How to Design Your Life in 1 Hour

What if you could teleport into Stanford’s most popular class and walk out knowing exactly how to build the life you want? This episode is your invitation to do just that. Today, Stanford professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are giving you their step-by-step guide to find your purpose and design the life you want, even if you feel stuck, uncertain, or overwhelmed. Their proven process will quickly help you take charge of your life, expand your view of what’s possible for yourself, live with no regrets, and find more meaning in each day. Is it ever too late to design the life of your dreams? In this conversation, the professors will tell you the surprising truth – and exactly what to do if you feel like time is running out. You’ll also learn: -The 3 powerful questions to ask yourself to figure out what you really want -How to really design a meaningful life and why there’s no such thing as a “perfect” life -The easy, no-stress way to turn your ideas into action -Why you can’t fail, no matter what This conversation will prove to you that your life is the biggest, most important project you’ll ever take on. You’ll see that you really can live a meaningful life and design the future you want, and you’ll walk away with the simple tools and positive mindset to make it happen, one step at a time. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-372 Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 00:00 Meet the Guests 02:18 What to Do When You’re Stuck in Life 06:01 You Can Design Your Own Life 11:31 Why Your 20s Feel So Hard 14:19 The Odyssey Plan: What’s Your Dream Life? 22:59 Design Your Life With Prototypes 32:25 Why You Should Have Your Funeral Early 41:42 Bill and Dave’s Guide For a 20-Minute Life Reset 45:43 How to Stop Procrastinating: Design Meaning Now 49:19 How to Live in the Present Moment 52:54 Four Simple Steps to Design Your Life — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

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

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:09Mel Robbins?

  How cool would it be if you could just teleport into one of the most popular and interesting college courses that's ever been taught, you know, be a student again, no matter your age, and learn from two of the top professors on the planet? You know, one course that I've always dreamed about taking more than any other courses at Stanford, and it's called "Designing Your Life." In fact, when I started this podcast here in Boston, which is the world's home for higher education, that was my vision, to have world-renowned professors and experts come here to Boston and give you and me the exact same lessons, takeaways, and wisdom, being

• 0:51Mel Robbins?

  taught in the most incredible courses and research being done at the top universities on the planet. Well, today, I am so excited that the two Stanford professors who created the Design Your Life course 20 years ago are here in our Boston studios to teach you their greatest life lessons. Now, they're going to tell you that the real challenge isn't designing a life, it's designing your life, so it has more meaning and purpose. And today, you're going to get the same proven frameworks that these professors have used for two decades to help people take charge of their lives.

• 1:32Mel Robbins?

  They're going to walk you through a powerful exercise that's going to give you clarity, especially when you feel stuck, uncertain, or overwhelmed. You will leave this conversation with a crystal-clear idea of what will bring you more meaning right now. And trust me when I tell you, what's going to come up for you when we do this exercise is going to be a total wild card. It's not too late. You can find work that makes you happy. You can experience more meaning and fulfillment in your life. And using the process you're about to learn, it will be easier than you think. So grab your seat, because class is in session. It's time to design your life.

• 2:27Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm thrilled to be here and I'm excited that you're here too. It's such an honor to be together, to spend this time with you, but I'm super excited about what's about to happen. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I cannot wait for you to meet two professors from Stanford University, who are here in our Boston studios to walk you through how you can design the life you want. The lessons that they've learned from teaching one of the most popular courses in the world for more than two decades are going to change everything.

• 3:09Mel Robbins?

  Dave Evans and Bill Burnett are the founders of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University. They're also the creators of the Designing Your Life course at Stanford, which has been taught for almost 20 years and is now being taught at over 600 universities. But long before they were teaching life design, for decades, Bill and Dave, they were designing products and leading teams at startups and Fortune 100 companies across Silicon Valley. Bill Burnett earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in product design at Stanford. He worked at Apple in the early days designing their laptops. He also worked on the team that designed the original Star Wars action figures.

• 3:52Mel Robbins?

  Today, he's a professor in mechanical engineering and design at Stanford. Dave Evans also earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering at Stanford. He also went on to work for Apple. And while Bill was designing laptops, Dave was leading the team that created their very first computer mouse. Dave was also the co-founder of the video game company Electronic Arts, which is one of the most successful gaming companies in the world. If Madden? FIFA or Sims ring a bell? Well, you're about to meet the co-founder who made it happen. Together, Bill and Dave have authored multiple bestsellers, including the number one New York Times bestseller, Designing Your Life, and their latest blockbuster,

• 4:37Mel Robbins?

  How to Live a Meaningful Life. So, without further ado, please help me welcome Professor Bill Burnett and Professor Dave Evans to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Thanks for having us. We're thrilled to be here.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is fantastic.

• 4:50Mel Robbins?

  You two have been at the top of my list since I started this. I have been waiting for this moment. I hope you don't disappoint me. No, I'm just kidding.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  You could have called sooner. We would have come sooner.

• 5:04Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:06Mel Robbins?

  Here's where I want to start. How will my life be different if I take to heart everything that you're about to share with us today?

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:14Mel Robbins?

  And I apply it to my life?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  You're going to get freer. You're going to feel more agency in your life. You're going to realize you actually know how to find your way, and as you go along it, you can make meaning every day.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Everybody's so busy, and there's so much going on. You're going to learn that it's not about cramming more stuff in. It's about getting more out of what you've already got and what you can, you know, what you can design for. And I think that helps people just relax, you know, and understand that they probably have enough.

• 5:46Mel Robbins?

  Bill, what do you think it is about the popularity of your, both of your books and the course? What does all of this interest say to you about what we're searching for?

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Particularly amongst the students. And I've taught at Stanford and I've taught all over, all over the place. And we've got over 600 schools now teaching the class. With the students, it's really, it's really clear. And it's gotten kind of worse lately in the last five, six, or seven years, social media and other things. Well, I have a good life. Well, I find a good job in it. I want meaning and purpose, but people tell me jobs aren't purposeful. The Gallup polls is 70% of Americans are disengaged from their jobs. Is that the world I'm going into? It's going to be that bad? And so for the students, it's that kind of anxiety about how do I get started? And I have been in office hours. For students for years and years and years before Dave and I decided to put this together. And it seemed clear to me that designing the the new thing in the world,

• 6:40Speaker 02

  because I've been teaching designers to design iPhones and iPads and websites and things for years. Designing the new thing in the world was just like designing the you. What am I going to be in my future? So everybody had that problem. And then we started working with folks in, you know, some mid careers, thirty five, forty five. And they're having the same question. Gee, it isn't as much, it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be. Or I'm kind of done with this job or I need to pivot.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Now what?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Now what? And I haven't thought about that in a long time. And I don't have any framework for thinking about it. And I've been doing work with folks who are retiring, you know, when they're fifty, sixties, or folks that are, you know, some of the empty nesters. And they're like, well, gee, I organized my whole life. My wife and I are empty nesters. Organized my whole life around my kids. And now it's just me and my wife. Like, do we even know each other? Do we even like each other anymore? What are we going to do? So this question just keeps coming up. And it's about, will my life or my future be meaningful? Can I find something to do that is got some purpose in it? And a lot of the structures of that, it used to be, well, you had a community. Everybody grew up in the same town. And so you knew where you fit in. Or maybe you had a faith community or a church or something.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  And a lot of those communities have gone away. There's this huge loneliness. People really feel isolated and lonely. And things are changing so fast, right? That they they don't know, they don't know where to turn for even a way to get started.

• 8:05Mel Robbins?

  You say in your number one New York Times bestselling book, Design Your Life, that the true way to design a life is to design your lives. What does that mean?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  We say all the time, all of us contain more aliveness, more personhood, than one lifetime permits you to live out. There's more than one of you in there.

• 8:27Mel Robbins?

  Hmm.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Which is why, by the way, Maslow's idea about self-actualization through fulfillment is dead wrong. Because he literally says on the nineteen forty three paper, you achieve that by becoming all that one can be. No, you can't possibly be all that you can be, because you're way bigger than your own lifetime. Look, I've buried plenty of people. None of them were done. That's the good news.

• 8:46Mel Robbins?

  Oh, whoa. I want to make sure that you didn't miss it. We've buried a lot of good people and none of them were done.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I'm in an age where I know plenty of dead people closely. And they all left with a long to do list. That's the good news. You're far bigger than your lifetime. So the chance of you being bored or running out of things is zero if you're paying attention. That's the good news. So the best way to design your life is to recognize there is no getting you right. There is no right life. There are lots of good lives. Let's go lean into them. And by the way, you don't know the future. You might have a good idea and implement it poorly. You might have an idea you thought was good and it didn't work out very well. Whoops, oh, I blew it. No, I learned my way forward and I'm gonna keep going. There's no getting it right.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  They're just getting it going.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Imagine this, we have this linear accelerator at Stanford. It's not the big and it's not as big as it used to be because we had bigger ones now. But this one's pretty good, still runs. And I can put you, I can put you in the tube and fire you to the end of the accelerators, two miles long. And by the time you get to the end, you're going 99.99% the speed of light, at which point you will experience the multiverse. And you can have as many lives as you want simultaneously. You could be the astronaut and the ballerina and the stay at home mom and whatever you want. And you'll know about all the universes at the same time. And then we asked the, I said on the count of three, one, two, three, tell me how many lives you want. I go one, two, three, and people go everywhere from one, the really bored, burned out guy, to

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Infinity.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  But on average, seven.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Seven are rated here.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Seven rate, people want eight lives. And I go, well, that just proves our theory, there's more than one life in you. If you could have all those lives, wouldn't it be cool?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And if you have seven lives worth of interest in you and you get one life, you're going to be 14% of your personhood.

• 10:45Mel Robbins?

  Right now.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  By the time you die.

• 10:47Mel Robbins?

  Wait, hold on a second.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:49Mel Robbins?

  Hold on, because I imagine a world.

• 10:53Mel Robbins?

  Where your one lifetime. Yeah. Could have seven different lives in it. Sure. Which means where you are right now. Right. In this particular chapter. Right. Is just 14% of what you will experience. That's also true. Which means you have the opportunity, if you change your mindset. Yeah. To really design the next 14% section. Whether it's from age 71 to 74, Dave, or I don't know how old you are, Bill. But I. A little younger. We won't hold that. Starts on the six. We won't hold that against you. But if you really think about it that way. Right.

• 11:35Mel Robbins?

  That means you could create whatever you wanted that was meaningful to you.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Well, and particularly now, I tell my students, don't you hope five, 10 years from now, you're doing a job that hasn't been even been invented yet? I mean, do you really want to constrain yourself to, I'm just going to be this, you're a scientist, or I'm just going to be this economist or something? Because first of all, jobs are going to change. Remember in the age of AI, everything's going to be different. And, and you can look at that and be terrified, or you can look at that and go, wow, there's going to be so many new things that show up. All I have to do is pay attention. You know, as these jobs disappear and reappear, like when I got out of Stanford long years ago, when, you know, dinosaurs still roamed, you know, White Plaza. You had to learn drafting to be a designer, drafting on a drafting table with a, with a pencil. Nobody's done that in 40 years.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  And now I can just do something on my phone and print it on a 3D printer. It's amazing. And so if you stay in a growth mindset, if you stay curious, the next 10 or 15 years are going to be amazing. For jobs, for careers, for possibilities. Get your boat in the water now, you know, learn some AI, get some, get, get, figure out how to. I think it's actually going to be a renaissance in creativity because it'll be possible for everyone. To do a video, to do a drawing, to do anything, to write a song. This generation feels a little bit despondent. You know, there's a lot going on in the, in the news. And I think like, this will be the first generation that doesn't have more than their parents. This will be the first generation that can't afford a home.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  This is the first gen, the kids aren't getting married because they just don't see, you know, they don't see a future. And I think the design mindset, it's inherently optimistic mindset. It's like, I can't make the

• 13:19Speaker 01

  We're optimistic.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Design, but I can make a better one. You know, I can make a better one than the one I've got.

• 13:24Mel Robbins?

  Could you speak to somebody in their twenties? Who is feeling that sense of discouragement, which frankly is justified?

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:34Mel Robbins?

  Given some of the factual research about the cost of living and changes that are happening in the headlines, like

• 13:40Speaker 01

  First of all, if you're 20.

• 13:41Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Be encouraged by the following fact. Your neocortex, which is the part of your brain that allows you to have an executive function and actually allows you to have full empathy for other people, isn't formed until 27 or 28, a little later in men, big surprise there. So if you're 20, 21, 22, you're not even here yet. We remind our graduating seniors, you're not broken, you're 22. Your 22 year old job is not to figure it out because the you that's, you're ever maybe even going to have a shot at figuring it out is six or eight years away from you. So your 20 year old self's job is to give your 28 year old self some interesting options. Now, no means sit on the couch at mom and dad's house and wait for something to land

• 14:25Speaker 01

  in your lap, get out there, start living, do things, learn your way forward, all that stuff we talk about in all our books. But if you're 20 something, it's going to get more interesting. So don't give up yet. Now externally, the macro situation we're all living in, I mean, that macro situation I was living in in 1976, when I graduated college is pretty radically different from what's going on right now, 50 years later. People are feeling powerless for a good reason, because people with power are hanging on to it and exercising it pretty egregiously right now, personal point of view. That being said, okay. There are systems that are bigger than you. The question then says, do you want to spend your time working on those systems?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Bill's got a son named Ben, who's currently working in Congress. He's going to go directly after the problem. I'm not going directly after the problem. I'm writing books about meaning making for everybody else in the meantime. I hope that leaves the campground a little better than I found it. So find what you can do within the constraints of reality. Maybe it's different than your parents' generation. Who cares? That was then, this is now. What world are you in? What is available to you? How can we make the most of what is, not complain about what isn't? But I get that it's hard. It is hard.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  It's hard. And I see this in lots and lots of our students. People say, oh, the Gen Z's don't want to work hard and they want to be pampered.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  It's like Not the ones we know.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  The ones I know, they'll do a startup, they'll work 100 hours a week if they believe in something. And so I'm very optimistic about the generation coming up and the generation that's already out there. And say, well, you know, what can I do?

• 16:03Mel Robbins?

  You know, a lot of people feel like they don't even know what they want. But there's this other exercise that you are world famous for called the Odyssey Plan.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:13Mel Robbins?

  Can you just walk the listener through a little bit? Cause it can help you see other lives in yourself and how to live a meaningful life to lean into.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  So we know you have to have more ideas to get your best ideas. And if you get stuck on the one idea, you're going to get stuck in a corner. So if we're going to plan the future possibilities, we got to hear from more than one of you. Three is kind of a magic number because it really gives you some freedom. And one of them is probably the life you're already in. The other one is if you can't do that, what else would you do? And the third one, the wild card, if money were no object, you know, and nobody would laugh at you, what would you do? That's the wild card. Well, maybe I would open the Beanie Baby store or I'd start the button shop, whatever the crazy thing is. The reason we ask people to have a crazy idea is not because the crazy idea is a good idea. It's because we need to train you to quiet the internal critic.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  So as soon as you say, well, you know, the 54 year old woman says, I mean, I'm thinking about going back to medical school. I always wanted to do that. I don't think it's too late, but my friends say I'm all crazy. What do you think? So her internal critic is being encouraged by all of her friends' internal critic going, "Well, that's crazy. You can't do that." And that's the part of evolution that keeps you from being eaten by the saber-toothed tiger. You know, so there's a negative bias built into your brain evolutionarily lest you be eaten. So you have to learn how to overcome that critic. So the Odyssey Plan helps you imagine there's more than one way you can live, and it helps train you to quiet your internal critic so you get the rest of your ideas back.

• 17:40Mel Robbins?

  So I want to make sure that you really got that. So the way that you help yourself imagine

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:47Mel Robbins?

  different possibilities in your life is through the Odyssey Planning, you ask yourself three questions.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:53Mel Robbins?

  What happens in my life if I change absolutely nothing? Where am I for five years from now?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And assuming it goes well.

• 17:59Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, well, I thank you for that. Like, let's just assume it goes well.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Let's assume it goes well.

• 18:03Mel Robbins?

  What happens in five years? What is my life?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Who am I?

• 18:06Mel Robbins?

  Who am I? Okay. Second one is, all of this disappears.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yep, can't do that.

• 18:11Mel Robbins?

  Can't do that, but I gotta pay my bills.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  You have a Plan B.

• 18:13Mel Robbins?

  Gotta have a Plan B. Five years, what am I doing?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:17Mel Robbins?

  What am I doing? And the third is, money's no object.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yep, whatever you want.

• 18:21Mel Robbins?

  Whatever you want. Nobody's gonna laugh.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:23Mel Robbins?

  It's gonna work out.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:24Mel Robbins?

  What are you gonna do?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  If you do those three, and we've done this with, I mean, Tens of Tens of thousands of people, including people like, "I'm not doing this." And we give them 12 minutes.

• 18:35Mel Robbins?

  12 minutes?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  12 minutes, sometimes 15. And absolutely, I mean, 99.7% of the people do it just fine. I'm standing behind this 57-year-old chiropractor. You know, we were a guy, we had 600 people in the room. This one guy's sitting back from the room, just looking at the paper going,

• 18:56Speaker 01

  so I come up to him and said, "Um, so how's it going?" "Fine." I go, "You're just gonna sit this one out?" And he goes, "No, no, I'm doing it." I go, "Well, you're not doing much. You gotta pick up the pen." He goes, "Yeah, I'm a little stuck." I go, "Well, what do you do?" "I'm a chiropractor." "Okay, great. You like it?" "I like it a lot." "How long have you been doing that?" "27 years." "Okay. You wanna die doing that?" I said, "What?" I said, "By the time you die, do you wanna still be doing this?" He kinda goes, "Well, I don't think so." I said, "Oh, then at some point, you're gonna do something else." He goes, "Well, I guess so." I go, "And what might that be?" He goes, "Oh, I guess I am gonna do something else, aren't I?" I said, "Yes, you are." Write that down. He goes, oh, okay. I mean, he had it in him. He just had to get over himself.

• 19:40Mel Robbins?

  I love this, and I'm going to encourage you as you're listening, unless you're driving a car, do this right now. Think about it. It like if you, if nothing changes, it goes, well, what does life look like five years? If everything disappears and you gotta go to plan B, what does life look like in five years? And what are you doing? What's the something else? And what is the crazy wild thing that you don't need money? And nobody's gonna laugh at you. What is that thing?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Classes and lectures. It's a series of these little workshop things and design exercises. So then people get in threes and they read each other. I read my Odyssey plan to the other two people and we teach them to listen very generously. And in tens and tens of thousands of these, the last question I ask when I'm doing briefing a class, I say, you know, those wildcard plans that you heard from everybody in the class of the listeners, how many of you think that person could actually do the wildcard?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  It's not nearly as crazy as that.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 20:34Mel Robbins?

  Hundred percent.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  It's not as crazy as you think. And again, we're not trying to get people to quit their jobs and, you know, and

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Join the circus.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Join the circus. It's just that it's proof. There's more life in you than you think. There's more possibilities than you think. When you think in threes, not binaries or ones.

• 20:49Mel Robbins?

  You, you know, you light up like the sicko sign in Boston when you talk about this. What is your wildcard? The last time you did this.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Artist.

• 20:58Mel Robbins?

  Being art, like a painter?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I am a painter. I have been a painter. So I went off to Stanford. Well, even back when I did, it was kind of expensive and I wanted to be an art major. My dad was a pretty practical guy and he said, look, if you want to be an art major, yeah, come back and go to, go to UMass. I'm not paying for Stanford. But I found this design thing and that was pretty cool. Cause our design major was a combination of art and engineering and psychology. But I did make a promise to that 18 year old kid that someday I'd be an artist. And so I have a studio and painting is my thing. And when I'm in the studio painting, that is, I don't know if I'm any good. I don't care. Robert Henry is a famous painting school in New York in the 1920s. His phrase was the, the goal isn't to make art. The goal is to be in that marvelous state of mind that makes art inevitable.

• 21:45Mel Robbins?

  Do you know, that's the mission of how we do work here?

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:50Mel Robbins?

  That quote.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  I cool. I, I can tell. So that's on the door of my studio and to be in that marvelous state of mind. Yeah, it's a very special place.

• 22:00Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  And so I promised myself that that will be my, that is my wild card and that is coming up.

• 22:06Mel Robbins?

  Dave, what's yours?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Well, there are a bunch of them. One probably came very close to becoming an actor, but there's a particular version of performance art that I've long thought would be really fun to try, which is to be a waiter in an extremely elite restaurant.

• 22:21Mel Robbins?

  Really?

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I think is absolutely performance art.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  First thing I've ever heard is, so tell me more.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  How to read the room. I mean, so, um, you know, that people are coming in, their expectations are incredibly high. And this couple's having an argument and that, you know, family is celebrating the kid's graduation. And, and can you read, can you read the room? Can you maximize this incredible experience because you go to a fine dining experience for a particular kind of celebration or a particular kind of, you know, outing. And the right wait service catalyzes it beautifully. The wrong wait service wrecks it. And can I deliver the improv performance that has nine different stages at the same time called tables, playing nine different parts, having every one of those people have an amazing experience in real time? Can I pull that off?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  I mean, running a really, really amazing restaurant is a really, really, really hard thing. It's really hard.

• 23:15Mel Robbins?

  That's definitely not on my fantasy list. My fantasy list-

• 23:17Speaker 02

  I don't want to be in the kitchen, it's too scary.

• 23:19Mel Robbins?

  Mine for sure is I want to write a fantasy trilogy.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 23:24Mel Robbins?

  Yes, all about angels that are among us and the theme of are you born like-

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Imagine a world where Mel is a fantasy trilogy writer.

• 23:31Mel Robbins?

  Right. Born good or bad? And I have this whole, I've been thinking about it for 10 years and I'm, I'm going to do it.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:38Mel Robbins?

  I'm going to do it like, but it's, it's always in there and I love that you shared that. And for you listening or watching, I, I want you to share your wild card.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:51Mel Robbins?

  Either with us or put it in the review or the comment of the show. Or when you share this episode with somebody that you care about, be a little cryptic and say, my wild card is this. And you'll know exactly what I mean when you listen to this and then I want you to tell me yours.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  You know, Mel, Bill and I, we talk about the stuff we've been doing for a long time. We often say, at the end of the day, what we're really doing- We're just giving people permission to live their lives. It's really just give, yes, you can. You do know how to do this. You have it in you. You may not have it in you to be an Olympian, but you have it in you to be something.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  And because right after the Odyssey plans comes prototyping, what a new plan you want to learn about. And then they prototype.

• 24:34Mel Robbins?

  Oh, that's the next step.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  They come back.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  That's the next step, yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  At the next class and they go, did you know you can actually make a living in the circus? I had one student who was a gymnast at Stanford, and she wanted to go to medical school. Her parents wanted to go to medical school. She cut a deal. Can I do something before I go to medical school? She's now in Cirque du Soleil in China, and she is a circus clown, which was on her Odyssey plan.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And just having a great time.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  But people have a hard time even imagining something so wild it's not possible. And when they talk about Plan One, it's kind of like, yeah, well, so I'm going to just keep being an accountant, and I'm going to do this thing. And, you know, I'm pretty good at it, da, da, da. But when they talk about their wild cut, they're like, you know, I really love diving and underwater photography. And I'm wondering if I could be a dive instructor who does photography, nephew for National Geographic. And I say, well, I happen to know a guy who started a company building underwater cameras. Would you like to have a prototype interview? And they're like, really? They go, yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  When you know that you don't know what you're doing, right, the competence, you have to be competent at your incompetence. You have to be good at knowing when you don't know what you're doing, called the future I haven't figured out yet.

• 25:43Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  So you make a move, then learn something, make a move, learn something, go back, you know, keep making moves until you finally iterate your way forward through prototyping. That's what we teach. Life is a series of incremental prototypes. You find your way by living into your life. You build your way forward, we keep saying. There is no knowing. There is only doing, learning, and growing.

• 26:05Mel Robbins?

  Bill and Dave, I am so happy that you're here. I hate to say this, but I gotta hit the pause button real quick. I know you're loving Bill and Dave too, but let's give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I want to give you a chance to share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it. Because we all deserve the permission, and we also need the frameworks to design the life we truly want to be living. Don't go anywhere, because there's so much more to dig into. And we've got a really cool exercise that we're going to do when we return. So stay with us.

• 26:46Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today, Stanford University professors, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are here for our first ever double guest episode. We're talking about how to create a meaningful life. And I am loving it. I know you are too. So let's jump back in. So I know I'm going to get a ton of questions about this. Can you guys give a couple of examples of what actually a prototype looks like?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Clowning. Clowning is actually a thing. And is it the Shriners? Is there some outfit where they train the members? And they do clowning in hospitals to visit kids? Oh, so you could probably call the local hospitals. And does anybody do clowning with the children? Oh, great. Do they have a training for that? So you could go, trust me, there's somebody who will train you to be a clown. Maybe a little bit of clowning that you could go into the children's ward and try cheering some, maybe just ride along with them, watch them. You know, I mean, there are ways to get at the thing that you think you're thinking about.

• 27:45Mel Robbins?

  So you're a 20 something. You see your friends living in Montana. Should I live in New York? Should I go to Montana? Should I go into iBanking? Should I be a ski bum? Like, I don't know what to do with my, you're 28. What's an example of a prototype? Here's another one. A stay at home mom, the kids are gone. Now it's my turn.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:05Mel Robbins?

  What am I doing? Am I going back to nursing school? Am I finishing my degree?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Writing that novel.

• 28:10Mel Robbins?

  Am I writing that novel that I'm thinking about? Like, what does that mean in terms of just a couple of specific things that you've seen people do to give the person listening an idea?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  So I'm sitting with the 57 year old, suddenly empty nested mom who left a couple of things behind, doesn't know what to do. Great. So let's quickly come up with your list of things that might be at all interesting.

• 28:30Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about being a ski bum. I'm thinking about going back to medical school. Actually, I talked to a 54 year old about that. And I'm thinking about being a novelist. Okay, fine. Now, maybe I should, oh, I'm going to go back and get a master's degree in creative writing and spend three years and $30,000 and then write one blog and I didn't like it that much. Terrible idea. That's jumping way off the cliff. So the prototype I do would say, talk to people, try stuff. So go out and have a bunch of narrative conversations. Now with, oh, you're a novelist and how much do you make and what? Did you, school did you go to? Those are transactional conversations, not narrative conversations. Like, what's it like to be you? And what do you enjoy? And what do you not enjoy? And tell me all about that. And I have these narrative conversations with people in the world I'm thinking about being in,

• 29:13Speaker 01

  which is what Dan Gilbert at Harvard, not a bad school, would say is surrogation, not stimulation. Quit reading about it. Go talk to people about it because you're a person. And when you encounter a person who tells that story, that story becomes real. You'll actually learn more from persons in the world you're thinking about than reading about it.

• 29:30Mel Robbins?

  You'll feel something.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  You'll feel something. You'll experience something. And then maybe some of them can get you a ride along and a visit. You can, you can do some experimentation, try stuff long before you over commit. And then eventually after enough iterations, you'll make a better decision.

• 29:43Mel Robbins?

  You know, it's interesting because I want to build on this. Because so many people probably say to you, well, I have no idea. I have no idea what I want to do. And I

• 29:51Speaker 01

  That's almost never true.

• 29:52Mel Robbins?

  I agree with you. And if you're saying that right now, like, I don't know what my life's about. I don't know what I like. I, I love this 14% thing and this idea and the invitation you gave us to step into a time machine accelerator thingy. And the average person says, I've imagined eight lives.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:10Mel Robbins?

  So you're in one of them.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:11Mel Robbins?

  You've got another seven.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:13Mel Robbins?

  What are the other seven lives you would imagine in the fantasy of your mind?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:17Mel Robbins?

  And those are the things to then lean into and get curious about, correct?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  I wanted to be a dive instructor. I love diving, but I always wanted to be a photographer. I want to have a podcast. Okay, before you jump into a podcast, try writing, you know, a 2,000 word essay every day for five days. See how that feels. Oh, that was really hard. It was really lonely. Dave hates writing because it's lonely. I'm the introvert, he's the extrovert. I love sitting in a room, talking to myself all day long. It's wonderful and he can't stand it. So like try the trying stuff and the talking to people. If you talk to writers, they'll say writing is very lonely.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  If you can't handle that, it's probably not, it's not going to be a good thing for you. And you wouldn't know that unless you talk to somebody who does it. So it's almost like time travel. You can have a little experience of talking to somebody who's the person you think you might want to be. They're already 10 years down the road doing it. And that experience, that, yeah, that conversation is so much more powerful than, oh, I'm going to look up on the Google, how many, how many writing hacks are there, you know? When, when did the five most famous writers write? You know, they wrote in the morning, they wrote in the afternoon. There's just no patterns in that stuff. So you can prototype anything and, and the lack of, the lack of curiosity isn't really true. I, I've got, I have no ideas. You really have no ideas. Okay, you know, what did you, what was the last show you watched that you thought was interesting?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Pick something simple. We're not talking about the thing you'll do for the rest of your life. We're talking about what do you want to do next week?

• 31:42Mel Robbins?

  So as all of this opens up for somebody and they have this sense of what might create more meaning. Right? And I want to get curious. I want to prototype. The fear of failure and the fear of what other people are going to think probably comes in like a sledgehammer. What do you say to people in your classes when they get this moment of clarity? And then it's like, huh?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Start really small. I mean, cut yourself some slack for God's sake. We talk about failure immunity because the purpose of a prototype is to learn something, not to succeed. We don't prototype to make sure, oh, will it work? No, just what do I need to know more about? I'm, I'm going to go ride along, you know, and, and be an auditor of the children's clowns, you know, at the hospital. You know, and I might say the wrong thing. I mean, did I blow it? No, no, no, I'm just, I'm just trying to learn what it's like here. So first of all, have your prototypes not bet the farm. You know, like maybe my, maybe what I'll do is I'll, I'll go to Chez Panisse in Berkeley, you know, one of the most expensive restaurants in all of California. And see, because I know a friend who's really close friends with Alice Waters and she could probably get me in as the waiter.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  So my first night as a waiter is in front of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. That is not a prototype. That's a performance. So cut yourself some slack.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Likely to fail.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And I'm likely to fail.

• 32:58Mel Robbins?

  I probably wouldn't even want to serve the bread there.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, and that's. So, so make it easy. Make it small where almost nothing is at stake, of which there are plenty of opportunities. Give yourself a break. Make it interesting. Make it fun. Cut it down small, don't shoot too high.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  We're, we're really big on set the bar low. Set the bar low and clear it. This is the whole psychology behavior change. You're not going to change if you make something so big. This is the new year and people have made their resolutions. I'm going to run a marathon this year. It's like, well, probably unless you break that into very, very small steps, it's not going to happen. And so we really go for super simple things. And that's, and that builds up your confidence too. You could try something and you, you know, you're asking prototypes, you learn some stuff. You get a little more confident. Eventually, you know, when you flip into these, this designer's mindset, you realize, oh, I can prototype anything. There's really no failure here. You know, failure is just a rule I made up in my head. And once I get rid of that rule, I'm, I'm much more free.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  But yeah, fear drives a lot of people to, to not try.

• 34:01Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. Is it too late? I think there's a big fear that it's too late. I've blown it too much like I. It's never too late.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  I mean, coming out of a talk, a 54 year old woman has asked me about, you know, am I crazy to go to medical school? I said, look, let's, let's just run the numbers really quickly. Okay. Based on the DNA of the gene pool you were born into, what's the likelihood of when you're going to die? She kind of goes, I'm probably going to make it to my late 80, 90. So go great. If you let's say I make it healthy to 85, 88, how long do you want to work? Well, probably 80. I said, okay.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Great.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  So we've got 26 years to go.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, so you applied, probably going to spend a year going to, you know, a medical school application preparatory program, you know, called a post back program, spend a year on that. Spend a year trying to get in, that's two, four years to get through medical school. Now you're in residency, by the way, 90% of medicine is done by residents. So you're already a doctor. You're now practicing medicines six years into the program. Eventually let's, you finish your specialty, you know, we're now eight years into the program. That puts you at 64. You got 11, you got 11 to 12 years to go before even backing off, maybe 15. Cut out the crap of all this conventional thinking and just ask yourself the question, what's happening? What might it be? I mean, I'm about to get married for the third time. Cause you know, my wife died on me, in which was not the plan.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  And a lot of my friends, they make, it's too hard, it's too much work. I don't, Tony, you really want to go through that again? I go, sure. This is terrific. It's a ton of work. It's an absolute mountain of work. You know, but I mean, what else am I doing?

• 35:36Mel Robbins?

  Dave, thank you so much for saying that. There are so many more things I have to ask you. I've been waiting for this moment since I started this podcast. I need to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. So let's just hit the pause button for a moment. And they've given you so much to think about. And I know as you've been imagining, imagining all these possibilities, all these lives that you could be living, somebody's popping in your mind. There's somebody in your life who's stuck, somebody who needs this framework. Text them this episode, share this episode, because this episode is proof that creating a happy, meaningful life doesn't have to be a guessing game or a pipe dream. You don't have to do this alone. There are proven tools and strategies and frameworks that can help

• 36:18Mel Robbins?

  you and the people you care about do it. So share this and don't go anywhere because we'll be right back. Stay with me.

• 36:36Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are spending time with Professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the brilliant minds behind Stanford University's incredible course called Designing Your Life. And today they're here to teach you and I how to create more meaning in our lives. Here's another thing I was wondering about. When you go to a funeral, it's very interesting.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:58Mel Robbins?

  The second you walk out of the funeral, you feel more alive and you have more urgency to do what you came here to do, Dave and Bill. You said, "We want to give people permission to live their lives." And especially right now, when the world feels so overwhelming and people are exhausted and there are very big problems, it's easy to go, "It doesn't matter." And when you start to do the math, whether you're telling me that you have seven different lives you could do, you're going to die with shit on your to-do list and things you never achieved, you're 50, so what? You got 40, you're 70, you probably got 20 more years left. What are you doing?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. My next milestone is death. I haven't got time to waste.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  But Dave and I have been in wonderful communities. I've been in this group of men, a men's group for thirty two years because I had started when my son got born and I needed to figure out how to raise a son. And we end up, we've been around long enough that we've had some guys die and we've gone to their funerals and said wonderful things about them. And then we decided, why do we wait till we die before we say wonderful things about each other? So we have a protocol in our men's group where you can say, I'm gonna die next week. I'd like everybody to write a eulogy. And then you come in and then lay there quietly and you listen to people say the most wonderful things about you, right? Because eulogies are not about, oh, well, you know, Dave had a big to-do list. He crossed off lots of things. His power coins were very well done and he always got his budgets in on time. Nobody says that.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  They say, well, he's a good man. He was a wonderful husband. He was a great father. So do that. Have your friends write your eulogy and find out what you really mean to people. It's amazing.

• 38:39Mel Robbins?

  You could also, you do that exercise thinking about what you hope or wish is being said about how you lived your life. Because what you don't want it to be is, well, he got to be seventy and had the love of his life and just turned down the opportunity to get married again and do it. And she wanted to go to medical school but talked herself out of it for thirty years.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Right. No, I'm in a smug of a guys for fifty one years, formed in nineteen seventy four, called TD Three, Tom and Three Daves. I'm the founding Dave. And, you know, we just went through this exercise of moving into our seventies. And so we said, okay, let's all, first of all, announce what age we think we're gonna die at. And then write the eulogy you hope will be true by then. And make sure that the eulogy includes things that aren't true yet. So you can live aspirationally into that.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  And we really do believe that a human being is a becoming and that becoming should be a non-stop program.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Don't quit early. Now, you might have some constraints physically, circumstantially otherwise, but there's always more you can become into. So which questions do you want to live into? And by the way, preferably, it does really help to have some people around that you're asking these questions with. Yeah.

• 39:57Mel Robbins?

  So how old did you say you were going to be when you died? And what was the thing that you haven't done yet that was on the list?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  My line, eighty-five, I'm guessing I'll make it to eighty-five.

• 40:05Mel Robbins?

  I'd like you to live a little longer.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Well, I'm thinking I may work for an extension to the contract. But nonetheless, I said, at the time, I said eighty-five. And the way I put what I'm aspiring to was, when I get to heaven, I want to be recognized as somebody who's already been there, meaning I've already stepped into profound acceptance and universal love and welcome to all persons at all times. I want to look like I'm already doing that by the time I get there.

• 40:29Mel Robbins?

  I think there's a huge power, and you know this based on the way the brain works, in really embracing the truth of everything that you just said in terms of giving yourself permission to not just live a meaningful life now and find moments of meaning, but to really think about what you want to accomplish by the end. And I'm thinking about this text.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Who do you want to become?

• 40:52Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, who do you want to become? I'm thinking about my mother-in-law, who's eighty-nine. I think she's eighty-nine, is she eighty-eight? I don't know. But she's, she texted in the family-wide group chat, "I'm going to be here another ten years."

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:05Mel Robbins?

  Because I want to see all the grandkids get married, if they choose to get married.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:09Mel Robbins?

  And I was like, wow.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  She's in the game.

• 41:12Mel Robbins?

  She's in the game.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:14Mel Robbins?

  She knows what she's doing.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:16Mel Robbins?

  And I think that's, there's an invitation to all of us. And so I love that construct of what age do you think you're dying? And what are all the things that you want to accomplish that you haven't done yet? And what do you hope?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. The specific tool in the book for that is called the focus question. We actually encourage you to come up with the focus question, what focuses your attention on what you're trying to become at this particular moment or season of your life. So can you write down the question, not like, will I have money to retire by then? Those are transactional questions. But, you know... A year from now, two years from now, three years from now, if you live well into the invitation to become more yourself, what question do you hope to be able to answer by the end of the next year, two or three that you're thinking about? So in my case, it was, you know, how will I learn to live out of get to, not got to?

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Because I think that's a more generous position that might allow me to hit heaven in the right point of view. And so that's the focus question I've got. How do I live deeply into get to, not got to? That's my focus question for now. And preferably having some people around you that can help you with that question.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  And by the way, I don't think anybody writing their eulogy or those questions says, I wish I had more, I think I want to have more money by the time I'm X. Because you get to the second half of life, assuming that money is enough and how to get it's not, but, or whatever. But it's hard. You start to realize that those kinds of transactional accomplishments, while important and interesting ways of keeping score, aren't the things that are going to make you happy when you're dead? I know when you're, when you get to that point. So I think, you know, it's, I really encourage the folks who are thinking about this stuff, think, think a little, you know,

• 43:10Speaker 02

  give yourself a little bit of time, turn off the phone and give yourself a little bit of time to think about, you know, what, what would I hope people say about me? And, and how do I become the person that deserves them to say that? And I bet stuff comes up. And it's, it could be connected to your wild card. It could be just connected to, you know, where you are in your journey. I bet stuff comes up. Where you'll, you know, a lot of times when I do this, actually, because, you know, one of the first things I said to Dave when we set this up is, you know, we got to do everything and put in the books. Otherwise, we're the biggest hypocrites on the planet. So we do all this stuff. And if once in a while I do this stuff, I think back and I go, oh, wow. Where did that come from? You know, that's a good, like, that's, that's an idea. Where did that come from?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  And, you know, it came from some part of me, you know, just needed a little bit of quiet. To, you know, to find its voice. So I hope people can do that because it's really.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're paying attention, life is full of invitations.

• 44:07Mel Robbins?

  Hmm.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  I think life is full of invitations to your becoming self if you're paying attention.

• 44:14Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, you said, turn off the phone and take the time for the person that says, well, I just can't, I'm overwhelmed. I have no time. What do you want to say directly to them, Bill?

• 44:22Speaker 02

  I'll bet if I looked at your phone and tell me how much time you spend on Instagram, how much time you spend on TikTok, how much time you spend scrolling mindlessly, you know, through reels or short videos on YouTube. I do it too. And every once in a while I look at it and go, I can't believe I spent an hour on this crap. So give yourself a pause and, you know, go look at the phone. It'll tell you how much time you spent just doom scrolling through stuff. And I always ask people, tell me the last video you watched. They go, I don't know. Tell me the last really, I don't know. Tell me the last, you know, text you read or the last thing you read on X. I don't know. So if you're doing it and you can't even remember what it was, would you like to reallocate that time to something more interesting?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  I'm only talking about 20 minutes here. Can you give me 20 minutes that you would have spent and just be present with yourself?

• 45:16Speaker 02

  And see what comes up.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  You know, standing in front of a big blank canvas and I'm going, oh, the world really needs an older white guy painter because we need more painters in the world. And I'm going to paint something and no one's going to care. So I go through all of that stuff in my head. And then if I quiet down for a little while and I, you know, just stare at this thing, I get an idea. Then I get another idea and I get another idea. And pretty soon, the painting is painting itself and everything is wonderful. But boy, everybody's got that moment where they're like, oh, this isn't going to work or this is stupid or this is useless. I have that all the time.

• 45:53Mel Robbins?

  Well, that's the moment.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:56Mel Robbins?

  That's what it all comes down to because you can stay there. Or you can lean into the other world you've taught us about.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Pick up a brush and put something on the canvas.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  And again, set the bar low, like, oh, I really need to start meditating. So I should do 20 minutes every morning between six and 6:20. I gotta get up at 5:30, you know, and eat some really pure yogurt first. Like, whoa, dude, lighten up.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  We've got a thing called the Seventh Day Savoring. Once a week, sit down and pick a moment during the week when you felt deeply alive, go back and savor it because you didn't have time to fully experience it in real time.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  You could just go back there and like linger over it. I mean, put that, let it sit on your tongue and really get the most out of it. Okay, it's five minutes a week. And your prototype is, I'll do that twice. Okay, so two five minutes on a Sunday afternoon. And then ask the question, was that worth it? Did I enjoy that? Might do a bit more. It's okay. You don't have to jump over your head. If you're moving, you're, you know, that's moving toward a meaning-making practice. So you're designing your way forward.

• 47:02Mel Robbins?

  I want to read to you

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:04Mel Robbins?

  from your blockbuster bestseller, How to Live a Meaningful Life. And this is page eight, "All of Us." "This longing for more meaning

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:14Mel Robbins?

  may be one of the most universal things that all humans want. Lives that are generative and joyful, fulfilling and connected. Lives that are about more than just getting through each day, paying the bills, maybe taking a vacation now and then. And too many people are finding too few an answer for how to get what their hearts keep telling them they were made for. The meaning and purpose that they need. The quest for meaning can seem too big and too overwhelming. But here's the thing. There is something you can do, really actually do, to experience a more meaningful life today, right now, in this exact moment."

• 47:59Mel Robbins?

  So Dave.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:01Mel Robbins?

  What is that one thing?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing is you get a reframe. You know, in design, we do problem finding before we do problem solving. One of the reasons people fail is they're working on the wrong thing.

• 48:10Mel Robbins?

  Problem finding?

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Finding precedes problem solving.

• 48:14Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So the question, oh, how do I live a more meaningful life? Usually frames itself as what is the meaning of my life? I have not yet found my purpose. What is the one true thing that really is what I'm here to do? And we think those are all the wrong question. Because they all treat you as a transaction, as a problem to be solved for which there is a correct answer.

• 48:34Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  So instead of working on the what is the meaning of life? We're here to give you tools to design more meaning in life.

• 48:44Mel Robbins?

  Okay, I want to make sure the person listening got this.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:46Mel Robbins?

  One of the reasons why I get stuck and you get stuck and the people that you love get stuck is number one, we're asking the wrong question, which is how do I find meaning?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  The ultimate answer to life, the ultimate, is this really it? Have I found it? No, you haven't found it because you're going to keep growing and the it's going to change. So stop worrying about it and let's work on this.

• 49:07Mel Robbins?

  Well, what I love about it is, and you know, look, this is why you guys are brilliant. Okay, just got to say, is because as I've been sitting here going, you know, I got to find it. That that statement in and of itself says it's out there.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:21Mel Robbins?

  How do I create more meaning right here?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yes. So don't wait for the ultimate answer. No, by the way, we have both in different ways have worked on the big questions for a long time. And we think the big questions really matter. I'm not saying never think about that. What I'm saying is don't defer life is good and worthwhile until you find those answers. What you can do is start living into the moment that you're in. So the first reframe is, how do I find more meaning now? And then the second thing is, and where might I find it?

• 49:51Mel Robbins?

  Well, I'm glad you said there was a second question. Here's the thing, as somebody who's really screwed up her life for large stretches of it, there are times if you had asked, you had instructed me.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:01Mel Robbins?

  Mel, the answer is to find more meaning where you are right now. You know what I would have said? Probably F you. Because I don't like where I am right now. And there is nothing meaningful about this, which is why I want something else. Do you know what I mean?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 50:14Mel Robbins?

  What do you say to the person that's feeling that right? Like, there is no way to find meaning where I am right now.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  That's probably because the thing that's not working, there's something about the job is not working, the marriage isn't working. There's something I'm really unhappy about.

• 50:29Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  I'm not getting what I wanted from this particular aspect of my life. And so then you say, well, find more meaning. You're trying to tell me how to make a bad thing good. This is the old, well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Okay, the problem with the lemonade idea is let's take a bad thing and make a good thing of it. No, no, no, no. So I think, okay, there's something that's not working. I get that, but that doesn't mean there aren't other parts of your life where more meaning and more aliveness are lurking latently, waiting for you to discover them. Don't let those go. Now, meanwhile, we might want to have some projects to, maybe your job is a bad situation. When we've got asked over and over again, why isn't it more fulfilling? It's, I thought I did everything you guys said, and it still isn't working for me.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  We're hearing that skyrocket as a question in the last two years. I'm just not having the impact I want to. Well, impact is important, but it's only one form of meaning making, and it's got a very short half-life. Like, right after you finish doing something successful, three, two, one, what have you done for us lately? So there are other ways to experience meaning, which happen in this place we call the flow world, not in this busy world we're all in most of the time, we call the transactional world. So our big invitation for where that more meaning is, is spending more time in the flow world, which is right here, by the way. But there's a lot more in front of you than you think. This is easier than they told you.

• 51:48Mel Robbins?

  Okay, that's the part I want to hang on to. This is easier than they told you, and this is also easier than what you're currently doing.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  So flow is that state where time stands still. You're in the moment by definition, because that's where you are fully engaged. And it's a moment where actually you're making energy. Psychologists will say it's an energy generating moment, because it just feels so good. You know, dopamine and other good chemicals going in your brain. And some of this comes from the work of Dr. Lisa Miller. You know, her's from Columbia. She kind of updated the left brain, right brain model. We used to have a right brain was the creative brain, the left brain was the analytical brain. It's more nuanced than that, and her model is there's the achieving brain, the transactional brain. And the awakened brain is where we experience flow,

• 52:41Speaker 02

  where we experience spirituality, where we experience a connection to something bigger than ourselves. And so all we're arguing for is recognize that those two things, the transaction world, the flow world, the achieving brain, the awakened brain, and get a little more into, you know, building your whole brain, which is having a balance between the two. And being in the flow world and experiencing this awakened sense of yourself connected to the world, that's when we're more human, right? So we need both sides of the brain. We need both awakened and achieving. We need to be in the transaction world and the flow world. And we're underpracticed, right, at getting into the flow world.

• 53:20Mel Robbins?

  Can you give me some examples in day-to-day life that really help illustrate for the person listening, who has never even considered that there's a second world to live in, other than the one in your head?

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:35Mel Robbins?

  What does it feel like to be in flow? Or what's an example that you might find in somebody's everyday life that you could hold on to and go, oh, I've experienced this. Okay, I understand this difference.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  If you're an athlete, you felt that you're in the zone. You're at a place where you just know where the ball's gonna be. If you're a runner, it's the runner's high, where your brain goes quiet and you're just on the run. I like to cook. For me, it can be as simple as, you know, I'm chopping onions. I'm doing my mise en place. I'm preparing everything before I cook. And put on some good music and just be in that state. And then I'm not thinking about school. I'm not thinking about, you know, the budget. I'm not thinking about other things. I have a lot of voices in this head that are talking to me all the time. And so learning to just kind of quiet them down and do some, do an activity, running, cooking, something that you enjoy doing,

• 54:28Speaker 02

  but really being all in, totally present, and being available to what the experience can be.

• 54:36Mel Robbins?

  I keep coming back to this 14% thing. I think your next book should be the 14% mindset. Because I just feel this sense of the invitation, of the unlived life, that there's these two lives that we have.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  You're talking about unfinished business.

• 54:52Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, the one you're living and the one you have yet to create.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 54:55Mel Robbins?

  And one of the things that you two write about is that you can boil The Design Your Life process into a post-it note.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:05Mel Robbins?

  Bill, what's on the post-it note?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  This is hard. Professors don't like to boil their, their things down to something so simple that anybody can do it.

• 55:11Mel Robbins?

  Actually, what everybody says, anybody, any idiot can make it complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. Um, that was Mark Twain's, "If I had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter." Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  It happened on Canadian live TV. We, we were running out of time. The producer goes, "We're just about out of time. Can you do the book in a sentence?" I said, "Dude, we're Stanford professors. We don't give short answers to hard questions." He goes, "Oh, then you're off the air." I said, "Give me a minute." I was a marketing guy. Um, get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story. So it's 10 words. It's really not one sentence, but it's get curious, lean in, lean into the availability, talk to people, go out and engage with the world, you know, because the narrative story is where it's at. Try stuff, prototype your way forward, then tell the story of what you're learning, you're becoming. Pay attention, reflect on what you're learning. You know, "Hey, how's it going?" "Oh yeah, I binge watched Game of Thrones all night last night. Again, what'd you do?" That's not that interesting. It's almost like, "Well, I was talking about Robbins.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  She's talking about there's not, there's 14% of the lives I'm living as well as the ones I'm not. I'm really thinking about that." And they kind of go, "Oh, say more. What's going on with that?" So if you're leaning into and living your life and paying attention to it, get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  The circular pattern, I'm telling stuff, I'm telling my story. People say, "That's very interesting. Have you thought about talking to so-and-so or this, trying this or this?" And it just keeps going. You know, your curiosity leads to more engagement, which leads to more prototypes, which leads to more stories. Once you get that flywheel running, you know, it runs by itself and it feels like, "Hey, I'm, I'm making progress. I'm going somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where it is, but I'm pretty sure I'm going in the right direction."

• 56:47Mel Robbins?

  Well, I think it's really cool to just allow yourself to imagine. That there are all of these things that you can do.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:56Mel Robbins?

  And you're, you're gonna die with the to-do list and the experiences and all of the things that you could have become regardless.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:04Mel Robbins?

  Of whether you mope on the couch or you use these principles.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  You gotta move from FOMO to JOMO, from the fear of missing out to the joy of missing out. So people think, the reason I have FOMO, right, fear of missing out, some cool thing goes by like, you know, oh, oh, wow, oh, we should have done that instead. Shoot, I missed it, says the person who has FOMO. The phrase, I missed it, acts as though the world is a scarce place and there's barely enough to make an it of your life. And if you missed a little bit of an it, you are now diminished. Wrong. Seeing something cool go by you haven't got time to do, just reminds you the world is a target-rich place and you're a highly capacious creature who could be interested in so many more things than

• 57:50Speaker 01

  you have time for. Isn't that great? So get used to, get a comfortable attitude toward wonderful things passing you by. Just reminds you the world is a cool place to live and enjoy that which is in front of you. Look, he talks me into writing a book. Again, I've just, we just wrote this third book and I said, oh my God, if I do that, the next four years of my life are completely spoken for. Do I really want to do that from 71 to 75?

• 58:17Mel Robbins?

  Do you?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I get a year or two to write a book and I get a year or two to talk to Mel about it, you know. I feel like, do I really want to do that at this point in my life? Well, sure. And it comes in packages of yes or no. And the yes to this book has got about 75 noes in it for things I'm not doing right now.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  And I'm perfectly happy living into the life I've chosen. Choose your life.

• 58:41Mel Robbins?

  Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, what are your parting words?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  You can do this.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  And I really hope you do. You deserve it.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  My wish for, for folks is just try something, try something really small and see if you can find that little piece of joy or that just like a pointer towards something that wakes you up. And we know you can do it.

• 59:04Mel Robbins?

  Well, my wish for you is that I'm at the table at the night that you do your waitering and that when you have your opening exhibit for the paintings you don't think the world cares about, that we're all there to clap for you.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  I will absolutely invite you.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:19Mel Robbins?

  I'm gonna make you. I'm gonna be there whether I'm invited tonight. Now I know Dave will text me and tell me even if you don't. No, seriously. I love you two. I love the work you do. Thank you for the difference that you make in all of our lives. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for writing this blockbuster of a book. Now more than ever, I know we are all searching for more meaning.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:44Mel Robbins?

  And we real, I really am grateful that you're giving us the blueprint to find it where we are. Thank you.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. You're a dear woman. This was really sweet.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we really appreciate, appreciate the opportunity. It was a great conversation.

• 59:58Mel Robbins?

  It really was. And thank you. I want to thank you for spending time with us and for making the time to invest in yourself, to listen to something that's going to open up possibilities for your life and your future because you deserve, as Bill and Dave said, to live a meaningful life. And this conversation has given you not just tools, but the permission and the encouragement to do so. And in case no one else tells you today, as your friend, I want to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And as Bill and Dave said, do it for crying out loud. All right. I'm going to welcome you into the next episode the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.

• 1:00:44Mel Robbins?

  You a motorcycle rider?

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  No, I had one motorcycle, I crashed it, and then I decided I don't have the reflexes for this then, so I stopped.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  I chant a little Stephen Stills every time I walk into a room and I don't know what I'm gonna find. Love the one you're with.

• 1:00:59Mel Robbins?

  Love the one you're with.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Mel Robbins?

  That's your next book. That's how to find meaning in your marriage.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  It's a ton of work. It's an absolute mountain of work, you know, but I mean, what else am I doing? You know? Come on, people. Sorry.

• 1:01:16Mel Robbins?

  No, I-

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  This is your life. I mean, come on.

• 1:01:19Mel Robbins?

  You guys are so good.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Oh, man. You can do this for a living. You're actually pretty good at this. I mean, I think you ought to seriously consider doing this, yeah. This was great.

• 1:01:32Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  Sirius XM Podcasts.

• 1:02:15Mel Robbins?

  This segment is sponsored by Microsoft Copilot. So I've been away from home on a work trip for almost a week. And while I was gone, I'm trying to juggle work and meetings and exercising and eating right and keeping tabs on everybody in the family, all while living out of my suitcase. It's been a lot. And you want to know the first thing I did when I walked through my front door? First, I kissed my husband, Chris. Then I said hi to our dogs. I picked up the cat and petted him for a minute. And then I plunked down in my favorite chair. And immediately, I started to think about all the stuff I needed to get done. What is wrong with me? My inbox was full of messages that I'd been meaning to answer for weeks. I still had to book flights to go out to Los Angeles to see our daughter.

• 1:02:58Mel Robbins?

  Our fridge looked like a wasteland. Next thing I know, I'm out of that chair, feeling overwhelmed, wondering where to begin. I needed help. I grabbed my phone and I opened up Microsoft Copilot. I think of Copilot as my little AI companion because it helps me take care of the million things that are on my mind so that I can be more present. And it helps me do it in so much less time. But I also love Copilot because it's so simple to use. All you do is open it up and ask it a question. You give it a problem to solve. And within seconds, it's working with you to come up with answers that work for you and your life. For example, that flight to Los Angeles that I have to book. Do you know how long I had been thinking about that? Okay, I should have gone, uh, uh.

• 1:03:44Mel Robbins?

  Here's what I did. I just gave Copilot the non-negotiables. Okay, here's the dates, here's the airports, and I asked it to find the best deals. Then I said, okay, now that you have the best deals, could you explain all the trade-offs of picking one over the other? This was all done in a couple of minutes. Flight booked. Then I had Copilot help me reply to a work email. I knew the gist of what I wanted my response to be. And here's what I love about it. I was unloading the dishwasher as I was telling it how I wanted to come across to be professional and firm, but in a kind tone. A few seconds later, I had a draft, I read it, I made a few adjustments. And before I knew it, inbox cleared. And how about that sad, empty fridge?

• 1:04:28Mel Robbins?

  I opened up the door, I snapped a photo, and Copilot built a simple meal plan and grocery list for the week. It gave me new recipes. It told me exactly what ingredients I needed to buy at the store and gave me cooking instructions. I didn't have to carry all this stuff around with me anymore in my head, draining my energy, because Copilot had my back. I felt the tension lift from my shoulders. And I realized why. The overwhelm that you and I feel, it doesn't come from doing all the things that we need to do. It comes from carrying those things around in our heads. The planning, the coordinating, the remembering, the checking back, the thinking about it,

• 1:05:10Mel Robbins?

  the strategizing, the mental to-do list that never shuts off. There's a term for that in science. It's called cognitive load. There's a lot of research around this, but I'm going to tell you what researchers in China found not too long ago. And this research was published in the Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science. When you're trying to keep too many things in your head, your thinking gets slower, your emotions get louder. Everything starts to feel heavier than it really is. Your brain has a limited amount of mental bandwidth. It can only hold so much at one time. So when you've got a million open tabs in your head, your brain isn't just stressed. It's overcapacity. That's why even the tiniest things start to feel huge. Because it's not the fridge.

• 1:05:54Mel Robbins?

  It's not even the work email. It's the fact that you and I carry all the planning and decision-making for these things around in your head all day long. You're getting up every day. You're taking care of yourself. You're taking care of your family. You're caring for people. You're doing the best to take care of your health. You're trying to be all these things. You're doing so much. But it's time to stop doing it all alone. You have to get this out of your head. That could mean doing what I call a brain dump. Just jot all these mental drains on a sheet of paper so you don't have to hold on to them. Or talking them out with a close friend. Or what it's meant for me more and more is I open up Copilot. And what I've found is Copilot is just like the perfect partner. It helps you stop all those little mental drains and leaves you feeling empowered.

• 1:06:38Mel Robbins?

  See, when I sit down with Chris for dinner tonight, I'm not going to be replaying everything I need to get done because Copilot helped me figure it all out. I can be present in a moment that really matters to me. And there's nothing better than that. Thanks, Copilot. If you want to try it for yourself, visit microsoft.com backslash Mel Robbins to download the Copilot app. Get started with Copilot today for free and see how handing off all the small stuff gives you more energy and more time to be present for the moments that matter. That's microsoft.com backslash Mel Robbins.