Transcript of Stop Doubting Yourself and Go After What You Really, Really Want | Mel Robbins

Louis is going to save you the almost 13 years, was it? How long was it? Two decades or whatever of pain that he put himself through to get to the wisdom and the greatness that he has unlocked in himself. Because I've known Louis for five years. He is a different human being, a different human being than even just a year ago. I think that it is possible, and Louis will tell you this, to be a competitive motherfucker and to compete at the highest levels, which he does.

Yeah. I still like to win. Hell, yes. But it's a win-win. It's a different type of win.

And to be a calm, cool, and confident person because you have peace with yourself as you are doing those things.

And even just to comment on what you said about paying bills. I don't think you can have financial peace unless you have inner peace, because there's so many people that you know that have lots of money who are overly stressed.

Right.

And more money It doesn't always solve every problem. It solves lots of problems, but it doesn't always solve the problem of accepting and loving yourself.

That's true. I'm going to add something to that because both Louis and I have been in moments of our life Ironically, it was during 2007 and 2008, where neither one of us were able to buy groceries. We did not have any savings. We did not have any income. We were relying on other people to help us get through. The stress that you feel when you cannot pay for your basic needs is a toxic level of stress that can consume you. But what I also want you to consider is the added stress and shame and mental beat down that you add on top of that reality doesn't help you pay your bills either. 100%. Whether you are at a point where you've been wildly successful, but you're deeply unhappy, or you're at a point where Where you're having trouble paying your bills, cultivating a sense of peace inside yourself, an assuredness that you can rely on yourself, a steadiness so that the world around you does not trip you up emotionally. That that is a superpower. That's part of this greatness mindset that you're talking about. And Louis has been on this profound healing journey. And so I want to go there.

The game is healing. The game is healing. The game is healing in order to create anything in my mind.

What does healing even mean, Louis?

I used to feel a lot of pain in my chest or tightness in my throat or disturbance in my stomach. I used to feel like I couldn't sleep at night because I was up for an hour and a half, ruminating or thinking and stressed. I used to be very reactive when my nervous system was triggered. I feel like that's the opposite of healing. Healing is learning how to overcome all those things. So your nervous system is in peace when there's chaos around you. It doesn't mean I'm not going to feel triggered momentarily or feel like, Oh, I don't like that, or react to a thing or feel disturbed. But it's learning how to recognize it much faster and from a place of integrating healing and lessons, be able to respond differently when there's a disturbance, as opposed to based on a wound. So most of my life, I was just reacting, responding running based on wounds that I was unaware of. Or maybe I was aware of them, but I was just like, This is who I am. Don't mess with me.

Oh, how many of us have heard that?

Yeah, this is, don't try to change me. Don't mess with me. This is who I am. I'm fine. There's nothing wrong with me. This reaction. Can you give people a sense that don't know, you've wrote about this extensively in your New York Times best seller, The Mask of Masculinity, and you talk about this on your podcast, but can you give people a sense of some of the things that needed healing.

So I'm going to just point out one of them. So being in a classroom where you cannot do cognitively because of a learning difference. You and I both have dyslexia. Yours seems to be probably more profound than mine.

Even reading my own words, I trip up sometimes because I still have to practice reading slowly and with a cadence.

So what was that like for me to pass the book to you?

I was even going to say it. I was like, I get to practice my insecurities all the time. I have to read on a teleprompter all the time, and I'm always like, just take a deep breath. I just know that I'm not going to be the best reader in the world, and that's okay. And so I just say, I accept myself when I stutter. I accept myself when I stumble. I accept myself when I have to redo a sentence over and over again because I wasn't able to see what's coming next, and it just didn't sound right. It probably takes me twice as long to read my audiobook as you do, right? And I But I used to hate myself for that and beat myself up, and now I accept and love myself. And when I do that, I notice I read a lot better, and I flow a lot better. And it's not perfect or anything, but I'm like, it's just I save a lot more time. I'm more relaxed. And as opposed to, I used to beat myself up and be the biggest critic, now I'm just a positive self-coach in those moments.

I'm just like, Oh, you got this. It's okay.

Can we unpack that for a minute? Because I think it's a really relatable example. So Every one of us has something that we're self-conscious about or that we beat ourselves up about, whether it's our weight or something about our skin or our hair or our height. Or for you, you mentioned stuttering and stumbling and reading out loud or being slower at something. And you so beautifully talked about how you used to just beat the hell out of yourself. You hated that about yourself. How do you or how did you, Louis, learn to accept something you hated How do you fucking do that?

There's many different modalities of healing. What worked for you? And I feel like over the last 10 years, I was telling your husband Chris about this. Because he was asking me about all these different things. I was like, I feel like I've tried lots of different stuff because I got a lot of work to do. So I'm willing to dive in and take a look in the mirror and say, Tell me what to do, and I'll try it. And I did workshops, emotional intelligence leadership training workshops 10 years ago that helped me unlock and open up about sexual trauma. That was stage one. It was one of my biggest shames that I didn't want to talk about. I didn't want anyone to know about, because if anyone knew that I've been sexual abused, I thought no one would ever love me. So it was a huge protection, that I was a shield that I was putting up on myself to show people that I was strong, to show people that I was confident, to show people that no one could mess with me in sports or whatever it might be. And that That supported me in accomplishing certain results, but hurt me in feeling loved and harmony and alignment within myself.

And so it was exhausting. It's draining. It's an emotional train wreck because you're living a double life. Inside, you know the truth. Outside, others don't know the truth about you. So you're hiding something.

And I want to point something out about this because we've been doing a whole series on trauma and nervous system repair. And you talked earlier about how your lived experience, even though you were super successful on the outside, is like, knot in the stomach, tightness in the chest, something in the throat. You don't even have to be conscious about the fact that you're hiding this thing. It's not like you're walking around thinking about the fact that you were a victim of sexual abuse. It's that it's stored in your body. So your body operates in a state all the time as if something bad is about to happen.

I wasn't even I wasn't aware that I wasn't telling people. I was just trying to block it and cover it up constantly. But it was always in my mind. Maybe every few days, the memory would come up in some way. It was just like a movie that was repeating on repeat. And when I did this first workshop, a lot of things started to happen in my life where I was having breakdowns, intimate relationship, business partnership, just life. I just felt like, man, stuff is breaking down all around me. Although I'm successful, why are all these things breaking down? I'm the common denominator. A friend of mine was like, I actually got in a fight on a basketball court. This was the tipping point where I was the perfect storm. And a friend of mine who was there was like, I don't want to hang out with you anymore if you're going to keep reacting in this in this way because I was the same fun-loving guy. But when I would get triggered, I was like, this reaction would come out of me.

You get super physical, like a linebacker?

I would just try to defend myself energetically. But if someone was physically trying to to attack me, which in a basketball game is...

Isn't that part of the game?

Yes, but I would take it so personally. So when there was a cheap elbow, I'd be like, Turn around and be like, Let's go. Let's fight. So I didn't have the filter because I felt like someone was always trying to abuse me or take advantage of it. Because they had. Exactly. And so this was the last thing that happened. I got in this fight, and my friend was like, Hey, I don't want to hang out with you. I don't want to play basketball anymore with you if you're going to react like this. And it was a tendency that was happening for many months, more and more, until this fist fight came about.

Fist fight? Fist fight. On a basketball court?

On a pickup basketball court. There was no stakes on the line. It was just like a friendly game in the mean streets of Beverly Hills. How old were you? I was 10 years ago.

Yeah. So how old are you now? I'm 39. So when you're 29 years old.

And I remember there was a police station right across the street. It was in West Hollywood. It was 10 minutes away from here. And I remember going home after this. Well, I remember seeing the guy's face when it was done and being really scared of what I'd done.

Meaning?

His face didn't look good. I'll just say that. And I always had this rule that I'll never hit someone unless they hit me first. That was my thing. But I'll freaking get in someone's face. I'll talk trash, whatever. But I was like, I'll never hit someone unless they hit me first. He ended up headbutting me because we were in each other's faces, and he headbutts me. And then I just go blank. And I turn into the Incredible Hulk. In that moment, this guy hit me. There's no rules. And afterwards, I had so much adrenaline because I don't think I'd gotten in an actual fight since I was 13. And so I played football to get my aggression out, but I no longer was able to hit people legally, right? And so this was a point where this happened. And I remember going home and looking at myself in the mirror and being I'm like, who are you? I did not recognize myself. And I was really shaking because I was like, what am I doing? Who am I? Why are you reacting? I always started to ask myself this question. And I remember thinking, I have too much to lose now to allow my anger, my fears, my wounds to be in control.

Because I had built a business, and I was like, what if someone had a knife or a gun or whatever, or I injured myself in a worse way or I hurt someone else? What if something really bad happened? He was ended up fine. We were fine. But I remember thinking, okay, this could really get out of control. And this was nothing. This was like a little incident, and I was so reactive. So that's what got me down the path of saying, let me take a look in the mirror. I asked some friends for some suggestions on what I could do. I went to some workshops. The first workshop I went to got me to a vulnerable enough state to talk about sexual abuse for the first time. Out loud? Out Out loud. First time I spoke the words.

What was that like?

The most terrifying moment of my life, to be honest, because I never thought that this had happened to any other man. So you have to imagine if you think that what has happened to you has never happened to anyone else, then you think you are wrong, broken, and the worst human being alive. Now, that was my interpretation, right? And I got to a place during this workshop Where it was a five-day experience, and a lot of people were going through about... It was a leadership workshop, but we have to go into our past and mend things to get clear on what we want for the future and then move towards the future, right? So it's like a process, a journey of your personal life to help you have more tools of leadership. And at one point during this workshop, people were opened up about different stuff. It was a vulnerable state at this time, but it was after the third day. The trainer goes, Okay, we've gone into these different past experiences, parents and this and that and breakups. We're not talking about the past anymore. We're moving on. We're going into what you want to create for the future.

We're done. We're moving forward. But if there's anything you haven't shared, now is the time. If there's anything you haven't shared from the past, now is the time, or we're moving on, and you're going to miss your moment. For whatever reason, that voice came back out and was like, Okay, and during this time, I started to address all these different things from my childhood. My parents, they probably should have never been married in the first place, but they went through a divorce eventually, and just the fear of their arguments and fights as a young child. That was stressful. My brother went to prison when I was eight for four and a half years. So I didn't have friends for four and a half years because in a small town, the moms wouldn't let their kids hang out with me. So that was just a lonely time, and it was dramatic. To go to a prison every weekend and watch your brother in a room full of convicts and their families. It was a traumatic experience for the whole family. Being picked on in school and special needs classes and all these different things, breakups, heartbreak.

I was like, Okay, I've already addressed this stuff. I feel fine here. But what about this thing that I've been thinking about almost every day for 25 years? And whatever inside of me just said, You have to stand up. And I remember just standing up and getting out of my seat and walking to the front of the room. And there's probably, I don't know, 30, 40 people in the room were in a semicircle, and I stand up. And this was interesting because I couldn't look anyone in the eyes. I stood up, I looked down at the carpet, went in front of the room, and just said, When I was five, I was sexually abused by the babysitter's son. And I went through the entire story of the entire event. It was almost like I was in the bathroom, again, reliving it. And I shared this, but I could not look up because I was so ashamed of what I was And I was just thinking to myself, Man, everyone's laughing at me. Everyone's thinking I'm a loser. Everyone's thinking I'm unlovable. All these things came up for me, and I was like, My life is over, essentially what I was thinking.

And I remember sharing this, staring down, walked through the whole thing. And somehow I was semi-calm. I was standing there, maybe because I wasn't looking in anyone's eyes, but I was pretty calm and able to just get through it. I wasn't crying or anything. I was just getting through it. And then I went and sat down, and there was two women sitting on either side of me when I sat down. I remember just looking at one of them, and she's weeping. The other one is holding me. They're crying. Now, it's like 25 years of pain just erupts. I start crying, and they're holding me. They're all jumping and shaking. They're crying uncontrollably. I'm just like, I have to leave. I run out of the room. It was in a conference room of a hotel. I run out of the hotel to get some fresh air. I'm in the back alley behind this hotel by LAX, and there's a wall. I just put my hand against the wall, and I'm just sobbing. A few minutes later, I feel a touch on the back of my shoulder, and it's this guy who's bigger than me. He's probably in his late 50s.

He turns me around. He's crying. He looks me in my eyes. He says, You're my hero. You're my hero. I will I'll follow you anywhere. I vividly remember this. He goes, I have three kids. I've been married for 20 something years. My wife doesn't know. My kids don't know. This happened to me when I was 11. This happened to me multiple times. And I've lived with shame, and doubt, and insecurities my whole life. Thank you for being the first person to open up in front of me. You're going to give me the courage now to go and tell my wife. Wow. All these men from the room started coming out. There was only a two or three guys who had been sexually abused that tell me that for the first time, by the way. They hadn't opened up either to anyone in their lives. And then other guys were just like, I've never heard anything like this This happened to me. I feel really insecure about this in my life or this thing I'm ashamed of. And it was so powerful because I was thinking everyone's going to make fun of me, but in fact, it made them trust me and respect me more and love me more.

The thing that was the scariest thing for me was actually the thing that brought me closer to people, and people could actually see me for the first time fully, at least in that regard. And that was the start of 10 years of lots of different healing modalities, which I'm happy to talk about some of them, but that was the start of processing the healing. The next step is integrating the healing, which is where all the work is.

Yeah, that's true. Well, we will get you back to go in and talk about all the modalities, but I want to just say that this is yet another one of those areas where you and I have a parallel path because I had a very similar thing happened to me when I was in the fourth grade, and I buried it. I knew in the back of my mind, somewhere in the back of my mind, that something had happened. And it wasn't until I was at a leadership seminar. Really? That I thought you started open up. No. Well, what happened is somebody else shared, and they shared about how they had been molested and they had forgiven their parents and forgiven the babysitter, but they couldn't forgive their sister Because while this was happening to them in the bathroom, similar to their story, their sister was watching TV. As she said that, I had a very vivid memory of the moment that it happened to me in the middle of the night. When I rolled over because because I was scared that this person was on top of me, the first person I saw was my brother because he was sleeping on the bunk bed right across.

And I thought, I don't want this person to hurt him. So I was just quiet like a mouse. But it was the sibling connection. And it, like you, just flooded in. And I was like, I got to share this. And for a minute, I question whether or not it had happened.

Was it a bad dream or was it a reality? Did I block it? Was it real? Yes.

But that voice, that knowing that flood of emotion made me, like you, say, I just have to say it out loud.

And what happened when you said it out loud?

I just collapsed, sobbing. It's the same thing as you. So many people come up. I mean, it is such, unfortunately, a very common story. One in four women, one in six men have experienced something like that. But it's in either the denying that it's real and questioning it or the shame that you feel around it as if somehow it's your fault or it somehow is damaging to you and carrying that inside, which really is damaging. And so I think that it's an important Thank you, first of all, for sharing that story.

Yeah, of course.

And I think speaking the things that you hate or ashamed of is a form of acceptance. Because if you keep this stuff silent, if you're unwilling to talk about it, it's going to continue to haunt you. You've been on this incredible journey of healing. What has it taught you about greatness?

You can't be great without having peace and without going on a healing journey, in my mind. You can accomplish a lot. You can achieve a lot. You can get a lot of awards and make a lot of money. But I feel like if you feel like you still aren't enough, then you're not great. I don't think.

Because the enough, the thing that you're chasing It is outside of you.

It is outside of you. And again, I was chasing them to feel better about myself, to feel like, okay, I matter and I have value, because I didn't believe I had value. And I think once you believe you have value, then you're creating from a space of love and win-win and service, as opposed to, I need to do this for me and look good and feel something up inside of me. You're doing it from a more healing healing journey place, and then you're able to give more. You're able to create in a better place. So a lot of my life was doing things to prove people wrong that I felt abused, abandoned, made fun of by. I was like, Well, let me go make, create, succeed, to prove people wrong. So when I would lose, I was a bad loser because I was like, I didn't prove them wrong. I lost. They were right. And so it was just a different energy of creation. It's the second most powerful fuel is the fuel of anger and not enoughness. You can go nonstop for years trying to prove your enoughness from that state. But it is exhausting energy.

It's draining. It's like you feel like, what was the point of this? So many times I I accomplished things in sports. Biggest dreams, after 10 and 15 years of thinking about them, working hard and accomplishing it and feeling so angry after I accomplished it because I thought I would feel something different, and I still didn't feel good enough. So I was like, I need to go create more and accomplish more. And then I would do it. And I was like, why am I still feeling alone inside? It's because I didn't have a good relationship with me internally. And once I started to shift that, I just feel such a good sense of peace. And because I have a meaningful mission that is not about me, it's about others as well.

You talk about mission in this book a lot.

And I think that's the foundation. It's like getting clear on a meaningful mission that is not about- How do you do that?

You've got the framework in here, but I'm thinking, Louis, about the person.

It depends on the season of your life. Again, if you are trying to pay your bills, you can't think about a meaningful mission. You got to think about protecting yourself, safety, and getting to a place of financial stability. Well, that's a meaningful mission, right? That is a meaningful mission for this season. Right? Okay. So when I was on my sister's couch, that's all I could think about. I was like, How can I make enough money to get off the couch? Great. And so that was the mission for that season. But once you complete that, you got to think about something bigger that includes others. Right? And so I was still including others in that by adding value to people in order to get money from them. Essentially, I'm going to give you a service. I'm going to help you, and you're going to pay me. So I'm helping them overcome a problem. And I was using my passion and my power to solve a problem. And that's what I started to do. And then I started to... Once I overcame that mission or accomplished it, I was like, Okay, now I can see a little bit further.

Now what I want to create. And the same thing happened with the School of Greatness. Hold on.

I just wanted to tell everybody. So Louis, basically, in looking for a job, figured out how LinkedIn worked. Exactly. And then realized, oh, whoa, I can teach other people how to use LinkedIn like a pro. And so he literally became wildly successful being an expert on monetizing and utilizing LinkedIn and one platform. And tell everybody how you came up with the school for greatness idea.

So after four or five years of teaching LinkedIn and then expanding standing it into just social media and marketing in general and courses and stuff like that, I realized, okay, I had enough money for maybe two years to live.

Oh, that's pretty damn good, Lewis.

When you're broke and poor, at least from my point of view- That sounds like the Holy Grail. When you're broke and poor, from my point of view, I didn't spend anything. I was like, I just need to stack everything because I was in scarcity mode. So I wasn't spending anything. So I had enough. And I also didn't have a car. I was living in an apartment that was only 490 $75 a month. I was living in the lowest amount I could. I was taking trains places, not flying anywhere. I was like, how can I save?

This is Louis, the squirrel. Yes. Yes. I was a squirrel trying to get nuts everywhere. Here we go. That's right.

I was trying to get nuts everywhere. Put him in my back pocket. And once I realized, oh, I can actually... I'm surviving now, right? I'm thriving. I'm surviving. I got out of this scarcity mentality. I was able to think beyond that. I was able to think beyond this need to just make money really quickly. And I realized I didn't want this anymore. This season of life, I was like, I don't want to do what I was doing in this business anymore. So I sold it to a business partner that I had. And I was like, okay, I've got about two years of cash if I don't make any money to survive. This is the exact moment when I got into the fight on the basketball court. I was going through a breakup in a relationship that I moved to LA for, and I was just having breakdowns in life. And so I was literally stuck in traffic in LA a little over 10 years ago. Tuesday, next week is my 10 year anniversary for my podcast. No way. Tuesday, next week. So a little over 10 years ago, maybe 10 years and three months ago, I'm stuck in LA traffic.

All this stuff had just happened. And I'm just thinking to myself, Man, I don't have it all figured out. I thought I did. I thought my ego knew it was right. I thought I'd accomplish stuff and this and that. And it was featuring in the White House and all these other things. I was like, Man, I should be the man, but I feel like a loser. And I was stuck in LA traffic. We were literally on the 405, and we were not moving. And all these people around me in cars stopped, were screaming and honking and flipping each other off. And I'm honking, and I'm like, Man, I'm stuck. We're stuck. Everyone's stuck. And I was just like, Okay, huh? If people are stuck in traffic and they're taking them so long to get places, what if I could offer value and solve a problem for them to get unstuck? This was literally what I was going through. And I was like, I need the solution myself. And I just started hearing about podcasting. This was 2012. I just started to hear whispers. Whispers, podcasting, what is this thing? And I was like, I literally called two friends in the car.

It was a long drive. I'm being stuck. I called two friends. I go, I know you have a podcast. I just saw you launch this thing. Who were they? Pat Flynn and my friend Derek Halpern. Okay. I called them both. And I go, Tell me about the podcasting thing. And they were like, I love it. It's the coolest thing ever. The audience I'm connecting, the building, the relationship. It's the best thing ever. I don't make any money, but it's the best thing ever. And I was like, okay, cool. And I was like, man, I think I could do this because I had started to just interview people for myself, recording it for me, business leaders and sports athletes and all these people for years leading up to that. That's how I got the LinkedIn space. I would network with people. I'd interview them. And I just was like, man, I've learned so much from these people which got me here in my business results. So let me take it a step farther. And they were both telling me, well, you should just make it about marketing and entrepreneurship because that's what you're doing. I was like, it just doesn't resonate with me.

I feel like I'm supposed to do something more. They're like, Well, don't go too broad because it probably won't work.

You mean like, greatness? Yeah.

And I was like, And who are you? You're still just getting started. You're like an You're not a marketer. You don't have a big audience. You can't go too broad.

You just beat somebody up on a basketball court. I know, right?

Come on. You're breaking down everywhere in your life. And I was just like, again, that voice kept saying, I just feel like this is what I want to step into, though. And even if it fails, I'm going to make it an experiment. I'm going to do it for one year, one episode a week for a year, and just see if I like it. So I discovered the mission by exploring something, by being curious and trying it. And I gave myself some parameters. I I'm not going to try to make money. Again, at that time, I had money for two years. Got it. So some people may not have that luxury when they're figuring this out in terms of making money. You might have to make money really quickly. If I needed to make money, I could have.

Well, you also don't have to go all in. Exactly. What I loved about what you said, did you hear what Louis said? Experiment. He gave himself permission to experiment with something for a year. Number two, he took the pressure off and said, I'm not going to make this experiment generate money. And so if you can, whether you're on the couch or you're working a job, if you can give yourself the grace of an experiment and take the pressure off of money, you now are walking in the footsteps of greatness here. And so you set out on this experiment, and you didn't know shit about how to do it. You have two friends that- I had an iPhone that I used to record in the beginning.

I had no clue what I was doing. I was trying to do what I thought I was supposed to do. I was just trying stuff. And it's funny because my assistant listened to the first episode last week. She goes, I went back and listened to the first episode. She goes, You're a completely different person. And I'm like, because it was more about success, right? It was more about achievement and winning and results.

Oh, I have to go back and listen. I was like, You, Louis. We're going to have to pop in a little audio of Louis introducing himself. Exactly.

Then I went to this workshop a few months later.

Oh, the one where you spoke for the first time?

Yeah, about sexual abuse and all these things. And I actually, this is so funny. I I actually learned the concept about no one wins. You don't win unless everyone wins around you. That was like, what? That concept didn't make sense to me as an athlete. I was like, no, there was one winner. Everyone else must lose. Otherwise, you're the loser user. That was the mentality I was trained with. It was the programming that I was conditioned to have. And this workshop taught me that you don't win unless everyone wins.

You embody that, dude.

And it's about Thank you. It doesn't mean... Winning could look differently for everyone around you, but there must be a win-win experience. Otherwise, your win doesn't mean as much if others aren't improving and growing and succeeding in whatever it is they're doing as well, right? It doesn't mean it has to be equal winning or something like that. And that's why I was like, Yeah, that's right. This podcast can't be about results. It should be about elevating others and about improvement and how we can all win together. And that's when it started to shift, and I started to be a little softer. I was like, Let's just get results. And it was beautiful. So there's so much that happened in that first year of the experiment, where I started to try something, and it wasn't perfect the first hundred times. I just said, how can I make it better every time? How can I listen to the feedback and make it better every time? And how can I find my voice in this process? Even if I'm not comfortable sharing my voice, how do I find it by practicing it? And after the first year, I remember being like, man, I just really love this and enjoyed it.

And so 10 years later, here we are. I still love it. I still enjoy it.

When you think back on, literally, probably thousands of people that you've interviewed. What's one interview that you reflect on the most?

I was going to say Kobe because he was my favorite interview. But when you said this, there was an interview the first year that I had with a guy named Chris Lee, who was the actual coach and trainer of the workshop I went to when I opened up for the first time. Really? He had such a massive impact on me from that experience that I ended up hiring him as a coach for a couple of years just to coach me personally. And I had him come on the show, and I had him put me through... Well, I guess he put me through it, but I asked him about... I was single at the time. I go, How do you find the dream partner? And he put me through a guided meditation where you had me close my eyes. And he walked me through a scenario and a scene of my future self. He said, I want you to imagine waking up next to this person. I want you to imagine what they look like, what they sound like. I want you to imagine when you open the windows, where you are in the world, what your view is.

I want you to imagine the feeling, the experience you're having with this person. And And the reason I'm talking about that is because I said to myself during that, my eyes were closed. I was like, I don't know if this is weird enough, but I was like, I wake up next to the woman of my dreams, and when I open my eyes, she looks at me and she's smiling at me every morning. And I remember just saying that. I don't know why that came to me, but I was like, she looks at me, she's smiling at me because she's so grateful and happy that we're in this relationship together. Essentially, eight years later, I'm in a relationship with a person that wakes up, that literally opens her eyes and looks at me and smiles. And this is no joke. It happens every day. She looks at me, she hugs me, Some days she wakes up crying. I'm not kidding, because she's just a grateful human being, not just because I'm in her life, but she's just a happy person. And I dreamt of this. And so for me, that was a powerful, powerful episode episode because I had two other relationships before her and after this conversation.

Those things didn't happen. And I realized that it only happened the moment I started to fully heal A lot of the emotional things that I still wasn't ready to face in intimacy. So I healed one element, but not all the other elements. And it wasn't until I... I literally there was a pain in my chest for still for years from other things It's not the sexual abuse pain, because I could talk about that freely and be in peace. But in other things that I still wasn't willing to face, and it wasn't until I faced those things two years ago, there was a pain in my chest for many years that would come and go. It disintegrated after about five months of intensive therapy, integration, healing. It finally disintegrated in my chest, and I felt this ball of pain go throughout my body into complete freedom. And it hasn't come back since. It took five months of intense reflection, exercises, practicing of healing the nervous system to where that went away. That is literally a month or two later I met her.

Wow.

And it's been a game changer ever since.

Have you talked publicly about what that thing was that you faced?

I haven't really talked about it publicly. I just started telling people that... Because I don't know if other people feel a pain in their chest. I don't know if you've ever felt a ball that's like this, not palpitations, but just a nagging pain.

I think people feel the... I feel it more like right above the stomach. That's where my... And I know when it's coming because it hits the ankles first and then this clenches.

Like wobbly legs or something?

No, I feel literally when I get triggered, I literally feel it start. And it comes to your stomach. Yeah, but I think you want to know why. It's because that's how the person approached me. Oh, wow. Yes.

Yeah, because it used to be the throat and the chest for me. You just feel like I couldn't speak. And there was I'm in pain here. And I was just like... It wasn't like I felt like I was in a heart attack or anything like that, but it's just like a nagging pain. It would come and go, and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it or how to eliminate it. And it just... I went to five months of intensive every week therapy, sometimes five, six hours on Saturdays, where I was just like, I'm a maniac on a mission to create peace, clarity, and freedom. The first day I stepped in the therapy with my coach, I call her an emotional coach because I think we should all have She said, What's your intention for starting this process? I said, I want peace, clarity, and freedom, because I didn't feel like it had any of those.

Can I take a guess at what your biggest block was?

Sure.

It was an inability to even allow love in. Is that what it was?

I don't know if that's what it was. Maybe, but it was my inability to not abandon myself.

What does that mean for somebody who's I've never heard that term?

It was my inability to not abandon myself in intimacy with one person, the person that I was choosing to be in a committed relationship with, because I wanted to abandon myself in other areas. I would stand up for I was like, No, I'm not going to do that.

Oh, for you, like a nice guy, doormat type in relationships?

I was more trying to buy peace. So whenever my relationship, your relationship was in the past, would be upset at me, you didn't do this. I'm sorry. Okay, I'll I would do it now. Whenever there was disturbance emotionally, or the environment, or they were screaming at me, or they were cold shoulder, or they wanted to speak to me, I was like, I don't like this feeling. And so I didn't know how to navigate my inner world when that would happen. I didn't know how to be peaceful under chaos, emotionally. So I would do things to buy peace. I would say, Okay, I'll stop doing this. Even though I don't want to stop doing something, I'll stop doing it to make you feel comfortable. Okay, I'll give in here. Okay, I'll come home five hours early. Okay, I won't go on that trip because you don't feel comfortable with me going alone.

See, I don't think people understand how much men struggle with this. No, I mean it. This is why I said, you remind me a tremendous amount in ways of Chris. Same thing. Like, just would shut down. Yeah, or give in. Or give in and not capable of expressing what he needed Because his experience as a kid was it didn't matter anyway. Exactly.

And a lot of times, in general, a lot of men were never trained on how to navigate uncomfortable emotions through their highest selves. They would navigate it through their ego self, which is defend, protect, and show that everything's okay. And that works in some cases, but not in every case. I think I didn't have the tools, the training, the knowledge, the experience, the wisdom on how to navigate stressful emotions in love, in an intimate, loving relationship. I could do it in business, in sports, and other things.

What was it modeled for you?

It was a model for me. It was a And low level stress and resentment from my parents of each other, which made me always like, what's going to happen, right? They loved me, and I knew they loved me, but I knew they also didn't love each other. And so that was stressful. And so I didn't know how I had to be with a woman who was like, You can't do this, screaming at me, don't do this. I don't like when you do this. This is not okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, I didn't accept myself for who I was. I knew I wasn't enough. That's how I thought. So I said, I'm going to do what's going to make her feel like I'm enough for her. And after a year, two years, three years of doing that and just giving in and giving in and giving in, you fully lose yourself. You lose who you are. Then you get resentful, you get frustrated, you get angry. So I lacked the emotional ability to say no. And if you don't love me and accept me and you want to walk away, that's okay. And I lack the emotional ability to just be okay with me walking away from something as well.

And that's why when I met Martha, which you've met her a couple of times now.

She smiles at you all the time.

I had a fully different experience.

Because you were different.

Because I was completely different. And I just told her straight up, I was like, This is my values. This is who I am. And I'm never going to abandon myself For anyone. You, this, that. It doesn't matter. I'm just never going to abandon myself. It doesn't mean I'm not going to be a flexible human being and supportive in all these other ways, but I'm not going to give up who I am to please one human being because they're not happy with me.

Dude, if you could sum up the greatness mindset, I think you just did. There's this quote that goes viral all the time. I have no idea who said it first, but it's that thing that when you put all your energy into trying to keep the peace with others, you create a war inside yourself. That's good. That is just what you describe. That tension in your chest, and so many of you listening, listen with it, or that pit in your stomach is the war that Louis just described with yourself because you're so much more focused and concerned with keeping the peace, making sure everybody else is okay. And until you invert that and you focus on creating peace within yourself, that's it right there.

And this is the moment when it unlocks, I remember now, exactly what happens when the pain went away because I was working on... Because I didn't feel free. And so for five months of therapy, going in every week, I was committed. I was like, I'm going to figure this out, and I'll go as long as it takes.

You're like a truffle pig for healing. He's going to root that thing out right there. I'm doing right now. I'm doing it right now. I'm not going to stop until I heal. I love that.

I'm proud of you. And healing is a journey. It's not an event that happens overnight. There's an unlocking, there's an awareness moments, but then you've got a... Then PTSD occurs if you don't keep integrating it. So it's a constant.

So what was that moment?

So the moment was because every time I would meet my coach, she'd say, what's your intention? Peace, clarity, freedom. I didn't feel them. And so we were talking about what each one is. When do you not feel peace? When do you not feel clear? Freedom. I was like, I've never felt free in my life. And a lot of it came down to modeling parents. They weren't free in their relationship. They both were resentful of being in the relationship. They both got married when they're 19. They didn't know any better. They had four kids. They were working their butts off just staying together. So I don't blame them, but they stayed together, not because they wanted to, because they didn't know how to navigate it as well. And so I saw them trapped. That was what it was for me. I saw them trapped, and I was afraid to be trapped because I didn't want to repeat the feeling of them being trapped and feeling miserable a lot of the time. And I was like, I don't want to create that in my life, but I didn't know how to stand up for myself. So that was the thing.

And she just kept looking at me. It was like a Goodwill hunting moment. She was like, You're not trapped. You're not trapped. You're not trapped. You're a free man. You're a free man. You're a free man. And I don't know what... It was just all the months of the practicing, the integrating, the opening it back up, where it just like this rush. It finally connected to me that I am a free man, that I am not trapped. She was like, You can walk away at any moment. You can walk away at any moment. You don't have to keep working in this relationship, especially since you're not married. You can walk away at any moment.

But even if you are married, you're free.

You can walk away. And that was the thing. I was like, I'm so afraid to get married because I don't want to have the shame of getting divorced or the pain that happens after divorce that so many people go through.

Well, it's so interesting. You're so focused on not feeling trapped that you actually trapped yourself.

A hundred %. And it's so funny because I went to a prison almost every week for four and a half years, and I watched men who were trapped behind bars. But some of them were emotionally free. Some of them were there, but I saw them free men. Like, they were in a state of complete peace. Not all of them, but some of them had so much love in their hearts, were very kind and generous. They had their families around, and they were free emotionally. But they just did something that put them in there physically. And I realized for so long that I was trapped emotionally, but free physically, and I didn't know how to break free. And that was the thing where I was like, I'm just sick and tired of feeling this pain. I'm sick and tired of repeating the pattern, where I'm the common denominator in all these relationships, choosing them, staying in them, not standing up for myself. So that was a massive game changer for me, was investing in emotional coaching, showing up consistently when I didn't want to, and doing the work. And I think a lot of us will get business coaches, career coaches, health coaches.

But the emotional game is the game that most of us don't know how to master. And yet we won't invest in coaching or find support. And I just think it's so crucial.

Well, you're right. At the very end of of your fantastic book, The Greatness Mindset. You're talking about, Unlock the Power of your Mind and Live your Best Life Today. You have a huge section in this on healing.

A whole section is healing. I feel like you cannot be great. A huge section.

The whole middle of the book is healing I feel like it's not even unlock the power of your mind. It's literally unlock the power of your mind, body, and spirit. Integrate it all.

Well, you know everything's a Trojan horse. That's true.

Nobody's going to pick up the healing book. So they're like, I'm going to buy the mindset book. But guys, if people understood The Art of Falling in Love with yourself, the world would be a much better place. Lewis, the world is a much better place because you're in it. Thank you, Mel. I wanted to ask you, let's see if I could find.

You're going to make me read one more thing?

I am not going to make you read one more thing, especially now that I know that was a trigger for you.

No, I'm happy to. Give it to me.

You did fantastic. When you're the person that's stuck and it feels like everyone around you is trying to change you or pressure you to change or help you get out of that rut. Is your own almost fear to admitting that they're right also a big barrier? I'm thinking about if you have somebody in your family that's drinking too much or that has really let their health or their weight go. Yeah. And admitting that it's a goal to deal with this also means admitting that other people are right. Did you see any of that social pressure aspect to why people Will also stay stuck?

Yeah. So I really firmly believe that you can't make people care about a goal or an outcome. You can't say to someone you're stuck and you have to care about getting unstuck. That's really got to come from the person. You can guide them there. You can show them why it's important. You can have them introspect about it to the point where they say, you know what? I'm now seeing the light. I understand why it's so important to do this. But you can't bully people into saying this thing that's sticking me is a problem and I need to do something about it. So I think the best thing you can do as a loved one, as a friend, as a family member, is to make it without being judgmental, is to make it as clear as possible why this thing matters and gently guide this person along in that direction. Show them that it matters and have them answer some questions about it. That's the best thing you can do is ask questions. Do you want this thing to change? Do you think it could be better? The friction audit is a great example of this because it means it's not about them.

It's not confronting. You just say, Hey, this is not about you, but tell me all the things that are annoying to you right now. Like, What's a friction point? And by pouring out all of those things onto the page, you then have something you can latch onto and at least say, Hey, this seems like it's an issue for you. Let's work on it together, rather than telling them, Here's your problem, we're going to fix it together, which often leads people to push back.

You do a lot of work with companies. So how does this work apply if you feel like you're on a team and the team stuck?

Yeah. So that's originally where I started doing this work was with companies. It wasn't with individuals, but it was the same idea that Companies, either in the way they interact with customers or internally in their operations, have sticking points. Every company, no matter whether it's big or small, even more if it's big, will have this series of bottlenecks and sticking points and red tape and bureaucracy. They What do they need to deal with. And so this is an attempt to figure out where those points are. It's also when you're dealing with customers, a lot of my work is on consumer behavior and human judgment and decision making. Humans don't like stuff that's hard. And if you are losing people in a funnel in your interactions with them in a sales funnel, moving towards making a particular sale. All of those points where you lose them, you can almost always put it down to friction. You're asking them to do an extra thing, an extra click on a website, go to an extra page, make a phone call, make a text, send an email. And so I work a lot with companies to say, let's figure out where those friction points are and see if we can track what effect it has when we remove those from the process.

Can you speak directly to somebody who feels stuck? They want to change jobs. They want to put themselves out there again after a breakup. They want to really go after their financial security, but they're scared. They're scared that if they won't find the job, they're scared that they're going to just meet somebody else that breaks their heart. Could you just talk a little bit about what the research says about why it's so important to do it anyway?

Yeah. So the one thing we haven't really talked about is the third section of the book, which is habit. It's actually doing something. It's acting. The single best thing you can do if you feel stuck is to take a minimally viable action. In other words, the smallest possible action that moves you in the right direction. Try to think of what that tiny little action would be. It might be if you're in a job you don't like, it might be just learning what the alternatives are, making a list of alternative job options, alternative industries you might want to work in. Maybe go even to the point of making a list of specific companies that are your goal companies. And then you can go through the pros and cons exercise of figuring out what are the strengths and weaknesses of each one. But even that small act, doing something, moving in the right direction is enough to signal that you've got forward progress. And then you can do the biggest stuff later on. But getting the ball rolling is the biggest trick. It's doing the small things so that you're not static. You're actually moving in the right direction.

Why is that important?

It's important in part because you're signaling to yourself that you are the person, again, who can move. The same issue comes up again, but also because moving from zero to any action is really important in getting the big action to happen. You have to do that step anyway. And once you start doing it, you're more likely to do more. There's this classic story of Jeff Tweedie, the frontman of the band Wilco, who talks about how when he's trying to come up with creative ideas, it's incredibly difficult. And so what he does is this minimally viable action. He says to himself, When I wake up in the morning and I don't want to be creative, he writes books and he writes books and he writes music, sometimes he doesn't want to do either one. He says to himself, I'm going to spend 10 minutes coming up with the worst sentences I can, writing the worst, most boring music I can, because what he's doing is he's lowering the bar all the way to the ground and saying, I'm going to be non-judgmental. I just need to do something. And that has two effects. One thing is, again, it gets the ball rolling.

And so when he's trying to do good writing, it's more likely to happen. But the other thing it does is it sometimes means that the things you think are not good in those moments actually turn out to be better than you think. They actually are more important than you think. And that process of being non-judgmental and just letting little things happen and not saying it has to be perfect is a very useful way of moving forward.

I love this 10-minute rule, and I also love, assume it's going to be the worst because you've lowered the bar. Do you have other quick examples? Because I know the person listening is going to be like, Okay, so what's an example in a job? What's an example with a relationship? What is the minimal viable action that you could take just to get somebody thinking? Because based on the research, without doing this, you're going to stay stuck. This is step three.

Yeah, exactly. So this is the thing is the smallest action is the good one. One thing I really like that I find very valuable, and this is what got me unstuck when I was doing a degree I didn't want to do was experimentation. Figure out the list of options and then start working through them. Compare them to each other. You will never know what is the right option if you don't know what the set looks like and you haven't tasted a little bit of each one. So set up that array and then spend a week on each one and line it up and do that. And maybe that itself won't get you moving forward much, but it will teach you what you do like and what you don't like, what does work and what doesn't work. And that's a great minimally viable action is to say, I'm going to treat at least this part of my life like a long experiment. And then once I figure out the best thing for it, then I can be single-minded and focused on exploiting that one opportunity, that one thing. That's all I'm going to do. But you can't make forward motion until you know what that thing is.

Okay. I want to make sure I translate that because that was genius. So basically, let's just say your goal is to start working out. And if you take on the mindset of being curious, and don't turn it into, I'm getting six-pack abs, and I'm exercising seven days a week. Create a experiment of curiosity. I'm going to spend the next month figuring out what works out that I even like. And I'm only going to spend 10 minutes every other day. I'm going to try jump broking. I'm going to try Pilates. I'm going to try a hit class. And if you turn it into an experiment, this is no longer about getting it right. It's about getting yourself moving. Yeah.

And you know that when you do an experiment, some conditions are going to be bad. Some things will be better than others. And that's good. You've learned what does work and what doesn't work. Actually, you appreciate what works more when you've seen and tasted what doesn't.

And I'll give you an example. This podcast is something that I thought about for probably seven years, and it haunted me. You want to talk about stuck and feeling like you're not tapping into your potential. There's this thing you want to do, and you're not doing it, you're not doing it. I was fully in that mode of the emotion around it, the excuses around it, and it really made me miserable. And it also showed up, by the way, when I did that friction list. And so if I think back, it probably would have been three or more years ago, I made one of those friction lists, which I do all the time now, and right on it was, I haven't started the podcast yet. So the fact that it showed up on the list meant to me that this was an area of my life, an area of potential that I needed to do something about. I didn't start the podcast that day. I made a decision that I was going to start working on it. In your words, I turned it into an experiment. It's interesting to point out, I think it's really important for you as you listen and are a fan of this podcast to know that I didn't even, quote, do anything for a year.

I would wake up every day and I would take 15 minutes of action a day. And the first day, the action was I made a decision I was going to launch a podcast in a year or two. The next day, I simply made a list of podcasts I was going to listen to. That's it. The next day, I listened to a podcast for a little bit of time. The next day, I did a Google search, and I learned about the equipment that people use for podcasts. And it just went on and on and on. For an entire year, I would say that I was so busy almost doing a research project and becoming a student of the thing that I was interested in before I even did any of the actual steps of, I guess, recording an episode or figuring out what the audio editing software was. And simply researching podcasts, simply becoming a student of it, every single day when I did something, knowing that it was leading toward this bigger thing, it got me moving. I didn't feel stuck again. And that was years before the podcast actually launched.

That's a great minimally viable action in life.

Tell us about the role of failure because everyone's so terrified of failing at this. How do you reframe the way you think about failure to help yourself get unstuck That can be successful.

Yeah. So very few failures are the be all and end all. It's all about framing and how you think about a failure. Very few failures mean you can never do this thing again. Usually, they open up other options, opportunities, a second attempt at the same thing. And so So the first thing is to accept that and to recognize that failure is inevitable. It's going to happen as you get better, as you challenge yourself. But usually that's not irrevocable. It's not the end of the world. You can move forward. So that's, I think, the first very useful thing. The other thing is to figure out what to take away from that failure. So there are good failures and bad failures. Bad failure is where you fail, you have no idea why, and it doesn't help you move forward and you feel dejected. You don't feel good about it. Good failure is saying, I've learned something. Here is what I've learned. This This part of what I did actually worked quite well. Here is where I got close. Here's where I fell short. It may even be a case of learning through that failure that this is not something you should be doing, and you can quit.

You can move on to something else. There's nothing wrong with doing that. There are a billion things we could be doing without time. And if failure is teaching you something about what you shouldn't be doing, that's also valuable. So essentially, the question that differentiates good failure from bad failure is, have I learned what the next thing should be from this failure? If the answer is yes, then it's good. It helps you.

It wasn't a failure at all.

It wasn't a failure.

I love that, Dr. Alter. I have another question for you. Who should you talk to when you feel stuck?

There are essentially three kinds of people that are very useful when you're trying to get unstuck. The first kind are people who are like you, who overlap with you, similar background, similar ideas. They get where you're coming from. Got it. Organizations, when they put teams together, will often do this. They'll knit together people who are similar. The second person is someone who is completely different or non-redundant. So I see this happen when companies come to NYU to recruit. A lot of the best companies will come in and say, We're an organization that focuses on, say, investing. We don't just want the best finance students. We want the best two finance students, the two marketing students, the two French literature students, the two organic chemistry students, because they'll all have a very different idea about the world. And when you put those different ideas together, you get something very useful. So when we're often stuck, we consult with people who are like us, and that often further entrenches us. There's something very valuable in going out and speaking to people who are deliberately quite different from you. And then the third person is the black sheep, someone who actively pushes back against you.

So most of us can think about people in our lives who consistently see things not just differently, but actually in opposition. They push us a little bit to challenge the way we see the world. And so Pixar has done this for a while, So when they have a team of people working on a film, they will bring in a black sheep. So they might have a whole lot of people who say, The most important thing is our animation. That's what sets us apart. But they'll bring in someone who says, Animation doesn't matter. Essentially, it's all about narrative. Let's make sure that that first scene in the movie Up is the best narrative we can write, because if you don't grip people early, then we're never going to get them. So these three kinds of people, everyone should have essentially a brain trust. So once you feel like you're stuck, you go to the people who get you. They really know you. They are a lot like you. You go to the people who are a bit different. They have different backgrounds and ideas. And then you go to the people who really push back on you.

And you are much more likely to succeed in making progress with the influence of those three kinds of people.

If I were to translate that to the personal life, right? So it makes perfect sense if you're trying to have a creative breakthrough or a breakthrough in your business or a breakthrough in the way that you're approaching a project. If you were to translate that to the personal life, I'm sitting here thinking, I'm like, okay, I got my high school friend And they're like me. I got maybe the college friends or the work friends. There's some diversity there in terms of how people think and problem solving backgrounds. And then I got to find that one outlier that just looks at life differently to bounce this off of. If the person listening were to just do one thing, what is the most important thing that you want them to remember and put into action from this conversation, Dr. Alta?

There are two things that you could do, two ways of approaching life. There are two ways of approaching a sticking point. The first one is called exploration, where you try different things. The second one is exploitation, where you drill really deep into one thing. You cannot do both at the same time. You can't both be exploring all your options and really doing as much as you can to make one particular option work for you. Figure out which stage you're in and then bounce between the two. So try different things, figure out which one is best, drill down on that until you hit a wall, and then go back to exploring again and bounce between those two phases and you will effectively get unstuck.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

We all face problems in our lives. It's just part of being a human being. But have you ever considered that there are really only two kinds of problems that you're ever going to face? There are temporary problems, and then there are permanent problems that are more like conditions that you have to learn with. Now, a temporary problem is something that you have tremendous power to change. And permanent problems, though, are something that require a different skill, and that is the ability to just accept things as they are and let the complaining go. Now, one of the skills in life that is really going to help you become a great problem solver, and it's also going to give you more control over your life, is knowing what problem you're actually dealing with. Because we all complain about our problems, but to actually solve a problem, you got to understand what problem you're dealing with. The truth is, you can't change a permanent problem. So no matter how much you complain about it, how much you try to change it, how much energy you put into it, nothing's changing. It's a waste of your time and your energy to focus on those.

Here are some examples of permanent problems. You can't change time. You have 24 hours a day. That's it. You can't change how much time has gone by. You can't change how quickly time is passing, complaining about You don't know how little time you have. That is a permanent problem. It's a waste of your time to do that. Another thing you can't change, a permanent problem, how old you are. Can't change that. You can't change your past. You can't change your family. Here's one that's really hard to understand. You cannot change the personalities of other people. You can't do it. Yes, you can influence some people's decisions, but people's hard wiring, that's only going to change if they choose to change. And focusing so much of your time and energy on the things about other people that drive you bananas, again, complete waste of your time. Think for a minute how much time you spend complaining about these things. Now, when you try to change a permanent problem, you know you are stuck because you feel like you're just spinning in circles. Temporary problems are what you want to focus your energy on. These are the decisions and the life choices that you keep making that might feel good in the moment, but they actually make you miserable.

Now, here's the thing about temporary problems. They're not permanent. You may hate your body, but you can change it. You may hate and be unhappy in the relationship that you're in, but you can change it. You might complain a lot about how your boss treats you or how you feel passed over at work, but you can change how you interact with your boss, and you can change how you show up at work, and you can even change your job. That's the difference between a temporary and a permanent problem. Temporary problems you can change. Now, here's a simple exercise that I want you to do. I want you to make a list of all the things that you complain about. Maybe you complain about your commute, where you live, the person you're with, your health, your boss, the amount of money you have. Now, I want you to look at every single complaint you have and ask yourself, what can I do to change this problem? What can I do to fix my relationship with your boss Because you can't change your boss's personality, but you can definitely change how you interact with her. And when you change yourself and your own behaviors and how you think, you're going to change everything.

I wanted to talk to you about a mindset trick, okay? For those of you that don't know me, I struggled with anxiety for literally 30 years, and so do our three children. They've all struggled with anxiety at various moments. My My daughter used to have this word for it. It's called the what-if loop. That when you get trapped in your mind, you start thinking about what if this happens? What if that happens? What if this goes wrong? What if I fail and somebody critiques me? What if this person judges me? What if that happens? What if they say this and I don't know what to say? What if my friends judge me? What if they think I'm weird? What if they think I'm silly? You can get trapped spinning what-if thoughts all the time. I want to give you a super simple trick that you can use to interrupt the what-if loop. It comes from both the research that I've done about having a high five attitude and empowering and encouraging yourself. The reason why having a high five attitude is so important is because when you believe in yourself and your ability to face anything, when you believe in In your ability through your attitude and your actions to have a positive impact on anything that you're dealing with in life, that's the secret to success.

It doesn't remove the obstacles. It doesn't change the circumstances that you're dealing with. It changes you and your ability to face those circumstances and tap into the resilience and the courage and the confidence and the strength that is in you that is waiting to help you. That's what a high five attitude is. It's realistic optimism. Oh, gosh. Okay. There's a gentleman I'm walking in front of our car. Okay. I was talking with Jenny, who's got her camera aimed at me. Jenny Maloney, if you need a phenomenal photographer, who's saying, who is my favorite person, sorry, Tev, to drive, and our COO and my fabulous sister-in-law, Christine. We were sitting here talking. Jenny literally decided three weeks ago? Yeah, about a month ago. About a month ago, that where she was living was sucking her soul dry. Mm-hmm. She'd been thinking about it and thinking about, how many of you have been thinking about, is this the right place for me to live? Should I move? Should I try somewhere new? Even if it's just like, I don't like this apartment or this neighborhood or my roommates. Have you experienced this? I have been experiencing this for five years.

Every time I would take off and land in a new city, I would allow my mind to wander. Hmm, could I live here? Could I live here? Is it Austin, Texas? Is it San Diego? Is it Nashville? Is it Portland, Maine? I even consider Portland, Maine. It's cool. It's cool. So she literally decided four weeks ago to honor that feeling inside of her. And the second that you started honoring that feeling like, maybe I should move, even though my family lives here, even though people are going to be upset, maybe we need a change. When you feel depleted, when you feel like every morning you wake up and you don't want to high five your life, that's a signal. That That means you got to dig deep and figure out what you really want. You got to do some soul searching, and you got to find your strength and your courage to face and be honest with yourself about what's not working and make a change. That's exactly what Jenny did. But when you start to get honest with yourself that you're not happy with your life, any aspect of it, you don't want to high five that relationship.

You don't want to high five your friend group. You don't want to high five where you live. You don't want to high five that job. That's when the storm kicks in in your mind, because then you go, well, what if I'm wrong? And what if I don't have new friends? And what if it doesn't work? And what if this? And what if that? And what if the other thing? What if I don't sell my house? What if my kids don't like the new school? What are some other things that you had about it? What if I don't find somewhere to live?

What if my house doesn't sell? What if I'm making a big mistake?

Yeah. What if I'm making a big mistake?

And I was terrified.

Terrified. And I thought that was my gut trying to tell me something. But no, any big change is freaking terrifying. Yes. That's terrifying. Just expect that, okay? So if you don't high five your life right now, that's all the sign that you need that you need to change. Then your mind is going to kick into what if mode to keep you paralyzed where you are because your mind does not want you to change. This change is scary. This is where you're going to use this little high five attitude flip, and I'm going to let Jenny tell it to you. What is the flip? Just tell them what that flip is. Instead of going, what if this is a mistake? What if this goes wrong? What if it doesn't work out? What do you say instead? What if everything does work out? What if everything works out? I know it's so simple, but it's so profound. What? Can you imagine if you went through life thinking, what if it works out for me? What if I make this big change and I actually love my new life? What if I start exercising and I love it?

What if I decide to move and it all works out for me? What if I start this side business and it works out? Imagine placing a bet on yourself. That is how you have a high five attitude. You place a bet on yourself, on your dreams, on what you want. And it can be as simple as swatting away that bullshit. What if it fails? What if it doesn't work? What if my friends judge me? What if I'm unhappy? Look, there are very few things that are... I know, I'm really red. It's because I'm having a hot flash right now. I keep it very real. There's no filter that I can have. I'm 53 years old. This is the shit that happens to me. But what if? All those what ifs, you don't know if they're true or not. Are they serving you? What if it doesn't work? What if that? What if the other thing? What if, scaredy cat, paralyzed? Do you like that? How about you flip it? How about you get a high five attitude on? What if it all works out for me? What if it's hard in the beginning? And then a month from now, I look up and go, holy shit, this was the best decision I ever made.

What What if quitting your job is the scariest thing, but it all works out for you? What if ending that toxic relationship makes you feel scared and you dread being alone again? But what if two months from now, when you invest in building back a relationship with yourself, you can look in the mirror and you go, wow, it's all working out for me. That was exactly what needed to happen. What if the heartbreak that you're dealing with or the pain that you're dealing with, what if it's all just a dot on the map of your life connecting you to something amazing? What if it's preparing you for something? What if it all works out for you? Betting against yourself makes you feel miserable. Staying in situations that you don't want to high five that make you feel depleted It's the reason why you're not happy and fulfilled. I want you to start putting a bet on you, on your intuition, on your happiness, on what your heart and soul are screaming at you to do. If you can't high five every aspect of your life, I want you to stand in front of that mirror and start to get honest with yourself.

I want you to get a piece of paper out and put a pen in your hand and start writing down what the you want. What does a high five life look like to you? And you know what's interesting about using the term a high five life? You know exactly what that means. I don't even have to explain it. It's a life where every day, even on the hard days, you still want to wake up and high five what's happening. You're still waking up, surrounded by people and playing a game that's worth It's playing to you. It's personal to you. And I'm here to tell you, you start to develop the daily habits of encouraging yourself. What if it all works out? What if this is actually the best decision I've ever made? What if it's really difficult and going through this is going to make me a better version of myself? What if six months from now, after I make this change, I'm going to look in the mirror and... It's not that you're not going to recognize yourself. You ready? You're actually going to recognize yourself. The you that's in there, the one that you're ignoring and criticizing.

What if it all works out for you? That's my message for you today. I want you to take on that high five attitude. What if it all works out for you? I'm sitting here high fiving you every step of the way because I believe that something amazing is happening in your life. I sense something extraordinary is about to happen for you. And when you start to leverage a high five attitude, what if it works out? What if this is the best decision I've ever made? A really difficult one. What if this is the best decision I've ever made? I love to say that you're one decision away from a different life. So make the decision away to swot away those negative thoughts and bring up that high five attitude. What if it all works out for me? Believe, anchor down in hope and optimism and faith and in celebration of yourself and your ability to pivot your life anytime you choose. That's what's available to you. The second you decide to just get that negative shit out of your mind and adopt that high five attitude. Because I do believe, I do believe that something, I sense something incredible, extraordinary is going to It's not going to happen for you.

But first, you got to start to say, what if it works out for me? What if this is the best decision I've ever made? What if I place a bet on myself for a change? Wouldn't that be cool?

I literally quit my other job, and I was like, I'm done. Yesterday, you quit your job? Morning. And I literally texted Rob and all my friends. I was like, I'm diving in. Universe is hard work, faith. Let's go. I'm no more... It's just I don't have time. I'm like, there's no time time, except for everything you want to do, whatever. And I was trying to raise my vibration. And so I just came here out of the blue because I'm a producer here, and I'm always around.

But you weren't on staff yesterday. No.

And I had no idea what was going on here. I was just like, you know what? I'm going to a creative space. I swear to God. And then I sat down and I was like, and I heard your voice. And I was like, oh, my God, Mellon, I know Robert's. And the chapter was making me shake because it's everything affirming to me in that moment. And I was like, what the fuck is going on?

So two years ago, I landed at the Dallas Airport, and I get into it Uber. Now, I barely had a moment to say hello to the driver before my cell phone rang. It was one of the executives from Sony Pictures television calling about the launch of my new daytime talk show. When I hung up the phone, Eduardo introduced himself and said, I can't believe you're in my car. I've got to talk to you. And he said, I want to know how to become an Oscar-winning actor who will create opportunities for black and Latino men in the inner city who also want to be actors. Oh, I love that idea, I said. And then I immediately asked him the most obvious thing that was on my mind. So, Eduardo, why are you in Dallas? If acting is the game you want to be in, you have to be in New York or LA. He paused. Right. How old are you? Twenty-five. Oh, cool. Well, you have two choices, I said. You can either stay in Dallas or move to where the action is. And if you're 25 years old, I'm going to assume that like the 25-year-old me, you don't You don't have a house, and you don't have a spouse, and you don't have all the obligations that the 50-year-old Mel Robbins has, so you got nothing tying you down.

After you drop me off, you should give two weeks notice on this job, and you should move to New York or LA. You need a specific date so you can stop thinking about what you're going to do and start taking steps to make it happen. Give yourself a deadline. This is your dream, not mine, Eduardo. I could feel him thinking, Well, now the tears were flowing. So, Eduardo, you got to train your mind to spot all the opportunities that are right in front of your face rather than the obstacles. Can you give me one thing that happened today that is evidence that you should move to California? And he said, This conversation right now.

I cannot believe that was happening.

Well, but you need to believe it. Here's why. Yeah, right.

That's the- Here's why. Yeah. Okay?

You put it in motion by quitting your job. Yeah. Don't give secret. You put it in motion by quitting your job. And so when I talk about the fact that you can look backwards and be like, oh, that's how all the dots line up in my life and brought me here. Now it all makes sense. I'm telling you this moment is a dot that is going in a direction you're meant to go. And the more intentional you are about the decisions that you make and whether or not they align with where you want to be going, you have the power to change the trajectory. Anytime you make a decision, you're going to get it. You quit your yesterday. You made a decision to come here because it's where you feel more creative and alive. And you walk in, and you hear me recording the first audiobook that I'm releasing in literally four years. And you hear the chapter about a guy who is dying to move to LA and too scared to do it. If that is not you putting exactly what you needed in place, I don't know what is. Don't give the universe credit.

Give it to yourself because you're the one that finally woke the fuck up and made the right decision.

Now, I've been working on my debut album with Rob here. You are? I have been, but recently, I've been denying my dreams a little bit and crawling back into the resistance thing. Why?

What is it that makes you pull back from your dreams?

It's when you actually feel what you want. You literally said it, which is why I was listening to Chapter 10 yesterday, just through here. When you take that in and actually feel it, it is overwhelming. It's so much that comes up that's scary. What comes up for you? Everything. Oh, my God. What do I feel?

Yeah. When you really allow yourself to believe that it could be you on that stage. It could be your songs that are having millions of downloads and moving people. What does that bring up for you?

My free self, my What my soul knows. I feel like I just need to believe it in this world. But it's like, I do believe it can happen. It's just like allowing it to.

See, what I want to teach you is this. So you're absolutely right. When you allow yourself to envision the thing you deeply want the most. Like, I have the same thing about launching a podcast. If I really allow myself to believe it, it's that we will be the number one podcast, period. And I can feel it. That is my soul pulling me forward. But what's keeping me from really going all in and doing the work is this deep sense that I still am not worthy of the things that I want. And so the battle for you is not... Well, for me, it's not with fear. It's with this opinion that I don't deserve to be happy or I don't deserve and I'm not worth or I'm not good enough to have something that magnificent. And that is what holds me back. So how would you describe yours?

That's exactly it. If it comes down to this, why can't... Because it's a big dream. It's a big, It's a freaking thing. It's the whole thing. He's been with me from the beginning doing this. It's a whole thing. And it's like, yeah, and I could get there, but I'll still feel this way, I feel like, unless I deal with it now. You can have everything you want, still feel imposter syndrome or whatever.

You always will, because what you're talking about is that resistance you're feeling is the distance between your life right now and the life you want.

Yes, that makes sense.

And so what I want to tell you is this. This is also a mindfuck. You ready? You might not actually ever have your album have a million downloads or change anybody's life. The point of doing it anyway is that there's something inside you that is supposed to come alive that currently dies when you don't put this album out. It's really not about the album. It's about giving yourself permission and having the self-worth and the self-love to let that part of you that's dying to be seen and heard come alive and be expressed. The album is the vehicle to do it. What happens to that album is irrelevant. The most important thing is that you see that it's this opinion that you're not worthy or good enough that stops you being like, Fuck that. I'm not listening to it, and allowing the part of you that wants to be seen and heard to just come out and be you.

Thank you. It's crazy because whenever we're working in here on music, I'm the happiest. All my anxiety goes away. Everything feels like Homeostasis. Yeah. But then, so I just need to keep doing that, like you said, because that's the thing that needs to be fed. Yes. And just let the rest take its course. But that's what matters. It's what you're saying. It's doing the thing and not what's going to happen, I guess.

You have to let go of what's going to happen. You have to. Because otherwise, the thing that you love the most that makes you come alive becomes about achieving something rather than being the person, like being a state of being. It's not about the thing. It's about how you feel and how you're being. And music is what makes you come alive. So stop thinking about what is going to happen, right? Use that dream to make yourself come alive. But don't expect that to be the thing. Don't depend on it for your self-worth. Your self-worth is determined by getting up and showing up and doing the things that you're scared to do and that you love. That's how you're going to feel worthy, not by the number of albums that you sell. 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.