So I want to read to you a question from somebody that listens to the podcast. Okay. Corinne Schillinger, she says it's great advice, but here's the deal. Everyone says, love yourself, accept yourself, validate yourself. These are general terms. No one actually knows what that means. What does loving yourself actually look like? What does that mean in our everyday lives? Please do an episode about what loving, accepting, and validating yourself looks like feels like specific examples. So many people are frustrated and find themselves confused by the advice, love yourself. So what does that mean? And give specific examples of what you do.

It is an incredibly broad term. Just love yourself. So easy to say, but I personally think that loving yourself is different for everybody. Everybody's gonna love themself in a different way. The way I like myself is I feel like there's always little things. There's always little things about yourself that you can find, that you like.

Okay, so number one, find something little.

You know, it doesn't have to be big.

Doesn't have to be big. It could be like, give us three examples of little things you like or.

Love about yourself right now.

Yes.

I haven't looked at a mirror recently, but I think I like my hair right now. Pretty sure I like my hair right now. We'll check the footage later. Let's see here. I'm liking my smile right now. I really like my smile. And I'm also liking. I'm also liking who I am in my friend group right now.

What does that mean? So what do you like about who you are? Give me a specific example.

It's kind of like how I'm acting with my friends and how I'm treating them and how I'm respecting them and being there for them. I'm enjoying that. I'm liking that about myself.

You're proud of yourself?

I am proud of myself.

Can you give another example that is not about something physical?

About something physical? I'm proud of how I'm doing in school. I'm doing pretty well in school.

And do you know why you're doing well?

Cause I'm trying.

Yes. So you're proud of yourself for trying?

Yeah, I am.

See, it's like those little things, like when people are negative, it's also so, so more broad when they, when they're negative about themselves. And it's like a bigger thing. Like, oh, I don't like the way my stomach looks, or I don't like.

The way I look, or I don't like my grades, or, I don't like this. And then you don't feel motivated because you're beating yourself down.

Exactly.

And so you find, number one, little teeny.

They can literally be like, I like the color of my eye right now. It doesn't have to be like, the world ending. Like, I look like a God. No. Just has to be, like, very little.

Yeah. Start with, I love the shape or the color of my eyes. I love the sound of my laugh. Find something small. And I'm focusing on simple and small habits because this is not something that happens overnight. Self acceptance, self kindness, self love is a habit you practice. And for it to become second nature, you have to practice it every single day. And so we've already talked about two things that you can do. One is find one small thing that you like about yourself. It could be that you're a great friend, that you have an amazing laugh, that you're a wonderful cook, that you're a terrific son, that you try really hard at work, that you are proud of the way you're working on your boundaries. There is one thing that you need to compliment yourself on every single day. And if you can't think of something, look in that mirror and look at your iris and just compliment the incredible miracle that is that unique pattern and color that is unique to you. Of 8 billion people on this planet, you are the only one with an eyeball that is designed and looks like that.

And that is freaking cool. So start with that. The second thing you're going to do is, before you go to bed, scan your day and think of one win, just a small win. And the reason why I want you to think of a small win is because you don't realize how much your brain is currently scanning for what's wrong. And I want you to start to create a habit where we're going to retrain and reprogram your mind to look for what's going right. Cause there's a whole lot going right in your day that you're not giving yourself credit for. And whether you got out of bed, that's a win. You got dressed. There's a win. You got to work. There's a win. You smiled at a stranger, there's a win. You treated yourself to a coffee today. There's a win. You got outside and looked at the sun. There's a win. I mean, there are so many things you do right and you don't even realize it. And so I want you to start to just interrupt the campaign of negative thoughts with one win before you go to bed. And in just a second, I'm going to share my absolute favorite tool.

But I just wanted to take a minute and say it's hard, you know, oak sounds really upbeat, and so do I. And we're joking around because we're really good. You know, we have a great relationship. And Oakley doesn't hate himself anymore. And I'm actively working on self kindness and self love. But it's hard, right? Oak?

It's definitely hard. It's not going to be easy to love yourself. And it takes time. It's like a muscle, I'd say it's definitely like a muscle. When you work at it and you start off small, like, start off with small weight, and then you get bigger, it becomes easier. If you're in a. If you're a very think you're a very negative person right now, it's probably because it's a very unconscious decision that you're making. But when you start to try and work at it and you work more, it's gonna become more unconscious that you are nice about yourself.

Oh, my gosh. Oak. I almost forgot. The most important habit that helps with self love and self acceptance, and that's the high five habit. All right, I'm gonna explain it. The high five habit. Super simple. Don't overthink this. I will do an entire episode about the high five habit, probably in January, because there's so much science to cover and so many stories to tell you. It's also the subject of my New York Times bestselling book called the high five habit. But let me just tell you what this habit is, because it is the thing you need to know, based on science and research, to have a breakthrough in self acceptance and self love. Here it is. Tomorrow morning, after you finish brushing your teeth, put the toothbrush down. And now I want you to do the high five habit. And this is how you do it. First, you look in the mirror. For many of you, that's going to be the hardest part. 50% of men and women, based on our research, cannot or will not look themselves in the mirror because they do not like the person they see. That is sad. And so I don't want you to be surprised if simply looking at yourself in the mirror is really difficult.

Step two. You are then going to raise your hand and high five your reflection. I know it sounds dumb. It sounds stupid. Why would somebody do that? I'll tell you why somebody would do that in a later episode. Because the science will is so profound. The neuroscience, the research on motivation, the research on mindset, the research on how the dopamine gets released. It's just unbelievable what happens when you simply high five yourself in the mirror. I just want you to practice it and trust me on this one. Now, let me tell you what's going to happen when you go to raise your hand. I don't want you to say anything. Nothing. It's just about the action and watching yourself high five yourself. The action alone of high fiving yourself does all the work neurologically, physiologically, chemically and psychologically. It will take less than five days for you to have a breakthrough in self love. If you simply look in the mirror every morning and send yourself into your day by high fiving yourself in the mirror, you may laugh. The reason why you laugh is because your brain releases dopamine. This is really normal. You might burst into tears.

That's also very normal because you may not have looked at yourself for real or been kind to yourself for real in years. Many, many people are super surprised by how emotional they get by simply silently high fiving themselves every morning in the mirror. If you have this visceral, that's the stupidest thing, I really want you to do it because not being willing to simply try something that I'm telling you, we've had 164,000 people in 91 countries go through a five day challenge with me called the high five challenge. I'll tell you about that in a minute. And the results are just irrefutable. This is the fastest way, based on science, to start rewiring your brain and to have a breakthrough in being kind and loving to yourself. And it works at a reprogramming level in your nervous system and in your brain, and it's all in the book. But I just want you to trust me on this. And so the best way to do this is let me coach you and support you because I have developed a free. That's right, no money, nothing to buy. Free five day challenge. It's called the high five challenge.

High. The number five challenge. High. The number five challenge. High fivechallenge.com dot register for free if you want a true breakthrough in how you speak to yourself, how you feel about yourself loving yourself, this is the fastest way to do it, and I would love to coach you. So high five challenge. I'll see you in it. Look, motivation is complete fucking garbage because it's not there when you need it. Yeah, you're going to feel motivated if you listen to Doctor Hyman or Mel Robbins, but that's extrinsic motivation.

Yeah.

In terms of the intrinsic motivation that you need to motivate yourself, you're gonna have to push yourself, because you're not designed to, like, change. You're designed to stop yourself from changing. And that's the problem.

I find that if you can actually master your mind and get out of your own way and deal with this crazy inner dialog that most of us have, that you can get free. And what I kind of figured out at 63 years old is that the purpose of life is to get your soul free. Kind of like, you know, Joni Mitchell sang in that Woodstock song, you know, let's get your soul free. And. And it's not easy because most of us don't learn how to do that. Just as we don't learn how to take care of our bodies, we don't learn how to take care of our minds. So we know maybe how to do exercise, but how do we do inner size?

Inner size. Is that a word you made up?

Kind of.

I think Doctor Hyman just discovered I a word for his next book, the inner size program, the ultimate wellness solution. I can already see this. You know, you talk a lot about how to heal from the neck down, and I agree with you. I personally have come to believe, after 54 years of torturing myself unnecessarily, in many cases, that it does begin with the neck down. That if you follow a lot of the protocols that you talk about, whether it is toning the vagus nerve or it's getting your diet right, or it is resetting your hormones or it's cold exposure or the habits that settle you and free your soul, but you also have to develop habits around your own mind.

Yeah.

And that's an area where, like you and like everybody listening, I have struggled profoundly. And there are a couple key insights that have really helped me change the default setting that is in my mind. And so the way that I would get into this is that self love is the goal. You know, you talked about the fact that you've come to realize that it's really a journey, your adult life, of setting yourself free. And I look at it like it is a journey of coming back home to yourself and learning how to love yourself for exactly who you are and exactly who you aren't. And you have a opinion medically that our bodies have this intelligent design, and that our bodies have this intelligent design, that if you have the proper inputs, your body can heal itself. Your body is designed to grow. It is designed to help you. It is designed to be vibrant. The same is true about your experience mentally. And that if you stop and think about the fact that when you are born into this world, you come into this world needing, of course, other human beings in order to survive.

I mean, we as a species, we cannot just pop out like a deer and get up on our hind legs and start running around and figuring things out. We need human connection. Yeah, but at our core, when you think about the intelligent design of a human being, we are curious, we're loving, we are seeking connection. We are self expressed. A baby, you as a baby, you would laugh, you'd smile. You would crawl towards a mirror. If you saw your own reflection, you would crawl towards things that were interesting to you. You were not editing yourself. You are not questioning what people around you would think about you kind of jiggling your booty or smashing your face into a plate of spaghetti. At your core, you are a loving, curious, confident human being. That's who you are. And that's why we miss feeling that way, because you can only miss something that you know.

Yeah.

And so what happens to all of us, and this is no fault, this is just part of the human journey, is that we now know, and you talk about this on your show, that part of your core memories and your imprint mentally, in terms of your mental patterns, happen between zero and five when your brain is in a theta state and you are largely nonverbal, and your little brain is absorbing everything at hyper speed. And what it absorbs are the speaking patterns and the emotional patterns and the emotional tone of the household that you grew up in.

Oh, that's a scary thought.

Well, it's true. It's true. And so by the time that you start to be able to attach words to your reality, you have adults correcting you, and you also have a biological demand, which is, I need food. I need to be part of this family in order to survive. I need love. And so you start to figure out how to survive or thrive in the environment you grew up in. And so these core coping skills start to develop. You don't even realize it's happening. These opinions that you have about yourself that are largely coming from other people. So most of us did not receive the love that we needed in the way that we could really process it as love. Right? Yeah. And it's not necessarily a function of abuse or trauma or any of this other stuff. There's this term that I love called parental mismatch. Yeah, parental mismatch. Your parents may have been absolutely awesome human beings, but when it comes to what you needed, there was a mismatch. And what happens in human design is that when you, as a child, don't get what you need or you get yelled at, or something bad happens to you, which happens to everybody.

We're not wired in a way to say, my parents are fucking screwed up. We're not wired that way.

You know what parents are?

What?

Parents are people who have kids.

Yes.

They have no training.

Yes. And they're just repeating things that were repeated on them, largely without even realizing it. And so if you get bullied at school, if you experience racism, if you experience some sort of abuse or neglect or emotional whatever in your home, you don't go, those people have a problem. You go, there must be something wrong with me. And that's where it begins, doctor Hyman, and it happens to everybody. Where you prioritize the need to fit.

In or survive in any way in your family. If it screwed up, which most of our families are not perfect.

Yep. Or to keep the peace, or to not get hurt, or to please the people around you, you figure out how to adapt very quickly based on the environment that you're in. And for almost all of us, that means I gotta put other people's expectations, other people's opinions about what's going on, everybody else's emotional reactions above what I need. Because remember who you are at your core. You are a loving, self expressed, curious person who wants to connect with people and wants to share yourself. That's who you are at your core. And at some point during your childhood, it happens to all of us. We internalize a message that there's something wrong with who we are. And in order to fit in or survive or be accepted, or get the love or the praise that we are seeking, we have to be somebody other than who we are. And that's where the mindset shit goes sideways, because you start to actively tell yourself, I don't fit in there. That person's pissed at me, I gotta be like this. There must be something wrong with me. If nobody's asking me out on a date. My mom's always criticizing the way that I look.

Why do I look different than other people? Why am I the only black kid in the class? Why am I like, my family immigrated here, and there's nobody else in it? And you start to see all the places that you're not a part of. And all of these things compound. And it traps us in a narrative in our own minds where we beat the shit out of ourselves. We pick about, pick apart the things that are wrong. We're constantly, relentlessly just focused on what we're not doing.

Yeah.

And it's a very dark place that most people live in.

Yeah, it's really true. I mean, and often people don't realize it. And, you know, I thought I was in my shit together.

When did you realize you didn't?

And, I mean, I know over the years I realized I needed work to do because I understood that my family origin was problematic, that my stepfather was a rageaholic, that my father was sort of absent, abandoned us, that my mother was depressed. I mean, I had to navigate a very kind of unsafe environment and be a people pleaser and take care of broken people and, I mean, all these habits and patterns, you know, be around people who were failures and wanted to not be a failure. So I had all these things that were driving me unconsciously or consciously. But, you know, when I. When I really kind of, kind of woke up was when I realized that I struggled with love. I'd been married three times, divorced three times, and like, wait a minute. What is going on in there? In many areas of my life, I have success and things are great and I have a great community and great friends and so much is great. But in this one area, I was like, what the. Why is this such a problem? And I really, until I took the time to investigate, I call it soul archeology, to investigate what was going on and to unpack my inner dialog and to write it down.

I literally wrote down all the stupid shit my head was saying.

What were you saying to yourself?

Oh, my God, I'm very sad.

That's why I want you to say, what is the stuff you're saying?

Is this me interviewing you? Yeah. So basically I was. I had this belief that, you know, I think that was underlying it, that I wasn't kind of worthy, that, you know, I didn't really deserve to have love, that I had this sort of needy inner dialog that was feeling a lack in scarcity, that I felt this emptiness and this hole that I was trying to fill and that I wasn't ever going to be able to fill it. And so I was constantly doing that. And I realized it was because. And again, you know, these sort of sins of our fathers are visited upon their children, right? It's like my mother was the child of deaf parents and she had to take care of them from a very early age and she took care of them and they were beautiful people and very loving. But, you know, she thought that love was taking care of somebody broken. And then my mom was depressed and she used me as her therapist as a little kid. And then I thought love was taking care of broken people or, you know, people pleasing and doing all these things that really weren't serving me right.

And once I sort of began to realize that, I began to call in my, you know, higher self, whatever. Whatever that you want to call it is. But there's some part of your, you know, soul being that knows what the truth is.

Well, I think it's the part of you when you're born.

Yeah.

It's actually who you are.

But most of that is not what's running our inner dialog.

Correct.

And so that was not running my inner dialog. So I began to do this practice where I would write down all the stupid shit my head would say and then would write back to myself from my higher self.

Yes.

And it was really effective. I did this for months and months and months, and. And I was able to really unpack some of this sort of stuff. And once I kind of realized also what this. This wounding was as a kid and why I felt emptiness. And I. And actually, it was because of. In part because this movie called Coda that was about this young girl who was tearing and grew up in a deaf family, just like my mother. And that just broke me open, and I was literally on the floor sobbing for days. And I got to release a lot of it. And then it kind of reset my nervous system. It was almost like a real reset, but I've sort of struggled with some of that. And so going through that process, I realized each of us has to be on our own journey, and each of us has to sort of look at where are the areas where we don't love ourself. And I think I thought, oh, I love myself. You know, I'm real good. I feel good about myself. I'm successful, blah, blah, blah. But the truth was, there was a part that I really didn't, and I didn't really fully accept and love myself.

And that's what was creating this kind of constant pattern of choosing the wrong people. You know, a friend said I had a broken picker. You know, it wasn't the problem of the people I was with. It was. It was me.

You had a broken pattern.

Yeah.

Of belief in your head. And that made you feel broken.

Yeah.

And the good news is, when you can identify what the broken pattern of thinking or behavior is, you can replace it with something else. See, the good news is, at any moment in your life, you can decide who you want to become. It's never too early or too late to decide that you want to become a different you you want to go back to who you know you truly are a loving, curious, confident, connected, self expressed person.

Yeah.

And what I want to just add to your story is that that wasn't a lie you were telling yourself because your experience was one where you did not get the love you needed as a child. That happened to.

That did.

That happened, and it was because of this mismatch. Nobody intentionally set out to damage you.

No, my parents are good people. They just screwed up themselves.

Yes, but. So I think one of the mistakes that we make when we start to do this work, to reclaim our lives and to change our mindsets and to become a different version of ourselves, is that we kind of shy away from telling the truth to ourselves. Like that should happen. The reason why I believe that is because my lived experience was everybody else's needs came first. I did not get the love that I needed. And in order to even get the attention that I needed from the adults around me, I had to twist myself in knots. Like, I literally had to forget about myself. And that was real. Like my husband, for example. You know, we've been married 26 years and have been in really awesome, intense therapy for the last two years. And one of the things that has come out of it is that Chris has a lot of trauma from his childhood. Had an absent father. His mom was always working. He was a latchkey kid. He had no physical abuse, but nobody was ever there.

Neglect is a form of abuse.

Yes, but you feel. But he is forever kind of. Oh, they were great. We were all. But the truth is, no, they weren't.

Yeah.

And that's okay. Yeah. When you claim, for real, that you didn't get what you needed, and that created years, decades of an experience where that was your lived experience. But what you're talking about by writing that down and writing it down is critical, because part of the issue is we try to change the default patterns of thinking that come from your lived experience. So they may have been true in the past because of the way you got treated or what people said to you. That is your lived experience. Just like trauma is your lived experience. When we don't really call that out for what it is, we unconsciously carry it forward. And so when you start to write down, these are the crazy ass things that I think, because this is how I fucking felt, and based on my lived experience, this makes a lot of sense. But here's where consciousness, alignment, choice, the wake up call I call it, comes into play. You get to choose if you want to keep thinking this shit moving forward. Now, when it comes to mindset, what is profoundly complicated about it, and what I got wrong for years is that I thought that changing your mindset began with changing your thoughts.

It does not. It does nothing. You change your mindset the same way you change the health of your body from the neck down, from the outside in. And let me give you what I'm talking about. So the act of writing things down, that is not doing the internal work of your thinking, that is getting that shit out of your head and in daylight and on paper and in the real world, so you can look at it objectively, that is doing work outside of your mind. The second thing is everything that you talk about, Doctor Hyman, from, especially the stuff related to nervous system regulation, cold exposure, warm baths at night, the five breaths that you talk about learning how to tone your vagus nerves so that you flip off the fight or flight, which continues all of those thoughts from your past to spin on repeat. Your thinking has so much to do with your nervous system. State that learning how to regulate your nervous system using all of the tools that Doctor Hyman or that I write about, or all the amazing, like, put that shit into place. Because a calm nervous system facilitates calm thinking.

Yeah.

And the third thing is, I just.

Want to stop you there because that's such an important point, is you can change your physiologic state with practices that don't involve your thinking, that change your mind.

Yes.

And change the way you feel and change your mood. And that is such a powerful insight that most people have no idea about. People feel stuck in the state that they're in and they don't know there's a pattern break. For example, I. Yesterday I was, you know, I had podcasts all day preparing for my book, and I, and I had one that I didn't record. And I was like, I didn't hit the record button. Long story. And I was like. And I was just tired. I didn't. And my, my partner, fiance, she, she basically set the alarm stupid early and forgot to turn it off. And I got. I didn't get him to sleep. So I was like, feeling kind of a little bit fried. And so I could tell myself, my body, my mind was just doing bad stuff. So I said, I'm going to meditate. So I meditated for 20 minutes and I have a steam shower. Put that on, went in the steam, hot as it could be, for 20 minutes, went on an ice bath. Cause it's winter, very cold in the berkshires for like two, three minutes. And I got out of that and they literally felt completely different.

My mood, my energy, my focus, my brain. So we have these doorways into our mind and our mood that are nothing internal, they're external. So you could summarize the things that are the most powerful to help us come back to self love and self acceptance, which really is the key to everything. It's the key to healthy relationships, it's the key to being successful in life. It's the key to taking care of your own body, of eating the right thing, of exercising everything you can think you want to do or want to get in your life. It kind of starts there. So what are the close today? What are the kind of take homes around? How we create self love and acceptance.

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

What would I do?

Yeah.

What would you do?

Would you be nice to them? I would say nice things to them. I would bring them coffee. I would give them a kiss. A lot of things.

Yeah. You'd compliment them?

Yeah.

Yeah. You'd encourage them to take care of themselves. You'd support them in their goals and dreams. You'd tell them good job when they do something great. You would reassure them when they fail. You need to do that to yourself. And this isn't just some cheeseball like thing. All of the research shows that being critical of yourself, which most of us are, as a default, it, it is demotivating. And so one of the reasons I'll give you two hacks. One is get your ass out of bed. 54321. And create a morning routine that really sets you up to feel supported and to feel encouraged and to feel clear about your own priorities. That's what love is. That's number one. Number two, please add to your morning routine the high five habit. Here's how you do it. When you stand in front of the mirror after you brush your teeth, I want you to do this right after you brush your teeth. Because based on research, if you, most.

People brush their teeth, yes.

And if we stack this new habit with something you already do, it's going to encode much faster. Put your toothbrush down, look in the mirror. Based on our research, doctor Hyman, 50% of men and women cannot do this part. We did a study where we had 164,000 people in 91 countries. Take what I call the high five challenge. You can just go to high five. Number five challenge.com. high fivechallenge.com. to do this. And all you're going to do is practice the high five habit. Five days in a row, 50% of men and women could not look at themselves in the eye. Why? They don't like the person they see. If you can't look at yourself in the eye, that is a habit of self rejection. That begins your morning. All you're going to do after you look yourself in the eyes, which is the hardest part for most people, is raise your hand and high five the human being you see in the mirror. It sounds profoundly stupid, but wait to hear the neuroscience.

Yeah.

So you have for your entire life, Doctor Hyman high fived other people. What is a high five? The action celebration. What else does it communicate?

Fun.

Yeah.

Love.

Yeah. If you're in a huddle and a teammate fucks up a play, and you come back to the huddle and you high five somebody who just screwed something up, what are you saying to them?

You love them, they're okay. Didn't matter.

Yeah. Get back in there. I believe in you. All of that programming with the physical action of a high five is already in your brain. When you high five yourself in the mirror, guess what happens to all that programming? Let's get rewritten to you, to your reflection. You've never high fived a human being, Doctor hyman, and thought, I hate your ass. You suck.

Definitely not.

I hope you lose. But that's what we think about ourselves. How could you have done that? You're a loser. You're never going to be loved like you screwed up that many times. When you go to high five yourself, you're going to notice a couple interesting things. Number one, the critic in your head shuts up because the programming is only positive. It won't allow the critic to speak. And in less than five days, a funny thing happens. It completely changes how you view yourself. You see yourself as a teammate that you're going through life with. You see yourself as somebody who deserves to be encouraged and cared for and love. And then there's all this incredible impact. Like you get a release of dopamine. It taps into the celebratory energy of your nervous system, so it boosts your mood, which helps with productivity. It is profound. And it is a silent action that you do every morning that taps into programming and chemicals and all this goodness. It's already in your mind, body and spirit.

And it's free and takes seconds.

Yes. And the results are profound. It's all in the book. And wow.

Wow. It's all research driven.

Right?

The high five habit. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Check it out. Mel, you've been amazing.

Let's just start with the basics. How many attachment styles are they and what are they?

Okay, so there's four major attachment styles. We'll talk a little bit about how they come about as well. So the first one is the securely attached child growing into the securely attached adult. And the secure attachment individuals in their childhood, they get a lot of approach oriented behavior. So if they.

Wait, approach oriented, yes. What does that mean? This?

Yeah. So essentially, if they cry as a child, their parents will come towards them, try to figure out what's going on and what's wrong, and try to meet their needs. And so the repetition and emotion, the conditioning or programming to the subconscious at this age is okay. If I express my emotions, I get my needs met. It's safe to express my needs. It's safe to rely on other people. And I get loved when I'm in hard times, so I'm worthy of connection, and I'm worthy of love just for who I am, not for what I do. And so this person, as an adult, grows up to have much easier experiences around relationships, of course. And they trust and they rely and they communicate, and they feel safe expressing their emotions and feeling their emotions. And so statistically, they have the biggest success rate in relationships by far and away. Then we have three insecure attachment styles. On one end of the continuum, we have an anxious, preoccupied attachment style. And this individual essentially grows up with a lot of warmth and a lot of care from their caregivers, but a lot of inconsistency. So a really common example would be that mom and dad are very loving.

They are approach oriented, they do care, but they both have really long jobs. They're gone for 12 hours a day, and the child's often at daycare or with the grandparents who might be more cold and withdrawn. And so what happens is the repetition and emotion. So the programming becomes, okay. I really want love, and I really feel good when my caregivers are here, but it keeps getting taken away. And so this child learns to really fear abandonment and fear of being left alone or excluded. And so they grow up really having a lot of abandonment wounds, and they're very sensitive to rejection, exclusion, and they become very panicked if they see partners in their relationships, start to pull away. And so they really struggle, unfortunately, because they want love, they want connection so much, but because of this deeply conditioned fear of abandonment, it's almost like they hold on so tight that the sand sort of constantly slipping through their fingers, it accidentally pushes people away.

Wow.

And so that's our anxious, preoccupied, and they tend to struggle in relationships big time, especially when it comes to getting people to kind of commit and stick around. On the basically opposite end of the continuum, there's a dismissive, avoidant attachment style. This individual grows up with childhood emotional neglect. And sometimes it's really overt, like, food's not on the table, nothing's organized. Sometimes it's very covert, where instead it's like, you know, mom and dad are there, but if you cry or express emotion, they're like, toughen up. They don't check in. If the child comes home from school, they're never going, oh, are you okay? I see that you're off. So this neglect happens, and this child grows up in this environment, and they can't understand that my parents are emotionally unavailable. So instead, they go, there must be something wrong with me that I'm not getting my needs met. And so they build this deep wound of, I am defective, and they feel shame, and then they grow up, and they don't want to be that vulnerable again to anybody and rely on anybody. So they become hyper independent. And in relationships, as a result, as soon as things get real or as soon as people get too close, they sabotage, they push away, and they tend to fear commitment.

And, of course, the anxious and dismissives often end up in relationships together.

Are you talking about my marriage? You just summarized three years of marriage therapy with Chris Robbins and Mel Robbins. And then what's the other third? Insecure attachment style.

So, the last one is fearful avoidance, sometimes referred to as disorganized attachment. And essentially, they grow up in an environment where there's chronic chaos. So a really easy example or analogy would be if there was a parent who's an alcoholic. So let's say it's mom. As an example, one day, the child comes home from school, and mom is drinking, and she's in a really good mood and she's really loving. Another day, mom comes home, or child comes home, and she's drinking a lot, but now she's angry. She's an angry drunk. Another day, she's so brung up, she's in a good mood, she feels guilty. Another day, she's so broke up, she's going through withdrawal. She's in chaos, right? So it's like, you never know what you're gonna get. It can be a bad divorce, parents fighting all the time, having a parent with narcissistic personality disorder, all these sorts of things where there's chaos and fighting, and you never know what you're gonna get. So this child grows up having some positive experiences with love, but some terrifying experiences with love. And so they feel conflicted. This is what I was. And so what the person will experience is this feeling of, like, I want closeness.

And then people get close, and they're like, get back. And so they'll really be in this push pull pattern. But more than anything, they struggle to trust. They feel like they can't rely on people. They can't really connect. They don't want to open up too much. Similar to the dismissive avoidant, but they also have the anxious side. And so they become, as adults, the hot and cold partner in relationships who's constantly going back and forth. But again, these patterns get conditioned into us. So the things we don't like or don't serve us, we can absolutely recondition to become secure and have thriving relationships.

You know, what I love about listening to you is that I find it personally reassuring that anyone can become more secure. And before we discuss the specifics of each of the four attachment styles and how we can use this entire framework to heal yourself and create better relationships, I really want to back up for just a second. I keep hearing you use the word subconscious, and it's a word that can be confusing to a lot of us. It's confusing to me, for example. So can you tell me and everyone listening, what exactly is your subconscious mind?

So your conscious mind, if you were looking at your mind from sort of the top down, as an analogy of your conscious mind, which is like the tip of the iceberg floating above the surface, your subconscious mind is what is just out of your conscious mind's awareness. And you can imagine it's sort of the part of the iceberg that's just beneath the water level. We actually then have the unconscious mind, which is like the very bottom of the iceberg, but our unconscious mind, it's very difficult to retrieve information from. So I put a lot of focus on the subconscious mind, because your subconscious mind, you can actually. It's this warehouse of information, but you can actually dig into it and be like, oh, how did I feel 15 minutes ago when that happened? And you can retrieve information even though it's out of your peripheral awareness. So, in summary, your subconscious mind is essentially the part of your mind that stores all information, and it's just out of your conscious mind's awareness, but it is retrievable.

Okay.

So I think that one of the most important things to recognize is that we have a subconscious mind that's really running the show, and our subconscious mind gets all these patterns and ideas about what love looks like, and then we take those with us, and that forms the lens we basically see and interact with the world through. So if we grew up in an environment where we learn that we don't communicate about things or we learn, okay, we should just expect people to know what we need, or we learn to violate our own boundaries and people, please. If we learn these patterns at a subconscious level, your attachment cell is the subconscious set of rules you have for what love and closeness and relationships are supposed to look like. And for some people, that works in their favor. And for some people, unfortunately, if they didn't learn healthy patterns, it's really working against them. And it can make relationships feel very difficult, very hard, and very confusing.

Wow. There was so much I want to dig into in what you just said. And one of the things that caught my attention is when you said that the rules and the beliefs that we have about what love is and how relationship work, that that is all stored in your subconscious.

Yes.

And why is it important to know that?

Because our subconscious mind, first of all, is responsible for roughly 95% to 97% of our beliefs, our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. And our conscious mind is three to 5%. And so the other thing we have to understand is that our conscious mind cannot out will or overpower our subconscious mind, which means we can have the experience of going, I don't want to get angry at my partner. I don't want to raise my voice or I want to stop drinking, or I want. We can have all these goals or New Year's resolutions or ideas for how we want to change our behaviors. But unfortunately, it just being a conscious goal, until it's actually ingrained at the subconscious level, we are going to experience this friction between what we say we want to do and what we actually do. And this has a huge impact on our relationships, where if we say, I want to show up better or I want to have a relationship that lasts, but if we have subconscious patterns working against us, we will constantly feel like we're putting the gas and the brakes on at the same time. And that can be a very frustrating process.

Are you saying that it's possible, though, to change?

Yes.

What's in your subconscious mind?

Absolutely. Of course.

How did you figure all this out?

I figured this out because I was. I had a lot of work to do on myself. I had a tough upbringing, and I was, like, kind of a mess. And to be honest, the actual route was that I was addicted to opiates at 15. So I went through from 15 to about 20 years old. It was actually, I think it was just before I turned 15, I had a knee surgery, got addicted to painkillers. And actually my biggest experience was every day being like, I'm going to get clean. I'm going to delete people's numbers from my phone, and every day repeating the same pattern. And for me, going through that over and over again, I was, like, high functioning enough. I made it to school. I was in a psychology class one day, and somebody said to me, the conscious mind can't outwill or overpower the subconscious mind. And I was like, you described all of my suffering that I experience every day, because going through that and being like, I'm going to do this. And then every day losing that battle to myself, it was like tormenting. And so when somebody said that to me, I was like, I'm going to learn everything I can on God's green earth about the subconscious mind.

And then it really opened up to all these different. What is the subconscious? How does it affect us? Oh, it's our core wounds. It's our unmet needs. It's our beliefs about ourselves that really extend from those core wounds and our patterns in terms of boundaries. So I actually started there, did all that work, actually went into practice, and then revisited attachment theory.

And by practice you mean therapeutic practice? Working with counseling. Yeah, counseling. Okay.

And so then I was doing a lot of subconscious work with people, and then I realized, oh, all of the attachment styles actually have very specific core wounds. All these generalized core wounds I was working on with people, there's about 18 or so. They actually fit in these perfect little packages to each attachment style, as well as the needs fit perfectly into these little packages, as well as the boundary issues and the community. So what I ended up doing is, okay, once I know somebody's attachment style, I don't have to find all these core wounds all over the place. I just know their kind of blueprint. And then I had done so much work on the subconscious for how to heal. And so that's sort of how everything became born.

Well, that makes a lot of sense, because when you're working with someone who is a client of yours, you're dealing with the pain. And by figuring out all of the pain that someone is talking about, whether it's, I'm unworthier of love or I'm ashamed of what I did, or I regret this or I don't trust somebody, whatever it is that the pain may be you're only ever talking about the pain level, so you're not going deep enough to change fundamentally. And so realizing that you weren't going deep enough, you dug in. And it's when you discovered attachment theory and the fact that when you locate yourself in one of the four different attachment styles, you now have this simple framework to be able to heal the insecure attachment style that you may have or may be dealing with and become more secure with yourself and more secure in relationship with other people. I'm getting this.

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

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

And so, like, the high five habit, I'm sorry. I just kept barging along. Is there something you wanted to.

No, I'm just taking it in. You're right where you need to be. Keep going.

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

And what happened for me, this is not a pandemic book, but what happened for me, because we're all sick of hearing about the pandemic. But what happened for me is, you know, when the COVID hit, we all have that moment. Like, I'm sure you remember the moment you knew, oh, my God. Like, this is changing everything.

Yeah.

What was it for you?

When they said two weeks the kids would be off school? And then they said, no, it's going.

To be a month.

And I had that feeling of, like, things closing in and the claustrophobia. Like, how will I be able to exist now with. With us not being able to go out to even a park? What if this would stay this way? Yeah, it was right then. I couldn't believe they were, like, closing school.

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

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

Oh, my God.

And then I thought, am I about to lose all my money again? And I'm like, I'm too old for this shit. I've worked too hard. Like, you go into that, like, mode where, like, why is this happening to me? I'm a good person. I've worked so hard. Like, you, like, kind of go at yourself. And so I'm thinking this, and I'm like, okay, get up. Just get up. 54321. I get up. I make my bed. I always make my bed. And then I drag myself to the bathroom and I start brushing my teeth. And as I'm brushing my teeth, Kathy, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I think, oh, my God, you look like hell. And the gray hair is coming in, and there's dark circles under my eyes, and my neck is all saggy. And one boob is hanging lower the other. And I'm literally. I felt sorry for the woman I saw in the mirror. She looked exhausted. She looked scared. She looked overwhelmed. And as soon as you start to go down a negative path in your mind, it will continue taking you there. And so I immediately drift to everything I'm worried about.

I'm worried about my parents. I'm worried about the world. I'm worried about frontline workers. I'm worried about COVID I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my employees. I'm worried about what's going to happen in my business. I'm worried about everything. And the interesting thing in that moment is if you had walked in, I would have been able to pivot on a dime, especially we women. That's what we do. I would have been like, Kathy, Kathy, don't you dare. Don't you dare. I know this isn't fair. I know you don't deserve. If anybody can handle this, Kathy, you can. You're going to pick your ass up, you're going to pull on your big girl panties, and you are going to get your ass back out there. Right? You could do that for anybody else. But there I was without a bra on my attitude, in the gutter. Overwhelmed by my life, stressed out, no energy. Last on my list. An impossible amount of shit to deal with. Just defeated. And I couldn't think of a damn thing to say to myself. And, you know, the other thing is, I probably wouldn't have believed it anyway, right?

But for whatever reason, as cheesy as it sounds, I literally raised my hand and gave the woman I saw on Amir a high five because she needed it. And, you know, it wasn't like lightning struck, but something shifted in me. You know, I felt my shoulders drop. I felt my chin lift. I laughed because it's so dumb standing there high fiving yourself in your underwear. My God. And it's interesting because I also felt like, okay, you know, come on now, Mel. Don't be so dramatic. You can handle this. And I left the bathroom. Now, it was the second morning that something really clicked with me because I woke up again. All the same problems, all the same overwhelm. 54321. I get out of bed. I make the bed. I drag myself into the bathroom. And right as I was getting to the bathroom, that's when I felt something I've actually never felt before in my entire life. And that is this. You know when you are about to go see somebody you really like and you're going to meet them for a cup of coffee or like a. You know, like a glass of wine or whatever, I.

And you're about to enter the cafe. What do you feel, Kathy, as you're about to see somebody you like, you're.

Excited, and there's, like, this anticipation, and so you're already feeling good vibes because you know what that person's like and being in energy.

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

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

Yeah, it's everything. And so I sat and I looked at the woman I saw in the mirror, and I thought to myself, well, who does she need me to be today? And what game in life matters to her? And how could I actually just, like, move the ball down the field today? And so I thought about it, and I thought in that moment, based on what was going on, that who she needed me to be was more optimistic about our ability to get through this. And the game that I wanted to play was showing up in a different way for our kids because they were looking at Chris and I about what was happening in the world. And so I raised my hand, and I, like, high five my reflection. And so there's a couple things that I just want to explain first about when you do this, because the beauty of this habit, and this is just the first habit in the book, and we're going to talk about it, and trust me, we are going to get down to the achievement stuff next because it's really important part of why everybody resists high fiving themselves and why they feel that it's weird.

And I'm going to unpack that in a very methodical way, because thematically, when you feel that this is weird or you resist giving yourself this support and celebration, what's contained in the resistance? Confidence is the key to understanding why you don't have what you want. And it's also the key to unlocking the cage that you're trapped in.

Oh, that's so juicy.

Don't sit around waiting for the confidence. You got to break through the self doubt by being yourself. And you're going to see your confidence building. Now, here's the fourth truth to being your true self. Loving yourself first will create true and lasting love with other people. I mean, think about that. How could you feel good enough for someone else if you're not even good enough for yourself? And there's a lot of research that really is going to help you understand. This research shows that in order to create better relationships, check this out. You don't change the person that you're dating. You have to change yourself. That's why the art of being yourself is going to require you to learn how to truly love yourself. It's almost as if loving yourself is the loudest love language there is. Research has found that in a romantic relationship, who you are has a much bigger effect than the match between you and somebody else. I'm gonna say that again, who you are has a much bigger effect than the match between you and your partner. I want you to listen to the study because it shows that the quality of your relationships will not change until you change.

Now, this is based on an eight year long study that showed that people had the same dynamics in new partnerships as they had in past broken relationships after the glow of the initial honeymoon dating phase had faded. Same exact dynamics as the old broken relationships. Now, Doctor Matthew Johnson from the University of Alberta, who's a relationship researcher and lead author on the study, said this, although some relationship dynamics may change, you are still the same person. So you likely recreate many of the same patterns with the next partner. So here's what that research means for you. It doesn't matter if your partner is one of the best people in the world. If you're insecure, if you have a poor self image, if you have a terrible relationship with yourself, if you have low self worth, you're not going to be able to connect with that person. In fact, I bet you've had experiences in your past where you have dated somebody who's absolutely awesome and you're the one sabotaging things. That was me. All through high school, college and law school, I dated really great people. But here's the problem. I hated myself. And instead of learning how to love myself, you know what I did?

I just kept changing the person that I was with. It was a great distraction in the beginning, but then, ultimately, guess what happens when all the nudists wears off. Hello. You're still there with your same broken relationship with yourself. And it wasn't until I started to change myself that I was able to create better relationships with other people. So if you're sitting there looking around on all the dating apps, or looking around outside yourself for the validation and love that you need, you're looking in the wrong place. Based on the research and common sense, you got to look in the mirror. In fact, I mean it literally. I want you to start your day by looking in the mirror and doing something very specific to improve the relationship that you have with yourself. This is something that I'm going to teach you called the high five habit. I've written an entire international bestselling book about this, and it uses a field of research called neurobics, which is the fastest proven way to reprogram old thinking patterns. And let's face it, hating yourself, telling yourself you're not good enough, treating yourself like garbage, that is an old, outdated thinking pattern.

We got to reboot your mind. We got to update the way that you talk to yourself and treat yourself. And so I'm going to teach you how to use a simple hand gesture with a brand new thought to reprogram the way that you look at yourself, that you treat yourself. And it's going to help you love yourself. This is called the high five habit. Now, my research team and I have now tested this free and simple habit with over 175,000 people who have tried it for five days. And the results are incredible. You are going to change how you feel about yourself, which is what the research says that you have to do. Love yourself first. And here's how you're going to practice it. Every single morning after you're done brushing your teeth, you're going to look yourself in the mirror, and you're simply going to high five your own reflection in the mirror to send yourself in the day. I'm not kidding. I know it sounds ridiculous, it sounds cheesy. But every single morning, brush your teeth, put your toothbrush down, look yourself in the mirror, and then you're going to raise your hand and high five yourself.

And here's what's crazy. You are going to feel the impact immediately. And after practicing this for five days, simply adding a high five in the mirror to yourself without saying a thing before you send yourself into the day. And after practicing it for five days in a row, it changes how you see yourself. One of the reasons why this works is this. A high five is what's called a neurobic exercise. An aerobic exercise makes your brain snap into attention. It creates this kind of, like, brain fertilizer that makes your brain learn new habits faster. They are one of the easiest and most powerful ways to create new pathways and connections in your brain. And they have three specific parts. First of all, you take a routine activity, like brushing your teeth in the morning and looking in the mirror, and you then pair it with something unexpected, like all of a sudden, high fiving yourself. You don't do that every morning, so your brain's not expecting that. And the third and final piece to this, based on the research, is it's paired with an emotion or thought that you'd like to feel. Now, here's where this habit gets super exciting.

Let's think about a high five. What does a high five represent? A high five is a positive gesture that says, I love you, I support you, I see you keep going. Your brain knows what a high five is. A high five is 1000% positive programming. I mean, you have been giving other people high fives your entire life. You have been showing them the love, you've been celebrating them. And so when you high five yourself, it triggers celebratory and encouraging emotions to flood your body. The heightened neurobic state of high fiving yourself creates new nerve connections in your brain that connect the action of high fiving with the emotion of celebration. So every time you high five yourself, you aim all that high five goodness and positive programming right back at your own reflection. How fricking cool is that? I mean, you would high five the person that you love in the morning, wouldn't you? So now you're doing it to yourself. And trust me when I tell you this, when you try this five mornings in a row, start your day with a high five in the mirror. You'll not only experience a boost in the moment, but over time, something awesome happens.

This neurobic exercise rewires your mindset for more resilience, which is one of the most powerful benefits of a high five. I know, I know, I know. It sounds simple, but this cuts so deep. And you don't need to believe me. You just need to try it for five days and see what happens. I mean, what do you have to lose? If you now know, based on the research, that loving yourself first is the most important factor in you having loving relationships with other people, why wouldn't you try something for free? This works. It's grounded in science and loving yourself first is how you create true and lasting love with other people in your life. Why has it been tough? You really love her. You're getting on a plane and you're gonna go see her.

Yeah, I love her a bunch.

Okay.

So I guess I'm kind of coming to the realization that I haven't been hearing her properly, connecting with her on the level that should be now. Trying to figure that out.

Yeah.

So a couple months ago, she had. We've been having counseling.

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

It helps. She was doing it before, and then it kind of became the group, and then now I kind of see a little bit on my own. I've been recognizing these things. But I also know, like, a couple of months ago in counseling, she admitted on her last tour that she had emotionally connected with somebody else. Obviously, that put a big fire under my ass.

Yeah.

Supposedly I handled it really well. So she's wanting to, you know, do all this. She's worked a lot on herself for kind of getting to the point where she's at. She's got a spot on the bookshelf. That's 1215 composition books. Deep of just thoughts. Ever since she was back. I think she said to, like, twelve.

Amazing.

Some things that happened to her before that age of services.

Scary. And then a lot of regrets come up, and a lot of things you wish you could do over. And then you start to realize there's shit from your past that really mess with you that you shoved down. That happened. We were a kid. This is, I think, the cycle that we all hit. And here's the amazing opportunity. You not only have an amazing opportunity to change the person that you are and to change the relationship that you have with your wife, but you have an amazing opportunity to change the relationship you have with yourself, because your thoughts, your feelings, they actually matter, too. And you can't get. Yes. See, relationships are amplifiers. You go into a relationship and you're not right with yourself. That relationship just magnifies what's missing. What did you just get from that?

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

Yeah. And here's the thing that most men, at least in a traditional gender sense, don't understand, that it takes tremendous strength to be normal. It takes tremendous strength to talk about the shit that's bothering you. It takes tremendous strength to admit that you're wrong and to be scared. And that's actually what makes you connect more deeply to your partner. My husband of 25 years failed miserably in the restaurant business, nearly bankrupted us, lost it all. When he left the business, he was an alcoholic and completely lost and demoralized. And I did not know until recently, because it was through these rock bottom moments that my career took off. I invented this little thing called the five second rule that I used to get out of bed when the anxiety was so crushing. The only thing that would help me escape it was drinking myself into oblivion to numb it all out. And I started using this little brain hack to 54321, shut down the noise of my brain and launch myself forward through the fear, through the pain, through all of it. And my whole life turned around. Chris's life turned around. But I did not know until recently when we've been in couples therapy, the man has, for the last eight years, just been beating the hell out of himself because he feels like he failed.

He feels like he wasn't there for me. He feels like he didn't do his job providing.

That's kind of.

Yeah. And then starts to get successful, and they start to find themselves. It gets very concerned here at gate. So what I want to tell you is that the opportunity to connect with her is through. Regardless of what happened, regardless of what you did or didn't do, regardless of all that, you got to learn how to look in the mirror and see a man who is worth rooting for and who is worthy of love. It is not too late. It is not too late to change your life. It's not too late to change your marriage. But it's an inside out job. You start to show yourself some kindness and love.

Yeah.

And you start sharing more of the stuff that's coming up for you, and that is the path that's gonna actually heal. You.

Build my stuff.

Yes.

My mojo back. I think that's what she mad at me. I had a nice swagger and everything, but it's gotten diluted. Or my life, I think so maybe my own. Just being stagnant. That's it. Accepting instead of keep pushing.

You know? My good friend Joel Marin, who you should follow, just sent me a freaking thing that he wrote today. Oh, my God. Joel. Praise you. Joel. Joel. I cannot believe this. Joel Maryland. I'll give you his name. He literally wrote me this whole thing that he wrote today that you need to hear. M a r I o n. He wrote me this whole thing about the fact that when we are born, we have incredible potential, but so few of us realize what we're capable of. And he uses this analogy. This is in your DNA. You were created to be a Lamborghini in life, you have literally everything inside you to be able to perform like that Lambo. You're manufactured that way. That engine, 729 hp engine is in there. That insane torque. You have unbelievable intrinsic ability to go from zero to 65 mph in under 3 seconds. But for most, most of us, we never experienced close to those numbers that we were created to perform at. And so he tells a story about how he was test driving one, but the neighborhood he's in has like 35 miles per hour speed. He ended up not buying it because he never experienced tension.

What you're talking about is you're talking about the fact that you actually know there is that inside of you. And when you lose your capacity or built it and you stop growing and you stop stretching yourself, and you stop pushing yourself forward and learning new stuff and expressing yourself, something inside you starts to feel like it's dying. And so I'm telling you, yes, it's still there. And the reason why it's still there is because you miss it. And you can only miss something, you know? Okay, so I think Joel sent me that for a reason. In times of my life when I felt lost or stagnant, I say I feel like a racehorse tied to a pony ride at a kid's birthday party. Like I am built to fucking run.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I hate it when I feel, like, just tied down like that. And so there is something inside you that you've been holding back. What do you think it is?

Not really sure.

Well, I would take on a challenge.

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

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

Yeah. Yeah.

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

Not only that, but I deal with motion sickness, vertigo, and I don't drive well at night. So I'm about. I've got the band, the bands on great.

They were.

I took my motion sickness pills.

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

We're doing what we can.

She doesn't know you're coming.

She does now. She didn't a couple days ago, but then she was. We were trying to do the pregnancy reveal to some of the family because we just found out last week. So she was all like, I'm gonna do it. You're there.

I'm here.

And I want to video chat my.

Family and be able to, like, tell.

Her because she's up where some of the family is, and she was seen, so I told her, I'll tell you what. Well, I'm actually coming up there. So she was pretty surprised. But, you know, that's awesome.

You're gonna be an awesome dad. You want to know who the best dads are?

Yeah.

The ones who are actually right with themselves. The ones who are able to talk about their emotions. The ones who are able to be human.

This is my second child. Like I said, this is her first. But I told them, like, my son's almost 23.

That's amazing. You're not gonna start over. You actually are building upon.

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

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

Yeah.

And if I were a betting woman, days I am. Depends how much liquor I make. I'd place my bet on it.

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

Don't wish for it. Don't want it.

And my wife deserves it.

Do the work. No, no, hold on.

What? Go ahead.

You deserve it. I deserve it.

Okay.

Give yourself what you're seeking from other people. Seek redemption and forgiveness, because you deserve it from yourself. And in my book, forgiveness means that you have stopped wishing things could be different. Accept everything that's happened or didn't happen as a lesson. And as long as you hold on to that shit from the past, you're actually still there.

Okay.

What'd you get out of this?

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

I don't.

I don't think so, so I'm also going to introduce you to my husband. So he created a men's group called, or a men's retreat called soul degree, where he takes guys out into the woods for five days to actually have these kinds of conversations. And he's had guys from 22 to 60, plus multiple tours of duty, professional athletes, regular, just everyday folks like all of us. And it's remarkable. And what he also does, because he only does these a couple times a year, is he also has calls every month where it's guys get on and he leads a meditation. And then there's a topic that y'all discuss and it's really freaking cool. And so I will make sure that you have his information and I will get both of your email addresses, and I will have my team email you a credit so you can listen to one of my books on audio.

I've been doing a lot more trying to listen to stuff and, you know, you just don't know what direction to go because some stuff, it's just some people just want to make some money on you, you know, there's so much out there. You just want to find the right path.

Yeah.

As best as possible.

Yeah. Awesome. Thank you.

So I guess my question is, what would you tell Mel in 20 07 20 06 20 05 and how would that five second rule, how do you think that would have changed things for you?

That is a great question, Laura. Nobody has ever asked me that question. So is there something big that's happening in your life that you're worried you're gonna screw up?

Everything is big for me. I'm fortunate enough to ot Swansea.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I have a wonderful marriage.

And by the way, hold on a second. Can we just stop right there? I'm fortunate enough to own two salons. Does anybody have a guess where I'm going? You work hard. You made that happen. And so I want to draw a distinction, everybody, with gratitude. Okay? Really important, you need to hear me, okay? Because I have a feeling what the issue is. You're not gonna like this. I'm ready for it. Okay, good. I know you are. That's why I'm gonna go here. When you say I'm fortunate enough, you just gave your power away. And gratitude is a wonderful thing, to be able to ground you in the moment and to amplify all these positive experiences. But I want you to be very careful to give away the power of what you've created through your actions and your hard work and the fact that you show up every freaking day and you are riding the wave called entrepreneurship and life, and you are making that happen. So you are not fortunate enough. You have done the work to have two amazing businesses. You got that? Okay, good. Because I think the issue is self worth. I think that's your issue, that you don't feel worthy of the things that you have created, and so you relate to the things that you've created.

Like, it's luck and, like, it could be taken away. Is that hitting home? So what do you want to say about that?

I received that.

I received that.

I mean, if I can just be human for a second, we all maybe struggle with a little bit of that. Am I worthy of the things that I've achieved, right? Or, like, that imposter syndrome?

Like, and so here's the biggest thing I want you all to take away from this. And I mean this. The fear that things could change, the fear that this is not going to continue to be successful, that's normal. And it's a big thing. But if you allow yourself to focus on this big, scary thing, you will literally lose sight of the power of all the little things. Getting the little things right is everything. So, getting out of bed, moving your body, checking your attitude before you walk into your business so you don't bring any negativity in with you. The way that you greet your spouse and your kids when you walk in the door at the end of the day, the stuff you put in your mouth, the person that you listen to in your head. Get out of here, Tina. Right? You focus on all those little things all day long. Everybody and the big things take care of themselves. You know how to do this. And so we want to make it more complicated than it is. Everybody. It's not. When you get the little things right every day, it shows your brain and your nervous system, your mind, body and spirit that you care about yourself.

It shows you that you can rely on yourself, and it creates its own form of momentum. And I see a lot of you crying, and I know why. Why? Because you're not actually getting the little things right. You've given up on yourself, because you've gotten so focused on everybody else and taking care of everybody, all these big problems, and we have to bring it back to the basics. And so what I would have told myself when things started to feel scary is I would have said, bitch, you got to get out of bed. You gotta, like, stop barking about what Chris is doing, and you gotta cheer for the mandev. You got to stop griping in your mind and letting your own negative voice come in and you got to fight to get the little things right. And what's coming up for you?

Is that a question was coming up for me?

Yeah. Because I just saw you, like, man.

I. I appreciate the little things. I think that's the focus for me. And I also know that we have big plans, big changes, big things that.

We want to do.

You know, creating a national brand, amazing industry. Right? Excellence in the industry, creating a voice for stylists or artists. That. Is that dream real? I don't know.

You tell me. I want it to be okay. Prove it. And how do you. How do you make a big dream come true, everybody? So this is amazing. You're going to use this whole body of research called behavioral activation therapy, which is literally a fancy pants way to say, act like the person that has built a national brand now. Act like the person you want to be now. And there's a simple way to figure this out. Take out a piece of paper, draw a line in the middle of it, describe the person that you want to be. So a person with a big national brand doing what they do. What do they do every day early? Yep.

They create objectives for the day. They affirm their self work, affirm their goals. They start out, you know, with nutritious meal activity going deep into work. And that's all before the family even makes up, right?

Correct. Yes. How many people want to be that person? Yeah. We're like, oh, my God, that's the right part. Yeah. And then the alarm rings and the voice in your head starts barking and the weight in your body hits. And you feel so far away in your comfy bed from that huge dream that you have. And we all know this feeling because this is what we all feel every single morning. It is the pull, everybody, of what you're meant to do. And I'm going to warn you, your dreams don't die. They haunt you. Unless you're taking action toward them, they do not leave you. You have been dreaming about the same shit since you were little. It's not going anywhere. It keeps getting, like, more painful because you can just like. And you see other people doing it, they're not even as nice as you. That pull is trying to get you to wake up and pay attention, stop sleepwalking through your life. There's something more important than being kind, comfortable in that bed. It is tapping into the power in you to serve, to create something that blows your mind. And so, yes, that's true.

And so there's a couple other things I'm going to tell you, give yourself a five year timeline, because the things that you all would take on, if you knew it was going to take five to ten years, it would be bigger than what you're taking on now. And that also kind of relieves the pressure, because some days you're going to wake up and have this amazing morning, and some days the kids are gonna dance and the dogs gonna be barfing on the floor and you're like, literally, it's not gonna work. And so it is a long game. And the other thing that I'm gonna tell all of you that want to expand, because how many of you want to expand your businesses or grow a bigger brand or do all this stuff? You have to hire somebody before you're ready. You have to replace yourself. So once you understand what all the little things are that you got to get right in your business every day, from the time that the doors open to what the morning meeting looks like, to the type of energy that you want to the playlist that's there, to when the counters get wiped down, to who's cleaning the bathroom, to all of that stuff, you got to hire somebody to replace you.

Because now that you know what all the little things are, you need somebody to do that so you can free up time and capacity to work on the bigger things that are calling you. Because otherwise you're going to start to resent your business because you're busy doing all the stuff you shouldn't be doing anymore. And that's keeping you from being able to focus on the bigger things. This was me for a long time in our business that I was so busy kind of running around and doing all this stuff that I wasn't able to focus on the bigger thing. You got this. You got this. I love you. All right, who's next? Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by goddess, 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. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe. Wow.