If You STRUGGLE With Anxiety, This MIND TRICK Will Save Your Life! | Mel Robbins & Lewis Howes

The alarm of anxiety is telling you that there is something missing right now for you. And what's missing is a feeling of safety. And so when you reframe it as a way to let love in, you start to.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The school of greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howis.

We talked about a little bit about stress in relationships in the previous episode, but I think a lot of people just are faced with more and more anxiety. Even, you know, two years after the pandemic, it's still kind of happening. But not. People don't know how to rebound after this. They don't know how to get into a place of healing their nervous system and healthy heart and mind connection. So there's still a lot of anxiety and stress now with the economy looking like it's going to a big recession and everyone's talking about the housing market crashing in the next year and stock market keeps crashing and just all these things in life are crashing.

You're making me feel anxious right now. Shut up.

That's why I don't watch the news.

I don't watch the news either because.

I want to be informed, but I don't want to be entertained psychologically. That hell is breaking loose every moment of every day. But I think a lot of people are caught in that loop of stress and anxiety. What is the greatest strategies you've discovered in the last couple years of managing stress, overcoming it, facing it, that some people can start to learn how to implement as well?

Okay, so I happen to be, in my opinion, one of the world's leading experts on anxiety because I struggled with it for a long time and a couple of our kids have had profound bouts with anxiety. And I learned things the hard way. And so everything I'm about to share is not medical advice. It is life tested wisdom from having to dig myself out of mental holes and messes, thanks to what used to be very chronic anxiety. So first, let me explain what anxiety is. It is an alarm in your body that is designed to agitate you. That's all that anxiety is. It's an alarm in your body that is designed to agitate you, to wake you up, because that alarm wants to get your attention so that you can focus on giving yourself what you need in that moment. Okay, I also want to preface what I'm about to teach everybody and to share with you by saying that a lot of this I have learned recently. And one of my favorite experts on this subject is somebody you should bring on the show. His name is Dr. Russ Kennedy, he wrote a book called Anxiety Rx. And I have for the past two years been in talk therapy and I have been in guided nervous system therapy like the emdr. I have also done some of the psychedelic modalities in a therapeutic setting, MDMA and ketamine in terms of my own nervous system. And I've also started adding cold exposure.

You're trying it all?

I'm trying whatever it takes. Cause I am so sick of living inside a body that feels on edge all the time. And I'm tired of having a mind that basically is on a constant campaign for what's wrong. So I made a decision that I was going to jump all into this space two years ago. So weekly therapy, emdr, the ice cold exposure, which is learning how to tolerate basically fight or flight and calm yourself through breathing. And through the exposure. I have done the guided psychedelic stuff in terms of smoothing out my nervous system and learning how to truly, I guess, heal and reprogram my body as it relates to past trauma. And I've done traditional talk therapy. And so from Dr. Russ Kennedy, one of the things that I learned recently that is just amazing is that all anxiety comes from one source.

What's that?

It is when your original alarm went off a child, and you probably don't even remember because it happens even in moments where you're non verbal. It's a moment of separation from parent. So the original alarm that you felt, because that's all that anxiety is, anxiety is an alarm that's designed to wake your up. Okay. Because you need something. So if you and I are driving down the street, Louis, and all of a sudden a car swerves in our lane, you will feel a wave of adrenaline and anxiety. That alarm goes off to get you to wake the up and turn the.

Car to be on alert.

Yes.

But when the car is no longer in a lane, the alarm disappears. So for people with generalized anxiety, or you feel like you're in a chronic state that what's happening is you have an alarm going off in the background all the time.

That seems exhausting.

It is exhausting. And so what's happened for the majority of the population in the past two years, because we are not designed to live with that much sustained uncertainty. Is that you right now? I personally believe every human being, unless you are in therapy attacking this or you have a massive meditation practice, I believe every single human being right now has their alarm turned on internally. Because for months on end it was sustained uncertainty in the news and a brand new experience with the lockdown and so of course you went into an alarm state. In fact, for those of you that are working in an office where you're still on Zoom calls from 7 in the morning till 7 at night, that is a company whose culture is in an alarm state. Right? Everything's an emergency, everything is on fire, everything is constantly changing. And so what I've learned is this. And so that original source is separation. Okay? Separation, meaning you have an experience as a child where you feel separate from the adult and the love that you needed. There is a situation that makes you like feel nervous and then you feel like your parent is not reassuring you. That's how it begins. This is what I learned from Dr. Kennedy that has changed my freaking life. This is actually what our episode is about. The fourth episode. It's like two hours long. We unpack the whole thing. It's just one mind blowing thing after another. So I, for years, Louis, chronic anxiety. I would attack it in my thoughts, I would interrupt thoughts, I would reprogram thoughts. And it works. It works to attack the worries, but it doesn't get to the source.

So it's limited. It's like surface level work.

It's part of the toolkit. Yeah, it's part of the toolkit.

Right.

So I'd get worried about something. I'd be like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then I'd think about something else or I'd recover and I'd come back. But of course it comes back because you will always have moments in your daily life that give you a wave of alarm. And by the way, anxiety is not just like feeling on edge. Anxiety is anger. Anxiety can be withdrawal. Anxiety can be any friction in your body. It manifests differently for different people. And so it's like when you go from a state of peace and calm to a state of being in hyper alert. That's what anxiety is. And it's this alarm that's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pay attention. Now most of us are afraid of it or we don't like it, and so we try to ignore it by drinking or ignore it by being busy or suppress it by just at people. But it's like this alarm in you that something's up, something's up, something's up. Like I don't like that. Like something is trying to wake your up.

So, and what does chronic anxiety feel like?

It feels like having. It feels like you're a car that's at a intersection and the light goes green and your feet are on the gas and the brake simultaneously.

Oh, man.

So like you're revved inside. For anybody that has childhood trauma, it can be an experience, Louis, and I'm sure you can relate to this of like, being on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop, having your thoughts be five or six steps ahead, never being in the room that you're in because you're thinking about what's next. It's very, very common to have very few memories from childhood or from your 20s or your 30s if you have chronic anxiety or you have some sort of trauma that you haven't addressed. Because if you're constantly on what's next, anticipating what's coming, you're never in the room where you are to make those memories. And also, when your nervous system is in a state of alert, the cognitive functioning of your brain is impaired. And so you're busy looking for what could be wrong. And you might be thinking about the meeting with your boss tomorrow instead of being in the room that you're in.

Yeah. And it's really hard to create from a stress state.

You can't.

It's very challenging to be creative and flow from stress.

Yes, yes. Now look, it's challenging because it also fuels busyness and drive. And like, being worried about something can be very motivating.

Yes.

And so was for a very long time hardwired into my success. And it kept getting rewarded and rewarded and rewarded.

You're getting results. Yes, in the external world, but in the internal world, you're still feeling anxious and stressed.

Always. That's why it's never enough. Because I'm not even here to enjoy this conversation. I'm already thinking about the thing I need to do at 2:00'.

Clock.

I mean, I'm currently not doing that, but that was my lived reality for a long time due to childhood trauma, due to these feelings of being separate. And so here's the huge aha moment. So, number one, anxiety is an alarm. Number two, your anxiety is from a moment where you feel separate. Okay. You could feel separate from yourself. You could be walking into a huge presentation at a venture capital firm, and you feel separate from the people that are now going to watch the presentation. So you start to feel that wave and that on edge, that alarm go off.

Right.

And the alarm is designed to get you to wake up because you need something in that moment. And here's the kicker. I always thought that anxiety was about what's wrong. Okay. Anxiety is the little Louis saying, hey, I need a little reassurance right now. Hey, I need a little love right now. That's all that it Is. And when you can teach yourself in moments where the alarm goes off, Louis. To not race up to your head and start negotiating, it's going to be fine. These venture capital people are going to love you. That helps on some level to be like, no, I'm excited to do this. I got this. To coach yourself through it. But if you really want to transform your experience of life, go from the shoulders down, notice that there's an alarm going off. Then I want you to realize it's the little you saying, I feel a little nervous right now. Could you just tell me I'm going to be okay? And I've gotten to the point where I can just put my hand right here, find the spot that feels right for you, and literally give yourself a little love, as stupid as that sounds. And that alarm goes off. Yeah, it's freaking nuts.

It's learning how to parent yourself. The wounded child inside of you, you being the adult in the room.

It is.

And the big game changer, though, is that it's about needing love from yourself. Because if you're experiencing anxiety, you are not. You're also blocking yourself from love and from assurance and from the that you need and you might not have gotten as a kid.

What happens if you put your need to be loved on someone or something else?

Then you lose control of it, because.

It'S always depending on, do they accept me? Do they like me? Do they invest in me?

Yeah.

Did they invest in. They hire me?

How do I do?

Like, is my podcast rating high? Like, every day, you are going to experience moments where that alarm goes off, because every single day in life, there is something that will trigger insecurity or feeling separate. You know, One example I can give you that's really simple is I was invited to a little, like, party in my new community. And it may be odd to people to hear this, but even though I'm extroverted, I still get nervous when I walk into any kind of networking meeting or any kind of room with a lot of people in it, where I'm going to have to introduce myself. There is an experience of feeling separate from everybody. And so even walking into a small gathering at somebody's house where I know everybody, the point of which is for me to get to know people better. Walking in, I could feel the alarm going off. And having just learned what I learned, I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'm feeling this noticeable separation, and all I need to do is be like, oh, you got this. Like, it's okay that you feel a little Nervous, you can take a breath, you can walk in there when you're ready. It's going to be good. Like giving myself exactly what I needed, which was a little love and reassurance. It completely went away.

Right? It's powerful.

It's really powerful because I think most of us that experience waves of anxiety hate it. I hate it. I'm like, I hate this. Like, get rid of this. Why do I have to be out? I'm going to have anxiety forever. And the truth is that when I. Yes, you need talk therapy. Yes, you need to use the five second rule and interrupt the habit of worrying. And yes, you need to reprogram a different way of talking to yourself. And yes, you need to go and high five the mirror, which by the way is also neck up because you're taking a physical action that then triggers new programming up here. But it all begins with an alarm in the body. So if you want to heal this, you have to start to go neck down. You need to start to learn how to in those moments, not be annoyed or scared of the alarm, but to actually turn toward it. So that's number one, go toward the alarm. Know that it's a call from the little you needing a moment of reassurance or love. And you'll start to spot it all the time now.

And not needing the reassurance from others.

From yourself, from yourself.

Because if you only rely on others and they don't give it to you when you need it, you're going to feel anxious.

Yeah.

Well, think about this. If I were to start to cry right now and tell you that I'm super anxious and something's happened and na, na, na, na, what would you do?

I would support you and comfort you and give you a hug.

Yes. And how would that make me feel? Amazing.

Yeah.

But we don't do it to ourselves.

Or if you're alone and you don't have that person with you.

Yeah.

How do you handle it on your own?

You hug yourself, literally. Take a towel and go like this. It feels like a freaking hug. Put your hands on your heart and take a couple deep breaths and tell yourself what you would tell somebody else. And the alarm disappears because it's not trying to tell you that something's wrong. The alarm of anxiety is telling you that there is something missing right now for you. And what's missing is a feeling of safety and a feeling of like, deep connection with self. That's all that's missing. And so when you reframe it as a way to let love in and that it is a way to let love in from yourself. You start to change the way that your body experiences moments that trigger you from childhood. And so I think so much of what I am trying to put out into the world is this notion that everything needs to start with addressing these feelings that we have. Like, for me, you want to change your life. There is a very simple formula that's not easy to do. You need to take action before you feel like it. You need to take the actions that the person that has what you really want and deserve in your life. You need to take the same type of actions before you feel like that person. You must act first, period. That's how you change. When it comes to healing your body and when it comes to anxiety, you have to, instead of running away from it or numbing it because the anxiety feeling is triggering you to grab the alcohol, it's triggering you to get very busy and start running errands or to. It's triggering you to turn on the TV or hit the vape pen or hit the joint or whatever. And that feeling could be boredom. It could be a sense of overwhelm. It could be insecurity. Like, because think about what happens. Let's take the example of your dating. And somebody hasn't texted you in a day. They left you on. On read. You know, like, you start to get that wave, the alarm goes off. Because what do you need? You need some love and reassurance. But what we do instead is, you know, you see that you're still on red and you grab the vape pen. That is you dealing with your anxiety in a destructive way. What do you do? You, like, start scrolling through social media, which makes you insecure. That is you trying to distract yourself or numb or whatever. This. This uncomfortable feeling that you don't know how to deal with, when really that feeling requires one action.

Love.

Love from self.

But why is it so hard for so many people to love and accept themselves?

Because when you were a child, love was transactional. You were taught that if you're doing what I want, I love you, we all do it. I did it to my kids, too. I didn't mean to. We all parent. We try to parent through connection, but we tend to correct our kids a lot. And so you learn that if I'm not doing what you want me to do, then you don't like me. Right now, you don't love me. And we learn that if we are getting into the right school or we're getting good grades or our team is Doing well in sports or we are interested in medicine because dad's interested in medicine, that that's how you earn love. And you know, it's very hard to, with day to day life, not do something that your kids up.

Even if you're being conscious and healthy and all.

The right things, of course, because you can't read your.

You don't know what they're perceiving and how they take your conversation and what you said, what you didn't say.

Yep, yep. And they are learning by observing and absorbing. And so that means that there are going to be moments where they deeply need a hug and they need a quieter tone of voice. And you've just slammed your laptop shut and you've just yelled out something because of somebody being like a jerk to you at work and your kid was standing behind you and needed something. And so I think that that's why we don't actually know how to love ourselves. And the other reason why is kind of biologically speaking, from 0 to 18, you're not in charge, right?

Your body, the whole world, your freaking.

Survival, dude, is based on your parents. If you want to eat, if you want to, like, you are hardwired to bond with them. And so this is who you're learning from, for better or for worse. And most of us learned that, you know, if mom's not happy, I'm not supposed to be happy. If dad's mad, then I've done something wrong. We do not have within us as children the ability to look at the adults around us and be like, well, they're up. And boy, you know, dad must have had a bad day at work. We go, something's wrong with me that they're not home when I get home. Something's wrong with me that she's giving me the silent treatment. What have I done? And so we are trained as kids, for better or for worse, that love is conditional, that if we please other people, we get more of it. If we perform and make other people happy, we get more of it. And so we don't learn that it's unconditional. And we don't learn because that's not how people act. And we don't learn how to truly love ourselves through these ups and downs of lives because our parents weren't taught how to do this for themselves. I mean, if you want to, like, instead of blaming your parents, look at your grandparents, right?

And great grandparents.

And great grandparents.

It's just been passed down because they're.

Just passing down what they had to put up with like, I always find it really interesting that every generation, for example, let's take a non anxiety, non relationship, non family example, every single generation disrupts the way we work and disrupts what we think about work. Like if you go back to the 1900s when you would die working in a factory, most people that worked in factories under those conditions were like, well, I survived it. Why do we need safety protocols?

Right.

Working in the coal mines.

Yes. And it literally is an upgrade.

Now people are like, why do I.

Need to be in an office? Well, we were in an office. It's better for.

Is it better?

I don't know. And so I feel too that we are the first generation to talk openly about mental health. I mean when I was in high school, you were a freak if you had anxiety, which I was by the way.

Right. But you can't talk about it.

No.

There was no self help section in the bookstore. Do you know what kind of a loser went in there? The, the amount of tools that are available, the self awareness, the research, the awakening, the fact that people are starting to connect the dots that mental health is everything. Because if you're not a happy person, you will take that into work and your relationship and your relationships and on your kids and this and that and the other thing and you're going to make your own life miserable. And so I feel like a lot of the things that we're talking about, it's actually very exciting because we didn't have these tools. People didn't talk openly about this. You know, my mom said something pretty profound the other day. She was kind of like we were talking about something. I remember she goes, you know, I often wonder if I don't have, if I've never experienced anxiety because I won't allow myself to.

We're so used to it now, right?

Yeah.

Or she's like, there's so much stuff that went down in my past, why would I want to unpack that? Right.

It's scary to look at.

Yes. It's hard, yes. Painful, yes. But I admire like this generation that you know, is like the 20 somethings now. My kid, my 17 year old son, you know what one of the best parts of his life is his frickin therapist. Why? Because he loves. I said, why do you like Keith so much? He's like, because I like talking to adults and I like having somebody other than you or dad to unpack this stuff with.

It makes you feel a little bit better. It makes you process it. Well, I think it's, you know, correct me If I'm wrong, but it seems like more than ever now, this generation has tools and the freedom without shame to talk about these things. And also on the other side, extreme, you know, it seems like more kids than ever are vaping, doing drugs, alcohol, having sex, younger and younger, connected their phones nonstop, not, you know, allowing themselves to really process. They're still using other things to mask the anxiety.

Well, because as pressure to get into the right school, to make money, to be an influencer, to figure out your life by the time you're 21 is all that pressure or perceived pressure increases, so does your stress and anxiety. And as stress and anxiety increases, if you don't have the resources, tools, the support, so will your coping negative habits. Scrolling through social media, by the way, is something people do when they feel anxious. Why? Because they're using what's on their phone to distract themselves from the uncomfortable feelings in their body. But the irony is it usually just makes you more anxious to see other people's seemingly perfect life. What else do people do? They do all the things you're talking about. They vape, they procrastinate, they drink, they buy that they don't need. They play sports bets, they watch porn. They like all these things are ways to escape uncomfortable feelings in your body. They overeat, they, you know, like all of it. And so when you understand that, at its core, anxiety is an alarm that is hardwired in your body to make you wake up. And what it's asking you to do is to give yourself a little bit of love and reassurance. Right now I know you're sitting in a dorm room. I know you think you have no friends and everybody here already has their friend group and you're the loser. But you know what? You're not. It's gotta be okay. You don't need to hit the pen. You can literally tolerate that feeling of feeling alone if you know that what that discomfort's about is really a need for love and connection. So give that to yourself in that moment. That's it.

Learning to love yourself has been the next thing. How can someone start to learn how to love themselves if they never felt like they got it from their parents the way they needed it? How can they learn when they've always been on high alert, stressed, anxious, separate from the love they've always wanted?

Okay, so there's two different things you need to do. First of all, you got to get serious about the body. You have two nervous systems, sympathetic and parasympathetic. I think about it like the wiring in your wall. So Lewis has these light bulbs behind us, right? What's fueling that? Electricity. There's wiring in there. If we were to flip the switch off, the wiring would still be there. What's happening when you feel stressed out or you have unresolved trauma, or you've just lived through a pandemic and you have not turned the light off is that the light's on. What we need to do as a society is find the switch and flip it off. And so the way you do that is going into your body, there's a bazillion different things that you can do. You can do cold exposure, you can meditate, you can do breathing exercises. You can start doing the high five in the mirror as part of your morning routine. You can give your heart a high five where you just place your hands right here in the center of your body and you tone what's called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is the on off switch. And so when you Google vagus nerve and do those exercises as part of your day to day life, going outside for a walk for 10 minutes is another way to like, literally get back into your body and to find the switch and turn the light off. Because you've got to understand that when the lights are on, the sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, you're stressed out when the light is off. You've now accessed peace. You're in the moment. You don't feel that stressed out. So body, body, body, body, body. That's number one. Number two, even if it was never modeled for you, you know what you want. So get out a piece of paper and make a list of all the things that you wish somebody who loved you would do. There's this fascinating study, Louis, about happy people. You know the difference between happy people and people who aren't happy?

Tell me.

Happy people tend to spend more time doing things that make them happy, right?

Activities that they enjoy.

And we so underestimate the little things you can do because just a small uptick in your mood actually makes you feel a little better. I'm not suggesting that if your best friend just got killed in a car crash, going for a walk is going to fix it. But it might, for a minute, help you clear your mind. Like for me, if I'm having a bad day, I do one of two things. I either buy myself flowers. And I'm not talking like a hundred dollar arrangement. I go to Trader Joe's. Yeah, $2 for 10 to E L's. I love Trader Joe's.

Right.

Flowers make me smile. And then I have a bud vase right by the kitchen sink. And I always put one of the flowers right there because it makes me happy. I don't know why, but it just does for just a minute. I see something beautiful and it allows me to escape whatever's making me sad. Okay. Or I go to Netflix and I turn on one of the stand up comedy specials because just laugh. I just try to get somebody to make me laugh. And it always makes you feel slightly better. And if you can feel slightly better today, you can feel slightly better tomorrow. And these things start to build. And over time, that little uptick starts to become a new default. And so I think the same is true with love. Love is a verb. It's an action. So what are the actions that you believe a loving person would take if somebody really loved you and it wasn't modeled for you? And so when you start to make that list, there's your map. Pick one thing a day and it might be, you know, I high five the mirror as part of my morning routine as an act of love. I make my bed every morning as an act of love. I don't lay in bed and think about my problems as an act of love. I always have an amazing cup of coffee as an act of love. And, you know, oddly enough, if I'm up first, I make coffee for the person I love, Chris. And Chris does the same for me. And so just because it wasn't modeled doesn't mean you can't create a map for yourself. And so think about it. What would you want somebody to do and then look around and who seems to have that in their life? And what are the behaviors that you're seeing?

Yeah.

And then the million dollar thing you got to do, do not wait to feel like doing it. You have to take that action first, because the action is what proves that you love yourself. If you sit around and think about it, you're going to talk yourself out of it. And the fact that you're not doing anything, that you're not taking action, like if you make a list, you're like, oh, they would buy me flowers, they would compliment me, they would give me a high five, they would buy me dinner.

And you don't do it for yourself.

You know what that shows you? I hate myself because a person that loves me would do these things, and I'm not doing that. So your own action demonstrates that you don't love yourself.

It's powerful stuff. Mel. I'm so grateful for you for Coming back on and sharing this wisdom. If people want more, they can go to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Yeah.

You know why I named it that?

Tell me.

Because when you Google Mel Robbins, it's the third thing that people say.

There you go. There you go. It's great. Mel Robbins podcast. They can get it over on Apple podcasts, Spotify, everywhere. They want to listen to it. You have an amazing format where you're really diving in, you're answering questions, you're telling like a whole story throughout your show. Oh, it's really cool.

It's personal. Dude, it is so personal.

It's really powerful. So make sure you guys go subscribe there. Follow, Leave a review.

Actually, episode number two, which is called episode number three, which is all motivation about hacking motivation. I talk extensively about my past with anxiety. And episode number four, which we have yet to title, is a two hour interview with Dr. Russ Kennedy, who you need to have on the show. And that literally will make you realize everything that you think about anxiety is probably wrong. And that there are incredibly accessible, simple, game changing tools. And you know why I like him? Dr. Kennedy is not only a medical doctor that treats anxiety, he's also got a degree in neuroscience.

I love that.

And he started experiencing anxiety when he was in medical school. And so he has personal experience having grown up with a bipolar father.

I love that.

And he treats people. He has written this incredible book about it. His tools are all about, what's it called?

Somatic therapy, Somatic healing.

Yeah, he's gets the brain, he gets the body, he wraps it all in one package.

Incredible. You got to get him on Mel. Appreciate you, acknowledge you for how you keep showing up for yourself, for your relationship, for your life, for your community. It's beautiful to witness that. You know, even though you've been extremely successful in different seasons of your life and you continue to succeed, you make a priority right now on your emotional mental health as a focus. So you can keep going to the next level. So I really acknowledge you for how you show up and I know you've been wanting to do the podcast for a while, so you acting on it is an act of self love.

It is. It is. You know what else, Louis? If people were to go back and they were to look at our first interview five years ago, what they would witness are two totally different human beings energetically, because you and I have for the past two years been working at profound levels on our healing from the inside out, especially in the body, especially in the nervous system, especially related to past trauma. And I would bet. I don't know this to be true, but I would bet that if you did a side by side, you would see I'd probably have a flushed face. I'd probably be more jittery and around and animated and this and that. I mean, I'm pretty animated. But there is. And the same with you, right? There is a groundedness that we have both accessed from the tools that you're sharing on your podcast that I'm now sharing on mine and that you and I have been deeply, profoundly invested in exploring these past two years.

Yeah, it's been fun. I'm going to add a 10 minute clip from that first interview and put it in the YouTube and the audio and see how it is. We'll put it in right now.

Oh, I'm sure I'm like. Because I had a dysregulated nervous system.

If you enjoyed that interview, then I know you'll love what we have coming up right now.

So the five second rule.

Wait, first off, when did you discover the five second rule?

Okay, so 2009.

This is when you first tried it or discovered it or.

Oh, it's a total horror show mistake.

Yes.

Okay, so 2009, I was unemployed and feeling like you.

Unemployed?

How? Well, okay.

Too much charisma, too much passion.

Yeah. Because everything's working right now.

That's why I'm not like this when things are not working.

Ask my husband of 22 years. Well, what had happened is I had had all these career changes and I got into the media business again by mistake. I had a coaching business and Inc. Magazine was writing an article about coaches and they featured me in it and CNBC called.

Got it.

And that led to me doing some stuff with cnbc and I spent a year still coaching people and then doing some stuff for cnbc. And then FOX called and they were interested in having me host a television show. Now, you got to understand, I'm from North Muskegon, Michigan. I mean, the media business, la. The closest thing I had ever seen to a celebrity. Lewis was the Muskegon Lumberjacks, the farm team.

Right, right.

From our. For the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Yeah, my dad.

Yeah, my dad was the hometown doc for the hockey team there.

Right, right, right.

So I thought the mayor was a celebrity. Wow. My life's about to change. I'm about to be a celebrity. Wow. We're going to solve all. This is amazing. You know, so I was originally going to be hosting a show for Fox where we were making over small businesses.

Nice.

Yeah. Pretty cool, right?

We show Up.

We like do Extreme Home Makeover for the office. Everybody's happy. We all know that doesn't solve business problems, but it makes for a nice television show. By the time I get to la, they've changed the format. It's now called Someone's Gotta Go. And I'm going to be firing people on national television from real jobs.

Wow.

Huh?

That sounds fun.

Horrible. Plus, we haven't told the offices that this is what we're doing.

Oh my gosh.

So you show up in Act 1 and you've got everybody all like this because they're going to think they're going to get new Ikea furniture and a paint job and this is going to be the best thing in the world for their small business. Now meanwhile, I'm a fourth generation small business owner, so that's like, my people grew up at a kitchen table with farmers and, you know, my mom at a retail store and my other grandparents were bakers. And so when it comes to like the heart and soul and what's so important when you launch your own business and how personal it is, I mean, this was like gut wrenching. So I show up. The first act, you kick out the owner of the company, who then freaks out. Then all the employees freak out. Act number two, we announce that somebody's getting fired. And then that's, that's the, the bad news. The good news is that I'm not picking. We're gonna have you vote somebody out. So it's Survivor in an office place.

Oh, my goodness.

So when, when I learn all this, I, I have a panic attack, even though I'm on Zoloft and I call the guy that got me the gig and say, you got to get me out of this. Like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And he said, well, I'm sorry, but they've already cast the entire show and you're out there for five weeks and you don't have a choice, they're going to sue you. And I said then fine, get me some Xanax because I don't think I can get through this thing. Like, this is awful. Luckily we taped two episodes and legal tabled it. But here was the problem. I was attached to the show and I only got paid if the show was shooting. And being an entrepreneur, I also kind of, yes, put all my energy into this. Shut down the coaching thing.

Yeah.

Really thought that. It also kind of negotiated a deal that was sort of a back end deal, thinking I'm a, you know, entrepreneur, always thinking about gotta have a piece of the action.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. That was a dumb move. And I was in a contract for a year while they figured out what to do.

So you couldn't do another show. Yeah.

So, you know, I just felt like I had made a huge mistake and I felt really embarrassed. And I didn't know at the age of 41 what I should be doing with my life. And while it's neat that I had jumped careers so many times, I started to feel like somebody that actually wasn't successful at all because I didn't have a career track. I had a bunch of jumps from one thing to another. Now looking back, it makes perfect sense. But standing in the middle of the mess, it just felt like everything was caving in. Probably just like when you were sleeping on your couch, feeling injured. And like everything I thought that was about to happen isn't happening now. Meanwhile, my husband had opened up a restaurant business. It had been his dream. He worked in high tech and came home one day after getting laid off and said, I. I'm never going to get on a plane and do a PowerPoint presentation for a company I don't care about her own. And I said, great, what's your plan? And he said, I'm going to open a pizza restaurant. And I looked at him and I said, was there a trust fund that was part of this marriage that I was unaware of because I'm not quite sure how it was where you get the money.

Did someone die? You got an insurance policy?

And he said no. And I then said the most famous lines of our 22 year marriage. Louis. I looked at him and I said, listen, buddy, inspiration is for strangers. You get your ass back to that job and you pay the mortgage and.

You forget the stream, you're not going well.

Because change is scary.

Yeah.

So we fought and he won. And the first one was a real home run.

He opened a pizza store.

Oh, he did? Yeah. 40. 40 seats right outside of Boston, Massachusetts. He and his best friend and they won Best of Boston. It was incredible. What do you do? And everything they did on the first one. So what do you do when everything's working? Let's go all chips in. Let's put in the home equity line, let's put in the, the kids college savings, let's get friends and family. And because you're so excited, you think it's going to work.

So you go big, big, big.

Well, the second one did not work at all. And it did not work at all so badly that when it was finally closed. It was close to an $800,000 loss, and it meant our entire home equity line, kids, college, savings, everything, went right down with it. That was right when I lost the Fox show. So I'm unemployed. The liens start hitting the house. The phone starts ringing all the time, and it's collections calls. So you unplug that phone.

That would stress me out.

Well, you just unplug the phone. I mean, that's how you deal with that. But I, I, I, I remember there were, I remember two things from that period of my life that were really painful. And one was having to call the town and, and tell them that we could not afford the 175 bucks for our sixth grader to play soccer, so we needed to pull her out. And I remember there being times because I was so afraid to look at the checking account that I would stand at the grocery store and items would scan and I could just feel that wave of anxiety rising, thinking, I don't think the check card's going to go through. And so I would stand there. I always had an excuse and it was to look at the person and go, oh, that's strange. It just worked at the gas station.

Oh my gosh.

Because I, what would have been more empowering is to probably say, oh, well, I guess I don't have the money for this. Let's take this, this, and this. And just kind of like the easiest thing to do is to tell the truth. But I was so filled with shame.

Yeah.

So I started to develop this habit of hitting the snooze button because what would happen is the alarm would go off in the morning and the first thing I would think about is all the problems that we had and how awfully things had gone off the tracks.

You didn't want to deal with them.

No. And I also didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't think I could. And this goes back to the feelings like you, you think that you need to feel confident or courageous in order to get started. You don't. You actually just have to start. And that's the riddle of life. That lying in bed, hoping that you wake up some morning motivated to change. That's not the answer. You actually have to learn how to push yourself. You have to learn how to, how to leverage the power of your decisions. And you've got to learn how to take action when you don't feel like it. Because every morning when I woke up, I did not feel confident. I felt like a loser. I felt like the world's worst parent. I felt like I had failed at every single turn. I did not know if Chris and I could pull out of the spiral. I did not know if we were going to go bankrupt and lose the house and move from our community. I did not know if our marriage would survive. I knew I wanted it to. And see, this is the knowledge action gap. You can know what you want, you can know what you should be doing, but how do you make yourself do it when the feelings and the motivation isn't there, when all you got is fear? And so every night, I would. I would lie in bed and I would say to myself, all right, that's it, Mel. Tomorrow, it's the new you. Tomorrow, you're going to wake up and be motivated.

You're going to.

You're going to get up, you're going to exercise like everybody says you should. You're going to meditate, you're going to get those kids on the bus. You're going to screw Fox. You're going to look for a job. You're going to cold call Cox Media and you're going to. You're going to do auditions. Come on, girl. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

You're going to take a couple cold shower.

Whoo. You know, here we go. And I meant it when I was saying it.

Maybe it was the alcohol that was talking, but.

But then I would wake up and I didn't feel any of those things. So I would hit the snooze and I would hit the snooze. Now, why was I hitting the snooze when I knew it wasn't the right decision? I'm going to tell you why. And this is something that I was blown away by when I discovered it. You don't make decisions with your goals. You don't make decisions with your prefrontal cortex. You don't make decisions with logic. Do you know how we make decisions? I didn't invent this. A neuroscientist by the name of Damasio, who does his research in Brazil, who gave an incredible TED Talk and wrote about this forever and ever and ever. We make decisions with feelings. 95% of our decisions are made by how you feel in the moment. And that is the problem. You need to take control of the moment and leverage the power of your decisions and make them up here. Because when I was lying in bed, I wasn't saying to myself, I should get up, because that's going to help me start my day right? I was Saying, do I feel like getting up?

No, you don't.

No. Do you feel like making that cold call? No, you don't. Do you feel like doing that third set of reps? No, you don't. Do you feel like having that hard conversation? No, you don't. Do you feel like ending this relationship, whether it's in business or in your life that is sucking you dry? No, you don't. We make decisions based on our feelings, and that is robbing you of joy and opportunity. And it is blinding you from the fact that all how you change your life is 15 second decision at a time, one push at a time. And if you. If you accept the fact that you may never feel ready and you may never feel motivated, and you may never feel confident, you may never feel courageous, and that's okay, but you can still push yourself forward. What happens over time is as you start to see yourself becoming the person that takes action, that you start to see yourself becoming the kind of person that speaks even though your voice is shaking, you're the kind of person that. That. That has a bias toward moving instead of a bias toward thinking. Guess what happens? You build the skill of confidence and courage. And so what happened for me is.

I was stuck, Louis.

I mean, I was so stuck. I was on. I mean, we were heading straight for divorce. We were heading for bankruptcy. I knew I wanted to change things. And so one night, I see this commercial. This is the stupidest story on the planet, but this is what happened. I see this commercial and you know, again, I also was drinking too much. I mean, I probably had a couple Manhattans in me. That's my drink. I'm from the Midwest, just like you. All right. Little Manhattan there, Little bourbon. And there was a rocket ship launching on a commercial. Yeah. And I had this instinct, this innovation, this disruptive idea, right? Oh, my God, Mel, that's the answer. Tomorrow morning, you're gonna launch your ass out of bed like a rocket ship. You're gonna move so fast you can't even think about your problems. Dumb, right? Totally dumb. So he's like, this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I cannot believe I have this chick on my podcast.

I understand it. You got to get moving first.

Yes.

That's the thing. You just gotta wake up at 6am or whatever it is and go into the gym. When you're in the gym, you're gonna start moving the first weight.

Yes.

And then you'll start.

Actually, people. People use the 5 second rule at the gym because you know how Much time people waste at the gym, standing around thinking about the next thing probably.

70% of the time.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So, so the next morning the alarm goes off and nothing, it changes changed in my life. I woke up to the lean on the house, the fighting with Chris, the unemployment, the lack of confidence, the lack of courage that like the whole thing. But I did something I had never done before. I went 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Just like NASA. I actually counted and then I stood up and I was like, what the hell just happened?

Uh huh. What? What?

That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

The next morning I used it again. It worked. The next morning I used it again.

It worked.

And then I started to notice something. And this is, this is one of those things. So we have a, we have an 11 year old son who has dyslexia. And when they finally diagnosed him, it was as if, of course it was as if, like, how could we have possibly missed this? Are we the worst parents in the world? I mean the kid can barely write, he can't cut his food, he doesn't like, no wonder he doesn't do team sports. It was right under our nose. And what I'm about to tell you is right under everybody's nose. There's a five second window between the instincts, the shoulds, the urges, the inner wisdom, the things that can change your life. If you listen to it. Got a 5 second window from the moment you feel that instinct to move. And if you don't, your brain is actually designed to kill it. Five seconds is all you have. The second you hesitate, it's actually. And you feel yourself hesitating. That is a moment of huge power. Because what's happened is you've just started to pull back from something that you need to lean into. And if you count backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And this is the neuroscience behind why this stupid little trick works. Counting is an action. Counting backwards requires focus. It's also not a habit for you yet. So when you feel yourself hesitate, you're triggering your mind that something's up. Like Lewis didn't hesitate when he pulled on his pants. He didn't hesitate when he's drinking his coffee, didn't hesitate when he walked out the door to the gym. But now he's hesitating to make that call. Your mind now goes into a cognitive bias called the spotlight effect. It magnifies whatever it was that you hesitated doing.

The moment.

The moment, yeah. Like all of a sudden you're like, I don't feel like it. Like, I don't. I don't know, maybe I'll do it later.

And.

And your mind is doing it because your mind's trying to protect you. Hesitation signals a red flag to your mind that something's up. Just that small hesitation. It's a habit that we all have. Should you hesitate if you're getting a tattoo? Yes. Should you hesitate if you're gambling? Yes. Should you hesitate if you are signing a legal document? Yes. You need your prefrontal cortex for those things. You need to interrupt it. Make a power, make a decision. Should you hesitate on making a phone call? No. Should you hesitate on speaking up in a meeting? No. Should you hesitate when you feel yourself starting to procrastinate and you know you got work that you should get done? No. You shouldn't hesitate at all. Should you hesitate in saying the thing that you really feel in your heart? No, you shouldn't. Should you hesitate and edit yourself when you're talking? No, you shouldn't. But we've all trained ourselves to. So it's actually this habit of hesitating. You start catching yourself. It's a huge moment of power because you have a decision to make, and you got to make it. In the next five seconds, are you going to go on autopilot and get trapped in your mind, or are you going to. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And awaken your prefrontal cortex and drive forward. So I started to use this rule as I noticed that every day, all day long, I had these moments of inner wisdom where I would know that I needed to pick up the phone and stop isolating myself. I would know that I needed to call a bunch of media companies and start auditioning for radio show hosting gigs. I knew that I should get on, get out of bed on time. I knew I should stop myself before I snapped at Chris. Right. Self monitor.

Yeah.

I knew I should not feel. Let the frustration be the things that was driving me. And so I started to use the rule all day long whenever I felt this, I should do this. Five, four, three, two, one. And I would make myself do it. And slowly, five seconds at a time, my entire life start. Started to change. And my husband used it in his business and he and his business partner dove in. They went on to open seven more restaurants. I went on to launch and sell two businesses and get recruited by CNN and join their team. I had a syndicated radio show that. That ended up winning the Gracie Award, which is kind of the female media, you know, awards for the number one talk show in the country. And you know, I never intended to tell Anybody about the 5 second rule, first of all, because it's stupid, right? I mean, come on, count backwards. That's the dumbest thing.

Not stupid to me, though. Anything that works works for me.

That's true.

I'll take any stupid thing.

That's true. And so I.

But I also was like, how do.

You start talking about something like that? Right?

Yeah.

So I was asked to give a TED Talk, like six years ago. And Ted, six years ago, not the brand that it was today. They weren't even putting the talks online yet.

Really?

Yeah, the TEDx talks are not online yet. And so that was the first speech I'd ever given in my life. If you want to see what somebody looks like having a panic attack for.

21 minutes straight, watch that speech.

I was backstage and it was like one PhD after another going out there. I'm like, scientists, the hell have I gotten myself into?

This is the dumbest thing.

And so at the very end, I wasn't even planning on talking about it. I say, oh, by the way, there's this thing I do. That's it. I don't even explain it. And you know why I didn't explain it, Louis? I didn't know why it worked.

So you didn't have the science or the research.

You were just.00.

And then something crazy happened. They put that talk online a year later and people started to write. We've heard from more than 100,000 people in 90 countries that have written to us that are using the rule in ways big and small to change their lives, to change their marriages, to change their thinking patterns, to grow their businesses. We know of 11 people that have stopped themselves from killing themselves in the moment. There's a gentleman that we talk about in the book, and you can see his social media posts in London. He was a veteran and he was suffering from post Traumatic stress disorder. And he boarded a ferry with the intention of jumping overboard. And he got to the railing and he was standing there and his inner wisdom kicked in. And this is another thing I want everybody watching to understand. I don't care what you're facing or how low you get, your inner wisdom is always there. It is. And the thing is that we often don't listen to it. And so he's standing there intending to kill himself, and that inner wisdom kicks in and he remembers the five second rule. And he goes, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And he turns and physically moves away from the railing and finds the first person working on the ferry. And Tells him that he's suicidal. Saved his life. He saved his life because he listened to the inner wisdom. And this is the other thing I love about this rule. It's not something to think about. It's a tool to use. So the part of the problem with a lot of the advice that I've found for me personally is that a lot of advice is all about kind of doing mental battle. And if I go upstairs, I'm behind enemy lines and I tend to get hijacked. Right. So I love this tool because 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 interrupts those patterns. It actually prompts the part of the brain that I need in order to change. And it makes changing easier because I've now got my mind working for me instead of against me. And it gets me out of my head. And so I'm super excited to share this rule with people because I now know not only that it's working, just not. Not for me, it's working for people around the world. And, you know, in the book, it took me three years to write it. It's all the science behind the rule. It's got more than 150 social media posts in it. So you see stories from around the world of people using it to end procrastination, to build confidence, to deepen their relationships, to launch businesses, to explode the sales. Why does it help with sales? I'll tell you why. Because you can't sell by thinking. Selling is about action. We have. We have groups from companies around the world, sales teams that put 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 up on the wall. So they hate me.

That's cool.

Yes.

Because what?

Cold calling, It's a momentum thing. If you stop and think, the phone is not getting. The dialing is not happening when you're thinking.

Yeah. If you're thinking about all those no's you've been getting.

Yes.

You're not gonna want to do it again. It doesn't feel good.

Yes. And if you're in the middle of a negotiation or you're in the middle of a really difficult conversation, and again, remember what we said earlier, you cannot control your feelings that rise up, but you can always control how you think and what you do. So if you're in the middle of a difficult conversation and you feel those feelings come up that normally trigger you to start editing yourself or to censor yourself or to silence yourself or to think sabotaging thoughts in, like, a business negotiation. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Awaken the prefrontal cortex. Get back in the game.

Okay, so you know this is kind of my brand of advice. It's gotta be incredibly stupid on the surface.

Yeah.

It's gotta be so simple. It's really implausible that it works. And once you start unpacking it, it has to have a crazy bananas amount of scientific proof and real life proof in people's lives to prove why it works. So I'll tell you the story first, behind the high five habit. Because I did not set out and go like, okay, I've written the five second rulebook, I need to come up with another five. I have been toiling away with what book to write for nearly five years. So it's been five years since I've had a book in print. And I had this random morning where there's a lot going on in my life. I'm not going to get into it because it's a boring story, but I was just having a really hard time in my life. And I woke up, got out of bed, I made my bed like I always do. I walked into the bathroom, I'm standing there brushing my teeth, and I catch my reflection in the mirror. And my first thought is, God, you look like hell. Seriously. And I know women in particular can relate to this, but what a lot of people don't realize is you guys are incredibly hard on yourselves too. And so as I go, God, you look like hell, I start then cataloging all of the things that are wrong with my appearance. I'm like, your gray hair is coming in, you've got stripes on your neck, one of your boobs is lower than the other. You know, you look exhausted. And then as soon as you have a negative thought or a self criticism, it's sort of like lint in a dryer. Once you start collecting it, it just keeps on collecting it. So now I'm thinking not about how horrible I look or how tired I look now I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do. I start going, oh my gosh, I got up a little too late and I've got a zoom call in eight minutes. I don't even have a bra on yet. The dog needs to be walked. And I could feel my energy going down. Like I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Overwhelmed, uncertain. You know, it doesn't even matter what was going on in my life at that time because I think it's a universal feeling to feel overwhelmed by your life at times.

Yes.

And so here I am, a motivational speaker, unmotivated, unmotivated, uncaffeinated, no bra, standing there in my Underwear with my dog at my feet. I don't know what came over me, but as cheesy as it sounds, I just raised my hand and gave the tired, haggard woman in the mirror a high five. And it didn't change my life, like, right then and there. But something shifted. Like, I felt a little lighter. I felt like I wasn't alone. I felt like, okay, this moment in your life is hard, but you can do this, Mel. And I went on with my day. So the second day, I woke up and this is when things started to really kind of churn in my mind. The first thing that I noticed was this. So I wake up Louis, and I make my bed, and I realized I was looking forward to that moment in the mirror where I was going to see myself. Now, look, I'm 52 years old. I will probably have a hot flash during the middle of this interview at some point. I'm a lot older than you.

Just don't eat lobster.

Oh, yeah, I know. I had a really allergic reaction the last time we were together. Wow. But I have spent the first 45 years of my life either criticizing the woman in the mirror or ignoring her. And this was the first time that I could remember that I was actually looking forward to seeing myself. Sort of like, you know, when I was coming here today. You and I are very good friends. I. As I was walking into the building, I'm feeling excited to see you. And it wasn't like I was feeling excited to see myself. Like, I'm not like, yeah, because I got a lot of crap going on in my life, but I felt a little bit like I'm about to see a friend. And so that second morning, I high five myself again. And again, I feel something shift. I feel a little. Just a little lightness in the mood, and I go on with my day. So the third morning, I do it again and again, like lightness. And so I keep doing it, keep doing it. A couple weeks go by, and now I'm starting to feel a little bit of momentum and I'm really enjoying. I have no idea what the hell is going on. I haven't even done this in front of my husband, Chris, yet. Because let's be honest, standing in front.

Of a mirror, high fiving yourself.

Yeah, like, come on, how pathetic does it get? Like, it's really. Is your life that bad? So I snap a photo of myself. I've got my retainer in. I got bedhead. Like, I'm not looking glamorous. I did not expect this to be the photo that would ignite a movement. And within an hour, I posted on my story on Instagram. Within an hour, at least 100 people tagged me all over the world. People high fiving the mirror with their kids. People on a submarine high fiving it in the military, People mma, like, just. And I thought, okay, wait a minute. Maybe I'm not the only one that needs a little boost in the morning. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one that is missing a sense of encouragement and control and confidence in an overwhelming moment in my life. Maybe there's something here. And then the messages started to come in. Whoa, Mel. Like, I have been using this for five days. This woman wrote to us, Louis. She's had body dysmorphia for 20 years, has not been able to look at herself in the mirror. Five days of doing this high five. And she said, I can look at myself and I even see beyond the body. I see the person and I can grin. We had a woman who wrote to us who said that she was in a domestic violence shelter. She had escaped a very abusive relationship. She had seen me talking at our friend Jamie Kurm Lima's event. She started doing the high five thing. She DMs us. And she says that, you know, I have childhood trauma. I've just been in a physically abusive relationship. I've lost everything. I'm in a domestic violence shelter. What this high five in the mirror is teaching me is that I still have myself. And so that was when I said, I got to figure out what's going on. And I started to unpack the research and the research around this simple ritual. I love that you called it a ritual, because I want people to who habit stack this with brushing their teeth. This is so life changing. It's so simple. The science here is like, you can't believe it. And once I unpack it, you're gonna be like, I can't believe how cool this thing is.

So what's the science say?

Okay, so the science. Let's start with the first thing. So the first thing is that when you first try it, okay, you will not be able to raise your hand and high five yourself and be like, you suck, Mel, or today's gonna be terrible. And there's a reason for that. And the reason is that for your entire life, you have given other people high fives. So when you give a high five or you receive one, what is a high five? Just the gesture alone. What does this communicate? If we do this to Each other.

Nice job. Good work. You're doing amazing. Yeah, Keep it up.

Yeah.

I believe in you. I love you. Let's go. If you blow a shot, you gotta get back in the game. A high fives like shot. Shake it off. You can win. And so all of that lifetime of high fiving other people and the messaging associated with it is programmed right here in your subconscious brain. There's a field of study called neurobics, which is about neurobics. I know, I didn't make that up. It's interesting. Physical movement plus new neurological activity. When you marry an unexpected physical movement with new neurological activity, it's the fastest way to forge new neural pathways in your brain. Okay, we know the example, you've covered this on your show of brushing with the wrong hand and thinking positive thoughts. And the reason why that works is because when you're brushing with the wrong hand, it's unexpected. Your brain doesn't expect it. So instead of drifting off about the fact that you need to walk the hand dog, you have to focus. So your prefrontal cortex is engaged. You're not used to high fiving your own reflection. So it's an unexpected physical movement that then activates all of the positive programming in your subconscious. So when you raise your hand and you high five your tired self, Louis, what happens is all of the messaging with this, the high five. I believe in you, I love you, I celebrate you. You got this. Keep going. Come on. It actually fuses with your frickin reflection.

Wow.

It's impossible to criticize yourself.

Yeah.

Your brain won't allow it because it's not wired that way when you're making that motion.

Right?

Isn't that crazy?

Hard to say. You suck. You. You don't matter at anything. It's hard. Yeah.

You can't. You can't. And so this lifetime of positive subconscious programming associated with high fiving other people gets fused with your own reflection in this ritual. That's just the beginning. Okay, that's just the beginning. The second thing that starts to happen that's really interesting. So, you know, we've had a ton of people do this obviously around the world, super easy idea. It's spreading around the world. We start interviewing people about what's going on. And this is what we notice. We notice that one of two things happen when you first try this. So here's how I want everybody to try it. You're going to go into the bathroom and do it before or after you brush your teeth. And that's important because I Want you to make this a ritual that's part of your morning routine. And so we need to stack it with something you already do. And you're going to stand there for a minute. And I want you to look at yourself now that right alone, most of us don't do look at yourself. And I want you to just think about the day ahead. This is based on more research. So recent studies show from the University of Florida that if you take just a minute and you set an intention about how the day is going to go, about who you're going to be, how you're going to show up, what's the one thing that kind of matters to you to really make a difference, to make progress on? If you just kind of set that intention, who am I going to be today? How am I going to show up today? Even if it's a hard day, how are you going to show up? And then you raise your hand and you seal it. Research shows just setting the intention alone changes your mood. It boosts your productivity, it increases your ability to make an impact on other people. And so when you seal it with this high five, it becomes this ritual of setting an intention for the day and also silencing the critic and reprogramming the default setting about how you see yourself, whether or not you believe in yourself. And you leave that bathroom feeling like the wind is at your back now when people do this for the first time. So you're going to stand there tomorrow and you're going to go, okay, Mel Robbins in Sin Lewis. Jeez, sitting here, brush my teeth. Okay, this is stupid. You're gonna just start rejecting it. I guarantee you this is the coolest stuff you're gonna have the biggest resistance to. And so for those of you that just raise your hand and do it, you're gonna immediately be like, why have I not been doing this? It feels good to be encouraged and.

Supported to high vibe yourself.

Yes.

Why have I not had my own back? Why do I stand here and criticize myself? Why do I allow this moment every single morning to be a moment where life takes over and I drift into autopilot? Why am I not taking this moment for me to build a partnership with myself? The second group of people, and this is the larger group, resist it. And this is really interesting. And the reason why you resist it and the reason why it feels weird is because you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration from yourself or from others, period.

Wow.

Why do we think we're not worthy of celebration?

Well, for people that grew up in chaotic, violent or whatever household. It was your lived experience. I think that for many of us, we look back on our lives and, you know, the cognitive negative bias has us focus on the things that went wrong. And so you begin to tell yourself a story about your life that is basically a pyramid of all the things that you regret, of all the things that you wish it had done over, of all the things that you don't like about yourself. And so you drag that with you into the bathroom every morning and you stare at the mirror and you see somebody that has screwed up. You see somebody who's not where you're meant to be. You see somebody who doesn't have the number on the scale or the car that you wanted, or the job that you had hoped for or the relationship that you had always dreamed about. And so standing there, you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration. And it's this deep belief. You know, we talk a lot in the personal development space of oh, I'm not good enough. I actually think that's the polite thing that people say. I believe that people have a much more horrible way of talking to themselves. I can't say it on tv, but I can say it on the Internet. I'm a piece of. I'm worthless. No one will ever love me. I screwed up my life. I'm a failure. I'll never amount to anything. It's too late. I'm a bad person. Like, I think people actually say this to themselves.

Yeah. And they say it over and over again.

Yes.

Daily.

Yes, yes. And just like ruts on a dirt road, it starts to wear in your brain and it becomes the familiar path. And so you stand in front of the mirror and you know, I'm telling you, raise your hand and let all that positive programming you've given to everybody else. We are amazing at celebrating everybody else. We cheer for our favorite sports teams, we buy tickets to our favorite musicians. We throw birthday parties for people, we take on extra work for our colleagues. We help our family members out and our friends out. But when it comes to supporting ourselves, we don't know how to do it. In fact, there's a lot of people that think it's selfish to put yourself first or that you're arrogant. If you do right, I'm here to tell you it is essential to your well being, to your fulfillment, to your happiness, all of it. So if you're feeling resistance, you're either going to feel it because you already have a deep story that you don't deserve it because of your track record, your past, because of what's happening in your life, or you're going to feel resistance because you have been trained to believe that you only deserve that kind of stuff when you're winning. Like, if I don't have that car, I don't get the high five. If I didn't get that promotion, I didn't deserve it. If I am not in a loving relationship, I don't deserve to be celebrated because I'm not actually achieving or doing the things that warrant that. I'm here to tell you I'm on a mission to make every human being realize that if you wake up in the morning and you're breathing and you're standing in front of that mirror and you have survived the stuff you have survived and you are still waking up and trying to do better, you not only deserve a high five, you need it. Because what we also know based on the research, is that empowerment, support, kindness, love, celebration, it is the single most motivating for force on the planet. Tough love is a bunch of baloney. What really fuels people, particularly when you're going through a challenge, is feeling celebrated, seen and supported. And the research bears it out.

Yeah, I can think of the times when I was with on sports teams where I had great loving, encouraging coaches. It made me want to work harder from a more energized place and abundant energy. But when I had the coaches that would just degrade you and put you down and call you names in front of your teammates and make you feel bad, it would drive me to try to be better. But it was always, like, harder. And I never felt satisfied, I never felt fulfilled. I always felt like even when I accomplished something, it still wasn't good enough. And then I repeat that pattern, like, okay, I'm gonna accomplish, but it's not enough to feel loved. And so let me keep accomplishing in order to feel loved. But I still don't love myself because it's not good enough. Yeah, so let me go for the next thing.

Yeah, exactly.

It's funny because I have a photo on my phone that my therapist told me to do this exercise like eight months ago, which was a strategy for me to reclaim the love for myself. So I have a photo of my childhood self. I don't know if people can see this on YouTube, but a photo of me. This is probably when I was like five or six, maybe I was seven. But something that I've tried to do and really been integrating my life is to reconnect with the child where I felt like I stopped loving myself.

Okay, so let's talk about this right now. You ready? So let me talk about this image. So let's talk about the Lewis this age standing in front of a mirror.

Yeah. And what I do is I stand in front of myself as a child, I imagine myself, but to do it. Imagine looking at the mirror as you're standing.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, what I'm trying to say is when you were this age and you stood in front of the mirror, you had a totally different relationship with yourself because you still loved yourself.

Yeah.

You still thought that you were a great kid, and you wanted all the things that the adult Louis wants.

Right.

You want to feel loved, you want to feel seen, you want to feel heard. You want to feel like you matter. And you, in seeing yourself when you were this age, felt those things for you yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. And somewhere along the way, you lost it.

And so what I'm trying to say is that when you stand in front of this mirror, exactly what Lewis is talking about. When you've got coaches that scream at you and degrade you and, you know, sure, it makes you run faster, but it leaves its mark.

It does.

It leaves its mark. And so there's research. So let me talk about why this is so motivating, particularly because so many of the. Your audience love sports, Right. So they did a study where they looked at NBA teams, and what they wanted to take a look at was, does fist bumps, backpack some high fives make a difference in a team winning touch.

Right.

Didn't they do like a 2020 special or something?

I don't know, but if they did, I need to watch it. Yeah, yeah, but so, like, the power of touch. But I think it's deeper. It's the power of encouragement. And so what they found is that in the study, at least in the years that they looked at, you could take a look at the teams that made it to the championships in the NBA, go all the way back to the preseason, and those were the teams that had the most number of fist bumps and back pats and high fives.

Yep.

And the same was true about the teams that were the lowest in the league at the end of the season. They had the least amount of fist bumps, high fives, and touch.

Why?

Least encouraging.

Correct. Those sorts of gestures build trust and partnership. I'm telling you, when you stand in front of a mirror and ignore yourself, you're like the losing NBA team.

Interesting.

Selfish on your own, isolated. You're not in partnership with the person you're Staring at in the mirror. You don't have your own back because you're ignoring yourself.

Yes.

There's another study, and this one is, I think, even more powerful. So they did this study where they wanted to know what's the most motivating thing to help somebody get through a really big challenge. The researchers divide kids into three groups, right? And they gave each of the groups of kids very challenging problems to work through. And they wanted to measure, okay, how resilient, how long would they work? What were their attitudes like? And then they measured it based on, well, what form of praise or support are we going to give each one of these groups? And let's see, what's the most empowering? First group gets what we know to be the fixed mindset stuff. The praise was all verbal praise, and it was simply about a trait. Louis, you are so smart. Louis, you are a super student praising something that is just sort of a compliment about you. The second group of students working on a challenging problem got praise based on work ethics. So something in their control. Oh, Louis, you're working so hard. Louis, you got such good perseverance. Louis, you know, you're really, like, just grinding away over there.

Good job.

Those guys did better than, Louis, you're smart, Louis. Hardworking, better. The third group, the researchers, simply walked up, did not say a word, and high fived the kid.

Really?

That's it?

That's it.

That group, literally exponentially more motivated, worked longer, worked through more challenging problems. Now, here's the big question.

Why?

Why would a simple high five with no verbal praise be more empowering and motivating and inspiring and develop more resilience and confidence and motivation inside somebody? And the reason why is this. A high five affirms your deepest fundamental needs. It's not just a gesture. When you high five somebody, particularly somebody who has either blown the free throw shot or is working on something difficult or going through a really hard time? When you high five them, you're saying, I see you. When you high five them during a challenge, you actually are acknowledging, I know this is hard. So the person feels heard. And because it's one to one, and you have to be really intentional. Like, if you and I go to high five, like, we have to focus on it. That was a good one. If you miss it, what do you do?

You got to do it again.

Correct. So there's an intentionality behind it, and that makes you feel like you're being affirmed as a unique individual.

Interesting.

And so all of those things are in that one gesture. Now it goes even more. So there's even more here. So I was talking to our buddy Dr. Daniel.

Amen. Right.

And so one of the world's leading experts on brains, he's got like 60,000 brain scans.

I think it's like 120,000. Oh, is it at this point crazy?

Yeah.

So he was so excited about the high five habit, he completely geeked out. He's like, oh, my gosh. Yes, yes, yes. He's like, yes, yes. Aerobics. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So we then he said, let me tell you what else is going on, Mel. And I'm like, really? There's more? He said, yeah. He said, you know how when you do it, you. You said you felt like a little kind of boost in your mood? He said, well, there are two things going on there. He said, first of all, when you cross a finish line in a race, what do you do?

Put your hands up.

Yeah.

What do you do when your favorite team sports someone? Yeah, you high five somebody. What do you do at a musical concert?

Yay.

What do you do? You know, you're raising your hand in celebration when you high five somebody or fist bump them or put your arm around them. That raised arm gesture, in a positive sense, triggers your nervous system to tingle with celebration. It's the energy of celebration, even if you're going through something difficult. And even more, you get a dopamine drip when you do this. And so part of the reason why you feel this, this kind of shift in your mood and you feel a little bit of like, oh, okay, I can do. I can face this. I can do this. I got this is because of the dopamine. It's because of the nervous system, and it's because of all of this positive programming associated with that gesture. What keeps a relationship alive is one question. How much do you invest in a relationship? Is a different question. So I'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive, because it's part of. And I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking, this.