the purpose of going for a hike ironically is not to get to the top it's to be on the trail if you focus on the freaking Trail whatever step you're on and you keep reminding yourself this is going to lead me somewhere that is where the meaning comes in your life because the best-selling author and host the number one Health and Wellness podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one Health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow now today's guest is someone who's been on once before and when she came on last time you exploded the community was showing the love feeling the love and the feedback and response was incredible that I've been wanting her to come back on and we were waiting to announce she's got a brand new podcast out herself so if you don't already listen to her show I'll announce it in a second uh please go and subscribe uh it's already crushing it it's going to be absolutely huge uh and I know you're gonna love it I'm speaking about the one and only Mel Robbins who became one of the most trusted experts in the world on confidence and motivation the hard way by first screwing up her own life as one of the most widely booked and followed podcast hosts and authors in the world Mel is sought after by the world's leading Brands and medical professionals for her research-backed tools and motivation at the same time most has amassed millions of followers online with their advice going viral every day pretty much Mel is a New York Times best-selling author and self-publishing Phenom and her work includes the high five habit the five second rule and the number one ranking the Mel Robbins podcast that's the one that you have to surprise subscribe to Mel's female lead Media Company produces provocative life-changing content with millions of books sold billions of video views six number one audio books and one of the most viewed tedx talks in the world Mel's work has been translated into 41 languages and has changed the lives of millions of people worldwide and on top of all of this Mel is one of my dearest friends we bumped into each other last week in Montreal where we're both giving Keynotes it was around 10 p.m and I get this text saying I heard you're in Montreal I said I still am and we hung out for like a couple of hours at the end of the day uh I I love this human I believe in everything she said as it does she lives it all she is the same off screen as she is on screen uh please welcome to my welcome to the show my dear friend uh an incredible thinker Mel Robbins oh my God can I just hug you yeah of course you can you oh God oh my gosh I just love you too I love you too I I just you know we've the best I think we've you know whenever we've connected the first time we met I was thinking about that last week in Montreal the first time we met we were also both speaking and we spent an evening together then and just hit it off and I appreciate it that was like four years ago now yeah you know I think we've all had this experience where you've been at a bar or you've been at a big party and you look across a room and your eyes meet somebody and it's like immediate like uh tractor beam electric pull I felt that way about you for a long time just by watching what you're putting out on social media and so I had had a brain and soul crush on you for a long time and so when we met it was like oh my God so and you know what else I love is that I love like I get both you and your amazing wife I love that you are decades younger than me and very creative and here's what else I love about you I consider you not only a very dear friend but my own personal monk there you have it I love it I love it just put me in your pocket right there right there to talk to you today literally the last time you came on it was unbelievable and I've genuinely been wanting wanting to have you back on like as much as you want to come back uh but I know there's a few things we want to talk about today and I wanted to start off with this idea that you've always talked about how you learned about things the hard way there were always challenges and even now when we talk offline we shared that even last week we were talking about challenges we were both going through in in building this opportunity to serve others and and I wanted to ask you like what do you think is the hardest thing you're working on right now like what's the most challenging thing you're working on internally or externally could be creatively it could be habit wise what is what is something that you're struggling with or grappling with that you're working through happiness wow okay yeah happiness it's interesting I was um getting ready to come over here this morning and so I my daughter goes to school here at the Thornton school for music she's a senior and she spent the night with me last night I'm going to tell you the story because it's relevant about both learning things the hard way and about happiness so she slept in my bed with me last night and it was so awesome and I just love her and she's 22 and she's about to like burst into the next chapter of her life it is so exciting and I miss her terribly terribly and I oh I'm gonna get like totally choked up when I think about it because I live on the other side of the country and I think one of the hardest things that you have to do in life if you really love somebody is to encourage them to leave to encourage them to grow and um I can't believe I choked up I'm getting about this because I mean this just happened this morning and I was laying in bed and she's sound asleep you know like sprawled out like those 22 year olds sleep and sweating and you know just like this and I thought oh I want to take a picture of this moment and then I thought no she's going to kill me because she looks terrible and you know how that rolls when you're 20 years old and so I closed my eyes to just capture the memory and I thought why is it that I am always gripping onto the thing that makes me unhappy what is it about this campaign I call it the campaign of misery like instead of focusing on the fact that here I am first of all lucky enough to be in Los Angeles to be able to have the means to go see her for parents weekend that I have a relationship with her where she would want to come and just snuggle up and spend the night that she is pursuing her passion and dream of being a singer-songwriter that she is just killing it she's happy why am I always defaulting to the loss and so when I say that I'm working on happiness what I've realized about myself Jay is that I have done a lot of things in life but I've spent the vast majority of my life being so busy and keeping myself so busy as a means to outrun I think a deep-seated unhappiness and that when the pandemic hit and I had to slow down and I had to truly say to myself okay you can't go anywhere you cannot regulate your anxiety by running to Target you can't catch a plane you can't you like it's you and your like you and yourself right now Mel and all the coping mechanisms that you used to have that distracted you from the fact that you're just not that happy they're not there anymore and unless I want to drink myself into the ground which I don't and numb it or hit the vape pen or take a gut like unless I want to numb it I got to deal with it and so I've spent the last two years and I continue to focus right now on the number one goal that I have which is to learn how to be happy and content wherever I am and so this morning is the perfect example of catching this profound sadness which is part of The Human Experience deeply missing somebody is also about loving them right and noticing that I was going into the negative and part of being content and being happy wherever I am is not trying to fix things it's being okay with things it's allowing the emotion to rise up and then noticing that there's a different way to feel and so in that moment I just am doing what I'm doing a lot of which is just breathing through those deep moments where I'm like why am I complaining about this it's so stupid why am I obsessing about this thing tomorrow and I'm not even here right now and reframing things in a more positive way and this might surprise people because I I am a very positive person I am a very optimistic person but when I really slow down my mind runs a million miles an hour and normally it's 15 steps ahead which means I'm never content where I am and so I've been doing a ton of work like in my nervous system in my body instead of going right up here and trying to wrestle with my thoughts I've been going down into here to just anchor in my body and slow things down and be physically where I am where my feet are and so then there was a second thing that happened so again I'm working on happiness that's the thing I'm really like working on it's like a muscle right um I'm in the bathroom and I am terrible at doing my hair I know it looks really decent today but normally I look like a freaking Labradoodle on a human day like that's just me I just have never figured out the hair situation and so I finally said that's it I have got to figure out how to make my hair look halfway okay like I'm not even looking for amazing I'm just looking for okay and so I was watching YouTube I'm learning the tutorials I've got the right sprays and so Kendall comes rolling in after she wakes up and I am sitting there trying to curl my hair right with this big fat curl and I'm terrible at it Jay and all of a sudden I hit my freaking ear and I'm like oh and I'm like oh my god I've just burned my ear and Kendall casually goes well you gotta learn somehow and she walks out of the room I think there is so much wisdom in that because that is how you learn that is how you learn how close to hold a curling iron to your ear you burn yourself and then your whole body absorbs the lesson and you don't go that close to the fire next time and I'm doing that dance with happiness and contentment that when I Feel the Fire of discontent or friction or complaining or looking for what's wrong I pull the curling iron a little away from the ear and I go back into a safer calmer place that was a beautiful answer I I didn't know what to expect when I asked that question I really appreciate you you know going that inward with it because you could have gone a number of ways I I fully understand and empathize what you're saying because my mom and my family do something similar so and I love my mum I have a great relation with my mum she's amazing and anything that's good about me is because of her but every time I go back to London the day I land my family will say well you're only here for 21 days am I 21 days like that's three weeks even if you add up all the hours weekly that you spend with time with someone it probably won't account for 21 full days yeah with full presence and then a week we'll go and be like oh you've only got 40 14 days left or you've only got seven days left oh you're leaving today and and that mindset just keeps forcing you to think that day 21 is day one right as in that day 21 days left is the same as one day left and you're living all 21 days as there's only one day left and I've I've taken time and I've sat with my mom so many times to have that conversation with her and I said Mom if you celebrate that we have 21 days I'm gonna make the most of it and we're going to create new memories and create new experiences then you're going to be happier for these 21 days and yes you're going to miss me the same it's not going to change that and I'm gonna miss you so I I have personal experience of that on the other end of it with having that conversation with my mom where she's really grown in understanding how that thought hasn't served her right and she's so much happier for it now when I go back so yeah that I definitely identify with that what you touched on at the end there though was really interesting to me when you talk about happiness it sounds like you believe you deserve it and you sound like you believe it's yours for the taking like it's like it is a clear goal Direction it's there yeah and I think what's happened is subconsciously all consciously so many of us don't feel we deserve happiness or we don't feel we're worthy of happiness or we actually think mediocrity is a safer place to live because then we don't have our expectations being unmet we don't have the fall of I wanted this but I got this right and so I've been I had a friend the other day who sent me a message and he said take a look at this and it was all about how really we shouldn't strive for happiness We should strive for mediocrity because mediocrity is where most people will end up so that was like literally this is the message so my friend message me he goes what do you think of this I think it sucks I think it's the worst advice I've ever freaking heard how about that it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard here here's the thing Jay so one of the things I also want to say is that I'm 54 and it's taken me a long time to figure out that I was actually not a happy person and I don't think I I really truly understood What happiness is and maybe I'm using the wrong word maybe the word is the problem because I always Associated happiness with like parties and laughter and like I'm just like full of joy and I'm and I just you know it's like this very positive thing and again I am a positive person I'm a very optimistic person but if you were to put a speaker on my head and broadcast the things I said to myself you would literally check me in to the seventh floor at Mass General Hospital in Boston Massachusetts because it was a constant drum beat of negativity and as I one by one by one J started to fix the problems in my marriage and my finances with my anxiety as I built a business you know a lot of people are surprised to learn that most of what you see that I've built has been built in the last six years literally and so I as I started fixing things outside that default drum beat did not go away it just was a situation where I no longer had anything outside of me that was rationally wrong so I turned it back on me and just started hammering me in in crazy ways I'll give you an example so this is where I started to have this breakthrough so I was sitting my my husband and I have just uh bought a house in Vermont and I know you guys you know are in your new home it's an incredible thing to do it is our dream house it's the house that his parents built it's the family house we not only were able to purchase this thing we have been able to completely renovate it make it our own this place is the closest place to God that I have ever been we sit nestled between mountains with a 140 mile view straight down a valley with cascading like it is just spectacular when I would sit in therapy sessions eight years ago and my therapist would ask me to come up with like a um you know like a totem or a spiritual guide or Vision whatever for truth or God or whatever it's always this View and so lo and behold eight years later we freaking live there and I'm sitting on this covered deck looking down the valley my daughter is sitting next to me her other daughter who lives in Boston who's 23 and it's Sunday and normally on Sundays I'm not even present on Sundays because I'm now got the Sunday scaries I'm now thinking about the week ahead she is starting to now do that okay I gotta get going I got I gotta pack the car I gotta get going I got I got a big week at work this week and and it's 7 30 in the morning on a spectacular day and the energy is starting and I recognize the energy because that is the campaign of misery that I have lived with for 50 years and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking oh this is interesting that's me and then I stopped in that moment Jay and I thought I don't feel that right now I just feel that exactly where I am looking at this View is exactly where I'm supposed to be and it was so profound it's almost like that moment where Eckhart Tolle has on the bench in the beginning of the Power of Now where I have this profound experience where I think wait a minute is this What happiness is that I'm not 15 steps ahead I'm just able to be right here without the anxiety without the stress I mean that is like a revolutionary experience for me I don't think I had ever not felt the default of a revved up nervous system an anxious mind or a to-do list that was a mile long and I don't want to go back to that sort of frenetic busyness that creates chronic stress and you know the challenge for me right now is how do I stay in a space that's that's happy because I love the game of building a business I love pushing myself I love like and I realized oh wait you actually need both you need deep spiritual quiet time and you need the busyness of Los Angeles or Boston or New York in small Sprints but that can't be your default anymore woman and that's uh that's such a great realization and reflection I think when you come to that and it it takes a lot of self-acceptance to come to that because I think we think of life as binary like you have to make a choice you're either going to be a hustler or you're going to be peaceful you're either going to be a winner or you're going to be a loser you're either going to be wisdom and Zen or you're going to be money and materialistic right and it's almost like you feel you have to make those choices early in life and I think when you came in here we were talking about something and I really really think it's something that a lot of our listeners will resonate with the idea that so many of us experience pain of not going after what we want or what we need or what we feel is our calling because of the pain that comes with that yeah and so we settle for the pain of where we are yeah and I think those two ideas are related because again we think there's this choice you have to make at any point in time where it's like I'm either going to live the life of my dreams or I'm gonna be stuck forever and then we're like okay well I'll be stuck forever because my dream seems so far away I remember being there and it's always hard to help everyone who's listening realize how much I felt that way so how old were you I was this was six years ago for me yeah oh my God that's right you guys have this crazy parallel yeah six years ago so six years ago I was working a safe corporate job six months from now I was about to be married to Riley and I was making 31 500 pounds a year and that was my salary at this company and I was doing extremely well at the company so I had a good track to to progress there and I'm sitting there going I've been there for two years and I'm like I don't think this is where I'm meant to be I was looking at people who'd been at the company for decades I was I've always said to people look 10 20 years ahead of you and look at that person in the company and go is that where I want to be and I was like well even if they paid me as much as that person's paid even if I got all the benefits that person got I don't think I want to do that in my 50s and so I thought to myself okay well then I have to take a risk so and obviously that was like a two-year journey of even convincing myself let's talk about that if someone's sitting there right now passionate about something wanting to get inspired wanting to do something but they're settling for the pain of where they are and that's why I asked that mediocrity and happiness question yeah it is really that dance between I'm gonna settle for where I'm at where I'm going to be where I want to be how do you think about that Journey how do you you know what just popped into my mind yeah weird grade cancer if you got diagnosed with a cancer that was treatable would you try to treat your cancer yes of course you would because otherwise it would kill you when you feel this call or this this burning desire and I feel like we all have this flame inside of us we are not like a boiler where the pilot light can blow out that is not how a human being is wired you whether you're stuck whether you're in pain whether you're suffering you still have this this flame inside you that is burning and when you actively engage in your own campaign of misery and you actively tell yourself the reasons why it's not going to work or the reasons why you can't do it or the reasons why now is not the time or you're never going to make it happen or it was great for Jay or great for for Mel but nothing ever works out for when you engage in your own campaign of misery you are creating literally a cancer inside of you that eats at you and we don't realize that by engaging in this campaign of misery because it's active that flame is burning inside you and you are actively convincing yourself not to do anything it is an active engagement that's why I call it a campaign because that flame is going to keep on burning which is why the campaign has to get louder and the excuses have to get louder and you know what starts to happen is you start to listen to that campaign and you start to feel pain because there's something burning inside of you and the only cure for this is to stop listening to that campaign and simply start taking small steps just one every day toward the thing that you want I talked to my daughter about this all the time so she dreams absolutely dreams of being a singer-songwriter solo artist with a a successful career literally Stadium tours and if I'm being perfectly honest this kid has all of the talent and all of the like she's one of those five tool players and she is a great person kind and just awesome and she's even on a program for it the best in the country she has everything she just has to do the work what is the work well the work is simply writing crappy songs every day the work is not listening to the campaign of misery because all around you you're going to see evidence of this person's better that person this or this one's that or that uh when you listen to that campaign in your head it is like a cancer inside it causes pain because you can feel when you are giving up on your own potential and that is the worst kind of Life to Live and we're we're all I've remembered I was the president of that campaign in my own life like you know I was like when when you and and I want people to understand this is that everyone you think is doing something good with their life at one point they were the president presidents of this campaign of misery in their own life I remember saying well that never is going to happen for me those things only happen to those people I remember also watching things and this was the key one that I realized had to go me and my friends and and my dream when I was young was to be a spoken word rap artist like that was my goal like I've always loved words I've always loved having a large vocabulary I've always loved bending words and making them rhyme and and I think that's why I love words today and what we do so much is that and I we would sit there and we would watch rappers or artists that were up and coming and we would critique them and we would almost talk badly about them we would criticize them and we talk about how rubbish they were and how untalented they were and or if we had those opportunities how good we'd be and I realized that today's culture is propagating that even more because now we're just scrolling through Tick Tock or Instagram and you'll see someone who's doing what you want to do and you may think you can do it better but instead of doing it we're spending our time watching someone else doing it and going well that sucks that's rubbish right I actually have friends who message me stuff like that sometimes and they'll be like look you know I've been wanting to make videos for a while and they'll send me someone who's made a bad video in their opinion and I said you know what's really interesting when you're on social media you look at everyone who's doing worse than you I said when I'm on social media I look at everyone's doing better than me and learn right it's like there's there's two mindsets you're either criticizing someone or you're creating and learning and growing and so I I just feel what you're saying is so true and I think I spent so much time thinking I had something but then not doing anything with it yeah so a couple things yeah I want to give everybody a visual yes because I find J's into words I gotta have a picture like my mind is that the words mind you are either in the stands commenting about the game or you're on the court playing it and right now I want you to think about that flame inside you that dream that you have and I'm gonna go back to my daughter who is on the court but she will be the first to say that for many years she was engaged in her own campaign of misery sitting in the stands telling herself why she can't get on the court right now and so I like that visual because at any moment it literally like Cuts right to the truth are you in the stands criticizing who the people who are playing the game or being jealous of them or in the stands telling yourself it's not time to jump in or are you on the freaking Court there's only two places to be in life that's it there is no middle ground here and so what I want to say also is that being in the stands it is loud it is an active thing that you're doing this is not a passive thing that we do to ourselves we actively argue against our dream and our potential and that is a thousand percent tied to your happiness to your confidence because if you are arguing against your own god-given potential you are actively destroying your confidence you're actively destroying possibility in your life and here's the thing you've heard people know when they have imposter syndrome they know it they talk about it openly and I also hate the term fake it till you make it and here's why when you say I'm just going to fake it till you make it you are calling yourself a fake it amplifies your self-doubt instead say this I'm going to get on the court and try until I make it because the pain of sitting in the stands and never getting down there is way greater than tripping on the court way greater you're causing your and this is the thing I want people to understand you are causing yourself so much pain by laughing off and making jokes about how it's never going to happen you're causing yourself so much pain by thinking about it get out of the freaking stands and get back on the court in your life I did this to myself for years about the podcast you know I'll tell you some insane stories so here I am crazy successful in the audiobook world the the most successful self-published audiobook in the history of audiobooks is the five second rule that leads to a seven book audible original deals with audible because of the success of that and I kept telling myself Jay I'd look at you you know and I'd look at a ton of our other friends who you know have these amazing podcasts you Rich Roll like you know just everybody and I'd be like I missed the vote I'm too late there's two million podcasts out there now I I can't do this I don't have anything different to say than Jay Jay's already got you know it covered like why would I jump in there now and then I would like I in the stands for six years and you know what else I would tell myself well you're just successful because audible's your partner and if you were to try this you're going to fall flat on your face and you don't have time and here's another thing that I tell myself well who on Earth is going to come to Boston to sit in a studio with you Mel everybody's remote now Boston is not a media Place nobody travels there like just in the freaking stands telling myself no no no now here's the thing about campaigns of misery it does not actually mute the heartache and the pull that you have because your dreams actually can't leave you they're meant for you and so all that campaigning or the drinking or the numbing out or the avoiding the thing that is inside you it doesn't make the dream go away it just creates more pain and so finally you know it was two years ago that I'm like I have to like take my own advice and I gotta make some major changes because I knew when I was going to step into the podcast phase that I was going to make it the only thing that I was doing that I needed to complete all the speaking engagements that I had I needed to create different boundaries around like I had to get serious about taking the steps and getting on that court and that's what I've been doing for the last two years and a lot of people don't know that I actually got my start in 2007 hosting a local radio show and I have wanted to get back to radio for almost 12 years because I love the intimacy of it and so and I can't like you know this you can't share your life in real time in an audiobook no I definitely you can't do it in a 60-second reel but I too sat there in the stands actively engaged in my campaign of misery here's another area of my life where I engaged in campaign of misery loneliness I have been profoundly lonely for a while now and by lonely I don't mean alone because there's people around me but I have and I think a lot of people feel this way and I know a lot of women do particularly when your kids get older and the social you know like things change and I think a lot of us are struggling with adult friendship and especially coming out of quarantine people are now kind of I don't want to leave my house not because of anything going on but because I like being home yeah and so I started to get serious about the fact that I was really in the stands in my life complaining to myself that I didn't see my friends that I don't have friends that I'm I'm really lonely but I wasn't on the court what are you going to do about it because it's easy to actually start making friends if you send texts every day to people and you make plans yeah oh Jay's in Montreal why don't I text him oh he's in the same Hotel why don't I go up Seven floors and go see him because my monk is in the penthouse you know what I'm saying I love what you're saying I can resonate with it so much and there's a journey from where is your campaign of misery right now oh that's a great question where is my current campaign where are you in the stands in your life Jay mine is actually I grew up loving uh I went to public speaking in drama school and public speaking became a huge part of my life and drama stopped and drama is something I'd love to get back into really oh yeah I loved acting growing up I loved the idea of getting into someone else's emotions and I love the idea of learning about new characters and understanding and I keep wanting to do it and two years ago three years ago when the Bad Boys movie came out I was asked by Sony to be in their theatrical trailer for TV and so I played the role of a therapist with Will Smith and mine Lawrence and I had so much it was so uncomfortable because I hadn't done it for so long I went to drama school for seven years it was so uncomfortable doing it and I got an acting coach that week and I and I practiced and I learned all my lines and then I got there on the day and they gave me a new script they said all the scripts changed and I'm going guys I had five days I knew about this five days ago I had an acting coach every day friend two hours a day and they give me a new script then they come in 10 minutes before I've been waiting around for two hours learning this new script we get there and they say oh by the way will and Martin have scrapped this script there's no more script they're just gonna freestyle and you're gonna have to Freestyle I'm like you want me to Freestyle we're two of the greatest to ever do it and I'm not a comedian now were you friends with Will at this point not uh not in the way we are today okay so so like because I think people might be like yeah but you guys are friends not a friend of mine yeah and I didn't know Martin at all I'd never met him in my life and so I am fully feeling impossible I'm fully in my discomfort zone I'm and I had the most fun yeah I was on the corn had fun but then since that day I retreated and so and so that's been if I'm completely honest that's where my heart is I love the idea of getting to be I've always loved biographies and I've always loved autobiographies I've always loved true stories and so if I had the opportunity to learn or play or be in a true story that would fill my heart with a lot of joy is there somebody that you would I dream of a thing no no I don't have that that answer I don't have clear um but yeah that would be my honest answer to that question of that's something I'm in the stands on there's so many excuses I'm like well Jay if you did that then it discredits all the work you've done up till now well Jay if you did that that and it doesn't work out then then what about the people that you coach in that industry like if if you uh if you did it and you did it really well then people will call you a sellout because you just did you chose to do something completely different and it's not saying I want to do that and stop doing what I do today it's just that there's a part of that expression that I'm so creatively inspired by that I'd like to try yeah and again it's try right yeah and I wanted to get so that's what I want to talk to you about it's what was the heart of my question before I'm so glad you asked me that thank you I've never publicly talked about that I've never shared that really with anyone beyond my wife is what is the difference because I think this is where it goes wrong I meet a lot of people who talk to me about their dreams and even mine and I want to clarify mine in a second the one I just shared with you what is the difference between a dream and delusion big and and I I'm going to share what I my initial thoughts before I hear yours when I say I would like to do more drama or acting or experiment with that phase in my life my dream is not at this point in time to win an Oscar my dream is to try to creatively express myself and see whether this vehicle is a form that brings me joy happiness and meaning in my life yeah that to me is not delusional because it is giving myself the opportunity to put my uh using visuals like put my uh you know what are they called uh stabilizers onto my bike and see if this is real right I I often find people whose first Dream is I want to build a billion dollar company or and they've never built a business at all or have business experience or I hear I want this to be the number one thing in the world and while those are nice aspirations I'm not sure that I actually think and this is just my personal take I never had those when I started and I feel that sometimes without the skills without doing the learning without doing the experimenting those things can actually stop you from doing it because it's so hard it's so far away and there's such a big way to fall so I want to understand how do you decipher between dream and delusion when you talk about delusion what I hear is like arrogance and conceitedness now and and let me explain the difference here because I think confidence is this willingness to try and this belief in yourself and what you're trying to do right I think arrogance and um conceitedness is thinking you're better than everybody else yeah and so I when you frame the delusion as this grandiose thing it feels like it's coming from insecurity right it feels like it's coming from wanting to be better than versus coming from a place where you're willing to take the risks and try and get on the court of life in a way that's aligned with this thing inside you and so that's what I process in my own brain when you ask me the question what's the difference between dreams and delusions yeah now if you have a true dream is it ever delusional and my answer to that is never and here's why I believe that dreams are not meant to be achieved I believe that your dreams are a directional signal that the dream is out there in a different chapter of your life calling you from this moment toward that direction and that the reason why you still have this Burning Flame inside you that relates all the way back to something that you did when you were younger that you freaking loved is because when you walk toward acting and what that requires of you to get on the court and walk toward that dream and look the dream could be an Oscar the dream could be something like that's an award it doesn't matter it's in the lane of acting what I believe about dreams is that the dreams are deeply personal they are connected to that flame inside you you are hardwired with them when you were born it is absolutely part of why you're curious about things why you're interested in things naturally this is part of your natural intelligence and that when you get on the court and you start walking toward them that is what's supposed to happen because if you allow yourself to take on some roles in acting it's going to make something come alive inside of you that's the purpose of your dreams it's to make that flame burn brighter inside of you it's about you Awakening something and your dreams are the directional signal that are trying to point you in what way to move forward going back to my daughter will she ever have a stadium tour I don't freaking know she might she might that's not the point the point is to have something come alive inside herself by getting on the court of her life and writing music and putting it out there yeah whatever happens happens the reason why I wanted to launch the Mel Robbins podcast is not so that it could become the number one podcast in the world of course I have those goals of course I want to be the number one female podcast host in the world of course that's what I want but the reason why I am pursuing this is because I wanted to connect with people at a deeper level I knew that I would come creatively alive I knew that I wanted to build an ongoing conversation that was deeper and I also knew I wanted to learn more because when you're constantly putting out content or you're standing on stages or you're writing books it's kind of a one-way conversation yeah and so part of my solve for loneliness was to stop griping about it to myself and to go well what would actually make me feel more connected what would be of more service to people what would create a deeper impact that's why I'm doing this thing yeah that's that's what I'm getting at that the clarity and the reason why I really want to get this really clear for people is that I had a friend last night I was talking to and they want to start a podcast and it was the most beautiful intention right everyone wants to start a podcast that everyone wants to start anything today sure it's very nice and they should but what I've learned is that anything I've started intentionally has not only more likely brought out the consistency and cre creativity for me it's not only been successful it's also made me happy and so what I'm trying to get to is how do you plant a seed that goes all the way from not only growing consistently to giving you Joy as it grows to then giving you that flower to then giving you that fruit then giving you the seed to do more rather than like I got the flour we then cut it it then broke and you know so when I look at it I go I think a lot of people are so obsessed with the result that all they get might be the result and then you have nothing else and then that result feels dissatisfying it's like when we had Gwyneth Paltrow on the podcast she talked about how like winning an Oscar in her teens like removed all aspiration because she goes well what do you do next right like when you've done that you've done the epitome the peak of that career in your teens and now it's like well what do you do next and it's like well when it was always when it was if it was only about the result not speaking about her but if it was only about the result then you stop and so I I just want to clarify that what you just said is you started it not to be number one you started it because of the impact you wanted to make the stories you wanted to totally the connection with your audience and I think if people leaned more into that to me that's the real dream yeah and you know it's interesting I keep bringing up my daughter because she's an artist yeah and when she leans into the fact that she's not trying to impress her friends and and her pop music program she's not trying to impress anybody yeah she wants to tell stories yeah with her music that inspire people yeah and when you really get into the reason why you're doing something so I'm going to give everybody another visual because there are two visuals that I think about a lot in life for me one of the most powerful things that I use to coach myself is that when I'm in the middle of something I always remind myself I'm on the bridge so in launching this podcast something I've been thinking about for more than eight years something I've talked myself out of for a long time something that I finally stepped on the court and started working for about two years ago and now we are here I know that this is literally step one on a long suspension bridge that is leading me somewhere and when you remind yourself that you're just on the bridge you stop focusing on how long is it going to take and what's it going to feel like and I'm not there yet you are on the bridge and you are going to be on the bridge until you get to this other side and then guess what happens when you get to the other side there's another freaking Bridge every single episode is like its own Bridge yeah the other visual that I use a lot is uh a trail leading up a mountain because the research is so conclusive and Jay and I can try to beat it into your head that meaning comes from working on something I'm gonna say it again meaning comes from working on something with intention that has importance to you it's that simple you can create meaning in your life by planting a garden if it's important to you and for me I think a lot about you know the act of going for a hike the purpose of going for a hike ironically is not to get to the top it's to be on the trail and if you constantly stare at the top you're going to be out of breath you're going to tell yourself you have so much longer when we're going to get there and you're going to miss the entire point of your freaking life which is the ride the trail the bridge the mile markers all of it and so part of my desire to be happier is to continually remind myself it is not about getting on that mountain because when you get to the top of that mountain the top of one mountains just the bottom of another one and if you're going up eventually you got to come back down like that is just life if you focus on the freaking Trail whatever step you're on and you keep reminding yourself this is going to lead me somewhere that is where the meaning comes in your life because Jay and I will both tell you guys that you put all this effort into writing a book it publishes you're like okay now what yeah it's true yeah and we want it to be something else we want to think that there is this Silver Bullet that if you get to the mountain if you launch the podcast if you meet the person of your dreams then you'll be happy and the truth is for me personally happiness was really about ending campaigns of misery in my mind it was about identifying where I was arguing against myself and my potential and it was allowing myself to get back on the trail or start walking across that bridge yeah that's that's I love those visuals they're so powerful and so beautiful and there's I mean when you said the bridge one it reminded me of I believe this is from uh the Christian tradition I believe it's from the Bible but this statement says the world is like a bridge don't build your house on it cross over it and I've always spiritually gravitated towards that statement very deeply so when you said Brits that was the first thing that came to my mind the the world is like a bridge you know I also like that term a couple reasons so yeah you know I was telling everybody earlier about how I woke up this morning and I'm here visiting my daughter who's 22 and a senior in college and I felt this profound sadness and I noticed it and I allowed myself to feel it because I wouldn't feel that if I didn't love her so deeply right and then I visualize this bridge that this is just one step on a very long bridge that I'm crossing and a bridge that as a parent like the most important thing that I need to do as a parent is to encourage my children to fly into this world and to leave and to become who they're meant to become which means they're going to leave and there are a lot of goodbyes and it sucks but it's also beautiful and I also love this idea of a bridge because when it comes to um anxiety when it comes to separation there is this concept uh when you say goodbye to somebody or when you're about to leave somebody who's going to do something anxious is you bridge that moment to the next moment you're going to see them so I'm sure you do this when you say goodbye to your parents in the UK you hug and say I can't you know for me I just said I can't wait to see you on Thanksgiving break I can't wait to hear how this thing goes tomorrow so that you are staying connected and bridging and closing that kind of loop of Something's ending because things are not truly really ending yeah they're always Beginnings to something else yeah one of the questions we get in my DMs a lot and comments and everything is and and I think people subconsciously or consciously have this as well the idea that and you just brought a brought it about is your parents expectations so either some people had parents who had very high expectations or different expectations to what the kids wanted like you're very aware that what your daughter wants to be and your happy to support it as long as she wants to be it some people have the experience of well my parents had very high expectations but they're not the expectations I want or my parents actually didn't have any expectations of me and they were actually more negative and they actually didn't believe in me at all and didn't really think I'd get anywhere anyway or when I want to try something I get the toxic feedback of well you're not going to make it anyway so I think we we deal with parenting and a feeling of not believing Us in ourselves in two ways one is your parents saw the path they gave you it but you're like that's not my path this is and then your parents don't believe in it all your parents never believed in any path you were to take and I think a lot of people I'm hearing right now are feeling like Jay I'm just surrounded by family and friends friends who don't believe in me don't believe in my ideas don't believe in the partner I want to be with like I just don't feel like people support my decisions yeah Chris and I have been married 26 years we have three kids they're 23 22 and 17. there is no doubt in my mind I've screwed them up yeah how could you not yeah I mean we're talking about millions of moments where somebody needs emotional support and you are a mismatch in that moment right and I love this term of Parental mismatch because it allows those of us that still have a good relationship with our parents to acknowledge a fact and the fact is there are things that went down in your childhood that you may not even remember that left you with negative or toxic thinking patterns that you struggle to get rid of as an adult it is a fact period and so I want to start off by saying that because we all deal with this and it is a result of childhood in fact Dr Russell Kennedy who is amazing you should have him on your podcast says that all anxiety results from a feeling of separation from your parents when you're a kid probably before you were five a moment where you felt separate there was a mismatch maybe you were sitting on the floor you don't even remember this you're quietly playing you're in a happy space and mom or dad comes home and they're frustrated and all of a sudden they lie you know like everybody does at some point because everybody has a volcano moment it's a fact and it startles you as a kid your body remembers that and there's this concept in research called ghosts in the nursery that a lot of us struggle as adults with behavior that we're like where did that come from and where it comes from is the fact that if you're now an adult and you had an experience growing up in a household where your parents raged or your parents were abusive or your parents just ignored you and you just felt separate or on edge when you get into those same situations as an adult your body has a feeling first we think we think first we don't your body has the feeling first and then your body repeats the behavior that you actually observed as a kid I speak English because I observed and absorbed the language my parents spoke and so there are patterns that you're struggling with that do not serve you as an adult that are not your own and so I want to say that first and foremost okay that one of the greatest Gifts of being an adult is separating from your parents and deciding how you want to talk to yourself how you want to change the way that you think how you speak how you support so that's number one number two it is so common and natural to feel this kind of complex mix of guilt and of pressure to want to please your parents why because you needed them to survive as a kid it's not like you could leave and what we learn as kids is that there is a give and a take and that oftentimes that love that you need and that support that you need is very transactional that Mom and Dad are in a great mood and you get a lot of attention when you're doing law and sports or doing well in school or you're doing what they want them to do and what we women learn in particular is that if you're not doing what I want you to do that's bad because guilt by definition is feeling bad about what you just did we learned that feeling during childhood and it happens to everybody and so I want to just say this because I want to normalize it these are things that don't mean that you're damaged it's stuff that we have to heal for ourselves as adults and so here's rule number one if your parents or your family are not paying your bills they have no vote if your parents are paying for your bills there is going to be power in what they're saying there is a transaction there because they're paying your tuition or they're paying whatever and not all parents are transformed and so I'm saying that because one of the fastest ways to Free Yourself is to pay your own way and when you pay your own way you start to feel very empowered to pave your own way I happen to believe as a parent that my job is to help my kids figure out who they are and you do that by listening you do that by validating their experiences you do that by not seeing them as an extension of you that what school they get into somehow means that you're a good parent or a bad parent the best thing that you could do for your kids is figure out what's going to make them happy and support them in doing that and the other thing that you can do is help them make decisions by helping them figure out what decisions are right for them so I'm saying all of this because zero to 18 so let's use another metaphor because I again love metaphors life's one big road trip okay every year of your life is a mile marker from 0 to 18 you're not even driving the damn car somebody else's you're in somebody else's car they're telling you what to do they're controlling what's happening the second you get to University or you leave home you get to navigate your own life but not if somebody else is paying for it yeah I think that perspective is empowering if you're willing to take that risk but what we've found you know the the research shows this as well there was a study a few years ago that I looked up which talked about how you know with men and women when when men see a job description and they can do like 50 to 60 right that's an HP study don't say I can do it right and then when a woman sees a job description and even if she can do 80 of it she'll be like I can't apply because I can't do 20 and so I find that there's a we do it in dating too by the way right so yeah so so that that disproportionate self-doubt that comes in there or that lack of self-confidence as as someone who's a mum of girls like does that do you see that playing out differently for you and for them and so I there's a tremendous amount of research on this with girls and confidence and I have a theory as to what happens and I know what age it happens at typically for girls because girls struggle with crippling perfectionism in numbers that far outweigh uh what happens to boys and I believe there is a specific reason why so at the age of 12 boys and girls have the exact same levels of confidence Jay at the age of 13 girls confidence fall off a cliff according to the research and I think I know why the reason why in my personal opinion is because that is the average age that a girl goes through puberty and she starts menstruating now here's the interesting thing about girls when they go through puberty it's like a public conversation and what's the first thing that somebody says to a little girl when they get their period you're a woman now and it's also something that happens to your body so there's this like implied maturing this implied notion of sex there's also the fact that your boobs are growing and you're butting and people are self-conscious and so now you're wearing a sweatshirt you also know who's got their period somehow everybody knows when this is happening everybody's talking about it and so you in that moment lose the control of the conversation about your body and for most girls it's incredibly uncomfortable like I remember one of my daughters wore like a gigantic sweatshirt for two years just to hide her developing body other girls might show it off because you get more attention but it becomes this public conversation about where you are in relation to everybody else and most girls in addition to the socialization that you get from the media and from culture you start then wishing you looked different you start to obsess about yourself if I could just get a perfect if I wear the perfect sweatshirt then nobody's going to notice and you start micromanaging as a defense mechanism to public judgment that's what I think happens because the perfectionism is off the church too when you dudes get hit puberty it's typically when you're 15. and it benefits you I mean because if we're not talking about what's happening with your balls right it's not like some conversation about that we're talking about the fact that your voice is deeper you've gotten taller it benefits you in high school sports and so it doesn't impact your guys's confidence it actually helps you and that's where it begins in my personal opinion along with the fact that there's so much that happens generally generationally where boys are encouraged to take risks boys are in sports where they're knocked around boys are picked up and shoved back in the game girls are coddled a little bit more and told to be a good girl be a nice sister go hug your uncle all those things that send a message that leads to women struggling with confidence what do you think then are some of the things that you did later on and you want for your daughters to do to develop better confidence like what are some of those steps towards better confidence because I think it's it's so difficult right to confidence requires you to do so many things you don't want to do to develop it yeah like I think the problem with the word confidence when I look it up in the dictionary it's one of my favorite definitions of a word one of the definitions is acknowledgment and self-assurance in one's own abilities right like you're acknowledging and you are aware of and you're reassured of your own abilities and your qualities and so when I look at that definition I go okay that requires you to do things that like you you don't build your self-respect when you sat out on the beach but you do build your self-respect when you went and hiked up a hill and then walked back down right like your self-confidence doesn't grow because you sat out in your garden and didn't do anything your self-confidence grew because you learned how to garden or do something right your self-respect self-esteem and self-confidence grow when you do things yeah that are not obvious or easy or simple right but like you're saying we're not trained in that way so what are some of the steps that people could take towards self-conscious yeah first here's what I want to tell you and then I'll give you some steps so confidence is one of those topics Jay that we have backwards everybody hears the word confidence and they think it's belief like up here yeah I agree confidence my definition of confidence that I want everyone to walk away with is confidence is the willingness to try in research there is something called The Confidence competency Loop and what that means is that as you try something for the first time like I was curling my hair this morning and I freaking burned my ear and my daughter casually says gotta learn somehow by trying and by the way screwing it up and burning my ear I still am gaining a little bit of confidence I know to hold this thing a little bit further away from my ear Now by gaining confidence by burning my ear I now am going to try again and I'm gonna be a little bit better and I'm going to gain a little bit more confidence and then I'm going to try again and I'm going to learn even more and so confidence at the heart of confidence is action it's the willingness to try and all you need is to know that if you try you're not going to die you're just going to learn something and when you learn something it removes a little bit of the insecurity so that it makes it slightly easier to try again and so I would follow the 60 rule okay and I use sixty percent because that is the figure that was in the HP study about men applying for jobs when they feel sixty percent qualified if you look at something that you want to do or try or apply for and you feel whether it's sixty percent qualified okay I got sixty percent of the stuff because the truth is a job description everybody a dating profile that is not requirements that's a wish list okay if you got sixty percent of this stuff freaking go for it that's rule number one the sixty percent rule the other thing is is that if you're looking at doing something that you're scared to do maybe it's signing up for an improv class maybe it is ordering the podcast equipment maybe it's signing up for genius like even thinking about even thinking about it you're thinking about it if you want to scale you're on this teeter-totter if you tip more toward I'd really like to so about 60 right weight versus 40 I'm kind of nervous freaking do it that's how you build confidence because back to the original thing that we're talking about self-doubt grows when you engage in negative talk to talk yourself out of the things you want to be trying there is so much pain Jay in talking yourself out of trying things and it just makes me so sad and frustrated to see so many of you that are listening wasting years of your life really feeling this desire to try something and putting all your energy all your energy into talking yourself out of it here's something that I just recorded an episode about this and it's the fall so I'm thinking a lot about the fact that you know in the fall season at least in New England and I realize in other areas of the world it's not the fall right now the leaves fall off the tree right here's an interesting fact this is not a beautiful graceful thing that happens the tree pushes those frickers off its branches as an act of survival because leaves have a huge surface area and they require a lot of water to be able to capture the Sun and convert it into energy for the tree and over winter there ain't no water and if those trees are there that the leaves are there the tree's gonna die and it's an energy conserver it is an energy issue you are putting so much negative energy into things that you won't let go of into complaining into relationships that don't work into your excuses do you know how much energy it takes to walk into a job you can't stand and yet you do it every day imagine if instead of sitting at your desk resisting complaining gossiping and coming up with excuses imagine if you just redirected some of that energy toward looking for something else that like the leaves get pushed off a tree you make a decision that today I am actually going to let go of the gossiping and complaining about this because that is zapping my energy and I'm going to direct my energy at something positive because once I get rid of that I got room for something positive to grow and complaining to yourself and robbing yourself of just trying something yeah and we don't think about it that way it takes the same amount of energy I think more yeah more potentially it definitely yeah it's more draining but it is if anyone wants to think about it yeah it's it's that same energy just put in a different direction could could change the course it does change the course yeah and it just needs to try I love that willingness to try so the 60 rule there's one takeaway in confidence okay the second thing that you can do with confidence because it's action based this is where the five second rule is a game changer just use my five second rule literally in those moments where you feel self-doubt kick in you gotta be careful because you have a habit of hesitating you have a habit of doing what psychologists say you have a bias towards thinking and so a second takeaway is use my five second rule and when you catch yourself hesitating when you catch the self-doubt coming in when you catch the feelings and the excuses rise up count backwards five four three two one and by the time you get to one the prefrontal cortex will have focused on the counting and you've got literally a split second to move and the trick about this is when you start counting you've made a decision to try and the counting itself is like a trojan horse because it's the first action yeah I love that rule and the book's there too in case anyone needs all the added information I think our last interview is all about that so I want to ask you about one final area of thought because we were talking about it before and I think a lot of our community does I have to ask you because I just wrote a book called Eight rules of love which is out next year and I I talk about this in one of the chapters so I'd love to hear your perspective on it but the idea where you've been married for 26 years right congratulations that's incredible and that's beautiful in that time you and your partner are going to go through different stages of personal growth personal Evolution collect collective growth Collective Evolution sometimes you're going to feel ahead they're going to feel behind sometimes they're going to feel ahead you're going to feel behind sometimes it's not even about ahead of behind the question I have is if someone's listening and their partner or even if they're not in a relationship their friend I was just mean to someone the other day and they were saying yeah my friend is a bit envious that I just landed my dream job where I'm just meeting the guy that I you know we always feel ahead of behind of the people that were closest to even if we loved them and we want them to win there's that feeling if someone's in a relationship someone's got a friend that's feeling behind or maybe they're the person who's feeling behind someone else what do we do in that scenario how do we support ourselves support others how can we think through that because I think feeling ahead or behind is never fun even feeling ahead is not fun yeah um when you feel behind that's your insecurity putting a lid on what you believe is possible for you so that's number one recognize that it is that's in security blocking you and you can use that as a sign that oh I all I have to do is start walking toward things the second thing I want to share with everybody is that it is normal to feel envious or even be somewhat of a jerk when somebody that you care about changes and I want to tell a story to explain why and the story I'm the villain okay well I've played in my marriage poor Chris is wonderful yes Chris is amazing so Chris uh a couple years ago decided he was going to completely stop drinking and he went on this deep spiritual journey and he was going to stop drinking for a couple years and he became a Buddhist Meditation instructor and a yoga instructor and started his men's Retreat business and I'll never forget the first night that he was not drinking I open up a bottle of Rose I'm pouring a glass of rose everything's great because I'm cooking great the second night as I'm opening up a bottle of Rose and Chris is like cracking open like I don't know like a Saint Croix I'm starting to feel agitation I'm starting to feel the campaign the complaining the this and the that and I notice it and I'm like don't say anything the third day is when Mel the villain showed up and I'm not proud to admit this but I want everybody to hear this so you understand what's actually happening inside of your relationship I crack open the rose I'm pouring my glass of wine and I turned to Chris and I'm like come on you want to have glass rose with me and he says no I'm good and I said it's like juice smell I do not want a glass of wine stop asking me and I said okay I'm sorry it's just that it makes me feel bad and this is when he said something that just he said nobody cares what's in your glass but you and if what I'm putting in my glass makes you question what you're putting in yours then maybe you have some work to do and it is easier everybody to question somebody else's change and even sabotage it because their change in growth creates a change in energy and ripples and changes in patterns that make you wake up and start realizing that maybe some of the things you do don't work for you so when that friend of yours stays in to write a business plan how many of us on a Saturday night we're like oh come on you work on it tomorrow do you have to go to the gym today stay in bed with me that's that same behavior of dragging somebody to join in with you and pour what's in your cup and so I want you to understand this is normal and it's a really good sign because it means that your behavior is not only changing you but is sending waves at somebody else that has just given them a wake-up call and most of us push against those wake-up calls and that's what they're doing because you're very safe to do it with and so that's something that's really important to understand and I find that the best way to support somebody because we all know we can't change somebody else is you keep a laser focus on what you're doing because the bigger the change becomes and the happier you become the more difficult it's going to be for your friend or your family to ignore it and the more it's going to stir up more things and eventually inspiration and the best thing that you can do is ask leading questions do not tell somebody what to do that is the worst thing you can do in a relationship or friendship or as a parent instead like literally hey you don't seem happy is there anything that I can do to help you don't seem like yourself is something going on do you need support in something and you know my my favorite sentence on the planet as a parent and as a wife is do you need me to listen or would you like to know what I'm thinking um and nine times out of ten my kids my husband the folks that work for me they just want me to listen and so I think when you create an opening for somebody to stop engaging in their own self-doubt and their own very active and painful kind of reasons why they can't join you at the gym or reasons why they're not going to meditate or reasons why they're not going to join you in dry January or whatever it may be or the reasons why they can't can't we all have a friend can't look for a job never gonna find anybody that's not true and you know it so create the space you be the light on the path ahead and when you hold your light higher eventually that jealousy and those excuses it actually allows it to disappear and you part you become part of the force that pulls them forward and the other thing you have to understand is that there are going to be legs of your journey in life and this is one of the hardest things where people are going to pull off and take a different route that's okay they may come back at another time that's okay and you know the final thing that I wanted to say about this is it's a very simple exercise that you can do with somebody and this helps somebody who is either struggling with happiness and doesn't know how to get started or is struggling with confidence and is not able to take action or who is resisting the changes that you are doing and you would love to see them do we did this with our daughter who is now 23 and last summer when she graduated from college really unhappy I mean two years of college had been imploded and she was extremely depressed and basically just drank her way through it and graduated and was not happy big life change nothing was going according to plan she had planned this huge trip to go to Cambodia and do a big service trip for four months that wasn't going to happen just lost and so Chris and I sat with her for a couple hours and then I said and she's like I don't know what to do I'm 22. I'm stuck I'm miserable I don't even know how to start I said I actually think you do I think you're just scared take out a blank piece of paper draw a line down the center on the left hand side I want you to write happy me now close your eyes and think about a time that you remember being happy or more confident or Alive it could be any word you want right and you might have to go back to childhood our daughter closed her eyes and she said it was senior year in high school and I said okay so write down all of the things that you were doing in a week of your life senior year in high school just describe your life for me oh I got up and do it in detail everybody I got up at seven a.m or 6 30 I was leaving the house by seven I was with my friends all day I was looking forward to going to college I was playing varsity lacrosse I was exercising six days a week I was only partying with friends twice a week I you know was in a healthy dating relationship I ate four dinners a night at home like just great write down what your life looks like now I sleep till one I drink every day I feel like I don't see my friends because everybody's scattered now that we graduate I don't have anything to look forward to my my trip to Cambodia is canceled I'm not exercising okay compare the two your own life experience offers the map and we want to over complicate these big words like happiness I know I did for decades or confidence it's actually found in the little things if you do this simple exercise of drawing a line down a piece of paper and you write down what life looked like in great detail when did you wake up when did you go to bed how are from your friends family what were you doing for work exercise what were you eating if you then compare that to what life looks like now you now know what to do and the fact is your whole life is Little Things it's when you wake up it's the first thing you look at it's what you do with your body it's how you greet your spouse it's how you talk to yourself it's what you say to yourself when you look in the mirror it's the mood that you walk in to work with intentionally it's how you greet your animals or your roommate when you end the day it's the tone of voice that you use that's your whole life and if you were to just take the time and intentionally write down a few simple things that you do when you're happy in life and you were to focus for the next seven days on just adding one of those in a day you would be very surprised how getting some of the little things right actually starts to turn your life in a completely different direction so powerful no it's been an absolute pleasure having you back on the show The miles Robin's podcast is out right now you can go and listen subscribe share please please please go and do that Mel I love sitting down with you I love today was that perfect balance as I was talking about before of playing tennis going back and forth and at the same time just getting some really practical insightful advice from you on step-by-step strategic systematic breakdown of how to do things I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a dear friend to me and Robbie I hope me you Chris all of us get to spend lots more time together uh genuinely or even if it's Lots not lots more time but it's deep time together that would make me very happy and I wish you all the best on defeating the campaigns of misery for yourself and everyone else in the world through your show through your books on Audible through through your book in the five second rule and also for helping me start working on my campaigns of misery as well so thank you so much Malay deeply appreciate you very grateful to you I love you Jay and I can't wait to see you you acting yeah no no I have to now I have accountability so I want to offer another mistake I've made and I've made this with both Chris and with our daughter Kendall so Chris as he is running Seoul degree which is men's Retreat and our daughter Kendall as she's writing music one of the best things that you can do to help create momentum is to call out the Teeny steps are taking I made a mistake with our daughter for a long time where I kept talking about the big stuff or I kept saying but you're not writing songs or this would make a great song or you know play me something new and she would go stop talking about this stop telling me what to do because when somebody loves you they respect your opinion and trust me they know when they're not doing what they need to do every day so you will support somebody more when you say you know I'm really proud of you for the fact that you're very relaxed about this I'm really proud of you for the fact that you're not beating yourself up uh that it's not happen sooner I'm really proud of you for marching to your own drone I'm really proud of you for writing a song today and playing it that's freaking awesome acknowledging the little stuff is incredibly powerful yeah because the person has to push through so much of their own stuff that if you go oh and you should do it this way or oh have you tried that or oh it'd be great if you do this you're not actually building momentum you're pointing out what wasn't done and that was something I was guilty of for a long time catching myself and trying to look for oh what are they doing and giving them that pat on the back that hug that high five that verbal acknowledgment of the effort done or even the fact that the fact that they haven't done anything but they're thinking about it that is worth it too and the reason we do that you know this is because we don't give ourselves a pat on the back for doing something small so we don't even acknowledge when we do something small we're waiting and we're saying to ourselves over all you did today was go to the gym all you did this week was go to the gym twice that's not enough yep and because we talked to ourselves like that when someone in our life does it triggers us about going yeah they only went to the gym twice a week too like that's terrible yeah and so I I couldn't agree with you more and I've yeah I I think I've had to be my own cheerleader for so much of my life and notice the little things that I've done and the little progress that with radi I've definitely seen then she appreciates it where I'll just you know notice those smaller things but I realized that anytime I get triggered by someone's lack of growth it's because I'm triggered by my own lack of growth and I'm just reflecting that back onto them I'm upset with myself for not going to the gym more times this week and because they haven't I'm now releasing that on them and that's been such a great way of going okay well I need to be kinder to myself too for the little wins yes it took you two years to launch this podcast but there were things in those two years that you learned about getting to where you are now that you made so many steps of progress and that's why you know and also there are so many little steps about completing things so that you can create room yes and so one of the other things I want to offer too is yes that tendency for us to jump in and be like oh did you try this or do this or do oh and like kind of create the snowball it does come from the fact that a lot of us are not encouraging ourselves but it also comes from a really altruistic loving space yes because you love this person so much you want it so much for them that as soon as you see a tiny step forward you're like ah let's do this and you want to jump in with them and so it can come from both a place of your own lack of support for yourself as a default yes unintentionally but it also comes from a really good place because you're just so excited and you then amplify things and then they feel crushed yeah because what they did do doesn't now feel like enough absolutely I love that clarification I agree this both everyone who's been listening and watching today make sure you tag Melanie on Instagram on tick tock on Twitter whatever social media platform you use with all your greatest insights nuggets of wisdom from this episode there was so many scattered across the entire time we've been talking make sure you grab the screenshot of the episode share it with a friend maybe there's someone in your life that would benefit from listening to this with you and then having a conversation about it afterwards I think that's something I'm really encouraging I find that when we're collectively having an experience it's even better than saying Hey I just heard this amazing thing listen to it friends listen to it family and then discuss it amongst yourselves I hope we've given you enough tools and insight and thoughts to start a conversation to ask a powerful question and I hope that you're leaving here today feeling happier healthier and more healed thank you so much on purpose Community I love you deeply and thank you to Mel for joining us again today and I'll see you on the next one thanks everyone if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check Below in the description to make sure you order today