The High 5 Habit & The Secret To Motivation w/ Mel Robbins EP 1170

Today’s guest is Mel Robbins. Mel is a best-selling author, tv host and motivational speaker. She’s one of the leading voices in personal development and transformation. In her global phenomenon The 5 Second Rule, she taught millions of people around the world the five second secret to motivation. Now she’s back with another simple, proven tool you can use to take control of your life in her new book, The High 5 Habit. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to check out our two previous interviews. You can find those in the show notes!In this episode we discuss how to learn to love yourself, how to stop engaging in negative self talk, why Mel thinks everyone is using the law of attraction incorrectly, what we get wrong about jealousy, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1170Check out Mel's Challenge: www.lewishowes.com/melDaymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,170 with Mel Robbins.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:27Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone. Today's guest is Mel Robbins, and Mel is a good friend of mine, who is a bestselling author, TV host, and motivational speaker. She's one of the leading voices in personal development and transformation. In her global phenomenon, The Five Second Rule, she taught millions of people around the world the five-second secret to motivation. Now she's back with another simple proven tool you can use to take control of your life in her new book, The High Five Habit. And if you enjoy this episode, make sure you check out our two previous interviews, and you can find those in the show notes, linked on Apple Podcast. But in this episode, we discuss how to learn to love yourself, how to stop engaging in negative self-talk that so many people do in the world, why

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  Mel thinks everyone is using the law of attraction incorrectly, what we get wrong about jealousy, and so much more. This is a powerful one. Make sure you share this with your friends, post it on social media, make sure to tag me and Mel Robbins as well to let me know that you're listening to this. And also, quick reminder to follow the School of Greatness, as well as give us a rating and review. If you're enjoying this at any moment, just let us know what part you enjoy the most by leaving a rating and review over on Apple Podcast. And today's Fan of the Week is Christina over on Apple Podcast Reviews. She wrote, "I only wish I had come across this podcast sooner. I'm listening to the episode with Robert Cialdini about the psychology of persuasion, and I'm smiling to my ears.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  Excited to implement these techniques and one day get interviewed about my own success story." Smiley face, wink. So, thanks again to Christina for being the Fan of the Week. We appreciate you. And in just a moment, the one and only Mel Robbins.

• 2:13Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to School of Greatness. Very excited about my guest. Mel Robbins in the house. Starting off with a high five because you have the high five habit, which is a simple technique to take control back of your life. And you were just talking about how you never truly learned how to love yourself in your own skin. And you started this daily ritual, this habit of high fiving yourself in the mirror.

• 2:39Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  I mean, you've lived a pretty full life right now, but you feel like really you've never truly learned how to love yourself, but now you feel like you know how to?

• 2:49Mel Robbins?

  Yes, I do.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  Why did you not know how to love yourself in the first place?

• 2:55Mel Robbins?

  Oh, that's a big question. I think that most of us are not taught how to love ourselves just for being alive.

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  For existing.

• 3:04Mel Robbins?

  For existing, thank you.

• 3:06Lewis Howes?

  It's always like we have to accomplish something.

• 3:07Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  Then we can get love.

• 3:09Mel Robbins?

  Yes, it's the same thing with happiness. Like you're chasing it and you think that if you achieve something, you're going to get it. And you also, or at least I, felt the most loved when I was little, when I was achieving something. And you know, I think that most parents kind of fall into this camp. And it's really interesting to write a book about this and sort of trace back how we go from being little teeny babies that would crawl up to a mirror and put our hands up and kiss ourselves and love the sight of ourselves, to being a self-loathing adult that stands in front of a mirror and either ignores or criticizes your very existence. And I believe that a lot of this has to do with the fact

• 3:54Mel Robbins?

  that so much of what you learn as a kid is if you do what I tell you to do, then I'll like you, then I'll love you. And so much of your existence becomes complying, fitting in, not making people angry. You learn how to sort of go in and out of spaces, belong to groups, make sure people like you, and you stop. Focusing on how you were born, which is looking in a mirror and liking yourself. So my formula for being somebody that was worthy of love is, well, if I'm accomplishing all this stuff, then I'm lovable. If this person over here that I love loves me back, then I'm lovable. If somebody likes me, then I'm lovable.

• 4:37Mel Robbins?

  Notice where all the sources of love were coming from? Outside. But I never really understood, how do you learn how to put yourself first? How do you learn how to love yourself, Lewis? How do you do that? We know we need to, but the question is, how?

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  So how'd you learn how to unlearn it? And then, I guess, relearn how to love yourself?

• 5:03Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so, you know, this is kind of my brand of advice. It's gotta be incredibly stupid on the surface. It's gotta be so simple, it's really implausible that it works. And once you start unpacking it, it has to have a crazy bananas amount of scientific proof and real-life proof in people's lives to prove why it works. So I'll tell you the story first behind the high-five habit. Because I did not set out and go like, "Okay, I've written the five-second rule book, I need to come up with another five." I have been toiling away with what book to write for nearly five years. So it's been five years since I've had a book in print.

• 5:43Mel Robbins?

  And I had this random morning where there's a lot going on in my life. I'm not going to get into it because it's a boring story, but I was just having a really hard time in my life. And I woke up, got out of bed, I made my bed like I always do, I walked into the bathroom, I'm standing there brushing my teeth, and I catch my reflection in the mirror.

• 6:08Mel Robbins?

  And my first thought is, "God, you look like hell." Seriously.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Mel Robbins?

  And I know women in particular can relate to this, but what a lot of people don't realize is you guys are incredibly hard on yourselves, too. And so as I go, "God, you look like hell," I start then cataloging all of the things that are wrong with my appearance. I'm like, "Your gray hair is coming in, you've got stripes on your neck, one of your boobs is lower than the other, you know, you look exhausted." And then as soon as you have a negative thought or a self-criticism, it's sort of like lint in a dryer. Once you start collecting it, it just keeps on collecting it. So now I'm thinking, not about how horrible I look, or how tired I look, now I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do. I start going, "Oh, my gosh, I got up a little too late, and I've got a Zoom call in, eight minutes, I don't even have a bra on yet, the dog needs to be walked."

• 6:57Mel Robbins?

  And I could feel my energy going down. Like, I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Overwhelmed, uncertain. You know, it doesn't even matter what was going on in my life at that time, because I think it's a universal feeling to feel overwhelmed by your life at times.

• 7:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:21Mel Robbins?

  And so, here I am, a motivational speaker.

• 7:25Lewis Howes?

  Unmotivated.

• 7:26Mel Robbins?

  Unmotivated, uncaffeinated, no bra on, standing there in my underwear with my dog at my feet. I don't know what came over me.

• 7:36Mel Robbins?

  But as cheesy as it sounds, I just raised my hand and gave the tired, haggard woman in the mirror a high five.

• 7:50Mel Robbins?

  And it didn't change my life, like, right then and there, but something shifted. Like, I felt a little lighter. I felt like I wasn't alone. I felt like, okay, you know, this moment in your life is hard, but you can do this well. And I went on with my day. So the second day, I woke up, and this is when things started to really kind of churn in my mind. The first thing that I noticed was this. So I wake up, Louis, and I make my bed, and I realized I was looking forward to that moment in the mirror where I was gonna see myself. Now, look, I'm 52 years old. I will probably have a hot flash during the

• 8:34Mel Robbins?

  middle of this interview at some point. I'm a lot older than you.

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  Just don't eat lobster.

• 8:38Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah. I had a really allergic reaction the last time we were together. Wow. But I have spent the first 45 years of my life either criticizing the woman in the mirror or ignoring her. And this was the first time that I could remember that I was actually looking forward to seeing myself. Sort of like, you know, when I was coming here today, you and I are very good friends. As I was walking into the building, I'm feeling excited to see you. And it wasn't like I was feeling excited to see myself. Like, I'm not like, "Yeah!" Because I got a lot of crap going on in my life, but I felt a little bit like I'm about to see a friend. And so that second morning, I high-fived myself again. And again,

• 9:22Mel Robbins?

  I feel something shift. I feel a little, just a little lightness in the mood, and I go on with my day. So the third morning, I do it again. And again, like, lightness. And so I keep doing it, keep doing it. Couple weeks go by, and now I'm starting to feel a little bit of momentum. And I'm really enjoying it. I have no idea what the hell is going on. I haven't even done this in front of my husband, Chris, yet, because, let's be honest, standing in front of a mirror.

• 9:49Lewis Howes?

  High-fiving yourself.

• 9:50Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, like, come on, how pathetic does it get? You're like, it's really, you're like, that bad. So I snap a photo of myself. I've got my retainer in, I got bed head. Like, I'm not looking glamorous. I did not expect this to be the photo that would ignite a movement. And within an hour, I posted on my story on Instagram, within an hour, at least 100 people tagged me. All over the world, people high-fiving the mirror with their kids, people on a submarine, high-fiving it in the military, people MMA, like, just... And I thought, okay, wait a minute.

• 10:23Mel Robbins?

  Maybe I'm not the only one that needs a little boost in the morning. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one that is missing a sense of encouragement and control and confidence in an overwhelming moment in my life. Maybe there's something here. And then the messages started to come in. Whoa, Mel. Like, I have been using this for five days. This woman wrote to us, Louis. She's had body dysmorphia for 20 years. Has not been able to look at herself in the mirror. Five days of doing this high five. And she said, "I can look at myself and I even see beyond the body. I see the person. And I can grin."

• 11:06Mel Robbins?

  We had a woman who wrote to us who said that she was in a domestic violence shelter. She had escaped a very abusive relationship. She had seen me talking at our friend Jamie Kern Lima's event. She started doing the high five thing. She DMs us and she says that, you know, "I have childhood trauma. I've just been in a physically abusive relationship. I've lost everything. I'm in a domestic violence shelter. What this high five in the mirror is teaching me is that I still have myself."

• 11:36Mel Robbins?

  And so that was when I said, "I gotta figure out what's going on." And I started to unpack the research. And the research around this simple ritual. I love that you called it a ritual because I want people to habit stack this with brushing their teeth.

• 11:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:50Mel Robbins?

  This is so life-changing. It's so simple. The science here is like, you can't believe it. And once I unpack it, you're gonna be like, "I can't believe how cool this thing is."

• 12:03Lewis Howes?

  So what's the science say?

• 12:05Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so the science. Let's start with the first thing. So the first thing is that when you first try it, okay,

• 12:13Mel Robbins?

  you will not be able to raise your hand and high five yourself and be like, "You suck, Mel." Or, "Today's gonna be terrible." And there's a reason for that. And the reason is that for your entire life, you have given other people high fives. So when you give a high five or you receive one, what is a high five? Just the gesture and what does this communicate? If we do this to each other?

• 12:35Lewis Howes?

  Nice job, good work. You're doing amazing. Yeah, keep it up.

• 12:38Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I believe in you. I love you. Let's go. If you blow a shot and you gotta get back in the game, a high five's like shake it off. You can win.

• 12:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 12:46Mel Robbins?

  And so all of that lifetime of high fiving other people and the messaging associated with it is programmed right here in your subconscious brain.

• 12:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:58Mel Robbins?

  There's a field of study called neurobics, which is about...

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  Neurobics.

• 13:02Mel Robbins?

  I didn't make that up. It's interesting. Physical movement plus new neurological activity. When you marry an unexpected physical movement with new neurological activity, it's the fastest way to forge new neural pathways in your brain.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 13:20Mel Robbins?

  Okay? We know the example, you've covered this on your show, of brushing with the wrong hand and thinking positive thoughts. And the reason why that works is because when you're brushing with the wrong hand, it's unexpected. Your brain doesn't expect it. So instead of drifting off about the fact that you need to walk the dog, you have to focus. So your prefrontal cortex is engaged. You're not used to high fiving your own reflection. So it's an unexpected physical movement that then activates all of the positive programming in your subconscious. So when you raise your hand and you high five, your tired self, Louis, what happens is all of the messaging with this, the high five, "I believe in you. I love you. I celebrate you. You got this. Keep going. Come on."

• 14:04Mel Robbins?

  It actually fuses with your frickin' reflection.

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 14:07Mel Robbins?

  It's impossible to criticize yourself.

• 14:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Mel Robbins?

  Your brain won't allow it because it's not wired that way when you're making that motion.

• 14:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:15Mel Robbins?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to say, "You suck. You don't matter to anything."

• 14:19Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 14:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Mel Robbins?

  You can't. You can't. And so this lifetime of positive subconscious programming associated with high-fiving other people gets fused with your own reflection in this ritual. That's just the beginning, okay? That's just the beginning. The second thing that starts to happen that's really interesting. So, you know, we've had a ton of people do this, obviously, around the world. Super easy idea. It's spreading around the world. We start interviewing people about what's going on, and this is what we notice. We notice that one of two things happen when you first try this. So here's how I want everybody to try it. You're gonna go into the bathroom and, you know, do it before or after you brush your teeth. And that's important because I want you to make this a ritual that's part of your morning routine. And so we need to stack it with something you already do.

• 15:05Mel Robbins?

  And you're gonna stand there for a minute, and I want you to look at yourself. Now that, right alone, most of us don't do. Look at yourself. And I want you to just think about the day ahead. This is based on more research. So, recent studies show, from the University of Florida, that if you take just a minute and you set an intention about how the day is gonna go, about who you're gonna be, how you're gonna show up, what's the one thing that kinda matters to you to really make progress on? If you just kinda set that intention, who am I gonna be today? How am I gonna show up today? Even if it's a hard day, how are you gonna show up? And then you raise your hand and you seal it. Research shows just setting the intention alone changes your mood. It boosts your productivity.

• 15:50Mel Robbins?

  It increases your ability to make an impact on other people. And so when you seal it with this high five, it becomes this ritual of setting an intention for the day and also silencing the critic and reprogramming the default setting about how you see yourself, whether or not you believe in yourself. And you leave that bathroom feeling like the wind is at your back. Now, when people do this for the first time, so you're gonna stand there tomorrow and you're gonna go, "Okay, Mel Robbins and Lois. Jesus, I'm sitting here, brushed my teeth. Okay, this is stupid." This is, you're gonna just start rejecting it, I guarantee you. This is, the coolest stuff, you're gonna have the biggest resistance to.

• 16:34Mel Robbins?

  And so, for those of you that just raise your hand and do it, you're gonna immediately be like, "Why have I not been doing this?"

• 16:41Mel Robbins?

  It feels good to be encouraged and supported.

• 16:44Lewis Howes?

  To high vibe yourself.

• 16:45Mel Robbins?

  Yes. Why have I not had my own back? Why do I stand here and criticize myself? Why do I allow this moment, every single morning, to be a moment where life takes over and I drift into autopilot? Why am I not taking this moment for me to build a partnership with myself?

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Mel Robbins?

  The second group of people, and this is the larger group.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:09Mel Robbins?

  Resist it. And this is really interesting. And the reason why you resist it, and the reason why it feels weird, is because you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  From yourself or from others?

• 17:27Mel Robbins?

  Period.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Why do we think we're not worthy of celebration?

• 17:33Mel Robbins?

  Well, for people that grew up in a chaotic, violent, or whatever household, it was your lived experience.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Mel Robbins?

  I think that for many of us, we look back on our lives and, you know, the cognitive negative bias has this focus on the things that went wrong. And so you begin to tell yourself a story about your life that is basically a pyramid of all the things that you regret, of all the things that you wish had done over, of all the things that you don't like about yourself. And so you drag that with you into the bathroom every morning. And you stare at the mirror and you see somebody that has screwed up. You see somebody who's not where you're meant to be. You see somebody who doesn't have the number on the scale, or the car that you wanted, or the job that you had hoped for, or the relationship that you had always dreamed about.

• 18:26Mel Robbins?

  And so standing there, you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration. And it's this deep belief, you know, we talk a lot in the personal development space of, "Oh, I'm not good enough." I actually think that's the polite thing that people say. I believe that people have a much more horrible way of talking to themselves.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Like what?

• 18:48Mel Robbins?

  I can't say it on TV, but I can say it on the internet. "I'm a piece of [BLEEP].

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Mel Robbins?

  I'm worthless. No one will ever love me. I screwed up my life. I'm a failure. I'll never amount to anything."

• 19:02Mel Robbins?

  It's too late. I'm a bad person. Like, I think people actually say this to themselves.

• 19:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and they say it over and over again.

• 19:10Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 19:11Lewis Howes?

  Daily.

• 19:11Mel Robbins?

  Yes, yes. And just like ruts on a dirt road, it starts to wear in your brain and it becomes the familiar path. And so you stand in front of the mirror and, you know, I'm telling you, raise your hand and let all that positive programming you've given to everybody else. We are amazing at celebrating everybody else. We cheer for our favorite sports teams. We buy tickets to, you know, our favorite musicians. We throw birthday parties for people. We take on extra work for our colleagues. We help our family members out and our friends out. But when it comes to supporting ourselves, we don't know how to do it. In fact, there's a lot of people that think it's selfish to put yourself first, or that you're arrogant if you're due.

• 19:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:54Mel Robbins?

  I'm here to tell you, it is essential to your well-being, to your fulfillment, to your happiness, all of it. So if you're feeling resistance, you're either going to feel it because you already have a deep story that you don't deserve it because of your track record, your past, because of what's happening in your life. Or you're gonna feel resistance because you have been trained to believe that you only deserve that kind of stuff when you're winning. Like, if I don't have that car, I don't get the high five. If I didn't get that promotion, I didn't deserve it. If I am not in a loving relationship, I don't deserve to be celebrated because I'm not actually achieving or doing the things that warrant that.

• 20:38Mel Robbins?

  I'm here to tell you, I'm on a mission to make every human being realize that if you wake up in the morning and you're breathing, and you're standing in front of that mirror, and you have survived the stuff you have survived, and you are still waking up and trying to do better, you not only deserve a high five.

• 20:58Mel Robbins?

  You need it. Because what we also know based on the research is that empowerment, support, kindness, love, celebration, it is the single most motivating force on the planet. Tough love is a bunch of baloney. What really fuels people, particularly when you're going through a challenge, is feeling celebrated, seen, and supported, and the research bears it out.

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I can think of the times when I was with, on sports teams where I had great, loving, encouraging coaches. It made me want to work harder from a more energized place, an abundant energy. But when I had the coaches that would just degrade you and put you down and call your names in front of your teammates and make you feel bad, it would drive me to try to be better, but it was always like harder. And I never felt satisfied. I never felt fulfilled. I always felt like even when I accomplished something, it still wasn't good enough.

• 21:53Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Lewis Howes?

  And then I repeat that pattern, like, okay, I'm gonna accomplish, but it's not enough to feel loved. And so I keep accomplishing in order to feel loved, but I still don't love myself because it's not good enough.

• 22:03Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Lewis Howes?

  So I'm gonna go for the next thing.

• 22:05Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  It's funny, because I have a photo on my phone that my therapist told me to do this exercise like eight months ago. Which was a strategy for me to reclaim the love for myself. So I have a photo of my childhood self. I don't know if people can see this on YouTube.

• 22:24Mel Robbins?

  Look how cute you are.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  But a photo of me, this is probably when I was like five or six, maybe I was seven. But something that I've tried to do and really been integrating my life is to reconnect with the child where I felt like I stopped loving myself.

• 22:39Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so let's talk about this right now. You ready? So let me talk about this image. So, let's talk about the Lewis this age. Standing in front of a mirror.

• 22:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And what I do is I stand in front of myself as a child. I imagine myself, but to do it, imagine looking at the mirror as yourself.

• 22:56Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 22:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Mel Robbins?

  Well, what I'm trying to say is when you were this age and you stood in front of the mirror.

• 23:02Mel Robbins?

  You had a totally different relationship with yourself because you still loved yourself.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Mel Robbins?

  You still thought that you were a great kid and you wanted all the things that the adult Louis wants.

• 23:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:12Mel Robbins?

  You want to feel loved, you want to feel seen, you want to feel heard, you want to feel like you matter. And you, in seeing yourself when you were this age, felt those things for yourself.

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, absolutely. And somewhere along the way, you lost it.

• 23:25Mel Robbins?

  Correct. And so what I'm trying to say is that when you stand in front of this mirror, exactly what Louis is talking about, when you've got coaches that scream at you and degrade you and, and, you know, sure, it makes you run faster, but it leaves its mark.

• 23:40Lewis Howes?

  It does.

• 23:40Mel Robbins?

  It leaves its mark. And so there's research, so let me talk about why this is so motivating, particularly because so many of your audience love sports, right? So they did a study where they looked at NBA teams. And what they wanted to take a look at was, does fist bumps, backpats, some high fives make a difference in a team winning? Touch, right?

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  Didn't they do like a 2020 special or something?

• 24:04Mel Robbins?

  I don't know, but if they did, I need to watch it.

• 24:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:06Mel Robbins?

  But so like the power of touch, but I think it's deeper. It's the power of encouragement.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 24:11Mel Robbins?

  And so what they found is that in the study, at least, in the years that they looked at, you could take a look at the teams that made it to the championships in the NBA, go all the way back to the preseason, and those were the teams that had the most number of fist bumps and backpats and high fives. Yep. And the same was true about the teams that were the lowest in the league at the end of the season. They had the least amount of fist bumps, high fives and touch. Why?

• 24:38Lewis Howes?

  They're the least encouraging.

• 24:39Mel Robbins?

  Correct. Those sorts of gestures build trust and partnership. I'm telling you, when you stand in front of a mirror and ignore yourself, you're like the losing NBA team.

• 24:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 24:51Mel Robbins?

  Selfish, on your own, isolated, you're not in partnership with the person you're staring at in the mirror. You don't have your own back because you're ignoring yourself.

• 25:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 25:01Mel Robbins?

  There's another study, and this one is, I think, even more powerful. So they did this study where they wanted to know what's the most motivating thing to help somebody get through a really big challenge. They divide, the researchers divide kids into three groups, right? And they gave each of the groups of kids very challenging problems to work through. And they wanted to measure, okay, how resilient, how long would they work, what were their attitudes like? And then they measured it based on, well, what form of praise or support are we going to give each one of these groups? And let's see what's the most empowering. Interesting. First group gets what we know to be the fixed mindset stuff. The praise was all verbal praise and it was simply about a trait.

• 25:45Mel Robbins?

  Louis, you are so smart. Louis, you know, you are a super student praising something that is just sort of a compliment about you. The second group of students working on a challenging problem got praise based on work ethic, so something in their control. Oh, Louis, you're working so hard. Louis, you got such good perseverance. Louis, you know, you're really like just grinding away over there. Good job. Those guys did better than Louis, you're smart. Louis, hardworking, better. The third group, the researchers simply walked up, did not say a word, and high-fived the kid. Really? That's it. That's it. That group, literally, exponentially more motivated, worked longer, worked through more challenging problems.

• 26:30Mel Robbins?

  Now here's the big question, why? Why would a simple high-five with no verbal praise be more empowering and motivating and inspiring and develop more resilience and confidence and motivation inside somebody? And the reason why is this. A high-five affirms your deepest fundamental needs. It's not just a gesture. When you high-five somebody, particularly somebody who has either blown the free throw shot, or is working on something difficult, or going through a really hard time, when you high-five them, you're saying, I see you. When you high-five them during a challenge, you actually are acknowledging, I know this is hard.

• 27:15Mel Robbins?

  So the person feels heard.

• 27:18Mel Robbins?

  And because it's one to one, and you have to be really intentional. Like if you and I go to high five, like we have to focus on it. That was a good one.

• 27:25Lewis Howes?

  That was good.

• 27:25Mel Robbins?

  If you miss it, what do you do?

• 27:27Lewis Howes?

  You gotta do it again.

• 27:28Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Mel Robbins?

  So there's an intentionality behind it, and that makes you feel like you're being affirmed as a unique individual.

• 27:37Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 27:38Mel Robbins?

  And so, all of those things are in that one gesture. Now, it goes even more. So, so there's even more here. So I was talking to our buddy, Dr. Daniel Amen, right? And so, one of the world's leading experts on brains. He's got like 60,000 brain scans.

• 27:53Lewis Howes?

  I think it's like 120,000.

• 27:54Mel Robbins?

  Oh, is it at this point?

• 27:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, some crazy, yeah.

• 27:56Mel Robbins?

  So, he was so excited about the high five habit. He completely geeked out. He's like, "Oh, my gosh, yes, yes, yes." He's like, "Yes, in aerobics, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes." So, we then, he said, "Let me tell you what else is going on, Mel." And I'm like, "Really? There's more?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "You know how when you do it, you, you said you felt like a little kind of boost in your mood?" He said, "Well, there are two things going on there." He said, "First of all, when you cross a finish line in a race, what do you do?"

• 28:23Lewis Howes?

  Put your hands up.

• 28:24Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. What do you do when your favorite team scores?

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  You high five someone?

• 28:27Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, you high five somebody. What do you do at a, at a musical concert? Yay! What do you do, you know, you're raising your hand in celebration when you high five somebody, or fist bump them, or put your arm around them. That raised arm gesture, in a positive sense, triggers your nervous system to tingle with celebration. It's the energy of celebration, even if you're going through something difficult. And even more, you get a dopamine drip when you do this. And so, part of the reason why you feel this kind of shift in your mood, and you feel a little bit of like, "Oh, okay, I, I can do, I can face this, I can do this, I got this," is because of the dopamine, it's because of the nervous system, and it's because of all of this positive programming associated with that gesture. Isn't that crazy?

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful. That's powerful. I mean, so what does someone do, though, if they just constantly have the negative self-talk in their mind that they're no good? Do they go in front of the mirror, you know, every 10 minutes and do this?

• 29:23Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  Or is there another strategy behind the negative self-talk?

• 29:26Mel Robbins?

  Well, okay, so first things first, definitely make this high five in the mirror a habit, okay? So, start practicing it. Give it five to 10 days and start to see what happens. The second thing that you can do with negative self-talk, okay, is you need to... Start to interrupt it. So the thing about negative self-talk is that it is typically something you've engaged in since you were yay high. And in addition to it being wired into your brain, it is also something that can get triggered by your nervous system in stressful situations. And so the first step, and we can talk more about the filter in your brain and how the

• 30:08Mel Robbins?

  filter in your brain is causing you to stay stuck in a lot of this negative self-talk and how to use your mind to help you. But the first step is you gotta do the awful part of getting self-aware

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:23Mel Robbins?

  of what the voice is saying. And the way that you do that, there's a couple techniques that you can use to create what researchers or psychologists call objectivity. You want to separate yourself from the voice.

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 30:37Mel Robbins?

  So you can do what Lewis is doing, he's writing down right now in a journal. You can keep just a little notebook with you and you can kind of catalog when your attitude tanks and what are you actually saying to yourself, okay?

• 30:48Lewis Howes?

  So should we write down all the things we're saying?

• 30:50Mel Robbins?

  You could.

• 30:50Lewis Howes?

  Negative about ourselves?

• 30:51Mel Robbins?

  You can, you can. I personally do it this way. I start to notice when I feel down or I start to notice when my energy drops. And then I tune into what I'm thinking about and if it's negative, I go five, four, three, two, one.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Mel Robbins?

  I literally notice, oh, you're sitting there thinking you're a bad person again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that somebody's mad at you again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you screw everything up again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you, that nothing ever works out for you. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you've blown it. Interesting. And then I go five, four, three, two, one, and I go, I'm not thinking about that. That's the most basic technique to use because what I want you to do, since this is like operating on autopilot, it's encoded right here. When you're not really thinking, this is what's running, kind of like the soundtrack of your life. When you just start to notice that you have a thought that's not helping you. You can't control that it popped up, but guess what you can do? You can smack it down.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Mel Robbins?

  And so I use the five-second rule, which we've talked about a lot on your show. Count backwards, five, four, three, two, one. The counting backwards awakens your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control. And then, the way to build distance, Louis, is say, "I'm not thinking about that." And here's why. You're so used to thinking this way, I can't just say, "Stop thinking you're fat and start thinking that you love your body."

• 32:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:15Mel Robbins?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:16Mel Robbins?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 32:18Mel Robbins?

  So you've gotta go, "Oh, there I am. I'm trashing the way that I look. I'm telling myself that I'm overweight, I look like, I'm hideous, nobody's gonna love me." Be like, "Five, four, three, two, one." I am not thinking about that.

• 32:30Mel Robbins?

  It's an act of defiance.

• 32:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 32:32Mel Robbins?

  See, I want you to go from these negative thought patterns to a more positive, empowering, high-five attitude.

• 32:41Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 32:42Mel Robbins?

  Because if you continue to live in, "I'm fat, I'm unworthy, no one's gonna love me, I've screwed up my life," that will be your life.

• 32:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:51Mel Robbins?

  And the trick on this is, I'm not saying, "Change your thoughts and unicorns appear."

• 33:00Mel Robbins?

  I'm saying, "Change your thoughts so you stop the 24/7 beat-down."

• 33:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:08Mel Robbins?

  And learn how to lift yourself up so that you can face the things that are going on in your life. And so that you can take the actions that you need to take to change your life. Because the reason why you're not changing is not because you're not capable. It's not because of the trauma, or your past, or anything else. It's because of the beat-down. That's why you're not changing.

• 33:33Lewis Howes?

  It's draining.

• 33:33Mel Robbins?

  It's draining. It's demoralizing. It is, and by the way, if you constantly are like, "I'm unlovable, I'm worthy, I'm this, I'm that," why on earth would you feel motivated, or do you think you deserve to change? If that's the thing in your mind.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 33:49Mel Robbins?

  It doesn't work. And so, pay attention. When you feel your energy go negative, you're like, "Oh, okay, what am I, oh, whoa, that's disgusting." Five, four, I'm not thinking about that. You don't have to insert anything else. Let's just practice shutting it the hell up.

• 34:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:03Mel Robbins?

  The second thing you can do is, once you kind of get good at interrupting it, I want you to, um, name, like, let's turn it into a character.

• 34:13Mel Robbins?

  So I did this with our son Oakley when he was struggling pretty profoundly with anxiety when he was in the fifth grade. He named his anxiety Oliver. And then we asked him to describe Oliver. And Oliver was like this pimply-faced kid that, what is that, The Diary of the Wimpy Kid kind of bully-looking kid? And whenever the negative worries and stuff would come up, he would literally, you could literally hear him go, "Oliver, shut up." And it is the ability, what's happening when you name it and picture the person, is that you're able to detach yourself from that voice in your mind that's talking.

• 34:57Mel Robbins?

  Because that voice is typically a caregiver that either talks to you that way, or talks to themselves that way, or some bully, or some trauma experience, or some nasty coach that beat this into your head. It's from somebody else. And so we want you to separate yourselves so you can be like, "Oh, that's what Oliver sounds like. That's not actually how I want to talk to myself."

• 35:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:18Mel Robbins?

  And so identifying it, interrupting it, and then you can get into the really incredible magic of rewiring your brain to work for you.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I think Ethan Cross, who's a psychologist out of the University of Michigan, has a book called Chatter, which is about all the different psychological strategies for eliminating the negative self-talk and improving the quality of your mind. And he says, "Start coaching yourself, just like you would have a great coach coaching you. Have someone, like a character in your mind, coaching you, celebrating you with your self-talk to help you kind of shift out of that by interrupt it, then coach yourself."

• 35:58Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, what would Lewis say to me? What would Mel say to me?

• 36:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:01Mel Robbins?

  And here's the tricky part of this. So the tricky part of this is that I personally think most mantras are also complete garbage. And the reason why I say that is because you don't friggin' believe them.

• 36:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:13Mel Robbins?

  So if you think you're worthless, you're never going to be able to stand in front of a mirror and change your life by going, "I'm worthy." Because your brain's like... No, you're not. We've been talking about this for your life. You're not worthy. You know what I'm saying? So you have to interrupt it. And if you're going to try to replace it, what you need to do are two things. Number one, you have got to come up with, I should have called it pathetic mantra, because it would have been easier to remember. In the book, I called it a meaningful mantra. We should just call it a pathetic mantra. You need to come up with something that's like, okay, you know, like if you're really like bad and you think you're a horrible person, like, don't make your mantra, "I'm amazing." Make your mantra like, "I'm doing the best I can."

• 36:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Mel Robbins?

  That's it.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  Something simple.

• 36:58Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, you can believe that, right? You can believe, "I'm trying. You know, I'm not meaning to screw up. I'm doing the best I can." Like, that I believe. And that's better than, "Boy..."

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  "I'm the best in the world right now."

• 37:11Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, no, you're never gonna believe that. Ever, ever, ever. Like, for example, if you struggle with, with health and weight and stuff, it's probably gonna be hard for you to stand in front of a mirror and be like, "I love my body," because you've been rejecting it. So instead, look at yourself in the mirror and use a meaningful mantra. "I deserve to feel healthy."

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:31Mel Robbins?

  And "I'm gonna treat myself in a way that proves it."

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Mel Robbins?

  That's it. That's different. It's different because it's believable. The only other thing that will change the way that you think is behavioral activation therapy. So there's a lot of the tools in this book that are grounded as a baseline in the body of research around behavioral activation therapy, which I know you talk about all the time on the show, which is basically, act like the person you want to become.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:01Mel Robbins?

  If you want to be more like Lewis, act like Lewis. Follow his morning routine. Take his advice. Interrupt the garbage Oliver in your head. Five or three, "I'm not talking to you, Oliver." What would Lewis say to me? How would Lewis talk to Lewis? And start to act like the person you want to become, and something interesting happens. And this is why the high five works, by the way, because it is an action. You are acting like somebody who believes in and loves themself.

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Mel Robbins?

  That's why it works.

• 38:33Lewis Howes?

  Moving to motion, don't just think only, but move.

• 38:36Mel Robbins?

  Yes. So when you see yourself, you know, we always talk about positive morning routines. Let's talk about negative ones, okay? Because your negative patterns are the reason why you have horrible self-talk.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:51Mel Robbins?

  Like, when I was in law school, I hated my life. My anxiety was out of control. I was out of control. I hated law school. And so my behavior actually reflected my state of mind. I would wake up hungover. I would immediately think, "Oh, my God, I'm late." I would then reach for a cigarette and light it. Then I would run around the apartment, getting dressed and trying to find everything, because nothing was organized. I would then quickly drive to Dunkin' Donuts, even though I had no time, to stop for a coffee. I'd get a big, old coffee with four sugars and two creams. Smoke another cigarette on the way, speeding my whole way there. Then I would sit in class, be panic-stricken about being called on. Same thing again. Then I would sit at lunch, pick at a salad, gossip with friends, avoid the homework.

• 39:35Mel Robbins?

  Then I would go to the library, procrastinate forever. Then I would drive home, split a bottle of wine with my roommate, fall asleep, wake up, repeat. When you see somebody's actions, you can typically predict just how bad they're trapped in their mind.

• 39:49Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 39:49Mel Robbins?

  But I think we all are. I mean, I think even people that have healthy habits don't have a healthy relationship with themselves. That your self-talk is ground zero. Because how you talk to yourself, what you think about yourself when you look in the mirror, that sort of default setting in your mind, jeez Louise. I mean, it makes me really sad, honestly. I gave my first speech in two years because of the pandemic, yesterday in Salt Lake. And there was a book line. And even though everybody had masks and they were six feet away, you could see the pain in people's eyes.

• 40:31Mel Robbins?

  The isolation, the sadness, the overwhelm, the feeling of uncertainty.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Mel Robbins?

  And I think that people are feeling way more uncertain and afraid than they're actually saying right now. That the sustained amount of change that we've been having to manage, it's too much, you know? It's a lot. And if you stand in front of the mirror... And you can't see somebody that's worth supporting through this, you're just gonna continue to go down. Because the one person that you spend your whole life with is you.

• 41:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:12Mel Robbins?

  And this is the relationship you need to be working on. Like, you wanna be loved? You better learn how to love yourself. You wanna feel worthy? Stop looking for it out there and treat yourself like you're worthy. How do you do that? Well, by pushing through the resistance and raising your head. Like, if you can't frickin' high-five your reflection...

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:35Mel Robbins?

  You can't do that. How the hell are you going to make things happen in your life? If you don't think you are worthy of support and celebration, particularly when life is hard.

• 41:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, how you gonna believe that other people are gonna do that for you as well? If you can't do it for yourself, why would other people?

• 41:54Mel Robbins?

  Well, actually, this is why people's relationships don't work out. Because you're looking outside yourself for the things you actually need.

• 42:01Lewis Howes?

  For validation.

• 42:02Mel Robbins?

  Correct. You are chasing people and seeking validation in romantic relationships. And that will end when you can stand in front of that mirror and validate yourself. When you build yourself up, when you support yourself, you show up totally differently for everybody else. When you know that you can have your own back, you're not gonna be looking for the validation from your boss or your friends or all these other things. People have problems with boundaries because they can't look themselves in the eye. So how the hell are they gonna look somebody else in the eye and say, "Actually, this doesn't work for me"?

• 42:34Lewis Howes?

  What about when things start to shift? And we start to see, "Oh, here's a great potential relationship I could get into, or I got a great job opportunity, or something's coming my way"? How do we learn to not self-sabotage the good things that come to us?

• 42:49Mel Robbins?

  So give me an example. Like, how have you self-sabotaged things in your life?

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  I can't think of a good answer. I don't think I really do that that much. But I know, I know that other people do, and it's a big issue. Maybe, I'm trying to think.

• 43:05Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so, I'll tell you.

• 43:06Lewis Howes?

  But if people get into like a good relationship.

• 43:08Mel Robbins?

  This is a really big answer, though. You ready?

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so now let's detour into the lane, we talked about this on the last time I was on. But let's detour into the lane of anxiety, of patterns and trauma. And talk about why people self-sabotage.

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:26Mel Robbins?

  People don't self-sabotage intentionally.

• 43:32Mel Robbins?

  Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Today, I'm gonna screw up my life."

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:38Mel Robbins?

  "That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna drink myself on the ground. I'm gonna cheat on my wife. I'm gonna embezzle for my company. I'm gonna lie to everybody about how I'm actually feeling. I'm gonna stop taking my meds. I'm gonna kick the dog." Like, nobody does that. What happens is people get triggered.

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  And they react.

• 43:56Mel Robbins?

  And then they fall into old patterns. And so what happens, I believe, in relationships, in particular, or jobs, where you're like, "This time, it's gonna be different," is it's different for the first three to six months when it's novel, and when you're intentional, and when everything counts.

• 44:17Lewis Howes?

  Then when you gotta face yourself.

• 44:19Mel Robbins?

  Then when it becomes like part of your life, you get lazy and you slip into old patterns. Or when the stakes get really high. Let's say you're somebody who had a parent die early, or your dad abandoned the family, and you're scared to love somebody. And so you fall deeply for somebody. And then what gets triggered is this tremendous fear that they're gonna leave.

• 44:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Mel Robbins?

  Because that's your lived experience. And if you go back to what you did as a child to cope with that fear that somebody's going to leave, that's the exact pattern that you will repeat as an adult. The only way to end this, or to try to get your arms around it, is to attack it holistically. Because so much of this happens at the subconscious level, and it also, it gets triggered first by your nervous system and you're not even aware of it.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:13Mel Robbins?

  And so there's a tool that I talk about in this book called "High Fiving Your Heart."

• 45:19Lewis Howes?

  Your heart.

• 45:19Mel Robbins?

  Your heart, yep. So you, you, uh, what you do, and, and I started doing this because I was having this incredible, uh,

• 45:32Mel Robbins?

  response from past trauma happened when the pandemic hit. So when the pandemic hit, uh, I started waking up feeling like something was terribly wrong. And I would, it would start in my ankles and it would flood up my legs and go all the way up my body and I would feel this wave come up. My immediate thought is something's wrong. And my heart would start to race and I'd feel this full-on like anxiety response. And I know what that is now. So I now know that the anxiety response of waking up, which so many people do, this is really actually very, very common.

• 46:12Lewis Howes?

  People wake up anxious.

• 46:14Mel Robbins?

  Yes, feeling like they're in trouble or something's wrong or something's about to go wrong.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's not good.

• 46:19Mel Robbins?

  Well, if you grew up in a chaotic household.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  That's normal.

• 46:22Mel Robbins?

  Yep. If you had a caregiver that gave you the silent treatment or had mental illness or had a drinking problem.

• 46:29Lewis Howes?

  Narcissistic.

• 46:29Mel Robbins?

  Abuse in your house, yep. You did wake up.

• 46:32Lewis Howes?

  Anxious.

• 46:33Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, because your anxiety, by the way, was trying to protect you. It was putting you in a state of being alert so that you were ready in case something happened. But for a ton of us, Louis, we have lived our whole lives with a dysregulated nervous system. That's what I've come to learn during the pandemic, that I have literally lived since probably the fourth grade with my nervous system never truly resetting back to a calm resting state. And so I started to wake up every morning in the pandemic, like so many people did. But, and I've always kind of had this sort of wake up and feeling like something's wrong, like, uh-oh, you know, Chris is mad. Like, my first thing is like, Chris is already up, he's meditating, he's angry that I've slept 15 minutes longer than him. Like, it's so stupid, you know, this is how we torture ourselves.

• 47:18Mel Robbins?

  But during the pandemic, it was like a full-on anxiety response. And so I started doing this thing where I would put my hands on my heart, like right in the center of my chest. I got big mitts, just like you, so you can kind of hit the whole thing. Take a deep breath and then I would say, I'm okay. I'm safe, I'm loved. If you can say those things, in this moment, it's true. You are okay. You are safe and you are loved, whether you're waking up in a mansion or a homeless shelter. And what would happen, as I was doing this, high-fiving my heart, is you're pressing on the vagus nerve. Like, that's what you're actually toning. It's the same thing that Wim Hof is teaching with the ice bath. You're toning your vagus nerve.

• 48:01Mel Robbins?

  And what the vagus nerve is, as you very well know, because you talk about on the show, is it's the switch between your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Fight or flight versus rest. So if you ever find yourself in a stressful state, put your, give your heart a high five. Put your hands on your heart, go, "I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved." Repeat it 111 times if you need to. What you'll feel is you'll feel your nervous system start to settle. You'll feel yourself come back into your body, you'll feel your mind slow down. And you will literally take control of your nervous system. It is unbelievable. And it's also really important because, you know, in researching this book, I talked to,

• 48:42Mel Robbins?

  you know, the acclaimed Dr. Judy Willis, who's an incredible neuroscientist. And she explained something I never knew, but it makes a lot of sense. If your nervous system is on edge, it's in a, like, alert state, you're dysregulated, it's impossible for your cognitive function of your brain to work. I can give you an example. If somebody were to bust in here with a gun and try to rob us, would you be able to do a math problem?

• 49:10Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 49:10Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 49:11Lewis Howes?

  Like, just thinking, "Safety."

• 49:12Mel Robbins?

  Yes, exactly.

• 49:14Lewis Howes?

  Saved my life.

• 49:15Mel Robbins?

  I can't, I, I bet the majority of people actually walk around with a nervous system that is on edge like that, particularly post-pandemic. And for me, the reason why, I've actually linked it all the way back. So when I was in the fourth grade, I was molested while I was sleeping by an older kid. And in the, um, kind of array of things that can happen in terms of sexual abuse, mine was very tame. Like, it was a one-time incident, it was a kid who was slightly older than me, it was confusing, not scary. I just possumed, disassociated, don't even remember how it ended. And for a long time, I didn't even remember it.

• 49:57Mel Robbins?

  And then I remembered it when I was 28 years old. And I believe that the reason why I have always woken up in a state on edge

• 50:08Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 50:09Mel Robbins?

  is because of that incident.

• 50:11Lewis Howes?

  Since the 4th grade?

• 50:12Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 50:13Mel Robbins?

  And the thing is, Louis, is that I, you know, the morning's a trigger. If you have that stored in your body, something happened to you, something happened to you, something's wrong, something's wrong, because something was wrong. And you don't have the tools, and no kid does, to smooth out your nervous system and heal the trauma, that trauma lives in your body.

• 50:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:36Mel Robbins?

  And so I believe most self sabotaging behavior that people continue to repeat is nothing but stored trauma, and your best ability to cope with it when it was happening.

• 50:50Lewis Howes?

  That's why we sabotage.

• 50:51Mel Robbins?

  Yes, so I don't think it's intentional. I really don't. Like even somebody who's diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, they don't know that they have that. Like they're not intent, like there's not, it's like such a programmed behavior, there's no, I'm gonna go do the, I'm in love with this person, let's go screw it up.

• 51:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:12Mel Robbins?

  That's not what happens. And this is also why I'm telling you, I know I'm crazy passionate about this topic, of this standing in front of the mirror and changing how you see yourself. If you don't get a hold of that story, I'm worthless, I'm unlovable, I screw everything up, I'm a bad person, I'm not good enough, nothing works out for me, if you don't change that and start cheering yourself forward, you will stay locked in these self sabotaging patterns, because you will act in a way that you believe it, subconsciously or unconsciously. I know, it's heavy. Oh, sorry, I keep sorry.

• 51:49Lewis Howes?

  It's all good, yeah. Man, so you're saying you're 52 right now, as you said?

• 51:56Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying I have a lot of work to do for the rest of my life?

• 52:00Mel Robbins?

  Well, I don't actually, I don't know. I don't know if you screwed up your life as much as I did. So I think it's like, and I don't know how much you torture yourself.

• 52:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:08Mel Robbins?

  I'm really good at torturing myself, or at least I used to be. And so back to your original question about learning to love yourself. I also think that even if you're wildly successful, whether it's successful in your relationship or successful at work, a lot of us, the more successful we become, the harder we are on ourselves. We harp on the things that aren't going right instead of really focusing on the things that are going well.

• 52:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we don't celebrate enough.

• 52:32Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  Just on to the next, or what could have been more perfect, or something like that.

• 52:36Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  What is that saying to ourselves when we don't celebrate the hard work we put in?

• 52:43Mel Robbins?

  You're not worthy of it. You haven't done enough. Even this amazing podcast that you have is enough, Louis. I'll high five you when, you know, I sell it for a hundred million dollars. I'll high five you, right? It rings true because it's true.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I'm not there yet. And somehow if I celebrate this, am I gonna get the big thing? Like, think about a marathon. So a marathon, I think life is a marathon. And if you've ever watched a marathon or run a marathon?

• 53:15Lewis Howes?

  I'm running one in a few months.

• 53:16Mel Robbins?

  Are you?

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  My first one.

• 53:17Mel Robbins?

  Oh, fantastic.

• 53:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm a little terrified.

• 53:19Mel Robbins?

  Why?

• 53:20Lewis Howes?

  You've done it?

• 53:20Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I've run four of them. Well, run is a very aggressive.

• 53:23Lewis Howes?

  Jog, run?

• 53:24Mel Robbins?

  Sorta.

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Mel Robbins?

  Like, you know, if over five hours could be, you know.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Okay, you finish.

• 53:29Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I finish. I walk through the, you know, the water things. But you're a big guy, so it might be hard on your knees.

• 53:35Lewis Howes?

  That's what I'm saying, yeah.

• 53:36Mel Robbins?

  So here's the thing that you're gonna love about it.

• 53:38Lewis Howes?

  Okay, tell me.

• 53:39Mel Robbins?

  The entire time you're running, spectators are high fiving you.

• 53:44Lewis Howes?

  It gets you through it?

• 53:45Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 53:46Lewis Howes?

  That's what I keep saying. I'm like, I feel like running alone is so not fun.

• 53:50Mel Robbins?

  If you can do a 13-mile training run.

• 53:53Lewis Howes?

  I did a 13-mile, yeah.

• 53:55Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  A few months ago.

• 53:56Mel Robbins?

  Then you can run a marathon.

• 53:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 53:58Mel Robbins?

  Well, because.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  It's just gonna get you through it, right?

• 54:01Mel Robbins?

  Well, all of the people get you through it.

• 54:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:03Mel Robbins?

  Every high five is a transfer of energy. It's a transfer of belief.

• 54:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:09Mel Robbins?

  It drips dopamine. What did Dr. Amen say? It actually harnesses the energy of celebration in your nervous system. Every high five says, keep going. It says, I believe in you. It says, you're gonna, you're gonna get there. It makes you enjoy it.

• 54:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:27Mel Robbins?

  The same thing happens in your bathroom mirror.

• 54:30Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 54:30Mel Robbins?

  If you have big goals, you better stand in front of that mirror and high five yourself every day. Every single step of the way. Stop looking around and waiting for everybody else to do it. Start giving it to yourself and you will be shocked at how much more quickly things start to happen, at how much more joy you experience along the way, at how much more present you are.

• 54:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Mel Robbins?

  It's wild.

• 54:56Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between high fiving yourself in the mirror versus high fiving your partner or best friend or business partner?

• 55:02Mel Robbins?

  You already do that. You're already throwing all this energy at everybody else. And then you get pissed off when it doesn't come back to you.

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:10Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. Take some of that and give it back to yourself. Improve the connection you have with yourself. And this isn't about like pumping yourself up to think you're like the best person on the planet. This is like the baseline. This is literally like, you know what? You're gonna have an okay day, let's go do this. You know what? I see you, I know this is hard, keep going. I know you're supposed to have this hard conversation with this person, I believe you can do it.

• 55:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Mel Robbins?

  Let's go. Like it's just one little boost along the way. You know, if you think about the things that go viral, it's little kids in front of a mirror with their parents getting them to talk affirmation. Correct. We all know that's how we're supposed to feel. But we feel weird and cheesy practicing it? You kidding me? The other thing that goes viral, all these teachers that are high fiving and fist bumping kids with this handshake as they go in and the mirror one with the I am that just kinda went viral. Why do we all love that? Because we know each one of those kids just felt seen and felt good and felt motivated walking into that classroom. Start your day that way.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they feel empowered.

• 56:17Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  It's easier to learn from a place of empowerment than

• 56:20Mel Robbins?

  Correct. I'm glad you're here. I see you. Glad you showed up today. Let's go do this.

• 56:26Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. I'm curious about manifesting. You've been really good at manifesting results in your life, especially since the last book.

• 56:37Lewis Howes?

  What is your thoughts on how to manifest?

• 56:39Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, everyone's doing it wrong, that's my thoughts.

• 56:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 56:42Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  Then how should we manifest the dreams that we have inside of us?

• 56:47Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  And what's your thoughts about the law of attraction? On how to apply it the right way or?

• 56:53Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I think, well, I think the law of attraction and manifesting are the same thing. So, law of attraction, for everybody who has not read The Secret, is simply your thoughts become things. And it's true, we've talked all about how when you have a negative self-talk, it tends to draw more of that to you. I think about it like lint in a dryer. Once negative stuff starts collecting, it collects a lot more. We can also talk about your brain filter, or something called the reticular activity system, and how it is a live network that filters the brain. We'll dig into that deeper, but let's do surface level right now, manifesting law of attraction. So, here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting. Everybody, at least kind of in the mass market,

• 57:35Mel Robbins?

  what you're trained to think about when you think about manifesting is vision boards. And when you hear the word vision boards, you think about the big stuff. Should you have big dreams? Of course you should! Should you dream of building a mansion on the ocean, if that's your thing? Yes. Should you dream of the log cabin? Yes. If you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Bronco, should you? Yeah, yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about? Yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. You dream about the end, you make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life.

• 58:14Mel Robbins?

  That literally, as you're sitting in your studio apartment with the cat box that hasn't been changed in two weeks.

• 58:20Lewis Howes?

  No food in the fridge.

• 58:21Mel Robbins?

  No food in the fridge. And you're looking for a job, and you're staring at a mansion going, someday. It's gonna make you feel like a loser. Because the gap between where you are and where you want to go, it seems insurmountable. And so what happens, based on the research, is when you only visualize the end game, Louis, it's demotivating. At first, it's really fun to like have a bottle of wine and make your like collage. I'm gonna visualize, I'm gonna slap this up. There's my vision board, this is fabulous. Law of attraction, baby, come on. I'm gonna think about it, it's gonna come to me.

• 58:56Mel Robbins?

  Okay, I've been doing this for two days. I'm still in this apartment with the cat box that needs to be changed. The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge. Between where you are and where you need to go.

• 59:09Lewis Howes?

  The bridge.

• 59:10Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and particularly the horrible stuff. So let's use your example of the marathon. The vision board would be Louis crossing.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  With the arms up at the metal.

• 59:24Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, the arms up at the metal, exactly.

• 59:25Lewis Howes?

  High fives, yeah, I did it.

• 59:25Mel Robbins?

  Yes, I did it, exactly. That will not help you. Because when you hit mile 13 on the actual race and it is sleeting rain.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  You're saying, "Why am I doing this?"

• 59:37Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and it feels nothing like that thing on your vision board. You're going to start a negative dialogue. "I can't do this, my knees hurt, this is not what I thought it was gonna be, I'm not ready for this, I didn't train for this, I'm running New York, I trained in LA, are you running in New York?"

• 59:51Lewis Howes?

  LA.

• 59:51Mel Robbins?

  Okay, good, well then at least you trained in the right weather. So on and on and on, and you are going to tank yourself. What you do by visualizing the bridge is you train your nervous system and your mind to do the hard work. So you should visualize not crossing the finish line, but what is it like to be at mile 12 when your batteries run out on your earbuds?

• 1:00:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Mel Robbins?

  I'm serious, and you keep going. What's it like when your shoelace breaks and now your heel is lifting and you're starting to get a blood blister at mile 17? What's it feel like when you wake up and it is pouring rain? And you visualize yourself running anyway. That way, when you visualize the work, you are preparing your body for it, so you're not resistant to it when it comes. Isn't that cool?

• 1:00:44Lewis Howes?

  I think it's great. A story that I had, George St Pierre, who's one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time, he said that he always puts himself in the most uncomfortable situations in practice, leading up to the fight, the most, you know, the hardest situations to get himself out of, when his arms are behind his back and he's faced against the mat in between the fence and he's just getting punched in the face, he's like, how do I get out of this?

• 1:01:12Mel Robbins?

  Right, right.

• 1:01:13Lewis Howes?

  He's like, visualize that and seeing, how can I get through this?

• 1:01:16Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:17Lewis Howes?

  Where it seems like, I just want to tap out.

• 1:01:19Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:01:20Lewis Howes?

  Instead of tapping out, what's the process for figuring out how to get through it?

• 1:01:24Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Lewis Howes?

  To then raise my hand at the end victorious.

• 1:01:27Mel Robbins?

  Totally. And so you are literally building up, almost like this resilience and this muscle inside of you to do the work to get the thing. So yeah, create the vision board, but make sure in addition to crossing the finish line, you have somebody running in the rain. You have somebody who, you have an alarm clock that says 5:13. You have, you know, these images that show the stuff that you don't want to do. So like, for people who want to launch a business, for example, like a lot of people that I'm sure follow both of us are dying to launch a business, are interested in being an influencer, social media, or making money online, and what you visualize are the checks, or you visualize the money you're gonna make, or you visualize how cool it's gonna be when you're a lifestyle entrepreneur, or whatever the hell it is.

• 1:02:11Mel Robbins?

  Don't do that. Visualize working a day job and telling your friends that you're not gonna go out tonight because you're working on something. Visualize making cold calls and being told no. Visualize not going to that party because you're staying in on a Saturday and not going to the barbecue because you're putting in the work. Visualize sitting in a seminar and learning from other people. Visualize watching YouTube videos. Visualize your first ever course failing miserably. Like, literally, that's the sort of thing that you want to visualize yourself doing and pushing through, because that's gonna help you do the work.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:47Mel Robbins?

  Isn't that cool?

• 1:02:48Lewis Howes?

  I think that's great. Yeah, visualizing, so in order to manifest what you want, don't just visualize the good things happening, visualize the bridge, all the things it's gonna take to get there.

• 1:02:56Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and the hard parts of the bridge, because then you're ready for it. Then you're like, I didn't expect this to be this hard. I mean, it's still gonna be hard.

• 1:03:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:04Mel Robbins?

  But you're less likely to quit.

• 1:03:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes. So what have you done in the last five years to help you manifest after the first book? Were you doing this as well? Or kind of, once you get on a rhythm and build momentum, does it become easier to manifest, in your opinion?

• 1:03:20Mel Robbins?

  Well, so I am constantly training my mind to work for me. And there's this little trick that I talk about in the book that is all sort of the beginning of having a high-five attitude. And a high-five attitude is the ability to catch yourself when you're going mentally low and to flip yourself back up into a high-five attitude.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:03:41Mel Robbins?

  The thing that I know to be true is that you cannot control the things around you. You can't control what's going to happen. You can't even control how your nervous system might respond or what thoughts might pop into your head. But you can always choose what you do next and what you make it mean, right? And so that's where all the power is.

• 1:04:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:04:02Mel Robbins?

  And so I do this thing where I, this is again, it's going to sound so dumb, but it's a way for me to introduce you to the power that your mind has to change in real time.

• 1:04:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:04:20Mel Robbins?

  We've talked a lot about negative self-talk. And part of the reason why negative self-talk is so crippling is not only because you've repeated it for so long and now it's a pattern, but it's also because you have a filter on your brain called the reticular activity system, okay? This puppy is the keys to everything. And it's remarkable that most of us have never heard of it. We've experienced it, but we don't know how to use it to our advantage. So first, let me tell you what the RAS does. Then I'm going to give you an example of when you've experienced it in your life. And then I'm going to explain to you how to use it to get what you want in life.

• 1:05:03Mel Robbins?

  This is like the super attractor manifesting, and it also works for...

• 1:05:09Mel Robbins?

  Interrupting negative self-talk, like it's gonna supercharge all the work you're doing with the mirror and interrupting thoughts. So first, let's talk about the RAS. So the RAS, imagine a hairnet on your brain. Only it's like electric, meaning it's alive, okay? Now, the RAS has one job, and the job is block out 99% of what's going on and let in 1% of what's going on. Our brains, at this moment in history, are having to process about 34 days' worth of cellphone data in one day.

• 1:05:41Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:05:41Mel Robbins?

  It's crazy. And so your RAS has a monster job. It's like a bouncer at a bar. You're not coming in, you can come in. And you've experienced this. So have you ever shopped for a car?

• 1:05:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:05:53Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so what's the last car you bought?

• 1:05:55Lewis Howes?

  Tesla.

• 1:05:55Mel Robbins?

  Oh, Tesla. Oh, fancy. Lewis Howes. I like that.

• 1:05:59Lewis Howes?

  Well, I never had a, I never had a nice car until three years ago. I had a $4,000 car for five years before that.

• 1:06:06Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:07Lewis Howes?

  And then I was like, you know what? I have no Bluetooth. I have no, it's like, I just needed an upgrade.

• 1:06:11Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I love it. You deserve it.

• 1:06:12Lewis Howes?

  It was a 1991.

• 1:06:13Mel Robbins?

  Dude, you deserve it.

• 1:06:14Lewis Howes?

  I had a 1991 Cadillac. And I was like, okay.

• 1:06:16Mel Robbins?

  You deserve it.

• 1:06:17Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna buy a car. So I bought a Tesla, yeah.

• 1:06:18Mel Robbins?

  Right. And so before you thought about buying a Tesla, you drive down the road, you don't really think about it. The second you're like, you know, I think I'm interested in a Tesla. What do you see everywhere?

• 1:06:26Lewis Howes?

  Teslas.

• 1:06:27Mel Robbins?

  Yes, everywhere.

• 1:06:28Lewis Howes?

  Everywhere.

• 1:06:28Mel Robbins?

  My husband just bought a pickup truck. I never even noticed him. Now I'm like, there are baby blue pickup trucks everywhere. What is going on? That's the bouncer in your brain. And let me tell you how this works. There are only four things that automatically get through the bouncer in your brain, the RAS. Number one, your name. So you've experienced being in a crowded place and somebody's like, you think you hear Lewis, and you're like, huh? Somebody call my name? That was the bouncer in your brain. The second thing that always gets let in is any threat to your safety. So there are loud noises all the, all the time, but only ones in close proximity make you go like this. That was the bouncer in your brain letting it in. The third thing that gets let in is when you sense

• 1:07:10Mel Robbins?

  that your partner is interested in sex with you or someone else. You're like, Chris, you know, who are you looking, stop looking at her, you know what I'm saying? You kind of pick up on the signals. That's the bouncer in your brain. And the fourth one, and this is where, this is the billion-dollar thing that everybody needs to know.

• 1:07:29Mel Robbins?

  The bouncer in your brain lets in whatever you think is important to you.

• 1:07:35Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:36Mel Robbins?

  So when you get intentional about telling your brain what's important to you, like, "I'm interested in a Tesla," your brain's literally like, "Oh, let all the Teslas in. Come on in." Here's the downside to this. If you have told yourself that you are a bad person for the last 10 years, guess what your brain thinks is important?

• 1:07:57Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:58Mel Robbins?

  Examples that mean you're a bad person.

• 1:08:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:08:02Mel Robbins?

  So I'm gonna give you a very specific example. So I personally don't think I'm a bad person. I don't think I'm perfect, but I know I do my best. I mean well. I don't have that story about myself at all. I used to, but I don't. And, um, let's say I oversleep and I miss the dentist. I miss the dentist appointment. I'm like, "Ugh, I gotta pay the 25 bucks. I had to reschedule that thing. That kind of blows." That's all I think. And then I go on. My daughter, who constantly beats herself up and says she's a bad person, this is a real example, by the way. She oversleeps, misses a dentist appointment, and it becomes, "See, I always screw everything up. I'm a terror. I'm always messing things up."

• 1:08:46Mel Robbins?

  Like, everything that gets let in confirms that you're a bad person.

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  She finds proof and evidence.

• 1:08:52Mel Robbins?

  Yes. That's the bouncer in your mind. I'm here to tell you that when you get intentional about what you want to think about yourself, it changes in real time what your brain lets in and what it doesn't.

• 1:09:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:07Mel Robbins?

  That helps you with the other things that you're doing. The high five in the mirror, the "I'm not thinking about that," the pathetic mantra, "Hey, you know, just 'cause I missed the dentist appointment doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I'm doing the best I can here. Give myself a break. High five. You know what I'm saying? Shake it off. Get back in there." Um, it's true, right?

• 1:09:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:09:27Mel Robbins?

  Because it's these little things. Somebody cuts you off. Somebody reaches for the last thing of cereal that you wanted to buy at the grocery store. You think it's like a sign that the world's out to get you. This is all your story and your mind skewing the world to prove all of the stuff you keep repeating. And the only way to get a handle on it is to start acting the opposite. Like, high five yourself, even though you don't feel like it. Interrupt the crap that you keep saying. Put your hands on your heart and settle your body down.

• 1:09:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Mel Robbins?

  All of these things are things that somebody does when they care about themselves. When they think they deserve to be treated with kindness.

• 1:10:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:09Mel Robbins?

  When they think they deserve support. And when they realize they need it. And when you start to build yourself back up, you'll show up very differently in other relationships.

• 1:10:20Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:10:21Mel Robbins?

  You know, if you tolerate this kind of treatment from yourself, you'll tolerate it from other people.

• 1:10:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:26Mel Robbins?

  It does begin with you.

• 1:10:28Lewis Howes?

  And when you create boundaries, and you don't abandon yourself, then you won't abandon yourself with other people either.

• 1:10:33Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 1:10:34Lewis Howes?

  You won't let them cross the boundaries.

• 1:10:35Mel Robbins?

  Correct. Like, if you stand in front of the mirror every single morning, and you're like, "I look like crap. I am not good enough. I'm unhappy with my life." And then you step into a relationship, and somebody leaves you unread, and they ghost you for three days, like, you come to expect that. Because that's how you believe you think you deserve to be treated. When you stand in front of a mirror, and you're like, "Hey, you're awesome. We got this. I got you. I know it's hard, you know? We're gonna go do this." Or, "Hey, this is a big day today. I've got this huge presentation. I am going to destroy this." You know, like, you get into it, you're excited. Like, then you're creating momentum for yourself.

• 1:11:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Mel Robbins?

  Otherwise, what? You're gonna stand there, like, "Oh, my God, I screwed this up. I'm not prepared." Like, it's like the negative morning routine.

• 1:11:26Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:27Mel Robbins?

  It leads to negative actions.

• 1:11:29Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:30Mel Robbins?

  So, this training thing, training your RES. So, here's what I want you to do. Starting tomorrow, after you wake up and make your bed, and kind of settle your nervous system, and high-five yourself after setting your intentions. So, now you're like, sending yourself into your morning routine in a totally different way, with a calmed-down nervous system, an intention, and this boost of feeling supported and loved and celebrated. I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape as you go through your day.

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  I saw this in your book, yeah.

• 1:12:03Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. It could be a stone. It could be a leaf on the ground. It could be a cloud shape. It could be a coffee stain. It could be an oil stain on the floor of a garage. It could be a spot on a dog walking by. I want you to tell your mind. Let's find a heart. Let's see if we can find a heart. And something weird's gonna happen. You're gonna see something. And then I want you to literally supersize what's going on in your brain. And what you do is when you see the heart, I want you to then take a moment and literally congratulate yourself, like feel like, oh my God, I found it. Like whatever you believe in, God, the universe, like greater connection, you put that there for me and I found it.

• 1:12:45Mel Robbins?

  And I want you to feel this kind of wave of, that's kind of cool. Yeah. I just saw a heart. And then that positive thing, remember how I told you, the bouncer in your brain pays attention to what's important to you. When you get your nervous system celebratory involved, that makes your brain really pay attention, just like trauma makes your brain pay attention. It does. So you supercharge the experience by celebrating it and then look for another one around. I see hearts all day long. Yeah. And what happens when you start to play this game is you will start to realize you are walking by an entirely different world every single day because you're not looking for it.

• 1:13:29Mel Robbins?

  There are opportunities, there are signs, there are mile markers on your path that you are literally tuning out. Yes. And we can all sit in this moment, Louis, and look back and see how the dots of our life connect us here. The coolest thing about practicing the high five habit, this training of finding hearts and the high five attitude, is that you start to ground yourself in the idea that this too is a dot on the map of your life and it is leading you somewhere incredible. And when you start to have that kind of high five attitude, that there are signs, whether

• 1:14:11Mel Robbins?

  it's the little hearts that you're now seeing, or it's your ability to catch guilt, or people pleasing, or insecurity, or the negative self-talk and be like, nope, not going down, not thinking about that, five, four, three, two, one, let's get that high five attitude back. I can, I can do this. I can have my own back. It's not gonna be perfect, but I can keep going. Everything changes. Yeah.

• 1:14:31Lewis Howes?

  What's the hardest thing you've had to deal with with the negative thought process in your mind? Like, what's the most challenging thing in your life to overcome the negative thoughts?

• 1:14:45Mel Robbins?

  You mean like a specific situation?

• 1:14:48Lewis Howes?

  Like you've had a lot of success, you keep manifesting, but what's something, like what's the biggest struggle for you?

• 1:14:53Mel Robbins?

  Currently?

• 1:14:54Lewis Howes?

  Where you give yourself negative self-talk? Like what's the thing you have to constantly try to overcome?

• 1:14:59Mel Robbins?

  Oh, that people are mad at me.

• 1:15:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:15:01Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. That people are mad at me. Or that I've done something wrong. It's actually, it's not that people are mad at me, it's that I've done something wrong.

• 1:15:10Lewis Howes?

  And so that's why people are mad at me?

• 1:15:11Mel Robbins?

  Yes. Yes, the default in my brain is, I've done something wrong. It was really interesting when this book came out, I mean, you and I are fantastic friends. And we have, and we are super supportive of one another.

• 1:15:23Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:25Mel Robbins?

  And we share a lot of mutual friends.

• 1:15:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:15:30Mel Robbins?

  And I did not want to reach out to anybody that we are friends with and ask them to be on their podcast, because I presumed everybody would say no.

• 1:15:45Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 1:15:46Mel Robbins?

  I have this default setting that I've done something wrong, that you're secretly mad at me, that you would feel that it's a sense of obligation, and that I would be imposing myself, and it would be this weird thing. Like, this is a complete just play that goes on in my mind. Completely, completely. And I don't know if I'll ever get rid of it.

• 1:16:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:16:09Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, but it gets quieter and quieter and quieter. I kind of laugh at him, like, oh, for God's sakes, just text him. I mean, he's either gonna say no or whatever. And, but it is something that I struggle with, for sure.

• 1:16:22Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:16:22Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, like this deep...

• 1:16:23Lewis Howes?

  Where do you think it comes from?

• 1:16:27Mel Robbins?

  I don't know. I think it comes from...

• 1:16:33Mel Robbins?

  Like if I had to, if I had to really unpack it, like maybe it comes from having a mom that was 19 and who didn't have her family around her.

• 1:16:42Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:42Mel Robbins?

  And who probably was dealing with a lot of fear and grief. And my dad was in medical school and she was working nights for the IRS. Both their families were on the East Coast. They were in the middle of Kansas. I can only imagine how overwhelming and anxiety ridden it must have been. And what we know now, I mean that book that Oprah did with Dr. Bruce Perry about the, what happens in your development from basically zero to eight months. I feel like that probably had a big impact. Not anything intentional, but just like how stressed out things must have been.

• 1:17:24Mel Robbins?

  Like I recently, my husband and I recently did a guided MDMA therapy session for trauma. It was one of the most life-changing things I've ever experienced.

• 1:17:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:35Mel Robbins?

  And...

• 1:17:36Lewis Howes?

  I've heard great things about MDMA.

• 1:17:38Mel Robbins?

  Oh, it's unbelievable. It suspends, I'm ter, there's no way in hell I'm ever doing ayahuasca.

• 1:17:43Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:44Mel Robbins?

  I don't need to poop or puke or any of that stuff. And I also feel like if I did ayahuasca, there would be monsters all over the place. It would be a horror show. And the thing that would come out of it is me going, "I can get myself through anything." That's what the drug taught me.

• 1:17:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:59Mel Robbins?

  And I don't feel like I need to have a really scary trip in order to make that happen.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

  I have no desire, yeah.

• 1:18:06Mel Robbins?

  But MDMA, I will shout from the rooftops. It suspends the amygdala, which is the fear center of the brain. So you do not have the scary response. And so we did this incredible thing. We were together, having separate experiences. We laid down on these mats. They made a six-hour playlist. You put a blindfold on and the music guides you. And as the drug took a hold, and my intention was I wanted to look back on my life and see all the good. And it was because I tend to, like everybody, focus on kind of the bad stuff. And not that there's been a lot of bad stuff either. And so, I mean, if anything, I had an amazing childhood.

• 1:18:48Mel Robbins?

  I had, my parents are still married, they're still in the house I grew up in. I grew up in a tiny, amazing little town in the Midwest. Super close family, like, whatever. But I still think the trauma that gets stored in your nervous system is very individual, whether it's a critical parent, or you're just hard on yourself, or it's generational crap that gets passed down. We are all healing something, whether it's ours, or it's our grandmothers that got passed down through your mother and on to you. And so, um, the, the, the music takes hold, and the very first vision, it was almost like being on a roller coaster, and it takes a turn, like Space Mountain, and then you come

• 1:19:33Mel Robbins?

  on to a scene of your life. And there I was, on our lake, Bear Lake, in North Askewa, Michigan, with Jody Bricken, my best friend from elementary school, and we were ice skating. And I was there, Louis.

• 1:19:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:19:47Mel Robbins?

  I was in the scene. And then, as the song ends, and, and you go into a different one, it takes you to a different part of your subconscious, and wait to hear this. I was sitting in a baby carriage, and the first vision was, well, actually, I didn't know I was in a, in a, in a little bassinet. I was looking up at the sky, and it was this beautiful sky with these big white clouds, and there were these kites flying all over the place. And then I looked over, and across from me were my parents, and they were so young. My mom had this beautiful pixie haircut that she had when she had me, and my dad had a perm, you know, my mom was giving him a perm, um, back in the late 60s. And I was filled.

• 1:20:29Mel Robbins?

  With so much love. And I was also filled with so much empathy. For how alone they were. It was them against the world.

• 1:20:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Mel Robbins?

  And that really shifted something in me. In terms of that experience and how I see, like, look, I love my folks. My mom and I have the kind of relationship, she's one of my favorite human beings, and we can stand each other for about three days. And then we literally want to kill each other.

• 1:20:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:00Mel Robbins?

  And I think as a kid, I made it my job that she was okay. If she was unhappy, I tried to make her happy, which only made her unhappy. And so I feel like my tendency in relationships is to try to make everybody okay. And, um, which constantly me, leaves me feeling like I'm not okay. Or if they're not okay, I'm not okay. That there's something wrong, I've done something wrong.

• 1:21:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:33Mel Robbins?

  And so, and it's a very common pattern, by the way. This is like about as classic as it gets. That doesn't mean there's anything horrible that necessarily happened. It's just that as human beings, we are energetically intertwined with one another. And so what was interesting is after this incredible experience, which is literally like watching the movie reel of your life. I have experienced almost no dysregulation in my nervous system. I had an experience the other night, we ordered from PF Chang's and we ordered everything and I have one daughter who's like gluten free this and da da da da, da da da. And she comes barreling into the room and tries a bite of hers and is like, this is terrible. And then picks up my husband's thing and leaves.

• 1:22:13Mel Robbins?

  And normally, that would send me into like, wah, you sell them, wah. And I felt the volcano come to my ankles. And then I very calmly said, "Hey Ken, that's Dad's. Could you put it back? And you can have what you ordered, or just make something else, but don't take Dad's." I didn't need to erupt. And so that was one impact that it's had, which is incredible.

• 1:22:39Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:22:39Mel Robbins?

  And we only did this a couple of months ago. And then the second thing that happened afterwards, I called my mom and I said, "You know, I had this vision." Because I didn't know. And I said, you know, all I could see were kites. And she said, "Oh, that's Kansas City." There's a park we used to go to.

• 1:22:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:22:56Mel Robbins?

  Is that not crazy?

• 1:22:57Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 1:22:58Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. So I think that sort of default, "There's something wrong,"

• 1:23:04Mel Robbins?

  comes from just energetically hardwired into...

• 1:23:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. People around me, are they upset at me? Are they upset in general that it was my fault?

• 1:23:13Mel Robbins?

  And I also think this stuff is generational.

• 1:23:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Mel Robbins?

  You know, and I think about, you know, I come from a long line of very hardworking farmers. And, you know, my dad's side of the family owned a bakery, immigrants. And, you know, it's not an easy life.

• 1:23:30Lewis Howes?

  No, it's not.

• 1:23:31Mel Robbins?

  Not an easy life at all.

• 1:23:33Lewis Howes?

  Working hard, all day, your whole life. There's a strategy that I started doing when I was broke. I was like, "I could really make, you know, start making some money." You know, I could really start making some money. And someone said, "Money comes to you when you're ready for it." And I was like, "I feel pretty ready." You know, I'm like, "Could use some of that money right now. I don't like feeling broke." But I said, "You know what? I'm gonna start looking at the world as if I see money everywhere."

• 1:23:58Mel Robbins?

  Yes! Yes!

• 1:24:00Lewis Howes?

  And I start, I literally start, like, I find money all the time. I see $20 bills, $100 bills I've found, like, just on the street randomly. I see quarters and nickels and dimes.

• 1:24:11Mel Robbins?

  Start with a penny. You could do this with a heart, you could do this with a heart, Rock. His mind is open to it. This is how you train your mind. You basically tell it what you want by saying, "This is important to me."

• 1:24:22Lewis Howes?

  Start looking for it. You'll start seeing it.

• 1:24:24Mel Robbins?

  Yes. And by the way, this is also why it's important to do that thing where you're like, "Boom, I found it, see?"

• 1:24:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:30Mel Robbins?

  And then it makes your mind do more. This is why it comes back to the positive affirmation. If you start to high-five yourself and tell yourself that you deserve to be happy and you deserve to be fulfilled, you will start to see reasons for it.

• 1:24:45Lewis Howes?

  That's it. I started doing this when I was single at one point. And I said, I'm gonna start attracting the most incredible, like, amazing women in my life, whether it just be friendships or romantic, I'm gonna meet-

• 1:24:56Mel Robbins?

  That's exactly when I walked into your life. I'm like his older sister.

• 1:24:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:24:59Mel Robbins?

  It rocks, Mel Robbins.

• 1:25:00Lewis Howes?

  But you just start finding these, you start recognizing what you want, you start seeing it, and then you start attracting it more frequently, whether it's, you know, a heart that you're looking for, whether it's pennies, like, you'll start finding it, and you'll start to manifest more of those things in your life. So, in the book, The High Five Habit, Take Control of Your Life-

• 1:25:18Mel Robbins?

  You wanna hear a crazy story?

• 1:25:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes, go ahead. Go ahead.

• 1:25:20Mel Robbins?

  Okay. So, I gotta say what chapters this is, because everybody's gonna ask it, and I don't really know.

• 1:25:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:25:25Mel Robbins?

  This is one of the most extraordinary stories ever.

• 1:25:30Mel Robbins?

  Oh, 189. Oh, no, that's the page number. It's chapter 14.

• 1:25:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:25:34Mel Robbins?

  Okay. You ready for this?

• 1:25:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:25:36Mel Robbins?

  It's incredible.

• 1:25:37Lewis Howes?

  Is this the jealousy part, or no?

• 1:25:39Mel Robbins?

  No.

• 1:25:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:25:40Mel Robbins?

  Oh, this, oh, you wanna talk about jealousy?

• 1:25:41Lewis Howes?

  No, go ahead.

• 1:25:42Mel Robbins?

  I'll tell you about jealousy, and how I write about you in the book.

• 1:25:44Lewis Howes?

  That's what I was-

• 1:25:45Mel Robbins?

  And how jealous I am of you. It's true. I am jealous of you. I am. So, here's the thing I want everybody to understand. We all have jealousy wrong. You have been taught to believe that jealousy is a bad thing.

• 1:26:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:26:01Mel Robbins?

  Jealousy is only a bad thing if you wallow in it and let it kill you.

• 1:26:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:26:05Mel Robbins?

  Jealousy is a great thing, if you understand it.

• 1:26:10Lewis Howes?

  And if you use it as a tool to move forward.

• 1:26:12Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:26:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:26:13Mel Robbins?

  You can only be jealous of the things that are meant for you.

• 1:26:16Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, that's interesting.

• 1:26:18Mel Robbins?

  Yeah. Like, I'm not jealous of somebody who lives on a ranch in Montana. I don't wanna do that right now.

• 1:26:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:26:27Mel Robbins?

  I'm not jealous at all. I'm not jealous of somebody who lives in a penthouse apartment in New York City. I don't want that right now. You can only be jealous of things that are meant for you. Jealousy is blocked desire. And it builds when you don't take action toward it.

• 1:26:45Lewis Howes?

  More and more.

• 1:26:46Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:26:47Lewis Howes?

  You resent them.

• 1:26:48Mel Robbins?

  Yes. And so you aim all this stuckness that you've created because you will not give yourself permission to take action. Why? Because you don't think you're worthy. You don't think you deserve it. You think you're too late. The negative self-talk in the mirror stops you dead in your tracks. And so you become buried alive in jealousy. Goes back to this high five. Give yourself permission to have the things that you desire. Let your jealousy, like I'm jealous of Louis because he started his podcast way back when. He's freaking amazing at it. He's got this like unbelievable impact. Every single day I wake up and I'm like, I love Louis, I hate Louis. I love Louis, fuck off Louis. I love Louis, like, why is it Louis and not me? Why did Louis do it? Why was Louis the one sleeping on somebody's couch and started a podcast?

• 1:27:31Mel Robbins?

  I was doing radio back in 2009. This should be me.

• 1:27:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:27:36Mel Robbins?

  Right? I have a desire to launch a podcast.

• 1:27:40Lewis Howes?

  So you're launching one now?

• 1:27:41Mel Robbins?

  Yes. We're in the middle of it, yes. I shook my hand so hard like I got that like weird thing that happens with your finger.

• 1:27:50Mel Robbins?

  So no, you gotta give yourself permission to feel jealousy and then just unpack it. Well, what is it that I'm jealous of? And it's the fact that you have a podcast. And so I've got two choices. Let that [BLEEP] haunt me or do something about it.

• 1:28:02Lewis Howes?

  Let it go or let it go. Either let it go and stop letting it haunt you.

• 1:28:06Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:28:07Lewis Howes?

  Or go take action.

• 1:28:07Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, either take action and go earn it and do it your way. Or let it eat you alive. Those are your two choices. Because the other thing about desire and the things that are meant for you, they never leave you. Somebody who's always dreamt of doing something will always dream of something.

• 1:28:24Lewis Howes?

  For 20 years is a good example. And then we gotta get to the final questions because you gotta leave here in a few minutes. But for 20 years, I, every year, I had the desire to learn Spanish.

• 1:28:34Mel Robbins?

  Oh my god, I have the same thing. If you're gonna tell me that you've learned Spanish, this is another reason why I'm jealous of you.

• 1:28:41Lewis Howes?

  For 20 years, I've had the desire, and every year I start to attempt it, and then I quit because it gets too hard. Because it's just not...

• 1:28:49Mel Robbins?

  You and I are dyslexic.

• 1:28:50Lewis Howes?

  Yes, it's very challenging for me.

• 1:28:52Mel Robbins?

  Foreign languages for dyslexia is very difficult.

• 1:28:54Lewis Howes?

  I mean, English is challenging.

• 1:28:55Mel Robbins?

  Are you telling me you know Spanish now?

• 1:28:57Lewis Howes?

  I'm learning Spanish. So, here's what I said to myself for a year now. I said, "Okay, I know this is not gonna happen overnight, like athletics happens for me, or where it's like quick for me to learn something. I know this has been a struggle in the past, but I'm gonna start, I'm gonna invest in a coach, a teacher, a tutor. I'm gonna work on my time. I'm gonna do it the times I can do it. I do it three days a week right now. It's only an hour at a time, three days a week, so it's three hours a week. It's not that much. It's not full immersion. It's not six months that I'm fluent. It's just like the slow process.

• 1:29:29Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, okay, but you're doing it.

• 1:29:31Lewis Howes?

  But I'm doing, I've been doing it for a year, and I still feel like, a year later, man, I'm like, "Do I even know any of this?" I still have those moments. But, I also know I'm way better than I was a year ago.

• 1:29:41Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:29:42Lewis Howes?

  I understand a lot. I understand a lot more, and I feel way more confident. And I'm just like, you know what? I'm gonna enjoy the process and keep enjoying it. If it takes me 10 years...

• 1:29:50Mel Robbins?

  That's a high-five attitude, dude.

• 1:29:51Lewis Howes?

  If it takes me 10 years, it'll take me 10 years.

• 1:29:53Mel Robbins?

  That's right.

• 1:29:53Lewis Howes?

  It takes me five years, three, hopefully it doesn't. But it's the process of I'm showing up consistently. I'm seeing the rain and the 5:00 AM on my vision board for Spanish, and I'm saying, you know what? I'm just gonna keep showing up consistently, and little wins at a time.

• 1:30:09Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I'm embarrassed, but I'm saying it anyway. I don't know the word, I'm asking for help, like all that stuff.

• 1:30:13Lewis Howes?

  But I'm celebrating the moment, and in three to five years, I'll be thanking myself.

• 1:30:17Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:30:17Lewis Howes?

  Because I'll be fluent.

• 1:30:18Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and the difference is, we gave up every... Because I've started a million times.

• 1:30:24Lewis Howes?

  Give it up for 20 years. And I said, "I'm not giving up anymore."

• 1:30:27Mel Robbins?

  Right.

• 1:30:27Lewis Howes?

  Because it was still, the desire was still there.

• 1:30:29Mel Robbins?

  Correct, it doesn't leave you, dude.

• 1:30:31Lewis Howes?

  I didn't need to kill the desire and say, "I'm done with this dream," like I let it go.

• 1:30:34Mel Robbins?

  I'm not willing to do it, yeah.

• 1:30:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, or I gotta actually start doing something.

• 1:30:37Mel Robbins?

  Correct.

• 1:30:38Lewis Howes?

  It took me 20 years to start doing this one. And it's not effortless overnight, but it's, I'm making it fun. I'm showing up, and...

• 1:30:47Mel Robbins?

  Well, let's use the marathon analogy. If you are celebrating yourself, and encouraging and empowering yourself every single step of the way, and you're keeping a high-five attitude about it, every single day when you wake up... You will keep going with the Spanish.

• 1:31:01Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:31:02Mel Robbins?

  You and I kept quitting because the moment it got hard, we said, "Screw this, I can't do it."

• 1:31:07Lewis Howes?

  Screw it, yeah.

• 1:31:09Mel Robbins?

  We gave up. We stopped cheering ourselves forward.

• 1:31:11Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:31:12Mel Robbins?

  It's a muscle.

• 1:31:13Lewis Howes?

  It is, yeah.

• 1:31:14Mel Robbins?

  Well, I'll tell you the painting story the next time, because I can't tell it without crying.

• 1:31:18Lewis Howes?

  Perfect, okay. Tell me the next time. People can go get the book. I've got a couple of final questions. They can get the book, "The High Five Habit: Take Control of Your Life with One Simple Habit." Simple high five in the mirror, just boom, just boom with yourself. That's a good one.

• 1:31:32Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 1:31:33Lewis Howes?

  You also have a challenge, and I've got a link I'm gonna send people to. You just go to lewishouse.com/mel, and it'll send you to the high five challenge.

• 1:31:41Mel Robbins?

  Lewis is doing it. That's right.

• 1:31:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I'll be doing it.

• 1:31:43Mel Robbins?

  Five days, five million people, Lewis. Start their day with this stuff.

• 1:31:47Lewis Howes?

  It's a five-day challenge.

• 1:31:48Mel Robbins?

  That's it, super free. It's easy.

• 1:31:50Lewis Howes?

  It's easy. It's free, it's fun, and it'll help you build self-confidence, momentum, all that stuff. So make sure you get a couple of copies of the book. This is gonna be a game changer for a long time for many people. You are...

• 1:32:01Mel Robbins?

  I believe that. You see, the five-second rule, it helped you get moving.

• 1:32:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:32:07Mel Robbins?

  And this...

• 1:32:08Lewis Howes?

  This will keep you going.

• 1:32:09Mel Robbins?

  No, this goes deeper.

• 1:32:11Lewis Howes?

  What's it do? Helps you believe in yourself.

• 1:32:13Mel Robbins?

  It helps you stop the self-hatred and the self-doubt.

• 1:32:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:32:18Mel Robbins?

  That keeps you from doing what you need to do. The five-second rule is a hack that helps you find instant courage and motivation. This fundamentally changes how you see yourself.

• 1:32:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's good. That's what we need.

• 1:32:29Mel Robbins?

  That's what we need.

• 1:32:29Lewis Howes?

  Because if we don't learn to love yourself, it's gonna be hard to keep going. You can go for a day or two days, but it's hard to be consistent when it's painful.

• 1:32:37Mel Robbins?

  Most people go through life not loving themselves.

• 1:32:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:32:40Mel Robbins?

  I thought I did.

• 1:32:41Lewis Howes?

  You thought you loved yourself.

• 1:32:43Mel Robbins?

  I really did. But the truth is, I was not actually demonstrating it. I mean, I was doing it by eating the right stuff and, you know, taking care of my body and being very loving and nurturing to my kids and going to therapy. But in terms of that intimate moment with myself and how I viewed myself, I still saw what was wrong. I still saw a person who needed fixing, a person who had screwed up. And what I see now is somebody that I love.

• 1:33:17Lewis Howes?

  Well, that's good. It's beautiful.

• 1:33:18Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's hard for a lot of people.

• 1:33:21Mel Robbins?

  Everyone.

• 1:33:23Lewis Howes?

  So I'm proud of you for doing that because it's not easy.

• 1:33:28Mel Robbins?

  I'm not done. Like tomorrow I could wake up and be like, okay, high five, it's fine, not with the negative.

• 1:33:34Lewis Howes?

  Again, people can get the book, melrobbins.com, Mel Robbins everywhere on social media, lewishouse.com/mel to get the free challenge.

• 1:33:45Lewis Howes?

  Audiobook as well, which is going to be powerful. They can go to Audible and check that out. This is going to be a big book for a long time, so I want people to get this.

• 1:33:52Mel Robbins?

  I think so. It's the thing I'm the most proud of, Lewis, that I've ever put out.

• 1:33:56Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited for you. Very excited. It's a great book.

• 1:33:59Mel Robbins?

  Thanks.

• 1:34:01Lewis Howes?

  I asked you this question before. I'm going to ask it again, so we have it and see what your response is from a few years later now. This is called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away from now, and you've accomplished all your dreams. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. So people don't have your books, this podcast is gone, your videos, your content, it's all gone to another place. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things you know to be true from all of your experiences in life, and this is all we have of your body of work. What would you say are those three lessons or three truths for you?

• 1:34:40Mel Robbins?

  Oh, well, for sure.

• 1:34:45Mel Robbins?

  The most important relationship you have in life is the one you have with yourself.

• 1:34:50Mel Robbins?

  So treat yourself like the most important person in your life.

• 1:34:55Mel Robbins?

  The second one is...

• 1:35:04Mel Robbins?

  I think what we talked about today.

• 1:35:08Mel Robbins?

  That, oh, I know. We didn't talk about this. This is part of the high five attitude. This is saved my... This moment is preparing me for something amazing that hasn't happened yet.

• 1:35:25Mel Robbins?

  That saying, which I deeply believe because life is the greatest school you will ever attend, hence we're at the School of Greatness, man.

• 1:35:35Mel Robbins?

  It anchors me down in hope, optimism, and faith, no matter what's happening. It is like a mental high five. And it has always borne out. That there's always a skill, or an experience, or a life lesson, or a person that I have gained in every horrible thing that's ever happened to me or because of me, that has prepared me for something amazing that's coming. And then the final thing is for sure, the five-second rule. And the application I would want people to know is that

• 1:36:16Mel Robbins?

  you can, five, four, three, two, one, and interrupt any thought you don't want to think. And that will give you immediate control over what you think next.

• 1:36:26Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:36:30Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and I know, and don't put too much MCT oil in your coffee, or else you will literally have an accident trying to hike.

• 1:36:36Lewis Howes?

  You'll crap yourself, crap your pants.

• 1:36:38Mel Robbins?

  True story.

• 1:36:40Lewis Howes?

  Before I ask the final question, Mel, I want to acknowledge you for being an amazing friend. You're a great friend to me and to so many people. And I acknowledge you for constantly showing up, because I know you go through a lot of different challenges, a lot of different weight in your life, pressures. And the fact that you constantly show up in service of creating a book like this, and creating content for people, so that they can overcome the crap in their life, is a beautiful thing. So I acknowledge you for being a symbol of inspiration and constantly showing up, even when it seems like there's a lot going on in your life. So, thank you for doing that.

• 1:37:12Mel Robbins?

  Thank you. And Louis, let me acknowledge you for something.

• 1:37:14Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:37:15Mel Robbins?

  You have been such an amazing friend to me. I'm gonna get emotional, probably. Pull it back. Um, you have been so open and so generous with your friendship and with your wisdom. Both the wisdom that comes from doing great and the wisdom that comes from being shitty. And you have allowed me to experience what it feels like to be considered a really good friend.

• 1:37:52Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it.

• 1:37:53Mel Robbins?

  I appreciate that.

• 1:37:54Lewis Howes?

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:37:55Mel Robbins?

  See, I'm all crying.

• 1:37:56Lewis Howes?

  You're making me emotional here. Okay. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:38:00Mel Robbins?

  Oh, this moment right now, two friends fully present with one another.

• 1:38:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:07Mel Robbins?

  Sharing and doing life together.

• 1:38:09Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:38:10Mel Robbins?

  I love you.

• 1:38:11Lewis Howes?

  High five. Love you.

• 1:38:12Mel Robbins?

  I love you.

• 1:38:13Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.