Mel Robbins: “Nobody Wants to Hear This! The 2 Keys to Creating ANYTHING You Want in Life!”

Everybody hates this answer. And nobody wants to hear, I don't even want to hear this. Is that there is a skill in life that I didn't learn until I was 41 years old and I was about to lose everything. And the skill is award-winning podcast host, best-selling author, Mel Robbins. Her latest book is called the Let Them Theory. Got a special guest in the building. Yes, she's back. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mel Robbins. I literally believe, Lewis, that success is a matter of not quitting. Like that's what it comes down to. Everything that you want to create in business and in life is possible through action and patience. That's it. And what keeps people, I think, from really achieving what you're capable of are two things. The first one is-- you- know, I.

Just had you on the show a few months ago. Uh-huh. But it was before The madness. It was like the madness was coming. You knew it was about to hit, but it's hit in the last few months in a big way, in a beautiful way. How have you been able to expand your emotional nervous system and your kind of energetic container to be able to--.

No kind of question.

What am I saying? How have you been able to prepare to be able to receive this much abundance?

Oh, it's a Greek-- that is actually And you know what? I just learned that when you say actually, it is like a backhanded compliment. So I did not realize that. You're actually a good question. I'm sorry.

Actually, yeah.

But I have a problem.

It wasn't that bad, yeah.

Right, because it's a filler word for me. So I don't mean it to be that way. It's a great question because there's no question that this is kind of one of the biggest moments of my life. and I think there are going to be times in your life where you're getting married or divorced, right? Or you're having your, a child, or you're giving a eulogy, or you're graduating, or you're launching a business, or you're putting your art out into the world, and you recognize that this is a moment. And so as this thing started to take off and, you know, you said, this is Mel, I've known you for eight years. And, you know, I-- Lewis and I have a very, like, you can probably already tell, a relationship like an older sister, younger brother. And he was the first person to interview me when I self-published the Five Segments Rule book. So this man showed up for me when nobody else knew who I was. I'd never done anything, had no social following, and Lewis kind of plucked me from, excuse me, and supported me. And I think it's so important to remember the people who supported you. And so it's been an interesting experience because I know that this is way bigger than me. I mean, I'm obviously, this is not a new idea that you stress yourself out when you focus on things that are outside your control. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, stoicism, Buddhism, the Serenity Prayer. You know, as you start to use this in your life, you probably remember things your grandparents said to you or things that your parents said around the kitchen table or that you heard at a sermon or at synagogue. And so it's sort of powerful because it's reminding you of something you already know. And so as this started to take off and resonate, and I'm realizing this is one of those moments, I have missed out on so much of my life because I was anxious or afraid or felt like I was undeserving. I was not able to be present and allow it in. that I was like, I am not missing this. And so I asked somebody for some advice and they gave me this kind of visual where they said, I want you to just imagine that you're on a plane and the plane is moving 500 miles an hour at velocity and you're gonna feel like this at times in your life. And what's weird about these moments is that there's this sense of acceleration, but there's also this real slowing down. if you can allow yourself to be present. Like if you've ever been present for a child being born, if you've ever stood at the end of an aisle as your partner is about to walk in.

It's a moment.

It's a moment. And so I have just visualized myself kind of in an airplane that's moving 500 miles an hour, but my job is to sit in the seat, And to have my water or something a little harder and look out the window and occasionally check out the view.

Enjoy the view.

Yes. And I think that it's a useful thing because I've also in the middle of this, you know, things are going on in life and things are going on, you know, with my kids and with my husband and everything's not perfect, but I've even noticed that when stuff feels like it's flying sideways, just having this meditation to say, okay, my life can feel like it's moving super fast, but if I just take a breath and remind myself that I don't need to get caught up in this, I can really just stay present in the moment. And that's what's helped me to kind of allow it in and also just realize it's just so much bigger than me. this is tapped into something. Like, I think there are times in life where there's a lot of negativity, whether it's in your relationship or your family or your community or the world at large. And if you pay attention, there are corresponding positive messages. And I feel that right now in particular, I mean, you all showed up on what night is it tonight? Is it a Monday?

I think it's Monday.

Oh my God, on a Monday night.

Tuesday night.

Tuesday night.

I don't know.

See, I'm not that person.

I love that.

A Tuesday night to be at an inspiring event, because you're the kind of person that wants to grow and learn and surround yourself with other people who do. That is a big deal. Like there are millions of people 20 miles from here, millions and millions, but you chose to be here. That says something about you. And so I also feel that you know, in moments where things feel overwhelming in life, that being somebody that is putting something positive out and showing up for people is more important than ever. And you're doing that by being here and you're doing that by what you do. And so I think kind of you receive, you're able to receive it if you're present and if you realize it's almost never about you.

Interesting. Now, for the last eight years since I've known you and you were You were working really hard in developing your communication skills for many years before then. You've been one of the top speakers in the world. You've had big moments. You're a great content creator, marketer, entrepreneur. You've done a lot of big things in the last eight years. It's not like this is out of nowhere. For those who are entrepreneurs in the room who have been trying to build it and grow it, or maybe are struggling, how did you, I guess, Emotionally prepare yourself. I know I already asked this a little bit, but how did you really emotionally prepare yourself for what was really to come?

I don't think you do. I really don't. No, I'll tell you why, because that question presumes that I somehow was self-aware enough in the middle of the stuff that you're doing to actually think that I need to prepare myself for something else. Now, it's gonna sound like I'm contradicting myself, so. So, I'm- Because you knew this was.

Gonna be big, though. You had a, there was like an energy building up.

Hold on, so let's go, like, so if you go back in time, right? Like one of my favorite things to do, because personally, I personally believe, whether we're talking business, or you're talking building a social media following, or you're talking any kind of art that you wanna take off, any kind of money you wanna make, I literally believe, Lewis. that success is a matter of not quitting. Like that's what it comes down to. It really does. And you know, more than anything else, like I just was like a tenacious person. I'm just like, I'm not gonna stop here. And there were so many things that I did not do well. Not at all. I mean, like in terms of like just the talk show that literally got canceled. 'Cause it sucked. Oh my God, I love you. Thank you for being there. I'll blame the fact that it was canceled on me and not on you, okay?

Here's the thing, it didn't suck though.

I mean, how many episodes did you do?

Well, we taped like 174.

So it can't suck if you do 174 episodes. That's true, but they were airing it.

Like, it can really- But also, there was COVID, right?

It stopped.

Yeah, but COVID- Here's the thing, you're discounting yourself though. I'm gonna stop Mel for a second, 'cause you're discounting yourself.

No, you gotta look at the ratings. People were not watching. And when they don't watch-- But it.

Doesn'T-- you- don't make money.

And then they cancel it. Just 'cause people don't watch doesn't mean it sucks. Okay, now, so hold on. Let's build on this, right? So here's the thing that I developed out of survival. So there are the things that you do out of survival that turn out to be brilliant. And when I was creating some of the things that I'm about to share with you, they were not because I was brilliant, it was because I was trying to keep myself going, especially in times when I needed to pay bills and I needed to get out of debt. And so whenever I felt like quitting, I would literally have a pep talk with myself and I would say, this is not how my story is going to end. I just refuse to believe that. And I refuse to believe that this is how it ends. And so I would say those kinds of things to myself, even though I felt like this is the end. And I just made the stupidest decision I could have ever made, or I just lost more money, or that didn't work out, just another twist, another. And so that's one thing that I would do. The second thing that I would do, Louis, is there's this thing that I do with time traveling. where I go to the past and I go to the future. So it's easy in this moment. I don't know where you are in your business. I don't know where you are in your career or your life. But it is easy to sit in this moment and to look backwards and to make sense of all of the twists and turns that have happened to you, right? And to say to yourself, okay, I can see the lessons. I can see how I grew. I can see how that made me stronger. It is a very important skill to take that ability of making sense of the past and actually project it forward. And this is how you develop faith in yourself and your capability to see yourself through the twists and turns that life is going to demand of you. And so as you sit in this moment, the skill to develop from this point forward is to look ahead and tell yourself that I have faith that this moment too, just like every moment I can see in the past, is but a brick on the path of my life that is leading me towards something I cannot see yet. And I have faith that whatever this experience is delivering no matter how much it blows, no matter how painful it is, no matter how much I don't deserve this, that this too will be part of the thing that gets me to something even greater. And that is how I built what you're talking about, but never in a million years, like I have big aspirations and goals, just like everybody here. That's why you're here on a Tuesday night.

Right?

You're investing in yourself, you're learning, you're surrounding yourself with incredible people that want to do the same. And so even though I had amazing goals, like this is completely just blown apart what I ever thought was possible for myself.

It's crazy. In a good way.

Completely shocked and humbled by it all.

What was the goal of like, okay, I'm going to launch this book and did you have like a number in mind of how big it would be? And then it just went so far above and beyond, is that what happened?

Oh, like, I just had always thought that it would be great to have a book that I don't like, I don't even know. Like, I wasn't even thinking like 10 million copies of this, that or the other. Like, who sells that many books? Who's even reading books? Right? I mean, I so I just never thought, because it's bigger than that. It is something that has transcended the 322 pages. It is caught wind at a moment in time where everybody needs help focusing on what's in your control so that you can focus on what's meaningful and so that you can protect yourself from outside stressors that are draining your time and energy. Like never more in my life has this been more important or more relevant? And so I never ever, Louis, thought that it would, I would be, I never thought that I would just be somebody that this many people knew about or that my work would be this public. Like I know the impact of the five second rule. I know that how that has spread around the world. We know of more than a thousand people that have taken the time to write to us who did not die by suicide because they use the five-second rule in a moment to stop themselves and ask for help. And so I thought that is the most extraordinary thing that could ever happen to a person, to put something out into the world that actually helps people and saves lives. So to think that this tool has so far eclipsed that, It's just unreal.

And what have you done before you got here? I was talking about the weight of gold. There's a documentary called the Weight of Gold, which is where Olympians kind of sabotage themselves after they win the gold medal.

Oh, I'm never reading another book, because I can't top this. That's what you mean.

No, not that. Not that. But how have you stayed present within yourself to make sure you don't sabotage yourself with the success? Like how have you said like, oh, am I actually deserving of this or am I actually worthy of this?

How have you made sure you've been able to say, I don't think about that. You don't think about it? No, because I know how hard I work writing that book with my daughter and how much research went into it.

And the experts and you don't have.

Any doubt around like, Zero. That's good. Zero, because here's the other thing, I don't, like I'm very proud of the impact, I'm just proud that people are reading a book. I'm proud that people are interested in this moment in time in reading a nonfiction book, a self-help, are you kidding me? And that they're, I know they're reading it, why? Because they're recommending it to people. And so I think it's bigger than a book because to me that's a sign of hope that people are taking time and turning it inward to improve themselves, which is how you create a ripple effect that improves everything. And so, you know, I guess, the one thing that I'm doing is I feel very lucky because we live in Vermont, right? So it is not, I could not live in LA.

It's peaceful in Vermont.

Oh, there's mountains, there's trees, there's, you know, we raised our family here in Boston. And then we moved to southern Vermont and my son went to high school up there. It is not in my face. It is easy to not get full of yourself. When you wake up and there's bear poop in your driveway and you shop at a hardware store for your groceries and nobody cares. And honestly, I don't either. And so I feel like I'm removed from the noise. that is media and the machine and all the stuff that could really trip me up. And since it's not my face, I don't really think about it.

That's amazing. But I know your story from in your early 40s, I think it was like 800,000 or a million dollars in debt.

19 miles from here, everybody. Right by Framingham. Yep, 19 miles, 2008, $800,000 in debt. My husband had restaurants in the Boston area.

So how do you build belief after having big financial failures? How do you continue to show up again and again and not just say, I am a failure, not this was a failure.

Right. Everybody hates this answer.

Yeah.

Because it's not a pill. No, it's serious. And it's not like a quick fix and it's not one thing. I literally will tell you. what changed my life was getting out of bed when I didn't feel like it. And the reason why that's important, and it's the same thing that you talk about, and nobody wants to hear it, I don't even wanna hear this, is that there is a skill in life that I didn't learn until I was 41 years old and I was about to lose everything. And the skill is, can you do the things you need to do when you don't feel like doing them? It's that simple. Everything that you want to create in business and in life is possible through action and patience. That's it. And if you only did the things you don't feel like doing, you would have everything you wanted.

It's true. Being a champion is not a sassy life. No. Being a champion, like being an athlete from the sports world, even the greatest athletes in the world, they live a very boring life because they get up and they do groundhogs day over and over. They get up. At 5:00 a.m. when they don't wanna wake up, they eat whatever the same food every morning, they go to the gym the same way, and they just do the same repetition, win or lose, until they get to what they want. It's not sexy.

It's boring. Actually, it's grueling, it's boring, it's the reason why it's a game of not quitting. Because you gotta be willing to do all of the things you don't wanna do. You gotta be willing to do all of the stuff that's boring and grueling, , on the days no one's watching, nobody cares, nobody's there to help you, it's just you against you. And that's why I'm gonna go back and say, if you can't haul your out of bed on those mornings on time, when you don't feel like it, you're not gonna achieve your goals. Because you're not gonna make the cold call that you need to, 'cause you're not gonna feel like it. You're not going to say no to a deal that's a bad deal for you, because you feel like you need it. Like, you're gonna get your emotions All jacked up and they're gonna run you over. And so when I say, how did I build belief in myself? I did it the only way I know how. It's in proving that I believed in myself and that I could keep my word to myself no matter how I felt. And that begins every morning when the alarm rings. It's a daily battle. Like even though I invented this thing 5-4-3-2-1 to get you out of bed, I still have to use it Like, I think it's a mistake. Like every time you and I interview an expert that studies habits and they say, well, it's 21 days or it's 60 days or it's just, I'm like baloney. That's only if you like it. Like, because there are things that have never become a habit for me, Louis. Like, I hate unloading the dishwasher. I have to force myself to do it. I hate folding laundry. I have to force myself to do it. There are going to be things in your life that you always hate doing. doing? Do it anyway. And get over yourself. Because that's actually what's standing in the way of what you want. You know, it's easy to look at Lewis or me and be like, oh, well it's so easy in the head. Are you kidding? It's boring. You get up at 5:30 in the morning, you go to the gym, you then get, I got over to the studio, we had our first meeting at 7:40, where's Cameron? Is Cameron still here? Cameron, there she is, one of our senior producers right there for the Mel Robbins Podcast. Yeah! Cameron was there 7:45. She'll tell you, I'm just as cranky at that point. You know, like, run this thing. I was there till 8:30 tonight. We'll be back up tomorrow at 5:40 in the morning. Like, this is what it looks like. And so for me, how you believe in yourself is that if you can get out of bed enough days in a row, and all you need, in my opinion, is 70%. I'll even give you 60%. If you can get 51%, like let's shoot low, everybody. If you can get out of bed more days than not, when you don't feel like it, you're proving to yourself that you can rely on yourself to be bigger than the emotions in the moment. And that's what you need in life to keep going. And so it didn't come overnight. It came over time.

Yep.

And there are plenty of times where you're not gonna believe in yourself. And that's when I use those tools that I shared, which are saying, like, I refuse to believe that things end here. And then that's when I remind myself everything that has been really awful or good or anything has led me here, which means this awful thing is actually gonna leave me there. And the other thing that I have recently started to think a lot about, I really feel like there are only two things that hold people back. And I'm not talking about the big external factors because there are very real factors that limit what's possible for you to achieve in a day. And I think it's very important to say that. Like the amount that I can get done in a 24-hour window today is very different than what I could get done 14 years ago when I have three kids who are home and I can't pay my bills and I have no help. And so don't be beating yourself up when you see that quote like, yeah, everybody's got the same 24 hours. No, we don't. That is a lie. But you can do a lot with the time that you have. And one of the things though that I think I've come to believe is that there's only two things that are actually stopping you from getting the results that you want over time. And what keeps people, I think, from really achieving what you're capable of are two things. The first one is discouragement. I think this is the single biggest obstacle.

Discouraging yourself?

Yeah, just pure discouragement because, you know, let's just, like, admit to ourselves, we live in this crazy amazing moment of time where you could never, ever, ever say with a straight face or use an excuse, I don't know how. Go to ChatGPT.

Go to Google.

No, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. Literally go to ChatGPT and say, Act like the world's best life coach or business consultant. Here's the thing I want to create. Give me a 60-day plan. Tell me what to do every day for 15 minutes that will actually create that. Your jaw will hit the floor. And we literally had this thing happen with our podcast. We were having trouble with upload speeds in terms of getting files thing. And the team's been working on it, working on it. And I finally said, Will you just put our equipment in ChatGPT and ask it how to solve this? Honest to God, you guys. 30 seconds later. Let's spit out the answer. We've been struggling with this for a year. So here's the thing though, information only makes you smart. It doesn't make you do it. And so you can be holding the answer in your hand. You can read Lewis's book, which is fantastic, and you can learn everything that you need to know in terms of the blueprint. But if you are discouraged, you won't do it because you will believe it's not gonna work for you.

So how do we overcome discouragement?

That's a great question. I don't know.

But that's the first thing. So there's two things. Discouragement. And what do you think are some ways that could help us get out of that? Obviously, your method 54321 gets you moving. But even if you're moving, you could still be doubting or discouraging yourself.

Yes. Well, so the thing about using 54321 to push through is I felt so discouraged. That's why I wasn't getting out of bed back then. Because I believed there was nothing I could do to get out of the financial mess that we were in. I believed that getting out of bed or looking for a job or laying off the drinking or not screaming at my husband, why would I do it? Like it's not gonna work. It's not gonna matter. And if you can get yourself in that rut, it's not gonna matter, then why would you do it? And so the interesting thing about that moment in time is that I don't know that anybody could have necessarily gotten through to me because I was so convinced. And you know how you can get so right about how stuck you are?

Yeah, very righteous.

Yes, yeah. It's kind of a way to stay in control, as weird as that is. And so I believe that the best way for me anyway was simply that countdown thing, 5-4-3-2-1, move. And what happened for me is that the action started to prove that there were little things that didn't fix the big problems, but they at least shifted a small thing in me. And again, it doesn't change overnight, it changes over time. So that's one thing. I think the other thing that's really important, honestly, and you're actually already doing it, which is pay attention to input. If you feel discouraged in your life listening to Lewis, being here on a Tuesday night where you know he's not gonna come here and be like, you're all are losers and you're never gonna achieve your stuff, and this book is not for you because you're gonna be broke. Now, you knew you were gonna get encouragement. And so seeking it out is a really important thing to do when you recognize you can't do it for yourself. And so you can catch that from other people. And you're doing that. And so I think those are two things. And then there's another exercise that I love that I typically do around happiness, but I think you could do this in your life right now. Take out a piece of paper. This was something that I just stumbled upon with my daughter. I'm not sure I've told you this story. I'm not sure.

I don't know.

Okay, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We share a lot, so I don't know. Our daughter, after college, graduated completely just depressed. Which one? Sawyer. Okay. The one that I wrote the book about. Yeah, okay. So she graduates from college completely depressed. Why was she depressed? Oh, my God. COVID had blown up two years of college. And when you're all disappointed because you feel like you missed out on graduation and you missed out on senior year and you missed out on this, and she had put on weight and she had been drinking too much, and all of a sudden the friends have scattered and she is home and she's going to a job in cyber security, which she was not excited about. And so she's just like, bumped. And so she had this breakdown. She was crying like crazy. And when she was finally done crying, we sat down and I said, here's what I said. What do you think is going to make you happy? She's like, I don't know. I don't know what's going to make me happy. And I'm like, okay. Here's the thing, hon. I think you do. Take out a piece of paper. And you can do this at any moment in your life. It's the greatest exercise. Draw a line down the center. I want you to now think about a moment in your life where you just felt happier. You don't even have to be like, this is the happiest moment. When were you happier? When did you feel a little bit better? And the first thing that popped out of her mouth was senior year in high school. And first thought of mine was, well, that's kind of sad because that was like four years ago. But okay, didn't say that because you don't want to hit somebody when they're down. So I said, great, I want you to describe a day in the life. What time did you get up? What did you eat for breakfast? What did you do during the day? Who did you see? What did you do after? And she said, I got up at 6:30. I ate breakfast. I went off to school. I was with my friends all day. We then hung out because we had lacrosse practice. I was dating somebody. I would party on the weekends. I was looking forward to going to college. I'm like, great, okay, that looks like I can see why you felt better. All right, let's describe your life now. Sleep till one, I wake up hungover, I don't know what to do all day, I feel terrible, I'm out of shape, I'm not exercising, I don't see my friends, I'm not looking forward to everything. I'm like, okay, compare. Your life provides a map to the things that actually make you feel good. Yes. You just forgot. And so if you do that exercise, what you are going to see is a roadmap for what you have done at times in your life that actually make you feel like you and make you, like, lift you up. And I don't remember who said this. It might have been you. I once heard somebody say that if you ever feel stuck and you don't know what to do, the single most important project to take on is yourself. And taking on improving yourself, whether that's your health, or whether that's learning something new, or whether that's finally facing your finances, or whether that's to claw back more time on the weekends and take on a project that you've been pushing aside, whether it's launching your YouTube channel or figuring out affiliate marketing or starting a podcast or getting your real estate license or going back to school, When you take on yourself as a project, you now create a sense of direction that gives your life meaning. And that's always going to lift you up. So I think that's how you do it.

Can you think of a time where you were accomplishing a lot of things and outwardly had a lot of success or things looked good or you were building something and people were acknowledging for it, but you didn't feel good about you?

You mean like my 20s, my 30s, my 40s, and a lot of my 50s?

Is there like a season, like a six month or one year season where you're like, Man, it looked like everything was really great, or my business was blowing up, or this, or people were saying, you,'re incredible, but I didn't feel good.

I think a lot of my life has felt like that. Don't you guys feel like that?

Even when you're successful?

Yes. Yes. Because if you have not worked out yourself and your relationship with yourself, It does not matter what's happening on the outside. That's like the clothes you wear. That's what everybody sees. If you hate yourself, if you still are beating yourself up for the mistakes that you made, if you're holding that over your head like ransom for your happiness, success does not make you happy. Like, I started too late. Thank God I did, but I started too late in earnest looking at my relationship with myself.

Really?

Yeah, I think that we all make the mistake. And there's a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists and incredible researchers out there that talk about this. This is not my field of expertise, but I have lived it in terms of hating myself and holding past mistakes over my head and feeling like I'm a bad person. And so many of us chase achievement and tell ourselves that if we just get a million followers, if we just have a million dollars in the bank, if we just drive the right car, if we just have the right clothes, if we're just in the right friend group, then those things on the outside somehow repair the things on the inside. Those are just the things you're doing. How you're feeling about yourself is the game. And the faster you can dedicate time and energy to looking at who you are and what you can learn from the mistakes that you've made and how you forgive yourself for the things that you did that hurt other people and the things that you've done to yourself that hurt you so that you can step fully into the next chapter of your life feeling like you've got your arm around your own shoulder. Like, that is the greatest gift you could ever give to yourself.

Yes.

For real.

Absolutely.

Like, and I also think back to your question, it's one of the reasons why I am humbled profoundly by what is happening in my career right now. But I'm very clear this is a job. My identity is not the podcast for this book, full stop. And it wasn't until I could get good with myself and the kind of person that I am and forgiving myself for the mistakes that I've made in the past instead of just constantly relentlessly beating myself up over regrets and like waking up every day and feeling like I've done something wrong and trying to prove that it wasn't until I got to the point that I was good with myself that you have this very detached experience about the things that happen out there. It's great. It's a measure of the impact that you make, but it doesn't change anything about how I feel about myself. And I never, ever, ever even knew that it was possible to be good with yourself. That's how much I trashed myself.

Wow. When did you start to take that journey for yourself where you said, I'm good with me, no matter what happens in career or numbers or money?

I think that I didn't realize that I had actually achieved this breakthrough for myself until the success of this project. And I just completely felt detached from how successful this thing was.

So in the last few months?

Yes. And I've been working very, very, very hard to look at the stuff that went down in childhood, the things that I did that were crazy unhealthy coping mechanisms in especially my late teens and my 20s and, you know, even into my early 30s.

What were some of those?

Oh, God, how long do we have? I think like 23. I mean, everything, everything from the drugs to the drinking to the stealing to cheating on people to like, like, I literally will bump into old boyfriends and be like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry you met me. like when I didn't realize I had childhood trauma and I had been the victim of this. And, you know, I'd repressed all these memories. And instead, I had a form of ADHD that was not diagnosed. It was the type that makes you, like, really impulsive and you have really low dopamine. And so, like, you literally are seeking thrill-seeking behaviors, like, you know, shoplifting or, you know, cheating on nice guys.

And, oh my God, I'm really sorry.

And they're like, great to see you, too. Oh, wow. You used to beat yourself up a lot. Daily.

Every day.

Oh my God, I mean, am I the only one that would literally you sent a text, you're like, oh my God, Lewis did not text back. Is Lewis mad at me? I have not heard from Lewis in a day. Is something going on with Lewis? Like, I must have done something wrong. And so I, and I now know because I've spent enough time just like you have and like you do because you listen to Lewis, hearing from experts and going, oh wait a minute. Hold on a second. Why is my default thought that I've done something wrong? Why am I so hard on myself? Why am I so busy that I cannot actually sit still?

Interesting.

And, you know, I didn't even realize you guys how, and it's a double-edged sword because, you know, if you're going to be an entrepreneur and successful in business, you know, you got to have a drive. You know that you're signing up for 80-hour weeks. You know that there is going to be amount of go, go, go that is part of the job and the demand of actually going after something big. That's just what you're signing up for. But what I started to realize, and I don't know if any of you have had this epiphany, but you certainly have, I've noticed, that I actually was busy as a default. And I didn't realize this until the pandemic hit and there's nowhere to go. And then all of a sudden you get all fidgety because you can't run to Target or you can't run to the coffee shop or you can't run to see your friends or you can't run over here. And I started to, and then we moved to Vermont and I'm like, oh my God, there are no people, there's nowhere to go. And you know, my skin is crawling and I started to realize that my resting state was go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

And that sounds exhausting.

It was exhausting. I think most, and actually the research now shows, this comes from Dr. Aditi NuraKar over at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess. She runs their massive stress management clinic. Her research shows that 83% of people are actually living in a state of chronic fight or flight, meaning your amygdala is going. So if you're procrastinating more than ever, if you feel on edge, if you feel more irritable, if you are struggling to focus more than ever, the issue is that your stress response is running you. And that was me. And if I go back through my history, I had an incident happen in fourth grade where I woke up and we were in a big family ski trip thing with a bunch of other families and I woke up, I was sound asleep, so a moment when you're safe and resting, and I woke up to an older kid on top of me. Ooh. And I rolled over and I don't remember what happened next. And then the next morning, I woke up and I had the sheets over me and my immediate, 'cause I'm in like my 10-year-old body, I immediately sense something's wrong. And then part of the human wiring when you're little, and I didn't know any of this stuff you guys till I'm like in my 40s, that the human design is such that when you're a little kid, you don't have something. This is from Dr. Paul Conti at Stanford. He, who is one of the world's leading experts on trauma. I always thought trauma was like, you've been to war, you've been the victim of violent crime, like something like wildly horrific had happened to you. It was a whole new thing for me to understand that trauma is any experience that actually is remembered in the body in an alarm state. It gets recorded in your nervous system. So this happens to me. I wake up at 10 years old. My first experience is something bad's happened. And then because you're little, you developmentally do not have something called attribution. Attribution is a human being's availability or a human being's ability to look outside yourself and attribute what you're feeling. to somebody else. So little kids, I think this is one of the cruelest things about the human design. Little kids do not have attribution. So when your mom or dad came home, and some people have that experience where you hear a car pull up on the gravel driveway and you freeze a little.

Or you get excited.

Well, yeah, that's a positive one. But if you freeze a little.

Oh, yeah.

That's because when some people came home when you were little, you know what happened. And so if you still do that, or if you hear a crack of a beer can open and something like somewhere just makes you tense, that is what I'm talking about. So I, of course, didn't go, that kid's the problem. I did, I did. I am. And do you know I suppressed that memory? I don't know why. And I recalled it in my early 30s. and then I didn't know what to do with it and I was too embarrassed to talk about it. And then I started to learn more about this in my 40s and it suddenly made sense. Oh my God, no wonder I wake up every morning and I think I've done something wrong or something's wrong. Because this is what my body's been doing since I was 10 years old. This is a stored memory. And if you grew up in a chaotic household or you grew up with parents where you didn't know what mood people were gonna be in and so you kind of wake up, This is one of the most common experiences that people have that you don't realize it's actually tied to what it was like to be a kid. So that was kind of the beginning of all this unwinding and just really going deep and going, I don't want to freaking live like this. And I could have a choice. There are things I could do to just make my body settle.

Right. So before you share how you did that, how you started settling it, I don't know if you guys are hearing a theme tonight. But I talked about memories and the meaning we give our memories create a belief within us that we hold on to until and that belief influences our behaviors and we consistently show up that way until we're able to reflect and take a step back and say, why am I doing these things? What's causing me to react this way? Why am I responding this way? Why do I tense up in these situations? And so you started to reflect on that.

Yeah.

And what helped you start to heal, process, let go of, and integrate feeling emotionally safe within you again whenever you used to feel like you were doing something wrong, and now you can feel more safe within you no matter what is happening around you?

It's a great question. So for me, because you talked about memory and story and that stuff, it goes a layer deeper because I think, and I know you're incorporating this with memory, but for me, it was important to have this epiphany moment where we're like, oh my God, this is about the sensations in my body.

Your nervous system.

Yes. Yes. Like it's about that kind of, am I actually calm? Or does my body feel like I am a car at a stoplight and I'm revving the gas?

Yeah.

And that was what it felt like to be me all the time.

24/7.

24/7. And so there's a million things you can do. I mean, and I think what's really exciting about it is, What's, you know, kind of sad and exciting? Sorry. Is that to think I lived for so long like that because I didn't know? And it didn't take a long time for my body to learn a different way. Really? Yes.

But what was the awareness that you had and the process you used personally to start to feel more safe?

Okay, well, so the first Awareness that you need is to go, I don't want my life to feel like this anymore. That's all you need.

Making a decision.

Yes. You need to say, I don't want my life to feel like this. And you could insert, I don't want my job to feel like this. I don't want my body to feel like this when I wake up. I don't want my relationships to feel like this. I don't want my stress like, you can just literally saying the way that my life is right now no longer works for me. That's all you need to do. And then I would write out what exactly is it? And for me, it was like, I hate waking up and feeling a sense of dread. And then it was like, I hate feeling on edge all the time. And then it was like, there were just a lot of things. And so when I started to learn about the fact that a lot of this is driven by your nervous system, there are so many things you can do to program your nervous system. And what works for me, and the good news is there's not one thing that works for everybody. And what I love about having multiple things that you can do is that there are going to be different days where different things work. And so if you just think about it, like here's how I think about it, because I like metaphors, I like visual stuff, it really helps me think about this. So I think about your nervous system, like there's electrical wires all through this building that we can't see.

Right?

And the lights are turned on. And I think about those moments when my body starts to do one of these and I go on edge or I feel myself getting a little too like ramped up about something. So you know you're not an idiot. You know when you're calm and when you're present. You also know when you're like super stressed out or you're starting to feel that the engine is revving. The way that I think about it is when my Fight or flight engine revving nervous system goes, the lights are blinking. They're blinking. Oh yeah, because you feel it, it's like it's like, and so what does that mean? It means there's like some kink in the wire somewhere in my nervous system. Who knows if it's from the kid when I was in fourth grade or something that I don't remember that one of, you know, who knows where it came from. I just know that this is, it's happening. So now it's my job to switch, to find the switch. Because if I turn the switch off on a light that's flanking, you know, when you lower dimmer on a blinking light, it's not so annoying anymore. All of a sudden, it's a little calm. That switch is the vagus nerve. Vagus nerve runs from your seat, through your major organs, through your vocal cord, all the way to the top of your head. This is the on/off switch for your nervous system. It's how you switch between the blinking light to turn it down a little bit, and now everything's calm. Everything's steady. And there's a bazillion things you can do. You can hum. Like you can't have a panic attack in church because as you're singing a hymn and your vocal cords are vibrating, it's actually what they call toning the vagus nerve. Cold plunging is a way to tone the vagus nerve. And cold plunging also works because you are putting yourself in a setting, whether you're in the shower or the bathtub or the ice bath, where all of a sudden the lights start to blink. You get in that cold water, it's like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And then as you breathe, you're hitting that dimmer switch and you're bringing it down. Meditation, another way that you can do it. There are so much, like just go to ChatGPT and say, I would like, act like the world's best psychologist and tell me what to do twice a day to tone the vagus nerve and actually calm my nervous system. And there you'll have the answer. And then you're gonna, that's not gonna work for me, I'm not gonna do it, 'cause I'm discouraged. And then you're now going to use 54321, I'm gonna do it.

I don't know if anyone here has ever done this. I don't know if you've ever done this where you felt the blinking, you felt the stress, and you've tried to get someone else to stop what they're doing to cause that stress within you. Yes.

I don't know the- It's called marriage. It's called marriage. parenting. Work.

W that's what you say though, you know?

You know, yeah, you mean, like all the emails you if you' ever it's like tiipt, they' like best. S, you know what I mean? Like when you do that?

Yeah. But I mean when you try to when you try to control or stop someone else from doing something, that's causing you to react stressed out. Oh, yeah And trying to Control everything in your environment except for managing yourself.

Yes. Have you heard of the Let Them Theory?

Yeah, is that something you used to do though?

Yes, of course. Well, because other people are annoying and they stress you out and they worry you. And so this is the problem. We all have a fundamental need for control, right? It makes you feel safe. I need to feel in control of Like, even, like, Lewis, I'll give you an example. You ready?

Oh, what I feel. Okay?

Like, so Lewis, like, comes back as you guys were sharing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes.

Yeah, I said, you got five more minutes? Are you good? Yeah, I'm like, I'm great, I'm great. And so literally, like, 11 minutes go by. Yeah, yeah, and she's like, I'm good. Right, and now I can't control him. Oh, yeah. And I'm starting to feel it. So now I'm like, okay, should I sit? And I'm like, let him, let him. I'm standing backstage, and I'm now starting starting to get like, okay, what's happening? I can't control what's happening out here. So let him do that and let me just stand back here and take a deep breath and be so proud of my friend who is here in Boston, in the town where we raised our kids with all of you amazing people. But how many times have you felt yourself getting stressed in the grocery store line or stressed on the Mass Pike? I mean, how irritating is that when they close the tunnel? What idiots are painting the tunnel on a money, let them, right? Right? So yes, see what happens is when other people's behavior is annoying or bothers you or stresses you out or upsets you, it makes you feel out of control.

Yes.

Nothing makes me feel more out of control than when I need a red eye from Dunkin Donuts and the line is really long in the morning, you know what I'm saying? And so I just you tend to then make this mistake when other people are upsetting you of controlling what they're doing.

And that's something you did for a long time.

My whole life. I still do it. That's why I need the Let Them Theory to stop myself from doing it. We all do it because we have a need to be in control and other people's behavior often makes you feel out of control. I mean, have you ever If I think back to some of my relationships before I met Chris, when somebody breaks up with you, and then you're the loser that's trying to control what happened, bring them back, and hang around and make yourself better looking so that they'll take you back. That's a form of control, right? Because you're trying to take away the pain by making them do something. And it took me a very long time. I'm clearly a slow learner about these life lessons.

So, so, because that seems like something that was holding you back for most of your life. This idea of trying to control other people and stuff like that.

Everybody is trying to control the environment.

Or whatever it might be. And so when was the exact moment, because I've heard you say it a bunch of times, but for people who haven't heard it, when was the exact moment, this epiphany of, I'm gonna let people be themselves and not try to control every situation. Well, my mother will tell you she's.

Been telling me to do this my entire life. Sure. And she even has a pillow. She's like, I came up with, The let me part, it's this pillow where she's like, pull up your big girl panties and deal with it. You know, the joke about this whole thing is you and I both created content like, stop caring about what people think. And, you know, the concepts have been out there forever. But I'll tell you something. The time that it hit me, when it landed.

Yeah.

A freaking sledgehammer.

Yeah.

'Cause you can talk about stuff all you want. You can read concepts all you want. Like, you know how many books I've read about stoicism? My husband is a Buddhist. I can't let anything go for God's sake.

Like, I understand these.

I've read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning is one of my favorite books of all time. Like, what's happening out there doesn't have to control what's happening in here. That your power is in your attitude and your response to things. They're not new ideas. I've even talked about these. I've interviewed experts on these things. When it hit me, like a ton of bricks, you know, when you're ready, the teacher appears. I don't know who said, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And you better be careful, because it's gonna be really annoying who shows up. And who showed up for me, and there's such irony to this, is because this was at my, when the power of this hit me at my son's high school prom, because I was a micromanaging freak. Have any of you ever sent anybody to a prom or had a mother who controlled you at your prom, right? So I just was like all upset about things and like, OK, you got to bring a corsage. She doesn't want a corsage. I know better. You've never been a prom. You need to bring a corsage. We get to the pre-photo party and we take the photos and then all of a sudden it starts to rain and all these kids are like, well, we think we're gonna go on the rain. I'm like, you,'re not going in the rain. Look at these new fancy sneakers that you got. And like, what do you-- and they're like, we're gonna go to the taco-- you're going to a taco bar? your tux is going to get wet, your sneakers are going to, and my daughter was home. And here's the irony of this, you ready? When my daughter's prom happened, she was such a raging, controlling, dare I say, entitled piece of work that we had A knockdown argument at a hair salon in Natick.

The day off?

The day of the, oh yeah, 'cause we had this spray tan and the nails and the whole thing and she got her hair done. I mean, it's like a thousand, I can't say dollars. And she doesn't like the way the women made the makeup. I lost my mind, Louis. screaming at her, I stormed out of the salon. Your father's gonna have to drive you. You better call. And I left. Yes. -huh. And her father had to go get her. Wow. Yes. And he had to pay for this stuff. I was so angry at how much of an attitude she had. I'm like, this is a prom. It's not like, come on, you're not on the COVID of Vanity Fair. Right. You're going to a public high school prom. But I'm the idiot paying for this stuff. So of course I'm, so anyway, it's a whole story. Anyway, okay, so.

This is the irony.

This is the irony. So guess who the teacher is in this story? That daughter. Because she's home and I'm starting to like go, like, you can't go out in the sneakers and this, that, and the other. My husband's standing there. My mother-in-law is there. My son is there. He's like kind of inching away from me. And my daughter reaches over and grabs me and she has like fake nails so it like goes in the bicep, which basically, I think, snaps me out of like the ha and into the moment. And she's like, Mom, you're being annoying. You know, if they want to go outside, let them. If they once they get to see it, let them. It's like this cascade of let them, let them, let them, let them. And then she's like, it's their prom, not yours. Let them do what they want. And then she like released the nails. And Louis, honest to God, all I said to myself was like, why the hell do I care about this? And it's not like at that point I'm like, I'm gonna write a book. That's not what it, that's not what happened. And so I literally just started to say those words. I'm at Home Depot. You ever been to Home Depot in the Garden Center on a nice weekend? And they got one cash register open and you got the flatbed and there's like five things in front of you and it's like beep, beep, beep. Anybody got a price on these impatiens? Oh my God, they're $1.99. I gotta get to Dunkin' Donuts, I'm ready to kill somebody. Right? And so you feel the volcano, and I'm just like, okay, Mel, let them. And that was how it started. That's how it started. And then we did a podcast episode about it as I started to use it, and it started to go, I just like, it became a thing. And then as the podcast episode took off, People started writing articles about it and sending in tattoos. And the last time I had seen anything with tattoos was the five-second rule. Because I've received 10,000 tattoos with 543-200 rockets. And so I just was like, wow. And the truth is, I don't like to write books. I'm dyslexic. I have ADHD. I thought, okay, well this is like one of those little books. This is like a book, like a graduation speech book. Like, you know the books that you read on the toilet? that are like you buy them at like urban outfitters or something, you know what I'm saying? Like maybe we could do one of those. And then we just started digging it and it was so deep and rich and the stoicism and the themes, like when I went on the, what's been so incredible about this experience is that I feel like your grandparents and all of our ancestors are part of this. Like when I sat with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 's son, Martin, and his wife, Andrea, as we were talking about this on their podcast, My Legacy Podcast, he literally looked at me and said, Mel, this is my father's teaching.

Wow.

You know, because no response doesn't mean you're giving in. Choosing peace is not surrender. Choosing peace is a form of power.

Wow, that's true.

And so to see this reflected back in the ways that you make it your own, whether it's the shirts that you're making or it's the let them for realtors, let them for parents, let them for entrepreneurs. Because if you're gonna build a business, you gotta learn to let people not do business with you. You gotta learn to let people not understand what you're doing. You gotta learn to let your family have their opinions. and you gotta let me stay focused on the simple things you are not doing right now that you know you need to do that will actually create everything that you want. And the fact is, and this brings me to the second thing, after, I know there's like 55 things, I'm sorry, take away, take away, is that I said that the two obstacles, only two that you have, one is when you're discouraged, Uh huh. The second is when you doubt your capability. And the only reason why I think you doubt your capability is because you're too concerned about what other people are going to think about it. That's the biggest source of your doubt. And you don't even realize it. Yeah. Because you stop when you hesitate. And the only thing you're considering is how other people are going to react. or what their mood's gonna be, or what their expectations are. And so when you recognize, wow, I can go to ChatGPT, write my business plan and give me the plan, and it can tell me day by day what to do, every day this year to lead to a certain result, that it is right there. And now all I have to do is, I gotta let other people do what they're gonna do, and then I gotta let me remind myself every morning when I wake up, even when I don't feel like it, Dammit, I'm going to do it. Because that's how I create the things that I want in my life.

There you go. I love that. I got one final question, and I asked everyone to do this when you weren't here yet, I don't think. And the question is, what are a couple things you're most grateful for today?

Oh, well, today I'm grateful for you.

Grateful for you.

Grateful for you.

Yeah.

Grateful for you. Lewis is a great friend. You know, one thing that I will tell you about, like, really good friends. Like you would look at Lewis and I and you would think we're competitors, right? Because we're in the same industry. Like one of the greatest things about Lewis is he is like the world's greatest supporter. And the mistake that everybody makes, I learned this too late as well and I'm so grateful that I know this now. You might be surprised to know that so many of us that have podcasts are actually really great friends. And you know, but it's not, of course.

Not all of them. Not everyone.

Not everyone. But so the thing that's important though, I think it was on Jay's podcast, was it Selena Gomez that said this?

What did she say?

I didn't. Well, I think that's who he said. I think that this is who, like when he shared this sentiment, 'cause I'm like, Jay, you're right. He said, the mistake that people make is you actually think the other people that own restaurants or who are in real estate or other entrepreneurs that you're competing against them. Actually, they should be your best friends and here's why. Because your family has no idea what you're going through. Chris, Martha, they have no, well, Martha has a podcast. And she's also got a huge career and is kind of in an adjacent space, but even still, like my husband, Martha, doesn't understand the day-to-day pressures because they're not doing what we're doing. And the mistake that you make is you think you're the only one and then you think your friends and your family understand, they're never gonna understand. It's the people that you think you're competing against who will actually be your greatest allies and your biggest forms of support in the business that you're building. So seek them out, cheer for them when you see them winning. There's a reason why you see restaurants kind of on the same blocks. It's because when they put them on the same blocks, they actually all do better. Because people that go to restaurants like going to other restaurants. And so it's a mistake to think that if you're opening up a fitness club, that somehow the yoga studio down the street is somehow competent. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because people get tired of yoga. And so if you're cheering for those guys and you show up at their grand opening and you're shouting them out on social, guess what they do? They do the same thing for you. And so please seek out the people that are doing things that you admire. cheer for them, seek out people and support people that are doing the similar kinds of businesses because you're going to find you have so much more in common and people are more interested in helping you than you think.

Yeah, and this is something that we do. I mean, for the last three months, I've been texting you every couple of weeks. I'm like, you,'re still here, you're still here, you're crushing it here, congrats. And it's just, you do the same for me, we do this with each other. And I think I learned early on that like, Just competing isn't fun. It's like maybe there's a little bit of thrill of like, oh, I'm beating someone, but it's not enjoyable long term and it's not sustainable. But collaboration is the key again to that abundance feeling. If you want to feel abundant, if you want to feel joyful, free, collaborate, don't compete. And I think that's been a key for me as well. So if you guys haven't yet, make sure you go right now and get the Let Them Theory book. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast.

No, you know why? Because it would be the coolest thing in the world to see one of my closest friends dethrone me and take the number one spot. So take, buy Lewis's book. That was gonna be hard to do.

It's gonna be hard to hit number one with her up there. I mean, your book is going crazy. But it's not about being number one. It's about doing the best you can and being of service.

Yes.

And if it hits number one, cool. If it doesn't, That's okay too. It's all good. So, panel one day. No, I'm gonna. Guys, make sure you guys get a copy of her book. Make sure if you haven't subscribed to her podcast, make sure you subscribe right now. Leave a review for the book and for the podcast. While you're at it, you can leave a review for my book and the podcast as well. And let's give it up one more time for the inspiring Mel Robbins.

Yes.

Thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it and let me know in the comments below your biggest takeaway. If you haven't subscribed to this channel, make sure to click the subscribe button right now, like this video. And also, if you're looking to create more financial freedom and live an abundant life, then make sure to get the new book, Make Money Easy Right Now. The link is below. Go right to Amazon, get your copy, I can't wait to see you in the next interview. We all default to assuming that people do what we do or think the way that we think, right? That it's, and it's crazy because people are completely different.

And it's interesting too because the same.

No thing, it's funny because I probably have a very similar reaction that you.