How To Train Your Brain To Get Unstuck And Cultivate Self-Love with Mel Robbins

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

You don't have to go somewhere exotic. If you just get out of your environment and you give yourself a little bit of space to think, new opportunities hit you because you're not getting all the input from the environment that you're used to. Hi everyone, it's Dr. Mark.

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Did you just say pretty good? I understand that you need to sell the episode, Dr. Hyman.

Well, let's see how it goes.

Wow, wow. He is already questioning whether or not, thank God, I have tremendous confidence and I know that this is going to be a game-changer.

It's all about how we get to self-love, actualizing what matters to us, doing the things that we care about in a way that is without struggle and beating ourselves up. getting control of the monkey mind we have, which really runs most of our lives. And Mel Robbins has become one of the most trusted experts in the world on confidence and motivation the hard way by screwing up her own life. And I actually become a medical expert by screwing up my own body. So I kind of get it. And she's kind of in a category all her own. She's one of the most widely booked, followed podcast hosts and authors in the world. She's sought after by leading brands and medical professionals and has all these amazing research backed tools on motivation. At the same time, she's amassed millions of followers, has great online advice and she's going gangbusters. She's a New York Times bestselling author, a high five habit, the second five second rule and the number one ranking Mel Robbins podcast, which is awesome. Go listen to it. She's got a female led company, which is amazing and produces really provocative life changing content, which we're going to hear today. She's got one of the most viewed TEDx talks in the world. world, billions of views on her stuff translated into 41 languages and on and on and on. Most importantly, she just cares about people.

Yes.

And she cares about people getting out of their own way.

Yes.

So I once heard you say, Mal, welcome to the Doctors Pharmacy podcast.

Thank you.

I once heard you say that if you took a speaker and you attach it to the inner dialogue in your head and you broadcast it, you would not have any friends, you know, because they, if you talk to yourself like you would talk to other people, like you talk to yourself, you would not have any friends. And people would think you are crazy and would not want to be friends with you.

-You would be on the seventh floor of Mass General.

-That is right, which is the psych ward.

-Yes. Yes.

-How do you know that? Anyway.

-That is a topic for another day.

So, I have struggled personally with my own inner dialogue and getting in my own way in many ways around love, around, you know, parental stuff from my childhood. And, and I've, I've talked a lot about on the podcast, and I find that, that it's, if you can actually Master your mind and get out of your own way and deal with this crazy inner dialogue that most of us have, that you can get free. And what I kind of figured out at 63 years old is that the purpose of life is to get your soul free. Kind of like, you know, Joni Mitchell saying in that Woodstock song, you know, let's get your soul free and And it's not easy because most of us don't learn how to do that. Just as we don't learn how to take care of our bodies, we don't learn how to take care of our minds. So we know maybe how to do exercise, but how do we do inner size?

Inner size. Is that a word you made up?

Kind of.

I think Dr. Hyman just discovered a word for his next book, the Inner Size Program. The ultimate wellness solution. I can already see this. you know, you talk a lot about how to heal from the neck down, and I agree with you. I personally have come to believe after 54 years of torturing myself unnecessarily in many cases, that it does begin with the neck down, that if you follow a lot of the protocols that you talk about, whether it is toning the vagus nerve or it's getting your diet right, or it is resetting your hormones, or it's cold exposure, or the habits that settle you and free your soul. But you also have to develop habits around your own mind. And that's an area where like you and like everybody listening, I have struggled profoundly. And there are a couple key insights that have really helped me change the default setting that is in my mind. And so the way that I would get into this is that self-love is the goal. You know, you talked about the fact that you've come to realize that it's really a journey, your adult life of setting yourself free. And I look at it like it is a journey of coming back home to yourself and learning how to love yourself for exactly who you are and exactly who you aren't. And you have a opinion medically. that our bodies have this intelligent design, and that our bodies have this intelligent design that if you have the proper inputs, your body can heal itself. Your body is designed to grow. It is designed to help you. It is designed to be vibrant. And I believe the same is true about your experience mentally. And that if you stop and think, about the fact that when you are born into this world, you come into this world needing, of course, other human beings in order to survive. I mean, we as a species, we cannot just pop out like a deer and get up on our hind legs and start running around and figuring things out. We need human connection. But at our core, when you think about the intelligent design of a human being, We are curious, we're loving, we are seeking connection, we are self-expressed. A baby, you as a baby, you would laugh, you'd smile, you would crawl towards a mirror if you saw your own reflection, you would crawl towards things that were interesting to you, you were not editing yourself, you were not questioning what people around you would think about you kind of jiggling your booty or smashing your face into a plate of spaghetti, At your core, you are a loving, curious, confident human being. That's who you are. And that's why we miss feeling that way, because you can only miss something that you know. And so what happens to all of us, and this is no fault, this is just part of the human journey, is that we now know, and you talk about this on your show, that part of your core memories and your imprint mentally, in terms of your mental patterns, happen between zero and five when your brain is is in a theta state and you are largely nonverbal and your little brain is absorbing everything at hyper speed. And what it absorbs are the speaking patterns and the emotional patterns and the emotional tone of the household that you grew up in.

Ooh, that's a scary thought.

Well, it's true. It's true. And so by the time that you start to be able to attach words to your reality, You have adults correcting you, and you also have a biological demand, which is, I need food, I need to be part of this family in order to survive, I need love. And so you start to figure out how to survive or thrive in the environment you grew up in. And so these core coping skills, start to develop, you don't even realize it's happening. These opinions that you have about yourself that are largely coming from other people.

Yeah.

So most of us did not receive the love that we needed in the way that we could really process it as love. Right.

Yeah.

It's, and it's not necessarily a function of abuse or trauma or any of this other stuff. There's this term that I love called parental mismatch.

Yeah.

Parental mismatch. Your parents may have been absolutely awesome human beings, but when it comes to what you needed, there was a mismatch. And what happens in human design is that when you as a child don't get what you need or you get yelled at or something bad happens to you, which happens to everybody, we're not wired in a way to say, my parents are fucking screwed up. We're not wired that way.

You know what parents are? What? Parents are people who have kids. Yes, they have no trading.

Yes, except for... And they're just repeating things that were repeated on them largely without even realizing it. And so if you get bullied at school, if you experience racism, if you experience some sort of abuse or neglect or emotional whatever in your home, you don't go, those people have a problem. You go, There must be something wrong with me. And that's where it begins, Dr. Hyman. And it happens to everybody. Where you prioritize the need to fit in.

Or survive in any way in your family if it screwed up, which most of our families are not perfect.

Yep. Or to keep the peace. Or to not get hurt. Or to please the people around you. You figure out how to adapt very quickly based on the environment that you're in. And for almost all of us, that means I gotta put other people's expectations, other people's opinions about what's going on, everybody else's emotional reactions above what I need. Because remember who you are at your core. You are a loving, self-expressed, curious person who wants to connect with people and wants to share yourself. That's who you are at your core. And at some point during your childhood, it happens to all of us. We internalize a message that there's something wrong with who we are. and in order to fit in or survive or be accepted or get the love or the praise that we are seeking, we have to be somebody other than who we are. And that's where the mindset shit goes sideways. Because you start to actively tell yourself, I don't fit in there. That person's pissed at me. I gotta be like this. There must be something wrong with me if nobody's asking me out on a date. My mom's always criticizing the way that I look. Why do I look different than other people? Why am I the only Black kid in the class? Why am I, like, my family immigrated here and there's nobody else in that and you start to see all the places that you're not a part of. And all of these things compound and it traps us in a narrative in our own minds where we beat the shit out of ourselves. We pick apart the things that are wrong. We're constantly, relentlessly just focused on what we're not doing. And it's a very dark place that most people live in.

Yeah, it's really true. I mean, and often people, don't realize it. And, you know, I thought I was in my together.

When did you realize you didn't?

And, I mean, I, I know over the years, I realized I, I have, you know, needed work to do because I, I understood that my family origin, you know, was problematic, that my stepfather was a rageaholic, that my father was sort of absent, abandoned us, that my mother was depressed. I mean, I, I had to navigate a very kind of unsafe environment and be a people pleaser and take care of broken people. And I mean, all these habits and patterns that, you know, be around people who are failures and wanted to not be a failure. So I had all these things that were driving me unconsciously or consciously. But, you know, when I, when I really kind of, kind of woke up was when I realized that I, I struggled with love. I'd been married three times, divorced three times, and like, wait a minute, what is going on in there? In many areas of my life, I have success and things are great and I have a great community and great friends and so much is great. But in this one area, I was like, what the, why is this such a problem? And I really, until I took the time to investigate, I call it soul archeology, to investigate what was going on and to unpack my inner dialogue and to write it down, I literally wrote down all the stupid shit my head was saying every minute.

What were you saying to yourself?

Oh, my God. I'm very sad.

That's why I want you to say it. What is the stuff you were saying?

Is this me interviewing you? Yeah. So basically, I was. I had this belief that, you know, I I think that was underlying it, that I wasn't kind of worthy, that, you know, I didn't really deserve to have love, that I had this sort of needy inner dialogue. Yeah. That. That. was feeling a lack and scarcity that I felt this emptiness in this hole that I was trying to fill, and I wasn't ever going to be able to fill it. And so I was constantly doing that. And I realized it was because, and again, you know, these sort of sins of our fathers are visited upon their children, right? It's like my mother was the child of deaf parents, and she had to take care of them from a very early age, and she took care of them. And they were beautiful people and very loving, but, you know, she thought that Love was taking care of somebody broken. And then my mom was depressed and she used me as her therapist as a little kid. And then I thought love was taking care of broken people or, you know, people pleasing and doing all these things that really weren't serving me. Right. And once I sort of began to realize that, I began to call in my, you know, higher self, whatever that you want to call it is. But there's some part of your, you know, soul being that knows what the truth is. Well, I think it's a part of.

You when you're born. yeah, it's actually who you are.

But most of that is not what's running our inner dialogue. Correct. And so that was not running my inner dialogue. So I began to do this practice where I would write down all the stupid my head would say, and then I would write back to myself from my higher self. Yes. And it was really effective. I did this for months and months and months, and. And I was able to really unpack some of this sort of stuff. And once I kind of realized also what this. This wounding was as a kid and why I felt emptiness and. And actually it was because of, in part because this movie called CODA that was about this young girl who was hearing and grew up in a deaf family just like my mother. And that just broke me open. And I was literally on the floor sobbing for days. And I got to release a lot of it. And then it kind of reset my nervous system. It was almost like a real reset. But I've sort of struggled with some of that. And so going through that process, I realized each of us has to be on our own journey. and each of us has to sort of look at where are the areas where we don't love ourselves? And I thought, I thought, oh, I love myself. You know, I'm real good. I feel good about myself. I'm successful, blah, blah, blah. But the truth was, there was a part that I really didn't. And I didn't really fully accept and love myself. And that's what was creating this kind of constant pattern of choosing the wrong people.

You know, a friend said, I had a broken picker. You know, it wasn't the problem of the people I was with. It was. It was me. You had a broken pattern. Yeah. of belief in your head. And that made you feel broken. And the good news is when you can identify what the broken pattern of thinking or behavior is, you can replace it with something else. See, the good news is at any moment in your life, you can decide who you want to become.

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It's never too early or too late to decide that you want to become a different you. You want to go back to who you know you truly are. A loving, curious, confident, connected, self-expressed person. And what I want to just add to your story is that That wasn't a lie you were telling yourself because your experience was one where you did not get the love you needed as a child. That happened.

That did.

That happened. And it was because of this mismatch. Nobody intentionally set out to damage you.

No, my parents are good people. They just screwed up themselves.

Yes, but so I think one of the mistakes that we make when we start to do this work to reclaim our lives and to change our mindsets and to become a different version of ourselves is that we kind of shy away from telling the truth to ourselves. Like, that should happen. The reason why I believe that is because my lived experience was everybody else's needs came first. I did not get the love that I needed. And in order to even get the attention that I needed from the adults around me, I had to twist myself in knots. Like I literally had to forget about myself. And that was real. Yeah, like my husband, for example, you know, we've we've been married 26 years and have been in really awesome, intense therapy for the last two years. And one of the things that has come out of it is that Chris has a lot of trauma from his childhood.

Yeah.

Had an abandoned, had an absent father. His mom was always working. He was a latchkey kid. He had no physical abuse.

Yeah.

But nobody was ever there.

Neglect is a form of abuse. Yes.

But you feel, but he is forever kind of, oh, you know, like they were great. Like we were all, yeah, but the truth is, no, they weren't.

Yeah.

And that's okay.

Yeah.

When you claim for real that you didn't get what you needed, and that created years, decades of an experience, where that was your lived experience. But what you're talking about by writing that down and writing it down is critical because part of the issue is we try to change the default patterns of thinking that come from your lived experience. Yeah. So they may have been true in the past because of the way you got treated or what people said to you, that is your lived experience, just like trauma is your lived experience. When we don't really call that out for what it is. We unconsciously carry it forward. And so when you start to write down these are the crazy ass things that I think because this is how I fucking felt. And based on my lived experience, this makes a lot of sense. But here's where consciousness alignment choice, the wake up call, I call it, comes into play. You get to choose if you want to keep thinking this shit moving forward. Now, when it comes to mindset, what is profoundly complicated about it, and what I got wrong for years, is that I thought that changing your mindset began with changing your thoughts. It does not. It does not. You change your mindset the same way you change the health of your body from the neck down, from the outside in. And let me give you what I'm talking about. So the act of writing things down, that is not doing the internal work of your thinking. That is getting that shit out of your head and in daylight and on paper and in the real world so you can look at it objectively. That is doing work outside of your mind. The second thing is everything that you talk about, Dr. Hyman, from especially the stuff related to nervous system regulation, cold exposure, warm baths at night, the five breaths that you talk about, learning how to tone your vagus nerves so that you flip off the fight or flight which continues all of those thoughts from your past to spin on repeat. Your thinking has so much to do with your nervous system state that learning how to regulate your nervous system using all of the tools that Dr. Hyman or that I write about or all the amazing re, like put that shit into place because a calm nervous system facilitates calm thinking. And the third thing is, I just.

Want to stop you there because that's such an important point, is you can change your physiologic state with practices that don't involve your thinking, that change your mind and change the way you feel and change your mood. And that is such a powerful insight that most people have no idea about. People feel stuck in the state that they're in and they don't know there's a pattern break. For example, I, yesterday I was, you know, podcast all day, preparing for my book. And I, and I had one that I didn't record. And I, and I was like, I didn't hit the record button. Long story. And I was like, and I was just tired. I didn't, and my, my partner, fiance, she, she basically set the alarm stupid early and forgot to turn it off. And I got, I didn't get him to sleep. So I was, like, feeling kind of a little bit fried. And so I, I could tell myself that my body, my mind was just doing bad stuff. So I said, I'm gonna meditate. So I meditated for 20 minutes, and I have a steam shower. I put that on, went in the steam, hot as it could be for 20 minutes, went in an ice bath because it's winter, very cold in Berkshire's for like two, three minutes. And I got out of that and literally felt completely different. My mood, my energy, my focus, my brain. So we have these doorways into our mind and our mood that are not internal, they're external.

Well, one of the things that I don't think any of us realize is that your thinking patterns don't begin with a thought.

What do they begin with?

It's triggered by a feeling or an emotion. So your body reacts to something first. So you feel the stress first or you feel the trigger related to past trauma first. You feel something happening in your body first. And the mistake that we make is we then immediately race up to our heads and we assess with our minds, what does that mean? Oh, something must be wrong. Oh, I'm really stressed out. Ugh, this isn't working. And then your thoughts, usually negative when it comes to some stress response, then dictate what you do next, which is yell or be frustrated or feel frazzled. And so what I'm going to tell you to do is to reverse that chain of events. Because everything begins with a sensation in the body. Your nervous system picks up on the cues around you, first, then it goes up into your mind and your mind tries to make sense of the sensation and that making sense of, which is usually a negative interpretation, that then triggers a negative response. And so let me give you an example, just for those of you that don't have a steam shower or don't have time to jump in a cold plunge. Have you ever noticed- I just had a cold bath.

I just fill it up with cold water. Or take a cold shower.

So, yes, in either work. But have you ever noticed that you can be super frustrated or feeling really low energy or kind of depressed or anxious. And if you go outside for a walk alone, that within 10 minutes you feel different.

Yeah, totally.

It's because you have shifted your physiological state. And when you shift or relax your physiological state, it relaxes your mind.

Yeah.

And so I think A lot of us and talk therapy is a fabulous thing if you can afford to do it. But what happens in talk therapy is you talk through all this stuff and you're in a calm state when you're in therapy, aren't you? So you're utilizing a part of your brain to talk through the issues in your life when you are in a calm, non-reactive state. And then if you ever noticed you can talk for an hour with your therapist, but then you get out into your life and you get into the situation with your spouse or your kids that you or your colleague that you just processed with your therapist, you know that it is related to your trauma from childhood, you know that you're working on not being a yeller, you know you're working on all these patterns, and yet you get into the situation. You're triggered. And you're triggered. Well, the reason, and then all of a sudden you lose control again. And the reason why that happens is because it's not about your thinking first. It's about the fact that all of the triggers are stored in your nervous system and in your body. and you in therapy are using a part of the brain, your prefrontal cortex, which is present when you're calm, but when you get triggered in life, your kids are frustrating you, the traffic is terrible, you're exhausted and you didn't record the fourth podcast in the day. You're now in a different part of the brain and your nervous system is now flipped on. And so that's, why you have to attack your mindset from your physiological state and you've got to use these tools. Now, a second thing that I want to say is this. I said that you can choose to become who you want to become at any moment. I subscribe to the whole body of research around behavioral activation therapy.

Okay, what's that?

Behavioral Activation Therapy is act like the person you want to become now.

So act into the feeling instead of feeling to the acting.

Yes. So let's just say that you are somebody who wants to be, I don't know, we'll just use an example. You want to be somebody like part of your bucket list because you've read Young Forever and you want to be, you know, a marathon runner and you're going to get back in shape, right? Instead of thinking about it, instead of like being the you today that's 20 pounds over shape and the last place that you've run is to the car to try to beat the parking meter person, you know, that's the last time you ever took a run. In order to become the new version of yourself, start to act like a marathon runner would today. What do they do? Well, they have tennis shoes. They typically go outside every day. They might have different ways of eating. They probably follow different social media accounts than you do. They probably wake up at a different time. And so if you start acting like who you want to be today, an interesting thing happens with your mindset. You see, when your brain sees you doing something new, it starts to relate to you. as that new person. If you, this is why mantras often are bullshit. Because people will want to learn how to love themselves, Dr. Hyman, and they will stand in front of a mirror.

Affirmations, yeah.

After 40 years of beating them up, beating themselves up, hate my body, I hate this, I'm a loser, I'm unlovable, nobody's ever gonna love you, you failed at this, you failed at that, now look at the bags under your eyes and one boob's hanging lower and this, that, and the other thing. You've been saying that for Decades. You cannot stand in front of that mirror and say the affirmation, I love myself, 'cause your brain's like, Bitch, no you don't! Did you see how you talk to yourself? I don't believe that. And so you have to take the actions first before you feel like it. Because if you see yourself following Dr. Hyman's protocol and eating in a way that actually activates the healing part of your body, your brain looks at you and goes, oh, look at you. You actually do care about your health. And your brain starts to change the things it's telling you. It begins with your actions first.

And then what about the excuses that we all make? Oh, I can't because this. I don't have time or I'm too tired or, you know, I don't have money or I don't, whatever the excuses are. How do you navigate that? Because I think the idea of acting into the feeling is brilliant one. And I often tell people that just try it and then you don't have to actually decide you're gonna do it. You just have to try it and then see how you feel.

Yeah. So here's the thing about feelings. It's interesting. I think you should ignore your feelings.

What?

I do.

We should talk about our feelings, express our feelings.

No, you should ignore it. When it comes to change, you're gonna have to ignore how you feel because you are never gonna feel like doing something that is different than what you always done. Your brain is not wired that way. Your brain is wired for certainty. Your nervous system is wired for safety. Your entire body is predisposed to keep you in the patterns that you're in because it knows them. Even though it sucks, Dr. Hyman, for you to tell yourself forever that you're unlovable or you're unworthy or you're only, you're always going to be with broken people, even though it sucks, it's familiar.

Yeah.

And so it doesn't make any sense that you would tell yourself things over and over and over that continue to make you feel broken, but it's familiar. Anytime you try to change a thinking pattern or you try to change a behavior pattern, your own body will shove resistance in your way because your body is biased towards wanting you to continue to eat what you eat, continue to think.

Autopilot.

Yeah, it's just on autopilot. And so number one, expect to never feel like it. Motivation's garbage. It's not gonna be there when you need it. Expect to not feel like eating what Dr. Hyman tells you to eat. Expect to not feel like interrupting the bullshit thoughts that you don't want to take with you in the future. Expect to not feel like it. And so that leaves you with only one thing. You have to force yourself to do it. There is no other way. This is not easy. If it were, everybody would have six-pack abs. Everyone would have a million dollars in the bank. And so your excuses are always gonna be there.

That's true.

And when you realize that there's nothing wrong with you, you don't lack the willpower or discipline. That's not the issue. The issue is you've been waiting to feel like doing it. And you're never gonna feel like doing it because this is what you've always done. And so expect the resistance to be there. And you can use the five second rule. That's why I invented the thing.

Tell us about that. What's the five second rule?

So the five second rule.

I wrote a book about it.

I did. I did. The five second rule is a brain hack that I created in a moment of desperation because like everybody, I didn't feel like doing the things I needed to do to address the problems in my life. It was 2007. My husband and I were 800 grand in debt. His restaurant business was failing. I had lost my job. Our entire life was what we put on the line to start the restaurant business. We had three kids under the age of 10. We were living in a fancy suburb outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and we were about to lose everything. Checks were bouncing left and right. I was unemployed. Chris had not been paid in six months. Friends and family had invested in the business, so we couldn't really tell anybody how bad it was. Dr. Hyman, I found myself in a situation where I didn't even recognize myself. Like, I never thought that this would be what happened to my life. And I faced my issues and our problems by drinking myself into the ground, screaming at Chris, and blaming everything on him, and basically sleeping in hitting the snooze button five times, the kids were missing the bus. Like it was, and here's the irony, is that even when you're in a crisis, you know what you should do.

So there's some part of yourself that knew.

Of course. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that you should get your ass out of bed and get a job. Get the kids breakfast, get the bus. Yeah, and the drinking isn't helping, and maybe you should tell somebody what's going on. Maybe you should ask for help. Maybe you should get outside and take a walk. Like this isn't PhD material level crap that you need to do, but I couldn't make myself do it. Why? Because I didn't feel like it. And when you start to blow off the little things, like getting up on time, eating healthy, practicing kindness to yourself, staying connected, asking for help, When you start to get the little things wrong, it just snowballs into everything being wrong. And the good news is the way that you get back on track, and this is also what you believe and what your research and your work demonstrates, is that you get your life back on track, you get your health back on track, you reset your mind and the default ways that you think the exact same way by getting the little things right. Because when you get up, when the alarm rings, your brain sees a human being that has the willpower to get up. When you make your bed in the morning, your brain sees a human being that completes things. When you walk into the bathroom and you look in the mirror and you don't criticize yourself, but you give yourself a high five in the mirror, which is something I call the high five habit.

Another book.

Yeah. You literally activates neural pathways in your brain around positive encouragement. toward self. You know, when you journal, when you meditate, when you move your body, your brain sees a human being that prioritizes themselves. So it's through the actions, the teeny, teeny little actions that snowball into massive transformation. And so I one night it was Tuesday. It was a. No, it was a Monday night in 2008. I mean, it was bad. We were a week away from a bankruptcy proceeding. Leans on the house, Chris and I fighting like cats and dogs. And I'm sitting in my living room and I'm like, Mel, you gotta pull this shit together. Like, tomorrow it's the new you woman. You gotta get up, you gotta be nice to Chris, you gotta look for a job, you gotta get out, get those kids on the bus, you gotta do it all. And what happened is I.

All of.

A sudden saw a rocket ship launch across the television screen. And I thought, that's it. That's the answer. Literally was.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

It's a dumbest story. I was four Bourbon Manhattan's into the evening. So it was probably the alcohol made me make the connection. But I was like, that's it. Tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off, you're gonna launch yourself out of bed so fast, just like NASA launches a rocket, that you're not gonna be in that bed, Mel, when the anxiety and the depression hit. 'Cause I was having cascading panic attacks, like generalized at this point. so the next morning, the alarm rings, and all I did was count backwards. 5-4-3-2-1 and I stood up. And that one decision changed the trajectory of my life. And what I had discovered by mistake during one of the worst moments of my life is the single most powerful starting ritual, which is what habit researchers and neuroscientists call a technique, metacognition, that you can use. to interrupt old habit loops stored in the basal ganglia. 54321 interrupts that encoded pattern and it draws your focus to the prefrontal cortex, giving you a manual way to switch gears between autopilot, subconscious, trauma patterns, all of it, and activate the part of the brain that helps you change, that helps you learn new behavior. that helps you take control. The five second rule has now spread.

It sounds like a holy grail.

Oh, it is the holy grail. It's now being used in clinical settings with pediatricians. It's profoundly effective with OCD and PTSD. I had an entire inpatient wing, the medical staff in a Philadelphia hospital come and tell us that of all the things that they can give somebody on discharge after an inpatient commit, the five second rule is probably the most effective.

Thing because- To break it down, what is the five second rule?

So the five second rule is any moment where you know what you should do, but you feel the feeling come up. Hesitation, anxiety, fear, heaviness, trauma, whatever it may be that causes that momentary hesitation. If you don't physically move within five seconds of that moment of hesitation, the subconscious part of your brain takes over.

To physically move.

You got to physically move. And so there's this window, this five second window. Psychologists call this the difference between a bias toward thinking versus a bias toward action. And many of us, especially if we're analytical or we're introverted or we struggle with anxiety or ADHD or depression or whole trauma, we have a bias towards stopping to think and consider what to do versus doing what we need to do. And I'm talking about these windows of time where you're sitting in a meeting at work. You have an idea to share.

Yeah. And you don't say it.

Correct. And you wonder why you're getting passed over at work. You wonder why you're not getting promoted. It's because you're not visible. And it comes down to these moments. Same thing at home. There's things you wanna say. There's hard conversations to have. Or what about exercise? The hardest part is getting out the door.

My mother used to say, the minute I get the urge to exercise, I lie down till it goes away. Yes.

Yes. Well, you don't even have to lie down because it goes away if you.

Don'T move within five seconds.

She was an expert at that. Yeah. And so, you know, how you use it is in these moments or like addiction. It's profoundly effective with addiction because you feel yourself drawn towards something. 5-4-3-2-1, count backwards, physically move away from the thing.

So you just literally just say 5-4-3-2-1 and then get your body up and.

Go to the other room.

And here's the cool trick.

You don't do jumping jacks or sit.

On your head or anything.

No, here's the cool trick. Counting backwards is an action. So it's like a Trojan horse because let's face it, putting down the alcohol is difficult. It feels hard. You don't want to, you know, like have this neurochemical draw to it. When start counting backwards, 5-4-3-2-1. You've actually made a decision not to do it. So the counting is like the first domino that falls, and then you turn, and now you're moving in a different direction. And so the five-second rule became a tool that I use to push myself through the feelings and anxiety and depression and sadness and anger and grief and all the bullshit feelings that are very real that dictate what you do.

You were in a really tough situation, and it's understandable why you felt how you felt.

Yes.

And you can choose one of two things, either to just go back to bed and not deal with it or wake up and deal with it.

Yeah, but we make 30,000 decisions a day and the vast majority of them we make with our subconscious. And if you want to become a different person, you have to make intentional decisions that are aligned with the kind of person that you want to become. If you want to follow all of Dr. Hymen's advice, you have to make different decisions. And so counting backwards 5-4-3-2-1 is a tool that you can use to activate the part of the brain that you need to consciously make different decisions. And there's even more involved here because there's this famous researcher, Dr. Judith Willis out at UCLA. And she has studied the impact that the nervous system has on decision making. and what she has discovered is that when your fight or flight sympathetic nervous system is activated, so in situations where you're procrastinating, that's a fight or flight nervous system. Procrastination is a freeze.

Alert. Freeze, right?

Yeah.

Fight or flight.

And freeze.

Freeze, yes.

And anxiety or nerves or nervousness or depression if you're in any, or just even worrying and overthinking, your sympathetic nervous system is now flipped on. Your prefrontal cortex, according to the research at UCLA, Dr. Judith Willis, your prefrontal cortex does not function in its full capacity when your alarm state is triggered.

No, it can't.

It can't.

There's often a disconnect between the limbic system, which is the reptile, lizard, stress response, and the frontal which is the adult in the room. And so you see, this person's an adult, but why are they acting like a lizard?

Yes, yes. And so when you count backwards 5-4-3-2-1, the decision to count backwards is a moment of taking control. And the counting itself is what activates the prefrontal cortex so that you make the choice to go walk outside so that you then lower your nervous system stress, and then you could come back to what you need to do. And so it's profoundly effective with addiction, with suicidal ideation, with procrastination, with making more money. Because you're not gonna make more money if you're not willing to make the sales calls. You can sit there and think about making them all damn day long. And so it is, it's changed the lives of millions of people. It's just, and I love it because it's free. Anybody at any age can use it, anybody in any language. Just don't count up 1-2-3-4-5. It doesn't work.

You have to count down.

You have to because we have been taught to count up since we were little. So the act of counting up already happens in your subconscious. Counting backwards in the beginning, 5-4-3-2-1.

You have to think about it.

Correct. The more you use it, you are encoding a habit of taking action, a habit of courage, a habit of confidence, a habit of betting on yourself. And so it becomes a date.

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of your work is about motivation and helping people with self-love and breaking these patterns and shifting, you know, yourself. And, and we do get stuck. We get stuck in these sort of repetitive patterns of thinking. Yeah. And there's a part of our brain that actually is involved with that, that you talked about, that particular activating system. Can you talk about how that plays a role in kind of the kind of repetitive nature of our thinking, whether.

It'S good or bad? Yeah. So there's a super cool thing. I can't believe I didn't learn about this. you know, sooner. They should teach this in school because it's so cool. So there's a- you- mean like how.

To eat and take care of your.

Body among other things? Oh yeah, balance a checkbook, pay your taxes, all that stuff that nobody wants to learn. So there's a super cool thing in your brain called the Reticular Activating System. I always get the middle word wrong, who cares. I call it the RAS. That's right. And this thing is so freaking cool. This is a filter on your brain. I think about it like, think about, like, you know when people wear a hairnet Imagine if you have a hairnet on your brain, but it is lit up, it is electric, it is alive, and it constantly lights up and changes in real time, depending upon what it thinks is important to you. And you can use this sucker to your advantage. So I'm going to give you an example of how you've experienced this. So think about when you've either bought a new car or you've liked a new car. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, that new Bronco, that new Bronco design, that thing's pretty cool. The second that you latch onto something that you're interested in, what do you see everywhere, Dr. H?

It's the same car.

Everywhere.

Yeah.

Now, here's what's interesting. Those cars had always been there. It's not like they magically appeared. What happened magically is the RAS, this electronic or this electric alive filter on your brain, once you got excited about something, it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Dr. Hyman is interested in the Broncos, shift the filter Block out the Mercedes, everybody let in the Broncos, 'cause he wants to see those. Yeah.

If you say- I love the new Ford Broncos.

Awesome car. Yeah, it is an awesome car.

So that's where you drive? No, I have rented it though, and I love it.

So what's fascinating, and look, if you've never had this happen with a car, you've had it happen with a college. Like, if you've ever applied to college, you all of a sudden go, wait a minute, does everybody go to USC? Does everybody? Go to Wittenberg? Why does it, why, like, I thought I discovered this school. And that's your RAS changing in real time. Why? Because it's trying to help you. It is trying to help you see more of what you want. And so you can do a little exercise. It sounds schmaltzy and cheesy as hell, but I want you to do it. Today, I want you to tell your brain that you want to find one naturally occurring occurring heart shape somewhere in the world. Wake up or leave this podcast and be like, all right, that's it. I'm not gonna go to bed until I see one naturally occurring heart shape. And I swear to God, you will see a cloud, you will see a leaf, you will see a stain on the floor, you will see something on the sidewalk, you will see a spot on somebody's shirt. I just noticed something I'd never seen before. Right there on that lower wood shelf, there is a dark thing under my YouTube award. that looks like a dark heart in the middle of the shelf right there. Why? Because I tell my brain to do this. Now, why on earth would I play this game of looking for hearts every single day? Because I am actively training my mind to change in real time, to show me what I want to see. See, the reason why this is important is because unless I give you an experience, Dr. Hyman, Where you experience your own brain changing and showing you something because you'll see right there on the sidewalk, you've been walking past this thing for a year.

Yeah.

It was there.

And how do we use that understanding of the RAS to actually change our behavior, make our lives better?

I'll tell you how.

Yeah.

You have to first try the game. Because unless you experience it, you won't believe that this is possible.

Yeah.

Because if you can find hearts, you can actually start telling yourself, it is important to me to start seeing evidence that I'm worthy of love.

Oh, that's a good one.

It is important to me to start seeing all the people in my life that care about me. It is important to me to start seeing these acts of eating healthy as acts of being worthy of self-love. Because if you just were to tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna love myself now, your brain's like, nope. Why? Because the RAS also works in the negative.

Yeah.

So one of the reasons why, yes, one of the reasons why so many of us have such a hard time shaking and breaking the beliefs from our childhood is if you're an adult who believes that you're not worthy of love. That belief is real because of your lived experience. And you now act in congruence with that lived experience.

And you pay attention to things and filter the things that confirm that experience.

Correct. Why? Because your electronic hairnet on your brain, your RAS, thinks this is important to you. Because you put so much energy into being like, I'm fat, I'm unworthy. See, that person said that, my boss hates me. I always get everything wrong. Your RS is like, oh, okay, okay, I'll show you more things you did wrong. If I can get you to start seeing a heart every day for five days in a row, and then- I'm gonna do it.

Everybody, you should do it.

Do it. You should do it because you're gonna be like, Shit, this bitch is right. Oh, this is weird. And then if you wanna supersize it, if it's a rock or a leaf, pick it up and be like, this sucker right here, this is evidence that my brain can help me. then get serious about doing the exercise you talked about, writing down the stuff that was true in your childhood, and now write down the stuff you want to believe.

Yeah.

And then challenge your RAS. Show me that I have friends. And start seeing every inbound text from somebody that is evidence, not that people are using you or they don't like you.

It's so true. It's so true, Mel. We always accumulate evidence to support our existing beliefs and our existing ways of thinking and everything else we kind of ignore. Once a friend said, Stop looking for ways to be offended, you know, because you can easily look at everything as in my mother used to say when I was home honk and I would look around, they go, what makes you think that's for you? You know, like, and I think we do that so much.

Yes.

Stop constantly looking for evidence to support our beliefs unconsciously and that reinforces our way of living or way of being.

Or actions or everything. Yes, and so a couple more things about that. Mindset is critical because right now your mindset was programmed by the adults and the experiences of your childhood. And you are largely trapped in thinking patterns that are probably the patterns that you had when you were between six and 12 years old.

For sure.

And so you are basically an elementary school or middle schooler living in an adult body. And you have the opportunity to get serious about the person you want to become now. And so if you were to write down, like take out a piece of paper and write down all the things that you want another person in your life to bring into your life. So the partner that you're with, All of the things that you want her to bring into your life. What are some of those things?

Well, actually, I did that. I actually wrote down what my partner would be. I wrote down, it's like I call it the love that I dream into being. What were the criteria and what are these? There's a lot that you don't have to love themselves. They have to be playful. They have to, you know, be, you know, willing to kind of come back always to love. I mean, a whole this thing. I mean, we go to the jungle and mountaintop to, yeah. hang out with anybody to, you know, just be on that magic carpet ride. Yeah.

Okay. So you want to know the secret to self-love? Be those things for yourself. Be those things for yourself. And what's going to happen though is you can make that list. It's going to be right there. Stick it somewhere that you see it every day is you will resist doing those things because you don't currently do those things. And that's why you need the five second rule to to punch through the resistance that's going to be there to help you plow the new neural pathways and the new behavior patterns. And it's through the actions. You see yourself coming back to love, you see yourself climbing the mountain, you see yourself doing all these things, your entire mind, and the default wiring will change because of the actions that you're taking.

Yeah, yeah, it's so true. I mean, it just reminds me of these studies where they literally had people changed the way they did things in a study of longevity where they took people who were born like and lived in the 50s. They put them in like a model house. Everything was like the 50s with the magazines, the newspapers, everything, the TV, all the same. And had them just sort of act that way. And what happened was that they literally changed their physiology, their grip strength changed, their fitness change. All these biomarkers of longevity change simply by them like having these different ways of acting in the moment.

It's so true. It's so true. And so like think about the fact that your physical inputs, the way you get conscious about your thinking, the physical activities that you take, they change the way that you think. And so I think the biggest single message that I have is that they change your biology. Oh, of course. Of course. And so, you know, the single biggest message that I have is that you're not stuck with the patterns of thinking that you have. And they're probably your mother's or your father's, and they're not yours to carry forward. And if you can identify just like you did, Mark, the things that you said to yourself about love, and you say and you honor the fact that, wow, that sucks. And that was my experience. and now I want a different one. Your body and your brain will be so fast to fall into line and think completely different thoughts. You know, one of the reasons why so many people go away on a vacation.

Yeah.

And you feel like a different person and you have all these different thoughts. And isn't it true, I mean, for me personally, every major time that I've made a major life decision, I typically do it when I'm either on a hike, or I am on a, just a family vacation. You don't have to go somewhere exotic. If you just get out of your environment and you give yourself a little bit of space to think, new thoughts come, new opportunities hit you because you're not getting all the input from the environment that you're used to day in and day out. Yes. And so what I always tell people is if you want to have a completely different experience of who you are, try setting the alarm a half an hour earlier tomorrow. And when that alarm goes off, feet on the floor and get up. Because... And do what? Well, start your morning for beginners. I mean, I can tell you the five things that I do.

Morning routines, right? They're important. They sort of set the day.

Not sort of. So let's just, let's just like start with common sense. the alarm goes off. Tell me the difference between the day that the person's gonna have. If they roll out of bed when the alarm rings, they turn off the alarm and they start their day versus turning off the alarm and rolling over and going to sleep and then coming back and turning it off again and snoozing again and then snoozing again. Tell me the difference between the type of day those two people are going to have.

One's probably going to not get much done, the other's going to get a bunch of stuff done.

Yeah, why? Because that first decision that you make in the morning is the first domino that falls. And when you turn off the alarm and roll back to sleep, the first decision of your day is to procrastinate.

Right.

And it's to put your feelings first versus what what you need to do to support yourself first. What's the second decision that most people make? It's to pick up the phone. So now the second decision that you've made is to hand over your most precious commodity, which is your attention to the outside world. When you pick up that phone, your cortisol spikes, which is already high in the mornings. And if you've had something to drink last night, you're also experiencing anxiety as a result of your body processing the the poison and the chemicals. And so now what are you doing? You're putting a stressful input into your brain of either social media or email or the news, and you've now lost the battle with your attention. And you're not even out of bed. And so again, if you can set the alarm, and this is where my story begins, 2008, my life's going to shit. And I don't feel like getting out of bed, so I don't. I lay in bed like a human pot roast and I stare at the ceiling and I think about our problems and I get pissed at my husband and I'm sad and I'm depressed and I'm this and I'm that. And then I hit the snooze button 'cause I feel like doing that. You have to win the battle with your feelings if you're gonna change your life. You have to take action first and your feelings and your mood will follow. And I think every one of you know exactly what you should be doing. You should get up on time. You should brush your teeth, you should high five the mirror, you should move your body, you should get outside and look at the sunlight, you should eat whole foods, you should be kinder to yourself. This stuff isn't rocket science. We wanna overcomplicate it because our problems are so big. That's how I was. The problems are so big, so the solution has to be big. Getting out of bed, how the fuck is that gonna help, Mel? That's how I felt. And look, getting out of bed on time, Taking care of yourself, it doesn't eradicate racism and poverty and cancer and all these things. I'll tell you what it does do. It eradicates your own resistance and self-doubt and it helps you tap into the power inside of you to face those things. And then over time, as you start to tap into that power inside of you to change the way that you think, to change the way that you act, to become the person that you want to become, it enables you and empowers you to make a meaningful difference in those bigger things.

Yeah.

And that's the secret to everything.

That's true. It reminds me of the Taoist notion that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Correct.

And we often resist taking that single step, and whether it's the count down from five or whether it's, you know, high fiving or whatever it is, getting in a bed, there are simple actions that you have to move through those rough feelings and not let them run your life.

Yeah. And, like, I think if you just accepted the fact that the first 10 minutes of your morning are gonna suck, and if you can push yourself through those, your whole life will change.

Yeah.

Like, I don't like doing laundry, Dr. Hyman, but I still do it.

One of the best things to do in the morning is you know, a hack is based on sort of a lot of longevity. Science is wake up, get out of bed, and take an ice cold shower for two minutes.

You're now freaking me. I'm not rolling.

That is... That I promised you will get you going. And it's better than a cup of coffee. I spent a month in Vermont with myself doing nothing. No computer, phone, really no books, a couple of maybe spiritual books like the Bhagavad Gita. And, just me, myself, nature, God, whatever you want to say. And the one thing I did every morning was I got up and I took an ice cold shower in December in Vermont. And it really was a profound experience because then I would just sort of be awake and I would just go sit and I would just be. And I got to create the spaciousness that I've never had, being busy running a million things. And it was, it was such a revelation to me that, that the quality of our our morning and the things that we do in the morning set us up for the whole day.

Yeah. And here's the big life-changing idea. You have a morning routine already.

It's a shitty one usually.

Correct. Like choosing to hit the snooze button is a morning routine. Running late and your kids missing the bus is a morning routine. Not eating something healthy, that's a morning routine.

Yeah.

Choose to change it.

Yeah, well that's powerful. So you see sort of the motivation actually has to come through, in a sense, changing your behavior first is basically the motivation.

Look, motivation is complete fucking garbage. Because it's not there when you need it. Yeah, you're gonna feel motivated if you listen to Dr. Hyman or Mel Robbins, but that's extrinsic motivation. In terms of the intrinsic motivation that you need to motivate yourself, you're gonna have to push yourself. because you're not designed to like change. You're designed to stop yourself from changing. And that's the problem.

So if you could summarize the things that are the most powerful to help us come back to self-love and self-acceptance, which really is the key to everything in life. It's the key to healthy relationships. It's the key to being successful in life. It's the key to taking care of your own body, of eating the right thing, of exercising, everything you can think you want to do, want to get in your life, it kind of starts there. So what are the, that are the closed today, what are the kind of take homes around how we create self love and acceptance?

Yeah. So first of all, love is an action. So write down on a piece of paper, what would you do to show a human being that you love, that you love them?

What would I do?

Yeah, what would I do?

I would be nice to them. I would say nice things to them. I would bring them coffee. I would give them a kiss. A lot of things.

Yeah, you'd compliment them.

Yeah.

Yeah, you'd encourage them to take care of themselves. You'd support them in their goals and dreams. You'd tell them good job when they do something great. You would reassure them when they fail. You need to do that to yourself. And this isn't just some cheeseball like thing. All of the research shows that being critical of yourself, which most of us are, is a default. is demotivating. And so one of the reasons, you know, I'll give you two hacks. One is get your ass out of bed 5-4-3-2-1 and create a morning routine that really sets you up to feel supported and to feel encouraged and to feel clear about your own priorities. That's what love is. That's number one. Number two, please add to your morning routine the high five habit. Here's how you When you stand in front of the mirror after you brush your teeth, I want you to do this right after you brush your teeth because based on research, if you- those.

People brush their teeth. Yes.

And if we stack this new habit with something you already do, it's gonna encode much faster. Put your toothbrush down, look in the mirror. Based on our research, Dr. Hyman, 50% of men and women cannot do this part. We did a study where we had 164,000 people in 91 countries. Take what I call the high five challenge. You can just go to highfive@numberfivychallenge.com, highfivechallenge.com to do this. And all you're going to do is practice a high five habit five days in a row. 50% of men and women could not look at themselves in the eye. Why? They don't like the person they see. If you can't look at yourself in the eye, that is a habit of self-rejection that begins your morning. All you're going to do after you look yourself in the eyes, which is the hardest part for most people, is raise your hand and high five the human being you see in the mirror. It sounds profoundly stupid, but wait to hear the neuroscience.

Yeah.

So you have for your entire life, Dr. Hyman, high fived other people.

That's right.

What is a high five? The action.

Communication. Celebration.

What else does it communicate?

Fun. Yeah. Love.

Yeah. If you're in a huddle and a teammate fucks up a play and you come back to the huddle and you high five somebody who just screwed something up, what are you saying to them?

You love 'em, they're okay, didn't matter.

Yeah, get back in there, I believe in you. All of that programming with the physical action of a high five is already in your brain. When you high five yourself in the mirror, guess what happens to all that programming?

Let's get rewritten. To you.

To your reflection. You've never high-fived a human being, Dr. Hyman, and thought, I hate your ass. You suck.

Definitely not.

I hope you lose. But that's what we think about ourselves. How could you have done that? You're a loser. You're never gonna be loved. You screwed up that many times. When you go to high five yourself, you're gonna notice a couple interesting things. Number one, the critic in your head shuts up because the programming is only positive. It won't allow the critic to speak. and in less than five days, a funny thing happens. It completely changes how you view yourself. You see yourself as a teammate that you're going through life with. You see yourself as somebody who deserves to be encouraged and cared for and loved. And then there's all this incredible impact. Like you get a release of dopamine. It taps into the celebratory energy of your nervous system. So it boosts your mood, which helps with productivity. It is profound and it is a silent action that you do every morning that taps into programming and chemicals and all this goodness. It's already in your mind, body and spirit.

And it's free and takes seconds.

Yes. And the results are profound. It's all in the book and- Wow, wow.

It's all research driven, right?

Oh yeah.

The high five habit.

Yeah.

It's pretty awesome. Check it out. Mel, you've been amazing. We could talk for hours about how we have to as a culture, get back to loving ourselves, to heal so much strong with us. And, you're just a gift. Thank you. And your, your podcast is amazing. The Mel Robbins podcast. Everybody should listen to it. Check out her book. Yes, you should, everybody. Absolutely. She's on YouTube everywhere. You can find anybody. She's there. She's got all kinds of great audiobooks on Audible. And, Mel is a force, a force for good in the world and been grateful to have this conversation with you and anybody listening. If you've learned how to love yourself, tell us how, because we all want to learn and leave a comment. Share this with your friends and family because they need to hear it. And we'll see you next week on the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to DrHyman.com/pix to sign up. That's DrHyman.com/pix, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer.

Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. this podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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