How to Break Free From Your Past with Mel Robbins

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My whole life changed on a Tuesday morning in February 2008 outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Mel Tomorrow it's gotta be the new you, bitch. When that alarm rings, you can't lay there in bed and stare at the ceiling and just marinate in your problems. So that Tuesday morning, the alarm goes off and this is where our work and research intersects yours and mine. And so here I am at the top of my game, which I worked my ass off to become how I'll tell you how I started as a beginner. If you want to be successful at something, figure out all the things that you have to do when no one's watching and do them better than anybody else. You're one decision away from a different life and you need to push your ass through all the excuses and all the feelings and start taking action. I mean, there's always going to be excuse not to do something and those excuses will rob you of everything that your life could be.

Welcome everybody to the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am so excited to have Mel Robbins here with me. I was telling you right before we started, we have a few mutual friends that are like, yeah, you guys are gonna vibe. You guys are very authentic. You tell everybody your shit. You both cuss. I know a lot of people in our industry don't really cuss. They kind of hold it back.

Yeah.

And. And at the same time, the one thing that I do appreciate about what you do is you keep things really, really simple. And I think a lot of people over complicate a lot of different stuff. But the thing I like most about you and all the stuff I've listened to is you might be the most authentic person in our space. Like, I thought I was authentic, but I think you're like, extremely authentic where you'll just pop up a reel and you'll just say exactly what's going on through your day and what you've been struggling with. And I think that's what really people appreciate because sometimes they look at people in our industry and they're like, oh, I can never get there. They're so perfect. And I love that you share what you're going through. And I'm curious with authenticity. I know a lot of people struggle with being authentic. They have to be somebody for their mom, they have to be someone for their dad, someone for their spouse, someone at work. Is that something that you've always been good at or is it something that's been a path that you've had to go and discover?

Great question.

Thank you.

Well, it's not something I've always been. I was a anxiety ridden people pleaser with undiagnosed childhood trauma, just like everybody on the planet. Right. And I spent a large part of my childhood and my young adult and adult life lying, literally, kind of anticipating and being worried about what other people would think or how they would react, and then saying whatever I needed to say in order to not have people be disappointed or to have people like me. And I guess what happened for me is that when you spend a large part of your life trying to get other people to like you and trying to do everything you possibly can so nobody's mad at you is. It's exhausting and it doesn't work. And it's very liberating when you can get to a point that you can accept yourself for exactly who you are right now and exactly who you're not, and it's just easier. And so I think when I finally started to realize that I am not happy and my life is not headed in the direction that I want to go in, it just became much easier to just throw in the towel and just, okay, I'm not perfect. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I have good days, I have bad days, and why do I care so much about managing what other people think? And that was kind of the beginning of it, just letting it all hang out, so to speak.

So you said your life was going in a direction you didn't really want. Was there a moment where you're like, yeah, I'm just fed up with this, or was there, was it one big moment or was it just accumulation of moments where it got to like a fever pitch and you're like, I can't do this shit anymore.

Well, what's interesting is that the answer is there are those moments every week. I get frustrated with myself all the time and I'm not the kind of person that is really wired to change because I'm so inspired to do something. I am so stubborn or stuck or whatever word you wanna use that. The thing that I've noticed about all the par points in my life is there is a level of internal friction and frustration that I start to feel where I just get sick of myself or I get like frustrated with where I am and the inaction that is keeping me stuck. Like I'll be thinking about something and thinking about wanting to do something or thinking about changing something. And I'll think about it and think about it and the friction builds because the more that you think about what you want to do in any aspect of your life or your career or your relationships and you just think you will start to feel this self imposed tension because you're not doing anything to move the ball forward. And those are the moments that always cause big change in my life.

And so we were talking about right before we started of how you used to be a lawyer.

Yes.

You got hired with CNN because you were covering a case.

Yeah.

How did you get into doing what you do now? Was there a moment where you're like, actually, I don't want to do this anymore. But what actually makes me feel the most alive is teaching people all of the stuff that I'm going through. What's helped me get better, what's helped me improve, is it. Did you discover that path? And the reason why I asked, because for me, we were talking about how I used to work with Cutco and then I was in sales, I was 29 years old and I could feel myself starting to get depressed. And even my wife, who you just met, she was my girlfriend at the time and she's like, hey, you don't really seem normal. Like, it seems like you're like, dude,

you need to do something.

Like you're starting to kind of get a little bit depressed. And what does that look like for you? For me?

What does depressed Rob look Like, here's the thing.

I don't really, like, show it outwardly, but I think what was happening is. The other thing that also happened as well is I was working out, like, five, six times a week. I was in the best shape of my life. And then I found out I had four torn labrum, one in each shoulder, one in each hip.

A labrum? What the hell is that?

So it's the things that are inside of your joints that are. Like the padding. And so I was starting to feel a lot of pain to the point where I was 29, working from home, and I had to. Instead of sitting on my computer, I had to lay down and actually start to be on my computer to work from home. And the physical therapist I went to said, you can't work out anymore. Like, just stop working out for a while.

Oh.

They told me I needed hip surgery on both my hips.

Wow.

I didn't end up doing it. They told me I needed shoulder surgery on both my shoulders as well. So I was working a job I didn't want. I was making great money. And then I was just like, I can't do this anymore. And I think it got to a fever pitch for me, and that's why I'm asking, like, for me. Like, I could tell you the exact moment.

Tell me the moment.

We were in Jason's Deli. You know Jason's Deli, the chain?

No.

Okay. So there's a chain in the south called Jason's Deli, and it was like a movie where. Have you ever watched a movie where it's like, everything starts to kind of warp? And it seems like the person's like, the requiem for a dream where they start to kind of, like, trip. And the people were like. They were yelling at their kids. They seemed like they were unhappy, and they were yelling. And I turned to her, and I go, I think I'm gonna start podcasts. And this is January of 2015. Podcasts weren't what they are now.

And.

And so I'm sitting there, and I'm like, I think I'm gonna start a podcast. I moved to Austin to be a musician. I had a microphone, and I was like, I'll just start talking into it and just see what happens. And I felt obligated to teach. And what I had come to realize was that I was on this life path, and I was looking at everybody who was further along than me five, 10 years ahead of me. I was like, I don't want that fucking life. That's not the life that I want. And if I continue down this path, I'm just going to lose myself more and more. And so for me, it was like I started to really, like, the zest for life, I think, is what started to come out and, like, leave me. And I think that's what she started to notice was that it was just, like. Wasn't as happy, wasn't as excited to go out and do things. She would leave and go to work, and I would stay at home. And it was just like, same shit, different toilet, was just every day. And so she kind of helped me with my awareness of, like, yeah, I think I am going down this road. And I started to realize, like, my passion was wanting to help people. And there's a phrase that I always say is, a lot of people don't know their passion, but some people do. And when you find your passion, if you don't follow that passion, that passion will destroy you. And for me, I realized that I was starting to be destroyed, knowing what it is that I truly wanted to do, having no idea how to do it, but just not jumping off the ledge and saying, I trust that this is going to work out. And that's what it looked like for me. And it was just that moment, I think, completely changed my life in Jason's Deli. And so I'm just curious with you if there was, like, a moment where you're like, well, I've been. You know, you went to school. You had to go to years of school. And a lot of people are just afraid to leave what they've always been doing and put so much time into it. And you had success in it, right? And so was. There were. You're just like, I'm just. I want to teach people how to overcome that mindset or what was it for you, dude?

You're like, a strategic guy.

I'm very strategic, yes.

I am somebody who fails forward. The only thing that was on my mind when the pivotal moment that pointed me toward personal development, like, you know, was I was in such a breakdown at the age of 41. So here's the picture. We're living in this. Can I put my feet up on this table? Okay, good. Cause I'm, like, super relaxed now. So. I was 41.

This is the shit I'm talking about. Like, nobody else would do this. This is great. I love that you put your shoes up.

Well, I'm comfortable. We're just having a convers. And plus, this chair is great. I wish you guys could all see it. You should watch this on YouTube as well. And so here's the thing. I was 41 years old. I'd gone to an Ivy League college, I'd gone to one of the top law schools. I was living in the best town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. We were in the best school district. My husband had started a restaurant business with his best friend and we were killing it, or so I thought, right, because we all get caught up in climbing some kind of ladder and in keeping up with everybody else. And one of the interesting things about also being young parents is that you then find yourself in lockstep with other parents that have kids the same age. And so for me, what happened at the age of 41? We have three kids, all under the age of 10. My husband is in the restaurant business. The first small pizza joint did very well. So like complete idiots, we cashed out our entire life savings, the kids college savings plan. We took out credit cards because that's free money and cashed them out. We took out a home equity line and you know, completely maxed it out and shoved it all into expanding he and his best friend's pizza restaurant. And location number two is a dog. Location number three was three times the cost to get it open. And then 2007 and 08 hit, which was when the housing market went upside down and we found ourselves 800 grand in debt with liens on the house, no savings. Chris wasn't getting paid, I lost my job, the house was underwater. We had friends and family that had invested. And never in a million years did I think that at the age of 41, having done everything that I had worked for in my life, that I would be facing bankruptcy, that I would hate my husband, that I would be embarrassed by what was going on and that I would self isolate and that it would get so bad that I became a person I didn't recognize. I was drinking myself into the ground. And every single morning when the alarm went off, I wasn't rolling out of bed, I was hitting that sucker four, five, six times a morning. The kids were missing the bus. I became that person that just could not do the basic shit. And my whole life changed on a Tuesday morning in February 2008 outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And the whole story is very simple. The night before, I was drunk on bourbon and I was giving myself a pep talk, Mel, tomorrow it's gotta be the new you, bitch. Like you gotta wake up, you gotta be nice to your husband, you gotta find a fuckin job, you gotta call your parents and explain what's going on, you gotta Let your friends know. You have to start like taking care of your body. You can't eat crap. And by God, woman, when that alarm rings, you can't lay there in bed and stare at the ceiling and just marinate in your problems. And then all of a sudden, this rocket ship blasted across the television screen. And it was probably the bourbon, but I was like, that's it, It's a sign from God. That's it. I hear you, God. Tomorrow, when the alarm rings, don't lay there, Mel. Launch yourself out of bed like a rocket. So that Tuesday morning, the alarm goes off. And this is where our work and research intersects yours and mine. I first saw it that Tuesday morning. There is an unmistakable five second window of hesitation. It's a habit that everybody has. It is this moment between thinking about what you need to do and doing it. And psychologists, as you know, call this the difference between a bias towards thinking and a bias towards action. And there's all kinds of research about what happens between somebody's life who has a bias towards thinking. You know, you ponder, you overthink, you talk yourself out of things, you procrastinate, you get in these worry loops and somebody who has a bias toward taking action, not overthinking the little things. And so that morning the alarm goes off and I immediately remembered this idea that I should launch myself out of bed. And then I started thinking about it instead of doing it. And in that moment of hesitation where I started thinking about it, all of the emotion and feeling gets triggered, right? That's where you feel, I don't want to. What good is this gonna do? It's dark, it's cold, it's February, It's Boston, you're 800 grand in debt. Why the hell would you want to get out of bed? And I started reaching for the snooze button. Because if you think about something for more than five seconds, you go from consciously using the part of your brain to slipping into your subconscious and your habit loops. And that's where all the procrastination, all the stress, all of the habits and patterns that you have, whether they're thinking patterns or they are behavior patterns. That's where all of that self sabotaging behavior is encoded in your brain and runs on autopilot and it takes over in less than five seconds. Well, for whatever reason, as I was reaching for that snooze button that morning, I just started counting backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then I stood up. And that was the first morning I used it. I started using it every morning to just get out of bed. And then I made myself a promise that I would use this countdown technique anytime I knew what I could or should do, but didn't feel like doing it. And slowly but surely, using this little count backwards technique that I started calling the five second rule, you gotta move within five seconds or your brain kills your motivation to act. The counting backwards is critical. It doesn't work if you count up. It doesn't really work if you think about moving. Counting backwards is this incredible starting ritual that manually moves you from the basal ganglia to the prefrontal cortex. That's what it does. And the other genius thing about this is that it acts like the first domino that falls in a new direction. Because counting backwards is and of itself an action. And so it is the first micro action that you take in a new direction. Because when you start counting, you've actually made a decision to do the thing. That's why it works. And now, of course, I know all the science that proves why. And so I just went on with my life. I was selfish. I'm like, I need to climb out of this hole that we've dug and nobody's gonna do it for me. And I'm using this little tool to do the things that I need to do that I don't feel like doing. And it was working. And I did that for three years. And it was in that period of time that I auditioned for a radio show so that I could make some money on Saturday mornings to pay for groceries. That show took off. It became a syndicated daytime show. I won a huge award for that show CNN called so three years later, using 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5, 4, 3 2, 1. 5, 4,. 3, 2, 1. To not overthink the little things and just think fricking do it. I was on CNN and I had given this talk in 2011 that was supposed to be about career change. It was the first speech I'd ever given in my entire life. And somebody put it online, it went viral. And at the very end of that talk, I had not planned on talking about this little five second thing because I didn't know why it worked. And it sounds kind of stupid. Just count backwards. Your whole life will change. Just count backwards. And when you. The talk I'm referring to is my TEDX talk. If you watch my TEDX talk, which now has like 30 million views, you're watching a 21 minute long panic attack. That is not. Dude, I have the neck rash that people get when they have anxiety or they Drink too much in that thing. I wasn't supposed to talk about the 5 second rule I mentioned at the very end because I forgot how to end it. I was so anxiety ridden. Rob, in the original talk, I gave out my email address.

Oh my God. And 30 million people would have seen that.

Well, I had to email them after they put it online to say, can you edit out my email address? Because I was starting to get bombarded with emails from people around the world about this 5 second thing and how it was changing their lives and they were using it to stay sober to make more money. To super effective with anxiety with OCD. We know of at least 637 people at last count that have stopped themselves from attempting suicide. It's being used in medical practice, in therapist's office and inpatient settings with all the world's leading executives. And this thing took off virally and I became sought after to teach it and corporations started to call. Because I think in life we talk about what we want to do, we think about what we want to do, we teach people what they need to do. The what and the why is conceptual. You have to know how to make yourself do it when you don't feel like it. And that's what this is all about. So I never ever, ever, ever, ever said, I'm gonna build a brand, I'm gonna go out and do this thing. And I've become extraordinarily strategic and focused as the business has emerged. But it has always and will forever be driven by the everyday folks everywhere around the world that are on the other end listening to this conversation.

Yeah, the beautiful part about it, it's funny, I actually have you in my book, just FYI. Oh, cool. Because the whole part is to take action. And when I was younger, I'm a big introvert just in general, which is. It's funny that a lot of people in our industry are. A lot of people that put stuff online are introverts because it's easier just to put it. I don't have to be in front of anybody. I can just sit at my house and I can record something and put it out there and then I can hang out by myself for a little bit. Yeah. And I was really shy when I was younger and I had a realization 8th grade, that if I wanted a girlfriend, I'd have to start talking to girls. And I used to actually say, okay, what's the first sentence I'm going to come up with when I want to talk to a girl? And I'm going To go, three, two, one. I'm a force myself to say the first one. And I would actually count down. And it's funny because as your. When your book first came out, I was like, fuck, yeah. Like this. There's science behind this whole thing. Like, it actually makes sense. But the most important part that I think for people to take off of what you said is it's not the actual taking action, it's that the first action is the decision to do the countdown, which is a little micro winning towards the movement of where you're trying to go to actually get yourself to do something.

Yeah. You're on the couch and you've been blowing off the gym forever and you're like, I gotta get five, four, three, two, one. You stand up. You're now moving in a new direction.

Yeah.

So that's why it works.

So tell me about now. Okay, so you went from not wanting to be a speaker, not wanting to be a writer, and all this, and you decide that you're gonna start going down this route. I want to ask you about imposter syndrome, because the last person, usually almost all my podcasts are me actually speaking directly to camera. And I have a few interviews. Last person I had on was Tony Robbins. So I went from Tony Robbins to Mel Robbins, which is kind of cool. And when I googled you, I don't know if you google Mel Robbins, it actually says, is Mel Robbins married to Tony Robbins?

This fucking drives me crazy. No, I'm not kidding. This actually pisses me off.

Really?

Yeah. Because for years I would show up at speaking events and everyone would be like, oh, are you his husband? Whatever the hell it's called?

Who's Tony?

Yeah. And I'm like, why are you assuming that I'm here? And then it burned me because I'm like, oh, you must think that the only reason why I'm here is because of that.

So, yeah. So with transitioning into going into self development, writing a book with me, what was interesting is I had the idea for the podcast in January 2015, and I didn't start it till. And actually put my first episode out until August of 2015, because I thought, who would listen to a 29 year old when they could listen to Tony Robbins? Like, this guy's way better than I am. And then after eight months, I was like, I read that the average person that does a podcast, they put out seven episodes and they quit. So I'll record 14 before I ever put any out. And I'll put them out there. I'll See if they like it. I'll see if people like it. But for eight months, it was just imposter syndrome. Who the fuck would listen to me? Why would they listen to me? There's no reason why somebody listened to me. Did you have imposter syndrome come in. When you started to actually go down this route and decide this is something that you wanted to try.

So, of course. And here's what I want to talk about. So imposter syndrome is a really good thing, because imposter syndrome means you actually care about the thing that you are a beginner in. See, you're not an imposter. You're a beginner. And it's really important to reframe this, because when you say I have imposter syndrome, you have basically called yourself an imposter. And I want you to stop doing that. I want you to recognize that feeling of, I don't belong here, or I don't know what I'm doing, or I don't have permission to do this, or people are gonna find out that I don't know what I'm doing. I want you to see that moment of fear that comes up as a really good thing because it means you're stepping into a space or a room that you really want to be in. And I want you to start calling yourself a beginner. You're not an imposter. You're a beginner. And when you start calling yourself a beginner, you own where you are. And you also can now say the most important three words when it comes to building confidence. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm gonna figure it out. Because what does a beginner do? A beginner studies the thing that they wanna get good at. A beginner asks for help. A beginner admits that they don't know something. And so I hate that phrase, fake it till you make it. Because when you tell yourself, I'm just gonna fake it till I make it, you're calling yourself a fake.

Yeah.

And I don't think you should do that. I think you should say the truth, which is you're just a fucking beginner. Of course you're nervous. That means you're a beginner. And here's the other thing that's interesting about this feeling of imposter syndrome is that you don't feel it in rooms you don't care about.

That's so true.

You only feel it in the places and spaces that you want to be in. And so embrace the fact that you're A beginner own it. And what's also cool is if you don't, like, waltz in somewhere and pretend like you got this shit all figured out, nobody's going to think you're an inauthentic phony. People are gonna wanna help you. And so, you know, we did a podcast episode with my daughter who lives here in Los Angeles, and she's. Now I'm trying to, like, sit up, and I'm also gonna flip myself back off this chair. And she's a singer, songwriter, studying it for four years, and she had this extraordinary opportunity of going to the Newport Folk Festival this summer. And she is standing backstage with, like, the people that inspire her, right? And, like, right there. They're right there. Oh, my God. That's everything, you know, like. And we had this whole conversation about this topic and how she was crippled for the first five hours sitting in the artist tent next to all these people that inspire her career. And then all of a sudden, she had this epiphany where she's like, I gonna sit here alone and miss out on this opportunity. And, yeah, I may not be touring like Maggie Rogers, and, yeah, I may not have made it, like, so and so or such and such, but I have something that I can bring. I'm at the beginning of my career. I have the passion and the humor. And so she just started talking to people and explaining it. She was at the beginning and blah, blah, blah, blah. Next thing you know, she's getting asked to sing on stage. Next thing you know, all the big bands are coming up to her and going, we gotta collab. And so, in adopting this beginner mindset, that is an authentic thing to do because that's where you are. Own that shit.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important because what you're basically saying is, don't Compare your chapter one to someone else's chapter 20, which is what we all tend to do. And it's important because it seems like with the imposter syndrome, there's energy of I want to be where they are, which can be jealousy. And I've heard you talk about jealousy is actually a really important thing if you use it the correct way, which I think is. I've never actually heard somebody say before. And I think it. As I was listening to you, I was like, that makes so much sense because it's showing you. I think that the way that I always talk about is like, I believe I'm not religious in any sort of way. I believe in God, the universe. I believe there's something that is there, that's put this incredible thing together. And I think that the way it speaks to us is through energy and the energy that we feel towards something. And when I feel driven to learn about something, or if I do feel the imposter syndrome or I do feel the jealousy, it is kind of, in my opinion, the universe coming through and saying, hey, like, Mel, this is something that you actually want to get, get good at. And instead of beating yourself up over and over and over again of why am I not as good as this person, right, you also have to realize, like, okay, I'm not as good because I just haven't had as much time. And I think that's the important thing, that one of the things that I always talk about is there's only three real things that are required in hitting a goal. There's the direction, like, am I heading in the right direction? Am I taking the right action? And is time just gonna work its way out? And you've probably found yourself here before where it's like, we wanna be so far along. We see the people that we look up to and we're like, I wanna be where they are. But then when you take a step back, you realize they've been on the path for 10 years longer than I have. As long as I'm heading in the right direction, I'm taking the right actions. Eventually I'm gonna find myself hopefully somewhere in the area that they are. But what I've come to find, and I'm curious your thoughts on it, is if you just let time work its way out, it ends up being way better than you actually even imagine it to be, as long as you're just heading in the right direction. So with you and writing the books and having all this come out, have you ever had a moment of like, this is fucking crazy that this is what I've built and this is where I am because this is beyond my dreams of what I thought could be possible.

Every day, really every day. I mean, it was only six years ago that I still had liens on my house.

And we will be right back.

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Every day I wake up and go, I am so in awe of this. And the only difference between you and somebody who has the kind of life or things or work or friend group that you want is they're doing the work. They've been at it longer than you and they've been chipping away at it. And that, I think is a really important thing because I do believe that if you can figure out the directional signals, which is which direction should I head in? And for me, I use either inspiration or jealousy because I think jealousy is blocked. Desire. Jealousy is very different than envy. Envy is when you bring negative opinions to somebody that has something right. Like I envy you and there's this implied opinion that you don't deserve what you have. Like, I envy that house that you have. I envy, like there's this negative thing. If you're jealous, what that is is that's your desire for something coming up and your soul and your DNA going, that thing is a match for me. And when you can look at jealousy that way as a piece of data, it's a directional signal. And because it is so easy for us to beat down inspiration and to beat down instinct, oh, I can't do a podcast. Oh, I can't do this. But oh, interesting. I'm jealous of everybody who has them. I pay attention to the negative emotion. It is much louder for me than inspiration. And so I think if you can scan the world and see who you're sort of jealous of, that's gonna be louder for you than things that inspire you, because you probably don't give yourself permission to have those dreams, but you can feel the shit that bothers you. And so for me, every single business decision I've made has literally either been driven by something that I see as a very clear strategic thing to do, or it has been from a negative signaling. Either that, and I'll give you an example. So I start getting asked to give all these keynote speeches. I'm talking all over about the 5 second rule to all these big corporations. And over the course of a number of years, I become the single most successful female speaker on the planet, period. And I could still to this day do 365 speeches a year if I wanted to, which I don't. And so here I am at the top of my game, which I worked my ass off to become how, I'll tell you how, I started as a beginner and I took on this mindset of I am gonna study the Best people. And I am not gonna study what they do on the stage. I'm gonna study what they do when people aren't watching. Because that's where success actually comes from. If you wanna be successful at something, figure out all the things that you have to do when no one's watching and do em better than anybody else. And for me, I did that. I just worked my craft, I worked the skill. I was a student of it. I just honed and honed and honed and honed until I became in a category of one. And then I noticed something. I would be flying to an event and I would be feeling this pit in my stomach going, I'm lonely. I don't want to be on this airplane. I'm missing out on too much at home. Like there is something that's not working out about this. And plus, it's a dumb business model. Yeah, you can make a lot of money, but you can't scale it. I have to show up in order to get paid. And so I started to feel this jealousy about what a lot of other people were doing. And so I started to notice that, well, who am I jealous of and what is it that I wanna do? And I didn't know how to change the business. I didn't know what the right thing would be to do. But I just started paying attention to this friction inside my body that was rumbling and it was this feeling that something is off. I shouldn't be spending this much time on planes. It's no longer okay for me to be away from my family this much. I don't give a shit about how much money I'm making. Because you know, when I first started, when you have $800,000 in debt and liens on your house, you will say yes to anything for sure. Yes to anything. And so I was maniacally focused on pay off our bills. Pay off our bills, Pay off our bills, pay off our bills. And then once we got the liens off the house and the debt settled, then I was like, get the savings back, get the savings back, get the savings back. And then I was like, college savings, college savings, college savings, college savings. That's what it was about for me. And then of course, like the stories that kept coming in about people really connecting with the five second rule and the fact that you're one decision away from a different life and you need to push your ass through all the excuses and all the feelings and start taking action. And so this restlessness though, started to come up. And so what I'm telling you right now is that if you're in your life and you get in your car and you drive to work and you feel this restlessness either about the work and the job that you're headed to, or the neighborhood that you're living in, or the roommate or the spouse that you live with, fucking pay attention to that. Because that is a signal from deep within you that is hardwired into your natural intelligence and your DNA trying to wake your ass up and to get you to take your life seriously. And when you can look at those negative emotions as your soul and your body's own attempt to get you to make a pivot, to get you to care about yourself, to get you to start taking your time back and chipping away at the things that will bring more joy and fulfillment to your life, or simply working on your relationship, that's the beginning of all change. And so you know, to me, how I went from speaking to now the podcast is I just noticed. I'm jealous of Louis, I'm jealous of Jay. I'm jealous of all my friends that have these podcasts. And then, of course, I would say, I'm too late. Fucking Rob Dahl's been doing this shit since 2015. Who am I to get on there? They're already talking about this. I don't have anything new to say. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's always gonna be excuse not to do something. And those excuses will rob you of everything that your life could be. And so I just made a decision. I guess it would be three years ago now that I was going to pay attention to this jealousy. Cause it had been around since I had left the radio business and I started seeing podcasting. But I was so busy paying off my bills and so busy building the speaking business and so busy self publishing books that I didn't have time to do anything. And when I finally made a decision that I need to get off the road, I realized there's 6 million podcasts on Spotify alone. I realize I have a million excuses, but I am not gonna go to my deathbed regretting that I didn't try this, because I can feel myself aching to try this thing. And so it took me two years of wrapping up business and changing up our business and being a student of the podcast space until I was ready to launch less than a year ago.

And it's become, what now at this point?

75 million downloads.

It's crazy, right?

It's according. According to everybody, it's been the most Successful launch of a podcast since Smartless.

It's amazing.

We have absolutely destroyed it. And I'm so proud because I own it all and we do it all in house. We have, same as you. Sirius is our ad partner, and it is beyond my wildest dreams because I love doing things that are free. And so being able to have longer conversations and connect with our audience twice a week, it's extraordinary. It's absolutely extraordinary. And the other thing that I'm really proud of is we've had no press. Like, I don't get any press. You probably don't either. And I have a suspicion it's because we're not therapists or PhDs. And there is, I think, a very kind of a looking down on the personal development industry. And so I'm really proud of the fact that all of that has happened organically because of our audience. And so, I don't know. It's the single most fun thing I've ever done. I love it. If I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, it would be the podcast.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, it's.

It's.

It's interesting because we're. We're so cerebral. Like, we're always thinking, thinking, thinking. And what you keep coming back to is something I think is important for people to always kind of consider, which is we're always thinking about what we should do, and we're never actually, like, checking in with our body and being like, hey, what feels right? What feels wrong? Because one of the things you brought up is, like, going to a job in going to a job that you hate. Like, it requires so much energy to get yourself to a job that you. It requires so much mental energy, it requires so much physical energy to get your ass up out of bed and go to a job where you feel like, this is what the rest of my life looks like. I can look at my manager and say, like, I don't want what he has. I don't want what she has. That's not the life that I want. And you continue to force yourself to go. I actually think it probably takes more mental energy to go do something that you hate than to actually do something that you love. And the thing that I've heard one time somebody say, as a spiritual teacher was saying, when you do something that is out of alignment with what your soul's supposed to do, you have to come up with that energy. If you do something that is in alignment with what you're supposed to do, God or the universe will provide that energy. Like, for me, when I get done with the podcast, when I am 100% positive about when we get done with this episode, I will have more energy than when we first started it. And it's not coming from me, it's coming from somewhere. And I think that that's the thing that people need to check in with more is like, where is my energy? Where do I feel the most alive and where do I feel the least alive? Because there is energy that is always being used at every moment of your life. And if you're constantly thinking about, like, how long do I have to do this? Dammit, I gotta get myself out of bed. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I hop out of bed. Fuck, I still don't want to go to this job. Like, it's still happening all the time, versus checking in with your soul and being like, what is it that I actually truly want to do? And so for me, I was blessed with when I was younger, my father was an alcoholic. He passed away when I was 15 from being an alcoholic. And I was blessed with the fact of seeing the first person that I ever knew die, which was my father in a casket, who had so many dreams. Like, he was a dreamer and he was an incredible human. I always say I was lucky in the fact that he never beat me, he never touched me inappropriately, he never made me feel like shit or anything. He just got drunk and fell asleep, which obviously caused a lot of neglect issues from it. That was something I had to work through. But I remember seeing him in his casket and sitting there and it's, you know, the casket's right here and I'm on the sofa and my grandma, his mom is next to him. I'm sorry. Next to me. Then it's my sister and then it's my mom. And I remember looking at him and being like, nah, I'm not going to die with regret. Like, this guy had so many things he wanted to do. He was such a dreamer, but he never took any action towards anything.

That's why it was a drunk.

What?

That's why people drink.

Because you weren't taking the action that

you wanted to correct. You were numbing because you know that you're not living the life that you

want to be living and you're numbing those feelings.

Yeah. And look, you know, who knows what happened to your dad and what trauma he experienced. And you know what? He was also self soothing.

Oh yeah. He walked into the room after his father killed himself when he was 12.

Well, there you go. I mean, that's A level of complex PTSD for sure, that I'm sure he didn't get treatment for and that lives in your nervous system. And if you don't do any of the amazing protocols that are out there to heal your nervous system, the only thing that is going to really allow you to escape from it is something that numbs you out for sure.

And so I'm curious for you though, this is what's interesting, is because we were like, well, let's go back to our parents and think about the way that our parents were with her, with her and with me. And the one thing that my mom did do. Well, there was obviously some things that we can all talk about that maybe she had to work three jobs. My parents got divorced, so she wasn't around as much. But the one thing she said to me all the time is she always told me she was proud of me. And I think that gave me a level of okay, no matter what I do, my mom's gonna be proud of me. I think that was a big piece of it. When you hear of negative self talk, do you think that a lot of it comes back to childhood where maybe the children were yelled at for not being the way that the parents wanted them to be? No. Where do you think that it comes from?

Well, I think it comes from a number of places. So is it 0 to 5 that the brain's in a theta state?

0 to 7? Yeah.

And it's like absorbing everything at Mach 10 speed. So there is like irrefutable research around the programming in your nervous system and how you absorb information from adults around you, whether it is tone or body language or stress that you don't have to have parents yelling at you in order for you to become somebody that feels on edge. And you can have mom or dad come home and when they get home, they slam something down on the kitchen counter. And if you're a two year old sitting on the floor of the kitchen playing with Tupperware and that slam and it surprises you, you start to associate somebody coming home from work with like that.

Ah.

And so you can, as an adult later, at 5 o' clock in the afternoon, immediately flip into feeling on edge because of one experience that gets literally encoded in your nervous system that is associated with coming home from work and people being stressed out. Another one that a lot of you may experience is between 5 and 7 was when most people experience fighting in their households as kids between the parents because somebody's coming home, the drinking is starting, the stress is now playing out in Front of you, the sound of a car driving into a driveway, tires on pebbles. That's a huge trigger for people. And they don't know why. They suddenly get very on edge at night. The sun going down, another one, the crack of a beer can, another one. And so there are so many things that are getting absorbed by your body and your brain that you do not remember. And so that is one aspect to it. And the research is very clear that you can tell, particularly with girls, whether or not they will have critical self talk, which we all do. But the extent to which you will be critical of yourself, you can establish around the age of five, based on what the moment is saying to herself, so you don't have to be criticized yourself. If you watch your mom go, I look like shit, or have this running narrative that it's never enough, or your father's this or those people are that. That kind of criticism becomes the second language you speak and you don't even realize it. And so those are two of the major sources based on the research. But then there's a third one. And the third one is that when we go to school and we're in elementary school, and you have this experience of going from your nuclear family where not everybody has a sense of belonging, but you're in this nuclear family. And for most people there's at least this sense that you're a unit, right? Whether you feel accepted or not, when you go into school, you now have the experience of being other. You start to, from a protective standpoint, scan the room for people that are like you and people who are not like you. And you do it subconsciously. It's a protection mechanism. We all have an experience where you walk into the big cafeteria in an elementary school and you immediately scan where am I gonna sit? And you opt for a place that feels like you'll be accepted. And you don't walk to the tables that, for whatever reason, make you feel like that might not be a fit for me. And so that protection mechanism of starting to see the world as places you belong and places that you don't, that is also where the self criticism comes. You can't go over there because those are the jocks. You can't go over there because those are those, those are the mean girls. And so you start this almost like as a way to protect yourself from an uncomfortable experience. Ooh, the teacher's in a bad mood. I'm not gonna talk today. That's you protecting yourself. And yet it starts to run on repeat. And your own dialogue Starts to then make you smaller and make you not show up as yourself and make you not be as loud. And so it's like a death by a thousand cuts. And then there's one more really big piece to all of this, which is when they study boys and girls at the age of 12. Boys and girls in research studies have the almost identical levels of confidence girls levels of confidence and self criticism falls off a freaking cliff at the age of 13. And there's a very. Well, like, there's a very big reason why that's the average age when a girl gets her period. And so what's interesting about a girl going through puberty is it's a very public thing. Your boobs are changing. Everybody's talking about it. You know, who got theirs first, who didn't get theirs first. And there's also this conversation around it that's very sexual because when you get your period, typically the moms and aunts and older sisters are like, oh, you're a woman now and your body's also growing. And so girls tend to have one or two responses. They either think it's amazing and they show it off and get a lot of attention or they start wearing big sweatshirts cause their body is changing and they don't have control. There is a profound drop off in self confidence and a spike in self criticism that happens in that moment for girls that then tracks, unfortunately for a lot of women throughout the rest of their life.

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And now back to the show number one. That's fucking crazy, right? Like it's, it's makes sense. So it makes complete sense because the one thing that I'm curious of that goes, that goes along with it too. And I'm curious your thoughts on it because we were talking before, like this is like 65% women that listen to this, the episodes that I put out. I'm curious if you think whether there's research behind it or whether it's just your opinion. Do you think that makeup is also a part of that as well? Because I think that's also around that time to start putting makeup. So do you think that maybe in their mind. I've always been curious of this. They think like I'm not good as I am so I have to cover myself in order to conceal.

Well, think about the word concealer.

Yeah.

Well, there's two things though about this. Number one is that I think that makeup can either be a form of amplification and self expression or it can be something that you do because you don't like.

It's like a mask.

Yes. And so you have to be very careful about what you're thinking about yourself as you're putting it on. I hate my this da da da da da. And flip it to. I want to bring out the brightness in my eyes. I want to have some fun and be creative with this stuff instead of being something that is covering you up. And there's no question like when you. The messaging for women. So I personally feel when you talk about it from a like biogender kind of level and just the traditional subconscious messaging that's aimed at people who identify male versus people who identify female. The messaging from society for women is your worth is about what you look like, what your body shape is, how beautiful you are. Women that start to age are cast away from society. For guys, you get very similar pressure, but it's about how much money you make, it's about how successful you are. And so we are both getting it, but in very different ways. And so the messaging to women is that your body and your face and your beauty is where your value is. And since we're all bombarded with it, whether it's marketing or it's the self inflicted stuff that we do to ourselves on social media, in terms of the accounts that we follow, you can reinforce that negative messaging to yourself and thereby tank your own confidence and amplify your self criticism.

I'm curious with your Children, were you aware of this? When you have two daughters and a son, were you aware of this at this point when they started to go through these changes? Because there's a lot of people that obviously have children that are going through these changes and they're. And were you aware that they were going through these changes? Or is this something that you've become aware of in the past few years? And if you were, was there steps that you tried to help build your children's confidence as they were going into. Because middle school is hell for a lot of people, but as they were going into middle school, their bodies were going through changes. Were you aware of it at that point, or is this something you've become aware of as of recently?

I was definitely aware of it because we have a 24 and a 23 year old daughter and an 18 year old son. And our daughters, as is the case in many families, are not the same size and shape. And we were just talking about this last night at dinner, actually I was having dinner with our 23 year old and she was explaining to somebody that she and her sister used to battle all the time over clothes. And one of the things that stopped the battles is Sawyer, our oldest, finally said to Kendall, I have a boundary and you are not allowed to borrow my clothes unless you ask. And then Kendall got all upset about it and Sawyer said, because you can wear all my shit and I can't wear yours. Cause you're skinnier than me. And Sawyer beat herself up constantly about her body. And she has very athletic build. She's a fabulous human being. And one of the things that I sought out in terms of advice. Cause I'm not a parent, you know, I'm not a parenting expert. I'm sure screwed up my kids in many ways, just doing the best that I could. But one piece of advice that really helped me is how important it is to not compliment your daughters based on their appearance. You look so cute. Oh, you're so beautiful. Oh, you're so pretty today. Oh, I love that outfit. Because that's something that you don't feel like you have control over. If you compliment somebody for their energy or their passion, or their loyalty as a friend, or their perseverance at school, or their dedication to something, or the fact that they're so organized, those are character attributes. That's something that affirms you. So like when you said earlier that your mom always told you that she was proud of you, telling somebody that you're proud of them and then explaining what it is that they did. Or what character attribute makes you proud of them. That's how you lift somebody's confidence up in a way that they've got control over it. Because if you tell somebody, oh, my God, you look so fabulous, if they gain five pounds, they're gonna think they don't look fabulous because it was anchored on how they look.

Obviously, as we were starting right before, I was telling you that Lauren and I are starting to get ready to prepare for children. Right. And I'm excited about it because I have to. I'm.

How old are you?

37.

Okay.

And so. And she's 35. And so I'm excited. Cause it's like a new path where I get to discover things and fuck up. Like, I've already come to terms that I'm probably gonna fuck my kids up in some way. And I don't think there's a way around it. You know, it's just you try to fuck them up less, I guess, than what you could have done. And so I'm curious with you, as of recently, what's something that your children have taught you? Like, what's something, as of recently, where you've learned a lesson from your children?

Well, I'm just thinking about the fact that my daughter and I had a huge fight this morning. And we had a huge fight because I was trying. I stayed over at her apartment last night after flying in from the east coast. And she has a tiny little bedroom, and I was trying to pack up my suitcase and get ready to come over here for a full day of work. And she was all hot and bothered because she wanted to make her bed. And I'm trying to pack up the suitcase and get out of her room. And she's like, you gotta get the suitcase off the bed. And I'm like. But I'm trying to pack it up so I can get out of your room, so I can get out of your way. But I'm ocd and I have a morning routine, and I need to move to bed and you need to get out. And so we just, like, started, and then we got in the car. And she's right. She's like, you didn't tell me. It was 40 minutes away from here. And we went into that mode of silence where neither fine. And I almost did the thing that I used to do, which is I almost fought dirty. And this is one of the things that my kids have taught me, because they have permission to call me out, and they do a really good job at it. And I'll give You an example. So when I landed yesterday, I took Kendall shopping and I bought her some new sneakers, and I bought her, like, a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and we had a great afternoon. And when we were fighting this morning, I almost said, after all the shit I bought you yesterday. And then I was like, whoa, hold on, hold on. Because they have called me out because this is what my mom used to do to me. I'm buying you things, therefore you owe me your good behavior. And my kids have really taught me, do not do that to your children. If you want to buy your kids something, buy them something, but do not buy it and then hold it over their heads as some sort of token that they owe you obedience. And one of the things that I truly believe that I think my husband and I have done a really fantastic job at is that we've always stayed focused on our primary role as a parent, which is to help our kids become themselves. And they are not many versions of us. Even though they look like us, they are their own individual beings. And it's a really empowering place to anchor yourself, because you do. You can't help it. You have expectations about what it's gonna be like as a parent. You have expectations about what they're gonna do with their life. You have expectations and hopes and dreams about where they're gonna live and how close you're gonna be. And parenting, especially when they get older, every single day is an exercise of letting them be themselves. Like right now, our daughter Sawyer is doing a four month long solo backpacking trip through Asia. And she has come alive on this trip. I don't think she's gonna come home. I mean it. And I want her to. I want her to live near me. I don't want her to fall in love with somebody halfway around the world, which she, you know, she's not going to. She's in love with somebody in Boston. But maybe she will. I don't. But I would want her to do something different. But your job is to empower them to be themselves. Same thing with Kendall living here in Los Angeles. She's a singer, songwriter. This is where she needs to be. It would be way better for me if she lived in New York. But you gotta let them pursue what they want to pursue. And that is something that you have to practice every single day. Because worrying about somebody or trying to control them does not make you care more. It just makes you focus on what you're worried about. You need to learn how to care about somebody from a calm place where you're not trying to control their every move and where you're not making love transactional. And for a lot of us, I don't think we realized how much we grew up in homes where if you behave, then you get my affection. If you do well at school, then you get positive reinforcement. If you're not pissing me off, then I'll be nice to you.

Yeah, well, I did a three month backpack trip by myself in 2012. It'll be the best thing your daughter's ever done, for sure. First off, it got me really addicted to traveling, so that was a good thing about it. But the thing that I love most about what you just said is I have a really good friend and his mom. You know, I have lots of different friends. And sometimes I can see how parents will try to control their children outside of the house based off of fear. Some of my friends, they're like my mom and people write into me and send me messages. She'll send me all these fear things every single day and try to scare the shit out of me. As me trying to protect you is kind of the lens that they try to say it through. And it's a lot of fear. And then I have my best friend, his mom says all the time, she's like, my children didn't come to the world for me. They came through me. And I think that what's important about what you're saying is that love becomes very transactional for a lot of people in the relationship with their parents, which is when you act.

And their spouse.

Yeah. And their friends, because it becomes a proxy for their parents. Right. And so we learned that if you are the person that you always have been and you show up the way that I want to, then I will love you. But if you show up a different way as somebody else, I'm going to fight you. I'm going to bring you down. I'm going to tell you why that shit is wrong so that you can become the person that you can stay the person who you've always been before. And I see this a lot. I'm curious with you if you see it as well. A lot of times I'll get people that write into me and they say, hey, I'm really into personal development. I'm new on this journey, but my husband or my wife is just talking so much shit about it. They're just saying, stop, stop going to the gym. And maybe they're insecure about it. And one of the things that I've been saying to people Is like, yeah, there's probably a fear inside of them because you're killing the person that they love in their mind. And it's about having the conversation of being like, hey, this is the route I'm going. This is why I'm going. I would love for your support on it. But I'm curious with you, with the children, specifically, when you notice those feelings come up, you notice the old triggers. You notice yourself wanting to say something. What is the actual thing that you do? Do you take a deep breath? Do you pause?

Do you fast forward 5, 4, 3, 1 to myself and then you say,

shut the fuck up.

No, I just like put myself in pause. I catch it. That's what I do. I use the 5 second rule now more in my life to pause than to pause.

So it's like the reverse of what it used to be, huh?

Yeah, I mean, you can use it both ways. And that's why it's really effective with addiction and with PTSD.

How so?

Well, because you're counting backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It puts a pause in between whatever it is that just triggered you and your response. So the counting settles your body and it switches gears from where the trauma response is taking you or the anxiety is taking you and the patterned response in those situations, whether it's to erupt emotionally or grab a drink or whatever. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Now you have engaged your conscious mind and so you can now choose what you're going to do in response.

Yeah, It's a pattern break more than anything else, right? Yeah. It's funny because you said literally, we were driving here this morning, you met our dog Bear, and he hates going to the groomer. And we take him to the groomer first thing in the morning. You know, when we take him, it's at 8am so when we get into the car this morning, he starts shaking because he thinks that we're going to the groomer. Right. Because we left around started shaking. And what's interesting, when we were talking about the nervous system a minute ago, when I had Andrew Huberman on my podcast, he was talking about with ptsd, not always is it the event that is a reminder. It is the things that lead up to that event that are a reminder.

Well, those are the triggers.

Right. Which is where.

So the crack of a beer.

Yeah. It's not your dad hitting you.

Yeah. It's the can of beer. Why? Because think about your nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the alarm system. When you have any kind of situation, positive or negative, where Your body goes into a hyper alarm state. And what happens in that moment, especially with negative trauma, is that your brain hits, you know, like when a camera. You hold down that little button that takes the photos. Your brain does that with all five senses. It is snapping a thousand photos a second. There was an incident that happened with my mom where I was in the sixth grade. We were driving from Muskegon, Michigan, where I grew up to. Up to the Petoskey area. We were coming into Kalkaska, Michigan. We always stopped there to go to a McDonald's. We were in the front. My dad and brother were driving behind us. It was a crazy snowy winter night. And we were listening to the radio. We could see the McDonald's up in the distance. And the person on the radio that we were listening to said something about the weather report. And then they said the words black ice. And it was at that moment that this car passed my dad's car and came up alongside of us. And as we come into the town, this car pulls out. Out of nowhere, this car swerves in front of us and we frickin roll. And my dad and brother watched this whole thing play out. The Wagoneer that we were in rolled like five or six times. And what happened in that moment is that. Excuse me. The sympathetic alarm nervous system activates dangerous situation. And it absorbs everything and just imprints it in your brain, pours it into your nervous system. Every smell, every sound, every everything. And here's what's interesting. My mom and I were in the same car, had the exact same experience. And I remember it like it was yesterday. It felt like Rob. I was sitting in a dryer with clothes tumbling around me because the suitcase went, the dog flew from the front to the back.

Did it feel like slow motion?

Slow motion?

Yeah.

You know why? Because your brain is slowing it down to record all this. And so I, to this day, if I walk on crunchy snow, which was the sound of the car rolling, your

body just lights up.

I'm back in the car. If my mom walks on crunchy snow, she feels nothing. But if she hears anybody say the words, black ice.

Black ice. Really?

Yes. So that's an example of how a sound or a word or a smell that triggers that thing, it's the preceding thing that says to the nervous system,

oh, God, Mel Robbins, this is great. Thank you for sitting down. Thank you for showing up. And I want to. I want to recognize you for your authenticity and everything you're putting out into the world. I. I really, truly do believe that the stuff you're putting out there is changing the world. Because I think that the thing that I've tried to do since I started the podcast is be as real as possible. Because I didn't want to talk about my father's death for a really long time. Why? Because I was just ashamed by having an alcoholic father. You know, like, I remember him showing up to basketball games and baseball games drunk, and I would just be like, there he is again. You know, he's drunk. And I was ashamed to have that. You know, he passed away on a Thursday. I went back to school on Friday. I'm sorry. I went back to school on Monday and I didn't tell anybody about it because I was just so ashamed to have an alcoholic father. And when I started the podcast, I realized that if I was gonna have real, true connection with people and people were gonna listen to me, I had to share all of my shit and I had to tell them. And I think there's a lot of people out there that want to present as if they have it all figured out and they're all perfect. But the thing that I think really relates with people, with you, is that you're so fucking real and authentic and that I think people go, she's working on herself too. She's just a little bit ahead, and if she can do it, I can do it. And I think that's the most important thing for anybody, it's in the self development industry, and any industry, I think, is to know that your mess is your message. And there's so many people that just want to feel seen and they want to feel heard. And when they look at someone and think, I'll never get there, I don't think that does any good, being a perfectionist and trying to show themselves as perfect. And so I love all the stuff that you put out because I feel like as soon as you walked in the room, I was like, yep, that's the same person I see online. And I think that that's really important for everyone to do. And so I think that you're giving a lot of hope to people who are on the path starting on the path to go.

Well, you want to know a secret?

Sure.

So this morning, my daughter and I had planned on going to a 7am Mega Reformer Pilates class.

Okay.

And we had signed up and I flew in last night and we went out to dinner with her roommate and her roommate's mom, and we had just a fucking great time. And halfway through dinner, after two espresso martinis, I Ate half a gummy with my daughter. And we just. Which were legal here in California. No, we were planning on going.

Are you still going?

Oh, yeah, we were. And then the alarm rang this morning at 6:15 and I was laying next to my daughter in her apartment with no air conditioning, sweating like a human furnace. And I rolled over and I said, ken, you wanna go to Pilates? And she's like, no. And I said, me either.

Yeah.

And we hit the snooze button, went back to bed.

Yeah.

And that is from the woman who invented the five second rule to get out of fucking bed. I know that hitting the snooze button is not what you should do. And I still did it.

Yeah.

And so I.

But you're not gonna guilt and shame yourself for it, right?

No, I'm gonna go to a class tomorrow. That's what I'm gonna do.

Yeah.

And you know, but I did feel bad. I did go. We should have gone. We should have gone. We should have gone. We should have gone. And I just said, drop it. I'll just go tomorrow. But I think that the thing for me is everything exists in a cycle. Your to do list is always a cycle. Your laundry is always a cycle. The dishes are always a cycle. Working on creating a better life is always going to be a cycle that never ends. And one of the reasons why I am sharing especially those moments where I didn't do it is that you're right. Like kind of putting out this thing online or in podcasts or your books or whatever. Like you have it all figured out. I don't have it all figured out. Every single day. I'm still learning new things. I'm a beginner in some areas, I'm ending other areas. I'm evolving my friendships. I'm learning more about who I am and what I want to learn in the future. And when I think about it as not something that I have to do or that's ever going to get done, but that it's just the ever never ending cycle of what it's like to try to live a good life. That's what I'm here for.

Yeah. And it's important because I've been preaching this a lot recently, which is I don't think there's a destination that we get to. Like a lot of times people are always like, when am I going to be done with this thing? When am I going to be done? When am I going to be better? And it's like, I think you just start to get better at when you find yourself off course, you get back on course. And you said, I don't have it all figured out. I don't think either one of us are ever going to get to end our lives and feel like, well, fucking figure life out. I don't think we're gonna get there. I think it's just part of life, of just losing yourself, rediscovering yourself. And when you release the expectation of the journey, excuse me, the destination, it's more of like a sense of ease, I think comes over you, of, I'm trying my best and I'm getting better. And that's all that really matters. And I love that that's what you put out there. Cause I think you make a lot of people feel better about themselves by doing that.

Thank you for.

Yeah, well, thank you for being on the podcast, Mel. It's been great.

Awesome. Thank you. Congratulations on your book. Buy it everybody. If you're listening to this thing, buy the damn book. The man is here for you every week. He's doing this for free. Buy his book and support him.

Thank you, Mel. Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

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