Should You Trust Your Gut Instinct? | The Mel Robbins Podcast

It's really hard to find the courage to make a decision that is the right decision for you. We are so quick to consider what everybody else is thinking. We're so quick to weigh how our decision is gonna impact somebody else's feelings. That's why we don't trust our gut, and I've been dying to talk to you about this, about how you really tune out other people, how you find the clarity and the quiet to hear what's right for you, how you feel it. (upbeat music plays) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I have been looking forward to talking to you all week long, because I just got done with spring break, and let me tell you, it was such a memorable spring break. I just want you to close your eyes for a second, unless you're driving a car, and I want you to just picture the absolute spring break perfection. Maybe you imagine beautiful sandy beaches, tropical waters, a Mai Tai in your hand. You're just laying there with a good book, like a beached whale, sunning yourself with not a care in the world. It's quiet, nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Wouldn't it be amazing? That is not what happened for me over spring break. Nope, not me. We have a college-bound rising senior in high school. That's a fancy way to say we have a junior in high school. And he does sports, which means our April vacation, the time of year I look forward the most to getting the hell out of New England disgusting muddy weather and going somewhere in Florida or somewhere else where I can see the sun and I can tan my zombie gray body, that did not happen this year. Nope, not at all. We piled into my husband's pickup truck and we did college tours. Now, it was fun, it was fun, but I did not get tan, and there were a bunch of things though that happened. I learned some things about myself that I'm going to share with you. These are very ugly traits of mine. I was not on my best behavior during college tour week. I will explain why in a minute, but I did learn some really incredible things about trusting your gut and about the outside forces and influences that override what you know is true for you. It's really hard to find the courage to make a decision that is the right decision for you, and it's hard because we are so quick to consider what everybody else is thinking. We're so quick to weigh how our decision is going to impact somebody else's feelings. That's why we don't trust our gut. And so, I'm gonna talk a lot today, and I've been dying to talk to you about this, about how you really tune out other people, how you find the clarity and the quiet to hear what's right for you, how you feel it. And the interesting thing about this is that I learned this from watching our son, Oakley, this week, because if you really think about college tours, if you are at this point in your life, or if you remember what that was like, or, or even if you didn't go to college, but you were weighing, am I gonna go into the military? Am I gonna go to a tech school? Am I gonna go work, uh, and get a job because that's what I have to do? It's a moment in your life where you have a big decision to make and you're weighing options, and it's also this moment where everybody around you has an opinion. Everyone around you. I remember when, um, I was touring colleges back in the 1800s. Uh, no (laughs) , it was 1985, the spring of my junior year, and I was not the world's most diligent student, but I happened to be a phenomenal test taker. So I take the SATs and I destroyed it. I don't know how it happened, but I destroyed the ACTs. No, the SATs, sorry. It was the SATs. And so I'm like, that's it, I'm going Ivy League. Let's go people. And I was in a small town in Western Michigan, so hello geographic diversity. Nobody in my tiny, tiny high school, which had a graduating class of 73 people, nobody left the state. I mean, we were a feeder school in the, uh, '70s and '80s for Central Michigan University, for Michigan State, for UMich. Nobody went out of state. Like, that was unheard of. And so we loaded up the Wagoneer and loaded in the dog and we drove across country, stopping at the family farm in Buffalo, New York for the overnight, and we went from one school to the other school. Now, being a complete moron that grew up in Western Michigan, I had no idea. There was no internet. I didn't know that half of these "Ivy League" schools were in cities. So we pull into these ci- I'm like, this is co- this is not what college looks like to me. And we finally get to Hanover, New Hampshire. Dartmouth College. And we pull in, we park on the main street. I knew jack shit about this school. I step out onto the town green right in the center of campus. I'll never forget it. And there were students everywhere. They were playing Frisbee. There were dogs running around and I said, "This is college." And I remember going back home after that spring break trip with my parents and going into math class, and I'll never forget this happening....and Mr. Beaver, my math teacher, and I was a fantastic math student. I was a real, like, math wizard. English, forget it. I can barely speak it with this dyslexia that I have and the mispronunciation that I'm sure that you pick up on all the time. Um, Mr. Beaver asked me, "So, you know, how you doing? What do you think?" And of course, I was wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt 'cause now that I've decided it's Dartmouth, you gotta buy the swag, people. I mean, that's what I also realized about college tours these days, is that these kids rack up sweatshirts. It's not only the tour. It's like, okay, let's go to the co-op and let's, like, buy shit from a school that I don't even attend to go to because I gotta get the swag to show that I went here. So, I'm wearing the Dartmouth sweatshirt. I've just gotten back, and I look at him, and I say, "Oh, I'm gonna apply early decision to Dartmouth." And he looks me square in the eye, and he says, "That's a very hard school to get into. Are you sure?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm sure," and he said, "You better not get your hopes up," and he walked away from me, and you know what? That's all that Mel Robbins needs. There are some of us that when somebody says, "It's not gonna happen," you're like, "Oh, yeah? Fuck off. Watch me, motherfucker." And so, I, of course, did not ask him for a recommendation, and I ended up applying ED, and I got in. And look, I don't know that I would've get in... I don't think I would get into Dartmouth today. I mean, this was the 1800s that we're talking about here, and I was coming from a tiny school where no one had ever even applied to Dartmouth College. Western Michigan, like, I had everything working for me. So, I end up going, and that was that, but it was that one person's voice, "Oh, it's really hard," that really influenced me. And if I hadn't been such a son of a bitch, it might have made me go, "Oh, he's right. Who do I think I am?" And so, that brings me to present day. So, present day, we go on these college tours with Oak, and, you know, we have two older kids, and when our daughters looked at universities, I was really good. I actually didn't care. I just wanted them to go somewhere that they were gonna be happy. And so, I was like a super cool mom on these college tours because I honestly could care less. I didn't want to go to any of the schools that they looked at. I thought that their choices were fantastic. I wanted them to fully own the process. And here's the thing, none of them looked at my alma mater because they couldn't get in, and they weren't interested in it anyway. And so, I went through two college tour processes just having a ball. Like, "Oh, my God, this is so cool. Okay, oh, you like this? Oh, you don't like that?" Like, learning about my kids. So, fast-forward to last week. We get in the car, and we start driving to all these schools in New England because one thing that our son is really clear about is he does not want to leave New England, and I've even tried to influence this. I'm realizing as I analyze my own participation in his college process, I'm kind of a freak. I've been a little micromanagy. He's very clear. "I do not want to be in a city," and yet I'm still like, "You wanna look at BU?" He's like, "Mom, that's in a city." "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. You wanna look at Syracuse?" "Mom, it's in a city." "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's r- What about Michigan?" "Mom, it's not New England." "You know, maybe you should look at Colorado schools." "Mom, I'd like to stay in New England. I like the fall seasons." "Well, what about Elon?" "But, G- Mom, that's in the South." I can't help myself, you guys. I don't know what is wrong with me. So, we go on the first tour, and there's a couple things that I noticed about myself and about our son as we went through the week. I was not on my best behavior when we got to my alma mater, okay? And I think it's important to share this with you, to confess to you, um, what I did, because I played a role in trying to pollute my son's clarity. I'm kind of embarrassed about it, honestly, 'cause I never thought I was that parent. I always said very vocally to our kids, "Look, I got to go to the school that I wanted to go to. Your dad got to go to the school he wanted to go to, which was UVM. He fricking loved it. I fricking love Dartmouth. We already had our college experience. You have to choose where you want to be, and by the way, I'm not putting the bumper sticker on the car like some sort of, uh, you know, flex to other parents. I'm not gonna buy the sweatshirt. This is your experience. I'm not that person, okay?" And I think it worked because I think it took the pressure off. Holy shit, when Oakley said, "Mom, I think I'd like to look at Dartmouth," I became a sociopath. Honest to God. I don't know what got into me, and here's the thing that's kind of weird about it. The truth is, I fricking loved Dartmouth. It is an incredible school, but I hated myself when I was there. Like, we're talking the eight- I mean, the 1980s circa version of Mel. I was unmedicated. I had undiagnosed trauma, undiagnosed anxiety. I basically fooled around with just about everybody I met there, and I did not take advantage fully of all the opportunities that were presented to me, and if I could go back and do it all over, I would be a different human being. And so, as much as I loved that school, and I have a couple incredible friends from there, I look back on my college years, and I'm like, "Ugh." I haven't ever even been to a reunion. I didn't own a Dartmouth sweatshirt after I graduated, mainly because I was afraid that if I wore one, Dartmouth alums come up to each other, that I'd be bumping into people I'd fooled around with, you know. Chris was like, "Jesus, have you, like, fooled around with everybody that you went to college with?" I'm like, "You should thank them because I have a lot of skills because of that." Um, but anyway, I digress.So, Oakley goes and like, I was like, "I think I wanna look at Dartmouth. He's got the grades. He would honestly probably love it." And so, I'm like trying to be like, not like, (gasps) "Oh my God, that's incredible." I'm like, "Oh, okay. Uh, that sounds like a good idea. Fuck yes!" So we pull up on the campus, and it was sort of synchronicity, because it looked like the exact same kind of day as when my parents and I pulled up in 1985. Bluebird sky, kids all over the green, Frisbees, dogs. And Oakley steps out, and he starts looking around, and I'm thinking, "I could see him here." Now, I'm like fast forwarding, right? I'm going, "Oh, yeah, I could see dropping him off. I could see him walking across that green." I'm starting to get invested, you guys. I'm starting to think, "Oh, yeah, this is a good pick for us. This would be really cool for us." And in fact, and now I'm starting to tell myself this story. And I gotta be honest with you, I've never been this person. Something came over me. It's like I became a psycho alum possessed with this alma mater kind of like just hysteria. And I'm thinking, "Oh my God, if he goes here and he has an incredible experience, then I'm gonna get to relive it in a whole new way, and I will redeem myself, and I will get to love this school even more. And I'll get to go to his reunions, 'cause I never went to my reunion. And I'll start to do..." And I start to get completely enraptured in the story. "And I can come up for the games, and oh yeah, and then there's winter carnival. And oh my God, summer, summer session! I forgot about summer s..." And I start to just get this tornado of enthusiasm. So then we go upstairs and we're sitting down, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, this is a way better info session than the other ones. Dartmouth's really cool. They're doing it right. They're d- I love this. These are the right people." And then they take us out, and I loved as we're walking down the stairs, and, and the stairs are made of marble, and you can feel like the dip in the stairs 'cause the buildings are so old. And Oakley's like, "Ooh, these stairs are cool." I'm like, "That's because these stairs are 200 years old, Oakley. They're the same stairs as when I was there." So we get out on the green and they now separate us out, and there's four tour guides. And the one tour guide on the right is this kid named Nico, and he's super cool, and he's wearing flip-flops and shorts, 'cause of course. All the Dartmouth kids wear flip-flops and shorts in April, 'cause you know, it's New Hampshire in the mid-winter mud season. And he's wearing like a hoodie and he sort of toe walks his way on his slides, and I'm like, "Oakley, we gotta go with Nico." So now I'm even pushing him to pick the person, 'cause I'm thinking, "If he gets that tour guide," because the kid plays Ultimate, Oakley plays Ultimate, he's like a really kind of cool kid who's into kind of musical... Oakley's into theater. "Okay, we're gonna get this kid." So I'm like inching Oakley. I am literally that parent. The tour starts, and I am that parent. I'm like pushing us toward the front. "You gotta hear him. You gotta get up close, get up close so you..." And he's like, "Mom, Jesus." And I can't help myself, you guys. He's talking about the credits, and they have a wellness credit. That's pretty cool, and I'm like, "Do they still require you to pass a swim test to graduate?" And he's like, "Actually, no." I'm like, "Oh," and he's like, and Oakley's like, "There was a swim credit?" And so now I'm basically leading the tour. And at one point, Chris puts his hands on my shoulder, and just ever so gently pulls me back towards him. And he's like, "Mel, let's let Oakley go on the tour." And I'm like, "Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm just so excited. I'm so excited." And then the college tour went right past my freshman dorm window, Russell Sage, people. That window. I had a flashback to the last day of freshman year, when completely unorganized, undiagnosed, anxiety-ridden ADHD Mel had not planned on the fact that in order to get home to Michigan, she was gonna have to board a flight later that day, and I had not packed anything. And so I finish exams, I walk into my dorm room, and I have a complete fucking panic attack because I don't know what to do with my shit. So you know what I did? I popped the screen off the window and I started putting stuff out the window, and then I put a bunch of pieces of paper on it that said free, and I left. That's what I did. Disaster Mel. And so I imagined literally the yard sale of shit from the dorm fridge that we had bought, to God knows what we had collected, to lamps, to the rug, to odds and end, right out there on the lawn on Russell Sage. And I'm telling you this for a particular reason, because at one point on the tour, as I was hanging back, we had just left the engineering school, and Oakley's kind of just walking with the students up front, and I'm hanging back with Chris, and we're chitchatting about some stuff. And I'm realizing, "Mel, you gotta just fucking chill here. You gotta let him like just make the decision. Like you can't put pressure on him." Oakley turns around and he says, "What do you think?" And I said to him, "It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what you think." But I'm telling you this story because I think that moment where he turns around and says, "What do you think?", that's what we all do when we make decisions, isn't it?... whether you've got somebody annoying like me going, "Oh, you'll be here? Oh, you should do this and you should do that, and you should do the other thing. You should break up with this person, but you should go with that person. But maybe you should... " Or you don't. We have this reflexive nature, don't we? Where instead of tuning in and going, "I could see myself here," or, "This relationship is over," or, "I don't want to do this job anymore," or, "Could I see myself here?" Or, "What do I want to do next?" We turn around and we go, "What do you think?" And that's where we lose our power, because it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks, because you're the one that's going to have to live with the decision. So, we were just doing college tours for the past week on spring break.