So let's talk about loving you, the you of you, and how that is such a diversion from what you've been practicing doing yourself.

Oh, that's so true. Oh, my God. It's so funny because here I invent this thing called the Five Second Rule out of dumb luck drunk on bourbon. I literally share it by mistake on a TEDx stage. And I invented this thing to help me get out of bed during the worst moment of my life and finally face the issues that my husband and I had gotten ourselves into. It spreads around the world. I use the Five Second Rule to build a business, to be productive, to do, do, do, do, do But it wasn't until I discovered the high five habit that I actually understood how deeply I had been betting against myself, how every step of the way I had been criticizing myself or focusing on what was going wrong, that when I stood in front of the mirror, Cathy, I did not see a successful woman. I did not see somebody that was out there making a huge difference. I saw what was wrong with me. I think for the last 45 years, I have either criticized or ignored the woman I saw staring back with me in the mirror. And so the high five habit...

I'm sorry, I I just kept barging along. Is there something you wanted to- No, I'm just taking it in.

You're right where you need to be. Keep going.

And so the high five habit, it did not begin like some big business strategy. I didn't go, okay, I had the five second rule. I need to write a book about the five something. What is it? Let's manufacture something. Oh, Atomic Habits is good. Let's get a habit book. That's not what happened because that's not my brand of self-help. My brand of personal development and empowerment is hit rock bottom, have a challenging moment, resist change, and then come up with something that sounds so stupid and so ridiculous that it couldn't possibly be something that would actually work. And then when it actually starts working, not only for you, but people who follow you, you better fucking figure out how this thing works. Why is this working? And so the high five habits no different. I have been trying to write a book, Cathy, for five years. The five second rule was self-published five years ago. I have dyslexia and ADHD. I can create an audiobook in a day. Writing something, forget about it. I bet I have written seven books in the last five years. All of them sucked. And what happened for me, this is not a pandemic book, but what happened for me, because we're all sick of hearing about the pandemic, but what happened for me is when the COVID hit, we all have that moment.

I'm sure you remember the moment you knew, oh, my God, this is changing everything. What was it for you?

When they said two weeks, the kids would be off school, and then they said, no, it's going to be a month. And I had that feeling of things closing in and the claustrophobia, how will I be able to exist now with us not being able to go out to even a park? What if this would stay this way? Yeah, it was right then. I couldn't believe they were closing school.

So Yeah. For me, it was a Wednesday in March in 2020, and we were taping this talk show. It was my dream to be a daytime talk show host. And at the age of 51, I got the opportunity to do it. And so we had shot 167 shows at the CBS Broadcast Center. And all of a sudden somebody comes into the studio space and says they found COVID in the building and you need to evacuate. You got to be out of here in five minutes. The fire trucks are outside. And like that, show canceled, fired from my dream job, didn't get to say goodbye to the 130 people that I had been working with for over a year. That is so painful. But, hey, everything is preparing you for something. Everything. And so I get into my car and I'm driving home. And I realized as the New York City skyline was disappearing, and my daughter was in Spain, and she called and said, I just heard the news that they're shutting down the borders. You got to get me out of here. And then I hung up with her, and all of a sudden it was my daughter in California.

Usa is shutting Mom, what's happening? What's going on? And I thought, oh, my God, what is about to happen? And so in a matter of two weeks, a book contract that I had got canceled, and they wanted the money back. Every speech I had booked more than a year started canceling. And that was the beginning. The kids come home. They're in a state of turmoil. We all experienced it, right? And I think for those first three weeks, it was like a complete blur. I basically never got out of my pajamas. I started drinking Bloody Mary's at about 11:00 AM. We watched Harry Potter marathons and glee. We watched that season, like all of it. And then all of a sudden, one morning, I woke up, and I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I woke up, and I started I'm feeling a couple of things. I felt, Do I need to reinvent myself again?

Oh, my God.

And then I thought, am I about to lose all my money again? And I'm like, I'm too old for this shit. I've worked too hard. You go into that mode. We're like, why is this happening to me? I'm a good person. I've worked so hard. You go At yourself. And so I'm thinking this, and I'm like, okay, get up. Just get up. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I get up. I make my bed. I always make my bed. And then I drag myself to the bathroom. I start brushing my teeth. And as I'm brushing my teeth, Kathy, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. And I think, oh, my God, you look like hell. And the gray hair is coming in, and there's dark circles under my eyes, and my neck is all saggy and my boob is hanging lower at the end of there. And I'm literally, I felt sorry for the woman I saw in the mirror. She looked exhausted. She looked scared. She looked overwhelmed. And as soon as you start to go down a negative path in your mind, it will continue taking you there. And so I immediately drift to everything I'm worried about.

I'm worried about my parents. I'm worried about the world. I'm worried about frontline workers. I'm worried about COVID. I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my employees. I'm worried about what's going to happen to my business. I'm worried about everything. And the interesting thing in that moment is if you had walked in I would have been able to pivot on a dime, especially we women. That's what we do. I would have like, Cathy, don't you dare? I know this isn't fair. I know you don't deserve. If anybody can handle this, Cathy, you You can. You're going to pick your ass up, you're going to pull on your big girl panties, and you are going to get your ass back out there, right? You can do that for anybody else. But there I was without a bra on. My attitude in the gutter, overwhelmed by my life, stressed out, no energy, last on my list, an impossible amount of shit to deal with, just defeated. And I couldn't think of a damn thing to say to myself. And the other The thing is, I probably wouldn't have believed it anyway. But for whatever reason, as cheesy as it sounds, I literally raised my hand and gave the woman I saw in a mirror a high five because she needed it.

And it wasn't like lightning struck, but something shifted in me. I felt my shoulders drop. I felt my chin lift. I laughed because it's so dumb standing there, high-fiving yourself in your underwear. My God. And it's interesting because I also felt like, okay, come on now, Mel. Don't be so dramatic. You can handle this. And I left the bathroom. Now, it was the second morning that something really clicked with me because I woke up, again, all the same problems, all the same overwhelm, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I get out of bed. I make the bed. I dragged myself into the bathroom. Right as I was getting to the bathroom, that's when I felt something I've actually never felt before in my entire life. And that is this. You know when you are about to go see somebody you really like, and you're going to meet him for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or whatever, and you're about to enter the cafe. What do you feel, Kathy, as you're about to see somebody you like?

You're excited, and there's It was anticipation. And so you're already feeling good vibes because you know what that person is like and being in their energy. Totally.

That's exactly how I felt sitting in your Zoom room. Like, Let me in, Cathy. Let's go. Come on. I can't wait to see you. I meet you. I actually felt that about seeing myself. I have never felt that in my entire life. I have never been excited to see be the human being Mel Robbins. I have been excited to see my outfit. I've been excited to see if the eye shadow looks good. I have never looked forward to seeing myself, the human. And so I walk in, and I'm a little bit more present this morning, and I'm brushing my teeth, and I put my toothbrush down, and I take a moment, and I really look at myself, and I don't even see my face. I see a human being. What's coming up for you?

I mean, that's just so beautiful. What you just said, we think about that when we're about to go see our friend or the other mom, her daughter's in your daughter's class, and there's an excitement. You feel like this is a gift to spend time with this person, but you had never thought about that. And I just think about the women and the men who I've met in my life, the people who listen to this show who they're so good, Mel, and they're so wired to achieve, but they're only as good as their last achievement. So there is nothing other than, well, what's my big post today on Facebook for everyone to see that I earned it? I earned it today. But inherently, Like me just being me. No, I've never heard anyone say, what a gift to get to be in that person's energy, my own energy today with myself, to see myself.

Yeah. It's everything. And so I sat and I looked at the woman I saw in the mirror and I thought to myself, well, who does she need me to be today? And what game game in life matters to her? And how could I actually just move the ball down the field today? And so I thought about it, and I thought in that moment, based on what was going on, that who she needed me to be was more optimistic about our ability to get through this. And the game that I wanted to play was showing up in a different way for our kids because they were looking at Chris and I about what was happening in the world.

Yeah.

And so I raised my hand and I high five my reflection. And so there's a couple of things that I just want to explain first about when you do this, because the beauty of this habit And this is just the first habit in the book, and we're going to talk about it. And trust me, we are going to get down to the achievement stuff next because it's really important part of why everybody resists high fiving themselves and why they feel that it's weird. And I'm going to unpack that in a very methodical way, because thematically, when you feel that this is weird or you resist giving yourself this support and celebration, what's contained in the resistance is the key to understanding why you don't have what you want. And it's also the key to unlocking the cage that you're trapped in. Oh, that's so juicy. Hey, it's Mel. I want you Can you stop thinking about what you want and actually do something about it. What can you do? Jump into my new free training called Make It Happen. This training gives you the tools. It's packed with science. It comes with a free workbook.

It's exactly what you need right now. More than half a million people are taking it. You have the power to change your life. Together, let's make it happen. All you got to do is click on the link in the caption, melrobbins. Com/makithappen. It's free. I created it for you. Why wouldn't you take it? Don't Don't miss out on the life you could be living. Let's make it happen together. You deeply impacted me today. Okay, what happened? Well, the boundaries thing. I loved that. I feel like I don't have very good boundaries. But then I heard you just say, I think that you were a victim of sexual abuse, which I also am. And I think that part that you were saying to put your hand on your chest, I think my biggest nerve is broken because it made me more anxious. It's not broken. Push harder and repeat it over and over and over and over and over again, and you will slowly feel yourself come back into your body. So when you have an anxiety response, do you leave your body or what happens to you? I shut down. Okay. Bed I'm in bed, covers like I don't want to do things, or sometimes I go over the top and exhaust myself.

Okay. So what I want you to try, because I don't actually want you to stay in bed. I think staying in bed is a terrible to do, and here's why. When you stay in bed, and are you talking about in the morning, like you wake up and just want to stay in bed? So there's a reason why we feel waves of anxiety and stress in the morning. Number one, when you wake up, your cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone, are typically pretty high. And so that triggers a dump in terms of your emotional state. The second thing is that if you are waking up and you're not excited about your life or There's chaos going on. You're going to feel this sense of anticipatory dread. So lying there makes the dread feel worse. Third thing, staring at the ceiling, thinking about your problems does not solve them. Fourth thing, rolling over and trying to go back to sleep does not change what feels like a nightmare in your life, right? And so what will change it is if you throw off the sheets, put your feet in the ground and get up, because once you get up, you can get going.

And once you get going, you can keep going. What What I want you to add to this, though, is the high five in the mirror and the high five to your heart, because before you start your day in a state where you're spiraling, I want you to come back into your body and tell yourself over and over and over again, I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved. If you can hear it, it's true. Why do you think when we did that exercise in the audience, you felt a wave of anxiety come? Because I don't believe it's true. Okay. That's exactly why you felt that. You felt that because you've been running so fast and so long because you think as long as you're busy and you're running, nobody can catch you and hurt you. And so slowing down is terrifying. Okay. I had the exact same thing. In fact, it wasn't until this fucking pandemic that I couldn't go out, that I really realized that I run the Target and Starbucks and go fill up the car because I wasn't okay being in my body and being still. I was so busy because if I was busy, then I wasn't having to feel the shit I hadn't healed yet.

Yes. And so when you put your hand on your heart and you started breathing and going, I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved, your body was like, Oh, no, you aren't. We are running. We are going to target. We got shit to do. We are not listening to this lady. And your body will fight it because you have trained yourself to run and move and be busy as a protection mechanism. And what I'm here to tell you is you are okay, you are safe, and you are loved, and you can Heal this. Thank you. I believe it eventually. Okay. I believe it eventually. Right now, I want you to say it. Say it. Go ahead, put your hands on your heart. Let's see you do it. You can keep taping. Smart cookie. And I will put a little alarm in your phone. So go ahead, put your hands on your heart. Here we go. Close your eyes. Press deeper. Press deeper. Okay, now you say it for yourself. I have to I'm struggling. That's okay. Breathe in. Here we go. Breathe in. Blow it out. Say it. I'm safe. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm safe.

I'm loved. I'm loved. Breathe in again. That's great. Now say it again. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm loved. Let's do it again. Breathe in. That's great. Really great deep breath. Blow it out. Say it again. I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm loved. I'm okay. I'm safe. I'm loved. It's weird, isn't it? It's super weird. What do you feel? I feel it a little more. Good. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Because there are moments when there's all kinds of stuff going around you. And what you need to know is that no matter what's going around you, you always have you. And you can bring yourself back into your body. You can bring yourself back home. You can settle yourself in this moment. And if you can and tune out the noise and come right back in here and feel yourself, literally flip the switch and find some power, then you can take a deep breath and face whatever's coming. You don't have to run anymore. Thank you. Thank you. I'm talking to myself, too. Okay, good. Thank you so much. So inspiring. You're so inspiring. I want to be like you, Wendy. You are like me, Runday.

You're running from your fears. You're anxious. You're doing your best. You're reminding yourself every day. You get triggered by shit. This is what my life looks like. Yeah. Okay. Just because I am creating these tools doesn't mean I'm not using them every day. Yeah.

What are the take-homes around how we create self-love and acceptance?

Yeah. So first of all, love is an action. So write down on a piece of paper. What would you do to show a human being that you love, that you love them? What would I do? Yeah, what would you do? I'd be nice to them.

I would say nice things to them.

I would bring them coffee. I would give them a kiss. A lot of things. Yeah, you'd compliment them. Yeah. You'd encourage them to take care of themselves. You'd support them in their goals and dreams. You'd tell them good job when they do something great. You would reassure them when they fail. You need to do that to yourself. And this isn't just some cheese ball-like thing. All of the research shows that being critical of yourself, which most of us are as a default, it is demotivating. One of the reasons, I'll give you two hacks. One is get your ass out of bed, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and create a morning routine that really sets you up to feel supported and to feel encouraged and to feel clear about your own priorities. That's what love is. That's number one. Number two, So please add to your morning routine, the high five habit. Here's how you do it. When you stand in front of the mirror after you brush your teeth, I want you to do this right after you brush your teeth because based on research, if you-Many people brush their teeth. Yes. And if we stack this new habit with something you already do, it's going to encode much faster.

Put your toothbrush down, look in the mirror. Based on our research, Dr. Hyman, 50% of men and women cannot do this part. We did a study where we I had 164,000 people in 91 countries. Take what I call the high five challenge. You can just go to high5number5challenge. Com, high5challenge. Com to do this. And all you're going to do is practice a high five habit Five days in a row, 50% of men and women could not look at themselves in the eye. Why? They don't like the person they see. If you can't look at yourself in the eye, that is a habit of self-rejection that begins your morning. All you're What you're going to do after you look yourself in the eyes, which is the hardest part for most people, is raise your hand and high five the human being you see in the mirror. It sounds profoundly stupid, but wait to hear the neuroscience. Yeah. So you have, for your entire life, Dr. Hyman, high five to other people. That's right. What is a high five? The action.Communicate.Celebration. What else is a communicate?Fun.Yeah.Love. Yeah. If you're in a huddle and a teammate 8 fucks up a play, and you come back to the huddle and you high five somebody who just screwed something up, what are you saying to them?

You love them, they're okay. It didn't matter.

Yeah. Get back in there. I believe in you. All of that programming with the physical action of a high five is already in your brain. When you high five yourself in the mirror, guess what happens to all that programming? That's give rewritten. To you, to your reflection. You've never high fiveed a human being, Dr. Hyman, and thought, I hate your You suck. Definitely not. I hope you lose. But that's what we think about ourselves. How could you have done that? You're a loser. You're never going to be loved. You screwed up that many times. When you go to high five yourself, you're going to notice a couple interesting things. Number one, the critic in your head shuts up because the programming is only positive. It won't allow the critic to speak. And in less than five days, a funny thing happens. It completely changes how you view yourself. You see yourself as a teammate that you're going through life with. You see yourself as somebody who deserves to be encouraged and cared for and loved. And then there's all this incredible impact. You get a release of dopamine. It taps into the celebratory energy You have your nervous system, so it boosts your mood, which helps with productivity.

It is profound, and it is a silent action that you do every morning that taps into programming and chemicals and all this goodness. It's already in your mind, body, and spirit.It's free It's going to take seconds. Yes. And the results are profound. It's all in the book, and it's there for you to use.It's.

All research-driven, right? Oh, yeah. The high five habit. It's pretty awesome. Check it out.

You see, Nina did the high five challenge with me, and She had a powerful breakthrough. This is what she wrote, everybody. I have been living with body dysmorphia for more than 20 years. After doing the high five habit for just five days, instead of hiding from my face, I'm finding myself grinning at me instead. Cathy said the high five habit is fundamentally changing how she sees herself. You see, we have, this is what she writes. We have this pattern of seeing ourselves in the mirror and always looking at all the flaws. I notice my eyebrows are not aligned, my white hair is growing. Why do I have a double chin now? My arms look flabby. I see so many things wrong with myself. And in the world where Zoom and video calls and Facebook lives rule, it's not just the mirror that we have to live with. It is seeing ourselves on camera more times than we would want to. For me, Kathy writes, the habit of high-fiving myself in the mirror creates an affirmation, a physical act of celebrating myself. The act alone forces me to look at my face, my body in a different light, a brighter light, a kinder light, a more compassionate and joyful way.

I found I cannot high five myself and say bad things in the mirror. You know, that's true. You can't high five yourself and think something or say something bad. It's neurologically impossible because of the programming associated with a high five that's already in your mind. This is why it's so powerful. We're unlocking neural associations that are already in your mind, everybody. You see, you deserve to be celebrated as you are right now, not when you lose the weight, not when you make more money. Not when you fall in love or get into graduate school, because research shows when you learn how to love and accept yourself, wherever you are right now, you will be better able to ride the ups and downs of your life. And by the way, accepting where you are right now is not about complacency, everybody. Accepting where you are and being kinder to yourself And treating yourself with a level of respect and self-worth is the secret to self-motivation. When you feel worthy, it's motivating. When you feel respected, it's inspiring. When you feel a sense of worthiness, you will feel worthy of bigger things in your life. You cannot, not, not, not pound yourself into the ground and believe or feel motivated to change.

It doesn't work that way based on the research. It's the opposite. This is why it's so hard. This is why you're struggling, everyone, because you want these big things in your life, and you deserve them, and you have goals, and you have dreams, and you have desires. But you stand in this present moment, and you have all these hopes and dreams and desires for your life and for yourself. But what you do is you just punish yourself mentally. That's why you're not motivated. You have to learn how to be where you are right now, accept where you are, and know in your heart, you still deserve to be treated with loving, kindness, and respect. And when you flip that switch in your brain, in your body, and in your spirit, you will be more motivated and inspired to walk toward the things that you deeply yearn for in life than you ever have before, because you will feel worthy of those things. It's so cool. When you beat yourself up all day long, you're pounding yourself into the ground, and you're more vulnerable to feeling like you are being buried alive when life gets stressful.

Everything starts to feel like a beat down. But when you start to look at yourself in the mirror and accept yourself as you are right now and see a person who deserves celebration and support, you're going to tap back into that natural motivation, celebration, and resilience that you were born with. Because you weren't always like this. We are on page 53, Right here, everybody. This is one of my favorite parts of the book, page 53 in Chapter 4, and I'm going to read it to you right now. I'm Mel Robbins, and we're reading from Chapter 4, Page 53 of my instant best-selling book that is changing people's lives. It's called the High Five Habit. Here we go. You ready? Everything I'm about to teach you is already in you. That's the coolest thing about the High Five Habit. We're tapping stuff that's in you. Self love is your birthright. As a baby, you loved the very sight of yourself. You'd crawl up to a mirror and you wouldn't just high five yourself. You know what you used to do? You need to press your face against your reflection and smile and laugh and love on yourself in one wet, sloppy open mouth kiss.

And there is so much about you to celebrate. Let's start with how unique and special you are. Your DNA sequence, your fingerprints, your voice, the patterns of your iris, every one of these things is in entirely unique and yours alone. How you see the world, the way you laugh, the things that you've experienced, the way that you love, it all comes down together to create something magical. You are the only you that will ever exist. Each one of your distinctive gifts and talents is a phenomenon because they are unique to you, and you need to celebrate that shit. And you know what? You are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. Resilience is hardwired into your DNA. I mean, think about when you learn to crawl as a baby, you didn't try once and give up. You didn't lay on the floor and gaze morosely at the ceiling and say, well, I guess this is my life. It's time to throw in the towel. I'm never going to learn to crawl. I think I'll just sit here on this spot on the rug in my diapers and stare at the ceiling. No, you tried again and again because you didn't have words, so you couldn't tell yourself some sad story about how you just can't do it and you're not good enough or smart enough or strong enough.

You know what you did? You kept trying, and eventually you pulled yourself across that floor. You're also naturally intelligent. You don't give Give yourself enough credit for this. By simply watching the people around you as a baby, you figured out how to coo and smile and crawl and scooch and eventually walk. And it didn't matter that you fell on average of 17 times an hour while you were learning to walk. You just kept trying. And that tenacity, that tenacity is still in you. And here's something else, everybody. Celebration is part of your DNA, too. As a kid, every time you succeeded at something thrilling and new, you'd laugh and breach and raise your arms up above your head. If the music would play, you'd shake your booty and wiggle and jump around. You are perfectly designed to feel loved, resilient, joyous, and celebrated. That's why a stranger's high five feels so damn good. A high five strikes deep down to the core. It hits the you of you, and it reminds you of something you've forgotten, who you really are and how you're meant to feel. I think it wasn't until I discovered the high five habit that I profoundly realized how much self-hatred I was dealing with.

Despite everything else, yeah. Well, and this, I I think is a really big piece of the power of this, especially if you're somebody who's achievement-oriented, and everybody that listens to this podcast feels a big calling and wants to do more in the world and make a bigger difference and a bigger impact. There's a real danger that's very common, Jay, that you start to marry or you've always married, being worthy or lovable with what you're doing and what you're achieving. It works In both ways in terms of if you don't have the number on the scale, it means, again, the dust on the mirror. You are not worthy because you haven't achieved it yet. For those of us that have achieved some things that we've set out to do, what happens is you find that as soon as you achieve the thing, you actually need to do something else. Bigger, better. Bigger, better. Because it was a thing that you achieved that made you lovable or worthy. The real trick, and this is Everything is being able to know and feel in your bones that you are lovable and worthy just because you're breathing. And that was a huge breakthrough for me.

And so, no, I never celebrated because I think I was so married to this idea that unless I'm doing or winning or achieving, and it happens so subtly when you're little because you start to get so much positive praise when you get a good grade or when you do something at school or when you make your mates laugh or whatever it might be that you start to go, oh, that's what love feels like. Oh, if I do that. And so you outsource love and validation to outside things. And I'm here to tell you, we all got to learn how to bring it back home and anchor the validation and love that you need where you are right now every single day. And it's only in discovering this that I had to confront just how much I was beating myself up, just how much I was tearing myself down, and how I was chasing these things because what I actually wanted was to feel loved. If you ask yourself, okay, great, you want to make a million dollars, why? There's a feeling that you're looking for from that. And if you can start to work on bringing that feeling into your day to day life for yourself, it changes the way that you go about achieving things.

I didn't even enjoy half the stuff that I did Because I was constantly, maniacally focused on the things that weren't working rather than the hundred things that were. The same is true with everybody's day. You don't even know the number of amazing things you do every day. You feed the dog, high five. You got the kids to school, high five. You read 10 pages of the book, high five. You said a nice thing to a stranger, high five. You got something done at work, high five. You got through 70% of your inbox, high five. Instead, you focus and ruminate on the one thing you didn't get to, and then you use that as evidence. Again, dust on the mirror. To see a human being that's not measuring up and never will and all that stuff their stupid fourth grade teacher said to you must be true, dust on the mirror. No, you need to interrupt this. The other question we got is from Spencer. This is really good, and this is from yesterday's reading. Mel, how do you teach your kids that love is unconditional and not transactional? What Spencer is referring to is super important.

Every human being gets the message from their parents that in order to be liked or loved, you must comply with rules. You got to wear your hair a certain way. You got to have a certain major, you got to play a certain sport. Parents do this to their kids because it's the easiest way to get them to comply. If you're a stressed out parent and you need your kids to do stuff, it's hard to slow down and be present. And so instead we're like, Cut your hair, play the sports. And so you start to get the message as a kid that if I do what you say, then you'll love me. That love is transactional. And so, Spencer, it's a great question. How do we teach our kids that love is unconditional, it's not transactional? First, you need to understand as a parent that when you hold out liking your kid or loving your kid as the punishment or the reward for them to do something, you're teaching them that love is transactional. You are holding out your emotional support and your approval and acceptance in order to get them to comply. So stop fucking doing it.

That's number one. How do you stop doing it as a parent? Well, I'm going to give you four things that you can do to model that you love and support your child unconditionally while still parenting. Because as a parent, you can't just take the guardrails off and let your kids run wild. That would be completely reckless and irresponsible. What you have to learn how to do is to be tough, to have your kids understand that there are rules that they need to follow, but don't use your love of or your acceptance as the weight for complying or the penalty for complying, the reward for complying or the penalty for complying. Here's four things that you can do, and I'm going to give you one caveat beforehand. This applies for the generic parenting stuff. Whenever you're dealing with a situation that is dangerous, deadly, or destructive, dangerous, deadly, or destructive, destructive, you step your ass in and you be the parent, period, because you need to protect your children. You step in in situations that are dangerous, destructive, or deadly. Because protecting them in those situations and being the parent and taking control is what communicates love and support in those situations.

But in all What are the other just million of scenarios that you're going to find yourself in, these are the four rules that allow you to parent without penalizing your kids. Let me say this in a different way. These are the four things that you need to do in order to parent in a way that allows a kid to be seen, heard, and accepted, and also allows them to learn and grow, which is what What do you want them to do. Ultimately, your kids are supposed to leave. They're supposed to grow up. They're supposed to go on and build a life of their own. That's the whole point, to raise them so they can leave and be successful on their own. So the four things I'm going to teach you allow you to satisfy your kids three emotional needs of being seen, heard, and loved, and still parent them. Number one, listen, listen, listen. Don't do as much talking. Start listening. There There's one sentence that fundamentally changed the way that I parent, and it communicates that I love you unconditionally. And that is, whenever my kids come to me with a problem, I always say, Do you want me to listen or would you like advice?

When you start giving advice and jumping in too fast, what happens is your kids don't feel validated or heard by you. When I ask my kids, Do you want me to listen or just give advice? 90% of the time they say, I just want you to listen. And that's a wonderful thing because they are gaining the self-awareness that they need somebody to listen to them. And you just saying, Do you want me to listen or do you want me to give you advice? It allows you to let them just unload on you. And oftentimes, if you jump in and give advice too quickly, what happens is they start to feel like you don't hear them, and they start to feel like they need to follow your advice, or you're not going to like, love, or approve of them. That's rule number one. Rule number two, when they come with you with a problem, even if they say, I'd love your advice, don't jump in and give them advice. Ask questions. Because what you want to do is you want to teach your kids how to think critically through situations and how to think through what the consequences of what they might do.

Are going to be. Because that's how you learn to do it as an independent adult, right? Ultimately, you're not going to make all the decisions for them. So you want to teach them how to think through. Well, what do you think you should do? What do you think your friend would react? Or how do you think your friend would react if you did that thing? What are three things, three different options? You're right. You could text, you could email, you could make a phone call. Which do you think would be more effective? So don't even jump in with the advice. Ask a lot of questions. That teaches your child how to think through confronting situations. It makes them feel seen, it makes them feel supported, and it makes them feel loved by you. And then when they pick, ultimately, which thing they're going to do, just say, I think that's a great idea, and know that I'm here to support you. If your kids say, Well, what do you think I should do? You should say, Well, here's what I think I would do in that situation, but I'm not in that situation. So what do you think you should do?

Always put it back on them. The third thing is, this is the golden rule. No matter what they say to you, this is really hard for me, by the way, affirm what they're feeling. Affirm what they're feeling. Their roommate takes their favorite T-shirt. Don't go, Well, you got 15 others. What's the big deal? That makes your kid feel invisible. It makes him feel misunderstood. Say, Well, that's terrible. I'm sorry that happened to you. If they're talking about how they're scared to go to school or scared to their first day of work, or they're worried about going to this thing tonight, or they don't think they look good, or just whatever it is that they're feeling, affirm what they're feeling. Super important, super important, because if you don't affirm what they're feeling, what you're teaching them is, Oh, well, my mom or dad doesn't understand, so I'm not even going to tell them. And so they start to learn that you don't like them, you don't understand them, so they're just not going to share that stuff with you. They feel like they're not seen. You're training them not to talk about how they're feeling because you're invalidating what they're feeling.

And finally, this is a big one, too. Always complement attributes and qualities, values, and character, not how your kid looks, not the fact that they're an amazing baseball player. Always affirm the characteristics, the values-driven qualities. You're loyal, you're hardworking. I see you trying your best. That is what's going to build up this sense of being affirmed as a unique unique individual is you hammering the qualities, characteristics, and values that you see them expressing. If you are somebody who focuses on appearance or performance, You're training your kid that being loved and appreciated is about how you look and about what you do. When you affirm qualities or value-driven behaviors, you are affirming that you like, love, and appreciate your child for who they are. Big difference. Hey, it's Mel. You know what? I want you to stop thinking about what you want and watching videos on YouTube and actually go out into your life and do something about it because action is the answer, and the first action you should take is jump into my brand new free training. It's called Make It Happen. This training gives you the tools to go from thinking to doing.

It's packed with science. It comes with a free workbook, and it's exactly what you need right now. More than half a million people are taking it. And the fact is, you do have the power to change your life. And I want to help you. All you have to do is click in the link in the caption or go to melrobbins. Com/makethappen. It's free. You jump right in. I'm going to be your coach. I created it for you. Why wouldn't you take this opportunity to make your life better? Go do it. Do not miss out on the life you could be living. Let's make it happen together. Why has it been tough? You really love her. You're getting on a plane and you're going to go see her. Yeah, I love her a bunch. Okay.

I guess I'm coming to the realization that I haven't been hearing her properly, connecting with her on the level that I should be. Now, I'm trying to figure that out. So a couple of months ago, we've been having counseling.

That's good. My husband and I go to counseling.

It helped. She was doing it before, and then it became the group, and then now I see a little bit on my own. I'm recognizing these things, but I also know a couple of months ago in counseling, she admitted on her last tour that she had them emotionally connected with somebody else. So obviously that put a big fire under my ass.

It's scary.

Supposedly, I handled it really well. So she's wanted to do all this. She's worked a lot on herself for getting to the point where she's at. She's got a spot on the bookshop that's 12, 15 composition books deep of just thoughts. Ever since she was back, I think she said till 12.

Amazing.

Because of some things that happened to her before that age of being taken care of. This is three or five, two weeks, four services to Pittsburgh at 8:17.

This is certain as a final report, the doors are closing in about three minutes, and they will not doing this, you realize how much you need to work on that stuff. It's scary. Then a lot of regrets come up and a lot of things you wish you could do over. Then you start to realize your shit from your past that really messed with you, that you shoved down, that happened when you were a kid. This is, I think, the cycle that we all hit, we'd all hit. Here's the amazing opportunity. You not only have an amazing to change the person that you are and to change the relationship that you have with your life, but you have an amazing opportunity to change the relationship you have with yourself. Because your thoughts, your feelings, they actually matter, too. You can't get- I've been neglecting them. Yes. See, relationships are amplifiers. You go into a relationship and you're not right with yourself, that relationship relationship just magnifies what's missing. What did you just get from that?

I like that. Well, it's going to expose those demons more.

Yeah. Here's the thing that most men Men, at least in a traditional gender sense, don't understand that it takes tremendous strength to be vulnerable. It takes tremendous strength to talk about the shit that's bothering me. It takes tremendous strength to admit that you're wrong and to be scared. That's actually what makes you connect more deeply to your partner. My husband of 25 years failed miserably in the restaurant business. Nearly He was completely bankrupt. He lost it all. When he left the business, he was an alcoholic and completely lost. That was Kevra Emmerman? And Demara Emmerman. Demara Emmerman? And Demara Emmerman. And I did not know until recently because it was through these rock bottom moments that my career took off. I invented this little thing called the Five Second Room that I used to get out of bed when the anxiety was so crushing. The only thing that would help me escape it was drinking myself into oblivion to numb it all out. I started using this little brain hack to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, shut down the noise of my brain and launch myself forward through the fear, through the pain, through all of it.

My whole life turned around. Chris's life turned around. But I did not know until recently, when we've been in couples therapy, that the man has, for the last eight years, just been beating the hell out of himself because he feels like he failed. He feels like he wasn't there for me. He feels like he didn't do his job well.

That's how I work.

Yeah. Then when his spouse starts to get successful, and they start to find themselves, it gets very frustrating. Here at 8:00 AM, 12:00. Again, Ms. Lindsay, I'll be assisting your friends down today here at 8:00 AM, 12:00. What I want to tell you is that the opportunity to connect with her is through being her and through being her. If your group is seen, your act, your permitted only a personal item. I'm proud of you.

I've been doing it as you see it.

I can see that. I can see that. Other than that, there are a larger item that will not stay. You got to learn how to love yourself. You won't need to see me prior to boarding to share that item. Regardless of what happened, regardless of what you did or didn't do, regardless of all that, you got to learn how to look in the mirror and see a man who is worth hurting for and who is worthy of love. It is not too late to change this. It is not too late to change your life. It's not too late to change your marriage, but it's an inside out job. You start to show yourself some kindness and some love, and you start sharing more of the stuff that's coming out for you. That is the path that's going to actually heal you. It's going to…

Build my stuff?

Yes. Yeah. So to speak.

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I just need my mojo back. I think that's what she meant. I mean, I had a nice swagger and everything, but it's gotten diluted or…

By life?

I think so. Maybe my own just being stagnant. That's it. And accepting instead of You know, my good friend, Joel Maron, who you should follow, just sent me a freaking thing that he wrote today.

Oh my God. Joel. I praise you, Joel. Joel, I cannot believe this. I'm hearing you. Joel Maron, I'll give you his name. He literally wrote me this whole thing that he wrote today that you need to hear. Very shortly will not be open. This is your last call. Wait a minute. I want to find out. M-a-r-i-o-n. He wrote me this whole thing about the fact that when we are born, we have incredible potential, but so few of us realize what we're capable of. He uses this analogy. This is in your DNA. You were created to be a Lamborghini in life. You have literally everything inside you to be able to perform like that Lambo. You're manufactured that way. That engine, seven 1729 horsepower engine is in there. That insane torque. You have unbelievable intrinsic ability to go from zero to 65 miles per hour in under three seconds. But for most of us, we never experience close to those numbers that we are created to perform at. He tells a story about how he was test driving one, but the neighborhood he's in has like 35 miles per hour. Okay. He ended up not buying it because he never experienced the potential.

What you're talking about is you're talking about the fact that you actually know there is that inside of you. When you lose your capacity, your building, and you stop growing, and you stop stretching yourself, and you stop pushing yourself forward and learning new stuff and expressing yourself, something inside you starts to feel like it's dying. I'm telling you.

It's still in that engine.

Yes, it's still there. The reason why it's still there. It's because you're missing. You can only miss something you know. I think Joel sent me that for a reason. In times of my life, when I felt lost or stagnant, I say, I feel like a racehorse tied to a pony ride at a kid's birthday party. I am built to fucking run. I hate it when I feel just tied down like that. There something inside you that you've been holding back. What do you think it is? Not really sure. Well, I would take on a challenge.

I'm not sure if it's a passion that I've ever tapped into or something that I've missed since earlier years.

Who knows? I think you should take on a challenge. I think you should take on climbing some mountain or some race or some fitness thing, something that's a little out of your comfort zone to give you something to push you. It doesn't have to be the perfect thing. Just something that you're up to is enough.

Yeah, got you.

But I want to acknowledge you for the fact that you recognize that there's an issue and you're taking the steps to go make the effort. You're getting on a plane, you're flying to surprise your wife.

I I don't do that, but I deal with motion sickness, vertigo, and I don't drive well at night. So I'm about, I've got the bands on. Great. They work. I took my motion sickness pills.

I love that. I give you a high five for that. That's fantastic.

We're doing what we can. We're doing it.

Then she doesn't know you're coming.

She does now. She didn't a couple of days ago, but then we were trying to do the pregnancy reveal to some of the family because we just found out last week. Congratulations. She was all like, I'm going to do it. You're there. I'm here. I want to video chat my family and be able to tell them because she's up where some of the families that she was seeing, and some of them are coming to visit. I told her, I'll tell you what, well, I'm actually coming up there. She was pretty surprised, but you know.

That's awesome. You're going to be an awesome dad. You want to know who the best dads are? Yeah. The ones who are actually right with themselves. That's true. The ones who are able to talk about their emotions. The ones who are able to be human.

This is my second child. This is her first, but I told them my son's almost 23. That's amazing. So start over. It's been a lot of emotions.

You're not going to start over. You actually are building upon. Okay. Okay.

My son's been great. He's guys would be super impressed with how good my son is. He hasn't seen his mom since he was six years old. So I'm embracing him. I mean, there's people in and out of the life, but you know.

You got a moment in your life to make yourself really proud of yourself.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

If I were a betting woman, some days I am, it depends how much of a bet I make. I'd place my bet on.

That's what I'd like. I want that more than anything.

Don't wish for it. Don't want it. My wife deserves it. Do the work. No, no, no. Hold on. What? Go ahead. You deserve it.

I deserve it.

Okay. Give yourself what you're seeking from other people. Seek redemption and forgiveness because you deserve it from yourself. In my book, forgiveness means that you have stopped wishing things could be different. Accept everything that's happened or didn't happen as a lesson. As long as you hold on to that shit from the past, you're I really still there. Yeah. What did you get out of this?

I got a little more resiliency. It'll pick me up. I I'm glad I came and talked to you very much and took the time. I wasn't sure if I was imposing because I didn't know if it was more like a female thing, but I have plenty of emotion that I'm pretty open with. Sometimes too open, maybe.

I don't know. I don't think so. I'm also going to introduce you to my husband. He created a men's group called, or a men's retreat called Soul Degree, where he takes guys out into the woods for five days to actually have these kinds of conversations. He's had guys from 60 plus, multiple tours of duty, professional athletes, regular, just everyday folks like all of us. It's remarkable. What he also does, because he only does this a couple of times a year, is he also has calls every night where it's guys get on and he leads a meditation, and then there's a topic that you all discuss, and it's really freaking cool. I will make sure that you have his information, and I will get both of your email addresses, and I will have my team email you a credit so you can listen to one of my books on all of it.

That's what's cool. I've been doing a lot more trying to listen to stuff. And you just don't know what direction to go because some stuff is just People just want to make some money on you. There's so much out there. You just want to find the right path as best as possible. Yeah. So thank you.

What do you love the most about yourself now and your story?

I feel really surprised that I'm going to say this. I think the thing that I love the most about myself now is that I actually do believe that I'm a really good person. I love that. You know, I just think that I have a really good heart, and I mean well, and I want to make a difference, and Having spent an entire lifetime believing that there's something wrong with me. It is so liberating to finally have my brain align with my heart and in terms of my belief about myself, my intentions, my actions, all of it. And what was the second question?

What do you love the most about your story?

It's the thing that I I think that there's this divine guidance nature to my story. That what's happened in my life, particularly in the last 13 years, is so implausible. That there is no other explanation than divine intervention. And I believe, like you believe, that every single human being is born with a purpose that's unique and all their own. And at the same time, and I know you believe the same thing, I think everybody's purpose is exactly the same. And it's to find the courage to tell your story because it's in the sharing of yourself that you will impact somebody else. And nobody else has your story, your experiences, your wisdom, none of it. Nobody else ever will. And so I do think everybody's purpose is to come back home to who they are and share that story of the journey of returning home. And You know, I was going to say that my answer was going to be that I have to... My version of Helping people always requires me to fall into a hole or dig one. And then once I hit the bottom of that hole, I got to somehow build a ladder to get out of it.

And that's what the five-second rule was 13 years ago. It was a ladder that I created to help me get out of bed when the anxiety and fear was so crushing, it would pin me there every morning. And the high five habit was a ladder to help me climb out of the hole of overwhelm and defeat and self-criticism that kept me really down. But the truth is, I don't like learning like that because it's painful. I literally am like, Can I just read something in a book like other people do? Why does it involve me driving headfirst into a brick wall before I have an epiphany? Do I have to be this stubborn and screwed up in order to discover these things? When will it get easy? But I do think that that is the nature of things. My daughter said to me because I was really when the you know what hit the fan with the quarantine and my business turned upside down and I lost my dream job and the speaking business upended and I felt like we were going to be back in a financial free fall, and my kids are having cascading anxiety attacks.

Oh, not to mention all the stuff that came with the global pandemic. We all had a complete spiritual, mental, physical, like just realignment, reorganization, upset, fear, all of it. And obviously, it was a blessing in so many ways. And I remember going, why is this happening to me? Why? I've worked so hard. Seriously, this is how my story ends. Thirteen years ago, I'm $800,000 in debt and drinking myself into the ground and on the edge of losing everything. And I claw my way out of that hole. I share the five second rule. Millions of lives are changed. I build a business. I land my dream job, hosting a television show, helping people. Now it's all taken away. Now I'm in financial crisis again. Now I'm reinventing myself again. Are you kidding me, God? Why are you like this? Why is it? And then why? And then on top of that, why am I now the victim of wire fraud? Why is this person betraying me? Why are the implants that I got causing cancer? Why, why? And finally, my daughter said, Why are my kids college? I was in that state. And my daughter said, I think I know the answer.

And I said, Why? And she said, You're My gift in life is to help people. And I think you've forgotten what it feels like to be lost and afraid. And she was right. It's not that my life was easy. It wasn't easy because I was beating the hell out of myself every step of the way. But I had, in many cases, because I'd become so busy and so successful, I had forgotten what it's like to wake up with crushing anxiety every morning. I had forgotten what it's like to look in the mirror and absolutely feel like you can't get through the day. And the gift of this breakdown was the high five habit, which cracked absolutely everything open. And led a bunch of light into a place that was really dark in my mind.

What I've learned is that when we go through all these experiences, and I've been through quite a few, very much like you, and I'm only 25. Oh my God. So I'm still quite literally a baby.

Yeah, you are. When I was 25, I was like, cheating on boyfriends and drinking myself into the ground, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my... He's like, Oh, whoa, okay. I didn't know I had been the victim of sexual abuse when I was in the fourth grade yet. I hadn't gone to therapy. I had generalized anxiety, train wreck or human being interchangeable.

But you know what? It helps me and helps you to relate to other people. And I think people are searching for, like we've been talking about, connection, connection to- It's true. Self love, and you help bridge that divide. So I'm grateful for your work and everything that you are doing. You have this incredible book. People can go and get a couple of it.

Can I ask you a question, though?

Of course.

How the hell did you get so awake and transformed at the age of 25?

I That is a difficult question to answer in a short period of time. But essentially, my life wasn't going where I wanted it to go. My life literally came crashing down, and I fell apart in 2019, went through a difficult breakup, lost my dog of 11 years, who we were like this. I was going through a lot of grief, a lot of torment, found out a little bit later on that I was sexually abused when I was six years old. So there was all that. I was dealing with depression, anxiety. And in the middle, around, I think it was June or July, I attempted to end my story, attempted to end my life because I didn't feel like I was enough anymore. I was also in a pretty high stress environment with my career, which is real estate. I had no idea what I was doing, by the way. And then towards the end of August, I made the choice to leave the career in real estate and step out in a lot of debt. I had no idea what I was going to do, and was just very lost. And I was actually in a job interview for a top recruitment company here in Sydney, Australia, and the CEO asked me this one question.

He goes, Why do you want to work here? And I said, I want to help people. I've been helping people get a home, and I thought maybe I can help people get a job. But little did I realize the extent of what I actually meant in that answer. What I was really saying was I want to help people realize their own worth, realize their full potential through the power of stories, because I realized, I'm young, I've been through absolute hell and back, And I still didn't know what it was going to fully look like then. I just knew I wanted to help. So how many people are struggling like I am? How many people are dealing with all these crippling anxieties and they don't know that they're enough? How many people have committed suicide or attempted suicide that I can potentially help with my story and all the things that I've been through? And so really, that's where the Storybox became the Storybox. And I started this growth journey of I worked with disabled people for a period of time. It taught me a lot about gratitude and who I am as a person, and I should be really thankful for the way I am and what I've been through.

And then it's just grown enormously. So that in a short nutshell is how I've managed to get to this realization. And because I get to speak with incredible people like you, Mel, that teach me through your story. And I realized that we're not so different. And that just No, but you're clearly a little bit more aware than I am because I kept digging the hole I was in for another two decades before I hit the bottom of it.

So high five to you, man. You're a faster study than I am, apparently. Either I'm more stubborn.

No, I think that I've just been blessed, honestly, to have that realization early on. And I desire, first and foremost, that a lot of young people, especially, like If you are a young person right now, you don't have to go through all the things that I went through or even Mel went through. You can change your life right now. And why put yourself through absolute hell when you don't even need to? If I had a choice to to go back and choose a much simpler path, I probably would have chosen the simpler path. Why extend even more pain to yourself when you don't need to? I know some of the pain is unexpected and unavoidable, and how you show up in that pain is often a big difference maker. I really believe that. But for pain that we put ourselves through, why put yourself through it?

Well, it's true. It's true. I hope that our conversation is an awakening for somebody. That maybe the pain that you're in the middle of, you're not alone in it. I mean, you said something that I think about a lot, which is there's like 8 billion people on the planet. What are the odds that you're not the only one that's feeling the way that you feel? And I guarantee you're not, because I also think if you go to YouTube, somebody made a video about it. And when you start to realize that, yeah, it feels deeply personal and you feel isolated, but you're not alone in what you're feeling, and other people have gotten there, have been there and gotten through it, you'll realize that you can, too. It's interesting. The only thing that I disagree with is that I wouldn't go back and change anything. I often get asked, What would you tell your younger self? And I say, absolutely nothing. And the reason why I say that is because I do believe that all the dots on the map of your life connect. And it's easy to sit in this moment and look backwards and see exactly how all the dots in your life, good and bad, painful or glorious, connect to this very moment.

That in some way there was an experience that shaped you or a trauma that shaped you or a person or wisdom or something that has prepared you for this moment. And I I also gain a lot of faith, and the high five habit has taught me this, by standing in front of the mirror every morning and pushing through the resistance and the self judgment and high fiving the woman who's doing her best and sending myself into the game of life to play another day. I also am affirming this very deep belief that this moment is also a dot on the map of my life. This day is a dot on the map of my life. This thing I'm feeling is a on the map of my life. And it, too, is preparing me for something that is coming in the future. And when I know and look at my life that way, a series of experiences, some shitty, some amazing, some heartbreaking, some heart exploding and expanding. It's like being a surfer and learning to ride the waves, knowing that eventually it'll carry you to shore. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for checking this video out.

And if you like this one, I have a feeling you're going to like this one, too. I'll see you there.