Do THIS To Turn Your Life Around Today | Mel Robbins EP 858

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12here's the thing there is one person in charge of how successful how fulfilled and how happy you'll be in 2023 and beyond and that person is you that's right i've got some good news though i want to help coach you into living your greatest year yet for free in my upcoming training and i'm to break down the keys to create long-lasting change over the next 12 months and beyond. And you can follow through on pursuing your dreams. You can rewrite the story in 2023 and stop living out the same fears and self-doubt that has held you back for years. And you can take a major leap towards multiple areas of your life.

0:48But first, you just got to make sure you click the link and show up. Join me for this upcoming free training, The Four Keys to Overcome Your Fears and Achieve your biggest goals by going to lewishouse.com slash reprogram. Make sure to click the link to sign up and I can't wait to see you there. I did not set out and go like, okay, I've written the five second rule book. I need to come up with another five. I have been toiling away with what book to write for nearly five years. So it's been five years since I've had a book in print. I had this random morning where there's a lot going on in my life, and I woke up, got out of bed, made my bed like I always do.

1:29I walked into the bathroom. I'm standing there brushing my teeth, and I catch my reflection in the mirror. And my first thought is, God, you look like hell. I start then cataloging all of the things that are wrong with my appearance. I'm like, your gray hair is coming in. You've got stripes on your neck. And then as soon as you have a negative thought or a self-criticism, it's sort of like lint in a dryer. Once you start collecting it, it just keeps on collecting. So now I'm thinking not about how horrible I look or how tired I look. Now I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do. I start going, oh, my gosh, I got up a little too late.

2:06And I've got a Zoom call in eight minutes. I don't even have bra on yet. The dog needs to be walked. And I could feel my energy going down. Like I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. It doesn't even matter what was going on in my life at that time because I think it's a universal feeling to feel overwhelmed by your life at times. Yes. And so here I am, a motivational speaker, unmotivated, uncaffeinated, no brawn, standing there in my underwear with my dog at my feet. I don't know what came over me, but as cheesy as it sounds, I just raised my hand and gave the tired, haggard woman in the mirror a high five.

2:53And it didn't change my life, like right then and there, but something shifted. Like I felt a little lighter. I felt like I wasn't alone. I felt like, okay, you know, this moment in your life is hard, but you can do this, Mel. And I went on with my day. So the second day I woke up and this is when things started to really kind of churn in my mind. The first thing that I noticed was this. So I wake up, Lewis, and I make my bed and I realized I was looking forward to that moment in the mirror where I was going to see myself now look I have spent the first 45 years of my life either criticizing the woman in the mirror or ignoring her and this was the first time that I could remember that I was actually looking forward to seeing myself and so that second morning I high-fived myself again and again I feel something shift I feel a little just a little lightness in the mood and I go on with my day so the third morning I do it again and now I'm starting to feel a little bit of momentum and I'm really enjoying it.

3:59I have no idea what the hell is going on. I haven't even done this in front of my husband, Chris yet, because let's be honest, standing in front of a mirror, high five yourself. Yeah. Like, come on, how pathetic does it get? Like, it's a really, is your life that bad? So I snap a photo of myself. I've got my retainer in, I got bed head. Like I, I'm not looking glamorous. I did not expect this to be the photo that would ignite a movement. I posted on my story on, on Instagram within an hour, at least a hundred people tag me all over the world. People high-fiving the mirror with their kids, people on a submarine high-fiving it in the military, people MMA, like just, and I thought, okay, wait a minute.

4:36Maybe I'm not the only one that needs a little boost in the morning. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one that is missing a sense of encouragement and control and confidence in an overwhelming moment in my life. Maybe there's something here. And then the messages started to come in. Whoa, Mel, like I have been using this for five days. This woman wrote to us. She's had body dysmorphia for 20 years, has not been able to look at herself in the mirror. Five days of doing this high five. And she said, I can look at myself and I even see beyond the body. I see the person and I can grin.

5:18We had a woman who wrote to us who said that she was in a domestic violence shelter. She had escaped a very abusive relationship. She had seen me talking at our friend Jamie Kirm Lima's event. She started doing the high five thing. She DMs us and she says that I have childhood trauma. I've just been in a physically abusive relationship. I've lost everything. I'm in a domestic violence shelter. What this high five in the mirror is teaching me is that I still have myself. That was when I said, I got to figure out what's going on. And I started to unpack the research and the research around this simple ritual.

5:54This is so life changing. So the first thing is that when you first try it, OK, you will not be able to raise your hand and high five yourself and be like, you suck, Mel. Or today's going to be terrible. For your entire life, you have given other people high fives. So when you give a high five or you receive one, what is a high five? Just the gesture alone. What does this communicate if we do this to each other? Nice job. Good work. You're doing amazing. Keep it up. Yeah. I believe in you. I love you. Let's go. If you blow a shot and you've got to get back in the game, a high five is like shake it off.

6:29You can win. Yes. And so all of that lifetime of high-fiving other people and the messaging associated with it is programmed right here in your subconscious brain. Right. There's a field of study called neurobics. physical movement plus new neurological activity. When you marry an unexpected physical movement with new neurological activity, it's the fastest way to forge new neural pathways in your brain. You're not used to high-fiving your own reflection. So it's an unexpected physical movement that then activates all of the positive programming in your subconscious. So when you raise your hand and you high five your tired self, what happens is all of the messaging with this, the high five, I believe in you.

7:19I love you. I celebrate you. You got this. Keep going. Come on. It actually fuses with your freaking reflection. It's impossible to criticize yourself. Your brain won't allow it because it's not wired that way when you're making that motion. And so this lifetime of positive subconscious programming associated with high fiving other people gets fused with your own reflection in this ritual. That's just the beginning. Okay. That's just the beginning. So here's how I want everybody to try it. You're going to go into the bathroom, do it before or after you brush your teeth, and you're going to stand there for a minute.

7:50And I want you to look at yourself. Now that right alone, most of us don't do. Look at yourself. And I want you to just think about the day ahead. This is based on more research. So recent studies show from the university of Florida, that if you take just a minute and you set an intention about how the day is going to go, about who you're going to be, how you're going to show up, what's the one thing that kind of matters to you to really make progress on. If you just kind of set that intention, who am I going to be today? How am I going to show up today? Even if it's a hard day, how are you going to show up?

8:21And then you raise your hand and you seal it. Research shows just setting the intention alone changes your mood. It boosts your productivity. It increases your ability to make an impact on other people. And so when you seal it with this high five, it becomes this ritual of setting an intention for the day and also silencing the critic and reprogramming the default setting about how you see yourself, whether or not you believe in yourself. And you leave that bathroom feeling like the wind is at your back.

9:07Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:57Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.