Mel Robbins on why we reject new places by comparing them to the past. Moving to a small town, she criticized everything until she realized she was amplifying judgment and idealizing her old life. The real question: have you actually given it a chance, or just decided it was wrong?
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When we moved from outside of Boston, where your dad and I lived for 26 years, and we moved up here for you to go to high school up here, I hated it. You did? I hated it. And like you, all I did was look around this tiny little town where there are more cows than people and compared it to where we had lived for 26 years outside of Boston. Every time that I woke up in the morning, I'm like, this doesn't feel like I want it to feel like. I don't I don't like this. It's new. Like, it doesn't feel right. And I started to get very critical of everything that I didn't like. And it started reinforcing that this wasn't going to be right for me, that it felt wrong, therefore it's not right. And I started to blame the place instead of seeing that my inability to let go of the door that had closed prevented me from seeing the wide open door in front of me. Yeah. And one of the reasons why it's important to really examine periods of your life when you were happy is because it does provide clues about what you can bring forward to this chapter to help you be happy. I knew damn well that what would make me happy is making friends, but I sat in the house and bitched about how much I hated this place compared to where we lived. I did the same thing in my dorm. Correct. And so the comparison actually amplifies judgment, and the comparison isolates you, and the comparison also inflates the fantasy of the old life. Because here's the truth for me, this wasn't the case for you, and I don't know as you're listening if this is the case for you, I had gotten bored of our old life. I was tired of living in suburbia. I did want to change. I did want something new. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in that version of my life. Yeah, I knew I was ready for a change. But when that change came, holy cow, it did not feel like I thought it was going to feel. And so then all of a sudden, I'm like, I don't want this change. Yeah, you have to ask yourself, have I even given the situation a chance? Have I given the person a chance? Have I given the job a chance? Have I given the school a chance? Have I given this neighborhood a chance? Or have I been confronted by the change and I started comparing and now I've got my arms crossed and I'm like super judgy and I'm sitting back?
