals before the events starting my tech check is at 7 30 the doors to the event open at 8 and i'm on stage at 8 30 and i had a red dress my heels or so i thought so i crack open that's what i was planning on wearing i crack open the suitcase there are no heels i have left the heels in the hotel room back in miami all i have are the birkenstocks that i wore on the plane and i wore out in vegas last night and my new justin bieber high top sneakers and i have exactly 15 minutes to get to the tech rehearsal and nothing else is open so birkenstocks justin bieber i think we'll go with the justin bieber sparkly high tops i slapped those puppies on i walked from my hotel room all the way through the casino floor past all the restaurants and the shops to the convention center which you know is like a two mile walk i was so happy to be not only in my red dress but more importantly in my justin bieber sneakers because it was super comfortable to walk there that way i get to the backstage area and for the first time in two years something happened and let me tell you what happened one of the guys that was on the production crew turned and goes ah cool sneakers that was like the first time somebody in production had really acknowledged me for something other than the job in two years so i was like huh and as i started walking toward the backstage area everybody i passed cool kicks oh those are cool those are cool and i'm like this is wild nobody's ever complimented on my like this is people are and so i did the tech rehearsal and then this was the moment of truth when i walked out onto that stage it was at the mgm arena and uh there were like 5 000 real estate agents in the audience i was there to deliver a speech for re max it was the first time i'd ever walked on a stage where i actually felt like myself it was also the first time that i felt the audience kind of lean forward and go oh she seems kind of cool but when you walk onto a stage and heals in a dress you're like the authority and you're on a stage and you're talking at people there's something about walking onto a stage or walking through life and having something fun that you're wearing that makes you relatable and interesting and real and from that moment forward i have never not worn sparkly speakers for work i wore them every day on my daytime talk show i'm embarrassed to tell you that i probably have 20 pairs of these i love this is my favorite these are my fav well i love these are my favorite because these are the originals but i would say these are my second favorite because i like the low top and i love the blue i love these um which have a big silver kind of thing these are super comfortable and i've got a bunch of these and these did not even come with sparkles so i literally bought swivarsky crystals or whatever the hell they're called and got a glue gun out and put them on myself if you're looking for sparkly sneakers there's all kinds of them out there these days it's the coolest thing in the world but dazzled me sneakers are a thing whether you go to dsw or nordstroms or zappos or anywhere you can find them and so the moral of the story the secret to confidence is being comfortable in your own skin i think that the work that we all have to do every single one of us whether you bulldoze whether you people please whether you avoid conflict whether you're impulsive whether you uh yo-yo your decisions uh whatever it is that is your pattern you know you the the constant trashing yourself i think the the the journey of your whole life is figuring out how to truly like and love yourself you know sometimes when the dream is so big the fact that it's so big becomes paralyzing because you think about where you are right now and you think holy cow that thing that i really want i don't even like how do you even start when the dream is so big so here's what we're going to do today we're going to shrink it down because you know me i am all about simplicity i'm all about making sure that the advice works for you because if it doesn't work for you you're not going to do it and i'm all about switching how you think about things making this smaller and making it something that i'm learning about rather than doing and launching and that somehow thinking about it differently frees up the ability to get started if i get you to start doing that and you do this every day for 10 or 15 minutes which you absolutely can guess what's going to happen you're going to feel momentum you're going to feel like you're working on it you're going to meet people that are interested in it you're going to learn things that are going to lead to the next thing that you need to learn and you will have mastered the art of getting started and by doing something a little bit every day you're also going to master the art of continuing to keep going and from there it'll snowball i promise you i promise you you see you're only ever running against yourself there's room for all of us there's room for you to do the same thing there's room for you to write that book there's room for you to do those makeup tutorials there's room for you to launch that restaurant there's room for you to start your singing lessons there's room for you to write that song it is normal and it is going to happen to you all the time that you're going to see people that seem to block out the sun whenever they make an announcement because they're that big and that amazing i don't want you to allow yourself to shrink when somebody else is doing something that is similar to what you want to do if you look at human development we're the only species that literally can't survive without another human being taking care of you and so we are biologically hard wired to bond with other people and that is the ver from the very beginning of when you come out bonding with somebody else and making sure they pay attention to you is your survival imperative so you are born needing somebody else and i think what ends up happening is there's never that kind of clean break or pass off between needing your parents to take care of you needing your friends approval to fit in to truly having ownership over giving yourself what you didn't get giving yourself what you needed and that's the piece that i've been doing a lot of during the the great pause is slowing down because so much of my busyness was fueled by uh you know praise me love me am i doing enough you know please tell me i'm doing okay okay i can breathe now i'm okay now and when i slow down and maybe it's a function of the anxiety that's when things get scary because that's when you've really got to be with yourself i am making cabbage faro soup it sounds disgusting it is delicious it is from my absolute favorite cookbook six seasons by joshua mcfadden um but that's not why i made this video i made this video because i want to share a recipe for relieving pain tension frustration and hurt in your life every day all kinds of stuff happens to you right some good some bad some frustrating some some things that are amazing and everything that happens to you there are three versions of what happens there's your version and the story that you tell yourself about what happened there's a second version which is the version that the other person that's involved in the story tells themselves about what happened and then there's the truth and the truth is just the facts no story no explanation it's just what's so so i'm going to give you a quick example so i'm sitting here cooking and um i've got a lot i got to clean up i've got stuff all over the counter i've been working on some architectural plans over there i got to clean that up so i'm starting to clean up and i come over here to the sink and i notice someone that i loves egg dish is right there now i'm not going to out them i'm also going to not out the fact that part of the uh breakfast that they were creating for themselves which involved uh sweet potato and making some eggs is still out and that said person is nowhere to be found so let's talk about the three versions of this story version number one is my version which goes a little something like why does my family believe that i am the maid this is being done to me how rude they expect me to do this like on and on and on you can see that story about the fact that there is an egg dish here and there are knives that need to be cleaned that story i'm telling myself gets me really jacked up and angry and frustrated and feeling used and annoyed and of course when your mood switches it can hijack your whole day now version number two would probably be holy cow i'm coming back later of course you don't need to clean it up i'm just in an online jam session working on a song i have to record for my class and in fact [Music] now here's the cool part you don't have to tell yourself a story you can just see something and not make it mean anything at all and in fact here she comes she's done doing her thing and she's coming back in to clean up i torture myself and you torture yourself for no good reason so check your story stick with the facts and i think you'll find that life is a lot less stressful and frustrating i completely forgotten about the audiobook because i was so focused on this new york times things and by the way here's another thing you can't make the new york times list if you're a self-published author something i didn't even know when i started so here i thought i'd fail didn't achieve my dream the whole thing i get this email your monthly report is ready and i'm like monthly report what are they talking about i click on that report i open it up i am literally like oh my god audiobooks audiobooks who knew audiobooks were a thing here's what happened the entire time that i kept going something amazing was happening lisa they were going to the hardcover but it wasn't available they bought the only thing that was available the audiobook the five-second rule became the number one audiobook of the year lisa it to this day is the most successful self-published audio book in the history of audible and it created a brand new partnership that i have with audible something by the way that i never would have had happen had my hardcover campaign be successful and here's the other thing i have never achieved my goal of being a new york times selling author and i might never achieve it i've never made a traditional bestseller list and it proves something that i believe very deeply and that is that your dreams and the things that you put on your vision board have a very important purpose they pull you through your fears they inspire you to take action but they are not necessarily meant to be achieved i believe when you pursue your dreams and you keep going and you keep telling yourself that if i work hard something amazing is going to happen you'll achieve something better something that you don't even know or can even think about right now because it's not even on your radar screen those dreams are dots on the map of your life that pull you in a direction you're meant to go but you might never end up there because you're meant to end up somewhere else i actually have an incredible quote of yours about dreams you say when it comes to your dreams you have two choices pursue them or be haunted by them it's true you can't forget a dream you can something that you want in your life once you really want it because you made it this far in a video i want to celebrate you most people start and don't finish most people never actually follow through most people say they want something but they don't ever do the work to actually get it but you are different you are special believe nation you made it here all the way to the end and i love you so it's a special celebration if you put a hashtag believe down in the comments below on this video i will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome to get some incredible motivation from tony robbins check the video right there next to me i think you'll love it continue to believe and i'll see you there let's talk about nobody wants to talk about who here's ever failed who's here has failed miserably at something you wanted to achieve say i who's done this more than once say i

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 39,775

Keywords: entrepreneur, yt:cc=on, evancarmichael, mel robbins speech, mel robbins high five, mel robbins motivation, mel robbins ted talk, mel robins, mel robbin, morning routine, motivational speaker, best of mel robbins, mel robbins interview, success motivation, mel robbins top 10 rules for success, success advice, mel robbins advice, mel robbins motivational speech, mel robbins evan carmichael

Id: p1J2BmQqBgc

Length: 146min 58sec (8818 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022