I hop on the treadmill. This was over the weekend. I put on my headphones. I turn on this interview, and I'm listening to somebody I love, and that's David Goggins. Now, David Goggins, Navy Seal, best-selling author, and he's doing this interview with someone else I listened to. You might listen to him, too. Stanford Professor, Andrew Huberman. I freaking love David Goggins because of everybody that I know in the personal development, life optimization, research, science space, I think David's message is the closest to what I'm trying to convey to you every time we talk. And look, I'm not a Navy SEAL. I don't swear as much as he does, although some of you think I do. But his message is always about action, that you cannot sit around and wait to feel like it, that there is always some level of resistance or friction, or suckiness, or pain in the way between you and the things that you need to do in order to change your life, in order to reach your potential. And that's what I believe, too. And I tell you that every single time that you and I are talking, action, Action, action, action.

I even say that this is not just a listening podcast. It's a doing podcast. I tell you to expect it to be hard, because when you expect it to be hard, and it is hard, it doesn't derail you because you're smart. You saw it coming. You expected this, so you pushed through it. And so here I am. I'm on the treadmill. It's literally the next morning after I've decided we're going to have this conversation, and we're going to talk about Nisi's acceptance speech, and I'm listening to him as I'm walking, and it's as if the universe planted him right in my ears because he picked up right where Nisi left off. Nisi was talking about believing in yourself, that you got to just spoon feed that stuff to yourself, that you got to thank your sofa doing the work. But it begs the question, How do you believe in yourself? Well, the answer is simple. You have to act as if you believe in yourself, even when you don't. What does that mean, Mel? It means you have to get out the door and start that walk before you feel motivated to get out the door and start that walk.

It means you have to quit drinking before you actually feel like or want to. It means you have to apply for that job or apply to the school, even though you're not sure you're going to get accepted. The action comes before the belief. It's the action that creates it. And in the case of Nisi, on those days when she felt gutded, she didn't lay there on the floor for the next 10 years. She got back up. She pushed herself forward. She took action. And the fact is, no one wants to hear this. Everybody wants the hack or the three this or the other thing. Give me the easy thing. I'm sorry. But some days it's not easy. In fact, most days it's not. And the reason why it's not going to be easy is because every single day, there will be at least one moment when you feel self-doubt or you feel friction. That stuff is always going to be there. You got to learn how to push through those temporary emotions. You got to learn how to pick yourself back up and slowly keep going and moving forward. That's how you spoon feed belief in yourself.

Thinking will not create belief in yourself. So let's go back to David Goggins. Here I am on the treadmill, walking, walking, walking. And he's talking in this interview about the fact That every day is a battle. That's why whenever you see David Goggins on social media, he's usually doing one of those running videos. He drops about 15 F-bombs every 60 seconds. But here's what everybody gets wrong. He's not swearing at you. He's swearing at himself. If you don't know his story, it's freaking incredible. You have to listen to his audiobook. David Goggins, before he was a Navy SEAL, check this out. The guy He was 300 pounds. He was an exterminator in Indiana. He had suffered extreme childhood abuse and trauma. He's basically illiterate because of his learning disabilities. He's terrified of water. But deep down He went inside as a 300 pound exterminator, terrified of water, you want to know what his dream was? He wanted to become a Navy SEAL. And the long and the short of it is, you got to listen to his audiobook, he did what seems impossible. He decided he was going to do it. And he not only lost the weight in the amount of time, which was a crazy amount of time, for him to lose the weight, to make the weight requirement, to even be allowed to get into the training.

He passed the written test, and then he went through the Buds Navy seal training. Not once, failed Not twice, failed, but three freaking times until he passed. I mean, unfricking believable story. It will motivate you unlike any other story will motivate you. And what you see on the outside or when you listen to him as you see this drive, and you're just like, Oh, my God. This guy must have been born with motivation and discipline and the mindset and all this stuff. And he's like, No way. No freaking way. I battle for this every single day. And he said this thing in the interview. He was talking about how you cultivate self-belief and self-doubt. And this part of the interview comes up, and they joke, and it's not really funny, but it's true. He said, There's a cure for alcoholism. The problem is it only works one day at a time. The same thing is true for self-doubt. There is a cure for self-doubt, but it only works one day at a time. You have to battle self-doubt. The cure is your actions. You prove your self-doubt wrong every single day. I want to share with you one of my favorite moments from this interview.

There's no hacks, bro. It's you against you. You against you. If you misunderstand that, you have a real problem. This has to be in you. Something in you has to wake up. Usually, the only person that can wake it is you. If you're watching me on YouTube, you're watching me not up and down. He's right. He is right. There has to be something in you. And so first of all, I want to say there is something in you. That's why you listen to this podcast. But you are the only person that can wake it up. And if you want to tap into something bigger inside of you, whether that's winning a primetime Emmy, or it's getting into that school, or it's healing whatever you need to heal, or it's making millions of dollars, you have to figure out how to wake up, how to push yourself every day. And you got to figure out how to keep going on those days when you feel gutted. Because the only reason why someone doesn't give up on those days when they wake up, they don't feel like it. And it's the fourth rejection in a row, is because somewhere deep down inside of you, you still believe.

In fact, you know. You know the truth. And the truth is that despite how hard this may be, despite how much this sucks right now, despite how slow, oh my God, it's so slow, the progress. You know that some Someday you're going to look up, and this will all have been worth it. That it's worth it to just wake up every day and fight the battle. And Goggans just told you who the fight is with. It's you against you. I want to stop on this idea because I think it's really important to dig deep into this concept, You Against You, and unpack what this means. Because when you first hear You Against You, I bet you made the mistake I made, which is you think, Oh, it's me against me in this moment, how I feel in this moment. That's not actually what I'm talking about. This This goes so much deeper, and I've pulled this apart with my family because everybody in our family listened to this. And in particular, I had a two-hour conversation with our daughter, Kendall, which I'll get into in a moment. But here's what You Against You means. There is a past version of you that you are going to have to battle for the rest of your friggin' life.

And for Goggins, he is in a battle with the A 300-pound, lazy piece of shit (those are his words, not mine) that he used to be. That's who he's in a battle with every day. That's who he's swearing at when he's online on social media. It's so important for you to realize there's a version of you in the past that is still in there inside of you in your day-to-day life. If you stop and take the time to really identify what past version of you is still chirping in your ear right now, bringing self doubt, insecurity to the table. When you can identify that version of you, you now know who you're fighting. And I mentioned that I've been talking with my daughter, Kendall, about this. Here's a little bit of background. We've been talking about it because she She's a singer-songwriter. She studied this in college. She has been working for months and months and months and months on her brand new single, Once You Hear This, her new single, Pastime, It Will Be Out. And so she listens to the Goggins interview, and we really start talking about this, You're battling against yourself.

And nobody sees this. Because on the outside, from my standpoint, I can't understand why Why she feels so insecure about putting herself out there, right? Like, she's got her song coming out. She knows what she needs to do. She's got to start promoting her brand new single, Pastime. She's got to start creating reels and TikTok things, and that's how people get discovered. And she's done all the work. Now it's the moment to thank herself and celebrate and start posting. She has been hesitant to do it. And you're the same way. Do you know how many of you Write in and say, Mel, I'm a real estate agent. I'm a personal trainer. I'm a coach. I have this thing to market, and I'm scared to put myself online. I don't want to promote myself. I'm afraid of what my friends are going to think. You want to know why? Because an old version of you is keeping you feeling insecure and small. I want you to think about this for a minute. Think about the ways in which you're holding yourself back. You know what your are. You know what you want, and yet you feel insecure about doing the things you need to do to do it.

In my daughter's case, she knows. The song's insanely amazing, and she's got something proud that she's proud of. You've got something that is insanely amazing. You're afraid to talk about it. We got into this conversation about the you against you. I said to her, Well, what version of you is holding you back? Who is actually talking to you when you go to post on social media and you're like, and she was new immediately. You probably will know immediately, too. If you really stop and say, What version of me is holding myself back from walking back into a gym? What version of me is holding myself back from applying for this job? What version of me is trashing myself right now? And for Kendall, it was her sophomore year in college. Just listen to her How would you describe who she was, sophomore year. Insecure, chasing the wrong friend group, a social climber, worried, paralyzed about what everybody else thinks, scared to be the biggest, brightest version of herself, scared of people judging her. Now, even though that was three years ago, that's who she's battling every single day in her life right now. And once you You want to know who you're battling, you can win.

You can win. And you want to know who I'm battling? Well, buckle up, because this could get really dark really fast. But I'm going to try to keep this light because I think I finally figured it out. I really like this construct of you against you. So when I was in the fourth grade, my family wanted this really big ski vacation with a bunch of other families, and I woke up with an older kid on top of me. And even though it wasn't that severe of an incident, it changed my life forever. And the very next morning, that nine-year-old me woke up, and in my little brain, my fourth-grade brain, I believed I had done something wrong. I believed that if I told the adults what had happened, the truth, that people would get mad at me, that people would be upset with me, that I would somehow Now, get in trouble. Obviously, that's not true, but I internalize that in my little brain. I'll tell you something, I have been battling that version of me for almost my entire life, and I'll probably battle that version of me forever because every single morning when the alarm rings, do you know who's there?

It's not 55-year-old Mel Robbins. I wake up, and that freaking fourth-grade version of me is what I feel. Anxious, nervous, insecure. I wake up I'm literally feeling like I've done something wrong every single morning, I'm worried about everybody else's feelings. I'm worried about upsetting somebody. That is the version of me that I'm always battling. I'm going to tell you something. I am so freaking done with that. Just like Kendall is so done with the person she was three years ago. It was so liberating to see her identify, Oh, it's the sophomore of me, because she's like, I don't want that person running my life right now. Just Just like you are so done. When you figure out the version of you, you're going to be like, What? You? No way. That's the battle I'm talking about. And you got to bring that to the surface, because otherwise, that version of you, they like, lurk around like some creep. And next thing you know, they creep back in and steal that Lifetime Achievement Awards right out of your hands. That's the I'm talking about. And it just happens like that. And you want to know the secret?

You want to know the secret to everything? You identify that version of you, and all you got to do is outwork them. Just outwork them. I'm going to give you Two examples. Every single morning for me, the alarm rings, right? And it's like, Oh, here we go again. Here's that little fourth-grade version of me. And whenever I feel that, I've done something wrong. Someone's mad at me, insecure. I'm like, Not today. Not today, Mel Robbins. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I am getting up. This is why I work so hard. This is why I constantly take on new things. This is why I have worked so hard to eradicate people-pleasing. Let them feel what they want to feel. Adults need to be adults. I do not need to be responsible for your emotions. This is why I roll out of bed. I go to the gym. I do the things I don't feel like doing. I keep pushing I'm past my insecurities. I'm not doing anything to prove anything to you. I am battling the old me. That's what I'm doing every single day, that I am bigger and better and stronger. And you know what?

So are you. You are bigger and better and stronger than that old version of you, and you freaking know it. So start proving it. When you really take it on as I'm battling an old version of myself. I am outgrowing that bullshit. It is one of the most meaningful things that you can do in life because you really start to tap into this potential that you've left on the table. I know everybody says you got to serve others, and you do, but there's something so fulfilling about not letting whatever you want to call yourself, version of you, rob you, of who you are meant to become. It's no joke when you feel like there's something more. I want you to imagine Mel Robbins is giving you a Lifetime Achievement Award. What do you want to thank your sofa?