Transcript of How to Break Negative Habits and Build Self-Worth Every Morning | Mel Robbins

For everyone listening out there, the starting point, if you are feeling like either... And I think there's a lot of people that have good jobs and feel like their life is good, but they still find themselves criticizing. I'm sitting there this morning looking at, I need to put cover up here. I need to do this. Oh, I need to get my roots done. Like you said, all the little picky things. And as opposed It goes to stopping and appreciating and taking a moment.

Yeah. Here's the thing. We can unpack the science because I think the reason why this is so powerful is it's not a mantra. It's a physical action and habit that your own brain watches you do because you do it in a mirror. And between the dopamine drip that your brain gives you when you receive a high five to the programming and neural association that you already have in your mind, in your subconscious with a high five, to the celebratory energy that is hardwired in your body, there are four extraordinary benefits, back by science, that you will get no matter who you are, where you are, or what you're facing in your life, if you add a high five in the mirror to your morning routine, no matter how cheesy, stupid, and weird it sounds. So number one, you get a boost of dopamine, which boosts your mood. Number two, you literally silence your critic because the programming associated with a high five is already in your brain. So when you raise your hand and go to high five yourself, your prefrontal cortex is paying attention. But as soon as it recognizes that a high five is coming, it grabs the programming from your subconscious.

A high five says, I believe in you. I love you. I see you. Keep going. Shake it off. You can face this. I'm with you. A high five has never in the history of high fives meant you're a bad person. You're going to fail. Fuck off. I hope you lose.

Right.

So your brain's programming with a high five shuts up your inner critic and overrides it. That's benefit number two. Benefit number three is your mind is watching. A high five is not just some gesture A high five demonstrates to your own brain that you treat yourself with kindness, respect, and support. And as your brain every morning sees you taking this action of kindness, support, celebration and love for self, your brain starts to plow new neural pathways related to your identity. That's number three. Number four is you feel a little jolt of energy that comes from your nervous system because your nervous system is hardwired for celebration, and your nervous system knows exactly what a high five is. And so every single morning in five seconds or less, you can give yourself those four benefits, backed by science, that have been proven to work for more than 140,000 people in 91 countries in the last 48 days. That many people have gone gone through a five-day challenge online with me. Not a single person in that challenge. Not one has said it hasn't worked.

And here's the thing. It's five seconds and it's free. So what have you got to lose.

Why would you want to do it? But hold on a second. Why would you want to do it? If you got bills that you can't pay, if you've got shame and regret, if your life is a hot mess, if you're surrounded by clutter, I guarantee you, you You think yourself fucking wrong over it. Imagine the difference if instead of starting your day by ignoring yourself or beating yourself up and trashing yourself about how cluttered the bathroom sink is and how you haven't even gotten to this yet. Imagine if you shut that down and instead you started practicing a new habit of simply raising your hand and sending yourself into the game of your life the way that a good teammate does in sports. Wouldn't that help you open one, Bill? Wouldn't feeling encouraged help you attack the clutter in your calendar? Wouldn't feeling that you at least treat yourself like you like yourself make it easier for you to draw some boundaries with yourself because you like yourself? Isn't high-fiving yourself an act of forgiveness, an act of compassion? And don't you fucking need it?

I was having a conversation unrelated to clutter. I was chatting with one of my girlfriends about another one of my friends who's going through a hard time in her life. And we were just talking about when you start, you start to take comfort. And I talk about this also with people with clutter. But so whether it's clutter or an unhappy marriage or whatever your dysfunctional workplace or whatever it is, sometimes we take comfort in this chaos that's in our world in that specific fill in the blank. And we just almost feel like it's easier to stay in that, whether we tell ourselves that we don't deserve it or it's easier to just pooh-pooh it. Because then if you do say, I'm going to try it, then the scary part is what happens if it works? What happens if the change then does happen? If your identity is tied to feeling like the hot mess, or your identity is the one that's always struggling or on this, and you become that negative identity, The thought of change can be scary because it's the devil you don't know versus the devil you do.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

So I mean, I'm just saying, what do you say to that person?

I would say it a different way because I think I'm bitchier than you are.

Oh, I don't think so. Dawn has me clean it up for the show better. But no, I don't think you are at all. But go ahead.

The reason why change is scary is because your brain likes patterns.

Yeah.

That's it.

I love it. I wrote it down when you said it.

I like to take this into the lane of patterns, because I believe one of the things that makes it very difficult for people to change is the problem The problems feel so personal, the issues seem so big. The obstacle in your way seems insurmountable. And so you have this gigantic emotional reaction to simply trying new patterns. And I am trying to simplify it by saying, you're not broken. You have patterns of behavior that are broken. The pattern of behavior of not looking at your bills is a broken pattern. That pattern makes you feel broken. And so if you don't fix broken patterns by replacing them with new patterns, those old broken patterns will continue to repeat. I don't believe you are a hot mess. I believe you are trapped in a broken pattern that makes you feel like one. And I also don't believe that you're scared of being something else. See, I believe that you deeply yearn to become who you're meant to be. I don't I don't think people fear change at all. I think they are longing for it. And what you don't understand is that these patterns that you have from childhood or that you've repeated for whatever reason, these patterns are broken, but you're not.

And if you can identify patterns of behavior, whether it's you're not paying your bills or you are ignoring your intuition and you keep dating and sleeping with people people that you know you shouldn't, or whether that pattern is to go silent when somebody seems like they might get disappointed in you. If you can identify those broken patterns that are keeping you trapped, and then you go to work and fix them and replace them with patterns that align with your values, patterns that align with what you want, You will literally set yourself free. You see, I don't think people fear change at all. They long for it, but they don't know how to do it because we have spent all of our energy saying, I'm broken. I'm a bad person. I'm a failure. Instead of talking about the patterns, this pattern of behavior is broken. This pattern of behavior makes me feel like a failure. This pattern of thinking makes me believe I failed. I need to get rid of this broken pattern, and I need to start practicing a new pattern. When you focus on the patterns, you are now free to change your life.

When you continue to focus on labeling, criticizing, and victimizing yourself, you lock yourself in a cage.

Well, you aren't your behavior. And I think a lot of times people identify themselves and full snaps for everything that you just said. And I think it's so true. I mean, obviously, I'm a big fan of your work, and I think there's so much value because I look at There's a big theme of shame that I talk about that I see with people, specifically in the space of clutter an organization. I mean, you can apply it to anything, weight, finances, all the things, anything. But in my lane of clutter an organization, there's so much shame that I see people have. That is just the power is on the stuff or the power is what they don't have, or the power is not measuring up, or whatever it is, fill in the blank. And trying to get people to see past that and how reclaimed control over their space of their stuff, of their time, whatever it is. And the exhaustion that I see from people because they are struggling with calendar clutter because they are such yes people that they overcommit to everything. And so then they're not putting on their own oxygen mask or they're yelling at their kids because they They're so busy being a million different directions that they have no margin for their kids.

And that may or may not have been me 15 years ago. And so you do all of these things or you buy all of these these things or whatever it is to get all of this acceptance, or you think you're going to see this big reward at the end, and then you come up empty. And so I love that it just starts primitively with just that acknowledgement. And I think for so many people that might be listening, I guess my question for you, and we're going to be wrapping up soon, but we have people that out there. You and I are similar in age. We're both moms of bigs. I've read your stories. We both made mistakes with our kids, and hopefully, we said things and done things to our kids. Maybe you could share a story because I think there's so many parents that I hear that are like, I'm messing up my kids, or I've done this to my kids, or I want to set a better example for my kids. And then I've got other moms that are moms of littles that are like, I can't come up for air for five seconds.

I would love to high five myself in the mirror if I could get five seconds alone.

Bullshit. Here's what I have to say about that.

Yeah.

You know, If you want a different life, start making different decisions. Stop bitching about what's not working and get to work, working on it to change it. You are in control of so much more than you are willing to admit. I'm not suggesting that it's easy to change your life. It takes time. It takes discipline. It takes commitment. It doesn't happen overnight. You got to fight for it. But you have a choice. Every morning, when you wake up, you get this. You get a blank fucking page. You get to decide whether or not you're going to hit the snooze button five times, and you're going to wake up a hot mess, and you're going to make all the same decisions that you made today. Or you can decide that today is the day I am changing my fucking life because I am changing the decisions and the patterns of behavior that I engage in. I am going to get up when the alarm rings. Instead of racing into my day late, I'm going to take a minute and make my bed because that one small thing of getting up when the alarm rings and then taking a minute and making your bed so that you have one thing done so that you have one less thing of clutter And then I'm going to walk into my closet and pull on my extra clothes because, damn it, I know I'm in a better mood when I take a walk outside.

And once these clothes are on, it's one less thing that I need to do, and it's going to remind me. And then I'm going to walk into that bathroom, and I am going to brush my teeth, and then I'm going to high five myself, even though I hate what I look like, even though I don't like what I weigh, even though I have so many bills to pay that it's overwhelming. And I focus on the regrets, but I am going to high five myself because I am committed to silencing this shit in my head. I am tired of listening to my mother's voice. I'm tired of listening to my father's voice. If you want to change your life, you are going to have to fight hand-to-hand combat all day long against the current patterns that you have that are making you miserable. And what are those patterns? Those patterns are criticizing yourself. Those patterns are focusing relentlessly on the things you're doing wrong or the one thing you didn't get to on your to-do list. Those patterns are picking yourself apart. Those patterns are focusing on the things that are in your way and complaining about the excuses.

Those patterns are obsessing about the mistakes that you've made in the past. And what do you need to do to break these patterns? Well, by God, number One, you've got to stop labeling yourself, and you've got to start identifying labeling the behavior that's making you feel broken. Number two, you need to start focusing on all of the amazing things you do right. You got up, you get a high five. You made your bed, you get a high five. You brush your teeth, you get a high five. You slapped some yogurt on that counter, and those kids slapped it. You get a high five, man. You let the dog out today, you get You get a high five. You responded to one text, and what? You get a high five. You need to start to focus on everything that you're doing right. Another thing you need to do, you need to stop obsessing about the past and look ahead and figure out what you want the future to look like, because your future will not be different unless you make it different. And finally, finally, finally, you have got to start celebrating, supporting, and encouraging the woman you see staring back at you every morning in the mirror.

Changing your life is one of the most important, and challenging, and difficult, and profound things that you could ever do. And nobody's I'm going to do it for you. You got to make a decision that you deserve to be happy. You can change these patterns of behavior and thinking that make you feel broken. It begins with how you treat the woman in the mirror. To me, the coolest thing about the high five is this. First of all, I am demanding that you try it, especially if you think it's stupid as hell. I want you to stand in front of the mirror, number one, because This research out of Harvard says taking a moment of reflection with yourself in the morning and setting an intention changes your productivity, it changes your neurochemistry, it changes how you show up for the day, it changes everything. That's number one. Number two, you have a lifetime of looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing what you hate. I want to change that. When you raise your hand and high five your own reflection because you have been raising your hand and high fiving other people for your entire life, it is already programmed into your subconscious.

All of that shit that's positive. I believe in you. We got this. Come on, shake it off. Let's get going. Here we go. I see you. I hear you. I celebrate you. All that stuff you've been doing for other people. When you raise that hand, the subconscious part of your brain kicks in and it overrides all of the negative stuff you think. You cannot stand in front of that mirror, Rich, and go, God, I look fat, and high five yourself. It's impossible. Your brain can't do it. You also can't think about work emails. You also can't think about what's stressing you out. Here's the thing that I also love about it. This is a field of study called neurobex. You're marrying physical movement with a change in a lot. The other thing that I- It's like neurology aerobics. It is. Basically. It's exactly what it is. I found that part of the book fascinating. Yeah. I mean, I think, look, you're taking this very simple action that we all associate with positive things that's backed up by the neurochemistry with this mirror work, which has a tradition in psychology in the field of cultivating self-love.

It's not like the idea of looking in the mirror and doing the Stuart Smauley saying, there's science and research behind this to cultivate appreciation for the self. Yes. And so there's even more here. So the other stuff that's super cool about this is that we've all bought into this lie that somehow beating yourself up and tough love and being hard on yourself is motivating. Wrong. All the research shows that it is demotivating. If you're somebody that's stuck, if you're somebody that has regrets, if you're somebody that is tired of where you are, if you feel like, why can't I change? Beating yourself up is making it worse. You have to learn how to cheer for yourself where you are. Because if you're not, you will never find the motivation to change. They did this study with kids where they broke kids into three different groups, okay? They gave the kids very challenging problems, and they wanted to know what was going to be the thing that researchers could do to motivate and inspire kids to work through a challenging problem and what is going to be the most effective thing that we could do to give somebody that boost that you need to really face something that's hard.

Group number one got the old fixed mindset praise where it's like, Hey, you're super smart, Rich. Hey, Rich, you're really good looking in those glasses, and I bet they help you make you focus on this problem. Keep going, buddy. The second group got the fixed mindset praise, which is, Hey, Rich, you're really, really working hard. Rich, that perseverance is amazing. Keep going. The third group, they got a simple high five. No words, just a high five. The group with the simple high five outperformed the other two group and then some. Why? That's so crazy. Why? I'll tell you why. A high five is fulfilling your fundamental emotional needs. It's not about the problem. When you high five somebody, including yourself, you are affirming that somebody exists. You are saying, I see you, and you're celebrating with them. You know how those things go viral all year long of teachers standing outside their classroom doing individual hands shakes with kids. It's the same thing. Every one of those kids is being seen as an individual and celebrated. There's also that study of the NBA teams, where they basically looked at how many high fives all the teams were Yeah, backslaps, fist bumps, yeah, touching.

The teams that were giving out the most high fives were the highest performing teams. Yes. That's crazy. The teams that had the least amount of contact like that, of fist bumps and high fives and backtaps, performed the Why? Because you're building trust with whomever you're high-fiving. You see, when you stand in front of the mirror and instead of going, God, my jowels look like saddle bags, and I'm fucked today because my to-do list is so long and I shouldn't have had that. That sets your mind and your day on a certain course. When you walk into the bathroom and you habit stack this simple high five along with brushing your teeth, you are starting your day by fulfilling your most important needs. You You see yourself, you affirm yourself, you celebrate yourself. For those of you that feel stuck, part of your problem is you are withholding that shit from yourself until you get to the number of the scale, until you get that job, until you do the thing you're supposed to do. What you are doing is backwards. You need support, celebration, and acknowledgement now in order to hit that number on the scale.

You see, most of us believe we're not worthy of celebrating motivation until we achieve something. I'm here to tell you, if you start celebrating, supporting yourself as you are every single day, it will become a part of who you are, which empowers and equips you to face the shitty things, and more importantly, empowers and equips you to do the things that scare you that you need to do. It's a moment that I think everybody can relate to. What was going on in my life is my dream job, which was to be a daytime talk show host, ended.

Which you were great at.

Thank you. The show failed. I mean, let's be honest. It got canceled. I got fired for my dream job. That's what happened. I could make some lovely story up, but that's been a bit bit. If I'd been amazing, we'd be in season two. And so I find myself, fired from my dream job, I then abruptly get a book contract canceled, not because the publisher is a jerk, but because I have crazy dyslexia and ADHD. It is next to impossible for me to take what's in my noggin and get it on a piece of paper, and I was a year late in delivering a manuscript. So I then get a contract canceled, and I have to return money I've already spent. And then the pandemic is just in full swing, and speech after speech after speech after speech starts canceling. We get three kids coming home, two from college, one from middle school. We all know what it was like to be with their kids in the early days. They were like caged animals going through grief and fear and anger and aiming it right us, the parents. I found myself one morning standing in my bathroom in my underwear.

I was brushing my teeth. I hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet. I hadn't put on a bra. I mean, I'm I'm just standing there.

Giving me the visual.

Appreciate it. Okay, please brush it up somehow, okay? Because you trust me. If you want to look at this, there's something wrong with you. Stop it. So I am standing there, and of course, I look at the mirror, and I immediately think, I have jowels that look like saddle bags on a packed mule going into the Grand Canyon. I've got stripes on my neck. One tit is hanging lower than the other. I got gray hair coming in. I look down, the dog still has to be walked. I haven't responded to Ed's text. I've got a Zoom meeting in nine minutes. I literally... My mind is taking me down the drain. I feel the mood drop. Look, like you, I am one of the most successful motivational speakers in the world. It's so awesome. I didn't have a fucking thing to say to myself.

Right. I've been there.

All I wanted to do is crawl on the couch with the dog and have a cup of coffee. I wanted to not have to deal with anything or deal with anybody or face the problems that I felt. I wanted the stress to disappear. And I didn't know what to say. Here's the pathetic part. Okay. As if this isn't lame enough. I, literally without thinking, raised my hand. I love this. And gave myself a high five in the mirror. I love this. And I could cry. My shoulder's dropped. I felt this like, Okay, pick your head up. It's okay. You got this. And I went on with my day.

That was it. In that moment, you go, This is something. No.

God, no. I'm like, Don't tell anybody what just happened. That is lame. Oh my God. Yeah. Normally, what I would do is on a stressful day, it's like, Fuck it. Cancel the Zoom call and make a bloody Mary. I mean, it's like... So I-25 billion people are agreeing and connecting with you right now, obviously. But this is the truth.

Yeah.

Right? This is the truth. Yeah. And so the next morning, this is the weird part. This is when things got weird. I woke up, I always wake up when the alarm rings, and then I make my bed, largely so I don't crawl back into it, but also so that I have a beautiful place to come back to to sleep, so that I practice simple discipline. And as I walked toward the bathroom, something weird happened. I started to anticipate seeing myself. So Sort of like when you pull out of your driveway and you got a neighbor that waves to you. Yeah. I felt like I was about to see a friend. Interesting. Now, here's the crazy part. I have probably spent the last 40 years either criticizing the person I see in the mirror. You really? Or ignoring her. And so I step into the bathroom, right? So I step in and there's your reflection. And I stood there for a minute, and And like you, I'm really busy, and my mind is also wildly active, constantly going. And when I stood there and stared at my reflection, knowing that I was about to high five myself, it was this moment of intentional, just purposeful presence with myself.

That's beautiful.

Yeah. And as I raise my hand and high five myself again, something else weird happened. Okay. It's impossible to have a negative thought when you're high fiving yourself. I love this.Impossible.I love this. You cannot go, You fucking suck. Yeah. You're a failure. You've blown it. You're not going to do well in this Today is going to be... You can't do it. And I'm going to tell you why. The science on this shit is crazy.

This is what I love.

It's crazy. So here's what happens. You have a lifetime of giving other people high fives.

Yeah, you got a trigger now or something, don't you?

So what is a high-five What does a high five mean to you?

Good job. Awesome. Let's go, right? Yes.

You got a teammate that's going down. You give them a high five to pick them up. You got the biggest player of your life. You give them a high five to send them into the game. You've got a really awesome thing you're celebrating, a high five5 is what seals it. So you have a lifetime of positive programming. Very good. High-fiving other people. This is awesome. It is already stored right here in your basal ganglia. And so when you do the physical motion that is tied to all the positive programming, Ed, you start to fuse it with your own reflection. Oh my gosh. You silence the inner critic, you silence decades of criticism, you shut the shame up, You literally reset the regret that you may feel. Any stress or anxiety that you feel about what's about to happen shuts up. And you cannot have negative thoughts. This is reallyas your arm moves. Now, there's this whole field of psychology and neuroscience called neurobex. I didn't make the word up, but it's like neuroscience and aerobics. The research shows that when you take an unexpected physical action. So we're used to high-fiving everybody else, but we're not used to high-fiving ourselves.

It's unexpected for your brain, so your prefrontal cortex engages, and you have a positive thought with it, you accelerate new neural pathway development. You're using the physical action that's unexpected, along with a lifetime of positive programming, to fundamentally rewire how you think about yourself. This is good. It's unbelievable. This is good. And so that's just the beginning.

Can I say something about that? I want to just validate a few things. One, I want to tell you that I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing that you spent those four years either criticizing or being invisible. Forty. Okay, excuse me, 40. That's what I meant to say. 40 years. And I can tell you, because we get this both a lot, we're all these people that poor energy in other people. I just want to tell you that that's true for me, too, and I want my audience to know that. I do a lot of criticism of myself. I've done it all my life, but I've really moved that more into invisibility. I don't look at myself. I don't think about myself. I do that as well. Just from a male perspective, I don't have the right boob, lower than the left and all the other stuff you're going through.

If you lift on one side, you might.

I probably actually. At this point, the way I've been eating, I definitely do. But typically, I would like to think I don't. But I want to say that I want to second Then the other thing is the massive power of what you're describing because you're engaging both parts of the brain here. You're engaging the frontal cortex of the brain because it's a new move. So your brain can't conserve energy. It's got to actually engage. But you're also engaging all the hardwiring you've had for years and years and years of having this The trigger of this high five. This is brilliant at both times. So I don't want to interrupt you on it.

I'm not even done, dude. I've only just scratch the surface on the science. You're going to freak the fuck out. Talk about max out. You're going to max I'm going to break F out.

Okay. So keep rolling on it because you know me, I'm super fascinated by this. So simple move, out of nothing, high five. All of a sudden, you've stumbled into some of the best neuroscience in the world that proves that this is a game changer. Yeah.

So now there's even more. So think about a moment when you go to high five somebody and you guys like... You have a shitty high five. You miss it. You miss it. It's like a limp. I hate that word.

Me too.

Do it again. Do it again. Why? Because a high five requires both presence and intention. Yes, that's true.

You're right.

Yeah. You're right. And so standing there with yourself, there's a new research right out of Harvard that proves that if you take just one minute of an intentional reflection about who you're going to be today, it changes your level of productivity. It changes how you show up as a leader. It changes your ability to impact people, and it changes your effectiveness. Simply a single minute of setting an intention about who you're going to be today. And so when you stand in front of that mirror and you don't ignore yourself like Ed and my husband do, or criticize yourself like 91% of women do on default, and you take a moment to intentionally be with yourself, and you think about the day ahead, even if you've got a lot of stressful stuff going on, especially, actually, if you have a lot of stressful stuff going on. You then raise your hand and you begin your day with this high five to yourself. You are sealing that intention that you believe in yourself and that you got it. It's very good. It's incredible. I was just It's with Dr. Daniel Amen, who I know you know, too, who's one of the world's leading experts on the brain.

We were talking about the high five habit. He was saying that the other thing that's happening, and this is why when you first start doing it, it's going to take 2-3 days to get through, and we're going to talk about the resistance, and we're going to talk about the fact that it feels weird and why, because there's a very deep and very sad reason why it feels weird and why you're going to have resistance to doing this. But by about day three, what's going to happen is pretty crazy. You're either going to feel a major surge and boost in your mood, or you are going to have a very just unnerving sense of calm. And the reason why is you have a lifetime of your nervous system experiencing joy when you celebrate people. I mean, think about going to, for me, well, you're a Boston guy, the Red Sox. You go to the Fenway Park and they score. You're like, yes.

Yes. Naturally.

High five in each other. First move you make. First move. And so literally, when you raise your It's been like that, and it has been infused with so much celebration, your nervous system and your brain recognizes it, and you get what he calls a positive drip of dopamine, which either calms your brain and the stress, or it amplifies your mood to make you feel excited about what you're about to do. My gosh.

Isn't this incredible? It is incredible. Yeah, it is incredible. So are you suggesting, and we're going to go to the resistance in a minute. I'm just thinking through all the applications. The other thing is almost anything good happens in my life, especially anyone that ever played a sport, you, bam, I am high-fiving anywhere I can get it and spread it. And it is a way of acknowledging yourself, but also acknowledging the other person. It's a massive state change. I love the fact that I introed you this way, not knowing when we're going to talk about this, that you can take incredibly complicated things and distill them down to the most simple action you could take. This is the best example ever of that because there's all this neuroscience behind all of it. You're like, look, look in the mirror and high five.

Yeah, which sounds like, please.

It actually doesn't now, though. We're 10 minutes in here and it's brilliant. It doesn't sound that way to me now. I want to go back. Physically, you're saying that what you're suggesting we all do, recommending, which I will begin to do immediately, is that upon waking, is there a time And then you believe that this is applicable?

It's a good question. I personally think how you set your day up is how it ends up. And all the research also shows that your mood in your morning impacts productivity all day. For sure. When you do small things to boost your mood, it has a documented impact on your ability to focus, to be productive, to believe in yourself. And so I personally would recommend that you habit stack it, that you pair it with something that you always do in the morning in the bathroom. So whether that's brushing your teeth or whether it's flossing or shaving or whatever you might do, before or after, just before you leave that bathroom, you have to high five yourself in the mirror. And so the simple rule is don't ever leave a bathroom without high fiving yourself in the mirror. Ever again. Send yourself back into the game of life, having your own back. Okay.

Can I ask you about that? Yeah. No one else is going to ask you this. I'm just thinking through because I'm going to do this. Okay. I'm in, 1,000 %. Do Do you think that if you do it too repetitiously, that it loses its charge? Or do you believe that if you do it more repetitiously, that it actually gains a pattern with you as a deeper trigger?

Excellent question. I'm realizing that I do the high five right before I leave the bathroom, so it's the last thing I do. It's always after I brush my teeth, but it's the last thing I do before I leave the bathroom. Now, I might come back in and put makeup on or do something else, but that first Just high five in the morning is important. Here, to answer your question, in the beginning, it becomes something you do. It becomes a practice that you're adding to your morning routine. Over time, it becomes part of who you are. Because here's the killer thing. Oh, my God. I'm not even done explaining all the research. Because we've got to get into motivation. We've got to get into what research says about celebration, empowerment, support. We got to get into what the studies about the MBA teams say about high fives and championship teams. I got so much to unpack here. It's incredible. I love this. Oh, God. What was I going to say? I was high-fiving in the...

I want you to I'll just say one thought you have because I don't want to move off of it because we're going to get into the research. I actually want to ask you about the resistance piece of it because you said that it's powerful and a little bit sad, and that just stuck with me when you said it. Because we can move into the NBA stuff. But beforehand, because one, my question is, don't outthink the room. Just take this principle and apply it. That's the first thing. Don't overthink it. How do I do it? Where do I put my hand? Just give yourself a high five. You're not thinking about when you're giving another person a high five. Open hand, close hand. Just give them a damn high five. So let's not overthink the room. I know that 30% of us is like, Exactly which hand? How quickly? How long do I hold it up for? Let's not do that, everybody. Let's apply the principle. The second thing is, though, what is the resistance? Why is there a resistance?

This is so sad. There's two the buckets that it falls into. The one bucket is that you believe you only deserve it if you've achieved something. I haven't done anything worthy of a high five. I don't get a high five unless I hit I have a number on the scale, or I have that number in the bank account, or I land the job, or I find the person, or I do the thing. By withholding celebration, support, empowerment, and encouragement from yourself, you're making it not only harder, I would say next to impossible, to make those things that you want a reality. Very good. The other reason why people feel a resistance, and this is also incredibly sad, is that your default in your mind is that you are not worthy of it.

Yes. Yeah.

That you have failed, or you're damaged, or you've been abused, or you have so much evidence stacked up about why you do not deserve to be celebrated. That you actively withhold it from yourself.

Which is a metaphor for other parts of your life. You actually don't think you're worthy of this joy. I have to say to you, if you're hearing me under my breath during the interview, I'm going, This is very good. This is very good. They don't normally hear me talk like this, because I'm going to be honest with everybody. When I have someone on the show that's in our space or our world, there's usually There's things, This is very good, or this is great. But when I'm listening to you right now, there's a part of me that envies you a little bit because I think this is one of the most brilliant things I've heard since I've ever been involved in personal development or peak performance or life change. I'm just going, Why didn't I think of this? This is so good. I also am a high five person. I've done it with people think I'm doing my high kids all the time. I'm spreading that all the time.

I love that you said this, dude. Okay. You want to know why? Yeah. Because we're all good at giving everybody else a high five.

So everybody thinks they're extra good at it, but everybody's actually good at doing it. They just don't. They won't give themselves one because they're not worthy.

Or nobody's ever taught you how. Yeah. We all know we're supposed to validate ourselves and love ourselves and accept ourselves.

How the fuck do you do it? Yeah. What are you doing actually to physically do that? Yes.

Yeah. Yes. And so the thing is, is that we're amazing at cheering for our favorite sports teams and downloading albums and planning birthday parties and doing extra work for colleagues who are stressed out and visiting people that are sick, we not only fall short. What I have found now researching this for a year is that most of us do the opposite. We withhold it from ourselves. Yeah.

I do. Yeah, I do, too. I do the two things you said. If I'm in a space by myself, I am typically being somewhat critical of myself, evaluating what I could have done. There's one thing we all do, too. I could have done this better. That's actually self-criticism. I used to think, no, I'm growing. I'm evaluating I'm self-aware, it's usually criticism. It's usually criticism. And then because I avoid that guy, I do the invisible thing. I've literally gotten ready in front of hundreds of mirrors in my life and really never looked at I really never looked at the man looking back at me. I wonder sometimes, I've looked at myself so little. I don't know if everybody can relate to this. I don't know if I would recognize me in a crowd if I were there. That's a pretty sad thing to admit as somebody who's probably impacted a few people in their life positively, right? I pay so little attention to me and give myself so little of just this gift. For me, I'm thinking about this in the morning. For sure, I'm going to do it. I'm also thinking about before I go out and give a talk somewhere, just go look, find myself in a bathroom, just give myself a gift of it.

This is a gift you can give yourself. Exactly. That is so simple.

Do you know why your mind is popping off? Because you actually understand so much about the brain. Yeah. I can see your neurons firing as you're connecting the dots and being like, this actually reshapes your RES. Correct. This is like something that is a tool. One of the other things that I think that you're going to really, really love about this is that I want to tell you about two other studies. Okay. Because your audience, my audience, really into peak performance, into achieving goals, into... And I think when you're somebody that's driven like you and I are, you already We said it. We have a negativity bias because we're so driven that we've developed a voice that's really hard on us. We don't see the hundred things that went right today. We see the one freaking thing that didn't work. Absolutely. And then we look at that and we call that, of course, it's one of the reasons why we're successful. But I'm here to tell you, it's also why you're not as joyous as you could be as you're having this success. Yes. Because you are focused on the that's wrong instead of having micro-celebrations and moments of joy and drip dopamine, as Dr. Amen says, throughout the day as you're seeing the things that are going right.

I think the robbing of that of yourself will eventually cause crying in burnout. If you continue to take actions and get no dopamine hits for doing any of them, at one point, you just reach the conclusion that it's not as worth doing as it used to be. This is one way to give yourself that hit. My brain is firing thinking about all the applications of this. Yeah. It is. So give me another study.

You're going to say another So there's two really cool studies that I know you're going to love. And this goes into the power, the motivational power of encouragement, support, and celebration. Because I think the myth of tough love and being hard on yourself is a motivational force. I know it is. Based on the research, it doesn't work. Even if you look at Goggans, what does he do when he is really up against the wall? He's got that cookie jar thing. That's a positive memory.

It's a positive memory. That's right.

So even that is in the form of encouragement. Here's the study with the NBA teams. They took a look at NBA teams in a couple, across various seasons. You can predict who is going to be in the championships based on the teams that have the most number of high fives, fist bumps, and backpacks in the preseason.

In the preseason?

Because they build trust and partnership. And you can also predict who's going to rank the worst.

Based on the fewest?

Yes, because those players are selfish and in for themselves. There is a partnership and a trust that this builds. What I'm here to tell you is you do this every morning, you will build partnership and trust with yourself. I love it. You are the most important person in your life. Your relationship with yourself is the foundation of every single relationship that you have. You better You're not going to start faking paying attention to it and look in yourself in the eyes. If you continue to do this, you are a man with an enormous heart and soul. Thank you. I don't even see myself physically. I'm in touch with the being that's in this skin sac. Seriously.

Were you prior to this?

I don't think so. I think I was so busy and dysregulated in my nervous system. My success was born out of, at least in this chapter of my life, another rock bottom moment where we were on the verge of losing absolutely everything. I know that you've been there, too, facing bankruptcy. I was drinking myself into the ground. Chris and I were fighting like crazy. While I have fixed things on the outside, I never actually knew how to connect with myself on the inside. I absolutely was chasing all those things outside, the likes, the validation, the external achievement stuff, in order to prove that I was worthy of love. The high five habit, and that's just the beginning. I mean, This High Five Habit, and that's just the beginning. I mean, this High Five in the Mir is just a Trojan horse. The whole book is about small habits based in science that teach you how to fulfill your own needs emotionally and how to support, encourage, and empower yourself through the ups and downs in life. How to flip jealousy, for example, into inspiration. How to go from a really low mindset into what I call a high five attitude when you feel insecure or people-pleasing.

And so the high five in the mirror is the beginning of it.

I I don't go to this jealousy and to inspiration thing, but I want to say something to you first. I'm loving this, by the way.

What does it mean to live a high five life? Well, honestly, a high five life is being able to wake up every day and feel as though your life is a game worth playing. That doesn't mean you're necessarily winning. It just means that you have a sense of optimism and resilience and a attitude I call it a high five attitude that encourages, supports, and propels you forward every step of the way. That's what a high five life is, and that's what a high five habit helps you create. So what are some of the things that that incorporates? We wake up, what can we do to feel that? Okay, well, there's a couple of things that I recommend based on science, and a lot of this stuff is going to sound stupid when you first hear it, but it is working for millions of people, and it's grounded in science. You just hear me out. Number one, when the alarm rings, do not lie in bed. Lying in bed and letting your thoughts overtake you, that's a moment when you wake up when your cortisol levels are very high. Most people wake up and stare at the ceiling or start checking social media.

So before you're even out of bed, your nervous system is already in a state of fight or flight. It's stressed out. It's on edge. This is why it's hard to focus. So the second the alarm rings, number one, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, get out of bed. Do not look at your phone. Second thing you're going to do is you're going to do what I call high-fiving your heart. You're going to put your hands right in the center of your chest, and you're going to be pressing on something called the vagus nerve. This is a treasure in your body, and it's an on-off switch between your stressed-out nervous system and your grounded, calm nervous system. Remember that, everybody? Most of us haven't felt that calm, grounded nervous system in a long time. So put your hands on your heart, take a deep breath, and then just say, I'm okay. I like that. I'm safe. I'm loved. You might need to repeat it 83 times, but you'll feel your nervous system settle and you'll feel yourself coming back into your body. And then once you do that and you grounded in your body, get to the bathroom, brush your teeth, get the gunk out of your mouth so you don't spread dragon breath everywhere.

And then we're going to get the gunk out of your mind, body, and spirit. And this might be generational gunk. This might be decades of gunk. Because right now, the dirty secret about waking up is everybody has a habit of either ignoring their reflection. 50 % of men and women cannot look at themselves in the mirror. That's so stunning. That's so sad. That's a stunning number. It's true, though. It's true. And then you're going to, as cheesy as it sounds, raise your hand and high five your own reflection. And the reason why this works, Marcy, is so exciting. You have been high fiving everybody your whole life. So when you give somebody a high five, what is that actually communicate to somebody, Marcy? What does it mean? You're like, yes, you feel good about it. Yeah, we've done something great. Yeah. It's like, I believe in you. I see you. I love you. Keep going. Shake it off. You can do this. We're going to win. It's never, ever, ever. You've never high-fived somebody and said, I hate you. You've never high-fived somebody and said, you're a failure. You've never high-fived somebody and said, you're about to blow this.

It's always been positive. So the exciting thing about this new habit is all the programming is in your brain and your nervous system. So when you go to raise your hand to your own reflection, despite the fact that you've spent decades beating yourself up and picking apart the things that you need to fix, the second you do the physical action, your brain doesn't know the difference difference between high-fiving somebody else and high-fiving your reflection. Number one, it gives you a drip of dopamine. That's why it feels good. Number two, all the positive programming, I believe in you, I see you, I support you, I'm encouraging you. It now gets married with your reflection. It interrupts the habit of self-rejection, self-criticism, self-hatred, and it programs in everything associated with a high five: self-encouragement, self-validation, self Self-celebration, self-confidence, self-love. It's extraordinary. All things that we want, yeah. Of course. And that none of us know, how? How do I love myself? How do I validate myself? Especially if I'm not happy with where I am in my life right now. And this is the answer. Use science and let it do the work for you. So let's talk about how this came about for you and your book, The High-Five Habit.

It's a great story, Mel. So please share. Yeah, it is. And it's really resonating. We are the number one audiobook in the world right now, and we're two days into this. We are number one on lists all over the world. I think people are really hurting. And that's where I was when I invented this. Marcy, I had been fired from my dream job in March of 2020. I was a daytime talk show host, and it was my dream to have my own show. I get fired from it, and I'm like, Are you kidding? At the age of 51, I got to I meant myself, what? And now the quarantine hits. My kids' college experience implodes, they're grieving, they're anxious like everybody else on the planet. I was worried about my parents, worried about frontline workers. I was defeated, demoralized, overwhelmed. I didn't know how I was going to make payroll as every speech started to cancel. And I just would wake up and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. And it doesn't It doesn't matter what's going on in your life. It's a very familiar feeling, whether your friend group just dumped you, or you just lost your job, or you just got a bad diagnosis.

And that's where I was. And one morning in April of 2020, I was standing in my underwear in my bathroom, and I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, and I thought, Oh, my God, you look like hell. And then the beat down started. I started picking myself apart. The woman in the mirror that I saw sad and overwhelmed. I couldn't think of anything to say, and honestly, I wouldn't have believed it because I didn't feel positive. I didn't feel optimistic. But for whatever reason, Marcy, I think it's a divine intervention moment. I really do. I believe that. I just raised my hand to my tired reflection, and I gave the woman in the mirror a high five because she needed it. And something shifted. It wasn't like light my shoulders struck, but something shifted. My shoulder is- It only needs to be a tiny one, right? A tiny shift can make a difference. Yeah. And I feel like when your problems feel overwhelming, we all get really cynical, and we think there's no way something that sounds stupid or simple could possibly address these massive issues that I'm facing or these overwhelming emotions.

And what I have found time and time again, and I know you believe the same thing, it's actually the simple things that change everything, because if it's simple, you'll do it. If it's simple, you'll remember it. And tools only work when you use them. You can't think about doing this and change your life. You got to actually 5, 4, 3, to, one, raise your hand in the mirror and push through the resistance and try it and feel it, and then do it again and do it again and do it again because your whole life is a marathon. And every day you need to send yourself into the game of life the way that a winning team does. They don't start any game. Your favorite sports team does not start a game by huddling up and going, Marcy, you're a loser. You look terrible. Today is going to be horrible. You got up late. All right, let's get in there and do this. That's not how it goes. You literally are like, We're going to win. We're going to try. We got a big game to play. Can we beat them? We're not sure, but we're going to put it all in there, and we're going to encourage each other.

And then you seal it with a high five, and you send yourself in to the day. It makes so much sense. We are in Chapter 4, page 54. Here we go. Wait. So what the half What the heck happened to the happy me? If I was born a happy person, what the heck happened? Why am I not happy now that I'm an adult? Well, simple. The reason why you're not happy as an adult is because life got its hands on you. How many How many of you feel like, Yep, life got its hands on me. All right. Well, from an early age, your life stirred all kinds of. All the highs and the lows from your life, they get tumbled together like a load of laundry in a dryer where all of a sudden everything goes in bright colors and it comes out. Everything's that light grayish blue color because it all gets blend together. Like I said, and like I write about in the high five habit, you were born perfect. You were born whole and complete. As as you are. You came out of that womb perfectly wired to grow into a beautiful, smart, amazing, passionate person.

But somewhere along the way, as you grew up, as you went to school, as you tried to make friends, as you tried to fit in, you got a very clear message. There's something wrong with you as you are. I see people from all over the world. Write in the comments where you are watching from. I see Palestine, Kentucky, Ontario, Des Moines. I see folks all over the place. Let's see here. Let's see. From all India. Welcome in, everybody. This is true regardless of where you were born. Regardless of where you were born in the world, you were born and came into this world, whole, complete, beautiful, happy. You loved yourself. Then as you grew up and you tried to fit in and you tried to to survive, whatever it was that you were needing to survive in your community or your household, to get the love, to get the attention, to get the support that you needed, you started to change. You started to believe that you needed to change something about yourself in order to be liked or accepted. Now, when you start to feel like there's something wrong with you, and do any of you that are watching right now feel like you know when that happened?

There's a story that you can remember where somebody said something or did something, and you're like, My tough skin jeans and the T-shirt I wear, there's something wrong with this because the kids that I want to be friends with don't like this. Or a coach said, You run funny, and you started to feel like there's something wrong with you. If you know the moment that you started to think Wow, I got to change myself to fit in. I can't be gay. I can't have kinky hair. I don't like the color of my skin because I feel like there's something wrong with me. Society gave you that message, your parents did. Maybe a bully said something to you. I see somebody writing the way that I walk. I see somebody talking about the texture of their hair. I see somebody saying, I always felt like there was something wrong with me. Well, let me tell you something, everybody. I never fit in with any particular groups of friends. Let me tell you something. Every one of you is now going, I remember that feeling because I was the only immigrant in my class. I was the only Muslim in my class.

I didn't look like the other people. I didn't feel like the other people. My father was so critical, right? When you start to get this message from society or other people or just this perception that you have that something's What is wrong with you, this is where your obsession with changing yourself to fit in begins. This is where your obsession with people-pleasing. This is where this sense that you don't belong anywhere that you go began. It can become a habit. We're going to unpack this because what I want you to understand is that you literally came into this world perfect, whole, and complete. You are wired to love yourself. You're wired for love. That's why you miss it. You're wired for self-acceptance. The world taught you that there's something about you that needs to be changed in order to be liked or loved. It's simply not true. When you can come back home to yourself and you can accept and love yourself first, exactly where you are, exactly where you're not, then you'll know the secret to going out in the world and not feeling like you never really belong anywhere or you You constantly need to tweak yourself or how you show up in order to be accepted by people.

When you accept yourself as you are, when you love yourself as you are, other people liking or loving you is just a bonus, but it doesn't change how you feel about yourself. That's what we're talking about in Chapter 4, The High Five Habit. This feeling that you feel, everybody, that there's something wrong with you, it's a very normal thing. It happens in child development. Psychologists call this moment where you suddenly go from feeling connected to yourself and perhaps to people in your family or to friends, to feeling outside of your family or feeling like you're not part of something. They call this a break in belonging. You start to feel like you don't belong in your family, or your church, or your friend group, or your neighborhood, or even the world at large. That feeling then creates it's this second break, and it's the break in feeling connected to yourself, who you really are. This break in belonging, everyone, it's normal. It happens to all of us, and it can happen a million different ways. You know, maybe you grew up and you had to move a lot, and so you were constantly changing schools, and so you always felt like an outsider looking in because every school year you needed to make new friends.

Maybe you were attacked or unsafe as a child. Maybe you got called stupid or you had a critical parent because you were dyslexic. Maybe you were put in special classes or you were the only kid who was transgender or Muslim or a refugee or black in your entire class. And so you didn't look around and see anybody that looked like you, and that made you feel like something was up. Maybe you got teased for how you looked or spoke or acted, or you felt uncomfortable getting undressed in gym class because your mom was constantly on you about your weight. And so that made you feel like, God, there's something wrong with me. I can't just love myself as I am. When your home life or your friends at school or the world itself makes you feel like you're not okay or you're unsafe or unworthy of love, as a kid, we believe it. And it happens to all of us. No one, not you, not me, no one gets to being an adult without experiencing this break in belonging and this trauma. It could have been really serious things that you survived. Maybe your dad walked out on the family, or your mom had severe depression, or your brother died by a suicide.

Maybe you lived growing up with the constant worry about where your next meal was coming from, where you experienced racism and bias every single day in your neighborhood, or maybe your family rejected you because you did have the courage to be who you are. You did have the courage to say that you are a gay person, or you had a parent who struggled with addiction or was constantly shaming you with the silent treatment. These experiences impacted you. You absorbed them as a child in your mind, body, and spirit. It's not like you could leave, right? When you're a kid, our only choice is to survive the situation that we're in. This is especially hard on an emotional level, this break in belonging. I I see some people saying, I didn't fully start to understand myself until my 50s. I really believe that. Me too. It took me a long time, and it's my hope that in putting the high five habit out and doing the work to help you learn how to take control of your thoughts and your actions so that you can create the life that you want. That part of what happens is that you come back into accepting, loving, and knowing yourself.

It's the ultimate secret weapon, everyone. When something happens to you as a kid, you don't to have the life experience or the support system to process what's happening. So you absorb it in your nervous system and coping patterns and thoughts. As I said, your only option when you're a kid is to just survive it. What's interesting, and I think this is a fundamental flaw in human wiring. There's so much amazing intelligence in the way that you and I are designed, all human beings. If you think about all of the sophisticated wiring in your brain, in your body, your nervous system, your digestive system, your heartbeat, how your body is constantly learning and creating new cells, it's freaking mind-blowingly cool. But one thing that's really screwed up about all of us, and I think it's a flaw in human design is that when something happens to you or to me as a child, we don't have the life experience or the default thinking patterns in our brain to go, Wait a minute. This is really fucked up. We don't have the ability to be objective and go, These adults need to be arrested because this is not okay.

We don't have the support system or the life experience to go, Wow, if this kid is hurting me, I'm sure somebody's hurting this kid at their house. What happens is that when something bad or scary or stressful happens to you as a kid, do you know what we all do? We point it right back at ourselves. We literally say to ourselves, something must be wrong with me. Something must be wrong with me. If my parents treat me like this, something must be wrong with me. If these kids don't include me. Something must be wrong with me. We turn it back on ourselves because we don't know any better. We're just kids, and that's when it happens. You start to get this default filter about your whole life where you look at the world and you have this default opinion that something's wrong with you. It's just simply not true. I'm going to teach you that you can change that. You can change that. You can live your life without ever thinking, something's wrong with me. Are there things that you need to change? Of course. There's always going to be things that you need to change because you're always going to be changing and life's always going to be changing around you.

But those are opportunities. It doesn't mean that there's something fundamentally flawed about you. You might have some thinking patterns that are broken based on where you are right now. You might have some habits that don't work for you anymore. That doesn't mean something's wrong. It means there's something you need to change. That's it. That's That's it. I did the same thing. When I was nine years old, I was molested by an older kid. What was my immediate reaction and processing? I had done something wrong. Of course, I hadn't done something wrong, but that's just how the kid brain works. Something's wrong with me. It's what our son did when he was bullied at a summer camp that we sent him to. What he did is he hid his pain and then he blamed himself for being the one that this bully picked on in the cabin. I, of course, blame myself for not picking up on the clues sooner and ripping our son right out of that freaking camp. I'm sure that's what you did, too, with the experiences you survived. You made the things that were done to you or the situations that you survived as a child mean that something's wrong with you, that you're damaged or that you're not lovable or you're unworthy or you're not good enough.

That is up, and we all do it. The truth is, you were just a kid doing the best that you could. What's awesome about seeing your your past experiences this way is that when you realize we all have this flaw in terms of the way that the brain processes trauma and stress and scary situations and abuse and violence and all the things that you can experience as a kid, is that when you understand that this is what happened, you can change this default in terms of your opinion about yourself. Because when you think there's something wrong with you, of course, you're going to be a people pleaser. Of course, you're going to have imposter syndrome. Of course, you're going to have anxiety. Of course, you're going to feel on edge because your default opinion is there's something that's not okay with you. And that's not true. There are opportunities for you to heal. There are opportunities for you to upgrade your habits. There are opportunities for you to think differently. There are opportunities for you to heal your nervous system, all of which we talk about in the High Five Habit Book, Using Science and Simple Things that You Can Do.

Whether Whether you were dealing with a critical mom or parents who got divorced or racist microaggressions every day or physical abuse, you did what I did. You turned this stuff back on yourself. It's why you think you're not good enough. That is a massive flaw in human design, instead of blaming the people that hurt you or blaming society, you blame yourself, and you think there's something wrong with me. Now, as much as I hate to admit it, as a parent, we often send that message to our children that there's something wrong with you or that I don't like you, how you are. And we do it unintentionally sometimes. I mean, sometimes it's pretty overt. If your parent is hypercritical or a real jerk, they might be doing it overtly. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, by the way. It means they have trauma. They're in trouble. They're taking it out on you. They're something they need to deal with. Here's the story I promise to tell you. This is the lesson I didn't mean to teach our son. The lesson that I taught him that I did not mean to teach him is that I don't like you, and I'm not going to love you unless you look the way I want you to look.

That's the lesson I unintentionally taught him. I'm about to tell you a story. I'm on page Page 56 in Chapter 4 of the High Five Habit. I'm about to tell you a story that I hate because it makes me feel like a terrible mom. But I'm sharing it because the story illustrates just how loud and consistent this message is, that there's something wrong with who you are, what you look like, and how you express yourself. To take it a deeper level that unless you fix it, I don't love you. I reject you because I'm not going to accept who you are, what you look like, or how you express yourself. In Our son, Oakley, was in the sixth grade, he died the ends of his hair because he was a huge fan of the video gamer Ninja. It looked really cool, and he loved it, and I loved it. Then our son changed schools in seventh grade. As we were leading up to the first day at his new school, I started to worry that the kids at his new school might be mean to him if he showed up on day one and he had blue hair.

Look, it's hard enough to be the new kid in seventh grade, right? Try being the new kid with blue hair. Actually, try being the new kid with blue hair who's got a neurotic mother who's desperately trying you to make you change who you are and what you look like. Yes, this book is available online. You can get it at Amazon. You can listen to it on Audible. It's coming out in 31 languages. They're starting to release around the world. We are on Chapter 4, page 57, for those of you who are asking and want to read along. For weeks, you guys, I'm not proud to admit this, I kept asking our son, Hey, you want to get a haircut before school and maybe cut those tips off? Maybe try something new? Now, our son, here's the most important part, our son, seventh grader, he's not nervous about his hair. He's not nervous about what he looks like. He's completely comfortable. He chose the blue. He loved loves the blue. He wasn't nervous or rejecting himself. I was. I was. And as school got closer, I kept asking him more, You sure he don't want to get a haircut.

And then his and her sister's piled on. You know, dude, it's not like you're a star lacrosse player. Maybe you don't want to roll into school with blue hair, dude. Well, Oakley, our son, finally caved, and he got a trim before his first day of school, and he cut the blue ends off of his hair. Here's the thing, everybody. He didn't cut the blue tips of his hair off for himself. He did it to appease our fears. See, when you're a kid, everyone's going to tell you what to do or what they'd like you to do. You acquiesce because you want to make your mom happy. You don't want her to be upset. You don't want to disappoint anybody. You want to fit in with the cool kids. Or maybe you acquiesce because you don't have a freaking choice. But what happens is it gets conditioned into you that love and acceptance are transactional. I'm going to say it again. When you feel pressure to change who you are or how you talk or how you dress or what you look like because your parents or your friends pressure you to. You're learning that love and acceptance are transactional.

If you do what I say, then I'll love you. If you look the way I want you to look, then I'll be nice to you. If you do exactly what I want you to do, and you dress how I want you to dress, or talk how I want you to talk, or pretend that you like the opposite sex when you you don't, then I'll love you, then it'll be okay, then I'll be happy. You are learning a lesson that love and acceptance are transactional. That is horrible. That's how you learn the lesson to withhold love and acceptance for yourself. That you won't love yourself unless you lose the weight. You won't accept yourself or support yourself or love yourself unless you get that big job and you make that money. You learn that love is transactional from your parents because you got the message that unless you behaved exactly how you were supposed to behave, they weren't going to like you. You probably got the message that they would withhold love if you didn't do what they wanted you to do, whether that's behave or look a certain way. This is the book that we all bought into, by the way.

Looking back on this story with our son, Oakley, I realized the message I was sending, the mistake I made. I was saying, There's something wrong with you. There's something wrong with the way you look. There's something about you that I don't like, and I'm not going to like you until you change to make me happy. I was basically saying, I'm only going to accept the version of you that makes me happy. Yet in reality, here's the irony. I actually felt the opposite, you guys. I loved his hair. But I didn't trust the other seventh-graders would accept him with blue hair. I was just trying to give him the best chance for a smooth start, but instead, I clearly made him question his own choices and whether or not I loved and accepted him as he was, as he appeared. I was telling him this, too, and this is scary to admit to you. I was telling him, I'd rather you fit in than be yourself. I'm going to say it I taught my son this lesson. I'd rather you fit in than be yourself. Holy shit. What a mistake. What a mistake. Oh, my God.

I hate this. I hate that I did this. I feel horrible because I know that somewhere along the line, we all got that message, right? It's better to fit in than be yourself. That's how it begins. There's something wrong with you. You better fit in because it's better to fit in than be yourself. This This is a very big lie that you and I believe. That what other people think of you is more important than what you think of yourself. That's bullshit. This is how you started to believe that other people's opinions of you is more important than what you think of yourself. This is how you started to believe that fitting in is more important than being you. Complete the secret to life is actually the opposite. Be yourself. Be yourself. Let the The world fit into who you are. Be yourself. It's more important that you be yourself and like yourself than anything else, everybody. We've all bought into this belief for our whole life because people taught you that this is how the world works. This is the lesson I didn't mean to teach our son, that it's better to fit in than be yourself, that I'll like you and love you if the version of you is the one that I like and I love.

I hate that I did this. Kids, if you're watching this, I'm really sorry. I'm sure your parents, if you're not my kids that are watching this, didn't mean to do it either. They didn't know any better. This is how their parents raise them. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying this is what's so, everybody. I hate that story. But that's the heart of what happened to you, to me, to everybody you know. You started questioning what you look like and what you do and ultimately who you are. And that's how your connection to your truest self gets blocked. That's why you stopped accepting yourself. It's why you started criticizing yourself. It's why you stand in front of a mirror and pick yourself apart because your mom or dad used to do it to you. For our daughter or anyone who struggles with their appearance, you got to start to reverse this. You got to learn how to appreciate the parts of yourself right now. You got to stop trashing yourself. If you are pulling on a pair of jeans and beating yourself up and trash yourself because they're tough to pull on, just dump the jeans in the trash, please.

Because when you criticize yourself and you beat yourself up, you're treating yourself the way I treated our son. You are basically treating your self the way I treated our son. You're saying your love for yourself is transactional. Until I approve of everything about your life and the way you look, I'm going to withhold the love and acceptance that you need in life, and it's a horrible way to go. You don't hate appreciate. You don't need to change anything to deserve the love and acceptance that you need. Just like my son did not need to change his blue hair, to be loved and accepted. To be loved and accepted for who you are, all I needed to do was love and accept him exactly as he was. I made a huge mistake, everybody. The next time you stand in front of a mirror, stop poking and prodding and picking yourself apart. For those of us that put makeup on, let the makeup be a creative expression, something that's additive, and stop having the makeup be an act where you cover yourself up because you think you're ugly or you think that how you look isn't okay.

If you're going to wear makeup, do it as a creative expression. Do it because it's fun. Don't do it because you need to fix yourself because you don't need to fix yourself. Just like my son did not need to cut his hair. I needed to learn the lesson that love Love is not transactional. Love is unconditional. Love is accepting somebody for exactly who they are and where they are and how they look and how they express themselves. That's what love is. It's accepting someone for everything that they are and everything that they're not. It's caring for somebody and supporting and seeing somebody for who they are right now, where they are right now, no matter what what that may be. Because when you start your day, and you need to do this with yourself, by the way, and the way that you do that is stop poking and prodding and picking yourself apart, please. Stop doing that. It makes you feel the rejected and rejected and discouraged. When you pick yourself apart in the mirror every morning, you are acting like I did with our son. You're basically staring at the blue hair saying, I'll love you if you cut it.

I'll accept you if you change something about that reflection in the mirror. And by the way, this picking and rejecting that you do of yourself, it sets the tone for what you think and feel all day. Instead, I'd like you to start each morning the way I should have been back then with our son. By looking for qualities that you appreciate. Notice the intricacies about your face that you ignore. Notice your strength, your intuition. Thank your body for how it's taking care of you. Despite you trashing it all these years, it's still got a beaten heart. It's still moving forward. Or how those stretch marks remind you of the kids that you have. There's nothing wrong with you. Period. You may not be happy with where you are in life right now. That may be a fact. You may not be happy about the balance in your bank account. That may be a fact. You may not be happy about the number on the scale. That's a fact. You may not be happy about the The size of the pants, the car you drive, where you live, who you hang out with, decisions you've made.

Yeah, but here you are. Life hasn't been easy, but here you are. Resilient intelligence It's strong. Still standing. Still waking up every day, pushing yourself to learn and grow and become a better person. And honestly, you know what? That makes you fucking awesome. I love what Jordan shared with me after she started this habit of high-fiving herself in the mirror instead of tearing herself apart. She said, So often, self-love is shown to be about fixing yourself. That's why I love high-fiving myself in the mirror, because it shows us that self-love is really about falling in love with the parts of you that you're trying to fix. Oh my God, I love that. I love that. Self love is really about falling in love with the parts of yourself you've been trying to fix. There is so much about you to love. Soak it in. And then every single morning, raise your hand and seal this appreciation into your subconscious. Demonstrate it. Prove it. By high-fiving, the person you see in the mirror. The person with the blue hair and the stretch marks and the saggy neck and all that you are and all that you aren't.

Love your sofa exactly where you are. This is Page 54, Chapter 4. I just want to say one other thing. I'm going to answer one or two questions, and then we're going to sign off. And yes, I'm going to read the rest of this book for free online. If you have not If you want a copy, this is the greatest gift that you could give somebody this holiday season because you're giving somebody the gift of learning how to love yourself, accept yourself, and support yourself in changing your life and in creating the life that you want. So the best freaking gift you could possibly give somebody, including yourself. But I wanted to say one thing because one of the things that I also realized about telling my son, and one of the things I also realized I'm not teaching my son this lesson I didn't mean to teach him. The lesson is that love is transactional, that there's something about you that needs to be fixed, that I'm not going to like you or love you unless you cut this blue hair off. Even though I didn't mean to teach that lesson. It is a lesson I regret teaching him, that love is transactional, because love isn't and shouldn't be transactional.

True love is unconditional and supportive and kind and compassionate. That's what you need from yourself and that's what you need in your relationships, and it starts with you. The other message, though, that I was sending to our son, which is just as damaging of a message, is I was basically saying to him, If other kids tease tease you about your blue hair or they reject you for how you look, you're not strong enough to handle it. So you better cut your hair. You better change yourself because you're not strong enough to stand in who you are. That is the second lesson that I mistakenly taught him. Because the fact of the matter is that I should have said that I love your hair, you walk in there, and if somebody said something, then I I could have talked to him, coached him, and supported him in standing strong in who he is, to make him understand that when somebody attacks somebody else, it sucks and it feels bad, but it's always a reflection of some insecurity. Anybody that teases a kid with blue hair is afraid that the kid with blue hair is about to become more popular than them because they're way cooler than them, and they clearly have parents that aren't controlling freaks like I used to be that allow them to express themselves.

The attacking comes more out of jealousy and insecurity than anything else. A lesson that you could easily teach a seventh grader and that they can get. You can also then teach them, You have the power to stand in who you are. You are bigger than fitting in. You are more powerful than somebody else's criticism. You have the tools, the resources, and the support system to withstand that teasing, to get the support that you need, and to not change yourself because of some tool at school that is saying something annoying. 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.