I'm so excited to learn from you today. And I wanted to start off by asking you if you could just speak directly to the person who's listening and tell them what they're about to learn and how their life could change if they really apply what you're going to teach them today.

Sure. So I think there are two things. The first thing is I think we sail through life, generally not really understanding what's shaping how we feel and behave and what's guiding us in the directions that we happen to be moving. So the first thing is I think you're going to understand a number of the things that are guiding you that you don't recognize are there. But the second thing is because you understand what those things are, you're able to act on them. You're able to use them to your benefit. Maybe the ones that are pushing in the wrong direction, you can stave them off. So I think it's a combination of both of those things.

What made you want to research things like colors and these environmental, I don't know, things outside of us and within us that shape our experience of life?

I think like a lot of people, I'm fascinated by this idea that so much of what goes on is hidden from us, that essentially life is like the iceberg where there's a little bit above the surface of the water, but a lot of really interesting stuff is unconscious, it's hidden from us. And so I wanted to try to understand as much of what's going on under the surface of the water. And a lot of it is these things that are shaping us in ways we don't recognize. So a lot of my research has been about trying to uncover those and then figure out what we can do about them.

I love this. All right, so let's dive in. There is so much to learn.

So much of your research also focuses on the environment around us and how that can influence all different outcomes.

Can you share some of that with us?

Yeah. So it's huge numbers of different factors, but around us all the time, there are colors. Sometimes we're in a built environment, like a room, and sometimes we're in a natural environment. And so a lot of my work focuses on how these different cues shape how we think, feel, and behave, and our welfare, our well-being. A lot of the focus for me recently, because I've been very interested in the effect of spending huge amounts of time in front of screens, is what happens when you go as far from screens as possible to natural environments, which we all have the, I think, general sense that that's good for us. It's good to be in a natural environment. But the effects there are among the most profound I've ever seen in any research, that just spending a bit of time near a body of running water or hearing wind rustle through trees or spending 12 hours driving to the eclipse, which is what I did. It's a huge amount of energy that you put in, perhaps, to get to those kinds of environments, but they have a It has a huge effect on your welfare, and it's worth doing.

What effect does it have on your welfare?

So one thing about the way we live our lives today in the modern era is that we are constantly sapped. Our attention is sapped. We're asked to pay huge amounts of very focused attention all the time, whether we're looking at screens, whether we're having extended work conversations, whether we're doing work. And so by the end of the day, you're depleted, depleted, depleted. If you wear one of those watches that tracks your body battery, you see it just goes down and down and down. And that's a good metaphor for the way we live our lives. It sums it up pretty well. The thing about nature is that apart from actually being asleep, being in a natural environment is replenishing. It basically turns that dial upside down, and so your energy starts to climb again. So it gives you back a lot of what is sapped by that very focused attention. Because when you're in a natural environment, your attention is still grabbed by things. You might hear a bird, you might hear the running water, you might look at trees, whatever it might be, looking at the ocean. But that less Less focused attention is really restorative.

And there's actually a whole body of research called attention restoration therapy that focuses on exactly this idea that being in natural environments is one of the best forms of medicine we have.

So let's unpack that because I could feel the person that is listening to us right now, literally stop on the treadmill, or hopefully you're outside walking, or you just stopped loading the dishwasher and you're knowing that what Adam is saying That is true.

But there were a bunch of things you talked about that I would love for you to dig in further.

The first one was this idea of the, I think you said something about attention therapy.

Attention restoration therapy.

What is that?

Yeah, it's basically this idea that your attention is constantly being sapped, it's being taken away. And the attention you have in a natural environment, which is not demanding, it's replenishing. It's true. It restores you. It brings you back. It gives you something that you don't have. I think the single most profound example of this for me There was a study that was done at a hospital on people who were recovering from surgery, and they were randomly assigned to different rooms. Some of the rooms looked out at a natural environment, a beautiful green lawn, some trees. Some of the rooms, just where they happened to be in the building, did not have that view. They were looking at another part of the building. They wanted to track how these people recovered from identical surgeries, depending on which room they happened to be assigned to. They found they needed half as much pain medication. They spent three days fewer in hospital recovering. Just looking out at that natural environment was the best form of medicine there was. So it's true. I run maybe four or five days a week, and I try to do it outside when I can.

And I know on some level it just feels good, but there's a huge amount of science behind that as well.

So what do you recommend for us to put into our lives? Because we've had neuroscientists, medical doctors, sleep experts come on the show and talk about the importance of getting natural light first thing in the morning. We've also had someone talk about if you're burnt out and you are having one of those moments where you just feel your energy draining, even looking off at the distance out the window can help you restore your energy.

What are some of the takeaways or the science fact things that people can implement in their lives to tap into this research?

Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is I ran yesterday in a forest and it was wonderful. And there was running There were all these ingredients and it was incredibly restorative. But as a runner, my instinct is to just keep going, which is how we live our lives, right? You're doing something and you want to keep going till it ends, till you finish doing it, till you can check it off. I had to push myself to stop for five minutes to sit on a rock and just let the water go by. And that was by far the most restorative, wonderful part of the day. I think there's something to that, this idea of purposely stopping yourself. I would say, whether you're in a big city or whether you're not in a big city, find a little patch of natural environment. And by the way, if you're in an apartment in a big urban environment, you don't have that option. Even little trees, little plants that you have in the apartment, the sound of a little fountain that you have with running water, that stands in for that experience, too. Is just spend, say, five minutes a day doing absolutely nothing but taking and drinking in that natural environment, even if it's a tiny one in your apartment.

If you can get out, all the better. But it's very important to do that, I think, as a daily practice.

And also So as your research shows, a countermeasure to the fact that modern life is requiring this intense focus that is just sapping your energy. You mentioned colors, and there is so much that you have uncovered that is fascinating about how colors influence so much in terms of our mood, our behaviors, our physical strength. Let's unpack that. Yeah.

So some of this is my research, some of it's other people's research. And I got interested in color because I can't see color very well. I'm color blind. Oh, you are? I'm color blind. So I'm fascinated by color.

How did you figure out that you're color blind?

It took a while. When I was young, I would get colors right because all the colors in little picture books are so bright and obvious. So that was never a problem. But as I got older, it seemed like I lost the ability to distinguish colors. I think my parents were a bit concerned. They were like, What's going on? There's something going on in Adam's brain. We need to figure this out. So I did a series of tests and they identified that I had certain kinds of color blindness. And so it made total sense. But it It's subtle. So you can't pick it up when kids are very young. Sometimes it takes a little while to figure it out. But it made me really interested in color, and in particular in the question of the way I see the world is, whether it's different from how you do. Do we all see the world the same way? And And then, assuming that there is some uniformity to that, is that exposure to color influencing us in any way that's predictable? And the answer is yes. There are all sorts of interesting effects.

Let me ask a question.

So given that you're color blind and When you are researching the impact that color has on our mood, our emotions, even things like physical strength, it also can influence the actions that you take.

Is the color influencing all of us the same way, even if you're color blind and the color appears slightly duller or if you're colored.

You see what I'm saying? Yeah, 100 %. So there are two ways it could affect you. So one of them is just association. So maybe I see the color yellow It's yellow and it makes me think of the sun and fire, and I see green and I think of natural environment. So it's just the association. It reminds me of other things that are green or yellow or blue or whatever. The other one is, as you say, maybe it doesn't matter if you can actually see that it's green or yellow. Maybe it's something about the wavelength It hits your eye, it hits your retina, and your brain is doing something with that information that whether or not you can see that it's yellow or green or red or whatever, you're responding the same way. I think most of it is association for us, that there are certain things that have certain colors, and then that reminds us of those things. So a lot of us talk about blues and greens being more soothing, reds and yellows being more activating, which can be good or bad depending on what you're looking for. I think if I didn't know that a color was red and I couldn't see it and it looked washed out to me, it It will have less of an effect for me.

Got it. So what colors affect our moods?

Well, all colors have some effect. They have some effect not just on mood, but on all sorts of different outcomes for us. There's a really interesting research looking at how the The colors that competitors wear in sports affect how they play. So there's some work looking at Olympic athletes in combat sports like judo and wrestling and taekwondo. And in the Olympics, what they did a while ago is they decided that they were going to randomly assign each competitor to either wear blue or red before each bout as a way to just be fair. We're going to randomly pick red and blue, and you're going to get your color, and then you're going to go into the bout. But one of the things that research has discovered was when we wear red, we feel stronger, we feel more dominant. And when you see someone else wearing red, you perceive them as more dominant. And there are very lower order reasons for this. If you look at animals, the animals with more red are more dominant in general. So if you look at 100 birds from the same species, the ones with more red feathers or a redder face will be the alpha birds.

And that's going to be true for apes and other animals as well. So the color red has a really big effect, and it's associated with how well your blood flows through your body and things like that. And it's a signal that someone is strong and dominant. And what you actually find is in these Olympic bouts, when the competitors are evenly matched, if you are assigned to wear red, you win about two-thirds of the time despite being evenly matched. Really? It has a huge effect on these outcomes. Yeah. Wow.

So, Dr. Halter, does that mean if I'm going in for a negotiation for a job, I should be wearing red or an interview or a date?

Yes, with a caveat. So the yes is, yes, it will do that. It'll make you seem more dominant. It also turns out to make people more attractive to others. Really? Which is interesting, too. So there's research looking at dating profiles where you have the same picture. You just change every two months the color of the shirt you're wearing. People get much more attention online when they're wearing... It's the same picture, but when they're wearing red rather than any other color. So there's all sorts of good reason to surround yourself with red. It's true, even if you have a border around your picture and it happens to be a red border rather than blue or green or another color. But red also has other meaning, too. It's not a color that we don't notice. So you're signaling something beyond just I'm dominant and making yourself look more attractive. It's a conscious choice. And so if people are seeing that and making other drawing, other inferences from the fact that you've chosen red, then maybe it's something you don't want to do. If it's very unusual in that context, for example. But beyond that, as long as that's not an issue, there is very good reason to wear it.

Wow.

And what colors calm us down?

The most calming colors are generally blues and greens. And I think a lot of that is the association we have with nature, which we discussed. So natural environments are very calming. Water, the sky, trees, leaves, things like that. And so I think a lot of it comes from just the calmness you get with the association with those colors.

So one of your international best sellers, Drunk Tank Pink. Very interesting name. And there's very Really interesting research about that bubble gum Pepto-Bismo pink color. Can you explain that?

Yeah. So the name is Drunk Tank Pink is a name that was given to this very bright bubble gummy pink color. It was used for a while inside They were called drunk tanks, where you put people who are aggressive, often drunk. You're trying to calm them down. And researchers found that if these drunk tanks were painted pink, in their words, you could calm these people down much more quickly. Within 15 minutes, they'd be calm.

And did it work?

There's some evidence that it worked. I think the research is a little bit shaky, but there was some evidence that this pink color did calm people down. It got a huge amount of attention in the '80s. There was a 60 Minutes episode about it. It really got a lot of attention. And so I thought it was just a fascinating emblem of the kinds of effects you might see from cues that you might think would have a smaller effect on us. But by being surrounded by those colors, there are huge effects. In fact, the visiting locker room at the University of Iowa has painted Drunk Tank Pink in an attempt to calm down the opposition when they spend time in that locker room. So it's been used in a lot of different contexts more recently.

Yeah.

Well, and I think where my mind goes is both to the Miami soccer team, but they're a little bit more bright and also to the beautiful trend of athletes wearing pink for breast cancer awareness, which obviously is signaling something else. But I think that's fascinating. If you're put in a bubble gum pink room, that it just dulls your mood a little bit if you're a bit aggressive.

Yeah. Regarding Inter Miami, there are people who when they box, they only wear pink boxing trunks because they think it'll make their opposition a little bit less strong. I don't think that's why Inter Miami is pink, and they have that pink uniform, but that's one of the theories. Wow.

So can you talk about mirrors and how you can use them to change your behavior?

Yeah. There's a lot of research looking at what happens when we see a human face. So one of the things that happens when you see a face, particularly eyes, is you feel that you're being And when you're being watched, it changes your behavior in certain predictable ways. So if you think about a store that has a lot of shoplifting, one of the things these stores do, if they can't afford constant surveillance, is they put up more mirrors because we are less likely to behave badly when we have to look at ourselves doing it.

Really? Yeah. Why?

Because it basically forces you not just metaphorically, but to look into your own eyes, literally. And you have to decide, is this the right way to behave? It makes us much more introspective and thoughtful about what we're doing. So there are these really interesting experiments where you say to people, privately, you can toss a coin, and if you get heads, you get a delicious jellybean, and if you get tails, you have to eat something that's not very nice. And if you let people do that without a mirror, they all report, oh, yeah, I got heads. There are a lot of people who report getting heads More than 50%, which you would expect. People are fudging the numbers a little bit. When you get them to do that same task in front of a mirror where they're looking at themselves, 50/50, so they become honest again. Really? Yeah. There are some, I think, interesting implications. And one of them that I've always found quite useful is a lot of people might have a cupboard in their home somewhere, maybe in the pantry where they keep their chocolates and things that they want to eat only occasionally.

Mine's in a drawer.

Right. Or a drawer. And when you open When you're in the cupboard or when you go into the pantry, one thing a lot of people do now is they'll put up a little mirror. What? So what happens is you're like, I'm reaching for the chocolate. I have to look at myself in my eyes. I have to scrutinize this decision. And sometimes it's fine, but other times maybe I look at myself and I'm like, okay, fine, I'll leave that chocolate sitting there for a little bit longer. So it basically forces you to be a little bit more thoughtful about your decision.

Well, I could see how that would happen because if you think about opening up a fridge, if there was a giant mirror in there, I'd be like, Oh, you again? Okay, shut the thing. So I might actually have to try this, putting a mirror in the bottom of the drawer. Yeah, there you go. Where I have all of our snacks. We call it the snack drawer. So could you use a mirror to cue yourself when it comes to bad habits? Is that an environmental trigger that can be effective in making you stop and think?

Yeah, I think so. I think what the mirror does is it makes you think more deeply, and it especially makes you think more deeply about doing the wrong thing, where it's something that's contrary to what you think you should be doing. Because you have to do it in your own presence. It's like you're watching yourself. And so it's a very powerful cue in all those cases.

I love that.

I can think of a lot of implications for that.

If you're somebody who's trying to cut down on drinking, having a mirror sitting there when you open up the cabinet where the... Okay, I see you.

Not so fast today.

I understand there's some interesting research about how simply looking at money can change you.

Yeah. There's interesting evidence that it can do lots of different things. So one thing it seems to do is it makes you a little bit more independent, makes you feel a little bit stronger, and reminds you of resources and having more of things. The other thing it can do is, though, it makes you a little bit less less helpful towards other people. How so? It makes you a little bit less generous. Really? It makes you a little bit more independent. Yeah. So there's some research where if you show people money or you show them dollar bills or things like that, and then you have a task where they have to be helpful, they're going to be a little bit less helpful if they've just seen money than if they haven't. I think that's because one thing you get from money is you can stand alone a little bit more. You don't need other people quite as much. That's at least the theory. And so it makes you more independent and less communal-minded, and it might make you a little bit less generous.

Well, Dr. Alter, maybe that's why I'm such a generous person because I never have cash in my wallet. There you go.

It's all about the credit cards.

Do you have favorite tweaks based on the research that you either recommend or use in your own life that help cue you to be your best or to make behavior change stick?

Yeah, I've talked about the one, the biggest one. Six years ago, I I lived New York City with my wife and two kids, and we moved to a town where it was natural and beautiful, and we could go less than a mile in any direction, and we would have either a beach or we would have a forest or we'd have something.

Where is the Shangri-La?

You still work in New York?

The Shangri-La is in Connecticut, just outside New York. Wow. Okay. It's beautiful, and it means that on any day I can drive for 10 minutes or even walk for 10 minutes and be somewhere that does all of this restoring. So I think being around nature for me is a huge one. Different people have different things that mattered to them. That was very important to me. It also it drew me back to my childhood because growing up in first South Africa and then Australia, natural environments, and especially the beach in Australia, was a big part of what I was used to, and I missed that. And so being near it near a beach, the sand and the water was really important to me. I think picking the location that does the best for you most of the time is really important. It's worth sometimes sacrificing other things for. And that's something that I've always followed.

That makes a lot of sense. I remember this was decades ago, but when I had just graduated from law school and I moved to New York City, I basically spent all of my puny income so I could live walking distance to Central Park. And so that I could also get to the West Side Highway because just being able in the big city to get to some green space was critical. And you said that thing about it also has this nostalgia thing of being able to be outside. Anything about your inside environment, like the way that you think about your workspace, or you might think about the kitchen or places where people want to be primed or prompted to be their best?

Yeah. So we mentioned earlier, especially if you're in a big city, it's useful to have something natural inside that environment. It can be hopefully a real plant, but if it's not real, a fake plant, anything that gives you the sense of that greenery and that nature, maybe even a little fountain feature, just a little thing that you plug in and maybe has a light and a little bit of running water. Even the sound of running water reminds you of all these things. I had the same experience in New York. I was always in Central Park or running on the West side. And so to the extent I think you can bring these features into your home. There's a huge amount of benefit to that. I think for me personally, and this varies, but I think the lack of clutter that you create in a place is really an important source of well-being. For me, trying Trying my best, and this doesn't always happen, but trying to remove clutter from an environment, especially where I'm trying to think, is really important. I think that's a really good way to think about doing your best work in general, that having blankness in front of you and just moving forward and pouring out your ideas is the best way to go without being infringed upon by other things that are in the environment around you.

Why does lots of stuff around the environment where you're trying to work or focus impact your ability to do your best thinking?

Where every Every single thing, even if it's in a small way, is distracting. Everything draws you out of the here and now. Some things more than others. A smartphone, massively distracting for all sorts of reasons that are obvious. Even other objects, if you have a memento that's in view, that's really nice. A picture of a loved one, that's really nice. But of course, if you stare at it, it's going to take you out of the here and now. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have photos of loved ones on your desk, but you should at least recognize that if there are a thousand different nice mementos around you, the clutter of that while lovely and it brings back good memories, that's probably not the time and place to do it. So having clarity in front of you as you work, I think, is a really important driver of good ideas and creativity in general.

I'm sitting here thinking about my workspace, my at my home, and it is knickknack attack everywhere. Like little stuff that I really love and means a lot to me. And I can tell you this is probably an indication of just how distracted I am because I could look I look at my computer and I've got four little Mason jars with all the pens in one and Sharpies in another and pencils. And then I got a photo of my mom and my grandmother. And then I've got a little compass my parents sent me. And then I've got a mug that Chris gave me. And then it just It's like a little zoo of objects.

If it makes you feel great, though.

I don't know that it does. I just feel like, holy cow, even though I'm not staring at all this stuff, you're saying that subconsciously your mind is still pulling it in to some extent.

To some extent, it's processing things around you constantly. To the extent there are things around you all the time, you might ignore them consciously, but they're always there. The clutter is always there, and On some level, even if it's on a small level, each little thing is pulling you away in some small sense. And that's the opposite of what you need, especially in the world that we live in now where everything is so distracting. We're actually getting 10 minutes of good hard quality work is It's vanishingly impossible.

That's it? Ten minutes?

I mean, it's very hard for a lot of people to work. If you track them across the day to get 10, 15, 20 minutes bursts of good hard work, it's tough for a lot of us, especially if your phone is nearby, if your computer is dinging you with emails and things like that. It's really hard to do the same task for 20 minutes in a row.

Let's jump in. I want to start by talking about how you can use music as a hack to put you in a better mood almost instantaneously. It turns out, according to research, that when you listen to songs that you liked when you were growing up or songs that were like the anthem during certain periods of your life, research shows that simply listening Because a lot of these old songs puts you in a better mood. And I think you know this. You know this, right? Because you've experienced this before. But when I share the research with you and we really unpack this and what's happening in your body and your brain, I really want you to lean into this because it's a powerful tool that you can use in your day-to-day life. Okay? So just picture this. You're driving in your car, you're just cruising down the highway, you're thinking about work, or you're thinking about your grocery list, or you're wondering, Oh, my God, did anyone need to feed the dog? Your mind is just busy turning over these thoughts. And all of a sudden, one of your favorite songs from high school comes on the radio.

For me, oh, boy, there There was a phase early in high school, I was so into The Cure and the specials. Friday, I'm in love. I don't even want to say I'm a terrible singer. You guys know my daughter's a singer. You'll turn this off if I sing, so I'm not going to be singing. But then there was a phase where everybody in my high school in Western Michigan was way into Bruce Springsteen, born in the USA, came out, I believe, when I was in high school. And there was also this whole body of music that's now called Yacht Rock. That's that easy soft rock stuff that my parents were constantly playing. It was always in the house or in the car or in the boat. You know that song, If you like piña coladas? I'm so embarrassed. I am so embarrassed when I sing because I think I have a terrible voice. But when you even think about those lyrics, if you like piña coladas, aren't you immediately transported back in time? I mean, first, if you think about your favorite song, stop and think right now, what was one of your favorite songs when you were in high school?

Maybe even had a poster hanging in your room. You played it over and over and over again. If you had siblings, they were like, Turn it off. Oh, my gosh, you knew all the words. If you think of that song, you immediately start thinking about all all the memories that you have from that period of your life. And what's so interesting about this to me is you don't have to think to yourself, Oh, I'm going to think about that time I took a road trip with friends, and now that the song is on. No, no, no, no. Your mind, naturally, just hearing the song goes there. I cannot hear that song, rather. If you like Pina Coladas, I don't even know what the heck the name of the song is. You know that song, right? And not immediately just go back to being in middle school, and Nights in Michigan, where I grew up. It just naturally goes there. You think of your song, maybe you're thinking about a road trip with friends, or the day you went to see that band in concert, or a school dance where you were just so excited because you had a huge crush on that person and that song was playing in the sweaty gymnasium in middle school, or I don't remember what song it is.

Maybe you guys can remember this, but there was a song when I was in middle school. Gosh, I was racking my brain trying to figure this out. I'm hoping you will write in and tell me what this was. It was a song that would play near the end of every middle school dance. I'm talking early '80s, everybody. It is a song that is probably eight minutes long. And this song would come on, and so help me God, I cannot remember what it is. But if you were dancing with somebody that you really liked, you were so excited. I mean, because you were going to hold them close. This was going to be like that hip-rocking circle for eight minutes long. Oh, yeah, you won the lottery because you get to be with this. But if you were with the wrong person, this is like a slow death march in a circle with the wrong person. God, I wish I could wear that. You know what it is? It starts out slow, and then it builds, and it's so It was too long, and it was at the end of... Anyway, I'll give you another example.

When I was in eighth grade, my dad fulfilled his lifelong dream of renting a motorhome and taking his family on a cross country road trip where we visited all of these national parks. We had three eight track cassette tapes in that motorhome. We had Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits, we had the band America and Their Greatest Hits, and we had Hooked on Classic. And I'm going to tell you something, if Hooked on Classics comes on, I can feel myself just hearing that music. Like just the ba, da, da, da, da, Cruising down I-90 toward the Corn Palace in Iowa, playing Jim Rummy with my mom and my brother in the back while my dad drove. I mean, it's immediate. You know what I'm saying? You've got these songs, right? There's research around what's happening, because you don't have to think your body and your brain remembers. And here's another one. So I haven't talked to you guys about this, but I am all fired up because my daughters and I just went to see Taylor Swift in concert. Holy cow. I got to do a whole episode about everything that I learned from Taylor Swift, but that's a whole 'nother' thing.

It was insane what a sensory experience that concert was, because her first album debut came out when Kendall was, I think, seven years old. Kendall picked up a guitar in order to learn how to play Taylor's music. Her music was the soundtrack of my life as a young mom and of their life growing up. When you got two girls, that's what was playing. And so fast forward almost two decades later, here we are in concert, screaming our brains out. And it's almost like as all the music was playing, I was both in the concert with my adult daughters, but I could also feel in my body like I was in a car, like in 2010, driving carpool to a lacrosse tournament and Cruel Summer's You know what I mean? I'm drunk in the back of the car. Holy cow. What about you? What was some of the favorite music from your past? Is there a particular song that brings up fun memories for you? Maybe it was the song that played the summer you graduated from high school, or the song that your dad always played, and every time you hear the song, immediately think of him.

Or maybe it was your first dance song, right? Every time our first dance song comes on the radio, Barry White, Can't Get Enough of your Love, That's What Chris and I, First Dance, I'm like, Wedding Song. Like, and I'm right there. Well, I want to explain the research to you. Because according to researchers, you and I can use the happy associations from these songs of our past to lift our mood in the present. How cool is that? And you've experienced it just by accident. But I want you to get intentional about this, because check this out. The researchers dove deep into understanding why memories associated with songs like Immediately change your mood. And they say that you and I tend to have more memories associated with older songs than newer ones. And there's a term for this. It is called neural nostalgia. In other words, these songs from our past where we have really positive memories and positive emotional associations with them. I'll give you another one, the Steve Miller Band, that album with the horse head on the cover. I played that, oh my Gosh, sophomore summer in college. And these songs from your past that you and I have positive associations with, it's like reminding you of a time in life when you had less stress, when maybe you had You felt a little less on your plate, you were a little more innocent, you felt a little more hopeful.

You have happy memories that are intrinsically linked with music from your past. So the fancy way that scientists talk about this is they call this music of invoked autobiographical memory, which means you have emotions that are like crazy strong driving to the grocery store simply because you hear a song from the past. And what's also cool is, let's just say you're driving to the grocery store, right? And all of a sudden, the song that was the defining song of your high school summer, or your college years, or being a young parent, or being in your 20s in the city, all of a sudden hits the car. Your body changes immediately. And you know what else happens? Vivid memories. You immediately remember living in the city post-college with your friends. You immediately Immediately remember that summer that you took that road trip. You immediately remember your childhood and something you were doing. And we're going to get into the science of why this is the case. And I am so fired up about this topic because I just experienced this with the Taylor Swift concert. Not only at the concert, by the way, but a week before our daughter Kendall found a playlist of the set that Taylor was going to play.

And again, Kendall is the super fan. And so she was like, You got to listen to the playlist. And I'm like, I know all these songs. She's like, I know, but she got to listen to the playlist. I'll tell you what, even listening to the setlist before the concert, as I'm driving my errands and I'm going here and there, It flooded me with a decade and a half of memories raising my girls. And the same thing is going to happen to you. I mean, you've experienced this. There's nothing cooler than it being a beautiful day. And the windows are down in the car, and the song is coming on the speakers, and the wind is blowing, and you feel this feeling of freedom and joy. So let me explain what's going on inside your brain when you hear music that you associate with great memories. It's so cool because what's happening is biological. See, the music is activating a part of your brain called the limbic system. And the limbic system is located beneath the brain surface, and it's involved in learning, but it also is in charge of memory and emotional responses. I find it personally fascinating that the research shows that the limbic system is involved and activated when you are listening to music from your past, and all of a sudden, all these memories are triggered.

And it made me think about something. So in the world today, we talk a lot about trauma, right? And when you hear the word trauma, you immediately think negative past experience, right? And if you've ever had a traumatic experience, one of the things that happens is all of a sudden, you'll be living your day-to-day life, and boom, some negative memory pops into your mind from the past. And I can give you a quick example. So one traumatic experience for me is that I was in a car crash where the car rolled. And I can remember being in that car like it was yesterday. I can literally close my eyes. The memory is so seared into my mind and into my body that I know exactly what it felt like to be in that car as it rolled. Now, here's an interesting thing. That accident happened when it was snowing, and there was a particular sound that I heard as the car was rolling, and it's the sound of snow crunching. You know how snow's like... And to this day, I'm talking decades later, if I walk down a sidewalk and the snow crunches under my my feet, I have the sensation of immediately being back in a car that's rolling.

It's a form of negative neural nostalgia, right? We've just been learning about how songs can take you back to the positive. So here's what I want you to understand that I think is super cool. The same mechanism in your body that records negative traumatic experiences, right? And you then get triggered, and you remember them, or you feel things from your past. It's the exact same recording system that records the positive ones. And it explains why you remember positive memories when it was like something super emotional. It's because the high state of emotion, being in a car crash, high state of emotion, right? And when you're in a high state of emotion, the limbic system is activated and it's trying to remember everything. The emotions are on fire and it's trying to protect you. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, which is why it records it. It's why I remember the Come on. Same thing with positive. Same thing with positive. You're in a high, positive emotional state. Think about graduation from high school. Think about graduation from college. Think about your wedding day. Think about when your first child was born. Think about some of the most positive experiences.

Even positive experiences like, you are seeing your favorite band play. I will never forget what it was like to be in that stadium with my daughter screaming every single word of those Taylor Swift songs. I was in such an activated, excited, positive state that my limbic system was on fire recording the memory. And it's the reason why For example, you can remember things like... I bet you can remember what day it was and details about your high school graduation years later, right? You could almost put yourself back there. Highly in a positive state. But I bet you cannot remember what you did the Thursday before graduation, can you? Of course not. If you've ever been in a car accident, you know exactly what you were doing right before the accident happened. But you don't know what you were doing two days before. And there's a reason why. The heightened emotional state that your body went into is what triggers the recording of the memory. That's why this works. I hate the fact that it It's good that we have a word for negative trauma, but I wish we had a really amazing pump-up word for the positive recording, because it's the exact same thing.

It's only with your best memories, not your worst. And what this research has What I'm telling you is that this neural nostalgia that gets created because of the heightened emotion and also repetition, that's also part of the research when it comes to the encoding of these memories. And you listen to the song over and over and over, and you're having these happy days, and it's the best summer of your life, and oh my God, that it's the heightened emotion that locks in the memory. That's why this works. Isn't the science so cool? And this explains why neural nostalgia is such a hugely cool thing and can be a remarkable tool for you to help you lift your mood or to help you change your mindset. Because you know that song that you heard at one of your favorite concerts? Boom, it can put you right there. For example, for me, one of the best concerts I have ever been to in my entire life, 2017 Gillette Stadium, You Too, Joshua Tree album tour. All I have to do is hear the opening rift of the first song on You Too's Joshua Tree album. What is it?

Streets Have No Name. I don't even know the name of the song, but I know they're. The guitar starts playing, and all of a sudden, it accelerates. Incredible song. And I'm transported to Gillette Stadium, July 2017. And you know a funny story about that tour. Right before the concert, I happened to be giving a speech in Vegas to 27,000 people, and I was standing backstage, one of the biggest events that I had ever spoken at, and the whole setup and the production for that event, 27,000 people, was unbelievable. And the guy who was working for the production company who did the event in Vegas that I was speaking at also happened to be the production company to me that was doing You Two's tour. He told me this story about the fact that it was the first time, if any of you ever saw that tour, it was incredible because You Two played in front of this massive, up like, IMAX-size screen. It was the first time That anyone had ever done a tour with a screen that size. It was 8K resolution. It was 200 feet by 40 feet tall, cinematic screen. It was the largest high-res screen at a touring show ever.

And he told me the funniest story. He said that a few years before the Joshua Tree tour, you two had signed a contract to do a stadium tour, but the album that they were planning to tour wasn't ready. So they had to scramble because they had booked all the stadiums. Albums, and they decided to just do their most popular album of all time, like front to back, cover to cover. I mean, absolutely incredible. And I don't know if it's a true story or not. It's just the one that he told me. And I got to tell you, it was one of the best nights of my entire life. And I'll tell you why. Joshua Tree, the album, was released March ninth, 1987, which was the spring of my freshman year of college. I played that album until the needle broke on my record player. I mean, it was the album of my college experience, and so many other people, too. In fact, at the concert in 2017, it It was like crazy. There was a huge thunderstorm, and right before you two came out, the sky broke open and the sun came down, and then all of a sudden that first song played, and the 200-foot cinematic screen started running the music videos that had played on MTV back in the day, and I looked around.

Everybody there was my age. It was like the world's biggest college reunion. All of us who had been freshmen in 1987, it was magical, it was iconic. But here's the part I want you to hone in Your favorite music from the past can help you hit the Reset button on your mood right now. Simply putting on one of your favorite songs from high school, from college, from your childhood, from another time in your life that reminds you of a really good memory. The second you hit play, your mind and your body does the work. It changes you. And as we go further and further into this topic of using music as a hack, you're going to learn the science. It's absolutely insane how this works. And I want you to understand this, because whenever you're stressed, or you're feeling really low, or you're having a bad day, or you're feeling isolated or alone, I want you to be able to use this tool. I I don't want you to just listen to me today as you're taking your walk, or you've invited me into your house, or your car, or you're watching me on the TV, if you're on YouTube.

I don't want you to just nod along and be like, Yeah, I've experienced this, Mel. I know exactly what you mean, and I know exactly what my song is. Because these songs that transport you are a hack and a tool to make your life better. I want you to make a playlist, because any time that you want to shift in your mood, you don't have to wait for lightning to strike. You can put a song on that you love, and you can let the song do the work. And it could be exactly what you need. And oftentimes, you don't need to want it to work. Seriously. Have you ever had somebody that's really sad? And you're like, Oh, come on, let me cheer you up. They're like, Oh, really? And then all you do is you put their favorite song on. They look at you and they're mad because they don't want to feel better. And the song turns on, and by the time the song's done, they're feeling better. That's why this is such a great hack, because you don't have to feel feel like it. You just have to put on the music that will lift your mood.

And this is for when you want an immediate shift. I want you to consider this research when you're feeling like, I don't know. Put the song on and let the research and your brain do the work for you. In fact, I've got a little hack for you. If you ever want people to help you do the dishes, all All you got to do is play music. My trick is I've got this disco playlist that I use to make people help me with the dishes. You have a big dinner party, you got your family around, you got a backyard barbecue. Boom. Hit the disco playlist. Mine begins with Y-M-C-A. And people like, Young men. When that starts playing, people cannot sit at the table while you're bussing. Everybody starts picking up their plates and wiggling toward in the kitchen, and you will all of a sudden have put on a playlist disco that activates brain waves inside of everybody. And now they're moving and they're grooving, and they're motivated, and they're helping you. And it becomes a dish party instead of a chore that you have to do. So I want you to use this to your advantage, and here's how.

Number one, make a playlist in advance. When you're done listening to this, please make a playlist. Remember back in the day, if you're in your 20s, you probably did not Although maybe you make playlists for people. You probably make playlists for people. Well, being 55 years old, I remember making mix tapes for other people that I loved. Remember doing that? Where you would have one of those fancy stereo's that had a double cassette player, so you could stop, play, record, stop, and you'd have to... Do you remember that? I remember being so psycho about it. I remember actually trimming and doing hand edits on this at time. And so when you When you make a playlist, what were you doing? You were trying to communicate emotion to somebody. This is how I feel about you. I made this gift for you. When you make a playlist for somebody today, you're doing the same thing. Make it for yourself. Make a playlist of your favorite old songs. And here's another hack. You can create the playlist and not fill it yet. So I've got all these playlists. I'll talk more about this. And if you're just randomly listening and a great song comes up, just add it to the existing playlist.

And you can label them based on your mood. My Hype playlist, my I'm Feeling Down, Pick Me Up playlist, my High School Favorite Songs playlist. And those tunes will get your mood up. And you want to know how you know that this research is true? Look at Spotify. They have playlists that are marketed to you based on mood. Confidence, Sunny Afternoon, Fun Barbecue. They know what they're doing. They know the science. So you use the science, too. Your playlist should be made to put yourself in an uplifted mood. You can shake off a bad day, and you can tap into, now you know the fancy word, neural nostalgia, but you always knew that this was there. Now, I just want you to use it. All right, that's hack number one. I want to talk to you about three simple steps that you can take to create powerful changes in your life. And I'm talking really big changes. Yes, the steps are simple, but simple over time creates amazing results. And simple is important because if it's simple, you can do it. As I already said, these are the three steps that led me to launching this podcast.

They're the three steps that I use to help me start working on my marriage and making my mental health stronger. They're also the three steps that helped me make the move from a very busy and stressful life outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where my husband Chris and I had raised our family for the last 20, in six years, and make a major move and a major change to a simpler lifestyle by moving to a tiny town in Southern Vermont. Now, using these three steps, I not only changed my life, I have reinvented every aspect I love my life over the past two years. And today, I'm going to share those steps with you. I'm going to tell you the whole story, and I want to help you. I want to inspire and empower you to make the changes that you have been thinking about as you go about your day-to-day life. Speaking of life, I think about life as one long road trip. Your past right now is behind you. It's in the rear view mirror. And the future, it's right out that windshield. That's why the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror, because we're not going backwards, people.

We're not doing that to ourselves. We are going ahead. And you know what's in front of you? An open road. Every single birthday, I believe, is a mile marker on this road trip called Life. It's a chance to pull over for a second and think about the open road ahead. Where do you want to go next? How fast you want to go? How slow? Who do you want to have in the car with you? There's endless metaphors around this, and it helps me think about this major topic of reinvention and change. Now, I love birthdays. I'm sure you do, too. I love them for so many reasons, because every time you're celebrating a birthday, I mean, think about what you're actually celebrating. We're celebrating the fact that you're still here. We're celebrating your existence that you're breathing, that you're alive. How cool is that? And you want to know what else we're celebrating when we celebrate your birthday? We're celebrating the possibility and magic that your life and the future and that next year holds for you. Now, there's one part of celebrating your birthday that I want you to really think about, okay? You know that moment when the cake comes out?

Your mom or your dad your spouse or your friends or the waiter, they bring out that cake and the candles are burning on top and everyone starts singing Happy birthday to you. And then they put the cake down, you look at the candles, you close your eyes and you make a wish. And for just a moment, time stops. Have you ever noticed that as that cake gets closer to you and you start going inside and thinking about the wish that you're going to make. You don't even hear anybody singing anymore. You hear something inside yourself. You hear something deep from within. You close your eyes, you grab that wish, and you blow out those candles as if it's going to magically make that wish come true. And when you open your eyes, you are present to the wish. You feel excited for the year, and you can almost see all the new possibility that you could tap into in the year ahead. Well, researchers have a name for this exact moment. It's called the Fresh Start Effect. When You make that birthday wish, you break from your past self, and this transformational window of time opens up.

You think bigger, you feel hopeful and inspired. There's some incredibly interesting research that explains why these moments are so powerful. I'm looking right now at a study from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where they've studied the intrinsic motivational power of this fresh start effect. Researchers studied moments in our life where we feel motivated to make big changes, and birthdays are an example of that. It's as if a birthday hands you a blank slate, a clean page, a fresh start at a whole new year, and this That feeling inside you ignites an intrinsic, motivational, aspirational force that's hardwired within you. It's this power to change. Now, you've experienced this fresh start effect at other times in your life, too. Just think about the new year? January first. Hello, fresh start effect. Now, January first is one of those moments where all of a sudden, last year ends. Boom, slam the door on that year, and something new opens up. A whole new you, a clean slate, an open road. This is why, by the way, so many people start a diet on January first. Hello, Mel Robbins. So many people go to the gym for the first time on January first.

It gives them a natural mental starting line to cross on a new leg of the journey called life. How cool is that? You also experience this fresh start motivation with every new semester in school, the start of a new sports season. You feel like this could be our year, right? That's the fresh start effect. The birth of a child, a breakup, a wedding, a death. These are all moments in time where something ends and something else begins. And it's not only happening in the physical space, it's happening in the psychological and spiritual space. That's why so much stirs inside you, according to the research. I just realized, you know this fresh start effect? This is probably why I am addicted to buying new journals. Every time I get a new journal, I crack it open and I literally feel like a new Mel is about to pour out on all those open empty pages. This phenomenon is so powerful that researchers have even created a label to describe anything that triggers that fresh start motivation that stirs inside you, like your birthday, January first, that new journal, a new semester at school. These things are called temporal landmarks.

Now, let me explain what a temporal landmark is. A temporal landmark a date or an experience, or a physical thing that marks the passing of time. January first, for example, is a date. It marks the end of one year and the beginning of a new year. And when the new year begins, you cross that starting line mentally to think about a whole new you. Your birthday is the exact same thing. It's another year, another mile on the road of your life. And this creates all kinds of new possibilities about the stretch of open road ahead. A new semester is an experience that's always brimming with excitement. New friends, new experiences, a chance to think differently about who you are and how you're going to show up and what you want. A breakup or a divorce. Now, that's a major temporal landmark because it not only marks time, it also impacts your identity, your life as a couple before, and now your life as you after the breakup. But here's what researchers have found that I think is fascinating about what happens to your psychology and motivation and thinking. Temporal landmarks not only mark the passing of time, they open up a whole new mental accounting period.

Just like an accountant closes the books at the end of a fiscal year and opens up a fresh page to begin a whole new fiscal year, the event, whether it's January 1, the first of the month, a Monday, the end of a fiscal year, or making a wish on your birthday. This landmark creates a break from the past you. It separates you from the things that you feel are imperfect, and it silences all that judgment that you have about yourself. Here's the cool thing. When you shut that judge inside you down, you open the door to a whole new vision for yourself. It creates a break from your past self, the things that you feel are imperfect about you or your life, and the things that you judge your sofa. Here's what's really amazing: when you stop judging yourself and you stop focusing on what you think is wrong with your life, you open up the floodgates to what might be. Let's go back to that moment when you make a wish on your birthday. As soon as you see that cake coming with those candles burning, you go in. You stop hearing everyone singing. You close your eyes.

Why? Because mentally, a new accounting period is opening up. You stop caring about the song and the people around you and what's happening outside of you. You tune into what you're feeling on the inside, in your heart, in your soul, what you dream about, that thing that's calling from you deep inside that normally you can't hear because you're so focused on all the stupid stuff that we all obsess about. No one even has to tell you to close your eyes. You see that cake coming. You know that you can make a wish. You just do it naturally. And when you go inward, you're disrupting the circuitry of your old thinking, your old judgments and your past habits. For just a moment, you're escaping the old you. And then, you make the wish. A wish for what could be. A wish for what will happen this year, in the next year of your life. And the same thing happens when you sit down at the end of the year and you create resolutions, not the one you share with people at a party. I'm talking about the real ones that you write down in your journal.

Here's another moment like that. You know that moment after a really painful breakup? This one takes a little bit of time because you basically need to cry and feel bad about your sofa about a month or two. And then one morning, you wake up and you realize, Oh my God, I'm happy that's over. I'm better off single. You let go of the relationship and the version of you who was holding onto it for so long. More importantly, in that moment of acceptance, you stop judging yourself and you realize you'll be okay. No, you'll be more than okay. You're going to be great because of this. And then you start to do the work to create a better life. These temporal landmarks are a big psychological deal because something really profound happens inside of you for a second. You snap out of all the stressful bullshit that's going on and the relentless self-criticism, and you have this mental freedom, this temporary break from your normal negative thinking, and you allow yourself to consider the bigger picture. You allow yourself to envision the future capture you. You tap into your deepest hopes, your wildest dreams, and your most exciting aspirations.

You see a vision for a better life. You see that, yes, you deserve to be happy. And that's exactly what I want you and I to experience today on episode one of the Mel Robbins podcast. Let's hold each other's hand and sit side by side and imagine what might be possible in the next year of our lives if we let go of the past and we hold on to our dreams. That's the invitation I'm giving to you. Allow yourself to have a fresh start. You don't have to wait for your birthday or January first to change your life. You can turn the page on the past and start writing that new chapter today. And in just a few minutes, I'm going to share the three simple steps that you can use to create that powerful change that you've been wishing, wanting, or dreaming about. The fact is, change is possible, and you can't convince me otherwise. I know you might try, but I know that it's a fact. Change is possible. It's possible for everyone, and it's possible for you. Now, we're going to talk about this in-depth, but the bottom line is, if you can imagine that new chapter, there is a way to make it happen.

I guarantee you, someone else on the planet has done it. I mean, there's about 8 billion people on this planet. Someone else has faced what you're going through right now. Someone else has built the company that you dream about building. Someone else has gone from where you are to where you envision yourself going. Someone else has improved their relationship, healed their mental illness. And if someone else has done it, you can do it, too. Start seeing people in the world around you as evidence of your own success being possible. I want you to start saying to yourself, If they can do it, then I can do Other people's success just proves that you're worthy of what you want, and more importantly, that you're capable of reverse engineering how they got there and doing the work to get it for yourself. Now, I get it. It might not happen the same way or look the same way. You might not be starting on the same starting line. It might not take the same amount of time. But if you keep telling yourself, if they can do it, I can do it. You're going to change your mindset, and you're going to see that, yes, it's true.

There is limitless success, love, money, and happiness. There's enough for everyone, and there's enough for you. I want you to use me as an example from time to time. If Mel Robbins can do it, then I can do it. Honestly, I'm going to be looking to you for the same encouragement from time to time, because I'm sure there are things you've accomplished or experienced that I haven't. So let's agree. We're going to encourage one another through this thing, okay? I know how to create massive change because I just did this in my own life. A For the past two years, I've completely reinvented myself and every aspect of my life. And look, I'm not being dramatic. It's a fact. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. The Mel Robbins that you're hearing right now is not the Mel Robbins that I was just two years ago. Two years ago to this exact birthday, on the day that I turned 52, I did not wake up and feel like a million bucks. I did not see an open road. I saw a dead end. I was not kicking ass and taking names. Two A few years ago, when I turned 52, I was sucking wind.

I woke up all alone. I felt lost and stuck and scared. Here's what was going on in my life. I had just been fired for my dream job. Look, I'd been fired from other jobs in the past when I was younger, but boy, at 52, that really stings. Then with COVID, the speaking and event business came to a halt. As a small business owner, I'm responsible for the livelihood and health care of 15 families, including my own. So I started to panic. As the income dried up, I had no idea how I was going to continue to make payroll. And to add to that, I had people in my inner circle that betrayed me. They lied to me. They stole from me. So I just felt rocked because people that I trusted, that I had counted on, had violated that trust. That's what made me feel so damn alone. Plus, then college was canceled. Remember that? So we were all under the same roof with our three kids, Two of whom were in college, and they were all anxious and angry, and sad, and grieving. I mean, it was like living with caged animals. I bet you felt a lot of these same things.

And finally, my husband Chris, he had just been diagnosed with long-term depression. I mean, talk about a shit storm. I felt like absolutely everything was spiraling out of control. So here I am on my 52nd birthday with all this going on, and I wake up in the bunker room at my mother-in-law's house where we're quarantining. And I just started crying. The sadness that I had been trying to push down, it just poured out of me. And I instinctually picked up my phone and I just started filming how I felt. I figured someone out there on the internet would relate. And maybe, just maybe, they might even be able to give me some encouragement back. Now, when we come back after a short word from our sponsors, I'm going to play that video that I made on my 52nd birthday, and you're going to hear that sad, lost Mel Robbins. I want you to hear it because I want you to know I've been there, and I've been there recently. And clearly, if I'm where I'm at now, kicking ass, taking names, going after my dreams, doing better than ever, I know how to bridge the gap from where you are to where you want to go.

And later in the episode, I'm going to share those three steps with you that I took to make powerful changes and reinvent my whole life so that you can use those same proven simple steps to make whatever changes you want in the next year of your life. Are there particular areas in your research that come up over and over in people's lives where they tend to get stuck?

A lot of it is creativity-based. So I think it's hard to be creative. You're asking a lot of a human being when you say, come up with something new or have a good idea. And we all assume that that's something we should be able to do. Our work often requires that of us. And so for a lot of people, it's in that domain. For a lot of other people, it's not work-based. It's about relationships. It's about being stuck in a situation where you have to deal with someone you don't want to deal with or you don't know how to extract yourself from a situation. And then for other people, it's the broadest kind, which is exactly as we've described this. I don't even know why I'm stuck. I just know that I feel like things aren't the way they should be.

Dr..

Alter, I take it that based on the research, this is something that you're going to experience over and over and over again during the course of being alive.

Yeah. A huge part of it is accepting the discomfort that comes from being stuck and recognizing that this is universal, that everyone is in this position at some point, often many points of their lives. There's this incredible research talking about how often these things come up for us, these major changes in our lives that make everyone feel stuck. Bruce Filer has done some research looking at what he calls lifequakes. Lifequakes are these huge major life events that affect all of us, and we're almost always blindsided by for them. And they're very often not things we want to happen in our lives.

What?

Like a change in a marital status, a divorce, the death of a loved one, illnesses, things like that. They come up. They happen to us. And they are universal. It's part of being a human being. Some of these are really good things by the way, but they still force you to change what you're doing. What's a good one? A good one might be a job promotion, or you move to a new town, or a new state, or a new country, and you're excited about it. Maybe a marriage is a good one. Having a child could be obviously a huge positive, but also it brings complications and change, and you've got to figure those out. So you can be stuck by a good change, too. So if your broad philosophy of life is there will be ups and downs, and there will be times that are tough, then when those times happen, you don't spend time saying, why me? I can't believe this is happening. There's a whole lot of rumination that goes on if you are surprised by the fact that you're in this position. But if, broadly speaking, you recognize that this is what it means to be human, you're just a couple of steps ahead.

So it liberates you to start acting and to start making the next steps you need to make to get through that part of life in that moment.

I found all kinds of amazing research on the impact that plants can have on your well-being and your mental health and your concentration, and also the impact of gardening itself. I cannot wait to tell you about this crazy study that was done with plants, because this study connects to something that Dr. Adam Alter, Professor from NYU, he was on the show recently, and we were talking all about the brain and happiness. And if you didn't hear that episode, no problem. Always linked in the show notes if you want to go deeper. But he did this bit about the research that's been done on the impact of getting out in nature and how it impacts your brain and can make you happier and help you lower your stress. And so I want you to listen to Professor Adam Alter on the Mel Robbins podcast, talking about the research and how being in nature improves happiness and lower stress.

The thing about nature is that apart from actually being asleep, being in a natural environment is replenishing. It basically turns that dial upside down, and so your energy starts to climb again. So it gives you back a lot of what is sapped by that very focused attention. Because when you're in a natural environment, your And attention is still grabbed by things. You might hear a bird, you might hear the running water, you might look at trees, whatever it might be, looking at the ocean. But that less focused attention is really restorative. And there's actually a whole body of research called attention restoration therapy. That focuses on exactly this idea that being in natural environments is one of the best forms of medicine we have. I think one really useful thing and why nature is so great is because it's timeless. That I think one way to measure how well you're living is, are you spending at least some of your day in an environment that is timeless, that is not attached and tethered to the here and now, that is not about the latest screen, the latest device, the latest tech, the latest gadget. So when you are sitting in a forest, you could have been doing that a thousand years ago and seeing exactly the same thing.

And I think there's some value to living at least part of our lives every day in an environment that is timeless. Don't you just love that?

Running water, nature. Holy cow. No wonder. I'm a happier person now that I live in Vermont, and I'm around nature all the time. But you may We do not be around nature all the time. So if you can't get outside, don't you worry. Dr. Alter has got you covered because in that episode, he also talked about how just having the presence of nature near you, like a plant in your apartment or being able to see a tree outside your window, how that alone can impact you. So just listen to what Dr. Alter said about that research.

If you're in an apartment in a big urban environment, you don't have that option. Even little The trees, little plants that you have in the apartment, the sound of a little fountain that you have with running water, that stands in for that experience, too. Is just spend, say, five minutes a day doing absolutely nothing but taking and drinking in that natural environment, even if it's a tiny one in your apartment. If you can get out, all the better. But it's very important to do that, I think, as a daily practice.

I think that's so cool that these simple things can become a daily practice. That's why I'm so excited about this, because it's so accessible. It's right in front of your face place. It's not just Dr. Alter who's doing this research. There's a study that I found from researchers in the UK where they looked at plants in your home, and simply having plants in your home or near you can increase your concentration by up to 20%. So what does that mean? It means this. If you work from home, let's say you have a little desk at home or a place where you're trying to get things done, researchers say, put a plant on the desk or on the counter nearby Why? They want it near you in a place where you're trying to focus. And the research shows that simply having that plant near you, on your desk, near you where you're working, can boost your concentration by 20%. Now, when I read this, I was like, Why? Why the hell would a plant boost my concentration? Well, the researchers dug into why, and they believe it's because of two reasons. Check this out. Number one, plants improve air quality because they reduce CO₂ levels.

I want to explain why this matters when it comes to concentration and focus. There is this really interesting study done at Harvard's TH Chan School of Public Health. Researchers did this massive study about productivity and focus at work. They had people in six different countries. This study included the UK, the US, China, India, Mexico, Thailand. They had people at work sit near air quality monitors, and the air quality monitors were detected expecting when the CO₂ levels went higher. When the CO₂ levels would shoot higher, the researchers would make the folks at work perform tests that measure things like memory, how fast your brain is working, how well you can do certain tasks. Now, check this out. This is where it gets really interesting. This global study found that higher CO₂ levels in an office has significant impact on an employee's cognitive functioning, including lowering your response time, interfering with your ability to focus, and it also affects your productivity. This is a very real thing. In fact, this is so real that when we first opened our studio in Boston, where we tape a lot of the expert interviews for this podcast, we started noticing that after we were in the studio and the experts and I were talking for 90 minutes, I could literally feel my energy leave my body.

My focus was starting to decline, the room was stuffy, and it wasn't the conversation. It was literally as if there was some gas being poured into the room. So we put in a CO₂ monitor. Holy cow. Simply by being in a room where we're doing a lot of talking because of the interviewing, the CO₂ levels were spiking, and that was impacting focus and brain processing. Isn't that crazy? So we had to take steps to improve the circulation in the room. We put in an air filter. We also started opening up windows in between interviews. Now that I've learned about this research, you better believe Mel Robbins is bringing in the plants, and we are putting it in the studio because we clearly need help with the CO₂, and so do you. This is legit a really cool thing you can do for yourself. Put a plant on your desk, help with the CO₂, and let's get that focus going. Let's talk about how you do that, because We already talked about the fact, you and I, we can't stop the melting, but you can make the most of it. And there are seven things that I have done this year that have really helped me prioritize the time that I have with Oakley.

I'm going I'm going to walk you through all of these, and I'm going to warn you, some of these sound obvious. If these seem obvious, good. It means you know what you need to do. I hope that my conversation and sense of urgency with you today makes you do it. The first The next thing that you need to do is you got to say it's a priority. And that's exactly what I did. I said last year, it is a priority in my life this year to spend as much time as I can with Oakley because I've already missed out on too much. I'm going to say that again. It is a priority for me to spend as much time as I can with our son, Oakley, before he leaves for college because I've I already missed out on too much. I know that that ice cube has melted, and I was not there for it, but I'm going to be there now. And I want to break down this statement because this is the first step. It's obvious, but there's two parts. You have to say this is a priority. You have to do that.

And I want you to stop and think right now as you're listening, who is it for you? I'm serious. Who is the priority for you right now? If you could pick one person that was your priority this year to make sure that you make the most of the time that you have with them this year. Who is it? Well, I've got two people. Obviously, Oakley. Oakley is graduating from high school, but there's another one. My dad is turning 80 in August. And when I think about my dad being 80 years old, both my grandfathers were dead by this time. Chris's dad died at the age of 69. So for me, this This is a real priority. I have this sense that the time is slipping through my hands, and we're not going to get it back. What about you? Who's the person that you want to make a priority this year? Maybe it's your best friend. You never see them. They moved on, they have a big job or whatever. And every time you pick up the phone and call them, you're like, We should get together. We should get together. But you never make plans.

Maybe it's grandparent. That time just keeps passing, and you realize, Oh my gosh, I haven't seen my grandmother in three years. I mean, she lives halfway across the country, and she's in a retirement home, or maybe it's your siblings. There's someone in your life that needs to become a priority. I want to talk about the second part of that sentence, because the second part of the sentence is just important as the first That's the part where you say, It is a priority for me to spend more time with this person. The second part of the sentence that I said is, Because I've already missed out on too much. This is the recognition of the water and the puddle that the melting ice cube is sitting in. This is the part of the relationship where you left the room while the ice cube was on the counter, and time passed, and you come back, and holy cow, you realize there's a lot that I missed out And it's so important for you to let yourself feel this second piece. What have I missed out on by allowing myself to be too busy? I really want you to drop in and feel this because it's important and it's uncomfortable.

And there's a reason why, and I want to unpack this a little bit. It's because when you think about all the things that you missed out on, you're, of course, going to feel bad. But I want to explain what that feeling is, that tension, that time that has passed, the things that you missed out on, like the things that I've missed out on with our son. You know what that is? That's grief that you're feeling. The thing that's beautiful about grief is that grief is just all the love that you have for a person that you haven't expressed or you didn't get a chance to express. And it's an expression of love. And I want you to sit with that for just a second And really think about, what have you missed out on? And it's a powerful motivational force. When you really tap into that, wow, I'm bummed that this happened because I really love this person. I feel that way about my parents all the time. They live a 16-hour drive from here. And I have a lot of grief about how much of my life has gone by without seeing them all the time.

And it's important for you to feel this, because it is a motivational force to get you to wake up and take this seriously. Because I think, Yeah, I know Mel, time's passing. Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I mean, boy, particularly with our daughters, because if I think back, I was the only breadwinner in our household when our daughters were in middle school and high school. I mean, I was responsible for earning money. And the thing is, it wasn't just to pay the bills. We were so in debt. I felt this extraordinary amount of pressure to keep working, not to slow down. I felt like I had zero freedom to say no to anything. To have any boundaries with work whatsoever. And so I not only left the room, I was gone while that ice cube was melting because somebody needed to pay the La Cros fee, somebody needed to pay the car payments, somebody needed to pay for the eighth grade Washington, DC, field trip that so many public high school students go on. I miss my daughter Sawyer's entire varsity lacrosse season. I miss the majority of our daughter Kendall's varsity field games. And there It was a time, even not so long ago, when I was living separately from Oakley and Chris because they had moved up to Southern Vermont, and it was in the middle of the pandemic, and I had to stay in Boston in order to keep the company afloat.

So I also missed out on two and a half years of living with Oakley and Chris and being part of his day-to-day high school, even though it was mostly remote. And I bet if you're a working parent or a working grandparent, or you're really busy in your job and you never see your parents, you're probably nodding along, right? If you're that grandparent who lives really far away from your kids and you don't get to just show up at the soccer games, you're like, Yeah, I feel this, Well, I feel this deep in my heart. If you're the parent that has been just slugging away, trying to pay the bills, my God, what are you going to do? I get it. And you're probably thinking about this, and you're also thinking about how it relates to your parents as they're getting older. And the reason why I want you to think about these things that you missed out on from a place of grief is so that you tap into the love that you have for people. I don't want you to feel guilty about what you needed to do, because it's not going to make you want to change if all you're doing is making yourself wrong.

And besides, if you're making yourself wrong about what you did in the past, is that going to change it? No. But when you rephrase shame, this feeling as grief, that it's just the love that you didn't get to express physically, it will fuel the motivation that you have to change and to wake up right now and to start to take this seriously. In fact, Research says that grief and regret can be really good when you use it to motivate yourself to change behavior in the future. So that's the first thing. I want you to say it out loud. I want you to have right now the person or the two people that you're really going to prioritize this year. And then I want you to just sit just for a minute with that grief. I want you to think about the things that you weren't there for, the things that maybe you missed out on because you got really busy or you had a ton of stuff that you needed to do or life just happened. It's okay. But now what are we going to do about it? Because here's the second tool. I'll tell you what you're going to do about it.

You're going to tell people, you cannot keep this a secret buried in your heart. And just for background, like a lot of you, I traveled for work. And when I wasn't on the road for work, I would be on Zoom calls after dinner or on phone calls on the side of the soccer matches. I've been the one that's been late to the parent-teacher conferences. If I made them at all, I had never been in a position to be the person that was the sports team parent. I'd never been the homeroom parent. I took 95 % of my energy in the past and just aimed it all at paying off our debt, paying our mortgage. And it was that way for a really long time. And I just felt like I didn't have the bandwidth or the flexibility to do the things that I really wish I would have been able to do, and maybe you don't either. Maybe you don't either. And I need you to hear that it doesn't make you a bad parent. The fact is, I didn't feel like a bad parent back then when I was constantly working, because I knew that what I was doing mattered, and I knew that it was a way that I could support my family.

I just tried hard to work on being there in other ways. But there was something inside of me. Just recently, when I saw this study, the American Times study, and I stopped, and I truly reflected on this statistic. Holy cow. This is it for me. This is it. This is my last kid in high school. This is the last year of high school. I'm not missing out on a chance to be a bigger part of his high school life. And that doesn't mean any drastic changes. And this is the good news. It's not like I quit my job. It doesn't mean I changed a thousand things. But I did do a few little things. And it started with first saying, This is a priority because I'm not going to miss out on anything more. And the second thing is, I got very vocal. And this is a big change for me. I had to tell Chris. I had to tell Oakley. I had to tell everybody that I work with that this is a priority not to miss out on all the things that I've been missing out on. This is a priority to not be working on the weekends.

This is a priority to stop working certain days at three o'clock to be sure that I can be there. I'm doing the same thing with my parents. I mentioned earlier that I don't want the time to slip through my hands with my dad. You know what's funny about my parents is, turns out my parents haven't been waiting for my call. Every time I call them, I'm like, I want to see you guys more. Let's make a plant. They're busy. They're getting their haircuts and doing Majan and playing golf. And I keep saying, We doing something for your 80th dad? My dad's like, I don't want to surprise. I don't know. I might do something with the golf guys. It's okay. I don't want to do this. I'm like, Okay, okay. You got to tell the people that are a priority to you that you're going to do something different this year, that you're going to take the lead. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming.

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