787. How One Simple Habit Can Give You Back Control of Your Life with Mel Robbins

Oh my gosh, I am so happy you're back. And before we get started, I have to give a big thanks to Gusto for supporting Earn you happy. If you run a small business, you have to try Gusto payroll. Deposit paychecks and file payroll taxes automatically. Plus get employee health insurance, onboarding, export HR and more. Get 3 months free@gusto.com Lori and how can we forget about Butcherbox? Thank you so much for supporting my show. Every month, Butcherbox ships a curated selection of high quality meat right to your home. You don't even have to go to the grocery store. Right now, Butcherbox is giving new members free ground beef for life. Yes, that is for life. Sign up@butcherbox.com lori and get two pounds of ground beef free in every order for the life of you your membership.

If you stand in front of that mirror and you pick yourself apart, it makes you feel insecure. That's why you go out into the world and you pick other people apart and you people, please. It's because you feel insecure with yourself. If you have issues in your relationships with trust or feeling loved or picking people or falling for people who are actually healthy for you, it actually goes back to how you treat yourself in the mirror. Foreign.

Welcome to the earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere. From being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself, to later becoming a multi millionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I, I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. At rock bottom, we had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. Not by choice, but because I realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not alone and and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing. We're gonna give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're gonna stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform. I want to you so if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. Welcome back to the show guys. I literally cannot believe that I got to sit down with Mel Robbins and interview her all about the High Five habit. You guys, I have been obsessed with Mel Robbins for longer than I can possibly remember and today was an absolute dream come true. So before I tell you a little bit about what we talked about, have you gone to LitePink.com yet? L I t e p I n k dot com because we are about to come out in November with the holiday guide to Literally Gifting for anyone, including yourself. Because there are going to be coupon codes in here for so many of my favorite products and so many of my investors favorite products. It's going to blow your mind. So go to light pink.com and opt in right now. Go put your email in. You will not be sorry. We are working day and night to get you the best possible deals on the best things. It's going to make your holidays so incredibly easy. And you guys, Mel Robbins is one of the leading voices in personal development and that is who we're going to be hearing from today. She is a transformation and international bestselling. Her work includes the global phenomenon the Five Second Rule, which I'm obsessed with. I use it in my life. If you've not read that book yet, you have to do that as well. And her upcoming book the High Five Habit, which is what we talk all about today. It is the number one best selling audiobook, the number one podcast on audio, as well as signature online courses that have changed the lives of more than half a million students worldwide. Her groundbreaking work on behavior change has been translated into 36 languages and is used by healthcare professionals, veterans organizations and the world's leading brands to inspire people to be more confident, effective and fulfilled. She's one of the most widely booked and followed public speakers in the world. She coaches more than 60 million people online every month and videos featuring her work have more than a billion views. A billion with the b including her TEDx talk which if you haven't seen it, you have to go check it out. It's one of the most popular of all times. I think it's probably how I found her. There's nothing Mel loves more than making a real difference in people's lives by teaching them to believe in themselves and inspiring them to take the actions that will change their lives. Mel lives in New England with her husband of 25 years and her three kids. But she is and always will be a Midwesterner at heart. And that's why I love her. Both from Michigan. You guys, I'm so excited. Let's get started. You're about to learn a habit that is going to change the game for you. Mel, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming on.

It's so great to be here with you. And I'm just taking it in for a minute. It's kind of odd, the moment that you meet somebody for real that you've been following for a long time and you admire. And so it's just great to be with you.

I'm gonna take a second just to pinch myself and I'm so glad we got that on record. Cause I'm a little bit like blushing super hard over here. I'm like, wait one second. What did you just say? I have been a long time follower of just, you know, all of your wisdom and motivation because you just give these amazing. You have this great way of offering up these massive perspective changes that are like these smacks in the face, but then like a little pat on the butt. You know, it's just like, you can do this, it's in your face, but it's with so much love.

Where do you think that comes from? Oh, my gosh. Probably where all of my kind of lane of life improvement comes from. And that is by either falling into a hole or digging one for myself and then needing to build a ladder to climb out of it. And so that sort of slap across the face is the kind of just no holds bar, no BS punch that I typically need to shake myself out of an emotionally low state or a pity party or a nasty negative pile drive of a mindset. And the pat on the butt or a pat on the back or as we're going to talk about a high five, is that reminder that you need that encouragement, that celebratory energy, that optimism that we all need in order to pivot and turn away from the crap that is bringing us down and remind ourselves of who we actually are and the power inside of us to face whatever the heck is happening and to move forward. That's what I have to do every day for myself and So I think that that's where it comes from. It's funny because I know that I post a lot of content every day on social media. And the truth is I'm always talking to myself like I'm posting the stuff I need to hear. And I think that's why it comes through so loudly, because we forget, because we get trapped in our own negative garbage. We beat ourselves down, we feel disconnected, we think we're the only ones. I also forget that I'm not the only one that feels insecure or worried or compares herself or feels beaten down or gets stuck at times or feels rejected like it happens to all of us. And I find that it does not serve me if I keep this shit inside, that I really. I have to process it by talking about it. And so that's what you're seeing in real time in my content is the stuff I'm facing, the stuff that people that bump into me in airports and after speeches and in grocery stores come up and ask about. We're all struggling with the same stuff.

So you just said something. It's like keeping all of that inside, keeping all the shit inside. There must have been a point when you did keep it inside and it gave you this realization. So how did that manifest for you? What did that feel like, walking around with all of that in you?

Well, you feel like a human Porta Pot.

Yeah, exactly.

You know what I mean? That's what you're like. That's what it's feels like to be in your body. It stinks, it's gross. You wish you could get out there, but somebody out of there, but somebody locked the door. And it's disgusting to start to look down at, like, what's actually going on inside of it and to dig deep and clean it out and, you know, the honest truth. And I guess that's kind of a dumb thing to say because truth is honest truth. But I guess I put the qualifier on there because I think people might find this hard to believe. And that is this. It is only since April of 2020 that I have figured out the secret to unlocking the door of the Porta Potty and stepping out into the fresh air. And I'm going to be 53 this year, and I have spent my entire adult life for sure. But I will go and say probably the first 43 or 44 years or the last 44 years of my life, absolutely beating the hell out of myself and hating myself and focusing on what I wasn't doing right and focusing on where I wasn't being the person I wanted to be. And it wasn't until I discovered by mistake this high five habit that I found a way to truly confront the level of self hatred, self rejection, self criticism and self doubt. That was the soundtrack in my mind. And most people know me for inventing the five second rule, which you know, I invented at a rock bottom moment in my life. As you know, you talk about it, it's an extraordinary tool. Just count backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. If you don't know what we're talking about and it's a little switch in your brain, it switches off your subconscious habits and it gives you a moment where your prefrontal cortex is engaged and you can now change your behavior. You can push yourself through fear. You can push yourself through anxiety. You can interrupt anxious thoughts and interrupt worries. You can push yourself off the couc go exercise. You can push yourself. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. To put down the sugary drink and pick up the water. You know, it's a tool you use to do things and it has changed my life. It has changed the lives of millions of people.

I use it all the time.

Yeah, Wendell, what do you like to use it for?

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Oh my gosh. I use it in the morning all the time just to get out of bed. I'm like, this is stop sitting in the pain of like, oh, I should get up. Oh, if I had these extra 15 minutes, I could finally start reading like I want to again in the morning. And I'm just like, do it. Like, stop choosing. So it's a trigger for me to realize that I'm choosing pain and all I have to do is like get up. So it's a moment of yeah, my husband and I actually use it for a lot of things and even courage. Oh yeah. I actually have been talking about you on my podcast because I use it for sending emails to people that I wanted to invest in my company. And I'm like, you gotta send this right now. And I'm like, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And I send And I'm like, ah, close the line. And I walk away.

That is incredible. I love that. Because you're right. Positive thinking alone actually doesn't change your life because you gotta change your life through actions. And this is a little tool that will help you take action. And look, the five second rule has changed millions of people's lives. I know of. There are pediatricians around the world that use it to help kids interrupt the worries that trigger anxiety. Veterans organizations use it to help vets interrupt the triggers associated with PTSD. We know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from attempting suicide by counting backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then asking for help. It is profound, it is extraordinary, and it is why I am so successful. Because I use it all the time, just like you. Five, four, three, two, one. Stop procrastinating. Make the call. Five, four, three, Two, one. Turn off the television. Get the work done. Five, four, three, 2, one. Just like you. Send the email that I'm scared to send. Make the ask, set the boundary. Here's what it didn't do, though. It didn't address the habit that I have of beating myself up.

Yeah, I need to hear all about this. Cause it's like right when you think you're stopping doing it, that nasty coach can come back in your head. The one who's just like, abusive.

Yeah, yeah, totally abusive. And here's the thing, it's interesting because I never realize. It's not until you actually confront the critic that you realize how much it's dominating your life experience. And so do bad things happen to me? Of course. Do things happen every day that make me emotional or that make me feel rejected? Yes. Do I struggle with jealousy or comparison or those kinds of things? Not as much as I used to at all. Because I now understand what it is. And I can flip myself from a negative state into a more inspired, what I call high five attitude. But what I'm about to share with you is the single greatest, most extraordinary thing I've ever discovered. And it's gonna sound remarkably stupid and it's gonna sound cheesy, honestly. Like, I didn't set out to write a book called the High Five Habit. I did not sit there and go, okay, it's been four years, Mel. You need a book with a five for the five year anniversary. Okay, what's the title gonna be? What could the concept be? That's not what happened. What happened is life punched me in the face. And In April of 2020, I found myself in a situation at the age of 51, where everything that I had been building for the last 10 years fell apart in an instant. My daytime talk show, which had been my dream since I was a little girl in western Michigan. I grew up in western Michigan, North Muskegon. I'd come home and my mom would have on Oprah or Donahue or Montel. And I always dreamt of having a daytime talk show and talking to real people and helping real people and letting real people tell their stories and then letting that format inspire millions of people like those talk shows did. And so when Sony Pictures came to me and offered me a daytime talk show, I was like, I am so in. I've been waiting for this moment since I was a little girl. And on a Wednesday In March of 2020, they found Covid at the CBS Broadcast center and with five minutes notice, canceled the show. Which means I was fired from my dream job.

Oh, my gosh.

And then I get home and my publisher for a book I hadn't written. I'd been struggling to figure out what to write. Nothing was coming. I was a year late in delivering anything. They canceled the contract, and they want money back. And money I've already spent, by the way, and they don't have PPP loans yet, so I don't know how I'm gonna make it. As speech after speech after speech after speech cancels. And I start to get triggered, and I start to feel like, are you kidding? Is this how the story goes? 10, 12 years ago, I'm nearly a million dollars in debt and drinking myself into the ground. We claw ourselves out of that hole. I work day and night to build a new me, to create a new business, to do good in the world. And now it's all ending. I'm about to lose it all again. And so I wake up one morning in April, and I just literally feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I know everybody can relate to this. Whether it's because you got fired from a job or you got told no again, or somebody just said, I don't love you, I want a divorce, or your IVF didn't work, or all your friends went out last night to celebrate somebody's birthday and they didn't include you. All the stuff that just makes you feel like life is punching you in the face. An impossibly long to do list. A mom who is dying from cancer. There's a million things that can make you feel like you just don't have the energy to face what's going on. That's exactly how I felt. And so I use the 5 second rule. Like you, I do not get out of bed easily. I also know it's a terrible place to be lying in bed staring at the ceiling when you feel bad. So I use 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, like I do every morning to get out of bed. I make my bed so I don't crawl back into it, and I walk back into the bathroom, right? And I'm standing there and I'm brushing my teeth, and I'm just, like, ticking through an impossibly long to do list. And all of a sudden, I catch a glimpse of the woman I see reflected in the mirror. And I think, oh, my God, you look like hell. I honestly felt sad. Hmm. I then started picking apart my appearance. The dark circles under my eyes, the gray hair coming in my saggy neck, one boob hanging lower than the other. Now I'm, like, just trashing myself. And then I start thinking about the day. Why'd I get up so late? How are you gonna get ready in eight minutes? The dog hasn't even been walked. Like, this is how my day began. And by the way, I know we all talk about morning routines, and we talk about gratitude, and we talk about meditation. We talk about healthy habits. Nobody has blown a hole wide open in this secret, ugly habit that we all have. That is part of your morning routine right now. That is the habit of standing before yourself in the mirror and either ignoring yourself or criticizing and rejecting yourself, picking yourself apart. 91% of women do not like how they look. 50% of us can't even look at themselves in the mirror. So I'm doing what I always do, beating myself down before the day begins. And here's the thing. If you had walked into the bathroom at that moment, I would have spun on a dime. I would have been like, lori, you're right, this is hard. You do not deserve this. But if anybody can handle it, it's you. You know that this is gonna make you wiser and stronger. You know that, right? I would have said that thing. That's so annoying when somebody says, this is happening for you. Fuck you. I don't want this. Like, let it happen for you, because I would like something else to happen for me. So I couldn't think of anything to say. And in fact, I'm glad I didn't, because I actually wouldn't have believed it. Cause it's not how I felt. And I don't know what came over me. But for whatever reason, as cheesy as it sounds, I literally raised my hand and high fived the woman I saw in the mirror because she needed it. And here's the thing. It's not like lightning struck, you know, the heavens didn't part. The. It wasn't like. Oh, it was not like that. In fact, all that happened is I felt this sort of, like, shuffle of energy. And I thought, huh? And my shoulders dropped and I laughed out loud. Cause it's so dumb, so stupid to be in your underwear alone, high fiving yourself. I mean, come on. And the energy shift didn't even. I didn't even think anything. It was like, sort of sarcastic. Mel came up, like, this sort of jolt, and it was sort of like kind of that energy of like, oh, get over yourself. Get out there. Come on. But like, mm. And so I leave the bathroom and I go on with my day. It was the second morning where everything changed. And this is where this goes from stupid to profound. I wake up, same problems, same overwhelm, same anxiety, same feeling defeated. Five, four, three, two, one. I'm up, make my bed. I start walking to the bathroom. And I realize as I'm about to hit the bathroom that I'm feeling something I have never experienced in my adult life. And it's this. You know that feeling that you get when you're about to walk into a cafe and you're gonna see somebody you really like? What do you feel?

Just, like, excited and at home and excited to. I don't know, it's almost like even excited to be. You love what they bring out in you. Yeah, excited.

Well, that's beautiful. You love what they bring out in you. That's what I felt about the thought of seeing myself. Hmm. I don't ever remember feeling that way. I felt excited to see an outfit.

Same.

Or a haircut. Yeah, but have you ever truly felt excited about seeing the human being Lori Harder?

You know, I can honestly say that just from kind of what you're even saying, I've done an exercise just that was kind of like that, that allowed me to see that, like when. Like allowing my little girl to kind of look at me now. So I love. Which is why I'm just, like, eating out of your hand right now. I want to know more about how I can access that more daily.

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You can. It's extraordinary. It's the most profound thing that you will ever tap into because it's a sense of coming home. You know, we weren't born criticizing ourselves. We weren't born Rejecting ourselves like this. This is what happens from life. Like when you stand in front of a mirror, what do you pick apart?

Oh, God. It's always, what can I make better? Mm.

Yeah. You see what you're not. You see the things you don't like. Yep. And so as I rounded the corner, it's really hitting me, Laurie, that there's something profound unfolding right now, and I need to really pay attention to this. And so I'm standing at the sink, brushing my teeth, and I have this realization. There are always two human beings in the bathroom with you. There's you, and there's a human being in the mirror. And if you really allow yourself to be present and if you really allow yourself to look at the human being in the mirror, what you're witnessing is your spirit, your soul, that inner child you were talking about every single day. And she's trying hard, and she needs you, and she wishes you would wake up and pay attention and see her and encourage her and be kinder to her.

It's gonna make me cry.

What's happening? What's coming up for you?

Yeah. Just how beautiful we all are and how beautiful I am in all the hard work that we all do every day.

Yeah. And what you see is what I used to do to myself. You see all the stuff you're not doing. You see all the things, the little things that are going wrong, and you are completely missing the thousand things you do correct every day, the amazing work that you're doing. And I was doing the exact same thing I have forever, since I was a little kid, and I got positive praise for getting good grades or doing whatever, being good at sports, like, whatever it is that you got praise for. So many of us then start to marry praise with being lovable or being worthy. And so the chasing and the doing and the relentlessness with which you pursue the things that you do and the focus on what's not working, that's really all about this desire to feel good enough and to feel loved. And I'm telling you, with the high five habit, you can break that relentlessness that's constantly having you focused on what's not happening, and it's constantly having you pick apart what you're not doing. Are there still things that you need to work on? Of course. Are there areas where you're going to fall on your face? Yes. But the hyper obsession with it robs you of joy. It robs you of momentum. It robs you of your true power. And I was doing it, too. That's Why I know this so well, because this is my reality. This is why I'm saying, yeah, the five second rule was amazing. It turned me into a fricking machine. But it didn't address the self hatred. It didn't address the insecurity that I felt. It didn't address my relationship with myself. That's where the high five habit comes in. And so I put the toothbrush down on the second morning and I realized there's this my soul staring right at me. And I asked myself this question I had never asked myself before. And it was this, what does she need for me today? And the answer was literally, she needs you to actually be optimistic. She needs you to fight a little harder. She needs you to encourage her and count the small wins. That's what she needs. And I'm like, okay. And then I go to high five. And so there's a couple things that happened. I started doing it every morning. I immediately, as it became part of my morning ritual, I noticed a couple things. First of all, the second that you go to do it, it does feel really weird. And it feels weird because of brain science. Basically, what's happening is you are plowing a new neural pathway in your brain. And that new neural pathway says we don't criticize the person in the mirror. And right now you have the opposite habit. In the morning, you either ignore yourself, which is a form of rejection, or you actively criticize yourself, which is a form of rejection. When you go to raise your hand and high five your reflection, it will feel weird because it's the opposite of what you do. Just like I'm a right hander. If I were to lose my right hand today in a car accident, it'd feel weird to write with my left hand because it's something that's the opposite of what I've been doing. So expect it to feel weird. The other thing that you'll notice is as you start to raise your hand, your mind goes quiet, the critic shuts up. So it can feel weird, but you won't think anything. And there's another piece of science that explains why. Let me ask you this. When you high five somebody or somebody high fives you, what is the gesture? No words. What does a gesture of a high five say to you?

Great job. You're awesome.

Yeah, exactly. Keep going. I love you. I see you, I celebrate you. We got this. Come on now, shake it off. Come on, keep going. Like it's literally encouragement, celebration, love, support, belief, all of it in one gesture. Well, this is the coolest part about this high five habit. You have been giving and receiving high fives your whole life from other people. All of the programming is already in your brain. It's already in your nervous system. We're just gonna teach you how to turn it away from other people and back at yourself so you're not actually having to program in something new. You're unlocking something that's already in you and now using it for yourself. That's why this is so cool and why it works immediately and why the results are profound for people. So, you know, I just use this every morning of my life for a couple weeks. I then post a photo. No instructions, by the way, for other people to do it. I just post a photo and I got a retainer bed head. Had I known this would be the photo, I probably would have posted a different photo. Back to the criticism, right? It's kind of perfect that I look like I look. And within an hour, hundred people around the world post photos of themselves alone with their kids all over the world, all ages, all sizes, all shapes, all races, all religions. And I think, oh, my God, I'm not the only one that needs this. Maybe this isn't so cheesy after all. And so I dig into the research and I know you've tried it. So what did you feel when you've tried this?

For me, just whenever I can take a minute and kind of exactly like what you said. See deeper than what we're seeing. Because it is like what you said. When you look at yourself, it's either ignoring or it's criticizing. And then really looking into a lot of it for me, too, is like really looking into my eyes and allowing to see that soul part and being able to just stand there with a different perspective. I don't know. It's super profound when I take that time because it just. It gets me out of the place of the pushing and the. I think I have these moments, Mel, where I am so aware that the critic is not sustainable and it doesn't feel good and it's painful and it feels like prison. And it's just like the breakdowns where it's not working anymore. So what works? And I just kind of always come back to that, like, you need to give yourself some love, sister. Like that, that cheering on like that. And it is only going to come from us, and it is only going to come from doing something opposite. And that feels weird. And, you know, I think that if we really dug into, you know, people who feel the way that you feel now which I feel like even just such a beautiful just energy coming from you of just like dropped into yourself. Like just even just sitting with you, I'm like, oh, I feel like I'm relaxed. Let's take a quick break because I want to save you time. Chris and I truly are always trying to eat as good and as healthy as we possibly can. We also like to know where our food is coming from and we absolutely trust Butcherbox. Butcherbox is offering Earn your happy listeners Ground Beef for Life. Sign up@butcherbox.com lori and get two pounds of ground beef free in every order for the life of your membership. That is such an amazing deal. And you guys, if you didn't know, we make bananas food. Banana is actually our dog and we make his food homemade every single week here at home. We love to know what goes in his food. So this is a huge bonus for us. Not only us personally, but also for our dog. Choose from our curated boxes or create your own custom box. They have grass fed beef, free range, organic chicken, wild caught Alaskan salmon, sugar free bacon and more. No matter what you choose, the meat is always going to be super high quality with no antibiotics or added hormones ever. This is your chance to never have to shop for ground beef again. That's right, Butcherbox is giving new members free ground beef for life. Sign up@butcherboxbox.com Lori and get 2 pounds of ground beef in every order for the life of your membership. Log on to ButcherBox.com Lori to claim this deal.

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Well, you know, here's the beauty of why this is so profound. So. So I'm gonna just unpack some science for everybody, and then we're gonna go into why everybody resists it and why you need to give this at least five days. I want every person on the planet, every kid, every senior, I want everybody to know to do this, because just like you brush your teeth and you get all the crap out of your mouth and you don't spread bad breath everywhere, I want you to brush your brain and your mind, body, and spirit and get all that crap out so you don't spread that negative stuff everywhere, especially all over yourself. So couple things about the science. It's miraculous. You don't have to say anything. And that's important. That's interesting, because most of us, if we don't believe what the pep talk is, we reject it. So it doesn't work. That's why most mantras don't work. You hate your body. You've hidden the back of photos for 20 years. You beat yourself up. You can't. You won't actually be able to stand in front of a mirror and be like, I'm amazing. I love my body. I wish you could, but I'm being honest with you. Your behavior has demonstrated self hatred. And so one of the greatest and most powerful aspects of this is you don't say a thing because the programming's already in your brain, and it's connected to the high five gesture. So when you stand there on a morning where you hate yourself or you don't love your body, or you've just been broken up with and you're heartbroken and you feel unlovable, when you raise your hand, the critic silences because your brain recognizes the gesture. So it moves to the subconscious part of your brain, and it pulls forward all the positive. I believe in you. I see you. You got this. It's gonna be okay. You can keep going. And all of that gets fused with your reflection, with the simple gesture that is so interesting.

I can see that for sure.

And then there's more. And this I only learned recently. So I was talking with Dr. Daniel. Amen. One of the world's leading experts in the brain. And he geeked out over this. He was like, do you feel boost in your mood when you do this? I'm like, yeah, because it's cheesy. And he said, no. He said, when somebody else high fives you, Mel, your brain gives you a drip of dopamine. It always has. Same thing when you get a hug. Same thing when you get any kind of encouraging gesture like this. And he said, so your brain is programmed to give you dopamine when you high five. So when you high five yourself, you get dopamine released, which boosts your mood. The second thing he said is, do you feel like you're a little more energized when you leave the bathroom? I'm like, yeah, I feel kind of awkwardly corny when I leave the bathroom after high fiving myself. And he said, well, do you want to know what that pep in the step is about? I'm like, yes. He said, that's your nervous system. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, your nervous system is encoded with a life vibrancy, celebratory energy, and your entire life, whenever you do celebratory gestures, you cross the finish line. You raise your hands. When you hug somebody, you raise your hands. When you wave to somebody, you raise your hands. When your team scores, you raise your hands. When you high five somebody, you raise your hands. He said, when you start raising your hand to celebrate yourself, your nervous system gives you that energizing vitality, that zap of energy that you need to then go send yourself into the game of life. It is science. That's why this is working. And it's already in you.

Oh, my gosh, that is so interesting. I think of that a lot. When I'm walking and I'm trying to solve, like, something, or I'm not feeling good, or you're trying to walk through some emotion. I always notice that when I'm looking down, it's really like, I feel very negative. And then I'm always like, lori, look up. Like, look up. Because the answers are usually like, up and outside. So I'll look up, I'll raise my hands. And it feels so Mel. I've been corny my whole life, so this just adds to.

That's why we get one of my.

Habits that's kind of just put that in my pocket. But it makes so much sense to me, all of the things that you said, because they are. We are such physical beings. Like, it's so connected to change the way that we Think and see and respond. And to have a physical action connected to it is why I think it takes like the five second rule also to another, another level and just changing that. I think we all have that. You know, especially for people who, a lot of people listen to this podcast. It's a lot of people who are probably really resonating with the achiever mindset or want to do things. And, you know, a lot of the reasons why we want to do things are for obviously that fitting in reason or the, you know, wanting love. But we'll always end up finding ourselves with, you know, what is that like, what is that coach saying in your head? And throughout the years, it's definitely changed, but I still have tendencies to want to go back. And I'm sure that you do too. So I'd love to hear kind of if you just go back to this, like, you can almost feel like, but am I going to be able to still do the things that I want to do? Am I still going to be able to achieve the things that I want to achieve if I go with this more like loving route or I let go of this kind of like disciplinary in my head? Did you ever have thoughts like that?

Well, I'm going to ask you this question.

Yep.

How is being a disciplinary person who is beating you up and relentlessly focused on what's not working helping you? Yeah, it's not.

It's not.

It's an addiction to it. It's the letting go that almost.

You're just used to it.

Yeah, you're just used to it.

You know, tough love is complete bullshit. It doesn't work. It's demoralizing. And you know, if you think about the metaphor of a marathon, life is a marathon. Building a business is a marathon. Having a fulfilling and healthy marriage is a marathon. And you don't ever see spectators in a marathon cross their arms at mile nine and go, I'm not clapping. You see how slow you're running? Please. I'll see how you do when you get to the finish line. That's not what we do. That's so true. You literally are clapping and cheering and high fiving the runners every step of the way. And if you've ever done a walkathon or a half marathon or any kind of road race, you know, the best part of it is strangers encouraging you every step of the way.

Totally.

All the research shows whether we're looking at NBA teams, researchers have proven that when you look at who is winning in the NBA at the end of the year, There's a behavior that all the winning teams have in the preseason that the losing teams don't. And that behavior is to high five, fist bump or patent other players on the back. Those gestures aren't just gestures. They actually communicate partnership and trust and momentum and support. And that's what builds the foundation for a team to go on to win. And if you want to win in your life, in your relationships, you need to build that partnership and trust back with yourself, because your relationship with yourself is the foundation of every other relationship. And I'll explain why. If you stand in front of that mirror and you pick yourself apart, it makes you feel insecure. That's why you go out into the world and you pick other people apart and you people, please. It's because you feel insecure with yourself. If you have issues in your relationships with trust or feeling loved or picking up people or falling for people who are actually healthy for you, it actually goes back to how you treat yourself in the mirror. If you see somebody who is unlovable or unworthy or damaged, you will not allow another human being to fully love you, because you don't love yourself. So you don't possibly trust that somebody else could. And so you have to come back to the mirror every single morning. And here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna have. When you first do this, we know it's gonna feel weird. Who cares? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Do you can touch the mirror? I get a lot of questions about. But I don't wanna put handprints on the mirror. Then don't put handprints on the mirror. Just raise the hand. That's all you need to do. You will have only a positive or a negative reaction. That's it. Positive. You'll laugh because it's kind of stupid, but it feels kind of weirdly good or positive. You will cry. This is really common for people to cry. And it's a positive thing because it's an emotional release when you realize, oh, my gosh, I have been waiting for you to do this for decades. I've been waiting for this acknowledgment. I've been waiting for this kindness. I've been waiting for this support. And again, you don't have to say a thing, but the more likely, the more likely thing is gonna be you're going to resist this. And the resistance is something we need to unpack because it's profoundly sad and it's what everybody struggles with. So when you stand in the bathroom and there's you and this other human being in the mirror, you also drag subconsciously your entire past in the bathroom with you. And it's laid out between you and the person in the mirror. And so if you're somebody that's been abused or traumatized or heartbroken or abandoned or neglected, or you have suffered some terrible accident, or you have had all these things that have happened to you, most people stack that as evidence that they are unlovable or damaged or unworthy because of those things that have happened. And they then see somebody in the mirror who does not deserve or is not worthy of a high five because of those things. And I'm here to tell you, actually, it's the opposite. First of all, you're not responsible for all that crap that happened to you. You have a responsibility to heal and to grow and to move on from it. And if you have survived all that stuff and you're still standing here and you're still breathing and you're still showing up every day, you have earned a fricking high five. You deserve a high five. And you need one in order to heal from this. The high five shows you that you are okay. You will get through this. You are stronger than that crap that's happened to you. That's why it's powerful. That's why you need it. And you know, the other reason why everybody resists this is because if you're a human being, you have done shit that you regret. You have cheated, you have lied, you have had addictions, you have hurt people, you've hurt yourself. You've squandered opportunity, you've wasted time. All of these things, by the way, that you would forgive Laurie or Mel Robbins for, but you refuse to forgive yourself for. My husband was this way after the restaurant business closed. It was really interesting. His business partner was able to look at the whole experience and go, we worked our tails off for seven years. I am proud of what we did. I am proud of how we showed up. I am proud of the brand that we built. I'm proud of how we treated our employees. Did we return the profit we had hoped for our investors? No. But I'm not gonna let that take away from what I did do. My husband could not do that. He couldn't do it. He literally dragged it all in there and basically saw a human being that was a failure, that was damaged, was awful, had bankrupted his family, had not provided, and for seven years pounded himself mentally about it. Now, I didn't see that at all. I saw, like, what is business? I Saw you guys tried so hard and, okay, that's all right. We're gonna learn. And we wouldn't have the 5 second rule without it. And, you know, we're in this next chapter and we're gonna learn. He could not do it. And so when you. And when he first. When I first told about the high five, he's like, that's stupid. In fact, we just put up a video today on Instagram talking about. He said, well, it's because I saw somebody that was a failure. And you don't high five somebody that you think is a failure. And I'm like, actually, no, that's not true. Because when somebody's attitude is going down or somebody just missed a free throw shot as a teammate, what do you do? Give them a high five to shake it off and to say, it's okay, we're gonna keep moving forward. I still believe in you. Let's go. And so what happens every time you raise your hand when you will not forgive yourself for something or you will not move on from the past is. It's an act of defiance against all that judgment. It's an act of forgiveness. It's an act of encouragement that you need in order to move on, in order to grow. And then there's the resistance that comes from people like you and me that we believe because we are achievers and we are relentless and we are hard on ourselves. And part of that is what makes us successful. That's why we have such a strong work ethic. It's why we pick apart the details. But we also withhold the celebration until. Until I hit the number on the scale, until I have the money in the bank, until I reach this, until I have this many followers, until I live in this street or drive that Range Rover or have this group of friends, or my hair's not so kinky, or this hasn't happened, or that hasn't happened. Like that you believe that if you didn't go to the gym today, somehow you should punish yourself. You should withhold support. Absolutely not. You need support and celebration every step of the way. Because when you give yourself that kind of encouragement, that high five in the mirror, you silence the critic and you start to realize I'm not even present to the amount of things that I do. I am so focused on the one misspelling on the post I put up that I don't even give myself grace. I don't even recall that I have all these audiobooks that I've done because I'm micro, hyper, negative. About the one thing that's not working, and I'm here to tell you when you can stand in front of the mirror and create a habit right after you brush your teeth, of building trust and partnership with yourself, of knowing that the person that you see in the mirror is the one person you're going to go through life with and you have her back no matter what, that she's trying and she needs you and she needs that high five at this leg of the journey to keep on going. And that you got her back. That's what this is about.

What are you using it for right now, personally, when you do it, what are some of the thoughts that keep coming up?

Well, I don't have any thoughts when it comes up. Like, that's the coolest thing. I've been practicing it for more than a year. And the truth is, I don't actually need to do it.

Wow.

So do you still do it? I still do, yeah. I did it this morning in the hotel room. Cause I was psyched. I'm like, here we go. It's like, what does a sports team do when you start play?

Yep.

You huddle up and you seal your celebration and your intention to win and your intention to be a great team with a high five. You send yourself into the game. And so, yeah, I send myself into the game. When I was in the elevator today, there was a mirror. I'm like, hey, how you doing? Let's go. Because it's energizing. But the truth is, I don't need to do it. Even though it feels amazing and this is the most magical, incredible thing on the planet. And this is why you feel the energy that I have right now. Over the course of using this for a year, I have fundamentally rewired the patterns of my mind. Fundamentally, I don't actually see a person I criticize. When I see myself in the mirror, it wouldn't even occur to me. Just like when I see one of my kids, I don't criticize them in my mind. I just feel a sense of love and acceptance and, oh, I like that person. I've never felt that before. I don't even see my face or my body. I see a soul. I see energy. I see a spirit. I see a person that I'm rooting for. That's what I see. And it's not about being a bitch or being conceited or being stuck up. That's not what this is about. It's actually about acceptance. It's about love. And so same thing with the five Second rule. I don't even have to count because I know the energy of it. I can just kind of feel the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and move. Shift the gears. Except for in the bed in the morning. 5 or 51. Gotta go.

What is this unlocked in you? What is this kind of like. I know that you've probably had a lot of profound moments from it, but what are some of the most that you've been like, oh my God, this is allowing me to X or this is really, you know, this is so profound. I'm able to see this part of myself that I didn't see before. Maybe it's a personality trait that you really love or maybe something that's really unlocked from it.

Yeah, there's a couple things. So the first thing that comes to mind is joy. I've always been a really kind of positive person, upbeat person, but in my head, criticizing, doubting, people pleasing, worried about what people are thinking. I have a level of joy and contentment that I have never been able to access at a consistent level.

Wow.

The people pleasing is really dialed down to. If it used to be a 90 on a scale of 100, it's dialed down to a 10. I'm able to be in the presence of other people without the monologue in my mind, worried about what they're thinking or how they're feeling. Oh, freedom it is. Does that mean I'm perfect? No. Does that mean I sometimes get triggered all the time? Does it mean I worry about how people. Of course. But instead of adjusting myself, I tend to now just speak about it. I can immediately. This is the other thing that's unbelievable. You have immediate, like there's such a huge jump in your self awareness and your self control. Because I can immediately feel when I'm no longer grounded in my body. I can immediately feel when my headspace or my nervous system goes negative or on edge. And I now, because of writing this book and practicing the tools in this book from. Because the high five in the mirror is just the beginning. About 12 different tools that act like either high fives to your attitude or high fives to your mood or high fives to your nervous system to flip you out of a stress mode and into a grounded mode. I can, on a dime, catch when I'm getting emotionally reactive or triggered. And I can flip it almost immediately. The time between snapping at somebody and then catching myself and apologizing has also gone from if it's a scale of 0 to 100 where I'm beating myself up, I shouldn't have said that. I literally can just catch and be like, I'm really sorry it came out that way because I feel the intensity in my voice. It's not about you at all. I just. There's a lot of stuff going on. I apologize that the tone came out like that. There's just this. I don't know, it's just mind blowing. I can't tell you how many people I have seen in the last three months who have looked at me. Lewis Howes said this to me. Maria Menounos said this to me. Jay Shetty said this to me recently. All of them looked at me and said, you actually look about a decade younger.

It's really crazy. I was gonna say, I don't know what your. Tell me your skincare regime.

Happiness, the high five habit is my skincare. No, I'm serious. Cause you are tapping into a force inside of you that radiates something positive. And this isn't toxic positivity. Like, here's the other thing that I love about this. It's actually grounding you in authentic confidence. It's grounding you in the belief that you have within you the ability, through your attitude and through your actions, to have a positive impact on anything that's happening or that's about to happen. So, you know, things go wrong in my life every single day. My daughter sat down with me just two days ago and had a very confronting conversation about my behavior and how it's crossing her boundaries. Something I'm extraordinarily proud of her for doing, but was like, oh, God, on the receiving end. Because, you know, it triggers that people pleaser, insecure, wanna be liked, oh, my God, am I screwing up as a mother kind of thing. And I'm able to hear that kind of feedback without then obsessing about whether or not I'm a bad person. I don't go there. It's weird and amazing at the same time. And so those are things. But I think the other thing that's been really at the most deep levels, I've always believed that there is a very unique path that is meant for each and every one of us and that everything that's happening in your life is happening for a reason. I really do believe that. And as I sit here in this moment and I look backwards and I'm sure you can do the same thing, I can see exactly how every dot on the map of my life not only connects to this moment, but has prepared me for this moment. And I'm often asked this question, if you could go back to your younger self and give yourself advice, what would you say? And I answer that by saying I actually wouldn't say anything because I wouldn't go back and tell my younger self to do anything differently. Because absolutely everything, even the stuff I wouldn't wish on anybody else to have happen. Being molested when I was in the fourth grade, Being somebody whose anxiety was so out of control that I cheated on boyfriends, something I deeply, deeply am not proud of. I caused tremendous pain to myself and to them. I had a drinking problem, like, just on and on and on. I was consumed with jealousy. I was deep. Like, I can see all. All of these things that have happened in my life that were extraordinarily painful to go through. I wouldn't change a thing because it's prepared me for this moment. And I think one of the things that the high five habit has done that is just one of the most exquisite experiences you could ever have, is I have the capability, having now practiced the tools in the high five habits, it. To sit in this moment. This has been the hardest year of my life, for sure. For sure. Not only the changes in the business, but we have relocated, which was very difficult to kind of be leaving a community that we were in for 23 years. I found out my breast implants had been linked to lymph noma and had been recalled and had extensive surgery. There were multiple betrayals that I experienced by people close to me. I was the victim of wire fraud in an extensive phishing scam to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. There were multiple times that I, while writing this book, was thinking, I can't handle one more thing. I cannot mentally, spiritually, physically handle one more thing. And then I would walk into the mirror, and I would raise my hand to my tired reflection, and I would feel this switch flip. I was talking to Jay Shetty a couple days ago, and this is how he described the high five habit. He said, mel, this is the book that the world needs right now because so many of us are experiencing so much darkness. And this simple tool is a light switch that turns the light back on, that makes you believe again in yourself and in your ability to change your life. And I think that what has really been exquisite is that I can now stand in this moment, even the day the wire fraud hit, Even the day I found out about the breast implants being recalled, Even on the deeply painful, personal stuff that happened, Even as I lost my dream job, even as my kids are in breakdown because their college experience imploded and they're grieving and frustrated and angry and sad. And I can stand with myself and high five myself through it. And I can know that this moment is also a dot on the map of my life. And it too, like every other moment, is connecting forward. And it too is preparing me for something extraordinary that hasn't happened yet. And when I can cultivate that kind of high five attitude in any moment, anchoring down in faith, in optimism and resilience, I know that with the woman in the mirror, we can get through anything.

So beautiful. I absolutely see that same. I'm so excited, number one, to have this toolkit and also to find out more. But also just that moment of being proud of yourself and that physical. I love the physical connection with it. And when you actually are having that physical reaction of I'm proud of you, that's saying, you did your best, you're doing your best, and that is the most you can do. And that becomes worthiness for yourself. It's so beautiful. I absolutely love it. And we'll be doing it. And I will report back to you. And with that said, I could talk to you all day. And I would love to do a giveaway for my listeners. So I want to give away 10 books. So I'll be sending you guys 10 books.

But Mel, what do you think? I'm going to add in something.

Oh, my God.

We're going to give you links for five audiobook codes.

Oh, my gosh.

So it'll be your 10 books and I'm throwing in five audiobooks.

Oh, so exciting. Okay, so we have so many chances to win these. And do we want them to either. Should they post a picture and tag both of us high fiving themselves in the mirror for it?

Yeah. Great. Sounds great.

So the first 10 people.

And you're gonna pick the winners?

I'm gonna pick the winners. I'm doing the. I'm gonna do that. So the first people to tag Mel and I. And it would probably help if they hashtagged what the high five.

Actually, why don't you hashtag something called high five challenge. H I G H the number five challenge. Because there is also h a free five day challenge that we're doing. And I think you're gonna put the links in your show notes. Right. And she'll email you a link too. And whether you're listening to this in the year we recorded it or 10 years from now, that challenge is gonna be live. Lori and I have partnered on it. And you can find the link in the show notes. You get five days of coaching tools. And the best part, Community. Hundreds of thousands of people waking up in the morning high fiving themselves. Lessons on confidence. You're gonna get cheered for by other people. You're gonna love it.

Oh, my God.

Exactly what you need.

Amazing. Okay, so hashtag, say it again.

High five challenge.

High five challenge. And you're gonna tag Mel and I and I will send 10 books to the first people who do it. And you're also included in all of her amazing challenges that she has going on.

Yes. And then what do you wanna do about the audiobook? So the first 10 get books and 11 through 15, you get an audiobook.

Yes, we'll do audiobook to the last. This is amazing. So you guys, so many chances to win. So we cannot wait to see all of your pictures of you doing this in the mirror. I literally cannot wait for it. So, Mel, I can't thank you enough. This was so beautiful. This is always, you know, I know it's soul nurturing for so many people listening, but I'm so grateful as well to have also just received this beautiful gift from you today. And you are, you're so incredible. I just have to say your energy and your presence with people is like, like nothing I've experienced. So thank you for just dropping in and being so present with me and sharing so much. I'm grateful for you. Any last things you want to share?

Yeah. Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

Stop being so hard on yourself. You deserve a high five because you're out there in the world making amazing things happen. And just know that I'm here.

Oh, you're amazing.

Hearing for you, always.

Well, this definitely was a huge perspective shift and I know for so many of you listening, this was a massive perspective shift as well. Definitely go and grab that book because even if you are a winner, you need to give this to a friend. You need to high five your friend and hand it on over. It's so important. So you guys, I'm so grateful for you. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.

Sam.