Mel Robbins On Why Confidence Is A Habit

People ask me all day long for the secret ingredient to success and a comfortable way through personal transformation. My enduring answer: there is none. I believe in the individual potential for positive transformation. I’m also a self-help skeptic who greets most #lifehacks with profound hesitancy. There is a line between snake oil and efficacy—and that line is crossed more often than not. So if you struggle with self-confidence, making life changes, finding your purpose, or if the general vernacular that encircles self-improvement—words like motivation, inspiration, and passion—leave you more deflated than empowered, I feel you. Today’s guest, the queen of grounded, science-backed personal development is here today to help us sort things out. Meet the singular, multi-talented hyphenate Mel Robbins. A former lawyer turned CNN legal analyst, turned mega-bestselling author and talk show host, Mel is a powerhouse and one of the most widely booked public speakers in the world. Her work includes the global phenomenon The 5 Second Rule, four #1 bestselling audiobooks, the #1 podcast on Audible, and her videos have over a billion cumulative views, including her TEDx Talk How to stop screwing yourself over—which has racked up over 27 million views alone. The official occasion for this conversation is Mel’s brand new book, The High Five Habit—a must-read primer on how to make believing in yourself a habit so that you operate more empowered and with greater confidence. However, this conversation is about so much more, packed with practical, life-altering, science and experience-based wisdom you (and myself included) need to hear. Nobody loves making a real difference in people’s lives more than Mel. Her energy is infectious. Her authenticity and earnestness is palpable. Everyone at the studio fell in love with her—and I know you will too. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. My hope is that Mel’s message will do for you what it has for me—remind you to celebrate the small wins, cultivate that bias for action, and get out of your own damn way of creating the life of your dreams. Peace + Plants, Rich 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.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Mel Robbins?

  The second that you're in a situation where you're procrastinating, or you're thinking negative thoughts, it's your subconscious that's in charge of you. And so, in order to change, you have to interrupt subconscious patterns. You see, the five-second rule isn't just some dumb counting-backwards thing. It is a form of metacognition that interrupts the patterns stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus, which flips on your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control over what you think and do next. That's the genius of it. Because it is simple, you remember it, and it immediately interrupts the negative and suicidal ideations that torture people.

• 1:49Mel Robbins?

  And speaking of suicide, we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from taking their lives by 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, asking for help. So, I am here to tell you, I want you to try it, I want you to share it with people, because interrupting the patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back and pushing yourself to take action, or to think something different, it is the only way you are gonna change. And this is a tool that's gonna help you bridge that gap. And if you program your mind correctly, and if you're clear about what you want to create, your mind will help you get what you want.

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:42Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. If, if, if, if, if you struggle with things like self-confidence, finally making those life changes you know you need, if you struggle with finding your purpose, or if just the vernacular around self-improvement, words like motivation, inspiration, and passion, leave you more confused and deflated than empowered, you are in the right place, my friends, because today's guest, the queen of grounded, science-backed personal development, my friend Mel Robbins is here today to sort you out. Chances are, if you're at all online, you already know this woman.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  She's like everywhere. But if her name doesn't ring a bell, Mel is a former lawyer, turned CNN legal analyst, turned tons of other jobs, turned mega bestselling author, talk show host, and one of the most widely booked public speakers in the world. Her work includes the global phenomenon, The Five Second Rule. Her podcast and Audible is number one on that platform. And her videos, all told, have over a billion views, including, not the least of which, is her TEDx Talk, which is called, "How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over", which is one of the most popular TED Talks of all time with over 27 million views. Mel is an absolute powerhouse, and it's all coming up in a few. But first.

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  Okay, Mel. Mel Robbins. So, the official occasion for this conversation is Mel's brand-new book. It's called "The High Five Habit," which you should all pick up. It's basically a toolbox for how to make believing in yourself a habit so that you operate more empowered and with greater confidence. But this conversation is about so much more. It's just packed with practical, life-altering, science- and experience-based wisdom, tools that you, and myself included, really need to hear. Nobody, and I mean that, nobody loves making a real difference in people's lives more than Mel. I adore this woman,

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  and I'm pretty sure you're gonna fall in love with her as well. So, let's cultivate that bias for action, shall we? And do the thing. This is me and the wonderful Mel Robbins. It's good to have you here. Delighted to be in your presence. This has been a long time coming. And I was trying to remember the last time I saw you, and I'm pretty sure we were talking about this before the podcast. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you was on the set of your television show, literally, like, maybe a week or two before everything locked down in the pandemic?

• 5:42Mel Robbins?

  I think days, Rich.

• 5:44Rich Roll?

  Again, I think so, right?

• 5:45Mel Robbins?

  Days.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  Because your show ended very abruptly, shortly thereafter, as a result of that.

• 5:51Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 5:52Mel Robbins?

  They found, I'll never forget it. So, it had always been a lifelong dream of mine, growing up watching Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. I grew up in the Midwest, and I'd come home from school, and they'd be on television. It'd always been a dream of mine to host my own daytime talk show. So, when the opportunity presented itself, when I was 50 years old, I jumped at it. It was not the right fit for me at all.

• 6:17Rich Roll?

  In what way?

• 6:18Mel Robbins?

  Um...

• 6:18Rich Roll?

  You seem pretty at home.

• 6:20Mel Robbins?

  On a television set?

• 6:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Mel Robbins?

  Well, I'm at home, kind of, creating something and working with a big group of creative people. And I love helping people, and I love live coaching. That is really something that...

• 6:36Mel Robbins?

  It just brings me alive.

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:38Mel Robbins?

  What I didn't like is, ever since I've been an entrepreneur, so for the last eight years, 10 years, as I've been kind of recreating myself and building my career, I've been in control, for better or worse, of everything that I do.

• 6:51Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:52Mel Robbins?

  When I signed on with Sony Pictures Television to do a daytime syndicated talk show, I was profoundly fucking naive about just how much was out of my control. And also, Rich, how much I fucking hate being out of control in terms of not having the final say in what I'm doing.

• 7:12Rich Roll?

  Well, if anything, it confronted you with that, I don't want to say "character defect," that predisposition, right? That you had to work through.

• 7:22Mel Robbins?

  Um...

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's a machine. There were so many people there. It's crazy.

• 7:25Mel Robbins?

  Hundred and thirty-one.

• 7:26Rich Roll?

  I mean, it was a sight to behold, just knowing you and then being there and being like, "Wow." Like, this is an operation.

• 7:31Mel Robbins?

  Well, here's what I learned about myself. So, I personally believe that absolutely everything that is happening to you is preparing you for something that's coming.

• 7:42Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:43Mel Robbins?

  And if you look back in this moment, Rich, I know that you can look at all the moments in your life and you can see how those dots connect you to this moment. There was a lesson, there was an experience, there was a person, there was something, even in the worst moments, and I know you, sleeping on that mattress, you know, at the worst moments of your life in that apartment, when you were still practicing law and barely hanging on. There was something that you learned from that experience that you probably still use at this moment in your life, correct?

• 8:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, I have all kinds of things I want to say about that, but before I do that, I'm gonna put on my Mel Robbins glasses. They're not, they're not black, they're like brown, but they're the closest that I have, so I'm doing that right now for you.

• 8:31Mel Robbins?

  They are great-looking on you.

• 8:32Rich Roll?

  Um, yeah, it is...

• 8:35Rich Roll?

  I think part of that also, you know, we're around the same age. When you get to a certain age, you're able to cast your gaze backwards and see how everything kind of conspired to create the person that you are today. And it all makes perfect sense through the rearview mirror. And what's interesting is that although our journeys are very different in many ways, there's so much overlap in the variety of experiences that have brought us to this place. I mean, law school, being a lawyer, being an unhappy lawyer, you know, a whole financial dismantling, being the parent of young adults and et cetera, and all of that, you know, that comes together. But when I look back on my life, yes, all these different things that I did that seemed

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  to not be related to each other or didn't really appear to have any, you know, kind of stickiness to anything that I do now, of course, they all inform. It all, it was this perfect soup that has allowed me to be able to kind of do what I do now. And it's certainly the case in your story.

• 9:38Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. And, you know, I think life is not really meant to be enjoyed. It's a school.

• 9:46Rich Roll?

  How dare you.

• 9:47Mel Robbins?

  What do you mean, how dare you?

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  Not meant to be enjoyed.

• 9:50Mel Robbins?

  Well, you can enjoy it.

• 9:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Mel Robbins?

  But life is school.

• 9:53Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:54Mel Robbins?

  And it's there to teach you something. And maybe it took me 50 years to figure this out and to be able to look backwards and see how the dots connect. But I think the real secret is to be able to stand in the moment today and have faith that this is yet another dot that is leading you somewhere that you're meant to go.

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:16Mel Robbins?

  And that attitude is what got me through, first of all, this past year, which has been one of the worst years of my life. I can't talk about most of it because the attorneys would start calling.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 10:27Mel Robbins?

  Or my kids might hear some of it and they can't know. But, you know, the talk show, for example, when I went into it, this is what I said to myself. I've got an opportunity to go after something I've dreamt about since I was a kid. And I know it's not about a show. I know that this is an experience that is preparing me for something else. And having that sort of this is a dot on the trajectory and the map of my life allows me to detach from the outcome. Because let's face it, the show was not a success. I got fired from my dream job. It did not get renewed for season two, which means it was a failure.

• 11:10Mel Robbins?

  But I don't relate to it that way. Because I know that it was in my life to give me an experience. And the experience taught me this. I am a horrible CEO. I am terrible at running a company. I am amazing if I can have an organization around me that allows me to show up and do what I do best. I left that talk show, having been fired from my dream job, realizing I was in the wrong seat in the bus in my business. And that I had to change absolutely everything. If I wanted to be happy, if I wanted to work in a way that was effective, and if I wanted to really reach the goals that I have.

• 11:55Rich Roll?

  Did you have that awareness in the moment? Or is that in retrospect that you're able to develop that?

• 12:00Mel Robbins?

  I had that experience as I was hosting the talk show because it was the first time that I was surrounded by expertise. I have built my business in spite of myself.

• 12:12Rich Roll?

  And you took your executive producer with you, right? In the wake of that?

• 12:16Mel Robbins?

  Yes. And you know what's interesting? She's a genius. She is the Mindy Borman, absolutely amazing human being. And what she learned stepping into digital is that she was in the wrong place. She kept saying, "I feel like a whale in a swimming pool. I feel like a whale in a swimming pool." You see, I loved having 131 people around me and having a very specific, narrow role in the making of something.

• 12:42Mel Robbins?

  She realized, stepping into a team of 10 people, that she needs a big team to work in. What I realized from the experience is, I need a team of experts around me.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Right, and prior to that, you were building your social media empire and becoming this lauded, lauded public speaker and writing all of these books and doing it with a team of people, but also in a manner in which it was not sustainable because of your control issues and trying to manage all these people, which is not a skill set, I think you would admit, is, speaks to your strengths. And the lesson, I guess is what I'm saying, from the talk show was, oh, I need to surround myself with people who are better at these respective roles than I am and have somebody who's in charge of managing them for me. Correct. So I can do my thing.

• 13:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and somebody strong enough to just smack me across the face when I'm stepping out of my lane and stepping into every other lane.

• 13:38Rich Roll?

  Sure, but then the pandemic comes, slaps you in the face, and then you're just at home with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

• 13:46Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. So, you know, we haven't gotten into this yet, but I have had a lifelong history with anxiety. I was a worrier as a kid, homesick at every camp that I ever went to. In fact, when we went to sixth grade camp at my little public high school, go away for like five days, I was so disassociated and freaked out so badly that I lied to the camp and told them that my grandmother, there had been some sort of family emergency. First, I get them to let me use the camp phone so I can call my parents. Then, I hang up and tell them that there's been a terrible tragedy in the family and that my grandmother

• 14:28Mel Robbins?

  has fallen gravely ill, convincing my parents to show up. And then when my parents show up and my friends ask me, "Why are you leaving early?", I lie to them and tell them, you know, that there's been this emergency and that I have to go, when in fact, my panic and anxiety drove me to great lengths to get out of that situation. And so when I say I struggled with anxiety, I mean, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder when I was 22 years old in law school. That should have been a hint that I didn't like law school, right? But I went on Zoloft and I took it for two and a half decades. And I only came off it when I discovered the five-second rule and started using it

• 15:13Mel Robbins?

  to change my physical habits and then my mental habits. I stopped taking Zoloft when I was 45 and hadn't been on it for, I don't know how old, 52, seven years now. But when the pandemic hit and I was suddenly off airplanes and I was no longer racing around from a speech or wherever and I had to sit and be with myself, that came roaring back

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  in. Yeah, terrifying.

• 15:42Mel Robbins?

  And what I realized is, I never understood how dysregulated my nervous system was. And it was having to be still that made me realize that I literally will dart to Target or run to a coffee shop or make a phone call or swipe through social media as a way to distract myself from having to just be.

• 16:09Rich Roll?

  Even though you have a husband who's a Buddhist and an avid meditator.

• 16:14Mel Robbins?

  Well, that's, his Buddhism and meditation does not smooth out my dysregulated nervous system.

• 16:20Rich Roll?

  You're not absorbing that by osmosis.

• 16:22Mel Robbins?

  No, it's the reason why we're still married. He would have divorced my ass a long time ago if he wasn't meditating and Buddhist because he wouldn't be able to deal with me.

• 16:30Rich Roll?

  My favorite story about your anxiety is in the new book, which we're going to talk about, The High Five Habit. And it's the story of you getting the job with the Michigan AG and being assigned to write this paper on recidivism and just not doing it at all. And then the day that you're called into his office, just not showing up and completely ghosting him.

• 16:52Mel Robbins?

  Yes. Yes. It's true. Like, when I think back to what a train wreck of a human being I was, I cannot believe I made it through college and law school and basically was upright for as long as I was. I, the story that Rich is talking about is, at this point, I was not diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.

• 17:18Mel Robbins?

  I was just a person who was a complete fuck-up. I was drinking too much, trying to regulate my nervous system. I hated law school, so I go home for the first year summer. What did you do your first year of law school for?

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  I worked for a nonprofit in San Francisco.

• 17:35Mel Robbins?

  Did you know when you're in law school that you didn't want to be a lawyer?

• 17:39Rich Roll?

  Hundred percent.

• 17:40Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and I think so many people get into this position too, whether you're in a relationship, or a job, or a major, or a neighborhood, or whatever, where you know you're in the wrong place.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  Right, but there's so much inertia behind it, and the idea of stepping out of it is so fraught and terrifying that it's easier to just keep going. I mean, I would say, I actually enjoyed being in an academic environment, and I needed, I was coming out of living in New York City, where I was just a wild man, and I needed some of that structure, because I knew what to do every day, and I was capable in that regard. So I actually didn't mind, like, going to class, and the kind of, you know, sort of, social environment that it provided, but I had no interest in being a lawyer. I didn't even know what that meant. Even when I graduated from law school, I still didn't know what being a lawyer meant. It doesn't really teach you that part.

• 18:33Mel Robbins?

  Well, I guess because there's so many things that you can do.

• 18:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Mel Robbins?

  Being a lawyer.

• 18:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Mel Robbins?

  But so, back to the summer. I'm living back home in western Michigan. I grew up in Muskegon, Michigan, and I'm driving 50 miles a day each way to go to the Attorney General's office in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And at the very beginning of the summer, the AG selects me to do a massive research paper about recidivism rates in the state of Michigan. Basically, he wants, at the end of the summer, it gets worse. He wants to make a massive speech about how he has been responsible for lowering recidivism rates, which basically means the rate of re-entry to jail, rearrest, and re-entry, for those of you that are not criminal defense attorneys, or study this thing. I had no idea how to do a project like this. I also didn't know at the time that I was dyslexic

• 19:19Mel Robbins?

  or ADHD. Like, law school was a nightmare for me, all the reading and the writing. And so I would literally drive there. I would be terrified to walk into work, knowing I had this big assignment. Everybody else had little things to do, so I would sit and I would procrastinate all day. Do nothing. Like, literally, not even crack open a book. I didn't even open up LexisNexis. I did nothing. And this went on for three months. I would drive there five days a week. I would do nothing all day. I'd go to lunch with the other interns. I'd then sit around. I'd do nothing all day. I didn't even have social media or the internet to like, just blow off the time. I was literally doing nothing. And then he called me in. You're right.

• 20:03Mel Robbins?

  I'll never forget it. I don't remember a lot of that summer, but I do remember being called in. And I remember my cheeks being bright red and my armpits were sweating like crazy. And I was wearing a suit that my mother had probably bought me at JCPenney's. And he stood there and said, "How is it coming? You know, this, this speech that I need to give is coming up. I'd love to see what you're working on." And I literally blustered. I was like, "Oh, oh, well, yeah, there's tons of data to go through. And the research departments were really helpful. Uh, yeah, yeah, okay, I'm gonna get it to you. I know I'm going back to school next week. I, I promise you, it'll be done." I walked out his door. I didn't even stop by my office to turn the lights off. I went straight out to the parking lot. I jumped in my parents' car and I drove

• 20:43Mel Robbins?

  right back to Muskegon, Michigan. And I never went back. Nothing. Nothing.

• 20:52Rich Roll?

  It's unbelievable that you're such a capable human being, when I hear that story.

• 20:57Mel Robbins?

  Um, it is unbelievable. If I can change from somebody that is literally riddled with anxiety and, and just completely on edge all the time.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Mel Robbins?

  To a person who is, I think I'm tremendously self-aware, both the internal self-awareness and external self-awareness. And change my habits in the way that I think and really heal my nervous system, you can too.

• 21:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so this happened before you were technically diagnosed and you went on to have, you know, success. You were in legal aid, you were a public defender. You become this analyst for CNN.

• 21:37Mel Robbins?

  Oh, that was later.

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  That was later. I mean, at what point do you start reckoning with all of it? Well, let's take it back. Talk me through this journey because as you mentioned, you haven't been on a lot of podcasts. You haven't been on this podcast before. And I think the kind of origin story here is super important and impactful in terms of contextualizing everything that you're doing now.

• 22:01Mel Robbins?

  So after law school, so I'm now on Zoloft, thank God, but after law, which helped me tremendously. It was life-saving. It literally, for me, what it did is it just turned down the volume of the negativity in my head. I mean, I understand a tremendous amount now about anxiety and panic attacks and worry. And there's a really significant connection between worry, anxiety, and panic. I believe all anxiety begins with worrying, that your negative thought loop starts going. This is the baby. So when you start to worry about something, the thoughts start to spin, right? And as your thoughts start to spin, your

• 22:42Mel Robbins?

  body and your nervous system take notice. Anxiety is simply when worrying starts to get lodged in your body. Your body goes on edge. You guys talk about it all the time, parasympathetic versus sympathetic nervous system. But it begins with a worry. Then your body gets agitated. And when your body gets agitated, I understand the science behind all this now, thankfully, and your stomach starts to feel gurgly. We make the mistake then of letting the worries pick up. Oh, shit, my stomach's on edge. That must mean that something bad's gonna happen. And that only ticks up the anxiety in your body. And at some point, this gets so pronounced that your body goes, that's it, I'm getting her

• 23:22Mel Robbins?

  out of here. Panic attack time. And so when you start to attack the worry loop. That's how you can slow down the anxiety. But I didn't know any of that back in the day. So I was a legal aid attorney. And then my husband, I did that for four years. And then my husband got into business school. And we moved up to Boston. And the only job I could get was with a large law firm. And so I worked there for a year. I hated it, Rich. I hated it. Oh, my God. I went from being in a courtroom five days a week to sitting in a suit in an office, writing briefs. Like, again, like, this was like penance for the Attorney General stunt that I pulled. And luckily, I got pregnant.

• 24:06Mel Robbins?

  And when I was pregnant with our first daughter, who's now 22, so this is 22 years ago, 2000, 1999. When our daughter was born, I had severe postpartum depression. And when I finally came out of it, and I was allowed to be with the baby, like, I had to be supervised. It was that scary. And when I came out of it, I turned to Chris at one point and said, "I can't go back to that law firm. I do not want to be a lawyer anymore." And for me, he said, "How do you know?" And I said, "I don't ever want to answer the question, 'What do you do?'" with, "I'm a lawyer." And Chris, he wasn't a Buddhist then,

• 24:49Mel Robbins?

  but he was very calm, very grounded, thank God. He looked at me and said, "That's great. You realize, we've just bought a house, and you can't be with the baby full time. She's going to be in daycare. I've done the numbers. And you can do whatever the fuck you want, but you have to make $60,000 a year. Right. And you have four weeks to figure it out." Because that was when I had to go back to the law firm. And so I'll tell you, when you have a problem defined like that, what do you want? I'll tell you what I wanted. I wanted a job in the next four weeks that paid me $60,000 a year. If you can define what you want, you can make it happen. I networked, like, my life depended upon it.

• 25:32Mel Robbins?

  And I ended up, the night before, Rich, I was supposed to go back to that law firm. I have a habit of ghosting people. Let's just put that on the table. Waste the old bell. So the night before, I was supposed to go back to... This story is so cringey. I don't write about this in the book. Wait till you hear this. The night before I'm supposed to go back, I get an offer for $55,000.

• 25:53Mel Robbins?

  Chris and I are like, okay, we'll make it work. The next day, I go in to my first day back at the law firm where I've been out on paid maternity leave to walk in the door and quit. And when I walk in, they are hosting a surprise baby shower for me.

• 26:11Rich Roll?

  Your head must have just lit up with all those thoughts of, I should have ghosted.

• 26:18Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 26:19Rich Roll?

  I should have just never gone back.

• 26:22Mel Robbins?

  Uh huh.

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  Oh my God.

• 26:24Mel Robbins?

  So, we have the shower, you know, they have like breakfast for everybody and presents. And then I have to walk into my boss's office and tell her the news.

• 26:36Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:37Mel Robbins?

  And she was so shocked. Like, have you ever had that experience where you're talking to somebody and as you're talking, you realize they are managing their facial expression because they don't know what to do?

• 26:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:51Mel Robbins?

  So, um, that was really fun.

• 26:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Mel Robbins?

  Um, but it kind of flipped for me because as I went around and said goodbye to people, there was one partner who stood up as I was talking and walked past me and closed the door behind me. And I thought, oh my God, what's about to happen? And he sat back down and said, I hate it here too. If that startup company is hiring, could you give them my name?

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  Oh my God.

• 27:17Mel Robbins?

  So, I thought, okay, I'm gonna be okay.

• 27:19Rich Roll?

  No more bait stamping.

• 27:20Mel Robbins?

  No more bait stamping. So, I go to this little tech startup called, at the time it was called E Mode. And it was founded by this super, super smart guy, James Courier. And I was like the fifth person in the door and I was handed a job in 1991 as the Director of Content and it was my introduction to digital marketing.

• 27:41Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 27:42Mel Robbins?

  And I spent, uh, gosh, a year or two there and then I went to another digital, uh, kind of marketing platform, uh, for creative services and, uh, ended up getting fired from that job, which I should have because I did not know what I was doing. They hired me. I was able to talk myself into a great job and then clearly within four months had no clue what I was doing. And then I went to another one and, uh, in a lower level and kept working. And that's when I started going, I'm not really happy. I don't really know what I want to do. I've done the lawyer thing. Now I'm like in digital marketing. What the heck? The first.com bomb happened and there weren't a lot of jobs and so I hired a life coach.

• 28:22Mel Robbins?

  And the life coach that I hired was teaching a course at the Sloan Business School on life design. And I started working with her and the piece of the story that I left out is that in 1994, my husband and I started doing all these life improvement courses with a company called Landmark Education in New York City. And so I had like six years of Landmark courses under my belt. And I had had a ton of training in just ontology, which is the study of being. I had had a lot of training as a coach. I had been trained to lead courses for them, but I'd never really

• 29:07Mel Robbins?

  done anything coaching wise and life coaching really wasn't a thing. And so I hired this person to help me figure out what to do with my own life and a couple sessions in, this person goes, "You should be coaching people." I'm like, "Coaching people? What does that look like?" And so it took me about six months of training and finally I was ready to start a life coaching business and that's what I did.

• 29:28Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that about you.

• 29:29Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting. And at some point you started doing radio, right?

• 29:33Mel Robbins?

  Okay, that's a whole nother story.

• 29:36Rich Roll?

  I'm seeing like the little beads, you know, along the string that are all adding up to, you know, the Mel Robbins of today.

• 29:45Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so here's what happened. So this would have been, I get so lost in the timeline of my life because you know what I feel like? I feel like, do you remember that Looney Tunes cartoon where is it Daffy Duck wanders into a construction site on sleeping medication?

• 30:02Rich Roll?

  I've told this story before. No, it's, I think it's Sweet Pea.

• 30:07Mel Robbins?

  Who the hell is Sweet Pea?

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  The little baby in Popeye.

• 30:10Mel Robbins?

  Oh, is that what it is?

• 30:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and Sweet Pea kind of crawls onto a construction site and onto an I-beam.

• 30:16Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 30:16Rich Roll?

  And then the crane lifts the I-beam up.

• 30:18Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 30:19Rich Roll?

  And the baby is like crawling along the I-beam. And right when the baby's gonna fall to its imminent death, the other I-beam swings around and it crawls onto the next one.

• 30:28Mel Robbins?

  That's my life.

• 30:29Rich Roll?

  And my life is exactly like that.

• 30:31Mel Robbins?

  That is my life. Like, as you're hearing this, like, me tell the story of my career, which is somewhat embarrassing, it is a testament to resilience, though. I literally fail over and over and over again. I lose my way a million times before I find myself. And even when I find myself, I eventually feel lost again and go looking for myself again, constantly seeking, constantly growing, constantly failing. And so, I start this life coaching business. I love it. It goes incredibly, incredibly well. This would have been like 2002 to like 2000, I don't know, I'm guessing here, '06, maybe?

• 31:12Mel Robbins?

  And what ends up happening is, a friend of mine emails me, forwards an email to me. And when you look at the chain of the forward, what you see at the bottom is there's somebody at Inc. Magazine looking to write an article about life coaches? And I immediately scan the thing. And it's a month old, the deadline has passed, I have none of the credentials they're looking for, I have none of the types of clients they're looking for. And I start to go, like we always do, down the list of reasons why I should not respond. Like, we're always arguing against ourselves, always holding ourselves back. And I immediately say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

• 31:57Mel Robbins?

  What would somebody who's more successful than me do?" And I'm like, "They'd fucking apply."

• 32:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 32:02Mel Robbins?

  So I take a sip of wine, I start typing like crazy, and I just free-form this hilarious response back a month late with none of the credentials, da-da-da-da-da. She writes back the next day and says, "I was about to turn the article in. What if I come to Boston next week and trail you?"

• 32:17Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 32:17Mel Robbins?

  So she comes, she follows me around for a day, she ends up publishing an article. And I'm like, "Oh, yes." Because, oh, that's right, because the article, uh, released in 2005. I can't believe how old I am, 2005, my god, that's like 16 years ago.

• 32:34Rich Roll?

  I know, but it seems like yesterday.

• 32:35Mel Robbins?

  And I'm pregnant with our son, and our third child, and I'm like, this is gonna be amazing. The timing of this article is fabulous. This article is gonna print rich, and I am gonna have an avalanche of clients. It's gonna be awesome. The article prints fucking crickets. Not a single client, not a single inbound email, nada, nothing, nothing. So, uh, I forget about it. I'm out to dinner one night. My phone's ringing. It's a New York number. Who the heck is calling me from New York? I pick up the phone, and is this Mel Robbins? Yeah, this is Mel Robbins. Hey, this is Mary Duffy from CNBC. I'm like, oh, hi, Mary Duffy, how are you? Having no idea who she is.

• 33:20Mel Robbins?

  She's like, well, I saw the article in Ink Magazine, and we'd like to fly you down and talk to you. So literally, a week later, I find myself on a plane down to New York, drive over to New Jersey, walk into the offices, I sit down, and I am in a meeting with the executives at CNBC, and they're in a development meeting. Oh, my god, coaching is hot, we think you're amazing, we wanna do a show, we wanna stick it between Kramer and Donnie Deutsch was on at the time, The Big Idea, and we'd like you to do da-da-da-da-da. I walk out of there with a frickin' development deal.

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, my god. That really is like a Sweet Pea thing.

• 33:55Mel Robbins?

  Yes, to do a talk show, not, to do like a call-in advice show for the money audience on non-money topics in between Kramer and Donnie Deutsch. So they decided that, by the way, that never happened, okay, not the story, but the show. So in the meantime, they are like, we should put you on Donnie's show all the time to start to seed you to our audience. So I'm now being brought down to New York once a week to appear on The Big Idea, Donnie Deutsch's show, as like a panelist, and I am just kinda doing my thing. Meanwhile, something else is happening.

• 34:34Mel Robbins?

  There is a show that is being cast by Fox, uh, called, it was a business makeover show, where they were going to do something like The Gordon Ramsay Show with kitchens, right? They wanted to do that with small businesses. Now, mind you, this show has been played out now a million times, but I'm talking 2007 here. And 2008, this is the time zone that this was happening in. And so I'm now starting to feel like, holy cow, like my frickin' gravy train is coming in. I'm not only like in development at CNBC, which means jack shit, by the way. I am now, oh, I don't even know about this yet. So, so I am, um, so the show's in development.

• 35:16Mel Robbins?

  And the executives at Fox are talking to Donnie Deutsch about hosting the show. I know nothing about it, Rich. I'm just happily life coaching and I am happily appearing on the big idea, thinking I am a big shit, which I am not. All of a sudden, my agent calls me and says, because I didn't even have an agent. I had to get one because I didn't know how to negotiate the contract because I was a criminal lawyer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This guy that represented me called me and said, you're never going to believe this. I said, what? He said, there is a guy who runs all of non-scripted, meaning reality programming at Fox. It's responsible for American Idol, the whole deal. And they want to talk to you about hosting a reality show for Fox.

• 36:01Mel Robbins?

  That's a business makeover show. I'm like, you're kidding me? And he said, no, they want you on a plane tonight out of Boston. I'm like, you're kidding me? So, um, I pack up, I go to the, oh, this is a hilarious story. You ready? Brace yourself. So I pack up, I go to Logan. It's 2007. I'm terrified of flying. I'm wearing sneakers, a, uh, sweatpants, a sweatshirt. I have a roll-on suitcase that has the single best suit I own and a pair of high heels in it because you have to dress the part. Like interviewing is all about walking in as the person. I have my makeup in there. I'm ready to go.

• 36:45Mel Robbins?

  The meeting is at 8:30 in the morning in LA. I get on this plane and I am sitting in my seat, breathing through my breathing exercises because I had not invented the five-second rule yet. As I'm having a panic attack and all of a sudden it dawns on me. I've left my suitcase at the Starbucks in the airport. Oh, no.

• 37:13Mel Robbins?

  I have the interview of my life tomorrow morning.

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  Right. By the time you land in LA, you can't go to the store.

• 37:21Mel Robbins?

  It's midnight.

• 37:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You're toast.

• 37:24Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. So I get up early. I go to the front desk of the hotel they've put me in. The nicest hotel I've ever been in. I feel already like the world's biggest fraud. I don't belong here. I am in pit-stained t-shirt and dirty sweats. My hair is greasy as hell because I have literally been sweating all night thinking about what I'm gonna do. And I said, "Is there anything open? Do you have anything in lost and found that I can borrow? I don't even want to steal it. I just need to wear it." "Nothing, nothing, nothing." And he's like, "Oh, actually, there is a Target that is on your way to the place that you're going to go that opens at 8:00."

• 38:06Mel Robbins?

  So the car service picks me up. I tell them to beeline at the Target. I ran through that Target like I was in one of those shopping spree game shows. Black pants, black shirt, black eye heels, dry shampoo, running, running, running. You know, like a little like thing, like the foundation thing, running, running, running, running. Run out. I change in the backseat of the car. You know, all this. I snap across the heels because the heels are connected. You know what I mean? And I get out of the car and I realize I have grabbed a size, or 10, heels and I wear a size 8. So I'm now in like 3-inch-high flip-flops that are as I'm walking. And I shuffle my way down the thing and I walk into the meeting and I land the role.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 38:51Mel Robbins?

  And this should have been the last time I ever did television because I have been screwed all three times I did TV, except for CNN.

• 39:01Rich Roll?

  So what happened? Did that show never transpire?

• 39:04Mel Robbins?

  Thankfully, it never aired because this is what happened. When I landed the role, the role was to basically do Extreme Office Makeover. You take a struggling business and you get to have the extraordinary job of making over the whole thing. Everything from training employees to the whole physical space itself. Remember the Extreme Home Makeover and they'd like, you know, kind of move the bus? And so that was the show concept. Four months later, when we were ready to tape the show, they had brought on some big names in reality, End them all, 51 Minds, and the show had completely changed. And it was now a show called Someone's Gotta Go. And I was told that I would be firing people

• 39:48Mel Robbins?

  from real jobs on national TV on a reality show.

• 39:52Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 39:53Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. And I...

• 39:56Rich Roll?

  Welcome to Hollywood.

• 39:58Mel Robbins?

  Well, it's not what I signed up for, and I love helping people. And so I remember calling my husband, sobbing from the hotel room, and calling my agent, sobbing, "I can't do this, I'm quitting." And he's like, "I don't think you understand what you've gotten yourself into." There's a crew of 150 people, there's Fox and two massive production companies. They have already cast the entire season, Mel.

• 40:28Rich Roll?

  And it's an unbelievable opportunity. I mean, essentially, you were...

• 40:31Mel Robbins?

  If you like that kind of thing...

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  Back in Boston, coaching however many people, and nobody calling you after that article came out.

• 40:38Mel Robbins?

  But I was happy.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Mel Robbins?

  Like, I think that that's the thing, is that we chase the next bigger thing. And, look, all these experiences are amazing, but what was immediately apparent when this train left the station is, this is not a train I wanted to be on. And so, we shot the first two episodes, and it was a... You know, I mean, the people were lovely, but it was a horrible experience. It was the typical reality show. They put you in a bubble, they take everybody's phones, they take the television sets out of the rooms that people are staying in. And again, this was 2007. This is not like when everybody's watching Love Island, and we all know what the reality show thing is.

• 41:22Mel Robbins?

  And these were people that had signed up, thinking they were getting a makeover. So the people who had signed up for the show, the business owners, were actually told that somebody was getting fired in the opening scene because they wanted to capture the authentic reaction.

• 41:35Rich Roll?

  Ah, that's awful.

• 41:36Mel Robbins?

  Uh-huh. And if you're a person that, for me, it was never about doing this for show. I thought that I was on a show that was gonna help businesses. And look, I realize that a lot of times you gotta fire people to help your business. But that's not at all what I wanted to do. And we were teetering on a recession and at the same time, my husband's restaurant business was starting to face some real challenges, as restaurant businesses often do. And so the thought of actually going in and pushing a small business owner over the edge on national television was gut-wrenching. We shot two episodes, I don't know how I made it through it. And then luckily, again, the I-beam comes over and as I'm falling, I'm caught.

• 42:20Mel Robbins?

  The legal department at Fox said, "The recession is coming on. This is the wrong show at the wrong time, and this is tabled." And so instead of airing it on January 6th, on my husband's 40th birthday with "American Idol" as the lead-in.

• 42:34Rich Roll?

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Holy shit.

• 42:42Mel Robbins?

  I dodged that, but then got handed.

• 42:45Rich Roll?

  Life would've been very different if that show aired for you, I think.

• 42:49Mel Robbins?

  I think my career would've been over.

• 42:51Rich Roll?

  You think?

• 42:52Mel Robbins?

  I do. Well, I, you know, look, I mean, everybody can...

• 42:55Rich Roll?

  Well, the timing saved you.

• 42:56Mel Robbins?

  We make themselves over and over and over again.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  You would've been vilified.

• 42:59Mel Robbins?

  Vilified. And I didn't believe in what I was doing.

• 43:01Rich Roll?

  And you would have to kind of wear the mantle of, you know, the evil person who, you know, delivers the hatchet.

• 43:08Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. Like, I wasn't, if you're not vested in it, you can't defend it. And, you know, if I believe in what I'm doing, I will fight anybody to the death over it. But I didn't believe in what I was doing. That's why it was the kiss of death.

• 43:24Rich Roll?

  I didn't realize you had all these television experiences prior.

• 43:28Mel Robbins?

  So I'm not even done.

• 43:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Mel Robbins?

  So, um, what happens next is, um, I go, "Oh, thank God."

• 43:36Mel Robbins?

  And then the agent lawyer person calls me and says, well, I have some bad news. And I said, what's that? And they said, um, the executives at Fox want this to air. And you're locked under contract, so you can't do anything for the next year. And I thought I was all smart because I negotiated a deal where I had more of a back end. And I only got paid as the episodes aired.

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 44:01Mel Robbins?

  So I found myself unemployed.

• 44:03Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 44:04Mel Robbins?

  And I felt like such a idiot that I didn't even have the confidence to go back to coaching people. And it was at this point that my husband's second and third restaurant started to fail. The liens hit the house and I was 41 years old. A former lawyer turned digital marketing failure, who became a happy and successful life coach, who then got too big for britches and stepped into television. Got handed one kind of experience after another. And now I'm 41 years old and I have no idea what to do with my life or what I should do. And I feel like a complete failure.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:46Mel Robbins?

  And at the same time, my husband's restaurants, which we've secured with our house and our life savings and our kids' college funds are going under. We're $800,000 in debt. I'm unemployed. And it was certainly at that moment, the worst moment in my life.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  So this is like 2008?

• 45:15Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, lousy year for a lot of people.

• 45:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:17Mel Robbins?

  Housing crisis.

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  Not a good year for us either. Yeah, it was brutal. Um, and that's a phase that was pretty protracted, right? You guys really went through it. And the more I learn about, you know, what went down for you, it's kind of amazing to me. I mean, we can talk about all the entrepreneurial success, et cetera, but more importantly, that your marriage survived this because you guys were at loggerheads.

• 45:45Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  Big time.

• 45:46Mel Robbins?

  Big time because, um, It's a lot easier to be angry than to be afraid. And so, when the shit hit the fan in my life, even though I had made a ridiculous number of mistakes, many of which I've been talking about with you, I reacted to this crisis in my life and my marriage and in our finances, like a lot of high-functioning adults, by screaming at my husband and drinking myself into the ground.

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Like any respectful person would do.

• 46:17Mel Robbins?

  Why?

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:19Mel Robbins?

  I, um, it was a low moment. Look, I think that you know when you hit rock bottom. You'll know when you hit rock bottom because you finally hit something solid within yourself. And what happened for me is I spent eight, six months screaming at Chris and drinking like crazy. And, you know, it was a terrible period in our lives. Our kids even remember it. This is the part that sucks. They remember coming downstairs in the morning and I'm still asleep in the chair in the living room. They remember, uh, Chris being angry all the time. They remember sort of the standoff. Like, it's one thing to be roommates with your partner, it's another thing to be in a standoff, which Chris and I were.

• 47:03Mel Robbins?

  And, you know, it wasn't Chris's fault. This is the restaurant business. I mean, this is the risk of entrepreneurship. It's not like he went into business and was like, "Let's just fuck this up and go a million dollar." That's not at all what happened.

• 47:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Mel Robbins?

  You know, I, you, you pick locations and some are great and some suck. And if you do that at the second location, you're gonna be in trouble with your business model. And what happened for Chris, and we're still unpacking this to this day, is that he, as the business started to fail, started to marry that with his own identity.

• 47:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:37Mel Robbins?

  And think that he was a failure.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  You talk about that in the new book.

• 47:39Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Rich Roll?

  And his, his self-identification with that failure being very personal, whereas his investors didn't see it that way. They realized this is a calculated risk.

• 47:49Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  And you, in turn... You know, seeing Chris through the lens of that failure such that no matter what he did, whether he's mowing the lawn, or taking the kids to the park, or, you know, coaching a sports team, was all indications of that failure as opposed to contributing to the family welfare.

• 48:09Mel Robbins?

  Right. I mean, it took a number of years. I mean, basically, what ended up happening is, you know, as the liens were hitting the house and the bankruptcy letters were arriving, and Chris was scrambling with his business partner to pull the business out of the wreckage, which, by the way, they ultimately did.

• 48:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:28Mel Robbins?

  And ended up selling off the units. Not for great success, but they certainly did not provide the return on the investment that they had hoped, but they mitigated a tremendous amount of loss and risk.

• 48:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Mel Robbins?

  And the thing that I think a lot about is that, you know, Chris's business partner has a way more optimistic, what I call, high-five attitude. And he was able to separate his identity from what had happened in the business. And for whatever reason, Chris just couldn't.

• 48:59Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 49:00Mel Robbins?

  And so, he left the business in 2014, and just really, really, it's been a long process for him to separate who he is from what happened in that business.

• 49:12Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So, here you are, it's 2008, you're 800-

• 49:15Mel Robbins?

  I feel like I'm having a hot flash.

• 49:16Rich Roll?

  Eight hundred grand.

• 49:18Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my God.

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  Don't ghost me. Are you gonna get up and just leave? Just walk out on me?

• 49:23Mel Robbins?

  I'm getting hot. Somebody bring me a fan.

• 49:26Rich Roll?

  Come on.

• 49:27Mel Robbins?

  Okay. Okay, here we go, it's all the lights.

• 49:29Rich Roll?

  Eight hundred grand in debt.

• 49:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 49:31Rich Roll?

  Now, in retrospect, being this, you know, person who embodies self-empowerment is very easy and almost cavalier to say, "Things like this happen for a reason. They're happening for you, not to you." Julie would call it your divine moment, right? But when you're in that, it's like, you don't, you can't hear that. You don't want to hear that. You're like, "Fuck off. You don't understand my pain. I need a solution now."

• 49:59Mel Robbins?

  Yes. I agree. Look, when you, like, here's the thing about mindset. A mindset will not change the shitty situation you're in. A positive mindset changes you, which changes your ability to deal with the shitty situation that you're in.

• 50:15Rich Roll?

  Well, this goes to so many of the things that you talk about and a subject matter that I love, and the neuroscience proves this out. This idea of developing a bias towards action. In AA, we call it mood follows action. The idea being that we're all victims of some level of analysis paralysis and we're waiting until we feel like doing something, or we are blessed with the spark of inspiration. But in truth, the only way to shift out of any of these kinds of scenarios is to take an action first, right? As hard as that is. And the emotions, the perceptions, all of that follows action, not the other way around.

• 50:58Mel Robbins?

  Hundred percent true. So, how I discovered this in my life is during this horrible period in life. So, 2008. Every morning, I would wake up and I would immediately start spinning the negative thoughts. We're fucked. I hate my husband. How did we end up here? I can't believe I did that stupid ass show. I've made so many mistakes. I should just flush my life, you know, the last 40 years down the toilet. I'm so embarrassed. I'm the world's worst mother. I'd stare at the ceiling. I was like a human pot roast marinating in fear. And then, of course, the anxiety would wave up my body and pin me down to that bed and I'd hit the snooze button. And I would hit the snooze button four or five times a morning. By the time I woke up, the kids had missed the bus.

• 51:43Mel Robbins?

  So, we got three kids under the age of 10. Chris was long gone because he's a very smart man and he did not want to be in the house when I was awake. And he was trying to fix the situation that they were in. And I would literally scream at the kids, get them in the car, and from there the day, it was just horrible. And then every night, I would do the same thing. I'd say, "That's it. Tomorrow morning, it's gotta be the new me." Everybody that struggles with addiction does this exact same thing. Tomorrow, I'm not drinking. That's it. I'm done with this. And then the next morning, it's the same fucking pattern of negative crap that you're doing to yourself. And this is exactly what you talk about all the time. It's not the what you need to do, it's how. How do you make yourself do the things that feel hard, or scary, or don't seem like they're

• 52:26Mel Robbins?

  gonna work because you're resigned and you're stuck in your patterns? That was me. I knew I needed to get out of bed. I knew I needed to stop drinking. I knew I needed to look for a job. I knew this wasn't Chris's fault and I needed to stop screaming at him all the time, but I wasn't doing any of those things. I didn't know how. And so this was the moment I created the five-second rule. And again, this is another I-beam, or T-beam, or whatever the hell beam it's called. I'm sitting in front of the television. And I am watching TV, the kids are in bed, and I'm drinking bourbon. And I'm probably on like my fourth Manhattan. And I'm having my nightly pep talk. And I'm going, that's it. Tomorrow morning, it's the new me. I gotta wake up, I gotta do this, I gotta do the other thing. And all of a sudden, Rich, honest to goodness, I see a rocket ship launch at the end of a commercial.

• 53:12Mel Robbins?

  And I go, that's it. Tomorrow morning, I'm launching myself out of bed like a rocket. And that was the beginning of the five-second rule.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  What's so interesting about that are these... You talk about like hitting your bottom, and this is a bottom for sure. But in that kind of reckoning where the pain of your current circumstance exceeds the fear of doing something different, no matter how small that difference is, there's like a crack in the universe, like a little opening, right? Where you have just the slightest bit of willingness that you didn't have the day before. And even the tiniest action, whether it's picking up the phone to make a call, or counting back down from five. When you look back now, it's like, I did a couple little things that changed my life forever.

• 54:03Rich Roll?

  This incident, you know, obviously changed your life forever. And it's kind of amazing, in a beautiful mystical way, how that occurs.

• 54:11Mel Robbins?

  I think it occurs when you're ready. Wasn't yours a phone call?

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had a couple in my life. I mean, when I got sober, I hit a certain bottom, and that was a phone call to say, I'm ready, like, let's go to rehab. I had it again at 40, on a staircase, realizing I needed rehab for life, or lifestyle. But I look at those events as great blessings, and things to be really revered. And when I talk about it, I'm always quick to remind people that I think we're all blessed with those moments, in various shapes and forms. But we do have to be ready, and we also have to be aware, because when... They're visited upon us if we're not paying attention. They can quickly pass like sliding doors, right?

• 54:57Rich Roll?

  And I often think, how many other incidents like this have I allowed to slip by? Where if I had been more aware and present and perhaps in a position to be ready to receive them, my life could have changed in other ways that, you know, in some parallel universe, I'd be living a different life.

• 55:15Mel Robbins?

  Well, let me tell you my intention for this conversation. That you, listening to us, have this podcast be that crack that lets some light in and becomes a sliding door, that you might just see, oh, wow, maybe if that phone call I'm avoiding, or counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one, or high-fiving myself in the mirror, even though I don't think I deserve it, and I think it's stupid, and I'm a failure, and why is this gonna help? That you try it.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Mel Robbins?

  Because I think that any, you can trace back again, back to our dots analogy. Any change in trajectory was just a moment. And for me, that moment was when the alarm went off, I just counted backwards, like NASA launches a rocket, five, four, three, two, one, and I stood up. And you know what my first reaction to it was?

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  This is fucking stupid.

• 56:11Mel Robbins?

  Correct. Resignation.

• 56:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Mel Robbins?

  It was immediately like, okay, so you can get out of bed. So fucking what? You're $800,000 in debt, Mel. How is this gonna help? And thankfully, I thought, well, what the hell do I have to lose? Why not just, for one day, anytime, Mel, you know what you should do, but you don't feel like it? Or anytime your emotions start to hijack you? Or anytime you feel afraid or anxious or whatever? Why don't you just count backwards and see what happens? And that's what I did.

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Mel Robbins?

  And I haven't looked back.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  I think the power of it... Because it is like, on some level, it really is fucking stupid.

• 56:54Mel Robbins?

  Oh, totally.

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  And when I first saw you on Facebook or whatever, before I knew you, and I was like, "Who is this? What is this?"

• 57:00Mel Robbins?

  You can say the word, I don't care. I can take it, bring it.

• 57:03Rich Roll?

  I was like, "The five, come on, you know, this is a bunch of bullshit, right? Now I've gotten to know you, I adore you, I love you, I think you're brilliant and talented in so many ways, but it took me a minute to get my head around this thing. But I think where I'm at now with it is that there's a certain genius in the simplicity and the low-hanging fruit nature of it. Like, I had to pick up a phone, pick up a phone and make a very difficult phone call. That phone weighs a thousand pounds.

• 57:34Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Rich Roll?

  That's a, that's a heavy, that's a, that's a leap, right? But to say, "Well, I can count down from five to one," right? I could, I could do that at least. Like, it's creating permission and a welcome mat and something that's so accessible for anybody, no matter how much pain they're in, or whatever circumstances they might find themselves in. So whether it's counting down from five to one, or giving yourself a high five in the mirror, it may seem like childish or silly, but in truth, there's a, there's a neurochemical thing that takes place that sets in motion a chain of events that allow you to take

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  that initial action, and that then puts you in a position to take further actions. And that's where the cascading effect happens and lives change.

• 58:25Mel Robbins?

  Well, you said it earlier, so let me hit you with the science. Because the fact is, I used it in secret for three years, to 5-4-3-2-1, pick up that phone that weighed a thousand pounds. And part of the genius of this is that when you start counting backwards, you've already committed to taking action. So the counting itself moves you from a bias towards thinking toward a bias toward action. And the more you repeat it, the more you break the pattern of thinking and you program in a pattern of taking small actions. It creates agile moves and agile mindset. So that's one thing. The second thing that's crazy cool about this is that the reason why it's so fucking hard to change is because you talk about changing with the prefrontal cortex.

• 59:08Mel Robbins?

  You're conscious when you sit in your therapist's chair or you're listening to me and Rich, and you're using the think, you're using this sort of strategic part of your brain. The second that you're in a situation where you're procrastinating or you're thinking negative thoughts, it's your subconscious that's in charge of you. And so in order to change, you have to interrupt subconscious patterns. You see, the five-second rule isn't just some dumb counting backwards thing. It is a form of metacognition that interrupts the pattern stored in your subconscious brain. Counting backwards requires you to focus, which flips on your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control over what you think and do next. That's the genius of it.

• 59:52Mel Robbins?

  And the reason why I'm so fucking passionate about this is not only because kids can use it and senior citizens can use it, you don't have to have any kind of education or speak any kind of language, it works for anybody that uses it, is because I am now standing with millions of people that have tried it. And the, we have pediatricians around the world that are using it to help kids interrupt thoughts that trigger anxiety, veterans organizations that are using 54321 to help reprogram responses to triggers. We had an entire wing of a Pennsylvania psychiatric inpatient nursing unit show up at the talk show to tell me that of all of the tools that they give people that have an inpatient

• 1:00:36Mel Robbins?

  commit, the single most positive and effective tool is the five-second rule. Because it is simple, you remember it, and it immediately interrupts the negative and suicidal ideations that torture people. And speaking of suicide, we know of 111 people who have stopped themselves from taking their lives by 54321.

• 1:01:00Mel Robbins?

  Asking for help. So I am here to tell you, I don't give a fuck how stupid you think this is. I want you to try it. I want you to share it with people. Because interrupting the patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back and pushing yourself to take action or to think something different, it is the only way you are going to change. And this is a tool that's going to help you bridge that gap.

• 1:01:23Rich Roll?

  Boom! I know. We just found the clip. We could pull that clip.

• 1:01:29Mel Robbins?

  Whatever you want.

• 1:01:30Rich Roll?

  Throw it up. Who would have thought?

• 1:01:32Mel Robbins?

  I didn't intend to do any of this.

• 1:01:33Rich Roll?

  You're on the I-beam crawling from one thing to the next.

• 1:01:35Mel Robbins?

  Still.

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  What's so funny is that you end up doing this TEDx talk, right?

• 1:01:39Mel Robbins?

  Well, you know, that was a whole thing too. Like, I didn't apply.

• 1:01:43Rich Roll?

  How did that happen?

• 1:01:43Mel Robbins?

  Oh, you're going to die when you hear this. You ready? So I...TEDx wasn't even a thing. This was like one of the first TEDx conferences. So it's TEDx San Francisco. Hello, San Francisco! TEDx! And a friend of a friend of a friend is the person curating it. And they're looking for somebody that can talk about career change. Hello, Mel Robbins. Hi, everybody. How are you? The Chameleon of Careers.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  Right, 50 careers.

• 1:02:11Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, 50 careers. And she's a talker. Now, I had never given a formal speech on a stage. You know, people think just because you're a lawyer, somehow you're a public speaker. Not true. In fact, there are a lot of people that practice law that are introverted. I don't happen to be one of them. But I'd never given a speech. And so I get this email from this person asking if I'd be interested in giving a talk about career change for this thing called TEDx. They were offering two tickets to San Francisco. And they were also going to put us up in the St. Regis, a hotel that was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. At this point, we still have $800,000 liens on our house and kids under the age of 14.

• 1:02:55Mel Robbins?

  And we're like, yes, a free vacation! So despite my fears of giving a speech, we go. There was very little training. And I got on that stage. And I literally had like a 21-minute-long panic attack. If you look closely, you will see the chest rash start to appear at about minute one. I'm darting all over the stage like a freak. Oh, my God, blinding light! At one point, I jump off it. That was not like planned. I just was trying to escape. And at the very end, Rich, I forgot how to end it. I wasn't supposed to talk about the five-second rule. Because at that point, I still thought it was so dumb. Like, how am I gonna possibly explain? I didn't know any of the science. I'd been using it for three years.

• 1:03:40Mel Robbins?

  I knew it worked. And I look out there, I forget how I'm supposed to end this thing, and I go, "Oh, oh, oh, wait, okay, this is the last part, sorry." So, one more thing that you can use. I call it the five-second rule. I call it the five-second rule. The moment you've got an instinct to act, you gotta move within five seconds, or else your brain will kill it. Thank you very much.

• 1:03:58Mel Robbins?

  I think I was so disassociated at that point, I even gave out my email address. So, I leave.

• 1:04:04Rich Roll?

  Did they edit it out? Because there's like 28 million views of this thing at this point.

• 1:04:09Mel Robbins?

  I know. So, a year goes by. I literally leave. The first thing I said to Chris backstage is, "I'm never giving a speech again." That is the worst experience of my life. He's like, "It wasn't that bad, don't worry." Like, there are only 500 people out there. A year goes by, Rich. A year. And then somebody puts it online. I don't even know it's online. Another year goes by, and now it's got like a million views. And it's at this point, I'm starting, I get my first email, like, "Hey, I saw that thing you did for TEDx." I'm like, "Were you there?" And they're like, "No, it's online." I'm like, "It's online? I had no idea." So, for a year, people asked me to come speak at their events. I didn't know normal people got paid. I thought you had to be a bestselling author like Rich Roll. I thought you had to have a podcast like Rich Roll.

• 1:04:54Mel Robbins?

  I thought you had to like be somebody like Rich Roll. I did not know that normal human beings, especially those of us that fall off I-beams, or A-beams, or whatever they're called, as part of our success strategy, got paid to do this. So, I just happily speak for free at seven different events that year. So, now we're probably talking, what, 2013? And somebody comes up to me and says, another I... Is it an A-beam or an I-beam?

• 1:05:17Rich Roll?

  I-beam, I think.

• 1:05:18Mel Robbins?

  Okay. So, another I-beam moment. She walks up to me and goes, "Oh, my gosh, can I ask you a question? I was a speaker at the event too, you were so great." I'm like, "Yeah, absolutely." And she said, "Did you get your check yet?" And I said, "Check? You got paid for that?" And she looked at me with horror and goes, "You didn't." I just assumed you did.

• 1:05:41Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:42Mel Robbins?

  And I thought, I am a complete moron. Like, I, it didn't even occur to me to ask to get paid. And so, I, um, made myself this promise. This is genius. If you have no idea how to break into an industry, this is how you price yourself. I said, "The next time somebody calls, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, and you're gonna say, 'Yes, I'm available.' What's your budget? And then you're gonna count backwards, five, four, three, two, one." Because it's really effective at putting yourself in pause.

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:13Mel Robbins?

  And say, "Normally, I'm double."

• 1:06:15Rich Roll?

  I love that. I love the "What's your budget?" Because you always want them to put the number out first. And then you know what you're dealing with.

• 1:06:23Mel Robbins?

  And see, at this point in my career, I was so just grateful and desperate. That's a terrible combination, to be grateful and desperate. Um, so grateful that anybody would hire me. And so desperate for the money, because dude, we still had leans on our house.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Mel Robbins?

  We were barely making the ends meet. In 2014, Chris was just leaving the restaurant business. He hadn't been paid in six months.

• 1:06:47Rich Roll?

  So how do you go from having a panic attack on the TED stage, TEDx stage, to being this, you know, crazy in-demand speaker? I mean, first, on a, you know, a pure kind of like trajectory, but also on a skill level. Like, how did you learn how to do it? Because for people that haven't seen Mel do her thing, I mean, you're masterful at this. I mean, nobody can command a stage the way that you do. And, you know, I was watching some of your stuff online earlier today, having my own panic attack. Because I gotta get on a plane tomorrow and go give two speeches out of town. And I haven't done this in like, two and a half years. And I think even on my best days, I'm like a B minus at this. And I really wanna get good.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  And I've been trying to figure it out myself. And I realize there's so much to learn. And so many things I don't know about how to do this. Well, I feel like I'm capable of it. But, um, I've lacked like, the guidance from other people that kind of helped me figure it out.

• 1:07:47Mel Robbins?

  This is something I'm a genius at.

• 1:07:49Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:50Mel Robbins?

  And I had to get through tremendous fear to discover that I'm a genius at it. And so, I want you, listening to us, to know that there is something that you are meant to be doing. And it is your fear and your negative story, and sort of the pain of going from being out of shape at something, to getting into shape in something, that is keeping you from tapping deep within you into that thing that you're meant to do. And what I'm meant to do is not be on stages. I'm meant to move people. And what I mean by that is, everything that I do has the intention to either move you into action, or move your state of thinking,

• 1:08:35Mel Robbins?

  or your state of emotion, or emotional state. And so, what happened for me is, first of all, I was talking about something that I deeply believe in. Because as that TEDx talk started to gain momentum, people started to write to me from around the world. I was literally spending three or four hours a night, Rich, writing emails back. "Okay, well, you can use it for procrastination like this." And then I started getting tons of questions about anxiety. So I would start picking up the phone, or emailing experts to understand how to answer these questions. And I finally was, I became so masterful about the topic, and so passionate about it, not because of my experience, but because this stupid thing was working for people around the world.

• 1:09:18Mel Robbins?

  And now I had some of the leading experts in neuroscience and habit research and anxiety, and pediatric medicine and oncology validating why it worked. And so now, I'm like, "Oh, I need to tell people about this." And it was because of the impact it was making in other real people's lives that emboldened me that I gotta get my ass on that stage, and I gotta figure out. Because here's the problem, right? I have the world's stupidest topic to talk about. Dumb! I am literally gonna get in a stadium in front of 25,000 people, and for an hour?

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  And tell them to count back from five.

• 1:10:02Mel Robbins?

  And say, "You could change your life in five seconds." Who the fuck is gonna do that? I better show up, and be so entertaining, and so moving, and so convincing, and so just irrefutable.

• 1:10:18Mel Robbins?

  That you not only believe me, you're fucking bawling at the end of that speech because you realize, "Holy fuck, I have missed so many five-second moments. I have given up on myself. I have doubted myself. I fucking hold myself back. I can't do this to myself anymore." Because it is true, Rich, your whole life comes down to these five-second windows. These moments of hesitation, these moments of opportunities, where you either step forward, lean in, speak up, or you fucking lean back and you hold yourself back. Your marriage, your finances, your expertise, your business, it all comes down to how and who and what you do in this five-second window. And I am here to tell you, if you learn how to manage your response,

• 1:11:03Mel Robbins?

  what you think and what you do within this five-second window, you can do or be anything. But most of us stop and hesitate, and then the habit of doubting ourselves takes over. The habit of saying, "I don't deserve that." The habit of you pulling away from what you want. That is why I'm so passionate. And so, in terms of how to be masterful at public speaking, start with the audience. What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to feel when you're done talking?

• 1:11:43Rich Roll?

  Empowered.

• 1:11:44Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Rich Roll?

  Inspired.

• 1:11:46Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Rich Roll?

  I want them to feel a sense of agency over their lives. I want them to feel like there's a path that is ready to unfold for them. And I want to give them tools to begin that process.

• 1:12:03Mel Robbins?

  I would pick one tool.

• 1:12:06Rich Roll?

  See, this is the thing that you're so good at. I mean... For all of the things that you talk about, I think, underappreciated or under-discussed is this incredible skill that you have to communicate complex ideas clearly by distilling them down into very kind of, simplistic's the wrong word, but like elemental.

• 1:12:28Mel Robbins?

  I like simplistic. Dude, I'm not a celebrity person at all. I'm not a mass media person at all. I like the average person. The average person has a ton of shit going on and a lot that they're shouldering. It's why I wanted to do daytime talk, because the person that's still watching daytime talk has very few resources and has been left behind by most media. But I love real people, and you can only reach real people when you're having real conversations and you're discussing real problems. And simplistic solutions are what work for complicated problems. Life's complicated enough, my god.

• 1:13:12Mel Robbins?

  If you can remember the tool, you'll fucking use it.

• 1:13:15Rich Roll?

  Which brings us to the high five.

• 1:13:18Mel Robbins?

  Oh, this is even dumber than the five second rule.

• 1:13:22Rich Roll?

  Staying on the theme of fives, right? How can I extend this thing? Well, we should point out, so you end up writing this book, The Five Second Rule, that like blows up.

• 1:13:31Mel Robbins?

  Oh, that's an IB moment, though. The book launch failed, dude.

• 1:13:34Rich Roll?

  No, it didn't.

• 1:13:35Mel Robbins?

  Yes, it did! The story of the Five Second Rule book, you guys? So I self-published that book, okay? Because I just thought, okay, I want to own what I do, because I'm a control freak. I want to own what I do, and I really care about this message, and nobody's going to tell this the way that I want to tell it. So I self-published the book. I study all the bestselling authors to figure out, how do you get on the lists? Because if you get on the lists, then, you know, mass media will pay attention, and more people will get the book, whatever.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  No one told you that if you self-publish, the lists are out the window?

• 1:14:06Mel Robbins?

  No. So I literally self-published the book not knowing you will not make a single list and not realizing there won't be a single bookstore that carry the book. So I put all my effort into marketing for this big book launch. We're gonna sell as many books as possible so I can get on the list. And here's what happens. I do everything you're supposed to do. I have a puny ass newsletter list at that point, like 8,000 people or whatever. I am on like one podcast, I'm doing a couple speeches, and on the day the book goes on sale, I pour all the energy at getting people to buy on Amazon. Within two hours, everybody's writing saying it's out of stock. And I'm thinking, there's no way 20,000 books are out of stock. No way.

• 1:14:51Mel Robbins?

  I like, I don't have that many people on the newsletter list. And my Aunt Sally only bought four of them. So like, you know, there's no way there's 20,000. And this is what I know now. If Amazon has a product that is unknown and they get an unexpected surge that's pretty consistent, they turn off inventory.

• 1:15:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:15:13Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:15:14Rich Roll?

  Because they just assume it's fraud?

• 1:15:15Mel Robbins?

  Correct. And they also want to make sure they can check with inventory to make sure the supply is okay before they say it's being shipped.

• 1:15:22Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:23Mel Robbins?

  So for the first

• 1:15:24Rich Roll?

  Deadly.

• 1:15:25Mel Robbins?

  Two weeks of my book launch, as I am now exhausting everything that I've worked for six months to try to do, all the traffic that I'm sending to Amazon is going to a page that says "out of stock." I am literally crying every day. Meanwhile, Tony Robbins has launched a book the same day, so every fucking where I go, his face is everywhere. He's in the front of every bookstore, he's in every airport. I'm like, dear universe, why? I get asked every time I speak, "Are you Tony Robbins' wife?" Because my last name is Robbins. I'm like, "No, I'm Christopher Robbins' wife." Which is actually my husband's name, Christopher Robbins. I literally thought, what have I done? Why me? Why am I the bad news bears? Why do I always have to sneak in the back door? Why does nothing ever work out for me?

• 1:16:10Mel Robbins?

  Why do all these other people get to have it easy? Why are they all friends? Why do they support? Like, why, why, why? So I am literally licking my wounds, thinking that this is the worst thing that's ever happened. Meanwhile, I have completely forgotten that I also self-published the audiobook. When people went, I didn't know this was happening. But about four weeks later, when I have just chalked up the book as a total failure... I get an email from Audible that says, "Your monthly report is due." And I literally fall out of my chair. It was six figures.

• 1:16:45Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:16:46Mel Robbins?

  I-

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  So it just directed everybody to get the audiobook.

• 1:16:50Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  And this was at an inflection point for audiobooks. Audiobooks hadn't quite tipped over into being as mainstream as they are now, but that was a huge-

• 1:16:58Mel Robbins?

  2017.

• 1:16:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that was like, right around the time where it started to become a thing.

• 1:17:01Mel Robbins?

  And Audible is owned by Amazon. So everything that happens on Audible impacts the Amazon algorithm. So all of a sudden, the five-second rule shot up. It was the number-one audiobook of the year in 2017. It was the number-six most-read book of the year on Amazon. It has been translated into 36 languages in four years flat. It has sold millions of copies. And here's the most important thing I want you to hear. It has never made a bestsellers list.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Right. It's so crazy how that works.

• 1:17:34Mel Robbins?

  But here's the thing I want you to understand. Your dreams have a purpose. I have always dreamt of being a New York Times bestselling author. Never have been. That dream has a purpose. And the purpose of that dream is to pull me through my bullshit, and my fears, and my anxiety, and my sense of unworthiness, to make me work for something. But those dreams are not necessarily to be fulfilled. They are a vehicle that gets you moving.

• 1:18:00Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:01Mel Robbins?

  There is something so much better in store for you than that dream. There's something bigger. Because what happened to me is, by not making that dream, I've learned an entirely new business model. I mean, I have a huge partnership with Audible now.

• 1:18:16Rich Roll?

  Right. You've done a ton of stuff with Audible. You're one of their leading partners in the whole, sort of, listening space altogether.

• 1:18:22Mel Robbins?

  Yep. I never would have known that. Had I achieved my dream of being a New York Times bestselling author, if I had had a successful traditional book launch, I never would be where I am right now.

• 1:18:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no way.

• 1:18:34Mel Robbins?

  No way.

• 1:18:35Rich Roll?

  It would have satisfied your ego temporarily-

• 1:18:37Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 1:18:37Rich Roll?

  -for the two weeks or whatever that it was on the list. And then, after that, all the- First of all, you wouldn't have sold that many audiobooks, because the book would have been available.

• 1:18:47Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 1:18:47Rich Roll?

  And you definitely would not have made the cake. That would have all gone to the publisher.

• 1:18:52Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  Which is insane, because I'm sure you just printed money off of the audiobook.

• 1:18:57Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Rich Roll?

  So self-publishing looking pretty good now.

• 1:19:00Mel Robbins?

  Oh, extraordinarily.

• 1:19:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, unbelievable.

• 1:19:02Mel Robbins?

  But so here's the other thing that that taught me. It's what gave me that sort of high five attitude, this mantra. And the mantra, because I, as I was schlepping through airports and the book is out of stock, and Tony Robbins' face is everywhere, and I'm thinking, I'm the world's biggest failure. I kept saying this to myself on repeat. There is no way, Mel, if you've worked this hard, that you will not be rewarded. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet. Keep going. You have to believe that this moment is preparing you for something amazing that hasn't happened yet. Keep going.

• 1:19:42Mel Robbins?

  And so I repeated that over and over and over and over and over again, as I wanted to throw in the towel, as I would start to bash myself, as I would start to feel sorry for myself and be like, nope, there's just no way I'm going to believe that something amazing isn't going to happen. I've worked too hard. Something amazing that hasn't happened is coming. And when you get yourself into that mindset, it creates a sense of resilience and momentum and resolve that you need in order to keep going when the shit hits the fan or when you feel disappointed or when life is beating you down. And that was the other gift of that moment, is developing a little tool to flip my mindset

• 1:20:27Mel Robbins?

  when I wanted to start to feel sorry for myself.

• 1:20:31Rich Roll?

  Throw the timeline out. Divorce yourself from expectations. Double down on that belief and maintain your adherence to just moving forward and action.

• 1:20:43Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:45Rich Roll?

  So much easier to say than to do.

• 1:20:48Mel Robbins?

  That's why I focus on tools. Because we all know what to do. It's the how.

• 1:20:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think when we start to talk about the self, the quote unquote, like self-help or self-improvement space, you start to hear words like motivation and inspiration and how do I find my purpose? And we need to be living with passion. And I just think, for the most part,

• 1:21:16Rich Roll?

  It does more harm than good in the sense that it confuses people. And I think it makes people feel bad about where they are in the moment. Because it often lacks any kind of practicality. Like, it's sort of a measuring tool. Like, "Oh, I don't have passion," or "I don't know what my purpose is." Like, "I must not have self-worth." All these other people seem all fired up and excited, and here I am, little me over here. And I'm like... You become a shrinking flower. And so I think the vernacular around it... Like, I'm saying this because I want you to help me make sense of it for the person who's listening or watching, who is in that place, who's struggling with the idea of

• 1:21:59Rich Roll?

  how to move forward and how to make sense of the idea of self-empowerment and self-improvement.

• 1:22:07Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. So that brings us to the high-five habit, which is gonna sound so stupid.

• 1:22:16Rich Roll?

  More stupid.

• 1:22:17Mel Robbins?

  You know, this is my brand, I've come to realize.

• 1:22:19Rich Roll?

  I know, yeah.

• 1:22:20Mel Robbins?

  If it sounds stupid and it's backed by science, it's something Mel Robbins wants to talk about. So the high-five habit is for all of us, but particularly if you're somebody that feels stuck, or you're easily tripped up or brought down by jealousy, or guilt, or procrastination, or beating yourself up, or comparison. And, you know, honestly, if you're breathing, that's you. Who isn't?

• 1:22:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:48Mel Robbins?

  This is an idea that, once I unpack it for you, you're gonna literally go, "Holy shit."

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  In a good way?

• 1:22:57Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  All right, lay on me.

• 1:23:01Mel Robbins?

  So, we all know that we need to love ourselves, right? How do you do that?

• 1:23:10Rich Roll?

  I don't know. What is the action that you take?

• 1:23:13Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. We all know we're supposed to accept ourselves. We all know we're supposed to have self-esteem and self-worth and self-validation and self-confidence. How do you build it? And, you know, the other thing is that we also are looking outside ourselves for confirmation, validation, affirmation of those things. And so how do you relocate the source of your self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, self-validation within yourself so that you're in control of it? Big idea, right? So, let me tell you the story about how I discovered this because it was not like a,

• 1:23:55Mel Robbins?

  oh, how do I have another high five moment, you know? I get fired from my talk show and I am essentially fired from my dream job. I then start having speech after speech after speech after speech cancel. Then Houghton Mifflin cancels my contract for my next book and asks for me to return money that I've long spent and-

• 1:24:19Rich Roll?

  Why'd they cancel it?

• 1:24:20Mel Robbins?

  Because-

• 1:24:21Rich Roll?

  Just because of pandemic related?

• 1:24:22Mel Robbins?

  There are two reasons. First of all, they were laying off 45% of the staff, but more importantly, let me take responsibility, I was a year late on delivering a manuscript. Okay, let's be honest, I fucked up yet again. I ghosted my publisher and they fired my ass, as they should.

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  A long play to ghost your publisher, right?

• 1:24:40Mel Robbins?

  I'll spend your money and then ghost you. But I found myself again in this like familiar place, having sort of echoes back to a decade of go of, oh my God, are we in financial freefall again? Like, is this ride over? Kids come home-

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, you did like 100 speeches in a year or prior to that-

• 1:25:01Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 1:25:01Rich Roll?

  Or prior to the show.

• 1:25:02Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 1:25:03Rich Roll?

  And then took a pay cut to do the show.

• 1:25:05Mel Robbins?

  Yep. And look, I've been saving money. I've been very smart about money now that I've made it. We've paid back all of our debt, something we're both really, really proud of. And at the same time, when the shit hits the fan in your life, your old things will get triggered. And what got triggered for me is I'm about to lose it all again.

• 1:25:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:23Mel Robbins?

  Meanwhile, just like everybody else on the planet, your kids come home and it's both a blessing and a horror show to have your children in a state of distress as the world is in distress. And I just started to feel overwhelmed. And there was this one morning where I walked into the bathroom and I was standing in my underwear brushing my teeth in front of the mirror. And I looked up at the mirror and my first thought was, ugh. I noticed that my jowls were starting to look like saddlebags on a pack horse at the Grand Canyon. And I had like these crazy lines by my eyes

• 1:26:05Mel Robbins?

  and my neck was really like kind of saggy. And one boob was hanging lower than the other and my gray hair was coming in. And I, and as soon as I started kind of critiquing my thoughts or my, my looks and appearance, then my mind, Rich, started going, fuck, I didn't get that email back to that person. And I got that presentation I need to do. And my God, did that speech just cancel again? What the fuck am I gonna do? And then I looked down and the dog needs to be walked. And then I think, I got a Zoom call in nine minutes. Like, I gotta get my shit together. And before I knew it, my whole mood was low. I felt overwhelmed. I had taken myself down mentally. I just wanted somebody to walk in and be like, Mel, you got, it's gonna be okay.

• 1:26:50Mel Robbins?

  Like, you got this, girl. Like, it's lift your head up. You can handle this. I don't know what came over me, Rich. This is pathetic. But standing there in my underwear, in front of my bathroom sink, I raised my hand and high-fived my reflection.

• 1:27:10Mel Robbins?

  And I cracked a smile because it's so fucking corny. I even thought of that guy Stuart Smiley from the SNL skits. Remember that? I'm nice, I'm kind, people like me. Went on with my day. That was it.

• 1:27:25Rich Roll?

  Snapped a photo, though.

• 1:27:26Mel Robbins?

  No, not that one.

• 1:27:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, not that one? Not the first time.

• 1:27:29Mel Robbins?

  And then I kept doing it. I did it probably for a week or two. And here's the weird thing about it. I started when I woke up after doing this high five your own reflection in the mirror thing. I actually started to feel like I was looking forward to it. And here's why. You know, I've spent a lifetime, just like you, standing in front of the mirror. And what I realize now is that when I'm standing in front of a mirror, I'm either critiquing or picking myself apart, or I'm ignoring myself. And when you start to high five your own reflection, it starts to build a partnership within you, with yourself. When you walk into the bathroom and you see your reflection and you've been greeting it,

• 1:28:14Mel Robbins?

  it's like seeing another person. It's the strangest thing. You start to realize how often you fucking ignore or destroy yourself when you see yourself, or beat yourself up. And here's what's also crazy. You have a lifetime, and this is where the science gets wacky, and I'm going to hit you with so much science because this stuff is so cool. You have a lifetime positive association with high fiving other people.

• 1:28:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, sure.

• 1:28:41Mel Robbins?

  As a runner, as a racer, you have gotten so many high fives, Rich. What does a high five say to you when somebody gives you one?

• 1:28:49Rich Roll?

  You feel seen, you feel appreciated, you feel energized by it, and it's a, it's an exchange of energy. It's not the same, and you talk about this in the book, it's not the same as like self-talk because there's a participation involved in it. There's like a communion aspect to it.

• 1:29:07Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. And you know, if you think about it, you're so good at celebrating, seeing, and cheering for other people in your life. You plan birthday parties, you reach out to people when you're worried about them, you help out colleagues, you cheer for your favorite sports teams, you high five people like Rich as they're running races past you, you buy people's merchandise, you do all kinds of stuff for other people. But nobody's taught you how to do it for yourself.

• 1:29:33Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:33Mel Robbins?

  In fact, the reason why it feels fucking weird to high-five your own reflection is because you've been taught to do the opposite.

• 1:29:42Rich Roll?

  Why is the default to just beat ourselves down like that? I mean, it is crazy. We would never treat anyone else in our lives, especially the people we care about, the way that we treat ourselves in terms of the self-talk, or the narrative, or the critique, or the, you know, the kind of harshness with which we, you know, judge our appearances, our behavior, the way we, you know, think back on things that we said the other day and just are horrified by our own selves. And it's, I don't know if it's everybody...

• 1:30:14Mel Robbins?

  Everybody.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  But it's most people.

• 1:30:16Mel Robbins?

  Except for Buddhists. I mean, I think that they're like, like if you're a big practicing Buddhist, that's a monk.

• 1:30:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:21Mel Robbins?

  That's like just kind of...

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  Why can't the default be the good things, though?

• 1:30:25Mel Robbins?

  Well, I...

• 1:30:25Rich Roll?

  You know, why is it wired that way?

• 1:30:27Mel Robbins?

  You know why? There's cognitive bias. There's a bias towards negativity. And it's a protection mechanism that's a default from evolution, that if you remember the bad shit, you're more likely to spot it when it happens in the future.

• 1:30:38Rich Roll?

  Right, so you can avoid it.

• 1:30:38Mel Robbins?

  And here's where I think it begins. I believe, my theory, is that it begins two places. Either you, or it could be both, actually, you either learned the pattern of beating yourself up because you had parents or caregivers that were hard on themselves or hard on you. And so as a child, you absorbed that pattern, and you now repeat it, and you don't even realize it. So those moms are like, "Oh, my God, I sound just like my dad or my mom." That is an example of a pattern that you've absorbed. So particularly for women, we've watched our mothers be critical about their appearance. We've watched our mothers ignore and criticize themselves in the mirror. And so we learn that from our caregivers. So that's one place.

• 1:31:22Mel Robbins?

  The second place that we learn it is when the drive in your life becomes fitting in. Fitting into groups in elementary, middle, high school, college, your neighborhood, that feels safe when you fit in. When you feel like you don't belong, you immediately go into a protection mechanism. And I believe a lot of the negative self-talk is a sorting hat type of mentality that we do to ourselves going, "I can't be with those people. I can't be with those people. It's safe to be with those people." And you start to see yourself and the world around you as places where you belong and places where you don't. And part of the criticism, as fucked up as it sounds, that we engage in all the time is, "Don't be too big. Don't be too loud.

• 1:32:06Mel Robbins?

  Don't show yourself too much. Don't have blue hair. Don't do this. Other people won't like you." It starts as a way to protect yourself from being rejected, but the truth is, you develop a habit of fucking rejecting yourself.

• 1:32:19Rich Roll?

  Right. Meanwhile, you're further divorcing yourself from who you truly are because you're not giving yourself permission to be yourself. That gets sublimated in favor of fitting in and accommodating other people and acclimating your behavior around what will be approved of.

• 1:32:37Mel Robbins?

  Yes. So for me, I have clearly a lifetime of beating myself up and tearing myself down and regretting decisions that I made. And in the middle of stumbling through life, instead of being like, "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay." Being like, "You're really fucked up now, Mel." How does that help? How does criticizing and being hard on yourself help? You know, what's interesting is I even think of somebody like David Goggins, right? Everybody looks at him, "Can't hurt me. Tough, tough, tough, tough, mentally tough." His single biggest mindset trick is the cookie jar. It's reaching into your mind to find a positive thing that's worth fighting through the bullshit for. It still comes down to encouragement and support and something positive.

• 1:33:22Mel Robbins?

  And so, to me, the coolest thing about the high five is this. First of all, I am demanding that you try it, especially if you think it's stupid as hell. I want you to stand in front of the mirror. Number one, because research out of Harvard says taking a moment of reflection with yourself in the morning and setting an intention changes your productivity. It changes your neurochemistry. It changes how you show up for the day. It changes everything. That's number one. Number two, you have a lifetime of looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing what you hate. I want to change that. When you raise your hand and high five your own reflection,

• 1:34:02Mel Robbins?

  because you have been raising your hand and high fiving other people for your entire life, it is already programmed into your subconscious. All of that shit that's positive, "I believe in you, we got this, come on, shake it off, let's get going, here we go, I see you, I hear you, I celebrate you", all that stuff you've been doing for other people, when you raise that hand, the subconscious part of your brain kicks in and it overrides all of the negative stuff you think. You cannot stand in front of that mirror, Rich, and go, "God, I look fat", and high five yourself. It's impossible. Your brain can't do it.

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:34:38Mel Robbins?

  You also can't think about work emails. You also can't think about what's stressing you out. And here's the thing that I also love about it. So this is a field of study called neurobics. You're marrying physical movement with a change in thought. The other thing that I-

• 1:34:53Rich Roll?

  It's like neurology aerobics.

• 1:34:55Mel Robbins?

  It is.

• 1:34:55Rich Roll?

  Basically.

• 1:34:56Mel Robbins?

  That's exactly what it is.

• 1:34:57Rich Roll?

  I found that part of the book fascinating, yeah. I mean, I think, look, you're taking this very simple action that we all associate with positive things. It's backed up by, you know, the neurochemistry. With this mirror work, which has a tradition in psychology, in the field of cultivating self-love. It's not like, like the idea of looking in the mirror and doing the Stuart Smalley thing. Like, there's science and research behind this.

• 1:35:25Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25Rich Roll?

  To cultivate appreciation for the self.

• 1:35:27Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and so there's even more here. So the other stuff that's super cool about this is that, you know, we've all bought into this lie that somehow beating yourself up and tough love and being hard on yourself is motivating. Wrong. All the research shows that it is demotivating. If you're somebody that's stuck, if you're somebody that has regrets, if you're somebody that is tired of where you are, if you feel like, you know, you just, "Why can't I change", beating yourself up is making it worse. You have to learn how to cheer for yourself.

• 1:36:05Mel Robbins?

  Where you are. Because if you're not, you will never find the motivation to change. So they did this study with kids where they broke kids into three different groups, okay? And they gave the kids very challenging problems. And they wanted to know what was going to be the thing that researchers could do to motivate and inspire kids to work through a challenging problem? And what is going to be the most effective thing that we could do to give somebody that boost that you need to really face something that's hard? So group number one got the old fixed mindset praise where it's like, hey, you're super smart, Rich. Hey, Rich, you're really good-looking in those glasses and I bet they help you make you focus on this problem. Keep going, buddy. The second group got the fixed mindset praise, which is, hey, Rich, you're really, really

• 1:36:50Mel Robbins?

  working hard. Rich, that perseverance is amazing. Keep going. The third group? They got a simple high five. No words, just a high five. The group with the simple high five outperformed the other two group and then some.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  That's so crazy.

• 1:37:08Mel Robbins?

  Why? I'll tell you why. A high five is fulfilling your fundamental emotional needs. It's not about the problem. When you high five somebody, including yourself, you are affirming that somebody exists. You are saying, I see you. And you're celebrating with them. You know how those things go viral all year long of teachers standing outside their classroom doing individual handshakes with kids? It's the same thing. Every one of those kids is being seen as an individual and celebrated.

• 1:37:50Rich Roll?

  There's also that study of the NBA teams, right? Where they, they, they, they basically looked at how many high fives all the teams were doling out.

• 1:37:59Mel Robbins?

  Backslaps, fist bumps, yeah, touching.

• 1:38:00Rich Roll?

  And the teams that were giving out the most high fives were the highest performing teams.

• 1:38:05Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:38:06Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 1:38:07Mel Robbins?

  And the teams that had the least amount of contact like that of fist bumps and high fives and back taps performed the worst. Why? Because you're building trust with whomever you're high fiving. You see, when you stand in front of the mirror and instead of going, God, my jowls look like saddlebags and I'm fucked today because my to-do list is so long and, you know, da-da-da-da-da, and I shouldn't have had that, da-da-da-da-da. That sets your mind and your day on a certain course.

• 1:38:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:33Mel Robbins?

  When you walk into the bathroom and you habit stack this simple high five along with brushing your teeth, you are starting your day by fulfilling your most important needs. You see yourself, you affirm yourself, you celebrate yourself. And for those of you that feel stuck, part of your problem is you are withholding that shit from yourself until you get to the number of the scale, until you get that job, until you do the thing you're supposed to do. And what you are doing is backwards. You need support, celebration, and acknowledgement now in order to hit that number on the scale. You see, most of us believe we're not worthy of celebration until we achieve something.

• 1:39:15Mel Robbins?

  And I'm here to tell you, if you start celebrating, supporting yourself as you are every single day, it will become a part of who you are, which empowers and equips you to face the shitty things, and more importantly, empowers and equips you to do the things that scare you that you need to do.

• 1:39:35Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I'm somebody who, who always, you know, rooted validation or associated love with achievement. If I achieve enough, you know, then I will be worthy of that love. And the idea of self-love is so foreign to me. The practice of cultivating that in a manner that's divorced from whether I'm doing anything worthy of it or not feels so strange. But it is true, we are in an epidemic of lack of self-love.

• 1:40:06Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:07Rich Roll?

  And there's a discomfort with, like, like it doesn't feel, like I need to earn the right to even practice that for myself.

• 1:40:16Mel Robbins?

  Yes. Well, let's go back to my husband, Chris. So Chris is an extraordinary human being. We're gonna celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, gosh, in just a couple of days. And I have watched, I've had a front row seat to watching somebody who I think is the most incredible human being on the planet, the world's best dad, an incredible provider, destroy himself because of one failure.

• 1:40:43Mel Robbins?

  A dumb restaurant business. He would tell you that for years, he could not look himself in the eye in the mirror and see somebody that was worth celebrating. Because he was convinced that that failure made him a failure. And it wasn't, and he found, you know, his path through meditation, through yoga, he, through therapy, he has started a men's retreat called Soul Degree. But it is also now, and, oh, and through loving kindness meditation. But he has been practicing the high five. And what he first said is, it was almost impossible to do it. Because I still, in some part of me,

• 1:41:27Mel Robbins?

  feel like I'm supposed to have earned it. Or it's supposed to come from somebody else. It doesn't feel comfortable giving it to myself. And to me, it's, that's honest. I think that's what most people feel. But it's also fucking sad. Like, imagine if, if somebody that you loved or one of your kids felt that way about themselves. I mean, you have people in your life that aren't perfect, that fuck up all the time, that are struggling, and you still believe they're worthy of celebration and worthy of support? But we can't see it within ourselves. And so, I'm on a mission

• 1:42:10Mel Robbins?

  to get people to understand that it's only through small habits of support, celebration, and love that you will achieve the happiness, the peace, the healing, the success, the fulfillment that you're seeking. You can't withhold that shit from yourself.

• 1:42:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And if you think about it, I mean, the journey towards loving yourself, could there be a more...

• 1:42:37Rich Roll?

  Valid, you know, important thing for you to do because the ripple effects of that journey, you know, find their way into every single thing that you do.

• 1:42:47Mel Robbins?

  Well, that's what I say that this book is about. It's about improving the most important relationship that you have in the world, and it's the one that you have with yourself.

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the high five in the mirror is like a Trojan horse.

• 1:42:58Mel Robbins?

  Totally.

• 1:42:59Rich Roll?

  To getting deeper into the idea of figuring out how to love yourself.

• 1:43:03Mel Robbins?

  Yes. And to me, loving yourself is about fulfilling your most essential needs for yourself. That's what it's about. It's knowing how to soothe your nervous system when you're scared. It's about encouraging and supporting yourself. It's about recognizing when guilt and jealousy and insecurity and people pleasing start taking you mentally down, and knowing how to flip yourself back into a state of empowering and encouraging yourself, no matter what. That's what this book is about.

• 1:43:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I know you're all about the simple, practical tools, but I have to tell you that my favorite part of the book.

• 1:43:48Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. Oh, God.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  Is, you know, you take kind of a left turn in the later chapters of this book.

• 1:43:57Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Rich Roll?

  And you go down this metaphysical rabbit hole, which I found to be like, I love that stuff.

• 1:44:03Mel Robbins?

  I do, too.

• 1:44:04Rich Roll?

  So the story of the painting at the mill, the Vermont painting.

• 1:44:07Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44:08Rich Roll?

  And the journey there. Like, I just thought that was really.

• 1:44:12Mel Robbins?

  You want me to tell you the story?

• 1:44:13Rich Roll?

  Beautiful, yeah. And I'm also interested in, like, it feels like I know why you put it in the book, but it also feels like tonally a little bit different from everything else in the book. But I see this as, you know, when I think of your husband, and I think of you, and there's a ying and a yang there, I see you moving more into, you know, Christopher Robin's land with this story, right?

• 1:44:34Mel Robbins?

  Well.

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  A little bit.

• 1:44:36Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, and I guess here's why.

• 1:44:40Mel Robbins?

  There's levels to fulfillment and to discovering what's meant for you. And the first level is clearing away the surface level bullshit that is dragging you down. The bias towards thinking, the negative thoughts, the habits of comparison and jealousy and people pleasing and all that stuff. And then there's another layer. And the second layer is something that the folks that follow me, because what happened is I, after about a week or so, I just put up a photo of myself, a really kind of not-so-attractive

• 1:45:19Mel Robbins?

  one, online on my story, and immediately, people from all walks of life and ages and stuff started...

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  Right, once again, you're creating a movement.

• 1:45:29Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, and I'm like, okay, there's something here. And so then I dug in and did a research project for almost a year, trying to figure out why something so simple is universally working. And one of the things that people started to report back made me super sad. And it's what my husband was struggling with after the restaurant failed. And that is, that there's this deep sense for so many people that they are unworthy of love. Like, at your core, for simply existing, that you're not worthy of love unless you're doing something that's worthy of love. And there were so many people that wrote to us, as we were kind of researching this,

• 1:46:13Mel Robbins?

  saying, you know, "I'm sitting here trying to raise my hand and I'm just crying because I'm realizing how often, in my life, I have not cheered for myself. I have not truly supported myself. I have not even wanted to look in the mirror. I'm so disgusted by myself." Stories about whether it was failure, or abuse, or trauma, that somehow that experience has just scarred me in a way that makes me unworthy of being lovable. And so, you know, when people... Sorry.

• 1:46:54Mel Robbins?

  You know, a woman writing about how she's had dysmorphia for 20 years and like couldn't look at herself in the mirror. And her writing and saying after just doing this for five days, she can look at herself in the mirror and actually smile. And just story after story after story of real people like you and me, who are so disconnected from themselves and from their worth, that just standing for a moment with themselves

• 1:47:31Mel Robbins?

  in the mirror and doing something that's affirming is bringing up so much stuff. And, you know, we have a daughter that really is struggling right now with her health and her weight, just really unhappy. And it's, we've all had the experience of having somebody that we love who's deeply in pain. And you can do everything in the world. You can say positive things, you can offer up support, but the truth is, the only person that can help you is you. And to know that there are so many people that stare at themselves in the mirror and

• 1:48:15Mel Robbins?

  are disgusted or judgmental, and that this small shift changes something profound, I mean, it's just extraordinary. And that's where it begins. And so, I kind of lost my train of thought.

• 1:48:33Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, just the idea that there are so many people who can't even look in the mirror and say something nice to themselves. I think that's a lot of people, a lot of people.

• 1:48:50Mel Robbins?

  Everything changes when you start doing it. And it has this massive snowball effect. Because when you feel seen and you feel slightly empowered, you might just make a different choice at lunch. You might show up differently at work. You might express your boundary this afternoon. You might go out for that run because you feel a little bit more empowered and emboldened. And so, you know, we talked earlier about this sort of crack that can happen and a little light comes in. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is hitting at a much deeper level for people. And so, when you can wipe away that second level

• 1:49:34Mel Robbins?

  and start to treat yourself as if you're worthy. You see, all these things that we're seeking outside of ourselves, self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-love. We're looking all around at likes and followers and the number in your bank account and the number on the scale and the car you drive. All those things begin by giving them to yourself. And so, when you start to do that, you know, I spoke earlier about how this is creating a partnership within you. When you start to give those things that you desperately need, something else magical happens.

• 1:50:18Mel Robbins?

  You start to have the ability to turn down the noise around you, which only turns up the signals within you and the voice within you. The criticism is so loud. When you can turn that down, you hear something else. What you start to hear is your hopes, your dreams, the things you're drawn toward, your curiosity, those things that you're not giving yourself permission to lean into because you don't think you're worthy. Fuck, you won't even look at yourself in the mirror. So, how the hell are you going to listen to your intuition? And that's what this painting story is about.

• 1:50:55Rich Roll?

  Your intuition is going to lead you astray until you're able to reckon with all of that stuff so that you can get at the purity of what your soul is actually trying to communicate with you.

• 1:51:06Mel Robbins?

  And that's what that painting story is about. It's about what happens when you are able to just give yourself permission.

• 1:51:16Mel Robbins?

  To want the things that you want. And unless you believe that you're worthy, unless that you practice love, you're never gonna think that you deserve the things that you want.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  Right. So tell the story.

• 1:51:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay. So I'm probably gonna sob hysterically. I'll shorten it. So the bottom line is that so in 1990, I was a senior in college at Dartmouth. And my parents came to visit from Western Michigan. And we went to this place called Simon Pierce, which is a famous glass-blowing mill. And as we walked into the restaurant, I had an experience that you may be able to relate to. And that is, I walked in and I immediately saw this painting hanging on the wall. And it was about the size of a door, only horizontal. And it was a Vermont landscape. And I was drawn into it immediately. Like, I was no longer in that restaurant. I was standing in that field. I could feel that breeze.

• 1:52:12Mel Robbins?

  I'd never, ever had an experience like that with a painting. Have you ever had an experience like that with art?

• 1:52:18Rich Roll?

  No. I mean, not like that. Not like that. I mean, yeah, my sense was that this is very atypical for you.

• 1:52:24Mel Robbins?

  Very. So I kinda lost it. The restaurant was quiet. And then I leaned back and suddenly, kinda back in the moment, I'm like, I'm gonna own this painting someday. It just, that was what was right there. And I looked at the price and it said like $3,000. I'm like, not today! And I went back and I sat down. And that was it. But the painting never left my mind. You see, there's something called the Zeigun effect. I always say it wrong. But it's like, there's a checklist in your brain that when you have a moment where you're like, this is important, your brain puts it on a checklist.

• 1:53:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's like a notch.

• 1:53:02Mel Robbins?

  Yes, a notch happens. And now your brain, as part of the filter in the brain, is always gonna be kinda scanning the subconscious to let anything into your mind related to that incident. It can be positive, by the way, like with the painting, or this is how trauma happens, too. Like, you have this high-intensity emotional experience that notches something in your brain, and now your brain kicks in to remember. So, bottom line is, I always thought about that painting. Years go by. Whenever somebody would say Vermont, I'd think of the painting. I don't know why, I can't explain it. Never wanted a painting before, was not an art student. It's going to law school.

• 1:53:43Rich Roll?

  It's not like you're out collecting art.

• 1:53:44Mel Robbins?

  No, no, no, no. And so I, you know, fast forward the story 10 years and my, uh, Chris and I are engaged and we're gonna go up to Vermont to see the leaves. And immediately I'm like, we gotta go to Simon Pierce, I gotta show you the painting. So we pull up to the mill and we walk in and right in front, there is boom, a painting by the same artist, Gail Shepherd. And I'm like, oh my God, it's here. And we race all around the place. And it's gone. And the funny thing was, and this is the way your brain works. Chris was more disappointed than I was. I literally turned to him and said, it's okay, dude, like it'd be weird if it were still here after 10 years. I'm gonna track this thing down. I actually said to him, you know what's gonna happen, Chris? I'm gonna be able to buy this like 40 years from now.

• 1:54:29Mel Robbins?

  It's gonna be hanging in the corporate lobby of some fucking building and I'm gonna have to track down the owner and pay like quadruple the money they pay, but I'm gonna own this painting.

• 1:54:37Rich Roll?

  You have a mission now, though.

• 1:54:38Mel Robbins?

  I have a mission, yes. So a couple of years pass and, um, it's my birthday, I think I was turning 30 and Chris says, uh, Chris gets a couple of people to give money. And he said I could buy anything I wanted with it. So I had, what, 500 bucks? Now, I'm pregnant at the time with our first kid. I should've bought a crib or stools, but for whatever reason, the Zygonark effect takes over and I'm like, the painting! So I call the mill and I get this guy on the phone, I'm like, uh, you know, I wanna buy a Gail Shepherd piece. And I said, could you send me Polaroids? And he's like, sure. And I tell him the budget and he goes, I'll, I'll send you Polaroids of some of her smaller things.

• 1:55:15Rich Roll?

  Cause she's like blowing up in the meantime, right?

• 1:55:17Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, she's a very, very successful Vermont landscape artist. And so I, I, I, I say to him, you know, by the way, there's this one painting. And I describe the painting I had seen over 10 years ago. And he said, well, that was way before my time, but I bet Gail will know. And I'm like, Gail? You know Gail? He's like, of course I know Gail. She like, lives in, down the road. Here's her number. So for two days, I paced around the apartment with 500 bucks in my pocket, driving Chris crazy. Cause I felt like, what am I gonna say to her? And I must be a weirdo. I've been stalking this lady. I've been thinking about her for 10 years. I can't afford a painting. You know, who am I to buy a painting? Like, what the hell?

• 1:56:00Mel Robbins?

  So finally, Chris is like, would you fucking call her? I'm gonna call her. You're driving me crazy. So I call her, and I start talking a mile a minute, and she was amazing. And then, I said, by the way, there is this one painting. And I go and I explain this painting. There's a stand of poplar trees down the center, and a big mountainscape behind it, and this beautiful blue Vermont sky, and geese flying in formation overhead, and I could hear her thinking on the other end of the line. And she said, you know, Mel, I've done so many large-scale paintings over the years. I'd hate to mistake the one you're talking about. But I'll tell you what. What if my husband and I meet you and Chris at the mill, at Simon Pierce?

• 1:56:45Mel Robbins?

  And we'll walk all around and have lunch, and I'll tell you the stories behind every painting. And if you don't see what you like there, I'll take you back to my studio, which is a couple miles down the river. And you can look at everything I'm working on, and if you don't see anything you like there, then you can go through all my slides and see if you can find that painting that you saw 10 years ago. And I said, deal. So a month passes. We go up to the mill. I walk in. We meet each other. She's amazing. She's like, twice our age, just incredibly cool lady. She's walking around, as we're walking around, looking at these paintings, Rich. I've got, I'm like, eight months pregnant. I'm realizing, these are 10 times the amount of money that I have. I can't afford this. Like, I don't, I don't have this kind of money.

• 1:57:30Mel Robbins?

  And I'm getting, like, more and more into that imposter syndrome, what am I doing mode? Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. I'm meeting somebody I idolize. I don't deserve to be here.

• 1:57:41Rich Roll?

  Right, wasting her time, cause she thinks she's gonna get a payday out of this.

• 1:57:44Mel Robbins?

  Correct. We sit down, and she goes, now that you're sitting down, I have something to tell you.

• 1:57:51Mel Robbins?

  She said, "There's only been two times in my career as an artist that I've done two studies of the same piece. And your painting is one of them. It's one of a pair."

• 1:58:08Rich Roll?

  She knew all along.

• 1:58:09Mel Robbins?

  She knew all along.

• 1:58:10Rich Roll?

  She was playing games with you about not knowing which painting.

• 1:58:14Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, and she said, "The sister piece to the one that you saw all those years ago is sitting in my studio right now, where it's been for the past 11 years." I start sobbing. Everybody's like totally emotional. Her husband's like, "You should have seen her when she was on the phone with you. It was like she saw a ghost." So we get in the car and we drive to the mill. And when we walk in, there in the center of this massive kind of barn studio space is an easel with a painting taped up with painter's tape on it. And it was the sister to my painting. There were slight differences, not as much movement in the grass,

• 1:58:54Mel Robbins?

  but it was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. It was as if time suspended and I was standing before that painting in 1990, saying it would be mine. And there I was 11 years later, standing in front of it. And then I realized, "Oh, my God, I can't fucking afford this." And Chris walks over and he's like, "What's wrong?" And I'm like, "Just promise me someday, like, promise me that I don't need jewelry, I don't need a car. Like, just promise me you will buy me this thing." And he kind of leans over and goes, "Hey, Gail, how much for the big one?" And she said, "Mel can have it for 500 bucks."

• 1:59:38Mel Robbins?

  Because clearly, when I was making it 11 years ago, I was making it for her.

• 1:59:46Mel Robbins?

  And so it hangs in my kitchen. It's on the back of the book.

• 1:59:52Rich Roll?

  This is the galley, though, right? Wait, is it in the...

• 1:59:55Mel Robbins?

  I think so, yeah. And it's a reminder every day that your mind is designed to help you get what you want. I never stopped believing that I could make it happen. And when you tell your mind what's important to you, there is extraordinary science that proves that your mind has a live and ever-changing filter, a live network, that changes how it views the world, what it lets in, what it blocks out. And if you program your mind correctly, and if you're clear about what you want to create, your mind will help you get what you want.

• 2:00:38Rich Roll?

  It's such a beautiful story, but I also think it's more than that because there's this quantum metaphysical piece to it because it's not just you with that notch and the Zeigarnik effect, it's also Gail.

• 2:00:55Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:56Rich Roll?

  And the intention that she put into that painting and whatever was going on with her, deep down, this knowingness that it was meant for you. And it took however long it took for those I-beams to swing and sync up so that that union could take place.

• 2:01:12Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 2:01:13Rich Roll?

  But what I make of this, and I'm interested in hearing a little bit more, hearing what you think, but like, there's just more going on.

• 2:01:20Mel Robbins?

  Yes, always.

• 2:01:21Rich Roll?

  Than we're able to perceive. And I find great comfort in that, especially when I'm stuck or when I'm in a place where I can't see the way forward. It helps remind me that this difficult situation is happening for me and not to me.

• 2:01:41Mel Robbins?

  And you know, I've mentioned this a couple of times. This is another example of that this is another form of high-fiving your mindset. And that is saying to yourself, there's something amazing that's coming. Like, as long as you stay in this mindset, I'll just keep my head down. I'll keep focused on what I want. I'll keep chipping away at it because something amazing is going to happen. This is preparing me for something. All those years, I never gave up believing that it was possible. If you divorce the timeline from something, you can always make a case that it's possible.

• 2:02:23Mel Robbins?

  And when you stay in that frame of mind, it changes how you show up. And it also changes the filter in your brain. It's why every time somebody said Vermont, or why whenever I picked up a heavy glass that was hand-blown, my mind immediately brought the painting from the back of my mind to the front of my mind. Your mind is designed to show you and help you and to keep things front and center if you are managing all of the basics. Now, if I had believed I was unworthy, or undeserving, or whatever, which I did in other areas of my life for sure, but for whatever reason, this painting, I kept an

• 2:03:07Mel Robbins?

  open mind and I never, ever, ever thought I didn't deserve it or wasn't worthy of it, because the second you go there, your mind's like, oh, it's not important anymore.

• 2:03:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it would have been lost. A million things would have happened before even the opportunity to call Gail, which you never would have made that call.

• 2:03:25Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 2:03:26Rich Roll?

  Because you wouldn't have felt worthy and you would have felt like you were wasting her time. So I think the power is in this idea that when you lodge into your brain a certain possibility and you hold on to it, you create...

• 2:03:40Rich Roll?

  A frequency and a state of being that allows the possibility to exist for it to happen. Short of that, it's not happening, right? And it's not that, it's not like toxic positivity where it's like, "Well, I believe it's gonna happen, so it's gonna happen." You're putting yourself in a position for the outcome to go favorably for you.

• 2:04:00Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and I think-

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  On somebody else's timeline. I mean, this took 20 years or whatever, right?

• 2:04:05Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, it was like 11 years.

• 2:04:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, whatever.

• 2:04:08Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, and I think that even bigger is all of the, not my research, but research by people way smarter than me, on how this reticular activity system in your brain is designed to bring in information or block it out. And so, just like there's a default, a negativity bias, a confirmation bias, you can actively make sure that your filter, this live network, that's like a hairnet on your brain, deciding what comes in, what goes out. There's only four things that come in and out of your brain: your name, any threat, any sign that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else, because everybody's had that, "Who are you looking at?" I get a sense of that.

• 2:04:53Mel Robbins?

  And four, whatever your brain believes is important to you. That fourth one is where the treasure is. Because when you get intentional about what's important to you, your reticular activity system is already paying, always paying attention. I'll give you an example. You've shopped for a car, right? And the second, you're like, "Oh, I wanna get the new Bronco." You see them everywhere.

• 2:05:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:05:20Mel Robbins?

  Everywhere. You know why? You told your brain, "That's important to me." So, your brain's like, "Okay, block out the Hondas, let in the Broncos."

• 2:05:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you use the red Acura example in the book, and then this idea of seeing hearts everywhere.

• 2:05:33Mel Robbins?

  Yes, so this is another little sticky tool that sounds super stupid, but this is the key to kind of experimenting in an interesting way with just how quickly you can change the filter of your brain. Starting tomorrow, after you high-five yourself in the mirror, I want you to play a little game. Look for a naturally occurring heart shape. Could be a rock, could be the shape in a cappuccino, could be a stain in the floor of your garage. It could be anything. And what you're doing is you're telling your mind, "I want to see a heart shape." And your mind will literally start to filter the world for it. And when you see it, this is how you can amplify the exercise in terms of changing the network and patterns in your mind. Just take a moment and be like, "Oh, my God, I found it."

• 2:06:18Mel Robbins?

  Like, kind of like let that, "Oh, scavenger hunt, I win, the universe put this here for me" effect happen. And what will start to happen, because you'll see it all over my story, is you'll start to see hearts everywhere. And the reason why I want you to start with this heart game is because you won't do anything I'm telling you to do until I can prove to you that it actually works. And when I can prove to you, either through the car example or through this heart rock example, that you can in real time change what your brain shows you, that you normally walk by, you will start to realize that you can use that to your advantage. If you start to treat yourself every morning in a way that shows your brain that I love

• 2:07:00Mel Robbins?

  myself, I support myself, I encourage myself, I put myself first, your brain will start to show you other examples of that throughout the day. Because right now, the opposite is happening.

• 2:07:12Rich Roll?

  Right. You just find examples of why you're a piece of shit, or unworthy, or...

• 2:07:17Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. Yeah, like, for example, my daughter was like, you know, beating herself up. And if she looks in the mirror and trashes herself, if she misses the dentist appointment, she goes, "See, I can't do anything right. I missed the dentist appointment, too. I don't have that story about myself, because I've been practicing the high-five habit." And so, I miss the dentist appointment, and I'm like, "Oh, shoot. I need to get better at planning. I'll call him and apologize and reschedule." I don't take it to the "I'm a shitty person" level.

• 2:07:45Rich Roll?

  Right. It seems like tiny little things, like, "Oh, the dentist appointment missed," or whatever. But those associations, when you string them out over the course of even a single day, imagine what the experience is, you know, the difference in your daily experience. I mean, when you talk about like sliding doors. That leads to so many unforeseeable outcomes that you can't predict. And if you do that every day for a year, what does your life look like? What are some of the decisions that you're going to make or not make based upon practicing like a profound level of self-love?

• 2:08:24Mel Robbins?

  I think that that's why it's so hard to change. It's the aggregate effect of all those small, little negative thoughts that keep you feeling like, why even bother?

• 2:08:38Rich Roll?

  Well, on some level, we're addicted to those thought patterns. They are doing something for us. In a perverted way, they're providing a sense of comfort.

• 2:08:47Mel Robbins?

  I actually don't think that we're addicted to them at all.

• 2:08:49Rich Roll?

  You don't think so?

• 2:08:50Mel Robbins?

  No, I have a much more kind of clinical opinion about it. I think our brains love patterns. That's it.

• 2:08:56Rich Roll?

  Just give it a different pattern?

• 2:08:58Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. We've made the mistake of making our patterns personal. They're not. They're just a pattern. You've had a pattern of thinking this stupid shit for a long time. And if it's not working for you, you have to break the pattern because patterns repeat.

• 2:09:11Rich Roll?

  But addiction in the strictest definition, meaning you just keep doing the same stupid shit over and over again, even though you're getting bad outcomes?

• 2:09:21Mel Robbins?

  Got it. In that definition, then yes, I agree with you. I want to say one other thing, if we have time. I don't know even where we are with time.

• 2:09:28Rich Roll?

  We're going to add this shortly, but go for it.

• 2:09:31Mel Robbins?

  This was a really profound piece of research that we stumbled into from Dr. Judy Willis, leading neuroscientist and big researcher that we talked to in this book. And it was something that I had never fully understood. And so, one of the high-five habits is what I call giving your heart a high-five. And this, in many ways, I think, is just as profound as high-fiving your reflection and just the depth of research that goes into explaining why it has such a profound impact in terms of how you relate to yourself. But high-fiving your heart is putting your hands kind of right on your heart,

• 2:10:13Mel Robbins?

  one on top of the other, and saying, "I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm loved."

• 2:10:20Mel Robbins?

  And I started doing this when the pandemic hit and I started to wake up to a wave of anxiety. And one of the things that we learned in writing this book is that the first thing that you need to be able to do before your brain can even engage in new patterns of thinking is to settle your nervous system. So, you know, we wrote a bunch about the vagus nerve, but when you put your hands over your heart first thing in the morning and give your heart a high five and say, "I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." First of all, it's true because if you can say those words, you're okay, you're safe, you're loved. But secondly, it tones what's called the vagus nerve, which I know you talk about on this

• 2:11:05Mel Robbins?

  show, that is the secret to switching between your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system. So if you're somebody like me who has lived your life on edge, if you grew up in a chaotic household, if you've experienced trauma, if you constantly feel like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, if you wake up and the first thought is, "I've done something wrong, someone's mad at me," I want you to try this other high five habit by high fiving your heart. You can say it 15 times if you have to. "I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." It will soothe your nervous system and settle it because you cannot have new thoughts or

• 2:11:46Mel Robbins?

  learn new behavior if your nervous system is on edge or on hyper alert. And it makes sense. If somebody were to run in here and like suddenly like come in here with a gun and rob you, would you be able to do a math problem at the same time?

• 2:12:03Rich Roll?

  No. And if you're jittery or anxious, try reading a book. It's not, you're not going to be able to really comprehend anything that you're reading.

• 2:12:11Mel Robbins?

  Correct. And so this is one of these other things that builds. You learning how to soothe yourself, you learning how to calm a weary nervous system so that you are able to receive the benefits of being able to raise your hand in the mirror. You know, we have, I don't name her in the book, but there's a person in this book that we write about that is using these tools in a domestic violence shelter. And one of the things that I love about learning how to Fulfill your deepest emotional needs for yourself is that even when, and these are her words, not mine, you know, she wrote and said, you know, Mel, here I am in a situation

• 2:12:55Mel Robbins?

  where I have nothing. I am starting over for real, but these tools are reminding me that at least I have myself.

• 2:13:02Rich Roll?

  Beautiful. I think that's a good place to end it.

• 2:13:07Mel Robbins?

  I could talk to you forever.

• 2:13:09Rich Roll?

  I know. We have to five, four, three, two, one in order to just end the podcast.

• 2:13:14Mel Robbins?

  Yes, we do.

• 2:13:16Rich Roll?

  I adore you. I love you. You're so powerful and I think, you know, such a service to humanity with everything that you do. And I just, I love the conversation. So, thank you for being here today.

• 2:13:28Mel Robbins?

  Thanks.

• 2:13:29Rich Roll?

  I appreciate it. The new book is The High Five Habit, available everywhere when we publish this podcast. There's a picture of Mel in the back in front of the painting.

• 2:13:39Mel Robbins?

  That's right.

• 2:13:40Rich Roll?

  That we told the story about. Everybody go pick it up. It's on Audible also, right? As an audiobook?

• 2:13:47Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:48Rich Roll?

  And also, you've got this high five challenge thing, right?

• 2:13:50Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah. Join me and Rich. The High Five Challenge. It's a five day, totally free to do the challenge. I'm getting five million people to wake up five mornings in a row and high.

• 2:14:02Rich Roll?

  Just five million?

• 2:14:03Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, just five million and start their day by high fiving themselves in the mirror. And every day, there's video pep talk, deeper dive into things like self-confidence or self-esteem. And what's really cool is it's powered by something called Growth Day. And that allows you to be part of a community of people. You can upload photos, get cheered on by lots of other people. But more importantly, you won't be alone, standing in your bathroom in your underwear, doing this cheesy thing. You'll have me supporting you and millions of other people. So, come to the High Five Challenge.

• 2:14:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, where do they go to? Highfivechallenge.com?

• 2:14:37Mel Robbins?

  Yep, you can. Or Rich is going to provide a link. And if you end up joining Growth Day, you might get a kickback to Rich and support the podcast.

• 2:14:46Rich Roll?

  Right. Some kind of affiliate thing? All right. Well, you can go to highfivechallenge.com if you want to support the podcast. It looks like there's some kind of, I don't know, swing back my way. If you do that, I'll put that link up.

• 2:14:56Mel Robbins?

  Only if they end up staying with the app. The challenge is free. The challenge is free.

• 2:15:01Rich Roll?

  Awesome. And don't be a stranger. Come back and do this with me again sometime.

• 2:15:05Mel Robbins?

  Anytime. You ask. Five, four, three, two, one. I'll be there. High five, baby.

• 2:15:08Rich Roll?

  Five, four, three, two, one. Peace.

• 2:15:10Mel Robbins?

  High five.

• 2:15:24Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting

• 2:16:09Rich Roll?

  the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder. Graphic and social media assets courtesy

• 2:16:51Rich Roll?

  of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Thanks.

• 2:17:36Mel Robbins?

  Thank you very much.