are we rolling yet because I have some things I need to say to Rich for round two is the ever inspiring one and only queen of grounded science-backed personal development my dear friend Mel Robbins the research is conclusive that when you are critical of yourself it destroys all motivation to act Mel is crazy talented she's super authentic and just has this knack for cutting through the noise and the [ __ ] and telling you exactly what you need to hear to get off your butt and in to action my mission is super simple it's very very much a the same as yours it's to help you create a better life she does it with a smile she does it with compassion and wisdom born from a lifetime of both success and more importantly epic failures if you have a bad day congratulations you're breathing you're a human being please do not beat yourself up shake it off and pick something you're going to do tomorrow Mel is a former lawyer turned CNN legal analyst talk show host Mega best-selling author of the five second rule in the high five habit and one of the most widely booked public speakers in the world and after absolutely dominating in the world of audible only audiobooks Mel is now branching out into my territory with the launch of her brand new podcast aptly titled the Mel Robbins podcast which immediately upon launch skyrocketed no surprise to one of the top shows in the world I deeply believe that you can heal generalized anxiety something I've struggled with for almost 45 years so buckle your proverbial seat belt open your hearts and enjoy this enlightening Exchange Mel Robbins so I cannot believe you just said that you feel guilty about making people drive out here to your students it's a commitment we it's way out in the middle of nowhere it's cool I'm glad you're here it's complete [ __ ] first of all you have this incredible platform that you have built you have people that hang on your every word and it is absolutely like a gift that you're giving to people so the fact that you would feel guilty about somebody spending 45 measly minutes to be able to come and have a conversation it was probably more like an hour hardly but it doesn't matter I don't know stop that okay yeah well this is kind of like we're going to talk about tangential issues around you know this kind of mental ailment yes and so let me point out another one of yours yeah so this morning I was looking on Instagram and you put up the post about Zac Efron right being a fan of your show and you said I might take this down later and all of your fans I held back because I knew I was going to tell you this in person we're like stop if you didn't actually make a difference in the world then he would not be doing what he's doing in terms of the the way he's gotten his health in order and so you make a huge difference and you call it self-promotional but the truth is you are creating positive Ripple effects and I think it's very inspiring that you do that and so I don't see it as promotional at all I see it as you demonstrating the reach of your show and the fact that the people that you have on change the lives of real people and that has a huge impact on the world dude well I appreciate that I'm gonna click now I can clip that out and I'll put that up on Instagram let him I'm now talking to Rich's team Mel Robbins will drive back here and literally yell at everybody I'm telling you like you are you are humble which I deeply admire and it's something that you know I might not be sounding humble right now but you and I share that sort of like ah Shucks thing because we didn't get into this in terms of podcasts or writing books or doing what we're doing because we had some aspiration to become a celebrity we have been sharing our stories because I think both you and I believe that first of all if we can do it you can do it and secondly that there are simple things that you can do to become happier or healthier and that if you and I can save anybody the [ __ ] headache and heartaches that we both caused ourselves that is a life well lived I'm on your page with that and you know I appreciate everything that you just shared and and I am trying to grow into you know the person who can kind of just gracefully accept nice things when they're when they're said to me as opposed to you know every Instinct inside of me which is to say yeah but or to diminish you know the the kind things I think in the case of you know uh publishing like a something that really is unabashedly very self-promotional I mean on its face that's what it is right there is inside of me a thing like like the only reason I'm putting this up it's like it's shining a light on me and I have discomfort with that like I'd rather make it about what you just said which is the ideas behind it yeah but you are making it about the ideas because you don't sit here and have the conversations and do all the work behind the scenes that you do that most people are not aware of that go into making this form of Art and this act of service that you're doing for the World by hosting this podcast by producing it by putting it out there rich and I think that what's really cool about putting out that post about Zac Efron giving you credit right for everything that he knows about health for training for Baywatch for the stuff that he's learned from you that you're the person that he listens to is that he has a big platform and so he can then send that ripple effect even further and so the other thing I wanted to say because this is going to lead us right into the topic about mental health about mindset about happiness and the the profound issues I've been working on in my own life is I completely understand what you mean when you say it's really hard to accept a compliment it's hard to accept a gift you'd rather have it be about somebody else one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had in the last couple years rich is this Epiphany about my inability to receive love and the fact that I was uncomfortable for a long time hearing a compliment or having somebody say something nice or having a birthday party thrown for me or receiving a gift and I have recently had this breakthrough because I have learned that there is a extremely tight connection between feeling anxious and not allowing love to come in and so I have this visual rich and I'm going to explain this to you because um I just had this emotional experience happen when you sort of were like pushing away the love I was trying to to to shower you with so I think when you block love like imagine like there's this closed door and when somebody tries to link with you or connect with you or authentically tell you how amazing you are if you have a hard time hearing it you basically have put a solid door between you and the other person and I've been working recently with visualizing The Galley doors in a kitchen That Swing both ways because you're very good at giving love you're very good at giving support you're an incredibly amazing friend because you're always there when somebody needs you and you always open the door to listen to advise to share and I'm the same way too and for a long time when somebody would try to give it back to me the door was closed so let's talk a little bit about where that comes from like what is the Genesis of that instinct for you or what have you learned about what I've learned about this and I would strongly encourage you to bring Dr Russell Kennedy onto your show he wrote the book anxiety RX he's a medical doctor who also got his degree in neuroscience and he started experiencing anxiety when he was in medical school and he um has gone on to heal his anxiety he treats people around the world with anxiety like he is a game changer on this content and the topic of anxiety so his theory and I now see this completely in my life his theory is that all anxiety comes from childhood and it comes from the experience of being separate in childhood and so every single one of us has an experience and you may not remember it because 80 of your brain is formed by the time you're five years old but you have an experience where you as a kid feel distinct and separate from your caregiver and he talks a lot about this concept of a parental mismatch so there are a lot of us that have parents who are wonderful people or maybe they're not wonderful people but you have parents who are wonderful people but for you emotionally just like the five love languages there can be a mismatch in terms of the love language you speak and need and what your partner does that your parent and the way that they provide emotional support is a mismatch and so as a kid when you don't get the reassurance you need or when you don't feel loved or seen or heard or accepted you feel separate from the parent that you're biologically hardwired and needing to bond with which also means you feel unsafe and so as a little kid at some point an alarm would go off in your body whenever you felt separate from your parents and it could be as innocuous as go hug your uncle and you're like this I don't want to hug my uncle you're like get in there um or don't do that now I'm busy or the snapping at you and you immediately feel that alarm because you feel separate and so what happens is that this alarm that starts going off and going off and going off in moments where you feel separate you're not feeling the love that you need you're not feeling connected you're not feeling reassured it starts to go off all the time now as you get older and older and older I mean we've all had the experience of walking in to see old friends at lunch and for many of us we feel that alarm go off they've all arrived there they're all talking you feel that sense of Separation that's anxiety that's what it is it's in your body and it is according to Dr Kennedy it is the little you basically waving their hand saying I need a little reassurance right now that's all that it is and for decades I have approached what has been an experience of living with anxiety from the neck up I mean the five second rule is a neck up approach and based on the last two years of intense therapy that I've been in and you know a lot of stuff that I've recently learned from Dr Kennedy I realize it is fundamentally a neck down issue that attacking anxiety and these moments where you feel separate or scared or you feel the alarm go off in your body if you instead of treating it like a signal that something's wrong if you actually treat it as a signal that you just need a little bit of love from yourself right now just put your hand on your heart you can like take a towel and kind of do this on your back rub it back and forth and you feel like you're hugging yourself take a deep breath tell yourself whatever you need to hear in that moment in order to reassure yourself that you're going to be okay or that whatever you know I get it you know you feel a little nervous but all those people at that table love you it's freaking bonkers how powerful of a purchase is and it's also made me realize that wow I am so not used to giving myself that kind of love and reassurance no wonder I'm uncomfortable letting other people give it to me um that's powerful I mean a couple sort of Reflections on that the first being uh that it tracks in a very similar way to uh science that's emerging on the nature of trauma like I've just had a couple episodes with gabarmate and Dr Paul Conte and both of them they have their approaches are a little bit different but they they have this shared shared sense or a shared uh perspective that that trauma arises in early childhood and for the same reasons you're you weren't the parenting match wasn't appropriate or correct um and it makes me wonder whether kind of all of these things that we experience later in life where we feel off-kilter can be tracked back to those very early years and it's interesting I'm surprised I think that all in fact I start get I'm now I'm so uh deep in my own personal exploration of the somatic modalities whether it's the I the the cold exposure which has been a game changer for me in many ways and I still hate whether it's guided MDMA therapy sessions with my husband which has been incredible around nervous system regulation and being able to re-experience past trauma in a controlled setting that allows my body to reprocess it so it doesn't keep triggering me um EMDR but I'm telling you just this reframe of thinking about anxiety as not a neck up approach of course cognitive behavioral therapy works of course talk therapy is super important of course things like the five second rule and pattern Interruption and working on different ways of thinking in terms of interrupting the self-criticism with a little bit more encouragement that stuff is part of the toolkit but I deeply believe that you can heal generalized anxiety something I've struggled with for almost 45 years I believe that through learning how to experience that alarm that goes off that is completely normal when you feel separate when you feel invisible when you feel slightly nervous and learning how to give yourself the love and the reassurance that you didn't get at whatever moment it was that this alarm started going off sub five years old I think this is game changing it has been for me I've now taught it to two of my kids that are uh that struggle with anxiety they're reporting back like okay why didn't you know this like when I was eight and the doctor kept saying change the channel like just being able to silence the alarm and realize oh this thing can come and go I don't have to be ruled by it it's freaking awesome the feeling of of being different than or an outsider or other than and that you know kind of low-grade uh nervousness that comes with walking into a room of people and not really knowing how to connect and feeling like you're on the outside of that I mean this is the story of my life I've never really couched it or thought of it in the context of anxiety I thought of it more I mean now and I've said this a million times so forgive me but you know I kind of perceive all of these things through the lens of of addiction and recovery and the tools that I've learned you know through many years of being in in in that rubric and in that Community to make me feel more integrated and over many years of practicing those tools and you know creating a life for myself where I do feel more self-actualized and kind of uh with that comes a sense of self-esteem that has ameliorated you know 95 of that feeling that you know I used to have that made it impossible for me to be around other people and why I medicated for so many years um but I still have some low-grade aspect of that I've just never really thought of it as a chronic anxiety as much as just a a feeling of like dissonance it's the same thing because the dissidence or the uh like my biggest experience with anxiety was disassociation so when I felt separate or I felt like nervous about something and I and I and I didn't understand that all I needed in that moment was reassurance I would like mentally leave the room in my body and so one of the other interesting things the more that you look into research around anxiety is there is an extraordinary connection between anxiety and addiction and the reason why is because if you don't know what to do with that alarm that is simply the little you going hey can you just give me a hug right now and tell me we're going to be okay um you find ways to silence it and so for you alcohol and addiction for my husband a daily weed habit like he never thought of himself as somebody that had anxiety either but what Chris was dealing with in those moments when the alarm was going off my my response to the anxiety alarm is is fight go go go go go go which is why my addiction was an addiction to busyness and to work and to trying to outrun it my husband's response to that alarm that goes off inside you when you feel separate or you feel nervous about something or you feel uncertain or overwhelmed was to freeze and to withdraw and so it became so intolerable for him that feeling of being separate that he would hit you know the wheat pen every day I didn't even know this as a way to silence the alarm and so you know I think that that when you start to talk about it not as anxiety but as an alarm that has been with many of us since childhood that feeling of being separate or getting triggered by these subtle moments where you feel like you're on the outside looking in I mean I think a lot of people find it hard to believe that somebody who puts themselves out there the way that I do I was actually pretty shy as a kid and my childhood best friend just has a big laugh because she's like most people don't realize you were like this awkward weird little kid you were shy you were always kind of off you were never like with a big group of friends and I still as an adult feel that that way even when I'm welcomed into big groups of people or you know I I do much better one-on-one with people well let's let's drill down on the busyness thing you know on some level I suppose that's analogous to workaholism uh and it and it's rooted in this drive that that you know was created very early in life and translates into this you know busyness also what comes with that the drive the ambition the competitiveness all of these things and I share all of these traits with you that you know as we get older we learn to be proud of and credit with our success but also become unsustainable energy sources that end up wreaking all kinds of havoc and mask that anxiety or kind of distract us from really looking inward to kind of course correcting what's not serving us so I would say my primary addiction that I still struggle with is busyness an addiction to being busy and I would classify at least the busyness that I've experienced in three different categories so there is the busyness that comes from transactional love and transactional acceptance and worth and I don't think that necessarily is something that happens in adulthood I think most of us learn it as kids that when you get good grades or you excel in sports or you do what makes your parents happy that's when you get the positive attention that we also desperately need when we're growing up validation that our existence is worthy of love and praise and so when you start to recognize that acting the way that your folks want you to act or getting good grades or doing great in sports or doing what makes everybody happy that that's what gives you that emotional support that creates a certain kind of achievement a busyness a chasing of something outside of you because you were trained as a kid that that's how you got positive emotional feedback so that's one kind of a business and it's why so many of us find ourselves putting all of our worth outside of ourselves because we were trained to believe that if we're doing something worthy of Praise then we get the emotional support that we need so that's one kind of busyness and for sure I absolutely have that absolutely and it has been wonderful in many regards because that kind of drive that kind of ambition that that can be very very successful it can it can make you very very successful the second kind of busyness uh is another kind of busyness and that's a busyness that's born out of crisis and so you know a lot of My Success came at a moment in time where my husband and I were about to lose everything I told the story the first time that I was here on the podcast and you know when you can't pay your bills and you're about to lose your house and everything is on the line there is a level of busyness that is motivated by sheer need and so I also had this problem Rich where when I started getting booked for speeches we had liens on our house so I became very very busy because I was in the middle of a crisis and the problem with that kind of busyness is it's very hard to hit the brakes and to go I'm not in a crisis anymore in fact I think that based on a lot of the you know this you and I both do a ton of speaking on the corporate circuit and what I've noticed even coming out of the pandemic is that every single company and person in the world had an over-functioning anxiety response to the pandemic the second it hit and we were all in quarantine and everything is uncertain everybody's like go go go go go go go go zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom zoom change change pivot pivot pivot and most companies have not gotten out of that mode because it's a busyness that was created in response to a crisis and so there's this huge moment right now that everybody needs to step on the brakes and go wait a minute I can't keep responding to day-to-day life like it's a crisis not everything requires a zoom meeting not everything requires us to work all day long I got to go back to getting focused on what matters and being strategic and thoughtful rather than driven by this like anxiousness Well there's almost a PTSD to it it's my version of your story you know what I relate to that deeply we I went through something very similar and was once we emerged out of it and everything stabilized it was very difficult for me to slow down because I was so desperately afraid of ever being in that situation again that I was just pushing the accelerator as hard as I possibly could to get as far away as I possibly could from ever being that person with this sense that if I even eased up a bit that the whole house of cards was going to topple on top of me and it took me a long time to kind of exhale and realize like yes I'm not in a crisis anymore everything is working fine you can you know breathe and you know it's now incumbent upon you to kind of deal with that anxiety or that post-traumatic stress or however you would qualify it and transcend it and overcome it and that was not that was not an easy thing well at the same time because you're getting you are growing and you're getting that external validation and things are working and so there's a there's a you have like a feverish you know kind of relationship with that because um the outside world is praising you for it which makes it more difficult to slow down I remember when somebody I told a bunch of people that you and I know that I would I had decided that I was no longer going to be speaking on the corporate circuit and somebody looked at me and said why on Earth would you stop giving Keynotes right and just deposit for a moment for people that don't know you're like the number one self-improvement motivational speaker on the circuit you were commanding insane fees and there was no shortage of of companies that wanted to book you so you could go on the road and just you know Bank like serious life-changing cash I did for years and you know in this and and I but I wasn't happy like again it was being driven by this addiction to being busy and the fact that just like you like my success was born out of a crisis and so I was trying to outrun that crisis and build as much buffer as I could and I'm grateful for the experience I'm grateful that I could pay off the loans I'm grateful to be in a position um that I'm in now uh with with savings and to be able to pay for college and to be able to go on nice trips but I wasn't [ __ ] happy I'd missed all of our daughter's High School experience and I felt deeply disconnected from my husband and I just was exhausted and somebody looked at me and they said but you like are in a category of one in this why would you give it up and I'm like it just doesn't make me happy and I think that's part of how you get out of that mode of the second form of busy which is that pts response that we all had PTSD response that we all had to quarantine and to the world turning upside down like I personally believe that unless you are somebody that has been working on your nervous system regulation I personally feel and this is not a medical opinion this is just Mel Robbins opinion that when the quarantine hit and the pandemic hit the universe flipped the switch on everybody's nervous system and everybody because we were going through an unprecedented experience your nervous system went into fight or flight the alarm turned on as you don't know whether you can bring groceries inside masks everywhere we're not going back to school now it's one month now it's two months now it's three months uncertainty and we're not Built For This and I believe almost everybody listening unless you are actively working on your nervous system regulation that you have a major opportunity to do some simple things to flip the switch off and switch off your uh sympathetic nerve which would it would the parasympathetic nervous system right and flip on the parasympathetic I always I always get them mixed up because I think if it's sympathetic it should be the one that makes you relax sympathetic I'm probably wrong but I think the sympathetic nervous system is the fight-or-flight yeah which is which seems screwy to me but so I feel like you know if you think about it in the walls of your studio there's all kinds of wiring for electricity that wiring is your nervous system and what happened for many of us whether it's because of the pandemic or because of childhood trauma you've never addressed or because of some traumatic incident or chronic abuse whatever it may be the lights have always been on and you know how some lights are like um if you feel on edge if you feel like you're waiting for the next shoe to drop you have an opportunity to just start to see that alarm going off in the background and to give yourself the reassurance and the love that you need to flip the switch to go back to your calm cool resting state and there are simple things that you can do all of which you talk about extensively on the show whether it's cold exposure whether it's meditation whether it's exercise whether it's breathing exercises but even the stuff related to toning the vagus nerve but I think one of the greatest access points is truly understanding that that alarm is just that little kid in you who had experiences when you were little that you don't necessarily remember that made you feel scared separate alone uncertain and nobody reassured you the first step though is recognizing that it exists within you because we have a tremendous capacity to normalize whatever our experience is and so we could be completely off kilter or just so acclimated to a level of chronic anxiety or whatever the case may be that it becomes difficult to even recognize in ourselves because we've just lived with it for so long yeah and you know when you realize it's not about being nervous like the alarm that you feel on your body could be expressed as anger it could be expressed as frustration because you can't tolerate that discomfort that's going off in your body it might be expressed as withdrawing it might be expressed as you know being on edge like somebody you know like me which was my experience of feeling always like something bad was about to happen but then there's a third busyness and this is the one that has really been kind of a real game changer for me Rich um I caught the campaign of misery may surprise you to know that is positive and is optimistic of a person you know that I am and I I do believe I'm a very positive person I'm a very optimistic person meaning that I do believe that your attitude and your actions can have it can improve any situation that you're facing I had in the background a constant campaign of misery that was a tape playing in the back of my mind and if you grew up around anybody that complains or gripes or life is hard or gossips or just is pointing out what's wrong or unhappy you don't realize it but it becomes the language you speak to yourself it's how you keep yourself company and when I started to truly go both you know attacking my thoughts but more importantly when I started to go neck down and I started to realize this alarm is something I don't want to live with anymore this alarm going off all the time not something I'm going to tolerate and I started to take the steps to find the switch inside me and to silence that alarm going off of my body what I noticed rich is holy [ __ ] when I'm not paying attention the place that my mind goes is to what's wrong and the more that I fix the outside [ __ ] like you know I we pay off our bills we start saving money we are moving to Vermont and and renovating this house and I'm working on my marriage and things are really good and the more that the outside stuff is good the louder the campaign of misery actually turned inward at me well it's got to latch on to something yes if that's your default disposition I didn't realize how much my mind scanned for what was wrong and so it's this third form of busyness where you yourself in your own mind are like pointing out the things that aren't good enough like I literally would be sitting in this house that Chris and I built complete dream house you've been there and instead of being able to truly look at the view down the valley my mind would go yeah well but there's no people here you're not going to have any friends you thought you were lonely in Boston just wait like it's like the alarm yeah is trying to come back in fairness it is in the middle of nowhere okay now don't make me nervous does that mean you're not going to come visit see now I'm panicked again everything was when the alarm wasn't going off it was as if this campaign of misery was trying to flip it back on and that's the thing I'm working on now I feel like most people want to eat better they want to improve their diets absolutely have you heard of it I've heard of it this trips up so many people we thought hey we know a couple things about how to do this a few so we created this thing called the plant power meal planner that is this beautiful offering 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that that compelled you to to reckon with it it was uh during well I think that it's I'll tell you the breaking point it was during a guided MDMA session yeah I want to get into this we I wanted to put a pin in that but if that's relevant to this let's hear about this well I have been uh working with a therapist for two years uh on just healing past trauma on um trying to figure out how to be more content accepting and happy with wherever I am instead of constantly grinding for the next thing and between that talk therapy between the therapy that Chris and I are doing um once he got diagnosed with long-term like depression um and EMDR and like I think all of it was compounding to this one breaking point so my husband and I have done uh two guided therapeutic MDMA sessions with uh this couple I can't name them because it's not legal in the state that we were in but they're part of the maps protocol and part of a huge integrative therapy community that is doing the post integration therapy after these sort of uh you know psychedelic experiences which I think is the most important part of these experiences is the therapy that you do afterwards to integrate what you experienced physically mentally spiritually emotionally back into your life so um we've already done one it was absolute Game Changer fantastic so here we are 18 months later this was in April and we're doing a second one and so the way that it works is you set an intention you then take the um the MDM the MDMA and uh it takes about 30 to 45 minutes to kick in and I had done ecstasy at concerts or just recreationally this is a completely different experience because once you start to feel this sort of warm wave take over you immediately go to a separate like mattress or mat or cot or whatever and you climb in under blankets and you've got all these amazing pillows and then you put on a mask and then you put on headphones and there's a six hour playlist and it's the most delicious amazing incredible like Buddha Bar Meats I don't know what kind of stuff and they say that the um you know that the the MDMA is the medicine but the music is the guide and with every song change what happened to me the first time I did this is I would have a completely different image in my mind it was as if because you're you're uh vision is blocked and because you know you have all of this like amazing music coming in the MDMA is a game changer because it blocks the amygdala so you have no fear reaction and so what happened for me the first time I did it is it was the most profound experience of my life for six hours I witnessed the Highlight Reel of my past present and future and I didn't just watch it I actually was there and so the first song comes on and it's like I am you know that Space Mountain ride uh where you're in the dark at Disney and then it comes around a corner and you're it was a feeling like that and then all of a sudden the clouds broke and there I was I was uh at Bear Lake in North Muskegon Michigan where I grew up and I was in the eighth grade and I was there with my best friend Jody the one who says I'm shy and we had the jam box out there and journey was playing and I like felt the whole thing I was there again and my intention for the first uh MDMA therapy session was I want to look back on my life and remember the good stuff I mean our brains are a real [ __ ] with this negativity bias and the fact that you remember the bad things that happened like I don't know if it's 3x or 5x to the good things I'm like please show me the beauty in my life and so that was the first thing and then the song changed and the second vision was um I could see like little baby feet and I looked up and there was this big beautiful blue sky with these big clouds and there were kites everywhere rich and then I looked straight ahead and there's my mom and she was 19 years old and there was my dad and he was 23. and I felt this wave come over me they were so Young and you know I love my mom and she loves me but we have a very kind of mismatched sort of the way that we express and I know that she feels in many ways that she gave up on her life because she dropped out on of college to have me and for the first time I I just felt this huge intense wave of love and I reached for the therapist that was sitting with me and I'm like I can't handle this I can't handle this I can't and I started sobbing and then I and she just put her hands on my chest and was just like you know tell me what's happening and breathe into it and I felt this crazy amount of just sorrow and and love that I had never felt in just at a soul level for how scared she must have been and this was in the first experience that you had and that and this is relevant because it's great to hear about it yeah and that experience was a vivid memory like you were actually in that place oh yeah and then for you were able to access a memory from being a baby yes in stored here because what happens with this music is it on whatever is going on with this music and this like the MDMA is it unlocks something in your subconscious that you can't access for whatever reason at least this is the way I explain it God knows if that's what's actually happening but so for six hours rich like it was past present future I've already been to my daughter's wedding I I have been there I've I've seen it I know exactly I travel to the future I did you did oh I did and so the next day as we were driving home I called my mom and I'm like you know I I had this thing where we did this therapy session and you know I saw you and Dad and there were a lot of kites and she immediately went oh that's such and such Park in Kansas City I've never seen a photo of this rich said they would always fly kites and do this and airplanes and stuff yeah we used to go there every you know Saturday afternoon when your dad was off call wow and so that was remarkable and I had this experience of literally like almost like my nervous system smoothing out and so for the second time I was so excited oh my God you know we're moving to Vermont we thought we would do this to like start the new chapter this is going to be amazing meanwhile I've been doing all this therapy and I'm working so hard on trying to get that alarm to turn off I have not yet learned the connection between being separate as a child and separation anxiety and all anxiety is adult I have not learned the connection between this alarm and the little you just needing love and so we go into the second uh session and this time we're going to do it at our brand new home the first day we move in Chris is again with you know it's a husband and wife therapy team he's with the husband I'm with the wife we set an intention and I say I want to look to the Future and I want to really enjoy this next chapter of my life I want to stop like just and so they say that the medicine gives you exactly what you need so 30 minutes goes I'm feeling the warm thing I'm climbing in got my little blanket up I put my head and here's the other cool thing I've never had any interest in doing Ayahuasca because I don't I'm like I don't want to [ __ ] or puke like that that is not right that does not make me feel excited about this I don't want to feel out of control I'm scared about scary things and so what I loved also about the MDMA is that the second you take your eye mask off to go to the bathroom you're out of it even though the drug is still coursing through your veins out of it you know when I have to go the bathroom you know I'm like I I need to help go in the bathroom and I literally stood up take the eye mask off nove nothing so there's something about the Sonic wavelengths and the visual experience and the yes yeah it's incredible and then the whole time you're going to the bathroom you're like I gotta get back I gotta get back because so the second time I climb in and I'm expecting this to be this amazing highlight reel nothing happens so I'm laying there I'm like like is this gonna work what's going on reaching for the the gal the therapist I I don't think he gave me enough is Chris is Chris tripping is is he oh he's he's in a great place but worry about you just drop in just let it happen I don't know how to drop in Mel you've got to stop gripping the medicine is working just just trust what it's trying to teach you so then I spent probably three hours going what the [ __ ] is wrong with you like why can't you just enjoy this why can't and I am just is this going to work is it not gonna work well why don't you just lay here and enjoy the music why do you have to be so intense about everything maybe this isn't supposed to work like that I reach for again I don't think it's working I really think that you should give me more because Mel it is working because you need to learn how to let go and I said but I don't know how and she said exactly and then I got what I needed because this is what I said to her well I have to figure this out because if I don't it's gonna be over and I'm gonna have missed the whole [ __ ] thing and the therapist paused and said yes just like your life um and it made me just stop for a second and I thought to myself in that moment I'm like okay you're a person who's had fun and you've laughed a lot and you've done some amazing things but have you allowed yourself to really enjoy it have you ever truly now like just allowed yourself to receive all the things that are around you whether it's the beautiful sky that you see as you're out hiking or it's the people that are around you in this moment and so back to the original analogy we were talking about rich like is there a closed door that shuts you off and keeps you trapped with yourself going it's not enough and I got to do this and you know there's no people here in in southern Vermont and why did I do this and is this going to be bad that'll triggered by this alarm or can you have a different experience in life where you truly are okay with what's happening and you allow yourself to be content and you allow the love to come in can you get there and I'll tell you like it just by then dropped in and there were no visuals I just it was almost like silence and that's when that campaign of misery really kind of and what was interesting though is that the very next day you know we we're doing our integration therapy afterwards and I couldn't get off the couch I sat on that couch rich for two and a half days like didn't get up and I felt this almost like energetic shedding of generations of [ __ ] of this you know I come from a long line of farmers and my grandparents were from Austria and had a family like super hard working everything was always about work everybody always had dirt under their fingers everybody that they're bitching about the cows or the pigs or this or the that or the hooded lots of laughter but work work work and I felt this just shedding of that I don't even know what it is that wiring that just cloak that was around me and that's it hasn't left yeah I was gonna ask what is the half-life of these experiences I mean I think you know to your point like the integrative kind of therapeutic process that follows those experiences is really the the key piece and I say that as somebody who hasn't done this and I have a lot of baggage and opinions about you know those experiences and I as somebody who hasn't done it um but I'm always curious like you know I know I know people that do Ayahuasca like all the time they're not enlightened like so what are they getting out of it of the so-called medicine what is what is the lasting impact versus the transient kind of experience that's cool and perhaps opens a door or a window into you know uh some some insight about how to live but how do you then integrate that into your daily behavior in a way that stays with you it's an excellent question like I think it's all about your intention is it escapism is it a cool experience or is it something that you really are doing to truly integrate some type of profound change into your life and for me um you know I've spent enough of my life trying to escape it and run away from it and now that I'm 54 today I'd like to spend the next half of my life or however much time I have really in it and how's that going um well I've only been in it now you know it's up and down I mean first of all happy birthday I was going to open this by saying happy birthday we're also here on the day after you launched your new podcast um and I know a lot of work went into that I mean there's I mean come on there's a lot of handwriting that in the you know the back story to this thing but also that's gonna flare up the competitiveness and the measuring yourself against other people and all those external forces that that Rob you of being present in the experience and and just you know that that sense of gratitude or just you know being that is antithetical to um your disposition right so how does that like in the in the in the wake of this launch yep how is that showing up for you how is that MDA MDMA experience buffering against your you know default settings it's a great question so um I think the single greatest thing that helps me other than the work that I'm doing from the neck down to stay in my body and to stay in the moment and to recognize when the alarm goes off and then to quiet it is to stay deeply connected to the reason why I do what I do and there's a couple things that that we've put in place that act like guard rails for when I get way too when I get triggered by why aren't we on new and noteworthy on Apple we're number 12 like when we walk in here we're number 12 on all of Apple podcasts right now you were number one for a minute yeah you launched the trailer I was like Jesus Christ you're taking up my valuable real estate in the education category by the way but you know I'm happy for you Mel uh sure there's enough success to go around that's the one thing that I've I've certainly learned it's taken me a long time that there's room for everybody I really believe that and the reason my mission is super simple it's very very much a the same as yours it's to help you create a better life and selfishly my mission is that I wanted to get off the road I wanted to stop feeling so lonely and I wanted to be able to connect with people and share my life and the things that I'm learning in a much more personal and real-time way that I can't do in an audiobook and I can't do on a stage you know giving a speech and I can't do in a 60 second reel and I I don't know if you know this about me but I got my start in local radio no I knew that yeah yeah and so I I you know back when I hosted this local radio show it was like a Lifeline during a really difficult time for me and so I've been wanting to get back to Radio podcast it's just interesting that it took you this long because it's such an obvious you know low-hanging fruit for you yeah you know I guess the reason why it took me this long is because I knew when I finally was going to have a show of my own that I wanted it to be the thing that I was doing I didn't want it to be another thing I was doing I wanted to make a deliberate intentional decision that I was going to change my entire business and organize the entire business the rhythm of the week and what I was focused on on the podcast show and so it took me 18 months to complete existing contracts to finish up the stuff that we you know had on Deck with audible to hire the right people to figure out what we needed to do and so that's that's also why I wanted to go all in and um I think particularly when you look at in personal development the fact that there's an enormous opportunity for female voices and they're lacking you know I want to see more and more and more it is incredible I mean there's there's Glenn and Doyle and there's brene Brown and then it just kind of drops off precipitously from there like it's wide open yeah for powerful female voices I agree and so um the way that I protect myself from it is we I just stayed tightly connected to the people whose lives were changing and who are impacted by the content that we put out and so one of the things that we do that I love as we send out a daily email that's a Roundup from all platforms the inbox of things that real people have actually said about the stuff that we're doing and the impact that it's made and so and today on my birthday my team had uh tricked me they said that Tracy was working and could not join us for breakfast and when I walked back to the hotel room they had printed out birthday messages from people in our community from all over the world and so and their photos and and so and last night like at the at the restaurant we were at there were four people that came up to us and they all worked at the restaurant and one of the things about me and I know this is true about you is I have zero interest in Celebrity I have zero interest in celebrities and it's really you know just sort of like normal people that are doing the best that they can just like you and I are that's the kind of people that I want to connect with those are the folks that I really want to be able to be somebody that can make you feel like somebody believes in you that you can do it right uh the danger being for you of course that nature abhores a vacuum and you mentioned you know you wanted to go all in like I'm an all-in guy right so what does all in look like like how do you not repeat the historic pattern of you know filling that vacuum with a lot of noise and busyness yeah and wrapping it in a bow that says yes but I'm launching a podcast and I need to do this for now and blah blah blah and whatever else only to wake up a year later or two years later miserable once again yeah uh with a with a faint recollection of some MDMA experience that you had two years prior do I hear cynicism from ritual is that what I'm hearing well my baggage you know my baggage is that I'm a recovery guy right and so and I've said this many times so I don't want to belabor the point for people who've heard me say it too many times but you know when you tell a recovering drug addict that this solution to his problem or or a solution to the problem it lies in a very powerful mind-altering drug like that is that's that's uh that's intoxicating in and of itself that idea right so I will obsess oh this is I have to do this this if I do this then everything will be fine and that Loop can be very destructive for me I I have no judgment on people whose lives who that have been improved I know lots of people who have had similar experiences and whose lives have been made better by that it just scares me personally because of my history even though I know people in recovery who also have explored this and had you know a positive outcome from it well I think that's just me like you know like putting my cars on the table on that yeah I think you have to pay attention to that and and I think it's it's enormously responsible and an act of self-love to say that and it shows how self-aware you are and if you were to ever explore something like that as your friend I would hope that you would explore it with a therapist that specializes in a particular I mean you know what I mean if I if I was to entertain it and I'm not you know completely you know putting it off the table but it would have to be in a highly regulated environment with people who are super experts yeah I didn't I didn't hop on a plane and go to Peru with travel bloggers and you know sit around and look and just go to Venice and you know oh really well you know there's plenty of it around but I I you know if that's what somebody wants to do then that's what they should do that is not at all what I was interested in I was not interested in a recreational transformational experience I was not interested in a burning man situation I was interested in addressing specific things in my marriage in my past in my own well-being with right a guided therapist and with my husband and with therapy afterwards and it's interesting now that like like why why MDMA and not psilocybin or now they're using ketamine for similar purposes um I didn't want to do psilocybin because when I was at Dartmouth I had a horrendous experience on psilocyte and um I think we basically bought morels that had been dusted with LSD or something because I was tripping my ass off in a canyon trying to put my hand in a fire pit because I thought there were dancing Chipmunks in there and I was living on like uh uh oh what the hell's the name of that band I was living on like an album cover fish and it was terrifying and for a long long long long long time I didn't even smoke pot after that because I was so scared of that experience and I am scared of a experience on psychedelics where you lose control and you're in a dark tunnel like I don't need to take drugs experience a giant frog chasing me only to have the outcome be oh I can get myself through this right but control is at the center of your whole thing right and so that experience in and of itself is compelling you to loosen the reins and let go which is a very uncomfortable place for you right so are you telling me I should do mushrooms no I'm not telling you anything I'm telling you that the struggle with your second experience probably had a lot to do with this control issue right it had everything to do with not only control but for whatever reason feeling like I'm not allowed to be happy I had an experience as a child of a parent who was never happy joyful loud fun but not happy [Music] and I absorb that and didn't even realize it and it's almost as if the closer I would get to being happy the more this sort of programming in my mind that I absorbed as a child would be like but no you're not and so I feel that after lots of therapy and some of these physical experiences facilitated by medicine facilitated by other modalities that's the Breakthrough that I'm having like at a super deep level that it's okay for me to be happy when somebody that I love isn't it's not a betrayal and that you know it makes me sad because I think for a very long time I didn't even understand that I wasn't happy and it's because of this silent campaign of misery which is how I kept myself company because it was there during childhood and what about the fear that that comes up around letting go of that pattern in the sense that it's going to uh it's going to you know destroy that engine that's made you successful right like well if I actually heal this and I'm happy then I'm not going to have that motor that drove me actually got me to this place I think but did you have to deprogram because I'm sure that you would pivot to that right that idea you know I I I I feel that the engine's there I'm just giving it different fuel so I like what if we all had a Hybrid engine it could run on electricity or gas so what's the fuel now like how did you make that transition a lot of therapy and a lot of like dealing with this alarm and allowing myself to have more and more and like just kind of flexing this muscle of being in the moment being content noticing when the but there's nobody in Vermont but why did you move three hours away you're not going to have any friends you're already busy enough how do you think you're going to have a new life you're three hours away from your kid what are you doing like catching that being like you know what it's okay you're gonna be okay it's like you're in Vermont who cares so here we are it's your birthday yeah oh you know what you didn't you asked me how are you gonna make sure you don't have busy yeah come in you said that really like sarcastic and uh right yeah like how is the vacuum three hours away from an airport so I put a huge buffer in between myself right but we had conversations when you were wrapping your head around how to do this podcast and one of those one of the things you were debating was you know I need to get a studio in Boston yep you're living out in the country and I was like don't do that like the Mel Robbins experience will be enriched by The Listener knowing that you're sitting at your kitchen table and Somebody's knocking over a glass in the background like that sense of you know reality and and authenticity is so important to what you're doing you don't want to you know inoculate everybody from that and then distract yourself from the mission by getting all caught up in a studio and fancy stuff and what's it going to be like and all of that and then you walked in today and said I got a studio and flushed it yeah but so here but so it's not this but but I told you not to do it you did I did listen to you and hear hear me out so I agree with you the whole intent for starting this podcast was for me to have a deeper Connection in real time with people and to help myself through the podcast and also help other people create better lives and to also learn more and so a thousand percent yes you also made me realize that it's not actually a show that you go anywhere to do that you literally need to figure out how to make your life podcasting and so you had a enormous transformative impact on me Rich but hold on but let me tell you about the studio so what I also have come to realize much like a Hybrid engine that can run on negative energy or positive energy right that can run on stress and busyness or can run on strategic disciplined like thinking and priorities is I've also come to embrace the fact that I am the kind of person that actually needs two things I need the Deep Quiet and isolation of Vermont to do deeper thinking and to feel connected to Chris and to Oakley and to do deeper work and to Exhale and to commune with nature and I also need these moments and bursts of the city and of my team and of creative Sprints and that I can't do that if I don't have an office somewhere but I have to figure out how to not be in that office every week I have to figure out a business model so I can create my so I can live my life and have the podcast be part of it and I can have a legitimate business that runs like a business not out of the desk in my house but at an office that is not my house which is something I haven't done in eight years right and you got like whatever it is 200 miles of New England Countryside separating you so that you can't escape into that office yeah and the other thing is is that I don't want jumping on a plane to give a speech to be the solve for that energy and that that that kind of creative thing that I need right I need my projects the the challenge obviously then is for someone who's trying to simplify their life and be very focused to not allow those externalities to fill that void or that vacuum and then create all the insanity that you are trying to get away from how do you repeating that pattern I mean it's that's you know I've been on a similar Journey with the whole thing I mean this studio that we're in now is a relatively new thing um but the good thing about it is that it has allowed me to relinquish a lot of the control and to empower other people and that's been a huge learning curve for me and to make it more of a communal effort as opposed to you know I'm doing this thing we're doing it which has been great so there is a there's a there's a release with that and a letting go that's been instructive and I think empowering for the people that I work with here and also for me as well that's freed me up to do other things and I still hold on probably a little bit too tightly you know as you're finding out it's more work than people realize to do this thing it's really hard work to put out good content in this format and to do video yeah so you know but we've been doing it for a long time and I feel like we're in a really good space right now and I feel great and you know I haven't done MDMA but I have all these other therapeutic modalities that I've relied upon and have grown as a result of embracing and you know I as I'm sure people say to you all the time Malik what's the what are you working on what's the big thing where you know what's the next thing or whatever I get that question a lot and I don't there isn't really a net it's this isn't driving towards something that I don't already have like this is [ __ ] awesome to be able to do this I want to just be able to wake up every day and be excited about it I have other creative things that I want to manifest and Express in my life but but I'm not doing this so that I can do those other things like I just want to be fully plugged into this and to wake up and recognize and be present with what an amazing thing it is and one of the mantras that I've been practicing is just saying remember like this is the good time like nothing is static there will come a day where I don't want to do this anymore or this won't be happening or you know some intervening event could occur that derails me who knows what's going to happen but right now like it's great you know and I'm having fun and I can provide for my family and I can employ people who seem to enjoy working here like what is better than that to be excited about what you get to do every day and to share it with people that enjoy it and are nourished by it like it's [ __ ] awesome this is exactly why I'm watching you podcast but you know the other thing that happened for me um because you know you and I also share the fact that we've been married for a long time and you have four kids right and we've got three and the other thing that happened for me rich is that my family said very loud and clear that they were tired of our house being my work and so as we made the move from outside of Boston to Southern Vermont where our son is going to the public high school and where my husband's family has had a house for 40 years um I really listened and I they were right like I was never not working because I worked at home and so it was really important for me to try to figure out and I I haven't figured it out yet we're just got two episodes out as of today like I don't we're so new with this this is literally I put my pinky toe over the starting line of America and you're gonna do two a week yep right yep yeah that's heavy yep and uh that we stopped scaring me like all of a sudden I felt the campaign of misery coming up like oh God should we have done two take responsibility for your response me yeah [ __ ] you um I'm not trying to trigger you I just you just I didn't tell you anything you don't already know well you know what I wanna I really feel that I want to be out there two days a week and I have a lot to say and I didn't want it to you're you're in you're the best as far as I'm concerned at interviewing people period And I wanted to do a ton of solo stuff and a ton of stuff with my kids and husband and friends and so part of it too was I wanted to have an episode every week that was deeply personal and then an episode that was more me learning from yeah I'm curious about that I mean I feel very comfortable having conversations with other people but if I was just sitting here by myself trying to do a solo episode that's about the most terrifying thing I can I'm not good at that that is not my you know sweet spot at all it's very uncomfortable for me it obviously suits you perfectly well but on top of that you you know you only have two episodes up but the second episode involves your daughter and a very personal issue and I'm curious about how like how you know the relation like how you feel about including family members and I mean obviously they're willing to participate in all of this like I just know my kids like they wouldn't want anything to do with it they're doing their own thing good for you Dad but like we don't want our personal laundry being aired out on the podcast and like respect like totally totally understand totally so um boundaries so how I handle those boundaries I don't want to turn my family into a reality show however there are things that happen every day in our family that happened in everybody's family and so take Kendall who's a senior at USC uh she found out the other day it's like two weeks ago that a guy that is her ex just casual relationship during college fizzled out they're not together but he now likes a friend of hers and they're all in the same music program and this went down in real time as she is blowing up my phone with texts about this and I texted her back and I said would you be willing to talk to me and could we potentially tape you know and can I tape it and we maybe use it as a podcast episode and she writes sure and here's the boundary I've put in place with my family you do not have to do this you can always say no and say no all the time if you want and you also can listen back and will listen back to whatever we tape and you get to decide if you're comfortable or not with this and so for example there are a couple things that we've taped with our 17 year old son that are about things going on at school for him the issue that we taped was about uh him wanting to drop a friend who's really offensive but he's part of a larger friend group and all the drama involved with that and that is what I would call a melting Ice Cube moment that situation that's unfolding in real time as we're sitting at our kitchen counter and he's asking me for advice or we're just talking through it is something that everybody can relate to so we'll capture that but I wouldn't air that this year might not air it next year I'd wait until he's out of high school so that it doesn't impact people in our community right so the episode that just went up with your daughter yep you know it's been up a day yep you have to assume that it's gonna leak out and her friends and classmates and whoever else is going to hear this or be aware that this exists and that obviously impacts how she's going to be able to navigate this whole thing yeah but here's the thing like it is so past she's already dating somebody else like but she and and the thing is is that the episode is not about it's not love Island like we're not trashing anybody she's calling me to process in real time that wave of emotion that hits you when you find out that your ex likes a friend or you find out that you didn't get that job or you find out and you now are wrestling with which version of you right how to respond how do I respond to this because the truth is she doesn't want to not have them in her life she also doesn't want to feel the [ __ ] she's feeling and so how do you in those moments when the emotional tsunami hits how do you find your power and so what I am really proud about in that episode is I'm not even giving her the advice she's actually unpacking it in real time for herself as she's going do I not collaborate with him do I do this am I upset do I even care I actually want these people in my life and I'm realizing that they're better musicians than I am which is making me feel insecure because maybe that's why they like each other and now it makes me like so there's so much in there but what I'm so proud of is first of all that she's comfortable sharing it secondly that even if you're the two people I would imagine that she talks so nicely about both of them and at the end she's happy for them and she has risen above her own insecurity in turmoil to be able to conduct herself in a way that allows her to get what she wants which is to remain friends with people collaborate with them and open the door to new possibilities and wouldn't you know it five days later literally an amazing human being walks into her life what I got out of it and what I found instructive was um this sort of instructional audio uh about how to help somebody navigate through a problem and disabusing people of the idea that that like oh here well how do I say this here comes Mel she's the one who's gonna tell you you know what's wrong and how to fix it and you know the parent is supposed to come in and tell the kid what to do to solve the problem instead you illustrate the more effective path which is to uh of empowering Somebody by just asking questions and providing space for them to process it so they can arrive at what is correct for them right like it's not like I'm not going to tell you what to do but let me ask you this let me ask you this let me ask you this and just kind of retreating a little bit into the background and allowing them to or you know hit that you know stick that Landing which is the most empowering thing you can do and it's difficult as a parent because you do want to solve the problem even if you can clearly see they should do this and not that it's very difficult not to just say that well that's one of the things that I've been working really hard on is not trying to solve my kids problems and not trying to fix anything because I've learned the hard way that my kids don't want my advice they want me to listen they don't want me to come with my daughter the other day because I I stepped right into that trap yeah well I I use steal this sentence for me I can't remember who I got this from but literally anytime they're upset or whatever or they're blown up do you want my advice or would you just want me to listen nine times out of ten when I say that sentence they're like I just need you to listen and then when they're done blah blah then they'll typically go what do you think I should do and I'll be like do you want my advice or do you just really want me to validate what you just said and it's amazing how much they're mostly seeking connection and validation not the solve and I think if you get them talking you know ideally you want to raise independent human beings that have the ability to think through an issue and come to a decision after considering all different options and I really appreciate what you just said about the experience of listening to that second episode because I agree with you I don't sit here and say I have all the [ __ ] answers and I don't want this podcast to be preachy or know it all that's not at all like how I relate to myself I feel like I'm shoulder to shoulder with everybody and it's way more illustrative and empowering I think to hear that conversation unfold than to have me recount a story oh so let me tell you my daughter called me and this is what she said this is what I told her to do and this is the tool she said way more relatable to hear that actual phone call and an interesting thing is that so this morning when that episode went up our website has been flooded with questions about like because there's a form for submitting topics I'd say almost every other one is how do I create a relationship like that with my kid how do you and I don't even feel like the expert on it like I don't I don't [ __ ] know like I I would actually bring all three kids on and say parents are writing in saying how do you create a relationship like that what's your advice to parents because you're on the receiving end of whatever it is that Dad and I did what do we do right what do we do wrong what is it that they're listening to because what they're listening to I think when you hear the episode with Kendall is you hear the fact that she trusts me and I respect her and she's willing to share all kinds of intimate details about what she's thinking what she's done who she's intimate with very freely that's not something that happened overnight that comes over time and I don't even like I I wouldn't I don't think I even know how to boil that down it would have to be them saying what created that mm-hmm what does your instinct tell you though um I think my instinct is um probably you know one of the gifts of the work that you and I do and how much therapy we've both engaged in and self-reflection and self-work is that you do stumble upon really interesting research that's very um informative and I think more than anything else Chris and I have this philosophy that our kids are not extensions of us we do not own them we do not control them as our as parents our job is to help them figure out who they are and how to make decisions and how to live with the decisions and accept the consequences of them and so I think we've done a really really good job of trying to emphasize who you are as a person rather than the outside [ __ ] so like for example here's a tactical thing and I don't remember where I where I got this but whenever we would go into a parent teacher conference and they go to talk about work Chris and I literally go we actually I don't need to see their schoolwork don't need to maybe that's how we missed Oakley's dyslexia for years but we said tell me about who they are at school tell me about the kind of person are kids and I'm way more interested in developing kids that are kind that are self-reflective um and I don't know I think I think oh oh and then the other big thing is just like all the growth mindset stuff I think I think it actually works when you praise a kid for their effort and for their trying and you know as crazy as it sounds I also think about like parenting kind of like training a dog like you don't train a dog by beating it and correcting it all the time you actually reward the good behavior and so if you want to see more kindness call it out and model it at home and there's a dispassionate kind of disposition that you have to have when you were talking earlier about you know disentangling yourself from generations and generations of a certain way of being that was tied to workaholism and busyness and drive and the like as much as you know as much work as you put into that like I know for myself in my weaker moments like that still eeks out and it eeks out in my parenting and so to parent from a place of relative neutrality where you're not projecting that ancestral [ __ ] onto your kid I think is super key and when your daughter calls you up there's a sense of feeling safe and not being judged right like you're not evaluating her you're just listening and that's it's a it's difficult as a parent I wasn't always like this yeah I don't I definitely was not always like this I think that um it really all started I think a huge breakthrough that Chris and I had was was when we really thought how are we going to address the issue of daughters and sex and we took a very um probably radical approach I decided that I was gonna address it head on and so you know I don't think that we talk enough about pleasure especially with young girls and so what I did is I basically I basically uh kind of hijacked the conversation and sat our girls down when they were age appropriate which probably 12 or 11 maybe even early I remember right about when they were doing the sex edit school and what do you know what do you want to know okay great now let me tell you sex is one of the best things about being an adult it's amazing especially when you're having sex and making love to somebody you care about and who deeply cares about you so here's the deal when you are in a relationship with somebody very special I want you to come to me and Dad and tell me when you're ready to have sex because we will then take you to the gynecologist you will make sure you are protected and when you're ready to do it and you have your protection we'll leave the house you can have the house you can be in your bedroom because it is something that is so amazing that we want you to have your first experience with somebody who is worthy of it and you're worthy of that and you're not ready to have sex something that's incredible unless you can actually tell us you're ready and what's incredible is your kids are like wait are you telling me to have sex oh no like are you actually saying I should have sex but there's some grenade that goes off in their head what if they came back a month later great okay what makes you think you're ready how do they treat you that's funny because the person's ever been at our house so why do you think you're ready yeah if this is what you really want okay but there are ways to continue to but you you re you you shower them with the praise for coming to you see most of the times our kids come to us and we're like you shouldn't be drinking you shouldn't be doing this versus take a deep breath even though inside you're like because when you know she came to us both of them same thing a couple years later is like okay I'm ready they've been in long-term relationships and you're like oh my God I'm not ready but you are honoring the fact that they're going to do what they're going to do you want them getting relationship advice from their [ __ ] friends or do you want them actually coming to you yeah do you want them to be safe or do you want them in the corner of somebody's basement during a party keeping that channel open is everything and not judging what they bring to you is the hardest part because you're kind of wanted the channel doesn't stay open if you're judging totally that's the thing totally so that's that created this kind of opening that um you know I remember when one of our daughters was being intimate with somebody just like you know how did how do you like give a [ __ ] and I'm like ask your father I don't know like what feels good and she did Chris was mortified but of course anyhow about it that just feels like a episode of a sitcom or something well you know but here's something to their friends would be a very popular episode of the Mel Robbins podcast well I'm sure we'll I I I if you approach that I want to have this conversation with her kids because most parents want to just turn their heads and be like my kid's not drinking they're not doing this they're not doing that and when you make something taboo first of all they never tell you what's going on and secondly you make it more enticing when you say you have permission to do these things within guidelines and uh with respect they start to respect themselves yeah we've had this experience with our with our 18 year old and and she is open to a fault like oh my gosh she'll come home and oh man you should see what's happening and it's terrifying right but I think it's also important to understand and appreciate that just because you're doing that doesn't necessarily immunize yourself from the problem like there will be you know it's like these are fraught years and stuff happens and [ __ ] like that so when that thing happens to not then get activated and you know regress away from that whole approach that got you to the open communication Place one of the other things about regulating that alarm inside you is a lot of times your kids bring you alarming things and we've all had an experience of working for a boss or having a parent that when you bring news it's disappointing or upsetting they freaking vomit on you and their emotional reaction is actually what you're afraid of and so Chris is way better at this than I am Chris is yoga instructor meditation instructor he also now is studying to be a death Doula dude oh wow um a long way from being a restaurateur no kidding yeah and so he is Mr chill non-reactive able to just hear and be with and I've learned a lot from him and I think that non-reaction is incredible because it is a freaking gift when your kids share their lives with you it's a gift when people that work for you feel comfortable coming to you and talking about the stuff that's not working it's a gift that somebody feels safe enough and linked and connected enough to you that they will bring hard things to you and so that's the thing that I have found to be like super rewarding about managing my own [ __ ] in terms of the reaction and the marriage is good you know depends on the day yeah uh no the marriage is really how many years you've been together 26 years Mary how about you guys 22. yeah the theme that Chris and I have been working on a lot is that um we're really good not surprisingly at the doing and we're and it's not a situation of being roommates it's something almost deeper because if it's roommates it feels like I don't care about you but our lives have gotten so much about the puzzle pieces yeah especially as the kids have flown the nest and they're all over the place that we were both very emotionally sequestered from one another so you know we're doing all this stuff together but we're not wanting to burden one another with the things that we're wrestling with in our own journals or with our own therapist or and and the issue that we've been unpacking in therapy is that if I'm the kind of person and we've talked a lot about this busyness where I am so going all the time that I quickly take care of things and quickly do things and quickly jump ahead and Chris is a person that is easily provoked to take a step back as I'm doing doing doing part of my campaign of misery is going why is Chris not doing this stuff and as Chris is sitting back he's feeling unfulfilled because he's like when I can never make her happy so why like I'm just gonna go on a hike I'm just gonna do my thing and so we over the last couple years particularly you know as we've been in the process of moving and building this place for two years we definitely have gone into our emotional corners not in a way that's like I hate you or but just this sense of loneliness that we've both felt and so we're really good right now because I feel that through having a therapist that we talk to once a week it's in what a gift to be able to kind of have a place to come to to say that like one thing happened today our son has been sick for four days they were supposed to fly out today for parents weekend for my birthday for the podcast launch and we pulled the plug last night and we were able and now have the tools to talk about what is the right decision but to also take a moment and check in with each other about how you're feeling because I'm sad you know I'm sad that they're not here and I also know I can be two things at once I can be sad that they're not here and I can also be grateful that Chris is home with Oak and that they're making that decision not to get on a plane I mean he's coveted negative but the kid's really sick and I can also prioritize finding time to be with him when I get home next week and you can focus on what you came here to do without distraction and maybe that's a negative you know busyness oriented kind of perspective but I even feel myself thinking like yeah but she's here to like launch this thing and now she can just do it and not be worried about you know other people's needs yeah it's tough man like being together for a long time I mean I definitely relate to a lot of that like Julie's super busy and she's got her startup and she's you know putting together this Retreat she's taking people to Egypt and I have things that I'm interested in doing and you know we we birthed a lot of creative projects together but over the years we've kind of you know we have our own respective Corners now and there's something great about that like we each have our domains and we support each other completely but it is a lot about the puzzle pieces and you know all our kids are still at home and they're somewhat independent like they're kind of like the boys have girlfriends I never know when they're there when they're not there and Mathis has a boyfriend and she's gone a lot too um but there is a uh you know a Transit Authority kind of role that you're playing a little bit and and uh it's very easy to lure yourself into believing that you're communicating because you're talking about those things yeah you actually have nothing to do with your relationship yes so there is an autopilot and and with that kind of autopilot you can delude yourself into thinking everything's cool and it's static but it's not really static if you're in that place you're regressing yeah and that's something I always have to remind myself of because we have you know been in places where it's like Oh Our Lives are you know we're living separate lives right now like we need to sort this out and you know get back to the intimacy that you know is is why we're together in the first place well for Chris and I it became an even deeper and more or urgent opportunity and directive because what I've discovered is that you know kind of trying to break apart my own reaction to that alarm and trying to outrun it and always being busy right and Chris's reaction to his alarm is to retreat we actually in many ways our default patterns were keeping one another trapped in those patterns and so there's been a real opportunity that we're now showing up differently I mean 28 years into knowing somebody which is super cool so that Chris is more of I my code name is trip leader because as I was trying to think about what are the moments where uh I am most attracted and feel the most connected and safe with the guy and there's two images one is anytime we go on any kind of outdoor adventure Chris is in [ __ ] charge man that guy is Mr Knowles Mr outdoor Wilderness Mr experience education and then there's this other image I have of him where when we first met we were in New York City and I was meeting him for a date and he came rollerblading in a suit down Fifth Avenue weaving in and out of traffic with a messenger bat on from work and he just looked like he was a kid at Play and that's the guy I want and that's the part of him that that really makes me come alive but my [ __ ] busyness it sends that dude into the corner and so I'm working now both for my own happiness and my own boundaries with work and my own ability to enjoy what I'm doing I'm also working on breaking that pattern because it allows a part of Chris to step forward that he has not been able to do because I've been such a dominant [ __ ] and how's it going I mean can you turn it off can you be at home and not work yes yeah it's really good good I have really good boundaries with my phone I mean I'd like to get to the point where as of 5 30 6 o'clock I'm not working noon on Fridays not working I put boundaries in place with speeches it's a no unless it's middle of the week and something I want to do in a direct flight um only to a month yeah that's good yeah I'm I'm trying I'm I'm taking the tools the tools only work if you use them Rich right I hate that that's true I do too I want somebody else to do it for me Mel I know you just fix it I don't like that too although I don't think either you and I would never be happy doing nothing right but isn't that the ailment like that's that's the place to go to understand why it is that you can't just be like shouldn't we be able to just be happy doing nothing even if for a moment well I can do it for a moment an evening defined moment for an extent a week on vacation you know a i i yeah I think I could for a month but after that now I've gotta put my brain onto some yeah I mean I I take a month off every year now I have not I've never done that and I know that you do and I also know that you go off the grid for a while there's a lot I'm I'm I'm stalking you rich yeah I'm I'm highly recommended Rich rolls best now I look forward to it and it's been very nurturing and it's allowed me to you know remain enthusiastic about all this stuff you have to take breaks well I feel like moving to Vermont is very much like that yeah but you can occupy your interior space with your busyness and it's true you know delude yourself because you're geographically you know remote from a city that you're you know that you're dialing it back when in fact you're not it's true the tricks we play you know me well yeah um well the last thing I want to talk to you about is this idea of temporal landmarks you talk about this in the first episode explain explain this to me and then you know maybe I'm going to push back here I don't know let me see okay yeah well so there's this thing that researchers call the Fresh Start effect which is this uh moment typically in time that opens up sort of this inspirational aspirational behavior and thinking in all of us and they have studied the Fresh Start effect and again there's a million examples of how this works but in the studies around the Fresh Start effect they talk about specific dates and experiences that create this moment where you break from your past self and you literally feel like you have a fresh start and so the perfect example of this is January 1st on January 1st you turn the page on the last year and you you know flip the page and it's a brand new year and they call dates and experiences like a birthday or January 1st or the beginning of a school semester or a sports season or for some people a Monday for other people a fiscal year that opens up they call these temporal landmarks and a temporal Landmark is something that gives you for a moment a break from the past it opens up a new window of time where you consider the future and you consider the future you and so you know a great temporal Landmark today's my birthday is the moment when they're going to bring out the cake and there are the candles and as I close my eyes and I blow out the candles what do you do you make a wish right and have you ever noticed that when you go to make that wish you no longer hear people singing because you are taking a break from the moment to consider a bigger possibility and the same thing happens on January 1st and the same thing and so these temporal landmarks are something that naturally occur in life they happen when somebody dies they happen when you get married it's these sort of new chapter effect if you will and for just a moment I'm not saying that the motivation is sustained I personally think that the Fresh Start effect that we all can relate to when you make a birthday wish is more about your willingness to see something Beyond where you are rather than the motivation to make this [ __ ] happen yeah I think it's about ceremony and ritual right like when you inject a certain date or event with kind of a ceremonial energy it opens up that portal for you to reflect a little bit more deeply on your life and cast your gaze forward towards that better self um unfortunately the human brain is wired in such a way that these things you know have a very sure back to the short you know the the half-life of these things right like it's it's a Trope at this point it's not even worth discussing well I I disagree because I think you could actually through a ritual create these sort of temporal landmarks in your day-to-day life right that's what I'm saying I mean we can there are January 1st your birthday Etc but the choice resides within you at all times to make that different decision if you want to decide that tomorrow is the day that you're going to create that ritual and ceremony you have that opportunity we just don't you know it's harder and we don't generally I do this is one of the reasons why morning routines are so important because if you get intentional about setting up your morning almost like it's a series of temporal landmarks that trigger you right and that creates a sustained focus on these things that's gonna put you in a better place to actually move the ball forward correct yeah correct it's [ __ ] hard though right well that's why you have to listen to the ritual podcast every week because no you just need to do the things temporal landmarks yeah but you know you can listen to the podcast as a distraction from actually doing you know the actual things that are going to move your life forward I call that personal development porn yeah there's a lot of that right I don't know man well what is why don't you why don't you take us out with uh you know some sort of uh inspiration or maybe a tool for the person who is stuck who maybe has made that birthday wish or had that experience of a withering um uh New Year's resolution you know not really panning out for them like how do you get people to uh basically turn right rather than left to use your parlance from episode two that was Kendall's that was Kendall's right and left um you know when you sum up advice it sounds so stupid and so simple but I do think a lot about alignment and I think a lot about how so often because we are resigned or we convince ourselves that there's no hope there's no way this is going to make a difference the problems are so big there's no like without the actual kernel of Hope inside you which I do believe even if you're stuck you still have that there is this it's almost like a burner on a furnace although sometimes those blow out the ones inside a stone and there is inside of you this desire to be happier and I believe that the reason why you want to be happier is because you miss being happier and you can only miss things that you know and so that tells me that it's within you and we want to make it more complicated than it is but I'll give you a simple exercise that you can do that I did with one of our daughters after she graduated from college and two years of it had been imploded by covet and she basically uh dealt with the depression and the grief by drinking herself into the ground and you know putting on a ton of weight and becoming very sedentary and then she just had a complete breakdown after she graduated and so she was sitting with Chris and I and we were just listening to her as she cried and she's like I just don't know what to do I'm 20 you know one years old how do you how do you how do you get unstuck how do you do this I said okay well here's where let's start here first of all I want you to have this breakthrough where you realize you do know what you need to do so take out a piece of paper and I want you to draw a line down the center and now I want you to think about when was a time that you felt happier than you feel right now and she said senior year in high school so that was like four and a half years from the moment we were talking about and for some people it might be some moment in childhood it might be high school it might be last year I don't know I said great now on the left hand side of the paper I want you to write down all the things that were happening in your life then like what did your day-to-day life look like well like what time did you get up what did you do during the day what did you do near the end of the day how did you spend your weekends until she starts right I left the house at 7am I was at school all day with my friends I went to lacrosse practice five day you know five days a week I drank twice a week I was looking forward to college I exercised every day like just boom boom boom and I'm like great now write down what your life looks like now I sleep till noon I drink every day I don't leave the house I don't exercise I'm like compare um and change accordingly and what happens in life and I'm guilty of this too is we get so overwhelmed by how big the distances that we need to travel in order to change our lives that we miss the solution that's right in front of us which is your whole life is about those little things that you do every day and if you're not happy get out a piece of paper draw a line down the center and write down the things that you were doing when you were a happier or healthier person and add one in tomorrow and if you simply just get out for that walk or buy yourself those flowers or start texting a friend today to make plans or you I don't know put your name on the list for one of the Huts for the national park in the spring so you have something to look forward to your life contains the clues to what actually makes you feel a little happier and when they're sitting there on a piece of paper and then you take a piece of duct tape and you tape that sucker to the wall next to your bed so that when you wake up in the morning you see that there's the roadmap pick one of those damn things you'll slowly start to feel better and if you can feel better today you can feel better tomorrow and that day that you slip up and revert back to the old version beat the [ __ ] out of yourself yeah just beat the hell out of yourself tell yourself see I sucked useless useless it never works out for me Heap on the self-criticism grab the alcohol eat your face off sit in your house isolate that's what you should do okay no what you need to do is recognize that you're a human and to be human means that you are going to have days where you don't do what you said you're gonna do rich I have not exercised like for real in a month not at all of course I feel like I know I look relatively you know skinny but I feel so bloated and disgusting on the inside I know what I need to do I need to get back into my rhythm there are things that work for everybody and here's the major mistake we make you talk about it all the time we let our feelings dictate what we do and we have to do the opposite if you want to change you have to lead with the actions that align with the way you want to feel after you've done the actions you have to take action first because if you allow your feelings of I'm tired I don't feel like it it's hopeless why bother that feeling will dictate you doing nothing and that's going to keep you on the right side of that page if you just look at that list that you created of all the things that you know you should be doing that would just uptick your happiness slightly or make you slightly healthier slightly less or slightly that then act like the person on the left hand side of the page and then every time you take that action your feelings will fall in line and you'll start to feel more like that person you know I don't I I know I feel bloated I know I'm not exercising I don't [ __ ] care right now because I've got something else that I'm focused on in terms of this podcast and the move to Vermont and you know Landing the plane so to speak and I also know that the second I get home on Wednesday of next week I'll get back into that rhythm so why on Earth would I beat myself up right now don't because that is the reason why you're not motivated the research is conclusive that when you are critical of yourself it destroys all motivation to act and so if you have a bad day congratulations you're breathing you're a human being please do not beat yourself up Shake It Off look at your list and pick something you're going to do tomorrow and take the next right action correct powerful Mel Robbins coming in hot with the mood followers action wisdom on her birthday nonetheless say it's my birthday I love you Mel thank you for coming by today and sharing your birthday with with us you know I can't think of a better way to spend my birthday and to get to spend two hours with you ritual and it was my honor to drive here in fact I uh would fly across the country and drive those 45 minutes to an hour because it is a privilege to be able to sit in this seat and be able to spend time with you and to have the generosity that you are giving to me and to everybody else by sharing this conversation with people that really love and respect you so thank you and I will respond to that by simply saying thank you you're welcome and I'm so excited for this podcast it's going to be massive it already is huge it's already a success right out of the gate so I will throw it right back on to you um to say that you are an amazing servant to humankind and my hope for you is that you can truly enjoy the process and not get caught up in the externalities because this is the good time now this is the good time yeah right now so come back I will on the other side let me know how it goes very cool thanks Mel love you I love you cheers [Music]