Feeling Stuck Right Now? Stop Looking In The Wrong Place | The Mel Robbins Podcast
Mel Robbins (host), Ricky (guest), Ricky (guest), Ricky (guest), Ricky (guest)
In this episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, featuring Mel Robbins and Ricky, Feeling Stuck Right Now? Stop Looking In The Wrong Place | The Mel Robbins Podcast explores stop Surface Fixes: Dig Up The Hidden Roots Keeping You Stuck Mel Robbins uses a gardening metaphor to argue that recurring life problems persist because people keep trimming surface ‘weeds’ instead of digging out the deeper root causes. Through a live coaching session with listener Ricky, a 44‑year‑old who feels stuck in career, health, and relationships, Mel uncovers unresolved grief over Ricky’s father’s death as the central root issue. They connect how that loss quietly led Ricky to abandon her dreams, change her habits, and form disempowering beliefs like “it’s too late” and “good things aren’t for me.” Mel then guides Ricky to rewrite her story with concrete, emotionally meaningful actions—writing a letter to her dad, revisiting past passions, and aligning daily habits with the belief that her best years are ahead.
Stop Surface Fixes: Dig Up The Hidden Roots Keeping You Stuck
Mel Robbins uses a gardening metaphor to argue that recurring life problems persist because people keep trimming surface ‘weeds’ instead of digging out the deeper root causes. Through a live coaching session with listener Ricky, a 44‑year‑old who feels stuck in career, health, and relationships, Mel uncovers unresolved grief over Ricky’s father’s death as the central root issue. They connect how that loss quietly led Ricky to abandon her dreams, change her habits, and form disempowering beliefs like “it’s too late” and “good things aren’t for me.” Mel then guides Ricky to rewrite her story with concrete, emotionally meaningful actions—writing a letter to her dad, revisiting past passions, and aligning daily habits with the belief that her best years are ahead.
Key Takeaways
If the same problems keep repeating, you’re likely treating symptoms, not causes.
Mel’s weed metaphor shows that pulling at visible issues—bad relationships, unfulfilling jobs, weight gain—without finding the common emotional root will guarantee those patterns grow back in new forms.
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Your story about your life can be a bigger obstacle than your circumstances.
Ricky’s belief that “it’s too late” and that her best years were in her 20s made the necessary work feel “insurmountable,” leading her to act like someone whose future is already over—settling in career, health, and love.
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Unprocessed grief and trauma often freeze momentum and quietly derail your path.
Mel links Ricky’s stuckness to her father’s death and subsequent breakups; after that shock, Ricky narrowed her life to “just getting through the day,” stopped dreaming, and slowly abandoned the habits and passions that once energized her.
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Your actions will always align with what you truly believe, not what you say you want.
Because Ricky believed nothing big would happen for her, her routines—tolerating a draining job, neglecting exercise, lowering relationship standards—perfectly matched a woman who doesn’t expect a better future.
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Reclaiming past sources of joy can reconnect you to your life force.
By mapping what her life looked like in her 20s (acting, singing, writing, loving workouts) versus now, Ricky discovers that reintroducing these activities—especially through emotionally charged steps like writing to her dad—can restart momentum.
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Healing requires both a powerful ‘why’ and a practical ‘how.’
Research Mel cites shows change sticks when you tie specific actions (classes, auditions, daily walks) to a compelling reason—like honoring a late parent, making yourself proud, or believing your best years are ahead.
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Letting love in means dropping self‑protection patterns like self‑criticism and hyper‑independence.
Ricky is “the rock” for everyone else but quietly rejects help, compliments, and hope for herself; Mel frames crying, accepting love, and believing others’ faith in you as essential steps in opening that inner “door” again.
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Notable Quotes
“Anywhere in your life that you have a problem, or you're stuck, or you're struggling, I guarantee you, you're working on the wrong problem.”
— Mel Robbins
“We have such a low tolerance for going deep that we just try to remove it at the surface, and then all of a sudden, you're dating another loser… the same wound from your childhood is getting triggered.”
— Mel Robbins
“The reason why the mountain feels insurmountable is because you've convinced yourself that it's too late.”
— Mel Robbins
“I felt like I didn't get the chance to really show him who I could have been, who I believed I could be.”
— Ricky
“When you figure out how to heal and why you want to create a better life, you will be shocked at what unfolds.”
— Mel Robbins
Questions Answered in This Episode
What recurring ‘weeds’ in my life might actually share a single emotional root?
Mel Robbins uses a gardening metaphor to argue that recurring life problems persist because people keep trimming surface ‘weeds’ instead of digging out the deeper root causes. ...
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What core story am I telling myself about my age, potential, or worth—and how is it shaping my daily actions?
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Which passions, habits, or activities from my ‘best years’ have I quietly abandoned, and what would it look like to reintroduce them now?
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Is there an unresolved loss or turning point that subtly changed how I show up, dream, and take risks in my life?
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If I truly believed my best years are ahead of me, how would my typical week look different starting this month?
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Transcript Preview
(ticking clock) (upbeat music) I'm gonna prove to you today that anywhere in your life that you have a problem, or you're stuck, or you're struggling, or you just can't get the results that you want, I guarantee you, you're working on the wrong problem. We have such a low tolerance for going deep, that we just try to remove it at the surface, and then all of a sudden, you're dating another loser. All of a sudden, the same shit with your mother's showing up. All of a sudden, the same wound from your childhood is getting triggered. Why? Why does this keep happening? I'll tell you why. (upbeat music) . Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm so glad that you joined me today, because I'm gonna prove to you today that anywhere in your life that you have a problem, or you're stuck, or you're struggling, or you just can't get the results that you want, I guarantee you, you're working on the wrong problem. You're attacking it all wrong, and there is something deeper that you're not seeing. It's below the surface. And today, I got my shovel. We are gonna dig deep, and we are gonna get to the root of the problem. I have been doing this now for a decade. You guys write to me from around the world, and I read everything that you submit to melrobbins.com, and I've noticed something in the last decade since I've been coaching people. Everybody is working on the wrong problem. You can't even see it. And one of the things that I am able to do is I can listen to you for just a little bit, and boom, laser right in to the root of it. And so we're gonna get to the root of your problem today, and here's how we're gonna do it. I'm gonna bring in a metaphor, and the metaphor is gardening. I love gardening, by the way. It is one of my favorite hobbies. My parents were big gardeners. I grew up working in the yard every single weekend. My grandparents and my aunts and uncles on my mom's side are all farmers. So dirt, and digging in the dirt, and growing stuff, it's in my DNA. And I think about the issues in your life that you can't seem to overcome, or that keep coming back over and over and over again. It's like weeds in a garden. And so I'm gonna tell you a story, 'cause you're attacking the weeds all wrong too. You can't just pull weeds out. You gotta dig 'em out at the root. Otherwise, they keep coming back. And this is why I say you're working on the wrong problem. You keep pulling at your problems, tugging at 'em, clipping at 'em, snipping at 'em, whatever, hitting 'em with the Roundup. That's not gonna kill 'em. You gotta destroy it at the root. And I remember there was this one moment when we still lived in Boston, and I started to notice that there was this particular weed that kept coming up in my garden. It was about a foot tall and it looked like the kind of grass you would see, uh, you know, like in the sides of a golf course. You know, that fescue that's like a foot tall and it blows around? Well, this stuff started showing up in the middle of my fricking Montauk daisies and my peonies and my irises, and I'm like, "What the hell?" And so I'd yank it out of the Siberian irises, and then I'd turn around, I'm like, "Why, how the hell is it over there in the peonies?" Like, is this bird seed that's scattered about? What is going on? Why is this weird stuff sprouting up? And it was just like this clump over here, and then this clump over here, and then this clump over here, and I'm like, "What the hell?" And so one day, I'll never forget it, it had been raining for like a week. And so the first sunny day, I get out there and I'm like, "Oh my God, there's these clumps everywhere." They just boom, 'cause what happens? Uh, things grow when you water it. Things in your life change when you tend to it. So, I start with the irises, and instead of just yanking it like I normally did, which is basically just ripping it off at the surface, I just sort of gently started tugging. And as I started tugging, the roots started coming out, and then I started shaking at it and the dirt started shaking off. And then I take my shovel and I start easing around, because I don't wanna slice the root. I need to get to the source of it, right? Otherwise, what happens when you just trim something, when you cut it off at the surface? Well, that just empowers the roots to start sprouting up other things. Well, I'll be damned you guys. I get the shovel and I dig underneath and I start popping it up, and because the soil is wet, it's a lot looser. This fucking root went from my irises all the way under our lawn to the other flower bed, 10 feet away, to pop up another clump into the peonies. And that same damn root was also the source of the clump of fescue that was now growing in my daisies and in the phlox, and I couldn't believe it. It was all coming from the same root. And if there's one thing I've learned in a decade of coaching people and all of the research that I've done is that when it comes to the things that aren't working in our life, we have such a low tolerance for going deep that we just try to remove it at the surface. And then all of a sudden, you're dating another loser. All of a sudden, the same shit with your mother's showing up. All of a sudden, the same wound from your childhood is getting triggered. Why? Why does this keep happening? I'll tell you why. You're working on the wrong problem, 'cause you're just trying to clear it away at the surface. You're missing the bigger picture. These problems all connect. There is a root cause that you need to dig out, and today I'm gonna teach you how to do it. A fellow listener of The Mel Robbins Podcast wrote to me, Ricky. She's 44. She is stuck on the outside. Her life looks amazing. The garden's beautiful, right? But she can't get where she wants to go. She feels like she's lost a part of herself. She doesn't know what the hell's going on. All her friends think her life looks great, but it's not. And let me tell you something, she's working on the wrong problem. But Mel Robbins has her shovel, and I'm gonna dig deep and wait 'til you discover-... what I find, because it comes out of nowhere. You ready? I sure am. Let's start digging. Hi.
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