This is the Mindset Shift You Need for a Happier Life

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 could stop snapping, this video is absolutely unbelievable. 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 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 ghosts 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, um, 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, um, that, uh, you can do, and this one's not so fun, is you can train your partner, your kids, your roommates, your 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 Absolutely. You're, uh, the youngsters seem to love to cross-check the adults, so be careful with taking that advice.

That negative voice inside your head that's telling you that you suck and you can't do it, that's not your voice. That's not actually your voice. That's not you telling yourself that you suck. That voice was planted there. That voice was put there by somebody else in your life, and probably early on growing up, telling you that you can't do something. You were not born You didn't come out of the womb and say, I suck, I can't do anything. No, you're playing, you're experimenting, you're finding joy, you're laughing, you're, you're doing it. And then along the way, people tell you that you can't do it, that you should stop, that you should quit, that it's not going to work out, that you can't do it. And we've been so conditioned around that, that we take it on and we think it's our voice. When you come up with an idea, right? Just workshop this. You come up with an idea. It's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna write a book, I'm gonna start a YouTube channel, I'm gonna launch this business, I'm going to whatever. You come with your, your bucket list, your, your dream life, your vision board. You come with a list of ideas, things that you think that you want to do, things that you feel confident that you'd love to create for yourself, right? Okay, what happens the next day? The next day, it's not even telling our friends. You know, I think we blame our friends and say, well, we tell our friends and they're going to be negative and they crap on our idea, and so we don't do it. Well, before that happens, we crap on our own ideas, right? You look at that list the next day and say, I can't do that. Who was I yesterday? This crazy person that I used to be yesterday who thought I could do that. It's ourselves telling ourselves that we suck. But the problem is we've taken on that voice and we think that it's us. That's not your voice. That is not your voice telling you that you suck. That is somebody else's voice that was planted in your head that has been conditioned to be there, that we're so used to being there that we have taken on as our voice. It has become your identity, but it was not your voice. It was put there. It was a seed that was planted that has been grown over time, and you need to rip that weed out. That is not your voice. You do not think that you suck. It's other people with low expectations who hate their own lives, who at some point went and tried something that did not work out for their life, and now nobody around them can have success because it makes them look and feel bad. And so they spend their time ripping other people down and apart. That's who planted that weed in your head. That might hit pretty hard. I hope it does, because when that happens, if you can actually digest that, what ends up happening is you think, oh, whose voice is that? Whose voice is in my head? And that's great awareness to know that it's not your voice, and then to identify whose voice it is. Who told you these things? Who made you feel this way growing up? And if you think about who that person is, if you can actually picture somebody, oh, that was Uncle Joe, or oh, that was my grade 3 teacher, oh, or that was my, you know, the bully at school, whoever that person was. Now think about, okay, it's that person's voice, not you. That's already incredibly liberating. But then too, do you want to live that person's life? Like, think about that person. Probably they're not living a great life. They're not hitting their potential. They're not even happy with what they're doing. If somebody's spending their day tearing other people down, what kind of painful life does that person have to have when they go home? You don't want their life. If you don't want their life, then you definitely don't want their voice in your head anymore. Hopefully that creates an aha moment for you that starts to actually shift things because we've been so conditioned to listen to that voice that we don't recognize that we actually have a choice to rip it out and start to listen to our own voice. So that's step 1. Step 2 then is whatever you want more of in your life, you need to be surrounded by it more. You need to change the environment. Your environment has been perfectly designed to keep you where you are. And if you're watching this video, I love you. Thank you for being here. You are probably the happiest, most optimistic, most positive, most caring, most pouring into other people that's in your environment. Like, if you think about you and your friends and your family, you're, you're the most optimistic person in your family. You're the most positive person in your family. You're the most ambitious person in your family. You're the one who wants to care and serve the most in your family, right? But You know you're capable of way more, right? You know you can do way more than what you're doing right now. And so you end up being this big fish in a really tiny pond where you're serving others and pouring into others and you wish they could do more. And that's amazing. Don't stop caring for others, but you need more of a push yourself. You need to be around the people who are doing things that you want to do on a higher level. So the environment really matters, and your environment right now is, is good. It's not terrible. Maybe it is terrible, but it's not great. Most likely it's just good and it keeps you stuck and it keeps you in slow growth mode and it prevents you from becoming the person that you actually want to be. So how do you start to shift that? Well, you shift your environment and you may say, well, Evan, I don't know people who are super accomplished and are living the life that I want to live. I don't have any of those friends. If I did, I wouldn't be still stuck here. And I hear you, I get it. So the fastest way to do it isn't through actually trying to make those friends. It's through what I call aspirational mentors. It's by watching videos like this. You may never meet me. You may never meet Mel Robbins. You may never meet whoever your heroes are, but you can learn from it through these videos. Whoever you want more of, whoever you, you respect and maybe are even jealous of that they can think that way and live that way, be around them more. Look at who you subscribe to on YouTube. Look at who you subscribe to and follow on Instagram. Look at the books you read and the podcasts you listen to and the shows that you watch. Are they from the people who make you feel better about yourself and give you hope, inspiration, and courage to go live your dream? And if not, then switch it out. Switch it out. If you are watching YouTube when you just found that you you wasted the last 3 hours of your life, it's not YouTube's fault. It's your fault. You're subscribed and watching the wrong videos because there's a lot of positivity out there. If you close a YouTube session, you feel worse about yourself, then you subscribe to the wrong channels. If you're watching this video and feel worse about yourself, one, I sincerely apologize, and two, you should unfollow me and go follow somebody that that makes you feel more hopeful and alive. Because if you started your day with the thing that made you feel hopeful, alive, bold, confident, powerful, things are possible, your life will change. But we need that external stimulus. You are a product of your environment. You have to have those people around you. You can have Elon Musk and Mel Robbins and Tony Robbins and whoever pushing you every day. You can have them pushing you every day by consuming their content. We just happen to be enslaved by the things that are around us that we haven't designed with intention. That's all. You know, YouTube, the algorithm is so addictive. So addictive. You, you get one video that then takes you down another path and another path, and now all of a sudden you've just watched 3 hours of videos on something that doesn't make your life better and you don't actually really care about. You just got sucked into the drama of a certain storyline. Has that ever happened to you? I watched the Michael Jordan tribute, The Last Dance, and I went to research one of the storylines of Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan to see kind of what the 2022 updated version was. And all of a sudden I got down this rabbit hole of Scottie Pippen versus Michael Jordan, and 3 hours later there's still other videos to watch. Like, what am I doing? This is a waste of time. I don't even care that much about these guys. I watched The Last Dance. It was a great documentary, and, and I learned from it, and I love the drive and tenacity and hustle, but I don't care about the drama between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. And so we will easily default back into that comfort mode and back into consuming drama. You have to, with intention, try to bring that back. So here's a great homework assignment. Go look at your YouTube homepage and see what's being recommended to you. And how many of those videos, whether it's my channel or other channels, how many of those, how many of the videos on your homepage right now will make you a better human, will make you feel more proud of yourself, will make you feeling hopeful, confident, courageous, ready to take some action on some of your goals? And how many of them are drama? How many of them are pure entertainment? How many of them you know will lead to some giant rabbit hole that you don't want to go down? If you actually set out your calendar and say, how do I want to spend my day with intention? How many of these videos would actually lead you towards that path? Right? And for too many people, it's not a pretty picture. We're listening to the wrong people. And so you can change that. You know, you could change that. If we circle back, you recognize that The negative voice in your head is not your voice. It was planted there by somebody else who hates their life, and you don't want their life. Then you switch it to say, okay, well, whose life do I want? And ultimately you want your best version of your life. But to get there, you're taking different pieces from different people's lives. Like, oh, I like how he does that and she does that and she does this. And you're pulling different people, different things from different people. And then you start to surround yourself with with that. And the shift doesn't happen overnight, but if you're constantly pouring these people into you, if you're constantly pouring Evan Carmichael into you, you're going to start to believe more in yourself. And if you're constantly pouring other people into you, you're going to start thinking like them, behaving like them, taking on their mindsets and their beliefs. And if those are beliefs that you want and the mindset that you want, amazing. You get to choose now. You're in control. You've been a product of your environment, your early environment with negativity, your ongoing environment with probably just mediocrity keeping you where you are. And now you can change it. You can shift it. You can decide to be in a different spot one year from today. And the most important step you can do is to start choosing and carefully decide with intention who you want to be around so that in 1 year from now, you are in a different spot, not just for you, but so you can serve others and lift them up to catch up as well. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all of 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.

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. 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 gonna 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 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, 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 get nervous, get excited because you can show everybody what it 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 that'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 gonna 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 set you, that puts you in a state of being afraid before your mind catches up and starts thinking about what you're afraid of. And so one of the key takeaways from Take Control, and one of the things that I want to teach you today, is that if you start to tune into your body and you start to notice the signals that your body is sending to you in your day-to-day life. Signals like butterflies in your stomach, signals like feeling a rush of energy up to your neck, signals like your armpits sweating, signals like your hands getting sweaty, signals that your body is stepping and noticing a situation that reminds it of your past. Learning how to read those signals that, oh my God, here goes my body. My body is starting to recognize that this is a situation that puts me on edge. Recognizing those signals first and slowing the body response down before your brain starts to go, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. That is a critical skill in taking control of your life. Everything we talk about has to be proven, right? Everything. I love that. I don't give you some shit 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.

Yeah.

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, right? You know, that they've read from somebody else. Anybody can tell you to, you know, 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. Yeah. You have to know how.

Yeah.

I also am, you know, somebody who is a little bit cynical. So, you know, I'm sort of embarrassed that I'm in self-help on some level because it sounds stupid, right? You know, 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. Yeah. And I am an entrepreneur. There's a lot of— I mean, there's a lot of— there's a lot of fake people out there for sure that are renting houses and 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, that can be scary. But you take control of your life not by speeding up, everybody, but 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, uh, have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and read something, listen to a podcast for 15 minutes, 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 got to raise your own game. Got to 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 gotta 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 Anker is 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 I've had experiences— Even when we're in pain, we love our patterns. Well, pain's familiar for a lot of people.

Yeah.

So a lot of people, like you may be listening to Lewis 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 yourself, you're 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 going to 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 lie 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 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'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.

The relationship that was bad to you, yeah.

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 because they were, my mom was a teen mom. But, uh, 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 going to leave that right there, right? And I always talk about how you have the power in your life, always. I know that 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 jerk face 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 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 feel comfortable. You're saying this shit to yourself when you're alone, don't you? I want you to say it out loud because it's not okay to say this stuff to yourself. What do you say to yourself that we're not gonna say anymore? I'm disgusting. I'm disgusting, what else? I hate the way I look. I hate the way that I look. I hate the way I feel. 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? That's usually when it happens. So what I want you to do is I want 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 of 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, and 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 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 cut 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 going to 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 an 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 in to 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 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 You're not retraining your brain. 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. 'Cause you're the one in a leadership role doing the picking. And so there's a part of me at the age of 51 that is realizing that, you know, these feelings of feeling unworthy and this hyperdrive 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, you still don't feel, being the most booked female speaker in the world, like you still don't feel—

It's so fucking 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. Um, 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 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 is really profound. And this comes from Shawn Anchor. I talked about this yesterday, but I'm going to 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 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 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 Five Second Rule audiobook has been a complete, like, 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, 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, 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, um, and I I don't want to be the CEO. I'm a terrible leader, horrible leader, the worst actually, um, because I'm amazing at coaching, I'm amazing at, uh, 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 feel similar about I know we are. We'd kill each other if we were roommates or business partners. 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 chapter.

And what is that?

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

Yeah. But you want to advance, 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, you're kind of struggling with something. 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 it 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 kid's 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 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 all resigned. They don't believe that their behavior can change this. They don't believe that their attitude can change this. Maybe 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 fill your life. You got to start investing in yourself in order to pursue the things that are interesting to you. I think this is 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, uh, yo-yo your decisions, uh, 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 been 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 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 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 the 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 friends' 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, 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 am 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. '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 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 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 I'd snap 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 ghosts 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 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. 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 gonna put a practice in place that's gonna 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 surprised by how much nicer you are to the people around you. Another thing that, um, that, uh, you can do, and this one's not so fun, is you can train your partner, your kids, your roommates, your 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. You're— 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. Um, 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 I'm speaking at the Energetic Women's Conference here in Indianapolis 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 are curious about? What is it that you feel so expanded, you feel energized, you feel kind of excited excited whenever you're doing it. You're in a 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 really good at it. Because if you like doing it, 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 gonna do today. We're gonna 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 mm-hmm, 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 going to happen? You're going to feel momentum. You're going to feel like you're working on it. You're going to meet people that are interested in it. You're going to learn things that are going to 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 room for you to start your singing lessons. There's room 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 what you want to do. Refresh your routine. Refresh your routine. Why is this important? I'll tell you why 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 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 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.

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

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—

An overscheduled entrepreneur cannot be creative.