World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want

Today, you are going to learn the science of manifestation, visualization, and imagination - and the steps you can take to start creating the life you want. In this powerful episode, Mel sits down with Dr. Cassandra Vieten, PhD, a clinical psychologist, professor at UC San Diego, and one of the world’s leading researchers on imagination and consciousness. Dr. Vieten directs the Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego, leads the Center for Mindfulness at UC San Diego’s Centers for Integrative Health, and her research has been cited more than 5,000 times. Together, Mel and Dr. Vieten unpack the science behind changing your mindset in order to change your life. You’ll discover how your mind shapes your reality and learn practical, research-backed techniques to shift your thinking and create new possibilities. In this episode, you’ll learn: -The difference between manifestation and magical thinking -How your imagination shapes your decisions, identity, and future -How to stop reacting to life and start intentionally creating it -How to use visualization even if you do not naturally see pictures in your mind -Why imagining the worst case keeps your body stuck in stress -How to meet your future self and use that vision to make better decisions today -How to break out of a “reality tunnel” and see possibilities you have been missing Dr. Vieten’s research is clear: Your imagination is not an escape from reality. It is one of the most powerful tools you have to change how you see your life, what you believe is possible, and what you do next. By the end of this episode, you will know how to get off autopilot, break free from the stories holding you back, and use imagination, visualization, and manifestation to start creating a more intentional and hopeful future. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-423/ Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 00:00 Introduction 03:15 How to Stop Reacting to Your Life & Be More Present 08:19 The Science of Visualization 13:33 How Manifestation Really Works 25:19 What to Do When You Feel Stuck 31:58 Manifestation vs. Magical Thinking 33:33 How Your Imagination Can Change Your Reality 44:04 Use This Tool to Get Unstuck 54:16 How to Break Free From Your Current Reality This episode is brought to you by Apple Card. — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

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

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

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

• 0:09Mel Robbins?

  I am so excited for today's episode because you're going to learn how to manifest anything and create the life you want from a world-renowned researcher and psychologist who is also the director of three different institutes that research mindfulness, consciousness, and imagination. And today, she is here in our Boston studios to teach you the simple science-backed framework to move from reacting to your life to intentionally creating it. She's also going to share cutting-edge research and teach you step by step how to apply the science of visualization, manifestation, and consciousness, and use all three of these tools to create more possibilities in your life.

• 0:54Mel Robbins?

  Doesn't that sound great? I sure think it does, because after listening to this episode, you'll know how to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. You will have gotten a private master class from one of the world's most cited researchers and professors on the subject of consciousness and manifestation, and she's going to tell you, no matter how hard, difficult, or unfair your life may seem right now, you are not trapped by your current circumstances. You are more powerful than you may feel. There are possibilities beyond what you can see.

• 1:33Mel Robbins?

  And Dr. Cassandra Vieten will teach you how to use these three powerful tools to see greater possibility and start intentionally creating the life you want. And you'll be able to start doing that as soon as you're done listening to this episode.

• 2:01Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. It's such an honor to spend this time together. And if you're new or somebody shared this episode with you, I just want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Our topic today is extraordinary. Dr. Cassandra Vieten is going to teach you how to manifest anything and create the life you want using the science of imagination, consciousness, and mindfulness. Dr. Vieten is a PhD clinical psychologist and professor at UC San Diego, as well as one of the leading researchers in the world studying imagination and consciousness. She's the director of the Center for Human Imagination at the University of California,

• 2:43Mel Robbins?

  San Diego, where she conducts groundbreaking research at the intersection of psychology, imagination, and spirituality. She's also the director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health at UC San Diego, and a senior fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she studies consciousness and human experience. Her peer-reviewed academic articles and work have been cited over 5,000 times. She's the bestselling author of five books. Today, she hopped on a plane and flew to our studios here in Boston for you. She's going to teach you how to manifest anything and create the life you want. So please help me welcome Dr. Cassandra Vieten to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

• 3:26Mel Robbins?

  I am thrilled that you're here. The subject of your research is so fascinating. And what I want to start with is what could change about my life? If I take everything to heart that you're about to teach us about the power of our imagination, visualization, manifestation, consciousness, if I apply everything you're about to teach me, what could change?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think it's a couple of things. One is that you become the author of your life. You become the person who creates the world that you want to live in. And the second is sometimes you'll hear the phrase, "The magic is gone" from a relationship or from a job or something. I really believe in imagination's power to bring the magic back into your life. And I don't mean magic in a fake sense. I mean, the vitality, the awe, the wonder, the mystery, the beauty, just the fun parts of life, the spices that make life so interesting and bring back that curiosity.

• 4:27Mel Robbins?

  I love that. I want to put a giant highlighter on what you just said, the power of your imagination to bring magic back into your life.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:41Mel Robbins?

  Is that possible?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. I work with hundreds and hundreds of people every year who feel like, as you grow up, you become nine, 10, 11 years old, and people say, "Okay, time to stop imagining, time to get real." You know, that's imaginary, that's not, that doesn't really happen, none of that actually happens. And so, you're trained over time to become this very serious, logical, rational, reasonable type of person. And what happens unfortunately is that it's almost like the pendulum swings too far in that direction, and you lose that sense of awe and wonder and mystery, and even like noticing synchronicities that happen, or noticing things that are amazing. You're sort of like, "Oh, filter that out, just stay focused," when those are the things

• 5:27Speaker 01

  that people actually, when they look back at their lives, they remember those moments as some of the most important things that happened to them.

• 5:34Mel Robbins?

  I would love to have you speak to the person who's listening right now, who feels like they're just reacting to life, because 70% of the millions of people that listen to this show every single week responded to a survey that we just put out, saying, "I feel like I'm reacting. I'm not really living my life. I'm not creating anything." Dr. Vieten, based on your research, what can they learn to do that will help them switch out of that mode of like, "I'm just trying to survive here. I didn't even realize creating something different was possible?"

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's not your fault. Society and culture right now has been set up in a way that is encouraging us to be reactive. I call it the great flattening. I can't tell you how much of my day I spend in front of a Zoom screen, or in front of a TV screen, or in front of my phone screen. So, a lot of people are waking up in the morning, and all the way until the evening, all they're doing is reacting to what comes at them. So, how does imagination help with this? Well, I like to think of life as sort of like a tapestry. So, let's say you have threads that are weaving into the tapestry, and these are the actual constraints of your life, all of the stuff that you have no control over.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  It's your genetics, it's what networks you have, what opportunities you have, et cetera. But then you've got the part of life that you create and you weave in, and a lot of that is imagined. I mean, first of all, some of the threads that come into your life that you perceive as reality, you're actually imagining. You think they're reality.

• 7:10Mel Robbins?

  Give me an example. What do you mean?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Well, so how about, "The only thing that I can do to be successful is work at a 40, 50, 60-hour-a-week job." That's what it is. That's the deal. That's the only way that anybody's ever successful.

• 7:22Mel Robbins?

  That's not true?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  No, there are tons of different people who do work in many, many, many different ways. So, some of the limits that we think are hard and fast are either individually imagined or collectively imagined, and you can decide, "I want to imagine something different." But even more important, there are real constraints. There is reality. But throughout our day, when we encounter our reality, I like to call it Swiss cheese reality. And so, we see some things, we observe them, but there are a lot of gaps. So, let's say I run into a new person at my job, and she walks up, and she's really well-dressed and extremely well put together, and I look at her and immediately I'm observing,

• 8:05Speaker 01

  but then I'm also imagining, "Oh, this is somebody who really has it together." Or, you know, "They know what they're doing," or "They come from a lot of privilege," or "They probably think they're better than me." Or, you know, I mean, I'm already off to the races. I'm not even noticing that imagination. I'm seeing that as reality, but I'm weaving that in to what reality really is. What could I do instead? I could decide that the threads of imagination that I weave into my reality, I want them to be something different. I want to imagine that everybody's pretty much doing their best, that most people are excited about helping if they are asked for help.

• 8:44Mel Robbins?

  As I was sitting here thinking about the example about meeting a new colleague that's dressed to the nines, you don't- Stop to consider that your opinion and immediate impression of this person is something you've imagined.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You've imagined it.

• 9:00Mel Robbins?

  And it's a helpful example, because when you hear the word imagination, I tend to think about Disney, or Avatar, or these worlds that don't exist. But you're challenging me and the person who's here listening to consider that a lot of the opinions that you have about yourself, or the way that the world works, or who other people are or are not, are examples of things you've imagined, and you just live as though it's fact.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are inherently storytellers, and we only have a little bit of the available information at any given point in time. And so, we can say to ourselves, I want to retrain the way I tell a story about my life. I don't want this to be my story anymore.

• 9:49Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Veetan, what are the specific mindset tools that you're going to teach us today that can help you stop reacting to your life, and start creating the life that you want?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Today, I'm going to talk about visualization, manifestation, and imagination. How you can visualize, manifest, you know, do all of these practices to help you be more skillful about your imagination, once you've recognized the science, and you know you have it, and it's influential. And the third is to tap into a territory of your being that is not your usual way of being, that holds information and energy for you, that you cannot access any other way.

• 10:34Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my God, I love this. Let's just jump right in. What is visualization?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  So, for most people, visualization is one of the easiest ways to access their imagination. There's so much brain real estate that's dedicated to vision, that we can actually use that even when our eyes are closed. And I want to expand the definition of that, to say, it's not always pictures in your mind. Sometimes, it's a feeling that you want to imagine, or it's a movement, or an environment. So, when we talk about visualization, let's think about it in terms of, where do I want to be? How does it feel? Not only, what does it look like? Because there's a lot of people out there who, their visualization is kind of blocky, right?

• 11:20Mel Robbins?

  I always thought you had to picture it in your mind.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  It's hard for people, because when I used to teach workshops, in the early days, I would make everybody visualize, and we'd always have these four or five people who were like, I didn't see anything. And I had to learn, not everyone visualizes. Some people are much better at storytelling. So, let's say that your story of your life is that you're a pinball in a pinball machine, and you get shot out of that little tunnel every morning, and then bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching. And you don't get to decide, you just get blasted around all the time. You might then say, I don't want my future to be the pinball machine future. I want my future to be the hiking-through-the-Alps woman.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  I engage with everyone I encounter along the way. I have uphill battles, but when I do that, I breathe deeply, and I walk methodically. And then, when I see a beautiful view, or a moment of joy, a small, little flower coming up from a rock, I sit and spend time with that, that the walker becomes your new story.

• 12:30Mel Robbins?

  I think it's so helpful to know that you could use the power of visualization by writing a story versus closing your eyes and trying to see the movie scene of it. I'll give another example, because this is something that I've been working on for a long time, which is, I think, for a very long time, like a lot of people, I had a story, it's all up to me. It's all up to me.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  All up to me.

• 12:51Mel Robbins?

  Like, it always goes back to me. It's up to me. Like, there's, you know, if I don't do it, nobody's doing it. Oh, you know, they didn't do it, so I gotta do it. And it's not empowering. And it just plays on repeat, and I have been, I didn't realize it was visualization. I have been working on a different story, which is, I don't have to do it alone.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:14Mel Robbins?

  There's a lot of help. All I have to do is ask for help. There's a lot of people that want to help. This is, it is not all up to me.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not even skillful to have it be all up to you. Like, I was working with a client the other day, where we were using the metaphor of an obstacle course. And you know those military obstacle courses, where you're like crawling underneath the ropes, and then you gotta get over this gigantic wall? How do they get over that gigantic wall?

• 13:39Mel Robbins?

  Somebody else pushes you up.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah, so, you could say, I gotta do it all myself, but you could also be stuck at that wall for many, many years, because you simply will not ask someone to give you the boost.

• 13:50Mel Robbins?

  I've never thought about visualization as writing a different story. I've always thought, I have to close my eyes, crisscross applesauce with my feet, and try to see the movie. And it's very frustrating, if you're in a position in your life where you want things to change, but you can't actually see the movie of the change.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:13Mel Robbins?

  But I do think it's accessible and easy, if you start with, okay, what about my current story? Do I hate, and I'm tired of?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:22Mel Robbins?

  And if it were just the opposite of that, what would that look like? If I weren't a pinball? If I didn't have to do it all alone? What's the opposite story? And then, write that out.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And here's a super fun exercise, because part of imagination is also what we call thought experiments. And that does kind of use the thinking mind. So, let's say that you are stuck in a situation that is really, really difficult, whether it's a job, or a family matter, whatever it is. Write down 10 ways that you could make it worse.

• 14:55Mel Robbins?

  You could make it worse?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Write down 10 ways that you could make the situation worse, that you could make the situation worse. And the exercise is, after you write down the 10 ways, flip it. What's the opposite of the thing you wrote that would make it worse? And it is fascinating, because you come up with answers that you wouldn't come up with by just saying, what should I do? You force yourself to be like, okay, let me make this as bad as it could possibly be.

• 15:23Mel Robbins?

  I could light the house on fire. That'd be pretty bad.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 15:26Mel Robbins?

  I could spend all my money gambling. Well, that would make this a lot worse.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  And then, you write the polar opposite, and when you look at that list of opposites, you have a roadmap.

• 15:34Mel Robbins?

  Wow, and that's a form of visualization?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a form of imagination, yeah.

• 15:39Mel Robbins?

  So, is imagination the big category, and visualization as a technique in it?

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Correct, that's right, that's right.

• 15:45Mel Robbins?

  Okay. A lot of people talk about manifestation.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:49Mel Robbins?

  And we also did an extraordinary episode on the neuroscience of manifestation with the late Dr. Jim Doty.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:55Mel Robbins?

  Who I know was a really good friend of yours. How does that fit in?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:02Mel Robbins?

  To your research around imagination, what we just talked about with visualization?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I love how Jim talks about manifestation, and I believe he's absolutely right, that it's not so much about just picturing something I want in the future, and then magically having it appear, but it is about visualizing purposely, intentionally, what direction do I want to move in? Where do I want to be in my life? How do I want to show up? And the more we visualize that, we write about it, we draw it, we think about it, we conjecture about it, we tell other people about it, the realer and realer it becomes to our mind and to our brain. And what we're trying to do is get everything in there, rowing in the same direction.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Because a lot of times, people are moving into the future, they have one foot on the gas, they have one foot on the brake. And they're like, why am I not getting anywhere? And what's that noise? Right? And you don't even know you have the one foot on the brake. So, to keep that foot on the gas, and to take the risk of lifting the foot off the brake, you've got to keep telling your mind and your brain, this is, in fact, where we're going. This is going to happen. I am going to be okay. I'm not going to lose something important by pursuing this dream or this goal. And that's what people are often scared of, is if I pursue this dream, I am going to lose something. I'm going to look foolish.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I'm going to betray my family, who said, the only thing you should do is become an accountant, a doctor, or a lawyer. So many things. And so, also, having a lot of compassion for yourself, about the things that you are unconsciously imagining might go wrong, to hold that part of yourself closely, and to say, look, I know you're scared, but we are doing this. How can I make you feel more comfortable? Because it's non-negotiable. We are going to manifest this thing that we're working toward. But be aware, there's going to be a part of you that's like, I can't do that. You know, how can you take care of that part?

• 18:09Mel Robbins?

  What's helpful in the way you just described that, is that visualization feels like a very accessible tactical tool. And as I was listening to you, especially talking about one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brake, so relatable. Manifestation, all of a sudden, seemed like this very necessary thing for you to do for yourself every day in modern life, because there is so much external noise from the world, from friends, from family, telling you who you should be, what you should be doing, where you should be by now. And manifesting, at least for me, is a very intentional daily practice, for me to get

• 18:51Mel Robbins?

  clear about who I am, what I want, how I want to feel, and where I'm actually going. And in a world that's constantly telling you not to be the person that you really feel internally you want to be, it's vital, because it's the only way that you tune into yourself, and you can hear yourself.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are two main ways to shift perspective. One of them is training. You repeat it to yourself over, and over, and over again. And practice means the combination of intention, setting an intention for what you want and what you're doing, attention, paying attention to it on purpose, every day, and repetition. And that's what re-trains the brain. When you

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Have a clear vision of what you want to do, where you want to go, what is trying to come through you. And this is personal, not scientific. How many of us start to have synchronicities and feelings that you're getting signs from the universe and that somehow the universe is conspiring to help you? And sometimes, you know, I kind of like to imagine that there's like a, we got a live one over here in Sector 5, like they've got their vision. They're going for it. Everybody get over there and try to help, right? Because you are trying to do something. And I think it has to be something that is serving humanity, that's serving the planet, serving all beings. I don't think that this works when you're trying to manifest something that's going

• 20:27Speaker 01

  to harm others or that's going to cause more fear or constriction or division or hatred.

• 20:33Mel Robbins?

  What is the difference between visualization versus a manifesting practice of training your mind to be in alignment with the things that you want to attract or create in your life?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  I think it's a dance between effort and hard work and commitment and discipline and affirmation and staying focused on one hand. And this is going to sound like the complete opposite. Surrender, letting go, letting be, going with the river, not trying to boil the ocean, all of those phrases. And these two, even though they seem counter to each other, when you go back and forth between them and you navigate between them and you use both, that is really the pathway toward what we can call manifestation or creating the life that you want.

• 21:29Mel Robbins?

  I am kind of picking at this point because there are so many people around the world that are interested in having a daily practice. And I am somebody that has a daily manifestation practice. And I specifically think about the things that I want. I then pick up a pencil and I write them down. I write down five things every morning that I want to create in my life. And then I read them again and I sit in my body and think about how I'm going to feel as I'm doing the work to create those things. And time and time again, that practice of intentionally organizing my thoughts and

• 22:13Mel Robbins?

  mind from the mental to the physical of writing it, to the rehearsing of it, to the flooding my body with the feeling of what is it going to feel like when X happens? What is it going to feel like when Y happens? And then I close my eyes and I see myself doing the annoying steps. Like a simple example would be if you have on your bucket list, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or running a half marathon. Yes, write it down, but then when I close my eyes and think about it, I think about the boring 6:00 AM training run when it's raining.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:57Mel Robbins?

  I think about huffing and puffing at the bottom of the mountain and how heavy the pack is and not enjoying it. And I see and feel myself in a future state as a person working toward this thing. And what I believe is that when you intentionally take the time to identify the things that you want and you go from mental to physical and then you go and kind of flood your body with feeling what the future you is going to be doing on the road there, something crazy happens in your brain and the filters in your mind.

• 23:37Mel Robbins?

  And you see patterns and you see connections and you see the future differently. And I don't believe it's woo woo at all. I think it's very hard science.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly what we're talking about is. And the only difference is I would say you're using your imagination to completely embody, we call it embodied imagination. You are embodying the future you want to see. You're embodying the goals. And I love how you said you're also imagining the hard parts because so many people just imagine the result. Embodied in your imagination, all the steps it's going to take to get to where you want to go. It's like the future's already happened and you are reverse engineering it through giving your brain and your body the signals that this is what we are up to now. And it takes that level of work because the programming and the conditioning that you

• 24:32Speaker 01

  have from the previous parts of your life, so much of it, right? It's hardwired. So that daily practice is you literally using your imagination to retrain your brain and get it to cooperate with you in these activities that you're going to pursue.

• 24:49Mel Robbins?

  I'll give you another example because I think this is such a useful tool because what you're also fighting against is your own discouragement and your excuses and fear. So let's just take the example of you're moving to a city and it's hard to find an apartment and you're worried about not being able to afford it. I did this actually when we were looking for our first house because we could not afford a house in the town that we wanted to live in because they had great public schools. And every night I would write down, we are going to find an old house and we're going to be shocked and it's going to be beautiful and we're going to have to paint it ourselves. And, you know, it's going to be a magical thing where we find out. And it took six months of doing that.

• 25:32Mel Robbins?

  And sure enough, we found a house that wasn't on the market yet, that had a lawn that had like grass that was 27 inches high and was completely abandoned and locked up in a battle between the people that were still alive from the person who, like it was just on and on and on. But I think what it does is it doesn't make the house magically appear.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:55Mel Robbins?

  It makes you have more tenacity and belief that something's possible.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  That's right. I love that. Yeah, it reminds me of when I first moved to the Bay Area for grad school. We couldn't afford to buy anything in the Bay Area even back then. And so I imagined this little tiny house and behind it was this ocean. And I'm like, Cassie, how are you going to get an ocean view? You can't even afford, right? So we're looking everywhere. What did we find? We found a 640 square foot houseboat floating on the ocean. That's what we moved.

• 26:29Mel Robbins?

  No way.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was like, oh, okay, it wasn't the ocean view. It's going to be literally on the ocean.

• 26:36Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Veaton, I love the way you are explaining these topics and I cannot wait to share this episode, particularly with my two daughters. I need to hit the pause button so that we can hear a word from our sponsors. And if somebody is coming to mind in your life who deserves to see a bigger possibility, share this incredible conversation with them too. Just drop it in your family group chat, share it with a friend and don't go anywhere. Because when we come back, Dr. Veaton is going to go even deeper into the science of manifestation and imagination. So stay with us. We're going to be right back.

• 27:22Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today you and I are here with Dr. Cassandra Veaton. And today she is teaching you how to manifest anything and create the life you want using her extraordinary research around imagination, consciousness, visualization. So Dr. Veaton, for the person who's feeling stuck and now is leaning in because they're starting to imagine something else might be possible, what is the first step to starting to use the practice of manifestation in their life to get unstuck?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, here's one thing that I find very useful. This is a tool where you, if you can't do it inside yourself initially, you can imagine someone who loves you tremendously, like really has your best interest at heart. This could be someone who's alive. It could be someone who's passed away. It could even be a fictional figure.

• 28:19Mel Robbins?

  I'll volunteer. I'll be the fictional person in your mind. Or I guess I'm a real person, but I could be the person.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 28:25Mel Robbins?

  What would Mel tell you? What would Mel tell you is possible?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you are sitting there and you explain your whole situation to this person and ask them, what do you see is possible? What do you see as possible for me? And you'll be surprised at what you hear back from that person because it's, it just kind of tricks your mind into getting out of the tyranny of your critical judging mind and allowing this person who's a million percent behind you and believes in you, in your imagination, to tell you, here's what I see. And you can recognize, again, as we were saying, it's not going to be harsh. It's not going to be an argument. It's not going to be a ton of questions and it'll probably be something really short

• 29:12Speaker 01

  and pithy that you'll hear from this person, as well as feeling the love and the cheerleader in that person, like I'm 100% behind you. This is what your next step is. That's one.

• 29:24Mel Robbins?

  What does manifesting change about your life?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  So when you decide that you are going to pursue a dream, and that becomes the orienting principle of your life, you become motivated in a different way. You have access to energy that is not coming from fear of consequences. It's not coming from your anxieties. It's not that you're being... Have you ever had that feeling where you're just pushing so hard that you're just running low on energy?

• 30:01Mel Robbins?

  That was last week, but yes.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Well, yes, we have that, right? Even when you're driven by purpose, even when you're driven by vision, you can have that. But there's overall a different sense of motivation, energy, direction, momentum when you have that. It's more about what you're going toward than what you're going away from. Whenever you're trying to get away from something, there's kind of a mad dash and a scramble, and it's all defined by what you don't want. When it starts to become defined by where you're going and what you do want, then there's this sense of walking into the future with energy and with commitment. I like to say Martin Luther King Jr. did not say, "We have a problem." He said, "I have a dream."

• 30:45Speaker 01

  And he invited people into that dream, and more quickly than anyone thought, at least a lot of that dream has been realized. There's still a long way to go. That's what motivates people, is imagining a future that's different. And I think this is very important for those of you who are listening. When you criticize yourself, when you punish yourself, when you focus on what is not working and how you need to do it better, and the weight you need to lose, and, you know, all the stuff. I would spend about 10% to 15% of your time accurately seeing what are the issues, what are the problems? And then the rest of your time on what are potential solutions?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  And what is my vision for the future should those solutions come to pass? What will it feel like? What will it look like? Where will I be? What colors will be around me? What kind of people will be around me? What language will I be using toward myself or toward other people? How much further could I go with just that one change?

• 31:51Mel Robbins?

  That just gave me a visual, speaking of imagination. Because in periods in my life where I have been in utter survival mode, don't even know how I got through the day. Young kids, can't pay the bills. So many of us have been there. It's like you're treading water in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:14Mel Robbins?

  And that's why it feels like you can just keep your head above water, and that's all you can do. And these tools have really helped me, because what they've done is by using tools like your imagination, visualizing a future state, starting to manifest and intentionally program your mind for where you want to go. It's almost like a lighthouse in the distance appears. And now, even though you're still just barely able to keep your head above water, you now have a direction to move toward.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, sometimes it goes back to story. So I'm drowning, I'm exhausted, I can barely get through this. One story is to say, "I can see myself drowning." The other is, "I'm on mile 19 of a 26-mile marathon that I volunteered for, and I am going towards the finish line, but mile 19 sucks, right? It's painful, it's hard, but I am the runner who's doing this. What do I need? Sometimes I need my pit crew to hand me some water along the way," you know, all of that stuff.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Another is, you know, even when you are facing something that is so difficult, so hard, so even shameful, that you feel like you have to keep it a secret. One of the things that I'll work with people on is imagine that there are 1,000 women in a semicircle behind you, and they have all faced the same thing. "I have a kid in trouble. I lost someone." You know, that you have an entire group of people throughout history who have faced the same thing, and now they are walking behind you and helping you make your way through it.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  So, yes, going towards the vision, going towards manifesting the future, and also using these other metaphors to help you navigate towards it.

• 34:21Mel Robbins?

  What's the difference between manifestation and magical thinking?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so magical thinking often has to do with the stuff that I want other people to do, or the stuff that I want to have. It has to do with things I don't have any control over. I just want these things to appear in my life. And manifestation, as I understand it, is more about how do I want to show up? How do I want to be as I move into the future? I want to be honest. I want to be supportive. I want to be empowering of other people. I want to lift other people up with me. I want to be genuine. I want to be authentic. I want to set boundaries. I want to have a different energy level.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Those are things that I can actually do. And so manifestation, I think, the best use of it is to picture who and how you want to be, and what results that might have. Because a lot of times when we think about things we want in the future, it's because we think they're going to give us a sense of freedom, or vitality, or love, or connection, or worthwhileness. And they may, and it's good to move towards those. But the other thing you can do is flip it and say, "What could I do today to give myself a sense of those things that I think the future thing are going to bring me? What freedom can I bring into my life today? What vitality?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  What are the things that I could do right now that would bring me what I think that future thing is going to give me?"

• 35:58Mel Robbins?

  What's a daily practice or routine the person who's listening right now can start to put all this into their life? Like, one thing, yeah?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I wake up in the morning, I do my meditation practice, and then I take myself through my day. I imagine it. I look into what am I going to do? How am I going to get there? What am I going to eat? What are the meetings I'm going to have? Where am I going to be sitting? So that's that simulation form of imagination of just walking through the day. And then, how do I need to be today? What do I want to bring to that? And then, looking into something in my past, and when did I feel what I want to bring in today? So if I want to bring balance into today, or emotion regulation, or I want to bring a warrior spirit and some firm boundaries, or I want to bring compassion and empathy,

• 36:54Speaker 01

  when did I last feel that way? Embody that completely, and then move into your day with that quality?

• 37:01Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Vieten, I want to take a step back, because all the things that you've been teaching us about visualization and manifestation fall under the larger umbrella of your research around the science of imagination. So can you explain what exactly is imagination?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Imagination is the way that we simulate, reconfigure, and transcend reality. Sometimes through visualization, and oftentimes through other forms of imagination.

• 37:33Mel Robbins?

  What do those words mean? What do you mean it's simulate, reconfigure, and transcend reality?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Okay, so simulate is when I think about something in my mind, I bring it into my mind's eye. Let's talk about, let's just think about your house right now. Imagining your house, when you open the door, when you walk into it, what rooms are in it? Where's the kitchen? What do you love about it? What do you still want to fix about it? What's in the yard? That's simulation imagination. You are like a copy machine. You're just trying to copy what things are like so that you can game things out. What am I going to make for dinner tonight? What am I going to say to my kid tonight? That is very important, like us being able to simulate reality. And you and I are sitting here right now, as far as we know, there's nothing outside of this room. We're imagining, we're simulating all of it.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And so it's very helpful to simulate.

• 38:27Mel Robbins?

  I think a lot of us simulate negatively.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:30Mel Robbins?

  We wake up, we think about the day ahead, we start bracing, we start thinking about what's going to go wrong, or the thing we're dreading. And you're saying that you can first start training yourself to simulate having a good day, or showing up a certain way.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:46Mel Robbins?

  And then, the second thing you said was reconfigure? Now what am I doing?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Reconfigure. So now what you can do is say, "I know what it's probably going to be like, but I know I'm going to have some hard meetings in the morning, and I know I'm going to have another tricky situation in the afternoon that I have to face. What would make me feel vital? You know what I'm going to do? I am going to go out and get my favorite sushi. I'm just going to go out, get it, bring it back, sit with a cup of tea, eat the sushi, and know that that is me taking care of myself. I need a little bit of extra care today." So you're adding something to the reality. You're adding something to what you're imagining. Another way of reconfiguring goes a lot further than that, and it's reconfiguring your story

• 39:35Speaker 01

  about who you are and how you want to be.

• 39:38Mel Robbins?

  The third part you said was transcending.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  So transcending is the most fun, which is, what can I do that's completely outside of what I think is possible? I have a client who went through the unimaginable, which is that she lost her son to an overdose. And this was quite a long time ago. And she has suffered since then from extreme guilt, because she also had an addiction at the time. And she's sure that her addiction caused his addiction, and that his overdose was completely on her shoulders. And so this was really, really entrenched. And she felt like punishing herself was the right thing to do.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  And so as we worked together for a long time, we started to change the story into we both suffered from the disease of addiction. And it went far back in their family, totally genetic. And we started turning it into a story where our family and my ancestors, it's almost like we live in a village and every now and then a dragon comes in and breathes fire and lays waste to the land. We lose people, people die, it destroys things. But that has been happening in my family for many, many generations. And the dragon came while I was there with my son and it got me and we lost him.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  And so now what I do in my life, instead of punishing myself, is I help other people who are facing the unimaginable, because I've been through it and I can be by their side while they go through it. Totally different story. The dragon metaphor really, really helped. And so when we talk about transcending reality, it's not always about going into a complete la la land. It's about finding a story that's big enough to match what's actually happening in your life and help you transcend that and have it be different for, not that the situation was different, but the way you look at it is different.

• 41:48Mel Robbins?

  Well, it's a super helpful image, especially for anybody who's trying to break generational patterns.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:56Mel Robbins?

  Why is the skill of imagination critical to creating a better life?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Well, the only thing that has ever led to inventions or breakthroughs or things that have changed the world, both individuals and in our society, like cell phones or electricity.

• 42:19Mel Robbins?

  Going to the moon.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Right, going to the moon, right? Somebody somewhere said, what if, what if we could go to the moon? What if we could talk to each other using a machine? There's a super cool story about Alexander Graham Bell and the inventor of the telephone. And so he actually had this experience where he somehow knew his sister was in trouble. And this is before the phone, this is before, this is like, you know, mail was on the Pony Express, right? He just had a sense, something's wrong with my sister, something's not okay. And he did find out through letter, like three weeks later, she had had a carriage accident. And he said, you know, I wish we had a machine that would let us communicate with each other.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  And he just dedicated his life to making that machine. And so that's a big one, right? But in your own life, there are things that you could create or invent, solutions that you could come to, that again, can only begin in your imagination. Imagination is like the workspace in your mind where you can simulate, reconfigure, go beyond current reality and say, hey, there's probably a different way to do this. I want to find out what it is.

• 43:38Mel Robbins?

  Is everybody capable of imagining?

• 43:40Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. So when people say, I'm not very imaginative, or worse, they're told, you're not very original, you're not very imaginative, usually what people mean is you don't know how to visualize things in great detail. You can't seem to visualize things that are different in great detail. The good news is there is a neurodiversity of imagination where each of us has our own particular, unique brand of imagination, like a fingerprint. We each have our own profile. So you may not know that you are actually less of a visual imaginer and more of a social emotional imaginer.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Those kinds of imaginers might not have very vivid images, but they sure can tell you how someone feels. They can tell you how someone across from them might be feeling or thinking, or if I do this behavior, this is how it's going to come across to the other person, or this is the response you might get if you do that. They're just really good at that. Then there's other senses besides vision, like even smell imagination and gustatory imagination, you know, chefs are really good at imagining what something might taste like. And it's part of how they imagine their new concoctions that they make. So what I want people to know too, is all these imagination profiles are strengths.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  We need every type of imaginer. We need the fantastical, visual vivid imaginer, but we also need that practical imaginer who knows exactly how things will fit.

• 45:16Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Veaton, thank you for sharing that. I want to hear more, but I have to take a quick break so we can hear a word from our incredible sponsors, but don't go anywhere. Because after the break, Dr. Veaton has another very specific and simple exercise that you can do that helps you apply everything that she's teaching you about visualization, manifestation, and so much more. And she's going to walk us through it when we return, so stay with me. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. Today, you and I are here with Professor Cassandra Veaton.

• 45:57Mel Robbins?

  And today, she's teaching you how to manifest anything and create the life you want using the science of your imagination, visualization, consciousness. This stuff is so cool. So Dr. Veaton, let's just jump right back in. When we first got you to agree to come on the show and I started digging into your book and your work, I immediately thought of this quote in Trevor Noah, who I love, his number one New York Times bestseller, Born a Crime. And I want to read to you from Noah's book. It's on page 73, where he's talking about imagination. "We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine.

• 46:42Mel Robbins?

  And depending upon where you came from, your imagination can be quite limited. Growing up in Soweto, our dream was to put another room on our house, maybe have a driveway, maybe someday a cast iron gate at the end of the driveway, because that is all we knew. But the highest rung of what's possible is far beyond the world you can see." I think intellectually, we know that, but if you're in a moment in your life where you feel very stuck and you feel that there's a lot of evidence that this is all that there is, and that this is what your life is and what it's always going to feel like.

• 47:26Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Veaton, what do you want to say to the person who really believes that the highest rung of what's possible in your life is where you are?

• 47:38Speaker 01

  When we feel stuck, it's often accompanied by the feeling of, I don't know what to do. I don't know what's next. I don't, I got nothing. And the linear logical ego mind really hates that, does not like it. But there's another part of us that when we are in a place of, I don't know, I have no idea what to do, imagination does like that. And so you've probably seen the book by Pema Chodron, Uncomfortable with Uncertainty. And I had a teacher that was very important to me, Angela Sarian, who would say, spend more time in the land of, I don't know.

• 48:20Mel Robbins?

  But I don't want to be in that land because I don't like feeling like I don't know.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Right? So spend some time there. But also, I teach a workshop called The Next You, and we take people to meet their future selves.

• 48:36Mel Robbins?

  How do you do that?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Right. So first, what you do is get yourself into a state, whether it's through meditation or listening to music or being in nature, where you're really open minded and kind of let go of some of the, you know, busyness and all that stuff. So you might do some breathing for five or 10 minutes. And then what we want you to do is... Five years, 10 years, 15 years into the future, imagine that you are at your front door and you are about to meet the future you that has already embodied a lot of the qualities and goals and accomplishments that you hope to do. Now, I wouldn't get too locked down on exactly what it is

• 49:21Speaker 01

  because if you put an overlay on it ahead of time, you're going to be kind of controlling it too much.

• 49:27Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  So instead of saying, well, she's got a mansion and she has a Jaguar, you just say, this is someone who feels the way that I think the mansion and Jaguar would give me. This is someone who feels free. They have a lot of spare time. They feel balanced. They feel vital. They feel healthy. They have positive relationships. Whatever your goals are, right? Whatever your goals for how you want to be are. Open the door. See your future self. And then you can ask them some questions. What is the one thing, more than any other thing, that you did to get you to where you are today? And you'll be surprised at what they answer. You know, they'll give you some direction.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  The great thing is you don't have to do this once. You can actually have that future self be your ally, your best friend, your golf caddy. You know, sort of like, hey, I wouldn't do that. That's going to get you into a sand trap. Like, they can become a coach for you as you move into your future. It can become a sort of a true north on the compass. And it can help you make decisions now. Like, is this taking me closer to my future self or further away from my future self? And people might think that sounds, I don't know, you know, frou frou or woo woo or something like that, right? But we know from the science that when people imagine their futures, they act differently.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  They show up differently. They make different decisions. And so there's very interesting data showing like college students and they have them meet their future self and they actually take a photo of them and they age the photo. And so they see themselves, what they might look like when they're older. And then they ask them, you know, do you want to start a savings account for the future? And the kids who saw their future selves want to save more money for the future.

• 51:24Mel Robbins?

  What's happening in your brain when you are using the skill of imagination to visualize a whole different reality?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  The most important thing about what's happening in the brain when you are imagining is that the brain differentiates much less than you might think between something that actually happens and something you imagine. So when you imagine seeing something, your visual cortex lights up. When you imagine hearing something, your auditory cortex lights up. When you imagine moving, your motor cortex lights up. And so when you imagine something, you are actually giving your brain the signal that, in a way, it's happened. The great tennis player Billie Jean King said, before she went to sleep, she would just imagine the ball coming at her and every single angle and how she would hit it.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And so what we know from research is that athletes who imagine practicing basketball game, soccer game, they have better performance than athletes who don't imagine. And so when you add imagination to your rehearsal for life, you're giving your brain the signal, I'm still training. Even though I'm just sitting here next to my window, drinking my tea in my pajamas, I'm still practicing in my imagination. And so those parts of your brain are lighting up. The other things that are happening in your brain is if you imagine something that is very scary or threatening or what might go wrong or the worst, you're releasing cortisol.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  You're the same way you would if it happened. Not quite the same, right? It approaches it. But if you're imagining the worst all day, every day, you are giving your brain the signal that those things are happening. There's this great quote that I think comes initially from Seneca, but it's attributed to Mark Twain. And it's like, I've experienced many terrible things, most of which have never happened. And so even though they haven't happened, you're still giving your body the same stress signals as if they did happen.

• 53:34Mel Robbins?

  Let's apply this. So let's say that the person listening is bracing all day long because they think they're going to get laid off. Or they're bracing because they're worried that they're going to never meet somebody and fall in love again.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:51Mel Robbins?

  And so they're imagining a future state, right? Because if you are driving to your job today, you still have it. And so I take it if you have trained yourself to be somebody that worries, what if this, what if that? This is going to go wrong. What if this person thinks that? That's evidence that you could train yourself to imagine in the positive.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 54:13Mel Robbins?

  And what changes about your life when you get very serious about training yourself to imagine in the positive?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, my personal experience is that I have experienced maladaptive imagination. There was a time in my life where I had everything I wanted. I had a beautiful place to live. I had an incredible job. I mean, absolutely incredible. There was a lot of pressure and I did go through a divorce. And so when the stress increased a lot, I started drinking very heavily. And at that point, I started to tell myself, it's going to be okay as long as you don't ever tell anyone about this.

• 54:53Mel Robbins?

  Now, let me stop because that, it's going to be okay if you don't tell anybody? You imagined that. Is that what you're saying?

• 55:00Speaker 01

  It's a story I told myself. I can do this as long as I don't tell anyone. So it's getting worse and worse and worse. It's having more and more consequences. And still, my story is if you tell anybody about this, if you ask for help, you are going to get a black mark on your record forever. Like, people are going to think you are the worst, that you have completely lost your mind. You're untrustworthy. You're damaged. So it goes on and on and on. It gets very bad. Finally, out of desperation, I call one of my colleagues and say, hey, I can't stop drinking. And he says, I'll be right over. I said, you know, look, I know I can't take any time off work. There's way too much responsibility.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  He said, oh, no, you're already off now for the next 60 days. You go take care of yourself. We got it. We are all behind you. Come back well. Did I imagine that would happen? Never in a million years. And so these diseases of despair is what my colleague Lisa Miller at Columbia University talks about, where you begin to despair addiction, depression, anxiety. Your mind starts telling you stories that are not true, but you start believing them anyway. And it's very hard to get yourself to tell a different story. But it's partly because you don't know you're telling yourself a story. You just think it's real. And so there's a colleague of mine who's at the Arizona State University.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  He's at the Center for the Science of the Imagination. And he's doing something called the VIP Project, the Veterans Imagination Project. His name is Bob Beard. And what he does is has veterans come in, and these are folks who have faced severe combat trauma. They've had PTSD. They've had, you know, brain consequences because of what they've experienced. And so they're feeling like, I don't know if there's anything for me after all that. He sits them down. He has them imagine their futures. And then he pairs an artist with them who sketches it all out for them in this very detailed painting or, you know, drawing. And after they go through this, they're like, I have hope.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  I have vision. I have a compass. I have a true north. I have a direction. And that is the best gift you can give to anyone.

• 57:20Mel Robbins?

  You know, it reminds me of a passage in your blockbuster bestseller, Imagine That. It's in the introduction. And I want to read to you from your book and have you dig a little deeper into the power of imagination.

• 57:42Mel Robbins?

  You say that your primary goal with your work, Dr. Vieten, is to help people re-enchant their lives, to re-enliven their world, spark new hope, and reveal new possibilities through the science and practice of imagination, to help you escape the confines of your current reality tunnel and envision hopeful futures while experiencing more awe, wonder, and the ability to chart a new course for yourself and society. Because the antidote to despair isn't just hope, it's the skill to generate hope. So the first thing I wanted to ask you after reading that is, what is a reality tunnel?

• 58:25Mel Robbins?

  And how do I know I'm in one?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Right, right. So this is a concept that came up in the 60s. And this was when consciousness was starting to explode and people were doing psychedelics. And this was like Timothy Leary and his colleagues were like, hey, man, you're stuck in a reality tunnel. So it sounds kind of like dude, right? But it's true. Like, we are actually stuck in a reality tunnel. And all of us have our own reality tunnel. What we think is real, what we think is possible, what we think is impossible. And part of our job is to break free from these limited ideas about reality, open up our aperture and say, you know, if I'm stuck in a relationship and I'm like, should I stay, should I go? Should I stay, should I go? Should I stay? Or a job, let's say. It's only two choices, stay or go.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  The truth is, there's probably 10, 15, 20, 25 possible choices that you could make to break out of that tennis match inside of your mind. And I see people who have been in this tennis match for decades, for years, for months. And so one of the practices they can try is to sit down and write 50 possibilities. And don't make them practical necessarily. Some of them can be practical, but some of them can be completely impractical. Like, I'm going to open a cozy bookshop in Scotland. I'm out of here. Or I'm going to join the circus. Like, whatever it is, right? Just don't add it, write them all down. And what happens then is that when you start to look at all 50, you might notice every single one of them

• 59:58Speaker 01

  had an element of travel in it. Why, why is that? I guess I, I want to travel.

• 1:00:04Mel Robbins?

  Or I want to escape this person and this relationship. So traveling means I'm somewhere else.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but let's say, so maybe you do, right? Maybe you say, hey, you know what? I'm out of here. Or maybe you say, I don't want to be out of here. I want to work on this. I got three kids, I'm not leaving. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to travel for a month every year. I'm going to go with my girlfriends. And that is going to change my life. That's practical, that's possible for some people, right? Maybe it's a week. Maybe you just say, I'm not taking a vacation with my family. I'm taking a vacation with my girlfriends. There are small things that are real that can come out of those big, crazy 50 possibilities that you didn't notice before.

• 1:00:43Mel Robbins?

  Well, going back to the very beginning, where we talked about the fact that 70% of the people who listen to this show around the world feel like they're reacting to life. What I love about what you're teaching us is so many of us are looking outside of ourselves for the signals, when transformation is an inside activity.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:04Mel Robbins?

  And these tools help you turn inward and go deeper inward into your subconscious, into your spirit, into your heart, into the things that you can't explain, and tap into those signals for guidance, rather than constantly looking outside yourself for them. You are one of the most cited researchers alive on the conscious mind. What is consciousness?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Consciousness is what you experience, what you believe, what you intend, your intuition, your inner life. It's, you know, at the very basic level, just everything you're aware of. But then there's sort of a bigger C consciousness, where it's what you don't even know that you're assuming, believing, intending. And so one of the things about becoming more conscious is to start to pay attention to, what are all of my beliefs? What are my values? What are my commitments? What's inside of me? How do I bring my consciousness into the world every day? And so I worked at the Institute of Noetic Sciences for about 18 years.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  And this was founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was the sixth man to walk on the moon. And when he was on his way back to Earth from space, he's viewing the Earth and the stars and the sun and the moon. And he had this epiphany where he recognized that my consciousness isn't just mine, but I'm actually connected to the molecules that make up my body are the same as the ones in the stars and in the space capsule and the sun and the Earth. And there's this deeper sense of interconnectedness. So there is an outer world. And we all know what that is. This table, the lights, the walls, things that are real.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Then there's an inner world. And that inner world is also real. It's our experience. It's what we perceive, it's what we believe, it's what we intend, it's our whole worldview. How do we view things? And that consciousness affects our bodies and our brains, our hormones, our neurotransmitters, the way our brain is built, the way we behave in the world.

• 1:03:29Mel Robbins?

  What does it mean, though, to become more conscious in your everyday life?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Becoming more conscious in your everyday life means that you are not automatic as much. You are working as you move through your life with intention, with attention. You are, instead of just being kind of a pinball in a pinball machine, deciding that I want to bring a certain intention to this meeting that I'm about to have. I want to bring in a direction that we can go together. And I want to elicit this from other people.

• 1:04:09Mel Robbins?

  How do you tap into the unconscious mind?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting. When I started to do a lot of work on imagination, I went out to the desert in Enzobarago. And it's this gorgeous desert landscape. And hiked to the top of this mountain. And at that point, I had this 360-degree view of everything. And I asked what I guess I would call the spirits, but let's just call it the universe or other people might call it something different. It's like, what does the world need to know about imagination? And the answer was immediate. It was, tell them it's the place where we can most easily talk to them. And I love that because I feel like there is an inner wisdom, a deep inner wisdom that each one of us holds

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  that's not accessible by typical, linear, logical thinking. It's accessible through imagination. And as we practice imagination more purposefully, as we create the conditions in our lives where imagination is more welcome to spontaneously arise, we start to get messages from that deeper inner self that are meaningful, that are influential, that are outside the box, and that allow us to make fundamental shifts in the way that we view the world and therefore in the way we show up in the world. And that changes everything.

• 1:05:37Mel Robbins?

  All right, so do you have a way that you could show me what experiencing this is like?

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so actually, we have created a number of virtual reality experiences for people. Especially, it's great for people who don't have a ton of visualization ability to have this training wheels of this. But the other thing that's great about VR is it can allow you to go to places that you couldn't ever go in this world. So what I want to show you is putting you into the shoes of Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut, who was the sixth person to walk on the moon. And then have you come back to Earth and have a little bit of the experience that he had? Are you ready?

• 1:06:15Mel Robbins?

  Okay, yes, let's do this. Okay, so do I put it on?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Okay, so try putting this on.

• 1:06:18Mel Robbins?

  Okay, this is heavy.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Okay, you got it?

• 1:06:21Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:06:22Mel Robbins?

  Okay, so I am seeing like the moonscape. Okay, whoa, what's behind me?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  That's your, whoa.

• 1:06:30Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  That's your spacesuit.

• 1:06:32Mel Robbins?

  I'm seeing a spacesuit that is next to me. It's like right behind, it's like right here. I'm not in it.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  It's kind of, you're supposed to be.

• 1:06:40Mel Robbins?

  Okay, then I'm supposed to be in it, but I'm sort of in front of it. But, okay. Whoa. Three, two, one. Whoa, there it goes. Welcome to the Apollo 14 mission. Your journey home begins on the dark side of the moon, which is also an excellent song. Astronaut Edgar Mitchell is your co-pilot. All right, everybody, we're on the dark side of the moon. Allow my body to relax. That's a good cue because I was gripping the chair here. It literally feels like you're in Star Wars or in a movie. Whoa, what is that? There's something floating by me right now.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  That is the capsule that you are about to marry with to get back to Earth.

• 1:07:24Mel Robbins?

  So we're about to connect to a capsule that's going to then shuttle us back to Earth. And it's like right there. It looks like a D-size battery.

• 1:07:37Mel Robbins?

  Floating right there, almost like you could touch it.

• 1:07:41Mel Robbins?

  Whoa, and there's the, you see the flame thing? And now it's shuttling forward. And I have a feeling I'm about to grip my chair again as this thing starts moving forward.

• 1:07:50Mel Robbins?

  And as you look around, the stars are so close. As you're kind of experiencing this, and now we're moving forward away from the moon, you just can't believe that human beings figured out how to do this. So why have me visit the moon in virtual reality?

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Well, virtual reality is a way that we can help people with their imagination. So I could have taken you on a guided visualization and said, imagine that you're lifting off from the moon. Now imagine that you're coming closer to the earth. But putting you in there really gives you a little bit of the sense of what it might be like out there. And so in this particular experiment, what we're looking at is when people have that experience of coming back to the earth slowly, like an astronaut who describes the overview effect, meaning that once they see the earth from space and they see there are no boundaries between countries, that it's so small and a sea of blackness. They often come back to earth feeling like the only thing they want to do

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  is help maintain and make the earth sustainable and help other people on the planet. And they lose that sense of separation because it's so small, we're all one family. And so we're trying to give people a little echo of that overview effect.

• 1:09:09Mel Robbins?

  Well, I'll tell you, it's a very interesting experience because there's no way that you can feel like you're out in space, looking back down on the earth and not understand that you are just a visitor. That in terms of the timeline of humanity, you're here for a blink of an eye.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Mel Robbins?

  And that a lot of the things that you're struggling with right now are not unique to you. That, as you said, you don't see the borders between countries. You just see this massive, beautiful planet. And you feel simultaneously tiny and limitless at the same time. How can you apply this experience to your daily life?

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think for people who are living in their daily lives, one of the things they can do is absolutely pull back and gain a bigger perspective. So one of the VR experiences that we're producing right now is you all know about the train of thought. One thought after another, just chugging along, taking you to Chicago when you didn't even mean to go there. And so people who feel overwhelmed by rumination or by those kinds of thoughts, what we'll have them do is put their thoughts on the train and it'll be right up next to them, like going by very, very loud, you know, kind of like our thoughts are. And then we'll have them pull back and pull back and pull back until the train is just like a little tiny toy train in the distance.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  And they're looking at this grand vista, the Grand Canyon, or you know, some huge mountain range. And realize that that train of thought, even though it's kind of like the CNN announcer in your mind, it shouldn't really be taking up as much space as it is. It could be that your thinking patterns could be just kind of like a radio playing in the background or a train off in the distance, like, yeah, my thoughts are important, but how about if I was just right here, right now, sitting in the studio with Mel? Do I also want this massive narration that often tends towards the negative to be there? Not really, I don't want to lose it. I just don't want it to be dominating every moment of my life. So that perspective is what we're trying to train.

• 1:11:27Mel Robbins?

  Well, one of the amazing things that you've done for us today is you've taught us how to use the innate skill that we have of imagination, visualization, manifestation to see a world that we want to live in and to see a future that we want to create. For somebody that's feeling very discouraged because the news is horrendous. People are really, really struggling. Maybe you're in a moment in your life where you do feel like things are falling apart. Why is that a moment that it's more important than ever to tap into the power and the science of your imagination?

• 1:12:10Mel Robbins?

  To imagine a better future? Why does this matter right now more than ever?

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  I mean, there's not much you can do about the external pressures or the way that so many things seem to be going kind of insane. But what you can do is shift the way that you choose to navigate the moment in time that we are all in. And that requires your imagination. How do I want to show up in the world? Imagination can be framed as an act of resistance. Your imagination is something that no one can ever take away from you. The story of Viktor Frankl, for example, the Holocaust, he's in a concentration camp.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  The only thing he has left is he imagines himself in the future teaching a classroom of students. They could not take that away from him. And indeed, after surviving, that is where he ended up. That was what he could hang on to. And so I would tell people who feel despair, who feel a loss of hope, what can you imagine that you can put in your home, in your environment that would make you feel like there is still hope, that there is still contributions that you can make? And then what might that be? Because I know a lot of us are just feeling helpless. And there's almost nothing worse than feeling helpless when you see people you love in trouble or in pain.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  What is your contribution, small or large? One thing I want to say about imagination is that it doesn't follow the same rules as the logical, linear mind. It doesn't care a lot about time moving forward. You can go back in time in your imagination and do some healing work with your younger selves. You can go forward in time. It doesn't care a lot about distance or space. I can imagine being with somebody that I'm distant from. So in the world of imagination, use the different rules. Don't worry about time, don't worry about space, don't worry about scale. What are you here to do?

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  And just taking those small actions, even just imagining, is your act of resistance.

• 1:14:31Mel Robbins?

  Dr. Vieten, what are your parting words?

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  I just want everyone at home to know that you have something inside of yourself that is available to you. It's free. When I introduce people to their imagination, sometimes it's like I point out a small door in their house that they didn't know was there and open it. And all of a sudden, there's a giant new wing. And that wing of your house, your imagination, offers you information and energy that it's not frivolous, it's not just for kids, it's not just for artists. It is for you. And you may as well notice it because you are using it all day, every day. Use it more frequently, use it purposefully. And also take the time to spend a little bit more time every day

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  in this territory of imagination and it will bring more magic back into your life.

• 1:15:24Mel Robbins?

  Well, Dr. Vieten, thank you, thank you, thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for flying here and taking the time to teach us and to explain how specifically we can use these tools to bring more magic back in our lives. And I certainly feel it. And I know the person who's with us feels it too. So thank you.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:15:45Mel Robbins?

  You're welcome. And thank you, thank you for making the time to listen to something that will help you access this skill inside of you. You deserve a better future and using these tools, you can first start to visualize it and experience it. And that's going to help you actually create it. All right, in case nobody else tells you, I also wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And maybe, just maybe, if you start visualizing the life that you want and you start allowing yourself to feel what it's going to feel like now, that's the first step to you being able to create it. I actually believe it is. All righty, I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:16:30Mel Robbins?

  I'm going to welcome you in the moment you hit play.

• 1:16:36Mel Robbins?

  Um, here we go.

• 1:16:39Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my gosh, okay. Well, what do you want me to say next? Okay, do you want me to do the open first? Do you want me to do pickups?

• 1:16:47Mel Robbins?

  And do I need to have Yuna move her computer? Because I don't know.

• 1:16:53Mel Robbins?

  Sorry.

• 1:16:57Mel Robbins?

  Guys, there's like a lot here. I don't know where this is from. But there's a lot of something right here. Hold on a second, okay. Is that what it is?

• 1:17:08Mel Robbins?

  Actually, it was, it was the salad I ate six hours ago. So I don't know what the hell is happening. Okay.

• 1:17:17Mel Robbins?

  Researcher and psychologist, hold on, let me go back up. Okay.

• 1:17:22Mel Robbins?

  Was it okay? For real?

• 1:17:26Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:29Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:32Mel Robbins?

  She's also the director of the Center for Mindfulness and the Centers for, okay, my, okay. Okay. Baby claps, okay. Coach me.

• 1:17:46Mel Robbins?

  Okay, read me those, just read me them.

• 1:17:51Mel Robbins?

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