How to BREAK FREE from Anxiety and Doubt | Mel Robbins' Secret to Mental Clarity in 3 Hours

Learning new habits are the only way to go from what your day-to-day life looks like right now to something different. It's the only way. You're not a procrastinator. You have a habit of procrastinating. Big difference. Because if it's a habit, I can teach you to use science to break it. Your brain is primed to be able to focus for the first 4 hours of the day. By the way, we live in the most magical period of time. You have no excuse for not walking toward what you want. When you were in your 20s, money made you feel good. It expanded you. It energized you. Chasing the money, that was the game. That was your passion. That was your purpose. There's nothing wrong with that. Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I watch these videos every day because I need them for motivation. Being around successful entrepreneurs every morning helps me believe that I can do great things too. It's like your morning coffee, but for your goals, kickstarting your day with a blast of positivity. So here is a challenge for you. Try watching one video every morning for the next 30 days, and let's find out together if they help you do great things too. If you're in, leave a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can celebrate with you. So today, let's get some incredible motivation from the one and only Mel Robbins. Enjoy. When you wake up, generally what the research shows is that your brain is primed to be able to focus for the first 4 hours of the day. The first 4 hours of the day tend to be, for most of us, the time of day when your brain has the most fuel and when your speed of processing is awesome and when you are able to direct your attention at what you need to be focused on. Okay, so now There's a caveat to this. You can manufacture boosts of productivity and boosts of feeling like you've got a little bit more brainpower. Number one, immediately after you exercise. So if you have a burst of cardio, 30 minutes is what a lot of the research says. But if you have a burst of cardio, you will get a little bit of increase in fuel. Another thing that helps is getting outside, getting outside. When you start to feel your energy and your focus start to go to empty, getting outside is another way to give yourself a boost of brain power. But generally speaking, everybody, you need to start to marry mornings with peak productivity. If you can own your mornings, if you can put that thing that matters to you first thing in the morning and make a little bit of progress on it, you are going to start to feel like you are more in control. You're gonna start to see yourself using your best brainpower and your highest level of fuel at the thing that matters most to you. I think you should chase what energizes you. Everyone talks about passion, legacy, purpose, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The one word to pay attention to is energy. I love that. That's it. Let's simplify this. Okay. Whatever energizes you, naturally expands you, feels like possibility, is exciting to do. It may be scary, that doesn't matter. It has to do with how it makes you feel. When you were in your 20s, money made you feel good. It expanded you, it energized you. Chasing the money, that was the game, that was your passion, that was your per— There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. And I particularly want to say that to the women that are watching because it is so socialized into women not to chase success like that, not to go after the money. And so if what energizes you is amassing wealth, go for it. But what ha— and the reason why I say that is because people talk about the word passion or purpose. And the truth is it's not a person, place, or a thing. It's not. It is the feeling of being expanded and energized. Great. If you're pursuing your passion, it means that you wake up every day and are energized. So instead of trying to think, what's my purpose? What's my passion? What's my purpose? What's my passion? I don't know. Yeah. Instead of thinking like that, I want you instead to ask yourself, what's— what could I do today that would energize me? What energizes me? If it's making money, figure out how to make money. Right. If it is making a difference, figure out how to make a difference. It could be in any single shape or form, but if it energizes you, that's what you need to follow. And what happens is that passion also, because it's energy, it dissipates over time. Because when you first start making money, it's fucking thrilling. Yeah. But what happens is once you learn how to do something, once, you can do it over and over again. And so it starts to become routine, which means it's no longer energizing, which is why every entrepreneur out there goes through the mode of chasing the money, and then you hit the money that you need to make, then you're like, I'm not fulfilled. What's my purpose? I don't know what to do. I need to find the light. Everybody does. And it's because you were energized by the money and now you're not. Yeah. Now you got to be energized by the next thing. Yeah. And for you, it's clearly service. It's clearly making a difference. It's empowering others. And so when I look back on my trajectory, yeah, the thing that energizes me is making people feel like they matter. Yeah. It's that simple. It is giving people hope in a situation where they don't have it. It is shining a light on the path forward when somebody feels stuck in darkness. Give yourself permission to dream with the lid off. This is really important. And the reason why this is important is because I guarantee you that right now you are not even allowing yourself to fully dream or think about or set goals that are truly aligned with what you deeply want in your heart. That you aren't even able to manifest properly because you're not even honest with yourself about what you actually want. This is a really common thing because you're allowing your self-doubt, you are allowing your fears, your anxiety, your insecurity, you're allowing where you are to dictate and limit where you wanna go. And so, step 1, super important, You must allow yourself, give yourself permission to start dreaming with the lid off. Now, the scientific reason why this is so important is because you have a filter in your brain called the reticular activity system. I write about the RAS for short, the reticular activity system, extensively in The High Five Habit. The RAS is a filter in your mind. And you can do simple things that change the structure of that filter. In fact, the filter in your mind, the RAS, is always changing. So one thing that you can do in order to teach yourself how to dream with the lid off is to adopt a simple habit. Every single morning, I do a very simple thing. I write down 5 things that I want That's it. When I start my day, after I get up when the alarm rings, I make my bed, I pull on my exercise clothes, I set an intention, I high-five myself in the mirror. I then go out into the kitchen. I crack open my High Five Journal. And then inside the journal, there are prompts that walk me through the steps of visualizing. And the first prompt is dream with the lid off. Set your spirit free. Write down 5 things every morning that you want. And this is important because when you get what you want out of your head and you physically put them on a piece of paper, research shows that you're 42% more likely to achieve those goals simply by writing them down. That's pretty cool. Secondly, your mind is paying attention. And when you take deliberate action and you write down what you want, You are signaling to your brain that you deserve to have these things. You are signaling to your brain that you do want those things. You're not just going to think about them. These are things that matter to you. And that helps train your mind to allow you to let the desires flow through you. Because right now you're not manifesting properly because you're not even allowing yourself to dream with the the lid off. So that's step number 1. You're going to start writing down 5 things that you want every single morning as a way to train your mind to let you dream freely. Why are habits awesome? I'll tell you why habits are awesome. Because when a behavior becomes automatic, there's zero drama in your life. It's just so much easier. Like, I'll give you my husband. The man is Mr. Habit. He just rolls out of bed like nothing's happened. He gets up, he gets dressed, he meditates, he goes to the gym, he walks the dog, he journals. He does it automatically. No drama. There are certainly areas of my life where I would love to be less dramatic, less emotional, less resistant to the things that I want to do. I'd love to just sort of roll through it like my husband does. And so let's you and I Let's not just make this like a conversation. Let's move from listening to doing. If I could take a science-backed magic wand and I could remove all the resistance that you feel in your body, what is one behavior change that you would like to make? One new habit, or, you know, sometimes it's easier to say, What's a bad habit you'd like to break? Do you chew your nails? Do you hit the snooze button 5 times? Said in the positive, what's a new habit you'd like to create? Would you like to exercise every day? Do you want to get your finances in order and be more responsible with money? I'm gonna give you a few examples, okay? Would you love to be the kind of person where part of your routine is to get outside and exercise every day? Or how about the kind of person who keeps your room or your desk clean, or you have a zero inbox? That'd be pretty awesome. Would you like to be the kind of person that gets up 30 minutes earlier than you do right now? Just rolls right out of bed like my husband does? Or how about the kind of person who feels comfortable in social settings? You push yourself out there a little bit more. You, you know, push through that discomfort. You feel a little bit more outgoing. Maybe you want to make it a habit to meditate and feel like you're the kind of person that's more mindful. That's where the science of habits is so important. Why do habits matter so much? I'll tell you why habits matter. You've learned one reason, and that has to do with identity, right? But the real reason why habits matter is because learning new habits are the only way to go from what your day-to-day life looks like right now to something different. It's the only way. It's the bricks on the pathway to changing your life. That's what habits are. And habits are evidence. Every time that you get out that door and you go for the run, it's evidence that you are becoming a particular type of person. The other reason why habits are so important is because they make your life easier. I mean, I want you to just stop and consider something. Think about how hard it is to be the kind of person who has a habit of hitting the snooze button 4 or 5 times every morning. And then you drag yourself out of bed. That's a habit. And you start your day chronically late. That's a habit. I used to do this. I used to do this. This was the Mel Robbins that you did not know. I was a chronic snooze button hitter. I would drag myself out of bed. By the time I got out of bed, the kids had missed the bus. I started the day behind. It was a nightmare. It was so hard to have that bad habit. And in order to change, I needed to become a different person. I needed to become a person that got up when the alarm rang, that had a morning routine, and that organized my morning so that I would begin the day with a sense of accomplishment. That's what I wanted. Instead of beginning the day like I was behind and I was already failing before I got out of bed. And the gateway to making that change is changing your habits in the morning. When you have habits that support you and your goals and the kind of person you wanna become, your life gets easier. And that's why habits truly matter. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight our favorite lessons from the video that will inspire you to remember what you learned today and actually apply them. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there. If you want to change your life, It begins right here. Every single morning, there is a powerful skill that I want you to learn. It's simple. It's not easy. And here it is. When that alarm rings, you have got to get out of bed. Look, I know there's a million reasons not to get out of bed right now. This morning, I can think of a bunch. It's 40 degrees, raining, disgusting, cold, depressing outside. I feel tired. My bones feel heavy. I have a lot of work to do and it's stressing me out a little bit. None of that stuff matters. The only thing that matters when it comes to changing your life is, can you keep a promise to yourself? Can you keep a promise to yourself when it feels uncomfortable? Can you keep a promise to yourself when suddenly you don't want to? Can you keep a promise to yourself when it'd be easier not to. That is the core skill that you need to change any area of your life. Because change doesn't require motivation, it requires discipline. You need the discipline to do what you said you were gonna do. And I want you to think about this. When you set an alarm, setting an alarm the night before is an act of Making a promise to yourself, setting alarm, which I do. I get up between 6:15 and 6:45 every day. I am making a promise to myself that I am going to get up when that alarm rings. And if I can't keep a promise to myself because I don't feel like it, I'm cranky, I'm not a morning person, whatever the hell your excuse is, you're not going to be able to keep promises to yourself in any area of your life where you feel uncomfortable, where it's easier to avoid conflict, where you succumb to your excuses, where you soothe yourself instead of pushing through. And I mean this, all change happens the same way, with discipline. All change begins with a decision to change. All change begins with making and keeping promises. So regardless of what you're working on, if you're working on boundaries, if you're working on saying no, if you're working on pushing yourself through discomfort, you can start to practice the skill of showing up for yourself no matter what by simply setting the alarm the night before for the— when the time you you actually need to get up, and when that time comes and that alarm rings and it's time to keep that promise, no matter what you're feeling, your number one job is to keep that promise to yourself. You're not a procrastinator. You have a habit of procrastinating. Big difference. Because if it's a habit, I can teach you to use science to break it. You see, all habits have three parts. It's 3 parts. There's a trigger, and in the case of procrastination, the trigger's always stress. Then there's a pattern you repeat, and in the case of procrastination, it is to avoid doing something. And then there's a reward. You get a little stress relief. The only way to break a habit, you guys, is not to deal with the triggers. You're never gonna get rid of the stress in your life, but you can 100% change change your pattern of avoiding work. So next time that you're in a situation where you feel yourself hesitate, you spent way too much time checking out the highlights from last night's scores, what you're going to do is you're going to go, "Oh, I must be stressed out about something." Acknowledge the stress, then go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I want you to count to yourself because I want you to interrupt the habit that's stored here, and I want you to awaken your prefrontal cortex. Then I want you to just work, just for 5 minutes. The reason why I want you to only work for 5 minutes is because your problem isn't working. It's the habit of avoiding. I just need you to start. And here's the other cool thing. We know based on research that if we can get you to start, 80% of you are going to keep going. I show up here because I do believe in you. You— I don't care what's happened to you. You cannot convince me that you cannot change. I have way too much evidence on my side. You only have your experience. I've got an army of a million people that I've seen change. And so I know you can change because I know you can take the actions to make your mind a better place. You can take the actions to make your life feel better. You can take the actions to improve your relationship with yourself. And this is the most exciting part. This is the thing I am working on myself day in and day out. You can take the actions that reclaim your brain, that reprogram your mind, and that make your mindset and your thoughts work for you. I mean, all this shit is made up that we're saying anyway. So if you can think bad thoughts, why not think good ones? Does it actually make you happy to tell yourself that you suck and that there's something wrong with you? And is it even true? So if you can make that crap up, if you can adopt what somebody else says about you, can't you make up your own? Of course you can. The reason why visualization and picturing yourself succeeding and allowing yourself to feel the happiness and the pride that comes with picturing a positive future— the reason why that's as important is, let's say Shelley does that every single day this week. Every day she wakes up, she walks for 5 minutes, and as she's walking on that treadmill, she's visualizing herself finishing a 10K in 6 months and how proud she is. Every time she does that, she is changing what's going on up here. This isn't something I made up. This is true. And it's not only true based on science, but let's think about this from a common sense perspective. If Shelly wakes up, or if you wake up every single morning, and instead of thinking about the worst case, instead of looking at your body in the mirror and going, I'm so fat, I'm so out of shape, I'll never run a 10K, this is never going to happen, why didn't I exercise last year, I hate my flabby stomach, I hate my, my big thighs, I hate how out of shape I'm, embarrassed to go— like, if that's what you're thinking, then that is what you're allowing your brain to continue to filter the world through. If you start teaching yourself the skill of visualizing a positive outcome and feeling the pride that comes with achieving that positive goal, what happens for you right now is you start to think like the kind of person that does a 10K. If after an entire week what Shelly does is she looks in the mirror and she goes, I'm getting stronger every day, I'm really proud of myself, Even though I'm feeling flabby— I'm not saying you're flabby, Shelley— but even though I'm feeling flabby, I'm doing the work. I can do this. What happens a week from now is when she sees a registration for a 10K, the old mind that wasn't programmed correctly would go, oh, you're fat, you're out of shape, you're not prepared for that, don't sign up. But the new mind, because she's been visualizing every single day The new mind, just 7 to 10 days later, is gonna go, "Oh, wait a minute, I'm in shape. I'm proud. I'm doing this. Why do you say that?" It's gonna filter the world in a very different way because you're training it to. This is the heart of doing a mindset reset, and this is why visualization works and why it's an important step and why I'm so glad you're doing it. It's very easy to see where you doubt yourself, but it's super hard to come up with the alternative thought that you're going to substitute? Well, the reason why it's hard is because you actually believe these thoughts. And these thoughts have become patterns, and they've become habits, and they've become so prevalent in your life that they're almost like the co-host of your life. You know, if you think about it, you are the star of your life. But if the supporting actor is a limiting belief that constantly tells you that you're not good enough or that you're not worthy or that you'll never succeed, then it's no wonder that you believe it because the co-star of your life is your limiting beliefs. And so it's not easy to change your limiting beliefs, but it is simple. and it begins with you identifying them and then substituting them. So the most, I think, effective way of beginning the process of teaching yourself how to identify a limiting belief and then come up with your own substitute positive belief as a way to change the negative pattern in your mind is to use the power of objectivity. So write down all your limiting beliefs, and I'm going to go through this in detail in just a second. Write down all your limiting beliefs. I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough. Nothing works out for me. Nobody's going to love me. Whatever the fuck it is that you think that's bringing you down. And then you can ask yourself this: What would Mel say if Mel were sitting here across from me? What would Mel say? Another thing you can do, you can write the opposite of what you're thinking. Do it anyway. Is a mindset trick that you can use when you start to feel excuses rolling up. It works a lot like the 5-second rule. So you have said to yourself, okay, I'm gonna talk to my boss today about that thing that I've been avoiding talking to them about. Or maybe you've said something like, I'm gonna go to the gym today or tomorrow or whatever. And then the moment comes where you've gotta have that conversation. Or the moment comes where it's time to pack up your bag and leave your desk and go to the gym. And what always happens? You don't feel like it. I bet there are plenty of you watching that have made a commitment that, "Yeah, I'm not gonna have a drink tonight." And then guess what happens when you get home? You don't feel like not drinking. You feel like having a drink. And so here's what do it anyway has done for me. The idea that I just do it anyway has pushed me to realize and to recognize that there are a lot of moments where there are things in my life that I really want to do, I need to do, I should do, but when the moment comes, I don't feel like it. And so I pull out this idea of, you know what, I'm just going to do it anyway. It's raining outside. I said I would go for a short run. I don't feel like it. I'm gonna do it anyway. It's 6 o'clock in the morning. I'm tired. It's cold. I laid out my yoga clothes, but now I don't feel like it. What do I do? I do it anyway. When you start to say to yourself, I'm gonna do it anyway, what happens is something really cool. You acknowledge that there are feelings that you have that are trying to swoop in and hijack you. You acknowledge them and you basically say, guess what, I'm gonna do it anyway. Whatever it is that you're dealing with in your life right now, it can put blinders on you because you have to deal with your aging parent, you have to deal with the illness that's in front of you, but it is so critical that you still dream. Why? Because dreams transport you from the day to day. Dreams give you a beacon to look up, because dreams will remind you that the situation that you're facing right now is temporary. Dreams will remind you that even if the situation isn't temporary, let's say that you've got some horrendous degenerative disease. And so it's going to get worse, not better. Dreams still give you a purpose to live a bigger life despite what you're dealing with. Now, you may not have the bandwidth to pursue your dreams because of how sick your parents are. That's okay. It won't always be like this. This. But it is critical that as a form of self-love, as a form of self-care, that you still build the skill of holding space for your dreams and writing those dreams down every day and thinking about those dreams and reading about those dreams, because they will help you move through the chapter of the life that you're in more powerfully. More grounded, and more fulfilled. We tend to think about fear as something that's up here, you know, that the fears are all in our heads. Well, the truth is your body feels fear and remembers fear and senses fear way before your mind does. And the reason why I want to talk to you about this is because, as many of you know, we have a brand new audiobook that just launched with Audible Originals. So Audible Originals is an imprint inside of Audible. We are a major partner of Audible's, and we just released a brand new audiobook. It's their number one new release on Audible called Take Control of Your Life: How to Silence Fear and Win the Mental Game. And there were some unbelievable things that I learned and that my team learned and that we're now sharing with you in doing that project. So Take Control of Your Life isn't your typical audiobook. It's not me just reading a book that I wrote. What Take Control of Your Life is, is Take Control of Your Life is a live coaching and takeaway program that's 10 hours long. And so there are 6 people that you meet when you listen to Take Control of Your Life, and they have fears just like you have fears, fears that are holding them back just like you have fears that hold you back, fears that impact your life in a negative way. And we go session by session for 6 sessions. You listen to the coaching session, you hear about somebody else's fear, you hear me coaching this person live, and then I spend like 45 minutes unpacking the entire coaching session for you. And on top of it, you guys, there's a 55-page workbook that our team designed that goes along as a companion to this audiobook. And you don't even need to buy the audiobook to get the workbook or to get the takeaways, because I'm giving you the takeaways for free here on our live stream. So if you want the audiobook, just go to melrobbins.com/takecontrol, and you can download the audiobook. And what I'm going to talk to you about today is I'm going to talk to you about the session that we did with Heather in Take Control of Your Life. And it's a really incredible session because Heather is held back at work. Because what happens is when she has to have a really difficult conversation, when there's something that she wants to talk to her boss about, when there's a conflict with one of her colleagues— you ever have a conflict with your colleagues at work? Ever feel like you work in a toxic work environment? Well, this is something that you need to understand. Sometimes the toxicity in your work environment is about the other people, and sometimes the toxicity in your work environment or in your life environment or your friend environment is about stored memories in your body from your childhood. I know it's crazy stuff, because the saying 'feel the fear and do it anyway,' it's true, because your body feels situations that set you— that puts you in a state of being afraid before your mind catches up and starts thinking about what you're afraid of. And so one of the key takeaways from Take Control, and one of the things that I want to teach you today, is that if you start to tune into your body and you start to notice the signals that your body is sending to you in your day-to-day life, signals like butterflies in your stomach, signals like feeling a rush of energy up to your neck, signals like your armpits sweating, signals like your hands getting sweaty, signals that your body is stepping and noticing a situation that reminds it of your past. Learning how to read those signals that, oh my God, here goes my body. My body is starting to recognize that this is a situation that puts me on edge. Recognizing those signals first and slowing the body response down before your brain starts to go, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. That is a critical skill in taking control of your life. I want to tell you a little bit about the science. So there's this famous neuroscientist called Antonio Damasio, and he did a really interesting study where he discovered that our body senses fear before our mind even realizes it. And when fear or danger Speaking to your boss, calling a prospect, going to the gym when you're not proud of the way that you look. And, you know, it's not fear like terror. It's more that low-grade agitation in your body. I felt it yesterday because I went to a boot camp class yesterday, and I'm not in good shape, and I don't do boot camp classes. And Kendall and I are staying at this hotel where, holy cow, everybody seems like there's some sort of professional weightlifter or Instagram model. And so it was really intimidating, and I could feel that agitation in my body. That's the kind of fear I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the paralysis fear— your life is threatened and you really are in a life-or-death situation. I'm talking about the low-grade agitation that is there when you're about to do something that makes you feel a little uncomfortable. So when fear or danger is sensed in the body, your body begins a stress response before your mind even catches up. And if you want to take control of your life, you got to take control of that physical state. And it starts with catching these moments, everyone, when you, um, start to feel it. Okay? And so for some of you, it may be a pit in the stomach. For some of you, it may be tightening in the chest. For Heather, who was one of the people I coached in Take Control. It was this massive wave of heat that went into her chest, tightness, a rash, and then she could start to feel that she was crying. You need to understand how do you react to situations that make you nervous. I'm gonna be talking to you about the connection between worrying and anxiety. And how it is critical if you want to quiet your anxiety, if you want to stop worrying, if you want to get control over what you're thinking about. It's going to begin with a habit that you have that somebody else trained you, that you've gotten really good at this habit. And you know what the habit is? It's the habit of worrying. We all do it. We're all guilty of it. We're all guilty of— sorry, let me just move that a little bit. We're all guilty of worrying about things that are beyond our control, worrying about things that doesn't matter, worrying about things that we shouldn't care about. Sorry, I've got the streaming lights anymore. Hold on, let me just ask Mandy a question. Worrying about all kinds of things that you shouldn't worry about. And it becomes a habit. It becomes a default way of thinking. And so in order to kick off Anxiety Week, I want to explain the connection between worrying and why that impacts anxiety. And now since we're talking about anxiety, I have to be very clear about something, okay? I am not a therapist. I am an individual who struggled personally with anxiety for more than 2 decades. I took Zoloft, which was a lifesaver, and I strongly believe in trying medication when a professional believes that you are so in a hole mentally that medication will give you the ability to start to claw your way out of that hole. I have learned so much about anxiety because of my own struggles, and 5 years ago I trained myself to be a deliberate thinker, just like I'm training you to be a deliberate thinker in this program. And through everything that I am about to teach you and all of the, all of the, the strategies that you're about to learn I learned all of these by researching anxiety, and I road-tested them on myself while I was still in therapy. And I then started going off of my medication, and as my mindset reset and as my thinking patterns became more positive and stronger and healthier, I was able to completely cure myself of anxiety. And I say that with the utmost of relief and confidence. And I have also used— gone on to use these exact same techniques that I'm going to teach you to help my children deal with their anxieties. I've written extensively about anxiety in The Five Second Rule book, which is right behind me. We've sold almost a million copies of that book. It is the number one self-published audiobook in the history of Audible. I'm so proud of it. And I speak at length about anxiety and using the 5 Second Rule to cure yourself of anxiety. Okay, but I need to make it very clear that these training sessions are in no way, no way a substitute for getting professional help. If you have the kind of clinical anxiety or you suffer from an anxiety disorder, it is paramount that you seek professional help from a therapist one-on-one, that you try remarkable therapies. I'm gonna say it wrong, but it's EDRM or ERDM, which is the rapid eye movement therapy. Incredibly helpful. And so don't be a hero. Don't go off your meds cold. Don't quit therapy because you think that this live training program is the answer. This live training program is a step. And this live training program for the next week in particular, while we talk about anxiety, you're going to be introduced to tools that are grounded in research and tools that have worked for millions of people and tools that you can take back to your therapist or take back to whatever counseling you get to help you become a deliberate thinker, which will help you quiet your anxiety, get control of it, and then ultimately cure it. With the help of a professional if you have an anxiety disorder. So, um, that said, please, please, please listen to everything that I'm about to tell you and try it, okay? Please try it because this stuff works if you practice it. And again, quieting anxiety, it's not an event, it's not a one-and-done. This is a process that you are going to repeat over and over and over again because the connection between anxiety and your mindset begins with your habit of worrying. We have a question from Twitter. Is worrying the same as overthinking? If you're overthinking about positive stuff and keeping yourself in an excited state, no, it's not. If you're overthinking and the overthinking is you spinning scenarios in your mind that are negative, yes. Overthinking is another word when it's negative for worrying on overdrive. It means that you worry in loops. And you keep repeating the worry over and over and over as if you were washing the same load of laundry over and over and over again. And so we're starting with the habit of worrying— worrying about things that don't matter, worrying about things that you can't control, worrying about things that haven't happened yet, worrying about things that are far off in the future, and When you start to train yourself to think about things that are not in your control, or think about things that are statistically likely never to happen, that is when you can get into trouble. And that's why we're going to start with worrying. You see, worrying is when you allow your mind to default on autopilot and think about things that don't serve you. Think about things that are outside of your control. Here's another massive insight. So I always think about business levels, right? And I also realize that as the media landscape or the, the particular vertical or industry that you're building a business in is changing, That is a constant, and it's something that you can't control, right? You just cannot control the things that are happening in the world around us. But you can always control what you're thinking and what you're doing in response to it. So all of my work centers inside this gap between what's happening in your life and in your work and what your reaction is to it, and how you can't control the things that are going on around you, but you can always control what your reaction is. And that gap there That's about 5 seconds long. When you start to understand that you can change how you think, you can change your habits, you can change how you lead, you can pivot and change even the philosophy of your company, and you can do it through the decisions that you're making and managing your reactions, you will become unstoppable. So 3 years, 3 and a half years ago, I got into the speaking business, um, because of the popularity of that TEDx talk that that I gave. And that first year I did, I don't know, I think it was like 27 speeches. The next year I did 87. Last year I did 121. I was the most booked female speaker in the world. This year I've capped it at 80, and here's why. I realized, just like you may be realizing in your business, whatever your business is, that there are aspects of your business that you love and that energize you, and there are aspects of your business that are depleting as hell. And that are old and that are tired, and that if you continue in that lane, you're going to end up 10 years from now in a place that you don't want to be. It's so important for you to pay attention to what's energizing you about the landscape around you and about your own business, because that's the secret to seeing around corners. And so the corner that I was seeing around is that as an entrepreneur, even though it's wildly lucrative to do what I do just on the speaking platform, I mean, anybody can do the math on 121 I do speeches, right, and the amount of money that I get paid to show up and deliver a 1-hour talk and realize there's a lot of money. Here's the problem. It's a terrible business because you can't scale it other than raising your price or raising the number of times you do it. And guess what else? You have to show up. And I can't sell it. So I found myself in a situation where I had built a multimillion-dollar business. Highly profitable, and it was depleting the hell out of me, and I can't really scale it, and I can't sell it. Terrible position to be in, in an entrepreneur. So I made a decision that I, you know, what was it, Bo, that actually energizes me about my business? And I answered it with the first question. It's hearing from people. I would rather answer comments on Instagram all day long than stand in a stadium with 5,000 people in it. I get more from the one-to-one connection. That's what fuels me. And so I had this lightbulb moment, paying attention, being clear, that wait a minute, I don't want to build the biggest speaking platform, and I don't want to build a coaching business. I want to build a content company. I want to go back to my roots and build a media company. And so with that insight, I now have to change, right? Because the kind of businesswoman that runs a multi-multi-million-dollar speaking business where it's just you and your speaking management firm and your travel folks and your logistics people and maybe your social media manager, that's who's on the team. The kind of leader that runs that kind of team is very different than the kind of leader that is going to grow a $100 million media company, that's going to syndicate content every single day, that is going to own what she's doing, that's going to build Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and LinkedIn as my personal ABC, CNBC, Fox. And this is what I want you to understand about the story, and that is this: in order to get to the next level in your business, you got to decide right now What habits do you have as a leader that you have to change now? Because you will not see around the corner. You will not engineer that next quantum leap unless you personally change. And so one of the reasons why I've gone from being the most successful female, you know, book speaker on the speaking circuit to launching the number one book on all of the self-publishing platform for Amazon and one of the most read books in the world and selling like gangbusters still is because I am constantly innovating myself. I know that I am the single biggest problem in my company, and if I don't constantly pivot and evolve how I lead and what I'm focused on, I'm going to be the blockade. And so You know, stop looking at what everybody else is doing, stop micromanaging the team, and ask yourself, 2 years from now, when you think about where you want your company to be, what habit do you have to change right now? The thing about procrastination is it's triggered by stress. So your cleaning is being triggered by stress, and there's only one way to deal with this pattern. You have to interrupt it. So when you catch yourself cleaning next time, that's a moment of power because you're, you're now present. You're like, oh my God, here I am cleaning again. Use the 5-second rule— 5, 4, 3, 2, 1— to switch gears in your brain and get control in the moment. And then I want you to just do one thing on your side hustle. That's it. Drop the cleaning stuff, walk over, send one email on your side hustle, write one paragraph of content, do one thing. And here's why, here's why I want you to focus on doing one thing or working for 5 minutes. That's it. Set a timer for 5 minutes. I'm going to work on concept for 5 minutes. We know based on the research that you're 80%, 80% of the time you're going to keep going past the 5 minutes because the issue isn't that you don't know how to create content. The issue is that when you start to feel stressed out, you go to cleaning. It's a pattern that you've trained yourself to do. The only way to interrupt that pattern is to break it and insert a new one, okay? And let me just say something about procrastination and perfectionism, okay? Because how many of you struggle with being a perfectionist? Yep, yep, I'm sure. The thing about those of you who are perfectionists is that it is not about being perfect. Perfectionism is really your attempt to be in control. And we're seeing a massive rise in the number of people that struggle with perfectionism. And I think it has to do with the fact that our culture is now so focused on performing from an early childhood, from How you doing school to being on the right club team, and then it's the travel team, and then it's the this team, and then it's recruiting for college, and the way that we parent our kids and helicoptering and swooping down, and, and the pressure of college and the pressure to achieve and the, the concern that you're gonna make a mistake. I mean, this has become a self-imposed epidemic. And so if you are somebody who struggles with perfectionism. You can't turn in something at work until it's perfect. You can't finish the paper until it's perfect. You can't even start with redecorating your room until you know the perfect color. That this is really about control. You are uncomfortable just being in the flow. You're uncomfortable with the unknown. And the most important thing here is to realize that this is a pattern, and you absolutely have to break free of the need to do everything right and to get into the mode of just being willing to try. Get into the mode of understanding, hey, if I turn in something at work that's not like perfect, I'll get feedback and then I'll make it right. Like, in the work and in the willingness to just keep pushing things down the line, keep showing up, keep raising your hand even though you're not sure you're going to say it right, keep contributing, keep asking for feedback, you 1,000% will slowly lose the grip of being a perfectionist. Because the only way to break that pattern is to realize, oh my God, I'm trying to keep control and that's why I'm holding on to this paper. That's why I'm torturing myself. That's That's why I'm doing everything. The magic is in the willingness to push things forward, to try, to get in the flow, to basically say, I'm either gonna, I'm just gonna do my best, that's it. I'm not gonna do it right. I'm going to just try. I'm gonna do my best. And when I get feedback on how I can do it better, that's how I'm gonna learn. You know, I am a lifelong learner. I don't ever think I'm gonna do anything perfect. I— this is not something I struggle with anymore because I have broken this pattern in my mind and realized that all of the, all of the opportunity and magic comes from you being willing to put yourself out there when you're not perfect, being willing to do things and start things when you haven't figured it out, and understanding that when you get into the flow and into the conversation and into the livestream that you can get into problem-solving mode and you can figure it out. Your mindset and having a powerful mindset and being deliberate about what you're going to think about and what you're not going to think about, it begins the moment you wake up. And believe it or not, how you wake up, not when, but how you wake up and the first few things that you do in the you wake up in the morning will dictate your mood for the rest of the day, which based on science is going to impact your productivity and it's going to impact how you feel about your life. And it will also impact your mindset for the rest of the day. And that's why now that we've done in days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, we've done foundational training. You've learned a tremendous amount about how your brain works, about your default network, about how to be a deliberate thinker. You've spotted your limiting beliefs. You've learned how to think this, not that. You've started the skill and the practice of the skill. Remember, it's a process, not an event, to be a positive thinker. You started practicing catching your limiting beliefs and swapping from that default way of viewing the world and thinking about yourself and choosing deliberate thoughts. Now let's talk about physical habits that you can adopt that are very simple that will be life-changing because they will impact your ability to be in control of what you're thinking and to be deliberate. And that begins with how you wake up. So let me talk about the morning. You can think about your morning routine and whether or not you even have one in the exact same way that we think about the brain. You're either defaulting to something that you've always done that may not— no longer serve you, or you're getting deliberate and choosing to do something that's more positive and powerful because you deserve it. And that starts with your morning routine. So if you're the kind of person where the alarm goes off and you hit the snooze, and then the alarm goes off again and you hit the snooze, and You know, eventually you roll out of bed and you step into your day and you maybe drink a big dark cup of coffee and you skip breakfast and you skip exercise and you're tired. If that's how you start your day, your mindset is going to be impacted by that. If your alarm goes off and you immediately reach for your phone and you start scrolling through Instagram while you're in bed and looking at Facebook, and you are putting all kinds of stuff in your brain that triggers FOMO, that triggers insecurity, that triggers anxiety, that is going to impact your mindset for the rest of the day. And so starting tonight, I want you to take control and be more deliberate about your habits in the morning. And what we're going to do this week is we are going to build, based on science, the most powerful morning routine that you could possibly have. Sorry, I'm just moving this around so that the Instagram channel is brighter. The most powerful morning routine that you could possibly have based on science. It's super simple. It will help you become a more deliberate and positive thinker, and I'm gonna walk you through step by step, and you're gonna be doing this with more than 230,000 people around the world. So what is the assignment tonight? The assignment tonight is very simple, and you're gonna hate it. You're totally able to do this, and most of you are not going to. You're going to let your limiting beliefs and your default mode of thinking stop you from making this simple change. And the thing that I want you to do tonight— this is your assignment— this smartphone right here I don't want it anywhere near your bedroom. Your assignment is when you go to bed tonight, you are to plug your smartphone in outside of your bedroom. If you live in a studio apartment, put it on the other side of the room. I don't want this phone anywhere near where you sleep, and there's a simple reason why. You're addicted to it. And if it's next to you while you're sleeping, as soon as you wake up, without even thinking, the default mode of your brain will mindlessly reach for this, and you will lie in bed and you will look at your phone. And when you do that, you are putting in garbage into your brain before you even get out of bed. If you wake up anxious, if you wake up overwhelmed, if you wake up feeling like you're losing some imaginary race, if you wake up and you feel dread, if you wake up and feel negative or exhausted, I'm telling you, this is the reason why. And if you want to have a positive mindset this year, and you deserve to, then you also have to get very deliberate about your habits and about your morning routine in particular, because how you wake up matters. How you wake up determines your mood. How you wake up determines— thank you for your patience, by the way. Normally our streams are not as spotty, but when we started this program, I knew that I was going to be traveling 24 out of the 35 days that we're broadcasting live, and tech can be a challenge. And so for those of you that have been hanging in there on Instagram, if it's spotty, jump over to Facebook Live, jump over to YouTube. Jump over to Twitter. We're streaming on all 4 platforms at once, and we will also email you a link to this video, which is one of the reasons why, if you haven't yet, sign up for melrobbins.com/mindsetreset, because we curate all this information for you and we tee it up for you every day. So thank you for your patience as I am broadcasting from my parents' place, my mother's 70th birthday is tomorrow. And for those of you that are just tuning in because the stream has been dicey, we're talking about the powerful connection between your mindset and your morning routine. In fact, I would say it's not even powerful, it's critical. You cannot have a positive, in-control mindset if you don't have control of your mornings. The barrier is everybody gives a What other people are thinking. Yeah. And so they're on camera or they're on a microphone trying to be smart or concerned about whether or not they look good in the shot, concerned about how they sound, whether or not they stuttered, if their neck is turning red, like whatever it may be. And they're so up here that they're not actually being true to just saying what's right here. Absolutely. Whether you're speaking from the heart, speaking from the gut, like, that is the skill to develop, is the ability to be more like an 11-year-old that gets on camera and can just be themselves instead of being a 49-year-old person censoring themselves. And that's what I'm talking about when I talk about the truth, when I talk about authenticity, that People really want to feel that connection, and the only way that they're going to feel that connection is if you do the work to remove the own veneer and the own barriers that you put in between you and other people. And the number one thing is everybody gives too much of a shit about what everybody else thinks. And you know who they think they're worried the most about? Their fucking friends. If I put this thing up not for my friends, but for the people that I'm trying to build a rapport with online, my friends are gonna judge me. Fuck your friends. Seriously. If you're out to make a difference, if you're out to share something that is important to you, if your friends don't like it or don't support you, they're really not your friends. Absolutely. You know? Yeah, no, definitely makes total sense. And it's a really hard lesson. It's a very hard lesson because everybody's always judging everybody else. That's why you can't worry about it. Do you have recommendations for how people just get started, like, for moving forward? To move from that, like to basically move from the mindset of I care too much to I don't care as much? Are there steps that you recommend people take? The only step that really works is action. Because if you're stopping to think about what people are thinking or whether or not you're worried about what people are thinking, you've already fallen into the trap. The second that you push yourself to get started through the action itself, You are proving to yourself that even though you care what everybody thinks, you're going to do it anyway. And so that's why I talk about the 5-second rule. The 5-second rule is how you interrupt the excuses, the patterns, the concerns, and the fears that you have, whether it's perfectionism, whether it's disappointing your parents, whether it's being judged by your friends, whether it's looking stupid when you post something. Whether it's screwing up and saying something that a bunch of trolls come after you for, right? All those things that everybody's concerned about, that can stop you forever. If you go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you break the part of the brain where all of those trappings are, and you awaken your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that you're using when you're creating content, when you're speaking with courage, when you're learning something new. And so that's why this simple brain trick that I invented is exploding around the world, because every last one of us is exactly the same. Exactly the same. You and I, we want the same thing. We want to actually live a life where we get to express ourselves at the highest level. We all want the same thing, and we're all stopping ourselves the same way— by thinking too too much, by buying into the lies that self-doubt tells you. And so I'm here to tell you, you can cut that off at the knees. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You can make a 5-second decision the second you feel that doubt, the second you feel that concern, the second you feel that fear, and you can literally feel it and actually move anyway. When you allow yourself to envision the thing you deeply want the most, like, I have the same thing about launching a podcast. I, if I really allow myself to believe it, it's that we will be the number one podcast, period. And I can feel it. That is my soul pulling me forward. Totally. But what's keeping me from really going all in and doing the work is this deep sense that I still am not worthy of the things that I want. Yep. And so the battle for you is not— well, for me, it's not with fear. It's with this opinion that I don't deserve to be happy, or I don't deserve, uh, and I'm not worth or not good enough to have something that magnificent. And that is what holds me back. About how you can interrupt negative thoughts and flip into a positive mindset. And why would you want to do that? Well, the reason why you want to do that is because your thoughts lead you in a particular direction. And if you start to allow your mind to dwell on negative outcomes, if you start to obsess that things are not going to work out, if you allow yourself to continue to think negative thoughts, you're not only priming your mind to default to negative, but you will literally, through your thoughts, trigger negative actions. You know, if you think about it, you've had experiences in your life, right, where you've really trashed yourself, you've hated on yourself. And when you continually think that you hate yourself, or you continually, um, tell yourself that you're screwing up, you tend to do things that you hate, don't you? But when you're in a positive mindset, when you're in an optimistic mindset, when you interrupt those negative thoughts and you start to say, well, maybe it is going to work out, or, you know, I got to just keep on going. Your thoughts literally can trigger positive action too. This is where I think people go off the rails. They, they're sitting at home thinking, yeah, I want to start a podcast as well. And I want to hear, because I know that you end up doing it on a way more professional professional stage, but walk people through what— who'd you call? Was it a relationship that you built 20 years ago? I want people to follow that. Yeah, so first things first, I went to my friend Google, and I'm like, how do you start a podcast? Honest to God, because I'm smart enough to know it's different than radio, and I didn't even know what equipment people have. I didn't know anything about, okay, do you go to I was like, how do you put a podcast up? Do you put it everywhere? I don't know. Like, is there a form that you put the title on and the captions? And then do you send it somewhere? Like, I know how to upload a video to YouTube. I know how to, but I don't know anything about this market. And so I went to Google. You're gonna laugh at me, but I bought a course about podcasting. Not laughing at all. I studied a bunch of videos about the type of equipment that people I then just started stalking people that are doing it, and I started to say to myself, okay, what does somebody that already has a podcast— what do they do that I'm not currently doing? And so the first step is obviously learn about it, identify a group of people that serve as what I call your lights on the path. And so lights on the path are people that are anywhere from one step ahead of you to 10 years ahead of you. And these are all people that can guide you forward if you study what they did. And most of them, by the way, we live in the most magical period of time. You have no fucking excuse for not walking toward what you want. I realize it may be harder for some of us with mental health issues. I realize that not everybody starts starts at the same starting line because of bias and all kinds of things that can happen to people. But the bottom line is through your actions and attitude, you can create anything you want. And look, I'm sitting here saying I've been wanting to do a podcast for 8 years, and for 6 years I was nothing but excuses for why I couldn't get started. And then finally I'm like, fuck it, I gotta start. And so you start by Google the topic, number one, become a student of what you want to be first. That's the mindset. What can I learn? What are people doing that is calling to me? What are people doing that I don't like? And so as I started being a student of this, really important, that's why I say Google, Google is a search engine. Become a student of what you want to learn about or launch in your life. And there's a bazillion books, there's masterclasses, there's free videos, there's workshops. And what's so cool, people like Tom are unpacking this shit for you with people. And so you can also hear people's stories. The question is, how do you deal with the anxiety that comes from waking up and being on a roll and realizing that When you're making things happen, it's easy to look back and realize how much of your life you wasted, and that makes you present to how potentially little time you have left and how much there is to do in the little time that you have. I can so relate to this. So relate to this. The few things I wanna say about this is that I don't think that our experience of feeling anxiety about getting it all done before your life is over, getting it all done in the time that you have. I don't think it's unique. I think that that is something that starts to happen when you feel like your life is on a roll and you're not present to misery, but you're actually present to power and joy and all the cool possible things that you could do. Does the anxiety, or how do you make the anxiety go away? I don't think you can. You can. I think that that is a very normal thing to feel when you're a big thinker and you become present to the fact that when you put in the work and when you focus, you really are capable of creating just about whatever you want in your life. And that's both empowering and daunting and terrifying as hell. And so you can't get away from that anxiety, but you can respond to the trigger. I often I feel what you're talking about when I'm on an airplane. And maybe it's because I'm really— I feel very vulnerable and out of control when I get on a plane and I click the buckle and I realize this puppy could go down. And then I think about, okay, I spent 49 years here. Fuck, there's so much more I wanted to do. So I can relate to this. So there's two things to this. One is being present to time passing and the fact that we're all gonna die. And that your life is a fucking gift. When you get present to that, that's the biggest motivator on the planet. And when you feel one of those moments, what I do is I shrink it down and I try to find something in this moment that I'm incredibly grateful for, so that if it were to end right now, then all would be well. I think about the sunset I'm looking at. I find a picture of my kids and my husband. I think about, you know, the lives that have been touched by the 5-second rule. And that gratitude in the moment allows my mind to not go psycho thinking about the big vastness around life and those big topics. So that calms me down immediately. That's number 1. Number 2, I think a slightly different question than— it's probably anxiety, but I think it has more to do with momentum and how when you start to get unstuck and you start to see things happening, you'll notice that things feel like they start moving faster, as if you are on a treadmill and somebody has secretly come up and turned it up on you. And there are days where we're moving through our day, like this morning was one of them. We're getting ready for this live training and all of a sudden I caught myself almost about ready to hyperventilate because I wasn't present to this. I was present to, "Shit, what happens when we have 1,000 people show up and where are we gonna hold—" You know, you kind of speed it up on yourself. So when that happens, I know that I'm in the future, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, I need to be right here and right now. And that when you start having big things happen and when you start start feeling unstuck and when things start moving, the momentum, you know, 'cause an object in motion tends to stay in motion, your anxiety will make it roll faster. That will not make you effective. You have to slow it down immediately. Just in the case of getting overwhelmed by the big themes in life, when you start to feel like things are going too fast, oh my God, oh my God, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough time, no, yes you do. Slow it down, okay? You know, I'm always looking for new ways to explain the power of the 5 Second Rule and the power of 5-second decisions. And I read something that Tim Ferriss said that really resonated with me. And he had this one line buried in a podcast somewhere that just jumped out and it's stuck. And what he said is he said something about how there's a gap between the world and the things that trigger you and your response. And your entire life is that gap. When you start to— this is not what he said. He kind of identified this gap, and I, of course, intrinsically was like, "Well, absolutely, that's the 5-second window between instinct or stimulus and your reaction." And when you start to understand that your whole life plays out in this 5-second gap and that there's a gap that's 5 seconds long between fear and courage, and there's a gap that's 5 seconds long between self-doubt and confidence. That is your life. And what's super cool about understanding that your whole life is inside this gap is it's so small, everybody, that you have the ability to control it. Life's always gonna throw triggers at you, and there will always be all kinds of cool things that inspire you, your wisdom, and you get to choose What happens in that gap? Do you succumb to an excuse or do you push yourself forward? When you start to speak up in business, you'll be shocked at how you start to speak up in your relationships. When you start to make hard phone calls, whether it's in a selling situation, you'll be surprised at how you'll start to close the gap and have hard conversations in your personal life. And so that gap is everywhere and it's the same everywhere. And when you start to go to work in controlling how you live in that gap between stimulus or idea and your response, that's where the magic is. And that's what you're experiencing. When life suddenly changes and you feel like you have lost control and you start to feel stuck and powerless, how do you take control when you don't know where your life or the world or this moment is going. And here's the number one thing I want you to know: you don't need to know where this moment or where the world is going. You just need to know where you are going next. And one of the things that has happened, uh, certainly in the pandemic, but it always happens when there's any kind of reckoning in your life, is that when you have something something suddenly happen and your life is fundamentally changed, whether it's a death or somebody says, 'I don't love you anymore,' or you're fired, or you find yourself, uh, with a scary health diagnosis, there is a line in the sand. There is a life before that happened and then a life after that moment happened. And that line in the sand, that reckoning that happens and it happens for all of us, whether it's happening for you right now or it has happened in the past, I'm telling you, there is a gift inside of this, even the darkest moments, because every single sudden change in your life that makes you feel like you've lost control and you no longer know where you're going, it's like hitting the giant pause button. And if you lean into the moment, there is a chance for tremendous wisdom and growth. There are things that you can do right now in order to take control of where you're going, of what you're thinking about, and you can start to take this moment of change and you can use it to be able to take and make an intentional pivot in direction that is meant for you next. And one of the things I want to say about this moment is, look, if you're losing loved ones, you are terrified, this has made you lose your job, you feel like you're in that moment where everything, you know, you're falling off a cliff, you're trying to pack a parachute, you're grieving. And so you got to give yourself space to grieve the losses that you're feeling. And when you get a little bit of distance from the grieving and the waves of grief and fear that you're feeling start to space out, they don't ever leave you, but over time, those waves of holy cow, and I don't want this, and I can't handle this, and why is this happening to me, time will start to lessen those waves. You will gather your feet underneath you again. And you will absolutely be stronger and be a better version of yourself based on this incredible challenge that you're facing. And I can say that even though you may be facing a tough time, because if you think about your life, you faced extraordinary challenges and there hasn't been a single one that hasn't made you a better and stronger version of yourself. And this moment will be no different. So I want you to understand that when you get out of the cycle of grief, this is an enormous reckoning, an enormous opportunity for you to hit the pause button and for you to start to ask yourself the question, what do I want my life to look like? Because I think too many of us are sitting here going, I can't wait for my life to get back to normal. I can't wait for this to end. I can't wait for things to go back to normal. And in any moment of reckoning, What happens is there's actually parts of your old life that you don't want to go back to, and there is a tremendous amount that you're learning in this moment that you need to pause and take in and say, okay, based on what I've just learned, based on my old life, when I look ahead to my new life, what is it that I want my new life to look like? This next chapter, I can I can turn to a blank page. I can take all this wisdom, all this resilience, all this strength, and I can write something new. That's what I want you to know. You don't need to know where the world or where everything is headed. You just need to know where you're going to head next. Everybody is capable of change, period. You and I have seen too much evidence of it that you could try to argue to Tom and to Mel Robbins that this person is beyond change. Bullshit. I think everybody is capable of change unless you have some sort of incredible psychosis or diagnosed something or another that makes it neurologically incapable. Everybody's capable of change. And so the importance of what you're doing cannot be understated because our brains are organized to spot evidence that matches our belief system. That's the way the RAS works. And until you start to interrupt the story that you're telling yourself, you're going to continue to feel stuck. You're going to continue to see those thoughts. And you're— this kind of content that you're putting out is hugely important because the other thing that interrupts the RAS is representation. If you see somebody that looks like you, or you see somebody like me that was facing bankruptcy 14 years ago and have liens on my my house and you see somebody else that faced the shit that you feel overcome by, it's proof that you can do it too. And you got to view this moment like a test. And what is the test testing? It's testing who you are. That's part of the race right now, how you show up for it, right? It's not a matter of how you finish it. It's how you show up for it and what you do while you're running it, the kind of racer that you are. And look, I get it. This is a very difficult race that we're all running because we don't know where the finish line is. And it is very, very hard to stay motivated, which is the advice that you're seeking, Peter, when you don't even know when this damn thing is ending. This is the part of the race— I've run 4 marathons. Don't everybody gasp. I mean, it was nothing to, uh, to brag about. I mean, I finished them, which is, which is something to brag about, but it's not like I won the damn thing. But this is the point in time when you're running a race when you said you're losing ground. What that means is you're starting to slow down. You feel your legs getting heavier. You feel your breath getting a little bit more shallow. You start to wonder, oh, why did I sign up for this thing in the first place? You start to wonder. If you are going to make it. And so here's what I'm going to tell you, Peter. When you are coaching your clients and your clients start to lose ground, when you are coaching your clients and your clients don't feel motivated and they feel tired and they feel like giving up and they don't want to do another set of burpees, what do you tell them? You tell them to dig deeper. You tell them to find the strength within them to keep going. You see, what you need right now is you need to start building the motivation of your mind, because motivation doesn't exist in your body. It comes from up here. And what I hear is that you now have an opportunity— this is what the test is, Peter— to train harder, because you are capable of so much more. This is handing you a moment where you get to become an even stronger and more capable version of yourself. Now, does that mean that you're going to be motivated all day long, uh, every single day that you wake up? No. But it means you've got to have the mental fitness right now to continue to get up to show up and to dig deeper when it comes to your mindset, when it comes to your attitude, when it comes to your just knowing that you are going to get through this. And so this moment, everybody, it's telling you who you are. It's telling you whether or not you're the kind of person that shows up to a challenge and you're pissed off or you're sad, or you feel depressed, or you feel despair, or you feel all of these things that start to take you down the drain of negativity. And what I'm here to tell you is that you are built for this moment. You may not feel like it. You may feel sad. Those are all normal feelings. You may feel negative. It's very easy to do. You may start to feel a little bit of despair. That's gonna come and go, but this is where the test of this race that we're currently running lies. When those feelings rise up and you start losing ground and you start feeling like you're not gonna make it to the finish line and you start feeling unmotivated, can you dig deeper and remind yourself that you were built for this moment? Because one of the things that I know is that when the shit is hitting the fan, I guarantee you there are people in your life that are looking to you. There are people in your life, whether it's clients or colleagues or family members that are looking to you right now. You know what that tells me? That you're the kind of person that people rely on. And now is the moment in time in the race that we're all running where you gotta teach yourself to rely on yourself. How do you do that? How do you build the muscle of the mind? It's very simple. Very simple. I didn't say easy, I said simple. The steps are very simple to win this race and to build strength in this muscle right up here. You got to focus on the shit you can control, and that is what you do with your body and what you do with your mind. And the one thing that has made a huge difference in me, because you can see that I am showing up as a very different Mel Robbins than I've been the last couple weeks. The last couple weeks I have been losing the race. I've been going up and down. I've been doing my best to stay positive, but I am now back in the race. I have now found my ground and found my footing, and it comes in focusing on what you can control. And you know what you can control? There's only one thing. It's what are you doing to make this day the best day that you can do? What are you doing to master this day today? Tomorrow, forget about next week, forget about what's happening this summer. This is a race that will be won by those of you who are— the ability to focus on today and making today amazing. In fact, I was just talking with, um, my creative director, and she was sharing with me that a friend of is going through this terrible thing right now. It's not terrible. It's just, it's just what happens in life where she knows that the relationship that she's in isn't right. They get along really well. Things are really easy. But in her heart, she knows it just isn't right. Those are the kinds of decisions that are really difficult to make. And so it gets I think it gets to the heart of Emily's question, which is, how do I know whether to make a decision with my head or a decision with my heart? I'm the kind of person that believes you should always make decisions with your heart and soul. You can use your brain for math. You can use your brain to look at the fine print in a contract. But when it comes to the actual feel of the decision, you always wanna go inward and check it against your heart and soul. How do you do that? Here's the simple test. Does the decision that you're about to make expand you, expand your future, or expand the possibilities of your life? If the answer is yes, then the decision is yes, no matter how terrifying it is. If you conversely look at the choice that you have to make and the decision will shrink you, will silence you, will inhibit you in some way, then the answer is no. No matter how easy the decision is, no matter how safe the decision is, the answer is no. Now, one of the things I want to point out, that when you start to use this— does it expand or does it shrink me? Does it open possibilities or does it keep things closed? Does it raise my voice or does it silence me? Right? Is that there's always a short-term and a long-term impact to the decision. The short-term impact to making an expansive decision, a decision that's based in your heart and your soul, sometimes it's terrifying because sometimes it means moving or it means changing a job or changing a relationship or having a difficult conversation or starting something new. And those sorts of things are always uncomfortable. So brace for impact, put the force fields up, but make the decision anyway, because the long-term impact of making a decision from your heart and soul, that is where the best life comes from, because you're living for what's true for you, not what's safe in the moment. Most of the shit that we react to is some sort of response to a past experience. And that it's not until you have a wake-up call from somebody like Tom Bilyeu, or you see somebody that has been in your circumstance that has overcome it, or somebody says something that challenges what's been programmed up here, that's the wake-up call. And that's when you realize, oh, wait a minute, all of this shit that I just naturally believe, like for example, I didn't have, like, you know, I didn't choose to speak English. That's what was spoken in my house, so I absorbed it. If you grew up with a hypercritical parent or a narcissistic-leaning parent, you probably absorbed certain things from them that you don't want now that you're an adult. Yeah, I wouldn't even say probably, that's a guarantee. Yes. And so I just wanted to be very clear because one of the things that prevents people from changing their lives is when you said the thing about what's missing, I was gonna say hope. Because without hope, that things could change or that this new action or thought matters, you won't do it. And so if you have this moment where you immediately get this wake-up call that maybe I don't have to be miserable, maybe I don't have to criticize myself, maybe I don't have to live with anxiety for the rest of my life, maybe I could be the first one to go to college, maybe I could like live as an open-minded person openly gay or trans person, even if my family rejects me. Like, there's that wake-up call moment that is critical. But now what you're up against is completely learning how to reprogram all that default shit that somebody else put there. And that's the work that you're up to. That's the work that I'm doing for myself. And I did it at a certain level up until the last 2 years. I've been chipping away at this shit at all different kinds of levels. And I think the more self-aware you become and the more successful that you become in achieving goals or taking away a lot of the stressors that, you know, are no joke, like paying your bills, the deeper the opportunity to attack the deeper shit, which is what I've been working on. If you want to get work done, you have to manage distractions and interruptions. So the tech stuff is easy. Put your computer or your phone on do not disturb so that you can get work done. That's number one. Number two, if it's interruptions from family members, um, what the heck, put a sign on your door. Do not disturb unless you are on fire, or, uh, I'll be available in an hour. Unless it's an emergency. When we first started quarantining, my kids were so anxious and discombobulated, they would come into my office at home every 10 minutes. Mom, how do I cook microwave popcorn? Mom, how much food do I feed the dog? Mom, um, uh, is someone going to the grocery? Mom, can I— and you know what they were doing? A lot of times when people interrupt you, they're managing their own anxiety, boredom, procrastination by coming to interrupt you. They're creating reasons to interrupt their own work or their own emotional state by coming and interrupting you. That's what I realized was happening. Everybody was all discombobulated. We're underneath one roof. People are bored, frustrated, procrastinating, feeling anxious. And so what do you do if you can't sit still and you don't want to do what you're doing? You get up. And you can't drive to a coffee shop, and you can't go run an errand, and you can't go do— so you go interrupt somebody. So I'm not kidding when I tell you, put a sign on the door. The other thing that you should do that is super helpful— I know this sounds terrible, but it works like a charm— on Sunday night, have a family meeting. Go over the week. Outline all of the things that you have coming up, and then you've got to take it a step further. I've been doing a tremendous number of virtual presentations for companies all over the world, and whenever I'm streaming online for a paid client, it's not enough to have previewed this for my family on Sunday. That takes care of who's picking people up and what needs to happen on Tuesday when I'm giving the presentation, but when I'm in in the middle of it, nobody's going to remember that Mom was not supposed to be interrupted. So you know what I do? I text everybody in our family group chat in all caps: I'm about to go online for a paid client. Do not call me. Do not. I will not pick up from 2 o'clock to 3:30. Thank you. I love you. And that has worked like a charm. You should hang something on the door, and you can have a sign that says you may enter, and then you should have a sign that says you may not, and then put a sticky note as to when you're going to be available again. That way you are training somebody to stop and think before they walk in. You're training somebody to go, is this actually important, before they come to you. In terms of everything else, it's on you to hit the do not to disturb. It's on you to send calls to voicemail. It's on you to turn off the notifications because you simply can't work if those things are happening. You've got to manage the interruptions and distractions, period. Anxiety— if this is the first time you're thinking about it, anxiety is what happens when you are worrying about something in the future that makes you feel uncertain or makes you feel like you're going to lose control. That's it. Anxiety is when you start worrying about things in the future that make you feel uncertain or make you feel like you're about to lose control, and you start to get a stomachache, or you start to feel tightness in your throat, or you start to shake your hands, or you start to have your heart race, or you start to have sweaty palms. Your body starts to get get agitated because you're really busy worrying about the test tomorrow. You're really busy worrying about whether or not you're gonna throw up. You're really busy worrying about that sleepover and whether or not it's gonna go okay. You're really busy worrying about whether or not your friends are gonna talk to you when you walk into school today. Or you're busy worrying that something might happen to your parents. Why did I give you those those examples. There was a specific reason why. The top worries that kids 12 and under have are number 1, throwing up. Now, why would throwing up cause kids anxiety? Because as an adult, you've probably done it a bunch, and so you know, you throw up, it's over. It sucks, but that's it. There's no sense getting yourself worked up about it. But for kids, this is the number 1 thing that kids are afraid of because it is an enormous loss of control when it happens. And it scares a lot of kids to have that happening to them because their brains aren't matured and they don't understand that it's just a moment. So they're not actually worried about the throwing up, they're having anxiety because they're thinking that it could happen at some point, and that makes their body feel weird. And then of course, because their body feels weird, it makes makes them certain that it's coming. I mean, kids can actually— I have a son that actually made himself throw up because he got so worked up thinking that he might, that he caused himself to. This is a true story, absolutely true story. So I have lived this. Um, being worried about you dying, major cause of worry for kids. They think about it, and if they think about it too much and they don't have a process and a plan around how to live with that very normal fear, it will turn into anxiety. The social pressures of being accepted, going to a sleepover and being worried about what's going to happen because you've never been to the house before, you don't really like dogs and they have one, your friend's dad kind of scares you, what time are we going to go to bed? You see, there's a lot of uncertainty that we adults don't think about when it relates to sleepovers at new friends' houses that your kids are worrying about. And if they stay up here and they start worrying about all the uncertainty, it's going to cause their body to start to freak out, and then the whole thing starts to spiral. And next thing you know, they don't want to go, or they get there and they're on edge and they need to come home. Again, we've had that situation in our family too, where the inability to tolerate the uncertainty of something that's supposed to be fun. When am I going to bed? What are we going to eat? Will I throw up while I'm there? Are they going to like me? What are their parents like? What TV are we going to watch? What time are you picking me up in the morning? All of those unanswered questions and the inability to tolerate the uncertainty of that triggers the anxiety in your kids. This is what's happening in their brains. The rejection of friends, you know, that the group dynamics of kids, particularly in middle school, brutal. You couldn't pay me millions of dollars to go back to middle school at this point. But your kids are walking into it every day, and they're worrying about whether or not they're being accepted, because every moment in school is a moment of uncertainty about whether or not you're going to get the answer right, whether or not people are going to laugh, whether or not you're wearing the right things. And so again, these are all the things that trigger your child to worry because they are wracked with situations that cause uncertainty and that make our kids feel like they might lose control. Now, here's the major mistake that you and I make as parents. When our kids start to worry, or when our kids start to feel anxious, which is the agitation in their body, you know what you and I immediately do? We immediately try to fix it. We swoop right in and we start to either say, "You're going to be okay," and we assure them because we're trying to fix it, right? We're trying to make the worry go away. We say, "Oh, well, this is going to happen and that's going to happen and this is going to happen." And so we answer all their questions and we start to put in all kinds of certainty for them. And that is the exact opposite thing that you and I should be doing. And it's not our fault. We've kind of been doing it forever, haven't we? I mean, we're always worried about our And so we put up gates at the top of stairs so that they don't fall down. We've got child locks on caps so that they don't eat anything. We stopped buying the Tide Pods because we didn't want them to choke on it. Like, as parents, we're constantly anticipating things that could go wrong. We're putting in controls. And so it is natural for you and me to jump into fix-it mode. If you want to get your kid To move beyond the grip of anxiety, you have to understand how your behavior is contributing to the anxiety itself. See, one of the things that I believe about anxiety is the reason why we develop it and the reason why we keep it around is because it works. I mean, if your kid is anxious and they start freaking out, they don't have to go to school. So all of a sudden, that situation that they felt uncomfortable around, they've now gained control because the anxiety worked. You swooped in, you fixed it, you said, that's okay, you don't have to go. And the problem with doing this is that we might be managing the momentary breakdown, but we are not teaching our kids a critical skill in life, and that is the ability, the ability to tolerate not knowing and and the ability in the face of not knowing to assure yourself that no matter what, you'll figure it out. That is one of the most critical things that you could teach your kids. The self-reliance, the resiliency, the courage, and the confidence to know that even though I feel a little nervous and even though I don't have all the answers, I can trust that I can figure it out. And so that's That's the kind of biggest picture that I want you to switch your mind from thinking you gotta fix this for your kids, and that's us buying into the anxiety, and realize that when anxiety is present, it means that your child, my child, can't cope with uncertainty. And now as a parent, it's my job to teach them how. When's the last time you felt excited? Because you were up to something that was either cool or it was new or it was exciting. You know, I think about times in my life when I was up to something. It's like those moments of anticipation. I was applying to college or I was applying to law school or I was making a decision that I was going to leave a job that I didn't like, or even after a breakup, you know, where you're newly single and you feel like, whoa— oh, I love how many of you are saying right now, right now I feel like I'm up to something. Right now, you know, I feel like I could be a part of something. Or maybe for many of you who are saying, I don't feel I feel that way, Mel. I'm feeling like my life is pretty stagnant. It was a long time ago. I can't remember when. I wanna have you imagine something. Imagine how energizing and exciting it would be to wake up every day and feel like you're a part of something really cool. Imagine if you made a decision that starting literally today, you were gonna be up to something. You were going to push yourself. You know, it makes me kind of sad, everybody, how many of you are sitting there saying, I can't even remember, I've lost my direction. And I wanna tell you something. If you feel lost, if you feel stuck, if you feel like it has been way too long since you've had something that you've looked forward to, I want to tell you something. You deserve, you deserve to have that energy back in your life. You deserve to get the push that you need because yet last night was a reminder of something. You know, it's so easy. And I know that I can fall into this too. It's so easy to kind of get stuck in your rut, especially after working from home for 2 years, especially especially after coming through the pandemic, especially after being in this routine of isolation and feeling like nothing is ever going to change. Last night, for me, being in New York City and just coming down and being with friends and seeing how energizing it is to be around people that are up to something, it reminded me of this piece of research that when you you hear it, it sounds kind of stupid, right? But then when you stop and think about it, it's so true. When researchers study happiness, you want to know something crazy about happy people? Happy people are just prioritizing and making time to do the little things that make them happy. And what we also know, and you know this too, that when you look forward and you see things in your calendar, just this weekend, for example, just this weekend, having something that you've planned, something that you're going to be a part of, that just having something just out in the near future to look forward to, it gives you two bursts of energy. Two. Number one, the planning of it makes you think about it, right? And as you anticipate it and you anticipate what something is going to be like, you get get this burst of energy, and then the doing of it makes you feel energized and excited again. Okay. And so last night when I came down here to New York City to support my friend Tunde and be a part of her big event here in New York launching her book, just thinking about the fact that it was coming up made me feel excited and energized, and being there made me feel excited and energized. Part of creating a better life is having moments that you're going to have to navigate where you get triggered by something stupid or something profound and all these emotions come up and you say, "Fuck it." And I do not want you to give up in those moments. I do not want you to throw in the towel or throw out the Christmas cards or say, "I can't do it." I mean, that's what I did yesterday. I felt that huge wave. I said, "That's it, fuck it." I came up into the office and I started crying and I said to the team, "I can't do this. I can't talk about habits. I can't even get Christmas cards out in the mail. I can't do this." I went to my husband and my daughter and I said, I'm not doing 75 Hard. I got too much going on. This is not the time for me to do this. Like, I'm setting myself up for failure. And you know what they said? They said, yes, you can. Yes, you can. And they sat there and they listened to me whine and whine and whine. And Chris looked at me and he said, Mel, you gotta have a breakthrough. You have to take on something that feels hard and you have to do it for longer than the month or the, you know, 45 days that you've done it in the past. And right now is the perfect time. The fact that you're feeling the fuck it just 4 days in, this is a good thing, Mel, because it's pushing buttons in you. And so what was interesting, because it's pushing buttons in you, and you know what? He's right. He's absolutely right. And so I went to bed, like, immediately. I didn't even want to tempt myself because I was so frazzled. I went to bed. I slept all night, and when I woke up this morning and came up to work, what was so interesting is that life doesn't always give you what you want, but it does give you what you need. And I think fuck it moments sometimes are what you need because you need to see that you can have a moment where you want to give up And you can even screw up in those moments, and you can get back on the transformation train, and you can keep going. That you are bigger than the fuck-it moment. That the fuck-it moment is there to test you. It's there because it's part of the process of growing. Seinfeld famously joked that the person in the coffin isn't scared. It's the person who has to speak about the person in the coffin who is. The fear of public speaking is the number one fear that people have, and I don't even mean necessarily talking on a stage like I do for a living. I'm talking about the fear of speaking in public, sharing your ideas at work, expressing what you need to other people, having hard conversations with friends and family, talking at a meeting at school, pushing back on something, with a doctor, like just being able to express yourself. And the reason why this is such a huge fear for people is because it is a moment of intense vulnerability. The second that you go to speak at work, what happens? Everybody turns and all eyes are on you, and suddenly you feel like there's a spotlight on you and you get really worried about being judged. Same thing happens when you have to speak in class. Right? When you got called on in class, oop, most people get a little nervous. A lot of people hated that moment in elementary school when you had to read out loud. That's a moment of public speaking. And we are so afraid in that moment when the spotlight is on us. And I've shared in a number of episodes that I used to be terrified of public speaking. I would turn bright red when I got called on as a little kid. In law school, I would start coughing attacks or I would leave the room. As a young lawyer, I would wear a scarf because I'd get these neck rashes as I was talking to the judge and to the prosecutor in a small courtroom. And I just figured I would be the kind of person that always had a bright red face, always had an awful case of hives on my chest, always felt my tongue going dry. And I hated it. I hated it, hated it, hated it. I want fear to stop holding you back. I want you to trust fall into your life. I want you to take that first step and climb the staircase to the things that you want in your life. And there are too many places where fear holds you back and keeps you silent and has you questioning yourself. And so that was me too. And I just chipped away at this shit. And I am so glad that I did, because I just can't even imagine how much I would yearn for what I'm doing now without even realizing it. But the first step is admitting that there are fears that are holding you back. And so we're gonna use public speaking because it's the number one fear for everybody. The decision that aligns and is true for you is the one that is gonna feel more expansive, like that something inside you opens up. It doesn't mean it's an easy decision, doesn't mean that there aren't things you're concerned about, but that it's gonna create growth, that there's something exciting, even if it's scary about that decision, that there's some expansive energy to it. And that's how you can feel in your heart and in your gut that that is a decision that's aligned with who you are and where you're meant to go. If you, are making a decision and you feel yourself shrink a little. Yeah. You feel the energy go down. Mm-hmm. You feel kind of instead of the expansion, like this kind of contraction of energy. That's a no. It's a no. And that's why I opened up our conversation by saying, I think this is gonna be a short conversation because you already know. And one other piece of advice I'm gonna give you is this. When making decisions in life, always use your heart to know what the truth is for you. I want to teach you how to train yourself to dream big. It's actually a skill, and dreaming big is something that we used to do as kids, right? It was so easy as kids to sit in class because you were bored with, you know, whatever it was that your teacher was doing and you started to daydream. And as adults, we tend to lose that ability. So the Dream Book is going to be your companion to this program. And here's my philosophy about training yourself to dream big again as an adult. In the Dream Book, one of the things that you're going to be doing as a daily practice is you're going to do something that I do in my book. And that is every time I crack this open, 'cause I keep my notes in here, is I write down the 5 things that I dream about. So I've written down, okay, I'm super, super embarrassed that I've written this down. So I'm gonna tell you what my 5 are. And you can see, you probably can't see how red I'm turning because I have so much makeup on because I was on television today. And in television, they put a lot of makeup on you. In digital, I normally look like shit. But this is why we all need to learn to dream big and to dream authentically, because when you talk about it, you immediately shrink because we're trained not to have these aspirations. So the first thing that I wrote down is I want to be the number one talk show in the United States. You know what's so fascinating is I used to dream of just actually being where I am. And now that I've achieved that, I have a dream that's even bigger. And what does it mean? And why is this dream important to me? And this is part of what you're going to learn in the workbook, but I'll tell you why this dream is important to me. Because if we are number one, it means that the work that we're doing that I care so deeply about, which is helping people heal their minds and heal their relationships and to live a more positive, happy, mentally well life, that we're reaching more people. That's what that means, and that's why I want it. I wrote down number one New York Times bestseller. I have for years said I don't give a shit about it, but I actually do, I guess. And I think it's because it would be really nice to have the powers that be actually acknowledge the impact that we're making. Do I need it to keep going forward? No, of course not. And I will keep going forward. I want to make the Time 100 list for mental health and for the work that we're doing. And the reason why is because as much as I like being an entrepreneur that does things in a very innovative way, that kind of public recognition brings with it resources and partners that would allow you to make an even bigger impact. And so when I think about that kind of recognition, it challenges me to dream so much bigger than I'm dreaming right now about the impact that I want to make in mental health. The fourth one, this is not my dream right now, but I wrote this down 3 days ago, and that is to be the happiest I've ever been living in Vermont. The reason why I wrote that down at the time is because my son is going to go to high school in Vermont. And we are grappling with a move. And I had a mental breakdown when we started looking at houses there, thinking I couldn't live here. One of the interesting things about dreaming is your dreams will change. I love the daily practice of writing in your dream book the 5 things you're dreaming about, because you'll notice that there are things that show up consistently for you, and that's a sign that it's important to pay attention to it. It's important to walk toward it. And by writing, I dreamed that I'd be the happiest I'd ever be in Vermont, I was doing the work of trying to shift my attitude about how I was feeling about a move when I'm not that excited about it right now. The fifth one is, I want to build a summer house. I grew up on Lake Michigan. I've spent the last 30 years not on the water. I dream to be successful enough that someday in the next decade, I will have the money to buy a fantastic fucking piece of property on the ocean, and I will build an awesome house that is a gathering place for our family. And hopefully that will not include grandchildren in the next decade. This idea of a substitution diet for the shit you've been thinking forever that no longer serves you, that's a simple way for me to explain to you You're not stuck with the thoughts that you think. That idea right there, that's the whole thing. That's everything. You are not stuck with the thoughts that you think. You can let them rise up, but you don't have to grab 'em and grip onto 'em and wrestle 'em to the ground and be like, oh, there's that stupid thought that My dad taught me to think. Bye, Dad. I choose to think something else because I know what cognitive bias modification is. And that horseshit that you said that I was a failure or didn't mount up to something or wasn't wanted, I don't believe that shit anymore because it's important to me to not only see hearts, but it's important to me to encourage myself, to believe in myself. To believe in my life and my effort and my ability, because that's what I believe. That's why I'm here. You can do this. If I can do this, you can do this stuff. Here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting. Everybody, at least kind of in the mass market, what you're trained to think about when you think about manifesting is vision vision boards. And when you hear the word vision boards, you think about the big stuff. Should you have big dreams? Of course you should. Should you dream of building a mansion on the ocean if that's your thing? Yes. Should you dream of the log cabin? Yes. If you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Bronco, should you put— yeah, yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about— yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. You dream about the end You make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life. That literally, as you're sitting in your studio apartment with the cat box that hasn't been changed in 2 weeks, no food in the fridge, no food in the fridge, and you're looking for a job and you're staring at a mansion going, someday it's going to make you feel like a loser because the gap between between where you are and where you want to go, it seems insurmountable. And so what happens based on the research is when you only visualize the endgame, Lewis, it's demotivating. At first, it's really fun to like have a bottle of wine and make your collage. I'm gonna visualize, I'm gonna slap this up. There's my vision board, it's fabulous. Law of attraction, baby, come on. I'm gonna think about it, it's gonna come to me. Okay, I've been doing this for 2 days. I'm still in this apartment with the cat box that needs change. The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge between where you are and where you need to go. The bridge. Yes, and particularly the horrible stuff. I like to think about life as one long road trip. Every year of your life is a mile marker on the road of life, and the thing about this road trip is it's a solo journey. You started at mile zero and you were alone. That's how you came into this world. And wherever the road of your life leads you, when you leave this world, you're going to be alone. When you leave, yes, you'll be surrounded by family and friends. But when you actually pass over, you are on your own. And the truth is, it is a solo journey. Yes, you're going to drive parallel with some people. Yes, you're going to intersect with some people. Yep, you're going to travel in packs, but you are driving alone. And look, I'm not telling you this to make you feel isolated or unsupported. That's the last thing that I want you to feel. The reason why I'm telling you this is because I want you to understand the power that you have to make these dreams part of your day-to-day life as you pursue them. I mean, maybe you've been so worried about what everybody else is gonna think, and that's what's kept you from starting your YouTube channel or writing that screenplay or making a career change. I'm here to tell you, no one gives a shit about what you do. You wanna know why? Because everybody else is driving their own car on their own solo journey and they're busy trying to figure out their own life. When you realize that the only person who is truly judging you right now is you, When you embrace that you're the one in your way, it can spark a fire in your gut. Yes, it sucks that my friend has been telling herself for 20 years that she's not a real writer, that she's not a respected writer, that it's not that interesting. Yeah, that sucks to wake up and realize that you're the one that's been dragging yourself down. But you wanna know what sucks more? Spending another 20 years never writing it. So step 1, you have to acknowledge the thing that's on your list and that's in your heart. And then step 2 is take responsibility for doing whatever you can, however you're capable, in whatever big or small way to move toward it. Get serious about looking ahead instead of looking back. Looking out the window in front of you at the road ahead and where you wanna go, you can inch your way day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year to creating a whole new life for yourself. Everybody that struggles with addiction does this exact same thing. Tomorrow I'm not drinking, that's it. I, I'm done with this. And then the next morning it's the same fucking pattern. Of negative crap that you're doing to yourself. And this is exactly what you talk about all the time. It's not the what you need to do, it's how. How do you make yourself do the things that feel hard or scary or don't seem like they're going to work because you're resigned and you're stuck in your patterns? That was me. I knew I needed to get out of bed. I knew I needed to stop drinking. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew this wasn't Chris's fault and I needed to stop screaming at him all the time. But I wasn't doing any of those things. I didn't know how. And so this was the moment I created the 5 Second Rule. And again, this is another I-beam or T-beam or whatever the hell beam it's called. I'm sitting in front of the television and I am watching TV. The kids are in bed and I'm drinking bourbon and I'm probably on like my 4th Manhattan and I'm having my nightly pep talk and I'm going, that's it. Tomorrow morning it's the new me. I gotta wake up. I gotta do this. I gotta do the other thing. And all of a sudden, Rich, honest to goodness, I see a rocket ship launch at the end of a commercial. And I go, that's it. Tomorrow morning, I'm launching myself out of bed like a rocket. And that was the beginning of the 5 Second Rule. If you have big goals, you better stand in front of that mirror and high-five yourself every day, every single step of the way. Stop looking around and waiting for everybody else to do it. Start giving it to yourself. Yourself, and you will be shocked at how much more quickly things start to happen and how much more joy you experience along the way, at how much more present you are. Yeah, it's wild. And this isn't about like pumping yourself up to think you're like the best person on the planet. This is like the baseline. This is literally being like, you know what, you're gonna have an okay day. Let's go do this. You know what, I see you. I know this is hard. Keep "Come on, I know you're nervous to have this hard conversation with this person. I believe you can do it. Let's go." Like it's just one little boost along the way. You know, if you think about the things that go viral, it's little kids in front of a mirror with their parents getting them to talk out loud. Believing in themselves, yeah. Correct. We all know that's how we're supposed to feel, but we feel weird and cheesy practicing it. You kidding me? Right. The other thing that goes viral, all these teachers that are high-fiving and fist-bumping kids with these handshakes as they go in, and the mirror one with the "I am" that just kind of went viral. Why do we all love that? Because we know each one of those kids just felt seen and felt good and felt motivated walking into that classroom. Start your day that way. Every single day when you wake up, you can find 5 minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes to move from thinking about what you want to taking action on what you want. Picking up the pen, writing a sentence, sending an email, doing the research, taking a class. All of these actions are how you move towards what you want while you're still in the life that you have. That's how you do it. And the other thing that you're gonna have to pay attention to is energy. Because just like you are wasting precious time on shit that doesn't really matter to you, you are also wasting your precious energy spending time with people who are draining it from you, who are not giving it back to you. And so every single day when you wake up, I want you to pay attention to where you're putting your time and where you're putting your energy. And I want you to find 5 measly minutes to start working on what you want in the physical world instead of keeping it a secret in your heart and in your mind. If you struggle with boundaries, I want you to know you're not alone, and this is super common. And, um, one of the reasons why I'm excited to share everything that I've learned about boundaries with you is because I used to be the kind of person that had zero boundaries. I mean, nada, nothing, zilch. Nothing. In fact, there were periods of my life where it was worse than zero because I was so attached in romantic relationships that I literally would become like a human amoeba in my romantic relationships. I mean, I was like, literally, if it's possible to have negative boundaries, meaning you like somehow go in a totally different direction, that was me. And so if somebody as insecure and as, uh, emotionally attached in relationships and as people-pleasing as me can figure out how to identify, communicate, and uphold boundaries in my life, you can learn how to do this too. Okay? And so that's what we're going to unpack in this video. So I think a big question, because a lot of people talk about boundaries, they know they need boundaries, but they don't have good boundaries. Why is that? Well, the reason why we don't have good boundaries is because none of us were trained how to set them. I mean, I want you to think about your childhood for a minute. Your childhood with your caregivers, your parents, your grandparents, whoever— it is naturally an imbalance, right? Like, when you come into this world, you are born into a a particular family, you're born into a particular culture, religion, economic situation, a place in the world, a race, like a religion. And based on where you were born and to whom you were born into in terms of the family structure, there were all kinds of rules that you had to follow. And if you did not follow those rules, there were consequences. And so can you imagine if you, as like an 8-year-old, started to try to express boundaries Literally, like, mom cooks a, uh, you know, a pot roast dinner and you cross your arms, you're like, you know, Mom, uh, this is a boundary cross for me. I have decided that I am no longer eating meat. Uh, your mom would probably go, guess what, youngster, you not eating dinner is a boundary crossing for me. You're not getting up from this table until you finish what's on your plate. And so saying boundaries when you're little doesn't really work for the adults in your life. And that's why you never learned how to do it. And by the way, your parents were probably never taught how to have boundaries either. And so I want to start at the very beginning, okay? Where do you even begin? Where do you even begin when it comes to learning how to set healthy boundaries? Okay, so first things first, where you're going to begin is you're going to start to think about boundaries in a completely new way. Okay, the number one mistake that we all make— I made it, you're making it right now— is when you think about boundaries, you are thinking about other people first. Okay, you're thinking about boundaries, uh, and believing that your boundaries are rules in a relationship that define respect, and that somehow your boundaries are going to control or change someone else's behavior. That is the exact opposite of how you should be thinking about boundaries, okay? And I'm going to give you a bunch of examples, don't worry. I didn't realize this. This is why I was lousy at setting boundaries, because I thought that my boundaries control what other people do. No, no, no, no, no. So how do I want you to think about boundaries, okay? Boundaries are rules that you create about your own behavior. Yep, I'm gonna say that again. Boundaries are rules that you create about your own behavior. Understand that you can find people to support you. You will always find people to criticize you. Watch though how when somebody outside of you criticizes you, how that triggers the internal pattern. So what is the pattern that you have of thinking that gets triggered that disempowers you? That I won't have any words. You won't have any words. Let's go deeper than that. Is it something about being loved or being unworthy or not being good enough? What is underneath I won't have the words? Yeah, they won't be the right words and it won't be good enough. Yeah. Okay. And so do you have an opinion that you you're not good enough or not deserving of success, or that you're not smart enough to make a difference. Yeah. What is the one? What is the thing that hooks you, that you say to yourself? That I'm stupid. OK, there we go. That's a good one. Not a good one, but you know what I mean. That's a good one because— I'm a piece of shit. That's my biggest one. OK, I'm a piece of shit. Now we're talking. Yeah, that's the big one. Who told you that? I don't know who told me that. When did you start believing that? As a little girl, yeah. God, I've just been saying it for so long, I don't know. That's okay. She said, I've been saying it for so long, I don't know. As you now know what you're looking for, you're going to start to connect the dots, okay? And so here's the thing. At some point, you started telling yourself, "Whatever, I'm a piece of shit," as a strategy. You did it on purpose as a youngster as a way to survive things that were happening. 'Cause maybe when you said, "Well, I'm a piece of shit," you actually got really quiet and you didn't get hit. Or maybe when you said that, you removed yourself from situations when you would've been abused or something. It worked because it protected you, as weird as it sounds. Yeah. Are you seeing something? Yeah. What are you seeing? Well, yeah, my dad didn't want— he wanted me to be quiet in the corner, being quiet. Yeah. We couldn't make noise and cry. OK. And if you raised your voice, you got in trouble. So do you guys see the link now between why she has a concern about finding her words? Oh, yeah. I didn't get that one. You see that now? Yeah. So every time that you are in a situation where you need to speak up— how many of you are relating to this, by the way? I have a theory about all of us, that we have patterns and strategies that we created when we were little in order to survive situations. And what she internalized was don't speak up. And you're a piece of shit if you do. And believe me, that protected your ass. It worked because you didn't speak up and you didn't get in trouble with your dad, right? And I still got the love. So if I speak up now, I'm gonna lose my dad's love. Do you see this? So this is a pattern that got written when she was little, and it was written by someone else, and it worked. It worked. The problem is Because now that you're— It's not working now. It's not working now. It's not working now. Not working now. Can't move forward. Exactly. And so this is what's fascinating about all this. There are places in your life where you have patterns that you don't even recognize that were strategies that you developed when you were a kid. And so in the areas where you're really frustrated, that pattern is probably not present or conscious. That you're aware of. And so every single time, because you've been repeating this and repeating it and repeating it, every single time you're about to hit play, every single time you're going to stand on a stage, what's going to be right there is, "Don't speak up." "Freeze." Yes, freeze. And you're going to go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The only thing that actually overrides this pattern is to speak. And through you will see that you're not a piece of shit. You actually have something to say. Or you could make fun of it and say, "Well, I guess I'm just a piece of shit with something to say." That's gonna be my thing. I'm a piece of shit and I got something to fuckin' say. That's right. And I also like the strategy of kind of making fun of the stuff, even the heavy stuff. Because it loses its grip on me. It works for me. It may not work for you, but it's something to try. First of all, you got to give yourself permission to really have what you want, okay? Because you got to have the thing that you're visualizing be something that is authentically something that you want. Number 2, you must see yourself taking the steps, the tiny actions, and doing the work that will lead you to creating or having what you want. Third, you gotta feel in your body what it feels like to do the work. And you also have to feel pride as you see yourself doing the work, because that amplifies your mind, body, and spirit really imprinting and training and preparing for it. And fourth, obviously, you gotta take the actions. And all of that manifesting and preparing inspires you to take the actions. But one place where so many folks get stuck when they start trying to make manifesting a daily habit is you go and you know what you want, but then you sit down and you try to imagine what the steps are that you need to take to get there, and you don't have a clue. Your mind goes blank. If this is you, I'm so excited that you're watching this. Because the simple trick based in science is called the power of objectivity. All you got to do is stop visualizing yourself and insert your friend Mel Robbins, or insert somebody else that you love and admire. And the power of objectivity is going to immediately switch you from a blocked mind to one that is bolder and more creative and able to visualize the steps. Now, I'm not just making this up. There's extraordinary research that just written about in the Harvard Business School Review. They did 8 different studies at the University of Wisconsin where they were studying the power of objectivity. And with thousands of participants, here's what they found: when participants tried to visualize themselves doing hard things, immediately the participants, when they thought about themselves doing something hard, like let's just say asking asking for a raise. Okay, I want you to imagine yourself asking for a raise or applying for that dream job. When you visualize yourself doing it, you immediately focus in on minutia. You start imagining all kinds of things that could go wrong. You start arguing against yourself and doubt comes flooding in. You have a very cautious mindset when you place yourself in those scenarios. However, If you were to visualize me, Mel Robbins, asking for that raise, immediately your mindset switches to being very bold, being creative, seeing all kinds of opportunities. And in fact, when you not only visualize me, your friend Mel Robbins, asking for that raise that you want, when you give me advice, you're super enthusiastic. You're like, Mel, you should go for it. And I bet in your life you have probably told friends or loved ones, you should ask for more money, and you mean it because you're visualizing them, but you yourself won't visualize yourself doing that. You talk yourself out of it. We've all had this experience. You yourself are probably sitting there going, you're right, Mel. I constantly tell my friends, you deserve more, you should break up with that jerk, doo doo doo doo doo, you should go for it. But when it comes to yourself, You see the excuses in depth. So I want you to leverage not only this common sense but this research to your advantage when it comes to manifesting. Pick what you want, and then if your mind goes blank when it comes to seeing yourself do the work, literally just insert your friend Mel Robbins or insert anybody that you love. One of the high-five habits is what I call giving your heart a high-five, and this in many ways, I think, is just as profound as high-fiving your reflection and just the depth of research that goes into explaining why it has such a profound impact in terms of how you relate to yourself. But high-fiving your heart is putting your hands kind of right on your heart, one on top of the other, and saying, "I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." And I started doing this when the pandemic hit and I started to wake up to a wave of anxiety. And one of the things that we learned in writing this book is that the first thing that you need to be able to do before your brain can even engage in new patterns of thinking is to settle your nervous system. So, you know, we wrote a bunch about the vagus nerve, but when you put your hands over your heart first thing in the morning and give your heart a high five and say, "I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." First of all, it's true, 'cause if you can say those words, you're okay, you're safe, you're loved. But secondly, it tones what's called the vagus nerve, which I know you talk about on this show, that is the secret to switching between your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system. So if you're somebody like me who has lived your life on edge, if you grew up in a chaotic, chaotic household, if you've experienced trauma, if you constantly feel like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, if you wake up and the first thought is, I've done something wrong, someone's mad at me, I want you to try this other high-five habit by high-fiving your heart. You can say it 15 times if you have to. I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved. It will soothe your nervous system and settle it because you cannot have new thoughts or learn new behavior if your nervous system is on edge or on hyper alert. Intermittent fasting is a health protocol whereby you focus on periods of time where you're eating and periods of time where you are not eating. The purpose of intermittent fasting is to use periods of time where you are not eating to help you switch between the two different energy sources in your body. We learned all about this in part one from Dr. Mindy. You have an energy source that is all about sugar and calories and energy that happens when you eat. And then you have a second energy source that only turns on after an 8-hour period of not eating anything. And Dr. Mindy calls that your fat-burning energy source. And so what we learned is that you are designed to switch between these two cycles, kind of like how you have cycles of sleeping and cycles of being awake. You have a circadian rhythm cycle. Cycle. If you're a woman, you have a menstrual cycle. The human body runs on cycles and rhythms. And your eating is no different. And fasting is a way for you to be very intentional, not about what you eat, and that's why this is not a diet. Diets focus on what you eat. Fasting is a protocol that focuses on when you're eating for maximum health benefit. I literally fail over and over and over again. I lose my way a million times before I find myself. And even when I find myself, I eventually feel like, lost again and go looking for myself again, constantly seeking, constantly growing, constantly failing. And so I start this life coaching business. I love it. It goes incredibly, incredibly well. This would have been like 2002 to like 2000— I don't know, I'm guessing here, 2006 maybe. And what ends up happening is a friend of mine emails me, forwards an email to me. And when you look at the chain of the form, the form, when you look at the chain of the forward, what you see at the bottom is there's somebody at Inc. magazine looking to write an article about life coaches. And I immediately scan the thing and it's a month old. The deadline has passed. I have none of the credentials they're looking for. I have none of the types of clients they're looking for. And I start to go like we always do down the list of reasons why I should not respond. Like, we're always arguing against ourselves, always holding ourselves back. And I immediately say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What would somebody who's more successful than me do? I'm like, they'd fucking apply, right? So I take a sip of wine, I start typing like crazy, and I just freeform this hilarious response back a month plate with none of the credentials. She writes back the next day and says, I was about to turn the article in. What if I come to Boston next week and trail you? Wow. So she comes, she follows me around for a day, she ends up publishing an article, and I'm like, oh yes, because— oh, that's right, because the article, uh, released in 2005. And I'm like, this is going to be amazing. The timing of this article is fabulous. This article is going to print rich, and I am going to have avalanche of clients. It's gonna be awesome. The article prints, crickets. Not a single client, not a single inbound email, nada, nothing, nothing. So I forget about it. I'm out to dinner one night. My phone's ringing. It's a New York number. Like, who the heck is calling me from New York? I pick up the phone and, is this Mel Robbins? Yeah, this is Mel Robbins. Hey, this is Mary Duffy from CNBC. I'm like, "Oh, hi, Mary Duffy. How are you?" Having no idea who she is. She's like, "Well, I saw the article in Inc. magazine and we'd like to fly you down and talk to you." So literally a week later, I find myself on a plane down to New York, drive over to New Jersey, walk into the offices. I sit down and I am in a meeting with the executives at CNBC, and they're in a development meeting. Oh my God, coaching is hot. We think you're amazing. We want to do a show. We want to stick it between Kramer and Donny Deutsch was on at the time, The Big Idea. And we'd like you to do— I walk out of there with a frickin' development deal. Oh my God. Let's detour into the lane of anxiety, of patterns and trauma, and talk about why people self-sabotage. Yes. People don't self-sabotage intentionally. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, today I'm gonna screw up my life, right? That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna drink myself on the ground. I'm gonna cheat on my wife. I'm gonna embezzle from my company. I'm gonna lie to everybody about how I'm actually feeling. I'm gonna stop taking my meds. I'm gonna kick the dog. Like, nobody does that. What happens is people get triggered. And they react. And then they fall into old patterns. And so what happens, I believe, in relationships in particular, or jobs, where you're like, this time it's gonna be different, is it's different for the first 3 to 6 months when it's novel, and when you're intentional, and when everything counts. But then when you gotta face yourself. Then when it becomes like part of your life, you get lazy and you slip into old patterns. Or when the stakes get really high. Let's say you're somebody who had a parent die early or your dad abandoned the family and you're scared to love somebody. And so you fall deeply for somebody. And then what gets triggered is this tremendous fear that they're gonna leave. Yeah. Because that's your lived experience. And if you go back to what you did as a child to cope with that fear that somebody's going to leave, that's the exact pattern that you will repeat as an adult. The only way to end this, or to try to get your arms around it, is to attack it holistically. Because so much of this happens at the subconscious level, and it also, it gets triggered subversed by your nervous system and you're not even aware of it. You're the kind of person, just like me, that every single year you write down the things that you want in your life. And I would imagine that as each year rolls on and the new list gets written, you move the thing that you didn't work on this year to the list that you do for the next year and on and on and on. I mean, how many years have you been thinking about writing a book or changing your job? Or changing where you live, or healing some aspect of your past, or finding love, or learning how to love yourself, or starting that business. These things that you hold in your heart, they are meant to be out in the world. And today I'm on a mission to get you to stop waiting. Stop waiting for the perfect time. Stop waiting to feel ready. Stop waiting for the money. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting to feel like somebody's gonna care about this. The only person that needs to care enough is you, because today is the day that you're gonna pick up the pen, you're gonna start the research, you're gonna commit to taking action. Why? Because that's what you're meant to do with your life. You're meant to create a bigger vision for yourself. How do I use this energy exchange and my intuition to spot the things that are draining me dry and to let them go, push them off the branches, get them out of my life, thank them for their purpose and their service, but then get outta here because you need to make room for something new and better and energizing. Doesn't that sound good? Yeah, you better believe it sounds good. So let's do it. And one of the reasons why I want you to really focus on energy is because your energy doesn't lie. I mean, just for a second with me, just take a second, whether you're out there walking the dog or you're driving around in your car or you're working from home or you're busy doing a bunch of stuff, I want you to just stop for a second. And I want you to assess right now, what's your energy level? Think about a fuel gauge in a car, empty to full. Empty in a human being means you feel depleted, you feel burnt out, you feel checked out, you feel like your whole life is basically pouring energy into everything else. Full in a human being basically means that you're energized, you're excited, you feel like the things that you're pouring yourself into, your habits, your routine, the people you're surrounded with, the projects you're working on, It may be difficult, but it's bringing energy back into your life too. Your energy never lies. We are energetic human beings, and I know that sounds woo-woo. We can get into the neuroscience on that on a totally different episode, but let me prove it to you. Have you ever walked into, say, a coffee shop and the person that is behind the counter is having the world's worst day? They are super grumpy. It doesn't matter how big your smile is. It doesn't matter how nice you are. They are like, "Ugh, ugh, ugh." That energy actually impacts you, just like your positive energy can impact somebody else. Energy is contagious. This is an exercise called looking for hearts. And this is how you play it. Every single day when you wake up, you are going to go on a scavenger hunt in your day-to-day life, and you are going to try to find a naturally occurring heart shape somewhere in the world. It could be a cloud that's shaped like a heart. You could look at your coffee and see that the foam on top has made the shape of a heart. You might get out of your car and you'll see a stain on the floor or a leaf that's the shape of a heart. I constantly constantly see rocks. I see heart shapes in the top of mountain ranges. I see the shape of hearts in brick buildings all the time in terms of the different colors of bricks. And here's what's interesting about this. What you'll realize is that there are probably 10,000 heart shapes that are around you in your day-to-day life. The stain on the carpet, the spot on your dog's back, The tear in a pair of pants, the shape of a leaf. They're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere. And right now you walk right by them. Why? Well, because they're not important to you. You have not told the bouncer of your brain to let the hearts into the nightclub. So you are walking right past all these things and they are actively being blocked out. It is not in your conscious mind. The second you start playing this game, find a heart, you will experience something amazing. You will experience your brain going to work for you. And so here's how I want you to play this, because I do want you to play this every single day. This is truly not a game about finding hearts. This is about training your mind. This is a game where you are telling your mind, I am the fricking boss. Bouncer of the mind, I pay your salary. You are going to do what I tell you to do. You are gonna find me a heart. And if you wanna get paid, you are gonna find me a heart. That is your job today. Find me a heart. So get intentional about that. And then I want you to go through your life and just let a heart shape in. And when you see it, Here's what I want you to do. And if you're really analytical, you're gonna think this is the cheesiest damn thing you've ever heard, but I want you to do this because there's neuroscience involved. When you see that heart, I want you to pause and I want you to really stare at it for a minute. You can take a photo of it. If it's a rock, you can pick it up or a leaf and take it with you because I want you to reward your brain for being focused. Flexible and for trying to help you. I want you to take that moment for real, as cheesy as this sounds, the foam on the top of your coffee, the shadow on the floor. I want you to take a minute and really savor it and literally just go, holy shit, there it is. That's pretty cool. Yesterday I walked right past this and I didn't even see it. Thank you, mind. Wow. You just changed in real time. You just let something in that I asked you to let that in. And if you really want to supersize this, if you're somebody that's really struggling with a sense of self-worth or hope or really believing that you can turn things around, I want you to look at that and tell yourself, that that was placed there for you to find. That this was placed there because you needed to see evidence that it is in fact possible to change the way you think. It is in fact possible to tell your mind what you wanna see more evidence of and for your mind to work for you. There's no reason not to be kind to other people. There is no reason not to ask for help in a polite manner because the people that you're asking for help from almost never are responsible for the thing that's not working. And the person that's emailing you at work who's all frustrated because of the Q4 numbers and the boop boop boop boop boop and the client this and the doo doo doo doo doo, like you're not responsible for the stuff that's stressing them out. And so here's what I did in that moment, because a couple things happened in that story. Number one, that woman's bitchy behavior and entitlement, it's like contagious. And when somebody's yelling at you, whether it's an email or you're separated by the front desk at the hotel that you're working at, it still like gets all over you. I think about the visual almost like if you've ever walked walked your dog and they jump into like muddy water, or they roll in the mud, or heaven forbid, you're walking on the beach and there's a big nasty rotting fish on the beach and your dog runs right up to it before you can get to the dog. And now your dog is rolling all in it and it's like, blah. And then they run over to you. And what does a wet dirty dog always do when that dog gets up to you? They shake. And when they shake, all of that negative, nasty, muddy fish, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it just hits you. And when somebody is in a positive or a nasty mood, it's like a muddy dog shaking, and that energy gets all over you. And so it's critical in these moments that you protect your energy. And for me, I normally speak up when I see this kind of thing, because normally I have really great energy, and I'm not gonna let somebody get away with that. But the truth is, I was really tired. I'd just flown across country, and we were in town to do something that was weighing on my mind, and I just didn't want to get into a fight with somebody who clearly had an ax to grind with absolutely anybody. And I'm not gonna change this person anyway. And so what I do in those moments, when I start seeing that muddy dog shake or that high ponytail start flying, flapping her mouth and being rude is number one, I take a deep breath. That's it. I just take a deep breath. And there's a breath technique that you can use called 4-7-8. I don't remember who came up with this. I'm sure some will put it in the show notes, but you breathe in for 4 seconds, Hold it for 7, then out for 8. And I read somewhere that the 8 part is the most important because when you breathe out for longer than you breathed in, it sends a signal to your nervous system that it's okay to relax. What we're talking about is whether or not you're hiding in plain sight. Now, the reason why I want to talk to you about whether or not you're hiding in plain sight is because if you're not the real you, the people who are looking for you can't find you. I'm going to say that again. If you're not living your life, if you're not showing up at work, if you're not going through the process of dating and being the real you, the people who are looking for you can't find you. And the secret to life— and this is so hard to grasp— is to just be yourself. That's the secret. There's only one you. There's only ever going to be one you. There's never going to be another you. And the way you make your mark in this world, the way that you learn how to believe in yourself, the way that you discover the people that you're supposed to surround yourself with, the job that you— or career path that you're supposed to have— is by being the real you. And it's terrifying. I get it. I was a chameleon for a very long time. And when I say long time, I mean like the first 40-some years of my life. And what does it mean to be a chameleon? Being a chameleon means that you adapt to your surroundings and you blend in, that you're scared to let the real you be seen. I mean, think about a chameleon. They hide in plain sight. And so if you are in a relationship like I used to be. I used to be in relationships and I wasn't even present. I was hiding in plain sight. I was a chameleon. If, uh, you were somebody that I was dating and you like the Grateful Dead, guess what I liked? I like the Grateful Dead. If you like to eat pizza, guess what I liked? I like to eat pizza. If you like to sit around and watch, uh, baseball for 3 and a half hours, guess what I like to do? Not really, but guess what I would do and pretend that I would like to you, because I was so convinced that I was not a good person, that I was not likable. I was terrified of disappointing anybody. And it may be hard to believe that because you see me now, but this is how I live my life. And the problem with being a chameleon— and give me a thumbs up if you can relate to this— and here's another challenge I have for you. Let's come out of hiding right now. Tell me, confess to yourself, where is it in your life that you're hiding in plain sight right now, that the real you is isn't present? Is it at work? Do you have ideas at work and you just show up and go through the motions and you don't put yourself or your best work out there? Are you hiding in plain sight because you're at a job that you can't stand? Are you hiding in plain sight because you're in a relationship and you know that the person that you're with has all of the power in your relationship? You're scared of upsetting him or her, and so you stay quiet or you you don't make the requests that you need to, to make? Are you hiding inside a body that's not truly who you are, that you're hiding in plain sight and underneath the body that you're in, whether you're way unhealthy, too skinny, or you're overweight and you know that that's not the real you, but you're hiding in plain sight because you're scared to be seen? This is a major issue for a lot of us. And when you think about the areas in your life where you are hiding in plain and please, Tracy, if you see where people are giving me examples, or Audrey, let me hear some examples. Work, relationships, and school. School a lot. I bet in school you maybe aren't taking classes or majoring in what you really care about. Maybe you're not asking questions because you're afraid to look stupid. Relationships— this is huge. And the reason why it's huge in relationships and where so many of you are hiding in plain sight is that you're afraid of getting rejected. You're afraid of disappointing somebody. You're afraid of rocking the boat. And so you don't. You just blend in like a chameleon does. The single biggest obstacle to you experiencing more joy in your life is your own inner critic. Critic. First, you have to identify that you're doing it. And you see that with your kids, and just like the associates were seeing it with the guests that were coming in, right? You can see it in a friend when they're criticizing yourself. You have to identify it in yourself. And so it's almost like it's a feeling. Am I holding myself back? Am I coming up with an excuse? Am I speaking to myself the way that a friend— Yeah, totally. So you got to identify it. Second You got to interrupt it. You have to interrupt it. And a quick way that you can do it is give it a name. Ooh. Yes. Well, just think of a name. Yeah. That you could call that nasty negative part of your head. That girl is— she's creeping up. Yeah. Gina. Gina for me. Gina. Yeah. When Gina appears, what do I say to Gina? Shut up, Gina. Yeah. Shut up, Gina. You're not, you're not going to the painting class. Yeah. Wow. Shut up. I bet when you thought about starting your book club, yeah, that inner critic was there. Oh yeah. And the thing is, imposter syndrome, right? Well, that is kind of part of it. Part of their friends. When you feel small, when you feel yourself shrinking, when you feel yourself pulling back or saying, I couldn't do that, all the excuses that come up with, they may be legitimate obstacles. Yeah, but you got a brain and you can solve problems. Yeah. And when you tell Gina, shut up. Yeah, we're starting this book club. Yeah. You now aim your thinking at what you want instead of spending your time listening to Gina tell you what you can't do. When I hear the word productivity, I don't want you to think about plowing through a to-do list. Because part of the reason why you don't feel productive is because you're busy doing the things that aren't important to you. Yeah, do you need to make sure you have milk or you got almond milk or oat milk in the fridge? Of course you do. But have you ever noticed that all the busy crap in life, uh, tends to take care of itself? That you don't really need to focus your time and energy on the minutia that's on your to-do list, because that stuff tends to grab your attention. What you really need to do is figure out how to create time and how to create the focus that you need in order to feel like you are making progress on the important things. And that's really what productivity means to me. You get all kinds of stuff done. You're really busy in your life. Life, aren't you? But are you getting progress made on the important things? Probably not, because that's the challenge for most of us. And so first things first, when it comes to trying to have a breakthrough in productivity, you need a game plan. You need to have a very short list every week of what actually matters to you, okay? Because I guarantee you, if you were to do an audit of the way that you spend your time this week, you would probably see that 95% of your time is spent on things that you really don't care about. And even more scary, I bet you don't even realize how much time you are wasting just mindlessly scrolling through social media or sitting on the couch with the the TV on, also answering emails. That is the least productive way to spend your time— multitasking, spending your time just sort of zoning out on things that don't matter. What I want you to do is I want you right now to think about what is it between now and the end of this week, for example, what is it that matters to you? What's the most important thing that you would love to make progress on that you never seem to find the time. Okay, it's a whole nother conversation for us to talk about whether or not you actually have time, because the fact is you do have time. You have plenty of time to make small amount of progress every single day on what matters to you. What you do have right now is you do not have a plan for prioritizing the important stuff in your life. So many of us have this perfectionism gene, and the reason why we're perfectionists is we're trying to insulate ourselves from criticism. That if you get it perfect, no one will give you feedback. If you get it right, nobody's going to criticize you. If you do it perfect, then no one will be able to attack you. And the problem with that, and that's just another side of the same coin, which is the fear of disappointing people. You're managing not disappointing people, not by lying and not by being codependent, but by actually trying to be a perfectionist so that nobody criticizes you. So let me tell you a story about the fear of disappointing people in my own life, because this is the biggest trigger in my life. I mean, it goes back to being in 4th grade, right? It's there. And this is another thing I, I literally have to remind myself of this, everybody, every single day. You cannot remove the things that trigger you. You can't. If you've been doing a pattern since 4th grade, there will be things for the rest of your life that will trigger that pattern to come up. But you can always choose not to repeat the pattern. So you'll be triggered and be afraid that you're going to disappoint somebody. That's real, that's normal, it's natural, it's part of being a human being. I think it's interwoven into every relationship where you love somebody, but you don't have to behave the way that you always behaved when you're nervous about disappointing somebody. So let me give you a dumb story, you ready? When my husband and I got married, my father gave us this really incredible gift. He gave us an antique pool table. I grew up in Muskegon, Michigan, where Brunswick was founded. And my dad has a hobby of going to garage sales and estate sales and buying old, dilapidated pool tables, and then he restores them. So when Chris and I got married, he bought us an old, dilapidated pool table from the same era as our house, which is the 1870s. He restored the whole thing, and then recently, he and I rented a U-Haul, and we drove this sucker from Muskegon, Michigan, to Boston, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. My dad and I took a road trip, get there, and we assemble the pool table in what used to be our playroom. Fast forward 3 or 4 years, the speaking business takes off, my business starts to grow, we have people that work for us, and my kids are older. We don't need a playroom, we need an office. The pool table is in the middle of this thing. For the first 2 years of having the office, we kept the pool pool table there. Why? Because I didn't want my dad to be disappointed, because I love him. Now, he visits our house twice a year for 2 or 3 days with my mom, and I kept this thing occupying a third of our office for 2 years. And then I realized I'm being ridiculous. I'm being absolutely ridiculous. Now, here's the thing: will he be disappointed if I take the pool table down? Absolutely, definitely. There are always going to be things that you do, decisions that you have to make in your life, in your business, for your family, that will disappoint other people. It's unavoidable. But the fact that he's going to be disappointed should never be the reason that I don't do something that is aligned with my values. Now let's take it a step further. When you make a decision that is likely going to disappoint people, or that does, still make the decision because it's your life. There's nothing worse than when you start to rob your future and your life and your happiness because you're so focused on other people. However, if you love people, you can still take care of them when you make that decision. So let me go back to the example of the pool table. So I knew I was going to take it down. I knew my father was going to be be disappointed. I was disappointed. I don't have a big house, so I don't, you know, I don't have the room for a huge pool table. I don't have a finished basement like a lot of people. I don't have like a cool garage game room thing. Like, I don't— I just don't have it. I called him first and said, I need to talk to you about something. You know the pool table? I love the pool table. Dad, my business is growing so much, I actually need an office. And, oh great, it'll be great in the office. And I'm like, well, Yeah, it would, except I have, you know, 3 or 4 people showing up, and we gotta put some desks in there for now. Evan went down, well, you could put a piece of plywood, and they could work on the pool table, and then they could do the thing, and then the thing. And now my heart is racing because I don't wanna disappoint my dad, and now he's fighting for the— And I had to just say, for me, Dad, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna hire professional movers in the pool table business to disassemble this with love and care. We're going to store it beautifully. When I either get a full-time office offsite, or I build a barn, or I build a different house, this will have its own beautiful room dedicated to you. So we had this beautiful conversation. Now, was he disappointed? Absolutely. When they come to the house and visit, which they just did, and they walk into the office, do I feel a pang? You better believe I do. It doesn't matter. That's all normal. I still need to make the decisions that I need to make, and the difference, what's changed, is how I relate to that fear. So instead of what I would do in the past is I would make a decision that doesn't serve me. I'd leave the pool table, and then I'd be all about it. I'd leave the pool table as a way to make my dad happy, but it makes me miserable to leave it there because I need the space, right? And then I'd be kind of annoyed, and then he'd come and I'd fake play pool because it kind I kind of want to run, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, we do all this shit that's not real. And what I've been able to do for myself in some instances when I catch it is to hit it head-on and to be authentic and to still take care of people. And what I've also come to learn is that people can be disappointed in you and they still love you. You know, you're never going to get around this. Everybody in your family is going be disappointed with you, probably once a day, probably. And you have the ability to retrain how you respond to that trigger that rises up in you where you start to fear that you're disappointing somebody. And the answer really is make the decision that's aligned with your values and the thing that supports you, and then take care of the person by being honest and straightforward about it, dealing with their disappointment head-on, because that's really the adult thing to do, and that's what you do when you love somebody. The way we've all been handling it, myself included, is manipulation, lying, resentment, withholding, and that doesn't serve anybody. Mel, I got fired from a job I was really excited about. What should I do? Excellent question. First of all, how many of you have ever been fired from a job? Yep, yep, I have been fired from a job, And let me tell you something, it's a kick in the teeth, doesn't it? There is nothing that feels worse in the moment than being brought into a conference room and being let go. And then how bad does it blow to pack up your stuff and to leave? It stings. It is terrible. It is humiliating. There is nothing around it. There's nothing around that feeling, even if it's a job that you can't you can't stand. Even if it's a job where you've been looking for another job, even if you know in your heart that this is the biggest blessing in disguise because you didn't really like it there, you still want to be the one to rip off the Band-Aid, don't you? You want to be the one to walk in and be like, guess what, people? I found a different job. I'm out of here. So when they beat you to the punch and they tell you the truth that this isn't working, it's not working for them, it's not working for you, and now it's time for you to leave. It is still a kick in the teeth. So I want to be clear about something. Feeling down, feeling embarrassed, feeling angry about how it was handled, even if they handled it in the way that is legal, that is normal. It's normal because it blows to be rejected, and that's exactly what happens to you emotionally when you get fired from a job. I get that because boy, oh boy, have I been there. I have been fired from jobs that I actually liked. I have been fired from jobs that I needed, and I have been fired from jobs that I viscerally hated, that I was physically sick going to work every morning. I hated it so much and it still stinks when you're fired. So here's what I want you to do when you're fired. I want you to really just relish in how much it stinks for, I don't know, an hour. No more than 24 hours. You get to milk this puppy for free, you know, a free dinner from your pals at night. You get to milk this and complain about it to all your friends for 24 hours. And then guess what? You got to stop complaining about it. You got to stop thinking about it because you don't have a choice anymore. The job is over, and I don't want you looking back. I want you looking forward. Now, before you look forward though, I want you to do one of the signature things that we talk about all the time. And what is that? I want you to look for the message in the mess. What is it that you learned about yourself or about a job or a boss or or a kind of work, that you need to make sure you understand the message in the mess. Because when you get the emotion out of the way, guess what you always see about a job or a breakup that happens? You always see that that was exactly what was supposed to happen. That that job, that that person, that that manager, that that focus, that that was holding you back. And you were just too scared to take the leap. You were too worried about finances. You were worried about how it looked. I've been there, I get it. But you need to see the message in the mess because I don't want you to make the mistake and step into the exact same thing or the exact same type of job or the exact same management situation that didn't work the first time. Because part of the reason why jobs don't work is it's not a fit. You see, people get fired for a lot a lot of reasons. Some of the reasons why people get fired is because the companies are not doing well, and in that case, you want to thank your lucky stars that you're getting out now so that you can find something better. If it's not a fit, that's a more nuanced reason to get fired, but let me tell you something, if it's not a fit for the company, it wasn't a fit for you either. And so look for the message in the mess. What are you going to learn about this situation, whether there was a skill gap, and you need to bring your skills up to speed so that you're not floundering your next job. Or maybe it was a personality gap that you accepted something that in your heart you knew wasn't right, but you took it because you had to or because you felt insecure. Don't make that mistake again. So part of the reason why you don't feel productive is because you're trying to complete everything. And so let's take one of the things that I saw somebody write. That you want to, uh, clean up one of the spare rooms in your apartment or in your house. That maybe there's a spare bedroom and you have been wanting to turn it into a home office, or maybe one of the kids has moved out of the house and you want to declutter that room, like in a project around organizing. Maybe it's something in your garage or your basement, or hey, here's one for me, uh, our daughter moved out and started her life uh, you know, post-college. And our other daughter is out in Los Angeles going to college. And we, no joke, have 3 garbage bags full of clothes that somebody needs to go through to figure out what needs to be donated, what could you actually sell because it still has tags on it. And it has been sitting there for 2 months. So maybe you have a pile of that that kind of stuff in your house. This is not a priority for me. I'm perfectly fine with it sitting in the room where our laundry is. The priority for me this week is to carve out dedicated time to hang out with our 16-year-old son and do something fun together, because we spend a lot of time together but we don't get intentional about doing something specific. But if you want to declutter, for example, here's where we all go wrong. You identify what you want to do, and then you think you got to get it done. In order for me to go through 2 bags of clothing, for example, in order for you to clear out your garage, that could take you 2 days to do it the right way, right? Because, you know, if you don't give yourself enough time, then you're gonna pile, and so then you think, I can't get it done, and so then you never schedule it, right? Okay, we're not going to worry about completion, everybody. We're going to worry about progress. So when you think about things in terms of progress, it can shrink the amount of time that you need. Maybe all that you're going to do is you're going to work on one dresser in the room, or you're going to work on one shelving unit in the garage. And by simply making the time to, number one, identify what matters to you, and number two, identify what meaningful progress could look like, you will now shrink the amount of time, you will define the project, and you can make the time for it. And simply just doing that is going to make you feel more productive based on the research. All right, now let me talk about, um, what you need to do. Okay, I literally have notes for this. Oh, there we go. And I just lost it because I really want to make sure that I teach you all this stuff. So, um, Here, Becca, can you help me? Because this is not— oh, because my thing is not— never mind, guys. I am trying. Multitasking is not how you be productive, and you are watching me multitask right now. We're going to get into some of the science now. So now that is how you leverage something called the progress principle. Okay, the progress principle is really important when it comes to productivity. This is a concept that I first learned about in the Harvard Business Review. Review. So if it's in the Harvard Business Review, everybody, very fancy, must be accurate, right? If it's coming from Harvard. Well, The Progress Principle is a study that comes from a study where researchers looked at, I believe it was 14,000 work journals. And what they found after looking at the work journals of how people spent their time, 14,000 people, is that at the end of the week, the people that felt like they had been the most productive and the people who felt the most fulfilled by their work week were the people who simply made progress on something that mattered. And so by you identifying what matters to you this week and by you identifying a way that you can make a small amount of progress on it, you are leveraging this research, research from Harvard Business Review about what creates productivity and meaning and fulfillment in your life. And that's making progress on something that matters. You know that wave that you feel, or your tongue gets numb, or you get tightness in your cheeks, or you freeze? You know when that happens? Based on the science, there is only a 90-second chemical release in your body. It's called the 90-second rule. When your body starts to— stomach starts to flutter, when your heart starts race, when you feel this feeling of fear that you have that's unique to you— based on the science, there's a 90-second rule. And all of the chemical release that's happening, because your body is going into a state of being alert, it only sticks around for 90 seconds, as long as you don't let your thoughts race. If your thoughts start to race, you'll start to agitate the situation. So the next time that your body body goes into a state of alert. Stomach gets tight, you feel frozen, you get stuck, you feel your neck. When the body starts to do that, number one, just remember it means your body is getting ready to be alert and pay attention. Doesn't— and it does not mean you're going to lose control. It does not mean you're in danger. It does not mean to stop or to shut up. I want you to take a deep breath, count to 5— 5, 4, 3, 2, 1— that's it. And realize that the hormones that just got released because you're about to do something, they only last 90 seconds. That's it. You can breathe slowly, you can count to 90, you can get up and walk around, you can do 90 seconds of jumping jacks, you can meditate and meditate for 90 seconds. You can ground your feet in your chair and wiggle a minute so that you feel your body in your chair and take deep breaths. And what you're going to find is that you're going to be blown away. You're going to be blown away because what you're going to see is that in 90 seconds flat, You can go from being somebody who has an upset stomach and who would normally not go talk to your boss, who would normally not walk into that gym, who would normally not make that call— in 90 seconds flat, you can manipulate your body state to calm down. And you will notice that your thoughts do not race. Your thoughts calm down. You're in full control. And now you can speak up. And now you you can show up. And the truth is, if you want control in your life, if you want to make things happen, you have to be able to expect that you're going to get a no and do it anyway. So what do I mean when I say, if you want control, expect a no? Well, there's a couple of things that I mean by it. Number one, if you're somebody that gets paralyzed because you want things to be perfect, perfectionism is a way that most of us try to handle or mitigate or make sure that we don't hear no. We assume that if we're perfect, everything's going to go okay. And so we spend all of our energy thinking about our dating profile or thinking about the business plan or thinking about how to make things perfect. And the reason why we do that is we're terrified to hear no. We're terrified to put something out there that's not perfect. Because if it's not perfect, you might get a no. One of the better ways to handle this is to actually expect a no. You know, I saw the most incredible quote by our friend, Faustina, over in Australia. She's a very famous DJ and friend of ours from Australia, and she put out the most amazing quote, and I'm gonna get it totally wrong, but it's something like this. You have to be yourself because how else are the people who are looking for you gonna find you? And I think particularly when it comes to dating, what we tend to do is we are so afraid of being rejected by anybody out there that we try to be somebody that we're not, that we put out a fake, improved, or what we think is improved version of ourselves in order to not hear no. And most of us pretend to be somebody that we're not when we fear rejection, when we believe that how we are, who we are, isn't good enough. And so that's why it's so important for you to understand that you have to be willing to hear a no. You have to be willing to hear a no from the wrong people so that the people that are looking for you can find you. So that the people who want to be part of your business can be part of your business. If you're putting a fake person out there or a pretend perfect person out there because you think that's going to save you from rejection, you're actually screwing yourself over. Here's your new definition of passion. Passion is simply energy. That's all that it is, okay? Passion is what you feel when you are energized and excited about what you're doing. Okay, I want you to think about that for a minute. I want you to think about a moment in time when you felt incredibly passionate about something. Okay, and why don't you in the comments tell me where are you watching from and tell me about a moment in time when you felt incredibly passionate about what you were doing, about where you were, about the people that you were with. Describe that moment for me, because when you start to really investigate passion as energy, this is what you're going to discover. Those moments when you were super passionate— like, I'm sure my kids would write down when they're doing community theater with all their friends. I would write down whenever I'm doing any kind of creative project with my team, I'm incredibly energized. Whenever I'm doing group exercise stuff, climbing a mountain, doing a 5K race, doing some sort of walkathon, I'm incredibly energized by that. Whenever I'm doing some sort of creative project, incredibly energized by that. Whenever I'm working with our video team, incredibly energized by that. Whenever I am coaching someone or giving advice, I am incredibly energized by that. And so what I want you to understand is that if you look back on your life, you have had moments where you have felt passion. I'm being very deliberate in how I'm talking this morning on Coffee Talk because passion is a huge topic for so many of you. And you've been so focused on trying to figure out what job is going to make me passionate, what job is my passion, what is my purpose on the earth. I'm going to tell you what your purpose on earth is right now. Your purpose on earth is to figure out how to align your life so that you feel more energized and excited by it. That's it. And it begins with you following the energy and and following your natural enthusiasm. You're not going to think your way to passion. You can't think your way to finding something that you feel in your heart. It doesn't work that way. You got to feel your way into it. It's inside of you. Do you understand? There's no passion out there somewhere. The passion is in here. And so what you have to do first is you've got to stop thinking that you're going to find it somewhere, and you've got to realize that passion is about unlocking something that's already in you. My mind can be my worst enemy. I was laying in bed last night and I had fallen asleep and I kept waking up. And you know what I was thinking about? I was waking up because I could hear people in the hallway kind of coming in from a late night of partying. And you know what the first thing that my mind defaulted to? There being a fire in the hotel. And I started having these visions of my daughter and I going down the stairwell and getting trapped. And then I had visions of us being on the balcony on this room and fire kind of engulfing. And what are we doing? Are we tying a rope? Which, I mean, it's just insanity, absolute insanity. And I, I use the techniques that I teach you. I went 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I am not thinking about this. And the thought disappeared because I constantly reset my mindset. And, you know, one of the reasons why I'm telling you this is if you you are tired of feeling negative, if you feel often that your own thoughts are the things that trip you up in life, that you wish that your mind were more positive, I'm telling you that I'm the same way. Just because I teach this stuff, just because I study this, just because I do what I do for a living doesn't make me immune to what it means to be human. And what it means to be human is that your brain and your body want you to survive. Your brain and your body remember situations that scare the daylights out of you. Your brain and your body try to talk you out of anything that makes you feel risky. And your brain, given that it has been trained by situations in the past, and given that you allow it to worry all the time, you have a habit of doing it, if you're not careful and you're not deliberate, your brain will default to scary crap like mine was last night. That doesn't mean you're broken. It means that your brain is thinking something that's broken, and it's time for you to reset your mindset and pull it back. Do you know what the one strategy— one strategy that is associated with making more money for women? Do you know if there's— what is one strategy that will help you make more money as a woman when you work in a company? You can put it in the comments. You can guess. Uh, no, it's not working longer hours. No, it's not taking the notes in the meeting. No, it's not, um, doing everybody else's work for them. The one strategy based on research that will actually translate to you making more money is making sure you're achievements are known. And I want to dig deeper into this because there are two kinds of work, right? Two kinds of work. I want you to shift your paradigm and the way that you think about work because you do two kinds of work. You do work that is visible, and that is the work that you get credit for. So visible work consists of the ideas that you share in a meeting. It consists of the things that you talk to your boss about. About. It consists of the work that you're doing that people see. It consists of the results that you generate that are reported and discussed. And most importantly, it consists of the projects that you are working on that are strategically aligned with the goals of the company that people know about. Invisible work, on the other hand, is all the stuff you don't get credit for. So all those folks that you mentor in private, you're not getting credit for that. You should still do it, but I'm gonna tell you how to do it differently. Answering the same question over and over and over again for multiple people on telephone calls, that's invisible. And if you only make one change this year in your career, I want you to take on a habit of making sure your accomplishments are known, that the things that you're doing are more visible. We all procrastinate. We avoid the things that we know that we need to do, and then we spend the rest of the day beating ourselves up. It's amazing. Actually, it sucks, doesn't it? So how do you stop procrastinating? Oh, simple. Just nail yourself to a chair. That's what you do. You tell yourself no booze until you get it done. That works. No, it doesn't. The reason why these things don't work is because most of us don't even understand what procrastination is. I know I certainly didn't. The reason why you procrastinate is not why you think. Procrastination has nothing to do with work. Procrastination is a stress reliever. That's right. It's a tool that you use to give yourself relief from stress that you feel, and the stress that you may be feeling right now might be stressed about money, you might be stressed about your health, maybe you're stressed about something going on at work or about a relationship that you're in. And the way that this relates to procrastination is you're stressed out, you got work you know you need to do, but instead of doing it, you go online or you watch the highlights of last night's game or you waste an hour looking at Facebook Facebook. And when you do that, when you avoid work, it makes you feel good, but just for a minute. See, this is where we get procrastination all wrong. A lot of people think procrastination is about willpower, or it means that you're lazy. It has nothing to do with that. It's all about your stress. That's why your work ethic or discipline, that's not, that's not going to solve this either. The key to stopping procrastination Number one is understanding what it is. It's a way that you deal with stress. And number two, it's about 5-second decisions that stop the cycle of procrastinating. Because when you change your decisions, you're gonna change everything. And here's how you're gonna use the 5-second rule to do it. When you catch yourself procrastinating or you feel yourself starting to avoid what you need to do. Use the rule: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, activate your prefrontal cortex, and then acknowledge. Acknowledge that you feel stressed out. That's the first piece. Then you're going to use the 5-second rule to just get started. That's it, for 5 minutes. That's all I'm asking. Force yourself. I'm stressed out, I get it, but I'm going to work for 5 minutes. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, sit down and get started. After you've worked for 5 minutes, give yourself have a break. Watch all the cat videos you want. I don't really care. The point here is that this is a way that you can use the 5-second rule in combination with research about beating procrastination that puts you in control of your decisions. Stacy found that when she used the 5-second rule to improve her relationship with herself, there was an amazing result. She stopped procrastinating. In her words, your rule has helped me grow in ways I never thought possible. I no longer procrastinate on anything. And the same is going to be true for you, because when you understand that procrastination is something that you do when you're stressed, and you also understand that the secret to beating procrastination, which is a habit, is to just get started, now you can use the The 5 Second Rule to leverage all the research that will help you end the habit of procrastinating once and for all. You need to do the work, okay? You gotta do the work because it's only through your actions that you will accomplish what you want. Let's say, uh, that you've always wanted to climb a particular mountain, okay? There's a mountain called Haystack. It's not even that tall, so I should probably pick a bigger one, but let's just call it Haystack Mountain. You've always wanted to climb Haystack Mountain. You pull up to Haystack Mountain and you get out of the car, you park at the, you know, National Forest parking lot, and you make the mistake of looking up at the mountain, which is the end goal, right? And you notice it's up in the clouds. And then you start to think, oh my God, that's a really far way away, you know. I don't really know how I feel about doing this anymore because that looks like it's going to take a really long time. And then all of a sudden it starts to rain and you go, I don't think I want to do this because I don't think I feel like doing this. And next thing you know, you are back in the car driving back down the road to that little diner that you saw. And instead of climbing the mountain that you've always dreamt of climbing, you've now come up with an excuse and you have abandoned ship. You now have literally become your own obstacle. You talked yourself out of it, you started to doubt yourself, you told yourself you weren't ready and that you didn't feel like it. You pull the ripcord, you're out of there. In order to have what you want in life, you must stop staring at the top of that mountain. You must stop creating excuses for why you can't or don't feel like it, and you must put your head down and look at the first step in front of you. And then you must take the action and start walking toward what you want. And it'll be a hell of a lot easier for you to do that if you have also been putting in the time every day consistently to not only see yourself walking up that trail step by step, but that you have felt yourself pushing through the resistance, the fear, the obstacles, the bull—, the excuses that are stopping you now and feel proud in every fiber of your being as you push through those obstacles and see yourself and feel yourself doing the work. That's how you manifest properly. And if you do that before you pull into the national park parking lot, if you look up at that mountain and you see clouds and it starts raining, it won't matter because because you've already rehearsed this moment in your mind, body, and spirit. And you, my friend, will start walking up that trail, and you're going to be proud. For some incredible Tower Swart motivation, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Having a purpose that transcends yourself is really important in terms of your own mental health, your physical health, your longevity. And if you're striving for something that is not authentic for you,