Mel Robbins on How To Take Control of Your Life With One Simple Habit (Re-release) #622

Mel Robbins is one of the most sort after motivational speakers in the world. Her TED talk has been viewed almost 27 million times and she's also the best-selling author of several books, including her latest one, The High Five Habit: Take Control of Your Life With One Simple Habit. In today's conversation, Mel explains that all of us know what we need to do for the best in any given situation but it’s acting on that knowledge that’s hard. It’s so easy to be impulsive or fall into old habits. And I think this is where Mel really comes into her own. Her approach is all about practical, real life advice that busy people with busy lives can easily implement. A prime example is something that Mel calls the five second rule. This is a rule that stops negative thinking in its tracks, and immediately breaks the feedback loop of procrastination and moves us into taking action. It changes a bias of thinking into a bias of action, giving you the confidence to try when you're full of doubt. In fact, it's so simple that my 11 year old son has already seen its benefits in his own life over the past few weeks. We also talk about The High Five Habit (which is the title of Mel’s new book) - this is the idea that by simply giving yourself a high five in the mirror each morning, you can experience transformative effects in your life. This simple exercise is about recognizing yourself and asking yourself what the person looking back at you in the mirror really needs and by doing so, Mel explains that you are retraining your brains neural pathways and convincing your subconscious that you are someone who is worthy of celebration. This really is a wide ranging and in-depth conversation. There is something quite unique about the connection that Mel has with her audience and the way she delivers her message. I think a lot of it comes down to her raw honesty, and the fact that all of her methods are borne out of her own lived experience. She's been there and she is very happy to share her struggles, her insecurities and her battles. I certainly got a lot out of this conversation and I think you will as well. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://thewayapp.com/livemore https://ag1.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/622 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm on a mission to get every human being in the world to add one simple thing to their morning routine. I know that this takes five days to work. Five days before you have an enormous breakthrough in how you see and relate to yourself. It's simple and it works.

• 0:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hi, my name is Rangan Chastie. Welcome to Feel Better Live More.

• 0:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hello, how are you doing? I hope you are having a good week wherever you are in the world. Here in the UK, it has been getting colder, it has been getting darker. But my hope is that this conversation brightens up your day no matter where you are. Because my guest is the one and only Mel Robbins. Now, I posted a photo of Mel in my studio just a few weeks ago. And I was overwhelmed by the response. So many of you are huge fans of Mel. And we're really, really excited that she was coming on to my show. So for those of you who don't know Mel, Mel is a former lawyer. She's one of the most sought after motivational speakers in the world. Her TEDx talk has been viewed almost 30 million times.

• 1:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  And she's also the bestselling author of several books, including her latest one, The High Five Habit. Take control of your life with one simple habit. In today's conversation, Mel explains that all of us know what we need to do for the best in any given situation. But it's acting on that knowledge that's often so hard. It's so easy to be impulsive or to fall into old habits. And I think this is where Mel really comes into her own. Her approach is all about practical, real life advice that busy people with busy lives can easily implement.

• 1:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  A prime example is something that Mel calls the five-second rule. This is a rule that stops negative thinking in its tracks and immediately breaks the feedback loop of procrastination and moves us into taking action. For many people, including a brand-new team member of mine, it has been transformative. It changes a bias of thinking into a bias of action, giving you the confidence to try when you're full of doubts. In fact, it's so simple that my 11-year-old son has already seen its benefits in his own life over the past few weeks. We also talk about the high-five habit, which of course is the title of Mel's brand-new book, the idea that by simply giving yourself a high-five in the mirror each morning, you

• 2:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  can experience transformative effects in your life. This simple exercise is about recognizing yourself and asking yourself what the person looking back at you in the mirror really needs. And by doing so, Mel explains that you are retraining your brain's neural pathways and convincing your subconscious that you are someone who is worthy of celebration. This really is a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation. I was delighted that Mel made the trip up to my studio in person, and I really think there is something quite unique about Mel, the way she delivers her message, the connection she has with her audience.

• 3:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think a lot of it comes down to her raw honesty and the fact that all of her methods are born out of her own lived experience. She's been there, and she is very happy to share her struggles, her insecurities, and her battles. I really do think this is a special conversation. There were times within it that I think we both forgot there was a microphone there recording what we were saying. I certainly got a lot out of this conversation. I think you will as well. And now, my conversation with Mel Robbins.

• 4:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  You have been helping probably millions of people around the planet for many, many years now. What do you think is the main reason why people, despite knowing what they should be doing, struggle, they procrastinate, they have these negative thoughts that get in the way of them taking action? What do you think the reason is?

• 4:22Speaker 00

  Well, I think knowing what to do is really simple.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  I'm serious. Like, if you, in any area of your life where you feel stuck, you know what you need to do to move the needle, to improve the situation at work, to change your career, to improve your health, to make yourself happier, to work on your marriage, the information is everywhere. And in fact, if you're listening to me right now and you go, Mel Robbins, you are wrong. I have no idea what to do. I just know I'm stuck. Actually, you know what to do. Go to Google and type in, I hate my job, and you will get hundreds of millions of links.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  You will probably find 100,000 videos that are made by people who have been stuck in their jobs, who will walk you through a step-by-step process that you could take in order to change. The what is easy. The issue is how. How do you make yourself take actions when you're afraid, when you're scared, when you're overwhelmed? How do you break bad habits? How do you break the negative thinking that is causing you to feel paralyzed? See, the problem for most of us is we think about what we need to do. But thinking won't change your life. The only way you're going to change your life, or change your career, or change your health,

• 5:53Speaker 00

  is to take action. And so the reason why so many people get stopped by procrastination, and stopped by fear, and stopped by anxiety, is because they never get past the part of just thinking about it. And I believe that we all have a habit that I call the habit of hesitation. And in psychology, psychologists and researchers say there's basically two types of people, right? There's people that have a bias towards action, and those are the kinds of folks that when inspiration strikes, or when confidence strikes, or when courage strikes, or when opportunity strikes, they tend to lean toward it and to take action. And based on research, those folks tend to be happier,

• 6:37Speaker 00

  healthier, more successful, more fulfilled in life. And then there's the rest of us, and those of us that have, what psychologists call, a bias towards thinking, which means in a moment of uncertainty, a moment of opportunity, a moment where you need courage or confidence, instead of leaning toward it, you lean away from it, and you start thinking, what should I do? And it's that habit of hesitating in moments of change that is keeping you stuck. We call it procrastination. We call it overthinking. We call it a lot of things. But it's just a habit of pausing, and then you trip into patterns of thinking and patterns of behavior that have been holding you back for years.

• 7:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, people say information is power. And based on what you're saying there, and I actually agree with this, information's not everything, is it? Like, we can have the information. We can have the knowledge. You know, knowledge is power. It is, but it's not everything, is it? You can have the knowledge and not take action.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  I know a lot of really smart people that are miserable. I know a ton of people that do nothing but read self-help books or watch videos on YouTube about inspiration and do nothing. And the reason why is they gather information as a way to feel like you're working on something. And learning is a really important thing to do, like understanding, becoming more self-aware. It's critical to you improving your life. It's critical to you being happier and more fulfilled. If you don't understand yourself and you don't understand the patterns of thinking, the patterns of behavior that are keeping you stuck, you'll never be able to break them and replace them.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  But you can get yourself comfortable with learning and duping yourself into thinking that somehow being smarter about what you need to do to be healthy will make you healthy. That's not true. Just like reading about launching a business doesn't launch a business. And so, you know, one of the other things that I find to be really interesting, and I think this is one of the reasons why people really resonate with a lot of what I have to say. I don't know if it's the dyslexia, the ADHD, what it is. But I can't remember a lot of information in terms of a list.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  So if I'm trying to get healthy and you give me 11 things to do, I will do none of them. If you give me one simple thing that I can grab on to, I will likely try it. And I think a lot of times what happens for folks is, and I know it certainly has happened for me, is that even if the information is empowering, if it feels complicated, I'm not going to do it.

• 9:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's the beauty, or one of the beauties, I'd say, of your approach, whether it's in your, you know, you've written multiple books, but the one before this, and including this one, The High Five Habit, you know, the subtitle, I think, says, "Or Take Control of Your Life with One Simple Habit." And as you talk, Mel... I really, I can't tell you how much I connect with what you're saying because it's a, it's very similar to the approach I've tried to take with patients for over 20 years now is keep it simple. You know, what is that one keystone habit that's going to unlock the door to all the, to all those other habits?

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Before we get into the new book, I have a new team member.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Uh-huh.

• 10:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  And she's a huge fan of yours.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  And last night, I said to her, hey, so I've got Mel coming to the studio. She was losing it with excitement. And she said, Mel Robbins changed my life. If it wasn't for Mel, I'd still be in a job that was stressing me out. I couldn't stand anymore. If it wasn't for Mel, I'd still be on antidepressants. If it was for Mel's 54321 rule, I wouldn't have pressed send on the application to join your team, Rangan. And she only joined a few weeks ago. And that just really hit me at how profound and how life-changing your

• 10:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  work is because this is one individual who has shared how it's helped her health, it's helped her, well, it's helped her physical health, her mental wellbeing, and it's helped her to get a job, which, as she said to me last night, has pushed her out of the comfort zone that she knew she could do, but probably wouldn't have had the courage to go for.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. And there's a couple of things that I want to say about that. That story does a beautiful job of explaining my mission in the world. And that is to uncover simple tools that anybody can use to help them make changes in their life. And so the reason why, what's her name?

• 11:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Her name's Steph.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  So the reason why Steph was so excited, and I hear it every day, like, one of the coolest things about, you know, being on YouTube and being on social media and putting work out and speaking on stages around the world is when you have a super simple idea. It's so sticky. Yeah. That anybody can share it. It sounds kind of stupid. That count backwards? Okay, you know, you're not going to forget that because it sounds kind of dumb. And the idea itself is so simple and so sticky. Anybody can try it and anybody can share it. And oftentimes, people don't even know my name. They're like, oh, my gosh, you're the five lady. Or Robin, you know, they like mix, like they don't even like, they've been watching me. And they've, and I love that. Yeah. Because for me, it's about the tools.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  And in Steph's case, what's super interesting about her excitement, because I literally cannot go through a day at this point and have somebody not walk up to me and say, you changed my life. And I always say the exact same thing when somebody tells me that. I say, thank you so much for telling me. I appreciate you acknowledging me and following me. But you deserve the credit. Because you did the work. I just gave you a tool that I happened to discover that helps you move from thinking to doing. Yeah. So she moved herself from thinking about how much she hated her job

• 13:11Speaker 00

  to five, four, three, two, one, stopping the thinking by counting backwards and pushing herself to move. She moved herself from thinking about applying for the dream job of yours and five, four, three, two, one, hitting send. She moved herself from thinking about going to the gym to five, four, three, two, one, cutting the procrastination loop in half and then replacing it with a push to take action. And so what's so elegant and simple and empowering about the five second rule or the high five habit or all the other simplistic stuff that I tend to share with the world? Because that's the stuff that works for me. Is that these are all tools that cut through the bullshit that's holding you back.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  And it just so happens that your nerdy friend Mel has done all the research to be able to explain to you why science and research and decades of psychological academic work.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Actually is encapsulated by counting backwards five, four, three, two, one. Or in this particular new brain hack, the high five habit, how simply high fiving the human being you see in the mirror every single morning as part of your morning routine will build the habit of self empowerment, self respect, self worth, self encouragement, self love. Like this is powerful stuff. And it sounds dumb, you know, like it's like, and here's the other thing. And you and I were just talking about this. I think that, that, that life is so freaking overwhelming.

• 14:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  And when your problems seem overwhelming or when that dream job seems impossibly far away,

• 14:55Speaker 00

  we all make this fundamental mistake of believing that because your, your problems are so big, the solution must be big. Or because the dream is so far away that the, the, the way that you're going to get there is so enormous. And the fact is, it's the exact opposite, the exact opposite, everybody. That when your problems are enormous, it is the littlest thing that moves you in a different direction and starts to chip away at it. When your dream is enormous, it's the littlest thing that gets you moving. And when you understand that you can get started towards something by doing the smallest little thing and it'll crack open something inside you and let some light back in. That's powerful.

• 15:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  One of the reasons I think so many people around the world resonate with you is because you have a real knack at making people feel that you get them. You get their life and you share a lot of that in the new book, The High Five Habit. You share a lot of your own struggles where things didn't quite go as well as you wanted them to on multiple occasions. And when I hear you say that people come up to you on a daily basis. I'm interested in how do you really take that feedback? And does the Mel Robbins of 2021 take it in a different way from the Mel Robbins of,

• 16:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  let's say, 2011? Because I get this real impression that you have evolved. You are taking your readers with you. You've spoken about, you know, and we'll get to this. You've spoken about guilt, about shame, you know, insecurity, jealousy, all these things.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  That's the nice stuff.

• 16:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's the nice stuff.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Oh, for crying out loud. When are we going to talk about the cheating and the anxiety attacks and the quitting jobs during a panic or the homesickness or the, I mean, whole drinking myself into a ground, anxiety, postpartum depression? Like, I mean, I have just had a roller. I was a very high functioning, screwed up human being.

• 17:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. I think there's a lot of them around.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  I think most people are.

• 17:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Like, I mean, you're either, I think we're all sort of like finding our way back home to ourselves.

• 17:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  So as you felt, I guess, more secure in who you are in your skin? Because the reason I'm asking on this, I think a lot of people, myself included, have struggled to take praise in the past. And you say all kinds of things to sort of, you know, battle it off or just, you know, you take it, but you feel a bit uncomfortable maybe with that praise. And I'm just interested on a personal level.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  How has that been for you?

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Well, um.

• 17:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Was it hard at times?

• 17:50Speaker 00

  I'll tell you what it's hard. It's hard when I'm with a friend or when I'm with like a family member and I know that it's annoying to somebody else because they see it sort of in the lane of celebrity and it's not a celebrity experience at all. I have no interest in being famous. I have no interest in being considered a celebrity. I personally don't consider myself a celebrity, so much so that up until four months ago, my freaking home address was on my LinkedIn account. That's how dumb I was about the kind of reach that I have. And so I love those moments and I'll tell you why.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  I don't think those moments are about me at all. I see a moment like meeting somebody like Steph, who walks up and says, "Oh, my gosh, holy cow. I can't believe you're in London. Because of you, I've got this new job. And because of you, I stuck to my diet. Or because of you, I got control of my anxiety." And I'm like, "Thank you, actually. You deserve the credit. Don't give me the credit. I just shared with you a couple of tools that worked for me. You need to keep the credit because you're the one that did the work." And so every person like Steph that comes up to me, or that writes to me, or that messages me, or that puts something in the comments,

• 19:18Speaker 00

  to me, that is evidence that the work that I'm doing in putting up a YouTube video is having a real impact on people's lives around the world. I'll tell you a story where it was a real turning point for me. And so it's like this incredible validation that is the source of my drive. And it's why I am maniacal about what the thumbnail looks like on YouTube. I'm maniacal about what we're putting up on Instagram. I micromanage. There is not a caption that goes out that I don't write. And we put out 19 pieces of content a day. There is not a thing that gets posted that I have not personally signed off on, that I haven't looked at the edit, that I haven't picked the music, that I haven't literally done everything.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  Now, I haven't done everything, but I take so much care and intention in what we put out. And here's why. So we were on vacation in Iceland as a family for my dad's, I think it was his 75th birthday. And we were three hours outside of Reykjavik. And we stopped at a little ranger station outside of a national park to walk in and go to the bathroom and to grab a cup of coffee before we drove into this national park to go hiking in the middle of nowhere. And I am wearing a parka with a hood up. I have a hat on, a little beanie. I have my glasses on and my coat zipped up like this.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  And we go walking into the ranger station and my husband, Chris, says, hey, Mel, you want a cup of coffee? And I say, oh, yeah, I'd love one. Um, I'll, I'll take it with cream and sugar. And the ranger, a woman in her mid 40s, all of a sudden looks up and says, Mel Robbins? Is that you? She didn't even see me. She heard my voice. And I turn and she goes, oh. And I'm like, hi. Oh, my gosh. Take my hood off, my beanie. How are you? What's your name? You know, and, and she got so overcome and she said, I, I have to tell you, you got me through an abusive marriage.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Your videos made me feel like I would be okay if I left. Your videos gave me tools to find the courage to reach out for help. Your videos. And look, I don't feel like I'm responsible for her changing her life. I feel like I'm a human being that has had a lot of struggles. And because I've met so many other human beings that are trying to change their lives, I understand the patterns. I understand the holes we dig for ourselves and we fall into. I understand all this because it's both a lived experience and because I've literally talked to, coached, helped, uh, inspired so many just normal, real people going through

• 22:13Speaker 00

  stuff. And, you know, I also happen to be a trained crisis intervention counselor who worked a domestic violence hotline for four years. I happen to have been a public defender that did criminal defense work for people who could not afford attorneys. And there's tons of, of mental health services and addiction counseling and thing and training that goes along with that. And so. When I hear that there is a woman in an abusive relationship in the middle of nowhere in Iceland, who is watching YouTube videos as a way to have a lifeline, to be able to find the courage to face the things going on in her life, and find the strength

• 22:55Speaker 00

  within herself, to be able to take those actions and to hold on to the hope that things are going to be better if she does, that to me, like, we're done here. If I were to die on the plane crash home, I have lived an extraordinary life because I have helped somebody. And so that experience made me go, whoa, this is so much bigger than a book, than a video. Like, I, I put so much intention into what we put out because I know there is a human being on the other end of it.

• 23:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Put it there. High five.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  I mean, that's such a powerful story. And, you know, I think about that, Melon, I think.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Well, your podcast is the same thing. You take your expertise, your intellectual curiosity, your wisdom, your humanity, and you produce a show.

• 23:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Where you're putting this out, like, can you, what is the difference for you in terms of going from treating patients in a one-on-one capacity and their families?

• 24:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  To do, to, to spreading life-saving, life-changing information, knowledge, empowerment, stories?

• 24:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  To help people.

• 24:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  It, you know, I resonate with a lot of what you've been saying. It's the most incredible journey. It's the most incredible feeling. It's, it's made me really question, what does it mean for me to be a medical doctor in 2021, 2022? You know, what does it really mean? You know, medicine, like law, I'm sure, is a very sort of conformist profession.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I know, like, in a conventional, let's say, National Health Service, primary care clinic, I can probably see 40 patients in a day at 10-minute intervals, which is suboptimal, but we'll leave that for another, another conversation.

• 24:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  This show, my books, you know, all the stuff like you do, you know, we're reaching with the show, if you include YouTube, close to a million people a week. Right. And I get drowned in messages on Instagram or private messages or letters. And it's so touching because you realize actually every time you put something out, it is reaching a human.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  They're hearing it. They're changing their perspective on their life. And it's impacting, yes, their health or their relationships. And it's incredible. And I think what a great age to be alive in because we've now got these mediums where we can do that. I mean, what I hear about you Mel, which I wish I really love is that so far we've talked about how you've helped a lady who's struggling with domestic violence. We talked about one of my team members who you've helped leave a job she wasn't happy in. You've helped change her health and get her off medication. Yet you're not a doctor.

• 26:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I find that fantastic because I think the majority of what we see now as medical doctors, I think 80 to 90% is in some way related to our collective modern lifestyles. How we're living and we're stressing out or we're overworking and we we get anxious thoughts and we're not, you know, this is what's driving our real health. So the question then I for you is, as you say, you're not a trained, I guess, therapist or medical doctor, yet you're helping people with their mental, physical and emotional health. Why do you think that is?

• 26:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change. The mornings are darker. Everyone around you seems to be coming down with something and suddenly that well being you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals. And one of those fundamentals. Is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years. And one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed

• 27:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  to continuous improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers. All you

• 28:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends. Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals. And one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years. And one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains, for example,

• 28:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now. AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order.

• 29:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers. All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I think that there's a couple of things. One is I do have expertise because my expertise comes from lived experience and from sitting in a therapist's chair, getting therapy for five to 10 years off and on. It comes from taking medication for 25 years. It doesn't mean I can prescribe it, but it means my life has been saved by it. It comes from studying this stuff. Because what happens when you invent something like the five second rule and perfect strangers start to tell you that they're counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one,

• 30:33Speaker 00

  just like they saw you doing on YouTube, Mel. And it's impacting major issues in their life. From losing 100 plus pounds to staying sober to, we know of 110 people who have stopped themselves from attempting suicide.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  For me personally, I feel a responsibility to understand why something like that works.

• 30:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  And then when somebody invites you to come to Starbucks or JP Morgan because they've seen your videos and they want you to come talk about how the five second rule can help a company change its culture, or help a company change, or help people who work somewhere be less stressed or more courageous. You better be able to show up and explain exactly why counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one can be proven using science and studies and case studies and the examples of real life people around the world. And so what was interesting is when I invented the five second rule and this little technique,

• 31:38Speaker 00

  I was simply a woman who was 40 years old with three kids under the age of 10, who was unemployed. Eight hundred thousand dollars in debt because my husband and his best friend went into the restaurant business. It was fabulous for a while and then it was the restaurant business. Yeah. And like complete morons, we had secured everything with everything we owned. And so when the things get bad in 2008 and the market turns and the housing crisis happens and the restaurants start to go under, the liens hit our house. We lost everything. I mean, I, we, we didn't go bankrupt. I mean, just by the grace of God, I had such crushing anxiety despite the Zoloft. I couldn't get out of bed. Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  And so the five second rule, whether you call it an act of desperation or divine intervention, I think it's divine intervention because it sounds stupid. I mean, the idea was simply, when I wake up, that anxiety is so dark and I would lay at the ceiling, I would lay in the bed and I would stare at the ceiling and I would think, we're going to lose the house and I'm a failure and I hate my husband and nobody can find out and what am I going to do? And just like, how did my life end up like this? And just on and on and on and on. And the more I thought, the, the deeper the hole was. I, I had this idea that God, maybe if I move fast enough. Yeah. When the alarm rang, if I got out of the bed fast enough, maybe I'd beat the anxiety.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  Maybe I wouldn't be in the bed. So I decided I'd launch myself out of bed like a rocket. That's where the counting backwards came. Little did I know that when you count backwards, you interrupt the habit loops in your basal ganglia and you draw your focus to your prefrontal cortex. Little did I know, this would become one of the most powerful starting rituals in habit research on the planet. Little did I know that this little brain hack is a form of metacognition that allows you to interrupt any thinking or behavior pattern and give you a moment of what psychologists call objectivity. So you can choose what you do next. Yeah. And so, you know, you see that quote all over Instagram, right? And all over social

• 33:50Speaker 00

  media, you know, it's not what happens, it's, you know, how you respond and that's where your power is. But if you're a person and life is overwhelming and life is happening, you're like, life is not happening for me. Fuck off. Like, what do you, what do you mean? It's choose how I respond. I don't even know. I can't even get out of bed. Like, and so the five, four, three, two, one becomes a how. It's the tool you need to cut through the noise and the fear and the anxiety and grab just a moment where you can take control. And that's why it works. That's why therapists use it around the world. That's why it works with reframing triggers associated with PCSV. I mean, it's just unbelievable.

• 34:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is such a great tool. In fact, not only does Steph use it, who we've already mentioned, I was telling my son about it last night. He's only 11. And I often talk to the kids about the podcast. I said, Daddy, who are you talking to tomorrow? He said, Well, I'm talking to someone called Mel Robbins. And then I got him to go and do a high five in the mirror. I'll tell you about that a little bit later. And then I told him about this five, four, three, two, one rule. And this morning over breakfast, he says, Daddy, it actually works. I was really tired and you had to get it for school. So I said, five, four, three, two, one, got out of bed.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Five, four, three, two, one, put my school uniform on. And I was like, this is so cool.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  It's really cool.

• 35:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, but it's great. Adults use it, grown, responsible adults, young kids are using it as well.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  You can use it in any language, any age, any education, any situation where you're thinking about what you need to do and you've got to five, four, three, two, one, push yourself to do it. And I love that you shared it with him. I love also, this is the other thing that I love about the stuff that whatever I've created, is that your son can now stick it in his back pocket.

• 35:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  And if he's sitting in class and he wants to share, but he starts to doubt himself, five, four, three, two, one.

• 35:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hand up.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Like what he's doing is he's now breaking the habit and the bias of thinking and he's moving across that spectrum toward having a bias of action. And of course, what we know about confidence is that confidence does not begin with believing in yourself. Confidence begins with the willingness to try. And so the five second rule is so powerful for developing confidence because it's a tool you use to push yourself to try when you're full of doubt. And when you try and you raise your hand in class. Or you speak up more at work, or you ask for the raise, or you hit send on the email. When you try, you might fail, but you gain a little competency. And that competency makes you a little bit more willing to try next time.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  And so that's where this competence competency habit loop comes in. And the the linchpin to it is now you've got a tool, five, four, three, two, one, to push yourself to say, all right, I'm in. I'm gonna try, move back on myself.

• 36:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is just so simple, yet so effective. And I love the way you come up with these things. And your expertise initially comes from your lived experience, right? Your struggles, how do I overcome that? So that didn't work. Oh, that's a bit bad. Oh, man, this tool really works. Okay, let me share it. Oh, man, people sharing that back with me. This is working. And then you go and figure out the science.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Which I really find, I love that. I love that sort of approach. I think I heard someone say once that the word for experience and experiment in all languages which come from Latin, except English, is the same. Experience, experiment, it's the same thing.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  I didn't know that.

• 37:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  This is what I've heard. Like, I'm not a linguist who would know that for sure. But I found that really interesting because you are literally creating the evidence through your experience, through sharing it, people are coming back to you. But this is not a study in a lab, but it's kind of a study in the in the real lab of life that works.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  You know, it's so interesting that we're going here because, you know, I personally do believe in experts and I believe in credentials. And I think that it is important that there are controls, that, you know, you need to be a medical doctor to prescribe medicine. You know, I do I think that there needs to be innovation everywhere? Of course, I'm super excited about all the plant based medicines. But I also feel like they need some serious controls.

• 38:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Uh, in place, that you can't just, in my opinion. I think it can be terrifying to think of somebody with a lifetime of trying. Trauma, who is not in the hands of a medical expert. When they're trying some of these new therapies. I personally have tried them in, you know, with medical experts and they've been life changing for trauma. But I worry about people kind of road tripping on this stuff. And so I do believe in expertise and I do believe in making sure that there are studies and that there's safety protocols and that experts are respected.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  And so I think that's important, but I think what you're saying is we have come to a point in our society where it is important to expand the categories of what we deem to be expertise. So for example, there is traditional medicine, right? The MD, my dad happens to be a DO, which when he was a DO way more kind of poo pooed on because it's a little bit more holistic in terms of the training, but he's an orthopedic surgeon.

• 39:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  For people in the UK, that's osteopath.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's an osteopath, who was an orthopedic surgeon in the United States. And, you know, now let's take a look at the fact that what clearly needs to happen in the medical field is a way more holistic approach and a focus on the whole person and health rather than treating illness. And there's so many different ways to treat things rather than just prescription drugs. And so people's expertise in these areas, super important to recognize it in new ways, super important to, you know, really make sure it's safe in new ways. And what kind of frustrates me at times is because the two letters after my name are JD, Juris Doctor, I'm a trained lawyer, right?

• 40:23Speaker 00

  But they're not MD or they're not MA or they're not the social work degree. Even though I have been studying this for 10 years and I have clinicians using what I'm talking about. And I have an, I had an entire wing of nurses from an inpatient psychiatric ward in Philadelphia come to my daytime talk show. And they told me, aside from prescription medication.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  The one tool that they can give somebody when they leave an inpatient commitment for suicidal ideation, severe depression, the one tool that really works is the five-second rule. Because it's simple.

• 41:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  And somebody in crisis can remember it, and it works. And yet, nobody recognizes me as an expert in mental health.

• 41:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  People will call me a motivational speaker, they'll call me, you know, whatever, she's a this, she's a that. And the fact is, I have, you know, with, with the High Five Habit, that was a year-long research project.

• 41:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  We have a, um, a, a study that we've done, it's called the High Five Challenge. We've had 137,000 people from 91 countries take a five-day challenge online, fully monitored, that we have created.

• 41:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  In the last 32 days, that many people have rolled through this thing. And not one person has reported that they did not experience positive change. Now, is that an academic study? Probably not. But it's good enough for me. And so, it's interesting because I often find that, you know, I, I was really flattered when you invited me on, because you are a doctor.

• 42:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  And it's taken a while for people to realize, because I think a lot of people hear five-second rule or the High Five Habit, and they're like, oh, God, here goes, uh-huh. And the truth is, there is so much

• 42:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  freaking research and evidence.

• 42:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  There is, and you put that in all your books, and the new one is full of references at the back, full of the evidence. And, and the point I'm trying to make is, you should be seen in the same way as, you know, people with the right letters after their name. I'm not saying we don't need experts, we do need experts, but also, we need to broaden out our definition of experts and expertise. And also, the point I'm trying to get at is that I think sometimes we we outsource expertise so much to others, we sort of lose confidence in our own expertise and our own ability to try some of these tools. I mean, I will be using that five, four, three, two, one rule with my patients now. Like, I can already

• 43:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  think of four or five people that come to mind straight away. They think, you know what? I think next time I see them, I'm going to mention this because I think it would really help them.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's what it's about, right? Because a lot of, one of the big problems with science is that the way that science is communicated often is very dry to the public, you know?

• 43:31Speaker 00

  What's the what?

• 43:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  So like I said, there's a paper that says that, you know, that there's a paper which says this diet or this technique is really good for your mental health.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  A lot of the time, the way that's communicated with the lay public, it's done in very scientific terms.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  And a talking down.

• 43:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  The talking down. And you're communicating powerful ideas that work in a way that people see, I think people see you as their friend. They think, oh, Mel, that's kind of like.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Well, I'm shoulder to shoulder with you. Yes, 1,000%. So think about it.

• 44:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's why they take the advice and that's why they give you this love because they are peers of yours.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you are their guide and their, their friend.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  But by the way, I'm learning just as much from everybody that writes to me as they are for me.

• 44:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Because when people share their stories about why they've been struggling, how something worked, what didn't work, how they tweaked it, for example.

• 44:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  And I can tell you a story about that with the high five habit, how one person's story about the high five habit and their experience with it blew open a whole lane around sort of shame and judgment. And we can come back to it.

• 44:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, let's get to that. Well, why don't we, why don't you explain what is the high five habit, right?

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 44:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Because I'd love to hear about those sort of experiences.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, you know, in its simplest terms, I'm on a mission to get every human being in the world to add one simple thing to their morning routine.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  And it is called the high five habit. And here's what it is. Every morning after you brush your teeth and you get that gunk out of your mouth. So you're not spreading that nasty breath everywhere. Okay. I want you to take a moment, put your toothbrush down and look at the human being in the mirror. That's not your reflection. That is a human being who needs you. A human being who's beaten down, who feels forgotten, who is so sick and tired of your criticism. And I want you to just stand there and look at them and take a moment. Because the rest of your day is going to be about everybody else. And then I don't want you to say a thing. This is the genius of this habit.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  You can be on your lowest morning, which I was when I, again, divine intervention or stupidity. You can be the judge, right? It was April 2020 and I was having a moment in my life where I just felt overwhelmed by life. I was waking up, the anxiety had come back. I felt like life was unfair. I had lost my dream job. We were in the middle of the pandemic. My kids were in a state of huge grief and anger and frustration because university, you know, had closed and you know, now they're dealing with it.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  I had a bunch of speed, like all of a sudden my business is imploding and you know, don't forget, just over 10 years ago, I was in a crisis financially where my husband and I were about to lose every, we couldn't even pay for groceries. My dad was lending us money.

• 46:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  And so it was triggering all of that. And I was thinking this, like, what the, I've worked so hard. I'm a good person. Like I'm, how could you be doing this to me? Like, I don't deserve, like, just-

• 47:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you were pretty successful at that point already, right?

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Successful? I was the number one motivational, female motivational speaker in the world. I had a daytime syndicated talk show in the United States, so 175 shows a year giving advice. I, you know, had the five second rule book, which was self-published and a huge, millions of copies sold.

• 47:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  But I think that's the powerful thing about this story, even with all that success. You were still racked with self doubt and anxiety and negative thoughts.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Of course, because I hadn't had the biggest breakthrough of my entire life yet. And I had it one morning in April of 2020. You see, the five second rule is extraordinary. But it doesn't address what I believe is everybody's fundamental issue. And everybody's fundamental issue is that you either hate yourself or you do nothing but judge yourself. And this habit of relentless self criticism and relentless self rejection is the reason why you're unhappy.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  It's the reason why you're never satisfied. It's the reason why you can't take a compliment and why you're uncomfortable feeling celebrated. And it all comes down to the fact that when you stand in front of the mirror every single morning, you have this really subtle way that's not so subtle of starting your day by rejecting yourself. And I'm going to unpack this because it's unbelievably powerful when you start to truly understand this. Because if you can't look in the mirror and authentically see a human being that you respect,

• 49:03Speaker 00

  that you encourage, that you like, that you're cheering for. I'm going to even leave love off the table because I think that is so unattainable for where people are right now. Let's just go with can you accept yourself? Can you like yourself? Can you see a person that's worthy of support? Worthy of your encouragement? Can we just start with that baseline? Because from my research, the average person cannot. From my research, 50% of men and women do not or cannot look at themselves in the mirror because they are either disgusted by the person they see or they are disappointed by them.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  And for those of us that can look in the mirror, we're still rejecting ourselves because we focus on what we don't like, or we start to mindlessly think about all the things that we haven't done right, or that we didn't do yet. You know, on this particular morning, April 2020, I'm overwhelmed by my life. I drag myself into the bathroom. I immediately see my reflection and I'm like, oh, God, you look like hell. I start ticking off all the things, the saggy neck, one boob lower than the other, like, you know, how exhausted I look, the gray hair coming in, how old I'm starting to seem. And then the mind, once it goes negative, keeps going in that direction unless you're five, four, three, two, one, not thinking about that.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  But so my mind's like going down the drain. I'm like, why'd I get up so late? I got a Zoom call in eight minutes. God, he didn't even, you know, text him back yet. And the dog still needs to be, and I'm like, the beat down, boom, boom, boom, starts. And, you know, I don't know what came over me. But that morning, standing there, could not think of a thing to say. And here's the important part. When you feel like shit, when you're overwhelmed by your life, you're not going to believe a pep talk anyway. Because it doesn't match how you feel. And so for whatever reason, I literally just raised my hand and I high-fived the woman that I saw in the mirror. Because she looked like she needed a high five.

• 51:17Speaker 00

  She looked like she needed somebody to say, it's gonna be okay. You can do this. Get out there. And, you know, from that very first one, you know, it wasn't like lightning came crashing through the ceiling and, you know, stuck me in the head. That's not what happened. But there's definitely a switch inside each and every one of us. So like, think about the walls here. Even when the lights are off, there's electricity in these walls. Even during your worst moments, there is vitality ripping through your veins. There is an electrical life force within you. And life can turn that switch off, but it's still there.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  There was something about this high five action that felt like a flip, like the switch flipped on and all of a sudden the energy could connect back. And something inside me turned on. Now, that first morning, I didn't go, yeah. Like, that's not what happened. I just felt this sort of shift from to, all right, you got a roof over your head, you know, your, your, your family's healthy. You've, you've saved money. It's not that bad.

• 52:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Get out there. Like, I didn't even think those things. It was more like the electricity, the, the energy in me, this vitality kind of kicked in. But it was the second morning where the profound nature of what I was stepping into really kicked in. So I wake up, anxiety, ankles right up the legs, feel like the rush of, oh, God, something's wrong. Five, four, three, two, one, I get out of bed. I start walking to the bathroom and it's, as I'm walking to the bathroom, I'm not even in there yet, that I feel something I have never felt in my entire adult life. And it's this. You know, when you're about to go to a cafe and you're going to meet somebody you're really excited to meet, right?

• 53:11Speaker 00

  Or, or somebody you really love, then you're going to see them.

• 53:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  What do you feel, right? As you're about to walk in the cafe?

• 53:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're excited. You're, you're upbeat. You know, you're anticipating something good happening.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. I actually realized I was feeling that way about seeing myself.

• 53:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  Now, I'm 53 this year. I don't think until that morning in April 2020, I had ever had an experience as an adult of being excited to see the human being Mel Robbins. I've been excited to see an outfit or a haircut or the way new eyeshadow might look. But the human being? The way our kids, when they're really, really little, just love the sight of themselves? This unconditional support and celebration that's hardwired in your DNA when you're born?

• 54:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  And so, as I rounded the corner that second morning, that's when the profound nature of this started to really hit me. And I stood there and I stared at the woman in the mirror. And I realized, I don't think I've ever asked myself the question, what does she need for me today? I have never joined in partnership with myself. I have been so busy trying to get shit done, trying to make sure people like me, trying to make sure the bills are paid, trying to make sure everybody else is okay, trying to do all this stuff that is the stuff of our lives, that I have forgotten about the most important person, and that is myself. And again, I'm going to go back to a point that, that, you know,

• 54:56Speaker 00

  we have been talking about kind of in various ways, which is, we all know that we're supposed to love ourselves. We all know that we're supposed to be kind to ourselves. You can read a quote on Instagram. You should talk to yourself like your best friend. The problem is how? You know, you read a quote like that, you're like, no shit, Sherlock. How do I do it? I mean, like, what, seriously? Right? How do you do that? I don't know. I've been beating the shit out of myself for years. How do I stop doing it? I don't know. And, you know, here's the thing, like logically, we know it's stupid because if beating yourself up, being hard on yourself, rejecting yourself, trashing yourself, if it actually worked, we'd all be millionaires. We'd have rock star bodies.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  We'd have the best marriages on the planet. We'd never have to work a day in our life. We'd be on a beach somewhere, like, it would work.

• 55:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  But instead, we have these patterns of thinking and small patterns of behavior, like not looking in the mirror at yourself is a form of rejecting yourself. Picking yourself apart is a habit of rejecting yourself. And so when you start your day like that, which you do, and then you go out into the world having rejected your very being, this is the reason why you are so thirsty for everybody else's validation. This is the reason why you are seeking your worth in the money that you make, in the car that you drive, in the downloads that you get, in the likes that you have, in the neighborhood that you live in.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  You think your worth is outside of you. And I'm here to tell you, the secret to your fucking life is grab that worth and bring it back home. Start practicing a physical habit, an action that demonstrates to your brain that you respect yourself, that you believe that you're worthy, that you deserve forgiveness, that you deserve encouragement, that you believe in you. And as you start to practice the physical action, the universal symbol for "I got you, I love you, I celebrate you, I see you, I believe in you," when you practice this physical action, the neuroassociation

• 57:15Speaker 00

  that is already in your brain with the high five to yourself in the mirror takes over. It's insane how this works. The science is mind blowing. I think this is a thousand times more powerful than the high five habit because it cuts down to the core of who you are.

• 57:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  You think it's more powerful than the 5-4-3-2-1 habit?

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Hell yes, I do. Hell yes, because the 5-4-3-2-1 is a tool that will push you to take action. 5-4-3-2-1 is a tool you use to cut off the worries that trigger anxiety. 5-4-3-2-1 is a tool that you use to create a moment of objectivity and control when you're normally triggered, so you can consciously choose a different response.

• 57:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  The high five habit goes all the way down to the core of who you are and how you treat yourself. And when you become a human being who has compassion for yourself, who likes you, it won't matter what happens out there.

• 58:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  Because everything in here is healed and taken care of. And so, like, you know, somebody can say to me, "I don't love you anymore. I don't like you." It'll sting, but it doesn't change the fact that I still like myself. Because I practice and demonstrate it. That's the difference.

• 58:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and that's, I think, the hidden magic in the high five habits is, because I've been trying it the last few days, right?

• 58:41Speaker 00

  And what did you experience?

• 58:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is powerful because.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Walk us through, like you're standing at your bathroom sink. And walk us through your experience.

• 58:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, first of all, you have to take a pause from your life, whatever you were going to do. It requires an intentional pause to go, no, I'm going to now do this action for myself. And I've got to say, before I tell you how it went, I think it would have been very different for me a few years ago. Because I feel self compassion, you know, not seeking your worth from outside, from other people, from download numbers, likes, what people say about you, which was a huge part of my life.

• 59:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  I feel that having put a lot of that to bed now and really feeling that I actually like the person I see in the mirror these days. So I kind of feel five years ago, I would have had a different experience with it. But it was still powerful because you are just looking at yourself and you're putting your hand on the mirror. And I think what it is, it's just that pause, that moment of seeing me. Like you are seeing yourself. And like, I don't know, you know, obviously as a guy, what do we do? We're often looking in the mirror and we might be looking at our beard as we're shaving, right? But you're not looking at your eyes, right?

• 1:00:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're just looking at, oh, I need to shave, oh, I missed a bit here, let me get rid of that. And then you crack on, right? Or you, you look at your face and your hair, but you're not really looking at yourself.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:00:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're seeing your silhouette, you are seeing yourself, but you're not seeing yourself, if that makes sense.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  And that's what I think was really powerful was that it's just another.

• 1:00:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Like, I feel it's just another tool now, which is gonna take me all off two seconds, if that's five seconds tops. It's not as if I don't have time to add that in. There's no harm in adding it in, and frankly, I like adding it in. It makes me feel good. It's like, oh, and I think it's what you say, it's the action.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  You don't have to say anything if you're not in the mood to say anything.

• 1:01:03Speaker 00

  I don't want you to say anything, actually. And the reason why is the neuroassociation. So.

• 1:01:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Well, here's what I mean by that. So when you high-five someone else, what does the action of a high-five communicate?

• 1:01:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's, it's just a universal symbol of you got this, I see you, you're great, we can do this. You know, it depends on the situation, but it's, it's a good feeling. It's a mutual sort of validation type experience.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  What did they, what, tell me about the London Marathon and getting high-fives.

• 1:01:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Oh, I mean.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  What, what does a stranger's high-five mean to you?

• 1:01:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  It just gave you, like, and that's the key, it's strangers, right? You don't know them and they're looking at you, you're looking at them, or you don't even, maybe you're not even looking at them, you just went through, you give a high-five. It's, it's like you've taken a shot of feel-good. It's validation, it's like, hey, you know what? We're in this together. You're standing at the side cheering, I'm running, but at that moment, it was like common humanity, it was like, there was no animosity. And actually, this kind of, one of my big learnings from the London Marathon actually was, and it relates to this, I think, is that that's kind of who we are. Like, in, in what is considered a very divided world at the moment.

• 1:02:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  I went and did the London Marathon and all I saw was love, strangers giving love to other people that they didn't know, right? And how did they give that love? Through cheering, but more often than not with a high five.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Correct. It is a universal symbol of encouragement, of love, of celebration. And the neuroassociation, whether you live in a culture where you've been high-fived or not, the neuroassociation is still there because you have seen them in sport.

• 1:03:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  You've seen them in marathons, you've seen teachers give them to kids. So your brain has a lifetime of programming in your subconscious that is triggered by this action. It is neurologically impossible to high-five yourself and think, you're a loser, you failed, I don't like your face. Your brain will not allow you to do it because the neuroassociation is so entrenched, it has only ever meant, I celebrate you, I see you, I got you, keep going, you got this, I'm behind you.

• 1:03:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know, as you say that, Mel, it makes you think of gratitude, because when we are feeling grateful, we can't feel down, we can't feel anxious, we can't feel annoyed with ourselves. And in some ways, this is kind of gratitude for ourselves.

• 1:03:59Speaker 00

  Correct, because the thing about gratitude, which obviously has tremendous demonstrated, proven benefits in your life, most of us are grateful for things outside of us.

• 1:04:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  What I'm teaching the world to do is to unlock neuroassociation in your mind and in your nervous system and aim it back at yourself. And use this simple habit to interrupt the critic, to break the default loops in your mind associated with judgment, shame, criticism, hatred for self, and to replace it with a new default setting of seeing yourself the way you see your child, which is love. Like, my kids do stuff that piss me off all the time.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  And I can be upset with them or disappointed with them, but I never stop loving them.

• 1:05:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  And there is something that has happened to each and every one of us. That as life's pains and heartaches and disappointments and setbacks sort of stack up, we stop loving ourselves. We start judging ourselves more. We start condemning ourselves more. We start rejecting ourselves more. We start trying to seek somebody else's love and approval in order to fill up this well inside of us that we've been digging because we've been rejecting ourselves. And so, you know, it's so powerful because the action alone is what communicates it. If you're looking at yourself and you raise your hand on your hardest days,

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  what the high five says is not, "Yeah, I'm amazing." Like, this is not going to turn you into a narcissist. This is grounded in compassion.

• 1:05:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  This is basically saying, "I see you. You're right, this is hard. And you know what? You can do this. And I'm gonna be here. And I've got your back." And when you send yourself into your day with that physical action, it leaves an imprint in your mind and spirit. Now, there's a couple of reasons why. I don't even write about this part in the book because I didn't know this until I started doing podcasts for the book.

• 1:06:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  So Dr. Amen told me, who's, you know, one of the leading experts in the brain, that one of the reasons why you feel better when you do it, no matter how terrible of a morning it is, is because your brain has always given you dopamine when somebody else high fives you.

• 1:06:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  So these sorts of gestures are rewarded in the brain. So when you simply high five yourself, your brain doesn't distinguish between me high fiving me and me high fiving you. It just sees, "Oh, I know what that is. Drip dopamine. Oh, I believe in that person." The second thing that happens is that your body is hardwired for celebratory energy. This is that electricity that's in the walls that has a switch that you can turn on and off. And so, you know, for example, if you, when you cross the finish line of the London Marathon, what do you instinctively do?

• 1:07:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  High five someone.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and raise your hands, right? When your favorite team scores, raise your hands. When you yell surprise at a birthday party, you raise your hands. When you say hello, you raise your arm. When you go to high five somebody, you raise your arms. When you hug somebody, you raise your arms. This is wired through your entire body. And normally, we give that celebratory energy to other people or things.

• 1:07:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  I'm here to tell you, when you high five yourself, you flip the switch. You flip the switch and give yourself a little bit of that vitality that's coursing through you to help you move into your day.

• 1:07:39Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I see it as, um, almost like, it is about the high five, but it's not in many ways as well, because it's like if you're going down a road and the high five to yourself sets you off on a different path for the rest of that day compared to had you not done it, right?

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  A thousand percent right. So let's just use a great example that everybody can latch on to, sport.

• 1:08:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  So if a team is about to play the championship in the league, right?

• 1:08:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  And they're the underdogs. What is the best way to send the team into that game? Is it to be to beat them down? Oh, you did a terrible job on the London marathon. You're gonna face plant in New York. Oh, my God, and I saw your split times. We're fucked. No, that's not the best way to do it.

• 1:08:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  But that's what we do to ourselves.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Correct, correct. And so I'm here to say, you don't have to say anything because you're not gonna believe it. So we're gonna cheat this. We're gonna circuit your feelings.

• 1:08:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  You're bypassing words. It's like when you take, like, this ridiculous example, but it's like when you, um, you take a B12 supplement, but you take it sublingually, so it dissolves. So you bypass having to go into the gut, through the liver, and then you get it straight in.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:09:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's kind of, it's got that feel to me.

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  Thousand percent. And so you send yourself into the game of life. With that sort of optimism, with that resilience, with that compassion. And, you know, look, some days you're gonna laugh, some days you might cry. People report, some days you're gonna just feel a little bit better. And some days you're gonna high five yourself and laugh out loud from the dopamine and walk into your boss's office and ask for that raise or quit. Because you're gonna remember that no matter what, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna remember that no matter what, you got your own back. You're gonna remember that it doesn't matter if nobody says great job at that presentation that you worked on, because you can walk into the bathroom, as people have written to us,

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  having practiced this, hey, I did a presentation at work, nobody said a damn word. The old me would have walked into my cube and cried and thought I was getting fired. I knew I did a good job. I walked into the bathroom and high five myself. Your kids can stick this in their back pocket. And it's a way to reset yourself when you start going down that negative road. And why is this important? It's important because the high five is not gonna remove poverty. It's not gonna remove discrimination. It's not gonna remove diabetes. It's not gonna remove the fact that somebody just said they wanna divorce you. It's not gonna remove all of the trauma. It doesn't change those things. It changes you.

• 1:10:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Speaker 00

  And it changes your relationship with yourself and your ability to believe that through your actions and your attitude, you can move the needle on those things.

• 1:10:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I love that last point, Mel, because the similarities between the way you talk about this and the way I've been talking about certain behaviors and five minute habits for years, they are so connected. And one of the things I often say, and I wanna just acknowledge you for what you just said, it's, it's not gonna change your life situation. You know, if you're, if you're in poverty, you're still gonna be in poverty, but you're gonna be a different person. You're gonna be better able to face the stresses that are in your life.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:11:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I think this is such an important point, right? Because I have said this before on the show, but I always think it's worth reiterating that a lot of people feel that self-help or wellness is the preserve of the wealthy and the middle classes. But actually, habits like this, yes, they'll help someone who's got a ton of money in their bank accounts, because a lot of people like that are racked with self-doubt on the inside as well. But it's also going to help someone who isn't poverty, or a single mum who's working two jobs and has got three kids and is really struggling. That little micro-moment each morning where she sees herself in the mirror, she signals

• 1:12:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  to her brain that she is worthy, that actually she's a human being with real feelings and for all her qualities and all the great things that she's doing, that has power, right?

• 1:12:14Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, amazing power.

• 1:12:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is free. There's not a single person, pretty much, who is listening to this or watching this right now, who couldn't just either pause or at the end go, "All right, I'm convinced, Mel. I'm going to give this a go. I'm going to give this a go."

• 1:12:30Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, don't rush it. Don't rush it. So don't go into the bathroom and slap the mirror and be like, "I didn't feel anything." I want you to, again, as you so rightly put, take a minute and just look at yourself, because for most people, that's the hardest part. I mentioned that I get smarter and I learn so much from every comment and people that write their stories in. And one person, Alison Byrd, a friend of mine, who made my ability to explain the depth of this so much deeper, because she said one thing to me when she tried it before the book came out. She said, "You know, I think it's working.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  I kind of feel energized." I said, "But you know what surprised me, Mel?" I said, "What?" She goes, "The resistance." I said, "The resistance? What are you talking about?" She's like, "Oh, the first couple of days I did this? I stood in front of that mirror and I..."

• 1:13:32Speaker 00

  There was something in me that's like, I couldn't even raise my hand. There was this resistance. And so I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And so I, of course, put something out, hey, to the 700,000 people on the newsletter list, anybody trying this and feel any resistance? We write to everybody that's in our little test group. Anybody feel... Holy cow. It turns out that most people do not have an immediate positive, oh, I'm doing this reaction. Most people have massive resistance to even trying it. And I want to explain why, because this is extraordinarily sad.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  And it also is an enormous opportunity for growth. Because I believe, based on having 136,000 people go through a five-day challenge online that we're monitoring in an app from 91 countries and seeing what they're reporting. I know that this takes five days to work. Five days before you have an enormous breakthrough in how you see and relate to yourself. Five days before the chemical, physiological, neurological, physical, and psychological change starts to go, holy cow, this is crazy, this works like this.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  And so the resistance comes from self-judgment and self-condemnation. And I'm going to tell you a story to drive this home.

• 1:15:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something, and suddenly that well-being you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling, and that's why, at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals. And one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years. And one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many... Of the nutrients it contains, for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous

• 1:15:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order. That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers.

• 1:16:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com/livemore to claim this offer before it ends. Today's episode is sponsored by the daily health drink AG1. The clocks are about to change, the mornings are darker, everyone around you seems to be coming down with something and suddenly that wellbeing you felt in the summer seems a long time ago. I certainly know that feeling and that's why at this time of year, I remind myself to lean into the fundamentals and one of those fundamentals is AG1. AG1 is a daily health drink that has been in my own life for over eight years and one of the many things I like about it is the fact that many of the nutrients it contains,

• 1:17:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  for example, vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc and selenium, supports a healthy immune system. Some of the other things I really like about AG1 is that they are committed to continuous improvement and updating their formula as a scientific research involves. And each batch is independently tested for quality and safety markers, including heavy metals, allergens and banned substances. This is how they can guarantee what's in your scoop and what's not. Right now, AG1 is offering a free AG1 flavour sampler and AGZ sampler to try all the flavours, plus Free vitamin D3 and K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription

• 1:17:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  order. That's $87 in free gifts for first time subscribers. All you have to do is head to drinkag1.com forward slash live more to claim this offer before it ends.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  For people who stand in the bathroom mirror when they try the high five habit and they feel this resistance in their body. First of all, let me say it's really normal to think this is weird because it is. Okay. It just sounds so cheesy. For those of us that grew up with Saturday Night Live, you're going to think of Stuart Smiley. You know, I'm nice. People like me. That skit they used to do about the guy who talked to himself in the mirror. You're going to stand there and go, seriously, Dr. Charlie and Mel Robbins, you two have lost your mind. But okay. If it's weird as you do it, that's a sign it's working. So Dr. Leaf told me, oh, well, that's what it feels like when a new neural pathway is getting plowed. So if it feels weird, good because we're teaching you to

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  do the opposite of criticizing yourself. But the resistance is something else. The resistance is the fact that every morning as you start your day, you drag your entire past into the bathroom with you. And if you're somebody who has experienced trauma or been abused or abandoned or neglected or grew up with chaos and addiction, or you've been the victim of a crime, or you're constantly having to deal with discrimination or violence, all stuff that you're not responsible for. There are a lot of people who take all of that from their past. And when they look at themselves, they see somebody who's damaged.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  They see somebody who's unworthy. They see somebody who is unlovable because of those things. And what the high five starts to become when you do it is it becomes literally an act of defiance. It becomes an act of strength. It becomes a sign that I'm a survivor. It becomes permission to heal. It becomes this deep sense of feeling and knowing where you are and the fact that you have an extraordinary future despite all of the pain and suffering that you have endured and survived. And then there are people that bring everything they regret, all the shame, all the regret, all the cheating, the lying, the stealing, the

• 1:20:23Speaker 00

  hurt you've caused yourself or other people, the missed opportunities. And boy, did I get an unbelievable example of this in my own life. So, you know, I was doing the high five habit myself. And during the early days of the pandemic, my husband had just been diagnosed with depression. And he's a super healthy guy. He is a certified Buddhist meditation instructor. He leads men's retreats called Soul Degree. He's a yoga instructor. He's wildly involved with our community and with our family. He's a super high functioning

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  guy. But it's just, he's just felt heavy. He's, there's been like a cloud there, like a heaviness to him, like no, there's no light between his eyes. And so thankfully, you know, his therapist finally got him to go see a psychopharmacologist and somebody to do the advanced testing. They're like, dude, you have dysthymia. You have like really long term depression. Like, you're lucky you've been doing all this stuff because it's kept you alive. And, you know, I turned to him at one point, I've been doing this for a couple days, or a couple weeks, rather. And I'm like, you know, I know I'm not your doctor and I know I'm not an expert in your mental health, but I really think you should try this high five thing. I really think it's gonna help you with this depression. He's like, I'm not high five.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  It is the stupidest thing. I don't care what you're doing. No. And I'm like, okay, if you won't do it for yourself, would you just do it for me? Would you do it for five days? Cause we're in the middle of researching this now. And I like, I haven't even shared it with my audience yet. And I'm kind of like writing down in my journal what I'm feeling. And I've got a couple of people on the team. Would you just do it for me? He's like, all right. So he kind of did the first one, like, are you happy? You know, typical spouse thing. Like, so he did it for five days and then I asked him what he thought. And he said, you're on to something really big. And I said, why do you say that?

• 1:22:31Speaker 00

  And um, I had no idea how dark my husband's thoughts were. I had no idea how much he was condemning himself, how much shame he felt. I knew that he was struggling with depression. I had no idea that for the past seven years, the man who has stood next to me, at the bathroom sink next to me, would look up at the mirror and see a person that he hated.

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  He saw a person that had failed. He believed that since the restaurant business didn't work and since it left us 800 grand in debt and that his wife had to go out and make the money, that he was the world's worst father, the world's worst husband. And he has been condemning himself every day for seven years. And the reason he thought the high five was stupid is because you only high five people you care about. You only high five people who are winning.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  And he of all people didn't deserve it.

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  And for me, you know, I knew that he was struggling with shame around the restaurant business. I knew he was struggling with the amount of debt that we had and the fact that, you know, he had, you know, that investors lost money. Like, for me, I had a totally different experience. I'm like, you guys worked at that for eight years? You made your investors whole? Like, you know, like, hello entrepreneurship? Like, you know, we wouldn't have the five second rule without it. Are you kidding? Like, woo-hoo, we're winning. This is amazing. Like, I didn't, his business partner had the same, like, he was proud of what they built, proud of how hard they worked. Chris, for whatever

• 1:24:41Speaker 00

  reason, that was not his story. His story was condemnation, regret, shame. He could only see a failure. And, you know, what was wild about that is, you know, I've for years talked Chris up. I've for years have told him how proud I am of him. I, you know, he's, he was the CFO of the business as my company, as the company was taking off. Like, he owns half of it. Like, he's an integral part of everything. He doesn't see it that way. And that's an important part. Nobody can heal you. Nobody can change how you

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  talk to yourself. This is an inside job. And so if you relate to how my husband feels, I want you to understand that what Chris said to me was that this high five and pushing through the resistance is an act of forgiveness. It's an act of healing. It's an act of support and compassion that allows you and shows you that you are giving yourself permission to feel good again, that you deserve to be happy, that you deserve and that you can continue to push on and go do better and be better and feel better. And that of all

• 1:26:07Speaker 00

  people, you're gonna stop judging you.

• 1:26:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's the hidden power because you had said to him, "You're great." He was in your company.

• 1:26:25Speaker 00

  Our company, yeah.

• 1:26:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly.

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  He owns it, with me.

• 1:26:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Working, seeing the success, loving wife, loving kids. But it didn't matter because that can only take you so far if the voice and the narrative that's playing in your own head is negative. For many people, it doesn't matter what the world around is telling them. They're not telling it to themselves and therefore the high five habit, it kind of breaks that even if it's just for 20 or 30 seconds.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is still that micro moment of compassion, of companionship.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:27:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? Companionship with yourself.

• 1:27:11Speaker 00

  Forgiveness, like all of it. All the stuff that we know we need to do, but we don't know how.

• 1:27:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:16Speaker 00

  Because all we see is the stuff we regret. And so you weigh that in your mind and you start thinking about it. And this, what I love about this is not only the science, which is just like,

• 1:27:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  And it's all there in the book.

• 1:27:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. And the studies are there and all of it. But I think the more powerful thing is that it's a simple action. And so let's go a layer deeper. Because the other thing that's happening is we can dip into behavioral activation therapy. So behavioral activation therapy, which as you know, is just as effective and in some cases, more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy. Behavioral activation therapy can be boiled down to simply this. Act like the person you want to become. This is very different, by the way, than fake it till you make it. Act like what you, act like the person you want to become is set an intention for the person you want to become. Like you want to become a marathon runner? You need to start acting like one.

• 1:28:14Speaker 00

  You better buy some trainers. You better schedule some time with your wife to be able to go on a training run. You better watch some videos about how you taper up to the race. You better talk to, you better start acting like one. And so when you start to raise your hand and high five the human being in the mirror, you are acting like a person who cares about themselves. You're acting like a person who cheers for themselves. You're acting like a person who cares, empowers, respects, believes they're worthy, and your brain is watching. And so over time, as you repeat this, your, the structure in your brain starts to change in relation to how you feel about yourself.

• 1:28:59Speaker 00

  You stop thinking, believe it or not, about the failed restaurant, and you start remembering that you join in companionship and support in cheering this person forward.

• 1:29:14Speaker 00

  It's brilliant. It's like unbelievable.

• 1:29:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it really is, right? Because the research on self compassion is just overwhelming. I don't know if you know.

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  The UK study?

• 1:29:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, but also, do you know Professor Kristin Neff?

• 1:29:29Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 1:29:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  She's, you would love her work. And she has been studying this for about 20 years or so. And she came on the show and she was talking about how the research shows that people who are compassionate to themselves, they're healthier, they're happier, they're more productive. You know, it's, it's not the narrative that we think we have to beat ourselves up. And when we beat ourselves up, that motivates us to take action. Although I think this is an interesting point, right? Because if I look at you, Mel.

• 1:30:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I've been researching you for the past few days. I've been, this morning I watched your TED Talk.

• 1:30:08Speaker 00

  Do you know that's like a 21 minute long panic attack?

• 1:30:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  I do, because I heard you talk about that. And I want to address that a little bit because I think it's interesting. So you do a TED Talk that certainly was uploaded in 2011 and is close to 30 million views now, right? So one of the most watched TED Talks of all time, I would imagine, probably top 10.

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's top 20 anyway, maybe longer, I don't know.

• 1:30:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay, so you, you know. The outside world, much of society would look at that and go, Mel Robbins is crushing it. She has just nailed a TED Talk and it's gone viral. Now, you're saying that you had a panic attack the whole time, right? So let's just think for a minute. You're getting the external success, but inside you are eating yourself up with worry, right? Then we fast forward, let's say nine, 10 years.

• 1:31:02Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  April 2020, you are successful speaker, motivational coach, you know, bestselling author.

• 1:31:15Rangan Chatterjee?

  And you're struggling with self doubt in front of the mirror. So is there this slight clash here somewhere where actually you can be successful and not love yourself and be racked with self doubt?

• 1:31:29Speaker 00

  I think everybody is.

• 1:31:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  I don't, success is not the source of self love. In fact, most people who are successful or competitive or entrepreneurs, most people are chasing that success because they have married their self-worth with achievement. And I was the same.

• 1:31:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:55Speaker 00

  And so, right there.

• 1:31:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Me too.

• 1:31:58Speaker 00

  And so, this is, by the way, evidence that you have a problem with self rejection and with self-worth and with self criticism. Because you believe you are only worthy of love and you are only worthy of support if you have achieved the thing.

• 1:32:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  So someone's looking at you and thinking, man, I wish I was Mel Robbins, right? We'll talk about jealousy if we get to it later, but they might be jealous of you in a nice way. They might think, man, I wish I had a viral TED Talk like Mel. I wish I had multiple international bestsellers.

• 1:32:31Speaker 00

  Great, write them. Great, apply for one. You can do it. If I can freaking do it, you can do it.

• 1:32:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  But they might also be thinking, well, that is. That is success. You've had that even though you were racked with these problems on the inside.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Rangan Chatterjee?

  And they may think, you know, I'll take that. I'll take that success. And I think this comes to this widely societal point, which is we confuse sometimes success with happiness.

• 1:33:00Speaker 00

  When you anchor your happiness to doing things, it's always out of your control. When you anchor success to the crap you achieve, it is always a moving target.

• 1:33:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 00

  And so, you know, I, it's a really hard concept to wrap your brain around because first of all, there's the research that shows, at least in Western countries, that, you know, there's the baseline with money. Seventy-five grand is the baseline, that when somebody makes seventy-five grand or more, there's this happiness thing that, I can't remember how the exact study goes, but it makes a lot of sense because as somebody who could not pay groceries with three kids, as somebody who had liens on her house, as somebody who was getting the bankruptcy letters in the mail, as somebody who was unemployed during this whole thing, and whose husband was bouncing the payroll checks and was running from one restaurant to the other to hide from the collectors that were showing up,

• 1:33:57Speaker 00

  I know what it's like to live with the constant relentless pressure that comes from having no money.

• 1:34:06Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  And until you can get yourself to a state

• 1:34:12Speaker 00

  where you can take a deep breath and you can pay the bill.

• 1:34:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Speaker 00

  And you can buy some groceries and you can put some gas in the car and the phone rings and it's not a collector,

• 1:34:26Speaker 00

  you are going to live a stressed out life because your basic needs are under threat.

• 1:34:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  And that is a horrendously triggering thing to live through. And we lived through it for several years. It was like that. And so, you know, there is a certain level of economic stability that has a direct impact on your happiness, on your safety as a person, and your ability to experience less stress. So I just wanted to be, you know, responsible about that because I freaking lived it. And but I do think that, you know, look, I use the five second rule. I certainly

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

  have found my calling. I love building stuff. I'm incredible as a businesswoman. I love the game of making money. I love being smart and deal making. I love content syndication. I'm super excited for NFTs and for how blockchain is going to change the role of being a creator. And so there's a part of this that's a real expression for me in terms of building a business. And the five second rule helped me take action. And the five second rule made me very productive. And the five second rule had me go, no, I don't want to do a talk show. No, I don't want to do talk show. No, I do not want to do a talk show. Why are we still talking? Like, I just, oh, and you know, this is interesting. When you say

• 1:35:53Speaker 00

  no, people want you more. I wish I knew that a long time ago. But so I for sure use the five second rule to push myself to take the actions that have made me wildly successful. But that doesn't change the fact that I would look in the mirror and still see a person that I didn't like. And that as soon as the five second rule book came out, like, I'll give you an example. So I write the High Five Habit book. I'm practicing these tools. And I am also human. So when we get word two weeks before the book comes out, that

• 1:36:34Speaker 00

  the big box stores like Target and Walmart in the United States are passing on my book because I'm not a known author. I get triggered, I punch the wall, I pour a gin martini, light up a joint, I call a bunch of friends and bitch up a storm. I am literally reliving being left out at a sleepover in middle school. I've got this gigantic ridiculous story that, you know, it's, you know, I'm always left out, I'm never part of the group. Like, there's this group of like, real authors that are all friends, that all, like, you know, I like have the whole thing. I'm human.

• 1:37:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Put the record out, just press play.

• 1:37:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, yes, exactly. I tend to be like angry depressed kind of person, you know, like, yeah, like breaking stuff. And then, I wake up in the morning, and I drag myself into the bathroom, and I look at myself in the mirror, and I have compassion. I'm like, you're right, that sucks. You are a known author. You deserve to have your work be in places where people can find it. It doesn't feel fair. And you know what? You're gonna be okay. And so the high five becomes this, it's like a, it's like a life jacket in the waves of life, that keeps you above these waves, so that they, yeah, they knock you over, they

• 1:37:58Speaker 00

  tumble you around, but then you climb back up, you reassure yourself, and I have this thing that is embodied in the high five. So the high five is also a wildly realistic, optimistic mindset. So, part of what I am constantly doing, and I do this as a mother too, so we have a 23 year old, a 21 year old, and a 16 year old. And, every day, in everybody's life, there is stuff that happens that sucks. There are friends that go out to lunch that don't invite you. There are people that tell you no. There are schools you don't get into, there are apartments that somebody else gets, there's boyfriends and girlfriends that break up with you, there are people that have cooler clothes

• 1:38:43Speaker 00

  and nicer cars, and parents who throw the parties, and, you know, like, it just, there's always going to be something that makes you feel like life is out to get you, things aren't fair, people don't like you, it's just like a tweak, right? It's triggering your insecurity. And I have this saying that I developed that, again, it embodies this high five, which for me, also having run a marathon, the only reason why I made it across that finish line is because every stranger's high five said, "I believe you can keep going." That's what the high five said to me. "I see you, Mel. I see that you're limping.

• 1:39:22Speaker 00

  Keep going, girl." Like, and so my mindset, whenever I'm working for something and I don't get it, and I feel the sting of rejection or disappointment, I always say to myself, and I say this to my kids on repeat, too. I say, "Look, when you work hard, you're gonna be rewarded. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something better, that you didn't get this thing because something better is coming." And, you know, so there have been a couple of those. Like, for example, the High Five Habit audiobook

• 1:40:00Speaker 00

  is unreal. I mean, I record it. It is the number one selling audiobook on all of Audible ever since it's been out in terms of the number of downloads in one month. Like, it's just destroying it. And I know you don't like that word, but it is destroying audiobook. It has been reported in the AP. It has been reported in all these places. It is in the charts, number one. And we are destroying it on the Amazon charts because people are reading it and loving it and sharing it. And I frickin' love it because it tells me like the, you know, that the tool is spreading.

• 1:40:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:36Speaker 00

  Because my books, like your books, are just vehicles for ideas to get out. So then people can talk about them. And obviously, I put all this stuff online for free anyway. So if you can't afford the book, you're listening to this podcast. Like, you're gonna get... But so, The New York Times puts out a monthly audiobook list. I self-published the audiobook. And in the back of my mind, I was saying, "Don't get your hopes up, Mel. Don't get your hopes up." You're not a publisher. You're a self-published author. They're very fancy over there. And so the audiobook list came out for the month of October. I clearly destroyed it. Like, I'm clearly the audiobook. We don't even make it. Like, a complete and utter intentional snub.

• 1:41:21Speaker 00

  That was another night where I punched a wall and drank a couple martinis and lit up a joint and called a bunch of friends and felt really sorry for myself. And the next morning, I literally high-fived myself in the mirror. It took about four mornings of high-fiving myself to get over that sting because it felt personal. But I kept saying, "Something better's coming, something better's coming." Do you know? I figured out the better thing that's coming. Well, first of all, sales. Actual sales are better than a list. So let's just get that straight. But I'm human. You know, we all want to be recognized. I was in the New York Times crossword puzzle today.

• 1:41:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today?

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  Yes. Isn't that not crazy?

• 1:42:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  For the high five.

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  I literally... It is the coolest thing.

• 1:42:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's cooler than being a New York Times bestseller, I reckon.

• 1:42:06Speaker 00

  Don't you think?

• 1:42:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I think it is.

• 1:42:08Speaker 00

  So I...

• 1:42:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's a smaller club.

• 1:42:09Speaker 00

  I'm literally getting off the train and my text messages are blowing up from mates from the United States. And they've screenshot this and it says, literally, a three-word down on the New York Times, and it said, "Motivational speaker, Robbins." And it was me.

• 1:42:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Oh.

• 1:42:30Speaker 00

  And you know what it was that made me so just blown away? Is that I underestimate the fact that people know who I am. I think that I am a person who has really screwed up a lot. And for a very long time, I have lived inside a body that was racked with anxiety and

• 1:43:10Speaker 00

  fight-or-flight and doubt and judgment. And it has been...

• 1:43:19Speaker 00

  Really hard to live in this body. Yes, I've been high functioning. Yes, I have still gotten okay grades. I've gone to great schools. I've had friends. I've been married for 25 years. But it has been a real bitch to live with this much unedgedness. This much stress, this much self-imposed condemnation, this constant relentless drumbeat of what's wrong and someone's mad at me and I've screwed up again and just constantly feeling like nobody likes me and I can never do it right and it's all never gonna work. And just this, just this grinding feeling

• 1:44:01Speaker 00

  that when I finally started to attack the anxiety and understand it, when I finally started dealing with the childhood trauma that created a dysregulated nervous system in the first place, when I finally understood what was going on and came face to face with the woman in the mirror and I started getting help and finding a new way because I didn't want to continue living a life where I felt that stressed out and that anxious and that worried and where the constant just noise in my head was negative.

• 1:44:45Speaker 00

  Now, through the five second rule, through EMDR and psychedelic guided therapy, through traditional talk therapy, through the high five habit and practicing that since April of 2020, I have a totally different experience of being alive. And if I can save anybody, the headaches, the heartaches, the struggles that I have been through, that I now realize. That you have very simple tools at your disposal that you can use to move the needle

• 1:45:27Speaker 00

  on the things that are making you feel anxious and stressed and unhappy and just constantly on edge, that you can come back home inside yourself and reconnect with your true nature. If you think about our true nature, we're wired for love, wired for connection. We're born accepting ourselves. Like when a four year old sees a mirror, they don't back up and say, God, my thighs are fat. And look at that nose and my hair. No, they like, woo, they're twirling, they love themselves. That's your true nature.

• 1:46:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:00Speaker 00

  That's why a high five from a stranger feels amazing because it cuts down to the core of who you really are. A person who deserves to be seen, a person who deserves to be celebrated. And it begins with you.

• 1:46:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, it's so powerful, Mel. As you were describing your different experience of life now, you're still successful, as you were, but you're, you experience it differently. There's a, there's a calmness, there's a, there's a groundedness, I guess, with it. Is what I hear. And it reminds me of a phrase that my friend, Pippa Grange, she's a psychologist. She used to help the England football team a few years ago. And she has this term, winning shallow or winning deep. And it really epitomizes that. She's, she's dealt with so many. Yeah. It, it, she's brilliant and it, and it, it's such a great phrase because it's,

• 1:46:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  she's dealt with, you know, elite Premier League footballers. And, um, you know, they've been walking up the steps to win the trophy. And on the inside, they're feeling nothing. They thought from a young age, on the age of eight, I'll keep training, I'll keep training. I'll get for a big club, we'll get into the cup, we'll win it. Because they thought, like many overachievers, that actually winning that medal, getting that number, getting that job, getting the house, getting the car, would make them happy. But it doesn't because it's an inside job. And that's where I think this high five habit, it's not going to change everything, but it makes everything much easier. You know, you've still had therapy. Like I feel someone who,

• 1:47:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let's say they've got childhood trauma.

• 1:47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do. Everybody does.

• 1:47:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  And who doesn't, really?

• 1:47:49Speaker 00

  Everybody does, yeah.

• 1:47:50Rangan Chatterjee?

  On some level. And they, it's too hard for them to even address it and actually go and see someone. Well, the high five habit, I think, is your way in.

• 1:47:59Speaker 00

  Oh, of course, yeah.

• 1:48:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  You start doing that.

• 1:48:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:48:02Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think a few weeks down the line, you're going to be picking up the phone to someone and making an appointment.

• 1:48:07Speaker 00

  Because you realize you deserve it.

• 1:48:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly. Or you, when you're saying, when things didn't go to plan on this book launch, and I know all about that kind of stuff.

• 1:48:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  That drink you poured yourself and that moan to your friends, that was one night, right? It seems to me like that high five habit, it just puts a flag in the sand and says, okay, you know what? We did that. Today's a new day. And today I see myself, I'm going to get on with it now.

• 1:48:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like the way that a team shakes off a bad play and resets the game for themselves. And there's, you know, there's interesting research about that in chapter two. As you know, it's where all the research is. People love hearing about the study with NBA teams in the United States. So researchers at Berkeley wondered, are there habits in the preseason of the professional basketball league in the United States, habits in the preseason that can predict what teams are going to have a winning record? And in fact, there are.

• 1:49:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:10Speaker 00

  And the habit in the preseason that determines what teams are going to have the winningest records are the number of pats on the back, fist bumps and high fives the team members give one another. And, you know, it seems so implausible that the Wall Street Journal in 2011 did an independent study where they paid people to watch tapes and count it.

• 1:49:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:32Speaker 00

  And in fact, it's true. And it's also true that the teams that had the least number of high fives, pats on the back and fist bumps during the preseason had the worst records. Why? Well, you've already said it. When you high five somebody, you're building trust and partnership. You're in it together. When you withhold those gestures, you're selfish, you're judgmental, you're in it for yourself. And one of the things that's helping me now feel like I'm winning deep. Is the fact that I know that I'm in partnership with myself. And when you know you can count on yourself,

• 1:50:16Speaker 00

  you know that anything that happens, even a massive tragedy, even the biggest heartbreaker betrayal of your life, you know that you will, like those waves of life, come out the other side.

• 1:50:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:30Speaker 00

  That it will suck for a period, but you know that you have within you the ability to get through it. And I think that's where my kind of grounded, deep winning sense comes from. And you know, that doesn't mean I'm not immune. I'll give you, I'll give you a real time example. So we've come here from the United States and traveling with our 23 year old daughter and our COO, who's my sister in law. We've had an amazing time and I was super proud and honored and excited, you know, that you had us on your podcast. And so last night, because it's COVID, we've got to do all these tests, right? You got to submit all this documentation to even come to the UK. Then when you arrive on day two, as you probably know, you've got to do this two day test.

• 1:51:15Speaker 00

  And then there's all this complicated stuff that you've got to then upload in order to get a pass so that you can then, you know, be able to stay here and then you got to get another test and you got to get that test within a certain number of days. And you can't get that test unless you get the first, like it is so mind blowingly stressful. And so last night, we take the test and it's the little like COVID 19 swab thing. And we take the photos and we upload them. And we go off to dinner and we come back and we're not approved yet. And my daughter starts going, oh my God, well, what, what if this happens? And what if that, does this mean we're going to be get to go to Paris on Thursday? What if we can't get back into the United States? What if I actually do have COVID if I test on PC, like her, she's,

• 1:51:59Speaker 00

  and then I start going, oh my, you're right. What if, what, what if we do get stuck here? What, we do have to do a PCR test. Like, what do you mean if these don't come back? But they were supposed to, it says we're going to come back in an hour, but they haven't come back in an hour. Is there something wrong? Did I not do, but I was like, The swarm, they did not come back last night. We woke up and now I am fully, I haven't high fived myself. I'm fully in the wake up mode in the dark. It's six o'clock in the morning. We're over by High Street. We're in the hotel. My daughter's in the bed with me and she wakes up and she's like, Mom, are you awake? I'm like, yeah. And she's like, did you check your email? I'm like, mhm. And she's like, we don't have our results checked. Did we do it? And I'm like, no, we don't. We know we don't. They're negative. I know they're negative. They're negative. Like, I don't, you, you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I had two COVID tests before I came here. I know they're negative.

• 1:52:44Speaker 00

  We've been wearing, like, and so we're working ourselves into a frenzy. I walk into the bathroom. I look in the mirror and I go, Mel? What if it works out? What, what if, what if you get to Paris and the PCR test is negative or positive? Like, let's just go, like, we weren't even worried about a positive test. We were worried that the form we had to submit somehow wasn't going to get accepted. So we wouldn't be able to leave. And then, like, it just became this craziness.

• 1:53:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  Just playing out all these fictional.

• 1:53:17Speaker 00

  Yes, and we've all had this happen where your mind hijacks you. By the way, the second I got on the train, we get the email. Results are in, negative. You're good to go. You can leave the country. You know what I mean? So we're like, oh, thank God. I wasted probably five hours sort of ginning this thing up with my daughter, allowing my mind to take me down a road that was absolutely ridiculous, which is part of the human experience. And it was, honest to God, a high five in the mirror and that pause. And this kind of like, you, this is going to be okay.

• 1:53:59Speaker 00

  And then my favorite kind of mantra, when I remember to use it, is what if it all works out? What if, and then I said, well, sorry, what if it all works out? Like, let's just play this out. Let's just say we can't leave Britain. You've always said you want to live in London. Let's just say we can't, we can't get home for Thanksgiving. Maybe dad and those two come over.

• 1:54:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:18Speaker 00

  What if it all works out?

• 1:54:20Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:20Speaker 00

  What if I record the audiobook next week here in London or Paris instead of going back home to the States? What if, what if we can't leave?

• 1:54:26Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:26Speaker 00

  What if it all works out?

• 1:54:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  There's a beautiful section in the book on that, which, which I loved. And I think so many people will resonate with that. Maybe a different scenario, but this just hypothetical, then you just bleed time and hours. And before you know it, the, the amount of energy you've wasted on that is just incredible, isn't it?

• 1:54:48Speaker 00

  It's incredible. And I, I'm telling that story because I want everybody to understand just because I'm sharing tools, doesn't mean I always use them.

• 1:54:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Speaker 00

  It doesn't mean that I, you know, have a disappointment or a stressful situation and my mind is suddenly zen. Like I am just as vulnerable to the waves of emotion carrying me downstream. But what I have developed, which is what I love this idea of winning shallow and winning deep.

• 1:55:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:22Speaker 00

  I have developed this toolkit, especially with the high five and the mirror, especially with this, everything is preparing you for something extraordinary that's going to happen that if you didn't get what you wanted and you've worked really hard, it's because something better is going to happen, so just keep working. You know, like literally, you know, one of my favorite friends who grew up in London, Paul Wilmington, once gave me the best interview advice.

• 1:55:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:49Speaker 00

  And he said, when you're interviewing for something, you go in there and you give a thousand percent, you just light it up. And then when you walk out of that interview, forget it ever happened and go and focus on being amazing at what made them want you in the first place.

• 1:56:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:12Speaker 00

  Because if you don't get that job, you weren't meant to. And something better is coming.

• 1:56:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. And what I love about that, Mel, is We've got a choice in life, right? You can choose not to believe that. You can choose to believe that I didn't get that job. Man, that was my dream job. Everything would have been perfect. It was in the right city, the right salary. I've been working for that. You can do that. But where's that gonna get you? Like, the choice to believe that actually something better is coming along. It is a choice, right?

• 1:56:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:56:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  And by making that choice, as hard as it may be in that moment, your shoulders drop. You feel calmer, you feel stressed. You're much more likely to see the opportunities that are on the other side of that than if you are caught up in that stress mode. I mean, you've, you've written, I've, I've read about how what stress does to the brain, right? When you're in that panic, what does that do?

• 1:57:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, if the, if, if all of a sudden we smelled smoke and the fire alarm went off, you and I would not be able to do a math problem.

• 1:57:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Speaker 00

  Because your nervous system takes over and goes into fight or flight, which then impairs your brain's ability to focus on something rationally.

• 1:57:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:30Speaker 00

  Or strategically. And so you just made me think of something that I think is really helpful to understand. I know it was really helpful for me to understand this point. And it relates to this, um, the story about me all of a sudden getting freaked out and stressed out about the fact that our documents were not uploading to the UK, you know, passport thing.

• 1:57:58Speaker 00

  You can choose what you tell yourself about a situation that's happening. But it was helpful for me when I started to understand that your emotional waves and your nervous system response happens before your thoughts appear. And so it's really important for everybody to realize you will not be able to control the fact that there will be moments when you're disappointed, moments when you feel rage, moments when you feel betrayed, moments when you feel pissed off, moments when you feel shortchanged, moments when you feel aggravated, and these waves come over you. You will never be able to control those from coming up.

• 1:58:45Speaker 00

  But you can choose what you are going to tell yourself about what's happening. And the other thing is, is that when it comes to trauma, I mean, all of this is sort of dysregulation in your nervous system that's stored there that keeps getting re-triggered. And so if you're dealing with a trauma response, you will not be able to also think your way through it first. And part of what has really helped me is when I started to understand, oh, the wave of emotion and feeling comes before my brain can actually help me get back in control. And so when I started to understand that, oh, there's going to be these waves of emotion, don't resist them, let them come.

• 1:59:29Speaker 00

  Feel it. Like, I'm somebody that likes to hyper-process. That's my weird word for it, which is basically, I will say, I feel really pissed off. Like, I just express it because it feels like it expels it. I'm working on not emotionally venting at people. I'm working on saying, putting myself in pause and going, Chris, honey, do you have the capacity to hear me, like, go rip shit about something that has nothing to do with you? And he's like, as a matter of fact, I do. Why don't you make yourself a drink and I'll sit down here with my glass of water and listen to you rip, Mel? You know, so like, that kind of being responsible for.

• 2:00:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  That is progress.

• 2:00:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, that's huge progress.

• 2:00:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, no, seriously, it sounds funny, but actually...

• 2:00:13Speaker 00

  It's huge progress.

• 2:00:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is huge. It's kind of, it's a real awareness of the situation, isn't it? It's a real awareness of your emotions, go, I now am about to un-rip.

• 2:00:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:00:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Let me just check that the person I love is okay for this. It's respectful.

• 2:00:27Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm so happy you said this, because I just learned about this in our couples counselling, where, like, go see this marriage therapist that, like, sort of just deal with her own stuff, and depression, and my stuff, and, and, holy cow, I didn't realize that my turning to Chris, my best friend, my partner in life, my lover, my husband of 25 years, I never knew that in the past seven years, when I would turn to him and just be like, the British fucking website's not doing this, because part of his story is that I'm not a good husband.

• 2:01:13Speaker 00

  And I've failed in this business and my wife is out there doing this and I'm the one that should probably be making the money and that makes me less of a man and all of the garbage.

• 2:01:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Speaker 00

  Even if I was venting and upset about something, it had nothing to do with him. He would tell himself. If you were doing your job, you'd be able to fix this. If you were a good husband, she would not be stressed out in England right now. And so my venting, unbeknownst to me, which I thought, okay, he's like, we're in this, like he could, was feeling like more reasons why he was incapable. Now, I didn't know any of this.

• 2:01:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:59Speaker 00

  And so I really appreciate you saying that because I think a lot of us in our, in our most important relationships, we just assume that our spouse or our lover can absorb everything and there's a lot of times where they can't.

• 2:02:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:13Speaker 00

  And being more responsible about what you're feeling, what you're about to express, whether or not somebody has the capacity to listen to it or to help you with something right now.

• 2:02:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Speaker 00

  It's, you're right, I did make a joke about it and, and it is an enormously important thing and this is a very new thing for me.

• 2:02:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  I appreciate you sharing that because this is again, I think, the sort of power of your work, Mel. It's, it looks as though it's, you know, the subtitle, take control of your life with one simple habit, but our life is not just us, right? We are relational beings. We only exist in relation to other people. So you show yourself a bit of self compassion, you create that a little bit of space to sort of process your emotions and see yourself and validate yourself. You're then going to show up differently with all the interactions in your life, including those with your loved ones, your children, your partner.

• 2:03:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  And, you know, why I sort of picked up on that is because I feel in my own marriage that, and even with my kids, if I'm honest, just I guess, close relationships, this real understanding of what is it?

• 2:03:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  You want from me now, what do you need from me? Let's say, for example, my wife says something to me to complain, or she's anxious about something. I will now ask in a way that I didn't a few years ago. Hey babe, do you want me to try and provide a solution? Or do you want me to just listen? 99 times out of 100, it is, I just want you to listen. And that's changed everything because the old me would have just jumped into the solution.

• 2:03:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:03:56Rangan Chatterjee?

  She didn't want that.

• 2:03:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:03:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  She just wants me to listen. And likewise, if I've got something to say about, because she produces the podcast, right?

• 2:04:02Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing.

• 2:04:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:04Speaker 00

  Great job.

• 2:04:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  So, you know, it's hard.

• 2:04:06Speaker 00

  Thanks for booking me.

• 2:04:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  So it's, it's kind of, it can be hard sometimes because our whole personal lives can be consumed with trying to put out this show.

• 2:04:16Speaker 00

  This was a big issue in my marriage, by the way.

• 2:04:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  I can believe that.

• 2:04:19Speaker 00

  Which I didn't realize. And so I think it's amazing when couples can work together. I thought it was bringing us closer. And it was actually making it really hard on Chris because our marriage became work.

• 2:04:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:37Speaker 00

  And so it's one of the reasons why he's leaving the business.

• 2:04:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Oh, my God. Well, literally this morning, before you showed up, Vid and I were talking and we have decided that we're going to look for a new producer. Because she's brilliant at it, but it's just too much. The show's too big now. There's too much intensity to get this show out every week. And I think as much as she loves it, this is my thing.

• 2:05:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:05:08Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? This is my thing. I've chosen to do this. She's helped me with this thing, but it's not her thing. And it's taken a while to get to that point, but we're kind of feeling quite free in thinking, okay, now we have to find someone.

• 2:05:23Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm sure it'll get flooded now that that's out on the air. I'm really proud of you guys because it.

• 2:05:31Speaker 00

  We got so busy and sort of stuck in our roles, both in the company and in our marriage, that I think for Chris in particular, he couldn't see a way to break it apart without feeling more disappointment that he had failed there too. And I couldn't see a way to having somebody else take over his role as the COO, because I trust him with my life. And so we were both in these habits that felt broken. But it was just patterns of thinking that were broken. And you know, I gotta give Chris the credit because he is the one that said,

• 2:06:16Speaker 00

  we gotta like, go talk to somebody about this.

• 2:06:19Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, it's really wonderful to hear that. And you've come out the other side of that.

• 2:06:25Speaker 00

  Still going.

• 2:06:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Still going.

• 2:06:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:06:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  But in relation to the point about being respectful to others, because work takes up so much of our personal life, as well as professional life, like, I will always ask, or try my best to, and likewise with it, it's like, look, I just want to ask you a question about the podcast, or about production schedule, you know, is now a good time?

• 2:06:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:06:49Rangan Chatterjee?

  And even that small thing, it's kind of really cool because it's like, you know what, I just not, or I could say, babe, I really don't want to talk about work at the moment. Can we leave it till tomorrow? It just opens up, instead of someone trying to say it, and the other person getting really frustrated, I'm trying to unwind now, you know, why are you bringing work in? Which could also happen.

• 2:07:08Speaker 00

  Well, that's all that our life became. It's all we talked about. It's all we, because it was so consuming. And you know, neither one of us had ever built a friggin media company, or a production company, or had been in this business. And so we didn't know what the fuck we were doing, which added more stress.

• 2:07:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:24Speaker 00

  And so I'm really proud of you two for recognizing that. You're certainly doing it faster than we did.

• 2:07:33Rangan Chatterjee?

  There was a very powerful section in the book. Can't remember the subtitle you gave to it. What it was essentially saying, the added benefit of adopting not just the high five habit, the book is full of other practical things.

• 2:07:49Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I was like, should we call it the high five habits? Should we call it the high five habit? Should we call it the? And we may, I made a strategic decision to only call it the high five habit because if there was one tool that got out, I wanted this one. And I knew if we called it the high five habits, everything would be, well, what are the high five habits? And it would become a listicle in terms of the PR. So that was strategic, even though there were like 11 tools in the book around self empowerment.

• 2:08:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I mean, we could do a whole podcast on my struggles with book titles. But I think it's a great title and there's lots of practical tools in the book beyond the high five habits. But I love that bit where you were talking about that doing this stuff, it kind of helps you to be a better role model to your kids. You know, you show them how you manage difficult situations. You show them that you're worthy of compassion to yourself.

• 2:08:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:08:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I kind of reread that several times because if I'm brutally honest, I think one of my own drives to become a better person, a calmer person, a less judgmental person, a less reactive person has been to be a better dad. Because when you see things about yourself that you're being reflected back through your kids, you're like, you know what? I could either tell them not to do that, or I could take a look in the mirror and try and figure this stuff out myself. So I thought that was really powerful. I think.

• 2:09:18Speaker 00

  Not easy. There's a story in there that I didn't include that I can tell you that really kind of drives us home. So.

• 2:09:28Speaker 00

  I remember we were, maybe I did put it in the book, I don't remember at this point. We were, I was taking a selfie with our two daughters who are 23 and 21. And I, oh, I know what it was. We were talking about just body image.

• 2:09:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:47Speaker 00

  And one of our daughters is very tall and lean and the other one is shapely and gorgeous and amazing and the best human ever. They both are. But I, and the reason why I sort of paused there is because I was making a mistake that all mothers tend to make, which is we compliment our daughters for their beauty and not for the fact that they're loyal and they're smart and they're amazing human beings and they're hardworking. So we, because it was done to us and the brain learns patterns, we're just repeating the patterns with our daughters. And so it's super important, and I learned this late, to compliment attributes that you like, rather than constantly complimenting outfits and nails and hairstyles and the way

• 2:10:32Speaker 00

  that they look. So that's one thing that you can do. And we were talking about this and I was like, why do you guys like, I see you and you're so freaking beautiful. Like, I looked like a troll when I was in, when I was in college. Like, I had a Dorothy Hamill haircut and then I had a flash dance perm. I mean, you guys look like unbelievable. And I'm like, why don't, why are you so critical? Like, you constantly look in the mirror? Where does that come from? And without skipping a beat, my 21-year-old daughter turned to me and said, "It comes from you." I said, "What, what do you mean?" She said, "Are you kidding me? Have you ever heard yourself talk about yourself?"

• 2:11:16Speaker 00

  I'm like, "What? No? What are you talking about?" She's like, "Every time we take a photo with you. Do you know what you say about the photo?" I'm like, "No."

• 2:11:30Speaker 00

  She goes, you go, do I really look like that? And mom, we think you're beautiful. So if we think you're beautiful and you're constantly criticizing and questioning what you look like, why would we ever trust you when you tell us that you think we're beautiful? And I was like, mic drop. Okay, that's 10 years of therapy. You can just put that on my credit card, girls, because clearly I fuck you up. But so, and I laugh because otherwise, what are you gonna do? Yeah, what are you gonna do? But seriously, I think that, you know, your kids are watching and they learn patterns. And one of the things that I'm excited about in terms of the tools in this book is I do

• 2:12:11Speaker 00

  believe in terms of winning deep, that there is an opportunity, not for you to just break your own habits that are self-destructive, but you have the chance to break generational habits. Yeah. Because the self-criticism didn't start with you. The self-rejection didn't start with you. This is your father's voice, or your mother's voice, and before that, it was your grandmother's voice, or your grandfather's voice. Nobody taught them how to feel worthy and to love themselves and to accept themselves and to forgive themselves.

• 2:12:50Speaker 00

  And so, when you start to take on this project of really practicing and demonstrating to yourself every single morning in the mirror, that you like you, that you think you're worth it, that you respect you, that you're gonna validate you, that you will support you, that builds and it breaks cycles and cycles of generations of self-criticism. And that means that it can stop with you. And you can show your kids a different way, because, you know, I've also know that, you know, look, your kids are going to, you can't avoid comparison. You can't avoid those feelings of insecurity.

• 2:13:35Speaker 00

  You can't avoid looking around at the world and seeing places that you fit in and places that you don't. And it's heartbreaking when you're a parent and you get a text from one of your kids going, why does nobody like me? Or why won't anybody ask me to the dance? Or why am I the biggest one of all my friends? Or the brownest, or the darkest? Or why do I have kinky hair? Or why am I so tall? Or why do I have to these? Like this sort of like, ah, if I could only be different.

• 2:14:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:04Speaker 00

  You won't be able to change that. But through the high five habit and the tools in this book, you can demonstrate what self-acceptance looks like. So eventually, they will learn how to do it for themselves.

• 2:14:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  I think that would be my hope too, because I,

• 2:14:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  you know, my kids are a bit younger than yours, 11 and eight at the moment. And I do think these two habits that we've spoken about, and there's many more in the book, but 5-4-3-2-1, go.

• 2:14:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:14:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  And the high five habits. I can see no reason why they can't be adopted into every school.

• 2:14:43Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 2:14:43Rangan Chatterjee?

  So many teachers listen to this podcast, and I would love some of them to get in touch and let us know, right?

• 2:14:50Speaker 00

  Oh, we have teachers all over the world right now that put a mirror up in the classroom, and the kids walk in and high five the mirror. And, you know, as part of bullying programs, the high five, or the 5-4-3-2-1 is a tool that is like, you know, look, when they're like, I'm gonna, you know, don't you dare tell your parents, you know, and you start to go down the road of, but everybody will hate me. And this 5-4-3-2-1, tell the frickin' adults. Like, one of the most painful design flaws in a human being is that when you're a kid and something bad happens to you, you do not have the life experience or the wiring, unfortunately, to go, oh, my God, if this loser's doing this to me, I can't imagine what's happening at home.

• 2:15:36Speaker 00

  Or these adults are screwed up. Somebody call the frickin' police, because you don't get to talk to me or treat me like that. No, every kid, it's the design of a human being to go, what's wrong with me?

• 2:15:48Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:49Speaker 00

  You aim it back at yourself. And you use this abusive, or toxic, or negative behavior or treatment.

• 2:16:00Speaker 00

  And you, because you don't know any better. It's the way our brains are designed. It's what we all do. We think there's something wrong with us. And it's because you don't have the support system. You don't have the life experience. And so that's what the brain does.

• 2:16:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:18Speaker 00

  And I think that I have been doing that to myself for 40 years. And it's only in discovering this high five habit that I've been able to break it and be like, there's, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm just a human being that feels a bunch of stuff. It's doing a bunch of stuff that's trying her best. And life is a lot richer and more rewarding and full of joy and meaning. When you can start every day knowing that you like the person you're spending your whole life with and that you're going to support them no matter what, no matter how much they weigh, no matter how little money they have, no matter how many freckles or how kinky your hair is, that you got you.

• 2:17:00Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, I could talk for hours with you. I think there's just so much that we haven't talked about yet. And I encourage people to pick up the book to kind of learn all those tools. There's so much cool science, like the RAS, which you didn't mention, which I wanted to get into. But, you know, I really would encourage people to get the High Five Habit. I think it is so well written. Your voice, your energy kind of permeates through it. And it's not easy to write books like that. You know, when they're that easy to read.

• 2:17:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  And there's a lot of science behind it. I know full well what it's like to try and simplify that messaging.

• 2:17:40Speaker 00

  It was painful. Let me tell you, it was really painful.

• 2:17:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  It is harder to write books that are that easy to read than going, you know, deep and going on for pages and pages. I want to really acknowledge you for that. So I think it's a

• 2:17:53Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:17:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  Really good reads.

• 2:17:55Speaker 00

  Thank you. I mean, it's been almost five years since I've written a book.

• 2:17:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:59Speaker 00

  Because it's very hard for me and because the right idea was not ready to be born.

• 2:18:04Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:05Speaker 00

  And, you know, for better or for worse, it seems like my fate in life is that I have to fall into a hole or I have to dig one for myself. And then I have to be pissed off and sad and overwhelmed. And then I have to have the epiphany that nobody's coming to save my ass. And I need a ladder. And so I build one. And that's what the five second rule was. That's what the high five habit is. And so this book, I only started writing in probably, oh my God. I mean, we started kind of researching it end of May. I started writing maybe in August.

• 2:18:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 2:18:42Speaker 00

  I wrote that thing in about four months. And then when I looked at the first draft, I realized I was writing it for fancy pants. People like you who have a degree so that you would see the research. And it was so boring. And in 14 days flat, we tore that book apart and rewrote it. Because I realized I was coming back to that credentialed thing of wanting to seem smart. When really I just wanted to make a difference for the woman in Iceland. Or Steph, who's thinking about hitting send on an email. Or that person who just lost their job or is going through a divorce or feels overwhelmed by life.

• 2:19:25Speaker 00

  Because I know what that's like, because I've lived it.

• 2:19:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:28Speaker 00

  And if a book isn't easy and fun to read, you're not going to read it.

• 2:19:32Rangan Chatterjee?

  Mel, as I said at the start, there are so many similarities in our lives. We've led different lives on, you know, different sides of the ponds. But that's exactly the same story with my very first book, which is called The Four Pillar Plan in the UK. It's called How to Make Disease Disappear in America. First book I was writing, I remember writing it in the first, first couple of weeks. I really want doctors to like this. Loads of, loads of research in there. I was doing it, maybe not even two weeks, about a week in, I remember just looking at it and going, Wrongin, what are you doing? Why are you writing this book? Are you writing it so that doctors like it and then they like you? Or you're writing it to help people?

• 2:20:12Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 2:20:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  And I went for a long walk in nature and I was like, no, I, I know I have got a way of putting these messages out. That's going to help people because I know I can do it one on one with patients. That's why I'm writing it. I threw out the mind, I started again, I thought, right. You're going to have that reader in your mind throughout this entire process. And it's just so wonderful to meet someone else who's gone through that same process. Even just a year ago, you were going through it.

• 2:20:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  This podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. Right at the end of what for me has been an incredibly enjoyable and deep conversation, what are your sort of final words of advice and wisdom for people listening and watching as to how they can start to get more out of their lives?

• 2:21:09Speaker 00

  You know, you only get one life.

• 2:21:13Speaker 00

  And I want you to enjoy it.

• 2:21:17Speaker 00

  And I hope that the conversation that you've just listened to not only gives you hope and the possibility that there is a way and a path for you to truly make some changes and enjoy your life. Enjoy the experience of being you. Enjoy what it's like to wake up and to move through your day. I hope you also got some tools that are going to help you do it. Because, you know, I think at some point

• 2:21:59Speaker 00

  you'll have an awakening, and I hope it's right now,

• 2:22:05Speaker 00

  that

• 2:22:08Speaker 00

  you gotta give yourself permission

• 2:22:12Speaker 00

  to feel happy.

• 2:22:14Speaker 00

  You gotta be willing to say, I don't want to feel like this anymore because I know deep in my heart I'm meant to feel better.

• 2:22:22Speaker 00

  And if that's all that the awakening is, that's all you need, is just knowing that you deserve to feel better because you do. And whether it's the high five habit or it's counting five, four, three, two, one, and shutting the critic down in your head, there are simple tools that you can use to help you to start to feel better every single day.

• 2:22:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Mel Robbins, you're an incredible human being. You've written a fantastic book, The High Five Habit. You're helping millions of people. Thank you so much for coming to the studio, and I cannot wait for the next time we get together.

• 2:22:58Speaker 00

  Me either.

• 2:23:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I'd be consuming,

• 2:23:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatge.com/friday5. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different topics: happiness, food, stress, sleep, behaviour change and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out.

• 2:24:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family, or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week, and please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android. All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health.

• 2:25:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Making lifestyle change is always worth it, because when you feel better, you live more.