Mel Robbins: 10 Productivity Habits That Will Change Your Life Forever!

One of the things that I've learned in my business is that the mistakes are where all the learning is. And actually, the mistakes and the imperfect stuff, that's where the gold is. And so as you're sitting there and you're thinking about doing stuff and you're trying to make it perfect and you're trying to come up with the right script before you make that cold call, or you're trying to make sure your body looks perfect before you put yourself out there on Match, you are missing out on your life. I hope that if there's one thing that I consistently inspire you to do, it's to start before you're ready. It's to put yourself out there and make mistakes. It's to have yourself go live and have it look like crap. And all of a sudden you disconnect yourself and to be able to laugh at yourself, to be able to shake it off. Like, that is a skill. It's a skill that means that you're self-aware. It's a skill that means that you're growing.

Need motivation?

You better watch a top 10 with Believe Nation.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael and I make these videos because you are probably the most ambitious person in your circle, but you know you're capable of more and you get that push by surrounding yourself with the best. So today, let's learn from one of the best, Mel Robbins, and my take on her top 10 rules of success. Enjoy. Rule number 2, don't run away.

There's a lot of you that are running from things instead of running to things, and that's a huge difference. Running from something versus running to something. And so I want you to think about that for a minute. Um, because you don't have to move across country to change your life, and you don't have to do something drastic to experience drastic positive change. And here's the thing about running away from your problems, running away from your past: have you ever noticed that when you run away, it tends to follow you? You know, I used to, uh, have this problem in relationships. And the reason why I had this problem is because I was a very unhappy person. I didn't like myself truly as a person until probably 4 or 5 years ago. I spent, as sad as this is, I spent the first 46 years of my life really not liking myself, really feeling like I wasn't a good person, really questioning the sanity of people that were in love with me or that were friends of mine because I had such a low opinion of myself. And it didn't matter, you know, I, I was guilty not of moving from one city to another, but I was guilty of moving from one person to another. That I would literally get in a relationship, I would be in a relationship for a year, and then I would start to feel that unsettled feeling. Because what happens after a year of being in a relationship? Well, you got to start working on it. It's no longer the thrill and the delight and it's new and you're dating. Now it's just you and the person in your life. There's nothing new about it. And so all your old crap starts to show up, and that's when you got to start to do the work. And so it was about the year or the year and a half mark in almost every single relationship that I would start getting that itchy feeling. And the reason why I was getting that itchy feeling is because my past was now there. This new relationship was no longer new, and so I was no longer distracted by it, and I was going to have to deal with myself in order to be happy. And so what did I do for years— not even just years, decades, everybody. I'm not, I'm not proud to admit this, but I would literally jump out of one relationship and into another new one because another new one would distract me from the fact that I was an unhappy person. True story. And I think a lot of you who are unhappy with yourselves are looking to move jobs or looking to move the city that you live in, or you're looking to change your relationship, and the problem isn't where you live, the problem isn't your job, the problem isn't the person that you're with. The problem is how you feel about yourself.

Rule number 3: Validate, separate, and celebrate.

If you're not facing a breakup personally in your romantic life, you still want to pay attention because somebody that you care about might be, and this is advice that you can give to them. Also, breakups happen in your career. You might be breaking up with a work situation. You might be breaking up with a friend. I know a lot of us are working hard to draw boundaries and to surround ourselves with more positive people, and we get questions every day about how you do that. And so breaking up with friends can be just as traumatic as breaking up with somebody that is a romantic partner. I have 3 steps to getting over a breakup that I'm going to explain in a minute, but first I want to I want to explain some research to you to help you put what you're feeling into context. Because what you're going through when you break up with somebody or you're broken up with is you literally go through withdrawal. I'm not kidding. And yeah, I'm using the word withdrawal. Where else do you hear the word withdrawal? You hear the word withdrawal when you hear about people withdrawing from a drug. And that's a lot similar to what you're going through. In fact, there was a study done by neuroscientist Lucy Brown who found that like drug abuse, romantic love begins with that euphoric feeling. It's a high, right? And when the drug leaves your body or the romance leaves your life, what are you left with? You're left with the withdrawal, which is a craving for it. Validate. Number 1, breakups are painful, but they don't need to leave you broken. So I want you to validate where you're at. It's great that you're asking the question. You got to have a little bit of compassion for yourself. You got to understand that you're going to be sad for a while, but please don't pour gasoline on the sadness fire. Please, please, please don't be staring at photos of your ex. Please don't be putting his or her social media face right in front of your face. It's going to make it worse. But definitely validate the sadness because you're going through a major change, and it might not be a change that you wanted. Number 2, separate. This is the most important part because the other thing that I don't think any of us realize is that when you get broken up with or you break up with somebody, you don't realize how much of your daily routine and the habits that you have and the way that you go about your day was tied to the person that you're no longer with. And so what you're not only dealing with is not only missing the person, but your whole life schedule may have just been thrown off. Maybe you two went to the same gym in the morning. Maybe you got a text in the morning from this person. Maybe you liked your little FaceTime call at work. Maybe your friend group became their friend group, and now all of a sudden that you're broken up because you hung out with their friends all the time, you don't have that social life anymore. And so it is so important for you to recognize that you're not only facing the person being gone, but the habits that marked your day and the other people that maybe you hung out with and the things that you did with your time and the music that you listened to and the food that you ate, that those might have all been dictated by the person you were with, and those are changing too. So it's important for you to separate yourself. I think a lot of women in particular, when we get into a relationship, we tend to lose ourselves. We tend to morph into the person that we're dating. I used to do that all the time. And so now we get to the third part. As you start to think about separating, right? So you're validating where you're at, you're separating from this person. We need to get to the third part, which is celebrating you. Now that you're broken up, you have an opportunity. You have an opportunity to rediscover yourself because I guarantee you, you lost a bit of yourself in that relationship. And so as you think about the way that the structure of your day has changed, what can you proactively insert that is a celebration of the things that you stopped doing? What have you been keeping yourself from doing because you were in this relationship that would celebrate you? Who are the friends or family members or colleagues that really lift you up? And how can you find more time to hang out with them? This is a time to celebrate a moment when you get to rediscover you.

Rule number 4, learn to speak up.

I've looked into the research. There's only one habit and skill, just one, that has a direct impact on how much money you make, a direct impact on whether or not you get the promotion and the influence and the cash money that you deserve. And do you know what that is? Any ideas? The one skill, the one habit, the one thing that has a meaningful behavior change that impacts what you get— it's your visibility. You see, you don't get credit, you don't get paid for, and you don't get graded on the things that people can't see. In order for you to get what you deserve, you have to start being deliberate about your visibility behavior that you've got to start learning to do. Whether you're shy, whether you're introverted, whether English is your second language, it doesn't matter. You've got to learn how to speak up. You've got to learn how to share your ideas. You've got to learn how to talk about your business. You've got to learn to talk about your dreams and your goals. And I know for many of you, that is one of the most terrifying things in the world. You hate being the center of attention. The idea of speaking in a meeting at work and risking sounding like you don't know what you're talking about is really scary. The idea of asking for feedback from your boss or asking for a raise, really scary. The idea of going in and talking to your professor about adjusting your grade, really scary. The idea of raising your hand, I get it. I read your emails, I see the comments, but you've got to understand that this is the number one skill that you need in order to increase your visibility wherever it is that you need to increase your visibility.

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 all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. 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. Rule number 5: Cut yourself a break.

The world doesn't need another perfect person. The world needs you. And you're trying your best. You're doing what you can. And, you know, I think it's really important that you cut yourself a break and that you stop thinking that you have to be perfect. There are going to be days where you're an hour late to pick up your kid, and that's okay. There are going to be days when you can't get to every email, and that's okay. There are going to be days where you feel so underwater, and that's okay. You'll get through it. You'll figure it out. And you've got to understand that it's not about being It's about just being you. And that means that you gotta be willing to start before you're ready. You gotta be willing to do what I do every damn day, which is show up in my rollers or start a livestream and disconnect myself or start it and be talking and not even know that I'm broadcasting. You've got to do that version in your life or you're not gonna get ahead, period.

Rule number 6, don't judge yourself.

Instead of doing what so many of us do when we're broken up with and we go, I'm a loser, I'm unlovable. I'm not good enough. What I want you to do instead is I want you to put that opinion and judgment on the relationship itself. That relationship that's over wasn't good enough, wasn't worthy, and wasn't the right fit for love for you. Do not take that on as an internal judgment of yourself. Make sure that when you're judging it, You're judging the relationship and how it wasn't a good fit for you. You, my friend, are whole. You, my friend, are perfect how you are. And yeah, you may have to change. Yeah, there's things that you can do better now that you know better. Yes, there's baggage you got to deal with, but there's nothing wrong with you. There's just patterns that you need to deal with.

Rule number 7, love the process of pursuing goals.

You'll get the day where you celebrate, and that was yesterday. And you'll have that moment where you cannot believe that you actually got into the school that you wanted, or you got the job that you wanted, or you found the person that, that really complements you finally, or that you got the raise that you wanted, or you built the house that you've always dreamt of. And then a funny thing happens after you actually achieve the dream. After you celebrate, life goes right back to the way that it was. And for me, what I'm present to is not the fact that this talk show is actually happening, It's, I'm focused on all the work that I now need to do in order to do the talk show as powerfully as I can. And I think that the point that I'm trying to make about the fact that, yeah, you can achieve all the things that you're going for, but I've even noticed already in just 24 hours, like, that the crazy rise in emotion and excitement has already been replaced with things are back to normal. That is exactly what psychologists talk about when it comes to happiness, because happiness is not about achieving things. It's not about getting the result. It's about how you pursue the things that you enjoy and why you're pursuing them. And so the key to life, and I'm seeing it happen in my own life, is not actually checking the boxes and getting all those things that you dream about. It's how you go about living your life as you're pursuing them. Because if I were just gonna like, boop, check the box, and now I'm done, Done. Biggest goal of my life, to have a daytime talk show, just achieved that. What do I have to look forward to? Nothing, if you've already achieved it, which is why it's so important for you to understand that the real meaning of happiness is about how you show up every day. Yes, you should have big goals. Yes, you should have big dreams. Yes, yes, yes. And yes, you should pursue them. But don't ever think that, quote, making your dreams come true is what actually makes you happy, because what actually makes you happy is having those dreams and waking up every morning and doing a little something to push yourself to make them happen. It's about the pursuit.

Rule number 8: Have empathy.

It's really important for your personal boundaries to use what I always talk about, which is empathy. Understand that anybody that's acting out, it doesn't excuse the behavior, it explains it. And it also allows you to separate yourself emotionally. That person is likely miserable. That person has a bad life, which is why they treat people badly. And so if you can start to really use empathy to put it on them versus making it that they are doing something to you, that can help you from getting hooked emotionally.

Rule number 9, be a fan.

If you start shifting the dynamic, and here's how you do it, you do it by being a fan. What do I mean? I talk about this all the time. If you Google Mel Robbins being a fan, you'll probably come up with like 10 different videos on YouTube about this philosophy. It's a philosophy about leading with appreciation. It's a philosophy about cheering for other people publicly. Because what happens when you cheer for other people is you naturally trigger the law of reciprocity. And even the biggest jerkface, even the biggest curmudgeon, even the biggest, most competitive person on the planet, who might be competitive, by the way, because she's paying for her parents' nursing home bill, And she's feeling stressed out and she's also divorced. I mean, who knows what's driving this competitive nature? Maybe it's a sense of scarcity and fear and insecurity. And so the opposite of competition isn't more competition, it's connection. And you create connection by cheering for people.

And rule number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip, is have the courage to speak up.

The majority of people lack self-awareness at work. You get that? The person who's disrespecting you likely doesn't even know what they're doing. The person who's taking his or her anger out on you likely doesn't know how it's impacting you. You see, when people do this, when they have these kind of toxic patterns, they've been getting away with them for so long because nobody has had the courage to cross-check them verbally on it. And that's where you come in. Lucky you, you're in their life because your purpose in their life is to be the one person that has the courage to actually sit down and have a candid conversation about it. So what are you going to do? How do you have that candid conversation? First of all, try not to make them wrong. Try not to come in and shame them and tell them all the horrible things they're doing. Because you'll immediately create a situation where they're defensive. And if the research bears out from Harvard Business School and they actually had no idea that they were doing it, they might get defensive. The better way to do it, the more effective way to do it, is to explain how their behavior impacts you. And when you do that, most people are mortified because most people are venting or are disrespectful, and they're not even thinking about the impact it has because nobody's ever told them. 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'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. I'm a piece of shit. That's my big 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? 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. 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? 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 going to lose my dad's love. Do you see this? Yeah. 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 now that you're working now, it's not working now. It's not working now. Not working now. And see, 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, something 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." You're— 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 speaking, 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 going to be my thing. Yes. I'm a piece of shit, and I got something to fucking 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. 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 lid off. So that's step number 1. You're gonna start writing down 5 things that you want every single morning as a way to train your mind to let you dream freely. 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 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 gonna take a really 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 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. 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 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 crossed 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 going to say that again. Boundaries are rules that you create about your own behavior. 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 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. 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 table there. Why? Because I didn't want my dad to be disappointed. 'Cause 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, 'cause 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 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. 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 3 or 4 people showing up and we gotta put some desks in there for now." He even went down, "Well, you could put a piece plywood, 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 want to disappoint my dad. And now he's fighting for the— and I had to just say, for me, Dad, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to 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 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 gonna get around this. Everybody in your family is gonna 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 someone. 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. 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, Shelly, 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 don't you sign up? 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. 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 to turn it into a home office, or maybe one of the kids has moved out of the house and you wanna 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. Our daughter moved out and started her life, 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 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 Maybe 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 going to 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 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, 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. 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, 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 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. 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, 10 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. There's a caveat to this. You can manufacture boosts of productivity and boosts of feeling like you've got a little bit more brain power. Number 1, immediately after you exercise. 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. 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 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 going to start to see yourself using your best brain power and your highest level of fuel at the thing that matters most to you. First of all, you got to give yourself permission to really have what you want. Okay? Because you gotta 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 was 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 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. Do, do, do, do, do. 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 TV on, also answering emails. That is the least productive way to spend your time. Multitasking, spending your time just sort of zoning out 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 not have right now is you do not have a plan for prioritizing the important stuff in your life.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag below believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. To see my recent interview with Mel Robbins one-on-one, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

I hope your business goes bankrupt, Evan. Evan, you're a terrible person. I spent the first 40-some years of my life trying to be somebody else. I'll give you guys a secret way