Mel Robbins' Top 10 Rules for Success

That thing that you want, I guarantee you, you've convinced yourself that you're fine not having it. That's why you're not pushing yourself.

Friend of the channel, Mel Robbins, is a motivational speaker, podcast host, and author best known for The 5 Second Rule, a book that has sold over 3 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 40+ languages.

There is nobody like Mel Robbins. There is nobody. They call her the female Tony Robbins. But she's so much more than that.

She went from being $800,000 in debt, unemployed, and unable to get out of bed due to anxiety and depression.

My husband is in a failing restaurant business. We have liens on the house and we're $800 grand in debt. I had created this little thing that I call the 5-second rule, which is this technique of counting backwards: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I invented it to help me get out of bed on those mornings when the anxiety was so crushing. That I couldn't get out of bed.

To building a global personal brand and business in the eight figures.

Come on now! Oh my God! Powerhouse speaker, your global podcast sensation, and best-selling author.

Need motivation?

You better watch a top ten with Believe Nation.

If you've been here before, drop a hashtag believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time. Believe. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: stop being hard on yourself.

What you need help with is you're tired of being so serious all the time. You're tired of being responsible for everyone and holding everything together. And more than anything else, you're just sick and tired of being hard on yourself. You look in the mirror and you start putting yourself down. And even when you accomplish something, you're so quick To move the goalposts and move on to what's next and not even savor the thing that you just did right. Come on. What is going on with you and me? Not everything has to be that deep, for crying out loud. When do we all get so frickin serious? No wonder we're all exhausted. We're constantly beating the hell out of ourselves. I mean, you'd never talk to your kids like that, right? So why do you talk to yourself like that? And there's a shift. That you need to make. You need to stop waiting for somebody else to pick you back up. You need to stop waiting for someone in your life to come along and hype you up. Do you deserve that? Of course you do. We all deserve to be told that you're doing a good job. But you also need to become your own cheerleader. You need to remind yourself that not everything is that deep. Not everything is worth your attention, for crying out loud. And by gosh, you're doing a darn good job at the things you are doing. That the person that looks at you and says, I got you, you're amazing, look how far you've come— that person needs to be you. You need to remind yourself you're allowed to have fun, because if we're not having fun, of course everything's going to feel heavy. You're allowed to wake up and think, what kind of shenanigans are we going to get into today? In fact, you need to remind yourself that you've got to get into some more shenanigans and trouble.

Rule number 2, lower your expectations.

We're constantly Expecting people to show up a certain way and then judging them when they don't, instead of stopping to consider that other people have lives and other people have a lot of things going on. And sometimes when people go silent on you, it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with a crazy busy period in life, or it has to do with the fact that something's going on with their family and they're so drained at the end of the day that the last thing they want to do is talk to anybody. And so I do think we expect too much because relationships feel very like transactional. You do this for me, I do this for you. I text you, you better text me back. Now, there are rules in terms of just being courteous to people and being gracious to people.

Rule number 3, enjoy the moment.

20 years from now, you'd give anything to be this exact age This healthy, and back in this exact moment. Take a second and enjoy it now. I love this quote. It's from writer Rich Webster. And one of the reasons why I love this quote is it's so easy to get caught up in the stress of your day-to-day life that you don't slow down and drop in the moment and consider 2 really important things. That every single thing that you're gonna do today is something that your 95-year-old self will wish that they could go back and do. And you know, you and I don't stop and consider that the moment that we're in right now, like, even if it's difficult, it's stressful, you're caring for people, whether it's little kids or it's aging parents, there are aspects of your life— right now that were once a goal or a dream. Now stop and think about this. There was a period in your life where you didn't have a job, and boy, did you wish you had a job. There were periods of in your life where you were single, and you wished that you were in a relationship, even though that person may be pissing you off right now. There was a period in your life where you didn't have kids, and boy, did you want them, but oh my gosh, is it stressful. They're not sleeping through the night, or maybe they're really struggling, and that's causing you a lot of stress right now. But you forget that holy cow, this moment right now, my past self, my 10-year-old self, my 20-year-old self, my 30-year-old self dreamt about some of the things that are stressing me out right now. Or wow, the things that I'm complaining about, my 95-year-old self wishes they could come back to this moment no matter how stressful it is and be able to do it and experience it and be with the people that I'm around right now because when I get to 95, they're not gonna be there. And so I need to like slow down a little bit. And instead of focusing on all the things that are driving me crazy and stressing me out and are out of my control, what about dropping into this moment and just taking a beat and appreciating it?

Rule number 4, identify what's in your control.

So in case you haven't bumped into this online, the theory is very simple. It is a mindset tool that instantly helps you identify what's in your control and what's not in your control. The reason why this is important is because any psychologist will tell you that if you focus and try to manage things that are never gonna be within your control, it only creates stress, anxiety, and frustration for you. When you take the context of work, there is so much inside your day-to-day life at work that is irritating, It is stressful, it is annoying, from the endless meetings and no time to get work done, to if you're somebody that is working in a retail store, you're doing shift work, you don't have control over what shifts you get, to feeling like you don't have the chance for promotion. It is just endless. And the way that you're gonna use the Let Them Theory is anytime something is happening at work that stresses you out, you have a customer that's really rude, you lose a big account, you get passed over for something, your idea gets dismissed in a work meeting, as you notice the stress come up, James, Okay. You're simply going to say, let them. Let my boss be in a bad mood. Let my colleague take credit. Let the customer, like, be rude to me. And here's the thing, this sounds almost like you're being a doormat and you're being passive. It's the exact opposite. When you say let them, you're recognizing that the situation right now that has just happened has already happened, and that There is no reason to allow it to stress you out.

Also, if you wanna take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from this video, helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in the description below to go grab it, and I'll see you there. Rule number 5, change your focus.

You know what I need help with, Mel? My brain is fried. I know this feeling. I always explain this like the drawbridge is not closing. You know how on a drawbridge both sides go up? And then as it comes down, the sides connect. When my brain is fried, whether it's because I've worked too much or I've been pushing myself too hard, or I've been going through something, it's almost like the drawbridge can't close. I can't connect the dots. I start a sentence, I can't finish the sentence. I have a thought, then I forget the thought. Make the appointment, I forget the appointment. I forget that it's my husband's birthday. I drop the ball on a deadline. You start to go like, what is wrong with me? Is this hormones? Is this life? Is this just my brain? Is this like something going on with my memory? Well, it turns out that feeling mentally fried is what happens when your brain has been taking in too much for too long. Does that sound like you? You're juggling too many things. You got too many open tabs. You've got too many people needing something from you. Too much scrolling, which is input. Too much reacting, which is input. Too much worrying, which is input. Too much trying to keep up, which is input. And at some point, your brain's just like, okay, we're done here, we're done here. And what happens is your attention starts to get weaker, and suddenly the simplest things feel hard, or you're rereading the same thing 5 times. Or here's my favorite one. How many times have you walked into a room and you're like, I— wait, what? What was I— why am I coming in here? And then you walk out, and then you go, oh, oh, oh, that's right, I needed to get the scissors. And then you go back in, and you get halfway across the room, and you go, what was I doing? Wait a minute, what am I looking for again? Or this is another thing that happens for me. This is signal number one that Mel Robbins has reached peak brain capacity. I get irritated over the tiniest things, or I get upset with the nicest people, and then I feel terrible, and it's the worst. It's the worst when your poor brain is fried. It's just been trying so hard to do everything and to file it all away and to keep you organized. Oh my gosh, that brain of yours. Wow, it's been working on overtime. And look, you can tell yourself all you want, focus, try harder, get it together. But maybe you don't need to focus harder. Maybe you need to change what your brain is looking at. Isn't that kind of an interesting thought? I mean, let me say that again. You may not need to try harder. In fact, you shouldn't. Maybe you just need to change your focus for a second.

Rule number 6, quiet the inner critic.

You are holding yourself back from truly enjoying all that your life has to offer you now Because you believe at some future date there's an idealized version of you that will be ready or more deserving of the things that are available to you now. Stop it. Stop it. You prove it's true. You prove the self-criticism wrong when you're like, all right, I got weight to lose. That's the point of the gym. So I'm going to go in. And I'm gonna do it now because I deserve to take care of myself regardless of how I may be feeling about where I'm at in my life.

Rule number 7, build your confidence.

In terms of my own experience with getting serious about creating the skill of confidence is it's a game changer. The more that you build confidence in your life, the greater the risks you're gonna take. And that's critical in business, in life, for fulfillment. I also have the ability to say no and not even be bothered by what other people are gonna feel. Why? Because I have the skill of confidence. It also makes you an incredible negotiator because you realize you would rather be respected than be liked. And see, this kind of need to be liked or to look good is part of the reason why you doubt yourself all the time. I want you to bring that power back internally. That's what the skill of confidence does. And you'll also be able to recognize when you're afraid of something, And that, that fear is just kind of bullshit in your head. And you have a choice. You don't have to let fear stop you anymore. And that's where the skill of confidence comes in. And the same is going to be true for you. So I think it kind of begs the question, if confidence is something that we all want, why is it so hard to master? I'll tell you why. Because when it comes to the research around confidence, it is some of the most dry, Boring. No offense to the confidence researchers and writers out there, but I'm talking if you have trouble sleeping, just print out a study about confidence. That'll put you into deep REM sleep. It's also confusing, and even Google isn't much of a help on this topic. If you search how to be confident, you know what the top results, one of them says? Be true to you. What the hell does that even mean? Be true to you. And honestly, be true to you, That is not what the research says. The problem and why it's hard for people to develop the skill of confidence is the research has not been boiled down into tactical information that you can apply to your day-to-day life. And that's where your friend Mel Robbins comes in. So here's your first assignment on today's podcast, because, you know, we're not just listening here. This is a doing podcast, and we're going to make this tactical, And relevant immediately. Assignment number 1, be selfish as you listen. I want you to listen a particular way. I want you to listen and think, what's in it for me? And so let me ask you a question to help you get really selfish. If you had more confidence, like I could go and boom, you have more confidence than you've ever had in your entire life, how would your life be different? How would your future be different? Now, Heather has already shared that she has this awesome promotion, which she clearly earned. I mean, businesses don't just give those out as charity. If a business has promoted or hired you, they believe in your ability to execute. But now she's freaking out. She doesn't have the confidence. Now, when you think about confidence, How would more confidence help Heather's life be different? Well, confidence would allow Heather to step into that role, right? And she would be able to lose the self-doubt and the imposter syndrome and the panicking. And she'd be able to act like the leader that the organization promoted her to be, right? Without all the, like, nervousness and crap going on in her head. What about you? Let's get selfish. What would more confidence allow you to do that you're not currently doing? Would you be able to say no? Would you be better with boundaries? Are there more risks you would take? Is there a conversation you've been avoiding with yourself or someone else? Would you be able to stand up for yourself, advocate more for yourself, ask for what you need? What about work? Would you be more visible? Would you speak up more? All of that, that you just envisioned, it's all within your reach.

Rule number 8, develop good habits.

Sarah's question was this, are there ways to unlock sudden, rapid steps to big change in a short period of time? Or is this a dangerous misconception? Now, I said, yes, there is a way for you to experience big change in a short period of time if you change how you view yourself. I mean, that's the biggest kind of change that you can experience. When you change your identity, when you change what you believe is possible, that's transformational. Now, one of the things that Sarah said, though, is she asked, is it a dangerous misconception to think that big change happens immediately? And that brings me to the topic of habits. See, change doesn't happen overnight. But when you understand the science of habits, what you realize is that change, little change, it compounds daily. And the massive change that you experience in a short period of time when you focus on habit formation is how you relate to yourself. So I'm going to give you an example. Let's say that you set a goal that this is the year that you are going to run your first marathon, you're going to train for it, you're going to finish the race. Now, it will take time. It's going to take you time to achieve that goal. But if you make it a habit to wake up every day and get out the door and go for that training run, within a matter of days, something kind of crazy happens. You experience this massive change because you start to see yourself differently. You start to see yourself as a runner. Now, have you achieved that goal yet? No, that's going to take time. But the power of habits is that as you practice them, they start to change your identity. They become evidence that you're the kind of person that goes for a run. So in the beginning, habits are just something that you and I do. But over it— but over time, habits change who you are.

Rule number 9, do what energizes you.

Passion is something you feel. I think about passion as another word for energy. Passion is something you feel, and passion is so simple to bring into your life because passion is literally just about getting intentional about filling your time with things that bring you energy. It kind of makes sense, right? That's all the passion is. And now that you understand this simple idea of what passion is, that it's something you feel, it's for you, it brings energy into your life, you now understand why people say, oh, I'm, I, I'm, I, I'm, I'm living my passion. I would never use that sentence because I think the accurate thing is, I feel passionate about my work as a doctor. What they're saying when somebody says that is, is they're saying, I feel energized by my work. And if you are one of the 89% of people that feel stuck right now, here's what I know. If you look at your day-to-day and your week-to-week life, you are not doing anything that naturally brings energy into your life, positive energy. And a simple way to flip the switch and bring more passion into your life is to become intentional about making time to do the things.

And rule number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip, is show up for yourself.

Most of us have an experience, especially as women, where we feel and know that we are last on our own lists, that if we tell somebody else we're going to do something, we will be there. But when we promise ourselves we're not going to have a drink tonight, or we're going to get up tomorrow morning early and journal or go for a walk, or we're going to lose weight and stick to some healthy goals because we know we deserve to feel better, we abandon those promises over and over and over again. And one of the things that I've come to learn about myself and that I've come to learn about human behavior in general is the reason why we women do that is because we've been trained to. And we don't even need to go into it, but anybody that was raised, uh, in a household in a traditional gender sense who saw behavior modeled for them around being a good daughter, or watching your mom tirelessly take care of your grandparents, or her partner, or her friends, watch her be exhausted, you start to learn that pattern yourself. You start to learn that people like you And they love you more when you behave and when you take care of them. And so we do more and more and more of it. And there's substantial research in every aspect of a woman's life that this is true. It's also true in your job. You probably are the caretaker at work. You bring in the cupcakes for birthdays. You're picking up after the meetings. And we're not being asked to. It's how we've been trained to develop worth. If somebody else is happy with me, then I can be happy with myself. As long as I'm not disappointing somebody, then I'm okay. And what I really had a breakthrough around for myself, and especially as a businesswoman, and learning how to create better deals, ask for my value, learning how to not feel guilty about going after my dreams and how that might impact my kids in some way, I had a huge breakthrough when I realized that the foundation to success and happiness and fulfillment begins with your relationship with yourself. And for women in particular, we have to re— it's not even retrain ourselves because we were never taught how to put ourselves first. We have to teach ourselves. That it's not only important, it is crucial that you learn how to show up for yourself. And so what does that actually mean? What that means is that when you make a promise as simple as a promise that says, I'm not going to have a glass of wine tonight, that you develop the skill and you put systems in place that support you in keeping that promise. That when you say you're gonna get out of bed in the morning because you know you feel much better if you take a half an hour for yourself, that you get your ass out of bed in the morning. Why? Because you said you would. And so, when you develop skills of keeping simple promises to yourself, what you're doing is you're building a habit of putting your word first. You're putting You're putting into practice via your behavior that what you say to yourself in terms of what you're promising that you would do, that it matters to you. And you have to do that because otherwise, if we don't learn how to do that for ourselves, what happens for most women is we get into these issues with relationships where we— I don't know if you ever had this issue, but geez Louise. It seems like every relationship I had, Until I met Chris, and then this was even an issue in the beginning of our marriage, I literally lost my identity. I would take on every musical taste, food taste. I would get absorbed into my, my, uh, you know, boyfriend's friend group. I became defined by whether or not I was in a relationship to someone else. They came first. Their interests came first. And The biggest breakthrough in your life and in your business will happen when you learn how to have that relationship with yourself. Right. Where you learn how to put your needs first. And until you learn how to do that, and it's, it's, it's practiced by keeping the little promises to yourself, not drinking the glass of wine if that's what you said, exercising or walking the dog if that's what you said, getting out of bed when the alarm rings if that's what you said you would do. And most of us can't even do that, which is why we know we can't count on ourselves to do the big things. And so 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. 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.

And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. To learn how to beat anxiety when you don't feel motivated with Mel Robbins, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Mel Robbins is a motivational speaker, podcast host, and author best known for The 5 Second Rule, a book that has sold over 3 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 40+ languages. She went from being