Living With Purpose: Timeless Wisdom for a More Meaningful Life

I had a life changing experience with a wild animal. (instrumental music plays) I crouched down over it and the rain is coming down and the headlights are lighting me up from behind, and at that exact moment, turns its head slowly around and it is now staring at me eye to eye. It was the craziest experience of my life. I kinda look at Chris and I'm like, "Can you believe this is happening on our anniversary? This is like a message from God or the universe. Th- this is unbelievable." And there are five ways that the whole experience taught me, and so today, it is story time. Let's get into it. (clock ticks) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so fired up for story time today because I have one heck of a story to tell you about something that happened to me a year ago, almost to the day, involving an owl, and I'm gonna get to that in just a minute. But first, I wanna welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast, particularly if you are brand new. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to something that could make you happier, help you improve your life. That is exactly what this story about the owl is going to help you do. You're gonna love this. It is going to give you chills. It is gonna make you think. It's gonna give you specific things that you can do in order to enrich your experience. I kinda can't believe I haven't told you this full story before because this has been a huge deal in my life ever since it happened a year ago. It was so impactful, it's almost like I've become the owl lady, like obsessed with owls. But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, so here's how this whole thing started. It was my 27th wedding anniversary, and my husband, Christopher, and I went out to dinner. We drove about 45 minutes from where we live in southern Vermont. We went to this really nice restaurant. We had a date. It was really fun. We get back in the car, and as we get back in the car, now we're gonna drive 45 minutes back home, it's starting to get dark. And not only is it starting to get dark, but the rainstorm looks like it's coming. And so we get in the car, we start driving, we put on the music, the sun is setting, and the rain is picking up. So we got about a 45-minute drive on the back windy roads through southern Vermont to get back to our house and it is pouring rain, and it's pitch black. It's the kind of eerie rainstorm where it is dark, dark. I mean, if you turned off your headlights, there would be no moon, there would be no stars. You would not be able to see the hand in front of your face dark. Plus, it is raining, and it's not just like the sprinkle raining. It's like (imitates rain pouring) and your windshield wipers are (imitates wiper swishing) and it's almost like they're not even making a difference. And so here we are. We're driving really slow because obviously hydroplaning, and we are coming around a corner and up and down the hills and we're up and down the road and it- up in the mountains, and luckily there is a car in front of us because, can we agree, isn't it helpful when there's a car right in front of you in a dark rainstorm? You can track their taillights so you know what is right in front of you even though you can't kinda see in front of you? And so we're all just kinda inching along, and by all I mean the two of us because we are in the middle of nowhere in southern Vermont. So, we come around this corner and we are coming down this hill, and we can see the car in front of us. We see their taillights. The rain is coming down, and up ahead on the other side of the road, I see headlights coming, and you can kinda tell based on how far they are that as we are descending down this hill, and they are coming from the other direction, we're gonna kinda meet and pass one another as we get to the flat part at the bottom of the hill. So, we're going along and the rain's (imitates rain pouring) coming down, windshield wipers are going, and the red taillights are our north star, and I see this just flash of whiteness up ahead of the car that we're following. It's like this giant white (imitates air whooshing) outta nowhere from the top-right side just flying down toward the road, and that oncoming car is now right there upon us and (claps) it hits this white thing and the thing goes tumbling and I realize, "Oh my God, that was a bird." And I yell, "Chris, Chris, stop. Stop. Stop." And he pulls over the car and the car that we had been following just keeps going. That car is not the car that hit the bird. The car that was coming, the oncoming traffic is what hit this bird, and there was a car behind us and so Chris pulls off and it was so just eerie. Like I don't know if you're into things like the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Game of Thrones, but those scenes where it's super dark and the light is somehow there and the rain is falling and I'm in heels and a dress 'cause I've dressed up for Chris. I don't wear this stuff in Vermont, but for some reason I am wearing this tonight. That doesn't stop me because I just have this like first responder syndrome thing in me where if somebody's hurt or some animal's hurt, I'm like...... first on the scene. And so I've yelled at Chris, we've pulled over, the other car is gone, the car that has hit this thing has now pulled off, and the rain is coming down. But here's the craziest part, our headlights are beaming through the rain. So if you can imagine a scene in a movie where the raindrops, every single one of them, is backlit by these headlights. And a car pulls up behind us and I hold up my hand and stop. I don't even know what the person has hit at this point. I just know I'm out of the car and I'm into the rain in my high heels, and I am stopping traffic, and I am lit in this rainstorm by the headlights. And so I clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp through all the puddles and the pouring rain over to this mass of feathers, and it is a huge adult barred owl. And its wings are spread open, and this thing must have had a wingspan, like, three and a half feet, maybe even four. Like, it was huge, and it was just splayed out there, the poor thing. And the rain is coming down, and- and you can tell that one wing is open the correct way and the other wing is flipped backwards. And you just know, oh- oh, that is not supposed to look like that. And the bird is perfectly still, and I just crouched down over it. I literally step on either side of this thing, and I crouched down over it, and the rain is coming down, and the headlights are lighting me up from behind. And at that exact moment, this owl, who had been face down, turns its head slowly around, and it is now staring at me eye to eye. It was as if Gandalf the Wizard was like zit. It was the craziest experience of my life. I had this one-on-one eye lock moment with a wild owl in a rainstorm on the evening of my 27th wedding anniversary, and I just stood there and had this eye to eye intimate moment. I could tell this poor thing was in such a state of shock, but there was just this shroud of mystery and majesty to the moment, and I was in a trance. Like, I- like, if you would have told me in that moment, "Mel, this owl is here to tell you that you have wings. Girl, just sprout 'em out, start flapping," I would have been convinced that that messenger in that owl was to tell me that I had angel wings and it was time to flap. Like, it was that incredible of an experience. And, you know, I have to say, as I've reflected on this, if this had happened during the daytime, I'm not sure it would have had the mystery and the magical nature, but there was something about the rainstorm and the fact that darkness was everywhere and the headlights created this just dramatic other world experience. And if you had told me that I spent two hours crouched in my high heels, dripping wet, staring into the eyes of that owl, I would have- I would believe you, because it was that kind of experience where time just froze. Have you ever had an experience like that, where everything around you just disappears and you are, in that moment, frozen? It was incredible. I will remember that moment for the rest of my life. Those few seconds felt like years, and the only thing that brought me out of it, because that owl and I, man, we were not going to break eye contact. You get a chance to really have that kind of intimacy with an owl or a wild animal, you do not look away. It's like the most, uh, primal staring contest you could ever be in. And I was trying to communicate through my eyes, "You're gonna be okay, buddy. You're gonna be okay, buddy. We're gonna take care of you. You're gonna be okay." And what happened next is all of a sudden, I felt the presence of other human beings behind me, and thankfully, the other driver and Chris had gotten out of their cars and the other driver yelled, "Hey, I've got a huge beach towel in my car." It didn't even occur to me that I needed something to pick this owl up. I mean, like, I was in full on Mother Earth mode about to scoop this thing up in my arms and take it to the hospital. Didn't even occur to me. This thing has a beak that could shred your jugular, Mel. It's got talons that could rip open your arms. You do not wanna pick this thing up. I was about to scoop it up, but this guy's like, "I got a towel." So he runs back to his truck and he comes running back and he has this bright blue aqua-colored, Caribbean blue, big old beach towel-And without even thinking, I just dropped that beach towel on top of this bird, and I scooped it up as carefully as I could. And this guy from the truck behind us helped me just as best we could tuck that poor broken wing up and underneath it, and dear God, I hope I didn't hurt that bird further, because we just wanted to get it to safety. And next thing you know, I'm sitting in the front seat of our truck, holding a wild barred owl in my arms, wrapped in an aqua Caribbean blue beach towel. Unbelievable. And I kind of look at Chris, and I'm like, "Can you believe this? Can you believe this is happening on our anniversary?" This is like a message from God or the universe, like this is unbelievable. And I haven't even told you the fact that our family are crazy Harry Potter fans. And by crazy, I mean I bet we have watched the entire Harry Potter series probably nine times as a family, from, uh, movie number one all the way to the end. When our kids were little, Chris read the Harry Potter series to our kids every single night of their lives. Like, this ... I have always wanted a hedgewick. I have always wanted an owl. And now I have got this, like, two-foot tall barred owl wrapped in my arms, and if you think about Harry Potter or any fantasy novel, owls are messengers. They go between the human world, called the Muggles in Harry Potter, and the wizard world. They carry messages, and so I was convinced as I sat there in the front seat of the car this was a message. I mean, this is no accident. This is happening on our 27th wedding anniversary, which we have just celebrated, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this magical, incredible bird is hit in front of our eyes, and we're the ones who are rescuing it? It clearly has to have a message for us, right? And so I wrap it up and, you know, Chris is so adorable. I've got my arm squeezing this thing, but not too tight. You know, I don't want to hurt the thing anymore, and then I'm also starting to think, "Did I wrap its talons in this towel, or are they sitting against my skirt right now, ready to go ʻEh!ʼ?" And Chris, like, reaches over carefully and grabs the seatbelt and pulls it out extra wide to click it in so that the owl and I are safe, and off we go. Which presents a problem. What the hell are we gonna do with this bird? I mean, it's not like I am a certified animal rescue responder. It's not like I know anything about how to rehabilitate an animal. And so, I say to Chris, "Dude, we gotta figure out where we're gonna take this bird. Like, you don't take a bird like this to the pound. What do you do?" And so, Chris goes, "Oh, I know, we should call Dr. Bob." Dr. Bob is the world's most amazing vet. He's our vet here in Southern Vermont. We love Dr. Bob, and so we call the after-hours service, 'cause we think, "Dr. Bob, been a vet in Southern Vermont forever, he is gonna know exactly what to do." And so we get the after-hours service, and now we're driving, and of course I'm holding this thing like a newborn. And so as Chris is driving, I'm like, "Be careful!" Like, "Watch ʻspidal! Be careful of the bumping!" Chris is like, "Okay, I got it, I got it. I'm doing the best that I can here." And so we get the after-hours service, and I gotta give a huge shout-out to Dr. Bob. Dr. Bob called us back five minutes later. It's like 9:30 at night, and he had this great, calm voice. "Hey guys, what's up?" I'm like, "Dr. Bob, we have just found this barred owl that was hit by a car." And he's like, "Oh, wow. Like, that's, that's a really special thing. Thank you for rescuing it." And he immediately knew what to do. He told us to call this organization called VINS, which is the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences. They specialize in this. They're about an hour and a half from us up in Woodstock, and so we call their after-hours service. And there was no one available, so I'm then, with one hand as I'm holding the owl, I am googling what to do. And I find all of these videos about how you are supposed to keep an animal safe, like an owl or a bird, when you find one injured in the wild. And so we mainline these videos as Chris is carefully driving and I'm holding this barred owl in my lap as my own personal messenger from the universe and God and the magical kingdom, and I'm, just can't help but go ... I mean, this is not like a fly has hit your windshield. This is a big, fricking spiritual deal. And so we get home, and what I have learned on the drive home by watching these videos online, is that the best thing to do is to put the owl in something like a, um, laundry basket, because it has holes in it. And it is a safe container, and we happened to have, you know, a nice-sized laundry basket, just like you probably do. Shout-out to the big container stores that sell these things. And so Chris runs upstairs when we get there, and now meanwhile the kids are all home. So they come downstairs, and I'm holding this thing in the front seat, and they're like, "Oh my God, it's an owl." And it's blinking, and it is fully present in the moment, and you know, people are, "What should we name it?" I'm like, "Well, we're not keeping it. We can't name it anything." Like, this is, this is, like, this incredible thing that's happening, and so now we've got five of us all shouting, like, "Okay, let's get the thing. L- let's put it in Dad's tractor barn," 'cause Chris has this barn where his tractor is and where he does his woodworking stuff. And so we put the, the, the laundry basket out there, and I'm now holding this thing-And we're walking it, again, through the rain, over to the little barn. "Keep the dogs away. Get the dogs out of here. Th- I don't want the dogs to make a thing." And we turn on the lights, and we gently set the owl into the basket, and then we all stand there and look at the owl. And it's looking up at us, and it's just one of these giant, aw, moments. I mean, it's pretty unbelievable to be that close to a wild animal. No fence in between you, no distance, and it was so still. And we all just stood there and looked at this owl, and, oh my God, its poor wing. I mean, it was just like, its right shoulder was just, like, two inches lower than the other side, and its wing was just hanging there. It was so sad. And I- I was like, "God, should I take the towel out? Do I leave the towel in?" Chris was like, "I don't think the owl cares about the towel right now. I think we should just let it be." And so we put a piece of plywood over the top as the video from the certified rescue people showed us to do, and then we turned off the lights, and we went inside. And I'll tell you what, I did not sleep a wink. If you've ever brought a new puppy home or a newborn home, you do not sleep that first night. You lie awake and you go, "Uh-oh, are they okay? Are they gonna make it? Are they gonna, like, how is this gonna work?" And I remember getting up that next morning and just having this heaviness in my heart. "Is that owl gonna be alive? Oh my God, dear God, I would give anything for this poor owl to be alive. Please, please, dear God, let this owl be alive." And so first thing in the morning, Chris and I go out there, and if you've ever had an experience like this, you don't run. You kinda walk slowly because you have this sense that maybe it's not gonna have made it, that maybe it's not gonna be okay. And so we open up the barn door, and I walk over to the laundry basket, and I don't see any movement at all. And I'm kinda scared that it didn't make it, and so I carefully lift up the plywood, because I'm also nervous that maybe it did, and maybe it's gonna use that one wing and flap out and attack us all. Like, I don't know what's gonna happen. This is a wild animal, for crying out loud. And so I lift up the lid, and there he is, just looks right up at me, still, I'm sure, in a massive state of shock. And I take a giant exhale. Oh my gosh, it made it. And that morning was a blast because we told everybody that, "We- we- we found an owl. An owl got hit." And so our friends came over and they all looked at the owl, and, you know, we allowed people to take, you know, like, you could lift it up a little and take a photo, then we're gonna leave it for an hour. And we had about four hours with the owl in that barn before the volunteers from VINS showed up. And when the volunteers from VINS showed up, I- it was sad. I didn't want the owl to leave. It was really sad. I had grown so attached to this thing. I felt like there was a message in this and I didn't know what it meant. What was this owl trying to tell me? Because this stuff does not happen by accident. Dear Owl, before they take you away to the rehabilitation center where you will live happily ever after with all your other owl friends that got rehabilitated, and I will come visit you forever, what is the message? That is what every single spirit person, guide person, you know, of course, 'cause I went on a crazy spiral on Google searching for what does an owl mean, what is the meaning of an owl, what is a spirit animal of an owl. And owls are messengers. Owls usher in change. And so I'm sitting there as they're packing this owl up, and, "Oh, wow, that looks like a broken clavicle. That's a really bad injury. Oh, boy." Like, and they're- And I'm like, "Oh, no." And th- and- and- I'm like, "Can I check on the owl? How am I gonna ch-" "You just tell them that it was an owl rescued on this date. This is a barred owl. We think it's a male. You can call, you can check in on your owl." That made me feel a little bit better. But they packed that owl up, they put him in the back of a Subaru, and off he went. It turns out what was happening is the barred owl was up in the trees in the dark, and the cool thing about owls is they see in the dark. And the other cool thing about owls is they are silent flyers. Their feathers are super unique. You cannot hear them fly, and we're gonna get into that in- in a little bit. But this owl was probably perched up on a tree. That's how they hunt, and they can see through the dark, and I guarantee you it saw a frog or a mouse or something about to scurry across the road, because now that I've gone back and thought about this moment over and over and over again, as we were getting to the point where there was a dip at the bottom of the hill, I remember seeing, right before this white flush, I remember seeing, out of the corner of my eye, this tiny little hopping thing.... that was going from our side, crossing over into the other. An interesting fact about owls, which I have recently learned in the last year having rescued one, is that their eyes don't move. They're fixed. The reason why an owl's head can go 270 degrees, they've got twice the amount of bones that you and I have in our necks, is because they move their necks as a way to move their eyes. See, when that owl up in that tree saw that little thing hopping across the road, it locked its eyes on that little mouse. And once the eyes are locked on the mouse, it takes flight silently, because it is a deadly predator, man. It is flying down to snatch that mouse. And if it were to have to move its neck all around and move its eyes to track the mouse as it's moving, it would cause it to make sounds as it's flying and so it can stay stealth and just move its neck to track the mouse, which is probably why it didn't see the fricking car that was coming, 'cause it came out of nowhere and swooped down because its fricking neck and its eyes were locked on that mouse, not everything else going on around it. And that's (claps) when it got hit. So what happened? What happened to the owl? I was so curious, especially in those days. I was like, you know, a mom that sent her kid away to camp or was waiting to hear from the doctors how the surgery went, and I kept calling and calling. And finally, three days later, I speak to someone on the phone. The owl didn't make it. I was crushed. I was so devastated. In those three days where I was waiting like an anxious parent to hear what the doctors were gonna say about the surgery, I had concocted this entire fantasy of my owl, my owl, uh, living happily ever after up at Vin's and us being able to go once a year and visit the owl and meet the owl friends, and I just had this whole fantasy in my mind. They explained the nature of the injury, how devastating it was. I ju- I was kinda angry. I was like, "Are you kidding me? With today's technology, you can't just amputate that wing and kinda wrap him up and let him have a one-wing life?" I mean, I know that's selfish of me. They did the right thing by the owl. But I think had the owl lived, my last year would've gone an entirely different trajectory, because there was something about learning that the owl died that sent our family into, I don't know, it- it just triggered this incredible obsession for our family with owls. I mean, I've always loved owls, absolutely loved owls, but this experience took it to a whole new level. I mean, first of all, what did we do? We, we bought as many books as we could. We learned as much as we could about owls. They're absolutely unbelievable. We signed up, uh, for Christmas, everybody got a little, like, owl statue put into their stocking. We gave Chris a book all about owl nests and how you build a, quote, "Owl house." If you ever wanna build an owl house, which is something that our family has done together, it is a three-foot-high plywood birdhouse with a huge opening on one side that took Chris and our daughter, Sawyer, an entire weekend to build. And then you know what they had to do? They had to drag an extension ladder, like the ca- kind of ladder that you see people using to clear out the gutters on a house, all the way through the woods on the mountain that we live on, up into the woods and up against a tree, and then Chris had to haul this thing that weighed, like, 40 pounds up, like, 25 feet and hang this thing up. Why? Because we're obsessed with owls. Like, we became that family. And I haven't even told you the fact that my husband's name is Christopher Robbins, as in Winnie-the-Pooh. And who is one of Christopher Robin's friends? Owl. Where does Christopher Robbins and Pooh and Tigger and Piglet go to get advice? Oh, Owl's house. And so we started as a family going, "Maybe we should name our house Owl's house." Like, it became this whole thing. And then just a couple months ago, as it was turning into spring, we signed up and went on an owl walk, and that brings me to one of the first owl objects that we bought. Oh my God, this thing is so heavy, because if you're... (grunts) Oh my God. If you're watching on YouTube you can see this, but if you're listening, I'm gonna describe this. I'm gonna move this over real quick 'cause it's a little too close to me. I'm gonna... (grunts) Okay. O- All right, you hear that dragging? That is probably a 20-pound cement owl statue, which is one of the first objects that we bought to signify that you are now at the owl house. And this sucker right here sits on the front porch greeting you when you come into our home. And it's like, it just took off from there, no pun intended. We wanted to just be around owls. I- I guess because we couldn't go visit our owl, we wanted to be able to be around other owls. And so the next thing that we did that was pretty impactful is we signed up for an owl walk at a local state park that also has this great education center, and we go on this owl walk with a bunch of other people, and if I'm being honest, I'm like, "I don't want other people in my owl experience." But I learned...... a lot there, and this takes me to the first thing that this experience with an owl taught me in my life, and that is look up. Look up. If an owl's entire spiritual message is wisdom, that it's here to be a symbol of change, one change that I have made in my life that has made a huge difference thanks to this owl is looking up. You cannot see an owl out in the wild if you're looking down. In order to spot one, you've gotta keep your eyes up and you scan the canopy and you look for something that's like a foot or so tall that's sort of shadowy. That's how you find them. And isn't it true that in life you need to look up more? You spend so much of your time, and so do I, looking at your phone, looking at a computer. When you're walking, you're looking at the ground or you're looking at the phone. There is so much to see, so much magic, and you're missing it if you don't look up from your phone, if you don't look around when you're outside. And that's the first thing that I've learned from this experience with the owl, because now whenever I'm out in the woods, and look, it's great that I'm just getting out in the woods and I'm hiking, but before this experience, you know what I was doing? I would be out there hiking, it'd be quiet for the first 10 minutes, and then I'm like, "Oh, I should make a video for everyone while I'm hiking," or I'd be like texting somebody or I'd be listening to an audiobook. No. My phone is in my fanny pack now. I... Which is a whole nother problem because the dog treats are in there too and so you gotta have them in the back pocket of the fanny pack, but I digress. But I now go on hikes and I'm scanning all the time, looking. And that brings me to the second thing that's so cool about owls and what this experience taught me: open yourself up to magic. When I go out into the woods now, I expect to see an owl. I am opening myself up to magic. Now, I almost never see one. I n- I have seen one owl in the wild since I had the experience a year ago on my 27th anniversary. That's how elusive they are. But I'll tell you what, every single time I am out in the woods, every single time I step outside at night here in Southern Vermont and I hear the barred owls up on the mountain go, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?" I- I'm like, "They're right here, they're right here. Okay. Oh, I'm gonna open myself up to magic, something magical is gonna happen." And when you look for something in life, the world has an amazing way of showing it to you. And even though I have only seen one owl in the wild since I've been looking every day and opening myself up to magic, holy cow, my husband, Chris, has opened himself up to magic. He's looking for owls. Our family kinda believes he's become an owl. The man is an owl whisperer. He steps outside at dusk and it's like they can sense him. They start calling to him. I don't know if he smells musky and the chicks are out there like, "Who cooks for you? Christopher Robin's aro-" Like I don't know what it is, but he had this crazy experience the other day. He sees owls all the time. And so he steps down on this hike that we do on this mountain that we live on where he's coming up close to our house, and all of a sudden, he sees a barred owl like 10 feet from him, sitting right there in the tree. And he looks the barred owl in the eye, just like I did a year ago almost to the day, and has this whole experience. And then all of a sudden, check this out, that owl starts to call. And there's another owl that starts to respond. And he's standing there as they're talking to each other, and then all of a sudden, the one that he's looking at spreads its wings and (flapping sounds) flies to another tree. And then guess what else happens? The other one spreads its wings, (flapping sounds) flies back to the branch where the other one was, and now it's staring at Chris. I can't make this up. I was so freaking jealous. Like he's literally getting these experiences that are insane. He's drawing them to him. I- I just... It's not happened for me, but I'm gonna tell you what, it is gonna happen for me, because I am opening myself up to that kind of magic too. And you should too, because if you expect it and you keep looking up and you put out that energy, you will draw it to you. I know this to be true in my bones. And in fact, I was so curious about the fact that Chris just has this connection that I of course asked a psychic to tell me what is the meaning of this thing that happened on our 27th wedding anniversary. And so I want you to hear what the world acclaimed psychic Kim Russo had to say about this experience of rescuing this owl on the night of our 27th anniversary.