Transcript of Rewiring Your Brain with Your Reticular Activating System | Mel Robbins

You are encoding a habit of taking action, a habit of courage, a habit of confidence, a habit of betting on yourself. And so it becomes innate.

Yeah, I think a lot of your work is about motivation and helping people with self-love and breaking these patterns and shifting yourself. And we do get stuck. We get stuck on these repetitive patterns of thinking. And there's a part of our brain that actually is involved with that, that you talked about the particular activating system. Can you talk about how that plays a role in the repetitive nature of our thinking, whether it's good or bad. Yeah.

So there's a super cool thing. I can't believe I didn't learn about this sooner. They should teach this in school because it's so cool.

You mean like how to eat and take care of your body, among other things.

Oh, yeah. Balancet check, pay your taxes, all that stuff that nobody wants to learn. There's a super cool thing in your brain called the reticular activating system. I always get the middle word wrong, who cares?I call it the RAS.That's right. This thing is so freaking cool. This is a filter on your I think about it like... You know when people wear a hair net? Imagine if you have a hair net on your brain, but it is lit up, it is electric, it is alive, and it constantly lights up and changes in real-time, depending upon what it thinks is important to you. You can use this sucker to your advantage. I'm going to give you an example of how you've experienced this. I'm curious. So think about when you've either bought a new car or you've liked a new car, and all of a sudden you're like, Oh, that new Bronco, that new Bronco design, that thing's pretty cool. The second that you latch on to something that you're interested in, what do you see everywhere, Dr. Hunter? The same car. Everywhere?

Yeah.

Now, here's what's interesting.

Those cars had always been there.

That's It's not like they magically appeared. What happened magically is the RAS, this electric alive filter on your brain, once you got excited about something, it was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Dr. Hyman is interested in the Broncos. Shift the filter, block out the Mercedes. Everybody let in the Broncos because he wants to see those. I love the new Ford Bronco. It's an awesome car. Yeah, it is an awesome car. That's where you drive?

No, I have rented it, though, and I love it.

So what's fascinating, and look, if you've never had this happen with a car, you've had it happen with a college. If you've ever applied to college, you all of a sudden go, Wait a minute, does everybody go to USC? Does everybody go to Wittenberg? Why does it...

I thought I discovered this school.

And that's your RAS, changing in real-time. Why? Because it's trying to help you. It's trying to help you see more of what you want. And so you can do a little exercise. It sounds schmulzy and cheesy as hell, but I want you to do it. Today, I want you to tell your brain that you want to find one naturally occurring heart shape somewhere in the world. Wake up or leave this podcast and be like, All right, that's it. I'm not going to go to bed until I see one naturally occurring heart shape. And I swear to God, you will see a cloud, you will see a leaf, you You will see a stain on the floor, you will see something on the sidewalk, you will see a spot on somebody's shirt. I just noticed something I'd never seen before. Right there on that lower wood shelf, there is a dark thing under my YouTube award that looks like a dark heart in the middle of the shelf right there. Why? Because I tell my brain to do this. Now, why on Earth would I play this game of looking for hearts every single day? Because I am actively training my mind to change in real-time, to show me what I want to see.

See, the reason why this is important is because unless I give you an experience, Dr. Hyman, where you experience your own brain changing and showing you something, because you'll see right there on the sidewalk, you've been walking past this thing for a year.

It was there. How do we use that understanding of the RIS to actually change our behavior, make our lives better? I'll tell you how.

You have to first try the game, because unless you experience it, you won't believe that this as possible. Because if you can find hearts, you can actually start telling yourself, It is important to me to start seeing evidence that I'm worthy of love.

Oh, that's a good one.

It It is important to me to start seeing all the people in my life that care about me. It is important to me to start seeing these acts of eating healthy as acts of being worthy of self-love. Because if you just were to tell yourself, Okay, I'm going to love myself now, your brain's like, Mm-mm. No. Why? Because the RAS also works in the negative. Yeah. So one of the reasons why... Keeps you looping. Yes. One of the reasons why so many of us have such a hard time shaking and breaking the beliefs from our childhood is if you're an adult who believes that you're not worthy of love, that belief is is real because of your lived experience. And you now act in congruence with that lived experience.

And you pay attention to things and filter the things that confirm that experience.

Correct. Why? Because you're a That electronic hair net on your brain, your RAS, thinks this is important to you because you put so much energy into being like, I'm fat, I'm unworthy. See, that person said that my boss hates me. I always get everything wrong. Your RAS is like, Oh, okay, I'll show you more things you did it wrong. If I can get you to start seeing a heart every day for five days in a row, and then-I'm going to do it.

Everybody, you should do it.

Do it. You should do it because you're going to be like, Shit, this bitch is right. Oh, this is weird. Then if you want to supersize it, if it's a rock or a leaf, pick it up and be like, This sucker right here, this is evidence that my brain can help me. Then get serious about doing the exercise you talked about, writing down the stuff that was true in your childhood, and now write down the stuff you want to believe. And then challenge your RAS, show me that I have friends, and start seeing every inbound text from somebody that is evidence, not the People are using you or they don't...

It's so true, Mel. We always accumulate evidence to support our existing beliefs and our existing ways of thinking and everything else we ignore. Once a friend said, Stop looking for ways to be offended. Because You can easily look at everything. My mother used to say when someone honk and I would look around, they go, What makes you think that's for you? And I think we do that so much. Stop constantly looking for evidence to support our beliefs unconsciously, and that reinforces our way of living, our way of being, our actions, or everything.

Yes. And so a couple more things about that. Mindset is critical because right now, your mindset was programmed by the adults and the experiences of your childhood. And you are largely trapped in thinking patterns that are probably the patterns that you had when you were between 6 and 12 years old. For sure. And so you are basically an elementary school or middle schooler living in an adult body. And you have the opportunity to get serious about the person you want to become now. And so if you were to take out a piece of paper and write down all the things that you want another person in your life to bring into your life. So the partner that you're with, all of the things that you want her to bring into your life. What are some of those things?

Well, actually, I did that. I actually wrote down what my partner would be. I wrote down, I call it the love that I dream into being. What were the criteria and the. And what are they? There's a lot. They have to love themselves. They have to be playful. They have to be willing to come back always to love. I mean, the holiest thing, being able to go to the jungle and mountaintop to hang out with anybody, to just be on that magic carpet ride.

Yeah. Okay. So you want to know the secret to self-love? Be those things for yourself. Be those things for yourself. And what's going to happen, though, is you can make that list. It's going to be right there. Stick it somewhere that you see it every day, is you will resist doing those things because you don't currently do those things. And that's why you need the five-second rule to punch through the resistance that's going to be there, to help you plow the new neural pathways and the new behavior patterns. And it's through the actions. You see yourself coming back to love. You see yourself climbing the mountain. You see yourself doing all these things. You're in entire mind and the default wiring will change because of the actions that you're taking.

Yeah, it's so true. It just reminds me of these studies where they literally had people change the way they did things. In a study of longevity, where they took people who were born and lived in the '50s, and they put them in a model house. Everything was like the '50s, with the magazines, the newspapers, everything, the TV, all the same, and had them just act that way. And what happened was that they literally changed their physiology, their grip strength changed, their fitness changed. All these biomarkers of longevity changed simply by them having these different ways of acting in the moment.

It's so true. It's so true. And so think about the fact that your physical inputs, the way you get conscious about your thinking, the physical activities that you take, they change the way that you think. And so I think the biggest single message that I have is that-And they change your biology. Oh, of course. And so the single biggest message that I have is that you're not stuck with the patterns of thinking that you have. And they're probably your mother's or your father's. And they're not yours to carry forward. And if you can identify, just like you did, Mark, the things that you said to yourself about love, and you say, and you honor the fact that, wow, that sucks. And that was my experience. And now I want a different one. Your body and your brain will be so fast to fall into line and think completely different thoughts.

If you train your mind to start spotting evidence as you're doing the work, as you're going through your day. It will help you if you train your mind to start scanning the world and spotting evidence that, yes, indeed, the world is sending you positive signals that things are going to work out. Now, why is it important to train your mind to help you get what you want? Well, the reason why is because if you get into a negative mindset If you start thinking, Shit, this business is never going to work. Why even bother? I'm never going to meet anybody. It's nothing but losers out there. Look at all these idiots on hinge. Why the hell should I keep doing this? If you allow your mind to start to rest in a pessimistic, negative, protective, scared, and doubtful stance, your mind will continue to show you reasons why there's nobody on hinge worth talking to. Your mind will continue to show you all the reasons why you will never make it in business. Your mind will continue to show you all the reasons why you're never going to lose that weight and be able to tuck in your shirt, as my friend, Corinne Crabbtree always talks about, that transformational moment.

When your mind goes negative, your mind starts to scan the world and will show you more reasons to stop. The power of training your mind to spot positive signs is very simple. The power is that your mind will start to show you reasons to keep going. Your mind will help you take the step. Your mind will encourage you to feel optimistic, to feel empowered, just like you woke up today on a Tuesday It was February 22nd, 2022, and those numbers are lining up, and that makes you in your heart and soul go, whoa, something cool could happen today. That shit only happens once in my lifetime, those numbers are going to line up like that. Today is a really cool day. Let's go do something with this. You could create that attitude every single freaking day of your life. You could if you train your mind and if you start taking action. Training your mind is the key piece that we're going to talk about. For those of you that have read the high five habit, one of the things that I talk about a lot is every single day find a naturally occurring heart-shaped object in the world.

It could be a stone, it could be a leaf, it could be a cloud, it could be a shape in your coffee. Hey, Chris, if we've got anything around here that looks like a heart, hand it to me. The reason why I love telling you to start playing a game with yourself where you start your day going, mind, brain, show me some heart. Oh, what is this? Come here. Dog tree. Oh, my God.

It's a dog tree.

Look at this, guys. What shape is that, bitches? That right there is a heart, bitches. There we go. Check that out. If you say, brain, mind, show me a fucking heart today, guess what's going to happen? That damn dog biscuit, you're going to be like, there's a heart. You're going to look out at the sky and you're going to see a heart shape. Or right there in the mountains. There's a heart shape in the mountains in Southern Vermont. You're going to see it in the clouds. What you're doing when you tell your mind what's important to you is you're telling your mind and the filter in your brain to change in real-time and allow into your your consciousness, what's important to you. And if you want to see hearts, by God, those damn dog treats are going to start looking like hearts, everybody. That's how you train your mind. It's freaking incredible. And if you want to see evidence of this, follow me on social media. If you follow me, Mel Robbins, on social media, you will see every day I'm reposting your stories of finding heart shapes around the world. Now, why is this important?

Well, it's important because it's a simple way to prove to you that your mind it changes in real-time. That if you get serious about becoming more positive and optimistic and encouraging of yourself, if you get serious about saying, Fuck this, I don't want to see all the reasons why I'm unhappy. I don't want to see everybody else in the world that's launched a business or that's lost weight and is healthy or that has a really good marriage or relationship. I don't want to see that shit and have my mind process it as evidence that it's never going to happen for me. I want my mind to reprogram itself and see other people's businesses and see other people getting healthy and see other people in relationships. I want my mind to say, fucking, yeah, if they can do it, I can do it. That's evidence. If that person can get healthy, so can I. If that person can find somebody on hinge, so can I. If that person can reconcile with their child, so can I. Other people can become evidence that you can have it, too. Right now, your mind is so fucked up from your past that when you see what other people have and you don't have it, you can't actually translate it through a negative mind and see that that's evidence that you're going to win.

You see it like, Oh, somebody already stole what I wanted. That sucks. And so what I want to start to open your mind to is that you have the power to train your mind to filter the world differently, just like you woke up and you saw the date today, 2:22:22, and your brain saw that and was like, Whoa, this is a once in a lifetime day, everybody. You are never going to have another day that lines up like this, ever. What are you going to do with this day? Your mind already interpreted this as, wow, something cool could happen. And if you tell yourself something amazing is going to happen today, something will because you're going to be looking for it. I swear to God, something will. Something will. If you want to see the good all around you, you got to tell your mind you want to see the good. This just isn't a bunch of horse shit, everybody. This isn't toxic positivity. There is a filter in your brain called the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system. I call it the RAS. I like to think about it like a giant hair net on your head.

And this RAS sits over your brain. I'm probably getting this wrong. I'm not a neuroscientist. I could give shit about getting it right. I just need you to know the basics here so that you can apply it to your life. You don't need a PhD to use the science that super smart people have been working really hard on in order to apply it to your life. That's what I'm here for in your life. I'm here to translate this stuff into simple, believable, and actionable things that you can do to take all this super cool stuff that people are researching and apply it to your normal person's every everyday life to help you change from the inside out. And one of the coolest things that you have at your disposal is you have a whole system in your body that you can train and change. And one of those things that you can train and change that is impacted by that word you're hearing a lot of, neuroplasticity, that just means that things are able to twist and bend and change, and you're able to learn new things For as long as you're alive, as long as you're breathing, everybody, you got a chance to change the way that you think.

As long as you are breathing, you got a chance to change from the inside out how you experience your life. As long as you are still here watching me, people, you got a chance to create a new experience in your life. And one of the things that helps a lot is understanding that right now, all of the bullshit from your past has jammed the filter in your mind, body, and spirit, the reticular activating system. And it is clouding your ability to look at the world around you and see hearts. Remember this? Dog treat. Heart's, bitches. Look at that. There's a heart right there. I'm going to ask you, I want you to find a heart today, and I want you to tag me @melrobbinswhenyoudo. Okay? Tag me. Whoa, we got somebody whose birthday is today. Damn, you better declare something amazing on 2022. That's freaking awesome.

Fabulous for you.

So here's the thing. Your past has completely fucked up the reticular activity system. The reason why you doubt yourself, the reason why you think nothing works out for you, The reason why you're seeking validation from everybody else is because your life trained you to do that. And I'm here to tell you, you can wake the hell up and you can realize that from this moment forward, you have the ability using simple and believable tools to reclaim your mind, body, and spirit, to retrain it, and to use it to help you feel the way that you want to feel, to experience life the way that you want to experience life, and to build a sense of momentum as you go through your day and you start to see all kinds of stuff around you as evidence that you can have it, too. I'll give you a simple example. So as many of you know, for a very long time, I've always wanted to launch a podcast. I got my start in the media business back in 2007 by having a local radio show in Boston, Massachusetts, on a talk radio station on Saturday mornings. That's what I did.

I made $25 an hour. I hosted a show for two hours, a live call-in show where we talked about what was going on in the world. It was an advice show. I absolutely loved it. From there, that show grew. It then became a Sunday night show in Atlanta, and then I got a five-day Week show in Orlando. So you're looking at a woman who got her start in the media business doing local radio. I paid for our kids' braces by reading Invisalign ads for the local dentist. So I have been in the radio or podcast business since 2007, since before podcasts. And then my life took detours like it did. I have not been in radio since God, 2011, maybe. It's a long time. 10 years. And I've been thinking about launching a podcast for five years, everybody. Five years. And every time I would think about it, my mind would look around and my mind, my reticular activity system, the filter in my brain, was clogged with all kinds of crap. And when I looked around and I saw all these people launching podcasts, that fact of seeing it would filter through my mind.

And my mind would say, There's no room for you. You're too late. You're not going to be as good as those other people. So my mind was looking at the outside world and the fact that everybody and their My father was launching a podcast five years ago, and they still are today. And it would pass through the filter in my brain, and my brain would say to me, Mel, you're fucked. You might as well just stop thinking about it because you're too late, woman. How many of you do that to yourself? That you see other people having what you want and the way that fact that somebody else has gotten healthier, somebody else has made a million dollars, or somebody else has launched a business online, or somebody else has found somebody after divorce and is happier than ever, and you see that, and you immediately assume, I'm fucked. It's never going to happen for me. Instead of having your brain go, Whoa, look at that. Look at all these people out there doing this. If they can do it, you can do it too, Mel. Look at that. You got all these people that can give you advice.

You got all these people that are lights on the path that you want to walk down. How cool is that? You got all kinds of information, all kinds of help, all kinds of evidence That's positive. Well, the reason why my mind didn't see it as positive is the same reason why your mind does not see everybody else's business and everybody else's health journey and everybody else's bank account and everybody else's fancy vacations. Or when you walk into a bar and all your girlfriends get hit on instead of you, your mind does not see all of that as evidence that it's going to eventually work out for you because your mind is clogged with all kinds of crap from your past. And I'm here to tell you, when you wake up and realize that you could train your brain to wake up every day and go, holy shit, today is going to be a magical day. Today is going to be that 2, 22, 22 day where you immediately see this. You know this is the one day of your life where this is going to be the day.

Come on in, Jessie.

Jessie's here.

Hey, Yolo.

Yolo, come on in. You could literally train your mind to wake up every day and go, damn it, I'm going to see a heart today, and I'm going to see evidence today that shit's working out for me. And when my mind starts to see that this is going to work out for me, I'm going to feel more empowered, I'm going to feel more inspired, and I'm going to keep going. Because the bottom line is, everybody, your positive mindset helps you with momentum, repetition, and discipline. Your positive mindset helps you by encouraging you to take the action. Because as you know, because you hang out with me, Mel Robbins, thinking about changing your life is not going to change your fucking life. The only thing that changes your life is action. You want something different, you got to do something different. But a filter in your brain that filters the world in a positive way, in an encouraging way, a filter in your brain that acts more like that annoying friend. You know that annoying friend who's always trying to build you up? I say annoying because when you're committed to being like, It's never working out for me.

I'm never going to meet anybody.

I'm never going to lose the weight. And your friend's like, Oh, are you kidding? You know how amazing you are?

You're like, Fuck off.

Don't tell me I'm amazing. I want to feel terrible. So when you start to change your brain, when you start to really go to work on this filter, you're going to turn your own mind from a critic and somebody who's nasty into that friend that's really cheering you on. See, this is going to work out for you. See, you should keep going. See, this is really good for you to do. And that's why it's important. It's really hard to take action when you have a shitty mindset. It's really hard to find what's called the activation energy, the force to push yourself through the resistance and the fear. If you are committed to believing that it's not worth doing anyway. And so action is critical. Action is where the five-second rule comes in. But if you want to supersize this and step on the accelerator, you must start to train your mind. And one way you can start to do this is to look for hearts every day. That's one chapter in the book we haven't read yet. See, this is a dog treat that was shaped like a heart. I asked Chris, he scanned the room.

Boom, bitches. That's how this works. The other way that you can start to train your mind is to learn about the filter in your brain, to learn about the fact that this filter in your mind has the ability to change in real-time what you see.

You're going to learn a filter in your brain called the reticular activating system, the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system, I call it the RAS for short. And this filter in your brain is super important If you're somebody who feels like you can't escape a negative mindset, if you are tired of your negative self-talk, if you would love to have a more positive, optimistic, motivated mindset I said, this filter in your brain called the reticular activating... No, wait, I keep saying it wrong. Activating? Activating. I wrote a damn book about the damn thing, and I can't even say it. The reticular activating system I call it the RAS, for short, so I don't stumble on my words. We're going to learn about it today. Now, a couple of rules here. If this video is helpful to you, freaking share it with people you love. That's That's number one. Number two, if you have somebody in your life that is struggling with self-criticism, with pessimism, with negativity, with constant worrying, this reticular activating system filter in your brain, understanding it and using it to your advantage, it is a game changer, and I'm going to teach it to you today.

Now, I am reading Chapter 6 from the high five This is my New York Times best-selling book. It came out in September. This is Chapter 6. We are starting on page 73 for those of you that want to read along. And Chapter 6 digs into negative self-taught and how this filter that is part of your brain keeps you locked in a pattern of repeating negative self-taught and seeing nothing but evidence around you. And so let's dig in. Okay, everybody? Here we go. Chapter 6 in the High Five Habit, page 73, for those of you who would like to follow along. The chapter is, Where's all this negative crap coming from? Now, every one of us has a negative belief about ourselves, right? I screw everything up. I'm a bad person. I'm ugly. I'm a failure. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, trying to get rid of is, I overcomplicate everything. Why do I make things so difficult? Do any of you have that same story? Why is everything so freaking easy for everybody else? Why am I the one who has all these problems? Why do I overcomplicate everything? Why is it not easier for me?

This is this shit that repeats in my head, and this is something I am actively trying to get rid of. Okay, well, maybe you have failed or screwed up, or in my case, overcomplicated things. Maybe Mel Robbins, you have in the past made things more difficult than they need to be. Maybe you aren't winning any beauty pageants right now, and maybe you are the shortest one of all your friends. All of that may be true. But is thinking this shit helping you? How does me thinking, You screw everything up, Mel. There you go, overcomplicating it How is that helping me change? You see, I think a lot of times when you identify the negative, it just pushes back and you see more of it. That's where your reticular activity activating system comes in. My husband, we were reading Chapter 5 the other day, and we were talking a lot about my husband who, after his restaurant business failed, he started to believe that he was a failure. He collapsed what happened, that his restaurant failed. With how he felt about himself. And once you do that, that filter in your brain kicks in and keeps you trapped.

And so we're going to learn today about the RAS, the reticular activating system. You got to be really careful, everybody, about not letting this negative opinion or story get stuck on replay in your head. But the question is, how the heck do you fucking remove it? A Especially if you look in the mirror and you have a lot of regrets or doubts and disappointment. Now, believe it or not, the steps to catching and removing your negative self-taught are as straightforward as doing a load of laundry. Check this out. I love this metaphor. Now, I can't tell you how many times, everybody, I have opened up the dryer and put in a load and thought, Oh my God, again, the lint screen clogged? Am I the only one in this house who knows how to take my forefinger and my thumb and peel the lint off the screen and put it in the garbage can? Anybody else feel this way about their family? Like, Am I the only one that cleans the lint screen around here? There is always a thick pad of lint and fuzz that clogs the filter in that laundry machine. Now, the other day, I had an epiphany while I was doing laundry.

Just like that dryer filter, you and me, we got all kinds of crap inside us that has built up over time. Those negative thoughts that you got, it's like fuzzy residue from your life. It's the residue that's been accumulating. People's opinions, negative self-taught, rejection, disappointment, heartbreak, discrimination, trauma, guilt, self-doubt. These experiences that you have felt, that you have faced, that you have survived in your life, these experiences are literally creating mental lint. And these experiences from your past are clogging your mind, and they are blocking you from being able to tap into the confidence and the courage and the wisdom and the action that you need to change your life. Now, I just talked about the filter in a dryer and how it collects lint, and there's a lot more to this example, everybody, than just a cute metaphor. In your brain, there's a filter, and it's called the reticular activating system, or I like to call it the RAS for short. Now, I call it a filter because negative experiences from your past past, tend to get stuck in this RAS, this filter. But technically, the reticular activating system is a live network of neurons that sit almost like a hair net over your brain.

And when your RAS, which is a filter, gets clogged with thoughts, beliefs, and experiences from your past, your brain stays stuck in the past, too. That's why you keep repeating the same mistakes, thinking the same negative thoughts, and living in this echo chamber of your mind. Now, all the tools in the high five habit are basically teaching you how to take your thumb and your forefinger and clear away all of that crap that is built up over time so that the filter in your mind can be clear and so that new experiences and new beliefs can start to flow more freely through it. Kind of cool, right? That's also why I want you to practice the tools that I teach you every single day. Because just like a dryer, a dryer, every time you spend a load of laundry, it creates fuss and lint. That filter always needs to be cleared so that the hot air can flow freely through the dryer. You also are always going to need to be clearing away the crap that gets stuck in the filter of your brain so that new thoughts, new idea, inspiration, motivation, confidence, all that shit can flow freely through you instead of you feeling stuck and weighed down by all the stuff that has happened.

So some experts call the RAS the bouncer for your mind or the gatekeeper. Your RAS is a huge job It decides or filters, is the word we're using, what information gets into your conscious mind and what information stays out. Now, check this out. Every single day, your RAS, the bouncer in your brain, this hair net over your brain, it's got to police 34 gigabytes of data. That's three years worth of crap that's on your phone in 24 hours, everybody. I want you to embrace something. This RAS RAS, this filter in your mind that is jammed with all this crap from your past, it has an enormous job, and it needs your help. Your RAS blocks 99% of what's around you from reaching your mind Because if it didn't, your head would basically explode. You just can't process that amount of stuff.

There are only four things that get through this RAS in your mind.

Only four things. Number one, the sound of your name being called. How many of you have ever in a crowded place and you hear your name being called? You immediately turn around, don't you? Did somebody just say my name? Your filter in your brain blocked out all the other shit that was going on, the conversation over there, but your sound of your name gets right through. The second thing, anything that threatens your safety. Let's say you're at a concert and all of a sudden there's a big boom, what do you do? You duck a little bit because that sound sounds like a threat. So even though the RAS is jammed with all kinds of crap, it lets in a threat? Another thing, signals that your partner is interested in having sex with you. That always gets in. And then the final thing, and this is where all your power is going to come from. You ready? The RAS will let in anything to your conscious mind that your RAS believes is important to you. And this last point is everything. Because when you can get really clear about what is important to you, for real, you can take the steps to train your RAS so that it's not only clear and new things that are important to you can come in, but your RAS, and this is where it gets really cool, your RAS will start to help you because your RAS will filter the world every single day and will start to point out things that are important to you, the evidence that life is working.

I want you to just let the power of that sink in for just a second. You can teach your mind to find things that you want to see, things that elevate you and support you, that make you feel happier and proud, things that lead you to your dreams. Imagine how cool that would be. Right now, your RAS believes that you want to see the same world that you saw in middle school, the world where you think you're the dumbest or the fattest or life doesn't work out or you have no friends or nothing works out for you or you overcomplicate everything or whatever the bullshit is that you're telling yourself. It's time to clean the filter, everybody. So when you know how to use it, your RES, instead of becoming a block, it becomes a searchlight, and it sweeps the path ahead of you, and it shines its light beam out there. And all of a sudden, what's going to happen when you start to clear out the filter in your brain is that you're going to start to see opportunities and synchronicities and hidden surprises that are waiting for you around every corner. And when you tell your RAS what you want to see, it works for you.

That's right. Instead of your mind beating the shit out of you all day, imagine if it were working for you. But here's the catch, everybody. The RAS only does what you tell it to do. So if you allow your negative thoughts to dominate, I'm a failure, I'm a bad person, I'm not good enough, nothing works out for me, so why even bother? If that continues to be the soundtrack of your life, your RAS steps in line and it'll show you all kinds of reasons to believe that that crap is true. You will not see opportunities or synchronicities or that you're winning at anything. You're going to see all the crap that you're doing wrong. Let's take my husband, Chris, who I love dearly, for example. He believed for a long time, I'm a failure. For years, that's all he could see when he looked in the mirror. He had all kinds of evidence to back it up. He jumped from job to job early in his career. Then he opened a pizza restaurant and wholesale business with his best friends. Friends and family invested, and they poured their hearts and souls into that business. And after seven years, it closed its doors.

Now, those last few years, as the business was failing, they were horrible. And if you know my story or You've read the five-second rule. How many of you have read or listened to the five-second rule? And if you have not, it is fucking fantastic. And you need it in your life, especially the audiobook, which you can only find on Audible. There were liens on our house. There was debt, fear. I mean, unless I was too drunk to think about it, which unfortunately was very often. Chris left the business in 2014, and he was destroyed. He was a shell of himself. At that point, 2014, I literally became the brand winner, not by choice, but because I freaking had to if we actually wanted to avoid bankruptcy and wanted to put food on the table. Here's Here's the thing. I was really pissed off at the time about it. But by the grace of God and also by a tremendous amount of hard work, this is exactly what I was meant to do. I would never want to relive those years. The anxiety was crushing. I could barely get out of bed. But the truth is, when all this shit went down and Chris basically left the business and for two years opted out of anything, I was angry.

I didn't want to be responsible for my life or my healing or my future. I was angry when I realized Chris was not going to rescue me. As much as I hated it, I also knew the truth. Isn't this the truth? You can be pissed off all you want in life. You can be bitching about what other people are doing. But at the end of the day, you know deep in your gut, it's ultimately it comes down to you. Your life is your responsibility. And you're either going to piss it away by waiting for somebody else to rescue you, or you're going to waste your days feeling bitter and resentful and angry and blaming people, or you are going to wake the hell up and take responsibility for what happens next. I knew that. I knew that in 2014. If this horrendous situation that my life had become, bankruptcy, drinking, unemployed, if this shit was going to turn around, my husband was not going to do it for me, I was going to have to do it. I was going to have to fight. I was going to have to find a reason to get out of bed.

And listen, if you are in a terrible situation in your life, you're going to have to fight. You're going to have to fight the anxiety, the excuses, the fear, the the procrastination, the trauma, you're going to have to fight. You're going to have to find a reason to get out of bed. You're going to have to fight a reason, find a reason to move through your day. You're going to have to find a reason to get up again tomorrow. You're going to have to find a reason to push yourself. Even if the reason is simply that you know that you just shouldn't waste another day laying in bed thinking about your problems. Excuse me. I get really heated when I talk about this stuff. Seriously, if you're in a bad place, nobody's coming. Life is basically saying it's time to wake up and realize you're going to have to fix this, and you have it within you to fix and face whatever situation in it. Even if your only motivation is, I just don't want to feel like shit anymore. I don't want to feel miserable anymore, so I got to change something. That was me.

You got to really identify what you want, even if it's like, I don't want this anymore, and then you got to push yourself forward. Now, the decision that changed my life is just getting out of bed. I decided that instead of laying in bed staring at the ceiling, consumed with anxiety, and hitting the snooze button as if somehow it was going to transport me to some magical land and out of the nightmare of my life, I literally had to say, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm changing. And that's where the five-second rule came in. Just like NASA uses 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, that countdown to lift off a rocket, I basically 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, launched myself into action in a moment in time when I could barely get out of bed. I'm dead serious. The alarm rings. Don't stare at the ceiling. Don't get consumed with panic. Don't lay there and think about your problems. Don't grab your phone and scroll through social media. No snooze button, no phone, no rolling over and shoving your head under the pillow so you can blot out your day. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Kick your own ass.

Seriously, get up, get going, and keep going. Now, I use this little countdown thing to launch myself out of bed. I use it to stop screaming at Chris and waiting around for him to fix it because he wasn't going to. I used it to stop drinking so much. I used it to make cold calls. I used it over and over and over and over again. And slowly, day by day, pushing myself one five-second decision at a time, my life started to change. And you want to know how your life changes? Your life changes because you change the small things that you're doing in your day-to-day life.

It's just like running a marathon.

You complete a marathon one step at a time, and that's you change your life, one step at a time. Now, I wish I had known about the high five habit back in 2014, because I'll tell you, the five second rule, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, pushed me through all that crap, but it didn't make the crap I was thinking disappear. It just made me really good at taking action in spite of it. This all would have been so much easier if I had been kinder and more encouraging to myself. I'm really grateful for the five-second rule. It's changed millions of people's lives, including my own, by giving me a simple tool, based in science, that helps you break bad habits and create new ones. I look back, personally, on that period in my life, 2008 to 2014, with a completely different view than my husband Chris, because I look back on the painful periods of my life and I say, If I didn't have all that, there would be no success story. You see, There isn't a single success story that doesn't include a lot of failure. There'd be no five-second rule. I'm grateful for everything that that horrible experience in my life and period in my life taught me.

I'm grateful that Chris became a stay-at-home dad to our kids. I am grateful that he wanted to be around the kids as they got older because he had always wanted to be around them when he got older because his dad wasn't around. He missed out on that with his own father and he wanted to be there for our kids. I wouldn't have been able to become as successful as I was without his help and his support. You see, my view of this chapter in our lives was that the pizza business family is what created this wonderful new chapter in our lives. It put us in the right roles in our marriage and in our family. I thought that this painful This period of our life paved the road to an incredible success story. And honestly, I thought it was behind us. But that's not the way my husband viewed it at all. Everywhere Chris looked, all he saw was evidence that he was a complete failure. If he was picking up the kids from school, he didn't think, This is amazing that I get to spend this time with my kids and I have this flexibility.

He thought, Look at me, I'm the only dad in the pickup line. I'm a fucking loser. If he was mowing the lawn at home, it didn't mean, This is great. I get to enjoy being outside. I have this beautiful house. I have all this flexibility. He thought, I'm a failure that I'm doing this at 2:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. If he was cooking dinner, I'm a failure. If he was serving as the President of the high school Booster Club, something that he did, which is basically a full-time job that they don't pay you for. Oh, I'm a failure. The fact that our kids say all the time that they got to spend all that time with him while they were growing up is one of the greatest gifts of their childhood. Who gets that much time with their father? It doesn't change how Chris feels about himself. And when he started working again, his story stayed the same because as he stepped in to help me with my growing business, he just was like, Well, I failed at my own business, so now I'm helping my wife with her business. And it didn't even feel legitimate to him.

I didn't see it that way. It didn't matter that he owned 50% of the company. Here's the thing. We all do this to ourselves, don't we? Chris's story is just an example of how you look at your own life and you have a story and you see evidence. I'm sure that you relate to this. What do you actually tell yourself? What do you tell yourself that you're learning from this story about Chris? Because here's the thing. As you repeat this negative belief, I'm a failure, I'm a loser, I'm not good enough, whatever that belief is, everybody, as you repeat that belief, the filter in your brain, the RAS is paying attention. The filter in your brain will start to look at the world in a way to confirm your belief. So for example, when my husband Chris, who keeps saying to himself, I'm a failure, if he's coaching our daughter's lacrosse team, which he did, instead of having the thought, This is fucking amazing. My dad never did this for me. I'm living out one of my goals in life. I'm able to participate in my kids' lives. This is amazing. But since Chris has been saying, I'm in failure, I'm in failure, I'm in failure, and the RAS is paying attention, you know what the RAS does?

It filters the world to show evidence of failure. Chris sees a dude across the field talking on the cell phone, and instead of looking at the guy and going, God, I'm so glad I'm not sitting there on a conference call at my kids' lacrosse game, not even paying attention. I get to be the coach. How freaking cool is that? Chris's filter, the RAS is like, Oh, I'm a failure. Oh, you should be on the cell phone. That dude over there is evidence that you shouldn't be coaching because you're a failure. You should be doing that. See that guy right there? That means you're a failure because you're not doing that. That's how your RAS screws you. That's how your negative belief starts to train your RAS to filter the world in a way that confirms all the negative creative crap that you say. Now, if I told Chris he was the best dad in the world and that I could not do what I was doing without him, I might as well just waste my breath because his mind couldn't even hear it. You have people like this in your life, no matter what you say to them, they did not hear it.

Can't do it. Here's what I want you to take away from this. Your brain is like a computer, and your brain has specific programming thanks to your negative self-taught and all the experiences in your life. And no one else can reprogram the computer in your mind. I can't change Chris's or my daughter's beliefs. I can't change yours either. You have to decide that you are sick and tired of thinking this crap. You have to decide that the programming, which is your beliefs and your RAS, is something you can change. Your mind is standing by. It's waiting for you. Please, your God, stop saying you're a failure. Please stop telling me I'm not good enough. Your RAS is the key to changing all of this. It is standing by waiting to be reprogrammed, just like your dryer is standing by, waiting for you to clear away that filter. Now, perhaps this will help you, too. No one else is still thinking about what happened five years ago, by the way, but you. No one else is keeping store but you. You're the one cataloging your flaws, mistakes, and problems, and it's keeping you focused on, you guessed it, all your flaws, mistakes, and problems.

It's creating creating these toxic untrue beliefs about you. It all acts like walls keeping you trapped. It's time we stop doing that, okay? We're going to literally teach you how to identify the negative self walk, and then start to clear it out of your RAS and tell your RAS to show you something else. That's exactly what Chris did. You're going to have to do it from the inside out, everybody. I know you're going to ask me, so I'll quickly tell you. He started meditating. He started going to therapy therapy once a week. He became a practicing Buddhist. He started making amends for all the shit he did wrong. After several years as a marathon, you complete a marathon step by step. When it comes to healing, it is not a marathon that you complete. It is a wonderful long marathon of a jog that you take for the rest of your life. He started a retreat for men called Soul Degree, and it was a chance for men to get together and do what men never do, which is take time for themselves to connect with other men about their life experiences and reconnect something deeper within themselves and the greater forces in life.

If Chris and I can identify our negative beliefs that are running our lives And if we can clear out the RAS, the filter in our minds from this crap, and teach the filters in our minds to help us instead of continuing to hurt us, so can you. If you say, I'm a bad person. How many of you say that to yourself?

I'm such a bad person. I always screw up. Nothing works out for me.

If you say I'm a bad person, isn't it true that you see things every single day that make you think it's true?

And then our daughter said, Yeah, actually, yesterday I missed my dentist appointment.

I just completely forgot about it.

And as soon as I realized I blew off the dentist appointment, totally forgot. The first thing I said to myself was, There I go again, screwing everything up.

And I said, Look, that's an excellent example.

Imagine if instead of missing the dentist appointment, imagine if when you miss the dentist appointment, how many of you have missed the dentist appointment?

I know I have.

How amazing would it be if you miss the dentist appointment and you could just shrug your shoulders and go, Oops, forgot the dentist appointment without going, See, I screw everything up, and pounding yourself into the ground and beating yourself up. Imagine if you could teach your own mind, everybody, to not see all the stuff that what's happening in life as evidence that you're a bad person. Because you can forget a dentist appointment and just let it pass through your mind without attaching, I'm a bad person to what happened.

You have to be deliberate.

You have to tell your mind exactly what you want to think about yourself when things mess up.

So my daughter looks at me, this is a true story, and is like, really?

How the hell do I do that, mom? I've been telling myself I'm a bad person and I screw everything up for as long as I can remember. How the hell am I going to get my mind to think something else.

And this is when I hit her with the heart rock game that I'm telling you, you got to steal this hat from me.

I said, well, let's train your mind by playing a simple game that's going to change the way that your mind works in real time.

And I said, every single day, I want to look for a naturally occurring heart shape in the world, whether it's a heart-shaped rock, a heart-shaped leaf, a heart-shaped oil stain on the floor of your garage, a heart-shaped swirl of milk on the top of your latte.

Anything counts.

And then my daughter said, You mean the way you're always looking for heart-shaped rocks when we walk on the beach, mom?

And I said, Yep. And you know what she said to me? She said, Mom, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I said, my other daughter then said, I agree.

How the hell does looking for hearts stop me from feeling like the ugliest one of all my friends? I want you to teach me how to be happy and how to be successful and how to make a lot of money in my new career, mom. I mean, you're a self-help person.

How the hell do rocks on the ground help me change my opinion of myself?

Fair question, right?

Don't worry, I had a great answer. I said, Look, the point of the exercise of every day, I want you to look for a heart shape, like a heart shape rock in the world.

The The point of this, everybody, is to train your mind to spot the things that you're blocking out so you can prove to yourself that you can make your brain work for you by simply telling you what's important to you.

And if you want to make a lot of money, you better train your brain to see opportunities and deals that other people walk right by, just like you walk by that stupid rock on the ground that's laying there right now. And you miss it because you're not looking for it. And if you want to stop thinking you're bad or hating the way you look, you better train your mind to stop attaching that thought to everything you see. Pretty smart, right? If you'd like to make more money, you got to spot opportunities to make more money. If you want to feel better about yourself, everybody, you got to stop pounding yourself into the ground with negative thoughts.

Any time life doesn't go 100% your way or you screw up, which is totally normal.

I could tell they were considering my argument, so I went even further.

Besides, oh, there goes the clock.

Hold on a second. And feel free to ask questions in the comments. This is a short Short, short, short chapter, okay?

Besides, if I told you, everybody, to just repeat a positive mantra, I'm beautiful, I'm a good person, you're thinking, you'd think this is stupid because you don't believe that.

So first, I got to show you the power that you have to change what your mind sees. Then you're going to trust what I'm saying.

You see, good people mess up all the time.

It doesn't make you a bad person.

And even if you are a bad person at times, why does that make you unlovable? See, it's all about the way you flip the things you look at so that you can see a world that makes you feel empowered and supported. Imagine how much easier and fulfilling it would be if you could stop the beat down and just love yourself while you work on your health goals.

Now, let me tell you how to do the heart-shaped exercise. You guys ready?

Okay, good. Starting tomorrow, super easy, or today, starting today.

I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape in the world around you.

Then stop and take a look at it.

Here's mine. Every day when I go for a walk, if you follow me on my stories, you will see that I take It goes all day long of heart shapes.

This is the thing that trains your mind.

I'm getting asked for a meditation on manifesting.

Yeah, looking for a heart shape every single day in the world around you is a way to manifest because you are practicing a skill.

You're practicing a skill of waking up and intentionally saying, I am going to find a heart shape today. You are putting that intention into your mind. And by putting it into your mind, you are training your mind to work for you. Now we're going to take it a level up. You ready? When you find something, I want you to stop. I want you to take a moment. I want you to take a photo of it. Oops, my computer just died, so we're going to stay on Instagram. I want you to take a photo of it.

And I I want you to really feel that that was placed there for you.

I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to have an experience whereby you feel that literally the universe had put something there for you, and your mind helped you find it. And if you take that moment and you feel a moment of gratitude, what's going to happen is that That energetic, positive experience of acknowledging that you told yourself you were going to find a heart shape. And then your mind scanned and you found it, and now you're taking a to feel grateful that this happened, to be present to the larger forces that are out there. And then take a photo, put it on your story. Tag me, Mel Robbins. Tag high five habit.

And you will be shocked locked. Because what will happen is because you took a moment to positively encode it in your brain, your brain will start showing you hearts all over the place. You're not going to believe the amount of hearts that you walked past. I'm dead serious about this.

These These are just a few examples on page 91. I repost these all day long from you guys. There's a heart in a coffee cup.

There's a heart right here that's a leaf.

We've got a heart. One of my favorite ones was inside of an onion. We see rocks all the time. I'm looking for this stuff. That's on page 91.

I just realized that we lost our friends on Facebook because your imperfect friend Mel Robbins forgot to plug her computer in. We lost Power. Oh, well.

Done is better than perfect. And simply showing up here today and making a little bit of progress instead of waiting for it to get perfect is better than not doing it at all. I think about the hair net on the brain. It's really a live network. The reticular activating system is a filter. That's what it is. And it has an enormous job. And the job of the RAS is to decide what information gets into your conscious brain, and what information do we allow to block out so that you're not consciously thinking about it. Now, the reason why you have this is because if you didn't have this filter, your head would explode off of your shoulders, literally. You are processing, it's like 34 days worth of cell phone data every single day in your brain. You just can't handle it. And so there are only four things that your RAS allow into your conscious mind all the time. Only four. It's the sound of your name. And we've all experienced that. You're walking somewhere in a crowd, and you're like, Did somebody say Mel? That was your RAS, letting it in. The second thing is any threat to your safety.

So one of the reasons why we go like this, if you hear a loud noise, it's near you, is because your RAS let it in. There are loud noises all the time, but It blocks them out because it's not near you. The third thing is that your partner is interested in having sex with you or someone else. We've also experienced this, where you're like, What are you looking at her for? You know, right? And then the fourth one, and this is where all of the money is, right here, everybody. Is whatever you tell your brain is important to you. You see, your brain, and most people don't understand this. It took me 52 years to realize this. Your brain is designed to help you get what you want. Your brain will filter the world in real-time and change what comes into your conscious mind based on what's important to you. And we have all experienced this phenomenon. If you have ever shopped for a car, you know what I'm talking about. The new Broncos are out right now, right? And so let's say that you wanted to get a new Bronco. And you've seen Broncos forever.

But once you start thinking about it like, oh, those are interesting. I think I want one of those things. Your mind's like, oh, it's called the Zeigarnik effect. It opens up a little checklist in your brain. It goes, oh, wait a minute. Her nervous system just lit up. She's all excited about this thing. Let's put this on the list. It's important. Let it in. One day you're driving down the road, you don't see a single Bronco. The next day, the new models aren't even out yet. But what do you see everywhere? You see a Bronco where you're like, Where the hell did all these Broncos come from? They were always there. It's just that your mind now got the message from you that this shit was important to you. So it's like, let it in, let it in, let it in. The second that you're interested in a Porsche, you're not going to see Broncos anymore. You're going to see a Porsche. That is your mind trying so hard to just manage the world and change in real time. And so this also works in the negative, by the way. So if you have forever thought that you are a bad person, you're a piece of that's what you say to yourself.

A lot of people say that. It's terrible. Maybe this is what your parents said you. Maybe this is what some coach said to you. Maybe this is what you picked up from childhood because you were discriminated against or you were the victim of abuse, all kinds of stuff that you're not responsible for, by the way. But you absorbed that and you kept thinking about it. And so what's happening in your mind is that your mind literally is like, Oh, well, Mel's thought this thing, I'm a bad person, for so long that she actually thinks it's important. And so the littlest things, like you forget to go to the dentist. And then they call, Did you miss your appointment, your brain immediately lets it in and makes you think, See, I screwed everything up. I'm a bad person. I can't even get to the dentist. And so what I'm here to tell you is that just simply repeating, I'm a good person, I'm a good person, I'm a good person, is not going to be enough. You got to start to do the high five habit. You also have to start to come up with what I call a meaningful mantra, which is something you can believe right now while you still think you're a bad person.

I may be doing things I regret, but I'm trying to be better. You know, that gets you a little bit out of the bad person. So now my brain's like, Okay, hold on, hold on. She's looking for reasons that she's trying to do better. Oh, I missed the dentist point. I didn't mean to. Just that little flip, like a little high five in your mind, little attitude adjustment, that wipes away the, See? There I am again, screwing everything up to. Oh, didn't mean to. Trying to do better. Doing a little better every day. And those things start to change the way you see yourself. Now, there's another exercise, another habit that I have, I call Looking for Hearts. This is going to sound so dumb, but please, this is so freaking cool. It's unbelievable. You won't try this stuff in terms of the big stuff. It's hard to change what you think about yourself. Really hard. I mean, that stuff is wired into your nervous system. You look back, you see tons of evidence, but I am damaged. But I have done things that I regret. But I But I am a bad person. But I screwed up that relationship, and I did this thing, and I'm going to fuck up.

All this garbage you say to yourself, it is in your body. So you're going to have to get intentional and be like, I'm done living with this crap. And the imagery that I have is, imagine it snows. When you get intentional with the high five habits, you can literally plow a new path in snow. That's what a neuropathway is. And I can show you that it's true If you play the heart rock game with me. I want you to, after listening to this, spend the rest of the day and just tell your mind, I really want to see a heart, whether it's just a naturally occurring shaped heart, whether it's a rock on a path or a symbol on the top of your coffee or a stain on the floor of the garage or a leaf on the ground. I want you to be like, I got to find a heart today, and just be open to it. And all of a sudden you're going to find one. And then here's how you really amp up your hair net on your brain, going, oh, she really thinks this is important. Let's look for more hearts.

I want you, when you see that heart, to go, oh, I found it. The universe, God, that was It's like, Oh, it's good. I'm going to put there for me. That is cool. And when you do that little mood vibe through your nervous system, it is like the opposite of negative trauma. It's like a positive wave in your nervous system that makes your brain go, this shit Really important. And so now you'll start to see. Once you play this game, you'll start to see it everywhere. And when you play this game with your RAS, look for hearts, and you start to see, whoa, wait a minute. My brain is showing me what I'm telling it I want to see. Oh, wait a minute. There's a Bronco. I don't even want one. And just because I heard Mel talking about it, now I'm seeing a Bronco. Whoa. Now you can get into the deeper thing of getting intentional about how you talk to yourself, intentional about not getting down, dragged down by guilt or insecurity or people-pleasing or anxiety or fear or failure, all that crap that takes your attitude low. I want you to stay in a high five attitude.

I want to talk about what people experience when they try to implement the high five habit in their lives. We've talked about the fact that I believe every single human being has this habit of self-rejection You practice it every morning without even realizing it in this moment in the mirror in your bathroom, and then it gets carried throughout your entire day as you beat yourself up, as you focus on what's going wrong, as you point out the negative, as you pick yourself apart, as you hide in the back of group photos, as you stay silent. These are all habits of self-rejection. What we know for sure is that when... And I ask people, Just please give us five days. Just do this for five days because something extraordinary happens within five days. We have 126,000 people from 91 countries going through a five-day challenge that I call the high five challenge. They have completed the challenge. We have not had a single person out of 126,000 people report that it didn't work. And so what you need to know is that when you stand in front of the bathroom mirror, you put your toothbrush and you stand with your sofa a second, it will feel weird, and that's good.

It should feel weird because, in my opinion, that is evidence that your brain is now plowing a new neuro response instead of operating the habit loop of rejecting yourself. Just like I'm a right-hand or if I lost my hand today and I had to write with my left hand, it would feel weird. That's a sign that I'm learning something new. So So if it's weird, good. What we notice is that there's only two reactions that people have to doing it the first time, raising up their hand. The first reaction is positive. So either a lot of people laugh, that I believe is the cortisol. A lot of people cry in a very positive way. And the crying is really good because the way that everybody describes it is it's like a decade or decades of emotional release of finally getting it. You just woke up and you have come home to yourself. You realize how long you have been longing for that connection and acceptance and seeing from yourself. Is there something that you want to add to that positive thing before we go negative?

Can I show you some models? It's going to make it super easy. He has a brain and a skull, and here is another model of the brain and body. My audience is very I'm not familiar with what I'm going to say, but there's always new audiences watching, so I'm going to explain it again. Now, as you've explained that to me, as you said those words to us, that was a sound wave, electromagnetic light waves. Our mind receives that energy, and then the psychological part of our mind does a think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose at 400 billion actions per second, which is a lot to process what you've just said. Now, because it's coming from your place of total love and kindness and absolute passion to share this with people, so everything about you, all the photons you're generating, as Einstein would talk about it, are coming from a place of absolute love. They're coming from your wired for love nature. That whole message is being received by all of us in this incredibly healthy way. It comes in, but now this is what happens. It comes in your words into the brain, show up in the brain.

The brain responds on a neurophysiological level, a neurochemical level, an electromagnetic level, a quantum level, and a genetic level. Your words at the speed of 10 to the 27 are busy converting into little amino acids that group together to form proteins and our vibrations inside of those proteins, vibrating in the region of 528 hertz and above, which is super healthy. Every concept you're giving us is vibrating in its own unique way. It's your own unique protein. So by the end of this however long conversation, people are going to have 2,000 or 3,000 plus concepts that they would have taken away from you. Each of those would have grown into a tree like this. In your brain, you're literally growing trees that I call thoughts. Thoughts look like trees. As neuroscientists, we talk about the thoughts in the brain having an arbor-like structure, tree-like structure. All of us at this moment are taking your and my words and growing this into these trees. But notice a tree, and I'm going to use this little pot here. A tree is planted first the seed and then roots. Our words are the root system. It's the same thing, proteins and whatever.

This is a thought tree about the conversation with Mel about the high five. The tree is called the high five. The detail is the conversation. Now, what you and I are saying is the source. The memories of this thought tree, there's source memories and there's interpretation memories. You'll see the significance of this now relating. I'm believing the point because this is why the high five is just so important. I'm using this conversation as an For example. The thought is made of memories, root memories and branch memories. Memories are not the same as thoughts. Exactly like a mind, mind is not the same as brain. Mind is the action, it's the processing, it's the electromagnetic, it's the gravitational field. You have your own gravitational field around you and through you. An electromagnetic field is different to mine. I can't take yours, you can't take mine. But when we interact, we enhance each other. If we are in conflict, we don't enhance each other. We cause brain damage in each other. As humans, we are wired to enhance. We're wired for love, which is what the high five is helping yourself do personally. But the collective response that you're creating is an enhancement process.

But coming back to this, what's actually happening in the brain is that we are all building this root system of the source, which is what you're saying in my responses to you. But every single listener and viewer is interpreting this immediately in a parallel... It happens immediately, simultaneously. So the root above the ground, the memories above the ground, the branch, memories, and leaves and trees, whatever you want, whatever shape it is, are the interpretation of what you're saying. Every person is hearing the same thing, but he's seeing it in their own different way. They're applying it to their life in their own different way. Now they are busy building an insurance policy in in your brain. This high five content is a neural structural change. I studied neuroplasticity. I was one of the first in my field in the '80s when they told us that you can't change the brain. Now it's accepted fact. We are being neuroplasticians. We've been brain surgeons, neuroplasticians, historians, archeologists, all that to build this conversation. In other words, this conversation has created a structural change in your brain that is a healthy structural change that if people go get your book, if they get into to follow you, whatever, they are then going to stabilize this.

But they will lose everything that we are saying if they don't stabilize this and turn it into a habit. A habit takes 63 days minimum, not 21. Most people think that it's 21. I'm just seeing the whole audience, if you want to benefit from what Mel and I are talking about now, you need to take this. You need to actually get the book, get my neurocycle app in my book, and learn how to apply this over the 63 days, because there's very little research showing how long it takes to create a neural network like this that is sustainable. We're doing this now. But if you don't apply this within 24 hours to 48 hours, most of this beautiful tree would denature and become heat energy. What a waste. Then they know, I heard something that Mel spoke about, something about high-fiving, but it's something good for me. Then they won't really apply it and they won't get the benefit that you're desperate for people and passionately desperate for people to get. Because when humans are functioning as themselves, we won't see what we see in the world that we have today. We won't see this mess in conflict, et cetera.

That's getting super philosophical. Now, that's healthy. When you spoke about the complaining habit, I have to grab my toxic tree. Give me one second.

Yeah, let me see it. I'm imagining a dead... Yes. Okay, great. Yes. This is so good. You know what I love about this? Is that I love the high five because it's a physical thing that's so simple, that has this profound shift throughout your mind, body, spirit, and that think, feel, choose, loop. I love the visuals that you're bringing to the table because the second that you said, I got to get my toxic or negative, I can't remember what word you're, I'm like, I imagine a dead tree.

There you go. There it is, Mel. There's it. And these are built into neurons on the brain. So this is This is what... These are the dendrites. Everyone's seeing what a neuron looks like. I think if you don't just Google it, if you don't know what a neuron looks like, these branches here are where memory is stored, not in the synapses. Synapses are short-term memory. So as we're speaking, you get synaptic action, and then the actual memory is stored here. And so these are the dendrites. So they look like trees. So now here, this is a healthy conversation. It's a healthy tree. The proteins fall correctly, the quantum energy is correct, the neurochemicals are correct, your whole neurophysiology, endocrine system, immune system, everything's happy. But this is It's a toxic reaction. When we have this wake up in the morning and you talk about the patterns that most people are waking up and saying, I hate myself. I'm not good enough. The FOMO, the FOPO, all those people pleasing, all that, I can't do this. You see the saggy boobs.

It's all the That's the thing, by the way.

There you go. It's this thing. The statements that we're making about ourself are this part of the tree, the interpretation. If we look at our interpretation, we can then track the interpretation. Why am I saying this about myself? That's the root system. Like the root system of this conversation is our words, there's a source. There's also a source to the complaint. Why are you looking at yourself like that? And this causes brain damage because as you said in the beginning about how we've got, you said very beautifully about our neural network and our brain and body are designed to celebrate. That's the wide for love concept I spoke about. So this, threaten survival. This causes brain damage. This, I hate myself stuff, activates the immune system in the same way that COVID does. In other In other words, there's an immune response to this. Tv lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, macrophages, all going to that site, creating inflammation. And if you keep on 63 days later, nine weeks later, 18 weeks later, a year later, you're still doing this. This thing, whatever you think about the most, It's growing. This is enormous, and it's in your non-conscious mind.

Your subconscious mind is a bridge between the conscious and the non-conscious. The non-conscious is where everything is stored. In the non-conscious mind, it's gravitational fields. In the brain, it's trees. In the body, it's a change in your gene code. This is how powerful this stuff is. When you high five, you are actually drawing up this toxic thing that's been there for 9 weeks, 18 weeks, 5 years, 25 years, 40 years. You are Actually, and from neuroscience, we know that as soon as you draw something up and you become aware of it, you weaken it. It becomes malleable and changeable. If I don't change it and I walk away from the bathroom mirror thinking, Oh, gosh, I hate myself, boom, it goes back stronger. So tomorrow it comes back stronger. And this is in the non-conscious mind, which works 24/7. It's the most powerful and intelligent part of you, and it's driving everything that you do. So how I see the high five, and I don't want to take any of your time because we want to hear you, not me, is the high five is breaking that. It's pulling this non-conscious view of myself out.

You know what it is?

You gave me an idea. Okay, go for it. It's an ax.

It's an ax. There we go. It's an ax. It's an ax. It's an ax that's not only chopping it down, but it's You've got to dig the soil out because you've got to get the root system. You know like when you take a weed out of the garden, you can't chop off the head. You have to get the whole weed upend it. So the High Five is preparing you to do the work of actually getting it out. So it's putting that spade or ax in your hand. Love it. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. So that's what you've got to get.

Exactly what it is.

Every day when you do this, you are allowing yourself to bring your identity to the surface, which then drives every other part of your mind, which then drives your brain and your body, which then changes your lifestyle. So this is a step into reversing that terrible statistic of people dying younger. Yeah.

And one of the reasons why it's so powerful is because it does not require you to say anything. The positive programming is already associated with the physical action. Because you've never high five somebody and thought, I hate you and you're worthless, your brain cannot actually neurologically, it is impossible to think that thought as you high five yourself. Impossible.

And that's so true. So scientifically, to back you up there, it's the Wired for Love Nature. So that's built in. I spoke about an insurance policy earlier on. A Wired for Love Nature is an insurance policy. I talk about it as a wise mind. So in the depths of the middle of this forest of all these trees and some of that look at this, some look like that. There is this beautiful green forest, and that's where the high five resides in that forest, in that gravitational field as a resilience network in your brain and in your genes. So it's all over the place. It's a recognition of truth.

Yeah. I think that's why people cry, is because you, by high-fiving yourself, you are reconnecting with your true nature. That is a powerful spiritual experience.

Speak more about that. That is so true because I want you to speak about that, and then I'll throw some science in afterwards, because that is so huge.

Yeah, I apologize for interrupting you. I get so excited about this, particularly since you and I are free styling. It's amazing. And I can't wait till I get together. We got to do an event for people or something and just really- Yeah, that's it for sure.

We can sit there with all of our little props and that we have to. We promise you people this is going to happen.

Yes. So it was interesting because the very first morning that I did this in April of 2020, during a very overwhelming moment in life, when I first did it, my immediate reaction was to laugh. And then I laughed. I realized now I laughed because of the dopamine. But I also laughed because on the surface, standing there in my underwear, high-fiving. It just seems so stupid and pathetic when you just first hear it. But I will say, even though lightning didn't strike, and heaven didn't open, and the angels didn't sing that first morning. But I did feel this little flip. I felt almost like the high five had almost turned a light switch on because I noticed my mood went from feeling energetically down, defeated, overwhelmed, to all of a sudden this shift in energy. I didn't even think these thoughts, but I would describe the thoughts like, Okay, come on now. You got a roof over your head. You can handle this. You You've been in way worse places. It was like that, here we go, energy. But I'll tell you, it was the second morning where it went from this funny thing that I did to something profound and deeply moving.

And so I woke up the second morning, and you talked about cortisol levels, and I believe that you'll have to tell me if this is true or not, that your cortisol levels tend to be higher in the morning. A lot of us experience a higher level of anxiety in the morning since we're anticipating that the day is going to go bad. So a lot of us already, whether it's because of past trauma or it's because of just what's going on in your life, or because it's a habit to wake up and feel this level of anxiousness. I woke up feeling overwhelmed, feeling defeated. I use the five-second rule, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I get out of bed. I start walking to the bathroom. And this is when the high five habit became something bigger. I realized as I was walking to the bathroom that I was feeling something that I hadn't ever felt in my entire adult life. And this is what I was feeling. You know how when you are going to meet a really dear friend that you just adore, and you're about to walk into the cafe. What do you feel in that moment when you're about to walk in and see somebody you really adore?

Anticipation, peace.

Yeah.

Excitement.

Exactly. I realized I was feeling that about seeing myself.

Wow. That's beautiful.

I've been Are you excited to see an outfit or a haircut? I don't ever recall as an adult feeling excited about seeing the human being, Mel Robbins.

Oh, wow. This is amazing. This is core to who we are as humans, and we've forgotten to see that in ourselves in this very fast technological, physically-based world where you got to get something from outside in to make you feel better, which is how we've been almost programmed. What you're saying is the absolute opposite of that.

Yeah.

That is profound.

It was a profound feeling. As I turned the corner and stepped into the bathroom, the profound nature of what was unfolding was hitting me. It was that second morning realizing that I was excited to see the human being Mel Robbins, that I realized Oh, my gosh, all this time, it never occurred to me that there's another human being in the bathroom standing there in the mirror. I believe that represents your soul and your spirit and who you are.wise mind. Yes, your wise mind. As I stood there, and I had this moment of really just being with the human being Mel Robbins, it was profound. That was the second morning was the morning that I cried when I high-fived myself. It was as if years and years of feeling isolated or feeling not good enough or feeling invisible or feeling whatever, the pain that we all feel at times in the human experience, that the high five became a recognition of just how much I have lived through and how much I needed and deserved support and encouragement, just like every human being does. That's when it really started to crack open. It's also something that When I notice something, and that is this, you can stand there and be with your sofa a minute.

When you first start to do it, particularly if you're somebody who has a hard time looking at yourself or you hate so much about where you're at in life right now or what's happened to you or whatever it may be, you can be thinking and feeling all those things. But I noticed in that second morning that the second you go to raise your arm, your mind actually goes silent. 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.