Transcript of How a Simple High 5 Can Transform Your Self-Doubt into Confidence | Mel Robbins

How do they start to shift for those that are ready?

Okay, great. If you are sick and tired of beating yourself up, if you are sick and tired of focusing on what's not working, if you are sick and tired of the self-doubt and the self-criticism and the self-hatred, this is a game-changer. I only learned this 18 months ago. So despite all of my success, Koya, on the outside, being me was this weird mix of having positive outbursts of energy and enthusiasm in the moment, combined with a deep, relentless, grinding internal voice that was critical, that had a lot of self-hatred, that was constantly making me feel like the world was aimed at me and that I was screwing everything up. That was my experience. I think that is the majority of people's experiences, that no matter how good it looks on the outside, the majority of human beings who are adults either can't look at themselves in the mirror, and this was a huge wake-up call in researching the high five habit, 50% of men and women, and this is not a blind, double-research, PhD-back study, this is looking at hundreds of thousands of people that are taking the high five challenge. This is looking at the millions of people that follow me and the feedback that we're getting.

50% of the people that first try to do this high five habit, which I'll explain in just a second, report that they can't even look at themselves in the mirror. There is so much self-hatred or disgust or judgment. It is so sad. And I am on a mission to wake everybody up and to teach everybody a fundamental simple habit that unlocks science in your brain and in your nervous system to help you break the habit of self-rejection and self-hatred and self-doubt. And that's where the high five habit comes in. And so the high five habit is very simple. First, I'm going to explain it, and then we can unpack it however you think will benefit everybody that's listening. All you're going to do is you're going to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, and I want this to become part of your morning routine. There's lots of science around why I want you to do in the morning. We can get to that in a minute. But you're just going to stand in front of your bathroom mirror, and I want you to take a moment and I want you to look at the human being in the mirror.

That right there is a complete change from what you're doing right now. Because what you're doing right now when you stand in front of the mirror and you brush your teeth, or you stand in front of the mirror and you get for your day, is you either ignore yourself, you won't even look at yourself, that's a form of self-rejection, or you focus on all the things that you need to fix: your hair, your makeup, the things you don't like. And so you start your day with a habit in your morning routine of rejecting yourself. And that habit of self-rejection has created created the insecurity that you feel. That habit of self-rejection is what drives your need for validation externally. That habit of self-rejection is why you think you're only worthy if somebody else says that you're worthy. And so the high five habit is all about using science to break the habit of self-rejection and replace it with a habit self-empowerment, self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-love. And here's how you do it. You're just going to stand there, you're going to look at the person in the mirror. And notice I'm not saying reflection. There are two people in the bathroom every morning.

There's you and there's a human being in the mirror who has been waiting for you to wake up and realize that they're there. They are trying. They are doing their best. They are so beaten down by your relentless criticism. They need you. They need you to see the positive. They need you to compliment them. They need to be kind to them. And so I want you to take that in for a minute because you're staring at your soul, at your spirit, at your essence, at your humanity. And most of us have never actually considered that. I hadn't. And then what I want you to do is I want you to just reflect for a second as you look at that human being. What is she or he or they need from me today? Something you've never asked yourself, because Because right now, what your morning routine is, is that you drift into your day and you start thinking about everybody else. What do you need to do for everybody else? What's all the things on your to-do list? You have skipped the most important person, and that's the human being in the mirror. And I want you to literally stop and ask yourself, What do she, he, or they need for me?

And it might be, I need you to have some freaking fun. I need you to stop being a bitch. I need you to be a little more positive here. I need you to reach out to some people and ask for some help. Something will pop in your mind. And then take a deep breath. And then as cheesy as it sounds, I want you to raise your hand and I want you to high five that human being in the mirror. And something crazy is going to happen. So this is why this is so revolutionary. Regardless of how weird the high five habit feels, regardless of how much you may resist it, regardless of how corny it is, you will immediately feel your mood shift because your brain doesn't know the difference between high fiving somebody else and high fiving yourself.

That's what I love about it. I love that it's so simple and silly because we need to play more.

Yes. And so when you give somebody a high five, Koya, what does the high five communicate?

Yes. We got this. You're awesome. Just love, basically. It communicates love.

It does. You're right. And it communicates a lot of different forms of love. So it could be a high five that's really encouraging. I see this is hard. You got this. Yeah. It could be, shake it off. Keep going. It could be, I love you. I believe in you. We're together. It's partnership. It's this massive, wonderful feeling of love. You have never high five somebody and thought, I hate you. I hope you fail. You're ugly. You're worthless. You've never done it. And so you can stand before yourself in the bathroom mirror and hate the person you see. But the second You physically raise your arm and you do the motion that you've done your whole life, your brain shuts off all thinking, and it taps into the programming in your mind that says, I believe in you. I love you. I see you. Keep going. And then you feel this boost in your mind because, and in your mood, every time somebody else is giving you a high five, your brain has released dopamine. That's why high fives feel so good. The other reason why a high five feels so good is because your nervous system recognizes it as somebody celebrating you.

And so you get this affirming life energy that jolts through your body. And so your brain, again, and your nervous system doesn't know the difference between me high-fiving you and me high-fiving myself. So even on my lowest days, Koya, when I high-five myself, I get a dopamine drip, and I get this nervous system boosting the energy. And that's why it feels so good. We are using programming in you and aiming it back at you so that you have the benefit of belief, of self-love, of positive mental programming, of dopamine, and of a jolt through your nervous system. It's freaking bananas.

That's amazing. I love that. I love that it's so simple. I love giving myself a high five. And I love something that you say. You say, and I don't know if this is your quote or something from someone else, but you say, The way you view yourself is the way you view the world.

It's true.

That's powerful.

It's true. Well, let's talk about people pleasing. So many of us struggle with people pleasing. Well, people pleasing for a long time. I thought people pleasing was about making other people like me. That's what you're doing, but that's actually not the source of people pleasing. People pleasing is not about the need to be liked by other people. People pleasing results from you not liking yourself. So people pleasing is about you and your self-hatred and your insecurity. Wow.

That's going to wake a lot of people up.

What did you just get from that?

People pleasing is more about how you feel about yourself than how you feel about others. Correct.

Correct. Because here's the thing. If you like yourself, even though you're not where you are, even though... If you like yourself, even if you don't like where you are in your life right now. If you can still look in the mirror and see a person who's trying, a person who's worthy of support, a person that you're going to root for, a person that you like, because you deep down know, even though you're way more than you want to, even though you don't have the money you want, even though you're not in a relationship yet, whatever it is that you've been bashing your sofa. If you can look in the mirror and see somebody you genuinely like because you know deep down, they're a good person, and they're trying, and and they've survived a lot, and they are a person that's worthy of being liked because you know who they are at their core. If you can feel that way about yourself and treat yourself that way by giving yourself a high five, that's how you demonstrate that you like yourself. When you go out into the world, if somebody doesn't like you, it does not take away from the fact that you still like yourself.

If you treat yourself with respect and somebody out in the world disrespects you, that will not change the fact that you still treat yourself with respect. The core problem is that most of us look in the mirror and reject the person that we see. And then we bring that insecurity out into the world. And we are looking at lovers and bosses and friends and family to then make us feel secure or make us feel loved. When the root problem is we don't love and like ourselves. And so we got to bring all of that back in house. Using the high five habit, you can show yourself, demonstrate to yourself, and practice what a person who likes and loves and respects themselves does, which is they wake up every day and they treat themselves with love and kindness. And the best part for me about the high five habit is you actually don't have to say a word. And in fact, I recommend that for the first five days you don't. Because your self-critic and your brain programming is so negative and relentless, and it's been in there for decades, that I want you to feel the benefit of the science.

I want you to just stand there and look at the human being in the eyes in the mirror, and I want you to raise your hand and notice what you're feeling. You can't help but crack a smile after you do this for a couple of days because of the dopamine. You can't help but shift how you see yourself because of the nervous system wiring. We've had reports back now from people who have said this really interesting thing. They've said, You know how you can probably... Can you recall a time in your life where you actually remember getting high fives? Yeah. When was it? Can you describe it? Basketball. Okay, put us right at the scene.

Oh, yeah. So playing basketball, I mean, that is the best place for high fives. High school. I mean, for a whole year, I wrote the bench. But when I actually start getting rebounds, making points, High five, high five. The more high fives I got, the better I got because it boosted my confidence in myself.

Correct. There's a study, actually, with the NBA that proves this. They took a look at NBA teams. Researchers did, I think this was in 2011. There's a massive article in the Wall Street Journal about this, as well as a published academic study, they looked at NBA teams. Do you know you can predict what teams are going to have the winning-est record at the end of the season by looking at behavior in the preseason. The behavior that predicts whether or not an NBA team is going to have a winning season or not is the number of pats on the back, fist bumps, and high fives that a team gives one another in the preseason. Wow. Because just as you said, based on your lived, felt experience, playing basketball, being in high school, being on a team, feeling the encouragement, the momentum, the support, high fives aren't gestures. They communicate trust in partnership and belief. So when you high five a teammate, you're communicating, We're in this. I believe in you. Shake off that shot. Even though you're on the bench, you're a valued member of this team. Keep trying, keep going. And the corresponding data about the teams with the worst record was also true.

They had the least number of pats on the back and fist bumps and high fives. Why? Well, when every player is in it for themselves, it creates distrust and selfishness. And so by high-fiving yourself in the mirror, can create that same partnership with yourself, and that same momentum starts to get created every single morning when you send yourself into the game of life every day, the way you would send yourself back into the game of basketball after having a team huddle.

I love that. I love that. And it actually brings me to one of the most important pillars of Get Loved Up, which is spirituality. And I want to dive into spirituality with you because I feel like giving that high five is bringing Bringing people back into divine alignment with themselves.

Okay, say that again, because that is exactly right.

Bringing people, giving that high five is bringing people back into alignment with themselves, with spirit, with universe, with God, because that negative self-talk It's taking you out of alignment with love, out of alignment with spirit. And so that one act, because I know you say habits, I say ritual. We have so many different language, but what I feel when I give myself a high five and when I practice that positive self-talk is alignment with spirit.

A thousand %. So all of the negative talk, like remember, let's go back to the two human beings in the bathroom, you and the human being in the mirror. The negative self-talk stands between you two. And when you go to raise your hand and high five yourself, it is a moment of divinity with yourself, with your universe, with the spirit, with God, with whatever you believe in. You will feel that energy if you allow yourself to. You will feel yourself coming home. You will feel yourself stepping back into alignment with who you truly are in your essence, which is a being that is worthy of love, a being that is worthy of support, simply because you exist. Like, today is my 53rd birthday. And when I think about birthdays, what are you actually celebrating? You're celebrating life. You're celebrating your breath. You're celebrating the fact that you're still here. And there is something divine mind about that. And every single morning, if you make the high five habit a ritual that starts your day, you are also bringing the celebration of your life and your existence into your morning. And the thing that I love about this, because I love gratitude and I love meditation, and these are extraordinary practices with documented benefit.

I'm to somebody who's a Buddhist meditation instructor and a certified yoga instructor. I love Chris. Yeah, Chris is just awesome. And interesting thing about Chris, though, is that here he is practicing every single day. He is a disciplined guy, right? Mm-hmm. Meditating daily for probably eight years. Okay. Meditation teaches you self-awareness, and it teaches you how to not react to thoughts. It doesn't change the default opinion that you have about yourself. Gratitude, if you look at what most of us write down when we practice gratitude, it is external. It is rarely something within you. And what I love about the high five habit and why this simple ritual is so divine and spiritual is because it is about reconnection with self. It is and I will. What I've experienced after doing this now for over a year is when I step into the bathroom, I don't even need to high five myself. I still do. But what's happened over this repetitive ritual of raising my hand in celebration, encouragement, empathy, support, and love to myself every morning, no matter where I am, where I'm waking up, how I feel, just part of how I begin the day, is over time, because of the science, it has reset my mind.

I don't even see a person I would ever criticize. I don't even see my face. I just see this human being that I love.

That's beautiful. And I think with meditation, with the high five, with these rituals, it gives us the time to come back to center. And people use things in different ways, but it is the opportunity to come back to center to crowd out the noise.

So I'm back with my husband, Chris.

Hi, Mel.

Hi, Chris.

Thanks for having me. Of course.

I was just sharing with everybody that when I first stumbled upon this high five habit, and I started doing it, and then I asked you if you would try it for five days. Do you remember that?

Definitely. And I said, NFW.

You did have a very deliberate, I'm not doing that.

Yeah, I immediately thought it was the dumbest idea ever. I found it ludicrous, quite honestly. Let's go to the mirror. Let's high five ourselves, and this is going to solve all problems.

Well, I'm not saying it's going to solve all problems, but I know based on the research, and I know based on the testimonials of 175,000 people and the testimonials that roll in every single freaking day that are so profound that when you take on this habit, it has a shocking impact on your brain and how you see yourself and the person in the mirror.

And that kicks open a door to an entirely new set of habits and an entirely new possibility. And we're laughing. But when I kept pushing you because I'm like, Dude, you're my husband. I need you to try this. I want you to take the high five challenge. I want you to do this for five days. You shared with me something that I didn't know, and the real reason why you thought this was stupid when you dug a little deeper, it was really sad. And honestly, it was scary to hear as your spouse.

Would you share with everybody the deeper insight as to why you had that reaction?

I think at the time, I related to the idea of a high five to myself as being encouragement, like looking forward, the idea that you would high five yourself to inspire forward action. And yet I find that the power of that high five in the mirror is less your hand meeting the mirror and more your eyes meeting your eyes. And that's where the struggle was. Because when I took that challenge on, I remember really, the high five was easy. The looking at myself in the mirror, that was not easy.

Why? Can I hold your hand?

I think it was not easy because there was so much reflection on the past. I was looking back. I was not seeing somebody that deserved a high five. I saw fail failure, I saw upset. I saw just not living up to the expectation that I think I had set for myself. I'm sure that society Society's expectations were also influencing that. But just where I was at the time, I didn't feel like I deserve that high five. I I think that that was probably the underlying reason why my reaction to the idea of doing it was, This is stupid, when the truth is that I was not happy with myself and didn't think a high five was deserved.

(sighs) It's really hard to hear how long you felt that way about yourself, because I stood next to you for years the sink right next to you. And when I looked at you, like I saw the world's best dad, amazing husband. I saw somebody who was absolutely integral to helping me build my business. I felt grateful for you. I didn't know you thought any of those things. You just put on a smile and carried on. You were so stoic about it. So can you explain? Because I think that there's a lot of people, especially men, that really beat the hell out of themselves when their career doesn't go how they thought it was going to go, or they get laid off, or you become an entrepreneur. And entrepreneurship looks fucking glamorous. It's a bitch, especially in the restaurant business. And you had been an entrepreneur. So can you just share just a little bit of context for people so they understand how long you would look in the mirror and see somebody that failed and why you felt that way?

Oh, It had to have been 15 years anyway.

Fifteen years?

Oh, yeah. No, I don't think it was just the unraveling of the restaurant business that was the beginning of that. I think that I'm not sure exactly when, but as you and I know, looking back on my very colorful career, I am grateful today for all the things that I did. But But having moved through so many different roles and responsibilities and industries and companies and the job changes, and I just never, ever related to myself like I was succeeding in a professional sense. I, of course, concluded that therein lies the source of my failure because my job here is to be the provider, the proverbial provider, and to go, quote, make it happen. The discomfort with myself and my progress professionally was absolutely what I think dragged me down. Being an entrepreneur can seem glamorous. I would say that at the time when this whole thing the high five challenge or the book came out, you and I were in the throes of it. I mean, we were, talk about just getting up and putting on your boots and just diving into the fire every day. There wasn't, at least just didn't seem like there was a moment to actually stop and acknowledge the good.

And quite frankly, you weren't acknowledging me like that. You might have seen me as a good husband father or business partner, but those words weren't being shared between us. And so naturally, I didn't get that reinforcement verbally from you. But I also think that being in the thick of it and running as fast and as hard as we were didn't The idea of stopping and looking in the mirror and seeing myself truly for who I am and the good that I have done and acknowledging all the failures as being a source of powerful learning and all that stuff, fuck that. It wasn't I wasn't. And that's why I say, I think the hardest part was to stand in front of that mirror and see your whole self. And for guys, I think for guys, that is For many, borderline feels impossible because that's what we do. We just get up, put the boots on, and go, Okay, Mel needs something. The wife needs something. The kids need something. The employer needs something. Okay, let me jam in a quick workout. Maybe because maybe I'm thoughtful about what my mind, body, or spirit needs, but also something that I think is an afterthought for guys.

We put everybody but ourselves first. So the act of standing in front of a mirror and high-fiving yourself and looking yourself in the eyes and saying, I love you, outlandish concept. But hugely, hugely important. And it doesn't happen unless you're willing to really stop and slow down and consider that you matter more than your wife, your kids, your employer, the rest of it. And I think that's part of what has, I think maybe over the years, dragged me down was paying zero attention to me and paying all the attention or so I felt on everybody outside of me.

And providing and trying to prove that you were successful and trying to earn money and live up to also your dad's expectations. Yeah.

Well, that's... I mean, if you really want to go back to the root of it all, we could be here all day. But yes, certainly growing up with a father that did what he did and accomplished he accomplished. Even just the basics of putting on a suit and tie, and packing a briefcase, and catching a train, and working in a sky rise, a high rise in Manhattan. All of those things were just visual cues of what I thought I should be doing. None of which, of course, played out other than the occasional suit until ties and the rest of it flew out the window. But just I wasn't being like my dad, which is what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

You get really emotional when you talk about looking at yourself in the mirror. I want to hear you talk more about that because I know that it's a bunch of things that come up for you because you're not in that place that you are in, where you look in the mirror and see a failure, and you don't believe those things about yourself. The challenge of simply standing in the mirror and looking in the eyes, I agree with you. That's the hardest part of adding this habit to your morning routine. Just put the toothbrush down and be with the person in the mirror. Look them in the eyes and don't see a reflection, see be a human being who needs you. That half of men and women can't or won't look at themselves.

It's a good point because you can... It sounds weird, but you can look right through yourself in the mirror.

Yes.

Versus actually seeing yourself.

Yes. If you aren't looking through yourself, a lot of us look at all the things we don't like. Even gazing at ourselves is an act of self-criticism because we're like, I hate my this, I hate my that, my neck is saggy. You have since done tremendous amount of therapy. You and I have done the psychedelic supervised therapies. You are in the middle of getting your master's in spiritual transpersonal psychology. You are getting your training to be a death doula and to sit with people at the end of their life. And you have also started a men's retreat called Soul Degree. And you've been leading retreats with men for four years, Chris. And there's a lot of emotion that comes up for you. Six. Six years, sorry. Six years.

Terrible wife. Can I get a high five?

Cheer me on even though... Thank you. Don't let go of my hand. I don't want to hold your hand. You have been in the presence of so many men, and you've even had Oakley reach out to you and had you counsel some of his friends through anxiety and through issues. And I know there's a lot of emotion there. So can you just speak to the men and the boys that may be listening or to the people in their lives that love them about what you've witnessed, about the coaching that you lead, the meditation circles that you lead, not from what you want people to know about the importance of being able to look yourself in the mirror and learn how to take actions to truly support and love yourself, and that this is a very foreign concept for boys and men.

Yeah, I think that the... I I often talk about Soul Degree as being a space that I hold for men that allows them to slow down, when the truth of the matter is, it's in the slow down that all of those beautiful things can take place. I think that the reason why there's a lot of emotion there for me, particularly with guys, is that, and I speak to all the partners and the spouses, the people that have sons and fathers and male counterparts, is that Yes, it is the responsibility of the individual to be able to look in the mirror and see the whole person, foibles and all. But why there is a lot of emotion is because in my experience in sitting with men, very rarely do men feel truly seen and heard? And that's not...

On an emotional level. So let's go back to the mirror and what you experienced when for five days in a row, you made it a habit to stop at a time in your life where you still were beating the shit out of yourself and look yourself in the eyes and either say, I love you, which I know is one of your practices, to look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and say, I love you. But to me, one of the powers of the high five habit is there's a lot of people that I love you. And so the physical action of giving the person in the mirror a high five demonstrates love. And so what did you experience for yourself personally in terms of the science working, the shift in how you started to see the person in the mirror?

Well, transformation doesn't happen without repetition. And I think at one point, I don't remember if this is in the book, but the idea that there's so many mirrors out there in the world. I mean, you come across a mirror a dozen times a day, potentially. I tried that during the challenge. It wasn't just brush teeth in the morning one time. It was whenever I saw a mirror. I think that That's critically important because this high five thing, this idea, it's not... I know you call it the high five habit, but it's one of those things that doesn't It almost feels elusive in terms of becoming habitual. And that's because next week or next year, some shit might go down, and you might do something or something happens where you really feel immediately lousy about yourself. Even though there may be some habit of you getting up saying, I love you, or high-fiving yourself, your life circumstance is going to get in the way frequently.

Correct. Just like with exercise or drinking your water or getting a good night's sleep.

But when you come back to that moment, because for me, personally, it's a moment of joining in with myself. It's a moment of partnership with myself. You used to coach almost all the teams that our kids played on when they were little, when they were really little. As a coach, if you think about when you high five a kid, it's either to congratulate them for something that they did, or it's to help them shake something off and know that there's somebody that believes in them and to get back out there into the game. For me, whether it's the high five I give myself in morning after I brush my teeth and the moment I take to look at myself in the mirror, or like you said, I don't always high five myself throughout the day when I see a mirror, but I'll tell you something, I look at myself differently. And I know you do, too. And so the importance of this, because it is something that most of us don't do. I think we casually slip into the subconscious where we're beating ourselves up and we're on autopilot. And every time you pass a mirror, you have a chance to look yourself in the eyes and see a person that is worthy of celebrating, of cheering for, of believing in, simply because you're here.

That, to me, is the power of this. What is the power of it for you?

I'm still a little steeped in acknowledging that, yes, I'm here, but not here physically and how great this is that I'm alive and breathing. Yes, that's all amazing. But when I look in the mirror, it's what I see is... I guess I can see the age and the wisdom and the learning more I'm more grateful for that, for having been through what I've been through. So the looking in the mirror and the acknowledging of myself, it's rarely like, Okay, you got this. All right, your next meeting or your next whatever.

Maybe it should be.

Maybe. But like I said, I look forward less than I do look back. Great. And today, in the look back, there's more gratitude and appreciation and a willingness to high five those elements of me, which for so many years I hated.

When you look in the mirror, can you describe the person you see today?

I see a man for who he is. And I see a man with different, but the same number of battle scars that every other other man, I think, has in the sense of what I've been through, what's worked, what hasn't worked. I see a man who's worked his ass off, but not necessarily with the right mindset or for the right reasons. If there's regret, that's probably the area to dig in for me is just being able to completely release that, Yeah, whatever. I made that choice for that reason at that time with the tools that I had, and that's all I knew. I see today, looking in the mirror, somebody that is accepting of those decisions and choices that I made, and even acknowledging the pain and the struggle that I was also blind to. The idea of coming to terms with having battled depression, I think I was oblivious to that for many years without... Just didn't even occur to me. That might have been part of the resistance, too. If you're battling depression, a high five in the mirror definitely feels like the last thing in in the world you would ever pursue.

But it's something that you should.

Oh, without a doubt. I see a man I love. I see a man I'm proud of. I see a great father. And I see a great partner to you. And I see a man who has accomplished a lot in a short period of time. I see a man who's doing his best and deserves a look in the eye and a high five.

All right. Well, I'll give you one. Oh, my God.

I think one last thing I want to say to the men out there, any man who feels a sense of failure or that they haven't lived up to their own expectations or those outside of them, Any man who's been battling with or has battled with addiction or depression or any of these things that drag us down, I strongly encourage you to start with you and to begin with forgiveness. Not always so easy, but Without a doubt, I know from my experience, not just me personally, but being in the company of lots of men, that we are all working our ass off to do the right thing. And while we don't always believe that the results live up, it's in the forgiveness and the starting with yourself and the self-acknowledgment.

And I want to go back to what you said in the very beginning, because I know that we're going to get a ton of questions, Chris. How? How do I begin that? One step that you could take today is trying this habit of even just looking yourself in the mirror.

I'm shocked that I'm even saying this, given my initial reaction to the high five habit. But I agree. Start right there. Start in the mirror.

Because if you change the story you're telling yourself about the person you see in the mirror, if you change the actions that you take in how you treat the human being in the mirror, if you change what you're thinking when you look in the eyes of the person in the mirror, that is the beginning of forgiving yourself. You will never forgive yourself if you refuse to look yourself in the eyes with compassion and with forgiveness and with understanding. And one of the reasons why I'm going to keep hammering this, everybody, raise your hand and high five the mirror, because if you're at a place where you are beating the shit out of yourself and you can't stand your sofa whatever reason, whatever you did, we've all done something. You don't have to change your thoughts. The neurobics and the science of simply making the physical gesture of the high five, Chris, and all of the lifetime of positive programming associated with it, it has a chemical, a neurological, a psychological benefit immediately that is grounded in science. And so the physical act does the work for you, and it starts to plow new neural pathways, and it releases dopamine, all of which will help you do the other work that you need to do to walk down the road of forgiving yourself.

But you got to start by simply looking at yourself in the eyes and seeing somebody who is worthy of forgiving because you are.

Yeah, I can't stress that enough. You could forgive yourself all day long walking down the sidewalk, but that's a futile exercise. The mirror is where it happens. And seeing yourself.

I think it wasn't until I discovered the high five habit that I profoundly realized how much self-hatred I was dealing with.

Despite everything else. Yeah.

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

Biger, better.

Biger, better, because it was a thing that you achieved that made you lovable or worthy. The real trick and this is everything, is being able to know and feel in your bones that you are lovable and worthy just because you're breathing. And that was a huge breakthrough for me. And so, no, I never celebrated because I think I was so married to this idea that unless I'm doing or winning or achieving. And it happens so subtly when you're little because you start to get so much positive praise when you get a good grade or when you do something When you're in school or when you make your mates laugh or whatever it might be that you start to go, Oh, that's what love feels like. Oh, if I do that. And so you outsource love and validation to outside things. And I'm here to tell you We all got to learn how to bring it back home and anchor the validation and love that you need where you are right now every single day. And it's only in discovering this that I had to confront just how much I was beating myself up, just how much I was tearing myself down, and how I was chasing these things, because what I actually wanted was to feel loved.

If you ask yourself, Okay, great. You want to make a million dollars?

Why?

There's a feeling that you're looking for from that. If you can start to work on bringing that feeling into your day-to-day life for yourself, it changes the way that you go about achieving things. I didn't even enjoy I say half the stuff that I did because I was constantly, maniacally focused on the things that weren't working rather than the 100 things that were. The same is true with everybody's day. You don't even know the number of amazing things you do every day. You feed the dog, high five. You got the kids to school, high five. You read 10 pages of the book, high five. You said a nice thing to a stranger, high five. You got something done at work, high five. You got through 70% of your inbox, high five. In Instead, you focus and ruminate on the one thing you didn't get to, and then you use that as evidence, again, dust on the mirror, to see a human being that's not measuring up and never will and all that stuff their stupid fourth grade teacher said to you, Must be true, dust on the mirror. No. You need to interrupt this, period.

That is so powerful. Everything you just said, I was just nodding along thinking, this is so true. I saw a video recently from a good friend of mine, Jason Goldberg, and he I was talking about a study at the Olympics where people who win bronze are happier than those who win silver. And so coming third makes you happier than coming second, because the people that come second, they go, Oh, but I was a second away from first. And so they feel disheartened. Whereas the person who came third goes, At least I made it on the podium. Yeah. And that's what you're saying. Yeah, thousand %. Make it to the podium.

Yes.

Put on the clothes.

Or just You just put on the clothes. You just put on the clothes, but that's making it to the podium. To me, that's just getting there. It's not about... Actually, what you really hit something when you were saying that about celebration for me, it's not just about celebration, it's about what we celebrate in our lives. So when we celebrate our birthday, we're celebrating life. When you're celebrating an achievement, you're still celebrating a thing. Yes. And so celebrating life, when you're celebrating your breath, when you're celebrating your life force, your energy, your The soul, the ability to love, the ability to be kind, the ability to have relational exchanges like we're having right now, that's what you celebrate. Because if you only celebrate things, now you're waiting for the next thing. And I actually learned that completely from My wife, Radhi, whether it was consciously or unconsciously, she didn't even know what she was doing. This was totally all in my own head. But I realized that every time I reached a new external peak or a new thing, I expected to receive more love from her. I I expected that she would think something more cool of me.

And the answer was she didn't. She loved me the same. And I would always wonder, why does she not love me for this? How does she not respect me? How does she not feel it differently. I mean, look what I'm doing. Look what I've achieved. And when I kept working with that thought, and I reflect deeply, and I love breaking down my own thoughts and figuring it out, and I really get stuck in there, I realized that my wife loves me for my life and who I am, not what I do. And so she unintentionally trained me and taught me to disconnect my value from what I do to who I am, which is what she loves me for. And I realized that that was so much more beautiful and so much more powerful and so much more meaningful to be loved for who I am than what I do and achieve. Yes.

And here's now an even bigger thing. Please.

You already do this. But as you're listening to Jay and I, I want you to actually grasp how profound it would be if you could feel that way about yourself. If you could always just look in the mirror and see a human being that's trying, and that's worthy of a high five, and a human being that failed, and, Okay, we're going to brush it off, and that's worthy of a high five. Somebody who is running the marathon of life that you are going to celebrate every step of the way. I also want to take this and flip this in the opposite, because I think this is where people really get mucked This happened in my own marriage, and it's only a recent discovery between Chris and I, and that is that we had the opposite thing happen, Jay. When Chris and his best friend went into the restaurant business and they poured seven years into it and gave it their go, and at the end of the day, they sold it for penn on the dollar to the next investor, and they did not return the profit that they had hoped they would return to their investors.

Now, what was interesting about watching this all go down is that our best A friend who was Chris's partner, was able to leave the experience and go, Okay, entrepreneurship. I'm so proud of us. We put in so much work. We built something amazing. We had an incredible brand. We were incredible leaders. Did we return the profit? No. But that's not everything in life. And he moved on. My husband could not. He literally said, Because I didn't achieve, because I failed, I am a failure who is not worthy of love. And for seven years, he has walked into a bathroom with the dust that has said, I am a failure. And so as you have been looking for, Why doesn't she love me more? Somebody who fails goes, How can you still love me? It's only until... It doesn't matter how much I love the guy. It doesn't matter how much I build him up. I'm so proud of everything that he's done and all the stuff that Chris is doing. He's had a There's a massive breakthrough in this. Part of it is through the high five habit because of the resistance. But I can't do that.

Look at the failure that I've been. If you don't love yourself, you won't allow somebody else to love you. When you can separate what you're doing from your soul and your intention and your spirit and your humanity, and you can stand with yourself every morning, and that high five doesn't necessarily become celebration. It becomes acceptance, and it becomes compassion, and it becomes acknowledgement. And then it becomes slowly, celebration and momentum and forward energy that you need when life drags you down. It's really a profound point you just made that it's only when you love your sofa breathing, for living, for being, just as you are, that level of acceptance that we so want from everybody else. And I'm telling you, you have an opportunity to do it for yourself by keeping your promises, by being kind to yourself, by standing before yourself and seeing a human being who needs you and who loves you and who's going to be with you your whole life.

This is a really profound moment in my life and a major turning point. And it's not a pandemic moment, but in order to give you the backdrop of what was going on in my life. And given that at the time that you and I are talking, we're still in the middle of a pandemic pandemic. I'll just tell you what was going on in my life, at least to the extent I can, based on what the lawyers tell me. No, I'm just kidding. Everybody knows the moment that their life turned upside down because of COVID. Whether you got news that the office was closing or you couldn't go see your grandma or dad, or you were quarantined with your kids and they were in a state of distress, there was that moment. And for me, what happened is I was taping a daytime talk show here in the United States, and they found COVID at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. And they walked into the taping room and said, You need to evacuate the building. And within five minutes notice, Fern, my show was canceled. I was fired from what had always been a dream job of mine.

I grew up coming home from school. My mom would have Oprah Winfrey or Donna Hugh on here in the United States. And I always wanted to do that and to help people doing it. And so five minutes, grab everything you can that's not nailed down, run out the door. Don't even say goodbye to the 130 people I'd work with for a year. I get in the car, I start driving to Boston. I see the New York City skyline disappearing in the rear view mirror. And Boston, Massachusetts is where my husband and I live. And then the phone calls start coming in. My daughter's in college in California. They're closing school. What's happening? What's happening? My other daughter's in Spain. And I can't get a flight. And the whole world starts to close down, and we all felt it. So I get home, and those first three weeks were basically a blur of alcohol and living in my pajamas and watching Harry daughter, no kidding, on repeat with the kids. There were aspects of it that were fun. But what happened in those three weeks is I lost my dream job. My book publisher canceled my book and then told me I had to return the money they had given us, money I'd already spent.

Every speech I had for a year started to cancel. And I started to get flashbacks to a moment in my life when my husband and I were nearly a million dollars in debt. This was 13 years ago. This is my origin story. We were about to lose everything. And that's when I invented this thing called the five-second rule. But I started having these flashbacks. We are fucked. Like, this is happening again? Are you kidding me? I'm 52 years old. I've got to reinvent my freaking life And one morning, I wake up and I use the five-second rule. You count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, and I get out of bed. And the anxiety is thumping through me. And I make my bed, and I drag myself to the bathroom, and I'm standing there brushing my teeth and my underwear, and I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. And I think, Oh, my God, you look like hell. And I had these dark circles under my eyes, and my gray hair was coming in, and I looked haggard and tired. I actually felt sorry for the woman I saw reflected back in the mirror because I could tell she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

She was worried about her kids who were grieving and anxious and distressed. She was worried about herself, her employees. She was worried about the world and the frontline workers and her parents and her business and everything. And as soon as your thoughts go negative, it's like lint catching in a dryer. More and more and more negativity builds. And so then I started thinking about the day. And who doesn't start their day by going, I'm late. I forgot to do the text. Today is going to suck. And then I look at my feet and there's my dog and he still needs to be walked. And I need to be on a Zoom call in eight minutes. And I just look like bloody hell. And I'm starting to feel heavier and heavier. And you know what's interesting, Fern, is if you had walked into the bathroom in that moment, I would have been able to spin on a dime and be like, Come on, Fern, you got this. You're awesome. I know this sucks, but come on, let's just take it one step at a time. You can face this. But standing there with myself, alone in my underwear, one boob hanging lower than the other, I couldn't think of anything to say because I didn't feel I didn't feel confident.

I didn't feel optimistic. I didn't feel like I could handle what was happening. And as cheesy as it sounds, standing there without a bra on, I found myself just raising my hand and high-fiving the woman I saw in the mirror. Now, here's what's interesting. Almost immediately, I felt my shoulders drop. I chuckled because it's so stupid and cheesy to high five yourself in the mirror. And it didn't disappear the problems. It didn't change all the stuff I was dealing with, but something inside of me changed. I felt this sense of, okay, I know this sucks. Pick your chin up, Mel. You got this. Come on. And I sent myself into the day. Now, it was the second day that something really interesting happened, because what happened on the second day is when I woke up, I immediately thought about that high five. I 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, got out of bed. I made my bed. And as I was walking toward the bathroom, I felt something I'd never felt in my entire life. And I'm going to explain it this way. You know when you're about to go see a friend, You're going to grab a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or something, and you're about to walk into that cafe, and you feel this sense of excitement that you're going to see somebody you like.

And I felt that as I was sitting waiting for us to connect. I was so excited to talk to you. As I walked into that bathroom, I felt this sense that I was about to see somebody that I like. Now, I'm going to be 53 years old this year. I think for the first 45 years of my life, I have either criticized the woman I've seen in the mirror or I have ignored her. I have looked forward to seeing outfits that I'm wearing or makeup that I've put on. I have never looked forward to seeing myself.

No, I haven't.

I mean, there's an awkwardness. There's a real awkwardness about... Because when I was reading this section of your book, I was like, why have I never seen myself in the mirror? I've looked at myself. I've gone, Oh, that's what I don't like about it, and there's that, and I can improve that with some eyeliner, whatever. But I've never seen myself. And the beauty of that moment you've just described is seeing yourself was a moment where you hijacked the usual judgment that is just so omnipresent. We don't even think about it. It's just there all the time. When any of us look in the mirror, we go straight to the points we don't like. But you bypass that to empathy. And that is so rare that we look at ourselves with compassion and that we go... Because the high five habit isn't going like, Yeah, you're amazing. You rock. It's, I see you. This is really hard. I get that it's really hard, and it's okay. It's okay to find it hard.

Yes.

But we don't look at ourselves in the mirror like that. I tried after reading the book, and I was like, This is so fucking weird. I'm looking at myself. It's really awkward. What is that awkwardness?

Oh, okay. This is so sad. Okay, this is really sad. So I'm going to tell everybody right now, you have to do this five mornings in a row because you will feel resistance, and you'll feel exactly what Fern is talking about. You'll feel this awkwardness, and this weirdness and this tremendous sense of discomfort. And I want to unpack this on multiple levels, because what that resistance represents is so profoundly sad. And this is what the enormous opportunity is when you start to practice habits of encouragement, of empowerment, of self-love and self-celebr. So first things first. None of us have ever been taught how to truly see ourselves, support ourselves, love ourselves, and be kind to ourselves. We have not. We have encouraged our children to do that. We do it for them. But at some point, you stop listening to your parents and you start criticizing yourself. And so first things first, it's weird and awkward because you've never been taught how to do this, so it's not a habit. Your habit is the exact opposite. And as we know, whether you are trying to create a new habit of eating healthy or not drinking so much or knocking off the caffeine or getting out of bed early, you're resistant and it feels weird because it's new.

So that's reason number one. But that's not the sad reason. That's the scientific reason. The real reason why you cannot stand in front of a mirror and be with yourself, where you are, how you're feeling in this exact moment of your life is because you drag your entire past to that moment. Everything that you regret, everything that you're disappointed about, everything that you have survived, the abuse, the trauma, the confusion, the heartbreak, all of your hopes and dreams that have not been realized yet. They are with you in that moment. You do not see a person who is trying. You do not see a person who is worthy of celebration because what you have survived in your life. You see somebody who is damaged because of that. You see somebody who is a failure because you're not where you're supposed to be. You see all of the things that you're not instead of all of the things that you are. And so that resistance and that weirdness and that judgment is actually rejection. It is judgment. It is disappointment. And here's the next layer of this. And this is why this habit, while cheesy on its face, I think is the most powerful thing that you could possibly do in your life in terms of adopting a new behavior.

We have made the take as human beings of believing that you are only worthy of celebration and support when you achieve something that is worthy of celebration and support. So here you are standing with yourself every morning in judgment. The scale doesn't have the number on it that it needs to be. My bank account isn't where it needs to be. My relationship isn't where it needs to be. My career isn't where it needs to be. My mental health isn't where it needs to be. And you stand there and judge that. And then you go cross your arms and go, well, I'm not going to cheer for that person until they get there. I'm going to just stand there and judge you. So get out there, you loser. And see if you can lose that weight. It's literally insane. If you watch the marathon in London and those racers are running by, even Brits aren't standing there with their arms crossed going, bloody hell, you suck. I'm not clapping for your ass until you cross the finish So I know. You like to clap and you cheer people every step of the way. Your life is a marathon, and you have outsourced the single most motivational and important thing that you need to other people.

You're waiting for your spouse or your kids or your parents or your colleagues or your friends or your boss to cheer for you and to validate you. I'm sitting here telling you, you have to learn how to validate yourself and cheer for yourself where you are right now or you're not going to get where you're meant to go.

No, because that's what we've been, I guess, more recently taught with social media. We're certainly encouraged that unless there's outside validation, validation, you do not exist, which is a terrifying thought, because if you are solely relying on our exterior validation, then when it eventually dissipates or there's a break in it, you're free falling. What are you going to do? So that is a huge problem. But going back one layer, looking at all the judgment and all the past that we lug around, because I recognize that in myself, I'll look in the mirror and I'll conflate my own thoughts about myself with other words spoken from people I've met along the way or strangers, whatever it might be. And I am pulling that along in a massive sledge behind me every morning, because everyone's got that. And I'm thinking people at home are going to be like, Yeah, I have that. But how are we moving past that? How are we not bringing our whole past and our lump of regret with us each morning? How do we move on? Because I know, obviously, sometimes with tricky situations in life, you might have had good intent, but others have still judged you or you've ended in a tricky spot.

But there will still be times in our past where we acted without good intent. And we know that. We did something out of jealousy or cruelty or whatever it might be, of just feeling angry about our own lives. So how do we let that go? When we know that good intent wasn't anywhere near that situation, how the hell are we stepping over that massive pile of crap?

Well, I think that, look, I think especially your listeners know that you act out in pain because you didn't know any other way to cope. And so when you can bring empathy and understanding to what happened to you, you can start to understand the behavior. And it's only when you understand the behavior from the past that you can spot it and you can catch it and you can change it. Because patterns of behavior repeat unless you break them and replace them. One of the reasons why this high five habit, and it's just one of a bazillion habits in this book that we can talk about to address this question. One of the reasons why high fiving your reflection in the mirror works is because you don't have to think anything. This is the genius of it. So when it started to work for me, and then I, of course, put a photo on social media on my story, and within an hour, 100 people, men, women, children around the world, were high-fiving and tagging themselves, I thought, Okay, whoa. First of all, I'm not the only Anyone who's feeling like the world on my shoulders.

Okay, that's reassuring. Secondly, maybe this thing isn't that cheesy after all. I've spent the last year researching this. First, let me explain in addressing your question about how do you get your mind to stop going down the road of beating the shit out of your sofa all the stuff that you did when you were just trying to survive? Because that's what you were trying to do. You were just trying to survive. I have been startled, Fern. I I was molested when I was in the fourth grade, and it was a one-time incident. I woke up in the middle of the night at a big family thing with lots of different families, and all the kids were in one room, and there was an older kid on top of me. And it is that moment that my anxiety began. I literally had a fight or flight response, which is all that anxiety is. Anxiety in your body is just an alarm bell going off when your nervous system goes into a sympathetic or an on-edge alarm state. And I possomed. I disassociated. I literally left my body. And that next morning, I woke up knowing that something was wrong, knowing that something bad had happened.

And in that moment, my nervous system was still on alarm. And when I walked downstairs that morning, my mom was cooking breakfast. The kids were all over the kitchen, lots of other moms around. And my mom turned to me and said, How do you sleep, honey? And I froze. And I froze because the kid was sitting at the kitchen table. Now, I knew if I said something, my mother, she's a farm girl. She grew up on a cattle farm. She would literally take that spatula and hit them in the next week. There was no concern about my mom. I was concerned about what this person would do. And so my nervous system in that moment got hardwired to be on edge, to be worried about how people will react. And I have lived in that state for literally ever since, 45 years. One of the things that happens, we're going to talk about our nervous system because there's also a high five you can do to your heart that is profound for any anxiety or trauma that you may be feeling. And we're going to explain that in a minute. But first, I want to explain what some of the world's leading neuroscientists have said about why the high five habit works.

When you go to raise your hand in the mirror, and this is how you're going to do it, you can do it So right after you listen to this, you can do it tomorrow morning. What I want you to do to make it a habit, first of all, is I want you to do it right after you brush your teeth. Hopefully, we're all brushing our teeth every day. It's a really good habit to have. When you put your toothbrush We're going to watch down right on the counter, now we're going to practice the high five. You're going to take a minute, and you're just going to look at yourself. And I want you to, in that moment, I want you to set an intention. And the reason why I want you to set an intention is you're yourself is because there is new research out of Harvard that shows that if you take just a minute in the morning and you think about how you're going to show up today and who you're going to be, and more importantly, what actually matters to you? What game do you want to play that you want to make progress on?

Not complete, not win at, just what's one thing you want to inch forward? And how do you need to show up today to really engage in that game that matters to you? It could be something personal, it could be something at work. It doesn't matter with your kids. And then once you have that in your mind, you're going to raise your hand and you're going to high five yourself. And yes, it will feel weird. Yes, it will feel awkward. But I'm going to tell you what's not going to happen. It is neurologically and scientifically impossible to raise your hand and high five your reflection and think, gosh, you suck. Boy, you're ugly. Your chin is really pointy. Your jowels, Mel, are starting to look like saddle bags on a packed meal. You can't think those things. You just can't. And here's why. You have spent your lifetime high fiving other people or or raising your hands in celebration with other people. You've done it so many times that the gesture of high-fiving, even by just seeing other people do it in sports matches, it's already encoded. Fern, when somebody high-fives you, what are they saying to you?

Well, I think that they're celebrating you on a subconscious level and saying, I see you. Hey. And I think what I'm realizing as you're talking is, and this is so obvious to say, but it's just hit me, is that we're not to underestimate habits It's a bit... Because I think some of the time we're sat there waiting for, quite frankly, an epiphany. There's going to be this moment where I really like myself, or if I get the job, the partner, the thing, then I'm going to like myself. We've got to do the habit bit first to get anywhere near that. And we are all relying on some miraculous... Maybe it's because we've been indoctrinated over the years with the big reality TV shows where all of a sudden you're celebrated and you look amazing and you're on TV and everyone's cheering at you. And I'm going to Out of that moment, it's going to happen down the line. This is a habit. This is like you say, cleaning your bloody teeth. This is a habit we have to do every day. And it's as much as changing your habit can be tiresome, once you're in a habit, you don't even know you're doing it.

I don't think I'm going to brush my teeth. You're just doing it. So we can't underestimate habit here.

Yes. And by the way, you already have a habit that we're trying to break, which is you have a habit of ignoring or criticizing yourself. Just like you're cleaning your teeth, we got to clean your mind of all that bullshit you've been saying for a long time.

That's empowering, because often we believe it. We think, well, I am just a piece of shit, but it's empowering to know, no, that is a habit that I go to, that I think I'm a piece of shit when X, Y, Z happens. It's not true. That also is a habit. Empowering, both things. Yes, exactly.

And you have friends that have done piece of shit things in their lives. And you can understand that they did that. They drank, they were addicted, they cheated on people, They... Like, whatever they did, they were a bloody asshole. But you can now see that they're trying. You can now see that they're changing and they're working hard, and you can love them through it. I'm here to tell you, you have to make a habit of doing this for yourself every day. And you just said this thing about, I'll be happy when I get that job or I lose that weight. The problem with attaching your happiness and your validation and your support to achieving something is once you achieve it, you are stuck with the old habit of still hating yourself. And you're now going to need to find something else to achieve in order to prove that you're worthy of it again. You see, I've been an overachiever my whole life because I've equated achieving with being worth something. And when you are an overachiever and you think it's only when you're achieving something that you are worth loving or celebrating, you will be a jealous motherfucker because everybody else that's succeeding is now competing with you for the love and for the worth that you want.

And when you start to actually give yourself the love and the self-validation that you need, even when you're failing, especially when moments are hard, when you're telling yourself, okay, Rex was an asshole to me last night, and I feel like a terrible mother, and you stand there, Fern, and you're like, you know what? Today, I'm just going to show up, and I'm going to be compassionate and patient, both with him and with myself. And you raise your hand and you high five yourself. What you're doing in that moment is you're shutting down the criticism. It's an act of defiance to that beat down that you've been giving yourself. And because this is the coolest part, everybody, because you've been high fiveing everybody else and watching everybody else do it, all the messaging, I believe you, I love you, we got this. You give a teammate a high five or a kid a high five when their attitude is sinking to basically say, I get it. It's hard. You blew it. But guess what? Pick back up. We're going in. Come on. We got this.

I got your back.

You're not alone here. So it communicates It's all of that. It's already in your subconscious. So when you go to raise your hand, two things happen. First of all, your nervous system recognizes the raised hand as a celebratory action. And so as you start to repeat this habit, it will start to give you a jolt of energy. This research comes from Dr. Daniel Amen, who is this world's leading neuroscientist. He also said that the act of high-fiving gives you a drip of dopamine. So if you do this for more than five days and you start to push through the awkwardness and you start to push through how weird it feels because it's a new habit and because you're basically silencing judgment, you're going to feel your mood boost because your brain is releasing dopamine because of the subconscious programming associated with high-fiving. And that's not all. This is really cool. So I know you have a lot of parents that listen, and you need to... I know you've already read the study, but if you'll allow me, I want to unpack this because this is mind-blowing. So there was a study that they did with kids, right?

Where they wanted to know what's the best way to motivate a human being through a really challenging situation. And we're all going through a really challenging situation right now with how overwhelming the world is. And they said, we're going to divide kids into three groups. And group number one, we're going to give these kids a very challenging bunch of homework to work through, super hard. And we're going to do that for all three groups. So these poor kids are toiling away at this challenging stuff. And group number one, The encouragement that they gave these kids was based on the growth and the fixed mindset research from Dr. Carol Dweck. And what we know about this is that the fixed growth praise is basically walking up to somebody and complimenting them about something about them. Hey, you're really smart. Hey, you're a good student. Hey, I love the sweater that you're wearing. Keep on going. Yeah, that's motivating because somebody sees you. The next group got the growth mindset type of praise, which is basically to tell somebody that they're doing a good job working hard. And what we know, based on research, is when you reward somebody or praise them for their hard work, you feel empowered because you can control your hard work.

So you work a little harder. And sure enough, these kids in the second group, Fern, who were told, you're working really hard. Keep going. I love your perseverance. They worked a lot harder than the kids that were told they were smart. But check this out. The third group, the researchers didn't say a word to them. Not a word. These kids simply had a research searcher walk up to them and high five them. That's it. Those kids who got a high five, outworked, had more confidence, had better results, felt better about themselves than the other two groups combined. And the answer is why. And the reason is based on psychology. We all have fundamental emotional needs to be seen, to be heard, and to be loved and celebrated for the unique human being that we are. When those needs of being seen, heard, and celebrated are met, you feel affirmed, you feel confident, you feel whole. When those needs are not being met, you feel rejected, you feel invisible, you feel disconnected and lost. So a simple high five was affirming that those researchers saw, wow, you're working really hard. Wow, I hear you. You're struggling with this.

And wow, I'm going to celebrate you right here in this moment for who you are and how you're showing up and how you're going through. And I'm here to tell you, simply doing this for yourself every single morning and making it a habit and teaching it to your kids, it empowers you in a way that is hard to describe because for the first time in your life, you are giving yourself what you have been seeking from other people. This is it.

I get it, because if someone wants to come up and high five you, there is something about it, because you don't know what's going on their head, but you know it's positive. And something very primitive about the touch, like palm to palm. That's a really beautiful sentiment. And again, doing that to yourself, it feels like in the mirror. That's quite an intimate thing to do. You're seeing your palm touch your palm, And there is something beautifully mysterious about it, but very primitive, very intimate. And I think once you break through that awkwardness, there's the beauty. It's there.

Yeah. And I've been doing this for over a year, and what I can tell you is super cool is use the gesture. For sure, you got to try it five days in a row. And for sure, you should just make it a habit and do it every day just like you brush your teeth. But what will happen is you literally are you are rewiring your nervous system with celebratory energy, and you are deleting and breaking the default programming that has been in your mind since you were a child. It might not even be your voice. It might be your mother's voice or your father's voice, or you know what I mean? Some other critical voice. You are silencing it, you are breaking it, and you are encoding a totally new default thought pattern related did to you. And so I can now look in the mirror, and some mornings, I don't even need to high five myself because I now don't even see the physical me. I see the human being in there, and I don't criticize myself anymore. Are there things I don't like? Of course. Are there days I look better? Of course.

I don't give a shit. I don't, because I see a human being behind the skin and through the eyes that is worth it. I see somebody who's trying. I see somebody who survived a lot. I see somebody wakes up some days and is in pain and needs support. I see somebody who some days wakes up and has something to look forward to. But here's what I know. I know that I have my own back. I know that I am the one person I am going to go through life with, and I better How can you fucking take care of that person.

Yeah. And this is not... The habit part is so essential because this isn't easy. And this is where we can all reach empathy for ourselves. Because if you look around the world right now, out and see what we're bombarded with, the messaging is usually the opposite. It can be very subliminal, but it's, you are lacking, you could probably improve. If you had this, your life would be better. If you weren't like that, you'd then be accepted by this group of people, whatever it is. There's so much divisiveness in the world, and there's so much projection onto us as individuals to make us feel in lacking. On a really base level, it's also, of course, how a lot of advertising works. You know this, and you're going to feel better. We've had that. We've been bombarded with it probably for the last 70 years. So this is a generational thing. No shit, Sherlock. We're all going to probably feel like this. So this is hard work for us to, by ourselves, just feel deeply compassionate So I think the habit bit is so key that there's that sensory thing where we get it. We know that this means something good, and we just keep doing it to get ourselves in a positive mindset.

And we have to also, I guess, be willing to see the positives. And And again, that sounds so obvious. But again, we've been bombarded with the lacking. So we have to be able to spot, you did well there or you tried harder. And if there's no willingness, we're just not going to see it. We're not going to see the good stuff.

Yes. And so most human beings, I know I was here for a long time without the high five habit. I was in a trap, an impossible trap. And the trap is, if you achieve this, then Then you can be happy and worth it and lovable, Mel. But I'm going to stand here and I'm going to beat the shit out of you and tell you that you're not any good and that you're not lovable because you haven't done that, which, based on the research, being hard on yourself is demotivating. If you stand in front of the mirror and you know that you want to be healthier and you want to treat your body in a kinder way, you want to eat more wholefoods, you want to move your body a little bit more, right? It's not about the number on the scale. It's about your vitality. It's about how, whether or not you respect yourself with your decisions, whether or not you're taking care of yourself with your decisions. But if you focus on the fact that you've got 50, like a Fifty... It's not quid. What is it? You guys do quid.

Pounds. No, so stone.

Stone. So you got 50. You got a bunch of stones to lose, whatever. When you focus on the gap and you then pound yourself into the because you're not there yet or you had a brownie yesterday, you're not motivating yourself through that tough love. You're actually proving to yourself that you don't deserve to feel healthy. Your disrespect to yourself and the way that you're talking to yourself proves to your brain that you're the person that doesn't deserve to do those things. You're actually making it harder with the habits that you have right now. And the fastest way to change behavior is to feel encouraged encouraged and supported and loved as you're doing it. I want to share one more thing with you because I know you talk a lot about anxiety. I know that you're sharing openly about a panic attack that you were feeling in the beginning of the pandemic. And a lot of us have kids that are struggling with anxiety, and I struggled with anxiety for 30 years. I took Zoloft for two and a half decades, and it was a life-changer. But it wasn't until I understood my nervous system's role in this and the default beat down negative critic and how that keeps your anxiety alive and how you can use high five habits to, A, regulate your nervous system, which is critical because remember, when your nervous system is on edge, And when your nervous system is what psychologists call dysregulated or you have a trauma response programmed into your nervous system, and let's be honest, every single one of us has experienced trauma on some level.

And after these last 18 months, everybody Everybody's nervous system is at a on edge setting. Are we masks? Are we not masks? Are we in quarantine? Are the kids going back to school? Are they not going back to school? Are we getting on planes? Are we not getting on planes? Am I allowed to leave the country? You're constantly in this state of uncertainty. So I want you to take a second habit that is going to help tremendously with anxiety. It also helps with focus. And I'll explain how in a minute. So I call this habit, and we write about it and explain the science behind it in this book, The High-Five Habit. It's called high five in your heart. And here's how you're going to do it. So high five in your heart is a way to take advantage of your vagus nerve. And your vagus nerve, as you know, you talk about this, runs from your seat all the way to the top of your head. It goes through every major organ. It goes through your vocal cords. Your vagus nerve is literally a treasure that you need to discover. It is the on/off switch that helps you You switch between your sympathetic, which is your on edge, anxiety ridden, stressed out dysregulated nervous system, and the switch to a calm, cool, grounded, nervous system, your parasympathetic nervous system.

So what you can do every single morning, and I do this right when I get out of bed. So the alarm rings. I use the five second rule. I count backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And that me get out of bed. I move on one. And mornings are always hard for me. I hate getting out of bed. I love how cozy the bed is. If I were left to my own devices, Fern, I would lay in bed And I would stare at the ceiling, and I would think about all the what ifs that could go wrong today, and I would slowly become a human pot roast marinating in fear, and anxiety and panic and overwhelm and depression, depression would pin me to that bed like a gravity blanket. And I would lay there for hours. That's what I do when I'm in distress. I love to just soak up all that anxiety.

So I get out of bed.

That's really important for me. Then I make my bed. And then I do this thing where I take my hands and I got these big mints, so I put them right in the center of my chest. But you want to get it right. Make sure your hands are touching your heart because your vagus nerve runs through your heart, and you're going to press against your chest. This is high-fiving your heart. And then you're going to take a deep breath, and then you're going to say these three sentences. I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved. I'm okay, I'm safe, I'm loved. And you're going to repeat those sentences over and over and over again. And what's going to happen is wild. You are going to feel your nervous system calm down. You're You're going to feel yourself like your being, come back into your body. I call this body confidence. It's being comfortable, literally comfortable in your own skin. And I do this first thing in the morning for a very important reason. First of all, this was new research to me, but I talked to this amazing expert in neuroscience, her name is Dr. Judy Willis.

She was at UCLA for a long time, and she's been researching forever the connection between your nervous system and your brain's ability to learn new information. And her research shows that when your nervous system is on edge, which everybody's is, you're waiting for the next shoe to drop, you feel nervous, you can't quite focus, you are having trouble sleeping, you're constantly having your mind wander, your breath is shallow. Everybody feels this way right now because of our shared experience and what we're living through. When If your nervous system is in that state, it is impossible for the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that you use when you're learning new behavior or when you're really focusing on something, it's impossible for it to engage. And I can explain this. If somebody were to come running into your room right now and scream, The house is on fire. The house is on fire. First of all, your nervous system would go into a state of being on edge, and it would go into alarm mode to alert you. But you wouldn't be able to do a math problem in that moment because your nervous system has taken over.

And so if you're struggling with focus right now, and who isn't? If you're constantly trapped in that what-if loop where you're worried, worried, worried, very worried and you can't bring your attention to something optimistic or positive. If you're having trouble feeling like you're in control, I want you to also add into your morning routine this high five to your heart because I want you to settle into your body and I want you to activate your vagus nerve. Because if you can start your day with a calm and cool nervous system, you've got a fighting chance to not only stay in control, but to make progress on something that matters, to not be so reactive to everything going on around you and to feel like your emotions are going to hijack you. And then when you walk into the bathroom and you brush your teeth and you have this moment with yourself, your brain is now ready to think about the day ahead and to think about it in an optimistic way and to think about how you want to show up and to work for you. See, what I love about all these tools that I've uncovered just by dumb luck and by being at a bottom moment in my own life is that there's so much about the way your body is trying to help you, your vagus nerve, the fact that the filter in your brain, the RAS, can actually change in real-time and filter how it sees the world when you use these tools I'm teaching you, the fact that your subconscious mind is already programmed with all the positive association with the high five.

The fact that your nervous system recognizes raising your hands is celebratory. This is your body, your nervous system, your mind, trying to help you be happy, help you be positive, help you get back to the state that you were, frankly, born in.

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. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.