How to Speak So That People Listen: #1 Rule for Getting the Support You Need

Mel Robbins 0:00 Let's change some lives.

Lisa Bilyeu 0:01 Let's change some lives. When you know you don't like where you are-

Mel Robbins 0:04 (sighs)

Lisa Bilyeu 0:04 ... it's a great start. I started to realize I had been swallowing my dreams for eight years. Why? And so it all came to, what- what got me stuck in the first place? It was the word when. "I will do this when." The when is so powerful to us, that keeps us stuck. And what I had to ask myself is, what happens if the when never came? So, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z when this happens. What if that thing never happens? What now? And so taking away that when was very powerful for me.

Mel Robbins 0:35 I am so glad you're here. I'm just honored to be able to spend some time with you today. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family, and thank you. Thank you for making this podcast one of the most popular podcasts in the entire world. And I also wanna start by acknowledging you for something. You decided to listen to this, and I know why you did, because you're committed to making your own life better. And I just wanna say, I think that is so cool. I am so proud of you. So go you. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading experts on confidence and motivation. And I have a simple mission, and it's this. I just wanna inspire and empower you with the tools and the expert resources that you need and deserve in order to create a better life. And lately, I've been seeing so many of you writing in from around the world, and you are having so much trouble shaking free of the guilt that you feel. It's almost like I can feel the weight of it as I'm reading your questions and reading your stories. And, you know, the fact that you have all these things that you would like to do, there are things about who you are, but it doesn't fit the expectations of other people in your life. Whether it's what your family thinks that you should be doing with your career, or what your spouse thinks you should be doing with your life, or maybe you don't wanna get married, maybe you don't want kids, maybe you don't wanna work in the family business or go to the school that your brother and your sister went to. Or maybe people are upset with you, and they don't really say it directly, but you know it, and it's because you no longer practice the religion of the household that you grew up in. Or perhaps you're just questioning yourself every single day because you're on this totally different path that your friends are on right now. And you think about it, and then you feel conflicted, and you wanna talk to the people in your life about it, but you don't know how to bring it up or... Have you ever done this? You actually do bring it up. This is what happened to me. You bring up this thing that you wanna do. "You know, I think I might start an online business." And the reaction, "Wait, you? What- what are you gonna sell? What do you know about that?" That happened to me. See, 20 years ago when I first decided I wanted to go into something called life coaching, it wasn't really this big thing, but I went through this big training program, and when I was done with the training program, I told a friend of mine that I was gonna start a life coaching business. And she looked me in the face

Mel Robbins 3:00 and said, "You? Who is gonna hire you to coach them?" I felt myself disappear, and I bet you can relate. That may be the message that you're getting right now from the people in your life. So I wanted to track down someone who's not only insanely successful, but she is also radically confident. And I am absolutely thrilled that one of my dear, dear friends, I love this person, Lisa Bilyeu hopped on a plane in Los Angeles and flew all the way to our studios here in Boston just to coach you. So let me tell you a little bit about Lisa. Lisa is the co-founder of Quest Nutrition. You know that brand. Every single grocery store on the planet has like an entire aisle of their cookies and their chips and their bars, which by the way, was ultimately sold for a billion dollars. But that isn't just the whole story. Lisa's journey to becoming unapologetically and confidently herself began being a young gal dreaming of the film business, but she grew up in a conservative Greek family in the UK, and they were not all that thrilled about the film business. In fact, she was told, "Don't worry about those dreams 'cause you're gonna go on and get married and just support your husband." And you know what? Ultimately, that's where her path started to lead. And for the first eight years of her marriage, she put all those ambitions and dreams on the back burner. So it begs the question, how on earth did Lisa Bilyeu go from feeling like a bored, insecure housewife to one of the most successful, confident, and absolutely unbelievable people that I know and love? Well, you're about to hear the whole story, and more importantly, the advice, the tactics, the tools, and the scripts, I love scripts, that you need in order to take control of your life and own how you want to live it regardless of what everybody else thinks about it. And after leaving Quest Nutrition, Lisa is now the co-founder and president of Impact Theory Studios. She's a New York Times bestselling author. Her YouTube channels and all the shows that they launch have billions of views, and she is here today to be with you and me. So please help me welcome the remarkable Lisa Bilyeu.

Lisa Bilyeu 5:23 Ah, Mel Robbins!

Mel Robbins 5:25 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 5:26 Let's go, girl. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 5:27 (laughs) My God.

Lisa Bilyeu 5:29 I'm so excited to be here.

Mel Robbins 5:31 I am so excited that you're here.

Lisa Bilyeu 5:33 Let's change some lives.

Mel Robbins 5:34 Let's change some lives. So I wanna go back to the beginning of your story because when people tune into the shows that you produce, they pick up a Quest bar, they see you on the cover of your New York Times bestseller, Radical Confidence, you are the kind of person that just screams, "I don't care what you think, I'm doing what I wanna do." You are so confident and just yourself that you're probably intimidating to a lot of people. So take us back to the beginning-

Lisa Bilyeu 6:03 All right.

Mel Robbins 6:04 ... and tell us a little bit about Lisa...... being a little girl over in the UK, and what you dreamt about doing, and the kind of family environment you grew up in.

Lisa Bilyeu 6:12 Yeah, so I think everything that we talk about, how we handle things as an adult absolutely stems from the things we've been taught we should or shouldn't

Lisa Bilyeu 6:20 do. The amount of times I've been patted on the head by a, um, um, grown man when I was a kid, telling me, "Little girls don't speak until spoken to." So I think it's super important for people at home to be listening, to think about what their story is, and how they then use what we talk about to then lead into the life they actually want. So the expectations, Greek family, very traditional, was patted on the head a lot, like I said.

Mel Robbins 6:44 Really? Like literally, tap, tap, tap?

Lisa Bilyeu 6:46 Like literally, top, top, top, tapped on the head t- multiple times. Um, and little things, like when you think about the subliminal messages that we're taught, you have to pay attention, because when you look at your belief system now, a lot of it stems from what you've been taught as a child to be true. So for me, for instance, I would run in the street, play like, you know, like a, y- in, in the mud with boys, and I would scrape my knee, and my grandmother would like come running over, like wipe the tears, and in a big thr-, big, thick Greek accent, she'd be like, "Oh, it's okay. You'll be okay by the time you get married." Oh, so, "You're gonna be okay by the time you get married." That was her consoling me for pain. So imagine that messaging for a young little girl. It's basically saying, "Your life only needs to get..." Like, "Don't worry, when you get married, everything's gonna be solved for you, and you just need to get to marriage." Then I go on s- study film. I have these big dreams, audacious, like, "I wanna win an Academy Award" was like... I actually said that. I would stay up at 3:00 AM, I'd watch the Oscars. Um, and I remember so vividly doing that.

Mel Robbins 7:52 And what was it about film that really drew you in?

Lisa Bilyeu 7:57 I was bullied and teased as a kid for my looks, and being short, and a big nose, and a unibrow. And I had like a head brace that went all the way around the platine. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 8:05 Oh my God.

Lisa Bilyeu 8:06 Dude.

Mel Robbins 8:06 A head brace. I remember head braces.

Lisa Bilyeu 8:09 Oh my... I wish I had a photo, but I refused to let anyone take a photo of me with a head brace. So I go to school, I get teased and bullied. I go home, I can lose myself in anything. You watch a movie, it impacts your life. It can change how you feel. It can change how you see things. It was just magical to me. So I wanted to be a part of that.

Mel Robbins 8:29 Mm.

Lisa Bilyeu 8:29 The magic of creating a story that can impact someone for the, for the greater good. So I just loved film, so I really wanted to do it. But I have a very traditional Greek father, and so

Lisa Bilyeu 8:40 I was like, "I wanna go to film school, Dad. I wanna go." And he's just like, "No, you need to do something academic. It has to be math, science," something like that. We argued for like two weeks. In the end, he turned to me. I remember this day so clearly. He turned to me and he said, "You know what? It doesn't matter. Study film, you're gonna be a stay-at-home wife anyway." Now here's the thing. Uh, w- I hope people can see your face. If you're on podcast...

Mel Robbins 9:06 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 9:06 ... Mel looks horrified right now, people. Now here's the thing. Think about where my dad came from. Everyone has a belief system. Remember how I said that earlier?

Mel Robbins 9:14 Yes.

Lisa Bilyeu 9:15 My dad's belief system was he grew up in a tiny mountain in, uh, in a village in Cyprus. The toilet was a hole in the floor. He didn't have running water. So all the kids growing up, there was no school. So at the age of 12, they would choose, I think it was like four kids from the village that would then be taken for an education. They didn't choose women 'cause contracep- contraception didn't exist. So women just got pregnant. So they're like, "Well, we won't give a woman an education, 'cause she can't go out anyway."

Mel Robbins 9:45 Mm-hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 9:46 "Let's give the boys an education. Let's take them away from their families." So at the age of 12, my dad moved away from his parents, lived with strangers, just to go to school. So now when my dad says to me as an adult, or as a, you know, teenager who wants to go to college, "You're just gonna be a stay-at-home wife anyway," it wasn't an insult. It was his belief system. Now at the time, I took it as an offense, as a lot of us do. We like take offense to that sort of thing. And I fought back, and I was like... well, at the time I was like, "Well, actually, I got what I wanted, so it doesn't matter." But that was a pivotal thing that happened to me that made me realize, I have to understand where people come from before I defend or judge their opinion.

Mel Robbins 10:25 Let's highlight this for a minute. Because when it's happening to you, you are so offended, and angered, and frozen in the moment-

Lisa Bilyeu 10:34 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 10:34 ... and yet it is so easy to forget that the world that your

Mel Robbins 10:40 parents grew up in doesn't exist anymore.

Lisa Bilyeu 10:43 Correct.

Mel Robbins 10:44 But they still live based on the conditioning, the experiences, the good, the bad, from that world.

Lisa Bilyeu 10:52 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 10:53 And yet we just have this expectation that somehow every human being is going to magically transform, and magically think differently, even though they have had generational conditioning. And that is not to excuse-

Lisa Bilyeu 11:08 No.

Mel Robbins 11:08 ... any kind of abusive, or terrible, or toxic behavior, or excuse what your dad just said to you, but you've just offered up this framework where you can look back and go, "Wait a minute. I'm not condoning what he did, but I understand it."

Lisa Bilyeu 11:23 Yeah, it's what I call a frame of reference. It is so helpful when people say anything to me from now on, and it's not even just offensive. Like if someone says something, it's like, "Oh, what's their frame of reference in they're saying that? Like, "What would have to be true..." Like imagine movie scripts, right?

Mel Robbins 11:37 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 11:37 I've just said movies are my jam. I literally go, "If I was writing a script right now, what would have to be true about their frame of reference for them to say that to me?" Now when it comes to family, I do this a lot. I don't necessarily do it with strangers a lot, because I don't... that it takes a lot of time and energy to go through someone's-

Mel Robbins 11:52 Yes.

Lisa Bilyeu 11:52 ... frame of reference. But when it's a parent, when it's a friend, why are they actually saying it? What is it that has taught them to believe that thing that they're saying to you? So you said earlier about how people said to you like, "You're going into coaching. What the hell?" My dad said the same thing, like, "Movies? What the hell do you know about movies?" Now here's the other thing. A, frame of reference, already said that, makes me understand my dad. The second thing that I'm gonna be honest, Mel, is what the hell did I know about movies?

Mel Robbins 12:17 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 12:17 Like when people get very defensive over the... right?

Mel Robbins 12:21 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 12:21 Like, "What did you know about coaching? You didn't probably know...

Mel Robbins 12:24 Ooh, I took some course.

Lisa Bilyeu 12:25 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 12:25 I mean, literally. I didn't know what the hell I was doing.

Lisa Bilyeu 12:27 But that's my point. We take offense to, um, criticism when sometimes the criticism is true. And so-

Mel Robbins 12:33 It's true.

Lisa Bilyeu 12:34 And so what I go is instead of it being criticism, what can I learn from it? So if my dad said to me, and I didn't have this frame of reference at the time, but I do now, if my dad said to me, "You can't make it in Hollywood," my response would be, "Why?" And he will list a whole load of reasons. "You don't know anyone." "You have to have a visa." Um, "You haven't got an education." All of those things he says is true. So what I do instead is I go, "Listen." Because it's not that they don't believe in you, they believe in the laws of physics, if you will. If you haven't taught yourself something, how you gonna know it?

Mel Robbins 13:05 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 13:05 So I just go, "Oh, he's got a point." And so instead of taking offense to it, instead of making that detrimental to my self-esteem, which I used to, I don't wanna pretend that I never used to. I absolutely did. Uh, so I want people to know that the way that I'm talking now is how I think now. It's an evolution. And I'm trying to help people that have been there, because, or- or there, because I've been there. I know what it feels like when someone doesn't believe in you. I know what it feels like when someone actually tears down your fricking dreams. It feels terrible. It feels, um, destroying sometimes emotionally. It makes you doubt yourself, who you are, and what you want. But how do you get past it? Frame of reference, and maybe there's truth to what they say. And if there's truth, you've now become more powerful for it.

Mel Robbins 13:53 Damn, Lisa fricking Bilyeu. I, I did not expect us to go here, and I'm so happy we are.

Lisa Bilyeu 14:00 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 14:01 Because this is something that can help anyone navigate your day-to-day life, because it is so easy to get hooked and triggered emotionally-

Lisa Bilyeu 14:15 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 14:15 ... when somebody else's frame of reference is not the same as yours.

Lisa Bilyeu 14:20 Correct.

Mel Robbins 14:21 And we walk around thinking that absolutely everybody that we meet, our parents and our friends included, have the same level of therapy, have the same way of thinking, have the same way of loving that we do, and people don't.

Lisa Bilyeu 14:37 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 14:38 And we make assumptions about that. And then we are pissed off, or we are emotionally triggered, or we are devastated when it doesn't match what we want to hear. If it's okay,

Mel Robbins 14:50 can we take some time to really unpack it for the person-

Lisa Bilyeu 14:54 Totally.

Mel Robbins 14:54 ... that's listening?

Lisa Bilyeu 14:55 Yeah, let's go deep.

Mel Robbins 14:56 Let's start with how you define what this thing is. And can you give us an example of how the person listening might be able to use this concept of frame of reference to create better relationships with somebody in their life?

Lisa Bilyeu 15:12 Yeah, absolutely. So frame of reference really is how someone perceives the world, the words they use and actions. So when somebody comes in and yells, if you've come from a family of abusive, verbally abusive family, let's say, where you've just, yelling actually triggers you, if someone comes in and yells, your frame of reference is, "Danger."

Mel Robbins 15:34 Hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 15:34 "Run." If you come from a Greek family where everyone yells, and someone yells, I'm like, "Oh my God, it's my peeps."

Mel Robbins 15:41 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 15:41 My frame of reference is when someone yells, it feels good. It means that everyone's happy and excited. So you can imagine two people in the same room communicating over something, and their frame of reference is completely different. You're talking, it's l- literally like I'm talking Chinese and you're talking, you know, English, and we are not understanding each other, because our, our entire perception of words, actions, and behaviors are all based on our own beliefs of grow- from growing up.

Mel Robbins 16:11 Got it.

Lisa Bilyeu 16:11 Does that make sense?

Mel Robbins 16:12 Yes. And if you... And the reason why this is powerful is because if you understand, in your example, that you're not triggered by yelling, because your association growing up in a very loud, "Ra-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba," kind of family is that's the sound of a full house.

Lisa Bilyeu 16:30 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 16:31 But somebody else may experience that same volume and have a profound shutdown and traumatic response, because that kind of volume and yelling in their household meant something else.

Lisa Bilyeu 16:45 Correct. So now when you see somebody acting out of accordance to what you expect them to do, right? So, you know, when you go into a conversation and like, "Okay, they're gonna say this," and then they say the comp- You're like, "They're offended? How the hell are they offended? I thought that that was gonna be a great news." That's an indication you actually probably have a different frame of reference.

Mel Robbins 17:06 You know, I would imagine that most couples therapy is nothing but a therapist trying to tease out people's frames of reference, which is their conditioning-

Lisa Bilyeu 17:16 Correct.

Mel Robbins 17:16 ... from their life experience, which then leads to your beliefs.

Lisa Bilyeu 17:20 Yes.

Mel Robbins 17:21 And this needs to be shouted from the rooftops, because what you're talking about at the highest level isn't allowing someone else to treat you poorly. What you're talking about is developing a skill where you do not allow other people's frame of reference, or other people's emotions, or other people's opinions to derail you.

Lisa Bilyeu 17:47 Yes.

Mel Robbins 17:48 And at the same time, because you're not derailed, because you're not emotionally triggered, you have this objectivity to truly hold space for that other person.

Lisa Bilyeu 18:01 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:02 And obviously this is a lot of work, so you do it with the people you care about. Like, it's hard to do (laughs) with strangers.

Lisa Bilyeu 18:07 Yeah, yeah.

Mel Robbins 18:07 But even so, it's a way to not be emotionally hooked. Now, we're in a story where you're probably 16, 17 years old, and you feel run over by, you know, a, a train at the moment.

Lisa Bilyeu 18:18 Oh, I'm in tears. My... I used to be called daddy's little girl, so you can imagine this entire thing where my dad doesn't believe in me, it is-... tearing me apart. And so I still went to college, I still studied film, but-

Mel Robbins 18:31 So did you study film in the UK?

Lisa Bilyeu 18:32 Yes. So I studied film, yeah. I got a degree in movie making and-

Mel Robbins 18:35 And so was there, like, a lot of eye-rolling in your house, or what happened once you started down the path?

Lisa Bilyeu 18:40 Um, I think my dad... So it's funny how traditional families are. They'll push you to get a, you know, college degree and something that's prestigious, and then they wait for you to get married.

Mel Robbins 18:49 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 18:50 Like, it's literally, like, "Get..." My dad was like, "Get the college degree," only so I could go and get married, and then not do a-

Mel Robbins 18:55 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 18:56 Not, not do anything, I don't want to dismiss, like, freaking being a stay-at-home wife is the hardest job ever. Can't imagine being a stay-at-home wife with kids. Oh my God, literally the hardest job ever. But my dad just assumed I'd get the college degree just to get me to marriage. Marriage just gets me to kids. Kids just then get you to dying. Like, it's the, it's the, the projected life that a Greek woman is going to have in my dad's eyes. So, it-

Mel Robbins 19:19 'Cause that's his frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 19:22 Correct. Correct. So when he said, "Okay, fine, go to college," he'd just been like, "Ah, okay, three years, she's gonna meet someone, she's gonna get married." So there was no eye-rolling, because for him, he already thought, "Well, she's gonna find a guy, get married, and it won't matter anyway." So the dream of movie making, I just kind of just leant into it.

Mel Robbins 19:40 Yup.

Lisa Bilyeu 19:41 Um, and so I didn't have any backlash once he had said, "Fine."

Mel Robbins 19:46 'Cause he already had in his mind a different frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 19:48 Correct.

Mel Robbins 19:48 "This isn't gonna work out anyway-"

Lisa Bilyeu 19:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 19:50 "... 'cause I know what happens here, because my frame of reference is she gets married."

Lisa Bilyeu 19:53 Correct.

Mel Robbins 19:54 And it's such a fabulous tool, because everybody in your family has a frame of reference-

Lisa Bilyeu 20:00 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 20:00 ... about what they think is about, or should happen in your life, because that's what they've experienced.

Lisa Bilyeu 20:06 Yeah. Exactly.

Mel Robbins 20:08 And so you study. You now are tapping into this ambition. What happens

Mel Robbins 20:15 next?

Lisa Bilyeu 20:15 So I'm thinking, "Okay, I'm getting this degree, I'm working..." But like, all of my dad's concerns are, like, in my little ear, right?

Mel Robbins 20:23 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 20:23 Like, like, "You don't know anyone Hollywood. How are you gonna make movies?" Like, all these voices.

Mel Robbins 20:27 And I'm looking at you-

Lisa Bilyeu 20:28 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 20:28 ... because if you're watching on YouTube you see it, but if you're listening to us, Lisa Bilyeu has such a extraordinary style, and she is so distinctive and gorgeous and powerful in her style. And she has this fabulous stack of earrings.

Lisa Bilyeu 20:47 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 20:47 And so as you reached up your little hand and you started to wiggle your fingers, I started thinking about it. It's almost like wearing an ear cuff that's, like, going, "Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep."

Lisa Bilyeu 20:55 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 20:56 "You're not gonna, you're gonna get married anyway-"

Lisa Bilyeu 20:57 Exactly, yeah.

Mel Robbins 20:57 ... that's always, like, right there, hanging around-

Lisa Bilyeu 21:00 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 21:01 ... just kinda chirping in your ear.

Lisa Bilyeu 21:02 Yeah, except you ca- you can take earrings out at the end of the day. You can't take the thought out of it, you know, as easy. Um, but it's so true. Like, it is... That voice echoes, and you remember that stuff. The stuff that really stings is the stuff that you remember.

Mel Robbins 21:16 True.

Lisa Bilyeu 21:16 And so it was repeating in my head. So as I was finishing college, I was like, "What is that next move?" Like, "I don't know anyone in Hollywood. I have zero contacts, and I don't have a visa." And then my roommate walks in and she hands me a brochure for the New York Film Academy. And sh- it's an eight-week course, you get to go to America, you get to film on the backlots of Universal Studios. Like, you actually get to use their sets. You get to use their props department. I mean, it was literally like a dream come true, and it was just for eight weeks. And so I had, I was like, "Okay, I have to persuade my dad now to fund it," 'cause I had no money. I was c- I was in college. I had just finished college. So I was like, "This is dream come true. I get to go to America. I'm gonna prove myself in eight weeks, and I'm gonna get the five-picture deal," right? Like, that's the-

Mel Robbins 21:57 Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu 21:57 That's the, the lie I'm telling myself. But the lie was helpful.

Mel Robbins 22:01 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 22:01 The lie propelled me forward, so I actually don't mind that. So I go to my dad and I have to convince him again. And I'm like, "Dad, I know that I said that I'd finish college and I'd get a job and..."

Mel Robbins 22:11 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 22:11 "... but I actually need a lot of money to go and study film in America for eight weeks." And so, again, we just argued, and eventually he's like, "As long as you promise me that when you come back, the first thing you're gonna do is take life seriously and get a job, and get a career until you find the guy." He didn't say that, but that's what was underlined.

Mel Robbins 22:28 Yup, yup.

Lisa Bilyeu 22:28 So I said, "Yep, deal." So I go to America, and my life changed forever.

Mel Robbins 22:34 What happened?

Lisa Bilyeu 22:35 So I walk into the New York Film Academy, and I'm like, "Wow, my, that teacher, my teacher's really freaking hot."

Mel Robbins 22:40 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 22:41 And I'm in class. This is a school for adults, people, just to give context. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 22:46 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 22:46 I'm 21 years old, and I'm like, "My teacher is

Lisa Bilyeu 22:50 really smoking, and he's very talented, and I get very turned on by talent." And so he shows his movie, and I'm really interested, and he ignores me, Mel. And I'm like, "God, this guy." So anyway, to cut a long story short, a month in, he turns around and asks me on a date.

Mel Robbins 23:06 It, like, so you're still taking the class?

Lisa Bilyeu 23:08 So I'd finished-

Mel Robbins 23:09 You got four weeks left, baby, 'cause it's an eight-week class.

Lisa Bilyeu 23:12 Yes. L- Look at her counting. But the last four weeks was practical.

Mel Robbins 23:16 Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 23:16 So I didn't have any more classes with him. You just have to go out and make your movie.

Mel Robbins 23:20 Okay, great.

Lisa Bilyeu 23:20 So on the last day of my last class, it was like, I, I hint we're going out with friends. He's like, "Why don't you give me your number?"

Mel Robbins 23:27 And how much older was he than you?

Lisa Bilyeu 23:29 Four years.

Mel Robbins 23:30 Okay, so n- like, this is not, like, some 40-year-old dude?

Lisa Bilyeu 23:32 No, no, no, no.

Mel Robbins 23:33 Okay, gotcha.

Lisa Bilyeu 23:34 So he comes to pick me up on the first day, and it is not what I was expecting, not what I thought, like, I'd been taught as a young kid. Like, having a car with rims was, like, a sign of wealth. Wealth meant security. Um, having a guy that wore so much cologne was, you know, a, a, a, a, almost like a calling card, right-

Mel Robbins 23:53 Yup.

Lisa Bilyeu 23:53 ... like I'd grown up with. And I open the door, and this guy's standing there, and he comes straight from work, and his car's a mess, and it's dirty and it's half-broken.

Mel Robbins 24:02 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 24:02 And the backseat is full of, like, just complete junk. And then he opens the car door for me. And I was like, "Wow, chivalry is alive." So all the things I had on my checklist that you kinda think you look for, none of that was there, and then he surprised me with this. And I was like, "Wow, this is interesting."

Mel Robbins 24:20 Well, what's interesting, and I wanna stop here-

Lisa Bilyeu 24:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 24:23 ... is that this is an example of your frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 24:25 Correct.Yes.

Mel Robbins 24:26 Because your frame of reference growing up in just the neighborhood and the community that you did is that the cologne and the fancy cars and all those things is my frame of reference for a good catch.

Lisa Bilyeu 24:40 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 24:41 And then, he shows up and doesn't match it, but then all of a sudden because you were like, "Hmm..."

Lisa Bilyeu 24:48 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 24:49 ... the door was opened.

Lisa Bilyeu 24:50 Exactly. And we went to, like, a B restaurant.

Mel Robbins 24:54 A B restaurant.

Lisa Bilyeu 24:54 So, um, in California, I wasn't sure if it was worldwide or countrywide, you rate a restaurant and you have to put it legally on the front of your window. And so an A means that you're great. A B means-

Mel Robbins 25:05 What?

Lisa Bilyeu 25:05 A B means, "Oh my God, we're about to shut you down." It's like the health department.

Mel Robbins 25:08 So you don't go to somebody that has a check for a good bill of health.

Lisa Bilyeu 25:13 No. He-

Mel Robbins 25:13 You've got sort of like, eh, kinda sketchy.

Lisa Bilyeu 25:15 Yeah. So he takes me to a strip mall restaurant on our first date with a B rating for health and he starts asking me these crazy questions I've never been asked before on a first date 'cause I'm used to guys posturing. He didn't posture. He was just like, "Oh, so, uh, yeah, why do you believe in God?" And he was sincerely asking. And he's like, oh-

Mel Robbins 25:33 Like on the first date?

Lisa Bilyeu 25:34 On the first... Oh, we talked about God and porn all in one date.

Mel Robbins 25:37 Wow.

Lisa Bilyeu 25:39 And-

Mel Robbins 25:39 And that's either going to lead you right into somebody's arms or straight for the exit door.

Lisa Bilyeu 25:43 Exactly. And I was fascinated. I was like, "This guy isn't posturing. He doesn't care what his clothes look like. He actually wants to know what I'm interested in. He's not just trying to, like, create conversation for conversation's sake." And I was mesmerized. And I'm thinking this is gonna be the best holiday fling ever.

Mel Robbins 26:01 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 26:01 When I'm 90 years old, Mel, I'm gonna go back as a grandmother and I'm gonna tell my grandkids that once upon a time-

Mel Robbins 26:07 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 26:07 ... I had this hot fling with this hot American dude.

Mel Robbins 26:10 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 26:11 And so... (laughs) I literally thought, "This is a great story to tell." Now on the other side, he had just come out of a relationship where the girl got a little clingy.

Mel Robbins 26:22 Mm.

Lisa Bilyeu 26:22 So he's thinking, "Great. She has to legally leave the country 'cause she's only here on a visa." (laughs)

Mel Robbins 26:27 I'ma have a hot fling.

Lisa Bilyeu 26:28 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 26:29 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 26:29 I'm gonna have a hot fling and the government's gonna take care of the rest-

Mel Robbins 26:32 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 26:32 ... even if she's interested. And every day we would hang out, it was, "What are you doing tomorrow?" "Nothing, let's hang out." There was zero pressure, zero expectation, and we just had the best time. And, of course, that person turns out to be my husband, Tom.

Mel Robbins 26:49 At what point did your frame of reference completely shatter and you had that moment where you go, "This is my person"?

Lisa Bilyeu 27:03 I think it becomes a drip-by-drip. There was the conversation, then there was... He wrote poetry. And I was like, "I'm thinking of this as being..." He's a, like a stoic alpha male. I mean, you know Tom, he creates pr- He has presence. And here he is writing poetry and he's reading it to me and he's take... He had a dark room. For those people who have no idea what a dark room is, it's back in the day when you used to process film, you actually had to process it in, like, a red light in a dark room and put it in liquid. He had his own dark room.

Mel Robbins 27:31 Oh.

Lisa Bilyeu 27:31 And so he was just fascinating. Like our dates were, we would go to the mountains and take photos on, like, film and then we'd go back and develop them to... It was just, my frame of reference, it was bit by bit. It was showing what was possible, it was seeing what was possible, it was then seeing what was possible, was questioning my belief system around what I thought and why did I think it. And bit by bit, each thing started to chip away, and I started to compare my belief system with how I actually felt.

Mel Robbins 28:00 What's so great about the detail in this story is that you're sharing this very powerful tool frame of reference,

Mel Robbins 28:10 and the first way that you introduced it is a way that you can use it to truly understand and be separate from another person's opinions, emotions, expectations, and the example was your dad.

Lisa Bilyeu 28:28 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 28:29 So understanding, in hindsight, that his frame of reference is growing up on a mountain, the toilet's a hole in the floor, only four boys from the village get to go to school, every girl in the village, because there's no contraception, is gonna get married, that's my frame of reference. And because you can understand that, it allows you to be separate from it-

Lisa Bilyeu 28:49 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 28:50 ... hold space for it, and actually still be able to say for yourself, "That's not gonna be my frame of reference."

Lisa Bilyeu 28:57 And one more thing to add to that, that is 100%, and it's not personal.

Mel Robbins 29:01 And so I love that you have first shown us how you use a frame of reference to truly understand where someone's coming from and to unhook emotionally, but now you're explaining a second way to use it, which is when you meet somebody like Tom and he is completely different than anybody that is in your frame of reference and your belief system,

Mel Robbins 29:30 you're explaining how when you really have the courage to examine, "What is my frame of reference? What do I believe about family? What do I believe the rules are that make you a good person? What do I believe about purpose and meaning and what means, it means to be a good daughter or a this or a that?" When you can see your own, you can now have the power to start to challenge it based on the people that you meet or ideas that you bump into or things that you study in school, and that's so powerful.

Lisa Bilyeu 30:05 Thank you. I love the, the, the way you brought it together on... It didn't really dawn on me as I was talking that it's the, the two, it's the frame of reference for somebody else, but then it's also your own frame

Lisa Bilyeu 30:15 of reference.

Mel Robbins 30:15 Yes. And we are so quick to defend our frame of reference as the right-

Lisa Bilyeu 30:21 Yes.

Mel Robbins 30:22 ... way to look at something and the only way to look at something, and that if you don't fit in this, you're out, or if you don't understand me, you're out. And so I think it's a very powerful self-awareness tool that you're explaining.... for both understanding and being able to live in that kind of...

Lisa Bilyeu 30:39 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 30:39 ... messy, sticky middle part where your emotions aren't the same as others, the way you think about things aren't the same as others, and to also challenge yourself. So I have to ask, what the hell happened?

Lisa Bilyeu 30:53 (laughs)

Mel Robbins 30:53 Like, the eight weeks come up. Do you have to go back to the UK? Do you tell your father? Are you getting married?

Lisa Bilyeu 30:58 Yeah. (laughs)

Mel Robbins 30:58 Like, what is going on?

Lisa Bilyeu 30:59 So eight weeks, eight weeks comes.

Mel Robbins 31:01 Yes.

Lisa Bilyeu 31:01 And we, we... Literally, for four weeks, we're like, "It's fun. It's a fling. It's fun. It's a fling." And we're just seeing each other all the time. So it was, like, the last week, and we go to, uh, Dockweiler Beach, and we're making s'mores with his friends.

Mel Robbins 31:14 Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 31:14 And so we're sitting there making s'mores, and his friend turns around, and he's like, "So, um, you know, Lisa's leaving. Like, what are you guys gonna do?" And he didn't say a word. He just turned to me, and he's like, "I'm gonna come see you in London. Is it okay if I come in, like, two weeks?" And I was like, "Yeah." He didn't even have a passport. So in, like, two weeks, he booked a flight, got, like, an emergency passport, didn't even have a suitcase. He took s- he took his mom's pink suitcase.

Mel Robbins 31:39 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 31:39 Like, I literally can still see him walking down the r- like, the thing with his pink suitcase. And I was like, "Who is this guy? I love him so much." Um, but he... So he jumps on a plane, and he just comes. Now, I've never introduced the guy to my dad ever.

Mel Robbins 31:51 Never introduced any...

Lisa Bilyeu 31:52 Never.

Mel Robbins 31:53 ... guy?

Lisa Bilyeu 31:53 No. And my-

Mel Robbins 31:54 And now you're gonna introduce him to Tom Bilyeu, who's got a pink suitcase and has flown in from the United States?

Lisa Bilyeu 31:59 Yes, exactly.

Mel Robbins 31:59 Are you out of your mind?

Lisa Bilyeu 32:00 I was out of my mind.

Mel Robbins 32:01 What did you feel?

Lisa Bilyeu 32:03 So, well, my parents are divorced. So I used to live with my mom. So he was gonna stay with my mom. So I contemplated-

Mel Robbins 32:08 We're gonna hide him.

Lisa Bilyeu 32:08 ... do I hide him (laughs) for two weeks?

Mel Robbins 32:10 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 32:10 And I was like, "I can't. Two weeks? That's a long time." My dad's a Greek man who takes care of his daughter, very protective. If I don't call him for two days, he's, like, calling the ambulance. He's calling the police. Like, he's that guy. So I was like, "I can't hide him for two weeks. I just have to take him to see my dad." So I was like, "Well, I've never introduced him." So I tell my dad, "Hey, I'm meeting somebody. He's coming to stay. Don't worry, he's staying with my mom." Like, "I want you to meet him." And my dad's Greek Orthodox, so he's... The first thing he's like is, "Is he Greek?" And I'm like, "No, he's, like, a white boy from Tacoma, Washington." And my dad's like, "Okay." So I bring him in, and I'm preparing Tom, right? I'm like, "Babe, my dad asks a lot of questions. He's very protective. So he's gonna bombard you with a thousand questions when you walk in. I just wanna warn you, that's who he is. Nothing against you. Like, don't worry."

Mel Robbins 32:57 This moment, I'm feeling nervous...

Lisa Bilyeu 33:01 Ah.

Mel Robbins 33:01 ... for you because you don't have this frame of reference thing. And you're taking me... We all have this moment...

Lisa Bilyeu 33:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 33:08 ... where we're about to introduce somebody that we've fallen for to our family. And I cannot wait to hear what happens next, and I'm particularly curious to hear what your father's reaction was. And so I gotta take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. They're bringing this to you at zero cost, so please take a listen. But don't go anywhere, because Lisa and I are gonna be waiting for you after a short break. And check this out. I have a story that Lisa's reminding me of, of when I first met Chris. It is really personal. I have never shared this on the podcast before, and I'm gonna tell that. And you're gonna hear what happened with Lisa and Tom, and her dad. And we're gonna dig more into this tool, frame of reference. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel. I'm so thrilled you're still here. I am with my dear friend, Lisa Bilyeu, and she is the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, which sold for over a billion dollars. She is also the co-founder and the president of Impact Theory Studios, and she's here today talking about how you can become unapologetically you. And there's this interesting angle we've been discussing, which is, how do you do that without cutting everybody out of your life? How do you do that when you actually do care about what your friends and your family think? And we were just talking about both how she met her husband, Tom Bilyeu,

Mel Robbins 34:30 and we're at the part of the story where she is having him come to London. He's about to meet her dad. So Lisa, what happened next?

Lisa Bilyeu 34:39 So I tell Tom, "He's gonna ask you a thousand questions. Remember, he's just a Greek dad that cares about his daughter. So when he asks you questions, he just wants to know that you're good for me. So please, if you... Just come from, like, he's a c- a father that cares, not that he hates you." Right? So set him up there. Then my dad, I've said to him, "I've never introduced you to a guy before, Dad. I'm 21 years old. I really like this guy. It would be great if you could welcome him."

Mel Robbins 35:03 Hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 35:04 "It would mean a lot to me."

Mel Robbins 35:05 What was your dad's response?

Lisa Bilyeu 35:07 "Okay." But here's the funny thing. Now, my dad didn't think it was gonna last.

Mel Robbins 35:14 Oh.

Lisa Bilyeu 35:14 So he was like, "Yeah, I just thought, 'Why rock the boat?'" I may as well say, "Okay," Tom meets my dad. He asks him barely even one question.

Mel Robbins 35:25 Wait, your dad barely asked Tom any questions?

Lisa Bilyeu 35:28 Yes. So remember, I've set him up, and now I'm like, "Oh, dear Lord." And it was because my dad was like... I showed him respect. I fed him. I greeted him. Like, we were very polite. "I wanna make sure." My dad's very polite. He just was like, you know, "How's the weather? What's America like?" It wasn't like, "What do you do for a living? What's your goals?" You know, like... So it was very, like, not like my dad. So even though he was welcoming, and again, in hindsight, he just didn't think we would last, so he was like, "Well, you greet him. You show politeness. You always show respect." But-

Mel Robbins 36:00 How, how... What did you do? 'Cause you know that this is not going...

Lisa Bilyeu 36:03 I was unsure. I was like... Yeah, I w- Well, the funny thing is, I didn't know it was a sign of what he was actually thinking.

Mel Robbins 36:10 Oh.

Lisa Bilyeu 36:10 Because when someone acts out of accordance to what you expect, now, as having done all the mental work-

Mel Robbins 36:16 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 36:17 ... the first thing I would say to myself is, "If I was writing a script, what would have to be true for my dad, who always asks a thousand questions, not to ask Tom any?"

Mel Robbins 36:25 That he doesn't like him.

Lisa Bilyeu 36:26 And the, the answer would be he doesn't like him, or he has resentment towards him, or he has a threat. My dad is the center of my, you know, center of my attention.

Mel Robbins 36:37 Hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 36:38 And so if my dad doesn't approve of him, and now my attention is going elsewhere-... could that be why? I didn't know. But those are kind of, like, you come up with conclusions. But again, it's not about me.

Mel Robbins 36:49 Here's what I just wanna hover on for a minute, because this is life, the ability to navigate these moments where somebody's behavior or their emotions do not align with what you wish. This is reminding

Mel Robbins 37:10 me of a story I don't think I've ever told, which is when Chris and I got engaged, and Chris lives in the East, and I grew up in the Midwest. And like most families and parents, now that, you know, I'm kind of at the age I am, I understand my mother's frame of reference now.

Lisa Bilyeu 37:30 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 37:30 But back then, I didn't. And there was this thing that happened between us that really pissed me off and hurt me. And it was this. As Chris and I got engaged, and as the wedding approached, my mom became more and more bristly towards him and snarky about his family. And it bothered me, and I did not have this tool that we're talking about in terms of being able to take a step back and not get all triggered and emotional but- but go, "Well, what is her frame of reference here? What might be true for her to be, in her mind and her frame of reference, to have her, someone I love, and someone who I know loves me, act like this?" And not having that tool, I, of course, just was spun around like a to- "Why is she doing this?" And then you get angry, and then you literally start interacting with each other through emotion instead of being able to unhook yourself and slow yourself down. And so here's what happened. I was talking to a friend, and she said, "Well, I think you just need to talk to your mom. And maybe what you could say is it really hurts you that you're chilly and kind of, like, bristly toward his family, and you're a very warm person, and you're acting in a way that's very cold and judgy. And I need you to act consistently with this. I need you to pretend you picked him for me."

Lisa Bilyeu 39:13 Mm.

Mel Robbins 39:14 "I need you to show up in a way that is consistent with you being happy because you picked him for me." And do you wanna know what she said?

Lisa Bilyeu 39:28 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 39:28 She said, "I didn't pick him for you, and I'm not happy."

Lisa Bilyeu 39:32 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 39:33 And I was so pissed. And then here's though what I started to piece together, and this is the interesting thing. Even the request made her warmth come back online and made her change.

Lisa Bilyeu 39:50 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 39:50 However, I can now use your tool, frame of reference, and I can absolutely see what was going on, because she grew up in a huge farm family in Upstate New York, and my dad grew up in New Jersey in a working class family that had a bakery.

Lisa Bilyeu 40:08 Mm.

Mel Robbins 40:09 The second that they got married, right outta college in Kansas, and ended up in Michigan, they never saw their family, ever, ever, because my mom's family was too busy running a farm. So who's gonna take care of 100 head of cattle? My dad's family's running a bakery. Nobody was flying around or traveling like they do today. Her frame of reference is once you move away, you never see your family.

Lisa Bilyeu 40:35 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 40:36 And so I can now use that tool and go back in time and say, "Of course she didn't pick a guy that was on the East Coast for her daughter, 'cause she wanted somebody that was gonna have her end up in the Midwest."

Lisa Bilyeu 40:48 Right.

Mel Robbins 40:48 And I totally get it now. And so you can... Using this, whether you're using it today for difficult conversation to really try to hold space for what somebody else's reaction might be and also what you need to say, or you're moving forward in your life, examining your own frame of reference or helping you understand others, or I think this is an incredibly powerful tool to go backwards.

Lisa Bilyeu 41:20 1000%. And what's interesting with everything that you just broke down is your mom probably wasn't even aware of her own frame of reference or why she was behaving like that, because if you don't do the work, you know this, if you don't have a growth mindset, if you don't actually look to try to understand yourself, you will be reactive. And when someone's reactive, sometimes they don't actually have clarity on why they're reacting. And so as you do this process, please bear in mind that they, that person may not actually know their frame of reference.

Mel Robbins 41:49 I think you should assume they don't.

Lisa Bilyeu 41:50 Y- yeah, actually, that's probably best, yeah.

Mel Robbins 41:51 And don't tell them-

Lisa Bilyeu 41:52 No, no, no, exactly, yes.

Mel Robbins 41:52 ... what you think their frame of reference is.

Lisa Bilyeu 41:54 Do not know because then the response would be, "Oh, you know me better than I know myself." It's like you're doing this for your own work so that you know how to show up, how to communicate, and actually work towards your goals without someone hindering it. That's the goal, right? It's like if you have a dream, what life do you want? How are you gonna get that life? What's getting in your way? And these are all tools that you can use so that you can keep moving forward towards that dream without holding back when someone comes to you, whether it's a mom that you care about and is upset about a decision that you made.

Mel Robbins 42:23 I love this so much, Lisa. This is so powerful because it is at the heart of every interaction and every relationship. And one thing I also wanna say about this is it takes time.

Lisa Bilyeu 42:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 42:36 Do not just start regurgitating frame of reference, frame of reference, and assume that you're suddenly healed.

Lisa Bilyeu 42:41 No.

Mel Robbins 42:42 This is something that takes time.... understanding yourself, knowing yourself and your own frame of reference takes time, especially when you want to navigate in this space that we all need to learn how to navigate, which is where you are in relation to other people.

Lisa Bilyeu 43:02 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 43:03 And so

Mel Robbins 43:05 what happens? He meets your dad.

Lisa Bilyeu 43:07 So he meets my dad, and he's very quiet, doesn't ask a lot of questions. I... Tom and I just get along so well. There's just something, connection between us that we cannot describe. We just keep leaning into it. And this was before cell phones, so we would email each other. He'd come back to America. So we tried to find ways to be together.

Mel Robbins 43:25 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 43:25 So I would come to America for three months. I would try and like... Tom would get me a job on a movie set. I would work un- you know, for three months kind of, you know, as like a PA, and then I would go back to England. Then Tom would come and visit. So we did that on and off for about, um, a year.

Mel Robbins 43:39 Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 43:39 And then Tom proposes. But here's the thing. Being a very traditional Greek family that I have, I've always said to him it was very important that he gets my dad's blessing if it ever happened.

Mel Robbins 43:50 Yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu 43:50 So, of course, Tom goes to my dad and sits down and says, "Andreas, I love your daughter. I want to marry her." And my dad says no.

Mel Robbins 44:00 (laughs) Oh my God. (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 44:07 You're so ... man. I can't believe you don't know this story. Yeah. My dad actually said no. So-

Mel Robbins 44:12 What did Tom do?

Lisa Bilyeu 44:12 So first of all, what happened was he asks him, and my dad then had the thousand questions.

Mel Robbins 44:19 Oh. Now we're in.

Lisa Bilyeu 44:21 That's, that's when the thousand questions came up. What is your plan? How are you going to provide if you don't have a, like, a, a job right now that's paying a lot? Like, you live in a one... you know, an apartment. How are you... What about kids? If you have kids, what job are you going to have so you can pay for the kids? Like, it was all very traditional questions.

Mel Robbins 44:36 Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 44:37 Um, and then afterwards, then my dad said, "No. I..."

Mel Robbins 44:40 No?

Lisa Bilyeu 44:41 No.

Mel Robbins 44:41 Based on Tom's answers?

Lisa Bilyeu 44:42 Bas- yeah. He basically was like, "I, I still don't want you to marry my daughter." And so Tom-

Mel Robbins 44:47 Was the fact that Tom wasn't Greek also a big issue?

Lisa Bilyeu 44:50 Oh, that was like one of the biggest.

Mel Robbins 44:51 Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 44:52 That was actually the biggest. It was more the religion first. Then it was the career path of how you're going to take care of me and the children that we're ago- apparently going to have. Um, so, see, he didn't even ask me if I was gonna have children. He just assumed, and that's why he asked Tom that. So Tom, like the man that I loved did, he's like, "Andreas, I respect you. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me. I'm still going to propose to her. I understand I don't have your blessing. But I promise you, the man that you see today will not be the man that ends up being with your daughter. And I promise I will provide for her." So that's what Tom said to him.

Mel Robbins 45:30 Wow.

Lisa Bilyeu 45:30 And so Tom, when he proposed, he told me very honestly, "Your dad said no, but he's..."

Mel Robbins 45:35 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 45:35 "... and still knows that I..." So my dad, even after that though, was very respectful. He paid for the wedding. He came to the wedding. Like, he was very gracious. He was just... As I was talking to him, I'm going to leave, go to America. So remember all the things that we've set up. "I'm daddy's girl. I really want to please him."

Mel Robbins 45:53 Yeah. Frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 45:54 I'm now saying yes to someone that my dad doesn't want me to marry. My dad was just very adamant. Like, he kept saying, "You sh- maybe you should wait. What's the rush? Don't put a down payment on the reception yet." Like, he was very kind of like... He was respectful, but very tried to push it off.

Mel Robbins 46:09 Mm-hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 46:10 And that's where it's the collision. How many people have made decisions in their life based on their parents and what they want or other people? And what's happened is one of my favorite movies of all time is a movie called Closing Doors or Sliding

Lisa Bilyeu 46:25 Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. That metaphor, I think about all the time. For people that may not know, Gwyneth Paltrow's running for the train. In one scene, she makes the train, they show her life. They cut, and then they do it again. She's running for the train, and she doesn't make the train. And they cut, and then her life. The difference of just making that train. That's really how I think about decisions. One decision can take you on a completely different path. So what are the decisions that you make? I love him so much, I will marry him. But how do I navigate that with my dad who doesn't want me to marry, who, who doesn't want me to go? So I stepped back and I said, "Okay, I can't have my dad dictate." But that was a thought, like a fleeting thought there in the fall.

Mel Robbins 47:07 Of course. And for a lot of people, they do.

Lisa Bilyeu 47:09 Yeah. I'm just honest. I try not to hide around anything. And the truth is,

Lisa Bilyeu 47:15 hopefully, if nature takes its course, my dad dies before me. So now think about when I'm 50, if my dad's not around. I've now said no to the person that I love. And it may not have worked out, but what if it did, and I made a decision for somebody else that I have to live with for the rest of my life? So that was how I processed, "I can't do what my dad wants. I have to do what I want." Now, how do you navigate the conversation? 'Cause I didn't want my dad out of my life. Going back to I actually care. So I said, "Okay, what do I know about humans?" Everyone wants to be seen and heard, period. My dad, if I shut him down, and I'm like, "I'm gonna do..." Right? We said it earlier.

Mel Robbins 47:58 Yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu 47:58 "I'm gon- I'm gonna do me. Don't... Who you, you think you are to tell me what to do?" Like, "You go, girl." Like, all of that.

Mel Robbins 48:04 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 48:05 Like... It isn't reality.

Mel Robbins 48:06 True.

Lisa Bilyeu 48:06 Because the reality is, I did care, and I wanted to show my dad respect. So I said, "Okay, going into this conversation, you're not gonna back down, Lisa. You are going to marry the man of your dreams. It may not work out. You have to embrace that everything you fight for may not work out, but it may. But either way, I have to know I'm making this decision for myself. Otherwise, I won't forgive myself, because I won't know if it works out or not." So.

Mel Robbins 48:29 And here's the thing. What I love is that you were willing to make the decision with the mindset, what if it does?

Lisa Bilyeu 48:40 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 48:40 What if it does work out? And in that moment that you isolated, where your dad has said no-You are making the decision that you are gonna go ahead and marry Tom. I think at some point in every person's life, there is that collision between somebody else's expectations, and hopes and dreams, and wants and desires, and yours. Whether it's a job, or moving somewhere, or choosing to live openly in terms of who you are and who you love.

Lisa Bilyeu 49:21 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 49:22 And... in that moment, literally

Mel Robbins 49:30 putting the bet on, "Well, what if it does work out? What if this collision is momentary? And I'm willing to acknowledge that this person's frame of reference is not the same as mine, and I'm just gonna step one step further onto that train, knowing it's taking me in a direction I feel called to go-

Lisa Bilyeu 49:50 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 49:51 ...but what if it works out?" Like, that's a beautiful way to inch your way forward in your life.

Lisa Bilyeu 49:57 Agreed, and I think the poison of our brains is when we ask ourselves, "What if it doesn't? And now I've gone against the family. I've gone against the beliefs.

Lisa Bilyeu 50:05 I made a big deal." So let's say you're studying something, and you've gone to college, and you tell everybody. Even if they don't agree with you, you're gonna go do this thing, and you spent $100,000 and four years of your life, and you go to the job, and you freaking hate it. And now you stay in the job because you're so embarrassed to tell everybody you actually hate it, right? That you can never predict what's going to happen. And so I have the ability and I- p- just... The ability 'cause I've just promised myself that even if it doesn't work out, I'm gonna be freaking proud that I gave it a chance in the first place. And if I make that decision now, when I get there, if it fails, I just go, "Oh, I knew that it could fail. I just gave myself permission to get started in the first place." So even with my marriage, I had to say to my dad, "Even if my marriage doesn't work out, I have to give it a shot and I won't feel bad and go back." Like, I'm not gonna be that person that's gonna go lick my wounds back to my dad being like, "Dad, you were right." It's like, "No, I gave it a shot and I'm proud that I did."

Mel Robbins 50:55 Yes.

Lisa Bilyeu 50:55 Now, the thing with how you'd communicate that is that next step in, like, this whole humongous, like-

Mel Robbins 51:01 (gasps) Oh, I just got something really big.

Lisa Bilyeu 51:02 Okay.

Mel Robbins 51:03 Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So, in the scenario where you make a decision-

Lisa Bilyeu 51:11 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 51:11 ...and it turns out that it doesn't work out-

Lisa Bilyeu 51:15 Yes.

Mel Robbins 51:16 ...and you come back with your tail between your legs and you're at that moment with your dad, right?

Lisa Bilyeu 51:24 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 51:24 Or anybody in your life who's like, "I told you so. See, I was right." Here's what I just got. In the moment of the collision, and we're just gonna use your story-

Lisa Bilyeu 51:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 51:36 ...as the model for this, and your dad is saying, "No, this is not the right person for you," what he's actually saying is, "He's not the right person in my story about what happens in your life."

Lisa Bilyeu 51:50 Yes.

Mel Robbins 51:52 But that collision is the moment where you get to decide who is the right person for your story about your life. And it doesn't matter, honestly, if the relationship goes the distance or not, because obviously, if you are making the right decision for your story in that moment, they are meant to be a part of your story.

Lisa Bilyeu 52:23 I a thousand percent agree, and I think what we instinctually do is if it fails, we then beat ourselves up and-

Mel Robbins 52:28 And we think somebody else is right.

Lisa Bilyeu 52:29 ...and we think the other person's right.

Mel Robbins 52:30 And it doesn't make them right.

Lisa Bilyeu 52:31 Exactly, and what you have to do in order to prevent that... Because I know that, right? Like, I try not to, like... Okay, I know this about me. Like, know thyself. Know exactly what makes you tick, know exactly what doesn't make you tick. I know myself. I knew that, "Oh, my God, if it fails, I'm gonna feel really bad." And, "Oh, my God, now everyone will think I'm a loser," and... Right? That story you're telling yourself.

Mel Robbins 52:48 Yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu 52:48 So in that moment, going, "How do I make sure that even if it doesn't work out, I don't actually have that knock-on effect, because I know it's gonna be dentri- detrimental to my self-esteem and how I feel about myself?" So I put in actions now in order for the future me to thank me and feel good about the decisions I've made. So that's why I say I did the process. Okay, my dad's gonna die before me. Okay. That's actually true that I don't know if my relationship's gonna work out or not, but either way, my dad may not be around, or obviously eventually he won't be around to even know if it works or not. So I have to make a decision for me, not for him. So I was very concrete on the decision I was making. (air whooshing)

Mel Robbins 53:24 Lisa, this is so powerful. I am getting so much about this concept of frame of reference in my own life right now. A- and looking at the past, and here's what I wanna do. I wanna take a pause, hear a word from our sponsors, because they're bringing this to you at zero cost. And when we return, let's unpack this tool for real, and let's really make sure that you, as you're listening, you leave knowing exactly how to use this in your life, with yourself, with your relationships. I also have listener questions. You're gonna love all of it, so don't go anywhere. We're gonna be waiting for you after a short break. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. I'm so glad you're still here. I am learning so much from Lisa Bilyeau. I know you are too. Her book is Radical Confidence, and she is teaching us about this relationship tool. I freaking love this thing. It's called frame of reference, and Lisa, what I wanna do now is unpack this even further. (air whooshing) I love this idea of rolling the clock forward, and I can give you an example of how I used this without realizing it in my own life-

Lisa Bilyeu 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 54:31 ...to make a really, really big decision. So Chris and I, we... You know... As you know, we have three kids, and, um, we had two daughters,

Mel Robbins 54:40 and Sawyer was five, and Kendall was... literally had just turned four. They're, like, 17 months apart. And, um, we were trying to decide, "Do we wanna have another kid?" And in that moment, everybody has an opinion about this kind of thing, but I made the decision by going...... I don't really wanna think about it for my life right now. But if I roll the clock forward-

Lisa Bilyeu 55:06 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 55:06 ... 50 years from now, and I close my eyes, do I wanna see two adult children or three? Decision made.

Lisa Bilyeu 55:15 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 55:15 And what's interesting about your story is you and Tom ultimately go on and get married. And another collision point with you and your parents was the decision that you and Tom made that, "We're not gonna have kids."

Lisa Bilyeu 55:28 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:29 Could you share

Mel Robbins 55:30 more about having that conversation with your parents?

Lisa Bilyeu 55:34 Yeah. So, um, every time I have a conversation, I've done the internal work first, because I've realized that until I've actually realized how strong I am, why I believe what I believe, why I've made the decision I've made, I understand that I'm, um, permeable to other people's opinions and thoughts and expectations. And so I have to do the inner work first before I ever bring something up to some- to somebody else to have that communication because I gotta know what I'm saying. And because I find myself, again just knowing myself, I start blubbering when I don't have clarity. "Well, you know, oh, well, it could be, it..." That means you don't have clarity. So have clarity in why you are making the decision, so that you can articulate it. So when it came to having kids, it was really hard because there was such a loud voice in my head. Now this is back, let's say, uh, it was maybe 15 years ago.

Mel Robbins 56:21 Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 56:21 So women weren't talking like they do about being child-free. It wasn't heard of really, especially as a Greek woman. So what was interesting is I kept pushing it, pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. And people, being the external sources, family, everyone,

Lisa Bilyeu 56:35 assumed one of two things, because I didn't have children: my marriage wasn't stable or I naturally couldn't have kids.

Mel Robbins 56:42 Oh. 'Cause that was their frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 56:44 That was their frame of reference. So when I kept getting asked, "Is everything okay? You and Tom all right?" Like, you know, "Oh, have you been to a fertility doctor," right? Like, it's all frame of... And I'm like, "I'm not even trying! Like, why do you keep asking me?" But it was their frame of reference. So once I started to work through, "Do I actually want children?" Like, I know people keep saying it, and I actually told Tom when I first married him that I wanted four. I'm a different person now. Like, the neurons in my brain have rewired. I think differently. I have different ambitions, different hobbies. I'm not that person that I was when I met Tom, and so do I actually want children? And I just had to ask myself the question. Now what's weird is, a lot of people may, uh, resonate with this, whether it's children or something else-

Mel Robbins 57:27 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 57:28 ... sometimes you find it starts in, like, a little whisper in your head that you try to ignore. "Nope, not gonna hear her." And then she just gets louder and louder and louder, till eventually you're just like, "Do I actually want kids?" And so instead of just judging myself, I stepped back, and I said, "Why do people want kids?" People keep saying legacy. I've never actually asked myself what legacy means to me. Frame of reference. Legacy means to me that you do something that actually lives past you. Amazing. I don't have to have children to do that. Okay. Let's write that down. Next thing. Why do people think I have to... "You don't want to die alone," is what my dad used to say. All right. Well, if I don't want children, is it worth having them all my entire life, just so I don't die alone? That's not fair on them, let alone me. Okay. Nope, doesn't make sense. Don't die alone. Have great friendships. Build community. Like, there's other ways to not die alone. And so I literally just went through the checklist of why I think I need kids. And everything that I had believed, everything I had believed, I actually disagreed with-

Mel Robbins 58:32 Hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 58:33 ... once I started to actually ask myself. And then the final thing to all of this is, okay, I love the idea of having a little Tom running around, because the truth is, I think we can all get caught up in the idea of the glory of something.

Mel Robbins 58:48 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 58:48 Build a business. The glory is you make so much money, you never have to worry about money. Have kids. The glory is that you never have to do anything when you're older and your kids are gonna take care of you, right? You can, you can have little kids that love on you, and when you feel badly about yourself and the world hates you, your kids are gonna come and give you a cuddle. There are so many reasons why I l- will have the idea of kids. But what does that look like in reality? So

Lisa Bilyeu 59:10 I call it, what does your average Wednesday look like? Like, actually a Wednesday.

Mel Robbins 59:16 Yeah.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:16 What does it actually look like if you're working and you've got kids, if you're not working and you have kids, if you don't have kids and you're working? Like, every possible scenario, paint what a Wednesday looks like.

Mel Robbins 59:25 And you could do this for anything.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:27 Anything.

Mel Robbins 59:28 Anything. Any change you wanna make.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:30 Correct.

Mel Robbins 59:30 What does it look like on a Wednesday if I decide to cut gluten out? What does it look like on a Wednesday if I go back to art school?

Lisa Bilyeu 59:36 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 59:37 Got it.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:37 What would have, what would have to be true-

Mel Robbins 59:39 Mm-hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:39 ... for me to cut gluten and go to art school at the same time? "All right. Well, my husband's a baker, so I have to tell him to either make gluten-free bread," right? Like-

Mel Robbins 59:47 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:47 ... then it takes you into action.

Mel Robbins 59:49 Yes.

Lisa Bilyeu 59:50 Of what you actually have to do to have that life that you want on an average Wednesday. So I sat with Tom, and we had the communication that we always have. "Babe, how do you feel about kids? How do you wanna function?" And he was like, "I'm very ambitious. You knew that about me. I'm not gonna be the father that comes home at 7:00 PM. I need my cognitive load to be very on point, so I'm not gonna be waking up during the week to, to, to change the diapers." He's like, "I love you. I'll support you in any way, but these are my, how I wanna show up." I have to respect that. He's my husband. He has an opinion just like I do. So-

Mel Robbins 1:00:23 Frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:00:23 ... frame of reference. So on my average Wednesday, I took him and his thoughts, and I said, "Cool, he's not waking up in the middle of the night. So either I am or I have a nanny. How do I feel about that? Well, I don't really want a stranger in my house. Okay. So Lisa, you're waking up in the middle of the night. But you love what you do. You love crushing it at work. You love being a beast. You love growing a team. You love creating content. How do you do that if you've got a kid and you don't have a nanny?" All right, well... Right? And you can see-

Mel Robbins 1:00:51 You know what's interesting about listening to you unpack this? Is that if you're somebody who wants kids, or you're like me and you already have 'em, my frame of reference answering every one of those questions is completely different than Lisa's.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:01:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:01:05 And yet two things can be true at the same time.And that's how you navigate this understanding of others and understanding of yourself. You know what I forgot to ask you?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:01:18 What?

Mel Robbins 1:01:18 Whatever happened with your dad and Tom? Like, what is their relationship like now?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:01:21 (laughs) Oh, my God. So you wanna talk about how people can shift their frame of reference?

Mel Robbins 1:01:25 Yes.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:01:25 So my dad goes to s- from somebody who's, "How are you gonna take care of my daughter? I'm not sure I believe in you. I don't know how you're gonna do it," to we're five years in at Quest. My dad doesn't quite understand, like, the ginormous company that it had grown into. Grew at 57000%. We went from zero to a billion dollars in five years.

Mel Robbins 1:01:45 (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 1:01:45 (laughs) Yeah. So I went from stay-at-home wife supporting my husband to helping him build it in five years, to talk about how much skillsets I had to learn and build, and the confidence that I was, like, feeling inferior all the time. But I just kept going. But the results are, five years later, we're announced as the second-fastest growing company in North America. And my du- my dad comes for vacation. So it's the first time we go from poor, not, you know, n- not having a company, just kind of, like, really trying to make ends meet, to then this company. And we take him around the facilities. And we at that point had 300,000 facil- uh, 300,000 square feet. We had 3,000 employees.

Mel Robbins 1:02:25 Wow.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:02:25 3,000 'cause we were manufacturing. And so we take my dad round this 300,000 square feet, and you walk into the facility, Mel, and it looked like freaking Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Like, we were doing 1.2 bil- um, 1.2 million bars a day. So my dad goes from nothing to seeing this, right? We take him around. We've got the tour, we've got the hairnets, the, the jackets, and we are done. And right at the end, Tom turns around to my dad and says, "Andres, remember when you asked me how I was gonna take care of your daughter?" And he goes, "Yes." Tom goes, "How am I doing now?"

Mel Robbins 1:02:58 (gasps) .

Lisa Bilyeu 1:02:58 And my dad burst into tears. He hugged him. He was like, "I'm so proud of you." And it was the most incredible moment because of where we had started. Because I had spoken up, because we spoke to him, we communicated. I didn't accept his frame of reference, as it was going to be my frame of reference. And I gave him the grace to adapt and change, and for us to prove, not necessarily to him, but to prove that we were willing to work through our relationship struggles and actually thrive. And it was just the most amazing kind of ending to... You don't have to just stop at someone else's opinion. You don't have to relinquish your dreams for somebody else. Keep going on that path. And either they're gonna come around like my dad or they're not. But either way, homie, you're gonna be on that path that makes you freaking thrive.

Mel Robbins 1:03:49 What I love so much about that is that it also reveals that if you give somebody the space to feel how they feel, to have their opinions, and you don't agree, and you respect that that's their frame of reference, and then you go and you make the decisions that really empower you, people do change.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:04:17 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:04:18 And you've now just not shamed somebody into doing it-

Lisa Bilyeu 1:04:20 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:04:21 ... but he can own authentically a massive shift in his belief.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:04:28 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:04:28 What a beautiful example.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:04:29 Thank you. Now, the other sto- part of this, though, is we may not have succeeded. We may not have got the company. We may have bickered so much and not been able to communicate, and we may have got divorced. So I don't want people to think there's always going to be the rainbows, but I still would've made the same choice. That's the important part here. (air whooshing)

Mel Robbins 1:04:48 All right. Let's jump into some listener questions because we got tons of them from people that listen to this podcast and knew that you were coming on.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:04:55 Yay.

Mel Robbins 1:04:56 And I know that you're gonna give some incredible advice.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:04:59 Let's do it.

Mel Robbins 1:04:59 And this is an interesting

Mel Robbins 1:05:00 one. This comes from Patty. "How can you correct a mistake? I took confidence away from my daughter, who is now in college. I think I messed this up big time. I think I made her feel like I didn't believe in her and her ability, and I feel like I ruined her."

Lisa Bilyeu 1:05:22 Wow. Okay. Wow. Patty, thank you, first of all, for being so open and honest. I think it's very hard to admit when you've made a mistake. That's a huge freaking win already that she is thinking about that.

Mel Robbins 1:05:34 Mm-hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:05:34 Number two, I would say you only know what you know. And so you did the best you could at the time, and now you've grown, and maybe you've realized differences of how you should have maybe have behaved or a- interacted. But you didn't know better. You do now. And then I would just say, thirdly, I'm always the person to just be honest. And I would literally read that question out to my daughter. I would say, "I love you so much. You mean so much to me, and I feel like I've made a mistake. And this isn't about me. This isn't about you making me feel better," 'cause that's gonna be the trick, right? You don't want her to get into that conversation and have the daughter console the mom.

Mel Robbins 1:06:09 Oh, that's good. That's really good.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:06:13 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:06:13 So if you're not going into the conversation with your daughter or anybody because you think you screwed up...

Lisa Bilyeu 1:06:23 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:06:24 ... we do go into those conversations wanting to feel relief from the guilt that we feel.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:06:29 Yes, we do.

Mel Robbins 1:06:30 So what do you go into that conversation with instead?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:06:33 What is your intention? If your intention is to actually help your daughter gain her confidence back, this isn't about you. Take yourself out the freaking equation. Don't make yourself part of the victimness of this situation. And I mean that with compassion. Hopefully, you know that. But, like, I would just go, "This isn't about me. I actually feel like I've done something to my daughter." I would go into that conversation like, "I love you so much. I really care about you. I feel like I've made a mistake, but this isn't about me. I just need to know how you feel, and I'd love to work with you in order to fix it. Is this true or is this my own figment of my own perception of how things have been? And I want to leave space that you can be very open. This isn't about protecting my emotions." 'Cause that's very important, because your daughter...If her true thing is to actually get the truth, you need to give space for her daughter to be honest. But if you're going in to make yourself feel better, and you expect and want an answer from her, you're setting yourself and your daughter up for disaster. And the conversation won't go well. And if you actually care about her, based on what that letter says, or that question, then do not go in with the idea of you're trying to fix your own emotion. This isn't about you.

Mel Robbins 1:07:42 And I would add something. I personally think that the frame of reference piece could be extremely helpful for you understanding why you may have acted how you did.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:07:53 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:07:55 You don't go in explaining yourself, I agree with you, because putting the focus on your daughter, and listening, and what she needs, because your own inability to deal with your own emotions and fears is what caused this-

Lisa Bilyeu 1:08:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:08:07 ... if in fact it did. Second thing I would just say is that human beings are built for resilience. Don't sell your daughter short.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:08:14 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:08:15 Like, just 'cause she's struggling right now, and yeah, you probably did do something. Uh, we all do, and we don't mean it.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:08:22 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:08:23 But taking responsibility and standing also in the space of you are gonna get through this, and you are confident, you're not wrecked or ruined in even thinking that brings your daughter even further down. Like, hold a higher standard for what's possible in your daughter-

Lisa Bilyeu 1:08:39 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:08:40 ... as you're going into that.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:08:41 And one more thing to just even pile onto that is there's no way you are solely responsible for somebody else's behavior, confidence, uh, or self-esteem. Zero. So while I say yes, you should talk to her and everything else, you've gotta give yourself compassion, homie. Like, there is no way you are the sole being of everything that's happened to her. There's so much complication to a human, right? The, the condition of when they're, how and where they were birthed, the, their g- their gut biome, their interactions with their first teacher, the, maybe they got bullied and maybe they didn't. Um, what was their diet like as a kid? If they were only on sugar, then I'm sure that their brain was inflamed, so they actually feel less l-, uh, more c- they feel less confident. Like, there's so much complexity to what makes a human that I honestly want to give you compassion as well to say this isn't on, all on you, so give yourself that grace as well.

Mel Robbins 1:09:30 And focus on your daughter.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:09:31 Correct.

Mel Robbins 1:09:32 This isn't about relieving-

Lisa Bilyeu 1:09:33 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:09:33 ... your stuff. Got it. Go to a therapist

Mel Robbins 1:09:35 for that. (laughs)

Lisa Bilyeu 1:09:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:09:36 Right?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:09:36 True. Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:09:36 Here's another question. Um, can you be successful even when you have an introverted personality type? The reason I ask is because I'm 40 years old, and for years, I've been told by people I meet in new situations, "You're so quiet. Speak up," and it really annoys me. Why is it not okay to be a bit quiet? Or should I make an effort to change and be more outgoing and loud?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:09:59 Well, there's no shoulds. It's only if she wants to be more outgoing and loud based on her own needs, not other people's expectations. So I think that's where she needs to start. If- it seems like she's very comfortable being an introvert. So the question is, why do you feel like you have to please other people, number one. Number two, what does success mean to you? 'Cause she's like, "Can you be successful?"

Mel Robbins 1:10:20 I am gonna come back to frame of reference. Anybody that comes to you and says, "Why are you so quiet? You should speak up more," that's their frame of reference.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:10:29 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:10:30 And you need to create... Well, first, you need to understand your own, but then Lisa gave you the advice. What does success mean to you? And there's a, a small piece of research that I would add here, which is, if it does matter to you to make more money, if it does matter to you to be perceived

Mel Robbins 1:10:50 as more successful, the research is very clear that the only thing that tends to translate to a promotion or a pay increase for women in the workplace is when your contributions are made known. Which means, in that specific setting of advocating for yourself and being louder about the contribution you are making at work, that is important if getting paid more is important to you.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:11:17 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:11:18 But being louder or more outgoing when you're first meeting people, that's up to you.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:11:24 Yeah. I think it stems from the goal. What are you trying to get to? And then what skills do you need to adopt to get there, period. That is how I think about my life in every single, um, avenue. So for her, what are you trying to get to? What is that success for you look like? And to your point, is if then it means you have to advocate for yourself, then yeah, you're gonna have to become more of an extrovert and, you know, come outta your shell. So that will dictate how you show up.

Mel Robbins 1:11:47 I have a question that I think is really gonna resonate with you. This is from Marina. "Hello, Mel and Lisa. From a young age, I was raised to keep my head down, to be small, and to not want a lot, and even writing to you both now feels strange."

Lisa Bilyeu 1:12:03 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:12:03 "The old me wouldn't dare." And she goes on to write that she doesn't wanna feel small anymore. "What wisdom can you give me to push myself to do more with my life and to take the small steps every day toward my dream?" But what advice do you have for someone like Marina who feels lost, who feels out of touch with her ambition?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:12:31 Yeah. I think clarity's key. So A, I wanna say just applaud this woman, because holy smoke, she said that even writing that question made her uneasy. So do you wanna talk about a s- a step-by-step in the right direction? Hells yeah, homie. Congratulations. I'm so damn proud of you. Um, and really

Lisa Bilyeu 1:12:48 the key is to have clarity on what you're actually trying to get to. I have a feeling in her question she doesn't actually know what she's looking for. And this is the problem that I think a lot of us face is, if you don't have clarity, um, what's the, the quote? Like, a fuzzy target is hard to hit.

Mel Robbins 1:13:02 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:03 So it's like, if you don't have such clarity on what you're trying to get to, I have no idea what steps I need to take. So let me just give you a bit of a, like a, um, a method that I use on how I figure out-

Mel Robbins 1:13:15 Great. Okay.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:15 ... goals and stuff. So I go, okay, what is my mission? Everything's based around the thing that's gonna help me get up out of bed every single day when I feel terrible. We all know it. We have those days. We feel badly about ourselves. It's our hormones-

Mel Robbins 1:13:26 It's hard to imagine you like that.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:28 Oh, dude, I'm like that all the time.... same.

Mel Robbins 1:13:30 No, seriously.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:31 I am.

Mel Robbins 1:13:31 Like, you know, when you look at your resume, it's hard... Does Lisa Bilyeu ever wake up and feel bad? Like, she is confident, she is driven, she is clear. I mean, when you were in that eight-year cycle-

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:42 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:13:43 ... for yourself, where you were just in the monotony of the day-to-day, staying at home, you were bored, you felt insecure-

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:13:52 ... where do you start when you're there?

Lisa Bilyeu 1:13:53 Okay. That's a great question. So when you know you don't like where you are, it's a great start. But again, if I don't know where I'm going, I don't know how to put a plan together. So let's say I was the stay-at... Well, I was the stay-at-home wife. I started to realize I had been swallowing my dreams for eight years. Why? Why was I doing that? I had to start there. What was the conditioning and the thought process that made me think, like, I couldn't speak up? My husband's shown me every step of the way that he loves me and he'll support me in whatever I want to do. And so it all came to, what w- got me stuck in the first place? That was important to me. And so I backtracked, and I wrote the script. What was the things that I was saying to myself? It was the word when. "I will do this when."

Mel Robbins 1:14:38 Mm.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:14:39 "I will tell Tom that I don't like cooking for him when we have enough money that I can then go do what I want." "I will go after my dreams when Tom's made enough money, and we have enough money to go make movies." "I will, um, speak up about not having kids when. I will..." Right? Like the when is so powerful to us that keeps us stuck. And what I had to ask myself is, "What happens if the when never came?" So I'm going to do X, Y, and Z when this happens. What if that thing never happens? What now? Now you have a choice. And so taking away that when was very powerful for me. So now I have to figure out what I'm actually then going to do with my life. What, what do I actually want to do? So of course, it was making movies. How do I articulate that to the people in my life that I'm about to make a change in my life? 'Cause to her point, she doesn't know how to.

Mel Robbins 1:15:31 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:15:31 It's hard to speak up.

Mel Robbins 1:15:32 Right.

Lisa Bilyeu 1:15:32 So I had to have the clarity of what I'm trying to do. So clarity is the goal. It's the what, the how much, and by when.

Mel Robbins 1:15:41 That's a great little tip because for any of you that are sitting there listening, going, "But I don't know what I want. But I don't know what I want," Lisa's basically going, "That's not true." Because somewhere down in the back of your mind, you have a timeline where you say, "When this happens, then I'll do X." So if you answer that, "When I can pay my bills, then I'll do the X. When I don't have to do this, then I'll do that. When..." A lot of people write in, "When