This Simple Mindset Shift Will Change the Way You See Your Life

24:30But it's when we anchor our identity to something prematurely without having explored all other available options. So when it came to the violin, I just kind of attached myself to that moving train and I jumped on it and I was just like, off to the races. Okay. I'm going to be a concert violinist. That's my identity. Yeah. Okay. And what identity foreclosure does is that it prevents us from more consciously building these multifaceted identities. We inherit labels and identities from our families, from our teachers, from our friends, from our communities, but we aren't always interrogating what they are or making proactive choices that help expand them.

25:13Mel Robbins:I have a friend who always wanted to get married and hasn't found the person. Yep. Not yet. And yet it's this thing that they wrestle with. And how do you handle that experience when it's something you've thought about for so long, you know? Yeah. And it hasn't happened yet. One of the topics that I explore in the book is called possible selves. Ooh. I like that. And here's the basic premise. Okay. So all the time, we are generating possible selves as we go about our lives. So when your friend is thinking about one day wanting to be married, she's generating a possible self. When Mel decided, hey, you know what?

26:02I think I should do a podcast. She was imagining a possible self. When I, as a teenager, learned that she could no longer play the violin and had to figure out how to find some way to reinvent herself, she too was generating a possible self. And so possible selves come into three buckets. There's hope for selves. Those reflect our dreams of what we hope will happen in the future. Feared selves reflect our anxieties and our worries about what might happen in the future. And then expected selves reflect what is just most likely to happen, good or bad. So yes, I could tell you right now, Mel, I'd really love to become the next Taylor Swift.

26:43Too bad. Don't know how to sing. Don't know how to write songs. And probably in five years, I'm still going to be a cognitive scientist, right? So that's my expected self, okay? So what can happen when a big change comes our way is that all of these doors close that we were hoping would stay open. Or that you expected. That we expected. Or that you feared. now a bunch of doors also open that we fear. I'd never thought that my life could maybe turn out this, like I don't want that door to open. That door is so scary. I don't like what that future looks like. And what I've learned from my research is that when it comes to imagining possible selves, we can sometimes have an overly constrained imagination for what is possible for us based on stereotypes, experiences, social norms, you name it.

27:44How many times have we been thrust into a new environment? All of a sudden, I'm a caregiver. All of a sudden, I'm a chronically ill person. All of a sudden, I'm jobless. And we've been so afraid about who we might become. And one thing that I am so eager to spread is, well, in those moments of inflection, how can we conjure up more promising, positive possible selves than we previously imagined?

28:13Mel Robbins:This feels like a good moment to take a pause. And I want to give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I also want to give you a chance to share this episode and these tools with somebody in your life that's going through change right now? This could be exactly what they need in order to help themselves navigate this next chapter of their life and don't go anywhere. Because Dr. Shunker and I will be waiting for you after this short break. Stay with me.

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29:24Mel Robbins:We need lunch. We need something else for a different podcast. So what do we do? We didn't send anybody else. We DoorDash lunch. We DoorDash the marbles we needed. Trust me, you're going to love it. It's for a little visual experiment we're doing on upcoming podcast. It's incredible. Whenever I use DoorDash, whether it's dinner, it's essentials here at work, it's essentials that I need like hair products, toiletries. It just shows up right at your door, whether that's home, your hotel or work. Order DoorDash right now to get a little bit of order delivered. You know, now's the time where school year starts to accelerate.

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32:07Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are here with Dr. Shunker, cognitive scientist who's teaching us how to move on from the past and reinvent yourself in those moments when life is not going your way. So, Dr. Shunker, I want to hover for just a second on this identity foreclosure thing. And I'd like to focus on the experience of when you have something when you're young that then you can no longer do. And I'm just curious, is there any research or any specific advice that you have to somebody who was like the star athlete and all of a sudden they don't have sports or who was the star math student?

32:57Yes.

32:57Mel Robbins:And now they're in the corporate world and they're just lost. Like it's sort of that. Can you talk a little bit about this? Yes. Just because they've lost the ability to do that thing. Just because they're not the star athlete anymore. just because they're not the top math student, doesn't mean that all of the soft and hard skills that they built, all the experiences they had, all the wisdom and knowledge they accrued as a result of doing those things can't serve them meaningfully in what comes next. So we feel like we lost everything, but actually it turns out when it comes to the violin, guess what I'm still holding on to?

33:34All that grit. Guess what else I'm using? That fearlessness. Going on stage as a little kid performing in front of thousands of people. That's helping me today in my roles that I have, right? As a writer, podcaster, cognitive scientist. And so the relevant question to ask themselves when they're no longer that math student or that star soccer player is, who else can this person be? You apply the worth to the label.

34:02Mel Robbins:Exactly. And when the label is gone and identity foreclosure happens, we make the mistake of thinking that all of the value that was underneath the surface is gone too. That's exactly right. I want to read to you from chapter three of your book. Most of us know what it's like to get caught in a negative mental spiral. Any number of things can trigger these unrelenting, suffocating loops, but the catalyst is typically a change in our lives. Our new anxieties, regrets, and uncertainties can take on a life of their own and become a bigger challenge to deal with than the change itself. These thoughts become like mind worms nestling in our psyches, hijacking our attention, and stoking our biggest fears.

34:46Mel Robbins:What's wrong with me? How could I not have seen this coming? How could they do that to me? What's going to happen? let's talk about what to do when you are stuck in a mental spiral. So we talked about how our brains aren't wired to like uncertainty. We want what's called cognitive closure. Cognitive closure? Yes. What is that? What that means is we want black and white answers, we want clear, definitive answers. Yeah, I want the possible self that I'm hoping for and the possible self that I expected. I don't want any of this stuff in between. Exactly. Okay. But guess what? When a big change happens and we climb out from the rubble, there's no black and white.

35:31It's all gray. And that makes us feel so much anxiety. Certainly it makes me feel anxiety. I don't like being out of control. And when you're in the throes of change, all you feel is out of control. So what does our mind do? I don't know. Well, it starts spiraling, but why does it do that? It starts. It's so not helpful. Exactly. it starts spiraling because it's trying to regain control in the way that it knows how, which is we think, maybe I can outthink this problem, but it's fool's gold. You think, if I could just figure out, let's say you're navigating a breakup. If I could just figure out why he stopped loving me, then I can finally move on and enter another relationship.

36:09If I can just figure out all the ways that I can keep my family safe, then I can actually move on peacefully. If I can analyze every mistake I've made in the past and every regret I possibly have, then I'll never make those regrets in the future. So we have this false sense that we're actually making progress on the problems and challenges we're facing, but we're actually just looping over the same negative thoughts over and over again. Because a lot of questions in life don't actually have answers. But our brains, they haven't caught up to that wisdom yet.

36:39Mel Robbins:So you've got all these tools. God, do we need this. Let's start with the first one, cognitive repraisal. What is that? Cognitive reappraisal is, again, one of those fancy pants terms that doesn't need to be fancy, which simply means that we interpret a situation differently in order to alter the emotional impact it has on us. Okay, so let me try to put that in a way that I would understand. You are going to gaslight yourself or you're going to put nicer icing on the cake in order to get you to direct yourself at the expected or the hope to not the fear? Is that what you're doing? What are you doing?

37:18You're going to change the way you think about a situation. You have a gut reaction to your being a certain way or a situation unfolding in a certain way. Yes. And you're going to deliberately change your interpretation.

37:30Mel Robbins:Would this be an example of one? Because I talked to somebody who, on this podcast, who is an expert in grief, and he said something that I will never, ever, ever forget, which is if you are in a spiral around what ifs, what if, what if, what if, what if this, what if that. And I actually use this on the phone with my mom this morning because they had a friend who died over the weekend very, very suddenly. And I shared this little reframe with her. So David Kessler, mom, just did an episode with us And he suggests that you say, even if, even if, even if. And I find, I found it to be so powerful.

38:18Mel Robbins:Yeah. Because if the person is gone, there is nothing that brings them back. And all of the worrying that we're doing, which is trying to make sense of it, which is super, super, super normal, doesn't actually do anything. but make you feel this false sense like there could have been something. And so the even if I thought was really powerful. And I could see how you could use even if in a breakup, even if I did this, even if I did that, even if I did the other thing. Is that an example of what you're talking about? You're reframing a situation and it's altering the way you feel about it. 100%.

39:02That's reappraisal. Yeah.

39:04Mel Robbins:It doesn't mean that it wasn't fair. It doesn't mean that it wasn't cruel. Absolutely. All the facts are still true. It doesn't mean you're not going to grieve or anything, but that sort of bouncing from what I wanted and what I hoped and what I expected, oh my God, my fear, now I can't handle it. And the need to kind of land the plane and feel okay and in control, like to me, okay, great. I thought that's what that was. Yes. You have another one that you reference, which is mental time travel. Yes. So our brains have a remarkable ability to go into the past and into the future. And this can be an asset to us when we are navigating a really frustrating mental spiral.

39:45Mel Robbins:You've actually taught us a lot about that because you've taught us that we can look back at the past and go, well, I'm not that person anymore. Like I look at the college version of myself. I'm like, that was peak dysfunction, Mel. I'm not that person anymore. Thank God. And you've also said that the possible selves are a way that you project into the future. Yeah. So you've proven that to us. And if there's a specific topic to your rumination, what you can do is you can travel into the future and say, so Maya at three in the morning, wakes up, ruminating, right? What I need to do in that moment is I'm replaying this extremely frustrating encounter, let's say, with a coworker, right?

40:28or let's say with a receptionist or whatever it is. Okay. I ask myself, how am I going to feel about this five hours from now, five days from now, and five years from now? And what that quick mental exercise does, it's just five seconds of thinking, is it reminds you that your current situation is transient. And the problem, your current preoccupation, is probably going to feel less significant to you moving forward. And what I've done in those moments where I feel like I am still going to be worried in whatever, five years, is to mine my past and surface moments in which I was similarly convinced that I was going to be stuck in this mental spiral indefinitely, but I turned out to be wrong.

41:12Or moments where I showed resilience in the face of adversity that I did not think I had. And so we can leverage, we can go into the past. We can also go into the past, by the way, when we're scared of what's happening globally. And we can say, look, it's not the first time humanity has faced these sorts of challenges that we're going through right now, but a combination of self-sacrifice and collective action led us to a better spot. So this is a mental time travel is a wonderfully flexible, helpful tool. And here's the other thing, Mel, not everyone has the ability to just like get on a jet and be like, okay, I'm gonna reinvent myself by like moving to another country and I'm going to quit my job.

41:48And it's like, no, most of us have to keep our jobs, okay? And most of us have to live in the homes or apartments that we're currently in. And so my goal was to figure out, well, how can we have that reinvention happen in here?

42:00Mel Robbins:And in here, by the way, if you're listening, she's pointing to her brain. Yeah, to my brain. This is a really important note. That reinvention, we think about it and we think about the thing that you put on your vision board. We think about the future that you're going to cast forward that you can visualize and all the physical stuff and what it's going to look like. You're saying that true reinvention when it comes to yourself and moments of change happens internally in your own mind. That's exactly right. Because we cannot control, in fact, what happens to us. That is the nature of let them.

42:38Mel Robbins:I think what we're talking about today and the tools that we're unpacking and the kind of mindset shifts that you're teaching us, I think it's really gonna help because when change happens, it's so damn overwhelming that you can just feel like you're getting run over by it. And I'm excited to share this with people because these are things that you can hold on to to help you navigate where you are right now. And here's what I wanna do. I wanna take a quick pause. I'd love to give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I wanna give you a chance to share this with people in your life who are navigating change right now, people who need tools to be able to move on from the past, somebody who's reinventing themselves or experiencing a loss, the things that Dr.

43:27Mel Robbins:Shunker are sharing may be the exact thing that helps them open the door to a new possibility. And don't they deserve that? Of course they do. All right, don't go anywhere. We're gonna be waiting for you after this short break. Stay with me.

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45:53Mel Robbins:Own the dream.

46:03Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. Today, we are talking about how to move on from the past and reinvent yourself when life is not going your way, when change is happening. And I am feeling inspired because I love some of the stuff we've been talking about. I particularly love the three possible selves. That's a framework I'm going to hold on to. I'm sure you have shared this with people you care about because you're learning something. So Dr. Shunker, you have a tool that I would love to discuss. So let's talk about this. Visual self-distancing. What is that? Yeah. So what we're trying to do with this tool is just create as much psychological distance as we can between us and the problem we're trying to solve.

46:45Okay. Because oftentimes when we're immersed in it, we have all of these heated emotions and we're feeling pissed off or feeling frustrated or we're feeling a lot of regret. Let's use an example.

46:55Mel Robbins:A lot of people are losing their jobs right now? Yes. And so let's use this tool of visual self-distancing to help somebody who's in a situation where they have just lost their job. Yep. And now they feel like a loser. Yep. And now they feel flat-footed because of all of the change in the ways that people are working. How do I use this to get out of that negative self-talk? So visual self-distancing means taking a bird's eye view on your problems. Okay. Because here's the thing. If you're a first person narrator of your own situation, here's what you're saying afterwards. What does that sound like?

47:33I'm a loser.

47:34Mel Robbins:Yep. I have no future. I'm pathetic. No one's going to respect me anymore. I don't love myself. How could anyone ever love me? I'm too old. I can't figure this out. I've screwed up my career. Yeah. Also, I'm so intimidated by having to learn this new set of skills. Yes. What am I going to do? That's what the self-talk version looks like and why it turns negative so quickly. Because at the end of the day, most people have the least amount of compassion for themselves. True. That's certainly me. I have so much compassion for other people. I reserve, Mel, roughly 0.2 % for myself, okay? So I am incredibly harsh on myself.

48:15I'm super self-critical. And I'm going to be the first person to be like, I screwed up. Now, it makes for a really nice marriage because my husband and I are both like this. So typically we end up being like, I messed up. No, I messed up. But there's other scenarios where being like that is not healthy. It's not great for your positive talk, okay? And so when you take a bird's eye view, when you essentially coach yourself like you would a friend, you're bringing self-compassion to the table. You wouldn't go to your friend and be like, hey, guess what, Maya? You're a loser. You're pathetic, okay?

48:46No. How you have no future ahead of you. No. You would never say that to me. Ever. You would be productive. You would try to correct some of my misunderstandings about myself. You would poke holes in my narratives because you would see things more objectively without that cloud of emotions. So rather than saying, I need to get my stuff together, you say, Maya, you need to get your stuff together. Ooh. Okay. That small little, it sounds like a little gimmick, but it is so effective. and across domains and intensity of emotions, it is one of the most powerful tools. You change the focus from feeling like you're the problem to reminding yourself that this is a universal problem that the collective you all shares.

49:32Mel Robbins:Well, you know what's interesting is when you said, Maya, you got to pull it together. Yeah. Or Mel, stop complaining about this and sign up for the tutorial online and lean into this. Mel, start picking up the phone and just calling friends and telling them that you got laid off. And, you know, you would really appreciate a chance to just talk about, you know, what they think you should do next. Like, Mel, pull your big girl panties on. That's what my mom always used to say. And work on that resume. Like, get back out there. Because that's what you would tell a friend. Correct. But what's interesting is when you use your own name, I had this experience when you said, Maya.

50:10Mel Robbins:What did you say to yourself? Maya? I tried to use a PC term. It was get your stuff together. Maya? Come on. You got to pull yourself together. I could almost feel like there was a little coach standing behind you going, come on now, come on now. You were outside of yourself. Exactly. Now, you say distraction can be a tool to get out of the past and this negative self-talk. And I need to hear more about this because distraction is a very negative thing in the world right now. Yes. I think there is a really harmful, popular narrative that if we don't persistently and directly confront our negative emotions after some negative change happens in our lives, those emotions are going to rear their ugly head with greater vengeance down the line.

50:57The research actually shows that the story is much more complex. Distraction is a very helpful, productive tool for a lot of people. If you find that watching Netflix, having a conversation with a friend, going on a run is bringing you joy on any given day, and you don't feel like those negative emotions are trying to like force their way through and you're actively suppressing them, chances are it's a really good tool for you to be using. And so what I hate about that narrative, Mel, is that I don't want people to feel both the burden of their grief or the challenge they're going through, and then an additional burden that the techniques they're using aren't the right way to get through their trauma or whatever negative situation they're going through.

51:45There is actually no right way. Individual differences play a massive role. So if distraction's working for you, you do you. Another thing that's fairly easy to do is to read fiction. So researchers call fiction an identity laboratory because what you're able to do when you're reading fiction is to freely explore and try on for fit, if you will, new identities. You can anticipate how you would respond at different junctures. You can take risks that you would never take in normal life, right? You can experiment with yourself. It's kind of like a playground. And it's a totally psychologically safe space.

52:27And so we, as readers, we tend to blend our identities with the characters that we're reading. So that's one way to explore who else we can become. Another way is actually, this was just advice my dad gave me when I was at that juncture with the violin. So I just lost the ability to play. I was feeling down in the dumps, right?

52:47Mel Robbins:Identity, foreclosure, baby. My possible dreams, who I expected, gone. Gone. It's the summer before college. I thought I was going to major in music performance. Now I have no idea what my major is going to be, right? And my dad looked at me and he was like, you've been wearing blinders for 10 years. Your job this summer, in addition to doing your job that you're working this summer, is to, yeah, I had a job at the local museum, is to expose yourself to as many ideas and worldviews as you possibly can. So by that, I mean watch documentaries, read books, watch TV, talk to people about their experiences, talk to their parents about their experiences.

53:35But importantly, and this was the key part, Mel, you need to go on this quest with no end goal in mind. Because if you're trying desperately to figure out what's my major going to be, you're not going to be as exploratory as you should, right? You're going to preemptively close doors because you don't see them as possible.

53:56Mel Robbins:What about when you choose to make the change? Yes. Okay. So, you know, because oftentimes you think it's going to be good. Yes. But is there value in creating change in your own life, even, you know, though it's going to feel uncomfortable and you're going to be uncertain? I mean, discomfort is the key to unlocking our brain's potential. That's what the neuroscience shows. So we have this remarkable ability for neuroplasticity, which basically just means our brain can rewire itself in response to our experiences and the challenges we put in front of us. And so every time we put ourselves into an uncomfortable situation, we are boosting our brain.

54:41Here's the great thing though, when we are in these positions where we're learning something new, when we're having to challenge ourselves because we're introducing change into our lives, we fail a lot. Failure is uncomfortable. But what failure does is it releases this powerful cocktail of neurochemicals that signal to the brain, hey, something's not working. The current setup is not serving me. I have to rewire things in order to get them right next time. And so that is how we tap into this amazing neuroplasticity and keep ourselves sharp as long as we possibly can.

55:17Mel Robbins:So what do you say to the person listening who may be holding themselves back? They're in a pattern. They are looking at the doors. They see who they hope to become. They know who they kind of expect to become, especially if they don't make this change. Yes. Because if you're thinking about looking for a job, but you're not doing anything, You can expect to stay at that job. If you're thinking about running the marathon, but you never actually buy the sneakers, you can expect to never run the marathon. Correct. They're staring at the fear door thinking, oh, but what if this, what if that? So they are in that moment where you are actively waiting.

56:01You're waiting for change while you're raising a family.

56:04Mel Robbins:You're caring for your parents. You're finishing school. You're in between jobs. There's a thing you want to do, but you just are waiting. for the right time, what would you say? No action is too small. You can start right now. You do not need to wait until the kids leave the nest. You do not need to wait until you are no longer a caregiver. Because here's the thing. Let's say that your goal is to start a blog. Or like, yeah, you know what? Today I woke up. I really want to write a sub stack because let's say you really care about building community. All you have to do is write for one minute a day.

56:46And the reason is that the difference between zero minutes and one minute is seismic. Because when it's zero minutes, nothing. When it's one minute, you're a writer. You've embodied this identity and you're going to build towards it and it's going to be self-reinforcing and it's going to lead to this virtuous cycle where over time you start to believe it too. So I would tell people to start now. It can be the smallest little action, okay? Maybe it's just one little step you take in the direction of that possible future self. The other thing I want to share is that there are really good techniques from science that can help drive motivation when we need it most.

57:31So the first is to break really big daunting goals into bite-sized bits that feel much more manageable and where we can feel a sense of accomplishment in the short term. And the other reason why it's so important to break the big goal into the small goals is that we want to avoid what's called the middle problem. What's the middle problem? So the middle problem refers to the idea that we don't have stable amounts of motivation over the course of pursuing a goal. We get a huge boost in the beginning. So this is like New Year's Day, right? We're like, oh my God, I'm ready to go. Where is my gym shoes?

58:05I'm off, you know, I'm gonna go on the elliptical or the treadmill or whatever it is, okay? And then we get a huge burst of motivation at the end because now we're really close to achieving the goal. So we're like, oh, it's like, think of a marathon. You're in the final stretch. You actually speed up a little bit because you're so excited to almost be there. But we actually get a lull in motivation in the middle. So what breaking a big goal into smaller goals does is that it reduces the continuous length of that middle stretch. If you have a year-long goal, that middle is three months where you have that drop in motivation and you're likely to just fall off the wagon altogether.

58:40If you have a week-long goal, now your middle is just over, you know, it's like two and a half days or something, right? Yeah. So now you have a much smaller timeframe in which you get that, oh, I don't want to do this. But okay, you know what? I'm right back into it as I'm getting towards the end of the week. Okay, so that's the first thing, right? Break the big goals into the small, into smaller units. The second, and this is the technique that has completely transformed my life. It's called temptation bundling. It's developed by my friend Katie Milkman. You just have to do the hard thing that is required for you to achieve your possible self with an immediately rewarding activity.

59:18So something that is immediately delightful is a great reward. But importantly, you have to deny yourself access to that little fun treat in all other realms of life. So here's how I've applied it to my life. Okay. I only allow myself to listen to Taylor Swift's new albums when I'm working out.

59:38Mel Robbins:I love temptation bundling. Yes. I love it. Okay. Change my life. Okay. Third one. We have a funny quirk in the way that our brains form memories and how we look back at an experience. Okay. This is my favorite insight about the brain. When I learned this in college, I thought, I need to be a cognitive scientist. Okay. It's called the peak end rule. When we look back at an experience, we don't give every moment of that experience equal weight in our memories. We overvalue the peak of the experience, positive or negative, just the most emotionally potent moment that we went through. And then we assign a lot of weight to the end of the experience, hence the peak end rule.

1:00:20Now, what does this mean in practice? I don't know. It means we can't really control the peak. That's out of our control, right? If I'm like in a, like I've been in these difficult writing sessions, I definitely can't control how negative or positive and also when it happens and if it's negative or positive. But what I can control is the end. So here's what you do. You hack the system. You tack on something joyful to the end of a working session, or you make the end of a workout slightly less painful than it otherwise might have been. in order to remember the experience more favorably so that you're more likely to return to it.

1:00:53So after I do my 30 minutes of writing, guess what? I have my favorite candy. It's just like I have a little bowl sitting on my desk. I just eat a little coffee, chew, and I'm like, okay. It sounds so silly, but I swear to God, Mel, it works. Because I think back, I'm like, oh, it wasn't so bad. And you can do this. Like when you work out, and let's say you don't like working out, you don't like how hard it is. and with a fun cool down stretch thing that's more relaxing. Your brain will remember it more favorably. The peak end rule is something to keep in mind. If you have something that you feel like, oh, I'm trudging to you this again so hard, you can shape its end opportunistically to make it something you look back on more fondly.

1:01:34I love that.

1:01:35Mel Robbins:So Dr. Shunker, what do you want the person who's listening to know about what's possible for them if they change their relationship? to their future, to what's happening right now, and to the identity of who they think they are. Yeah. But who they could become. Yeah. I think you will astound yourself by the person that you can become on the other side of change. And I'm excited for you to go on this journey. I think your friend along the way is going to be curiosity. I think we have to be so curious about ourselves to even witness the progress we've made or to witness our own evolution. We have to study ourselves and to ask and interrogate, what are my beliefs?

1:02:26How do I see myself? How do I see the world? Maybe these things aren't sacred, immutable truths. Maybe I can revisit them. Maybe there's a new version of me that can exist? Who's better? And if you just know the right questions to ask and the right tools, I'm so confident that you will get to the other side of change so proud of who you've become.

1:02:50Mel Robbins:One of my favorite things that you said that I am never going to forget is that I don't have to worry about the future because I can stand in this moment and trust that the future version of Well, figure this all out, that somehow it's going to make sense. And that I, because I'm in this moment, I got to give myself a little bit more credit for how whatever it is that I'm going to go through is going to change me. Yeah. Bet on your future self. You got to bet on your future self. Yeah. What a beautiful message. So thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And I want to thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this.

1:03:29Mel Robbins:There's so much change going on right now. I loved the frameworks. The frameworks were so helpful. I am so excited for you. I'm excited for the future you. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And everything that you learned today about how you navigate this moment and how you believe in that future version of yourself and who you're going to become on the other side of what you're facing right now that will help you create a better life, period. Alrighty. I'll see you in the very next episode.

1:04:06Mel Robbins:I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

1:04:15So these are the best versions of our lives playing out. I'm about to sneeze so bad. Go for it.

1:04:22Mel Robbins:Oh my Lord. I just had like a little like thing go up my nose. So these are the versions of us that we are really, sorry. Sorry. That's okay. I'm going to filter again. Okay, let me try again. Okay. You're doing great. Are you not a ruminator? No. Wow, that's amazing. So jelly. But I was so pissed. I was like, I'm not having it. I'm pissed for you. I'm like, who is Jimmy thinking? I know. How dare he try to engage me with his exercise? That was like a life-threatening, dumb thing to say. Okay, but go ahead. I'm like, Jimmy, we need our marriage to be strong right now. Let's not forget. We've just lost this huge potential in our lives.

1:05:01Mel Robbins:I'm reading about mental spirals. I have a PhD in mental spirals because that is my personal specialty. Oh, my God. I've been driven crazy by my mental spirals. You killed it. I can't believe it was two hours. The time just flew by. Yes, of course. That was fantastic. I'm not surprised at all. I'm actually shocked it wasn't three between the two of us. You were terrific.

1:05:27Mel Robbins:Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

1:06:02Mel Robbins:Sirius XM Podcasts.

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