Negative Habits RUIN Success | Mel Robbins Explains

Literally, it also, when it comes to productivity and focus and fulfillment, it's not when you get up, it's how you get up. And there's all this crazy research. Like, I'm not some sort of like psycho about the alarm clock or the snooze button. I personally love sleeping in. But I also know that as somebody that's struggled with anxiety for 3 decades, lying in bed in the morning or at night is the worst place I can be. Absolutely. That is where the anxiety can pin you down like a gravity blanket. And so understanding that the habit of hitting the snooze button has a detrimental impact on your productivity all day, because what happens is when you wake up, your brain is typically ready to wake up. When you drift back to sleep after hitting the snooze button, your brain drifts back into a sleep cycle, which based on research takes about 75 minutes to complete. When the alarm goes off 9 minutes later, your brain is now trapped in a sleep cycle, and researchers say it takes you about 4 hours to snap out of what they call sleep inertia. That impacts your productivity all day long. And so you're complaining that I didn't get enough sleep and you feel groggy. No, you actually got plenty of sleep. You screwed yourself over by hitting the snooze button, and now your prefrontal cortex can't snap back into operation until you're ready to go.

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 for success. Enjoy. Rule number 2, change your view.

The reticular activity system, the RAS for short, for if you don't know what it is, Picture a hairnet over your brain that is a live network, and the RAS is a filter, and it has a huge job. And it is a filter that blocks out 99% of the world and lets in about, you know, 0.00000001%. And it is always changing. There are only 4 things, Tom, that get through the hairnet on your head. The sound of your name, and you've experienced this because you've been walking through a crowd and you're like, "Did somebody say my name?" Right, the cocktail party effect. Cocktail party effect. The second thing that gets through is any sort of threat. So if you hear a loud noise and you go like this, there are lots of noises you didn't hear, but the loud one, you kind of duck because it's a threat. The third thing is when your partner is interested in sex with either you or someone else. That's why you're like, why are you checking that person out? Right? You know, because the brain is letting that information in. The fourth thing, and this is where the transformation begins. Your brain will let in anything that it believes is important to you. The Zeigarnik effect is the documented fact that when something is important to you— and I'll explain what that means— your brain opens up a checklist in your mind. And now your brain, once it puts this item on your checklist, it will store the checklist in your subconscious It's encoded in your RAS, and your mind is now on the alert to spot things related to it. The way that you make yourself feel like something is important is your nervous system goes on alert while you're thinking about it. You're either super excited about something— oh, this is super important— or this is the trauma effect. You go on alert and you have something really bad happen, which is why things continue to bring it up throughout the rest of your life. So when you understand that if something's important to you, your filter will change in real time how you see the fucking world. You now know how to change your brain to work for you. And looking for hearts is the way I'm gonna prove to you that this happens. I wanna give you one other example 'cause everybody's experienced this. If you've ever gone shopping for a new car, or you've dreamt about having a new car. What happens immediately when you get excited about that new car is your mind goes Zeigarnik effect. Oops. Okay, Tom wants the new Bronco. That's cool. So what do you see now? You see Broncos everywhere. Now, they were always there, but your mind is letting them in because the Zeigarnik effect is now made it on a checklist. It's changed the RAS. And so I am going to prove to you that it is unbelievably cool that you can change the way that you view the world by looking for heart-shaped objects. So tomorrow when you wake up, you're gonna start your day by high-fiving yourself in the mirror. I want you to examine what the resistance about because you're gonna start to then be able to unpack what's holding you back. Then you're gonna go out in the world and just like tell your mind, I wanna see a heart today. Look for a rock, look for a leaf, look in your like latte. Is there a little shape there? Is there an oil stain on the floor? And when you see one, stop and go, "I just, like, there's a scavenger hunt. I never would've seen that before. Thank you, brain." Now your brain's like, "More hearts." You will start to see hearts everywhere. And when you can start to train your brain and realize, "Whoa, this is actually a cool thing," this is high-fiving your mind. When you can see hearts, you can now go, wait a minute, if I can change what I see based on what I tell it, maybe if I got serious about not constantly saying I'm a failure, I wouldn't attach that or see it everywhere. Maybe if I got serious about saying I can figure anything out, this is happening for a reason, instead of I'm fucked, you say, okay, I'm gonna learn something with this. It changes the way your brain filters everything. And this is such an important piece to the book because we've all had the experience where you love somebody deeply and you see all their incredible attributes and all they see is failure, or all they see is the weight that they can't lose. And it doesn't matter what you say, it doesn't matter what kind of pep talk or support you give them, your loved one still only sees what they hate about themselves. Blame the filter in your brain. You have been bitching about your appearance or the weight on your scale, the fact that you're a failure for so long, your brain believes it's important to you to see reasons why this is true. And one of the things I gotta say about this and everything in the book is the tools are simple, Tom, but it's super important to say, just because you change and start celebrating yourself, it's not gonna make the weight disappear suddenly. It doesn't change the number on the scale overnight. What it changes is you. And that changes your ability to deal with the problems and the issues you wanna change in your life.

Rule number 3, show up for yourself.

How does your favorite sports team begin the game? By high-fiving each other to send yourself out into the game. But when researchers actually studied NBA teams. They could predict who's gonna be the most successful teams at the end of the season and who's gonna be at the bottom of the league based on one characteristic at the beginning of the season in the preseason. And that is, how many times does the team in the preseason do fist bumps, high fives, or pats on the back? And what they found is it's the teams that do that the most in the beginning have the winningest record. And the reason— the question is why. Well, the reason why is these gestures are more than gestures. They are symbols of trust and partnership. They build momentum. And so many of us are struggling in life with people pleasing and guilt and all of these emotions because we have broken that partnership with ourselves. And this is a way every morning after brushing your teeth, we're gonna stack this habit, put the toothbrush down, pick up your hand, look yourself in the mirror and say, How am I gonna show up for that human being today? And seal it with a high five. That's it.

Rule number 4, interrupt negative patterns.

Let me explain what happens. So there's a really interesting concept called ghosts in the nursery. And so trauma patterns get automated because they're not experienced in your brain, they're felt in your nervous system. And so it's why you can have a pattern from your past but be completely unaware that it's running your life right now because it's stored not in your conscious thought, but in your nervous system. And you feel it in your body before it even gets into your head. And so there's this concept called ghosts in the nursery, which basically means there's all kinds of shit that goes on when you're little that you may or may not remember in your mind, but your body remembers it. So for example, if you had parents that were just stressed out, and they come home and they've been busy and you're sitting there playing on the floor and there's toys everywhere and mom or dad's reaction to a mess is to scream. That creates this kind of thing in your nervous system. Now you may not remember that episode that happened on May 17th, 1972, but your nervous system remembers what it's like. So fast forward, you're now 51 years old, And you walk in the house and there's a mess everywhere. And even though you have said, I'm not going to bulldoze and yell at anybody, my body recognizes the situation. So what do you do? You repeat the pattern you saw. And so what I'm working on right now is a pattern that is encoded in my nervous system. I was trying to create a video yes, or 2 days ago, for Share the Mic, for Share the Mic Now. Trying to create a video and I'm like doing take after take 'cause I wanna get it right. And my daughter comes waltzing into the room and was like, how long are you gonna be doing this? And I was like, you can't just say that I'm working. I literally like screamed at her. And she looked at me, Lewis, and she goes, you have a real problem.

Wow, how old is your daughter?

20. And I said, I calmly said, you're right, I do. When I get interrupted, I lose control of the response. And I'm working so hard. And the way that you, and I'm clearly not mastering this yet. But the way that you do it is as you feel it rise up, you have to, you know, you can use the 5-second rule, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You can use, just take a quick breath. You can notice the pattern and you've got to create a pause between the emotion rising up and the reaction that gets automated. And for many people, the reaction, Lewis, is to run away. It's to leave the room. It's to avoid the confrontation. The— it was just easy, you know, hold on, let me let the clock go.

Even though you hate being interrupted by anything, this is a great interruption.

See, I did, like I didn't do the bulldoze. I was calm. 'Cause it wasn't a human being. I'm only mean to human beings. Like, a lot of people run away. They avoid conflict. They say it's just easier. But if running away and avoiding conflict continues to create a pattern where you feel invisible and your boundaries are tromped on, that's a pattern. And, you know, here's the other thing about patterns. Running away and being quiet might have saved your ass when you were little. Because if you were quiet and out of the room, you didn't get hit, you didn't get yelled at, you were out of harm's way. So when you were little, it was a genius pattern because it protected you. But the issue for adults is that again, we walk around with the patterns that we created when we were 8 years old in different situations than we are in now. And now we are completely a robot to these patterns.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free workbook 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: Flip jealousy.

Jealousy is one of the most powerful directional signals on the planet because you're only jealous of people that are doing things or have things that you actually want. It's impossible to be fake jealous. Whatever you're jealous of, is hitting something deeply personal, pay attention to it. Instead of stewing in it, go, oh, flip it. That's interesting. I wonder why I'm jealous. What is it about it? Oh, it's that they're doing it consistently. It's that they've built a team. It's that they've aligned their work together so that they're spending more time together. Huh, how could I take those things that I'm really now really inspired by and take action and go get them in my life. Because the thing about jealousy is it's just your inspiration that's blocked. Jealousy is sort of the insecurity that you have that blocks this inspiration. I guarantee you, back to the Uber driver, he's jealous of all the other actors earning Oscars. Because he's so inspired by the thought of doing that in his own life, but his insecurity is blocking action. His fear is blocking action. So instead of it being inspiration, it shows up as jealousy. And I'm here to tell you, the second you feel jealousy, freaking whoop, stop. Okay, let's unpack that. What exactly is it about it? And now, if I were inspired by it— because there's enough success to go around for everybody. If I can use that as a roadmap to then go figure out how I might be able to do that for myself, wow, talk about a game changer. And now let's add in the high five. What if every time I took a little step, I celebrated myself for just doing it? Now you're building small wins and momentum in a direction that's meant for you. That's how you change your life.

Rule number 6, express your needs.

We encourage people to break boundaries. You know, they feel like they're limited. But you talk about your boundaries are there to serve you. So obviously it's a different type of boundary, but you know, you said—

Yeah, so here's the thing.

What boundaries do you need to help yourself, to protect yourself, and which ones do you need to grow past that are holding you back?

I think that the definition with boundaries that has helped me the most is understanding that boundaries are for me, they're not for you. And the single biggest mistake that we make in any relationship particularly romantic ones, but also work-related ones, is we do not express what we need. Any pattern can be replaced. Change isn't personal, it just feels personal. Change is just about identifying patterns and replacing them with new ones. That's it. And it'll take a little while 'cause they're encoded in your nervous system and your default is to just do it yourself. But you have to, you cannot, as a rule, punish other people for shit you didn't communicate. Right. So I'll give you the perfect example. So Chris and I have been married for 24 years. And when I was before the talk show and I made my living mostly by, you know, doing 100 speeches a year, I would be on the road 150 days a year. And when I would come home, there was always something that pissed me off.

Like what? Like, oh, the trash isn't taken out, the clothes are here, or is it something else?

Oh no, I'm way worse than that. Are you kidding? I would walk in after being gone for 5 or 6 days, and there on the island in the kitchen was a vase that had dead flowers, the ones that I had bought for myself a week before. And it was as if everybody in my family had been walking around the island for 6 days as if there was some dead flower sculpture in the middle of the island. And so I would come home and first of all, the only person that's really excited to see me is the dog. And my family did sit me down at one point and they said, you know, you realize when you're not here, we have our own lives. So you don't put your lives on hold while, you know, for us, and we're not putting our lives on hold. So it's not that we're not excited to see you, but we're not organizing our whole lives around when mom comes home.

Right. Which is actually really good. To be like the dog, excited and running up and jumping in your arms and kissing you. Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, they don't. But that— but I think that's cool because that means that they're independent and doing their own thing.

They've set boundaries.

They've set boundaries with me. Perfect. So for probably 6 months, I would get pissy and I would walk in and put my bags down and I grab the flowers and I demonstratively— how many times has everyone done this? Throw them out loudly like, well, everyone hears you. Communication. Yeah, I'm getting my communication. Does throwing these dead flowers out communicate to you that you should buy me flowers? Like, I'm not saying that, but that's what the body language is, right? How dare you? I have been off, I've been in 4 cities, and then you become a mart— like, ugh, I'm disgusting when I tell this story. But this is it. This is like—

so, well, I see you've got some lovely flowers behind you that look alive, so that's good to see.

Oh, there's nice— so I do love flowers. So finally I just said to Chris, you know what would make me feel amazing is if when I came home, you had just bought some flowers. Just go to the— just when you're at the grocery store. It doesn't— you don't have to order— I'm saying buy the $5 pack of half-dead tulips, just something, okay? And then he said, why? And this is the most important part of expressing. And look, you don't have to give an explanation if you're trying to like cut off a toxic person, but if you want to express boundaries with somebody because you want them to understand you more deeply, give them the why. I said, because it makes me think that you are excited for me to come home and that you knew I was coming because I'm starting to feel forgotten. So underneath the anger, Lewis—

Wow.

—was hurt. And feeling like I didn't matter. And so, I'll be darned, I walk in and there they are, and I literally feel so seen.

Rule number 7, be kind to yourself.

What are the key principles of how someone deals with themselves when they love themselves, when they care for themselves? What are those key tenets, those key values that we can draw ourselves to and measure against and say, am I doing that for myself? I think at the heart of it are two foundational habits that you need, and one you already mentioned. It's being kind to yourself. It's really that simple. And I know, you know, the study that they did in the UK where they looked at every possible behavior change that you could do in life and whether it was changing in diet, meditation, exercise, relationship changes, all of it. The one change that has the biggest impact on fulfillment and happiness is being kind to yourself. And it's the one change we practice the least because I don't think we know how. Yeah, I don't. How do we be kind to ourselves? Well, number one, stop the beatdown in the mirror. And despite the fact that it might feel weird or you're going to resist it or you got a lot of dust. Oh, boy, we got to wipe it away. Ooh, it's more like mud. It's not like dust. Jay has dust. The rest of us are caked with mud. Gotta get some elbow grease in there. The high-five habit every day is wiping that away. Okay, that's number 1. Number 2, when you catch yourself in the what-if loop or the beatdown, use the 5-second rule. Count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, interrupt it and start just interrupting it because you don't have to listen to it. You can't always control when it pops up, But you can start to create distance from it. Meditation obviously helps with that, but in terms of the hand-to-fist combat with your own brain, I prefer punch back, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then I literally go, I'm not thinking about that. Another strategy that you can use as you're doing the hand-to-hand combat with your own brain is come up with like an avatar for this negative voice, okay? And make it really good. Like when our son was really profoundly struggling with anxiety, he's 16 now, he started to call it all that worry wart in his head that was beating him up, Oliver. And he looked like this big pimply bully of a kid that was out of the Diary of the Wimpy Kid. And he would literally say, when he was 9 years old, shut up, Oliver, like you're not invited to sleep. Like he would literally talk to it. And it sounds like you're giving your kid multiple personalities. That's not actually what's happening. You're leveraging objectivity so you separate yourself from the voice that's talking to you. Yes. Another thing that you can do, I love this for worrying. Oh, this is a genius, to steal your word, move. When you catch yourself doing the what-ifs, because we know there's two forms of worrying, right? There's the type of worrying that just destroys you, that's destructive worrying, where you just ruminate, what if, what if, what if? Then there's the positive form of worrying, which is productive 'cause it motivates you to change. When you get stuck in the what if, what if, what if, interrupt it with this, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then go, what if it all works out? What if this turns out to be one of the hardest things I do, but the best decision I've ever made? What if placing a bet on myself was the moment my life changed? What if it all works out? Because you can't argue with that. And it literally stops that sort of cycling because worrying is just a habit that you have. It's like a pathway that you've plowed in your mind. And it's a protection mechanism. You're actually not a procrastinator, you're not a worrier, you're just afraid. And by staying in your mind, you think you're safe. And really what you're doing is you're holding yourself back from living the life that you're meant to live. I love that. That's such a great answer. So that's be kind to yourself. I've got a couple. Yeah. That was be kind to yourself. And then there's another one. And then the other one's keep the little promises that you make to yourself. And there's two simple ways you can practice this that everybody's gonna hate. When you set the alarm the night before, I don't believe in having the same wake-up time every morning, because I think if you have a normal life, things are constantly changing. And so I think if you were to have one simple habit, which is the night before you go to bed, think about when you need to wake up to truly support yourself, and then intentionally set your alarm. And if you wanna get really intentional with the science here, make it like a random odd number. Don't make it 6 o'clock, make it 6:17, because there's a purpose behind that. And then when that alarm rings, don't think about it like an obligation. I want you to think about it like it's a promise that you're gonna practice keeping. And this is where you can use the 5-second rule. You're just gonna count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, to interrupt all of the desire in your mind and body to stay in bed or to hit the snooze button or to argue against what you need to do. And you're going to push through that resistance and take action. And by getting out of bed simply when you said you would, you are again behavioral activation therapy. You're acting like a person who keeps their promises.

Rule number 8, take responsibility.

You talk a lot about taking responsibility for that, recognizing nobody's coming to save you. It's something you said in the book. It's something that you've said in interviews. It's something that I absolutely think is really powerful. How do we use that? Why is that important to recognize? Well, it's important to recognize because first of all, nobody is coming. I mean, if you've been sitting around waiting for somebody to discover you, to pick you, to save you, to rescue you, to give you your shot, it's not fucking happening. Like, at some point you gotta wake up and realize when you're 18 and you're out of that house, you have to parent yourself. Your life is your responsibility. Responsibility. And as a woman, one of the things that I found to be extraordinarily transformational is when I stopped, in a very traditional sense, looking to my partner to be responsible for providing for me, providing financially, providing the support, providing. When I realized, wait a minute, it starts with me. I have to be able to figure out how to make myself happy. That's, by the way, the secret to a happy relationship. Marry somebody who's happy and work on your own happiness. Preach. And so when you stop outsourcing your happiness, your validation, your support, all of it, and you bring it back in and you get responsible for it, it. It sounds scary. It's so liberating because you could do anything when you're responsible, when you're the driver of your life, when you're not looking out to anybody else to fix it for you. Can you ask for help? Of course. But the buck stops with you. You're the one that has to do the work. You're the one who has to push your own ass. You're the one who has to figure out what makes you happy. You're the one who has to figure out and become self-aware about what you need. And then you're the one that has to find whatever it is, the courage or being humble enough to ask for help, even if it's asking for help from the biggest ally that you have, which is the person staring back at you in the mirror every damn morning.

Rule number 9: Explore your feelings.

If you Google word wheel or wheel of emotions, you will find that, um, if you ask somebody, name as many emotions as you can. Most people can name 3: happy, sad, angry. There's literally like 113 of them, from disgusted to hopeless to— and if you start with a core, this thing allows you to start with a core emotion and go out. Because back to the flower example, I was expressing anger. That's not what I was feeling. I was feeling invisible and forgotten. And so the word wheel is something that we used several times a week to help people go from the thing that they are expressing to communicating what you're feeling, which is a lot like the work that you wrote about in your book around wearing masks. Getting to the root of the core emotion you're feeling but not expressing.

And rule number 10, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is have fun.

Ow! I can't open my eyes. No, stop touching your eyes! I can't open my eyes anymore. Okay. Don't open your eyes. Don't open your eyes. Please, I'm freaking out. I need the ice cream. Please. Is it still burning though? Still burning? Here, here. I actually have an incredible quote of yours about dreams. You say, when it comes to your dreams, you have two choices. Pursue them or be haunted by them? Mm-hmm. It's true. You can't forget a dream. You can't. Something that you want in your life, once you really want it and you give yourself permission to feel that desire, there's something called the Zeigarnik effect. And the Zeigarnik effect is this thing that happens in your brain. And I also think it's tied into your heart and your nervous system, but it happens in your brain where when something is important to you and you can feel that wave hit you, your mind takes note and goes, oh, I'm going to put this on the list in the file of my mind called 'this is important.' And whenever you are near anything that's related to what's important to you, your mind changes. The live network and filter of your brain will change in real time to try to alert you to the fact that you're near something that is important to you. And I'm not making this up. This has been proven in study after study. And I think that's why your dreams haunt you. You can ignore them, you can shove them down, you can tell yourself you don't want it anymore. But if you've ever wanted something deeply, it doesn't leave you. It gets stored in the subconscious part of your mind, waiting for you to remember that it's there and to get to work on it. If you've always dreamt of living in an amazing beach house somewhere, you will always think about it, and you'll either pursue it or you're going to be haunted by it. If you've ever thought about taking your grandmother's recipe and, like, doing something with that tomato sauce, You'll either pursue it or it's going to haunt you. And that's because of how you're designed as a human being. So you got two choices. You either do something about it or you're going to live for the rest of your life with this thing in the back of your mind that slowly eats at you. That the one person, the one person that is diminishing your ability to make these dreams a reality is you. Because when you state your dream, this is what happens. You state it and then all of a sudden you're present to how far away you are from it. And when you see the distance between where you are and where you want to go, the direction that your dream requires you to walk in, you're going to get present to the gap. And that scares us. That's where fear comes into play and you start to think of all the reasons why you don't deserve it. You start to think of all all the reasons why you can't do it. All that you have to do in order to start to pursue your dreams is take small actions every day that align your life in that direction. So what does that mean if you want to play guitar professionally? It means that you start playing guitar more. It means that you sign up for open mic nights. It means that you go back to class if, if that's something that interests you. You see, your dreams will happen either because of you or in spite of you. They don't happen because of other people. They happen because of you and what you do. The second you have the bravery to state that dream, now are you going to create it or are you going to diminish it in your mind? Those of us that are out there in the world doing big things, that one of the reasons why we're able to do big things is because we have trained ourselves to just push forward even when things are not the way that you want them to be going, to keep your cool, to roll with the punches even when you don't have the support that you need. And so, you know, I had something happen yesterday. I was in the middle of giving a speech. So imagine this: you're on stage, you are 20 minutes into your speech, and You have 40 more minutes to go. You have 30 more slides to go to, which is what was happening at that point. And all of a sudden, my laptop dies. I mean, just blank, you guys. So I've got an entire audience. I'm through the first third of my speech. I have two-thirds of the speech to go. And my speech is a story that has a ton of videos and photos in it. And my laptop died. And what had happened is the AV team had plugged the laptop into a podium that had no power in it. So my laptop was set up correctly, it was plugged in, but it was plugged into something that had absolutely no power source. So over the course of the hour before the tech check to when I was on the stage, the laptop had run out of juice. And so all of a sudden Here I am, completely cold laptop. I just, you know, had this moment where I thought— the first thing in my mind was, holy cow, what am I going to do for the next 40 minutes? And I could feel my stomach start to go crazy and the butterflies to kick in. And it just— wow, I was, I was extremely panicked for about a second, and then I was like, okay, use the tools, use the tools, don't, don't get nervous, get excited, because you can show everybody what looks like in front of a live audience to have a massive technical breakdown and not lose your cool. And so I made a joke about it. The AV team ran up. I said, look, you guys have no power here, so take it back there, get it plugged in, and I'll talk for 2 or 3 minutes while you get this thing set up. Now meanwhile, I'm thinking while I'm talking to a live audience. What if they don't get this set up? What am I going to do? How am I going to fill the 40 minutes when the whole speech is not only anchored in the story, but it's anchored in all of these photographs and proof of people's stories from around the world? And so I'm like, don't panic, don't panic, use the tools, Mel. And then all of a sudden the guy shouts out, what's your password? You know, because my screen was locked. So then I thought, okay, we're going to get this done, not a problem. It took about 5 minutes for things to get back up and running, and it was one of the longer 5-minute periods of my life, but I got through it. And one of the reasons why I got through it is because I've trained myself to roll with the punches. That's what I've trained myself to do. Heather, um, 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 put 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. Everything we talk about has to be proven, right? Everything. I love that. I don't give you some— I've read in a book or something that I've read on Instagram. The only things that we share are things that are backed by science, that have been researched, that we have seen working in our own lives, that we see working for our audience. And I think that is critical because let's face it, anybody can put up an inspirational quote that they've read from somebody else. Anybody can tell you to be positive or do this or put in the work or hustle or whatever the hell it may be. At the end of the day, it's just talk. You have to know how. And I also am somebody who is a little bit cynical. I'm sort of embarrassed that I'm in self-help on some level, 'cause it sounds stupid, right? I mean, I come from, I mean, I'm older than you. I'm almost 50. Self-help had a really bad name 20 years ago. And I also am Ivy League lawyer. And I am an entrepreneur. There's a lot of, there's a lot of fake people out there that are renting houses and Ferraris. Ferraris and telling you if you use their ClickFunnels strategy or whatever strategy that you'll be rich like they are. And yeah, you may, and chase the money if it energizes you, but there's a lot of smoke and mirrors. For many of us, slowing down is really scary, but that's exactly what you need to do. And so if you are always in a rush, if you feel like there's urgency in your life, if you move at a pace that makes you feel panicked or rushed, you got a million things to do. And you think that you're busy but you're not productive, the solution is not doing more, it's doing less. It's not speeding up, it's actually slowing down. Because being busy doesn't mean you're in control. It means you're being driven by this fear of slowing down. You're being driven by the fear that when you slow down, you're going to have to confront where you're at and you're going to have to start doing the work. And that be— that can be scary. But you take control of your life not by speeding up, everybody, by slowing down. You take control of your life by removing distraction and adding in focus. You take control of your life by being honest with yourself about the things that you're filling your life with that doesn't matter, that makes you so busy, and that also prevents you from finding the 15 minutes that you need every day to really find the courage to focus on making your life a little bit better or pushing something forward. If you're somebody who's guilty of being busy and never having the time to do the thing that really matters to you, that your heart's calling you to do, or you never have the time to do something to take care of yourself, I want you to find 15 minutes today and I want you to slow down. Whether you've always thought about meditating and you've never done it, download the Calm app, listen to it, do one guided meditation, go for a walk for 15 minutes, just a quiet walk without your phone or with your phone turned off. Have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and read something. Listen to a podcast for 15 minutes. So take a bath tonight. Something where you experience the sensation of slowing down. Because again, busyness becomes a habit, and when it becomes a habit, it becomes an epidemic. And when it becomes an epidemic, it will rob you of your ability to take control of your life. And at the root cause of all of this is fear. Just the fear of slowing down. Because when you slow down and you start to create priorities and you start to take control, now you're responsible for what's happening in your life. And you can no longer rely on just complaining that you're busy. I think the most important thing I want you to know is whatever it is that you're dealing with right now, no matter how scary it is, no matter how overwhelming it is, or even if you're just bored with where your life is, or if you're super happy, I want you to know that you always have the power to change your life because you have the power to make a decision to change how you think about something, to change how you treat the people around you, to draw boundaries, and to make the small changes that add up to absolutely everything. You gotta raise your own game. Gotta raise your own game. And so what is the game that you play at work? You got to get out of the head that it's all about you. The best team members are always thinking about how to make the team better. The best team members are loyal to the team. The best people to work with are the ones that are in it together. And so in order for you to get your toxic colleague to shift behavior, you got to model it. And here's the interesting thing about the research: when people are working with coworkers or on a team where people collaborate and where you have honest conversations, it creates what we call psychological safety, which basically just means I feel safe working with you. I know that if I come to you with feedback, you'll listen. I know that if I tell you how your behavior is impacting me, you'll actually care. I know that if you need help, you'll come to me, and I know if I need help, I can come to you. That's what psychological safety means. You're a safe person, and hopefully a fun person to work with. So you've got to model that. That means you got to ask for support. That means you got to have direct collabor— or direct conversations. And it means you got to support your team members too. And do you realize that when you work with other people that do this, team members are 35 times more likely to show visible commitment to your success, and they're 47% more likely when you model it to work hard to build and maintain your trust. So don't ever get resigned in thinking that the way that you behave won't impact how somebody else is behaving around you. One of the most important things when you're in a situation where the truth, the facts are that there is more on your plate than one human being can effectively handle on his or her own, there's a really important moment where you have to surrender to the chaos that your life is for the next couple weeks. Things are going to change when summer hits, but part of what I find personally is that when I resist, and I do resist, I resist what's actually happening when that's not the way that I want things to go. And so if you start complaining or you start bringing extra weight to all of the things that are going on, it's gonna make it feel even more overwhelming. And if you can bring a sense of realism to it— so I call this, and I think Shawn Anchor's the one that came up with this, this, this term— realistic optimism. Realistic optimism is a really powerful mindset because You're not just putting a sunny spin on a crappy situation. You're being realistic about where you are in your life right now, and you are still maintaining an optimistic point of view. And what that means is that you, when you're an optimist, you believe that your actions and your thoughts matter. You believe that you can handle what's on your plate. You believe that based on your thoughts and your actions, you can positively affect the outcome of whatever it is that you're dealing with. Whether it's being wildly overwhelmed because you're a single parent or terrified because you just got a scary health diagnosis or you're spinning because somebody just told you they don't want to be in a relationship with you anymore. Whatever it is that you're facing that's making you feel overwhelmed, first start with how important it is to be a realistic optimist. So there's a surrendering to what's so, but you're going to stay very optimistic and positive and know that everything that you think and do is in your control. And that when you know that your behavior matters, it gives you a sense of empowerment that's proven by research. Super duper important. It's also why you can have a very hard life right now and a very overwhelming life right now and still be happy. Because you know, based on being a realistic optimist, that this period will pass and you know that there are things that you can think about and do that are within your control. Oftentimes when you hit bottom, you bounce. And that's where I think the power is. That you— when the world feels upside down, you always have the power to make it right. When one chapter ends, you always have the power to write a new one. When, you know, you feel like nobody loves you, you have the power to learn how to love yourself. And if there's one thing that COVID-19 has done, regardless of whatever devastation it has caused in your life, is it has forced us all to experience the great pause. And I read that in a Medium article, and I loved that idea of a pause because I think in 2020, our lives have gotten so fast and so digital. And when you are forced to pause and get present and to slow down, you are reminded of what's actually important. And what's important is your health. What's important is your family and your friends. What's important is whether or not you are taking care of yourself and thinking positive thoughts versus negative thoughts. The world gave us a gigantic experiment where we got to practice and get to continue to practice the most important skill on the planet, which is emotional resilience, the ability to face hard shit and actually be okay. The ability to face the uncertain and redirect your attention on things that you know that are certain. But as is the case in life, you're always going to be growing. And when you hit new chapters in your life, it's really important to be deliberate and mindful about the people that you spend time with and who you surround yourself with. Does that mean you got to ditch your high school friends? Absolutely not. But it might mean that you shouldn't spend as much time with them. It might mean that you should show up to those friendships a little bit differently, and maybe they'll go a little bit deeper. And it definitely means that based on where you are in your life right now, that you should get more proactive about surrounding yourself with a group of new friends or current friends that are up to the same kind of growth that you are.

Why do you think that is in human beings, that, you know, things are going bad, we won't change? If they're going good, we won't change. But it's almost like we need a massive breakdown, near-death experience, divorce, COVID, for us to see clearly, to start changing.

Well, there's a really simple answer: patterns. So the thing about all human beings is that we are pattern learning machines. And if you feel stuck or broken, I guarantee you, while you feel that way, you're not. You have a pattern of behavior or a pattern of thinking that is broken. And we need to be disrupted because we love our patterns. And even people that I know, like, even when we're in pain, we love— pain's familiar for a lot of people. Yeah. So a lot of people, like you may be listening to Louis and I talking and you grew up in a super chaotic household. Maybe your parents argued all the time. Maybe your dad or mom were in and out. Maybe there was a lot of fighting. Maybe there was actual abuse. I don't know what was going on, but it was chaotic as hell. And so as an adult, you have vowed to yourself, you are not going to repeat that pattern. But what ends up happening is because as a little kid, you observed, witnessed, absorbed the pattern of chaos in your nervous system. Unless you go about the intentional work of breaking the pattern of chaos, you will create it in your own life because it's what's familiar. You won't understand, "Why do I keep dating these assholes? Why do I go to these bosses that treat me like crap?" Because you don't know what it feels like to be in a relationship with either a boss or a romantic partner, or a roommate that is consistent because for the first 18 years of your life, you lived in a state called, "When's the next shoe gonna drop?" Right. And so wherever it is in your life that something is broken, there is a pattern that you don't see yet that is making you continue to stay in a broken situation. It's all that thinking, that overthinking, that thinking too big. Thinking big is about dreams. Thinking big is about goals. Thinking big is about your heart. And your soul and figuring out what you want. Then once you do that and you think big and you see where you're headed, boom, you got to come back and you got to go brick by brick to make that vision stick. You got to go brick by brick to make the action stick. You got to go brick by brick to lay that pathway forward and to keep going. And let me tell you something, I don't care how busy you are, I don't care how tired you are, I don't care how much there is to do to make this big dream forward. You have time to lay one brick a day. You really do. You really do. And this is the secret, everybody. This is the secret to everything. It's to understanding that there is no timeline to getting your dreams done. All there is to do is to allow your heart and soul to dream big, to see the path forward, and then to pull yourself into the moment every day and have the discipline to be deliberate to lay one brick on that path. That's it. And to keep reminding yourself that everything that you're learning on the way as you lay bricks down and you move forward a little at a time is helping you build the path. And there will be times that you start to lay bricks in this direction and you realize, whoa, wait a minute, I'm going over here and my dream is over there. I guess I better lay bricks over here and head back in the direction. Then you're going to go this way. That's That's great because everything that you learned over here is going to be exactly what you needed in order to be doing what your big dream is. Having a breakdown is one of the biggest things on the planet because what you get is you get a break from your own and you can look objectively at where you are and for the first time look ahead and say, well, what do I want to go create? And 9 times out of 10, if you're discouraged right now, if you've got financial devastation, if you've If you're facing something that is making this moment in time as hard for you as life was for Lewis and I in 2008 during the last recession, I beg you, ask yourself honestly if what you had is actually what you wanted. The thing that you just lost, that job that you bitched about all the time.

That relationship that was bad to you.

Yes, or the friends you can't hang out with because it's convenient and you can't, you're in quarantine. Like actually ask yourself if this is what you wanted or were you just used to it? Being used to something, Lewis, I think is the biggest reason why people don't change. I asked my mother, I love my mother. I love my parents, have been married 51 years, which is a feat 'cause they were, my mom was a teen mom, but, I asked her once if she'd go to a personal development seminar with me.

What'd you say?

Are you kidding me? Why would I want to change at my age? Oh wow. I might discover I hate my life. Wow. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna leave that right there, right? And I always talk about how you have the power in your life, always. I know that you I know you may have your feelings hurt. I know you may be angry or upset or frustrated. I certainly feel those things all the time in my life. But I want you to understand that no matter what's going on, you always have the power because you can choose what you think and what you do next. You may not be able to control the way that somebody treated you. You may not be able to control the number of promotions that have passed you by. You may not be able to control whether or not your boss is a jerkface or not to you, but you can choose how you respond to these things, and that's where your power is. And this is a very important first piece of advice, by the way, is that a lot of times we start to feel the weight of the overwhelm, but we don't get out of our heads. And if you spend too much time thinking about all the stuff that's going on on and you don't go through the process of breaking it down and figuring out what actually is important to you and prioritizing what you're going to do about it, you're just going to continue to feel heavier and heavier and heavier and more and more sunk. I mean, it's, it's a very, very difficult thing to feel. Why don't you like the size you are? Because it's unhealthy. Is it? Yes. Okay. Because I don't believe in losing weight to be skinny. I believe in getting healthy because of how it makes you feel. Yeah. So if you love the size that you are and it's healthy, you should stay the size that you are. But if you look in the mirror and seeing your body the size that it is gives you evidence to say, I'm a piece of shit, or I'm unworthy, what do you say to yourself when you see yourself in the mirror? All of those things. Tell me, what is it? Let's get it out of your head and let's bring it to the light because, you know, you feel comfortable saying this to yourself when you're alone, don't you? I want you to say it out loud because it's, it's not okay to say this stuff to yourself. What do you say to yourself that we're not going to say anymore? I'm disgusting. What else? I hate the way that I look. I hate the way that I feel. Okay, what do you want? What do you deserve? To feel good when I walk down the street. Yes, yes you do. See, I think at the heart of this, I think at the heart of this is a belief that you don't deserve to feel that way. So who taught you to feel that, that you don't deserve it? When did you start saying that to yourself, that you don't deserve it? Holly, maybe when I was like 6 or 7. That's usually when it happens. So what I want you to do is I want you to leave here, and what you're going to go to war against is not your weight. You're going to go to war against the pattern in your head, okay? Because the longer you invalidate yourself, the less motivated you're going to be to change. Yeah, because you're beating yourself down. So we got to start with not fixing you. You're not broken. You're perfect how you are, Holly. You are. I know you don't feel that way, but I feel that way. Yeah. It's the pattern up here that's broken. Yeah. So we just want you to have a zero tolerance policy for this, like, I'm not worth it, I don't deserve it, I'm a piece of shit, this, I'm all that. No. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It's like an ax. You got that? And then you're going to come up. What can we say instead? I can do this. I do that. I can do this. But more important, I think it needs to be more heart-centered. I deserve to feel good. Yeah, I deserve to have what I want. Watch me go get it. First of all, you're not in a race, so there's no catching up. And I want you to stop saying you need to catch up with everybody right now, whether you're facing this issue at work because you haven't been promoted or Or you're facing this issue because you're the only one of your girlfriends who's not engaged or married or pregnant or a mom yet. Or if you're facing this issue because you feel like you look around and you're comparing your life to somebody else's. Stop that. Stop that. Stop that. Stop that. It is one of the most horrible things that you can do because it's very demotivating. Because what you're doing is you're making yourself wrong for where you are. And that's not going to make you motivated. What I want you to do is see the gap and recognize that if you're jealous, it's because you want that thing. That's why. My own mind, because it's not something I'm used to yet, is making up stories to cling to the old way of life. This is a moment in time, everyone, please. This is the greatest gift, the greatest gift. Is this moment of pause where you get in touch with what you actually want. And if you don't have the skills, for crying out loud, look around and take an online course. Because if you need skills to prepare yourself for the thing that you want, get them right now. When you hit a moment in your life or your work or your family where you feel very overwhelmed, one of the most important things to not do is to not speed up. I tend to be the kind of person that when I get overwhelmed or I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders or I feel stuck, I tend to start running into a brick wall headfirst at about 50 miles an hour. That is exactly what you should not do. You should slow down. You should slow down and you should assess where you are, and you should bring that realistic optimism to doing some problem solving and some planning and some decluttering in your very busy life in 4 main categories. Okay, it's so important that you slow down and realize that part of the overwhelm is coming from the fact that you are too busy. There is too much on your plate. There's probably a lot on your plate that's the wrong things. There are probably things that you're thinking about that are not important. And that's why once you slow down, you also start to think about being a realistic optimist. You also need to declutter, and that's where your friend Mel Robbins comes in. Setting a quitting time isn't something that I invented. It's something I stole from a professor at Caltech, and the The setting a quitting time habit is so important. It leverages something called Parkinson's Law. Parkinson's Law is a phenomenon around time that basically says this: anything that you have to get done, you will get done in the amount of time that you give to it. So let me just ask you this. If you think about your to-do list, if you have 10 hours today to work on it, how long is it gonna take you to get through it? 10 hours. If you have 10 minutes to get through the to-do list that you have, how long is it going to take you? 10 minutes. Because the things you need to do expand or contract according to how much time you have to give to it. And so what I want you to do right now, because part of your problem with your routine is you don't have one, you allow work to bleed into your evening, you allow work to just constantly show up whenever the email email arrives, and you're the one that has to hit reset on your routine so that you don't allow your work to do that. When a manager or a boss defines norms, the team is 73 times more likely to work hard to keep them. And here's the kicker: they're 125 times more likely to address the situation if there's somebody on the team who is not operating within the norms. You know, it's so obvious. I mean, think about it. If somebody were to walk into work and put their feet up on the desk and turn on porn and be sitting at their desk watching porn, would that be the norm for your workplace? I don't think so, unless you're working for Playboy or you're working in the porn industry. That would be so out of the norm that everybody would address it immediately. Period. Full stop. And what I want you to understand is that when you take responsibility for how you're acting on the team and you're collaborative and you're supportive and you're putting the team first and you're modeling that behavior, and when you also bring the courage and you dare, as Brené Brown says, to be brave enough to have honest conversations with your colleagues colleagues about what's acceptable and what's not based on how things are impacting you, you personally shift the culture in a positive direction. Now here's a trick about gratitude. Writing down what you're grateful for doesn't work unless you do it this way. Because if you— if I ask you what you're grateful for, everybody says the same thing: I'm grateful to be alive, I'm grateful for my health, and I'm grateful for my family. And that's so generic that you're not retraining your brain. Right. You've got to add in the 'because.' I'm grateful for X because— and the added detail will make you change up what you say, and it will also train your mind in a way that's more detailed, so it actually has a lasting impact on the way that you view the world. Just because you identify And for me, as a kid, for whatever reason, I have my own version of feeling invisible and feeling like I'm not good enough. And so my way of coping both with my anxiety and being a survivor of sexual abuse and, um, and wanting love, which we all need, is I was like an overachiever. And so I'm the kind of person that's super busy and a go-getter because it got me attention. And if I was the one that was super busy and achieving, I not only got praise, but it also insulates you from other people not picking you because you're the one in a leadership role doing the picking. Right. And so there's a part of me at the age of 51 that is realizing that, you know, this— these feelings of feeling unworthy and this hyper drive to try to achieve shit, it's all coming from a place of feeling inadequate or like what I'm doing is not enough.

And so that's— Still, at 50, having a talk show, having a bestselling book, having the Audible Originals, having the platform everywhere, having the impact, I still don't feel, being the most booked female speaker in the world, like you still don't feel—

stupid. It's annoying. And human beings are annoying. We are stuck with this wiring. Like, if you think about it, like, all of the crap you believe is probably a hangover from age 0 to 10. That as adults, we walk around thinking the same stuff we thought as kids. And I can't stand that I feel that way. But knowing it, it allows me to catch it before it has me— before it stops me from having an event or writing that next book or taking a risk. Here's the thing about morning routines. I think morning routine envy is a real thing. And I do believe that a lot of people lie about their morning routines. I think lying about your morning routine is a real thing. I think pretending you have the perfect morning routine is a real thing. I'm, I'm about— when I'm home, I'm almost 80% in my morning routine. I get it done because it's super simple, right? So I mean, I think I need a simple one. Yes. And when I'm traveling, I almost never get the whole thing done because there's too many excuses. And so I think the key to to having a morning routine, and morning routines are critical because how you start your day has a massive proven impact on how your day turns out. There's one piece of research that I think is really profound, and this comes from Shawn Achor. I talked about this yesterday, but I'm gonna tell you this too, Susie. If you consume 3 minutes, just 3 minutes of negative news, of negative television, of negative emails, maybe stressful emails from work or stressful texts from friends, you have more than a 50% chance 8 hours later to say you had a bad day. And the reason why is because of what consuming that kind of information does to your mind. It literally sets your mind up to be on the lookout for things going wrong. And so the reason why a morning routine is, is actually so important is because, number one, it determines what your priority for the day is. And we also know based on research that your mood in the morning, it impacts your productivity all day long. Everything that I have done since, since we launched the Five Second Rule book was in reaction to things that were coming to me. So I never sat out and said Hey, The 5 Second Rule audiobook has been a complete record breaker. We clearly have an audio audience. Let's go pitch Audible. Audible came to me, which is fantastic. I always dreamt about having a talk show, but I wasn't out pitching one. Sony came to me. In fact, the only reason why we got into courses, online courses, and we now have more than half a million people that have taken our courses online, um, was because Success Magazine came to me and said, let's do a course together. I remember I was there interviewing you for it. Oh, that was— I hated it because what I discovered is I hate being told what to do. And so, but that gave me the idea, oh, we should do courses ourselves. And so this pause has made me stop and go, what do I really want to do? And the truth is, I want to go and make the biggest possible impact that I can. And I want to collaborate with more people. And I want to do events. And I don't want to be the CEO. I'm a terrible leader, horrible leader, the worst actually. Because I'm amazing at coaching, I'm amazing at, creating. I'm amazing at reacting. I'm terrible at managing people. I am terrible at managing a project. I have ADD. I have dyslexia. Um, I'm a bulldozer when I get anxious. Um, I think— I know we are. We'd kill each other if we were roommates or business partners. But, but I think understanding yourself is really important. And so there's a couple things that I've decided. Number one, I'm going to consciously create the next Check.

And what is that?

Well, I'm still in the middle of doing it.

Yeah, but you want some events, you want to do these things you're talking about, yeah.

Yes, and I want to collaborate more with a wider audience of people. And I want to build a brand bigger than Mel Robbins. Yep. I don't want it to just be me. I want to build a platform-based business that reaches more people. Because here's the thing that has got— that got me through kind of the loss of the talk show and the way that I think about things that I hope helps, um, if you're listening, kind of struggling with something. Um, I believe— and I went into the talk show saying this to myself— because there's a 99% chance based on the history of people that have tried to have a daytime talk show that was going to fail. And I went in there saying this, I'm not doing this because I expect to have a successful talk show. I'm going to put 1,000% into it so that I have no regrets and I wouldn't change a thing. But I'm going into this because I know that there is a skill, a person, or an experience I am meant to have that will help me for the next chapter that I can't see coming. One thing that's true about life is that things are always changing around you, always. Whether you are moving into a new season or in, in school and all of a sudden your kids' school schedules change, or you're moving into a new season of work and all of a sudden your work life is changing, or you're moving into a new season of your marriage or of your health or of anything. Life changes all the time, which is why it's really important to be self-aware and to make the small changes that help you enjoy and seize all the opportunities from the season of life, work, family, relationships that you're in right now. The only thing that you can do is change yourself for the better and hope that that means that when you change for the for the better, that your friends and the people that you love and care about are inspired and encouraged to change for the better too. And if you have people in your life that are stuck, they probably are also resigned. They don't believe that their behavior can change this. They don't believe that their attitude can change this. Maybe they're feeling a little beaten down. It's really hard to acknowledge the fact that your lives are no longer synced up, but you got to train yourself to look for the positive, that she still loves you, that she is there for you. And you've got to find new ways to hang out. That's it. That's it. And here's the other thing: you got to go to work on you. You got to start reaching out and finding other friends to fill your life. You got to start investing in yourself in order to pursue the things that are interesting to you. I think that the work that we all have to do, every single one of us, whether you bulldoze, whether you people-please, whether you avoid conflict, whether you're impulsive, whether you yo-yo your decisions, whatever it is that is your pattern, you know, the constant trashing yourself, I think the journey of your whole life is figuring out how to truly like and love yourself. If you are afraid of disappointing people, if you're afraid that you're not good enough, you may catch that in one area of your life, but as your life gets bigger and as you change, it'll creep in in other areas. And one way that those patterns where you don't think you deserve it or you don't think you're good enough or you're terrified of disappointing people comes into play is when you start to expect the worst. And so catch it, that's the first step. You can't break the pattern unless you see it, and then you're going to replace it. And what I'm going to start doing is I've got this little app on my watch, you can set it on your phone, where every like 3 hours it reminds me to breathe. And I notice the second that the alarm goes off, I've been holding using my breath. And so you can set a little alarm in your phone— Megan's laughing— you can set a little alarm in your phone that just says Savor. It's a reminder to take a minute. You can make it say take a minute, take a minute, look around, compliment yourself on what's going right. Because expecting the worst is something you taught yourself to do. Guess what? You can teach Force yourself to take a minute and to savor what's going right. And the more you force yourself to do it, the more it'll become a habit. It comes back to the core message that I always have for you. No matter what's happening around or to you, you hold the power. Because you always have the power to have an honest conversation. You always have the power to discuss how things are impacting you. You always have the power to make requests. And you certainly have the power to draw boundaries. And you also have the power, by the way, if the culture gets worse and worse or you just are tired of it because it's not changing, to go find a different job. The power is always in you. And I think that's something that's so important to constantly remind yourself. I get that I don't like where I am, but what could I do to change it? How can I change how I think about this? And I'm telling you right now, you know this, the second you start changing how you think about a situation, The situation changes. The second you start changing how you think about what your options are, you start to see them. The second you stop thinking that you're stuck or that you're a victim and you start thinking about how you solve something, you start to see solutions. And so the answer is always in you. If you look at human development, we're the only species that literally can't survive without another human being taking care of you. And so we are biologically hardwired to bond with other people. And that is very— from the very beginning of when you come out, bonding with somebody else and making sure they pay attention to you is your survival imperative. So you are born needing somebody else. And I think what ends up happening is there's never that kind of clean break or pass-off between needing your parents to take care of you, needing your friend's approval to fit in, to truly having ownership over giving yourself what you didn't get, giving yourself what you needed. And that's the piece that I've been doing a lot of during the great pause, is slowing down because so much of my busyness was fueled by, you know, praise me, love me, am I doing enough? You know, please tell me I'm doing okay. Okay, I can breathe now. I'm okay now. And when I slow down, and maybe it's a function of the anxiety, that's when things get scary because that's when you've really got to be with yourself. The reason why it's so important to start with a friend cleanse— and I'm sure a lot of you— how many of you heard that and you thought, oh my God, getting rid of people, oh boy, oh boy, I'm gonna cleanse these friends? Yes and no. A friend cleanse is critical because the single most influential thing around you are the people that you hang out with. And if you have relationships that are toxic, If you have relationships that cause guilt, if you have relationships that are creating drama in your life, if you have relationships that are not equitable, guess what? That's creating the overwhelm. That's creating unhappiness. That's keeping you doubting yourself. If you have friends that, um, have bad habits, guess what? That's making it really, really hard for you to change your habits for the good. You have this behavior pattern where you get angry. You have this behavior pattern where you snap. You have this behavior pattern where you yell and you get upset and you make people wrong and you don't mean to. If you are somebody who's ever said to yourself, I wish I could stop yelling, or I wish I, I, I, I, I could just snap, I could stop snapping, this video is absolutely unbelievable. Okay, and the reason why is I explained this research that was so mind-blowing for me. It's called Ghosts in the Nursery. A lot of the patterns that you have that you don't have control over are patterns from your childhood, and they are there because when you were a kid, you experienced people in your life that were tense. Did you ever have a parent that was a yeller? Did you ever have a teacher that was a yeller or a coach that was a yeller? And secretly in your little kid body, whenever your mom or dad would yell or your coach would yell or your teacher would yell or your grandmother or grandfather would yell, you would feel tense, right? You would feel nervous. You would feel on edge. Of course, that's how we all feel, right? Well, here's the reason why you might have an issue like I used to have an issue where I would yell at my kids and then I'd feel terrible about it. I'd snap at my husband and then I'd feel terrible about it. Psychologists— and then I would say to myself, I'm not doing that again, I'm not doing that again, but I wouldn't have the ability to end it. Psychologists call this ghost in the nursery. It means that any situation where you start to feel tense or you start to feel stressed out, guess what happens? Your body remembers what it was like when you were little to feel tense and stressed out. And what were the adults doing around you when you felt that way? They were snapping. They were yelling. And now here you are repeating the pattern and you don't know why and you feel guilty. And I'm explaining this to you because it wasn't until I thought, holy cow, like, I know I don't want to snap at my husband. I know I don't want to take my anger from work out on my family. Why can't I stop this? That's the reason why. It's because it's a pattern that you remember from being a kid, that the adults around you were snapping or yelling or being mean anytime. And when they were, you felt tense and stressed out. So now that you're an adult, when you're tense and stressed out, you repeat the behavior that you witnessed. Crazy, right? So how do you stop it? Well, the first step to stopping anything is to actually understand what you're dealing with. Now that you know you're dealing with a pattern, now all you need to do is basically say, okay, I'm going to put a practice in place that's going to interrupt this pattern. What's the practice? Well, a really good one is Before you walk in the house at the end of the day, if you're stressed out, take 5. Take 5 deep breaths. Like, reset your mood, reset your energy before you walk in the house, and you'll be surprised by how much nicer you are to the people around you. Another thing that you can do, and this one's not so fun, is you can train your partner, your kids, your roommates, your family members, family that if you're trying to get a hold of how you bring stress home, you can train them to say to you, hey, don't take your work stress out on me. When somebody that you care about says that to you, it's a humbling experience. And the person that says it the most in my life is my son Oakley. Your, uh, the youngsters seem to love to cross-check the adults, so be careful with taking that advice. I know that in this next chapter that I consciously create, I want to have more fun. I want to— I really want to love the process. Yeah. I don't want to make it so hard on myself and be gripping everything so tight. And it's really easy for me to see it in other people because I know what it feels like in here. I'm working hard to break the patterns that still hold me back. And the big one that holds me back is bulldozing. That's the, it's literally when I start to feel any level of tension, this is particularly true in my marriage. I'm married to a saint, thank God. Chris Robbins meditates every morning. It's the only reason why we've lasted 26 years. It's how he puts up with me. When I feel my, like, whatever emotion rise, I immediately raise my voice. Wow. It's how I assert power in the relationship. And I am so committed, Lewis, to breaking that pattern. Wow. And being a more fun person to be around and a kinder person to be around. First of all, stop talking about passion. Stop talking about launching a business. Okay? When you think about it too big, it will paralyze you. If you're lucky and you're in a position where your bills are getting paid and you have the luxury of being able to try to think about what you want to do in this next chapter, here's where I want you to start. I want you to start with what energizes you. Now how ironic is that given that I'm speaking at the Energetic Women's Conference here in Indianapolis? Minneapolis today. Why am I saying energizes you? And what am I talking about when I say energize? When I say energizes you, I'm asking you, what is it that you're curious about? What is it that you feel so expanded, you feel energized, you feel kind of excited whenever you're doing it? You're going to think phase when you're just trying to figure out what's your next move, of just paying attention to your curiosity, paying attention to the things that interest you. The truth is, passion is just energy. If you're passionate about something, it means you're energized when you do it. So let's reverse engineer this and let's just ask yourself a simple question. What are you curious about? What energizes you? And if you allow yourself to explore things that energize you, you, my friend, will start to find the clues about what it is that you should and could be doing. Because all the research says that if you're doing something that you like, if you're doing something that you're curious about, you're not only going to enjoy it, you're going to be you'll spend more time doing it, which means you're going to get better at it. You know, sometimes when the dream is so big, the fact that it's so big becomes paralyzing because you think about where you are right now and you think, holy cow, that thing that I really want, I don't even— like, how do you even start when the dream is so big? So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to shrink it down. Because you know me, I am all about simplicity. I'm all about making sure that the advice works for you, because if it doesn't work for you, you're not gonna do it. And I'm all about switching how you think about things. Huh, making this smaller and making it something that I'm learning about rather than doing and launching, and that somehow thinking about it differently frees up the ability to get started. If I get you to start doing that and you do this every day for 10 or 15 minutes, which you absolutely can, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna feel momentum. You're gonna feel like you're working on it. You're gonna meet people that are interested in it. You're gonna learn things that are gonna lead to the next thing that you need to learn, and you will have mastered the art of getting started. And by doing something a little bit every day, you're also gonna master the art of continuing to keep going. And from there, it'll snowball. I promise you. I promise you. You see, you're only ever running against yourself. There's room for all of us. There's room for you to do the same thing. There's room for you to write that book. There's room for you to do those makeup tutorials. There's room for you to launch that restaurant. There's room for you to start your singing lessons. There's room for for you to write that song. It is normal, and it is going to happen to you all the time, that you are going to see people that seem to block out the sun whenever they make an announcement because they're that big and that amazing. I don't want you to allow yourself to shrink when somebody else is doing something that is similar to what you want to do. Refresh your routine. Refresh your routine. Why is this important? I'll tell you why that's this is important because there is so much science that talks about the power of your morning routine, and there's also so much noise out there about the morning routine. And I don't know about you, but when I read all these articles about the power of a morning routine, I'm typically reading them by some male influencer who clearly doesn't have children yet, or some male CEO. No offense to the dudes, but all of the articles out there tend to be written by by guys that have 2.5 hours before work starts to somehow drink mushroom tea and meditate and go to yoga and exercise and drink Bulletproof Coffee and sit in an infrared sauna. And I don't know what planet these people live on, but they clearly don't have children or a job they need to get to at 8 o'clock in the morning. And not to make anyone wrong, I'm being realistic. I'm being realistic. Realistic about the fact that you need a morning routine, but you need one that works for you and for where you are in your life in this season. You see, I had a morning routine that used to take me 30 to 40 minutes last year when I had more time. I've had a morning routine that took an hour when I had time and the ability to go for a jog in the morning. I'd incorporate that in the morning routine. Do you realize that my morning routine right now has been responsible for helping me curb my anxiety. It's responsible for why I'm so successful and I'm able to be productive. My morning routine, 10 minutes long. That's it. It's 10 minutes long because that's what works for me in this season of my life.

If you want more top 10 videos, they're not on this channel anymore. I have a dedicated channel just for it. Go check it out, the link is right there next to me. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.