The fact is, there are going to be days where you got to clean toilets.

We're all humans.

And that's just a fact. And so also, don't get discouraged when you have a string of toilet days. That's just what life is like. You can keep going forward. And so the other thing that I wanted to say is that for a lot of you that are watching this conversation right now, I know that you've hit a plateau in your business, or you're struggling to get to the, quote, next level. One of the things that I I want to tell you is that, first of all, Peter and I believe in you. That's why we're here. The second thing I want to tell you is you're 100 % capable of doing the actions that will take you to the next level. The third thing I want to tell you is that you know what those actions are. The problem is you're spending all your time thinking about those actions, and that's a trap. That's where your self-doubt comes in. And what Peter and I want you to do is we want you to First of all, acknowledge that you know what to do, acknowledge that you don't feel like doing it or that you're scared like I am about taking my business to the next level and expanding into events, and do it anyway, literally.

Like And that's the formula for success. You should give zero fucks about how you feel, and you should really focus on what you need to do. Think about what it was like when you were a kid and your parents were so annoying because they didn't care. About your excuses. They knew what you needed to do, and they pushed you to do it. And so Peter and I really want you to, first of all, feel the acknowledgement that you got this. Secondly, no matter, stop focusing on the shit you can't change and start focusing on the actions you can take and more positive thoughts, because it's really difficult to get to the next level when you're busy cheering against yourself.

Let's go back, and that's still I want people to understand because a lot of achievers, Mel, I've seen, they're so obsessed with the tactics.

They're like, I don't need the motivation.

I need business tactics. But they don't realize that a lot of the stuff that's holding them back, even if they had the tactics, is in their mind.

So I'm glad you talk about this first, which is huge.

Let's go back. So you're struggling.

You're filed for bankruptcy.

This is a couple of years ago.

And you're in the eight-figure business.

What was the steps?

If someone is in that stage where they're struggling the frustration, they don't feel like it, but they're maybe still taking action But they're not at the level they're capable of.

For you, do you remember the first couple steps when you were struggling on how you got out of it?

Yeah. So it all starts... It's so interesting because I just finished an interview with a group that are doing a I'll tell you about morning routines, Hal Elred, who are at the Miracle Morning. And so it starts with your morning routine. And so and here's why. So when I was stuck, I am facing bankruptcy and my husband and I are fighting, and I was unemployed, and his restaurant business was failing. Here you got this trifecta of just do-do all over the place. This was his dream to have this business, and now it's failing as an entrepreneur. I lost my job after stepping into the media business. Just one thing, fighting like crazy. I had a terrible morning routine. I would hit the snooze alarm five, six times a morning. I would then mainline my phone and read emails and surf social media. I would constantly eat bad food. The kids were always late for school. They were missing the bus constantly. It was like one decision after another that was horrible. Now, why was I making the decision to hit the snooze button five times? Because of my feelings. I felt overwhelmed. I felt terrified.

I had tremendous anxiety. I felt like a loser. I had no confidence. I dreaded the day. All those feelings were driving my decisions. So this This is how I discovered the five-second rule. It actually started as a simple hack in order to beat the snooze alarm. The alarm would go off. So I want to expand this moment because I want you guys to understand the power of a five-second decision. Your entire life, your entire business comes down to five second decisions, period. Do you make the phone call or not? Do you negotiate like a monster or not?

Do you take the deal that sucks or do walk away from it or not?

These are the decisions that define your business. And they happen in five seconds flat. You either expand into your power or you shrink. That's what happens. And so for me, Here I was hitting the snooze alarm, and I knew I needed to stop it, but I didn't know how. So I invented this little trip because here's what happens. The alarm would go off, and in a matter of seconds, I would feel dread. I would think about bankruptcy. I I feel the anxiety come from my stomach. My heart would start to race. My throat would get tight. I'd start to sweat. I'd think about the day ahead and all of our problems, and I would immediately feel incapable. And I would shrink and hit the snooze. And that was all taking place like that. Just like when you look at the phone call, you look at that phone and you know there's a call you need to make for your business. You've been thinking about it, and thinking about it, and thinking about it. If you think about it for more than five seconds, you will come up with a reason not to make that call.

You will. That's how our minds work. And so I decided, holy shit, this is happening like So fast. I got to move faster before my mind can talk me out of it. And so the first morning I used it, I went, five, four, three, two, one, and stood up. The next morning when I used it, I was surprised it worked again. The next morning when I used it, I couldn't believe it worked again. And then I noticed this, and this is what I want you all to take away. Your mind is designed to protect you. The second you hesitate, and it could be the smallest thing, guys, it could be that Somebody's telling you that the split on the deal is going to be 60/40, and your gut's like, What the?

No, it's not.

But if you hesitate and you start to go, oh, they're a bigger partner than me, and maybe I need this deal, you will, within five seconds, shrink. Self doubt will come in, and you will not own your power. But you can, if you move forward 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in that second, where you're like, wait a minute, 60, 40? I don't think so. It's 50, 50 or nothing, buddy. And you move. Now you've interrupted the patterns that stop you, and you've taken control in a five-second window. And you have also now developed this muscle where you're now starting to align action with instinct. Why is Jay Zee so successful? It's It's not because he sits around and he mainlines social media and he gives a hoot about what other people think. It's because he has an instinct, he goes for it. Why is Oprah so successful? Why is Steve Branson so successful? Why is anybody that you admire successful? It's not because they're lying in bed looking at social media. It's not because they sit around and doubt themselves. It's not because they eat a shit sandwich on a deal. It's because they've learned how to quiet the noise around them, to hear their instincts, and to move and lean into them.

And that is the secret to your business. That's why you want to be an entrepreneur. It's not so that you can hide. It's so that you can expand. It's not so that you can live in fear of these phone calls. It's so that you can freaking pick up that phone and call anybody you want. That is your power. And I'm telling you right now, if you master this five-second window, you win. And look, Peter, it didn't even... So how did I go? So now people are probably wondering, well, okay, fine. So you got up on time. How does that change things? I'll I'll tell you how it changes anything. If you can master the ability to get up when you don't feel like it, that's the same thing as making a phone call when you don't feel like it. If you can master the ability to go to the gym when you're tired, that means you can work on that spreadsheet when you're tired. If you can master the ability to feel your emotions rise up at 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, shut them down and speak to your spouse with respect, even though you're pissed, then you know how to manage your your emotions in a business setting.

So in five second windows, what you're doing is you're building the muscle of self control. You're building the muscle of discipline. You're building the muscle of aligning your actions and your thoughts with the things that matter to you instead of letting your emotions trigger you and wig you out and take you off course. It's freaking amazing. So I would say for those of you that feel stuck, take a look at your routine because you have one in the morning. The first 30 minutes of your day are the most important because they set the tone. Do you get up on time? Do you make your bed? Do you spend the first 20 minutes planning your day and the one thing that's important to your business? Do you schedule the one thing you're going to do to make progress on your priority? Before anything else, don't look at your phone. Don't sleep next to your phone. That phone is crack cocaine. You do not need it. We have become the tool. That is supposed to be a tool for your business. Number two role for you, do not put that freaking phone next to your bed. Do not do it.

Your first head talk. You're talking about how you're pacing and you're sweating, and I'm like, this was amazing to watch the behind the scenes brain, and then watching a real time was like, oh, my gosh, I get it. Is that what you're still doing, so to speak?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. You refer to that TEDx Talk, which was the first speech that I've ever given. It's basically a 21-minute long panic attack. If you go back and look at it, ignore the 28 million views and realize that is a...

I'm doing that 13 years ago, 2011, 10 years ago.

So I'm 43. I'm facing bankruptcy.

There are liens on the house. My husband has dropped out of the restaurant, is basically struggling with alcoholism. I'm hopping from job to job to pay our bills, and I've been asked to give a talk about how to change your jobs. I mean, talk about imposter syndrome.

So you look My chest, about a minute in, I've got this raging chest rash that people have when they're anxious or they drink too much. I mean, it was darting all over the stage like an idiot. I had no idea that that would go anywhere. It was the first TEDx conference. It didn't go anywhere for a year.

And then a year later, they started putting the TEDx talks online, and that would have been late 2012. And then it sat and went nowhere for another year. That It would have been 2013.

And it wasn't until the end of 2013 that it started to gain traction online, and that's when people started to reach out.

Wow, that's super cool. It's just cool to be able to It's a peak in the mind of someone.

It's almost like you unintentionally became successful, but not unintentionally.

It's this weird-Well, our friend says, I became intentional despite myself.

I certainly probably made it harder Sure, then I needed to, but I didn't know any other way. I think if there are some lessons learned, it would be reach out for help sooner. So reach out to people that are two steps ahead of you. Go to their seminars. Don't judge them. Learn from them. They are your best resources. And I built in the dark and alone, banging my head against the wall for too long. And it was very lonely, and it took longer than it needed to. If you simply go to a few events in the area that you want to have a breakthrough in, you'll be shocked at how fast your growth accelerates and how you build a community and how that empowers you. The other piece of advice that I would give is pay attention to what is causing you friction or angst or you don't like it and try to I source that to somebody who's amazing. I recently hired our friend Evan Carmichael after meeting everybody at the Napa Mastermind Group.

I almost didn't hire him because I was embarrassed to have him look at our YouTube channel.

Because our YouTube channel has been like, Just post it, just post it, just post it. Sort of like the newsletter. I don't know what to do over there. Just post it. He looked at it, and it was embarrassing to have him walk us through all the basics that weren't getting done and all the buttons that needed to be switched on. A month into it, we've 10Xed our growth because I asked for help in an area where I don't have expertise. And so don't be stupid like I was. Reach out before you're ready, spend Find money before you think you should, and offload the stuff that you don't like to somebody who knows what the hell they're doing. Boom. Let's say you're oversleep and you missed a dentist appointment. Who hasn't done that, right? I certainly have. If you're somebody that has good self-esteem, you go, Oh, shoot. I missed the dentist appointment. I'm going to have to pay the $25 fee. I guess I'll just reschedule it, right? If you're somebody who has really low self-esteem, you go, See? You can't do anything right. You can't make it to the dentist. Everything in your life becomes evidence that you're a piece of shit.

Everything in your life becomes evidence that you are doing things wrong. You see, the difference between me having done all this work on myself, therapy, EMDR, psychedelic guided therapy sessions, all of the high five habits, learning how to regulate my nervous system, dealing with childhood trauma, the difference between where I am now and where I used to be is I screw up shit all the time. I don't hook your piece of shit to it anymore. I'm able to allow myself to screw up and go, Good people do. Have bad days. I'm doing my best. I'll just pay the 25 bucks and reschedule.

Right. And you don't hold on to it. Correct.

Hold on to it. Most of It's all of us, pour it all over ourselves. We just bathe in it. And so meaningful mantras, I should have called them pathetic mantras, you're right, are literally, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, interrupt that thought. I'm a bad person. I screw everything up.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

I'm not thinking about that. I'm not thinking about it. And then you can insert something like, Hey, I'm doing the best I can, and I'm getting better every day. Hey, doing the best I can. That's not exactly like, Woo, we're going to run the Ironman, talk. But meaningful talk is something you can believe.

Yeah, that's true, actually. I like that. Again, this is- I can see your wheels turning.

You're like, Oh, my God.

Because it's so refreshing, and I really Enjoy when people actually give you the how, not just this is why it's happening and go on and on and on. But these are all, and this is in this book and in your other book, tangible. I guess that's the best way to put it, actionable.

Yeah, you want to get your mental health in order, and you want to have better self-worth and self-love, here's what you do.

Stop sleeping with your phone so it's not next to you when you wake up. That way, when you wake up, you'll get out of bed, and you won't look at social media.

Where do you put the phone? Do you put it downstairs? I charge it in my bathroom. You do? Okay. And what time are you off the phone at night?

Depends on the day. I mean, I don't do what's called the gray zone. So the reason why people are so screwed up right now is because you're living in what's a college is called the gray zone, which is you're never not working, which is your phone. That's true. You're right. It's always on you. And so you never have a break, ever. That's true. And there's no separation between work and life. And your life, there's not going to be balanced, but there can be harmony and there can be boundaries. One of the things that I have that's really helped me because I love what I do for a living, it doesn't even feel like work. I could be on my phone 24 hours a day. I'd never see my husband or my children, but I could be on my phone 24 hours a day. I have a basket in the kitchen, so I use a lot of environmental triggers to help me cheat good behavior. An example of an environmental trigger is a basket in the kitchen that has plugs at it. So when I get home, I put my phone in the kitchen. A lot of times you can't reach me because it's sitting in the basket.

It's not on me. You can't see it.

It's in the basket.

Correct. So keeping it away from you is really important, because here's the thing, you're never going to be successful if you're on your phone 24/7. Never. You're going to always be busy and mistake it for success. If you want to be wildly successful, you better get strategic and smart. And it is not smart to let this thing use you. You need to be the one using it. And so I put it in the basket in the kitchen when I'm home because we don't have phones when we're having a family dinner. I just celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary. Thank you.

I love them.

I think the phone has been one of our biggest fights.

Oh, yeah.

Me too. Just being distracted and not present with each other. So that's helped a lot. When I go to bed, it's in the bathroom. And for everybody that's worried because you're a single parent or you've got a job that you work a shift, that you need to be available, no problem. Tell people, call me if you need me, and leave the Ringer on. But tell them, if you text me, I'm not going to respond. It's amazing. People will text you in the middle of the night But they won't call you unless it's an emergency. So that way, you ensure that you get a good night's sleep because you're not sitting there going to bed watching it or scrolling through it. Then when you wake up and the alarm rings, you have to get out of bed because it's in the bathroom. When you walk toward the bathroom, you have enough presence now to know that you're going to turn it off and flip it over. And now you've got a fighting chance to have the first 30 minutes of the day be for you. You're going to brush your teeth, you're going to stand in front of the mirror, and you're going to have a moment with yourself.

Yourself, where you're going to think about who you're going to be today. You're going to think about what's important to you today. And then you're going to raise your hand and you're going to high five yourself. And the other thing that happens and why this is so powerful, in addition to the subconscious programming, I just spent a ton of time with Dr. Daniel Amen, one of the world's leading experts. He was on there. And he said he was so excited about the high five habit, not only because of all the stuff with neurobics, which is marrying neuroscience and neuropathways, with aerobic activity. It's the fastest way to build new neural pathways, by the way. He was also super excited about it because when you cross a finish line, you raise your hands in the air. When the band that you love comes out, you raise your hands in the air. When you go to high five or double high five, somebody raise your hands in the air. When you pat somebody on the back, you lift your arms in the air. The lifting, whether it's a high five or a fist bump or whatever, is coded into your nervous system as a positive a positive rush.

Remember how we talked about that anxiety rush? Yes. This is a positive energy force. One of the reasons why it feels good if you can push through the fact that it feels weird and you try it for more than five days is because your nervous system starts to jump in. The other thing that happens is you get a drip of dopamine.

Yeah.

And that is why you suddenly feel a little lighter. You feel a little boost in your mood. You feel your shoulders drop. You feel like, okay, My life sucks right now, but I got this.

Right. And then the whole thing is if you keep your phone in your bathroom, and then you're not allowed to check the phone until you finish. Or is it 30 minutes? Or just you have to do the high five first? Do it.

Do it. It works for you.

For me- Don't you get stuck in the bathroom just checking Are you checking your emails? No, absolutely not. You know why? Why?

My mental health and my goals, my finances, my family, my dreams, way more important than what's on that fucking phone.

Right. So you don't check any emails for how long? For 30 minutes, you said? I try. What time do you wake up in the morning?

Depends on the day. My husband's up at 5:00. I'm doing 75 hard right now, so I'm getting up a little bit earlier.

You're doing what?

That challenge 75 hard.

What is that challenge 75 hard? It's some I guess I'm out in the... I have no idea.

Amy is doing it, too. We got roped into it. My husband and my daughter are doing it. I think I heard of it, actually. It's 75 days. It's very male. I've decided I'm going to come up with something called 21 Days Easer.

Is this the one that Jessie Itzler is doing?

No. I have no idea. But it's like two 45 minute workouts a day. One has to be outside.

I did hear about this, actually.

Gallon of water. You have to stick to a particular diet of your choosing. No alcohol. Ten pages of non-fiction. What else do we have to do?

So you have to do two 40- Workout.

Read.

Read. Water. Oh, progress photo. Progress photo. And you've got to do it 75 days in a row. And if you miss one day, you're out.

You got to go back to zero. So is it too late to start?

You can start anytime you want. It's not like a thing. It's like a thing you do yourself or with a group.

So two 45 minutes a day, can it be anything?

I walk my dog. Check.

For 45 minutes? I stretch. Check.

Yeah, I'm into winning. I don't know about everybody else, but this is the other thing. And the high five habit is not for losers, because we very wildly successful people, we tend to harp on the things going wrong. You will have so much more success and more joy and be a better leader if you are able to laser focus and celebrate the things going right.

But how do you teach that, really?

You stand in front of a damn mirror.

And you do the high five? Yes. Okay, let's- I know. You do not want to believe it. I know. I do believe it. I'm going to join the challenge. How about that? You can do this.

Do the high five challenge. High five challenge. Five million people, five mornings in a row.

Okay.

What are three things that very successful people run every day that helps them be successful?

They get their ass out of bed.

You and I both struggled with that.

Oh, my God. I still struggle with it.

So do I. I don't think people believe me. It is a thing every day of my life.

Every day of my life.

It's such a trip.

Well, I understand why, for me anyway. I don't know the reason why it's hard for you, but there are levels of reasons why it is so hard to get out of bed for me and why you have to get your ass out of bed. I'll explain why it's in a second, but first I want to explain why it's actually difficult for me. Number one, from a physiological standpoint, it was very helpful for me to learn that your cortisol levels are their highest when you first wake up in the morning. And so cortisol being the stress hormone, it's also something that can then flood your body with a sense of worry or heaviness or overwhelm. And so knowing that that was just a fact in terms of what's happening in your body, it was helpful. Second, for me personally, part of my childhood trauma was having a incident where somebody did something to me in the middle of the night. And that encoded an experience in my body that is triggered by waking up. Because at the age of, I guess I must have been nine, I had an experience where I woke up one morning and an older kid had climbed into my bed and done something.

The second I woke up, Tom, I I was in full alarm state. Fight or flight kicked in. I disassociated, and I knew something bad had happened. And then I had a second response, which is, I did something wrong. You talk a lot on the show about habits and how habits have three parts, the trigger, the pattern, the reward. Waking up in the morning is a trigger, Tom, for my body to remember this experience of feeling something's wrong. So that's the second reason. And the third reason is because I have fucking amazing sheets and my bed is super comfortable. And my husband used to be next to me, but He now gets up at 5:45. He just rolls right out of bed. And I love to just stay in that bed, Dom, under those sheets.

It's so cozy, it's so snuggly, it's absolutely amazing.

And so that's why it's hard for me. I don't freaking feel like getting up. And then on top of it, and you and I both know this, that an object that is resting will stay resting unless there is a force that acts upon it to get it to move. And so it is always hard for me, and how I've resolved this is by basically realizing that there are a few things that I will never feel like doing. I will never feel like unloading the dishwasher. I will never I will never feel like folding clean clothes. I will never feel like cleaning that damn cat box or picking up the dog poop in the yard. I don't ever feel like getting out of bed, and I still have to do it.

It's interesting. I think For me, my cortisol levels are too low. So whatever it is that gets people out of bed from a physiological level, I don't have that. I've always felt... To me, it feels like the neurochemistry of sleep is slow to be flushed out of my system. Maybe it's just that the cortisol doesn't pump enough. And so getting out of bed just seems like this Herculean task. Because even if there's something I'm excited to do, I find myself still wanting to lay in bed. And then the whole warm and cozy thing, yeah, that goes a long way. Even now, if I'm sleeping alone, like Lisa's traveling right now, so I'm sleeping alone. I always wake up before Lisa, so I can't turn the AC off. I need it to be cold when I sleep.

Now, how cold do you keep your bedroom?

Sixty-eight degrees.

I I keep mine between 66 and 68, and that's also part of the problem. The bed is warm, and it's like climbing into an ice bag to throw their sheets off.

Correct. Yes. I give myself 10 minutes to get out of bed. Ten minutes? Yeah. That for me, going from 4:00 or 5 hours to 10 minutes was like, Oh, my God.

Well, that is a huge thing.

Yeah, for me, 10 is perfect. What do you do in that 10 minutes? I try not to fall back asleep is the honest answer. When I wake up, even though I've woken up naturally because I don't use an alarm.

You don't use an alarm.

I'm like, I wake up rough. Lisa, in the beginning of our relationship, it was really almost contentious because I was so grumpy in the mornings. I'm like, You don't understand. Whatever the chemistry is of sleep, I have a hard time shucking it off. I remember I heard a joke one time. I'm going to totally bastardize this, but the guy was like, To all you morning people, what the fuck are you talking about? He's like, I don't even want to talk. What are you people going on about? You're so happy, you're so smiling. I was like, Yes, that's exactly how I feel. Everything just feels when I wake up. Anyway, I give myself 10 minutes to get out of bed.

When you're in bed, are you thinking about something? Are you looking at the ceiling? What are you doing?

No, I'm under the covers. This would, I think, surprise everybody. I sleep completely bundled up under the covers.

Like with the pillow over your head?

Not the pillow, but the blankets.

See, I put pillows over my head and I make a little breathing hole right here. It's like a safety thing, I think. I'm hiding.

I couldn't have that on my face. On my body I feel nice when on my face. So I'm under the covers, and now this isn't true historically, but for the last probably two years, I sleep with a book playing in my headphones. With a who? A book playing. While you're sleeping? While I sleep the entire night. Why? It is incredible.

What?

And I don't... This isn't one that I necessarily recommend, but if people struggle to stay asleep. So I fall asleep easily. I have a hard time staying asleep. So I wake up three times a night, every single night, the third one being the final time I wake up. And I have to switch my headphones out so they don't die. I have three sets of headphones. So, headphones one, I fall asleep, and that's in ear. Headphone 2, in ear. Headphone 3, over the ear.

You sleep with headphones? So are you on your back?

Yeah. But it is unbelievably comforting.I.

Can't even tell you.Is it the same book?

Well, no, it changes once I finish the book. But I'll read it in these little increments because I have to keep rewinding it. Don't worry, we will get to the other two things that amazingly successful people do. But yes, it's the same book until it's done. I read it in these tiny little increments. It's a specific book.

What book?

It has to be a book like... Have you ever read a biography of Lincoln, which is probably what I'm reading now? And they'll spend 17 pages on what the grass was like in his front yard. And so it's like, you don't have to really scrutinize every sentence. You can drift in and out. And so what ends up happening is I drift and then I'm gone. I'll wake up and let's say I started on chapter I wake up and it's like, chapter 9. So I'm like, okay, I know to go back to chapter 2, and then I fall asleep again, and then I wake up again, I go back to usually chapter 2, and then I'll sleep. So when I wake up, I've got the book still playing. So then I'm like, well, I'm interested. I'll turn off the AC so it starts warming up. I stay under the blankets, and I'll even pull another blanket over me so I start getting too warm. Then I'm like, cool, my nine minutes and 42 seconds are up. Because I have a rule, I have to be standing up before the 10th minute hits.

Okay.

I'm up out of bed before the 10th minute hits, but that has worked like a charm for me. Wow.

This is very complicated. I'm just sitting here about the management that you have to do around this. But I think that's the most important thing about advice is everybody's looking for the silver bullet when in fact, it's got to work for you. That would never work for me. I'm already starting to think about why I sleep on this here and what about the headphones and I'd forget to charge them and then I'd be awake and I'd be staring at the ceiling. You have that system. That's fascinating. One of the things that I also got from what you were saying is that because of the cortisol, like flying through my system, and because I am somebody that has had a very dysregulated nervous system, meaning I have lived life with the accelerator on edge. That when I would wake up and I would feel that wave of being on edge, it had a very weird effect of not motivating me to get out of bed, but pinning me there. Ironically, intellectually, I know, and this is one of the reasons why it's important to get up, because if you can get up, you can start moving, and if you start moving, you can keep moving.

And as you move, the chemistry changes and your mood shifts, and within five minutes, you feel different, even if it's just a little incremental bit of difference. Even though I know that, the feeling in the body was so heavy that I thought, I'll just lay here and hopefully it'll go away and it just gets worse. And that's why I asked you what you do in those 10 minutes, because one of the reasons why I say get out of bed, is because most people reach for their phone. And most people win the battle for success, for dreams, for mental health, for happiness, for confidence, in the first 30 seconds of being awake because they reach for the phone and they immediately direct their attention at other people's lives. That's so crazy. And so that's why I say, I know nobody will... When I tell people, Don't look at your phone, leave your phone out of the air. Everyone's like, and then they go and do it. But if you just get out of bed immediately, you got a fighting chance to be awake enough to not do that. I think most people, if they're struggling with being successful or happy or whatever, I guarantee you, you give your attention to social media or your phone before you've done the second thing.

And so now we're on to the second thing, which is set a freaking intention for the day. Set a mark for what's one thing that matters to you. What is the one thing that you're going to make progress on today? And that one thing could be how you're going to show up with your family. It could be, today I'm getting to that gym, or it could be some project at work that you're going to move the needle on, or it could be some habit that you've learned on impact theory, that today is the day I'm going to do that thing that I learned from Tom, and you're going to do it. It's so important for you to direct your mind that this matters to me because your mind is paying attention. And if you set a little habit in place and successful people do this, you have something that matters to you. Because the other thing about successful people is we're all fucking busy and we have a million things going on. And the second that we look at our phone or we walk through the front door of our business or we step into the kitchen, other people will now need you.

And you will most likely spend the rest of your day unless you have a huge staff and you've got amazing boundaries and you got a lot of white space in your calendar, and that is not me, you will spend the rest of your day, Tom, reacting to everybody else's stuff. And so if you can get into the habit of going today, the most important thing for me to make progress on is X. You have directed to your mind that this thing matters. Now, if you can actually inch it forward before you look at your phone, before you start your workday, before you start responding to everybody else, you will start to develop a superpower because you will see yourself prioritizing what matters to you. And that's critical. So for anybody with a side hustle, do not be working on that thing just at night when you get home. Your dreams, your business, it deserves the first 10 minutes of the morning. And If you literally just lay like one brick on that path between where you are and where you want to go, that one 10 minute of effort every single day on the thing that matters most to you, that changes everything over time.

Because I think most people are struggling with the fact that you have all these things that you want to do, but your life is organized in the exact opposite of what is important to you. That you've let everybody else dictate how you spend your time. You've let everybody else take over your day, and you haven't done the basics of waking up, get moving, think about what matters to you, and if you can, just inch it forward. There's even research about this. I know you've talked about this, too, the progress principle, which they studied extensively at Harvard Business School, that when they look at very successful people and they ask them, Okay, what makes for a fulfilling week? And they were specific to work But I think this applies more generally. What made for a fulfilling week for most people that are successful is I made progress on something that matters to me. I felt a sense of control and progress over the things that I care stuff. And so if you really are someone, and this used to be me for sure, where you feel like you're last on the list, you never have time to get to what's important, that everybody else needs come first, that years keep going by and you're not seeing yourself make the changes that you want to make or not make the money you want to make or not launch that business or start that thing, take a look at the first three or four things you do in the morning.

And see where you put your attention, because I guarantee you it is not aligned with what you actually care about. And so if you can grab that back, you can do the third thing. And the third thing for me is It's this combination. I call it aligned action. And that is that successful people act before they feel ready. They act like the person they want to be instead of the person that they feel like today. And you talk about this, too. This is the philosophy that you believe in, which is behavioral activation therapy. Act like the person you want to become.

Can you give me an example of that?

Oh, yeah. I'm launching a podcast. I've been thinking... Talk about not taking your own advice, okay? Most people don't know this, but I got my start in the media business. This was my first taste of the media business in 2008 by Hosting a local call-in radio show on Saturday mornings in Boston, Massachusetts. I did not know that. Yes. I paid for my kids' braces by reading Invisalign ads for a dentist in Boston that I still go to. Shout out to Dr. Ronken. He did not pay me to say that. That was a long time ago. I loved that show, Tom. I freaking loved it. Why did I have a radio show? I'll tell you why, because for those of you that have seen my first appearance here with Tom, this was the period in my life where Chris's restaurant was going off the rails. We were nearly a million dollars in debt. There were liens on our house. I had lost my job. I needed money. That's why I had that job. It paid $25 an hour for two hours every Saturday. I felt like the world's worst mom because every other parent was at town soccer.

Somebody else, thank you, thank you, thank you to the graces for driving our kids. They were taking our kids to soccer for us while I could go host this radio show and Chris was doing whatever he could to save the business. That show was a lifeline. I would talk to real people every single day. It made me feel connected to people. It gave me a sense of purpose. I loved the intimacy of it. And so that show eventually grew. It became syndicated. And then I won something called the Gracie Award for my coverage of Trayvon's murder. That got CNN's attention. And they called me and said, Hey, we would love to have you be a legal analysts here. And so that then got me on CNN. And ever since I left radio, I have missed it, and I've been wanting to get back to it. And in the back of my mind, especially after I wrote the five-second role, I I kept thinking, I need to launch a podcast. I need to launch a podcast. I love podcast. I need to do this. And it mattered so much to me. I was so drawn to it, Tom, that I think that oftentimes when the dream is such a call, the excuses match the desire for it.

It was never the right time. I just talked myself out of it over and over and over and over and over again. Finally, 18 months ago, I literally I literally woke up one morning, I had my own wake-up call, and I'm like, That's it. You're going to let another 10 years go by unless you make a fucking decision to get started.

How did you get started? So you decide you're going to do it and take people into the weeds a bit. Yeah, okay. This is where I think people go off the rails. They're sitting at home thinking, Yeah, I want to start a podcast as well. And I want to hear because I know that you end up doing it on a way more professional stage, but walk people through who'd you call? Was it a relationship that you built 20 years ago? I want people to follow that.

Yeah. So first things first. I went to my friend Google. Honest to God, even though I know Tom and I know Lisa, I was too embarrassed to ask you because You guys are out here with all these millions of subs, and you've been doing the show for a while. And same thing with Louis. You and I have some amazing friends, and oftentimes, I find that going to people that already seem like they're at the top of the top, that's intimidating because it magnifies, at least for somebody who's got a lot of insecurity like me, it magnifies the distance between where you are starting and where somebody is years down the road. Because part of your genius, Tom, is that it's easy to look at what Tom's built and forget the fact that this dude has been studying film since he went to USC for Film Skull. This guy is an insanely successful entrepreneur that's bringing all of that sweat equity and learning to the table. This is somebody that's dedicated himself to years of figuring this out and sampling and editing. And so I personally find that when you go to somebody that's already there, it It could be a little discouraging.

So I went to Google and I'm like, How do you start a podcast? Honest to God, because I'm smart enough to know it's different than radio. And I didn't even know what equipment people have. I didn't know anything about, Okay, How do you put a podcast up? Do you put it everywhere? I don't know. Is there a form that you put the title on and the captions? And then do you send it somewhere? I know how to upload a video to YouTube, but I don't know anything about this market. I went to Google. You're going to laugh at me, but I bought a course about podcasting. Not laughing at all. I studied a bunch of videos about the type of equipment that people bought. I then just started stalking people that are doing it. And I started to say to myself, Okay, what does somebody that already has a podcast, what do they do that I'm not currently doing? And so the first step is obviously learn about it, identify a group of people that serve as what I call your lights on the path. And so lights on the path are people that are anywhere from one step ahead of you to 10 years ahead of you.

And these are all people that that can guide you forward if you study what they did. And most of them, by the way, we live in the most magical period of time. You have no fucking excuse for not walking toward what you want. I realize it may be harder for some of us with mental health issues. I realize that not everybody starts at the same starting line because of bias and all kinds of things that can happen to people. But the bottom line is, through your actions and attitude, you can create anything you fucking want. And look, I'm I'm sitting here saying, I've been wanting to do a podcast for eight years, and for six years, I was nothing but excuses for why I couldn't get started. And then finally, I'm like, Fuck it, I got to start. And so you start by Google the topic. Number one, become a student of what you want to be first. That's the mindset. What can I learn? What are people doing that is calling to me? What are people doing that I don't like? And so as I started being a student of this, really important, that's why I say, Google.

Google is a search engine. Become a student of what you want to learn about or launch in your life. And there's a bazillion books. There's master classes, there's free videos, there's workshops and it's so cool. People like Tom are unpacking this shit for you with people. And so you can also hear people's stories. And so I probably just immerse myself in it, Tom. And I'd say the The first person that I called was Rich Roll. Rich Roll is a really good friend of mine.

An amazing human.

Amazing human being. And he was really cute. I called and said, Okay, I'm going to do this thing. What would you tell me knowing everything you know, having been doing the podcast for seven years? And interesting about Rich, that guy is an artist, incredible storyteller, amazing personal story. His hands are in every aspect of every aspect of that podcast. That is Rich's gift to the world. And what he said to me, as he said, Turn on a mic. That's good advice. Turn on a mic. Start recording shit. But I'm not ready.

But I don't have the equipment. I haven't done this.

But Mel, if you want to do this thing, Turn on the mic and start taping episodes and then listen to it. They're going to sound like shit. You're going to realize it's a hell of a lot harder than you think it is. Here's the second thing. Number one, become a student of what you want. Even if you don't know people or you don't have a network that is like the one that you and I have built over time, you can still learn from people they haven't met, full stop.

Especially with YouTube.

It's crazy. It's incredible.

Then you just reverse engineer it. What you'll do is if you were to simply do this exercise, we're just going to stick with the podcast episode, but you could insert anything. How do I start a dry cleaning business? You could Google. I don't know how to use that, but I bet there's a video about it. How do I start a catering business? Do I need a commercial kitchen to do that? All these things somebody has figured out, and they have put a video out, or they've written a blog post, or they've written a book, or they're doing a course right now on it. As you're a student, here's your assignment from Mel Robbins. Write down all the actions that you're learning about that people do. Oh, for podcasting, I got to learn how to edit audio. Oh, I got to learn about equipment. Oh, I got to understand all these platforms. Oh, I've got to listen to a ton of podcasts to understand what I like and what I don't like. Oh, I've got to record some. Oh, I've got to... There's a bazillion things, right? And so keep that list handy because every day you can wake up and look at that list and Where is your roadmap to what you want to create in your life?

What happens next is there will be something on that list that is the starting line for real, like when Chick gets real. For me, that was turning on a microphone, which I started doing about six months ago.

How did you deal with being bad if you were bad in the beginning?

I was terrible. Well, because I yammer on and on and on, and I have a very dyslexic ADHD brain, and so I'm all over the freaking place. It was interesting because I just assumed having done six audio projects with Audible and these two self-published audiobooks that, Okay, we got a lot to talk about. Well, one of the One of the big takeaways for me in being a student of this is that the podcast is not about me. It's about what my intention is that I wanted to have the listener experience. If you are going to create something that has an intention, it has a very different level of artistry and discipline and purpose to it. And so I figured out very quickly that, yes, I personally want a podcast to sound like two friends having a conversation. And without a certain level of prep and intention on my part, it was not going to turn out that way. It was going to be Mel meandering all over the place. I mean, even just here, you and I sit down and we're 20 minutes into a conversation and we're already like, We're like, Time out. And so I needed to, in my student mindset, I needed to be honest with myself that there are things that I have as natural talents and skills, just like everybody does.

But I also have major weaknesses that I got to get under control so that I don't derail possible success and fulfillment with this project based on my weaknesses.

That's the part I want to understand, though. You have these weaknesses, they're rearing their head, you're having some emotional response. How do you soothe yourself through that? Is it just a belief that, Hey, I can learn, I'll get to the other side, that the awkwardness is a natural part of the progression? Or what do you do to keep that emotional demon from consuming you?

It's an excellent question. It brings us to number three, right? Because we've talked about get up, we've talked about set an attention, we've talked about aligned action. And part of aligned action is about your attitude. So I think I am proud of this unwavering faith and optimism that I have programmed into my noggin over the past several years. That I believe that whatever it is that I'm doing is leading me somewhere else. That every experience, especially the shitty stuff that you can-In the universe is guiding me In your way? No, I just feel like... So it could be mystical and spiritual, but for me, it's more of an internal grounded faith. I think you and I talked about this, but I had this this wake-up call moment where I realized, Oh, my God, you and I are sitting here today, Tom. And if you and I look back at our lives, you can see how everything that happened led you right here. And that even the hardest moments had a deep purpose in shaping who you are, your skills, your expertise, your heart, your soul, your habits, your perspective, and knowing that that's always been true.

Do you believe that that's true, that everything that's happened to you has somehow prepared you for what's happening now?

I don't believe that it's prepared me. I think that it shapes you for sure. I think most people live by the law of accident, though, and I'm terrified to live by the law of accident.

What is the law of accident?

That things happen and I just go with them. I don't believe in that. Yes. I don't think everything happens for well. One of my favorite Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes the reason is that you're dumb and unprepared or whatever. You think you're stupid.

You make dumb decisions.

That I will agree with. But I think that we make meaning and purpose out of things. I don't think they intrinsically have meaning and purpose. I think the second law of thermodynamics is true, that everything leads towards entropy, aka chaos. The only way to get it back on track is what you're walking us through, which is you inject energy back into the system. This idea of aligned action makes a lot of sense to me. You have to figure out, Okay, I got out of bed, I set my intention, and now I'm going to do things that align with my intention. But that's going to be hard. They're going to be things that are knocking me off course. It's interesting that you have a deep faith that I guess you've made sense of everything.

No. Let me see if I can explain it this way. I know, I guess it makes me feel grounded, confident, and assured that all the shit that's happened back there, stuff I would not want to repeat, but if it brought me to here, I would, that it has shaped me, prepared me. It has had a purpose.

Do you think things sometimes shape you for the worst, though?

I think things shape you for the worst until you get the lesson or the wake-up call or the frustrated rock-bottom moment.

Is Mel Robin just unusually good at making use of that? I actually think you are.

I think that I hate the fact that I have to hit a fucking wall to change direction.

As your audience, though, it's really interesting. For the audience, one of the first things you said when you got here was, I'm actually doing really well right now. I've learned to reject all the self-hatred beating myself up and all that. And my reaction was, that's amazing. But you've made such extraordinarily good use out When you have all your struggle, you are uniquely able to take that mess of life and turn it into this really simple idea that people can deploy immediately.

I literally find it comforting knowing that somehow every experience of my life is going to be connected to something in the future.

Because you're good at learning lessons, I have to put that caveat. Yes.

When I believe that the shit that's going on is going to somehow connect to something in the future, it allows me to be more resilient. It allows me to be a little bit more, is it objective? Yeah, objective when When things are going wrong or when I'm in a really low point or when I listen to my first couple of episodes that I recall, Okay, Rich Roll, I'm going to do a podcast episode now. And I listen, I'm like, Holy shit, this sucks. And I just took on an advertising part. This really sucks. I got a lot of work to do. I go, Yeah. And thank God you had that call with Rich. And thank God you're listening to it because you're right, Mel. If you want this to really make a difference in people's lives, if you want to really do something awesome here, you're going to have to fucking learn something new.

Walk me through that process. So what are you doing now? The first or what did you do? The first few episodes were not what you wanted.

Before I came here, so we have taped about 17 versions of episode one, not because I'm trying to be perfect, but because I have a certain standard for what I want to put out there. I literally, as we've gotten closer and closer and closer and closer and closer to launch, I just knew that what we had put out was not what I was supposed to put out. I kept standing, though, not in a place like, We're fucked. We're literally launching four days from this interview, Tom. Two hours ago, I was in the corner of my hotel room in LA. My team had built a... Remember when you were kids, you make those little forts out of sofa cushions? I am in a fortress of sofa cushions on the floor of the hotel room a mile from here. There is a fucking truck outside the window going... That sounds about right. And we've We got a deadline to get this to our sound engineer so it can get mixed in everything. I know that this is all leading somewhere else, so there's no reason to actually get stressed out about it. There's no reason to get nervous about it.

And so being able to be in a moment that's high pressure and know that somehow it's going to work out, and somehow this lesson is going to connect me to something in the future, and somehow this all leads somewhere. It allows me to show up when shit's going sideways in my life and still maintain this centered, focused level of confidence.

I started with coaching maybe 10 years ago, but I've never made... I'd I had confidence in myself or what I was selling, and so I never made any money coaching. I just kept going to groups like Brenda and some of those others, and I just kept going thinking it was going to happen. The first of the year, I was introduced to grief for the first time. And I just said, Grief is wonderful about eliminating all the chatter around you. So I just said, Okay, I'm stopping everything. So I quit every program I was in. I sat down and I said, Okay, what do I like about my life? Well, I have a podcast. I've had it for eight years, and it's always been about women in transition. And it's called Second Wind with Joyce. So I love doing that. So my natural inclination is to go into speaking because I like being in front of audience, telling the story. But my audience is still about the transformation. But because I have continued to age, so has my group that I want to support. I see this group of 50, 60s that go through re-evaluating who they They're finding their identity.

They've never found their identity because they inherited it. And now they're faced with what I do now. I've lost my partner. I've lost who am I?

Is that what And what happened to you?

No, I divorced when I was 50.

Who did you lose recently?

My ex-husband and my sister. Okay.

So anyway, how do I make a business? What did you say, hon?

How do I make a business?

I don't I get the sense that you want to be doing this. I get this, so just hear me out. I get the sense that you feel like you should. And what I want you to really just hang with me for a second.

I love personal development.

If I didn't have a business around personal development, I would just constantly go to seminars and I'd listen to podcasts, and I would consume it because I love it. It makes me feel human. It makes me feel connected to other people. It makes me, in moments, feel in touch with something larger in life.

And there's something that is bigger than a podcast or coaching or speaking.

I just get the sense with you that there's more of a... I just get the sense with you that there's more of a calling And that's why it's not turning into a business.

There is a desire to serve. There's a desire to support. There's a desire to connect.

And what is coming up for me, maybe it's because my husband is going through this training, but he's going through the training to be a death doula. And I don't know if that's what you would do, but there's something... To me, you love the podcast the most. What do you love about it?

Interaction with people, sharing the story. Their stories are all about how life is better after the trauma because of the trauma. And so I like sharing that message.

So I feel...

I don't know.

What's your reaction to what I'm saying?

Yeah, I agree with some of it. I agree that I have a bigger purpose. And I've started writing because somebody said to me, Well, you're grieving. Why don't you write? And I went, Duh. It had to come from outside of me. So I started writing. I'm enjoying that very much.

Okay. Do you have to make money?

To be honest.

No.

Okay. Now we're getting somewhere.

But let me tell you this. From childhood, money is a measurement to me. Of what? From making money. Of what?

What is money a measurement of?

Success.

Bullshit.

Well, for me. It's my belief.

I think you need to change your belief.

Well, maybe- I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why.

Because you have not... You say you value it, and yet your actions don't tell me that you do. Your actions tell me that you value connection and you value purpose, and you value making a difference. I think somebody else made you feel like it wasn't successful or what you're doing is not helpful or big enough if there isn't money attached to it.

That's probably true.

That's 100% true. Look, I'm not saying it's not fun to have money.

I'm not saying it's not fun to make money.

I love making money. I love building shit. I love all that stuff. But I will never be able to coach you in how to make money if in your heart, you actually don't care about it. And I don't think you do. I think that somewhere back in history, you got it in your head that you're only successful if you're making money.

And that's horse shit.

You're successful if you are happy with who you are are, and if you are happy with the life that you're living, that is what success is.

If you get to spend your days on a podcast, talking to people, making a difference, You are a very successful person, particularly if you don't have to worry about whether or not it makes money.

And so what I want you to do is I want you to go to work on dismantling this notion of what a successful life looks like and what your worth is.

Yeah.

You are wildly successful. Tell me why that's true.

I Because I make a difference.

Fuck, yes.

That's right, Joyce. That's right. You focus on that and you show up, and you show up with that energy on that podcast, and you show up with that energy with the women you're talking to. And trust me, if money is supposed to fall out of the sky, it will land in your lap. There is a reason why you haven't done it, because deep in your soul, you know that's not what matters. You know what matters is what you're already doing.

And I want you to launch yourself into a new chapter where you honor that and where you truly celebrate the fact that every Every day.

We have been given the gift of Joyce. Joyce has the ability to wake up every fucking day and make a difference in someone's life.

Joyce has the ability to sit with people that are grieving and help them understand that grief is so important because actually what you're present to is all the love that you feel.

And Joyce has the ability to get people to talk about their trauma. And that's helping everybody. That is such a beautiful thing, Joyce. It is a gift that we have all been given that you can do that.

Thank you.

What are you getting from this?

Oh, well, tears. I always have tears. I'm just getting more permission just to sit back and enjoy life.

Yes.

I'm getting out of my head, probably.

Yeah. You deserve to enjoy your life. I'm trying to learn that lesson, too. And suffering can become a habit.

It would be really wonderful if you could lead by example and enjoy yourself.

Yeah.

Beautiful job, Joyce. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Okay, so you have all of the same insecurities and fears and doubts, like wants the projects to work and are afraid that it's not going to work out. So that is super relatable.

But what then makes the difference?

If Mel Robin struggles with all the things that average human struggles with, how do you then go on to achieve extraordinary success when most people don't? So there is probably a multi-layered answer. So I'll number it as I go along. I think that, number one, work ethic. I'll outwork anybody. I know that the secret to success is not getting it right. It's actually getting after it until you get it done. And so work ethic, work ethic, work ethic. Anything is possible if you are willing to give up your timeline and you're willing to put your head down and put the work in. The second thing is I know that failure and screw-ups are a massive part of paving the road to success. I'm not a lucky person that can just study stuff and implement it, and then it all works out. I have this deeply personal process that everybody shares, by the way, of studying everybody who does it really well, and then implementing their best practices, and then tweaking it so that it feels right. And so failure, screw-ups, detours, all of it is part of the road to success. The third thing is, I write about actually all of this stuff in the high five habit.

There is this mindset trick that I created that is an entire chapter in the High Five Habit that I created when I was launching the five-second rule book, which the hard cover book was a huge failure, believe it or not. And When we launched the hard cover, it originally... The bottom line is that when I launched the hard cover, Evan, the hard cover was not available for sale when my marketing kicked off. There was a screw up It was Amazon. I started marketing. I told everybody to go buy it, and it read as out of stock. Couldn't even pre-order it. It was like out of stock. Huge mix up on my part. I was a self-published author. As my attitude was going down the drain, I literally started saying this thing to myself on repeat, and everybody, you should just feel this. It's like Chapter 13 in the book. This moment is preparing me. This moment is preparing me. This moment is preparing me for something amazing that hasn't happened yet. And every single thing in my life that has been a struggle or a hardship or a heartbreak or anything, even losing people I love to the disease of hopelessness and addiction, those moments of going through tremendous grief and heartache prepared me to help other people to do it.

And so when you can start to ground yourself in this idea that... I never really liked, by the way, Evan, that whole phrase, Life is happening for me. Because there's a lot of it, but I don't want it. I don't believe it's for me. But there's something about tweaking it like, This is preparing me. It allows me to take control of a situation I don't like, I didn't want, I didn't plan for, it's not what I deserve. But if it's preparing me for something, it flips my mindset into this attitude that allows me to endure it and allows me to have perspective that someday I will look back on it and understand the wisdom that I gained from it. And so the failure of the hard cover with the five-second rule prepared me for something all right. It introduced me to my business model that has a huge partnership with Audible. The five-second rule, because of the failure of the hard cover, became the most sold and listened to audiobook of the year of all of 2017 and opened up a whole new business model, which, by the way, is still bearing out everybody because as the book sells out around the world, it's the audiobook.

We were the number one selling audiobook in the world last week, number two selling title on Amazon because of the audiobook. And so there's a whole new business model I learned. And so you need to understand that every failure that you have, everybody, it is actually preparing you for something else. That's number three, that attitude. The other thing, honestly, is I've been successful in spite of my yourself, Evan, because it's only since learning the high five habit that I have been able to truly reset my default thinking and become a person whose default is to cheer for herself. Do I have insecurities? Yes. Do I have self doubts? Yes. But the one thing I don't do anymore is I do not beat the out of myself anymore. You see, even all those years, everybody, when my speaking career was taking off, I was literally my biggest critic. It was never enough. It was, well, I... Even though the audience is giving me a standing ovation and the clients just hired me to do seven more events, Evan, I'm like, well, God, I really screwed up minute 43. I really blew it that time. I was relentless with myself.

And there's a difference, everybody. Between having a level of excellence in what you do and high standards, which I know Evan has a level of excellence in what he does. And he also marries his process with excellence, but that's very different than relentless self-criticism. You know what I mean? And what happens with relentless self-criticism, self-hatred, self-doubt, All of that beat down is that number one, you slow down your progress. Number two, you miss opportunities.

Number three, you lose inspiration and motivation because everything is a grind.

Number four, you have no joy in what you're doing because you are singularly focused on finding stuff that's not going right. Number five, you literally will never be happy and content because you're not allowing yourself to celebrate and empower your sofa all the things you're doing right, which only creates more positive momentum. And it was the high five habit, something I created by mistaken in April of 2020 that completely changed my habits, my attitude. The reason why this is the most successful thing I've ever done is because I'm different. Using the high five habit, I've asked for help. I've I've gotten out of the insecurity of needing to do it all myself. I'm enjoying the process of it, even though it's a show behind the scenes. This is just the greatest gift in the world because it changes how I experience my life. And that's the biggest thing, everybody. That's the final takeaway in terms of success and why most of you don't have the success you deserve, because you're too hard on yourself. You are focused on what's not working instead of celebrating what is. You're beating Getting the hell out of yourself every day, which is demotivating.

If you want to be more successful than you could ever imagine, you must read the high five habit. You must start to put these practices in place. You must start to see the good. You must start to flip your attitude when it's going down. And you must, must, must be able to use the tools in here to become somebody that is supportive, encouraging of yourself.

Success is standing in front of a mirror in my bathroom and seeing a person reflected back that I love and that I am proud to spend my life with.

When was the moment that you realized that was success for you? Has it been this gradual thing over time that you've looked at yourself in the mirror and said, I love myself for who I am, or was it more of a catalyst for you?

Well, I think for the first 52 years of my life, I did the opposite. I, as an adult, really was relentless in my self-criticism, my judgment. My role in my life was chief criticizer. And I did not have this realization about the profound power of, first of all, self-acceptance, because you can't actually get to the profound power of self-love until you walk through the gates of self-acceptance. And for most people, they don't even get there because the habits of self-rejection and self-criticism and self-hatred are so entrenched And it's actually become so casual and so subconscious that you don't realize just how relentless the beat down is in your mind. And that was me. And I remember the distinct moment that I had the breakthrough, and it was in April of 2020, and we were full on the whole world in quarantine at this point, and my business was upside down and life was very overwhelming. And this is the day after I had first high-fived myself in the mirror.

And what's interesting is that first morning in April of 2020, that I very first did the high five, a very pathetic moment in my life, one that's very relatable, standing in my bathroom, feeling beaten down and overwhelmed by the demands of life and work, and just feeling like it was all just too much and just completely defeated before I had even started the day.

I caught my reflection, and I first thought when I looked at myself in the mirror, my God, you look like hell. And then, of course, the beat down starts. You're dark circles, one boob's lower than the other. Your neck is so saggy. And then, of course, once one thought goes negative, it's like you're just going to circle the drain. And so next thing you know, it's why did you get up so late? You got a Zoom call in eight minutes. You didn't text Jay back. You haven't walked the dog. Pound down, pound down, pound down. And I don't know what came over me because you can probably tell that I'm not that cheesy of a person. I'm pretty direct.

Tell it like it is.

But For whatever reason, standing there that morning feeling overwhelmed by life in my underwear, I just instinctually raised my hand and gave the woman in the mirror a high five because she looked like she needed it. And that very first morning, my reaction to just instinctually high fiving myself was to laugh at myself because it was so cheesy. But I'll tell you something, there was a little switch that flipped. It's not like I was like, my life has changed. I need to write a book.

Here we go. Okay. Oh, my God. Finally, I have a book title.

No, that's not what happened. I just felt this energy shift where I didn't even think anything, Jay. I just felt this energy muster up that was a little bit like a teammate who when you screw up a play and they high five you to say, shake it off, get your ass back in there. Come on now. It was a little bit like that. But it was the second morning, the second morning that everything broke open. And so you asked a question about When was it that I learned how to see a person in the mirror that I loved? And it has not been a moment. It's been a process, but it began in a moment. That second morning, I woke up, same problem, same issues, feeling totally overwhelmed by life, and I start walking to the bathroom. And before I even get into the bathroom, I realize I'm feeling something I've never felt before in my adult life. And it was this. You know how when you are going to go meet a friend at a cafe and you really like this person and you're about to walk in the door and see somebody you like, what do you feel, Jay?

Oh, sheer excitement. Yeah, nerves and sheer excitement. Yeah.

Yeah. I felt that way about seeing myself. Wow. Now, I felt excitement about seeing an outfit or seeing a haircut. But I don't ever recall in my entire adult life the feeling of being excited to see the human being Mel Robbins. And I think that moment right there was the beginning of realizing what self love is. And so I rounded the corner to the bathroom, and the profound nature of this is starting to unfold. And as I walk in there and I step in front of my sink, and I see myself in the mirror, I have this second realization. And the second realization is there's always two people in the bathroom with you every morning. There's you and there's a human being in the mirror. And that human being is trying, and that human being needs you, and they are tired of your negativity, and they are tired of you criticizing everything that they're doing, and they are tired of the beat down, and they need you to be more encouraging. They need you to be more compassionate. They need you to be more optimistic. They need you to have more fun. They need you to wake up and see them.

And when When I realized that I wasn't staring at a reflection, I was staring at my humanity. I was staring at me, this human being. It shifted everything. I had this realization that when I see one of our three kids, they're 23, 21, and 16. And yeah, there are times on a daily basis that they irritate the hell out of me. But I never, ever cast a gaze on them without just feeling this acceptance and this love for their existence, even if they're annoying me. I still have this baseline that is grounded in acceptance. It's grounded in compassion. It's grounded in gratitude that they're in my life. It's grounded in seeing them and loving them for who they are, not trying to change, like just this pure thing. And I realized in that moment that I was experiencing that with myself. And so the high five in the mirror has become this way to demonstrate partnership with self, acceptance of self, forgiveness of self. And I'll tell you, I started adding it into my morning routine. And the way that I did it was when I'm done brushing my teeth, I get the gunk out of my mouth so I don't have bad breath all day.

Then I stand with myself for a second. I look at myself in the eyes, and then I raise my hand. I don't even say a word because the high five does all the work for you. I mean, the science behind this thing is bananas. That's a whole another story we can talk about. But I did this every day for a month. And then I ended up putting a photo up, as you read about in chapter two. I didn't put any instructions on the photo. It's just me with my retainer in and a high five in the mirror. And within an hour, more than 100 people around the world had high five themselves in the mirror and posted it online. And that's what made me go, oh, my God, maybe I'm not the only one who feels defeated. Maybe I'm not the only one who needs a little encouragement. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels like some days I just can't deal with the demands of my life. Maybe I'm not the only one who needs to learn how to support themselves a little bit better, be a little kinder, a little bit more encouraging.

Maybe just maybe there's something here. And so I took on a year long research project, and the results of it are absolutely freaking extraordinary. This is the most powerful thing I have ever discovered in my entire life. The leading neuroscientists, people that have discovered neuroplasticity in the '80s, have now completely verified everything we're talking about and added in 10 times more research about why this is so ground-breaking.

And you also mentioned, I've heard you talk about Dr. Daniel Amen, too, and how he's excited about this habit. And the moment I heard about this habit, I was excited, too, because it's so simple. And I've often tried my best to understand this, and hopefully you can help me understand this. Why is it that people often resist something that is so simple? Is it because they feel like because it's so simple, it's too good to be true?

I think that's the right answer. I also think that there's... Oh, the complexity bias. So your brain has a complexity bias whereby if your dreams are big or your problems feel big, you naturally think the solution to either solving it or achieving the big dream must also be big and complex. And what I found in life is that, ironically, it's the opposite. The bigger the problem, the smaller the solution that makes a difference. The bigger the dream, the smaller the action that starts you going there. And so I do think that there is a immediate reaction that is that, well, this is so simple. I think there's also this resignation that we all have that that's cheesy. I'm not doing that shit. I'm just, come on, please. And then the bigger reason why, though, that people resist it is really sad. And the real reason why people resist this is because your habit of self-rejection is so profound and strong and relentless and habitual that high-fiving yourself is literally... It'd be like me saying, Oh, no, you got to eat with your tonight. It makes no sense because we all know, Jay, that you need to be kind to yourself.

We all know that you need to treat yourself better. We've all heard a bazillion times us say, If I talk to my friends, the the way that I talk to myself or if my friends talk to me the way that I talk to them, I wouldn't be friends with them. Yeah. And you still talk to yourself that way. And the reason why so many of us are so stuck is we don't know how to be kinder to ourselves because nobody has ever taught you how. We don't know how to stop the relentless criticism because nobody's ever taught us how. And it is such a strong habit that it is akin to your dominant hand. I could write with my left hand, but it would be such a pain because it's the opposite of what I've done my entire lifetime. And for most people, based on our research, they have spent an entire lifetime criticizing empathizing themselves. It's literally you and I speak English. It's the language that we speak. Criticism, judgment, the beat down is the language that most people speak in their minds. And so that's the other reason why most people's reaction to this is, well, that's dumb.

That's not going to work. And besides, it's stupid. I'm not doing it. Yeah.

For a long I was one of those people that beat myself up. I thought that I didn't have worth, didn't have purpose, I didn't know that my story actually mattered. So I just would allow all the negative emotions and feelings, you name it, to just flood in my life. And that would often inform how I acted with my friends, with my family, with my work colleagues, you name it. Wasn't a good scenario. I was very angry, very upset because I felt like I wasn't going anywhere until that I, one day, it's a long story, Mel, but to cut it short, until everything just came crashing down. And I started to ask myself those difficult questions that many people often avoid and really started to dig deep into who is Jay? Who am I really? What is my purpose? And then it was like, well, you were talking about how you had that moment of realization. I call it the old light bulb burst and the new one was quickly put in its place. And It was like shining brightly, and it finally all made sense. It's like, my story has value. I was born with a purpose.

I don't have to go and continue to chase this thing. I am enough right now. And I love your message, especially because it speaks to this very thing of you do have value, you are enough, and you should love yourself every single day, no matter what.

Yeah. And I knew all that, and yet I had no idea how to do it, Jay. Yeah. I was on the outside. You would look at me and say, wow, that Mel Robbins is such a positive, loving person. I was to everybody else. Oh, wow, that Mel Robbins, she is wildly successful. Yeah. Because I was relentlessly trying to prove to myself that I had value. I had married worth with achievement like so many of us do. And we do it because when we were little, you got positive attention and praise when you did well in school, when you made the sports team. It got conditioned into you to believe that you are only worthy when you are doing something that makes you feel worthy. And so we get all these mixed messages. And so I didn't know how to do those things, Jay. I would stand in the mirror having self-published a book selling 2 million copies and be like, It's not enough. What's next? Oh, the audible things everyone, not enough. And the reason why is I had not fixed the core problem that every human being struggles with, and it is self-rejection. That is everybody's core problem.

And I didn't even know how deeply of a problem it was until I discovered the high five habit and started to practice treating myself differently. Because here's the thing that is so interesting based on the research. You cannot change a habit of self projection and a habit of self-hatred by telling yourself you're worthy. You cannot do it by telling yourself you love yourself. And the reason why is your actions for your entire life have demonstrated the opposite. And So your brain goes, no, you don't. You don't think you're worthy. Stop saying that. You don't believe that. And so your brain rejects it because it's been programmed based on your own behavior to believe that you don't think anything you do is good enough. You don't think you're ever good you're looking enough. You don't think it's ever enough money. That is what you've trained your brain to believe. And so the only thing that has ever worked for me is the high five habit. And I'll tell you why, because it's a physical action. You shouldn't say a thing when you do it because the programming is too powerful against you and your mind. And I want you, when you practice this, to leverage programming and neural associations that are already in your brain associated with cheering for everybody else.

We're just going to aim it right back at you. And so the huge transformational power of this is that because most of us have either watched other people high five one another in sports or in road races, or we've watched videos of teachers high fiving kids as they enter the classroom, or we have experienced high fiving people that we love or high fiving teammates, or we have experienced somebody else high fiving us, that That behavior and the positive association and the neural programming and the wiring in your nervous system is already in your body, mind, and spirit. We are just going to aim all that stuff back at your own reflection. And so what we're doing with the physical action of high-fiving the mirror is you are every single morning shutting down the critic. You are demonstrating that you see yourself and you care about yourself. And over a short period of time, based on the chemical releases in your brain, based on the nervous system wiring that gives you a celebratory jolt, and based on all the positive programming that you have in your mind already affiliated with a high five, you literally reset your default programming back to the way that you were born.

Because the bottom line is, none of us came out of the womb beating the heck out of ourselves. None of us as toddlers stood in front of in the mirror and we're like, Gosh, my thighs are fat. I better not go to kindergarten today. We were wired for love. We were wired for self-acceptance. Life taught you to hate yourself. And I'm telling you, through the habits in this book, and by adding a high five to your morning routine, you will tap back into something that is core to who you are, which is self-love and self-acceptance.

How does the high five habit help people that are dealing with trauma?

It's a great question. So number one, let's talk about what happens when you do it. So how it helps with trauma is that we're going to unpack trauma at several layers because trauma is obviously a stored experience experience in your mind, body, and spirit. And what happens for a lot of people with trauma is that when you stand before yourself in the bathroom and you look in the mirror, a lot of people with trauma that has not been healed or is not being healed, as you see the trauma as evidence that you're damaged, that you're unlovable, that you're a bad person, that nothing's going to work out for you, that you're not good enough. And so you thereby see a person that isn't worthy of the love that you desire. It's why you're seeking it in relationships and you're seeking it outside of yourself, because internally, you see the trauma not as evidence that you've survived something, which means you deserve a high five, but evidence that you're damaged so you don't. And so the high five in the mirror becomes an act of healing. It becomes an act of defiance that brings your power back inside you.

It becomes an act of empowerment, acknowledging how far you've come and all that you've survived and the fact that you still love you and you still are going to have you. There was a woman that wrote to us that was in a domestic violence shelter when she saw a video that I did about the high five habit. And she said that I've had childhood trauma very severe from the age of four till about 15. Then I left the family abuse of home. I'm now in my late 20s. I've been in a wildly violent relationship. I've just escaped that. I have nothing. I know I have a lifetime of healing. But in five days, waking up in a domestic violence shelter in the most traumatic experience of my life, what the high five habit is showing me is that at least I still have myself. That if I could learn how to have my own back, if I can forgive myself for the mistakes I've made, if I could forgive myself for not listening to my intuition, if I could see myself, then I can heal myself. That's what it can do for trauma. The other thing that I write about in this book is because the high five in the mirror is just the beginning.

As you can practice something called high fiving your heart. This is in chapter 13. This is how you can use a five, you put it in the center of your chest. And I want you to put it right here because you're going to now use something that's a treasure in your body called the vagus nerve. And as you know, the vagus nerve, it's an on-off switch. It switches off your fight or flight dysregulated, traumatized nervous system, and it flips on your resting, cool, grounded nervous system. So on those mornings where you wake up and you're spiraling, or those mornings, and mornings for a lot of people because cortisol levels are high, or it's evening, and darkness triggers you. When you feel yourself get triggered, put your hands on your chest. This is called high-fiving your heart. Take a deep breath. And then just repeat these words. I'm okay.

I'm okay.

I'm safe.

I'm safe.

I'm loved.

I'm loved.

And repeat them over and over and over until you feel yourself come back into your body. And what you're going to feel as you repeat those words and you press right here in the center of your chest, activating the vagus nerve, is you're going to feel your dysregulated, triggered nervous system Flip off. And you're going to feel yourself come back into your grounded body. And you're going to feel yourself take control of your body response, whether you're in a grocery store, you're at a stoplight, or you're standing in your kitchen, or you're waking up. And in that moment, if you can hear yourself saying or thinking, I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved, it's true. In that moment, you are. And even if it only gives you a few seconds, it allows you to realize that within you, you have the ability to take control of how you're feeling in any moment.

I think it's another powerful tool that we can all use because I myself have experienced quite a bit of trauma. So I'm a morning person. I get up at 4:00 AM in the morning. People say that I'm crazy, but I do it for a specific reason. And I have a philosophy in my life that if I can beat the sun, which is constant every single day, then no matter what comes my way during the day, I can beat that, too. And it's setting myself up for some positive habits like exercise, like prayer and meditation, the high five habit now as well that I do. All these things, they're all in my repertoire, my toolkit for success in combating any of those horrible things that do come my way, stressful times, you name it.

What have you either learned about yourself or experienced by adding a high five in the mirror to your morning routine?

I think it's what I've noticed more recently, actually, is it makes me smile, number one. Number two, it makes me... When I do those words, and at the end, when I get to you are loved, it actually makes me feel like, hang on a minute, I am loved. It puts me in that, once again, reminding state that I am loved. And it helps me whenever I'm going through a difficult, stressful moment of the day to just stop and reflect and say, Jay, you high five yourself in the morning. It's going to be okay. This is nothing. So that's what it's helped me do.

Yeah. Well, I'm sure you love the study in the book in Chapter 2 about NBA teams, and most people love this study. But basically, if you think about it, the reason why you smile, by the way, is because any time somebody high fives you, your brain gives you a drip of dopamine. And your The brain does not know the difference between you high-fiving yourself in the mirror and you high-fiving me. And so when I see the programming, you're smiling and everybody feels a lightened mood, even on the worst mornings, because your brain is giving you dopamine. The second reason why you feel more assured is because your body instinctually is wired for gestures of celebration. And so when you cross a finish line, what do you do? High-five. Farms immediately go up, right?Yeah.Yeah, arms up. When you wave, arms up. When your favorite team scores, arms up. When your favorite band comes on the stage, arms up. When you surprise somebody, arms up. And so the arms up is a celebratory gesture. And so the reason why you leave the bathroom feeling a little more empowered is your nervous system just gave you some of that associative programming that gave you a jolt of vitality.

Now, when we take this into the research lane, researchers looked at the NBA basketball teams here in the United States, and they were curious, researchers at Berkeley University, what is it that are the habits of the teams that have the best winning-est records? And they discovered that there are habits present in the preseason that are present for all teams that are winning, and they're not present for the teams that have terrible records. And the habits were this. The teams that have the best records at the end of the season also have the most number of fist bumps, pats on the back, and high fives during the preseason. And the reason why this habit of encouraging gestures correlates to a winning record is because these aren't just gestures. They're demonstrating frustrations of trust and partnership. The teams that do the worst have the least number of these. No fist bumps, no pats on the back. Everybody's in it for themselves. And you can see it because they make selfish moves, selfish plays, teams not wired together. And I'm here to tell you that the reason why you feel that carry through in your day is because the high five is creating partnership with yourself and trust within yourself.

And it gets sealed in your mind. We've had more than 130,000 people go through a five day high five challenge in a matter of 26 days from 91 countries. And So many people report that throughout their day, they also can reflect back to the high five in the morning. Again, because the neural association with a high five is so pounded into everybody's brain, regardless of where you grew up, regardless of the culture that you grew up in, you have witnessed these things happening in culture. And so it's just programming that we're activating to help you. And here's what I've noticed. This is the biggest thing everybody. And it's this. I mentioned the fact that I was such an achiever because I thought that that's what made me worthy of love. And so many of you will stand in front of the mirror and you'll feel resistant to doing this because you'll say, But I didn't go to the gym today. But I didn't get up at four o'clock. I hit the snooze button. Should I still high five myself? And the answer is yes, especially on those days. Because the high five isn't something you earn.

It's something you deserve and need, simply for breathing. If you can stand there and be here another day, and you're still pushing forward, and you're still trying, and you're not getting it right, you're still trying. You not only deserve a high five just for your existence, you need one. It is the most empowering force on the planet to feel seen, to feel encouraged. And I want people to understand that when you start to practice this and demonstrate it to yourself, it not only changes how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself, it changes how you operate out there. If I like myself, it doesn't matter if you like me or not, Jay. It might sting a little bit because I want you to like me, but it won't change the fact that I still like myself. If I am really treating myself with respect, I won't allow somebody else to treat me with disrespect because I demonstrate every morning that I respect myself, and that becomes the new baseline. We let so much crap slide with other people because we don't even treat ourselves with acceptance and respect. That's why we're looking for it outside of ourselves.

And one more thing The thing that I'll say is after more than a year of doing this, I don't even need to high five myself. I still do it, but I don't need to. And I'll tell you why. It wouldn't even occur to me at this point to criticize myself, because I don't see a body, I don't see a face. I see a human being who's trying. It has reset my brain in the most beautiful and profound way. Now, do I still get pissed off when I'm number two on the New York Times? Of course. But that's not pissed off at myself. And the recovery from that is almost instantaneous because I have a new resting default that's optimistic, that's encouraging, that's compassionate. The resilience factor is through the roof. It's really unbelievable. And so for those of you that are high achievers, it has not changed how competitive I am. It has not changed the game that I am playing. It has made me better at it. Because when you're constantly focused on what's going wrong, you're going to hate what you're doing. You're going to feel beaten down. When you can celebrate all the little wins around you, get pissed off for 2 seconds about number two and then move on.

You have more joy, more contentment. You play a bigger game. You feel more motivated. You make a bigger impact. We have it reverse. You think that you got to have all the money in the world and then you're going to be happy and satisfied with yourself. Not true. Treat yourself with respect and encouragement now, and you will feel empowered to go do all the things that create all the wealth that you need and all the impact you want.

Very true.

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. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. Create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.