The Diary of a CEOMel Robbins: This One Hack Will Unlock Your Happier Life | E108
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,248 words- 0:00 – 3:28
Intro
- MRMel Robbins
And this is fricking genius. I've taught it to millions of people. It's curing people's anxiety.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There is nobody like Mel Robbins. There is nobody.
- MRMel Robbins
If I hadn't done what I did that morning, my life would have gone in a totally different direction. I'd probably be divorced, I'd probably be an alcoholic, my family would be torn apart. No idea what I'd be doing for a living or where I would be. I finally had the experience of being in my body, and being safe, and being okay, and I hadn't had that in a really long time. Um... So you asked me in the beginning, kind of, what is it that, that created all of this insight or this drive to figure it out? And I think I just figured it out. (laughs) You, you just fucking did it.
- NANarrator
(Instrumental music)
- SBSteven Bartlett
They call her the female Tony Robbins, but she's so much more than that. She's one of the most incredibly vulnerable, honest, introspective, wise people I have ever met in my entire life, and she's written three best-selling books that offer a very simple solution to have a transformative impact on your entire life. I first found out about Mel Robbins some seven years ago when I watched a video of her talking about how to motivate yourself every single day, and when my team told me that she was coming to London for a short trip, I said, "We have to get her on this podcast." There is nobody like Mel Robbins. There is nobody. I've never seen Mel Robbins cry during an interview before, but in this podcast, it happens again. We have an epiphany. Mel removes her glasses. She begins to cry. And it's an incredibly touching moment. I think for a lot of you, this is gonna be the favorite podcast on this channel that you've ever listened to. So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Before we started recording, I said a lot of nice things about you just a few seconds ago, and, um, I talked about how sort of introspective you are, how much you've achieved, your remarkable ability to speak about ideas and things you've discovered in yourself. Um, you really are a standout individual, and so whenever I meet someone that I consider to be a s- really standout individual, it always begs the question to me, having a small background in like childhood psychology, what is it, what was the cauldron in which Mel was sculpted that made you the person you are today at the very start of your life?
- MRMel Robbins
I, I guess that... I'm trying to think about, like there's no defining moment, because I had great parents who did the best that they could with what they were handed in terms of their own childhoods and patterns and thinking, and, uh, I grew up in a tiny little town where nothing really happened, but one thing did happen, and that was in the fourth grade. I was, uh, at a family kinda ski trip thing, and,
- 3:28 – 12:10
What made you into who you are today?
- MRMel Robbins
uh, in the middle of the night, I woke up and one of the kids was on top of me. And, yeah. Like, on top of me, molesting me. Uh, we're going here, like fast. I mean, you asked like what-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes. Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... was the thing and this was like the first-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
... thing that popped into mine. And, um, it was interesting because I didn't remember the experience for a very long time. I did not remember that this had happened until I was in my late 20s, and if you look at the spectrum of what can happen to somebody in terms of sexual abuse, which unfortunately is very common, uh, experience for people, this was a very mild experience. Like it wasn't anybody that I knew, it was a one-off, it was another kid, so clearly something was happening to this kid in their life. It wasn't scary, it was confusing, but I was awoken from a state of sleep, and I immediately felt and knew that something was wrong, and it's my first experience in my life of what psychologists call disassociating. I literally left my body and I rolled over, and I don't even remember how it ended because I wasn't in my body to be there, and the very next morning, I'll never forget this, um, I hid underneath the sheets 'cause it was a big bunk room and all the kids, uh, left to go downstairs to get ready to go skiing, and I remember waiting until I thought it was quiet. I threw the comforter off, I went down these steep stairs, I turned the corner, and there was my mom, and she was cooking breakfast with some of the other moms, and she turned around and she said, "How'd you sleep?" And I immediately, Steven, wanted to tell her. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw the kid. And in that moment, split second child brain, I froze, and as much as I wanted to tell my mom, and I knew exactly what she'd do. I mean, she grew up on a farm. She had a spatula in her hand. She would've hit that kid in the next week. But I didn't know what the kid was gonna do. And in that moment, I lied, and I said, "Fine." And the day went on, and nothing happened. And I believe, whether it is a 30-year-long struggle with anxiety or a tendency to disassociate, or the fact that I was chronically lying when I was younger in any moment when I felt uncertain-I had no idea how that singular moment set me on a course that would last decades, before I realized that all of these patterns of behavior that I was struggling with, I didn't know why I lied. I didn't know why I felt so uncomfortable if I couldn't predict somebody's reaction. I couldn't understand why I would leave my body so many times. I couldn't understand why I had very few memories from my childhood. It wasn't until I started to understand human behavior, uh, the way the brain learns patterns, the way that you need and can break patterns and replace patterns and learn new patterns, that I began this journey that I've been on for the past 10 years of understanding my own breakdowns, my own heartaches, my own struggles, and sharing what I'm learning with anybody who will listen. How's that for an answer? (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah. Did you ever tell anybody? Uh, wh- when did you first tell someone about that incident?
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I never told anybody because it's like I forgot about it in that moment. Like, I just suppressed what had happened. And there were lots of times in my life, when I was a teenager, when I was in college, when I was in law school, particularly in law school, because my anxiety, uh, just came to a huge crescendo in law school, just completely out of control with my thoughts, with how I felt in my body. I had not been diagnosed yet with anxiety or anxiety disorder and had not been medicated, did not even know anxiety was a thing. So, this would have been 1992 through 1994. And, um, I didn't even remember it. And so, I didn't even remember this incident until I was 28 years old, and I was sitting in, like, kind of one of these life improvement seminars, where you're in a windowless conference room and everyone's got a name tag on, and there's a person up front. And this woman stands up, and she was talking about how she had been molested when she was younger by a babysitter that her parents hired. And the story went on how she had been in therapy for a long time. She was starting to deal with the trauma of the experience. She had forgiven the babysitter. She had forgiven her parents, but she could not forgive her sister. And the person leading the seminar kinda looked at her and said, "Why... What's wrong with your sister?" And she said, "Well, I'm so angry that this babysitter was choosing me. And while I'm in this room getting abused, my sister is out there watching TV." And when she said that, I had an immediate memory, and there was this triggering moment where I, voom, I was sitting in this windowless conference room at the age of 28, but I was physically in that ben- bunk bed because what I remembered in that moment was, oh my God, when I woke up in the middle of the night with this kid on top of me, I looked to my right, my younger brother was sleeping in the bed right there. And my immediate thought was, I don't want this person to hurt him, and that's why I rolled over and stayed quiet. And so, it was that, it was this woman telling the story about her sister that triggered me to remember it. And as soon as I remembered it, oh my God, I told my brother, I told my parents, I, you know, I just started talking about it. I, I think that one of my, um, one of the things that I'm grateful for is that I process things by talking about it. Once the dam is open, baby, like, the floodgates are coming. Like, I just-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And, and so I tend to process things by speaking about it. And for me, it wasn't the, um, incident itself that created a lot of grief for me, because I know, based on the work that I've done as a crisis intervention counselor working, uh, with victims of domestic violence, the work I did, uh, as a criminal defense attorney working for Legal Aid in New York City and the amount of training that we got, um, and also just the amount of, uh, work I've done and studying that I've done on the subject of psychology and human behavior, I know that when a kid is doing that to another kid, it's being done to them. So I, even at the age of 28, I didn't even have any anger toward the person that did this to me. My anger was at myself. Why didn't I remember this? Why, wh- why am I so fucked up? Why couldn't I have remembered this sooner? Like, the constant self-bashing, that is the piece that, um, I think has been the thing that I really struggled with.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why am I so fucked up?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, why am I so fucked up? You know, there's, um, there's this incredible thing about the human design. So, when you think about human beings, and, you know, as a, as a parent, so my husband and I have three kids. Uh, one's 23, uh, another one's 21, and then our son is 16. And as a young parent, I would often feel this incredible sense of awe. Like, it is remarkable how many babies are born, when you think about how many things have to go right, you know (laughs) what I mean-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... in the design of a human being. And there is so much elegance and beauty and sophistication and genius to the human design. It's just shocking. But there is one fundamental flaw that screws up everybody, and that is that when you're a little kid and things happen to you, you do not have the life experience and you do not have the support system
- 12:10 – 19:05
The biggest flaw in the human design
- MRMel Robbins
to be able to process what is happening.And it could be anything. It could be something as serious as homelessness and poverty and systemic discrimination. It could be violence. It could be abuse in your home. It could be addiction, mental illness. It could be chaos in your household. It could be sexual abuse. It could just be a mother or a father who's so freaking critical or who is passive-aggressive, so you wake up as a kid, and you have no idea what you're gonna wake up to. But when something goes wrong or something happens to you as a kid, you don't have the life experience or the support structure to basically go, "Whoa. This situation is fucked," or, "These adults? Somebody call the police. Like, this is not o- You don't get to talk to me like..." Like, no kid does that. The fundamental flaw in human design is that when something happens to you as a kid, you don't say, "What's wrong with that kid?" Or, "What's wrong with my dad?" Or, "What's wrong with this situation?" You say, "What's wrong with me?" We aim it back at ourselves. And then I think that, you know, this then starts to build as a thinking pattern, that there must be something wrong with me, that you aim everything that's happening out there back at yourself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you did that through your early ch- early adulthood, right?
- MRMel Robbins
I think everybody does. I really do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
I, I think that, that, you know, when you're, um, growing up, I believe that this happens around the age of eight or nine or 10 that, you know, no human being is born and hates themselves. We're actually wired for love. We're wired for connection. Um, you know, if you look at a kid who's two or three or four, right, and they see a mirror, they don't look at it and go, "Ugh, my thighs are so fat. Like, I can't..." You know, they look at the mirror and they put their hands up and they twirl and they kiss the mirror and they da- They love the sight of themselves. And you and I don't remember this, but we loved the sight of ourselves too. And what happens... Because that's your natural state. That's your wired state, in my opinion. You are wired for self-love. You are wired for self-acceptance. You are wired for self-worth. You are wired for self-respect. You're wired for resilience. I mean, when you think about, uh, a baby, none of us remember this, but you will literally fall down 77 times an hour and you'll just keep standing back up. So this resilience, this sense of empowerment, this sense of really being proud of yourself, of loving yourself, it is part of your design, your DNA, your birthright. But life happens. And it can happen two ways. You know, if you grow up in a chaotic household, you start to absorb the message that something's wrong, and so you go into modes of behavior to protect yourself, and these patterns of behavior that you create to protect yourself get locked in your brain, but for everybody. So if you grew up in a, in a wonderful household like I did, if you grew up in a place that you were very safe like I did, you still are gonna experience some kind of trauma, 'cause trauma's deeply personal, and trauma at its, at its simplest form is just a moment when your nervous system gets dysregulated, a moment where your whole body turns on an alarm. And when your whole body turns on an alarm, whether it's, "Uh-oh, there's the car pulling on the gravel driveway," the person that drinks and comes home and is abusive is pulling in, or, "Uh-oh, Mom's got that expression on her face. I better not say anything." It can be small moments, big moments, but when your nervous system goes into a state of alarm, your brain kicks into, "Let's record everything in hyper-speed so we can remember this so I can protect you in the future," and that pattern locks, and that's why so many adults continue to stay trapped in patterns from their childhood that they don't even remember why they have them, how, like any of it. But for everybody, so that's sort of like if you grew up in a chaotic household, which I didn't. But I think what happens developmentally is, you know, there's this moment when we're in elementary school, and none of us remember it, or at least I don't remember it, but it happens to everybody, where one day you walk into elementary school and you're like loving yourself and you're happy as a clam and you're just kinda walking up to whomever and you like yourself and you love yourself, so you'll go up to anybody. You'll sit with anybody in the cafeteria. And then I don't know what the hell happens, but the next day, you walk into that cafeteria, you got your little hands on your tray, and you start scanning the room for where you're gonna sit, and all of a sudden that brain that is wired for self-love and self-acceptance flips into the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter and you all of a sudden see the world in the places that you belong and the places that you don't. And that's how it begins. And your mind starts to tell you, "You can't go there. You don't look like those kids. Those are the sports kids. They're gonna..." As a way to protect you. But the message that you start to get from your own brain or from society at large or from what's going on in your household is that who you are is not okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
When I was reading about your story, we're talking about education now and schools, um, it seemed that you were quite, I don't know, disorientated in college when you went to college and you were struggling to figure out who you are and if that resulted in quite significant procrastination and-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh my God. (laughs) Yes. Um, so I- you know, I'm very open with the fact that I struggled with anxiety for a long time.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And, um, what's interesting about anxiety is that, you know, I'm, I'm now talking to you from this perspective of being 53 years old. I was, like, really fucked up. And by "fucked up," I mean, not that I was, like, s- stealing cars or breaking laws or doing anything like that, but I was not comfortable in my own body. And the way that I would describe it is, I think from that moment, literally, that moment in fourth grade that I just shared with you, it makes me really sad to think about the fact that I was just a fourth-grader that had
- 19:05 – 25:51
Dealing with anxiety my whole life
- MRMel Robbins
had a traumatic experience. I didn't know, but my nervous system remembered. And so, any time I went to bed, I woke up the next morning with the sensation in my body that something was wrong. And any pattern of behavior or thinking that you start to repeat becomes a habit. Habits are just patterns. It's all that they are. And so, I had a life experience because of one incident where I would wake up every single morning and feel like something was wrong and I couldn't put my finger on it. And the more that you wake up and think something's wrong, the more your brain is gonna find reasons why something might be wrong. And so, I developed this sort of chronic state of feeling on alert, feeling this sense that I gotta be aware.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Fight or flight.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes. Yes. My, you know, in- in clinical terms, my sympathetic nervous system got switched on and I had no idea how to turn it off. And if you don't know how to calm your nervous system down, to flip off the sympathetic nervous system and flip on the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your calm, grounded, resting nervous system, you will forever struggle with focus, with being present, with the ability to think clearly and make good decisions. You will constantly talk about the fact that you feel anxious, and that comes from your nervous system always being on edge and being in fight or flight. I didn't know any of this. I was just a nervous kid with a nervous stomach. Every camp that I went to, I got sent home 'cause I was too homesick. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was just- I mean, you know how homesick you have to be for trained counselors to actually call your parents and go, "Uh, we got a problem (laughs) here. She can't stay here. Like, she is out of her mind."
- SBSteven Bartlett
When you say, "Out of your mind," wh- what are the physical symptoms or verbal symptoms of that?
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, my gosh. Um, complete disas- disassociation. So I would be at camp, like, literally sixth grade camp. So at the end of sixth grade year... And I feel, I feel bad for little Mel Robbins. I feel bad for her because, you know, here's this, this experience, sixth grade camp, where the entire school, for four nights, goes away to a camp, just the sixth grade, it's supposed to be the culmination of your sixth-grade year, and I am so freaked out that something bad is gonna happen that I, of course, escalate things in my own mind. I don't even feel like I'm at camp. I feel like I'm walking on a movie set. I don't feel like I'm on Earth. I feel like I'm on a spaceship somewhere, looking down all the time. I, uh, feel like I might throw up 'cause my stomach is rattled, because when you're anxious and you can't focus your thoughts, you tend to not eat, and so that, of course, upsets your stomach. It's not that something bad's gonna happen, it's that you're screwing up the chemistry in your stomach by not eating 'cause you're so nervous, which only makes it worse. And as your mind is scrambling thinking something bad is gonna happen and then your stomach is hurting, then you start to think, "Oh, my God, I'm gonna throw up." And then you start to think, "Well, if I throw up, something bad's gonna happen and then the kids are gonna laugh." And like, it just becomes-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Spiral.
- MRMel Robbins
... this spiral train wreck, and that is the state that I lived in. And so, um, you know, you learn how to cope. You- it becomes your new normal, but that was basically my life, constantly feeling like something bad was gonna happen, constantly feeling like I wasn't really present, constantly lying or fibbing about how I felt or what I was thinking because I didn't want people to judge me. I mean, it was awful.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then you come through college and you've gotta make that choice in life as to which direction you're gonna go in. It's kind of, it seems quite-
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) Choice. I love the choice.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, it is. Well, how would you define it?
- MRMel Robbins
Um, panic.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Panic? Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, 'cause I didn't know what I wanted to do.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause I had only ever lived in survival mode.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. So did you, did you not take a pause to deci- to sort of listen to-
- MRMel Robbins
Take a pause?
- SBSteven Bartlett
... who you were and what your c- your calling was and, uh-
- MRMel Robbins
Take a pause?
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you know.
- MRMel Robbins
When you have anxiety-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... your whole mode of living is, "If I'm on the move, no one can catch me. If I am on the run, I'm safe." And so, what's interesting is that I think the only time in my life that I have actually slowed down was during the pandemic.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Does that sound familiar?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, of course. Yeah. You had no choice (laughs) .
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah. And one of the hardest things, which became one of the greatest realizations, is truly coming face to face with myself and realizing that even though I have done all this work to heal trauma, even though I have, uh, done extraordinary things in terms of my own thinking patterns, that there was a level to which I was still on the run, that I was darting off to a coffee shop or darting off to Target or darting off to an airplane.And all of this racing around kept me from having to truly stop and stand with the woman in the mirror and just be still and figure out, "Well, what do I really want? How do I really want to feel?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
You talk about the topic of distraction and procrastination, and it's rarely in this context, but th- it sounds like a form of distraction, distracting yourself from the, from taking a moment to, to confront thyself and, um, yeah, to really ask some of those questions which, I guess, if you're in this fi- or survival state, um, the answers to- to some of those questions might be maybe illuminating to a vulnerable, you know, to a, to, uh, to a, to an extent which will make you feel vulnerable and unsafe because those are pretty, like, existential questions to ask yourself, to look at yourself and say, "Who am I and what do I want?" And, you know, "How do I get it?" It's much easier, as you say, just to, to be swept by the tide.
- 25:51 – 53:23
The layers of healing
- MRMel Robbins
like, all of this is connected-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
... in a really interesting way, um, compounding itself, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah. Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Talking about it is one layer. And it's a super important thing to do, to give yourself the gift of sitting down with somebody who is licensed or who has an expertise in helping you unpack what happened. Because it's only in being able to talk through what happened that you have the ability to start to free yourself from what happened. Like, if you can't reveal it, you are definitely not gonna heal from it. And so, I had done the layer of talking about it, and then I had gone and done the layer even underneath it of understanding what had happened and understanding how it connected to anxiety and how it connected, how trauma connected to that and understanding the lying piece. And I had even gone and done the layer underneath that which was starting to interrupt the old patterns that would get triggered and put in new patterns. But it wasn't until recently that I went to the layer that you need to go to to truly heal which is to repair the nervous system. And, you know, what, what is, uh, interesting to me about kind of even the whole journey is that, you know, I've had layer after layer after layer. For me, talking about it was very freeing. And, you know, people always say to me, "Oh my god, you're so relatable." Like, we open up, boom, right out of the gate. I tell you something that normally somebody reveals, like, an hour in. It's because I have a level of freedom around it and I also know it's a shared experience that so many people can relate to on some level. Um, but it wasn't until I understood how it impacts your nervous system and the connection between your mind, body, and spirit that I began to realize what I think it was Michael Pollan or Tim Ferriss on one of his podcasts said which is, "If you didn't talk yourself into this shit, you're not gonna talk yourself out of it." Like, you have to have a corresponding physical intervention if there was something physical that disrupted your body's state to begin with. And that makes a lot of sense to me. It makes a lot of sense to me that if your nervous system or your brain recorded an experience... Like, I can give you a benign example, uh, for people that don't, that have never really kinda thought through what trauma actually means, why it's deeply personal, how it's a physical experience, not just a mental experience. So when I was, um, god, how old was I? I, I guess I was, I must've been in high school. We were driving to Northern Michigan, it was a huge snow storm, and my mom was behind the wheel and my dad and my brother were in the car in front of us and there was a radio on and, um, all of a sudden the radio announcer said something about black ice and this truck pulled out to try to pass us and right as he tried to pass us you could see headlights coming on.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And my mom said, "Oh my god, hold on," 'cause the truck started to veer back in, so I remembered the words black ice, oh my god, hold on, and the next thing I remember, we were in the... It was like a S- SUV, the car rolled over, right, several times, and the experience of being in that car was like, um, imagine sitting in a dryer-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and you're sitting still like, "Mm," but the clothes are tumbling around you, right? And so, like, you know, the McDonald's bag went flying past us and the dog went flying past us and all this stuff and we... And I remember, even though I don't remember getting tumbled around, I remember this unbelievable sound that was like, crunch, crunch, crunch of the car rolling and packing down the snow. Now, we ended up with the car on its side and I was, like, thrown to the back seat, the dog was in the way back but my mom was buckled in at the top. We were fine, little shaken up, think my mom might've had a concussion. We survived, nobody died. They flipped the car back over, we climbed in with my dad, off we went. Now here's what's interesting about that experience. I was never scared to drive, ever. I w- I didn't ever really even think about it. Um-But it was a traumatic experience, because my body remembers it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And it remembers it in a certain way. I don't ever think about the experience if I'm driving a car. That's not a trigger for my body to remember it. But if I walk to my mailbox in Boston, Massachusetts after a freshly fallen snow, and I step on the snow and it goes rrrr... I feel like I'm back in that car, because that sound is a trigger for my nervous system to remember.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Now, that sound of me stepping on freshly fallen snow, my mom does that all day long in Michigan and doesn't think about the accident. But if somebody ever says the two words "black ice" around my mom, she feels like she's in that car accident, because that's her trigger for her nervous system to remember it. So, the reason why I tell that story is because I didn't understand trauma. I thought trauma was, like, for victims of war, that's what you experience if you, you know, do a tour of duty, somebody who has been the victim of a super violent crime. I did not realize that trauma is a disruption in your nervous system that sends your brain into a mode where your brain, like, holds down the shutter on a camera and is like, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, all five senses recording everything it can possibly grab as a way to protect you in the future. When I started to understand that, oh my God, patterns of behavior get triggered by smell, they get triggered by sound, they get triggered by music, they get triggered by... And the same thing with patterns of thinking. Now, I had the missing piece to be able to start to truly reset not only my nervous system, but also the default patterns in my mind, and I haven't looked back since. But that was step one, um, in terms of how I stopped the cascade of the "What if this happens?" and "What if that happens?" and "What if this happens?" and "What if-" and "What are they thinking?" and "Why didn't they invite me here?" and "What i-" And the universal thing that I started to replace the what if with was, "What if it all works out? What if this is the best thing that ever happened to me? What if this is really hard and it does suck..."
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's not easy.
- MRMel Robbins
"... but it turns out to be the best thing that I ever did?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's not easy though, is it?
- MRMel Robbins
No. It's very simple to do, but it's not easy. And it's not easy because you love patterns. Like, we don't, it doesn't, that's not even the right way to say it. It's not easy because you're so used to thinking a certain way.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you, and as you write about, you know, one of the things, uh, I scribbled down was that you said feelings are merely suggestions, ones you can ignore. But we go through life, no one's ever said that to us before. We go through life thinking that our thoughts are ourselves-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and that that is an instruction from ourselves, and that's my voice in my head telling me what to do and that I must, my job is just to obey. So, if it says, you know, this ice means danger, then I, you know, and we accept our thoughts. And when I've sat here with guests, you know, who have spent a lot of time working on the brain and understanding the difference between thoughts and are they true, and it appears to be that you can analyze a thought and accept or reject, which is a compelling...
- MRMel Robbins
Well, the way that I put it, or I- I like to think about it is this. You can be two things at once. So, you can have the feeling of being really frustrated with somebody. And that can be true, and you can also love them at the same time. You can be jealous of somebody, and you can also allow that to inspire you at the same time. You can be afraid, which is true, and you can still find the willpower to push yourself or discipline to push yourself forward.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
You can be deeply in a state of grief, having experienced one of the biggest losses or betrayals of your life, and still experience a moment of joy as you're standing on the ocean and watching some bird dive into the sea.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Human beings are very complex. And when you start to understand you're not just one thing, it gives you freedom to ride the waves of feelings, to ride the waves of experience, and to kind of go down and go, "Oh, shit, this is a terrible thing," and know that you will be able to come out the other side of it. And so, you know, I- I think that- that emotions, yeah, they are suggestions, and that's one way to dismantle it. Another way to dismantle kind of the way that an emotion can hook you is to keep reminding yourself that it's temporary. This wave of pissed off-ness, this wave of betrayal, this wave of fear, this wave of grief, this wave of frustration, this wave of feeling stuck, this wave of feeling hopeless, it's temporary. It will come and it will go. And when you realize that emotions are temporary, it also gives you perspective, right? To know that something better is coming. And that's gonna help you be able to endure whatever it is that you're enduring.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why should you drink Huel? We're going into the fourth quarter of the year. Diets are dropping off. We're becoming lazier and lazier. And what tends to happen when w- when our diets dip and we- we start to become less, um, compelled to go to the gym is, yeah, we get out of shape, we start to feel low energy, we start to binge eat bad things. And Huel is the antidote. It's nutritionally complete, so you get everything you need for your diet in a drink. You get your 20 grams of proteins. You're gonna get your 26 vitamins and- vitamins and minerals. It's low sugar, high in fiber. It really is the cure to a lot of the health issues that we see in our personal lives, but in wider s- society. If you've never tried it, all I'll ask you to do is give it a try.And if you're like me, then you will like the wild berry ready-to-drink. You'll like the mac and cheese, which is just selling, like, absolutely cr- crazy, unsurprisingly. Um, you'll like the cinnamon, and you'll like the banana flavor. Those are my recommendations. I know a lot of people love the chocolate flavor. Let me know. Try it, get yourself healthy, and send me a message on Instagram. Tag me on Instagram as well on your stories if you do dr- try it out, 'cause I, I sometimes upload those tags. And let me know which is your favorite flavor. Can't wait to hear from you. So that was step one.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I dug a little deeper on that step one phase, which was that, you know, the kind of mental work. What was step two of your level four overcoming, um, the, the trauma?
- MRMel Robbins
So the first step was combating the thoughts in my head, seeing them, interrupting them, "I'm not thinking about that." And then, you know, I went a little bit further and then started to figure out, "Well, if I think this, I'd rather be thinking this." And so then I started working on replacing the thoughts so that the default became different. The next step though was a deeper understanding of anxiety, and really studying it, because I was tired of being anxious. I was tired of taking Zoloft. And look, Zoloft saved my life. I mean, I was on that drug for two and a half decades, for crying out loud. Uh, one of my kids takes Zoloft, and it helped them climb out of a hole. It is... I love medication. Like, I'm not here saying nobody should be on medication. It's the opposite. I think that you, it's self-harm not to take medication if you're in a hole, and that medication can serve as a ladder to help you climb out of it. But I was at a point where, you know, I'm 45 years old. I've been on this drug for a long time. I've been out teaching The 5 Second Rule. I'm interrupting thoughts. I'm starting to feel like, "Wow, I actually have the ability to not think what I have always thought. I actually have the ability to shut that worry down." And so as I started to understand what anxiety really is... So anxiety is a really important thing. Anxiety is an alarm system in your body. If you and I hop in a car and we drive off to have dinner and a truck pulls out, right, and cuts us off, and you immediately swerve, what do you feel in your body?
- SBSteven Bartlett
It feels like something rising in my belly, and-
- 53:23 – 1:02:34
The 5 second rule
- MRMel Robbins
we had secured the restaurant business like complete morons with our kids' college fund, and our house, and every credit card, and the home equity line, and the cars, and everything. And that's great when your business is working. It's absolutely terrifying when it's not. And so, I would wake up every morning just pinned to the bed with anxiety, and I became somebody that I barely recognized. I was screaming at Chris. I was drinking myself into the ground. I... The kids were missing the bus every day. I didn't have a job. I was hiding from my friends. I hadn't told my family what was going on. Uh, and, and, you know, the thing that's, that's, that's interesting about being stuck in life is that the fact is, you know what you need to do. That's the easy part. And if you don't know what you need to do to improve the situation, then google it. There's approximately a bazillion videos out there of people like you that have been in the exact same situation. They will walk you through how to... There are books you can buy. There are courses that, that, uh, the h- what you need to do is out there. It's the how. How the fuck do you make yourself do what you need to do when you are scared, or overwhelmed, or anxious, or hopeless, or depressed, or any of the stuff that happens to you as a human? That's the $100 million question. And at the time, I didn't have the answer. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew I needed to stop screaming at Chris. I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of those things.I was stuck in broken patterns, and I didn't know any of the things that we're talking about right now. But one night, you know, I was sitting there and I was watching TV, and I was telling myself, "Tomorrow morning it's gotta be the new you." I was giving myself that lame pep talk like, "Mel, you've gotta stop drinking, you have got to be nice to Chris, you have got to pull your shit together, you gotta look for a job. And by God, woman, when that alarm rings, you cannot lay there like a human pot roast marinating in fear and staring at the ceiling. You have gotta get out of bed, woman." And then all of a sudden, this is divine intervention, the rocket ship launches across the television screen, Steven, and I say, "That's it. That's it. Tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off, Mel Robbins, you're gonna launch yourself out of bed like a rocket ship. You're gonna move so fast, you're not gonna be in that bed when that anxiety hits." Now, it was either God or bourbon, one of those two things gave me the idea, 'cause it sounds dumb. "Okay, Mel, you're gonna beat anxiety by moving fast. That sounds great." Well, the very next morning, it was a Tuesday in February outside of Boston, Massachusetts in 2008, the alarm went off. And I think a lot about this moment, because if I hadn't done what I did that morning, my life would have gone in a totally different direction. I'd probably be divorced, I'd probably be an alcoholic, my family would be torn apart, no idea what I'd be doing for a living or where I would be. And I profoundly believe that you are one decision away from a different life. And that happened to me on a February morning in 2008. The alarm rang, and as soon as the alarm rang, I remembered the idea of launching myself out of bed. And then I did what psychologists call a bias toward thinking. And this window opens up when you start to think about what you need to do instead of doing what you need to do. It's this window of hesitation that's about five seconds long, a window of hesitation that defines your whole life. Inside this window of hesitation lives anxiety, and procrastination, and fear, and imposter syndrome, and overwhelm, all patterns of thinking, all patterns of feeling, all patterns of behavior that get triggered in this five-second window of thinking about what you need to do. Because it's in the thinking that you go from being present to all the patterns kicking in and the coping mechanisms that you have. And so for whatever reason, I started to think about getting up and all the shit started to come in. "I don't feel like it. How's it gonna help? I don't want to." For whatever reason, I just started counting backwards, "Five, four, three, two, one," and I stood up. And I used it the next morning and the next morning. And by the third morning, I was kinda freaked out 'cause I'm like, "Okay, this is working. This is weird." And I said, "Mel," I made myself a promise, "if at any moment you know what you need to do but you don't feel like it, just count backwards and let's just see what happens." And so I started using it, Steven, this little count backwards technique, five, four, three, two, one. No idea why it's working, by the way. Um, in any moment, I'd see Chris, I'd wanna kill him, five, four, three, two, one, all of a sudden I'm calm, I can speak to him from a more supportive place. Kids are irritating, five, four, three, two, one, take a breath, and now I can be the mom that I know I wanna be. Five, four, three, two, one, I'm going out the door to exercise. Five, four, three, two, one, I'm picking up the phone and I'm networking. Five, four, three, two, one, I'm picking up the phone and calling my parents and asking for help. And slowly but surely, one decision at a time using the five-second rule, and the five-second rule is very simple. The moment you have an instinct to move, you gotta do it within five seconds or your brain will kill it. And counting backwards is critical. I now know why it works. When you count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, you interrupt habit loops stored in your basal ganglia. And the counting backwards requires focus so it awakens this sucker right here, your prefrontal cortex. It's referred to as a starting ritual in habit research, a cheat code for your brain. And, um, basically, I used it in secret for three years 'cause, I mean, what am I gonna do? Tell people you can count to five and you change your life? I mean, it sounds ridiculous. Plus, I was just trying to survive. I'm trying to, like, find a job, and save my marriage, and help my husband, and make sure my kids are okay, and start to pay our bills and make the ends meet, and that's what I was doing. And one thing led to another, and, um, word got out about it and people started to write to me about it, and, um, it has now gone on to change the lives of millions of people. We know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from attempting suicide by counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one. When I had a daytime talk show, an entire wing of, um, nurses from an inpatient unit at a psychiatric, uh, hospital in Philadelphia came to my talk show and explained to me after the show that of all the tools that they have when they discharge somebody from an inpatient commitment, that the five-second rule is the most effective thing that they have, except for medication obviously, but it's the most effective thing that they have because it's simple, and you can remember it, and anybody can use it, and it works. And I think we make a huge mistake in life-We make the mistake of believing that because our problems are big or because our dreams are so big, that somehow the solution to achieving those dreams, or to solving those problems must be enormous too, when in truth, it's the opposite. The larger the problem, the smaller the solution. The bigger the dream, the smaller the actions are that you need to start taking.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Super compelling, because that also has a lot of similarities with your, with your new book-
- MRMel Robbins
(laughs) Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... The High 5 Habit.
- MRMel Robbins
It does, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So, I'd love to hear the story of, um, of how this was born. And I imagine, you know, that, that came out of, as you said, a, a low point in your life where you were, you were looking for what you thought would probably be a complex solution to a set of complex-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... sort of problems and dynamics in your life.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But, um, The High 5 Habit is more centered around gratitude and, um, I guess, like, self-appreciation. Is that an accurate description of, of the-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... of The High 5 Habit?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah. Like, it's, um... You know, even knowing what I know about the five-second rule, I believe The High 5 Habit is a thousand times more powerful. And the reason why I say that is because the five-second rule will help you break patterns of behavior. It'll help you push through fear, it'll help you take action, it'll help you interrupt thoughts. It will help you walk away from things, define boundaries. Um, it's very action-oriented.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Overcome procrastination.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Overcome procrastination.
- 1:02:34 – 1:23:46
The high five habit
- MRMel Robbins
The High 5 Habit works at a much deeper level. It solves what I believe is everybody's core issue and problem. And that is the issue and the habit of hating yourself, of criticizing yourself, of not liking yourself, of beating yourself up. And as successful as, as I've become, and as much as I've accomplished, it wasn't until I stumbled into The High 5 Habit that I truly confronted the fact that, in spite of all that success, I still didn't like myself. I still judged the woman in the mirror. I was still, in many ways, betting against myself by constantly beating the hell out of myself. And it was a habit. And, you know, we talked in the very beginning about how we go from being children that are wired to love ourselves to the ways in which life can make you start to feel what's wrong with me, and the ways in which your brain starts to turn and filter the world in a way where you see everything that you're not, and all the ways that you don't fit in, and all the things that aren't working out. And that was exactly my experience, and I think it's every single human being's experience. I don't care how successful you are. And so, The High 5 Habit is very, very simple, and first, I'll tell you what it is, and then I'll explain the story. So, I'm on a mission to get every single human being on the planet to add high-fiving themselves in the mirror to their morning routine. That right after you brush your teeth, as ubiquitous as it is for people to brush their teeth in the morning, let's get rid of the skanky breath so you don't drag it through your day, I want you to literally wipe clean your mind, body, and spirit, so you don't drag generational gunk and patterns into your day. And it's that simple. Put down the toothbrush, look at yourself in the mirror, raise your hand, and send yourself into your day knowing that you have your own back, knowing that no matter what happens today, you will be here, there to support you and encourage you, no matter what, because you haven't been. And, um, the way I discovered it was, um, in April of 2020. And, you know, the backdrop doesn't even matter. I mean, what was happening is a universal experience. I was just at a moment where I was overwhelmed by my life. There was a lot of shit going on in my business. There was a lot of stuff going on in the world. Uh, a couple of my kids were really in a state of being anxious and upset about things. And I just woke up morning after morning feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, feeling like if one more thing happened, I just can't cope. And I think that that's something that we all feel at times in our life, whether somebody just breaks up with you, or you lose a job, or you don't get the funding you wanted, or you lose an election you went for, or you just feel lost in your life, or maybe your parents are sick, just this feeling of, "I just can't take it. I, I just don't know how I'm gonna deal with the demands of my life," and that was me. And so, one morning, I'm standing in my bathroom, and I'm brushing my teeth, and I'm there in my underwear, and I look at myself in the mirror, and my first thought is, "Oh, my God, you look like hell." (laughs) And then I immediately, out of habit, start picking my appearance apart. "I mean, look at the dark circles and your gray hair and your sagging neck, and God, one boob is lower than the other. You look like shit, Mel." And the second your mind goes negative, you already alluded to this, it's like, you know, more negative thoughts climb on, and so then I drift into my day. And it's not like, "Yes." It's like, "Why did I get up so late?" And you got a Zoom call in eight minutes. "Oh, my God, I haven't even walked the dog yet," and, "Oh, I forgot to text Stephen back," and just the beat-down begins. And I believe that my experience that morning is everybody's experience, and I know based on research that it is. That we talk a big game about gratitude and, and meditation and morning routines, but we've skipped this one thing that's happening in everybody's morning routine-And it's a habit of self-rejection, of self-criticism. And every human being has it, I kid you not. And standing there that morning, overwhelmed by life, giving myself the morning just kind of beat down and, you know, negativity, I couldn't think of anything to say to myself. And I wouldn't have believed it anyway, 'cause I felt overwhelmed. And as pathetic as it sounds, I don't know what came over me, but for whatever reason, again, I think it was probably divine intervention, I just, dog at my feet, uh, underwear on, no bra, I just raised my hand and I gave the woman in the mirror a high five, because she looked like she needed one. That very first one, a couple things happened. I actually laughed, 'cause it was so cheesy. I now know that the reason why I laughed is because your brain drips dopamine when you give somebody a high five. And then I felt like a, a switch flip. And it wasn't like I was like, "Yes!" But I just felt myself go from this very low state. I didn't even think any words, but energetically, I felt myself go from feeling defeated to sort of a like, "Come on now. You got a roof over your head. It's not that bad. Get your ass up." Like it was kinda like that kind of tough-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... coach kind of mustering of an energy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
But Stephen, it was the second morning when everything broke wide open. So I wake up, same problem, same kind of energetic depleted overwhelm. Five, four, three, two, one, I get out of bed. I make my bed. Um, and as I'm walking to the bathroom, I'm not even to the bathroom yet, and then it fricking hits me. I realize I'm experiencing something I've never felt in my entire adult life. And what I'm experiencing is this. When you go and you're about to meet somebody at a café that you really love and you're about to walk in the door, what are you feeling?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, excitement, positive anticipation, um, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
I felt that about seeing myself. Now, I've felt excited to see an outfit or a haircut.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
I don't ever recall as an adult feeling excited to see the human being Mel Robbins.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why were you excited?
- MRMel Robbins
I was excited because the experience of high-fiving yourself is more than a gesture. It creates partnership, and there's a sense that you're returning home. The same way that a neighbor waves to you and sees you, I knew that I would have that experience with myself as soon as I rounded the corner and walked into that bathroom. Because what I realized that second morning as I rounded the corner and walked into the bathroom is that there's actually two human beings in the bathroom every morning. There's you and there's a human being in the mirror. And that human being is trying, and they've been there a long time, and they've been waiting for you to wake up and to see them. They're tired of your constant negativity. They're tired of you beating them down. They need you to be more encouraging. They need you to be more celebratory. They need your support. And when you finally wake up and create a moment with yourself every single morning where you look yourself in the eye, and you see yourself, and you forgive yourself, and you honor yourself, and you say, "I believe," with this gesture in you, it is this remarkably deep and se- spiritual feeling of connection that you've been longing for for a very long time. And so that second morning, you know, I'm realizing, "Holy cow, it's like this sort of..." It's sort of like when you first realize that the voice in your head isn't you-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... and you have this whole paradigm shift. When you allow yourself to understand the depth of what I'm trying to teach you, there will be a paradigm shift that will fundamentally change how you live your life. The hardest part is looking at yourself.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
50% of men and women cannot or will not look at themselves in the mirror-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
... because they are either disgusted or disappointed with where they are in life. And if you cannot look at yourself in the mirror, that is an act of self-rejection. That is an act of self-criticism. That is an act of self-hatred. That's not just a casual thing you're doing. The rest of us that can look at ourselves, what we do when we look at ourselves is we focus on the things we need to fix. For most women, putting on makeup is not additive. It's not a creative expression. It's covering something up that you don't like. It's changing something that you think is wrong. That action, that intention behind it, is self-rejection. It is self-criticism. It is self-hatred. And for so many men, if it's not about your appearance, it's about where you are in life, what you've provided, how much you've made, what car you drive, where you stand in your career, what you've built, what you haven't, the mistakes that you've made. So you stand in judgment.And what is so groundbreaking about the act of being where you are in life, even with all that judgment, or that weight, or that shame, or that regret, or whatever it may be that you carry into the bathroom with you based on your life, when you raise your hand to high five the human being you see in the mirror, your brain has neural association with that physical action. The physical action in and of itself is a positive trigger for every human being on the planet. Even if you are in a culture where people do not high five each other, you have seen sports teams do it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
You have seen viral videos with it. Your brain knows exactly what a high five is, just like everybody's brain knows exactly what this is. You don't even have to say a word, because all of the positive programming is already hardwired into your basal ganglia, and the physical action alone triggers it. You know, you've never high fived somebody and thought, "I hate you, you suck, you've blown your life, I hope you lose the game, fuck off." You've never ever done it. It is neurologically impossible to stand in front of the mirror and actually think something negative as your hand is reaching the mirror, because your brain's not programmed to do that. So when you high five somebody, what are- what does the high five communicate?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well done, acceptance, congratulations, you did it, you can do it, let's do it. Um, yeah, well done, it's collaboration, it's partnership, it's union.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
If somebody's going through a challenge, it's shake it off, you got this, keep going.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
It is so many things, but it's all in belief and celebration and being seen, all of which are your fundamental emotional needs.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And so the thing that's super exciting about this is that we're taking programming that is already stored in your mind, body, and spirit, and we're just gonna aim it right back at you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- 1:23:46 – 1:36:14
Manifestation and visualisation
- SBSteven Bartlett
or else we're not gonna move.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah. So, um, couple things. 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 gonna 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 h-" Like, your brain's like, "Uh-uh." Your brain has a great bullshit detector.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And so the mistake people make is they pick a mantra that is the exact opposite of the way they treat themselves.
- SBSteven Bartlett
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.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right?
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it, it, like, so-
- MRMel Robbins
And you know what evidence at once? It wants fucking action.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, yeah? Prove it to me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Behavioral activation therapy. Act like the person you say you wanna be, and then maybe I'll believe you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Now, should you still interrupt the beat-down?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Absolutely. Absolutely you should. What I'm saying is you gotta stop beating the hell out of yourself. But you can't jump immediately to, "And it's gonna all magically disappear-"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
"... and I'm gonna love my body after beating myself up and hating myself for 20 years."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
It's not gonna happen that fast. So, you know, if you wanna do mantras, do a more pathetic mantra.You know, do something that's, like, a little bit, like, more achievable-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MRMel Robbins
... 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."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Even if you hate your body, anybody in any brain can get behind, "Yeah, you do. That's right. I'm glad you're waking up. You do deserve to be healthy."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
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, that's number one. Number two, manifesting. Everybody has been sold a bill of goods about manifesting. If you make a vision board with your, uh, house on the ocean or you at the Stock Exchange ringing the bell, and that's all that you have on it, science says that that vision board will become a source of profound discouragement. Because over time, as you sit there and stare at your dream house or you ringing the bell at NASDAQ and nothing in your life changes, you start to feel further and further and further away from what you want, which makes you feel further and further discouraged, which means you're less and less motivated to even begin working on it. Like, the hardest part for everybody is to start. And the reason why is not only the patterns of procrastination and anxiety and stuff that you get trapped in, but it's also because your goals feel so far away that you don't believe that just starting is gonna even chip away at it. And so number one, 'cause it sounds like I just contradicted myself, yes, you need to have something like a beach house or the NASDAQ bell or the business you're starting or the love affair of your life or the family you've always envisioned or the health that you've always dreamt about. Absolutely, swing for the fences. What do you want it to look like 10 years from now? But when it comes to manifesting based on science, I want you to think as manifesting as a bridge. Manifesting is a bridge that's made of bricks between you and the thing that you dream about. And what you do when you manifest is you don't manifest where the bridge is going, you manifest the bricks.
Episode duration: 1:58:58
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