Creating a Better Life | بناء حياة أفضل | #ABtalks with Mel Robbins - ميل روبنز | Chapter 213

[Music] [Music] [Applause] I [Applause] [Music] So, we finally concluded two hours, and I can sit with Mel for way more hours, but you know, life has priorities. I hope you enjoy this conversation. I think Mel really simplified so much from life and from your learnings, and I think it's going to help a lot of people. I hope you're happy with the conversation and that you feel you actually said what you wanted to say.

Well, you know what I'm going to say: let them. Absolutely. We can't—I can only show up and be present and just give everything I got, and then I'm going to let you do what you're going to do with it. I have my hopes, but yeah. So anyways, always support us, subscribe. Our job is to give you the best we can—the minds and the stories. If you don't know where Mel is, find her everywhere; she'll help you and help your life. If you know her, I hope I brought a different perspective or a bit more about her as a human. So yeah, enjoy the conversation.

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Okay, um, first question—it's always a basic question. Hi Mel. Hi, how are you really doing?

How am I really doing? Correct. So I want you to imagine that you're sitting on an airplane, and the airplane is flying through the air 100 miles an hour, just moving, and you are sitting calmly in your seat. That's how I'm doing right now.

Seems like you've answered this question recently.

No, I knew you were going to ask it, so I prepared. And in life, if you don't do your research, then you're not prepared. I thought about it, though, because even the question itself—how are you doing really? The "really" is a prompt to ask somebody to go deeper, correct?

And I am, and I believe that your life changes overnight. It just took me 15 years to get to that night. As things are moving at a very accelerated pace, I know that my job is to stay centered and grounded. That's what I mean by that analogy—that how I'm really doing is that I acknowledge that I'm in this period in my life where there is a moment happening, and it's a moment that I've been building toward in my career and the impact I make in people's lives for a long time.

It's easy to get swept up in a moment, but the real power move is to actually meet it and be present for it and not miss it.

You're ready?

I'm ready.

You like—it's like you've been building up for this moment.

Uh, and you know there's the saying, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

Mhm.

And you've planned.

I have.

So you're there.

I am.

And you know, I think what's interesting is that a lot of people that are fans of yours are going to see this or listen to this and be bumping into me for the first time, or they're going to say, "Oh, that's that lady in the glasses that I see online."

Um, you can meet me in a moment like this and see everything that I've accomplished, but the truth is getting here wasn't glamorous; it was grueling. I think we're going to talk a lot about that today—like the truth about how you build a life that's very meaningful and what it actually takes to do it.

Okay, that's dance.

Um, who are you when no one's around?

Who am I when no one's around?

Yeah.

Um, it depends if I'm stoned or had a drink or I'm in a restaurant or I am at home. No, I'm just kidding. But I'm actually proud of the fact that at the age of 56, I am exactly who I am. The person that you see online, the person that I am right here, the person I am with my kids—I'm exactly that person.

And I'm very proud of that because I spent a long—so I am very proud of the fact that I've gotten to a point in my life where I'm exactly the same person everywhere I go. And I wasn't that way. I used to really change how I showed up depending upon people's moods, depending upon what I thought was expected of me, depending upon some sort of social norms or rules.

And it's liberating to be able to just be yourself. So whether I'm traveling for work and I'm having dinner alone, typically sitting at the bar so I can talk to the bartender or read a book, or I'm at home in Vermont and I'm in front of the fire and I'm hanging out with my husband Chris and we're playing cards or we're doing something, or I'm sitting here with you, I really believe I am the same person.

You know, one of the best compliments—I think me and you, I think thankfully we get complimented often online and offline, but the one that really I like, I would smile even internally, is when somebody says, "Oh, you're exactly the same as we thought you'd be from online."

And I think that's such a beautiful alignment between the persona people see and they're like, "Is he actually sweet? Is he actually deep? Is he actually not judging?" And then they sit down with me and they're like, "Okay, you're actually curious. You actually ask these questions even off camera." I'm like, "Yeah, it's always been me." The only difference is that that item there now.

Yeah, so I think you would appreciate that because you've reached now alignment.

Mhm.

And it's a beautiful compliment when somebody says, "You're just like we thought," or "exactly."

Well, I am a little different today because you have cameras, so I put makeup on. But the truth is if you saw me in real life, I would not look this made up.

Um, in fact, I find that my content on social media does way better the worse I look. And my daughters often say to me, "Mom, why did you put that video? You look terrible." I'm like, "I went to the grocery store looking like this. Why wouldn't I put this on social media? This is what I look like." But today, just a little bit fancier.

Okay, Mel's childhood in three words.

Um, oh, you didn't get done in the research.

No, I didn't.

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Um, stable, Midwestern, hardworking.

Why hardworking?

Uh, my parents both came from families that had family businesses. My mom grew up on a big cattle farm, and my dad grew up in a family—my grandfather was an immigrant from Austria, and my grandparents owned a bakery. My dad and his four brothers worked in the bakery, and my mother worked on the farm.

When I was growing up, my dad had gone to medical school and had a medical practice, and my mom had a little retail store. They were just very hardworking people, and we wouldn't eat dinner until both were home. It definitely made an impression on me, that's for sure.

A personal question, or more personal: what happened in fourth grade for me?

In fourth grade, I had an experience where, you know, it's sad that this is very common, but I had an experience where my family was away on a weekend trip, and I was with a bunch of kids, and we were all in like a big bunk room. I was on the bottom bunk, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and one of the older kids was on top of me.

It was a very confusing, is the word I would use, experience because this kid was molesting me. On the kind of range of things that happened to people, this may sound like a strange thing to say, but it was not the scariest thing. But for a fourth-grade brain to wake up with a kid on top of you in the middle of the night, I immediately knew something was wrong, even though I had no concept of what was happening.

I left my body. I just, you know, I had this experience where I just kind of rolled over. I think the experts call it "numbing," where you just shut down. I don't remember what happened next. I just remember that that next morning I woke up, and the covers were over me, and I didn't quite remember what had happened. I just had this incredible sense that it was all my fault.

The interesting thing about that is that I waited for all the kids to leave the bedroom, and I then kind of waited a little bit, and I got up, and then I went downstairs, and I saw my mom cooking breakfast. She had a spatula in her hand, and she turned around and said, "How'd you sleep?"

I wanted to tell her, and I saw the kid out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately froze. Now I knew what she would do. She would take that spatula and knock that kid into next week, but I didn't know what the kid was going to do. So I said nothing, and then I answered her question and said I slept fine, and I buried that memory and did not even remember that it had happened until I was 27 years old.

There was just a situation that I had where I was in a seminar, and somebody was talking about the experience of having had a babysitter abuse her while the babysitter was babysitting them and how she had done all this work to forgive her parents for hiring the babysitter and to forgive the babysitter and to work on her trauma.

But she realized she had a tremendous level of frustration that she was still angry at her sister because it had happened to her, not her sister. When she said that, I had this unbelievable moment where it was like time collapsed, and I remembered being in that bed as a fourth grader.

I remember when this kid was on top of me turning and seeing that my baby brother was asleep in the bed on the other bunk and thinking, "I can't make a sound because I don't want this person to hurt him." And that's when I left my body. They call it disassociating.

It was that person sharing that experience that triggered the memory and the suppressed trauma that profoundly changed the rest of my life.

Wow, it's crazy how people can suppress, or the brain suppresses or closes, archives something, and you don't even know there's an archive.

It's true. We don't even choose to do it. I think it's an automatic response where, as it's been explained to me, if you think about the fight-or-flight mechanism in your body, right?

And I'll give you an example of another way that trauma works and how it encodes in your body and your nervous system. I'm going to give you an example that is something that a lot of people might be able to relate to.

So when I was little, my mom and I were driving a car, and she was driving the car, but I was in the car with her. Where I grew up in the Midwest in the United States, it gets super snowy, and it can be really treacherous to drive. There was this big snowstorm, and we were driving, and I remember the radio station saying something about Calcasieu, Michigan, and to be careful on the roads out there because of black ice.

At that moment, this car went to pass us. We were driving at night, snowstorm, icy roads, and they went to pass us, and they misjudged the oncoming traffic, and a truck was coming. They swerved back into our lane. My mom just with the steering wheel to try to avoid this guy, which sent our car rolling down the hill in the snow.

Now, I remember being in the car. I remember feeling in the car as the car is going over this sensation like I was in a washing machine, you know? And I'm sitting still, and everything's spinning around. The dog flew from the front seat. My mom was at the steering wheel, and then all of a sudden, we come to a stop. My mom's driver's seat is kind of up like this, and I'm in the back, and the dog's in the way, and she's like, "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

And that is a traumatic experience. What happens in the body is that whenever your body gets put into a state of complete fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system turns on, right? And you go into fight, flight, or freeze. Your brain has this mode where it's almost like a camera, and you hold down the shutter. It's like, and it is taking snapshots in hyperspeed through your five senses of everything that's happening, which is why people often say that during traumatic events, things really slow down.

The reason why your brain does this is because it's trying to remember everything associated with this threatening event so that in the future, if any similar happens, you can be warned. This is why if you had somebody that was really rotten to you who wore a certain cologne, you could smell that cologne 30 years later and immediately feel the presence of the person.

That is the way that the body is designed as a protection mechanism to try to warn you in the future of situations that feel similar to threatening situations in the past.

So what's interesting, though, is that it's very personal. My mom, if somebody says the word black ice, my mom feels like she's right back in that car. For me, if it's a snowy day and if you walk on snow and it's like crunch, crunch, crunch, I'm right back in the car because that sound triggers the sound I heard as the car was rolling.

The reason why it seemed so slow is because my own brain was slowing it down to capture all the details to warn me in the future. Now, the reason why a lot of this sticks around is because the system that captures all that imagery and sensory encoding is not the same system that files it in long-term memory.

So for a lot of us that have had—and I would say us for every human being on the planet—because you cannot go through the experience of being a human being and not have something happen to you that stays with you that is some form of a traumatic event, which simply means your nervous system got turned on, a lot of memory got established and encoded, and it never got refiled in your long-term memory.

That's why people think about it. That's why people have these visions. That's why you can feel this sensation related to something that happened to you in childhood. That's why a lot of people, if you grew up in a household where there was a lot of abuse or yelling, a common trigger for people is when the sun starts to go down because that's when the adults came home and the yelling started.

Another common trigger is hearing tires on a gravel driveway pulling up, meaning somebody's come home and things are about to go down. And that's your body and brain trying to tell you to stay alert.

The problem for most adults right now, at least what I'm seeing with people that are—what I'm seeing as I talk like you do with world-renowned experts who come on my podcast, is that the experts estimate—and this comes from research from Dr. Aditi Nar, who is a Harvard Medical School doctor who ran one of the largest stress management clinics in the Harvard system—that 80% of adults right now are locked in a chronic state of stress, meaning their fight-or-flight response, the amygdala is turned on, and their higher functioning of the prefrontal cortex and their ability to focus or regulate their emotions is turned off.

And I'm kind of going out on a tangent now.

No, I'm listening.

Okay, and I think it's an important thing to understand because I do have a concern that most people are living in a state right now where they're really on edge, burnt out easily, emotionally activated or reactive, and you don't have to live like that. In fact, you're not supposed to live like that for long periods of time.

Yeah, I can only imagine that human beings maybe a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years ago, you do go through the stress of a hunt or being chased, but it's not the whole day, probably.

No, it's—I think a lot of it has to do with notifications on your phone.

Well, I mean, I think that is—you're too accessible.

We're not designed to be living our lives online, and we're not designed to—like part of the issue, and I'm sure you've talked about this on your show, is that if you look at the search, the algorithms for social media are designed to keep you on it.

Absolutely.

The headlines anywhere that you are in the world are designed to get you to read and to click. I don't know if you've heard this, but you might, but let me know if you did. Do you know this was crazy when I heard this? Do you know what is the number one competitor of Netflix?

TikTok?

I don't know.

Sleep.

The number one competitor of Netflix is sleep.

Yep.

They don't want you to sleep.

Oh, that's why they put the autoplay on.

Absolutely. It's crazy because we all fall for it. We're like, "At least five minutes of the second episode," and then you see the countdown—five, four, three.

When I heard that, I'm like, "Wow."

Well, and this is, I think, something that was certainly a wake-up call for me. A lot of what my work is about focuses on the things that I've struggled with, and most of us know exactly what we could or should be doing to be a little happier and healthier, to be a little kinder to ourselves and the people that we love.

Most of us know that it's not good for us to sit inside and stare at our phone for six hours a day. Most of us know that doom scrolling on social media and getting all jealous and worked up comparing ourselves to other people is not going to make our goals and dreams magically come true, and yet we do it.

Mhm.

And I was the same way. And the reason why we do it is because knowing what you need to do and doing it are two very different skills.

And everybody, especially if somebody's choosing to watch the show right now, the person that watches this wants to create a better life. And there is no problem with knowing what you need to do. The problem that most of us face is how do you make yourself do it?

Whether it's getting out of bed or going to the gym or getting off your phone or taking a breath and settling yourself before you snap at your spouse or your kids, we know what we need to do to be better people. We don't do it.

And one of the reasons why we don't do it is because we're stressed out and we're tired and we're addicted to our phones and we're exhausted and social media is in our face, and so we chronically feel behind.

And I'm here to say there's a completely different way to live, and it's important if you're somebody that wants to be happy and healthy to wake up and realize it's your responsibility to start making some changes.

Who have been your best teachers?

Um, my best teachers are my biggest struggles and breakdowns and failures. It's my worst moments that teach me the most. A lot of people say that, you know, a problem is a mountain of learning if you want to learn, of course.

And it's a very typical thing to hear. Well, you know, the thing is, look, I've learned everything that I talk about the hard way. Like you can read in a book; it's a totally different thing to apply in your life.

That's true.

And what I've learned is that when you start struggling, no one's going to come and save you. No one's going to fix your problems.

Heard that.

I heard you say that.

Although some people have, of course, advisors or counselors, and these can relieve but not solve.

Well, it's wonderful to have support, and I think—and I believe it's an important thing in life to be a supportive and kind person and to be a caring person. It's an important thing in life to invest in your relationships and to be the kind of person that shows up.

But it's critical to understand that your life is your responsibility. If you're sitting around blaming somebody else, if you're sitting around wishing somebody else would fix things for you or pay for your life or that somebody owes you something, you're wrong.

Mhm.

And to me, that's been one of the biggest wake-up calls in my life is realizing that if I want to be happier, if I want to make more money, if I want to have a better relationship with my kids, if I want to achieve my goals, it's not on anybody else; it's on me.

That's, in a nutshell, you're summarizing it to accountability, which unfortunately a lot of people—because it's easy not to be accountable because then you have to deal with yourself.

Mhm.

So it's much easier to sit here, and me and you can talk about 16 things why we haven't done the last thing we wanted to do, and probably 14 of them are valid excuses, but it doesn't change anything.

So I noticed this self-pity because I think also people don't realize—I was talking to my manager about this. I said what a lot of people don't realize is that ego—we have a very one-dimensional way of looking at ego. It's this arrogant, bossy, or whatever type of ego.

I said that's just one type of ego, but for me, the more you're insecure as a human, the bigger your ego is. And sometimes it's what you're insecure in that brings out that ego, and what you're secure in, you see you're very confident about.

But why do I say ego? It's because the ego doesn't want to take responsibility.

Well, you know what's interesting is that I don't even like the word ego. I think it's too intellectual. I don't even know what the hell you're talking about, and the average person who's just trying to wake up and do a good job at work and have a better relationship with their kids—the minute you say ego, like I'm tuning out.

Like I personally feel that there are two main problems that people struggle with, and it's the same stuff that I struggled with. The first one is knowing what you need to do but not feeling like doing it.

Mhm.

And that is a problem of motivation and not understanding the mechanism inside you because the truth is motivation just means feeling like doing something. And if something's painful or hard, you're hardwired to resist doing it.

And if you're sitting around waiting to feel ready or waiting to feel like doing something, you will never do it. Motivation is complete garbage. If it were available to all of us at all times, we'd all have billions of dollars and six-pack abs and, you know, the best cars and everything else.

What changed my life is understanding that you can feel unmotivated and still do it. You can see that something's very hard and be nervous and still try. You can wake up in the morning and feel dread and overwhelmed, and you can count backwards—5, 4, 3, 2, 1—and get your rear end out of bed.

That it's through action that you change everything. Talk is cheap. Thinking about your problems gets you trapped in your problems. I prefer a neck-down approach that is grounded in aligning your actions with your values and what you want.

Counting backwards 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, which is something that I started doing, gosh, 15 years ago when my husband and I were $800,000 in debt, and I was dealing with our problems and our financial breakdowns by drinking myself into the ground and blaming everything on him.

I found myself at a point where I could barely get out of bed. I didn't even recognize myself. I was hitting the snooze button three, four, five times a morning. I knew I needed to get out of bed. I didn't feel like getting out of bed. I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus to school. I didn't feel like getting up and doing it.

I knew I needed to look for a job. I didn't feel like doing it, so I didn't do it. And so I learned again the hard way that waiting and wishing and hoping something's going to change—it doesn't make it change; it makes things stay the same.

It's that, um, what's that Einstein quote? Um, the definition of insanity is expecting different results but doing the same thing.

Yes.

And I know I read something really interesting that the huge difference between interested or committed.

Mhm.

When you're interested, you only do things because they're convenient or because you're purely interested. Commitment is what you just said. You wake up, you don't feel like it, you slept three hours, but your kids want you to drop them to school. You're like, "Okay."

Yeah.

If you want your life to change, the message for me is very clear. There's nothing special about the two of us, you and I. We just do what a lot of people won't do. We get up on the mornings we don't feel like it, and we do the boring, tedious, irritating, unglamorous crap every day that over time actually changes your life or achieves your goals.

And that's why I'm adamant that if I can define what I want and put my head down and work for more than a decade to make it a reality, I believe anybody can.

But then what's the difference between us and somebody who's like, "How does Mel and I find time to work out, sit with their family, work on their podcast, write a book?"

Like, is it like—what? Because I do believe it's like you said, we're all human. We're all with the 24 hours. Nobody has 25 or 26.

Well, tell you what. If you want me to show you what you're committed to, show me how you spent your last 24 hours. Don't tell me in today's world you don't have time when I can look at your phone use or I can watch what you're watching on Netflix, and I can see how you're wasting your time.

And not everybody has the same 24 hours. The 24 hours that I have now, that I'm at a point in my life where I'm financially successful and my kids are launched, is very different than the 24 hours that I had when I was $800,000 in debt and I had three kids under the age of 10, and we were struggling to put groceries on the table.

Same block of time, very different relationship to it because I had no access to things that money can buy you, and I didn't have the support that I needed. However, I still wasted a lot of time. I still slept in. I still spent time on my phone. I still procrastinated. I still avoided things that I needed to do. I still had too much to drink at night, which then again wasted more time and wasted more time in the morning.

And so if you want to see what you're actually committed to, take a look at how you've spent the last 24 hours or the last week, and your actions are the truth.

And this is a very important thing in life—that people's behavior reveals who they are and what they're committed to, and so does yours, by the way.

And we don't want to look at that. We want to complain and say, "Well, I don't have time," and "I don't do this," and "You know Mel and I," and "No," and blame, blame, blame.

Well, I'm going to say there's always three fingers pointing right back at you when you point the finger at somebody else.

And this is important because if you're tired or you're frustrated or you feel stuck or you're just not as happy as you'd like to be, the problem isn't you. The problem is you're giving too much of your power to other people because you are spending too much time and pouring too much energy into either worrying about or managing or trying to make other people happy.

And that is time that you need for yourself. That is power that you need to claw back so that you can focus on what's actually in your control in life because there's always things you can control, and it's what you think, it's what you say, and it's how you process your emotions. Those are the three things that you can always control.

I want to rewind because I remembered something I wanted to ask you.

Sure.

You said there are two things on the brain aspect: one is the trauma that it goes through, and then it fails to refile it.

Yes.

Can you refile it?

Yes.

Huh.

You absolutely can, but you cannot do it if you're in a stressed-out state.

Okay.

And the refiling doesn't happen through talk therapy. Talk therapy and talking about what happened absolutely helps you process it and cope with it, but if you didn't talk yourself into the thing that caused all this programming in your body, how the hell can you talk yourself out of it?

You can't. You have to go from the neck down. All the modalities that are out there, whether we're talking about cold plunging or you're talking about meditation or EMDR or you're talking about some of the therapeutic protocols for guided psychedelic meditation, which are all designed to put you in a parasympathetic state, which means your resting calm nervous system is now in control.

That's what allows your brain to then revisit those experiences and process them in long-term memory.

Interesting.

You, well, from what I know, you studied law.

I did.

And then you went to media, and then you also became a motivational speaker and an author. Was there a switch, or was it incremental, or was there a moment, like a mindset switch?

Um, in what regard?

In changing your life, because it seems from what I read there was something in Mel as a human that switched.

Well, I think that I'm just one of those people that had to kind of feel my way through everything. I went to law school because I didn't know what else to do, and people around me were going to graduate school.

Then I got to law school, and I'm like, "I don't like this," but I'm going to stay because I'm like a dog with a bone. I'm not going to give it up, right?

And in law school, I discovered that—I actually didn't discover that I have dyslexia in law school, but I hated law school. But the third year of law school, I discovered what's called mock trial, where you basically learn how to be a trial lawyer, and you're on your feet. You're not reading; you're not writing briefs; you're basically talking.

And it turns out I was really good at that. So I kind of have felt my way from one thing to another. I practiced law for a bit, and my first job as a lawyer was as a public defender, which means I was assigned to represent people who could not afford a lawyer who had been accused of a crime in New York City.

Which means I was, as a young lawyer in my early 20s, meeting my clients when they were arrested and behind bars and about to go before a judge and have a bail hearing. That was the first time I had ever met them, and I was assigned to represent them, so they didn't pick me.

It was an extraordinary experience in my life because there was always this moment where somebody's brought out from the jail cells in the back, and you're sitting, you know, at this table, and they're being formally charged with the crimes, right, and read what the charges are against them.

And then there's a bail hearing, and one of the biggest things that happens in a bail hearing is whether or not somebody shows up because you are granted bail based on the severity of the crime, based on your criminal history, and based on whether or not, as the attorney, I can prove that you're a reliable person with ties to the community.

I was startled by how many people had no one—no one. And I have never, ever, ever forgotten what that feels like to see that no one shows up.

And I think that's one of the things that drives me as a core value is to show up for people, and that's what I do in my work.

And so, you know, to answer your question about what switched, I feel in my body frustration when things are out of alignment.

And so I, you know, I was a public defender, and then I went to work for a large law firm, and I hated it. I just knew I didn't want to be a lawyer anymore. I didn't want to answer the question, "What do you do for a living?" with the answer, "I'm a lawyer."

And when your body has friction in it, something's out of alignment. That decision to not be a lawyer anymore and to figure out what I was going to do next was sort of the beginning of me really listening to that.

The next big core tipping point would have been when I was 41 years old, and my husband had gone into the restaurant business, and the first restaurant was very successful.

And so, like complete morons, we cashed out our life savings and took out credit cards and a home equity line and poured it all into restaurant number two and number three. This was around 2007-2008, which was when the global real estate crisis hit.

We found ourselves in a position that I never thought I'd be in—almost a million dollars in debt. We've lost friends and family's money. My husband's spiraling; I'm spiraling. I lose my job. We got three kids under the age of 10.

You know, I don't know if you create vision boards or manifest, but I'll tell you something: I'd never created a vision board that was like divorce, alcoholism, bankruptcy. This is great.

And even then, even when things were horrible, I still knew the little things I could do, but I struggled with doing them. And I think that's what most people struggle with—just making themselves do the little things that they know kind of are everything at the end.

And that was a huge tipping point in my mindset because that's the moment that I started counting backwards—5, 4, 3, 2, 1—the idea being if I can launch myself like a rocket out of bed, maybe if I moved fast enough, I wouldn't be in the bed when the anxiety and the depression and the overwhelm pinned me there.

Counting backwards 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 turns out to be a wildly effective technique. You know, the idea being that if you don't move within five seconds, your brain kills your motivation to act.

And counting backwards is what researchers now call—I started calling it the 5-second rule. You got to move within five seconds so your brain will kill your motivation to act.

It's a starting ritual. It's a little tool that you can use to trick your own brain and to trigger positive action. And so the second you start counting backwards—5, 4, 3, 2, 1—you've already made the decision to do it.

And the counting is like that first domino, and the first domino can tip a domino twice its size, and these two dominoes can tip a domino about five times its size.

And so the counting backwards leverages all this really interesting science. I knew none of this at the time. I know this now because it's been studied extensively.

When you count backwards—5, 4, 3, 2, 1—it requires you to focus, so you're manually switching gears from the subconscious part of your brain where your self-sabotaging behavior is, and you're bringing your prefrontal cortex online, which is what you need to be using to create new behavior, to be present, to be intentional, and to change.

And so that was kind of the first big thing, and the 5-second rule taught me the skill that everybody needs to learn, which is doing it even though you don't feel like it.

Let me explain this another way. So let's take Nike—just do it. Most famous tagline in the world, right? Those three words—what do you think the most important word is?

Do?

Nope.

Just.

Yes.

Imagine if the tagline was "Do it."

Yeah.

When it's not that inspiring, is it?

Yeah.

"Just do it" is powerful because it acknowledges your humanity. It acknowledges that you have hopes and dreams; you have a desire, but you're hesitating; you're doubting.

So Nike is calling you through your doubt. They're saying, "Just do it. Stop thinking. Just do it. Stop doubting."

I have a counter, though.

Just do it.

Uh-huh.

Does it make you an impulsive human being?

No.

Why?

I'll tell you why. Because you can use it in two ways: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 pushes you through excuses and self-doubt to do the thing you know you need to do, or 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 pause.

But for, uh, or pause, but like you're in a car dealer.

Uh-huh.

And you're really excited about this car, and you go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, buy it.

Well, if you have a spending problem, you're an idiot.

See, that's my point.

Yeah, you're screwed.

But here's the thing—no, hold on a second. This is about doing what you know you need to do.

Yes.

So that's a very important point. And so this is now used in treatment centers around the world for addiction because if you're going to be sober, you actually have to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 choose not to drink, and you have to choose something else.

And if you're somebody who gets frustrated and angry like you do or like I do, it's okay. Both of us—5, 4, 3, 2, 1 puts you in pause, which we know we need to do.

Absolutely.

And so that's why that works.

And then the next big thing is what I discovered two years ago, which has had the single biggest impact on me, my life, my success, my relationships, and that's the let them theory.

Yeah.

And learning to let adults be adults and learning to focus on what I can control and to stop focusing on things I can't control.

Yeah, I'll get to this to your book also.

Um, another question: when you went through a very difficult time with the second and third restaurant with the financial crisis, how did your marriage survive that?

I have no idea.

No, I'm just kidding.

No, I literally—I guess it survived because we both wanted it. We both wanted it to survive.

See, in any relationship, it will work if you both want it to work and if you're both willing to do the work. If you have been in a relationship that failed or you broke up or you got a divorce, you can look back and you can actually pinpoint the moment when somebody decided to no longer work at it or they decided they didn't want it to work.

Yeah.

And so that's why it worked. Neither one of us got out of the boat. Like in life, think about your relationships like a seesaw. There are going to be times where you're up, where you're down, where you're in balance. If one of you gets off the seesaw, it slams to the ground.

And so a lot of what relationships are about is realizing that you're leaning toward the person. And our tendency, especially when things get hard, is to turn the other person into the problem and to lean away from them.

And that's why, like, I remembered I kept reminding myself that I knew who Chris was in his heart. And I think that's another mistake that people make is you forget who you actually are with.

It's a very important point because I think patience is the skill, obviously, and it's not being trained in the current modern life where everything is fast. You know, your likes, your posts, your ordering, your Ubers, your delivery—everything is so instant.

Like even if I'm an '81 child, so it was at even at my time, you wait until—if I call my friend and he doesn't answer, I'm not upset. He'll call me tomorrow, or I'll see him at school tomorrow. I called his house; he didn't answer. His mom answered, and it's okay.

So your life is guiding you that things take time, and it's okay. Now, the moment a financial crisis happens within a marriage, which is apparently the number one divorce reason, you said something so beautifully: you turn the partner into a villain or you blame, or you could have done better. You should have never left that job, right?

And suddenly now it's inconvenient, and I quit.

And I'm very, very afraid that we're grooming a generation of quitters. And I don't mean somebody should stay if they really give it their all, and it's healthy to quit sometimes.

It's healthy to quit; you should know when to leave.

But also, don't quit too prematurely. I know a lot of people who stuck through very hard times.

I know everybody that I know—so we will be almost 30 years married. Everybody that goes the distance in a relationship, whether it's a business partnership or a marriage, they never regret working through the hard stuff.

But I know a lot of people who broke up or got divorced who have a lingering question and regret that they actually didn't try harder as things were starting to get hard.

And you will never regret trying to work through it because even if it ends, you know in your heart that you gave it what you had to give.

And it also, especially if there's kids involved, means that the separation tends to be less volatile, and you're able to figure out co-parenting in a much more respectful and supportive way.

Absolutely.

What—why do you do all that you do? I mean, it's beautiful that I'm getting to know you, and this prison story is a DNA for you. It's just that feeling you don't want anybody to go through that feeling, so maybe that's one of the drivers, like you said.

But is—am I—what's the why?

You know, I caused myself so much headache and heartache, and I also hurt a lot of other people because I just didn't know. Like, I didn't—I'm part of a generation of women who—there's about a 20-year span of women like me who started having anxiety when they were in middle school and high school, and we got treated for anxiety disorder, medicated.

Like, I was on Zoloft for 25 years, and then lo and behold, when I'm 46 and our 10-year-old son is going through issues at school and he's getting evaluated, it turns out that he's dyslexic and dysgraphic and has ADHD.

And I go, "Wait a minute, this looks an awful lot like me." And I go through the testing, and it turns out I had dyslexia and ADHD.

And if you don't treat ADHD and you don't put a kid in an environment where they are being taught in the way that the brain learns, what do you suppose develops on the surface? Anxiety.

There is an entire generation of women that were diagnosed with anxiety and treated for it with prescription drugs when the underlying issue all along was a learning disability or something like ADHD.

And there are so many things that I see as patterns in my life because I just didn't know.

Um, and knowledge is power, and understanding that you're not the only one that's struggling with these things—that guarantee you anything that you've struggled with, anything that I've struggled with, the person that is watching or listening to us right now spending time together with us, they are either struggling with the same thing or somebody that they care about is.

And so I've just come to realize that just like a walk with a really good friend always makes you feel better, and you open up and you share about things that are bothering you, and you tell a funny story, and then you pass a recommendation back and forth, and you leave feeling better, I want to do that with my work.

I want to be a friend to anybody that wants to live a better life and wants to learn and wants to connect because I have wasted too many years of my life hurting myself or hurting other people because I just didn't know what I was dealing with.

Even things like trauma, you know, almost all of us have patterns that began in childhood. And you know, I recently had a doctor on that you should have on—his name is Dr. Stuart Ablon. He's a psychologist who has been in practice for 30 years, and he's been running something—an institute called Think Kids, I think that's what it's called—for 30 years at Mass General Brigham.

He said this thing to me that I will never, ever, ever forget, and I just heard it a week ago: "People do well when they can, and when they can't do well, it's typically because they're missing some core skills, like being able to communicate what they need, being able to regulate their emotions, being able to be socially not awkward with people."

And there are a bunch of other kind of skills that people can develop, and if you don't have those skills, like I didn't have the skills of regulating my emotions, I didn't have the skills of communicating what I needed when I was in classrooms as a little girl.

Because a lot of people don't realize girls—when ADHD became a diagnosis, they studied boys in the 1970s, not girls. Girls present very different symptoms than boys do. Boys tend to be kind of fidgety and all over the place; girls go inward and get quiet.

Interesting.

And so they get missed. And the majority of women that get diagnosed with ADHD—you want to know how they get diagnosed? Because their kids are going through an evaluation at school, and it's applicable to them.

Yes.

So I didn't know. And imagine how incredible it feels if I share all of these things or I sit with an expert and I really get them to unpack what they're researching down to simple things that we can do—how that impacts somebody halfway around the world who doesn't have access to a therapist or doesn't have a family structure where their family talks about these things or won't ever be able—like that Dr. Stuart Ablon or some of the researchers we've had on, you wouldn't be able to get an appointment ever because they're either not taking appointments because they're doing research or the waitlist is three years long.

So to be able to share this kind of information, whether it's information from my life or mistakes I've made as a parent or the things I've screwed up in my marriage because I didn't know.

But why? What do you mean why? Like you could still keep it all to yourself. Why do you have to bother and want to help other people?

Because I think everybody's purpose is the same: it's to share your story and to connect with people. Like, it really—like the more that you are generous of spirit, the better your life gets.

H. Like, I don't want a life where I'm focused on myself. I don't want a life where I'm, you know, trying to figure out the next purse to buy or, you know, that makes somebody happy—great, but it doesn't make me happy.

If I know I can save somebody the headache or the frustration or I can give them a shortcut, I'll do it all day long.

What does the voice in your head sound like?

Um, you know, it's really quiet.

H.

Because of the let them theory.

And that's recent?

Yeah.

But literally, you go about your day thinking, "Let them, let them, let them."

Or course.

Completely.

Then they don't manage anything.

No, I literally say anytime somebody is frustrating me or pissing me off or stressing me out, I just say, "Let them."

That's it.

And then the second part of the theory is you have to say, "Let me." Let me decide how I want to respond to this. What do I want to think, say, or do?

And here's why this is powerful: you will never, ever be able to control another person. You will never be able to control what they think. You will never be able to control what they do. You will never be able to control the emotions or feelings that rise up or their opinions.

You will not. And this is not my opinion; this is hard science. The fact is human beings—you, me, the person that is watching and listening to us right now—we have a hardwired need for control. It is a survival instinct. We have to feel like we're in control of what we're doing, what we're saying, how we're feeling, our environment, our decisions.

If we don't feel in control, we feel unsafe. And so we have a problem then because if I have a need to control and you have a need to control, then naturally it's going to spill out, and we're going to try to control one another so that we feel better.

Like this is why we worry. This is why we want the best. Like, you know, anybody that's a parent will be like, "But I want my kid to be motivated in school," but I want them to have good—but I want this—but I want that.

That's great. You can guide; you can inspire; you can influence. You cannot control whether or not they do it.

Yeah.

Well, you can influence.

So yeah, I say let them all day long because the one thing you'll never be able to control is another person, and yet you spend way too much time and energy worrying about managing or trying to control what other people are doing, saying, and feeling.

It's a very tricky thing.

Like, I want to dig deeper into this. If you go about your day thinking, "Oh, they sent the wrong email," let them.

Mhm.

Well, it's different if you're an employer and you're a boss.

So it's about truly understanding what can you actually control and what can't you control.

Now, if a person sends the wrong email, they screw up at work, let them. It already happened. What the heck can you do about it?

Your power is not in erupting.

Yeah.

Your power is in the let me part. Let me choose how to respond.

Correct.

Because that's what you can control. And if you're the leader, two very important things. First of all, leaders bring the weather. Your energy is the weather at your company. If you're frustrated and stressed out, guess what the weather is in your company?

Your job as a leader is to make sure that people understand the outcomes that define success and the outcomes that they're supposed to achieve every week.

If somebody consistently does not do that, you either have a problem with skills or training. And in my experience, at least, if I'm calling myself out, it's always in my lack of training and my lack of clarity of communication of what I expect.

If you have clearly communicated to somebody what your expectations are for them to do a good job, then you've done your job as a boss, and now you got to let them do their job.

And if they continue to screw up, let me give you feedback. If they continue to screw up, let me lay you off.

Yeah, but getting all pissed off and stressed out because somebody just—that's dumb.

You know what played with my head is this saying that you are the size of what you allow to irritate you.

I think that's true.

And right now, you're giving way too much power to things that are beneath you when you worry about somebody else's opinion, which is something you'll never be able to control.

Here, I'll give you an example. Every single person has had the experience where you open up social media and you go to post something, and you're like, "Oh, is that photo going to..." and then you put on a filter, and then you write a caption like, "Oh, is that too much?"

Why do we do that? The reason why we do that is we're trying to control what people think. We don't want somebody to have a negative thought. We don't want them to unfollow us. We don't want them to have an opinion. We don't want them to roll their eyes.

So that is an example of you giving power to something you will never be able to control. The average person has 70,000 thoughts a day, none of which are in your control.

So is it a wise use of your precious time and energy to adjust your behavior to try to influence something you can't control, or is it smarter to go, "What actually makes me proud?"

And then say, "Let them think a negative thought."

Because that's what you're worried about.

It's a radical idea.

Let them think a negative thought, and then let me remind myself that if I operate in a way that's aligned with my values, and if I operate in a way that allows me to express myself, I'm proud of myself.

And that's how you live a life where you're aligned with who you are. That's how you show up as yourself no matter where you are.

And the interesting thing also about the let them theory is that it creates incredible connection and space for deeper connection because when I say let them, especially with family, let my mom be disappointed that I'm not going to come visit next weekend.

Let her be disappointed.

Why do you have to remove that feeling for her? Why do you have to make her happy? Isn't disappointment a mentally healthy response to not being able to see someone you love?

What's the alternative?

And she's like, "Thank God you're not coming. I can't stand you."

So let them be disappointed, and then go to the second part: let me act in a way that's aligned with my values and that really supports me.

And the big thing that people need to hear is this: don't go visit your parents because it makes them think you're a good son. Visit your parents because it makes you feel like a good one.

When you allow other people's emotions to manipulate your decisions, you turn other people into the villain.

Yeah.

When you say, "Let me decide what works for me," and if you being a good son and you value family, then you make it a priority, but you do it for you.

And when you let your parents be who they are, you're going to learn how to see who they are and choose how to love them as they are.

If family's important to you, and it might be the first time that you actually see exactly who they are—their limitations, their positives, their negatives—and it creates—when you let someone be who they are, they will reveal themselves to you.

We're so busy worrying about people and like fixing people.

Tricky.

I'll give you a personal example. So if you're an—I, the other day, we had with one of our colleagues, um, I really don't do well—I don't want to make this, but it's relevant, so I'll ask.

Let them.

So, uh, we need that tattoo now.

Let them.

Um, the—I don't enjoy the elephant in the room situations.

Great.

You know when people are just like silent treatment or—

Well, hold on. The silent treatment is actually punishing somebody.

Yeah, I don't like that.

Well, you—and that's somebody who doesn't communicate that I'm bothered or you hurt me or I wish you didn't send this email this way.

Just tell me.

Then I have the right to apologize if I did something wrong.

So here's what you—well, tell me the situation. What happened?

No, this is a very common situation because I deal with a lot of people throughout, whether work or not work, and it's a lot of people don't know how to vocalize that they got offended or they got—

It's not a lot of people; it's everyone.

I live by the rule that every human being you meet is an 8-year-old emotionally trapped in a big body.

And if you look at behavior side by side, childlike behavior—throwing a tantrum, like your kid doesn't get the toy in the aisle of a store—they flop on the ground and throw a tantrum because their emotions of disappointment and sadness and surprise overwhelm them.

They don't know how to process their emotions; that's what a child does.

And as the adult, it is your responsibility to help the child process those emotions.

But let's talk about what adults do. They send nasty texts; they rage at people.

Same thing.

Uh, kids pout to try to draw an adult. Adults give the silent treatment; they punish you and cut you off to try to get you to come to them.

These are all emotionally immature behaviors. Most adults have never, ever, ever been taught the skill of emotional regulation, emotional self-awareness, or emotional maturity.

And if somebody hasn't been taught a skill, they're not going to be able to display it.

And so for me, the let them theory has been incredible because if I see somebody that is giving me the silent agreement or is passive-aggressive or they take their stress out on me, first all I say is let them.

And I'm not allowing them—like treat me like crap. I'm allowing it without allowing it. I'm basically going, "I see this. I see the 8-year-old in you. I see that you're emotionally overwhelmed right now and that you're very immature in your development of handling your own emotions."

So I'm going to let them because it's not my job to parent you, and it's not my job to tiptoe around your emotions, and it's not my job to sit here and manage this situation.

So I'm going to let them because then I recognize that this is not something that I can control, and it's not my job to control it.

But then I say, "Let me." Let me address this in a very adult way.

Let me choose that if this person responds in this way, how much time I'm actually going to spend with this person.

Let me say to somebody, "Look, I'm sorry for what your work stress is done to you, but you're going to have to apologize for what your work stress has done to me."

That's a very different way of handling something.

And you talk a lot about boundaries.

Let them and let me is the ultimate boundary with people.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that.

And what I love about this is that, you know, when you kind of see people as 8-year-old maturity level, you feel more compassion for them.

Absolutely.

You know, empathize.

Yeah.

And the truth is people do well when they can. And if somebody wasn't taught how to regulate their emotions as a child, they don't know how to do it as an adult.

Our parents were never taught this, which is why they didn't know how to teach it to us.

But all it takes is one person in a family to change everything.

All it does is take one person to be the mature one in the room.

I mean, we're all tiptoeing around the person that's exhibiting immature, toxic behavior. The opposite is true.

The person that is centered and calm and mature has way more power.

Like, have you ever noticed if somebody's yelling and you get really quiet and you talk a little softer, how everybody turns to you?

Absolutely.

But you can't do that if you're not calm inside.

Absolutely.

What's your take on social media?

I think social media is a tool that is incredible, but human beings have become the tool.

And that I am extremely frustrated by the fact that we know that companies have manipulated the algorithms to screw around with people's brain chemistry.

There's a ton of research about addiction and something called intermittent rewards.

And what they find when they study addiction and behavior that people get out of control with is that, you know, I think they did this study with rats where they either gave the rat consistent reward, and the rat got kind of bored because it knew it was coming.

But when you gave this little rat a reward and then they had to tap, tap, tap, and they weren't sure when it was coming, they just kept tapping.

It's like a slot machine.

Why do you keep pulling a slot machine? Because you think the next one might be good.

It's the same mechanism for why you scroll. You get intermittent rewards.

"Oh, this one's good. The next 10 are terrible. Oh, this one's good. The next 13 are terrible."

Exact same brain mechanism.

Plus, because the algorithms change in real time to show you more of what you're paying attention to, it also taps into your own bias in your brain of seeing things that confirm what you believe.

And so I think social media has ruined global politics. I think it has destroyed children's mental health.

I think people are addicted to it and don't admit it to themselves, and I have a tremendous amount of fear about where this is headed.

I'm thrilled to see Australia ban social media for kids 16 and under. I don't think phones belong in schools, and we're complete idiots for allowing kids to have phones on them when they're supposed to be in a school environment learning.

We know based on the research that if your phone is next to you, even if you and I had a phone here and it was face down, both parts of our brain that show that we're now thinking about something else—like our ability to pay attention—it is actually implicated by somebody else's phone near us, just like an 8-ball of cocaine would be.

And yet we're allowing it, and I think it's sad, honestly.

And the other flip side to this is it's incredibly powerful. It's an amazing tool.

I mean, you can launch a business from your phone. You can connect with people around the world. It's how I'm making a global impact right now.

And so with most things in life, there are pros and cons. But I think the adults and governments are asleep at the wheel in terms of limiting what's happening.

Like, I think a lot about the—remember all the legislation? I don't know how old you are, but at least in the United States, when they discovered that the big tobacco companies knew that cigarettes were addictive, just like vaping, when they started jamming grape-flavored stuff and marketing it to kids, that shouldn't be allowed, which was why there were lawsuits against it and why there were massive settlements around it and why things changed.

The exact same thing is happening with social media right in front of our eyes. We have the data; we know it; we're ignoring it.

Like, this is where—even with social media, knowing that it's addictive, yet there's no regulation and no licensing.

Like, you can't drive a car without a license, but you can open an Instagram account, and you're five years old.

Right?

It's crazy.

Well, it's also parents, dude. Like, the problem is parents.

Like, at some point, a parent has to be able to say no, and that's part of the problem.

I'm angry at social media companies because they know what the algorithms are doing. They know exactly what they're doing, and the reason why they're doing it is because the more time people spend online, the more money the companies make.

But if you know that somebody has designed something to be addictive, then there is some responsibility, I believe, to limit access.

It's why there are age limits for drinking and pornography and cigarettes, because we know it's hyper-addictive to somebody's developing brain.

But parents also have a responsibility to say no, and we don't.

We don't let our kids be upset. We don't let our kids be mad that, you know, everybody else has it, but I don't get it.

Or just be bored.

Yeah.

Or just be bored.

When my son says he's bored, I'm like, "Good! You're going to be creative."

I mean, it should be a wake-up call to every parent out there to know that any founder of any platform does not allow their kids to have smartphones.

Yeah.

That's telling.

What about your take on Gen Z?

What age limit is Gen Z?

I can't—

I think 2013.

I think it stops at 2013, so they're late.

Are they 2000 plus?

I was—I don't even know.

I have no idea.

Here's how I feel about it. I feel like every generation has a story about the generation above it and below it, and I refuse to buy into the stories because I believe everybody has tremendous potential, and everybody can change if they can and if they want to.

And so we are a product of our childhoods and our conditioning, and we're increasingly a product of the technology we consume.

And to me, I look at everybody, and I see a person who is capable of living a beautiful, connected, meaningful life.

That's what I see.

And what is your definition of success?

It is being surrounded by the people that I love in a place that I love when I take my last breath.

That's beautiful.

And what is your definition of love?

Um, love is simply consideration and admiration.

Love is simply consideration and admiration. That's all it is.

When you consider somebody else, you have them in mind. It's an act of love to make somebody a cup of coffee in the morning.

When you admire some attribute about somebody, it's an act of love.

And that's why I actually think saying let them is an act of love because you're seeing somebody—letting them be.

Yes.

And what has been the most important thing in a love relationship in general from what you're learning? Because you're 30-plus years, I believe you said?

Yeah, we're married 28, been together 30.

Lovely.

So what is so important?

I think it's kindness.

Like, I—it sounds cheeseball, but at the end of the day, I say to my daughters, who are 25 and 23, that the person that you choose to create a life with, they should feel like home base.

You know when you play tag and you run to home to base to be safe?

Right?

Feel so good.

Yeah, yeah.

That like you're going to come home at the end of the day, and you want to feel like you're coming to home base.

And that's a very different feeling than desire and dating and shininess and all the stuff that we chase.

And the more that you can feel like you can be you and the more that you feel like they let you be you, I think the better the relationship is.

Because if you truly want to be in a relationship where you're going to go the distance, it will go the distance if you're with somebody who wants it to go the distance and who's willing to do the work.

And if you show up in a relationship and you really prioritize consideration—do you have the other person in mind?

Like, you know, you mentioned the fact that the number one cause for divorce and breakup is financial struggles.

And when things get hard, we blame the other person, but we don't ever stop and think, "Wait a minute, my partner didn't try to go bankrupt. It wasn't their goal to lose their job."

Like, remind yourself of the person you fell in love with in the first place. Remind yourself of the goodness in their heart.

Like, you're with this person because there's something about them at their core that you've forgotten.

And if you're with somebody for a long time and you start to feel like they don't consider you or they don't look at you and admire something about you—whether it's your loyalty or how hardworking you are or what a great parent you are or what a wonderful son or daughter you are or the difference that you make with the neighbors or in the community—if you don't feel that from somebody, you close off.

So that's what I think the secret is. It's like truly about waking up every day and reminding yourself that at their core, this person is a good person, and they do well if they can.

And the more that you let them be who they are, the better the relationship's going to be.

Your brain is so cool, man, like the way you go.

Yeah.

And at some point, if they can't do well or if you grow apart, let them.

Because then it comes back to you because you always get to choose whether or not you're going to pour time and energy.

Like if somebody's emotionally abusive, let them.

Because controlling them isn't going to work.

You got to focus on what you can control, which is why are you staying with somebody like this?

If you're with somebody that is disrespectful or not texting you back or is leading you on or sleeping with a bunch of people and you know not wanting to commit, don't try to control them.

Let them.

They're revealing very clearly that you're not a priority; you're a convenience.

And then you got to do the let me part and ask yourself, "Why am I accepting less than I deserve? Why am I accepting table scraps?"

It's not their problem; it's mine.

Absolutely.

He reminded me of the late Maya Angelou when she said, "When people show you who they are, believe them."

Nobody wants to.

That's the problem with dating. You're in a fantasy in your head with the potential, but you're not in the reality of who the person is—the loser next to you in bed.

Let them reveal who they are, and then get serious about choosing and creating love because it's probably not with this person.

Yeah, I think also people accept and tolerate way more when they don't have a good evaluation of their self-worth.

Well, most people don't because we believe our worth is in other people.

We believe that if we perform and we get likes or we get money or we win something or we're top-ranking, that it means something about our worth.

Your worth does not come from out there because if you put it out there, you have no control over it.

It's dependent. Your worth has to come from in here.

And the way that you build up self-worth is you figure out the kind of person you want to be, and you start acting like it, especially when you don't feel like it.

That's how you do it. You prove it to yourself.

Do we have the—can I get the red card?

Yes, these are just questions that I just want to make sure are more technical.

Sure.

And I don't want to forget them.

So you said that COVID was the first time you felt peace and calm.

Mhm.

How come?

I couldn't go anywhere.

Oh, you were forced to be at peace.

Yes.

I was the kind of person I discovered that was addicted to business. I had no idea how often I was darting to a coffee shop or a grocery store or running to buy something just because that's what I did.

Yeah.

And not being able to go anywhere at first was torture because I didn't know how to be still.

And then learning how to just be okay made me realize how long I'd been living my life running and just racing from one thing to the next.

And honestly, I think it goes all the way back to that incident in fourth grade because if you think about it, I was sound asleep—possibly the safest and most peaceful place you could be—and then I'm awoken abruptly in this traumatic incident.

And so I feel like from that point forward, my little nervous system went into hyperdrive.

And if I'm busy, you can't—

Yeah, yeah, it's not safe.

How you reminded me now of the story you told me. It's crazy how at that young age you felt shame automatically, and you felt it was your mistake, and you wanted to protect your mom and your brother.

And I had Gabor Maté on the show recently.

Yeah, he's lovely.

And he said to me, "The thing the kid did wasn't the trauma; the silence was."

Yeah, suppression.

Yes, because imagine being a fourth grader and feeling like you couldn't tell anybody. That was the trauma—having to take it all on yourself.

It's too heavy.

Mhm.

For that age, too heavy of a burden.

And the funny thing, nobody asked you to keep it but your character.

Yes.

Um, how did you get out of the $800,000 debt?

So we know you went 14 years—like literally one step at a time.

Okay.

Like, it took eight years chipping, getting a job and then a second job, and not spending money and canceling subscriptions and opening up bills and making phone calls and consolidating debt and not going out and not spending money on things and just chipping away.

And it's not glamorous. It took a ton of time.

And when I started making money, I had a rule for myself that 50% of the money that came in had to go to paying off debt.

But a lot of the way that you get out of debt is by actually not spending, and a lot—and people don't want to hear that.

Yeah, they want that dopamine hit.

No.

If you had to describe your relationship with yourself in one word?

Proud.

I like.

As an adult, you mentioned you have ADHD, anxiety, and dyslexia. How do you manage them?

I don't have anxiety anymore.

Okay.

No, is that from the recent learning?

Yeah, interesting.

The second that I got diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, I literally started addressing it—zero anxiety.

Love zero.

And look, I have anxiety when it's appropriate. If I'm on a plane and the thing is in terrible, of course, that's a mentally healthy response.

Absolutely.

When my daughter's going through a massive breakup and I'm like worried about her, that's a mentally healthy response.

Yeah.

But chronic anxiety? No, absolutely not.

Um, you often talk about people being stuck. What's the tip you'd give someone that is feeling stuck?

If you're stuck, um, I want you to know that I recognize that you're actually very busy because being stuck isn't being still.

Being stuck is you being in conflict with yourself, and you're going to hate to hear this. I hated to hear this, but I want you to trust something.

I want you to trust that this moment of friction and tension—because people who describe themselves as stuck, I want you to insert this word: I'm frustrated with where I am.

You're not stuck because you have, what, three cards you can play? You can deal with your feelings, you can take action, and you can change how you think.

And those are all positive things that shift anything. So you're not stuck; you're frustrated.

And what I want to tell you is this: if you stand in this present moment and look backwards, I bet you can see that your entire life led you to this moment.

What if you could stand in this moment and look toward the future and trust that 10 years from now, you're going to look back and see exactly how this moment of frustration led you to where you're meant to go?

And then you're going to start to say to yourself, "Just what if it all works out? What if this is just one brick on the path that is leading me where I'm meant to go? What if this frustration is revealing something that I've been unwilling to see?"

If you can shift that mindset, things will play out.

You talk about letting go and the let them theory.

I can't let go.

Uh, I think they're different.

Huh, really?

Yes.

So my question was, can letting go actually bring more success?

No.

Let me tell you why.

Okay.

Not for me.

Yeah.

Because I always felt like letting go meant I'm surrendering.

Letting go means I got no choice; I got to just let this go.

I always felt like I was losing.

I realize it's not a very peaceful thing to say, but it's true.

I like—my husband is very like Zen dude; he can let stuff go.

It's like water rolls off.

Not me.

I'm like a—like just—I don't—and so I don't feel like let them is anything like letting it go because I can't let things go.

De let them is a decision.

You're allowing it without allowing it.

You're saying, "I see this, and I recognize this is not worth energy that would work for me."

Let them.

Yeah, let them, not let go.

No, can't let go.

I'm too stubborn.

Yes, me too.

So, but if you let them, I see what's going on here.

And here's the thing—here's why you're going to love it.

You literally feel superior.

Yeah.

Like, I like—you don't even know that I'm just sitting here going, "Let them," because technically you are rising above the situation.

No guarantee how long I'll live. How do you deal with negative thoughts?

Um, I just literally—I'm in martial arts warfare upstairs. I just do not allow it.

Why would I? How is it that easy? You make it sound easy.

So I just use a couple tricks. Sometimes I go 5-4-3-2-1 and like I just interrupt the thought. Sometimes I say, "What if it all works out?" which is a really fabulous thing to ask yourself.

Because if you're thinking negative—and by the way, rumination and getting trapped in negative thoughts is one of the biggest symptoms of depression.

And it's been proven that when you sit there and talk to yourself, you actually make the problems bigger.

Really?

Oh yeah, it's a very—very. This is the interesting thing. People say you should vocalize it and talk about it or, you know, get it out of your head, write it down.

Yeah, and some people say no, if you keep talking about it, you're making it bigger.

No, I think talking about it with the intention of working through it is different than talking to yourself about it and working yourself up.

And if you are somebody that obsesses about the worst case, you don't know what's going to happen.

So if you're going to make something up, train yourself to make up the positive.

And if you say to yourself, "What if it works out?" the truth is you don't know. Even if it fails, it might be working out.

Correct. You can't argue with it.

What if it works out?

Yeah, yeah, but what if it works out?

Well, what if it works out? Consider that possibility.

You okay?

We covered how you think. I can tell you, like, Jesus, you're smart.

Okay, keep going.

You said you are one decision away from a completely different life.

It's true, is it?

Yes, one decision. Ask anybody who's sober what decision changed your life.

The decision that changed mine was to count backwards 5-4-3-2-1 and get out of bed.

Now, it didn't change everything overnight.

Yeah, anybody who tells you that is trying to sell you something.

Yeah, it changed the trajectory of my life because once I made that decision and I felt that I could do something when I didn't feel like doing it, there was no turning back.

And that is the skill that everybody needs to achieve their goals—to get in shape, to be happier, to put themselves out there after heartbreak or loss.

You have to do the little things that you don't feel like doing.

And deciding that you're going to stop drinking or deciding that you're going to start the podcast or deciding that you're going to go to nursing school or deciding that you're going to walk into the room and say to the person, "This isn't working anymore," that one decision changes everything.

And what's interesting about telling a person that you don't love them anymore or "This isn't working anymore" is it doesn't actually mean the relationship ends.

It means that chapter does.

Saying it is identifying the elephant in the room, and then you get to choose whether or not you're going to lean in and work on it.

And you also watch what the other person does.

Let their response to that tell you everything about where they stand.

Absolutely.

You know, even you reminded me when you said motivation is garbage.

I feel it.

We have motivation junkies.

So what happens is—and I feel a lot—I don't want to be a hater, but a lot of—I won't say all—a lot of these, you know, life coaches or motivational speakers, they prey on the insecure, on the motivational junkie.

And this motivational junkie watches an inspirational video, gets hyped up, then needs another hit the next 24 hours.

And that's all they're doing, but they're missing out on the most important thing, which you said—neck down, he said, right?

But whose fault is that?

It's not the person that's actually trying to motivate somebody; it's the person himself.

Yes, yeah.

So let them motivate you, but then it's going to come back to you.

Let me decide what I'm going to do with it.

Yeah, and if you're the kind of person that's constantly listening to podcasts, constantly reading books, constantly, then you're just a person that finds personal development entertaining, but you're not actually committed to doing anything.

How interesting.

Remember you said, "Are you interested or are you committed?"

There's a lot of people who are interested in learning how to improve their lives, but they're not committed to applying it.

And again, let them.

One of your gifts is how you—and you know this, I'm just giving you a compliment—it's how you really simplify things into, like, bullets, into basic thoughts.

And I think this is one of the key magics, if I can put a plural on magic, that you have for humans.

Like, if you're in India or in your Dubai or in your Tokyo, if you listen to Mel, she makes it easy to swallow, to eat, to digest, and more importantly, to do.

Because I don't want you to just listen; I'd like you to actually do something with it.

Yeah, and that's why your advice is practical—5-4-3-2-1.

Let them—let—well, you know, the truth is I've been in situations in my life too often where I'm so overwhelmed and stressed out or scared that if it's complicated or intellectual, I'm not going to remember it.

And if I can't remember what to do, the advice doesn't work.

Yes, it's like when you open an instruction manual, it's too complicated.

Yes, you're like, "Yeah."

And so for me, I'm constantly—as I'm in a conversation, because I feel that life is the greatest school and everybody can teach you something, I'm constantly listening for the wisdom.

And then I'm thinking about, like, how do you apply that?

And how could you explain it in a way that you could explain it to your seventh grader, hypothetically?

You said something earlier.

If you had the blessing of a hopefully very healthy, long, happy life and you are on your deathbed with your children—I believe you have three?

Yeah, and grandchildren.

Let's add them into grandchildren and your husband.

Yeah, what do you feel you want to say before you go?

Thank you.

That's it.

I mean, I tell my kids I love them every day.

I would say, "I love you. Thank you for the most amazing life."

I'll see you on the other side.

When was the last time you hugged your dad?

My dad?

Um, I'm trying to think when I—I'm going to see him next week.

Um, God, when did I see them?

Was it August?

Oh yeah, I went home to Michigan, and he ended up needing back surgery, so I stayed longer.

And so I hugged him then.

I'm going to see him next weekend, and then we're going to see each other over the holidays.

You said you feel bad for little Mel.

Yeah, why?

Um, well, because like all kids, you think everything's your fault.

And I feel bad that I took on the burden of staying quiet and shoving down what happened to me.

And I feel bad that, you know, she struggled with dyslexia and didn't know it and ADHD and thought something was wrong with her.

And I lived for a very long time like I had done something wrong.

And I really attribute that to undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD and being in classrooms and being just in life with a brain that didn't quite operate the way that you were expected to as a kid.

And so I just feel bad that the little me struggled so much, and you didn't have to.

And now this goes back to what we were talking about earlier.

When I was a public defender, if you look at the research—and I'm going to cite this wrong, and I don't care—but the research is pretty clear that the majority of people that are imprisoned, at least in the United States, have a learning disability.

Wow.

And what happens to children is that when a child doesn't have certain skills—and this is researched from Dr. Stuart Ablon, Mass General Brigham—if kids don't have certain skills, whether it's being able to communicate how they feel or it's a brain that can learn in the environment that they're being asked to learn in, or it's managing your emotions or impulse control or the ability to connect with people socially, if you don't have those five core skills and you're missing any one of them, what presents is challenging behavior.

And what we do in this world is we punish people that present with challenging behavior.

And it makes me really sad, especially now that I'm a parent, to see that, you know, when our son was really struggling with his profound dyslexia, he still looks like—his handwriting still looks like he's writing with his feet.

I mean, it's just unbelievable how bad it is.

But he was acting out at school.

He would rub his hands like this to the point where they were bruised, and the school kept saying he's very challenging because they were looking at his behavior.

And it turned out that underneath it all, the poor little guy just had a brain that wasn't operating in the way that we expected it to operate and the way that public schools teach.

And if we hadn't had the means at that point in our life to go outside the school and pay thousands of dollars to have a psychologist do one of these neuropsych evaluations, he would have been labeled like so many kids get labeled as a problem when really he was just struggling with very easily addressed skills.

And so I really choose to go through life believing that people do well when they can.

And that if they can't, and if they're challenging, there is some skill that nobody nurtured or developed in them, probably from way back when they were a kid.

Yeah, or there's something going on in their life or at work right now that is really impacting them.

Like even if you take something like narcissistic personality styles, right?

People love to throw that word around.

Ninety-nine percent of people that throw that word around have no clue what it actually means.

When you look at the research from the world's leading experts on narcissism, you're going to understand some things that will change your mind about narcissism.

Number one, narcissists are not born; they're made.

And they're made in childhood.

And the majority of narcissists are made through childhood neglect.

When a child does not feel seen, when a child is emotionally abandoned, when a child is shamed and made wrong and experiences trauma, what can happen in some children is they wall themselves off.

And there is a developmental window for empathy, which is not understanding somebody else; it's the ability to actually step into somebody else's shoes and try to imagine what they're going through.

And no child has the ability, if adults are not modeling it, to figure that out themselves.

This is that attribution piece we were talking about.

And so when I learned, "Oh my God," like most narcissistic personality styles are made in childhood because either overindulgence by parents who make kids think that the world revolves around them and that they're better than other kids, or more likely neglect—neglect, and it's emotional neglect typically.

Because physical neglect and physical abuse, we all know, is wrong.

But emotional neglect and feeling invisible and forgotten and abandoned or not cared about, it happens in so many people's lives.

And so you wall yourself off.

And when you understand that most people with a narcissistic personality style are not even aware—

Yeah, absolutely.

They're like a mod.

Yes, and so people literally are like, "They're a monster."

And yes, their behavior is very problematic, and it is extremely destructive if you get into a relationship with somebody who has this personality style.

But when you understand that this was made in childhood, this person is not changing.

From the world's leading experts, if somebody who has a narcissistic personality style is brought into therapy and they're highly motivated—they want to save their marriage, the board of directors is threatening to fire the CEO, and they want to keep their job—most people with that personality style, when they hear what you need to do to actually make other people feel like you care about them and respect them, they're like, "Forget it, marriage over."

And so when I finally learned that I can say to the narcissistic kind of people in my life, "Let them be," I get to choose if I get sucked into this.

I get to choose how much time and energy I put into this.

I get to look at somebody and go, "I feel sorry for you because a parent who screwed up created this."

My mother always says that you create a monster.

Parents can create a monster.

What would you like your tombstone to say under your name?

I don't want a tombstone.

I really—yeah, no, I want to be cremated.

And my father-in-law did something incredible.

Uh-huh.

And I want to do this too.

Okay.

He was cremated, and then they ordered all these old metal film canisters, you know, from like movies and stuff.

And then they divided up his ashes in like a hundred of them.

And at his end-of-life celebration, there was a huge tray with canisters, and anybody at the service was invited to come up and take one with one condition.

H, you had to spread his ashes somewhere in the world that meant something to you and him.

And then you had to write a letter back to the family and share what you had done.

So he is all over the world.

He's near the pyramids in Egypt.

We had a friend sneak out onto the U.S. Open golf course and dump him into the 10th hole the night before they capped it.

Like he's been everywhere, and we have this beautiful book with all these photographs and all these memories.

And that's what I want.

Why did that hit you?

[Music]

Um, I think because it's a sign of a life well lived that that many people, you know, want to take you somewhere and want to remember you.

That's what it's about.

Like we get so obsessed about the stupid things on the surface—the next car, the next this, the money, the that.

You will never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul full of stuff.

And we prioritize stuff over people.

And the research is very clear that if you want a happy and healthy life, it is about your relationships.

And it's available to all of us if you can stop controlling people and let them be and learn how to love them as they are.

And I just think it's a beautiful tribute of what somebody meant to other people.

It is, and it's a very beautiful memento for grandkids and great-grandkids and people to have.

We so quickly forget.

Like, do you ever think about your great-great-grandma?

You know, when your mom passes, will the kids think about—?

Not so much.

And so we are easily forgotten, which is why it's really dumb to waste any of your precious time on things that just don't matter.

Well, you have a dinner or outing with your daughter, so you won't waste that.

Mhm.

Um, final one, Mel.

In one word, Mel.

In one word?

Um, I don't know.

Um, real.

Very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this.

I did.

I did, so I did.

And I think you're going to help a lot of people.

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All.

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