How to Break Free From Your Past with Mel Robbins

27:07and when I feel driven to learn about something or if I do feel the imposter syndrome or I do feel the jealousy, it is kind of, in my opinion, the universe coming through and saying, hey, like, Mel, this is something that you actually want to get good at. And instead of beating yourself up over and over and over again of why am I not as good as this person, you also have to realize like, okay, I'm not as good because I just haven't had as much time. And I think that's the important thing that I, one of the things that I always talk about is, is there's only three real things that are required in hitting a goal.

27:40There's the direction, like, am I heading in the right direction? Am I taking the right action? And it's time just going to work its way out. And you've probably found yourself here before where it's like, we want to be so far along. We see the people that we look up to and we're like, I want to be where they are. But then when you take a step back, you realize they've been on the path for 10 years longer than I have. As long as I'm heading in the right direction, I'm taking the right actions. Eventually, I'm going to find myself, Hopefully somewhere in the the area that they are But what i've come to find and i'm curious your thoughts on it Is if you just let time work its way out it ends up being Way better than you actually even imagine it to be as long as you're just heading in the right direction So with you and in writing the books and having all this come out Have you ever had a moment of like This is fucking crazy that this is what i've built and this is where I am because I this is beyond my dreams What I thought could be possible every day really?

28:33Every day. I mean, it was only six years ago that I still had liens on my house. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. Every day I wake up and go, I am so in awe of this. And the only difference between you and somebody who has the kind of life or things or work or friend group that you want is they're doing the work. They've been at it longer than you and they've been chipping away at it. And that, I think, is a really important thing, because I do believe that if you can figure out the directional signals, which is which direction should I head in? And for me, I use either inspiration or jealousy, because I think jealousy is blocked desire.

29:36Jealousy is very different than envy. Envy is when you bring negative opinions to somebody that has something, right? Like I envy you. And there's this implied opinion that you don't deserve what you have. Like I envy that house that you have. I envy, like there's this negative thing. If you're jealous, what that is, is that's your desire for something coming up and your soul and your DNA going, that thing is a match for me. And when you can look at jealousy that way as a piece of data, it's a directional signal. And because it is so easy for us to beat down inspiration and to beat down instinct, oh, I can't do a podcast.

30:22Oh, I can't do this. But oh, interesting. I'm jealous of everybody who has them. I pay attention to the negative emotion. It is much louder for me than inspiration. And so I think if you can scan the world and see who you're sort of jealous of, that's going to be louder for you than things that inspire you, because you probably don't give yourself permission to have those dreams, but you can feel the shit that bothers you. And so for me, every single business decision I've made has literally either been driven by something that I see as a very clear strategic thing to do, or it has been from a negative signaling, either that, and I'll give you an example.

31:14So I, you know, start getting asked to give all these keynote speeches. I'm I'm talking all over the about the five second rule to all these big corporations. And over the course of a number of years, I become the single most successful female speaker on the planet. Awesome. Period. And I could still to this day do 365 speeches a year if I wanted to, which I don't. And so here I am at the top of my game, which I worked my ass off to become. How? I'll tell you how. I started as a beginner. and I took on this mindset of I am going to study the best people and I am not going to study what they do on the stage I'm going to study what they do when people aren't watching because that's where success actually comes from if you want to be successful at something figure out all the things that you have to do when no one's watching and do them better than anybody else and for me I did that.

32:14I just worked my craft. I worked the skill. I was a student of it. I just honed and honed and honed and honed until I became in a category of one. And then I noticed something. I would be flying to an event and I would be feeling this pit in my stomach going, I'm lonely. I don't want to be on this airplane. I'm missing out on too much at home. Like there is something that's not working out about this. And plus, it's a dumb business model. Yeah, you can make a lot of money, but you can't scale it. I have to show up in order to get paid. And so I started to feel this jealousy about what a lot of other people were doing.

32:56And so I started to notice that. Well, who am I jealous of? And what is it that I want to do? And I didn't know how to change the business. I didn't know what the right thing would be to do. But I just started paying attention to this friction inside my body that was rumbling. And it was this feeling that something is off. I shouldn't be spending this much time on planes. It's no longer okay for me to be away from my family this much. I don't give a shit about how much money I'm making. Because, you know, when I first started, when you have$800 ,000 in debt and liens on your house, you will say yes to anything.

33:33For sure. Yes to anything. And so I was maniacally focused on pay off our bills, pay off our bills, pay off our bills, pay off our bills. And then once we got the liens off the house and the debt settled, then I was like, get the savings back, get the savings back, get the savings back. And then I was like, college savings, college savings, college savings, college savings. That's what it was about for me. And then, of course, like the stories that kept coming in about people really connecting with the five-second rule and the fact that you're one decision away from a different life and you need to push your ass through all the excuses and all the feelings and start taking action.

34:09and so this restlessness though started to come up and so what i'm telling you right now is that if you're in your life and you get in your car and you drive to work and you feel this restlessness either about the work and the job that you're headed to or the neighborhood that you're living in or the roommate or the spouse that you live with fucking pay attention to that because that That is a signal from deep within you that is hardwired into your natural intelligence and your DNA trying to wake your ass up and to get you to take your life seriously. And when you can look at those negative emotions as your soul and your body's own attempt to get you to make a pivot, to get you to care about yourself, to get you to start taking your time back and chipping away at the things that will bring more joy and fulfillment to your life, or simply working on your relationship.

35:25That's the beginning of all change. And so, you know, to me, how I went from speaking to now the podcast is I just noticed I'm jealous of Lewis. I'm jealous of Jay. I'm jealous of all my friends that have these podcasts. And then, of course, I would say I'm too late. fucking rob doll's been doing this shit for you know since 2015 who am i to get on there they're already talking about this i don't have anything new to say blah blah blah blah blah i mean there's always going to be excuse not to do something and those excuses will rob you of everything that your life could be and so i just made a decision i guess it would be three years ago now, that I was going to pay attention to this jealousy because it had been around since I had left the radio business and I started seeing podcasting.

36:16But I was so busy paying off my bills and so busy building the speaking business and so busy self-publishing books that I didn't have time to do anything. And when I finally made a decision that I need to get off the road, I realized there's six million podcasts on Spotify alone. I realize I have a million excuses, but I am not going to go to my deathbed regretting that I didn't try this because I can feel myself aching to try this thing. And so it took me two years of wrapping up business and changing up our business and being a student of the podcast space until I was ready to launch less than a year ago.

37:02and it's become what now at this point 75 million downloads it's crazy right it's according according to everybody it's been the most successful launch of a podcast in smartless it's amazing we have absolutely destroyed it and i'm so proud because i own it all and um we do it all in-house we have you know, same as you, Sirius is our ad partner. And it is beyond my wildest dreams because I love doing things that are free. And so being able to have longer conversations and connect with our audience twice a week, it's extraordinary. It's absolutely extraordinary. And the other thing that I'm really proud of is we've had no press.

37:56Like, I don't get any press. You probably don't either. And I have a suspicion it's because we're not therapists or PhDs. And there is, I think, a very kind of a looking down on the personal development industry. And so I'm really proud of the fact that all of that has happened organically because of our audience. Yeah. And so, um, I don't know. It's the single most fun thing I've ever done. I love it. If I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, it would be the podcast. Yeah, me too. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting. Cause we're, we're so cerebral, like we're always thinking, thinking, thinking.

38:36And what you keep coming back to is something I think is important for people to always kind of consider, which is we're always thinking about what we should do. And we're never actually like checking in with our body and being like, Hey, what feels right? What feels wrong. Because one of the things you brought up is like going to a job and going to a job that you hate. Like it requires so much energy to get yourself to a job that you hate. It requires so much mental energy. It requires so much physical energy to get your ass up out of bed and go to a job where you feel like this is what the rest of my life looks like.

39:10I can look at my manager and say like, I don't want what he has. I don't want what she has. That's not the life that I want. and you continue to force yourself to go, I actually think it probably takes more mental energy to go do something that you hate than to actually do something that you love. And the thing that I've heard one time, somebody say as a spiritual teacher was saying, when you do something that is out of alignment with what your soul's supposed to do, you have to come up with that energy. If you do something that is in alignment with what you're supposed to do, God or the universe will provide that energy.

39:45Like for me, when I get done with a podcast, when I am a hundred percent positive, when we get done with this episode, I will have more energy than when we first started it. And it's not coming from me, it's coming from somewhere. And I think that that's the thing that people need to check in with more is like, where is my energy? Where do I feel the most alive? And where do I feel the least alive? Because there is energy that is always being used at every moment of your life. And if you're constantly thinking about like, how long do I have to do this? Damn it. I got to get myself out of bed. Five, four, three, two, one, I hop out of bed.

40:14Fuck, I still don't want to go to this job. Like it's still happening all the time versus like checking in with your soul and being like, what is it that I actually truly want to do? And so for me, I was blessed with when I was younger, my father was an alcoholic. He passed away when I was 15 from being an alcoholic and I was blessed with the fact of seeing the first person that I ever knew die, which was my father in a casket who had so many dreams, like he was a dreamer and he was an incredible human. Um, he, I was always say I was lucky in the fact that he never beat me. He never touched me inappropriately.

40:47He never made me feel like shit or anything. He just got drunk and fell asleep, which obviously caused a lot of neglect issues from it. And that was something I had to work through. But I remember seeing him and in his casket and sitting there and it's, you know, the casket's right here and I'm on the, the, the, the sofa and my grandma, his mom is next to him. I'm sorry next to me then it's my sister and there's my mom and I remember looking at him and being like No, i'm not gonna die with regret Like this guy had so many things he wanted to do He was such a dreamer, but he never took any action towards anything.

41:20That's why I was a drunk to do What that's why people drink because you weren't taking the action that you were correct you were because you know That you're not living the life That you want to be living and you're numbing those feelings yeah and look you know who knows what happened to your dad and what trauma he experienced and you know what he was also self-soothing oh yeah he walked into the room after his father killed himself when he was 12 well there you go i mean that's a level of complex ptsd for sure that i'm sure he didn't get treatment for. And that lives in your nervous system. And if you don't do any of the amazing protocols that are out there to heal your nervous system, the only thing that is going to really allow you to escape from it is something that numbs you out.

42:16For sure. And so I'm curious for you though, this is, this is what's interesting is because I'm, I, we were like, well, let's write, let's go back to our parents and think about the way that our parents were with her, with, with her and with me. And the one thing that my mom did do well, there was obviously some things that, that we can all talk about that maybe she had to work three jobs. My parents got divorced, so she wasn't around as much. Um, and, uh, but the one thing she said to me all the time is she always told me she was proud of me. And I think that gave me a level of, okay, no matter what I do, my mom's going to be proud of me.

42:47I think that was a big piece of it. When you hear of, of negative self-talk, do you think that a lot of it comes back to childhood where maybe the children were yelled at for not being the way that the parents wanted them to be? Or where do you think that it comes from? Well, I think it comes from a number of places. So is it zero to five that the brain's in a theta state? Zero to seven, yeah. And it's like absorbing everything at Mach 10 speed. So there is like irrefutable research around the programming in your nervous system and how you absorb information from adults around you, whether it is tone or body language or stress, that you don't have to have parents yelling at you in order for you to become somebody that feels on edge.

43:38And you can have mom or dad come home, and when they get home, they slam something down on the kitchen counter, and if you're a two-year-old sitting on the floor of the kitchen playing with Tupperware, and the slam and it surprises you. You start to associate somebody coming home from work with like that. And so you can, as an adult later at five o 'clock in the afternoon, immediately flip into feeling on edge because of one experience that gets literally encoded in your nervous system that is associated with coming home from work and people being stressed out. Another one that a lot of you may experience is between five and seven was when most people experience fighting in their households as kids between the parents because somebody's coming home, the drinking is starting, the stress is now playing out in front of you.

44:35The sound of a car driving into a driveway, tires on pebbles, that's a huge trigger for people. And they don't know why they suddenly get very on edge at night. The sun going down, another one. The crack of a beer can, another one. And so there are so many things that are getting absorbed by your body and your brain that you do not remember. And so that is one aspect to it. And the research is very clear that you can tell, particularly with girls, whether or not they will have critical self-talk, which we all do, But the extent to which you will be critical of yourself, you can establish around the age of five based on what the mom is saying to herself.

45:19So you don't have to be criticized yourself. If you watch your mom go, I look like shit or have this running narrative that it's never enough for your father's this or those people are that, that kind of criticism becomes the second language you speak and you don't even realize it. And so those are two of the major sources based on the research. But then there's a third one. And the third one is that when we go to school and we're in elementary school and you have this experience of going from your nuclear family where not everybody has a sense of belonging, but you're in this nuclear family. and for most people there's at least this sense that you're a unit right whether you feel accepted or not when you go into school you now have the experience of being other you start to from a protective standpoint scan the room for people that are like you and people who are not like you.

46:23And you do it subconsciously. It's a protection mechanism. We all have an experience where you walk into the big cafeteria in an elementary school and you immediately scan, where am I going to sit? And you opt for a place that feels like you'll be accepted. And you don't walk to the tables that for whatever reason make you feel like that might not be a fit for me. And so that protection mechanism of starting to see the world as places you belong and places that you don't, that is also where the self-criticism comes. You can't go over there because those are the jocks. You can't go over there because those are the mean girls.

47:10And so you start this almost like as a way to protect yourself from an uncomfortable experience. ooh, the teacher's in a bad mood, I'm not going to talk today. That's you protecting yourself. And yet, it starts to run on repeat, and your own dialogue starts to then make you smaller, and make you not show up as yourself, and make you not be as loud. And so it's like a death by a thousand cuts. And then there's one more really big piece to all of this, which is when they study boys and girls at the age of 12 boys and girls in research studies have the almost identical levels of confidence girls levels of confidence and self-criticism falls off a freaking cliff at the age of 13 and there's a very well like there's a very big reason why that's the average age when a girl gets her period and so what's interesting about a girl going through puberty is it's a very public thing.

48:15Your boobs are changing. Everybody's talking about it. You know who got theirs first, who didn't get theirs first. And there's also this conversation around it that's very sexual. Because when you get your period, typically the moms and aunts and older sisters are like, oh, you're a woman now. And your body's also growing. And so girls tend to have one or two responses. They either think it's amazing and they show it off and get a lot of attention or they start wearing big sweatshirts because their body is changing and they don't have control. There is a profound drop-off in self-confidence and a spike in self-criticism that happens in that moment for girls that then tracks unfortunately for a lot of women throughout the rest of their life.

49:05And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Number one, that's fucking crazy, right? Like it's, it's, it makes complete sense because the one thing that I'm curious of that goes, that goes along with it too. And I'm curious your thoughts on it because we were talking before, like, this is like 65 % women that listen to this, the, the, the episodes that I put out. I'm curious if you think whether there's research behind it, whether it's just your opinion, do you think that makeup is also a part of that as well? Cause I think that's also around that time to start putting makeup. So do you think that maybe in their mind, I've always been curious of this, they think like, I'm not good as I am, so I have to cover myself in order to be accepted?

49:46Well, think about the word concealer. Yeah. Well, there's two things, though, about this. Number one is that I think that makeup can either be a form of amplification and self-expression, or it can be something that you do because you don't like. It's like a mask. Yes. And so you have to be very careful about what you're thinking about yourself as you're putting it on. I hate my this and flip it to I want to bring out the brightness of my eyes. I want to have some fun and, you know, be creative with this stuff instead of it being something that is covering you up. And there's no question, like when you, the messaging for women.

50:31So I personally feel when you talk about it from a, like, biogender kind of level and just the traditional subconscious messaging that's aimed at people who identify male versus people who identify female. a the messaging from society for women is your worth is about what you look like what your body shape is how beautiful you are women that start to age are cast away from society for guys you get very similar pressure but it's about how much money you make right it's about how successful you are and so we are both getting it but in very different ways and so the messaging to women is that your body and your face and your beauty is where your value is.

51:25And since we're all bombarded with it, whether it's marketing or it's the self-inflicted stuff that we do to ourselves on social media in terms of the accounts that we follow, you can reinforce that negative messaging to yourself and thereby tank your own confidence and amplify your self-criticism. I'm curious with your children, were you aware of this when you have two daughters and a son? Were you aware of this at this point when they started to go through these changes? Because there's a lot of people that obviously have children that are going through these changes. Yeah. And were you aware that they were going through these changes?

51:57Is this something that you've become aware of in the past few years? And if you were, was there steps that you tried to help build your children's confidence as they were going into? Because middle school is hell for a lot of people. But as they were going into middle school, their bodies were going through changes. Were you aware of it at that point? Or is this something that you've become aware of as of recently? I was definitely aware of it because we have a 24 and a 23-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son. And our daughters, as is the case in many families, are not the same size and shape.

52:24And we were just talking about this last night at dinner, actually. I was having dinner with our 23-year-old, and she was explaining to somebody that she and her sister used to battle all the time over clothes. and one of the things that stopped the battles is sawyer our oldest finally said to kendall i have a boundary and you are not allowed to borrow my clothes unless you ask and then kendall got all upset about it and sawyer said because you can wear all my shit and i can't wear yours because you're skinnier than me and sawyer beat herself up constantly about her body and she has a very athletic build.

53:05She's a fabulous human being. And one of the things that I sought out in terms of advice, because I'm not a parent, you know, I'm not a parenting expert. I, I, I'm sure screwed up my kids in many ways, um, just doing the best that I could. But one piece of advice that really helped me is how important it is to not compliment your daughters based on their appearance. You look so cute. Oh, you're so beautiful. Oh, you're so pretty today. Oh, I love that outfit. Because that's something that you don't feel like you have control over. If you compliment somebody for their energy or their passion or their loyalty as a friend or their perseverance at school or, you know, their dedication to something or their their the fact that they're so organized.

53:49those are character attributes. That's something that affirms you. So like when you said earlier that your mom always told you that she was proud of you, telling somebody that you're proud of them and then explaining what it is that they did or what character attribute makes you proud of them, that's how you lift somebody's confidence up in a way that they've got control over it. Because if you tell somebody, oh my God, you look so fabulous. If they gain five pounds, they're going to think they don't look fabulous because it was anchored on how they look. Obviously, as we were starting right before, I was telling you that Lauren and I are starting to get ready to prepare for children.

54:28Right. And I'm excited about it because I have to. How old are you? 37. OK. And so and she's 35. And so I'm excited because it's like a new path where I get to discover things and and fuck up. Like I've already come to terms that I'm probably going to fuck my kids up in some way. And I don't think there's a way around it. You know, it's just like you try to fuck them up less, I guess, than what you could have done. And so I'm curious with you, as of recently, what's something that your children have taught you? Like what's something as of recently where you've learned a lesson from your children?

55:00Well, I'm just thinking about the fact that my daughter and I had a huge fight this morning.

55:10um and we had a huge fight because i was trying i stayed over at her apartment last night after flying in from the east coast and she has a tiny little bedroom and i was trying to pack up my suitcase and get ready to come over here for a full day of work and she was all hot and bothered because she wanted to make her bed. And I'm trying to pack up the suitcase and get out of her room. And she's like, you got to get the suitcase off the bed. And I'm like, but I'm trying to pack it up so I can get out of your room and so I can get out of your way. But I'm OCD and I have a morning routine and I need to move my bed and you need to get out.

55:43And so we just like started. And then we got in the car and she's right. She's like, you didn't tell me it was 40 minutes away from here. And we went into that mode of silence where neither, fine. And I almost did the thing that I used to do, which is I almost fought dirty. And this is one of the things that my kids have taught me because they have permission to call me out and they do a really good job at it. And I'll give you an example. So when I landed yesterday, I took Kendall shopping and I bought her some new sneakers and I bought her like a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt. And we had a great afternoon.

56:42And when we were fighting this morning, I almost said, after all the shit I bought you yesterday. And then I was like, whoa, hold on. hold on because they have called me out because this is what my mom used to do to me i'm buying you things therefore you owe me your good behavior and my kids have really taught me do not do that to your children if you want to buy your kids something buy them something but do not buy it and then hold it over their heads as a as as some sort of token that they owe you obedience. And one of the things that I truly believe that I think my husband and I have done a really fantastic job at is that we've always stayed focused on our primary role as a parent, which is to help our kids become themselves.

57:39And they are not many versions of us, even though they look like us. They are their own individual beings. And it's a really empowering place to anchor yourself because you do, you can't help it. You have expectations about what it's going to be like as a parent. You have expectations about what they're going to do with their life. You have expectations and hopes and dreams about where they're going to live and how close you're going to be. And parenting, especially when they get older, every single day is an exercise of letting them be themselves. Like right now, our daughter Sawyer is doing a four month long solo backpacking trip through Asia.

58:31And she has come alive on this trip. I don't think she's going to come home. I mean it and I want her to I want her to live near me I don't want her to fall in love with somebody halfway around the world which she you know she's not going to she's in love with somebody in Boston but maybe she will I don't know but I would want her to do something different but your job is to empower them to be themselves same thing with Kendall living here in Los Angeles she's a singer-songwriter this is where she needs to be it would be way better for me if she lived in New York but you got to let them pursue what they want to pursue and that is something that you have to practice every single day because worrying about somebody or trying to control them does not make you care more.

59:31It just makes you focus on what you're worried about. You need to learn how to care about somebody from a calm place where you're not trying to control their every move and where you're not making love transactional. And for a lot of us, I don't think we realized how much we grew up in homes where if you behave, then you get my affection. If you do well at school, then you get positive reinforcement. If you're not pissing me off, then I'll be nice to you. Yeah. It's well, I did a three month backpack trip by myself in 2012. It'll be the best thing your daughter's ever done for sure. Yeah. It's, it's first off, it got me really addicted to traveling.

1:00:11So that was a good thing about it. Um, but, um, I'm the thing that I love most about what you just said is I have a really good friend and his mom, you I have lots of different friends and sometimes I can see how, how parents will try to control their children outside of the house based off of fear. Some of my friends, they're like my mom and people write into me and send me messages. She'll send me all of these fear things every single day and try to scare the shit out of me as me trying to protect you is kind of the, the lens that they try to say it through. And it's, it's a lot of fear. And then I have a, my best friend, his mom says all the time, she's like, my children didn't come for me, come to the world for me, they came through me.

1:00:50And, uh, I think that what's important about what you're saying is that love becomes very transactional for a lot of people in the relationship with their parents, which is when you act and their spouse, yeah. And their friends because it becomes a proxy for their, for their parents. Right. And so we learned that, uh, if, if you are the person that you always have been and you show up the way that I want to, then I will love you. But if you show up a different way as somebody else, I'm going to fight you. I'm going to bring you down. I'm going to tell you why that shit is wrong so that you can become the person that you can stay the person who you've always been before.

1:01:24And I see this a lot. I'm curious with you if you see it as well. A lot of times I'll get people that write into me and they say, Hey, I'm really into personal development. I'm new on this journey, but my husband or my wife is just talking so much shit about it. They're just saying, stop, stop going to the gym. And maybe they're insecure about it. And one of the things that I've, that I've been saying to people is like, yeah, there's probably a fear inside of them because you're killing the person that they love in their mind. And, um, and it's about having the conversation of being like, Hey, this is the route I'm going.

1:01:52This is why I'm going. I would love for your support on it. Um, but I'm curious with you with, with the children specifically, um, when you notice those feelings come up, you notice the old triggers, you notice yourself wanting to say something. What is the actual thing that you do? Do you take a deep breath? Do you pause? Do you count backwards? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to myself. And then you say shut the fuck up? No, I just like put myself in pause. Yeah. I catch it. That's what I do. Like I use the five second rule now more in my life to pause than to push. So it's like the reverse of what it used to be, huh?

1:02:25Yeah. I mean you can use it both ways. And that's why it's really effective with addiction and with PTSD. How so? Well, because you're counting backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Yeah. It puts a pause in between whatever it is that just triggered you and your response. So the counting settles your body and it switches gears from where the trauma response is taking you or the anxiety is taking you. And the patterned response in those situations, whether it's to erupt emotionally or grab a drink or whatever. five, four, three, two, one. Now you have engaged your conscious mind. And so you can now choose what you're going to do in response.

1:03:19Yeah. It's a pattern break more than anything else, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's funny. Cause you said, uh, literally we were driving here this morning, you met our dog bear and he hates going to the groomer and we take him to the groomer first thing in the morning. You know, when we take him, it's at 8am. So when we get into the car this morning he starts shaking because he thinks that we're going to the groomer right because we left around 8 a.m he starts shaking and um what's interesting when we were talking about the nervous system a minute ago when i had andrew huberman on my podcast he was talking about with ptsd not always is it the event that is a reminder it is the things that lead up to that event that are a reminder well those are the triggers right which is where the the can of the crack of a beer Yeah, it's not your dad hitting you.

1:04:02Yeah, it's the can of beer. Why? Because think about your nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the alarm system. When you have any kind of situation, positive or negative, where your body goes into a hyper alarm state. And what happens in that moment, especially with negative trauma, is that your brain hits, you know, like when a camera, you hold down that little button that takes the photos. Your brain does that with all five senses. It is snapping a thousand photos a second. There was an incident that happened with my mom where I was in the sixth grade. We were driving from Muskegon, Michigan, where I grew up to up to the Petoskey area.

1:04:55We were coming into Kalkaska, Michigan. We always stopped there to go to a McDonald's. We were in the front. My dad and brother were driving behind us. It was a crazy snowy winter night. And we were listening to the radio. We could see the McDonald's up in the distance. and the inner or the person on the radio that we were listening to said something about the weather report and then they said the words black ice and it was at that moment that this car passed my dad's car and came up alongside of us and as we come into the town this car pulls out out of nowhere this car swerves in front of us and we freaking roll and my dad and brother watch this whole thing play out.

1:05:43The wagon year that we were in rolled like five or six times. And what happened in that moment is that like my, the, the, the, the, excuse me, the sympathetic alarm nervous system activates dangerous situation and it absorbs everything and just imprints it in your brain, Pours it into your nervous system every smell every sound every everything and here's what's interesting My mom and I were in the same car had the exact same experience And I remember it like it was yesterday. It felt like rob I was sitting in a uh dryer With clothes tumbling around me because the suitcase went the dog flew from the front to the back Did it feel like slow motion slow motion?

1:06:35Yeah, you know why because your brain is slowing it down to record all this And so I, to this day, if I walk on crunchy snow, which was the sound of the car rolling. Your body just lights up. I'm back in the car. If my mom walks on crunchy snow, she feels nothing. But if she hears anybody say the words black ice. Black ice? Really? Yes. So that's an example of how a sound or a word or a smell that triggers that thing. It's the preceding thing that says to the nervous system, oh, God. Mel Robbins, this is great. Thank you for sitting down. Thank you for showing up. And I want to recognize you for your authenticity and everything you're putting out into the world.

1:07:27I really truly do believe that the stuff you're putting out there is changing the world because I think that the thing that I've tried to do since I started the podcast is be as real as possible because I didn't want to talk about my father's death for a really long time. Why? Because I was just ashamed by having an alcoholic father. I remember him showing up to basketball games and baseball games drunk, and I would just be like, there he is again. He's drunk, and I was ashamed to have that. But he passed away on a Thursday. I went back to school on Friday. I'm sorry, I went back to school on Monday.

1:08:01And I didn't tell anybody about it because I was just so ashamed to have an alcoholic father. And when I started the podcast, I realized that if I was gonna have real true connection with people and people were gonna listen to me, I had to share all of my shit. And I had to tell them. And I think there's a lot of people out there that wanna present as if they have it all figured out and they're all perfect. But the thing that I think really relates with people with you is that you're so fucking real and authentic that I think people go, she's working on herself too. She's just a little bit ahead.

1:08:30And if she can do it, I can do it. And I think that's the most important thing for anybody that's in the self-development industry and any industry I think is to, to, to know that your mess is your message. And there's so many people that just want to feel seen and they want to feel heard. And when they look at someone and think I'll never get there, I don't think that does any, any good being a perfectionist and trying to show themselves as perfect. And so And I love all the stuff that you put out because I feel like as soon as you walked in the room, I was like, yep, that's the same person I see online.

1:08:58And I think that that's really important for everyone to do. And so I think that you're giving a lot of hope to people who are on the path, starting on the path to go. Well, you want to know a secret? Sure. So this morning, my daughter and I had planned on going to a 7 a.m. Mega Reformer Pilates class. Okay. and we had signed up and i flew in last night and we went out to dinner with her roommate her roommate's mom and we had just a fucking great time and halfway through dinner after two espresso martinis i ate half a gummy with my daughter and we just uh which were legal here in california no we were planning on going oh you're still going oh wait yeah we were and then the alarm ring this morning at 6 15 and i was laying next to my daughter in her apartment with no air conditioning sweating like a human furnace and i rolled over and i said ken you want to go to pilates and she's like no and i said me either yeah and we hit the snooze button went back to bed yeah and that is okay from the woman who invented the five second rule to get out of fucking bed.

1:10:08I know that hitting the snooze button is not what you should do. And I still did it. Yeah. And so I... But you're not going to guilt and shame yourself for it, right? No. I'm going to go to a class tomorrow. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah. And, you know, but I did feel bad. I did go, we should have gone. We should have gone. We should have gone. We should have gone. And I just said, drop it. I'll just go tomorrow. But I think that the thing for me is everything exists in a cycle your to-do list is always a cycle your laundry is always a cycle the dishes are always a cycle working on creating a better life is always going to be a cycle that never ends and one of the reasons why i am sharing the especially those moments where I didn't do it is that you're right.

1:11:00Like kind of putting out this thing online or in podcasts or your books or whatever, like you have it all figured out. I don't have it all figured out. Every single day, I'm still learning new things. I'm a beginner in some areas. I'm ending other areas. I'm evolving my friendships. I'm learning more about who I am and what I want to learn in the future. And when I think about it as not something that I have to do or that's ever going to get done, but that is just the ever never ending cycle of what it's like to try to live a good life. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. And it's important because I've been preaching this a lot recently, which is I don't think there's a destination that we get to.

1:11:45Like a lot of times people are always like, when am I going to be done with this thing? When am I going to be done? When am I going to be better? And it's like, I think you just start to get better at when you find yourself off course, you get back on course. And you said, I don't have it all figured out. I don't think either one of us are ever going to get to our lives and be like, well, fucking figure life out. I don't think we're going to get there. I think it's just part of life of just losing yourself, rediscovering yourself. And when you release the expectation of the journey, excuse me, the destination, it's more of like a sense of ease, I think, comes over you.

1:12:16I'm trying my best and I'm getting better. And that's all that really matters. And I love that. That's what that's what you put out there because I think you make a lot of people feel better about themselves by doing that Oh, thank you for saying. Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the podcast. It's been great. Awesome Thank you. Congratulations on your book. Buy it everybody. If you're listening to this thing buy the damn book The man is here for you every week. He's doing this for free buy his book and support him. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome